Film Comment Selects Series To Feature Criterion-Related Titles

This year’s lineup for the ever-eclectic Film Comment Selects series was announced today, and features a group of Criterion-related films among twenty-two handpicked films in all. The series will screen at the Fim Society of Lincoln Center from February 17^th to the 27^th.

Me and You, the first Italian-language film from The Last Emperor director Bernardo Bertolucci in thirty-two years, has been chosen as the closing night selection. The film, about “the solipsistic self-confinement of an obsessive narcissist who is “saved” and led out into the world by a woman who may well be nothing more than a projection of his insecurities,” seems to be an idiosyncratic addition to his late period minimalist phase following The Dreamers, Besieged, and maybe even Stealing Beauty.

The Hypnotist, from My Life as a Dog filmmaker Lasse Hallström, who also returns to his native tongue in a film following multiple decades away from Swedish-language films, is a noir about a psychologist who uses hypnotism—something he previously swore off—to solve a brutal family slaying.

The last Criterion-related film has got to be the best of the bunch, if not the longest. Jane Campion’s 350-minute film/television series Top of the Lake—which is an absolute masterpiece, by the way—tells the story of “a detective who has returned to the bleak rural town where she grew up in order to spend time with her dying mother, and is recruited by the sole local police officer to investigate a case of statutory rape.” Eerie, brooding, and totally exhilarating, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before and yet reminiscent of something like David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. It’s available now on Netflix, but when are you ever going to get to see something like this on the big screen? Now’s your chance.

Check out the rest of the lineup—that includes some great choices such as Hong Sang-soo’s Our Sunhi; Ti West’s The Sacrament; Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy, starring Jake Gyllenhaal; as well as the 1971 film The Hospital, written by Paddy Chayevsky—over here. Tickets go on sale to the general public on January 30^th, so plans ahead while you can!