The Cineskinny

BONUS: Matthias & Maxime and 21st Century Queer Filmmaking (Live at GFT)

In a departure from our regular scheduled programming, it's the panel from our Queer Cinema Sundays screening of Xavier Dolan's Matthias & Maxime at Glasgow Film Theatre.

The sound quality is a bit patchy but our boy on the 1s and 2s has done his best – if you're a fan of Dolan's films, yearn for a bit of chat about some of queer cinema's current leading lights from Celine Sciamma to Luca Guadagnino, or just want to know what it would sound like if Peter genuinely did get trapped down a well, give it a blast.

Queer Cinema Sundays: https://www.glasgowfilm.org/queer-cinema-sundays/

Get us on Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram and Letterboxd  @thecineskinny, email us at cineskinny@theskinny.co.uk

Music: Too Cool by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4534-too-cool) License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Nosferatu, Babygirl, Wallace and Gromit, and What We Will Be Watching

The podcast is back, and we're having just as much fun talking about the films as ever (medium-to-high). For a first pod back, we chat Nosferatu, Babygirl and the new Wallace and Gromit, talk through our holiday rewatching, and look ahead to some of the films on the 2025 schedule. The cinema, it lives on!

TIMESTAMPS:

What We've Been Watching (4:30)
Nosferatu review (13:30)
Babygirl review (26:05)
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl review (35:40)
2025 preview, ft new Edgar Wright, Lynne Ramsay and more (46:10)

Recorded at Ground Floor, Leith – eh.fm/live

Get us on Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram and Letterboxd  @thecineskinny, email us at cineskinny@theskinny.co.uk

Music: Too Cool by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4534-too-cool) License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

 

The Cineskinny Awards 2024: Josh O'Connor, Koreeda, The Wild Robot and... Lindsay Lohan?

It's our now-annual recap of the year as Anahit, Jamie, Ellie and Peter pick out some of the favourite performances, moments, needle drops and hot boys of the past year in the kino.

You know we love Challengers and Love Lies Bleeding, but did you know we also loved a slept-on Koreeda banger, a queer time-hop costume drama and shouting about bad romcoms? You did? Well this'll be right up your street...

TIMESTAMPS:

Underrated and surprising films of 2024: Timestalker, Monster, Occupied City, Red Rooms, The Wild Robot (1:30)
Big Swings and Weird Sequels: The Substance, Megalopolis, 2073, Madame Web (24:35)
Stupid, Sexy Cinema: Challengers, Love Lies Bleeding, Orlando: My Political Biography (43:30)
Fun Ones: Evil Does Not Exist, Irish Wish, Look Back (1:00:30)

Get us on Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram, Letterboxd and TikTok @thecineskinny, email us at cineskinny@theskinny.co.uk

Music: Too Cool by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4534-too-cool) License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Films of 2024: Sexy Tennis, Sexy Grave Robbing, Sexy Bodybuilding and more

The Earth has almost done another of its rotations of the Sun, so once again it's time for The CineSkinny team to take a whistlestop tour of the films that The Skinny's film writers voted as the best of the year. It's an eclectic list that takes us from Poor Things to The Zone of Interest, via I Saw the TV Glow, Kneecap and Anora. 

The full team – Anahit Behrooz, Ellie Robertson, Jamie Dunn and Peter Simpson – are here, and we also get some cameos from some of The Skinny's film writers – Rory Doherty, Josh Slater-Williams, Emilie Roberts, Tony Inglis and Carmen Paddock – on their favourite titles.  

Take a listen to find out which film was crowned number one for 2024.

The Skinny's Top Ten films, upon which this whole pod is based: https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/opinion/the-skinnys-films-of-202https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/opinion/the-skinny-films-of-2024

Follow the team on Twitter @ptrsmpsn @anahitrooz @jamiedunnesq @lew_rob_, get us on Twitter and TikTok @thecineskinny, email us at cineskinny@theskinny.co.uk

Recorded at EHFM's Ground Floor Studio in Leith – ehfm.live

Music: Too Cool by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4534-too-cool) License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Additional sound effects courtesy of https://pixabay.com

Luca Guadagnino's Queer, Grand Theft Hamlet and Witches

Luca Guadagnino and Daniel Craig team up to adapt William Burroughs in Luca's second film of 2024, Queer, so we talk about that.

Elizabeth Sankey draws the line between society's flawed understanding of post-partum mental health and society's flawed understanding of witchcraft in new doc Witches, so we talk about that as well.

And Grand Theft Hamlet is *sort of* what it says on the tin, in that it's a late pandemic doc about loneliness, futility, community and aliens in fighter jets. Naturally, we talk about that too.

Gang's all here, throw in a bit of chat about David Lynch and Fran Drescher and baby, you've got an episode of The Cineskinny goin'.

TIMESTAMPS:
What We've Been Watching – The Nanny, Emilia Pérez, Blue Velvet (2:30)
Grand Theft Hamlet review (10:15)
Witches review (25:50)
Queer review (39:35)

Get us on Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram, Letterboxd and TikTok @thecineskinny, email us at cineskinny@theskinny.co.uk

Intro/outro music: Too Cool by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4534-too-cool) License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Anora, Bird and Our Favourite Wild Tonal Shifts in Movies

This week we review two films from directors who like to shine a light on communities on the margins.

First up, we take a look at the coming-of-age drama Bird, the sixth feature film from Andrea Arnold. It concerns a young girl named Bailey (Nykiya Adams), who thinks she's met a kindred spirit in the title character Bird, played by Franz Rogowski. But all is not as it seems. 

Next, it's Anora, the eighth feature from Sean Baker, which won the coveted Palme d'Or earlier this year. The film introduces us to Ani (Mikey Madison), a dancer at a New York strip club, whose life gets turned upside down when she spends a whirlwind week with a gawky Russian playboy, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn). 

And as both Anora and Bird are notable for their ambitious tonal shifts, we take a look at some of our favourite (and least favourite) tonal shifts in cinema.

TIMESTAMPS
What We've Been Watching - horrors (The Blob, The Ring, Immaculate), Juror #2 and Gilmore Girls (2:17)
Bird review (10:42)
Anora review (25:10)
Our favourite tonal shifts in movies ft Sorry to Bother You, Mute Witness, Laura, Psycho (39:13)

Follow the team on Twitter @ptrsmpsn @anahitrooz @jamiedunnesq @lew_rob_, get us on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd and TikTok @thecineskinny, email us at cineskinny@theskinny.co.uk

Intro/outro music: Too Cool by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4534-too-cool) License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

 

Megalopolis, Dahomey, A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things and Tilda Swinton

The great Francis Ford Coppola spent 40 years and $120 million of his own money making the epic saga Megalopolis. Was the years of toil and expense worth it?

We also look at two stunningly original documentaries concerned with art: Mati Diop's Dahomey, which follows the process of 26 royal treasures being returned from France to their rightful home in Benin; and Mark Cousins's A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things, a poetic celebration of the undersung Scottish modernist artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.

And given that Tilda Swinton narrates Cousins's film and will also appear soon in Pedro Almodóvar's The Room Next Door, we thought it a good time to discuss the career of this extraordinary Scottish actor. 

TIMESTAMPS
What We've Been Watching - films on planes, The Iron Claw, Our Friends in the North and LFF films (2:18)
Anahit reviews LFF (11:55)
Melalopolis review (19:10)
Dahomey review (36:00)
A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things review (51:10)
The great enigma that is Tilda Swinton (01:03:29)

Follow the team on Twitter @ptrsmpsn @anahitrooz @jamiedunnesq @lew_rob_, get us on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd and TikTok @thecineskinny, email us at cineskinny@theskinny.co.uk

Intro/outro music: Too Cool by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4534-too-cool) License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Outrun, Since Yesterday and The Yearning, Physicality and Camp of Action Cinema

Two great Scottish films this week: The Outrun, the big screen adaptation of Amy Liptrot's book with a great starring turn by Saoirse Ronan, and Since Yesterday, a documentary celebrating the forgotten girl bands from Scotland's musical past.

We review those two, then go all punchy-jumpy-shouty with some chat about action cinema in honour of a new restoration of Point Break and a BFI season of action classics. Slide down the stairs and kick your best friend tenderly in the face, it's The Cineskinny.

TIMESTAMPS
What We've Been Watching - Twin Peaks, My Own Private Idaho, Chinatown (1:20)
The Outrun review (13:35)
Since Yesterday review (28:40)
Action Cinema: Adventures of Robin Hood, Point Break, Hard Boiled, Rush Hour and others (44:40)

Follow the team on Twitter @ptrsmpsn @anahitrooz @jamiedunnesq @lew_rob_, get us on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd and TikTok @thecineskinny, email us at cineskinny@theskinny.co.uk

Intro/outro music: Too Cool by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4534-too-cool) License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Fall, In Camera, and our Favourite Filmmaking Follies

This time, we're talking about one of Anahit's favourite films of all, Tarsem Singh's 2006 opus and Tumblr's Favourite Film™, The Fall. It's back, it's in 4K, and it's grrrreat.

Elsewhere, we talk about the less successful but still-ambitious In Camera, and look back on some of filmmaking's biggest swings. Terrence Malick, Tommy Wiseau, big piles of white powder and on-retainer helicopter pilots – finally, a conversation with something for everyone.

TIMESTAMPS:

What We've Been Watching: The Third Man, Lee, Twilight (2:10)
In Camera review (9:50)
The Fall review (23:10)
Filmmaking follies: The Room, Days of Heaven, The Blues Brothers (37:40)

Recorded at EHFM's Ground Floor HQ in Leith. Get a coffee and see radio/audio in action, @groundfloor__

Follow the team on Twitter @ptrsmpsn @anahitrooz @jamiedunnesq @lew_rob_, get us on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd and TikTok @thecineskinny, email us at cineskinny@theskinny.co.uk

Intro/outro music: Too Cool by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4534-too-cool) License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Starve Acre, Red Rooms and Venice Film Festival

We're talking about obsession on this week's podcast after falling for the curious Quebecois courtroom drama/tech thriller Red Rooms. We also delve into a film that crosses two circles on The CineSkinny's Venn diagram of interests: folk horror and creepy puppets. That film is the 70s-set British horror film Starve Acre.

We also receive a missive from Anahit, who's attending Venice Film Festival, where the weather is hot. Will that be the same case for the films, though?

Note: this episode has a post-credits scene.

TIMESTAMPS:

Venice Film Festival: Babygirl, Queer and The Brutalist (2:38)
Starve Acre review (7:27)
Red Rooms review (24:23)
Films about obsession: American Psycho, Peeping Tom and The Vanishing (41:49)

Recorded at EHFM's Ground Floor HQ in Leith. Go there, get a coffee and see radio/audio in action, @groundfloor__

Follow the team on Twitter @ptrsmpsn @anahitrooz @jamiedunnesq @lew_rob_, get us on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd and TikTok @thecineskinny, email us at cineskinny@theskinny.co.uk

Intro/outro music: Too Cool by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4534-too-cool) License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license