Little White Lies

Directed by BARRY JENKINS Starring KIKI LAYNE, STEPHAN JAMES, REGINA KING Released 8 FEBRUARY Misty eyed and enveloped in the soulful cover of ‘My Country Tis of Thee’ that plays over the end credits of If Beale Street Could Talk, I was swept up into

When you’ve been through the mill of Academy Awards press lobbying, a once-open and outspoken artist can become cagey and distant. Journalists suddenly become attack dogs with an ulterior motive, and one tiny slip-up can cause the entire house of car

James Baldwin’s sharp, rhythmic and tender prose. It seems only right to begin an appreciation of ‘The Devil Finds Work’, Baldwin’s book-length essay about the cinema, with an homage to its opening sentence: “Joan Crawford’s straight, narrow, and lon

Mark 20 February on your calendars and start planning what films you want to catch at the 15th annual Glasgow Film Festival. By the time you read these words, the full line-up will be available to peruse, but we want to flag up an ace looking retrosp

Hale County This Morning, This Evening is the exceptional debut feature by photographer turned filmmaker RaMell Ross. It sees the industrious director embedding himself in the predominantly black community of Hale County, Alabama, and just hanging ou

In James Baldwin’s 1974 novel ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’, his native Harlem is a place both of the city and apart from it. Early on, his narrator Tish remembers being a little girl, coming downtown with her sister and father: “We’d watch the people

Based on a novel by Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem introduced moviegoers to the unforgettable black detectives Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St Jacques) and Grave Digger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge). First-time director Ossie Davis transforms what c

In a 1948 Bugs Bunny cartoon entitled Big House Bunny, Bugs accidentally burrows himself directly into Sing Sing Prison and is mistaken for an inmate. Once he’s dressed in a regulation striped uniform, he may as well be a criminal. It’s only when he

I’ll be honest – I was a dull kid,” Steve Carell grins. “I wouldn’t say I was straight-laced, but I wasn’t a party guy. I played a lot of sports, I was in school plays, I was on the student council, I was on the social committee.” When you meet him,

Before he was an awardwinning film composer, Nicholas Britell dreamed of making it big with his hip hop band, The Witness Protection Program. The instrumental New York ensemble ultimately went their separate ways, but for a good chunk of his formativ

Directed by FELIX VAN GROENINGEN Starring STEVE CARELL, TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET, MAURA TIERNEY Released 18 JANUARY At the tender age of 22, Timothée Chalamet has the world at his feet. His confident turn in Call Me by Your Name launched a thousand Twitter

Directed by SARA COLANGELO Starring MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL, GAEL GARCÍA BERNAL, ATO BLANKSON-WOOD Released 8 MARCH “Talent is so fragile and rare, and our culture does everything to crush it.” So says Maggie Gyllenhaal in Sara Colangelo’s The Kindergarten

It’s been a good year for Maggie Gyllenhaal. Her turn in David Simon and George Pelecanos’ small-screen serial, The Deuce, in which she plays Candy, a sex worker turned porn director, has been lauded by critics for its feminine perspective on the por

Directed by JASON REITMAN Starring HUGH JACKMAN, VERA FARMIGA, JK SIMMONS Released 11 JANUARY The thing about most “movies of the moment” is that they aren’t built to last. What, for instance, is the major utility of Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner

Directed by CLINT EASTWOOD Starring CLINT EASTWOOD, BRADLEY COOPER, MICHAEL PEÑA Released 25 JANUARY Clint Eastwood’s late style is a quavering echo of classical Hollywood filmmaking, a set of conventions refined to such shorthand you can’t tell if i

Directed by JANE MAGNUSSON Starring INGMAR BERGMAN, LENA ENDRE, THORSTEN FLINCK Released 25 JANUARY In 2013, Jane Magnusson invited an impressive collection of international filmmakers to Ingmar Bergman’s home on Farö to comment on his VHS collection

Directed by PETER FARRELLY Starring VIGGO MORTENSEN, MAHERSHALA ALI, LINDA CARDELLINI Released 1 FEBRUARY You haven’t heard someone do a Noo Yoik accent until you’ve heard Viggo Mortensen do a Noo Yoik accent. In Green Book, the famously erudite, nat

Mahershala Ali may have come to worldwide attention in 2016 with his Oscar-winning role in Moonlight, but he’d been grafting away for over a decade with minor roles in television and film, before finally breaking through in 2013 as slick lobbyist Rem

Directed by JOEL EDGERTON Starring LUCAS HEDGES, NICOLE KIDMAN, RUSSELL CROWE Released 10 JULY The word ‘gay’ is only mentioned twice in Boy Erased, the impressive second directorial effort from Australian actor Joel Edgerton. Victor Sykes (Edgerton

Directed by KARYN KUSAMA Starring NICOLE KIDMAN, TOBY KEBBELL, TATIANA MASLANY Released 25 JANUARY Nicole Kidman is an unpredictable megawatt talent whose name when attached to a film instantly makes it a compelling proposition, especially when her r

Directed by RAMELL ROSS Released 18 JANUARY How nice it is to be shown what we rarely ever see. RaMell Ross’ exceptional debut feature Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a brief, beautiful snapshot of a place and its people, and a rare depicti

Directed by JOSIE ROURKE Starring SAOIRSE RONAN, MARGOT ROBBIE, JACK LOWDEN Released 18 JANUARY There’s a reason why Saoirse Ronan is thought of as one of the best actors working today: she possesses the innate ability to make you second-guess as to

Directed by CATHERINE CORSINI Starring VIRGINIE EFIRA, NIELS SCHNEIDER, JEHNNY BETH Catherine Corsini’s An Impossible Love, adapted from Christine Angot’s novel, is a Trojan Horse of a movie. On the surface it is a sensual romance: there are sweeping

Directed by MARIELLE HELLER Starring MELISSA MCCARTHY, RICHARD E GRANT, DOLLY WELLS Released 1 FEBRUARY A film about the difficulties of monetising your awkward personal brand does not, in any way, sound like a fun ol’ time at the flicks. It is the s

Jack Hock is the one friend of acid-tongued, literary letter forger Lee Israel in director Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? His bulletproof charm is matched by his thirst for intoxication. Richard E Grant, forever emblazoned in the cultural

Directed by ADAM MCKAY Starring CHRISTIAN BALE, AMY ADAMS, STEVE CARELL Released 25 JANUARY Given the current state of politics both domestic and transatlantic, it makes sense that Adam McKay is looking for answers. It’s human nature to try to find o

A new film by the South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong is an event. He only makes bangers, and it’s been eight long years since he graced us with the magestrial Poetry. LWLies met the writer/director on the occasion of his triumphant return with Burning, a s

If you’re familiar with the phrase “Quizzlestick”, or have ever yelled out “Stephen!” in a public place, then you may be excited to learn that the taller half of cult British comedy duo Adam and Joe is returning in early 2019 with a new feature. Joe

Directed by LEE CHANG-DONG Starring YOO AH-IN, STEVEN YEUN, JEON JONG-SEO Released 1 FEBRUARY Twentysomething delivery boy Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) is the guy who never gets the girl, but out of the blue, Hae-mi (Jun Jong-seo), a cute promotions assistant

When I was a kid, my siblings and I used to build forts out of our VHS cassettes. We’d line them up with bricklayers’ precision in the living room, stacking The Rescuers on top of Ghostbusters on top of Notting Hill, until a prefecture just large eno

Barry Jenkins: Ahh. What do I love about movies? Y’know, I watched the Carlos Reygadas film Our Time a couple of weeks ago. I really love his work. When I watch his films, no matter what I end up thinking about the film, there’s always this sense of

Each year the Mumbai Film Festival – or, to give it its full, sponsor-gilded title, Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival With Star – brings together the best world cinema, with a focus on experimental and cutting-edge independent features. The festival is o