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.

Factory dreams: the artist-run collective L’Abominable imagines a future for the film laboratory in the ruins of the ...

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(Bruce McDonald, Canada, 2008)Early on a frigid Valentine’s morning in some desolate village within the Ontario hinterland, talk radio DJ Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) is assailed by an unidentified ...

(Denis Villeneuve, Canada/Spain, 2013)The Portuguese title of The Double, the José Saramago novel upon which Enemy is loosely based, is O Homem Duplicado, or “The Duplicated Man.” I like “Enemy” for ...

(Darren Aronofsky, U.S., 2010)Early in Black Swan, artistic director Thomas Leroy concludes his personal synopsis of Swan Lake with the declaration that only in death does its troubled heroine find ...

1. Johnny Guitar Nicholas Ray, 1954 2. Mouchette Robert Bresson, 1967 3. Laura Otto Preminger, 1944 4. Barry Lyndon Stanley Kubrick, 1975 5. Muriel Alain ...

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1. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia Sam Peckinpah, 19742. Claire’s Knee Eric Rohmer, 19703. Faces John Cassavetes, 19684. Eyes Without a Face ...

Back in the day, Tucson photographer Bob Broder used to string for The Arizona Republic. Eric Kroll, another local—and former Taschen book editor—recently unearthed a stash of negatives Broder shot on ...

An example: a brilliant Brazilian director and friend, João Jardim, made a beautiful documentary in 2001 called Window of the Soul that he brought to me for the mix. The first scene is a close-up of a ...