Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i Empire

A SCENIC SPOT nestled in the Irish Sea, the Isle Of Man is famous mainly for its TT race and cats with no tails. On-screen glory has so far eluded it, except occasionally as a surrogate for Georgian England. “They were delighted because this was, essentially, the first film that wanted the Isle Of Man to be the Isle Of Man,” laughs Sean Foley, first-time director of the actually-Manx-set comedy Mindhorn. “Even though we do poke gentle fun. It’s got a Wicker Man flavour to it.” Which is why Empire finds itself at the island’s Laxey Wheel, an 18th-century water pump, watching The Mighty Boosh’s Julian Barratt, decked out in a Tom Selleck moustache, bionic eyepatch and tan leather jacket, escaping the clutches of the Manx Police alongside Russell Tovey’s…

YOU’VE NEVER SEEN a movie like The Love Witch. A decade after her feature debut Viva, a ’70s sexploitation satire so vivid it’s like mainlining a lava lamp, director Anne Biller has returned with a ravishing Technicolor tribute to the femme fatale. With a breakout turn from New York-born, London-raised actress Samantha Robinson, Biller’s feminist horror enters the world of Elaine: a heartbroken sorceress whose love spells end in death for her suitors and insanity for her. “It’s about a woman driven crazy by being a woman,” says Biller. “And how she’s coerced into behaving a certain way.” Biller insists the film is set in the modern world but the style is an exquisite recreation of primary-coloured pulp. Every frame is so immaculately kitsch it feels less a movie, more…

THERE WILL BE teenagers watching Snatched that have never seen one of its stars on the big screen before, because the last time she made a movie they were not yet born. The most recent cinematic appearance by Goldie Hawn — Oscar-winner, one of the great comic actresses of the ’80s — was in 2002’s The Banger Sisters. In Snatched, she’s leaving unofficial retirement to play the mother of Amy Schumer’s Emily, a recently dumped narcissist who takes mum on the dream Ecuador holiday she should have been enjoying with her boyfriend. Sadly, during this bonding ritual, the pair are mistakenly kidnapped. “Amy was doggedly pushing for Goldie from the beginning,” says director Jonathan Levine (Warm Bodies). “Not that I was resistant in any way, but I wasn’t all that…

BASED ON SCREENWRITER Chris Roessner’s own experiences of the Iraq War, Sand Castle will offer a grunt’s-eye view of life (and death) on the ground when it’s released on Netflix in the spring. Starring Henry Cavill as the gruff Captain Syverson, but majoring on Nicholas Hoult as Roessner cipher Matt Ocre, the movie has a nice line in Hurt Locker-ish roughhousing and dusty explosions. Unusually, though, it also tackles the pacification process: a temporary, edgy détente that sets in between US troops and Iraqi locals as they try to restore a crucial water supply in the war-torn city of Baqubah. Director Fernando Coimbra has dealt with action before (he directed two episodes of Netflix’s Narcos), but it was the human aspect that interested him. “It’s a war film,” he tells…

YES CHRIS HEWITT ASSOCIATE EDITOR/ EMPIRE PODCAST HOST I’M WRITING THIS before the nominations for this year’s Oscars are released, so there’s a chance I might end up looking like an absolute bellend. Even more so than usual. But I feel I’m on fairly safe ground when I predict this year’s batch won’t recognise some actors who put in cracking turns in 2016. Love & Friendship’s Kate Beckinsale and Tom Bennett. Hunt For The Wilderpeople’s Sam Neill and Julian Dennison. And, despite a ‘well done for making loads of money’ Golden Globes nomination, Deadpool’s Ryan Reynolds. The connective tissue between all these performances is, of course, that they’re designed, first and foremost, to make you laugh. The Academy, though, doesn’t do comedy. The Academy doesn’t get comedy. It’s fearful of…

OUT 3 FEBRUARY CERT 12A / 123 MINS DIRECTOR Jeff Nichols CAST Ruth Negga, Joel Edgerton, Nick Kroll, Christopher Mann, Jon Bass, Bill Camp, Marton Csokas, Michael Shannon PLOT The true story of Virginian couple Mildred and Richard Loving (Negga and Edgerton), whose marriage was illegal according to the laws of the state. Banished for 2T years, their plight eventually led to the landmark case of Loving v Virginia (P9U7), which repealed all laws banning interracial marriage. “I’M PREGNANT.” ANYONE who’s ever heard, or indeed said, those words will fully understand their sheer stomach-lurch impact. And though too often wasted on default soap-opera plot lines, they can still exert dramatic heft — if the context is true and the delivery sufficiently well-measured. It’s hard to imagine a better way writer-director…

OUT 10 FEBRUARY CERT 15 / 87 MINS DIRECTOR Alice Lowe CAST Alice Lowe, Jo Hartley, Kate Dickie, Gemma Whelan, Kayvan Novak PLOT Widow Ruth (Lowe) is seven months pregnant. Yet rather than surfing on Mumsnet or watching This Morning, she goes on a killing spree of those who have wronged her, guided by her unborn baby. IF WHAT TO Expect When You’re Expecting sits at one end of the Juno MacGuff Movie Maternity Scale, then at the polar opposite, nestled right next to Rosemary’s Baby, sits Alice Lowe’s Prevenge. Written, directed and starring Lowe as a response to her own pregnancy, it is a violent, lurid, funny roadside to all the sanitised received wisdom that surrounds being “with child”. Chiefly it suggests someone’s bundle of joy can be another…

OUT 27 JANUARY CERT U / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Garth Jennings CAST Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, Taron Egerton, Seth MacFarlane, Jennifer Hudson, John C. Reilly PLOT Failed impresario Buster Moon (McConaughey) has a brainwave: to revive the fortunes of his ailing theatre with a singing competition; one that attracts a motley crew of animal entrants. GARTH JENNINGS’ LAST movie was the heart-warming and imaginative Son Of Rambow, a small but perfectly formed personal film that served both as an antidote to his first, the fun but flawed adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and a calling card for what he could do with gentler material. We waited with bated breath to see what he’d do next. And waited. And waited. Finally, a decade on, he’s made…

OUT 3 FEBRUARY CERT 15 / 162 MINS DIRECTOR Maren Ade CAST Peter Simonischek, Sandra Hüller, Michael Wittenborn, Thomas Loibl PLOT Winfried Conradi (Simonischek) is a divorced piano teacher with a passion for practical jokes. Grieving the death of his pet dog, he travels to Bucharest to reconnect with his daughter in the guise of his alter-ego, life coach Toni Erdmann. IF YOU WANT a snapshot of the oddball brilliance of Toni Erdmann, just hoover up some of the IMDb plot keywords: “father-daughter relationship”, “false teeth”, “woman watching man masturbate”, “capitalism”, “zombie make-up”, and “reference to Whitney Houston”. Writer-director Maren Ade’s 2016 Cannes darling works very hard to stack the odds against itself. It’s nearly three hours long. It’s set in the densely detailed world of German business consultants. It’s…

OUT 17 FEBRUARY CERT 12A / 115 MINS DIRECTOR John Lee Hancock CAST Michael Keaton, Laura Dern, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Patrick Wilson, Linda Cardellini PLOT Ray Kroc (Keaton) is an ageing businessman struggling to sell his milkshake machines. When he visits the small McDonald’s family restaurant, run by brothers Mac (Lynch) and Dick McDonald (Offerman), he sees a chance for success at last. RAY KROC BUILT an empire that spans the globe, under one of the most recognisable symbols in the world. But he also built a myth reflected in this biopic’s title. Kroc was not the founder of McDonald’s, though he worked hard to create the perception that he was. And John Lee Hancock’s biopic charts his course, in a story that entwines capitalist triumph and moral…

OUT 31 JAN FORMATS PS4/XB1 DIRECTOR Christian Elverdam CAST David Bateson, Jane Perry, John Hopkins PLOT Agent 47 is commissioned to fulfil a series of assassination contracts for the International Contracts Agency (ICA). While each contract seems unrelated, soon enough a link emerges... AT SOME POINT, Agent 47 will have to pay for all the damage he’s dealt over the years. A shuddering stab of PTSD whenever he saunters into a hotel and imagines every linen basket is bulging, not with dirty laundry, but with a body, maybe. Or perhaps an inability to walk into a local B&Q without seeing the racks of gleaming tools as a smorgasbord of improvised weaponry. For now, however, the bald-headed killer gets to enjoy one of the major perks of being an international assassin.…

STRIDENT, SEXY AND smart, Billions is the dictionary definition of addictive TV. The brainchild of Brian Koppelman, his writing partner David Levien and financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, it’s set in the cut-throat, high-pressure world of high finance. Typical of the Sky Atlantic portfolio, it’s a smartly paced, funny, deliciously entertaining drama that pulls off the deft trick of portraying a seemingly impenetrable world — hedge fund management — in clear, blistering, dramatic ways, without ever dumbing it down. Billions is slick without being facile, outrageous without being soap-y, full of memorable characters, quotable dialogue, high style and, in Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti, two acting heavyweights at the top of their game. As well as top-class talent in front of the camera, the quality writing has also attracted the…

Thomas Tull was eight years old when he first heard that the Great Wall Of China is the only man-made object you can see from space. Like all powerful myths, it lodged itself in this New York boy’s imagination and dug its roots in deep, never to be withered by the fact it’s totally untrue. “It might be an urban myth, but I found it fascinating,” Tull says now. “I couldn’t get it out of my head.” Questions buzzed around his young mind: “Why would they build something like that? What were they trying to keep out?” It wasn’t until 2010 that the answer — the mythical answer, that is — came to him, during a trip (of course) to China. By this point, Tull was 40 years old and…

RESIDENT EVIL (2002) THE LASER CHAMBER The series’ first film introduces Alice (Milla Jovovich), a woman who wakes up naked in a mansion with amnesia, and the Hive, a booby-trapped genetic research facility. In this scene, a SWAT team enters the latter in an attempt to shut down rogue computer the Red Queen. Cue panic, decapitation and Colin Salmon diced into human Jenga blocks by lasers... Paul W.S. Anderson (director): I’m obsessed with Lewis Carroll. Back in 2000, I was toying with adapting a video game called American McGee’s Alice but it had already been optioned. So Resident Evil turned into my version of Alice In Wonderland. The central character’s called Alice, she enters the Hive through a looking glass, and the computer, the Red Queen, has a thing for…

ALLST TAR PICTURE LIBRARY/LUCASFILM FROM THE FIRST page — STAR WARS: A SPACE FANTASY — the images and characters jumped off the pages. Not only into our minds, but into the chairs and other furniture that surrounded us. I’m exaggerating (a little) but it could have jumped onto the furniture, eaten all of it, and drank the blood of an Englishman — because it was as epic as any fee-fi-fo-fum rhyme you ever heard. The images of space opened around us, planets and stars floated by. The character I was reading for, Leia, was kidnapped by the evil Darth Vader — kidnapped and hung upside down when the smuggler pilot Han Solo (who Miguel [Ferrer, star of RoboCop and Twin Peaks] was reading for) and his giant monkey creature co-pilot…

THIS MONTH: CHILDREN OF THE CORN FANCY A RECIPE for madness? Just try surviving 14 hours of Children Of The Corn movies. Intended as a satirical jab at America’s isolationist Bible Belt, Stephen King’s 1977 short story has somehow fertilised nine killer-kid movies that try to put the boo in taboo. Sadly, the majority of these films are corn-on-the-cobblers. Unleashed in 1984, the original sees Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton blunder into Gatlin: an eerie ghost-town run by demon-worshipping kids. John Franklin was 24 when he played 12-year-old prophet Isaac, and it’s his creepy-campy menace that makes the movie unforgettable. What’s truly shocking is how the film’s motifs — crucifixions, rusty scythes, grabby vines, spooky choirs, third-act explosions and excruciatingly fruity acting — are endlessly cannibalised by its dopey sequel-spawn.…

#8 TOM FLETCHER ON THE BREAKFAST CLUB THE IDEA OF The First-Take Club is simple: we ask notable types to select a movie they haven’t seen from our 301 Greatest Movies Of All Time list (published in 2014), see the film in question, and tell us about it. This month, we asked Tom Fletcher — singer and lead guitarist for the effervescent rock bands McFly and McBusted — to name his shame. Turns out it’s one of the greatest teen movies of all time. So what’s the story, Tom…? When I was asked to write this there was one thing on my mind: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE let The Breakfast Club be on the list. It’s one of those movies I’ve always been embarrassed to admit I’ve…

Jenny Agutter says: “This is a chaotic, peculiar and thrilling scene in a stunning film full of wonderful images. Young Hushpuppy [Quvenzhané Wallis] is being taught self-reliance by her father Wink [Dwight Henry]. The relationships between Wink, Hushpuppy and the rest of the small community is demonstrated beautifully during this celebration of their survival of the storm. When Hushpuppy finally breaks open the crab and bites into it, it’s a great moment from director Benh Zeitlin.” INT. LADY JO’S BAR (FLOODED) — NIGHT We’re in the late stages of a party-cum-feast in a waterlogged bar deep in The Bathtub (a flooded region of Louisiana). Lots of adults and kids are packed into the place, including Jean Battiste (Levy Easterly), Miss Bathsheba (Gina Montana), Walrus (Lowell Landes), Little Jo (Pamela Harper),…

BAUBLE SLIPPY Already very excited about the imminent release of T2 Trainspotting, I have found a nifty use for this loft-bound Christmas decoration. Forget Santa — now I can keep track of exactly how many days are left until the boys are back! JEN DAVILLE, LEEDS Choose to subscribe to Empire. Choose to buy all the other covers anyway. Choose to turn a festive ornament into a Renton-themed countdown clock. Jen, for doing all these things, you win this month’s prize. Now please put that thing in the loft. Empire's star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend! Valid for one year at 2R Picturehouse Cinemas across the UK, including the Picturehouse Central in London’s West End, each membership comes pre-loaded with four free tickets, and gets…

LOOK BEYOND ITS West Country settings, Georgian finery and stormy emotions, because My Cousin Rachel is definitely not just you-know-what for the big screen. “Poldark did loom lusciously over us,” admits director Roger Michell of his take on Daphne Du Maurier’s 19th century-set romance, “but we didn’t want to invite comparisons, because we’re not quite in the same ballpark. This pushes and pulls you in all kinds of surprising ways.” The Notting Hill director is making edgier use of the source novel than the stolid 1952 Olivia de Havilland/Richard Burton version. Its central love affair, between Sam Claflin’s innocent heir Philip and the older, more worldly Rachel (Rachel Weisz), is complex, taboo and, it turns out, sinister. “He’s intoxicated and almost obsessed by her, and then he discovers that it…

1_MAKE THE TOUR THE FOCUS Since making raucous Madchester chronicle 24 Hour Party People in 2002, with its numerous gig recreations, Michael Winterbottom hankered to make a proper concert movie, only coming close with 2004’s 9 Songs. But what fascinated him was feeling the Tarmac-pounding rhythm of touring life, rather than directly documenting a band itself. “That was the attraction,” he says of On The Road. “The experience of a traditional tour, on the road, in confined spaces. It’s a hard life.” 2_DON’T CHOOSE A CRAP BAND Given he needed a British outfit who were big enough to tour by bus rather than van, but not so established they jetted everywhere, North London neo-grunge outfit Wolf Alice fit the bill perfectly. They are, he says, “a great live band —…

ALAMY KRISTEN STEWART IS putting paid to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous adage about American lives having no second acts. Aged just 26, she’s already into the third of her career. She emerged as a star of the $1.3 billion-grossing Twilight franchise, earning the kind of fame that tends to open every door in Hollywood. Then came a brief, unhappy dalliance with another studio franchise, Snow White & The Huntsman, before she began taking roles in a series of smaller, thoughtful indies that have showcased much more of her range than bashing CG beasties with a big sword ever could. “I think people are realising they underestimated her,” says Personal Shopper director Olivier Assayas of his new leading lady. “That she’s more than a character out of Twilight. She’s a pretty…

OUT 17 FEBRUARY CERT TBC / 111 MINS DIRECTOR Barry Jenkins CAST Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes, Naomie Harris, Janelle Monfle, Mahershala Ali PLOT Three chapters in a troubled life: as a boy (Hibbert), taken under the wing of a local drug-dealer (Ali); as a teen (Sanders) who falls in love with his best friend; and as a man (Rhodes) who must resolve his inner identity with his hardened, crack-pushing exterior. MOONLIGHT DIRECTOR BARRY Jenkins obviously doesn’t care much for Chekhov’s gun. In a Miami-set movie which features two drug-dealer characters, we twice glimpse pistols, supposedly loaded. But neither is ever fired. Russian playwright Chekhov would have argued these unspent firearms are thus superfluous to the plot, but watching Jenkins’ second feature, nothing feels superfluous. In fact, it goes…

OUT 27 JANUARY CERT 15 / 139 MINS DIRECTOR Mel Gibson CAST Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Vince Vaughn PLOT Stirred by the call of duty, Desmond Doss (Garfield) joins the US Army looking to do his bit in the Pacific campaign as a medic. The catch? His religious faith prevents him carrying a gun. FORGET WHAT YOU’VE heard about Hacksaw Ridge’s pacificist hero, because Andrew Garfield does take up arms in the heat of battle. It isn’t, we’d hasten to add, in an orgy of Arnie-like bloodletting. Instead, he uses a rifle and blanket to improvise a sleigh to pull a stricken soldier to safety as said soldier opens fire on the advancing enemy like a demented Radagast. It’s a rare moment of action-movie fun in…

OUT 10 FEBRUARY CERT 15 / 118 MINS DIRECTOR Mike Mills CAST Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, Lucas Jade Zumann, Billy Crudup PLOT A freethinking Santa Barbara mother (Bening) enlists the help of two young women (Fanning, Gerwig) as she bids to raise her adolescent boy during a period of cultural and social turmoil. WRITER-DIRECTOR MIKE Mills is no stranger to plundering his own past to provide the foundations for a perceptive study of a family at work. In his last film, Beginners, he remembered his father. This time he recalls the tender relationship he enjoyed with his mother, using this template to explore the way in which three females — provocative ingénue Julie (Fanning), twentysomething punk Abbie (Gerwig) and laidback mum Dorothea (Bening) — raise a single adolescent…

OUT 17 FEBRUARY CERT PG / 127 MINS DIRECTOR Theodore Melfi CAST Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons PLOT NASA is determined to send an astronaut on a trip around the Earth before Russia beats them to it. As the space agency becomes increasingly more desperate, three big brains are drafted in to help. The problem? It’s 1962, they’re women and they’re black. WE’VE CRUNCHED THE numbers and it’s official: there could be no better time for Hidden Figures to come out. At a time when the United States is locked in turmoil, with racial divisions widening, misogny rife and science itself under fire, along comes the incredible true-life story of three female African-American mathematicians, or “computors” as they were known in the…

NETFLIX OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Mark Hudis CAST Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Warburton, Malina Weissman, Louis Hynes, Presley Smith PLOT When their family home is burned down and their wealthy parents declared dead, three children are taken into the custody of a man they’ve never met. Sadly, he turns out to be the shadowy Count Olaf (Harris), a rotter hellbent on getting his dirty fingers on their fortune. A SERIES OF Unfortunate Events is just that. In it, three people are driven from one outlandishly miserable circumstance to another, pursued by a group of malicious brutes after their money. There is deceit, arson, murder, enforced labour and terrible, terrible luck. Did we mention it’s for kids? As a series of addictive books, written by Daniel Handler…

IN THE END IT WAS JERRYSEINFELD WHO FINISHED OFFWOLVERINE. After eight films and well over a decade as the quick-healing breakout star of the X-Men films, Hugh Jackman was beginning to wonder when the time would come to step away from his signature role. At Seinfeld’s birthday party in April 2014, he asked for advice that changed his life. “He doesn’t particularly like parties, and I’m a little the same,” says Jackman of the legendary comedian. “So we always end up in a corner chatting. I started asking about Seinfeld. Jerry said, ‘I always had a belief that creatively you should leave on a high.’ Not just for legacy, though I’m sure that was a part of it. But he said that if you are tapped out, it’s Herculean to…

HONOLULU, HAWAII LATITUDE 21 • LONGITUDE -157 NOVEMBER 2015 SURROUNDED BY PRIMORDIAL jungle, lashed by rain and dressed for combat, Tom Hiddleston is trying manfully to explain The Crystal Maze to Brie Larson. “It was a fantastic, zany television show from the 1990s on Channel 4 in the UK,” he ventures. “Presented by Richard O’Brien from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He wears leopard-skin tails and there are four zones and you have to get a crystal in every room...” “Is it a reality show?” Larson cuts in. “A game show,” Hiddleston clarifies. “At the end you go into a big dome and have to grab tickets that are flying around. It’s impossible to stay calm, even though the calmer you are, the simpler it is.” “That sounds intense,” Larson…

ALAMY, PHOTOFEST, REX FEATURES 1 ADAM WEST BATMAN (1966-’68) “Adam West was definitely the Batman I grew up with. He had the task of being the first big on-screen Batman. I’m sure he wasn’t cognisant of the fact that he would forever be referenced as the first in a long line of Batmen, and what that legacy would be. What I loved about it as a kid was that it was very kitschy, but it was representative of the time and a lot of the stuff that was out there. He brought a superhero to life and was very fun. He made superheroing, if that’s a verb, a fun, accessible experience. He was Batman in Technicolor. And that theme tune was so good. We played on it in the first…

“THESE MOVIES ARE BASICALLY BOYS’ FANTASIES,” said Carrie Fisher in 1983, after the release of Star Wars Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi. Leia aside, the original Star Wars trilogy has one female speaking role per film, their total lines amounting to barely a minute of screen time. The cast is almost entirely composed of male pairings: Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan, Han and Chewbacca, Vader and the Emperor. After lining up in droves to see it, little boys could roleplay as the humble farmboy who saves the day, or the cool hot-shot, or the biggest bad guy. The galaxy was theirs. But Fisher knew something instinctively that it took George Lucas years of draft scripts to realise: in space, there’s no reason to be sexist. “You can portray a woman…

ALAMY THE RELEASE OF Ace In The Hole in June 1951 marked a clutch of career milestones for Billy Wilder. Aside from being his first film without Lost Weekend/Sunset Boulevard writing partner Charles Brackett, it was also the first he’d ever written, produced and directed. And, after a string of successes, it was also his first flop, a box-office bomb detested by critics and audiences alike. It’s hardly unique in that respect; cinema is littered with the bones of movies that were critical or commercial duds (or both) upon release, before a long road to reappraisal: Citizen Kane, Vertigo and Blade Runner are three famous examples, while The Shining earned Stanley Kubrick a Razzie nomination for Worst Director of 1981. But it’s easier, perhaps, to see why Ace In The…

COSTUME When we did Lost, we hit upon this idea, J.J. [Abrams] and I, that when Charlie puts his hood up he’s turned into a Sith Lord. I said that when this happened it should be like turning to the dark side. J.J. said, “I fucking love that, let’s do that.” I was able to take the hoodie at the end of the show. It’s in storage somewhere. It has a slightly magical element for me. When we did Pet, there were a couple of days where I’m only wearing boxer shorts and blood, which gets a little old a little quickly. They kept saying to me, “Do you want to have a shower?” I’d say no, because then they’d need to redo the blood. They weren’t my boxer shorts.…

Hannah And Her Sisters is peak Woody Allen. A 1986 ensemble comedy about the lives and loves of three sisters in a New York middle-class family, it is as funny as it is emotional and chock-full of great performances. To keep the relationship shenanigans straight, here is a cut-out-and-keep guide to the three siblings. HANNAH (MIA FARROW) Aka The Successful One Hannah is the eldest sister, a respected actor who has given up the stage to focus on married life. Divorced from hypochondriac Mickey (Woody Allen), she lives a comfortable life with accountant Elliot (Michael Caine, who won a Best Supporting Oscar), who has a thing for her sister Lee. She is the perfect hostess — the film is built around her elaborate Thanksgiving parties — and wife, often to…

FOR MANY, 2016 was a bumper year of awful events which left the world in a nail-bitingly precarious position. And amid all the anguish on various social media platforms, it wasn’t uncommon to spy a still from a 49-year-old movie, showing a bronzed Charlton Heston standing on the sand before a half-buried Statue Of Liberty. Whether a tattered EU flag was photoshopped in, or a President Trump-related gag inserted, the text was always the same: “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” For audiences in 1968, the end of Planet Of The Apes wasn’t just an ingenious twist that revealed to them and Heston’s astronaut character, Taylor, that this crazy, ape-dominated world was Earth all along. It also spoke to them of…

SO HERE THEY are. After years stuck in development hell, including a George Miller version that got as far as building sets and casting (Armie Hammer as Batman! Common as Green Lantern! D.J. Cotrona as Superman!), the Justice League — DC Comics’ ultimate band of costumed crusaders — have finally arrived. Well, almost. In our exclusive shot from Zack Snyder’s follow-up to Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice, one member is missing — Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, the king of the seas. But Ben Affleck’s Batman, Ezra Miller’s super-speedster the Flash, Ray Fisher’s cyborg, erm, Cyborg and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman are a pretty good foursome by any standards. And it’s their interactions that could form the surprising heart of Snyder’s sequel. “These guys — Aquaman, Cyborg, Flash — really are…

SHOOTING SCI-FI thriller Life, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds and Rebecca Ferguson had first-hand experience of what it’s like to be a Thunderbirds puppet. Eschewing the cutting-edge LED lightbox approach of Gravity, Safe House director Daniel Espinosa’s film kept things practical and — ironically — grounded in reality. For three months, the cast of Life, playing the crew of the International Space Station (ISS), were pulled around incredibly detailed sets on wires to replicate zero-g, with movement coaches teaching them how to float accordingly. “It takes a while to get into that space, to access your feelings,” explains Gyllenhaal. “There are 40 people pulling us all around from above. The physical part is a huge element of it.” Set in the not-so-distant future, Life sees the crew of the ISS bring…

ONE LESSER-KNOWN fact about California’s usually sun-drenched High Desert is that temperatures can get seriously low. So as the clock ticks past midnight on the outdoor set of TV-show-to-movie project CHiPs, the temperature slips below zero as everyone involved shivers and waits. Director, star, writer and producer Dax Shepard is aware of the engulfing misery. “Worst set visit ever?” he asks cheerfully between takes. “Top five?” As it happens, not even close. Yes, extremities may have severed communication with brain, but this remote Palmdale location, an hour or so north of Los Angeles, is currently hosting high-flying motorcycle stunts and throw-him-through-the-wall fight scenes. Things could definitely be worse. Many sacred cows in America’s TV back catalogue have suffered on their journey to the big screen, but CHiPs is a passion…

THE EMPIRE AWARDS returns on 19 March with big stars, a sparkling new venue and new categories. It’s special because once again it will all be voted for by you. There’s no hanging chads, no electoral colleges, just your picks of the best movies, performances, writing, design and soundtracks of another great year in cinema. The first round of voting has closed but now comes the juicy bit. When the shortlist of nominees is announced in the week of 30 January, the destiny of those awards is in your hands. Simply head to empireonline.com/ awards and select your favourites. Hurry, though — voting closes on Friday 24 February. Heavyweight contenders this year will likely feature Arrival, Captain America: Civil War, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Doctor Strange. Can…

“THERE ARE PEOPLE firing blanks, explosions going off, smoke,” recalls Asa Butterfield of the trench raid his officer, the idealistic Raleigh, has to lead on German lines in World War I drama Journey’s End. “You really don’t have to act,” he laughs, adding that the sequence was the hardest thing he’s done “in any context”. That includes being bollocked by Harrison Ford in Ender’s Game. Directed by The Duchess’ Saul Dibb and adapted from R.C. Sherriff’s novel, rather than his more famous play, Journey’s End follows a British unit (Butterfield, as close as there is to a lead in this claustrophobic ensemble piece, shares a dugout with Paul Bettany, Stephen Graham, Toby Jones, Sam Claflin and Tom Sturridge) at the sharp end of the Western Front before a big Hun…

OUT 10 FEBRUARY CERT 15 / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Ang Lee CAST Joe Alwyn, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Steve Martin, Vin Diesel, Chris Tucker PLOT After his rash heroism is caught on camera, Billy Lynn (Alwyn) and his fellow Bravo Squad are shipped home from Iraq for a victory tour. Waiting to be presented at a Dallas Cowboys game, Billy tries to fathom this alien country he used to call home. YOU CAN SEE the appeal for a cinematic daredevil like Ang Lee. Ben Fountain’s hipster novel swivels the standard orientation of the tell-all Iraq drama to land in the head of a 19-year-old Texan boy (Alwyn) acclimatising to the phoney adulation of America rather than the dust storm of Fallujah. His life during wartime, particularly the events that have…

OUT 10 FEBRUARY CERT 12A / 139 MINS DIRECTOR Denzel Washington CAST Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Mykelti Williamson, Russell Hornsby, Saniyya Sidney, Stephen Henderson, Jovan Adepo PLOT An adaptation of August Wilson’s award-winning play in which fiftysomething garbage collector (and almost-pro baseball player) Troy Maxson (Washington) struggles with a fatigued marriage to Rose (Davis), strained relationship with his son (Adepo) and the crippling weight of past disappointments. NEVER MIND VIDEO games, plays are the real tricky beast when it comes to wrangling film adaptations. Too literal and they are simply a retreading without a live audience; too cinematic and they become warped, a new kind of wood from the bark from which they were born. So expect to see much made of Fences being ‘too stagey’, but believe that —…

OUT 27 JANUARY CERT 15 / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Antonio Campos CAST Rebecca Hall, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts, Maria Dizzia, J. Smith-Cameron, John Cullum PLOT Envious of her mother’s new romance while she pines after anchorman George Ryan (Michael C. Hall) and struggling to accept her TV station’s decision to prioritise lurid stories, local reporter Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) kills herself on live television. CHRISTINE CHUBBUCK IS known for one thing. It’s hardly a spoiler, therefore, to reveal the Florida field reporter shot herself in the head live on Sarasota’s WXLT channel on 15 July 1974. After all, the incident inspired Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning screenplay for Sidney Lumet’s Network, and was recently explored in Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine, which saw actress Kate Lyn Sheil explore the 29-year-old’s mental…

FOX STARTS 9PM, 15 FEBRUARY EPISODES VIEWED PILOT DIRECTOR Stephen Hopkins CAST Corey Hawkins, Miranda Otto, Jimmy Smits, Anna Diop, Charlie Hofheimer, Dan Bucatinsky, Coral Peña PLOT When terrorists start to bump off members of the squadron who assassinated their leader, it becomes apparent a big attack on US soil is planned. But when it turns out CTU could be compromised, a small team has to go rogue. THE INITIAL RUN of 24 had two stars — Kiefer Sutherland as morally dubious but get-the-job-done agent Jack Bauer, and its ‘real-time’ gimmick. And even if it was the preposterous thrills of the latter that first brought you to it, it was Bauer that made you stay. And then compelled viewers to keep returning year after year, as the show threw all…

AMAZON VIDEO OUT NOW SHOWRUNNER Graham Yost CAST Giovanni Ribisi, Bryan Cranston, Marin Ireland, Margo Martindale PLOT On the run from gangster Vince (Cranston), Marius Josipovic (Ribisi) takes the identity of an old prison cell mate (Pete) and moves in with his family. Joining the family business, he sees the company safe as an opportunity to pay off his debts to Vince. AS BEFITS ITS con man title character, Sneaky Pete has had a slippery journey to the screen. The brainchild of House creator David Shore, the show was developed and piloted at CBS in 2015 but didn’t make it to series. After a bidding war between cable networks and streaming services, with Amazon prevailing, the pilot — co-written by Shore and executive producer/guest star Bryan Cranston — was reshot…

DAN AYKROYD I grew up as a simple Catholic kid from a government family in Hull, Quebec, so you can imagine how much of a privilege and honour it was for me to have known this one-off, broke-the-mould woman as a great friend. When we were both in our twenties, Carrie and I associated as intimates, occasionally co-habiting in her New York apartment, Hollywood Cottage and Debbie’s [Reynolds] house. I met Carrie at Saturday Night Live. She and John Belushi became instant pals. I remember how much she made him laugh. Later, while filming Blues Brothers, Carrie and I fell in love and during the shoot she moved in with me into a penthouse suite in the futuristic, aluminium-clad Astro Tower, which I knew to apologise for. Carrie had the…

LANDMARK MEDIA, REX FEATURES AFTER HER PREVIOUS success casting complete unknowns (Katie Jarvis in Fish Tank and James Howson in Wuthering Heights), British director Andrea Arnold struck gold once again in discovering her lead for last year’s American Honey. Spotted on a Florida beach, Sasha Lane (then a student at Texas State) was immediately tasked with carrying Arnold’s film about a group of travelling, partying American teens attempting to stay afloat by selling magazine subscriptions. On their long, awards-laden press tour Arnold and Lane were seemingly joined at the hip, so we felt it only fitting to have the director and her star tell us about each other and a hugely promising new creative partnership. ARNOLD ON LANE ON CASTING LANE “When I saw her, she was on a beach…

ALAMY THOUGH SHE’D BE far too polite to say it herself, Sharon Maguire is key to the big-screen success of Bridget Jones. After directing Bridget Jones’s Diary, the first, still much beloved, instalment of the adventures of Renée Zellweger’s lovelorn singleton, Maguire stepped aside for the second, Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason. The end result was about as amusing as the morning after a night of vodka and Chaka Khan. But when Maguire returned for the belated threequel, Bridget Jones’s Baby, the franchise was restored to rude health. Here are her golden rules for making Bridget Jones [vg]… 1 ACT YOUR AGE From the opening scene, a cheeky reprise of Bridget singing All By Myself all by herself, the film doesn’t shy away from the ageing process. “What I…

ALAMY, ALLSTAR, GETTY, , REX FEATURES LEADER BOARD Ben Kingsley 9.5 Christopher Lee 9.5 David O. Russell 9.5 Quentin Tarantino 9.5 Robert Rodriguez 9 Guillermo del Toro 9 Werner Herzog 9 Christian Slater 8.5 Bryan Singer 8.5 John Waters 8 1 In One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, your character sends fellow patient Harding into a rage while he’s playing which game? Checkers? It wouldn’t have been chess. Was it a card game? That was with William Redfield. I was always picking on him, on the set and off. It was my first film so I was in a state of nervous frenzy. The correct answer is Monopoly. 2 What type of animal does Jim buy for his apartment in Taxi episode ‘Jim Gets A Pet’? That’s Gary the horse!…

ALAMY, BBC, GETTY THE DALEKS. TWO words guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of Time Lords everywhere. Part-dustbin, part-pepperpot, all-arsehole, they’ve been Doctor Who’s archenemies for decades. This month they return in ‘lost’ story Power Of The Daleks, painstakingly animated from off-air audio recordings of Patrick Troughton’s debut in 1966. Here are their most notable appearances to date. 1 THE DEBUT (1963) From their introduction on Doctor Who in December 1963, threatening The Doctor’s assistant Barbara with what looked like a dodgy egg-whisk (but was actually their death ray gun), the Daleks — actually horribly mutated aliens housed in an indestructible tank-like shell — captured the public’s imagination. Their catchphrase “Exterminate!” didn’t actually appear until 1964 and the fourth episode of this arc (and then it was a variant…