Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve, 2024) Ambitious, talented, über-earnest Denis Villeneuve must be in thrall to the super-drug in Dune. He begins Dune: Part Two with a black screen: suddenly, a stentorian voice proclaims the galvanizing force of “Spice.” As subtle as a cattle prod, this audio coup reminds the audience (how could we forget) that Dune’s space empire runs on sci-fi fairy dust. Occasionally cinnamon-flavored and always addictive, this magical powder turns brown and green eyes blue and expands (or blows) the mind....

Whistle Stop For some of the best years of his working life, Léonide Moguy operated without a permanent fixed address. This was a condition forced on many European filmmakers by the circumstances of World War II, a global conflagration that would influence Moguy’s later humanitarian efforts and find its way into his handful of American films. While Moguy worked more extensively in France and Italy before and after the war, the output from his brief Hollywood stopover is limited to three features: Paris After Dark (1943), Action in Arabia (1944), and Whistle Stop (1946)....

On today’s episode, FC co-editor Devika Girish is joined by programmers Inney Prakash (Prismatic Ground) and Edo Choi (Musuem of the Moving Image) and critic Caitlin Quinlan to discuss the buzziest premieres from the festival’s second half: Lila Avilés’s Tótem, Lois Patino’s Samsara, Christian Petzold’s Afire, Philippe Garrel’s The Plough, and James Benning’s Allensworth. Stay up to date with all of our Berlin 2023 coverage here.

And, in case you missed it, check out our daily Cannes podcasts and festival coverage.

This NYFF61 panel—moderated by Film Comment editor Devika Girish and FC contributor Madeline Whittle—brought together Lisa Takeuchi Cullen (President, WGA East), Rebecca Damon (SAG-AFTRA Executive Director, New York Local), and Alissa Wilkinson (Senior Correspondent, Vox) for a deep-dive into the circumstances that led to the strikes, the needs of actors and writers working in Hollywood today, and the history and contemporary role of labor organizing in the American film industry....

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Ira, a longtime producer and distributor, has a secret Film Comment connection: in the ’90s and early ’00s, he penned the magazine’s anonymous industry column, Grosses Gloss. To pick Ira’s brain about his days working for Rugoff, his extensive knowledge of the New York City exhibition landscape, and the transformation of the indie business over the last half century, we invited a special guest host: Film Comment publisher and industry veteran Eugene Hernandez....

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Clint and Devika chatted with the director at length about his productive pandemic, his collaboration with screenwriter David Koepp, how Big Tech can make bad ideas even worse, and much more. They also got a little insight into Steven’s next project: Magic Mike’s Last Dance.

In 1968, the director made his feature debut with The Story of a Three Day Pass, a dazzlingly multi-layered film about an African-American soldier’s dalliance with a white French woman in Paris. With the film returning to screens this week in a brand-new restoration, Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute reached out to two Van Peebles superfans: filmmaker Ephraim Asili, director of The Inheritance, and writer and film editor Blair McClendon....

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Three Sad Tigers W­ith over one hundred films to his credit, Raúl Ruiz was perhaps the most prolific filmmaker of his generation. However, his filmmaking exploits were so far-flung and diverse that it is virtually impossible to compile a definitive filmography. Born in Chile in 1941, Ruiz first received international acclaim with his debut feature, Three Sad Tigers (1968), which won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 1969....