Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2018 i Empire

Alamy EMPIRE Empire spoke to Olivia Colman at home on 10 August, taking a break from shooting The Crown Season 3. “IT GETS QUITE bonkers,” says Olivia Colman. “[At one point] there’s a naked bloke who gets pelted with a shitload of pomegranates.” The Favourite, it seems, isn’t your average period picture. “I love it. I don’t want to see costume drama unless Yorgos Lanthimos has done it. You can almost smell what it smelt like: the sweat, the putting the wee around everybody’s skirts. It’s sumptuous but stinky.” Set in 18th century England during a war with France, The Favourite sees Colman play Queen Anne, beset by clinical obesity and characterised by a huge temper, with the real governing left to her lover Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz). Their relationship…

EMPIRE Empire spoke to to the Aquaman cast and crew on dry land on 11 and 12 July 2017. JAMES WAN ISN’T really treating Aquaman as a superhero movie. It has irrefutable comic-book roots, of course, but the film — the first solo outing for hairy, boozy, fish-whisperer Arthur Curry, played by Jason Momoa — “has a fantasy approach to it,” the director tells Empire. “It shows you a part of Earth we’ve never seen before. That’s what enticed me to it: the opportunity to play on a big canvas.” Judging by the first trailer, the canvas isn’t just big, it’s also drenched in bright, salty watercolours. Not only will the movie explore Curry’s backstory, it will also plunge headlong into the subaquatic realm that helped spawn him via his…

EMPIRE Paul Dano called Empire from New York on 20 August. THERE’S NO SECRET to coaxing an outstanding performance out of an actor — that’s according to first-time director Paul Dano, at least. Not when you’re working with Carey Mulligan. “When you’ve got an actor that good,” he says, “my job is just to create an environment for them to do their best work.” Based on a 2006 novel by Richard Ford, Wildlife sees Mulligan play Jeanette, a 1960s housewife and mother in a boring Montana town. Her husband, Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal), a man mad at the world for his own shortcomings, leaves his family indefinitely to work as a firefighter while her teenage son, Joe (Ed Oxenbould), watches with horror as his parents’ marriage splinters. It’s a remarkably assured…

EMPIRE Matthew Holness spoke to Empire on 18 August, a week before Possum’s FrightFest premiere. THE HANDS OF ORLAC (1924) “The old silent German expressionist films were very influential. You’ve got these characters dealing with an inexpressible emotional trauma. It was all in the visuals. They’re not necessarily stating what’s going on in the character’s head, but you’re feeling it.” MARTIN (1978) “George Romero’s Martin was a huge influence — it was such a small, quiet horror film. It’s about psychology more than anything else: that twisted, screwed-up family unit playing out a madness that’s hidden away from the outside view, and that claustrophobic family insanity, which I found very interesting.” DON’T LOOK NOW (1973) “It’s one of those films which reveals itself, bit by bit. That was a real…

EMPIRE Empire met the cast as they filmed the heist climax at Ealing Studios on 10 June 2017. THERE HAVE ALREADY been two clunky movies (Hatton Garden: The Heist and The Hatton Garden Job) rushed out about 2015’s notorious Hatton Garden Robbery, the biggest jewellery heist in British history. The difference with King Of Thieves, the new offering? One: a prestige cast, including Michael Caine, Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, Michael Gambon and Paul Whitehouse. Two: the authenticity. The script’s based on police transcripts; director James Marsh is capturing events docu-drama style; and, strangest of all, Winstone actually knows the criminal he’s playing. He grew up with Danny Jones, and has visited him in prison several times. In fact, the only fictionalised element is the elusive, mysterious Basil —…

★★★★ OUT 14 SEPTEMBER CERT 15 / 88 MINS DIRECTOR John Carroll Lynch CAST Harry Dean Stanton, David Lynch, Ron Livingston, Ed Begley Jr, Tom Skerritt, Barry Shabaka Henley, Yvonne Huff, Beth Grant PLOT An old man approaching his end of days lives a loner’s life in a small desert town. After suffering a fall he fears he must come to terms with the fact that he is not the master of his own fate. HARRY DEAN STANTON is Lucky. No, he really is Lucky. This hazy, winding desert zephyr of a movie from actor-turned-director John Carroll Lynch (you likely know him best as Norm Gunderson from Fargo) is drawn from the life of its late leading man. The details of the eponymous character — Lucky is unmarried, he served…

★★★ OUT 27 SEPTEMBER CERT 15 / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Lance Daly CAST James Frecheville, Hugo Weaving, Freddie Fox, Barry Keoghan, Stephen Rea PLOT P8S7. Ireland is in the grip of the potato famine. Returning home, Feeney (Frecheville), an Irish deserter from the British imperial army, goes on a mission to avenge the death of his family. Feeney’s old military comrade, Hannah (Weaving), along with English officer Pope (Fox) and private Hobson (Keoghan), set off in pursuit. IF IT’S NOT the first Irish-tinged Western (John Ford’s The Quiet Man and Mike Newell’s Into The West are perhaps the most notable examples), few have embraced the genre’s tics and tropes so fully and smartly as Lance Daly’s film set during the Potato Famine. From lone horseman in wide-open spaces to evil…

★★★★ OUT 21 SEPTEMBER CERT 18 / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Gaspar Noé CAST Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Kiddy Smile, Claude Gajan Maull PLOT After a successful rehearsal, a recently established dance troupe celebrate their upcoming tour of France and the US. But someone has spiked the punch with a powerful hallucinogen, and the night turns into a violently bad trip. “GOD IS WITH us!” crows Sofia Boutella’s Selva, arm in the air like Liberty Leading The People, early in the new Gaspar Noé film. If she’s right — and subsequent events suggest otherwise — the relevant deity is a vengeful, mischievous type who torments a dance troupe for its own amusement. From the fuzzy, VHSstyle opening and the overheard shot of a bloodied woman struggling through deep snow (the only…

★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Jon Turteltaub CAST Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Jessica McNamee PLOT When a deep-sea research team discovers the existence of a megalodon — a 7O-foot, supposedly extinct shark — they face a desperate race against time to stop it from eating everything. IT MAY NOT shock you to hear this, but The Meg — a movie that apparently exists just so people can make jokes about Jason Statham punching a giant shark — is a bad film. What’s important, though, is to discern the level of intent from director Jon Turteltaub and his team. Have they genuinely stunk the joint out despite their best efforts? Or are they trying to have their cake and eat it too by…

★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 93 MINS DIRECTOR Sylvain White CAST Joey King, Julia Goldani Telles, Jaz Sinclair, Annalise Basso, Taylor Richardson, Alex Fitzalan, Javier Botet PLOT A group of friends attempt to prove child-snatching internet demon Slender Man doesn’t exist by calling on him to appear. Then — who’d have guessed it? — one of them disappears. WITHOUT THE WILLING suspension of disbelief, the history of cinema would’ve ground to a halt shortly after the Lumières’ steam train pulled into the station. But there are limits. Take this wholly unnecessary addition to the teen-horror canon, for example: hapless high-schoolers summon forth the titular bogeyman not by reciting an ancient and forbidden incantation, nor even by venturing to the godforsaken reaches of the dark web. Nope, 20-odd seconds on…

★★★★ OUT NOW / NETFLIX EPS VIEWED 5 OF 10 CREATED BY Bill Dubuque, Mark Williams CAST Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Peter Mullan, Lisa Emery, Sofia Hublitz, Skylar Gaertner PLOT Since moving to the remote Ozarks to escape his angry criminal bosses, money-launderer Marty (Bateman) has found his life becoming more stressful, not less. His entanglements with local villains are putting him and his family in more danger than ever. SOME SHOWS TAKE a while to blossom. There are few things so annoying as being told you need to stick with a series for X number of seasons “before it gets really good”, but some do need quite a few hours to sow their seeds and then a few more to let them germinate. Ozark’s first season was strong but…

★★ NETFLIX / OUT NOW EPS VIEWED 8 OF 8 CREATED BY Simon Duric, Hania Elkington CAST Sorcha Groundsell, Percelle Ascott, Guy Pearce, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson PLOT Repressed teenager June (Groundsell) runs away from her remote Pennines farmhouse with her boyfriend Harry (Ascott). As they escape, they learn June is a “shifter”, with the power to take the physical form of other people. FEELING LIKE A Young Adult The OA with a touch of last year’s time-travel thriller Dark, this UK-produced Netflix Original doubtlessly has ambition. But it fails to live up to the promise of its premise, lacking the visual or narrative flair to compensate for its lack of budget. Pinging between gloomy England and a mysterious commune in Norway, The Innocents presents a perplexing set-up involving a small…

You’ll likely have heard the outline: centuries from now, with Earth long-since devastated by apocalypse, cities have taken to wheels to hunt down limited resources. This, though, is merely backdrop to the forthcoming techno-fantasy directed by Christian Rivers and produced by world-builder extraordinaire Peter Jackson, based upon Philip Reeve’s series of dystopian-hued novels. As Jackson says, for best results an epic has to be “anchored in humanity”. Their saga promises a tale of family intrigue and revenge worthy of Dickens, if Dickens’ sprawling London was fully mobile and currently gouging its way across the dried-up bed of the North Sea. THADDEUS VALENTINE _ HUGO WEAVING Erstwhile Elf-lord Weaving returns to the Jackson fold as the suave but deceitful conspirator at the dark heart of the story. “Valentine is the chief…

“MY BIG THING in my career is, I just want to do something different,” says Viola Davis. “Something that wakes people up.” Starring in Widows, a heist movie from 12 Years A Slave director Steve McQueen, certainly qualifies. Davis plays Veronica, the wife of a thief (Liam Neeson). But when he and his crew are killed, she and the other widows must continue their husband’s planned job to get the money to survive. “The men put us in the hole, and now it’s up to us to dig ourselves out — not just as individuals but by collaborating.” With Veronica is a “motley crew” played by Michelle Rodriguez (Linda), Elizabeth Debicki (Alice) and Broadway star Cynthia Erivo (Belle). After being denied help by a family of politicians, the unlikely group…

CREED II _ 30 NOV In the movie that could have been called Drago, the returning Creed Jr (Michael B. Jordan) is set to face the offspring of his father’s one-time Soviet monster Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). It’s a confident move, to follow the grounded Creed with a story that spins out the Rocky series’ most OTT entry — and without Ryan Coogler directing, either (Steven Caple, Jr. takes over). But Coogler is executive producing and the script’s co-written by Sylvester Stallone and Luke Cage showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker, so we predict plenty of brains with its brawn. HUNTER KILLER _ 2 NOV “If we don’t pull this off, it’s gonna be World War III.” The trailer for post-Cold War military thriller Hunter Killer couldn’t make its high stakes any…

WHEN DIRECTOR MIKE Leigh was growing up in suburban Salford, he had no idea he lived a mile or so away from the site of a defining moment in British democracy. Save for “about four brief seconds of O-level history in 1959”, Leigh knew nothing about the Peterloo massacre of 1819, which saw up to 80,000 peaceful reformist protestors attacked by cavalry, leaving at least 15 dead and around 700 injured. Peterloo, the first film to be made about the event, aims to shine a light on a forgotten chapter on the road to democratic reform. It’s an ambitious undertaking for a director known for kitchen-sink realism, with his biggest budget to date. But Leigh shrugs off the jump in scale. “Whether it’s a film about three people arguing with…

David Gordon Green on resurrecting Michael Myers IF YOU HAD to guess the identity of the director tasked with resurrecting the Halloween franchise, chances are you’d work through most of Hollywood before alighting on David Gordon Green. He’s the indie wunderkind who these days oscillates between daft comedies and impactful dramas. Horror has been conspicuous by its absence. But that’s without reckoning on the number Michael Myers did on Green as a teenager. “I was a very sensitive kid, and it got under my skin,” he admits of John Carpenter’s Halloween . “The relentlessness of it horrified me.” So, when Blumhouse and Carpenter invited pitches for a new instalment, Green and his long-time collaborator Danny McBride leapt to the head of the queue with a take that would wipe out…

Look at that big stone raven. Remind you of anything? If that side profile and those threateningly spread wings give you some pretty strong Nazi-heraldry vibes, then ten points for historical-symbolism knowledge. And if you were hoping that a trip to the cinema this autumn might mean a break from headlines about fascism and political demagogues, then we’re going to have to disappoint you. Bring your placards. Things are going to get fighty. David Yates describes The Crimes Of Grindelwald as a very different movie from Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them . “[It still has] some of its charm,” the director says, “but we’re exploring something deeper and darker and more intense.” Specifically, he means the rise of Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), who has graduated from secret baddy…

BBC If you were to list influences for Doctor Who, how long would it be before you got to Forrest Gump? Because as strange as it may seem, that’s the reference point of new executive producer Dan Strevens. “It’s a box of chocolates of a series,” he tells us. “There’s something different in every episode.” This new season, the 11th (or the 37th in old money), will have no two-parters, and the first episode will act as something of a reboot, in the same way Matt Smith’s first episode ‘The Eleventh Hour’ did in 2010. A “jumping-on point” Strevens calls it, but also “a restating of what the show is”. Or, particularly, what the show is under new showrunner Chris Chibnall (writer of Broadchurch), who has already bucked more than…

EMINENTLY QUOTABLE AND endlessly rewatchable, Die Hard remains the gold standard for big-screen action. Adapted from a Roderick Thorp novel by first-time screenwriter Jeb Stuart and fizzed up by Steven E. de Souza’s quippy dialogue, it was meticulously directed by set-piece maestro John McTiernan. Combined with the movie’s secret weapon — TV star Bruce Willis — these ingredients added up to create an action film like no other. For the movie’s 30th birthday, we asked McTiernan, de Souza and Stuart to talk us through Die Hard scene by scene. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers. 0:01:00 __ New York detective and reluctant flyer John McClane (Bruce Willis) touches down at LAX with some handy jet-lag advice from a fellow passenger: “Walk around on the rug barefoot and make fists with your toes.” The tip…

00:12:51 A FRIDGE TOO FAR __ Those expecting lotsa lols from Deadpool 2 are jolted early on by the shocking murder of Deadpool’s girlfriend, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). It led to a backlash, with the writers (including Ryan Reynolds) accused of ‘fridging’ Vanessa, a term for killing a female character to motivate a male hero. “It wasn’t something we were aware of,” admits co-writer/producer Rhett Reese. “We’re all learning.” 00:14:48 THE NAME’S POOL… DEADPOOL __ Vanessa’s death segues straight into a fun, very Bondian title sequence, complete with plenty of Reynolds cavorting, and Celine Dion belting out ‘Ashes’. “We fell in love with that song,” says Wernick. “We built the credits sequence around that song. It was tough — the credits sequence in the first movie was so beloved. How do…

THIS MONTH’S NOMINATION for Cult status is Road House. Not the Patrick Swayze-Rowdy Herrington ’80s barroom brawl classic — the original Road House (1948), directed by Jean Negulesco, starring Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde and Richard Widmark. The lasting, if little-noticed influence of Negulesco’s movie is as one of the key inspirations for the road house in Twin Peaks, which shares its handy location near gloriously strange woods abutting the Canadian border and is also an unlikely showcase for monotone torch singer/keyboard acts playing to audiences of drunken, plaid-shirted hairies. Technically, Road House is a film noir — with a super-tough dame at the apex of a romantic triangle that leads to torment and violence — but its wilderness setting, small cast and fable-like plot are worlds away from the mean…

Alamy WHEN IT WAS announced in August, via a very carefully worded statement, that Danny Boyle had “decided to no longer direct Bond 25”, the immediate perception was that this was a bad thing for the future of the longest-running franchise in movie history. That with Boyle the risk-taker gone, it would be the same old Bond. Dependable and formulaic. I’m not so sure that’s the case. As those “creative differences” (for all we know, Boyle might have been advocating a scene where Bond laser beams off his own testes while high on horse steroids) began to manifest themselves during the film’s pre-production, it’s possible producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson were faced with a decision. They could have cast a different actor (insert Idris Elba here), and entrust…

© Marvel 1__ MOON KNIGHT (MARC SPECTOR) Who is he? Marc Spector, former CIA agent-turned-mercenary, has a near-death experience which bonds him with an Egyptian moon god. Returning to New York, he adopts the identity of millionaire Steven Grant and cabbie Jake Lockley, and fights crime. Lots of crime. At night. Why should he join the MCU? CHRIS HEWITT: He’s (not) Batman. A billionaire playboy by day who becomes a costumed crime-fighter by night would ordinarily have the DC lawyers reaching for the cease and desists, but Moon Knight has enough about him to separate the Batwheat from the Batchaff. He has powers, for one. And three — three! — separate identities means he could actually be the Jason Bourne of the MCU, battling with repressed memories. Oh, and just…

Alamy EMPIRE Empire spoke to director Julius Avery on the phone from Queensland, Australia, on 14 August. IT’S A WAR MOVIE Overlord borrows its title from Operation Overlord, the codename for the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. Director Julius Avery explains that it’s “quite literally the jumping-off point”, as the film opens on a team of American paratroopers leaping from a burning plane on D-Day. Nazis are handy bad guys — “There’s nothing better than watching Nazis get blown up,” Avery notes — but once our heroes land, the film veers sharply into a fictional alternate history. IT’S AN ACTION MOVIE “I love intense, physical action,” says Avery, and as the AC/DC-soundtracked trailer hints, the emphasis here is on riotous B-movie fun. “I really wanted to put the audience…

Illustration: Matt Herring Have you ever knowingly broken the law? I did break into a house with a friend once when we were 14 or 15. We knew nobody was living there and there was no furniture inside. We noticed there was a window cracked open, so we went back under cover of darkness and broke in and wandered around and felt really badass. What one thing do you do better than anyone else you know? I kind of gave up the goods on my hidden talent with the ‘Cups’ thing. I am out of hidden talents now, because I have revealed all of my talents. What is the worst thing you’ve ever put in your mouth? Once when I was in Tokyo, I went to the fish market in…

THERE’S A LINE that’s often trotted out about ‘dumb’ movies: “Don’t take it all so seriously.” The argument being that The Meg, the Transformers series, or anything starring Dwayne Johnson should just be fun and we shouldn’t really expect anything more. And, actually, that’s true. However, a great dumb movie is a wonderful thing, and our current crop simply isn’t up to scratch. Dumb movies have been having a moment this year. As well as The Meg, we’ve seen Rampage and Skyscraper (notice both star Johnson), and you could argue Pacific Rim Uprising and Tomb Raider, too. While some of those had a lot of really enjoyable moments, none of them came close to reaching their full potential for insanity. Some kept pulling back from their silliness, trying to be…

★★★ AMAZON PRIME VIDEO OUT NOW EPS VIEWED 4 OF 8 CREATED BY Carlton Cuse, Graham Roland CAST John Krasinski, Wendell Pierce, Abbie Cornish, Ali Suliman, Dina Shihabi PLOT While tracking some shady monetary transactions, CIA agent Jack Ryan (Krasinski) uncovers evidence of a previously unknown terrorist, who he believes could be the next Bin Laden. Despite his misgivings about being in the field, he’s brought in to take him down. WHAT IS IT about Jack Ryan? This series marks the fifth new actor to play Tom Clancy’s CIA agent which, while hardly on a par with, say, Hamlet in the multiple interpretations stakes, is still pretty good going. Certainly, he’s been rebooted with enough regularity to suggest Hollywood (and now TV) execs believe he has the potential to hit…

None of us would have touched a remake in a million years,” promises Rob Marshall, director of upcoming sequel Mary Poppins Returns. “The original film means a lot to all of us.” But when he set out to recruit his cast for a sequel, proposing an original story that aims to capture the tone of the 1964 original, Marshall found stars eager to help. Emily Blunt plays Poppins, Meryl Streep signed on as her cousin Topsy, and Broadway hero Lin-Manuel Miranda takes his first major big-screen role as lamplighter Jack. Ben Whishaw and Emily Mortimer are the grown Michael and Jane Banks, and Colin Firth plays Michael’s boss Mr Wilkins. Even Disney legends Angela Lansbury and Dick Van Dyke, both 91 at the time of shooting, turned out, with Van…

Agent Burns works for Sector 7, the shadowy organisation we’ve seen before in Transformers films. Is he friend or foe to Bumblebee? You’re going to find out very quickly that this is a secretive interview! The folks who have made the movie have let me know they’d like to keep things intriguing, so I’ll let people continue to debate that. You’ve not done a big blockbuster movie before. Why this one? I try to not only work with good people, but also projects I’m comfortable with, and this was no exception. Travis [Knight] was a wonderful director. And I truly love the story of this movie. This is a new take on the Transformers series; a much more intimate look at the Bumblebee origin story. Not only that, but I…

MUCH NOISE HAS been made about the fact The Old Man And The Gun, a beguiling crime comedy about the ‘Over-The-Hill Gang’, pensioners who rob banks politely, will be Robert Redford’s final film. Quite right, too. But one element shouldn’t be ignored: it is also director David Lowery’s latest effort. A filmmaker who has straddled both crowdpleasing Disney flicks (Pete’s Dragon) and weird arthouse experiments (A Ghost Story), Lowery has seized the opportunity to cut loose. “The rule on this movie was to just have fun,” he says with a smile. “I’ve made lots of movies where everyone’s coming to work ready to do some serious drama and get the waterworks going, but on this movie we just wanted to smile every day. It was one of the most effortless…

Perhaps the biggest surprise about the new Coen brothers movie is that it turned out to be a movie. With their shock move to Netflix, it was taken as gospel that the unpredictable siblings’ next enterprise, a Western anthology diced into six discrete tales, was to be a television show. The IMDb still refers to it as Season 1. In fact, that was never the case. “Everybody got the wrong end of the stick,” laughs Tim Blake Nelson, who fills the boots of cowboy troubadour Buster Scruggs, misanthropic hero of the title story. Not that this was some cunning Fargo-esque ruse, he hastens to add. “Joel and Ethan simply chose not to dispel any of the misconstruing that was going on. This was always a movie.” Ten years ago, Joel…

Following the head-spinning experience of making 2013 astronaut epic Gravity, director Alfonso Cuarón felt the need to decompress. “I spent so much time in space,” he laughs, “I felt like I needed to be grounded.” The project that’s brought him back to terra firma couldn’t be more different. Roma is an autobiographical drama that Cuarón says is “90 per cent rooted in my own memory. In many ways it is unlike any other film I’ve ever done.” Named after Cuarón’s childhood neighbourhood, Roma chronicles a year in the life of a middle-class family in early ’70s Mexico City through the prism of nanny Cleo (newcomer Yalitza Aparicio). A love letter to the women who raised him, Cuarón has broadened the scope to take in the changing face of his homeland,…

THE BOARDING SCHOOL is a staple of British culture and films, from Goodbye Mr Chips to Harry Potter. But it’s never been treated as irreverently as in Slaughterhouse Rulez, the horror/comedy that’s the first film from for Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s new production company, Stolen Pictures. Pegg and Frost both take roles in the film: Pegg as well-intentioned, slightly ineffectual teacher Meredith Houseman, and Frost as local drug dealer and weirdo Woody. “They’re national treasures,” says director Crispian Mills. “Now they want to launch a new generation of actors, [so] they’re playing these supporting roles and letting the kids really drive the movie.” Those ‘kids’, led by Asa Butterfield’s Willoughby Blake, Hermione Corfield’s Clemsie and Finn Cole’s Don Wallace, will have to fight gruesome, shit-spewing monsters unleashed by the…

For cast and crew, going into the final season of a long-running show will always be an emotionally fraught experience. Actors are saying goodbye to characters they’ve lived with for years, and the pressure is sky-high to deliver a satisfying final chapter. But as production unfolded on the sixth and final season of Netflix’s flagship show, House Of Cards , emotions were strained for darker reasons. On 30 October 2017, production was halted, about two weeks after it had begun, when Anthony Rapp publicly accused Kevin Spacey, the show’s lead, of making unwanted sexual advances towards him in 1986, when Rapp was 14. The following day, Netflix announced that production on Season 6 would be suspended “until further notice”. On 3 November a statement came: “Netflix will not be involved…

While other big-name Hollywood stars got with the New-Golden-Age TV programme years ago, Sean Penn was always the hold-out. He may have popped up in sitcoms such as Friends and Ellen , but the 57-year-old actor has never taken a leading role in even the mini-est of mini-series. Until now. “We were told he didn’t want to do television,” says Jordan Tappis, executive producer of new Hulu show The First . “And then he read the script...” That script was the pilot for an eight-episode first season of a series about nothing less ambitious than the first-ever manned mission to Mars, set in the close-future of the 2030s. Yet it wasn’t so much a personal enthusiasm for astronautical endeavour that hooked Penn as, quite simply, the quality of the writing.…

Alamy, Photofest JEFFREY WIGAND SITS in the corner of a hotel room, alone. 60 Minutes is on television, an interview he gave edited down to useless information. The mural on the wall behind him transforms into the garden where his two little girls play. Wigand’s in a bad place, lost in this dream, a haunting reminder of everything he’s given up, maybe for nothing. And Lowell Bergman, miles away, is a solitary figure on the darkening beach, worried about Wigand, hoping he’ll take his call. A storm looms. Michael Mann’s The Insider is based on the true story of ordinary people under extraordinary pressure: tobacco company Brown & Williamson’s former head of research and development, Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), and the man who helped him blow the whistle over the…

THERE’S NO SUCH thing as a perfect film — well, maybe Paddington 2 — but Midnight Run comes pretty damn close. Martin Brest’s 1988 movie, about Jack Walsh, a bounty hunter (Robert De Niro), transporting Jonathan ‘The Duke’ Mardukas, an absconded Mob accountant (Charles Grodin), across country under the nose of the Mafia and the Feds, is part road-trip, part-buddy comedy, part-action movie, and is utterly magnificent. It’s incredibly influential — many movies, including the Gerard Butler/Jennifer Aniston comedy The Bounty Hunter, Reese Witherspoon’s Hot Pursuit and the Ryan Reynolds/ Samuel L. Jackson misfire The Hitman’s Bodyguard, have attempted to match its blend of character-based comedy, potty-mouthed humour and chaotic action, but none have come close. Its appeal lies in the incredibly quotable dialogue, the memorable, well-drawn supporting cast, and…

MPTV IT ONLY TOOK — contrary to some reports — a day. One day, one take. “Oh my God. You can’t do that over again. How many times you think you can do that?” James Caan told Larry King, reflecting on the bloody massacre of his character Santino ‘Sonny’ Corleone, hot-headed firstborn to The Godfather (Marlon Brando), gunned down at the tollbooth on the Long Beach Causeway in New York State. Cinema doesn’t get much bloodier than this. It also, ultimately, doesn’t get much more emotional. Because although Sonny is an old-school hoodlum — peacocking and punching like he’s walked out of a ’30s Warner Bros. gangster classic — he’s also beloved. He’s funny, he’s flawed, he’s fiercely loyal. The reason Sonny is driving alone is he’s enraged, racing to…

Alamy MIKE NEWELL, LIKE his contemporary Stephen Frears, is a hard director to pin down. He’s as comfortable making romantic comedies or lavish blockbusters as he is independent dramas, such as his latest, The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society. Is there a connective tissue? “If you boiled everything down, everything I’ve made is about good characters in bad fixes,” he says. We asked him to talk us through five of the best. Well, four winners and one near-career funeral. 1. FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (1994) The Richard Curtis-written comedy that made Hugh Grant a star and launched a thousand imitators. “I was deeply negative about the title. I wanted them to change it. They said, ‘You’re mad, why?’ I said, ‘Audiences will count. If halfway through they’ve…

EMPIRE Empire spoke to Zachary Levi and director David F. Sandberg on 3 April. DARK. BROODING. GRITTY. All words you’d normally associate with DC Extended Universe films (Man Of Steel, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad), all set to bounce off Shazam! like bullets pinging off its hero. The first trailer for David F. Sandberg’s movie, unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con in July, showed off a much breezier side to the superhero stable, with its magic-channelling hero charging people’s phones using his powers, striding out of a grocery shop with armfuls of snacks, and doing the floss dance. Try to picture Batfleck doing any of that. While he exists in the same world as Batman, Wonder Woman and co, Shazam is unlike any other DC character. Behind the hero moniker he’s…

1 __ THE TIMELINE For the uninitiated, Resistance follows Kazuda Xiono, a rookie pilot recruited by the Resistance who is assigned a top-secret mission to spy on the mounting forces of the First Order. It’s set between Return Of The Jedi and The Force Awakens — though, in a bit of espionage of his own, Star Wars spy Jose Ruiz mined meta-data on StarWars.com and discovered a description that says the story is set six months before The Force Awakens. 2__ THE OLD HANDS Given the timeline, it is perhaps no surprise that Kaz’s mentor here is ace pilot Poe Dameron, voiced by Oscar Isaac. (Thankfully, the animation maintains Isaac’s good hair.) Obviously where there is Poe, there is BB-8, who shares a moment in the trailer with Kaz staring…

Alamy, Getty EMPIRE Empire spoke to Gareth Evans on set in Bridgend, South Wales, on 31 May 2017. FOUR YEARS. THAT’S how long it’s been since The Raid 2 thundered onto screens. After spending two years on an untitled, big-budget action epic that flamed out in development hell, director Gareth Evans is finally back. Apostle, his first English-language film, is set in 1904, but don’t expect a dainty Edwardian period drama. It stars Dan Stevens as a fallen preacher who, after receiving a cryptic ransom note, travels to an island to rescue his sister from Michael Sheen’s sinister cult. “He doesn’t know who the fuck has her,” says Evans. “Or the trap he’s walking into.” There’s certainly nothing dainty about the set that Empire witnesses. The first thing we clock…

EMPIRE Empire was on set in Scotland in September 2017, and then spoke to David Mackenzie in his London flat in August 2018. AS ONE OF the four Movie Chrises, Chris Pine is one of the most bankable names in Hollywood. So it’s somewhat incongruous to see him in a scraggly beard near Edinburgh, just off the M9. This is Outlaw King, a historical film shot in a style that Scottish director David Mackenzie dubs “epic realism”— and as Empire watches Pine receive his crown during a coronation scene at Linlithgow Palace, it all seems remarkably real. Here’s how he pulled off an unlikely epic. PICK THE RIGHT STAR Outlaw King sees Mackenzie continuing the acclaimed partnership he established with Chris Pine on Hell Or High Water. “We set about…

Alamy, Allstar EMPIRE Peter Jackson spoke to Empire from New Zealand on 20 August, while putting finishing touches to the film. IF IT HADN’T been for World War I, Peter Jackson wouldn’t exist. “My dad only emigrated to New Zealand and met my mum because he’d heard good things about the Kiwi soldiers in that war,” he explains; and thanks to tales of a paternal grandfather who served, the Great War became a lifelong obsession for the Oscar-winning director, with a couple of biplanes and a tank among his memorabilia. (It isn’t lost on him that Tolkien survived the Somme.) In his hour-long documentary They Shall Never Grow Old, Jackson has had the chance to unite his “hobby” with his day job to create “something authentic”. Aware of his passion,…

EMPIRE Jim Hosking phoned Empire while filming in the Dominican Republic on 5 August. JIM HOSKING ONLY makes movies for Jim Hosking. That’s not arrogance — he just doesn’t know who else to make them for. “The only person who I know how they experience things is me,” the British filmmaker explains, carefully. “I make films that people always think are really weird. And I always think, ‘Oh come on, everybody would enjoy this!’” A chuckle. “I guess I’m not a good gauge.” People do think his films are weird. They certainly thought that of The Greasy Strangler, his 2016 debut, which featured more prosthetic penises on nude, greased-up septuagenarian non-actors than most films; and they think that of Hosking’s follow-up, An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn. Like Greasy, Luff…

EMPIRE Eli Roth spoke to Empire on the phone from LA on 14 August, shortly before the film’s premiere. WE HAVE NEWS for anyone who would like to paint The House With A Clock In Its Walls as ‘something of a departure’ for Eli Roth. After all, the director who’s bumped off helpless victims galore with killer viruses, torture implements and the odd cannibal village does seem to be taking a step away from pure horror with a fantasy movie for, y’know, kids. But Roth is keen to head you off at the pass. “For me, it’s the most honest reflection and representation of me and my personality,” he tells Empire. “For years people have been asking me: ‘When will you make a film that’s funny?’” That would seem to…

EMPIRE Empire spoke to Frank Marshall as he recuperated from knee surgery on 17 August. SHOT BETWEEN 1970 and 1976, The Other Side Of The Wind would have been Orson Welles’ final film as a director. But he didn’t finish it. Finally, after various failed attempts, producers Frank Marshall and Filip Jan Rymsza have completed it. These are the five biggest challenges they faced. FINDING FUNDING Frank Marshall was part of the original crew, and recalls how Welles struggled to get funding. “We’d shoot in little spurts, in between the movies I was making with Peter [Bogdanovich]. Finally, in ’74, Orson called to say, ‘I’ve got money. We can finish it.’” It took a further two years. RECASTING NIGHTMARES On the final night of filming, Welles found his second lead,…

★★★★ OUT 14 SEPTEMBER CERT 12A / 121 MINS DIRECTOR Jon M. Chu CAST Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Awkwafina PLOT When Nick (Golding) invites his girlfriend Rachel (Wu) to a wedding in Singapore, she sees it as a chance to meet his family and find out where he came from. On arrival, Rachel learns Nick has been keeping a little secret: they’re the richest people in the country. YOU CANNOT FOR a second accuse Crazy Rich Asians of failing to deliver on its title. Almost every one of its characters has a fat bank account and is not afraid to show it, as gaudily and fabulously as they possibly can. That title, larky and campy as it is, is something else, too. It’s a statement. The…

★★★★ OUT 7 SEPTEMBER CERT 15 / 117 MINS DIRECTOR Bart Layton CAST Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters, Jared Abrahamson, Blake Jenner PLOT Kentucky 2OOS. Following a tour of his school’s rare book collection, Spencer (Keoghan) and pal Warren (Peters) hatch a plot to steal the most valuable items. With two new recruits (Abrahamson, Jenner), can they realise their audacious plan? AT THE BEGINNING of Bart Layton’s American Animals we are cheekily told, “This is not based on a true story”, before the words “not based on” are erased from the screen. Like Layton’s calling card, The Imposter, American Animals has a ball with the tension between truth and fiction. Grabbing hold of a true story about four college kids’ plot to steal rare books — chiefly John James Audubon’s Birds…

★★ OUT 19 SEPTEMBER CERT 12A / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Peter Berg CAST Mark Wahlberg, John Malkovich, Lauren Cohan, Iko Uwais, Ronda Rousey PLOT In the Southeast Asia country of Indocarr, a police officer (Uwais) holds the key to sensitive terrorist intel that could save the lives of millions. It’s up to elite paramilitary agent James Silva (Wahlberg) and his team to escort him across a city to safety — but a lot can happen in 22 miles. UP UNTIL NOW, the collaborations between director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg have focused on honouring the stories of all-American heroes. This film, their fourth together, is purely fictional. And, with no real people to honour, Berg and ’Berg have decided to switch it up by focusing on a character who…

★★★ OUT 7 SEPT (CINEMAS AND RAKUTEN TV) CERT 15 / 115 MINS DIRECTOR David Blair CAST Iwan Rheon, Milo Gibson, Stefani Martini, Marcin Dorocinski PLOT In P9SO, Polish pilot Jan Zumbach (Rheon) steals a plane and escapes from Nazi-occupied France to England. There he joins the Royal Air Force, along with several of his countrymen, and is faced with battling not just the Luftwaffe in the air, but the xenophobia of the British pilots on the ground. HURRICANE IS AN old-fashioned war yarn, complete with requisite dogfights and derring-do, but despite that, it strikes an unlikely melancholy tone. Its focus, 303 Squadron, an RAF unit composed of Polish exiles, are fêted by the British establishment, but really they’re fighting for a country they’ve already lost. And, thanks to dirty…

★★★ OUT 21 SEPTEMBER CERT 12A / 111 MINS DIRECTOR Lenny Abrahamson CAST Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Will Poulter, Charlotte Rampling, Liv Hill PLOT Country doctor Faraday (Gleeson) returns to his home town to work, but when he visits the fading estate of the Ayres family, he becomes fascinated with injured son Roderick (Poulter), his sister and carer Caroline (Wilson) and mother (Rampling). ADAPTING A BOOKER Prize-shortlisted novel seems like a surprisingly safe choice for Lenny Abrahamson, after the confines of Room and the subversive weirdness of Frank. But there’s something strange and slippery about his adaptation of Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger that reveals it to be a better fit for the director than you’d imagine — something off-kilter and unsettling, even if it isn’t quite up to his…

★★★★ OUT 14 SEPTEMBER CERT TBC / 104 MINS DIRECTOR Chloé Zhao CAST Brady Jandreau, Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau, Lane Scott, Cat Clifford PLOT Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) lives with his dad Wayne (Tim Jandreau) and sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau) in the Badlands of South Dakota. When a head injury threatens his rodeo career, Brady must decide whether to find a new way of life, or fight to get back to the rodeo. EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT cowboys. One of the most mythologised figures in human history, the cowboy is a symbol of rugged individualism, uncompromising masculinity and a type of toughness that deals, unflinchingly, with whatever nature throws at him. But what if he faces a challenge that’s insurmountable? That’s the question in Chloe Zhao’s impressive second film, a small…

★★★★ OUT 28 SEPTEMBER CERT 15 / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Björn Runge CAST Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, Annie Starke, Harry Lloyd PLOT When novelist Joe Castleman (Pryce) is awarded the Nobel Prize, his wife Joan (Close) begins to re-evaluate their relationship, just as a determined biographer (Slater) threatens to unearth some long-buried secrets. IN A CAREER spanning four decades, Glenn Close has played a number of wildly varied roles, earning six Oscar nominations (three for Best Supporting Actress, followed by three for lead) without yet snagging a win. If larger-than-life characters such as Cruella de Vil made Hollywood forget she achieved early acclaim playing real people in the likes of The Big Chill and The Natural, The Wife will serve as a welcome reminder. The film, adapted from…

★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 91 MINS DIRECTOR Brian Henson CAST Melissa McCarthy, Elizabeth Banks, Maya Rudolph, Bill Barretta, Kevin Clash PLOT When a killer targets the puppet cast of ’9Os TV show The Happytime Gang, ex-cop puppet private eye and prime suspect Phil Philips (Barretta) re-teams with his old, human partner Detective Connie Edwards (McCarthy) to find the culprit and clear his name. THE IDEA OF an ‘adults only’ puppet-based comedy is hardly stuffed with novelty value. Way back in 1989, Peter Jackson orchestrated cat-on-walrus fellatio — among countless other felt-based atrocities — in his knowingly distasteful Meet The Feebles. More recently we got Avenue Q on the stage and Team America: World Police on the big screen. But The Happytime Murders does give the freaky-fuzzy sub-genre a…

Inside the anonymous grey building, the air is cooler, thinner, though cut through with quiet urgency and expectation. Goddard himself, despite being in what he describes as “the fine-tuning stage” of the edit of his second directorial outing, Bad Times At The El Royale, is smiling, maybe even surprisingly calm. He has just a handful of weeks to lock the film and deliver it to the studio; a deadline he also describes as the moment “they pry it out of my hands”. Everything about Bad Times At The El Royale has been fast and in many respects, smooth. It became an official, formed idea, an actual thing, in November 2016. But really, Goddard admits, this was a project he’d been thinking about for years. He’d always wanted to do a…

VENOM _ 3 OCT The first Spider-Man spin-off arrives in the oily form of Venom, an alien symbiote which turns investigative journo Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) all Jekylland-Hyde-y. Director Ruben Fleischer says the film is “distinctive and different” to other superhero movies, and not just because it’s more horror-tinged than what we’ve seen before. The forging of a symbiotic relationship between Brock and alien forms what Fleischer describes as “a duality that from a character standpoint is really fascinating for Tom to play”. BIRD BOX _ LATE 2018 After winning an Emmy for her slick le Carréadapting BBC series The Night Manager, Danish director Susanna Bier drastically shifts gears with this post-apocalyptic movie for Netflix. Although it’s not your usual apocalypse; perhaps unsurprising with a script from Eric Heisserer (adapting…

Agonzo, big-budget collaboration between director Robert Rodriguez and writer-producer James Cameron, Alita: Battle Angel promises to deliver more cybernetically pumped-up action than a dozen Terminators. There will be hyperviolent battle royales between metal-limbed adversaries, not to mention ‘motorball’ sequences that threaten to make Speed Racer look like ‘Slow Racer’. But at the heart of the story is something much gentler: the relationship between cyborg Alita (Rosa Salazar) and cyberphysician Dr Ido (Christoph Waltz), the human who discovers her discarded remnants in a scrapyard at the start of the movie. “He’s a wounded person himself, who finds this core as he’s rummaging through the trash,” says Salazar. “And right away he has this connection to this young, angelic face due to traumatic events in his own life, having lost his daughter.…

FIRST MAN _ 12 OCT After taking us to the City Of Stars in La La Land, Damien Chazelle and Ryan Gosling now want to fly us to the moon. First Man is a nitty-gritty reconstruction drama which focuses on the hard realities of mounting the first manned lunar mission, both in terms of the extreme dangers faced by the astronauts — primarily Gosling as Neil Armstrong — and the personal impact it had on their lives (Claire Foy plays Neil’s wife, Janet). Sounds good; after all, Chazelle, Foy and Gosling certainly have the right stuff. A STAR IS BORN _ 5 OCT At one point, this third remake of the 1937 Hollywood romance was going to be directed by Clint Eastwood and star Beyoncé. But, after years in development…

You know what?” says Jamie Lee Curtis, “I scare easily. It’s not my gig. I don’t like it. But it’s the truth.” Given this, there’s glorious irony in the fact that Curtis, who began her career as the scream queen in John Carpenter’s original Halloween, The Fog, and a couple of inferior slashers, keeps coming back to this genre. And, in particular, this series. She last played Michael Myers’ nemesis, Laurie Strode, in 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection, where she was unceremoniously bumped off. But as her presence in David Gordon Green’s Halloween shows, you can’t keep a good survivor down... You must have thought Laurie was dead and buried. [Laughs] I don’t think anyone’s ever dead and buried in a Halloween movie. I certainly didn’t entertain, ever, that I would revisit…

IN 1980s DETROIT, Ricky Wershe Jr, so the legend goes, was an FBI informant and drug kingpin at 15, and imprisoned by 17. In fact, the truth is less grand, and director Yann Demange (’71) found the initial draft of White Boy Rick that landed on his desk “a bit sensationalised, too preoccupied with being a Wolf Of Wall Street rise and fall of a teenage gangster”. Instead, Demange homed in on the relationship between Wershe and his father. Demange saw an opportunity to tell “a story about a family trying to survive abject poverty.” He was intent on casting a real kid with an affinity for Wershe’s roots, finding Baltimore’s Richie Merritt, who had “never even done a fucking drama class before”. For balance, he went A-list with the…

THE GOOD PLACE _ 28 SEPT For a show so dedicated to slamming us with twist after twist (both narratively and philosophically), it’s fair to ask: where the fork is Michael Schur’s after-life sitcom The Good Place going to go next? When we last saw Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) and her fellow afterlifers, they’d (spoiler alert!) been resurrected for a proper go-over of their Earthly mistakes. Or had they? Well, unless he’s messing with us, Schur has confirmed it’s exactly as it seems: “The four of them are straight-up back on Earth, in a new timeline where they didn’t die.” ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, SEASON 5.2 _ LATE 2018 Earlier this year, it was good to see the dysfunctional Bluth clan properly back together after being carved up into separate storylines for…

Tonight, the premiere of her new film, The Wife, takes place in the courtyard of Somerset House in London. After months of blistering, scorching heat, today is the day that the skies are fat and grey with the threat of rain. And it’s an important day. One that’s been coming for five years — since Close first read the script (adapted from a book), ostensibly telling the story of a wife, that hadn’t even secured financing yet. She was intrigued by Joan, the wife of the title, who we meet as her husband, writer Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), is awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. As they travel to Stockholm for the ceremony, their marriage begins to unravel under the weight of a secret they’ve shouldered between them for 40…