Features

Cover feature: All she desires

 

With Todd Haynes’s five-part miniseries of James M. Cain’s novel Mildred Pierce – already the inspiration for a 1945 film – HBO has produced a work of truly cinematic ambition, says Paul Julian Smith

PLUS Haynes tells Isabel Stevens how HBO gave him space to explore female experience in a way today’s Hollywood would never allow

 

Sculpting in time

 

Perhaps more than any other film, Alain Resnais’s Last Year in Marienbad lays itself open to esoteric interpretation. To celebrate its rerelease, Brian Dillon maps the film’s relationship to sculpture

PLUS Keith Reader uncovers the SM subtext beneath the elegance

 

Flesh, blood, passion

 

Director Bertrand Tavernier has a flair for turning historical research into vivid drama, as he shows once again with The Princess of Montpensier. He talks to Demetrios Matheou

 

Listen to Britain

 

A new DVD collection of films documenting British folk culture evokes a lost world for Philip Hoare

PLUS Folk singer Shirley Collins remembers the pioneering field work of Alan Lomax and Peter Kennedy

 

Between thought and expression

 

Poetry is the first of Lee Chang-Dong’s films to secure big-screen release in the UK. But since his debut 15 years ago, the writer-director has played a crucial role in South Korea’s cultural and political life, says Tony Rayns

 

Great wide open

 

Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’avventura is now more influential than ever, argues Robert Koehler in the latest of our series on ‘top ten’ contenders for next year’s Sight & Sound poll

 

Art for art’s sake

 

When the Japanese distributor Art Theatre Guild turned to production in the late 1960s, it unleashed a wave of extraordinary work from Japan’s boldest filmmakers – Oshima, Imamura, Terayama and many more. Alexander Jacoby surveys its legacy

 

Selected reviews

Reviews in this issue:

• Bad Teacher
• Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
• Film review: Beginners
• Bobby Fischer against the World
• Born to Be Wild 3D
• Break My Fall
• Breath Made Visible
• Cell 211
• Dancing Dreams
• Film Socialisme
• The Flaw
• Green Lantern
• Hobo with a Shotgun
• Holy Rollers
• Honey/Bal
• Huge
• Kung Fu Panda 2
• Larry Crowne
• Last Night
• The Light Thief
• Poetry
• The Princess of Montpensier
• The Round Up
• Sawako Decides
• Screwed
• Super
• Swinging with the Finkels
• Film of the month: Treacle, Jr.
• Film review: The Tree of Life
• Trust
• Viva Riva!
• X-Men First Class
• Zookeeper
•  
• DVD: Szindbád
• DVD: Nick Pinkerton on Fassbinder’s flawed but fascinating Despair
• DVD: Tim Lucas revists Joseph Losey’s The Romantic Englishwoman
• DVD: L’Age d’or
• DVD: Beauty and the Beast – Season 1
• DVD: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
• DVD: Cross of Iron
• DVD: Faccia a faccia
• DVD: The Halfway House
• DVD: A High Wind in Jamaica
• DVD: Java Head / Tiger Bay
• DVD: Jemima Shore Investigates
• DVD: The Kingdom I & II
• DVD: The Kremlin Letter
• DVD: Laila
• DVD: The Miners’ Hymns
• DVD: Night Flight
• DVD: People on Sunday
• DVD: Rififi
• DVD: Skidoo
• DVD: Stressed Eric
• DVD: Taking Off
• DVD: Who Can Kill a Child?
•  
• Books: Kim Newman hails a definitive biography of Boris Karloff
• Books: Sophie Mayer welcomes the reappearance of Born in Flames as a hybrid graphic novel
• Books: Paolo Cherchi Usai samples a revealing selection of 100 Silent Films
• Books: Brad Stevens is surprised by a re-evaluation of the films of unsung 1970s/80s director James Bridges