Film Comment

EVEN AS SOMEONE WHO GREW UP treating each Spike Lee movie as an event, I have to admit that it’s been a while since the filmmaker has truly occupied cinema’s center stage. In fact, neither Lee nor any of his films have ever occupied the cover of Film

As any 21st-century person with a heart knows, one of the few positives about the social media age can be the platform it gives us to come together and celebrate (very) recently deceased artists and celebrities. However, this also often results in th

CERTAIN REAL-WORLD HORRORS REMAIN UNFATHOMABLE, UNGRASPABLE, and seemingly impossible to capture on film. Systemic subjugation, torture, premeditated mass murder—the immensity of these horrors can feel beyond comprehension, even as we’re also aware t

Director: Debra Granik Country/Distributor: USA, Bleecker Street Pictures Opened: June 29 Redolent with regional ambience, Leave No Trace is coolly directed even when springing sudden surprises. In Debra Granik’s third fiction feature, a youngish fat

Director: Susanna Nicchiarelli Country/Distributor: Italy, Magnolia Pictures Opening: August 1 Known primarily as the blonde chanteuse for Andy Warhol’s The Velvet Underground—a short stint that only produced three songs—the German singer, model, and

Director: Andrew Bujalski Country/Distributor: USA, Magnolia Pictures Opens: August 24 Very rare are the movie depictions of restaurant work that evoke the mental and emotional dissonance required to get through an eight-hour shift. Andrew Bujalski’s

Director: Robert Schwentke Country/Distributor: Germany/Poland/Portugal/France, Music Box Films Opening: July 27 The Second World War is winding down and rural Germany is lousy with deserters, among them Willi Herold (Max Hubacher), a baby-faced priv

Directors: Marco Dutra & Juliana Rojas Country/Distributor: Brazil, Distrib Films Opening: July 27 Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas’s Good Manners seems a little unwieldy at first, as it sets up its premise of a black woman who is hired as a nanny by a

Cinema spun, streamed, and beamed • DVD/⋆ DEBUT • BLU-RAY/⋆ DEBUT ▸ STREAMING ▸ EXCLUSIVE TO VOD The current state of gay streaming THERE’S A PECULIAR, AS-YET-UNNAMED BRAND OF MILLENNIAL-shaming that comes from streaming services that let you know wh

⋆ The Complete Hal Roach/Thelma Todd/Patsy Kelly Comedy Collection 21 shorts, USA, 1933-1936; ClassicFlix COMEDY MATCHMAKER HAL ROACH, THE auteur-producer who aligned the stars of Laurel & Hardy and The Little Rascals, envisioned a female duo with th

By Lee Mandel University Press of Mississippi, $35 Surely no studio-era Hollywood star biography has ever evinced less interest in its subject’s films: it’s not until 35 pages from the end of Sterling Hayden’s Wars, with comments on Dr. Strangelove,