Table of contents for December 2020 in Empire

IT’S SIMILAR, BUT A DIFFERENT STORY At first glance, We Are Who We Are shares a fair bit of DNA with much-loved 2017 romantic drama Call Me By Your Name: both are directed by Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, both feature an American teen finding his feet in an unfamiliar Italy. (The TV show even has blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos from the film’s stars, Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet.) But the new miniseries is its own beast, says the show’s 17-year-old star, Jack Dylan Grazer (Shazam, It). “When I read the script for the show, I wasn’t surprised that I felt the same way as I did when I saw Call Me By Your Name,” says Grazer. “But story-wise, I don’t think they’re similar. Some of the themes, maybe. It’s hard to say…

JESSICA CHASTAIN WON’T tolerate inequality. She’s fought for wage equality for Black co-stars such as Octavia Spencer, has spoken out against sexism, and used her producing arm, Freckle Films, to develop female-led films. In 2017, she sat on the jury at Cannes and noticed lots of ensemble action films being touted with all-male casts. Clearly there was a gap in the market for a women’s equivalent, but no-one seemed to have noticed. So Chastain decided to not only change the picture, but create her own dream project in the process. “Instead of waiting for studios to do it, I think we have to take matters into our own hands,” she says now from New York. “I thought, ‘What if I call a bunch of incredible actresses who I have always…

“IT’S A LOVE story, it’s a religious story, it’s a strange story!” Paul Verhoeven booms, over the phone from his Dutch hometown of The Hague. He’s referring to his long-delayed next film, Benedetta - and judging by what he goes on to tell Empire, “a strange story” is something of an understatement. Based on the book Immodest Acts by Judith C. Brown, it’s the true tale of Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century nun prone to violent visions, who was accused of engaging in sexual relations with a fellow sister while ‘possessed’ by demons. “Judith found this story by coincidence while searching an archive,” says Verhoeven. “She opened a drawer and there was a text about this trial. It detailed precisely what these women did, sexually, and it’s really the only thing…

COMING 2 AMERICA 18 DECEMBER TBC, PRIME VIDEO If there’s anybody who can brighten up this flaming garbage-can of a year, it’s Prince Akeem Joffer. After all, this is a guy who arrives in a particularly scummy part of Queens, New York, rife with rats, muggers and, yes, flaming garbage cans, and grins, “Imagine a country so free, one can throw glass on the streets!” The full-beam optimism of the crown heir of Zamunda is something we could all do with right about now, not to mention that this is Eddie Murphy returning to his peppiest character for the first time in over 30 years. Throw in a supporting cast that includes Tracy Morgan, Wesley Snipes and James Earl Jones, and you’ve got a movie timed perfectly to help us…

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #2 (COMIC, 1964) Doctor Strange made a brief cameo in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, but the first meeting proper between the characters is in this now-collector’s item comic, where Peter is hypnotised into stealing the Wand Of Watoomb from the good doctor. SPIDER-MAN/DOCTOR STRANGE: THE WAY TO DUSTY DEATH (COMIC, 1994) On the anniversary of Uncle Ben’s death, Peter Parker rescues a woman from suicide - setting off a chain of events that sees him team up with the doctor, travel to the ‘Death Dimension’, and fight demons. When Strange shows up, things inevitably go a bit strange. SPIDER-MAN: ONE MORE DAY (COMIC, 2007) In this post-Civil War comics storyline, the webcrawler asks the Sorcerer Supreme for help, and then travels across the astral plane. With Jamie…

OUT 30 OCTOBER CERT TBC / 107 MINS DIRECTOR Josephine Decker CAST Elisabeth Moss, Odessa Young, Michael Stuhlbarg, Logan Lerman PLOT Author Shirley Jackson (Moss) is struggling to write a novel about a missing student, hampered by her own anxiety and agoraphobia. In an effort to help her, her husband Stanley (Stuhlbarg) invites his academic assistant Fred (Lerman) and wife Rose (Young) to stay. As time passes, the two women form an unusual and potentially unhealthy bond. ELISABETH MOSS HAS made a speciality of playing brilliant women teetering on the thinnest of edges. The hurricane of madness whirling in her eye, the strength locked in her jaw as her teeth grind. And after 2019’s Her Smell, Shirley feels like a natural evolution, even if this time much of the madness…

OUT 30 OCTOBER / NETFLIX CERT TBC / 93 MINS DIRECTOR Remi Weekes CAST Wunmi Mosaku, Sope Dirisu, Matt Smith PLOT Bol (Dirisu) and Rial (Mosaku), refugees from South Sudan, arrive in England and are granted a house, one which they’re told they can’t leave under any circumstances. But, as they try to adapt to their new life, they find that the house is home to an angry spirit. And soon, leaving the house is the least of their worries. JAVIER BOTET IS one of the most ubiquitous actors working today, but you wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a line-up. A spindly Spanish actor who can squeeze his 6’ 6” frame into all kinds of prostheses, he’s scared the crap out of you more often than you’d…

OUT NOW / SKY ATLANTIC/ NOW TV EPISODES VIEWED 5 OF 6 SHOWRUNNER David E. Kelley CAST Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, Edgar Ramírez, Noah Jupe PLOT Grace Fraser (Kidman) is a successful therapist, married to charming oncologist husband Jonathan (Grant) with a privately schooled, violin-playing son Henry (Jupe). Yet her cocooned world is shattered when Jonathan goes AWOL on the night of a brutal murder within her circle. AT ONE POINT during The Undoing – episode three, to be precise – Nicole Kidman’s Grace Fraser has had enough. “I’m under ridiculous pressure right now and I’ve reached the point where I am not taking any shit from anyone!” The declaration gets to the heart of what should be the appeal of the Sky Atlantic mini-series, as promised by the title:…

BOOM! ON FRIDAY 20 July 2018, James Gunn’s world suddenly came crashing down. One day, he was riding high at Disney’s Marvel Studios with the meteorically successful Guardians Of The Galaxy movies. The next he was an instant pariah, fired as the writer-director of Guardians Vol. 3. In a matter of hours he was on the outside. The bad guy. He must have felt like he’d been thrown into movie-making prison. “Yeah, absolutely,” Gunn confirms just over two years later. “For a couple of days I felt like my career was over. That I was gone.” His mistake was having posted a series of offensive-joke tweets between eight and 11 years earlier. These had been dug up and recirculated by alt-righters with an axe to grind over the outspoken filmmaker’s…

STEVE McQUEEN AND TV WERE TWO THINGS THAT DID NOT GO TOGETHER. The director has, of course, already turned television into cinema, with Widows, originally a popular 1983 British series based on a Lynda La Plante novel, becoming in McQueen’s hands a lauded Chicago-set thriller. But as for the actual small screen itself, well, they’ve not really got along. Back in 2014 he directed and co-wrote a pilot for Codes Of Conduct, a would-be limited series for HBO that aimed to explore a young African-American man’s experience breaking into the social circles of New York’s elite, but the network axed the show before it aired. And then, only two years ago, in fact, McQueen in an interview seemed to dismiss telly as a medium entirely, calling it “fodder”, noting that, “I…

The course of Denzel Washington’s life changed (not for the first time; probably not for the last) in 2014. He had just finished a performance of Raisin In The Sun on Broadway, when he received a visitor backstage. It was Constanza Wilson, widow of the great African-American playwright, and Washington’s old friend, August Wilson. She had a request for him. “She said, ‘The Estate would like you to take care of August Wilson’s plays, and turn them into films, if you’re interested,’” recalls Washington. He didn’t mull over his answer for very long. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’m just the man for the job.’” From that moment on, Washington had a new purpose in life: to protect August Wilson’s most august works. Wilson, who died in 2005, is perhaps the greatest…

Alamy NOT FOR THE first time in his career, it had been brought to Brian De Palma’s attention that he had run out of money. According to David Mamet’s script, and De Palma’s storyboards, their flashy gangster movie would culminate with untouchable treasury agents Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and George Stone (Andy Garcia) racing the Chicago-Miami express in a car. Leaping on board the train, an extravagant shoot-out ensues, ending when Stone puts one in the brain of the last mobster, Al Capone’s bookkeeper (Jack Kehoe) whimpering in his grasp. “For budget reasons and time reasons,” the director sighs, “we weren’t able to do that.” Until now the script had been gospel. Mamet’s snarling wit and genre enthusiasms had landed them Sean Connery as untouchable Irish street cop Malone and,…

ACROSS 1 Creator of The Evil Dead movies (3,5) 5 Comedy cooked up by Jon Favreau in 2014 (4) 9 Life moved pretty fast on this kid’s day off (6,7) 10 The cold never bothered this Disney character anyway (4) 11 Alexander, who went Sideways to Nebraska (5) 13 Her surname is Seydoux (3) 15 Dr Evil’s clone, as played by Verne Troyer (4-2) 16 A place of Rock, or where 9 Across was supposed to be (6) 17 Ms Green, the astronaut and mother in Alice Winocour’s Proxima (3) 19 Silva’s first name in Skyfall (5) 21 Crimson - (Denzel Washington) (4) 23 He’s been Moses, John Connor and Dick Cheney (9,4) 24 Clarke, British actor and filmmaker (4) 25 Status of The Matrix prior to its Revolutions (8) DOWN…

Robert Viglasky/Universal FIND A GOOD MENTOR Cooper Raiff was still at university when he wrote, directed, edited and starred in a 50-minute short movie about a freshman student having a bad time in a great place. On a whim, Raiff tweeted his hero, filmmaker Jay Duplass (Cyrus, Jeff Who Lives At Home), a link to the short; luckily, Duplass liked it and helped the young filmmaker turn it into the feature-length Shithouse, shepherding the development of the project. “He lives in Eagle Rock [in LA], where I went to college and filmed the movie, too,” Raiff says. “I feel like we’re spiritually aligned and have similar upbringings.” WRITE FROM A PERSONAL PLACE Shithouse follows Alex, a loose proxy for Raiff, struggling to find his place away from his solid family…

IN THE TEN years since Andrew Lincoln first stumbled out into the zombie apocalypse, it has at times felt like The Walking Dead itself was a shambling, lifeless corpse that will never stop going. Having once commanded a towering 17 million viewers in the US, the show dipped below the three-million mark for the first time this year, and with only two members of the original cast still standing, this former pillar of Peak TV is now a husk of its former self. Kudos to AMC, then, who announced last month that the show’s next series will be its last, with an extended, 24-episode run kicking off next year, before bringing the story to a close in 2022. While it might seem mad for the cable network to slaughter its…

THE LOCATION Instead of the British seaside of Roald Dahl’s novel, we’re in 1960s Alabama. Think spooky Southern Gothic, with Spanish moss on the trees and racism in the air. Robert Zemeckis figured that setting the book in the 1980s, when it was written, would make this a period piece anyway, so he might as well go further because “stories like this feel more believable when they’re set in the distant past” - not least because of the lack of security cameras and mobiles. “It’s more logical in its illogic,” he explains. THE PERFORMANCES “It’s a very nuanced performance. I hope it registers,” laughs Anne Hathaway of her outrageous and flamboyant Grand High Witch, the leader of the group we meet at an Alabama hotel. For perhaps 30 seconds at…

OUT 22 NOVEMBER (BBC ONE/iPLAYER) CERT UNRATED / 70 MINS DIRECTOR Steve McQueen CAST Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn, Micheal Ward, Shaniqua Okwok PLOT After sneaking out of her family home, Martha (St. Aubyn) heads to a party in early-1980s West London. Over the course of one long evening, she encounters a figure from her past and — possibly, when she meets Franklyn (Ward) — makes a connection that may outlast the night. POLICE VIOLENCE, SOCIAL unrest, struggles in the face of endemically racist systems; much has been made of the fact that the supposedly historical themes of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe feel uncannily relevant to life in 2020. And this is all true (if we put aside the fact that these issues have been ‘timely’ for a century or more). But…

OUT 20 NOVEMBER CERT TBC / 93 MINS DIRECTOR Harry Macqueen CAST Colin Firth, Stanley Tucci, Pippa Haywood PLOT Couple of 20 years Sam (Firth) and Tusker (Tucci), who is suffering from early onset dementia, are combining work with pleasure, travelling through the Lake District, visiting family and old haunts on the way to Sam’s upcoming piano recital. With every moment becoming increasingly precious, Sam discovers Tusker is withholding a secret. FOR THOSE KEEPING count, Supernova is the third time Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci have worked together. After 2001’s World War II drama Conspiracy and 2012’s Coen Brothers scripted caper Gambit, this time the pair have struck gold. An affecting depiction of how a long-term couple negotiate the inexorable effects of dementia, actor-turned-writer-director Harry Macqueen’s second feature (following 2014’s…

OUT 30 OCTOBER CERT TBC / 90 MINS DIRECTOR Bassam Tariq CAST Riz Ahmed, Alyy Khan, Sudha Bhuchar, Nabhaan Rizwan PLOT About to embark on a world tour after years of trying to break through, New York-based British-Pakistani rapper Zed (Ahmed) visits his family home in London. But when he develops symptoms of an autoimmune disease, he is forced to confront familial differences and reconcile the duality of his identity. ANYONE WHO’S BEEN keeping up with the musical artistry of Riz Ahmed will be well aware of his exploration of British identity. From 2006’s Post 9/11 Blues to the 2016 mixtape Englistan, his stellar work on the album Cashmere as part of the Swet Shop Boys, and most recently his second solo album The Long Goodbye, Ahmed’s lyrical wit has…

OUT NOW / NETFLIX EPISODES VIEWED 9 OF 9 SHOWRUNNER Mike Flanagan CAST Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Tahirah Sharif, T’Nia Miller PLOT Hired as governess for a pair of orphaned children, American Dani Clayton (Pedretti) starts her new job at a country estate in Essex. Once there, however, she is troubled by her charges’ strange behaviour and begins to wonder if there is more going on at Bly Manor than meets the eye. HENRY JAMES’ GOTHIC novella, The Turn Of The Screw, is oft held up as one of the greatest ghost stories ever told. Over the past century it has been turned into an opera, two ballets, nine films, ten TV series, a Harold Pinter-directed play and an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. It’s even been adapted once this…

IN CINEMAS/PRIME VIDEO DO NOT CROSS HERE IF SPOILERS OFFEND --- DO NOT CROSS HERE IF SPOILERS OFFEND --- DO NOT CROSS HERE IF SPOILERS OFFEND 1 SAD BILL & TED Chris Hewitt: Before Face The Music came out, there was a fair amount of concern about how Bill and Ted would behave. Would the happy-go- lucky idiocy that carried them through the first two movies feel weird coming from two blokes now in their fifties? Well, it seems that Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter and creators Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson felt this could be an issue as well, and so went the other way. When we meet our heroes, they’re so weighed down by the pressure of being the saviours of the universe that they’re almost unrecognisable. Reeves’ Ted,…

“DON’T TRY TO contact me. There is no money for the film. I’m leaving the country in ten minutes.” It had all been going so well for Grizzly II. It was a sequel riding off the back of a surprising hit. It had future A-listers George Clooney, Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen, in their first film roles. It had a 16-foot bear. And it had pulled off the remarkable feat of staging an entire rock concert, in then- communist Hungary, for the film’s climactic sequence. But on 14 August 1982, the day before principal photography was due to start, with over 300 cast and crew ready to go, producer Suzanne Nagy received the gut-punch phone call from her producing partner, Joseph Ford Proctor: there was no cash, and he was…

FALLING IS, FOR ME, AN UNEXPECTED STORY. Looking at the finished movie now, it seems natural that my debut as a writer-director is with a screenplay that has its roots in memories of my upbringing. “Tell a story about what you know” is the advice often given to first-time directors. Although most of the events, dialogue, and characterisations in Falling are fictitious, the urge to write the story did indeed spring from a desire to explore personal recollections and feelings for my mother and father, and what I’ve learned from each of them, for better or for worse. When I say the story is unexpected, I mean that I had been attempting for quite a long time to raise financing to make another, quite different movie. I had come close…

ERASERHEAD SEEMED TO come from nowhere. David Lynch’s debut 1977 feature began production while he was studying at the American Film Institute and took a long five years, during which time the money ran out but his resolve never did - this was as passionate as projects get. The story - if that’s what it is - concerns Henry, a young man with massive hair (Jack Nance), his sweet girlfriend Mary (Charlotte Stewart), and their highly peculiar baby. Also involved: a writhing, bloody chicken carcass and a lady in a radiator. A beautiful, black-and-white masterpiece, it introduced the world to a director with anunadulterated vision, and much of its aesthetic is still reverberating in his work today. He’s not one for explanations, but in a rare interview to discuss Criterion’s…

Illustration: Jacey The X-Men franchise Chris: The X-Men movies. Began in 2000 with X-Men, finished just a few weeks ago with The New Mutants. And while I don’t think that is a terrible film, it did end on a low-key note. Which is a shame, because this franchise deserved a more noble end. Ben: It’s been a little while since it was really good, especially the mainline X-Men team films. It’s been off the boil for a couple of years now. It’s been sad to see it decline because it broke so many barriers for this genre. Helen: What X-Men showed was that you could take comic books seriously as character dramas, and make something different out of them. Chris: But let me ask you a question: if Mission: Impossible…

Illustration: Neil Edwards. Alamy UNDER-THE-RADAR franchises often deliver a tardy, bland part two that’s a star-free remake of the original - then a livelier, more entertaining part three. John Pogue’s Deep Blue Sea 3 is no Deep Blue Sea… but no Deep Blue Sea 2, either. Tania Raymonde, in the demanding role of hot ichthyologist, defends a floating eco-village against genetically engineered smart sharks and kickboxing mercenaries. Halfway through I realised I actually cared whether the nerdy guy in the Hawaiian shirt (Alex Bhat) and the cute, sarcastic Japanese grad student (Reina Aoi) a) got together, and b) avoided getting eaten. That’s more honest emotion than you find in Michael Bay films made on a thousand times the budget. It has wry humour, but doesn’t go the usual shit shark…

Crossword Corner is a super-classy place to be this month, as we celebrate Martin Scorsese’s award-winning The Irishman making its debut on Criterion Collection Blu-ray. Wallow in the legend’s cinematic mastery, then find out more from extras including: a round-table chat between Scorsese and leads Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci; a look at the groundbreaking de-ageing techniques used; and a new ‘making of’ documentary featuring cast and crew. We’ve got one copy to give away, along with a big smart HD TV to watch it on! To enter, crack the crossword, solve the anagram and text your answer to the number below. THE IRISHMAN IS OUT ON 30 NOVEMBER ON CRITERION COLLECTION BLU-RAY…

THE LAST TIME Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks teamed up, they made Captain Phillips, a propulsive true-life thriller that started with Hanks’ character being attacked by pirates, and ended with him having something of a nervous breakdown in real time. Fun for all the family. Their next movie together, thankfully, won’t be nearly as arduous, either for director/actor or audience. Not that News Of The World will be sedate - there will still be drama and danger and men with guns - but chances are that your blood pressure won’t be quite so bothered. “I wanted to do something different,” says Greengrass. “And who could resist the idea of doing a Western?” Few could. And Greengrass isn’t among that number. So News Of The World finds him and Hanks both…

SMASH THE PATRIARCHY! With filmmaker Patty Jenkins reteaming with Gal Gadot, there’s no doubt this version of Cleopatra will be just as much of a wonder woman: a superhero in the ancient history mould. We’d expect to see a Egyptian queen who will not suffer men gladly. And hopefully, the script – from Laeta Kalogridis, creator of sci-fi show Altered Carbon – will surround her with female characters for more than just the first act. FOCUS ON THE SMARTS! Cleo’s cinematic outings have focused on her romances with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, rather than her brilliant intelligence. As Egyptologist Sarah Parcak noted on Twitter: “If she’d been alive today, [Cleopatra] would have been a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, or a world-renowned author. Think of the best college professor you had…

IT’S BASED ON A REAL NUDIST CAMP The story of Patrick was inspired by an unusual family holiday that writer-director Tim Mielants took, aged six. “My parents got invited by friends [to a campsite]. Little did they know that it was a nudist camp.” Many of the characters in the film – such as the blind woman running the camp, unaware of all the nudity – were drawn from real life. THE NUDITY WASN’T A PROBLEM Most of the cast are starkers throughout, but it was never an issue on set. “If you leave out sexuality, then there’s no problem at all,” Mielants explains. The director himself, however, remained fully clothed. “I felt like, if I’m doing a cowboy movie, I’m not gonna dress as a cowboy!” IT STARS THE…

1985’S POLICE STORY was a watershed moment for martial-arts movies and film in general. There’s the car chase that demolishes a shanty village. Jackie Chan clinging to a double-decker bus. And in an iconic sequence, our hero breaks approximately 700 lb of sugar glass during a mall brawl and shimmies down a five-storey pole, destroying countless Christmas lights (and nearly himself) in the process. Jackie Chan still considers Police Story his best film, and it’s easy to see why. Which is why it’s exciting to see Chinese production company Mokexing Film announce that Jackie Chan will team up for another Police Story with director Leo Zhang, with whom he previously collaborated on 2017’s Bleeding Steel. Police Story reinvented action cinema. And it gave Jackie Chan a showcase for his comic…

WHERE? A field in Surrey WHEN? 24 October 2019 WHY? Because a star-studded, mostly British cast, and an Aussie director, are making archaeology sexy again. Theatre and film director Simon Stone is bringing John Preston’s book of the same name to life, an imagined tale based on real people and one of the UK’s most important and exciting archaeological discoveries: the burial mound of an Anglo-Saxon king at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. No, honestly, it was a really big deal. WHO’S IN IT? Ralph Fiennes plays Basil Brown, the local architect who discovered the site, Carey Mulligan is Edith Pretty, the owner of the land and commissioner of the dig, while Lily James is Peggy Preston, a talented archaeologist battling patriarchal bias. You also get healthy doses of Johnny Flynn,…

OUT 13 NOVEMBER CERT TBC / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Tomm Moore CAST Sean Bean, Honor Kneafsey, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Eva Whittaker, Simon McBurney, Tommy Tiernan PLOT Ireland, the 1600s. Englishman Bill Goodfellowe (Bean) is tasked by the malevolent Lord Protector (McBurney) to kill all wolves. But after Bill’s daughter, Robyn (Kneafsey), meets a shape-shifting ‘WolfWalker’, Mebh (Whittaker), the fate of the wolf-pack is far from set. KILKENNY-BASED ANIMATION studio Cartoon Saloon doesn’t have the budget of Pixar, the history of Disney, or the acclaim of Ghibli. But frankly, it deserves it all. With The Secret Of Kells, Song Of The Sea, The Breadwinner and now WolfWalkers, they are four for four: an extraordinary and unbroken run of sumptuous, gorgeously crafted fablistic animated tales, rich in visual flair, dramatic intrigue and…

OUT 30 OCTOBER / PRIME VIDEO EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNERS Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Nat Saunders, James Serafinowicz CAST Nick Frost, Malcolm McDowell, Samson Kayo, Susan Wokoma, Emma D’Arcy, Simon Pegg PLOT Missing his late wife Emily, Gus Roberts (Frost) throws himself into his twin passions: internet installation and ghost-hunting. These collide when a routine job sees a series of strange incidents coalesce into something much more sinister. LET’S MAKE ONE thing clear. If you’re gagging for your next fix of Simon Pegg-Nick Frost chemistry (and frankly, who isn’t?), Truth Seekers isn’t it. The Cornetto compadres are mostly kept apart in this likeable eight-parter, Frost spearheading lead duties and Pegg taking a supporting if key role. But in many ways, co-writing with Nat Saunders and James Serafinowicz, Pegg…

IN CINEMAS 1 MEET MAUD Ben Travis: Horror films are packed with devil-worshippers and occultists – but Maud is a different kind of holy terror, inflicting harm on herself (and others) in the name of God. Combining the religious fervour of Carrie’s mother, the alienation of The Witch’s demonised Thomasin, and the bubbling, wounded rage of Carrie herself, she’s a fascinatingly complex character – suffering from unprocessed trauma, filled with toxic thoughts, so stifled that the cocktail of her repressed pain and desire spills over into ecstatic, psychosexual, spiritual experiences. She feels like a character out of time, much like her immediate environment – an anonymous, wind-swept seaside town that’s technically in the present day, but never quite feels like it. All that, and she’s got a mordant Welsh wit…

Opening spread: Getty triages. This spread: Portrait: Michael Muller AS PAIRINGS GO, RYAN REYNOLDS AND JODIE COMER ARE A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN He’s the Hollywood veteran who breathed fresh air into the superhero genre with Deadpool (and followed it up with voicing a Pokémon - talk about range). She’s the acclaimed star of TV sensation Killing Eve, thrilling viewers as cinematic psychopath Villanelle. As for the movie that’s bringing them together, it’s one that looks like it’ll give both of them the chance to cut loose: set inside the world of a Grand Theft Auto-style shoot-’n'-loot video game, peppery action comedy Free Guy promises to unleash all manner of cyber-carnage. The Shawn Levy-directed film sees Guy (Reynolds), a non-playable character cheerfully working in an in-game bank, have his life…

IT’S AN ESSENTIAL part of any actor’s skillset: to generate chemistry with co-stars they have never met or perhaps even despise (Sonic The Hedgehog reputedly did not see eye to eye with James Marsden). But there are some levels of ease, comfort and understanding that can’t be manufactured, however well-trained the thesp. It’s this quality of intimacy, trust and kinship that Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci have in spades. Having met on set of 2000s HBO drama Conspiracy, the pair’s friendship has flourished even among the demands and vicissitudes of two hugely successful careers. It’s a relationship that Supernova plays on for hugely emotional effect. A beautifully poised and played love story, writer-director Harry Macqueen’s film pitches musician Sam (Firth) and his partner of 20 years, author Tusker (Tucci), on…

WHEN INDIANA JONES meets a bunch of tarantulas at the start of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, he brushes them off with a bullwhip and a glare. Not a bad way to show that your hero has steel cojones. But then again, those spiders didn’t leap at his face, or climb into his shoes, or rappel down a cobweb into his hair. In the late 1980s, when Indiana Jones producer Frank Marshall was musing over what project to pick for his directorial debut and came across a script titled ‘Along Came The Spider’, about a deadly new South American arachnid arriving in a small Californian town and breeding with a regular house spider, he realised he was sitting on true nightmare fodder. So with support from producer (and wife) Kathleen…

Gladiator THE STORY OF Gladiator begins with a 148- year-old painting called ‘Pollice Verso’ by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme. Depicting a victorious gladiator standing over his victim in the Roman Colosseum as spectators look on, it was that canvas that DreamWorks executive Walter F. Parkes and producer Douglas Wick armed themselves with when they went to pitch Ridley Scott their swords-and-sandals epic. As it turns out, that was all they needed. The striking imagery was enough to set Scott’s imagination ablaze, and the filmmaker all but signed on to direct the movie on the spot, without even learning what the script was about. It wouldn’t be the last time Scott and his leading man Russell Crowe operated on nothing other than the courage of their convictions while making a movie.…

TOM SAVINI HAS a tattoo on his left arm. It’s a doodle of a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, accompanied by the words “STAY SCARED”. It’s his way of keeping George A. Romero, the director who gave Savini his big break, close after Romero died in 2017. “I used to wear his watch, which his wife gave me when he died,” says Savini. “So my left hand was a tribute to George Romero.” Dawn Of The Dead was Savini’s first big gig for Romero, and gave the make-up maestro plenty of chance to perfect his craft. “I got a telegram from George,” he says. “It said, ‘Start thinking of ways to kill people.’” He didn’t let Romero down. THE NECK-BITE ZOMBIE Dawn Of The Dead, a decade on from Night Of…

PICK OF THE MONTH BETTER CALL SAUL: SEASON 5 OUT 2 NOVEMBER / CERT TBC / 502 MINS DVD BR The debate has been quietly brewing for a while now, but with its penultimate season, Better Call Saul makes the strongest case yet that it might actually be better than its parent show, Breaking Bad. Wringing unbearable tension out of a show where we know 90 per cent of the characters survive is no mean feat, but showrunner Peter Gould and his team manage it by making the ones whose fates we’re uncertain about so likeable, and three-dimensional, that their every appearance fair tightens the sphincter lest harm befall them. In particular, step forward Rhea Seehorn, whose layered turn as Kim Wexler, seemingly innocent partner of Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill…

Blade Runner HENRY GOLDING: “Blade Runner, ‘tears in rain’. That’s the most clichéd classic scene, and I’m almost embarrassed to bring it up. But oh man… I can partially quote it still. ‘I’ve seen C-beams glitter at the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments lost in time, like tears in rain…’ It’s the emotion, the setting, the lighting. It’s one of the best things ever created.” EXT. ROOFTOP – NIGHT Blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), in trying to escape from murderous android Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), has found himself on the ledge of an LA rooftop, in the pouring rain. He edges along, but Batty suddenly kicks out the window next to him and climbs out. Deckard turns back. BATTY: That hurt. That was irrational. Deckard smiles, and starts to…