From The Green Ray:
DELPHINE’S COMPANION: You’re a plant!
DELPHINE: I’m a plant?
From Annihilation:
Previous “Juxtaposition” posts can be found here.
Juxtaposition #16
Category: Screengrabs
Juxtaposition #15
I’ve Got Poetry In Me #3: Is This Thing On?
ALEX: Are you a nurse?
JILL: No, I’m a comedian. Are you a fucking nurse?
Previous “I’ve Got Poetry In Me” posts can be found here.
Ithaca Film Journal: 3/12/26
What I’m Seeing This Week: I am going to close out Movie Year 2025 by seeing Sirât at Cinemapolis tomorrow, then spend the rest of the weekend working on my top ten list so that I can post it before the Oscars start at 7pm on Sunday! I’m also planning to see Undertone at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall sometime after that.
Also in Theaters: If you haven’t already streamed them, Best Animated and Documentary Feature Film Oscar nominees Little Amélie or the Character of Rain and Come See Me in the Good Light are both worth a trip to Cornell Cinema on Sunday! You also have one final chance to see the Best Animated Short Film nominees at Cinemapolis this afternoon, and the Regal is screening Zootopia 2 and Train Dreams today, One Battle After Another tomorrow, F1: The Movie on Saturday, and Frankenstein on Sunday. And then, of course, it’s time for Cinemapolis’ annual “And The Winner Is…” Awards Night Celebration!
Other special events include the Woman’s Adventure Film Tour at Cinemapolis this evening, a free screening of Crazywater which also includes free popcorn at Cornell Cinema at the exact same time, and a free screening of a 35mm print of Cría Cuervos at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday. Finally, repertory highlights include Imitation of Life at Cornell Cinema tomorrow, Blade Runner there on Saturday, The Iron Giant at the Regal on Saturday and Sunday, and Irma Vep at Cinemapolis on Tuesday.
Home Video Recommendation: Ella McCay didn’t quite make it onto my top ten list, but this throwback to a time “when we all still liked each other” definitely was one of my favorite comedies of the year! If you take a close look at the diploma behind Emma Mackey’s titular protagonist in the image below, you’ll see that it also has a local connection:
I believe this may be the most flattering reference to Cornell I’ve spotted in a movie since I started working there in 2019! Ella McCay now streaming on Hulu with a subscription and can be rented or purchased on a number of other platforms.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.
You Know the Escape
Redbelt‘s first image doesn’t appear until more than a minute into an open credits sequence that, as director David Mamet explains in the commentary track included on Sony Pictures’ 2008 DVD release, was inspired by an early silent version of King Lear.
It’s a close-up of three marbles, two white and one black, resting on the concave bottom of an upturned metal cup:
As we cut back and forth to additional title cards, a story slowly emerges in stroboscopic increments. A hand places the marbles in the cup and holds it aloft. Another reaches up and takes one.
There’s a close-up of a fighter’s face, then a rack focus as he holds up his marble. It’s the black one:
A wheel spins:
There’s a cut to one final credit:
And the action begins in earnest with our hero Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor) saying, “tie him up.”
He’s the owner of a dojo, and what we’ve been watching is his signature training method. “Who imposes the terms of the battle will impose the terms of the peace,” he explains, drawing out the final word. “You think he has a handicap?” he asks his other students, referring to the one who drew the black marble. “No! The other guy has a handicap if he cannot control himself. You control yourself, you control him.” Then: “take him to court.” And thus begins the film’s first fight.
The man being “taken to court” is Officer Joe Collins (Max Martini) of the LAPD and his hands are bound because this is what it means to draw the black marble: you are given a handicap based on which number the wheel lands on, in this case six, which corresponds to the fighter’s hands. “Good!” Mike says as Officer Joe turns the situation to his advantage with a takedown.
“That’s it–the fight’s over. Finish it here,” Mike continues. Joe finds himself on his back seconds later, though:
“Okay! Improve the position!” Mike shouts at him. He breaks free, but it isn’t long before he’s even worse off than before, pinned to the wall in a chokehold:
I’m writing about Redbelt because the mantra-like words that come out of Mike’s mouth next mean more to me than any other movie dialogue I’ve ever heard. “Breathe. Breathe. Breathe,” he says as we cut to a close-up of him. “You know the escape.”
“You know the escape!” he repeats. “Breathe. Breathe. There’s always an escape.” We cut to a reaction shot of another student (Tino Struckmann) looking up at his teacher:
Then back to Mike as he repeats, “you know the escape. You know the escape. Breathe! There’s always an escape.”
But as we cut back to Officer Joe he grunts “passing out” and Mike taps the other fighter on the shoulder to end the fight. “Great class!” he says, smiling at his assistant Snowflake (Jose Pablo Cantillo), to whom he also nods ever so slightly:
As Officer Joe begins to walk away, Mike tells him to stick around. “You don’t fight your way clear?” he asks. “There is no situation you cannot escape from,” he reiterates firmly. “You know the escape. You know the escape. Show it to me.”
“Good!” Mike cries from flat on his back when he does. “You know the escape, you just got tired. What’s the lesson?” he asks. “Don’t get tired,” Officer Joe says sheepishly. “Let the other guy get tired,” Mike responds, thumping his student on the chest.
Sean Axmaker called Redbelt “a complete redefinition of the kind of film that Jean-Claude Van Damme cranked out in the eighties” when it was released on DVD in 2008, connecting it to Bloodsport, a favorite from my youth. Writing for Slant Magazine the same year, Nick Schager compared it to a formative text from my college years, Le Samouraï, all of which is to acknowledge that writer-director David Mamet and company are tilling fertile ground for me personally. That’s hardly a guarantee of success, though, and while some moments–like the explanation of the purpose of the handicaps (“you never know when you may be disabled”) shoehorned into the screenplay later–undeniably register as more silly than serious:
Redbelt earns the ending it ultimately rewards Mike with because we recognize in no uncertain terms that it isn’t a “happy” one. As Axmaker notes, he isn’t just a last bastion of nobility standing strong against a corrupt society, “he is also an idealist with little concern for taking care of himself and his family, financially speaking, in a material world.” His wife Sondra, the woman smiling at him in the image above, cannot perhaps be forgiven for betraying him, but it’s easy to see why she wouldn’t want to continue supporting him at the expense of her own business. More importantly, there’s one person who isn’t watching when Mike’s mentor, “the Professor” João Moro (Dan Inosanto), presents him with the eponymous red belt in the film’s final scene: Officer Joe, who committed suicide 35 minutes of screen time earlier to avoid bringing dishonor on the academy.
As Mamet explains in the DVD commentary track, the journey Mike’s on isn’t one toward vindication so much as fully understanding the stakes he’s been playing all along:
What it hid, in him, is the idea of “I don’t want to leave the academy. In the academy, I control everything. I get to know who fights who, whatever I say, my word is law.” It’s really easy to be pure in the academy. But when you get into the wider world where people are making up their own rules, it’s much, much harder to be pure. And what happens to him, Mike Terry, is he gets out into the wider world and he kind of falls off the wagon and he decides to quit. So he’s got to teach himself the lesson he’s trying to teach others, which is never give up.
The methods Mike learned from the Professor and has spent his life passing on to others really do work: there is always an escape. If you know you have a good plan, just breathe. Breathe. Improve the position. You know the escape! But also–and this is the hard part–never forget that your road will end someday no matter what you do because there’s one opponent who never gets tired: Father Time.
Ithaca Film Journal: 2/19/26
What I’m Seeing This Week: More than half the films on my “Movie Year 2025 Cram List” that I haven’t yet seen are playing on local big screens this week! I’m actually going to save the Oscar-nominated shorts programs for later this month when they come to Cornell Cinema, but I’m excited to see My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow there on Sunday and Sound of Falling at Cinemapolis before it closes next Thursday. I’m also hoping to finally check out Dracula at the Regal Ithaca Mall.
Also in Theaters: The new stuff is definitely the star of the show, but if you’re playing catch up Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which continues its run at Cinemapolis, is very funny and I won’t be surprised one bit if it turns out to be the best-edited film I see all year. I also enjoyed Hamnet, which opened there nearly three months ago, and Send Help, which remains at both Cinemapolis and the Regal.
Special events include a bevy of free screenings at both Cinemapolis and Cornell Cinema. To begin with the former, you can see The Navigator accompanied by local pianist Emmett Scott there on Sunday, Lafayette: A Hero’s Return on Monday, and three shorts by local filmmakers Daniil Lazuka & Logan Perzi on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Cornell alums Frank Dawson and Abby Ginzberg will present their film Agents of Change at Cornell Cinema this evening, and their screenings of Where Are You Taking Me? on Tuesday, 95 and 6 to Go on Wednesday (note: this event will take place in the Film Forum at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts), and Onlookers on Thursday will all be followed by conversations with filmmaker Kime Takesue. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include screenings of The Godfather at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and Saturday, All That Heaven Allows there on Saturday, and Eyes Wide Shut at the Regal on Wednesday.
Home Video Recommendation: Last week in this space I mentioned Downhill Racer, the single greatest depiction of hurtling down a mountainside ever captured on celluloid. This week I’m going with the first of two James Bond movies to star my favorite 007 Timothy Dalton, The Living Daylights, which deserves an honorable mention in the non-Olympics category. I am, of course, referring to the scene in which he navigates a cello over the Austrian border:
This flight of fancy aside, The Living Daylights is noteworthy for anticipating the Daniel Craig era’s efforts to reimagine Bond as a flesh-and-blood secret agent who has to actually work to stay one step ahead of his adversaries. Both this film and its follow-up License to Kill also feature excellent editing in this scene and others such as the latter’s airplane opening which I’m sure is what inspired Letterboxd user Michael Bokan to describe it as “Tom Cruise’s favorite Bond,” an amusing sentiment that I endorse! These two titles and the other 23 in the “Eon Series” plus Never Say Never Again are all now available on Netflix with a subscription.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.
Ithaca Film Journal: 2/12/26
What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie at Cinemapolis and Scarlet at the Regal Ithaca Mall. Other new movies at the Regal that I’d ideally like to see before they close include Crime 101; Dracula; Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die; and Wuthering Heights, which is also at Cinemapolis. There’s no way I can get to all of them, though, and it’s going to be next week before I catch any.
Also in Theaters: You have one last chance to see Magellan, my favorite new film now playing Ithaca, on the big screen at Cinemapolis today at 5pm! Here’s what I recently said about it on Letterboxd:
Just as the 28 Years Later trilogy may well turn out to be the closest thing we ever get to a movie adaptation of one of my favorite science fiction novels, this film is a beautiful cinematic rendition of the best idea from another, Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. That book postulates that if just one or two things had gone differently, we could easily be living in a world where Mesoamericans “discovered” and subjugated Europe instead of vice versa; in Magellan, a trick played on Gael García Bernal’s titular conquistador by Ronnie Lazaro’s Raja Humabon and a late shot of the former in a metal carapace looking like nothing so much as a crab ready for the boil establish that this film’s civilizations were also on much more even terms than Western history books typically like to acknowledge. Another way I could have gone with this was “Dead Man with boats instead of trains.”
No Other Choice, which continues its run at Cinemapolis, will almost certainly make my Movie Year 2025 top ten list as well, and I also enjoyed Hamnet and Send Help, both of which are at both Cinemapolis and the Regal.
Special events highlights include a free screening of The Outrun at Cornell Cinema tonight which also includes free popcorn, a free “Family Classics Picture Show” presentation of A Night at the Opera at Cinemapolis on Sunday, and a free screening of Memories of Love Returned at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday featuring an appearance by director Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include a “Galentine’s Day” double feature of All That Heaven Allows and Letter from an Unknown Woman at Cornell Cinema tomorrow, screenings of Hollywood classics Casablanca and Roman Holiday at the Regal on Saturday and Sunday respectively, and 40th anniversary presentations of Pretty in Pink there Saturday-Monday.
Home Video Recommendation: The New York Times recently published a helpful explainer on why, as two-time gold medalist Ted Ligety puts it, “ski racing is a sport where the favorites often don’t win.” It’s a great compliment to the realism of my second-ever “Drink & a Movie” selection Downhill Racer that the film is a great illustration of a number of its main points. As I said four years ago while the Beijing Games were in full swing, it’s also a great movie to watch right now when many of us are glued to NBC’s Olympics coverage because “Downhill Racer‘s subject isn’t just skiing or sports in general, but rather how sport is mediated through television.” That said, for as modern and ahead of its time as it appears in some ways, recent reporting by The Athletic *does* indicate that unlike Robert Redford’s Dave Chappellet, today’s American athletes probably know what a bidet is:
Downhill Racer is now streaming on Prime Video with a subscription and is also available on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.
Ithaca Film Journal: 2/5/26
What I’m Seeing This Week: I am absolutely thrilled that Cinemapolis is bringing Magellan to Ithaca tomorrow! It clocked in at ninth on my “Cannes 2025 Films That I Am Most Eager to See” list and was the highest-ranked title that I didn’t think would ever open here, so even though they only expect to have it for one week, that’s more than I expected. Best International Film Oscar nominee The Voice of Hind Rajab begins a limited engagement there tomorrow as well. As a Luc Besson loyalist, I intend to eventually see Dracula at the Regal Ithaca Mall, too, but probably not until next week.
Also in Theaters: As was the case last week, you can currently see three films likely to make my Movie Year 2025 top ten list on the big screen locally. The mix is slightly different, though: Marty Supreme remains at the Regal and No Other Choice (which repeats as my TOP recommendation) continues its run at Cinemapolis, as does Arco, which as I recently noted on Letterboxd “features one of the most surprising and convincing, and thus extremely moving, depictions of an authentic gesture of love by a robot capable of genuine emotions toward its human ward that I’ve ever encountered in a movie.” Meanwhile, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which is down to one screening per day at the Regal, is my first favorite film of Movie Year 2026, and I also enjoyed Hamnet and Send Help, which both continue their respective runs at both Cinemapolis and the Regal.
Special events highlights include a bevy of free events at Cornell Cinema starting tomorrow with a screening of The Conversation, which Cornell professor Dr. Karen Levy will use as the basis for a discussion on “the social and ethical aspects of data-intensive technologies.” A four-part film series called “Exploring Ethnographic Filmmaking” then begins on Monday with a “Scientific Cinema” program featuring Four Families, Trance and Dance in Bali, and Groh Groh (Rehearsal for Rangda). Cornell professor Michell Chresfield will introduce the documentary In My Blood It Runs on Tuesday. Last but not least, a filmmaker Q&A will follow a screening of Rule Breakers on Wednesday. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include screenings of Total Recall, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and Ran at Cornell Cinema tonight, Saturday, and Sunday respectively, and Lost in Translation at the Regal on Monday.
Home Video Recommendation: My Loving Wife’s last Family (née Friday) Movie Night selection was The Cutting Edge, a childhood VHS staple for both of us. Although stylistically very much a product of the early ’90s, it held up way better than I expected and the girls liked it, too, although they were both frustrated by the fact that it ends with a kiss before we learn what scores Moira Kelly’s Kate Moseley and D.B. Sweeney’s Doug Dorsey received for their climactic pairs figure skating long program at the 1992 Winter Olympics:
I don’t remember this bothering *me* when I was a kid, but there’s a lot of fuss about an empty medal case, so I get it. Except! Here’s one thing that definitely did not ever occur to me before: the Albertville Games were the last ones held before the IOC split the Winter and Summer Olympics into separate four-year cycles, so this is the exact moment in history where it’s maximally plausible that Terry O’Quinn’s overbearing father Jack Moseley would be perfectly satisfied with a high score that set his daughter up to be one of the favorites at the Lillehammer Games just two years down the road! Anyway, The Cutting Edge is easy to find on DVD and is also available for rental and purchase on a variety of streaming video platforms.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.
Juxtaposition #14
From The Tale of Silyan:
From “Cold at Night” by the Mountain Goats:
On the third day, you said you felt sick
I could hear the clock tick
Well, the first thing you learn is that there’s always a clock ticking somewhere
(The first thing you learn is that there’s always a clock ticking somewhere)
And the next thing you learn is how cold it can get at night
Previous “Juxtaposition” posts can be found here.
Film Criticism Musings Inspired by The Lego Movie
The Lego Movie obviously exists to sell Legos, specifically sets based on high-value licensed IP like Batman and Lord of the Rings. This may not be such a noble goal, but as a parent I appreciate the pitch it uses. If my kids want to play with Gandalf but don’t have a Gandalf toy, they’ll make one out of whatever materials at hand, even if it takes all day. Which is awesome! But they’ll happily level up if you *give* them a Gandalf toy and spend that same amount of time creating a balrog or Saruman to fight him or turning their bedroom into a replica of the Shire. You might believe one of these two forms of creativity is superior to the other, but *I* don’t and I agree that one of the cool things about a Lego set is that it accommodates both: you can build what’s pictured on the box, or you can turn the minifigures that come with it loose in an entirely different world.
Most films come with the equivalents of box art and instructions and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. Cast and director interviews, posters, press notes, and previews all tell us how we’re meant to read the work, as do aspects of the text itself like dialogue, production design, and shot selection. To say that a movie appears or (even worse) claims to be doing one thing but is in fact doing another is to shoulder the burden of proof. If you don’t show your work, you can’t expect people to take you seriously. But in the same way that you can always take a set of Legos and make something else with it, so too do viewers reserve the right to do what they please with whatever they watch. It isn’t CRITICISM, though, unless you account for all the pieces supplied by the film, its context, and its creators.
So: yes to this horror movie is more entertaining if you think of it as a comedy–as long as you explain why and ideally what it means! This is the same as arguing that you can make what’s on the box if you want, but what’s on the box is super lame and you can use the pieces that come in it to make this other really cool thing instead. Absolutely yes to spackling a crack in narrative logic. And potentially yes as well to suggesting that Happy Gilmore 2 is a Rosetta Stone for understanding the mindset of American conservatives even if you disagree with the politics of the piece and its writer, provided it has explanatory value. But no, no, no to both stridently insisting on a One True Interpretation and completely ignoring the intent of the authors, even if we don’t need to treat their word as gospel. Criticism isn’t about either following a manual or just pretending you got what you really wanted for Christmas: it’s about putting whatever actually was under the tree through its paces and maybe pushing the envelope a bit.
Previous posts about film criticism can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 