Inhaltsverzeichnis für March 2020 in Empire

IN 2001, Major Charles Ingram, his wife Diana and their friend Tecwen Whittock were accused of cheating their way to a million pounds on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The Major was a contestant on the show, and Mrs Ingram and Whittock were in the audience, apparently conspiring to signify the correct answers to him via a series of coughs. Now writer James Graham, who wrote the controversial Brexit TV drama with Benedict Cumberbatch as Leave campaign supremo Dominic Cummings, has turned his own stage play about the Millionaire scandal into a three-part drama for ITV. He describes it as “an origin story of fake news and the end of a shared truth”. It’s at once a high-stakes story about justice and the fate of normal people thrown into…

ITV, FEBRUARY FRANCESCA ANNIS (VIVIEN) Annis plays recently widowed Vivien who falls for local retired GP Mark (Stephen Rea), much to the horror of her three grown-up children. As Vivien’s priorities shift towards her new lover and away from her kids, years of family secrets and resentments are revealed. RUSSELL TOVEY (JAKE) Jake and his sisters Helen ( Manhunt’s Claudie Blakely) and Natalie ( Gentleman Jack’s Lydia Leonard) are threatened by their mother’s new relationship with Mark – goodbye, inheritance and large family home! But as the siblings try to discredit him, it backfires badly… IMELDA STAUNTON (MARY) Having lived next door to Vivien for 40 years, Mary appears to know everything about her neighbours. While the family members are fighting among themsleves and heading towards violence,…

SERIES ONE OF Liar in 2017 was one of ITV’s biggest scripted hits of recent years, scoring its highest audience figures for a new, non-returning drama since 2014, despite being scheduled at the same time as BBC1 thriller Rellik from the same writers, Harry and Jack Williams (The Missing). Now series two picks up where the first ended: serial rapist Dr Andrew Earlham (Ioan Gruffudd) lying dead in a ditch. While series one was an intense psychological thriller, structured around Joanne Froggatt’s teacher Laura Nielson trying to prove that the seemingly charming and respectable surgeon Earlham had raped her, the second six-part season pivots to more traditional whodunnit territory. In comes Katherine Kelly as bullish, no-nonsense detective Karen Renton investigating Earlham’s death, and the story’s interspersed with flashbacks to the…

IT’S APRIL 2019 AND PATRICK STEWART is muttering to himself on the bridge of a starship — somewhere he swore he’d never be again. He is, against all probability, back in the shoes of a man he’d said his goodbyes to almost two decades earlier. Yes, the presentation has changed — the crisp, tight-fitting uniform now replaced by a more functional shirt and brown overcoat — but even without the insignia on his breast, as Stewart stands on this Santa Clarita soundstage for the first day of filming, he is instantly, indisputably Jean-Luc Picard once more. Which was never part of the plan. “WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?” “The moment they came and made me the offer, I knew that I would turn it down,” Stewart tells Pilot…

Andrew H Walker/Shutterstock AS TEAM WHO settle into their seats round a huge table in a London hotel suite, we get the sense they’re embracing this opportunity to kick back, savour the moment and reflect on what it really means to be part of this extraordinary show. Even though this is only their second season together, showrunner Chris Chibnall and his core cast of Jodie Whittaker, Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill and Bradley Walsh (who’s absent because he’s busy filming his hit ITV game show The Chase), have evidently forged a strong fellowship, bonded together through the shared experience of being at the centre of the Whoniverse. So far, it’s been the wildest of rides. The moment when Whittaker’s casting as the 13th Doctor was announced may have caused some loud…

10 THE HUNTING PARTY (SEASON 2, EPISODE 10) City parks official Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) insists that the office ladies (and Aziz Ansari’s Tom) be allowed to join boss Ron Swanson’s (Nick Offerman) annual hunting trip. It’s all fun and games until someone shoots Ron in the head with buckshot. To protect the culprit, Leslie takes the fall — even though it jeopardises her campaign for equality with Ron. It’s an early example of the show working best when its characters look out for one another rather than their own ambitions. Even when they disagree — or almost kill one another — a sense of mutual devotion gets them through. 9 CITIZEN KNOPE (SEASON 4, EPISODE 10) The show takes a more explicitly political direction as Leslie runs for office…

BRYAN ELSLEY NEVER expected Skins to become a phenomenon. Instead, he saw the raucous teen show he co-created with son Jamie Brittain as “a little experiment”. “It was going to be a year of fun making a TV show which no one seemed to care about. There was always this sense that everything was happening under the radar.” Elsley came up with the idea for Skins after a conversation with his son Jamie in 2005. “He was at university and he told me that my ideas for TV dramas were rubbish and that there was a hole in the market for teen drama. I said, ‘Teens don’t watch teen dramas any more’. From there it took us half an hour to work out what the series could be.” In truth,…

THE END IS the latest in a slew of recent shows which tackle one of the final taboos. Like After Life , Dead To Me and Russian Doll before it, the series, set in Australia, gives death the side-eye with moments of both gallows humour and absurdism. Frances O’Connor is palliative care doctor Kate Brennan, who moves her depressed mother Edie (gloriously played by Harriet Walter) over from England into a retirement village nearby, following a suicide attempt by Edie. Each generation of the family is in flux. Edie is suffering after the revelation that her late husband was a cheat. She drinks anything she can get her hands on and strikes up a friendship with a no-fucks-given hippy. Kate’s eldest child is transitioning and getting into trouble. Her husband…

TREVORROW EXITS (5 SEPTEMBER 2017) Episode IX’s original director leaves the film. “Lucasfilm and Colin Trevorrow have mutually chosen to part ways,” says the press release. A week later, The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams is announced as his replacemnent. PALPATINE RETURNS (12 APRIL 2019) At the biannual Star Wars Celebration, the surprise return of Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine is revealed. TREVORROW EARNS A CREDIT (22 NOVEMBER 2019 ) Trevorrow still gets a “story by” credit, but tells Empire that including Palpatine in the film is “honestly something I never considered”. REVIEWS HIT (18 DECEMBER 2019) The reviews embargo lifts two days before the release. The film’s score on Rotten Tomatoes ultimately settles on 53 per cent, one of the few Star Wars films to earn a ‘Rotten’ rating.…

CYCLONE JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL At first glance, Cyclone just looks like a regular horse: a fine mane, good breed, solid neighing. Then we realise he is actually an in-game Jumanji avatar, with Bethany (Madison Iseman) inhabiting her very being. It only gets weirder after that. NØKK FROZEN II Frozen already has a four-hoofed friend in the form of trusty reindeer Sven. But the sequel introduced something distinctly madder: an elemental spirit horse who protects the sea, occasionally manifesting in the odd pond. As you do. ORBAK STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER The galaxy far, far away has had its fair share of space horses. But the Orbaks ridden by Jannah and Finn are another level of insanity. How many space horses can you actually ride on a Star…

HORROR AND SOCIO-POLITICAL commentary have gone hand-in-hand for decades. Way back in 1968, George A. Romero’s classic Night Of The Living Dead was a racially charged satire — with zombies. But Jordan Peele’s game-changing 2017 horror Get Out (which cited Night Of The Living Dead as an influence) seems to have left an indelible mark on the genre. Get Out showed that there are still untapped demographics of horror-loving audiences, waiting to see themselves reflected in the terror on screen; it’s hard not to look at this upcoming crop of horrors and see the explosive influence of the Sunken Place in them. THE INVISIBLE MAN FEBRUARY Leigh Whannell’s reboot of the H.G. Wells character arrives next month (see page 60), refashioning a classic Universal monster into a Blumhouse social thriller…

Alamy PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER. IT’S got a ring to it, hasn’t it? The former Governator has made no secret of his Oval Office ambitions, and plenty of films, from Demolition Man to The Simpsons Movie, have toyed with the prospect. But Kung Fury 2 is the first film to go all in and make the Austrian Oak the actual leader of the free world. “I think he was very happy with the part,” says the film’s writer/director/star, David Sandberg. And not just because he finally gets to be President. There’s another long-held dream realised here. “When they shot Commando, he wanted to shoot a scene where he rips off the arm of a soldier and beats him with his own arm,” recalls Sandberg. “They didn’t allow him to do that. I…

★★★★★ OUT 7 FEBRUARY CERT 15 / 132 MINS DIRECTOR Bong Joon-ho CAST Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Chang Hyae Jin, Park So-dam PLOT Seoul, South Korea. The Kim family are living in poverty, and collectively cannot hold a job down. When a teaching role in the household of a much wealthier family arises, the Kims scheme their way into employment by posing as highly skilled workers. But not everything goes according to plan. PARASITE IS A difficult film to talk about. It defies any easy pigeonhole, wriggles free from slotting into a single genre, can be considered both a mainstream crowd-pleaser and an arthouse masterpiece — and is, undeniably, a film best enjoyed going in blind, its delicious and shocking surprises ideally experienced as innocently and…

★★★★ OUT 31 JANUARY CERT 15 / 132 MINS DIRECTOR Melina Matsoukas CAST Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Chloë Sevigny, Flea, Bokeem Woodbine, Indya Moore PLOT After a first date, a young black man and woman (Kaluuya and Turner-Smith) are involved in a routine traffic stop. Things escalate, there is a tussle and the white policeman is killed. With no other option, these relative strangers — and sudden folk heroes — make a dangerous run for it. “WELL, IF IT ISN’T the Black Bonnie and Clyde,” says tracksuited pimp Uncle Earl (Woodbine) midway through Queen & Slim, regarding our two fugitive protagonists with more than a little scenery-chomping relish. It is the sort of line that may as well come with a turn to the camera and a wink; an irresistible,…

★★ OUT 7 FEBRUARY / CERT 15 / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Adam Egypt Mortimer CAST Patrick Schwarzenegger, Miles Robbins, Sasha Lane Daniel Isn’t Real feels like a run of missed opportunities. Despite inventive visuals and the odd gross-out moment, the tale of reclusive college freshman Luke (Robbins), who invokes his imaginary friend Daniel (Schwarzenegger) from childhood, feels like a blend of familiar plot beats. It’s harder still to be concerned when the characters are so shallow, particularly Daniel’s appearance as a more garishly dressed Tyler Durden and Sasha Lane’s thankless role as a love interest mostly left out of the loop. In its more outlandish moments, it takes on an exploitative tone, placing the responsibility of the film’s violence on a generic, undefined depiction of mental illness that makes Split…

★★★ OUT 31 JANUARY CERT 15 / 131 MINS DIRECTOR Clint Eastwood CAST Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde PLOT Security guard Richard Jewell (Hauser) discovers a suspect package during a concert celebrating the P99U Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Although Jewell raises the alert, the pipe bomb goes off, killing one person and injuring PPP. Initially hailed as a hero, Jewell becomes the chief suspect, turning his quiet existence into a living hell. RICHARD JEWELL ANSWERS the pressing question most of us have been asking since 2009: what if Paul Blart: Mall Cop were remade as a prestige picture? Clint Eastwood’s straight-down-the-middle drama about the security guard (Hauser) who saved countless lives by finding a pipe bomb during a concert celebrating the 1996 Summer Olympics…

★★★★ OUT 31 JANUARY / CERT PG / 93 MINS DIRECTOR Suhaib Gasmelbari CAST Ibrahim Shaddad, Suliman Ibrahim, Eltayeb MahdiManar Al-Hilo Taking its title from a Bertolt Brecht poem, this is a provocative profile of the four veteran filmmakers striving to reintroduce cinema in the strife-torn African country of Sudan. They are not helped by a shortage of funding, a lack of equipment or the dictatorship’s Sharia-inspired strictness. However, the quartet are as splendidly resourceful as they are passionately committed. But, while giving village screenings of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times is one thing, hosting a free showing of Tarantino’s Django Unchained in Omdurman’s derelict Revolution Cinema is quite another. Full of quiet courage and subversive wit, this reminds filmgoers everywhere to take nothing for granted.…

★★★★★ OUT 31 JANUARY CERT 15 / 109 MINS DIRECTOR Robert Eggers CAST Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe PLOT New England, the P890s. Two lighthouse keepers arrive on a remote island for a month-long stretch of maintenance and solitude. But mysteries abound: both men harbour secrets, strange visions and hallucinations appear, and when relief doesn’t arrive, their grip on reality starts to loosen. EARLY ON IN The Lighthouse, director Robert Eggers’ dazzling, demented follow-up to The Witch, veteran lighthouse keeper Thomas Wake (Dafoe) recounts how the last keeper (or ‘wickie’, to use the naval parlance) went mad, after believing there was “some enchantment in the light”. Ephraim Winslow (Pattinson), the replacement wickie, scoffs at this. “Tall tales,” he says. The Lighthouse is itself a tall tale, the kind sailors might have…

★★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 142 MINS DIRECTOR J.J. Abrams CAST Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Naomi Ackie, Domhnall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong’o, Keri Russell, Joonas Suotamo, Kelly Marie Tran, Ian McDiarmid, Billy Dee Williams PLOT Emperor Palpatine (McDiarmid) lives, and is threatening revenge on the galaxy via a huge fleet of planet-killing ships. The Resistance, and Rey (Ridley), must find the clues that will lead them to him and allow them to defeat him again, despite the fury of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren (Driver). FOR THE THIRD time in many adults’ lifetimes, a conclusion of the Skywalker saga. Once again, a trilogy has built to this finale; once again, the fate of the galaxy hangs in the…

WONG KAR-WAI’S exquisite romance is a heady mix of swirling cigarette smoke, evocative music and breathless tension. In 1962 Hong Kong, secretary Maggie Cheung and reporter Tony Leung rent neighbouring rooms in an overcrowded apartment block, and both have spouses who are regularly away. The lovelorn pair strike up a beautiful friendship, before discovering their other halves are having an affair, but their feelings for each other remain (mostly) chaste, all charged looks and meaningful glances, as the unhappy couple suppress their desire. The plot may be slight, but the performances are sublime, the lush visuals and rhythmic editing helping to produce a dream-like thrall. It remains Wong’s masterwork, and arguably the most achingly romantic movie ever made.…

A PERFECT, BLOOD-splattered marriage of director and material, Tim Burton’s brooding adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s macabre musical drips with Hammer Horror-style gore. Johnny Depp throws himself with gusto into the titular role, sounding not unlike David Bowie and rocking a black barnet adorned by a skunkish shock of white. And he and Helena Bonham Carter prove themselves more than capable singers, crooning their way through Sondheim’s showstoppers. The sets are extraordinary, of course, while Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and Sacha Baron Cohen provide suitably weaselly support. A gruesome delight.…

ANDREW DOMINIK’S sweeping revisionist Western revisits the tale of outlaw Jesse James with an eye for the dark trappings of celebrity and American mythmaking, James (Brad Pitt) seen through the eyes of a jealous admirer — Robert Ford (a weaselly Casey Affleck). The aesthetic inspiration came from Andrew Wyeth paintings and old photographs, allowing DP Roger Deakins to use wide-angle lenses and blurred edge effects. The results are burnished, achingly old-fashioned visuals, combined with a compelling intensity.…

IT CAME OUT of nowhere, much like one of those giant oval spaceships it positions over Johannesburg. A first-time director, Neill Blomkamp; an unknown star, Sharlto Copley; a viral marketing campaign that repeatedly deployed the phrase “For Humans Only”. And when it landed, District 9 blew our heads off. The effects remain nifty and convincing, while the immigration-camp setting feels even more pertinent today. But the real reason it holds up is that it’s so damn fun, revelling in its sci-fi trappings, and throwing in crazy weaponry, mech-suits, cat-food-eating “prawns”, and a blackly funny ending that still begs for a ‘District 10’.…

“SORRY, MY ARSE just fell off,” says Robert Llewellyn, falling on to a sofa in full costume as Red Dwarf’s subservient robot Kryten. “I just heard it go. But don’t worry: I can click it back into place.” We’re on the set of a special episode of the sci-fi/comedy institution which is breaking new ground by going feature-length. “I can’t think of too many sitcoms that have run from 1988 to 2020,” says Chris Barrie, who plays snobby hologram Rimmer. “Red Dwarf feels as good as ever, and this kind of longer piece makes for a nice creative departure.” Around the corner, there’s a human-sized cat-flap and a spaceship corridor that would make Doctor Who proud. Craig Charles (working-class hero Lister) explains that they’re only filming scenes that would be…

A THOROUGHBRED RACEHORSE stands still in the middle of a road. An oasis of calm among the chaos of war-torn Baghdad. A beat later it’s gone, obliterated by a US armoured vehicle that ploughs remorselessly on without a backward glance. This is the sort of random jeopardy that threatens the protagonists in writer Stephen Butchard’s Baghdad Central, a detective story set in lawless post-war Iraq that is also an exploration of the human condition in the most extreme circumstances. At its heart is Iraqi ex-policeman Muhsin al-Khafaji (Waleed Zuaiter), a widower who lost his son after the US shock and awe bombings of 2003. Six months later he is nursing one sick daughter, Mrouj (July Namir), and searching for another, Sawsan (Leem Lubany), when he is reinstated as a detective…

Matt Holyoak/Camera Press INSPIRED BY COP buddy pairings like Bad Boys and Lethal Weapon, Ashley Walters and Noel Clarke teamed up with co-creator and director Nick Love (The Sweeney) to give Sky One its biggest drama audience of 2018 with 1.59 million viewers. Now the National Crime Agency duo of fearless wheels man Ronnie Pike Jr (Walters) and loose cannon Aaron Bishop (Clarke) are going undercover to bring down a crime family involved with drug-running and sex trafficking. We sat down with Clarke to discuss the new season’s major expanded ambitions. What did you learn from making Season 1? We learned that we wanted the stunts to be bigger. I didn’t want to watch any of the stunts this time and think, ‘Oh, that’s British TV.’ I wanted it to…

THE FIRST SERIES of Netflix’s Sex Education raised more than a few eyebrows when it opened with a teenage boy unconvincingly faking an orgasm as his confused girlfriend asks “Where’s the spunk, Adam?” Series two might just have topped it though, with a three- minute sequence that director Ben Taylor describes as “a triumphant wanking montage”. Soundtracked by a choral version of Divinyls’ I Touch Myself, it’s immediately clear that Asa Butterfield’s Otis Milburn — the schoolboy-cum-teenage-sex-therapist (pun very much intended) — has finally learnt the art of self-pleasure, even if he hasn’t quite perfected it yet. “It needed to be joyful,” says Taylor. “His relationship at the start of series two is with himself and his own penis, and you can see that he’s deeply in love with himself.”…

ARMANDO IANNUCCI HAS always dreamt of the cosmos. Before co-creating Alan Partridge, before savaging the buffoons of British politics with his prescient political comedy The Thick Of It, and long before his US sitcom Veep became an Emmy award-winning smash hit series, he was a sci-fiobsessed teen, devouring HG Wells novels in his bedroom. “Not teleportation and tentacled space aliens,” Iannucci is keen to point out, taking a sip from his morning latte. “More hard sci-fi. The type that can pick up a contemporary theme and really explore it from a new perspective. I also liked how it could often do something a little bit existential, asking questions like: what the hell are we doing? How are we behaving as a species?” His latest creation, Avenue 5, asks those questions,…

THE WIRE BEGINS at a murder scene: blood splattered across granite, police lights painting the pavement red, white and blue. Across the street on a stoop sits Detective McNulty, played by Dominic West, chatting with a witness. The victim, we learn, was killed for pulling the same stunt he pulled almost every Friday night: trying to rob a dice game. “Every time, Snot Boogie, he’d fade a few shooters, play it out till the pot deep, then snatch and run,” the witness explains. Usually, Snot got away with just a beating. This time, not so lucky. “I gotta ask you,” says McNulty, turning to the witness. “If Snot always stole the money, why’d you always let him play?” The witness sighs, the camera cuts. Snot’s motionless body gazes lifelessly toward…

THE SCOTTISH ACTOR who became a star when he was cast as walking bar-brawl Francis Begbie in 1996’s Trainspotting is perhaps not the most obvious choice to play a (fictional) British Prime Minister, let alone a Conservative one. But that is the role Robert Carlyle takes on in Sky One’s new drama series COBRA, in which his PM character has to grapple with a national emergency caused by an impending solar-flare natural disaster situation. When we sit down with him to discuss the show, he seems as surprised as we are by his casting. What drew you most to the COBRA role? I don’t think I’m necessarily the obvious choice to play a Conservative Prime Minister. And so that drew my interest, as I wondered what they saw of me…

DEAD CREATURES ABOUND in The Pale Horse , the latest in a remarkable run of Agatha Christie adaptations by Sarah Phelps. Within the first few minutes of this two-parter, there are glimpses of a snake preserved in a jar, a dead rat in a sink, and a stuffed polar bear, all adding to the overall tone of dank, queasy depravity. Classic Phelps, in other words. Set in 1961, when the original Christie book was published, the title is both a biblical reference to the animal on which Death rides, as well as the home of three modern-day self-identified witches, located in the gloriously named Surrey village of Much Deeping. One of these elderly practitioners of the dark arts is found dead at the start of the story, with a hand-written…

STUB LIFE I am writing to you as I don’t know where else to turn. I’m in the process of cataloguing my cinema tickets chronologically. However, I have hit a couple of snags. Tickets from a local independent cinema have the date but no year and another fleapit only issues stubs with no details at all. Am I the only reader suffering in this way? NATHAN SHIPLEY How to correctly organise ticket stubs is, of course, the most underreported dilemma of the modern age. To help with this most first world of hardships, have a Picturehouse membership and all the (dated) stubs that come with it. Picture house  Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend! Valid for one year at 23 Picturehouse Cinemas across the…

“STRETCHING BACK ALMOST 20 years, I’ve had an incredible connection with The Master And Margarita,” says Baz Luhrmann. Now, finally, he’s secured the rights to Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical masterwork, to produce and likely direct. But why is he the right man for the job? 1. HE HAS EXPERIENCE WITH LITERARY CLASSICS Luhrmann has tackled towering literary edifices before in his adaptations of Shakespeare (Romeo + Juliet) and Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby). This is along similar lines. Russian playwright and author Bulgakov began work on the novel in 1928, but it wasn’t published until 1966, 26 years after his death. Since then it’s been hailed as one of the great works of the 20th century, translated into dozens of languages and selling millions. 2. HE GETS THE CULTURE “I wouldn’t take…

IT’S BEEN TWO years since women the world over said Time’s Up — and the impact is finally being felt on our screens, from Bombshell’s depiction of the Roger Ailes case, to The Morning Show tackling workplace sexual harassment on Apple TV+. Now 2020 brings Promising Young Woman, a revenge movie that turns the tables on so-called ‘nice guys’ with a stellar cast, genre know-how, and razor-edge wit. At its barbed heart is Carey Mulligan’s Cassie — a seemingly vulnerable woman who hangs around in nightclub corners where men invariably swoop in and take her home. Except, they’re not in for the night they thought they were. “I want the film to feel like a first date that’s going unbelievably well. It’s too good to be true, it feels really…

START WITH A BIG QUESTION The initial idea for Soul, which will be the 23rd film from Pixar Animation Studios, came from a big, juicy, existential head-scratcher. “We were thinking about why we are here, and what our purpose in life is,” says Pete Docter, chief creative officer at Pixar and Soul’s director. “For example, I’ve always felt like I was born to be an animator. Could we question that? And that’s where this idea of souls came up.” From there, Docter — along with co-director Kemp Powers and their creative team — developed a story about a music teacher passionate about jazz named Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) who suddenly falls down a manhole, and finds his soul separated from his body. But instead of going to the…

Getty Images IT’S A TIMELY ADAPTATION OF A CLASSIC Adapted from H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 apocalyptic sci-fi horror, director Richard Stanley says it has never been more relevant. “Lovecraft’s themes are creepily in keeping with the Trump era, the Brexit era — the pre-environmental-extinction generation.” IT HAS CAGE AT HIS CAGE-IEST The film features an appropriately bonkers Nicolas Cage performance as patriarch Nathan Gardner. “He’s a very self-aware individual,” says Stanley. “Before we started shooting, [Cage] highlighted areas in the script he could really run with. The kind of places where we could literally push the notorious ‘Cage Rage’ up to ten.” IT’S THE FIRST IN A PLANNED LOVECRAFT CINEMATIC UNIVERSE “I’m working on a Lovecraft trilogy,” says Stanley. “People are getting used to a universe like Marvel— but Lovcecraft was…

2014’S FORCE MAJEURE, Ruben Östlund’s classy exploration of a fractured family dynamic, focused on a couple dealing with the aftermath of the man fleeing an avalanche, leaving his wife to protect their children. Chilling but bleakly comical, it was uniquely Scandinavian. Downhill, a US remake with Will Ferrell and Julia-Louis Dreyfus as the troubled pair, hopes to replicate that spirit, the A-list comic actors dialling up the yuks without sacrificing any thematic heft. “We like to mine pain for laughs,” says co-director Nat Faxon, who is making Downhill with Jim Rash — their previous film was 2013’s coming-of-age dramedy The Way, Way Back. Empire is on a studio lot in Vienna soaking up the shoot, and the scene we’re watching has the couple psychologically unpacking the avalanche’s aftermath while their…

6 UNDERGROUND “Tremendous documentary about some True American Patriots who rain fire and fury on our enemies, the likes of which the world has never seen. Also, there’s a great luxury hotel in one scene.” LONG SHOT “A horror film about a member of the Fake News Media who infiltrates the Deep State. If I was the very stable genius in the movie, I’d fire everyone. Sad!” HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK “Don’t listen to the Do-Nothing Democrats who might claim that this actually came out in P992. Tremendous performances all round. Especially me.”…

★★★ OUT 14 FEBRUARY / CERT TBC / 137 MINS DIRECTOR Jean Paul Civeyrac CAST Andranic Manet, Gonzague Van Bervesselès, Corentin Fila Aspiring filmmaker Etienne (newcomer Manet) leaves Lyon and his girlfriend to study cinema at the Université de Paris. Once there, he dreams about directing alongside his new pals, likeable Jean-Noel (Van Bervesselès) and cocky Mathias (Fila), discusses Verhoeven, Fincher, Vigo and Ford and flits between various women. With its cinematic obsessives and black and white photography, Jean Paul Civeyrac’s film harks back to the French New Wave without ever reaching the intellectual precision or formal innovation and playfulness. Still, it’s well acted by a committed cast, and the sense of young people feeling they can change cinema and the world — even if they are destined to do…

★★★★ OUT 24 JANUARY CERT PG / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Armando Iannucci CAST Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, Gwendoline Christie, Hugh Laurie, Aneurin Barnard PLOT After his mother (Morfydd Clark) gets married to the cruel Mr Murdstone (Darren Boyd), kindhearted David Copperfield (Patel) is sent from pillar to post — until his wealthy aunt Betsey (Swinton) bankrolls David’s journey to become a gentleman. CHARLES DICKENS MIGHT seem a curious subject for Armando Iannucci. His last film, the venomously funny The Death Of Stalin, had more swearing and backstabbing than a Dominic Cummings dinner party, while his political TV show The Thick Of It gifted us an array of glorious insults. Dickens’ 1850 book contains no such insults but Iannucci’s affectionate adaptation still feels in keeping with his career thus…

★★★ OUT 7 FEBRUARY / CERT 15 / 116 MINS DIRECTOR Agnieszka Holland CAST James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, Peter Sarsgaard The true story of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones (Norton) who travelled to Russia to expose Stalin’s deadly engineered famine, Agnieszka Holland’s history lesson is split into numerous parts. The first sees Jones entering a world of shady dealings and colourful characters (Sarsgaard’s creepy editor, Kirby’s cold writer) to find passage to Ukraine. This segues to an engrossing, almost wordless section as Jones tries to survive in Ukraine’s harsh landscape. Unflinching, non-sentimental, it doesn’t grip as it should — there’s an underpowered denouement and an unhelpful framing story about George Orwell (Joseph Mawle) writing Animal Farm — but it’s a timely reminder that journalists should go the extra mile for the…

★★★★ OUT 14 FEBRUARY / CERT 15 / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Ciaran Cassidy CAST Colleen LaRose, Jamie Paulin Ramirez, Lars Vilks Ostensibly, this is an account of how Colleen LaRose achieved notoriety as ‘Jihad Jane’ after she exposed a 2009 conspiracy involving herself and Jamie Paulin Ramirez (aka ‘Jihad Jamie’) to murder Swedish artist Lars Vilks for drawing the Prophet’s head on a dog. In fact, Ciaran Cassidy indicts America for allowing vulnerable women to be sexually exploited, while also questioning why material that can shape the impressionable is so available online. It also challenges the methods of the US security services and the role the media plays in disseminating attitudes to the War On Terror. Terrifying, dispiriting and, at times, slyly satirical, this slickly edited documentary lays bare a…

★★★ OUT 14 FEBRUARY / CERT TBC / 98 MINS DIRECTOR Rachel Hirons CAST George MacKay, Alexandra Roach “Cobra, port, Ribena, milk.” The choice of beverage for the second date between Ryan (MacKay) and Laura (Roach) is just as confusing as every other part of the evening. Rachel Hirons’ debut feature as writer-director casts a firecracker duo who share a mutual attraction and an internal monologue set on ruining their chances. MacKay’s pure good will, eyes switching from charming to petrified, bounces off Roach’s energetic confidence. Slapstick moments of miscommunication convince, while a mildly convoluted twist expands the nightmare with an unwelcome third party. The film loses a sense of gravity when Hirons tries to balance too many tones and spin too many narratives, but still captures the millennial migraine…

★★★ OUT 31 JANUARY CERT 15 / 132 MINS DIRECTOR Terry Gilliam CAST Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgård, Olga Kurylenko, Joana Ribeiro PLOT Film director Toby Grisoni (Driver) is shooting a slick, soulless commercial in Spain, not far from the village where he made his student short about Don Quixote a decade earlier. He returns to the small town for inspiration and re-meets Javier (Pryce), the cobbler he cast as Quixote who has come to believe he is the deluded nobleman. IN SOME WAY, just the fact that The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has made it to multiplexes should see it hailed as a triumph. Some 25 years in the making, Terry Gilliam’s passion project has seen every setback that could ever hit a movie. Location issues, cast…

Blumhouse used to be a bank. The building housing the offices of the horror production company, on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles, does not bring attention to itself. The inside, where the films are edited, is even more nondescript. And in one little hovel, at the end of a staggeringly unassuming corridor, sit director Leigh Whannell and editor Andy Canny, giving Empire an unglamorous welcome. “This room has all the ambience of a Chechnyan coroner’s office,” deadpans Whannell. “Big Hollywood movies starring impossibly beautiful people are always put together in rooms that look like morgues.” Indeed, it’s the sort of shadowy hideout that, in a film, might suggest something awful is about to occur. And in a way, it is. For on the many monitors on the desk, there…

COMING OFF THE back of The Winter Soldier, MCU’s grittiest, most down-to-earth instalment thus far, 2014’s gonzo follow-up was a huge roll of the dice. With a group of lesser-known characters including a talking raccoon and an ambulatory tree, Guardians... could have derailed the entire series. The opposite proved true. Dialling up the comedy with its punchy script and intergalactic crime capering, Guardians... was a breath of fresh air. In taking Marvel to the stars, Guardians... showed how much flex was in the superhero formula, and its unlikely band of galactic A-holes established themselves as the series’ most delightful heroes yet.…

FROM HIS GLORIOUSLY phallic name onwards, Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) is an exquisite creation. He is an eccentric genius, one of the great haute couture designers of the 1950s. But in this Paul Thomas Anderson-directed film, he is so much more: an absurd manchild, prone to tantrums and large breakfasts; a repository of preposterous quotes (“Are you a special agent sent here to ruin my evening and possibly my entire life?”); a means to explore grief, loneliness and toxic masculinity; and a stunning swansong for Day-Lewis in his apparent final role.…

ANG LEE’S WUXIA epic started a trend for sumptuous, spectacular martial-arts melodramas and forced action filmmakers to raise their game both in fight choreography and in sheer beauty. Two pairs of star-crossed lovers struggle for control of the legendary sword Green Destiny, and one another, leading to tragedy and disaster and some of the most indelible images of the century. The cast are uniformly superb, but it’s the greater team around them that really sells it. Peter Pau’s cinematography is a bath for your eyeballs, while Tan Dun’s drum-heavy score and Yo-Yo Ma’s cello echo in your skull. As if that weren’t enough, Yuen Woo-Ping’s fight choreography will make you believe that people can fly — we’ll just need a few kung fu lessons first.…

Grooming: Emma White Turle at The Wall Group using Gents of London.Thanks to veromia.co.uk for the loan of the bridal dresses. Additional imagery: Alamy “YOU ALWAYS HOPE you do something people remember,” says Paul Feig, “but everything can feel disposable.” Produced by Judd Apatow and co-written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, Feig’s Bridesmaids proved that female-led humour was worth taking a chance on. “It’s always in the back of your head — hoping it means something to people beyond the initial blast.” A decade ago, the prospect of a comedy fronted by women was not an appealing one to the Hollywood studios. “I’d been dying to do female-led things,” Feig remembers. “I tried for years to pitch things, and the industry said that it wouldn’t sell if it was…

DOOM PATROL STARZPLAY EPISODE THREE The group at the heart of this latest adaptation from the DC Universe is comprised of a rag-tag bunch of society’s outsiders, from Matt Bomer’s Larry Trainor who has a dark spirit within him, to Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero), who has 64 personalities. There’s a lot going on, with a multitude of characters and side stories, and it’s only around the third episode when we started to get a grip on just what the hell was happening. THE TRIAL OF CHRISTINE KEELER BBC1/IPLAYER EPISODE THREE A fresh look at the Profumo scandal of the early 60s, when model Christine Keeler had an affair with War Minister John Profumo and all political hell broke loose. Amanda Coe’s script weaves myriad strands of the saga together while…

WITH A SERIES based on Malorie Blackman’s YA trilogy Noughts & Crosses about to land on the BBC, exec producer Preethi Mavahalli talks us through adapting a cult classic for TV… THE IDEA “The premise is a flipped world, where history has played out differently and black ‘Cross’ people rule over white ‘Noughts’. There’s a propulsive thriller element but at its heart, it’s a Romeo and Juliet story about two star-crossed lovers who aren’t allowed to be together, which gives it a universality. Many of us know what it’s like to date someone who our parents disapprove of!” THE ADAPTATION PROCESS “It’s been a long but satisfying journey. I read the books in the Noughties and was a huge fan, so when I came to Mammoth Screen [makers of Poldark…

It’s like a pitch to solve Brexit: two contemporary Britons, seemingly with nothing in common, are thrown together to form an effective partnership. What the characters of South London DCI Lauren McDonald (Tala Gouveia) and Bath local DS Dodds [Jason Watkins] actually share is a lack of visibility within the police force. She’s a young black woman trying to climb the career ladder and he’s a middle-aged man being nudged towards retirement. That unusual combination is one of many ways in which this series breaks new ground. TAKING THE LEAD Before McDonald & Dodds, Tala Gouveia’s acting CV was mostly limited to single episodes of series such as Plebs, Doctors, Holby City and Cold Feet. Not any more. “When I read the scripts I loved the fact that there was…

IT’S BEEN OVER three years since Jude Law lent his blue-eyed charms to Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino’s mini-series The Young Pope, and it appears there’s still an appetite for its sumptuously trashy take on the Holy See. The New Pope picks up where its predecessor left off, with Law’s Pius XIII in what can only be described as a sexy coma – immobile save for the occasional head tilt or suggestive moan. Enter hasty replacement Sir John Braddox played with unabashed relish by John Malkovich. First shown in head-to-toe indigo and eyeliner, Malkovich is every inch the camp, confident replacement for the first American pope. Like Pius, he has his traits: he enjoys Easy Rider, he plays the harp, he admires certain celebrities, some of whom pop up in lavishly staged…

Cover: James Dimmock/CBS A NEW TELLY YEAR IS HERE! AND HAVING BEEN knocked off my feet/rocker by both Dracula and Doctor Who in the days before I wrote this, I’m not sure it could have got off to a better start, honestly. But it’s only just beginning as we, are in fact, only days away from the triumphant return of Picard. And to celebrate such a seismic event, our very own sci-fi psychopath James Dyer spoke to Patrick Stewart to find out just why he clambered back on board. This is just the tip of the iceberg, though. Dive in for every other show that’ll have you lying gripped until 2am when you really should JUST. BE. ASLEEP. What a time to be alive. Hello, 2020!…

Andrew Eccles/August ONE OF THE most recognisable television actors like, ever, David Schwimmer’s post-Friends career has always been one of the most intriguing of the six stars. As well as continuing to work regularly with Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre company, which he co-founded in the 1980s, he’s stepped both in front of and behind movie cameras and recently arrived back on the small screen with an Emmy Award-nominated performance as Rob Kardashian in American Crime Story. On the phone from his home in New York’s East Village, he’s downright giddy as he talks about his new six-part Brit-com Intelligence, written by Nick Mohammed. Schwimmer plays NSA agent Gerry, a total pillock of a man who jets in to liaise with the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters where, despite the cybersecurity high stakes,…

NETFLIX FEBRUARY 7 WITH ITS PORTALS to other dimensions, teenagers bonding over shared trauma, ethereal supernatural beings, and a huge house with magical powers, you could be forgiven for thinking Locke & Key takes its inspiration from a previous little Netflix masterpiece called The OA. But any resemblance is purely coincidental. This new ten-parter is in fact based on a much-loved comic-book series by Stephen King’s son Joe Hill and illustrator Gabriel Rodriguez (who also worked together on the NOS4A2 graphic novel), and it’s been in development for over ten years. Showrunner Carlton Cuse (who worked on Lost and Bates Motel) describes the show’s journey to the screen as “long, circuitous and sometimes tortuous”. A film trilogy and various TV versions were mooted, and Fox even produced a pilot episode…

5. THROWING A WOBBLER For Tim, his actual job was only his second most important task in the office. Most important was, of course, tormenting Gareth. It resulted in plenty of classic moments, but none better than when he hid Gareth’s stapler in a lemon-flavoured jelly. (S1, Ep 1) 15. PRIVATE DICK Trudy is given a dildo for her birthday, which finds its way into Brent’s office while he’s in a meeting. Keen to demonstrate his authority, Brent strides out to find out who it belongs to. He confronts his staff, brandishing the, er, item, and accidentally sets it off. (S2, Ep 3) 2. DANCING FOOL Brent was never good at hiding his resentments. Jealous of the attention his boss Neil receives for a dance routine for Comic Relief, Brent…

Photofest AFTER THE SILENCE Of The Lambs changed the profile of fava beans forever, it seemed unthinkable that anyone other than Anthony Hopkins could play Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter. Thomas Harris’ books had suggested a monster — Hopkins gave him life. His chemistry with Jodie Foster’s trainee FBI agent Clarice Starling had the hypnotic effect of a snake with its struggling prey. But for Lecter’s reimagining as Mads Mikkelsen in NBC’s Hannibal, showrunner Bryan Fuller had a very different idea: what would it be like to solve murders, side by side with Lecter. To have access to that intellect before his dreadful secrets were revealed? And how could you live with yourself after becoming seduced and drawn, as FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) eventually is, down into the world…

FOUR AND A bit series of Inside No.9, created by and starring former League Of Gentlemen Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, has brought us a silent episode, a backwards one, a farce told in Shakespearean verse, an episode set in a wardrobe and a story filmed on CCTV cameras. Not forgetting the mind-blowingly tricksy one-off live Halloween episode of 2018 after which Shearsmith stayed off social media to keep up the conceit that he’d been beheaded during the making of it. With the fifth series of six new stories about to arrive, we asked Pemberton to talk us through the evolution of their latest anthology. and how it goes back to basics. THE IDEAS “The first thing I do before we meet up for each new series is get my…

During Empire’s chat with Sam Mendes about 1917, the Oscar-winning director devised a genius competition for you, the Empire reader. Says Sam Mendes: “I am announcing a little competition to guess the actual number of stitches/edits in 1917, from beginning to end — as long as you promise to do this the second or third time you watch the movie, not the first. The person who guesses correctly can join me for a day on set watching me shoot my next movie, in about a decade when I am ready to make another one!” The closing date is 14 February so time is the enemy.Send your answer to empire@bauermedia.co.uk with the subject ‘1917 Competition’. Full T&Cs can be found at https://www.empireonline.com/movies/ features/1917comp/…

Getty Images, Photofest “HEESA BACK!” After years in the Star Wars wilderness, Ahmed Best — the artist formerly known as Jar Jar Binks — has returned to the galactic fold. The actor, who provided the voice and motion capture of the much-maligned Gungan in the prequel trilogy, was announced as the presenter of Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge, a Crystal Maze-esque game show for kids that is coming soon to Disney +. The show marks the latest stage in a rehabilitation that saw Best go from Bigger-Villain-Than-Palpatine to beloved prodigal son via a terrifying brush with attempted suicide. After a “wonderful experience” shooting Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, Best’s troubles started when the trailer dropped on 13 November 1998. The then 25-year-old actor received all colours of…

“MY FIRST DOCUMENTARY was about the riots,” says French-Malian filmmaker Ladj Ly, discussing France’s three-week unrest in 2005. He’s been chronicling reality for years, and Les Misérables, his thrilling debut dramatic feature, leans into his non-fiction background, the social issues he’s experienced, and his own life. Les Misérables — not an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel or the subsequent musical, the title just a nod to political parallels — follows an anti-crime police squad over 24 hours in Paris suburb Montfermeil. After a lion cub is stolen from a travelling circus, tensions rise, warring factions clash, and an uprising gets ugly. Ly, now 40, grew up in Montfermeil, the only person on the block with a video camera, and from 2002 he used it to film cop corruption. He often…

IN 2018, CRAZY Rich Asians lived up to its title: a big, splashy studio romcom with an all-Asian cast, that racked up fat stacks of box office cash. Now that film’s director, Jon M. Chu, is back with In The Heights, a big-screen adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s pre- Hamilton stage show, set to bring a similar jolt of life to the movie musical. Set in the predominantly Latino-American community of Washington Heights in New York, the all-singing, all-dancing story of gentrification, generations and American dreams connected with Chu years before his smash-hit romcom. “I’d never seen anything that spoke to me at such a level,” he recalls of the stage show. When a version of the movie script came his way, he took notice. “It became very clear that I…

SINCE HANDING IN his Hogwarts hall pass for good, Daniel Radcliffe has played everything from a white supremacist to a flatulent corpse. You can’t knock the guy for wanting to make his post-Potter projects as ambitious as he can afford them to be, and Escape From Pretoria proves no exception. Based on the life of Tim Jenkin, a South African anti-apartheid activist who escaped from prison in 1979, the prison-break thriller put Radcliffe through the ringer, physically and emotionally. Speaking with Empire, he breaks down his meticulous method. CHECK YOUR POTTER PRIVILEGE “This was one of those scripts that you read and you’re like, ‘How is this not more widely known?’ With my specific career, Potter has afforded me to do my own thing, and I wanted to be part…

BABY MAUL LIKES His theme tune, ‘Drool Of The Fates’ DISLIKES Teething horns; Baby Obi-Wan FAVOURITE TOY A double-sided rattle FAVOURITE SNACK Granny Sith apples (sliced) BABY CHEWIE LIKES Junior Holochess DISLIKES His missing gold star at the end of class FAVOURITE TOY My First Bowcaster FAVOURITE SNACK Porg-flavoured baby formula BABY JAR JAR LIKES Putting his tongue in a plug socket DISLIKES English lessons FAVOURITE TOY The fragile democracy of the Galactic Senate FAVOURITE SNACK Meesa soup BABY ACKBAR LIKES Recognising traps in the crèche DISLIKES Traps FAVOURITE TOY A swivel booster sea FAVOURITE SNACK Anything that isn’t seafood…

“WHY DO BLACK people always have to be excellent?” asks Slim, Daniel Kaluuya’s character in Melina Matsoukas’ upcoming drama Queen & Slim. “Why can’t we just be us?” That question, posed with frustration and weariness, feels especially significant when you consider the challenging task of depicting the Black experience on screen. The film itself has been met with some criticism for being yet another film that depicts police brutality against Black people. But the film is not just another story of struggle. It’s also, crucially, an intimate Black love story — something which still feels like a rarity on the mainstream stage. We’re still at a stage where major Black releases have to worry about more than just being an entertaining film. Some filmmakers have skilfully managed to achieve just…

★★★ OUT 14 FEBRUARY / CERT TBC / 122 MINS DIRECTOR Emilio Estevez CAST Emilio Estevez, Alec Baldwin, Christian Slater Some RT years after The Breakfast Club, Emilio Estevez finds himself once again in a lock-in surrounded by books, this time as a librarian caught up in an occupation that turns a Cincinnati public library into a centre for the homeless. Written and directed by its star, The Public starts strong with a nice feel for its characters (well played by Estevez, Jena Malone as his right-on colleague, Taylor Schilling as his forward neighbour and Michael Kenneth Williams as the spokesman for the homeless), but once the protest begins leans too heavily on one-dimensional bad guys (Baldwin’s crisis negotiator, Slater’s wannabe mayor, Gabrielle Union’s reporter) to generate conflict and easy…

★★★★ OUT 14 FEBRUARY CERT 15 / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Takashi Miike CAST Masataka Kubota, Sakurako Konishi, Nao Ohmori, Shôta Sometani PLOT When young boxer Leo (Kubota) is diagnosed with a brain tumour, his life is suddenly cut short. He then runs into drug-addicted trafficked prostitute Yuri, also known as Monica (Konishi), who is embroiled in a plot planned by a cop and a yakuza wildcard (Sometani). As Leo and Monica attempt to outrun warring factions, things unravel. TAKASHI MIIKE’S WORK is never knowingly sane. The director of Audition and Ichi The Killer has always peddled anarchic, bloody violence — gross encounters of the absurd kind — and if First Love is anything to go by, he’s quite happy where he is. There is a decapitation two minutes into the…

★★★★ OUT 31 JANUARY CERT PG / 109 MINS DIRECTOR Marielle Heller CAST Matthew Rhys, Tom Hanks, Chris Cooper, Susan Kelechi Watson PLOT P998. Tough-nosed magazine profile writer Lloyd Vogel (Rhys) is sent to interview beloved children’s TV presenter Fred Rogers (Hanks). Yet as their meetings progress, the genial Rogers turns the tables on Vogel and starts gently interrogating the dark areas in the journo’s life, chiefly his estranged relationship with his dad (Cooper). THERE’S SOMETHING POTENTIALLY too on the nose about casting Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers. Hollywood’s nicest man playing the iconic children’s TV host who schooled a nation in kindness, decency and humanity seemingly writes itself. Only in Marielle Heller’s hands, it isn’t. Based on Tom Junod’s 1998 Esquire cover story in which the journalist set out…

★★ OUT 7 FEBRUARY / CERT TBC / 94 MINS DIRECTOR William Eubank CAST Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, T.J. Miller Underwater pitches the crew of a sub-aqua mining operation against sea beasties as they traverse the ocean floor after their facility has been bit by an earthquake tremor. From the spaced-out title design to the endless shots of characters listening to ominous sounds in an empty corridor and Kristen Stewart’s Ripley-alike Norah, this is a soggy re-do of Alien , high on exposition, low on interesting character dynamics and human interest. Director William Eubank comes up with the odd effective moment — the opening is effectively disorientating — but the scares in the murky blackness remain confused rather than atmospheric. In the end, Underwater can’t find its own vibe or…

★★ OUT NOW CERT U / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Tom Hooper CAST James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, Francesca Hayward PLOT A cat named Victoria (Hayward) is abandoned in a London alleyway. There, she meets the ‘Jellicle cats’, who all attend the ‘Jellicle Ball’, hoping to earn the honour of the ‘Jellicle Choice’ which will transport them into the afterlife. But the ‘Napoleon Of Crime’, Macavity (Elba), has other plans. WHERE TO BEGIN with Cats? Ever since it was announced that Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper would adapt the long-running Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, it’s become such joke fodder that it’s hard to see past the memes. So let’s focus on the positives first: this is, actually, a film with some…

IT’S HARD TO GET A HANDLE ON EMILY BEECHAM And perhaps that’s just how she likes it. Certainly, this elusive quality is working for her. Or more specifically, a combination of the enigmatic allure of an old-school Hollywood siren with a serious commitment to the craft (never mind already-evident excellence). It’s proving to be casting-director catnip, as Beecham’s busy slate attests. Even more impressively for an actor who’s only had one feature film in cinemas, she won Best Actress at Cannes last May for her starring role in the second, Little Joe. The film, Jessica Hausner’s gloriously offbeat indie sci-fi about a plant which may or may not have mind-control powers, follows 2017’s Daphne, the Fleabag-like tale of a lost London soul. Beecham has three more films due for a…

PRISON IS A place of evil and opportunity in Jacques Audiard’s startling picture, its title a dual portend of the possibilities for its hero, Malik (Tahar Rahim), a petty criminal whose crimes — and rewards — escalate once inside. Mentored by Niels Arestrup’s underworld overseer, Rahim, whose gauche features disguise ferocious determination, has killer ambition and manages to straddle two unlikely worlds: the Corsican Mafia and the Muslim community. While the genre tropes may be familiar, they’re refreshed by Audiard’s visual audacity and the ethnicity of the protagonist. As the director said at the time: “People have difficulty swallowing the fact that Malik is a survivor — but I think that’s because he’s an Arab character. They’re not used to seeing Arabs come out on top and they don’t like…

WITH BEING JOHN Malkovich and Adaptation, director Spike Jonze made a name for himself as a maker of weird, transgressive films that tease the boundaries of reality. By comparison, Her is his most mature and uncomplicated film, a straightforward romance with merely one little weird element: the romance is between a man (Joaquin Phoenix) and his mobile phone. What sounds like a gimmicky premise quickly becomes a profound and funny contemplation of love, priorities, and what it means to be human. It’s gentle, near-future sci-fi, which grounds everything in a plausible reality and leaves us pondering the big questions. Like: will Siri ever understand flirting?…

BEFORE GRETA GERWIG slid into director’s chair with effortless aplomb, she was best known for playing the lead in Frances Ha — or Frances Undateable to her roommates — the aimless but hugely affable 27-year-old dancer running riot in monochrome New York. Co-written by Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach (also directing here), her performance channels self-deprecating humour with a disarmingly sweet love story between two best friends, while intuitively capturing what it means to be young and longing for more. Catching our light-footed protagonist in a bohemian slipstream where irresponsible hipsters, money woes and furless cats co-reside, Frances Ha boasts a screenplay and a soundtrack for the ages, with an homage to David Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ that will leave you giddy.…