This article appeared in the November 26, 2025 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here.

Land of the Pharaohs (1955, Howard Hawks). When I first saw it, as a kid, Land of the Pharaohs became my favorite film. I’d always been addicted to historical epics, but this one was different: it ...

Thoughtful, original film criticism delivered straight to your inbox each week.

A lot happens in Hong Sangsoo’s latest, By the Stream. After a few features in which his plots seem to have been reduced to the barest minimum—like the beautiful sister-films In Water (2023) and In ...

Peter Tscherkassky will be receiving the Underground Spirit Award for “outstanding work in independent filmmaking” at the Paliç European Film Festival this month, and it’s easy to see why. Ever since ...

Receiving the Best Actress award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival for her role in Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, Juliette Binoche held up a sign bearing the name of Kiarostami’s frequent ...

Oliver Laxe’s fourth feature, Sirât, is the French-born Galician director’s first film to premiere in Competition at Cannes, where it’s been a highlight of the 2025 festival’s first week. A singular ...

At that performance, director Robert Rossen was impressed, and later cast Hackman in a small role in LILITH with Warren Beatty. Three years later, Beatty remembered Hackman and cast him in BONNIE AND ...

“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 ...

I heard that Paul Morrissey hopes to remake this, but I hope he Amazing Colossal Man instead. This version is perfect, so wonderful in fact that director Juran felt compelled to apply the same ...

This article is part of Film Comment’s Best of 2023 coverage. Read all the lists here. One of the benefits of the streaming-industrial complex and its rapacious and insatiable lust for content is that ...

The Japanese have two words for “monster”: kaibutsu, which refers to a physical, terrestrial creature; and obake, which is more ethereal, like a ghost or specter. For Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest, he ...