Empireの January 2021 の目次

IS THERE ANYTHING Marvel can’t do? We’re about to find out. Its creatives are, amongst other things, meticulous planners. Kevin Feige’s 11-year, 23-film intricate story arc is already the stuff of modern cinema legend. But one thing they couldn’t have planned for when they decided to take Marvel from the big screen to the small was quite how the world would have changed. That we’d all be hunkered down in our houses, remotes stuck to our palms. In many places, not even able to go to the pictures. That they would end that pretty-much-perfect run of films just 11 months before film closed down in an unprecedented way. As we go to press on this issue, critics haven’t seen Wanda Vision. And in many respects, it’s one of Marvel’s biggest…

IN THE FOUR decades since the first diagnoses of HIV and AIDS, back in the 1980s, remarkably, there hasn’t been a British drama which addressed the epidemic head-on. The significance is not lost on Russell T Davies. “I’m not the first person to say, Tm going to write an AIDS drama, ”’ Davies acknowledges. “And there are brilliant pieces of work out there. But not from a British perspective.” As the story of how AIDS affects a group of young gay flatmates in London in the early 1980s, It’s A Sin can also be seen as a spiritual prequel to Queer As Folk, the Channel 4 series which first made Davies a name back in 1999. But that gamechanging drama didn’t mention HIV or AIDS at all. Twenty-one years later,…

BENEDETTA BENEDETTA As revealed in last month’s Empire, director Paul Verhoeven is training his provocative eye on nuns for his next project – specifically, 17th-century mystic lesbian nuns. Which is not something they teach in Sunday school. CLODAGH BLACK NARCISSUS This classic Powell & Pressburger film is now a lavish BBC miniseries, with Gemma Arterton and the late Dame Diana Rigg as part of an order of Sisters in the Himalayas who find themselves in a psychosexual melodrama. MARY CLARENCE SISTER ACT 3 It’s been 27 years since Whoopi Goldberg – as former lounge singer Mary – was back in the habit. But her return comes nun too soon: Goldberg will reprise the role soon in the West End, and has confirmed a sequel is planned. Praise be!…

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998) CAPTAIN JOHN H. MILLER He Hanks them on the beaches, he Hanks them on the landing grounds, he Hanks them in the fields and in the streets. And he never surrenders. HANKRANK: 10/10 APOLLO 13 (1995) CAPTAIN JAMES LOVELL Houston, we have a template for the Tom Hanks Is An Everyman Captain Thrown Into Extraordinary Circumstances genre. HANKRANK: 8/10 SULLY:MIRACLE ON THE HUDSON (2016) CAPTAIN CHELSEA SULLENBERGER Hanks doesn’t have much luck with air travel. But here he does have a tremendously kempt moustache. HANKRANK: 8/10 Marco Vittur, Getty Images CAPTAIN PHILLIPS (2013) CAPTAIN RICHARD PHILLIPS Just a wonderfully mundane, unremarkable job on a boring old cargo ship, barely worth making a film ab-PIRATES! HANKRANK: 6/10 DANIEL BENNEWORTH-GRAY…

Getty Images, Sophie Gransard/Studio Sanctity THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (12 MARCH, IN CINEMAS) NICK DE SEMLYEN, DEPUTY EDITOR I’ve recently busted open my Blu-ray box set of The Sopranos, finding joy during lockdown in returning to the world of the shooty, shouty Bada Bing!. Not only has it made me annoy my friends and family by saying “gabagool” a lot, but it’s got me feverishly excited to see the long-in-the-making prequel movie. We’ll get to finally see Uncle Junior when he was actually junior, plus Tony Soprano again, played by James Gandolfini’s son, Michael. Basically, bring on the gabagool. Sorry. RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON (12 MARCH, IN CINEMAS) BEN TRAVIS, ONLINE STAFF WRITER What happens when you stick the director of Blindspotting on a Disney movie? I can’t…

OUT NOW / PRIME VIDEO / CERT 15 / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Alan Ball CAST Paul Bettany, Sophia Lillis, Peter Macdissi Alan Ball is masterful at tackling life, death, LGBTQ+ stories and bigotry in small-town America. His latest casts Sophia Lillis as Beth, who discovers her uncle Frank (Paul Bettany) is gay and secretly living with long-term partner Wally (Peter Macdissi) in New York. When a family tragedy prompts a road trip, this becomes Frank’s story, Bettany clearly relishing digging into real, human drama away from the MCU. Macdissi steals scenes as the twinkly-eyed Wally, whose gentle nature radiates into the film itself until the final reel’s explosion of alcoholism, lingering PTSD and homophobia unbalances the tone. Its structure is unwieldy, but Uncle Frank’s big heart is at least in the…

OUT 27 NOVEMBER / CERT TBC / 81 MINS DIRECTOR Michele Pennetta PARTICIPANTS Oscar Prestifilippo, Stanley Abhuumen, Roberto Prestifilippo Although they inhabit different worlds on the same island, Sicilian teenager Oscar and Nigerian immigrant Stanley have much in common. Oscar scavenges for scrap metal with his abusive father, while Stanley takes on menial jobs to support a housemate awaiting a visa verdict. Neither feels appreciated and their loneliness brings them together in a wordless denouement that could be a miracle or a dream. Either way, its simplicity leaves a deep impression. Combining widescreen lyricism and neorealist intimacy, this is a poignant reflection on the stark situation awaiting so many migrants who risk everything for a new life. Its documentary credentials sometimes feel compromised, but director Michele Pennetta’s intentions couldn’t be…

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Edoardo Ponti CAST Sophia Loren, Ibrahima Gueye, Renato Carpentieri The Life Ahead is all about the majesty of Sophia Loren. Her first big-screen appearance since Nine, she plays Madame Rosa, a former prostitute who takes in pre-teen Momo (Ibrahima Gueye) after the latter mugs her in a seaside Italian town. What follows is a predictable melodrama as the pair go from antipathy to co-dependence, both helping to heal each other’s past pains – his as a Senegalese immigrant, hers as an Auschwitz survivor. It’s sentimental in that Italian way – all honeyed hues and overblown score – but wins out on a cast of colourful characters led by Loren. Directed by her son Edoardo Ponti, she lends Madame Rosa a blend…

THE CAPITOL THECAPITOLHORSHAM.COM Operations Manager Matthew Effemy on the magic of the cinema in Horsham, West Sussex What’s your cinema’s history? The Capitol was built in just six months, opening in 1936 as The Ritz. The owners wanted to beat the opening of a nearby Odeon – they succeeded by four months! What’s special about your cinema? It’s housed in a stunning building. A refurbishment in 2003 was sympathetic to its Art Deco appearance: it still has everything from the terrazzo tile flooring to its proscenium arch. We now have three screens, including one 420-seater which doubles as a theatre. Share a memorable moment. We are lucky enough to have a trained, in-house technician who can operate a 35mm projector. As part of a recent Spooktober event, we showed American…

OUT NOW / NETFLIX EPISODES VIEWED 10 OF 10 SHOWRUNNER Peter Morgan CAST Olivia Colman, Josh O’Connor, Gillian Anderson, Emma Corrin, Tobias Menzies, Helena Bonham Carter, Erin Doherty PLOT As the ’80s dawn, the Queen (Colman) is challenged on both professional and personal fronts by the arrival of two women in her life: Lady Diana Spencer (Corrin) and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Anderson). THE POWER OF the United Kingdom sits behind the doors of two famous buildings: Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street, separated by just 57 green acres of St James’s Park in London. The Crown has always expertly dissected the relationship between the institutions of government and monarchy; how they co-exist (not always happily) and cooperate (not always willingly) in running the country Season 4 opens in 1979…

1 OSCARS WON 1988 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, THE UNTOUCHABLES 6 MARTINIS CONSUMED IN BOND MOVIES $ 3.5 BILLION THE COMBINED WORLDWIDE GROSS OF HIS MOVIES 12 YEARS DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONNERY AND HARRISON FORD IN LAST CRUSADE (DESPITE HIM PLAYING FORD’S DAD) 1 CONNERY MOVIES THAT ACCIDENTALLY LED TO REAL-LIFE WAR A 2016 ENQUIRY FOUND BRITISH INTELLIGENCE INVADED IRAQ BASED ON INFORMATION FROM A SOURCE WHO WAS RELAYING PLOT DETAILS FROM 1996’S THE ROCK 26 SUITS WORN AS 007 CHARACTERS PLAYED WITH EPIC PONYTAILS (MEDICINE MAN, ZARDOZ, HIGHLANDER) £8 BILLION MONEY STOLEN IN Y2K HEISTS (ENTRAPMENT, 1999) 10 NATIONALITIES PLAYED (ENGLISH, AMERICAN, SCOTTISH, RUSSIAN, IRISH, EGYPTIAN, ITALIAN, MOROCCAN, NORWEGIAN AND, ER, DRAGON) ACCENTS ADOPTED ACROSS ALL THOSE ROLES 1 GOLF HANDICAP 22.0…

George Clooney is fully in control. The Midnight Sky, his seventh film as director, is precisely the kind of stirring work he thrives on: an apocalyptic drama, it’s told from the dual perspectives of a spaceship crew drifting near Jupiter, and a dying scientist on Earth (played by Clooney), forced to warn the astronauts of the latter’s sudden doom. As he tells Empire from his Los Angeles home while completing post-production: “I made the film I wanted to make.” It’s an expansive, ambitious sci-fi, bringing together Clooney’s interests both off screen (he is a staunch environmentalist and outspoken political campaigner) and on (this is his third trip to cinematic space, after Solaris and Gravity). And it’s a film he could have only really made now: the culmination of a long…

IT HAD BEEN in the works for a decade. Yet weeks away from The Third Day’s 12-hour live event, it seemed dead. And then, just in the nick of time, echoing the plot’s own Christ allegory, it was resurrected and completely reconfigured, resulting in a truly pioneering piece of television, the likes of which we’d never seen. Felix Barrett, artistic director of interactive theatre company Punchdrunk, had been toying with the idea for ten years, wondering, he tells Empire, “if television could be a portal into something live and then back out again. I’ve always loved watching telly, or watching a film, and imagining if it was actually real, as if you could go into it.” He landed on that format - three episodes of a series followed by a…

110 RUNNING TIME IN MINUTES 20/1/64 The start of principal photography in Miami 12/8/64 The day Ian Fleming died; he had visited the set shortly beforehand $3 MILLION ITS BUDGET $46 MILLION ITS WORLDWIDE GROSS IN ITS FIRST RUN 1 THE NUMBER OF OSCARS IT WON (BEST SOUND EFFECTS EDITING FOR NORMAN WANSTALD.IT WAS THE FIRST.BONDTOWIN AN ACADEMY AWARD SLAZENGER1 THE TYPE OF GOLF BALL GOLDFINGER USES IN HIS GAME WITH BOND 38 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT THE TEMPERATURE BOND BELIEVES DOM PERIGNON’53 SHOULD NOT BE DRUNK ABOVE 007 The number of seconds left on the countdown clock of the nuclear bomb before it’s turned off. (Originally, it was set to stop at 003.) BMT 216A THE LICENCE NUMBER OF BOND’S ASTON MARTIN DB5…

What with lockdowns, winter weather and the holidays looming, now is a perfect chance to enjoy the best film can offer. And this month we’ve got an array of Blu-rays that would make great Christmas gifts; not least for you! Like a bit of buddy-cop action? Then the Bad Boys Collection is for you. Familyfriendly capers? A Jumanji double bill coming right up. After something inspirational and a joy to wallow in? Try Little Women. And for cerebral thrills, we’ve got El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. For a chance to win all four – and a huge 49” TV to boot! – crack the crossword, solve the anagram and text your answer to the number below. LITTLE WOMEN, JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE/THE NEXT LEVEL, BAD BOYS COLLECTION AND…

A MESSAGE OF HOPE Cinema isn’t dead, it’s just sleeping. I just got back from the local Co-op with my daughter, Halloween supplies and this month’s Empire in hand. As usual, I take a quick look to see what’s going on. Not much it seems, but then… Arachnophobia, The Untouchables… hang on, this issue is getting better… shit, a review of Over The Moon, I bloody loved it… FOUR STARS! Yes!! We’ve got films to watch, we’ve got food to eat, a warm house, and Soul coming out on Christmas Day. Cheers, Empire. PETE WILKINSON, WILTSHIRE This is the sunny optimism we needed. Thank you, Pete. Have a Picturehouse membership on us - ready to go for when the cinemas reawaken. Picture house Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership,…

John Nugent (News Editor): This looks like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody 2: David Bowie Edition’. Nick de Semiyen (Deputy Editor): There’s already a film called Stardust. They could have called it ‘Hero’ or something! It feels inevitable, a film like this. John: It’s had a bit of a kicking online, this one, but I don’t know that it looks like an all-out Cuis-level flop. Let’s see. Nick: The first shot of the whole thing is him looking at himself in several mirrors. Ben Travis (Online Staff Writer): A bit of a heavy-handed way of saying he has many different personas, perhaps? Nick: It’s Symbolism 101! Joanna Moran (Photography Director): “’Ello.” It’s like Michael Caine as David Bowie. John: It needs to be more like Adam Buxton’s impression. “Zaaavid Bowiee!” Nick: I ’m…

Getty Images, Sebastien Nevols ON WORKING IN BASINGSTOKE O DE ON AS A TEENAGER “I loved it. I was in charge of setting up the pick ’n’ mix and putting out the posters and cardboard cut-outs. The job is mostly cleaning, so the joy really is getting to see movies, and that was where I really started to consume films. I used to think that being a film actor wasn’t achievable, so that was never really in my goals.” ON HIS LOVE OF THE HUNGER GAMES “I read all of them and went to the midnight screenings. I was working at the Odeon when the posters got delivered and I was like, ‘This looks amazing!’ I used to take them home - I had loads of old film posters under…

DAVID OYELOWO hasn’t been spending much time on terra firma lately. He’s breached the realms of fantasy and fiction in Come Away – an ode to classic children’s literature co-starring Angeline Jolie – and is shooting off to space in George Clooney’s The Midnight Sky. Oh, and he’s starring in his own directorial debut, The Water Man, a sci-fi adventure influenced by the classic Amblin films of the 1980s. We managed to rein him in for a few moments, where he spoke thoughtfully about the significance of the stories he chooses to tell – both in front of the camera, and behind it. Come Away is rooted in the work of J.M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll. What’s your relationship like with their work? Those characters and those stories have hovered…

JODIE TURNER-SMITH AS ANNE BOLEYN IS THE KIND OF CASTING WE SHOULD SEE MORE OF I LOVE A good period drama. The fashion, the colourful characters, the intrigue - when it’s well made, a period drama can be immensely satisfying. But one thing that’s always bothered me is how whitewashed they so often are. You could easily watch ten period dramas and conclude that Black and brown people simply didn’t exist in history. That’s why the news that Black British actress Jodie Turner-Smith, of Queen & Slim fame, will be playing Anne Boleyn is so exciting: she’ll star as the Tudor Queen in an upcoming three-part psychological-thriller miniseries that will explore the final months of her life. Between her tumultuous marriage, disputes with the patriarchy, and her ultimate beheading, King…

OUT 11 DECEMBER / CERT ТВС / 114 MINS DIRECTOR Thomas Bezucha CAST Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Lesley Manville Reuniting Kevin Costner and Diane Lane - Superman’s folks from Man Of Steel - Let Him Go is Taken way out West. After the loss of their son, a retired sheriff (Costner) and his wife (Lane) leave their ranch to go in search of their grandson, after their daughter-in-law (Kayli Carter) is cajoled into living with an off-the-grid crime family. For an hour or so, it’s a bit dull as George and Margaret turn amateur detectives plodding round backwoods-y towns, before Lesley Manville enlivens things as a terrifying gangster matriarch. It all builds to a tonally at-odds Grand-Guignol finale yet, with its stars looking curiously unengaged, this is what happens when…

OUT 11 DECEMBER / CERT TBC / 84 MINS DIRECTOR Maite Alberdi PARTICIPANTS Sergio Chamy, Rómulo Aitken Effectively blending documentary and drama, Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent is a bittersweet exploration of late-life experience. Her subject is charismatic 83-year-old Sergio Chamy, who is hired by a private detective to go undercover at a local home for the elderly in search of staff mistreatment. With many of these ageing residents having been effectively abandoned by their families, they have created their own support network into which the dapper Sergio is warmly welcomed – particularly by the ladies at the home. And while audiences may be left wondering which elements have been crafted for dramatic effect, and the tone often leans towards the whimsical, the universal truths behind this endeavour…

OUT 27 NOVEMBER / CERT 12A / 117 MINS DIRECTOR Thomas Vinterberg CAST Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang, Lars Ranthe There’s a delicious high concept at the heart of Another Round that makes it ripe for an Adam Sandler comedy. Four middle-aged, jaded teachers try an experiment that argues everything in life – work, family, socialising - is better if you consistently have a little alcohol in your system. For its first half, Thomas Vinterberg’s breezier-than-usual Danish drama stresses the upside of the idea, each man rejuvenated by being ever so slightly drunk, but convincingly moves into darker areas as the gang pursue the idea to the extreme. If it says nothing new about the dangers of over-indulgence, Another Round is funny and rich, a fresh, perfectly played…

OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT TBC / 116 MINS DIRECTOR Ron Howard CAST Gabriel Basso, Owen Asztalos, Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Haley Bennett Law student J.D. Vance (Gabriel Basso) is at a dinner when his sister (Haley Bennett) calls: “She’s using again…heroin.” J.D.’s grandmother Mamaw (Glenn Close) ran away from home when she got “knocked up” at 13, and the baby grew up to be addict Bev (Amy Adams), J.D.’s mother. Both women are physically transformed with impressive prosthetics, and neither Close nor Adams flinch from the ugliness of these women. But while this commitment to unpalatable honesty may suggest authenticity, it’s not delivered. They remain roughly hewn; lacking motivation, nuance or any internal conflict to make them flesh and blood. This is a story told generically, with dialogue the…

OUT NOW I SKY ATLANTIC/NOW TV EPISODES VIEWED 7 OF 7 SHOWRUNNERS Ethan Hawke, Mark Richard CAST Ethan Hawke, Joshua Caleb Johnson, Hubert Point-Du Jour Opening on the words, “All of this is true... most of it happened”, The Good Lord Bird is historical revisionism played for maximum fun, shot through with energy, smart laughs and well-staged action. It’s dominated by a mesmerising Ethan Hawke as the Bible-spouting abolitionist John Brown, whose efforts to end slavery kickstarted the Civil War, but this isn’t just a white saviour story. Sensitive to Black perspectives, the emotional centre of the show is young slave Onion (Joshua Caleb Johnson) who joins Brown’s army and enjoys adventures that take in historical icons such as Frederic Douglass (Daveed Diggs) and Harriet Tubman (Zainab Jah). It ends…

The soft but distinctive Scottish burr, the sharply etched features and world-weary gaze, the smooth charisma that goes hand-in-hand with sudden violence; for many of us, James Bond is Sean Connery. “The thing that is indisputable is that Sean Connery is the reason why this series took off,” says Bond producer Barbara Broccoli. “I don’t think we would be here 58 years later if the leading actor in the first film had not pulled it off in such a way as Connery did.” The actor, who was 32 when he won the role in the modestly budgeted adaptation of Ian Fleming’s spy thriller Dr. No (1962), had lived his fair share of life before being catapulted into legend. The son of a lorry driver, he had been a champion bodybuilder,…

DANIEL LARUSSO RALPH MACCHIO In the Karate Kid series, a fresh-faced LaRusso painted fences and chased flies, watched closely by his guru Mr Miyagi. Decades on, the iconic character has returned in buzzy TV series Cobra Kai, now a car salesman who’s lost his lust for life. The ongoing show sees him facing down his old adversary, Johnny Lawrence (an also-returning William Zabka), and relearning the lessons of the gi. CONNOR MACLEOD CHRISTOPHER LAMBERT There can be only one. Which is presumably why the role of Connor MacLeod wasn’t recast when it came to Highlander: The Series. The immortal Scot only features in the 1992 pilot, though, crashing through a window to interrupt an antique-store burglary, then battling an adversary on a bridge in the fictional city of Seacouver. Lambert’s…

THIS YEAR HAS been a lot. For you, for us, for Michaela Coel. So in August, she just needed to get out. Of her flat, of London. After deciding that she’d simply head wherever “they would let me go”, she took two (negative) Covid tests, booked a flight, landed in Iceland, quarantined for five days, hired a car, got in, Googled “beautiful places to see in Iceland”, and every other day would drive to a place, any place. The months since March, the beginning days of lockdown, had been busy. Coel was still supervising the edit of the final episodes of I May Destroy You just as the very first episodes aired on the BBC. They’d always known the schedule would be tight, but then the pandemic hit and along…

GARETH EVANS GANGS OF LONDON (SKY ATLANTIC) SUZANNE HEATHCOTE KILLING EVE (BBC ONE) LENNIE JAMES SAVE ME TOO (SKY ATLANTIC) MAE MARTIN FEEL GOOD (CHANNEL 4) LAURIE NUNN SEX EDUCATION (NETFLIX) SARAH PHELPS DUBLIN MURDERS (BBC ONE) IN THE UNDERSTATEMENT of the year, we’d like to say, 2020: Christ, what a year! But, amongst the void-screaming, there have been pockets of joy. And so many of those pockets have been stuffed with the golden minutes and hours that have played across our TV screens. It could even be described, in the very worst of years, as the very best year for television. These shows tore apart genre, structure and narrative. Radical, disruptive storytelling was embraced and sex, finally, was something that we recognised. It’s no coincidence that the moment coincided…

Illustration: Nell Edwards. Allstar SOME FILMS SEEM to go out of their way to make you think you’ve already seen them - boasting naggingly familiar thumbnail synopses, soundalike titles, lookalike promo art. The horror- suspense field currently offers two films called I See You... plus, just for luck, another called I Still See You. The earlier I See You directed by Seth Fuller and Scott Hussion, is a retitling of 14 Cameras, a sequel to 13 Cameras - a stalker/ surveillance film seen in the UK as Slumlord. Character actor Neville Archambault shambles, drools and mutters again as a sleazoid who sets up hidden cameras in an Airbnb-type rental property, keeps a survivor of the first film chained in the basement, and has a nasty internet-auction business sideline. Slumlord was…

1 Todd Phillips was initially planning on using a grimy South Bronx step street that had featured in Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, but it had since been spruced up. 2 Writing as Fleck, Phoenix filled journals with musings. Phillips told him steps would feature prominently and, said Phoenix, “There were a few pages where I just wrote ‘step after step after step after step after step’, over and over.” 3 Filming the scene was hit by uninvited guests. “We go there, and there’s kids in the apartments next door banging on the window,” said Phoenix. “What I remember was trying to keep my head down and focused and not become self-conscious with kids screaming and cursing at me.”…

IRON MAN 3 (2013) Helen: Audacious, daring and sometimes genuinely emotional, Black turned the tables on audiences with one of cinema history’s most hilarious twistreveals. An inspired superhero sequel.” KISS KISS BANG BANG (2005) James: “Black at his hard-boiled best, giving zero fucks about what audiences wanted and all the better for it.” LETHAL WEAPON (1987) Dan: “A stone-cold classic and still the movie to go to if you want bickering, mismatched-buddy cops. THE NICE GUYS (2016) Dan: “My personal favourite Blackdirected entry. Certainly his funniest film, and it has a giant talking bee.” LETHAL WEAPON 2 (1989) Chris: “Only a story credit for Black, but his dabs are all over Richard Donner’s funnier, peppier sequel.” THE LAST BOY SCOUT (1991) Chris: “Perhaps hasn’t aged so well, but doesn’t disappoint…

BE CONFIDENT Carpenter scored his debut film, 1974’s Dark Star, out of “necessity”, he says. A long-time fan of electronic music, he realised that with synths, he could make epic-sounding music on his own. “We needed original music, so we figured it out.” What made him think he could pull it off? “Stupidity, I guess!” he laughs. “I didn’t know any better! I always had that confidence.” As he developed as a composer, “the chops got better”, but he wouldn’t put himself on the same level of his heroes - the likes of Bernard Herrmann and Vangelis - he says. “I’m just a bum director who was forced to make music. That’s all I am.” BE FLEXIBLE Carpenter is primarily known for his synths, but there are some meaty guitars…

EXCELLENT GOOD OKAY POOR AWFUL OUT 4 DECEMBER / NETFLIX CERT 12 / 132 MINS DIRECTOR David Fincher CAST Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Charles Dance, Tom Burke PLOT A pariah in Hollywood, alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. ‘Mank’ Mankiewicz (Oldman) takes on a job writing ‘American’, a screenplay for boy wonder Orson Welles. The script is a takedown of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (Dance) that eventually becomes Citizen Kane, arguably the greatest film ever made. MANK, DAVID FINCHER’S 11th feature film, ends on the words “the magic of the movies”. Don’t be fooled. True to form, Fincher’s first film since 2014’s Gone Girl isn’t a gooey-eyed Valentine to the dream factory. Instead it’s a clear-eyed, warts ’n’ all love letter to Hollywood, alive to both the glamour and…

OUT 18 DECEMBER / CERT PG / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Brenda Chapman CAST Keira Chansa, Jordan A. Nash, Angelina Jolie, David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw Brave director Brenda Chapman’s live-action debut attempts to reimagine both Alice In Wonderland and Peter Pan in one tale, but it doesn’t connect in the same way as her animated work. After a family tragedy, kids Alice (Keira Chansa) and Peter (Jordan A. Nash) see their parents (Angelina Jolie, David Oyelowo) hit hard by grief, giving way to gambling debts and day-drinking. The duo’s attempts to improve their family’s circumstances are embellished with fantastical flourishes ripped from Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie’s stories. Come Away never quite strikes the right balance between the real and the imagined, but with supporting turns from Michael Caine and Derek…

OUT 11 DECEMBER / CERT TBC / 120 MINS DIRECTOR Julia Hart CAST Rachel Brosnahan, Arinzé Kene, Marsha Stephanie Blake Living in a sophisticated 1970s pad, housewife Jean (Rachel Brosnahan) knows her husband Eddie (Bill Heck) is a thief. But there’s a whole lot more she doesn’t know. When she’s forced to go on the lam in the dead of night with zero knowledge of her husband’s whereabouts, she’s forced to reckon with her newfound independence. She pairs with enigmatic bodyguard Cal (Arinzé Kene), who is sent to protect her from mysterious forces, yet the danger Jean faces is given shared importance with the interior journey the frightened housewife must now go on. Director Julia Hart offers a strangely warm version of a throwback crime caper, making I’m Your Woman…

OUT 18 DECEMBER / CERT TBC / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Kieron J. Walsh CAST Louis Talpe, Iain Glen, Tara Lee Based on a weird knot in Tour de France history when, in 1998, the early stages took place in Ireland amidst widespread doping, The Racer delivers a formulaic sports drama. It centres on Dom (Louis Talpe), a pace-setter for a winning team, battling arrogant team mates, drug tests, and an owner who thinks he is past it. The drama is overwrought – on top of everything, Dom has an estranged sister, a relationship with a young doctor and clichéd anxiety dreams about winning – and the cycling scenes lack dynamism. There is some nice detail about cycling-team practices (how they urinate on the move), but overall The Racer lacks the…

OUT NOW / BBC TWO / EPISODES VIEWED 4 OF 8 SHOWRUNNERS Konrad Kay, Mickey Down CAST Myha’la Herrold, Marisa Abela, Harry Lawtey It takes a lot to make the impenetrable world of financial services sexy, but Industry pulls it off with ease. With a series opener directed by Lena Dunham, Konrad Kay and Mickey Down’s sharp show follows the new graduate intake at investment bank Pierpont as they try to win over bosses and clients to secure an all-important permanent position. A bit This Life, a bit The Social Network, it’s a fast, fizzy cocktail of drugs, oral sex, office politics and sharp dialogue (“An uncut dick? I feel like I’m in a Richard Curtis film”), all played by an engaging young cast. The result is far more addictive…

ALEX GARLAND HAD been frustrated with the film industry for years. He always had creative control but, in a box-office business where financiers make decisions, he was rarely far from heartache. His struggles, though, thankfully (for us) took him to television, and ultimately Devs, which was mainlined into our brains in eight gorgeous, doom-laden instalments this April. Focusing on an immoral group of tech pioneers recreating God, Devs emanated an unsettling existential rumble which clicked into a broader feeling of global unease. Yet it was as accessible as it was provocative, placing as much emphasis on emotions as it did on quantum physics. And, over eight hours, it went deeper than Garland could have explored within the confines of his usual medium. His film battles were legion. Ex Machina, his…

Lucy Kirkwood [writer]: It was impossibly hard to get this made: it took nine years to [get a] commission. I was continually surprised by how wary people still were of the subject matter. We were adamant we were making a serious, high-minded drama that’s not about being salacious or provocative for the sake of it, but the topic still has this radioactive glow. Hayley Squires [actor]: Lucy was trying to find the right home for it where they weren’t afraid of the content. It feels like there was finally a shift with conversations over the last few years: #MeToo, the way women are under-represented on screen, the idea of women being able to own and tell their sexual stories. Dawn Shadforth [director]: There’s not that many scenes of pornography in…

THIS MONTH SKYLIN3S DIRECT0R LIAM O’DONNELL LETS LET THE RIGHT ONE WIN FOR THE FIRST TIME I definitely have some embarrassingly great movies sitting in my queue judging me as I watch Predator again for the 100th time. That said, I felt pretty good that I’d seen most of Empire’s list of suggested First Take Club titles. Of those remaining, I naturally chose the only horror movie I hadn’t seen yet. I remember when Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In came out and was at the top of many of my favourite film writers’ Best Of The Year lists. It’s curious why I didn’t seek it out then, but looking back, my 2008 self was pretty swept up in the heavy metal and Hans Zimmer of Iron Man and…

Illustration: Neil Edwards. Allstar GAMERA Ever wondered why ninja turtles? It’s because of Japanese folklore goblins called kappa - several films feature the weird-creepy-cute child-sized humanoid turtles (see Death Kappa). Mightiest of the breed - a kaiju kappa! - is Gamera, created in 1965 by Daiei Studios as a rival for Toho’s Godzilla and star of outrageous entertainments now collected in a splendid Blu-ray set. Gamera, aka Gammera The Invincible, is a relatively straightforward tale of a flying, fire-breathing giant turtle out to burn down Tokyo, but the ’60s sequels have the beast befriend children (who sing happy, catchy songs to him) against bizarre Pacific Rim-type giant monsters like bat-lizard Gyaos, squid Viras, knifeheaded Guiron and can-opener shark Zigra (triumphs of impractical design). Gamera returned in the 1990s in a…

ACROSS 1 Nora Ephron’s film about an archangel (7) 5 The River — (James Earl Jones) (5) 8 This Disney animated musical introduced Auli’i Cravalho as the title character (5) 9 US company that streams films on TV (7) 10 Ron Howard’s film about boxing champ James J. Braddock (10,3) 11 Robert Benton directed this 1987 comedy, written specifically for Kim Basinger (6) 12 This VW Beetle debuted in The Love Bug (6) 15 Director who made Peeping Tom (7,6) 18 Adam who made his film debut in 1989’s Going Overboard (7) 19 “Life is a negotiation” ran the blurb for this 1997 Eddie Murphy release (5) 20 The Ice — (Kevin Kline) (5) 21 They were mean for Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel (7) DOWN 1 Guillermo del…