Thought experiment: which character would be least welcome in your home: Ben Kingsley’s in Sexy Beast? David Thewlis’s in Naked? Or Javier Bardem’s in No Country for Old Men? Wot? I’m projecting? You love these guys? Then go ahead; add a new name to your from-hell guest-list: Charles Bronson. Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s story is based on the life of a petty thief who managed to turn a minor sentence into a perpetual prison project....
Many glowing words—and awards—will be bestowed upon the pair of phenomenally transformative performers that headline Dallas Buyers Club—and deservedly so. Matthew McConaughey, completely shed of his Magic Mike brawn, has never been better, playing real-life bull-rider Ron Woodroof, a womanizing, hard-partying homophobe who, much to his disbelief, is diagnosed with AIDS in 1986. And Jared Leto as Rayon, Ron’s equally rail-thin transsexual hospital roommate turned business partner and eventual friend, steals the show from McConaughey....
Late in this documentary about film critic Roger Ebert, the subject himself e-mails director Steve James from the hospital to insist that a difficult conversation with his wife Chaz be captured for the movie. After all, he writes, “This is not only your film.” The correspondence underscores how this filmic profile is also a kind of a self-portrait by Ebert. It shares a title with the critic’s 2011 memoir, passages of which are lifted to narrate his rise from precocious tabloid reviewer to unlikely celebrity to national treasure....
Imagine a New York City bus packed with hyperactive Bronx teenagers. School’s out for summer and it’s time to go nuts. Most of the kids are euphoric, a few are aggressive, and all, of course, are horny as hell. Michel Gondry, working with nonprofessional actors, takes this one-location setup and—traffic conditions permitting—takes off. Using a budget that seems to have been spent, in its entirety, on securing the rights to a couple of Young MC tunes, he has fashioned a four-wheel microcosm....
Fans of medieval multihyphenate Hildegard von Bingen can at last burst into plainsong: Margarethe von Trotta herself has brought the abbess’s remarkable life and times to the screen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Vision is didactic and a bit stilted—although to be fair, so are most mainstream biopics rehashing historical events more familiar than this one, which presents its subject as a rousing protofeminist. Von Trotta’s soberly intent drama follows Hildegard on her rise to power from humble entrance into a convent at a very young age....
New York Central (dir. Ernie Gehr, 2020) Two of the greatest filmmakers to find inspiration on the sidewalks of New York City are featured in back-to-back brain-warping programs at the Museum of Modern Art this month: Fleischer Cartoons: The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer opened on March 7 and runs through March 14, with 77 anarchic cartoons in 11 programs; and Ernie Gehr: Mechanical Magic screens from March 15 to 24, with 26 varied and adventurous avant-garde films across six programs....
Susan Tyrrell was born Susan Jillian Creamer to a top William Morris talent agent father and a prim English socialite mother whom Susan would eventually disown after a “miserable” (but financially comfortable) upbringing. Her father died while Susan was still a teenager, but not before his ample industry connections helped her land stage roles which led to membership in the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center and a substantial screen part as a lady bank robber opposite Gregory Peck in Henry Hathaway’s Shoot Out (1971)....
Design for Living Christopher Reeve was once asked what it was like to “act with Katharine Hepburn” in the Broadway production of A Matter of Gravity. Reeve responded: “I did not act with Katharine Hepburn. I acted near Katharine Hepburn.” One can imagine that many of Miriam Hopkins’s co-stars felt the same way. The stories of her scene-stealing are legendary. Hopkins had done her time in the chorus in vaudeville and stock companies, and by the time she arrived in Hollywood, she would be damned if she was relegated to the chorus again....
Aaltra (Benoît Delépine, Gustave Kervern; Belgium) One of the wry pleasures of 2004, and certainly the year’s most enjoyable Belgian disability road comedy. Two warring curmudgeons hit the road in wheelchairs after losing the use of their legs in a bizarre farming accident and head to Finland to demand reparation, making misery for everyone they meet en route. Tati-esque pacing, crisp black-and-white photography, and marvelous non sequitur moments-including a touch of Finnish biker karaoke-lead up to a killer punchline, delivered in typical laconic style by Aki Kaurismäki ....
On today’s episode, FC co-editor Devika Girish is joined by critics Giovanni Marchini Camia (Fireflies Press), Victor Guimarães (freelance), and Frédéric Jaeger (critic.de). Before getting into a broader conversation about German cinema at the Berlinale, the four discuss some of the highlights from the festival’s waning days, including Music by Angela Schanelec, In Water by Hong Sangsoo, Bad Living and Living Bad by João Canijo, Ramona by Victoria Linares Villegas, and Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything by Emily Atef....
On today’s episode, Film Comment Editor Devika Girish sat down with Canadian filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson to discuss their new film Rumours, one of the true delights of the festival so far. It’s a horror comedy set during a G7 Summit, with a dynamic ensemble cast including Cate Blanchett as the German chancellor, Charles Dance as the American president with an inexplicable British accent, and Roy Dupuis as the Canadian prime minister sporting a man bun....
Ina selected Murder at the Vanities (1934), Mitchell Leisen’s madcap Pre-Code caper, while Nellie suggested Honey Moccasin, a 1998 experimental gem by Indigenous filmmaker Shelley Niro. Both selections were zany, incredibly inventive, and very much of their times. They made for a great double feature. We learned a lot from the conversation and hope you will, too. Pop quiz coming up soon! Links & Things: Close to Home: How to Make a Movie Without Leaving the House, curated for Criterion Channel by Nellie Killian and C....
What you may not expect is that the book is also, in many ways, a history of the cinema: as Malcolm details, Eadweard Muybridge developed his pioneering equine motion studies under the patronage of railroad baron Leland Stanford, who wanted to figure out how to raise better race horses. So on today’s episode, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited Malcolm to join them for a conversation about his new book and California’s decades-spanning nexus of technology, capital, and the moving image....
Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Director, BlacKkKlansman tells the story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department, who bravely sets out on a dangerous mission to infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan. In a feature on the film in the July-August 2018 issue of Film Comment, Teo Bugbee writes that, “BlacKkKlansman is no straight biopic. Instead, it follows the beats of a traditional cop movie, where a man of the law is torn between allegiances in his efforts to solve a case....
Films discussed: Mudbound, Dear Angela, Thoroughbred, Motherland, Whose Streets?, Novitiate, Person to Person, Gook, Dolores, The Discovery, The Big Sick, The Berlin Syndrome, Killing Ground, Kuso, Casting JonBenet, Beach Rats Listen/Subscribe:
