Sound On Sight / Sordid Cinema

Rian Johnson's hotly anticipated third feature, Looper, is finally upon us, and Julian rejoins Ricky and Simon after a brief absence in order to tackle Johnson's knotty time-travel actioner in both spoiler-free and spoiler-ful flavors. Following that and our latest Under the Radar segment, we do a bit of time-travelling ourselves, back to 1979, to take a look at Nicholas Meyer's Time After Time, in which H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper become unstuck in time.

For the latest in our marathon of Sordid Cinema 'casts, we take a look at two highlights of the Fantastic Fest lineup. First up is Peter Strickland's audio-nerd dreamland Berberian Sound Studio, starring Toby Jones as a UK sound engineer who finds himself working on a particularly nasty giallo. Next up is a movie that's been making waves since Cannes: Leos Carax's Holy Motors, which may very well defeat us in our attempts to even properly describe it.

As the Remakeathon continues unabated, it seems inevitable that someone would give the Judge Dredd series another crack, especially since the Sylvester Stallone / Rob Schneider attempt was generally deemed not so hot. (Who'd have guessed?) Dredd 3D finds Karl Urban donning the helmet, and Ricky D and Simon fly sans third host to tackle the new flick, along with re-running their older review of the original Dredd adaptation with special guest Derek Gladu.

Paul Thomas Anderson's much-anticipated dual character study The Master is finally upon us, having just enjoyed its proper North American premiere at TIFF. Julian, Ricky and Simon offer an epic take on the new film, along with a rewind back to the beloved 70s-porn ensemble pic Boogie Nights, as well asthe latest installment of our newest segment, Under the Radar.

With TIFF over and done with, a huge number of noteworthy films have to be parsed, and first up is the "subjective documentary" Room 237, in which a host of obsessives muse over their pet theories on what Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is really about. Ricky D and Simon Howel are joined by special guest Corey Atad, who helps us survey the madness. Afterwards, we kick off our new Under the Radar segment, spotlighting whatever cultural detritus we happen to be digging this week.

With the notion of film canonization once again at issue, we thought it might be an appropriate occasion to check in on our staff’s collective opinion of the greatest films of all time. The results were, appropriately, eclectic, ranging from acknowledged cornerstones to contemporary classics. Starting today on the Sound On Sight podcast, we will begin reviewing each of the ten films that landed on our list, two at a time, for the next five weeks. Today we discuss Modern Times a 1936 comedy by Charlie Chaplin that has his iconic Little Tramp character struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. After which we review 12 Angry Men, a brilliant courtroom drama whose strength lies within the power of Reginald Rose's words and Sidney Lumet's great direction. Replacing both Julian and Simon (who are currently in full swing at TIFF), is guests Josh Spiegel (of the Mousterpiece podcast), and other SOS contributor Deepayan Sengupta.

Director John Hillcoat reteams with writer and musician Nick Cave for their third collaboration, the Prohibition-era quasi-historical actioner Lawless, with Tom Hardy, Shia Laboeuf, Jason Clarke, Gardy Oldman, and a particularly cartoonish Guy Pearce; Simon Howell is joined by regular co-host Julian Carrington and special guest Josh Spiegel of Mousterpiece Cinema to see if the movie measures up to their last team effort, the grim Aussie western The Proposition. After that, Josh is swapped out for SOS contributor Ty Landis, who joins Simon and Julian for an in-depth preview of this year's Toronto International Film Festival, including some discussion of anticipated flicks as well as some highlights of films we've caught an early look at.

If you've been following Sound on Sight for any length of time, you'll know that, for all of our love and affection for arthouse and foreign film, not to mention documentaries, we love a good terrible action film. So we thought it might be fun to check in on Sylvester Stallone's latest ensemble action pic, The Expendables 2, directed by Simon West (Con Air, The Mechanic). After that, we take a look back at True Romance, Tony Scott's cult actioner (scripted by Quentin Tarantino), in the wake of Scott's death this past week. Ricky D and Simon Howell are joined by guest host Deepayan Sangupta.

Last week, we got to talking about the Sight and Sound poll, as well as its critics' list topper, Vertigo. This week we switch gears to discuss Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, which topped the filmmakers' poll. That happens to lead into a discussion about whether a great film is always necessarily one that rewards regular revisiting; before that, though, we take on Craig Zobel's Compliance, a new true-crime indie thriller that has divided some audiences and critics.

Unless you've been under a rock for the last week, you probably heard that Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo unseated Citizen Kane for the #1 spot on Sight & Sound's critics' poll of the greatest films of all time. Ricky D, Justine Smith, and Simon Howell weigh that result along with Vertigo itself before tackling one of the year's most acclaimed films, the Sundance breakout Beasts of the Southern Wild, as well as each taking a crack at the best flicks of '12 so far.

Sound on Sight's misshapen relative Sordid Cinema is finally back with a new episode, and it's a doozy: William Friedkin, famed director of The Exorcist and The French Connection, has undergone a bit of career rehabilitation these past few years, thanks to his collaborations with playwright Tracy Letts. On this episode, Ricky D, Simon Howell and special guest Justin Li tackle their two cinematic encounters: Bug, which introduced the world to the errant ways of Michael Shannon, and the new Killer Joe, an NC-17 Southern-fried neo-noir graced with some truly debauched material.

This episode is coming to you a little late due to a technical issue. Apologies! The most anticipated movie of the summer season arrived this past weekend, and we're taking it on in a supersized format. Regular hosts Ricky D, Simon Howell and Julian Carrington are joined by new SOSer Ty Landis for a two-part (spoiler free / spoiler-ful) take on Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, the nearly three-hour capper to his Batman trilogy. Some of the topics evoked include: Dickens, class warfare, silly accents, Gotham weather patterns, and the possible future of the cinematic Batman.

On episode 327 of the Sound On Sight podcast, guest host and SOS contributor Al White joins us to discuss both The Amazing Spider-Man directed by Marc Webb and Sam Raimi's Spiderman film. Al also drops the details on his latest short film titled Spider-Man Eclipse.

With the release of Channing Tatum Stripper Movie, aka Magic Mike, we take another look at director Steven Soderbergh, whose filmography is among the most diverse in American cinematic history. Ricky, Julian, and Simon tackle the new flick, as well as taking a look back at Soderbergh's first feature, the pioneering 1989 American indie Sex, Lies and Videotape.

After a slow North American rollout following its Cannes premiere, Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom has finally been seen by all four SOS hosts - Ricky, Julian, Justine, and Simon - so we figured we'd all throw our critical hats in the ring for an epic humdinger of a review. Following that, we take on Hal Ashby's 1971 dark comedy and cult classic Harold and Maude, which definitely shares some connective tissue with Anderson's new movie, and is the recipient of a shiny new Criterion DVD/Blu-ray release.