Truth & Movies: A Little White Lies Podcast

We’re signing off 2019 with an in-depth chat with the makers of one of our favourite films of the year. With their sensational fourth feature, Uncut Gems, arriving in the UK on 10 January, the New York siblings took time out of their busy schedule to discuss making the step-up from their previous work, while also namechecking a few recent movies they’ve enjoyed.  Hosted on Acast. See aca...

It’s a massive week for new releases, as two of the most anticipated films of 2019 are finally revealed. JJ Abrams brings the current Star Wars saga to a less-than-spectacular close with The Rise of Skywalker, while Tom Hooper orchestrates an all-star cast for his digitally-enhanced big screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. Michael Leader is joined by David Jenkins and Hannah Woodhead to d...

On this week’s Truth & Movies, Michael Leader, Steph Watts and Adam Woodward gear up for the fantasy adventure sequel Jumanji: The Nextl Level, featuring The Rock, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan, while the nature film gets a heavy metal makeover in Viktor Kossakovsky’s water-themed eco doc Aquarela. And in Film Club, we’re slashing through the snow with the 1974 seasonal horror classic, Black Chr...

Michael Leader is back in the T&M host’s seat this week as critics Hannah Woodhead and Pamela Hutchinson offer their thoughts on two new releases. Honey Boy sees Shia LaBeouf play his own father in a semi-autobiographical study of child stardom, while Wang Xiaoshuai surveys China’s recent social and political past in So Long, My Son. And in Film Club, Jacques Demy’s classic musical The Um...

It’s a bumper week on Truth & Movies, as stand-in host Beth Webb is joined by David Jenkins and Lou Thomas to dissect three new releases. There’s Knives Out, Rian Johnson’s starry twist on the classic whodunnit; Atlantics, Mati Diop’s beguiling Dakar-set mystery romance; and The Nightingale, Jennifer Kent’s gruelling post-colonial thriller. We also hear from rising star Aisling Franciosi...

On this week’s show our resident animation expert, Michael Leader, is joined by Kambole Campbell and Caitlin Quinlan to discuss two very different new entries into the genre. First up is Frozen II, Disney’s long-overdue sequel to its 2013 pop culture phenomenon, followed by the decidedly more melancholy I Lost My Body, from French director Jérémy Clapin. In Film Club, we queue up a blast from the...

On this week’s show Michael Leader, Manuela Lazic and Adam Woodward try to keep the motoring puns to a minimum as we gear up (sorry, sorry!) for Le Mans ’66, starring Matt Damon and a Brummie Christian Bale as American car designer Carroll Shelby and British racing driver Ken Miles respectively. And, in Film Club, Steve McQueen’s fascinating early ’70s passion project Le Mans. Before all that, we...

Before it arrives on Netflix later this month, Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited mob epic The Irishman makes its way into UK cinemas this week – Michael Leader, David Jenkins and Sophie Monks Kaufman get in early on the action, assessing the de-aging job on Robert De Niro and whether the film glorifies the Mafia. Also this week, wigs and wackiness abound in the auto-themed thriller Driven, about the...

With another UK election looming, what better time to welcome back the foremost custodian of social-realist cinema on these shores, Ken Loach. His new drama Sorry We Missed You arrives in cinemas this week, and Michael Leader, Anton Bitel and Hannah Woodhead are on hand to deliver their verdicts. Also this week, there’s a pair of belated horror sequels in the shape of Doctor Sleep, starring E...

This week on Truth & Movies, James Cameron gets the old gang back together for director Tim “Deadpool” Miller’s Terminator sequel Dark Fate, while onetime enfant terrible Harmony Korine shows his mellow side in the sun-kissed slacker comedy The Beach Bum, starring Matthew McConaughey as fun-loving stoner poet Moondog. Michael Leader, Matt Thrift and Steph Watts team up to tackle those new rele...

Did 2009's Zombieland really need a sequel ten years later? Does Olivier Assayas' new film, Non-Fiction, reveal all about the world of publishing and e-books? What does the inventor of the iPod have to say about life in Silicon Valley and the future of movies? The host with the most Michael Leader is joined in the studio by Elena Lazic and David Jenkins, with film club this week is Assayas' 90s cl...

Déjà vu, doppelgängers and political discourse are on the T&M agenda this week, as Michael Leader, Darren Richman and Adam Woodward team up to tackle Ang Lee’s action sci-fi Gemini Man, in which Will Smith faces off against... himself, and The Day Shall Come, Chris Morris’ long-awaited return to the political satire fold. In Film Club there’s another serving of Big Willie style in the shape of...

DC’s clown prince is back in action this week courtesy of director Todd Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix – but is Joker a harmless supervillain origin story or something more insidious? Michael Leader, Pamela Hutchinson and Hannah Woodhead cut through the #discourse before turning their attentions to Judy, Rupert Goold’s tender portrait of Hollywood’s tragic entertainer. And in Film Club, 1954’s...

This week, the Truth & Movies team tackle the screen adaptation of Donna Tartt's art world doorstop, The Goldfinch, as well as The Last Tree, the intriguing second feature from up-and-coming British talent, Shola Amoo. And in Film Club this week, we rake over the genteel New York weirdness of Jonathan Glazer's 2004 film, Birth. On the panel we have LWLies regular Sophie Monks Kaufman and T&amp...

In this week's episode we're blasting off to the outer echelons of the galaxy to join Brad Pitt on a journey to Neptune in Ad Astra, and spending some time on a Russian space station to pick apart dreams and reality in Andrei Tarkovsky's classic Solaris. Then it's back down to earth for Lulu Wang's culture clash family comedy The Farewell, with Michael Leader in the presenter's chair, and David Je...

On T&M this week, Michael Leader is joined by David Jenkins and Sophie Monks Kaufman to explore the extreme poles of modern cinema. At one end we have the harrowing but vital documentary For Sama, and at the other, it's the glossy, entertaining crime flick Hustlers (starring an on-form Jennifer Lopez). And for Film Club, look at the strange, ever-changable legacy of of Paul Verhoeven's 1994 Ra...

It's our second Truth & Movies special live from the 2019 Venice Film Festival. Reporting from the Lido is LWLies editor David Jenkins and critic Christina Newland, and we pick apart four big titles: Todd Phillips' divisive Joker, Stephen Soderbergh's Panama Papers movie, The Laundromat, Roy Andersson's poetic About Endlessness, and Shakespearean battle epic, The King. Hosted on Acast. See aca...

This week, Truth & Movies heads back down the storm drain to tackle Pennywise the clown once more in IT: Chapter 2. There's political and legal anxieties in Argentina for Benjamín Naishtat's festival darling Rojo, and for Film Club, we tramp the sidewalks of 1960s New York City in culture clash classic, Midnight Cowboy. Joining host Michael Leader in the studio is Anton Bitel and Kelli We...

Put on your sunglasses and mosquito repellant as Truth & Movies are coming to you this week live from the 2019 Venice Film Festival. Little White Lies editor David Jenkins and film writer Christina Newland pick apart Seberg, a biopic of tragic actor Jean Seberg starring Kristen Stewart, an epic comic two-hander with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson in Marriage Story, and a voyage into deep s...

This week sees the release of not one but two British classics-in-the-making. Michael Leader is joined by Adam Woodward and T&M first-timer Ian Mantgani of Badlands Collective fame to espouse the myriad virtues of Joanna Hogg’s intimate relationship drama, The Souvenir, and Mark Jenkin’s experimental monochrome culture-clash drama Bait. Capping off this episode, we revisit Sam Peckinpah’s noto...

To celebrate the release of Joanna Hogg’s masterful new film, The Souvenir, which graces the cover of the summer issue of Little White Lies, we’ve put together a special pod tribute to the British filmmaker. Regular Truth & Movies host Michael Leader is joined by Sophie Monks Kaufman and Hannah Woodhead for an in-depth look back at the writer/director’s three previous features, Unrelated, Arch...

This week sees the return of one of our favourite living filmmakers: Pedro Almodóvar reunites with Spanish stars Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz for the semi-autobiographical late-career highlight Pain & Glory. Also on this episode of Truth & Movies, US documentary maker Penny Lane investigates the curious rise of the Satanic Temple in Hail Satan?. Michael Leader, Kambole Campbell...

There’s a throwback feel to this week’s Truth & Movies as Michael Leader, David Jenkins and Hannah Woodhead are transported back to 1969 care of Quentin Tarantino’s end-of-an-era elegy Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. In Film Club, our critics check out a largely forgotten ’60s comedy which Tarantino tips his hat to, the Dean Martin-Sharon Tate espionage caper The Wrecking Crew. Plus there’s pla...

From the Badlands to the Backstreets, this week’s episode kicks off with a look at the Gurinder Chadha’s Bruce Springsteen-inspired coming-of-ager Blinded by the Light, which comes endorsed by The Boss himself. Host Michael Leader is joined by Sophie Monks Kaufman and pod newcomer Mike McCahill, who also offers their thoughts on Opus Zero, an auteurist curio starring Willem Dafoe, and in Film Club...

The boys are back in town this week as Fast and Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw crashes into cinemas. Michael Leader, David Jenkins and, making her Truth & Moves debut, Steph Watts, give this testosterone-fuelled blockbuster a good going over before turning their attentions to Sophie Hyde’s portrait of a young female friendship, Animals. Then in Film Club, we check in with Spike Lee’s e...