EmpireApril 2022的目錄

BOB ODENKIRK IS, put simply, a legend. The star of Breaking Bad, its prequel Better Call Saul and last year’s surprise action breakout Nobody (best bus brawl ever), not to mention a dillion small but memorable comedy cameos, is a man who can portray a breathtakingly sleazy lawyer and make you like him. He continues to find the humanity in Saul Goodman, aka Jimmy McGill, a perpetually flop-sweating ambulance-chaser with zero capacity for embarrassment (“I once convinced a woman I was Kevin Costner,” Goodman revealed to Walter White, “and it worked, because I believed it”). He’s turned a truly pathetic loser into an icon, one of TV’s most nuanced characters. Legendary stuff. So when Odenkirk suffered a heart attack on the set of the final season of Better Call Saul…

Shutterstock THE GOONIES HAS many life lessons to teach. Teamwork makes everyone stronger. Monsters can be beautiful on the inside. Musical instruments made of human bones are best avoided. But perhaps most key is this one: a path to ‘rich stuff’ can be stumbled upon when you least expect it. And so it has proven for Ke Huy Quan, best known as that movie’s gadget-loving Data, and as Indy’s high-spirited sidekick Short Round in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom. After striking it massive at the tender age of 12, plucked out of obscurity to star in two of the biggest blockbusters of the 1980s, he decided he was happy stepping away from the limelight, living a quiet life in Los Angeles. Until recently, when a screenplay arrived at…

IF YOU LOVED… COBRA KAI KUNG FU (AMAZON PRIME VIDEO/ ITUNES) Fifty years before Cobra Kai, here’s the original US martial-arts TV drama, which ran for three seasons and 62 episodes between 1972 and 1975. Problematically featuring white dude David Carradine in the lead role of half-Chinese Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine engaging in lavish slo-mo action fights in the Old West, the series was one of the biggest hits of the ’70s, and influenced the likes of Quentin Tarantino, who cast Carradine in Kill Bill. Despite its issues, the series has a surprisingly elegiac, soulful tone which makes it seem less dated than you might expect. INTO THE BADLANDS (AMAZON PRIME VIDEO) Despite running for three seasons from 2015, this quirky mix of post-apocalyptic sci-fi and martial-arts adventure is…

WHAT COMMON GROUND does ambient music star Enya share with cannibalism? They’re both hot talking-points from Yellowjackets, the small-screen word-of-mouth mystery-drama that’s grown into an international phenomenon. “I’m trying to think of a less corny word than ‘magic’, but it’s reached people in a way that I didn’t anticipate,” says the show’s co-creator Bart Nickerson. Yellowjackets follows two timelines: one in 1996, where an American all-girl soccer team has been stranded on a mysterious island following a plane crash, and one in the current day, where a handful of the survivors are wrestling with their collective trauma. “The key elements were the survival tale, the character investigation of the adult women, and cannibalism,” Nickerson’s creative partner (and wife) Ashley Lyle says of the show’s genesis. “When we had those, we…

SEVEN Instead of opening the mysterious box to discover his pregnant wife’s head, Brad Pitt’s harried Detective Mills instead finds a delicious frosted cake which he shares with serial killer John Doe, burying the hatchet and allowing Morgan Freeman’s Lieutenant Somerset to retire after all. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON While the original film saw a baby version of Brad Pitt’s Benjamin (who was actually 84) dying in the arms of his elderly beau (Cate Blanchett), this cheerfully reimagined ending sees the age-appropriate pair enjoying an early-bird special before bed at 7pm. THE SOCIAL NETWORK Rather than repeatedly hitting the refresh button on his lost love’s friend request, Jesse Eisenberg’s youthful Mark Zuckerberg throws his laptop out the dorm window and commits to a life as a park ranger.…

WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENS between a romcom couple after they’ve had their happily-ever-after moment? That’s what Starstruck creator Rose Matafeo set out to answer in the second series of her acclaimed BBC sitcom, in which she plays 20-something New Zealand expat Jessie, who, when we last see her, has missed her flight home to stay in London with her movie-star lover Tom (Nikesh Patel). The new series starts directly where the first leaves off, with Jessie freaking out about her impulsive, expensive decision. “What I’m trying to do with the show is undermine certain romcom tropes, while also still preserving what makes the genre good,” Matafeo tells Empire from her London home. “I’m asking how someone would genuinely emotionally react to a romcom situation.” The comedian has been devoted to the…

★★★ OUT 4 MARCH CERT 18I 105 MINS DIRECTOR Jacques Audiard CAST Lucie Zhang, Makita Samba, Noémie Merlant, Jehnny Beth PLOT In a crisp, black-and-white vision of Paris, three young people — call-centre worker Émilie (Zhang), teacher Camille (Samba) and student Nora (Merlant) — meet through circumstances of life, love and work. As their sex lives intertwine, they learn to navigate their relationships with each other, their families and themselves. DURING ONE OF many lilting conversations about sex and desire in Paris, 13th District, charismatic, confident teacher Camille (Makita Samba) shallowly states, “If I’m not violently turned on, forget it. Attraction fades, so start with the highest attraction level.” It’s an approach that doesn’t go down well with still-infatuated former lover Émilie (Lucie Zhang), despite her own laid-back attitude to…

★★ OUT 7 MARCH (DIGITAL) / CERT TBC / 87 MINS DIRECTOR Abel Ferrara CAST Ethan Hawke, Cristina Chiriac, Phil Neilson In Abel Ferrara’s gritty yet tedious political thriller, shot during lockdown, Ethan Hawke is a soldier called to Rome to stop an imminent terrorist attack on the Vatican. Also searching for news of his imprisoned twin brother, over the course of one evening he traverses the city’s underground world seeking answers. The combination of Sean Price Williams’ low-light, grainy digital camerawork and Joe Delia’s heavy-on-the-reverb score make for an atmospheric watch. But the edgy uncertainty of the first act becomes an indecipherable hodgepodge of scenes as the film continues. It’s certainly a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the story’s structure and dialogue are as incoherent as the early…

★★★ OUT 18 FEBRUARY / CERT TBC / 114 MINS DIRECTORS Peter Middleton, James Spinney CAST Charlie Chaplin (archive), Pearl Mackie (narration) The latest feature documentary from Peter Middleton and James Spinney (Notes On Blindness) plays out with the tone of a video essay, placing emphasis on authorial voice and perspective rather than claiming any kind of objectivity. In that respect, and in its experimentation with archive imagery, The Real Charlie Chaplin can feel refreshing. But it too often veers back toward conventional style when it comes to delivering information or reflecting on new discoveries. Its chronological structure both gives the film room to experiment with image and question our relationship to celebrity and performance, but also makes it feel decompressed and unsatisfying. It becomes hard not to focus on…

★★★ OUT 4 MARCH / CERT TBC / 83 MINS DIRECTOR William E. Badgley CAST Don Letts, John Lydon, Mick Jones, Jeannette Lee DJ, filmmaker, band manager, fashion icon, musician, social butterfly… Don Letts is a fascinating and complicated man. This potted history of his life, which only occasionally veers into hagiography — it is narrated and guided by the man himself through occasional puffs of a joint — recalls an electric time in music, fashion, politics and art. From ’70s Brixton to ’80s New York, and much more besides, Letts has evidently enjoyed a remarkable life, brushing shoulders with everyone, from Vivienne Westwood to Bob Marley, with charisma and cool. The doc sometimes gets lost in the weeds of the less compelling details; it’s when it celebrates the cultural…

★★★★ OUT 4 MARCH CERT TBC / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Clio Barnard CAST Claire Rushbrook, Adeel Akhtar, Ellora Torchia PLOT Ava (Rushbrook) is a loving woman living on a Bradford estate who has survived an abusive marriage. When she meets Ali (Akhtar), a local landlord with his own marital problems, the pair fall in love, but are challenged by their different backgrounds. OPTIMISM IS A RARE thing to find in a Clio Barnard film. Her bruising debut The Arbor blended fiction and non-fiction to retell the story of a young woman’s suffering on a Bradford estate. The Selfish Giant, which follows two school friends who make a living selling scrap metal, ends in tragedy. The visual imprints of both films can be found on Ali & Ava — a rag-and-bone…

★★★ OUT NOW (AMAZON PRIME VIDEO) EPISODES WATCHED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Nick Santora CAST Alan Ritchson, Malcolm Goodwin, Willa Fitzgerald, Chris Webster, Bruce McGill PLOT When ex-military police investigator Jack Reacher (Ritchson) arrives in Margrave, Georgia, he’s arrested for a murder he didn’t commit. While he works to prove his innocence, Reacher teams up with local cops Finlay (Goodwin) and Roscoe (Fitzgerald) to unravel a criminal conspiracy. WHEN TOM CRUISE was announced to play action hero Jack Reacher, the fan reaction was loud and clear. Though Cruise would ultimately do a good job of embodying the ex-military-police major-turned-drifter, he wasn’t the 6’ 5”, 250lbs muscle man described in Lee Child’s novels. With the casting of Alan Ritchson, Reacher — an eight-episode season based on Child’s first book, Killing Floor…

IF YOU’VE NO IDEA WHAT A ‘SUITCASE PIMP’ IS, let the Adult Video News — the pornography industry’s leading trade publication — put you straight. By their definition it is a “hanger-on/assistant (usually male) to a (usually female) porn performer”. And in such relationships, “the assistant is [financially] supported by the performer”. For a fuller explanation of the term, meet Red Rocket’s Mikey Saber: a former porn star approaching middle age and possibly the end of the suitcase-pimping line. When we first meet him, Mikey (Simon Rex) is arriving back in his Texas hometown with nothing but the clothes he’s wearing, the $22 in his pocket, and some unexplained bruises on his face. Aside from his supposed professional skills (“I won best oral three years in a row,” he claims),…

Alamy, Getty Images, MPTV HALFWAY THROUGH The Elephant Man, John Merrick has a dream. As he sleeps, restlessly scratching away at fabric, we travel through the eyehole in his hooded mask, and then along some greasy industrial piping, elephants trumpeting while we see Merrick’s mother writhing in agony. Shirtless men toil away at heavy-duty machinery, smoke billowing, before Merrick’s own disembodied head veers towards us and then, finally, we find him on the ground, kicked to bits by aggressors. It’s one of a handful of surreal sequences that elevate The Elephant Man, making it even more transcendent than it already is, lodging it in your soul forever. The Straight Story aside (although that is about an old man who crosses America in a lawnmower), The Elephant Man is David Lynch’s…

IN A VIDEO message screened for fans before they saw Ghostbusters: Afterlife in cinemas, Jason Reitman — son of Ivan, director of the first two Ghostbusters movies — challenged them to keep their eyes open. They wouldn’t just be experiencing a charming, emotionally resonant reinvigoration of a long-dormant franchise, but embarking upon what Reitman called “the biggest Easter egg hunt in history”. He wasn’t wrong. The finished film contains dozens of references to the movies of Ghostbusters past, some obvious, some so obscure you’d have to be a giant Sloar to get them. “There’s a thrill to hiding all these little details, so as you’re watching the film you have this simultaneous experience that sparkles through the back parts of your brain,” he tells Empire. We asked Reitman to guide…

BY 1937, WHEN they shot their seventh full-length feature, Way Out West, Laurel & Hardy were at the very peak of their popularity. But nevertheless, it was a miserable year for the pair. Both were suffering through public and embarrassing divorces, and their relations with comedy-kingmaker Hal Roach, who had locked the pair into contracts from which they were trying to escape, were at an all-time low. Rumours of a possible split swirled. Which makes it all the more astonishing that the film they shot that year would feature the most carefree, joyous expression of their timeless, innocent appeal. And, even more remarkably, what would come to be recognised as one of the most sublime moments in the movies — a stalwart of any ‘greatest moments of cinema’ reel —…

COMMENT OF THE MONTH ARRGHHH! ARRGGGHHHHH!! What have I done to piss you off? Breaking into my house and leaving a severed copy of the latest issue in my bed?! I got such a fright when I pulled back the covers to see a bloody Don Corleone staring back at me. I promise to read every single line of text in each issue, and continue to subscribe. What else do you want from me? Yours, scared (and mentally scarred). GORDON SMITH, GLASGOW The thing is, Gordon, there have been transportation problems of late, so we’ve been hand-delivering issues ourselves. Looks like this one came courtesy of Ben Travis. God only knows what he’d been up to. Picture house Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend!…

Shutterstock ANA DE ARMAS FANS VS UNIVERSAL Two avid de Armas admirers are suing the studio for $5 million after renting the Beatles-inspired Yesterday to find that the star, who appeared in the film’s trailer, had not made the final cut. DID THEY WIN? With the fans unhappy to simply let it be, the case is currently ongoing. HELLS ANGELS VS DISNEY The motorcycle gang took their troublemaking to the courtroom, complaining that Disney had featured their logo and other similarities in middle-aged bikers romp Wild Hogs. DID THEY WIN? For once, the Angels came out on the right side of the law. Disney removed all mention of them from the film. MAN VS HIS CINEMA DATE A Texas man took legal action against the woman he saw Guardians Of…

Getty Images ADRIAN LYNE, THE undisputed heavyweight champ of the high-end erotic thriller, hasn’t made a film since 2002’s Unfaithful. The director of 9 ½ Weeks and Fatal Attraction has been coming up with shadowy stories in sunnier climes. “I spent a lot of time in Provence,” he says simply. “I was working there but it’s a difficult, seductive place to leave.” The film that’s brought him back, Deep Water, is Lyne back in his wheelhouse, film-noir themes (lust, jealousy, obsession) relocated to desirable houses with slick visuals, mad plot-twists and — most importantly — lashings of rumpy-pumpy. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name, it stars Ben Affleck as uptight Victor Van Allen, who is married to free spirit Melinda (Ana de Armas). She has a roving…

IT’S HARD TO believe that Jenna Ortega, who was just ten when she made her horror debut in Insidious: Chapter 2, was a self-labelled “scaredy-cat” as a child. “I started watching horror films [so I could see them with my friends]… and accidentally fell in love,” she tells Empire. Today, Ortega can be seen tackling Ghostface in the latest Scream instalment, and has a host of upcoming spooky projects on the horizon. The rising star tells us about her scarily big year ahead. SCREAM As Tara, Ortega nabbed the coveted ‘first victim’ role in the fifth Scream. Yet the scariest part of the experience was trying not to give anything away. “It was really stressful!” she says. Weirdly, coming up against Ghostface was a comparative pleasure. “It’s very therapeutic; any…

★★★★★ EXCELLENT ★★★★ GOOD ★★★ OKAY ★★ POOR ★ AWFUL ★★★★★ OUT 11 MARCH CERT TBC / 130 MINS DIRECTOR Sean Baker CAST Simon Rex, Suzanna Son, Bree Elrod PLOT Down and out, middle-aged porn actor Mikey Saber (Rex) has fled Los Angeles, battered and bruised, with 22 bucks to his name. Back in his hometown of Texas City he meets 17-year-old doughnut shop-worker Strawberry (Son), and begins to think of a way to rebuild his status and claw back his stardom. SIMON REX’S MIKEY Saber is a twitchy creature, head held high, as if he’s rising above his own shit. He’s always craning around, always on the lookout. He moves like a meercat and thinks like a snake, forever scheming. If he ever had an attention span, it’s long…

★★★★ OUT 25 FEBRUARY / CERT 12A 95 MINS DIRECTOR Roger Michell CAST Jim Broadbent, Helen Mirren, Fionn Whitehead, Matthew Goode, Anna Maxwell Martin PLOT 1961. Kempton Bunton (Broadbent) lives a humble life in Newcastle with his wife Dorothy (Mirren) and son Jackie (Whitehead). Their lives change forever when a heist at the National Gallery results in a multi-million-pound Goya painting of the Duke Of Wellington hiding in their wardrobe. Can Kempton find some social justice from the crime? SADLY AND UNWITTINGLY, The Duke is British filmmaker Roger Michell’s swan song. It’s almost as if he planned it. His final fictional feature (a documentary on the Queen, Elizabeth, is still to be posthumously released) seems, on reflection, like the perfect confluence of his versatile talents: mingling his knack for crowd-pleasing…

★★★ OUT 11 MARCH / CERT TBC / 97 MINS DIRECTOR Ruth Paxton CAST Sienna Guillory, Jessica Alexander, Ruby Stokes, Lindsay Duncan Rich in atmosphere but underwhelming in story, Ruth Paxton’s ambitious feature debut turns one family’s terrifying experiences into an existential — and perhaps somewhat overstuffed — study of physical and mental trauma, maternal instincts and religious faith. Jessica Alexander (TV’s Get Even) is excellent as teenager Betsey, who is adamant that her apparent anorexia is, in fact, evidence of spiritual enlightenment; Sienna Guillory (Remember Me) is equally good as Betsey’s overwhelmed mother. With stunning cinematography from David Liddell and evocative production design from Sofia Stocco, this journey of awakening proves deliciously creepy, until an overwrought final act turns an effectively ambiguous chiller into something altogether more vanilla.…

★★★ OUT NOW (AMAZON PRIME VIDEO) I CERT 18 / 111 MINS DIRECTOR Jason Orley CAST Charlie Day, Jenny Slate, Scott Eastwood, Gina Rodriguez When Peter (Charlie Day) and Emma (Jenny Slate) are left for new partners, they form a pact to break up each other’s respective new relationships, so they can get back together with their exes. This is a break-up romcom in the Forgetting Sarah Marshall vein, then: one that trades primarily in the end of relationships, rather than beginnings. As a result, it’s more gently and occasionally funny than a laugh-out-loud riot. In places, it’s even a bit of a bummer. Still, it’s sweeter and more sensitive than you might expect – for all the screwball comedy, it’s the kindness the characters show each other that feels…

★★★★ OUT 18 MARCH / CERT TBC / 84 MINS DIRECTOR Blerta Basholli CAST Yllka Gashi, Çun Lajçi, Kumrije Hoxha Sweet, with a potent emotional sting, Hive is a measured, detailed and inspiring war story, where minor acts foster major resistance. After her husband disappears during the Kosovo war, beekeeper Fahrije (Yllka Gashi) sparks controversy by learning to drive and starting a business making ajvar, a Kosovar condiment. Made a pariah in her patriarchal society, she recruits other grieving women who join her seemingly modest, but ultimately mighty rebellion. Occasionally jarring melodrama veers the film away from its more stirring, delicate details, but offering hope and navigation through grief-stricken limbo, Hive shows that the act of cooking and eating together can be not just about sustenance, but a powerful political…

★★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+) EPISODES WATCHED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Robert Siegel CAST Lily James, Sebastian Stan, Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman PLOT It’s the ’90s. Baywatch star Pamela Anderson (James) and Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee (Stan) find their passionate new marriage plunged into crisis when a private videotape is stolen by a contractor seeking revenge. YOU GENUINELY COULD not make this shit up. And by “this shit”, we mean the truly deranged plot points and character details in Pam & Tommy that instantly trigger a Google search because surely that can’t really have happened can it, and holy hell, it actually did. And yes, we are absolutely talking about Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) having a full-blown two-way conversation with his own penis (an encounter lifted directly from the opening…

★★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Christopher Miller CAST Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson, Zoë Chao, Ben Schwartz, Ike Barinholtz, Ilana Glazer, Dave Franco, Jamie Demetriou PLOT Following a high-school reunion, a group of former friends converge at the home of Xavier (Franco) — now a celebrity — for an afterparty. When he is found dead, Detective Danner (Haddish) must determine which partygoer is the killer — but everyone has a different account of events. ‘MAIN CHARACTER SYNDROME’ is a favourite ailment among Millennials: the idea that everyone is the protagonist of their own internal film, a cinematic adventure constantly happening in your own head. Trust Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — the latter of whom breaks out on his own for much of this series,…

MICHAEL BAY IS talking about action. This is not a surprise. This is the director who, across a career spanning 27 years and 15 films including Bad Boys, The Rock and five Transformers, has presided over so much on-screen mayhem that it’s gained a new sobriquet: Bayhem. If it can be shot, stabbed, exploded, squashed, tossed, overtaken, overturned or atomised, you can rest easy in the knowledge that Bay has done it on screen. All of it. But he’s never not mulling over new ways to reinvent, and then blow the living shit out of, the wheel. “I think about action all the time,” he says. And then he pauses and laughs. “No, I don’t! That’s the dumbest statement I’ve ever heard! What does that even mean?” It means that…

He rampaged through Hollywood on a one-man mission. He slayed enemies with bullets and deadly one-liners. And he never — went down-without a fight. His name was Charles Bronson. But you can call him… IN THE SPRING OF 1975 Charles Bronson might have walked down the sweeping staircase of his seven-bedroom mansion at 121 Udine Way, Bel-Air — with its games room, wine cellar and spa — past the saltwater pool, and looked out over the manicured grounds of the Bel-Air Country Club with quiet satisfaction. He was, to put it simply, the most successful film star on the planet. There might have been actors that did slightly better than him, movie-by-movie, in Hollywood. But Bronson was global. In Italy, his legion of fans admiringly called him ‘Il Brutto’, ‘The…

HOWARD HUGHES WAS WAITING ON THE STREET. It was a Sunday evening in December 1949, and the RKO studio head was there to meet gossip columnist and radio queen Louella Parsons as she left her Los Angeles studio: Hughes had a sensational scoop for her about Ingrid Bergman, the star of his upcoming film, Stromboli. Bergman, said Hughes, was pregnant by Italian director Robert Rossellini, while still married to her Swedish first husband, and the studio mogul thought that the inevitable scandal would drum up attention for the film. Parsons was torn. She wasn’t that friendly with Bergman, who had never kowtowed to the Hollywood gossips by sending expensive Christmas gifts or singing at their parties. Still, Parsons had never written something that could wreck an actor’s career; while she…

Four Empire writers tackle the prodigious output of Steve Coogan’s comic creation Illustration: Jacey Chris: This is not simply an excuse to do a bunch of Alan Partridge impressions and reel off a load of quotes, oh no. It’s a discussion about one of the most complex and fully realised characters, not just comedy characters, of all time. Over the last 30 years or so few characters have been so thoroughly explored as Alan Partridge, across radio, TV, a movie, books and a podcast. Nick: When it comes to great, complex characters with that amount of shading, it comes down to Alan Partridge and Hamlet. I mean, it’s those two. Dan: And Hamlet never did a podcast. Nick: You feel like you know this person better than you know almost…

ACROSS 1 Michael, who had success with The Deer Hunter and failure with Heaven’s Gate 4 What Tiana kisses in a 2009 Disney movie (4) 8 Al Pacino character who had his way (7) 10 Skyfall’s Raoul (5) 11 Could be Guzmán, could be Buñuel (4) 12 Nicole Kidman was all at sea for this thriller (4,4) 14 James Stewart lawman who rides again (6) 15 Horror icon Pitt (6) 18 Princess — (Studio Ghibli) (8) 20 Martin, novelist who scripted Saturn 3 (4) 22 Calrissian, who lost the Millennium Falcon in a bet (5) 23 French cinema movement in the late 1950s and 1960s (3,4) 24 Say it twice to Sweet Charlotte (4) 25 Hayley, who joins the Mission: Impossible series next year (6) DOWN 1 He made The…

THIS MONTH’S FILM MOMENTS THAT MATTER IF YOUR EXPERIENCE of watching Spider-Man: No Way Home was enhanced by roof-raising cheers, you’re not alone. That was Benedict Cumberbatch’s experience, too. “That premiere, I will never, ever forget Jacob [Batalon], behind me, screaming, ‘Let’s goooooo!’ when certain reveals were revealed,” laughs Cumberbatch. “And he’s in it, for God’s sakes! It was infectious. It’s magic.” Even by the standards of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what No Way Home has done at the box office is remarkable. Currently at $1.7 billion worldwide and counting — which would be a huge sum pre-pandemic — in the midst of Covid it’s astonishing, with audiences flocking back to cinemas to revel in those reveals of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men, as they team up with Tom…

Getty Images ALL IS NOT well at the family dinner table in Lee Haven Jones’ metaphorical horror debut The Feast. The Welsh-language horror film culminates in a sumptuous culinary extravaganza at a chic country home that consists of severed limbs, butchered animal carcasses and, in one instance, a clump of human hair. “I’m from a theatrical background, and this film is like a Chekhov play on acid,” explains Jones. “And a dinner party is an intimate affair, so that’s where the inspiration for the food came from. It’s the vehicle for the story.” The Feast follows a wealthy, secretly troubled family who stage the dinner party in order to broker a deal which would see the surrounding countryside mined for its resources. The narrative drives a strong message about environmentalism,…

WHEN THE SANDMAN was first published by DC in late 1988, it defied every expectation of what a mainstream comic-book should do. It wasn’t written for pubescent boys of all ages; its readership skewed older, and more female. It was metaphysical, romantic and dialogue-led rather than action-packed. And its protagonist wasn’t a superhero. He was the aloof, flawed Morpheus, the lord of dreams, whose siblings included Desire, Despair and Death. It was bold, progressive (for example featuring non-binary and trans characters) and, over time, a huge hit. “Sandman was ahead of its time, and I never expected it to become as mainstream as it has,” says Neil Gaiman, author also of Good Omens and American Gods, who created the series with artists Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg. “When it was…

HOLLYWOOD LOVES MAKING movies about itself. Even one of the all-time greats — Singin’ In The Rain — is a story about a Hollywood production, after all. As film historian Farran Smith Nehme says: “Hollywood has always loved to film its past, even when it was so young there was less past to film.” And when it comes to biopics of Golden Age greats, it’s about not to rain, but pour. Chris Evans will play Gene Kelly, the legendary co-director/star of Singin’ In The Rain, in a film about his life. Fred Astaire, the top-hatted hoofer of Hollywood legend, is set to be the subject of two biographical films: one starring Jamie Bell, the other Tom Holland. Luca Guadagnino will direct Rooney Mara as Audrey Hepburn. And Netflix has already…

“DUDE, LOOK, I have never, ever, ever wanted to be a movie star.” Not our words, but the words of one Dave Grohl, speaking to this very magazine back in 2011. Back then, he was promoting his cameo in The Muppets, which, along with his tongue-flicking, fret-frazzling turn as Satan in Tenacious D In The Pick Of Destiny, showed Grohl’s natural on-screen charisma in even the most fleeting of appearances. Yet the Foo Fighters frontman still had a mind only for music. “I don’t want to be a musician who’s in movies,” he said. “I want to be a musician. I’ve got the greatest fucking job in the world.” Since then, he’s been true to his word. So, then, how to explain Studio 666, a full-on horror-comedy in which Grohl,…

Fight Club additonal reporting: Nev Pierce. Alamy, Getty Images, Shutterstock CHINESE FILM FANS rejoiced recently when David Fincher’s cult drama Fight Club appeared on their streaming giant Tencent Video. But, just before they got to the movie’s explosive final shot, which sees tower blocks crumble against the skyline as part of Tyler (Brad Pitt) and Project Mayhem’s bid to eliminate debt, the streamed film cut to a new title card, in English. “Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding,” it read. “After the trial, Tyler was sent to [a] lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.” If Fight Club fails to bring down capitalism in this version…

★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A I 130 MINS DIRECTOR Roland Emmerich CAST Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley PLOT Ten years after a freak swarm of mysterious alien tech disrupts a space mission, the moon’s orbit begins to change. If it continues on its new trajectory, the world as we know it could be destroyed. It’s up to two former astronauts — and a conspiracy theorist — to stop the extra-terrestrial threat and save the world. WITH MOONFALL, YOU can practically imagine the pitch meeting that willed it into being. Somewhere in a Hollywood meeting room, thumbs twiddle, a whiteboard sits blank — and then someone chirps up, suddenly struck with inspiration: “What if the moon… fell?” High-fives all round. Take the rest of the day off. That’s lunch. It’s…

★★★★ OUT 25 FEBRUARY / CERT TBC / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Fred Baillif CAST Claudia Grob, Anaïs Uldry, Kassia Da Costa, Joyce Esther Ndayisenga Perhaps inevitably, La Mif (French for ‘The Fam’) has drawn comparisons to Sarah Gavron’s groundbreaking coming-of-age drama Rocks. It has the same semi-documentarian style, workshop-driven script and empathetic interest in vulnerable young people. But Fred Baillif’s film has different motivations: La Mif is set in a Swiss care home for at-risk teens, and offers a unique perspective on a daunting social-care crisis. Baillif (a former social worker) gives roughly equal focus to the kids and the adults looking after them, and the thoughtful structure allots each character their own chapter. The result is a raw but nourishing watch: by the end, they all feel like members…

★★★ OUT 18 FEBRUARY / CERT TBC / 83 MINS DIRECTOR Stacey Gregg CAST Andrea Riseborough, Jonjo O’Neill, Eileen O’Higgins, Martin McCann, Niamh Dornan The chameleonic Andrea Riseborough disappears into another dark character, here playing a Northern Irish mother whose grief for her late daughter sparks an unhealthy friendship with the child next door. It plays like a Daphne du Maurier psychodrama — the Don’t Look Now parallels are obvious — but in aiming for social realism with a side of genre, it’s sometimes too understated, the dreariness of the tone occasionally coming off as draining. Still, Riseborough’s performance sells the kind of grief that can calcify the heart, and it offers interesting cinematography choices (Dutch angles, drone shots) that keeps things cinematic. Whether you’ll be surprised by the third-act…

★★★★ OUT 11 MARCH / CERT TBC / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Sebastian Meise CAST Franz Rogowski, Georg Friedrich, Anton von Lucke, Thomas Prenn The title Great Freedom is laced with grim irony. Post World War II, while the Allies promised freedom from fascism in West Germany, homophobic laws — some of which would not be repealed until the ’90s — meant oppression continued for many gay men. This impressive prison drama, a fictionalised account of real stories, focuses on one of those men (Franz Rogowski, brilliant), transferred direct from a concentration camp to prison after the war, and seeing many return trips simply for being gay. Spanning decades, with a shifting-sands structure, Sebastian Meise’s uncompromising film offers a bleak portrait of a shameful history. But this is ultimately an intimate…

★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 109 MINS DIRECTOR Sean Penn CAST Sean Penn, Dylan Penn Sean Penn’s latest directing gig gives his daughter, Dylan Penn, a solid showcase: through many earnest scenes she acquits herself well. The film itself is a fatherdaughter drama with a Terrence Malick-y romanticism but little emotional connection. Based on a memoir by Jennifer Vogel, it’s the story of a child’s (Penn Jr) endlessly forgiving love for her dad (Penn Sr), a petty criminal who becomes one of the US’ biggest cash counterfeiters. Jez and John-Henry Butterworth’s script is surprisingly thin; florid, self-consciously lyrical dialogue can’t hide a lack of truth to the characters. John turning from two-bit conman to master criminal gets little explanation and his daughter’s eulogising voiceover describes a man the…

★★★★ OUT NOW (STARZPLAY) EPISODES WATCHED 10 OF 10 SHOWRUNNER Patrick Somerville CAST Mackenzie Davis, Himesh Patel, Matilda Lawler, David Wilmot, Gael Garcia Bernal PLOT Twenty years after a pandemic causes the collapse of civilisation, Kirsten (Davis) and a band of performers travel the American Great Lakes, staging Shakespeare plays for other survivors. When their peaceful existence is threatened by a cult leader known as The Prophet (Zovatto), Kirsten must confront her past to save the people she loves. STATION ELEVEN CUTS so close to the bone, you can practically feel the scraping of meat cleaver against femur. It wasn’t meant to be this way, of course: based on a 2014 novel by Emily St. John Mandel, this ambitious, ten-part pandemic drama from showrunner Patrick Somerville (Maniac, The Leftovers) was…

Oscar Isaac’s gut was telling him: “No.” Back in 2020, when the call came in to see if he might be interested in playing a little-known, ultraviolent comic-book character named Moon Knight, something didn’t sit right. “My initial thing was, ‘No, I don’t want to go back into that kind of machinery’” Isaac tells Empire. “I did that already. The last thing I want is to be on a massive set, [thinking], ‘What am I doing here?’” A lifelong Marvel fan, Isaac had played the X-Men villain Apocalypse in 2016, but it wasn’t an overtly pleasurable time — due largely to the “walking sarcophagus” of glue and latex he had to don every day. Plus, he’d just spent five (more pleasurable) years as Poe Dameron in Star Wars. After all…

INDISPENSABLE HOME ENTERTAINMENT “THIS IS ONLY the beginning,” declares Zendaya in the closing moments of Dune. It might have been little more than wishful thinking at the time, but after a sandwormsized $400 million haul at the global box office, Denis Villeneuve’s spice saga will continue with Dune: Part Two. Despite the best efforts of Covid, various government lockdowns, and a controversial day-and-date release on HBO Max, audiences responded overwhelmingly to his sandy sci-fi epic and the director couldn’t be happier about it. Here, like Shai-Hulud burrowing its way through the deserts of Arrakis, Villeneuve takes us on a deep dive into his first instalment, with a little hint at what’s yet to come… How gratifying was it when you got the call giving Part Two the green light? It…

ONCE SEEN, ANNETTE is not easily forgotten. On paper, it’s a family drama: a comedian named Henry (Adam Driver) and an actor named Ann (Marion Cotillard) have a baby, then struggle as their relationship implodes. But on screen it’s a whole other proposition — a giddy, roiling, psychologically complex musical powered by a plethora of songs by Ron and Russell Mael, the brothers who comprise ultra-hip band Sparks. Oh, and that baby is a puppet. Naturally. The project, which began life as a mooted stage show, originally had over 40 pieces of music — we asked the Maels to shed light on some which actually made it into the movie. SO MAY WE START In which the main cast, plus the Maels and director Leos Carax, sing to the audience…

Illustration: Jacey 1 I’M ALAN PARTRIDGE S1 Chris: “Coogan and co’s first real effort to show us how deep, and rich, and petty, and weird Alan could be away from the cameras. Remains a classic. Smell his cheese, you mothers.” 2 MID MORNING MATTERS S1 Boyd: “Gave us a newly focused, funnier-than-ever Alan as well as Sidekick Simon. Superb.” 3 I’M ALAN PARTRIDGE S2 Boyd: “Not as inferior to Series 1 as many say, it features some of Alan’s finest moments.” 4 THE DAY TODAY Dan: “Alan’s television debut, and his side parting is nothing less than magnificent.” 5 KNOWING ME, KNOWING YOU… WITH ALAN PARTRIDGE Nick: “As Alan tries to stop each episode imploding, it’s a joy.” 6 MID MORNING MATTERS S2 Chris: “A hoot, weaving cameos from Reece…

AS ANYONE WHO’S seen Encanto — the canonical 60th film from Walt Disney Animation Studios — will tell you, there’s plenty to discuss in the Colombia-set family fantasy. And we’re not just talking about Bruno. Empire sits down with directors Jared Bush, Byron Howard and Charise Castro Smith to uncover the superpowered secrets of the magical Madrigal family. LIGHT In true Disney style, Encanto begins with a fairytale prologue — Abuela Alma (Maria Cecilia Botero) telling young Mirabel about the ‘miracle’ that has blessed generations of Madrigals. It packs in plenty: Alma losing her partner to Colombia’s historic political violence, the magic birthed from that loss, the creation of a living house sheltered from danger, and the powers bestowed to her descendants. It all springs from Colombia’s literary tradition of…

TIG NOTARO: “My favourite movie scene is from Mask. There’s a scene where Cher is trying to write a letter to her son, Rocky, who has gone off to camp. And she’s a single mother, and her whole life is her son. She’s writing this letter and she breaks down, sobbing, while she’s writing the letter. And Sam Elliott, who plays her boyfriend, starts to try and help her write the letter. That scene devastated me. It’s so touching. There’s this emotion in Cher as a mother that I connected to so deeply in the way that it reminded me so much of my mother, and her love for me and my brother. That scene is so great and powerful. It took me years to be able to describe that…