Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2018 i Empire

“HARRY IS A GREAT CHARACTER. THERE ARE THINGS YOU CAN RELATE TO, YET HE’S CAPABLE OF EXTRAORDINARY THINGS.” DAVID HEYMAN WELCOME TO HOGWARTS School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry. The doors to the Great Hall are already open. Through the windows, the Scottish Highlands are clearly visible. But primarily, it’s the heat that hits you, coming from 12 flame torches spaced along the ancient stone walls, fire rippling below Gryffindor house banners. Four columns of weathered, oak tables stretch the entire 145-foot length, laid with gold plates and goblets, ready for a feast. Four hundred pupils will dine here to celebrate the end of term. Once they’ve eaten their fill, it’s up the moving staircases to the common room, which is draped with medieval tapestries. A chess set stands on a…

LIFE AT HOGWARTS is changing. Once a place we visited to see innocent young whelps learn about fighting the Dark Arts and discover deadly conspiracies lurking in the girls’ toilets, this school year has more going on. The Great Hall is abuzz with a magic of a more traditional variety. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley — or should that be Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint? — are elbowing each other in the ribs and grinning like fools, before muffling their giggles in the cuffs of their cloaks. Hermione Granger — or should that be Emma Watson? — has a look of frosty disdain that would put Judi Dench to shame. All about them the rank and file of the Hogwarts school-body bears closer resemblance to a warren of rabbits frozen…

HAVING BATTED ASIDE familial death, a resurrected foe (repeatedly and with screaming gusto) and the sticky beginnings of puberty, Harry Potter now faces probably his greatest obstacle so far. No, this has little to do with the film being darker, though precedent insists that each adventure must be one step down the paint chart, nor that man whose name must not be spoken. The great obstacle for Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, which might initially appear insurmountable, is that many people, even a number of diehard fans, wouldn’t wholly object to skipping this episode and going right to the finale, as long as we could have that bit where the big character dies (has the spoiler moratorium passed on that yet?) as a prologue. The sixth Harry Potter is…

“THE AGE OF THE MIDDLE-AGED WHITE MAN IS OVER.” So whispers Robin Wright’s Claire Underwood in episode three of the new season of House of Cards. It’s but one example of the archly self-referential moments that punctuate the show’s sixth and final season but without doubt the most pointed. A season many speculated wouldn’t happen after the removal of its former star and executive producer, Kevin Spacey, whose turbulent journey as Francis J. Underwood — from party whip to Oval Office — had us rapt for the past five years. Netflix’s first original series is no stranger to scandal. The five seasons to date have seen Spacey’s callous, scheming politician entangled in everything from perjury to extortion – determined to rise to the top by any and all means possible.…

SKY ATLANTIC/ NOW TV MID-2019 “THERE IS NO WAY; THERE’S no reason to make a Season 2”. The words of director Jean-Marc Vallée back in the summer of 2017 just after the extraordinary finale of his seven-part drama aired on HBO. He went on to say, “That was meant to be a one-time deal. If we do a season two, we’ll break that beautiful thing and spoil it”. Yet not only is season two of Big Little Lies on its way, it’s also getting a Meryl Streep/Andrea Arnold upgrade. Streep joins the main cast as the mother of abusive husband Perry (Alexander Skarsgård), and singular British film-maker Arnold (American Honey) takes over from Vallée in the director’s chair.Big Little Lies was always supposed to be a limited series, rather than…

CHANNEL 4, JANUARY 2019 IT’S BEEN NEARLY FOUR years since Shane Meadows’ last TV project, the BAFTA-winning final part of the This Is England saga, and way longer since the writer/director created something entirely new that wasn’t part of that world. Not that he’s suddenly gone rogue and come up with a sci-fi epic. Instead, he pitches The Virtues, which stars long-time collaborator, actor Stephen Graham, as tonally somewhere between his two greatest achievements: “The Virtues takes the biblical, almost apocalyptic levels of revenge witnessed in [2004 film] Dead Man’s Shoes, along with the bittersweet humour from This is England and creates a landscape like nothing else I’ve ever worked on.” The series, shot entirely on location in Sheffield, Liverpool and Belfast, is partly a love story between two damaged…

BBC2 SPRING 2019 FRESH FROM TURNING THE real-life stories of Gianni Versace and his assassin Andrew Cunanan into the multiple Emmy-winning American Crime Story, screenwriter Tom Rob Smith now has his own equally ambitious but (mainly) fictional eight-part saga of wealth and power on the way. Set against a backdrop of contemporary media and politics, MotherFatherSon (yes, all one word) is, as the title implies, a family saga, with Richard Gere, no less, as a media tycoon, Helen McCrory as his wife and Billy Howle as their son, primed to inherit his father’s empire,. The idea of casting Gere was inspired by a viewing of American Gigolo during Smith’s preparation for the Versace series. “He had such an ambiguity and danger about him in that film”, Smith tells us. “For…

SAN FRANCISCO, THE late ’90s. Shawn Ryan is cruising the mean streets in the back of an SFPD squad car. Beyond the car’s steel-mesh cage, two on-duty officers bark into the radio over the siren’s banshee wail as they respond to an urgent 911 call. What had started out as a casual ride-along to familiarise Ryan with police procedure for his scriptwriting gig on Don Johnson cop show Nash Bridges has turned into something else entirely. Nash, after all, was a show that comforted the audience, championing the moral integrity of those tasked with upholding the law. Crime was present but under control and transgressors were always brought to justice. What Ryan witnessed during his night on the streets, though, wasn’t comforting. It didn’t fit with the cosy, wholesome law-enforcement…

FOLLOWING THE ICONIC Star Trek was never going to be an easy task, and The Next Generation certainly had a rocky start (evidenced by the lack of any Season One episodes on this list). Yet, Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D did the impossible, redefining the franchise with scientific thought experiments, social commentary galore, and more holodeck episodes that you can shake a phaser at. So grab a cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot, and let’s count down the best TNG has to offer. Engage! DARMOK (SEASON 5, EP 2) “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!” Oft touted as one of TNG’s most accomplished episodes, ‘Darmok’ sees Picard stranded on alien planet, trying to communicate with a potentially hostile alien companion. Nailing culture clash while giving us timeless quotes, ‘Darmok’s…

DESPITE EIGHT ENJOYABLY grandiose seasons of American Horror Story, TV still only rarely dips its toes into the classic horror genre. So credit to writer/director Mike Flanagan, for attempting this ambitious, ten-hour update of a classic novel that previously spawned two films of wildly varying quality. Thankfully, the mood of this re-telling is more akin to the slow-burn intensity of Robert Wise’s 1963 monochrome The Haunting, than the effects-driven mess that was the 1999 version. Flanagan’s revamp focuses on the Crane family of troubled siblings brought up in the grim mansion of the title, cutting between their childhood with their disparate present-day lives. Flanagan establishes a richly creepy, off-kilter atmosphere from the start, exploiting the Gothic setting of Hill House to the full. Every beautifully-lit shot draws us in to…

BBC1 EARLY OCTOBER JENNA COLEMAN HAS had her fair share of acting challenges during her time as the companion on Doctor Who and the Queen in Victoria, but this new four-part psychological thriller puts her through the mill from the first few seconds, and doesn’t let up. The drama’s intense focus on the troubled state of mind of Coleman’s character Joanna is played out in multiple timelines, all swirling around the central fateful moment when Joanna’s baby goes missing in the middle of a tense family trip to Australia. Strap yourselves in. What did you think when you first read the script? I thought it was so cleverly pitched that I genuinely didn’t know who to trust or where it was going. It’s a really finely tuned psychological thriller which…

SO FAR, THE John Wick movies have given us all kinds of fu. Kung-fu. Gun-fu. Car-fu. Now, with the grandly titled sequel John Wick 3: Parabellum, Keanu Reeves and his director, Chad Stahelski, are introducing the latest, and possibly, greatest yet: horse-fu. “I thought it would be cool if John Wick escaped on a horse,” explains Reeves casually. “So we have John Wick riding on some horses. And fighting on some horses. So that’s fun.” This image, and concept, doesn’t even scratch the surface of the madness that lies in store for the world’s greatest hitman this time around. For starters, this horse-bike interface is how the movie picks up, after Chapter 2 left off with Wick on the run, escaping a huge price on his head. Cue a checklist…

Alamy WHEN A TV show ‘reboots’, it’s a sign its story has run out of steam. In the case of Narcos, the show is undergoing a reboot, of sorts, because its story is just too big. Its universe needs to be split into manageable parts. For its fourth season, the cocaine chronicle — which so far has followed Pedro Pascal’s DEA agent Javier Peña as he brought down Colombia’s most powerful drug cartels — is wiping its cast list clean. Agent Peña is out. The action is travelling back from the early 1990s to the late 1970s and north from Colombia to Mexico City. This season, we’ll see what led to the events of the first three seasons — how cocaine became big business. “From very early on I had…

BARRY JENKINS KNOWS how to cast. Just look at the stars of 2016’s Moonlight, whose careers were juiced from appearing in the Oscar-winning drama. Trevante Rhodes got a plum role in The Predator, as ex-military tough-nut Nebraska Williams; Mahershala Ali stars in the upcoming Green Book as a jazz virtuoso. Both of those films, as it happens, played at the Toronto Film Festival in September, alongside Jenkins’ new movie, If Beale Street Could Talk. “I’m always in contact with those guys,” says the director, “so I was trying to find a way to get them on the carpet for a mini-reunion. But sadly, we couldn’t work it out.” The next likely recipients of a Barry Jenkins career-boost are Kiki Layne and Stephan James, the actors playing Tish and Fonny, the…

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY IS not alright, alright, alright. At least, he’s not in White Boy Rick, the new thriller from director Yann Demange, about a youngster (Richie Merritt) sliding into a life of crime while his fretting, helpless dad Richard Wershe Sr (McConaughey) watches. The star is most often seen on screen as idealistic heroes or charismatic villains; what he doesn’t usually play are schlubby losers with a mullet. McConaughey explained to Empire why he couldn’t turn it down. Was this a different kind of character for you? Yeah, it was. This is my sad country song. I had never really done a sad country song before. Vulnerable is a word that people throw around a lot, but boy, talk about vulnerable — this guy is done unto. He does not…

Illustration: Matt Herring What’s your earliest memory? I don’t know if being a photographer has anything to do with this, but memories are so caught up with the photographs that you see of yourself at a young age. I have one of myself, I think I’m about maybe four. I have an empty gun belt on, I’m holding a teddy bear, I’m standing in front of the tree that I used to love to climb, and I’ve got this intense smile on my face. And as I look at that photograph I remember the joy I used to have of just playing all by myself. Which film have you seen more than any other? It’s a toss-up between The Big Lebowski and The Godfather. When I watch TV and Lebowski…

★★★★ OUT 26 OCTOBER CERT 15 / 85 MINS DIRECTOR Matthew Holness CAST Sean Harris, Alun Armstrong, Simon Bubb, Andy Blithe PLOT East Anglia. Puppeteer Philip (Harris) returns to his boyhood home, where his parents died in a fire. He wants to get rid of Possum, a disturbing marionette, but it seems to refuse to be thrown away. Philip wonders if Possum is connected with a string of disappearances in the area. THOUGH SEAN HARRIS gives a powerful performance in the lead role, the breakout star of writer-director Matthew Holness’ debut feature Possum — and probably of your nightmares after you’ve seen the film — is Possum itself. The cracked head of a baby doll sewn onto the floppy limbs of a gigantic spider, Possum can barely be contained by…

Illustration: Dave Hopkins ★★★★ OUT 12 OCTOBER CERT TBC / 140 MINS DIRECTOR Drew Goddard CAST Jeff Bridges, Jon Hamm, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Chris Hemsworth PLOT America, P9U9. Four guests check in to a once-stylish, now down-on-its-luck hotel. None of them are quite what they seem — and neither is the hotel itself. The stage is set for an almighty reckoning. BAD TIMES AT The El Royale’s thrilling 1950s prologue is a noir checklist. Mysterious man up to no good in a hotel room? Check. Trilby? Check. Cigarette? Check. Sudden and extreme gun violence that almost gives you a cardiac arrest? Double-check. It’s like, how much more noir could this be? And the answer is none. None more noir. This is precisely the point, of course: Bad Times At…

★★★ OUT 19 OCTOBER CERT 18 / 109 MINS DIRECTOR David Gordon Green CAST Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Virginia Gardner, Nick Castle PLOT After 40 years in a mental asylum, silent killer Michael Myers breaks loose and returns to Haddonfield, butcher knife at the ready. This time, however, Laurie Strode (Curtis) — the sole survivor of his previous Halloween-night massacre — is ready for him, determined no longer to be a victim. IN 1978, JOHN Carpenter took a low-rent concept and turned it into a horror masterpiece. Lean, mean and efficient, Carpenter’s Halloween unleashed a force of quiet, unstoppable evil — Michael Myers, remorseless murderer more living nightmare than man. Halloween launched a franchise, and while many of the sequels had their moments, none could…

CHRIS COLUMBUS COULD teach anyone a thing or two about dealing with pressure. As director of Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, the sequel to last year’s special effects-filled spectacular Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, the American filmmaker is well-acquainted with the kind of crushing expectations that can often end with a crowd of graveside mourners saying things like, “But he was so young.” Don’t scoff. Columbus has the weight of the Warner Bros. world on his shoulders. Namely, he’s set with the task of taking potentially the biggest franchise of all time forward artistically, without screwing those billion-dollar returns. Now, that’s pressure. Except, right here, right now, just outside Watford at Leavesden Studios, the home for over 90 per cent of the Chamber Of Secrets shoot and…

★★★★ CHANNEL 4 10 OCTOBER THANK HEAVENS THAT no network in America wanted writer/director Desiree Akhavan’s story of Leila, a thirty-something lesbian, breaking up with Sadie (Maxine Peake) and soon realising her latent desire for men. Because the UK is long overdue a new show about young women – queer or not. Set in the east end of London, it could be any inner-city populated by young creatives, and rightly skewers the cliquey culture of the lesbian, art and fashion worlds that exist there, which will appeal far beyond the capital. Far lighter than, say, Fleabag, but sharing its arch humour, the miniseries hones in on the difficulties of apparently betraying a group you’ve long felt part of. Along the way, sex scenes are realistically clumsy, a bit like those…

SKY ATLANTIC/ NOW TV, MID OCTOBER ACTOR/WRITER/ DIRECTOR Julia Davis’ love for probing the ugly, funny underbelly of human sexual relationships has been evident since Human Remains, her BBC comedy collaboration with Rob Brydon 18 years ago. But even by her fearlessly frank standards, this new seven-part Sky/HBO co-production takes her depiction of adult acts and bodily functions to stunning new heights. Davis herself plays Emma, a decadent actress, singer, musician, poet and author, who inveigles her way into the life of ad agency operative Sally (Catherine Shepherd), on the eve of her wedding to her nice but dull long-time partner, David (Alex Macqueen). We spoke to Davis while she was still in the edit putting the finishing touches to the series, although luckily we did manage to see the…

SKY ATLANTIC/ NOW TV MID-2019 1 Expect shock deaths of major characters and plenty of them. Game Of Thrones is hardly known for letting its characters die of old age, but now there’s nothing to lose. The spin-off pilot ordered by HBO is a prequel, so the cast is unprotected by plot armour. 2 Get ready for a fight sequence that promises to make the Battle of the Bastards look like a car-park punch-up. Filmed for 55 consecutive nights over 11 weeks in three locations, it involves over 600 extras, and will set King’s Landing on fire. 3 This is no rush job. While previous Game Of Thrones seasons took between five and six months to shoot, the final run was allowed nine months. That’s despite the fact that Season…

SITE OF: WOLCOTT’S MASSACRE Garret Dillahunt’s second role in the show was as the deadly-twitchy Hearst agent Francis Wolcott, who vents his frustration by Jack-the-Rippering three Chez Ami prostitutes with a razor. An act he stiffly, chillingly describes as “something very expensive”. SITE OF: SWEARENGEN VS BULLOCK The tense rivalry between law man Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and chaos man Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) finally explodes at the start of the second season, when the pair brawl so furiously, they topple off the balcony of Al’s joint, The Gem, and into the mud… SITE OF: AL’S KIDNEY STONE REMOVAL In a masterclass of televisual discomfort, we watch Swearengen going through the worst pain imaginable (for a man) as he passes a kidney stone with the help of smelling salts, and…

ITV MID OCTOBER ANNA FRIEL KNOWS what it’s like to push boundaries. She compares the boldness of her new drama series, which revolves around a transgender child, to her ground-breaking lesbian kiss in Brookside back in 1994, when she was 17. “Look how much things have changed in those 24 years, because people have opened their eyes,” she says. Right now, though, it’s hard to think of a more hot-button subject than this. Friel plays Vicky, the mother of 11-year-old Max (played by brilliant newcomer Callum Booth-Ford), who identifies as a girl and wants to become Maxine. The child not only has to deal with the everyday challenges of transitioning socially and at school, but also the fractured relationship between their parents, who are estranged. Max/Maxine’s father Stephen is played…

EVER SINCE MISSION: Impossible — Rogue Nation catapulted her into Hollywood’s field of vision, Rebecca Ferguson has shown up with such regularity (Florence Foster Jenkins, Life, The Greatest Showman, The Girl On The Train) that we began to suspect that she was actually trying to take over the world. Now, though, with her new movie, The Kid Who Would Be King, she is trying to take over the world. Joe Cornish’s movie, the long-awaited follow-up to his cracking 2011 debut Attack The Block, is an updated, family-friendly take on the legend of King Arthur. There’s a young boy (Louis Ashbourne Serkis as Alex) who discovers the fabled Excalibur, and just might be the fabled king of ancient prophecy. There’s a Merlin, played as a teenager by Angus Imrie, and as…

IT’S A NEW TAKE Stan & Ollie is not a womb-to-tomb hagiography. “We had to throw out some of the biopic clichés,” says John C. Reilly, who plays Oliver Hardy. “What can’t you find out about these two on Wikipedia?” Instead, Jon S. Baird’s (Filth) film focuses on the double act’s little-remembered 1950s tour of the UK’s music halls and theatres during the twilight of their careers, giving the filmmakers a lens to examine the partnership. “I thought it was a really interesting take, because people won’t be expecting that,” says Baird. “They will be expecting the slapstick. Hence why we called the film Stan & Ollie. It was more about behind the scenes than their film characters.” IT BUSTS MYTHS If you believed the pair were best buds off…

Alamy WHEN THE HOLLYWOOD Reporter claimed that Henry Cavill was no longer going to be the Man Of Steel after ‘parting ways’ with Warner Bros. (in a statement, the studio said that no decision had been made regarding future films), the internet came alive. Some thought it a good move, others disagreed and a third group cried, “Who cares? Superman is boring anyway!” It’s true that Cavill’s performances, to date, have not always done the character justice. But perhaps he hasn’t been given the right chance. Perhaps it’s worth asking why. After all, Superman should never be dull. Cavill’s first turn in Man Of Steel tried to force the Big Blue Boy Scout into a Dark Knight mould, and ended up with a dull, navy blue hybrid that underserved the…

FROM BACK TO The Future to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump to The Polar Express, filmmaker Robert Zemeckis has always blazed trails, creating innovative visuals to tell magical stories. Welcome To Marwen promises to continue the tradition, dramatising the true story of Mark Hogancamp (Steve Carell), who built an alternate universe of World War II dolls in his backyard to deal with the trauma of being violently assaulted. Here, Zemeckis tells us how he brought it all to life. THE GENESIS “I came across the Marwencol documentary in 2010. It speaks to the healing power of art and imagination. I think that’s the whole point of art, to make sense of emotionally complex things. Mark Hogancamp spoke about these elaborate stories that took place in his mind between the…

★★★★★ OUT 5 OCTOBER CERT 15 / 135 MINS DIRECTOR Bradley Cooper CAST Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Sam Elliott, Dave Chappelle, Andrew Dice Clay, Anthony Ramos, Rafi Gavron PLOT Jackson Maine (Cooper), is a bloated, spiralling country star who meets and falls in love with waitress/wannabe singer Ally (Gaga). As the two fall in love, her star — with his help — is on the ascendant while his quietly sinks. Can their love save him? Or will he, and they, fall under the weight of his emotional pain and addiction? DEVELOPMENT HELL IS littered with victims and, for a time, it looked as though A Star Is Born may join the pile of broken bodies, with several huge-name directors, actors and singers linked with the project over the last decade.…

★★★★★ OUT 12 OCTOBER CERT 12A / 141 MINS DIRECTOR Damien Chazelle CAST Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll PLOT The true story of Neil Armstrong, a quiet engineer who rose through the ranks of NASA’s 1960s space programme to become the first man on the moon — a journey that included professional and personal tragedies. DAMIEN CHAZELLE SEEMS to be obsessed with obsession. His latest film, First Man, is a study of it — what it takes to achieve something that seems impossible, and the compromises required to do so. In that respect, it’s not a million light years from Whiplash and La La Land, Chazelle’s first two films (minus the drum solos and dance numbers). What’s notable is the upsurge in his cinematic ambition.…

★★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 107 MINS DIRECTOR Shane Black CAST Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Jacob Tremblay, Trevante Rhodes, Sterling K. Brown, Keegan-Michael Key PLOT Following the events of Predator and Predator 2, government organisation Project Stargazer, wise to the aliens’ spine-collecting visits, captures one — and finds it has human DNA. Furthermore, it’s being hunted by another bigger, nastier Predator. THERE IS A pleasing circularity to the fact the first person we saw killed by Jim and John Thomas’ Predator in 1987 has returned 31 years later to write and direct his own instalment of this seemingly unkillable series. Shane Black (formerly the unfortunate Hawkins) has made no secret of the fact he took this gig to rekindle a sense of lost youth. Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, means this…

★★★★ OUT 12 OCTOBER CERT 18 / 121 MINS DIRECTOR Panos Cosmatos CAST Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Bill Duke PLOT USA, P98R. Logger Red Miller (Cage) lives in the woods with his girlfriend Mandy (Riseborough). When an itinerant cult attacks them with the help of a trio of demonic bikers, Red goes on a crazed quest for revenge. IF YOU’VE BEEN waiting all your life to watch Nicolas Cage set a man on fire, then decapitate him, then light a cigarette using his still-burning severed head, then good news, folks — your ship has come into port, and then some. How to describe Mandy? Imagine a live-action version of the cover art from a band that sang about dragons, Vikings and both Sodom and Gomorrah, set to a…

★★★ NETFLIX / OUT 28 SEPT CERT 15 / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Jeremy Saulnier CAST Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgård, Riley Keough, James Badge Dale PLOT In the Alaskan wilderness, a grieving mother (Keough) hires a renowned student of wolves (Wright) to find the beast that likely killed her missing son. As the hunter begins to investigate, though, he finds much darker mysteries at play. ALASKA IS NOT a happy place. The landscape is merciless and the locals are damaged. “Do you have any idea what’s outside those windows?” asks Keough’s Medora Slone at the start of Hold The Dark. It’s a rhetorical question. “How black it gets,” she qualifies. “How it gets in you.” This is how she welcomes guests. It’s winter in Keelut, an isolated village currently blessed with…

★★★★★ BBC iPLAYER OUT NOW EPS VIEWED ALL DEVELOPED BY Phoebe Waller-Bridge CAST Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Fiona Shaw, Darren Boyd, Sean Delaney, David Haig, Kim Bodnia PLOT Villanelle (Comer) is committing murders across Europe for an organisation she knows little about. Eve (Oh) is an MIT agent on her trail. The pursuit evolves into a strange mutual obsession, which can only end badly for at least one of them. FOLLOWING UP FLEABAG, the ecstatically received 2016 BBC show, is a brutal gig. Its writer, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, takes the weight of expectation and flings it off, blowing raspberries at anyone who thought she might not be able to do it again. She has, in fact, done it again. Killing Eve is about two very different and similar women. Eve (Oh)…

“THESE STORIES ARE EVOLVING: HARRY IS A TEEN AND THE MATERIAL IS GETTING DARKER, AND THE KIDS ARE HAVING A LARGER VIEW ON THINGS.” ALFONSO CUARÓN ALFONSO CUARÓN IS waving, not drowning. His long arms are going left, they are going right, they are going up, then down, he hops, grins, then bursts into exuberant laughter, clapping his hands: “Ha ha, yes, yes!” It seems his cinematographer has successfully interpreted the latest disco-dance of a camera move and is ready to roll. A ragged-looking Gary Oldman lies down on a bed of pebbles on the vestiges of a frozen lake, and Daniel Radcliffe, dressed, unusually, in jeans and sweatshirt, aims a wand furiously in the apparent direction of an invisible Dementor. It’s not that Cuarón’s English is a bit wobbly,…

FOR A FILM series that routinely kills it at the box office, Harry Potter is refreshingly keen to not only evolve, but also take risks. Darker with each instalment, it’s a franchise that’s not exactly growing up with its audience (because it’s audience is basically everyone), but certainly with its characters. Reconvened at Leavesden Studios where many of the sets have remained intact since the first movie, the vast machine that is the Harry Potter industry has been busily churning out another surefire hit. “I think there is an edge here,” says David Heyman, producer of the entire series. “This time Harry is learning to become a leader of men.” There are many reasons, then, to be excited for number five — The Order Of The Phoenix — but, for…

Back in 1997, producer David Heyman read a children’s book about a boy wizard that had been recommended to him by his assistant. He quickly bought the film rights, and not a moment too soon — it became a publishing phenomenon, and his search for a director began. Chris Columbus: It was my daughter Eleanor who introduced me to Harry Potter. She was adamant I read the books, but I ignored her. They just weren’t what I was looking for at the time. In fact, I was looking for almost anything else, from a comedy to a character-driven drama. Just something a little more grounded in reality, something that wouldn’t involve so many visual effects. I just wasn’t interested. But then, eventually, I did read them. And, of course, that’s…

NETFLIX NOW STREAMING THIS TEN-PART comedy-drama stars Emma Stone and Jonah Hill as troubled souls brought together when they volunteer for a drug trial which sends them on dream journeys to myriad fantastical settings. Cary Fukunaga (True Detective) directed the whole bewildering series, and talked us through its genesis. THE CHALLENGE “My manager brought up the idea of adapting this show [from the Norwegian original] three years ago… the key was that I could play with any genre I wanted and any actors. At this point in my career all the different genres I’ve tried so far have been studies, and I haven’t necessarily found my voice. This felt like an opportunity to stretch the range that I’d previously worked in.” THE CONCEPT “We wanted to explore the idea of…

In March of last year, I jokingly suggested to Jodie Whittaker that she could be the new Doctor. At the time she was in the middle of promotional duties for the third and final series of Broadchurch, and blithely mentioned in passing that she’d recently had lunch with the show’s creator Chris Chibnall, who also happened to be the new Doctor Who showrunner. So it seemed obvious to ask whether she was touting for a guest role as an alien or something in his debut Who season. Turns out the day before that interview, Whittaker was actually cast as the 13th Doctor. During that meal with Chibnall, which she initially thought was “just a mates’ lunch”, he was in fact sounding her out about whether she’d be interested in becoming…

BBC1 EARLY 2019 IT’S EASY TO FORGET THAT before anyone belted out “I dreamed a dream” in the stage musical, Les Misérables was a gargantuan 19th-century novel about class warfare and French revolutionaries. So despite being adapted five times on film (most recently in 1998 with Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush), and twice on television, the BBC’s decision to go with Victor Hugo’s book as the subject of its next flagship period drama adaptation is surprisingly exciting. Not least because the cast features Dominic West, David Oyelowo and Olivia Colman. An even bigger attraction is that master scriptwriter Andrew Davies is on board. Davies, now 81, has been turning unwieldy old novels into sexy primetime television for nearly 25 years, most famously with his sexed-up Pride And Prejudice starring a…

BBC1 JANUARY 2019 IN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY I Partridge, Alan described the BBC as suffering from a “restrictive, choking, stifling suffocating bureaucracy and creativity-aborting compliance culture”. Now he’s back there for the first time since failing to secure a second series of Knowing Me, Knowing You. Alan’s not-quite triumphant return is mostly due to good fortune. And Brexit. “We felt because of Brexit the BBC might have internal memos saying they’re under-representing a certain section of the community which, weirdly, is represented by Alan Partridge,” explains Steve Coogan. “It’s like BBC management is saying, ‘We don’t understand these people but apparently there are a lot of them out there’”. Apart from his politics, Alan is only given this final chance of launching an unlikely primetime mainstream TV career comeback because the…

IN 1995, JOSS Whedon had said goodbye to Buffy The Vampire Slayer. His first movie script, written in time snatched from his day job on the writing staff of Roseanne, had not gone to plan. The 1992 film about a Valley girl mystically chosen to protect the world from vampires had ended up a knockabout spoof, far from the female empowerment horror he’d conceived. Whedon and director Fran Rubel Kuzui had competing visions, while actor Donald Sutherland’s habit of improvising lines sent the writer potty. After the film’s premiere, Whedon walked away and put Buffy behind him. The Slayer, true to form, didn’t stay down. While Whedon was doing his best to forget her, Buffy was capturing the imagination of producer Gail Berman, who thought Whedon’s original script could work…

© 2OP8 The Little Drummer Girl Distribution Limited. All rights reserved. BBC1 MIDOCTOBER THE MOST EYE-CATCHINGLY unexpected creative match-up this TV season must be the pairing of boundary-pushing film director Park Chan-wook, with the master of espionage fiction, John Le Carré. Park’s films, from Old Boy with its notoriously disgusting octopus-eating scene and extreme violence, to the intensely stylised eroticism of The Handmaiden, are infamously twisted affairs. Now we’re about to see the results of his first adventure in television, with a six-part drama he’s directed in full. For – wait for it – the BBC. The Little Drummer Girl is the latest Le Carré TV adaptation from Simon and Stephen Cornwell, the producers of The Night Manager, who also happen to be the author’s sons. But rather than follow…

Alamy, Getty Images IF THEY HAD polls for the Greatest TV Show Title Of All Time, My So-Called Life would surely be up there ( just behind ’Allo ’Allo) . The stroke of genius is the ‘So-Called’. While you can easily imagine a worthy, preachy, self-absorbed teen drama called My Life, the “So-Called” absolutely gets at the knowing, distanced, introspective quality that made it resonate so deeply. The show debuted on ABC on August 25 1994, just three weeks after Kurt Cobain’s suicide and quickly provided weekly 49-minute chunks of relatable solace for an inconsolable teen populace. Existing in the gap between Beverly Hills 90210 and Dawson’s Creek, it had the soap of the former, the smarts of the latter and a veracity all of its own. And it never…

★★★ CHANNEL 4 MID OCTOBER IT’S CLEAR WITHIN the first few minutes of this lumpen drama, about the first manned mission to Mars, why Sean Penn decided this should be his first major TV drama role. Not only does he get to show off his extraordinarily buff 58-year-old physique when his character, astronaut Tom Hagerty, goes jogging shirtless accompanied by his adorable black Labrador, but he also gets to indulge in a spot of DIY plumbing back home to show just how regular a guy he is. Playing Hagerty does give Penn plenty of opportunities to show off his acting skills, with rousing, inspirational speeches, intimate familial bonding moments, and spiky interactions with the Mars mission’s ruthless corporate boss, Laz (yes, Laz) Ingram, played in a variety of accents by…

Alamy BEST PICTURE WHAT SHOULD WIN: AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR The Academy may have ditched that silly popular film category (for now), but Infinity War is no less viable a ‘proper’ Best Picture than the likes of Gladiator, Braveheart or The Return Of The King. It is a vast, epic spectacle, featuring a strong ensemble cast, which tackles a big, ethical question (at what cost the greater ‘good’?) and deals emotional gut-jabs while orchestrating all its cosmic action. DAN JOLIN WHAT WILL WIN: ROMA Alfonso Cuarón’s memory movie of growing up in ’70s Mexico ticks so many Oscar boxes without consciously trying. It is deeply autobiographical, mixes the personal and political in a way that wins over the liberal base, boasts naturalistic performances that will resonate with the acting block, and…

I’LL NEVER FORGET the time I couldn’t escape Burt Reynolds’ mansion. It was a humid Saturday in late October 2015, and I’d just spent one of the most surreal mornings of my life as guest of the movie legend. After a lengthy interview in his man-cave (complete with ten-foot-tall Kodiak bear) and tour of his 20-seat private movie theatre (complete with prints of Dirty Harry and Blade Runner), I was bid goodbye and traipsed down the driveway, which seemed to never end. After at least a mile, or so it felt, I reached the set of towering entrance gates, with my taxi waiting on the other side. Then I realised the gates were locked. And I had no phone reception. So back I went, returning all the way to Reynolds’…

★★★★ OUT 26 OCTOBER CERT TBC / 132 MINS DIRECTOR George Tillman Jr CAST Amandla Stenberg, Algee Smith, Issa Rae, Russell Hornsby, Anthony Mackie PLOT Teenage Starr (Stenberg) lives a dual life appeasing both her local black friends and the privileged white kids at her private school. But when one friend becomes a victim of police brutality, she has a political awakening, angers a local kingpin and begins to question who she really is. HISTORICALLY, YOUNG ADULT blockbuster successes have been famed for the unexpected darkness of their subject matter, whether it’s the dystopian ritual slaughter of The Hunger Games or the, um, dystopian ritual slaughter of The Maze Runner. But, generally, these stories play out in speculative sci-fi futures or worlds touched by fantasy and magic. There’s no such…

★★★★ OUT 23 OCTOBER CERT 15 / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Jim Hosking CAST Aubrey Plaza, Jemaine Clement, Emile Hirsch, Craig Robinson, Matt Berry PLOT Lulu (Plaza) leaves her husband, Shane Danger (Hirsch). Then checks into a hotel with hired gun Colin (Clement) because Beverly Luff Linn (Robinson), an old lover she thought dead, is set to perform there. “THIS IS MY kind of hotel room,” deadpans Jemaine Clement’s virginal gun-for-hire as he settles into the Morehouse Hotel. The line is outrageously funny, because everything about the room is hideous, from the ‘Charge Of The Light Brigade’ picture embedded in the faux wood wall to the bedding that looks like carpet. This world is horrible on a level that’s hard to look at for the length of a film without shrieking…

★★★★ OUT 26 OCTOBER CERT TBC / 97 MINS DIRECTOR Erik Poppe CAST Andrea Berntzen, Solveig Koløen Birkeland, Aleksander Holmen PLOT On 22 July 2011, a home-grown right-wing extremist committed two terror attacks in Norway: a car bomb in Oslo’s government quarter, then, 40km north-west on the island of Utøya, a massacre at the Norwegian Labour Party’s Youth League summer camp. Utøya — July 22 revisits the tragic day. IN NORWAY, ‘JULY 22’ is their 9/11 — the day that scarred the nation’s psyche. Seven years on, some say it’s still too soon for dramatisation, yet two films have been made nevertheless — this one, by Norway’s own Erik Poppe, and Paul Greengrass’ take (22 July) for Netflix. The latter takes in multiple perspectives, telling the broader story; Poppe sticks…

DAMIEN CHAZELLE IS a history maker. Not only on screen, but off. You might not realise it, but never before in Empire’s (nearly) 30-year history has a filmmaker received a five-star Empire rating for their first three films. Not even the likes of David Fincher (Alien3 — two stars), Danny Boyle (A Life Less Ordinary — three stars), Quentin Tarantino (Jackie Brown — four stars) achieved such a stellar start to their careers. Going back pre-Empire, it took Scorsese a few movies to hit his stride with Mean Streets, and Spielberg’s theatrical debut The Sugarland Express was initially greeted with mixed reviews. Chazelle is three for three, 15 stars out of 15 stars, and it’s just not us. He won a Best Director Oscar at 32 for La La Land…

★★★ NETFLIX / OUT 10 OCT 143 MINS DIRECTOR Paul Greengrass CAST Anders Danielsen Lie, Jonas Strand Gravli, Jon Øigarden, Ola G. Furuseth PLOT After killing eight people with a car bomb, far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik (Danielsen Lie) drives two hours to a summer camp on the idyllic island of Utøya and guns down 69 teenagers. 22 July counts the ripples felt in the aftermath. PAUL GREENGRASS IS a master of the true-life story. From Bloody Sunday to United 93 to Captain Phillips, few can match his skill and sensitivity at getting under the headlines with sincerity, compassion and kineticism. His latest is a bold effort, dramatising one of the darkest days in living memory with a Norwegian cast (speaking English). But while 22 July has powerful stretches, thoughtful…