The Film Comment Letter

Seeing is believing: a clinical approach to sound and spacial construction in Jonathan Glazer’s new film, The Zone of Interest, opens up important questions about the ethical implications of aesthetics

Smile through it: Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s new series, The Curse, is a black-comedic minefield of mirrors, especially the metaphorical kind

Big plans: the latest from Ridley Scott, trailblazing auteur–turned–late-career journeyman, is an epic biopic of the war-mongering emperor that turns out to be a bit weirder than it initially seems

Perchance to dream: a satire on celebrity and cancel culture, Kristoffer Borgli’s new Nicholas Cage–vehicle, Dream Scenario, treads the thin line between critique and caricature

Material history: Dominik Graf discusses his latest documentary, an investigation of the numerous German writers and artists who collaborated (often quietly) with the Nazi regime

How Soon Is Now? The Killer, David Fincher’s latest entry in the canon of cinema du sociopath is a sleek, meticulously assembled film lives up to its punny tagline: “Execution Is Everything.”

Boo: premised on illusion and promising endless reanimation, cinema is often called the ghostliest of mediums, haunted by phantoms since its beginnings

Shutter speed: a new series at the Museum of Modern Art showcases a staggering range of Iranian films made before the revolution of 1979, including including films by Bahram Beyzaie, Amir Naderi, and Masoud Kimiai

Through the lens: Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon explores an overlooked chapter of American history, and intervenes in film history itself, especially as it pertains to representations of Native peoples

Listen to this: the place and role of music in NYFF61 biopics Maestro and Priscilla is instructive of the ways in which an artist’s life can only be understood through their work