Category: Ithaca Film Journal

What I’m Seeing This Week: I think I’m going to go with Here, which closes at Cinemapolis today but continues its run at the Regal Ithaca Mall at least through Thursday, but I might audible to A Real Pain at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is Anora, which I described on Letterboxd as “a container for some of the year’s best performances (most notably, as you’ve heard, by Mikey Madison and Yura Borisov, who is like a Frank Borzage hero in the way he immediately knows the woman of his dreams when he sees her and keeps his eyes locked on her for the duration of the movie) further elevated by a handful of standout moments.” I also enjoyed Conclave, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal; The Wild Robot, which is just at the Regal; and Sing Sing, which is at Cornell Cinema tonight only. Other new films that I hope to see in theaters include Small Things Like These (Regal) and Heretic (Cinemapolis and the Regal). We might also take the whole family to see Red One at the Regal as well because we’re suckers for Christmas movies and Dwayne Johnson. This week’s special events are highlighted by CatVideoFest 2024 at Cornell Cinema on Sunday. A portion of the ticket proceeds will be donated to the SPCA of Tompkins County. Last but by no means least, your best bets for repertory fare are two modern classics, The Fifth Element and Brick. The former is at the Regal on Sunday and Wednesday, and the latter is at Cinemapolis on Wednesday.

Home Video: My Old Ass, which is now available on Prime Video, has a premise that I find irresistible: what if you could communicate with your past or future (I suspect whether you’re closer to 18 or 39 has a huge bearing on how exactly you experience this movie) self via cellphone and occasional in-person meetups? What advice would you give yourself, and would you take it? Given that it also stars Aubrey Plaza as the older version of protagonist Elliott, I went in expecting to enjoy myself; I was surprised and delighted to discover that it’s also quite moving. Other reasons to see it include Maisy Stella’s spirited performance as someone who very plausibly could grow up to be Plaza and beautiful Ontario lake country locations.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m excited to finally see this year’s Palme d’Or winner Anora at Cinemapolis!

Also in Theaters: There aren’t any new movies now playing Ithaca which I truly adored, but as I mentioned last week I won’t be rooting *against* The Wild Robot, which is at the Regal Ithaca Mall, or Conclave, which is both there and at Cinemapolis, when they’re inevitably nominated for some of this year’s Oscars. If I wasn’t out of town, I’d be seeing Sugarcane at Cornell Cinema tonight, which is screening as part of a double feature with Cornell professor Jeffrey Palmer’s Ghosts. Other films I’m hoping to see in local theaters before they close include Here and Heretic, which are both at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, and Small Things Like These, which is at the Regal. Noteworthy special events include free screenings of Butterfly in the Sky at Cinemapolis on Tuesday and Oedipus Rex at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday. It’s a good week for repertory fare, with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Matrix screening at Cornell Cinema tomorrow, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial there on Sunday, and In a Lonely Place at Cinemapolis on Wednesday.

Home Video: I Saw the TV Glow has been streaming on Max for awhile now and I finally got around to rewatching it the other day. I’m pretty sure that it’s still my favorite film of Movie Year 2024. As I wrote on Letterboxd:

The key scene for me is the one in which Owen (Justice Smith) rewatches his favorite television show The Pink Opaque as an adult and it’s *completely different* from how he remembers it. Which: I don’t think we can write this off as “you can’t go home again” because, 1) he has ostensibly seen it a million times, and 2) we’ve seen clips from the show, too, and this isn’t the same program! The one we’ve caught glimpses of is a mash-up of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Adventures of Pete and Pete which veers on some seriously dark territory; the one Owen returns to is basically just a riff on the latter’s classic “What We Did on Our Summer Vacation” episode pitched at an even younger audience. Clues to what’s actually going on here are provided in the form of the games at the arcade Owen works at based on characters from the more grown-up version of TPO, which we could interpret as merchandizing, except that the lack of branding and fact that the show was cancelled decades earlier suggest that a more likely explanation may be that he invented the “complicated mythology” as a way of repressing what all those Saturday night sleepovers with Brigette Lundy-Paine’s Maddy were *really* about. This would presumably also explain how this supposed super fan somehow fails to comment on the fact that at one point he finds himself actually in the show’s Double Lunch hangout spot.

I suspect that by writing all of this out I’m exposing myself to a possible response of “well, duh, you dummy,” but what I find compelling is the way director Jane Schoenbrun presents it. Owen knows all of this, but he is unable to act. Like Arthur Hamilton/Tony Wilson (John Randolph/Rock Hudson) in Seconds, he sees the necessity for transformation, but remains tragically convinced that this is something he needs someone else to do *to* him. That film ends with the sound of a drill announcing that it’s too late for its hero; this one holds out the possibility that “there is still time.” It’s also quite a bit more sympathetic to both the mainstream and “counter” cultures it depicts, but that comparison might be a good place to start a deep dive.

P.S. I’m still a member of team “‘Claw Machine’ for this year’s Best Original Song Oscar”!

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I think I’m going to try to check out The Apprentice (which is at Cinemapolis) before the election on Tuesday as intended even though I’ve already voted.

Also in Theaters: The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is either The Wild Robot, which is at the Regal Ithaca Mall, or Conclave, which is both there and at Cinemapolis. I’m expecting both of them to be among this year’s Oscar nominees, and I won’t be mad if they win a few. Of the films I haven’t yet seen, the one I’m most interested in is Here (which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal), although I’m annoyed that it shares a title with one of my favorite movies of the year. Your best bets for repertory fare are Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which is at Cornell Cinema on Sunday; Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and Sunset Boulevard, which are there tomorrow; and John Wick, which is at the Regal on Sunday and Wednesday. Unless you have kids who haven’t yet experienced Labyrinth, that is, in which case your top priority should be taking them to see it at Cornell Cinema on Sunday!

Home Video: In the Drink & a Movie post I’m going to publish later today, I will refer to The Leopard Man as “the film I’ve long thought of as my favorite B movie” and House of Usher as “the one which recently stole that crown.” This is all true! But between you and me, that’s only because I forgot how good I Walked with a Zombie, one of my acquisitions during the most recent Criterion Channel flash sale, is. Its brisk 69-minute runtime is filled with enough atmosphere to fill six seasons of a television series, and it also includes the following exchange of dialogues which I consider to be the final word on the pros and cons of the tiki movement:

BETSY CONNELL: I don’t know about zombies, doctor. Just what is a zombie?

DR. MAXWELL: A ghost. A living dead. It’s also a drink.

BETSY CONNELL: Yes. I tried one once. But, there wasn’t anything dead about it.

It also contains one of the best uses of a troubadour (played by Sir Lancelot) I’d ever seen prior to this movie year’s La Chimera. There truly isn’t any other movie quite like it, and you can watch it on Watch TCM until November 3, so what are you waiting for?

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I think I’m going with The Outrun at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: The best new movie playing in Ithaca *right now* that I’ve already seen is My Old Ass, but it closes at Cinemapolis today. My whole family also enjoyed The Wild Robot, which is at the Regal Ithaca Mall, although not as much as we were hoping to. Other 2024 releases that I’d like to see in theaters include Conclave (Cinemapolis and the Regal), Rumours (Cinemapolis), and maybe Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (the Regal) if it runs long enough. This week’s special events include two performances of the Rocky Horror Picture Drag Show at Cinemapolis tomorrow and Saturday and a pairing of the silent short The Pill Pounder and feature It (on 35mm) both accompanied by musician Philip Carli at Cornell Cinema on Saturday. Your best bets for repertory fare are Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which is at Cornell Cinema on Saturday; Kiki’s Delivery Service, which is at the Regal Saturday through Wednesday; and The Shining, which is at Cornell Cinema on Sunday.

Home Video: My favorite horror movie of Movie Year 2023 was When Evil Lurks, which is now available on Hulu with a subscription. I recently revisited it after La Ciénaga, which I talked about in this space a few weeks ago, reminded me of it. Two scenes in particular really stuck with me, one involving a little girl and her pet dog and another featuring a boy and his grandmother’s necklace. Like the film as a whole, each is predictably less surprising on a second viewing, but even more disturbing, I think because director-writer Demián Rugna and company have indulged in just the right amount of world building: everything which transpires has a logic too it, but we never dwell on the details. Ezequiel Rodríguez’s Pedro’s doomed efforts to do right by people he no longer has any credibility with is also frustratingly relatable.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’ll be glued to my television watching the Mets play the Dodgers tonight and tomorrow, engaging in various seasonal festivities (e.g. my kids are throwing a Halloween party) this weekend, then traveling for work next week, so I’m taking the week off from theatrical screenings.

Also in Theaters: My favorite new movie now playing Ithaca remains Megalopolis, which continues its run at the Regal Ithaca Mall. I also enjoyed The Wild Robot, which is also at the Regal, and My Old Ass, which is at Cinemapolis. Films I’m hoping to see on the big screen before they close include Rumours (Cinemapolis), The Outrun (Cinemapolis), The Substance (Cinemapolis and the Regal), and maybe even Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (the Regal) if it sticks long enough. I’m also very intrigued by Pepe, which screens at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, but its showtime is incompatible with my schedule. This week’s noteworthy special events include a free screening of the film Machuca at Cornell Cinema tonight featuring a “talkback” session with screenwriter Roberto Brodsky, a “Family Classics Picture Show” screening of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein at Cinemapolis on Sunday (tickets = $2 apiece or $10 for groups of five or more), and the free premiere of a new documentary by Ithaca-based filmmaker Thomas Hoebbel called ¿Are We There Yet?: A Compassionate Exploration of Contemporary Immigration at Cinemapolis on Wednesday. Your best bets for repertory fare are Sunset Boulevard and Nostalghia, which are at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and on Saturday respectively. Two of my kids’ favorite Halloween movies, Hocus Pocus and The Nightmare Before Christmas, are also at the Regal all week.

Home Video: I talked about the “Directed by David Cronenberg” collection on the Criterion Channel in this space last week. Anyone who checked it out likely noticed that they’re also currently featuring a bunch of great films about witches, including my October, 2022 Drink & a Movie selection Suspiria. If you’ve already seen that one and are looking for something else to watch, try The Love Witch, which is a fun, subversive update of B-movie tropes that features outstandingly garish colors, including a magnificent purple house that is one of my all-time favorite movie locations! It’s also available on Mubi.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with A Different Man at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: I opted for “Mets magic” over the movies last week, so my top new film recommendations remain Megalopolis and The Wild Robot, both of which are at the Regal Ithaca Mall. There are a whopping *three* movies playing at Cornell Cinema that I would have gone to this week were they playing at different times: Pepe, which screens tonight at 7pm; Wings, which is there tomorrow at 6pm; and the screening of L’Inferno at Cornell’s Sage Chapel next Wednesday accompanied by a live score by Montopolis. So it goes! Other new films I’m still hoping to see on the big screen include Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, My Old Ass and The Substance, all of which are at both Cinemapolis and the Regal (although Beetlejuice Beetlejuice closes at Cinemapolis today). Finally, in addition to the Cornell Cinema titles mentioned above, your best bets for repertory fare are Carrie, which is at Cinemapolis on Tuesday, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, which opens at the Regal tomorrow.

Home Video: October is a month when many cinephiles’ fancy frighteningly turn to thoughts of the horror genre. Meanwhile, our family is heading north this weekend to celebrate our first Thanksgiving of the year with my loving wife’s family in Ontario. This makes the “Directed by David Cronenberg” collection now available on the Criterion Channel a doubly seasonally appropriate selection! The Fly, which is probably the Canadian auteur’s most famous work, is only available until 10/31, so you may want to start there. If you somehow only have time for one movie, though, I’d go with Rabid, which features an utterly terrifying depiction of Montreal under martial law during what is for all intents an purposes a zombie apocalypse and a lead performance by Marilyn Chambers that will reward your patience in the final reel when we suddenly find her wrestling with an impossible dilemma far beyond anything her male counterparts have been presented with. The Brood and Scanners are also well worth a look, but the early semi-silent featurettes Stereo and Crimes of the Future are for completists and superfans only.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: It is officially the time of year when I can’t possibly keep up with all the movies I want to see before they leave theaters, especially for as long as the Mets’ World Series hopes remain alive! I think I’m going to go with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall while the original Beetlejuice, which my loving wife and I watched on Max just the other day, remains fresh in my mind.

Also in Theaters: The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is Megalopolis, director Francis Ford Coppola’s idea of a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney “let’s put on a show!” film filtered through the lens of Ayn Rand as interpreted by Cecil B. DeMille. It continues its run at the Regal this week. My family was collectively a *bit* disappointed by The Wild Robot, which is also at the Regal, but it’s nonetheless one of the best kid-friendly movies of the year. I’m not free at 5pm on Sunday, but if I was I’d be going to see Brazil’s official selection for the 2024 Academy Awards Pictures of Ghosts at Cornell Cinema. Other new films I’d love to see on the big screen include A Different Man (Cinemapolis), My Old Ass (Cinemapolis and the Regal), The Substance (Cinemapolis and the Regal). Noteworthy special events include a screening of Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom followed by a conversation with director Manthia Diawara and Cornell professor Salah M. Hassan at Cornell Cinema tonight and a free screening of The Settlers at Cinemapolis on Sunday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are definitely the screenings of Notorious and Nostalghia at Cornell Cinema on Saturday and the screening of Possession at Cinemapolis in Tuesday, but I’d remiss if I didn’t also call out the screening of The Mummy at Cornell Cinema tomorrow since it’s the movie that briefly made me want to become a filmmaker. Because I thought it was terrible and could do better, to be sure, but I revisited it for the first time since I was in high school a couple of years ago and it’s actually quite fun if you don’t take it seriously.

Home Video: While watching La Ciénaga on the Criterion Channel recently, I kept thinking of the following lyrics from the Los Campesinos! song “Feast of Tongues” off their recent album All Hell:

When the black cloud comes, if one flame flickers
We will feast on the tongues of the last bootlickers
To the tune of the National Anthem
Of a country that didn’t survive
In a language I’d learned and forgotten
I’ll stay home, keep the garden alive

The opening shots, including the zombie-like shuffling of drunk, overweight bourgeoisie sunbathers and the vaporous font of the credits, establish it as a ghost story, a reading confirmed by the ending which evinces the same attitude toward religion as las year’s When Evil Lurks: as David Oubiña wrote in an essay for the Criterion Collection DVD release, “Martel has created her own version of a world without God.” The sound design in both of these scenes and (as, Oubiña and many others have noted, all throughout the film) is brilliant, including clinking ice cubes at the beginning which sound like Jacob Marley rattling his chains and a cleverly-deployed dial tone at the end in the role of a flatlining heartbeat monitor. Lucrecia Martel remains one of my most glaring cinematic blind spots, but at least now I know why!

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m excited to finally see Megalopolis, which opens at the Regal Ithaca Mall today! Additionally, my youngest is going with The Wild Robot for her Family (née Friday) Movie Night selection, so I’ll be seeing that at the Regal as well.

Also in Theaters: You’ve got one last chance to see Sing Sing, my top new movie recommendation, at Cinemapolis today. This screening will be followed by a talkback session featuring actors and facilitators from Phoenix Players Theatre Group and ReEntry Theatre Program. Other new releases I hope to catch before they close include Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and The Substance, both of which are at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. I’m not able to attend, but there’s a free screening of the very well-reviewed new documentary Sugarcane at Cinemapolis on Sunday. Another new documentary, Film is Dead. Long Live Film!, plays Cornell Cinema on Saturday. There are free screenings of the films Clara Sola and La Pecera at Cinemapolis on Saturday and Sunday respectively as part of the Cine Con Cultura Latin American Film Festival. On the repertory front the highlights are once again Seven Samurai and Whiplash, which continue their runs at Cinemapolis, but additional great options include Howl’s Moving Castle, which is at the Regal all week, and Notorious, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow.

Home Video: Raphaël Nieuwjaer, a critic for the legendary French publication Cahiers du Cinéma, recently called Ricky Stanicky “almost […] a masterpiece.” I can’t go quite this far myself, but watching it was gratifyingly like running into a bosom companion from my youth for the first time in decades and discovering that they somehow haven’t changed a bit. Peter Farrelly’s films are to other Hollywood comedies as Sammy Cohen is to the other characters in the Strawbs’ song “How Everyone but Sam Was a Hypocrite,” so this is perhaps not a friend you’d take just anywhere, but anyone who can see past the vulgar exterior to the heart of gold within is A-OK in my book! Be sure to stay through the end credits for the mock mashup of William H. Macy’s Summerhayes. Ricky Stanicky is now streaming on Prime Video.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I still haven’t made it to a screening of Seven Samurai at Cinemapolis, so that remains next up for next up for me.

Also in Theaters: My top new movie recommendation is still Ithaca’s own My First Film, which ends its regular run at Cinemapolis tonight, but returns for a special screening on Tuesday that will be followed by a moderated discussion featuring director Zia Anger, co-writer Billy Feldman, and DP Ashley Connor. Other 2024 releases I enjoyed include Between the Temples, which closes at Cinemapolis tonight, and Sing Sing, which will be there at least through the end of the week. The real action this week is special events and re-releases, though. To start with the former, the Reproductive Rights Film Festival runs tonight through Sunday at Cinemapolis and features five free screenings each followed by a “talkback” session. You can also attend the world premiere of a film called Possible Landscapes at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday. Finally, there’s a free screening of the documentary The Berrigans: Devout and Dangerous followed by a talkback with subject Frida Berrigan at Cinemapolis on Wednesday. On the repertory front, the highlight is definitely Seven Samurai, but I wouldn’t blame you if you went with Whiplash, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall and which features an outstanding Oscar-winning performance by J.K. Simmons and one of the best endings of the past decade, instead. You can also see The Matrix at the Regal tonight and on Sunday, and Cornell Cinema’s solid lineup includes The Manchurian Candidate (tomorrow), Fight Club (tomorrow), and Roman Holiday (Sunday).

Home Video: If you can’t make it to My First Film today or Tuesday, fear not! It’s already available on Mubi.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I audibled to My First Film last Friday to catch one of the screenings at Cinemapolis introduced by director Zia Anger, which means Sing Sing (also at Cinemapolis) is still next up for me. I’m super excited to see Seven Samurai there as well since I think it’s literally been decades since I last watched it, so I’m going to try to make this a two movie week.

Also in Theaters: My First Choice is my top recommendation this week. It is instantly my favorite movie about/set in Ithaca–I especially appreciate the way it connects to our surprisingly rich cinema heritage through the inclusion of clips and reuse of locations from If Women Only Knew, which was shot here more than a century ago–and also contains one of the boldest and original filmic depiction of abortion I’ve ever seen. I also enjoyed Between the Temples, which remains at Cinemapolis, and two movies that continue their impressively long runs at the Regal Ithaca Mall: Inside Out 2 and Twisters. New movies I haven’t yet seen but want to include Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Cinemapolis and the Regal) and Dìdi (Cinemapolis); I’d love to catch Blink Twice (Regal) before it closes as well, but it’s already down to one showtime per day, so this probably isn’t in the cards. There’s a free screening of the documentary Divisible at Cinemapolis tonight followed by a panel discussion which includes director, producer, and cinematographer Lizzy Barrett. In addition to Seven Samurai, the other standouts in a great week for repertory fare include The Godfather and The Shining, which are at Cinemapolis tomorrow and Saturday respectively as part of the Ithaca is Books festival; Roman Holiday, which is at Cornell Cinema on Saturday; and Blazing Saddles, which is at the Regal on Sunday and Wednesday.

Home Video: One of the highlights of the 2023 Nitrate Picture Show was a film I had never even heard of before despite the fact that it is directed (Fritz Lang), shot (Charles Lang), and scored (Kurt Weill) by a trio of legends, You and Me. The scenes that made the biggest impression on me after my first viewing were the ones in which Sylvia Sidney’s Helen Roberts performs calculations on a blackboard to “prove” that crime doesn’t pay, which reminded me of Hippolyte Girardot’s mathematics in A Christmas Tale, and the tour of late-30s New York City ethnic restaurants that she and new husband (George Raft) embark upon in lieu of a honeymoon. This time it was the expressionistic prison break flashback sequence that stuck out as the most obvious example of its genius. Anyway, the film is now available on the Criterion Channel as part of their “Rebels at the Typewriter: Women Screenwriters of the 1930s” collection and you should definitely watch it!

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here.