Little White Lies

From the pen of Jack Fincher comes Mank, the story of how perma-soused Hollywood hack Herman Mankiewicz happened to write one of the greatest screenplays of all time. Sadly, Jack didn’t live long enough to see the words he had written transformed int

Pauline Kael, in her 1971 essay for The New Yorker, titled ‘Raising Kane’, wrote, “The only evidence of an instinct for self-preservation in the life of Herman Mankiewicz is his choice of keen-eyed Sara.” The long-suffering wife of the brilliant but

Wend your mind back to Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons to recall that it contains what might be the earliest recorded example of a mic drop. It occurs right at the end of the film when a boom arcs away from the camera before disappearing behi

We set our readers the task of creating a portrait of the little-known Swedish painter Hilma Af Klint which draws inspiration from her abstract expressionist style, all in celebration of the release of Halina Dyrschka’s film, Beyond the Visible: Hilm

When I was growing up, in the forties and fifties, there was nothing really available that I could find written about film – except one book – my first film book,” says Martin Scorsese at the beginning of his 1995 documentary A Personal Journey with

In Beyoncé’s 2018 concert film Homecoming, her appearance is introduced with a shot of a woman in a marigold-yellow majorette uniform and matching tall hat, banging a drum while staring purposefully and furiously to the camera. Once Bey makes her ent

LWLies: Hi there Adam, thanks for taking time out from your ent, musty, single-screen venue that was famous in my circle of high-school friends for not checking IDs on R-rated movies. If memory serves, that same year I saw Oliver Stone’s U-Turn and R

Directed by ROY ANDERSSON Starring BENGT BERGIUS ANJA BROMS MARIE BURMAN Released 6 NOVEMBER Another procession of bone-dry comic tableaux. Dead horse being whipped much, Roy? The same, but also completely different – less ironic and more reflective

Directed by MATT WOLF Starring MARION STOKES MICHAEL METELITS Released 6 NOVEMBER Super intrigued by this fascinating story. Starts off really strong, still lots to enthuse about. Dips in the second half but well worth your time. For 33 years, the el

Directed by ZEINA DURRA Starring ANDREA RISEBOROUGH MICHAEL LANDES SHERINE REDA Released 6 NOVEMBER Promising premise, love a protagonist finding love and themselves through architecture. A modest yet magnetic exploration of a beautiful Egyptian city

Ten years after her striking debut The Imperialists Are Still Alive! Director Zeina Durra returns with Luxor, which stars Andrea Risebourgh as a British doctor on a break from working in the Syrian war zone. We spoke to her about the power of ancient

Directed by HARRY MACQUEEN Starring COLIN FIRTH STANLEY TUCCI PIPPA HAYWOOD Released 20 NOVEMBER Macqueen’s first feature, Hinterland, was very decent. Feels like a big step up. Slow and steady for the first hour until it all comes to an emotional he

Directed by TIM MIELANTS Starring KEVIN JANSSENS HANNAH HOEKSTRA JEMAINE CLEMENT Released 20 NOVEMBER Another remake of Richard Franklin’s 1978 Ozploitationer? Nope, a bizarre bareassed Belgian banger. Sweet, difficult-to define quest film nails it.

Directed by ALEJANDRO FADEL Starring VICTOR LOPEZ ESTEBAN BIGLIARDI TANIA CASCIANI Released 10 JULY Know nothing about this. ‘Murder Me Rachael’ is a pretty good song by The National? A horror-crime hybrid with remarkable sound design and effects wor

Directed by STEVE MCQUEEN Starring AMARAH-JAE ST AUBYN MICHEAL WARD SHANIQUA OKWOK Released 22 NOVEMBER Intrigued by the massive undertaking that is McQueen’s Small Axe series. Full of light and love, specific but universally inviting. A welcome dose

Directed by STEVE MCQUEEN Starring LETITIA WRIGHT SHAUN PARKES MALACHI KIRBY Released 15 NOVEMBER Always interested in Steve McQueen, and anxious to see how this amazing story would be told. An emotional rollercoaster – it’s good to be reminded how d

Directed by STEVE MCQUEEN Starring JOHN BOYEGA STEVE TOUSSAINT ANTONIA THOMAS Released 29 NOVEMBER An episode of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe project exploring systemic racism in the police. A low-key drama with far-reaching intimations. Plus, a thunder

Directed by PIETRO MARCELLO Starring LUCA MARINELLI JESSICA CRESSY CARLO CECCHI Released 13 NOVEMBER The Lost and Beautiful director adapts Jack London as a dramatic Italian heavyweight. An epic, vital portrait of ideological ambition and decay. It’s

Italian director Pietro Marcello’s first-choice career was as a painter. He embraced documentary filmmaking aged 25, crossing into fiction with 2015’s fantasy drama Lost and Beautiful. Class-consciousness permeates his works so it makes sense that he

Directed by THOMAS VINTERBERG Starring MADS MIKKELSEN THOMAS BO LARSEN MAGNUS MILLANG Released 27 NOVEMBER Another Vinterberg-Mikkelsen midlife crisis joint? Sure! As gleefully fun when they can’t stand up as it is heartbreaking when they can’t slow

Directed by PETE DOCTER KEMP POWERS Starring JAMIE FOXX TINA FEY ANGELA BASSETT Released 24 DECEMBER Pixar have been hit and miss for a while. A welcome return to form featuring some very welcome new blood. A much-needed dose of Pixar magic for these

Directed by EVA MULVAD, LEA GLOB, MORTEN RANMAR  Released 6 NOVEMBER A weeping man frantically packs a suitcase, saying in Farsi, “I not sure tomorrow I will be dead or alive”. We then cut to his euphoric arrival in Turkey, where he is now accompanie

Directed by ALEXANDER NANAU Released 20 NOVEMBER On 30October, 2015, Bucharest’s Club Colectiv caught fire. Morethan 180 people were injured and 27 died. A further 37 people passed away needlessly in the city’s hospital from subsequent complications

Directed by THOMAS BEZUCHA Starring KEVIN COSTNER, DIANE LANE, LESLEY MANVILLE Released 11 DECEMBER While grieving over the loss of their son, retired sheriff George Blackledge (Kevin Costner) and his wife Margaret (Diane Lane), are persuaded to leav

Directed by MICHELE PENNETTA Released 27 NOVEMBER Oscar is a mohawked Sicilian boy on the cusp of adulthood. Spending his days recovering metal with his brother and father to sell on to scrap metal merchants, he is the most common target of his fathe

Directed by BRANDON CRONENBERG Starring ANDREA RISEBOROUGH CHRISTOPHER ABBOTT TUPPENCE MIDDLETON Released 27 NOVEMEBER Cronenberg Jrs’s brutal style combined with such an exemplary cast is bound to be fun. Not sure that I’d call this fun but I can’t

Eight years after his striking debut Antiviral, genre upstart Brandon Cronenberg is back with with his second feature Possessor, an ultra-violent, nightmarish film about mind-controlling assassins that flows on a gushing river of blood and gore. LWLi

Directed by VIGGO MORTENSEN Starring LANCE HENRIKSEN VIGGO MORTENSEN LAURA LINNEY Released 4 DECEMBER Debuted at the Sundance Film Festival where critics were not that kind to it. Feels alienatingly traditional at points, but digs deep into some murk

Directed by LEONIE KRIPPENDORFF Starring LENA URZENDOWSKY JELLA HAASE LENA KLENKE Released 4 DECEMBER Overdone, yet charming coming-of-age film within the domain of lesbian cinema. Emotionally and aesthetically stunning scenes with a uniquely feminis

Growing pains are the subject of the latest feature by Berlin-based filmmaker Leonie Krippendorff. Her previous film Looping and screenplay for Fucking Berlin explored sexuality in crisis and so Krippendorff is on home turf for Cocoon, the charming s

The films of David Cronenberg are overwhelmed with philosophical questions about the human body. The most significant of these probing exercises of flesh and blood is that of self-definition in an ever mutating world. The human body is the tree in wh

Directed by SHŌHEI IMAMURA Starring NORIHEI MIKI KEN OGATA SHÔICHI OZAWA 1983-89 Released 7 DEC Blu-ray One of a mere handful of filmmakers to have won the Cannes Palme d’Or on two seperate occasions, Japan’s Shōhei Imamura managed to go from youthfu

Directed by TSAI MING-LIANG Starring LEE KANG-SHENG CHEN SHIANG-CHYI KIYONOBU MITAMURA 2003 Released 23 NOVEMBER Blu-ray Peanuts are chewed, lips smacked and fingers licked; a drink is sipped, a little too loudly. Two feet go up on the chair in front

Directed by STEVE JAMES Starring WILLIAM GATES ARTHUR AGEE EMMA GATES 1994 Out NOW Blu-ray Unlikely though it may seem, a low budget film about two twelve-year-old basketball players from Chicago is a faultless sprawling epic about sport, race, mascu

Directed by CARL FRANKLIN Starring DENZEL WASHINGTON TOM SIZEMORE JENNIFER BEALS 1995 Released 14 DECEMBER Blu-ray The films that made up the noir genre, whose template was forged during Hollywood’s classic era, tend to focus on the travails of white

A perfect digital companion to the magazine experience, our website is updated daily with new stories, reviews and features. Head over now to learn about the complex cinematic legacy of Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’. Bi-weekly missives direct t

As we limp towards the end of a truly, impressively terrible year, attention once again turns towards the prospect of awards season. Usually by mid-September in any given year, film critics have a rough idea of the films that are likely to dominate t

Directed by WILLIAM GREAVES Starring PATRICIA REE GILBERT DON FELLOWS STEVE BUSCEMI 1968-2005 Released 14 DECEMBER Blu-ray In a recording of a Q&A for a screening of Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One that is woven into Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 ½,