Sight & Sound

Blade Runner 2049 review: the future’s still questionable

Denis Villeneuve’s expressively dour sequel to Ridley Scott’s hallowed sci-fi classic burns bright with uncomfortable questions, says Tim Hayes.

Monday 16 October 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Marsha Hunt: American girl, Un-American woman, upstanding centenarian

Marsha Hunt broke into Hollywood as a cinch-waisted 17-year-old ingenue at MGM studios, then fell foul of the blacklist at the height of her career. As she turns 100, she shares with J.E. Smyth her memories of love, combat and camaraderie on and off the screen.

Tuesday 17 October 2017

Interviews

Hellraiser archive review: “a return to the cutting edge of horror cinema”

Clive Barker’s demonic horror classic returns to cinemas, 30 years afters its debut. When it first appeared, our reviewer Kim Newman welcomed its preference for Grand Guignol intensity over “lazy splatter”.

Friday 13 October 2017

Reviews and recommendations

Mexico earthquake: how the media responded

The strongest earthquake to hit Mexico in a century prompted an almost immediate media response. The initial rush of hashtags and memes were followed by film stars drumming up funds and a ‘RubbleCinema’. Soon even escapist cinema took on a new meaning, writes Paul Julian Smith.

Tuesday 10 October 2017

Features

Austin Lynch and Matthew Booth on Gray House: a film to live in

Poised between documentary and fiction, Gray House evokes the residential space of prisoners and oil-rig workers with oblique imagery and Alvin Lucier’s architectural score. The filmmakers explain the ideas behind their project to Sophie Brown.

Tuesday 10 October 2017

Interviews

San Sebastian 2017: a rich harvest in late summer

At this, the best of the Spanish film festivals, audiences can be relied on to bring enthusiasm and patience to a diverse variety of screenings. And this year they were rewarded with a fine crop, reports Nick James.

Tuesday 10 October 2017

Festivals

Faith and creation: Anoushka Shankar on her score for Shiraz

The composer and sitarist tells Simon Broughton about the challenges and discoveries of writing her first film soundtrack – for the rare Indian silent film Shiraz: A Romance of India, which premieres as 2017’s London Film Festival Archive Gala.

Friday 6 October 2017

Interviews

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

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