Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2016 i Empire

MYLES ARONOWITZ/NETFLIX 1 Created by Archie Goodwin and John Romita Sr in 1972, the super-strong and invulnerable Luke Cage was, explains showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker, “Marvel’s answer to Shaft.” But don’t expect the Marvel/ Netflix series to riff on the blaxploitation genre, as did original comic Luke Cage, Hero For Hire. “I felt there was a way to invoke some of the stuff Shaft represented in terms of masculinity, power and justice,” says Coker, “but at the same time give it a modern feel.” 2 Feeling uninspired by the original ’70s Luke Cage titles, Coker looked more to Brian Michael Bendis’ graphic-novel series Alias — on which last year’s Jessica Jones is based. “I grew up reading [Luke Cage comics] but there were very few times that character had the…

DON’T PLAN ON taking the kids to Sausage Party. It may be an animation, but the latest movie from the depraved minds of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg is for adults only. Part coming-of-age story, part horror, part filthy comedy, it’s a saga in which anthropomorphic foodstuffs learn that outside their safe, refrigerated world lies not a land of promise, but a savage one where their people are literally eaten alive. We asked Rogen and Goldberg to serve up the skinny on their cast of characters — their delicious, delicious characters. FRANK THE SAUSAGE __ SETH ROGEN Goldberg: It’s a hero’s journey for Frank. When we meet him, he suspects everything’s not right. Rogen: The sausages have been led to believe that if you stay in your package and behave,…

IF YOU HAPPEN to live in a small town in New Zealand — a Te Puke, perhaps, or a Taihape, or even a Tokoroa — you may have been lucky enough to witness a rare phenomenon. A car would have pulled up, and the driver, a grey-haired man with a beard, would have got out and stretched, before addressing the assembled population. And at some point you may have realised that the driver was actually Sam Neill, come to spread the gospel of Hunt For The Wilderpeople. “It was his own weird little press tour,” laughs Taika Waititi, the movie’s writer/director, of his star’s unusual promotional method. “He took it upon himself to rent a car and drove all around the country by himself, telling locals about this movie that…

FIRST LOOK EXCLUSIVE THE GREASY STRANGLER OUT 7 OCTOBER “PEOPLE SEEM QUITE assaulted by it,” muses Jim Hosking, director of festival hit The Greasy Strangler. “Some find it very funny, but others look shell-shocked. I’m not sure why I find that surprising. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. That’s definitely possible.” The film — both hilarious and deeply gonzo — involves loser Brayden (Sky Elobar) and his homicidal dad Ronnie (Michael St. Michaels), who lathers himself in fat before kill-sprees and frequently exposes his penis. There is farting, psychotic disco-dancing and a twisted monologue about Michael Jackson. It’s not one for your gran. Perhaps surprisingly, Hosking is a well-spoken, amiable Brit. “Someone said it’s like Steptoe & Son on a psychedelic substance,” he says. “But there’s loads of stuff in…

YOU’RE UNLIKELY TO see him on the Oscar red carpet, yet Benjamin is one of 2016’s most interesting filmmakers — because he’s a machine. Built last year in New York as a smartphone AI by ‘creative technologist’ Ross Goodwin, he was fed a mass of sci-fi scripts, including Independence Day and Alien, and asked to create one of his own. Director Oscar Sharp shot the result over 48 hours, struggling slightly with stage directions such as, “He is standing in the stars and sitting on the floor.” Running nine minutes long, Sunspring is set on a space station and stars Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley). It features no extra-terrestrials, although characters do vomit eyeballs ( just like in The Neon Demon!). As for the dialogue (“I think I could have been…

OUT 12 AUGUST CERT TBC / TBC MINS DIRECTOR David Lowery CAST Bryce Dallas Howard, Oakes Fegley, Wes Bentley, Karl Urban, Oona Laurence, Robert Redford PLOT After his parents die in a car accident, toddler Pete is raised in the woods by a big friendly dragon. Six years later, their happy existence is upended when people from the local town discover Pete (Fegley) and try to take him back to civilisation. PERHAPS REMEMBERED MORE with a hazy affection than any kind of passion, 1977’s Pete’s Dragon was second-tier Disney — a mix of live action, animation, horrible acting and humdrum songs. It was a fun idea — a lonely boy makes friends with a dragon — but one that wasn’t properly fleshed out. As such, it’s an ideal target —…

OUT 19 AUGUST CERT 12A / 116 MINS DIRECTOR Brady Corbet CAST Bérénice Bejo, Liam Cunningham, Robert Pattinson, Tom Sweet PLOT France, 1918. When a US diplomat (Cunningham), his wife (Bejo) and young son (Sweet) decamp to France for the Versailles treaty negotiations, it’s not long before the boy’s behaviour takes a dark turn. A HISTORICAL STUDY set partly in a fictional world, 27 year-old Brady Corbet’s directing debut is impressive, unsettling and elusive. It’s a family drama in which the family in question barely functions and a period parable about the rise of fascism that feels seriously current. Opening with a Pathé-style montage showing the end of World War I and the beginning of the Versailles peace conference, we meet its central characters in familiar terrain. Liam Cunningham’s gruff…

OUT 26 AUGUST CERT 15 / 99 MINS DIRECTOR Pedro Almodóvar CAST Emma Suárez, Adriana Ugarte, Rossy de Palma, Daniel Grao, Inma Cuesta, Michelle Jenner PLOT Julieta (Suárez) plans to move out of Madrid with her boyfriend, but stays when she hears news of her daughter Antía, whom she hasn’t seen in years. As Julieta searches for her, flashbacks show how young Julieta (Ugarte) met Antía’s father. LOVE, LOSS, MELODRAMA and a dash of camp: Julieta is unmistakably the work of iconic Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. Although not as crazy and frenetic as the likes of 1988’s Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown — the film that made his name on the international scene — it’s instead closer in spirit to 1999’s All About My Mother, centred around…

OUT 12 AUGUST CERT 15 / 93 MINS DIRECTOR Todd Solondz CAST Greta Gerwig, Zosia Mamet, Danny DeVito, Ellen Burstyn, Julie Delpy, Tracy Letts PLOT A dachshund is bought by a dad (Letts) to cheer up his sick son, but the arrangement doesn’t work out. Then she makes her way across the country and through several different eccentric owners, from a vet’s assistant to a screenwriter, all experiencing a range of miseries. TODD SOLONDZ HAS built a career on making his audiences squirm, nudging them to laugh at things that are at best sad, and at worst horrifying. Whether it’s a teenage girl’s clumsy requests for love being cruelly refused in Welcome To The Dollhouse or a boy having a frank chat about his paedophile father’s intentions in Happiness, Solondz…

NETFLIX OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED ALL SHOWRUNNER Raphael Bob-Waksberg CAST Will Arnett, Amy Sedaris, Alison Brie, Paul F Tompkins, Aaron Paul PLOT Former star of beloved sitcom Horsin’ Around BoJack Horseman (Arnett) has spent 20 years in the Hollywood Hills, desperate for a return to the spotlight. But after years of self-loathing, drunken nights and career sabotage, can an Oscar nomination finally give the horse a sense of worth? WELCOME TO HOLLYWOO, a version of Los Angeles where humans and humanoid animals coexist, a cat called Princess Carolyn manages a depressive, alcoholic horse actor named BoJack, and no-one bats so much as an eyelid about any of it. The screwball creation of writer and comedian Raphael Bob-Waksberg (and his animator collaborator Lisa Hannawalt), unlike many animated comedies BoJack Horseman has…

OUT NOW FORMATS: PS3, PS4, XB1, 360, Wii U, 3DS VITA DIRECTORS Jamie Eden CAST Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill PLOT Luke Skywalker has vanished. Princess Leia has sent her best pilot to Jakku in search of clues, meanwhile Kylo Ren leads the First Order on the dark side. Finn, a Stormtrooper deserter, and Rey, a scavenger waif, are whipped into the centre of the drama, which now involves bricks. Lots of bricks. YOU COME EXPECTING the youthful exuberance of Finn, Rey and BB-8 and instead you’re treated to a thick shot of greatest hits nostalgia. The first 30 minutes of LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a victory lap of every battlefront featured in Return Of The Jedi’s Battle Of Endor.…

ONE HOT SUMMER’S night in 2014, David Ayer had a dream. A bad one. “There was a black pool of oil, with a human shape rising out of it,” he remembers. “All shiny and covered with liquid.” As the hulking figure loomed towards him, oil dripping from its misshapen body, Ayer saw it was coated with what appeared to be frogspawn. Then a moment of realisation: those were eyeballs all over it. Staring at him. He woke with a start. And instead of calling a therapist, he smiled. “I’m a veteran of weird dreams,” the director says. “It takes a lot to rattle me.” In fact, a major problem had just been solved. The next morning he drove onto the Warner Bros lot in Burbank, strode into the pre-production…

THE AGGRESSION FROM ISIL was escalating. By spring 2014, the terrorist group was a global threat, so President Obama gathered his advisers to discuss the next step. He gave them a scenario. “There’s a scene in the beginning in which the gang leaders of Gotham are meeting,” said Obama. “These are men who had the city divided up. They were thugs, but there was a kind of order. Everyone had his turf. And then the Joker comes in and lights the whole city on fire. ISIL is the Joker. It has the capacity to set the whole region on fire. That’s why we have to fight it.” Yep, there’s your President of the United States of America talking about Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, comparing one of the world’s biggest…

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO WITH A SCANT SENSE OF WHAT SHE WAS starting, Sharon Maguire — first-time director, sweary broad and friend of acclaimed author Helen Fielding — brought Bridget Jones to our screens. Renée Zellweger was Bridget: a single woman trying to navigate work, friendship and sex in her thirties, while Colin Firth and Hugh Grant battled for her affection. It was a surprise smash, and three years later in 2004, the sequel, The Edge Of Reason, hit cinemas minus Maguire. While it managed a respectable box office, it was bruised by critics, many of whom missed the filmmaker’s touch. In the decade since there have been births (Maguire), Oscars (Firth) and a six-year career break (Zellweger). Now, with the addition of Patrick Dempsey as new romantic complication Jack (though…

AUGUST Dangling a honey dripper over his cup of coffee, Michael Keaton is telling Empire how an owl kept him awake last night. “I turn on the light because I can hear what sounds like calling,” he says, ferrying his drink to our table in a bustling Livingston, Montana café. “I keep a door open by my bed to let air in at night, so I look over and he’s there, just watching.” Those arched eyebrows go up and the head turns, mimicking a haughty winged intruder. “I’m like, ‘Dude, come on.’ And then suddenly he flew away. But he didn’t go too far. He just sat in the yard, called to another owl and kept me up.” If the Birdman star sees any extra significance in the fact that…

COSTUME The costumes when I was playing Hannibal. They were hand-tailored suits, and there was a fantastic one with a Scottish pattern in reddish and grey. It was so gorgeous [creator] Bryan Fuller had one made for himself. It’s so good for the film, but my badminton outfit in Men & Chicken. It highlights my incredible skinny legs and looked like something from the ’70s. That was the idea, but I wouldn’t bring it back home. AUDITION For King Arthur, I had to do a Shakespearean monologue sitting on a horse. I had a hard time understanding what that scene was about, so to everybody's shock, apparently, I stopped and asked the director [Antoine Fuqua]. People seemed to like that I had the balls to do that. I did one…

THERE ARE SOME people who believe that no great sitcom exceeds a dozen episodes. This year, The Big Bang Theory reached its 200th episode, long surpassing that fabled number 12 along with other televisual disasters like Friends, Dad’s Army, The Office: An American Workplace, Peep Show, Porridge, Steptoe And Son, Roseanne, Only Fools And Horses, Seinfeld, The IT Crowd and Cheers. It was a pretty good episode, too, maintaining the show’s unique balance of warmth and waspishness while adding a note of unexcessive self-celebration. The show’s initial premise was an interesting one that seemed hard to sustain — a group of nerds, who were scientists by day, spend the rest of their time obsessing about Star Wars, Star Trek, comics and girls. Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Howard (Simon Helberg), Raj (Kunal…

TRAVIS KNIGHT, HEAD of animation studio Laika, likes to quote a line from director Zhang Yimou. “He said that every boy wants either a train-set or to make a martial-arts movie,” Knight says. “And I never had a train-set.” So when character designer Shannon Tindle suggested they make a film set in the far East, his face lit up. “A sweeping stop-motion samurai epic is something we’ve never seen before. It just exploded with possibilities.” Of course, this being Laika, the people behind such winningly off-beat movies as Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls, this isn’t just Kurosawa with puppets. The hero of Kubo And The Two Strings is a boy (Art Parkinson), who starts off as a street entertainer, using a samisen (a kind of Eastern banjo) to bring origami…

“PABLO DIES.” TWO words, stark white on black, right at the heart of Narcos’ advertising campaign for Season 2. The Netflix docudrama, which during its first season charted the rise of Colombian ‘narco-terrorist’ Pablo Escobar by mixing real footage with lightly fictionalised events, has always embraced its true-life roots. So it’s not about to play the ‘spoiler warning’ game. Medellín Cartel head Escobar is the most toweringly infamous figure of the War On Drugs, and his death was one of that conflict’s defining events. Why try to hide it? No narrative twist is going to spare this show’s main character. “Pablo dies, yeah,” shrugs Wagner Moura, the Brazilian actor who learned to speak fluent Spanish (in Medellín, no less) and put on 46lbs to play the Colombian kingpin. That he…

A COMMUTE-BASED murder mystery, The Girl On The Train follows the events that transpire when alcoholic Rachel (Emily Blunt) sees something shocking out of a train window on her way to the office. “I’ve been calling it a ‘driller’ — a dramatic thriller,” laughs director Tate Taylor. “It has suspense, but it’s also a deep character piece. The lead character is just heartbreaking.” In Paula Hawkins’ hit novel, the tale takes place in and around London. The movie shifts the action to New York, but Rachel remains a Brit. “I wanted Emily to be in The Help [which he directed in 2011], but she wasn’t available,” says Taylor. “For this I decided to let her keep her accent, as a wink to the novel and to add to her isolation.…

FOR DECADES, MOST Disney princesses seemed to hang out together in a vague version of Europe. Directors Ron Clements and John Musker have bucked the trend twice before, with Aladdin and The Princess And The Frog, and now their latest, Moana, is set halfway around the world, among the island nations of the Pacific. Chieftain’s daughter Moana (newcomer Auli’i Cravalho) lives on the fictional island of Motunui, and wishes to become a great navigator like her ancestors. There’s just one problem: ‘wayfinders’ haven’t had a place in her society for a thousand years. She needs help, and finds it in the marooned Maui (Dwayne Johnson), a demi-god with a history of great exploits who has been stuck in one remote spot for a millennium. “The heart of the movie is…

STOP US IF you’ve heard this one before. A group of people are trapped in a single location with a genetically superior being that has violent designs on them. And it’s directed by a Scott. “Yes, there are comparisons with Alien,” laughs Luke Scott, director of Morgan and son of Ridley. “But it’s not the same kind of fear. It’s not a horror, but it is very violent.” Morgan — the film — tells the tale of a risk analyst (Kate Mara) summoned to a remote retreat to assess an incredible scientific breakthrough. Morgan — the character — is an artificial human being. Although she’s just five years old, her cells have been enhanced and equipped for accelerated growth, so she looks like a teenager. “She’s a genetic facsimile of…

ON-SET EXCLUSIVE THE CROWN OUT 4 NOVEMBER “WE WANT THIS to be the Harry Potter of British TV,” says Andy Harries, exec producer of The Crown. It won’t feature the Queen turning people into boggarts or conjuring a patronus but, looking around the set, it’s clear what Harries means. In Ely Cathedral, which is playing Westminster Abbey in the wedding of Elizabeth II (Claire Foy) and Philip Mountbatten (Matt Smith), a scan of the congregation reveals Jared Harris (King George VI), Eileen Atkins (Queen Mary), Greg Wise (Lord Mountbatten) and Harriet Walter (Clementine Churchill). As with Potter, this latest Netflix series, which at a cost of more than £100 million is reported to be its most expensive ever, has attracted the cream of British acting talent. And this is only…

OUT NOW CERT 12A / 122 MINS DIRECTOR Justin Lin CAST Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin PLOT After answering a distress call in deep space, the Starship Enterprise is drawn into a trap by the mysterious Krall (Elba). Stranded on a barren planet, can Captain Kirk (Pine) and his crew find a way to save the universe? ROSES RARELY LOSE their bloom as quickly as Star Trek Into Darkness. Well received upon its initial release, JJ Abrams’ sequel has since undergone a recalibration and a re-evaluation. It was famously voted worst Trek movie ever by one group of Trekkers, and has been criticised for being too dark, for its karaoke-style riffing on previous Trek films such as…

OUT 26 AUGUST CERT 15 / 102 MINS DIRECTOR David Mackenzie CAST Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gil Birmingham PLOT With their mother recently deceased and their family’s West Texas farm facing foreclosure, two brothers — ex-con Tanner (Foster) and divorced dad Toby (Pine) — embark on an audacious bank-robbing spree to raise some cash. The only thing in their way? A wily Texas Ranger (Bridges) and his put-upon partner. MIDWAY THROUGH HELL Or High Water there’s a shot of a Stetson-wearing cowpoke unhitching his horse at a gas station as a lime-green abomination straight out of Pimp My Ride rolls into view. It’s a throwaway moment and you could argue that it’s as subtle as, well, a tricked-out muscle car, but that juxtaposition of old and new is…

OUT 10 AUGUST CERT 15 / 98 MINS DIRECTOR Jake Szymanski CAST Zac Efron, Anna Kendrick, Adam Devine, Aubrey Plaza PLOT With their sister’s wedding approaching, Mike (Devine) and Dave (Efron) are forced into finding respectable dates for the big day. They ultimately settle on Tatiana (Plaza) and Alice (Kendrick) — but it soon becomes clear the girls are far from good choices. “I’M REALLY DUMB,” says Mike (Devine), during a confessional moment in Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates. It’s hard not to feel like he’s speaking on behalf of the movie itself. In both concept and execution, it wears its idiocy on its sleeve proudly, and hammers home its raunchiness with the gusto of a teenage boy. It’s a sex comedy with plenty of the former and not…

OUT NOW CERT 12A / 116 MINS DIRECTOR Paul Feig CAST Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Chris Hemsworth, Andy Garcia, Charles Dance, Neil Casey PLOT When ghosts suddenly start appearing around Manhattan, three scientists (and a subway worker) form a team to try to find out what’s causing it. But as City Hall attempts to keep the increase in paranormal activity under wraps, it’s not only the spirits the group have to contend with. IT’S SAID THERE’S no such thing as bad publicity. Paul Feig may well disagree. Since his version of Ghostbusters was announced in 2014, the ill will being bashed into internet comment sections has been unprecedented — the first trailer even gained the dubious distinction of being the most disliked trailer on YouTube. It…

SKY ATLANTIC STARTS 9PM, 26 JULY EPISODES VIEWED 1-5 SHOWRUNNER Stephen Levinson CAST Dwayne Johnson, Rob Corddry, John David Washington, Omar Miller, Donovan W Carter PLOT Spencer Strasmore (Johnson) — NFL star-turned-financial manager to elite American Football players — continues to make his way up Miami’s glitzy corporate ladder. The only thing standing in his way? Accident-prone clients, a possible addiction to painkillers and a rival money man with a serious grudge (Andy Garcia). WITH THE MASSED corpses of the Game Of Thrones finale in sight and the quiet euthanisation of muddled rock drama Vinyl, there’s an argument that Ballers, unexpectedly enough, could emerge as one of HBO’s most sustainable hits. Starring Dwayne Johnson (and made by his fledgling production company), the debut series of this flashy sports dramedy proved…

A PENCIL “How about a magic trick? I’m gonna make this pencil… disappear,” says Heath Ledger’s Joker to a table of Mob bosses in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. You know what happens next. Into the eye of a goon it goes. Screenwriter Jonathan Nolan came up with the idea, and the director was unsure of its potential effectiveness. Ledger, though, insisted it stayed. Magic, indeed. JOY BUZZER Fitting snugly in the palm, no murderous clown should leave home without one. “It’s my lethal Joker buzzer!” says Cesar Romero’s Joker in 1966, and lethal it is. Nicholson’s Joker burns a Mob boss to death with it, while in 1991 comic Robin II: Joker’s Wild #1 he kills Mr Freeze with one, squealing, “Adios, glacier face!” ACID FLOWER Not just for…

© TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMENT LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. WHEN THE TERMINATOR CLIMBED up the 1984 box office and established James Cameron’s name, the director held a meeting to pitch his follow-up. In attendance were three producers — David Giler, Walter Hill and the late Gordon Carroll — whose outfit Brandywine had produced Alien. The trio were expecting the works from the young Canadian: a hard sell, perhaps a draft budget, maybe a slideshow. In walked Cameron, not so much as a sheet of A4 about his person. He strode to a chalkboard and wrote “ALIEN” in capital letters. Pausing to allow the perplexed producers to take that in, he added an “S”. Another pause, and Cameron drew another line — “ALIEN$”. And grinned. “We greenlit the project that…

00:02:25 HAIR OF THE DOG __ The film opens with Tom Hiddleston’s Dr. Robert Laing chowing down on some prize pooch. After the dog/knitting needle interface in Sightseers, does Wheatley have anything against man’s best friend? “No, it features heavily in the book!” he laughs. “There’s an equal amount of dog and cat death in the book, but Jeremy Thomas, the producer, is a cat lover and told me not to kill any cats in this movie.” 00:04:43 THE GIF THAT KEEPS ON GIFFING __ The scene that launched a thousand GIFs, as Sienna Miller’s Charlotte spies on a sunbathing Laing, and we almost — almost — catch a glimpse of Tom’s Hiddlestones. “It’s in the book, so it’s not gratuitous,” insists Wheatley with a smile. The tome Laing uses…

HERE’S A DIAMOND absolute, just like the ones Bruce Wayne wangs on about in the opening voiceover of Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice. Zack Snyder’s movie was, to put it mildly, a disappointment upon its release in March. Shunned by many critics (it ranks just 27 per cent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes), it also underwhelmed at the box office. It seems faintly ludicrous to apply that label to a movie that made $872 million worldwide, but $872 million is a long way short of a billion dollars, and Warner Bros did not bring together its most iconic and lucrative superheroes to make anything less than a billion. There was even a fan petition — there are always petitions — lobbying Warner Bros to fire Snyder from his job…

ALEX COX’S SID & NANCY is often held up as the quintessential document on the ill-fated romance of punk icons Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, but its director — and former Moviedrome host — maintains his heroin-curdled love story is truly a study in self-destruction. To his eyes, Vicious, the erstwhile and, frankly, talentless Sex Pistols bassist (aped with uncanny levels of stupefied gurning by Gary Oldman) is ultimately more fool than icon. The film’s depiction of his deep dive into drugs, fuelled by a tempestuous relationship with American junkie Spungen (a squalling, vivid bottle-blonde Chloe Webb) is a morality tale staggering into tragedy. Thirty years on, Cox shares his thoughts on this iconic couple. SID Cox was in Los Angeles, studying film at UCLA, when he discovered Sid Vicious.…

“LOOKING BACK ON it,” reflects director Joe Wright, “it was a crazy idea, but outside of getting married and having children, that was the most exciting day I have ever had.” As scripted, Atonement’s surreal Dunkirk sequence involved 40 different set-ups. But with one day to shoot, Wright knew he didn’t have time for that. So this celebrated Steadicam shot, five-and-a-half minutes long, tracking James McAvoy’s Robbie, was the result of pure necessity. With Dunkirk too modernised, Redcar on the Yorkshire coast provided the expanse of beach, and a row of houses that resembled period France. Moreover, with high unemployment and few prospects, movie productions were particularly welcome. “It is probably entirely ego-inflation,” admits producer Paul Webster, “but we felt we were doing a lot of good there.” They recruited…

1 What’s the name of your character in Wild Bill? Mysterious Barry. The producer put that credit on because someone called Barry gets mentioned a couple of times and you never know who the fuck he is. I’m only in it for a second, buying crack. In a mysterious way. Correct. 2 In which movie do you say, “I’m a big movie star now”? All of them, but only in my head. I said it out loud in Bugsy Malone. It’s the one line that wasn’t in the script. Alan Parker told me to use it on the day, saying, “When you get to this bit look in the camera.” I’d been told never to look at the camera. As a kid you get that drummed into you. Correct. 3…

FIRST LOOK KONG: SKULL ISLAND OUT 10 MARCH, 2017 YOU’VE SEEN SKULL Island on screen before. But never like this. Kong: Skull Island re-imagines the mysterious location, which first appeared in 1933’s King Kong, as a beautiful hellscape, teeming with alien creatures. “There are jungles, sulphur pits, bamboo forests, a variety of different environments that are both wondrous and incredibly dangerous,” says producer Alex Garcia. At the behest of director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, cast and crew trekked to remote areas in Hawaii and Australia, before heading to Vietnam. “We wanted places with an otherworldly feel,” Vogt-Roberts says. “It was so important to be able to put the actors in a tactile space.” Vietnam plays a major role in the movie’s story too. Skull Island takes place in 1973, just as the…

ON-SET EXCLUSIVE FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM OUT 18 NOVEMBER INSIDE A RITZY New York department store, all hell is breaking loose. Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) has just slid across the floor at breakneck speed. Her sister, Queenie (Alison Sudol), is cowering in a storeroom, a silver punch bowl atop her head. And next to her is baker Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), limbs flailing. Despite all the evidence, Empire is not watching the Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them characters navigate a clearance sale, but a situation even more stressful. Magical creatures have escaped throughout the city, and several have ended up here, causing havoc with the Christmas displays. “There’s a lot of mayhem happening,” confirms Sudol when the scene is wrapped, bowl now removed from bonce.…

FIRST LOOK EXCLUSIVE WONDER WOMAN OUT 2 JUNE, 2017 ONLY ONE CHARACTER in Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice drew near-universal praise, skipping the brooding of her teammates for straight-up brawling. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, aka Diana Prince, combined ferocity in battle with serious civilian cool (not to mention a kick-ass theme), building serious excitement for her stand-alone outing. “Wonder Woman is tonally very different from Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad,” promises producer Charles Roven, who worked on Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy before this interlinked Justice League era. “It took us a while to get the script really working, but once Patty [Jenkins, director] came aboard, things started to click. You have to give these characters problems the audience doesn’t see coming.” Diana’s particular problem is culture shock.…

YES JONATHAN PILE, DEPUTY EDITOR BE HONEST. DID anyone expect Jon Snow to die during the Battle Of The Bastards? Even at his lowest ebb, when he was being crushed under the weight of countless corpses, it simply wasn’t going to happen. Especially as he’d only just been brought back to life seven episodes earlier. Speaking of which, did anyone expect Jon to stay dead after he was betrayed by the Night’s Watch at the end of Season 5? Of course not. For two episodes he lay cold and lifeless on a slab, but it mattered not – it couldn’t last. The question was really about how he’d come back, rather than if. (Most people guessed Melisandre, and most people were proven right.) So here’s the issue: there’s now an…

THERE ARE MANY reasons why filmmakers choose to make a film: personal expression, a change of pace, career advancement, the chance to drench Elle Fanning in fake blood. But when Todd Komarnicki’s Sully screenplay landed on Clint Eastwood’s desk (probably solid oak), the 86 year-old director-actor-composer-icon said yes for a far simpler reason. “I read it and I liked it,” explains Eastwood with trademark economy. “And then I started on it the next day.” Not a Monsters, Inc spin-off about furry blue heffalumps, the film details a thrilling and uplifting event from recent history. On 15 January 2009, US Airways flight 1549, carrying 155 passengers, was struck by a flock of geese. The impact took out power in both of the plane’s jet engines. Deciding they wouldn’t be able to…

OUT 26 AUGUST CERT 15 / 86 MINS DIRECTOR Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone CAST Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, Sarah Silverman, Tim Meadows PLOT The life of superstar musician Conner4Real (Samberg) appears to be a charmed one, filled with groupies, screaming crowds and sacks of cash. But trouble is on the horizon in the form of a scheming rapper (Chris Redd), a disastrous merchandise deal and a swarm of killer bees. THE SPIRIT OF This Is Spinal Tap looms large over the latest comedy from the Lonely Island crew. Like Rob Reiner’s masterpiece, it’s a mockumentary following three likeable idiots as they navigate the choppy waters of the music biz. There is even an update of Tap’s ‘Shit Sandwich’ scene, as Conner4Real (Andy Samberg) checks out reviews of his…

OUT 26 AUGUST CERT TBC / 105 MINS DIRECTOR James DeMonaco CAST Elizabeth Mitchell, Frank Grillo, Mykelti Williamson, Joseph Julian Soria PLOT America, 2025. As public sentiment rises against the Purge, ruling class the New Founding Fathers Of America target Presidential candidate Charlotte Roan (Mitchell), who’s lobbying to end the annual lawless mayhem. She’ll need help from Leo Barnes (Grillo) if she’s to survive the night. WITH HIS SCARY vision of a near-future United States where all crime is legal for one night in order to keep the peace the rest of the year, writer/director James DeMonaco has crafted a successful, thrifty franchise. As real-world America slides further into electoral madness, the latest Purge feels more apt than ever, even as it ramps up the terrifying politics and the slow-motion…

NETFLIX OUT 15 JULY EPISODES VIEWED ALL SHOWRUNNER Shawn Levy CAST Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Millie Bobby Brown, Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Matthew Modine PLOT Rural Indiana, P98R. When a boy vanishes, his family, the local police chief and his friends all help with the search. Could a local US government facility and a mysterious girl with telekinetic powers know more? SPOILER: yes. IF THE ICONIC films of the era are to be believed, you couldn’t go outside your door in ’80s America without running into something supernatural — be it a stranded alien, an ancient Native American burial ground, or a demonic clown that turns into a spider. And okay, technically that last one’s neither a film nor from the ’80s (it’s a…

JOEL KINNAMAN RICK FLAG “You go in with some expectations because it’s a superhero movie. But there is so much edge to this, while also having levity. David’s a mad genius.” ADEWALE AKINNUOYEAGBAJE KILLER CROC “Always keep one eye open when Croc’s around, because you might lose an arm.” VIOLA DAVIS AMANDA WALLER “I always want to be hip: that’s why I did a Tyler Perry movie and the cover of Jet magazine. But this is the hippest thing I’ve done.” WILL SMITH DEADSHOT “Every once in a while you get a group of people with magic chemistry. When you throw a couple of Aussies in, it’s like adding spice, this special seasoning that makes the whole thing taste better.” JARED LETO THE JOKER “There was a lot of laughter…

NOEL WEARS T-SHIRT: DUCK AND COVER. SWEATER: ORLEBAR BROWN. JEANS: ANTONY MORATO. BELT: ANTONY MORATO. TRAINERS: ANTONY MORATO NOEL WEARS T-SHIRT: : DUCK AND COVER. SWEATER: PRADA. BELT: ANTONY MORATO. TRAINERS: ADIDAS THERE ARE SCREAMS IN THE PLAYGROUND It’s a bitter December night, and Kensington Memorial Park has been transformed into an unlikely urban battlefield. As various crew play on the swings, Noel Clarke is choreographing a fight with actor Jack McMullen. Clarke’s armed with a fake nail gun. McMullen’s terrified cries sound sharply authentic. After a few rehearsals, Clarke switches from directing to acting. Off goes the cable-knit jumper. On comes Sam Peel’s signature streetwear. He flips his hood up, like an inner-city Jedi, and, with the Steadicam hunting behind him, rages into McMullen. A killer in Kidulthood,…

AS A BOY during World War II, Jean-Paul Rappeneau went to see a production of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play, Cyrano de Bergerac, at the Comédie-Française. “The provincial young boy I was discovered Paris, the theatre and Cyrano all at once,” he recalled. “It was the kind of shock one never quite gets over.” When a 1983 production at the Théâtre Mogador got film producers excited — especially since the play was finally in the public domain — Rappeneau, now firmly established in the French film industry, saw his chance to turn it into a film. It took a few years, but when his adaptation hit the screen in 1990, the result was a glorious tale of unrequited love and near-suicidal bravery told through flowery, passionate dialogue. Despite his enthusiasm for…

ACCORDING TO JEAN-LUC Godard: “Film begins with DW Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami.” Kiarostami started out making films for children in Iran, either side of the Islamic Revolution. But he became a sly commentator on his restrictive society through witty and wise studies of ordinary people. Blurring fact and fiction, his style is deceptively simple but daringly subversive. He passed away in July aged 76, leaving behind an astonishing body of work. THE TRAVELLER (1974) Obsessive pursuits fascinated Kiarostami and his feature debut explores the resourceful amorality of provincial tweenager Hassan Darabi, as he connives to raise money to see a football game in Tehran. Having made shorts for young audiences, Kiarostami playfully presents this neo-realist fable from the perspective of a scamp with a burning sense of frustration…

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING __ (1966) CHARACTER: LIEUTENANT YURI ROZANOV, A WARMHEARTED RUSSIAN SUBMARINE COMMANDER The highlight of my life. All my life I’d wanted to be a film actor, and that was my first film. Norman Jewison fostered such a sense of community and trust, and had such a love of actors. They’d offered the part of Rozanov to Peter Ustinov. I owe my career in film to the fact he had made too much money the previous year and turned it down. INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU __ (1968) CHARACTER: INSPECTOR JACQUES CLOUSEAU, INCOMPETENT FRENCH POLICEMAN That was a terrible mistake. Peter [Sellers] didn’t want to do it, I got offered it and said, ‘Sure, I can do the accent and I’ll spitball it as I go…

#2 DRIVE THE IDEA OF The First Take Club is simple. Every month, we ask someone to select a film that they haven’t seen from Empire’s 301 Greatest Movies Of All Time list (published in 2014). They correct this egregious oversight by watching it, then tell us what they thought. This month, Kieron Gillen — writer of cutting-edge comic books such as The Wicked & The Divine , Phonogram and Marvel’s Darth Vader solo title — gets his teeth, eyes and ears into a little movie that finished 49th on the list. It launched its director, Nicolas Winding Refn, into the mainstream, sent its star, Ryan Gosling, into the stratosphere, and made leather jackets with…

“When I first watched Joel and Ethan Coen’s Raising Arizona on VHS in the late ’80s, I rewound it immediately and started all over again,” says Edgar Wright. “This moment where John Goodman and William Forsythe muddle their words as they bungle their way through a bank robbery is a truly classic scene that subverts every movie stick-up ever.” INT. BANK — DAY Evelle [Forsythe] and Gale [Goodman] burst through the door of the Farmers And Mechanics Bank of La Grange. Evelle is carrying the Arizona baby in a carry chair. Both have shotguns. GALE: Alright, you hayseeds, it’s a stick-up! We see the bank — an old wooden building that’s seen better days — only has a few customers, none of whom quite seem to know what to do.…