The Film Comment Podcast

• A Conversation with Tom Gunning

  Legendary American scholar and critic Tom Gunning has changed the way we think about film history and the future of the medium, profoundly influencing generations of academics, artists, and cinephiles. On Sunday, April 27, Devika Girish and Clinton Krute hosted a live conversation with Gunning and curator David Schwartz at the Museum of the Moving Image, following a screening of Hal Hartley’s Flirt (1995), an experimental narrative of love and loss set in three cities—New York, Berlin, and Tokyo. The event was part of a multiday series of screenings and discussions organized by Schwartz, taking place at venues including MoMI, Anthology Film Archives, and Light Industry. This special weekend marked the publication of a new collection of Gunning’s writing, entitled The Attractions of the Moving Image: Essays on History, Theory, and the Avant-Garde. The conversation covered a wide range of topics, from Gunning’s seminal essay “The Cinema of Attractions” (1986) to his teacher-student relationship with Hartley to some contemporary films that he’s (perhaps surprisingly) enjoyed.

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• New Releases, with Robert Daniels and Michael Blair

  Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a singularly ambitious horror film set in 1930s Mississippi, is currently setting theaters ablaze (in an array of formats and aspect ratios to boot). The film stars Coogler mainstay Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as a pair of badass twins returning to their rural hometown of Clarksdale to build a blues joint—with performers whose talents are powerful enough to summon some unwanted spirits.  To talk about this fascinating film—which weaves together genres and tones to startling, if at times overwhelming, effect—Film Comment Editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited Podcast veteran Robert Daniels (Rogerebert.com) and FC’s very own Michael Blair into their humble juke-joint. After sinking their fangs into Sinners, the group touches on a few other new theatrical releases they’re excited about, including Steven Soderbergh’s stylish spy thriller Black Bag (42:26) and Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet (52:22), a refreshing update on Ang Lee’s 1993 classic.

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• David Cronenberg on The Shrouds

  A new film by David Cronenberg is always a major event for all of us at Film Comment, especially after his 2022 opus Crimes of the Future was voted the Best Film of the Year by our contributors. So with Cronenberg’s latest, The Shrouds, opening in cinemas this weekend, we invited this singular auteur to talk about his strange and thrilling new movie.  Like much of Cronenberg’s work, The Shrouds is obsessed with sex and death, body and technology. But it’s also funnier and more personal than almost anything the Canadian filmmaker has made before. Written in the wake of his wife Carolyn Cronenberg’s death, the film follows a grieving entrepreneur named Karsh (Vincent Cassell), who has invented software that allows people to monitor the decaying bodies of their deceased loved ones. When some of Karsh’s high-tech graves are vandalized, a complicated mystery arises, embroiling a number of eccentric characters—including the lookalike sister of Karsh’s dead wife, played by Diane Kruger, and her ex-husband, a software developer played by Guy Pearce. As questions and conspiracies proliferate in the film, answers become more and more elusive. In the process, The Shrouds emerges as an extremely intelligent and moving film about our desperation for explanations in the face of the unknowable. For today’s episode, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute chat with Cronenberg about making art to process loss, the eroticism of conspiracy theories, and why The Shrouds is very much a Toronto film.

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• New Directors/New Films 2025, with Mark Asch and Natalia Keogan

  Spring is finally in the air, and, for New York City cinephiles, that means it’s time for another edition of New Directors/New Films, the annual showcase for standout works by emerging filmmakers co-hosted by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. The festival is always a reliable sign of trends to come and talents to look out for—past editions have featured early films by Spike Lee, Christopher Nolan, and Kelly Reichardt, among others. This year’s iteration opens tonight and runs through April 13. Over the past few years, Film Comment has established our own annual tradition of previewing the best movies in the ND/NF lineup with some of our favorite critics. This time around, FC Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited Mark Asch and Natalia Keogan for a rundown of some of the gems in the 2025 edition, including Opening Night selection Familiar Touch (3:45); Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) (18:55); Lost Chapters (28:41); Invention (37:06); Drowning Dry (45:45); Holy Electricity (53:52); and more.

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• New Releases, with Tim Grierson

  Today’s episode marks another entry in our New Releases series, where we dig into the latest titles opening in theaters and offer recommendations on what’s worth seeking out and what’s better left skipped. With so many worthy films to choose from lately, Film Comment’s Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited critic Tim Grierson (Los Angeles Times, Screendaily, and elsewhere) to help us whittle down the selection. Tim starts things off with a brief report from the South by Southwest festival in Austin, which he’s currently attending. The trio then digs into some of the buzziest titles out right now—including Mark Anthony Green’s Opus (7:38) and Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 (19:00)—before showing some love for a couple smaller, but still unmissable movies: Alain Guiradie’s Misericordia (41:30) and Carson Lund’s Eephus (51:46).

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