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The Forbidden Room grew out of Maddin’s interactive Seances project, which resurrected lost films from the silent era by re-writing and shooting them live in Montreal’s Phi Center and The Pompidou Center in Paris, sometimes with nothing more to go on than a title. The new feature spits out serial-style adventures in spasmodic fragments: a stranded submarine crew must rely on air bubbles in their breakfast flapjacks for oxygen; a lumberjack goes on a quest to rescue a maiden from a pack of wild wolf men; a woman holds her own inner child at gunpoint; a man has a lobotomy in order to cure himself of a paralyzing obsession with bottoms; and a mustache induces melancholic memories....

Ladies They Talk About Roger Corman may have proved it was possible to merge any vaguely feminine noun with “Caged” or “Chained” and be halfway to a grindhouse bonanza, but the women in prison subgenre (WIP to those so invested as to require the abbreviation) wasn’t always the vanguard in exploitation cinema. At first it was a strain of melodrama that detailed the plight of young women straying from the righteous path (read: falling for the wrong men)....

Bernardo Bertolucci is back, directing his first Italian-language film in 30 years. It’s a clear variation on Besieged, the 1998 film (likewise set in Rome) that inaugurated a minimalist phase for the director after a series of huge international co-productions. Continuing on from The Dreamers (03), Me and You is Bertolucci’s third in a string of films mostly set in claustrophobic, very bourgeois interiors, and like Besieged, it concerns the solipsistic self-confinement of a obsessive narcissist who is “saved” and led out into the world by a woman—who may well be nothing more than a projection of his insecurities....

On today’s episode, FC co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute are joined by FC contributor Erika Balsom and B. Ruby Rich, Editor-in-Chief of Film Quarterly to discuss the haul of the first couple days: Paul B. Preciado’s Orlando, My Political Biography, Tina Satter’s Reality, Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry, Luke Fowler’s Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait, and Tatiana Huezo’s The Echo. Stay up to date with all of our Berlin 2023 coverage here....

Check out our daily Cannes podcasts and festival coverage.

Be sure to check out our features on First Cow in the print magazine as well as our discussion of the film on last week’s podcast.

On today’s podcast, Dessane Lopez Cassell (SEEN), Poulomi Das (The Playlist), and Jessica Kiang (Variety) join FC’s Devika Girish for another round of Sundance conversation. This time around, the panelists discuss festival selections Passages, Shortcomings, A Thousand and One, and Milisuthando. Catch up on all of our Sundance 2023 coverage here.

Today, Film Comment Co-Editor Devika Girish is joined by critics Abby Sun (Documentary), Vadim Rizov (Filmmaker), and FC contributor Madeline Whittle to discuss festival selections War Game, Realm of Satan, Love Lies Bleeding, Presence, Stress Positions, Girls Will Be Girls. Catch up on all of our Sundance 2024 coverage here.

Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish sat down with the Davies to talk about the film as well as an eclectic range of subjects: beauty, eternity, poetry, Catholicism, the power of silence, his experiences in the U.K’s gay scene, the horrors of reality television, and more. We hope you enjoy the conversation, and make sure you subscribe to the podcast and to the Film Comment Letter so you can keep up with all our upcoming Toronto and New York Film Festival coverage....

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Saint Laurent Our March/April 2015 issue arrives nattily dressed in the very height of fashion: Bertrand Bonello’s Saint Laurent is our cover story. Nathan Lee explicates the textures and ideas of the film and its fashions, calling it “one of those biopics engaged with creative genius, like Peter Watkins’s Edvard Munch or Maurice Pialat’s Van Gogh, whose integrity is wholly independent of its biographical dimensions.” Inside, Howard Hampton scales the rarefied heights of Olivier Assayas’s beguiling Clouds of Sils Maria, and Kent Jones confronts film criticism’s ongoing struggle to do justice to acting....

I do watch Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, and I watch it for the reasons most people do: to see the clips and enjoy the wrassling. I think the program has other merits, and said so in a sentence of my original article that didn’t make it into type: “Sometimes the show does good: in spotlighting foreign and independent films, and in raising issues like censorship and letterboxing.” The stars’ recent excoriation of the MPAA’s X rating was salutary to the max....

The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton Wanda, Barbara Loden The Lost One (Der Verlorene), Peter Lorre One-Eyed Jacks, Marlon Brando Bulworth, Warren Beatty Reds, Warren Beatty Nil by Mouth, Gary Oldman The World’s Greatest Sinner, Timothy Carey The Apostle, Robert Duvall Drive, He Said, Jack Nicholson The Hired Hand, Peter Fonda Buffalo ’66 , Vincent Gallo Good Night, and Good Luck., George Clooney The Two Jakes, Jack Nicholson...

The 12th edition of Film Comment Selects comes to the second half of the year’s shortest month! Sure to delight obsessive repertory film fiends and civilians alike, this 31-strong lineup boasts documentaries, festival rarities, good old-fashioned horror flicks, and one helluva triple-projection by J. Hoberman. But where to begin? You could always stay on the safe side and catch stuff made by some established directors, perhaps part of the mini Jean-Pierre Gorin retrospective: Poto and Cabengo, Routine Pleasure, and My Crasy Life....