The Film Comment Letter

Polished Drafts

November 8, 2021

Fit to print: Wes Anderson’s star-packed anthology The French Dispatch, though a bit too finicky, acheives moments of genuine grace

Film Comment Recommends: The Films of Mario Ruspoli

By Clinton Krute

November 1, 2021

Living rough: the veneer of vérité realism in this new-to-streaming collection of short docs gives way to something far more unplaceable

Review: Hail the New Puritan

By Chloe Lizotte

November 1, 2021

Salem’s just up the road: Charles Atlas’s 1986 fictionalized doc celebrates “the exuberant anarchy of limbs moving through space.”

Grief in Relief

By Corina Copp

November 1, 2021

Emerald cities: In Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II trauma and pain are transformed, through arduous self-examination, into art

Just Deserts

By Michael Sragow

October 25, 2021

Shifting sands: Denis Villeneuve’s Dune typifies the current mania for world-building over character-building

Secrets and Lies

By Manu Yáñez Murillo

October 18, 2021

Birth of tragedy: the search for truth, both personal and historical, is the driving force of Parallel Mothers, Pedro Almodóvar’s most openly political film to date

Interview: Joachim Trier

By Mark Asch

October 18, 2021

Common people: the Norwegian director discusses his latest, a shape-shifting romantic comedy of self-realization, The Worst Person in the World

Waking Life

By Imogen Sara Smith

October 18, 2021

Time’s arrow: in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, the past is alien, layered with trauma and the beauty of the unknowable

Of Gods and Men

By Molly Haskell

October 12, 2021

Saddle sore: Jane Campion’s latest is lacking in the richly personal, idiosyncratic feminism of her great early films

Interview: Alexandre Koberidze

By Jessica Kiang

October 12, 2021

In dreams: the Georgian director discusses the method behind the delicate balance of romance, folklore, and social critique in his What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?