Sundance Film Festival 2023 16 February 2023 Films Divinity screened at the Sundance Film Festival, and has that one-time Sundance icon and all-the-time rascal Steven Soderbergh among the producers Films of the year 2022 20 December 2022 Films Characters walking through mirrors in Paris early in the year and characters walking through walls in Paris later in the year. A good year for Jean Sight and Sound Greatest Films poll 2022 3 December 2022 Films Sight and Sound doubled the size of the voting cohort for its latest every-ten-years Greatest Films Of All Time poll to 1,639 people. I can account Crimes of the Future 15 September 2022 Films Critics falling gratefully on Crimes of the Future as Old School David Cronenberg, as if Cosmopolis and Maps to the Stars had not been Cronenberg Tribeca Film Festival 2022 6 July 2022 Films For Critic’s Notebook three films seen online from Tribeca 2022: Endangered is a HBO documentary about four liberal journalists currently gathering Tigers and Goal! 13 June 2022 Films In the print edition of Sight & Sound some words about Tigers, where the pressures at Inter Milan’s youth academy nearly destroy a teenage Zero Fucks Given 5 April 2022 Films No way that 2022 will produce a better Covid-era liberation visual than a thirty-second tracking shot of Adèle Exarchopoulos on an e-scooter in a SXSW Film Festival 2022 27 March 2022 Films For Critic’s Notebook four films seen online from SXSW: The Thief Collector which seems to say that you should think the worst of quirky eccentric The Matrix Resurrections 5 February 2022 Films Many a perfectly tolerable film is left in the wake of The Discourse bobbing like an used Pot Noodle container in a canal, but seeing Lana Wachowski Sundance Film Festival 2022 29 January 2022 Films round up: For Sight & Sound reviews of: 892 a serious drama with John Boyega taking hostages When You Finish Saving Films of the year 2021 3 December 2021 Films My votes in the year’s Sight & Sound best films poll were for: Quo Vadis Aida (discussed in part here and reviewed here Army of the Dead (discussed Foundation Year, Dune 5 November 2021 Films In the December Sight & Sound magazine some words about Foundation Year, a micro-budget college romance willed into existence by the enthusiasm of No Time to Die 7 October 2021 Films Casino Royale is a great film apart from that interminable stuff at an airport while you’re waiting for Eva Green to show up, although I’m not sure Mandibles, Mad God 23 August 2021 Films Two from the Edinburgh International Film Festival at Critic’s Notebook: Mandibles is the deadpan one with the big giant fly and Adèle Exarchopolus Security 2 August 2021 Films For the September issue of Sight and Sound magazine a review of Security, an Italian film set in Tuscany directed by an Englishman adapted from a First Cow 28 May 2021 Films arrives in the UK a fairly bemusing five months after being labelled the third best film of 2020 by a UK magazine, a situation which works Army of the Dead 25 May 2021 Films Netflix put up a behind the scenes thing for Army of the Dead in which Zack Snyder seems as carefree as the winds, just coasting through some Film directors writing comics 27 March 2021 Films & Art Madi: Once Upon a Time in the Future (2020) Duncan Jones with Alex De Campi and in this bit James Stokoe Noah (2011 Zack Snyder's Justice League 21 March 2021 Films For Sight & Sound a brief look at a lengthy thing, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, in which the plot hinges on the bad guys forgetting where they left Wonder Woman 1984, We Can Be heroes 15 March 2021 Films Zack Snyder’s Justice League looms ahead like the Cirque du Soleil performing The Book of Revelation. But first: The purpose of Wonder Woman 1984 Quo Vadis Aida, Phil Spector 22 January 2021 Films For Sight & Sound online and in the March 2021 issue of the magazine, some words on Quo Vadis Aida?, a fiction film with a ground-level perspective Films of the year 2020 11 December 2020 Films My votes in the year’s Sight & Sound best films poll were for: Bacurau (mentioned here) Greed (discussed here) Lynn + Lucy (discussed here) Richard Possessor 28 November 2020 Films is a wise and serious film about mental health, by any non-judgemental description. Reviews that don’t mention David Cronenberg should get Trial of the Chicago 7, The Newsroom 19 October 2020 Films Mutterings about Aaron Sorkin and The Trial of the Chicago 7 suggest it’s the season to fret about the cinema of the Centre again, which would sound Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Tenet, She Dies Tomorrow 15 September 2020 Films Film viewings: Not much about Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a surprise for anyone following Céline Sciamma’s humane and compassionate films of queer Nocturnal, Lynn + Lucy 30 August 2020 Films In the October Sight & Sound magazine some words about Nocturnal, a small-scale British working-class film of fatherly anguish. That period when the The Old Guard, 6 Underground, S Craig Zahler 28 July 2020 Films Film criticism might once have had to be dragooned into doing PR for Netflix but these days it’s obliged to volunteer, so it gave The Old Guard a Dreamland, Greed 16 June 2020 Films Calling a film Dreamland gets your excuse in beforehand for any amount of arch unnatural gurning, but the latest Dreamland (latest of many) already Samurai Marathon 15 May 2020 Films Bernard Rose’s Japanese-language film Samurai Marathon, mentioned previously here after last year’s Edinburgh Film Festival, has turned up on Bad Boys For Life, 6 Underground, A Hidden Life, Bacurau 30 March 2020 Films In the April print issue of Sight & Sound some cross words about Bad Boys for Life, a franchise emerging from the freezer after 17 years to chance Color Out Of Space 1 March 2020 Films For Critics Notebook a look at Color Out of Space, Richard Stanley’s first feature film in 27 years. Since the last one was Dust Devil, still safely Fanzine culture 23 February 2020 Films & Art Accidentally admitting you’re dubious about video-essay film criticism is a quick route into an argument, but let’s at least agree that the field is Little Women 1 January 2020 Films Seems fair to call Greta Gerwig’s Little Women exactly that, since Gerwig’s own tart self-sufficiency from Frances Ha and its Mistress America flip Films of the year 2019 2 December 2019 Films My votes in the annual Sight & Sound best films poll were for: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (discussed here) Vox Lux (discussed here) In Fabric Hoffa and films of the Left 28 November 2019 Films For Sight & Sound another of my occasional attempts to get Danny DeVito’s film Hoffa wedged into the conversation for being a vital spark of 1990s Rambo Last Blood, Driven 8 October 2019 Films John Rambo has been a cartoon character since 1986; something to recall before putting the boot into Last Blood for being a scuzzy exploitation film Film criticism's woes a series 30 September 2019 Films Please no more events where film critics in permanent posts with healthy salaries mention pitiful freelance pay rates but don't then produce their Once Upon A Time In Hollywood 23 August 2019 Films Any new Quentin Tarantino film uncorks a hot spring of emergency responders, in this case watching Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and detecting Richard Stanley's meteorites 9 August 2019 Films The Color Out of Space, HP Lovecraft (1927): It all began, old Ammi said, with the meteorite. Before that time there had been no wild legends at John Wick 3 and John Wick minicomic 13 July 2019 Films & Art John Wick 3: Obey the rules, swear your loyalty, pay for your transgressions, beg others for redemption, peace through suffering, mutilation as Edinburgh Film Festival 2019 6 July 2019 Films Seen at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival: The Vast of Night is sincere late-1950s sci-fi pastiche modelled on The Twilight Zone, X-Men Dark Pheonix 20 June 2019 Films Or maybe, sic transit gloria Stewart. Bryan Singer has been cancelled, leaving behind only several fine films and my 1700 words about some of them Godzilla In Hell 15 June 2019 Films & Art Godzilla: King of the Monsters does that sequel thing where no one is ever outdoors, and the director has to treat characters in corridors as the Vox Lux, We The Animals 10 June 2019 Films Brady Corbet’s teenage acting career went from Thunderbirds to Gregg Araki to Michael Haneke and on to Lars von Trier, so zero surprise that the two Demonlover, Holy Lands 12 May 2019 Films Demonlover glued itself into my personal Top Ten Films on sight, and the only things in Olivier Assayas’s film now showing its seventeen-year Avengers Endgame 1 May 2019 Films Brie Larson gets two hairstyles during the time-travel shenanigans of Avengers Endgame but Scarlett Johansson gets three, and that’s what star power Climax, Fighting With My Family 18 March 2019 Films There’s a hair-raising sight in Climax when a pregnant woman gets kicked in the belly and another when someone’s hair actually gets set on fire, but The Comics Journal, Breaking The Frames, Neon Visions 11 March 2019 Art & Films The Comics Journal resurrected its print version in January, if not quite Back By Popular Demand then maybe a recognition that TCJ had a presence Glass, Vice 7 March 2019 Films In 2002 Newsweek floated the theory that M Night Shyamalan and Steven Spielberg were kindred spirits, an idea which didn’t survive to see 2003. The House That Jack Built 21 February 2019 Films Bruno Ganz gone, the old devil. The House That Jack Built ends with two characters descending into hell, an exercise which looks like it involved Velvet Buzzsaw 12 February 2019 Films I started to watch Velvet Buzzsaw thinking of Tony Gilroy as the man who co-wrote The Fall, a sublime film about storytelling from which I emerged Films of the year 2018 11 December 2018 Films My votes in Sight & Sound magazine’s 2018 film poll were for: Annihilation (discussed here) Leave No Trace Unsane First Reformed (discussed here) Papillon, First Man 10 December 2018 Films The January/February Sight & Sound magazine includes me reviewing the new remake of Papillon, another film adaptation which ends by showing the Suspiria, The Girl in the Spiders Web 29 November 2018 Films Before everyone saw Luca Guadagnino’s new version of Suspiria he was professing his love of the old one to the point where it seemed he might turn The Guilty, Mandy 20 November 2018 Films The December Sight & Sound magazine includes me reviewing The Guilty, a Danish film about a police officer trying to control a tense situation down First Reformed, Pin Cushion 28 October 2018 Films Paul Schrader’s last couple of films involved Nicolas Cage shouting and as it happens I preferred the one that Schrader vehemently disowned, but in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, The Predator 14 October 2018 Films Jack Ryan rides again on Amazon Prime, busted back down to early-career espionage somewhere near the CIA’s mail room—the curse of workable IP Sink, Final Score, Mile 22 9 October 2018 Films For the November Sight & Sound magazine I watched Sink, a British drama about working class men that could fit onto Wednesday night ITV without The Moderns Alan Rudolph 26 September 2018 Films Great faces in The Moderns. But Linda Fiorentino first among equals Sicario 2 Soldado 7 August 2018 Films It’s been mooted by some that Denis Villeneuve might be a not-great director who just directs the hell out of the scripts he takes on, which sounds Mission Impossible Fallout 29 July 2018 Films I guess by now you can get a doctorate in Mission Impossible scholarship and write a thesis contrasting the 70/30 live vs. digital mayhem directed Edinburgh Film Festival 2018, Sicario 2, Avengers Infinity War, Sense8 1 July 2018 Films Three seen at the Edinburgh Film Festival 2018: Cold War: Paweł Pawlikowski uses his square black-and-white tall-ceiling frames to loom over a Death Wish 1974 and Death Wish 2018 14 April 2018 Films The great pop-culture recycling machine has had one bite at Michael Winner already, when it had a brainstorm and tried to turn The Mechanic into a Detective Chinatown 2, Annihilation 23 March 2018 Films The May issue of Sight & Sound includes me reviewing the Chinese film Detective Chinatown 2, in which a pair of goofball detectives visiting from The Liquidator, The Commuter 5 February 2018 Films B-movie cop films used to be so specific to the counties they came from that you could spot the cultural sore spots from over the horizon, but now I Am (Not) A Number 8 January 2018 Films The February issue of Sight & Sound includes me reviewing I Am (Not) A Number, Alex Cox’s new monograph about The Prisoner TV show, which decodes Films of the year 2017 7 December 2017 Films My votes in the annual Sight & Sound Films Of The Year poll were for: Silence Personal Shopper Elle mother! (mentioned here) Valerian and the City American Made, The Snowman, Blade Runner 2049 19 October 2017 Films “At some point the wish that art would present answers rather than questions turns into the wish that art would just go away.” The November Sight Nigel Kneale: We Are The Martians, Into The Unknown 2 September 2017 Films Two new books about Nigel Kneale came out recently, and I read them both for the October issue of Sight & Sound magazine. One is a biography and the Dark Night, A Ghost Story, Atomic Blonde, Valerian 19 August 2017 Films The September issue of Sight & Sound magazine includes me reviewing Dark Night, a film concerned with American mass shootings and trying to get its Edinburgh Film Festival 2018 24 July 2017 Films This year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival was subdued, but livened up no end by the sight of Aubrey Plaza swearing her head off while Pirates of the Caribbean Salazar's Revenge, Wonder Woman, Gods of Egypt 12 June 2017 Films When the August Sight & Sound magazine arrives it will include me on Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge, which has all the woes of the Life 28 April 2017 Films For the June issue of Sight & Sound magazine I watched astronauts get eaten in Life, a film happily symptomatic of the age. “There are no margins or Free Fire, Confusion and Carnage 28 March 2017 Films For Critic’s Notebook I watched Ben Wheatley’s new film Free Fire, and once again was left trying to work out whether the problem is him or me. I Certain Women, 20th Century Women, Logan 6 March 2017 Films My notebook says I was positive about Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves, which proves that memory is a tricky thing. But Certain Women is the real deal, Films of the year 2016, Rogue One A Star Wars Story 10 January 2017 Films The annual Sight & Sound Films of the Year poll is online and in the January 2017 print magazine. My votes were for: Little Sister (discussed in The Mechanic, The Oliver Stone Experience, Dan Dare, Doctor Strange, Logan 4 November 2016 Films & Art Even by the juggernaut logic of remake culture, picking Michael Winner’s very 1970s and Charles Bronson-shaped The Mechanic out of the hat for a Encounters Short Film Festival 2016, Hunt For The Wilderpeople, 2000AD #2000 28 September 2016 Films & Art For Sight & Sound, a preview of the live-action end of this year’s Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival. The knotty issue of whether films Suicide Squad 15 August 2016 Films Witch craft: not for the first time, The 13th Warrior wins. Whatever shortcomings unspooled from Suicide Squad and accumulated on the cinema carpet, Star Trek Beyond 4 August 2016 Films Hiring dancers to act in a film always makes everyone else look like they’re moving underwater. Star Trek Beyond dozes off, but the last sight Edinburgh Film festival 2016 and Little Sister 27 June 2016 Films This year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival produced a couple of items by me likely to surface presently in Sight & Sound magazine, and more X-Men Apocalypse 22 May 2016 Films Bryan Singer’s X-films arrive like weather reports, from a forecaster disappearing sideways out of the frame in a howling digital gale. X-Men: Films by Bryan Singer, The Trust 14 May 2016 Films On the Sight & Sound website: Hollywood tempts directors down unlikely tracks all the time, but sooner or later there will have to be due accounting Films by Zack Snyder 1 April 2016 Films No shortage of bigger pictures behind the spending of $250 million to make Batman punch Superman, before even considering the film-makers who ended Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 8 March 2016 Films The April issue of Sight & Sound magazine includes me on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a film with reasons for existing that are obvious to an The Last Witch Hunter, High Rise 16 December 2015 Films I’m in the January 2016 issue of Sight & Sound magazine pondering The Last Witch Hunter and fantasy templates in general, just before the biggest Basil Poledouris 3 December 2015 Films The composer in the picture has cancer and will be dead in twenty weeks. At this point, he is going loudly. Basil Poledouris had withdrawn from Spectre, Between Two Worlds 10 November 2015 Films I watched Spectre for Critic’s Notebook, and also said some things about it out loud in a podcast for the Bristol Film Critic’s Circle. The Bonds Encounters Short Film Festival 2015 21 October 2015 Films I wrote about some parts of this year’s Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival for Sight & Sound. The international programme fared a bit Bristol Radical Film Festival 2015 7 October 2015 Films For Sight & Sound I wrote about the Bristol Radical Film Festival, which is screening a bunch of alternative and radical films from 1975 opposite Mission Impossible Rogue nation 7 September 2015 Films I’m in the October issue of Sight & Sound magazine, pondering the revolutionary credentials of Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation just as it and its The Wrecking Crew 21 July 2015 Films The first urge after leaving The Wrecking Crew is to go and look up who exactly that was glimpsed playing Carol Kaye in Love and Mercy the other Edinburgh Film Festival 2015 6 July 2015 Films This year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival led to: Reviews of Learning to Drive, 13 Minutes, Last Days in the Desert, 45 Years and The Legend Four Corners, Timbuktu, Has Max Fury Road, Clouds of Sils Maria 6 June 2015 Films July’s Sight & Sound includes me on Four Corners, the South African police-procedural coming-of-age gangland hybrid which might act as a decent Chappie, The Face of an Angel, John Wick 12 April 2015 Films I watched Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie for the May 2015 issue of Sight & Sound magazine. Blomkamp’s a genuine social commentator with a surprisingly Trash, White God, The Duke of Burgundy 6 March 2015 Films For Critic’s Notebook I watched Stephen Daldry’s Trash, which nestles comfortably enough between superficial romanticism and YA earnestness to lose Superhero Cinema 29 January 2015 Films I wrote about superhero cinema for Sight & Sound, quoting Frank Zappa in the process and coming to a conclusion about which side of the fence I’m on Winter Sleep, Sally Potter, Altered States, Je t'aime je t'aime 19 December 2014 Films At Critic’s Notebook: Thoughts on Winter Sleep, an epic of human fallibility; Leviathan, an accusatory finger jabbed in the chest of people who may Henry Gibson 4 December 2014 Films I used to like fresh air, When it was there. And water. I enjoyed it, ’Till we destroyed it. Each day the land’s diminished. I think I’m finished. A Serena, Jimi: All Is By My Side 4 November 2014 Films The critical consensus about Serena is to take it out for a walk, which inevitably means that the truth is more complicated. Complication number one The Rewrite, '71 24 October 2014 Films I took a look at The Rewrite for Critic’s Notebook, and discovered that my respect for Hugh Grant is undimmed by the fact that nothing like American Encounters Short Film Festival 2014 7 October 2014 Films For Sight & Sound I wrote about the Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival, which this year clocked up its twentieth anniversary. A lot of the The Riot Club, Maps to the Stars, Dracula Untold 4 October 2014 Films I took a look at The Riot Club for Critic’s Notebook, a film which has the usual problem for any angry satire about the English upper classes: that Before I Go To Sleep 6 September 2014 Films I watched Before I Go to Sleep for Critic’s Notebook, a film full of slightly Off moments (one supposedly British character says he’s equipped a Sam Fuller's Brainquake 30 August 2014 Films For Little White Lies, I wrote about Sam Fuller’s not-exactly-lost but slightly misplaced novel Brainquake, out now after a couple of decades in the Two Days One Night, The Congress, Lucy, Sin City A Dame To Kill For 29 August 2014 Films When film reviews start stressing the word “real” it’s time to dig out the tin helmet, since there’s nothing more fake in narrative fiction films Welcome to New York 10 August 2014 Films played at the Edinburgh Film Festival, where the accumulated static made the festival take temporary leave of its senses and Grace of Monaco, The Young and Prodigious TS Spivet 17 July 2014 Films In Critic’s Notebook, reviews of Grace of Monaco, a key text in the current phase of impotent biopics which dares to subvert the limitations from Edinburgh Film Festival 2014 4 July 2014 Films This year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival produced the following: An attempt to parse the British narrative feature programme for Little X-Men Days of Future Past 24 May 2014 Films Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past would have needed to split the actual atom to truly return to the glory days of 2003 when he made X-Men 2, The Two Faces of January 21 May 2014 Films I watched The Two Faces of January for Critic’s Notebook, a Patricia Highsmith adaptation which confirms that age is gifting Viggo Mortensen with Bob Hoskins, Diane Lane 30 April 2014 Films In 1983, playing 1935. In 2006, playing 1951 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 29 April 2014 Films “Robert Bly, who’s done his share of thinking about the heroic narratives of childhood, has called ours a ‘sibling society,’ and called our lives Pioneer 17 April 2014 Films A review for Critic’s Notebook of Pioneer, Erik Skjoldbjærg’s conspiracy story set at the start of Norway’s economic miracle in which deep-sea diver Nymphomaniac Volume 1 and 2 5 March 2014 Films A review of Nymphomaniac for Critic’s Notebook. In the audience I was with, Vol I went down reasonably well, not counting the man snoring two rows Robocop(s) 12 February 2014 Films I reviewed the new-model RoboCop for Critic’s Notebook, a film which proves all over again that film reviewers and film critics do not have the same The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West 25 January 2014 Films The greatest sight in The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (Lev Kuleshov, 1924) is Aleksandra Khokhlova sprinting The Long Goodbye 1 January 2014 Films In SoFilm magazine I reviewed the recent Arrow Films Blu-ray release of The Long Goodbye, a disk that was already groaning under the weight of Saving Mr Banks 13 December 2013 Films I reviewed Saving Mr. Banks for Critic’s Notebook, which does that modern thing of explaining art though the artist’s pain, rather than leaving you Nicol Williamson 2 December 2013 Films YouTube has preserved for posterity the 1968-model David Frost signalling a chat-show commercial break with the words: “…the Rolling Stones, with The Fifth Estate, Short Term 12, Gloria, Thor The Dark World, Gravity 10 November 2013 Films I reviewed The Fifth Estate over at Critic’s Notebook, a film which did nothing to persuade me that the biopic form is not currently cold on the The Satanic Rites of Bette Davis 3 November 2013 Films YouTube automatic subtitles strike again Encounters Short Film Festival 2013 1 October 2013 Films A dispatch from the Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival is in the current issue of movieScope. Meanwhile, some notes of things that I don’t Diana, Rush reviews 27 September 2013 Films Pointing out that at one point in Diana the moping title character puts on a tune and the introduction reveals that it is indeed All By Myself would The Great Beauty, Riddick reviews 15 September 2013 Films I reviewed Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty over at Critic’s Notebook, but the film is a deep lake; another review twice as long still wouldn’t Magic Magic, Only God Forgives 17 August 2013 Films Dubious use of Cab Calloway is on the major crimes list in my house, but Sebastián Silva’s surprise mobilization of Minnie The Moocher as a source The Missing Person 18 July 2013 Films at Critic’s Notebook: Rosow dreams of his dead wife posed in a recreation of Edward Hopper’s “New York Movie” with the addition Edinburgh Film Festival 2013 3 July 2013 Films Autopsying the Edinburgh International Film Festival is a short route to an unproductive week; but yes, this year seemed a characterless affair. Two Edinburgh Film festival 2013 25 June 2013 Films 1.) Between the lines of film festival management, part 94: 2011: the festival opens with The Guard. 2012: the festival opens with Killer Joe. 2013: The Purge, Byzantium 12 June 2013 Films Coverage of this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival should be along shortly. A preview of the festival was commissioned by a commercial website and Star Trek Into Darkness 8 May 2013 Films Star Trek rolled up in 2009, a year without a serious Marvel movie (the useless X-Men Origins: Wolverine does not count), so the chance to directly The Look of Love, I'm So Excited, Iron Man Three reviews 5 May 2013 Films “Well Sonia, that was classic intercourse.” Paul Raymond was long gone from the Revue Bar by the time I ever got there, but if you squinted a bit it Oblivion, Trance, Jack The Giant Slyer, Post Tenebras Lux, Olympus Has Fallen 22 April 2013 Films “There is a house above the world where the over-people gather.” Co-opting Joseph Kosinski’s new movie as a comic-book film just because he first Oz The Great and Powerful 10 March 2013 Films Mila Kunis: that ’30s show. As a warm-up for my grapple with Jack the Giant Slayer and subsequent sacrificing of a pigeon for Bryan Singer, the two To The Wonder 2 March 2013 Films I watched To the Wonder for Critic’s Notebook; at last the chance to use a Cramps reference carbon-dated to 1976. You could argue that the new-model No, Side by Side 17 February 2013 Films Taking a leaf from the Steven Soderbergh book of aggressive aesthetics, Pablo Larrain films the whole of No in 4:3 on venerable videotape, turning Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, Django Unchained 31 January 2013 Films No one caught in my vicinity when the subject of Strange Days comes up is in any doubt about my views on Kathryn Bigelow films. I reviewed Zero Dark Films of the year 2012 31 December 2012 Films For a minute there, a discussion kicked off in 2012 about whether film culture was dead, dying, comatose, reviving or healthy. But this is a vast, Skyfall review 27 October 2012 Films James Bond and M in Scotland. I would have paid actual money to make Bond turn to his boss at this point and say “It is now that time of day that I On The Road review 14 October 2012 Films A review of On the Road for Critic’s Notebook, another theoretically Unfilmable Book that was always perfectly filmable on the understanding that Terry Gilliam vs Pauline Kael 30 September 2012 Films “…If you don’t respond to Sam Lowry’s plight, the picture has no core, but it’s hard to worry about whether somebody will get killed if he doesn’t Encounters Short Film Festival 2012 27 September 2012 Films A report with some thoughts on this year’s Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival has been posted at Little White Lies. A few more: Last year, 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick vs contemporary reviews 15 September 2012 Films Andrew Sarris, WBAI Radio, New York: 2001 is one of the grimmest films I have ever seen in my life… At this point in his career, Kubrick has gone 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick vs Books Magazine 14 September 2012 Films We’ve just spent eight hours interviewing Stanley Kubrick. We’ve just spent eight hours interviewing Stanley Kubrick. “I’d rather not discuss the Dredd and Anna Karenina reviews 13 September 2012 Films I can’t bring myself to be too sorry that the makers of Dredd were compelled by circumstances to create a comicbook movie that was mostly movie and 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick vs Ernst Fuchs 6 September 2012 Films Ernst Fuchs, The Gates of Gaza (1962) Seen in The Making Of Kubrick’s 2001 (1970) 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick vs Time Magazine 4 September 2012 Films August 2, 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey has as its key character a shining oblong object symbolizing a great extraterrestrial intelligence that has Tony Scott 21 August 2012 Films On the whole Tony Scott’s movies led in directions I don’t particularly want cinema to go; but he was first out of the gate in the game of the Edinburgh Film Festival 2012 3 July 2012 Films From the Edinburgh Film Festival 2012, a first round-up for Little White Lies covering week one, give or take. And for Critic’s Notebook, five films ID Fest Derby 2012 30 May 2012 Films A weekend at Derby’s ID Fest on behalf of Little White Lies produced, among other things, a close encounter with Brian Blessed. The great man’s firm Avengers vs Justice League 4 May 2012 Films Joss Whedon made an Avengers movie, something for which I would at one time have sold my own grandmother. The whole all-you-can-eat green-screen Battleship review 17 April 2012 Films One of the few positive, thoughtful outliers amongst the wave of early negative BATTLESHIP reviews: http://t.co/pmfMfGAK — Matt Singer (@mattsinger) The raven and Bel Ami reviews 17 March 2012 Films I reviewed The Raven for Critic’s Notebook. I did this mostly because I remember coming out of The Sure Thing in 1985 convinced that John Cusack was Films of the year 2011 31 December 2011 Films Reprinted from Critic’s Notebook, the 2011 state of things. I have written rude things about Kenneth Branagh, but I never wished him a term in the Encounters Short Film Festival 2011 26 November 2011 Films A festival report that attempts to describe everything screened at a short-film festival would have to rumble on for a week. Even one limited to Albatross and Sebastian Koch 13 October 2011 Films Those caught on the receiving end of my enthusiasm for Paul Verhoeven films will be surprised that I remembered to ask Sebastian Koch about his new Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy review 24 September 2011 Films Trace almost anything interesting in new films back a bit and Alex Cox will pop up at some point. The man links Ed Harris and Miguel Sandoval with Project Nim and Bob Ingersoll 7 August 2011 Films Project Nim gives the scientific method a long withering stare, and in the process deserves a place on the Christmas lists of scientists everywhere, Chris Weitz and A Better Life 27 July 2011 Films The absence of grit in A Better Life is more about director Chris Weitz taking a thought experiment out for a spin than any lack of nerve. All the Edinburgh Film Festival 2011, 2010, 2009 1 July 2011 Films The 65th Edinburgh International Film Festival was what it was. Some of the well-publicised flaws were not technically disasters, just a substantial Mr Nice review 27 April 2011 Films Last year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, which now looks a lot like a warm-up for this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, Dust Devil diary 12 April 2011 Films To go with notes on Dust Devil here, bits from Richard Stanley’s production diary via the 2006 US Subversive Cinema DVD set, which is © him and Dust Devil and Richard Stanley 10 April 2011 Films Written for The Film Talk: If the trick to being a good troublemaker is to lob your brick and promptly vanish, then Richard Stanley fits the