LWLies 106: The Nick­el Boys issue – Out now!

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.

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.