Little White Lies

Released 17 JANUARY This is the epigraph that author Kurt Vonnegut uses to launch his 1963 masterpiece ‘Cat’s Cradle’, hooked to the fictional religion of Bokonism. Terrence Malick is a Christian rather than a Bokonist, yet the faith he explores in A

The actors discuss working with one of cinema’s most brilliant and elusive artists, Terrence Malick. The last print interview given by writer/director Terrence Malick was published in 1979, shortly after Days of Heaven confounded critics and audience

Want to develop your skills as an editor, cinematographer or screenwriter? London Film School’s two-year MA Filmmaking course trains students to a professional level in a full range of filmmaking disciplines. It’s the perfect place to learn your craf

”He was handsomer than anybody I’d ever met. He looked just like James Dean.” To 15-year-old Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek), the sun rises and sets on Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen). He’s a misfit, a 25-year-old garbage collector with an abundance of pec

”Me and my brother, it just used to be me and my brother. We used to do things together. We used to have fun.” In Days of Heaven, you hear Linda Manz before you see her. Or, at least, that’s how it seems. In the opening credits, director Terrence Mal

Terrence Malick’s 1998 film The Thin Red Line begins with a shot of a crocodile slowly submerging its sizeable girth into a waterhole choked with vibrant green duckweed. As the croc disappears from view, birdsong of the jungle is drowned out by Hans

Before his 21st century turn towards contemporary subjects and settings with To the Wonder (2012) Terrence Malick had always been a historical filmmaker, albeit a singular and unusual one, less interested in the hard facts than in mapping a series of

In 2011, shortly after I attempted suicide and was diagnosed with major depression disorder (MDD), I bought a pirated copy of The Tree of Life from a guy who told me it was “a great nature documentary.” He said, “The director is American, he is very

Although many critics may think they have his style pegged down, Terrence Malick constantly proves himself to be an evolving, formally adventurous filmmaker who resists easy categorisation. Up until 2011’s The Tree of Life, there was a fixed idea of

My mother-in-law loves to watch nature documentaries on TV, and does so when she comes over to stay. I’ll often lift a beady eye up from my laptop, especially when there are otters in the mix. But in the main, these types of mass-audience nature film

The confession that opens Terrence Malick’s Austin-set 2017 film Song to Song points to the desperate emotional malaise experienced by Faye (Rooney Mara). Her desire to make a connection pushes her to extremes. “I went through a period when sex had t

You don’t have to be devoutly Christian, or even remotely religious for that matter, to appreciate the chief theological concerns of A Hidden Life. But while Terrence Malick’s stirring sacramental epic can be distilled to the fundamental struggle bet

We’re stuck in the middle. The starry skies above us, the barren earth beneath. Raise one arm to sense the divine, lower the other to feel the ground’s emptiness. Make yourself a channel of love and submit to its will. 2012’s To the Wonder is Malick’

Willem Dafoe is one of those actors who somehow manages to be compelling even when he’s performing mundane tasks such as painting – which we’ve witnessed him do on two separate occasions in recent years, in Sean Baker’s The Florida Project and Julian

Directed by ROBERT EGGERS Starring WILLEM DAFOE ROBERT PATTINSON VALERIIA KARAMAN Released 31 JANURARY While Robert Eggers’ 2017 film The Witch explored the insidious effect of fairy tales on a small God-fearing community, the writer/director’s follo

Directed by BONG JOON-HO Starring SONG KANG-HO LEE SUN-KYUN CHO YEO-JEONG Released 7 FEBRUARY It’s often said by people who don’t have a lot of money that money is the root of all evil. In actuality, the Bible verse (Timothy 6:10, if you were wonderi

Directed by BENEDICT ANDREWS Starring KRISTEN STEWART, ANTHONY MACKIE, JACK O’CONNELL Released 10 JANUARY It brings us no pleasure whatsoever to deliver the news that Seberg, a stilted and slight biopic of the Iowa-born screen icon Jean Seberg, is so

Directed by DESTIN DANIEL CRETTON Starring BRIE LARSON, MICHAEL B JORDAN, JAMIE FOXX Released 17 JANUARY Walter McMillian spent six years on death row between 1988 and 1993 for a crime he did not commit. For almost the entire length of his sentence,

Directed by SHENGZE ZHU Released 24 JANUARY China’s live-streaming industry is booming. Expected to generate 75 billion yuan (approx £8bn) by the end of 2019, the live-streaming market is home to streamers specialising in just about every subject ima

Directed by ADAM EGYPT MORTIMER Starring MILES ROBBINS, PATRICK SCHWARZENEGGER, SASHA LANE Released 7 JANUARY It is all in the title. Lots of films – which won’t be named here to avoid spoiling – only reveal the imaginary nature of a character’s ‘inv

Directed by JESSICA HAUSNER Starring EMILY BEECHAM BEN WHISHAW KERRY FOX Released 21 FEBRUARYA Actor Emily Beecham is styled to resemble an exotic flower in Jessica Hausner’s acetic paranoid psychodrama Little Joe. Her hair is formed into an opulent

Being centred around a team of botanists, led by Emily Beecham’s Alice, who have developed a new strain of flower which emits an endorphin-boosting scent (with predictably unexpected results), Jessica Hausner’s Little Joe is, on the surface at least,

Directed by CLINT EASTWOOD Starring PAUL WALTER HAUSER SAM ROCKWELL KATHY BATES Released 31 JANUARY In Atlanta’s Centennial Park, a roar rises from the crowd as they recognise the downbeat of the ‘Macarena’. Dressed in jorts and wide-striped shirts,

Directed by MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM Starring STEVE COOGAN ISLA FISHER ASA BUTTERFIELD Released 21 FEBRUARY Low prices exact a high cost in Greed, writer/director Michael Winterbottom’s satire of the fast fashion industry. Everything noxious about capita

Directed by MELINA MATSOUKAS Starring DANIEL KALUUYA, JODIE TURNER-SMITH, BOKEEM WOODBINE Released 31 JANUARY One of the side characters in Queen & Slim describes the two outlaws of the title as “the black Bonnie and Clyde”. As with the film that kic

Directed by MAKOTO SHINKAI Starring KOTARO DAIGO, NANA MORI, SEI HIRAIZUMI Released 17 JANUARY Rain has always been a prominent natural force in the work of Japanese animation director Makoto Shinkai’s, emblematic of a sort of spiritual connection be

Directed by JAY ROACH Starring MARGOT ROBBIE CHARLIZE THERON NICOLE KIDMAN Released 17 JANUARY As the theme of social justice has become sufficiently topical to bring audiences into cinemas, there has been a glut of films with a single issue as their

The mere existence of Icelandic cinema is fascinating in and of itself, especially given the country’s tiny population of just over 360,000. Not only does this unique local cinema exist, but it does so on a relatively large scale, and on a level of q

Directed by CÉLINE SCIAMMA Starring NOÉMIE MERLANT ADÈLE HAENEL LUÀNA BAJRAMI Released 28 FEBRUARY One of the first things they teach in life-drawing classes is that you should look at your subject more than your paper. By looking, you learn the esse

After concluding her trilogy of coming-of-age films – composed of Water Lilies, Tomboy and Girlhood – Céline Sciamma has returned with a story about older, more mature women. While her younger heroines navigated the wild currents of sexual fluidity i

Directed by TAKASHI MIIKE Starring BECKY SAKURAKO KONISHI MASATAKA KUBOTA Released 14 FEBRUARY “Things are getting complicated,” young, low-ranking yakuza Kase (Shōta Sometano) tells corruptible police detective Otomo (Nao Omori, who you may recognis

Directed by ARMANDO IANNUCCI Starring DEV PATEL HUGH LAURIE TILDA SWINTON Released 24 JANUARY On paper, yet another Charles Dickens screen adaption is an unedifying prospect. The Victorian author created some of Britain’s most memorable characters, b

To an audience of a certain age, Dev Patel is best known as Anwar, the sex-obsessed teenager from Channel 4’s 2007 comedy-drama series, Skins. In the 12 years since, he’s carved out an impressive career in film, rising to international acclaim with l

Directed by SUHAIB GASMELBARI Released 31 JANUARY A blackout in Khartoum motivates a group of elderly ex-filmmakers to recreate a scene from Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. in which Gloria Swanson saunters down some stairs. Through a joyfulness rooted in

Directed by LUKE LORENTZEN Released 21 FEBRUARY A police radio reveals an incident. Seventeen-year-old ambulance driver Juan Ochoa’s eyes widen and, within seconds, he’s flicked the switch on his makeshift siren, slammed the ambulance’s gearstick int

Directed by SAM MENDES Starring GEORGE MCKAY DEAN-CHARLES CHAPMAN COLIN FIRTH Released 10 JANUARY Stories. Sometimes it’s simply the way you tell ’em. You could look to the hear-tin-mouth beach landing scene in Saving Private Ryan, or the chilling de

Directed by RICHARD STANLEY Starring NICOLAS CAGE Q’ORIANKA KILCHER JOELY RICHARDSON Released 28 FEBRUARY There’s an inherent problem in trying to adapt the writing of HP Lovecraft. The very notion of something being ‘Lovecraftian’ connotes something

Directed by TODD HAYNES Starring MARK RUFFALO ANNE HATHAWAY TIM ROBBINS Released 28 FEBRUARY There’s a scene in Todd Haynes’ Dark Waters in which corporate defence attorney-turned-environmental lawyer Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Sarah (

Something a little different from director Todd Haynes, after the lavish romatic melodrama Carol and the whimsical journey to the past that was Wonderstruck. Dark Waters is the director’s first work in the realist mode, and tells of Robert Bilott (Ma

Directed by HASSAN FAZILI Starring HASSAN FAZILI NARGIS FAZILI ZAHRA FAZILI Released 17 JANUARY A bug-bear of this writer is how frequently the term “humanising” is rolled out to distinguish a film about marginalised people – as if, until ‘X’ film, i

Directed by TERRY GILLIAM Starring ADAM DRIVER JONATHAN PRYCE OLGA KURYLENKO Released 31 JANUARY If the release of Terry Gilliam’s long delayed and much ballyhooed fantasy satire The Man Who Killed Don Quixote proves anything, it’s that not all long

Directed by JUSTIN KURZEL Starring GEORGE MACKAY ESSIE DAVIS NICHOLAS HOULT Released 28 FEBRUARY There’s a moment early on in True History of the Kelly Gang where Russell Crowe’s gruff bushranger, Harry Power, manages to lasso Charlie Hunnam’s Sergea

Directed by TREY EDWARD SHULTS Starring TAYLOR RUSSELL KELVIN HARRISON JR ALEXA DEMIE Released 17 JANUARY Trey Edward Shults makes claustrophobic family dramas of Shakespearian proportions – films that thrust difficult individuals bound by blood into

Trey Edward Shults has only made three feature films so far, but they have all made their mark. A master of uncomfortable family melodrama, he’s part of an ultra-cool clique of young directors, alongside Robert Eggers and Ari Aster, though in real li

Directed by GEORGE CUKOR Starring KATHARINE HEPBURN CARY GRANT DORIS NOLAN 1938 Released 13 JAN Blu-ray This crackling 1938 screwball comedy from George Cukor is not merely a paean to all the freaks out there; it slyly suggests that freaks make for p

Directed by JAROMIL JIRES Starring JAROSLAVA SCHALLEROVÁ HELENA ANÝZOVÁ PETR KOPRIVA 1970 Released JAN Blu-ray Coming-of-age movies tend to focus on a character being forced to kick-start their inevitable transition into maturity, and with it comes t

Directed by KING HU Starring FENG HSU YUEH SUN CHUN SHIH 1979 Released 28 FEB Blu-ray If, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, you ever decided to tot up a list of the finest action directors ever to set foot on this green earth, then Hong Kong maestro King

Directed by MICHAEL CRICHTON Starring TOM SELLECK GENE SIMMONS KIRSTIE ALLEY 1984 Released 17 FEB Blu-ray Have you ever, at any time in your life, yearned to see a film in which Tom Selleck plays a tech-savvy super cop who takes on Kiss frontman Gene

Directed by BRYAN FORBES Starring KIM STANLEY RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH JUDITH DONNER 1964 Released 13 JAN Blu-ray A biography of the actor Kim Stanley was published after her death in 2001 and the title refers to her as the “Female Brando”. While she may

Niall Grant (cover) is an illustrator from England creating intricate artwork inspired by folklore and symbolism. He has worked to create album covers, editorial and book illustrations. “It was important for the artwork to evoke the idea of martyrdom

Directed by CURTIS HARRINGTON Starring DENNIS HOPPER GAVIN MUIR LUANA ANDERS 1961 Released 27 JAN Blu-ray There’s an alternative, underground counter-history of Hollywood to be written in which Curtis Harrington is a name feted with the same rapture