January 2012

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Features

#Lost and found: Spring Night, Summer Night

J.L. Anderson’s backwoods Appalachian love story is a forgotten classic of 1960s indie neorealism, says Ross Lipman

#2011: The year in review

In a strong year for arthouse cinema, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life emerged as the clear winner of the S&S poll of international critics’ best films of 2011, says Nick James

#In a lonely place: North Korea’s Pyongyang International Film Festival

What films are you allowed to see in North Korea, the world’s most secretive country? James Bell hands in his mobile phone and reports from the Pyongyang International Film Festival

Review of the year

Nick James introduces the results of Sight & Sound’s annual poll for best film of the year

PLUS 60 contributors from around the world on their top-five films and other highlights of 2011

Cover feature: The sound of silents

Michel Hazanavicius tells James Bell why his affectionate tribute to early Hollywood, The Artist, had to be a silent movie

PLUS Bryony Dixon on the myth of the silent-movie stars whose careers were scuppered by sound

The illusionist

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is not just a 3D adaptation of a hit children’s novel, but a magical tribute to Georges Méliès and the early days of cinema. By Ian Christie

Peach perfect

The most glorious of MGM musicals, Meet Me in St. Louis has hidden depths, says Richard Dyer

PLUS Kay Dickinson on Ken Russell’s The Boy Friend, an MGM musical with a very British twist

Forget me not

The case of a Londoner who lay dead and undiscovered in her flat inspired Carol Morley’s Dreams of a Life. The director talks to Nick Bradshaw

A nose for the grey areas

British documentarist Molly Dineen has turned her camera on everyone from prime ministers to zookeepers. She talks to Poppy Simpson

God’s lonely man

After lampooning Berlusconi in his last satire, Nanni Moretti takes on the Vatican with We Have a Pope. He talks to Nick James

Zones of conflict

In documentary, drama and his distinctive blend of the two, director Peter Kosminsky has never shied away from controversy. He talks to Mark Duguid on the eve of a BFI retrospective of his work

Fellow travellers

The prizewinning road movie Las acacias announces the arrival of the latest new directing talent from Argentina. Pablo Giorgelli talks to Mar Diestro-Dópido

Selected reviews

#Film review: The Artist

Moving on from his OSS 117 James Bond spoofs, French entertainer Michel Hazanavicius has found novelty magic in the style and lore of silent Hollywood. Tony Rayns finds resonances in unexpected places

#Film of the month: Mysteries of Lisbon

Raúl Ruiz, who died in August, has left behind a magisterial four-hour saga set in 19th-century Portugal that serves as a fittingly elegant summation of his life’s work. Jonathan Romney explores the Mysteries of Lisbon

#Film review: We Have a Pope

Nanni Moretti’s tragi-comic story of a newly elected pope on the run is no toothless satire of organised religion, says Catherine Wheatley, but a bittersweet portrait of age, fate and fallibility

#DVD: Miklós Jancsó - cinema’s lost language

Miklós Jancsó’s ‘musicals’ use songs, crowds and landscape to express social struggle, writes Jonathan Romney

Reviews in this issue:

  • Las acacias
  • Another Earth
  • Arthur Christmas
  • The Artist
  • Film review: The Artist
  • Dreams of a Life
  • DVD: Miklós Jancsó - cinema’s lost language
  • Ghett’a Life
  • How to Stop Being a Loser
  • The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)
  • Immortals
  • In Time
  • Justice
  • Machine Gun Preacher
  • My Week with Marilyn
  • Film of the month: Mysteries of Lisbon
  • Film of the month: Mysteries of Lisbon
  • Paranormal Activity 3
  • Puss in Boots
  • Revenge A Love Story
  • Romantics Anonymous
  • Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
  • Surviving Life
  • Texas Killing Fields
  • The Thing
  • Tower Heist
  • Trespass
  • A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
  • Film review: We Have a Pope
  • Welcome to the Rileys
  • The Well Digger’s Daughter
  • Wreckers
  •  
  • DVD feature: Jonathan Romney on music and social struggle in the films of Hungary’s Miklós Jancsó
  • DVD feature: Kim Newman revisits 1970s student satire Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs
  • DVD feature: Tim Lucas celebrates Maria Montez, ‘Queen of Technicolor’
  • DVD: Cannibal Holocaust
  • DVD: Daytime Drinking
  • DVD: French Cancan
  • DVD: Hammett
  • DVD: Hawaii Five-O: Season 1
  • DVD: Films by Imamura Shohei
  • DVD: Aki Kaurismäki’s Leningrad Cowboys
  • DVD: The Last Run
  • DVD: The Nickel Ride/99 and 44/100% Dead
  • DVD: No Blade of Grass
  • DVD: Poetry
  • DVD: Films by Ken Russell
  • DVD: Silent Running
  • DVD: 12 Angry Men
  • DVD: A Very Peculiar Practice
  • DVD: West Side Story
  •  
  • Book: Nick Pinkerton assesses the critical legacy of Pauline Kael, the subject of a new biography and collection
  • Book: Michael Atkinson is mystified why anyone would want to read an autobiography by Roger Ebert
  • Book: Nick Roddick is stimulated and baffled by an unclassifiable study of director Vincent Ward
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011