The Film Comment Podcast

The Rep Report continues with another joyous discussion of the latest in repertory and new release. This time we venture into the shadows of the Jacques Tourneur retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, along with some choice selections from New York’s wealth of offerings. Then it’s time for a holiday surprise—at least, that’s how the movie has affected our critics, who saw it only after deadlines for the best-of-the-year polls had passed: The Mule, directed by Clint Eastwood, who stars as a charming drug courier of a certain age. For this episode, I was joined by K. Austin Collins of Vanity Fair; Jon Dieringer, co-founder of Screen Slate; Nellie Killian, a contributing editor at Film Comment and programmer; and Nick Pinkerton, regular FC contributor.

Every year we send out a poll to our critics and staff and put together a list of the best movies of the year. For 2018, we did something a little different and fun: we counted down the best movies of the year at a live Film Comment Talk at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Along the way, Film Comment editor-in-chief Nicolas Rapold discussed the results with a group of all-star critics: Molly Haskell, critic and author; Michael Koresky, director of editorial and creative strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center; and Sheila O’Malley and Nick Pinkerton, also frequent Film Comment contributors.

At the New York Film Festival, Film Comment presents a series of talks that includes our reliably energizing and insightful conversation with a group of directors. Our 2018 Filmmakers Chat—posted for the first time now—featured a unique and invigorating mix of talents in a discussion about the art and craft (and anxieties and rewards) of making movies. I was honored and delighted to be joined at the Film Society of Lincoln Center by Louis Garrel, director of A Faithful Man; Jodie Mack, director of The Grand Bizarre; Alex Ross Perry, director of Her Smell; and Albert Serra, director of Roi Soleil.

The Rep Report, our new Film Comment podcast series devoted to repertory programs and new releases, continues this week with its latest installment. Once again we talked about the latest movies (new and old) that we’ve seen, desperately want to see, or have wept bitter tears over missing, with special emphasis on the rich offerings of repertory / art-house cinemas. For the first half, I was delighted to join FC contributing editor (and Screen Slate board member) Nellie Killian, and Screen Slate founder, publisher, and editor Jon Dieringer. We talked about everything from a freshly restored Detour at Film Forum to vérité rediscovery Inquiring Nuns at the Museum of the Moving Image to a beguiling SculptureCenter video program. And for the new release portion of the episode, I discussed The Favourite, Roma, and the joys of Thanksgiving viewing with FC contributor Maddie Whittle of the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

In marketing parlance, a “family film” has tended to mean an anodyne product, something that all could enjoy and that couldn't possibly offend anyone. For our latest Film Comment Podcast, we’re taking our cue instead from movies actually about families, with all of the love, mundanity, and cringing horror left intact. That includes not only Shoplifters—a new release from that auteur of the comforts and complications of home, Hirokazu Kore-eda—but also the likes of Jodie Foster’s Home for the Holidays, Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, Yasujiro Ozu’s Equinox Flower, and a couple more that may surprise you. Film Comment’s Michael Koresky was joined for this discussion by K. Austin Collins of Vanity Fair; Aliza Ma, head programmer of Metrograph; and Farihah Zaman, filmmaker and FC contributor.

Ida Lupino was an original. A Warner Brothers star who went on to become an independent director, writer, and producer, Lupino holds a singular place in American film history, and she is currently the subject of an ongoing retrospective at New York’s Film Forum. On the latest Film Comment Podcast, I was joined by Farran Smith Nehme, critic and author of Missing Reels; and Sheila O’Malley, frequent FC contributor and critic at Rogerebert.com, to discuss the work of this legend, including films she starred in, such as Moontide (which O’Malley wrote about in the March/April issue of the magazine), and those she directed, such as the unforgettable The Hitchhiker and Outrage.

There’s an abundance of riches in movie houses across our fair city of New York—and, of course, beyond. We’ve long wanted to feature discussions among our contributors about the many options out there, and we‘re pleased to dive right in with the first of a new strand in the Film Comment Podcast family. In the first half, we go deep into the repertory side with Screen Slate’s John Dieringer and FC Contributing Editor (and Screen Slate board member) Nellie Killian, including titles by Margarethe von Trotta and the largely unknown James Robert Baker (Blonde Death); then, frequent FC contributors Sheila O’Malley and Nick Pinkerton glance across the slate of new and recent releases and give us their thoughts on such titles as Private Life, Burning, and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

“With Shirkers, Sandi Tan . . . revisits the long-lost footage from her unfinished narrative feature shot in Tan’s native Singapore in 1992, also called Shirkers, and in the process reckons with both why the film was never finished and how several relationships were forever changed in its wake,” Eric Hynes wrote in our March/April 2018 issue, about Sandi Tan’s Sundance prize-winning film. For our latest Film Comment Talk at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Tan sat down to talk about her experience making Shirkers, joined by FC contributor Farihah Zaman, also a filmmaker. Shirkers opened October 26 and is available to view on Netflix.

Cinema and ghosts both offer the promise of life after death. On the latest Film Comment Podcast, just in time for Halloween, we talked about the fascinating role ghosts play in movies. We start with the 1940s, when ghosts seemed to exert a special hold on Hollywood cinema of wartime and postwar era. From there, it's off to the spooky races, all the way up to the 1970s and Personal Shopper and (the great) beyond. For this haunting discussion, I was joined by Imogen Sara Smith, critic and author of our Phantom Light column; and Michael Koresky, director of editorial and creative strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Our latest Film Comment Talk brought together Paul Dano, director and co-writer of Wildlife, and Richard Ford, author of the book from which the film was adapted. It was a rare occasion in many ways, with Ford and Dano exchanging illuminating insights on writing and filming fiction. Film Comment columnist Eric Hynes, curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image, moderated the conversation.