Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2018 i Empire

DON’T KNOCK IT OUT OF THE PARK With Dolores, Bernard and whatever consciousness currently inhabits Tessa Thompson now in the real world, we could conceivably move away from one of the other stars of Westworld: the park itself. With a less fantastic canvas to paint on, it would be easy fall back to a more generic, ‘us versus them’ story in Season 3, and the show would be all the poorer for it. Standout episodes like ‘Akane No Mai’ showed just how much scope there is for compelling, tangential narratives within other artificial worlds. Shogun World, like Westworld, was a stunning microcosm of our history; while Raj World worked less well, we’ve been told there are six parks in total, with three as-yet unrevealed. Delos’ master plan for the parks…

EMPIRE  Empire had a drink with director Bart Layton in London on 7 June. DIRECTOR BART LAYTON was sold from the start. Reading about an absurd art heist by four Kentucky college students who didn’t know what the hell they were doing, he immediately wanted to tell their tale — and immediately wanted to start playing with notions of truth. Layton has a documentary background — his previous feature was 2012 conman documentary The Imposter — and has long been fascinated with perceptions of reality. Corresponding with the culprits, he based much of his American Animals screenplay on these letters — then decided to put the actual guys in the film, interjecting alongside the dramatised versions of events, sometimes even appearing in scenes with their Hollywood counterparts. “I wanted to…

EMPIRE  Empire spoke to Leigh Whannell on 18 June, during the “notepad phase” of his next script. LEIGH WHANNELL HAS switched genres. The Australian filmmaker became known for his horrors with the likes of Saw and Insidious; his latest effort, Upgrade, is more like a gory revenge thriller spliced with a Black Mirror episode, telling the story of Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) who, after an attack that leaves him disabled and his wife dead, has his motor functions returned and souped-up thanks to a nifty microchip known as Stem. Here, Whannell explains how he did it. 1 FIND YOUR STORY Whannell started with an image that popped into his head: a quadriplegic man walking with the aid of futuristic technology. “I didn’t want to make a robot movie, because I’ve…

THE OPENING _ It’s the song that sets your mood. It needs energy. It needs force. It doesn’t need the acid-washed, back-combed ’80s pomp of Kenny Loggins. It needs the stomp and arrogance of peak Kanye. THE SEX SCENE _ It’s got to be a song that will work over gauzy shots of shiny bodies in sheets and motorbikes being ridden into sunsets. Kendrick and SZA seduce where Berlin bellowed you into bed. Alamy THE VOLLEYBALL SCENE _ The scene has no other purpose but homoerotic sweaty, slo-mo pecs and flexing, so it needs a fat slab of high-energy, camp pop with zero subtlety. Sax is all this and a big, winking double entendre.…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT PG / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Brad Bird CAST Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Vowell, Huck Milner, Sophia Bush, Catherine Keener, Bob Odenkirk PLOT The Incredibles are back out in the open, and with support from wealthy siblings Evelyn (Keener) and Winston Deavor (Odenkirk), hope to restore their legal status as superheroes. But can they stop the evil, hypnotising villain Screenslaver — and raise three super-kids in the process? FOURTEEN YEARS HAVE passed since we last saw the Incredibles, the Pixar superhero family to rival the likes of the Richards or the Els — but as far as returning writer/director Brad Bird is concerned, no time has passed at all. The first movie’s epilogue now forming the second movie’s prologue, the Underminer (voiced…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Drew Pearce CAST Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Dave Bautista, Jeff Goldblum, Brian Tyree Henry, Charlie Day, Zachary Quinto PLOT After a bank job goes wrong, two brothers hole up in a members-only hospital for criminals. But while they’re safe from the rioting on the streets below, their fellow patients could well turn out to be even more dangerous. THE FUTURE MAY not be written, but Drew Pearce’s directorial debut predicts dire consequences for continuing down our current path. Set a decade from now, the post-Trump America of Hotel Artemis is not a happy place. The wall is up, and drought has returned to California, leading to a future where clean water supplies are privatised. The rich have it,…

★★★★ CERT 12A OUT NOW / 128 MINS DIRECTOR J.A. Bayona CAST Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, James Cromwell, Jeff Goldblum, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda PLOT When Isla Nublar’s volcanic foundations become active again, Jurassic World’s former manager Claire Dearing (Howard), now a dinosaur rights activist, reunites with Owen Grady (Pratt) for a rescue mission. “DO YOU REMEMBER the first time you saw a dinosaur?” asks Claire Dearing (Howard) in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. We do. When Steven Spielberg’s photoreal prehistoric predators hit multiplexes in 1993, they changed cinema forever. And they were terrifying. But in the three films since, the original’s perfectly tuned moments of pure suspense (the tapping velociraptor claw, the water rippling in a T-Rex footprint) haven’t been matched. Enter The Orphanage director J.A. Bayona.…

★★★★ CREATED BY Liz Flahive, Carly Mensch CAST Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, Sydelle Noel, Britney Young, Marc Maron PLOT After a long time trying to grapple a women’s wrestling show into shape, the Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling now have their own little-watched cable series. They’re going to do all they can to make it a hit, while contending with equally punishing dramas off screen. EVERYTHING HITS HARDER in GLOW’s second season. The storylines are punchier; the performances are better; the scripts are funnier; even the fake wrestling moves are more elaborate. What was formerly a good show is now a great one. Season 1 did a great job laying the foundations of a story with endless potential: a group of women who want to be stars, but don’t fit Hollywood’s…

★★★★ NETFLIX / OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED 1-4 CREATED BY Vikramaditya Motwane CAST Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Radhika Apte, Jatin Sarna PLOT In modern-day Mumbai, honest but under-performing cop Sartaj Singh (Khan) receives a call from gangster Ganesh Gaitonde (Siddiqui), missing for 16 years. After Gaitonde tells him he has 25 days to save the city from an unspecified calamity, Singh sets out to solve the mystery. BASED ON A 2006 crime epic by Vikram Chanda, Netflix’s first Indian Original is an unflinching roll through the grit of Mumbai (and its former incarnation Bombay), which offers a bloody contrast to the crisp, bright cinematic India we’ve become used to via Bollywood’s typically glammy output. This is an eight-part cops-and-gangsters thriller with a vicious streak and against-the-clock propulsion, whose two…

1. MONSTROUS MONSTER A company called Boss Film was originally tasked with creating the Predator suit, then a more organic design, and housing none other than Jean-Claude Van Damme. It was a disaster from the start. “Steve Johnson from Boss Film was not happy about that creature at all,” says Steve Wang, who was there as a sculptor. “He kept complaining about how it was a terrible design, but he was forced to build it because the design came directly from the studio. The biggest problem everyone saw right from day one was the fact he had this leg extension, and the technology for it back then wasn’t far along — people couldn’t really walk in it, and not being able to walk on that terrain in the middle of…

On holiday in a sunny spot in Southern Europe, actor Laura Harrier, best known for playing Peter Parker’s super-smart crush in Spider-Man: Homecoming, reluctantly reached over for her buzzing cell phone. “I hear, ‘Laura, this is Spike Lee!’” she recalls. “He asked me to meet him. I told him I was on an island in Greece, and he was like, ‘No, that’s not gonna work for me. I need to see you Thursday.’ And I’m like, ‘Spike, it’s Tuesday and I’m in Greece,’ and he’s like,‘No, see you Thursday — vacation is over. Bye.’ And then he hung up.” Lee’s urgency was palpable. Gifted a script by Get Out filmmaker Jordan Peele, Lee had a project so zeitgeist-y it needed instant action. With bigots in positions of power going right…

REX/Shutterstock, BBC “NOW LISTEN TO me, you benighted muckers. We’re going to teach you soldiering. The world’s noblest profession. When we’re done with you you’ll be able to slaughter your enemies like civilised men!” So barks Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery) to the ramshackle would-be warriors of Kafiristan, a remote region of Afghanistan where he and fellow ex-soldier Peachy Carnahan (Michael Caine) are seeking their fortune. “Good soldiers don’t think, they just obey,” continues Dravot, eyes aglint above mutton-chop moustache. “You think, if a man thought twice, he’d die for his country? Not bloody likely! He wouldn’t go near the battlefield! One look at your foolish faces... tells me you’re going to be crack troops.” The Man Who Would Be King has pithier lines, but none that so adeptly sum up…

Getty WHEN THE MERCY sailed into cinemas in February it caused only a little ripple. Starring Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz, and directed by James Marsh (The Theory Of Everything), it was a perfectly fine telling of the story of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur sailor who died mysteriously during the Golden Globe boat race in 1969. It received solid reviews and did modest box office, before disappearing over the horizon. Six weeks later, another, smaller, much more striking take on Crowhurst’s story appeared in cinemas, but was perhaps consumed in The Mercy’s wake. Now, as it hits DVD, it’s time for Simon Rumley’s Crowhurst to get its deserved moment. Rumley has been quietly making a name for himself over the past 18 years, mostly as a horror director (Red, White…

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY OUT 16 JULY / CERT 18 / 114 MINS One of the great British gangster movies, The Long Good Friday showcases not only Bob Hoskins’ career-making performance, but a rundown, early ’8Os London I can just about remember — Ford Cortinas, smoking indoors, and a Canary Wharf devoid of buildings and bankers. Hoskins’ Harold Shand is a Capone-like East End crime boss with aspirations of respectability, a pro-European pitbull desperate to make Britain great again by redeveloping the decaying Docklands for the P988 Olympics, making a mint in the process. To fund this dream, Shand lays down with the US Mafia — a deal that sours when the IRA come to town, threatening his mum, then blowing up his favourite boozer. Amazingly prescient, with eye-opening support…

Alamy, REX/Shutterstock EMPIRE  Empire spoke to the director on the phone during a busy day of post-Cannes press on 13 June. WHEN PAWEŁ PAWLIKOWSKI dreamt up the scenario for gorgeous romantic drama Cold War, he loosely telegraphed his own parents’ turbulent love story onto the story, set against the backdrop of oppressive Communist Poland in the ’50s. The result: a dazzlingly shot black-and-white masterpiece, spanning decades, which picked up the Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Here, Pawlikowski explains how it came together. How did your parents inspire the story of Cold War ? My parents inspired and reflect the mechanics of the relationship and temperament in the film. It was a love story I witnessed as a kid: the mother of all love…

© 2OP8 The ULULU Company. DISENCHANTMENT TM E© The ULULU Company. All Rights Reserved. EMPIRE  Empire spoke to Matt Groening on the phone from LA during a busy day of press. MATT GROENING IS already responsible for two of the biggest animated series in history. The Simpsons, obviously, is the biggest animated series in history, but Futurama is no slouch, with seven seasons and every chance of one day being revived. His third show, then, comes with assumptions of success. “To have two pretty big shows behind us is confidence-boosting but also daunting,” says Groening, as he prepares for the launch of his Netflix series, Disenchantment. “I’ve seen a lot of animated shows with great ideas misfire. But I think we’ve done a pretty great job.” Disenchantment is a very…

EMPIRE  Empire spoke to the cast on the Chicago set of Widows (two blocks from Barack Obama’s house) on 9 June 2017. WHEN DIRECTOR STEVE McQueen won the Best Picture Oscar for 12 Years A Slave, the question was: what’s next? The unexpected answer: a big-screen version of an early ’80s Lynda La Plante ITV series. Adapted by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, this is an honest-to-goodness thriller that sees the widows of a criminal gang follow in their deceased husbands’ footsteps, after the men’s initial heist goes fatally wrong. Here, the four leading ladies introduce us to their characters. VIOLA DAVIS AS VERONICA It won’t come as a surprise to learn that Oscar winner Davis is head of the widows, the outwardly tough but inwardly devastated Veronica. “For me…

IT’S BEEN HALF a decade since the DC Extended Universe launched with Man Of Steel, and at times it still feels a little like it’s playing catch-up: while Marvel luxuriates in billion-dollar successes and glowing critical notices, the home of banner stars like Batman and Superman has been forced to accept the silver medal in the superhero race. And yet! Suddenly, it seems like an exciting time to be a DC fan, with a glut of promising projects recently announced, strong talent on the roster, and shock sequel revelations — all steered by new boss Walter Hamada. Here, Empire tackles the ten big questions facing the universe as it enters its pivotal next phase. 1 Wait, Steve Trevor is alive? DAN JOLIN: Apparently so: he’ll be back for next year’s…

Illustration: Matt Herring Do you have a signature dish? Yes. Macaroni and cheese. Pretty easy. I don’t claim to say that it’s anything special. I have a secret ingredient called ketchup that I sometimes use that makes it have a little extra something for my kids. I’m not a chef. What would you call your autobiography? I always had a fantasy of having a memoir called ‘Echo Hall Is Travelling’. ADs [assistant directors] on film sets always try to speak in code. And when you’re walking, when you’re not supposed to be, you hear them say, “Echo Hall Is Travelling.” Have you ever written fan mail? Yes. I definitely have. I’ve written a lot of fan letters over my time. I wanted to write Christian Bale a fan letter, because…

★★★★ OUT 13 JULY CERT 15 / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Paul Schrader CAST Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Phillip Ettinger, Cedric Kyles PLOT New England. Father Ernst Toller (Hawke) is a pastor of a small Dutch Reformed church. When he is asked by earnest parishioner Mary (Seyfried) to counsel her depressed husband (Ettinger), an eco activist, Toller spirals into religious doubt and on a path towards violence. FIRST REFORMED IS peak Paul Schrader. Part character study of a man in spiritual meltdown looking for redemption (Taxi Driver, American Gigolo), part expressionist treatise on inner turmoil (Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters) and part ’70s exploitation film (Dying Of The Light, Dog Eat Dog), the writer-director takes the issues that have suffused his entire career and makes them fresh for the 21st…

IF YOU DIDN’T stay in your seat to the bitter end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom — fair play, there was the World Cup/Love Island (delete where applicable) to watch — you would have missed out on a post-credits sting: a group of pterosaurs circling around an Eiffel-like tower. Don’t worry, the dinos haven’t reached Blackpool (or Paris). Instead, the winged creatures have arrived in Las Vegas (be careful on the slots, boys); a pertinent reminder that — ESTAs/visas be damned — these dinosaurs can now go anywhere. By making the Park extinct, J.A. Bayona’s sequel to Colin Trevorrow’s follow-on from Steven Spielberg’s/Joe Johnston’s original trilogy has ripped up the Jurassic rule book. After that bit with the volcano and that bit in the old house, the prehistoric critters leg…

★★★★ OUT 3 AUGUST CERT 15 / 101 MINS DIRECTOR Dominic Savage CAST Gemma Arterton, Dominic Cooper, Frances Barber PLOT On the outside, Tara Ainsworth (Arterton) seems to have it all: husband (Cooper), two kids, two cars, a conservatory. Yet inside, she is dying a slow death — until a picture book ignites a revolution in her heart and mind. HEART-WRENCHING BUT dispassionate, intelligent but empathetic, subtle but raw, The Escape is a riveting portrait of a woman trapped living the wrong life. Written and directed by Dominic Savage, best known for TV dramas such as True Love and The Secrets, its secret weapon is Gemma Arterton, who beautifully illuminates a stay-at-home mother who seemingly has it all but feels emotionally, spiritually, intellectually bereft. She is a revelation, displaying depths,…

“ JESUS TAP-DANCING CHRIST! IS THAT... PINK? ” A blushing vision descends from the sky as actors Boyd Holbrook and Trevante Rhodes look on, dumbstruck. A helicopter, pink as a baboon’s arse, whips through the air to settle in a field next to them, a grinning Keegan-Michael Key waving manically from the lilac interior. On the vehicle’s rosy fuselage, the silhouette of a naked woman reclines suggestively, the words “My Secret” and ”Heaven Sent” wrapped around her curves in flowery script. ”Well, that’s fancy,” observes Olivia Munn, as she, Rhodes and Holbrook shoulder weapons, grab their gear and get to the chopper — albeit one that appears to have been jacked from a sex-toy expo. “What did you expect?” says Rhodes, grinning at his ride between takes. “This is a…

A blue-collar Burton and Depp. Scorsese and De Niro with less pasta sauce and more testosterone. Over a trilogy of blisteringly recreated true-life tales — 2013’s Lone Survivor, about Navy SEALs under attack in Afghanistan; 2016’s Deepwater Horizon, about the crisis on an oil rig nicknamed ‘The Well From Hell’; and the same year’s Patriots Day, about the Boston Marathon bombing — director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg have solidified a working relationship, and friendship, of an intensity unusual in Hollywood. This summer sees the arrival of their fourth collaboration, a rocket-ride action movie called Mile 22 that casts Wahlberg as a CIA agent trying to exfiltrate a witness from an unnamed, far-flung country. This one’s not based on real events, so expect it to be even wilder, louder…

ONE COLD, RAINY DECEMBER night in 1975, a young man who was dressed to blend in — flared bright-crimson trousers and a sheer black body-hugging shirt — made his way across the dancefloor of a Brooklyn nightclub, through the strutting and writhing crowd, and out to get some air. The scene on the sidewalk was no less lively: a full-on brawl was enthusiastically playing itself out. But in the middle of the familiar flying fists and knees was an entirely unusual sight. Just starting to get out of a cab was an older man wearing, of all absurdities, a tweed suit. The pair’s eyes met and they studied each other briefly, aliens from distant galaxies establishing tentative first contact. As well as the tweed, the man was wearing an expression…

Illustration: David Mahoney. Alamy IT’S THE WEEKEND and too wet outside, too hot, too sunny, too windy. I’m too busy, too lazy, too stressed, too chilled. There’s way too much to do, or nowhere near enough. Something, somewhere is making me not want to engage with the outside world. I just need to close the curtains and hunker down with the cinematic equivalent of a mug of tea and a slab of jam sponge. I’ve been carrying around the same comfort-blanket film, The Shop Around The Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940), since childhood. Part romcom, part sedative and entirely lovely, it stars James Stewart as Alfred Kralik, a gently ambitious and decent sales clerk in a family-run Budapest leather goods store (can you feel your blood pressure dropping yet?) and Margaret…

THERE ARE MORE Easter eggs in Ready Player One than on your average supermarket shelf in the week after Christmas. Hardly surprising, given Ernest Cline’s source novel was drenched in pop culture references, but watching Steven Spielberg layer scenes with nods to both obscure and obvious was quite the treat. So we tried to list every single reference in the movie, with a little help from Cline and his co-screenwriter, Zak Penn. WADE’S VAN 1. Wade’s van boasts Q*bert stickers. 2. And Gremlins stickers. 3. And a Garfield sticker. 4. And Garbage Pail Kids stickers. 5. And a Watchmen smiley face. 6. Plus A Nightmare On Elm Street 7. And a Labyrinth one-sheet. 8. Not to mention a He-Man lunchbox. 9. And a Transformers lunch box. How much lunch can…

I DON’T CARE for boxing. That’s probably why I’d never seen Rocky, or Rocky II, III, IV, V or Rocky Balboa. I only watched Raging Bull for the first time five years ago, though I had to admit it was extremely good. Then I caught part of the documentary When We Were Kings and that too was extremely good. When it came out, I gave the seventh Rocky movie, Creed, a go. You’ve guessed it: extremely good. I may not care for boxing, but it turns out I do like movies about boxing. Growing up in the 1980s, you knew about Rocky even if you hadn’t seen it. It was made for $1 million and grossed $225 million. It won three Oscars, including Best Picture. In the Reagan era, the…

JON WATTS: “This scene from Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything is so awkward and it feels so real. John Cusack’s performance is so funny. It’s something I kept in the back of my mind when we were shooting the high school stuff for Spider-Man: Homecoming.” INT. LOUNGE/BEDROOM — DAY We intercut between Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack), pacing around his front room, and Diane Court (Ione Skye), sitting on her bed, as they have a conversation. LLOYD: Quick question. Do you know who I am? DIANE: Yeah. We sat together at Bell Square. LLOYD: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you remember. DIANE: No, I read it on the message. LLOYD: So it’s Lloyd and, uh, let’s go out. You wanna go out? DIANE: Oh, thanks. But I’m busy. LLOYD: Busy. DIANE: Yes. Things are…

EMPIRE David Heyman spoke to us on 25 June while overseeing Beasts post-production. THERE WAS ALWAYS a political edge to Harry Potter, even with all the dragons and broomsticks; Voldemort was nothing if not a fascist. However, the way producer David Heyman talks about The Crimes Of Grindelwald, the sequel to 2016’s Fantastic Beasts, makes it sound like we might be leaping into a political thriller. “It’s about the dangers of absolutism and fundamentalism,” says Heyman. “We see that in Grindelwald.” To recap, he was the dark wizard arrested at the end of the last film, revealed to be Johnny Depp in a Colin Farrell disguise. A year on, he’s on the brink of escaping prison and trying to unite the magically powered to crush the merely human. His means…

EMPIRE Empire met Sebastián Lelio in a drab London boardroom on 7 June. SEBASTIÁN LELIO WON an Oscar in March for A Fantastic Woman, a devastating battle cry about a trans woman’s unjust treatment. A sumptuously shot piece of work, it is worlds away from his new one. Disobedience, which follows New Yorker Ronit (Rachel Weisz) as she returns home to her north London Orthodox Jewish community, possesses a stifling suburban drabness. Yet Lelio’s stories have much in common. In Disobedience, Ronit rekindles a forbidden passion with ultra-religious friend Esti (Rachel McAdams), and things, as you might imagine, don’t go smoothly. “These two films, and Gloria,” says Lelio of his 2013 drama, “take characters on the fringes of mainstream representation, and take them to the absolute centre, creating these hopefully…

“YOU MIGHT THINK, ‘Oh no, a man’s kidnapped a woman! She’s the victim!’” says Luke Evans of his new thriller, 10X10. “But Noel [Clarke] has managed to spin that on its head. It takes a very different trajectory.” Good thing too, because that basic set-up has been done a million times. Evans’ Lewis creepily stalks Kelly Reilly’s Cathy before abducting her from a car park. Soon she’s bound, gagged and locked in the 10’ x 10’ cell he has prepared in his remote house. But Lewis is not a sexual predator or violent psycho, as we might expect. “This is a man who has been pushed to do something that is completely out of his comfort zone,” promises Evans. “For him to kidnap this woman has taken something. It all…

EMPIRE  Empire spoke to Jesse Armstrong on set at Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire on 14 March. IF YOU WANTED to find a recurring theme to Jesse Armstrong’s work, you might see it in swearing. The British writer’s work has covered flatmates (Peep Show), universities (Fresh Meat) and politics (The Thick Of It), and as different as they all are, each boasts inventively salty language. His latest effort, Succession, is a slick big-budget ten-part comic drama for HBO, and “certainly the most meatily dramatic show I’ve worked on”, he concedes — but the appetite for creative cursing is still there. Episode 2, for example, is titled ‘Shit Show At The Fuck Factory’. It’s not an inappropriate creative choice, given the setting. Succession focuses on Murdoch-ian media mogul Logan Roy (an almost King…

EMPIRE  Empire spoke to George Tillman Jr on the phone from LA, one week before the film was completed. THE OPENING PAGES of The Hate U Give, the debut novel by Angie Thomas, describe an African-American girl named Starr struggling over which side of her identity to present at a party — her black side or her white side. “There are just some places where it’s not enough to be me,” her narration reads. “Either version of me.” Filmmaker George Tillman Jr was working on Season 1 of Luke Cage when he was given an early manuscript of the book and immediately related to her experience. “She has two worlds,” Tillman Jr explains. “She goes back and forth. It’s about a woman who was code-switching — how African-Americans change their…

5 __ COLLATERAL – NIGHT CLUB SHOOTOUT What happens: Contract killer Vincent enters Fever nightclub to bump off his next target, Korean gangster Peter Lim. When the FBI also show up, it sparks a deadly shootout. Why it’s so good: It’s thrilling to see Cruise shrug off his all-American, hot-shot hero image and instead play a ruthless, brutally efficient murderer, popping bullets in heads, jabbing knives in legs, and smacking batons across faces with utter coldness as the crowd dissolves into panic around him. 4 __ MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III — BRIDGE ATTACK What happens: IMF Agent Ethan Hunt has captured villain Owen Davian — but the arms dealer’s people attack the convoy on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to break him out, forcing Hunt to make a desperate escape. Why it’s…

★★★ OUT 13 JULY CERT 15 / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Sergio G. Sánchez CAST George MacKay, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Mia Goth, Kyle Soller, Matthew Stagg PLOT After their mother dies, four children follow her final wish that they “stay hidden” until eldest sibling Jack turns 21. But their plan is complicated by a malevolent presence. AS DIRECTOR J.A. Bayona levels up to Hollywood big budgets with the Jurassic World sequel, his long-time creative compadre takes a seat in the feature-film director’s chair for the first time. Unsurprisingly, writer Sergio G. Sánchez’s movie feels very close to one of Bayona’s own, which Sánchez wrote — namely psycho-horror The Orphanage. Although, perhaps too close. Not on the surface, at least. Unlike the modern-day Spain-based The Orphanage, The Secret Of Marrowbone is…

★ OUT 20 JULY CERT 15 / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Steven C. Miller STARRING Sylvester Stallone, Dave Bautista, Xiaoming Huang, Wes Chatham PLOT Escape artist Ray Breslin (Stallone) is once again locked up in a state-of-the-art penitentiary. This time, though, he’s teamed up with protégé Shu Ren (Huang) to prevent an old enemy from making him a permanent resident. IT’S A TIME-HONOURED Hollywood tradition that any moderately successful movie without true franchise potential be considered for a straight-to-video follow-up. Thus we have been blessed by such timeless treasures as Behind Enemy Lines II: Axis Of Evil and Jarhead 3: The Siege, not to mention one additional Hard Target, two Air Buds and four successive Bring It Ons. Shorn of stars and budget, such bargain-bin fillers were a staple of video…

★★★★ OUT 3 AUGUST CERT TBC / 122 MINS DIRECTORS Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza CAST Julia Jedlikowska, Gaetano Fernandez, Sabine Timoteo PLOT Schoolboy Giuseppe (Fernandez) is kidnapped after his ex-Mafia father turns supergrass. The Sicilian code has the town’s adults sworn to inaction, but this means nothing to Giuseppe’s adoring classmate Luna (Jedlikowska), who is determined to track him down. SICILIAN GHOST STORY is an Italian film, and very much about an Italian way of life — the filmmakers titled it in English to give the horrors within some distance. A veil of fantasy protecting its protagonists from their awful realities. It’s an appropriate signpost for a unique film that wrings myriad emotions from you at once, leaving you elated, and slightly staggered. To an extent, it is based on…

★★★★ OUT 13 JULY CERT 15 / 82 MINS DIRECTOR Deborah Haywood CAST Joanna Scanlan, Lily Newmark, Sacha Cordy-Nice, Chanel Cresswell PLOT Northern England. Eccentric, shy Lyn (Scanlan) and daughter Iona (Newmark) relocate to a new town. As Iona falls foul of school queen bee Keeley (Cordy-Nice) and Lyn fails to make friends, the pair pretend everything is okay. But when Ione’s fortunes change, Lyn faces a life alone. PIN CUSHION STARTS in Indie 101 territory. Mother and daughter, the mother in odd shoes, the daughter in a pink knitted bobble hat, are driving in a camper van carrying a bird cage. It could be the opening of any Sundance Audience Favourite, but happily writer-director Deborah Haywood’s feature debut charts a course from whimsy to something more interesting, challenging and…

★★★ OUT 6 JULY CERT 15 / 101 MINS DIRECTOR Anthony Byrne CAST Natalie Dormer, Emily Ratajkowski, Ed Skrein, Joely Richardson, Neil Maskell, James Cosmo, Jan Bijvoet PLOT Sofia (Dormer) is a blind pianist living alone in a London flat. When her upstairs neighbour Veronique (Ratajkowski) plummets to her death, she begins her own private investigation, uncovering dark secrets that force her to confront her troubled past. IN DARKNESS OPENS with a woman gasping for breath on the floor as a man holds her down and chokes her. Although the camera slowly retreats, revealing that the scene belongs to a theatrical thriller for which Sofia is recording the score, this is a bleak introduction to a film that casts its women as victims, corpses and villains. Co-written by Natalie Dormer…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 122 MINS DIRECTOR Stefano Sollima CAST Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Catherine Keener, Isabela Moner PLOT After a US bombing is linked to Mexican people-smugglers, covert ops experts Graver (Brolin) and Gillick (Del Toro) are enlisted to help the CIA incite war between rival cartels, but the two men soon find themselves on opposing sides. APPRAISE THE DETAILS of this sequel to 2015’s dark, drug war masterpiece — no Denis Villeneuve, no Roger Deakins, no Emily Blunt — and you’d be forgiven for hearing the steady klaxon of multiple alarm bells. Well, those warnings won’t sound for very long after the lights go down in the cinema. Sicario 2: Soldado begins with one of the year’s most scintillating, pin-you-to-your-seat opening sequences (built around a…

★★★★ OUT NOW / HBO EPISODES VIEWED 1-7 CREATED BY Marti Noxon CAST Amy Adams, April Brinson, Eliza Scanlen, Patricia Clarkson, Matt Craven PLOT Chicago-based journalist Camille Preaker (Adams) returns to her hometown to report on a murder. But as the present triggers memories from her past, she finds it difficult to overcome her inner demons. SHARP OBJECTS HAS all the ingredients for a classic ‘whodunnit’ — a grisly, suspicious death, a small town chock-full of sinful secrets, and a big-city reporter sent in to cover the crime. But, as hinted at in the show’s first episode (“This isn’t going to be exploitative; more like a think piece on how something like this can affect a town,” says the newspaper’s editor), it plays out rather differently on screen. This is…

LOOKING OUT OF the window of London’s Soho Hotel, on a high enough floor that there’s a clear view of the city’s comers and goers, John Krasinski is scanning the streets. He’s explaining to Empire how one might start the hunt for perpetrators in the event of an attack. “You look for the cameras,” he says, squinting against the summer sun. “I do this now. I stand on corners and think, ‘Where would the footage come from?’ There are cameras on the ATM. There are cameras on the streetlights. London has a ton of them.” He never used to do this, but then, he never used to be the most famous CIA analyst in the world. Krasinski is the fifth actor to play Jack Ryan on screen. Tom Clancy invented…

00:05:11 HEADS UP __ After completing a somewhat hazy mission, in a single unbroken take we see Joaquin Phoenix’s enforcer Joe walk down the street, get attacked by a ne’er-do-well, only to plant the nut on him. It’s efficient, brutal, and a far cry from movies like Taken . “We didn’t have time for big, balletic sequences,” says Ramsay. “We were trying to set up the unpredictability of Joe. You don’t know what to expect from him.” 00:16:47 ALPHABET SONG __ Such unpredictability is evidenced by the scene where Joe shares a tender sing-song with his mother (Judith Roberts). “I remember singing the ‘Alphabet Song’ with Joaquin during prep,” laughs Ramsay, who included it from thereonin. “He and Judith had the best time. She’s in her eighties and is an…

HERE’S SOMETHING TO write to your MP about. Paddy Considine and Jodie Whittaker weren’t nominated for BAFTAs for their performances in Journeyman, Considine’s second film as a writer/director. Which, frankly, beggars belief. Because they are simply astonishing in this heart-rending tale of a boxer (Considine) who suffers brain damage, and tries to patch things up with his estranged wife (Whittaker). And nowhere are they more effective, and affecting, than in the film’s stand-out scene, where Matty receives a phone call from Emma and tries, desperately and falteringly, to win her back. It lasts approximately three-and- a-half minutes. Whittaker is never seen, only heard. And it’s nothing more than a close-up of Considine. But it’s just about the most powerful thing you will see all year. Considine: The last thing I…

Alamy/Allstar THE PROBLEM WITH trilogies is the middle instalment — part one begins and part three ends, but part two can tread water. Before the Empire struck back, another unpromising sequel turned out to be the most interesting in its series. Damien: Omen II (1978) was directed by Don Taylor, a former Robin Hood (The Men Of Sherwood Forest) who’d handled another mid-series highlight, Escape From The Planet Of The Apes. Richard Donner’s The Omen is lumbering, pompous hokum enlivened by solemn hamming, contrived proto- Final Destination deaths and a splendid Jerry Goldsmith score I hum every time I walk past a building site or under a shaky lightning rod. But it was a big enough hit to found a franchise. The second film is wittier, more engaging and has…

Photofest IN 1991, WHEN asked to select a single “master image” to sum up his work, Steven Spielberg didn’t choose a shark, or a fedora’d archaeologist or a bike flying across the moon. Instead he chose something simpler: a shot of a little boy opening his front door to see the blazing orange light from a UFO bursting in. In picking the image from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, the director recalled “that beautiful but awful light, just like fire coming through the doorway. And he’s very small, and it’s a very large door, and there’s a lot of promise or danger outside that door.” Promise or danger in light: it is what Spielberg’s cinema has been subsequently built on. The moment may have come from one of the…