Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i Empire

“I WANT WONDER Woman to be the James Bond of the superhero world,” says Patty Jenkins of the sequel to her 2017 hit. “I set out to make a grand, massive tentpole, à la the 1980s.” Not just in the style of the ’80s either, but set in 1984 — with all the colour and brash confidence of that era. After helping bring an end to World War I but losing the love of her life, Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor, we rejoin Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman more than 60 years on. But for director Patty Jenkins, this was always the right time to return to Diana’s story and always the story to tell. “This story came to me very clearly while we were making the first film,” says Jenkins. “There…

Alamy, Getty Images. Illustration: Mutant P0P IT SOUNDS LIKE the purest, most distilled, Cage-iest Nicolas Cage film of all time. In The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent, Nicolas Cage plays... Nicolas Cage, haunted by visions of Nicolas Cages past. Also, there’s a Mexican drug cartel. And probably some shouting. As pitches go, it’s gold: the kind of memefriendly Cage insanity that fuels the internet these days, and a headline writer’s dream. But for the film’s director and co-writer Tom Gormican, it was a big risk; a friend called it “the stupidest thing you could have ever done, as a business decision”, given Gormican and co-writer Kevin Etten took nearly two years writing a film which required Nicolas Cage to play himself. Gormican recalls the advice with a nervous laugh: “He…

WHEN THE MAN Who Killed Don Quixote finally arrives in UK cinemas this month, it will be three decades since its creator, Terry Gilliam, first pitched an adaptation of Cervantes’ supposedly unadaptable 17th-century classic. It will also be 19 years since his first attempt to make the film, starring Johnny Depp and John Rochefort, collapsed amid floods and illness five days into the shoot; 13 years since he re-secured the rights from the insurance company; four-and-a-half years since production on an all-new version was suspended after lead actor John Hurt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; and almost three years since he finally wrapped the film after a mysteriously disaster-free shoot. Needless to say, it has been a long and difficult journey. One Gilliam was never able to abandon thanks, he…

1. PILOT, THE UNUSUALS (SEASON 1) What makes Star Trek so enduring and endearing is the chemistry between its characters, each with foibles as much as expertise. To get a sense of how Hawley can handle such an ensemble, look no further than his sadly short-lived 2009 cop show The Unusuals, which introduced an NYPD precinct full of oddball cops, bouncing off each other in intriguing and entertaining ways. 2. ‘PALINDROME’, FARGO (SEASON 2) Hawley’s love letter to the Coen brothers has proven consistently surprising, never afraid to deliver some boldly out-there moments. And none quite tweaked our brains like the arrival of a UFO (cf. The Man Who Wasn’t There) in the midst of a climactic shootout. 3. ‘CHAPTER 1’, LEGION (SEASON 1) Hawley’s psychedelic spin on the X-Men…

I DON’T KNOW if the Snyder Cut — the great white whale of superhero movies — exists. But if it does, I know of at least one scene that could feature in it. It was August 2016, and I was in Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire to watch Zack Snyder and his amazing friends shoot a scene for Justice League, the mega-money follow-up to Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice, which was all set to introduce DC’s answer to The Avengers and the biggest supergroup since Fleetwood Mac recruited Neil Finn. The scene was a playful one, in which the members of the League (Ben Affleck’s Batman, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, Ezra Miller’s The Flash and Ray Fisher’s Cyborg) returned to the Batcave — dark, gothy, coalmine chic…

★★★★ OUT 10 JANUARY CERT 15 / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Sam Mendes CAST George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott PLOT On U April P9P7 — three years into World War I — two young British soldiers in northern France, Schofield (MacKay) and Blake (Chapman), are tasked with delivering a life-saving message to a distant battalion. To get there, though, they must traverse life-threatening enemy terrains. TALK OF A tracking shot might usually merit a sentence or two in a film review. A paragraph maybe. Even with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, which presented itself as an unbroken take, the technique was just one of a handful of talking points. But 1917’s camerawork engulfs the film. It’s supposed to. While not quite pretending to be a continuous long take, there…

★★★★★ OUT 10 JANUARY (CINEMAS), 31 JANUARY (NETFLIX) CERT 15 / 135 MINS DIRECTORS Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie CAST Adam Sandler, Julia Fox, Kevin Garnett, Idina Menzel, LaKeith Stanfield PLOT In hoc to some very bad dudes, New York jewellery salesman Howard Ratner (Sandler) thinks he has a way out: a rock from an Ethiopian mine that could net him over CP million. Problem is, a famous basketball player has talked him into lending it out, and getting it back won’t be so easy. DIAMONDS ARE FORMED under extreme pressure in the Earth’s crust. But it seems unlikely that any gem has been subjected to pressure quite as extreme as that which bears down on Howard Ratner, the hero of this triumphant flop sweat of a movie. Howard, a fast-talking…

★★★★ OUT 17 JANUARY CERT 12A / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Makoto Shinkai CAST (VOICES) Kotaro Daigo, Nana Mori, Shun Oguri, Tsubasa Honda PLOT Sixteen-year-old runaway Hodaka (Daigo) tries to eke out a living on the streets of Tokyo during a torrentially rainy summer. There he falls in love with Hina (Mori), who is able to clear the rain at will. Together they go into business, bringing brightness on demand, but it turns out there might be a cost to Hina’s sunshine-summoning power. IN 2016, WRITER-director Makoto Shinkai delivered a stone-cold anime masterpiece with Your Name, a soulful, witty body-swap romance that unfurled into something far vaster and more apocalyptic than we could have imagined from its light-hearted set-up. It is the toughest of acts to follow, and while Shinkai’s latest…

★★★ OUT 3 JANUARY / CERT TBC / 107 MINS DIRECTOR Mikhaël Hers CAST Vincent Lacoste, Isaure Multrier, Stacy Martin, Ophélia Kolb David (Lacoste) is an unassuming 2S-year-old Parisian who is close to sister Sandrine (Kolb) and gets along with her seven-year-old daughter, Amanda (Multrier). He is also falling for a piano teacher named Léna (Martin). Life is an unremarkable hustle until an off-screen tragedy wipes Sandrine from the picture. There are no chest-beating enactments of trauma. Rather, David continues as before — now responsible for a child. The decision by writer/director Mikhaël Hers and co-writer Maud Ameline to sublimate strong emotions in favour of an understated depiction of life continuing leads to some scenes that testify to human resilience, while some are strangely devoid of gravity.…

★★ OUT 3 JANUARY / CERT 15 / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Steven C. Miller CAST Aaron Eckhart, Courtney Eaton, Giancarlo Esposito LAPD patrolman Frank Penny (Eckhart) shoots dead an armed suspect, only to discover that the victim is the only person who knows the location of his ex-partner’s kidnapped daughter. Now, on post-shooting suspension, he races to find the girl, shadowed by vlogger/reporter Ava (Eaton) live-streaming his pursuit. Eckhart has never fulfilled his potential as an action hero, but there’s no denying his commitment to even material as flimsy as this. The script’s attempts at wisecracking dialogue are lame, and although there are a few kinetic set-pieces, director Steven C. Miller (Escape Plan 2: Hades) needs to learn that just because everyone on screen is always out of breath, doesn’t…

★★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 123 MINS DIRECTOR Jake Kasdan CAST Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Awkwafina, Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, Alex Wolff PLOT In a funk after his life-or-death Jumanji adventure, graduate Spencer (Wolff) ventures back into the video game for Round 2. But the glitching cartridge doesn’t just pull in his friends this time — it also nabs his grouchy grandad (DeVito), along with his former business partner Milo (Glover). NOBODY EXPECTED MUCH from Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle, a belated post-Robin Williams reboot-quel. But it ended up a surprise treat — a frequently hilarious body-swap comedy masquerading as a generic franchise revival, its four seemingly cardboard-cutout heroes (including Dwayne Johnson’s Dr Smolder Bravestone and Karen Gillan’s Ruby Roundhouse) revealed as intentionally clichéd video-game…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 118 MINS DIRECTOR Elizabeth Banks CAST Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, Ella Balinska PLOT The Townsend agency is waving farewell to John Bosley (Patrick Stewart), and welcoming a new mission. When the dangerous potential of a sustainable energy project is harnessed by the wrong people, two Angels — Sabina (Stewart) and Jane (Balinska) — must work with Elena (Scott), the young engineer who created it, to save the world. NICETIES ARE TAKEN care of from the get-go: “I think women can do anything,” Kristen Stewart’s Sabina Wilson tells a rich man she quickly ends up swindling. There was the fear that a new spin on Charlie’s Angels could have fallen into a trap of performative, derivative feminism — but Elizabeth Banks’ film puts its money…

1 FRANK AND RUSSELL Nick de Semlyen: “What’s the problem, kid?” With this question, East Coast crime boss Russell Bufalino (a man who, legend has it, was an unofficial advisor on The Godfather) hoves into the life of truck driver Frank Sheeran. It’s a fascinating relationship, not only in the way its tendrils snake into Frank’s personal life — Russell is both mentor and de facto family member — and in how the de-ageing tech allows Joe Pesci to play a character much older than that of Robert De Niro, once his big brother in Raging Bull. The peculiar friendship reaches its awful culmination on a 1975 road trip, as Russell, who speaks only in obliquities, issues a death sentence for Hoffa: “We did all we could for the man.”…

1. QUENTIN TARANTINO In 2013, Tarantino turned up to Busan Film Festival, explaining to reporters he’d come on a whim “to hang out with Bong”. Describing Memories Of Murder and The Host as “masterpieces”, he added, “Of all the filmmakers in the last 20 years, Bong has something that [1970s] Spielberg had.” Which probably helped ease the blow for QT when Parasite pipped Once Upon A Time In Hollywood to the Palme d’Or this year. 2. GUILLERMO DEL TORO The Pan’s Labyrinth mastermind was the first to congratulate Bong on his Parasite triumph at Cannes. “Rarely have I been as delighted by an award — a truly deserving filmmaker and a great guy [to] boot!” the director wrote on Twitter, where he’s regularly singing the Korean’s praises and debating his…

IN OCTOBER 2017, I WAS MIDWAY THROUGH writing Portrait Of A Lady On Fire when the biggest intellectual revolution of my lifetime took place. The #MeToo movement brought with it so many new theories, new ideas and new voices. I don’t think I’ve ever learned so many new things so quickly: every day there were new stories coming to light, as well as new data about rape and the culture of abuse. It was shocking, of course, but it created a new systemic vision: as a woman, you suddenly felt less lonely. You knew you were oppressed — that you were in a struggle — but you also knew you were not going through it alone. Here I was, writing a film about 18th-century female artists, whose stories have been…

AKIRA FIRST ANNOUNCED: 12 APRIL 2002 Warner Bros. optioned Katsuhiro Otomo’s cyber-epic in 2002, planning a live-action remake. However, directors including Stephen Norrington and Jaume Collet-Serra came and went, while screenwriters such as Gary Whitta and Steve Kloves sought a way to Westernise the story. Just as it looked like it was going ahead with Taika Waititi at the helm this year, it was put on hiatus again. THE CROW FIRST ANNOUNCED: 14 DECEMBER 2008 The remake of Alex Proyas’ supernatural thriller has been hit by legal issues, bankruptcy and deal collapses. It looked like it might be a Bradley Cooper vehicle, then one for Tom Hiddleston, then it finally looked like a dead cert with Corin Hardy directing and Jason Momoa in the lead. However, in June 2018 Hardy…

THERE’S AN IF…. TITLE DEBATE? There is indeed. Mainly because of the use of a four-dot ellipsis in the title of the movie. Which has proved controversial. WHY’S THAT? Well, commonly the ellipsis — a series of dots that usually indicates an intentional omission of a word or sentence — is presented as a series of three dots. LIKE SO…? Quite. BUT IT CAN ALSO BE FOUR….? Indeed. George Lucas used four, for example, in the Star Wars movies. The most famous title card in film history — “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away....” boasts four dots. FASCINATING. And let’s not even get started on the fact that the title is, on the poster, presented in lower case — if….. But it’s not the first grammatically…

THIS MONTH IN THE LINE OF DUTY WRITER JEREMY DRYSDALE WATCHES THE EPIC THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING FOR THE FIRST TIME I’M NOT CONVINCED that the rules to this game are any more onerous than 1) pick a film you haven’t seen from a list and 2) don’t write any more than 750 words about it, but I’m going to add a third: don’t pick the film which runs at nearly three-and-a-half hours — at least not if you’re on a deadline. So anyway, here we are. On the basis that so much happens and I understand so little of it, having never seen any of the other films or read the books, this is going to be a slightly esoteric review which leaves…

Getty Images WHEN SARAH GAVRON started work on her third feature (after Suffragette and Brick Lane), she had no script, no story, no cast, and really no idea what it would be. “We were talking around the idea of doing something about young people today, young women in particular,” Gavron recalls, “and what the experience of growing up [in London] today is like. But we knew that we couldn’t possibly tell that story ourselves.” So Gavron, working with a broad core creative team that included writers, producers, researchers and casting directors, went into East London schools and started talking to teenage girls directly, in a series of workshops that lasted a year. “We were all kind of inventing the idea of how to make the film as we went,” she…

JOSH BASKIN BIG (1988) Playing a 12-year-old in an adult’s body, Hanks is full of pre-teen fizz and fun, as charming and friendly as you’d expect — if childishly selfish and slightly creepily getting off with actual grown-ups. FORREST GUMP FORREST GUMP (1994) It’s hard to fault Forrest. This is the simple Southern gent who fights for his country, exposes the Watergate scandal and marries his childhood sweetheart. He may not be a smart man, but he knows what nice is. WOODY TOY STORY (1995) The nominal leader of the toys in Andy’s room, Woody should be steely and wise. But with Buzz on the scene, he’s extremely fallible: prone to jealousy and the sort of temper tantrums that would make Evil Emperor Zurg blush. MICHAEL SULLIVAN ROAD TO PERDITION…

WHERE ARE THE JOKES? The Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer certainly has a tone. The question, though, is whether that tone is particularly… Ghostbustersy? As opposed to feeling somewhat in the vein of Spielberg, Abrams and — yes, we’re going to say it, because it’s unavoidable — Stranger Things. There’s no doubt that Afterlife is playing on the nostalgia that countless people have for Ghostbusters — and as a fan, it’s undeniably moving to see Egon Spengler’s progeny, circular specs and all, discovering Ecto-1 in a barn; or to hear that Bill Murray line replayed. But what’s not clear is whether Jason Reitman’s film will lean on more than just the iconography and legacy of its predecessors. What the trailer really lacks is a sense of their distinctive spirit and wit. Still,…

IMOGEN POOTS IS no stranger to a tough gig. She’s fought off neo-Nazis in Green Room and zombies in 28 Weeks Later. But she had never made a full-blown sci-fi, until Vivarium, a Twilight Zone-esque nightmare about a young couple imprisoned in a phantom suburbia. The genre was a compelling place to explore, says Poots. “If you think of Sigourney Weaver in Alien and recently Toni Collette in Hereditary, you start to realise that sci-fi offers a tremendous platform for exploration of the female psyche,” she says. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of female actors are drawn to really dark roles.” Vivarium gets properly dark, even in the mundane setting of a nice, neat English housing estate, as Poots finds herself as a mother to a…

IT’S INSPIRED BY A CLASSIC A film about a genetically modified flower that corrupts minds, Little Joe had a definitive influence. “The starting point was Invasion Of The Body Snatchers,” says Hausner. “I was really intrigued by this crazy idea that someone has been replaced by an imposter.” IT’S BASED ON A REAL CONDITION “There’s a psychological illness that exists: the Capgras syndrome,” Hausner explains. “You think that, for example, your family member has been replaced.” IT WAS ORIGINALLY AUSTRIAN “I wrote the script in German,” reveals Hausner, who is making her English-language debut. “The translation was quite easy. I felt that what’s funny in Austrian is also funny in British English.” LITTLE JOE IS IN CINEMAS FROM 21 FEBRUARY…

★★★ OUT 10 JANUARY / CERT TBC / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Benedict Andrews CAST Kristen Stewart, Jack O’Connell, Anthony Mackie Best known as the pixie-haired American in Godard’s Breathless, Jean Seberg’s off-screen drama far outstripped her on-screen work. This visually strong but thinly written piece explores the latter part of her life where her support of the civil rights movement saw her become an FBI target. Though it refuses to embrace Seberg’s complexities, the film gets by on great production values (Rachel Morrison’s cinematography is as luminous as Seberg’s pink frock) and strong performances — particularly O’Connell as the (fictionalised) FBI surveillance wonk who becomes increasingly empathetic towards his subject’s plight and Stewart in the title role, portraying Seberg’s political purpose and personal fragility with skill.…

★★★★ OUT 17 JANUARY CERT 15 / 136 MINS DIRECTOR Trey Edward Shults CAST Kelvin Harrison Jr, Taylor Russell, Sterling K. Brown, Renée Elise Goldsberry PLOT Tyler (Harrison Jr), an P8-year-old under pressure to excel, is finding life tough. In denial after an injury threatens his potential career, he starts hurtling out of control, his family struggling under the weight of it all. His sister (Russell), meanwhile, must forge her own path through the pain. THE PALPITATIONS BEGIN soon enough. There’s harmony at first, serenity even, as Waves introduces us to South Floridian high-school wrestler Tyler (Harrison Jr) and his upper-middle-class African-American family. Tyler is a young man with all the promise in the world, but slowly and surely, he is coming undone. All misguided masculinity and pent-up frustrations, he’s…

★★★ OUT 1 JANUARY CERT 18 / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Guy Ritchie CAST Matthew McConaughey, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Henry Golding, Eddie Marsan, Hugh Grant, Charlie Hunnam, Colin Farrell PLOT American Mickey Pearson (McConaughey) presides over a huge marijuana business, growing weed under the estates of Britain’s wealthiest families. Yet when he considers selling up to spend more time with his wife Ros (Dockery), a possible investor (Strong), a Chinese gangster (Golding), a tabloid editor (Marsan) and a private eye (Grant) all begin to circle Mickey’s empire. THE GENTLEMEN IS Guy Ritchie back in his manor. After the big-budget misfire of King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword and the big-budget success of Aladdin, Ritchie’s 11th feature returns to his roots: the London-based crime milieu of Lock, Stock And Two Smoking…

★★★★ OUT 17 JANUARY / CERT 15 / 88 MINS DIRECTOR Hassan Fazili CAST Hassan Fazili, Fatima Hussaini, Nargis Fazili, Zahra Fazili Redefining the docu-road movie, Hassan Fazili’s remarkable account of the three-year ordeal endured by his fleeing family finally gives migrants their own voice. Having been driven out of their Kabul arts café by the Taliban in 20PT, Fazili and wife Fatima Hussaini use mobile phones to record their perilous R,T00-mile journey with young daughters Nargis and Zahra to seek asylum in the EU. Yet, while demonstrating that ‘the road of life winds through hell’ in exposing the brutality of people traffickers and xenophobic thugs, Fazili also captures fleeting moments of quiet lyricism and gentle humanity, as his delightful family derive simple pleasures from the tedium and terror.…

★★★★ OUT 17 JANUARY / CERT TBC / 120 MINS DIRECTOR Pamela B. Green CAST Jodie Foster, Alice Guy-Blaché, Julie Delpy In Green’s insightful documentary, the remarkable story of silent film pioneer Alice Guy-Blaché is given the scope and context it deserves. Featuring a wealth of archive materials and new research, Be Natural is presented with a voiceover from Jodie Foster. Blaché, who made her first movie in P89U and ran her own silent-film studio in New Jersey, was important and innovative, but often had credit stolen from her by male associates. The doc underlines this with help from talking heads such as Ava DuVernay and Geena Davis. Although the format’s fairly run-of-the-mill, it’s a commendable revival of the legacy of one of cinema’s pioneering female figures.…

★★★★ OUT NOW / NETFLIX EPISODES VIEWED 5 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Lauren Schmidt Hissrich CAST Henry Cavill, Freya Allan, Anya Chalotra PLOT Itinerant monster hunter Geralt of Rivia (Cavill) roams the countryside slaying beasts for coin while being reviled by almost everyone he meets. Meanwhile, swineherd’s daughter Yennefer (Chalotra) discovers an affinity for magic and Princess Cirilla of Cintra (Allan) goes on the run from the army who slaughtered her family. THE WITCHER BEGINS in a swamp, when a white-haired Henry Cavill bursts from the mire and sets about battling a multi-limbed hellbeast. Thrust beneath the water and half-drowned, flung through the air and near-skewered, he hangs on for dear life, barely able to catch his breath before finally gaining the upper hand and dragging its ichor-soaked carcass away in…

1 BENOIT BLANC Nick de Semlyen: Poirot. Marple. Holmes. Blanc. It’s one of the nicest surprises of 20P9 — Daniel Craig joining the ranks of the world’s top super-sleuths on the strength of a single, ultra-tangy performance. His Benoit Blanc is, frankly, a ludicrous concoction: with the voice of Foghorn Leghorn, the appearance of a particularly dapper chartered accountant, and a partiality for tortured doughnut analogies, the character is purest slab-of-ham. But from the moment he piano-plinks his way into the film to the moment he unmasks the villain, Craig is clearly having the time of his life — and the feeling is contagious. “I read a tweet about a New Yorker  article about you,” one of his suspects sniffily tells him early on. In the real world, Twitter has…

MARGOT ROBBIE SITS bouncing on the tip of a very large, very long tongue, laughing hysterically. It’s protruding from a statue of a woman’s head on a Burbank sound stage, which today has been decked out to represent a frightening abandoned funhouse. Sitting on another tongue opposite Robbie, also bouncing, are director Cathy Yan and screenwriter Christina Hodson, trying (not entirely successfully) to have a serious meeting in-between takes. This trio have formed a gang over the past four years, spearheading the movie Robbie has dreamed about since first playing the scene-stealing Harley Quinn — psychiatrist-turned-crazed criminal — in 2016’s DC comic-book adaptation Suicide Squad. Robbie, Yan and Hodson are having so much fun, you forget that the action scene they’re attempting to figure out (it involves a fight that…

MID-SUMMER, 1989. Inside the offices of Hollywood mega producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters, a production meeting is in full swing. “I don’t care if it fucking farts, I want Peter to fucking shoot it!” Jon Peters screams at line producer Larry Franco, referring to British second-unit director Peter MacDonald. “Whatever it is, action or dialogue, I don’t care. You gotta get Peter to shoot it!” “Jon…” “I hired you to be the policeman,” yells Peters. “The fucking policeman! You gotta figure it out! You gotta figure out how to make this work!” Welcome to the daily hellscape that is the life of Larry Franco, line producer on Tango & Cash. The grunt of the producing fraternity, a line producer’s role is to supervise the day-to-day running of the project,…

HUSTLERS HAS BEEN one of the surprise stories of 2019. All-too-glibly dismissed before it came out as “that J-Lo stripper movie”, lazy comparisons with the likes of Coyote Ugly soon gave way to comparisons with the likes of GoodFellas, with writer/director Lorene Scafaria channelling the very best of Martin Scorsese’s energy and visual verve in this tale of a group of exotic dancers, led by Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu, who start a lucrative sideline in embezzling their clients. The film became one of the year’s biggest sleeper hits, hitting $100 million at the US box office, along with Golden Globe noms, and inserting itself into the Oscar conversation, with particular focus on Lopez’ wonderful central turn. But it’s more than just a crime flick — it’s one of the…

Blinded By The Light IT’S BEEN A big year for Bruce Springsteen on the big screen. Beyond Jim Cummings’ Boss-inspired feature Thunder Road and the rock superstar’s own quasi-concert film Western Stars, which he co-directed, his music formed the backbone to Gurinder Chadha’s ’80s-set coming-of-age comedy drama Blinded By The Light. Adapted from Sarfraz Manzoor’s 2007 memoir Greetings From Bury Park, it’s the story of a British-Asian teenager living in Luton whose life is changed forever when he listens to a couple of Springsteen cassettes. Empire caught up with Chadha to break down its major moments. RECORD DEAL When we meet aspiring writer Javed (Viveik Kalra), he’s an outsider at college — until one lunchtime when new friend Roops (Aaron Phagura) slides over two Bruce Springsteen tapes: Born In The…

BEING THERE OUT 6 JANUARY / CERT TBC / 130 MINS Nobody gets to choose their swan song. But occasionally an artist gets a final role that feels so perfectly appropriate, it could have been planned. Being There is not Peter Sellers’ final film — that honour goes, somewhat dubiously, to The Fiendish Plot Of Dr. Fu Manchu — but it still feels like a goodbye somehow, especially in its stunning final shot. Sellers plays Chance, a gentle gardener who has lived his entire life in a wealthy Washington DC townhouse, living in a Plato’s Cave of sheltered innocence before ultimately earning the ear of the President (Jack Warden). In a typical flight of visual fancy, director Hal Ashby ends the film with Chance casually and inexplicably walking across water,…

BREATH OF THE WILD Yesterday, in a screening of Frozen 2, during the scene where Olaf tells his pals that “turtles breathe out of their butts”, my seven-year-old son turned to my wife and said, “Strictly speaking, it’s only the Fitzroy River turtle that breathes out of his butt.” Further investigation revealed there is such a thing, and I’m now hopeful that his geekiness will eventually extend to movie trivia. That’s when I know my job as a parent is done. JASON ELLIOTT, BOLTON As recognition for such advanced knowledge of reptilian arse anatomy, please accept this Picturehouse membership — hopefully your son can fact-check many more films to come. Picture house  Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend! Valid for one year at 23…

Professor Ross Sandler, former NYC Transportation Commissioner, on the closure of Manhattan in 21 Bridges “It’s a fantasy. The Mayor and the Governor could do it, but they’d have to declare a state of emergency. After 9/11, a lot of the bridges in Lower Manhattan were closed. But you would not do this for a single crime. The number of people who come into Manhattan below 60th Street is about five million a day. You’d have massive disruption!”…

THE PIGEON SPIES IN DISGUISE Will Smith voices a spy who is turned into a pigeon. And subsequently does things that pigeons should never do, like beat up baddies, drive cars in slow-motion and insult his co-stars. Coo! Coo! THE SEAGULL THE LIGHTHOUSE Despite two astonishing performances from Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, it’s arguably the terrifying seagull that steals the show. Who was, in fact, played by three stunt-birds. You should have seen their riders. THE FALCON LAST CHRISTMAS The budding relationship between Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding starts with a face full of faeces. It’s unclear what kind of bird it is — Golding’s guess is a falcon — but this simple act of shitting sparks a romance for the ages.…

Ben Travis (Online Staff Writer): So, this is the official start of the MCU’s Phase Four, then. Exciting. John Nugent (News Editor): When is this set? Ben: Kind of all over the place, I think. Nick de Semlyen (Features Editor): Apparently it’s between Civil War and Infinity War. The inter-war years. But then it’s got flashbacks to her origins, too. You’ll get to see some stuff from the ’90s. Joanna Moran (Photography Director): When she was really into Avril Lavigne. Nick: I think [Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff, played by Scarlett Johansson] has to go back and fix some wrongs. John: In the first Avengers, she talks about having “red in her ledger”, and she’d like to wipe it out. Maybe she gets the chance here? Nick: So this is Budapest, isn’t…

ACTUALLY RELEASE THE NEW MUTANTS THIS YEAR Is the long-delayed teen-horror X-Men spin-off anyone’s most-anticipated movie? Absolutely not — especially not since Dark Phoenix burst the X-franchise into flames. But at this stage, it’s time to release us all — the stars, the filmmakers, the fans — from this purgatory. According to Disney, it really is arriving in early April, but after a two-year delay. Stick it in cinemas. Throw it on Disney+. Beam it out via limited-edition Cerebro headsets. Just let it go. BEN TRAVIS KEEP MAKING GOOD EDDIE MURPHY FILMS After decades in the wilderness, Murphy reminded everyone why he’s the undisputed king of foul-mouthed funny in Netflix’s Dolemite Is My Name. Even in his heyday, Coming To America stands out as a comedic masterpiece (see The Ranking…

★★ OUT NOW / CERT PG / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Andy Fickman CAST John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key, John Leguizamo John Cena’s inherent likeability has helped him deliver winning comedic performances in the likes of Trainwreck and Blockers, but there’s only so much he and his overqualified castmates can do to elevate the formulaic material in Playing With Fire. After saving a trio of siblings from a house fire, Cena’s straight-laced superintendent, Jake Carson, takes the uncontrollable urchins into his care until their parents arrive, inevitably learning the value in letting his guard down along the way. But the feel-good moments are not enough to offset the lazy jokes, awkward editing and clunky dialogue. Aiming for harmless family fun is perfectly fine, but it should be executed better than this.…

★★★ OUT 1 JANUARY CERT 12A / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Taika Waititi CAST Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Scarlett Johansson, Taika Waititi PLOT Ten-year-old German boy Johannes ‘Jojo’ Betzler (Davis) has grown up in Nazi Germany idolising Adolf Hitler. But when he discovers his mother (Johansson) is harbouring Jewish girl Elsa (McKenzie) in their home, his outlook begins to change — to the dismay of his Führer-shaped imaginary friend (Waititi). INSIDE OUT’S RILEY had Bing Bong. Fight Club’s Jack had Tyler Durden. Now, in Jojo Rabbit, we get another cinematic imaginary friend for the ages: Adolf Hitler. In Taika Waititi’s latest, Hitler Youth boy Jojo’s confidant is none other than a goofed-up, gurning version of the Nazi leader played by Waititi himself. If the fact that Waititi is a Polynesian…

★★★ OUT 10 JANUARY / CERT TBC / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Richard Heap CAST Mark Addy, Tara Fitzgerald, Molly Windsor, Lee Boardman Family heartbreak leads to life on the run in Richard Heap’s Yorkshire-set directorial debut. The head of a paltry seaside home and owner of a small drove of donkeys, Reith (Addy) is gifted in turning his family’s poverty into beloved memories for his three children. With the arrival of his brother Blythe (Boardman), their unit unspools, leaving eldest child Angie (Windsor) to fend for her siblings against the windswept vistas. Windsor — who made a strong impression in BBC mini-series Three Girls — pads out Angie’s stoic frame with distinct sincerity, and Addy’s well-oiled charms feel warm if fleeting. The surrounding film, however, lacks the ingenuity and spark…

★★★★ OUT 17 JANUARY CERT TBC / 173 MINS DIRECTOR Terrence Malick CAST August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Michael Nyqvist, Matthias Schoenaerts PLOT Austria P9R9. Farmer Franz Jägerstätter (Diehl) is called up to serve in the German army to fight for the Nazi war effort. Yet, when he refuses to swear an oath to Hitler, he is sent to prison and faces the threat of execution for treason. Will he yield or stay to true to his religious convictions? THERE IS A film buff theory that Terrence Malick makes his best work set in the past. From Badlands (set in 1959) and Days Of Heaven (1916) to The Thin Red Line (1942-’43), The New World (1607) and The Tree Of Life (’50s via the prehistoric era), there is something about Malick’s…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT PG / 101 MINS DIRECTORS Nick Bruno, Troy Quane CAST (VOICES) Will Smith, Tom Holland, Rashida Jones Mixing secret-agent movie parody, body-swap comedy and mismatched buddy bonding, Spies In Disguise is always enjoyable if rarely innovative. After lone wolf spy Lance Sterling (Smith) is turned into a pigeon by techie Walter (Holland), the odd couple try to thwart a clawed-handed villain (Ben Mendelsohn, obvs) from wiping out the world’s security forces with a mega drone. The M:I/007 stylings are familiar, the messaging scattershot and true wit mostly AWOL. Still, there’s broad fun to be had with a tiny Avian agent struggling in a big world, and there is something refreshing about a kids’ action flick built on progressive ideas of pacifism, mediation and gluten-free breadcrumbs.…

“Goodbye, James.” THREE SIMPLE SYLLABLES. TWO SIMPLER words. But their cultural significance is huge. We’ve heard them plenty of times over the years. Sometimes there’s a variation on a theme — “Goodbye, Mr Bond” most often — but the basic gist remains the same. A megalomaniacal villain with designs on taking over the world has lured James Bond, the world’s greatest secret agent, into a trap, and is about to bump him off. Today, those words are being delivered in Cuba by Christoph Waltz’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of evil organisation SPECTRE and Bond’s adopted brother. Well, not quite. To be completely honest, Empire isn’t in Cuba, but a soundstage at Pinewood Studios that’s pretending to be Cuba, while outside the October wind rages and howls. And we’re not listening…

BONG JOON-HO has set movies in monster-infested sewers, on trains travelling through post-apocalyptic blizzards, and in abattoirs awash with the blood of giant pigs. Look a little closer, though, and the South Korean director’s films actually all take place in a single setting. “In my films, you really see the people on the bottom rungs,” says the filmmaker. “Normal human beings in conditions in which they can no longer act human, in situations where they become treated like ghosts.” Bong’s heroes tend to live at the foot of a ladder that’s impossible to climb. The people far above, meanwhile, are incompetent idiots, living lives of luxury, oblivious to the desperate, daily struggle of those beneath them. It’s these strugglers’ stories that Bong has dedicated his career to telling. Parasite, Bong’s…

THE START: A TINDER DATE. AND NOT A PROMISING ONE. A God-fearing, unambitious Costco employee named Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) sits down opposite a cynical lawyer named Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith), who’s had a bad day at work. As he drives her home, it doesn’t look like they’ll see each other again. But then a white police officer pulls them over, and the situation erupts into violence. Queen and Slim go on the run, pursued by the law and forced together, gradually realising they have much more in common than they initially thought. A protest movie made in reaction to numerous recent incidents of police brutality against African Americans, Queen & Slim is unpredictable, gripping and vital. Which makes it all the more impressive that three of the key players responsible for…

If.... IF YOU HAPPENED to be the kind of bod who hung around bus station waiting rooms in the late 1960s, you may have come across a battered folder with the words “great film available” scrawled across the front. Inside was a screenplay, the work of David Sherwin and John Howlett, a pair of twentysomethings both of whom had attended Tonbridge, then a middle-ranking public school in the heart of Kent, and then Oxford, where they had channelled their fury at their brutal school experiences into what was then titled ‘Crusaders’. Industry reaction to their script had ranged from indifference to furious contempt, the bus station a last hope — as Sherwin recorded in his diary at the time, “You never know... Lady Luck may strike.” Said round rejection was…

“MY PATH TO directing was a long and winding one,” says Leigh Whannell. And that’s something of an understatement. As of this moment, the Australian multi-hyphenate (like Garth Marenghi, he’s ‘plus actor’) is in a very good place. After years of struggle, his next movie, an ingenious-looking take on The Invisible Man, is one of the most anticipated of 2020, while his last, the cyberpunk horror thriller Upgrade, has steadily grown its reach and reputation as one of the best cult movies of recent years. The title of that movie doesn’t appear to have been an accident — from the Saw movies to the Insidious franchise, Whannell has upgraded his career an inch at a time. Here, he tells us how he did it. KNOW YOUR LIMITS (AT FIRST) From…

American Beauty Photofest IN SAM MENDES’ eight-film career, the rose-petal fantasy sequence in American Beauty holds a special spot in his affections. “That was one of the most bizarre day’s shooting I’ve had to this day and I’ve made lots of movies,” recalls Mendes. “Then I hadn’t made any.” The iconic moment in Mendes’ debut involves the fantasy of sad sack Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey): lying in bed, he imagines schoolgirl Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), best friend of his daughter Jane (Thora Birch), lying naked on his ceiling on a bed of roses, the petals falling slowly towards him. “I remember reading that in the script and thinking, ‘That’s amazing, I didn’t see that coming,’” says Mendes. Lester Burnham’s ceiling was created on a soundstage on the Warner Bros. backlot…

Illustration: Jacey Eddie Murphy movies Chris: Dolemite Is My Name is Eddie Murphy’s comeback after a while away. It’s a fantastic film, but it also made me a little sad. Watching it, I was like, “Where has this Eddie Murphy been?” Amon: It was great to see a return to R-rated Eddie Murphy. Around ’96, with The Nutty Professor, that’s when we started to get the PG era of Eddie Murphy. The pre-PG era is still prime Eddie Murphy for me. James: I wonder if that came from him having a wobble. He was in these really foulmouthed R-rated films, he was a foul-mouthed stand-up, and he had great success. Then he started to hit a bum run. Then he did Nutty Professor and Shrek and whatnot. It feels like…

Do The Right Thing Chosen by director ASIF KAPADIA ASIF KAPADIA: “Do The Right Thing is one of the films that made me want to make movies. I had grown up in Hackney, I did not come from a film background. I see it in the Empire Leicester Square, with Public Enemy on the soundtrack, and it spoke to me. At the time, Spike Lee was a big hero. There’s a really unusual bit in that film where characters look into the camera and are swearing at different communities. It’s a very powerful bit of writing and performance, breaking that fourth wall. It’s really brilliant and so unusual. At that time, in the late ’80s, there was something in the air where filmmakers were playing with the form. He plays…