Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2019 i Empire

Alamy DIRECTOR MICHAEL DOWSE grew up watching, and loving, action comedies. To him, the genre never got better than 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon or Midnight Run: movies which were “steeped in realism” and which punched hard before delivering their punchlines. “They weren’t initially comedies,” says the Canadian filmmaker behind scrappy ice-hockey comedy Goon, “but then they would put a comedy person in it and it would become an action comedy.” Now, with Stuber, Dowse hopes to bring the genre roaring into the 21st century. It stars Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick) as Stu, a Los Angeles Uber driver whose car is commandeered by rogue über-cop Vic (Dave Bautista). Vic’s just found out his partner’s killer (The Raid’s Iko Uwais) is in town, but is recovering from laser eye-surgery and can’t…

DUCKY AND BUNNY Voiced by: Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele Two carnival toys, sewn together at the hand, who have have lived their lives as prizes in a rigged game. Then they encounter Buzz Lightyear. “If you’ve ever [won] a toy at a carnival, you’ll know they’re going to last an hour-and-a-half. They’re barely held together. They’re the worst-coloured fabrics and fur. The painted-on eyes. We really wanted them to be truthful to that. They’re literally sewn together. They have a plastic hook that they hang from. All those things that anchor them as a carnival toy. Key and Peele are incredible improvisers, great storytellers and structuralists. They would follow the lines, but then breathe life into it. They’re saying what we asked them to say, in such a unique…

AFTER MORE THAN a decade of constant comeback talk, it’s happened: Deadwood is back, now in feature-length form. Set in the 1870s, the HBO series about a small, lawless Dakota town on the up was prematurely shut down in 2006, but has only grown in stature since. With the long-awaited movie upon us, McShane reveals to Empire what it was like to return as Al Swearengen, Deadwood’s insalubrious entrepreneur. BACK IN TOWN Set ten years on, in 1889, “The film is about the town becoming a state, as Deadwood becomes part of South Dakota,” says McShane. The residents are in celebratory mood — which doesn’t last long. “It’s connected with the final episode of the series, because we bring back Hearst.” When we last saw Hearst (Gerald McRaney) he was…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 116 MINS DIRECTOR Jordan Peele CAST Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Evan Alex, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Elisabeth Moss PLOT During a relaxing vacation to Santa Cruz, Adelaide Wilson (Nyong’o), her husband (Duke) and their two children are suddenly confronted by home invaders who look, talk and behave exactly like they do. GARTH MARENGHI — AUTHOR, dreamweaver, visionary, plus actor — once said that subtext is for cowards. Lord knows what he’d make of Jordan Peele’s Us. The comedian-turned-director’s second film is, like his first, Get Out, dripping with hidden meaning. It’s a symbologist’s wet dream, with subtext all over the shop. Many great horror directors/cowards, from Cronenberg to Romero, have had something to say about the state of the world. Two films in,…

★★★ OUT 3 MAY CERT TBC / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Joe Berlinger CAST Zac Efron, Lily Collins, Angela Sarafyan, Jim Parsons PLOT In P97Os Seattle, Liz Kloepfer (Collins) is a single mum, who thinks she’s found the man of her dreams on a night out. That man, Ted Bundy (Efron), turns out to be America’s most notorious serial killer. IT’S EXTREMELY FLATTERING casting to put Zac Efron in the role of Ted Bundy, the serial killer who murdered at least 30 women in the 1970s. Bundy didn’t have teen heartthrob looks or the physique of an Olympic wrestler, but the aesthetic upgrade is done with purpose: to over-exaggerate the scary charisma Bundy possessed, which let him seduce both his victims and the media, when his case went to trial. It’s…

★★★★ OUT 5 APRIL CERT 12A /132 MINS DIRECTOR David F. Sandberg CAST Asher Angel, Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Grace Fulton, Jack Dylan Grazer, Djimon Hounsou PLOT A wizard (Hounsou) gives PT-year-old Billy Batson (Angel) the ability to transform into an adult superhero (Levi) by using the magic word “Shazam!” Billy becomes famous before he learns to use his powers for good, and attracts the malign attention of demon-possessed villain Dr Sivana (Mark Strong). THE WRINKLE THAT makes Shazam different from other superheroes is that he’s literally a kid’s wish-fulfilment fantasy. Crusading reporters and millionaire playboys are as obviously enviable as their caped identities, but young Billy Batson (Angel) — originally a homeless orphan — is an underpowered kid like most of his original readers. A cry of “Shazam!” invests…

★★★★ OUT 3 MAY CERT 15 / 114 MINS DIRECTOR Brady Corbet CAST Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Jennifer Ehle PLOT Staten Island, P999. Surviving a school shooting, teen Celeste (Cassidy) is talent-spotted singing at the memorial service and, supported by songwriting sister (Martin), transformed into a pop star by her manager (Law). Fast-forward P8 years and Celeste (Portman), now a global but scandalised icon, tries to relaunch her career with a homecoming concert. VOX LUX OPENS in a rush of bravura, a clean, crisp recreation of a Columbine-style shooting, which, following a thrilling ambulance ride, leaves sole survivor Celeste (a terrific Cassidy) with a back injury. It’s a stunning, heart-stopping beginning that few films would recover from. Brady Corbet’s absorbing but shallow sophomore effort just about…

★★★★ BBC ONE / iPLAYER OUT NOW EPS VIEWED 1-2 (OF 6) SHOWRUNNER Jed Mercurio CAST Adrian Dunbar, Martin Compston, Vicky McClure, Stephen Graham PLOT Hastings (Dunbar), Arnott (Compston) and Fleming (McClure) — aka anti-corruption unit AC-P2 — are back tracking down bent coppers. When a deadly piece of inside information is leaked to an OCG, AC-P2 discover a top-secret undercover operation which smacks of skullduggery. AFTER THE SUREFIRE hit-turned-last episode disappointment of Bodyguard, much was expected from Jed Mercurio’s fifth go at the cop drama that blew all others out of the water. Thankfully he’s brought all the twisting, nerve-shredding explosive drama we’ve come to expect, and then some. Within the first three minutes we have our bad guys, our pulse-racing catalyst event and, crucially, our first corruption suspect.…

STORIES ABOUT KEANU Reeves on the sets of John Wick films are almost as mythical as stories about the character. Refusing to postpone a fight scene in the midst of high fever. Defying advice to ditch the rain machines for an exhausting 12-hour beatdown in weather so cold it threatened to freeze the water, saying, “No! This is cinema! We’re making this!” Keanu Reeves will not be stopped. In many ways, the John Wick franchise is a culmination of what’s come before — Reeves has been honing his action chops since 1991’s Point Break, forging a path that’s played to his strengths as a frankly leftfield leading man, kicking much ass and taking infinite names, but forever somewhat askew, never ditching character for dunderheaded brawn. He’s always looking for something…

Do you think the Tom Cruise ‘intensity’ will last through Mission: Impossible 8 and beyond, or will he have to cut back on the stunts as he gets older? BILL MCGREGOR We’ll all die before Tom. When you see him in Top Gun, you won’t believe the shape he’s in. It’s incredible. He’s a guy who’s dedicated to maximising his instrument for the longest possible time, for no other reason than he loves what he does. There was a 12-year gap between the brilliant The Way Of The Gun and Jack Reacher. Were there any projects you were set to direct but couldn’t get off the ground during that period? MARTIN GROOMS That’s my whole career. The number of projects I am set to direct but cannot get off the…

THERE’S AN ELEPHANT in the room. Empire knows it. Dexter Fletcher, the director of Rocketman, knows it. He knows that whenever anyone talks about his movie, this comparison will be made. It’s lazy, but unavoidable. And, as with all elephants in the room, it must not be ignored. It must be addressed head-on. So, how does Fletcher feel about the most recent John Lewis Christmas advert, which managed in two minutes what he hopes to achieve in two hours: namely, tell the life story of one Reginald Kenneth Dwight, aka Elton John? “I had a day of, ‘Genius! Bastard!’” he laughs. “It’s a bloody Christmas ad, innit. But if it makes people more keen to see a film about Elton’s life, then it’s all grand and good.” Ever the actor,…

00:00:49 THE FIRST STEAL __ Shoplifters begins with Osamu (Lily Franky) and Shota (Jyo Kairi) pilfering food from a supermarket. “There’s no dialogue; it’s all action,” says writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who studied CCTV footage of shoplifting ahead of filming to make the act seem authentic. “We staged the scene so that they always had eye contact; so they could understand each other even if they weren’t speaking.” 00:28:48 FISHING ROD HEIST __ Having been rescued by the family from violent parents, five-year-old Yuri (Miyu Sasaki) starts helping Shota to shoplift. “I liked watching the little sister in oversized clothes running after her brother,” says Kore-eda. For Shota, though, the feeling isn’t mutual. “He’s frustrated, as this was something he used to do with his father. Children have this need to…

Allstar “IT SOUNDS LIKE a good daydream but actually doing it is too weird,” says the wide-eyed, innocent Sandy (Laura Dern) to seemingly button-down everyboy Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle Maclachlan) of his plan to break into the apartment of mysterious chanteuse Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini). She has no fucking idea. How deeply odd and disturbing David Lynch’s fourth film remains, especially this scene — which if you’ve seen you’ll never forget and if you’ve not seen there’s little hope of explaining how peculiar and troubling it is. Having been discovered by Dorothy, Jeffrey hides in a wardrobe from the arrival of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), at this stage an unknown figure, but soon to prove one of cinema’s most terrifying antagonists. The script describes him as having “a raw, mean sexuality…

Alamy, Getty “SEULE, UNE FEMME pouvait oser faire ce film,” reads the tagline from Agnès Varda’s provocative 1965 drama Le Bonheur. “Only a woman would dare to make this film.” When I learned that Varda had died aged 90, surrounded by family in her home on 29 March, there was only one feeling that could soothe the sharp sting of grief that came with the news, and it was of overwhelming gratitude. It’s a sentiment shared by filmmakers such as Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay and Edgar Wright, who have spoken fondly of her legacy as a true trailblazer. It’s a legacy that stretched far into her final days with us (her last film, Varda by Agnès, is yet to be released), and even in this past year, Varda’s spirit —…

Illustration: Matt Herring Do you have a nickname? Big Daddy. [laughs] I was once in the play Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Though I didn’t play Big Daddy. But for some reason it stuck. Do you have a signature dish? Knives, and flames, and meat. Just put them all together, and I’ll grill you up something tasty. I mean, come on, who wants to eat vegetables? When were you most starstruck? I once got my haircut in the 1970s in a barbershop in London, and seated next to me was Benny Hill! [laughs] I was eight or nine years old. I knew it was Benny Hill, because I lived in Holland at that time, and as far as English-language programming went on TV, Benny Hill was on all the…

★★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 101 MINS DIRECTORS Kevin Kölsch, Dennis Widmyer CAST John Lithgow, Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, Jeté Laurence PLOT Louis Creed (Clarke) moves his family to a rural house in Maine adjacent to a pet cemetery. When his daughter’s cat dies, Louis soon finds the ancient burial ground behind the cemetery can bring the dead back to life. It’s only a matter of time before its powers are required to resurrect a human… STEPHEN KING AND Hollywood have never exactly been strange bedfellows, but there’s no question that the master of horror is flavour of the month right now. And while there are still plenty of King works that remain unadapted (The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Revival, and From A Buick 8, to name but…

★★★★ OUT 26 APRIL CERT 15 / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Bo Burnham CAST Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson PLOT Kayla Day (Fisher) has one week of middle school left. She’s a quiet girl — her peers don’t know her at all. Her dad (Hamilton) tries to break through, but Kayla lives her life behind screens: Snapchat filters, Instagram messages, homemade motivational YouTube videos. A FUMBLING, DESPERATELY effortful teenage girl is telling a nonexistent online audience how to be confident at the start of the deservedly acclaimed Sundance darling Eighth Grade. Kayla is both the narrator and subject of a new kind of teen movie — innovative and thrillingly honest, giving a voice to people warring with the noise in their heads for a lifetime. Bo Burnham has renounced stand-up…

EXAMINE ANY 15-minute section from Shazam! and you’ll find more jokes than the entirety of Man Of Steel. This fun wish-fulfilment story — lonely foster kid finds himself transformed into a brawny hero — is a world away from the faux-realism of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films or the Jesus metaphors of the early DC extended universe films. Following the similarly fantastical Aquaman before Christmas and cheerier Marvel hits like Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 or Thor: Ragnarok in the last couple of years, Shazam! marks a change of emphasis in our superhero movies. If The Dark Knight made comic-book movies respectable, this is the era where they stop playing cool and just try to be themselves. And these lighter, funnier results might be just what audiences stressed by…

Nobody’s quite sure how many people were killed in the original draft of John Wick, but it wasn’t 86. “It’s hard for me to remember the exact details,” says Keanu Reeves. Co-director Chad Stahelski says, “John Wick literally killed four people.” Writer Derek Kolstad thinks it was 11. “When we did the first table read,” he recalls, “[producer] Basil Iwanyk chuckled and said, ‘Man, that’s a bodycount.’ And Keanu’s reaction was, ‘But we could do so much more!’ He’s the one who kept going, ‘Bigger, bigger, bigger.’” So it got bigger. “It was kind of a hard sell,” says Stahelski, “to go to your producers, ‘Yeah, he’s gonna kill 86 people. Over a puppy.’” Everything about the John Wick world has grown, from day one. Originating as a spec script…

“STARK TERROR!” THIS is not an emotion you expect Will Smith, a man who has survived aliens, perps, robots and the word ‘Willennium’, to ever experience. But the thing that gave one of the biggest stars on the planet the heebie-jeebies, he divulges to Empire, was the prospect of taking on the Genie, previously played by Robin Williams, in a live-action do-over of Aladdin. “As a general rule as an actor, you stay a long way away from reimaginings of roles when actors have not left a lot of room to improve it,” Smith continues. “‘Hey, Will! We’re remaking The Godfather. We want you for the Marlon Brando role.’ There has to be meat on the bone…” Smith’s nerves were entirely understandable. 1992’s Aladdin is one of the most beloved…

LET’S CLEAR THIS up first. Just because a film makes you laugh — even if it is outrageously funny throughout — even if it’s full of comedy — it is not necessarily A Comedy. Or even a horror comedy. Half an hour into An American Werewolf In London, after backpackers Jack (Griffin Dunne) and David (David Naughton) have first encountered the creature on the moors, after Jack has been viciously torn to death, and after David, himself mauled, has already suffered a series of vivid nightmares in hospital, he has the worst one of all, and the least abstract: on YouTube the scene is entitled Mutant Nazi Massacre, because it is a mutant Nazi massacre. A suburban idyll — David and his Jewish, middle-class family at home before dinner —…

NOT MANY ACTORS get to work with one master of horror. Fewer still get to work with two. Over the course of just a few years, Adrienne Barbeau got to work with three, on a series of movies that cemented her status as a cult icon. That trio was John Carpenter (to whom she was once married), George A. Romero and Wes Craven. “Forty years later, they’re some of the films I’m most proud of in my career,” she says. Here are her memories of each director. JOHN CARPENTER Barbeau met Carpenter when she co-starred in his 1978 TV movie Someone’s Watching Me!. They married the following year. He wrote The Fog, in which she plays ice-cool DJ Stevie Wayne, specifically for her, and she is also memorable as Maggie…

I’VE NO IDEA how I managed not to see The Blues Brothers. I was exactly the right age at exactly the right time, and the soundtrack LP was fitted as standard in the cassette decks of all teenage cars giving me a lift to parties. But beyond a couple of tropes (“Mission from God”, sunglasses, something to do with helping a nun) I had no idea what it’s about. It’s more of a fancy-dress costume to me than a film. It opens beautifully. Chicago factories farting soot into the sky, a prisoner leaving confinement, shot from imaginative angles. John Landis is doing confident, stylish work. A safe pair of hands in charge of what’s basically an after-show romp for the SNL first team. It looks like it’s going to be…

THE FAVOURITE OUT 13 MAY / CERT TBC / 121 MINS To anyone who saw The Favourite, Olivia Colman’s ‘surprise’ Oscar win should be nothing of the sort. So many actors would have overdone the role of Queen Anne, an overweight, constantly sick, insecure and foolish head of state. Colman sees her comedy but also her cunning and the pain, both physical and mental, of a woman who has lost P7 children while having to be mother to her country. For anyone who didn’t get on with Yorgos Lanthimos’ other English-language movies, The Lobster and Killing Of Sacred Deer, The Favourite is more accessible. His story of the two women, played by Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, battling for Anne’s favour and the power that goes with it, is told…

RICKY GERVAIS: “That scene in The Godfather , when Michael Corleone says, ‘Who says we can’t kill a cop?’ It’s the twist that he was the civilian, he was the good boy of the family but he has to save the family now. That gave me an adrenaline rush the first time I saw it.” INT. CORLEONE FAMILY COMPOUND — DAY Following another attempt on Vito Corleone’s life, the Corleone family have gathered. Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sonny Corleone (James Caan) are having an argument, while Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), Clemenza (Richard Castellano) and Tessio (Abe Vigoda) look on. TOM: I found out about this Captain McCluskey, who broke Mike’s jaw. SONNY: What about him? TOM: Now he’s definitely on Sollozzo’s payroll, and for big money. McCluskey has agreed…

ONE OF THE greatest joys of Marvel Studios bringing Spider-Man into the MCU was seeing how well Peter Parker played with the superheroic grown-ups. But, much as we loved watching him take down Ant-Man in Civil War, or compare pop-culture notes with Star-Lord in Infinity War, what really captured our hearts were his scenes with newfound mentor (and suit-designer) Tony Stark. The absence of a reliable father figure in Peter’s life, and his difficulty holding on to the ones that appear, is a theme that’s been touched on repeatedly throughout the Spider-Man movies. Neither Norman Osborn nor Otto Octavius worked out in the first two Sam Raimi movies, but Tony filled the role admirably in Tom Holland’s three previous outings as the adolescent webslinger, not least by refusing to turn…

YOU WILL SELDOM find an actress who takes on a film because it’s anticlimactic. But for Regina Hall, star of stubbornly endearing workplace comedy Support The Girls, this was the big draw. “It’s set in a place called Double Whammies, so you think it’s gonna be a comedy about boobs and beers,” she says. “But it’s actually a story about working-class women and their battles. They’re just trying to figure out how to get from one day to the next.” The film — which is set in a Hooters-style restaurant off a Texan highway — sees a shift in trajectory for the Girls Trip star and Scary Movie stalwart. Her nuanced performance saw her scoop up Best Actress at last year’s New York Critics Circle awards, a win that both…

YOU WON’T FIND the island paradise of Genosha on TripAdvisor. It’s not exactly the sort of place you can just hop onto a plane and visit. Even Michael Palin might find it hard to rock up there for one of his travel docs. Largely because it doesn’t exist. Well, not in our world anyway. It can be found, just off the coast of Africa, in the X-Men comics, where its main function has been to serve as the home-cum-nation-state of Magneto, the master of magnetism, evil mutant, and all-round wrong-’un. Yet Simon Kinberg, long-term writer and producer of the X-Men movies, has wanted to go there for years. “Genosha is something that I’ve always been fascinated by,” he says. “It’s sort of Oz for mutants. As a Jew, its parallels…

DIRECTOR AMMA ASANTE’S new film, Where Hands Touch, is set in 1944. But it has much to say about 2019. With far-right groups currently on the rise globally, the themes of race and identity are as important today as they were during World War II. “I do think it’s relevant to the world we’re existing in right now, particularly the political environment,” says Asante. “But I’m also interested in how similar we are... with the idea of ‘the same, but different’.” The film documents what is seemingly an impossible love as Germany’s World War II campaign reaches crisis point, between biracial Rhineland teenager Leyna (The Hate U Give’s Amandla Stenberg) — daughter of a white mother (Abbie Cornish) and black father — and Lutz (George MacKay), a member of the…

EVERYONE KNOWS THE term ‘Stockholm syndrome’. But the real events that inspired that phrase are almost more peculiar than the idea of a hostage falling for their detainer. The Captor tells the true story of a 1973 Stockholm bank heist where the hostages became sympathetic towards their imprioner; for writer/ director Robert Budreau, real life was almost too mad. “I often found myself making choices in the script that were less absurd than reality,” he says, “just to try to ground it.” Here are the four ‘can’t-be-real-except-they-are’ moments. 1 THE SINGING POLICEMAN When Kaj Hansson (Ethan Hawke) shoots his way into the Kreditbanken, one of his first moves is to force a policeman to sing a Bob Dylan song. This is true to history — except it was a different…

FORGET “NETFLIX AND chill”. If Apple gets its way, we’ll all soon be saying “Apple TV+ and no fuss”. (Maybe.) Last month’s keynote announcement was stuffed with A-list talent (Spielberg! Abrams! Oprah!). But there were some huge shows Apple didn’t talk about. TIME BANDITS What is it? A small-screen adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s properly bonkers 1981 time-travelling fantasy film, which had knights, ogres, giants and encounters with Robin Hood and Napoleon. Why should we be excited? Taika Waititi — a Gilliamesque filmmaker if ever there was one — has signed up to write and direct the pilot episode. And Gilliam has given the project his blessing. FOR ALL MANKIND What is it? An alternative history space drama, imagining a time in which the space race never ended, and the Soviets…

★★★★ OUT 3 MAY CERT 15 / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Jonathan Levine CAST Seth Rogen, Charlize Theron, O’Shea Jackson Jr., June Diane Raphael, Ravi Patel PLOT At a swanky party, out-of-work journalist Fred Farsky (Rogen) reunites with Charlotte Field (Theron), the babysitter he crushed on during the ’9Os. The pair click but there’s a complication: Farsky’s an opinionated schlub and Charlotte is the US Secretary Of State. IT’S RARE THAT romcoms are both romantic and funny. Hurrah, then, for Long Shot, a potentially formulaic high-concept love story — she’s a high-flying politician! He’s a down-on-his-luck-writer! — given a boost by a modern edge mixed with old-school movie heart. It’s overlong and a tad tonally uneven, but Jonathan Levine’s film wins you over with a high gag-rate, a shaggy dog spirit,…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT PG / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Tim Burton CAST Colin Farrell, Danny DeVito, Michael Keaton, Eva Green, Alan Arkin PLOT Florida, P9P9. Former big-top star Holt Farrier (Farrell) returns to Max Medici’s (DeVito) struggling circus having lost an arm in the First World War. Placed in charge of a newborn elephant with gigantic ears, Farrier and his children soon discover that Baby Jumbo can fly. AT FIRST GLANCE, Dumbo feels an odd choice for Tim Burton, a filmmaker more typically taken with headless horsemen, scissor-handed loners and demon barbers. What could Hollywood’s kookiest, spookiest auteur possibly have in mind for Disney’s adorable flying elephant? On closer inspection, it’s an inspired pairing — this is the story of a pure-hearted oddity who, like Edward Scissorhands, is simultaneously welcomed,…

★★★★ OUT 10 MAY CERT 18 / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Claire Denis CAST Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Mia Goth, André Benjamin PLOT Outer space. A band of Death Row inmates are offered a shot at redemption if they undertake a mission to extract energy from around a black hole. But the ship’s doctor, Dibs (Binoche), has her own agenda: to harvest the men’s semen and impregnate the women. But one crew member, Monte (Pattinson), won’t play ball. IN AN ALTERNATIVE space-time continuum, the premise of High Life — Death Row convicts are sent into space on a do-or-die mission to harness the energy of a black hole — is Jerry Bruckheimer’s quasi sequel to Armageddon. Yet, in French director Claire Denis’ hands, it is pretty much the polar opposite: gruelling…

★★★ OUT 3 MAY CERT TBC / TBC MINS DIRECTOR Dome Karukoski CAST Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, Pam Ferris, Derek Jacobi PLOT Left orphaned in P9OS, John Tolkien and younger brother Hilary grow up in Birmingham in care. There John (Hoult) falls for fellow resident Edith (Collins) and, a first-rate student, wins a place at Oxford. However, it is the horror of fighting on the Somme that will shape his life’s work. HE’S SOLD MORE than 250 million books in over 56 languages, and is the genius at the heart of cinema’s most beloved fantasy franchise. Countries from Holland to Canada have streets named after him. So it’s quietly remarkable that Dome Karukoski’s Tolkien (pronounced ‘Tolkeen’, as we are told several times) should be the first biopic of J.R.R. But…

★★★★ OUT 5 APRIL CERT PG / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Chris Butler CAST Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Zach Galifianakis, Stephen Fry, Timothy Olyphant, David Walliams, Emma Thompson, Matt Lucas PLOT In Victorian London, old-school adventurer Sir Lionel Frost (Jackman) hopes to find proof of the missing link. With old flame Adelina Fortnight (Saldana), they find a lonely Bigfoot (Galifianakis) and hope to get him home to his Yeti cousins — but dark forces interrupt. WHILE THE ANIMATION big hitters such as Pixar and Illumination continue to vie for CGI supremacy, Laika Animation Studios has quietly burned a small flame for stop-motion. This is the fifth film from America’s answer to Aardman, and once again they have proven masters of their claymation craft, with ambitions both modest and mighty. The same…

★★★ PRIME VIDEO OUT NOW EPS VIEWED 7 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER David Farr CAST Esme Creed-Miles, Joel Kinnaman, Mireille Enos PLOT Raised in the wilderness and trained as a killer by her father (Kinnaman), Hanna (Creed-Miles) is thrust into civilisation and forced to go on the run after a ruthless CIA agent (Enos) discovers Hanna’s existence and tries to put an end to it. JOE WRIGHT’S HANNA (2011) was an action movie with virtually no interest in action movies. A coming-of-age story imposed on an espionage conspiracy (‘The Bourne Puberty’, if you will), it was a straightforward tale elevated by an unusual treatment. Deliberately skewed by Wright, the film was a surrealist take on the subject, riffing on Hans Christian Andersen more than Robert Ludlum, with fairy-tale motifs and bold,…

Well, this is awkward. Not least because Empire has convened with McQuarrie, in a London studio on a rare day when the writer-director isn’t racking up the air miles scouting locations for the next two Mission: Impossible movies, to discuss his evolution as a director. And, primarily, his evolution as an action director. And not just any common-or-garden action director, but one of the very best in the business. “I find it funny that we’re talking about me as an action director,” says Christopher McQuarrie. “I don’t consider myself one. I didn’t set out to be one. And if I don’t make another action movie, that will be okay.” Because, while McQuarrie might McQuibble slightly with the label, that’s what he’s become, across the course of the four films he’s…

Natalie Portman is used to being watched. Sitting in a restaurant in East Hollywood, so small that there is no table that isn’t in full view of every other diner, she is the target of many not-very-subtle stares. She nods and smiles whenever anyone gawps too long. It’s not new. Despite being only 37, Portman’s been famous for 25 years, since she gave one of the all-time great child performances in Leon. People have always been looking. It’s tempting to call an actor ‘normal’ if they act like a decent person rather than swanning in with an entourage and air of entitlement. As if managing to interact with regular people is some kind of achievement. In Portman’s case it kind of is an achievement. She shows no signs of having…

Alamy, Landmark FOLLOWING ONE OF the best-loved musicals ever is tough. Making it look easy and breezy is even tougher. Crafting the tunes of Mary Poppins Returns involved a lot of pressure and a heap of rejected songs for director Rob Marshall. He talks us through the film’s songs, track by track. LOVELY LONDON SKY In the movie’s opener, lamplighter Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda) walks us through 1930s London. “We had five or six different songs for that slot because it’s such an important moment, after 54 years, to reintroduce us to that world. We found a gentle way in was the key, because there’s so much to come. It was also introducing the character of Jack. You get a sense of who he is and his optimistic sensibility. The truth…

When we first got approached by Amy [Pascal] and Avi [Arad, producers] to do the movie, we basically said, ‘We think that’s a terrible idea!’” laughs Phil Lord, co-producer and co-writer of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. But Lord and his creative partner, Christopher Miller, have a habit of taking terrible ideas — a movie based on 21 Jump Street, another based on frickin’ Lego — and Rumpelstiltskinning them into piles of gold. And the key that brought them back was the idea of playing with a new Spider-Man. Over the course of almost 60 years, six live-action movies, one live-action TV series and more animated shows than you could shoot a web at, Peter Parker had had his shot. And while the idea of multiple universes that underpins Spider-Verse means…