Truth & Movies: A Little White Lies Podcast

There’s a wartime feel to the first Truth & Movies of the new year, as Michael Leader, Hannah Woodhead and Adam Woodward gear up for Sam Mendes’ immersive real-time World War One drama 1917, inspired by his own grandfather’s experiences. Next up, Kiwi funnyman Taika Waititi skewers the Führer in Jojo Rabbit, starring Roman Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell – but is it really an “anti-hate satire”? Staying with World War Two, we revisit Charlie Chaplin’s classic Nazi send-up from 1940, The Great Dictator, in our Film Club.

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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. 

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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 discuss those, as well as Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women, which hits cinemas Boxing Day.

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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 Christmas.

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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 Umbrellas of Cherbourg gets a welcome theatrical re-run courtesy of the BFI.

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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 about how she prepared for her demanding lead role in Kent’s film. And with Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 swansong Eyes Wide Shut back in cinemas, we revisit it in our Film Club.

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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 past in the form of Ken Russell’s Tommy, inspired by The Who’s seminal rock opera.

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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 settle down for a bittersweet take on the relationship drama with Marriage Story, courtesy of Noah Baumbach.

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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 unmaking of famed American car designer John DeLorean, while in Film Club we revisit one of Scorsese’s lesser-seen works, 1999’s Bringing Out the Dead.

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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 Ewan McGregor as an adult Danny Torrance, while in Film Club, Anthony Perkins returns for Psycho II.

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