Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i Empire Australasia

“HEESA BACK!” After years in the Star Wars wilderness, Ahmed Best — the artist formerly known as Jar Jar Binks — has returned to the galactic fold. The actor, who provided the voice and motion capture of the much-maligned Gungan in the prequel trilogy, was announced as the presenter of Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge , a Crystal Maze -esque game show for kids that is coming soon to Disney +. The show marks the latest stage in a rehabilitation that saw Best go from Bigger-Villain-Than-Palpatine to beloved prodigal son via a terrifying brush with attempted suicide. After a “wonderful experience” shooting Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace , Best’s troubles started when the trailer dropped on 13 November 1998. The then-25-year-old actor received all colours of hate…

“STRETCHING BACK ALMOST 20 years, I’ve had an incredible connection with The Master And Margarita ,” says Baz Luhrmann. Now, finally, he’s secured the rights to Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical masterwork, to produce and likely direct. But why is he the right man for the job? 1. HE HAS EXPERIENCE WITH LITERARY CLASSICS Luhrmann has tackled towering literary edifices before in his adaptations of Shakespeare ( Romeo + Juliet ) and Fitzgerald ( The Great Gatsby ). This is along similar lines. Russian playwright and author Bulgakov began work on the novel in 1928, but it wasn’t published until 1966, 26 years after his death. Since then it’s been hailed as one of the great works of the 20th century, translated into dozens of languages and selling millions. 2. HE GETS…

IT’S A TIMELY ADAPTATION OF A CLASSIC Adapted from H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 apocalyptic sci-fi horror, director Richard Stanley says it has never been more relevant. “Lovecraft’s themes are creepily in keeping with the Trump era, the Brexit era — the pre-environmental-extinction generation.” IT HAS CAGE AT HIS CAGE-IEST The film features an appropriately bonkers Nicolas Cage performance as patriarch Nathan Gardner. “He’s a very self-aware individual,” says Stanley. “Before we started shooting, [Cage] highlighted areas in the script he could really run with. The kind of places where we could literally push the notorious ‘Cage Rage’ up to ten.” IT’S THE FIRST IN A PLANNED H.P. LOVECRAFT CINEMATIC UNIVERSE “I’m working on a Lovecraft trilogy,” says Stanley. “People are getting used to a universe like Marvel — but Lovecraft was…

PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER. IT’S got a ring to it, hasn’t it? The former Governator has made no secret of his Oval Office ambitions, and plenty of films, from Demolition Man to The Simpsons Movie , have toyed with the prospect. But Kung Fury 2 is the first film to go all in and make the Austrian Oak the actual leader of the free world. “I think he was very happy with the part,” says the film’s writer/director/star, David Sandberg. And not just because he finally gets to be President. There’s another long-held dream realised here. “When they shot Commando , he wanted to shoot a scene where he rips off the arm of a soldier and beats him with his own arm,” recalls Sandberg. “They didn’t allow him to do that.…

CYCLONE JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL At first glance, Cyclone just looks like a regular horse: a fine mane, good breed, solid neighing. Then we realise he is actually an in-game Jumanji avatar, with Bethany (Madison Iseman) inhabiting her very being. It only gets weirder after that. NØKK FROZEN II Frozen already has a four-hoofed friend in the form of trusty reindeer Sven. But the sequel introduced something distinctly madder: an elemental spirit horse who protects the sea, occasionally manifesting in the odd pond. As you do. ORBAK STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER The galaxy far, far away has had its fair share of space horses. But the Orbaks ridden by Jannah and Finn are another level of insanity. How many space horses can you actually ride on a Star…

IT’S GOT PACINO! Any appearance by Al Pacino is a cause for celebration. As Meyer Offerman, a knife-wielding concentration camp survivor in charge of Nazi-killing vigilantes in ’70s New York, he may well have landed one of his juiciest roles. IT’S GOT TALENT! There’s Logan Lerman, seguing from Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters to some real-life monsters, Josh Radnor, Jerrika Hinton, Carol Kane and…wait, did we just see luscious Lena Olin make an appearance? Oh my! IT’S GOT NAZIS! Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan, above) joins Meyer and his deadly crew to blow away some bad guys, but they soon learn that a Fourth Reich is planning to take over America and it’s up to our violent heroes to stop them at any cost. Welcome to the hunt indeed!…

OUT NOW (STAN) / CERT MA15+ / 124 MINS DIRECTOR Justin Kurzel CAST George MacKay, Essie Davis, Orlando Schwerdt, Russell Crowe Once you get past the dresses – and the very modern, punk sensibility of it all – this is a revolutionary reimagining of the life of our most famous bushranger. Truth and myth mingle together as we follow the iconic figure from childhood to his final gruesome showdown at Glenrowan Inn. True Story… is at its strongest in the first half thanks to a stunning performance by Schwerdt as young Ned, especially opposite his controlling mother Ellen (Davis) and “father figure” Harry Power (Crowe). But the film loses its way when grown-up Ned (Mackay) starts building an army of iron-plated freedom fighters to take on the cops. Still, the…

OUT NOW (DVD) / CERT MA15+ / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Adam Egypt Mortimer CAST Patrick Schwarzenegger, Miles Robbins, Sasha Lane Daniel Isn’t Real feels like a run of missed opportunities. Despite inventive visuals and the odd gross-out moment, the tale of reclusive college freshman Luke (Robbins), who invokes his imaginary friend Daniel (Schwarzenegger) from childhood, feels like a blend of familiar plot beats. It’s harder still to be concerned when the characters are so shallow, particularly Daniel’s appearance as a more garishly dressed Tyler Durden and Sasha Lane’s thankless role as a love interest mostly left out of the loop. In its more outlandish moments, it takes on an exploitative tone, placing the responsibility of the film’s violence on a generic, undefined depiction of mental illness that makes Split look…

OUT 26 MARCH CERT PG / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Armando Iannucci CAST Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, Gwendoline Christie, Hugh Laurie, Aneurin Barnard PLOT After his mother (Morfydd Clark) gets married to the cruel Mr Murdstone (Darren Boyd), kindhearted David Copperfield (Patel) is sent from pillar to post — until his wealthy aunt Betsey (Swinton) bankrolls David’s journey to become a gentleman. CHARLES DICKENS MIGHT seem a curious subject for Armando Iannucci. His last film, the venomously funny The Death Of Stalin , had more swearing and backstabbing than a Dominic Cummings dinner party, while his political TV show The Thick Of It gifted us an array of glorious insults. Dickens’ 1850 book contains no such insults but Iannucci’s affectionate adaptation still feels in keeping with his career thus…

OUT NOW / CERT M / 94 MINS DIRECTOR William Eubank CAST Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, T.J. Miller Underwater pitches the crew of a sub-aqua mining operation against sea beasties as they traverse the ocean floor after their facility has been bit by an earthquake tremor. From the spaced-out title design to the endless shots of characters listening to ominous sounds in an empty corridor and Kristen Stewart’s Ripley-alike Norah, this is a soggy re-do of Alien, high on exposition, low on interesting character dynamics and human interest. Director William Eubank comes up with the odd effective moment — the opening is disorientating — but the scares in the murky blackness remain confused rather than atmospheric. In the end, Underwater can’t find its own vibe or sense of fun to…

OUT NOW CERT PG / 109 MINS DIRECTOR Marielle Heller CAST Matthew Rhys, Tom Hanks, Chris Cooper, Susan Kelechi Watson PLOT 1998. Tough-nosed magazine profile writer Lloyd Vogel (Rhys) is sent to interview beloved children’s TV presenter Fred Rogers (Hanks). Yet as their meetings progress, the genial Rogers turns the tables on Vogel and starts gently interrogating the dark areas in the journo’s life, chiefly his estranged relationship with his dad (Cooper). THERE’S SOMETHING POTENTIALLY too on the nose about casting Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers. Hollywood’s nicest man playing the iconic children’s TV host who schooled a nation in kindness, decency and humanity seemingly writes itself. Only in Marielle Heller’s hands, it isn’t. Based on Tom Junod’s 1998 Esquire cover story in which the journalist set out to write…

IF EX MACHINA isn’t a horror film, it definitely feels like one. Alex Garland certainly gives us much to be scared of. Fear of technology. Fear of monitoring and data-tracking. Fear of the future. Fear of a psychotic Oscar Isaac. Fear of killer robots. Fear of your sexual attraction to killer robots. It’s all there. Garland was already something of a geek hero, having sold a gazillion copies of his debut novel The Beach before switching to screenwriting with 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Dredd. But Ex Machina, his directorial debut, was Garland unleashed, an unfettered vision that shot his worldview through our veins and showed us what he could do when he was fully in charge of a film. A misanthropic morality tale, it mused on not just artificial…

WONG KAR-WAI’S exquisite romance is a heady mix of swirling cigarette smoke, evocative music and breathless tension. In 1962 Hong Kong, secretary Maggie Cheung and reporter Tony Leung rent neighbouring rooms in an overcrowded apartment block, and both have spouses who are regularly away. The lovelorn pair strike up a beautiful friendship, before discovering their other halves are having an affair, but their feelings for each other remain (mostly) chaste, all charged looks and meaningful glances, as the unhappy couple suppress their desire. The plot may be slight, but the performances are sublime, the lush visuals and rhythmic editing helping to produce a dream-like thrall. It remains Wong’s masterwork, and arguably the most achingly romantic movie ever made.…

A PERFECT, BLOOD-SPLATTERED marriage of director and material, Tim Burton’s brooding adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s macabre musical drips with Hammer Horror-style gore. Johnny Depp throws himself with gusto into the titular role, sounding not unlike David Bowie and rocking a black barnet adorned by a skunkish shock of white. And he and Helena Bonham Carter prove themselves more than capable singers, crooning their way through Sondheim’s showstoppers. The sets are extraordinary, of course, while Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and Sacha Baron Cohen provide suitably weaselly support. A gruesome delight.…

ANDREW DOMINIK’S sweeping revisionist Western revisits the tale of outlaw Jesse James with an eye for the dark trappings of celebrity and American mythmaking, James (Brad Pitt) seen through the eyes of a jealous admirer — Robert Ford (a weaselly Casey Affleck). The aesthetic inspiration came from Andrew Wyeth paintings and old photographs, allowing DP Roger Deakins to use wide-angle lenses and blurred edge effects. The results are burnished, achingly old-fashioned visuals, combined with a compelling intensity.…

LOOK BEYOND THE endless ‘Dances With Smurfs’ jokes, and James Cameron’s space epic still stands as a monument to cinema at its most boundlessly imaginative. Scarcely has a screen world been rendered with as much tactile, detailed splendour as Pandora; the lush alien moon that sees both an interspecies love affair (Sam Worthington’s paraplegic soldier and Zoë Saldana’s blue-skinned warrior princess) and a colonial war between villainous humans and literal alien tree-huggers. Undergirded by a prescient conservationist message, Avatar remains a gloriously weird, Na’vi-sized leap forward both technologically and creatively.…

BRITISH CINEMATIC COMEDY was not in great shape in the early noughties. Bar the odd highlight (Bridget Jones’s Diary; Bend It Like Beckham), it was more often weak vehicles for off-form Steve Coogan or Rowan Atkinson, or dross such as Sex Lives Of The Potato Men. Then Shaun Of The Dead arrived, which had a tone and filmmaking style that felt distinctly British but new. While influenced by the likes of Romero and Tarantino, Edgar Wright’s zombie adventure, with its backdrop of North London’s suburbs, remains the perfect encapsulation of his ‘ordinary guys in an action movie’ style.…

THE RUSSO BROTHERS were in the last chance saloon, cinematically speaking, when they were selected to helm The Winter Soldier, yet the duo somehow found it within themselves to direct a pulsating, propulsive comic-book thriller. Much has been made of how The Winter Soldier is Marvel’s version of a ’70s conspiracy flick, but that’s somewhat overstated: The Parallax View didn’t have a bit where the plot was explained to Warren Beatty by a brain living inside a supercomputer. Instead, what’s notable about The Winter Soldier now is the character work, with Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson on fine form as soldiers who find themselves on the run from their employers. And in the elevator throwdown and the Nick Fury car chase, it has two of the best action sequences in…

TREVORROW EXITS (5 SEPTEMBER 2017) Episode IX’s original director leaves the film. “Lucasfilm and Colin Trevorrow have mutually chosen to part ways,” says the press release. A week later, The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams is announced as his replacemnent. PALPATINE RETURNS (12 APRIL 2019) At the biannual Star Wars Celebration, the surprise return of Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine is revealed. TREVORROW EARNS A CREDIT (22 NOVEMBER 2019) Trevorrow still gets a “story by” credit, but tells Empire that including Palpatine in the film is “honestly something I never considered”. REVIEWS HIT (18 DECEMBER 2019) The reviews embargo lifts two days before the release. The film’s score on Rotten Tomatoes ultimately settles on 53 per cent, one of the few Star Wars films to earn a ‘Rotten’ rating. THE…

ON GROWING UP IN AN ACTING FAMILY DYNASTY “It was the family business. We always have Filipino family parties at my house, and my uncles [Darion and Dante Basco] were all in improv classes so they loved doing exercises with me and my siblings. When I auditioned [for Birds Of Prey], my dad [Derek Basco] was my acting coach. Sometimes my family is intimidating because we like to compete for jobs.” ON PLAYING CASSANDRA CAIN “[To prepare] I read comic books and based the character on Natalie Portman in Léon: The Professional and Taxi Driver. It’s been one long, fantastical dream. I remember watching DC movies with my friends. Now I’m in one!” ON BUILDING A MUSIC CAREER “I play the ukulele, piano and guitar. I’m working on an EP/…

START WITH A BIG QUESTION The initial idea for Soul , which will be the 23rd film from Pixar Animation Studios, came from a big, juicy, existential head-scratcher. “We were thinking about why we are here, and what our purpose in life is,” says Pete Docter, chief creative officer at Pixar and Soul’s director. “For example, I’ve always felt like I was born to be an animator. Could we question that? And that’s where this idea of souls came up.” From there, Docter — along with co-director Kemp Powers and their creative team — developed a story about a music teacher passionate about jazz named Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) who suddenly falls down a manhole, and finds his soul separated from his body. But instead of going to…

IT’S BEEN TWO years since women the world over said Time’s Up — and the impact is finally being felt on our screens, from Bombshell’s depiction of the Roger Ailes case, to The Morning Show tackling workplace sexual harassment on Apple TV+. Now 2020 brings Promising Young Woman , a revenge movie that turns the tables on so-called ‘nice guys’ with a stellar cast, genre know-how, and razor-edge wit. At its barbed heart is Carey Mulligan’s Cassie — a seemingly vulnerable woman who hangs around in nightclub corners where men invariably swoop in and take her home. Except, they’re not in for the night they thought they were. “I want the film to feel like a first date that’s going unbelievably well. It’s too good to be true, it feels…

“WHY DO BLACK people always have to be excellent?” asks Slim, Daniel Kaluuya’s character in Melina Matsoukas’ upcoming drama Queen & Slim . “Why can’t we just be us?” That question, posed with frustration and weariness, feels especially significant when you consider the challenging task of depicting the Black experience on screen. The film itself has been met with some criticism for being yet another film that depicts police brutality against Black people. But the film is not just another story of struggle. It’s also, crucially, an intimate Black love story — something which still feels like a rarity on the mainstream stage. We’re still at a stage where major Black releases have to worry about more than just being an entertaining film. Some filmmakers have skilfully managed to achieve…

OUT NOW (DVD) / CERT M / 122 MINS DIRECTOR Emilio Estevez CAST Emilio Estevez, Alec Baldwin, Christian Slater Some 35 years after The Breakfast Club, Emilio Estevez finds himself once again in a lock-in surrounded by books, this time as a librarian caught up in an occupation that turns a Cincinnati public library into a centre for the homeless. Written and directed by its star, The Public starts strong with a nice feel for its characters (well played by Estevez, Jena Malone as his right-on colleague, Taylor Schilling as his forward neighbour and Michael Kenneth Williams as the spokesman for the homeless), but once the protest begins leans too heavily on one-dimensional bad guys (Baldwin’s crisis negotiator, Slater’s wannabe mayor, Gabrielle Union’s reporter) to generate conflict and easy crowd-pleasing…

OUT 13 FEBRUARY / CERT MA15+ / 116 MINS DIRECTOR Agnieszka Holland CAST James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, Peter Sarsgaard The true story of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones (Norton) who travelled to Russia to expose Stalin’s deadly engineered famine, Agnieszka Holland’s history lesson is split into numerous parts. The first sees Jones entering a world of shady dealings and colourful characters (Sarsgaard’s creepy editor, Kirby’s cold writer) to find passage to Ukraine. This segues to an engrossing, almost wordless section as Jones tries to survive in Ukraine’s harsh landscape. Unflinching, non-sentimental, it doesn’t grip as it should — there’s an underpowered denouement and an unhelpful framing story about George Orwell (Joseph Mawle) writing Animal Farm — but it’s a timely reminder that journalists should go the extra mile for the truth.…

OUT 13 FEB CERT M / 131 MINS DIRECTOR Clint Eastwood CAST Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde PLOT Security guard Richard Jewell (Hauser) discovers a suspect package during a concert celebrating the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Although Jewell raises the alert, the pipe bomb goes off, killing one person and injuring 111. Initially hailed as a hero, Jewell becomes the chief suspect, turning his quiet existence into a living hell. RICHARD JEWELL ANSWERS the pressing question most of us have been asking since 2009: what if Paul Blart: Mall Cop were remade as a prestige picture? Clint Eastwood’s straight-down-the-middle drama about the security guard (Hauser) who saved countless lives by finding a pipe bomb during a concert celebrating the 1996 Summer Olympics continues…

OUT 13 FEBRUARY / CERT MA15+ / 98 MINS DIRECTOR Rachel Hirons CAST George MacKay, Alexandra Roach “Cobra, port, Ribena, milk.” The choice of beverage for the second date between Ryan (MacKay) and Laura (Roach) is just as confusing as every other part of the evening. Rachel Hirons’ debut feature as writer-director casts a firecracker duo who share a mutual attraction and an internal monologue set on ruining their chances. MacKay’s pure goodwill, eyes switching from charming to petrified, bounces off Roach’s energetic confidence. Slapstick moments of miscommunication convince, while a mildly convoluted twist expands the nightmare with an unwelcome third party. The film loses a sense of gravity when Hirons tries to balance too many tones and spin too many narratives, but still captures the millennial migraine of dating…

OUT NOW (DVD) CERT M / 132 MINS DIRECTOR Terry Gilliam CAST Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgård, Olga Kurylenko, Joana Ribeiro PLOT Film director Toby Grisoni (Driver) is shooting a slick, soulless commercial in Spain, not far from the village where he made his student short about Don Quixote a decade earlier. He returns to the small town for inspiration and re-meets Javier (Pryce), the cobbler he cast as Quixote who has come to believe he is the deluded nobleman. IN SOME WAY, just the fact that The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has made it to multiplexes should see it hailed as a triumph. Some 25 years in the making, Terry Gilliam’s passion project has seen every setback that could ever hit a movie. Location issues, cast injury…

COMING OFF THE back of The Winter Soldier, MCU’s grittiest, most down-to-earth instalment thus far, 2014’s gonzo follow-up was a huge roll of the dice. With a group of lesser-known characters including a talking raccoon and an ambulatory tree, Guardians... could have derailed the entire series. The opposite proved true. Dialling up the comedy with its punchy script and intergalactic crime capering, Guardians... was a breath of fresh air. In taking Marvel to the stars, Guardians... showed how much flex was in the superhero formula, and its unlikely band of galactic A-holes established themselves as the series’ most delightful heroes yet.…

FROM HIS GLORIOUSLY phallic name onwards, Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) is an exquisite creation. He is an eccentric genius, one of the great haute couture designers of the 1950s. But in this Paul Thomas Anderson-directed film, he is so much more: an absurd manchild, prone to tantrums and large breakfasts; a repository of preposterous quotes (“Are you a special agent sent here to ruin my evening and possibly my entire life?”); a means to explore grief, loneliness and toxic masculinity; and a stunning swan song for Day-Lewis in his apparent final role.…

ANG LEE’S WUXIA epic started a trend for sumptuous, spectacular martial-arts melodramas and forced action filmmakers to raise their game both in fight choreography and in sheer beauty. Two pairs of star-crossed lovers struggle for control of the legendary sword Green Destiny, and one another, leading to tragedy and disaster and some of the most indelible images of the century. The cast are uniformly superb, but it’s the greater team around them that really sells it. Peter Pau’s cinematography is a bath for your eyeballs, while Tan Dun’s drum-heavy score and Yo-Yo Ma’s cello echo in your skull. As if that weren’t enough, Yuen Woo-Ping’s fight choreography will make you believe that people can fly — we’ll just need a few kung fu lessons first.…

IT CAME OUT of nowhere, much like one of those giant oval spaceships it positions over Johannesburg. A first-time director, Neill Blomkamp; an unknown star, Sharlto Copley; a viral marketing campaign that repeatedly deployed the phrase “For Humans Only”. And when it landed, District 9 blew our heads off. The effects remain nifty and convincing, while the immigration-camp setting feels even more pertinent today. But the real reason it holds up is that it’s so damn fun, revelling in its sci-fi trappings, and throwing in crazy weaponry, mech-suits, cat-food-eating “prawns” and a blackly funny ending that still begs for a ‘District 10’.…

BREAKING MICHAEL CLAYTON down to brass tacks, it goes a little like this: a hotshot lawyer, who has lost his way, finds himself. Ugh. No thank you. We’ve had quite enough of those and, besides, what could possibly top, say, The Verdict? Well, thankfully, writer-director Tony Gilroy and star George Clooney — the men responsible for breaking Michael Clayton down to brass tacks — clearly agree and, as a result, Michael Clayton is much more than that. It’s not a legal thriller in the true sense of the term — there isn’t a courtroom in sight — but rather a character study of the eponymous Clayton, a fixer at a high-powered law firm who’s reached a crossroads in his life. Not because of a great ethical conflict or a sudden…

DENZEL WASHINGTON HAD, by and large, made his name playing straight shooters before taking on the role of Detective Alonzo Harris, a cop so corrupt that straight shooting is beyond him. Flamboyant in his villainy (this is a man who yells, “King Kong ain’t got shit on me!”, and you sense he believes it), as he puts his naive, idealistic new partner (Ethan Hawke) through hell, Alonzo is perhaps the sole reason why Antoine Fuqua’s thriller has made this list. Hawke is also excellent (and was Oscar-nominated), David Ayer’s script feels authentic, gritty and grimy, and Fuqua directs with an energy he’s never really come close to since. Even so, it’s Washington’s show. Without the Oscar-winning actor, it’s a solid thriller. With him, twinkling and malevolent, it’s a classic.…

BEFORE 1917, THERE was Birdman, a one-take wonder that kidnaps the breath. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s let’s-put-on-a-play drama sends Emmanuel Lubezki’s camera backstage at a theatre as former superhero actor Riggan Thomson (former superhero actor Michael Keaton) tries to stage a Raymond Carver adaptation as his life falls apart around him. The technical razzle-dazzle is off the chain, but Birdman also works on a purely emotional level, a piercing study of vanity and existential crisis. Although Emma Stone and Edward Norton offer fine support, this is Keaton’s show, a tour de force as he suffers the mother of all meltdowns. Stunning, unclassifiable cinema.…

JONATHAN GLAZER’S decade-in-the-making sci-fi is multifaceted and unnerving, featuring Scarlett Johansson in a performance of startling, nearly silent power. She stalks the rain-swept Glaswegian back roads in a van, using her powers of seduction to ensnare unassuming men. There she reveals her true form: an alien succubus, drowning humans in bone-melting, otherworldly goo. And though this alien seems to take on the form of a predatory woman, she soon learns what it means to inhabit a female body, with all the vulnerability that it entails. A chilling, deeply ambiguous science-fiction movie made for adults.…

FROM THE CHEEKY 8-bit Universal logo to the comic book-esque written sound effects to the storming garage-rock animated credits, it’s clear within minutes that Scott Pilgrim is different. It is different from any comic-book movie before or since (no fluttering capes here); it is different from any romantic comedy (forget love triangle, try love nonagon); and frankly, it is different from any Edgar Wright movie, the director working at a very different tempo. It didn’t garner big box office on release, but is now recognised for the strange, utterly distinct marvel that it is, a frenzied, caffeine-fuelled, surreal stew of action, romance and comedy, told in a video-game visual grammar better than any video-game movie ever managed. Plus: Vegan Police!…

MAKING JAMES BOND relevant in a new millennium was a tall order. Tackling Ian Fleming’s first 007 novel, Casino Royale eschewed Brosnan’s bonhomie and returned the character to his serious cold-blooded roots. Daniel Craig, crushing the #BondNotBlond naysayers, gave 007 a rugged masculinity syringed with a sensitivity (this Bond cries in the shower) that felt fresh. He was also pitted against a woman, Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd, who was as smart, funny and calculating as he was. This origin story starts with Bond earning his 00 status (in bold black-and-white) and throws in thrilling parkour action, a nail-biting card game, brutal hand-to-hand combat, a stunning Aston Martin flip and no gadgets. An object lesson in how to reboot a well-worn property.…

A NEED FOR SPEED While I enjoyed reading about Keanu Reeves and his movies (“The Ranking”, December 2019), I’d like to give a few thoughts on this matter. Speed has to be top – he owned that movie – but it’s hard not to argue with The Matrix at No. 1. My biggest issue is the omission of The Replacements [pictured above] – how can that movie not be in the conversation? It’s a great, funny sports movie with Keanu playing the quarterback hoping for a second chance. One which I’m happy to give you to rectify this mistake COLIN, VIA EMAIL We agree that Keanu has some fine films on his résumé that didn’t make the top 10, including 1986’s nihilistic-but-brilliant River’s Edge.…

ALSO KNOWN AS Jardani Jovonovich; Baba Yaga; The Boogeyman; Jonathan HEIGHT 6'1" STRENGTHS Killing people with guns. Killing people with knives. Killing people with books. Any kind of killing, really WEAKNESSES Not playing by the Continental rules LIKES Dogs. Secret coins. Guns...lots of guns DISLIKES Animal cruelty. Having his wife murdered. Oppressive assassin networks BEST QUOTE “Yeah...I’m thinking I’m back!” ALSO KNOWN AS Thomas Anderson; The One; “Missster Anderssson” HEIGHT 6'1" STRENGTHS Superhuman strength. Power of flight. Can stop bullets. Can look good even in leather WEAKNESSES His love for Trinity LIKES Red pills. Black leather. Guns...lots of guns DISLIKES Agent Smiths. Déjà vus. Oppressive simulated realities BEST QUOTE “Whoa!”…

2014’S FORCE MAJEURE , Ruben Östlund’s classy exploration of a fractured family dynamic, focused on a couple dealing with the aftermath of the man fleeing an avalanche, leaving his wife to protect their children. Chilling but bleakly comical, it was uniquely Scandinavian. Downhill , a US remake with Will Ferrell and Julia-Louis Dreyfus as the troubled pair, hopes to replicate that spirit, the A-list comic actors dialling up the yuks without sacrificing any thematic heft. “We like to mine pain for laughs,” says co-director Nat Faxon, who is making D ownhill with Jim Rash — their previous film was 2013’s coming-of-age dramedy The Way, Way Back . Empire is on a studio lot in Vienna soaking up the shoot, and the scene we’re watching has the couple psychologically unpacking the…

HORROR AND SOCIO-POLITICAL commentary have gone hand-in-hand for decades. Way back in 1968, George A. Romero’s classic Night Of The Living Dead was a racially charged satire — with zombies. But Jordan Peele’s game-changing 2017 horror Get Out (which cited Night Of The Living Dead as an influence) seems to have left an indelible mark on the genre. Get Out showed that there are still untapped demographics of horror-loving audiences, waiting to see themselves reflected in the terror on screen; it’s hard not to look at this upcoming crop of horrors and see the explosive influence of the Sunken Place in them. THE INVISIBLE MAN FEBRUARY Leigh Whannell’s reboot of the H.G. Wells character arrives next month (see page 84), refashioning a classic Universal monster into a Blumhouse social thriller…

IN 2018, CRAZY RICH ASIANS lived up to its title: a big, splashy studio romcom with an all-Asian cast, that racked up fat stacks of box office cash. Now that film’s director, Jon M. Chu, is back with In The Heights , a big-screen adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s pre- Hamilton stage show, set to bring a similar jolt of life to the movie musical. Set in the predominantly Latino-American community of Washington Heights in New York, the all-singing, all-dancing story of gentrification, generations and American dreams connected with Chu years before his smash-hit flick. “I’d never seen anything that spoke to me at such a level,” he recalls of the stage show. When a version of the movie script came his way, he took notice. “It became very clear that…

“MY FIRST DOCUMENTARY was about the riots,” says French-Malian filmmaker Ladj Ly, discussing France’s three-week unrest in 2005. He’s been chronicling reality for years, and Les Misérables , his thrilling debut dramatic feature, leans into his non-fiction background, the social issues he’s experienced, and his own life. Les Misérables — not an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel or the subsequent musical, the title just a nod to political parallels — follows an anti-crime police squad over 24 hours in Paris suburb Montfermeil. After a lion cub is stolen from a travelling circus, tensions rise, warring factions clash, and an uprising gets ugly. Ly, now 40, grew up in Montfermeil, the only person on the block with a video camera, and from 2002 he used it to film cop corruption. He…

OUT NOW CERT M / 142 MINS DIRECTOR J.J. Abrams CAST Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, Lupita Nyong’o, Billy Dee Williams PLOT Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) lives, and is threatening revenge on the galaxy via a huge fleet of planet-killing ships. The Resistance, and Rey (Ridley), must find the clues that will lead them to him and allow them to defeat him again. FOR THE THIRD time in many adults’ lifetimes, a conclusion of the Skywalker saga. Once again, a trilogy has built to this finale; once again, the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance. This one features no Sarlacc pit, nor is it as much of a step up from its predecessor as Revenge Of The Sith . But it does feel like a…

OUT 11 FEB (DVD) CERT TBC / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Takashi Miike CAST Masataka Kubota, Sakurako Konishi, Nao Ohmori, Shôta Sometani PLOT When young boxer Leo (Kubota) is diagnosed with a brain tumour, his life is suddenly cut short. He then runs into drug-addicted trafficked prostitute Yuri, also known as Monica (Konishi), who is embroiled in a plot planned by a cop and a yakuza wildcard (Sometani). As Leo and Monica attempt to outrun warring factions, things unravel. TAKASHI MIIKE’S WORK is never knowingly sane. The director of Audition and Ichi The Killer has always peddled anarchic, bloody violence — gross encounters of the absurd kind — and if First Love is anything to go by, he’s quite happy where he is. There is a decapitation two minutes into the…

OUT 12 MARCH CERT TBC / 132 MINS DIRECTOR Melina Matsoukas CAST Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Chloë Sevigny, Flea, Bokeem Woodbine, Indya Moore PLOT After a first date, a young Black man and woman (Kaluuya and Turner-Smith) are involved in a routine traffic stop. Things escalate, there is a tussle and the white policeman is killed. With no other option, these relative strangers — and sudden folk heroes — make a dangerous run for it. “WELL, IF IT isn’t the Black Bonnie and Clyde,” says tracksuited pimp Uncle Earl (Woodbine) midway through Queen & Slim , regarding our two fugitive protagonists with more than a little scenery-chomping relish. It is the sort of line that may as well come with a turn to the camera and a wink; an irresistible,…

OUT NOW CERT G / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Tom Hooper CAST James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, Francesca Hayward PLOT A cat named Victoria (Hayward) is abandoned in a London alleyway. There, she meets the ‘Jellicle cats’, who all attend the ‘Jellicle Ball’, hoping to earn the honour of the ‘Jellicle Choice’ which will transport them into the afterlife. But the ‘Napoleon Of Crime’, Macavity (Elba), has other plans. WHERE TO BEGIN with Cats ? Ever since it was announced that Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper would adapt the long-running Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, it’s become such joke fodder that it’s hard to see past the memes. So let’s focus on the positives first: this is, actually, a film with some…

OUT NOW CERT MA15+ / 109 MINS DIRECTOR Robert Eggers CAST Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe PLOT New England, the 1890s. Two lighthouse keepers arrive on a remote island for a month-long stretch of maintenance and solitude. But mysteries abound: both men harbour secrets, strange visions and hallucinations appear, and when relief doesn’t arrive, their grip on reality starts to loosen. EARLY ON IN The Lighthouse , director Robert Eggers’ dazzling, demented follow-up to The Witch , veteran lighthouse keeper Thomas Wake (Dafoe) recounts how the last keeper (or ‘wickie’, to use the naval parlance) went mad, after believing there was “some enchantment in the light”. Ephraim Winslow (Pattinson), the replacement wickie, scoffs at this. “Tall tales,” he says. The Lighthouse is itself a tall tale, the kind sailors might have…

1 PALPATINE’S PLAN James Dyer: If there’s a primary aspect of The Rise Of Skywalker that doesn’t bear scrutiny, it’s undoubtedly Palpatine’s master plan. The Sith Lord, having survived death thanks to a trick learned from former master Darth Plagueis, is whisked away to the Unknown Regions by the Sith Eternal (a Sith cult whose members form Palpatine’s audience — think Slipknot gig — at the film’s climax and are clearly numerous enough to build and crew hundreds of Star Destroyers), and spends three decades chilling on Exegol. Ian Freer: It has been Star Wars lore that there can be only two Sith: a master and an apprentice. Yet The Rise Of Skywalker introduces a new tenet — every apprentice kills their master and absorbs their mentor’s spirit. Hence Palpatine…

PRISON IS A place of evil and opportunity in Jacques Audiard’s startling picture, its title a dual portend of the possibilities for its hero, Malik (Tahar Rahim), a petty criminal whose crimes — and rewards — escalate once inside. Mentored by Niels Arestrup’s underworld overseer, Rahim, whose gauche features disguise ferocious determination, has killer ambition and manages to straddle two unlikely worlds: the Corsican Mafia and the Muslim community. While the genre tropes may be familiar, they’re refreshed by Audiard’s visual audacity and the ethnicity of the protagonist. As the director said at the time: “People have difficulty swallowing the fact that Malik is a survivor — but I think that’s because he’s an Arab character. They’re not used to seeing Arabs come out on top and they don’t like…

WITH BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and Adaptation, director Spike Jonze made a name for himself as a maker of weird, transgressive films that tease the boundaries of reality. By comparison, Her is his most mature and uncomplicated film, a straightforward romance with merely one little weird element: the romance is between a man (Joaquin Phoenix) and his mobile phone. What sounds like a gimmicky premise quickly becomes a profound and funny contemplation of love, priorities and what it means to be human. It’s gentle, near-future sci-fi, which grounds everything in a plausible reality and leaves us pondering the big questions. Like: will Siri ever understand flirting?…

BEFORE GRETA GERWIG slid into a director’s chair with effortless aplomb, she was best known for playing the lead in Frances Ha — or Frances Undateable to her roommates — the aimless but hugely affable 27-year-old dancer running riot in monochrome New York. Co-written by Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach (also directing here), her performance channels self-deprecating humour with a disarmingly sweet love story between two best friends, while intuitively capturing what it means to be young and longing for more. Catching our light-footed protagonist in a bohemian slipstream where irresponsible hipsters, money woes and furless cats co-reside, Frances Ha boasts a screenplay and a soundtrack for the ages, with an homage to David Bowie’s Modern Love that will leave you giddy.…

THE CAPSTONE OF Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy. Drunken foul-up Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is snatched off the street by an organisation, which offers a specialised service that is either kinder or crueller than assassination — for a price, they imprison clients’ enemies for set terms. Fifteen years later, Oh is let out…and starts to investigate the mystery of his unknown enemy, in whose coils he is still trapped. Remembered for standout bits — the scene where Choi has to eat a live octopus, or a single-shot corridor fight scene imitated by seemingly every subsequent action film or TV show — this also displays Park’s skill with complicated, slow-building mystery storylines that snap shut like mantraps on his characters.…

BEFORE SUNRISE, WHICH so perfectly conveyed the feeling of falling in love, was such a gem that a follow-up risked the chance of sullying a dream. Before Sunset, then, arrived with the enormous weight of expectation — but aced it. This one was about wish fulfilment. Meeting again nine years later, Jesse and Celine once more walked and talked and tumbled headlong into each other. More complex and less rose-tinted than the first film, it took our hearts hostage with its naturalism, with its purity, and with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke’s staggering chemistry. It scarred us as only films of such power can, hitting raw nerves, perhaps opening old wounds, taking us back to the rush of such moments in our own lives. Magic…

IT’S EASY TO forget in the afterglow of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood that Quentin Tarantino has previously drunk from the well of Sergio Leone film titles. Inglourious Basterds opens with a chapter called ‘Once Upon A Time In Nazi Occupied France’. And like OUATIH, Basterds courses with the belief that the movies can do anything, be it kill Hitler or save Sharon Tate. Yet here, the men-past-their-prime sadness is replaced with a joy in subverting historical fidelity and war-movie conventions. All in all, Tarantino’s seventh film might well be his most fun. The plot — Brad Pitt’s ruthless squad of Jewish US soldiers plan to assassinate the Führer at a movie premiere — eschews men-on-a-mission high jinks for trademark Tarantino stylings. Rather than action, it sets its stall…

ALFONSO CUARÓN’S AWARDS-season stormer is a monochrome masterpiece and his most personal and profound piece of work to date. Using Netflix’s pay cheque to recreate the 1970s Mexico City of his childhood in astonishing detail, Cuarón affectionately retells the stories of the women who raised him: Sofia (Marina de Tavira) is based on his mother Cristina, while maid Cleo was inspired by the house worker who cared for him during his formative years. Yalitza Aparicio plays the latter in a breathtakingly assured big-screen debut, bringing Cleo’s story of heartbreak and heroism to life with grace. Through her eyes, we see both political and environmental disasters (a violent street protest based on the Corpus Christi Massacre of 1971; a forest fire) unfold with devastating consequences, while both she and Sofia endure…