Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2019 i Empire

REDRUM Danny Torrance is back, and now a fortysomething called Dan (Ewan McGregor). After getting sober, his psychic powers return, manifesting in chalkboard messages on his wall. These culminate in the familiar “Redrum” — drawn in lipstick by Danny on a door in The Shining — although it reads “Murder” here, with Danny first seeing it reflected in his mirror. A signal that he’s now receiving the messages, not sending them. THE TRICYCLE “When I was a kid, I bumped into these things,” Dan says. And that’s when we see director Mike Flanagan’s first painstaking recreation of The Shining: young Danny, the tricycle, that labyrinthine carpet. This flashback is our first proof that, as well as being an adaptation of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep, this is very much a sequel…

Alamy EZRA MENAS ANYBODYS (JETS) Menas, a non-binary actor, takes on the role of Anybodys. They appeared in a national tour of A Chorus Line, and later this year will star in the original cast of Jagged Little Pill on Broadway, a new musical inspired by Alanis Morissette. BEN COOK MOUTHPIECE (JETS) 21-year-old Cook played the title role in Billy Elliot The Musical on Broadway in 2012, and was part of Tina Fey’s 2018 Mean Girls Broadway transfer. He’s worked with Fey before, playing a young Alec Baldwin in a 2010 episode of 30 Rock. SEAN HARRISON JONES ACTION (JETS) Jones played Samuel Seabury in the US tour of Hamilton in 2018, and in 2014 appeared on America’s Got Talent with his childhood friend as tap-dancing duo Sean & Luke.…

Have you just flown in? I live here. It’s my favourite place. I [was born] in Sweden, moved to Iceland when I was five, and came back to Sweden [as a teenager]. I never really felt at home, and then when I came to London for the first time when I shot Sherlock Holmes with Guy Ritchie, I fell in love with it. What made you fall in love with the city? It’s such a mix of people. In my house, people come from all kinds of different backgrounds. London is a world city, a boiling pot of creativity and madness. I love a bit of madness. But I find people to be intelligent and kind. If you’re walking home, people are nice to you. Taxi drivers are nice. Do…

WHEN ORLANDO BLOOM received the script for Carnival Row — writer Travis Beacham’s inventive, eight-episode twist on the fantasy genre — it rang more than a few bells. “Coming from fantasy at the start of my career, I read it and thought, ‘Oh yeah, this keys into a lot of things that feel familiar,’” Bloom tells Empire as we join him on set at Barandov Studios in Prague. “But it’s different enough for me to enjoy.” After his first major role as Legolas in the Lord Of The Rings films, he spent years away from fantasy (save for a brief stop-off in The Hobbit). But now Carnival Row has tempted him back. “We’re in a big city called The Burgh, a steampunk world that represents London in the 19th century,”…

THE DEADLY SERIOUS Queen & Slim was born at a party, when Lena Waithe — the multi-hyphenate star of Ready Player One and writer/ cast member of Master Of None — bumped into A Million Little Pieces novelist James Frey. “I’ve got this idea for a movie,” Frey told her, “that I can’t write because I’m a white guy.” He outlined the scene. Waithe listened, then nodded. “I can write that movie,” she said. “I know what that movie is.” A few years later, that casual chit-chat has turned into one of the most urgent and significant films in development. Because Waithe did go away and write that movie (Frey gets a “Story By” credit): the tale of two African-Americans on a Tinder date who become nationally famous when, at…

Atmospheric scientist Prof David Lee on the ‘Oxygen Destroyer’ in Godzilla: King Of The Monsters “Dissolved oxygen is, of course, vital for life in the seas. It is actually possible to get ‘dead zones’ in the sea — usually where sewage or nitrogen-rich effluent enters it — which cannot support fish life. But the idea that something could be ‘set off’ that removed dissolved oxygen from large areas of the globe is fanciful in the extreme.”…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 129 MINS DIRECTOR Jon Watts CAST Tom Holland, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zendaya, Samuel L. Jackson, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei PLOT In the wake of Thanos’ defeat, Peter Parker (Holland) leaves Spidey at home for a class trip to Europe, where he can ask out MJ (Zendaya). But he’s soon approached by Nick Fury (Jackson) to save the day with new hero Mysterio (Gyllenhaal). AVENGERS: ENDGAME IRREVOCABLY changed the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The apocalyptic time-travel epic not only wrapped up a decade of narrative threads and character arcs, but set up a whole new world in which half of the population has blinked back into existence, five tumultuous years after being blinked out of it. How will the MCU address such universe-altering consequences? The answer, as…

★★★ OUT 12 JULY CERT 15 / 105 MINS DIRECTOR Jim Jarmusch CAST Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Bill Murray, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover PLOT After polar fracking sends Earth off its axis, the residents of the sleepy town of Centerville start to notice some strange events: the days are longer, the animals have all disappeared — and the dead are rising. JIM JARMUSCH IS no stranger to visiting other worlds. In Dead Man, he went Western; in Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai, he dabbled in Mob movies; in Only Lovers Left Alive, he hung out in a cool-as-fuck rock star vampire world. But whatever his flirtations with genre, every Jarmusch film remains recognisably Jarmuschian. The Dead Don’t Die follows that trend, blending his signature low-key style…

★★★★ OUT 26 JULY / CERT 15 / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Lila Avilés CAST Gabriela Cartol, Teresa Sflnchez Eve (Cartol) is a maid in a luxurious Mexico city hotel, rifling through guests’ possessions, phoning home to speak to her son and trying to better herself by reading her first book. This shares thematic threads with Roma , but whereas Cuarón’s view of domestic drudgery is expansive and heroic, Lila Avilés’ terrific debut is more intimate, creating a hermetically sealed world beautifully rendered in chilly, precise strokes and oppressive sound design. Without over-playing her hand, Avilés makes it clear Eve’s aspirations are defined and diminished by the kind of moneyed guests she waits upon. As such, The Chambermaid is a poignant portrait of a have not, sensitively played by Cartol as…

★★★ OUT 13 JULY / CERT 12A / 114 MINS DIRECTOR Ron Howard CAST Luciano Pavarotti, Spike Lee, Princess Diana After covering The Beatles with Eight Days A Week, Ron Howard mounts a straightforward but enjoyable portrait of one of 2Oth century music’s greatest talents. Told by a mixture of archive footage and contemporary talking heads, it’s a soup-to-nuts story of the rise of a baker’s son who fought tooth and nail to bring opera to the masses, filling out US stadia (he would take suitcases of tortellini on the road), wowing the world with the Three Tenors, then collaborating with pop’s finest for charity. The film soft-peddles any sense of controversy (criticism by the opera elite, his womanising), but what emerges is an entertaining portrait of a generous, funny,…

★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 90 MINS DIRECTOR Lars Klevberg CAST Aubrey Plaza, Gabriel Bateman, Mark Hamill (voice), Tim Matheson And so Hollywood’s obsession with refurbishing the newest plaything from the oldest of parts leads to P988’s Child’s Play. Tom Holland’s original was a fun killer doll flick that made a star of its rubber rascal, Chucky, and by and large played it straight. This remake, from director Lars Klevberg and writer Tyler Burton Smith, leans into the absurdity of its premise and, initially, treads a nicely wonky line, aided by some fun, off-kilter dialogue delivery by Aubrey Plaza. But the second half fizzles, with ambitions its meagre budget can’t match, ideas that don’t play out logically, and a parade of deeply dense characters who don’t consider, even…

★★★ OUT 12 JULY / CERT 12A / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Thomas Vinterberg CAST Matthias Schoenaerts, Léa Seydoux, Colin Firth Based on the tragic 2OOO true story of the Russian submarine left stranded for seven days at the bottom of the Barents Sea following a series of explosions, Kursk: The Last Mission flits between underwater survival situations (freezing to death, diminishing oxygen) and dry-land dramas as the Russians refuse help from the international community (aka Colin Firth) and the families fight for news of loved ones. Script-wise, it’s standard disaster movie shenanigans (a Poseidon Adventure-style hold-your-breath swim) with a little bit of old school World War I camaraderie thrown in, but it’s well played by the Euro star cast and the craft, from Anthony Dod Mantle’s snaking camera and inventive…

★★★★ OUT 19 JULY CERT 15 / 115 MINS DIRECTOR Agnès Varda CAST Agnès Varda, Sandrine Bonnaire, Hervé Chandès PLOT The final work of French auteur Agnès Varda, who passed away in March 2OP9. The only female filmmaker of the French New Wave, Varda illuminates her obsessions — movies, politics, feminism, her husband Jacques Demy — in a series of illustrated lectures that are part filmmaking masterclass, part self-portrait. VARDA BY AGNèS is a delight. Like the most joyous, freewheeling TED talk imaginable, the late French filmmaker guides us through her career based on her artistic bedrocks: inspiration (why make the film?), creativity (how do you make the film?) and sharing (“a filmmaker’s nightmare is an empty cinema”). Funny, moving and insightful, all filmmakers should lay out their art and…

1 TACKLING THE BLIP James Dyer: How do you make a film about high school when half the students have been dead for five years? Coming hot on the heels of Avengers: Endgame, Far From Home was always going to have to do some narrative heavy lifting. Peter Parker’s mentor is dead, Earth was invaded by aliens (again), and 50 per cent of the population has spent the past half decade snapped out of existence. Rather than opting for clunksome dialogue, though, FFH’s solution is a simple as it is elegant: a student TV broadcast outlining the timeline’s existential hiccup — ‘the blip’. That said broadcast includes a my-firstiMovie eulogy composition for Tony, Cap and Natasha set to the strains of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ is simply…

JORDAN PEELE DRESSED AS JACK TORRANCE THIS YEAR. He’d wanted to for a long time, for no reason other than a deep love of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, but this was a particularly covert cosplay: while promoting his second feature Us, he arrived for a filmed interview seemingly incognito in a plaid shirt and red corduroy jacket. One eagle-eyed The Shining geek spotted the reference, though, duly screen-grabbing it and tweeting it to the movie masses. “All work and no play,” responded Peele, ’fessing up. “It was just a fun thing,” he says now. “I honestly didn’t expect anyone to pick up on it, but it was cool that they did. But I would have done that years before I was a filmmaker and doing press. The Easter egg life…

Throwing a puppet off a cliff is a lot harder than you might expect. For the best part of 40 minutes, a very focused puppeteer on the Langley Studios set of The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance has been trying to lob a Gelfling, a small elf-like creature, to his death, but the stupid doll refuses to die properly. He hits a camera. He plops to earth before making it to the edge of the cliff. He frisbees off in completely the wrong direction. After repeated resurrection, persistence pays off and the Gelfling whizzes past the camera in just the right way, plummeting to his end as intended, his successful murder receiving a round of applause. On The Dark Crystal, you keep going until things work out. It took almost…

IN HOLLYWOOD HISTORY, few directors have been as much of a one-man band as Robert Rodriguez. From the moment he exploded onto the scene in 1992 with the gonzo action movie El Mariachi, he’s been a multi-hyphenate so prodigious they were in danger of running out of hyphens. Writing. Directing. Editing. Composing. Operating the camera. You name it, chances are Rodriguez did it, as he established his base of operations, Troublemaker Studios, in Austin, Texas, far from the gimlet-eyed glare of Hollywood. That changed with this year’s Alita: Battle Angel, the first true blockbuster of Rodriguez’ career. Working with his old friend, writer-producer James Cameron, Rodriguez found himself at the helm of a $200 million behemoth — but one that benefited from all those skills he had honed on the…

Shutterstock, Press Association STEPHEN MERCHANT’S Fighting With My Family is a fun, compelling, feel-good comedy-drama that tells the story of the Knights, a working-class, wrestling-obsessed family in Norwich, and how their daughter Saraya made it all the way to the bright lights of big-time wrestling in the WWE — titles, big crowds, The Rock and all. If the story sounds familiar, it’s because the film was inspired by a 2012 Channel 4 documentary of the same name which followed the Knights’ journey. But, in creating the characters for the film, that was just writer-director Merchant’s starting point. 1 PAIGE Black-clad wrestling prodigy, played by Florence Pugh. “I could see why Dwayne [Johnson, who also produced] thought the documentary would be a good film, although I didn’t feel that it had…

Illustration: Neil Edwards DON MICHAEL PAUL American auteur Paul has been a regular in this column since his kind of movies were on tape. A B-picture action star in Rolling Vengeance (P987, above) and Alien From L.A. (P988), he switched career tracks to write the not-quite-a-cult Mickey Rourke-Don Johnson vehicle Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man (P99P) then graduated to writer-director with the above-average Steven Seagal prison picture Half Past Dead. Paul has truly found his métier directing latterday entries in off-the-radar franchises, made on-the-cheap in post-industrial Bulgaria or the wilds of South Africa, with interesting local actors in supporting roles, impressive locations, and the odd wild idea, like giving the Scorpion King a golem for a best mate. Among these are Lake Placid: The Final Chapter, Tremors: A Cold…

Captain Marvel DIRECTORS ANNA BODEN and Ryan Fleck weren’t kidding when they used the phrase “higher, further, faster, baby” for Captain Marvel. The first Marvel Studios movie to feature a solo female (Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers) in the lead role may have taken its sweet time to get here, but it made a huge impact, taking in over CP billion. Here, Boden and Fleck talk us through its key moments. STANNING LEE The first MCU movie to come out after Stan Lee’s death pays tribute to Marvel’s founding father in two delightful ways. First, the Stan-centric tweak to the Marvel Studios logo. And second, his customary cameo. This time, he plays himself, poring over the script of Kevin Smith’s Mallrats (in which he played himself) on a bus. “We were…

A NEW GOLDEN AGE? As I opened and perused my Once Upon A Time In Hollywood issue of Empire this month, I couldn’t help but notice that this has been a belting few weeks for cinema. Then I started to look at the scores, only to find two football pitches’ (roughly equal to six London buses) worth of four-star reviews — an admirable 62 stars across the reviewed movies. I wonder, is that some sort of record? RICHARD STAINFORTH, VIA EMAIL After 30 years of issues, it would take too long to check. But the film industry keeps growing more diverse, and is buoyed by exciting new voices. And that means we all win. Use these Picturehouse passes to take in those exciting new flicks. Empire’s star letter wins a…

YES, TAIKA’S PLAYING THE FÜHRER. SORT OF The film, Taika Waititi’s first directing effort since 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok, sees him play a ten-year-old boy’s manifestation of the Führer: an “idiotic” imaginary friend combining Hitler with his missing dad. But this Hitler is not a cuddly comfort. Waititi told Deadline he “didn’t do any research” because the Nazi is “a fucking c**t”, and he would essentially play himself with “a bad haircut and a shitty little moustache. And a mediocre German accent.” IT’S (LOOSELY) BASED ON A HIT BOOK Christine Leunens’ dark, haunting Caging Skies was published in 2008. Its anti-hero is Johannes, a devoted Hitler Youth member who finds his mother is hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa, in their house in World War II Vienna — the boy becoming increasingly…

ALLIGATOR CRAWL Director Alexandre Aja knows his violent-animal onions, having been responsible for 2010’s Piranha 3D , so expect this Kaya Scodelario-fronted disaster film involving an alligator attacking a flooded house to feature plenty of teeth. LION THE LION KING Live-actioning the classic ‘what if Hamlet , but Pride Lands’ Disney film looks set to make effete panto villain Scar into a violent and terrifying antagonist. Also lions are basically the sharks of solid ground. THE ROCK FAST & FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS & SHAW The man who famously punted a torpedo with one of his size 14s in The Fate Of The Furious has evolved into one of the most dangerous predators on our planet thanks to a heady streak of skull-bashing, terrorist-foiling and bicep-curling. Beware!…

WHERE? Sofia, Bulgaria. WHEN? 22 April 2OP8. WHY? To see Gerard Butler back in his happy place as Mike Banning, Secret Service agent extraordinaire in the third of the Olympus Has Fallen series. WHO’S IN IT? Butler, Morgan Freeman, Danny Huston, Nick Nolte, Lance Reddick, explosions (lots of them), bullets (lots of them). WHAT DID WE SEE? An action scene where Banning and Lance Reddick’s Secret Service head David Gentry have to get the President (Freeman) into a hospital while being pinned down by a hail of gunfire. Freeman wasn’t there, so it was his double, keeping his head down for more than one reason. WHAT’S GERRY GOT TO SAY? “It’s not just about lots of gunfire. There are bombs as well. No, this is a new side to the…

★★★ OUT 12 JULY / CERT PG / 100 MINS DIRECTOR David Fairhead CAST Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Janet Armstrong “Stoic” and “dependable” are ideas that come up a lot in David Fairhead’s enjoyable portrait of Neil Armstrong, the test pilot-turned-astronaut who became the first human to set foot on the moon. The film’s masterstroke is having Harrison Ford narrate Armstrong’s own words, the actor imbuing the astronaut’s thoughts with an apt gravitas. There’s some lovely home movie footage and a tense bit where Armstrong struggles to find a parking space on the lunar surface. But the very traditional approach coupled with a central figure who wouldn’t trouble Amy Winehouse or Maradona in the compelling character stakes means Armstrong never reaches the stars. Solid and dependable — like the man…

★★★★ OUT 12 JULY CERT 15 / 118 MINS DIRECTOR Harry Wootliff CAST Laia Costa, Josh O’Connor, Peter Wight PLOT After what initially feels like a New Year’s Eve fling, Spanish council worker Elena (Costa) and English Ph.D student Jake (O’Connor) — nine years her junior — jumpstart a relationship, quickly moving in together. It’s only when the loved-up pair look to have a child that cracks start to form. GIVEN THE BUDGET, logistics and small cast required, it is perhaps surprising there are relatively few British takes on the US indie romantic drama staple. Only You, the feature debut of TV screenwriter Harry Wootliff, is that rare effort that could go toe-to-toe with its American counterpart, a passionate, moving love story told with nuance and heart. It’s a little…

★★ OUT 19 JULY / CERT 15 / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Annabel Jankel CAST Anna Paquin, Holliday Grainger, Emun Elliott Tell It To The Bees is a tender mid-century love story cloaked in human frailty, and begins promisingly enough — only to falter mid-way. Newly single mum Lydia (Grainger) has been left with her son in a small Scottish town where, in the P9TOs, single motherhood was for many a one-way ticket to desperation. Her friendship with local doctor and beekeeper Jean Markham (Paquin) gently blossoms into a steamy romance, though the treatment of lesbian love — all suppressed yearning, sideways glances and secretive gestures — feels overfamiliar and a little tedious. It’s in the final section that the film really falls down, though, thanks to a jarring cruelty visited…

★★ OUT 26 JULY CERT 12A / 93 MINS DIRECTOR Max Minghella CAST Elle Fanning, Agnieszka Grochowska, Archie Madekwe, Zlatko Buric PLOT When she’s not clearing tables or helping run the family farm, Violet (Fanning) sings at her dingy local. She dreams of making it big, and when a talent competition holds auditions in her small town, it suddenly seems possible. But does she have what it takes to reach the top? 2019 HAS BEEN a banner year for movies that put aspiring singers centre-stage. Some, like Wild Rose, follow a talented underdog whose circumstances threaten to get in the way of them hitting the big time. Others have explored how fame can warp someone’s sense of self, from Lady Gaga’s Ally ‘selling out’ in A Star Is Born to…

★★ OUT 12 JULY / CERT TBC / 93 MINS DIRECTOR Michael Dowse CAST Dave Bautista, Kumail Nanjiani, Betty Gilpin, Iko Uwais Pairing a tough cop with a hapless comedian has become a Hollywood staple, one which director Michael Dowse spins here by pairing gross violence against Dave Bautista with Kumail Nanjiani’s bone-dry humour. Tough cop Vic (Bautista) has just had eye surgery when he gets a hot tip, so he forcibly enlists lovesick Uber driver Stu (Nanjiani) to help his pursuit of a heroin dealer (Uwais, outrageously under-served). Nanjiani’s hapless civilian must survive shootouts to secure his five-star rating, which gives the film a dystopian tinge that is sadly undermined by the film’s endless shilling for Uber. The story doesn’t always hit the right balance between yuks and yuck…

★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 95 MINS DIRECTOR John Herzfeld CAST Sylvester Stallone, Max Zhang, Dave Bautista, Malese Jow, Devon Sawa “I’m done with prisons,” drawls Sylvester Stallone’s security expert Ray Breslin, and watching Escape Plan 3, it’s hard not to disagree. The reheated old guff that passes for a plot sees Breslin and his cohorts (Bautista, Curtis ‘TO Cent’ Jackson, Jaime King) look to extract the daughter (Jow) of a tech giant (Russell Wong) from a giant penitentiary ominously known as Devil’s Landing, where she is being held by a goon (Sawa) with a grudge against Breslin. Director Herzfeld has a background in non-fiction and the film bizarrely opens with a tone poem about modern America. After that it’s the expected slog through decent if repetitive martial…

★★★★ OUT NOW / NETFLIX EPISODES SEEN ALL 8 SHOWRUNNERS The Duffer Brothers CAST Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer PLOT Nine months after the events of Season 2, the kids are enjoying their summer break. But as Fourth Of July approaches, all is still not right in the town of Hawkins, and the denizens of the Upside Down aren’t done with our teen heroes just yet. SUMMER HAS COME to Stranger Things. After two seasons of dark nights, gloomy forests and a subdued palette, Season 3 is all bright sun, swimming pools and hanging out at the new Starcourt Mall. New influences are added into its cocktail of ’80s nostalgia, retaining its love for Steven Spielberg and Stephen King while adding a…

1 THE GROUP ALL GROW UP Amon Warmann: This season sees Stranger Things’ core foursome deal with something just as terrifying as shadow monsters or the Upside Down — the inescapable fact that they’re growing up. With that growth comes girlfriends: Mike has grown closer to Eleven (to Hopper’s great chagrin), Lucas and Max are a couple, and even Dustin has found someone to sing epic duets with. After spending the majority of the last season as the host for the Mind Flayer it makes sense that Will would try to hold onto any semblance of normalcy with his friends — aka many games of Dungeons & Dragons — but eventually even he accepts change. Indeed, with it being hinted that he’s on the cusp of discovering his own sexuality,…

“ YOU HATE YOU HATE ME ” Joaquin Phoenix is pretty sure Empire hates him. We don’t. “It’s okay, man, it’s okay,” he says. “You hate me.” We’re 30 minutes into our interview about Joker, and there’s been little direct Joker talk. “I don’t know how to talk about this movie, man!” he says. He hates talking shop at the best of times, but the experience of making Joker has so profoundly affected him that he doesn’t want to ruin it with anything approaching explanation. Dressed in black here by the pool at Los Angeles’ A-list hideaway the Chateau Marmont, he enthuses forever about working with Joker’s writer-director Todd Phillips, but you want to know how he feels about his character? Good luck. “Am I the worst that you’ve ever…

ADDITIONAL REPORTING ALEX GODFREY, CHRIS HEWITT, JOHN NUGENT TWO ACTORS IN COMFORTABLE ARMCHAIRS DOESN’T SOUND LIKE THE STUFF OF HORROR LEGEND. There are no buckets of blood, no levitating demons, nary a chainsaw in sight. Which makes it all the more impressive that director Jordan Peele managed to get under the skin of the entire world with the Sunken Place sequence in 2017’s Get Out. African-American hero Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is visiting the home of his girlfriend Rose’s (Allison Williams) parents — seemingly liberal, definitely white — and is heading back inside from a late-night smoke when the mother, trained hypnotherapist Missy (Catherine Keener), invites him into her study for a little chat. A chat which turns, almost imperceptibly, into a full-blown nightmare, as she uses a teacup and…

NEW ZOO REVUE (1972-1977) Let us be thankful that, of all the trash TV that oozed across the Atlantic to our shores, A&E’s New Zoo Revue never made it here. A well-intentioned, educational kids’ show, it featured a trio of full-bodied puppet characters — Charlie the Owl, Freddie the Frog, Henrietta Hippo — who lolled about the ersatz woodland-cum-suburbia set with unseeing, rolling eyes and disconcertingly sagging limbs. They might have been discussing such matters as the importance of patience or the miracle of childbirth, but we knew what they were secretly screaming: “Kill me. Kill me. Killll meee...” FRAGGLE ROCK (1983-1987) On the surface, this Muppets spin-off is nothing more than a bit of fluffy, fantastical fun: the googly-eyed Fraggles mess around and have adventures in a secret, subterranean…

It took a few moments before Jeannot Szwarc realised he was throttling the star of his movie. The 39-year-old French-Polish director of Jaws 2 had agreed to an emergency meeting with Roy Scheider, producer David Brown and Universal Studios production executive Verna Fields (who had edited the first Jaws). It was intended to clear the air between Szwarc and Scheider. Just over two months into a testing, mostly water-based shoot at a remote location on the Florida Panhandle, tension between the two was at breaking point. Scheider, who’d reluctantly returned to the role of Amity Island police chief Martin Brody as a contractual obligation, contended that Szwarc’s attention was unduly absorbed by the shark — a second great white now stalking Amity’s waters. Szwarc, an emergency hire after Jaws 2’s…

Alamy, Capital Pictures, Getty Images PEDRO ALMODÓVAR’S INTERNATIONAL breakthrough film is an odd beast: part 1930s screwball comedy, part 1960s thriller, and set in a contemporary, thoroughly forward-thinking 1980s Spain. Like so many of the director’s films it’s a story about women and the men who don’t deserve them. Betrayal, abandonment, attempted suicide and murder, terrorism and gazpacho all play key roles, yet despite the deadly serious issues, it all works out in the end, in an optimistic story that contrasts one woman and her resilience with her feckless lover. Our heroine is Carmen Maura’s Pepa, a voiceover artist and actress who has been dumped by her older, married colleague and lover, Iván (Fernando Guillén). She’s also pregnant and desperate to tell him the news, but he’s dodging her calls…

THIS MONTH ACTOR AND DIRECTOR JESSICA HYNES ON THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD I DON’T KNOW how I’d missed it, but I had a great time with Andrew Dominik’s three-hour opus detailing the final months of the vulnerable, paranoid, infamous outlaw Jesse James. The James gang, led by Jesse (portrayed delicately by Brad Pitt) and Frank James (Sam Shepard), are all but washed up. Most of the original gang have gone and the train heist at the start of the film — shot in shadowy sepia, the ghostly hooded heads waiting in the wooded railway sidings strobe-lit by the clickety-clackety passenger train — sees the James brothers working with two-bit hoodlums and hangers-on. Enter Robert and Charley Ford, played by Casey Affleck and Sam Rockwell…

Landmark North By Northwest BOB COE IS an unsung hero in one of cinema’s greatest moments. A crop-duster pilot from Wasco, California, Coe flew the Naval Aircraft N3N Canary, a World War II Navy pilot trainer nicknamed the Yellow Peril, that strafed Cary Grant wearing a grey Savile Row suit as he ran for his life playing Roger Thornhill in Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest. Coe was paid $150 per day with an additional $100 for every hour spent in the air, but what he helped create was priceless. Northwest’s cropdusting scene remains a masterclass in knuckle-tightening action cinema. “On the surface it’s ridiculous,” observed L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson. “Why would the villains lure Cary Grant to the middle of nowhere in order to shoot him from an airplane?…

Illustration: Jacey Harry Potter movies Chris: I remember my job interview for Empire. I was asked what I thought of Harry Potter. I was like, “Ugh, kids’ books.” Stupid. And I was told I should have an open mind. I was like, “Oh God, have I just lost the Empire job?” I ran out, chastened and humbled, and bought Philosopher’s Stone. I loved it and from that point on I was a massive Potterphile, counting down the days to each book. But the movies have never really connected with me the way the books did. Amy: I have never walked out of the cinema disappointed with a Harry Potter film. I look back on Philosopher’s Stone and Chamber Of Secrets and can see the flaws — they’re a bit too…

THE MOST EXCITING films this summer are all glorious odes to pure, unadulterated action. Nothing encapsulates this more than the return of Rambo, still drawing blood after nearly 40 years, or the arrival of Hobbs & Shaw, a giddily ludicrous Fast & Furious spin-off . In fact, the genre has been reinvigorated by Mad Max: Fury Road, The Raid, John Wick, the aforementioned Fast & Furious movies and more. Plus, with two more Mission: Impossible sequels and John Wick: Chapter 4 on the horizon, the renaissance isn’t slowing. Yet these films continue to be underestimated and misunderstood, so let’s be clear: the action film is an art form unto itself. Action is sensory, immersive and something of a spectacle. It can be therapeutic and cathartic; the resurgence of the Mission:…

THE KING IS back, but you won’t find him in Wakandan finery. Chadwick Boseman’s first non-Marvel film role in two years sees him play a detective on the hunt for a pair of cop killers in 21 Bridges, a dark, gritty, grounded New York-set thriller. It’s the first post-Black Panther test of his star power — and the biggest flexing of his behind-the-scenes muscle; as well as starring, he’s also credited as a producer. But Boseman hasn’t left Marvel behind completely — the film is produced by the Russo brothers’ AGBO company. And with Black Panther 2 on the horizon, that Wakandan garb will be out before you can say, “Yibambe!” 21 BRIDGES IS IN CINEMAS FROM 27 SEPTEMBER Planet Photos…

Planet Photos IT’S THE FIRST ONE MADE BY A WOMAN All previous iterations of Charlie’s Angels have been male visions of a women’s world. The 1970s TV show was made by men; as were the two early 2000s movies directed by McG. Now it has a new director, co-producer, co-writer and co-star in Elizabeth Banks, marking her second time behind the camera (after 2015’s Pitch Perfect 2). Banks wanted to make a movie that had fun, but still took the private detective trio seriously. “I want to tell a story about women at work,” she says. “I don’t care about their boyfriends, the mum they don’t call, the cat they don’t feed. These women are here to kick ass and do a great job.” IT’S REPRESENTING A WIDER WORLD For…

Landmark ★★ OUT 26 JULY / CERT 12A / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Nick Broomfield CAST Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen, Judy Collins, While the idea of an artist and his muse can sound romantic when sung, the story of the relationship between Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen is much more scattershot and imbalanced when told by filmmaker (and Ihlen-ex) Nick Broomfield. His new documentary feels like half of a biopic of a flawed, but still tremendous, man, and half of a gossiping speculation about a woman who was never as creative as him. Scrappy direction slows the pace: interviewees are given too much time to shuffle and stare, and Ihlen exists as a disconnected voice until her dying days. Unfortunately, the biased narrative seldom escapes the longing gaze of Cohen’s audience.…

★★★ OUT 26 JULY CERT 12A / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Alfonso Gomez-Rejon CAST Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, Nicholas Hoult, Katherine Waterston PLOT During the P88Os and P89Os, inventor Thomas Edison (Cumberbatch) and entrepreneur George Westinghouse (Shannon) strike up a fierce rivalry over who will bring electric light to the American people. Meanwhile, a wild card enters the fray, Serbian visionary Nikola Tesla (Hoult). THE OPENING TEXT OF The Current War describes the events it’s about to portray as “a race to create the modern world”. If true, then the race is circuitous, has a few diversions, and changes the number of its competitors part-way through. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s long-delayed follow-up to Me And Earl And The Dying Girl is appealingly set during a time where, as in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige…

★★★★ OUT 2 AUGUST CERT 15 / 109 MINS DIRECTOR Sophie Hyde CAST Holliday Grainger, Alia Shawkat, Fra Fee PLOT Aspiring Irish writer Laura (Grainger) and American ex-pat Tyler (Shawkat) have been best friends for ten years, spending most of their twenties drinking and dancing across the streets of Dublin. When Laura falls for charismatic pianist Jim (Fee), the pair find their friendship stretched to the point of potentially no return. A DEFINITIVE SCENE IN Animals — Sophie Hyde’s bawdy adaptation of Emma Jane Unsworth’s acclaimed novel — sees a well-meaning Laura (Grainger) try to lull her sister’s newborn baby to sleep. Upon completing the task, she instinctively places the baby on the bare floor, to instant howls of dismay from her on-looking sibling. It’s a perfect, gently funny moment…

★★ CERT TBC / 26 JULY / TBC MINS DIRECTOR Dominic Brigstocke CAST Sebastian Croft, Emilia Jones, Kate Nash When one of his clever schemes goes awry, Roman teenager Atti (Croft) is forced into the army and sent into battle where he’s promptly captured by would-be Celtic warrior Orla (Jones). The improbable friendship that forms between them fizzles rather than sparks — as do the song and dance numbers — but there are some laughs to be had, most notably from Rupert Graves’ General Paulinus and Craig Roberts’ bratty and impulsive Emperor Nero. Still, despite some fun ideas, Horrible Histories’ big-screen debut relies far too heavily on crude and crass gags to be a satisfying comedy. One for devout completionists only.…

★★★ OUT 19 JULY / CERT 15 / 84 MINS DIRECTOR William McGregor CAST Eleanor Worthington-Cox, Maxine Peake, Richard Harrington Is Gwen a folk horror? Its gothic stylings meet all the criteria, but debut filmmaker William McGregor would rather keep his supernatural cards close to his chest. With the seismic changes of the Industrial Revolution looming in the background, it tells a savage story of a mother’s slow descent into an unexplained kind of madness and grief, never quite settling between horror or realism. The film’s relentless bleakness makes for a tone without much texture. But it’s stunningly well-staged, with Maxine Peake and Eleanor Worthington-Cox excelling as the downtrodden Welsh protagonists, while McGregor uses natural light and the oppressive landscapes of Snowdonia to elegantly set the mood.…

★★★ OUT 19 JULY / CERT TBC / 93 MINS DIRECTOR Dominic Dromgoole CAST Luke Thompson, Matthew Tennyson, Barbara Marten, Deborah Findlay, Trystan Gravelle Subtitled ‘Three Conversations’, Making Noise Quietly never really escapes Robert Holman’s stage-y source material. It’s essentially three meetings set over UO years all touched by war. A conscientious objector (Thompson) and an artist (Tennyson) share a picnic as doodlebugs drop. A working-class mother (Marten) learns about the death of her son in the Falklands war from a naval officer (Geoffrey Streatfeild). A concentration camp survivor (Findlay) tries to calm an autistic child (Orton O’Brien) and his violent step father (Gravelle). It’s empathetic and well played — especially by Tennyson and Findlay — and is convincing in its portrait of the way strangers develop trust, but theatre…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT U / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Josh Cooley CAST (VOICES) Tom Hanks, Annie Potts, Tony Hale, Tim Allen, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, Jordan Peele, Keegan-Michael Key PLOT Woody (Hanks) is struggling to adjust to his new position in Bonnie’s toybox. He’s no longer in charge, and is getting left in the cupboard with increasing regularity. But when his kid creates her own toy, Forky (Hale), Woody finds new purpose: teach the confused newborn the ways of toys. One that is complicated when, during a road-trip, the pair are separated from the rest of the gang. FOURTH INSTALMENTS HAVE never been easy. The likes of Rocky IV and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home are easily outnumbered by such fourquel farragoes as Superman: The Quest For Peace, Batman…

Chris Hewitt: The other month, we were shooting Danny Boyle as part of his #Empire30 interview, and got to talking about Yesterday. The film was still in the ‘upcoming’ column, and its central premise: a man enters a coma and awakens in a world in which The Beatles never existed, and so never wrote the songs that changed the lives of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. I mentioned that I was a huge Beatles fan. Boyle smiled. “I would love to know what you think of it,” he said. “There’s something in there that might divide Beatles fans.” And that was all he said on that. A couple of months later, I finally saw Yesterday, and the something in there that might divide Beatles fans. Namely,…

HE WAS A GANGSTER The Joker’s first origin story was by his co-creator Bill Finger, in Detective Comics #168, in 1951. Here, he was a lab worker turned criminal called the Red Hood, who escapes Batman by jumping into a vat of chemicals, leading to his disfigurement. HE WAS A STAND-UP COMIC In Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke (1988) he is once more the Red Hood, but this time a failed comedian. The Joker himself, though, says this might be BS: “If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!” HE KILLED BATMAN’S PARENTS In Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), Joker again resurrects after falling into chemicals due to the Caped Crusader, but, more egregiously, this guy, named Jack Napier, is also said to have killed…

THE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS need no introduction,because you’ve met them before. In bars and on buses and at house parties where fag ends and beer bottles lie scattered across carpets. You’ve met them spilling out of clubs and into taxis, then again the next morning in the queue for self-check-out tills, bumper packs of paracetamol in basket. You might even be one yourself. There’s only one place you don’t run into them often: on cinema screens. “These are raw, imperfect modern women,” says Emma Jane Unsworth, who wrote the riotous new coming-of-age drama, about two wine-demolishing Dubliners drifting through life in a blur of boys and booze. “You know those patriarchal arcs in movies where you’ve got this messy woman who decides to finally sort herself out, throw all the…

IF YOU HAD turned up a little early to the world premiere of Blinded By The Light at Sundance Festival in Utah, and made your way towards the auditorium through the nearby car park, you might have seen something surprising: the director, Gurinder Chadha, dancing with the film’s star, Viveik Kalra, and co-writers Paul Mayeda Berges and Sarfraz Manzoor, to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Hungry Heart’, as it blasted through a car stereo. “Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack…” For Chadha, it was certainly one way to triumph over the nerves that naturally come when you watch your film with an audience for the first time. And by the time the film — based on Manzoor’s book, Greetings From Bury Park, about coming of age in 1980s Luton with a…

1979 1941 Spielberg might have refused to do Jaws 2, but he was happy to go back in the water to spoof himself during the opening of his World War II comedy flop, when a skinny-dipping swimmer (Jaws victim Susan Backlinie) falls afoul of a Japanese submarine — all to the iconic John Williams theme. Gutter credit 1983 JAWS 3-D Sadly, all of Joe Alves’ shark-based experience didn’t make the second Jaws sequel — to this day Alves’ sole directing credit — a success. The SeaWorld Orlando setting made the shoot more bearable, but a low budget and a penny-pinching producer (Alan Landsburg) meant there was little substance to match the RD novelty. 1987 JAWS: THE REVENGE The nadir of the franchise. In this deservedly ridiculed stinker, Lorraine Gary returned…

SUNSET OUT 29 JUNE / CERT 15 / 142 MINS Sunset might be a tough sell on paper — A melodrama! About hats! — but it deserves your time. Hungarian filmmaker Lflszló Nemes first announced himself in 2OPT with Son Of Saul, a staggeringly unsparing portrait of the Jewish Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. This follow-up, depicting the demise of the Austro-Hungarian empire as World War I looms, is challenging in different ways. Shot in what you might call his house style, it has the same daring compositional style as Saul, the camera never leaving the shallow-focus close-up of the lead actor’s face — in this case, newcomer Juli Jakab. We share in her confusion and fear as early 2Oth-century Budapest crumbles around her, life apparently bursting from the frame. It’s not…

Miller’s Crossing Chosen by director DREW GODDARD DREW GODDARD: “This is certainly a scene that has been influential to me. Gabriel Byrne comes in, sits down, answers the phone. It’s shot from one side and when he hangs up, we see Bernie has been sitting across from him the entire time. Then they have the scene. It’s an extraordinary entrance for a character.” INT TOM’S APARTMENT — DAY The phone is ringing. We hear the door open. Tom (Gabriel Byrne) enters. He walks to the chair by the phone, sits down, takes off his hat. A long pause. He picks up. TOM: Yep? PHONE VOICE: Lazarre wants his money. He wants it now. TOM: I need a coupla days. PHONE VOICE: Why a couple of days? TOM: Because I don’t…