The Cineskinny

This week, we review Bong Joon-Ho's latest – Mickey 17 stars multiple Robert Pattinsons and Mark Ruffalo doing what we're assured is not an impression of any named individual. We also dive into the lovely 3D animated waters of Flow, Oscar-winning animation and, fun fact, the highest grossing Latvian film of all time. 

Elsewhere, we interrogate horrid visions of surveillance, intrigue, subterfuge and suspicious gender politics, but eventually we do *stop* talking about Love Is Blind and talk about dystopias in cinema instead.

The Cineskinny; we had you in the first half, not gonna lie. 

TIMESTAMPS:

Love Is Blind, Picture This, Good Time (2:10)
Mickey 17 review (11:30)
Flow review (29:45)
Dystopian Cinema chat (39:40)

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

On this edition of The CineSkinny we take a look at two of the most anticipated Scottish films of the year. First we review On Falling, the deeply impressive feature debut from Edinburgh-based director Laura Carreira.  And fresh from his second feature Tornado having its world premiere at Glasgow Film Festival, we have an interview with John Maclean who talks about westerns, samurai films, and the challenges of indie filmmaking in Scotland. 

Elsewhere there are a couple of great film festivals (Glasgow Short Film Festival, HippFest) we wanted to give shout-outs to, and we take a look at some filmmakers who are attempting different distribution models that involve taking their films on intimate tours of the country. We also briefly chew over the Oscar results.

TIMESTAMPS:

What We've Been Watching: Walking & Talking, Disney Channel original movies, Common Side Effects and more (1:49)
On Falling review (14:18)
GSFF, HippFest, The People's Joker and Hundreds of Beavers (32:30)
Interview: John Maclean on Tornado (50:10)
Oscar chat (1:07:50)

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

Glasgow Film Festival is one of the most exciting times in Scottish cinema, so this week we dive headfirst and two-footed into the GFF programme with a trio of reviews and some additional chat.

We discuss Marie Losier's art doc Peaches Goes Bananas; talk through the excellent Austrian comedy Peacock; and luxuriate in the lo-fi animation of Boys Go To Jupiter.

Elsewhere, there's a weird smell, Jamie gets annoyed by people taking their jackets off too slowly, and Peter starts the campaign for a new podcast. It's The Cineskinny, drink it in.

TIMESTAMPS:

GFF: A beginner's guide (2:20)
Peaches Goes Bananas (6:40)
Peacock (15:05)
Boys Go To Jupiter (24:10)
More GFF picks 33:40

GFF, 26 Feb - 9 Mar, glasgowfilm.org

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

With the film world mourning the loss of David Lynch, the most original and influential American filmmaker of the late 20th and early 21st century, The CineSkinny pay their own tribute by tracing a line through his career from Eraserhead to Blue Velvet to The Straight Story. 

We also review two new releases: Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, a surprisingly propulsive drama exploring Iran's patriarchal regime through the prism of one family, and Adam Elliot's Memoir of a Snail, a downbeat and whimsical stop-motion film from Australia.

TIMESTAMPS:

HippFest 2025 (1:25)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig review (5:45)
Memoir of a Snail review (22:20)
Our celebration of the one and only David Lynch (35:50)

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

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

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

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 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 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

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