Founded in 1962 and originally released as a quarterly, Film Comment features reviews and analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world.
Special essays on isolation and movies by Nick Pinkerton and Devika Girish, Imogen Sara Smith on Roy Andersson’s existentialist tragicomedy About Endlessness, Aboubakar Sanogo on the revolutionary legacy of Med Hondo, and Ela Bittencourt in conversation with the late Colombian genre-twister Luis Ospina. Plus: Camilo Restrepo on his electric feature debut Los Conductos, Sheila O’Malley on the film writing of the poet H.D., and Christopher Harris on his landmark St. Louis portrait still/here, along with an interview with avant-garde legend Michael Snow, Jia Zhang-ke’s viewing habits, Ari Aster and Alex Ross Perry on their home-viewing favorites, and much more.
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Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s radical genre mashup Bacurau, Nick Pinkerton on the maximalism of Hollywood royal King Vidor, an interview with Saturday Fiction director Lou Ye, and J. Hoberman on Thomas Heise’s epic essay film Heimat Is a Space in Time. Plus: Michael Koresky on the enduring promise of cinema, Pietro Marcello on Martin Eden, Garrett Bradley on Time, Isabelle Huppert in Loulou, Spike Lee’s trusted costume designer Ruth E. Carter, Amy Taubin on Sundance, and much more.
The best of the decade and the best of 2019, with essays from Dennis Lim, Amy Taubin, and Devika Girish, and lists galore, from the best 50 films of the 2010s to critics’ and editors’ picks to the best films of 2019, with arguments for each by the magazine’s contributors. Plus, an extensive interview with Pedro Costa on his breathtaking Vitalina Varela, features on Pietro Marcello’s breakthrough Martin Eden and the best single-scene performances, interviews with Albert Serra and Angela Shanelec, and much, much more.
Greta Gerwig interview on Little Women, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman confronts the void, the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems, Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Tamil action director Vetri Maaran, and Soraya Nadia McDonald on rape culture on screen. Plus: Rossellini’s history films, streaming Adam Sandler, composer Fatima Al Qadiri on Atlantics, and much more.
57th NYFF Special Section, including Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, Pain and Glory and Pedro Almodóvar on his literary inspirations, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, Angela Schanelec’s I Was at Home, But..., and Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers; Plus: film education, Piotr Szulkin, fake movies, and much more.
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, Jim Jarmusch by Amy Taubin, Mati Diop’s Atlantics by Dennis Lim, Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms, United Artists at 100, the acting partnership of Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, the overlooked films of Nelly Kaplan, Ari Aster on his inspirations, and much more
Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, Olivier Assayas’s Non-Fiction, Mindy Kaling’s Late Night and diversity, the lost language of lenses, Pedro Almodóvar on Pain and Glory, reconsidering Mexican auteur Roberto Gavaldón, Jordan Peele’s Us and assimilation, a special section on 50 years of Film at Lincoln Center, and much more
Claire Denis’s High Life, Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell, Christian Petzold’s Transit, László Nemes’s Sunset, Jafar Panahi on the process of secretly making movies, plus the not-so-secret gay history of a cult film magazine, Ari Aster on The Last Temptation of Christ, and reviews of Ash Is Purest White, Peterloo, and more
Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book plus interview with DP Fabrice Aragno; four takes on Mariano Llinás’s La Flor; Sydney Pollack’s Amazing Grace; special Year-End section, featuring Top-20 poll results, 10-Best Lists, and two essays on the state we’re in; Republic Pictures; Triumph of the Will; and a previously unpublished talk by Manny Farber
Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro, Barry Jenkins & If Beale Street Could Talk, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters, Willem Dafoe and Leigh Ledare interviews, Jean-Paul Belmondo vs. Alain Delon, Jacques Tourneur
56th NYFF Special Section, including Burning plus a Steven Yeun interview, ROMA, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Monrovia, Indiana; Chick Strand, Caniba, Wealth on Screen, Teaching the Films of 1999
BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee interview, Sorry to Bother You, Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Paul Schrader letters, drone cinema, Isao Takahata, Ingmar Bergman by Olivier Assayas
Let the Sunshine In, Claire Denis and Juliette Binoche interviews, Cocote and Latin American cinema, Hereditary, Marlene Dietrich, mothers and melodrama, Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, Peter Nestler
Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, Olivier Assayas on Wong Kar Wai, The Death of Stalin, Helen Mirren, Bill Gunn’s Personal Problems, 2017 at the box office, Amy Taubin on Sundance and Spoor, The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, Dan Talbot in memoriam, Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, the best (and worst) of 2017, Valeska Grisebach’s Western, The Post and the Spielberg procedural, Jia Zhangke’s mogul ambitions and China's multiplexes, interviews with Philippe Garrel and stuntperson Heidi Moneymaker, Armando Iannucci on The Death of Stalin, Gary Giddins on Taras Bulba
Hong Sangsoo takes Manhattan, Ruben Östlund’s The Square, Alain Gomis’s Félicité, Twin Peaks: The Return, report from Tehran on Iranian cinema post-Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, campus film societies, John Frankenheimer’s Playhouse 90 episodes, I, Tonya, Call Me by Your Name
Interview with Agnès Varda, Dee Rees’s Mudbound, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, Robert Mitchum at 100, Joan Micklin Silver, immigrants on screen, Nikos Papatakis, George Romero in memoriam, Todd Haynes’s Wonderstruck, Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
The Safdie Brothers’ Good Time, interview with Robert Pattinson, Bong Joon Ho’s Okja, Cannes at 70 special, David Lowery’s A Ghost Story, Yvonne Rainer, the superhero phenomenon, Barbara Loden’s Wanda and Nathalie Léger’s book, Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats, Andrzej Zulawski’s L’Important c’est d’aimer, Indian indies on Netflix, Jonathan Demme remembered
Essays on Robert De Niro by Molly Haskell and Nick Pinkerton with an interview by Eric Hynes, meditations on musicals, Leslie Thornton, Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama, Fassbinder’s Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day, Errol Morris interviews himself, Montreal independents, Angelo Badalamenti, Sean Byrne, Stéphane Brizé
Albert Serra’s The Death of Louis XIV, Jean-Pierre Léaud interview, James Gray’s The Lost City of Z, Julia Ducournau’s Raw, Olivier Assayas’s Personal Shopper, text and image on screen, Obama-era comedies, grosses gloss, Lina Wertmüller interview, Sundance
Martin Scorsese on Silence, the best of 2016, Radical Sundance, Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, Annette Bening interviewed by Molly Haskell, the films of Steve Bannon, The Human Surge, Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time, Marlen Khutsiev
40th anniversary of the Steadicam, Molly Haskell on Paul Verhoeven’s Elle, Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, LGBT characters in American cinema, the hidden art of VFX, Kent Jones on the marginalization of cinema, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Special section on 54th New York Film Festival, including Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann, Ava DuVernay’s The 13th, Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, Bertrand Tavernier’s My Journey Through French Cinema, Pedro Almodóvar’s Julieta; American movie acting, film criticism in the age of social media, Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius
Kristen Stewart, listening to the lost black actors of the silent era, Warren Oates and the working-class actor, Nathaniel Dorsky, Wang Bing, Clément Cogitore’s Neither Heaven Nor Earth, Cannes coverage, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister, Steven Spielberg’s The BFG, Paul Sutton’s Talking About Ken Russell
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