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 ...

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 …

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.)

A character in John Updike’s novel The Witches of Eastwick (an enjoyable book that presents magic as a vestigial nature-religion) delivers a guest sermon at a local church. It’s a pretty weird sermon, too, all about the emotions of the roundworm nestled in your small intestine, “when a big gobbety mess of half-digested steak or moo goo gai pan comes sloshing down to him.

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. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Johan Grimonprez, 2024). To make a movie is to appropriate—either that which is before the camera or something already filmed.

The Film Comment Letter is a free weekly digital newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing—including the Film Comment Podcast, features, reviews, interviews, streaming picks, news, and more. The Letter is delivered directly to subscribers’ inboxes every Friday morning before being made available on filmcomment.com the following Monday.

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 ...