Sundance Film Festival 2023
Feb 16, 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
Dec 20, 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
Dec 3, 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
Sep 15, 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
Jul 6, 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!
Jun 13, 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
Apr 5, 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
Mar 27, 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
Feb 5, 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
Jan 29, 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
Dec 3, 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
Nov 5, 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
Oct 7, 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
Aug 23, 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
Aug 2, 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
May 28, 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
May 25, 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
Mar 27, 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
Mar 21, 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
Mar 15, 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
Jan 22, 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
Dec 11, 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
Nov 28, 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
Oct 19, 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
Sep 15, 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
Aug 30, 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
Jul 28, 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
Jun 16, 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
May 15, 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
Mar 30, 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
Mar 1, 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
Feb 23, 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
Jan 1, 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
Dec 2, 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
Nov 28, 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
Oct 8, 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
Sep 30, 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
Aug 23, 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
Aug 9, 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
Jul 13, 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
Jul 6, 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
Jun 20, 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
Jun 15, 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
Jun 10, 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
May 12, 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
May 1, 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
Mar 18, 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
Mar 11, 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
Mar 7, 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
Feb 21, 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
Feb 12, 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
Dec 11, 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
Dec 10, 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
Nov 29, 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
Nov 20, 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
Oct 28, 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
Oct 14, 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
Oct 9, 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
Sep 26, 2018
Films
Great faces in The Moderns. But Linda Fiorentino first among equals
Sicario 2 Soldado
Aug 7, 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
Jul 29, 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
Jul 1, 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
Apr 14, 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
Mar 23, 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
Feb 5, 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
Jan 8, 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
Dec 7, 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
Oct 19, 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
Sep 2, 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
Aug 19, 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
Jul 24, 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
Jun 12, 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
Apr 28, 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
Mar 28, 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
Mar 6, 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
Jan 10, 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
Nov 4, 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
Sep 28, 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
Aug 15, 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
Aug 4, 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
Jun 27, 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
May 22, 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
May 14, 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
Apr 1, 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
Mar 8, 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
Dec 16, 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
Dec 3, 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
Nov 10, 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
Oct 21, 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
Oct 7, 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
Sep 7, 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
Jul 21, 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
Jul 6, 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
Jun 6, 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
Apr 12, 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
Mar 6, 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
Jan 29, 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
Dec 19, 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
Dec 4, 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
Nov 4, 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
Oct 24, 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
Oct 7, 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
Oct 4, 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
Sep 6, 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
Aug 30, 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
Aug 29, 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
Aug 10, 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
Jul 17, 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
Jul 4, 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
May 24, 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
May 21, 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
Apr 30, 2014
Films
In 1983, playing 1935. In 2006, playing 1951
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Apr 29, 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
Apr 17, 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
Mar 5, 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)
Feb 12, 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
Jan 25, 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
Jan 1, 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
Dec 13, 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
Dec 2, 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
Nov 10, 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
Nov 3, 2013
Films
YouTube automatic subtitles strike again
Encounters Short Film Festival 2013
Oct 1, 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
Sep 27, 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
Sep 15, 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
Aug 17, 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
Jul 18, 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
Jul 3, 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
Jun 25, 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
Jun 12, 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
May 8, 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
May 5, 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
Apr 22, 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
Mar 10, 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
Mar 2, 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
Feb 17, 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
Jan 31, 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
Dec 31, 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
Oct 27, 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
Oct 14, 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
Sep 30, 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
Sep 27, 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
Sep 15, 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
Sep 14, 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
Sep 13, 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
Sep 6, 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
Sep 4, 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
Aug 21, 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
Jul 3, 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
May 30, 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
May 4, 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
Apr 17, 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
Mar 17, 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
Dec 31, 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
Nov 26, 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
Oct 13, 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
Sep 24, 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
Aug 7, 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
Jul 27, 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
Jul 1, 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
Apr 27, 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
Apr 12, 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
Apr 10, 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