Sight and Sound

02/10/2025

“Without waggling an eyebrow or popping a pec, Dwayne Johnson is so damn good in Benny Safdie’s biopic of MMA pioneer Mark Kerr that you kind of want to take him apart to see how he does it”

Jessica Kiang reviews The Smashing Machine. Out Friday.

By drawing on the metatext of Dwayne Johnson’s wrestling background, director Benny Safdie has created a respectful account of MMA fighter Mark Kerr that plays like a fascinating essay on physique…

30/09/2025

“At the age of 28, Dickinson has already established himself as a distinctive onscreen talent, and with this flawed but admirable film, he’s serving notice that his career behind the camera may be just as exciting to follow”

Philip Concannon reviews.

The acclaimed actor makes imaginative choices with his first feature, an exploration of addiction and homelessness led by an outstanding performance from Frank Dillane.

28/09/2025

“This is a film about friendship, not fanaticism – a ride-or-die friendship, which saved the girls in the hostile UK, but which jeopardises them as the stakes get higher”

Kate Stables reviews Brides, out now.

Nadia Fall’s film about two teenage girls fleeing their British seaside town to join ISIS recalls the exuberant portraits of teens in Girlhood (2014) and Rocks (2019), focusing on the girls’…

26/09/2025

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as an off-the-grid freedom fighter searching for his vanished teenage daughter in an absurdist action thriller that thunders along with Mad Max-like propulsion.

Nick Bradshaw reviews One Battle After Another, out now.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as an off-the-grid freedom fighter searching for his vanished teenage daughter in an absurdist action thriller that thunders along with Mad Max-like propulsion.

26/09/2025

NEW ISSUE ALERT!

“This is a movie I’ve been pursuing for decades. I was pursuing it before I had a camera, as a kid – as soon as I learned what directing was.”

Guillermo del Toro on reanimating Frankenstein in a monstrous new era

Order your copy now: https://mmslondon.co.uk/shop/p/sightandsoundmagazinenovember25

Find out what's inside: https://bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/news/sight-sound-november-2025-issue

Out for subscribers on Monday

24/09/2025

“While there’s nothing wrong with playing quixotic Gen-Z idealism for laughs, Sacrifice is finally too slick and preening to work up any real sense of anxiety over issues of personal or collective accountability”

Adam Nayman reviews.

Director Romain Gavras’s film about a self-involved movie star (Chris Evans) who is kidnapped by a group of eco-activists for a human sacrifice crams together so many visual styles, its ideas about…

22/09/2025

First-time director Usman Riaz explains how a pirate VHS tape of Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) sparked his love for animation and led to his own landmark hand-drawn feature, The Glassworker.

21/09/2025

Max Porter, the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Shy, discusses his new film with Cillian Murphy, the fine art of adaptation and the pleasurable ‘dry-stone walling’ of screenplay writing.

The author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Shy discusses his new film with Cillian Murphy, the fine art of adaptation and the pleasurable ‘dry-stone walling’ of screenplay writing.

21/09/2025

“I have very little interest in the lighter side of storytelling”: As his new film Steve hits UK cinemas, Cillian Murphy looks back over his electrifying career and explains why the richest work comes out of longstanding creative relationships.

In Steve, Cillian Murphy plays the stressed-out headmaster of a reform school. As the film hits UK cinemas, the actor looks back over his electrifying career.

20/09/2025

“No one will miss the animation’s debt to the works of Studio Ghibli: [director Usman Riaz] has clearly imbibed that influence, graphically and conceptually, and wears it on his sleeve”

Nick Bradshaw reviews The Glassworker, Pakistan’s first hand-drawn animated feature

First-time director Usman Riaz embraces the old-fashioned star-crossed romance with a beautifully animated Studio Ghibli-inspired film about a young glass-blowing artist and his lost love.

19/09/2025

“The anxious tone, staccato pacing and underlying existential malaise of the whole thing is closer to Waiting for Godot than Walk the Line (2005)”

Adam Nayman reviews Ebony & Ivory, a Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder anti-biopic from Jim Hosking.

Hosking’s wacky two-hander imagines a rendezvous with Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder, who meet at a remote ‘Scottish Cottage’ to eat veggie patties, smoke ‘doobie-woobies’ and work on an…