Sight & Sound

Film of the week: Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled sets the hens on Colin Farrell’s fox

Set inside a seminary that is both a sanctuary and a prison, Coppola’s clever southern Gothic melodrama is tense, purposeful and more richly intriguing than Don Siegel’s priapic 1970s adaptation of the same novel, writes Kate Stables.

Friday 14 July 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Radu Jude interview: “Scarred Hearts is like a jazz piece”

The director’s new and stylistically distinctive film uses a sanatorium setting to interrogate Romania’s Golden Age. He talks to Jonathan Romney about fragmenting narratives and exposing antisemitism.

Saturday 15 July 2017

Interviews

War for the Planet of the Apes review: a highly evolved CGI-enhanced epic

With great leaps in motion-capture technology, and a brilliant cast including Andy Serkis and Woody Harrelson, the latest instalment in this sprawling franchise is a rich and satisfying film, writes Kim Newman.

Friday 14 July 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Willie Doherty’s Loose Ends review: revolution remembered

The Northern Irish artist’s deceptively serene, detached diptychs relate a little-told story of Dublin’s Easter Rising, which begins on the Donegal island of Gola, writes Ian Christie.

Friday 14 July 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Film of the week: It Comes at Night, an astute and ruthless thriller

While America is ravaged by plague, monstrous forces are unleashed in a besieged family home in Trey Edwards Shults’s expertly handled horror, writes Jason Anderson.

Wednesday 5 July 2017

Reviews and recommendations

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami: “A stick like that of Punch”

A puppet show gives Albert Lewin’s picaresque “history of a scoundrel” its leading metaphor – a symbol of patriarchal privilege, female oppression and sexual energy, writes Brad Stevens.

Friday 7 July 2017

Bradlands

Spider-Man: Homecoming review – Peter Parker as a humble high-school hero

Spidey returns to the big screen as a teenager endowed with superpowers and sound morals, which he channels into some memorable heroics, thanks to Jon Watts’s smart direction and a seamless script, writes Kim Newman.

Wednesday 5 July 2017

Reviews and recommendations

The Tree of Wooden Clogs archive review: a picture of man and God in harmony

Ermanno Olmi’s peasant drama is rereleased in cinemas this weekend. On its first appearance in 1979, John Pym praised its haunting imagery and quiet, unsentimental methods.

Wednesday 5 July 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Make it rain: a new chance for short documentaries?

Could the proliferation of online platforms finally mean (some) gold in them short films, asks Charlie Lyne?

Wednesday 5 July 2017

Festivals

Visions on: creative documentary at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2017

Under new chief programmer Luke Moody, Britain’s biggest (and broadest) documentary festival reinforces its interest in documentary cinema’s artistic edge. By Ben Nicholson.

Wednesday 5 July 2017

Festivals

Nineteen sixty-seven and all that: Sheffield Doc/Fest 2017 rewinds 50 years

The spirit of the Summer of Love was revived in Sheffield this year, with films exploring subjects from the bohemian counterculture to revolutionary politics past and present, writes Christina Newland.

Wednesday 5 July 2017

Festivals

Transformers: The Last Knight review – a dumbed-down daftfest

If this really is Michael Bay’s final Transformers film, the director has chosen to finish as he started, with a brash, confusing blockbuster that borrows from everywhere and goes nowhere, writes Anton Bitel.

Wednesday 5 July 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Barry Norman obituary: British television’s ambassador to the movies

The affable and erudite host of BBC TV’s flagship film programme for a quarter of a century, Barry Norman was the first word on cinema for a generation of British filmgoers, says Geoff Andrew.

Saturday 1 July 2017

Obituaries

Film of the week: Baby Driver, Edgar Wright’s mixtape on wheels

This hotshot heist musical is the joyride of Wright’s life, says Henry K. Miller.

Friday 30 June 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Twin Peaks: the Return episodes 7 & 8 recap – the extremes of experience

After seven episodes of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s cult series, things seemed to be slowly coming together. One more episode and they had entirely blown apart, says Tom Huddleston.

Thursday 29 June 2017

TV

Realm of the senses: alternate realities at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2017

The VR stories at this year’s showcase offered more than just 360-degree visuals – visitors were immersed in a world of scents, sounds and emotions, writes Marisol Grandon.

Friday 30 June 2017

Festivals

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