Little White Lies

It’s a truism to say that some films just grow on you, but Kelly Reichardt’s body of work does this in the most generative way. After watching her movies, they linger for days, not just growing but seeming to germinate inside you. Images that were qu

Jon Raymond is fond of a tangent. At one point in our conversation, he tells me about the recent trend in the US of Sikh drivers taking up long-haul trucking and completely transforming the industry. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you all of th

Will Oldham has been putting out music for the best part of 30 years, most often under the stage name Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. In that time he’s also appeared in a number of indie films (this despite his apparent apathy towards acting), popping up in H

Twenty seven metres underground, beneath one of the world’s busiest urban centres, is not the place you would stop to listen to birds singing. It was November 2019 and I was in Tokyo producing a podcast about legendary animation house Studio Ghibli.

Here at Little White Lies we like a bit of a thematic adjunct. When thinking about First Cow and its central story of a timid master baker impressing the hoards of an 1820s Oregonian outpost with his scrumptious oily cake, we decided that some kind o

Ajet blue colour block is split down the middle by two vapour trails; a canvas of cream-coloured clouds morph and mutate, swallowing up the edges of the frame; swollen rainy grey storm clouds slide by angrily, looking near ready to burst. These are t

Each choux bun is filled with raspberry and limoncello cream and the tower is held together with white chocolate. “In the spirit of the film’s famous climax, this is riddled red rose bullet wounds that bleed raspberry coulis and sits in a puddle of f

A layer cake with each section dyed by different combos of blue-green food colouring. The suburban vista is created with icing while the swimmer is paper. “My goal was to show the look and themes of the film in one design flourish. The layers are lit

A hand-raised horse’s head pie made with hot water crust pastry, minced pork belly, salt, pepper and a pinch of cayenne pepper. “My MO for this Godfather-inspired revenge pie was simple: to bake him (him being my esteemed editor, David Jenkins) an of

Earl grey sponge with an oatstraw tea and orange syrup, vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, hand piped sunflowers and daisies. “An 80th birthday cake for Maude, paying tribute to her desire to change into a sunflower. Both beautiful and delicious eno

A triple-layered wholewheat vanilla cake filled and topped with painted Swiss meringue buttercream, fondant locusts and wheat-stalk detailing. “To convey the painterly sweep of the film’s Texan tableaux, I approached the cake as a landscape painting,

An anatomical heart rendered in red velvet cake, with raspberry white chocolate serving as icing and a blood-red cream cheese frosting. “I wanted to create something audacious to honour Bob Fosse”s semi-autobiographical tale of sex and drugs and Broa

It’s been an exciting few years for fans of British horror. Matthew Holness’ Possum, Remi Weekes’ His House and Rose Glass’ Saint Maud are just a couple of the films that have thrilled audiences in recent memory, and now Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor is

A stacked wedding cake with pillars, made of vanilla sponge cake with a tangy cream cheese frosting, sprinkled with desiccated coconut. “Robert de Niro’s ‘This is this’ in Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter is an injunction to get real that jars with t

Released 28 MAY Tales of Earthsea and From Up on Poppy Hill are criminally underrated. 4 The CG animation creates a 3D world for Ghibli’s latest heroine to charm our hearts. 4 A perfect blend of old and new and a delightful update to the Ghibli formu

Released 25 JUNE Robert Altman’s masterpiece gets the 4K restoration treatment. 5 A stunning, epic layering of music and delusion. 5 Still a hauntingly relevant satire about America’s obsession with access. 5 “We must be doing something right to last

Released 18 JUNE An odd bird, Ben Wheatley. Since his 2009 debut Down Terrace, he’s cemented his reputation as one of the most exciting British filmmakers of the 21st century. Yet his last film – a glossy adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’,

Released 18 JUNE It’s been a decade since we last heard from Palestine’s most important filmmaker.. 4 It’s funny and astute without ever compromising one for the other. 4 The more one learns about the film’s sociopolitical context, the more daring it

Mandabi, the 1968 film by Ousmane Sembene, was the first to be made in colour in Senegal. It was supported by the National Centre for Cinema (CNC) in France, as the director was greatly admired by the French Minister of Cultural affairs, André Malrau

Released 7 MAY Timely subject matter, and the great Steve Zahn taking the lead. 3 Beautiful cinematography and a gentle westernflavoured score add much to this powerful story. 4 Sensitive and moving. Can’t wait to see what Kerrigan does next. 4 Belov

Released 24 JULY Here’s a question: does God’s waiting room do drink specials? 4 Serving glorious, tropicana melancholy à la vintage Errol Morris. 5 A bottomless brunch of candycoloured heartache. 4 It’s five o’clock somewhere – in this case, America

Released 30 JULY A festival circuit favourite and a bold new voice on the British cinema scene. 4 The first half is untouchable, though it loses its way a little on the home stretch. 3 Despite its use of humour, this is s a hard-hitting film about be

Egypt-born, London-raised actor Amir El-Masry had already appeared in an impressive series of highprofile films and shows before his starring role as Syrian refugee Omar in Ben Sharrock’s absurdist comedy Limbo. But this subtle performance, grounding

Released 11 JUNE A new work from a reliably interesting filmmaker following a strong festival run. 4 Kossakovsky and co-cinematographer Egil Håskjold Larson lens the film immaculately. 3 This doesn’t bring much new to the ethnographic animal doc form

Released 24 JULY What am I doing with my life? If you’ve ever been kept up at nigh by this question, then Emma Seligman’s debut feature Shiva Baby will strike a chord. At a time when the traditional markers of adulthood feel more out of reach for you

Released 24 JULY Unable to get financing for any documentary that does not involve serial killers, and far more interested in “the everyday problems of human beings,” documentarian Marc Isaacs takes the advice of his producer Rachel (Rachel Wexler) t

Released 28 MAY Apparently not a Joker-esque portrait of Pokémon character Lt Surge, alas. 3 Suggests that watching Michael McIntyre contributes to a mental collapse, so checks out. 3 A very uncomfortable watch that’s offers a bravura showcase for Be

Released 4 JUNE Aleem Khan’s excellent 2014 short Three Brothers bodes well for his feature debut.4 Strikes a lovely balance between naturalism and melodrama. 4 Khan’s careful direction and Scanlan’s acting chops bring the best out in one another. 4

Released 24 JULY “This vacation is far from idyllic,” remarks Frankie, a former film star and reluctant matriarch played by Isabelle Huppert. The narrative mainstay of the horrible holiday during which repressed middle class emotion threatens to over

She stole every episode of TV’s The Thick of It as the lovably bumbling Terri Coverley, and then went on to receive acclaim and awards with her own hospitalset sitcom Getting On. Her recent film roles have included a budgie-loving, cat hat-wearing ou

Released 25 JUNE Franco’s previous films were small yet harrowing. This is on a much bigger canvas. 4 You’re not here to enjoy yourself, but you can admire the craft. 3 The refusal of hope is offset by a lack of platitudes, making this an antidote to

Released 21 MAY Qualley’s very up-and-coming, Weaver’s an icon, so the potential is there. 3 Perfectly pleasant, though refuses to do anything that might quicken the pulse. 3 Lacking in style and substance, would benefit from a major redraft. 2 The A

Released SUMMER TBC Out of the blue, Kelly (Nika McGuigan) returns home to her sister Lauren (Nora-Jane Noone) after years of estrangement. Set on the fraught border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, Cathy Brady’s Wildfire operates in an atmosphe

Writer/director Cathy Brady returns home to Northern Ireland to unpick the murky relationship between the personal and the political through the eyes of her firecracker sisters Lauren and Kelly (Nora-Jane Noone and Nika McGuigan). The film’s beguilin

Released 11 JUNE In Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt), the debut feature from writer/director Monica Zanetti, asking a girl to the formal is the most terrifying task Ellie (Sophie Hawkshaw) has ever faced. Flustered in the presence of fellow studen

Released JUNE (TBC) Danish cop thriller with a BLM-ish theme? Could be good. 3 The excitement rarely lets up and there’s plenty to think about, despite lapses in originality. 4 However you feel about the boys in blue, this is an action-packed, social

Released 18 JUNE Starring one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s regulars, Barbara Sukowa. 3 Sturdily built and hits all its emotional notes bang on. Top-tier performances too. 4 Maybe pales against someone like Almodóvar, but director Filippo Meneghetti

Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer prize winning 2016 novel, ‘The Underground Railroad’, tells the story of the secret routes and safe houses that existed for enslaved African Americans to escape to the free states and Canada. It conceives of an alternate r

Blu-ray/DVD OUT NOW The new Indicator box set of Gaspar Noé’s infamous masterpiece Irreversible reintroduces UK audiences to a film which caused controversy at the time of its initial release almost 20 years ago, and which can reasonably be described

Blu-ray/DVD Released 31 MAY Although to this day little-known outside of the circles of staunch horror fans, Joel Anderson’s 2008 film Lake Mungo is one of the best examples in recent years of a film making a virtue of its limited means. Shot and str

Blu-ray/DVD Released 17 MAY You can smell the fuggy vapours emanating from Richard Burton as the morally conflicted/emotionally detached spymaster Alec Leamas in Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, still one of the great screen adaptaion

Published by TCO Little White Lies – Huck-71a Words, pictures, thanks… Anton Bitel, Anna Bogutskaya, Cheyenne Bunsie, Lillian Crawford, Glenn Heath Jr, Trevor Johnston, Aimee Knight, Leila Latif, Elena Lazic, Guy Lodge, Emily Maskell, Louisa Maycock,

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