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Little White Lies •

The Secret Agent – first-look review

An undercover agent discovers he can't escape his troubled past in Kleber Mendonça Filho's gripping new drama about the height of Brazil's military dictatorship.When Marcelo (Wagner Moura) first arrives in Dona Sebastiana’s building, he is greeted by a curious cat whose head is split into two fully formed faces, each facing an opposite direction. In a way, Brazil is much like that cat, constantly looking at two realities at once: the past that has shaped it, and the future it resiliently stumble...
BFI •

DJ Ahmet review: dance to the bleat

The bright-coloured interiors and cool, retro bomber jackets in DJ Ahmet at first look plucked straight out of a John Hughes teen comedy. But when the camera pulls back in the opening scene, we’re met not with an American high school but a Yuruk farming community in North Macedonia. This sharp left turn is the first of many pleasures to come in Georgi M. Unkovski’s charming coming-of-ager.Surrounded by sprawling mountains, this isolated village is home to the titular teenager Ahmet (Arif Jakup),...
Letterboxd •

No Place Like Home: Walter Salles and Fernanda Torres on time-traveling to honor the family of I’m Still Here • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine

It took Walter Salles twelve years to return to narrative filmmaking and sixteen to be back in his home country of Brazil, but I’m Still Here is worth the wait. As I write this, the director has just made history by helming the first-ever Brazilian film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. The drama also landed nominations for Best International Film and Best Actress for Fernanda Torres, who recently became the first Brazilian actor to win a Golden Globe for her luminous performance a...
Letterboxd •

Breaking the Rules: wrestling with the impact of Fincher’s searing study of masculinity and anti-capitalism 25 years on • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine

I know, I know. The first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club. But, guess what? A special occasion asks for some rule-breaking, and what better way to honor David Fincher’s subversive 1999 classic than to celebrate its 25th anniversary by bending the law a little? With that being said, if you haven’t seen the film yet, we’re about to dive headfirst into plot details—and this one is much, much better experienced without spoilers. Ready? Let’s go.
Adapted from Chuck Palahni...
Little White Lies •

Emmanuelle – first-look review

Audrey Diwan’s take on the infamous erotic French novel is a chilly, bemusing affair that lacks for a sense of real purpose.In Lars von Trier’s erotic opus Nymphomaniac, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s sex-obsessed Joe defines the erotic as “about saying yes.” It is a definition that lends itself to indulgence, the very sin Joe believes has rendered her body incapable of experiencing pleasure. It is, too, an idea that dangerously flirts with equating willingness to sensuality, a truth Audrey Diwan quickl...
i-d.co •

Harry Lawtey on playing Harvey Dent in Joker: Folie à Deux

“Listen,” the director Todd Phillips said to Harry Lawtey before ending one of the most insane Zoom calls of the 27-year-old actor’s life. “Choose five people you can really trust.” Barely weeks earlier, Harry had shot his self-tape audition with “phoney scripts” for an unknown part in Todd’s new film. Those five people – his agent, his parents and his two best friends – would be the only ones privy to a sworn secret: that Harry had just been cast as the district attorney turned villain Harvey D...
Little White Lies •

April – first-look review

Dea Kulumbegashvili's stark Georgian drama follows an obstetrician who moonlights as an abortionist, as she is accused of interfering with her patients.For ten whole minutes, Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili holds her gaze — and her camera — still. In the frame, the back of a nurse, and a naked woman’s body stretched atop an improvised operating bed made out of a worn-out dinner table. There are three women in this scene, the third being obstetrician Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), whose skilled h...
A Rabbit's Foot •

Sweltering desire: a critic’s verdict on the 2024 Venice Film Festival

The 2024 Venice Film Festival felt as if it was about to erupt. Literally, as temperatures reached the mid-30s and sweat-drenched festival goers resorted to looking for shade under sponsored banners and corner shop umbrellas; but also metaphorically, with films like Halina Reijn’s Babygirl and Luca Guadagnino’s Queer allowing established names like Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig to push the boundaries of on-screen pleasure while also ushering in a new generation of screen stars in Harris Dickins...
Letterboxd •

The Brady Rave: taking in the rapturous first reactions to Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine

Corbet’s first feature film since 2018’s Vox Lux spans 30 years in the life of Adrien Brody’s László Tóth, a Jewish architect who left his native Hungary for the United States to escape the horrors of the Holocaust. The Brutalist chronicles Tóth’s quest to reunite with his beloved wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and the aftermath of a meeting that will forever change the course of his life: the one with magnate Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Other cast members include Joe Alwyn, Isaach de B...
The Daily Beast •

The ‘Challengers’ Boys Are Making Everyone Horny for Big Ears

Italian director Luca Guadagnino knows how to frame beautiful bodies, and they are rarely as beautiful as in his latest, Challengers. Zendaya’s neverending limbs float through the air to the beats of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” and sweat drips through necks and chests and abs alike, making the toned bodies of both Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist glisten under the unforgiving sun of the small town where they face each other in a tennis match that will crown a winner in more ways than one.

If you are a h
Reclaim The Frame •

There Is Only Movement – On Ratcatcher and the Cinema of Lynne Ramsay

Children have a slippery grip on reality and an even slipperier grip on memory. What a cruel thing, then, that childhood recollections are the invisible hands moulding the sensitive clay on the kiln of adulthood, shaping a coming of age that makes or breaks the person that will come.

Cruel, too, are the muddy waters that envelop the body of young Ryan Quinn, blocking air from pumping through his small lungs. His body is buried in a tiny coffin while mourners battle both tears and the putrid sti
Letterboxd •

Romeo AI Juliet: Bertrand Bonello on the beauty in The Beast • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine

It’s 2044 and society has found a nifty solution to stop human emotions from leading to conflict and lack of productivity: to eliminate them altogether. For those willing to conform to the rules of this frigid world, all it takes is to step into a bathtub full of a black goo reminiscent of Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin and take a disorienting trip through memory lane, purging the body and mind from recollections that might reignite strong emotions. Bertrand Bonello’s adaptation of Henry James
primetimer.com •

Andrew Scott Is Wasted in Netflix’s Stylish But Empty Ripley

The first time Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) lays eyes on a Caravaggio painting is while on a visit to a Neapolitan church with his new friend and budding painter Dickie (Johnny Flynn). Hanging mightily atop the altar, “The Seven Acts of Mercy” casts a spell on the man, whose eyes traverse the artwork with an awe akin to hunger. It is no coincidence that this is the first meeting between Ripley and Caravaggio, and even less of a coincidence that the Italian painter acts as a running thread throughou
Letterboxd •

Caption This: the subtitling champions working to make festivals, screenings and global cinema more accessible • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine

Sundance’s first entirely virtual edition in 2021 awarded Siân Heder’s CODA with the US Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic plus accolades for Directing, Audience and the Special Jury Prize for Ensemble cast. The coming-of-age film about the only hearing member of a deaf family began its groundbreaking run during the festival, going on to win top prizes at major awards and eventually taking the Oscar for Best Picture in 2022, with Troy Kotsur becoming the first Deaf actor to win the Oscar for Best Suppor
Variety •

British Production Sector Regains Its Swagger After Strike Hiatus: ‘Demand Is Going to Be Ramping Up’

Despite being significantly hit by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023, U.K. film studios and production facilities are looking to pick back up where they left off after a record-breaking year for film and high-end television production spend in 2022.

When asked what the industry can expect in terms of business in the year ahead, Samantha Perahia, head of production U.K. at the British Film Commission, says she feels positive that demand “is going to be ramping up.”

She continues, “We alread
Variety •

Sandra Hüller on Speaking Out Against Fascism, Scrapped ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ Sex Scene and Oscar Nomination: ‘I Find Myself Giggling in the Morning’

The line sprawling along the corridors and staircases of De Doelen, the heart of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, alerted passersby that there was a star in town. The actor in question? German thesp Sandra Hüller, at the festival to support Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” and to give an in-depth talk about her career and latest projects.

Hüller, who landed her first Oscar nomination for best actress last week for Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” said she is “definitely no
Letterboxd •

Fantastique Cinematheque: Kleber Mendonça Filho on preserving Brazilian movie-palace memories with Pictures of Ghosts • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine

Brazilian filmmaker (and Letterboxd member) Kleber Mendonça Filho’s latest is a moving ode to his hometown of Recife—not to mention the third most popular documentary of our 2023 Year in Review. Split into three chapters, Pictures of Ghosts follows Filho’s formative years in the family apartment that would come to feature in many of his works, including 2012’s Neighboring Sounds, passing through the city’s historical cinemas and concluding with a touching musing on movie-palace culture and the v
Reclaim the Frame •

Medusa and neon-lit churches turned political headquarters

When Anita Rocha da Silveira’s piercing suspense Medusa began its festival run at the prestigious Director’s Fortnight sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival in July of 2021, Jair Messias Bolsonaro was the President of Brazil. The country still found itself in deep mourning for the thousands who lost their lives to COVID-19, with many citizens blaming the haunting number of victims (which currently sits at a staggering 700 thousand) on Bolsonaro’s loose grip on the public policies around isolation
Letterboxd •

Nobody Cares: good, scrappy Canadian Matt Johnson on respecting nerds in BlackBerry • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine

“No donuts this time?” asks Canadian director Matt Johnson when we meet in Glasgow two weeks after our first encounter in Berlin, post-world premiere of his latest feature BlackBerry. The first half of our interview happened at lunchtime, and I brought a bubbly pink box of fresh donuts in tow. When we meet again, my hands are empty, much to Johnson’s disappointment. So contagious is Johnson’s excitement for the things he loves, he will often punctuate carefully considered descriptions of texture
Little White Lies •

Rachel Weisz and Alice Birch: 'Siblings can be close, but this is a whole other level of codependency'

Rachel Weisz and Alice Birch: ‘Siblings can be close, but this is a whole other level of codependency’

Actress and producer Rachel Weisz and writer Alice Birch lift the lid on their reimagining of David Cronenberg's chilling twin thriller.

Red hooded robes, gynaecological gadgets resembling torture devices and a deep plunge into the bowels of folie à deux – David Cronenberg’s 1988 psychological horror Dead Ringers is firmly nested in the cult collective consciousness, with the stylised tale of
Little White Lies •

Past Lives – first-look review

Celine Song's feature debut is a tender exploration of multiethnic romance, complimented by nuanced performances from Greta Lee and John Magaro.

“You dream in a language I can’t understand,” Arthur (John Magaro) tells Nora (Greta Lee) when commenting on how she only sleep talks in Korean. The two are nested in the comfort of their marital bed, where long unspoken reservations can come out at last, the tender openness of their communication a testament to the loving nature of the relationship.
Letterboxd •

Toying with Disobedience: Guillermo del Toro and friends on bringing Pinocchio to life • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine

It’s the end of a long day of press junket interviews and, still, Guillermo del Toro speaks to me as if he has just sprung out of bed, an electric generosity that would be hard to believe if it were anyone else. The Mexican filmmaker is glistening with the adrenaline of the impending London Film Festival world premiere of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, a film fifteen years in the making. Much like what happened with Andrew Dominik’s long-time passion project Blonde, Netflix stepped in to make d
BFI •

The Hanging Sun review: a frigid Norwegian thriller

At the height of the Norwegian summer, there are days when the sun never sets. This phenomenon – labelled the ‘midnight sun’ – lends its name to the 2015 Jo Nesbø novel on which Francesco Carrozzini’s drama The Hanging Sun is based. It also resonates in the permanent exposure that highlights the play on darkness and light at the centre of this story about an emotionally tortured man seeking refuge in a land where night never comes.

The man in question is John (Alessandro Borghi), the son of a r
Variety •

‘Pacifiction’ Director Albert Serra on Political Correctness, ‘Boring’ Fiction: ‘The Most Radical Thing I Do Is Not Care About Success’

Cutting through roaring laughter, Spanish director Albert Serra said: “Why are you laughing?! I am serious!” The reaction of the audience was the natural byproduct of Serra’s staple candidness, which he brought to the International Film Festival Rotterdam during an in-depth talk about his career and methodology delivered earlier this week.

The director measured no words when speaking about the difficulties of working with actors (“They all have bad taste!”), the vulgarity of films such as “Tria
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