Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2018 i Empire

Illustration: David Mahoney WHEN CHOOSING YOUR favourite Star Wars character, there are several things to take into consideration. They include (but are not limited to): your age when you first encountered them, how good their outfit is, how quick they are with a quip, where they place on the spectrum of saint to scoundrel (and your feelings about that position). It’s far from an easy decision but, when we asked you to make that call for our poll, you rose to the task admirably. And this month, we’re excited to reveal the results. Who’s the top twin: Luke or Leia? Who’s master of the Jedi: Yoda or Obi-Wan (or Mace Windu)? And can Rey and the new crop challenge the Original Trilogy’s icons? The answers to all these questions (and…

Alamy, Getty Images LAVERNE COX The first openly trans woman to be nominated for an Emmy, Cox rose to fame as Sophia on Orange Is The New Black. BRIAN MICHAEL SMITH Smith came out as trans in 2017, using his role on Ava DuVernay’s TV drama Queen Sugar as a vehicle to disclose his gender identity. MYA TAYLOR Taylor earned international recognition for her breakthrough role in the iPhone-shot 2015 drama Tangerine. DANIELA VEGA Vega shot to fame when her starring role in Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman won Best Foreign Language film at the Oscars. NICOLE MAINES Maines (below) made history in July when she joined the cast of Supergirl as Nia Nal, the first trans superhero on television.…

How’s it going? Really well. You might hear the dreadful tweets of little birds and sunlight and happiness. Let me know if that’s disturbing. If you could get them to stop, that would be fantastic. I’m so sorry. I’ll try. I am a pacifist, but we’ll see what I can do. So, where are you? I’m in London. In a dark meeting room. What’s London like? I miss it so much. It’s a lovely day here in Camden. I’m watching people go about their business. Are you in Sweden? I’m in my little fishing village, but I live in London as well. I haven’t been back home now for a month-and-a-half. I’m giving birth very soon, so I’m not travelling that much. London’s very much a major place for you,…

EMPIRE Empire spoke to Shane Black in the living room of his LA house on 15 June. THE PREDATOR ISN’T even in cinemas yet, but writer/director Shane Black is already hip-deep in his next project. “There’s this old sort of adage: always get your next job before the previous movie comes out,” Black says. His “next job” could be another nostalgic passion project: The Destroyer is based on a series of pulp novels (145, to be precise) published in the ’70s and ’80s and featuring Remo Williams, a cop who fakes his death and joins a secret government organisation to fight everything from communists to killer robots, and even an ancient Chinese vampire. “It’s a plot of a Steven Seagal movie!” laughs Black. “It’s a tough sell because the story…

Photographer: Steve Schofield. Make-up: Kay Montano. Hair: Liz Taw. WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER IN THE INNOCENTS? The show was described to me as True Romance meets Let The Right One In, but I play June, a 16-year-old girl running away from a very restricted upbringing and dealing with this massive change in her life, when she discovers she’s a shapeshifter. She’s trying to maintain her relationship with her boyfriend and work out what their life will be like after this discovery. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST AUDITION LIKE? I was awful. I didn’t have much time to prepare and I had to do a Yorkshire accent, which I’d never done before, so I did it really badly. There were auditions for Miss Saigon happening next door, so…

★★★★ OUT 10 AUGUST / CERT 12A / 98 MINS DIRECTOR Marcelo Martinessi CAST Ana Brun, Margarita Irún, Ana Ivanova, Alicia Guerra ANA BRUN WON Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival for this captivating satire, an award which proves fully deserved. A masterclass of acting with the eyes, she plays Chela, a pampered fiftysomething who’s given a jolt when her longtime companion, Chiquita (Irún), is jailed for fraud, while covering for the pair’s overspending. Yet, while the focus falls on Chela’s growing infatuation with the sensual Angy (Ivanova), debut director Marcelo Martinessi deftly uses the story to comment on Paraguay’s class structure and tumultuous recent past. An irresistible blend of disarming intimacy and acerbic wit, this is a meticulous character study whose late-blossoming heroine hints at a wider sense…

BY FAR THE funniest moment in (500) Days Of Summer, a likeable romcom which spins through key dates in the relationship between everyday guy Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and music-loving Manic Pixie Dream Girl Summer (Zooey Deschanel), is when Tom, bouncing down the street high on Summer, checks his appearance in a car window. Looking back at him as his reflection is Han Solo from A New Hope. Han winks at him — it’s the wink he gives Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) when he is receiving his medal for his role in blowing up the Death Star — and it makes Tom happy. Apart from the surprising thrill of seeing a familiar character in another movie (both were Fox properties), the joy of it is that everyone — man, woman, Princess,…

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago, Luke Skywalker was cinema’s greatest hero: the farm boy who saved the galaxy, and with it his father’s soul. Last year he returned… As a bitter, isolated failure. It was tough for many to swallow; too tough for the fan-brats calling for Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi to be uncanonised. Tough for Mark Hamill, too, who confessed to being “unsure of the direction Rian wanted me to go”, and felt he had to switch off his own “internal navigation device” — just like Luke at the Battle Of Yavin — and “tune into his navigation device”. He was right to. The manner of Luke’s return was dramatically bold, thematically potent and utterly appropriate to the character. Just as onetime disbeliever Han grew to embrace the reality of…

Disney, Lucasfilm The Face In early designs, Yoda resembled a garden gnome, with a red hat, bushy beard and hipster moustache. Thankfully, that idea was flung into the nearest pond and the 900-year-old Jedi master was drastically retooled as a tiny Dalai Lama, with bat ears and a face modelled partly on Albert Einstein and Stuart Freeborn, the British make-up artist who built him. The Voice Lucas toyed with giving Yoda an Asian cadence, before deciding something more drastic was needed. “He’s such a weird, alien character,” he said in 1980. “I had to come up with something that’s not a foreign language, not an accent, but somewhere in-between those two things. That’s how I started Yoda’s backward style.” The Skin Early on, Yoda was covered in fur. But he…

FORGET BB-8, K-2SO, L3-37, even C-3P0 — there is still only one droid to rule them all. R2-D2 is one of the most recognisable elements of the entire series. Little has permeated the culture like the plucky astromech droid, be it stuck on the side of the Mothership in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, becoming his own version of Bop It!, or being inducted into the Smithsonian’s ‘101 Objects That Made America’ list. Artoo earns his high place on the list because of his huge personality and infectious spirit. He is loveable, charming, smart, patient (would you put up with C-3P0?), courageous, clumsy (he falls in a swamp and off a sail barge) and mischievous (look how he trolls Luke by playing him the old Princess Leia message just…

Disney, Lucasfilm Iain McCaig (concept artist): The original brief was brief indeed: “His name is Darth Maul; he’s a Sith Lord.” The only other Sith Lord I knew was Darth Vader, so at first I tried to out-helmet Ralph McQuarrie’s amazing design. Which, of course, is quite impossible. Eventually I took the helmet off and began exploring what might lie underneath. Nick Gillard (stunt coordinator/swordmaster): The casting director, Robin Gurland, came into my office the day after we first met, with this book called The Stunt Register, which has every stunt person in it. She said, “The brief is he should look like a heroin addict,” and bizarrely she had the book open on my page. So she’s showing me a picture of myself, saying I look like a heroin…

Disney, Lucasfilm “You’ll be malfunctioning within a day, you nearsighted scrap pile.” “Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to one!” “My parts are showing? Oh, my goodness, oh!” “It is against my programming to impersonate a deity.” “Don’t you call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease!” “I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the Wookiee win.” “Goodness, Han Solo! It is I, C-3PO. You probably do not recognise me because of the red arm.” “R2-D2! You know better than to trust a strange computer!” “Die, Jedi dogs! Oh, what did I say?”…

AFTER A DODDERY old man, a callow youth and an ageing green frog-thing, Qui-Gon Jinn is the first time in the saga we see a Jedi Knight in his prime. Played with gravitas set to maximum by Liam Neeson, Jinn is a grounding tonic in a film often derided for its frippery, and his “noble end” is keenly felt. Schooled in the ways of the Jedi by his master Count Dooku, Jinn’s notion of the Force is perhaps best conceptualised as living in the moment: “Remember: your focus determines your reality.” Yet, skilled with a lightsaber, he takes out battledroids with ease and balletically takes on Darth Maul in two memorable skirmishes. And he is also dangerous. Jinn is a maverick, a loose cannon operating independently from the Jedi Council…

DARTH REVAN’S LEGACY isn’t his reputation (fearsome) or his natty armour (shiny), but rather the fact that he’s... you. The star of 2003 video game Knights Of The Old Republic (set 4,000 years prior to any of the films), Revan starts out (as the player character) an unassuming Republic soldier, later identified as Force-sensitive and trained as a Jedi. It’s only when you face off against the scheming Darth Malak that your character’s true identity is revealed: former Sith Lord Darth Revan, the game’s elusive big bad, who has been discussed only in hushed tones until that point. As far as rug-pulls go, it’s a doozy. So much so that Revan lore has flourished since the game’s release, leading to a series of comics and novels (no longer canon) that…

Alamy, Photofest Stabbed by an underage hooker, Antonio Banderas crashes though a bookshop window and staunches his wounds with a paperback of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Inspired by the bloodstained book, he takes a vow of silence (except for voice-over narration) until he has completed his quest for revenge on the unknown lowlife who murdered his family. Of course, interrogating suspects involves more punches in the face than tricky cross-questioning. Isaac Florentine’s Death Wish-esque vigilante tale ACTS OF VENGEANCE is given heft by Banderas’ intense performance and off-the-wall plot developments. In one of those all-too-common situations, The Mercy and Crowhurst got made at about the same time and came out like conjoined twins. The Mercy got the theatrical push, leaving Simon Rumley’s smaller-budgeted biopic of the round-the-world yachtsman to bob around…

WAITING FOR DINO Just wanted to say that was a great interview with Colin Trevorrow on the Fallen Kingdom Spoiler Special Empire podcast! Only mystery that remains now is why those flying dinos waited for the post-credits scene to cause havoc, while they’ve been out and about in the world since their aviary was destroyed three years ago. CLARA, VIA EMAIL We hear the pterodactyl’s agents negotiated an 80 per cent salary increase for the sequel, plus a back-end deal and unlimited margaritas. The dino-divas. Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend! Valid for one year at 23 Picturehouse Cinemas across the UK, including the flagship Picturehouse Central in London’s West End, each membership comes pre-loaded with four free tickets, and gets you access to…

THE TATE MODERN SET-PIECE IN MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE FALLOUT There were many astonishing stunt sequences in Mission: Impossible Fallout, officially this summer’s Best Action Movie™; one saw Tom Cruise chase a baddie all the way to the top of the Tate Modern’s chimney in London. In the film, Cruise takes a lift to the top; in reality, no such lift exists. The filmmakers had to construct a temporary lift on the side of the 325-foot chimney, with a dizzying ladder for the Cruiser to clamber up at the highest point. Cruise wore a harness while on the roof, later digitally edited out — but despite recovering from a broken ankle, Cruise still cheerily waved at onlookers at the gallery’s viewing platform when the stunt was filmed back in February.…

They’re making The Shining 2? Is this an unauthorised cash-in? Not at all! Doctor Sleep is a genuine Stephen King-written sequel to his classic 1977 supernatural horror novel The Shining. Published in 2013, it came about after King polled fans on his website as to which book he should write next — Doctor Sleep or another Dark Tower novel. (Sleep won by 49 votes.) What is it about? Set decades after the events of the first book, it finds a grown-up Danny Torrance (now going by Dan) still traumatised by the events of the Overlook Hotel, and working at a hospice where he puts his ‘shining’ abilities to good use — only to come up against darker psychic forces. So it’s still in the supernatural vein? Very much so. Along…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT PG / 114 MINS DIRECTOR Ol Parker CAST Amanda Seyfried, Lily James, Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Cher, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, Christine Baranski, Stellan Skarsgård, THE GODFATHER PART II of ‘jukebox classics’ musicals, in so much as it’s part sequel, part prequel. In its best moments, director Ol Parker recaptures the original’s free-wheeling energy, but it is an uneven experience, with the ’70s-set portion recounting too much we already know and some unnecessary emotional baggage for Amanda Seyfried’s Sophie bringing down the vibe in the early scenes of the modern-day storyline. But there are more than enough joyful moments (and plenty of classic songs) to have you dancing in the aisles come the end credits.…

★★★ OUT 31 AUGUST / CERT 15 / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Leigh Whannell CAST Logan Marshall-Green, Harrison Gilbertson, Betty Gabriel AFTER BEING CRIPPLED in an attack (during which his wife is killed), grumpy near-future technophobe Grey Trace (Marshall-Green) is forced to accept AI into his life when he’s offered the chance to walk again (and more) via an implanted, super-smart chip called Stem. He’s able to dish out some rough justice to those who wronged him, but he’s soon worried that it might not be an equal partnership between man and microchip. Director Leigh Whannell offers up a genre stew that, while it features some overly familiar ingredients (and a story that heads in expected directions), has some fun ideas and all the gory thrills you might want in a…

★★★★ OUT 31 AUGUST / CERT 12A / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Aneesh Chaganty CAST John Cho, Debra Messing, Michelle La, Sara Sohn IT’S EASY TO get fixated on the gimmick of Searching. Its entire story is told on a computer screen, via FaceTime chats, YouTube clips and Google searches. It tells the story of David (Cho), a recent widower who believes he has a solid, honest relationship with his daughter, until she disappears and he delves into her online life to try to find her. And is left wondering if he ever really knew her at all. But it proves to be more than just a gimmick — it’s a highly entertaining, fast-moving and gripping drama with a solid emotional core. And while the conceit is occasionally pushed too far…

FILMS HE APPEARS IN 5 10 PLANETS VISITED Tatooine, Hoth, Bespin, Takodana, Starkiller Base, Corellia, Mimban, Vandor-1, Kessel, Savareen 2 MOONS VISITED (Yavin IV and Endor) 1 Death Star THAT’S-NO-MOONS VISITED 5 TIMES HE SHOOTS FIRST 55 times he’s called Hahn 26 times he’s called Han (Leia and Qi’ra) 13 KISSES KILLS 37 Imperials 8 Criminals 1 Green assassin WEAPONS USED BlasTech DL-44 blaster, BlasTech DL-18 blaster, pyro denton explosives, thermal charges, lightsaber, fists, bowcaster, explosives, E-11 stormtrooper blaster, vibrostaff 3 BAD FEELINGS HAD 1 GOOD FEELINGS HAD VEHICLES USED Millennium Falcon, Tyridium shuttle, tauntaun, Corellian M-68 landspeeder, Y-45 armoured transport hauler…

SHE’S STRONG. SHE’S capable. She’s resilient. She learns the Force too easily, too quickly. She’s too much of a natural. She defies the order of things. These are all, apparently, Officially Bad Things About Rey. Or at least, things that Might Make Rey A Bit Boring. Yes, she’s a good pilot. Yes, she can fix stuff. Yes, she is most possibly the most powerful user of the Force there ever was, ever has been, without an Obi-Wan (though let’s not forget that in A New Hope Luke goes from first touching a lightsaber to using the Force within the span of about two-and-a-half hours). The key to Rey, though, lies in her humanity, the things that give her her character, her texture. She’s an orphan: she’s had no-one to rely…

Landmark, Lucasfilm, REX/Shutterstock THERE’S A TRADITION in football that, should their team reach and win the World Cup, all footballers in the first team squad will receive a winner’s medal. Regardless of whether or not they actually play in the match. If Chewbacca ever hears of this tradition, he could be forgiven for letting out a typically pained Wookiee howl. Because Chewbacca didn’t get a medal for his part in the destruction of the first Death Star. And, if we’re extending the football metaphor to breaking point, he not only got on the pitch, but he came up with the most important assist of them all. Towards the end of A New Hope, Luke asks Han to join in with the Rebel assault on the Death Star just outside Yavin…

LIKE A GALACTIC RON Burgundy, Finn once bragged that he’s kind of a big deal in the Resistance. (No word yet on how many leather-bound books he owns.) But the true appeal of Finn is that he’s not a big deal. Not really. FN-2187, to give him his cold military designation, is a true nobody, just another stormtrooper in a vast faceless army — albeit one who, unthinkably, dares to dream of freedom. His unlikely rebellion is central to his character’s creation. During the first story meetings for The Force Awakens, original screenwriter Michael Arndt recalls struggling to find a hook for their male lead. Finally, Star Wars veteran Lawrence Kasdan piped up with a pep talk. “You guys, you’re not thinking big,” he said. “What if he’s a stormtrooper…

Julian Glover GENERAL VEERS “I got into The Empire Strikes Back by complete nepotism. I lived next door to [associate producer] Robert Watts and he popped his head over the fence and said, ‘Do you want to be in Star Wars?’ I played a lot of military types because I looked good in uniform so it was a nice little job. I will not accept that Maximilian Veers is a villain. He is a career soldier who has risen through the ranks and wins the battle of Hoth. The AT-AT cockpit was a little construction on top of a crane with a blue screen behind. They shook it about a bit. When I saw the film, suddenly this great mechanical giraffe rode in: ‘Bloody hell, that’s what I was driving!’…

THE FIRST PICTURE of Poe Dameron arriving in The Force Awakens was an ‘aha!’ moment. That jawline. The devil-may-care hair. The bruised cheekbone. This, fans clocked, is the Sequel Trilogy’s ‘Han Solo type’. And yet despite his planned early demise (he was originally fated to die in the crash on Jakku), Poe lived on to become one of Star Wars’ most complex heroes. In J.J. Abrams’ film Poe is a straightforwardly dashing hot-shot pilot, swooping in in his X-wing to save the day. But in The Last Jedi he develops a serious hero-complex, so convinced that his way (reckless and glory-seeking) is the only way. His planned mutiny against Vice Admiral Holdo — who had the situation under control the entire time — is anything but pointless, teaching him a…

UNLIKE MOST STAR Wars protagonists, Jyn Erso doesn’t set out to be the hero. She doesn’t dream of saving the galaxy, or set a course for a dazzling new life among the stars. She just wants her dad, Galen Erso, back — the father quite literally ripped away from her as a young girl. As a result she’s one of Star Wars’ most human heroes — and not just in the sense that she’s not covered in thick fur or made of wires and metal. Midway through Rogue One, Jyn’s personal crusade to rescue her dad evolves into a grander political mission, honouring Galen’s legacy by ensuring his Stardust plan comes to fruition. Jyn’s story brings an emotional weight to the fight — and she’s also a hard-as-nails heroine who…

1_ He was an utter badass who became commander of the Rebel Fleet during the Battle Of Endor in Return Of The Jedi. Despite, and we can’t stress this enough, being a fish. 2_ Okay, not quite a fish. He’s a Mon Calamari, an aquatic species from the planet Mon Cala. Which makes him one of the few Star Wars good guys to taste great with a slice of lemon and tartar sauce. 3_ Although he is never addressed as such on screen, his first name is Gial. And not, as we thought, ‘Admiral’. 4_ He has command of his own vessel, the Home One. As well as the flagship of the Rebel Fleet, it was also where the briefing on the second Death Star was held. 5_ He is…

ONE OF THE constants of the resurrected Star Wars films has been the new droids. Throughout the original trilogy and the prequels, C-3PO and R2-D2 were our ever-present companions, but now, every movie has a brand-new mechanoid, each with its own quirks. The Force Awakens started it with BB-8, The Last Jedi introduces his evil counterpart BB-9E, Solo has Lando love-interest L3-37, and K-2SO — a master of the biting putdown — is the droid of Rogue One. And while BB-8’s rolling, cutesy schtick has stolen the headlines (and sold the most merchandise), it’s K-2 who’s the choice of the connoisseur. Originally an Imperial security guard, he was captured by the Rebellion and re-programmed. Poorly. So while he’s compelled to serve his new masters, it’s not something he’s especially pleased…

How did you land the role of Valak, the demon nun? James Wan decided he wanted an extra monster in The Conjuring 2. The brilliant casting directors allowed me to audition. I was told it was an untitled James Wan film. It was between two men and me, and I was like, “No fucking way are they giving this role to a guy.” I wouldn’t even leave until I got the job. I was like, “What’s there to think about?” Did you have any sense that they were thinking of bringing you back? No, not at all. I was just hoping I’d get to work with James again. I was thrilled to work with him. And now I’m thrilled to work with Corin. My God: what an artist. What’s it…

Alamy, Getty Images, REX/Shutterstock IT IS ENTIRELY fitting that Heathers, a movie about school misfits and toxic cliques, was slow to make friends. When it was released in 1988 it was liked by a passionate few but broadly ignored. Three decades on, it’s an undisputed classic of the genre, the star pupil that set the template for almost every teen movie that followed, from Clueless to Mean Girls. Its writer, Daniel Waters, and director, Michael Lehmann, look back on three decades of learning the hard way. THE FIRST DAY Heathers was a misfit from the day it was conceived. Waters imagined it as “a teen movie for Stanley Kubrick, because he loved genre and he’d never done teen”. He wrote a screenplay that focused on Veronica, part of the popular…

Illustration: Want Some Studio REGARDLESS OF THE health hazards of binging six films straight, I gratefully accept the challenge of mainlining a half-dozen Mel Brooks movies — because the world is going to hell and I need a laugh now more than ever. No checking the news for depressing headlines. No checking Twitter, the hell portal in my pocket. It’s just me, Mel B and a metric ton of M&Ms. Bring it on. 9.20AM THE PRODUCERS Such manic energy! This Mel-a-thon is going to be a breeze at this rate. Zero Mostel (sleazy) and Gene Wilder (hysterical, wet, in pain) execute one of the all-time great comedic set-ups: the creation of a Broadway flop in order to flim-flam investors. It’s fascinating to see Gene Wilder’s career in utero as Leo…

Illustration: Jacey Chris: Batman has been going for over 75 years. He’s been reinvented a number of times. Different directors have had a take on him. Why is that? Helen: I think there’s little to him that’s canon, and that means you can reinvent him at least once a generation for a whole new audience. He’s weirdly flexible in that way. I think Adam West’s Batman is as much a Batman as the Christopher Nolan Batman. Dan: That’s the two sides of it. Either you treat it as stupid and all a big joke, or you can take it seriously and say, “Here’s someone with something so wrong that they’re using all their money to do this ridiculous thing.” Olly: Isn’t that why he’s great cinematically? You could argue that…

Alamy GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS The Comic-Con trailer for Godzilla: King Of The Monsters, the follow-up to Gareth Edwards’ 2014 reboot, begins with a post-apocalyptic bent. “The mass extinction we feared has already begun, and we are the cause,” gravely intones Vera Farmiga’s voiceover as the world crumbles. But then Debussy’s ‘Clair De Lune’ cranks up, suddenly injecting a sense of wonder and majesty into the teaser, as we learn of the only hope for humanity: the titans. This shot, of a newly awakened Godzilla letting loose a neon firebreath, reminds us why these monster movies keep us coming back. It may not have been the biggest film at Comic-Con, but with a money shot this grand and beautiful? All hail the king.…

1__ Skynet is not dead! A sixth Terminator movie is currently in production — the second reboot of the apocalyptic science-fiction franchise in four years. 2__ This is a reboot with a difference, however: it has the full participation of James Cameron, the creator of the series and writer/director of the first two films. Cameron wrote a story treatment that the script follows, and is also a producer. 3__ The film completely disregards the continuity of the last three films in the series (Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines, Terminator Salvation and Terminator: Genisys). “This is a continuation of the story from Terminator 1 and Terminator 2,” Cameron told The Hollywood Reporter. “We’re pretending the other films were a bad dream. Or an alternate timeline, which is permissible in our…

★★★ OUT 24 AUGUST / CERT 15 / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Dean Devlin CAST David Tennant, Robert Sheehan, Kerry Condon WHEN SMALL-TIME thief Sean ( Misfits’ Sheehan) breaks into the home of rich douchebag Cale (Tennant), he winds up with more than he burgled for — finding a terrified woman (Condon) chained up in a dungeon next to a kill room. Sean fudges his attempt to rescue her, and when Cale finds out about his intruder, he comes for Sean and his loved ones with extreme prejudice. Dean Devlin bounces back from the Geostorm fiasco with a tight, twisty little thriller let down only by a few plot contrivances. Sheehan is good as the bungling burglar, while Tennant attacks the role of Cale with even more sadistic relish than he…

1 __ LIVED IN JAMAICA “I was teaching myself the accent, but it didn’t really latch on. So I decided to live in Jamaica for a couple of months. The key thing is specificity — modern Jamaican patois is not what we needed, it’s been Americanised. In Jamaica I was around people of the right era. A lot opened up their world to me — Sly and Robbie, some of the Marleys, a lot of different music artists.” 2 __ CHANGED HIS PERCEPTIONS “In Jamaica I got into smoking weed. I’d never smoked weed in my life — I didn’t do drugs growing up. I smoked to understand the character, and to understand weed — how it can quell you but also make you tip-top suspicious. That was definitely a…

Alamy ON… HIS UPBRINGING “He was so far ahead of his time. But also his own age. He spent most of his youth with grown-ups, meeting captains of industry and people high up in arts and politics. So he heard and absorbed all that table talk. He had an accelerated access to the world of power, corruption, decline — all those things.” ON… HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH HOLLYWOOD “Hollywood turned against him because he showed up their banality. He was so much more talented than most of them, and so much younger. They were jealous as fuck . Welles and Hollywood fell out of love. Remember, he was an experimental artist working in an industrial system, and that was always going to go wrong.” ON… HIS FILMMAKING “He didn’t shoot much…

HENRY CAVILL “I was there — I saw it happen. I was like, “That looked like a bad hit,” and clearly he was in pain. For the rest of the day they shot me walking around London, which felt exhausting. It was that evening when we found out that it was a break.” VING RHAMES “I was in LA, getting ready to go to London. I’m sorry he got injured, but McQuarrie got more time to work on the script and I stayed home. Tom’s getting older now. I know he loves doing his own stunts, but as a friend, after we get the close-up, maybe we should let the stunt guy do it. Maybe.” SIMON PEGG “I’d taken a break from production. I went off to do Slaughterhouse Rulez,…

★★★★ OUT 17 AUGUST / CERT 15 / 134 MINS DIRECTOR Xavier Beauvois CAST Nathalie Baye, Laura Smet, Iris Bry, Cyril Descours LIFE ON THE Great War home front is presented in all its backbreaking authenticity in this gruellingly engrossing adaptation of a P92S Ernest Pérochon novel. Taking his visual cues from rustic art and cinema, Director Beauvois places the emphasis firmly on the daily grind, as Hortense (Baye) hires orphan Francine (Bry) to help run her Limousin farm while her menfolk are away in the trenches. But, as in Of Gods And Men, Beauvois uses understatement to explore the impact of external pressures on an enclosed community. Consequently, he manages to produce a moving human drama that also explores themes of class, gender and provincialism with intimacy and integrity.…

REX/Shutterstock How long has this idea been percolating? Ten years, maybe? I know I started drawing and really thinking about it in 2012 — that’s the date on my sketchbook. I started drawing pictures of elves and demons and princesses and taking all kinds of notes on the possibilities for fantasy. Why fantasy? I love creating new worlds. I love the idea of a self-contained animated universe. The Simpsons was a fairly straightforward template of a conservative family. One of the difficulties with Futurama was that doing the genre was not as satisfying as going for real emotion. It was much harder to write than The Simpsons. We were a bit hog-tied by the science-fiction. It’s the same with fantasy — there are only so many elf jokes you can…

JAMES DYER @jamescdyer Evangelical about Aliens and Nuns On The Run. Once had a wee next to Ice Cube. IAN FREER @mrianfreer Loves Jaws and The 400 Blows and Apocalypse Now. Yet to see The Big Lebowski. TERRI WHITE @terri_white Is disappointed in any film that isn’t unrelentingly grim. Apart from La La Land. NICK DE SEMLYEN @nickdesemlyen Loves film noir and Peter Jackson films. Can recite the lyrics to Magic Dance from Labyrinth. JONATHAN PILE @jonnypile Flirts with highbrow films, but is happiest in front of a decent thriller. CHRIS HEWITT @chrishewitt Loves horror and Marvel flicks. Freddy vs Tony would be his best movie ever. HELEN O’HARA @helenlohara Likes superheroes. And films about smart people arguing, ideally while falling in love. JOHN NUGENT @mr_nugent Big fan of Powell,…

Alamy, Disney, Lucasfilm The Voice: James Earl Jones More than mask, armour or rasping breath, it’s James Earl Jones’ booming baritone that lends Vader his awe-inspiring presence. While his work went uncredited for both Star Wars and Empire upon original release, Jones coated the Sith Lord’s every word in menace, radiating authority whether interrogating Rebels (“You are a part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor!”), dropping portentous asides (“I sense something. A presence I've not felt since...”), or berating Imperial underlings (“Asteroids do not concern me, Admiral”). Chosen as an alternative to David Prowse’s West Country twang (Prowse himself was rather less impressed by the substitution), Jones’ intonation is responsible for much of what made Vader an icon, and one of the most widely imitated, endlessly quoted characters in…

Capital Pictures, Disney, Lucasfilm, Landmark 1___ Give him a mask All the coolest Star Wars bad guys wear one, so it went without saying that the new villain originally conceived as the ‘Jedi Killer’ should get a mask, too. At first, much more Vader-ish skull-bucket looks were toyed with (concept artist Christian Alzmann reasoning that Darth’s style wouldn’t be a “one-off”), then they tried a silver stormtrooper look, which didn’t feel right for this villain but led to the creation of Captain Phasma. The final result was something of a blend, combining Vader’s black, face-encasing, voice-distorting mask with shiny metallic “spaghetti-type” highlights, which costume designer Michael Kaplan loved because they reflected any light sources around Ren. They also look, rather appropriately, like worry lines, and work on a symbolic level,…

EWAN McGREGOR CERTAINLY claims the bulk of the character’s screen time, and certainly no-one since Chuck Norris has sported the mullet-and-beard combo with similar aplomb. But for the quintessential Kenobi, we need look no further than Sir Alec Guinness. A classically trained thespian who considered the entire endeavour beneath him (“Fairy-tale rubbish”), Guinness brought a much-needed gravitas to the role, and to Star Wars as a whole, effortlessly selling the kooky concept of the Force (“It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together”) in a way few lesser actors could. From the moment he strides, howling, from the Jundland Wastes to rescue Luke from Tusken Raiders, Guinness’ space wizard installs himself as the story’s moral compass, inspiring, teaching and mentoring, before laying down his life so that…

THESE DAYS, IF you say the words “bounty hunter”, the first thing most people will think of is Boba Fett: the mysterious, battered, battle-armoured bad guy who served Han Solo up to Jabba The Hutt. But before The Empire Strikes Back, the answer would most likely have been the cigar-chewing Clint Eastwood, anti-heroically working For A Few Dollars More in Sergio Leone’s grittily stylish spaghetti Western. And the two of them are connected, far beyond sharing an ill-reputed job. In fact, without one, you’d never have got the other. George Lucas was certainly open about Empire’s bounty hunters emerging from films about “the Old West”, and confirmed that Boba Fett is “very much like the Man With No Name [Eastwood’s character] from the Sergio Leone Westerns”. As well as the…

Alamy, Disney, Lucasfilm, REX/Shutterstock BILLY DEE WILLIAMS had Lando Calrissian down cold. From the moment we first saw him, cloak fluttering in the breeze in the clouds above Bespin and pulling one hell of a practical joke on the usually unflappable Han Solo (“You slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler. You’ve got a lot of guts coming here, after what you pulled”), it was hard to imagine a smoother individual.But then it happened. Holding court at a Sabacc table, and wearing a yellow and black shirt only he could possibly pull off, here was Lando — but somehow an even cooler version. Donald Glover had not only successfully taken the baton, he’d sprinted off into the distance with it. But whichever portrayal you favour, one thing unites them — in both the…

IT’S EASY TO give into hate when it comes to Jar Jar Binks. After all, he’s the walking punchline that ruined Star Wars, right? But there’s a chance that might be an overreaction; the kind of toxic overreaction that drove Ahmed Best, who plays Jar Jar, to consider taking his own life. We all know what hate leads to. Something a wide swathe of the Star Wars fandom seem to have forgotten. If you want to understand the appeal of Best’s bungling Gungan, watch The Phantom Menace with a small child. Then he becomes a delight, a whirling dervish who gatecrashes a very sombre movie about men in cloaks interrupting trade negotiations and injects a welcome dose of chaos. By the end, when he’s taking down the Trade Federation forces…

BEFORE WE MET Padmé on screen, we’d heard about her. And she tended to be described in terms of other people — Luke’s mother, Leia’s mother, Darth Vader’s wife. Rarely have a person’s actions been so unjustly diminished. So let’s take a moment to recognise a few of them: elected leader of an entire planet at 14, she went on to become a galactic senator, survived multiple assassination attempts, and worked tirelessly for the good of her people in the face of widespread, Trump-level corruption. She’s arguably the true hero of the prequels. Certainly, in any given situation, she was likely to be the character making the most sense, most memorably as she declared, “So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.” But she wasn’t just a politician. When…

THIS NA’VI-SKINNED, ember-eyed officer may be unfamilar to most, but he is a man who near single-handedly saved the Star Wars universe from fading into memory. The principal antagonist in Timothy Zahn’s 1991 novel, Heir To The Empire, Thrawn proved a massive hit, the series popularising Expanded Universe fiction and re-kindling love for the Star Wars franchise. A member of the Chiss race, Thrawn was calm, calculating and philosophical; a strategic military mind who strove for martial perfection. Having been birthed in a story that told an alternative account of the years post-Jedi, Thrawn was on the wrong side of canon when the Extended Universe was banished to Legends. But his popularity was so great that it transcended Disney’s post-buyout retconning, and ended up in the official timeline via Star…

LOUIS JOLIN — 12 REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE What’s Rebel Without A Cause about? This kid keeps getting into trouble, and then he goes to a new high school and gets into a fight with the leader of this gang. They try and sort things out by driving to the edge of a cliff and jumping out of their cars. The leader of the bullies gets killed, and then it’s a combination of the kid making friends with Judy the girl, and Play-Doh... You mean Plato? His name’s Play-Doh. And the bully’s friends want to get back at him, and then it’s also interesting about Play-Doh’s story and how he’s troubled. Did you enjoy it? I thought it was going to be a really boring old film, but it was…

PEOPLE OFTEN GET in touch asking Empire to identify a film they saw years ago but remember dimly. Folks frequently wonder whether they actually saw a movie or only dreamed it. The formation “the one with…” serves to tag such tantalising puzzles. The one with the little people in the basement (Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark). The one with the alien-possessed bulldozer (Killdozer!). The one with the pizza cutter (Don’t Go To Sleep — seriously, if you saw it, that’s how you remember it). The Maze, directed by the great art director William Cameron Menzies, is “the one with the giant frog”. Yes, it’s as strange, ludicrous and oddly tragic as you’d think. Inspired by the legend of Glamis Castle — which means the giant frog is related to…

1 THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) Dan: “The right placing for a cast-iron Bat-masterpiece. Be as dismissive as you like about the plotting, it’s a perfectly calibrated thrill-ride from beginning to end, with the best performance of the entire franchise in Heath Ledger’s Joker.” 2 BATMAN BEGINS (2005) Chris: “When Nolan stepped in with this daringly structured, boldly ‘realistic’ reboot, he laid the groundwork for the brilliance to come.” 3 BATMAN RETURNS (1992) Olly: “It gets unfairly dismissed for its nuttiness, but it has some smart takes on the weirdness of superheroes/villains creating secret identities.” 4 BATMAN (1989) Helen: “Burton’s first outing has had a bad rap since Begins came out, but it’s time for a reassessment. A solid Batman story.” 5 BATMAN:MASK OF THE PHANTASM(1993) Helen: “Immensely cool, with a…