The Film Comment Podcast

For a while now, we’ve been wanting to do an episode on the curious art form known as the TV movie. For a lot of people, the TV movie couldn’t be …

Welcome to another edition of the Rep Report, our regular roundup of retrospectives, repertory cinema, and other film series in New York. This week, …

In her feature on Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir in the May-June issue of Film Comment, Sheila O’Malley writes,“The autobiographical origins of The Souvenir are obvious (Hogg doesn’t try to hide them), yet she allows for …

For our latest Film Comment Free Talk, the director of I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho sat down for a conversation about at her latest, …

The end is nigh! For our final salvo from the Riviera, we welcome guest Manohla Dargis, critic for the New York Times, for a wrap-up of all the …

The Film Comment Podcast takes you into the closing weekend of Cannes with guest Rasha Salti, programmer for the Marrakesh International Film …

We're back from Cannes, this time with a recording of a live Film Comment event at the American Pavilion. Joining Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold on …

It’s two-fer Tuesday! We’re back with a fresh-out-of-the-oven special episode on two of the most anticipated films at the festival: Quentin …

The Film Comment Podcast returns for another day of fun, sun, and Cannes-versation from the French Rivieria. For day 7, Italian critic Carlo Chatrian, recently named Artistic Director of the Berlin Film Festival, sat …

Welcome back for day 6 of our podcast from Cannes. We’re kicking the week off with guests Dennis Lim, director of programming at Film at Lincoln …

We’re back from Cannes with day 5 of our podcasts covering all the cinematic goings-on in the south of France. For today’s episode, Film Comment …

We’re back from Cannes for day four of our series of podcasts on the cinematic goings-on on the Riviera. For today’s episode, Film Comment …

Welcome back for day 3 of our podcasts from Cannes 2019. Joining us on the Riviera for today’s episode are Bruno Dequen, critic and Director of Programming at Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal and …

For day 2 at Cannes, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sits down with Eugene Hernandez, Deputy Director of Film at Lincoln Center, to chat …

Let the games begin! We’ve touched down in Cannes and, for our first of many podcasts from the festival, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold …

In our May-June issue (out now!), Aliza Ma writes about the new film Olivier Assayas’s Non-Fiction, a comedic portrait of a Paris literary set struggling to adapt to the digital age. Her essay begins, “In the cinema of …

The Rep Report is our regular roundup of current retrospectives and film series. This week, we're focusing on an important and fun series at the …

In our March-April issue, Michael Koresky writes about history of a movie magazine with a humble name: Films and Filming. Koresky writes about the importance of this long-defunct publication as both a classic movie …

For our latest Film Comment Free Talk, Claire Denis and Robert Pattinson joined FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold to discuss their singular new film …

New Directors/New Films has always been a vital for, well, new directors and new films. Over the course of its nearly 50 years, the festival has introduced audiences to filmmakers like Spike Lee, Chantal Akerman, Bi …

They say that "democracy dies in darkness," but a handful of new films, including Mike Leigh's Peterloo and Jordan Peele's Us, argue otherwise, …

The Rep Report returns with an in-depth conversation about the upcoming Nelly Kaplan retrospective at the Quad Cinema, along with other rep …

High Life, the new movie from Claire Denis, comes to theaters on April 5. With a cast featuring Film Comment cover subject Robert Pattinson, Juliette …

For our latest Film Comment talk, Academy Award-winning director László Nemes sat down to discuss his latest film, which opened Film Comment Selects last month. The film, Sunset, tells the story of an orphaned young …

Over the years, the True/False festival (based in the college town of Columbia, Missouri) has grown into one of the most outstanding annual showcases …

This week, the Film Comment Podcast digs into Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and the ways in which the reputations of the notorious film and its maker have shifted over the years. In a feature article on the …

On February 13, Film Comment presented a special evening with the Spike Lee, Best Director nominee for BlacKkKlansman. The night included an extended conversation between Lee and Emmy Award–winning writer and television …

Love is, of course, in the air, and with most new release schedules in hibernation, February can be a great time for repertory cinema for both lovers …

The Film Comment Podcast returns with our final episode on the wild, windswept ride that was Sundance 2019. Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas …

Maintaining a marathon pace, the Film Comment Podcast returns with more insightful commentary and conversation from the Sundance Film Festival. FC …

The Film Comment Podcast returns with another update from Park City. FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined this time by New York Times film …

The Film Comment Podcast returns with our fourth update from the snow-and-glamour-packed streets of Park City, Utah. For today's episode, FC Editor-in-Chief is joined by guests and FC contributors Devika Girish, Eric …

On the third Film Comment Podcast from the Sundance Film Festival, FC Editor in Chief Nicolas Rapold is once again joined by FC contributors Devika …

We're back with our second update from Park City. Today's podcast features Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold in conversation with FC …

In the first of a series of updates from the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold hits the slopes with Eric …

In the calm before the storm, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sits down with critic and FC contributor Amy Taubin to chat about some of …

From Woodstock to Stop Making Sense to Madonna: Truth or Dare, the concert film provides an up-close-and-personal—and otherwise unattainable—perspective on performance and performer. In the new issue of Film Comment, …

New year, new rep report! Our latest edition looks at the annual mainstay of the restoration calendar, To Save and Project at the Museum of Modern Art—featuring everything from Chantal Akerman to Nude on the Moon—as …

All too often, the ritual of ranking films at the end of the year leaves a lot of worthy movies on the cutting floor. Some don’t receive enough votes to make our Best of 2018 list; others maybe don’t leap to mind when …

For the final Film Comment Talk of the year, Matt Dillon came to the Film Society of Lincoln Center to talk about his new film, The House That Jack …

The Rep Report continues with another joyous discussion of the latest in repertory and new release. This time we venture into the shadows of the …

Every year we send out a poll to our critics and staff and put together a list of the best movies of the year. For 2018, we did something a little …

At the New York Film Festival, Film Comment presents a series of talks that includes our reliably energizing and insightful conversation with a group …

The Rep Report, our new Film Comment podcast series devoted to repertory programs and new releases, continues this week with its latest installment. …

In marketing parlance, a “family film” has tended to mean an anodyne product, something that all could enjoy and that couldn't possibly offend …

Ida Lupino was an original. A Warner Brothers star who went on to become an independent director, writer, and producer, Lupino holds a singular place …

There’s an abundance of riches in movie houses across our fair city of New York—and, of course, beyond. We’ve long wanted to feature discussions among our contributors about the many options out there, and we‘re pleased …

“With Shirkers, Sandi Tan . . . revisits the long-lost footage from her unfinished narrative feature shot in Tan’s native Singapore in 1992, also called Shirkers, and in the process reckons with both why the film was …

Cinema and ghosts both offer the promise of life after death. On the latest Film Comment Podcast, just in time for Halloween, we talked about the …

Our latest Film Comment Talk brought together Paul Dano, director and co-writer of Wildlife, and Richard Ford, author of the book from which the film …

As a chronicler of film history, director Peter Bogdanovich has assembled what amounts to an insider’s oral history of classic Hollywood, across …

Toward the end of the New York Film Festival, our all-star team of Film Comment contributors came together to talk about the highlights. It was the …

For this week's podcast, we take a close look at Projections, the New York Film Festival’s program of experimental work from around the globe. Film …

The 56th New York Film Festival features three special Film Comment Talks, the first of which was our latest “Cinema of Experience” roundtable. On the occasion of our September/October cover featuring Burning star …

“In their films—especially Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and Inside Llewyn Davis—there’s always the sense that the deck is stacked against us and that we’re the authors of …

Our latest guest for our Film Comment Talks was Ethan Hawke. His new film Blaze, which he directed, stars in, and co-wrote, was released in August by IFC Films. In a busy year that also saw the release of First …

“Very rare are the movie depictions of restaurant work that evoke the mental and emotional dissonance required to get through an eight-hour shift,” …

Our Toronto 2018 podcast series comes to a close as our group gabs about Olivier Assayas's garrulous Non-Fiction, Alex Ross Perry's Her Smell, Ho Wi …

The Toronto hit parade continues with another podcast from the festival formerly known as the Festival of Festivals. I brought together even more hearts and minds this time for another spirited chat: Aliza Ma, head …

Drawn like hopeless spaceships into a black hole, Film Comment and friends are currently attending the sprawling Toronto film festival. I brought …

Taking a breath to look back, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Jonathan Romney, FC contributing editor, in an undisclosed …

This week on the podcast, the re-release of Terence Davies’s first full-length film, Distant Voices, Still Lives, in a new restoration, has our …

This week on the podcast we head back to the summer of 2001. These days, the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop has become a way of life, though at the time that summer, we were blithely seeing movies without …

With a playful 13.5-hour multigenre film-of-films from Mariano Llinas, an ultra-sharp new Hong Sangsoo, and an array of other experiments, the …

Our cover story for the July/August issue is about Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman—a story about incredible events in America’s past that feel well-suited …

As long as we are being inundated with worrisome news about Russian cyberwarfare and other attacks, the time seems ripe for taking a look at the motherland’s cinema. The summer series “Putin’s Russia: A 21st-Century …

On July 17, our latest Film Comment Free Talk brought together Boots Riley, director of the mind-altering new film Sorry to Bother You, and special …

“In just a few years’ time, they’ve become both requisite filmmaking tools and regrettable freighters of cliché. Drone shots are easily recognizable …

“Audiences will enjoy Sorry to Bother You in one go, but the film invites and can stand up to multiple viewings, in much the same way that complex …

For many New York moviegoers, the past few weeks at the Film Society of Lincoln Center have virtually belonged to Luchino Visconti. The retrospective …

“Although religious symbols and themes have often found their way into Schrader’s film work, First Reformedmarks the first time he has applied …

This summer we kicked off our Film Comment Free Talks, a new series of conversations with filmmakers held at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. For …

In the May/June issue of Film Comment, Nick Pinkerton wrote: “Like few feature films before it, Spielberg’s [Ready Player One] exemplifies an …

In his essay “Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic”—first published in the January/February 1978 issue of Film Comment—Robin Wood wrote: “Critics are not, of course, supposed to talk personally. It is regarded as an …

In this unbelievable season finale, promises are broken, insults fly, and lives are forever changed…well, not really. New York Times co-chief film …

It’s been a full 10 days of Cannes! FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Eugene Hernandez, Deputy Director of the Film Society of Lincoln …

It’s Cannes, day nine! FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Justin Chang, film critic for the Los Angeles Times; Mara Gourd-Mercado, …

In this episode, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Amy Taubin, Jonathan Romney, and Eric Hynes to discuss Lars von Trier’s “provocative” …

In today’s dispatch, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Eric Hynes, curator of film at Museum of Moving Image, and Orwa Nyrabia, artistic …

Following the high-profile “82 women” red carpet protest, FC and Artforum contributing editor Amy Taubin joins FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold to …

Amidst the jubilance of a French wedding, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Eric Hynes, curator of film at the Museum of the Moving …

It’s Cannes day four! FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Film Society of Lincoln Center Director of Programming Dennis Lim and FC …

FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold and Otros Cines critic Manu Yáñez Murillo sit down in the Palais to discuss the day’s films: Jaime Rosales’s Petra; …

FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Eric Hynes, Curator of Film at the Museum of Moving Image and FC Columnist, as they reflect on day two …

It’s Cannes, day one! FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Amy Taubin, FC contributing editor and Cannes veteran, to discuss the films …

Acting dynasties—like any kind of dynasty—rarely produce talents as great as Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie’s daughter, who ended up a sui generis figure in cinema history herself. Writer Andréa R. Vaucher and David Bloom …

The incomparable French director Claire Denis returns with Let the Sunshine In, a romantic comedy of sorts that stars Juliette Binoche. Denis’s fluid …

While great pipes and a cute face don’t always allow pop stars to instantly become leading men or ladies (witness 2003’s From Justin to Kelly), many musical artists do succeed in bringing a heady mix of charisma and raw …

In the college town of Columbia, Missouri, the True/False Film Fest has grown to become one of the world’s premiere showcases of cutting-edge …

In honor of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s retrospective of Lucrecia Martel’s work and theatrical run of Zama, we re-present this episode …

With the ostensible arrival of spring comes the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA’s New Directors/New Films. In this year’s crop …

Just in time for Easter (and a new series celebrating Al Pacino at The Quad), this episode honors an often-misunderstood subcategory of star: hams. Ranging from the amusing to glorious to cringeworthy, these actors call …

In the March/April issue of Film Comment, Lauren Kaminsky wrote about Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin: "a delirious historical mash-up that compiles sometimes independently factual details in utterly …

All too often, women’s opinions are considered valuable only in certain situations: when there’s a problem affecting women, when there’s an opportunity to market to women, when there’s a president that is a deeply …

Featuring the talents of Bill Gunn (Ganja & Hess), Vertamae Grosvenor (Daughters of the Dust), Ishmael Reed, and many others, Personal Problems was originally intended as “an experimental soap opera” for WNET, the …

From the way in which the experiences of African Americans are portrayed on screen, to the way skin color is captured on film, the history of movies …

Valeska Grisebach’s extremely precise yet highly naturalistic films take years to make: so far, we have been graced with only three features. In the January/February issue of Film Comment, Haden Guest discusses …

After being notorious as a “hotbed” of piracy for many years, the Chinese market is now more rightly regarded as the second-largest in the world. In the January/February issue of Film Comment, Nick Pinkerton and Andrew …

Recent episodes of The Film Comment Podcast have contemplated formative filmmaker obsessions, but what about the movies that struck us much earlier in life? Maybe your parents took you to see it, maybe you flipped by it …

One of the most curious entries at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam (which runs January 24 to February 4) isn’t a film at all, but a …

Food is versatile on film. Consider the ways it’s used in Tampopo, Daisies, Babette’s Feast, and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. This week’s episode of The Film Comment Podcast contends with how its …

It’s Sundance, day seven! FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Amy Taubin, FC contributing editor and Sundance veteran, to discuss the …

Steve James returns to Sundance this week to present the first half of his ten-part miniseries America to Me, set to premiere in full this fall. …

We’re still going strong as we continue into our second week! FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold and Eric Hynes, FC contributor and Curator of Film at …

In this Film Comment Podcast transmission from Park City, Sundance regular Sebastián Silva discusses his latest film, Tyrel, which had its world …

As the first weekend of Sundance comes to an end, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold and Eric Hynes, FC contributor and Curator of Film at Museum of …

It’s day four and we’re still going strong! In this episode, Nicolas Rapold, FC Editor-in-Chief and Eric Hynes, FC contributor and Curator of Film at …

It’s Sundance, day three!

On this (snowier) edition of our daily Sundance 2017 podcast, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold and Eric Hynes, FC …

It’s Sundance, day two! On this edition of our daily Sundance 2017 podcast, FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold and Eric Hynes, FC contributor and …

Before the madness begins, Film Comment kicks things off with a glimpse of what to expect from the hectic experience that is the Sundance Film Festival—how it sets the tone for the coming year and what it means to …

“Can a meretricious, inane movie with nothing else to recommend it produce a radiant, rousing film score?” asks Gary Giddins in “Rolling Thunder,” …

“In Paul Thomas Anderson’s work, love can be—quite literally—a miracle,” writes Sheila O’Malley in her January/February 2018 Film Comment cover …

Stories about Harvey Weinstein’s misconduct and cover-ups have opened the floodgates of revelations about other figures in the entertainment industry and beyond. Victims have finally been able to come forward and be …

As filmmaker and critic Jeff Reichert put it in his January/February 2017 Film Comment feature on Steve Bannon’s documentary work, “We could dismiss …

Sleepovers offer kids a special opportunity to hang out with their friends largely unsupervised, free to chat and dream way after bedtime. The types of films that can be discovered—and obsessively re-watched—during the …

As another year of moviegoing comes to a close, relax by your fire or space heater with the results of the annual Film Comment critics’ poll! The top …

Picking up where we left off last week, this week’s episode travels further down cinephilic memory lane…or should we say, further forward. We check …

There’s nothing like first love, especially when it’s projected on the silver screen. This week’s episode of the podcast revisits formative cinematic fascinations—one director who kickstarted cinephilia at a young age, …

Nick Pinkerton’s feature in the new issue, “The Golden Age of Campus Film Societies,” serves as a point of departure for a discussion on the role of …

This week, The Film Comment Podcast welcomes back seminal critic David Bordwell to discuss his new book Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers …

Have we passed 100 episodes already? Apparently so! This week, we invite listeners to look back at some of the most memorable moments of The Film Comment Podcast, including choice blurts from Kent Jones, Amy Taubin, …

This Halloween, The Film Comment Podcast salutes a filmmaker whose work, according to the British Board of Film Classification, exemplified the “pornography of terror.” The panel—Ina Archer, media conservation and …

Premiered in Venice and recently screened in the New York Film Festival, Zama marks not only the long-awaited return of Lucrecia Martel, but also her first literary adaptation. Martel expanded on the first-person fever …

Armando Iannucci has long had a genius for the absurdity of global politics, from his work on the satirical news program On the Hour in the 1990s, to …

At the conclusion of the 55th New York Film Festival, Film Comment gathered together a panel of contributors and critics for one final live roundtable. For this “Festival Wrap” talk, the critics discussed festival …

In this special live episode of the podcast, moderated by Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold, panelists Teo Bugbee (The New York Times …

Looking ahead to the New York Film Festival premiere of Susan Lacy’s documentary Spielberg, this week’s Film Comment podcast considers the …

This week, The Film Comment Podcast hosts a very special guest, himself a choreographer of uninvited guests on their worst behavior. A longtime practitioners of his own strain of emotional extremity, Darren Aronofsky …

The centerpiece retrospective of this year’s New York Film Festival celebrates the centenary of Robert Mitchum, paragon of fatalist cool. In her …

This week’s Film Comment podcast requires very little introduction beyond the topic—Twin Peaks: The Return, a work that is both a heartfelt refraction of David Lynch’s 50 years of creative output and a medium-reshaping …

With every festival comes a new round of roundtables, so if you couldn’t make it to this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, you can still …

Screening in the New York Film Festival a little over a month after the white supremacist horror in Charlottesville, Dee Rees’s Mudbound has a shocking urgency. Charting the relationship between a black sharecropping …

In May, we premiered our very first gift-giving episode. In it, each critic chose two films for another participant to experience for the first time. The first was a film that they’d be interested in hearing that person …

Reducing Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama to a straightforward psychological reading barely scratches the surface—which is exactly what makes the film a …

In memory of Jeanne Moreau (1928-2017), this week’s podcast offers up a selection of previously unreleased interviews with the legendary actress and director. Writer Andréa R. Vaucher takes us through her series of …

“What holds the movies of 1977 together beyond a coincidence of the calendar?” asks J.D. Connor, writing on the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s ’77 …

“Championed by Annette Michelson, B. Ruby Rich, and many others, [Yvonne] Rainer’s films are densely verbose, elusive, dryly comic, furious, fractured, and intimately concerned with addressing a variety of injustices …

As Eric Hynes wrote in the cover story of our July/August issue, “At their best, the Safdies’ films don’t just mooch off the city’s story …

Plenty of films open with an establishing shot of a city's iconic skyline, or of a few iconic barns, only to go on and use the location as an anonymous backdrop. But few and far between are films that actually use the …

As David Thomson succinctly puts it in the July/August issue, "Wanda is the kind of person who didn’t and still doesn’t get into American movies …

What do we talk about when we talk about independent film? At various points it’s referred to a freedom of style, or it’s been shorthand for a low-budget film outside of the studio system. In his Cannes coverage, Kent …

We expect that discrete scenes will play off of one another to create any given feature film, but what happens when one of these moments tugs the narrative in an unexpected direction? Sometimes the moment works, and …

Having programmed two high-profile Netflix premieres, Bong Joon Ho’s Okja and Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), in the main competition, Cannes was shadowed by a debate over …

Maybe it’s the magnetic pull of a performance, a sequence, or a mood, but there are some movies that demand multiple rewatches. This episode of the …

Did the golden age of television already happen? This episode of the podcast makes the case that it has—in 1970s Germany, courtesy of the one and …

The agony and the ecstasy of festivalgoing continues on this week’s episode. In the second week of Cannes, two television shows by established auteurs—Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake and David Lynch’s Twin …

The dark of the theater and the sunny seafront come together but once a year at the Cannes Film Festival, and in this week's episode of the Film Comment Podcast, the critics weigh in live from the south of France on the …

There's one alliterative movie musical that's dominated the recent conversational limelight, but less frequently discussed is how it operates within the genre. In this spirit, Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and …

Following a free screening of Michael Radford's adaptation of 1984 in early April as part of a nationwide event, Film Comment Editor Nicolas Rapold …

To celebrate the 55th birthday of our magazine, we present a special gift-giving episode of the podcast. The gifts in this case are movies: as in a Secret Snowflake office gift exchange, each critic gave two films to …

This week's episode of the Film Comment podcast takes a sonic journey through this year's edition of Art of the Real, which runs through May 2 at the …

On the occasion of Criterion Collection's home video release of Multiple Maniacs and the publication of his new book Make Trouble, Violet Lucca chats …

James Gray's The Lost City of Z, which opened last Friday, charts a course into the jungle alongside a character in search of transcendence. Shot on …

"You don't want something to look too staged in movies or they look overly presented. You don't know what comes out . . . You don't know what you have at the end of the day." That was Terrence Malick during a rare …

In a March/April 2017 feature titled "No Joke," Film Comment Digital Producer Violet Lucca traces current trends in modern American comedies to the …

This week's episode of the Film Comment podcast begins with an interview with the irrepressible Albert Serra, director of our March/April cover film The Death of Louis XIV, which opens this Friday. Then we move on to …

Horror films are unusually adept at giving mutable flesh to the terrors of adolescence, and Julia Ducournau's new film Raw is no exception. After a …

The True/False Film Fest in Columbia, Missouri, reliably assembles a selection of the world’s finest nonfiction film, tracking down surprises from …

Jean-Pierre Léaud's familiar face graces the cover of the new March/April issue of Film Comment, waiting out his final days in Albert Serra's new film The Death of Louis XIV. As Yonca Talu observes in her feature on the …

As filmmaker and critic Jeff Reichert put it in his January/February 2017 Film Comment feature on Steve Bannon's documentary work, "We could dismiss …

In his 1985 film God's Country, Louis Malle visits a small town in Minnesota both before and after Reagan's election, documenting the stark economic …

“I always go back to Ozu and Bresson, both of whom I admire a great deal. I like the way Bresson frames midriff: a person going across the room but you’re just seeing the half, the midriff of the body. The scene in …

Road-tripping crises of masculinity soundtracked by classic rock, Harvey Keitel making up for his sins in the streets—a laundry list of 1970s New …

This week's two-pronged episode of the Film Comment podcast digs into a varied slate of contemporary filmmaking. First, from the New York Film …

The first Sundance Film Festival, then known as the US/Utah Film Festival, took place in 1978 in an effort to bring independent filmmaking talent to the state. Over the years, word spread, crowds grew, and first-time …

Alpine air, ski-friendly powder, and independent film converge every January at the Sundance Film Festival. And now, as a slight respite from the hype tweets, the Film Comment podcast is proud to transmit a little bit …

Ideology and aesthetics have somehow come to be positioned opposite one another—in film criticism, should one be privileged over the other? This …

Questions of legacy can rile up the creative juices in unexpected ways, especially when filmmakers who win a bit of success are allowed to dive headlong into their obsessions. In cases like these, equipped with higher …

There’s no single way to celebrate the holiday season, but nearly every custom is centered on family and friends gathering together. In the first …

On the other side of the visibility hurdle, questions about queer representation in film persist. Is visibility enough? How much is an appropriate amount? Do all queer films need to support the cause? Where is the gay …

2016 may be ill-suited to fond recollections, but the annual Film Comment Top 20 list does have plenty of good cheer to go around. This year's poll …

The clickbait consensus may be that cinema is dead, but the fact of the matter is a bit more nuanced. In the November/December issue of Film Comment, New York Film Festival Director Kent Jones suggests that perhaps we …

There’s more to tearjerkers than the deceptively simple term might suggest, and in this episode of the Film Comment podcast, we consider the nuanced …

According to the experts, this wasn’t supposed to turn out this way… but it did. While the election of Donald Trump has prompted a great deal of …

What are the uncanny forces at work behind Paul Verhoeven’s visceral and transgressive cinema? In anticipation of the Film Society’s complete …

It's finally here: Election Day. After you've cast your vote, hopefully this new episode of the Film Comment podcast will help you relax as the …

Although one-on-one interviews with filmmakers are often accessible (depending, of course, on the personality at hand), group roundtables with a …

Kristen Stewart took a quick breather from promoting her triptych of new films at NYFF to reflect on collaborating with Olivier Assayas and Kelly …

Is it possible to pinpoint what is so scary about an unsettling moment of a well-made horror film? It could be the image itself, but it could also be …

Photography is by nature bittersweet: a warm moment with a loved one is captured forever, a reminder of an instant in time that can never be …

The fanfare of the 54th New York Film Festival may have officially wrapped on Saturday, but the films themselves live on—so let's talk about them. As part of an aptly named "Festival Wrap" free talk, several of Film …

The September/October issue of Film Comment re-envisioned the magazine’s style and sharpened its focus, celebrating the vibrancy of cinema as well as delving into tough critical issues. As part of the 54th New York Film …

Aside from search engines, the most visited sites in the world are social media: the old mainstays Facebook and Twitter. Their impact on film culture …

Great works of art transcend the passage of time, but the cinema of years past has its own special qualities of transcendence and immersion. This …

How do you approach political filmmaking in a meaningful way? And, in this politically charged era, where are the dissenting voices in film? In this …

Hosting over 300 films, many of which are world or North American premieres, the Toronto International Film Festival is a frequently overwhelming experience even for veteran attendees. To help cut through—or at least …

This episode is the first of three to dive into features from our newly redesigned September-October issue, which asks "What Is Cinema Now?" Shonni Enelow, author of Method Acting and Its Discontents: On American …

Last month, the final VCR rolled off the line at the Funai plant in Japan, officially signaling the end of an era. Although there have been numerous …

Visions of class surround us each day, both overtly and subliminally, in advertisements, literature, and film. Which visual and narrative tools are …

While so many soundtracks seem to exist solely to underline the tone of a scene, unexpected musical cues can completely recontextualize and undermine …

Great directors can make crap. Whether because of a bad script, failing health, studio meddling, force majeure, or simply loss of artistic mojo, even the most enviable filmography can contain an irredeemable movie. But …

This month, at Anthology Film Archives, FILM COMMENT contributor Nick Pinkerton has programmed a variety of shockumentary-style works ranging from …

Though associated with heritage films—lush period films typically set in Britain’s imperial past—producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, and …

Kristen Stewart takes the spotlight in the brand-new July/August issue of FILM COMMENT, in a nuanced and balanced appreciation of the star's …

In his recently published book The Rhapsodes, seminal critic and film historian David Bordwell pays tribute to four groundbreaking film critics who were writing in the 1940s: Otis Ferguson, James Agee, Manny Farber, and …

Today, the term “summer movie” is synonymous with big budgets, explosions, superhero franchises, family-friendly animated films, and sequels. Yet this wasn't always the case. In the summers of the 1960s, years before …

Hong Sangsoo is a filmmaker who isn’t afraid to repeat himself. Fashioning narratives around lonesome or just pathetic male artists’ attempts at finding romantic connection, Hong’s films are characterized by their long …

In their intimate and insightful documentary De Palma, directors Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow sit down with the legendary filmmaker to discuss his …

Believe it or not, but occasionally the critics attending Cannes take umbrage with the jury’s choices for awards—so much so this year that the Grand …

Comedies and genre films may not be the usual Croisette fare, but that wasn’t the case with the 69th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Touching on Maren Ade’s unanimously praised Toni Erdmann, as well as more …

Plenty of films are set in the past, either adapted from texts from the period or written by authors looking back on history (and likely bringing their own biases to it). Yet only a select few of such works manage to so …

It’s that most special time of year: the May/June issue has arrived! What’s inside? We’re glad you asked: FILM COMMENT Digital Editor Violet Lucca …

On June 28, 1969, following a police raid of the Greenwich Village LGBT bar Stonewall Inn, a riot broke out around the neighborhood that continued …

Described by Joan Dupont in the March/April issue of FILM COMMENT as “too haunted to be the suave lady-killer and too classy to be the loser,” Vincent Lindon has slowly gained prominence outside of France in his quietly …

Following the bold experiment of Boyhood, Richard Linklater returns with Everybody Wants Some!!, a semi-autobiographical movie about the infinite …

Since film’s inception—from the Lumière’s early actualités to Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North—the boundary between documentary and fiction film has been fairly fluid (or not even a term of discussion.) And as …

In the spirit of fantasy football—or, you know, film criticism—FILM COMMENT contributors Michael Koresky (editor of Reverse Shot and director of publications of the Metrograph theater) and Ashley Clark (author of Facing …

Arnaud Desplechin’s My Golden Days takes the characters of his third feature, My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument, and puts them into new (but …

Now in its 45th year, New Directors / New Films showcases fiction and documentary work from around the world. These filmmakers offer bold visions and …

Though we’re taught to compartmentalize historical movements into discrete events and dates, the truth (or what we know of it) is anything but. Four …

Criticism gets a bad rap a lot of the time, even from its practitioners. But rather than a defense of criticism, A.O. Scott. a chief film critic for The New York Times, has written a kind of long-form thought experiment …

It's that most wonderful time of year: Film Comment Selects! This edition of our annual series of eclectic, international, and avant-garde films …

Now that “takes,” gossip, and conversations about film can be instantly broadcast to the world, it’s sometimes easy to forget that above all else, film criticism is an act of writing. In a frank and accessible dialogue, …

At first blush, the Coen Brothers and Peter Greenaway don’t appear to have much in common except that their new films, Hail, Caesar!and Eisenstein in Guanajuato, both came out the same day. Yet their films used to share …

The Film Society of Lincoln Center recently mounted a major retrospective of Douglas Sirk’s films, which included his first German productions from …

What were the noteworthy performances of 2015? And what different kinds of performance are there? Mindful of actors that weren’t nominated during …

Rejoice, o ye year-end list obsessives! Digital editor Violet Lucca sat down with senior editor Nicolas Rapold, contributing editor and New York Film …

A New York Film Festival Live talk, recorded October 9th, where Film Comment editors and contributors discussed this year's NYFF.

Participants: Wesley Morris of The New York Times; Eric Hynes, critic, reporter, and Film …

Melissa Anderson (contributor to Artforum, The Village Voice, and other publications) and Film Comment Digital Editor Violet Lucca speak about the …

The first episode of our podcast: a discussion of Shoah by critic J. Hoberman and Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing. Please leave your thoughts about your experience watching Shoah here:

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