Film Comment Selects highlights movies that made the studios, and sometimes the critics, turn away:
The programmers of Film Comment Selects reward the curious filmgoer by being unafraid to alienate their audience.
Bio: Simon Abrams writes about comics, books and movies for The Comics Journal, L magazine, The New York Press and Slant Magazine. You can find a lot of his writing here.
The Film Comment Selects series is a highlight of the Film Society at Lincoln Center’s annual surveys. Programmed by the writers of the Film Society’s own Film Comment magazine, the festival gives adventurous New York filmgoers the opportunity to sample new films that have yet to secure distribution. More
Posted on February 18th, 2012 4:02pm
It's not often helpful to evaluate movies by guessing at the social damage they might inflict on impressional young viewers, so forgive me for asking the following: What kind of message does This Means War send? More
Posted on February 16th, 2012 11:36am
Whatever happened to Wallace and Gromit? At one point, the British claymation duo, an eccentric cheese-loving mad scientist and his dog, were poised to be the next big British import. They could have rivaled Pixar. More
Posted on February 10th, 2012 5:16pm
The trouble with Rampart is that, like its corrupt-cop protagonist, it is excessive.
Director Oren Moverman (The Messengers) collaborated on the film’s script with renowned true-crime writer James Ellroy. The result is uneven: When the film is about a fallible individual who sees conspiracies threatening to close in on him, Rampart is terrific; when it’s about the macro-level effects of the real-life Rampart Scandal of 1998, Rampart is self-important and over-extended. More
Posted on February 8th, 2012 8:19pm
What is The Room? That’s the question you’re probably asking yourself if you've become ambiently aware of Tommy Wiseau’s baffling hit film but haven't done yourself the favor of seeing it yet. More
Posted on February 4th, 2012 5:12pm
Today, the gimmick of filming low-budget horror films from the perspective of a protagonist with a hand-held video camera already feels played out. But these movies still make money. Which is why Paranormal Activity 4 and a sequel to the abysmal January box-office hit The Devil Inside are both in development. Still, the sub-genre of fictional found-footage narratives needs something to keep the interest of viewers who aren’t content with the same boring jump-scares. More
Posted on February 3rd, 2012 2:37pm
It wasn't the least bit surprising to see that Albert Nobbs was recently nominated for two Oscars, regardless of which categories it was nominated for. It’s classic awards-season bait, exhibiting many of the worst impulses of so-called prestige pictures that are designed to appeal to Academy voters. More
Posted on January 27th, 2012 5:21pm
Haywire is the kind of movie that everyone tries to make and almost nobody gets quite right. Thankfully, director Steven Soderbergh isn't everybody. More
Posted on January 20th, 2012 10:00am
Robinson in Ruins, the third film in British documentarian Patrick Keiller’s “Robinson” trilogy (London, Robinson in Space), is not an easy film to classify, or even an easy one to understand in one sitting. More
Posted on January 13th, 2012 5:59pm
Much has been made of George Clooney’s transformation into a harried care-giver and father of three in The Descendants. But really, if were there were any justice, 2011 would have been more widely recognized as the year of Albert Brooks.
Brooks has reinvented himself a number of times over the course of his storied career, not just as a comedian and actor but as a filmmaker, best-selling novelist and even voice-actor. But when we think of Brooks, we still think of the totally self-absorbed persona he projects in such movies as Modern Romance and Real Life. More
Posted on January 7th, 2012 10:27pm
