Film Comment Magazine
WEBFounded in 1962, Film Comment magazine features reviews and analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world.
NYFF Preview: In the Realm of the Senses - Film Comment
WEBIn the Realm of the Senses (Ai No Corrida, 76) reconstructs the relationship between Sada and Kichi, from its beginnings with Sada’s arrival as a new employee at Kichi’s inn, to its triumphant, convulsive end.Virtually all the film’s action takes place within a “closed” world of eroticism: every scene either depicts or relates directly to sexual love.
The Top Film Criticism Sites: An Annotated Blog Roll - Film Comment
WEBUndercurrent. Spartan and straightforward, the online magazine Undercurrent gets by without the hard sell—and that’s no small matter. A labor of love founded by Chris Fujiwara in 2006, Undercurrent is a quintessential small magazine, posting only one or two issues a year yet greatly enriching the world of film criticism.
Cannes Interview: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi - Film Comment
WEBJul 16, 2021 · The romantic Demy-esque coincidences that spin the Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy came first, winning the Silver Bear at this year’s Berlinale. In this suite of Hamaguchi’s “short stories,” he plays daft Fate over a ronde of cool literary types and their enchanting missed connections.
Game Changers: The Close-Up - Film Comment
WEBThe Passion of Joan of Arc. The close-up can have an additional meaning separate from what the individual shot shows. The film that redefined the close-up is Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (28). The master of the close-up in our time, or my time at least, is Sergio Leone—witness the famous opening to Once Upon a Time in the West (68), in which he creates drama through tight close-ups.
Film of the Week: Out 1 - Film Comment
WEBNov 12, 2015 · Jacques Rivette’s Out 1 is one of the legendary “impossible objects” of modern cinema, and for a long time was one of the great (almost) unseen films. The result of six weeks’ shooting and six months’ editing, it was originally shown only once, in a work print, in Le Havre in September 1971 (reputedly, the projector broke down).
Gloria Grahame - Film Comment
WEBIn praise of the naughty mind. Not long before she died in 1981 at age 57, Gloria Grahame, who had acted in films signed by Frank Capra, Nicholas Ray, Josef von Sternberg, Vincente Minnelli, Elia Kazan, Fritz Lang, and Fred Zinnemann, demolished them all in one sweeping statement. “Those men never directed me,” she told an English stage ...
Deep Focus: The Homesman - Film Comment
WEBNov 13, 2014 · In The Homesman, Jones plays a claim-jumping saddle tramp and Hilary Swank a pious pioneer woman who team up on a risky, arduous trek across the Great Plains. With moments of excitement, revelation and stark humor scattered among harsh visual and emotional textures, it’s an erratic, idiosyncratic adventure, based on a groundbreaking ...
Queer & Now & Then: 1960 - Film Comment
WEBSep 12, 2018 · Queer & Now & Then: 1960. Flaunting a beauty so cruel it became the stuff of myth, Alain Delon first terrified viewers with his perfection in 1960’s Purple Noon (Plein soleil). He had appeared in smaller roles for a few years before that, such as Pierre Gaspard-Huit’s satisfactory piece of period eye candy, Christine (1958), hovering around ...
Deep Focus: Hunt for the Wilderpeople - Film Comment
WEBJun 23, 2016 · Familiarity breeds affection between an out-of-control 13-year-old Maori boy and a crusty old white bush hand—and between the movie and the audience—in Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a rambunctious, beguiling comedy adventure about fugitives on the run in the New Zealand wilderness.Julian Dennison as Ricky Baker, the roly-poly problem child from foster care, and Sam Neill as ...