Author Spotlight

Jonathan Romney

Jonathan Romney is a critic based in London. He writes for Sight and Sound, Screen Daily, the Observer, the Financial Times, and Film Comment, and is a visiting lecturer at the National Film and Television School. His books include Atom Egoyan (British Film Institute) and a collection of criticism, Short Orders: Film Writing (Serpent’s Tail).

6 Results
The Beat That My Heart Skipped: Out of Sync

Jacques Audiard’s Paris-set drama about small-time hoodlum with musical ambitions crystallized his identity as an artist with a high degree of confidence and control.

By Jonathan Romney

Moonage Daydream: “Who Is He? What Is He?”

Brett Morgen’s portrait of David Bowie is a free-associative hybrid of pop history and imaginative extravaganza—impressionistic, eclectically allusive, and, above all, immersive.

By Jonathan Romney

Insomnia: Unbearable Lightness

Erik Skjoldbjærg’s sun-drenched noir follows a detective trying to conceal his amoral actions amid unforgiving daylight.

By Jonathan Romney

The Double Life of Véronique:
Through the Looking Glass

When Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Double Life of Véronique was first screened at Cannes, in 1991, the critical reception was rapturous. Georgia Brown declared in the Village Voice, “Anything I say about [the film] is merely a labored minuet dance…

By Jonathan Romney

Trafic: Watching the Wheels

Linguistic cosmopolitanism in the Babel-like world of commerce and culture is one of Jacques Tati’s several satirical targets.

By Jonathan Romney

La Jetée: Unchained Melody
Taking the form of apocalyptic science fiction typical of the Cold War era, Chris Marker’s singular film is simultaneously a philosophical fiction, genre exercise, and treatise on cinematic time.

By Jonathan Romney