Category: Now Playing in Ithaca, NY

Now Playing in Ithaca, NY (5/9/24)

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What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Challengers at Cinemapolis or maybe the Regal Ithaca Mall.

Also in Theaters: For at least one more week, the best new movie now playing locally remains Dune: Part Two, which continues its run at the Regal. Civil War, which is there and at Cinemapolis, is also definitely worth seeing. The Beast has a few more showtimes at Cinemapolis today before it closes; if you like it, you may be interested to know that you can see the Met Opera’s production of Madama Butterfly at the Regal on Saturday and Wednesday. I hear that The Fall Guy, which is at the Regal, is a fun time at the movies and hope to see it there before it closes. It’s once again slim pickings for repertory fare, but you can see Amélie at Cinemapolis all week.

Home Video: I’m absolutely thrilled to report that Turner Classic Movies has devoted the first three Thursdays of May to films directed by Frank Borzage, who up until now perhaps my most glaring cinephile blind spot! Here’s tonight’s lineup (all times in Eastern):

And here’s next week’s:

Each film they showed last week showed up on WatchTCM shortly after it aired, and hopefully that will be true of these titles, too–if so, I’m determined to watch all of them! Of the movies there now, the highlight is definitely Man’s Castle, which is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to the cinematic equivalent of a Bruce Springsteen song–just change the setting to New Jersey in your mind, listen to that long whistle whine, and tell me I’m wrong! I’m also a big fan of the two Gary Cooper vehicles, A Farewell to Arms and Desire, which I believe is the first movie I’ve ever seen set in San Sebastián, Spain, one of my favorite cities in the world. The Circle, No Greater Glory, and Secrets are excellent as well. Also are available are two I haven’t watched yet, Mannequin and Stranded. Meanwhile, History Is Made at Night, the one Borzage film I’ve seen more than once and the subject of a future “Drink & a Movie” post, is also available on The Criterion Channel.

Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.

Now Playing in Ithaca, NY (5/2/24)

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What I’m Seeing: I’m going with The Beast at Cinemapolis for this week’s theatrical screening.

Also in Theaters: Challengers, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, is penciled in as my theatrical selection for next week. The Fall Guy, which opens at the Regal today, will likely work its way up to the top of my list later in May. The best new movie now playing in Ithaca that I’ve seen is Dune: Part Two, which remains at the Regal. Civil War, which is there and at Cinemapolis, is neither as good nor as bad as you’ve heard, but it’s definitely worth seeing so that you can form your own opinion. Finally, repertory pickings are slim with Cornell Cinema done until fall following a “mystery screening” tonight, but options worth considering include Amélie, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow and runs all week, and Alien, which closes at the Regal tonight, but definitely not Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, which: why is this back in theaters?

Home Video: I typically make it a point to only recommend movies in this space that I have watched recently, but decided to make an exception after reading in the New York Times yesterday that Uncut Gems is leaving Netflix on May 8. It would have been a shoo-in for my Top Ten Movies of 2019 list had I made one that year and I remember it fondly every time one of my sports books runs a promo that suckers me into a silly NBA parley, which happens more often than I’d like to admit. I haven’t seen it since right before the pandemic, though, and my loving wife hasn’t seen it all, so this definitely what we’ll be watching this weekend!

Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.

Now Playing in Ithaca, NY (4/25/24)

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What I’m Seeing: Local theaters are full of intriguing options right now! I’m going with the movie of the moment Civil War at Cinemapolis because I enjoyed the first three films that Alex Garland directed and because national treasure Stephen McKinley Henderson is in it.

Also in Theaters: I hope to catch both Challengers, which is at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, and The Beast, which is at Cinemapolis, before they leave Ithaca. Had I but world enough, and time, I’d see Monkey Man (the Regal) and Sasquatch Sunset in theaters as well, but it probably isn’t going to work out. Oh well. Following a lot of turnover on local screens, the best new movie in Ithaca that I’ve already seen is once again Dune: Part Two, which is at the Regal. Cornell Cinema is winding down their spring programming with Cléo from 5 to 7 on Monday, a free screening of Borders on Tuesday, and a Science on Screen event which includes a screening of Back to the Future and a lecture by Professor Eilyan Bitar on Wednesday. Your other best bets for repertory fare are Spirited Away, which is at the Regal in dubbed or subbed versions Saturday through Wednesday, and Alien, which opens at the Regal tomorrow and runs all week.

Home Video: The name of this blog refers to the fact that I took a roughly decade off from intensive movie watching between finishing graduate school in 2009 and the birth of my second child in 2018 to concentrate on my family and career. I’m sure I still saw more films than an average person during this time, but there were also a lot of prominent new releases that I completely missed. I finally caught up with one of them the other day after Jason Bailey noted in the New York Times that Whiplash is leaving Netflix on April 30. As you probably already know, it’s terrific! J.K. Simmons is a Best Supporting Actor of the Decade candidate for his performance as Terence Fletcher, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack nonstop on Spotify all week, and the final sequence is absolutely stunning. I think I like it best, though, for its treatment of art and sport as two sides of the same coin. Sport is the art of the body, and artists are competitors just as surely as athletes are–they just have different ways of keeping score. Whiplash is about how much we’re missing when we focus only on concerts and games and ignore the countless hour of practice and decision-making that preceded them: if we applaud the final performance without understanding what led up to it, who knows what kind of awful behavior we’re condoning? At the same time the only way to convincingly rebut Fletcher’s claim that his methods are necessary if we value greatness is with a thoughtful definition of what that word does and should mean.

Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.

Now Playing in Ithaca, NY (4/18/24)

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What I’m Seeing This Week: I am psyched to finally see La Chimera at Cinemapolis!

Also in Theaters: The best new film playing Ithaca this week that I’ve already seen is Aurora’s Sunrise, which screens for free at Cornell Cinema on Monday. I had the pleasure of catching this ingenious blend of original (partially rotoscoped) animation; interviews with Armenian genocide survivor Arshaluys Mardigian; and footage from Auction of Souls, a 1919 American silent film about her life in which she played herself, at last year’s Maine International Film Festival. I also recommend Dune: Part Two, which continues its run at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall. New movies I hope to get to before they close include Sasquatch Sunset, which is at Cinemapolis, and Civil War, which is there and at the Regal. Best International Feature Film Oscar nominee Io Capitano, which opens at Cinemapolis today, is supposed to be good as well, as are De Humani Corporis Fabrica and All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, both of which play Cornell Cinema tonight. Your best bets for repertory fare are once again two films directed by Christopher Nolan: Interstellar, which is playing the Regal this afternoon, and Inception, which is there on Wednesday. Finally, there are free screenings at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday and Wednesday, of the movies Bad Press and In Search of My Sister respectively, and a showcase of short films presented by Bike Walk Tompkins is playing Cinemapolis on Sunday with tickets available on a sliding scale from $2-$10.

Home Video: I recently finished watching everything in the “Directed by Kinuyo Tanaka” collection on The Criterion Channel. The highlight for me is Forever a Woman, which I *thought* I saw nearly 25 years ago as a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh under the title The Eternal Breasts, but I must just have remembered that it was playing as part of a local film series because its best scenes are unforgettable. It stars Yumeji Tsukioka as a long-suffering wife and daughter based on Fumiko Nakajō who is trying to finally live for herself a little as a poet before she dies of cancer and is probably the most explicit treatment of what seems to me to be Tanaka’s main theme: contrasting feminine-coded artistic pursuits like poetry and flower arrangement as a way of finding meaning in life with masculine-coded vocations like politics and journalism that are obsessed with controlling people’s destinies.

This is complicated somewhat in her next-best film as a director, Girls of the Night, in that the reformatory that former prostitute Kuniko Sugimoto (Chisako Hara) graduates from is run by women. I strongly recommend watching this film back-to-back (maybe even as a double feature) with Tanaka’s impressively assured debut effort Love Letter because it feels like an explicit attempt by a now more established director to correct the latter’s distractingly censorious attitude toward women with the audacity to seek economic security and sexual pleasure in the arms of foreign soldiers. Love Letter also includes what may be Tanaka’s single best scene, an arresting finale which cuts back and forth between the two main characters (Yoshiko Kuga’s Michika and Masayuki Mori Reikichi) but ends before the two of them ever share the frame together again.

Tanaka’s first color film, the historical epic The Wandering Princess, has really started to grow on me. The middle portion is an inversion of Forever a Woman: instead of using poetry to make meaning out of an unhappy marriage, Machiko Kyô’s Hiro Saga channels her thwarted aspirations to become a painter into building a blissfully happy home even as the world goes up in flames around her. There are also a number of nice scenes involving flowers and trees. The remaining two entries in the series, The Moon Has Risen (which is based on a script by Yasujirô Ozu and Ryôsuke Saitô) and Love Under the Crucifix, have their moments as well. All of these movies deserve to be better known, so check them out!

Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.

Now Playing in Ithaca, NY (4/11/24)

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What I’m Seeing: I’m going with Here, which is screening at Cinemapolis this evening as part of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival.

Also in Theaters: Two other FLEFF selections that I mentioned last week, Last Things and Pictures of Ghosts, are back at Cinemapolis again this afternoon and Sunday night respectively. Another good choice is the 1926 Soviet classic Mother, which continues a longstanding festival tradition of programming silent films when it screens there on Friday night accompanied by Ithaca’s own Cloud Chamber Orchestra. FLEFF’s full remaining lineup can be found on their website. The best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is 4x Oscar winner Poor Things, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and Friday. The most intriguing new movies I haven’t seen are All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, the 28th-place finisher in the most recent Indiewire Critics Poll, which is at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, and the concert film Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, which is there on Sunday. Other movies I’m hoping to see in the coming weeks include Civil War, which opens at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall tonight, and La Chimera, which begins a run at Cinemapolis tomorrow. On the repertory front your best bets are All That Breathes, my pick for last year’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar, which is at Cornell Cinema on Monday; The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow; and two films directed by Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight and Interstellar, which are at the Regal tonight and Wednesday respectively.

Home Video: I’m delighted to report that Mambar Pierrette, which I wrote about for Educational Media Reviews Online and included on my “Top Ten Movies of 2023” list, is now streaming on The Criterion Channel as part of a collection called “Three by Rosine Mbakam”! It also includes two short films, Doors of the Past and You Will Be My Ally, which pay testament to how far Mbakam has come as a director since the start of her career. I discussed the four feature-length documentaries which bridge the intervening ten or twelve years (Criterion and IMDb disagree on a couple of dates), all of which are available to current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students via Docuseek, in January.

Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.

Now Playing in Ithaca, NY (4/4/24)

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What I’m Seeing This Week: We’ll be out of town for the next five days, but my loving wife and I are going to take advantage of the fact that we’re staying with willing babysitters to see Stalker at The Screening Room in Kingston, Ontario tonight.

Also in Theaters: The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival kicks off in earnest tomorrow with two screenings at Cinemapolis, where all remaining events will take place. Highlights include three films which made a splash on the festival circuit last year: Green Border, winner of a Special Jury Prize at the Viennale, on Saturday; Last Things and Youth (Spring) on Monday; and Pictures of Ghosts, which is directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, whose last feature Bacurau was the topic of my May, 2023 Drink & a Movie blog post, on Tuesday. You can find reviews of all of them by searching my Film Blogs, Etc. 2.0 CSE by title. The best new film now playing locally that I’ve already seen remains Dune: Part Two, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall. Wicked Little Letters, which my loving wife wants to see, opens at the same two theaters tonight. Anything with both Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley in it is an easy sell for me, so we might have to make plans for another date night soon! I’m intrigued by two action movies at the Regal: Monkey Man, which is directed by one of my favorite actors, Dev Patel, and the Liam Neeson vehicle In the Land of Saints and Sinners. Critics seem to like both! Cornell Cinema returns from Spring Break with free screenings of the Burkinabé film Borders on Tuesday and A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings on Wednesday. The latter will be followed by a Q&A with director Aviva Kempner and Cornell professor Elliot Shapiro. Otherwise, your best bets for repertory fare are a trio of films playing the Regal: Gone with the Wind on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday; The Matrix tonight; and The Dark Knight on Wednesday.

Home Video: As mentioned previously on this blog, I was troubled by this year’s Oscar winner for Best International Feature Film and Best Sound The Zone of Interest. While that remains the case, I feel like I have more appreciation for what it is *trying* to do after finally seeing The Act of Killing, which it references in a key moment that I now understand clarifies that Christian Friedel’s Rudolf Höss knows that he is a monster. This is important because I don’t think “living next to Auschwitz” is a terribly useful metaphor. The Act of Killing and its companion film The Look of Silence delve deep into the psychology of killers like Höss (in this case the leaders of gangs that murdered hundreds of thousands of so-called “communists” in Indonesia in the 60s) by way of depicting in harrowing detail not just the sky-high cost of resisting them in the moment, but also the Sisyphean task of holding them accountable afterward should they emerge victorious. This is, to me, a far more potent “there but for the grace of God” than the fear we might one day be judged by history and/or our maker to have been “good Nazis” because it doesn’t let us off the hook so easily—we can’t just say not me, I attended a protest/changed my profile picture to a flag/cast a protest vote against Joe Biden/whatever. Anyway, these movies would be a mortal lock for any Best Films of the Millennium list I might be moved to create, so: highest possible recommendation! The Act of Killing is now streaming on Peacock, The Look of Silence is available on Prime Video, and current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students have access to both via Academic Video Online.

Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.

Now Playing in Ithaca, NY (3/28/24)

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What I’m Seeing: I’m going with Problemista at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: The 2024 edition Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, which has the theme “turbulence,” kicks off on Monday with an online new media exhibition. More on this next week after the movies get started! You’ve got one last chance to see the dubbed version of The Boy and the Heron with “bonus content” at the Regal Ithaca Mall tonight; otherwise Dune: Part Two, which is at both Cinemapolis and the Regal, remains the best new film now playing locally that I’ve seen, but depending on what else you’re into I might recommend Love Lies Bleeding, which is at Cinemapolis, instead. There are two free screenings at Cornell Cinema tonight which feature conversations with the filmmakers afterward, first Jole Dobe Na / Those Who Do Not Drown at 4:45pm and then The Art of Un-War at 7:30. Three films that garnered attention (some positive, some negative) on the festival circuit last year open at the Regal tonight: They Shot the Piano Player; Asphalt City (which premiered at Cannes with the title Black Flies), and Late Night with the Devil. Your best bets for repertory fare are Chinatown, which is at the Regal tonight; Dogtooth, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow; and The Matrix, which has a 25th anniversary screening at the Regal on Wednesday.

Home Video: One of my favorite things about The Criterion Channel is the wealth of short films available on it. Whenever I’m not pressed for time, I like to watch one before each feature I view at home. Many of them are grouped into collections, and I recently worked my way through everything in the “Animated Shorts” program. Three titles won’t be available after March 31 and are absolutely worth checking out before they leave. Spook Sport is directed by Mary Ellen Bute, whose Synchromy No. 4: Escape made a huge impression on me when I saw it at last year’s Nitrate Picture Show, and features direct animation by the OG Norman McLaren. Papageno is silhouette animation set to Mozart’s The Magic Flute directed by another giant of cinema, Lotte Reiniger, which has terrific backgrounds that lend outstanding depth to her compositions. Finally, A Night on Bald Mountain is a pioneering pinscreen animation by the technique’s inventors Alexandre Alexeïeff and Claire Parker which has many affinities with Movie Year 2023’s Godland (also on The Criterion Channel), including black and white living and dead horses, an erupting volcano, and the theme of civilization vs. nature. Additional highlights include Les Escargots, a tale of giant snails that my kids loved, and Something to Remember, a melancholy snapshot of a society of animals on the verge of collapse remarkably made in 2019 when, you know, HUMAN society was teetering on the brink. The pick of the litter, though, is the utterly charming Cockaboody, which recreates one of the great privileges and pleasures of parenthood: overhearing snippets of imaginative play.

Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.

Now Playing in Ithaca, NY (3/21/24)

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What I’m Seeing This Week: Lots of possibilities, but I think I’m going with Hundreds of Beavers at Cinemapolis unless I audible to Problemista, which is playing there as well.

Also in Theaters: Deserving Best Animated Feature Oscar winner The Boy and the Heron is back at the Regal Ithaca Mall in dubbed and subtitled versions, both with “bonus content.” The next best new movie that I’ve already seen is the satisfyingly epic Dune: Part Two, which is there and at Cinemapolis. Love Lies Bleeding is at both of these theaters as well, and if you saw its trailer and thought “that’s my kind of movie,” you won’t be disappointed–it’s absolutely bonkers! The “immersive feature documentary and profound sensory experience” 32 Sounds that I mentioned last week is back at Cornell Cinema on Saturday and Sunday. If none of that sounds good, there are quite a few choice repertory options this week, including a 50th anniversary screening of Chinatown at the Regal on Wednesday, a screening of Wings of Desire at Cinemapolis that same night co-sponsored by Buffalo Street Books as part of their “Stories to Explore” series, and a screening of Babette’s Feast at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday which is accompanied by lectures on the “science of taste” and a “special tasting.”

Home Video: In my “Top Ten Movies of 2023” post earlier this month I mentioned that I had not yet seen John Wick: Chapter Four because my loving wife and I were saving it for a movie marathon. That day came sooner rather than later when Jason Bailey of the New York Times alerted us to the fact that the first three films leave Netflix on March 30. Long story short, we enjoyed them all immensely! As someone who can’t watch high-rise collapse in an action movie without thinking of all the people who live in it who might not have renter’s insurance, I appreciate the fact that there is astonishingly little collateral damage in these films. I counted a handful of parked cars that will need some body work and any number of buildings end up with bullet holes in them, but civilians are conspicuously absent from most of the major fight sequences, which tend to take place in spaces that are coded as either abandoned or belonging to the bad guys. And my goodness, what a riot of color, grace, and inventiveness they are! My favorite installments in the saga are the original John Wick, which takes its sweet time coming to a simmer, and the last, which spends nearly its entire 170 minute runtime at full boil. I believe these will be regarded as classic movies of our era and I look forward to watching them again in a few years, at which time I might even dare to try to say something original about why.

Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.

Now Playing in Ithaca, NY (3/14/24)

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What I’m Seeing This Week: My loving wife and I have a Dune: Part Two date night planned for this weekend at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall, plus I’m going to see Love Lies Bleeding at one of those theaters as well.

Also in Theaters: There’s a ton of interesting stuff at Cornell Cinema this week! The highlight for me is probably a visit from experimental filmmaker Christopher Harris with his works Reckless Eyeballing, Distant Shores, and Still/Here tomorrow or the screening of the “immersive feature documentary and profound sensory experience” 32 Sounds on Saturday. Only 100 tickets are available to the latter so that every member of the audience can be given their own set of headphones. Two movies that appeared on plenty of top ten lists last year, How to Have Sex and Monster, are also there tonight and this weekend. Unfortunately, *none* of these showtimes work with my schedule! Oh well. The best new film that I’ve already seen remains The Taste of Things, which is at Cinemapolis, for at least one more week. The two biggest winners at this year’s Oscars, Oppenheimer and Poor Things, are back at the Regal. Finally, my top repertory recommendation is The Secret of Kells, which is at Cornell Cinema on Sunday afternoon.

Home Video: After all the controversy that Saltburn generated last year and with Swimming Home garnering attention on the festival circuit, I though it was high time that I finally watched Teorema, which both movies have been compared to. As a film almost entirely constructed out of captivating screen presences (including most notably Terence Stamp, Anne Wiazemsky, and Silvana Mangano) being captivating, it’s absolutely worth seeing. I’m not entirely convinced that it achieves all that it appears to aspire to in the realms of philosophy or theology, but at worst it may just be the definitive cinematic text on the phenomenon of the quarter/midlife crisis. It also features an intriguing sepia-toned silent introduction to the main action, Ninetto Davoli as a spirited herald-mailman, and a naked and epically hairy Massimo Girotti stumbling through an ashen Mount Etna landscape. Teorema is now streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.

Now Playing in Ithaca, NY (3/7/24)

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What I’m Seeing This Week: My Dune: Part Two date night with my loving wife remains a week away, so I’m going with The Peasants at Cinemapolis.

Also in Theaters: You can still see all of this year’s Oscar-nominated short films at Cinemapolis all week even after their annual fundraising gala, which returns for the first time in four years, on Sunday. The best new feature-length movie playing there or anywhere in Ithaca that I’ve seen is The Taste of Things. Director Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, which is also at Cinemapolis, is worth checking out as well, but his fellow 2023 Cannes Film Festival entry Anselm, which is screening at Cornell Cinema in 3D on Sunday, looks like it might be more interesting. The week’s best repertory options are the entertaining “ramen western” Tampopo, which is at Cornell Cinema tonight; The Iron Giant, one of my favorite animated films of the past 25 years, which is at the Regal Ithaca Mall on Saturday; and the gorgeous Irish animated film Song of the Sea, which is at Cornell Cinema on Sunday. Last but not least, two Cornell alums, director Jason Goldman and colorist Greg Reese, are presenting their documentary Rowdy Girl at Cornell Cinema tomorrow. More information about this screening can be found here.

Home Video: Earlier this week I published my top ten list for Movie Year 2023. The following titles from it are available on Blu-ray/DVD; streaming for free or via a major subscription service; or available to Cornell University students, staff, and faculty on one of the platforms that the Library subscribes to:

Previous “Now Playing in Ithaca, NY” posts can be found here.