Empireの May 2022 の目次

WELCOME TO ISSUE 400 of Empire. Yep, 400. It’s a mighty big number, and over all that time we’ve certainly seen some stuff. We’ve been up close and personal with movies from Tim Burton’s Batman to Matt Reeves’ The Batman. We’ve journeyed onto sets from Pinewood to Perth. We’ve been to Jack Nicholson’s kitchen (roomy). We’ve even seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, though admittedly that was just when we decided to watch Blade Runner again. So, to mark the milestone, we thought it would be fun to share 400 things that we’ve learned over the years. The nuggets of trivia, the insights, the sandwiches that Keanu Reeves likes best. Almost none of it will be useful, but hopefully it’ll be more entertaining than our back-up…

Alamy, Getty Images PINOCCHIO, THE LITTLE boy who started off as a humble block of wood, never had it so good: there are three cinematic versions coming to life this year. Pinocchio: A True Story, a Russian animated feature by Vasiliy Rovenskiy, is out in May; Robert Zemeckis’ live-action take, with Tom Hanks as Geppetto, is rumoured to hit Disney+ this summer; while Guillermo del Toro’s stop-motion film reaches Netflix in December. The first is a curio: the dubbed English release has Pinocchio voiced by a 54-year-old Pauly Shore. The trailer went viral in January, quickly becoming a TikTok sensation, with people imitating Shore’s lethargic vocal performance. But it will hardly dent the timber tyke’s reputation. 2022 is the year of the puppet, although that is a coincidental confluence. Zemeckis’…

Getty Images JORDAN PEELE’S ELUSIVE new film, his third after the triumphant Get Out and brain-spinning Us, is another project veiled in Pentagon-level secrecy. The world has been poring over the trailer and every poster for Nope for clues. Perhaps the most unexpected hint can be seen in this exclusive new still, given to Empire by Peele: a crew hoodie for much-maligned 2001 adventure movie The Scorpion King, as worn by hero James Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya). What could it mean? More than the alien plush toys or inflatable-tube men, this piece of attire presents myriad questions. Is Nope set in the past? Is Kaluuya’s Hollywood horse trainer an avid collector of Dwayne Johnson memorabilia? Will Johnson himself beam down from the vast, circular cloud hovering over the ranch as the…

WES CRAVEN’S SCREAM 2 shouldn’t have worked, according to Tyler Gillett, the co-director of the franchise’s latest instalment. “[Before seeing it] I remember feeling like there was no more gas in the tank, they’d already driven it so hard,” he tells Empire. Yet when he watched it, it did work. “The challenge that Wes and Kevin [Williamson, screenwriter] were having in trying to live up to the expectations of the first film was playing out on screen. It was such a wonderful way to let the audience in.” Now Gillett and his filmmaking partner Matt Bettinelli-Olpin face the same challenge. After their reimagining of Ghostface hit big at the box office with both devoted fans and Scream newbies, an experience that Gillett likens to “a crazy dream we’re waiting to…

LENNY ABRAHAMSON HADN’T anticipated that Normal People would turn out the way it did. The adaptation of Sally Rooney’s emotionally charged novel became the BBC’s most-streamed show of 2020, earned international acclaim, and scored Abrahamson his first Emmy nomination for his work directing six out of the 12 episodes. “It defied our most optimistic predictions,” he tells Empire. Now he’s doing another Rooney adaptation, her debut novel Conversations With Friends, and the pressure is on. “The expectations are always there, even if it isn’t connected to a big success,” he says. “It’s like, will we do it justice?” Where Normal People was a laser-focused love story, Conversations is bigger in scope. Set in modern-day Dublin, it follows student Frances (Alison Oliver) as she navigates relationships with best friend Bobbi (Sasha…

Allstar, Shutterstock, Marco Vittur WHERE? A field on the outskirts of Bucharest, Romania. WHEN? After midnight on 28 November 2019. WHY? To get the lowdown on The Contractor, a Chris Pine-powered actioner that follows a soldier returning from war to find his fighting is not quite over. Formerly known as Violence Of Action, it sees Pine’s ex-Green Beret, James Harper, desperate for cash. There will be action. There will be violence. There will be contracting. WHAT DID WE SEE? First and foremost: a dilapidated farmhouse being blown to smithereens. Okay, not quite smithereens — but not far off. The scene we’re here to witness finds Harper holed up in a vast, crumbling ranch while snipers move in. As director Tarik Saleh calls, “Action!”, Pine’s stunt double leaps from an upstairs…

Nottingham Who? Henry Cavill Where? Warhammer World Why? Cavill, a devoted fan of the Warhammer 40k table-top game, recently dropped into the company’s head office. He has, according to a Warhammer insider, “the Hero keyword and a 2+ save”. Who needs the ability to fly, eh? Welcome to BIRMINGHAM Who? Tom Cruise Where? Asha’s Indian restaurant Why? Cruise took a breather from Mission: Impossible 7 to drop by for a tikka masala with extra spices. He enjoyed the dish so much that he ordered it twice, which staff took as “the greatest accomplishment”.Turns out he doesn’t just have an appetite for action. WELLS Who? Nicolas Cage Where? Tramways Social Club Why? Hard to say, although Cage did formerly own a house near Glastonbury, so is no stranger to Somerset. He…

THANKS TO APOCALYPTIC time-hopping series The Lazarus Project, Paapa Essiedu’s skill set has broadened considerably. The role — his most physical yet — required the actor to learn everything from handling guns to jumping off bikes. Yet there was one thing Essiedu couldn’t nail. “Karaoke is not my strong suit,” he tells Empire mournfully. “They really threw me in the deep end with that. I was like, ‘Are you joking me?’” The scene in question sees his character George deliver the opening lines of R.E.M.’s ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It’ on a work night out, a musical nod to the show’s premise. In the opening episode, George is recruited to The Lazarus Project, an organisation that jumps through time to prevent world-ending events. Essiedu hails…

★★★★★ EXCELLENT ★★★★ GOOD ★★★ OKAY ★★ POOR ★AWFUL ★★★★★ OUT 25 MARCH CERT 15 / 128 MINS DIRECTOR Joachim Trier CAST Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum PLOT Julie (Reinsve) is on the cusp of 30 and struggling to find her place in the world. She changes jobs, changes haircuts, changes boyfriends to figure out which decisions make her feel most alive. Will her older partner Aksel (Lie) be enough to complete her, or is there still something missing? LOVE STORIES IN cinema can struggle to find a complex middle ground between frothy entertainment and bruising drama. There’s nothing wrong with either — but the real-life experiences we go through are much more contradictory than either extreme, full of mistakes and missed chances you just have to live…

★★★★ OUT 24 MARCH (SHUDDER) / CERT TBC / 93 MINS DIRECTORS Philip Gelatt, Morgan Galen King CAST Richard E. Grant, Lucy Lawless, Joe Manganiello, Patton Oswalt, Betty Gabriel A deliberate throwback to a bygone era of Ralph Bakshi-style sword-and-sorcery animation, you can really feel the passion of this seven-year project. The realism of movement that comes with the arduous process of rotoscoping, combined with OTT bloodshed, hand-painted backdrops and vivid neon colours befits its curious fantasy narrative. It can be a little rough around the edges — the voice acting is flat in places and the characters can feel divorced from the painterly backgrounds — but such patches never feel intrusive. It will satiate the cravings of those who miss a particular brand of animated storytelling, updated with psychedelic…

★★ OUT 18 MARCH CERT TBC / 115 MINS DIRECTOR Adrien Lyne CAST Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas, Tracy Letts, Rachel Blanchard, Lil Rel Howery PLOT Vic (Affleck) is a wealthy former tech designer, living in a marriage of mind games with his younger wife Melinda (de Armas). After a joke about a missing man – also a former friend-withbenefits of Melinda – arouses suspicion in his small-town community, Vic seemingly becomes embroiled in a series of murders. ON PAPER, ADRIAN Lyne looked like a safe bet when it came to choosing a director to bring an erotic, psychological thriller like Deep Water to life. Based on the Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name – about a husband and wife, the lovers she takes, and the fallout of a…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 18 / 106 MINS DIRECTOR BJ McDonnell CAST Dave Grohl, Jeff Garlin, Jenna Ortega, Will Forte, Leslie Grossman This meta-horror/comedy from Foo Fighters is a genuine pleasure. It’s largely a one-location film starring non-actors who show varying degrees of comfort in front of the camera. It could so easily have been a disaster. But director BJ McDonnell leans into everyone’s strengths, giving the easy-going Grohl most to do as an ego-monster version of himself. There are extra layers in here for Foo fans, but this doesn’t rely on in-jokes or even on self-parody for its laughs. At heart, it’s a bunch of clueless rockers and an egotistical singer facing an evil beyond their comprehension, and that’s a solid horror concept. In a very, very weird…

★★★★ OUT 18 MARCH / CERT U / 75 MINS DIRECTOR Jennifer Peedom CAST Willem Dafoe (narration) From their birth in mountain glaciers to their death at the mouth of the sea, River is, in a way, a biopic, about the life of bodies of water. Jennifer Peedom’s film combines astonishing cinematography with a poetic, unmistakably resonant voiceover from Willem Dafoe. Impressive drone footage captures the alien landscapes of global riverbeds from a safe distance, before swirling into POV mode for an eye-popping natural rollercoaster. Repetitive rhythms of pontification, followed by crescendoing montages, do make the film ebb in engagement. However a remarkable finale, colliding majestic visuals with a lush, anti-war lament from Radiohead, signals the brutal human damage to the environment, reminding viewers that for these rivers, plundered and…

★★★ OUT 18 FEBRUARY CERT 12A / 101 MINS DIRECTORS Channing Tatum, Reid Carolin CAST Channing Tatum, Jane Adams, Kevin Nash, Q’orianka Kilcher, Ethan Suplee PLOT Former US army ranger Jackson Briggs (Tatum) is desperate to get back to the combat zone. His chance comes in an unusual deal – bring Lulu, a Belgian Malinois military working dog, cross country to the funeral of a fallen comrade and he can return to action. The only problem: Lulu is a feral killing machine. DOG ISN’T THE movie you think it is. From its poster and tagline (“A filthy animal unfit for human company and a… Dog”), the joint directorial debut of Channing Tatum and long-term producing partner Reid Carolin appears to be a misadventures-with-a-mutt movie, full of shaggy shenanigans and heart,…

★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 116 MINS DIRECTOR Ruben Fleischer CAST Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Antonio Banderas, Sophia Ali PLOT When orphaned bartender Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) learns that his long-lost brother has been on the trail of equally long-lost treasure, he teams up with grouchy mercenary Sully (Mark Wahlberg) to find both. Cue much running, shooting and jumping. BACK IN 2011, for a promotional video, Harrison Ford sat down to play the third video game in the Uncharted series. “Fantastic. Oh, incredible,” said the star, as he hammered the X button with his thumb. “So cinematic.” It was a publicity coup – the actual Indiana Jones stepping into the pixelly shoes of his gaming equivalent, Nathan Drake. It was yet more evidence that Uncharted – a brilliantly executed…

★★★ OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / EPISODES SEEN: 3 OF 10 SHOWRUNNERS Akiva Goldsman, Terry Matalas CAST Patrick Stewart, Alison Pill, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, John de Lancie Omnipotent trickster Q (John de Lancie) returns to torment Picard (Patrick Stewart), as Jean-Luc and the crew travel back to 2024 LA. Picard’s second season feels even more aimed at series stalwarts than the first, dropping familiar names (Gul Dukat! General Martok!) and faces (Guinan! Q!) with wild abandon. And while the core crew continue to be excellent company, the story beats are an awkward mixtape of Trek’s greatest hits. Between time travel to the present day, an evil alternate universe, and the return of The Borg, it’s hard to get away from the fact that, while fun, these are all places…

ASH AND EVIL ASH ARMY OF DARKNESS Having screwed up with the Necronomicon once again, hapless Deadite-slayer Ash is plagued by a crazed, cackling version of himself. Cue Bruce Campbell relentlessly beating himself up. MICHAEL AND GARTHE KNIGHT KNIGHT RIDER An infamous Knight Rider episode featured a criminal version of Michael Knight which was, well, David Hasselhoff with a moustache. This guy was called Garthe. Yes, with an ‘e’. ADELAIDE AND RED US In Jordan Peele’s Us, the Wilsons meet an entire family of doppelgängers, emerging to take over the world. Lupita Nyong’o is superb as matriarch Adelaide and terrifying clone Red. CLARK KENT AND EVIL SUPERMAN SUPERMAN III In the midst of a mystic mental breakdown, an unruly Superman splits in two, the good-hearted Clark Kent wafting out of…

THERE’S A SHOT in The Northman that says everything you need to know about the film. Alexander Skarsgård, topless and ripped, axe in hand and wearing a wolf’s head for a helmet, squats down with similar Viking berserkers, about to pillage a village. From up high, a spear hurtles towards them; Skarsgård springs up, grabs it in mid-air, spins around and throws it right back, killing the sap who sent it. This is a huge, violent, bonkers movie. And, because it’s a Robert Eggers joint, heavily steeped in research. That “fight move”, Eggers tells Empire, comes directly from one of the Old Icelandic sagas, hulking historical opuses from around the 12th century. Those Vikings, they loved set-pieces. And, it turns out, one-liners. “The sagas can sometimes read like ’80s action…

INDISPENSABLE HOME ENTERTAINMENT A MARVEL MOVIE from Oscar-winning indie auteur Chloé Zhao was never going to be your typical MCU fare. But Eternals — arriving mere months after her awards-sweeping Nomadland — proved especially polarising, with its existentially troubled cosmic heroes, multi-millennia-spanning timeline, and a surprise cameo from a certain pop megastar. Marvel die-hards and critics alike were befuddled. But as Eternals hit Disney+, its reputation began shifting, audiences discovering more on every rewatch. Zhao sat down with Empire to talk the film’s polarising reception, emotional complexities, and evolving destiny. 2021 was a huge year for you — it began with Nomadland’s Oscar wins, and ended with Eternals. How are you reflecting on it all now? Wow. If you put it like that, how lucky am I? I’m very, very…

DAVID KOEPP KNOWS a thing or two about protagonists. “You gotta give a shit about them,” he says. And he should know. After all, he’s created some of the most memorable and iconic heroes/anti-heroes of the last 30 years, products of a fruitful career as one of Hollywood’s finest screenwriters. Here, Koepp talks us through some of his finest. MADELINE ASHTON DEATH BECOMES HER 1992 One of Koepp’s weirdest films, the blacker-than-midnight Robert Zemeckis comedy revolves around Meryl Streep’s Madeline, an actor who discovers that the secret of eternal life comes at a cost. “She was great fun to write, because she was just a terrible, terrible, selfish person,” laughs Koepp. He admits that with characters like this, studios can sometimes try to sand off their rough edges. “My response…

IF YOU LOVED... REACHER BLOOD DRIVE (PRIME VIDEO/SKY STORE) Prior to landing Reacher, big Alan Ritchson only had a couple of leading TV roles. This one from 2017 is by far the wildest. A camply over-the-top sci-fi romp with Mad Max stylings and lashings of gratuitous violence and nudity, one-series wonder Blood Drive stars Ritchson as an LAPD officer known as ‘Barbie’, who is forced to take part in a deadly car race in which the vehicles somehow run on human blood. It’s set in an alternate version of 1999, and has barely any connection to reality, but it’s a crazy good time and Ritchson’s spectacular physique is deployed to the max. MOST DANGEROUS GAME (ROKU) Reacher showrunner Nick Santora specialises in crime dramas built around big macho dudes doing…

IN 1968, Planet Of The Apes first dropped its climactic bombshell on viewers, Charlton Heston’s stranded astronaut realising with horror that apes had inhabited the Earth. In 2022, we now know how he felt. Since April last year, The Bored Ape Yacht Club — a key player in the world of NFTs — has risen from a baffling, peripheral development on the internet to a multi-million-dollar endeavour endorsed by everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Eminem. The Bored Ape Yacht Club is probably the best, and worst, entry point into NFTs (non-fungible tokens). This limited collection of human-like monkey caricatures is comprised of individual digital artworks, bought via cryptocurrency and owned and traded exclusively online. It’s like Pokémon cards, but for people with a lot of spare cash, and with greater…

Getty Images, Marco Vittur HOW DO YOU bring Disney’s first-ever animated princess into the 21st century? This is the task that Rachel Zegler — the star of the upcoming live-action adaptation of the 1937 classic — has not taken on lightly. “I think it’s going to be really important for young people to see that woman in a position of power,” she tells Empire. The West Side Story breakout star is due to begin shooting the film later this year. Directed by The Amazing Spider-Man’s Marc Webb, the contemporary fairy tale will expand on the music and story of the original film, with new songs from Pasek and Paul, the writing duo behind The Greatest Showman and La La Land. “It’s less about, ‘Someday my prince will come,’ and more,…

★★★★ OUT 4 MARCH CERT 15 / 176 MINS DIRECTOR Matt Reeves CAST Robert Pattinson, Colin Farrell, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, Zoë Kravitz, John Turturro, Andy Serkis, Colin Farrell PLOT Bruce Wayne (Pattinson) is only two years into his tenure as the masked vigilante known as the Batman when a serial killer who calls himself the Riddler (Dano) begins targeting high-profile figures in Gotham City. With the help of Lieutenant Gordon (Wright) and cat burglar Selina Kyle (Kravitz), Bruce must unravel the clues and stop a terrorist attack — while wrestling with his family’s legacy. BATMAN HAS BECOME Bat-ubiquitous. Gotham’s protector is rarely far away from the screen; this year alone, there is the return of Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne, the cinematic debut of Batgirl, and the animated DC League…

★★★★ OUT 18 MARCH/ CERT TBC / 72 MINS DIRECTOR Haider Rashid CAST Adam Ali, Svetlana Yancheva, Erfan Rashid, Mohamed Zouaoui Based on genuine ‘Balkan route’ testimony, Iraqi-Italian Haider Rashid’s third feature is an innovative, immersive insight into the migration crisis. Opening credits exposing collusion between border guards, state governments and nationalist ‘migrant hunters’ pitch the viewer into the ordeal that befalls an Iraqi refugee on the Turkish-Bulgarian frontier. Barely a word is spoken, but Rashid fixes on Kamal in tight close-ups that highlight his isolation and vulnerability and make his encounters with corpses, gunmen, motorists and householders all the more disorientatingly tense. Mancunian Adam Ali is exceptional, as he strives to retain his humanity in the face of pitiless xenophobic depravity.…

★★★ OUT 18 MARCH CERT TBC / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Craig Roberts CAST Mark Rylance, Sally Hawkins, Rhys Ifans PLOT Barrow-In-Furness, 1976. Maurice Flitcroft (Rylance) is a shipyard crane operator facing the employment scrapheap. Inspired by watching the US Open on TV and encouraged by his supportive wife, Jean (Sally Hawkins), Maurice decides to enter the British Open – without ever having picked up a golf club in his life. THE PHANTOM OF The Open is the kind of heart-warming, unlikely true-life tale that has become a mainstay of Brit cinema. Filed under the ‘triumph of the underdog’ sports-film subset – see Eddie The Eagle and Dream Horse – Craig Roberts’ third feature follows the template to a tee, but still comes up with a winning, likeable, zero-to-kinda-hero tale. Adapted…

★★ OUT 18 MARCH / CERT TBC / 120 MINS DIRECTOR Bastian Günther CAST Joe Cole, Carrie Preston, Callie Hernandez, Cullen Moss There is a great movie lurking under the bonnet of this strange, small-town American drama about what the economically deprived will do to win a new truck. A Texan dealership run by Joan (Carrie Preston, a bright spot) hosts an endurance test in which 20 people compete to see who can keep a hand on the truck for the longest, and the winner walks away with its keys. As sleep-deprivation and psychological disturbance kick in, writer/director Günther isolates moments that underline the perversity of the test. One participant keels over, another shuffles off crying. These potent vignettes fail to add up as Günther’s decision to focus on desperate…

★★ OUT NOW (SKY CINEMA) / CERT TBC / 84 MINS DIRECTOR Philip Noyce CAST Naomi Watts, Colton Gobbo, Andrew Chown While out for a jog, widowed mother (Naomi Watts) discovers a mass shooting at her son’s school; like Locke or last year’s The Guilty, the resulting drama is played out – in real time – through phone conversations with unseen callers. A fine conceit on paper; in practice, it’s all a little flat. Director Phillip Noyce finds some tension in the panic of the unfolding events, but it is visually repetitive, spending most of the time with Watts running. That minimalist approach – which could so easily be an asset – instead feels cheap and often contrived. At one point, Watts’ character calls 911 because she “doesn’t want to…

★★★★ OUT 8 APRIL / CERT TBC / 107 MINS DIRECTOR Juho Kuosmanen CAST Seidi Haarla, Yuriy Borisov A love story between strangers on a train: you can hear the comparisons to Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy before it’s even left the station. But there is very little cute about this meet cute, and far less erudite repartee than in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise. In the ’90s, Finnish student Laura (Seidi Haarla) shares a compartment with vulgar Russian skinhead Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov); their first encounter is blunt and offensive (he asks her if she’s a sex worker, she teaches him the Finnish for “Go fuck yourself”). But a mutual respect and even love blossoms. Juho Kuosmanen’s direction is naturalistic and artful, making atmospheric use of the Russian winter setting, but…

★★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 87 MINS DIRECTOR Steven Soderbergh CAST Zoë Kravitz, Devin Ratray, Jaime Camil, Jacob Vargas Steven Soderbergh keeps his postretirement streak going with a characterdriven, cerebral thriller, propelled by an excellent central performance from Zoë Kravitz, as an agoraphobic tech specialist who uncovers a murder, and a sturdily constructed script from David Koepp. In some ways a companion piece to Soderbergh’s Unsane, it’s the excellent, and expertly tense, second half of the movie that really motors with purpose, pitting Angela (Kravitz) against dark forces she never knew existed. A fascinating protagonist, Angela is resourceful, but Soderbergh and Koepp go out of their way to make us realise that might not be enough for her to make it out unscathed by the time we reach…

★★★★★ OUT NOW (BBC iPLAYER) EPISODES VIEWED: 3 OF 6 SHOWRUNNERS Steven Knight, Anthony Byrne CAST Cillian Murphy, Sophie Rundle, Natasha O’Keeffe, Paul Anderson, Finn Cole, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sam Claflin, Amber Anderson, Stephen Graham, Tom Hardy PLOT Criminal gang leader and MP Tommy Shelby (Murphy) tries to piece his life and business back together after the shattering death of his Aunt Polly. But Polly’s son Michael (Cole) blames Tommy for her death and vows revenge. THERE’S A LOT of heavy breathing in Series 6 of Peaky Blinders. The almost subliminal metronomic sound of a woman exhaling punctuates the soundtrack of key scenes, helping to create an atmosphere of impending doom. The breaths arrive in the first scene, which revisits the distressing climax of Series 5, with Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy)…

★★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) EPISODES VIEWED 6 OF 6 SHOWRUNNER Walter Mosley CAST Samuel L. Jackson, Dominique Fishback, Walton Goggins, Cynthia Kaye McWilliams PLOT Atlanta, Georgia. Ptolemy Grey (Jackson) is 91 years old and lives alone in squalor in his tiny apartment, his mind rapidly deteriorating. After teenager Robyn (Fishback) arrives in his life, Grey is introduced to an experimental procedure that could bring all his memories back — and give him a second chance at life. SAMUEL L. JACKSON is one of cinema’s most prolific stars. But his work in TV is vanishingly scarce — almost always limited to guest slots. Well, like buses, wait long enough and you’ll get two major small-screen Jackson roles — Marvel’s Secret Invasion, due later this year, and before that, this adaptation…

“HE MADE ME REALISE THAT BEING FUNNY COULD HAVE POWER” KUMAIL NANJIANI ACTOR/WRITER I WOULD NOT be a comedian or an actor if it weren’t for Ivan Reitman. Ghostbusters looms very large in my life: it’s literally my single favourite thing in the world (along with my wife). It has this anti-authority streak that runs through a lot of Ivan’s work. As a kid, you feel powerless. Watching these people not being taken seriously who then turn out to save New York and the world was a fantasy coming true for me. I think that thematically resonated for me, even if I couldn’t articulate it. Watching Ghostbusters, I realised that being funny could have power. It felt like magic — if they could make scary ghosts funny, they could make…

Alamy, Getty Images AT THE START of production for Miller’s Crossing in January 1989, cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld asked writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen an obvious but necessary question: how did they want the film to look? “It should be a handsome movie,” Ethan told him, distinguishing it instantly from the madcap, camera-whirling antics of the trio’s previous collaboration, Raising Arizona. “A handsome movie about men in hats.” The Coens had long been fans of the gangster genre, one well-known for its wealth of hat-wearing men. They particularly enjoyed the way it was explored by novelist Dashiell Hammett, whose Red Harvest and The Glass Key were the main inspirations for Miller’s Crossing. “He took the genre and used it to tell a story that was interesting about people and other things…

WITH ITS EXTREME violence, a hokey title that most people baulked at, a dark, antiReaganite sense of humour, and big sci-fi ambition, it was kind of a miracle RoboCop ever got made — let alone became a late-’80s sleeper hit that launched the US career of Dutch director Paul Verhoeven. Thirty-five years on, it still rocks, something writer Ed Neumeier (a former junior exec at Universal who co-scripted with music-video director Michael Miner) is relieved to hear. “It held up for you?” he says. “That’s great!” This is thanks mainly to his and Miner’s cracking screenplay — remarkably, their first — which is palpably packed with zingers. So it seems appropriate to ask Neumeier, still good friends with Miner and Verhoeven (with whom he’s making another movie, Young Sinner —…

Illustration: Neil Edwards. Getty Images DANISHKA ESTERHAZY Canadian director Danishka Esterhazy has done a lot of intriguing under-the-radar stuff – films about famous violent incidents (The Trials Of Rasputin, I Was Lorena Bobbitt) and contemporary spins on fairy tales (Suddenly Ever After, H & G) – but first got serious notice via festival screenings of her claustrophobic, dystopian fable Level 16 (2018), set in a cruel institution which raises young girls for some sinister purpose. Recently, she’s worked on the TV series SurrealEstate, about an estate-agents firm specialising in haunted properties, and made two lively, witty, retro-themed horror movies: Slumber Party Massacre (see main column) and The Banana Splits Movie, which reworks the hallucinogenic 1970s kids’ show – imagine the Monkees and the Muppets blended in a telepod – as…

Citizen Kane FROM ITS FIRST shot — craning over a fence to reveal a spooky mansion — to its last — zeroing in on a furnace to reveal ‘Rosebud’ — Citizen Kane is crammed with indelible images. But if you were looking for one shot to stand in for all the brilliance of Orson Welles’ barnstorming 1941 debut, Kane’s electioneering speech at Madison Square Garden might just do the trick. Full of stylistic bravura, cinematic sleight-of-hand, political smarts and a powerhouse of a performance, it is the movie in microcosm. The 1916 gubernatorial rally comes during the section where Kane’s closest friend, Jed Leland (Joseph Cotten), charts the rise and fall of the newspaper magnate’s political ambitions. The crowd-pleasing address was captured on Stage 7 at RKO studios in Culver…

ACROSS 1 Frank, director of It Happened One Night (5) 4 Film in which Jay and Silent Bob first appear (6) 8 State the name of a Harrison Ford character (7) 9 Character featured in The Seventh Seal and Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life (5) 10 A motion picture of 40 minutes or less, or Martin (5) 11 Nationality of Eisenstein and Tarkovsky (7) 13 “Listen” said one of the taglines of this Alejandro González Iñárritu film (5) 15 It describes People, Heart and Rich Asians (5) 18 Comic-book hero played by Jennifer Garner (7) 19 My Fair Lady’s Doolittle (5) 22 Mickey Rourke’s Harry or Simon Pegg’s sergeant? (5) 24 Nicolas Cage would “like to take his...” (4,3) 25 It links Ryan O’Neal and Kylo Ren (6) 26 Gene…

THIS MONTH’S FILM MOMENTS THAT MATTER WHEN YOU JOIN the cast of a movie with the word ‘Jurassic’ in the title, there are certain muscles you need to build up. Your legs, for running from things that are scaly and hungry. Your arms, for hoisting a flashlight or flare. And, of course, your jaw — for enunciating the lengthy, complex names of all the beasts trying to kill you. “I can say Quetzalcoatlus!” laughs DeWanda Wise, who is joining the franchise with new instalment Jurassic World Dominion. “But my focus was more on the character, so I didn’t think a lot about the dinosaurs. Between now and when the movie releases, I will probably refresh my eight-year-old memory.” In case you’re wondering what a Quetzalcoatlus is (let’s not get into…

CHUCK MEEHAN AND brad emmett are aware they got off lightly. After all, people who spend time in the vicinity of Dr. Evil himself typically find themselves eaten by sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads. Instead, the architects of a recent Super Bowl advert reviving the character lived to see another day. “It was surreal,” says Meehan, recalling the moment Mike Myers emerged on-set in full costume, Dr. Evil having not been seen on screen since 2002 (give or take a late-night US TV sketch or two). “My friends and I have been quoting Austin Powers for over 20 years, so to suddenly have his archnemesis right there in front of us was kinda crazy.” The ad — in which the notorious villain vows to fight climate change,…

EARLY IN THE anime short ‘T0-B1’ from the anthology Star Wars: Visions, a robot boy takes a literal leap into his own imagination. In a seamless shot, he crosses the boundary between the real world and fanciful drawings, changing his own shape and the textures around him. Through anime — a style of animation, originating from Japan, that generally features big action, big emotion and highly stylised characters — director Abel Góngora reimagines classic Star Wars mythology via Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy. The iconography is familiar, but the imagery is new. And now Góngora is set to lead a new anime adaptation of Scott Pilgrim for Netflix, executive-produced by Edgar Wright. Those are just two of the many iconic Western properties being reimagined in this way, in a wave largely…

★★★★ OUT 18 MARCH CERT TBC / 114 MINS DIRECTOR Mimi Cave CAST Sebastian Stan, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jojo T. Gibbs, Andrea Bang, Dayo Okeniyi PLOT Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is thoroughly disenchanted with the dating scene when she meets charming stranger Steve (Sebastian Stan) in a supermarket. After agreeing to go away with him for the weekend, despite being warned against it by friend Mollie (Jojo T. Gibbs), she’s shocked to discover Steve has some unusual appetites. “HOPEFULLY IT WILL make for a good story”, Noa (Edgar-Jones) tells best friend Mollie (Gibbs), as she psychs herself up for another first date full of awkward small talk, casual misogyny and ick-inducing sartorial choices. It’s a required approach in the world of modern dating, where fearing for your safety feels as common as…

★★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+) CERT TBC / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Domee Shi CAST Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Hyein Park PLOT Toronto, 2002. Meilin (Chiang) is a confident and contented 13-year-old with top grades, great friends, and a loving relationship with her mum (Oh) and dad (Lee). But soon, bodily changes begin to kick in: when she gets overwhelmed or overexcited, Mei transforms into a giant, fluffy red panda. IN SO MANY ways, Pixar’s Turning Red – the feature debut from Domee Shi, the filmmaker behind Oscar-winning short Bao – is all about asserting a renewed identity. Chinese-Canadian almost-teen Meilin (Rosalie Chiang), aka Mei, has an assured sense of self, right from the off; she’s an unapologetically dorky academic achiever who loves playing the flute, feeding her…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT TBC / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Amy Poehler CAST Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Bette Midler, Carol Burnett Director Amy Poehler’s documentary puts legendary sitcom stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz on first-name terms, reflecting what is clearly hoped to be a more intimate portrait of the partners, in both romance and business, who accidentally changed television. Chronicling the pair’s entire lives, this hurriedly darts through their remarkable achievements via fairly standard doc tropes (archive clips, home video, talking heads). That adherence to conventions leaves it feeling a little generic, and you sometimes wish Poehler – something of a comedy icon herself – had injected more of a point of view. But Lucy and Desi’s story is undeniably captivating and romantic to the end; as Desi himself…

★★★ OUT 1 APRIL / CERT TBC / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Lauren Hadaway CAST Isabelle Fuhrman, Amy Forsyth, Dilone, Jonathan Cherry, Kate Drummond Lauren Hadaway’s stylish, self-assured debut roughly follows the recent trend for thrillers about obsession at the top; swap out the ballet shoes of Black Swan or drums of Whiplash for the oars of a female college rowing team and you’re not far off. Interestingly, Hadaway worked as a sound editor on Damien Chazelle’s film, and she brings an inventive, collage approach to editing and sound design here, reflecting her character’s fanatical quest for rowing perfection. It doesn’t entirely escape the pages of the psychodrama playbook (shots of trembling, bleeding hands are very Whiplash-esque), and character motivations are deliberately murky to a fault, but the nervy, wholly committed…

★★★ OUT 1 APRIL CERT TBC / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Harry Wootliff CAST Ruth Wilson, Tom Burke, Hayley Squires PLOT Thirtysomething Kate (Wilson) works in a dull-as-dishwater benefits office with a string of failed attempts at relationships behind her. Things begin to look up when Blond (Burke) rocks up to her desk and asks her to lunch. Despite knowing that dating a claimant is a sackable offence, Kate is besotted. The same can’t be said for Blond. TRUE THINGS TELLS a sadly familiar tale. Girl meets boy. Boy turns out to be a mendacious bellend. Girl sticks around. Harry Wootliff’s second feature lacks the emotional oomph of her debut, Only You, but delivers an imaginatively shot, well-played, low-energy character-study of a woman struggling to find the things (career, partner, kids)…

★★★★ OUT 8 APRIL / CERT TBC / 105 MINS DIRECTOR Graham Moore CAST Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Dylan O’Brien, Johnny Flynn First-time director Graham Moore chooses simple staging for an impressively constructed whodunnit. It takes place in 1950s Chicago, where modest Englishman Leonard (Mark Rylance) runs a gentlemen’s outfitters popular with local gangsters, who use his back room for covert business. When a Mob boss’ son (Dylan O’Brien) gets wind of a mole, Leonard’s shop becomes the place to trap the informer. Moore uses just one set and broadly drawn characters, but the film’s staginess comes across as a deliberate choice. He sets the scene quickly then twists and reshapes his story across 105 tightly paced minutes, every line and cut chosen with absolute precision. Immensely satisfying, it will…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Kat Coiro CAST Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, Maluma, Sarah Silverman, John Bradley The wedding planner meets a wedding crasher; it feels like the big studio romcom never went away. Pop singer Kat (Jennifer Lopez) is planning a huge onstage wedding to her equally successful boyfriend when he’s caught cheating, and in a moment of madness marries amiable teacher Charlie (Owen Wilson) instead. Naturally, sparks fly. It’s well shot, well cast and gently amusing in the way of such glossy romcoms; light on drama and heavy on beautiful people going for walks, attractively. Sometimes, that’s enough – though there are hints that this could have been sharper than it is. With a catchy soundtrack and those two wildly charismatic leads, in…

★★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+) / EPISODES VIEWED: 3 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Elizabeth Meriwether CAST Amanda Seyfried, Naveen Andrews, William H. Macy Riding in on the crest of recent shows about financial scandal, from Inventing Anna to WeCrashed, The Dropout is a nuanced character study of Elizabeth Holmes, the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Amanda Seyfried plays an ambitious entrepreneur who dropped out of Stanford University to helm a pioneering tech company. The show draws slowly to its inevitable conclusion – the real Holmes is currently awaiting sentencing for defrauding her investors – but not before presenting her trance-like pursuit of power marred by institutionalised misogyny and a deftly handled instance of sexual assault. Textured and tenacious, this is much more than simply a villain’s story.…

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH HAS A BUCKET LIST. Hard to believe that someone who’s played Sherlock Holmes, Khan Noonien Singh, Frankenstein (and The Monster), plus a giant talking dragon, been nominated for two Oscars, and helped save half the universe would have anything left to tick off, but he does. Three things, in fact. “People say, ‘Well, what do you want to do next?’” he tells Empire. “Well, a Western, a horror and a musical. Those are the three things. I guess I’ve done a version of a Western, and now I’ve done a version of a horror.” The version of a Western is, of course, Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog. The version of a horror, though, is perhaps a little harder to guess, given that it’s the latest instalment…

Illustration: Jacey Helen: So, first memories of Nic Cage. Are we fans? Dan: I have difficulty remembering because he was just always there. I would probably say Raising Arizona. Then maybe Wild At Heart. And for some reason, I remember the poster for Zandalee, but I’ve never seen it. Nick: That’s his erotic thriller with Judge Reinhold. Helen: Are they erotic together? Nick: It’s an erotic love triangle. Helen: I haven’t seen that one. Nick: It’s very steamy. My first really vivid memory of Cage is going to see Con Air while I was at school, and we had a lot of cider. I’m pretty sure everyone involved in Con Air was very drunk on cider. Amon: For me, it might have been The Rock. It took a while to…

Will Sharpe’s biopic is a stylish, moving account of the life of its title character, a real-life artist whose paintings of cats made him world-famous. Featuring a Benedict Cumberbatch performance the equal of his Oscar-nominated work in The Power Of The Dog, its unique blend of whimsy and woe is no surprise to fans of Sharpe’s work on the small screen, including Flowers and Landscapers. Here, he takes us through the film’s key moments. RADIO CHATTER Wain’s paintings brought him fame, yet he was troubled by the loss of his wife, severe mental-health issues and an obsession with electricity. Three of those are hinted at in the film’s opening, in which the crackle of a radio brings us H.G. Wells’ voice, espousing the virtues of Wain’s cat paintings, before we…

PICK OF THE MONTH PETITE MAMAN OUT 21 MARCH / CERT U / 73 MINS DVD BR After the success of Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, Céline Sciamma could have done anything. That she chose to go petite, rather than grande, only speaks to her thoughtful sensibilities as a filmmaker. Petite Maman is a small film (only 73 minutes long), but such a singular delight. A sweet, gentle fantasy about a young girl meeting her mother at the same age, it is shot naturally and unfussily, yet still finds a sense of magic. Sciamma cited Hayao Miyazaki as a reference point, and the Ghibli-ness of it all seems so obvious on a second watch: the pastoral setting, the whimsical premise, the lack of an antagonist, the matter-of-fact approach to…

There’s a treat for your ears in Crossword Corner this issue. Because we’ve got two pieces of audio kit that will enhance your movie and TV-viewing, whether at home or out and about. First up is a set of Edifier S880DB speakers (RRP £259.99) – a classic pair which operate via Bluetooth so have no bulky wires to clutter up your shelves. Boasting studiosound quality, they’re a fine addition to any home cinema set-up. Then, for when you’re on the move, we have a pair of Edifier NeoBuds Pro (RRP £119.99), featuring innovative acoustic technology that delivers some of the highest fidelity ever achieved by wireless earphones. To be in with a chance of winning, crack the crossword, solve the anagram and follow the instructions below. THE EDIFIER S880DB SPEAKERS…

Anna Boden: “Mine is Jim Carrey diving into memories as he’s trying to run away from the machine and hide with Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. That whole sequence, with the oversized kitchen table, is just so memorable. It was heavily inspirational for Captain Marvel.” INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY Joel [Jim Carrey] and Clementine [Kate Winslet] are sitting on a sofa. It’s raining outside. CLEMENTINE: Joel? JOEL: Hmm-hmm? CLEMENTINE: I have another idea for this problem. This is a memory of me. The way you wanted to have sex on the couch after you looked down at my crotch- JOEL: [eyes widening after doing just that] What? CLEMENTINE: Joel, the eraser guys are coming here, so… what if you take me somewhere else? Somewhere where I…