Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2018 i Empire Australasia

ALTHOUGH I’LL HAPPILY point you towards our huge and incredibly awesome ’50 Greatest Star Wars Characters Of All Time’ feature that begins on page 45 of this very issue, I might skip out on actually talking about Star Wars this month (on account of me doing it here on this page almost certainly more than once). Instead I’ll briefly (or perhaps lengthily — I dunno, I haven’t finished writing yet) rabbit on about one of my other favourite movies of all time: Back To The Future. While at an excellent ’80s-themed party for the Bauer 18th Annual Connections Conference in August, I was lucky enough to bear witness to BTTF superfan Tim Whitbourn’s fully decked out DeLorean and an array of other geektastic collectables (among them: A BTTF pinball machine,…

You work a lot. When you don’t work, what do you like to do? Do you still paint? I haven’t painted in a while. I think about it a lot. I like to do nothing. Sleep. I listen to Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, the Stones... the usual suspects. I like to read. What have you read recently that you loved? I finished a book a while back called Fear Of Flying by Erica Jong. That was really funny, and very interesting as well. Are you still a big fan of Cuban cigars? I’m a big fan of Cuban music , Cuban food , Cuban people ... I haven’t smoked in a while, but every now and then,…

THE PREDATOR ISN’T even in cinemas yet, but writer/director Shane Black is already hip-deep in his next project. “There’s this old sort of adage: always get your next job before the previous movie comes out,” Black says. His “next job” could be another nostalgic passion project: The Destroyer is based on a series of pulp novels (145, to be precise) published in the ’70s and ’80s and featuring Remo Williams, a cop who fakes his death and joins a secret government organisation to fight everything from communists to killer robots, and even an ancient Chinese vampire. “It’s a plot of a Steven Seagal movie!” laughs Black. “It’s a tough sell because the story itself is not particularly impressive, but what makes it is these characters and style and…

Spielberg’s doing Blackhawk ?! Um, honestly, never heard of it. Really? Well, at one point it was bigger than Superman. In the 1940s. Who is this Blackhawk, then? What’s his super-thing? Well, he’s not strictly a superhero. He’s the leader of a crack squad of World War II pilots who fly around fighting Nazis in Skyrocket planes. Co-creator Will Eisner saw the character as a “Robin Hood” re-imagined for the war era. With added fantastical threats. So basically Spielberg’s doing another war movie. Sure, what’s wrong with that? Besides, we can expect this to be more of a retro-sci-fi adventure, given some of the foes and deadly war-machines Blackhawk and his ‘merry men’ faced, such as the villainous King Condor, who mastered monstrous bird creatures. How wonderfully…

★★★★ OUT 13 SEPTEMBER RATED M / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Aneesh Chaganty CAST John Cho, Debra Messing, Michelle La, Sara Sohn IT’S EASY TO get fixated on the gimmick of Searching. Its entire story is told on a computer screen, via FaceTime chats, YouTube clips and Google searches. It tells the story of David (Cho), a recent widower who believes he has a solid, honest relationship with his daughter, until she disappears and he delves into her online life to try to find her. And is left wondering if he ever really knew her at all. But it proves to be more than just a gimmick — it’s a highly entertaining, fast-moving and gripping drama with a solid emotional core. And while the conceit is occasionally pushed too far to…

★★ OUT 13 SEPTEMBER RATED G / 104 MINS DIRECTOR Marc Forster CAST Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell PLOT Years after leaving his friend Winnie-the-Pooh (Jim Cummings) behind, Christopher Robin (McGregor) is struggling at work and neglecting his family. One day, Pooh reappears. Has Christopher finally cracked under pressure, or is this a chance to reconnect with something he’s lost? WINNIE-THE-POOH is a giant of children’s literature for a reason. His mix of naivety and a strange sort of wisdom is enchanting — like a tiny toddler who’s also the reincarnation of a monk. And he is delightful here, voiced by Jim Cummings 30 years after he first took the role. Sadly, the rest of the film doesn’t have that complexity or lightness of touch, making its whimsy aggressive rather than…

★★★★ OUT 6 SEPTEMBER RATED TBC / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Jeremy Sims CAST Wayne Gardner, Donna Forbes IT SEEMS FITTING THAT Cold Chisel’s Wild Colonial Boy plays at the beginning of this loving documentary about Wayne Gardner, Australia’s first 500cc motorcycle world champion, for its title aptly sums up the one-time apprentice steelworker from Wollongong. His approach to racing was simple: “I just wanted to go fast”. And while there’s plenty of footage of him doing just that – be it in his triumphant win at the first ever Grand Prix in Australia on Philip Island in 1989, or in his horrific 1983 crash with Italian rider Franco Uncini – there’s also a very human story, largely in the relationship between Gardner and his ex, Donna Forbes, who’s interviewed throughout.…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 102 MINS DIRECTORS Jonathan Baker, Josh Baker CAST Jack Reynor, Miles Triutt, James Franco, Dennis Quaid, Zoe Kravitz AN EX-CON (Reynor) and his adopted younger brother (Truitt) find themselves fleeing a crime boss (Franco), the cops and two strange unearthly figures when they happen upon a mysterious weapon capable of incredible destruction in this sci-fi/crime/road trip mash-up. Although thoroughly engaging, at times it feels like there are two separate movies fighting for screen time, with the more intriguing sci-fi element relegated to the back seat. Maybe adapting the short story on which KIN is based into a TV series could have allowed some of those fleeting but kick-ass ideas to be explored further. A killer final act, however, creates an appetite for a sequel…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED TBC / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Ziad Doueiri CAST Adel Karam, Kamel El Basha, Camille Salameh, Rita Hayek, Christine Choueiri, Diamand Abou Abboud A DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN a Lebanese Christian mechanic (Karam’s Tony) and a Palestinian construction foreman (El Basha’s Yasser) over a drainpipe rapidly spirals into a tense, heated legal stoush that divides Lebanon by stirring up old race-related wounds in writer-director Ziad Doueiri’s gripping courtroom drama. A few minor on-the-nose plot contrivances aside, The Insult emerges as a damning interrogation of male ego and the futility of cultivating anger connected to past wrongs, as well as a thoughtfully constructed argument that the only way to gain a clear view on volatile issues and to move forward is to simply see through the eyes of others.…

How long has this idea been percolating? Ten years, maybe? I know I started drawing and really thinking about it in 2012 — that’s the date on my sketchbook. I started drawing pictures of elves and demons and princesses and taking all kinds of notes on the possibilities for fantasy. Why fantasy? I love creating new worlds. I love the idea of a self-contained animated universe. The Simpsons was a fairly straightforward template of a conservative family. One of the difficulties with Futurama was that doing the genre was not as satisfying as going for real emotion. It was much harder to write than The Simpsons. We were a bit hog-tied by the science fiction. It’s the same with fantasy — there are only so many elf jokes you can…

JAMES DYER @jamescdyer  Evangelical about Aliens and Nuns On The Run. Once had a wee next to Ice Cube. IAN FREER @mrianfreer  Loves Jaws and The 400 Blows and Apocalypse Now. Yet to see The Big Lebowski. TERRI WHITE @terri_white  Is disappointed in any film that isn’t unrelentingly grim. Apart from La La Land. NICK DE SEMLYEN @nickdesemlyen  Loves film noir and Peter Jackson films. Can recite the lyrics to Magic Dance from Labyrinth. JONATHAN PILE @jonnypile  Flirts with highbrow films, but is happiest in front of a decent thriller. CHRIS HEWITT @chrishewitt  Loves horror and Marvel flicks. Freddy vs Tony would be his best movie ever. HELEN O’HARA @helenlohara  Likes superheroes. And films about smart people arguing, ideally while falling in love. JOHN NUGENT @mr_nugent  Big fan of Powell,…

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago, Luke Skywalker was cinema’s greatest hero: the farm boy who saved the galaxy, and with it his father’s soul. Last year he returned… As a bitter, isolated failure. It was tough for many to swallow; too tough for the fan-brats calling for Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi to be uncanonised. Tough for Mark Hamill, too, who confessed to being “unsure of the direction Rian wanted me to go”, and felt he had to switch off his own “internal navigation device” — just like Luke at the Battle Of Yavin — and “tune into his navigation device”. He was right to. The manner of Luke’s return was dramatically bold, thematically potent and utterly appropriate to the character. Just as onetime disbeliever Han grew to embrace the reality of…

The Voice Lucas toyed with giving Yoda an Asian cadence, before deciding something more drastic was needed. “He’s such a weird, alien character,” he said in 1980. “I had to come up with something that’s not a foreign language, not an accent, but somewhere in-between those two things. That’s how I started Yoda’s backward style.” The Accessory Old Yoda rocks a gimer stick, useful for walking and whacking astromech droids. But in the prequels the emerald imp swaps it for a lightsaber, so he can take on Count Dooku in combat. Inevitable, perhaps, given Yoda was partly based on Shimada (Takashi Shimura), hero of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai . Interesting trivia, this is. The Face In early designs, Yoda resembled a garden gnome, with a red hat,…

FORGET BB-8, K-2SO, L3-37, even C-3P0 — there is still only one droid to rule them all. R2-D2 is one of the most recognisable elements of the entire series. Little has permeated the culture like the plucky astromech droid, be it stuck on the side of the Mothership in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, becoming his own version of Bop It!, or being inducted into the Smithsonian’s ‘101 Objects That Made America’ list. Artoo earns his high place on the list because of his huge personality and infectious spirit. He is loveable, charming, smart, patient (would you put up with C-3P0?), courageous, clumsy (he falls in a swamp and off a sail barge) and mischievous (look how he trolls Luke by playing him the old Princess Leia message just…

Iain McCaig (concept artist): The original brief was brief indeed: “His name is Darth Maul; he’s a Sith Lord.” The only other Sith Lord I knew was Darth Vader, so at first I tried to out-helmet Ralph McQuarrie’s amazing design. Which, of course, is quite impossible. Eventually I took the helmet off and began exploring what might lie underneath. Nick Gillard (stunt coordinator/swordmaster): The casting director, Robin Gurland, came into my office the day after we first met, with this book called The Stunt Register, which has every stunt person in it. She said, “The brief is he should look like a heroin addict,” and bizarrely she had the book open on my page. So she’s showing me a picture of myself, saying I look like a heroin addict! [Laughs]…

THERE WAS A lot riding on the Emperor’s appearance in Return Of The Jedi. This wasn’t just any old villain. This was Darth Vader’s boss, a figure so evil he made the Dark Lord Of The Sith breathe funny. Well, funnier. So George Lucas and director Richard Marquand decided they weren’t going to do what had been done for the Emperor’s brief appearance in The Empire Strikes Back. Namely, cast an old woman in a hood with a chimpanzee’s eyes superimposed over hers for full-on freakiness (true story). This time, the Emperor was going to be corporeal, sharing screentime with Vader and Luke Skywalker. So he needed a proper actor. And, in the shape of Ian McDiarmid, noted stage thesp, that’s exactly what he got. That may seem daft, given…

“You’ll be malfunctioning within a day, you nearsighted scrap pile.” “Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to one!” “My parts are showing? Oh, my goodness, oh!” “It is against my programming to impersonate a deity.” “Don’t you call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease!” “I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the Wookiee win.” “Goodness, Han Solo! It is I, C-3PO. You probably do not recognise me because of the red arm.” “R2-D2! You know better than to trust a strange computer!” “Die, Jedi dogs! Oh, what did I say?”…

AFTER A DODDERY old man, a callow youth and an ageing green frog-thing, Qui-Gon Jinn is the first time in the saga we see a Jedi Knight in his prime. Played with gravitas set to maximum by Liam Neeson, Jinn is a grounding tonic in a film often derided for its frippery, and his “noble end” is keenly felt. Schooled in the ways of the Jedi by his master Count Dooku, Jinn’s notion of the Force is perhaps best conceptualised as living in the moment: “Remember: your focus determines your reality.” Yet, skilled with a lightsaber, he takes out battledroids with ease and balletically takes on Darth Maul in two memorable skirmishes. And he is also dangerous. Jinn is a maverick, a loose cannon operating independently from the Jedi Council…

DARTH REVAN’S LEGACY isn’t his reputation (fearsome) or his natty armour (shiny), but rather the fact that he’s... you. The star of 2003 video game Knights Of The Old Republic (set 4,000 years prior to any of the films), Revan starts out (as the player character) an unassuming Republic soldier, later identified as Force-sensitive and trained as a Jedi. It’s only when you face off against the scheming Darth Malak that your character’s true identity is revealed: former Sith Lord Darth Revan, the game’s elusive big bad, who has been discussed only in hushed tones until that point. As far as rug-pulls go, it’s a doozy. So much so that Revan lore has flourished since the game’s release, leading to a series of comics and novels (no longer canon) that…

How did you land the role of Valak, the demon nun? James Wan decided he wanted an extra monster in The Conjuring 2. The brilliant casting directors allowed me to audition. I was told it was an untitled James Wan film. It was between two men and me, and I was like, “No fucking way are they giving this role to a guy.” I wouldn’t even leave until I got the job. I was like, “What’s there to think about?” Did you have any sense that they were thinking of bringing you back? No, not at all. I was just hoping I’d get to work with James again. I was thrilled to work with him. And now I’m thrilled to work with Corin. My God: what an artist. What’s it…

★★★ OUT NOW RATED MA15+ / 97 MINS DIRECTOR Jay Chandrasekhar CAST Jay Chandrasekhar, Paul Soter, Steve Lemme, Erik Stolhanske, Kevin Heffernan, Brian Cox THERE IS NO requirement to have seen the first Super Troopers, which came out a full 17 years ago, in order to keep up with its sequel. This is not a complicated saga. Both films centre on a posse of American state troopers who do very little work and a lot of winding each other up. In this film, they’re tasked with upholding the law in a bit of Canada that has been declared, in fact, part of America. It’s very, very silly and stuffed with jokes you feel dumb for laughing at, but it’s so ebullient that it’s very hard not to find yourself getting…

1 A NEW HOPE (1977) Helen: “There’s a reason that this revolutionised Hollywood, launched a franchise and got my grandparents to the cinema for the first time in 20 years. Even with its hokey lines and ancient effects, nothing can match it.” 2 THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980) James: Faster, more intense: everything a sequel should be. Lacks the purity of the original but has the best twist in film history.” 3 RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983) Chris: “Let go of your Ewok hatred, and recognise that this is a pretty much perfect end to the original trilogy.” 4 THE LAST JEDI (2017) Jonathan: “Hated by some fans for reasons I just don’t understand. A brave film that holds up on subsequent viewings.” 5 THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015) Helen: “A…

LOUIS JOLIN — 12 REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE What’s Rebel Without A Cause about? This kid keeps getting into trouble, and then he goes to a new high school and gets into a fight with the leader of this gang. They try and sort things out by driving to the edge of a cliff and jumping out of their cars. The leader of the bullies gets killed, and then it’s a combination of the kid making friends with Judy the girl, and Play-Doh... You mean Plato? His name’s Play-Doh. And the bully’s friends want to get back at him, and then it’s also interesting about Play-Doh’s story and how he’s troubled. Did you enjoy it? I thought it was going to be a really boring old…

PUMPED FOR THE PREDATOR The Predator, I’m so pumped for this movie (issue #209). It brings me back to 1987 and sitting in the cinema foyer lounge waiting to go into the movie. I could hear the sounds of the finale leaking through the walls. Explosions and screams and helicopter sounds. I was thinking “what’s going on in there?!” It was a movie magazine that got me amped for that film just like your issue is getting me ready for The Predator. I can’t wait for September and if memory serves me correctly Predator was also a September release here. MITCHELL HALL, ASQUITH, NSW Very close! The Australian release date was 20 August, 1987. Your memory is clearly a lot better than ours... THE ELEPH-ANT MAN I never knew director…

They’re making The Shining 2 ? Is this an unauthorised cash-in? Not at all! Doctor Sleep is a genuine Stephen King-written sequel to his classic 1977 supernatural horror novel The Shining. Published in 2013, it came about after King polled fans on his website as to which book he should write next — Doctor Sleep or another Dark Tower novel. (Sleep won by 49 votes.) What is it about? Set decades after the events of the first book, it finds a grown-up Danny Torrance (now going by Dan) still traumatised by the events of the Overlook Hotel, and working at a hospice where he puts his ‘shining’ abilities to good use — only to come up against darker psychic forces. So it’s still in the supernatural vein?…

1 __ After two adaptations from director Guillermo del Toro, Hellboy — the demonic and sardonic paranormal investigator — is getting a reboot, with British director Neil Marshall (Game Of Thrones, The Descent) behind the camera. 2 __ This film was very nearly Hellboy 3. Del Toro long mooted another sequel, and after 100,000 people voted positively in a Twitter poll, agreed to pursue it, but later reported that “100 per cent the sequel will not happen”. It remains unclear exactly why, but the film’s producers (including comic creator Mike Mignola) opted to reboot without del Toro, rewriting the script accordingly. 3 __ After two films as Big Red, Ron Perlman chose not to be involved in any non-del Toro project. David Harbour (aka Chief Hopper from Stranger Things) is…

NOT CONTENT WITH simply being one of Australia’s coolest gatherings for serious cinephiles, the Adelaide Film Festival has, since 2005, been bringing excellence to screens by putting money into movies via their ADL Film Fest Fund (past beneficiaries include this year’s Martin Freeman-starring zombie drama Cargo, Warwick Thornton’s sublime Sweet Country and charming 2016 romcom Ali’s Wedding). Showing no signs of slowing down, 2018 is another bumper year for Fund recipients set to screen their projects at this year’s fest. Fans of The Babadook will get to see director Jennifer Kent’s keenly anticipated follow-up The Nightingale, and the Opening Night film is Australian director Anthony Maras’ feature debut Hotel Mumbai, starring Dev Patel and Armie Hammer. Radelaide, it appears you just got radder. THE ADELAIDE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 10-21…

★★★★ OUT 27 SEPTEMBER RATED M / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Xavier Legrand CAST Denis Ménochet, Léa Drucker, Thomas Gioria, Mathilde Auneveux ACTOR XAVIER LEGRAND won the Best Director and First Film prizes at Venice for this tautly controlled continuation of his Oscar-nominated short, Just Before Losing Everything (2013). Combining stark realism with generic guile, he keeps the camera close to the characters, as the brooding Antoine (Ménochet) seeks to exploit weekend access to 11-year-old son Julien (Gioria) to maintain his grip on estranged wife Miriam (Drucker). Nixing a score and using ambient sound to ratchet up the tension, this is a masterclass in stylistic restraint that only misses its step during the still nerve-shredding denouement. Ménochet and Drucker excel, but it’s newcomer Gioria who generates the unsettling terror.…

★★★★ OUT 6 SEPTEMBER RATED TBC /91 MINS DIRECTOR Desiree Akhavan CAST Chloë Grace Moretz, Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck, Jennifer Ehle IT SEEMS THESE days that for every societal step toward eliminating bigotry and discrimination there comes a stark, alarming reminder that, in certain quarters, very little progress is being made (see: mostly everything associated with the Trump presidency). The Miseducation Of Cameron Post, based on Emily M. Danforth’s 2012 novel, is one such reminder as it pulls back the curtain on emotionally abusive US Christian ‘gay conversion’ camps, where thousands of youths are sent every year to “pray the gay away.” As grim as the story world may be, the 1993-set film acts as a modern, socially conscious John Hughes-style coming-of-age dramedy as Chloë Grace Moretz’s teenager Cameron has…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 121 MINS DIRECTOR Jon M. Chu CAST Henry Golding, Constance Wu BASED ON KEVIN Kwan’s bestseller of the same name, Crazy Rich Asians follows Rachel (Constance Wu), a young Chinese American, to Singapore with her boyfriend Nick (Henry Golding) to meet his parents for the first time. One snag: she has no idea they’re one of city’s richest and most revered families. Directed by Jon M. Chu (Now You See Me 2) and starring Michelle Yeoh as Nick’s domineering mother, Humans star Gemma Chan as a tragic socialite and Ocean’s 8’s Awkwafina as Rachel’s best friend, this flamboyant rom-com — the first Hollywood production in 25 years to feature Asian leads — manages to pass judgement on the class divide and the joys of…

What made you want to make a romantic comedy in Australia? The fact that my character Henry was sex on legs [laughs]. He’s the type of character I normally don’t get offered. I could let myself be charming and funny, show the Cary Grant side of myself [laughs]. How can I say that?! Well he’s a kid from Bristol and I’m a kid from Yemen. So we are very similar in that way. And he, of course, did the screwball comedies and found the darkness later on. Whereas I found the darkness first and am now allowing myself to do a romantic comedy. Romcoms have to have chemistry. How did you work on that with Emily? I could feel that this was the first time that Emily had played a…

HENRY CAVILL “I was there — I saw it happen. I was like, “That looked like a bad hit,” and clearly he was in pain. For the rest of the day they shot me walking around London, which felt exhausting. It was that evening when we found out that it was a break.” VING RHAMES “I was in LA, getting ready to go to London. I’m sorry he got injured, but McQuarrie got more time to work on the script and I stayed home. Tom’s getting older now. I know he loves doing his own stunts, but as a friend, after we get the close-up, maybe we should let the stunt guy do it. Maybe.” SIMON PEGG “I’d taken a break from production. I went off to do Slaughterhouse Rulez,…

THE WOMAN WHO redefined what being a princess meant. The woman who took what could have been a two-dimensional, passive character and made her into more than a character. More than just a sister, a lover, a mother, a victim, trussed up in a gold bikini, held in bondage. Made her into an icon. A role probably signposted all along by the fact that she was the only character mentioned by name in the opening crawl of A New Hope: “Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy…” From her first scene — a noble woman, trying to save the galaxy and taking out stormtroopers — to her last…

SHE’S STRONG. SHE’S capable. She’s resilient. She learns the Force too easily, too quickly. She’s too much of a natural. She defies the order of things. These are all, apparently, Officially Bad Things About Rey. Or at least, things that Might Make Rey A Bit Boring. Yes, she’s a good pilot. Yes, she can fix stuff. Yes, she is most possibly the most powerful user of the Force there ever was, ever has been, without an Obi-Wan (though let’s not forget that in A New Hope Luke goes from first touching a lightsaber to using the Force within the span of about two-and-a-half hours). The key to Rey, though, lies in her humanity, the things that give her her character, her texture. She’s an orphan: she’s had no-one to rely…

THERE’S A TRADITION in soccer that, should their team reach and win the World Cup, all players in the first team squad will receive a winner’s medal. Regardless of whether or not they actually play in the match. If Chewbacca ever hears of this tradition, he could be forgiven for letting out a typically pained Wookiee howl. Because Chewbacca didn’t get a medal for his part in the destruction of the first Death Star. And, if we’re extending the soccer metaphor to breaking point, he not only got on the pitch, but he came up with the most important assist of them all. Towards the end of A New Hope, Luke asks Han to join in with the Rebel assault on the Death Star just outside Yavin IV. Han, keen…

LIKE A GALACTIC RON Burgundy, Finn once bragged that he’s kind of a big deal in the Resistance. (No word yet on how many leather-bound books he owns.) But the true appeal of Finn is that he’s not a big deal. Not really. FN-2187, to give him his cold military designation, is a true nobody, just another stormtrooper in a vast faceless army — albeit one who, unthinkably, dares to dream of freedom. His unlikely rebellion is central to his character’s creation. During the first story meetings for The Force Awakens, original screenwriter Michael Arndt recalls struggling to find a hook for their male lead. Finally, Star Wars veteran Lawrence Kasdan piped up with a pep talk. “You guys, you’re not thinking big,” he said. “What if he’s a stormtrooper…

Julian Glover GENERAL VEERS “I got into The Empire Strikes Back by complete nepotism. I lived next door to [associate producer] Robert Watts and he popped his head over the fence and said, ‘Do you want to be in Star Wars?’ I played a lot of military types because I looked good in uniform so it was a nice little job. I will not accept that Maximilian Veers is a villain. He is a career soldier who has risen through the ranks and wins the battle of Hoth. The AT-AT cockpit was a little construction on top of a crane with a blue screen behind. They shook it about a bit. When I saw the film, suddenly this great mechanical giraffe rode in: ‘Bloody hell, that’s what I was driving!’…

THE FIRST PICTURE of Poe Dameron arriving in The Force Awakens was an ‘aha!’ moment. That jawline. The devil-may-care hair. The bruised cheekbone. This, fans clocked, is the Sequel Trilogy’s ‘Han Solo type’. And yet despite his planned early demise (he was originally fated to die in the crash on Jakku), Poe lived on to become one of Star Wars’ most complex heroes. In J.J. Abrams’ film Poe is a straightforwardly dashing hot-shot pilot, swooping in in his X-wing to save the day. But in The Last Jedi he develops a serious hero-complex, so convinced that his way (reckless and glory-seeking) is the only way. His planned mutiny against Vice Admiral Holdo — who had the situation under control the entire time — is anything but pointless, teaching him a…

UNLIKE MOST STAR Wars protagonists, Jyn Erso doesn’t set out to be the hero. She doesn’t dream of saving the galaxy, or set a course for a dazzling new life among the stars. She just wants her dad, Galen Erso, back — the father quite literally ripped away from her as a young girl. As a result she’s one of Star Wars’ most human heroes — and not just in the sense that she’s not covered in thick fur or made of wires and metal. Midway through Rogue One, Jyn’s personal crusade to rescue her dad evolves into a grander political mission, honouring Galen’s legacy by ensuring his Stardust plan comes to fruition. Jyn’s story brings an emotional weight to the fight — and she’s also a hard-as-nails heroine who…

1_ He was an utter badass who became commander of the Rebel Fleet during the Battle Of Endor in Return Of The Jedi. Despite, and we can’t stress this enough, being a fish. 2_ Okay, not quite a fish. He’s a Mon Calamari, an aquatic species from the planet Mon Cala. Which makes him one of the few Star Wars good guys to taste great with a slice of lemon and tartar sauce. 3_ Although he is never addressed as such on screen, his first name is Gial. And not, as we thought, ‘Admiral’. 4_ He has command of his own vessel, the Home One. As well as the flagship of the Rebel Fleet, it was also where the briefing on the second Death Star was held. 5_ He is…

ONE OF THE constants of the resurrected Star Wars films has been the new droids. Throughout the original trilogy and the prequels, C-3PO and R2-D2 were our ever-present companions, but now, every movie has a brand-new mechanoid, each with its own quirks. The Force Awakens started it with BB-8, The Last Jedi introduces his evil counterpart BB-9E, Solo has Lando love-interest L3-37, and K-2SO — a master of the biting putdown — is the droid of Rogue One. And while BB-8’s rolling, cutesy schtick has stolen the headlines (and sold the most merchandise), it’s K-2 who’s the choice of the connoisseur. Originally an Imperial security guard, he was captured by the Rebellion and re-programmed. Poorly. So while he’s compelled to serve his new masters, it’s not something he’s especially pleased…

★★★ OUT 12 SEPTEMBER RATED MA15+ / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Leigh Whannell CAST Logan Marshall-Green, Harrison Gilbertson, Betty Gabriel AFTER BEING CRIPPLED in an attack (during which his wife is killed), grumpy near-future technophobe Grey Trace (Marshall-Green) is forced to accept AI into his life when he’s offered the chance to walk again (and more) via an implanted, super-smart chip called Stem. He’s able to dish out some rough justice to those who wronged him, but he’s soon worried that it might not be an equal partnership between man and microchip. Director Leigh Whannell offers up a genre stew that, while it features some overly familiar ingredients (and a story that heads in expected directions), has some fun ideas and all the gory thrills you might want in a Black Mirror-meets-Cronenberg…

★★★★ OUT 12 SEPTEMBER RATED M / 89 MINS DIRECTOR Andrew Fleming CAST Paul Rudd, Steve Coogan, Jack Gore NARCISSISTIC, IMMATURE FOODIE TV presenter Erasmus (Coogan) and his long-suffering American husband Paul (Rudd) have their modestly glamorous yet dysfunctional lives upended by the sudden appearance of Erasmus’ troubled 10-year-old grandson (Gore). The forgettable title and cookie-cutter concept — “bickering gay couple adopt a kid” — may seem lazy, but Coogan and Rudd work hard to make Erasmus and Paul the most memorable gay screen couple since The Birdcage. Of course, Coogan gets all of the fun, swish stuff to do, but Rudd is every bit as good in the less showy role. Caustic, authentic and very funny.…

1 When Royston (Daniel Anthony) gets shot at the beginning of Brotherhood, what song is he singing? ‘Regularly’ by Jamie Joseph. If you listen very carefully an older version is also in The Anomaly, two years previous. Correct. 2 What’s the exact nature of your death in Centurion? It’s not on screen but it’s after whatisname [Thax, played by J.J. Feild] cuts my Achilles heel. I’m then attacked by wolves. I liked to think he survived and as the credits rolled you would see him ride up on a fucking pack of wolves and save the day. Neil Marshall wasn’t having it. Correct. 3 In the awards jury episode of Inside No. 9, your Gordon Norris says he’s in post-production on which show? I believe it was Doctor Who. I…

Chris: First up, we’re not putting those dreadful Ewok films in. Let’s keep this focused on the 10 theatrical movies. James: Shall we start with what we think is the best? Chris: Yes. I would say that, incontrovertibly, the greatest Star Wars film by a country mile is The Empire Strikes Back. James: Not so much. Helen: That’s not my number one. Jonathan: Yeah, no. James: This is the perceived wisdom, that Empire Strikes Back is dark and edgy and cool and therefore the best and has a really downbeat ending. It’s a brilliant film, but it’s not the best. It’s not A New Hope. Helen: A New Hope is the absolute pinnacle. Without it, you have nothing. It has a complete story — a beginning, middle and end…

IT IS ENTIRELY fitting that Heathers, a movie about school misfits and toxic cliques, was slow to make friends. When it was released in 1988 it was liked by a passionate few but broadly ignored. Three decades on, it’s an undisputed classic of the genre, the star pupil that set the template for almost every teen movie that followed, from Clueless to Mean Girls. Its writer, Daniel Waters, and director, Michael Lehmann, look back on three decades of learning the hard way. THE FIRST DAY Heathers was a misfit from the day it was conceived. Waters imagined it as “a teen movie for Stanley Kubrick, because he loved genre and he’d never done teen”. He wrote a screenplay that focused on Veronica, part of the popular crowd, who hates her…

★★★★ OUT 6 SEPTEMBER RATED TBC / 111 MINS DIRECTOR Ian Bonhôte CAST Alexander McQueen, Janet McQueen, Gary McQueen ALEXANDER MCQUEEN WAS one of the few geniuses British fashion has produced, smashing his way into the world of haute couture with a mix of raw talent, chutzpah and a pervy, dark sensibility that was the polar opposite of dowdy high fashion. This doc is strong on the ’90s context of his meteoric rise — an era of cultural confidence and working class access to culture that feels a long time ago now — but in its second half fumbles the question of why McQueen didn’t get the help he needed from the industry before his 2010 suicide. Still, though, it’s worth it for the footage of the shows, which have…

★★★★ OUT 13 SEPTEMBER RATED PG / 88 MINS DIRECTORS Aaron Horvath, Peter Rida Michail CAST Greg Cipes, Scott Menville, Khary Payton, Will Arnett, Nicolas Cage PLOT Robin (Menville) and his fellow Teen Titans never get any respect from the other heroes. They decide that it’s because they never appeared in their own movie, unlike Superman (Nicolas Cage) or Batman (Jimmy Kimmel). So Robin and the rest of the gang set out to crack Hollywood. NOW THAT WE’RE 40-plus movies in the modern superhero craze, consider the fate of those vigilantes who have not yet had their big-screen moment. But that’s the terrible situation Robin (Menville) and his fellow Teen Titans find themselves in — and superstar director Jade Wilson (Kristen Bell) tells them they’ll need an arch nemesis before…

★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 104 MINS DIRECTOR Bill Holderman CAST Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Mary Steenburgen THIS IS WHY Sex And The City producers need to put the idea of a third on-screen reunion to bed forever. Book Club sees a four-girl group go through the tired tropes of navigating life, love and sex to the backdrop of reading Fifty Shades Of Grey for their book club. The Charlotte of the group (Steenbergen) has a perfect life but is in a sexless rut with her husband. The Miranda (Bergen) is navigating online dating after putting her love life on hold for her career. The Carrie (Keaton) is umming and ahhing about finding new love after the death of her husband. And the Samantha (Fonda) is still…

1___ Give him a mask All the coolest Star Wars bad guys wear one, so it went without saying that the new villain originally conceived as the ‘Jedi Killer’ should get a mask, too. At first, much more Vader-ish skull-bucket looks were toyed with (concept artist Christian Alzmann reasoning that Darth’s style wouldn’t be a “one-off”), then they tried a silver stormtrooper look, which didn’t feel right for this villain but led to the creation of Captain Phasma. The final result was something of a blend, combining Vader’s black, face-encasing, voice-distorting mask with shiny metallic “spaghetti-type” highlights, which costume designer Michael Kaplan loved because they reflected any light sources around Ren. They also look, rather appropriately, like worry lines, and work on a symbolic level, too: a hint of the…

EWAN McGREGOR CERTAINLY claims the bulk of the character’s screen time, and certainly no-one since Chuck Norris has sported the mullet-and-beard combo with similar aplomb. But for the quintessential Kenobi, we need look no further than Sir Alec Guinness. A classically trained thespian who considered the entire endeavour beneath him (“Fairytale rubbish”), Guinness brought a much-needed gravitas to the role, and to Star Wars as a whole, effortlessly selling the kooky concept of the Force (“It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together”) in a way few lesser actors could. From the moment he strides, howling, from the Jundland Wastes to rescue Luke from Tusken Raiders, Guinness’ space wizard installs himself as the story’s moral compass, inspiring, teaching and mentoring, before laying down his life so that…

THESE DAYS, IF you say the words “bounty hunter”, the first thing most people will think of is Boba Fett: the mysterious, battered, battle-armoured bad guy who served Han Solo up to Jabba The Hutt. But before The Empire Strikes Back, the answer would most likely have been the cigar-chewing Clint Eastwood, anti-heroically working For A Few Dollars More in Sergio Leone’s grittily stylish spaghetti Western. And the two of them are connected, far beyond sharing an ill-reputed job. In fact, without one, you’d never have got the other. George Lucas was certainly open about Empire’s bounty hunters emerging from films about “the Old West”, and confirmed that Boba Fett is “very much like the Man With No Name [Eastwood’s character] from the Sergio Leone Westerns”. As well as the…

BILLY DEE WILLIAMS had Lando Calrissian down cold. From the moment we first saw him, cloak fluttering in the breeze in the clouds above Bespin and pulling one hell of a practical joke on the usually unflappable Han Solo (“You slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler. You’ve got a lot of guts coming here, after what you pulled”), it was hard to imagine a smoother individual.But then it happened. Holding court at a Sabacc table, and wearing a yellow and black shirt only he could possibly pull off, here was Lando — but somehow an even cooler version. Donald Glover had not only successfully taken the baton, he’d sprinted off into the distance with it. But whichever portrayal you favour, one thing unites them — in both the Original Trilogy and Solo,…

IT’S EASY TO give into hate when it comes to Jar Jar Binks. After all, he’s the walking punchline that ruined Star Wars, right? But there’s a chance that might be an overreaction; the kind of toxic overreaction that drove Ahmed Best, who plays Jar Jar, to consider taking his own life. We all know what hate leads to. Something a wide swathe of the Star Wars fandom seem to have forgotten. If you want to understand the appeal of Best’s bungling Gungan, watch The Phantom Menace with a small child. Then he becomes a delight, a whirling dervish who gatecrashes a very sombre movie about men in cloaks interrupting trade negotiations and injects a welcome dose of chaos. By the end, when he’s taking down the Trade Federation forces…

BEFORE WE MET Padmé on screen, we’d heard about her. And she tended to be described in terms of other people — Luke’s mother, Leia’s mother, Darth Vader’s wife. Rarely have a person’s actions been so unjustly diminished. So let’s take a moment to recognise a few of them: elected leader of an entire planet at 14, she went on to become a galactic senator, survived multiple assassination attempts, and worked tirelessly for the good of her people in the face of widespread, Trump-level corruption. She’s arguably the true hero of the prequels. Certainly, in any given situation, she was likely to be the character making the most sense, most memorably as she declared, “So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.” But she wasn’t just a politician. When…

THIS NA’VI-SKINNED, ember-eyed officer may be unfamilar to most, but he is a man who near single-handedly saved the Star Wars universe from fading into memory. The principal antagonist in Timothy Zahn’s 1991 novel, Heir To The Empire, Thrawn proved a massive hit, the series popularising Expanded Universe fiction and re-kindling love for the Star Wars franchise. A member of the Chiss race, Thrawn was calm, calculating and philosophical; a strategic military mind who strove for martial perfection. Having been birthed in a story that told an alternative account of the years post-Jedi, Thrawn was on the wrong side of canon when the Extended Universe was banished to Legends. But his popularity was so great that it transcended Disney’s post-buyout retconning, and ended up in Star Wars Rebels, making this…

★★ OUT 19 SEPTEMBER RATED M / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Jeff Tomsic CAST Ed Helms, Jon Hamm, Hannibal Buress, Jeremy Renner, Isla Fisher THE REAL LIFE story behind Tag, chronicled in the Wall Street Journal, is sweet and goofy: a group of school friends meet up every year to continue their playground game, decades after graduating. While the concept invites notions around the importance of male friendship and retaining a sense of playfulness amid the stressful trappings of modern masculinity, this fictionalised Hollywood comedy instead plumps for irritatingly zany man-baby antics with thin characters who are more invested in the game than in each other — a point which the film rarely and insufficiently interrogates. It would matter less if the gags were stronger. Looking for a freewheeling feel-good comedy?…

1_ The scary shot of the screws turning by themselves was an insert filmed months later in LA. The screws were physically turned beneath the set by the 10-year-old son of practical effects supervisor Roy Arbogast. 2_ The song that starts playing when Jillian bumps into the record player is ‘Chances Are’ by Johnny Mathis. 3_ According to production exec John Veitch, only on one occasion did a very tired Cary Guffey refuse to work, despite bribes with toys. It cost the production around $100,000, with cast and crew waiting around doing nothing.…