The Comic

Feb 26, 2019 — He gave us some of the greatest musicals ever made and followed up with winning comedies, romances, and thrillers.

Oct 7, 2017 — “Claire Denis’s new film, Let the Sun Shine In, about a middle-aged woman’s romantic adventures, refracts personal experience in the form of a modernistic screwball comedy,” writes the New Yorker’s Richard Brody. “Juliette Binoche brings luminous intensity and wicked humor...

Mar 2, 2014 — The author shares his memories of the French filmmaker, who died on Saturday.

Jul 22, 2009 — Made in 1966 (so quickly that it could almost be considered an improvisation), Jean-Luc Godard’s twelfth feature is arguably the most quintessentially “Godardian” of the filmmaker’s early period— but for those of us in the United States, it is also...

Feb 13, 2006 — Jean Renoir’s classic film shows the natural world and the power of technology as wedded through the closely coordinated labor—effected through glances and sign language—of two men.

Aug 2, 2004 — Anna Magnani’s flair for demotic street comedy was transfigured into stylized nobility by sumptuous costuming and Jean Renoir’s formal camera work.

Oct 17, 2025 — This week brings a profile of Jafar Panahi and a conversation between Lucile Hadžihalilović and Gaspar Noé.

Nov 19, 2024 — William Wyler’s adaptation of the Broadway musical celebrates the indomitability of vaudeville legend Fanny Brice, embodied by Barbra Streisand in an incandescent and remarkably vulnerable performance.

Aug 12, 2024 — The great actor creates an unforgettable portrait of a man worn down by the world in Tamara Jenkins’s darkly funny and deeply moving family drama.

Oct 17, 2022 — Memoirs from Paul Newman and Pierre Clémenti, miscellany from Satyajit Ray and Alan Rickman, and a translation of Marguerite Duras are among this month’s highlights.