Magzter Gold (Sitewide Promotion)

Magzter Gold (Sitewide Promotion)

Digital Delivery

Empire August 1st, 2024 Digital Back Issue Cover

Empire August 2024 (Digital)

(1)

Single Digital Issue

August 2024

$7.39

Powered By Zinio

Zinio

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Instant Start

Subscribe Instead

1 Year Subscription

12 digital issues

$64.58

($5.38/issue)

Go to Subscription

View Subscription Options

Also available on ZINIO Unlimited logo

Get unlimited access to Empire (Digital) + Back Issues & 5000+ other magazines

1-month free trial

Renews at $8.99/month after trial.
Cancel anytime.

Get unlimited access to Empire (Digital) + Back Issues & 5000+ other magazines. Renews at just $8.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Start Trial Learn more

74 Articles

SOME CALL HIM ‘Sauron’. Some call him ‘the Dark Lord’. Still others call him “that absolutely bloody terrifying massive flaming eye”. Well, arguably the most formidable villain in all of fiction (who else has world-corrupting powers and blingy jewellery?) has another name, and form — all the better with which to scam the gentle folk of Middle-earth into giving him what he wants. In the second season of The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, the biggest show on the small screen, Sauron will adopt the guise of Annatar, a being who’s as persuasive as he is malevolent. And in this issue of Empire, we take a deep dive into his dastardly doings. On our two special lenticular newsstand covers, Charlie Vickers’ Sauron changes shape before your very…

ALEX GODFREY INTERVIEWED DAISY RIDLEY “Daisy Ridley visited Empire HQ to talk Young Woman And The Sea for the podcast and was a delight, enduring my ridiculous questions about swimming, reminiscing about The Force Awakens, and discussing her litany of on-set injuries. I don’t know why I did that weird lean.” HANNAH EWENS SPOKE TO THE KNEECAP BOYS "Considering that I, an English-born woman, was asking an Irish rap-group to translate their native language lyrics, my chat with Kneecap about their political biopic could've gone badly. Thankfully they took the task in good humour — and now I know how to say ‘ketamine’ in Irish.” SOPHIE BUTCHER VISITED PROPSTORE “To celebrate our special-edition Christopher Nolan issue (on sale until the end of August!), I headed to movie-lovers’ wonderland Propstore to…

LETTER OF THE MONTH THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD As a mere 85-year-old movie fan I can still remember the first movie I ever saw: Son Of Kong. This was in 1949. From then on I’ve been an addict, seeing double bills twice over. Pay once and stay until closing time, unless the usherette noticed you. I remember the 3D craze, the wonder of CinemaScope, the huge Cinerama Screen and every movie I’ve seen. I’m 40 miles away from a decent cinema with IMAX, but luckily I’m also in range of the only Cinerama screen in Europe so my moviegoing continues — with help from Empire, of course. TONY COOPER, VIA EMAIL So lovely to hear your memories, Tony. Please enjoy this Picturehouse membership on us — though they…

PREVIOUSLY, IN EMPIRE…

INTRODUCING THE INTERNET DECEMBER 1994 In 1994, with the World Wide Web then just five years old, a feature ran in issue #66 of Empire, introducing readers to the joys of “surfing the Internet”. We were breathless with the possibilities of this new technology: “It’s like having 30 million mates on the end of the phone!” Back then, film fans had fewer options available online. There was no IMDb yet — but there was, erm, the ‘Cardiff Movie Database’, its humble precursor (named after the university where its servers were based). There were also thriving newsgroup message boards like ‘rec.arts.movies.reviews’. Yet the potential for this new technology, we pondered, was not yet fully realised. “Further into the future,” we predicted, “you may be able to send and receive film clips,…

PREVIOUSLY, IN EMPIRE…

AN OFFER YOU CAN’T REFUSE

EXCLUSIVE INVITES TO EVENTS CURATED BY THE EMPIRE TEAM THE ULTIMATE EMPIRE EXPERIENCE Reading the magazine is only the beginning. To get closer to Hollywood than ever before, join the Empire VIP Club. Screenings with A-listers in the house, our deep-dive Spoiler Special podcast, the magazine direct to your door with bespoke covers, plus free cinema tickets. All for the incredible value of £99.99 a year. Join us today! VIP MEMBERSHIP ONLY £99.99 PER YEAR* Worth over £130! INCLUDES: ✔ Exclusive live events, including preview screenings and Q&As ✔ 13 print issues of Empire a year ✔ Picturehouse or Cineworld Cinemas’ My Cineworld Plus membership, with two free cinema tickets** ✔ Access to the Empire Spoiler Special podcast ✔ Exclusive collectible covers ✔ Digital edition of Empire ✔ Access to back issues of Empire…

AN OFFER YOU CAN’T REFUSE

How to fake a pop star

“SALUTE TO ME, I’m your American queen,” sang Taylor Swift once. She wasn’t kidding. Entire news articles have been devoted to her dazzling statistics: net worth of $1.1 billion, a five-continent tour that has become the first ever to earn $1 billion in ticket sales, 49 Top Ten hits. US newspaper chain Gannett has even hired its own Taylor-focused reporter. And then there’s the 2.3. magnitude earthquake that was triggered by over-excited Swifties in Seattle last year. It all makes Beatlemania look like a queue at the post office. Of course, Swift isn’t the only pop titan around: in 2024, names like Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa and Charli XCX are also dominating headlines. Pop culture has become a literal term. It’s no surprise, then, that Hollywood is paying attention, with…

How to fake a pop star

Constructing an animal-loving android

FROM HOW TO Train Your Dragon to Lilo & Stitch, Chris Sanders’ animated characters are the stuff of legend. He even provided the voice for Stitch, the koala-like alien who became stranded on Earth and consequently impacted many a childhood. His latest directorial venture, The Wild Robot, follows a similarly shipwrecked outcast: ROZZUM unit 7134 — ‘Roz’ for short — a human-sized android assistant voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, who finds herself washed up on a remote island. Speaking with Empire, Sanders talks us through the latest addition to his island of misfit toys. VOCAL VITALITY Sanders had one major rule when it came to designing Roz. “I didn’t want her to have a mouth,” he confirms. “The only robot I would say that was very successful [with one] was the…

Constructing an animal-loving android

THE MONTHLY MIXTAPE

‘VILLAIN ERA’ LADY PARTS WE ARE LADY PARTS This anthem by the all-female Muslim punk band is both hilarious and catchy. Best listened to at an unreasonable hour. ‘SPACE ODDITY’ DAVID BOWIE VENOM: THE LAST DANCE (TRAILER) David Bowie and Venom are an unlikely combo, but with remnants of the symbiote’s homeworld crashing down to Earth, this feels like a canny choice. ‘DOWN HOME GIRL’ ALVIN ROBINSON HIT MAN A classic, sensual groove is perfect for this slick comedy-thriller as the relationship between Glen Powell’s faux assassin and Adria Arjona’s client heats up. ‘AFTER’ VIGGO MORTENSEN THE DEAD DON’T HURT Director, writer and actor Mortensen proves he’s a jack of all trades by composing a score that’s full of meditative, piano-led tracks like this one for his Civil War-set Western.…

THE MONTHLY MIXTAPE

TEENAGE CLICKS RIGHT THROUGH THE NIGHT

BEING A TEENAGER is scary. Now imagine being a teenager in 2008, when instant messaging and MySpace opened up brand-new ways to experience the highs and crushing lows of adolescence. It’s these platforms that create the anti-nostalgia minefield in Sean Wang’s debut feature Dìdi, a coming-of-age comedy-drama that follows Taiwanese-American 13-year-old Chris (Izaac Wang), whose difficulties with navigating identity are amplified tenfold by being online. “I wanted to show that you didn’t have to rely on people over-acting to show how emotional the internet can be,” the director tells Empire. Much of Dìdi plays out in tense silence, as Chris is devastated to discover that his best friend has taken him off his ‘top 8’ on MySpace (the social-media equivalent to being uninvited from a birthday party), or eagerly anticipates…

TEENAGE CLICKS RIGHT THROUGH THE NIGHT

Power games in paradise

WHEN NAOMI ACKIE first received the script for Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, at the time called ‘Pussy Island’, she had a strong gut reaction. “I was like, ‘Yessssssss! Fuck, yes!’” she laughs, her head back. “It already gave the vibe that it wasn’t going to follow the rules.” She wasn’t wrong. The film — which has since been renamed Blink Twice — is set to be one of the year’s most audacious: a psychological thriller that follows Ackie’s headstrong cocktail waitress Frida as she charms her way onto a hedonistic getaway with tech mogul Slater King (Channing Tatum) and his inner circle. Amid major partying on Slater’s private island, Frida begins to realise that there are sinister undertones to the group. “I really responded to that feeling of being a…

Power games in paradise

PEAKY BLINDERS MOVIE By order of Netflix, Steven Knight’s feature-length follow-up to his West Midlands Mob series is officially happening. Cillian Murphy returns as Tommy Shelby for the World War II-set film, written by Knight and directed by Blinders alum Tom Harper. Filming starts this September. BADLANDS Prey director Dan Trachtenberg’s secretive next Predator movie has found its lead in Elle Fanning. A separate project to Trachtenberg’s still-in-the-works Prey 2, this spin-off — which starts shooting later this year — reportedly takes place sometime in the future. MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE Nicholas Galitzine has the power! The in-demand The Idea Of You star will bring Prince Adam of Eternia — aka He-Man — to life in Travis Knight’s upcoming live-action take on the cult ’80s cartoon. This one’s eyeing a…

The Spotlight Isabela Merced

IT’S A QUESTION many of us have pondered in the middle of the night, but Isabela Merced has lived it: if you had to face a xenomorph or one of the infected from The Last Of Us, which would be worse? For Merced, who plays Dina in the second season of the show and stars in Alien: Romulus, it’s the infected. “[But] it depends what state, right?” she tells Empire, having thought about this extensively — Merced is a deep researcher about all of the projects she works on and played the whole game. “There’s the dumber ones, then there’s the Clickers, then in the game you have the Stalkers… But the Bloaters are ter-ri-fying! Oh my God. My heart’s racing now just thinking about it!” In Alien: Romulus, Merced…

The Spotlight Isabela Merced

A NEW BREED OF KILLING MACHINE

“WHAT IF GUS Van Sant directed a Friday The 13th sequel?” was Chris Nash’s elevator pitch for In A Violent Nature, the new slasher that has left audiences reeling and reportedly throwing up. The twist? The film is mostly set from Freddy Krueger’s point of view. Well, actually an undead, hook-wielding masked killer called Johnny (Ry Barrett). Here, Nash charts the rise of his unique debut. JOHNNY’S GENESIS 2020 The wheels for In A Violent Nature began turning while Nash was working on Psycho Goreman. “[I] wanted to make the most straightforward slasher film that we’ve all seen a million times before,” he laughs, “[I] just wanted to see different parts of the story.” Nash is also a major Van Sant fan. “I wanted to see what would happen if…

A NEW BREED OF KILLING MACHINE

From OAP to MVP

NOT MANY 94-year-olds can confirm that they performed their own stunts for the starring role in an action movie. Yet here is June Squibb, in the wake of making Thelma, doing just that. “It didn’t occur to me that I couldn’t,” she tells Empire. To clarify, these are not the kinds of stunts that Mission: Impossible’s Ethan Hunt is pulling off, although he is a major motivator for Squibb’s character. Instead, Thelma’s mission involves hijacking a mobility scooter, ‘borrowing’ her friend’s firearm, and tracking down the phone scammers who swindled her out of $10,000. “I just felt that I knew who this woman was,” Squibb recalls from reading the script. For one, Thelma is 90, not that that slows her down. “She just has such grit and determination,” Squibb enthuses.…

From OAP to MVP

A WORLD OF PURE NEW ANIMATION

THERE’S NO FILM festival quite like Annecy. Based around a lake in the Alps, it’s famed for showcasing upcoming animation, big and small, as well as its quirky rituals: paper planes thrown at the stage before every event, and cries of, “Lapin!” whenever a rabbit appears on screen. With masterclasses from Henry Selick and Wes Anderson, and a few surprises, this year’s line-up was more eclectic than ever. Empire visited and found out what most wowed the crowd. DC CREATURE COMMANDOS James Gunn’s upcoming animated series is a pulpy mash-up of classic Universal monster movies and a military action flick. Set in the aftermath of Peacemaker Season 1, the show follows an Amanda Waller-assembled black-ops team of misfits. Gunn — who wrote all seven episodes — appeared on screen to…

A WORLD OF PURE NEW ANIMATION

BEN TRAVIS IS THINKING ABOUT… A DROID WITH A DIFFERENCE Every time Star Wars chucks another droid into the mix, it’s delightful. But The Acolyte’s Pip is especially cute — decked out in vibrant blue and orange, described as having “a chipper, can-do personality”, and able to fit in a pocket. A pocket! BETH WEBB IS THINKING ABOUT… DWAYNE JOHNSON’S BOUNTIFUL BONCE There’s an analogy in Mean Girls that compares seeing a teacher out of school to “seeing a dog walk on its hind legs”. That also applies to hairy Dwayne Johnson’s return as wrestler Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine. Nature-defying stuff. ALEX GODFREY IS THINKING ABOUT… ANDI PETERS IN TOY STORY 2 I was reminded recently that Andi Peters recorded a line of dialogue for Toy Story 2:…

The Terminator hits Tokyo

FOR ALL ITS hopping about through different periods of history, the Terminator franchise has never ventured very far geographically. Over six films and one TV show, the action has been largely confined to California and Texas. That all changes with Netflix’s new anime show, Terminator Zero. Set in Tokyo, on the eve of ‘Judgment Day’ (29 August 1997 — the date the Skynet AI launches war against humans), the series also represents the first animated entry in the Terminator universe. Its creators reveal what we can expect from this wild new swing. NO CONNORS Sarah and John Connor — the mother-son duo at the heart of the franchise — will not feature in Terminator Zero. Instead, action revolves around Japanese tech genius Malcolm Lee. “Malcolm is haunted by visions of…

The Terminator hits Tokyo

ARISE, A NEW KNIGHT

IF THERE’S ANYONE who knows how malleable Batman is, it’s Bruce Timm. Having co-created Batman: The Animated Series in the 1990s, he is responsible for one of the most popular iterations of the character. And he’s set to reimagine the hero all over again with Caped Crusader, a series that has the Dark Knight tackling crime in 1940s Gotham alongside some familiar faces, Selina Kyle’s Catwoman and Commissioner Jim Gordon among them. In other words, the show — which is executive-produced by J.J. Abrams and The Batman’s Matt Reeves — is the same but different, with a greener protagonist. “Batman is so early in his career that in the first episode, he’s still an urban myth,” Timm informs Empire. “It’s not ‘Year One’ [the title of a legendary Batman graphic…

ARISE, A NEW KNIGHT

Mischief managed

WHERE WANDAVISION WENT big on meta, Agatha All Along is going big on mischief. To gauge the tone of the new Marvel miniseries, which spotlights Kathryn Hahn’s dastardly witch (and Wanda’s nemesis) Agatha Harkness, you need only look at its title, which in true chaos-magic-style underwent four major changes (including ‘Agatha: Coven Of Chaos’ and ‘Agatha: Darkhold Diaries’) before taking its true form. “We went really far with the ways in which she would mess with people,” laughs the show’s creator Jac Schaeffer, who confirms that reams of fake titles were concocted in the writers’ room. Schaeffer, who also served as creator for WandaVision, revelled in the chance to fully deploy witchcraft into the MCU via Agatha, who was last seen imprisoned in suburbia sans powers by Elizabeth Olsen’s heartsick…

Mischief managed

IT’S FROM THE MAN BEHIND THE MARTIAN US author Andy Weir is best known for his sci-fi bestseller The Martian, which was brought to life by Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard in 2015. Weir’s 2021 novel Project Hail Mary is now heading screenwards too, with Goddard returning as screenwriter, and occupies similar man-alone-in-space territory. The book focuses on an amnesiac astronaut who wakes up millions of miles from Earth, with two dead shipmates for company, and wonders — understandably — how the hell he got there. BUT IT’S WAY WEIRDER THAN THE MARTIAN While The Martian’s hero spends much of his time faffing about with potatoes, things in Project Hail Mary get significantly more out-there. The novel’s protagonist, biology expert Ryland Grace (to be played by Ryan Gosling), has been…

Know your ‘Garda’ from your ‘guds’

NOTORIOUS IRISH RAP group Kneecap’s core mission — as dramatised in their new self-titled biopic — is to save their native language from extinction. As a result, their lyrics are a chaotic mix of references to home, their intoxicated lifestyles, and sometimes, when there’s no Irish-language equivalent, some imaginative substitutes. “We invented certain drug references — for the ones we take, anyway,” Naoise ‘Móglaí Bap’ Ó Cairealláin tells Empire. “We recycled old Irish words that aren’t really used that much anymore and repurposed them,” adding, “[It’s] very uncommon for people to be taking ketamine back in old Ireland.” Here, the Belfast-based trio break down some key phrases from their screenworthy songs. ‘I SPENT ALL MY DLA ON MDMA’ JJ ‘DJ Provai’ Ó Dochartaigh: DLA is your Disability Living Allowance. Liam…

Know your ‘Garda’ from your ‘guds’

YOU CELEBRATIN’ ME?

IN NEW YORK this June, the streets were anything but mean. In fact, they were downright jolly, and all because of one event: De Niro Con. To celebrate the 80th birthday of Robert De Niro, the Tribeca Film Festival pulled out all the stops, throwing a three-day shindig that proved to be the greatest Bobby bacchanal since that Christmas party in GoodFellas. With multiple tiers of access — ranging from the Johnny Boy Day Pass at $150 to the Godfather Pass for $3,500 — there was something for every kind of De Niro fan. Live music? You could go to a concert playing tunes inspired by the film Shark Tale. Food? There was a themed sandwich competition, advertised with a shot of De Niro chomping a sarnie in Copland. Additional…

YOU CELEBRATIN’ ME?

SQUIRRELING ONTO THE BIG SCREEN

SANDY CHEEKS SAVING BIKINI BOTTOM: THE SANDY CHEEKS MOVIE (AUGUST) After nearly 25 years on air, SpongeBob’s furry friend is finally getting her moment in the spotlight. In the gang’s latest feature-length adventure, thrill-seeking, diving-suit wearing athlete Sandy (Carolyn Lawrence) recruits her Texan family in order to save her new hometown, Bikini Bottom, from an evil CEO. VARIOUS MENACING SQUIRRELS THE SCURRY (TBC) A vermin problem turns violent in Craig Roberts’ upcoming rodent revenge movie. Fallout’s Ella Purnell leads the horror as a park attendant who must utilise her survival skills when an avalanche of bloodthirsty squirrels descend on an eco-cafe, leaving few alive. Sometimes nuts just won’t cut it. WIRRAL HIGH IN THE CLOUDS (2026) An animated adaptation of Paul McCartney’s children’s novel has been in and out of…

SQUIRRELING ONTO THE BIG SCREEN

Frank gets frank

FRANK MILLER: AMERICAN GENIUS IT’S ABOUT TIME someone made a documentary about Frank Miller. The 67-year-old comic-book artist and writer is best known for Sin City and 300, and changed the face of superhero comics 40 years ago with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. His influence is all through superhero films today. With a new documentary covering his life and work, Empire caught up with him to find out what he still wants to see on screen. How do you think the young Frank Miller would have responded if a time traveller had told him that there would be a documentary called Frank Miller: American Genius? He would have said, “But of course!” (Laughs) No, I honestly never thought there’d be such a thing until Silenn Thomas (the documentary’s director…

Frank gets frank

“How can films have legs when they've been cut off at the knee?”

Windows can be a right pain. Specifically, the release variety. Before the one-two punch of Bad Boys: Ride Or Die and, particularly, the record-breaking opening of Inside Out 2, the summer blockbuster season had been a damp squib. The Fall Guy, which kicked off the season in early May, had fallen with a mere $30 million opening weekend. Furiosa had crashed and burned. Fingers of blame were pointing all over the shop, including (but not limited to) underwhelming marketing, exorbitant ticket prices, post-Covid wariness, and anti-social audience behaviour. And we haven’t even tackled the delicate matter of massive budgets, which then put pressure on films to post a wildly unrealistic box-office tally before they can even break even. For me, though, the streaming window is one of the biggest factors,…

“How can films have legs when they've been cut off at the knee?”

On A Role KAREN GILLAN IS MADELINE CROWE

DOUGLAS IS CANCELLED THE POISE Karen Gillan was first introduced to Douglas Is Cancelled when Steven Moffat, with whom she had worked on Doctor Who, sent her the script for a proposed stage play six years ago. When the play didn’t happen he pivoted to a TV show, and asked Gillan to star. “It felt really relevant all those years ago, but it feels even more relevant now,” she tells Empire about the story of Madeline, a popular TV presenter and her hapless co-host (Hugh Bonneville) whose career is threatened after he makes an ill-advised joke. Having known the character for so long, Gillan instantly began working on suppressing her “own nerdy, frantic energy” in order to portray this “cool-as-a-cucumber, unshakeable woman” on TV. THE LOOK In a key flashback…

On A Role KAREN GILLAN IS MADELINE CROWE

HOLLYWOOD’S NEW LORDS OF THE RING

ROCKY CAN TAKE a rest, as a spate of fresh films set inside a ring are limbering up. Borrowing from the great legacy of combat sport films past, these upcoming biopics are set to explore the dark sides of the personalities, struggles, and addictions of the athletes therein. The recent first image from The Smashing Machine, for example, the first solo venture from Benny Safdie of Uncut Gems fame, shows Dwayne Johnson as legendary wrestler and mixed-martial-arts fighter Mark Kerr. It’s a sharp turn from the family-friendly roles that Johnson has traditionally chosen (his next film will be Moana 2), and sees him don prosthetics for the film, which follows Kerr in 2000 at his UFC peak while he was simultaneously struggling with substance abuse. “I’m at a point in…

HOLLYWOOD’S NEW LORDS OF THE RING

A PENGUIN’S PAYBACK

HE’S GOT UNFINISHED BUSINESS Back in 1993’s The Wrong Trousers, Gromit thwarted Feathers McGraw’s dastardly diamond-stealing scheme, which the criminal penguin hoped to pin on Wallace. Instead, Feathers ended up in the slammer (or, the city zoo). You’d have to imagine he’s got Max Cady-esque plans to take down Wigan’s finest in Vengeance Most Fowl. Cinema cigar, anyone? HE’S GOT A KILLER LOOK “He’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. When he comes after ya, he doesn’t seem to be livin’.” Quint’s iconic Jaws speech could equally apply to Feathers, whose starkly minimalist design (a bowling-pin body with an eerily blank expression) exudes cold, calculating menace. As simple and perfect as villain character-design gets. HE’S GOT A PLUSHY LEGACY Over the last 31 years, Feathers McGraw has…

A PENGUIN’S PAYBACK

How Much Is A Pint Of Milk? Seth Rogen

What one thing do you do better than anyone else you know? I drive backwards better than anyone I know. And I really do. I have a very long, winding driveway that I have to back down every morning and I’ve had a lot of my friends be like, “Of all the things you do, this is most impressive about you.” When we’re filming movies and you have to reset the car, I’m very good at it. I’m a good driver in general, but I’m a particularly good backwards driver. Do you have an irrational fear? I really don’t like wet plastic. I don’t know if I’m afraid of it but I have a real aversion to wet plastics. A wet plastic bag to me is the grossest thing in…

How Much Is A Pint Of Milk? Seth Rogen

OUT 5 JULY / CERT 18 / 104 MINS DIRECTOR Ti West CAST Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Bacon PLOT Hollywood, 1985. Porn star and massacre survivor Maxine Minx (Goth) gets a part in a horror film — and is stalked by a serial killer. IN TI WEST’S 1979-set slasher movie X, Mia Goth played would-be porn star Maxine and elderly killer Pearl. Spinning the film out into a triptych rather than a trilogy, the 1919-set Pearl was about the younger days of the murderess, while Maxxxine is set in 1985 and catches up with what the final girl of the Texas Porn Star Massacre did next in her life. Eventual binge-watchers will notice the way elements recur with variations across all three movies…

OUT NOW / CERT U / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Kelsey Mann CAST Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Ayo Edebiri, Paul Walter Hauser PLOT All seems happy in the life of Riley (Tallman) and her emotions. But things take a disastrous turn with the onset of puberty and the arrival of a new collective, including the controlling Anxiety (Hawke). OF ALL THE Pixar films to follow up, Inside Out seems the most risky. While the ending of the first gave a clear signal of where the general plot could go, with a pre-teen Riley (now voiced by Kensington Tallman) on the edge of puberty, aka emotional Armageddon, you had to wonder what would be the point? The original so brilliantly, with the lightest of touches, dug into the foundations of…

OUT 5 JULY / CERT 15 / 120 MINS DIRECTORS James Floyd, Sally El Hosaini CAST Ben Hardy, Jason Patel, Hannah Onslow, Nisha Nayar Star-crossed lovers are always ripe for the big screen, a fact understood well by filmmakers James Floyd and Sally El Hosaini with the vibrant if familiar Unicorns. The lovers here are single dad Luke (Ben Hardy) and drag queen Aysha (Jason Patel). Eyes lock across a dance floor, before Luke notices Aysha’s Adam’s apple and things get complicated. The film explores self-expression and the definition of family protection carefully, looking at what it means to shelter your children from harm across every age and circumstance. But the romance retreads old ground in the pair’s dynamic. Patel comes alive in moments of romantic ecstasy, but Luke and…

FEDERER: TWELVE FINAL DAYS

OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT 16+ / 100 MINS DIRECTORS Asif Kapadia, Joe Sabia PARTICIPANTS Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic The latest documentary from Asif Kapadia (co-directing with Joe Sabia) takes a far less tragic tale than those of Senna and Amy, shadowing Roger Federer from the eve of announcing his retirement to his final moment on court just 12 days later. Despite contributions from peers (Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic), family, pundits and fans, spliced with archive clips and contemporary footage, inevitably Federer can’t hit the dramatic heights of those earlier works. Still, the film does go some way to communicating the difficult feelings — warning: there are many, many tears — the goofily affable Roger suffers as he hangs up his racquet for good. A suitably respectful…

FEDERER: TWELVE FINAL DAYS

OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 6 OF 6 SHOWRUNNER Rapman CAST Tosin Cole, Sabrina Mills, Josh Tedeku, Eric Kofi-Abrefa, Adelayo Adedayo, Calvin Demba PLOT As a disparate group of young people develop superpowers, one of them desperately attempts to find and unite them. SUPACELL SCENES OCCUR, as perhaps all scenes should, outside Bargain Booze and Wimpy. You can practically smell the knickerbocker glories. Set and shot in South London, with a predominantly Black cast, the action takes place on the estates, on the streets and in the clubs, in Peckham, Lewisham, Brixton, Camberwell. It’s genuinely homegrown, a tribute to creator and writer Rapman’s roots and life experience, and you feel that in practically every shot. It’s an unfiltered vision, a defibrillator of a show helping to bring an increasingly…

BLUR: TO THE END

OUT JULY 19 / CERT TBC / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Toby L PARTICIPANTS Damon Albarn, Alex James, Dave Rowntree, Graham Coxon Best known for era-defining ’90s hits including ‘Parklife’ and ‘Girls & Boys’, Blur reunited in 2023 to make The Ballad Of Darren. Blur: To The End offers an intimate portrait of the quartet as they record, rehearse and perform — first on a short warm-up tour in small British towns including Colchester, where frontman Damon Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon met at school, then at a pair of triumphant Wembley Stadium gigs. The exhausted band are most energised playing live but maintain their good humour elsewhere. Out front and backstage, this illuminating if not quite revelatory documentary shows a vulnerable, exhausted Blur and the band at their best. Interesting…

BLUR: TO THE END

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS

OUT JULY 9 / CERT 12A / 108 MINS. DIRECTOR Mike Cheslik CAST Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Olivia Graves, Wes Tank, hundreds of beavers If you predicted that one of the most entertaining films of the summer would be a deranged $150,000 comedy about a man battling beavers in the frozen north, then congratulations, you are more prescient than us. Essentially The Revenant meets The Road Runner, it’s more or less indescribable, but if you tune into its wacky wavelength you’ll be tickled silly by its relentless sight gags, video-game sound-effects and pure energy (think early Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson). A hit at film festivals, where people have dressed up in beaver-suits for the occasion, it’s one to see with a crowd if you can. If you view it…

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS

A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 99 MINS DIRECTOR Michael Sarnoski CAST Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Djimon Hounsou, Alex Wolff PLOT Sam (Nyong’o) is on a day trip to New York City when marauding aliens crash-land across the Earth. Along with fellow survivor Eric (Quinn), she tries to navigate the silent new world. BEYOND ITS HOOKY nobody-make-a-sound premise (Watch that nail! Stay outta the grain silo! You’re really giving birth in that bathtub?!), it’s easy to forget: A Quiet Place was so effective because it really made you care for the Abbott family. Since John Krasinski and Emily Blunt’s grieving parents were the original’s beating heart, spin-off A Quiet Place: Day One — dialling back to humanity’s first contact with the audibly enhanced aliens — has gaping holes to fill,…

A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE

OUT NOW (DISNEY+) / EPISODES WATCHED 4 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Leslye Headland CAST Amandla Stenberg, Carrie-Anne Moss, Lee Jung-jae, Dafne Keen, Jodie Turner-Smith PLOT Force sensitive Mae (Stenberg) is on a mission of revenge. Her targets are four people with one key thing in common: they’re Jedi. A GIRL WALKS into a bar — stop us if you’ve heard this one. Picking her way through tables crowded with a menagerie of alien patrons, she squares up to a figure in Jedi robes. The resulting fracas is something you definitely won’t be familiar with — at least not from Star Wars. A whirlwind of wuxia-inspired fists and feet, the series prologue has the flavour of Hong Kong action cinema, but with a distinctly Star Wars twist — punches and parries augmented…

THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE

OUT 25 JULY (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT TBC / 120 MINS DIRECTOR Guy Ritchie CAST Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Henry Golding, Alex Pettyfer, Cary Elwes, Rory Kinnear PLOT In the early years of World War II, a team of soldiers are sent on an unofficial, unsanctioned mission to hamper the Nazi’s U-boat programme. “REMEMBER, GENTLEMEN,” SAYS Henry Cavill’s Gus March-Phillipps in The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare, “try to have fun.” It is an instructive line. This is a very silly kind of war film, an action comedy with only a tangential, Wikipedia-skim-read level of historical reality. It is extremely loosely based on the real Operation Postmaster, the daring off-books operation which saw a crack team of commandos steal enemy warships from the Germans. In the midst of a…

THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON: SEASON 2

OUT NOW (SKY ATLANTIC/NOW) / EPISODES VIEWED 4 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Ryan Condal CAST Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Matt Smith, Rhys Ifans, Tom Glynn-Carney, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best PLOT King Viserys is dead. But the storm clouds of Targaryen civil war are gathering — one side fighting for King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), the other for Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy). DESPITE THE SUCCESS of House Of The Dragon’s first season, both in terms of its burnished worldbuilding and its broadly positive critical response, the second arrives with much expectation that it can do better. Whether it was the relative lack of geographical and social scope, the big leaps forward in time, or the constant casting switch-ups as characters aged, even its biggest fans had a niggle they could mention. On…

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON: SEASON 2

CHUCK CHUCK BABY

OUT 19 JULY / CERT TBC / 101 MINS DIRECTOR Janis Pugh CAST Louise Brealey, Annabel Scholey, Sorcha Cusack New beginnings and a second chance at love could be on the cards for long-suffering Helen (Louise Brealey) in this familiar but charming love story set in working-class North Wales. With a mix of gritty social realism and fairy-tale musical whimsy (enter a recurring floating dandelion seed-head and sporadic Sunshine On Leith-esque singalongs), Chuck Chuck Baby’s tonal shifts can feel quite jarring. But the heartfelt and moving performances from Brealey and Annabel Scholey elevate proceedings; their sweet and affecting sapphic romance is one you can’t help but cheer for. Despite some shaky moments, this is an endearing tale of self-acceptance and liberation, wearing its heart fully on its sleeve.…

CHUCK CHUCK BABY

FREUD’S LAST SESSION

OUT 14 JUNE / CERT 12 / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Matthew Brown CAST Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries, Jodi Balfour, Orla Brady An unknown Oxford don visited Sigmund Freud’s (Anthony Hopkins) London home shortly before his death in 1939. What if, this film asks, that don had been C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode)? Well, there might have been a clash of ideas as in this movie — although probably considerably sharper. The prominent atheist and Christian apologist, respectively, get into it as World War II looms. It’s not an inherently bad idea, nor an uninteresting pair of characters. The problem is that the conversation drags, with long silences punctuating brief, at times obtuse attacks on one another’s points of view. It’s not the fault of either star, but the…

FREUD’S LAST SESSION

BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 115 MINS DIRECTORS Adil & Bilall CAST Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Jacob Scipio, Joe Pantoliano, Vanessa Hudgens, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhea Seehorn PLOT A message from their late former captain (Pantoliano) sets Mike (Smith) and Marcus (Lawrence) on the trail of corrupt officials. MAYBE IT’S THE Florida heat, but this series about Miami cop-buddies named Mike (Will Smith) and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) just gets ever more delirious. What started out as a flashy-but-routine police thriller got a sequel in which they invaded Cuba (probably the most restrained part of the film) and another in which they went up against a witch (an actual witch). Now, coming quick off the staggering success of part three, we get Bad Boys: Ride Or Die, in which, early on,…

BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE

THE FUTURE WAS NOW

AUTHOR CHRIS NASHAWATY “I’VE SEEN THINGS you people wouldn’t believe.” Roy Batty’s iconic line from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner might well be applied to the cinematic summer of 1982. In one seven-week period between 16 May and 9 July, audiences could choose between Conan The Barbarian, Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Mad Max 2, Tron and — on the same weekend! — Blade Runner and The Thing. This embarrassment of riches forms the subject of Chris Nashawaty’s engaging survey of what is arguably the finest year in geek cinema. The author of great books on Caddyshack and Roger Corman, Nashawaty argues that the summer of ’82 crystalises a mid-point between the daring of the New Hollywood of the ’70s and the bombastic blockbusters of…

THE FUTURE WAS NOW

OUT 19 JULY/CERT 15 / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Josh Margolin CAST June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell PLOT When 90-year-old widow Thelma (June Squibb) is scammed, she embarks on a mission to take her money back. And then some… IF SHE HASN’T earned it already by now, June Squibb certainly deserves American national-treasure status for her performance as the indomitable Thelma. Having played supporting roles for decades in films like The Age Of Innocence, Far From Heaven and About Schmidt, in 2013 she was nominated for an Oscar for Alexander Payne’s Nebraska. But, perhaps unsurprisingly for an industry that’s not very interested in women over 40, let alone over 90, this Sundance hit is her first-ever leading role. And thankfully this indie comedy/road movie/nonagenarian…

SENUA’S SAGA: HELLBLADE II

PC, XBOX SERIES X/S A SEQUEL TO 2017’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was risky. The original was dark and mesmeric, following a ninth-century Pict woman plagued by auditory and visual hallucinations, but no frame of reference beyond gods and demons to explain them. Lauded for its exploration of mental health — specifically psychosis — the game also ended on something of an upbeat note, its hero achieving a degree of inner peace. A follow-up could have felt unnecessary, reductive even, trading a meaningful experience for mere medieval hack-and-slash antics. Yet with Senua’s Saga, developer Ninja Theory hasn’t just hand-waved Senua’s struggles away. She’s still tormented by visions that she doesn’t have the language to even describe, let alone understand, and subjected to a swirling jabber of inner voices offering unwanted observations…

SENUA’S SAGA: HELLBLADE II

HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA — CHAPTER 1

OUT NOW / CERT TBC / 181 MINS DIRECTOR Kevin Costner CAST Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Jena Malone, Sam Worthington, Danny Huston, Jamie Campbell Bower, Sam Worthington PLOT It’s the 1860s, and as the US Civil War rages back east, a loose assemblage of characters head west for a settlement called Horizon. THE WESTERN HAS been declared dead more often than Dracula, but Kevin Costner — who turned to the genre as soon as his fame allowed him to make his own movies — is betting a fair chunk of his personal fortune that there’s life in the ol’ horse yet. The result is a meandering three-hour oater that is only the opening salvo of a longer epic (Chapter 2 will follow in August; Chapters 3 and 4 are still…

HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA — CHAPTER 1

3 ISSUES OF EMPIRE FOR £5

SAVE 70% ON SHOP PRICES!* The ultimate Empire experience. See page 8 for details. Every issue delivered to your door, before it arrives in shops, with exclusive collectible covers SUBSCRIBE BY VISITING EITHER GREATMAGAZINES.CO.UK/EMPIRE, CALLING 01858 438 884 OR SCANNING THE QR CODE Terms and Conditions: *3 issues for £5 is the trial price available on an Empire print subscription. After your first 3 issues, your payment will auto-renew to £30 every 6 months thereafter. UK only. Offer closes 31/08/24. Your subscription will start with the next available issue. Cost from landlines for 01 numbers per minute are (approximate) 2p to 10p. Cost from mobiles per minute (approximate) 10p to 40p. Costs vary depending on the location. You may get free calls to some numbers as part of your call…

3 ISSUES OF EMPIRE FOR £5

THE BOYS: SEASON 4

OUT NOW / PRIME VIDEO / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF SHOWRUNNER Eric Kripke CAST Antony Starr, Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Claudia Doumit PLOT With supe Victoria Neuman (Doumit) now a hair from the Oval Office, time is running out for The Boys to stop her and Homelander (Starr) for good. AT THIS POINT, the formula for The Boys is well established. Take one helping of superpowered mayhem, add a side of human drama, season with a generous amount of political potshots, and voilà — you have one of the best TV dramas of the last five years. It’s a testament to showrunner Eric Kripke that in its fourth season the capacity to shock hasn’t dimmed, the political and cultural satire remains razor-sharp, and the character drama excavates new…

THE BOYS: SEASON 4

ARCADIAN FILM “Nicolas Cage continues his current hot streak, turning in a great performance as a father trying to keep a stable home under impossible circumstances. Though things go off the rails in the third act, Arcadian packs plenty of scares in.” BARRY LEVITT YOUNG WOMAN AND THE SEA FILM “It’s long, and sometimes gets swept astray by currents of family drama, but Daisy Ridley’s can-do energy carries the whole thing along. The result is an old-fashioned inspirational pleasure.” HELEN O’HARA PRESUMED INNOCENT TV “A legal thriller so addictive, it’s mildly infuriating Apple TV+ isn’t making the whole thing available in one go. It’s a rare example of a TV drama which expands significantly on its original source-material yet never feels baggy or indulgent.” JAMES DYER THE WATCHED FILM “Ishana…

OUT OF THE SHADOWS

Lucifer. Darth Vader. Heisenberg. Thanos. If you were ranking the best fictional villains, no-one would baulk at finding these names near the pinnacle of the list. Each brims with intimidating presence, relentless will, complexity of character and flair for a dastardly master plan. But, in the minds of J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, showrunners of The Rings Of Power, one bad guy has them all beat — in the blink of a fiery eye. “Sauron is one of the greatest villains in the canon of literature, genre writing, filmmaking… all of it,” says McKay. “He is not just dangerous and ruthless and brilliantly strategic in all the ways that great villains are. He’s unique, in that Sauron is a seducer and a deceiver who tricks you into doing evil for him.”…

OUT OF THE SHADOWS

THE WIGHT STUFF

1. THE IDEA “Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers” wrote J.R.R. Tolkien in The Fellowship Of The Ring. In the book, the wraith-like beings terrorise the Hobbits, but the wights didn’t show up in Peter Jackson’s films, and have only been tackled in a little-seen 1991 Russian TV adaptation of Fellowship. Until now. “The Barrow-wights are ancient, reanimated heroes, acting for evil against their will,” sums up Rings Of Power VFX supervisor Jason Smith. “It was superexciting to take on something I hadn’t seen before. We’ve seen undead before, but not like this. We’re doing a little horror movie in Middle-earth.” 2. THE GARB Essentially ghouls dwelling in barrows (tombs), the basic concept of the wights is that they used to be…

THE WIGHT STUFF

THE LORD AND LADY

NEITHER MORFYDD CLARK NOR CHARLIE VICKERS KNEW PRECISELY WHAT THEY WERE GETTING IN TO WHEN THEY SIGNED UP FOR THE RINGS OF POWER. Of course, they understood it would be a huge production, telling a sprawling story set in the Second Age of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Likely culturally prominent, career-changing stuff, whether compared with Clark’s impressive work in indies like Saint Maud and The Personal History Of David Copperfield, or Vickers’ supporting roles in TV show Medici and Aussie comedy Palm Beach. But, right at the outset, neither was aware they were playing the iconic Galadriel and Sauron. The true identity of Vickers’ character, Halbrand, wasn’t revealed to the Melbourne-born actor until part-way through shooting the first season, while Clark didn’t even know she was auditioning for The Lord Of…

THE LORD AND LADY

“WHAT IF THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS HAPPENED AT A TAYLOR SWIFT CONCERT?” THAT’S THE ONE-LINE, HIGH-CONCEPT, elevator pitch that writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has been using to describe Trap, his 16th feature film. It’s a brilliantly neat and typically efficient job for a filmmaker who has become the king of high concepts. This is the man, lest we forget, who brought you The Sixth Sense (what if a child could see dead people?), Unbreakable (what if superheroes were real?) and — of course! — Old (what if there were a beach that could make you old?). Trap is his latest “’90s movie throwback”, as he puts it. “I miss the high-concept movies!” he says. “Trap is meant to be that.” Like all good high concepts, its premise can be…

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS IF YOU ONLY WANT TO SEE ONE MOVIE this year about outsized beavers causing mayhem, we’ve got you covered (if you want to see two, you’ll have to wait for the next Mike Leigh). Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews’ Hundreds Of Beavers is a no-budget, silent, black-and-white, video-game-influenced, live-action cartoon, shot through with nutty energy, boundless invention and DIY indie spirit, achieving a gag-rate to rival Airplane!. Some comedy filmmakers — Wes Anderson, say — rely on being ironic and wry. Others, like Nancy Meyers, add a bit of heart. For Cheslik and Tews, laughs are best eked from inflicting grievous bodily harm on amateur actors dressed up as the titular dam-building rodents. “We knew we had to start from a fundamental comedy crystal that…

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?

WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR Budget: $150,000 Built on a nifty premise — a teenager gets immersed in a horror RPG and starts to plumb the depths of her own mind — Jane Schoenbrun’s 2021 debut feature is a visually haunting, completely original coming-of-age tale. TANGERINE Budget: $100,000 Famous for being shot on three iPhone 5Ss, Sean Baker’s 2015 study of Los Angeles’ sex-trade sub-culture is a riot. It is an old-school comedy powered by great performances and that rare thing: a long-lasting iPhone battery. SKINAMARINK Budget: $15,000 Kyle Edward Ball’s 2022 supernatural chiller thrives on a classic lo-fi set-up — two kids stuck in a windowless house. Shot in a week, the decidedly Lynchian effort was pirated at a film festival and became a viral sensation.…

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?

SHOOTING FOR THE STARS It took a long time to tame the strange world of Borderlands. The video-game series, which debuted in 2009 and has sold around 80 million copies, takes place on a ravaged planet, Pandora (not that one), where assorted lunatics fight for money and for simple love of carnage. In 2015, it was reported that Lionsgate was developing it for cinema. It took a few years to find a director wild enough to take it on. Eli Roth (director): I’d always wanted to do something that involved real world-building. Something big, fun and not too serious — on the Star Wars, Fifth Element end of the spectrum. Ari Arad, the producer, had approached Randy Pitchford, the game’s creator, about making a movie out of Borderlands about seven…

FLIPPING THE BIRD

Someone was going to revisit The Crow. We just didn’t know who. Since 2008, fans of Alex Proyas’ 1994 dark superhero movie — about a murdered rock musician back from the dead to seek revenge — have watched reports roll in about who was going to do it. Names of possible stars were attached and detached before it was ever confirmed they were true: Bradley Cooper, Channing Tatum, Mark Wahlberg (twice), Jason Momoa (that one got as far as leaked test footage). Potential directors included Blade’s Stephen Norrington, 28 Weeks Later’s Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Corin Hardy, and more. At one point in 2010, hopes were raised when there were rumours that Nick Cave was doing some form of script revision — The Crow is a graphic novel and a film…

FLIPPING THE BIRD

CHANGING THE GAME

REMEMBER IN SUPERMAN III — let’s be honest, if you’re reading an article about The Last Starfighter, it’s probably a safe assumption you remember Superman III — when Superman compresses a piece of coal in his hand, turning it into a diamond? That’s an apt metaphor to describe The Last Starfighter, a movie compressed by metric tons of pressure into pure 1980s pop-culture concentrate. It has Star Wars-esque space battles, it has arcade games as a plot device, it’s the first movie to extensively use CGI… all directed by a 35-year-old who was best known, at the time, for playing Michael Myers in the first Halloween. “They were looking for someone, I think, that wasn’t going to be too expensive, frankly,” says Nick Castle today. At the time, Castle had…

CHANGING THE GAME

JAWS Prior to the bloodiest Fourth Of July in Amity Island history, we glimpse a punter hammering away at Sega shooter Killer Shark on the boardwalk. Did Brody or Hooper have a quick go later, in memory of their old pal Quint? We may never know. BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II Marooned in the year 2015, Marty McFly attempts to wow some local future-dwellers with his skills on ’70s shooter Wild Gunman. Sadly, all he gets is a withering eye-roll from an eight-year-old Elijah Wood wearing a sieve on his head. TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY John Connor’s day at the arcades is ruined when a pesky liquid-metal killbot is sent back in time to destroy him. Not only does Connor have to run for his life, he also loses…

Strictly Strickland

THERE IS REALLY nobody like Peter Strickland. The Reading-born writer-director burst onto the scene in 2009 with Katalin Varga and almost immediately carved a cinematic space entirely of his own. He’s crafted atmospheric, surreal, tactile films, all full of sound and fury, food and bodies; and all in some way the product of Strickland’s retro obsessions, sly sense of humour, and uncanny sensibilities. Now, Strickland is getting his first-ever Blu-ray box set, a handsome and comprehensive Curzon-curated compendium, which gathers his five feature films to date — rape-revenge thriller Katalin Varga, sonic horror Berberian Sound Studio, sadomasochist romance The Duke Of Burgundy, retail giallo In Fabric, and culinary comedy Flux Gourmet — together in one package. Alongside those features, there is a glut of the filmmaker’s short films and music…

Strictly Strickland

The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg

THERE’S A MOMENT in Damien Chazelle’s La La Land where struggling actor Mia Dolan (Emma Stone) and hardcore jazz musician Seb Wilder (Ryan Gosling) go for a stroll around the Warner Bros. backlot. As Mia points out the window Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman looked out of in Casablanca, she fails to mention the shopfront below: an umbrella store named Parapluies and a recreation of a key location in Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg. The latter is not only a huge inspiration for La La Land, it also happens to be Chazelle’s favourite film of all time. “I think that’s a movie that doesn’t even make sense on paper in a way,” he once said. “’Cause it’s opera, but not opera. It’s real, but completely fake. It’s happy, but…

The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg

PICKS OF THE MONTH

1 THE CONVERSATION (OUT 15 JULY, 4K BR) With his new movie Megalopolis swinging for the fences, it’s a great time to appreciate this muted but magnificent effort from Francis Ford Coppola. Rattled off between The Godfather and its sequel, it’s a peerless paranoia thriller revolving around Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul, “the best bugger on the West Coast”. 2 BLOW OUT (OUT 22 JULY, 4K BR) If The Conversation has a rival for ‘finest movie about a sound recordist who gets embroiled in a conspiracy’, it’s this Brian De Palma classic. Boasting one of the best-ever John Travolta performances and absolutely the best-ever split-diopter shot of an owl, it’s also a great film about filmmaking. 3 PERFECT DAYS (OUT NOW, DVD, BR, MUBI) Wim Wenders’ drama about a toilet cleaner…

PICKS OF THE MONTH

Mothers’ Instinct

BASED ON BARBARA Abel’s 2012 novel, and Olivier Masset–Depasse’s 2018 French-language film, Mothers’ Instinct matches domestic family drama with Hitchcockian thrills, following neighbours and best friends Alice (Jessica Chastain) and Céline (Anne Hathaway) as their relationship deteriorates after the accidental death of Céline’s son Max (Baylen D. Bielitz). Here, cinematographer-turneddirector Benoît Delhomme talks us through some of the biggest moments and elements of his A-lister two-hander. STAR POWER Mothers’ Instinct gives us the chance to see two of Hollywood’s biggest actresses — Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway — going head-to-head on screen. Originally on board as the film’s cinematographer, Delhomme was asked to direct at the last minute, in part because of his existing relationships with the pair (he shot Wilde Salomé, The Tree Of Life and Lawless, all starring…

Mothers’ Instinct

GRIFFIN DUNNE’S CRACKING memoir, The Friday Afternoon Club, is not your usual celebrity autobiography. It’s beautifully written and often hilarious, detailing sexual awakenings, mishaps, misadventures and his career development with the kind of wry, sardonic voice that made Dunne shine in his breakout role, An American Werewolf In London. But if you’ve picked it up in the hope that it will be one of those books that trawls through a CV with forensic rigour, you might have come to the wrong place. There’s nary a mention of many of his movies, including 1998’s Practical Magic, which he directed. Just a few pages are dedicated to John Landis’ classic 1981 comedy horror, which was Dunne’s breakout. Only a few more are given over to After Hours, the 1985 black comedy which…

The Ranking The films of 2004

Chris: The films of 2004, then. What’s the first film that springs into your heads? Alex: Sideways. It’s one of my favourite films ever. It made such an impact on me. It did inform my wine choices. Beth: I would say it was a stonkingly good year for independent films, and people who were really finding their voices. Sideways, I just thought it was about grumpy old men drinking. It was with a second and third watch that I thought, “This is wonderful.” Chris: It wasn’t a great year for blockbusters. Nick: We did get the best Harry Potter film, by a mile. Prisoner Of Azkaban. Chris: But as Beth said, it was a good year for directors finding their voices. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou was Wes Anderson’s fourth…

The Ranking The films of 2004

TALES FROM KIM’S CRYPT

FANS OF ITALIAN genre cinema tend to revere directors Sergio Leone, Mario Bava and Dario Argento — specialists in cowboy films, horror movies and a brand of twisty thriller known as the giallo. On a tier below are cultier names like Antonio Margheriti, Lucio Fulci and Sergio Martino, who enthusiastically turned their hands to whatever was the craze that year — mythic muscleman, spaghetti Western, superspy, sexy comedy, cop action, zombie horror. You have to dig deep to find enthusiasm for Alberto De Martino (1929-2015), yet the recent Blu-ray releases of a couple of his bigger films (Blazing Magnum, The Antichrist) should inspire a deep dive into his strange, exciting, derivative, weirdly endearing output. His filmography covers all the crazes (filoni, in Italian) — The Invincible Gladiator, Medusa Against The…

TALES FROM KIM’S CRYPT

RESTORE POINT (DIGITAL) Cool, cerebral Czech sci-fi. In the future, the violently dead can be resurrected from a brain back-up, so when someone’s killed and their back-up wiped, it counts as absolute murder. Cop-with-a-grudge Andrea Mohylová investigates a double-double homicide and uncovers corporate conspiracy. RETRIBUTION (2023) (DIGITAL, BLU-RAY) Hedge-fund manager Liam Neeson is stuck in a booby-trapped car with his kids as a mystery voice forces him into an extortion scheme. It’s the fourth take on this script, after the Spanish El Desconocido, the German Steig. Nicht. Aus! and the South Korean Hard Hit. Neeson’s patented grumpy desperation is wearing thin. TIL DEATH DO US PART (DIGITAL) Bride-to-be Natalie Burn leaves Ser’Darius Blain at the altar and his tuxedoed pals — including smarmy Cam Gigandet and gloomy Orlando Jones —…

Kill Bill Vol. 1

THE ORIGIN The Bride, aka Uma Thurman, has apparently sliced off more than she can chew. As she herself has just wisecracked, for a second there, she kinda thought it would be that easy. With her freshly smithed Hattori Hanzo katana in hand, she is about to strike the first name off her ‘Death List Five’ at the climax of Kill Bill Vol. 1. But then, heralded by the roar of engines, she is surrounded by a horde of sword-wielding yakuza goons. The Crazy 88 have arrived at the House Of Blue Leaves, and Quentin Tarantino’s greatest-ever action scene lets rip. He’d long dreamed of proving himself as an action director. “If you can do action well,” he believed, “then you’re the greatest.” And in this he was as challenged…

Kill Bill Vol. 1

SPECIAL THANKS TO… SUE LAWLEY

JULIA JACKMAN’S CHARMING coming-of-age tale Bonus Track is about the budding romance between shy schoolboy George (Joe Anders) and his charismatic, cool new classmate Max (Samuel Small). Yet the first voice we hear in the film doesn’t belong to either of them. Instead, it belongs to the former newsreader Sue Lawley, in her guise as presenter of the legendary BBC radio show Desert Island Discs. You see, in Bonus Track George is such a fan that he has recorded multiple episodes, erasing that week’s celebrity castaway and replacing them with himself. It’s an idea that sprang from Bonus Track’s co-creator Josh O’Connor (yes, that one) and his friend Mike Gilbert, who wrote the screenplay. “That was something they used to do,” laughs Jackman. “They used to record interviews, pretend they…

SPECIAL THANKS TO… SUE LAWLEY

Time Capsule Andrew Lincoln

THERE’S MORE TO Andrew Lincoln than The Walking Dead, of course. There’s This Life, for one. The original version of Strike Back, for another. And, of course, his creepy/romantic cue-card waving at Keira Knightley in Love Actually. But there’s no question that The Walking Dead, and his dogged sheriff, Rick Grimes, has dominated. Lincoln led the show for nine seasons, before leaving to head back to England. But Rick wasn’t dead, and his return in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live affords us the perfect opportunity to take a little trip down zombie memory lane… MEET RICK GRIMES SEASON 1 EPISODE “I know where I was when I first saw that photo. Gale Anne Hurd, the brilliant producer who was instrumental in the success of this show along with…

Time Capsule Andrew Lincoln

The Ultimate Empire Quiz

THIS MONTH KING KONG 1 When did King Kong make his first appearance on the big screen? 2 And while we’re on that subject, who directed the film? 3 Kong was brought to life by which special-effects genius (who went on to become the mentor of Ray Harryhausen)? 4 What was the name of the direct sequel to the original King Kong? 5 Which characters returned from King Kong for that movie? 6 In the 1976 movie, which building does Kong climb up at the end? 7 Which special-effects legend co-created and donned the ape suit for the 1976 movie? 8 In Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake, Andy Serkis donned the performance-capture suit to play Kong. But which other character does he play? 9 Before Godzilla Vs. Kong, the two characters…

The Ultimate Empire Quiz

WE’VE GOT A brace of books in Competition Corner this issue, written by two of Empire’s very own writers. The first, The Legend Of Mad Max: The Complete Saga From Mad Max To Furiosa, sees Ian Nathan delve into the making of each film in George Miller’s gonzo, high-octane series, that’s now been thrilling audiences for five decades. From the initial vision to the special effects and groundbreaking action sequences, it’s as comprehensive a look at the franchise as you could wish for. And then we have The Last Action Heroes by current editor Nick de Semlyen — the wild behind-the-scenes story of the beloved action stars who ruled 1980s and ’90s Hollywood, and the much-loved movies they gifted the world. We’ve got signed copies of both books for five…

There Will Be Blood

JOSH O’CONNOR: “I just love it. Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance is fantastic, as always, but there’s something frenetic about the violence of it. It’s a kind of playful violence. That final line, the greatest final line of any film, is, ‘I’m finished.’ Like, ‘I’m finished with my food, I’m finished with this relationship, and also, I’m finished. I’m done. I’ve just murdered a man.’ The delivery is perfect.” Eli Sunday’s (Paul Dano) visit to Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) has not gone well. In the bowling alley of Plainview’s mansion, the latter reveals that the oil-rich land Sunday is proffering has been sold to him by Sunday’s twin, Paul. Sunday starts to sob. Plainview: Stop crying, you snivelling ass! Stop your nonsense! You're just the afterbirth, Eli. Sunday: No. Plainview: That slithered out…

There Will Be Blood

In This Issue

Description

Details

Reviews

Recent Digital Issues Browse all

Recent Empire Digital Issues Browse all back issues

Empire (Digital) Subscription December 1st, 2024 Issue

Empire (Digital) December 2024: $7.42

Empire (Digital) Subscription November 1st, 2024 Issue

Empire (Digital) November 2024: $7.69

Empire (Digital) Subscription October 1st, 2024 Issue

Empire (Digital) October 2024: $7.55

Empire (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2024 Issue

Empire (Digital) September 2024: $7.39

Empire (Digital) Subscription June 1st, 2025 Issue

Empire (Digital) June 2025: $7.43

Empire (Digital) Subscription May 1st, 2025 Issue

Empire (Digital) May 2025: $7.43

Empire (Digital) Subscription April 1st, 2025 Issue

Empire (Digital) April 2025: $7.23

Empire (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2025 Issue

Empire (Digital) March 2025: $7.13

Empire (Digital) Subscription February 1st, 2025 Issue

Empire (Digital) February 2025: $7.20

Empire (Digital) Subscription January 1st, 2025 Issue

Empire (Digital) January 2025: $7.32

Empire (Digital) Subscription December 1st, 2024 Issue

Empire (Digital) December 2024: $7.42

Empire (Digital) Subscription November 1st, 2024 Issue

Empire (Digital) November 2024: $7.69

Empire (Digital) Subscription October 1st, 2024 Issue

Empire (Digital) October 2024: $7.55

Empire (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2024 Issue

Empire (Digital) September 2024: $7.39

Empire (Digital) Subscription June 1st, 2025 Issue

Empire (Digital) June 2025: $7.43

Empire (Digital) Subscription May 1st, 2025 Issue

Empire (Digital) May 2025: $7.43

Empire (Digital) Subscription April 1st, 2025 Issue

Empire (Digital) April 2025: $7.23

Empire (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2025 Issue

Empire (Digital) March 2025: $7.13

Customers Also Viewed

Empire Magazine (Digital) Subscription June 1st, 2025 Issue

Empire Magazine (Digital)

(1)

12 Issues: $64.58 ~~$89.16~~

Go! Mozambique Magazine (Digital) Subscription June 19th, 2012 Issue

Go! Mozambique Magazine (Digital)

go! Mozambique 2012: $2.24

Reviews

0

1

0

0

0

Ask a Question

Click stars to rate

Please select a rating for the review.

Please enter title for the review.

Please enter content for the review.

Please enter order number.

Please enter your first name and last name.

Only letters allowed for first name and last name.

Please enter your email.

Upload photo

Cancel Submit

Processing...

Thank you for your feedback! Your review has been submitted and will be published soon.

OK

Be the first to ask a question about this product

Please enter content for the question.

Please enter at least 10 characters.

Your question can not be more than 150 characters.

Please enter your first name and last name.

Only letters allowed for first name and last name.

Please enter your email.

Submit Processing...

Thank you for your question! Your question has been submitted and will be published soon.

Answer this question

Please enter content for the answer.

Please enter at least 10 characters.

Please enter your first name and last name.

Only letters allowed for first name and last name.

Please enter your email.

Submit Cancel Processing...

Thank you for your answer! Your answer has been submitted and will be published soon.

OK

×