Table of contents for June 2021 in Empire

IT’S ALMOST A decade since we were first introduced to one of the strongest pairings in modern horror: Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as real-life married couple and paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. 2013’s The Conjuring spawned a multi-billion dollar franchise – and through all manner of demons, haunted dolls and one rather unpleasant nun, the Warrens have remained as stable and loving as ever. With the third film in the main series approaching – The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, based on a real-life court case that used demonic possession as a defence – Wilson and Farmiga share the secrets of their on-screen powerhouse partnership. When you signed up for The Conjuring, did you have any sense you’d still be talking about it a decade later?…

MAMMA MIA! The joyous ‘Dancing Queen’ sequence of Mamma Mia! is the latest film we keep returning to in lockdown IN MOST MUSICALS, you know when a song-and-dance number is about to begin. Mamma Mia! is not most musicals. When ‘Dancing Queen’ crashes in about a third of the way through the ABBA musical’s runtime, there’s no warning, no runway, no pause for inhalation. It almost happens mid-sentence, a bracing, whiplash-inducing, sing-song slap to the face. One second, Meryl Streep’s Donna is getting a much-needed pep talk from her pals – Christine Baranski’s Tanya and Julie Walters’ Rosie – after being reunited with three ex-boyfriends at once. The next, the duo are belting, “You can dance! You can jive!” right in her face (there’s a lot of singing at people…

Alamy, Capital Pictures, Moviestar Collection, A MODERN SUBURB of Copenhagen might not seem especially close to the crime-stricken streets of 1970s America. But the US films from that era were a direct influence on Shorta, the debut film from Danish writer-directors Anders Ølholm and Frederik Louis Hviid. “[We looked to] films like The Warriors or Assault On Precinct 13,” says Ølholm. “Assault On Precinct 13 is very contained, and so there’s a lot of room for developing characters and fleshing them out.” If John Carpenter were Scandinavian, this might be what he would have come up with. Shorta (the Arabic word for “police”) follows a very Precinct 13-esque pressure-cooker template, set over a single day and night. It’s told from the perspective of two police officers, one of whom is…

WHEN HARRY LENNIX was cast in 2013’s Man Of Steel as Calvin Swanwick, the army general tasked with locking up Superman, he had no idea that the role would be ultimately revealed as J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, then in disguise. An original member of the Justice League line-up in the comics, the shapeshifting alien’s appearance was one of just two new scenes shot for Zack Snyder’s Justice League, popping up at the end of the four-hour film. Fortunately, Lennix had no trouble making the leap from ordinary human to superpowered alien. “It’s probably a little-known secret,” Lennix jokes, “but I play a superhero in everything I do.” Rumours surrounding Lennix’s secret role in the film circled long before anything was official. “I was on the set of The Blacklist…

WHEN MICHAEL RIANDA (previously creative director on Disney Channel series Gravity Falls) was given the opportunity to direct his first film, he wanted it to stand out. “Animated movies [these days] look so good,” he says. “And people don’t notice anymore. Even the lamest animated movie looks great!” The film that became The Mitchells Vs. The Machines (previously titled ‘Connected’), about a family caught up in a killer-robot apocalypse, combines multiple animation styles. “We wanted the movie to look and feel really different,” says Rianda. It didn’t hurt that it was Sony Animation’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. Rianda says that that film’s success gave Sony the confidence to try new things. “After Spider-Verse, there was a feeling of, ‘Oh, that can be what Sony’s thing is!’…

IT WILL BE a day long remembered. On 2 April, The Star Wars Holiday Special, long the black space sheep of that galaxy far, far away, landed on Disney +. Well, part of it. The ten-minute animated segment ‘The Story Of The Faithful Wookiee’, an infamous cartoon adventure that gave the world the first look at Boba Fett, arrived on the streaming service, alongside a slew of other unfashionable SW output like the two 1980s Ewoks TV movies, and the Star Wars: Ewoks series. For the uninitiated, The Star Wars Holiday Special was a variety special produced for Thanksgiving 1978 as a way to promote A New Hope, which was still going strong in cinemas a year after its release. With George Lucas handing the reins over to producers Gary…

★★★★★ EXCELLENT ★★★★ GOOD ★★★ OKAY ★★ POOR ★ AWFUL ★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+) EPISODES VIEWED 2 OF 6 SHOWRUNNER Malcolm Spellman CAST Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Daniel Brühl PLOT Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are gone, and Sam Wilson (Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (Stan) are grappling with the post-Blip world. There are fresh problems, too: masked gang the Flag-Smashers, and a new superhero wearing a familiar suit. SO HERE WE go. Marvel’s TV kick-off, to make you forget all about those quasi-legit Netflix shows (Iron Fist? Forget it – here’s Vibranium Fist...). A mission statement, proving that epic superhero adventures can work just as well sprawling across six hours on a small screen as they can across two on a big one, porting across immense production values…

★★ OUT NOW (DIGITAL) CERT 15 / 128 MINS DIRECTOR John Lee Hancock CAST Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto, Natalie Morales, Chris Bauer PLOT While on a forensics errand to Los Angeles, Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe ‘Deke’ Deacon (Washington) is drawn into a high-profile serial-killer hunt, led by detective Jimmy Baxter (Malek). As the pair home in on their prime suspect, Albert Sparma (Leto), Deke spots connections with a case he has previously worked on. THE LITTLE THINGS is a script that writer-director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) has been sitting on since the early ’90s. And it shows. Not simply because it’s set in 1990, handily denying its crime-fighting characters the modern convenience of mobile phones. It looks and feels like it could be a lost…

★★★ OUT NOW / NETFLIX EPISODES SEEN 5 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Tom Bidwell CAST Thaddea Graham, Darci Shaw, Harrison Osterfield, McKell David, Jojo Macari PLOT Eking out a living on the streets, 17-year-old Bea (Graham) and her family of street kids are recruited by a sinister stranger to help investigate a series of paranormal events. Said stranger is Dr John Watson (Royce Pierreson), and his business partner one Sherlock Holmes (Henry Lloyd-Hughes). THE SCRUFFY RANKS of the Baker Street Irregulars have been a staple of Sherlock Holmes mysteries since their first appearance in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study In Scarlet. A gang of street-smart urchins, the Irregulars were Holmes’ eyes and ears on every corner. Reimagined here by Tom Bidwell (My Mad Fat Diary, Watership Down), Netflix’s YA take…

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” declares Barry Jenkins of his upcoming adaptation of The Underground Railroad. “I’m always saying, ‘I want to do shit that scares me.’ And this show was terrifying. Terrifying. Walking onto set every day was terrifying.” And when Jenkins feels that intimidated, it’s really saying something. The Oscar-winning Moonlight highlighted the filmmaker’s ability to explore universal but complex feelings of romantic desire in unexpected areas. His next project, Disney’s The Lion King 2, will be looking to conquer CG animation and find heart in the family film. It is clear that the director is always looking to push himself. But The Underground Railroad is another level. Jenkins’ upcoming limited series for Amazon Studios is based on a book set in an alternate version…

“EVERYTHING DIES, BABY, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies, someday comes back.” Bruce Springsteen – New Jersey’s favourite son, chronicler of Americana, The Boss – wrote and sang those words in 1982, as part of one of his greatest songs, ‘Atlantic City’. It’s doubtful that as he wrote them he was thinking about zombies, but with Springsteen you can’t rule anything out. Whatever the truth of the situation, those words occur to Empire on an endless loop on this chilly/sunny October day, where we’ve found ourselves in the actual Atlantic City, surrounded by zombies. Maybe everything that dies, someday comes back, and then some. Specifically, we’re on the casino floor of the Showboat Hotel (the 13th-best hotel in Atlantic City, according to TripAdvisor). It’s been out of action…

Alamy, Getty Images The Remains Of The Day WHILE PREPPING TO take on the role of Stevens, the butler hero of The Remains Of The Day, Anthony Hopkins spent a while in the company of Cyril Dickman, Buckingham Palace’s premier manservant for 15 years, and in service for 50. During that time, as Hopkins was drilled in Buttling For Beginners, Dickman instilled in the actor some iron rules. Never touch the lip of a glass. Address your master as “M’lord” when entering a room, and as “Sir” thereafter. Iron the morning paper page by page. Leave the dusting of books in a library to the housemaid. But the tip that proved most valuable to Hopkins was a more abstract one. “When you’re in the room,” intoned Dickman one day, “it…

MIKE LEIGH’S SECRETS & Lies – the story of an optometrist (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) in search of her birth mother (Brenda Blethyn) – was a huge hit before it was even released in 1996, winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, as well as multiple Best Actress awards for Blethyn. When Baptiste finds her mother, she finds her part of a family pinned to their spot in the world by dysfunction and misery. “Although it’s a domestic film, it’s quite epic really,” says Leigh now. Here are the six scenes that built out his epic. CYNTHIA VERSUS ROXANNE Secrets & Lies opens with Cynthia (Blethyn), a late-forties factory worker, nerves-jangling, pulling on a cigarette. Across the room, her street sweeper daughter Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook) spits venom through a cloud of smoke. Cynthia…

The Pawnbroker ALBERT BROOKS: “I was pretty young when I saw it, but when Rod Steiger put his hand through that metal spike in The Pawnbroker, because he couldn’t feel, that affected me. I just understood that in a way that I wish I didn’t. That was pretty remarkable. I remember how powerful it was, and how sad it was. When you’re younger, things affect you in weird ways. It was a way to understand how someone can’t feel, they just are dead. It was very strong to me.” INT. PAWN SHOP – DAY After witnessing the murder of his assistant Jesus (Jaime Sánchez) at the hands of three robbers, Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger) retreats to the counter of his pawn shop. Frazzled and frayed by recent events which have…

MILE-HIGH YIKES Reading your article on films on planes reminded me of a flight ten years ago, flying from Johannesburg to Mauritius. The plane had the TVs that come down from the ceiling. They’d chosen to show There’s Something About Mary. Didn’t cut any swearing, but when it got to the masturbation scene they left the audio on but showed a black screen with the caption, “Ask your parents what is going on.” Cue lots of questions from the kids on board! JOHN METCALFE, VIA EMAIL That sounds like the most awkward plane experience since a drunk Kristen Wiig crashed first class in Bridesmaids. Hope a Picturehouse membership belatedly makes up for the cringe. Picture house Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend! Valid for…

WITH A STARE that could freeze wet paint, and a raspy voice that could then strip it off the walls, Yaphet Kotto was always able to bring a piercing intensity to the roles he played. Chief among them is Parker, the engineer from Alien who seems, for so long, like the only member of the Nostromo crew who might be able to take on the titular terror and give it a good old hiding. But the American actor was also wonderful alongside Richard Pryor and Harvey Keitel in Paul Schrader’s underrated 1978 movie Blue Collar, gave good foil to Arnie in The Running Man, and brought grace and warmth to his signature TV role, as Lieutenant Al ‘Gee’ Giardello in the groundbreaking Homicide: Life On The Street. He even brought…

THIS TIME, IT’S personal. Steven Spielberg’s next film, loosely inspired by his Arizona childhood, sees Michelle Williams play his ‘mother’ and is co-written by the director and longtime collaborator Tony Kushner. The film seemingly has its roots in I’ll Be Home, a project written by his sister Anne in the early ’00s. “It’s very personal – that’s what scares me the most,” Spielberg told Empire at the time. But it wouldn’t be the first time he’s put some of himself in his work. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) Spielberg’s UFO movie also doubles as a documentary about the director’s childhood home, capturing the rites and rituals of suburban life – from elaborate train sets to the ever-present TV set. The scene where Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) grabs his…

Alamy, Shutterstock HOUSE OF THE DRAGON Based on George R.R. Martin’s novel Fire & Blood, this prequel will cover the early years of House Targaryen (usually mad, big on incest). Expect in-fighting, bloody civil war, and Paddy Considine riding a dragon. EXCITEMENT LEVEL: TALES OF DUNK AND EGG The adventures of Ser Duncan The Tall and his lesser-statured squire, Egg (in reality young Aegon V Targaryen), who get embroiled in all manner of high-jinks while traipsing around the Seven Kingdoms. Expect smaller-scale adventures with a less exhausting cast of characters. EXCITEMENT LEVEL: FLEA BOTTOM Set in the lowliest slums of King’s Landing, this shifts the focus from kings and queens to beggars and paupers for a more down-to-earth look at Westeros. (Ken Loach’s Game Of Thrones?) Expect cabbage in the…

IT’S BEEN NEARLY 40 years since Steven Spielberg snapped up the lifetime rights to adapt Stephen King and Peter Straub’s epic horror/adventure The Talisman. Now it appears that The Beard has finally found a creative team that can get the job done: Matt and Ross Duffer, the talented duo behind Stranger Things. It won’t be an easy job, but the results could be great if they hit just a few specific beats... FIND THE PERFECT JACK SAWYER Casting’s always crucial, but even more so here: The Talisman’s lead character is a young boy, Jack Sawyer, who gains the power to “flip” between our reality and a fantastical, dangerous world with echoes of our own. Casting kid roles has always been a dicey proposition on King adaptations (and the results have…

★★ OUT NOW (DIGITAL) CERT 12A / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Adam Wingard CAST Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Julian Dennison PLOT The inter-governmental organisation Monarch, along with the shady Apex corporation, attempts to transport King Kong back to his home. But when the giant ape encounters fellow titan Godzilla, an ancient conflict is re-established – setting the stage for an enormous punch-up. THE FIRST MEETING between Godzilla and King Kong – the iconic mega-monsters of Japanese and American B-movie cinema, respectively – was in 1962’s King Kong Vs. Godzilla. The premise was that a businessman thought a couple of massive kaiju having a fight would make for good publicity; while the VFX budget may have changed in the six decades since, this is essentially more…

★★★★ OUT 23 APRIL (DIGITAL) CERT TBC / 104 MINS DIRECTOR Lawrence Michael Levine CAST Aubrey Plaza, Christopher Abbott, Sarah Gadon PLOT In Part One, indie filmmaker Allison (Plaza) is invited to stay at the home of Gabe (Abbott) and Blair (Gadon), poking at their relationship’s fault lines with disastrous consequences. In Part Two, Gabe oversees the troubled production of a film seemingly inspired by the events of Part One. THERE ARE PLENTY of films about the making of movies, some of which spotlight the painful process of writing screenplays (Barton Fink, Adaptation and Mank), but few films have explored and exposed the cost of channelling personal trauma into art as effectively as Black Bear. And while a film about the making of a film sounds a little ‘inside baseball’…

★★★ OUT NOW (SKY CINEMA/NOW) CERT 15 / 242 MINS DIRECTOR Zack Snyder CAST Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Ray Fisher, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Porter, Ciarán Hinds PLOT Alien New God Darkseid (Porter) and his herald Steppenwolf (Hinds) want to get their hands on three planet-destroying ‘Mother Boxes’ hidden on Earth. Following the death of Superman (Cavill), it’s up to Batman (Affleck) to assemble a team of heroes with special abilities to save the day. IT’S BEEN A long and unlikely road to Zack Snyder’s Justice League. The underwhelming mess that is 2017’s Justice League — which saw Avengers Assemble/Age Of Ultron helmer Joss Whedon step in after Snyder left mid-production due to personal tragedy — is better remembered for a bizarre CGI upper lip…

★★★ OUT 9 APRIL (AMAZON PRIME VIDEO) EPISODES VIEWED 10 OF 10 SHOWRUNNER Little Marvin CAST Deborah Ayorinde, Ashley Thomas, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Melody Hurd PLOT The 1950s. African-American family the Emorys move from North Carolina to California looking to improve their prospects after a traumatic event. Little do they know their new neighbourhood harbours a corrosive malevolence, which manifests itself both in the everyday and the supernatural. HOW MUCH PAIN is too much? In Them, the tolerance bar is high. Created by Little Marvin and co-executive produced by Lena Waithe, this horror anthology series, set within a ten-day timeline, hurtles viewers headfirst into thick molasses of Black pain and generational bigotry, only intensified by capitalism and otherworldly afflictions. Them’s approach — Suburbicon by way of The Shining — provides…

★★★ OUT 19 APRIL (SKY ATLANTIC/NOW) EPISODES VIEWED 5 OF 7 SHOWRUNNER Brad Ingelsby CAST Kate Winslet, Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Angourie Rice, Evan Peters PLOT In a small Pennsylvania town, hard-bitten detective Mare Sheehan (Winslet) is under pressure for not solving the disappearance of a teenage girl, rowing with her mother (Smart), trying to date and fighting a custody battle for her grandson (Izzy King). To compound matters, a dead body has been found in a creek. THE BIG DRAW of Mare Of Easttown is watching Kate Winslet in her first major TV role (playing Suzanne in Casualty in 1993 doesn’t count) and she doesn’t disappoint. Brad Ingelsby’s drama spins many plates — it’s a murder mystery, a family drama, a small-town ensemble piece — but, thanks to Winslet’s…

Let Him Go WITH LET HIM GO, Thomas Bezucha is a long way from The Family Stone. Although ‘The Family Stone Cold’ might be an apt way of describing his dark, violent, modern Western in which Kevin Costner and Diane Lane play a married couple whose search for their missing daughter-in-law and grandson sparks a bloodbath. Here, Bezucha talks us through the key moments from his moving odyssey. DEATH COMES EARLY Let Him Go begins and ends with death visiting the Blackledge family. In the opening minutes, James Blackledge (Ryan Bruce), the only son of farmers Margaret (Diane Lane) and George (Kevin Costner), is found dead by his father, having been thrown from his horse. “I wanted to have his death occur off-screen, and then revisit it later,” explains Bezucha,…

Illustration: Jacey Tom Hanks movies Chris: When did you first become familiar with the work of Tom Hanks? Amon: Probably the Toy Story movies. Chris: This is a litmus test for people’s ages. John: I’m totally the same. Toy Story was one of the first films I got obsessed with as a kid. Helen: It was either Big or Dragnet for me. By the time Forrest Gump and Philadelphia came out, I was already on the Hanks bandwagon. Chris: Helen and I are of a similar age. So you guys didn’t get to see Hanks transition. He’s not a comedian, but he is a very funny and outrageously, naturally gifted comedic actor. If you look at his breakthrough roles in the ’80s, they’re all comedies. Bachelor Party, Splash, Big, Turner…

Raiders Of The Lost Ark IT’S RAIDERS’ DEFINING image. Stealing a fertility idol in the temple of the Chachapoyan Warriors, archaeologist-adventurer Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) dodges tarantulas, a collapsing altar, darts, a chasm, spikes and a treacherous accomplice (Alfred Molina), only to be faced down by a giant rock showing no mercy. It’s a moment that encapsulates the heart of Steven Spielberg’s 1981 classic; fun without ever winking to the audience, it’s a throwback to the classic ’30s/’40s adventure series, with a hero always scrabbling for his life. The sequence has been parodied endlessly – both Homer Simpson and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange have doubled for the stone – but never loses its power to enthral and excite. The idea for the sequence was Spielberg’s, relayed at a five-day script…

ACROSS 7 Thelma & – (Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis) (6) 8 Wood who was Frodo Baggins in The Lord Of The Rings (6) 9 Bogarde seen in Death In Venice, Darling etc (4) 10 “Policing the hard way” ran the blurb for this 2013 drama with Stephen Tompkinson (8) 11 John Hurt portrayed Stephen Ward in this account of the Profumo affair (7) 13 The Art Of The – (Kurt Russell, 2014) (5) 15 The Ice – (Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, 1997) (5) 17 US state in which Key Largo is set (7) 20 This 1954 Western teamed Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper (4,4) 21 Leslie Grantham and Tom Bell appeared in this 2001 black comedy (4) 22 A Bigger – (Tilda Swinton, 2015) (6) 23 This 1978 thriller starred…

THIS MONTH’S FILM MOMENTS THAT MATTER TO BORROW A poster tagline: he was dead... but he got better. If you’re any kind of Fast & Furious fan, you’ll know that car thief and drifter Han Seoul- Oh (Sung Kang) dies at the end of the third film, Tokyo Drift; as seen in a post-credits scene in the sixth film, it’s revealed that Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) killed him, a scene repeated in the seventh film. And now, in the upcoming ninth film, with a twist worthy of the world’s most expensive petrol-guzzling soap opera: Han is back, alive and well. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, this whole Fast & Furious journey,” Kang says now. “How do you get killed off multiple times and keep coming back? Like, come on. This…

Illustration: Jacey. Alamy IF YOU’VE BEEN on social media recently, you may have witnessed Tom Cruise taking time out of his busy schedule to play golf, perform magic, mimic a snapping turtle, and - in one instance - fall flat on his face. Or, at least, you thought you did. “I’m still getting comments from people who think those videos are real,” laughs Chris Umé, a Belgian artificial-intelligence artist, and creator of the eerily convincing ‘DeepTomCruise’ TikTok account. “I made them with a [Cruise] impersonator - they’re meant to entertain, but also show how rapidly the technology is evolving.” Until recently, news coverage of ‘deepfakes’ (synthetic face replacements powered by AI) has tended towards either the quirkily trivial (face-swapping apps) or the irredeemably grim (fake news, hoax pornography). However, one…

BBC CHALLENGE 1: FINDING NEW IDEAS UNDER PRESSURE Steve Pemberton: “It’s certainly not easier. Necessity is the mother of invention. With Inside No. 9, you’ve got the necessity of coming up with six different stories, and you’re trying not to tread on the toes of other stories you’ve done already. It’s all happening in one location. And since series one, we’ve been terrified that people will say, “Oh, this is the series that’s crap! It’s gone off the boil now!” That pressure, whilst you’re in the middle of it, is awful, but it does drive you on. We try to keep the bar high for ourselves.” CHALLENGE 2: KEEPING THE VARIETY Reece Shearsmith: “It feels like we’ve got six new ideas [in the new series] we haven’t done. Tonally, there’s…

PATRIZIA REGGIANI LADY GAGA Donning disguises is Stefani Germanotta’s MO, and this casting is gloriously Gaga – playing the eccentric, luxury-loving Italian matriarch, dripping in jewellery, who ordered a hit on her fashion-boss ex-husband Maurizio Gucci after he left her for a younger woman. Think American Horror Story’s bloodthirsty Countess meets the ‘Telephone’ music video’s fashion-forward revenge-fantasy. MAURIZIO GUCCI ADAM DRIVER Top of Patrizia’s hitlist, after he walked out on their marriage of 12 years. Maurizio inherited a majority stake in the family fashion-house from his father, Rodolfo Gucci, in 1983 – and then the trouble began. He sparked a family tussle for control of Gucci, drove the business into financial decline in the early ’90s, and was gunned down on the way to his office in 1995. It’s Adam…

IT’S A FAMILIAR story – buzzy, up-and-coming filmmaker moves into the studio system and signs up for a superhero movie. But the word that Emerald Fennell will be writing DC’s Zatanna is exciting, coming on the heels of her Oscar and BAFTA nominations for Promising Young Woman. That’s partly because barriers at the top end of Hollywood filmmaking are beginning to crumble and breakthrough women are beginning to get the same opportunities as breakthrough men. But it’s mostly because Fennell is a fantastic choice for the gig. Consider Fennell’s most high-profile writing to date, on Promising Young Woman and Killing Eve. She specialises in characters who are self-destructive in interesting and unexpected ways, whether that’s Cassie’s (Carey Mulligan) peculiar form of revenge, or the mutual obsession between Eve and Villanelle.…

WHEN MARIA BAKALOVA found out she was going to the Oscars, she was with Pedro Pascal. To be more specific, she was on the set of Judd Apatow’s forthcoming The Bubble, performing a scene with Pascal, having politely nixed suggestions that shooting be paused so she could watch the nominee announcements on TV. “I had said, ‘No, please! I just want to keep working.’ But I started freaking out: my hands were in the shot, and you could see they were shaking.” Then Apatow, who had been sneakily following the broadcast, asked her to look into the camera and said, “Congratulations. You just got nominated for an Academy Award.” The freaking-out process was complete. “I lost my mind!” Bakalova laughs. “Even in my wildest dreams I couldn’t imagine something that…

★★★★ OUT NOW (DIGITAL) CERT 15 / 126 MINS DIRECTOR Shaka King CAST Daniel Kaluuya, Lakeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons, Dominique Fishback PLOT In late 1960s Illinois, small-time criminal William O’Neal (Stanfield) is enlisted by the Feds to infiltrate the local chapter of the Black Panther Party. Caught between charismatic leader Fred Hampton (Kaluuya) and his FBI handler (Plemons), O’Neal contemplates a life-changing betrayal. IN THE END, it is an unexpected smile that tells you all you need to know about Judas And The Black Messiah. Midway through this Ryan Coogler-produced look at the life of Black civil rights activist Fred Hampton, Lakeith Stanfield’s character – a car thief turned notorious FBI informant called William O’Neal – is bluffing wildly to preserve his secret from comrades in the Black Panther Party.…

★★★★ OUT 7 MAY (CURZON AT HOME) CERT 12A / 91 MINS DIRECTOR Christos Nikou CAST Aris Servetalis, Sofia Georgovassili, Anna Kalaitzidou, Argyris Bakirtzis PLOT Amid a global pandemic that sparks sudden amnesia, Aris (Servetalis) is enrolled in a recovery programme designed to give blank people new identities. Armed with a Polaroid camera, Aris is tasked with creating and documenting fresh memories, a project that becomes complicated when he meets fellow patient Anna (Georgovassili). APPLES STARTS AS it means to go on. Closeups of a banal house interior are cut to the beat of a dull, steady drumbeat. The noise, it turns out, is a man, Aris (Aris Servetalis), rhythmically banging his head on a door jamb, oblivious to any pain. It’s an oddball note that Christos Nikou’s film not…

★★★★ OUT NOW (BBC ONE/BBC iPLAYER) EPISODES SEEN 2 OF 7 SHOWRUNNER Jed Mercurio CAST Vicky McClure, Martin Compston, Adrian Dunbar, Kelly Macdonald PLOT A new case comes AC-12’s way after a murder investigation unit led by boss DCI Joanne Davidson (Macdonald) bungle a high-profile job, letting a likely murder suspect escape. But with Kate (McClure) having left the anti-corruption team and now part of the one under scrutiny, will she work with her old colleagues or against them? Plus, will we ever, for the love of God, find out who H is? AS HAS NOW become Line Of Duty tradition, episode one of the new season opens with a high-octane, nerve-shredding, pulse-pounding police-work set-piece. This series, it’s a charging convoy of black unmarked cop cars (quite literally sucking diesel),…

AS SOMEONE KNOWN FOR DOING a mean Al Pacino impression from time to time, Tom Hiddleston is surely familiar with the line, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” But he’s almost certainly even more familiar with the concept, particularly when it comes to playing Loki. The British actor first brought the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s malevolent trickster god to life in Thor in 2011, mixing impish humour, repressed rage, and an arch theatricality. That movie, and solo-villain duties in 2012’s Avengers Assemble, turned Hiddleston into a huge star almost overnight, and he’s since worked with some of the most interesting directors around (Wheatley, Jarmusch, Bier, del Toro, to name but four). But what is acting, if not Loki persevering? And so, just three years after…

GEORGE A. ROMERO had never intended to make a horror movie. In 1967, at 27 years old, he was a recent graduate of the Carnegie Institute Of Technology in Pittsburgh and an increasingly successful advertising director in what had become his hometown. He shot beer commercials (“Duke Beer, the natural beer for the natural man!”) and occasional inserts for children’s programme Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which then filmed in the city. The most terrifying thing he had ever directed, he used to tell people, was the episode ‘Mister Rogers Gets A Tonsillectomy’. But the movies’ siren call had always been a strong one for him. In his childhood, in The Bronx, he had been a self-confessed film fanatic, slowly working his way through the classics. (He once tried to borrow a…

In a new regular series, we pay tribute to the towering, mega-watt stars who still roam Hollywood SHE BARELY SPOKE a word. In fact, the few times that anyone heard Nicole Kidman between takes on the set of Karyn Kusama’s 2018 noir thriller Destroyer were when she would scream or grunt, summoning up the intensity she required for a particularly bruising scene. At the end of each day, she would head home still wearing the tight black leather jacket that envelops her lost-soul cop character, Erin Bell. It was, Kidman later explained to The New York Times, “a part of the depression”. It may seem remarkable for an actor to remain this devoted, 35 years into her acting career. But then, Kidman has always been as much a daredevil as…

INDISPENSABLE HOME ENTERTAINMENT LIKE THE MEDIUM of animation itself, it seems that Pete Docter can imagine, well, pretty much anything. As the lead director of Monsters, Inc., Up, Inside Out, and now Soul, the Pixar veteran has been behind some of the most ambitious movies ever made, animated or otherwise, exploring life’s greatest mysteries – what’s it like inside our heads? Where do human souls come from? What would happen if you attached a bunch of helium-filled balloons to a house? Even Monsters, Inc. comes down to the revelation that a world can be more effectively powered by laughter than fear. It’s a stellar list of features, one that points to a filmmaker constantly pondering the biggest of big questions, before turning them into vibrant, boundlessly creative adventure stories that…