The Film Comment Podcast

Uncut Gems, directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, and starring Adam Sandler, is a full-throttle portrait of a diamond dealer in New York’s Diamond District. It’s been a wild success since it opened in December, and in our November-December issue, Michael Koresky wrote about the movie, praising how the Safdie brothers “capture the bustle and pace of rapid-fire economic exchange, filtering it through an increasingly panicky wild ride.” The neighborhoods of New York are central to the energy of Uncut Gems (as well as their previous films like Good Time). So we decided to invite Josh and Benny Safdie to chat about New York movies. Film Comment contributor Nick Pinkerton sat down with the filmmakers at Film at Lincoln Center, to talk about New York on screen and which particular movies influenced their vision of their hometown.

Little Women is without question one of the best movies of the recently-ended year, and it’s a wonderful triumph for director Greta Gerwig. That’s why we put it on the cover of our November-December issue, featuring Gerwig’s delightful interview by Devika Girish. But there’s even more to say about the movie and its intelligent, complex, and visually rich adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s novel. So Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with Devika and Amy Taubin, contributing editor to FC, to talk about what makes Little Women a great and important movie that shouldn’t be missed in the hustle of the new year.

Welcome to another episode in our Decade Project series where we look back at the past 10 years and talk about our favorite filmmakers, major changes and trends, and the movies that made a difference. This week, we’re talking about acting and performance in the 2010s—actors that made their mark, and tendencies we’ve noticed. Joining Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold are Michael Koresky, Film Comment regular, and Shonni Enelow, a Fordham professor and Film Comment contributor who wrote about a certain restrained acting style that’s taken shape for our September-October 2016 issue.

With the 2010s on the way out, we thought that this very recent history could use a road map. Each installment of the Decade Project will look at key developments, pivotal movies, groundbreaking film artists, and so on. This week, we’re looking at filmmakers but specifically everyone but the director. We’re as guilty as anyone of referring to movies in terms of their directors. So we wanted to look back and choose a few favorite cinematographers, and editors, and costume designers who were doing outstanding work in the 2010s. Joining Film Comment Editor-in-Chief for this conversation are two programmers, Eric Hynes, curator of the Museum of the Moving Image, and Ashley Clark, director, film programming, at BAM.

It’s that time of year again! Film Comment has made a list and we’ve checked it twice: the best films of 2019, chosen through a poll of our contributing writers. And according to our new annual tradition, we announced the results live at a special Film Comment Talk. This year, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold was joined to unveil and discuss the films by Amy Taubin, longtime contributing editor at Film Comment; Soraya Nadia Macdonald, who writes for The Undefeated and is a contributing editor at Film Comment; Michael Koresky, all around Film Comment all-star; and Devika Girish, assistant editor at Film Comment. You can read the full Best of 2019 list online, including best unreleased films, and don’t forget to follow along with our special podcast series The Decade Project, about the 2010s. But now, our Best Films of 2019 countdown.

By any measure, the 2010s have been a confusing and turbulent and also exciting time. That goes for both movies and the world at large, and that’s saying a lot after the 2000s. At Film Comment, part of our goal is to offer a critical chronicle of the movies as they’re happening, putting things in historical perspective, pointing out the bold and the beautiful in the art and craft of film, and hopefully offering an insight or two along the way. That’s often hardest to do with contemporary history, and so to grapple with the 2010s, we’re starting a series of Film Comment podcasts we’re calling The Decade Project. We’ll look at the movies from different angles and do our best to map out a vivid but often hard to characterize time. This week, we’ll talk about some of the major shifts and changes that happened over the last ten years, and some of the decade’s pivotal movies. It’s also an opportunity to talk about the big picture in movies, which probably means having a healthy skepticism about thinking in terms of decades altogether. Joining FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold for this discussion are longtime contributing editor Amy Taubin; FC regular Michael Koresky, who is co-editor of the Reverse Shot book, Martin Scorsese: He Is Cinema; and Nick Pinkerton, who’s written a number of essays for us looking at the big picture. Stay tuned for more of The Decade Project with guests Ashley Clark, Sheila O’Malley, Andrew Chan, Molly Haskell, and more. Let’s go to the beginning of our conversation.

Martin Scorsese’s new film The Irishman has been out in theaters since the beginning of November, which you probably know unless you’ve been hiding under a rock (or were buried under Giants Stadium). Scorsese’s story follows the life of mob fixer Frank Sheeran and his close relationship with mob boss Russell Bufalino and Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters leader. The movie’s release is the perfect time to talk about Scorsese and his work, and explore exactly where The Irishman takes us. Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Shonni Enelow, associate professor at Fordham University and author of Method Acting and Its Discontents; Molly Haskell, critic and author whose books include From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies and Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films; and Film Comment regular Michael Koresky, co-editor of the Reverse Shot book, Martin Scorsese: He Is Cinema.

It’s a busy couple of months for moviegoers as hits from festivals make their way into cinemas. That means it’s time for another New Releases episode, where talk about some highly anticipated titles. Film Comment Editor-in Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Devika Girish, assistant editor at FC, and Michael Gillespie, Associate Professor of Film at The City College of New York. Among the movies discussed are Atlantics, The Irishman, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which is coming soon in December.

Dark Waters is the new film from Todd Haynes, and it’s a change of pace from his last feature, Wonderstruck, and much of his work generally. Dark Waters is a whistleblower drama about Rob Billott, a lawyer who began investigating the chemical company DuPont, which his own firm was doing business with. To discuss the movie, contributing editor Amy Taubin sat down with Haynes for an extended interview. They cover the challenges of making political work today, the connections Dark Waters has with his previous films, details about shooting the movie, and more.

Some of the most exciting movies being made today are tackling class tensions and the role of work in our lives. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, our cover story last issue, is one major example, with its twisty upstairs-downstairs thriller set-up. But many other films have been taking up the subjects of work and class in a variety of different ways: Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, Stephen Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird, Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, and Greta Gerwig’s upcoming movie Little Women (the cover of our latest issue). For our latest Film Comment talk at Film at Lincoln Center, we were delighted to discuss work and class with veteran independent filmmaker John Sayles, whose film about striking miners, Matewan, is now available in the Criterion Collection. Also joining Sayles and FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold was Teo Bugbee, a contributor to Film Comment and The New York Times who also works as an organizer for Writers Guild of America East. Starting off with how Matewan was conceived, we covered a lot of ground, spanning decades at the movies and in American history.