Film Comment

HAVING THE NEW YORK FILM Festival around the corner has long been a boon for Film Comment, as it bestows a wealth of cinematic riches on these shores (and on the movie calendar). Thanks to the international reach of its selection, it’s a prime opport

WE LOOKED AT NUMEROUS IMAGES, FROM PAINTINGS AND drawings of the period to contemporary photography. We wanted to be loyal to certain aspects of the era but veer off whenever we felt it was interesting or necessary. For example, we stayed true to the

Nearly everyone in the cinephile echo chamber acted like someone had pulled a mother! on their firstborn when the academy of motion picture arts and Sciences announced a new category: outstanding achievement in popular Film. instituted under alleged

LEAPING ACROSS OCEANS, genres, and mediums in a single bound, Steven Yeun is poised to conquer new heights with his exceptional, enigmatic performance as ultrarich Ben in Burning, which comes on the heels of Sorry to Bother You, Okja, and his six-yea

IT SEEMS THE ONLY PROPER WAY TO WRITE ABOUT KIRA MURATOVA IS TO WRITE in short snippets, sporadic fits and fragments. As if trying to mimic the way she actually was—fierce, frantic, and controversial. I can hear her voice now. “Why would he suddenly

Director: Marielle Heller Country/Distributor: USA, Fox Searchlight Opening: Oct. 19 The biography writer Lee Israel, played in Can You Ever Forgive Me? by Melissa McCarthy, was never straight, but in 1991, she abandoned the straight and narrow. With

Director: Wash Westmoreland Country/Distributor: UK/USA/Hungary, Bleecker Street Opening: Sept. 21 Colette is not a film about a writer; it’s about a marriage, and as such it begins with courtship and ends in divorce. We follow Sidonie-Gabrielle Cole

Director: Ruth Beckermann Country/Distributor: Austria, Menemsha Films Opening: Oct. 19 During his campaign to become President of Austria in the 1980s, records surfaced that Kurt Waldheim, the fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations, had serv

Director: Paul Dano Country/Distributor: USA, IFC Films Opening: Oct. 19 The décor in Paul Dano’s 1960-set Wildlife is conspicuously beige, as if every patch and tile proudly proclaims its intent to blend in. You might fear the first-time writer-dire

Director: Gustav Möller Country/Distributor: Denmark, Magnolia Pictures Opening: Oct. 19 Gustav Möller’s The Guilty functions as a gripping monodrama for one character: Asger Holm, a policeman temporarily demoted to 911-type dispatch duties for an un

⋆⋆ Memories of Underdevelopment Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Cuba, 1968; The Criterion Collection • DVD/⋆DEBUT • BLU-RAY/⋆ DEBUT ‣ STREAMING ‣ EXCLUSIVE TO VOD THE RASPS, CRACKLES, AND HALOING REMEMBERED FROM previous viewings of Memories of Underdevelopmen

By Brian de Palma & Susan Lehman, Rivages, €16 From Kazan to Jodorowsky to Van Sant to Cronenberg, filmmakers have periodically turned to novel-writing as an alternate creative playground. So far published only in French, Are Snakes Necessary? was co

Confidential Confidential: The Inside Story of Hollywood’s Notorious Scandal Magazine By Samantha Barbas, Chicago Review Press, $27.99 FOR A BRIEF SPELL IN THE 1950S, FOLLOWING THE PEAK OF paranoia unleashed by HUAC’s terrorizing tactics, a tawdry go