Sight & Sound

Blood Simple archive review: an “abstracted, stylised expression of nothing in particular outside itself”

Re-released in a new Director’s Cut, the Coen brothers’ coolly diagrammatic neo-noir runs rings around its blinkered plotters in an individualistic, capricious rural Texan universe. In his original review in the Monthly Film Bulletin, Steve Jenkins hails the film’s “strikingly detached sense of style”.

Thursday 5 October 2017

Reviews and recommendations

10 Treasures from the Archive at the 2017 London Film Festival – as we first reviewed them

From Lucía to The L-Shaped Room, Scarface to Suspiria and Saturday Night Fever, the 2017 LFF is reviving a host of classics – but which did we originally consider clumsy, vulgar or a “long slog” and which did we hail as a masterpiece?

Friday 6 October 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Come out to play: nine of the best Cult titles at the BFI London Film Festival 2017

Are you sitting uncomfortably? From medieval witches to prison fights, Hitchcock’s gruesome visions to a UFO death cult, the transgressive, marginal and sometimes deeply odd films in this year’s Cult programme are full of surprises, writes Anton Bitel.

Tuesday 3 October 2017

Festivals

30 recommendations at the BFI London Film Festival 2017

Our critics’ top tips to the best of this year’s world cinema showcase, from the big-ticket galas (including our own special presentation) to the rarer choices with no UK distribution plans in place.

Friday 15 September 2017

Festivals

Film of the week: Daphne tracks a woman in crisis through a cruel city

Emily Beecham’s immaculately pitched lead performance anchors this quietly profound film, which slowly builds builds a mosaic of hope from fragments of art, writes Lisa Mullen.

Friday 29 September 2017

Reviews and recommendations

No guide to the future: the BFI Filmography reveals the thin wedge of female British filmmaking past

The BFI’s new searchable graphic database of British film production credits since 1911 shows us the stark historical lack of opportunities for women – but behind the dismal numbers there are characters with stories to be told, says Pamela Hutchinson.

Friday 29 September 2017

Comment

Goodbye Christopher Robin review: a bittersweet history of Winnie the Pooh

This warmly observed film relates how shell shock and new fatherhood prompted A.A. Milne to write a book that brought joy to generations of readers but not to his own son, writes Matthew Taylor.

Friday 29 September 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Queen of the Desert: Werner Herzog bows to Nicole Kidman

The flipside of the director’s famed portraits of hubristic male adventurers, this Gertrude Bell biopic, still undistributed in the UK, not only features a rare female Herzogian protagonist but willingly adopts the style of a Nicole Kidman vehicle, writes Brad Stevens.

Tuesday 26 September 2017

Bradlands

Waves of sound: Jason Singh on his live score for Drifters

The beatboxer and sound artist is accompanying John Grierson’s silent documentary on a tour of British fishing towns. He tells Michael Pattison how he channels the sound of the deep and the distant past for each performance.

Thursday 28 September 2017

Interviews

Tonsler Park: Kevin Jerome Everson captures democracy in close-up

This 16mm black-and-white documentary was filmed at Charlottesville polling stations the day that Donald Trump was elected, a riveting study of a world about to be shattered, writes Helen de Witt.

Wednesday 27 September 2017

Features

Wavelengths 2017: Toronto defends its bastion of the esoteric

Fears that programming cuts would damage the diversity of TIFF were allayed by a bold selection of experimental, short and gallery films, including a dazzling meditation on a hip colour, a disquieting study of a cannibal and a careful portrait of bodybuilders, writes Jordan Cronk.

Wednesday 27 September 2017

Festivals

Toronto review: Angels Wear White exposes sexism in a small town

Vivian Qu’s savage portrait of institutional corruption and misogyny in a Chinese seaside resort demands to be seen, writes Michael Leader.

Wednesday 27 September 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Film of the week: On Body and Soul finds love in a bloody place

Two lonely souls, a painfully shy doctor and a disappointed older man, share a pastoral dream world and a gory workplace in Ildikó Enyedi’s witty, sensitive romance, writes Philip Kemp.

Friday 22 September 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Lawrence of Arabia archive review: the hazy draw of the desert

With David Lean’s epic back in cinemas, read how Penelope Houston reviewed it in 1963. She has praise for the performances, including Peter O’Toole in the lead, but a thumbs down for Maurice Jarre’s score.

Monday 25 September 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Kingsman: the Golden Circle review – taboo-busting ultra-tedium

Wit-forsaken jokes, rote violence and obsessive genuflection to the first film make Matthew Vaughn’s spy sequel an appointment to miss, writes Henry K. Miller.

Friday 22 September 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Venice review: Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno – Abdellatif Kechiche’s deep pleasure plunge

The Blue Is the Warmest Colour director’s sixth feature, an evocation of early 90s young summer sensualism, is his most exuberant and indulgent yet, skinny on narrative but hungry for hedonist experience, writes Neil Young.

Monday 25 September 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Toronto review: A Season in France explores the precarious life of migrants

Two brothers attempt to make a new life in cold and grey Paris, with their futures at the mercy of bureaucrats, in Mahamet-Saleh Haroun’s compassionate family drama, writes Tom Charity.

Saturday 23 September 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Toronto review: The Third Murder, Koreeda’s morally complex noir

This metaphysical crime thriller from the maestro of Japanese family life will leave audiences with more mysteries to ponder than simply whodunnit, writes Michael Leader.

Saturday 23 September 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Harry Dean Stanton obituary: the lonely soul of US cinema

The cult actor best loved for his heartsick turn in Paris, Texas graced classic American films from the 60s on – playing a series of grizzled characters who looked as if they would rather be anywhere else, writes Tom Charity.

Friday 22 September 2017

Obituaries

Wrapped in plasticity: Twin Peaks’ myriad Laura Palmers

Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin conduct a forensic examination of the slippages at play in David Lynch and Mark Frost’s surrealistic investigative series.

Friday 28 April 2017

Video

Hollywood icon/oclast: the art of Jack Nicholson

From New Hollywood rebel to arch Hollywood devil, Jack Nicholson has been our gold-standard baby boomer, on the run from his demons even as he upends the world – and hounds down the last laugh. As he turns 80, Leigh Singer looks back at the art of Jack.

Friday 21 April 2017

Video

Video: Scorsese NYC

It’s complicated: Martin Scorsese’s irresistible passion for the mean streets of his hometown show us not just the psyche of a city, but the soul of a nation, says Leigh Singer.

Friday 3 February 2017

Video

Video essay: What is neorealism?

kogonada pits the director of The Bicycle Thieves against the producer of Gone with the Wind on the same movie material.

Friday 17 May 2013

Video