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Envisioned as both a writing project and an epic durational film program, Last Movies explores the (deceptively) morbid subject of the final films watched by a selection of 20th-century luminaries. Delving into the lives and ultimate viewings of figures ranging from Franz Kafka to John F. Kennedy to Kurt Cobain to members of the Heaven’s Gate cult, the book maps a strange and surprising cultural history from a seemingly arbitrary scatter plot....

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Nicolas Rapold is the editor-in-chief of Film Comment and hosts The Film Comment Podcast.

—The B-52s There is a terrifying shot in Land of the Pharaohs. It comes just before the last shot of the sequence in which Queen Nailla sacrifices herself to save her son, Prince Zanin. Interior, night. We are in the Pharaoh’s palace. Sitting cross-legged, still and naked, the small prince plays a flute that was offered to him by Princess Nellifer, the Pharaoh’s young mistress. Concentrated like a little hieroglyph, he repeats the only song that he has learned from the Princess: a simple, hypnotic children’s melody....

Naked Lunch David Cronenberg, 1991 Barfly Barbet Schroeder, 1987 Mishima: A Life in Four Chapter Paul Schrader, 1985 An Angel at My Table Jane Campion, 1990 The Color of Pomegranates Sergei Parajanov, 1968 Prick Up Your Ears Stephen Frears, 1987 American Splendor Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini, 2003 Capote Bennett Miller, 2005 Bright Star Jane Campion, 2009 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Julian Schnabel, 2007 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Terry Gilliam, 1998...

F.W. Murnau (42) 2. Jean Vigo (29) 3. Sergei Eisenstein (50) 4. R.W. Fassbinder (36) 5. Maya Deren (44) 6. Jean Eustache (42) 7. Ritwik Ghatak (50) 8. Humphrey Jennings (43) 9. Glauber Rocha (42) 10. Hollis Frampton (48) 11. Barbara Loden (48) 12. Larisa Sheptiko (41) 13. Andrzej Munk (40) 14. Paul Sharits (50) 15. Thomas H. Ince (42) 16. Yilmaz Güney (47) 17. Seth Holt (48) 18. Fabián Bielinsky (47) 19....

Cauleen Smith,COVID MANIFESTO, 2020, (video still) / Courtesy of the artist; Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago; CIRCA; and The Showroom, London During last year’s Berlin Critics’ Week—an annual program that I’m one of the Artistic Directors for—I had a conversation on the ethics of image-making that has stuck with me ever since. Under the title “See Through,” we brought together curators Stoffel Debuysere (Courtisane Festival), Kalpana Nair (Mumbai Film Festival), and Greg de Cuir Jr....

Interstellar begins more or less after the end. More or less, because the talking heads telling us about the end are evidently speaking from some later point in time, reminiscing about the doomed environment we are about to enter—an early signal that this movie will be a zone in which beginnings can never be presumed to precede endings. From what we can make out, civilization is smashed, in the wake of an apocalypse triggered by the effects of advanced technology....

In the last six years, 30-year-old San Francisco-based videomaker Anne McGuire, a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, has generated a collection of truly peculiar tapes, most of which deal with difficult and traumatic personal experiences. That she records them on videotape is only one of the reasons why her work is so perplexing. McGuire is always a presence in her videos, whether or not she’s in front of the lens, and she shoots her tapes in private, her performances covert and self-contained....

The Load (Ognjen Glavonic, 2018) A road movie with a somber palette and a terse but subtle script, The Load (Teret, 2018) harbors depths below its minimalist surface, complexities that are evoked through glancing exchanges and potent details. The main character is first glimpsed as a reflection in the rain-fogged window of a van, his spectral face superimposed on a wintry landscape of wet black trees lit by the orange smear of a burning house....

Given a spare moment, John Wayne played chess. And bridge, and poker, and backgammon. And how about another round of drinks for everybody at the end of a long day of shooting? Anything to be doing something, and not be by himself. The image of Wayne as someone who craved activity and shunned introspection is one of the strongest—and somehow most poignant—impressions to emerge from John Wayne: The Life and Legend, Scott Eyman’s exemplary biography....

Scott Foundas, chief film critic, Variety Todd McCarthy, chief film critic, The Hollywood Reporter Marco Grosoli, www.spietati.it Joan Dupont, International Herald Tribune Stefan Grissemann, Profil Jonathan Romney, contributor to FILM COMMENT, Sight & Sound, The Observer, and Screen My Golden Days Gavin Smith: So what’s the general feeling about the festival this year? Todd McCarthy: Well, I think it’s a pretty slack festival, but the first thing I would say is that, from what I’ve seen, the festival’s decision to throw its lot in with French cinema this year has not paid off at all....

Wings of Desire By the end of his Cannes book Two Weeks in the Midday Sun, Roger Ebert has left France and is checking the news in Heathrow for updates about the award winners. The biggest champions were Maurice Pialat’s crisis-of-faith drama Under the Sun of Satan, which claimed the Palme d’Or; Tengiz Abuladze’s Repentance, a boisterous yet blistering study of dictatorship in then-Soviet Georgia, unanimously voted the Grand Jury Prize, aka the silver medal; and Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire, reaping the Best Director award for its sublime and heartsore ruminations on, in, and above Berlin....