Monocle feature Little White Lies Movie Matchmaking Service
The Monocle Minute: Just like the movies
Solace is being sought in culture and media and it’s a wise gallery, magazine or broadcaster that knows how to stay close to the attentions and affections of its consumers; to warm the cockles of their hearts with a weather-eye on the horizon (writes Robert Bound). With just this in mind, the ever-impressive independent film magazine Little White Lies has just launched its Movie Matchmaking Service to pair self-isolating folk with films they’ll love. An email to film@tcolondon.com will get LWL’s editorial team whirring into action like a satisfyingly human algorithm primed to fire off a handful of titles to suit your mood.
Which mood? “The majority of people so far are searching for films that are on the brighter side, with some uplift potential,” says the magazine's editor, David Jenkins. “Otherwise, it’s the complete other side of the spectrum: nasty, gory, bleak horror movies. Nothing really in between.” Sounds about right.
To test the service, we imagined (or are very much living) three scenarios that are in need of celluloid sympathy:
1) I’m home alone and can’t concentrate on work.
Watch:The Money Pit. Tom Hanks and Shelley Long in a charming ode to long-game productivity and looking beyond the horrors of the present.
2) I’ve watched all the Studio Ghibli films on Netflix.
Watch: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, a hilarious and poignant animated coming-of-age tale set during the Iranian revolution. Or Don Hertzfeldt’s lucid, moving, animated It’s Such a Beautiful Day (available to rent from the director’s Vimeo channel).
3) I fear the apocalypse – what can cure me?
Watch: Claude Lanzmann’s epic Shoah and reflect on the testimony of survivors from a time when it was thought the world was going to end (but it didn’t). Or just indulge in the hectic poetry of the Sandler-verse and watch Happy Gilmore again.
Little White Lies Movie Matchmaking Service has recommended over 500 films in the past week for self-isolators as far afield as Dubai, Chile, Australia and Italy. Simply email film@tcolondon.com.