Viraldice

A notice hangs on the headboard of a public staircase that reads, “Don’t forget to smile”. As he saunters underneath it, Joaquin Phoenix’s violently depressive deadbeat rent-a-clown, Arthur Fleck, pulls out a black marker pen from his pocket and scrubs out the words “forget to”. This, in a grotesquely rotten nutshell, is the flash-fried turkey that is Todd Phillips’ Joker, a film which...

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Chilean director Pablo Larraín made a name for himself with his dark allegorical dramas on the devastating history of his homeland and the legacy of political dictatorship. He was rewarded with a trip to Hollywood where he delivered the divisive Jackie, starring Natalie Portman as America’s most famous widow, Jackie Onassis. He returns with something completely fresh and challenging, a coolly abstract vision...

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In this new series, Thomas Hobbs speaks to different musicians about their favourite film scores. First up, Cliff Martinez discusses Ennio Morricone’s For a Few Dollars More score. One of Cliff Martinez’s earliest memories is being taken to a drive-in cinema by his parents to see director Sergio Leone’s iconic spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars. For the musician, who would later play...

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It brings us no pleasure whatsoever to deliver the news that Seberg, a stilted and slight biopic of the Iowa-born screen icon Jean Seberg, is something of a trainwreck. Part of the problem is the casting of Kristen Stewart in the title role who, despite her best efforts, is just unable to capture the twinkle-eyed spirit of the soft-featured, imp-haired star of films...

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From the very first moments of Carole & Tuesday, a narrator foretells of a “miraculous seven minutes” that forever changes the world, and that this is the story of the women who made it happen. Whether this is exaggeration on the part of the narrator (later revealed to be Gus, Carole & Tuesday’s manager) remains to be seen, but the general optimism of Shinichirō...

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The trials and tribulations of childbirth are well-documented in cinema, but in Jeanie Finlay’s tender documentary a unique story of new life comes into rich focus. Freddy McConnell, a 30-year-old trans man, is desperate to start a family of his own, and Finlay is his companion on this long and arduous journey – together they chronicle his extraordinary struggle to fulfil a basic...

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The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Netflix’s 10-part prequel to Jim Henson’s cherished 1982 fantasy, features a dazzling mix of hand-crafted and digital special effects. Central to bringing the mystical realm of Thra to life for a new generation were Brian and Wendy Froud, who worked on the original film 37 years ago as creature and costume designer and puppet builder respectively. The...

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Beloved purveyor of eclectic and accessible anime Shinichirō Watanabe has finally returned with a new show, and it’s unlike anything he has created before – though not for the reasons that one might expect. A creator of eclectic crossover hits like the stylish Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, which mixed jazz music and hip-hop with space-faring bounty hunting and an Edo period samurai...

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Isn’t it a wonderful feeling when a director whose work you have been typically apathetic towards in the past produces something that comes dangerously close to a masterpiece? The speculative idea of A James Gray Movie has always managed to whip up a sense of anticipation and intrigue. Yet James Gray in reality has always, for me, landed on a bust. We Own...

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Earlier this month, a forty-two-follower SoundCloud user named Steve Ronsen issued a claim that Lady Gaga and her songwriting partner Mark Ronson plagiarized their smash hit “Shallow” from A Star Is Born (2018). Ronsen asserts that three notes from his song “Almost” are similar to three notes in “Shallow” and is currently seeking to “get to the bottom of this.” Lady Gaga emphatically...

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This is a bit of a strange one, but the film that came to mind while watching Noah Baumbach’s punishingly incisive dissection of a messy break-up and divorce was not Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage – which is even name-checked as a framed magazine article on the wall of a New York apartment – but in fact Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Yes,...

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As someone who believes in the ‘universal language’ of music and draws from that in creating his shows, it’s no wonder Shinichirō Watanabe has built a reputation as a creator of ambitious anime that’s as entertaining as it is difficult to pin down. In two decades of work, Watanabe has become known for eclectic and distinctive combinations of Japanese and American culture, with...

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A domestic fable that’s as gentle as a summer breeze, Haifaa al-Mansour’s The Perfect Candidate is a featherlight crowd pleaser that takes aim at the everyday misogyny that runs to the roots of Arabian society. It’s a film about grassroots political action and its discontents, taking time to explore the notion that people’s prejudices often prevent them from making practical decisions that would...

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It’s no secret that we at LWLies are long-time admirers of the British writer/director Joanna Hogg. (Hopefully by now you’ll have had a chance to pick up a copy our 80th issue, which features her sublime latest, The Souvenir, on the cover.) Yet while she’s held in high regard by critics and her industry peers, Hogg remains something of an under-appreciated talent on...

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An emotionally abusive relationship lies at the heart of Adrian Noble’s biopic of one of Britain’s most-loved painters, LS Lowry. In the vein of a psychological drama, the narrative centres around the intimate yet tempestuous relationship between mother and son, set against the backdrop of industrial Greater Manchester in the mid-1930s. Lowry is played by Timothy Spall, who previously brought JMW Turner to...

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We’re getting to the point where they don’t sell cakes big enough to house the amount of candles needed to celebrate the current age of the BFI London Film Festival. It’s 63 years young, and shows no signs of flagging, or wear and tear. Yet it’s never just the same old thing, as this year brings new filmmakers, new venues, new events, new...

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Bolaji Badejo, a 22-year-old Nigerian studying in London, decided to go out for a drink in Soho one evening in 1979. He had no prior acting experience, but at nearly seven feet tall, he caught the attention of a casting director. Director Ridley Scott later recounted their first meeting in a 2008 interview. “I said, ‘Do you want to be in the movies?’...

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