Inclination is flattening: Sight and Sound films of 2025
Films made on the assumption of non-Republican US government emerge from the pipeline. President Idris Elba in A House of Dynamite faces missile inclinations and a no-win situation with helpless honour and reluctance to hurt a fly. The film is hooked on The System while still making The System rigid, expensive and pointless. Kathryn Bigelow's particular form of politics scrambles people's compasses again.
My votes in the 2025 Sight and Sound poll were for:
28 Years Later
Danny Boyle seemed lost to Richard Curtis comedy and wistful looks back at the Beatles. Not so. 28 Years Later snarls and spasms, complaining about Brexit at the same time as writer Alex Garland sends his next message from The Green, standing on the shoulders of Annihilation and Civil War and Devs and even Men. The Jimmy Savile business is a Brass Eye provocation from the Chris Morris notebook.
2000 Meters to Andriivka
Seen via the Sundance Film Festival and reviewed here
Black Bag
Sex lies and video surveillance. Michael Fassbender's stoic spook has the Christian name of George Smiley and the glasses of Harry Palmer. He goes boating to ponder the identity of the mole like Gary Oldman's Smiley went swimming, but Fassbender is even more restrained than Oldman was if that's possible.
Caught Stealing
Darren Aronofsky not restrained, but surfing oddball undercurrents in the urban for the first time in a while.
Eddington
Joaquin Phoenix beams in direct from his psychiatrist's office.
Honey Don't
Sufferin' Sappho. In the Coen brothers' divorce, Ethan took all the whimsy.
A House of Dynamite
Kathryn Bigelow used to add flavours of the mythic to her images, and without them you get a less giddy version of the Paul Greengrass Bourne centrifuge. In the end a net loss. But this still looks both experimental and a branch of the James Cameron family tree.
Queer
Daniel Craig's eyes burn with sparks of lust under the shadow of Old Bull Lee's hat.
The Shrouds
Got halfway through before realising that Vincent Cassel was very obviously wearing David Cronenberg's hair. The entire Cronenberg project all these years has been about the consequences of being alive, and now that project arrives at its inevitable final destination.
Sinners
Let the right tune in. Ryan Coogler mentioned the name of Zack Snyder approvingly, prompting bafflement from those convinced of Snyder's inherent fascism (not me). Would Snyder, in his 2001 ad-man's mode, have directed the scene where several futures of black music materialise in a 1932 Mississippi barn like that? It ends with the camera rising through burning timbers into the sky, but how would it have been differently staged or directed if instead it panned down to an iPod, or a Coors?
These days Sight and Sound posts fewer of the voters' comments than it used to. So when topics like Gaza or Ukraine or anything much about the world outside crop up even less than last year, it might be the sampling. Or that hopeful theories of influencing things through low-paid gig economy arts commentary have sagged under the weight of The System. And reality.
See also: last year's comments.