Category: Ithaca Film Journal

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with The Surfer and Thunderbolts*, both of which are at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall. My oldest daughter has chosen A Minecraft Movie for our next Family (née Friday) Movie Night, so we’re all going to see that at the Regal as well.

Also in Theaters: The best new film playing Ithaca RIGHT NOW that I’ve already see is The Shrouds, but after its final screening at Cinemapolis tonight, Sinners (which continues its run there and at the Regal) will reclaim this coveted title. In addition to everything listed above, I also hope to see Secret Mall Apartment before it closes at Cinemapolis. There don’t appear to be any compelling special events this week, but on the repertory front my May, 2024 Drink & a Movie selection Stalker is playing Cinemapolis on Wednesday as part of their latest “Staff Picks” series. I caught the 4k restoration they’re showing on the big screen at Kingston, Ontario’s The Screening Room last April and can assure you that you definitely don’t want to miss it!

Home Video: In my recent Drink & a Movie post about Masculine Feminine, I quote Penelope Gilliatt as calling it “the picture that best captures what it was like to be an undergraduate in the sixties.” This inspired me to finally revisit Funny Ha Ha, which current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students have access to through Kanopy via a license paid for by the Library and which can be streamed as a rental via a variety of commercial platforms as well, for the first time in twenty years. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd afterward:

When I saw Funny Ha Ha for the first time in 2005 I would have been less than a year into my first full-time job after graduation and still a couple away from enrolling in a master’s program and it hit me like a bolt of lightning because I finally got to experience something for myself that I had read other people describe: the shock of recognizing myself onscreen. Which even then I felt just a bit sheepish about; after all, American movies have always been chock full of white middle class young people. But they’d never before looked exactly like my friends, unglamorous yet always dressed in the perfect killer thrift store find t-shirt. They’d never before sounded just like us, smart but inarticulate and begging the god(s) we didn’t so much not believe in as rarely think about to please not let us be misunderstood. They’d never before drifted listlessly through the Kuiper Belt of planetoid hangouts that didn’t quite rise to the level of parties orbiting some other college town, helping themself the requisite meager offering of bottom shelf bottles en route to another hookup and maybe a deeper connection and eventually an actual adult life in an entirely different place. Because, to go back to Gilliat, Funny Ha Ha is the picture that best describes what it was like to be recently *not* an undergraduate in the mid-2000s but, like Kate Dollenmayer’s Marnie, not quite as far along the road to things like a career and a long-term relationship as your peers, many of whom were beginning to leave, leaving you behind.

I can confidently recommend this film to almost anyone as the rootstock of mumblecore, a historical record of the brief time when cellphones coexisted alongside answering machines, and a rebuttal to the “No Girls Allowed” sign outside Jean-Luc Godard’s Children of Marx clubhouse. You probably aren’t going to be gobsmacked by the scene in which Andrew Bujalski’s Mitchell impulsively drops a beer off a balcony unless you once did the same thing with an empty bottle of champagne for the same silly reasons, though.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I still haven’t made it to The Legend of Ochi, so seeing it at Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall is my top priority. I’m also hoping to catch The Surfer at one of those two theaters before it closes, but I’m going to take a gamble that it will stick around for more than a week and see La Haine at Cinemapolis on Wednesday instead.

Also in Theaters: I’m still processing The Shrouds, a typically visionary outing by director David Cronenberg which maybe didn’t come together in the final reel the way I was expecting it to? But that may well have been the entire point, and it definitely is my favorite new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen. Sinners isn’t that far behind, though. Both films are at Cinemapolis and the latter is at the Regal as well. I also enjoyed Drop and One to One: John & Yoko, which continue their runs at the Regal and Cinemapolis respectively. Thunderbolts* doesn’t really seem like my cup of tea, but it’s garnering positive reviews, so I probably will see it at Cinemapolis or the Regal eventually. This week’s special events are highlighted by Cornell Cinema‘s traditional end-of-semester “mystery screening” tonight and a presentation of the “vegan horror” movie A44, which was shot in upstate New York, at Cinemapolis on Saturday followed by a Q&A with cash members. Finally, your best bet for repertory fare is Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is at the Regal on Sunday and Wednesday.

Home Video: I went on a Toots & the Maytals listening binge after the MUBI Podcast featured The Harder They Come as part of their “Needle on the Record” season a couple of years ago, but somehow never got around to watching the film itself until just the other day. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:

Sun sparkling on the water straight out of Black Narcissus and one of the great movie soundtracks of all time. It isn’t just a *container* for great music, though: it’s a mischievously subversive acknowledgement that these songs are dangerous which works because director Perry Henzell & co. also successfully argue that suppressing them would be an even bigger mistake. Jimmy Cliff’s Ivan, who at his heart is apolitical, is a much bigger threat as a one-hit wonder revolutionary martyr than as a popular entertainer, because Lord help the establishment if someone comes along later and groks the FULL power of the lyric “they know not what they’ve done.”

You can stream The Harder They Come on Peacock with ads, but I sprang for the Criterion Collection Blu-ray, which is out of print but still readily available through Amazon and other retailers.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m excited to finally see The Shrouds, which opens at Cinemapolis today! I’ll probably try to catch The Legend of Ochi there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall as well.

Also in Theaters: The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is the blues-drenched People’s History of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles Sinners, which meets both of Fritz Lang’s requirements for widescreen cinematography (snakes and funerals . . . check and check!) and continues its run at Cinemapolis and the Regal. I also enjoyed Drop, which is down to one showing per day at the Regal, and One to One: John & Yoko, which remains at Cinemapolis. This week’s special events are highlighted by a bevy of free screenings, many of which feature panel discussions and Q&A sessions: The Brutalist and Machines in Flames at Cornell Cinema tonight, Beyond the Straight and Narrow at Cinemapolis tonight, Human Again and National Velvet at Cinemapolis on Sunday, Deaf President Now! at Cornell Cinema on Monday, and Fancy Dance there on Tuesday. Finally, Anora now counts as “repertory fare,” so the screening at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday is my top recommendation in that department.

Home Video: An old and new favorite that I mentioned on this blog in the past year are both among the films leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month. The Palm Beach Story, my “Drink & a Movie” selection for last April, begins with an all-time great opening credits sequence, ends with an impressively advanced special effect for its era, and features maybe my single favorite movie prop ever, he notebook in which Rudy Vallee’s J.D. Hackensacker III writes down all of his expenses, in between. Of more recent vintage, About Dry Grasses came in eighth on the top ten list I published in March. I don’t actually say much about it there, but as I noted on Letterboxd after my first viewing, Deniz Celiloglu’s Samet is one of 2024’s most compelling unlikeable protagonists, and as I added after a second one the subjective sound design that puts the viewer in his headspace right from the start is also interesting.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with One to One: John and Yoko, which opens at Cinemapolis today, and Sinners, which also begins a theatrical run today there at and at the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: I’d be prioritizing The Ugly Stepsister, which I heard intriguing things about out of Sundance, but it’s only playing the Regal and I’m without a car while the rest of the family spends spring break in Canada. Hopefully it will run for more than a week! The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is Drop, an extended metaphor for what it must feel like to re-enter the dating pool as a single parent in 2025, which continues its run at the Regal. I hesitate to say I “enjoyed” the brutal and intense Iraq War film Warfare, which is there and at Cinemapolis, but it’s definitely worth seeing if you have opinions about that conflict or any other one. Noteworthy special events include free screenings of Santo vs. the Vampire Women, The Dybbuk, and Remembering Gene Wilder at Cornell Cinema on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday respectively, and of The Empty Chair at Cinemapolis on Wednesday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are the screenings of Vengeance Is Mine, Parasite, and Star Wars: A New Hope at Cornell Cinema tonight, on Saturday, and on Sunday respectively. A New Hope might actually be the movie I’ve seen in theaters more times than any other, now that I think of it, and if you’re of my generation (X or Y depending on how you count) you really owe yourself the pleasure if you’ve never had it.

Home Video: I watched the biopic Better Man on Paramount+ (which I get for free through Spectrum) as part of my tantalizingly close to successful campaign to see very film nominated for one of this year’s Oscars (I caught 48/49) even though I honestly somehow didn’t know subject Robbie Williams as anything other than the fella who covered “Beyond the Sea” for the end credits of Finding Nemo and enjoyed it enough to go back and listen to everything he ever recorded on Spotify. I revisited it the other day and I’m happy to report that when you’re actually familiar with the songs, the way they’re presented in the film makes them even more interesting, especially the Baz Luhrmann-esque staging of “She’s the One,” acoustic retelling of the origins of “Something Beautiful,” and revisionist history of “Rock DJ” as a Take That track that Williams was actually permitted to write lyrics for. I still can’t (and probably never will be) recreate the experience longtime fans presumably had of seeing a familiar *face* in their lives replaced by that of a CGI chimpanzee, but even this works for me as speculation about where the trail blazed by last year’s documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin might lead in the future.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m happy to report that I am finally going to make it to the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival! The screening I’m targeting is the one of 7 Walks with Mark Brown at Cinemapolis on Sunday. I’m also hoping to catch Warfare there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall and Drop at the Regal.

Also in Theaters: Had I but world enough, and time, other FLEFF events I’d want to attend include the screenings at Cinemapolis of Sleep with Your Eyes Open tonight and The End of St. Petersburg (which includes live musical accompaniment by local legends Cloud Chamber Orchestra) on Saturday, and the live performance using 19th-century optical devices called “Elliott and Schlemowitz’s Magic Lantern Show” there on Sunday. My favorite new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is The Woman in the Yard, a well-crafted chilling psychological horror film about my greatest fear as a parent which continues its run at the Regal, but maybe only for one more week (it’s down to one showing per day). I also enjoyed Black Bag, which closes at Cinemapolis tonight, and A Working Man, which continues its run at the Regal. Noteworthy special events include free screenings of last year’s Best International Feature Film Oscar winner I’m Still Here at Cornell Cinema on Monday and Matter of Mind: My Alzheimer’s at Cinemapolis on Wednesday and free “sensory-friendly” screenings of the PBS children’s television program Carl the Collector at the Tompkins County Public Library on Wednesday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are the 4k restorations of North by Northwest and my November “Drink & a Movie” selection The Searchers at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and Sunday respectively as part of their “VistaVision!” series.

Home Video: I’ve been meaning to check out Wooden Crosses on the Criterion Channel ever since Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell (RIP) referred to it as a “masterpiece unknown to most modern viewers” in their “The ten best films of … 1932” blog post a few years ago and I finally got around to it the other day. Here’s what I posted to Letterboxd after my second viewing:

As a committed pacifist war films aren’t my favorite genre. It is the shame of our species that we’re still fighting each other at this point in our development, and there isn’t much else to say about the matter. Wooden Crosses is largely exempt from this argument, though, because of when it was made and because it isn’t so much anti-WAR as it is anti-war PROPAGANDA. While it has elements that are maybe more appropriate to the silent era like a double exposed dual parade of living and dead soldiers, it’s very smart about sound and neither of its most crucial scenes would work as well or even at all without it. First Corporal Breval (Charles Vanel), far from leaving his comrades with lofty sentiments or pearls of wisdom as he expires instead instructs them to make sure everyone knows what a slut his wife is. Then Gilbert Demachy (Pierre Blanchar) is denied a hero’s death and succumbs to a gutshot wound after an entire day spent whimpering pathetically in no man’s land as he waits for nightfall and the promise of stretcher bearers who never arrive. The point is clear: there is nothing ennobling about their “sacrifice.” Their stories were simply cut short and wasted, leaving behind a lifetime of unfinished business. Wooden Crosses is also justly famous for the documentary-style combat footage that is the reason 20th Century-Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck bought the North American rights to it (so that the footage could be reused in The Road to Glory), the maddeningly incessant sound of artillery is again the reason this is *effective*. I would even go so far as to say that it compares well to some scenes from Band of Brothers, which is impressive considering it preceded that work by nearly 70 years.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I am currently out of town at a library conference, but I’m hoping to catch a few films at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival while I’m away. I’ll write them up in a dispatch blog post if I’m successful, so stay tuned! I’m also going to try to see The Woman in the Yard, which I’m hearing good things about from people I trust, at the Regal Ithaca Mall after I return.

Also in Theaters: If I was in Ithaca this week, I’d be prioritizing the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, specifically the screenings at Cinemapolis of Snow Leopard on Friday; Sleep with Your Eyes Open on Saturday; and Little, Big, and Far on Tuesday. The best new movies now playing local theaters that I’ve already seen are the enjoyable genre exercises Black Bag (spy film), which continues its runs at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, and A Working Man (Jason Statham), which is at just the Regal. This week’s special events are highlighted by free screenings of the movies Improper Conduct and The Accelerator at Cornell Cinema on Monday and Tuesday respectively. Finally, your best bet for repertory fare is Princess Mononoke, which is at the Regal all week.

Home Video: I’ve been digging the fact that there have been many pre-Code movies with ~60 minute runtimes featured on Watch TCM lately because they’re the perfect thing to watch when, say, we miraculously get the kids settled on Thursday night with about an hour to spare before Top Chef comes on. My favorite recent discovery is the 1933 film Female, which starts where Movie Year 2024’s Babygirl ends: with a girlboss CEO exiling an employee she has slept with to a faraway branch office. A lot of people seem to be hung up on the messaging of the climax, but the preponderance of available evidence suggests to me that whatever they say to each other in the final scene, Ruth Chatterton’s Alison Drake is much more comfortable in the board room than George Brent’s engineer Jim Thorne is ever likely to be. Anyway, the film also features delightfully profligate back projection and some outrageous wipes, so be sure to check it out before it disappears from the platform on April 9!

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m a single parent for the next four days while My Loving Wife is out of town, and I’m planning to take the girls to see The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie at the Regal Ithaca Mall while she’s away. I’m also going to try to sneak in a screening of A Working Man there during the brief window of time between her return and my departure for a conference in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

Also in Theaters: This week’s highlight is definitely the beginning of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival! For the reasons described above, I won’t be able to make it to any of the initial screenings, but some titles that jumped out at me include Little, Big, and Far; Snow Leopard; and Youth (Hard Times), which screen at Cinemapolis tomorrow, Saturday, and Tuesday respectively. Eephus is the first serious contender for my Top Ten Movies of 2025 list, but it’s sadly down to its last two screenings at Cinemapolis today at 5:50 and 8:20pm. Best Picture Oscar winner Anora closes there today as well, and there’s also a screening of Best Documentary Feature Oscar winner No Other Land at Cornell Cinema tonight at 7pm. After that my top recommendation will become Black Bag, a relationship movie disguised as a spy thriller starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett and shot by Steven Soderbergh (sorry: Peter Andrews) to look like a sleepy child’s view of Christmas lights out a car window. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which plays Cornell Cinema tomorrow, and Before Sunrise plus its sequel Before Sunset, both of which are at Cinemapolis all week.

Home Video: Speaking of Anora, it is now streaming on Hulu! Critic Noel Vera was kind enough to engage me in a back-and-forth in the comments section of his review last November about Ani, the character Mikey Madison won a Best Actress Oscar for portraying, and whether or not it’s believable that she falls so completely for Mark Eydelshteyn’s Vanya. To him Ani “feels too smart for that; at least as Madison plays her” and thus “the ending, glum as it is, doesn’t quite hit as hard” because the film “still feels every bit the fairy tale.” To me, though, that’s precisely the point. Ani may be clever and tough, but she still has Disney princess dreams that make her vulnerable. I rewatched Cinderella, the specific one she mentions, the other day, and it’s not like Prince Charming does anything to convince his bride that he’d be willing to stand up for her against his father the king if she turned out to be unable or unwilling to have children! Anyway, the mere fact that we spent so much time talking about this is a testament to how successful Madison and writer-director Sean Baker were at creating a memorable movie heroine and a world for her to inhabit.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: My top priority is On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, since it will be at Cinemapolis for one week only, and I’m planning to see Eephus there as well because I don’t want to risk missing it either. Finally, our plans for a “date night” outing to Black Bag at Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall last week fell through, so My Loving Wife and I trying again tomorrow.

Also in Theaters: The best new movie now playing Ithaca RIGHT NOW that I’ve already seen No Other Land, but its final screening at Cinemapolis is today at 2:50pm. After that it will be Anora, which continues its post-Best Picture Oscar run at Cinemapolis and the Regal. That should definitely be your first choice if you somehow haven’t already checked it out, but otherwise it’s all about special events and repertory fare this week. Highlights on the former front include free screenings at Cornell Cinema of an experimental short films program called “Matter Falling Out of Form” tonight, The Year Between on Monday evening and a shorts program called the “Women’s Adventure Film Tour 2025” on Wednesday, as well as a double feature of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and La La Land there on Saturday. My other “old movie” recommendation is Peeping Tom, which closes out Cornell Cinema’s “Powell and Pressburger: Titans of Technicolor” series tomorrow.

Home Video: My oldest daughter Lucy recently scored the first two points of her basketball career in the final game of her second season. We’re extremely proud of all the hard work she has put in on and off (her coaches think that indoor rock climbing has had a noticeable impact on her upper body strength) the court and have enjoyed watching her improve each week. In addition to the bucket, she also fought for rebounds and let her teammates know when she was open, which she attributes to our new pre-game ritual of playing the song “Defying Gravity” on repeat in the car so that she and her sister can lustily sing along to it to warm up her voice. In honor of this momentous event (which literally brought tears to My Loving Wife’s eyes!) in our family’s history, this week’s home video recommendation is Love & Basketball, which Cornell Cinema actually screened in February and which is now streaming on Peacock.

This film was released theatrically almost exactly one year before I officially became a diehard basketball fan during my freshman year at the University of Pittsburgh when my soon-to-be-beloved Panthers went on a Cinderella run during the Big East (RIP) tournament. Although this wasn’t enough to secure an NCAA Tournament bid that year, they went on to appear in the next ten and came within a heartbreaking miracle Scottie Reynolds coast-to-coast basket of the Final Four in 2009. Throughout this run they always had great point guards, so I was delighted when this turned out to be the position that Love & Basketball‘s protagonists Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) both play and in heaven when the movie’s pivotal moment turns out to be Wright taking a charge. It also features one of cinema’s great one-on-one games (along with Arthur Agee’s showdown with his father in my March, 2024 Drink & a Movie selection Hoop Dreams) followed by a heartwarming final scene celebrating the WNBA, which was still only in its third year of existence during shooting.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I wasn’t able to make it to Mickey 17 last week after all, so seeing it at Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall is my first order of business. My Loving Wife and I are also planning a “date night” (we’re probably actually going to hit a matinee) outing to Black Bag at one of those two theaters as well.

Also in Theaters: The best new film now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is Close Your Eyes, which screens at Cornell Cinema on Sunday. No Other Land, which continues its run at Cinemapolis, made my “Top Ten Movies of 2024” list too, and I recommend Best Picture Oscar winner Anora (Cinemapolis and the Regal) as well. I’m also intrigued by Toxic, which is at Cornell Cinema tonight, and am looking forward to selecting Paddington in Peru (Regal) and The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (Cinemapolis and the Regal) for Family (née Friday) Movie Night later this year. Noteworthy special events include an event called “Nosferatu x Radiohead: A Silents Synced Film” at Cornell Cinema and a free Pi Day screening of the documentary Counted Out at Cinemapolis tomorrow; a free “Family Classics Picture Show” screening of An American Tail at Cinemapolis on Sunday; and a free screening of Alien at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are Peeping Tom and The Red Shoes, which play Cornell Cinema tonight and Saturday respectively.

Home Video: It recently occurred to me that The Crowd, one of my favorite movies of all time, has now been in the public domain in the United States for more than a year. I was utterly shocked to discover that it nonetheless remains unavailable on a good R1 Blu-ray/DVD release. It can, however, be streamed on Watch TCM until March 21. Here’s what I wrote about it on Letterboxd after revisiting it there last week:

John Sims (James Murray) stars as a man who inherits the vision of exceptionalism his father (Warner Richmond) had for him and learns the hard way each time how to fall in love with first the mother (Eleanor Boardman) of his first child (Freddie Burke Frederick); then Mary, the actual flesh-and-blood woman who occupies that role; and finally the life they’ve been really living all the while he was dreaming, hopefully just in time to finally lay a foundation before the Great Depression that not even the filmmakers know is barreling down upon them hits. Mary’s brothers (Daniel G. Tomlinson and Dell Henderson) are perfectly dour avatars of bourgeoisie judgmentalism, and the depictions of the titular urban masses constitute all-time great cinema images which clearly inspired David Lynch, Jacques Tati, Orson Welles, and any number of other giants who followed.

The Welles film most commonly associated with this one is The Trial, but the Crazy House sequence in The Lady from Shanghai, which I wrote about in January, was clearly inspired by it as well. The works by Lynch and Tati I mainly have in mind are Twin Peaks: The Return and Playtime, which I wrote about in December.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I am excited to finally see Universal Language, which I heard great things about as it worked its way across the film festival circuit last year, at Cinemapolis! I am also going to try to catch Mickey 17 there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall on the only other evening I’m free.

Also in Theaters: Cornell Cinema has an absolutely killer lineup this week that my schedule doesn’t permit me to take advantage of, but you should if you can! If I was free on Saturday, I would definitely be going to the “unique Cornell version of Eno,” and if I was free tomorrow I’d probably prioritize Toxic ahead of Mickey 17 and Universal Language. They’re also screening Close Your Eyes, which landed at fifth place on my Top Ten Movies of 2024 list, tomorrow and my August, 2024 “Drink & a Movie” selection Black Narcissus on Sunday. Otherwise, the best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is newly-minted Best Documentary Feature Oscar winner No Other Land, which continues its run at Cinemapolis, as does this year’s Best International Feature Film I’m Still Here. Best Picture Oscar winner Anora is back in local theaters as well at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. Other noteworthy special events include “An Evening with John Cameron Mitchell” at Cornell’s Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts on Friday; free admission to the Streets Alive! Film Festival at Cinemapolis on Sunday, a free screening of Song Lang at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday, and a preview screening of The Friend at Cinemapolis that same evening. Finally, another repertory highlight is The Adventures of Prince Achmed at Cornell Cinema on Sunday.

Home Video: Speaking of my top ten list for 2024, the film that placed sixth on it, All We Imagine as Light, premieres live on the Criterion Channel at 9pm on Sunday! The first film from India to compete in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 30 years, it won the Grand Prix there and placed fourth in the IndieWire Critics Poll, which is definitely the list of this type that I put the most stock in. Looking back on the only “Ithaca Film Journal” post where I actually had occasion to recommend this movie, I realize I didn’t say anything about it because I assumed I already had! Anyway, it’s a sumptuously photographed tale of platonic and romantic love with a delightfully poetic “plot twist” and an outstanding final shot that features a kid absolutely rocking out to headphone music.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.