The results are now in for our 2024 poll of Film Comment ’s contributors! On this page, you’ll find our list of the 20 best films that were released either theatrically or virtually in 2024 in the United States, with original appreciations from our critics, as well as links to features, reviews, and interviews about these films and directors from throughout the year.

Founded in 1962, Film Comment magazine features reviews and analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world.

Oct 7, 2024 · This article appeared in the October 4, 2024 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke, 2024). Caught by the Tides, Jia Zhangke’s first fiction feature in six years, is among the 54-year-old Chinese director’s most radical and comprehensively conceived works to ...

Dec 20, 2024 · Speaking in Tongues: Take One (Christopher Harris, U.S.). Ishmael Reed’s novel Mumbo Jumbo serves as the jumping-off point for a rhythmic collision of dance, riot, and 20th-century American cultural detritus, marking the first iteration of an evolving project from one of the most vital voices in contemporary film. (Listen to a Film Comment Podcast conversation with Christopher Harris here.)

In the hands of a different director, Showing Up might have played like yet another Sundance-style indie: a film packed with quirky characters (including an injured pigeon) and snappy, self-lacerating one-liners about the bougie artists of Portland, Oregon. But, as expected, Kelly Reichardt finds a way to complicate and enrich this premise, crafting …

Why do you use Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” in the film? And what is the relationship between the discovery of a piece of music and the discovery of being in love?. I wanted the film not to have a score, which was kind of scary because making a …

Nov 5, 2024 · This article appeared in the November 1, 2024 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024). Months after the premiere of Megalopolis at the Cannes Film Festival, and several weeks into its dwindling theatrical release, we seem no closer to resolving the many ...

I am a Film Comment supporter.What’s the status of publication? Film at Lincoln Center is pleased to announce the return of Film Comment with the relaunch of its widely-loved podcast and a brand-new weekly Film Comment Letter —a first step towards bringing the best in film criticism back to the publication’s devoted audience around the world. The announcement follows a months-long hiatus ...

Jun 10, 2024 · This article appeared in the June 7, 2024 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here. Chime (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2024) There’s something in the air in the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa: over five decades into a career defined in equal measure by prolificness and idiosyncrasy, the Japanese filmmaker has ...

The Self-Styled Siren Classical Hollywood fetishism has found a most enchanting ambassador. Farran Smith Nehme of The Self-Styled Siren turns the articulation of cliché and convention into a sport—no surprise she’s chosen melodrama as her champion underdog and counts Max Ophüls and Douglas Sirk among her favorite directors.