For us here at LWLies HQ, one of the most hotly anticipated titles on the highly tentative calendar for 2021 is The Souvenir Part II, Joanna Hogg’s follow-up to her loosely autobiographical memoir of artistry and passion in her youth. But while Hogg’s fanbase (we prefer to be called Wild Hoggs) awaits the release of Read More
Discover the military thriller that put Park Chan-wook on the mapf
It is the wee hours of 28 October, at the scene of a multiple murder. Jeong Woo-jin (Shin Ha-kyun) and another man are dead, and Oh Kyung-pil (Song Kang-ho) is injured, while Lee Soo-hyuk (Lee Byung-hun), also injured, has managed to escape and is currently in custody, having confessed to the shootings. This is no Read More
76 Days
This intimate documentary, shot during lockdown in Wuhan, measures the human cost of the coronavirus pandemic. Hao Wu and Weixi Chen’s affecting documentary 76 Days was filmed in local hospitals at the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic while Wuhan was still under citywide lockdown. It opens with a visceral sequence pieced together from various handheld Read More
Watch Symbiosis, an animated short film about sex and jealousy
The domino effect that forms human connections has never been more relevant in our coronavirus age, as droplets pass from person-to-person, linking us through an invisible chain. Symbiosis charts a different type of intimate relationship that can exist between otherwise strangers: sex with the same person. The film follows a nameless woman who realises that Read More
A new version of The Magnificent Ambersons restores Welles’ vision
At the tail end of last year, we published a ranking of every feature film directed by Orson Welles. Top of the pile was The Magnificent Ambersons, which tells the story of an aristocratic Midwestern family who struggle to maintain their lofty social position amid the rapid changes of the late 19th century. Yet despite Read More
Noah Baumbach will adapt White Noise with Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig
The prose of Don DeLillo, wrapped up in mental interiority and postmodern abstraction as it is, presents a lot of the same challenges inherent in adapting Thomas Pynchon. Accordingly, the two men don’t have much of a presence in the film world, with one major adaptation each from an ambitious auteur. (DeLillo has David Cronenber’s Read More
Locked Down
An affluent couple plot an audacious diamond heist in the Covid movie absolutely no one needed. Hollywood, tread carefully. One of the first narrative feature films to be shot during the COVID-19 pandemic and include the deadly virus in its plot, Locked Down, penned by Steven Knight and directed by Doug Liman, is an unfortunate Read More
Away
This spellbinding and spiritual Latvian animation has parallels with Studio Ghibli’s The Red Turtle. It took Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis three and a half years to write, produce, direct and score his spellbinding debut feature – and the finished product boasts a rare kind of magic. A boy wakes up hanging by a parachute from Read More
Darren Aronofsky’s next film stars Brendan Fraser as an obese recluse
It’s been a while since Darren Aronofsky‘s last feature, the hectic symbolist parable mother!, came to theaters and collected an F CinemaScore for bringing its dense obliqueness to mall cineplexes. That was 2017, and now the idiosyncratic auteur has announced his follow-up feature project, another exercise in the extreme and abstract. DiscussingFilm broke the news Read More
An unseen archive of movie poster artwork is being published
Even if you’ve never watched a Star Wars film, chances are you’ll be familiar with the above image – but you won’t have seen this exact one before. That’s because it’s part of a massive archive of movie poster art called the Feref Collection, a veritable treasure trove dating from the company’s inception in 1968, Read More
The drug war targets a star in The United States vs Billie Holiday
On 16 May, 1947, Billie Holiday was arrested in her own apartment on the charge of narcotic possession. It was the culmination of a federal sting preying upon her open-secret dependency on heroin, an operation made possible through unsavory subterfuge that involved an agent conducting a love affair of questionable ethics with the singer. This Read More
Danny Boyle will direct a TV miniseries about The Sex Pistols
“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Those words, uttered by Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten as he concluded his final show with soon-to-be-dead bandmate Sid Vicious, encapsulate a lifetime of regret and disappointment with the music industry and the complexes of fame. But for too long, Sex Pistols superfans have felt cheated in their Read More
MLK/FBI
Based on newly declassified transcripts, this documentary charts the US government’s harassment of the civil rights leader. In his thorough documentary, director Sam Pollard meticulously maps out the FBI’s conniving operation to destabilise the equality mission of Martin Luther King Jr. Made up predominantly of archive footage of Dr King’s rallies and various scanned documents, Read More
Why a David Bowie biopic will always be doomed to fail
In the opening scene of Stardust, Gabriel Range’s new David Bowie biopic, we witness a merging of two powerful pop culture images: Bowie (Johnny Flynn) as Major Tom and the black hole sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. You’d expect such a pairing when watching a film about the early inspirations of a Read More
Me Without You and the toxic female friendship
The last decade saw a spate of films centred around female friendship, from Frances Ha and Girlhood to Lady Bird and Booksmart. But at the other end of the genre spectrum lies Sandra Goldbacher’s poignant feature Me Without You, which rather than glorify the sanctity of female friendships, goes against the idea that women should Read More
Beginnings: Boris Karloff’s South London
Images of Boris Karloff have become so ubiquitous in the years since he was working that it’s sometimes difficult to comprehend the man beyond them. Consider his name and the likelihood is that a number of stark images from classic horror cinema will primarily come to mind. His nuanced portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster in James Read More
Watch Zendaya and John David Washington in the Malcolm & Marie trailer
Up to this point, Sam Levinson has seemed to belong to that recent class of accomplished TV showrunners unable to survive in the hostile environment of the movies. (See also: Noah Hawley, Sam Esmail, Dan Fogelman.) His big-screen debut Assassination Nation fizzled after its record-setting buy at Sundance, but with the success of HBO’s Euphoria Read More
Pretend It’s a City is a wry love letter to pre-pandemic New York
New York has a way of turning people into landmarks, one of them being the writer and social commentator Fran Lebowitz, who is now so ingrained in the city’s fabric that she recently referred to herself as “the designated New Yorker” in an interview with the New Yorker. Her decades-long career began in the late Read More
Jessie Buckley is set to star in Alex Garland’s next film, Men
For a minute there, it seemed like Alex Garland might end up one of those promising cinematic talents lured to the wilds of TV by looser run times and lessened oversight. But the accomplished filmmaker behind the sci-fi standouts Ex Machina and Annihilation will follow up his polarizing small-screen series Devs with another feature project, Read More
Steven Soderbergh has shared his annual viewing log for 2020
A commonality among most of the great filmmakers is an appreciation for the medium extending into their own personal time, as they keep up with new releases and continue to school themselves on the classics. But no one maintains an eclectic, well-balanced viewing diet quite like Steven Soderbergh, who releases an annual day-by-day log of Read More
How we filmed Pieces of a Woman’s one-shot birth scene
Pieces of a Woman opens with a breathtaking 22-minute long take in which Vanessa Kirby’s character gives birth in real time. It’s an astonishing set-piece that stands out not just for its technical ingenuity, but for how it immerses us in this emotionally-charged situation. Director Kornél Mundruczó and cinematographer Benjamin Loeb trap us in the Read More
Pieces of a Woman
Kornél Mundruczó’s affecting drama follows a couple who experience the loss of their first child shortly after birth. Kornél Mundruczó’s drama, written by his partner and frequent collaborator Kata Wéber, focuses on an element of motherhood so rarely depicted on screen, it feels radical and devastating all at once. Expectant parents Martha Weiss (Vannessa Kirby) Read More
Fancy a week alone watching movies in a remote lighthouse?
Those untamed dark imaginations at the Göteborg Film Festival just can’t stop charting the outermost limits of sensation, at least where cinema is concerned. Around this time last year, in the blissful pre-pandemic months when confinement wasn’t such a constant horror, they offered a few attendees the chance to watch a movie while sealed in Read More
Mayor
This striking portrait of the mayor or Ramallah digs into the details of governance, diplomacy and dignity. At the start of David Osit’s Mayor, Ramallah is described as a “city in transition”. Musa Hadid, who is the city’s mayor and the film’s primary subject, is certainly always on the move. Frequently filmed from an over-the-shoulder Read More
David Squires on… A very merry Christmas movie medley
Published 24 Dec 2020 Share this
The 10 best film soundtracks of 2020
Thanks to COVID-19 restrictions, being able to go to the cinema has been a rare luxury for many of us this year. Yet that didn’t stop 2020 from producing its fair share of memorable movies. And with all that extra time indoors, there’s been plenty of opportunity to become immersed in great movie soundtracks. Here’s Read More
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
Last call for drinks in this liquor-lashed celebration of American bar culture from Bill and Turner Ross. There is no equivalent to the experience of spending the entire night – from sundown to sun-up – in a bar. It’s the alcoholic imbibing equivalent of a marathon race, where it’s all about pace, recovery and making Read More
The 30 best films of 2020
The 30 best films of 2020 Our favourite new releases from this year, featuring Spike Lee, Chloé Zhao, Josephine Decker and more. No two ways about it, 2020 has been an absolute stinker. But seeing as this time of year is traditionally one of giving thanks and being grateful, let’s set aside all the bad Read More
Beginnings: Ida Lupino’s London
A radical and important figure of classical Hollywood, Ida Lupino paved the way for tougher roles for women in front of and behind the camera. With a career spanning almost 50 years on stage and screen, she was noted for portraying controversial characters, gaining her the hard image as the so-called British Jean Harlow or, Read More
Know The Score: Open Mike Eagle on Punch-Drunk Love
Know The Score: Open Mike Eagle on Punch-Drunk Love The Chicago rapper describes the moment he fell in love with Jon Brion’s dreamlike score. In Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2002 film Punch-Drunk Love, Adam Sandler’s Barry Egan finds it difficult to express his true feelings. In order to fit in with society his fractured personality often Read More