Little White Lies

Hello Sophie Monks Kaufman, this is Wes.” In his slow, warm, contemplative drawl, my name sounds better than ever before. I am in seat 17C of easyjet flight K54K39S which is rolling down a runway at Nice Côte d’Azur Airport. I had switched my phone o

In 1998 Wes Anderson cast Jason Schwartzman as precocious high schooler Max Fischer in his breakout comedy Rushmore. Twenty-five years later, after remaining firm friends and constant collaborators, they reunite for Asteroid City, in which Schwartzma

Like Homer Simpson says of donuts, we must ask ourselves the question: is there anything Maya Hawke can’t do? She carefully juggles a career as an acclaimed singer/songwriter alongside starring in shorts, features and TV series, and working as a mode

Members of the AFFILIATED SPACE FOUNDATION and PUDDING CLUB of Grand Prairie, TX have teamed up with TENACITY OIL and FREEDONIA DYNAMICS to launch an exploration pod beyond the Earth’s atmosphere in honour of local filmmaker Wes Anderson. Within the

In 32 minutes, Pedro Almodóvar’s Strange Way of Life packs in more tenderness, eroticism and cinephile references than most feature films manage across a couple of hours. In his second foray into English language filmmaking after 2020’s The Human Voi

Directed by WES ANDERSON Starring JASON SCHWARTZMAN, SCARLETT JOHANSSON, TOM HANKS Released 21 JUNE The last time Wes Anderson took us on a class trip to the theatre, optional safety glasses and earplugs were provided to all patrons. With his scintil

Directed by JAMES MANGOLD Starring HARRISON FORD, MADS MIKKELSEN, PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE Released 28 JUNE A film about not being able to keep a good Nazi down feels very apposite in the current climate of rabid conservatism, and so that might go some w

Directed by ALICE WINOCOUR Starring VIRGINIE EFIRA, BENOÎT MAGIMEL, GRÉGOIRE COLIN Released 4 AUGUST It starts out as an ordinary day for Mia, a journalist and translator who works at a radio station in Paris. She takes her motorcycle to work; she me

Since her 2012 debut Augustine, French filmmaker Alice Winocour has proven she’s able to turn her hand to seemingly any genre, from the home invasion thriller Disorder, to co-writing Turkish coming-of-age story Mustang, through to sci-fi motherhood d

Directed by CLAIRE DENIS Starring MARGARET QUALLEY JOE ALWYN, BENNIE SAFDIE Released 24 JULY Soaked in sweat and bathed in orange light, Claire Denis’s second English language feature Stars at Noon is a film that seems to exist in a state of permanen

Directed by RILEY KEOUGH, GINA GAMMELL Starring JOJO BAPTEISE WHITING LADAINIAN CRAZY THUNDER, JESSE SCHMOCKEL Released 9 JUNE Who has the right to play steward to someone else’s story? It’s an unavoidable question in the conversation surrounding War

Directed by THOMAS HARDIMAN Starring ANITA-JOY UWAJEH, CLARE PERKINS, DARRELL D'SILVA Released 9 JUNE For anyone old enough to remember the early 2000s BBC drama Cutting It, you’ll know that the only thing more dangerous than the sharp end of a pair

Directed by TINA SATTER Starring SYDNEY SWEENEY, MARCHÁNT DAVIS, JOSH HAMILTON Released 2 JUNE When the unbelievably named Reality Winner printed out a classified intelligence report revealing Russian interference in the 2016 US election from her Nat

Eye-grabbing roles in TV’s The White Lotus and Euphoria established Sydney Sweeney as a fan-favourite talent. Her latest turn as document-leaker Reality Winner Tina Satter’s Reality reintroduces America’s sweetheart as a technical performer of rigoro

Directed by BARNABY THOMPSON Starring RUPERT EVERETT, ALAN CUMMING Released 2 JUNE Releasing a documentary profile on a towering cultural figure to mark 50 years since their death feels perfunctory, and more often than not, yields predictable results

Directed by D. SMITH Released 24 JULY First-time filmmaker D Smith imbues her feature debut with a vibrant, immediate energy that feels incredibly unique. Clocking in at a tight 70 minutes, Kokomo City centres on four Black trans sex workers in New Y

Directed by CAROLINA CAVALLI Starring BENEDETTA PORCAROLI, GALATÉA BELLUGI, MICHELE BRAVI Released 2 JUNE Cinemas are full of lonely people. They occupy both seats and screens – the stories we return to often focus on the daunting quest to find someo

Directed by STEPHEN WILLIAMS Starring KELVIN HARRISON JR, SAMARA WEAVING, LUCY BOYNTON Released 9 JUNE The scientist Stephen Jay Gould once wrote, “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near cer

Directed by ANNIE ERNAUX, DAVID ERNAUX-BRIOT Released 23 JUNE The French writer Annie Ernaux is having a moment: 2021’s Golden Lion winner Happening was adapted from her book recounting her illegal abortion in 1963. Many of Ernaux’s slender books, su

Directed by JEAN-PAUL SALOMÉ Starring ISABELLE HUPPERT, YVAN ATTAL, MARINA FOÏS Released 30 JUNE You’d be forgiven for thinking you’ve seen La Syndicaliste before. It is a murky-grey drama shot with corporate restraint, the sort of thriller vérité th

Composed of home videos created from 1972 to 1981, The Super 8 Years recalls the halcyon days of Annie Ernaux’s marriage, before she became the author who would go on to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022. Shot by her then-husband Philipp

Since bursting onto the scene in 2017 with his piercing turn in Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats, Harris Dickinson has been carving out a career as one of the most promising young actors working today. From starring in blockbusters like The King’s Man and

Directed by DIONNE EDWARDS Starring NATEY JONES, ALEXANDRA BURKE, TEMILOLA OLATUNBOSUN Released 16 JUNE When it comes to the annals of visual culture, the roots of cross-dressing wend all the way back to classical stage farce, silent comedy and beyon

Directed by LÉONOR SERRAILLE Starring ANNABELLE LENGRONNE, STÉPHANE BAK, KENZO SAMBIN Released 30 JUNE Léonor Serraille loves headstrong, emotional women. The French director burst onto the Cannes scene when, in 2017, she won the Camera d’Or (the pri

From the historically trenchant trilogy The Battle of Chile, commonly cited as one of the best political documentaries ever made, to the poetic depths of more recent films such as Nostalgia of the Light, Patricio Guzmán has remained a thorough chroni

Directed by FYZAL BOULIFA Starring AÏCHA TEBBAE, ABDELLAH EL HAJJOUJI, ANTOINE REINARTZ Released 7 JULY In Vincent Sherman 1950 noir The Damned Don’t Cry, Joan Crawford plays a housewife trapped in a loveless marriage, when the tragic death of her yo

Directed by SHAMIRA RAPHAËLA Released 7 JULY Shamira Raphaëla originally set out to make a film about the aspirations of four teenagers living in Rotterdam’s De Peperklip social housing complex – a striking architectural feat with a sprawling cylindr

Directed by QUENTIN DUPIEUX Starring GILLES LELLOUCHE, VINCENT LACOSTE, ANAÏS DEMOUSTIER Released 24 JULY Notably fond of deadpan dada and off-the-wall gore, director Quentin Dupieux (Rubber, Deerskin) delivers these by the bucketload in loony Super

Directed by DAVID LYNCH Starring LAURA DERN, JEREMY IRONS, JUSTIN THEROUX Blu-ray/DVD Released 19 JUNE Inland Empire is in many ways the ultimate David Lynch film. As well as writing, directing, and editing, Lynch shot the film himself, using a digit

Directed by DENNIS HOPPER, Starring DON JOHNSON, VIRGINIA MADSEN, JENNIFER CONNELLY Blu-ray/DVD Released 19 JUNE It can be easy to forget how prolific Dennis Hopper was. The Hotspot, the penultimate of his nine features as director, was one of two wo

Directed by ROUBEN MAMOULIAN Starring MARLENE DIETRICH, BRIAN AHERNE, LIONEL ATWILL Blu-ray/DVD Released 3 JAN 2020 A figure like that will get you into trouble if you’re not careful,” is the first thing that Lily (Marlene Dietrich) is told in The So

Directed by GIUSEPPE PATRONI GRIFFI Starring ELIZABETH TAYLOR, IAN BANNEN, GUIDO MANNARI Blu-ray/DVD Released 26 JUNE Some films are so odd that they defy description, not overtly weird but instead off-kilter and idiosyncratic. Giuseppe Patroni Griff

Directed by JOYCE CHOPRA Starring LAURA DERN, TREAT WILLIAMS, MARY KAY PLACE Blu-ray/DVD Released 26 JUNE Smooth Talk is the first fiction feature to be directed by Joyce Chopra following two decades of work as a documentarian. It won the Grand Jury

Directed by VARIOUS Starring BRUCE LEE, BIAO YUEN, JAMES TIEN Blu-ray/DVD Released 17 JUNE Even the most avid of Bruce Lee-based merchandise hoarder will likely be slathering at the prospect of this chunky new set which presents the corpus of work Le

Black-gloved killers; psychosexual stabbings; lashings of neon blood and plot twists built around retrograde understandings of sexuality and mental illness – that’s giallo, baby. Prompted by the BFI’s month-long season on Dario Argento’s films, my re

At the point of writing these words, the 2023 Cannes Film Festival has not come to an end. And yet, it feels safe to say that this year has been a classic vintage, particularly when it comes to the overall high quality of the competition films. Obvio

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