Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i Empire

JENNY SLATE IS probably the only actor you’ll come across who holds an affinity with a shell. And not just any shell. A stop-motion one-inch shell wearing tiny shoes, his single eye nestled in the shell’s opening, and with a soft, high yet emotive voice. A shell who enjoys hang-gliding (he uses a Dorito) and skiing (human toenails), and has natural showmanship. Yet, speaking with Empire about the feature-length adventures of Marcel — named after her great-uncle — Slate reflects on just how ingrained she’s become in the character over their journey together. “I was saying to my therapist yesterday, actually, that it’s become way more clear to me what the aspects of his personality are and how they’re connected with my own personality,” she says. Slate describes Marcel’s voice…

“MY NAME IS Elegance, so most people know that I’m Black and gay before I walk into any room,” Elegance Bratton tells Empire. The filmmaker mined those parts of his identity, and how they shaped his experience as a young Marine-in-training, for his debut feature, The Inspection. It follows Bratton’s onscreen alias Ellis French (Jeremy Pope), who, in a bid to win back the love of his mother Inez (Gabrielle Union), enlists in the Marines, only to be tormented for his sexuality. “By the time I got to boot camp, I thought my life was worthless,” Bratton recalls. “I had no value or purpose.” Yet the 43-year-old Bratton turned his life around during his time in training. “I had a drill instructor telling me that my life actually did have…

“THE WORLD IS already full of stories of the rest of us,” says Hirokazu Kore-eda when Empire asks why he champions underdogs in his work. The Japanese director’s latest film, Broker, continues his fascination with people who live on society’s periphery, from the criminal family in his Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters to the scrappy siblings in his 2004 drama Nobody Knows. Broker, his first movie set in South Korea, stars Parasite’s Song Kang-ho as a launderette owner, who with his partner (Gang Dong-won) runs an illegal business selling on babies left in a local church’s ‘baby box’ (a hole-in-the-wall where infants can be dropped off anonymously). Kore-eda came across baby boxes while researching the Japanese adoption system for his 2013 film Like Father, Like Son, which follows two boys accidentally…

PUSS IN BOOTS is back. The animated character, a cheeky spin on the fairy-tale icon who is voiced by Antonio Banderas, was first introduced back in 2004’s Shrek 2. A handful of cameos and one standalone film later, Puss is returning with a flourish in Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, the surprisingly hotly anticipated upcoming sequel. For one, Florence Pugh and Olivia Colman are doing voices (Goldilocks and Mama Bear, respectively). For another, it kicks off with a wild, thrilling battle between the eponymous kitty and a titanic villain. Here, we break down the film-commencing melee. THE SET-UP In building The Last Wish’s opening sequence, co-director Joel Crawford and his team were conscious that many viewers would be coming to the character fresh. “It’s been over a decade since…

WHEN LEE CRONIN was nine, his father sat him down for a movie double bill that Social Services probably wouldn’t have been too elated about. “He showed me Evil Dead and Evil Dead II back to back. It was like a dagger to the brain,” beams the Irish filmmaker. Decades later, the director is getting to repay the favour, by introducing his now 80-year-old dad to a new instalment in the horror franchise — one he was hand-selected by Sam Raimi to direct. “It’s undoubtedly an Evil Dead movie, but it takes the lore and pulls it in a new direction,” Cronin explains. Here’s where it’s going… A URBAN SETTING “I wanted to move the malevolence away from a cabin in the woods and put it into a domestic setting,”…

★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Tommy Wirkola CAST David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder Here comes Santa Claus. He’s got a sleigh full of presents, a big red coat, and a war hammer covered in the blood of his victims. Combining candy-cane-sweet festivities and lashings of fatalities, Violent Night sees David Harbour take up the Santa mantle with beer on his breath, as a chance arrival at a family’s estate during a home-invasion reignites his passion for presents — and punching. There’s a thrill in watching Harbour’s Santa utilise pool balls, darts and a star ornament to gruesome effect, but the central family melodrama pads things out far too much. For every abominable use of an ice-skate blade, there’s some dull argument to…

★★★★★ OUT 13 JANUARY / CERT TBC 158 MINS DIRECTOR Todd Field CAST Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer PLOT Revered conductor Lydia Tár (Blanchett) has it all: awards, an amazing apartment, a supportive partner, an angelic daughter and her dream gig conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker. She’s about to face the challenge of her glittering career — recording Gustav Mahler’s monumental Fifth symphony — but, as her focus shifts to infatuations old and new, her perfect life begins to crumble. THERE’S NOTHING in the elevator pitch of TÁR — arenowned classical conductor makes a recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony — that makes it remotely sound like it’s one of the must-see films of the year. But Todd Field’s film, only his third in 20 years following In The…

★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+) / CERT PG / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Adam Shankman CAST Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Maya Rudolph 2007’s Enchanted found Disney in an unusually self-aware mood: a knowing send-up of its most famous fairy-tale clichés. While there is an occasional sense of straight-to-streaming to this follow-up, it smartly addresses a key Disney trope — what happens after the “happily ever after”? Princess Giselle (Amy Adams) and Robert (Patrick Dempsey) are now parents in the sleepy town of Monroeville. But when Giselle accidentally casts a WandaVision-esque spell over the town, everyone becomes Disneyfied. It doesn’t quite surpass the original, but Amy Adams is just as wonderful as she was back in 2007, finding the perfect balance between princess parody and pure sincerity. JN…

★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+) / CERT 12 / 44 MINS DIRECTOR James Gunn CAST Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Pom Klementieff, Kevin Bacon Having learned of the Terran holiday ‘Christmas’, and keen to cheer up their leader Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Guardians stalwarts Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) head to Earth to kidnap his favourite film star, Kevin Bacon (Kevin Bacon). ‘Guardians 2.5’ is mostly where writer-director James Gunn ends up with this: it’s fairly inconsequential, but also frothy, fun and clearly not intended to be taken seriously. It’s simply a bunch of A-holes, learning, laughing and singing about Christmas. Perhaps it lacks the acerbic edge of Gunn’s Guardians movies, but even the most hardened of hearts couldn’t fail to be softened by Drax beating the living crap out…

★★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 106 MINS DIRECTOR Ondi Timoner CAST Eli Timoner, Ondi Timoner This moving, cathartic, non-fiction film documents the final days in the life of Air Florida entrepreneur Eli Timoner, as filmed by his filmmaking daughter Ondi Timoner. Elderly and beset by numerous health issues, Eli chooses to medically end his own life. There could be a more political film made about the issue, but Ondi lets her extraordinary home-movie-esque footage do most of the talking, ensuring an array of cameras are there to document every step of the process across the final two weeks of Eli’s life. It is a deeply intimate portrait of a person at their most vulnerable, and it’s rare to see such an outpouring of uncomplicated, unequivocal love expressed on…

★★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 3 OF 8 SHOWRUNNERS Jantje Friese, Baran bo Odar CAST Andreas Pietschmann, Emily Beecham, Aneurin Barnard, Isabella Wei German writing duo Friese and Odar’s previous Netflix TV project Dark was a cult favourite. Now they’ve made an even more puzzling period drama with supernatural horror inflections, set aboard a 19th-century cruise ship heading from Europe to New York. The series focuses on various passengers from contrasting backgrounds who all seem to be lying about what they’re really doing on the ship. There are mechanical beetles, strange little black pyramids and Aneurin Barnard being really creepy. Amid all the curious goings-on there are intriguing takes on sexual transgression, prejudice and class conflict. It all adds up to a beguiling if perilous journey. BH…

★★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / EPISODES VIEWED 6 OF 6 SHOWRUNNER Will Smith CAST Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Saskia Reeves, Kristin Scott Thomas, Rosalind Eleazar PLOT Slough House is home to the security services’ least wanted, operating under maverick spook Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman). When a former operative is found dead on a replacement bus, MI5’s misfits band together to root out the truth. THE MOST SURPRISING moment in the first series of Slow Horses wasn’t the resolution of the six-part drama’s case (a kidnapping by far-right terrorists), but the final episode’s reveal (via a surprise trailer) that Series 2 had already been made. And so, a mere eight months after we were first inducted into the scruffy, ramshackle halls of Slough House, we find ourselves back, once more…

“SHRUNKEN HEADS, SKULLS AND A NARWHAL TUSK,” CROONS NICOLAS CAGE, HIS HANDS DANCING ACROSS THE KEYS OF AN UPRIGHT PIANO. Sharply dressed in a black suit and tie, he is improvising a lilting hymn to the hoard of ancient curios amassed around him in the den of his Las Vegas home. “Welcome to Nick’s house,” he sings. “Only at Nick’s house…” Outside, palm trees sway around a grotto pool guarded by a statue of the fire-breathing turtle monster Gamera and an inquisitive Chow Chow named Bruce Lee. The sun is out, but you’d never know that in here. Heavy drapes cover the windows, preserving an atmosphere of gothic gloom. When Cage moved in he had the sandy walls repainted blood red and aubergine purple. “I didn’t want to feel like…

I’M VERY INTUITIVE about casting. I don’t believe in reads across desks, so sometimes you don’t have much to go on if someone is new. But I remember Joaquin’s film with Nicole Kidman [To Die For], and I thought that was very interesting. So he kept popping up in my mind and I thought, “How can I write for him?” Then suddenly, outrageously, I thought, “Why don’t I make him Commodus [in Gladiator]?” Joaquin was very thin, and maybe not considered perfect casting for a Roman emperor. But there was something in his face, and his eyes. He’s a very serious man. The decision was mine to go for Joaquin, and I had quite a lot of opposition. But when they saw the rushes, those who were doubtful said, “Oh…

HEATH LEDGER WAS a brilliant young actor. God only knows what he would have achieved later in life. He had so much talent — I’m sure he would have been a great director. Brokeback Mountain has the elegiac mood of a Western and an inner-twisted repression — Ennis is a very repressed character, macho but gay, gay but homophobic — and often there is no vocabulary to express his feelings. So Heath’s aura powers the whole story. He did a lot of preparation, mostly on his own. And he often surprised me with what he brought to his work. What stays with me is the nuance, the quieter moments. The trick is to know how to turn a performance down and still shape it. There is a scene I remember…

The Essential SAMUEL L. JACKSON JULES WINNFIELD PULP FICTION (1994) There are few actors so immediately distinctive from their voice alone as Samuel L. Jackson, a man who could intone the phone book with character, possibly menace, and almost certainly an expletive or two. Pulp Fiction’s wily, smart-talking assassin Jules (“Say what again, I dare you”) is so welded to the persona and image of Jackson himself that it is impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. As that wallet says, he’s one BMF. MITCH HENNESSEY THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (1996) An underrated stand-out in Jackson’s long filmography is this Renny Harlin action-crime flick, in which he stars opposite Geena Davis. He shows a more vulnerable underside here as a sarcastic private eye, forming an unlikely friendship with his…

CHINONYE CHUKWU HAS KNOWN OF EMMETT TILL FOR ALMOST HER ENTIRE LIFE. Emmett’s is a mournful story that, in the oral tradition of African-American history, has been kept alive for seven decades by mostly Black families passing it on, generation to generation. “As a Black person who grew up in America, a lot of us just have this acute awareness, a brief understanding,” the director tells Empire. “He was essentially a Cliffs Note in my American education.” An almost mythic quality has enveloped the 14-year-old Chicago boy’s name ever since he was abducted and lynched by white supremacists in Money, Mississippi, 1955, for the so-called crime of whistling at a white woman — Emmett was spending time with cousins when grocery proprietor Carolyn Bryant accused him of flirting with her,…

Muppet movies Chris: The Muppet movies, then. I’ve had such a lovely time revisiting these films. Nick: I feel like it’s pushed me ever closer to the brink of madness. We’ve answered the question: how many Muppet movies can you watch in a week and maintain sanity? It’s one fewer than I watched. Helen: I was close to Muppet overload a couple of times. And I did have a couple of short long, dark nights of the soul during Muppet Treasure Island. Nick: I made a little checklist to help myself with this Ranking. What are the essential things you need from a Muppet movie? Two of them are ‘songs’ and ‘celebrity cameos’. Helen: But are celebrity cameos necessary? Look at The Muppet Christmas Carol and there are pretty much…

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE OUT 9 JANUARY / CERT 18 / 108 MINS In a future free of disease and pain, where “surgery is the new sex”, Viggo Mortensen plays a performance artist who grows useless organs that are tattooed and removed by his partner (Léa Seydoux) for an avant-garde audience. With a title recycled from his own 1970 short and a clutch of Easter eggs for long-time fans, David Cronenberg’s divisive film is both a welcome return to his trademark body horror and a witty, icky reminder that nobody does ‘Cronenbergian’ like the 79-year-old Canadian himself. Not everyone has warmed to the film’s visceral black comedy, but in the deadpan performances and provocative images there’s no denying the twinkle in its creator’s eye. DAVID HUGHES HOUSE OF THE DRAGON:…

WHIP SMART Re: Paddington’s homage to Indiana Jones, as mentioned in the January issue, page 55: perhaps it’s a case of Mandela effect as I also always remembered it was his fedora that Indy grabs from a booby-trapped door in a Peruvian Temple in Raiders. But, having watched it recently, I was surprised to see it’s actually his bullwhip he risks his arm for. He does repeat the trick, however, in Temple Of Doom, this time for his fedora. MIKE TAYLOR, ABERDEEN That’s the kind of pedantry that Indy himself would appreciate, Mike. After all, archaeology is the search for fact, not truth. For your attention to detail, have a Picturehouse membership on us. Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend! Valid for one year…

MOST BIOPIC-Y THE FABELMANS DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG Is it about him? 100 per cent. 8mm cameras! David Lynch playing John Ford! Spielberg has wanted to adapt his life story for decades, but fear that his parents wouldn’t share his “loving yet critical” memories put the filmmaker off. Then, thanks to some nagging from said parents, Spielberg overcame his fear and made his story about lost love, the movies he made and the movies that made him. ARMAGEDDON TIME DIRECTED BY JAMES GRAY Is it about him? Also 100 per cent! Keen to go back to his roots after shooting outer space in Ad Astra, Gray’s Queens-based, Reagan-era upbringing as part of a close-knit Jewish family lies at the heart of the film. The filmmaker even sprinkled in small details…

Where did the idea of sending a claymation sheep into space come from? Well, it was a great surprise to me. One day I got an email saying, “Shaun’s going to go in this rocket.” I couldn’t believe it! But now I know how it came to pass: in Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, he went to space a bit in an extremely comical way, and I believe some of the European Space Agency saw it and thought he would be a good role model. Did Shaun find any of his training particularly challenging? No, no [laughs]. He’s small and wiry and strong. His first expedition was to go up on one of those gravity-free flights, and he did a bit of zooming around on the centrifuge. And he was…

ON PLAYING KATE WINSLET’S DAUGHTER IN THE WAY OF WATER I was freaking out because it was like, “It’s Rose from Titanic!” We’re in rehearsal and she comes in... and gives me the biggest hug. I’m like, “Okay, so she’s normal.” You could talk about anything and she is there for you. ON HER AVATAR EXPERIENCE It’s something that doesn’t happen every day. My mom’s a single mom and she hustled so hard, and for her to see her kid’s dream come true [tears up]… You put aside all the incredible things that can happen like being able to financially support your family, but more than that, Avatar started my career. It truly changed my life. ON PLAYING CLAUDIA IN THE INTERVIEW WITH AVAMPIRESERIES It’s still the same idea but…

WHAT MANY BELIEVE started with a mouse, actually began with a rabbit. Oswald The Lucky Rabbit to be precise, who in his 95th year is starring in a new, hand-drawn Disney short. But just who is this long-forgotten bunny? It all began in 1927, when Walt Disney and animator Ub Iwerks created Oswald as a grouchy middle-aged dad in his debut film Poor Papa for Universal Pictures. The studio baulked, demanding they make the character “young and snappy-looking, with a monocle”. Disney and Iwerks started afresh with a new cartoon, Trolley Troubles, and Oswald was reborn a cheeky slapstick artist in the tradition of the 1920s’ biggest animated star, Felix The Cat. What set Trolley Troubles apart was the film’s dynamic animation; Felix operated only in two dimensions, mimicking the visual…

What is the best thing you’ve ever stolen from a hotel? I have never! I would never. But I did steal a finial from a lamp at the White House. I don’t think anyone’s coming to get me for it. After what’s been happening there in the past administration? I don’t think they’d have a leg to stand on. Where do I keep it? I put it on a lamp in my house. When in your life were you most starstruck? I met the Dalai Lama. I was given an award by the Nobel laureates — me and George Clooney — for work we were doing around the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Gorbachev was also there. It was just a room where you’re like, ‘Why am I here?’ Which movie…

★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / CERT 12 / 127 MINS DIRECTOR Sean Anders CAST Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, Octavia Spencer, Sunita Mani, Patrick Page “Is this like — the Dickens story, the Bill Murray movie?” asks Ryan Reynolds’ Clint early on in Spirited. “Yes,” he is told, “like the Bill Murray movie, and every other adaptation nobody asked for.” It’s a meta joke that misfires slightly, as this musical spin on Dickens’ tale doesn’t quite reach the heights of Murray’s version — though it has a lot of fun trying. The Ghost of Christmas Present (Will Ferrell) finds his Scrooge in Reynolds’ amoral PR guru, and the pair are soon singing and dancing through Clint’s formative years. The songs are generally more ‘humbug’ than hum-along, but there are enough…

★★★★ OUT 6 JANUARY / CERT 12A 130 MINS DIRECTOR Chinonye Chukwu CAST Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett, Whoopi Goldberg PLOT 1955. While visiting Jim Crow-era Mississippi, Black teen Emmett Till (Hall) innocently flirts with white shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett). He is subsequently brutally murdered. For Emmett’s mother Mamie (Deadwyler), his lynching ignites a powerful and historic crusade for accountability. ON 28 AUGUST 1955 in Money, Mississippi, Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old African-American, was abducted, tortured and lynched for seemingly offending a white woman in a grocery store; his dead body, mutilated and unrecognisable, was discovered in the Tallahatchie river three days later. It is to the credit of filmmaker Chinonye Chukwu (Clemency) that Till has no truck with depicting and therefore sensationalising the heinous crime.…

★★★ OUT 9 JANUARY / CERT TBC 113 MINS DIRECTOR Sam Mendes CAST Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Monica Dolan, Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal Clarke, Toby Jones, Colin Firth PLOT In a British seaside town during the early 1980s, Hilary (Colman) works at the fading Empire cinema. When new employee Stephen (Ward) joins the team, the pair forge a romance — but her mental-health issues, and the turbulence of the times, threaten to drive a wedge between them. SAM MENDES’ LAST film, the one-shot war epic 1917, was a tribute to his grandfather, a World War I veteran. Empire Of Light, his latest, is an understated, 1980s-set drama set in a creaking old seaside picturehouse — ahandbrake turn in every way. But there is a personal element to…

★★★★ OUT 26 DECEMBER / CERT 15 / 114 MINS DIRECTOR Marie Kreutzer CAST Vicky Krieps, Florian Teichtmeister, Colin Morgan, Katharina Lorenz It’s December 1877 and Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps), about to turn 40, is restless. Rebelling as much as she can while living an unfulfilled life in grand rooms, her only freedom comes while horse-riding; eventually, heroin provides another escape. Anachronistic flourishes such as modern plug sockets accentuate writer-director Marie Kreutzer’s and Krieps’ vision of Elisabeth as being very different from the historical figure, and Krieps is superb as the frustrated Empress. If the pace sometimes drags, reflecting the flat moments of Elisabeth’s life, Corsage is still the most surprising, funny and compelling period drama since The Favourite. LT…

★★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT 15 / 89 MINS DIRECTOR Chris Smith CAST Robert Downey Jr, Robert Downey Sr, Sean Hayes, Paul Thomas Anderson A heartfelt, homemade documentary years in the making, “Sr.” is Robert Downey Jr’s attempt to mark the life and career of his father, the experimental filmmaker Robert Downey Sr, and capture his ageing, ailing dad for posterity. As you might expect from two filmmaking titans, it has a strange meta quality to it. We watch footage of Downey Jr playing with his kids, loving them 3000; then we watch Downey Sr, watching that same footage on a TV while offering notes, his directorial eye still focused and sharp. There’s a lovely dynamic between the two: Jr wears his heart on his sleeve, while Sr retains…

★★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT 15 / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Jonah Hill CAST Jonah Hill, Phil Stutz Shot in gorgeous black-and-white, Stutz is a series of conversations between actor/filmmaker Jonah Hill and his shrink Phil Stutz. Hill outlines his reasons for the movie as twofold. Firstly, to shine a light on Stutz’s unique practices, or, as Stutz calls them, “tools”: a series of no-nonsense concepts and exercises designed to create immediate change. Secondly, to construct a touching biography of the man who has changed Hill’s life, from his complicated relationship with his mother, to his inability to pursue romances and the onset of Parkinson’s disease. There are some insights into Hill’s doubts and anxieties (including a terrific rug-pull), but Stutz works best as a moving portrait of a friendship…

★★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+) / EPISODES SEEN 7 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Jonathan Kasdan CAST Warwick Davis, Joanne Whalley, Ralph Ineson Most 1980s fantasy films were cheap and looked it; Willow was an exception. So this TV sequel has something to live up to. The good news is that, with its bunch of bickering Gen-Z misfits, it offers all the necessary swashbuckling and pratfalling. The inevitable quest begins when dark forces kidnap Prince Airk (Dempsey Bryk); his sister Kit (Ruby Cruz) leads a rescue mission — with the first stop being Warwick Davis’ Willow. This is an unapologetically traditional fantasy, with no pretensions to Game Of Thrones grimness or Lord Of The Rings seriousness. But it also has vivid new characters, scary moments and fun obstacles. It relies less on nostalgia…

THE FIRST FILM I saw Jack in was Roger Corman’s The Terror. Then The Little Shop Of Horrors. And then everything: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest… It was all just incredible. He had an edge to him. He was iconic. And there’s a mystique about him. He’s a leading man, but he doesn’t really look like a leading man. He’s kind of an everyman, but he’s not really. He’s an anarchist, but people respond to him. It’s a weird magical-mystery tour of what a movie star is. Mostly, there was this kind of freedom: you always felt with his performances that he was just going for it. It’s exciting to see an artist do that. In everybody’s mind he was obviously always the first choice for the Joker. I…

THE FIRST FILM I distinctly remember seeing Nicole in was Dead Calm, but she really grabbed me in Gus Van Sant’s To Die For, because she was funny. Until then she’d just been known as dramatic, and very tall and beautiful. But almost to a fault. As soon as she came in on Moulin Rouge!, I realised she had a zany sense of humour, so I grafted that quality onto the text. Moulin Rouge! had the mechanics of a musical, but in a modern way. You go from slapstick comedy, to melodrama, to psychological realism. And Nicole can just flip the coin from a glamorous 1950s movie star to this intense, emotional and very modern woman who’s ripping her heart out. It was so hard to make. We never saw…

NOTHING IS MORE free than laughter. But on a silent screen, laughter is a science. Visual comedy isn’t about elements in isolation but relationships. (Name a great comedy shot in close-ups.) To get a laugh, particularly from a visual, a film artist must figure out how to show us something absurd and believable, original yet familiar, relatable but remarkable, something hilarious which also feels effortless. No-one laughs when you point at the joke or sweat too much making it. Screen comedy is a beautiful mechanism. Like a Swiss watch. No-one explored the mechanics of screen humour with more playfulness, intensity and restraint than Joseph Frank ‘Buster’ Keaton. One of the world’s greatest actors, comedians, stunt men, choreographers and most innovative filmmakers of all time, Keaton not only pioneered film comedy…

The Essentials OLIVIA COLMAN HANNAH TYRANNOSAUR (2011) The fact that Colman wasn’t nominated for any major award for Paddy Considine’s soul-shaking drama verges on criminal. As a woman stuck in an abusive marriage, she gives not just the best performance of her career, but one of the best performances of the 21st century so far. It’s a turn that shows you don’t have to play to the gallery to convey the force of emotion a character is feeling. She keeps years of pain roiling, devastatingly, just below the surface. QUEEN ANNE THE FAVOURITE (2018) Playing Queen Anne in Yorgos Lanthimos’ slippery comedy-drama asks a lot of Colman. As she allows two of her subjects to seduce her, she has to be funny, imperious, childish, vicious and a little bit heartbreaking.…

Test one-two.” Brendan Fraser is checking Empire’s recording device. By all accounts, Fraser, who was some 20 years ago a top-tier action star, ruling the box office with the likes of George Of The Jungle and The Mummy, is, they say, a humble soul, a gentle man. In the flesh that seems to be the case. Offering to place our Dictaphone nearer to him for a more effective recording, he perches it on a table next to his face and speaks into it. “The red light’s on,” he smiles. A kind smile. He is friendly but quiet, sincere, softly spoken — yet somewhat intense. There’s a heaviness about him — strength yet also fragility, and certainly no sign of an ego. This has all served him well in The Whale,…

THERE’S A MOMENT in the second episode of the final season of Better Call Saul when Mike Ehrmantraut, the grizzled fixer played so beautifully by Jonathan Banks across both this show and its progenitor, Breaking Bad, says, “Whatever happens next, it’s not gonna go down the way you think.” Understatement of the century. Because the final season of Better Call Saul ripped up the rulebook. Major characters died sooner than convention dictates (farewell, Nacho. Goodbye, Howard Hamlin). The main timeline was wrapped up with four episodes to go, at which point it zoomed into the future to conclude the sad-sack, black-and-white story of Jimmy McGill, aka Saul Goodman, aka Gene Takovic. In the end, we got to see Bob Odenkirk strut his stuff as full-blown Saul for around five minutes,…

The Piano A SEARING SYMPHONY of male and female desire, conflict, cruelty and music, Jane Campion’s The Piano endures as as a rich, emotionally crackling milestone in filmmaking. The film, which was written by Campion and follows an electively mute Scottish woman’s new life in mid-1800s New Zealand, won an Oscar for its star Holly Hunter, one for Anna Paquin, who plays her young daughter, and one for Campion for her screenplay. It bagged the Palme d’Or for Campion (her second, after a fashion; she won the Short Film Palme d’Or in 1986 for Peel), and in 2019 it topped a worldwide poll from the BBC seeking out the best 100 films made by women. The Piano is not just a masterpiece. Upon its release it blazed a trail for…

There’s a whole host of big new 4K UHD releases to buy this Christmas. First up is the Brad Pitt-starring, gonzo thrill-ride, Bullet Train. Then there’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, with Jason Reitman picking up the directing baton from dad Ivan. Next, dark superheroics in Morbius, with Jared Leto as the spooky living vampire, and Spidey action — times three! — in mega-hit Spider-Man: No Way Home. And finally, Uncharted, the globe-trotting action-adventure starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg. We’ve got a copy of all five to give away — along with a massive telly to watch them on. To be in with a chance of winning the lot, crack the crossword, solve the anagram and follow the entry instructions below. ALL TITLES ARE NOW AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON.CO.UK…

“IT’S AN OPEN-and-shut case: this is the greatest story that has ever been told in video games.” Big words? Or damning with faint praise? Considering it comes from the creator of HBO’s Emmy-winning Chernobyl, it’s a claim we should probably pay heed to. Craig Mazin is, after all, a man who knows a thing or two about story: his 2019 dramatisation of the infamous nuclear accident has been widely hailed as a TV masterpiece. And when he had his pick of almost any project imaginable as a follow-up, he chose to adapt a PlayStation game. While Sonic The Hedgehog may have collected gold rings aplenty at the box office, video-game adaptations have not had a storied history, almost always lambasted as cash-ins. The Last Of Us, however, feels different. The…

IN TODD FIELD’S wild character study TÁR, Cate Blanchett plays composer and conductor Lydia Tár, who unravels after accusations of abusive behaviour begin to pile up. Field asked musician Hildur Guðnadóttir, who won bags of awards for her Chernobyl and Joker scores, to work on the film from the ground up, creating music for all aspects of Tár — some of which we don’t even hear. She takes us through a unique process. TEMPO-MAPPING Discussions with Field at the script stage led to Guðnadóttir “tempo-mapping” music for Lydia, resulting in pieces that Blanchett would listen to through an earpiece on set, to inspire the character’s physicality. “When you’re writing, rehearsing or performing music, a lot of the process happens internally,” explains Guðnadóttir. “We needed to feel that in her demeanour.…

James Dyer (Digital Editor-In-Chief ): So we’re a couple of films into Phase Five with this one. Let’s hope it’s the magic number. Alex Godfrey (Features Editor): This is a splintered franchise; I can't remember what happened. Who went where? Who’s doing what? Who’s dead? Who’s alive? What multiverse? James: It feels like Thor: Love And Thunder was Guardians 2.5, the Holiday Special was 2.6. But they’re my favourite Marvel team, because they’re so much fun. Beth Webb (News Editor): Are we going to miss them? It feels like some of them aren’t going to live past this film. Alex: I don’t think no Gunn necessarily means they’re done. Mike Cathro (Deputy Art Director): Is Chris Pratt going to do his Super Mario voice? Because that would be top dollar.…

WHEN IS A film about a bear on a drug-fuelled murder binge not just a film about a bear on a drug-fuelled murder binge? The answer: when it’s a metaphor for the US war on drugs, of course. “In the mid ’80s, there was this big reaction to the crack epidemic in American society that actually created so many other monsters,” says Elizabeth Banks, revealing to Empire some of the ways in which, when it comes to 2023’s wildest-sounding movie, there may be more than meets the ursine eye. “There’s a bit of allegory in here, as well as true chaos,” she laughs. Cocaine Bear — shot in Ireland, produced by feel-good-comedy masterminds Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and featuring Ray Liotta’s final film performance — tells the true-ish tale…

IF YOU LOVED... THE WHITE LOTUS ENLIGHTENED (SKY ON DEMAND/NOW) HBO is deeply in love with The White Lotus creator Mike White right now, but not so long ago it cancelled his comedy-drama Enlightened after only two seasons. That series, which ran from 2011 to 2013, was more cult phenomenon than a mainstream success like The White Lotus, and is tightly focused on Laura Dern’s character Amy Jellicoe, who quits her high-powered job after a public breakdown, to search for meaning in her life. As well as writing every episode, White also has a recurring role as a troubled colleague of Amy’s, and the show is as bitingly funny as you’d expect. FLOWERS (NETFLIX) There are many contenders for most valuable player among the ensemble of The White Lotus Season…

IN THE PAST decade, Jon Wright has directed an alien invasion (with his 2012 cult hit Grabbers) and an AI uprising (with 2014’s Robot Overlords). But it all started with goblins. “My grandfather had a farm in the Irish countryside, and he believed in the fairy folk,” the Belfast-born filmmaker tells Empire. “He tried to build a wall on what he believed was a sidhe, which is an invisible sort of homeland for the fairies. Every morning when he got up, the wall had been knocked down. My granddad was quite a funny man, but I think he was serious about this.” Long inspired by this story of vandalic pixies, and the book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales he’d feverishly read as a kid while staying at his grandparents’ remote farmhouse…

BIG SCREEN. SMALL SCREEN. YOUR REVIEWS BIBLE STARTS HERE ★★★★★ EXCELLENT ★★★★ GOOD ★★★ OKAY ★★ POOR ★ AWFUL ★★★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A 192 MINS DIRECTOR James Cameron CAST Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Jack Champion, Britain Dalton PLOT Life is good on Pandora, with Neytiri (Saldaña) and Jake (Worthington) putting down their weaponry to raise a family after their battle against the humans. But a new star in the heavens heralds the return of the Sky People, and soon the Sullys are on the run, allying with a sea tribe to make a stand against their oppressors. IN THE NEAR-decade-and-a-half since we last visited Pandora, the humans in the film have travelled the 4.4 light years back to Earth, regrouped,…

★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / CERT 15 132 MINS DIRECTOR Antoine Fuqua CAST Will Smith, Ben Foster, Charmaine Bingwa, Steven Ogg PLOT 1863, Louisiana. Taken from his wife and children to work in a military camp, Haitian slave Peter (Smith) makes a daring escape through deadly swamps, pursued by slave hunter Fassel (Foster). His aim is to make it to the Union Army camp in Baton Rouge, reunite with his family — and finally earn his freedom. SLAVERY IS A near-impossible subject matter to get right on screen. To sugar-coat it is to effectively deny history; to depict it simply as it was, warts and all, would result in a stomach-churning viewing experience. It is a delicate, sensitive road to tread, and only a few filmmakers have successfully offered…

★★★ OUT NOW (CINEMAS), 30 DECEMBER (NETFLIX) CERT 15 / 135 MINS DIRECTOR Noah Baumbach CAST Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Jodie Turner-Smith, André Benjamin PLOT Professor Jack Gladney (Driver) and his wife Babette (Gerwig) live a busy life with their large family. Their constant worries about death are, however, thrown into sharp relief when an accident throws a cloud of chemical waste over their town — soon referred to as the ‘Airborne Toxic Event’. ACROSS THREE DECADES and around a dozen directorial efforts, we have come to know what A Noah Baumbach Film is. We might expect some lo-fi Millennial Manhattanite angst (Frances Ha, Mistress America); perhaps a Sundance-friendly approach to middle-age male malaise (Greenberg, While We’re Young); or a deeply honest probing of relationships and…

★★★★ OUT NOW / CERT PG / 102 MINS DIRECTORS Don Hall, Qui Nguyen CAST Jake Gyllenhaal, Jaboukie Young-White, Dennis Quaid, Gabrielle Union, Lucy Liu PLOT When the electrical flora that fuels the land of Avalonia suddenly starts powering down, scientist Searcher Clade (Gyllenhaal) ventures to a subterranean world to discover the cause. With his son Ethan (Young-White) and wife Meridian (Union) in tow, he unexpectedly reunites with his long-lost explorer father, Jaeger (Quaid). IT’S RARE THAT Walt Disney Animation Studios goes full sci-fi. The Mouse House’s roots have always been in fantasy and fairy tales, rarely looking to the future. But Strange World continues in the minor tradition of less-beloved ’00s efforts Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet, channelling B-movie monsters and adventure-serial aesthetics for a film that’s…

★★ OUT 6 JANUARY / CERT 18 / 90 MINS DIRECTOR Richard Hughes CAST Antonio Banderas, Kate Bosworth, Mojean Aria, 2 Chainz Having elevated Uncharted and dazzled in Official Competition already this year, Antonio Banderas — following Willis, Washington and Neeson’s lead — flexes his geri-action muscles in The Enforcer. A grotty neon-noir from first-time filmmaker Richard Hughes and OG Point Break scribe W. Peter Iliff, this one sees Banderas playing Cuda, a long-in-the-tooth mobster given a shot at redemption when he tries to save a teen runaway abducted on his own boss’ orders. You know the story, and that’s the problem. Despite Banderas’ best efforts to give Cuda some bite, there’s no escaping Iliff’s cliché-riddled screenplay, an uninspiring ensemble and constant reminders you’ve seen this all done — and…

★★★★ OUT 30 DECEMBER / CERT 15 / 85 MINS DIRECTOR François Ozon CAST Denis Ménochet, Isabelle Adjani, Khalil Gharbia, Hanna Schygulla François Ozon’s remake of New German Cinema icon Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant is part hero worship, part deconstruction, a film that somehow straddles the sensibilities of both auteurs, at once authentic and ironic. Changing gender (female to male) and profession (fashion designer to filmmaker), Ozon’s film centres on Peter von Kant (Denis Ménochet), a dissolute director whose life is turned around by meeting wannabe actor Amir (Khalil Gharbia). As the doomed relationship plays out, Ozon’s film becomes a lighter affair than its inspiration, enlivened by strong performances, especially from Fassbinder lookey-likey Menochet. The result is a small, enjoyable if slightly insubstantial slice…

★★★ OUT 11 JANUARY (DISNEY+) EPISODES VIEWED 3 OF 8 SHOWRUNNERS Robert Siegel, Jenni Konner CAST Kumail Nanjiani, Murray Bartlett, Annaleigh Ashford, Juliette Lewis, Dan Stevens PLOT California, 1980. Indian-American immigrant Somen ‘Steve’ Banerjee (Nanjiani) establishes Chippendales, the first male strip club, along with equally ambitious choreographer Nick De Noia (Bartlett). But backstabbing, theft and murder soon come to define the Chippendales’ legacy. NEVER MIX BUSINESS with pleasure. It’s an old adage that history has shown rings true more often than not. Yet it becomes an impossibility when one’s business is pleasure. Welcome To Chippendales, created by Robert Siegel (Pam & Tommy), depicts the turbulent origin story of male dance troupe the Chippendales as a rock ’n’ roll tragedy. It’s comprised of big personalities, flashy stripping sequences, an expansive soundtrack,…

The Essential FLORENCE PUGH KATHERINE LESTER LADY MACBETH (2016) At 26, the youngest person you voted for in our Greatest Actors poll was great from the start. She excels in her first lead role: a teenage bride forced into a miserable marriage with a colliery magnate’s son, coming alive when she meets groomsman Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis). Pugh delivers a subtle but provocative performance, hinting at a world of hidden passions. She also aces perhaps the most difficult test for any actor — aconvincing drunk scene. DANI ARDOR MIDSOMMAR (2019) It takes an actor of extraordinary skill and commitment to etch the journey of Midsommar’s Dani, but Pugh pulls it off effortlessly. She starts as a young woman downtrodden by tragedy and, after spending some time at a batshit Swedish festival,…

The Essential SHAH RUKH KHAN RAHUL MEHRA DARR (1993) Often called the Tom Cruise of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan can also be more like Robert De Niro. In his early performances, he was the man to call when you wanted a psychotic villain, and in Darr, as a stalker who stops at nothing, Khan shows terrifying tenacity, his expressions exuding determination. He oozes so much personality that he almost starts making us cheer for Rahul — abad, bad man. RAJ MALHOTRA DILWALE DULHANIA LE JAYENGE (1995) If there’s one genre you must master to become a Bollywood legend, it’s the romantic musical. Raj, a flirtatious, fun-loving, over-the-top figure who needs to show conservatism to woo Simran (Kajol), eventually becomes a modern man: fun on the outside, earnest within. Khan was…

You trained as a stage actor, but you’ve said it ultimately wasn’t what really interested you, and that “you were looking for film, always”. What did you feel you were able to do as a film actor that you weren’t as a theatre performer? In actual fact, I never trained at all. I was never really interested in being an actor of any kind. I was a writer and had gone to university as such. But I was smitten with the idea of working in cinema in any way possible, imagining myself more likely in the art department or writing film criticism than ever performing in front of the camera. It was only when I met Derek Jarman, and he opened up before me the possibility of being in film…

I FIRST TOOK notice of Viola Davis when I watched Antwone Fisher. She had one scene, and no lines. I remember thinking, “God, who was that?” Then there was Doubt. Again, one scene. And I’ve never forgotten it. The performance was extraordinary. Despite everything she was saying as a mother about her child, I still cared about her. I understood her and was moved by her. And that was opposite Meryl Streep. I watched Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and I was awestruck by her absolute commitment to who that woman was, flaws and all. Her physical appearance, too, in the way she did the make-up to stay true to the time and the character. I don’t know another actor who would have done that. I fell in love with that…

There is, acknowledge the cast and crew of Women Talking, a belittling joke that people might not go and see a film that tells the story of that title so literally. That would be their loss. The story begins in a hayloft in a Mennonite (an Anabaptist Christian denomination) colony, where nine women talk about how to move past sexual abuse at the hands of men. Women Talking absolutely delivers on its title — but these women, and this film, couldn’t be more alive. Adapting Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel of the same name, it presents countless parallels with our world: the #MeToo movement, of course, which began a year before the book was published, but also the routine silencing and reducing of women to little more than tools and muses…

IT TAKES A brave director to tackle another big-screen adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. And a braver director to wrestle with the ghost of The Muppet Christmas Carol by making it a musical. Yet that’s what Sean Anders did with Spirited, the Will Ferrell-Ryan Reynolds comedy which boasts a slew of original tracks from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the duo behind Dear Evan Hansen and The Greatest Showman’s tunes. Here, Anders talks us through the standout songs and sequences. That’s musical numberwang! THAT CHRISTMAS MORNING FEELIN’ From the off, there’s no beating around the Christmas tree: Spirited is an all-singin’, all-dancin’ musical, with Ferrell’s Present (as in, the Ghost Of Christmas...) leading an upbeat number about that feeling only a Yuletide dawn can bring. “I didn’t want…

JUSTIN BENSON AND AARON MOORHEAD have been melting melons and baking brains since their debut, Resolution, in 2012. Their latest effort, Something In The Dirt, is no exception. Here, the actors/directors/producers offer us insight. MEET -CUTE The film opens with Benson’s Levi, a shambling LA barman, bumming a cigarette from neighbour John (Moorhead), sparking a fractious friendship that goes to unexpected places as they investigate supernatural phenomena in their apartment block. “Asking someone for a cigarette — Iwould believe that,” says Benson. “And the cigarette brand, it turned out, was the one they used in The X-Files [Morley]. We didn’t know that when we shot it.” THEY ALL FLOAT Soon after, John and Levi witness a quartz ashtray (which actually may or may not be a quartz ashtray) levitating in…

Sam Mendes: “It’s so simple and so complicated at the same time, when Michael Corleone goes to the restaurant and picks up the gun in the first Godfather. It’s a staggering scene on so many levels. It’s a masterpiece in how to build tension. Sonny says to him, ‘You come out of the bathroom and start shooting’, and so you’re waiting for him to open fire. He doesn’t. He sits at the table with Sollozzo and McCluskey. It’s so breathtaking. Has there ever been a better death shot on film than those shootings?” I NT. LOUIS’ RESTAURANT — NIGHT Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) emerges from the toilet, where he’s just retrieved the gun left for him behind the cistern. The gun intended for him to assassinate Sollozzo and McCluskey, the…