Inhaltsverzeichnis für July 2020 in Empire

A MICKEY ROURKE-fronted horror-fantasy set during World War II, Warhunt inadvertently made some history of its own. When a Covid-19-induced lockdown was announced during the film’s early stages of production in Latvia, director Mauro Borrelli and his cast and crew began working closely with the local government to keep filming. Under strict safety measures, Warhunt, against all the odds, wrapped in April 2020. “We had to ensure that production was as safe as humanly possible,” Borrelli explains. “We were very lucky because we were in the country with the actors already, before they blocked the border.” To make conditions safe, the set underwent a complete transformation, from individual make-up stations and motor-homes for the cast to protective gear allocated to everyone involved. If anyone showed symptoms of the virus they…

JULIUS ROOT ARTEMIS FOWL ILLUSTRATIONS BILL MCCONKEY Tyler Shields/Contour by Getty Images, Photofest As commander of the fairy law enforcement unit Lower Elements Police (also known, genuinely, as ‘LEPrecon’) in this upcoming Disney fantasy, Dame Judi Dench is a tough cookie. Clap your hands if you believe in justice! BIKER FAIRIES ONWARD Sure, this gang of motorcyclists are less ‘Hells Angels’ than ‘Hella Cute Angels’. And it takes about ten of them to operate one hog. But you mess with them, as the heroes of Pixar’s neo-fantasy find, at your adorable peril. VIGNETTE CARNIVAL ROW In this Amazon gothic fantasy series, Cara Delevingne plays a neo-noir fae ruffian who has a tempestuous affair with a hunky inspector played by Orlando Bloom. She’ll break your heart — and flap her wings…

JUST GETTING UP THERE Cruise has already filmed in zero gravity — for 2017’s The Mummy — but going into actual space will require months of intensive training. “It’s a big hurdle,” says former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino. “I imagine he’ll be up there [on the ISS] for a while, so he’ll need to be trained beforehand in all the basic stuff — responding to emergencies, using the toilet, sleeping arrangements. And if he wants to go outside the craft, on a spacewalk, that’ll require months of extra training, too.” And unfortunately for Tom, there are no craft services in space. “Nobody’s going to cook for him — you cook for yourself up there,” says Massimino. “But it’s not too big a chore: it’s just heating stuff up.” MAKING SURE…

TWO EVENTS HAPPENED in Kelly O’Sullivan’s life that inspired her to write the screenplay for Saint Frances: working as a nanny in her twenties, and having an abortion in her thirties. O’Sullivan also stars in the film, directed by her partner Alex Thompson, as Bridget, a 34-year-old nanny who’s dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, a new job and the feeling she’s failing at life. It’s a semi-autobiographical story that brings together a diverse set of female-focused stories, as O’Sullivan explains here. BRIDGET (KELLY O’SULLIVAN) While abortion is typically represented as dramatic and traumatic, O’Sullivan wanted Bridget’s experience to be grounded in reality. “I really wanted to demystify it,” she tells Empire. “When I went to have an abortion in real life, it was surrounded in mystery because no-one ever talks…

THE STORY OF Josh Trank’s career is as fascinating as anything he’s put on screen (see sidebar, right). At 27, he was the toast of Hollywood with Chronicle; within three years, he had a calamity on his hands in the form of Fantastic Four. But now he’s back, with the independently produced Capone, a biopic of the Chicago gangster’s final years. In typical Trank fashion, it’s not a safe bet: an unconventional and provocative film showing Capone’s mental deterioration under neurosyphilis, which includes graphic depictions of diarrhoea. Here he explains, in his uniquely candid way, how he clawed his way back to credibility on his own terms. How long has Capone been in your head? I’ve been working on this movie pretty consistently since the end of 2015. It came…

★★★ OUT 12 JUNE / DIGITAL CERT 15 / 137 MINS DIRECTOR Judd Apatow CAST Pete Davidson, Marisa Tomei, Bill Burr, Bel Powley, Maude Apatow PLOT Depressed wannabe tattooist Scott (Davidson), 2S years old and living at home with his mum Margie (Tomei) in New York’s Staten Island, can’t get over his father’s death, P7 years after the fact. Having never moved on, his life is in stasis. Something has to give. IN LAST MONTH’S Empire, Judd Apatow said that he increasingly wants to hit the tone of the films that shaped him — most notably the work of Hal Ashby (Being There, Harold And Maude) and James L. Brooks (Terms Of Endearment, Broadcast News). Films that are as dramatic as they are funny. But Apatow’s films have never been…

★★★★ OUT SUMMER 2020 / DIGITAL CERT TBC / 106 MINS DIRECTOR Richard Wong CAST Grant Rosenmeyer, Hayden Szeto, Ravi Patel, Gabourey Sidibe, Janeane Garofalo PLOT Quadriplegic and aspiring rapper Scotty (Rosenmeyer) convinces wheelchair-bound Matt (Szeto) and blind Mo (Patel) to go on a road trip to Le Chateau Paradis, a Quebec brothel that caters exclusively for special-needs clients who want to lose their virginity. AFTER ROUGHLY 125 years of cinema, you’d think the movies might have run out of ways for American kids to lose their virginity. But, happily not. Richard Wong’s Come As You Are finds a new twist on the staple by filtering the action through the hopes and horniness of three very different disabled men. Based on a documentary and the 2011 Belgian flick Hasta La…

★★★★ OUT 19 JUNE / PRIME VIDEO CERT TBC / 92 MINS DIRECTOR Patrick Vollrath CAST Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Omid Memar, Aylin Tezel, Carlo Kitzlinger PLOT On a flight from Berlin to Paris, a German commercial airliner comes under violent attack from on-board Islamist terrorists. It’s up to Captain Michael Lutzmann (Kitzlinger) and First Officer Tobias Ellis (Gordon-Levitt) to stop them entering the cockpit. IF EVER THERE were a film for these lockdown days, it is 7500. Contained almost entirely within the confines of the cockpit of a German Airbus airliner on its way to Paris from Berlin, Patrick Vollrath’s debut feature — his tense short Everything Will Be Okay was nominated for an Academy Award in 2016 — is a tight, sweaty, claustrophobic affair that takes the notion of a…

★★ OUT NOW / NETFLIX EPISODES VIEWED 10 OF 10 SHOWRUNNER Greg Daniels CAST Steve Carell, John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz PLOT General Mark Naird (Carell) is given the honour of heading up America’s expensive new military venture. Problem is, he has a wife in prison, orders from nincompoops and an edict to get boots on the moon ASAP. THERE WAS PANDEMONIUM online in December last year when President Trump unveiled the official logo for Space Force, a new $738 billion branch of the US military, and it turned out to be extremely similar to the logo for Star Trek’s Starfleet. (“We are expecting some royalties from this,” tweeted George Takei.) But inspiration has gone the other way too, with this new Netflix sci-fi series based on — and named after…

50 MARTIN BRODY ILLUSTRATIONS SUPERTOTTO Jaws co-screenwriter Carl Gottlieb on the landlubbing police chief COMIC-BOOK HEROES are built on invulnerability. The same with most action heroes. But in Jaws, Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) grows from first scene to last, from nebbish new guy to a survivor who kills the shark in his own element. He embodies an ordinary man who rises to the challenge and succeeds. When I started on the picture, Roy was the only actor already signed. I knew him from The French Connection and The Seven-Ups, where he played a New York cop, so making him a New York cop who had retired to Amity Island tied in with his persona. He had a real keen sense of character. If you notice, Brody wears his police badge…

ACCORDING TO THE internet, which is never wrong, in the three movies in which he’s featured, John Wick has killed 299 people. He has shot people. He has stabbed people. He has punched people. He has kicked people. He has killed people with cars, with horses, and even with a pencil. So, Keanu Reeves, can we even consider the man once known as Jardani Jovonovich to be a hero? “Ah,” laughs Reeves. “The old ‘anti-hero/ hero’! When I think of the character, I think of his will, his fortitude, and his honour. And he’s trying to fight for an independence for his life, to a degree. And within the world, he’s just fighting bad guys. So yeah, I think he’s heroic. Is he someone that could be a role model…

TONY STARK SAID it himself: “Part of the journey is the end.” And that’s especially true of the Hero’s Journey. All heroes, with the possible exception of Highlander’s Connor MacLeod (and even he’s carked it once or twice), must disembark at their final destination eventually. And so Avengers: Endgame, the culmination of what was then Marvel Studios’ 22-film saga of storytelling, makes literal its title for the character who started off the whole shebang back in 2008. After temporarily acquiring all six Infinity Stones, Tony Stark snaps his fingers, and sends Thanos and his minions off to the sweet by and by, but, in the process, crispy-fries his insides. Surrounded by his loved ones, Tony — the motormouth of the MCU — can’t even manage a goodbye. It’s one heck…

WE’RE FINDING OUR HAPPY PLACE WITH OUR FAVOURITE BITS OF FEELGOOD MOVIE MAGIC. THIS MONTH: RATATOUILLE, A TELEKINETIC GIRL AND A JAILED BEAR FAR MORE TERRIFYING than anyone working at this magazine, fearsome restaurant critic Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O’Toole) haunts every moment of Pixar’s 2007 classic Ratatouille, the whimsical tale of Remy, a rat who dreams of becoming a chef. Ego is seemingly impossible to impress. But in the climactic scene, when he tastes Remy’s gourmet twist on the (appropriately named) ratatouille, the critic is transported to memories of being served the dish as a child, and his sternness melts. In a comfort movie about comfort food, it’s a perfectly baked moment — one that, as director Brad Bird explains, works as a metaphor for reconnecting with all…

Alamy, Shutterstock MARA WILSON WAS the grand old age of seven when she bagged the title role in Danny DeVito’s sweet, funny and hugely empowering adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story. Wilson exuded sincerity and heart as the bookish, downtrodden and, oh yes, telekinetic young girl who, with the help of her ally, the uncompromisingly kind Miss Honey (Embeth Davidtz), rises up against her tyrannical teachers and parents. Now 32, the actor and writer reveals how the character has stayed with her. Matilda is a kids’ film, but it can hit home at any age. Do you feel that? Yeah. A lot of people unfortunately can relate to feeling misunderstood by their family, their society, their situation, but can find a place where they feel really loved and understood by making…

PADDINGTON 2 MAY have more heartwarming moments. It certainly has more tear-jerking moments. But there’s a particular kind of comfort to be derived from a beautifully conceived and executed visual gag, and this is the finest to be found in Paul King’s glorious sequel. When the Browns visit Paddington in prison (long story), he’s just a lonely bear, adrift in an empty frame. Until he’s joined by Brendan Gleeson’s Knuckles McGinty. And then Noah Taylor’s Phibs. And then Aaron Neil’s Spoon. And Robert Stevenson’s Jimmy The Snitch. And on and on and on, until virtually every pink-clad inmate in the prison, it seems, has squeezed into the booth. We asked King how he pulled off The Pawshank Redemption. THE CONCEPT The idea was very much baked into the script, as…

IT TOOK HALF a decade to get Onward ready for cinemas. Dan Scanlon’s ripping Pixar yarn was made to bring families together in packed screenings worldwide, pitching elf brothers Ian and Barley on a fantasy quest for a brief magical reunion with their dearly departed dad — inspired by the father Scanlon never got to grow up with, and the big brother he always looked up to. But just as Onward finally hit screens, the world went into lockdown and the film was fast-tracked for an early digital release. It was a fate no-one foresaw — but it proved pertinent viewing amid rising tides of uncertainty. Empire catches up with a director who had the unique vantage point of releasing a film at the end of the world as we…

Day For Night THERE ARE SOME films that express the ecstasy in filmmaking (Singin’ In The Rain). There are others that capture the agony (8 ½). But only Day For Night (La Nuit Américaine) perfectly encapsulates both. Titled after the process of shooting night-time scenes during the day, François Truffaut’s billet-doux to movies — making them, watching them, dreaming about them — is the Valentine the art form deserves. Writing to critic Jean-Louis Bory, Truffaut declared, “I gathered up all of myself and reconciled it into La Nuit Américaine, which is quite simply about my reason for living.” The result is heartfelt, freewheeling and nimble. It simultaneously pulls back the curtain on the artifice of filmmaking but somehow retains the magic and glamour. If you know nothing about how movies…

VIVA ZAPATA! Chosen by WERNER HERZOG WERNER HERZOG: “The opening sequence in Viva Zapata!, where the leading character is introduced, is ingenious. There’s a delegation of barefoot peasants at the president’s palace, and they have grievances. He dismisses them and all of a sudden you realise that one man is still standing. And it’s Emiliano Zapata. It’s very, very wonderful, how it was made.” INT. PRESIDENTIAL CHAMBER — DAY A group of Mexican workers have just had an audience with President Diaz (Fay Roope), where they asked for his intervention in a land dispute and gave him supporting documents. PRESIDENT DIAZ: My children, the courts will settle this. I’ll send you to my personal attorney. But, before you see him, I urge you to find your boundary stones. Diaz hands…

SPREADING THE LOVE Currently in the midst of lockdown in Ireland and reading the Feelgood Issue. While flicking through The Comfort Zone, I decided to YouTube all the scenes and was transported in time with each feelgood moment, especially E.T. and the piano scene from Big. I’m such a kid that every time I acted as a tour guide in NYC (lived there for eight years), I brought loved ones to FAO Schwarz! Thanks for truly making me warm and fuzzy during this crazy time. SARAH McGRATH, VIA EMAIL You’re welcome! Just because we can’t get to cinemas, doesn’t mean cinema love can’t reach us at home. Take these Picturehouse memberships and dance out a celebratory piano scale on us. Picture house Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus…

JUDD APATOW LIKES to make movies for a big crowd. “Comedies are built for a communal experience,” he says. But while the filmmaker’s sixth directorial effort, The King Of Staten Island, earns an unexpected digital release this month, he felt the time was right for its emotional story, co-written by and starring Saturday Night Live comedian Pete Davidson. “The theme of our movie is heroes, and the effect that those sacrifices have on families. It feels like the movie applies to this moment. I wanted people to see it now.” Here, Apatow explains how his directorial hallmarks fit into his most moving film yet. DISCOVER FRESH TALENT A long-time veteran of Hollywood’s comedy scene, Apatow is constantly looking for the next comic voice: The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Trainwreck…

TAYLOR MORDEN WAS three weeks into self-isolation when the idea hit him like a speeding DeLorean. “I’d been talking with other directors about a project that might add up to something bigger, and it kinda just came to me,” says the Oregon filmmaker responsible for ‘Project 88: Back To The Future Too’ — a crowdsourced remake of the time-travel sequel. (He chose the sequel over the original because “it’s more absurd. And, well, hoverboards.”) Made up of 88 different scenes, shot by over 300 DIY directors and film fans spread around the world, it’s a bit different from Robert Zemeckis’ original: for a start, as far as Empire can recall, at no point in the 1989 movie was Doctor Emmett Brown played by a cat, toddler, Lego figurine or potato.…

HE WAS, QUITE simply, a giant of the British film industry. And while Trevor Green, who died on 30 April, was a very private man, he was one with huge presence; an unmistakable force among independent film distributors. Trevor was best-known for two things: his deep passion and immeasurable knowledge — famously being hands-on in all aspects of his business. That business was Entertainment Film Distributors (EFD), which he co-ran with brother Nigel. The company was founded in 1978 with their late father and they enjoyed their first success in 1985 with Teen Wolf. Their most recent was Ari Aster’s Midsommar in 2019. They oversaw many iconic films in the intervening years, including the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Brokeback Mountain, The Hateful Eight, and The Departed. Says Paul Keenan,…

1984 Born in Los Angeles to Pamela Trank and filmmaker Richard Trank (who would later win a Best Documentary Oscar in 1998). 2007 Directs the short Stabbing At Leia’s 22nd Birthday, which goes viral online. 2011 Directs subversive superhero film Chronicle. At 27, Trank becomes the youngest director to open a film at number one at the US box office (beating Spielberg’s record for Jaws, at 28). 2012 With offers flooding in after Chronicle’s success, Trank begins development on a reboot of Fantastic Four. 2014 Lucasfilm announces Trank as director of a standalone Star Wars film, rumoured to be a Boba Fett origin story. 2015 Fantastic Four is released to universally negative reviews; one critic calls it “worse than worthless”. It flops at the box office. Trank disowns the movie…

★★★ OUT NOW / NETFLIX CERT 15 / 86 MINS DIRECTOR Michael Showalter CAST Issa Rae, Kumail Nanjiani, Paul Sparks, Anna Camp, Kyle Bornheimer PLOT Jibran (Nanjiani) and Leilani (Rae) are on the verge of breaking up when they are carjacked by a mysterious man (Sparks) who uses their vehicle to execute a bike messenger. Left with the body, the warring couple must go on the run and find the real murderer. THE BASIC PLOT of Netflix’s The Lovebirds is not dissimilar to the premise of Murder Mystery, or Date Night, or any of a million other movies where an average person finds themselves mixed up in a major crime. The wrong-man — or couple — saga is a genre where you either write a stunningly clever script, or rely…

★★★ OUT NOW / NETFLIX CERT 12 / 105 MINS DIRECTOR Alice Wu CAST Leah Lewis, Alexxis Lemire, Daniel Diemer PLOT In the small Midwestern town of Squahamish, bookish Chinese-American teenager Ellie (Lewis) runs a side hustle writing essays for her classmates. Trouble begins for her when she’s asked to write a love letter to a beautiful girl at school, Aster (Lemire), on behalf of Paul (Diemer), a local jock, but Ellie falls for Aster, instead. EARLY ON IN her voiceover for teen romcom The Half Of It, high-schooler Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis) informs us that this is not going to be a love story. In the strictest sense, she’s right: nobody ends up getting what or who they want in the traditional sense, but an awful lot of growing…

★★★ OUT NOW / DIGITAL CERT 12 / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Nisha Ganatra CAST Dakota Johnson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Ice Cube, June Diane Raphael, Kelvin Harrison Jr PLOT Wannabe music producer Maggie (Johnson) is the PA to REB superstar Grace Davis (Ross), an artist stuck doing live albums and legacy shows. While Grace’s agent Jack (Ice Cube) pushes her towards a Vegas residency, Maggie thinks it’s high time the world got a brand-new Grace Davis studio album. STORIES OF HIGH-maintenance divas and their long-suffering underlings have proved a Teflon comedy-movie staple, whether it’s the Meryl Streep-Anne Hathaway duo in The Devil Wears Prada or Nisha Ganatra’s last film Late Night, which paired Emma Thompson’s highly strung talk-show host with Mindy Kaling’s bright-eyed incoming writer. It’s a formula that proves just…

1 THE ONER John Nugent: It was heavily trailed by Netflix, and came with much bluster and some hyperbole (“the best Oner we’ve ever seen”, raved the Russo Brothers on Twitter). But this might be the rare case of hype being justified. The 12-minute sequence, in which the camera seemingly never cuts (though there are hidden edits, masked by CGI), staged across apartments, balconies, bustling streets and inside moving vehicles, is the film’s audacious highlight. Kudos to Sam Hargrave: you won’t find many directors ready to strap themselves to the front of a car travelling at 60 miles an hour. Sam Hargrave: The impetus was to have the audience experience this crazy action scene, but you’re also feeling the connection between Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) and Ovi (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) start…

How do you feel about Jason Bourne making this list? I’m absolutely thrilled and honoured, obviously. He’s a great character, and he’s lasted a fair while. I don’t know whether they’re gonna make another one. I hope they do. But he was just a little bit different, wasn’t he, to some of the others? He came at the right time when we needed a fresh hero who spoke to the times. I’m very lucky to have been a part of it, and to have worked with Matt. What was your first conversation with Matt about the role? We first met in Prague, when he was making The Brothers Grimm with Terry Gilliam. We didn’t know each other, but we spent an absolutely fantastic night, and got absolutely hammered. The pair…

A SUCCESSFUL REBELLION against a despotic regime takes more than guys adept at swinging lightsabers or firing laser cannons. To effect lasting galactic change, you need the sort of hero who can actually lead the cause. That’s where Princess-turned-General Leia comes in, a lifelong freedom fighter who can be trusted equally with a blaster in her hand or on a sensitive diplomatic mission. She’s far more multi-talented than her brother or sometime lover: she can work as a spy, a senator, a figurehead or an organiser. You could rely on her to print sufficient leaflets to drum up support for your cause, or to lead a near-suicidal mission on a forest moon. As a bonus, she’s a rare mix of lethal and inspirational, wise and wickedly funny. And nothing stops…

In a nicer parallel universe, he would have been head of the Cannes Film Festival Jury, showcasing his latest film Da 5 Bloods out of competition (it would be a rare chance to see the Netflix epic on a big screen) and deep into prep for his next film, Prince Of Cats, an ’80s hip-hop retelling of Romeo And Juliet set in Brooklyn. But instead he is stuck in New York, or what he calls the “epicentre” of Covid-19. Typical of his work ethic, Lee knocked out a Super-8 Insta ode to his beloved Big Apple. New York, New York, scored to the Sinatra standard written for the Scorsese musical, is a love letter to a locked-down city, full of the poetry of the streets and appreciation for the care…

GENE KELLY KICKING up a puddle gets all the love. But all-timer musical Singin’ In The Rain has another sequence with just as much power to contort your face into an almighty grin. And it’s all down to the genius of Kelly’s impish co-star, Donald O’Connor. O’Connor’s backstory seems like it was invented by a Hollywood screenwriter. His father was a circus strongman; his mother a tightrope-walker. From the off there was no doubt his destiny would lie in entertaining. “I was about 13 months old, they tell me, when I first started dancing,” he told one reporter. “They’d hold me up by the back of my neck and they’d start the music, and I’d dance.” He made his first film aged 12, then pumped out movies at an outrageous…

SUCCESS ALWAYS MEANS that much more when you’ve been through hell and back to attain it. In the case of The Pursuit Of Happyness, the trials and tribulations of Chris Gardner (Will Smith) are especially gruelling — which makes the movie’s final triumphant moments all the more gratifying. Up until its cathartic climax, The Pursuit Of Happyness is about as far away from feelgood as possible. For much of the preceding 100 minutes Gardner is a struggling, desperate man who falls lower and lower, finally hitting rock-bottom when he resorts to sleeping in a locked toilet at a railway station with his son (played by Smith’s own son, Jaden). This and other lowlights, like lining up at homeless shelters night after night, are experiences the real Gardner went through. That…

Bad Boys For Life DIRECTORS ADIL El Arbi and Bilall Fallah — aka Adil & Bilall — on breathing life back into the franchise. START WITH A BANG Coming almost two decades after Bad Boys II, Belgian directors Adil & Bilall had to make a statement early on with Bad Boys For Life that this was not going to be the same old, same old. They accomplish that mission in shocking fashion about ten minutes in, when the film’s bad guy, Armando (British actor Jacob Scipio), guns down Will Smith’s seemingly indestructible ‘Bulletproof’ Mike Lowrey in the street. Though Mike eventually recovers, it’s a sign that Bad Boys For Life is going to dig a little beneath the surface and ask questions of its heroes’ ‘ride together, die together’ mentality.…

15 AGE HE FOUNDED FILM SOCIETY THE MOVIE MANIA CLUB 170 Articles published in esteemed French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma 451 The temperature at which books burn in his only English-language film, Fahrenheit 451 1959 YEAR OF FEATURE DEBUT THE 400 BLOWS, WHICH WON CANNES’ PALME D’OR 8 DAYS SPENT INTERVIEWING ALFRED HITCHCOCK FOR SEMINAL BOOK HITCHCOCK/ TRUFFAUT $5,864,102 TOTAL WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE AS A DIRECTOR $340,800,479 WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE OF CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (TRUFFAUT PLAYED SCIENTIST CLAUDE LACOMBE) 20 Years spent directing the five-film series featuring alter-ego Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) 21-10-84 DAY HE DIED (AGED 52 )…

THIS MONTH LOVE, UNSCRIPTEDAUTHOR OWEN NICHOLLS HUNKERS DOWN WITH SCREWBALL ROMANTIC COMEDY CLASSIC BRINGING UP BABY IF SOMETHING WAS released on a screen near you from the early 2000s to the days of digital, the chances are it drifted over my eyeballs. I was one of the people up in the booth, splicing reels together and making sure your film started on time. Add a film degree to this decade-long profession, and an Empire subscription dating back to the halcyon days of Matt LeBlanc covers and “That’s enough of that — Ed” jokes, I’d like to think there are few films that passed me by. But nobody (not even the little-known love child of Pauline Kael and Edgar Wright) has seen all the movies. And when you’re tasked with finding…

NEVER IN BRITISH history have this country’s cinemas sat empty and darkened for so long. During the Great Depression, they not only stayed open, but thrived. During the Blitz, cinema admissions actually increased. People then, as now, needed movie houses in their lives as a spirit-lifting communal experience. Coronavirus is, of course, not comparable with the Luftwaffe, and a global pandemic is not a world war. As wrenching as it was, there were few who disputed the shuttering of cinemas in mid-March this year. We were hyped for A Quiet Place Part II, No Time To Die and Wonder Woman 1984, but their postponement felt a small price to pay when lives were at stake. As this is the first national (and global) crisis from which we have been unable…

TRINITY IS DEAD. Neo too, it seems, his body last seen being carried away by machines. Yet, almost 20 years after The Matrix Revolutions appeared to bring their stories to a fairly definitive end, the two of them are back for ‘The Matrix 4’. The whys and the hows and the wherefores of Neo and Trinity’s resurrection won’t be revealed for a while yet — 21 May next year, pandemic notwithstanding — but Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss have both shared with Empire their thoughts on reuniting with writer-director Lana Wachowski for some more quality bullet time. “I never thought that it would happen,” says Moss, somewhat justifiably. “It was never on my radar at all. So then, when it was brought to me in the way that it was…

Getty Images, Project 88, Shutterstock Whereabouts are you right now? In London. In my crib, as they say. How’s lockdown treating you? Have you been keeping busy? I have. It’s not too bad. I mean, I quite like being holed up where I don’t see people at the best of times, so it suits me fine. Are you guys working from home? Yep, Empire has been working from home. A lot of it has been produced in pyjamas. Right! I try to be more disciplined. I have a routine: I get up, do a bit of the Joe Wicks workout, have a shower, y’know. [laughs] Are you working on anything at the moment? I’m doing this TV project for the BBC and Amazon. We got about two weeks into filming…

★★ OUT 3 JULY / DIGITAL CERT 12A / 98 MINS DIRECTOR Eliza Schroeder CAST Celia Imrie, Shannon Tarbet, Shelley Conn PLOT Aspiring dancer Clarissa (Tarbet) loses everything when her mother Sarah dies in a cycling accident. To honour her legacy, Clarissa recruits her estranged, bohemian grandmother Mimi (Imrie), and with Sarah’s business partner Isabella (Conn) opens the Notting Hill bakery of her mother’s dreams. WHEN USED WELL in a film, a sweet treat can weave new meaning into a scene as a sugar-dusted peace offering, a frosted, opulent mark of status or a proud display of heritage. In Eliza Schroeder’s light feature debut, the pristine cakes of the Love Sarah bakery are an extension of the late Sarah herself, both an homage to her craft and a means of…

1 THE PUB FIGHT Chris Hewitt: For the first half-hour or so of the feature-length opening episode, Gangs Of London doesn’t feel like it’s from the director of The Raid. But as Elliot (Sope Dirisu) barrels into a pub in the middle of a brawl between crime lord Finn Wallace’s (Colm Meaney) men and some Albanian lackeys, Gareth Evans also makes his entrance. The next five minutes are sheer mayhem, as Elliot fights his way through the maelstrom, using a dart in a way that Michael van Gerwen would frown upon. It’s brutal, and a declaration of intent that the action in this show is going to make Line Of Duty look like Countdown. 2 THE MEAT CLEAVER FIGHT Chris Hewitt: If the pub fight hadn’t already announced Sope Dirisu’s…

Congratulations on Marty McFly making the list, Michael. It’s funny — I never thought of Marty in terms of being heroic. He’s more Robin than Batman. But it’s a real treat. It was a huge gift I was given in my career. Famously, you replaced Eric Stoltz several weeks into filming, while you were making sitcom Family Ties. Yeah. [Family Ties producer] Gary David Goldberg called me into his office, and said, “I have this script from [executive producer] Steven [Spielberg] and [director] Bob [Zemeckis] and [co-writer] Bob [Gale]. I said, “That’s great.” One week later I was on set with flames running through my feet. Your head must have been spinning. It was pretty fast. But after I read the script I thought, “Skateboarding kid who loves rock ’n’…

1966 If Adam West’s Batman was a ‘joke’, then it’s all the better enjoyed for him telling it with such an admirably straight face. A ‘pop-art comedy’, the Batman TV series of 1966-’68 took its campy cues from the Silver Era comics, peaking with a movie which piled all the big villains together in a ludicrous plot involving the UN Security Council being turned into sand. But while he dressed as a flying mouse, West always kept things steady and (relatively) serious: the self-knowing square among the cackling hipsters. He saved the day with a gizmo for every occasion (keeping a canister of Shark Repellent Bat Spray in his Batcopter, for example), was a whizz at lateral detective work, and could scale a building like he was walking along a…

1 THE FRANKIE VALLI MUSICAL NUMBER Grand gestures don’t get more romantic than Heath Ledger’s Patrick, complete with a toothy grin and a brass band, singing a pitch-perfect rendition of ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ from the soccer-field stands. Even Julia Stiles’ stubbornly single Kat didn’t stand a chance against this unbeatable blend of charisma and corniness. 2 BABY JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT As the puppy-dog-eyed new student Cameron, Gordon-Levitt proved that even at the start of his career he could perfect the role of a hopelessly nice guy, winning the heart of Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) over oily model Joey (Andrew Keegan), which is understandable: nobody can resist such sweet charms and wholesome chivalry. 3 MS PERKY Grown-up stars in teen movies often seem to have the most fun, as is…

Alamy, Getty Images LEGEND HAS IT that the Fast & Furious 5 punch-up between Vin Diesel and the Rock originally had its own three-act structure. But this scene, described in William Goldman’s script as “the greatest duel ever fought”, has all that and a banana, even fitting in a narrative twist. The opponents are Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin), a master swordsman and revenge aficionado, and the Man In Black (Cary Elwes), a mystery. The two swordsmen feint, testing one another’s form and comparing notes on technique in a flow of patter. They trade blows in a flicker of lightning-fast moves, up and down the uneven ground of a ruined fortress. Fought to a standstill, Inigo admits that he is not left-handed, switches to his dominant hand and at last challenges…

THE NEXT TIME you’re having an argument with friends about the greatest movie trilogy, take our advice: move past the obvious candidates (sorry, Star Wars; later, The Lord Of The Rings) and plump for Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy. Shot over the course of four years, from 1955 to 1959, Ray charts the life of a young Bengali boy called — yes! — Apu, and it’s a trilogy as good as filmmaking gets. With the trio getting the Criterion Collection treatment, three Empire writers wax lyrical about their favourite Apu flick… GUY LODGE ON PATHER PANCHALI (1955) As a ten-year-old who fancied himself a cinephile but hadn’t seen very much, I was given a copy of Barry Norman’s 100 Best Films Of The Century one Christmas, and dutifully set about…

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD OUT 15 JUNE / CERT PG / 119 MINS Fans of Armando Iannucci’s usual brand of tart, savage satire may find themselves disorientated when watching this fresh yet faithful Dickensian adaptation. Starring Dev Patel as our mild-mannered hero, The Personal History Of David Copperfield lacks the fire and brimstone of Iannucci’s former work (despite sharing some of its starring players) and instead presents disarmingly kind messages of persistence and friendship. Patel and his co-stars are perfectly cast, the former leaning into his status as an endearing mumbler while complimented by standout performances from the likes of Hugh Laurie, Tilda Swinton and This Country’s Daisy May Cooper. Briskly paced and shot through with a very British brand of humour, the film is still undeniably Iannucci’s,…

Illustration: Jacey Denzel Washington movies Chris: Let’s talk about Denzel. When did we first discover him? Amon: For me, it was The Preacher’s Wife. Chris: Start with the best. Amon: It took me a while to get into Peak Denzel, to discover Training Day and Malcolm X and He Got Game and what have you. But The Preacher’s Wife is still a movie I really enjoy watching. Helen: I probably saw The Pelican Brief and Philadelphia early on. But Much Ado About Nothing is probably the Denzel film I’ve seen the most times, because my baby sister got obsessed with it. Nick: Pelican Brief was the first proper one. It’s not a great film. But even when it’s a mediocre film, he delivers, right? Helen: The Pelican Brief is a…

In her breakout film, playing the title part in The Haunting Of Molly Hartley (2008), Haley Bennett seemed just another teen-horror ingénue. She’s paid her dues by being a girl you don’t remember in boys’ movies like The Equalizer and playing the corpse in the case in The Girl On The Train, with the odd venture into indie stuff like Gregg Araki’s Kaboom, and the underrated campus-slasher movie Kristy. Bennett finally gets an awards-quality star showcase in Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ unique drama Swallow, in which she plays Hunter, married into a creepy upper-crust family and marooned in a spectacular but uncomforting home. Hunter rebels (or cracks up) by indulging an escalating compulsion to swallow small objects. It explores a real, if unusual, condition and Bennett is fiercely impressive as a wife…