Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2017 i Empire

SPIDER-MAN HAS NOTHING on Dylan O’Brien. Empire is watching O’Brien as American Assassin’s hero Mitch Rapp evade local heavies by nimbly scaling a vent like your friendly neighbourhood counter-terrorist operative. Occupying studio space at West London’s Art Deco Gillette building, the shoot is nearing its midway mark. Next up, O’Brien will mow down some bad guys in an Alfa Romeo. American Assassin, a 2010 globe-trotting thriller rooted firmly in real-world geopolitics, is the 11th Rapp novel by the late Vince Flynn. It’s an origin tale that portrays Rapp as a young spook for the first time. The counter-terrorist agent is also O’Brien’s first lead role since a vehicular stunt went awry on Maze Runner: The Death Cure in March 2016, leaving him seriously injured with concussion, facial fractures and lacerations.…

HAVING A STORY with just two characters should make a director’s job easy. No extras; fewer angles to shoot; very short queues for the catering truck. But Hany Abu-Assad, director of The Mountain Between Us, decided to put the kibosh on an easy life. How? By filming his tiny ensemble piece in the freezing conditions of Alberta, on Canada’s snowy peaks. Based on the novel of the same name by American writer Charles Martin, this is the saga of two strangers, a doctor, Ben Bass (Idris Elba), and Alex Martin, a soon-to-be-married photojournalist (Kate Winslet), chartering a plane home after their commercial flight is cancelled. Neither can afford to wait a day. Delays become the least of their worries when their plane crashes in the mountains, killing the pilot and…

AT FIRST GLANCE, Sky Atlantic’s new Western Tin Star has little in common with the 1957 Anthony Mann classic of the same name. The two have no formal connection, horses have given way to 4x4s and six-shooters to handguns. Make no mistake, though; writer-director Rowan Joffe (Before I Go To Sleep) has drawn from the same dusty well with a ten-part tale of corruption and revenge high in the Canadian Rockies. It may be set in a contemporary world of corporate interests and legal restraints, but fans of the genre will detect plenty of shared DNA. “[Rowan] has drawn from classic Westerns and thrown them right into the mix,” explains his star, Tim Roth. Roth plays Jim Worth, a workaholic London detective who’s decamped to the mountains with wife Angela…

A SMOKE GRENADE’S throw from Hyde Park, Kensington’s Price’s Gate is about to relive its violent past. A pistol-brandishing terrorist emerges onto its elegant, white-faced 19th-century terrace, screaming threats as extras scurry to safety below. The anachronist effect of this set-up from action-thriller 6 Days is of a Regency-era version of Zero Dark Thirty. Only two unmarked SAS transit vans and an array of dodgy ’taches remind us that we’re in May 1980 at the height of the Iranian embassy siege. “It’s an almost spiritual thing filming in the real place,” says director Toa Fraser. “It’s hard to replicate.” While the film’s interiors were shot on Auckland sets, everything else in 6 Days unfolds where it happened. And for one of those scurrying extras, it’s all eerily familiar. “They’ve given…

OUT NOW CERT 12A / 142 MINS NOMENCLATURE HAS ALWAYS been an issue for the Planet Of The Apes reboot series. The Apes’ Rise confusingly preceded their Dawn, which ended with a war. Meanwhile, this War, which follows the one in Dawn, contains little actual warfare but a fair bit of uprising. Disappointed? Don’t be. After the last film’s ballistic finale, it would have been easy for Matt Reeves to sit back and hurl fur and fireballs at the screen for two hours as the battle between humans and hominids came to a head. But Reeves is no Michael Bay, and War is a subtler beast than its title implies. The film begins with an arboreal firefight and a camo-striped hit squad invading the apes’ abode. But Reeves soon shifts…

★★★★ OUT 14 JULY CERT 15 / 88 MINS DIRECTOR Jon Nguyen CAST David Lynch PLOT A feature-length interview with David Lynch, where he reflects (as he paints) on his idyllic childhood and more turbulent teen years, closing as he works on Eraserhead , the film that made him. TREATING DAVID LYNCH as a puzzle to be solved is always a hiding to nothing. One of the more interesting facets to the recent revival of Twin Peaks has been online recap culture and its thirst to ‘solve’ every show like it’s a crossword colliding with the kind of dream logic that is Lynch’s stock-in-trade. But he’d run a mile before offering anything like an explanation for his more outré moments. This means a documentary portrait faces an uphill struggle from…

★★★★ OUT 4 AUGUST CERT 15 / 85 MINS DIRECTOR Gareth Tunley CAST Tom Meeten, Alice Lowe, Rufus Jones, Paul Kaye, Niamh Cusack PLOT Investigating a double murder, detective Chris (Meeten) takes advice from profiler Kathleen (Lowe) about feigning mental illness. Posing as a patient of psychiatrist Helen (Cusack), Chris begins to wonder if his cover story is actually his real life. IN BRITISH HORROR cinema, The Ghoul is a perennial title — a Boris Karloff film from 1933 and a Peter Cushing film from 1975 — and writer-director Gareth Tunley knowingly appropriates it for an exercise in fragmented London noir. This The Ghoul begins as a supernaturally tinged detective story then opens out — or closes in — to become a study of depression and paranoia. It’s a film…

★★★★ OUT 28 JULY CERT 15 / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Michael Showalter CAST Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter PLOT Pakistan-born comedian Kumail (Nanjiani) and grad student Emily (Kazan) start a relationship that runs into roadblocks. When a serious illness puts Emily in hospital, Kumail’s handed an unlikely second chance. FACED WITH SOMETHING as seemingly mundane as the thumbprint identification system on a smartphone, not many big-screen comedies will find the potential for a dark visual gag. Actually, few would spot any comic potential whatsoever. Not The Big Sick. Full of sharp observations that acknowledge everything from the most respectful way to unlock a coma patient’s phone to the viral possibilities of a disastrous comedy gig, Kumail Nanjiani’s (Silicon Valley) Judd Apatowproduced star vehicle couldn’t be more deliciously 2017. From…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 92 MINS DIRECTOR Trey Edward Shults CAST Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Kelvin Harrison Jr, Riley Keough PLOT In an America depopulated by a virulent disease, survivalist Paul (Edgerton) lives in a remote home with wife Sarah (Ejogo) and son Travis (Harrison Jr). When Will (Abbott), a stranger, breaks in, Paul accepts him, his wife Kim (Keough) and young child into the household. AFTER THE APOCALYPSE, movie characters have a hard choice to make: take to the road — as in Mad Max 2 or The Road — or hole up in a fortified enclave, as here. Neither option is ideal, and the collapse of society always means strangers aren’t to be trusted — but, then again, neither are close family members, or…

★★ NETFLIX OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED ALL CREATOR Lisa Rubin CAST Naomi Watts, Billy Crudup, Sophie Cookson, Lucy Boynton, Karl Glusman, Melanie Liburd PLOT A psychiatrist (Watts) with an apparently perfect life puts everything at risk by prying into the lives of her patients outside their sessions. Meeting one patient’s ex-girlfriend sparks an affair that looks certain to ruin many lives. NETFLIX’S NEWEST DRAMA, a sadly missed opportunity that takes juicy ingredients but dries them all out, is the story of Jean (Watts), a terrible but successful Manhattan psychiatrist. Jean has a handful of patients with whom she makes little progress, for which she blames them, but makes enough money that she can “take mornings off half the week”. At home she has a handsome lawyer husband (Crudup) and a…

Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds made a film together in 2013, but didn’t cross paths once. That’s because the film was CG animation Turbo, a not-exactly-classic tale of a common garden snail (voiced by Reynolds) who dreams of being a racer, and is at one point given a pep talk by a mouthy mollusc named Whiplash (Jackson). “You can do 300 animated movies for DreamWorks and never once meet a co-star,” explains Reynolds. “Those are odd jobs.” The film that has finally got them together properly is The Hitman’s Bodyguard. An unashamed throwback to the buddy movies of the ’80s and ’90s, the action comedy sees Reynolds’ bodyguard-with-a-past Michael Bryce (who’s also a control freak) assigned to Jackson’s assassin Darius Kincaid (who could not be more laidback) to ensure…

CHARLIE COX DAREDEVIL The most established of the Defenders, Cox has filled Daredevil’s suit since 2015, and is the only cast member to have two full seasons under his utility belt. “It’s funny,” says the London-born actor. “When I was auditioning, I do vaguely remember my agents mentioning there was eventually going to be a team-up show. I remember thinking, ‘We’ll see…’” Where is Matt when we meet him in The Defenders ? He’s been deeply affected by the end of Daredevil Season 2. People died and the place wasn’t safer. So he’s no longer putting on his suit and fighting crime. Perfect cue moment for a team-up. What does Matt bring to the team? Matt’s quite good on the investigative trail with Jessica Jones. Matt can hear people’s…

PREVIOUS PAGE: DENIM JACKET AND TROUSERS, BOTH BALENCIAGA ALAMY WHEN A FRIEND OF ROONEYMARA’S MOTHER READ THE NOVEL THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO SEVERALYEARS AGO, SHE INSISTED MARA WOULD MAKE A PERFECT LISBETH SALANDER. The role of a steely Scandi avenger, which Mara would subsequently pursue and win, didn’t seem like an obvious match for the actor, given her most high-profile screen appearance up to that point was getting dumped by Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. But this friend had known her since she was two and knew her nature. Mara is tenacious. Always targeting the tricky and challenging. Amid her upcoming releases this year, A Ghost Story is a lo-fi lament in which co-star Casey Affleck spends most of the film with a sheet over…

ALAMY FIFTY YEARS OLD this year, The Graduate changed the face of modern cinema. The story of Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), a disillusioned college graduate who is seduced by older woman Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft), then falls for her daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross), its influence ran from redefining the notion of the Hollywood leading man to pushing back the boundaries of on-screen morality and crystallising the youthful cynicism of the ’60s. It also solidified a raft of new talent, from Hoffman to the already Oscar-nominated director Mike Nichols. Yet only one man was there from beginning to end. The Graduate was producer Lawrence Turman’s stylish, slightly ironic baby. Now 91, Turman talks Empire through the decisions that defined a masterpiece… THE DEAL On 30 October 1963, Turman, then 36, read…

ALAMY, REX FEATURES FEW COMPOSERS CAN claim as many classic songs as Alan Menken — and no living figure can match his eight Academy Awards. He returned to Beauty to add new songs to Bill Condon’s live-action Beauty And The Beast, so we took the chance to ask him about some classics… SUDDENLY SEYMOUR LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1986) The off-Broadway musical-turned-Frank Oz musical that made Menken and Howard Ashman’s names is a horror-comedy about a man-eating plant. But it features an achingly sincere ballad (“a gospel number”) between the nerdy Seymour and abused Audrey — one that brought the house down in the tiny, 99-seat theatre where it premiered, with Menken himself on piano. “We didn’t have a single from Little Shop, and producers kept trying to figure [one]…

Michael Sheen: “This scene towards the end of Donnie Brasco really stays with me. Al Pacino has just found out that Johnny Depp’s character was an undercover agent. Here he’s in his apartment and he gets a phone call to set him up to be killed. The whole weight and emotion of the scene is in the mind of the audience and you as an actor have to decide, how much do you lean on that? How much do you play that? Al Pacino makes all the right choices. It’s one of the greatest pieces of acting I’ve ever seen, because of what he doesnÕt do.” INT. LEFTY’S APARTMENT — NIGHT Close-up on the television. A wildlife documentary is playing. VOICEOVER: Hyenas kill many young cheetahs. Benjamin ‘Lefty’ Ruggiero (Al…

ALAMY, LUCASFILM IN 1969, 14-year-old Ronny Howard made a two-minute movie called Cards, Cads, Guns, Gore And Death. It’s about a gambler who goes all in, then comes out firing, killing, among others, Howard’s brother Clint in a blood (well, ketchup) bath. Shooting first, it seems, is in Howard’s genes, which is just as well — the director of Frost/Nixon is now helming Solo/Greedo. Announced on 22 June, Ron Howard’s takeover of the so-far untitled Han Solo film, following Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s departure over “creative differences”, is rumoured to be built on producer Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm’s feeling that the tone was too flip, not Star Wars-y enough. Their choice of replacement comes with a long history with the Lucasverse. Learning of Lucas’ idea to combine Flash Gordon…

JUST ACROSS FROM life-sized Sully and Mike statues and a studio shop brimming with collectibles, a slice of Mexico arrived in Pixar’s gleaming Emeryville atrium last November as its latest, Coco, took shape. In tribute to the movie’s storyline, a small ofrenda — an altar dedicated to deceased relatives — was set up on the Day Of The Dead holiday, Dia De Los Muertos. Staff could leave photos of their loved ones there, as well as tributes to former colleagues. Soon it spilled over with dedications and offerings. “We had to keep expanding it because so many participated,” says co-director Lee Unkrich. “It was lovely.” Death, the Coco way, is anything but sorrowful. “It’s not about wallowing in the negativity of death,” stresses Unkrich of his first directorial assignment since…

THERE’S ALWAYS TALK of ‘Sundance breakouts’, but a whole lot less about the films that break in to Utah’s high-altitude indie haven. Geremy Jasper, the debut writer-director of Patti Cake$, wants to set that straight. He credits his time at Sundance’s Lab Program in 2014 with carving his hazy early ideas into the rap underdog tale that eventually sold at the festival for $9.5 million. “It makes you dig into yourself and tell your story,” he notes of the finishing school that also helped birth Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Hard Eight and Reservoir Dogs. “I’m not a film school guy, so this was all new to me.” Paying those benefits forward, Quentin Tarantino was one of the New Jersey filmmaker’s screenwriting tutors. “He was very enthusiastic about the first…

“IT’S TOTALLY MADDENING,” says director David Ayer. He’s talking about Joel Edgerton’s non-CG orc, a look which takes nearly three hours to apply each morning, then an hour to remove after a 12-hour day shooting. “He wanted the challenge. I think it has driven him mad. But it helps for character and performance, so it’s fine.” Easy for him to say. Edgerton is suffering in the name of Bright, Ayer’s gritty but fantastical first post-Suicide Squad project, written by Max Landis and co-starring Will Smith. So the story goes, 2,000 years ago there was a dark war on Earth, involving all manner of Tolkien-esque creatures, and we won — but instead of banishing the losers, we integrated them into society. Now, in present-day LA, Edgerton’s Nick Jakoby is the first…

AT FIRST GLANCE, Wind River seems like just another FBI procedural, the story of a young girl found dead in suspicious circumstances. But director Taylor Sheridan’s debut feature — following his award-nominated screenplays for Sicario and Hell Or High Water — is anything but. Set on an Indian reservation where outsiders can’t be trusted and the US government offers little more than a shrug, this is pulp fiction drawn from hard political fact. “It’s inspired by multiple true events,” reveals Sheridan. “I was on a reservation 20 years ago,” he recalls of the event closest to home, “camping with some buddies, and this [Native American] girl had disappeared. She was captain of the basketball team, she had a scholarship to college, she was a leader, a warrior… and she was…

★★★★ OUT 14 JULY CERT 15 / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Sofia Coppola CAST Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Colin Farrell, Elle Fanning PLOT During the American Civil War, wounded Union soldier John McBurney (Farrell) is taken in by Virginia’s Seminary For Young Ladies. Here he fascinates — and seduces — both teachers and students. But his actions have consequences… THE BIGGEST SURPRISE about Sofia Coppola’s remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 Clint Eastwood vehicle is how much more conventional it is. Siegel’s film comes after the psychedelic ’60s at the dawn of the political, paranoid ’70s, with the decade’s anti-war zeitgeist, feminist movement and President Nixon’s dirty-tricks campaign. Coppola seems to have taken out anything that might lend itself to interpretation in any meaningful modern way, starting most obviously with the African-American…

★★★★★ OUT 21 JULY CERT 18 / 92 MINS DIRECTOR Matthew Heineman PLOT A documentary following the Syrian rebels known as RBSS (Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently), who orchestrate an anti-ISIS campaign distributing information from enemy territory at great personal risk. SATURATED WITH SHOCKING imagery, this documentary from Cartel Land director Matthew Heineman also has a deep sadness and compassion at its core. This is an important film that confirms Heineman’s position as one of America’s finest documentary filmmakers — and he’s still only 33. Aside from its appetite for extreme brutality, one of the most remarkable things about ISIS is its slick media operation. Much has been made of the Hollywood-style production values of their snuff propaganda, but the aesthetic is far more along the lines of Call Of…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 133 MINS DIRECTOR Jon Watts CAST Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Jon Favreau, Zendaya, Donald Glover, Tyne Daly, Marisa Tomei, Robert Downey Jr, Jacob Batalon PLOT After the euphoria of his airport tussle with the Avengers, Peter Parker (Holland) returns to his mundane New York life. He craves excitement — and when he crosses paths with arms dealer the Vulture (Keaton), he gets it. IN THE LATE 1980s, Marvel began a run of comic books called Damage Control, about the underpaid, overworked schmoes charged with cleaning up the mess made by superhero battles. This series is relevant to Spider-Man: Homecoming for two reasons. Firstly, it inspired the movie’s villain, flying crook the Vulture (Michael Keaton), who starts out as a blue-collar construction guy sifting through…

★★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 88 MINS DIRECTOR Andrew Jay Cohen CAST Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, Jason Mantzoukas PLOT As they prepare to send their daughter to college, Scott (Ferrell) and Kate (Poehler) suddenly have their scholarship offer revoked. Accordingly, they set up an illegal casino in the suburbs. IT’S FAIR TO say that the fratty, improvisational brand of comedy minted by Will Ferrell and co — and popularised by the Apatow crowd — doesn’t necessarily seem built to age with its audience. But fast-rising writing duo Brendan O’Brien and Andrew Jay Cohen seem to have found a way to wring gently subversive, childish laughs from purportedly mundane adult situations. First came the bong-hitting generational mash-up of the Bad Neighbours films and now we get The House: a likeable,…

★★★★ NETFLIX OUT JULY 21 CREATOR Bill Dubuque CAST Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Julia Garner, Sofia Hublitz, Michael Mosley, Skylar Gaertner, Kevin L. Johnson PLOT Marty Byrde (Bateman) is a Chicago financial manager by day, money launderer by night. But when a scam draws the wrath of his druglord boss (Morales), he has to take his wife (Linney) and kids Sophia (Hublitz) and Jonah (Gaertner) to the rural Lake Of The Ozarks to repay a huge debt and build a new life. IT’S A FAIRLY high-pressure time to be launching a splashy Netflix show. Having previously appeared to be in the blank-cheque business, bosses at the disruptive streaming company recently euthanised a couple of expensive blockbusters (the Wachowskis Sense 8 and Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down) as well as a…

★★★★ NETFLIX OUT 14 JULY SHOWRUNNER Marti Noxon CAST Lily Collins, Carrie Preston, Lili Taylor, Keanu Reeves, Alex Sharp, Retta, Liana Liberato PLOT Ellen’s (Collins) struggles with anorexia have taken her out of college and numerous treatment programmes. Her family sends her to Threshold, an unconventional new programme run by Dr Beckham (Reeves) that may be her last chance. UNTIL NOW, THE screen has treated anorexia and eating disorders as the stuff of melodrama rather than a mental illness worthy of serious discussion. Blame the perception that it’s a young women’s disease, perhaps, or Hollywood’s own twisted body issues. But Marti Noxon’s debut feature corrects that oversight, taking a low-key, darkly comic approach that focuses on character first and illness second. Both writer-director Noxon and star Lily Collins have suffered…

Hollywood has been in the Stephen King business for just about as long as Stephen King has been in the Stephen King business. From the moment the great American horror novelist burst onto the scene in the mid-1970s, studios and big-name directors such as Kubrick, Carpenter, De Palma, Cronenberg and Romero have been queuing up to adapt his work. Even his vastly ambitious doorstop novels, such as The Stand and It, have been made into miniseries for the small screen, as Hollywood voraciously optioned virtually every word King wrote. If he’d written this paragraph, studios would be circling it even now. But one major King work has remained conspicuously unadapted. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” Those words kick off 1982’s The Gunslinger, the…

It was Memorial Day, 2016, and somewhere under the shadow of the Charlotte Motor Speedway’s vast grandstand, Adam Driver and Daniel Craig were revving up for an unauthorised lap of the famous old NASCAR circuit. Behind the wheel of a souped-up Dodge Charger or Toyota Camry on site for NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 race, they could thunder around the 1.5-mile track in just over 30 seconds. Sadly, they were in a golf kart. “There was a whole thing about taking a car, so I went rogue and grabbed a kart,” remembers Driver, the wheelman in this impromptu two-man heist. “For the first two minutes Dan and I were like, ‘Yeah! We’re doing this.’ Then we spent the next 15 minutes driving really slowly in a fucking circle.” As getaways go, it…

“I GOT MY BUM FELT BY A LOT OF WOMEN. THEY WOULD ALWAYS BE TRYING TO MAKE YOU DROP THE GLASSES.” MATT DAMON SHOE SALESMAN “Oh boy, I had a summer job where I had to sell women’s dance shoes in Harvard Square [in Cambridge, Massachusetts]. And that was a lot of fun. It was one of those stores where they marked everything up 200 per cent and then had a sign in the window that said ‘50 per cent off’. So I would have to hand out these ‘50 per cent off’ flyers in front of the store. You know, I was 17 years old and selling women’s dance shoes on the corner — it’s not that cool. I got laughed at a lot by people walking by, like,…

00:03:18 SLICE AND DICE __ The opening shot of the movie finds a groggy Logan (Hugh Jackman) taking out a group of car thieves in graphic fashion. “My feeling was that if you’re going to make a movie about a guy with blades, the whole point is that you see and feel them going in,” says Mangold, who sees this scene as a statement of intent. “I try to put forward an appetiser that can seduce my most sceptical audience members.” › 00:13:45 BIG ROUND ROOM __ When we meet Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), now a shadow of his former self, he’s living in an abandoned water tank south of the US border. The circular shape was an intentional nod to Cerebro, the device Charles used to track mutants across…

ALAMY, MARTINE BERTRAND ONE OF THE most vibrant, original and downright brilliant horror movies in years, Get Out was critically acclaimed, grossed a stunning $250 million (off a $5 million budget), and was a particular triumph for its writer-director, Jordan Peele. After making his name as a comedian alongside Keegan-Michael Key in the TV show Key & Peele and last year’s Keanu, Peele switched gears comprehensively with this tale of Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a young African-American man who gets more than he bargained for when he visits his new girlfriend’s seemingly ultra-liberal white parents out in the sticks. Dealing directly with themes of race, isolation and oppression, it’s clearly a personal movie for Peele. Did the success of the movie take you by surprise, to some extent? Yeah. I wanted…

COSTUME Anything Lucius Malfoy wore in Potter. They were just going to have me in business suits and I asked if we could try something more elaborate, which they ran with. I could have looked like Michael Gove. The green sequined dress in Sweet November, but only because I really hoped I was going to be fanciable. I put it on and I looked like some kind of Puerto Rican truck driver on a dare. It was not what I envisaged. AUDITION The Patriot. My agent said, “You won’t get it. Jude Law’s doing it.” I went in and it was clear they wanted to give me the job. I was sure I’d got it. Then nothing for two weeks. It turned out I had it but had to wait…

A QUIET PASSION, a slow, spare powerful portrait of US poet Emily Dickinson (Cynthia Nixon), is only Terence Davies’ eighth film in 30 years. But unlike that other profound, poetic Tel — Malick — Davies’ productivity has been thwarted less by artistic noodling than his disconnect from the film establishment. Here’s our quick bluffer’s guide to one of Britain’s greatest. HIS THEMES Davies’ tough upbringing in 1950s Liverpool included a brutal father, bullying and a troubled relationship with Catholicism, all literally dramatised in The Terence Davies Trilogy (1983), Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992). Tonally his films are full of feeling but never sentimental. “If you look at a trailer for the latest dramas, everybody cries,” he says. “It doesn’t mean anything because it is…

REX FEATURES THE STORY GOES like this: during The Dark Knight’s most explosive scene, in which clown-faced chaosmonger the Joker (Heath Ledger) blows up Gotham General Hospital — and director Christopher Nolan demolished an entire building for real — something went wrong. As Ledger walked out of the building with plumes of fire and debris bursting through windows behind him, everything unexpectedly fell quiet. The building, actually a derelict factory in Chicago, wasn’t collapsing as planned. Knowing it was a one-take deal, and figuring the SFX guys would fix it, Ledger improvised a ‘what’s up?’ gesture at the building before jabbing at his detonator. Suddenly, BOOM. The charges blew, surprising the actor, and the building came tumbling down. Good story. But it’s not true. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one many…

LEADER BOARD 1 Who composed the soundtrack to your 1966 hit Django? It’s Luis Bacalov. He’s a great composer. He’s from Argentina, but has been living in Rome for years. Correct. 2 In 1968 you were nominated for a Golden Globe for Camelot. In which category? At that time, it was called Newcomer Of The Year. But then also, in Camelot, the song that I was singing won the Golden Globe — If Ever I Should Leave You. I was hoping they would be giving me the award, but it goes to the song. Correct. 3 On Camelot, you met your future wife, Vanessa Redgrave. What was the name of the next film you made with her? Okay, with her, I made many movies. After that, we made a movie…

A BRUISING DRAMA set around 1967’s Algiers Motel incident, in which the police’s brutal response to reports of a shooting fed into the city’s bloody riots and led to a famous injustice, Detroit boasts a director making up for lost time. Five years on from Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow has delivered an urgent, timely comment on American policing and race relations inspired by more recent civil unrest. “I came across this story as I witnessed the aftermath of Ferguson and the fallout that spread across the country,” she tells Empire. “[This film] illustrated my frustration with what I saw as a cycle of injustice.” Bigelow has assembled a youthful, dynamic cast to do the job, spearheaded by a pair of talented Brits. John Boyega plays security guard Melvin Dismukes,…

1 All aboard for Wakanda! Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther solo film, courtesy of director Ryan Coogler (Creed), is the final standalone title before Avengers: Infinity War. Chances it will prove to be the calm before the storm? Slim to none. 2 The story sees King T’Challa (Boseman) returning to his reclusive, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda to take his father’s place on the throne, following the events of Captain America: Civil War. However, he faces challengers for his crown and “two foes” threatening to drag Wakanda into a world war. T’Challa must don the Black Panther suit again to fight for his people. Never a day’s peace for a blue-blooded battler. 3 Two foes? The teaser shows that one is Andy Serkis’ Ulysses Klaue, who first appeared in Age…

THE SETTING FOR the final act of Adam Wingard’s take on Death Note looks disarmingly jolly. A funfair runs the length of the boardwalk pier jutting out into Vancouver’s Fraser River, its brightly lit rides looking inviting. But if the movies have taught us anything, it’s that funfairs are rarely as innocent as they appear. And, true to form, as night closes in, menace descends. Nat Wolff and Margaret Qualley thread their way through the throng of punters, their anxious glances making it clear that someone — or something — is on their tail. Behind them two figures, expressions steely, move purposefully through the crowd. In a moment, this quaint little tableau has edged inexorably into darkness. “The three movies I watched before we started shooting,” says Wingard, “were Seven,…

CAPTAIN MARVEL __ A hotshot pilot whose DNA was fused with that of the alien Kree (think Ronan The Accuser), Carol Danvers has superhuman strength, speed, flight, you name it. She’s Superman with better hair. Of course, she’s already heading to screens in 2019 with Brie Larson in the lead and Mississippi Grind co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck set to direct — an emotionally intelligent combo that should fit Danvers’ steely charm. BATGIRL __ Batgirl/Barbara Gordon is a stalwart of the Teen Titans and Birds Of Prey super-groups, and proud owner of two hero personae: she was kicking ass as Batgirl, before spending years as wheelchair-bound, anti-crime mastermind Oracle (...it’s a long story). Get her right — cool, funny, fierce — and you clear a path to a Birds…

OF ALL THE worthy films at this year’s Sundance: London, including Kumail Nanjiani’s The Big Sick and Trump satire Beatriz At Dinner, it was David Lowery’s A Ghost Story that hit the hardest. But how best to describe a film that may be unlike anything you’ve ever seen? The director thinks he has the answer. “We often refer to this as the Apichatpong Weerasethakul remake of Beetlejuice,” he laughs. If there’s a sentence guaranteed to have them queuing round the block, it’s that one. But he’s on the money. A Ghost Story is, like a Weerasethakul movie such as Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, delicately composed and painstakingly paced. And, like Beetlejuice, it’s about a dead man who haunts the place where he used to live. That…

ALAMY, REX FEATURES HOT FROM HIS last job — Netflix’s Iron Fist — showrunner Scott Buck is in Hawaii for ABC’s Marvel’s Inhumans. But with only ten months to put the whole project together, he’s not seen many beaches. Hawaii doesn’t have the filmmaking facilities of Los Angeles but, as Hollywood’s busiest showrunner explains, a little logistical hardship was necessary to bring the spectacle necessary for Inhumans’ IMAX premiere. Yes, you read that right. The first two episodes will debut on IMAX screens in a near 80-minute opener, before the show hits smaller screens two weeks later. “It gives us a massive, dramatic opening,” Buck tells Empire. “It allows us to think bigger; to use visuals you don’t normally get on your television screen. We wanted [it to be] strikingly…

★★★ OUT 4 AUGUST CERT 15 / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Toa Fraser CAST Jamie Bell, Mark Strong, Abbie Cornish, Martin Shaw, Tim Pigott-Smith PLOT South Kensington, 30 April 1980. The Iranian Embassy is under siege by armed militants. The UK government launches Operation Nimrod, led by the SAS’ Rusty Firmin (Bell). WATCHED LIVE BY millions in the spring of 1980, the Iranian Embassy siege played out like a real-life thriller — an event so inherently cinematic it’s a surprise it’s taken 37 years to boom onto the big screen. The siege could be told from any number of viewpoints: the SAS, the terrorists, the negotiators, the hostages, Whitehall or the media. So which story do you tell? 6 Days’ answer is all of them. Here’s a film so vigilantly researched…

★★★ OUT 14 JULY CERT TBC / 109 MINS DIRECTOR Brian Fee CAST Owen Wilson, Christela Alonzo, Nathan Fillion, Larry The Cable Guy, Armie Hammer PLOT During the latest Piston Cup, Lightning McQueen (Wilson) begins to realise he’s being outpaced by newcomers, including the flashy Jackson Storm (Hammer). After a nasty crash, he has to decide if he’s going to learn how to compete in a changing world, or retire like so many of his contemporaries. THE CARS FRANCHISE is the black sheep (or should that be sedan?) in Pixar’s catalogue. The one series where it seems profit is placed above artistry. The first film cruised along pleasantly enough, but despite some good-looking vistas and trademark attention to detail, it didn’t boast the usual rigorous character work, often feeling like…

★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 149 MINS DIRECTOR Michael Bay CAST Mark Wahlberg, Josh Duhamel, Stanley Tucci, Isabela Moner, Laura Haddock, Anthony Hopkins PLOT The war between Transformers and the TRF (Transformers Reaction Force) is raging. In a last-ditch effort to save humanity, inventor Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) and Bumblebee join forces with an English earl (Hopkins) and Oxford professor (Haddock). BELIEVE IT OR not,Transformers, in its live-action movie iteration, is ten years old. For its first hour at least, there was something human, relatable and — whisper it — charming in Michael Bay’s original, a boy (Shia LaBeouf ) who loved his car (Bumblebee) and wanted the unattainable girl (Megan Fox). Now, fifth time out, the knack of coming up with anything so simple and likeable has eluded Bay.…

★★★ NETFLIX OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED ALL SHOWRUNNERS Liz Flahive, Carly Mensch CAST Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, Marc Maron, Britney Young, Sydelle Noel PLOT Los Angeles, mid-’80s. Sick of playing secretaries to powerful men, struggling actress Ruth Wilder (Brie) can’t make ends meet. In desperation she takes an audition for exploitation filmmaker Sam Sylvia (Maron) for cable TV show ‘GLOW’ — Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling. IT’S EASY TO see why Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch’s pitch for GLOW turned Netflix’s head. A fictionalised account of an actual female wrestling cable TV franchise in the mid-’80s by the writers of Nurse Jackie and Orange Is The New Black, with still relevant gender inequalities wrapped up wrestling hoopla, gaudy style and electro pop. Though enjoyable, the show only partly delivers on the…

★★★★ OUT NOW FORMATS SWITCH DIRECTORS Kenta Sato, Masaaki Ishikawa, Shintaro Jikumaru CAST Momoka Kawasaki, Yu Kobayashi PLOT Two contestants stand opposite each other in brightly coloured arenas and (when given the go-ahead) they fight with long, extendable arms. So not much in the way of actual story, but then, it’s not that type of game. ON THE FACE of it ARMS is a motion-controlled boxing game. But then, so was the pugilistic part of Wii Sports. Not all motion-sensing boxing games are created equal, and ARMS is a number of classes above Nintendo’s previous attempt. Visually, it could be a kids’ title, with bright, primary colours, bizarre-looking cartoon characters and in-your-face visual effects. But play it for a while and it begins to reveal a huge amount of depth.…

At Denis Villeneuve’s command, rain begins to fall. Waves crash against a vast sea wall that shields Los Angeles from an enraged ocean. It’s deep into the night, and only the sporadic searchlights that dance across the water provide any illumination. An effect one could happily describe as Blade Runner-y. “Action!” Out in the half-light, Ryan Gosling, wrapped in a hefty overcoat, finishes his push-ups and Sylvia Hoeks, head-to-toe in skin-tight artificial leather, concludes her lunges. At an unseen signal, they set to. No quarter is given: Gosling’s Officer K and Hoeks’ Luv come to expertly choreographed blows. Finally, with an ungentlemanly swivel of his hips, K launches Luv into the surf. Fictionally speaking, it is 2049 in a noir-soaked LA, 30 years after Blade Runner’s cop hero Rick Deckard…

STORYBOARDS: ALEX HILLKURTZ JUST A FEW DAYS AFTER WINNING A BEST ACTOR OSCAR FOR PLAYING A SUICIDAL ALCOHOLIC IN MIKE FIGGIS’ $3.5 MILLION-BUDGETED DRAMA LEAVING LAS VEGAS, NICOLAS CAGE WAS IN PRISON . He, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Simon West and writer Scott Rosenberg were visiting Folsom, a maximum-security facility in Sacramento, California — all part of their research for a $70 million action blockbuster they were making. After signing a no-hostage waiver (to ensure that, should a prisoner injure or kill them, their families wouldn’t sue), they walked into the yard. It was busy: 2,000 prisoners talking and exercising. “Gradually they started to recognise Nic,” says Rosenberg. “And bigger and bigger groups started to gather around asking questions.” One wanted to make a film with him. “And one guy…

DAVID FINCHER ONCE said he built his career on the assumption “people are perverts”, but the same thought wrecked Michael Powell’s. Peeping Tom — his morbid, compelling depiction of a sensitive serial killer — was released on 16 May 1960. Before then, Powell was Britain’s most respected filmmaker. After, he barely worked again. As the megaphone-wielding half of a partnership with screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, Powell had received audience and expert acclaim for a series of classics, from The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp to The Red Shoes. Peeping Tom, his second post-Pressburger pic, received the sort of critical reception that might now be reserved for a documentary in which Adam Sandler barbecues puppies. “It’s a long time since a film disgusted me as much as Peeping Tom,” wrote C.A.…

ALAMY WHEN ISABELLE HUPPERT was Oscar-nominated for her role in Paul Verhoeven’s Elle as Michèle Leblanc, a CEO who reacts to a sexual assault in an unorthodox manner, it was — astonishingly — her first. But that gutsy, fearless turn was emblematic of an entire career, not just in the performances she’s given, but her refreshingly honest attitude in general. A bold outlook that doesn’t show any signs of dimming… On playing Michèle, Elle’s protagonist “Michèle has a mixture of strength and vulnerability. [Working with Paul] was the perfect collaboration: I did what I wanted to do on my side and he did what he wanted to do. It’s not the kind of role you can sit down and say, ‘Okay, why do you think she did this?’ I think…

#14: THE FILM THAT BUILT A CAREER — WHEN HARRY MET SALLY Harry: Why don’t you tell me the story of your life? Sally: The story of my life? Harry: We’ve got 18 hours to kill before we hit New York. Sally: The story of my life isn’t even going to get us out of Chicago. I mean, nothing’s happened to me yet. That’s why I’m going to New York. Harry: So something can happen to you? Like what? Sally: Like I’m going to journalism school so I can become a reporter… I first saw When Harry Met Sally with my exceptionally crap boyfriend, in early 1990, shortly before I left home for London. I had neither car nor licence — never mind a wisecracking driving companion with whom to…

WHEN GIRLS PREMIERED in 2012, with Lena Dunham’s Hannah proclaiming herself the voice of a generation (“or at least a voice of a generation”), TV hadn’t seen anything quite like the super-realistic, brutally honest, skin-tightening depiction of a group of self-centred, narcissistic millennial women trying to make their way in the world (or at least Brooklyn). At the centre of the story, writer Hannah Horvath, and the friends she fights and fumbles her way through with: Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), Marnie (Allison Williams) and Jessa (Jemima Kirke). Plus, the men she tries to plug her gaps with — most notably, Adam Driver’s Adam. Coming hot on the heels of Sex And The City, it explored friendships, sex, mental illness and the reality of women’s bodies in a completely new, unflinching way.…

THIS MONTH: PSYCHO “WE ALL GO a little mad sometimes,” goes the notorious Norman Bates quote. Well, after a nine-hour binge on the Psycho feature franchise, I am, indeed, feeling a little mad. Not crazy mad, but angry mad. Anthony Perkins’ brittle, stammering, nervy Norman is such a perversely sympathetic creation you can’t help feeling oddly protective of the homicidal, cross-dressing fruitcake. The abuse Bates gets from Mother? That’s nothing compared to the torture inflicted on Norman by the diminishing sequels. First stop: Hitchcock’s rule book-ripping Oedipal slasher. This is my wazillionth viewing of Psycho, and it never disappoints. Prime your cine-radar and fresh, dark details always ping up. Ever noticed that Norman wears black after each kill? That Janet Leigh’s night-drive through lashing rain doubles as a shower-death premonition?…

#14 JOHN NIVEN ON SKYFALL EMPIRE’S FIRST-Take Club is simple: we ask someone to choose a film they haven’t seen from our 301 Greatest Movies list (published in 2014), watch it, and then tell us what they thought. This month, John Niven — the author of Kill Your Friends and The Sunshine Cruise Company — tackles the biggest Bond film of them all… Since I haven’t been a 14-year-old since the early 1980s, I haven’t much bothered about watching a Bond film since then. So it was somewhat mystifying to me to see Skyfall on Empire’s list of classic films. (Full disclosure: the only other film on the list I hadn’t seen was The Lord Of The Rings, but you’d need a soundproof basement, some rope and an M-16 to…