Charlie Shackleton

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Mädchen in Uniform

_{Mädchen in Uniform, dir. Géza von Radványi, 1958}

This was, improbably, the first movie I ever snuck into, having never dared attempt the adolescent rite of passage in my actual adolescence. Instead, I was walking through the lobby of the BFI in London one afternoon and saw a friend returning to one of the screens after a bathroom break. Almost reflexively I followed him in, but couldn’t find him inside, so sat down on my own. Coming in halfway through, with no context for the film’s delicate yet radical presentation of blossoming queer desire in an all-girls boarding school—within images that looked the best part of a century old—it felt like an actual dream.

Charlie Shackleton is a nonfiction filmmaker working across film, television, radio, and immersive media. His latest film Zodiac Killer Project premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the NEXT Innovator Award. It will be released by Music Box Films on 21 November.

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Sam Penn

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Morvern Callar

_{Morvern Callar, dir. Lynne Ramsay, 2002}

The best Christmas movie, soundtracked by Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Stereolab, and CAN. Scenes of Samantha Morton walking through a Spanish rave with earbuds in, blasting the Mamas and the Papas’ “Dedicated to the One I Love”… relatable. A beautiful film about getting out of Scotland with a best friend and a dead boyfriend’s mixtape. Top of your watchlist immediately.

Sam Penn is a photographer based in New York. Her new show, Max, is up at New York Life Gallery through December 20.

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Arielle Gordon

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The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years

_{The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, dir. Penelope Spheers, 1988}

“This movie is about groups, metal, guitars, girls.” I’d be hard-pressed to better summarize Decline Part II better than Gene Simmons himself does at the start of the film—Spheeris’s follow-up to her 1981 LA punk opus, here documenting the city’s hair metal scene and its requisite glitter, groupies, and egos. But Simmons’s remark diminishes the film’s tender and tragic heart: Ozzy Osbourne cooks an omelet in a leopard-print bathrobe as he details orgies; KISS’s Paul Stanley waxes poetic about the power of music on a bed surrounded by women. And there’s the infamous interview with W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes, who gets loaded in a hotel pool as he jokes about being dead in 10 years. But hey, Holmes is still with us, and the film remains, to me, an optimistic portrayal of big dreams and bigger hair, a vodka-soaked love letter to sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. 

Arielle Gordon is a writer and bartender based in Brooklyn. Her work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Pitchfork, and The Ringer.

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