Sight & Sound

Film of the week: The Ghoul twists two warped tales into one

Gareth Tunley’s ingenious genre exercise takes a circuitous route through a labyrinthine London and into the psyche of its troubled protagonist, writes Anton Bitel.

Thursday 3 August 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Short and sharp: ten of the best at Encounters 2017

At the Bristol festival of short-form cinema, celebrated films rub shoulders with new work from up-and-coming directors. Here is Laurence Boyce’s selection of the ones to watch.

Tuesday 8 August 2017

Festivals

Cinema Rediscovered 2017: new homes for old films

At the Bologna-inspired festival in Bristol, classic films were celebrated with some smart repertory programming, while parallels were drawn between the state of cinema now and in its infancy, reports Pamela Hutchinson.

Friday 4 August 2017

Festivals

Steve Bannon, doomsday auteur

Donald Trump’s chief adviser made his political fortune as the director of a catalogue of confused but delirious movie polemics that trumpet a fallen America awaiting a saviour. Celluloid Liberation Front watches another smashing of the line between fact and fiction.

Friday 4 August 2017

Features

Prick up Your Ears archive review: Gary Oldman fascinates as Joe Orton

As Stephen Frears’ biopic of the controversial gay playwright returns to cinemas, we reprint the original Sight & Sound review from 1987, in which Richard Mayne finds the film perfectly captures its subject’s magnetism.

Thursday 3 August 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Twin Peaks: the Return episodes 11 & 12 recap – bringing it all back home

As the series unfolds we’re spending more time in the town of Twin Peaks – but don’t go expecting easy nostalgia, says Tom Huddleston.

Wednesday 2 August 2017

TV

Jeanne Moreau obituary: a cultured, sensual actress for whom cinema was “life itself”

Renowned for her star-making turn in Jules et Jim and her collaborations with Louis Malle and Orson Welles, the iconic French actor aided the birth of the nouvelle vague with her downcast glamour and husky voice, says Ginette Vincendeau.

Monday 31 July 2017

Obituaries

Top of the Lake: China Girl review – Elisabeth Moss embodies Jane Campion’s Law

Reassigning Moss’s detective Robin Griffin from small-town New Zealand to the sex trade of cosmopolitan Sydney, the second series of Jane Campion’s police procedural continues to probe the director’s faith in the ultimate intelligence of the body, says Sophie Mayer.

Friday 28 July 2017

TV

Film of the week: The Big Sick refreshes the romcom

In Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V Gordon’s semi-autobiographical film, a mixed-race relationship is the springboard for humour, poignancy and a welcome message of tolerance, writes Naman Ramachandran.

Thursday 27 July 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Howards End archive review: a troubling Forster film for our grey times

Merchant-Ivory’s third E.M. Forster adaptation was first released during a time of economic depression in the UK. As it returns to cinemas we republish the original Sight & Sound review, in which Lizzie Francke hails its “rigorous inquest into a bygone era”.

Thursday 27 July 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Lucrecia Martel: “All that heroic past and brave macho stuff makes me ill”

The Argentian director’s long-awaited new film Zama has just been announced for the 2017 Venice Film Festival. Two years ago, Diego Lerer visited the set and spoke to her about the radical language of the film’s source novel and how to shoot a period film on a modest budget.

Thursday 27 July 2017

Interviews

Akira and Q & A: the joy of juxtapositions

Watching two ostensibly different films back to back can entirely colour our understanding of them both, as when Brad Stevens viewed Sidney Lumet’s 1990 police thriller along side Otomo Katsuhiro’s classic 1987 anime.

Sunday 23 July 2017

Bradlands

Film of the week: Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s victorious retreat

Breathtaking realism, sterling performances and distinctly restrained direction combine to make Christopher Nolan’s World War II drama a wrenching spectacle, writes Philip Kemp.

Friday 21 July 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Martin Landau obituary: a piercing, performing enigma

From Martin Landau’s searing early role as the pent-up henchman of North by Northwest to latter-day recognition in Crimes and Misdemeanors and Ed Wood, his blazing blue eyes had it – but what was it, asks Kim Morgan?

Friday 21 July 2017

Obituaries

Black Film, British Cinema 2017: from representation to radicalism

Questions about black identity and British culture that were raised in the 1980s seem just as urgent today, as a recent conference in London made clear, writes Simran Hans.

Saturday 22 July 2017

Features

Victim archive review: Dirk Bogarde fronts a courageous, landmark thriller

Basil Dearden’s gay-blackmail drama, which helped to change the law on homosexuality in the UK, is back in UK cinemas in a restored digital print. On its first release in 1961, Sight & Sound contributor Terence Kelly praised its groundbreaking candour and a first-class performance by Dirk Bogarde.

Saturday 22 July 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Twin Peaks: the Return episodes 9 & 10 recap – event horizon?

After the nuclear nightmare of episode 8, some semblance of normality is restored in Twin Peaks: the Return. But is that really a good thing, asks Tom Huddleston?

Wednesday 19 July 2017

TV

Pam Engel obituary: a fount of British cinephilia

The co-founder of Britain’s key arthouse distribution and exhibition company Artificial Eye (and later New Wave) introduced British filmgoers to a deep seam of world cinema across four decades, says Geoff Andrew.

Wednesday 19 July 2017

Obituaries

Father of the dead: George A Romero, the man who remade horror cinema

The original Night of the Living Dead pioneer gave us a new vision of both horror movies and of social apocalypse – and his influence just keeps on rising. Kim Newman pays tribute to the late titan of savage satire.

Monday 17 July 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