A film can resemble a window through which we look into a world. But some films present us with surfaces so textured and tactile that they have the physicality of a terrain. This is the case with ...

“I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert,” remarks Sandy (Laura Derm) to Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) at a crucial juncture in the harrowing new David Lynch picture, Blue Velvet. We never are ...

(Darren Aronofsky, U.S., 2010)Early in Black Swan, artistic director Thomas Leroy concludes his personal synopsis of Swan Lake with the declaration that only in death does its troubled heroine find ...

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One of the few working Hollywood directors who might qualify for a degree in American Studies, Anderson has made some impressively heady period films. Boogie Nights revived the hung-over ’70s; adapted ...

Class canceled: are the binders empty in Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt because the professors are full of shit, or is it just a continuity error?

Fire fights: highlights of this year’s festival, like Below the Clouds, Dead Man’s Wire, and Sacrifice reflected the anxious and violent status quo of our times ...

This article appeared in the September 19, 2025 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here. Penitentiary ...

(Bruce McDonald, Canada, 2008)Early on a frigid Valentine’s morning in some desolate village within the Ontario hinterland, talk radio DJ Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) is assailed by an unidentified ...

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(Joe Swanberg, U.S., 2011)Joe Swanberg’s reputation in most of the critical community—as a hack and a pseudo-philosopher whose gaze is permanently affixed to his navel and to those of the friends who ...

(Takashi Miike, Japan, 2010)Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins is bound to be regarded by some as its director’s most mature film to date—mistakenly so. It’s true that particularly in its truncated, ...