Truth & Movies: A Little White Lies Podcast

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 space with Brad Pitt in Ad Astra.

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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 notorious home invasion thriller from 1971, Straw Dogs, a film that has lost none of its ability to shock. 

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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, Archipelago and Exhibition, which are all available to rent now via Curzon Home Cinema.

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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 and Beth Webb discuss those, plus your pick for the best ever Almodóvar film, 1999’s All About My Mother.

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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 plaudits aplenty for German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s alluring riff on the classic World War Two-era romance, Transit. 

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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, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1946 noir Notorious, which is dusted off for a long-overdue theatrical re-release.

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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 era-defining 1989 feature Do the Right Thing.

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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 is more stimulating than its synopsis suggests. Then it’s on to Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, in which documentarian Nick Broomfield charts the romantic life of Leonard Cohen and his muse Marianne Ihlen. Finally, we revisit Park Chan-wook’s cephalopod-bothering revenge classic Oldboy ahead of its re-release next week.

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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 2008, Beaches of Agnès.

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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 western from 1995, Dead Man.

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