Tabla de contenidos para January 2022 en Empire

BOBA FETT IS one of the very few movie characters to have inspired a pasta dish. Namely, ‘Boba Fettuccine’, a hearty heap of carbohydrates that was created by a fan and features red peppers, cream and a small mountain of shredded Romano cheese. Word is, unlike anything that falls into a Sarlacc pit, it takes less than a millennium to digest. Though probably not much less. Such is the lasting power of a minor Star Wars character who became a phenomenon. In 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, bounty hunter Fett stood near a large metal ant in a Usual Suspects-style line-up of intergalactic perps-for-hire. Four decades on, while the large metal ant is yet to get a Disney+ show (we predict it’ll land in 2028), Boba is about to blast…

IN PERHAPS ONE of the more surprising pieces of film news in recent years, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are now confirmed as Barbie and her beau Ken in a live-action Barbie movie, with indie darling Greta Gerwig set to direct. We spoke to longtime Barbie collector Giovanni Madonia, who estimates his doll collection to be “around 4,000”, on what this unlikely toy story might look like. RELATIONSHIP WOES! Barbie and Ken have been going steady since 1961, with Ken always marketed as “Barbie’s boyfriend”. But there has been trouble in paradise. “They split up in 2004,” explains Madonia. “Barbie had a new boyfriend, and Mattel made a new doll.” (Blaine, an Australian surfer, was released in 2004.) “Then Ken had a makeover, and they got back together.” Could this…

If you’ve seen Marvel’s latest, and had the wisdom to stick around past the credits, you’ll know that a brand-new Eternal was introduced. You’ll also know that, in rather a big surprise, pop crooner and sometime actor Harry Styles is playing said Eternal: Eros, brother of Thanos. If it was a surprise for you, it made total sense to director Chloé Zhao. “For me, it was a package deal,” she tells Empire. “I never once said, ‘Here’s the character, let’s find the actor.’ It’s gotta be Harry. And then we do Eros. That’s how I pitched it to Kevin [Feige].” Though only appearing briefly in the dying minutes of the film, Eros (and by association his megalomaniacal purple brother) left a big impression in Zhao’s mind; just his appearance raises…

Alamy, Getty Images, Shutterstock Hi, Henry! You put together an impressive gaming PC during lockdown… That’s been a long-term dream of mine. And I thought, “Well, I have the time.” Although computer parts were incredibly hard to get a hold of during the pandemic. Apparently everyone had the same idea. But I got what I needed. And I’ve got plenty of use out of that computer. What are you playing on it at the moment? I’ve dipped into Assassin’s Creed Valhalla — the graphics are extraordinary on that. I am always playing Total War: Warhammer II. And Warhammer III is coming out soon! Everyone who knows me will lose me to that. Kal [Cavill’s dog] won’t get walked anymore, or fed [laughs]. I’ll be playing lots of that. And then…

Which Dean Stockwell will you remember? For many people, it was all about Quantum Leap; his time-travelling hologram Al remains indelible. But the late actor’s career had more phases than the moon. As a cherub-faced child star of the ’40s, crumpling his features on cue — Elia Kazan told him to imagine dead puppies — he racked up the credits, including Kim alongside Erroll Flynn and Anchors Aweigh with Frank Sinatra. As a scruffily handsome twentysomething of the ’50s, he was never quite a leading man, but beguiling in the Leopold and Loeb thriller Compulsion and Jack Cardiff’s Sons & Lovers. The ’70s reduced him to bit parts, B-movies and Dennis Hopper’s Peruvian psych-out The Last Movie. By the ’80s, he was a New Mexico realtor. That was, until David…

Getty Images ON HIS LOVE OF GHOSTBUSTERS “When I was three or four, my mom showed me Ghostbusters. I didn’t understand all the jokes and I remember being scared of the library ghost. I watched it every year growing up and it became funnier and funnier. When I was auditioning for this, I had no idea what the movie was. The part was just labelled ‘Boy’… Then they released the teaser trailer and I thought, ‘Oh shoot, we’re doing Ghostbusters!’ I found out I got the role about a week after the teaser came out.” ON PODCAST “Jason Reitman wanted him to be really enthusiastic and curious, but also have an emotional side… Honestly, I’m kinda like Podcast. I’m always happy about stuff. I don’t believe in the conspiracy theories…

★★★★ OUT 26 NOVEMBER / CERT TBC / 92 MINS DIRECTORS Harri Shanahan, Siân A. Williams PARTICIPANTS Debbie Smith, Karen Fisch, Jane Campbell Rebel Dykes tells the little-known story of friends who met in the ’80s and bonded over art, punk and, most importantly, queer women’s rights. Made by a team of women and non-binary artists making a first foray into film, this accomplished documentary includes revealing eye-witness accounts and testimonies from those at the heart of the movement. The film emphasises how they shook the core of Westminster, be it via protests against Section 28, which outlawed the “promotion of homosexuality” in schools, or demands for action around HIV. While archive footage used is at times raw, it only serves to emphasise the DIY nature of this revolutionary group…

★★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / CERT TBC / 115 MINS DIRECTOR Miguel Sapochnik CAST Tom Hanks, Caleb Landry Jones, Seamus There are just three cast members in this simultaneously bleak and uplifting redemptive drama: Tom Hanks, a CG robot (Caleb Landry Jones via performance capture) and a dog. It needs nothing more. Hanks is Finch, a scientist just about surviving life in a world that has become near-uninhabitable after the destruction of the ozone layer. Radiation will eventually kill him, but before he goes he resolves to build a robot capable of looking after the one thing he still cares about: his dog, Goodyear. Miguel Sapochnik, best known for directing epic battles in Game Of Thrones, shows he does just as well with small moments, bringing touching truth to…

★★★★ OUT 30 NOVEMBER (NETFLIX) / CERT TBC / 90 MINS DIRECTOR Patrick Imbert CAST (VOICES) Lazare Herson-Macarel, Éric Herson-Macarel, Damien Boisseau The Summit Of The Gods is a mighty feat of adaptation, distilling five volumes of the manga by late artist Jiro Taniguchi and writer Yumemakura Baku into a 90-minute film. Though it initially stumbles over some clumsy exposition, director Patrick Imbert neatly maintains the core of the man-versus-nature story. The animation embraces naturalism, combining simple but expressive drawings with nuanced character acting. That meticulous detail in its depiction of its natural landscapes helps sell its thrilling set-pieces and its characters’ obsession with Everest — the gargantuan rock-faces themselves feel as though they are living, breathing titans. A mesmerising combination of incredible scale and quiet contemplation.…

★★★ OUT 10 DECEMBER / CERT 15 / 107 MINS DIRECTOR Valdimar Jóhannsson CAST Noomi Rapace, Hilmir Snær Guðnason, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson “What the fuck is this?” someone utters halfway through Lamb. They’re not wrong to ask. Valdimar Jóhannsson’s slow, absurdist quasi-horror flick sees Icelandic farmers María (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) adopt a child with the head of a lamb discovered in their flock. After a slow, patience-testing start, Lamb develops into an increasingly engaging exploration of nature-versus-nurture ideas as Maria and Ingvar raise ‘Ada’ as their own, the happy scene threatened by the arrival of Ingvar’s wayward brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson). In the final third, the film enters enjoyably creepier territory — cue some impressive creature FX — and Rapace’s compelling performance as the new…

★★★ OUT 26 NOVEMBER / CERT 15 / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Russell Owen CAST Tom Hughes, Kate Dickie, Gaia Weiss Atmospheric and assured — if somewhat unsubtle at times — Russell Owen’s rural chiller makes the most of both its remote location and an exceptional performance from Tom Hughes (TV’s Victoria). As a traumatised widower seeking solace by working as a shepherd on an isolated and increasingly frightening island, Hughes shoulders the story’s psychological themes with a restraint that is at potent odds with the film’s full-tilt Gothic aesthetic. Some elements, such as Richard Stoddard’s evocative cinematography and Callum Donaldson’s haunting soundscape, work better than others; the tired narrative cliché of a dead wife being motivation for a male character to embark on a journey of the soul should itself…

GHOSTING The classic comeback gambit: train up really, really hard in an obscure Force power (or don’t, if you’re Anakin Skywalker), and just will your consciousness to continue in a shimmery, friendly-ghost form that’s in no way weird, creepy, or a good basis for a Mike Flanagan mini-series. Ben Kenobi was the first to pull it off (much to Alec Guinness’ annoyance), but he was swiftly followed by most of his Jedi buddies. Not Mace Windu, though. He clearly didn’t get the Force-memo. SALVAGING If you’re a dark side dabbler, resurrection’s a bit more messy, and a bit more techy (just ask Anakin). Take Darth Maul. After being bisected and thrown down a shaft, he got a new lower half in the form of robot spider-legs, which were later thankfully…

The word “vampire” isn’t used once in Mike Flanagan’s seven-part mini-series Midnight Mass. Yet, on the sparsely populated island of Crockett, there’s much jugular-gnawing, an epidemic of unnatural youthfulness, and even a fanged, bat-winged monster. There is a good reason for the notable absence of the V-word. To Father Paul Hill (Hamish Linklater), who smuggles the aforementioned bat-thing into this Catholic community and mixes its tainted blood with the communion wine, this is not some demonic affliction. It is a gift from God. In his faith-blinded eyes, the sky-stalking predator he’s uninterred is nothing less than an angel. One which has given him a rather unorthodox blessing. Father Paul believes he’s doing the best for his parishioners, curing their ailments with his spiked wine and, as encouraged by his zealous…

IT ARRIVED IN September, with little fanfare. Four weeks later, Squid Game was a global phenomenon: beamed into 142 million households, it was the first South Korean show to top Netflix’s streaming charts in more than 90 countries. The show’s premise is as captivating as it is crazy. A group of debt-ridden individuals are invited to play a bunch of children’s games like ‘Red Light, Green Light’. Win, and you’re guaranteed a cash prize of millions. Lose, and you’re ‘eliminated’, which in Squid Game-world means instantly killed. What’s made creator Hwang Dong-hyuk’s show so popular? Firstly, many of the characters’ predicaments are relatable: viewers saw parallels with the financial crash of 2008, and with societal inequalities that were made starker by the pandemic. Also, it cleverly combines our obsessions with…

AS DANIEL CRAIG’S swan song hurtles towards its finale, 007 seems, as ever, about to triumph. But then… well. Rami Malek’s Safin infects him with nanobots and, facing eternal misery thanks to the virus leaving Bond unable to touch his wife and child ever again, he accepts his fate, going out in a hail of missiles. Here, Team Empire thrash out 2021’s most heart-stopping cinematic conclusion. Beth Webb (Contributing Editor): I’d been pretty tired of the franchise, so the fact that it had this really emotional pay-off was really rewarding. I like Bond at his most vulnerable anyway. I liked him in Casino Royale, naked and bound to a chair. Daniel Craig has continued with that vulnerability throughout, and with this, he wasn’t a Bond that was afraid to die.…

Illustration: Neil Edwards. Getty Images With a solid track record as a producer — A Horrible Way To Die, Starry Eyes, Cheap Thrills and the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune — Travis Stevens shifted to writing and directing with the socially-conscious ghost story Girl On The Third Floor. In keeping with this month’s theme, he has now made a gruesome vampire picture, Jakob’s Wife, starring Larry Fessenden and Barbara Crampton, both overdue for Cult Hero acclaim. Anne (Crampton), dissatisfied wife of a smugly paternalist pastor (Fessenden), considers having an affair with an old boyfriend... but a cloaked, fanged shadow falls on her and instead she turns into a vampire who ropes in her now-subdued husband as she seeks who transformed her. Crampton (Re-Animator) is terrific as a mature, violently sexy monster diva,…

MULHOLLAND DR. OUT 6 DECEMBER / CERT 18 / 147 MINS Mulholland Drive — that famous LA road, high in the Hollywood Hills, synonymous with the most monied mansions of Tinseltown — plays host to a car crash. The sole survivor (Laura Elena Harring) recalls nothing of her past life. A naive starlet (Naomi Watts) helps her remember. But who are they really? What even is real? And why is a cowboy offering casting advice? The mysteries of Mulholland have only deepened in the 20 years since release — which is exactly how David Lynch, a filmmaker seemingly working directly from his subconscious, would want it. It is better to watch it as a cinematic dream, forged in Hollywood’s midnight hour: a surreal, sensual hall of mirrors that only improves…

COMMENT OF THE MONTH A GRAND DIE OUT One scene in No Time To Die has been rattling around my brain since I saw it: the inclusion of a few seconds of The Wrong Trousers. Nothing is an accident in a film like NTTD, so what does it mean? I think it’s there as a subtle foreshadowing of a critical part of the plot. On young Madeleine’s TV we see Feathers McGraw captured in a milk bottle — clearly a nod to Blofeld held captive in his little jail trolley. Gromit therefore equals James Bond himself, with Wallace as his M. TOM NICHOLSON, WIGAN Now this is how you solve the New Bond conundrum. ‘Moonraker 2: Wensleydale Is Forever’, anyone? Picture house Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus…

COLIN IN BLACK AND WHITE IS A PAINFUL AND JOYOUS CALL FOR AUTHENTICITY OVER THE LAST decade, Ava DuVernay has established herself as a vital voice in Hollywood. With Selma, she brought out the human side of civil-rights icon Martin Luther King Jr, scoring a Best Picture nomination in the process. With powerful drama When They See Us, she did the same for the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Hispanic teens who were wrongfully convicted of assault and rape, and sent to prison. And now with Colin In Black And White, she turns her gaze to Colin Kaepernick. The story of the former NFL athlete who made headlines by refusing to stand for the national anthem in protest at oppression of Black people and people of colour…

NOBODY Bob Odenkirk’s rebirth as a grizzled action hero was cemented in this claustrophobic public transport punch-up (see page 76). Guns, knives and broken bottles are used — but the best weapon is surely the ‘Stop Requested’ cord, used as a strangulation device. SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS Marvel’s newest superhero lets rip on a San Francisco bendy bus. Even when the bus gets split in two by a bloke with a sword for an arm, Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) still shows off some killer Jackie Chan moves. Illustration: Russell Moorcroft ETERNALS A red London double-decker gets flipped by a Deviant, before being transformed into petals by Sersi (Gemma Chan). This is what happens when you ignore the “Do not talk to the bus driver whilst the vehicle…

INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996) The aliens who terrorise Earth just in time for a US national holiday ultimately destroy over 100 major cities; according to the official tie-in novel Independence Day: Crucible, roughly half the world’s population dies in the so-called ‘War of 1996’, before Jeff Goldblum saves the day with his floppy disk. BODY COUNT:3 BILLION GODZILLA (1998) Emmerich’s critically maligned take on the giant lizard is a relatively bloodless affair. Godzilla largely smashes up more buildings than he does people, laying waste to downtown New York; if some of the reviews are to be believed, it’s Toho’s legacy that’s the biggest victim here. BODY COUNT: 500-1,000 THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004) It’s the climatechange warning nobody listened to! Emmerich’s superstorm freezes most of the Northern Hemisphere — leaving most…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 127 MINS DIRECTOR Jane Campion CAST Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee PLOT 1925. Polar-opposite brothers George (Plemons) and Phil (Cumberbatch) run a successful ranch in Montana. When George suddenly marries widow Rose (Dunst) and brings her home, resentful Phil decides to alienate her and son Pete (Smit-McPhee). IT’S BEEN 12 years since pioneering filmmaker Jane Campion last released a feature. Now, the writer-director returns with a similar energy to her lauded, deeply sensual Palme d’Or-winning The Piano, this time funnelled into a frontier Western adapted from Thomas Savage’s 1967 cult novel. Like The Piano, The Power Of The Dog feels like a contemporary drama in spite of its 1920s setting, and ruminates on the same romantic taboos, repression and visceral expressions…

★★★ OUT 26 NOVEMBER (CINEMAS/SKY CINEMA) / CERT TBC / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Gil Kenan CAST Henry Lawfull, Toby Jones, Sally Hawkins, Stephen Merchant, Jim Broadbent Adapted from Matt Haig’s 2015 bestseller by Monster House helmer Gil Kenan, A Boy Called Christmas is a hackneyed but likeable Santa Claus origin story. After his father (Michiel Huisman) goes AWOL on a search for a fabled city of elves (no, not Stockport), a young boy, Nikolas (Henry Lawfull), sets off in hot pursuit, joined by a stubborn reindeer and a smart-aleck mouse (a fun Stephen Merchant). It’s familiar stuff — wicked aunts, close shaves, set-pieces involving kids screaming — and the dialogue is strewn with aphorisms (“To see something, you have to believe in it”). But Kenan directs with élan — his…

★★★★ OUT 10 DECEMBER / CERT TBC / 126 MINS DIRECTOR Maria Sødahl CAST Andrea Bræin Hovig, Stellan Skarsgård Norwegian filmmaker Maria Sødahl’s Hope is a beautifully realised character study about the way a terminal illness reverberates around a family. On Christmas Eve, choreographer Anja (Andrea Bræin Hovig) discovers the reoccurrence of the cancer she believed she’d seen off, plus a new malignant tumour. Formally it’s unadventurous, but Sødahl’s clear-eyed treatment uses Anja’s illness as a prism to examine her atrophying marriage to theatre director Tomas (Stellan Skarsgård), the sense of chances missed, lives not led. There are no big breakdowns or showdowns — numerous scenes of medical consultations and bureaucratic red tape are perfect in their matter-of-factness — it’s just Skarsgård and Hovig working wonders in carefully observed vignettes…

★★★ OUT 3 DECEMBER / CERT 15 / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Luke Holland PARTICIPANTS Karl Hollander, Otto-Ernst Duscheleit, Hans Werk Distilling 300 interviews to just 94 minutes, Final Account focuses on the lower levels of the Nazi machine, the Wehrmacht soldiers, SS officers and prison-camp guards who carried out Hitler’s orders. Luke Holland’s film throws up some terrifying testimonies — such as the descriptions of the firefighters who did nothing as synagogues burned — and captures a complete lack of self-responsibility, as some of the military men dance around culpability while proudly showing off war memorabilia. But the filmmaking is rote — mournful cello scoring, archive material used as padding — and a lack of connective tissue between participants leaves you wanting much-needed context.…

★★★ OUT 26 NOVEMBER / CERT 18 / 106 MINS DIRECTOR Radu Jude CAST Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Olimpia Malai Romanian’s entry into next year’s Oscars, Bad Luck Banging… is a genuine oddity. Director Radu Jude takes a simple premise — teacher Emi’s (Katia Pascariu) career is threatened by a leaked sex tape — and laces it with gonzo porn, social satire and an avant-garde alphabetical interlude (we learn “blowjob” is the most looked-up word in the online dictionary), before climaxing with Emi facing parents baying for blood. The sections never really coalesce and Jude’s approach — often shifting from Emi to observe pandemic-hit Bucharest — thwarts engagement, but Bad Luck Banging… has funny moments, Pascariu is a distinctive lead, and the ambition is exciting. Fingers crossed the Academy love…

★★★★ OUT 17 DECEMBER / CERT TBC / 160 MINS DIRECTOR Mark Cousins PARTICIPANT Mark Cousins Mark Cousins’ 15-episode TV documentary series from 2011, The Story Of Film: An Odyssey, was a poetic opus chronicling the history of our favourite artform. His update, in the form of a 160-minute film about cinema in the 21st century, inevitably has a tacked-on quality. Yet, like the 16th champagne cocktail of the night, it is still full of sparkling uplift. Cousins has a flair for match-cutting edits between films made decades apart to illustrate, for example, how the opening of Patricio Guzmán’s The Pearl Button echoes Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. His scholarship draws from high and low, commercial and arthouse, Hollywood, Bollywood and Wakaliwood, and he tips his hat to the…

★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / EPISODES VIEWED 5 OF 8 DIRECTOR Michael Showalter CAST Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Kathryn Hahn, Casey Wilson Based on a true-life podcast of the same name, this peculiar show has Will Ferrell as Marty, an anxious, lonely man who goes to a therapist, Ike (Paul Rudd). Marty thinks Ike is turning his life around, little realising that Ike is beginning to manipulate Marty for his own gain. It’s a set-up with lots of potential but the execution results in a show that is neither funny enough to be a comedy, nor surprising enough to be a drama. Casting the ever-charming Rudd as a ruthless schemer is inspired, except Ike is written with no charm, giving Rudd little to play with. Ferrell does his best…

Oscar night can be prone to the odd surprise, but there was an air of happy inevitability about Daniel Kaluuya’s Best Supporting Actor win this year. After scoring his first Academy nomination for Get Out in 2018, we all knew it was a matter of when, not if. Of course, that didn’t make Kaluuya becoming the first Black British actor to win an Academy Award any less special. The speech that followed, in which he showed love to everyone from Fred Hampton to his mum and dad — “They had sex. It’s amazing!”, eliciting a memorable reaction-shot from his family — was arguably the best moment of the evening. It’s not hard to see why a total of 24 awards, also including a Golden Globe and a BAFTA, were freshly…

2021 WAS THE year when Ted Lasso — the Apple TV+ comedy starring Jason Sudeikis as an American soccer coach who transforms a small London club — became an Emmy-winning juggernaut. It was also the year when Brett Goldstein became the show’s fanfavourite. As Roy Kent, the gruff, sweary but sensitive ex-player-turned-coach, Goldstein — also a writer and co-producer on the show — is an utter joy, winning a Best Supporting Actor Emmy. When Empire catches up with the British star (he’s in Los Angeles, helping write Ted Lasso Season 3), evidence of how much Goldstein’s life has changed is everywhere. How was Halloween for you this year? Did you see any Roy Kents roaming the streets? It’s particularly mad over here because hundreds of people were dressed as Ted…

IF AT ANY POINT you’ve pondered what’s been missing from our lives for most of this past year, the answer lies about half an hour into Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. Bathed in golden light, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) strides forth from a monolithic starship, framed by the tendrils of Lady Jessica Atreides’ (Rebecca Ferguson) gossamer robe snapping in the wind. When Duke Leto and his retinue set foot on Dune’s desert planet for the first time, the sheer majesty of the vista (not to mention the wail of Hans Zimmer’s space bagpipes) is enough to bring tears to the eye. Because the last 12 months, largely spent deepening the buttock crevasses in our respective sofas, have seen us sorely starved of spectacle. From the lush coastal bluffs of Caladan, to…

.45 (2006) WHAT IS IT? A Hell’s Kitchen-set thriller starring Milla Jovovich and Angus Macfadyen as small-time crooks. Macfadyen plays Big Al, who wears a jacket with ‘Big Al’ on it. WHY THE NUMBERS? There are lots of guns in the film, and.45 is a popular calibre. 81/2 (1963) WHAT IS IT? A surrealist comedy about a depressed Italian director trying to make a sci-fi movie. Has a bit with clowns and a rocket ship. WHY THE NUMBERS? The working title was ‘The Beautiful Confusion’, until it was changed to this reference to how many movies director Federico Fellini had made. 21 (2008) WHAT IS IT? A rip-roaring romp about MIT students who decide to fleece Las Vegas casinos. Has a line-up of surprisingly glamorous maths geniuses. WHY THE NUMBERS?…

THIS MONTH FIVE GREAT CHRISTMAS SOUNDTRACKS 1. MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS Is there anything that brings a festive tear to the eye more than Judy Garland singing ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ to Margaret O’Brien’s Tootie in Vincente Minnelli’s ’40s classic? As Tootie gazes mournfully through the window at the ‘snow people’ outside, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane’s spinetingling song tugs mercilessly at the heartstrings of generations. “Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow. Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow...” Incidentally, the original lyric opened with the ultra-bleak couplet, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last,” but Garland and Minelli begged for a more upbeat rewrite, which they got — thank heavens! 2. THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL “Paul…

MICHAEL MYERS. JASON Voorhees. Ghostface. If you want to create an iconic horror villain, it helps to have a mask that conjures fear in seconds — something simple, powerful, and just waiting to be worn by next year’s trick-or-treaters. So when Scott Derrickson left the Doctor Strange sequel to plot horror comeback The Black Phone — an adaptation of Joe Hill’s novella, in which youngster Finney (Mason Thames) is kidnapped by serial killer ‘The Grabber’ (Ethan Hawke) and plots his escape with spiritual intervention from the ghosts of The Grabber’s previous victims — he knew he wanted a killer facial covering for this bleakest of baddies. “There is no mask in the original story,” the director tells Empire. In Hill’s tale, the killer’s a clown daubed in make-up. Here, he’s…

IN 1986, THEN-film student Joanna Hogg made Caprice, her graduation film with then-unknown actor Tilda Swinton. In 2021, Hogg’s semi-autobiographical sequel, The Souvenir Part II, sees Swinton’s daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne, play Julie, a proxy for Hogg, as she directs her own graduation piece. It’s funny how things turn out, Hogg says. “This hall of mirrors in this connection of Tilda as my friend, the person in my graduation film now in my films currently — it wasn’t designed like that,” she says. There are many meta-layers to the project: The Souvenir Part II is largely about the making of a film entitled ‘The Souvenir’. But while it participates in the classic tradition of films-within-films, it’s the personal, autobiographical quality that’s key. “The film that Julie makes is part of…

IT’S BEEN RAINING cats and dogs for Benedict Cumberbatch — cinematically, anyway. Not content with playing the eccentric, moggie-loving titular artist in The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain, the actor donned his shaggiest chaps to portray a cruel rancher in Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog. Throw in a few episodes of What If…?, where Cumberbatch got to play a darker, more tragic version of his Sorcerer Supreme, and it’s been quite the year. Here he talks about his latest biopic, Oscar buzz and his take on the important cat/dog question. Was Louis Wain a passion project? It really became [one]. I was taken immediately by the endurance of the man. He wasn’t really built for this world and didn’t have an emotional language to understand what was happening…

Chris Hewitt (Executive Editor) So, this is a spin-off of movies in which toys come to life when people aren’t looking. But also, the world of Toy Story around that always seemed grounded and realistic. Now we’re told there’s an astronaut who battled aliens? Mike Cathro (Deputy Art Director): But isn’t this a movie that’s in the Toy Story world of Buzz Lightyear? It’s not in the actual Toy Story world? John Nugent (News Editor): I’m a bit confused. Is Buzz Lightyear a real person in the Toy Story universe? Or is he a fictional character in their universe, and this is like the live-action sci-fi movie that Andy watches? Chris: My take on this is it’s a biopic of the guy who inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy range. Alex…

★★★ OUT 26 NOVEMBER / CERT TBC / 80 MINS DIRECTOR Reggie Yates CAST Elliot Edusah, Jordan Peters, Reda Elazouar While the title would suggest a tale of fierce marauders on choppy ocean waters, Pirates swaps sailboats for Peugeots in a lighthearted crusade through London. Set on New Year’s Eve 1999, it follows friends Cappo (Elliot Edusah), Two Tonne (Jordan Peters) and Kidda (Reda Elazouar) on a desperate road trip to find tickets for the clubbing event of the millennium. TV presenter Reggie Yates’ feature debut shamelessly plays on ’90s nostalgia with references to sat navs and ‘Goo-Goo’ (now better known as Google). Squeezing in punchlines and funny solo renditions of the Backstreet Boys comes at a price, as Pirates isn’t able to fully flesh out its charming cast’s individual…

★★★ OUT 3 DECEMBER / CERT TBC / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Aml Ameen CAST Aml Ameen, Aja Naomi King, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Marianne Jean-Baptiste With winter romcom Boxing Day, British actor Aml Ameen turns his attention to writing and directing with mixed results. Taking inspiration from Ameen’s own life, the plot sees Melvin (Ameen) bring his American fiancée Lisa (Aja Naomi King) back to the UK to meet his relatives for Christmas, only to run head-first into family drama and his ex-girlfriend Georgia (Little Mix’s Leigh-Anne Pinnock, impressive in her acting debut). The love triangle between Melvin, Lisa and Georgia is suitably prickly, and the cultural details (Melvin’s family are Caribbean) are lovingly captured by Ameen. But strong performances by the talented ensemble can only compensate so much for undercooked subplots…

★★★★ OUT 6 DECEMBER / CERT TBC / 90 MINS DIRECTOR Mariem Pérez Riera PARTICIPANTS Rita Moreno, Eva Longoria, George Chakiris Rita Moreno has lived one helluva life. Mariem Pérez Riera’s conventional but engrossing portrait charts her journey from Puerto Rico to MGM contract player and EGOT winner, mainly through Moreno’s own wise, funny, candid words. Moreno pulls no punches — there are tough sections here on being raped by her agent, an abusive relationship with Marlon Brando, a suicide attempt, a controlling marriage — but these recollections are leavened by her wit and insights in joining up the dots of her life. With contributions from practically every Latinx entertainer imaginable (Longoria! Estefan! Miranda!), Riera uses Moreno’s career to highlight the iniquities of showbiz for both women and POC, but…

DIRECTOR Guy Ritchie CAST Jason Statham, Holt McCallany, Niamh Algar, Scott Eastwood, Andy Garcia PLOT After a cash-truck heist ends with three corpses on the asphalt, a new employee (Statham) shows up to drive the armoured cars. His name is H, he’s very capable, and even more mysterious. But as the day known as Black Friday approaches, bringing over $150 million into the depot, his motivations will become clear. GUY RITCHIE’S ALADDIN may have been a billion-dollar earner on its release in 2019, but it seems beloved by few. Ritchie’s first wish following that Disney tentpole’s release, then, was to return to the type of swaggering, populated-by-men-with-silly-names crime flick with which he made his bones: The Gentlemen was awash with people called things like Lord George and Hammy, gabbing like…

★★★★ OUT 15 DECEMBER (NETFLIX) / CERT TBC / 130 MINS DIRECTOR Paolo Sorrentino CAST Filippo Scotti, Toni Servillo, Teresa Saponangelo, Luisa Ranieri There’s an explosion of colour in The Hand Of God, director Paolo Sorrentino’s brazenly autobiographical love letter to 1980s Naples, where his fictional avatar Fabietto Schisa (Filippo Scotti), grappling with his adolescence, finds hope and salvation in the arrival of Diego Maradona. The first half is adorably breezy — Italy is to die for, and familial banter takes no prisoners. Then, though, tragedy punctures the bliss, and as Sorrentino reckons with the childhood experiences that changed him forever, Fabietto learns life lessons from an eclectic parade of unlikely role models. It’s not the emotional hard-hitter it might like to be, but there’s no doubting the huge, broken…

★★★ OUT 26 NOVEMBER / CERT TBC / 115 MINS DIRECTOR Oliver Stone PARTICIPANTS John R. Turnheim, Henry Lee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr In an electric surge of news footage, Cronkite mopping his brow, Oswald playing the patsy, and the undiminished cosmic shock of Zapruder-cam, it all comes flooding back. Who can forget the day they saw JFK? In this beguiling but hardly revelatory sister doc, Oliver Stone has gone back, and to the left, of his masterful 1991 thriller, using declassified minutiae to double down on his multiple-shooter theory, his magic bullet, his cabals of CIA-backed Cuban hotheads. “Massive inconsistencies,” he whispers, shaking his head as unwavering experts (of mixed legitimacy) clamour over counterfeit autopsies and book-depository stairwells. It’s all familiar, but in an age of the true-crime podcast…

★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT 12A / 120 MINS DIRECTOR Lin-Manuel Miranda CAST Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Vanessa Hudgens An adaptation of Rent creator Jonathan Larson’s autobiographical musical, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut charts Larson’s (Andrew Garfield) early days as a composer, fretting over turning 30 and trying to get his dystopic musical Superbia off the ground while slowly alienating all around him. The score of piano-driven rock songs feels samey, it offers a first-base view of creativity and Miranda’s staging does little to make them soar, but some of the numbers — ‘Boho Days’, ‘Why” — come off smartly, the whole thing courses with an infectious love of musical theatre and it gets better when it moves into its more serious final third. Given that, if he decides to…

★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 10 OF 10 SHOWRUNNER André Nemec CAST John Cho, Mustafa Shakir, Daniella Pineda Rather than expanding on the hit anime’s inspirations, the new Cowboy Bebop is mostly an homage to Cowboy Bebop, which begs the question: what’s the point? Mustafa Shakir and John Cho’s fun performances aren’t enough to rescue it from its aimlessness, nor its ugly production values. Despite remaking the series almost verbatim — following a group of interplanetary bounty hunters — Cowboy Bebop misunderstands the subtext of the original, only expanding on its least-interesting narrative elements. Instead of feeling like a fun remix, it’s at best a just-okay cover version, and for the most part an out-of-tune rendition of the greatest hits.…

RALPH MACCHIO CAN’T BELIEVE HE’S HERE. Why would he? It doesn’t make sense. Thanks to his lead role as Daniel LaRusso in 1984’s The Karate Kid, he was one of the biggest stars in the world at 22, and for a handful of years stayed that way before the industry crane-kicked him in the face. Yet after a spell on the sidelines he’s now co-headlining one of the most popular TV shows in the world: Cobra Kai, which has brought LaRusso back to the masses. After all of Macchio’s “ups and downs”, he never anticipated this. “Here I am now and it’s just crazy,” he says. “Crazy!” Cobra Kai is almost impossibly successful, resonating with multiple generations. Almost 129 million people have watched the debut episode on YouTube, where it…

KATHRYN HAHN IS a scene-stealer. She has spent almost two decades making small yet impactful appearances in some of the biggest shows and movies around, from Parks And Recreation and Step Brothers to this year’s The Shrink Next Door, her golden comedy timing and exuberance often overshadowing, well, everything else. So it was practically inevitable that she would be tapped to play the ultimate supporting role in Marvel’s WandaVision Disney+ show, opposite Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda/Scarlet Witch: unassuming neighbour Agnes, who was hiding a magical secret. Agnes was, in fact, malevolent sorceress Agatha Harkness, and bringing spark and sardonic wit to every episode, Hahn turned her into a beloved MCU antagonist. As she tells Empire from her home in Los Angeles, this was more than just another role: it was a…

Murray Bartlett is on a semi-closed set in Hawaii with his pants down. A prop guy is waiting in a nearby closet for the actor to squat over an open suitcase. The take starts, Murray positions himself theatrically, and the prop guy pops out and drops a makeshift poo into the suitcase. “It’s something that you would have never imagined yourself doing,” Murray cheerfully tells Empire from his home in Cape Cod. The scene from Mike White’s luxury-resort satire The White Lotus, which Bartlett says was “awkward, bizarre, but also super-fun” to shoot, was one of the most talked-about TV moments of 2021. In the finale’s final act, Bartlett’s harried resort manager Armond — a fan favourite — is about to get fired, and decides to take revenge via a…

As Loki progressed, speculation grew about what the Disney+ series was slowly building towards in its finale. Who is the man pulling everyone’s strings? And what will happen when Loki and Sylvie confront him? It turned out that many fans had predicted correctly: it was Kang. Or rather, a mellow variant of the time-travelling Marvel villain, introduced while he’s chomping on an apple, seemingly happy for the company. To quote the man himself, “Not what you were expecting, hmm? Don’t tell me I’m a disappointment.” As played by Jonathan Majors, Kang — or, as he’s called in the finale, ‘He Who Remains’ — was far from a disappointment. If Loki as a whole is the talky-talkiest content the MCU has ever produced, then Kang is the epitome of it. For…

10/1/42 HILL IS BORN IN LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA (HE’S NOW 79) 1975 THE YEAR OF HIS DIRECTORIAL DEBUT, HARD TIMES $154 MILLION THE AMOUNT GROSSED WORLDWIDE BY HIS BIGGEST HIT, ANOTHER 48 HRS. 30 THE DISTANCE, IN MILES, THAT THE HEROES OF THE WARRIORS MUST TRAVEL 1 The number of Palme d’Or nominations he’s received at the Cannes Film Festival (for The Long Riders in 1980) 1 The number of films he’s directed under a pseudonym (Supernova is credited to Thomas Lee) 77 HIS AGE ON RELEASING HIS FIRST RECORD, THE COWBOY ILIAD: A LEGEND TOLD IN THE SPOKEN WORD $300 MILLION THE AMOUNT MONTGOMERY BREWSTER STANDS TO WIN IN HILL’S REMAKE OF BREWSTER’S MILLIONS $46 MILLION THE AMOUNT GROSSED BY BREWSTER’S MILLIONS…

Illustration: Neil Edwards. Getty Images BRAD MICHAEL ELMORE’S peppy, inventive LGBTQthemed Bit has new-in-town Laurel (Nicole Maines) inducted into a gang of vampire brides who have overthrown their master (Greg Hill) and set up shop for themselves. Elmore sticks to the pattern of The Lost Boys or Near Dark — even Heathers — in showing the freedoms (like flying) and cynical pleasures of joining a vampire clique, then depicts the dreadful toll taken by predatory selfishness. Arch vampire Vlad Manfred Castaneda (unpack that, psychedelic goths) struts to his theme tune (Boney M’s ‘Rasputin’) in a hilarious life-through-the-decades party montage. Jonathan Cuartas’ My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To is more morning-after regret than wild party night. A frail, androgynous, passive-aggressive youth, Thomas (Owen Campbell), who subsists on blood…

1 GOLDFINGER SHIRLEY BASSEY Amon: “The first and best of Shirley Bassey’s three Bond songs. Pairing her inimitable pipes with a call-and-response style works a treat, and the prolonged final lyric remains iconic.” 2 NOBODY DOES IT BETTER CARLY SIMON Chris: “A song so good, even Alan Partridge couldn’t ruin it.” 3 YOU KNOW MY NAME CHRIS CORNELL Amon: “Cornell sets the tone for the Craig era with a rock-heavy tune.” 4 WE HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD LOUIS ARMSTRONG Alex: “A heartbreaking statement by Bond after his wife’s death. Heavenly.” 5 GOLDENEYE TINA TURNER Helen: “Tina Turner, slinkier than any human being ever, ushered in the Brosnan era with an absolute banger.” 6 LIVE AND LET DIE PAUL McCARTNEY AND WINGS Chris: “McCartney goes for broke, shifting…