Sight & Sound’s top web posts of 2013

Stanley Kubrick, cinephile

On the occasion of Stanley Kubrick’s 88th birthday, Nick Wrigley explores the director’s favourite films and viewing habits with the help of Kubrick’s right-hand man, Jan Harlan.
Friday 26 July 2013

Film of the week: Iron Man Three

Zooming back in on its main techno-man – and switching hands to a different cult writer-director – the Marvel movie universe scores another irrespressible hit, reckons Kim Newman.
Friday 26 April 2013

The right-hand man: Jan Harlan on Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick’s brother-in-law, confidant and regular executive producer tells Nick Wrigley about the master’s ‘voracious curiosity’ for cinema.
Friday 26 July 2013

BFI London Film Festival 2013: 
30 recommendations

With vampires and folkies, stories from Mexico, the Philippines and Yorkshire, the BFI LFF 2013 is as multifarious as ever. Here are our favourite films so far.
Friday 13 September 2013

Film of the week: The Great Gatsby

Finally, Leo smiles again! And brings layers of resonance to lurid Baz Luhrmann’s madcap assault on Scott Fitzgerald’s glittering prize, says Nick Pinkerton.
Friday 17 May 2013

Death Tarantino style

Where is the Django Unchained auteur taking his talent, asks Kevin B. Lee?
Thursday 7 March 2013

Film of the week: Star Trek Into Darkness

The second instalment of JJ Abrams’ franchise ‘refresh’ brassily goes where the series has gone before, says Kim Newman.
Friday 10 May 2013

Film of the week: To the Wonder

Look afresh at Terrence Malick’s first contemporaneously set movie, writes Nick Pinkerton, and you’ll see gold in these visions.
Friday 22 February 2013

Film of the week: The Place Beyond the Pines

Blue Valentine writer-director Derek Cianfrance moves his ambitions up several gears with this expansive, bifurcated epic about adolescent sons and absent fathers, writes Thirza Wakefield.
Friday 12 April 2013

The essay film

Andrew Tracy explores the characteristics that have come to define this most elastic of forms, while eight more contributors highlight a dozen influential milestone essay films, from Jean Vigo to Chris Marker.
Saturday 3 August 2013

Video essay: The essay film – some thoughts of discontent

In a world bedazzled by intractable images, do we need the essay film now more than ever? Kevin B. Lee weighs up this distinctively self-aware, searching form of cinema through both video and text.
Tuesday 16 July 2013

Video: The world according to Koreeda

kogonada on how Japan’s modern master revives our taste for everyday life.
Friday 8 February 2013

The long conversation: Richard Linklater on cinema and time

kogonada looks time in the eye with the maker of Before Sunrise, Sunset and Midnight.
Monday 4 November 2013

A critical confusion

Reports of the death of cultural criticism have been greatly muddle-headed, says Brad Stevens.
Wednesday 6 November 2013

Build my gallows high: Joshua Oppenheimer on The Act of Killing

The director of one of the most astonishing films you’ll see talks to Nick Bradshaw about outing genocide, and the miasmic horror that binds us.
Tuesday 2 July 2013

Through a bottle darkly: Blue Velvet’s Freudian beers

Do beers maketh David Lynch’s men, wonders Michael Zunenshine?
Monday 1 April 2013

The best of 2013 in cinematic nonfiction

Robert Greene reflects on a triumphant year for the art of documentary.
Monday 23 December 2013

The roots of neorealism

For all its revolutionary impact, Italian neorealism did not represent a complete break with the past. Pasquale Iannone is your guide to 12 key milestones in the development of a new cinematic language.
Thursday 2 May 2013

Second youth: the golden age of Nikkatsu Studios

Jasper Sharp on how Japan’s oldest film studio became home to the country’s hippest post-war talents.
Tuesday 4 June 2013

Head trip: the animated worlds of Yamamura Kôji

Ten years ago Yamamura Kôji’s comically surreal Mt. Head put the thriving world of Japanese independent animation on the map. He looks back over his quarter-century career with Jasper Sharp.
Friday 4 January 2013

Sight & Sound: the October 2013 issue

In this issue: 40 years of The Wicker Man, plus The Great Beauty, Slavoj Žižek on cinema’s dark secrets, Claude Sautet’s noir classic Classe tous risques, Eddie Marsan’s stealthy success and James Benning on watching paint dry.

Editorial: Rough cuts

The 10 per cent cut in the BFI’s grant is five per cent more than other cultural institutions. Why, asks Nick James?
Wednesday 7 August 2013

Blockage on the line: Snowpiercer vs Scissorhands

Bong Joonho’s Snowpiercer was one of the most anticipated films of 2013. But while it has been a hit in France and Korea, English-speaking audiences won’t be able to see it for some time to come. This is more than just a case of the wrong kind of snow, reports Tony Rayns.
Friday 13 December 2013

True surrealism: Walter Benjamin and The Act of Killing

Carrie McAlinden on how Joshua Oppenheimer’s lurid incursion into Indonesia’s past horrors incarnates Walter Benjamin’s philosophies of historical awakening.
Friday 29 November 2013

Eastern Europe’s uprooted

With old structures failing a new generation of filmmakers, what are the hopes for arthouse cinema from the east, asks Verena von Stackelberg?
Friday 21 June 2013

A personal report on an adventure called film.factory

What Jonathan Rosenbaum learnt teaching at Béla Tarr’s new film school.
Thursday 18 July 2013

Film of the week: It’s Such a Beautiful Day

Cult animator Don Hertzfeldt grows up with a majestic passion play about a stickman named Bill, his mortal coil, life and the universe, writes Nick Bradshaw.
Friday 3 May 2013

Flaming the fans: in praise of DIY subtitles

On the internet, amateur subtitlers are taking commercially neglected cinema into their own hands, says Brad Stevens.
Wednesday 31 July 2013

The Grandmaster – first look

Wong Kar-wai’s first film in six years is a kung fu melodrama that spans the decades – and focusses on icicles falling, one at a time, says Nick James.
Thursday 7 February 2013

Female film reporter competition: the results

Nick Bradshaw surveys the entries – and reveals the winners – of our hunt for women film sleuths.
Wednesday 8 May 2013

Film of the week: Before Midnight

Life – middle-aged, familial, digital – has caught up with Before Sunset’s Jesse and Celine; but their love is not quite eclipsed, sees Sukhdev Sandhu.
Friday 21 June 2013