Truth & Movies: A Little White Lies Podcast

School’s out and the mercury is rising – so what better time to escape to the dark, cool shelter of the cinema? In the T&M host seat this week is Beth Webb, who’s joined by Kambole Campbell and Hannah Woodhead to discuss two fairly low-key new releases. The Current War sees Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon duke it out over the world’s electricity supply, although this historical drama...

Disney’s The Lion King stampedes into cinemas this week, but Hannah Woodhead and Kelli Weston aren’t feeling the love for this latest “live-action” reboot from the House of Mouse. There’s lots of praise from team T&M for another new release though – Varda by Agnès sees the late French cinema icon reflect on her remarkable career, while in Film Club we revisit the film’s companion piece from 20...

On this week’s Truth & Movies, Michael Leader is joined by regular guests David Jenkins and Matt Thrift, who take a collective bite out of Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die before sampling the latest from maverick Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas, Our Time. Then in Film Club, we slip back into the Jarmusch groove for long overdue look back at the director’s spiritual monochrome wes...

You may know Little White Lies from our weekly Truth & Movies podcast, but we also make a magazine, and its 80th issue is currently on shelves. Inside, we explore an alternative history of British cinema with a list of 100 mould-breaking movies, and on this special episode, host Michael Leader is joined by special guests Will Fowler, curator at BFI and co-author of new book on the underground...

Young love and break ups are the flavour of the day on this episode of Truth & Movies, as the MCU goes to the EU in Spider-Man: Far From Home and Hereditary writer/director Ari Aster heads to rural Sweden for his solstice-set freakout Midsommar. Michael Leader, David Jenkins and Adam Woodward offer their thoughts on these new releases, while in Film Club we trace the folk horror genre’s o...

It’s Beatles week on Truth & Movies, as Michael Leader samples Danny Boyle’s crowd-pleasing fantasy comedy, Yesterday, with a little help from his friends David Jenkins and Sophie Monks Kaufman. Later in the episode, the podders revisit the Fab Four’s breezy big screen debut from 1964, A Hard Day’s Night. Before that, we enter the bizarre realm of Peter Strickland’s In Fabric, an absurdist gho...

The toys are back in town. On the show this week, Michael Leader, Anton Bitel and Caitlin Quinlan team up to offer their thoughts on two new releases from opposite ends of the genre spectrum. First up is Toy Story 4, which sees Woody, Buzz and co reunite for one last adventure (probably), before the T&M gang turn their attentions to the reboot of the cult 1988 slasher Child’s Play. And in Film...

Joining Michael Leader in the studio this week are Carl Anka and Adam Woodward, two ’90s kids and self-confessed football fanatics who accordingly are well placed to discuss director Asif Kapadia’s latest celebrity exposé, Diego Maradona. Before that we take a look at Men in Black: International, starring Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson as the slick-suited galaxy defenders, and, in Film Club, t...

Like a mythical bird rising from the ashes, the X-Men return to our screens this week hoping to undo the damage caused by 2016’s Apocalypse – but does Dark Phoenix catch fire or simply fizzle out? Michael Leader, Simran Hans and Kambole Campbell are on hand to help you decide whether it’s worth the trip, while also offering their thoughts on Sebastián Lelio’s muted midlife crisis drama, Glori...

After the dizzying highs of the Cannes Film Festival, Truth & Movies comes back down to earth with a thud this week. Michael Leader, Hannah Woodhead and Adam Woodward are on hand to wade through the murky CG waters of Godzilla: King Of The Monsters, a colossal misfire which kicks off the summer blockbuster season with a whimper, before things take a decidedly more enjoyable turn with Olivia Wi...

Looking beyond the main competition, Michael Leader is joined by special guest Charles McDonald to offer a publicist’s perspective on the ins and outs of the world’s glitziest film festival. In a little over three decades of attending Cannes, Charles has worked with everyone from Jim Jarmusch and Lynne Ramsay to Ken Loach and here reveals how the festival – and the movies themselves – have changed...

Once upon a time in Cannes... Quentin Tarantino returns to the Croisette with his hotly-anticipated ninth feature, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as an ageing TV star and his stunt double sidekick respectively. We’ve got our own A-list double act in the form of Michael Leader and Adam Woodward to offer their reaction on that, plus Bong Joon-ho’s blistering social parable Parasite, b...

In our latest dispatch from Cannes, Michael Leader and Hannah Woodhead recap the best of the weekend’s action. Tales of forbidden female desire, crises of faith and nautical purgatory abound in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life and Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse respectively – all major new works which have successively raised the bar at this year’s festiv...

With the Cannes Film Festival in full swing, Michael Leader is joined by Little White Lies’ US correspondent Charles Bramesco to round up the best of the action on day two. In the main competition there’s the bizarre and bloody Bacarau from Brazilian directing pair Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, and over in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar, Jean Dujardin dons the jacket of his d...

Truth & Movies is on tour for the next two weeks, reporting live from the 72nd Cannes Film Festival. In this first bite-sized dispatch, Michael Leader and Adam Woodward discuss the opening film, Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die, and preview our most anticipated films across the official selection on Day 2. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this bumper edition of Truth & Movies, Michael Leader, Hannah Woodhead and Adam Woodward venture to the outer reaches of the galaxy for Claire Denis’ awe-inspiring sci-fi opus High Life, starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche. We also hear from the director herself, who discusses meeting the cast for the first time. Then it’s back down to earth with a thud, as Detective Pikachu puts...

Serial murder, high school massacre and a double dose of Zac Efron – just another week in the world of Truth & Movies. On this week’s show, Michael Leader is joined by David Jenkins and Caitlin Quinlan to review Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, starring the once squeaky clean Disney alum as notorious killer Ted Bundy, and Vox Lux, in which Natalie Portman plays a jaded pop star. The...

In today’s epic edition of Truth & Movies, Michael Leader, Kambole Campbell and Hannah Woodhead assemble for the mother of all blockbuster showdowns – but does Endgame bring a satisfying close to the Avengers saga? Also in cinemas this week is Eighth Grade from YouTube comedian-turned-filmmaker Bo Burnham, which finally arrives in the UK having earned plaudits across the pond. Then it’s back t...

This week’s episode of Truth & Movies is double hard-boiled, as Michael Leader, Sophie Monks Kaufman and Adam Woodward inspect S Craig Zahler’s button-pushing slowburn procedural, Dragged Across Concrete, and, in Film Club, Don Siegel’s classic cop thriller from 1971, Dirty Harry. Sandwiched in between is an altogether less serious film, Neil Jordan’s New York psychodrama Greta, in which Isabe...

This week marks our 100th episode, and we’re celebrating with a song – not from our critics, Michael Leader, David Jenkins and Beth Webb, but star-on-the-rise Jessie Buckley, who gives a scintillating lead turn as an aspiring country singer in Wild Rose. That’s bookended by Jonah Hill’s coming-of-ager Mid90s, about a hard-knocks skate crew in Los Angeles, and Larry Clark’s controversial 1995 drama...

On the latest Truth & Movies we take a side-by-side look at a pair of Stephen King adaptations: Mary Lambert’s 1989 Pet Sematary and the 2019 reincarnation from co-directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer. Host Michael Leader and guest critics Anton Bitel and Elena Lazic also check out Jacques Audiard’s side-splitting sibling western The Sisters Brothers, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Joh...

There’s a distinctly gothic flavour to this week’s Truth & Movies, as we check in with Tim Burton’s live-action Dumbo remake before setting a course to Norway circa the early 1990s, where there’s all kinds of devilry afoot in Jonas Åkerlund’s black metal biopic Lords of Chaos. Michael Leader, Adam Woodward and – making his T&M debut – Charles Bramesco are on hand to offer their though...

Doppelgänger is the word of the week on Truth & Movies, as Michael Leader is joined by Manuela Lazic and Sophie Monks Kaufman to unpack Jordan Peele’s eerie new horror Us. They also look at Peele’s hero Hitchcock and offer a reappraisal of his 1963 invasion classic The Birds, and journey to Rockford, Illinois for Bing Liu’s moving documentary portrait of youth in revolt, Minding the Gap. Hoste...

There’s an LA noir flavour to this week’s Truth & Movies, as Michael Leader, David Jenkins and Hannah Woodhead unpick the myriad mysteries of David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake, starring Andrew Garfield and Riley Keough, before diving into Robert Altman’s ice-cool classic, The Long Goodbye, for Film Club. Sandwiched in between is Lukas Dhont’s affecting – and somewhat divisive – com...

In this episode of Truth & Movies, Michael Leader, Simran Hans and Beth Webb assemble to discuss Captain Marvel, the 21st film in the MCU – and the studio’s only feature-length offering to date to be fronted by a female character. That’s followed by a look at British kitchen sink drama Ray & Liz, from photographer-turned-filmmaker Richard Billingham, and lastly our female superhero-themed...