Sight & Sound

What do you do with your revolution? Rocky Road to Dublin versus 1968 Ireland

A scathing portrait of independent Ireland’s squandered liberty, Peter Lennon’s state-of-the-nation documentary was launched into the fervour of 1968 Cannes, then suppressed at home. Fifty years later, Erica X Eisen asks if the Ireland it wanted is finally emerging.

Wednesday 13 June 2018

Features

Blake Williams on PROTOTYPE: “Artists are only beginning to discover the full capacity of 3D”

Stereoscopy has fascinated filmmakers since the 1800s, but one artist is trying to take the third dimension in new directions. He tells Ben Nicholson why he is inspired by Michael Snow and virtual rollercoasters, and why he really wants to see a 3D Transformers movie.

Wednesday 13 June 2018

Interviews

The haunted house of patriarchy: how The Entity subverts mainstream horror films

The nightmare to E.T.’s dream of a home-invading paranormal father figure, Sidney J. Furie’s radical 1982 horror film The Entity connects contemporary articulations of abusive, gaslighting patriarchy with the Gothic tradition’s ambiguous explorations of Evil, says Brad Stevens.

Monday 11 June 2018

Bradlands

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom review – dinosaurs go gothic

With J.A. Bayona in charge, the living fossils finally escape the island for an enjoyably sinister location, even if the family-friendly franchise occasionally cramps the director’s gothic style, writes Kim Newman.

Friday 8 June 2018

Reviews and recommendations

Film of the week: That Summer, a palimpsest of Grey Gardens memories

Revisiting an unfinished, unseen documentary project about the eccentric East Hampton residents the Beales – which formed the basis of the 1975 cult film Grey Gardens – Göran Olsson creates a new, richly textured standalone work, says Michael Brooke.

Monday 4 June 2018

Reviews and recommendations

Deep focus: The other side of 80s America

Amid the 1980s’ ‘Morning in America’ reckoning, the ‘high concept’ spectacles, cartoonish action and the bottom line, some filmmakers who persisted in making personal, often overlooked films that revealed the other side of Reaganism’s patriotic bluster and hollow optimism. Nick Pinkerton explores the flipside of 1980s American cinema, with a video essay by Sierra Pettengill.

Monday 28 May 2018

Deep Focus

Film of the week: Zama makes slow jest of a mouldering colonial mandarin

Lucrecia Martel’s masterly adaptation of Antonio di Benedetto’s 1956 novel maroons Daniel Giménez Cacho’s preening officer of the Spanish empire in an Argentine backwater, then turns the screw, writes Maria Delgado.

Sunday 27 May 2018

Reviews and recommendations

Solo: A Star Wars Story review – how the young rebel fulfilled his franchise dues

Alden Ehrenreich plays the younger incarnation of Harrison Ford’s cosmic tearaway Han Solo in Ron Howard’s rote but proficient space rollick that’s another brick in the Lucasfilm cinematic wall, writes Michael Leader.

Saturday 26 May 2018

Reviews and recommendations

Film of the week: Jeune femme is a divisive portrait of a flamboyantly chaotic young woman

The heroine of Léonor Serraille’s film comes across, at points, as a vulnerable, deluded individual and at others an enviably free spirit confronting the world’s hypocrisies. Is the trope of female messiness feminist or quite the reverse, asks Hannah McGill?

Wednesday 23 May 2018

Reviews and recommendations

Raze the red carpet: Cannes 2018 responds to #MeToo

To the #TimesUp moment and the world after Weinstein, Cannes offered an anti-harrasment hotline – but mostly just ceded its platform to women themselves to make the change, says Rebecca Harrison.

Friday 18 May 2018

Festivals

The best short films at Cannes 2018

The shorts selections in the Competition, Cinefondation, Quinzaine and Semaine offered up miniature marvels that sometimes exhibited more craft in a matter of minutes than some visionaries were able to realise in a much meatier runtime, report Catherine Bray and Jake Cunningham.

Thursday 24 May 2018

Festivals

Deadpool 2 review: super-mouth runs on

Ryan Reynolds’ super-jester returns with a proper story, a troupe of his own, X-Men franchise missteps to overwrite, and jokes that keep coming, thick and thin, writes Kim Newman.

Thursday 24 May 2018

Reviews and recommendations

Lucian Pintilie obituary: Romania’s tragic farceur without strings

Banned by the Ceaușescu regime from stage work but never deflected from his critiques of his country, Romania’s great film and theatre director was, in his implacable and subversive scepticism, a role model for the country’s cinematic new wave, writes Nick Roddick.

Wednesday 23 May 2018

Obituaries

Ermanno Olmi obituary: a maestro of Italian post-neorealist cinema

From Il Posto to The Tree of Wooden Clogs and The Legend of the Holy Drinker, Ermanno Olmi drew upon his family, history and religion to tell stories of everyday Italian life, writes Pasquale Iannone.

Monday 21 May 2018

Obituaries

Women on a Bergman screen – a video essay

Swedish master Ingmar Bergman’s fascination with female experience and emotions underpinned one of the cinema’s greatest virtual communities of women on screen. In this video study Leigh Singer invites Bergman’s talented actresses and their creations into closest possible correspondence.

Friday 2 February 2018

Video

In her eyes: notes on Gloria Grahame (a video essay)

With a curl of her lip and an arch of her eyebrow, Gloria Grahame was the actress who stood up to both Humphrey Bogart and Lee Marvin in their most violent roles. In this video essay, Serena Bramble explores the burn mark Grahame left on the silver screen.

Friday 24 November 2017

Video

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

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