Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2017 i Empire

“I’LL TELL YOU what I think about Eddie Redmayne,” says Rob Brydon to Steve Coogan, over lunch in the courtyard of a rustic restaurant an hour out of Madrid. “It sounds like the name a middle-class girl would give her pony. ‘Would you like a ride on Eddie Redmayne? You can have a trot on Mr Hiddleston as well. Come along, Mr Hiddleston.’” Coogan smirks, then stops himself. “Don’t mention their names,” he says. “I might end up working with them one day.” Empire has no idea if Coogan is saying that in or out of character. We’re in Spain as Brydon, Coogan and director Michael Winterbottom film the third series of The Trip which, of course, has the pair playing only slightly fictionalised versions of themselves. They riff and…

AVERAGING ONE FILM a year since his debut Sitcom in 1998, French filmmaker François Ozon is not only ridiculously quick, but remarkably restless. Often channelling his cinematic heroes, his CV runs the gamut from musicals (8 Women) to French farce (Potiche), via teen dramas (Young & Beautiful) and black comedy (The New Girlfriend). “I love different kinds of movies,” he explains, “[and] I don’t want to repeat myself. It’s like your life. Sometimes you have the feeling of living in a Bergman movie. The day after, you are in a Frank Capra movie. It would be so depressing to spend every day in a Bergman movie.” His latest, Frantz, is more in the key of Bergman. Set in the aftermath of World War I, it is a melodrama charting the…

“IT’S UP TO us to restore the Baywatch brand,” Captain Thorpe (Rob Huebel) tells Mitch Buchanan (Dwayne Johnson) in the big-screen adaptation of David Hasselhoff’s magnum TV opus (sorry, Knight Rider fans). In the film’s fictional world, it speaks to the tarnished image of Buchanan’s elite life-guarding team. It’s about to be given a PR boost by ex-Olympian Matt Brody (Zac Efron) — the film is a mismatched buddy comedy about Buchanan schooling Brody in the Baywatch philosophy of looking out for other people. But in that meta 21 Jump Street way, “restoring the Baywatch brand” is also a cheeky nod to the challenge of making the orange-filtered, soft-rock-anthemed cheese of the ’80s TV show work for now. “You can’t spend the whole movie winking,” says director Seth Gordon. “But…

HAIR AND MAKE-UP: EMMA WHITE TURLE. THANKS TO THE LORD STANLEY, CAMDEN PARK ROAD RED TURTLE: © 2OPU STUDIO GHIBLI-WILD BUNCH-WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS-ARTE FRANCE CINÉMACNS PRODUCTIONS-BELVISION Florence Pugh, photographed exclusively for Empire in London on 16 January 2017. AGE __ 21 PLAYS __ Katherine, a strong young woman trapped in a loveless marriage, in William Oldroyd’s icy period drama Lady Macbeth. BACKSTORY __ “Acting was what I always wanted to do. I did The Falling in my A-level year, then I did the pilot for Studio City, a really big project in America. I auditioned for Star Wars, too.” EARLY ROLES __ Pugh shared critical plaudits with Maisie Williams in Carol Morley’s The Falling. “The casting people said it was like a young Kate Winslet walking in the door,” remembers…

★★★★ OUT 24 MARCH CERT 15 / 141 MINS DIRECTOR James Gray CAST Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Angus Macfadyen PLOT While on a 1906 expedition, explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett (Hunnam) finds what he believes to be evidence of a lost civilisation. Unearthing this Amazonian El Dorado — ‘Z’ — becomes his obsession and, he believes, his destiny. HAVING SPENT MUCH of his career channelling the grit and glower of ’70s crime cinema (see: Little Odessa, The Yards and We Own The Night), it’s no surprise to find that James Gray’s latest movie just as faithfully echoes the same era — albeit in a very different way. In The Lost City Of Z he takes us far from the Scorsese-esque mean streets of the East Coast and…

★★★★ OUT 7 APRIL CERT 18 / 99 MINS DIRECTOR Julia Ducournau CAST Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf, Rabah Nait Oufella PLOT Timid Justine (Marillier), raised a strict vegetarian, undergoes severe hazing when she becomes a student vet. Forced by her sister Alexia (Rumpf) to eat raw rabbit’s kidney, she discovers strange new carnivorous cravings. IF IT WERE just about veterinary school initiation rites, writer-director Julia Ducournau’s Raw — the English-language release title offers as many meanings as the original French Grave — would be unsettling and shocking enough. On her first night in a hall of residence, repressed rookie Justine (Marillier) and her new roommate, gregarious gay guy Adrien (Nait Oufella), are both hauled out of bed by veteran students who act like masked terrorists. All the freshers are made…

★★★★ OUT 31 MARCH CERT 15 / 91 MINS DIRECTOR Ben Wheatley CAST Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Michael Smiley PLOT P97Os Boston, and Irishmen Chris (Murphy) and Frank (Smiley) arrange to buy guns from Vernon (Copley) in a deal set up by Justine (Larson) and Ord (Hammer). But an old grudge between two participants leads to a gun battle. THE MOST PROLIFIC and one of the most proficient filmmakers to come out of the UK in the last decade, Ben Wheatley has already proved himself across horror, thriller and whatever genre High-Rise was (period sci-fi psycho-drama?). Now he moves to America — not literally; he’s still shooting in Brighton — and establishes himself as an action director too. Surely a nihilistic romcom is next. Wheatley’s economy…

★★ OUT 31 MARCH CERT 15 / 88 MINS DIRECTOR Dito Montiel CAST Shia LaBeouf, Jai Courtney, Kate Mara, Gary Oldman PLOT Returning from Afghanistan, US Marine Gabe Drummer (LaBeouf) looks for his lost family in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The action flashes back to Drummer’s home life, tour of duty and his interrogation by military shrink Peyton (Oldman) about his involvement in a mission snafu. IN-BETWEEN THE art projects, arrests and Sia videos, Shia Saide LaBeouf is forging a body of work that is quietly as transformative as the McConaissance. Free from the shackles of Michael Bay and D.J. Caruso, his work post-2012 — chiefly Nymphomaniac and American Honey — is bold, wired and compelling. These days, he might not have the franchises on his résumé or the zeroes on…

★★★★ OUT 7 APRIL CERT TBC / 93 MINS DIRECTOR Raoul Peck CAST James Baldwin, Samuel L. Jackson PLOT Before his death in 1987, African-American writer James Baldwin was working on an opus. Here, that uncompleted book — a biography of civil rights activists Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. — is revived with archive footage and an ever-present narrator (Jackson). WHEN YOU THINK of searing examinations of race relations in the US, you possibly don’t picture the studio lights, pot plants and gentle audience laughter of a 1968 chat show. But that’s how I Am Not Your Negro begins, with James Baldwin — tie rakishly knotted, lit cigarette pluming smoke at his side — patiently answering a question from host Dick Cavett that essentially amounts to,…

★★★★ SKY ATLANTIC STARTS APRIL EPISODES VIEWED 1-2 DIRECTOR Michael Winterbottom CAST Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon PLOT Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take their culinary tourism to sunny Spain. They dine in some of the best restaurants in the world while chewing over the advancing of their lives. Food will be eaten, wine will be drunk, the world will be put to rights… ish. STEVE COOGAN DESCRIBES The Trip To Spain as “Last Of The Summer Wine for Guardian readers”. The first half of that comparison references a sitcom so geriatric it had to keep replacing cast members who died of old age, and it likely means little to people under 30 years old. That is appropriate. The Trip makes no overtures to a young audience. It’s a comedy about…

Early on in Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, the elegant Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee) is bathed by Sookee (Kim Tae-ri), her young new maid. It’s a sensual enough scene already: literally steamy, the bath full of oils and petals, the naked Hideko sucking a lollipop. “One of my teeth is sharp. It keeps cutting me,” complains Hideko, and Sookee fits a thimble onto her thumb, reaches into Hideko’s mouth, and begins to delicately grind at the tooth’s sharp point. Their eyes meet, breasts bob in the water, lips are licked. “God, my poor nan,” laughs writer Sarah Waters. “She’s been dead now for quite a few years, and I don’t know what she’d think about this having ended up in this particular film.” As a child, British author Waters once…

When Life entered his life, Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa was in a strange place. Personally, he had just gone through a divorce and was expecting a baby with a new partner. Professionally, he was still licking his wounds from Tom Hardy flop Child 44, having passed on a run of terrific scripts — including The Martian, Prisoners and Sicario — that went on to garner critical acclaim and box-office success. It was a time of self-examination. “I was curious as to why I would say no to things that were obviously good for me,” he says, smoking furiously outside a Belsize Park coffee shop during a break from scoring. “I came to the conclusion that I just read them as finished movies. There was nothing for me to add. That’s…

ILLUSTRATIONS: BILL MCCONKEY AS ANY FILM journalist will tell you, a trip to LA is a major buzz. For this one — which will take in one movie set, a press junket and a premiere — I’m taking my Dictaphone, iPhone and iPad. It’s a tech trifecta that’ll keep me in touch with the office while I’m away. And to make life easier, I’m trying out Three’s Feel At Home roaming package that enables me to use my phone here in the USA as if at home, without that nagging fear of a huge bill when I get back to the UK. MORNING If New York is the city that never sleeps, Los Angeles is the city that has to be up early because it’s got a drive ahead of…

MOMENT Watching Daniel Day-Lewis walk across a stubbly field towards set on Lincoln. I wasn’t watching Daniel Day-Lewis, I was watching Abraham Lincoln. You go, “Fucking hell, that’s Abraham Lincoln coming towards me.” That was pretty magnificent. Going to the Lost In Space premiere and realising they’d decided to dub half my performance with someone else was pretty crazy. I sat there watching it going, “I didn’t say that line.” Did I get an explanation? Nobody ever explains anything to you. FAN ENCOUNTER People have always been very polite with me. One of the funniest was at the premiere for The Crown [in which Harris played King George VI] last year. I signed something for someone and when the exchange ended, they curtseyed! I haven’t had a bad one. I’m…

IN THE BIG debate about cinema’s greatest directing siblings, some names come up over and over. The Coens, naturally. The Wachowskis, of course. The Brothers Strause, directors of Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem, almost never. And then there’s the Dardennes, the Belgian duo who’ve been beavering away on a string of social realist classics for the past few decades. If you don’t know them yet, here’s a helping hand. WHO ARE THEY? Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. WHICH IS WHICH? At 65, Jean-Pierre is the eldest of the two by about three years. Yet they look so much alike, they could almost be twins. In our experience, Jean-Pierre is the one with the bigger hair. He also tends to stand on the right. WHERE ARE THEY FROM? They’re from the small town…

ALAMY LEADER BOARD Ben Kingsley 9.5Christopher Lee 9.5David O. Russell 9.5Quentin Tarantino 9.5Robert Rodriguez 9Guillermo del Toro 9Werner Herzog 9Christian Slater 8.5Bryan Singer 8.5John Waters 8 1 In Shaun Of The Dead, what is the name of the store Noel and Shaun work in? [Long pause] I’ve got no idea. It’s a shop which is like a Dixons-type shop. Oh shit, it says it on the badge. [Hears the answer] What? Why? I’m going to be bad at this. The correct answer is Foree Electric. It’s named after Dawn Of The Dead’s Ken Foree. 2 Complete your line from Hot Fuzz: “You wanna be a big cop in a small town...” “... fuck off up the model village.” That day is the only day in my…

HOW DO YOU visualise blindness? It sounds impossible, and about as cinematic as a blackboard, yet James Spinney and Peter Middleton’s debut, Notes On Blindness, shines a light on sight-loss through the haunting story of John Hull. In 1983, the Australian-born theologian went blind. As his visual world faded, Hull recorded a vivid audio diary. His experiences are brought to life through pioneering lip-syncing and a deeply moving performance from Dan Renton Skinner (Shooting Stars’ burger-van owner Angelos Epithemiou). “The film presents blindness in a way nobody’s ever considered,” says the actor, here credited as Dan Skinner. “What is it like to forget your own memories? To lose the faces of your family? It’s a fascinating, inspiring story, and a role that will stay with me forever.” Here’s how they…

Garth Jennings says: “When I first saw Rushmore it seemed so perfect to me that there was almost no reason to make any more films. Though every scene is gold, Bill Murray’s speech to the school still resonates deeply with me. Wes Anderson told me the speech was written by [co-writer] Owen Wilson’s father, Robert. He was briefed to write a speech he might have given himself.” INT. SCHOOL CHAPEL — DAY Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) is nudged out of a daydream by his chapel partner Dirk Calloway (Mason Gamble). A man is at the lectern. This is Herman Blume (Bill Murray). HERMAN: Thank you. You guys have it real easy. I never had it like this where I grew up, but I send my kids here because the fact…

THE PROMISE, A love story set against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide, was always likely to ruffle feathers — and so it’s proved. When Empire met director Terry George on set in Spain, he was expecting hostility from the Turkish government. As he points out, they have form. Back in the 1930s, MGM scrapped plans to adapt The Forty Days Of Musa Dagh, a bestseller by Franz Werfel about the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, after threats from Turkey. Even Rocky took one on the chin trying to make a movie about it — Sylvester Stallone was interested in directing the novel, but dropped out after pressure by a genocide-denying group. “It’s more than denial,” George tells Empire. “It’s the active suppression of the truth. The Turkish…

IT’S BERLIN, 1989. The Wall is about to be consigned to history, and the Cold War with it, but Charlize Theron’s MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton is just getting warmed up. “Charlize transformed what you think a female action character can do [in this film],” says director David Leitch of his Atomic Blonde lead. “She’s just fucking badass.” With a key intel document missing and KGB goons all around, she’ll have every chance to show it, as Sofia Boutella’s night crawler Delphine Lasalle will discover. James McAvoy’s edgy Berlin station chief — “a Tyler Durden spy” says Leitch — is also along for the ride. Boutella (pictured with Theron) is in the way. As the title implies, Atomic Blonde is not your average cloak-and-dagger spy thriller. Leitch, who co-created John Wick…

MICHAËL DUDOK DE Wit was stunned when Studio Ghibli called him, late in 2006, to offer him a feature film. “It was so unexpected,” smiles the Dutch-born, British-based director. “Usually people want to meet you first, have a meal or something.” But the Japanese studio simply wanted the Oscar winner (for 2000’s animated short Father And Daughter) to conceive a feature-length story for them to produce. “It was not my ambition to imitate Studio Ghibli,” he stresses. “I would not have been good at it. But there was never any pressure; it was almost the opposite.” If the film he’s crafted shares Ghibli’s fascination with nature, it also bears the stamp of Western artists such as Hergé and Moebius. Wordlessly, it follows a desert island castaway and the turtle that…

“THERE’S SUPPOSED TO be a less-is-more thing in horror,” muses It’s Argentine director Andrés Muschietti. “It’s like you’re not really meant to show the monster. But Pennywise is different. With Pennywise, it’s like, ‘This is the monster, I’m showing it to you... and you’re going to shit a brick.’” As the accompanying image proves, Muschietti is very much a man of his word. For his big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel, the director was after “a baby-faced, off-balance Pennywise”, and he found him in 26-year-old Bill Skarsgård. “I was amazed by Bill’s body language,” he says. “I wanted this wall-eyed thing — the eyes looking in different directions. I thought we’d have to use VFX, but Bill’s like, ‘Oh, you mean this?’ He could already do it perfectly! I’m…

★★ OUT 7 APRIL CERT 15 / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Pete Travis CAST Riz Ahmed, Billie Piper, James Floyd PLOT London private eye Tommy (Ahmed) takes the case of a missing sex worker; as his investigation begins to take in radical Islam, property deals and the security services, he must confront a decades-old trauma. THERE’S A LOT of promise to the premise of City Of Tiny Lights — a contemporary noir set in London, starring man-of-the-moment Riz Ahmed as a PI who seemingly subsists on nothing but whisky and fags. What could possibly go wrong? Sadly, quite a bit. That promise is squandered, and the results are ordinary in the extreme. The set-up ticks so many noir boxes, you can imagine the ghost of Raymond Chandler standing in the shadows,…

★★★★ OUT 7 APRIL CERT 15 / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Pablo Larraín CAST Gael García Bernal, Alfredo Castro, Luis Gnecco, Mercedes Morán PLOT Chile, 1948. Poet and Communist senator Pablo Neruda (Gnecco) finds himself on the wrong side of the new pro-American regime. He goes on the run, but detective Peluchonneau (García Bernal) is on his trail. ELEGANT, INTIMATE AND always playful (watch out for some old-fashioned back projection and one of the sight gags of the year), Pablo Larraín’s latest comes to UK cinemas hot on the heels of Jackie (although he filmed it first). Neither a standard biopic nor a conventional chase movie, it fuses both into a grand narrative experiment that imagines the battle of wits between a poet, Chilean great Pablo Neruda (Gnecco), and policeman (García…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT PG / 129 MINS DIRECTOR Bill Condon CAST Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Ewan McGregor PLOT Novel-loving Belle (Watson) enjoys a peaceful life with her father (Kline), until a chain of events leads her to a mysterious and decrepit castle occupied by a furry brute with anger issues (Stevens). “LIVE-ACTIONIFICATION” IS not an actual word. It may be soon, though, given the frenetic pace at which Disney is turning its animated classics into films with human actors. The Jungle Book, Dumbo, The Lion King... it’s only a matter of time before a photoreal The Rescuers Down Under. So far they have made major bank, yet those charged with rebooting Beauty And The Beast must have felt a…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 137 MINS DIRECTOR James Mangold CAST Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Richard E. Grant, Eriq La Salle PLOT In 2029, Logan aka Wolverine (Jackman), mutant abilities in decline, keeps a low profile in a hideout with Charles Xavier (Stewart). But trouble finds him in the form of mutant-hunting mercenaries searching for a young girl named Laura (Keen) with very familiar powers. WHEN ASKED WHAT his influences were for the latest Wolverine film, director James Mangold reeled off a list that included classic Western Shane, indie hit Little Miss Sunshine and bruising character piece The Wrestler. Well, he wasn’t lying. Logan owes more to these films than it does Mark Millar’s comic series Old Man Logan, of which this is the loosest…

★★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 118 MINS DIRECTOR Jordan Vogt-Roberts CAST Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, John C. Reilly, John Goodman PLOT In the final days of the Vietnam War, secretive organisation Monarch secures government funding to lead an expedition to a recently discovered island in search of new species. And they find them. Boy, do they find them. THERE’S A TALE from the set of Kong: Skull Island that goes like this: faced with imagining the giant ape the audience would see standing in front of him, Samuel L. Jackson asked three questions. “How big is it? How fast is it? What it do?” What it does and how fast it is will be familiar to anyone who’s seen the beast on screen before. It wrestles…

★★★ SKY ATLANTIC STARTS 10PM, 15 MARCH EPISODES VIEWED 1-4 CREATORS Måns Mårlind, Björn Stein CAST Leïla Bekhti, Gustaf Hammarsten, Albin Grenholm, Peter Stormare PLOT After a Frenchman is killed in a Swedish town, a tough Parisian cop (Bekhti) travels north to solve the case alongside an uncompromising prosecutor (Stormare) and his untested colleague (Hammarsten). Cue more murders, encounters with the Sami people and a decade-long conspiracy. A NO-NONSENSE FEMALE detective with her own personal demons, a criminal investigation that spills over into local politics, baroque murders rupturing the peace; yes, it’s fair to say Midnight Sun, the latest hyped hunk of Nordic noir to be shipped to the UK, does not deviate wildly from the established formula. However, while playing a cop show cliché drinking game will likely render…

★★★★★ OUT NOW FORMATS SWITCH, Wii U DIRECTOR Hidemaro Fujibayashi CAST Patricia Summersett, Bill Rogers PLOT On waking from a century-long slumber, Link finds Hyrule in ruins, Princess Zelda trapped in a castle and monsters terrorising the land. He must destroy the evil Calamity Ganon to save the day. THE PRECISE MOMENT it becomes clear that Breath Of The Wild is not a traditional Zelda game comes about two hours in. Having just acquired a rudimentary hang glider, you float down from the game’s tutorial plateau and set foot upon the plains of Hyrule proper. Hills and valleys reach out to the horizon, horses crop lazily at the grass and you, sword in hand, are left with no earthly idea what to do next. Open-world games are hardly unusual, but…

JAMES GUNN REMEMBERS the exact day he started writing Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2. It’s not really too hard. Because that day was 1 August 2014: the day Guardians Of The Galaxy (or ‘Vol. 1’, as it’s now also known) was released in the United States. That he wasn’t just kicking back and sipping piña coladas after months of hard graft might suggest an impressive level of diligence on Gunn’s part. And eagerness, too — after all, Vol. 1 was the St. Louis-born filmmaker’s first studio directing gig, and its reckless gang of space-rogues couldn’t be closer to his heart. It may even smack of workaholism; Sean Gunn (aka number-two Ravager Kraglin and the physical actor for Rocket Raccoon) says his brother dived back in so early “’cause he’s…

ALAMY, ALLSTAR, PHOTOFEST, CONCEPT ART KINDLY SUPPLIED BY STEVEN E. DE SOUZA THE CALLS ALWAYS come in around Thanksgiving. So when my assistant told me I had five messages from reporters, and two requests for on-air interviews, my response was, “Let me guess: the annual ‘Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?’ debate again?” “No, they’re all about The Running Man.” I admit, I was surprised. True, since election day it had crossed my mind that reality was beginning to mirror my 30-year-old film, but I assumed that was simply my own insular navel-gazing from inside my Hollywood ivory tower. (Actually a one-storey California rancher, but the metaphor holds.) But apparently a film set in the amazing future year of 2017, in which the Department of Justice has an Entertainment Division,…

GROOMING BY HELEN ROBERTSON USING SURFACE MEN’S HAIR CARE PAUL FEIG (director of Ghostbusters and Bridesmaids ): “I’m not a cynical guy. Even though the genre-jumping Howard Hawks is my favourite director of all time, I’ve always loved movies that aren’t afraid to simply entertain. Frank Capra, the king of what his contemporaries disparagingly called ‘Capra-corn’, is a particular hero of mine, unapologetically making such feel-good classics as Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Meet John Doe and my favourite film, It’s A Wonderful Life. Capra wasn’t afraid to place ‘Making An Audience Happy’ at the top of his checklist, and audiences continue to respond by watching his movies again and again even after all these years. When I first watched Richard Curtis’ film…

00:04:56 NEWT IN A BIG POND __ Here, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) walks the streets of New York. Redmayniacs may be disappointed to learn that a shirtless scene was cut. “It showed all the scars he’s gotten from beasts,” explains director David Yates, “We put Eddie through a hellish body-building schedule, and he looked buff. But it felt gratuitous. So I had to sheepishly phone him up and say, ‘Sorry, mate.’” 00:06:16 MILLER TIME __ Ezra Miller’s character, Credence Barebone, was shrouded in mystery. Presumably because he’s a neglected teen who turns into a big cloud. “Ezra goes in full-bore,” enthuses producer David Heyman. “He met with various kids that had been abused and really went to these dark places. He’s such a passionate person: he’s probably in Dakota, fighting…

AN INNOCENT WARRIOR This Polynesian song plays as toddler Moana first meets the character of the ocean. Musker: We tried different songs and one was by Te Vaka, the band fronted by Opetaia Foa’i [one of the film’s songwriters]. Even without knowing what those words mean it set the mood. Clements: He rewrote the lyrics to fit. The question Moana keeps asking is, “Why did the ocean choose me?” WHERE YOU ARE Moana’s father Chief Tui (Temuera Morrison/ Christopher Jackson) leads this song about their island home’s laws and culture. Musker: We thought of this [as] like Tradition in Fiddler On The Roof: it sets up the world. Lin [Manuel Miranda, the film’s other songwriter] riffed on a melody by Opetaia. [Broadway star] Christopher Jackson did the demo. Tem’s register…

#10 THE ‘BOYS’’ FILM: GOODFELLAS TWO YEARS AGO, the New York Post’s chief film critic, Kyle Smith, wrote an unfathomably stupid essay called “Women are not capable of understanding GoodFellas”. There was righteous anger from male and female film fans worldwide as the piece went viral. Given Martin Scorsese’s 1990 Mafia epic easily makes my top five films, it angered me, too — but came as no surprise. I’ve been fielding this sort of misconception my whole life, since my parents allowed me to watch The Godfather and Once Upon A Time In America at an inappropriately young age, sparking my deep and enduring passion for gangster films. GoodFellas, should you not have seen it, is Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi’s adaptation of the latter’s book, Wiseguy, the true story of…

ALAMY ASK FILMMAKERS ABOUT the film that changed their life, and a fair percentage would say Star Wars. Not Martin Scorsese. His life changed when, aged 13, he first saw Georges Méliès’ Le Voyage Dans La Lune. It was his equivalent of the Star Destroyer sliding into shot and never stopping. “I was fascinated by the sleight of hand concept,” he recalled. “Méliès saw the potential in these moving images, and these images that came up on the screen absolutely took me to another planet.” One of these images — a rocket striking the moon in the eye, causing custard-y tears and a comedy grimace — became emblematic of Méliès’ aesthetic: lo-fi, whimsical, utterly enchanting. But it’s also an image that’s rocketed around pop culture ever since, in music promos…

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN you watch five seasons of Veep in one sitting? After mega-marathoning 48 episodes in 24 hours, sleep deprivation, golf-ball haemorrhoids and chronic sofa-lag would be the physical answer, but psychologically? I’m absolutely fizzing. Here’s a show so resplendently acidic I feel like my brain’s been plunged into a vinegar Jacuzzi. Created by Armando Iannucci, Veep is The Thick Of It’s American cousin, and shares the same comedy genes: hand-held style, improvised bustle, shitloads of swearing and omnishambles plotting. I’m a huge The Thick Of It geek, but this isn’t just faster and funnier — the entire show’s powered by the fearless Julia Louis-Dreyfus, whose venal Vice President is the poster girl for post-truth politics. When your ego’s the size of Iowa, there’s simply no room left for…

“APES TOGETHER STRONG” may have been the mantra last time, but the cataclysm that broke 2014’s Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes has forced Caesar (Andy Serkis) to rethink. War For The Planet Of The Apes sees him ditching most of his simian tribe and storming off on a mission both to avenge a wrong and solve a mystery. He’d have gone alone had Maurice (Karin Konoval), Rocket (Terry Notary) and Luca (Michael Adamthwaite) not insisted on joining him. “[Toby Kebbell’s renegade ape] Koba had the bigger arc in the last movie,” producer Dylan Clark tells Empire, “but this time it’s all about Caesar. His anger has led him to the position where he’s killed another ape. Now what? The stakes keep getting raised. And he will kill again.”…

DEEP WITHIN THE bowels of a former London art college, Empire is doing its best to pretend that close proximity to a naked German activist is the most normal thing imaginable. “Are they planning any other operations?” barks Rory Kinnear’s sadistic Rhodesian detective as he stalks a police cell, menacingly trailing a cricket bat over actor Giorgio Spiegelfeld’s trembling flesh. We’re on the set of Guerrilla, Sky Atlantic’s bold six-part look at the British Black Power movement of the early ’70s, and this interrogation scene is a crunching introduction to its textured world of high-stakes, revolutionary rhetoric and crooked cops. It’s the brainchild of Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave screenwriter John Ridley. But in a way, Jimi Hendrix was key to its inception. “I was in the UK working on…

ON 30 APRIL 1980, six masked gunmen took 26 people hostage in the Iranian Embassy on Princes Gate, South Kensington. Six days later, on 5 May, the SAS were sent in. It was a defining moment in British military history. And (as it was broadcast live at prime time) a ratings hit. 6 Days follows the story of that raid — codenamed Operation Nimrod — from a nerve-fraying new perspective. Jamie Bell (pictured) plays SAS trooper Rusty Firmin, here seen advancing stealthily through the famous building. For the six Khuzestani terrorists who’ve taken up temporary residence inside, the Bell is about to toll in an entirely literal sense. The film, as director Toa Fraser (The Dead Lands) is at pains to point out, is a very different beast to Who…

THERE ARE TWO surprises in The Other Side Of Hope, the new film by Aki Kaurismäki. The first is that, though it sticks firmly to the Nordic master’s 30-year template — fixed shots, rich, retro colours and a silent comedy-inspired love of sight gags — it is one of the year’s timeliest films, which likely brought him the Golden Bear for direction at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Initially conceived as the second of a three-film cycle that began with 2011’s Le Havre, in which an African migrant comes to a French fishing town, it’s the story of Syrian refugee Khaled (Sherwan Haji) and the eccentric Finnish restaurateur he works for. “It’s the second and last part of the trilogy,” the director states with a straight face over a lunchtime…

THE JAWBONE IS the area of the head most vulnerable to a knockout blow. It’s either the strongest or weakest part of a boxer, and that line between strength and vulnerability is the one Johnny Harris is negotiating with his debut film as both star and screenwriter. Taking elements from his own past, it’s the story of Jimmy McCabe, who walked away from the ring having once been a contender, but finds himself drawn back. Amateur champion at 16, Harris says the boxing life “just fell away a bit. I was listening to The Smiths and Paul Weller and getting political. That’s what I’m exploring here, to an extent. Something just changed.” In a pleasing bit of synchronicity, Weller has provided the film’s soundtrack. Empire is on set at the…

★★★★★ OUT 14 APRIL CERT 18 / 145 MINS DIRECTOR Park Chan-wook CAST Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, Cho Jin-woong PLOT In P9ROs Korea, young pickpocket Sookee (Kim Tae-ri) teams up with a con artist (Ha Jung-woo) to take down a Japanese heiress (Kim Min-hee). But as feelings intervene, who’s conning who? THE HANDMAIDEN IS numerous things at once. It’s a loose adaptation of British novelist Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, it’s a milestone of LGBT cinema in conservative South Korea, it’s an unapologetically kinky slice of erotica Tinto Brass at his most florid would be proud of, it’s a Byzantinely structured tale of con and counter-con that makes real demands of its audience to keep up, it’s a stirring narrative of women escaping from bastard men, it’s a vividly sketched…

★★★★ OUT 31 MARCH CERT 15 / 87 MINS DIRECTOR André Øvredal CAST Brian Cox, Emile Hirsch, Ophelia Lovibond, Olwen Kelly PLOT Austin (Hirsch) has to assist his coroner father (Cox) on a rush overnight job — determining the cause of death of unidentified ‘Jane Doe’ (Kelly). As they work, they’re plagued by perhaps-supernatural manifestations. AN ESSAY IN gothic forensics, The Autopsy Of Jane Doe is Norwegian director André Øvredal’s follow-up to Troll Hunter. This swaps the snowy wastes for the claustrophobic interiors of a retro-look morgue, yet, like Troll Hunter, it mixes suspense with black comedy, a high level of gore and spooky mystery. Despite the American setting, it begins as a Scandi-style small-town noir, then shades into ghost story chills. The hook is that an unnamed female corpse…

★★★ OUT 14 APRIL CERT 15 / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Ritesh Batra CAST Jim Broadbent, Charlotte Rampling, Michelle Dockery, Joe Alwyn, Freya Mavor PLOT Retired and divorced, Tony (Broadbent) potters around his camera shop while helping his daughter (Dockery) prepare for her first baby. Then a surprising legacy in the will of an old friend sends him on a quest that stirs up distant memories. BOOKER PRIZE WINNERS have long been a handy starting point for moviemakers. The Remains Of The Day, Life Of Pi and Schindler’s Ark accrued 31 Oscar nominations between them in their big-screen incarnations. On the smaller screen, Wolf Hall added a Golden Globe and two BAFTAs to that haul. Julian Barnes’ 2011 novella The Sense Of An Ending, a smaller parable about the way memories…

★★★ NETFLIX OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED 1-6 CREATOR Scott Buck CAST Finn Jones, Jessica Henwick, Jessica Stroup, Tom Pelphrey, David Wenham, Rosario Dawson PLOT Danny Rand (Jones) has been presumed dead since a plane crash PT years ago. Now he’s returned to New York, claiming to have been in an extra-dimensional monastery. Is he deluded, or really the Iron Fist, Champion of K’un Lun? IRON FIST IS later to the Marvel Netflix party than originally intended. He was supposed to arrive last year, kicking and streaming, on the gumshoe-heels of Jessica Jones. But his future bromancer Luke Cage so impressed everyone, the kung-fu master got shunted to the back of the queue. Which, in retrospect, feels just right. Though the Defenders strand of the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t really permitted…

HEN PETER CAPALDI first got the keys to the Tardis — way back before all those invading Zygons and cosmic Mummies, disembodied intergalactic kings and lavish guitar solos — he seriously considered investing in some gym equipment. And you can see the reasoning. Aged 58 now (and 55 when he took over from 31-year-old 11th Doctor Matt Smith), the former Malcolm Tucker was keen to show he could flee Daleks and fling himself around alien planets just as vigorously as the recent, younger incarnations of the Time Lord. “They had put me in a flat across the road [from the Doctor Who studios in Cardiff ],” says Capaldi, taking up the tale. “And I thought, ‘I need to get a treadmill or something to sit in the flat, to make…

CHERRY 2000 (1987) The age-old tale of a man trying to take his sex-bot back to the factory for repairs, this curio had its release repeatedly postponed, before making just $14,000 from a $10 million budget. The plot sees tracker Edith (Melanie Griffith), businessman Sam (David Andrews) and his robotic love-mate Cherry (Pamela Gidley) travel across a ravaged wasteland, heading for the town of Glory Hole. HOW CLOSE TO REALITY? Sexy robots haven’t really caught on outside of certain technology conferences. Neither has the crimson bouffant hairdo sported by Griffith. FORTRESS (1992) The US government decrees that families may only have one child, so ex-soldier John Brennick (Christopher Lambert) and his wife (Loryn Locklin), who is pregnant for the second time, make for Canada. Alas, they’re busted and Brennick is…

PREVIOUS PAGE: DENIM JACKET, DOLCE E GABBANA. THIS PAGE: BLACK DENIM SHIRT, ALL SAINTS ERIC BANA USED TO BE A COMEDIAN. If you don’t believe that, head to YouTube and have a browse of his sketch show and stand-up work. It’s often very good. He does impressions (Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Columbo), and canny character comedy. His teen magician Alex Topolino, who often winds up severing fingers and limbs, is a particular standout. When it’s remarked upon in articles about him, it’s usually with a degree of incredulity. And that’s because the 48-year-old Melbourne native has long since become associated with work of a far more serious bent. While comedy has been dotted throughout his big-screen career — his debut film, The Castle; Adam Sandler vehicle Funny People; last year’s…

PHOTOFEST ACCORDING TO A Reddit AMA in 2015, professor Stephen Hawking revealed his favourite film to be Jules Et Jim ( just in front of The Delta Force, we reckon). If, as a theoretical physicist, Hawking is primarily concerned with answering the vast questions of the universe, François Truffaut’s third feature film as a director, exploring the ménage à trois between shy Austrian Jules (Oskar Werner), confident Frenchman Jim (Henri Serre) and wild card Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), deals with exposing the equally unknowable mysteries of the human heart. By comparison Hawking has it easy. Truffaut discovered Henri-Pierre Roché’s 1953 semi-autobiographical novel at the bottom of a bargain bin outside a second-hand Parisian bookstore and was instantly smitten with the story. “I was struck by the licentious nature of the situations…

THE VAMPIRE WAS dead. He hadn’t been killed, as bloodsuckers usually are, by sunlight. Or a wooden stake pounded through his heart. Or even — and this is an old-school method — chopping off his head and stuffing the mouth with garlic. No, the vampire had been killed by a much more unlikely method. George Hamilton. “Love At First Bite had come out,” says Tom Holland (the film director, not the historian or new Spider-Man), setting the scene: Hollywood in the early ’80s, just a couple of years after Stan Dragoti’s spoof, which saw Hamilton and his tan permanently cock his eyebrow as Dracula. “That tells you the genre was exhausted. Vampires were exhausted. You couldn’t get a vampire film made to save your life.” But Holland had a plan…

#10 STUART HAZELDINE ON RIO BRAVO THE IDEA OF Empire’s First-Take Club is gloriously simple. Every month, we ask someone to watch a film they haven’t seen from our 301 Greatest Movies Of All Time (published in 2014), and tell us what they thought. This month, Stuart Hazeldine — director of Exam and the upcoming The Shack — confronted a movie considered one of the best Westerns of all time. Bravo. Bravo. 50… 100… 150… My smug-o-meter rose ever higher as I scanned down Empire’s 301 Greatest Movies list and realised I’d seen that, that and that… until Rio Bravo flashed by. Wait, which one was that? Not Michael Caine and a bikini babe on a faded VHS…