Film Comment

YOU MIGHT THINK THAT FILM Comment folk run a tidy side hustle placing canny bets on the Academy Awards. But more often than not, we’re busy championing movies that don’t already have tens of millions of dollars—in box office, in marketing, in product

Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold Digital Editor Clinton Krute Consulting Art Director Kevin Fisher Copy Editor Steven Mears Assistant Editor Devika Girish Consultant Michael Koresky Nick Davis J. Hoberman Dave Kehr Nellie Killian Soraya Nadia McDonald

THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISION I MADE WITH MY CO-SCREEN writer Maurizio Braucci when we decided to adapt Jack London’s Martin Eden was to bring the story from Oakland to Naples, in the south of Italy. Since it involves an archetype, like Hamlet or Faust

A typical visit to the Sundance Film Festival elicits a number of commonplace observations. There’s the perennial sound and fury of effortful branding in Park City. And, especially in the age of The Streaming Giants, there are extremely flexible defi

GARRETT BRADLEY’S TIME IS A FIRST-PERSON documentary, though the first-person storyteller is not Bradley but rather Fox Rich—a Louisiana mother of six who for 21 years worked ceaselessly to have her husband Robert released from prison, where he was s

Fourteen Super 8 films by Tatjana Ivančić 1970–1976, Austrian Film Museum in collaboration with the Croatian Film Archive Paulette McDonagh x 2: Those Who Love (1926) and The Cheaters (1929), National Film and Sound Archive of Australia Nationtime—Ga

Although still busy with her teaching duties at Bard, Kelly Reichardt made time to discuss her latest film on a grey morning in early December. We met outside the Walter Reade Theater in New York. You open First Cow with a wonderful quote by William

EMPLOYEES AFFECTIONATELY DUBBED THEIR STUDIO’S logo “the monument.” Sitting atop an Art Deco skyscraper and spelling out in huge carved letters, on separate platforms, “20th” and “Century” and “Fox,” it truly is a monolith. For 85 years, matte artist

Director: Rose Glass Country/Distributor: UK, A24 Opening: March 27 Though the Catholics would prefer it under wraps, there remains a hazy division between madness and piety in the lives of the saints. Rose Glass’s debut feature exacerbates that tens

The Cremator Juraj Herz, Czechoslovakia, 1969; Criterion The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson, USA/Germany, 2014; Criterion Guys and Dolls Joseph L. Mankiewicz, USA, 1955; Warner Archive Collection Kinetta Yorgos Lanthimos, Greece, 2005; Kino Lorber

American Factory Julia Reichert & Steven Bognar, USA, 2019; Netflix Crip Camp James Lebrecht & Nicole Newnham, USA, 2020; Netflix Ether Krzysztof Zanussi, Poland/Ukraine, 2018; MUBI The Farewell Lulu Wang, USA, 2019; Amazon Frownland Ronald Bronstein

Maya Deren Collection Eight films, USA, 1943-85; Kino Lorber & Re:Voir IN HER 1946 ESSAY “AN ANAGRAM OF IDEAS on Art, Form, and Film,” Maya Deren laid out her anti-manifesto approach to the artist’s manifesto. “In my case I have found it necessary, e

Brakhage and Frampton have gotten the Criterion treatment—so why not George Kuchar? If Bergman’s glimpses into the soul of man blow your mind, wait until you see what Kuchar can do with a motel toilet. Setting aside the dream of a box set or a compre

In Phantom Lady (1944)—produced by Joan Harrison—a man at a bar picks up a woman sporting an outlandish hat. She’s his only alibi when he’s accused of murder, but no one can recall her. This nightmare of urban anonymity from Cornell Woolrich’s eponym