Posts

Performance view of ΔV/ΔT (Jonas Bers, 2023). Courtesy of the artist. In the discourse about the pandemic’s effects on moviegoing and the latest death of cinema, there has been scarcely any mention of the plight of emphatically noncommercial modes like experimental film and video or artists’ cinema. The very terms, after all, suggest that no good capitalist should care: why wring one’s hands over the fate of cinema at the margins, whose makers aren’t even trying to secure Netflix deals?...

Double Suicide The wealth of older Japanese films available on U.S. home video is sometimes astounding, if you take into consideration what was released on VHS, then laserdisc, DVD, and finally Blu-ray. But the number of titles available with English subtitles, while large, still pales when compared to the depth and breadth of Japanese film history. For every Akira Kurosawa, whose entire feature filmography has been made available to English-speaking viewers on home video, there’s a Yasuzo Masumura, whose works available in translation are limited, for a variety of reasons, and represent only a tiny portion of his entire creative output....

America (Garrett Bradley, 2019). Photo by Akasha Rabut. Courtesy of Sundance Institute In 2014, the Museum of Modern Art restored and unveiled to the public a never-before-seen silent film by Bert Williams, titled Lime Kiln Club Field Day. Made in 1913, the unfinished film had languished in obscurity for 100 years, as had the remarkable circumstances of its production. Lime Kiln Club Field Day featured an all-black cast and an interracial production crew led by a Caribbean director—a historic effort in the early years of the Jim Crow era....

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, The Whistlers, and Vitalina Varela, online now via Film at Lincoln Center.

His latest role is as the lead in Passages, a new film by Ira Sachs. Rogowski stars Tomas, a diva-esque filmmaker and very indecisive queer man, who vacillates erratically between his husband, played by Ben Whishaw, and a new love interest, played by Adele Exarchopoulos. It’s a role of chaotic contradictions that seems made for Rogowski: Tomas is self-absorbed, brilliant, repulsive, sexy, vulnerable, and malicious all at once—and Rogowski brings to him a truly unselfconscious, combustible sense of humanity....

For this year’s festivities, they invited two horror experts to inflict some terror—FC regular contributor Nicholas Russell, and Clyde Folley, curator of the ’90s Horror series currently haunting the Criterion Channel. The two selected a pair of freaky favorites: Abel Ferrara’s Body Snatchers, an early-’90s remake of the classic sci-fi chiller, and Michael Powell’s 1960 serial-killer masterpiece, Peeping Tom. Where Powell’s film lived up to its reputation as an endlessly fascinating text, rich with commentary on the inherent violence of visual culture, Ferrara’s streamlined variation on an oft-told tale opened up surprising questions about identity, family, and conformity....

Each one of Scott’s choices—which include The Wolf of Wall Street, Kajillionaire, Good Time, Leave No Trace, Class Relations, and Trash Humpers—sparked a spirited conversation about the state of the nation. Devika and Clint added in some of their own picks: John Sayles’s The Brother From Another Planet, Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames, and more. We hope you enjoy the conversation, and may God bless America… Links & Things: A....

Listen/Subscribe: Welcome to the first episode of FILM COMMENT’s podcast providing an in-depth discussion of a DVD reviewed in our most recent issue. More than just listening along, we encourage you to watch along—either for the first time or as a repeat viewing—and leave your thoughts in the comments section below. Our first episode is about Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah: a daunting but nevertheless essential film experience. We brought together critic J....

For today’s episode, the final one in our Sundance 2022 series, editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited Film Comment contributors Abby Sun and Violet Lucca to join for an overview of the festival that was. They talked about standouts like We Met in Virtual Reality, Dos Estaciones, I Didn’t See You There, Leonor Will Never Die, Every Day in Kaimuki, and more. Find all of our coverage of Sundance coverage here....

At the 2016 New York Film Festival press conference for the film, you said that playing the death of Louis XIV became a way for you to face and go through your own death. When Serra offered me the role of Louis XIV, I said to myself that this film would mean a great deal to me, in my life and in my filmography. I said to myself that I must succeed, with all the energy that’s in me....

Nomadland (Chloé Zhao, 2021) © 2020 20th Century Studios What do we do when we quote Shakespeare? A case study: accepting her Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, Frances McDormand delivered a deep cut from Macbeth. “I have no words; my voice is in my sword,” she said, intoning a line few may remember but many can Google. It comes from the end of the play, when Macduff cries to Macbeth before killing and decapitating him: “I have no words; my voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain than terms can give thee out....

Crash Paul Haggis, 2005 Slumdog Millionaire Danny Boyle, 2008 Chicago Rob Marshall, 2002 Forrest Gump Robert Zemeckis, 1994 A Beautiful Mind Ron Howard, 2001 Gladiator Ridley Scott, 2000 American Beauty Sam Mendes, 1999 Shakespeare in Love John Madden, 1998 Braveheart Mel Gibson, 1995 Titanic James Cameron, 1997 Driving Miss Daisy Bruce Beresford, 1989 Dances with Wolves Kevin Costner, 1990 The Greatest Show on Earth Cecil B. DeMille, 1952 The King’s Speech Tom Hooper, 2010...

“Washington says she’s a killer” So declares the CIA Station Head in Pakistan about a new arrival in 2003, a “CIA targeter and subject-matter expert,” Maya (Jessica Chastain). Maya is young and delicate-looking, with flowing red hair that is only seen when she pulls off the hood she wears during the brutal interrogation of a “detainee” in the film’s first scene (Chastain’s features have often been described as pre-Raphaelite). The drive of Zero Dark Thirty is to play for a while on this slightly unnerving contrast: that such a woman should have the steel and determination to pursue the hunt for Osama bin Laden more ruthlessly than her male colleagues, until the dispatch of a team of Navy SEALs in 2011 to the hideout she has done most to locate....

Clouds of Sils Maria Shut out of the awards, Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria was certainly one of the festival’s standouts, and the director’s best since Summer Hours. Invoking the spirit of Ingmar Bergman (Persona in particular), it rematches Assayas with Juliette Binoche in a low-key, finely modulated psychodrama ostensibly about the relationship between successful actress Maria (Binoche) and her capable personal assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart). Reckoning with middle age, Maria agrees to revisit the stage play in which she made her name at age 18, in the role of a scheming assistant whose actions lead to the undoing of her businesswoman boss....

Every decade, Sight & Sound invites a multitude of critics to crowdsource the 10 greatest movies ever made. Three voted for Shoah in 1992; two joined them in 2012. Last year, in the aftermath of its 25th-anniversary re-release, Shoah received enough votes to tie Stalker for 29th place. At this rate, Claude Lanzmann’s nine-and-a-half-hour documentary on the extermination of Europe’s Jews could crack the charmed circle by 2032. But can we even consider Shoah a movie?...

Blue Is the Warmest Color “Who wears the pants—or doesn’t?” could be the headline for the fracas that developed around the Palme d’Or winner, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Color (aka La Vie d’Adèle–Chapitres 1 et 2). Embraced by the international press and the jury as well, the movie is a coming-of-age lesbian love story about the titular Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a high-school student from a working-class family who falls in love at first sight with Emma (Léa Seydoux), an art-school grad student from an upper-middle-class boho family....

Café Society An older man, a younger woman. A love triangle. Such is the story portrayed in Woody Allen’s Café Society, the director’s third movie to open the 69-year-old Cannes Film Festival. Debuting tonight in the South of France, Allen’s new film is set in 1930s Hollywood and follows an ambitious but neurotic young man from the Bronx (Jesse Eisenberg) who heads West to find a career. Sitting in the office waiting for a meeting with his uncle (Steve Carell), a powerful Hollywood agent, he meets a confident young woman (Kristen Stewart) and quickly falls for her....

Facing persistent criticism in recent years for a pronounced lack of women in its lineup, the organizers of the Cannes Film Festival—the most prestigious in the world—sought to turn the tide this year. Planners partnered with a new festival sponsor to host panels and parties aimed at showcasing women; the festival, for only the second time in its history, opened with a film by a women; a lifetime achievement award was presented to French auteur Agnès Varda; and throughout the event, countless films featured stories about women....