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In another piece of sad news, avant-pop composer Scott Walker has died. Walker forged an uncompromising and challenging body of work over the course of his five decade career, melding his crooning vocals with avant-garde textures and electronics and pushing the limits of pop songwriting well past the breaking point. Read Margaret Barton-Fumo’s run-down of Walker’s highly cinematic songcraft, including his remarkable scores for Leos Carax’s Pola X and Brady Corbet’s The Childhood of a Leader....

Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu in Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019) This weekend saw the 76th Venice Film Festival close with Lucrecia Martel’s jury awarding major prizes to actors Luca Marinelli and Ariane Ascaride, director Roy Andersson, and, winning the Grand Jury Prize for his film An Officer and a Spy, Roman Polanski. But the festival’s top honor, the Golden Lion, went to none other than Todd Phillips’s Joker—a film recently discussed by FC Editor-in-Chief Nic Rapold and Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang on our podcast....

Deborah Harmon and Kurt Russell in Used Cars (Robert Zemeckis, 1980) The dead man sits upright behind the steering wheel of a 1959 Edsel. Pennies are taped over his eyes. Around his neck is a garlic wreath. His three employees stand in the pouring rain, arguing about what they are about to do, which is: push the Edsel—with the dead man in it—into a pit, fill in the pit with dirt, and then tell anyone who asks that the dead man is on vacation in Miami Beach....

“Don’t, Rachel, don’t.” These whispered words waft across the soundtrack at a brief but crucial moment in the 1968 drama Rachel, Rachel, and they’re notable both because of the film’s otherwise sparing use of voiceover narration and for the specific context in which we hear them. It’s early in the film and Joanne Woodward’s title character—a single, small-town woman in her mid-thirties who, as evidenced in contemporary reviews, earlier generations would have uncharitably called a “spinster”—has been tossing and turning in bed....

A wayward son returns home, bringing doom with him. “I am he that causes suffering . . . and laughs,” João tells his struggling family upon returning after an eight-year absence. He is the specter of a ruined past and the promise of an empty future, a human void that engulfs those around him. Like most every new film from 105-year-old filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, Gebo and the Shadow is in close contact with death, and the 2012 film, made when he was a spry 103 and now receiving a week-long run at Anthology Film Archives, comes closest to the abyss....

French writer-director François Ozon invades the sanctity of the home with frisky, acerbic stories that lay bare the fragile nature of domestic tranquility. His early narrative film See the Sea (97) sets a sociopathic backpacker loose in the house of a young mother. Under the Sand (00) offers a glimpse of a woman unable to cope with loss, her life stalled by a ghost that haunts her mind, and her apartment....

Over the course of the seventies more than 40 Chilean filmmakers went into exile in France. One of them was Raúl Ruiz. He left Chile for Europe a month after the military coup that replaced Salvador Allende’s Socialist government with Pinochet’s hard-line regime. The majority of Ruiz’s over 100 subsequent films—many of them edited by his wife and fellow expat Valeria Sarmiento—were made in his new home country, of which he became a citizen....

Nitram (Justin Kurzel, 2022) There are only so many reasons to make a film about a real-life mass shooting, and only so many credible aesthetic approaches. Even the pillars of the genre risk misinterpretation: nearly 20 years after Elephant unexpectedly won the Palme d’Or at Cannes amidst accusations of opportunism (and anti-Americanism), the question of whether its Steadicam evocations of Columbine were bravely expansive or simply vacuous remains wide open....

Quartet, the first feature Dustin Hoffman has officially directed, tells the story of elderly singers who, lacking family and funds, are living out their golden years in the British countryside at Beecham House, a home for retired musicians. Looked after by the lovely Dr. Lucy Cogan (Sheridan Smith), the musicians live well, or as best they can, considering their infirmities, age, and the long-standing professional rivalries that burn as hot as ever....

A comedy of muddy morals set against the tropically clear, aquamarine shoreline of La Jolla, California, Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s San Diego Surf centers on the mismatched passions of Susan Hoffmann (Viva), a “nice, normal middle-class housewife with a penchant for surfers,” and her estranged, openly gay husband Mr. Mead (Taylor Mead). Desperate to ingratiate themselves with the town’s hoi polloi, our debauched protagonists decide to rent their summer home to a gang of beach bums played, not unconvincingly, by Joe Dallesandro, Tom Hompertz, Michael Boosin, and Louis Waldon....

Part video game, part teen romance, part postmodern collage experiment, Edgar Wright’s sui generis adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel is so visually ADD, I was expecting the Universal reps to be handing out Adderall after the screening. Install a camera in a pinball and you won’t approximate the whip-pan visual acrobatics at work here. No surprise then that Wii-playing 18-year-olds can’t get enough of it. Apparently fans of the graphic novel went “neon” with anticipation at this year’s Comic-Con (ground zero of the comic-book world); and judging by the audience’s reaction at the test screening, the film is hardly a letdown....

Of all of the young American directors shoehorned into the mumblecore movement, none made a more promising DIY debut than Jay and Mark Duplass with The Puffy Chair in 2005. Their largely improvised dialogue was fresh and finely attuned to twentysomething vernacular, and delivered with a relaxed sense of comedic timing that made comparable performances seem stilted and uncertain. But four films later, the brothers’ breakout success increasingly feels like a serendipitous fluke....

Working again with a DP borrowed from the Greek new wave and favoring an elliptical, lower-case strategy that evokes the likes of Claire Denis and Olivier Assayas, Memphis-born Ira Sachs has become one of our most European filmmakers. But he also understands the purpose and power of old-fashioned Hollywood high concept, of delicately detailing within well-worn grooves. Love Is Strange invokes McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow to craft a contemporary fable of separation: aging West Villagers Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) marry after several decades of cohabitation, only to find themselves without a home when the Catholic school at which George works as a music teacher fires him for making his homosexuality public....

After Paris, je t’aime, New York, I Love You, and Tokyo!, the omnibus film could become the next chamber-of-commerce must-have for any self-respecting city (beside a film festival, that is). Gondry, Carax, and Bong work up three riffs not on Tokyo but on “Tokyo”—all reasonably diverting and offering distinctive curlicues on the title’s exclamation point. Gondry’s “Interior Design” captures a universal urbanite rite of passage: a young cult filmmaker and his girlfriend come to the city and couch-surf at a friend’s box-like studio....

Adam Goldberg As in early cinema, the typical Vine clip so far involves either animals, comedians, stop-motion animations, non-narrative abstractions, or some combination thereof. (Nudity got the app slapped with a 17+ rating early on and is now noticeably absent, possibly due to advanced selfie recognition technology.) Sans privacy options (or ads) and only searchable by tags, Vine returns us to the blessed randomness of the early, less overtly corporate Internet....

The Rage of Paris Before MM (Marilyn Monroe) and BB (Brigitte Bardot), there was DD. Danielle Darrieux, the French actress and singer who celebrates her 100th birthday on May 1, was already known to her fans the world over for her coupled consonants and her singular confidence. Unlike most branded stars whose appeal can be captured in one well-chosen adjective, the multifaceted Darrieux would require the whole thesaurus. All accounts must begin with the self-possession that’s sparked every one of her performances since her debut at age 14 in 1931’s Le Bal....

All images from Executive Suite (Robert Wise, 1954) Let other movies start with a bang. Executive Suite (1954) begins with a “bong.” Over a series of office tower beauty shots, newscaster Chet Huntley’s uncredited voice insists that the white collar sanctums within are stocked with people just like us. “You may think that those that work there are somehow above and beyond the tensions and temptations of the lower floors,” Huntley says....

If you’re a longtime Film Comment subscriber, listener, or reader, or are just tuning in now, please consider becoming a member or making a donation to our publisher, Film at Lincoln Center, during these unprecedented times. Also, don’t miss details on the new streaming availability of Bacurau, online now via Film at Lincoln Center.

If you’re a longtime Film Comment subscriber, listener, or reader, or are just tuning in now, please consider becoming a member or making a donation to our publisher, Film at Lincoln Center, during these unprecedented times. Also, don’t miss details on the new streaming availability of Bacurau, online now via Film at Lincoln Center.