Picture the scene: a cold morning in London’s Soho. Film critics waddle towards the doors of a cinema with their gloves and coats on to waylay a sharp nip in the air. People are seated and relaxed. The lights go down. The film plays. The lights go up. Those same critics stagger breathless towards the exit, not sure how to amply contemplate what they’ve just seen. In the interim, the sun has risen and it’s a little warmer now, so words are shared in the street, words such as “masterpiece,” “what did I just see?” and “have we just witnessed an entirely new cinematic language unfold before us?”
This was a true account of when the LWLies team first clapped eyes on RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys, whose formal grace and emotional heft whacked us right on the solar plexus and left us in a daze. We’re so proud to be able to bring you an entire magazine dedicated to this wonderful film – one that we think ranks among 2024’s premium works of cinema. It is adapted from a 2019 novel by the double Pulitzer Prizewinner, Colson Whitehead, about the lives of two young Black men in 1960s Florida whose future has been placed into unnecessary jeopardy by the random pendulum swing of the Jim Crow laws. With aspirations of further education in his sights, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is charged for the crime of car theft purely for being in the wrong place and the wrong time. He is sent to the Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school whose educational veneer masks an underside of sordid racist violence and oppression.
As a magazine made by movie lovers, we’re drawn towards examples of exceptional craft, and with its innovative POV cinematography and fluid use of documentary inserts, Nickel Boys very much ticks those boxes. We were turned on to Ross back in 2018 around the release of his stunning debut documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, when he laid down for us a set of his own aesthetic principles, and he expands on that further for our in-depth interview inside this issue. Finally, it’s worth mentioning that as we were about to start work on this issue, the US electorate gave another pedestal to someone whose policies likely seek to perpetuate the grim desolation and abhorrent intolerance that’s plainly stated in this film. Yet we don’t just see Nickel Boys as a film for the moment, but one whose resonances and themes will echo through the ages.
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On the cover
We were so proud to commission one of our long-term collaborators, Rumbidzai Savanhu aka marykeepsgoing, to create a special cover for us this issue. Our covers tend to feature portraits of protagonists within the film, and she has created a playful interpretation of this concept whereby we see the back of Elwood’s head, watching his life play-out on TV screens in a shop window – a reference to one of the film’s most affecting shots.
Also in the issue we have incredible new illustrated work from Ngadi Smart, Tomekah George, Joanna Blémont, Xia Gordon, Krystal Quiles and Stéphanie Sergeant.
In the issue
Lead review: Nickel Boys
Sam Bodrojan lauds a harrowing modern masterpiece for its boldness, humanity and formal poetics.
The Interior Self
Leila Latif discovers how filmmaker RaMell Ross made a Pulitzer Prize- winning novel his own.
The Invisible Man
Actor Ethan Herisse on the challenges of sculpting a performance and building a character from behind the camera.
Hard Labour
Leila Latif gets personal with the formidable actor and by-proxy activist, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.
Ways of Seeing
Jourdain Searles discovers how cinematographer Jomo Fray refreshed traditional concepts of the camera eye.
Sacred Images
Sophie Monks Kaufman writes in praise of cinema that channels human brutality while rejecting its lurid visual nature.
Community Matters
Rōgan Graham celebrates the world of grassroots advocacy organisations built to promote diversity in cinema.
I See A Darkness
Cheyenne Bart-Stewart speaks to writer/ director Rungano Nyoni about her new film, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl.
In the back section
Magic and Loss: the making of Queer
Hannah Strong chats to Luca Guadagnino, Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey on how they tangled with the cryptic poetry of William Burroughs in this flighty and emotional new screen adaptation.
Jesse Eisenberg
Darren Richman shares stories of ancestral journeys to Eastern Europe with the writer/director/star of A Real Pain.
Brady Corbet
Keeping it real to the very last second was the main gambit of co-writer/director of The Brutalist, discovered Hannah Strong.
Halina Reijn
Rafa Sales Ross discovers that female desire can be both funny and sexy on screen in her conversation with the writer/director of Babygirl.
Pablo Larraín
The Chilean director lays out his opera credentials to Hannah Strong in this dialogue on his new film Maria, about Maria Callas.
In review
Luca Guadagnino’s Queer
Ruth Beckermann’s Favoriten
Steven Soucey’s Merchant Ivory
Justin Kurzel’s The Order
Michael Gracey’s Better Man
John Crowley’s We Live In Time
Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain
Pinny Grylls and Sam Crain’s Grand Theft Hamlet
Viktor Kossakovsky’s Architecton
Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle
Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio
Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist
Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths
Naoko Yamada’s The Colours Within
Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch
Halina Reijn’s Nightbitch
James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown
Pablo Larrain’s Maria
Plus – the LWLies top ten films of 2024!
Matt Turner and David Jenkins explore eight recent Home Ents gems, plus we have a postcard from the Tokyo International Film Festival via Hannah Strong, and Marina Ashioti writes in praise of Chantal Ackerman’s Je Tu Il Elle ahead of a major BFI retrospective.
LWLies 105 is available to order now from our online shop. Become a Club LWLies Gold Member or subscribe today to make sure you never miss an issue.
Published 10 Dec 2024
Pick up our fully-illustrated print deep-dive into the world of Andrea Arnold and her scintillating new film, Bird.
The great Naomi Ackie graces the vibrant cover of our new issue celebrating Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut.
Yorgos Lanthimos is up to his old tricks with this delightfully mean allegorical anthology.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
