Film

Betrayed By Our Nature: Ben Wheatley’s In The Earth

In a world where our relationship to safety is changing beyond repair, Ben Wheatley’s In The Earth offers a bombastic psychedelic escape. But, asks Kiran Acharya, are we emerging into heaven or hell?

Offline Objects: Terre Thaemlitz Interviewed

To celebrate the release of biographical film 'Terre Thaemlitz: Give Up On Hopes And Dreams', Blaise Radley sat down with the inimitable Terre Thaemlitz

Gwyneth Paltrow On Food Stamps: Shiva Baby, Sex Work And Suburbia

Emma Seligman's feature debut about a young Jewish woman navigates the excruciating suburbs and overbearing family with rare wit and authenticity, finds Leila Sackur

Dream A Little Dream: Beautiful Thing, Pride And Thatcher’s Shadow

Hettie MacDonald's 1996 coming-of-age film Beautiful Thing does a rare thing: it gives a gay couple a happy ending. Matt St. Clair writes on the film's enduring bravery

Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry And The Body in Pain

RJ Cutler's Apple documentary about Billie Eilish introduces the world to a global superstar, but pays crucial attention to the body in pain as a means of understanding her work, finds Savina Petkova

Mistaken For A Man: On The Emptiness Of Bob Odenkirk’s Nobody

Bob Odenkirk plays yet another middle-aged man with a midlife crisis in Nobody, a dad-action film that commits neither to its straightforward violence nor its critique, finds Steve Erickson

Is This Bitch For Real? Black And White Fashion In Cruella And Beyond

The release of Disney's Cruella offers another opportunity to examine a history of black and white fashion on film – and speaks to our neverending delight in wicked women, finds Soma Ghosh

Never Growing Up: Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World At 20

Ghost World was far from the first coming of age film, but its portrayal of unresolved cynicism and self-consciousness still resonates 20 years on, finds David Robb

Another Planet: The Quietus’ Top 20 Favourite Cinema Memories

As the UK finally prepares to reopen its cinema doors, tQ contributors remember their most precious memories that could have only happened in front of the big screen

Rewilding: How First Cow, Minari, And Nomadland Reimagine The Western

Kelly Reichardt’s forthcoming First Cow, along with Oscar darlings Nomadland and Minari, bring a fresh, environmentally minded perspective to the age-old western, finds Miriam Balanescu

A Mann’s World: Style, Masculinity And James Caan In Thief

Released 40 years ago this year, Michael Mann's debut Thief offered a prototype for the neo-noir action thriller about the American city – and it remains one of the best first features ever, finds Adam Solomons

Sisters With Transistors: Discovering Electronic Music’s Female Innovators

A new documentary is exploring the rich history of female composers at the forefront of electronic music – Madeleine Seidel speaks to director Lisa Rovner to find out more

A Deafening Glory: On Sound Of Metal And The Hell Of Noise

Darius Marder's bold debut Sound of Metal asks the viewer to understand rock and deafness as two contradictory things – but it's a complex history, finds Soma Ghosh

The Needle And The Damage Done: Christiane F. At 40

Set in the grimy pre-unification Berlin of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Einsturzende Neubauten, Christiane F. is a stylish, low-budget tale of teen heroin addicts with a cult following – now at risk of being commodified into an idea rather than anything real, finds David Robb

Don’t Look Now: Oscar Hopeful Quo Vadis Aida? Through A Bosnian Lens

Bosnia's hope for the Oscars explores the Srebrenica massacre through the eyes of a female interpreter, with filmmaker Jasmila Žbanić confronting the horrors of Yugoslav wars in a human way, finds Natasha Tripney

Beware Of Rainer Werner: The Bitter Tears Of Fassbinder’s Fans

Rainer Werner Fassbinder made some of the most vivid portrayals of women and LGBTQ+ lives in cinema history. He was also, as a new biopic makes clear, an abusive bully. Fassbinder fan Rachel Pronger unpicks a complicated legacy

The Realm Of The Senses: Blow Out And Cutter’s Way At 40

Two films released in 1981 unveil an American system that's irredeemably corrupt: Blow Out and Cutter's Way – one an unabashed thriller, the other a languorous character study, finds Patrick Preziosi

Inside The Heterotopia: Notes On Voguing With Beethoven

In celebration of Beethoven's 250th jubilee, Seeham Rahman explores how queer identity and ballroom culture reflects the composer's identity as an outcast in Emilie Norenberg's debut short film

More Than An Emblem: The United States Vs. Billie Holiday

Lee Daniels' gorgeous star-spangled biopic of Billie Holiday honours the incomparable artist, but risks reducing her to a shiny, heroic emblem more than the harsh-throated contradiction she was, finds Soma Ghosh

Humans After All: Daft Punk Said Goodbye With The Film Baring Their Soul

Daft Punk announced their split with an eight-minute video taken from the end of their avant-garde film Electroma which offers the key to understanding their whole oeuvre, finds Ryan Ninesling

Running Away: Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy In Gay Cinema

Bronski Beat's 1984 floor-filler 'Smalltown Boy' has travelled through cinema as a marker as gay cultural subjectivities since 1986's Parting Glances. Jack King maps the song's onscreen history and its reckoning with the queer tension between love and death

Creating A New World: Summer Of Soul And The Black Consciousness Revolution

One of the breakout hits from Sundance 2021, Questlove's energising concert movie-cum-historical artefact offers a re-canonisation of the Black perspective in American history, finds Luke Hicks

Happy Together: Wong Kar-Wai And The History Of Hong Kong Migrant Cinema

The centrepiece of Wong Kar-wai's melancholy drama Happy Together is a raw depiction of gay romance, but it speaks to the filmmaker's wider fascination with Hong Kong migrant cinema, finds Ian Wang

What Does The Future Hold? An Interview With Adam Curtis

One of the most idiosyncratic documentary filmmakers working today, Adam Curtis has returned with an audacious study of our current climate in a six-part BBC series. Michael J. Brooks meets Curtis to find out more

Hollywood Killed The Reality Star: Lana Turner At 100

To mark what would have been the centenary of Hollywood actress Lana Turner, Rory O'Connor looks back on the star's legacy: inspiring reality-star gossip before the world knew what it even was

No Image: A King Rocker Conversation with Stewart Lee, Michael Cumming And Robert Lloyd

Michael Cumming and Stewart Lee bring the story of Robert Lloyd and The Nightingales through insightful, lively conversations – and Neil Fox has one of his own with all three to celebrate the release

Sundance 2021: On The Poignancy Of Two Accidental Pandemic Films

The slew of titles reckoning with the cataclysmic change of the last year was inevitable, but the most effective films are those made with other motives that earn accidental poignancy, finds Ella Kemp

Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream: A 400-Film Collage About Our Anxious Present

Almost a year into the pandemic, a 400-film collage is now reflecting our overwhelming reality, rather than offering any release. Igor Fishman writes on 'Just Don't Think I'll Scream', and how the fun of binge-watching has started to curdle

The People’s Pyramid: Paul Duane On KLF Film ‘Welcome To The Dark Ages’

A new documentary by Paul Duane chronicles the attempts of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, aka The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu, aka The KLF, to build an enormous pyramid in Liverpool

Love In The Age Of Corona: Digital Intimacy At London Short Film Festival

This year's London Short Film Festival reckoned with our housebound circumstances to explore ideas of digital intimacy using found footage, finds Mary Beth McAndrews

How London Short Film Festival Speaks To Our Collective Rootlessness

This year's virtual edition of the London Short Film Festival understands our fraught definitions of home more than ever, Madeleine Seidel finds across several key titles

Let’s Waste Some Time: Quietus Best Movie Moments Of 2020