Film Comment

WHETHER YOU’RE talking about movies or the world in general, these are bewildering times to live in. Institutions can change rapidly or disappear entirely—and furthermore, without anyone even noticing—as the very notion of history seems to drop out o

THE STORY FOLLOWS FRANK SHEERAN, A HIT MAN FOR THE mafia. He fought in the Second World War, saw a lot of combat, had to do a lot of killing, and that desensitized him, in a way, to [murder]. He meets Russell Bufalino, the top Mafia person in Philade

You’re perfectly welcome to move on with your life, but we’re still in a state of consternation over the implications of The Lion King, which pushed Disney’s practice of photo-realistic reboots ever further into the realm of the obsessive. Were there

AFTER WINNING THE GOLDEN BEAR AT Berlin for Black Coal, Thin Ice in 2014, Diao Yinan shifts from northeastern to southern China for The Wild Goose Lake, which received its world premiere at Cannes. Its spectacularly realized story of an ostracized ga

A 17-EPISODE TELEVISION SERIES DEDICATED SPECIFICALLY TO ADAPTATIONS of American-authored short fiction occasioned the happy confluence of two uniquely cherishable homegrown artistic talents: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Joan Micklin Silver. Following thr

NEITHER OF THEM WANTED IT TO TURN OUT LIKE THIS. I refer, of course, to the divorce that (title notwithstanding) is the heart of the story in Marriage Story. Noah Baumbach’s latest film opens with a feint: a voiceover going through the qualities and

⋆ Akio Jissôji: The Buddhist Trilogy THIS TRANSIENT LIFE, 1970; Mandara, 1971; Poem, 1972; Arrow Films THERE’S NO MISTAKING THE BUTTON-PUSHING intentions of a “Buddhist Trilogy” that deals with incest, rape, and severe asceticism, but the unlikelines

The Art and Craft of TV Directing By Jim Hemphill Routledge, $39.95 THE 20 Q&AS MAKING UP JIM HEMPHILL’S The Art and Craft of TV Directing mine a rich vein of first-person creative experience from craftspeople whose jobs demand that they be articulat