Issue 82

Little White Lies

Truth and Movies

Little White Lies5 min readFashion
Uncut Gems
Directed by BENNY AND JOSH SAFDIE Starring ADAM SANDLER, JULIA FOX, KEVIN GARNETT Released JANUARY TBC Adam Sandler’s greatest strength is his flair for the ridiculous. It doesn’t matter if he’s blue-suited anger bomb Barry Egan in Punch-Drunk Love o
Little White Lies2 min read
A Safdie Brothers Reading List #1
SELECTED BY THE SAFDIE BROS TITLE SuperBookie: Inside Las Vegas Sports Gambling AUTHOR Manteris, Art YEAR 1991 TEXT Senior Librarian Adam Woodward Forget everything you think you know about Sin City. In ‘SuperBookie: Inside Las Vegas Sports Gambling’
Little White Lies13 min read
Money On The Street
Josh and Benny Safdie are a couple of real Noo Yawkahs, so much so that they don’t even pronounce the term that way. They grew up ferried between Dad’s in Queens and Mom’s on the Upper West Side, developing an infatuation with Gotham’s grit and eccen
Little White Lies8 min readFashion
SAFDIE & CO
Since producing their first feature film, The Pleasure of Being Robbed, in 2008, Benny and Josh Safdie have built up an enviable team of creative collaborators. Their roster comprises a notable array of recurring faces, each of whom brings a unique s
Little White Lies8 min read
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Yes, Adam Sandler is antic and aggro and utterly committed as the diamond cluster hustler at the centre of Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems. And yes, playing such an unapologetically mercenary, grifting, morally bankrupt character as his Howard Rat
Little White Lies2 min read
A Safdie Brothers Reading List #2
SELECTED BY THE SAFDIE BROS TITLE What Makes Sammy Run? AUTHOR Schulberg, Budd YEAR 1941 TEXT Chief Archivist Christina Newland Budd Schulberg, the author of ‘What Makes Sammy Run?’, was born into movie royalty – the son of Paramount honcho and Holly
Little White Lies6 min read
Shtelt Fablous
In the century-and-change since DW Griffith’s A Child of the Ghetto introduced goyishe moviegoers to the shtetl of New York’s Lower East Side, on-screen Jewishness has undergone a staggering metamorphosis. It has seen a shift from harried peasants an
Little White Lies8 min read
Stand-up Guys
When you’re hot, you’re hot. When you’re not, you’re not. It is what it is and it was ever so. The moneycombed ventricles of the eternally-moribund Hollywood dreadnought constantly thirsts for young blood: starlets; hunks; film school rejects; wackad
Little White Lies4 min read
Threads
In Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari’s 2015 movie Chevalier, six well-off men decide to play a game on a luxury yacht, brutally comparing each other’s taste, clothing, wealth and sexual prowess, all for empty larks. The prize for this (at one po
Little White Lies2 min read
A Safdie Brothers Reading List #3
SELECTED BY THE SAFDIE BROS TITLE The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz AUTHOR Richler, Mordecai YEAR 1959 TEXT Asst Janitor David Jenkins This lesser known 1959 novel is a tight-rope walk of precarious character empathy. Its hero is a young rapscallio
Little White Lies4 min read
Rian Johnson
It seems as if Rian Johnson is the man with the Midas touch. Since making his debut in 2005 with the excellent neo-noir Brick, he’s slowly but surely produced an enviable filmography notable for smart storytelling and a wicked way with genre. After e
Little White Lies3 min read
Knives Out
Directed by RIAN JOHNSON Starring ANA DE ARMAS DANIEL CRAIG CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER Released 29 NOVEMBER There is a second hand book shop on London’s Charring Cross Road and adjacent to its front door is a shelf – some might call it a shrine – dedicated
Little White Lies3 min read
Emma Thompson
Can comedy and activism combine to raise awareness of the climate emergency and foster action rather than apathy? A new short film by Jack Stimpson puts that theory to the test. Extinction features Emma Thompson and is set around the April 2018 upris
Little White Lies3 min read
I Lost My Body
Directed by JÉRÉMY CLAPIN Starring HAKIM FARIS VICTOIRE DU BOIS PATRICK D'ASSUMÇAO Released 22 NOVEMBER I’ve always been particularly fond of the hands of my loved ones. My mother’s – like my grandmother’s – are elegantly slender, while my father’s f
Little White Lies2 min read
The Report
Directed by SCOTT Z BURNS Starring ADAM DRIVER ANNETTE BENING JON HAMM Released 15 NOVEMBER On the face of it, the prospect of a knotty political drama about the US Senate’s 2012 investigation into the CIA’s ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’ (or EI
Little White Lies3 min read
Atlantics
Directed by MATI DIOP Starring MAME BINETA SANE AMADOU MBOW IBRAHIMA TRAORÉ Released 29 NOVEMBER t’s heartbreaking how casually the lively, goodhumoured Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré) makes a decision that brings about the end of his young life. Mati Di
Little White Lies3 min read
Mati Diop
How do you follow-up a coterie of excellent shorts which have travelled the globe and built your name as a director? If you’re French actor and filmmaker Mati Diop, you make one of the decade’s finest debut features, Atlantics, about youth and the sp
Little White Lies2 min read
Jojo Rabbit
Directed by TAIKA WAITITI Starring ROMAN GRIFFIN DAVIS THOMASIN MCKENZIE TAIKA WAITITI Released 3 JANUARY Ludicrously billed as an “anti-hate satire”, Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit is so concerned with making its thematic intentions unmistakable that i
Little White Lies3 min read
The Two Popes
Directed by FERNANDO MEIRELLES Starring JONATHAN PRYCE ANTHONY HOPKINS JUAN MINUJÍN Released 29 NOVEMBER Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce make for a study in opposites as the co-leads of Fernando Meirelles’ talky drama The Two Popes. They portray m
Little White Lies3 min readWorld
Citizen K
Directed by ALEX GIBNEY Released 13 DECEMBER Given his uneven output of recent years – the Rolling Stones, Fela Kuti and Lance Armstrong films being cases in point – it is something of a joy (and relief) to find Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibne
Little White Lies3 min read
So Long, My Son
Directed by WANG XIAOSHUAI Starring AI LIYA DU JIANG GUO-ZHANG ZHAO-YAN Released 6 DECEMBER This ambitious, epic melodrama from Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai is delivered with historical richness and staggering emotional gravity. Across three hours
Little White Lies3 min read
The Irishman
Directed by MARTIN SCORSESE Starring ROBERT DE NIRO AL PACINO JOE PESCI Released 8 NOVEMBER You’ve seen it mean and mohawked; raging and rouletted. You’ve seen it clean-cut and cut up; burnt, bloody and bedevilled. You’ve seen it mad-eyed and monocle
Little White Lies4 min read
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino hopped over to London with Martin Scorsese’s new gangster epic, The Irishman. An audience with two of the most influential actors to ever rise up through the Hollywood ranks covered the pair’s long friendship, their remar
Little White Lies2 min read
The Amazing Johnathan Documentary
Directed by BENJAMIN BERMAN Starring THE AMAZING JOHNATHAN, ERIC ANDRÉ, BENJAMIN BERMAN Released 19 NOVEMBER “Can you trust anything that a magician does?” This is the crucial query posed to director Ben Berman midway through his film about one. It s
Little White Lies2 min read
System Crasher
Directed by NORA FINGSCHEIDT Starring HELENA ZENGEL, ALBRECHT SCHUCH, GABRIELA MARIA SCHMEIDE Released 6 DECEMBER This debut narrative feature by Nora Fingscheidt is as bold and confrontational as its subject. Coming from a documentary background, th
Little White Lies2 min read
Luce
Directed by JULIUS ONAH Starring KELVIN HARRISON JR, OCTAVIA SPENCER, NAOMI WATTS Released 8 NOVEMBER Track star, debate champion, honours student: Luce Edgar (Kelvin Harrison Jr) can seemingly do no wrong in the eyes of gushing high school administr
Little White Lies3 min read
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Directed by MARIELLE HELLER Starring MATTHEW RHYS TOM HANKS SUSAN KELECHI WATSON Released 6 DECEMBER Is there anyone else on the planet who could play the incomparable Fred Rogers besides Tom Hanks? There’s not much of a physical resemblance, yet the
Little White Lies2 min read
A Dog Called Money
Directed by SEAMUS MURPHY Starring PJ HARVEY, SEAMUS MURPHY Released 8 NOVEMBER Strip away all the celebrity tittle-tattle, gossip and innuendo, and when we talk to artists we’re primarily interested in how they go about making their art. What’s your
Little White Lies2 min read
The Nightingale
Directed by JENNIFER KENT Starring AISLING FRANCIOSI SAM CLAFLIN BAYKALI GANAMBARR Released 29 NOVEMBER Following 2014’s maternally-oriented ghost story The Babadook, director Jennifer Kent’s second feature The Nightingale has proved far more divisiv
Little White Lies3 min read
Jennifer Kent
Jennifer Kent doesn’t think in terms of genre, even if everyone decided her 2014 sleeper hit The Babadook was a horror film on her behalf. Instead, a film is a film is a film to her – though she says The Nightingale, if you had to label it, is a myth
Little White Lies3 min read
Judy & Punch
Directed by MIRRAH FOULKES Starring MIA WASIKOWSKA DAMON HERRIMAN BENEDICT HARDIE Released 22 NOVEMBER Australian actor Mirrah Foulkes has performed for a clutch of her country’s most interesting exports, having appeared in Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Bea
Little White Lies4 min read
Noah Baumbach
Erudite and ineffably moving, Marriage Story sees writer/director Noah Baumbach raking over the bones of a messy divorce, between a foppish, wide-eyed theatre director (Adam Driver) and an actor wanting to expand her horizons (Scarlett Johansson). A
Little White Lies2 min read
Greener Grass
Directed by JOCELYN DEBOER, DAWN LUEBBE Starring JOCELYN DEBOER, DAWN LUEBBE, BECK BENNETT Released 22 NOVEMBER There’s something strange about this sunny, seemingly perfect American suburb. Adults wear braces on their teeth, drive golf carts and wea
Little White Lies2 min read
Here for Life
Directed by ANDREA LUKA ZIMMERMAN, ADRIAN JACKSON Starring JO GALBRAITH, JAKE GOODE, RICHARD HONEYGHAN Released 21 NOVEMBER Shoreditch in East London was one of the urban areas most impacted by the 2012 Summer Olympic games. Not surprisingly, all tho
Little White Lies2 min read
Marriage Story
Directed by NOAH BAUMBACH Starring ADAM DRIVER SCARLETT JOHANSSON ALAN ALDA Released 15 NOVEMBER Having just been served his divorce papers, Charlie (Adam Driver) wanders across the first floor landing of his wife’s family home, looking at the framed
Little White Lies2 min read
Honey Boy
Directed by ALMA HAR'EL Starring SHIA LABEOUF LUCAS HEDGES NOAH JUPE Released 6 DECEMBER Ask anyone who was a child in the early 2000s for the role they most closely associate with Shia LaBeouf, and odds are they’ll refer to Louis Stevens, the wacky
Little White Lies3 min read
Shooting the Mafia
Directed by KIM LONGINOTTO Released 29 NOVEMBER Glancing back over the incredible career of British documentarian Kim Longinotto, one might generalise that she has, through her films, shown an abiding interest in the female victims of male violence.
Little White Lies4 min readCrime & Violence
Kim Longinotto
Kim Longinotto excels at providing observational portraits of extraordinary women forging their way in oppressive structures across the world. Her usual method is to embed herself within events as they happen, never flinching from pointing her camera
Little White Lies2 min read
Little Monsters
Directed by ABE FORSYTHE Starring LUPITA NYONG'O ALEXANDER ENGLAND JOSH GAD Released 15 NOVEMBER “You’re being a child!”, remonstrates Sara (Nadia Townsend) with her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Dave (Alexander England), at the beginning Little Monsters,
Little White Lies3 min readAutomotive
Le Mans ’66
Directed by JAMES MANGOLD Starring CHRISTIAN BALE MATT DAMON CAITRIONA BALFE Released 13 NOVEMBER In the year of our Lord 1977, the BBC launched a weekly motoring magazine show called Top Gear, which was essentally metal fetish pornography for petrol
Little White Lies2 min read
Motherless Brooklyn
Directed by EDWARD NORTON Starring EDWARD NORTON GUGU MBATHA-RAW ALEC BALDWIN Released 6 DECEMBER There’s an astonishing scene in Motherless Brooklyn where Edward Norton’s gumshoe narrator, who has Tourette syndrome, chases a lead in the case he’s wo
Little White Lies2 min read
Heimat Is A Space In Time
Directed by THOMAS HEISE Released 22 NOVEMBER “Why do we have to live through these times?” This question found in documents drawn from 1942 is one that is just as pertinent today. Constructed from correspondences plucked from the filmmaker’s own fam
Little White Lies3 min read
Edward Norton
Stepping behind the camera for only the second time was not a straightforward move for Edward Norton. The actor best known for playing dangerously deluded outsiders in American History X and Fight Club spent more than five years developing Motherless
Little White Lies2 min read
Model Shop
Directed by JACQUES DEMY Starring ANOUK AIMÉE GARY LOCKWOOD ALEXANDRA HAY 1969 Released 2 DEC Blu-ray Accidental connections between movies arrange themselves all the time. Model Shop, Jacques Demy’s first and only major motion picture for a Hollywoo
Little White Lies2 min read
A Fistful of Dynamite
Directed by SERGIO LEONE Starring ROD STEIGER JAMES COBURN ROMOLO VALLI 1971 Released 25 NOV Blu-ray In some ways the inverse of John Ford’s longevity and abundance, the directorial output of Sergio Leone is comparatively dense and brief; its peaks s
Little White Lies2 min read
Spetters
Directed by PAUL VERHOEVEN Starring RENEE SOUTENDIJK RUTGER HAUER JEROEN KRABBÉ 1980 Released 2 DEC Blu-ray The rough and tumble of suburban Rotterdam’s amateur motocross scene is at the centre of this very weird and very enjoyable early missive from
Little White Lies2 min read
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On
Directed by KAZUO HARA 1987 Released 11 NOV Blu-ray It’s hard to know where to start with this deeply distressing 1987 film which seems to aggressively test the pliancy of the term “documentary”. The parameters are initially set as piece of ultra-sub
Little White Lies2 min read
Secret Ceremony
Directed by JOSEPH LOSEY Starring ELIZABETH TAYLOR MIA FARROW ROBERT MITCHUM 1968 Released 25 NOV Blu-ray As historians have pointed out time and again, the beginning of the dissolution of the American studio system, which would ultimately take more
Little White Lies2 min read
The Far Country
Directed by ANTHONY MANN Starring JAMES STEWART RUTH ROMAN WALTER BRENNAN 1954 Released 11 NOV Blu-ray Anthony Mann was already a great director, and James Stewart was already an established star actor, when the two made Winchester ‘73 in 1950, kicki
Little White Lies3 min read
Venice
As I would say to anyone who would listen, this was my first visit to a film festival in 18 months. The reason for this self-imposed exile was that I had recently become a father and, frankly, subsisting on a diet of movies, carbs and coffee in a dif
Little White Lies3 min read
San Sebastian
The weather was glorious, and I was delighting in the company of a chaffinch who joined me for lunch every day. At peace, I looked at the details of my next screening, due to start in 30 minutes. The cinema was, according to Google, 40 minutes away.
Little White Lies2 min read
Masel Tov!!
Tavan Maneetapho (cover) is an illustrator and comic book artist based in Brighton, UK. She says of her own style: “The characters in my universe are usually the misfits in society – the daydreamer, the loner, the one that laughs just a little too lo

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