The Film Comment Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Quentin Tarantino and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood Jul 31, 2019

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Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood is the subject of the cover story for our July-August issue. Tarantino’s latest made a splash at the Cannes Film Festival, and now it’s finding great success in theaters. All of that despite being a change of pace for the director. The film is set in the twilight period of 1969, in a small world of Hollywood actors, bit players, and movie and TV productions, alongside more fringe elements of society represented by the Manson Family. Though the specter of the murderous cult leader lurks throughout, Once Upon a Time is a largely affectionate movie, with a lot of room to hang out in, and terrific actors to hang out with: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie, among others. To discuss the film, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with Michael Koresky, longtime FC contributor and co-editor of Reverse Shot, and Maddie Whittle, programming assistant at Film at Lincoln Center. Listeners beware: in order to talk about the movie’s accomplishments and significance, we do talk about the story in full, including parts of the plot that have, to date, been kept under wraps.

21st Century Debuts Jul 24, 2019

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We tend to agree on the classic films of the past, from Breathless, to McCabe & Mrs. Miller, to Tokyo Story. A new series at Film at Lincoln Center looks to more recent history with a survey of outstanding debut films from the 21st century so far. The series includes Medicine for Melancholy from Barry Jenkins (director of Moonlight), The Forest for the Trees from Maren Ade (director of Toni Erdmann), and many more. For the latest Film at Lincoln Center talk, Film Comment put together a critical discussion of these works and their place in cinema. The participants were Florence Almozini (associate director of programming at Film at Lincoln Center), Eric Hynes (curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image), Devika Girish (assistant editor at FC), Ashley Clark (senior repertory and specialty film programmer at BAM), and FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold.

New Releases #2 Jul 17, 2019

Show notes

Welcome back to the second installment in our monthly series covering new releases. This week, Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by critic Emily Yoshida, who has written for Vulture and Vanity Fair, and frequent FC contributor Devika Girish. The three sat down to discuss Lulu Wong’s The Farewell, which has already received a fair amount of attention for its sweet story about a family reacting to the illness of a beloved grandmother in China. They also talk about two lesser known films that recreate vivid moments from the past in Argentina and England, Benjamín Naishtat’s Rojo and Richard Billingham’s Ray & Liz, before wrapping up with The Art of Self-Defense, starring Jesse Eisenberg.

Ari Aster and Midsommar Jul 10, 2019

Show notes

One of summer’s most anticipated films is Midsommar, from filmmaker Ari Aster. The director joined us last summer for a talk at Film at Lincoln Center to discuss his previous feature, the unforgettable Hereditary, and we were delighted to welcome him back for another Film Comment chat on Tuesday, July 10. In front of a packed house, Aster sat down with author and Film Comment mainstay Michael Koresky for a discussion about his Swedish countryside-set horror film, working with star Florence Pugh, and favorite movies such as 45 Years. Also, listen up for a few details on the forthcoming director’s cut of Midsommar, and don’t forget to read about Aster’s inspirations for the film in the July-August issue of Film Comment.

Queer & Now & Then Jul 03, 2019

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A big part of Film Comment’s mission is to bring well-informed insights and original voices to the rich heritage of movies. One beautiful example of this is our regular column, Queer & Now & Then, written by Michael Koresky. With every column, Michael picks a single movie from a specific year for a discussion in terms of queerness, as part of what he calls, “a conversation with himself and the movies.” For our latest Film Comment roundtable talk at Film at Lincoln Center, we invited several critics to join Michael for a talk about the interconnections between their experiences and memories of movies and their sense of identity. This podcast is record of this insightful, funny, and candid conversation between Koresky, Melissa Anderson of 4Columns, best-selling author and critic Mark Harris, Wesley Morris of The New York Times, and filmmaker and critic Farihah Zaman.

New Releases Jun 26, 2019

Show notes

As summer officially begins and vacations mount, more and more find themselves stranded on remote, unspoiled beaches, far from the nearest cinema. We decided to throw those unfortunate souls a lifeline with a podcast focusing on new and upcoming movies. Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by FC contributors Devika Girish and Maddie Whittle for an in-depth (and occasionally spoiler-adjacent) conversation about the latest and greatest films currently and imminently gracing the big screen, including Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Peter Parlow’s The Plagiarists, and Eva Trobisch’s All Good.

What Was the TV Movie? Jun 19, 2019

Show notes

For a while now, we’ve been wanting to do an episode on the curious art form known as the TV movie. For a lot of people, the TV movie couldn’t be less of an art form, the term itself having become a byword for hokey or schlocky storytelling, even long after TV movies were being made in any great number. But why do so many remember these movies vividly for so many years afterward? And what might they have in common with other forms historically regarded as “less than serious,” like the melodrama? And what makes TV movies—including those directed by Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, and George Cukor, to name a few—different from, just, a movie? Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold turns to Soraya Nadia McDonald, culture critic at The Undefeated, and FC contributor Shonni Enelow for help answering the vexing question: What was the TV movie?

The Rep Report #8 Jun 12, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to another edition of the Rep Report, our regular roundup of retrospectives, repertory cinema, and other film series in New York. This week, we turn our attention to a remarkable series at Film Forum titled The Hour of Liberation: Decolonizing Cinema, 1966–1981. The series looks at landmark works from around the world that pushed cinema and political critique into bold new directions, and includes rarely screened films by Ousmane Sembène, Med Hondo, Sara Gómez, Glauber Rocha, and many others. FC Editor-in Chief Nicolas Rapold is joined by Elspeth Carroll, the curator of the series and Repertory Programming Associate at Film Forum, and Ashley Clark, Senior Repertory and Specialty Film Programmer at BAM.

Joanna Hogg and The Souvenir Jun 05, 2019

Show notes

In her feature on Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir in the May-June issue of Film Comment, Sheila O’Malley writes,“The autobiographical origins of The Souvenir are obvious (Hogg doesn’t try to hide them), yet she allows for free-floating associations, creating a kind of space where connections are possible, where there can be a wincing kind of recognition, a remembrance of first love and first heartbreak. The response is a not always comfortable: ‘Yes. My God, I know that. That is so true.’’’ The film, a self-portrait of the artist as a young woman, is a complex and multi-layered exploration of first love, heartbreak, creativity, family, and class. Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with O’Malley (also author of the FC column Present Tense) and FC contributor and columnist Michael Koresky to discuss the The Souvenir and how Hogg’s previous films Unrelated (2008), Archipelago (2010), and Exhibition (2013) inform her latest.

Mary Harron on Charlie Says, American Psycho, and Punk May 29, 2019

Show notes

For our latest Film Comment Free Talk, the director of I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho sat down for a conversation about at her latest, Charlie Says. The film looks past the mythology of the Manson Family murders to focus on the experiences of three women under the charismatic cult leader’s spell, both at the time of the crimes and in prison. Harron and FC Editor-in-Chief discuss the genesis of the film, the director’s background as a punk-era music journalist, and her depictions of violence—both physical and psychological—on screen.

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