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71 Articles

THIS MONTH AT EMPIRE

2020 MAY HAVE been a turbulent year for movies, but the small-screen industry kept chugging along nicely and, in fact, helped fill the void for locked-down viewers. If we weren’t watching top-notch television series on our favourite TV channel or streaming service, we were catching up with a ton of movies that went straight to digital, including big-budget epics like Mulan and Greyhound. We may primarily be a FILM magazine, but we couldn’t ignore the small-screen juggernaut last year. With so many movie releases being delayed (and delayed again), there were months when, if it hadn’t been for the movies and TV shows streaming on Disney+, Netflix, Stan et al, we would have struggled to fill our ‘On Screen’ section. So, with that in mind, it seems appropriate that this…

THIS MONTH AT EMPIRE

THE DIVERSITY SQUAD The Suicide Squad (Empire, December) looks very male and very white. It will be interesting to give it the once-over with the Bechdel-Wallace test and view the film through the lens of diversity. ANN, NUGENT, TAS From what we could see, the Squad looks pretty diverse. We’re certainly not gonna argue the case with a guy sporting a shark’s head. MOVIES ROCK! Movies do more for us than people give them credit. For example, Peter Cullen – the voice of Optimus Prime in Transformers – was my childhood hero. I’m lucky enough to have had vodkas with Peter at a function. Now, I’ve been on chemo and watching films still gives me a certain strength and desire to keep going. To all you lovely people behind movies…

LETTER OF THE MONTH

VALE DARTH VADER I was saddened to learn of the passing of David Prowse last November. Growing up in England in the 1970s and 80s, I have fond memories of the big fella dressed up as the superhero Green Cross Man, who was used in a children’s road safety campaign. Of course, as a Star Wars fan, I loved the imposing physical qualities David gave to Darth Vader. And when I turned 18, I finally checked out his bizarre cameo in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. He was a versatile, talented actor. MICHAEL, GOLD COAST, QLD We agree that David’s strongman build helped Darth Vader come across as very intimidating, even before you added James Earl Jones’ deep voice to the mix.…

LETTER OF THE MONTH

No./1 Disney’s biggest bombshells, digested

WE WERE EXCITED! Disney were not shy about revealing new footage at their Investor’s Day presentation on December 10; it’s not every day you get four shiny new Marvel trailers in one go. The first Loki trailer gave us lots of tantalising glimpses of what Tom Hiddleston’s God Of Mischief will be up to in a show Kevin Feige called a “crime thriller”. Most intriguingly of all, the end of the teaser sees Loki returning to Asgard via Bifrost: who — or what — will await him upon his return? WandaVision’s second trailer looked appropriately wild, too; in contrast, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier promises to be a much more grounded show, focusing on Steve Rogers’ BFFs, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). Cap’s bequeathed shield…

No./1 Disney’s biggest bombshells, digested

No./ 2 “Dave was the opposite of everything Darth Vader was”

THE FIRST TIME I met Dave was when he came on set in the full Darth Vader outfit. I’d seen Ralph McQuarrie’s concept art, but to see it fully realised was stunning. A big part of that was just Dave’s size. He was a towering figure with this magnificent presence. Although we didn’t know it at the time, we were seeing the creation of one of the most iconic, enduring and feared villains of all time. That’s a tribute to him and to George Lucas’s storyline, because he’s only in that original film for less than ten minutes. Even though I wasn’t working that day, I remember being on set when they filmed Darth Vader’s opening scene. I asked George: “How come there’s no exposition when he first comes in?…

No./ 2 “Dave was the opposite of everything Darth Vader was”

No./ 3 How Toby Kebbell found his ideal role

TOBY KEBBELL HAS gone from junkie to monkey during his 20-year career: after hurtling onto radars in Shane Meadows’ Dead Man’s Shoes , and later as a drug addict in Guy Ritchie’s RockNRolla , he later moved into motion capture as Koba in War For The Planet Of The Apes and King Kong in Kong: Skull Island . No role feels more fitting of Kebbell’s talents, however, than Sean, the conflicted co-lead of M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological horror series, Servant . It was a role the Yorkshire-born actor fought tooth and nail for. “I auditioned for the part for over three months while doing other jobs,” Kebbell says. “I was shooting Bloodshot in South Africa. And then I was shooting Daniel , the Danish film. It was about four or…

No./ 3 How Toby Kebbell found his ideal role

No./ 4 O CAPTAINS! TOM’S CAPTAINS!

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

No./ 4 O CAPTAINS! TOM’S CAPTAINS!

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

No./ 5 Meet Nic Cage’s new foe: a martial arts alien

EVEN FOR NICOLAS CAGE, an actor hardly known for his subtlety or realism, the premise for his upcoming sci-fi actioner Jiu Jitsu is a doozy. The story goes: every six years, an alien comes to Earth, and demands that nine worthy warriors fight him. With martial arts. Your classic boy-meets-alien, boy-fights-alien-withnunchucks-to-save-mankind story. “Don’t expect to see a Brazilian jiu jitsu origin story, because it’s certainly not that,” says Ryan Tarran, the experienced Hollywood stuntman who plays said alien, nicknamed ‘Brax’. “It’s a Hollywood version of how jiu jitsu came about,” he explains with a laugh. “And it came about through a spaceman.” Cage plays Wylie, an eccentric martial arts expert who makes his own hats and describes Brax, the alien that gifted Earth its jiu jitsu skills, as a “poet…

No./ 5 Meet Nic Cage’s new foe: a martial arts alien

No./ 6 MAVERICK NUNS

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

No./ 6 MAVERICK NUNS

No./ 7 “I told George Clooney that I’d never seen an African astronaut in space”

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

No./ 7 “I told George Clooney that I’d never seen an African astronaut in space”

No./ 8 The story behind the buzziest performance of the year

MALCOLM X, SAM COOKE, Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown: the thinking-person’s choice of a party you’d want to gatecrash. This irresistible concept, of four icons meeting in a racially taut 1964 America, was first realised in Kemp Powers’ 2013 play One Night In Miami . Now Regina King — one of America’s most assured, Academy Award-winning actors — take a valiant leap behind the camera to adapt it for the screen in her directorial debut, which saw her become the first Black female director to screen a film at Venice Channelling an actor’s eye, King summons evocative performances from Eli Goree (as Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali), Aldis Hodge (as Jim Brown) and Leslie Odom Jr (as Sam Cooke). But it’s Londoner Kingsley Ben-Adir, as the mighty Malcolm X, who’s in the…

No./ 8 The story behind the buzziest performance of the year

No./ 9 Inside cinema’s most intense birth scene ever

THE CONCEPTION Pieces Of A Woman , a story of a home birth that undergoes complications, originated as a play in Poland. On stage, the birth sequence was “45 minutes long,” says Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó. “It was kind of like when you have a beautiful painting, but before that you do a lot of studies. The play was a little bit like a study [for the film].” But the prospect of adapting that sequence into a film, Mundruczó says, “really scared me. I mean, it’s so easy to make a bad birth scene. To be frank, there are so many.” The filmmakers did their research — talking to midwives, mothers, and drawing from personal memories. “As a father of three I have the experience. A father’s perspective is not…

No./ 9 Inside cinema’s most intense birth scene ever

No./ 10 Ben Wheatley vs the mega-shark

THE ACTION Free Fire showed that Wheatley can handle a very complicated shoot-out. Now, pair The Stath up with a genetically mutated, giant Armie Hammer and Brie Larson, give The Meg a pair of pump-action shotguns (and some arms), and we’re off to the aquatic races. THE GORE 2018’s The Meg was a disappointingly bloodless affair. As was Rebecca , with Wheatley dipping his toes in the waters of the 12 certificate for the first time. With The Meg 2 , he can chum the waters again. “Smile, you fackin’ caaaaaaaahnt!” The Stath might yell, as he bashes in The Meg’s brains with a giant Armie Hammer. THE CAUSTIC HUMOUR From Sightseers to High-Rise , Wheatley’s films are known for their mordant sense of humour. Something that could easily fit…

No./ 10 Ben Wheatley vs the mega-shark

No./ 11 SMILEY FACE KILLERS

IT’S BASED ON AN URBAN LEGEND A real-life urban legend about serial killers drowning young men across Midwestern America — and leaving a graffiti-sprayed smiley face — inspired the film. Bret Easton Ellis knew this when writing the script, but director Tim Hunter liked the way that main character Jake was written. “[He] was clinically depressed, kind of narcissistic, borderline impotent,” Hunter says. “Nobody believes him when he thinks he’s being targeted, and the poor bastard gets kidnapped and tortured anyway!” IT’S SURPRISINGLY SUSPENSEFUL While the name and the premise might suggest something gory from the get-go, Smiley Face Killers takes its time, as Jake receives suspicious text messages for an hour before anything goes wrong. “I liked the precisely orchestrated cat-and-mouse nature of Bret’s script,” Hunter says. “You come…

No./ 11 SMILEY FACE KILLERS

No./ 12 When time travel gets trippy

RULE 1: TIME IS NOT LINEAR The idea for Synchronic , the fourth film from filmmaker team Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, first began germinating in 2015. “Apparently, physicists are pretty well decided that time is not linear in any particular way,” Moorhead explains. “It’s just that that’s how we perceive it. Justin threw this idea at me: if time is not linear, what if there were a way to actually see it that way? Now, this is our pop understanding of it. Of course, we are mere indie filmmakers. But we found that interesting. And also absolutely terrifying.” Having previously tackled time loops in their 2017 film, the cosmic headscratcher The Endless , the pair began workshopping ideas, working within the ‘growing block universe’ idea — “the theory that…

No./ 12 When time travel gets trippy

No./ 13 THE COMFORT ZONE WHEN HARRY MET SALLY

CHOOSING THE MOST comforting moment in Rob Reiner’s 1989 romcom is a bit like asking which is the warmest log on the fire. Who cares when everything around you is this cosy? This movie is all long walks in the park and excellent knitwear, and even the downer moments shot through with bright and shiny hope. But if there’s one scene that’s right for right now, it’s when Harry (Billy Crystal), mourning his failed marriage, calls Sally (Meg Ryan), to find her rewatching Casablanca . He syncs up his Netflix — sorry, turns to the right channel — and the pair, warm and cosy in their respective beds, discuss the greatest film ever made, Harry’s hypochondria and whether they’re sleeping okay after devastating break-ups: “That’s the good thing about depression,…

No./ 13 THE COMFORT ZONE WHEN HARRY MET SALLY

No./ 14 Bob Odenkirk breaks bad

IN EARLY 2018, Russian filmmaker Ilya Naishuller entered a top LA stunt facility to be confronted by two very different types of action star. “In front of me was Keanu Reeves, getting ready for John Wick 3 ,” the director tells Empire . “Then I turned around, and there’s Bob Odenkirk sweating like crazy in the next room.” He chuckles as he recalls it. “This was right at the start of Bob’s training, though. Today, he can do more push-ups than I’ve done in my entire life.” The reason for Odenkirk’s gruelling, two-year Keanu-fication is Naishuller’s forthcoming thriller, Nobody , which sees the actor best known as Saul Goodman reborn as a bona-fide action hero. “It’s Bob going severely against type,” says Naishuller. “He plays a guy [the superbly named…

No./ 14 Bob Odenkirk breaks bad

No./ 15 [IN MEMORIAM] THE HUGH MAX TO

TOECUTTER MAD MAX (1979) Where Toad was a crazed-but-loveable biker in Stone, there’s nothing remotely pleasant about Toecutter, the leader of the bikie gang that murders the family of Max Rockatansky, which sends him more than a little “Mad”. WILLIAM WHOPPER SECRET VALLEY (1980-82) Displaying a flair for OTT humour, the actor was deliciously campy as an evil property developer trying to take over the Secret Valley children’s holiday camp with the help of the inept Spider McGlurk and his gang. IMMORTAN JOE MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015) Keays-Byrne’s final film role was suitably memorable as he returned to the Mad Max world, although the wasteland tyrant Immortan Joe made Toecutter look like a kindergarten bully by comparison.…

No./ 15 [IN MEMORIAM] THE HUGH MAX TO

No./ 16 Etched in Stone

THE MEMBERS OF the Grave Diggers — the outlaw bikie gang who are the focus of 1974’s violent thriller Stone — were portrayed as rebels. But none were more rebellious than its producer, director, co-writer and star, Sandy Harbutt. The Aussie auteur — who passed away last November at age 79 — only has one film to his credit, but its influence on our movie industry and motorbike culture has been profound. It may be dressed up as a blood-soaked action-fest but, at its core, Stone is a respectful deep dive into a much-maligned subculture, touching on concepts of honour, mateship and personal freedom. It also examines important issues of the day such as police corruption, conservation and the plight of war veterans (the Grave Diggers are all former Korean…

No./ 16 Etched in Stone

No./ 17 John Carpenter’s music masterclass

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

No./ 17 John Carpenter’s music masterclass

Do you have a nickname? There was one that I had, the weird one: two friends called me ‘Plugger’. It’s because I wouldn’t stop, I’d always keep going. I know they were mocking me, but I was okay with it. Do you have a signature dish? I’ve only got one dish: it’s cherry tomatoes, pasta, garlic thinly sliced. Get the garlic in the pan, hot. Once it starts to give off the aroma, whack the tomatoes in there, pepper, salt, chilli flakes or fresh chilli, then put in capers, some freshly cut basil on top and a lot of olive oil. Put that in the pasta and then parmesan cheese on top. I’ve perfected it! The Plugger Special! What is the worst smell in the world? [ Big laugh ]…

OUT JANUARY 21 CERT PG / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Glendyn Ivin CAST Naomi Watts, Andrew Lincoln, Jacki Weaver, Rachel House PLOT When adventurous, athletic Sam (Watts) suffers a crippling accident in Thailand she becomes lost in depression. While husband Cam (Lincoln) and their three sons try to maintain some normality in their lives, Sam isolates herself further from the family. But an unlikely friendship with a young magpie named Penguin slowly breaks through Sam’s emotional barriers and causes her to reassess everything she holds dear. PUTTING ASIDE MY natural aversion to magpies — not helped by the fact that one of the more psychotic members of the species was responsible for my older brother shattering his shoulder in a cycling mishap several years back — I have to admit that…

OUT NOW (SHUDDER) CERT TBC / 104 MINS DIRECTOR Josh Ruben CAST Josh Ruben, Aya Cash, Chris Redd Two horror writers meet at a weekend retreat in the wilderness. Successful Fanny (Aya Cash from The Boys and You’re The Worst) is arrogant and dismissive of wannabe hack Fred (writer/director Josh Ruben). That evening, following a power outage during a thunderstorm, she visits Fred’s cabin and, bored, suggests they tell each other scary stories, acting out the plots and even providing their own FX. As the night goes on and the pair get drunker, Fred’s true nature starts to emerge and Fanny discovers the scariest thing in the cabin may well be her fellow writer. Both actors are great storytellers. And here’s a drinking game for ya: every time a character…

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

OUT JANUARY 28 CERT MA 15+ / 105 MINS DIRECTOR Stephen Johnson CAST Simon Baker, Jacob Junior Nayinggul, Callan Mulvey, Caren Pistorius, Jack Thompson, Sean Mununggurr PLOT Outback policeman Travis (Baker) is complicit in an Indigenous massacre, although he manages to rescue one young boy, Gutjuk, and hand him over to a religious mission before vanishing into the bush. Twelve years later, Travis is pressed back into service to stop a murderous gang led by another survivor of the massacre, Gutjuk’s uncle Baywara (Mununggurr). But whose side is Travis really on? HIGH GROUND BEGINS with a harrowing massacre of an Indigenous community — men, women and children — before settling into a revenge thriller. It’s essentially an Australian outback Western, with Arnhem Land and Kakadu National Park as a spectacular…

WONDER WOMAN 1984

OUT NOW CERT M / 151 MINS DIRECTOR Patty Jenkins CAST Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen PLOT In 1984, Diana Prince (Gadot) is living a quiet life in Washington and discreetly helping people as Wonder Woman. That is until a scheme from charlatan businessman Maxwell Lord (Pascal) threatens global catastrophe, tempting bumbling gemologist Barbara Minerva (Wiig) down a dark path, and giving Diana something she never expected: the return of her long-dead lover, Steve Trevor (Pine). FOR THE FIRST time in about two decades, 2020 has been a year without a single major planet-rescuing superhero on the big screen. (Birds Of Prey arguably qualifies, though Harley Quinn was more concerned with saving an egg sandwich than saving the world.) After years of box…

WONDER WOMAN 1984

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

OUT NOW CERT MA15+ / 117 MINS DIRECTOR Robert Connolly CAST Eric Bana, Genevieve O’Reilly, John Polson PLOT After a long absence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk (Bana) returns to his rural home town to attend a funeral following a tragic murder-suicide. But his arrival stirs up old resentments regarding another mystery, the unsolved death of a teen 20 years earlier. When Falk investigates the new case, he learns there may be a connection between the two crimes. WATER, OR THE lack thereof, dominates the conversation — both spoken and unspoken — in co-writer and director Robert Connolly’s bush noir, based on Jane Harper’s international bestseller from 2016. For the citizens of the fictional central Victorian town of Kiewarra, water is as precious as gold, and just as rare following nearly…

MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

OUT NOW (NETFLIX) CERT TBC / 94 MINS DIRECTOR George C. Wolfe CAST Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Michael Potts, Glynn Turman, Taylour Paige PLOT Chicago, 1927. While singer Ma Rainey (Davis) squares off with white management over her music at a recording session, ambitious trumpeter Levee (Boseman) has an eye on Ma’s girlfriend Dussie Mae (Paige) and his heart set on launching his own career. IN THE EARLY 1980s, two-time Pulitzer Prizewinning African playwright August Wilson began writing a collection of ten plays known as the ‘Century Cycle’, with each work telling a story about the Black American experience in a different decade. Fences was the first of these plays to get given the theatrical treatment in 2016, courtesy of director and star Denzel Washington, to whom Wilson’s plays have…

MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

OUT NOW CERT R / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Brandon Cronenberg CAST Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Rossif Sutherland PLOT Tasya Vos (Riseborough) is an assassin who works for a corporate entity that inserts her consciousness into the bodies of unsuspecting vessels, who then take the rap for her crimes. When she’s implanted into Colin Tate (Abbott) for her next mission, though, things take a startling turn as his subsumed consciousness begins to fight back. BODIES MELTING INTO each other. A psychic battle on the astral plane. Questions of identity and transmutation and transformation. Outbursts of strong, bloody violence. And even the odd spot of kinky rumpy-pumpy. Yep, Possessor is a Cronenberg movie, alright. But the Cronenberg playing with the family jewels this time is Brandon, son of David, proving here, even…

OUT TBA CERT TBC / 93 MINS DIRECTOR Harry Macqueen CAST Colin Firth, Stanley Tucci, Pippa Haywood PLOT Couple of 20 years Sam (Firth) and Tusker (Tucci), who is suffering from early onset dementia, are combining work with pleasure, travelling through the UK's Lake District, visiting family and old haunts on the way to Sam’s upcoming piano recital. With every moment becoming increasingly precious, Sam discovers Tusker is withholding a secret. FOR THOSE KEEPING count, Supernova is the third time Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci have worked together. After 2001’s World War II drama Conspiracy and 2012’s Coen Brothers-scripted caper Gambit, this time the pair have struck gold. An affecting depiction of how a long-term couple negotiate the inexorable effects of dementia, actor-turned-writer-director Harry Macqueen’s second feature (following 2014’s micro-budget…

OUT NOW (NETFLIX) CERT MA15+ / 101 MINS DIRECTOR Justin McMillan CAST Lisa Kay, Geneviève Lemon, Martin Sacks PLOT Grieving mother Hanna (Kay) travels to rural Queensland to find her missing son, believed to have been taken by a serial killer. Weird events begin to unfold around her as hostile locals attempt to drive her away. Hanna’s search leads her deep into the ominous surrounding canefields and she soon realises that something sinister lurks there, eager to snatch children and snooping adults alike. IN NEW AUSSIE film Sweet River, Hanna (wonderful portrayed by British actress Lisa Kay) is a recovering addict suffering from terrible nightmares and haunted by the memories of her son Joey, who was abducted by a serial killer in a Far North Queensland town, but whose body…

AMERICAN UTOPIA

OUT NOW CERT M / 105 MINS DIRECTOR Spike Lee PARTICIPANTS David Byrne, Chris Giarmo, Tendayi Kuumba PLOT In February 2020, David Byrne’s Broadway show American Utopia is drawing to a close. For this end-of-run filmed performance, Spike Lee captures Byrne and his 11-strong band performing a selection of the former Talking Heads frontman’s expansive oeuvre. IF YOU EVER wanted to walk around in the brain of the tireless polymath and comfortably odd performer David Byrne, you would do well to watch American Utopia. Byrne has previously brought his powerful tenor and angular frame to the screen in Jonathan Demme’s 1984 concert movie Stop Making Sense. Directed by Spike Lee, whose fiction work often contains a sublime marriage of image and music, American Utopia carries that same fiercely kinetic and…

AMERICAN UTOPIA

OUT NOW / CERT MA 15+ / 98 MINS DIRECTOR Miles Joris-Peyrafitte CAST Finn Cole, Margot Robbie There’s nothing in Dreamland that you haven’t seen a million times before. A mismatched pair gradually bonding while on the run from the cops was done as recently as last year, with Queen & Slim. And the period setting evokes — deliberately — Bonnie & Clyde. There’s even a little E.T. in its principal hook of gentle young Eugene (Finn Cole) beguiled by entrancing, alluring stowaway Allison (Margot Robbie), a wounded bank robber who has taken refuge in his outbuildings. However, while there isn’t much in the way of surprises in Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s movie, it’s shot beautifully (kudos to DP Lyle Vincent), while Cole and Robbie (who also produced) work hard to make…

OUT FEBRUARY 11 CERT M / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Thomas Vinterberg CAST Mads Mikkelsen, Lars Ranthe There’s a delicious high concept at the heart of Druk (aka Another Round) that makes it ripe for an Adam Sandler comedy. Four middle-aged, jaded teachers try an experiment that argues everything in life — work, family, socialising — is better if you consistently have a little alcohol in your system. For its first half, Thomas Vinterberg’s breezier-than-usual Danish drama stresses the upside of the idea, each man rejuvenated by being ever so slightly drunk, but convincingly moves into darker areas as the gang pursue the idea to the extreme. If it says nothing new about the dangers of over-indulgence, Druk is funny and rich, a fresh, perfectly played take on middle-age ennui, topped…

RED, WHITE AND BLUE

OUT NOW (BINGE) CERT TBC / 80 MINS DIRECTOR Steve McQueen CAST John Boyega, Steve Toussaint, Antonia Thomas, Tyrone Huntley PLOT In ’80s London, Leroy Logan (Boyega), a research scientist, becomes a police officer to combat racial prejudice within the Met Police. But Logan is pulled between community and duty as his father Kenneth (Toussaint) seeks justice for the police brutality to which he fell victim. FIVE MOVIES MAKE up Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series, and so far two have focused on the treatment of London’s Black communities by the capital’s Metropolitan Police. But whereas Mangrove exposes the Force’s institutional racism from the outside through the 1970 trial of nine Black protesters, Red, White And Blue delivers an awe-inspiring internal perspective via John Boyega’s young police officer, Leroy Logan. Boyega…

RED, WHITE AND BLUE

THE MANDALORIAN: SEASON 2

OUT NOW (DISNEY+) EPISODES VIEWED 2 OF 8 DIRECTORS Jon Favreau, Peyton Reed CAST Pedro Pascal, Timothy Olyphant PLOT Entrusted with returning his ward, The Child, to a group known as the Jedi, The Mandalorian (Pascal) starts scouring the galaxy for fellow Mandalorians. En route, he gets into scrapes with ice spiders and the sheriff of a small desert town who’s wearing strangely familiar armour... THE WAY, THIS IS. Relatively hot on the heels of the success of the first season, along comes a second slab of The Mandalorian, aka ‘The Further Adventures Of Mando (because, let’s face it, nobody but nobody is calling him Din Djarin) And Baby Yoda’ (are you going to call him The Child, no matter how much Disney’s marketing arm wills it to be so?…

THE MANDALORIAN: SEASON 2

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY SEASON 3

OUT NOW (NETFLIX) EPISODES VIEWED 6 OF 13 SHOWRUNNERS Alex Kurtzman, Michelle Paradise CAST Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman PLOT After the events of Season 2, Discovery is propelled 900-plus years into the future. With no way back, the crew struggle to come to terms with a universe very different from the one they knew, and without the Federation to guide them. FOR THE LAST two seasons Discovery has been stuck on the canonical naughty step. Beginning a decade before The Original Series, the show has tried to carefully pick its way through the china shop of existing Trek lore without breaking anything valuable. But with the introduction of the Enterprise in Season 2 and the arrival of familiar characters like Spock and Sarek, the show’s existence…

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY SEASON 3

WE ARE WHO WE ARE

OUT NOW (SBS ON DEMAND) EPISODES VIEWED 4 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Luca Guadagnino CAST Jack Dylan Grazer, Jordan Kristine Seamón, Chloë Sevigny, Alice Braga, Francesca Scorsese PLOT In 2016, American teenager Fraser (Grazer) moves with his mother Sarah (Sevigny), a colonel, and her spouse Sonia (Braga), a major, to an Italian coastal military base where he meets a gaggle of hedonistic young things. After some hostility, Fraser forms a particular bond with gender-questioning Caitlin/Harper (Seamón). THERE ARE A lot of penises on display in episode one of Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are. Not quite as many as there were in, say, the infamous 30-penis episode of rival Binge teen drama Euphoria, but plenty nonetheless. Unlike Euphoria, the willy-waving in this, the first TV project from the director of…

WE ARE WHO WE ARE

THE GOOD LORD BIRD

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

THE GOOD LORD BIRD

AUNTY DONNA'S BIG OL' HOUSE OF FUN

OUT NOW (NETFLIX) EPISODES VIEWED 6 OF 6 DIRECTOR Max Miller CAST Mark Samual Bonanno, Broden Kelly, Zachary Ruane After a decade of wowing live audiences and YouTube followers here and overseas, the Aussie trio have landed this skit series on Netflix to showcase their surreal brand of humour. Trying to describe Aunty Donna is impossible although each episode has a theme (of sorts). In one, executive producer Ed Helms explains why his name is actually “Egg” Helms. In another, the guys compete in the ’Lympics against GLOW star Kia Stevens. The final episode sees them preparing a dinner for someone who may or may not be the real Queen. The jokes don’t always hit the mark, but enough do to be optimistic there’ll be a season two.…

AUNTY DONNA'S BIG OL' HOUSE OF FUN

OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) EPISODES VIEWED 10 OF 10 CREATOR Shawn Simmons CAST Mark McKenna, Ciara Bravo, Dean Winters PLOT Tough guy Wayne (McKenna) and his new 15-year-old girlfriend Del (Bravo) hit the road to retrieve a stolen car that was bequeathed to him by his dying father. But the journey promises to be rocky, especially as they’re being pursued by Del’s vengeful father Bobby (Winters) and her two ape-like older brothers. They want her back and Wayne’s head on a plate. IN AN EARLY episode of Wayne, teen runaway Del (Ciera Bravo) is stuck in detention at a school she doesn’t even attend (long story). Another student asks her, “You got a boyfriend?” to which Del replies matter-of-factly, “I got a Wayne.” “What’s a fucking Wayne?” asks the student.…

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

1 THE DAUGHTER Nick de Semlyen: It takes some special qualities to eclipse Johnny The Monkey, Kazakhstan’s most legendary simian porn star, who sidelines as the country’s Minister Of Culture. But Tutar, played sensationally by Bulgarian newcomer Maria Bakalova, manages it. She begins the movie as an impoverished, onion-munching, 15-year-old wildling, and ends it as an enlightened, well-dressed journalist — Bakalova sells the radical transformation, and every painfully awkward moment in between. None are more awkward, or painful, than that in which Tutar takes to the podium and addresses a roomful of gobsmacked Christian women about her discovery of the joys of masturbation. For her courage in performing sequences like this, involving real people, in a country to which she’d never previously been, Bakalova deserves both an Oscar and an…

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

SEARCH AND DESTROY

2020 WAS A LOT. For you, for us, for Michaela Coel. So last August, she just needed to get out. Of her flat, of London. After deciding that she’d simply head wherever “they would let me go”, she took two (negative) COVID tests, booked a flight, landed in Iceland, quarantined for five days, hired a car, got in, Googled “beautiful places to see in Iceland”, and every other day would drive to a place, any place. The months since March, the beginning days of lockdown, had been busy. Coel was still supervising the edit of the final episodes of I May Destroy You just as the very first episodes aired on the BBC. They’d always known the schedule would be tight, but then the pandemic hit and along with it…

SEARCH AND DESTROY

YOUR NEW FAVOURITE AUNTY

ONE OF THE big success stories of 2020 was Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House Of Fun on Netflix, starring the Melbourne-based comedy group of Mark Samual Bonanno, Broden Kelly and Zachary Ruane. The acclaimed six-episode series has opened up a whole new international audience for Aunty Donna, who’ve been wowing audiences, both live and on their YouTube channel, since 2011. Empire caught up with Zach recently to discuss some of the finer details of their new show, including why we all need to start calling producer Ed Helms by his real name, Egg Helms. Congratulations on the success of the show, Zach. What’s the feedback been like so far? “It’s been really positive, particularly in Australia. I think we always thought about ourselves and what we did as pretty weird…so…

YOUR NEW FAVOURITE AUNTY

“WE THOUGHT IT WAS A DISASTER!”

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

“WE THOUGHT IT WAS A DISASTER!”

IN THE UNDERSTATEMENT of the year, we’d like to say, 2020: Christ, what a year! But, among the void-screaming, there have been pockets of joy. And so many of those pockets have been stuffed with the golden minutes and hours that have played across our TV screens. It could even be described, in the very worst of years, as the very best year for television. These shows tore apart genre, structure and narrative. Radical, disruptive storytelling was embraced and sex, finally, was something that we recognised. It’s no coincidence that the moment coincided with debut writers from under-represented backgrounds filling writers’ rooms around the world. So much finally rang true: accents, perspectives and world views from different cultures and social backgrounds. Why? Because the writers who lived these worlds were…

ADULT ENTERTAINMENT

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

ADULT ENTERTAINMENT

I HATE SUZIE, created by Billie Piper and writer Lucy Prebble, follows Piper’s Suzie Pickle, a flighty, co-dependent actress whose life gets upended when compromising photos of her and a man who is not her husband are published online by phone hackers. As the threads of anxiety and stress begin to pull apart the fabric of her professional and personal existence, Suzie goes through a journey of self-discovery over eight episodes entitled ‘Shock’, ‘Denial’, ‘Fear’, ‘Shame’, ‘Bargaining’, ‘Guilt’, ‘Anger’ and ‘Acceptance’. It was a golden rule of the series that each episode would be delivered from Suzie’s singular emotional perspective, but director Georgi Banks-Davies says that each one was “designed differently for each emotion”. Episode 1, ‘Shock’, for example, has a claustrophobic feel to convey Suzie’s world caving in after…

DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET

THE ‘M’ IN the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s official acronym is a contender, for obvious reasons. And where would Thanos have been without the ‘U’ to snap away? But actually it might just be the ‘C’. “Cinematic” is a word that conjures thoughts of scope, of scale, of moving images and imagination that could only work on a big screen, and which were far beyond the reach of the small. For years, it seemed that that’s how Kevin Feige, the man who is president of Marvel Studios and chief architect of the MCU, felt. Feige’s purview was simple: he was the custodian of the cinematic. The TV side of operations was delegated to others. The results of the latter have been the very definition of a mixed bag. There were total…

DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET

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

THE RELUCTANT SPY

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

THE RELUCTANT
SPY

IF I’D WRITTEN a bucket list when I first joined Empire back in 2001, one of the things I would have scrawled near the very top would have been: “Interview Sean Connery”. After all, he was one of the greats. The first Bond. A fellow Celt (even if I’d ignorantly pronounced his name as “seen”’ until I was about ten). My party piece was being able to say every single line of dialogue of his from Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, in a fair approximation of that usually unfairly approximated burr. I never was very popular at parties. And then Big Tam up and retired after the horror show of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the lucky bastard; the rest of us had to plough on with our lives),…

CONNERY IN NUMBERS

1 OSCARS WON 1988 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, THE UNTOUCHABLES 6 MARTINIS CONSUMED IN BOND MOVIES $ 3.5 BILLION THE COMBINED WORLDWIDE GROSS OF HIS MOVIES 12 YEARS DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONNERY AND HARRISON FORD IN LAST CRUSADE (DESPITE HIM PLAYING FORD’S DAD) 1 CONNERY MOVIES THAT ACCIDENTALLY LED TO REAL-LIFE WAR A 2016 ENQUIRY FOUND BRITISH INTELLIGENCE INVADED IRAQ BASED ON INFORMATION FROM A SOURCE WHO WAS RELAYING PLOT DETAILS FROM 1996’S THE ROCK 26 SUITS WORN AS 007 CHARACTERS PLAYED WITH EPIC PONYTAILS (MEDICINE MAN, ZARDOZ, HIGHLANDER) $14 BILLION MONEY STOLEN IN Y2K HEISTS (ENTRAPMENT, 1999) 10 NATIONALITIES PLAYED (ENGLISH, AMERICAN, SCOTTISH, RUSSIAN, IRISH, EGYPTIAN, ITALIAN, MOROCCAN, NORWEGIAN AND, ER, DRAGON) 1 ACCENTS ADOPTED ACROSS ALL THOSE ROLES GOLF HANDICAP 22.0…

CONNERY IN NUMBERS

WHEN SEAN CONNERY was awarded the American Film Institute’s prestigious Life Achievement Award on June 8, 2006, Steven Spielberg sent the character has an appeal to a cross-section of people everywhere,” the former Fountainbridge milkman would shrug in 1983, when asked to explain Bond’s popularity. By the mid-’60s, Connery was driven not only by a passion to break away from the licensed-to-kill Commander, but also to prove there was far more to him than suave quips, sharp suits and flashy violence. More fundamentally, he wanted to establish that he and 007 were not the same person. “One is not Bond…one was functioning reasonably well before Bond…one is going to function reasonably well after Bond,” Connery told Playboy. “This Bond image is a problem in a way, and a bit of…

THE THIRD ACT TWIST

THE LEAGUE OF Extraordinary Gentlemen will forever be known as the film that drove Sean Connery into retirement. (It also drove its director, Stephen Norrington, to quit the film business, which is quite something.) And it’s not a good film, let’s make that clear. It isn’t entirely without merit, but it is a nonsensical, flabby mishmash of a dozen different genres. But at least it let Connery go out on top. On his own terms. He was the man now, dog. Along with Eastwood and Redford, Connery was that rarest of things: a septuagenarian who wasn’t just a leading man, but capable of anchoring massive blockbusters and selling them to worldwide audiences. And his decision to retire meant that we never got to watch him diminish on screen, both as…

THE THIRD ACT
TWIST

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

EVERY SINGLE YEAR, in late December, an argument erupts on the internet: is Die Hard a Christmas film? You’ll note, however, that nobody ever questions whether its 1990 sequel is one, because Die Hard 2 is absolutely as festive as a film with a triple-digit bodycount can be. Unlike the original, there’s snow everywhere. There’s a reference to “a fuckin’ reindeer flying in from a fuckin’ petting zoo”. And beleaguered cop hero John McClane even drives a sleigh-like snowmobile. “Eggnog, a fuckin’ Christmas tree, a little turkey,” he laments at one point. “But, no! I gotta crawl around in this motherfuckin’ tin can!” Orchestrating this violent seasonal spectacular, in which another band of terrorists take over Washington DC’s Dulles Airport, proved no simple feat for director Renny Harlin. Not only…

SO JAMES BOND will not return. Sean Connery, the true original, is gone. And only now do we realise what he gave us. Shaped from the start around his cat-like moves and that steady, amused voice (with a lovely salting of Scottish), Connery wasn’t the best Bond — he defined Bond. The resulting 25 official films have never been anything so crass as a franchise. Bond is integral to the very concept of going to the movies — the chance to escape. Amid changing times and sensibilities, indeed changing faces, we have needed Bond in all his absurdity, his thrill and his rapturous style. Each time, saving the world, Bond made us carefree. But within that security can we spy something more complex? Is it possible that Bond might just…

GOLDFINGER IN NUMBERS

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

GOLDFINGER IN NUMBERS

DIRECTOR SHANNON MURPHY on her bruising-but-beautiful Australian drama, about a teen’s final days with cancer. DANCING WITH DEATH Babyteeth opens with an off-kilter meet cute. Moses (Toby Wallace), sporting a floral shirt, rat-tail and serious case of pinkeye, tumbles past Milla (Eliza Scanlen) and nearly collides with a moving train. “That was the first time we were establishing Moses’ look, as this very sexual thing that’s just come into Milla’s life,” Murphy explains. “He gives her this electricity that she hasn’t felt before.” Wallace — who Murphy discovered in the TV adaptation of Romper Stomper — was cast for his caring nature and playfulness, even if he represents the opposite to Milla at first. “He’s fearless about death in that moment. He encapsulates all of the things that she’s afraid…

“WE DANCE A lot, by the way,” Todd Phillips told Empire when we visited him in the edit bay in June 2019, four months before Joker was unleashed. “People should know, there’s a lot of dancing in this movie. We think Joker has music in his soul.” Nowhere is that more pronounced than in the film’s signature scene: Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), in full Technicolor Joker garb, jubilantly throwing some shapes on the steps he used to trudge up when the weight of the world — or at least, Gotham — was on his shoulders. Now, the steps are his stage, Fleck’s dark heart unshackled, and this is a celebration. Phillips and Phoenix knew it was a moment. But neither could have predicted it would become iconic. To prepare for the…

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

IT’S BECOME A highly regarded cult horror flick overseas, but 2008’s Lake Mungo — the chilling tale of an Australian family haunted by the spirit of their teen daughter following her death by drowning — is barely known in its home country. Why is that? How does an accomplished, well-shot, well-acted, well-received movie — containing one of the greatest jump-scare moments in cinema since Sadako crawled out of the TV set in the original Ring — just vanish into the electronic ether with little fanfare? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that writer/director/producer’s Joel Anderson’s sole feature film can’t be easily pigeonholed despite its nominal “supernatural horror” label. It’s a fake documentary, a found-footage ghost story, a mystery and a family drama about secrets, mortality and coping with unimaginable…

Dawn of the Deaths

TOM SAVINI HAS a tattoo on his left arm. It’s a doodle of a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, accompanied by the words “STAY SCARED”. It’s his way of keeping George A. Romero, the director who gave Savini his big break, close after Romero died in 2017. “I used to wear his watch, which his wife gave me when he died,” says Savini. “So my left hand was a tribute to George Romero.” Dawn Of The Dead was Savini’s first big gig for Romero, and gave the make-up maestro plenty of chance to perfect his craft. “I got a telegram from George,” he says. “It said, ‘Start thinking of ways to kill people.’” He didn’t let Romero down. THE NECK-BITE ZOMBIE Dawn Of The Dead, a decade on from Night Of…

Dawn of the Deaths

THE FIRST TAKE CLUB

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

THE FIRST TAKE CLUB

Shane Black Movies

Chris: For me, Shane Black is Hollywood’s finest purveyor of pulp this side of Quentin Tarantino, and maybe even beyond Tarantino. But why are we ranking his films now? ’Cos we’ve just had Christmas, and Christmas plays a huge part in a lot of Shane Black movies. Dan: It’s a background thing. And even more so, given that most of his stories are set in Los Angeles, where it’s not going to snow. So there is almost always this weird little incongruity. Lethal Weapon, for example, is as much a Christmas movie as Die Hard. It opens with Jingle Bell Rock. Chris : Which The Last Boy Scout closes with. Helen: We can talk about Shane Black’s cynicism, and certainly all of his characters are wisecracking and violent, but setting…

Shane Black Movies

1 IRON MAN 3 (2013) Helen: Audacious, daring and sometimes genuinely emotional, Black turned the tables on audiences with one of cinema history’s most hilarious twist-reveals. An inspired superhero sequel.” 2 KISS KISS BANG BANG (2005) James: “Black at his hard-boiled best, giving zero fucks about what audiences wanted and all the better for it.” 3 LETHAL WEAPON (1987) Dan: “A stone-cold classic and still the movie to go to if you want bickering, mismatched buddy cops.” 4 THE NICE GUYS (2016) Dan: “My personal favourite Black-directed entry. Certainly his funniest film, and it has a giant talking bee.” 5 LETHAL WEAPON 2 (1989) Chris: “Only a story credit for Black, but his dabs are all over Richard Donner’s funnier, peppier sequel.” 6 THE LAST BOY SCOUT (1991) Chris: “Perhaps…

TRAIN TO BUSAN PRESENTS: PENINSULA OUT NOW / CERT MA 15+ / 118 MINS Since Yeon Sang-ho delivered an all-time-great zombie movie in Train To Busan, to say its sort-of sequel doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor feels a little unfair. Peninsula doesn’t have the streamlined economy of that first-class horror, but it’s shooting for a different kind of thrill — busting out of confined carriages into a city of militant gangs, hordes of hungry infected and undead death matches. There’s a pleasingly Carpenter-esque set-up (a ragtag crew is deployed to the infected zone to extract a truckload of cash), plenty of grisly imagery (a rat king of tangled zombie bodies in the standout sequence), and an emphasis on carnage-fuelled action instead of quiet suspense. If it overdoes the…

OLIVIA COOKE: “The dinner table scene between Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps in Phantom Thread. The way Vicky gets flustered was mesmerising. You can’t bottle that as an actor. It felt so spontaneous and such a visceral reaction. It’s what you crave.” INT. DINING ROOM — NIGHT Alma (Vicky Krieps) has made asparagus for Reynolds (Daniel Day-Lewis). His lukewarm reaction to it has erupted into a huge row. REYNOLDS: There are other things I’d like to do with my time. It’s my time. My time! ALMA: I have no idea what I’m doing here in your time. What am I doing here? I’m standing around like an idiot, waiting for you! REYNOLDS: Waiting for what? ALMA: Waiting for you. REYNOLDS: Waiting for what? ALMA: Waiting for you to get rid…

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