Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i Empire

NETFLIX 13 SEPTEMBER IT’S SIX YEARS since the multi award-winning Top Boy last aired on Channel 4, but now, in what must be one of the least likely Netflix TV drama revivals yet, the saga of drugs, gangs and crime in East London is back for a belated third series. We asked the show’s original producers to explain how and why it’s now returning, courtesy of Drake (and a few other key players)… Charles Steel, executive producer: Ten years ago, we sat down with [novelist and screenwriter] Ronan Bennett and hit him with some ideas which weren’t particularly great, we must admit. Then Ronan said he really wanted to portray what he saw on the streets of East London where he lived. That became Top Boy. We’ve been working closely…

FOX 7 OCTOBER AFTER TWO YEARS of shambling tedium, a great deal happened in Season Nine of The Walking Dead. Under new showrunner Angela Kang, we not only said goodbye to long-time lead Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), but saw two time jumps, including a six-year leap that placed the show in a brave new world. With an influx of new blood (including Nadia Hilker, Dan Fogler and Lauren Ridlof ) — not to mention a shocking cull of several legacy characters, the show successfully shook up the formula, managing to feel fresh and, most importantly, interesting for the first time in a while. Season 10 sees the united communities of Alexandria, Hilltop and Oceanside reignite their conflict with The Whisperers — humans who live among and emulate the dead. Led…

NETFLIX, OCTOBER AFTER MAKING A self-taped audition, and then being asked to fly to New York to do a chemistry read with lead actor Paul Rudd, Aisling Bea still wasn’t getting her hopes up of landing the female lead in high-concept comedy-drama series Living With Yourself. “The whole way there I was thinking, ‘Just enjoy this business flight because you’re not going to get the part... just enjoy everything about this trip,’” she remembers. “Because, statistically, having been an actor for 17 years, getting the role opposite the lead does not happen. You get to be the funny friend who’s edited out, and that’s your lot.” But when she arrived and did the read with Rudd, who has two roles in the show (his character gets replaced by a “better…

HELLO! WE’RE BACK! AND HONESTLY WE CAN’T believe that we’re two-thirds of the way through 2019. What a year it’s been so far, but now is the time we must look to the future. A future that got a hell of a lot more exciting when Team Marvel stormed the stage at San Diego Comic Con and unveiled their first raft of Disney+ shows. Turn to page 20 for everything they’ve got lined up. In the more pressing future, there’s a clutch of cracking shows we can’t wait to get stuck into: The Politican (Oh. My. God), Watchmen, Peaky Blinders, Catherine The Great... the list goes on. Don’t worry: stick with us for the next 64 pages and we’ll navigate the great and the good for you.…

Getty Images,PhotofestGutter credit THE PROBLEM WITH The Good Place is you want to tell everyone to watch it but you can’t explain why. Well, not without spoiling it almost entirely. A sitcom about the afterlife and moral philosophy that’s more Sartre than Seinfeld? Yeah, you heard us. But thankfully, this weird and wonderful show absolutely makes it work. The premise may start as “someone ends up in Heaven who actually belongs in Hell and antics ensue” but thanks to the performances, sharp writing and skilful world-building by creator Michael Schur, The Good Place is one of the finest small-screen comedies in recent memory. After years of writing and producing office-based comedies rooted in reality (Parks And Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Office) science-fiction fan Schur wanted to try something different.…

A separate show starring Christine Baranski’s fierce, elegant Diane Lockhart seemed to have its work cut out when The Good Wife finished on a high. But three seasons in it threatens to eclipse the original, thanks to an expert balance of daring new directions (with musical, animated sequences) and fun returning characters (Elsbeth Tascioni, David Lee and Colin Sweeney are all back). The show sees Diane learn her retirement savings and all her social cachet have gone due to a scam. Out of a job, she finds work at an African-American firm where she’s basically a diversity hire. This balances out The Good Wife’s general paucity of black characters, with Delroy Lindo, Erica Tazel and Audra McDonald as the partners in the new firm, along with Cush Jumbo’s returning Lucca…

DOCTOR MERCURIO WILL see you now. Before police anti-corruption unit AC-12 opened its first case file and long before bodyguard Sergeant David Budd strapped on his bulletproof vest, there was Bodies — the unjustly forgotten masterpiece by writer Jed Mercurio. Mercurio’s break into TV came when he answered an ad in the British Medical Journal for a clinical advisor on a new BBC production. Despite being a relative writing novice, he ended up scripting cult ’90s BBC1 drama Cardiac Arrest under a pseudonym because he was still working as a doctor when it aired. Starring Helen Baxendale (of Cold Feet fame) in her breakthrough role, Cardiac Arrest sparked complaints from the Royal College of Nursing for portraying nurses as “witless, sex-obsessed and callous” and Tory politician Virginia Bottomley, who was…

NETFLIX 20 SEPTEMBER AS LISA MCQUEEN in the most recent series of Line Of Duty, Rochenda Sandall shared much of her screen time with Stephen Graham’s undercover cop being thoroughly inscrutable, while writer Jed Mercurio kept us guessing as to whether she was a complete wrong ’un or not. By the latter stages of the series, after enabling throat-slitting and people-trafficking, it was clear just how ruthless she could be. Now, in Criminal, Sandall is a likeable, enthusiastic young detective, with Katherine Kelly and Lee Ingleby as her superiors. Sandall describes her character Vanessa as “one of those people you open up to,” a world away from her Line Of Duty role. “I loved going from shooting guns and driving fast cars as a gangster to this part, on the…

1 IT’S TRUE TO HISTORY Roland Emmerich has wanted to make a movie about Pearl Harbour and the pivotal 1942 Battle Of Midway for 20 years. When he first pitched it to Sony Pictures, its (Japanese) bosses weren’t keen. Besides, Michael Bay had his own Pearl Harbor thundering into production. And we all know how that turned out. But Emmerich, who’s now finally made Midway as a $95 million indie movie, dismisses comparisons. “They didn’t even use the right planes,” he laughs. “They had Spitfires flying around, which is nearly comical!” In contrast, Emmerich and his team buried themselves in research, even constructing all their ’40s war machines from scratch. “Nothing exists from ’42 anymore,” he says, “so we had to build everything.” 2 THERE’S NO BOLTED-ON ROMANCE One of…

IT’S A REALLY BLOODY WEIRD SATIRE Set in a world where everyone wears braces, women give birth to footballs, and children turn into dogs, Greener Grass is “a surreal comedy of manners satirising suburbia,” says director/writer/star Dawn Luebbe. “We were always drawn to the mundane,” adds fellow director/writer/star Jocelyn DeBoer. IT’S NOT WEIRD FOR WEIRD’S SAKE “That was very important,” says DeBoer. “We wanted to explore these themes, and then heighten them in a surreal way. Everything is grounded.” IT COULD HAVE BEEN EVEN WEIRDER Some ideas never survived the scripting stages: “In one draft, the divorcee cowboy had a girlfriend who was just floating hair.” GREENER GRASS IS IN CINEMAS LATER THIS YEAR…

John Nugent (News Editor): Let’s track the timeline. There were two horrific mass shootings in America within the space of 24 hours. Then President Trump tweeted about how Hollywood is racist. Less than 24 hours after that tweet, The Hunt — original title ‘Red State Vs Blue State’ — is pulled from release. Chris Hewitt (ReView Editor): We haven’t seen The Hunt, so it’s very hard to talk about its politics. But the decision to remove a film that has absolutely nothing to do with the recent shootings is setting a dangerous precedent. John: Do you think there was political pressure? Nick de Semlyen (Features Editor): I think there’s just a nerviness. It’s been reported that Universal consulted insurers who said that there could be violence in the movie theatres…

Illustration : Raul Allen/VCU SO, WHAT IS VALIANT COMICS? Valiant was founded in 1989 by Jim Shooter and Steve Massarsky. Shooter was a comic-book lifer and one-time editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics (overseeing the X-Men’s ‘Dark Phoenix Saga’ and Iron Man’s struggle with sobriety). Massarsky was the wild card: a music industry manager-cum-lawyer who helped launch the career of Cyndi Lauper, represented the Allman Brothers and decided to turn his Aerosmith money into superhero comic books. WHO’S IN ITS UNIVERSE? Valiant initially only started publishing Nintendo and WWE comics. But in 1991 the Valiant Universe began: a ‘shared universe’ built around Avengers-style crossover potential. This original universe was built on temporary licences, starting with previously established characters such as Magnus, a futuristic ‘robot fighter’, and Solar, a physicist exposed to radiation.…

MIDSOMMAR Ari Aster’s follow-up to Hereditary, about a Swedish cult that lures in gullible Americans, had the year’s biggest opening weekend for an indie film. It demonstrated an appetite for original horror, even if you might lose yours after that ending. US At the time of writing, Jordan Peele’s spooky doppelgänger horror-satire is the only entirely original film to make the American box-office top ten of 2019. In an era of sequels, franchises and films based on ‘existing intellectual property’, that’s a significant achievement. THE FAREWELL Lulu Wang’s second film, starring mononymous talent Awkwafina, saw the bittersweet family drama break the Top 10 at the US box office — and enjoyed the year’s best per-theatre opening weekend average, beating even Avengers: Endgame.…

ARNIE Before he returns to his Terminating, Arnie will be playing Captain James Hook, looking quite unlike anything Arnie has ever played. Isn’t Captain Hook a Peter Pan villain? Honestly, we can’t work out what the hell this film is about. JACKIE CHAN The Hong Kong legend has an impressive wig here, playing a mysterious character listed only as ‘Master’. To reiterate: we have no idea what this film is. RUTGER HAUER The late Rutger Hauer will be playing ‘Ambassador’ in one of his final film roles. But that’s about all we know. Seriously. The trailer’s in Russian. If anyone can help us, could they drop us a line? Capital Pictures, PA, Shutterstock…

THE HIGH SCHOOL movie may feel like a timeworn genre today. But Cory Finley — the filmmaker behind 2017’s treacle-black indie hit Thoroughbreds — had something sinister in mind for his follow-up, Bad Education. “I wanted it to have the epic sweep of a Greek tragedy,” he says. “Even though it’s a very specific story of a small town.” Based on the real-life Roslyn Public Schools corruption scandal, Bad Education stars Hugh Jackman as Frank Tassone, a popular superintendent who embezzled millions of dollars from his community. The film was written by Mike Makowsky, who “actually grew up in the neighbourhood and attended the school which is the setting of the movie,” Finley explains. Early comparisons have been made to cult ’90s satire Election, which Finley sees “some truth to…

★★ OUT 20 SEPTEMBER / CERT 15 / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Andrea Berloff CAST Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss, Domhnall Gleeson, Margo Martindale Given the quality of her past scripts (including an Oscar nomination for Straight Outta Compton), Andrea Berloff’s directorial debut is sadly lacking, speeding through scenes as if half the movie is a montage and, after last year’s Widows, feeling familiar. That’s no fault of the actors, who give chewy, affecting performances (Haddish steps winningly out of her comedy comfort zone), it’s just that the story of three women who look to fill the power vacuum left by their jailed mobster husbands never gels. The Kitchen boasts all the ’7Os gangster trappings, but has nothing much that’s new to say, and largely wastes the good work of…

★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 121 MINS DIRECTOR Ric Roman Waugh CAST Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Piper Perabo, Lance Reddick, Jada Pinkett Smith, Nick Nolte PLOT Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Butler) is at a crossroads: he is up for a big promotion, but his health is rapidly deteriorating. But when President Allan Trumbull (Freeman) is nearly killed in a drone attack, Banning is forced to go on the run to clear his name — and find the real threat. OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN was arguably the better of 2013’s two Die Hard-In-The-Oval-Office movies, pipping White House Down by pitting Gerard Butler’s Secret Service alpha male Mike Banning as a one-man-army against an endless stream of North Korean wrong ’uns, armed with only his wits and his walkie-talkie quips. Like…

Landmark Media ★★★ OUT NOW / CERT U / 97 MINS DIRECTORS Thurop Van Orman, John Rice CAST (VOICES) Jason Sudeikis, Danny McBride, Josh Gad, Leslie Jones The sequel to a 2016 original inspired by a popular app where you catapult birds to flatten green pigs is a surprisingly enjoyable affair. This time round, the furious feathered types (Sudeikis, McBride, Gad) — who never seem that angry — team up with their porcine rivals to take on evil Eagle Island, led by Zeta (a lively Leslie Jones). If it lacks the storytelling craft of a Pixar or a Laika, after a slow start, it becomes a lively Birds On A Mission movie, reaching its zenith in a hilarious set-piece when the Birds and Pigs use a giant Eagle Trojan horse…

★★ OUT NOW / CERT PG / 109 MINS DIRECTOR Simon Curtis CAST Milo Ventimiglia, Amanda Seyfried, Kevin Costner (voice) You can see why the logline for Garth Stein’s 2OO8 novel, The Art Of Racing In The Rain, must have excited Fox 2OOO executives. A kind of Marley & Me with racing cars, it follows the life and times of speed demon Denny Swift (Ventimiglia, strangely soporific) as witnessed by Enzo, the golden retriever he bought as a puppy. There are life’s landmarks — a courtship with Eve (Seyfried), a marriage, a birth, a tragedy — but little in the way of compelling conflict. Despite the odd laugh, the lack of drama is compounded by Enzo’s wall-to-wall cod philosophy, which despite Costner’s gravitas, gives you no time or space to…

★★★ OUT 13 SEPTEMBER / CERT 15 / 86 MINS DIRECTOR Camilla Strøm Henriksen CAST Ylva Bjørkaas Thedin, Maria Bonnevie, Sverrir Gudnason, Casper Falck-Løvås Horrible feelings of domestic dread permeate the first part of Phoenix, a small drama about a very broken family. Events unfold predominantly through the eyes of Jill (Thedin), who is about to turn PS and just wants stability and happiness, whatever the reality might be. Her mother (Bonnevie) is a depressed drunk, and anyone who’s had to deal with someone in an unbreakable downward cycle will relate to Phoenix’s very effective portrayal of near constant fear. Alas the film becomes less engaging as it goes on, and doesn’t hit as hard as you’d like, its story petering away. Still, it’s a tender piece of work, warmly…

★★★ OUT 13 SEPTEMBER / CERT 12 / 78 MINS DIRECTOR Marc Collin CAST Alma Jodorowsky, Philippe Rebbot, Geoffrey Carrey Paris, P978. Ana Klimova (Jodorowsky) is a musician using new-fangled synthesisers to create a new music struggling to find her sound. That’s about it plot-wise for Marc Collin’s affectionate look at the birth of electronic music and a tribute to the women who played a pivotal role in bringing it to life. But, if it lacks big drama, where Shock Of The Future scores is in its capturing of a moment — the move away traditional instruments and songs —and a great performance from Jodorowsky. There are many movies that detail male passion for music, fewer about women. Jodorowsky makes Ana a charming, obsessive nerd, the film celebrating creation and…

OUT NOW ANGEL HAS FALLEN ★★ THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE 2 ★★★ THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN ★★ DORA AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD ★★★ GOOD BOYS ★★★ FAST & FURIOUS: HOBBS & SHAW ★★★★ SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK ★★★ UGLYDOLLS ★★★ 6 SEPTEMBER IT: CHAPTER TWO (ABOVE) ★★★★★ ROJO ★★★★ THE SHINY SHRIMPS ★★★★ 13 SEPTEMBER FOR SAMA ★★★★ HONEYLAND ★★★★ NIGHT HUNTER ★★ PHOENIX ★★★ THE SHOCK OF THE FUTURE ★★★ 20 SEPTEMBER THE FAREWELL ★★★★ THE KITCHEN ★★ 27 SEPTEMBER HOTEL MUMBAI ★★★ READY OR NOT ★★★★ THE LAST TREE ★★★★ TOMORROW ★★★ FOR MORE REVIEWS, VISIT EMPIREONLINE.COM…

“I don’t give a fuck whose name it’s under,” he growled. “Are you stupid or what? Didn’t you hear what I said? Don’t buy anything, don’t get anything. Nothing big. Didn’t you hear what I said? What’s the matter with you?” It was August 2015, and in a classified location in New York, the actor was recreating one of his many iconic sequences from Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas. Specifically, the one in which his Jimmy ‘The Gent’ Conway dresses down a hapless cohort at a Christmas party. This time, though, there was no Caddy, no tinsel and no scene partner — De Niro was talking to air. It didn’t look like much. But in this room, history was being made, and not just because it marked the first time the star…

WALKING AROUND THE Overlook Hotel is a trip. Empire enjoys the privilege of many incredible set-visits, from greenscreen planets to vivid real-world locations. This, though, is something else. We’re really here. In that reception area. On that staircase. By that room numbered 237. And a day after we leave, it will all be gone. It’s November 2018 and we’re in Atlanta for Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep, an adaptation of Stephen King’s 2013 sequel to his 1977 book The Shining, but also a substantial nod to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece. Flanagan’s team have meticulously recreated Kubrick’s set. Every inch is as we last saw it in on screen, and there will be flashbacks: this temporary Overlook is new, but haunted by ghosts nevertheless. Room 237’s terrifying, cackling old lady gives us…

Nora wanted to see SNL because of Lucy Liu. She had become obsessed with the actor after watching Charlie’s Angels a couple of months prior, and was thrilled to hear that Liu would be guest-hosting the live comedy show, the first Asian-American in history to do so. She insisted on being there, to witness history. She lived with her grandmother (her mother had passed away when she was four), but spent weekends with her father, Wally. So she badgered him to take her from the neighbourhood of Forest Hill, Queens, onto a subway train, and all the way to Manhattan and 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where the show was filmed. The only problem: Nora and Wally didn’t have tickets. “I didn’t see her, sadly,” says the now 31-year-old, in her low,…

NETFLIX 13 SEPTEMBER RIGHT NOW IT feels like every week there’s a new television drama based on a real-life crime story, and they often make for uneasy, even ghoulish viewing. But Netflix’s new eight-parter limited series Unbelievable, which takes a deep dive into a complex case involving serial sexual assault, is an object lesson in how to turn a series of real, traumatic events into a sensitively handled, yet powerful drama. THE SOURCE MATERIAL The series is based on an episode of renowned radio show This American Life, as well as 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning article “An Unbelievable Story Of Rape” by T Christian Miller (from non-profit news site ProPublica), and Ken Armstrong (from The Marshall Project, which highlights problems in the US criminal-justice system). The piece explores how a Washington…

AMAZON PRIME 27 SEPT TRANSPARENT CREATOR JILL Soloway faced a huge dilemma when the star of her show, Jeffrey Tambor, was accused of sexual harassment on set in 2OP7. How could the series possibly continue without the actor who had won multiple awards for his performance? After four seasons and SO episodes, Soloway dispensed with Tambor, killed off his character Maura, and has now created a musical feature-length farewell episode. That might seem a big creative leap, but Transparent has always been a show in which each episode feels like a bold mini indie movie embracing major tonal shifts throughout. Soloway describes the series as, “a thrill ride for neurotic people”. So a glitzy Broadway-style musical about a family in mourning is perhaps the perfect way for this particular and…

BBC 1, SEPTEMBER WORLD ON FIRE is an ambitious project. It’s a seven-part World War II drama, written by Peter Bowker (Occupation, Marvellous), filmed in Prague, Paris, Manchester and Berlin, featuring an international cast and crew, with multiple narrative strands focusing on the lives of ordinary people in five countries. And heading up the cast, after a remarkable run appearing in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread and three series of Mum on BBC2, is Lesley Manville in yet another plum role… Had you worked with Peter Bowker before? No, I hadn’t. Obviously his reputation is well deserved. He’s a wonderful writer. He’s written these great individual personal stories about experiences of the war told from all these different angles. You’ve got Helen Hunt playing an American war correspondent. You’ve got…

WHAT’S NEXT? IT’S a question that fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were asking long before Iron Man snapped his fingers at the finale of Avengers: Endgame. And now, with the announcement of the MCU’s Phase Four, we finally have our answer. While Marvel will continue introducing new heroes (and heroines) to the big screen, the studio will also focus on telling smaller, character-driven stories with ones we already know and love on TV. But these limited series will do more than allow us to hang out with our favourite characters between films: they’ll have a real impact on big-screen events as well, something that was consistently promised in the short-lived Marvel Netflix-verse, Agents Of Shield and The Runaways, but never fully delivered. Thanks to Disney’s new streaming service, Disney+,…

The new series of epic drama Peaky Blinders will be bigger and bolder than ever. Its star and executive producer Cillian Murphy explains how the show keeps raising the stakes EVER SINCE IT arrived six years ago with a blast of Nick Cave while Cillian Murphy’s charismatic, cocky gangster Tommy Shelby rode through town on a horse, like a Brummie Clint Eastwood, Peaky Blinders has been a big show-off TV drama. Somehow, on a BBC2 budget, creator Steven Knight and his team made sure that each episode was as grandiose a spectacle as you’d see on British TV. Each series has managed to out-do the previous one in terms of visual bravado and storytelling audacity, providing actors such as Tom Hardy, Paddy Considine and Adrien Brody with some magnificently juicy…

FOR EIGHT YEARS and counting, creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk have been keeping TV viewers up at night with their groundbreaking horror anthology series. American Horror Story is a show like no other, one that built a reputation for risk-taking and boundary-pushing by incorporating cinematic horror elements into innovative small-screen storytelling. To celebrate the arrival of American Horror Story: 1984, the slasher movie-inspired Season Nine, Pilot TV takes a look back at how each iteration of this murderous series has kept viewers so firmly under its spell. S1: MURDER HOUSE From the moment viewers experienced the disturbing, discordant opening credits — foetus-filled jars and all — it was clear American Horror Story wasn’t going to go easy on them and Murder House did not disappoint. The first season, which…

HERE’S A BIZARRE thing: we’ve never seen the origin story of one of the most-loved and enigmatic characters in DC Comics’ entire Batman universe. But now, new TV series Pennyworth is about to right that wrong by taking us deep into the past of Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred. First released in July in America, this exciting and original new addition to the DC universe is now coming to UK screens thanks to streaming titans STARZPLAY. Welcome to the most extraordinary coming-of-age story you have never heard. A former SAS soldier afflicted with PTSD, young Alfred (Jack Bannon) remains skilled in the old ultra-violence, despite intending to live “a peaceful life”. When we meet him, he’s determined to be his own man, resisting pressure from his brutish dad (Ian Puleston-Davies) to…

3. COME TO JESUS A classic Frasier misunderstanding had Dr Crane pretend to be Jewish for the sake of his new girlfriend’s mother. The jig was up when she opened the bathroom door to find Niles wearing his yuletide pageant Jesus costume alongside a decorated Christmas tree. 7. NILES AND DAPHNE’S FIRST TIME After years of infatuation with TV’s least convincing Mancunian, Niles won Daphne Moon’s heart and almost immediately blew it. His idolisation was suffocating, but a huge row ended up with them rolling around on Frasier’s floor. 11. EDDIE VS. FRASIER In the red corner: Eddie (Just Eddie. Like Madonna or Pelé, the dog needs no last name). In the tastefully decorated teal corner, sipping a sherry: Dr Frasier Crane. The rivalry between the radio shrink and his…

WITHIN THE FIRST five minutes of the pilot episode, Veronica Mars, a high-school student with a sideline in private investigation, has cut the new kid from a lamp post where he has been tied, naked, with duct tape, and successfully foiled a ‘random’ drugs check by the local sheriff and school staff. “I know when they’re going to happen before Vice Principal Clemmons does,” Kristen Bell says, in a voiceover that will go some way to bagging her the title role in Gossip Girl. She opens the door to reveal a locker empty but for a heart-shaped picture of the VP. In a voice deader than any pan has ever managed since, she says, “Wow. This is a little embarrassing.” Pity the poor children who only know Bell from box…

“SAY GOODBYE. WHAT’S the big deal?” Captain Benjamin Franklin ‘Hawkeye’ Pierce (Alan Alda) clearly wasn’t speaking for the weeping 105.9 million Americans who tuned in to CBS on 28 February 1983 to see how it would all end for the the personnel of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M*A*S*H) serving in the Korean War. ‘Goodbye, Farewell and Amen’ remains the most-watched scripted episode in the history of American television — that’s 25 million more than second-place Cheers and 87 million ahead of Game Of Thrones. Directed and co-written by Alda in collaboration with the show’s seven other writers, the episode begins smartly by sticking its lead (Alda again) in his most emotionally vulnerable situation of the whole series while underlining its central theme: the struggle to maintain sanity amidst…

TELLING THE NEAR-unprecedented story of Pope Benedict XVI handing in his P45, The Two Popes had an immediate problem. The film, from City Of God director Fernando Meirelles and starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, required long stretches of filming in the Sistine Chapel, where papal elections take place. The Vatican has never allowed film crews inside the 800-year-old church. The solution: build a fake one. Here, production designer Mark Tildesley explains how he did it. GOT TO KNOW THE REAL THING FIRST “We had an extraordinary tour by this typically Italian expert, Enrico Bruschini, who is one of the world’s leading Vatican experts. He gave us a wonderful insight into the various artists involved, and the Chapel’s tempestuous history — each Pope wanting it to be more glorious, or…

MALEFICENT MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL The sequel to Disney’s 2014 anti-hero fantasy sees the horned, winged Angelina Jolie runing a wedding and feuding with Michelle Pfeiffer. There’ll be drama, savage put-downs and gleeful misery. XANDRA THE GOLDFINCH Sarah Paulson’s stripper-slash-waitress is the step-matriarch in this adaptation of Donna Tartt’s novel, a neglectful parental figure to Theo with a chaotic home life in the Las Vegas desert — the polar opposite to his beloved mother. LADY CRAWLEY DOWNTON ABBEY: THE MOVIE Downton’s plot — ‘people considerably richer than you are coming for dinner’ — is woefully thin, so praise be for Maggie Smith’s acerbic Dowager, and a runtime of plotting, scowling and eye-rolling.…

Alamy 1. IT’S STILL A WACHOWSKI PRODUCTION Despite it briefly looking like someone else would remake the seminal cyberpunk epic, Lana Wachowski is now back as director and co-writer (albeit without sister Lilly), making the film a new instalment rather than a hard reboot. It’s a chance to further explore the Matrix-verse, rather than just recreating what’s already been done. 2. THE ORIGINAL CAST ARE BACK Or at least, some of them. Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne-Moss are confirmed to return. Meanwhile, there are hints that Morpheus will be recast younger (Michael B. Jordan’s name has been mentioned), which raises many questions. Will it involve time travel? Reincarnations? Or just a few ghosts in this new-look machine? 3. IT HAS SOME SMART CO-WRITERS Wachowski has collaborated with novelists David Mitchell…

JULIA STILES What was your role in your first-ever school play? Senator Barbara Bonkers. It was a play that the students had written called ‘The Dream’ about aliens coming to Earth. We were in fourth grade and our teacher was very into current events and liberal politics. I think I had round glasses on and my hair pulled back in a bun. It was really satirical for something written by ten-year-olds! I went to a very progressive school. Do you have a nickname? Jules. Or Stylie-J. I don’t know where that came from. It was my joke rapper name. Do you have a signature dish? Chicken Marbella: it’s a chicken dish that’s kind of Moroccan. I like it because you can prep it the night before and then you just…

ON ACTING ADVICE FROM GARY COOPER “On Easy Rider, I remembered something I heard when I was 14. I heard Gary Cooper say this. My father [Henry Fonda], Randolph Scott, Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper were in the backyard of Cooper’s place. Jane [Fonda, his sister] and I were playing with Cooper’s daughter, Maria. And I just heard this, not knowing how to apply it. ‘If I know what I’m doing, I don’t have to act.’ Woah! Well, now I know what that means. If you work hard enough at that character, you know what to do. If something strange happens, we call that the accident. An accident is brilliant.” ON INSPIRING THE BEATLES SONG ‘SHE SAID, SHE SAID’ “See, George [Harrison] and John [Lennon] had been dosed without being…

Revenge Of The Sith: © 2005 Lucas Films; A New Hope: © 1977 Lucas FilThe Jedi: © 1983 Lucas Films; The Last Jedi: © 2017 Industrial LightAll Rights Reserved; Solo: A Star W f The Clones: © 2002 Lucas Film; Return Ofn of Lucasfilm Entertainment Company Ltd.© 2018 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved. WHY DO WE love Star Wars? It’s not just the spaceships and the laser swords and the spectacle. For Empire, the reason why we keep going back to that galaxy far, far away is the characters. In the Star Wars universe, all human (and alien) life is here. Wookiees, smugglers, bounty hunters, giant monsters that will rip your arm off — all manner of heroes and villains. And so, to celebrate the Star Wars Collection on Sky…

★★★ OUT 27 SEPTEMBER / CERT 15 / 92 MINS DIRECTOR Martha Pinson CAST Sebastian Street, Stuart Brennan, Stephanie Leonidas Directed by Martha Pinson, Martin Scorsese’s long-time script supervisor (Scorsese also exec produces), Tomorrow is a film with a lot of its mind. Living with disability, PTSD and dealing with illness all come into play in its story of wheelchair-bound Iraq War vet Tesla (Street), who becomes fast friends with Sky (Brennan), who has a secret of his own. Pinson’s film is good on the day-to-day realities of being disabled, be it in the confines of work, relationships or the minutiae of everyday living. If it perhaps feels driven more by its Big Themes than its characters, it wins out on good performances, a sensitive, informed look at oft-ignored issues,…

★★★ OUT 27 SEPTEMBER CERT 15 / 123 MINS DIRECTOR Anthony Maras CAST Dev Patel, Armie Hammer, Nazanin Boniadi, Jason Isaacs PLOT 26 November 2008, Mumbai. Ten members of Pakistani terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba arrive and begin a reign of terror across the city. The extremists finally target the luxurious Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, keeping the hotel staff and moneyed guests under siege. HOTEL MUMBAI, THE debut feature from short filmmaker Anthony Maras, puts you right in the heart of the darkest days of modern Indian history. Over a three day-period in 2008, ten Pakistani terrorists occupied the opulent Taj Mahal hotel, shooting at random in the name of Islam. Well acted and impressively shot, Maras’ film does a great job in making you feel the heat of the moment, but…

★★★★ OUT 13 SEPTEMBER / CERT 12A / 90 MINS DIRECTORS Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov CAST Hatidze Muratova, Nazife Muratova, Hussein Sam, Ljutvie Sam A Macedonian bee-keeper may not be the documentary subject you think you need in your life, but this gorgeously shot and closely observed film plays like a thoughtful indie drama. We meet Hatidze Muratova on a precarious ledge in the Northern Macedonian mountains, harvesting honey from a remote hive, and spy on her life with elderly, ailing mother Nazife and rowdy neighbours, the Sam family. The filmmakers spent years with their fascinating, complicated heroine and let their images speak for themselves: there are no caption cards, no narration, just Hatidza’s endlessly expressive face. Their care pays off in intimate storytelling and stunning cinematography.…

★★ OUT 13 SEPTEMBER / CERT 15 / 97 MINS DIRECTOR David Raymond CAST Henry Cavill, Ben Kingsley, Alexandra Daddario, Stanley Tucci As a vigilante (Kingsley) targets sex offenders whom he captures and castrates, dour detective Marshall (Cavill) and psychological profiler Rachel (Daddario) hunt a rapist and murderer in this uneven serial killer thriller, the feature debut of British writer-director Raymond. With a quart of plot in a pint-sized pot, it feels like a feature-length cut-down of a peak-time TV series, and it doesn’t help that Cavill’s character is so thinly sketched he might as well have been credited as Bearded Cop. Despite promising ideas, an impressive cast — Kingsley is reliably excellent, but Stanley Tucci and Nathan Fillion are utterly wasted — and a third act twist that briefly…

★★★★ OUT 13 SEPTEMBER / CERT 18 / 100 MINS DIRECTORS Waad al-Kateab, Edward Watts CAST Waad al-Kateab, Hamza al-Kateab, Sama al-Kateab Part hardcore news reportage, part intimate memoir, For Sama is a compelling dispatch from deep inside the Syrian conflict. Directed by Waad al-Kateab and UK non-fiction filmmaker Edward Watts, it takes al-Kateab’s footage, charting the conflicts in Aleppo between 2OP2 and 2OPU as a video diary/letter from mother-to-daughter, Sama explaining not only the conflict but, perhaps more importantly, why her parents decided to stay. The non-linear structure occasionally makes the chronology confusing but it’s crammed with powerful moments — a miraculous Caesarian section will leave you in bits — and perfectly dovetails the personal and the political to thought-provoking, emotional ends. The result is one of the best…

1 MEET MARVIN SCHWARZ Quentin Tarantino: It was just thrilling, the idea of writing a part for Al Pacino and then hearing Al Pacino say my dialogue. Marvin isn’t necessarily based on anyone in particular. He’s the guy in the ’UOs that worked at [Hollywood talent agency] William Morris. His job is putting name American talent in foreign productions — Toho monster movies, spaghetti Westerns and so on. Al is a great guy and we’ve been hanging out. Him and his girlfriend — I think they broke up — became good friends with my wife and so the four of us would go out and do things together. It was great. 2 RICK’S FILMOGRAPHY Nick de Semlyen: The film’s excellent marketing campaign has included one-sheets for the Italian phase of…

You have Irish roots yourself, don’t you? Yeah. My mother’s Dutch, French, German. And my father was Irish and Italian. I hitchhiked around Ireland when I was about 18,19. I’ve been trying for years to find relatives there. For some reason it’s not easy. Italy was easier. What did you make of Martin Scorsese when you met him for the first time? Well, Marty and I used to see each other when we were teenagers in Little Italy. We hung out with different groups of kids. And there was a kid who would go between our groups — he was in the productions Marty was directing and would tell me what Marty was doing. I was interested in him because I wanted to be an actor; that’s what I was…

James Gray is currently contemplating the biggest, most pressing question in the universe. Not the existence of aliens, God or parallel dimensions. Instead he is pondering an equally knotty problem: how do you release a film in 2019 that doesn’t star a superhero? “I think that the marketplace is tricky now for anything that isn’t The Avengers,” he begins. “This is a very strange time for movies. The very simple truth is this: you have to take a risk. Maybe not now, but sooner or later the day will come when people will not tolerate any more The Flash, Iron Man, Batman, Superman. There will come a time when there is fatigue. And then what? At some point if the movie business is to survive in any beautiful capacity, we…

I AM THE NIGHT ALIBI EPISODE THREE The storytelling meanders at the start of this true-crime drama based on Fauna Hodel’s memoir. In 1965 Fauna, the mixed-race daughter of a black single mother, discovered a family link to a chief suspect in LA’s unsolved Black Dahlia murder and Ep 3 is where we enter his sadistic playground. Never reaching True Detective heights, exec producer/co-star Chris Pine’s performance can be a tad Hart To Hart but India Eisley as Fauna is great. MONEY HEIST NETFLIX SERIES 2, EP THREE It may be strange to suggest giving Netflix’s most-watched non-English language series time — now on Season 3 with a fourth on the way. But after the initial heist at the Royal Mint of Spain and the “time is money” twist, you…

BBC1 OCTOBER THE BBC AND Netflix’s new collaboration is eight-part drama Giri/Haji, following a Tokyo detective searching London for his missing brother, who’s become embroiled with the Yakuza and is wanted for murder. Screenwriter Joe Barton talks us through the genesis of the show… THE IDEA “Seven years ago, my girlfriend at the time did a Master’s degree in Crime and Forensic Science. All her fellow students were in their 20s, like her — apart from a middle-aged Japanese guy, sat at the back of lectures by himself. Turned out he was a detective from Tokyo who’d been sent over to learn from the Met. I thought a Japanese cop in London was an intriguing idea, so filed it away in my head for future use.” THE RESEARCH “My knowledge…

THE OA SOARED as high as TV drama can go, and now it’s been brought crashing down. After two mind-bogglingly original seasons of profoundly affecting storytelling, Netflix has cancelled the one show that seemed to define the streaming service’s creative ethos. Showrunners Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, described by OA cast member Jason Isaacs as “young, independent film-makers from their own planet”, were given the freedom — and budget — to make a series unlike anything else out there, even in this era of Peak TV. This is a show whose opening titles rolled 57 minutes into the first episode, arriving as Marling’s character Prairie (aka the Original Angel) revealed her extraordinary Russian back-story to a group of hand-picked high-school students and their teacher. That spine-tingling moment was just the…

SARAH PHELPS’ TWITTER bio reads, ‘Screenwriter. Pervert. BBC Monster’. The description is a wry reference to troll-like critics of her work, and in particular, her audacious Agatha Christie adaptations And Then There Were None and ABC Murders for BBC1, which are, to be fair, filled with perverse monsters and monstrous perversions. The fearless Phelps, who started out writing on EastEnders in 2002, has also turned Dickens’ Great Expectations and JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy into subversive TV drama. Her new creation is a multi-tentacled psychological thriller, adapted from the best-selling crime novels by Tana French. The opening season of eight episodes, set in 2006, stitches together French’s first two books, In The Woods and The Likeness. It shifts focus between flawed Dublin Murder Squad detectives Rob Reilly (Killian Scott) and…

SKY ONE/ NOW TV 13 SEPT “I FIND IT easier to say what the show isn’t rather than what it is”, says Mark Strong, as he struggles to describe new eight-part drama, Temple that he both produces and stars in. “Although it’s funny, it isn’t a comedy, and it isn’t a thriller either, and it’s not a medical show, despite my character being a doctor.” What Temple is, he finally and emphatically decides, is “something different and unique”. Yet ironically, as tonally distinctive as the series undoubtedly feels, it isn’t an entirely original creation. The journey from concept to screen began when Strong and his partner Liza Marshall (the producer of daring TV dramas Taboo and Red Riding) saw the pilot episode of 2017 Norwegian series Valkyrien, and loved its…

MASTURBATION WASN’T MENTIONED once in Seinfeld’s iconic masturbation episode, even though the entire storyline of ‘The Contest’ saw the four leads trying to avoid pleasuring themselves for as long as possible. That episode, and the acrobatic deployment of every euphemism imaginable — the better to avoid tetchy network censors — helped cement Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld’s show as something of an outlier in a traditionally conventional TV landscape. While most sitcoms in the ’90s focused on family values or cosy entertainment, here was a show in which four New Yorkers — Seinfeld plus George Costanza (Jason Alexander), Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) each staked a claim that they could remain ‘the master of their domain’ longer than the others. The episode threw curveballs, or tests,…

10 POISONED PILL (SEASON 2, EPISODE 6) The eccentric opposing counsels our heroes routinely take on sometimes give the impression that Lockhart Gardner is the dullest law firm in Chicago. Best among them, however, is Michael J.Fox as Louis Canning: an evil genius who manipulates juries with his neurological condition — because Fox wanted to show that illness doesn’t make you a saint. Canning would return in multiple episodes but this introduction, in which he defends a big pharmaceutical company against a class-action suit, playing the court at every turn, remains the most memorable. 9 END ( SEASON 7, EPISODE 22) A controversial inclusion as its character turns proved deeply divisive for long-time fans, but there’s nevertheless an elegance and symmetry to the series finale that makes it worthy of…

NETFLIX, SEPTEMBER 27 “IT’S ABOUT an arguably sociopathic kid who is very egomaniacal.” That’s how actor Ben Platt, star of The Politician, describes the latest addition to the list of groundbreaking shows from creators and producers Ryan Murphy and Bard Falchuk. Platt plays the massively precocious and extremely driven Payton Hobart, who at a very early age decided he was going to be President of the United States and drew up a life-plan to get him to the White House — which he plans on sticking to, no matter what. And when we first meet him, he’s ferociously campaigning to be become President of senior class in high school, aided by his two hugely geeky mates who are constantly checking social media and algorithms to see how Payton’s doing .…

BBC1 SUNDAYS PEAKY BLINDERS HAS a unique approach to its production process. While creator Steven Knight writes every episode, each series gets a new director who’s effectively challenged to top the style and spectacle of the previous run. So for the new, fifth season, in comes Irish filmmaker Anthony Byrne, who recently made indie movie In Darkness. He’s confident this series will live up to Peaky expectations. “I just pushed it,” Byrne says. “Even though the characters are often just in rooms talking, it has a bigger feel to it”. He admits he hasn’t quite worked out how he achieved this grander scope, but he’s convinced he has. “It’s certainly more cinematic”, he explains, “which is a word that’s bandied about without really thinking what it means, but for me…

LIST CHECKED It’s been as epic as Frodo and Sam’s journey to Mordor, but I’ve watched every film in Empire’s 100 Greatest Movies list from 2017. From the highs (the Rings trilogy, Interstellar, Shawshank) to the lows (Lost In Translation), it’s been perhaps the greatest cinematic feat of my life, and I thank Empire and all those who voted for providing me with such an experience. I look forward to the next one. BILLY WHITE, VIA EMAIL Congrats, Billy, on completing your quest — next up, you might want to fill in any blind spots from our list of 30 essential movies from the past 30 years, as selected for our September 2019 issue. Picture house  Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend! Valid for…

NAOMIE HARRIS GETS recognised a fair bit these days — she is Moneypenny, after all. But while filming tough new thriller Black And Blue in New Orleans, she found herself getting noticed for different reasons. “It was interesting just to see how people reacted when I was in police uniform — how afraid they were me,” she recalls. “I became suddenly unapproachable, because of this uniform. The power of it was incredible.” It’s the power of that uniform that Black And Blue explores, reviving and evolving the template established in the ’70s and ’80s by one-honest-cop dramas like Serpico and Prince Of The City. Harris plays Alicia, a rookie police officer who witnesses a murder from her corrupt colleagues; the difference from the ’70s is that it’s all caught on…

Getty Images, Landmark DIRECTOR DAVID MICHÔD knew one thing: Timothée Chalamet’s enviable, Byronic curls had to go. “Everyone freaked out about the haircut a little bit, but no matter what, it just had to happen. It’s a famous haircut and we couldn’t have that kid from Call Me By Your Name just waltzing into the 15th century.” So be warned: unlike Game Of Thrones, this story of England’s King Henry V doesn’t shy away from the less attractive parts of the Middle Ages. Michôd’s take on Prince Hal/King Henry (Chalamet) was influenced by Shakespeare but isn’t a direct adaptation of his Henriad (Henry IV Parts One and Two, and Henry V). His co-writer, Joel Edgerton, played Shakespeare’s version to great acclaim onstage, but to write the script they also drew…

ANY SCREENWRITING STUDENT will tell you: films needs drama. Narrative needs conflict, and resolution. But how the hell do you find conflict in a film about someone as infallibly kind and gentle as Fred Rogers, the late presenter of US TV kids’ show Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood and all-round lovely human? “You can’t!” says director Marielle Heller. Which is a bold statement, given she’s just finished A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood, about Rogers. Isn’t he the hero? “You can’t make somebody like [Mister Rogers] the protagonist of your movie, because there’s no journey. What you can do is take someone like Mister Rogers, whose life mission is this radical kindness and an ability to pull the best out of people, and see that in action.” So Heller and screenwriters Micah…

I WAS BORN in London to Nigerian parents and was ‘farmed’ out at six weeks to a white working-class couple in Tilbury, a poverty-stricken docking town, and spawning ground for racist attitudes. The abuse levied towards African immigrants was made worse by high unemployment. Fuelled by the Enoch Powell rhetoric of “KEEP BRITAIN WHITE”, blacks and Africans were seen by many as the enemy taking their jobs. We lived in Poets Corner. It was poetic in name only, and the roughest part of Tilbury. Growing up was a painfully lonely experience. There were about eight other Nigerian children in the house, two of whom were my siblings. It was crowded and noisy, and hunger was the thing I remember most. I spent my childhood years seeking refuge behind our sofa…

TAIKA WAITITI HAS spent a fair bit of time in the Marvel cosmos; he plans to return with 2021’s Thor: Love And Thunder. But for now, he’s remaining Earthbound and returning to the intimate scale of his early work with Jojo Rabbit, a comic fantasy drama set in World War II Germany. Given its early-2020 release date and prime festival placement, there are already rumblings that the once-and-future Korg might be taking home an Oscar. As long as they print enough pamphlets. JOJO RABBIT IS IN CINEMAS FROM 1 JANUARY 2020…

Joanna Moran (Photography Director): I like the song ‘Last Christmas’. Young people don’t like the song but I do. Chris Lupton (Creative Director): I want to see the big five supermodels strutting down Borough Market like the ‘Freedom! ’90’ music video. That’s the only reason I’m going to go to see this movie. Ben Travis (Online Staff Writer): There’s not been a properly decent Christmas film since 2003, when you had Elf and Love Actually. John Nugent (News Editor): The only good Christmas movie is Home Alone 2: Lost In New York. Chris Lupton: Everyone’s going to see this, right? John: God, yeah. It’s going to be repeated on ITV2 for years. Ben: That’s Brixton! Chris Lupton: It’s a great advert for London. Ben: They really use London properly. Nick…

ONE FOR FANS OF… REVAMPED COSTUME DRAMA: THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD Charles Dickens’ 1850 classic gets a colour blind casting treatment from Armando Iannucci with Dev Patel as the boy who sets out on a quest to become a writer. Co-starring Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw and Gwendoline Christie, it promises laughs, heart and a timely reminder about the power of kindness. ONE FOR FANS OF… A-LIST WISE GUYS: THE IRISHMAN Scorsese. De Niro. Pacino. Pesci. Marty returning to his gangster roots employs bleeding-edge de-ageing technology to tell a true-life Mob story spanning decades. Expect as much passing-of-time melancholia as mooks with machine guns. ONE FOR FANS OF… EMPATHY: A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD America’s Mr Congeniality Tom Hanks plays beloved US children’s TV host Fred Rogers, who…

★★★★★ OUT 6 SEPTEMBER CERT 15 / 169 MINS DIRECTOR Andy Muschietti CAST James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, Bill Skarsgård, Isaiah Mustafa PLOT In 2OPU, 27 years after terrorising the town of Derry, big-headed clown Pennywise (Skarsgård) is back, a bodycount rising in his wake. Having researched the monster’s history, Mike Hanlon (IMustafa) tracks down the estranged members of The Losers’ Club, getting them to make good on their promise to fight once more. IT CHAPTER ONE, or whatever we must call it since it made enough millions to birth a chapter two, had its crutches. This was an adaptation of (half of ) a beloved book, following in the footsteps of a so-so yet affectionately remembered TV movie, leaning heavily into the never-ending wave of 1980s nostalgia. It…

★★★★ OUT 20 SEPTEMBER CERT PG / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Lulu Wang CAST Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen, Lu Hong PLOT When broke Chinese-American writer Billi (Awkwafina) learns that her grandma is dying, she rustles up enough money to travel to Changchun for one final visit. Problem is, she’s under strict instructions not to reveal to Nai Nai (Shuzhen) that there’s anything wrong with her health, so as not to spoil the end of her life. THE FAREWELL BEGINS with a flurry of fibs. Billi (Awkwafina), a young woman living in New York, is walking down a Manhattan street when her China-based grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen), aka Nai Nai, calls for a catch-up. It quickly becomes clear that they love each other deeply, but as the exchange ping-pongs back…

★★★★ OUT 6 SEPTEMBER / CERT 15 / 109 MINS DIRECTOR Benjamin Naishtat CAST Dario Grandinetti, Andrea Frigerio, Alfredo Castro, Diego Cremonesi Although it’s set in the mid-1970s, Benjamin Naishtat’s noirish study of small-town life in the months before Argentina’s notorious Dirty War very much has its eyes fixed on the invidious rise of global populism. Ostensibly it’s the story of small-town lawyer Claudio (Grandinetti), who enters into a shady property deal at the very moment celebrity detective Sinclair (Castro) arrives to investigate the disappearance of the stranger Claudio humiliated during a very public spat. With each subplot reinforcing the sense of unease, this compelling recreation of a pernicious period soberingly exposes how easily morality can become a casualty of debased human nature, and everyday normalcy spiral into a nightmare.…

★★★★ OUT NOW CERT 12A / 136 MINS DIRECTOR David Leitch CAST Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Vanessa Kirby, Eiza Gonzfllez, Idris Elba, Helen Mirren PLOT Former antagonists Luke Hobbs (Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Statham) team up to face the cyber-genetically enhanced villain Brixton Lore (Idris Elba) as he attempts to retrieve a bioweapon from Shaw’s sister, Hattie (Kirby). EVER SINCE THE ludicrous, immensely entertaining Fast Five, each new Fast & Furious instalment has been an exercise in preposterous escalation — from skydiving cars in Furious 7, to The Rock launching a torpedo with his bare hands in The Fate Of The Furious, and everything in-between. Far from the simpler times of the series being a Point Break homage about beautiful street racers boosting DVD players, each increasingly Fast & Furious…

★★★ OUT NOW CERT 15 / 90 MINS DIRECTOR Gene Stupnitsky CAST Jacob Tremblay, Keith L. Williams, Brady Noon, Will Forte PLOT When sixth-graders Max (Tremblay), Lucas (Williams) and Thor (Noon) are invited to a ‘kissing party’ by the coolest kid in class, their innocent attempts to learn more about the opposite sex pre-bash begin a misadventure that takes them way out of their depth. THEY GROW UP, don’t they? One minute Jacob Tremblay was that adorable kid on the Oscar trail for Lenny Abrahamson’s Room — and now four years later in Good Boys he’s swearing up an absolute storm, being grossed out by porn, and kissing a sex doll he mistakenly thinks is used for CPR. If the idea of naive, inquisitive pre-teens dropping F-bombs and boastfully misusing…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT PG / 102 MINS DIRECTOR James Bobin CAST Isabela Moner, Eva Longoria, Michael Peña, Jeff Wahlberg, Benicio Del Toro (voice) If you think that a live-action reboot of Nickelodeon’s prolific cartoon adventurer is for kids only, you’re in for a meta-infused treat. Helmed by The Muppets director James Bobin, Dora (Moner) gets the big-screen treatment with a spot-on sense of self-awareness. Eva Longoria and a scene-snatching Michael Peña play Dora’s parents, who send Dora to high school to improve her social skills. After they go missing, our plucky heroine recruits her peers to help her track them down. Bobin filters an Indiana Jones-calibre treasure hunt through a Gen Z lens, where solving the puzzle ends with a group hug over golden glory, but heavy-handed moral…

★★ OUT NOW / CERT U / 87 MINS DIRECTOR Kelly Asbury CAST (voices) Kelly Clarkson, Nick Jonas, Janelle Monfle, Ice-T A vehicle based on a popular American plush toy line, UglyDolls is so Candy-Crush-gaudy, bereft of laughs and shot through with sugary sentiment it makes Angry Birds 2 look like I, Daniel Blake. The plot is simple — a gang of rejected toys set out to find the mythical Big World where kids will play with them — but is piled high with obvious story beats and forgettable pop songs. Some of it works — there’s a nice running gag about the literal naming of the characters such as Exposition Robot but while this paean to living your own truth is more than welcome in the Insta age, you…

★★★★ OUT 6 SEPTEMBER CERT 15 / 103 MINS DIRECTORS Cédric Le Gallo, Maxime Govare CAST Nicolas Gob, Alban Lenoir, Michaël Abiteboul, Romain Brau, Roland Menou, Félix Martinez PLOT French swimming champion Matthias Le Goff (Gob) is on the brink of success until a homophobic remark made on national television puts his promising career in jeopardy. To make amends, the national swimming federation decrees he must coach The Shiny Shrimps — an amateur, unmotivated, gay water-polo team. A FILM ABOUT a group of disparate men coming together through the medium of water sports, The Shiny Shrimps is everything last year’s Swimming With Men wasn’t. A huge hit in its native France, the story is ripped from co-director Cédric Le Gallo’s experiences playing for a gay water-polo team actually called The…

1 THE CAMEOS Chris Hewitt: David Leitch and Dwayne Johnson clearly didn’t have to look far beyond the Favourites section in their contacts to recruit Deadpool 2 stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob Delaney as CIA agents Locke and Loeb (something of a pun on lock and load), and Jumanji/Central Intelligence co-star Kevin Hart as pugnacious US marshal Dinkley. As cameos go, they’re fairly odd, opportunistic things, with Reynolds and Hart in essence playing variations on their well-worn personas, apparently in the hope/expectation that audiences will love them so much that they’ll show up in future instalments. They’re fun, of course — three naturally funny guys being given plenty of room to riff tends to bear at least some fruit — but it’s hard to know whether the big-name cameos in…

Why did it take so long for you and Scorsese to team up? We both asked each other this question! You know, I had a relationship with [Sidney] Lumet and Marty had his relationship with Bob. I met Marty when I was a youngster, in around ’70 or ’71, and from time to time we’d run into each other and always got along. Throughout the years we had gotten very close to doing something together. We worked on a film years ago, about a painter [Modigliani], but it didn’t turn out. In 2010, it was reported that he wanted you to play Frank Sinatra in a biopic, with De Niro as Dean Martin. No, I’ve seen that but I was never approached. All I can tell you is it’s really…