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SMC Notebooks.

Film essays and reviews by our community, talented writers, moviemakers, and founder & programmer Craig Hammill — a notebook for serious cinema, spanning the canon and the newly discovered.

Latest Essay

ASHES AND DIAMONDS

April 8, 2026 · Craig Hammill

ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Wajda's film captures a great rhythm, an essential musicality as it follows an anti-Communist Polish fighter across a day and night involving assassination attempts, a love affair, and the weight of an entire generation's grief.

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From the Notebook

DEAD MOUNTAINEER'S HOTEL

DEAD MOUNTAINEER'S HOTEL

Sometimes you just need a little 1970's Estonian sci-fi.

THE SECRET AGENT

THE SECRET AGENT

THE SECRET AGENT is a movie told in ellipsis. A cinema meant to be "read between the lines."

WALDEN

WALDEN

Cinema diarist Jonas Mekas' 1968 WALDEN feels like the avant garde movie equivalent of Jack Kerouac's 1950's beatnik classic ON THE ROAD.

PERSONA

PERSONA

When you experience a towering creative work like Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA, you sometimes start to try to figure out what sets it apart.

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK

Some movies work on the sheer force of their conviction.

SENTIMENTAL VALUE

February 25, 2026

SENTIMENTAL VALUE

This is a moving, deeply thought out piece of cinema.

COVER-UP

February 18, 2026

COVER-UP

COVER-UP, for this writer, is the first necessary movie of 2025.

EARTH

February 11, 2026

EARTH

This writer found Ukrainian moviemaker Alexander Dovzhenko's 1930 released EARTH inscrutable. In a glorious way.

4 LITTLE GIRLS

February 5, 2026

4 LITTLE GIRLS

This is a movie that hits you different once you have children.