The Cineskinny

On this week's pod, two hot, hot movies.

First up, Sinners, Ryan Coogler's sexy Southern Gothic vampire flick set in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. It's got two Michael B Jordans, it's got epic musical sequences, it's got exquisite period detail, it's got spit sharing, it's got a smart and thorny race analogy at its heart, it's got great actors bringing their A game, it's got wonderful post-credit scenes and, did we mention, it's got two Michael B Jordans. 

Similarly sexy and sweltering is Motel Destino, a neon-lit tropical noir from Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz. And in...

In a change to our usual format, we review only one film this episode: the French coming-of-age film Holy Cow. Set in Jura, in the east of France near the Swiss border, it follows a wild 18-year-old lad who has to grow up fast and learn how to make some award-winning Comté after a family tragedy.

The rest of the episode sees Peter, Anahit, and Jamie discuss what they’ve been watching on the big and small screen recently, from Black Bag and a Jacques Tati classic to Adolescence and White Lotus via a goofy-sounding show we're prett...

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. 

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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...

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.

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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.

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HippFest 2025 (1:25)
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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.

Que...

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!

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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...

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...

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Underrated and surprising films of 2024: Timestalker, Monster, Occupied City, Red Rooms, The Wild Robot (1:30)
Big Swings and Weird Sequels: The...

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...