Sight & Sound: the December 2020 issue

 “These films should have been made 35 years ago,” Steve McQueen tells historian David Olusoga in our December issue cover story, a powerful conversation about McQueen’s new Small Axe collection of films about Black British history, broadcasting this month on the BBC.

To dig down even further on the this landmark of British filmmaking, we’ve recruited an ensemble of notable writers, all qualified by experience, to react personally to each of the films in Small Axe. Candice Carty-Williams writes beautifully about Lovers Rock, Kehinde Andrews gets to the heart of Mangrove, Gary Younge considers the conflicts in the John Boyega-led Red, White and Blue, Kit de Waal connects deeply with Education and Jay Bernard journeys into the soul of Alex Wheatle.

Elsewhere in this issue, Roy Andersson signs out with his magnificently droll About Endlessness; David Fincher revisits Herman J. Mankiewicz’s Hollywood in Mank; Christopher Frayling remembers his encounters with Ennio Morricone; youth worker turned director Henry Blake goes behind Britain’s cross-country drug-running gangs in County Lines; and from our archives, Louise Brooks appraises Lilian Gish and Greta Garbo.

Small Axe, Steve McQueen’s astonishing five-film anthology about the joys and pains of Black British life between the 1960s and 80s, is a landmark moment for British film and television. David Olusoga, the pre-eminent historian of Black Britain, talks to the director about the project, and why the films have as much to say about the country in 2020 as they do about the past.

+ Kehinde Andrews on Mangrove

+ Candice Carty-Williams on Lovers Rock

+ Gary Younge on Red, White and Blue

+ Jay Bernard on Alex Wheatle

+ Kit de Waal on Education

The great composer, who died in July at the age of 91, might be best remembered in the UK for his partnership with Sergio Leone on the director’s cycle of Italian westerns in the 1960s, but over a fantastically prolific career his scores provided the emotional heart for films in almost every genre by a dizzying array of the world’s finest directors. Here Christopher Frayling presents extracts from some of the interviews the maestro gave him over the years, to explore his much-loved musical genius.

Morricone, John Cage and Once upon a Time in the West.

David Fincher’s portrait of Herman J. Mankiewicz, the hard-drinking, hard-gambling screenwriter of Citizen Kane, enshrines the myth of a studio-era Hollywood populated by idiots. Farran Smith Nehme explores the truth behind the legend.

Henry Blake’s long years as a youth worker helped him inject a rare psychological depth and authenticity into County Lines, a devastating portrait of the damage inflicted on young people lured into running drugs for criminal gangs in the UK. Isabel Stevens talks to him about the highs and lows of his debut feature.

Roy Andersson’s About Endlessness, a series of melancholy vignettes that grapple with mortality, is as drolly comic and unique a work as anything the Swedish director has made over his singular career. He talks to James Mottram about why mankind must learn from its failures, why humour is essential for survival and how he was inspired by Bob Dylan.

After years spent in obscurity, the actress Louise Brooks reinvented herself as a writer in the late 1950s, penning a number of sharp articles about Hollywood – many of them for Sight & Sound. In this brilliantly astringent piece, she takes aim at the studio bosses for their calculated sidelining of two of the silent era’s greatest stars.

An axe that cuts deep

As cinemas reel from the impact of Covid-19, UK industry insiders assess where we’ve got to – and what the future holds.

+ The view from Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast

Nigerian films at the BFI London Film Festival and Film Africa highlight a thriving independent scene outside Nollywood. By Chrystel Oloukoï.

Director Malgorzata Szumowska recalls the magic of the big screen during Covid, via her memories of cinema-going under communism.

Pedro Almodóvar discusses his Jean Cocteau adaptation The Human Voice, working with Tilda Swinton and shooting in a Covid world. By Mar Diestro-Dópido.

The ‘Queen of Technicolor’ enjoyed a more varied career in the Hollywood studio system than her moniker suggests. By Pamela Hutchinson.

As Paul Verhoeven’s raucous sci-fi turns 30, Isabel Stevens explores the awesome production feat behind the film’s dystopian vision of Mars.

Thrilling Romanian exposé Collective uncovers a vast trail of corruption. The doc’s director reveals its universal relevance. By Nick Bradshaw.

With coronavirus halting live music, it’s the perfect time for a concert film from one of the giants of the genre: David Byrne. By Leonie Cooper.

As every year, the 2020 BFI London Film Festival showcased some exciting new filmmakers. We list some of the names to watch.

Though her name remains unfamiliar to most, the French-born filmmaker’s work is central to postcolonial African cinema. By Sukhdev Sandhu.

Garbo may have been divine, but the Danish actor Asta Nielsen rivalled her fame by being stunningly, captivatingly human. By Pamela Hutchinson.

Patrick Keiller’s sly, melancholy anatomy of London is now a book. How have print and time changed the film, and the city? By Matthew Harle.

Dick Johnson Is Dead

Kirsten Johnson’s superbly inventive movie confronts the trauma of her father’s imminent death with multiple advance stagings of it, finds Hannah McGill.

On the Rocks

Bill Murray and Rashida Jones are on sparkling form as a father and daughter navigating the still-gendered parenthood trap, writes Nikki Baughan.

• Bird Island
• Collective
• I Am Woman
• Looted
• Lovers Rock
• Luxor
• Mangrove
• Martin Eden
• One Man and His Shoes
• The Painter and the Thief
• Patrick
• Rebecca
• Song Without a Name
• Supernova
• The Trial of the Chicago 7
• Two of Us
• WolfWalkers

The Comey Rule

Adapting its hero’s memoir, Billy Ray’s two-part factual drama follows Jeff Daniels’s earnest FBI spy from the rapids of the 2016 US election to a democracy-imperilling dinner with Brendan Gleeson’s President Trump.

• The Beach
• Mystery Road: Series 2
• Battlestar Galactica
• The Undoing
• Us

Though Bruce Lee died young, with only a handful of starring roles under his belt, he remains the martial arts hero: a new box-set shows why. Reviewed by Tony Rayns.

Archive Television: Monkey

• Dementia
• John Ford at Columbia 1935-1958
• Girlfriends
• The Lady Eve
• I, Monster
• Sweet Charity
• This Gun for Hire
• The Times of Harvey Milk
• The Wolf House

The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood – and America – Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by Greg Mitchell (The New Press) reviewed by J. Hoberman

A Light in the Dark: A History of Movie Directors by David Thomson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) reviewed by Nick James

• Psycho’s ending: subtle or accidental?
• Trevor Griffiths’s Comedians is a divine comedy
• Thinking about the ending of I’m Thinking of Ending Things
• Christopher Nolan’s mechanical coldness
• The puzzling pleasures of Tenet

The devastating twist that closes the Michael Chapman-shot 1978 sci-fi/horror remake still feels scarily resonant after all these years. By Joshua Rothkopf.