Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i Empire

IF THERE’S A prevailing myth about The Little Mermaid’s Ariel, it’s this: she has gone down, rightly or wrongly, as the Disney Princess who quite literally gave up her voice to be with a man she’d barely met. In its most simplistic form this might be true — nary a word has our mermaid hero uttered to the handsome Eric before she signs a monkey’s-paw pact with sea-witch Ursula, swaps her flipper for legs, and totters ashore to find him. But that was never the whole story for this character, who, even before encountering Eric, long dreamed of leaving her life under the sea behind to — quite literally — step into a whole new world (wait, different Disney film). “A lot of people forget how modern she was, especially…

MRS. DAVIS IS the kind of show that’s hard to put in a box. Co-created by The Leftovers’ and Lost’s Damon Lindelof and The Big Bang Theory’s Tara Hernandez, the story follows a formidable nun’s battle against Mrs. Davis — a creepy, all-seeing A.I. — with the help of her ex, Wiley (Jake McDorman). But it also tackles the big themes of religion, technology and philosophy. It’s a tricky role for any actor, but Betty Gilpin isn’t one to shy away from a challenge, whether she’s landing dropkicks as an ’80s wrestler in GLOW or outsmarting killers in Lindelof-scripted survivalist horror The Hunt. She tells Empire how she harnessed the habit. FINDING THE FAITH In order to dive into a show that handles, in Gilpin’s words, “11 genres that deal…

IN AN EMPTY field somewhere in London, Roxy (Ria Zmitrowicz) stares at the bolts of electricity dancing between her fingers. She screams and channels the energy at a pylon in the distance, setting it ablaze. Her gift is the beginning of a new world order envisioned in The Power, a TV adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s seminal 2016 book, which sees all young women develop these newfound electrical abilities, overturning the patriarchy. “We weren’t modelling a revolution based on anything we’ve seen in the real world,” showrunner Raelle Tucker tells Empire. “We were collectively imagining what a new revolution would look like right now.” The Power hops around the globe from London to China to Nigeria, following the perspectives of seven people, both girls with powers and people impacted by their…

ON THE MORNING of Empire’s interview with Succession star Alan Ruck, who plays Connor, the much-put-upon eldest offspring of ruthless tycoon Logan Roy (Brian Cox), news breaks that the new, fourth season will be the last. “The truth is, we’ve all known on the show since June,” Ruck tells us. “And I think it’s the right time to end it in terms of the struggle to see who’s going to take command of this empire. A fifth season would have been drawn out, and if it just faded away, that would have been a disgrace.” Instead, Ruck insists this fourth season — which sees the Roy siblings finally stand up to their manipulative father Logan (Brian Cox) in a bid for ultimate power — is the best yet. It’s also…

FEW PEOPLE CAN say that they’ve followed up a Disney animated feature with a buddy comedy that involves, amongst other things, “going to China to get laid by the Chinese basketball team”. But for Adele Lim, co-writer of Raya And The Last Dragon and before that the box-office smash Crazy Rich Asians, no other film would do for her directorial debut. “My natural proclivities are nasty and ratchet, and my friends are that way too,” Lim cheerfully tells Empire. Those inclinations have led to Joy Ride, an R-rated comedy about four best friends who travel from America to Asia so that Audrey (Ashley Park) can track down her birth mother in order to close a big business deal. The film is written by Lim’s longterm pals Teresa Hsiao and Cherry…

★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Elizabeth Banks CAST Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr, Alden Ehrenreich, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Brooklynn Prince, Christian Convery, Margo Martindale, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Ray Liotta PLOT 1985. After drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton (Matthew Rhys) dumps 40 containers of cocaine from a crashing plane high above Chattahoochee National Forest, an American black bear subsequently ingests the narcotics and goes on a Class A-fuelled killing spree. COCAINE BEAR STARTS with a litany of facts about bears and their propensity for violence that immediately gets undercut by the subtitle: “Source: Wikipedia”. It’s a knowing, treats-its-audience-with-respect gag that makes you feel you are in smart, safe hands (a hope fostered by the presence of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller in the credits as producers).…

★★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT 12 / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Christopher Landon CAST David Harbour, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Jennifer Coolidge, Anthony Mackie We Have A Ghost continues Christopher Landon’s horror-comedy hot-streak, and while this one skews a bit younger than his earlier, blood-splattered work — good -heartedness here replaces the gore of his superb last film, body-swap slasher Freaky — it remains a spooky, crowd-pleasing treat. When Kevin (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) discovers a ghost (David Harbour) in his attic, the Gen-Z-er’s first reaction is to get his phone out and film it for viral clout. But Landon’s irony-soaked, online-inflected wit is tempered here: this is mostly an earnest, thoughtful genre-piece, less interested in scares and more interested in cares. It’s a film ultimately about families, and seems to be…

★★★★★ OUT 7 APRIL / CERT 12A / 143 MINS DIRECTOR Hlynur Pálmason CAST Elliott Crosset Hove, Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson, Jacob Lohmann Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) is tasked with building a church in a remote Icelandic community. Perversely, he chooses a punishing route, travelling on horseback across inhospitable terrain. Hlynur Pálmason directs with astounding rigour and momentum, giving Lucas’ struggles the force and atmosphere of a classic Western. The frame is square and the camera often firmly fixed — so much so that when it moves, to chase a moment of sudden violence, it’s a jump-scare. Hove plays Lucas with flashes of terrifying anger and slow, sickening dread, becoming increasingly gaunt, with haunted eyes popping out of his once-innocent, soft face. This excellent film is a portrait of…

★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Steven Soderbergh CAST Channing Tatum, Salma Hayek Pinault, Vicki Pepperdine The promise and ethos of the Magic Mike franchise is to give women what they want, but this falls short by talking too much, dancing too little. Incandescent sequel Magic Mike XXL celebrated how charming Channing Tatum’s Mike and his stripping buddies are in a road-trip movie. Last Dance, however, plays like a contemporary-dance GCSE project, celebrating the Magic Mike Live! show in London without fully doing justice to the spirit of the films. Tatum is trapped in a screwball narrative with Salma Hayek Pinault’s rich divorcée Max, enlisting the live show’s real dancers for one big blowout. But there is a nagging sensation that the magic has been lost.…

★★ OUT 17 MARCH / CERT 12A / 99 MINS DIRECTOR Richard Eyre CAST Jennifer Saunders, Bally Gill, Russell Tovey, Judi Dench Richard Eyre’s bewildering adaptation of Alan Bennett’s play Allelujah, about an at-risk elderly ward in Yorkshire and its residents’ efforts to save it, starts with kindly Dr Valentine (Bally Gill) espousing how he’s “always loved the old”. By its end, he’s face-masked up, delivering a bone-rattling monologue about the state of the NHS after some Shyamalan-worthy WTF-ery. In-between, we’re treated to an unholy cross between an Age UK advert and The Good Nurse, blighted by obfuscatory faux to-camera bits and mixed messages about the root of our health service’s woes. Eyre’s all-star cast galvanise some good will, but even the sight of Dame Judi Dench figuring out how…

★★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) EPISODES VIEWED 1 OF 12 SHOWRUNNER Bill Lawrence CAST Jason Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Jeremy Swift, Phil Dunster, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Nick Mohammed, Juno Temple PLOT Ted Lasso (Sudeikis) enters his third year as manager of Richmond AFC, having returned the team to the Premier League. But a relegation battle looms; Nate (Mohammed) is tur ning up the heat at his new job at West Ham; and Ted begins to ponder his future in England. SUCCESS IS NOT about the wins and losses, as Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) likes to rhapsodise. But even then, the success story of this low-key half-hour comedy-drama about a goofy, good-hearted American football coach taking over a failing Premier League club is like a footballing fairy tale: how it started…

THE STEVE JOBS THEATER is packed. It’s summer 2018, and inside Pixar’s west California headquarters, the top minds at the legendary animation stable have paused work on their forthcoming feature Soul to take a gander at an offering from a rival studio. An early cut of Sony ’s Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse has been brought in by writer-producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and no-one in the screening room knows quite what to expect. “ When it comes to animation, Pixar can be a tough crowd,” laughs Kemp Powers, Soul’s co-director, and one of the three men now helming the Spider-Verse sequel. “So, it was pretty exciting to be sat in that packed auditorium, full of Pixar people, all collectively picking our jaws off the ground.” Blending aesthetics from street…

Across The Spider-Verse begins in Gwen’s world — Ear th-65. How was the place first pitched to you? The first thing Kemp [Powers] told me when describing where we star t with Gwen was that a lot of the animation around her would feel like a mood ring, reflecting her emotions. That sounded so cool, visually. Af ter the first film, you’d think it couldn’t get any more spectacular, but this one really blew me away. Where is Gwen at when the movie opens? She’s at a point in her life where she realises she can write her own stories. If the first film was about Miles learning that anyone can wear the mask, this one is about how you wear the mask. So, Gwen is finding out who she…

THIS MONTH: Musso & Frank’s QUENTIN TARANTINO would leave nothing to chance. While shooting Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, he and his Oscar-winning production team went to great lengths to make Los Angeles in 2018 look just as it had in 1969. Classic Chevys were brought in to cruise along Hollywood Boulevard, past the resurrected façades of the Pussycat Theatre and Peaches Records & Tapes. The premiere of 1968 disaster-drama Krakatoa, East Of Java was restaged in front of the Cinerama Dome. There was one key location, however, that barely required a touch of set dressing: Musso & Frank Grill, Hollywood’s oldest and most storied bar and restaurant. It’s there that Leonardo DiCaprio’s fading star Rick Dalton and Brad Pitt’s loyal stuntman Cliff Booth go for cocktails (a whiskey…

When Druckmann wanted to create an expansion, shortly after the Last Of Us game came out, he settled on a prequel story that relayed how Ellie first discovered she was immune. The result was Left Behind, which takes a single line from the very end of the game, where Ellie reveals that her best friend Riley was also bitten, and spins from it a tale of young love and misadventure. “I realised what was interesting was not to show her turning, but to show these two characters finding that the other one is as in love with them as they are,” says Druckmann. “And then this metaphor of skipping school and seeing what teenagers look like when they hang out in this world.” Episode 7, a mini-Shakespearean tragedy that is,…

Moral ambiguity is all well and good, but if there’s one thing that surely everyone can agree on, if there’s a single bad guy we can all boo and hiss at together, it’s probably the cannibal paedophile. Ellie encounters David (Scott Shepherd) after Joel is injured, trading deer meat for antibiotics before being abducted, imprisoned and given the unenviable choice between David’s twisted affections and being served al dente with a side of garlic mash. “David doesn’t want to bring down a government or to win a war,” says Mazin. “He’s a paedophile. And he wants to satisfy his urges. That’s the way bad people are — they generally don’t want to blow up a planet, or eliminate half the universe’s population by snapping their fingers. They want something gross…

The coda, as Ellie and Joel hike the last miles back to a new beginning in Jackson, is bittersweet — asense of contentment tinged with an undercurrent of sadness. Joel, having fed Ellie a story of others with immunity and no cure in sight, talks freely about his past for the first time — opening up about Sarah in a way he’s been unable to until now. “He’s overcompensating,” notes Druckmann. “He’s being overly friendly because the guilt is weighing on him.” But it’s more than simply trying to sell the lie. At this point in the story, Joel has finally attained a measure of closure — he’s revisited his past and altered history, saving his child instead of letting her die. “The topic of Sarah comes up twice prior…

WITH MATILDA THE MUSICAL, director Matthew Warchus and songwriter-comedian Tim Minchin channelled the dark humour, delicious wordplay and rebellious spirit of Roald Dahl’s beloved kids’ book into a theatrical smash. And they did it all over again on film, re-teaming for a screen adaptation that takes everything that worked on stage and bolsters it with inventive visuals, warbling newborns, and Emma Thompson chucking children over fences. Amid rehearsals for the impending revival of their Groundhog Day musical, Warchus and Minchin sat down with Empire to break down the songs of Matilda The Musical — and how they brought it to the big screen. Like the stage show, the film begins with ‘Miracle’ — now with the joyous absurdity of singing babies. When did you realise you could do that in…

INSTANT TRIVIA ↓ 1 Koepp’s initial draf t involved an IMF agent called Kevin Mitnick, who gradually transformed into Luther Stickell. Koepp named Mitnick after a real-life hacker. 2 The analyst whose of fice is infiltrated, and who is later dispatched to Alaska, is William Donloe, played by Rolf Saxon. Sa xon would later narrate the US version of Teletubbies. 3 De Palma came up with the idea for how Ethan and his team enter the complex — by disguising themselves as firefighters and faking a fire alarm — af ter watching a news repor t about a fire. 4 The CIA’s headquar ters are of ficially known as the George Bush Center For Intelligence, and are at 1000 Colonial Road in Langley. Mission: Impossible IT SEEMS STRANGE now, but…

Confess, Fletch GREG MOTTOLA’S ADAPTATION of Gregory McDonald’s novel is the first film to feature roguish reporter (retired) Irwin M. Fletcher since the one-two Chevy Chase punch of the ’80s. This time he’s played, winningly, by Jon Hamm, in a fun Boston-set caper that deserves to find a second audience. CONFESSARE, FLETCH The film begins like the book, with Fletch arriving in Boston from Italy, and entering a rental apartment to find a dead woman on the floor, and him firmly in the frame for her murder. But after the policeman in charge of the investigation — Roy Wood Jr’s Inspector Monroe — shows up, Mottola flashes back to Fletch’s time in Rome, a suggestion of Hamm chum and fellow Fletch fan Neil Gaiman. “In the book, all the Italy…

This issue we’re of fering you the chance to give the sound in your home-cinema system a serious spring-clean. Not only is the Sonos Ray (RRP £279) a super-stylish piece of kit, it’s a compact device that will upgrade your movie- and T V-viewing, gaming and music-listening by enhancing your audio. Of fering balanced sound with crisper dialogue and seriously solid bass, you can control it with either the Sonos app, Apple AirPlay 2 — or just your existing TV remote. Fancy a bit of that? We’ve got one soundbar to give away. To be in with a chance of winning, simply crack the crossword on the lef t, figure out the anagram, then follow the instructions below to enter. Rock on! THE SONOS RAY IS AVAILABLE TO BUY NOW…

COMMENTS OF THE MONTH FROM FILM MAG TO FILM SET I wanted to take this opportunity to say I wouldn’t be where I am now without Empire. Your continued passion for cinema changed me from a casual cinemagoer to a proper film fan, obsessed and invested, ultimately leading me down a path of working in film myself! Now, the first two shows that I worked on as a third assistant director will finally be released. So thank you, Empire, for fuelling my passion and getting me to where I am today. You all do an amazing job! PHOEBE HODGETTS, VIA EMAIL Your mightily impressive IMDb page speaks for itself, Phoebe — keep fuelling that passion with this Picturehouse membership, on us. Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one…

HOW MANY FILMS must Hollywood make about Bob Dylan before they can call it a day? The answer is: quite a few. In the pipeline we have James Mangold’s Timothée Chalamet-led biopic Going Electric, which is currently in development while the director and star complete other projects. And a recently announced adaptation of stage musical Girl From The North Country, inspired by Dylan’s back catalogue, has now entered the mix. Featuring big-hitter songs such as ‘Jokerman’ and ‘Forever Young’, the film will star musician Chlöe Bailey (sister of The Little Mermaid’s Halle Bailey), Woody Harrelson, and Olivia Colman, and follows a group of travellers during the Great Depression. Dylan may not be the most mainstream of musicians, but Hollywood keeps coming back to him, whether he’s being played by an…

AIR JORDANS (AIR) Matt Damon and Ben Affleck reunite for this drama about Nike’s mid-’80s push to develop a new kind of basketball shoe around a then-unknown rookie named Michael Jordan. Come for the against-all-odds story of a culture-defining sneaker; stay for Affleck’s faintly ludicrous permed-wig-and-beard combo. TETRIS (TETRIS) Essentially a Cold War thriller based around an addictive videogame, Tetris stars Taron Egerton as a designer who attempts to secure the rights to the falling-blocks behemoth, while everyone from the KGB to Robert Maxwell tries to stop him. BLACKBERRIES (BLACKBERRY) Depending on your outlook, the BlackBerry was either a revolutionary communication tool or the death knell for the entire planet’s work/life balance. Either way, this drama about its invention has already notched up glowing reviews on the festival circuit. POP…

FROM THE AUSTIN Butler-fronted biopic to Sofia Coppola’s upcoming Presley project, Elvis is currently always on Hollywood’s mind. Yet a zany new animated Netflix series — co-created by Priscilla herself — is set to show the gyrating icon like never before. “The singular king of rock ’n’ roll lives a double life fighting crime and saving the world, with the help of a coked-up monkey with a shotgun,” summarises Agent Elvis showrunner Mike Arnold. And if that isn’t enough to get you all in a frenzy, Elvis is voiced by another icon of cool: Matthew McConaughey. “He jumped deep into it, recording himself on his cell phone trying lines, to really get a rhythm going,” Arnold tells Empire. Co-creator John Eddie met Priscilla when touring as a musician with her…

WHAT IF YOU could dive into people’s memories by recreating their scent? That’s the question explored in Léa Mysius’ offbeat drama — named after the five mountain peaks in the French Alps that give the film’s village setting its name — which follows Vicky (Sally Dramé), a little girl whose hyper-keen sense of smell leads to her accessing her mother Joanne’s (Adèle Exarchopoulos) inner life. The filmmaker tells Empire about creating a fragrant fairy tale. THE IDEA Vicky’s gift was born from a conversation between Mysius and her co-writer, Paul Guilhaume. “He grew up in Paris, I grew up in the countryside,” she explains. “He said that Paris smells really bad, so he was used to not smelling; he blocked off that sense.” Mysius thought about how her countryside upbringing…

IT WASN’T THE most promising of beginnings. In 1966’s One Million Years B.C., Raquel Welch had just three lines of dialogue and wore scraps of fur, as a cavewoman braving prehistoric beasts. The same year, she appeared in sci-fi Fantastic Voyage as tech assistant Cora Peterson. Reviews of the former focused on her looks, and she became an instant pin-up icon. But during a career that spanned over 50 years, Welch — who passed away in February, aged 82 — proved to be so much more, reinventing her sex-symbol image and becoming an emblem of power and vitality. Born Jo-Raquel Tejada, Welch was encouraged to go blonde and drop her Bolivian surname, but she refused to ditch her “hard-to-pronounce” first name. That strength was something she would display throughout the…

TUBE (2025) After the events of Plane and Ship, Mike Colter’s former soldier and homicide suspect Louis boards the Circle Line at Baker Street (Platform 5), only to discover HS2 protestors who are planning to strike at London’s heart in revenge for the train route’s ravaging of 108 ancient woodland sites. VAN (2027) Heading to Canada, where he was due to be extradited to in Plane, Louis goes on a camping holiday in a luxury RV, only to encounter the homicidal agents of a corporation planning to turn the wilder ness into a giant water park, with “the biggest, baddest flumes this side of the Columbia River”. TUK-TUK (2028) While on holiday in Bangkok, Louis reluctantly shares a wobbly auto-rickshaw with a woman (Olga Kurylenko) he assumes to be a…

★★★★ OUT 31 MARCH / CERT 12A 134 MINS DIRECTORS John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein CAST Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant, Daisy Head, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman PLOT After being imprisoned for a crime they did commit, best buddies Edgin (Pine) and Holga (Rodriguez) break out and unsuccessfully try to recover Edgin’s daughter (Coleman) — and their stolen treasure — from old-ally-turned-enemy Forge (Grant). Another heist is mounted — but there are darker forces at play... THE LAST ATTEMPT at a Dungeons & Dragons adaptation was a disaster to make you wish they’d lock the dragons in the dungeon and throw away the key. But this new effort comes courtesy of Game Night’s John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, and establishes them as the go-to…

★★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 129 MINS DIRECTOR Hirokazu Kore-eda CAST Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Lee Ji-eun, Bae Doo-na Making his first film in Korea, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with another sad-funny-wise take on finding connections wherever we discover them. Young mother So-young (Lee Ji-eun) abandons her son to a church-affiliated Baby Box, only for the boy to be stolen by a couple of child traffickers. But before the pair can cash in, So-young tracks them down and demands to be let in on the action. What follows is a lovely study of a makeshift family living on the fringes of society as the threesome plus baby go on the road looking for prospective buyers. If it’s not God-tier Kore-eda, Broker explores the toughest themes — emotional…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A 124 MINS DIRECTOR Peyton Reed CAST Paul Rudd, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jonathan Majors, Kathryn Newton, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas PLOT After Scott Lang’s (Rudd) daughter Cassie (Newton) sends a signal to the Quantum Realm, they are transported to a world of infinite probabilities and absurd aliens. There, Ant-Man encounters aggrieved timeline-meddler Kang (Majors), while Janet Van Dyne (Pfeiffer) faces up to her own secret past. IT’S TOUGH TO make truly trippy cinema. The bold ones break through. 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Star Gate sequence can still hurl you into an altered state at 3am. Alex Garland’s Annihilation, which turned people into flora, was fresh. It can even be done on the cheap, as Shane Meadows proved with Dead Man’s Shoes’ shuddering LSD sequence, and Ben…

★★★★ OUT 17 MARCH / CERT 15 / 82 MINUTES DIRECTOR Raine Allen Miller CAST Vivian Oparah, David Jonsson, Alice Hewkin, Munya Chawawa, Simon Manyonda, Karene Peter, Benjamin Sarpong-Broni PLOT Over the course of a day on the streets of South East London, twentysomethings Yas (Oparah) and Dom (Jonsson) meet for the first time, bond over their failed past relationships, and settle scores with their respective exes. Could a new romance be just around the corner? LATELY, THE ROMCOM has felt like a genre in decline. No longer the box-office draw it was in the ’90s, it has largely been exiled to the realm of streamer cheapies, with only veteran taliswomen like Jennifer Lopez and her wedding-industrial complex boldly keeping the meet-cute flame burning. Then along comes something like Rye…

★★★★ OUT 24 MARCH / CERT 18 118 MINS DIRECTOR Brandon Cronenberg CAST Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman, Jalil Lespert, Amanda Brugel PLOT James (Skarsgård), a writer, is on holiday in a luxury resort with his wife Em (Coleman), searching for inspiration for his difficult second novel, when he meets actress Gabi (Goth). An accident exposes the couple to the strange local practice of body doubling. Extreme hedonism, bloodshed and a bleak examination of mortality follow. THE IDEA THAT ‘rich people are bad, actually’ gets a simmering, stomach-churning spin in this new horror-thriller from writer-director Brandon Cronenberg, who asks: if you had enough money to buy your way out of trouble, even trouble as deep as the death sentence, how would you act? Just how terrible a person would…

★★★★ OUT 27 MARCH / CERT 15 / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Abi Damaris Corbin CAST John Boyega, Nicole Beharie, Olivia Washington, Michael K. Williams After a missing paycheck from the Veterans Affairs office threatens to put him on the streets, former Marine Brian Brown-Easley (John Boyega) resorts to holding a bank hostage, in a rock-bottom attempt to not only get his money back but shine a light on how veterans are treated after they come home from combat. Boyega gives a show-stopping performance, completely selling the stress of a man forced to rely on disability benefits, suffering from PTSD after two tours in Iraq. But it’s Breaking’s refusal to stick to the status-quo of heist movies that makes it stand out so much: where most such films are about the…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 123 MINS DIRECTOR Bobby Farrelly CAST Woody Harrelson, Kaitlin Olson, Ernie Hudson, Cheech Marin Once best known as purveyors of puerility, the Farrelly brothers are these days exploring a modicum of maturity. Peter Farrelly scaled Oscar glory with Green Book; now younger sibling Bobby returns with this comedy-drama about disability and difference that’s more grown-up than, say, Dumb And Dumber. Based on the Spanish film of the same name, it tells the story of a fading basketball coach (Woody Harrelson) forced into a stint of community service managing a Special Olympics basketball team. It teeters on the edges of bad taste and condescension, but never totally crosses, mostly celebrating its young cast rather than making them the butt of jokes. It’s crude, first-base,…

Is it true you wrote, “I am Miles Morales,” in your diary a few years before landing the part in Into The Spider-Verse? Yeah. At the time, I was reading The Master Key System [a book about ways to achieve your dreams], so I wrote in my journal, “I am Miles Morales, I am Spider-Man.” I’d seen Miles pop up for five seconds in the [animated] Disney XD series [Ultimate Spider-Man] and honestly — you can Google it — it looks like someone drew my face [laughs]. So, I wrote that in my journal, and then someone from the Spidey team ended up seeing my movie Dope at Sundance, and threw me to the top of the list for Miles. Where’s Miles at as Across The Spider-Verse opens? He’s older,…

IN 1978, THREE college kids ventured into a cabin in the woods in Michigan, and came back with one of the greatest horror franchises of all time. Not that Sam Raimi (director), Bruce Campbell (star/producer) and Rob Tapert (producer) knew it back then. They were there, with some other enthusiastic wannabe filmmaker friends, to make short proof-of-concept horror film Within The Woods, about a group of friends attacked by a malevolent, mocking, demonic presence which turns its victims into cackling psychos now known as Deadites. If that sounds familiar, it’s because in 1981, with that concept successfully proved, the trio remade and expanded Within The Woods as The Evil Dead, making such a bloody splash that it got banned over here ( ludicrously) during the video-nasty hysteria. But it also…

55,272 MARTINIS SERVED BY MUSSO & FRANK’S IN 2018. 6667 Musso’s address in a prime spot on Holly wood Blvd. Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre is across the street at 6706. 12 BAR STOOLS AT THE LONG MAHOGANY BAR IN THE NEW ROOM. 5 years Between David Lynch and Mark Frost’s 2012 lunch at Musso’s to discuss bringing back Twin Peaks and the debut of Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017. 3 Head chefs employed during the last century: Jean Rue (who spent 53 years at the restaurant), Michel Bourger and current occupant J.P. Amateau, who arrived in 2010. $1.35 PRICE OF A FILET MIGNON IN 1942. $49 PRICE OF A FILET MIGNON IN 2023. 8 Number of people Charlton Heston once turned up with, only to be told there was an…

The Last Of Us blends moments of heart-swelling joy, soul-crushing loss and brutal, bloody violence, but in terms of sudden, heart-stopping shocks, the abrupt deaths of Henry and his little brother Sam (Lamar Johnson and Keivonn Woodard) is among the most distressing. Joel reluctantly warms to the affable Henry, while Ellie takes eight-year-old Sam — who is now deaf in the show, a change suggested by Mazin to make the brothers’ dynamic more distinct from Joel and Ellie’s — under her wing. When Sam is bitten and inevitably turns, he attacks Ellie in a frenzy, causing his panicked, hysterical brother to shoot him dead, before turning the gun on himself. “I was scared, I will readily admit that,” says Mazin. “Not because I’m a coward, but because I care about…

The commencement address was, until relatively recently, a uniquely American phenomenon. Each fall, at colleges and universities across the United States, deans of degrees scour alumni lists, call contacts, rack their brains in search of a celebrity, a politician, a half-successful businessman or a second-fiddle astronaut with alimony debts, to deliver inspirational homilies to that year’s departing students. It was always thus, but in 1977 Eugene Hotchkiss III, the President Emeritus of Lake Forest College, a private liberal arts college just north of Chicago, found himself with an unusual problem. He had landed his speaker at the last minute: an artist and writer by the name of Theodor Geisel, who had been lured to the campus with the promise of an honourary degree. But Geisel, who was turning out to…

HIS FIRST FILM, 2010’s effed-up anthology Burning Palms, aside, Christopher Landon has spent the last decade and change carving out a career as one of the best and most interesting voices in mainstream American horror. His latest, the atypically family-friendly We Have A Ghost, is now on Netflix, affording us the chance to track his progression as a director… PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES (2014) After Burning Palms “ briefly scared me away from directing ”, Landon set up a sideline writing the first wave of Paranormal Activity sequels. But his hands-on presence (“I was on set saying, ‘The camera needs to be here’”) resulted in a natural step up to directing on the fifth instalment, by some distance the most intense of his career. “I did put a ton…

Chris: Usually we start a Ranking with our origin stories, when we first became aware of this subject. But with David Lynch, there’s a big elephant in the Red Room. We’re discussing his movies, but pretty much the most famous thing he’s ever done is a TV show, Twin Peaks. Alex: I think he said he treated those seasons as movies. Beth: Good for him, but they ’re telly shows. Chris: True, but the first two seasons are quintessential David Lynch. Everything I love about Lynch is there in Twin Peaks. The weirdness, the mystery, the surrealness, the sexiness, and of course Kyle MacLachlan looking pretty slick. Nick: Season 1, I’m with you. Season 2 is a big mess, and he wasn’t really involved in those episodes. Alex: And look…

JEREMY THOMAS IS the ne plus ultra of old-school indie producers: the guy who’ll somehow find the cash and ride the storms to make “original films”, he says; “unusual, but very long-lasting ”, as new 4K restorations of both The Last Emperor and Naked Lunch testify. Across his astonishing career, the British producer (son of Ralph Thomas, director of many ’50s and ’60s comedies; and nephew of Gerald, producer of the Carry On movies) has worked with some of the greatest directors of all time. Here, he reflects upon those relationships. JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI The Shout (1978) Essential Killing (2010) EO (2022) “Jerzy showed me a new side of filmmaking: stylistically unconventional and avant-garde. He taught me a lot about going off-piste and being brave — brave enough to throw out…

Top Gun: Maverick Chosen Justin Kurzel: “The scene in Top Gun: Maverick where Maverick has to prove that the mission is possible was one of the most exhilarating things I’ve seen for a very, very long time in the cinema. It reminded me of being 14 again, and that feeling of coming out of a cinema and wanting to go and be a jet pilot. It was just old-school, awesome action cinema.” INT. BRIEFING ROOM — DAY It is the morning after Maverick (Tom Cruise) has been grounded, and is no longer instructor of the squad of Top Gun pilots assembled to attempt a forthcoming suicide-run mission. The mission has to be flown in two minutes and 30 seconds. Nobody has come close. Cyclone (Jon Hamm) is addressing the pilots.…

Empire delves into the algorithm-fuelled minefield that’s looming for the movie industry First there was the emergence of ChatGPT — a text-generating software so sophisticated, it can write screenplays. Then there was the announcement that Robert Zemeckis’ next film Here would feature a digitally de-aged “deepfake” of Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, using a generative A.I.-based visual tool called Metaphysic Live. Throw into the mix a stark warning from Keanu Reeves — “What’s frustrating about that is you lose your agency… it’s scary,” he told Variety — and a picture begins to emerge of an industry divided, on the brink of a new frontier. The belief among those developing A.I. software for Hollywood is that it’ll unlock exciting new storytelling possibilities; a technological leap forward comparable to the advent of…

IT’S A CLASSIC tale. Husband and wife go on holiday. Husband accidentally kills a man. Husband is sentenced to death and pays handsomely to be cloned so his double can take the hit. Classic. “It was haunting, but it deeply fascinated me,” reflects Alexander Skarsgård, who plays James, of the unique set-up. For Infinity Pool director Brandon Cronenberg, this twisted premise provided an opportunity to create one weird, wild cloning sequence. Here’s how they pulled it off. STAGE 1: THE PREP Cronenberg wanted to bring a magical-realism quality to the sequence and called in puppet-effects designer Dan Martin. “It was all from the perspective of dreaminess and surreal impressionism rather than an attempt to reproduce actual cloning,” the filmmaker explains. Martin cooked up a “buffet” of elements for Cronenberg. On…

TALK TO CHAD Stahelski for long enough and you’ll form the strong opinion that this is a man of strong opinions. On art, on literature, on architecture, on pretty much anything you’d care to name. And yes, on sequels. “Keanu and I talked about this ad nauseum, even way back in the days when I was his double,” says Stahelski, who was indeed Keanu Reeves’ stunt double on films such as The Matrix, before becoming the author of all his pain as director of all four John Wick films. “Why a lot of sequels don’t work as well is that they expect the magic to come from the outside,” he tells Empire. “‘Let’s have a bigger set-piece, let’s blow more shit up!’ That’s not the answer. The only way to…

BEAR IN AMBULANCE COCAINE BEAR After inhaling an obscene amount of cocaine, the teddy embarks on a Michael Bay-style chase sequence that climaxes in the back of a speeding ambulance. Even the medical professionals can’t stymie the ensuing carnage. ELEPHANT IN MANSION BABYLON Usually ‘the elephant in the room’ is a term used to address an unspoken issue. In Babylon, a literal elephant is paraded through a debauched party to distract from the main issue: a dead body being carried from the building. GIRAFFE IN CITY THE LAST OF US A recreation of one of the original game’s most iconic moments sees Ellie (Bella Ramsey) meet her first giraffe while trekking through a derelict city on her mission with Joel (Pedro Pascal). BETH WEBB…

ON HER FIRST ACTING GIG I’d go with my [actor] parents to auditions and one day asked when it could be my turn. My first job was a Chevrolet commercial where I was singing a little song about baseball and apple pie in the car. Afterwards, because it was my fourth birthday, they got me a chocolate cake. ON PREPARING TO PLAY MARGARET As soon as I read [Judy Blume’s] Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., I immediately connected to how she was feeling [about becoming a teenager]. I was 12 when we started filming, so I was going through the exact same things. It was so special to bring that to life in real-time. ON STARRING WITH RACHEL McADAMS I hadn’t seen any of her work before filming…

IF YOU LOVED... THE LAST OF US LOOKING (SKY/NOW) Episode 3 of The Last Of Us is already a legendary slice of unforgettable television, a beautifully unlikely romance between two grizzled survivalist dudes, Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett), in the middle of the apocalypse. Offerman fans should check out Alex Garland’s mind-bending series Devs, while those of us who worship at the altar of Bartlett will enjoy going back to HBO’s wonderful Looking, the show which first brought him to our attention. He’s the daddy figure of a gaggle of gay guys in San Francisco, along with Jonathan Groff, Russell Tovey and Frankie J. Alvarez, and all 18 episodes are a joy to behold. THE GOOD WIFE: SEASON 1 (PARAMOUNT+) Before he masked up for The Mandalorian, before…

★★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A 116 MINS DIRECTOR Michael B. Jordan CAST Michael B. Jordan, Jonathan Majors, Tessa Thompson, Wood Harris PLOT Adonis Creed (Jordan) has successfully moved on from the ring to a life as a gym-owner and boxing promoter. But his past comes back to haunt him when childhood friend Damian ‘Dame’ Anderson (Majors) resurfaces. A former boxing prodigy fresh out of an extended stay in prison, he’s eager to prove he deserves a shot in the ring. “IT’S YOUR TIME.” So said Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky in the final moments of Creed II. It was true in more ways than one: not only has the franchise torch officially been passed to Adonis Creed on screen, but star Michael B. Jordan makes his directorial debut with Creed III.…

★★★ OUT 31 MARCH / CERT TBC 94 MINS DIRECTORS Saela Davis, Anna Rose Holmer CAST Emily Watson, Paul Mescal, Aisling Franciosi, Declan Conlon, Toni O’Rourke, Marion O’Dwyer PLOT In an Irish fishing village, Aileen (Watson) lives a quiet life that is shaken when her son Brian (Mescal) returns from a time in Australia. He wants to reestablish the family’s oyster farm, but his behaviour forces Aileen into one moral quandary after another. THE RETURN OF a prodigal son is supposedly a time of thanksgiving and celebration — but sometimes it would be better if he stayed away. A dysfunctional mother-son relationship fuels this slow-burning drama from Anna Rose Holmer and Saela Davis, demanding considerable patience of the audience but repaying them with a building sense of tension. As a…

★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT 15 / 129 MINS DIRECTOR Jamie Payne CAST Idris Elba, Cynthia Erivo, Andy Serkis, Dermot Crowley After apparently hanging up his well-worn coat in 2019, TV detective Luther is back, in movie form. The clearly heftier budget has gone on some big action sequences, but sadly this has all the dafter elements of the TV show and precious little of its inventive darkness. Instead, it’s confusing and plain nasty rather than sinister. Following a very hasty set-up, Luther (Idris Elba) winds up in prison, but it’s not long before he’s broken out to pursue a cyber-stalking serial killer (Andy Serkis, miscast). Neil Cross’ script feels recycled from bits of Black Mirror, Craig-era Bond and various Scandi dramas, jumbled together awkwardly. It’s lacking in logic,…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 106 MINS DIRECTOR Abdullah Al-Arak CAST Ibrahim Al Hajjaj, Shahd Algefari, Ibraheem Alkhairallah, Abdulaziz Alshehri Saudi sports comedy Sattar doesn’t break the formula for sporting comedies, but there’s an everyman appeal in this underdog story about a wrestling enthusiast trying to realise his childhood dreams in the ring. When humiliation strikes at the first hurdle, Saad (Ibrahim Al Hajjaj) is taken under the wing of an eccentric Hulk Hogan-obsessed manager, Ali (Abdulaziz Alshehri); together they strive to find glory in Riyadh’s underground freestyle-wrestling scene. It’s closer to Cuban Fury than Dodgeball, and for all its amusing floundering masculine energy, its female characters are one-note. But there’s enough physical comedy and dry wit, fun character beats, and a sick Arab rap soundtrack to earn…

★★★ OUT NOW (CINEMAS), 27 MARCH (DIGITAL) / CERT 15 / 105 MINS DIRECTORS Will Lovelace, Dylan Southern PARTICIPANTS Julian Casablancas, Karen O, Paul Banks, James Murphy This documentary, about the explosion of indie bands in early 2000s New York City, comes from the directors of 2012’s Shut Up And Play The Hits, a brilliant distillation of LCD Soundsystem’s genius and appeal. That band appears as one of six featured here, which leaves it a bit crowded and less insightful than the earlier doc. As the biggest band of that era, The Strokes get top billing, but their story feels the least interesting, and much of the narrative follows a clichéd trajectory — naive young musicians hit the big time; drink and drugs soon follow. But that scene was an…

★★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+) EPISODES VIEWED 1 OF 8 SHOWRUNNERS Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni CAST Pedro Pascal, Grogu, Katee Sackhoff, Carl Weathers, Emily Swallow, Omid Abtahi, Amy Sedaris, Christopher Lloyd PLOT Din Djarin (Pascal) and Grogu (Grogu) are reunited, but the bounty hunter known as The Mandalorian is no longer a Mandalorian, having admitted revealing his face to the artist formerly known as Baby Yoda. His new quest, then, is to find atonement on the poisoned planet of Mandalore, and re-join the cult that has defined the majority of his life. “I’M CONFUSED,” ADMITS Carl Weathers’ Greef Karga about halfway through the opening episode of The Mandalorian’s long-awaited third season. “I thought you had completed your mission. But you’re still running around with the same little critter.” It’s a fair…

★★★★ OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO/ PARAMOUNT+) / EPISODES VIEWED 6 OF 10 SHOWRUNNER Terry Matalas CAST Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Ed Speleers PLOT Pulled out of retirement (again) by a distress call from old flame Beverly Crusher (McFadden), Jean-Luc Picard (Stewart) enlists the help of Captain Riker (Frakes) and sets out to save the day. What he uncovers, however, is a conspiracy reaching to the furthest cor ners of the Federation, and the return of an old foe. ALL STARSHIPS WILL, at some point, stray off course. As far as inconvenient diversions go, though, Season 2 of Picard was a big one. While it began promisingly enough, the series rapidly fell down a wormhole of recycled ideas and daft plotting that strayed perilously close to the…

Was it a surprise to see how crazy people went for the first movie? It’s always dif ficult to anticipate these things, but I did feel it was one of the most unique and amazing animated films I’d ever seen. It was alive and fresh and really funny. I was so glad just to do that one little bit at the end, so I got ver y excited when I got the call saying, “We see [Miguel] as a real character in the next one...” How would you describe Miguel? He’s the reluctant ringleader of these wild Spider-People. He’s annoyed at having to be the leader. He’s naturally someone of a heavier disposition — aloner — so a lot of the humour comes from him having to be this kind…

AT WAS APPROXIMATELY 4AM ON MONDAY, 20 FEBRUARY, WHEN THE ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT BAFTA CELEBRATIONS STARTED TO WIND DOWN. Out of 14 nominations, the film had won seven awards including Best Film, Director and Adapted Screenplay, leaving much higher-profile contenders lying in its muddy, bloody wake. “There’s been a lot of ups and downs,” director Edward Berger tells Empire a couple of days later. “You finish the film. It’s a really hard shoot, you barely make it. Then you do the first cut, and it’s not like you want it to be and you think, ‘Oh, God, I ruined this.’ You eventually come to a result where you think, ‘Okay, this is sort of working.’ And then this is just absolutely beautiful and overwhelming.” All Quiet is…

IF YOU’VE BROWSED social media, picked up a newspaper or, let’s be honest, set foot in a public place over the past two months, you’ll have been hard-pressed not to stumble into a conversation about The Last Of Us. HBO’s adaptation of the 2013 PlayStation game has rapidly become a cultural touchstone, its emotionally charged story charting a journey of loss, hope and redemption within a post-apocalyptic dystopia, one where a global outbreak of cordyceps fungus has brought mankind to its knees. Against that bleak canvas we have the story of Joel (Pedro Pascal), a man crippled by grief, who journeys across the wreckage of America with orphaned teenage girl Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Adapted by Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin and the original game creator Neil Druckmann, the show has not only…

With its abundance of cannibals, torture and gnashing, eyeless revenants with blooms of fungus sprouting from their faces, it’s almost absurd that the image most associated with The Last Of Us turned out to be a strawberry. The full-hearted moan of ecstasy as Bill (Nick Offerman) takes a bite of Frank’s (Murray Bartlett) post-apocalyptic fruit became a standout moment from a near-perfect hour of television — one that swiftly went viral, talked about with the same awe and reverence as banner episodes of The Sopranos or The Wire. If people hadn’t heard of The Last Of Us before Episode 3, they could hardly avoid it thereafter. “I don’t even know the words for the reaction to this episode,” says Druckmann. “It’s flattering and it’s weird to walk down the street…

Given the show is predicated on most of humanity being transformed into hideous mushroom zombies, The Last Of Us is surprisingly coy when it comes to showcasing its central threat. Aside from a tense encounter with the eyeless ‘Clickers’ in Episode 2, the infected enjoy a subtle, quite subdued presence throughout the show. That is except for Episode 5, when the bowels of hell tear open, vomiting forth a screeching horde in the series’ most elaborate action set-piece. There are early hints that something rotten lurks beneath the city’s streets, but it’s not until an armoured vehicle explodes, ripping open a sink hole, that the true horror of the Kansas City underworld is brought forth. It’s a sequence that required the construction (and partial immolation) of an entire suburb just…

Every hero needs an origin story, and even messiahs, famously, have parents. The opening to the season’s final episode takes us all the way back to Ellie’s beginning, as her heavily pregnant mother, Anna (Ashley Johnson, the game’s original Ellie), staggers out of the forest and all but crawls into an abandoned farmhouse. There, in a bathroom birth that makes the one in A Quiet Place look like a weekend spa break, she fights off and stabs (with what will one day be Ellie’s switchblade) an infected, mere seconds before delivering her daughter. The idea came to Druckmann shortly after finishing the game, when he was approached with the idea of making an animated short. “I wrote a script of the moment Ellie’s mom gave birth to her and how…

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (2000) At the dawn of the centur y, producers set sail, To conjure a film from a Dr. Seuss tale. The tale of a grouch, who was funny, yet scary, Played by a heavily made-up Jim Carrey. The per formance was ace— but not a big ask, For Jim had nailed ‘shouty and green’ in The Mask. THE CAT IN THE HAT (2003) When The Grinch was a hit, Hollywood formed a plan: “Another Seuss book, and a new funny man!” For the nearest soundstage, they made a fast bee-line, With Mike Myers dressed as a titfer-topped feline. But oh dear — disaster! The film was a mess, Check Rotten Tomatoes... just ten per cent fresh. HORTON HEARS A WHO! (2008) Carrey returned for this…

Last Year At Marienbad WHEN IT COMES TO years that shook cinema, 1959 rates pretty near the top of the Richter scale. To all intents and purposes, it marked the birth of La Nouvelle Vague, the French New Wave of directors who, over the subsequent decade, would inject a fearsome new energy into French, and then global, cinema. A trinity of this gang of celluloid disruptors shot or released their debuts in ’59: Francois Truffaut with Le Quatre Cent Coups, Jean-Luc Godard with À Bout De Souffle and Alain Resnais with Hiroshima Mon Amour. These films challenged the fusty, middle-brow, middle-aged cinema that these young Turks railed against, but of the three, Resnais’ unorthodox love story was probably the most radically disruptive. Hiroshima Mon Amour tested the boundaries of conventional,…

PICK OF THE MONTH LIVING OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 102 MINS DVD BR Bill Nighy ear ned his first Oscar nomination as buttoned-down bureaucrat Mr Williams, prematurely buried in a drab civil-service job in post-war London, whose diagnosis of a terminal illness inspires a determination to take a fresh look at life and consider his legacy. Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood shines as a former work colleague-turned-platonic companion, who admits to having nicknamed him ‘Mr Zombie’ before his revivification. The fact that South African director Oliver Hermanus’ elegiac, exquisitely made film belongs among the pantheon of ‘remakes that are better than the original’ is doubly impressive given that the source material is Ikiru, made by Akira Kurosawa at the peak of his powers. DAVID HUGHES THE TEXAS CHAIN…