Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2019 i Empire Australasia

IT’S THE FIRST BRITISH ADAPTATION Despite its heritage, there has never before been a significant British adaptation of The War Of The Worlds. This new BBC miniseries brings it back to home turf — and provides intriguing opportunities to play up more contemporary themes, according to director Craig Viveiros and screenwriter Peter Harness. “It’s set right at the high point of the British Empire,” Harness tells us. “We’re thinking a lot about what it means to be British at the moment.” IT’S MORE PROGRESSIVE Shifting the time period forward slightly — from the Victorian era of H. G. Wells’ original to early 20th century Edwardian — the adaptation also seizes the opportunity to explore a time when the suffragette movement was beginning to take hold. Eleanor Tomlinson plays Amy, a…

1 __ IT’S FOCUSED ON JUST ONE CASE DCI John Luther is back. Every time you think he’s done, he emerges again, all gruff and becoated, ready to solve more crime. Where previous series have tended to give Luther several cases to crack, over one or two episodes each, series five is entirely focused on one, and it’s shorter, to boot — just four episodes. This series begins with an attack on a London bus, which draws Luther back into the darkness he’s always trying to escape. “[Writer Neil Cross] always conjures up more hideous storylines,” says Elba, adding that we should expect a number of revelations. “We peel the onion back on John Luther more and more personally.” 2 __ HE’S GOT (ANOTHER) NEW PARTNER Luther may be a…

★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 143 MINS DIRECTOR James Wan CAST Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, Willem Dafoe, Temuera Morrison PLOT Arthur Curry’s (Momoa) parents are a lighthouse keeper (Morrison) and Atlantean queen (Kidman). When a war between the subsurface world of Atlantis and its ruler Orm (Wilson) threatens the human world, Curry must confront his past to save the day. IMAGINE IF SOMEONE cut together all the biggest action sequences from the last few decades of Hollywood, resulting in a mash of Tron, Avatar, Clash Of The Titans, Superman, Jurassic Park, and Gladiator. Imagine a film where an octopus gets a drum solo, and it isn’t among the top 10 weirdest moments. Welcome to Aquaman, where you won’t have a clue what’s going…

★★★★ OUT NOW / 119 MINS RATED MA15 + DIRECTOR Yorgos Lanthimos CAST Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, Nicholas Hoult PLOT It’s 18th Century England. War rages with France. But there is a bigger battle royale unravelling in the court of the declining Queen Anne (Colman): a fight between her loyal counsel Sarah Churchill (Weisz) and new arrival Abigail (Stone), Sarah’s down-on-her-luck cousin. IF YOU CAN decipher the artsy, spaced-out font, a quick gander at the end credits of The Favourite reveals character names including ‘Wanking Man’ (Paul Swaine), ‘Nude Pomegranate Tory’ (Callum Lewin) and ‘Fastest Duck In The City’ (Horatio). This pretty much tells you all you need to know about Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos’ down-and-dirty period misadventure. As uncouth and unleashed as Merchant Ivory is buttoned up,…

ON 8 AUGUST 2018, the Academy Of Motion Pictures Arts And Sciences announced plans for an Academy Award for Best Popular Film. Ironically, it was the most unpopular thing the Academy had done since Seth MacFarlane opened the show with ‘We Saw Your Boobs’ and was quickly back-burnered. Yet, without a helping hand, the idea of celebrating popular film is happening organically. For alongside the usual indie stalwarts, a crop of films that might be described as blockbusters are having an equal say in the Oscar conversation. Black Panther (box office: $1.3 billion worldwide), A Star Is Born (box office: $370.5 million worldwide), A Quiet Place ($340.7 million worldwide), Crazy Rich Asians (box office: $237.9 million worldwide) and Mary Poppins Returns (box office: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious worldwide) are all making their mark…

★★★ OUT 31 JANUARY RATED M/ 116 MINS DIRECTOR Robert Zemeckis CAST Steve Carell, Leslie Mann, Diane Kruger, Eiza González, Janelle Monáe PLOT After being brutally beaten and losing his memory, artist Mark Hogancamp (Carell) has retreated into a fantasy life involving a miniature World War II Belgian village, Marwen, that bizarrely reflects his own experiences. His world is further turned upside down by a new neighbour (Mann). THE INGREDIENTS FUELLING Robert Zemeckis’ Welcome To Marwen are bizarre. Adapted from Jeff Malmberg’s 2010 documentary Marwencol about Mark Hogancamp, who after being beaten for being a cross dresser created a 1/6th World War II-era Belgian town to work through his lack of memory, it throws together disparate elements — subtle performance capture, World War II movie parody, shoe fetishism — to…

★★★★ OUT 17 JANUARY RATED MA15+ 124 MINS DIRECTOR Josie Rourke CAST Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, James McArdle, David Tennant PLOT The widowed Mary, Queen Of Scots (Ronan) returns home to take her throne. Her brother (McArdle) and his lords are wary of a female ruler, while in England her cousin Elizabeth (Robbie) is threatened by this Catholic monarch on the same island. THE STORY OF Mary, Queen Of Scots has everything a filmmaker could want. Three marriages, rumoured affairs and a tragic death on the orders of her cousin, Elizabeth I of England, is almost too much drama. Director Josie Rourke finds a way through by focusing on a relatable story about women struggling to survive a man’s world, though sometimes sacrifices historical believability. We meet Mary (Ronan) as…

This is because the most successful director in Hollywood history, the action-movie maestro who’s mounted blistering battles on Earth, in the ocean deep and across far-flung planets, is sipping his beverage from a ceramic receptacle emblazoned with three massive-eyed, primary-coloured cartoon kindergarteners. “You know somebody’s got young daughters when they have a Powerpuff Girls cup,” Cameron explains, catching Empire mid-gawp. Then he grins and repeats the catchphrase he’s clearly heard countless times: “Saving the world before bedtime!” Nine years after the release of the phenonenally successful Avatar, in which a band of intrepid heroes saved Pandora before bedtime, the director is beavering away on four sequels concurrently, a mammoth task the likes of which has never been attempted before. But he’s happy to take a break from blue folk to…

SOME TEN YEARS in the making, Roma is the passion project of Alfonso Cuarón’s life. It covers the story of one year in the life of a Mexican family between 1970 and ’71 — Cuarón himself was just 10 years old — that cleaves very closely to his own. In fact, 90 per cent of the screenplay is drawn from his own memories, filtered through the eyes of the domestic help, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), based on Cuarón’s real-life nanny, Libo. It’s a tumultous year that features an earthquake, a forest fire, a massacre and a near drowning, but it’s also a film that captures the ebb and flow of family life in small, affecting detail. Before the film’s premiere at the London Film Festival, Empire sat down with the filmmaker…

00:01:57 SHITE SUPREMACIST __ The film’s second prologue has Alec Baldwin as white supremacist Kennebrew Beauregard, spitting racist bile. “We wanted the feel of a black-and-white archival PSA from a redneck government cracker official,” says Lee, “explaining why things aren’t the way they used to be in the good old days.” Kennebrew’s vocal exercises were Baldwin’s own. “I asked if I could use that stuff,” says Lee. “He said, ‘Go ahead.’” 00:15:45 STRAIGHT TALKING __ After becoming Colorado Springs’ first black cop, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) goes undercover to a speech by civil rights organiser Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins). Lee and co-writer Kevin Willmott radically rewrote the script they were given. “We couldn’t just have a stereotypical black leader saying, ‘Whitey is bad, kill whitey.’ That would be disrespectful…

INGMAR BERGMAN WAS just a boy when he first encountered Death. The art-house legend spent much of his 1920s childhood in Swedish country churches with his father Erik, a Lutheran minister. But young Ingmar was less interested in his dad’s preaching than his fascinating surroundings. His imagination was nourished by what he saw, especially one mural in Uppland’s Täby church by 15th-century artist Albertus Pictor: ‘In a wood sat Death, playing chess with the Crusader…’ Decades later, in 1956, on the storm-lashed rocks of Hovs Hallar beach in south-west Sweden, Bergman would re-stage that image in his own, equally indelible way. He was now a respected director at home, though only just recently granted sufficient freedom to indulge his deepest creative passions (thanks to the hit 1955 comedy Smiles Of…

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

“I CAN’T THINK of any other time when we’ve seen a political drama with two women at the forefront,” says Saoirse Ronan about Mary, Queen Of Scots. Theatre alumna Josie Rourke’s film pitches two ruling monarchs — and cousins — who both fervently believe they are the rightful heir to the English throne. Ronan is the titular Mary, Queen Of Scots on a mission to overthrow the reigning monarch. Margot Robbie is Elizabeth I, fighting tooth and nail to hold onto her crown. It’s the kind of meaty period drama dynamics that men get to play all the time. Mary, Queen Of Scots is doing it with women. “I wanted to see if I could tell a story about two women in a very classic cinema way,” says Rourke. “In…

DOMINIC WEST What one thing do you do better than anyone else you know? Washing up. I’m really good at it. I’ve never met anyone who can do it as good as me. I’m usually driven mad by people’s shortcomings in that department. Not high standards — just ordinary decency. Ordinary human decency. What is your favourite animal? I like looking at quails. I think quails are the funniest. You just have to watch them. They’re very busy and clumsy, and the way they rush around is really funny. Some animals are just bloody funny. Have you ever knowingly broken the law? Oh yeah, all the time! But I think that might incriminate me. While certain laws exist, they’re there to be broken. Hopefully they won’t exist much longer. Do…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Wash Westmoreland CAST Keira Knightley, Dominic West, Eleanor Tomlinson, Fiona Shaw, Aiysha Hart PLOT France,1893. Colette (Knightley) marries novelist Willy (West), an intellectual. But as their respective affairs become more involved and Colette’s work becomes the toast of Paris, their unconventional relationship is tested. YOU MIGHT THINK you know what you’re in for in this film’s opening scenes, when Keira Knightley stands demurely in a French garden to wave goodbye to Dominic West. But then, still barely five minutes in, she sneaks out for a quick shag with him in a barn across the field. It’s refreshing to see a period drama that involves this strong a commitment to joyous bonking but, as befits the life and works of the scandalous…

★★★★★ OUT NOW / 135 MINS RATED MA15+ DIRECTOR Alfonso Cuarón CAST Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Marco Graf, Daniela Demesa PLOT In early 1970s Mexico City, a family and their two housekeepers live an ordinary life. When a series of events threatens to disrupt their existence, maid Cleo (Aparicio) must preserve the peace, while also dealing with her own dilemmas. A POST-APOCALYPTIC future, a low-Earth orbit space station and a school for wizards: Alfonso Cuarón’s recent filmography has been, by any standard, pretty otherworldly. Roma is in every sense a more grounded affair for the director, a low-key domestic drama about an ordinary middle-class Mexican family in the 1970s. And yet, with a confidence and ambition that again solidifies his status in the very top tier of modern filmmakers,…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 132 MINS DIRECTOR Adam McKay CAST Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Jesse Plemons PLOT Blue collar American Dick Cheney works his way up the political ladder to the White House. Eventually, as Vice President to George W. Bush, he ends up as the man behind some of the biggest and most notorious decisions of the 21st century YOU MIGHT HAVE thought the same thing we did when we saw this year’s Golden Globe nominations. A film about a loathsome US politician, starring Christian Bale in extreme-transformation, awards-bait mode, getting nods in the perceived “slight” Musical or Comedy category? And while the musical-ish A Star Is Born and the genuinely slight Bohemian Rhapsody were being acclaimed in the Drama category, no less?…

★★★ OUT NOW / 100 MINS RATED MA15+ DIRECTOR Lance Daly CAST James Frecheville, Hugo Weaving, Freddie Fox, Barry Keoghan, Stephen Rea PLOT 1847. Ireland is in the grip of the potato famine. Returning home, Feeney (Frecheville), an Irish deserter from the British imperial army, goes on a mission to avenge the death of his family. Feeney’s old military comrade, Hannah (Weaving), along with English officer Pope (Fox) and private Hobson (Keoghan), set off in pursuit. IF IT’S NOT the first Irish-tinged Western (John Ford’s The Quiet Man and Mike Newell’s Into The West are perhaps the most notable examples), few have embraced the genre’s tics and tropes so fully and smartly as Lance Daly’s film set during the Potato Famine. From lone horseman in wide-open spaces to evil land…

★★★★ OUT 24 JANUARY RATED M / 130 MINS DIRECTOR Peter Farrelly CAST Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini, Sebastian Maniscalco PLOT It’s 1962. After his nightclub closes for renovations, Tony “Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) takes a job as chauffeur and bodyguard to refined African-American musician, “Doc” Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), on a concert tour of the Deep South. Lip harbors his own prejudices but long hours on the road and exposure to the entrenched racism south of the Mason-Dixon line soon see him looking at his charge in a new light. THOUGH BASED ON actual events, Green Book – which comes to us from Dumb and Dumber co-creator Peter Farrelly, surprisingly enough – fits a fairly familiar narrative shape. Two characters, seemingly with nothing in common, are force to…

Handed by one friend to another, with no idea of the consequences that would arise. It was sometime in the late 1990s, and director buddies Guillermo del Toro and James Cameron — each recovering from a gruelling shoot, Mimic and Titanic respectively — were meeting up for one of their regular geek-out sessions. It was customary for them to bring along things they thought the other might dig: comic books, sci-fi novels, movies. On this occasion del Toro (or, as Cameron called him, ‘El Gordo’, aka ‘The Fat Man’) had in his satchel a VHS cassette, an import from the Far East. Cameron (or, as del Toro called him, ‘Jaimito’, aka ‘Little Jim’) hadn’t heard of it, but he took it home, popped it in his player and hit play.…

Before I ever dreamed of being a filmmaker, I was in love with cinema. As a kid, I knew all of the old B sci-fi films from the 1950s by heart. I’d record them on a little audiocassette recorder I got for Christmas, then listen back to them later and replay them in my mind, because home video was still decades away. Inspired by those movies, I’d draw pictures or build my own robots. Not that they were very sophisticated robotics — they were cardboard boxes filled with paper-towel tubes, and if you turned a crank they would dispense Maltesers. I made them as Mother’s Day presents and things like that. I also built humanoid robotic torsos and put them on top of a remote-control toy tank, which I’d drive…

★★★★ OUT 9 JANUARY RATED M / 98 MINS DIRECTOR Jesse Peretz CAST Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke, Chris O’Dowd PLOT Annie (Byrne) is in a dead-end relationship with self-centred boyfriend Duncan (O’Dowd). She wants more from life, and seems to be getting it when she begins a secret online relationship with reclusive American rocker Tucker Crowe (Hawke). Trouble is, Crowe is also the object of Duncan’s lifelong fan-boy obsession. NICK HORNBY’S BOOKS have been generally well served by their on-screen versions, even when they’ve been messed with. High Fidelity survived its relocation to Chicago with its integrity intact, and the Farrelly brothers’ 2005 take on his 1992 ode to football fanaticism, Fever Pitch, was uprooted to the US with the Boston Red Sox standing in for his beloved Arsenal —…

SAYING “LIKE MY men” after explaining how you take your coffee. Making a ‘drinking problem’ joke if you accidentally send a G&T down your chin. Clamping hard on your lip when you hear a sentence beginning with “surely”. These are all symptoms of Flying High! (or Airplane!, as it’s known elsewhere in the world). It is the starting place for dozens of reference points ingrained in us. Mainly, though, it’s a funny film. Possibly the funniest film, actually. It was born, however, of that most po-faced and self-unaware genre: the disaster movie. In the ’70s you couldn’t throw a stone in Hollywood without it hitting a troupe of jobbing character actors trying to make it out in one piece while battling an overturned cruise ship, or burning tower block, or…

THERE’S A GOOD chance that the funniest film of 2018 won’t be a big-budget studio comedy with, say, a Ferrell or a McCarthy, but a barely feature-length spin-off from a kids’ cartoon. Gloriously absurd and anarchic, Teen Titans Go! To The Movies is both clever and wonderfully infantile as it takes no-holds-barred potshots at its own genre: the superhero movie. We spoke to co-director Aaron Horvath and co-writer Michael Jelenic for their take on its finest gags. 1 The movie has an abundance of subtle gags for adults, a repayment for bringing the kids. Yet it also caters for the little ’uns with the mother of all fart jokes right at the start, when the evil Balloon Man has his bottom popped, releasing a jet of air that goes on…

★★★★ OUT 23 JANUARY RATED M / 114 MINS DIRECTOR Gus Van Sant CAST Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, Jack Black PLOT The true story of John Callahan (Phoenix), whose life spirals downwards when, at the age of 21, he is left quadriplegic after a serious car crash. But with encouragement from his AA sponsor (Hill) and girlfriend (Mara), he forges a new career as an edgy, irreverent cartoonist. GUS VAN SANT has made a career out of idiosyncratic, unconventional figures, whether fictional (Will Hunting, William Forrester), factual (Harvey Milk), or a mix of the two, such as the Cobainesque musician of Last Days. And so it continues with cantankerous cartoonist John Callahan, the protagonist of Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot. With his unkempt thatch of…

FRANK MARSHALL: “This scene wasn’t in the script; it was Steven [ Spielberg ] solving a production problem. We were in Tunisia, it was 130°F every day and we were exhausted — but Steve was still thinking about the movie. He created this iconic scene at lunch, and it’s one of the most classic in cinema history. An example of creative filmmaking; it shows how you have to be on your game all the time and why making movies is such a wonderful process.” EXT. A SMALL BAZAAR — DAY In an attempt to secure an artefact that will lead them to the Ark of the Covenant, Nazi agents have hired a group of thugs to capture Indy (Harrison Ford) and Marion (Karen Allen), who are strolling through…

“I LIKE A challenge,” grins Neil Marshall. “Maybe I’m just a sucker for punishment.” Hellboy’s legacy is almost as intimidating as his horns. The blood-red half-demon, having been birthed in comic form by creator Mike Mignola, starred in two beloved films by Guillermo del Toro, but a long-awaited third fizzled out. Around 2014, plans arose to reboot the beast, and Marshall, the British director of The Descent and Dog Soldiers, was chosen to nurture him back. “It’s a tough act to follow,” he tells Empire of taking over from del Toro. Marshall contacted the monster master to get his blessing. “I didn’t want to step on his toes or get his nose out of joint. So I got in touch and said, ‘This is something very, very different and I…

LUNCH WITH STAN Lee was a journey into a hyperspace of fame. First you pass through his version of Beatlemania. He was cheerfully mobbed as the pair of us strolled through Beverly Hills together. Car horns toot, all ages smile and genuflect, selfies are numerous and borne by the great man with an insouciant twinkle. Then into the restaurant where the hard-nosed masters of the movie universe step aside to kiss the ring and allow Stan to be ushered to his favourite corner table, where he sees all and is gazed upon by all. I was there to quiz him about the history of Thor, which I was to direct for Marvel Studios. He was there to tease me about having blagged the job because, as a so-called Shakespearean, I…

ADAM McKAY IS aware that choosing Dick Cheney as the subject of a biopic is unusual. It’s not something he intended. “Most of us don’t know much about him,” he says. “People called him Darth Vader and he shot a guy in the face; that’s as much as most people know.” Many years ago, the filmmaker started reading a Cheney biography, who served in the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford and Bush Sr before becoming Vice President to George W. Bush. Despite never being President, Cheney was one of the most powerful men in modern history, shaping the US response to terrorism post 9/11, including controversial approaches to interrogation, and marching the country into war in Afghanistan and Iraq. “It sounds grandiose, but he changed the course of history,” says…

IF NEW THRILLER Cold Pursuit, starring Liam Neeson as your regular snow-ploughing vigilante, seems familiar, that’s because it’s a remake of 2014 film In Order Of Disappearance. Norwegian filmmaker Hans Petter Moland — who made both films — talks Empire through the bonkers déjà-vu process of filming your own film again for an English-language audience. DON’T AUTOMATICALLY DO IT “The original got a terrific response at the Berlin [international film] festival and the next morning, America came calling about a remake. I had to give it a serious think. It was a little bit like if you put on a play in Norway and somebody asks you to bring it to Broadway. It’s a chance to speak to a different audience.” DEVELOP IT WITH A DIFFERENT STAR “Liam was…

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI 1941 — 2018 BERTOLUCCI HAD ALL three kinds of movie success: critical cred, earned with lasting mastery by The Conformist in 1970; profitable notoriety, earned by Last Tango In Paris in 1973; and a Best Picture Academy award, earned in 1987 by The Last Emperor. The production of the epic biography of Pu Yi, the emperor dethroned by the Chinese communist revolution, was at least as great a feat of diplomacy as cinema — with Bertolucci, left-leaning but hardly a doctrinaire communist, persuading the then-movie-shy Chinese government to allow The Last Emperor to be the first production filmed in the aptly named Forbidden City. This image epitomises Bertolucci’s approach, demonstrating the kind of madness and control only true dictators and bigshot moviemakers can even dream of: the grave-faced…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 114 MINS DIRECTOR Travis Knight CAST Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Justin Theroux, Angela Bassett, Jorge Lendeborg Jr, Dylan O’Brien PLOT Two decades prior to the events of Transformers, Bumblebee (voiced by O’Brien) crash-lands in 1987 San Francisco. Hauled from a local junkyard by teenager Charlie (Steinfeld), the intrepid Autobot does his best to adapt to ’80s Earth, while evading his Decepticon pursuers. EVERYTHING YOU NEED to know about this latest Transformers is contained in a multi-car pile-up. Near the film’s finale, a desperate pursuit sees a car hurtle towards a four-way junction. It skids to a stop inches from the bumper of an oncoming lorry, while cars from either side — displaying a keen observation of DMV-regulated stopping distances — screech to a similarly…

★★★★★ OUT NOW RATED PG / 117 MINS DIRECTORS Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti, Rodney Rothman CAST Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Liev Schreiber, Hailee Steinfeld, John Mulaney, Lily Tomlin PLOT In an alternate reality, teen Miles Morales (Moore) is bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes the new Spider-Man. But when a portal opens to other realities, Miles learns there are multiple webslingers. YOU’D BE FORGIVEN for feeling like Spider-Man’s recent big-screen adventures have simply been a repetitive, endlessly recurring multiverse. So kudos, then, to this, for boldly ignoring potential audience fatigue by doubling down — or rather, quintupling down — by telling not one Spider-Man origin story, but five. Right from the off, this is a Spider-Man wholly distinct from the live-action vintage, in every sense. While the…

★★★ OUT NOW RATED PG / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Rich Moore, Phil Johnston CAST John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Kristen Bell, Gal Gadot, Taraji P. Henson PLOT When a broken steering wheel threatens the decommissioning of arcade racer Sugar Rush, lead character Vanellope (Silverman) and her best friend Wreck-It Ralph (Reilly) head to the internet to try to secure a replacement via eBay. FOR A FILM about a fictional ’80s arcade game character, Ralph Breaks The Internet sure raises some weighty issues. We’re not 10 minutes into the Wreck-It Ralph sequel when a broken video game cabinet creates the displacement of several hundred pixelated characters, all looking for a new home among Litwak Arcade’s other coin-op machines. It’s an interesting set-up — could this brightly coloured, sugar-coated cartoon be a…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED G / 130 MINS DIRECTOR Rob Marshall CAST Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters, Dick Van Dyke, Angela Lansbury, Colin Firth, Meryl Streep PLOT Twenty years after Mary Poppins left the Banks family, Michael Banks (Whishaw) is now a widowed father of three who is in debt and risks losing the family home. So Mary (Blunt) comes back to save the family one more time… IT’S A WONDER nobody forced Mary Poppins to return earlier. P.L. Travers wrote eight collections of Mary Poppins stories and we’ve only ever seen one film, the 1964 musical, the very definition of a classic. That it’s taken almost 55 years might be cause for concern that this is a mere cash-grab, a cynical rummage around Mary’s…

★★★★ OUT 31 JANUARY RATED M / 132 MINS DIRECTOR George Tillman Jr CAST Amandla Stenberg, Algee Smith, Issa Rae, Russell Hornsby, Anthony Mackie PLOT Teenage Starr (Stenberg) lives a dual life appeasing both her local black friends and the privileged white kids at her private school. But when one friend becomes a victim of police brutality, she has a political awakening, angers a local kingpin and begins to question who she really is. HISTORICALLY, YOUNG ADULT blockbuster successes have been famed for the unexpected darkness of their subject matter, whether it’s the dystopian ritual slaughter of The Hunger Games or the, um, dystopian ritual slaughter of The Maze Runner. But, generally, these stories play out in speculative sci-fi futures or worlds touched by fantasy and magic. There’s no such…

★★★★ OUT 31 JANUARY RATED M / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Jason Reitman CAST Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons, Mamoudou Athie, Sara Paxton PLOT US Senator Gary Hart (Jackman) enters the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1988 with an overwhelming lead. Then it’s discovered he’s having an extramarital affair and his campaign swiftly goes off the rails. AS HAROLD WILSON once said, a week is a long time in politics. It took slightly longer than that to transform Senator Gary Hart from the next US President to a scandal-ridden campaign drop-out, but the 180 in his fortunes was still remarkably hard, sharp and fast. And it was a turning point for American politics — certainly the way politicians were scrutinised by the media. There’s an irony in the…

★★★ NETFLIX OUT NOW EPS VIEWED 1-3 SHOWRUNNERS Greg Berlanti, Sera Gamble CAST Penn Badgley, Elizabeth Lail, Luca Padovan, Shay Mitchell PLOT Bookstore manager Joe Goldberg (Badgley) becomes obsessed with poetry student Guinevere Beck (Lail) after she buys Desperate Characters from him. He builds an online mosaic of her life, then decides to make himself The One... by any means necessary. You is Notting Hill directed by David Fincher. A nice guy bookstore manager (Badgley) meets a smart, beautiful girl (Lail) in his store, yet rather than lead her to Rhys Ifans in his underpants, decides to stalk her online, inveigle his way into her life and knock off anyone that might threaten their togetherness. Adapted from Caroline Kepnes’ 2014 book by Greg Berlanti (Riverdale, Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina) and…

IT’S HARD TO tell when the Aquaman gags started. So hard, in fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking the subaquatic DC Comics hero was always a joke. Around 2012, stop-motion sketch show Robot Chicken started lampooning him regularly; at one point Batman’s sidekick Robin used his magic trident to clear a blocked toilet. Boston indie band The Motion Sick wrote a 2010 song titled ‘Aquaman’s Lament’, in which the orange-and-green-suited crimefighter lists other superheroes’ fantastic abilities before grumbling, “I can talk to some fish.” And then there’s Entourage, HBO’s Hollywood satire, which in 2005 began spinning a long-running, daffy plot line around an Aquaman movie directed by James Cameron. It’s something Jason Momoa, returning to the role for the third time (after Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice…

VAN WILDER (2002) Wasted Guy — he is what he sounds like “My friend was casting that film and she sent me the script and asked if there was a supporting role I would like to play. And there was Wasted Guy. I chose him because the first film I ever booked for was called Whatever It Takes. I read for the role of Wasted Guy but during the table read they asked me to audition for one of the leads, which I then got. So I had to say goodbye to Wasted Guy. Cut to Van Wilder coming to me and even though it was a tiny role, I had to take it. It’s like a little Easter egg in my own life. BREAKING BAD (2008) Jesse, the drug-dealing…