January 2011

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Features

#2010: The year in review

Nick James introduces the results of this year’s annual S&S poll, in which 85 contributors from around the world pick the top five films they saw in 2010, and their other movie highlights of the past 12 months

PLUS [online exclusive]: See the complete poll of 85 entries.

#Memento mori: Of Gods and Men

Based on the true story of a group of monks in Algeria, Of Gods and Men is one of several recent films to examine links between French and Islamic culture. But it’s the film’s evocation of the monks’ inner state that really resonates, says Jonathan Romney

#Lost and found: The Liberation of L.B. Jones

With his controversial and racially charged final film The Liberation of L.B. Jones, William Wyler confounded critics and audiences alike, says Neil Sinyard

#The mark of Kane

With Sight & Sound’s once-in-a-decade Greatest Film of All Time poll looming in 2012, David Thomson launches a series of occasional debates on the canon, here wondering whether Citizen Kane will – or should – retain its top spot

Cover feature: Hotel California

Like much of her past work, Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere is set in the rarefied world of the rich and unhappy. What do her films – and reactions to them – tell us about the perils of fame, asks Hannah McGill

PLUS Isabel Stevens talks to the director about capturing the mood and light of Los Angeles

Free radical

Famous for his experiments scratching directly on to celluloid, New Zealander Len Lye was a trailblazer who moved between the cinema and the art gallery. As a major new exhibition opens, Ian Francis surveys Lye’s legacy

Counter culture

Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 classic The Shop Around the Corner fills out its romantic-comedy confection with a moving portrayal of economic desperation. As the film is rereleased in UK cinemas, Nick James dissects the ‘Lubitsch touch’

Selected reviews

#Film of the month: Monsters

Blending road-movie and sci-fi, the fantastic and the everyday, Monsters is an astonishingly assured feature debut for its young British writer, director and special-effects designer Gareth Edwards, says Nick Roddick

#Film review: On Tour

Actor-auteur Mathieu Amalric’s portrait of a New Burlesque troupe touring provincial France rings up all sorts of resonances, finds Chris Darke

#DVD: Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie

Marcel Ophuls’s film about Klaus Barbie poses profound moral questions about war and guilt, writes Nick James

Reviews in this issue:

  • Aftershock
  • The Be All and End All
  • Broken Sun
  • Burke & Hare
  • Catfish
  • Chatroom
  • Cuckoo
  • Due Date
  • Easier with Practice
  • Enemies of the People
  • Fathers of Girls
  • Fezeka’s Voice
  • For Colored Girls
  • Fred The Movie
  • In Our Name
  • Loose Cannons
  • Love & Other Drugs
  • Love Life
  • Mammoth
  • Megamind
  • Miral
  • Film of the month: Monsters
  • Of Gods and Men
  • Film review: On Tour
  • Outcast
  • Paranormal Activity 2
  • Rare Exports A Christmas Tale
  • Saw 3D
  • Secretariat
  • Skyline
  • Slackistan
  • Somewhere
  • Spiderhole
  • The Thorn in the Heart
  • Unstoppable
  • Waiting for “Superman”
  • DVD: Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011