Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2024 i Empire

BACK IN 2015, when Mad Max: Fury Road first revved its thunderous engine and stormed into cinemas, I headed to the Curzon Soho to luxuriate in George Miller’s masterpiece for a third time. Cut to five minutes into the film. Max has gobbled a mutant gecko. He’s been branded and forcibly tattooed. A legion of pasty-white, hideously scarred, Gollum-y War Boys have leered, shrieked and cavorted. Suddenly, the middle-aged man next to me stands up and in a booming voice declares three words to the auditorium at large: “NOT FOR ME.” Then he scurries down the aisle and flees the building. BACK IN 2015, when His loss. The world of Mad Max might not be for everybody, but frankly that’s why it’s so much fun to visit. Outrageous, lurid, gory,…

WORDS BOYD HILTON “WHEN I WAS a kid and they invented the Pop-Tart, the back of my head blew right off.” This quote from a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up routine, that goes on to describe his love of the “frosted, fruit-filled, heated rectangle”, has become the genesis of his directorial debut. Egged on by his writing team —Spike Feresten, Barry Marder and Andy Robin, who all worked with Seinfeld on the 2007 animated feature Bee Movie —Jerry was tickled by the idea of depicting the Pop-Tart origin story as if it were a world-shaking event of great historic significance. The writer/director/star tells Empire how the whole silly, wholly Seinfeldian project came to, erm… fruition. WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH… THE PERIOD VIBE? A major element of the appeal of this story for…

Beth: I’m amazed that it’s taken this long for this to be turned into a film. John: It’s a big thing. But what does it have to offer me? Beth: Two words... John: ‘Defying Gravity’. Graham: This trailer goes straight in with the iconography. You’ve got the steaming witch’s hat, the yellow brick road. I think this will expand nicely on the stage play. Sophie: I do like the character design of Elphaba. It must be done with practical effects. The architectural design seems very cool as well. Ben: I’d like to see more of Toto. What a scruffy little guy. Beth: I’m looking forward to that dog actor’s publicity tour. Ben: I imagine that Ariana Grande travels from place to place via a giant bubble, as Glinda does here.…

Graham: It’s nice to be coming back to something like this after all these years, but they’re also trying something fresh with it. Beth: This is the most exciting casting line-up of the year for me. We’re heading into Glen Powell Summer, plus there’s Love Lies Bleeding’s Katy O’Brian, and Brandon Perea, who had a great breakout in Nope. Ben: It’s Perea’s second film where he’s part of a ragtag crew trying to analyse an unknowable vast phenomenon in the sky, which is a weird coincidence. John: The shot in this trailer where Powell’s tipping his cowboy hat is just pure movie star. I’m really happy to see him truly becoming what he was born to be. Sophie: Of course his character calls himself ‘Tornado Wrangler’. And it looks like…

NOT CONTENT WITH having embodied one of the greatest screen characters in Succession, Brian Cox is still seeking new challenges. “I’m at the age where I can’t remember why I came into a room,” the 77-year-old chuckles. “So, you want to do things that keep testing you.” Cox’s latest test is starring alongside racing pigeons in coming-of-age drama Little Wing. Here, he explains how to work with birds — without getting your feathers ruffled. EXPECT BOISTEROUSNESS Cox plays Jaan, a Portland pigeon-fancier whose prize specimen is stolen —then lost —by 13-year-old Kaitlyn (Brooklynn Prince). The pair become unlikely friends when they unite to retrieve the bird. “I had to interact a fair bit with the pigeons,” Cox tells us. “They could be quite boisterous, but once they were in their…

AT THE PEOPLE’S Choice Awards in February, film stars were making the usual red-carpet rounds. Among them was Barbie’s America Ferrera, who was nominated for, and would later win, Movie Performance Of The Year. Pausing in front of TikTok celebrity interviewer Harry Daniels, her face twisted in confusion as she uncomfortably mused, “Oh my God. Both? I don’t know,” before being hurried away. The question? “Would you prefer a gay son or thot daughter?” This intentionally provocative, somewhat baffling question (“thot”, for those out of the loop, is a term used to describe sexually promiscuous women), is one of the latest examples of content creators pushing Hollywood’s buttons in the name of engagement. Daniels is one of the more successful, garnering millions of likes on TikTok (69.5 million to date)…

KEEP 'EM PEELED The gladiator battle with Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha was shot by cinematographer Greig Fraser using IMAX cameras with infrared lenses, in order to depict a world almost entirely without colour — under a “black sun”. FILM ★★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 167 MINS DIRECTOR Denis Villeneuve CAST Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Austin Butler, Josh Brolin, Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken, Stellan Skarsgård PLOT On the planet Arrakis, Paul Atreides (Chalamet) joins the native Fremen people and plots revenge on the Harkonnens. But terrible visions tease a dire future. YOU SENSE THAT Denis Villeneuve has been having Spice-fuelled visions his entire life. The filmmaker has spoken much of how reading Frank Herbert’s Dune at an early age cracked his mind wide open. Bringing the sci-fi…

★★★ OUT 8 APRIL / CERT 15 / 77 MINS DIRECTOR Matthew Butler-Hart CAST Ellie Duckles, Riz Moritz, Matt Barber, Tori Butler-Hart Social-media pranksters Thea (Ellie Duckles) and Louise (Riz Moritz) plan to sabotage “a wanky commercial shoot” in an isolated Welsh mansion. Disguised as caterers, they arrive just as the ad crew are assailed by a curse and aren’t sure whether they’re being counter-pranked or primed for sacrifice. Moritz and Duckles get comedy mileage as urban dimwits alternately cooing over cows and creeped out by crows before being menaced by robed cultists and demonic forces. Matthew Butler-Hart’s iPhone-shot found-footage film isn’t groundbreaking, but is expertly assembled — with faces-to-watch leads and enough nicely timed scares to deliver chills. It also wins points for coming in at a tight, no-shot-wasted…

★★★★ OUT 21 MARCH (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNERS David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Alexander Woo CAST Benedict Wong, Liam Cunningham, Jonathan Pryce, Jess Hong, Jovan Adepo, Eiza González, John Bradley, Alex Sharp PLOT Detective Da Shi (Wong) investigates a series of mysterious deaths in the scientific community. Could they possibly be linked to an alien invasion? IN PHYSICS, THE ‘three-body problem’ is what you’d call a real head-scratcher: a scientific conundrum to do with the positions and velocities of three bodies of mass when they attract each other with gravity. It is a centuries-old question of chaos theory; a mathematical riddle, seemingly unsolvable. And only slightly trickier than adapting Liu Cixin’s 2008 novel, The Three-Body Problem, for the small screen. The book (and its subsequent sequels) spans…

★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Albert Kim CAST Gordon Cormier, Kiawentiio, Daniel Dae Kim, Ian Ousley Live-action adaptations of animations are an often fraught proposition. Sadly, the new live-action take on Avatar: The Last Airbender mostly sheds the original’s cartoonish charm and dynamic presentation in favour of more self-serious fantasy. At least as far as whitewashing is concerned, it is an improvement on M. Night Shyamalan’s maligned 2010 adaptation — but the character work feels either thin or just plain, all feeling explained rather than felt. The results are a rather drab and thinly sketched spin on well-worn fantastical tales of oppression and rebellion. But hey, here’s some good news: there’s a perfectly fine animated version of Avatar: The Last Airbender, also on Netflix.…

★★★ OUT 28 MARCH / CERT PG / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Mike Mitchell CAST Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, James Hong, Bryan Cranston, Ian McShane, Awkwafina, Viola Davis, Ke Huy Quan PLOT Panda and ‘Dragon Warrior’ Po (Black) must hand his title to someone new — but he is interrupted when the Chameleon (Davis) threatens the world. EIGHT YEARS AFTER Kung Fu Panda 3, and 15 years since the franchise first began, Po returns. There’s no radical new direction for this resurrection, but more of the slick, pacy and beautifully animated fun fans will be used to. Like the Minions series, this is reliable entertainment —never really pushing any boundaries, but likely to keep the kids quiet for about 90 minutes. To briefly catch up on where we left things: Po…

Ten months, and more, of training had led her to this point: the moment when she was about to put pedal to the metal on the desert sand as the title character in George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Motorbikes, cars, you name it, she had mastered it. She just couldn’t do it on a public road. “I still don’t have my licence, which I find hysterical,” she laughs. “I can pull some really crazy tricks in a car, and I have yet to be able to parallel park.” No matter. There is no parallel parking on the Fury Road. There is only one direction: forward. Surrounded by other vehicles, Taylor-Joy and her cast-mates and cadre of stunt-drivers waited for the signal from the unassuming, bespectacled Miller. Then it…

MAY 2024 | EDITED BY CHRIS HEWITT AS YOU MIGHT expect of the men who co-wrote Wonka, Paul King and Simon Farnaby have spent the morning in thrall to a Warner Bros. prequel about an eccentric young orphan who uses his incredible talents to galvanise an entire city. “We’ve been watching Batman Begins,” confesses King, sitting next to Farnaby in his London office. “We didn’t see it before [making Wonka],” jokes Farnaby. “Or we’d have had loads of gruff-talking BS.” Hardly. Wonka, the glorious confection starring Timothée Chalamet as Roald Dahl’s kooky chocolatier, is as far removed as you can get from the Dark Knight, and shows that King (who also directs, of course) and Farnaby are more than capable of recreating the magic they conjured up on the beloved…

JEREMY SAULNIER RECENTLY showed Green Room to his 16-year-old daughter. “She’s a horror nerd, like her father,” he laughs. “She goes to an art school in LA, and the funny thing is, they teach genre lighting, and Green Room is on the curriculum.” So, did she like her old man’s film? “I think she dug it,” says Saulnier. “Although she did try to watch it in two sittings. I was like, ‘No. This is a ride, my friend. You get on, you cannot get off.’” Say that again. Green Room, which Saulnier wrote and directed, is as relentless and gripping as it was when it first came out in 2016. It is a boot on the throat, a Stanley knife to the arm, a shotgun-blast to the face. Which is…

THIS MONTH 1 What was Martin Scorsese’s first film, released all the way back in 1967? 2 How many films has he made with Robert De Niro? 3 And how many films has he made with Leonardo DiCaprio? 4 Before Killers Of The Flower Moon, Scorsese directed De Niro and DiCaprio in a short film/advert for a Macau casino resort. What is the name of that short film? 5 We all know Johnny Boy, Travis Bickle, Rupert Pupkin, Jimmy Conway. But what’s the name of De Niro’s character from New York, New York? 6At the time of writing, he has won just one Oscar. What was it for? 7But how many times has he been nominated for Best Director? 8Scorsese’s highest-grossing movie took in just over $400 million worldwide. What…

CHRIS HEWITT SPOKE TO GEORGE MILLER FOR OUR COVER STORY “My marathon interview with the Furiosa director — conducted over Zoom as he’s based in Sydney — was his first about the movie, not that you’d know. He was a ball of energy, and in the end had to be dragged away to go back to editing, virtually mid-senten…” KATIE GOH INTERVIEWED OUR SPOTLIGHT STAR NELL TIGER FREE “People who work in the horror genre are often the sunniest, happiest interview subjects, and Nell was no different. The actor’s love for her roles in twisty, creepy projects shone through, even on a grey winter’s afternoon. Horror has a new bright star.” JAMES DYER AND BOYD HILTON JOINED JODIE FOSTER ON THE PILOT TV PODCAST “Having become obsessed with True Detective:…

WHEN IT COMES to contract-killer movies, you’d be forgiven if Richard Linklater wasn’t the first filmmaker to spring to mind. Nor the second, or probably third. Yet the indie auteur’s latest, literally called Hit Man, isn’t your average movie about, well, a hit man. Talking to Empire, Linklater recalls his film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where by coincidence it played alongside several actual hitmen movies, including David Fincher’s The Killer — “One of my favourite films of last year” —and the Liam Neeson-fronted In The Land Of Saints And Sinners. “Those movies are, as far as I can tell, playing it pretty straight,” he observes, laughing. “I’m not.” To make the distinction, you needn’t look further than Hit Man’s protagonist, a jorts- wearing, bespectacled bird enthusiast called Gary,…

Ben Travis (Deputy Online Editor): The MCU has got quite heavy and the thing that can bring the fun back is Deadpool. I’m more excited about him being connected to the MCU than having a straight-up ‘Deadpool 3’. Sophie Butcher (Social Media Editor): They could’ve splashed Wolverine all over this trailer, but instead it teases you really well. Graham Jones (Deputy Art Director): I get the sense watching this that when we first meet Wade, he’s trying to be more of a regular person than a superhero at this point. Ben: He’s Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible III, with his domestic life. Beth Webb (News Editor): And then these TVA guys go and ruin it all! Do we think they’re straight out of Loki? Ben: They look more militaristic, maybe…

THE BEATLES WERE so groundbreaking that a conventional biopic was never going to suffice. They deserve something more audacious and ambitious. Which is why Sam Mendes’ grand plan to direct not one, not two, not three, but four films about John, Paul, George and Ringo, to be shot back-to-back and released in 2027, is so exciting. He’s asked the big question: what would The Beatles do? And acted accordingly. Each movie will focus on an individual Beatle, with their stories ultimately overlapping. But what can we expect? Here’s what we’d like to see. JOHN LENNON THE PERSONALITY: The force of nature that drove The Beatles, Lennon has been played on screen more than any other member of the group, by the likes of Ian Hart (a couple of times) and…

“FROM THE IMAGINATION of John Krasinski”, trumpets the trailer for IF, the new movie from the actor-director behind A Quiet Place and its sequel. Given that it’s a film in which imaginary friends, or IFs, turn out to be real, it begs the question, “Just what kind of imagination is that?” Krasinski ponders the poser. “You know, on A Quiet Place, we were on a farm and convincing our department heads that the creatures are over here was a lot easier than, ‘We’re in a retirement home for IFs.’ I’m pretty sure my crew thought I was on drugs 90 per cent of the time.” He wasn’t, of course. Krasinski has had the world of IF in his head for years, ever since he and his wife, Emily Blunt, had…

ZACK SNYDER DOES not seem like the kind of guy who is glued to RottenTomatoes.com. Nevertheless, he is very aware that his sci-fi opus, Rebel Moon —Part One: A Child Of Fire received something of a critical mauling when it hit Netflix in December. “I don’t really have a rebuttal to the reviews,” he says, when Empire catches up with him. “For whatever reason, the reaction to my movies is very polarising, and it always has been. The movie, it doesn’t seem like there’s that much in it that would warrant such visceral responses.” Snyder is in an affable mood when Empire speaks to him in late February, perhaps because mere minutes before the interview he completed work on Rebel Moon —Part Two: The Scargiver. “They’re down at editorial, drinking…

DREAMS (1990) ROLE: Vincent van Gogh, artist SCREENTIME: Three minutes MOST MEMORABLE LINE: “The sun, it compels me to paint! I can’t stand here wasting my time talking to you!” Two masters of cinema united for Dreams, directed by Akira Kurosawa. An art student encounters van Gogh, played by Scorsese. Kurosawa was nervous to cast him —he asked mutual friend Francis Ford Coppola if Scorsese would be insulted. Scorsese was equally anxious: “I was so nervous that I had to stop drinking coffee,” he told Empire in 2019. Still, he stated, “You don’t say no to Kurosawa,” and flew to Japan the day after GoodFellas wrapped. QUIZ SHOW (1994) ROLE: Martin Rittenhome, CEO SCREENTIME: Three minutes MOST MEMORABLE LINE: “The audience didn’t tune in to watch some amazing display…

IN THE PIAZZA of the Hotel Metropol, Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are saying a touching goodbye. The lights are dimmed, a double bass twanging a bluesy shuffle, the hotel guests dancing casually. “Would you do me the honour of one last dance?” asks McGregor. The pair stand, embrace, sway. There are hushed whispers of travel documents, a declaration of love, a kiss —before Winstead wrenches herself away, not looking back as she strides towards the foyer, leaving McGregor stood alone. And cut. This isn’t a surprisingly dramatic moment in McGregor and Winstead’s real-life marriage that Empire has inadvertently stumbled upon —it’s a pivotal scene in upcoming Paramount+ drama A Gentleman In Moscow, a decades-spanning epic that intertwines romance and political intrigue against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution.…

★★★★★ OUT 22 MARCH / CERT PG / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Pablo Berger CAST Ivan Labanda, Albert Trifol Segarra, Rafa Calvo, José García Tos, José Luis Mediavilla PLOT In a 1980s New York populated by animals, a lonely dog orders a companion robot. But a day at the beach ends with disaster. IT MAY COME as a surprise to find that one of the most achingly beautiful stories of love and loss that you’ll see this —or any —year involves a dog, a robot, and a bit of rust. Robot Dreams is a film based on the enchanting 2007 graphic novel by Sara Varon, given new life for the big screen in glorious 2D animation by Pablo Berger. Like its source, it’s told wordlessly but is full of incident, imagination…

★★★★ OUT 5 APRIL / CERT TBC / 105 MINS DIRECTOR Ryusuke Hamaguchi CAST Hitoshi Omika, Ryuji Kosaka, Ayaka Shibutani, Ryo Nishikawa Not much seems to happen in the opening section of Evil Does Not Exist; we’re simply watching the everyday goings-on of a small community in the snowy woodlands of Japan. But half an hour in, the film snaps sharply into focus: at a town-hall meeting, two corporate spokespeople lay out their boss’ business proposal of a glamping site in the woods. The idea is met with fierce resistance by the local attendees. But what seems to be a film about the rural/urban divide and the wanton spoliation of nature becomes something rather more mysterious, culminating in director Hamaguchi’s most unexpected, opaque and downright brutal finale to date. Evil…

★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 116 MINS DIRECTOR S.J. Clarkson CAST Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Adam Scott, Zosia Mamet, Celeste O’Connor PLOT Cassie Web (Johnson) is just an ordinary ambulance driver — until one day, a near-death experience awakens dormant psychic powers. EARLY ON IN Madame Web —the latest superhero film to be based on a Spider-Man-adjacent comic series —Dakota Johnson’s Cassie Web rejects a thank-you gift from the child of a woman whose life she just saved. From this, you can probably surmise that firstly, she’s awkward around kids, and secondly, she will eventually end up having to protect some kids. Like many heavily telegraphed moments in this film, you won’t need psychic powers to figure that one out —even if Cassie herself does, in…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 87 MINS DIRECTOR Andrew Cumming CAST Safia Oakley-Green, Chuku Modu, Kit Young, Iola Evans In 43,000 BC, a group of prehistoric humans, led by alpha male Adem (Chuku Modu), arrive in a new land and soon sense a sinister presence hunting them. Filmed in the Scottish Highlands, this slowly ticks the survival-horror checklist, as characters make their case to be the next on the chopping block. There’s plenty of blood, but it’s all about what isn’t seen; excellent sound design leaves you to fill in the gaps between squelches. Rather than deploying jump scares, debut director Andrew Cumming focuses on creating a consistent sense of threat. Atmospheric and chilling, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but adds some thoughtful twists to a well-worn genre…

★★★★ OUT 15 MARCH / CERT 15 / 84 MINS DIRECTOR Ethan Coen CAST Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo, Bill Camp PLOT In 1999, Jamie (Qualley) and Marian (Viswanathan) take a “drive-away” rental car job from Philadelphia to Tallahassee — and get mixed up with some dodgy characters. DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS was originally called ‘Drive-Away Dykes’ —a far better, funnier, and frankly more accurate title than the marketing-friendly one eventually settled on. (That original title is even cheekily acknowledged in the closing credits.) Because this film is, to use the technical parlance, hella lesbian: from the comedy-cunnilingus found in the opening five minutes to the “very committed lesbians” of a college soccer team, Dolls wears its sapphic colours loud and proud. That’s notable, given that this is a…

★★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 10 SHOWRUNNER Justin Marks CAST Hiroyuki Sanada, Cosmo Jarvis, Anna Sawai, Tadanobu Asano, Hiroto Kanai PLOT 17th century Japan is on the knife-edge of war. The arrival of a shipwrecked Englishman (Jarvis) triggers a wave of scheming, violence and spiritual reckoning. JAMES CLAVELL’S 1975 historical-fiction novel Shōgun was first adapted for TV in 1980. As with that earlier effort, this adaptation — creatively led by Top Gun: Maverick writer Justin Marks and his wife Rachel Kondo —is set during a time of upheaval in Japan: five factions seek control of the country, whilst Portuguese Catholics hope to control its soul. Seeking ascendancy from the societal fraying are three key characters: the measured but militant Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada); his opportunistic,…

In the Bada Bing, they’d have called it a ‘sit-down’ —a term used by Mob-land mercenaries to describe rare meetings between formidable figures from the Mafia landscape. Meetings where people could say what needed to be said, and say it with gusto. Like when Johnny Sack assembled the families, pleading for permission to whack Ralph Cifaretto. Or when Tony Blundetto killed Phil Leotardo’s brother, Billy, putting the DiMeo and Lupertazzi crime families on the brink of war. Or when a certain duck-loving, therapy-attending gangster survived an assassination attempt by his own uncle, and carnage beckoned… Today’s virtual sit-down, however, is different. When four of the principle players from what many regard to be the greatest TV show of all time, The Sopranos, arrive at their meet-up —a reunion brokered by…

I STARTED WRITING CIVIL WAR IN JUNE 2020, A FEW MONTHS AFTER COVID ARRIVED, AND A FEW MONTHS BEFORE THE FIRST TRUMP/BIDEN ELECTION. I HAD THREE MAIN AIMS. I wanted to make something non-afraid. I wanted the heroes to be a throwback to an old form of journalism. And I wanted to make an attack on political polarisation. First drafts come in two forms for me. One, the script pours out fast, and the experience of writing blurs with the experience of watching a film. The room feels darker, and I can see the scenes and shot compositions more clearly than I can see my laptop screen. It seems more like transcription than writing. In the back of my mind, I often find myself wondering, “What’s going to happen next?”,…

IT’S IRONIC: ON initial release, Sleeping Beauty was… well, slept on. Today, Disney’s take on the tale of princess Aurora (aka Briar Rose, and never actually referred to as ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in the film) is more than just a pop-cultural staple — it’s held up as among the highest artistic achievements of the Walt Disney Animation Studio. It’s clear to see why —it’s a breathtaking accomplishment of animation, a moving tapestry rendered in a striking medieval-inspired visual style, a feat of full-on fantasy filmmaking. Every frame of Sleeping Beauty is a work of art in and of itself. But at the time, audiences didn’t care for it. Like many of Disney’s greatest works, it launched as a colossal flop, resulting in a level of financial failure that —not for the…

BREAKOUT ROLES DON’T come much more challenging than that of Tara, the assertive, sparky teen played by Mia McKenna-Bruce in How To Have Sex. The directorial debut from Molly Manning Walker is at once a coming-of-age movie about a 16-year-old seeking escape and ecstasy on a cheap party holiday, and a bracing study of sex and consent that forces audiences to reckon with big problems caused by society’s treatment of young women. The film scooped up the Un Certain Regard award following its world premiere at Cannes, and recently McKenna-Bruce won the EE Rising Star BAFTA, in no small part due to her performance. Speaking with Empire, she breaks down how she approached a character that has come to mean so much to her. TEEN MENTALITY To prepare for the…

LETTER OF THE MONTH LET’S GET PHYSICAL Enjoying your latest ‘physical copy’ and Ben Travis’ article [‘Owning A Disc Means Nobody Can Take It Away’, The Platform, issue #425]. I have this debate with friends. At 40 years old, call me old-fashioned, but I’m a proud owner of a growing 4K collection. And you really can’t beat having your own personal collection. I intend on reading Empire physically just as much as buying movies. GARETH WOOD, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE Physical media, much like the Goonies, never says die. Gareth, for your admirable commitment to tangible things, have a Picturehouse membership on us —and enjoy deciding what will become part of your 4K stash in the future. Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, valid for one year at all Picturehouse Cinemas across…

WHY DO WE have such an enduring fascination with Tom Ripley? The character first entered the world in Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, in which he —a young, underachieving nobody —is sent to Italy on an errand to bring back the rich, spoiled Dickie Greenleaf, after which things go bloodily awry. The story of this wayward conman-turned-murderer abroad instantly captured readers. It was immediately adapted into a TV episode for anthology series Studio One in 1956. Four more novels followed. Seven actors have portrayed him across film, TV and radio —Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper, Jonathan Kent, Matt Damon, John Malkovich, Barry Pepper and Ian Hart — enough that Highsmith herself had her favourites (Hopper wasn’t one of them). Now, a ’60s-set, eight-part series shot in hyper-stylised black…

Ben: This is such a great opening line for the trailer: “Are you familiar with the concept of evolution?” It really sets out what this film means for the series moving forward. Sophie: That these apes have no concept of the idea of being held captive is really interesting. Ben: It makes me wonder if Proximus Caesar, the bad guy, is trying to spin that these new apes evolved from humans. Beth: I just can’t get over the technology. It’s quite eerie looking at the details in their faces. John: It’s some of the best CGI in modern cinema, I would say. Ben: It’s nice to see this level of post-apocalypse as well, because all of the apocalyptic stuff that we get nowadays is quite dour, whereas this looks so…

THE FAMILY CONNECTION In Drift, Cynthia Erivo plays a Liberian woman who’s fled the country’s civil war, ending up scrabbling for survival under the piercing blue summer sky on a Greek island. For character background, Erivo turned to her mum, Edith, who’d been displaced as a 15-year-old girl during Nigeria’s Biafran War of the late 1960s. “I used her as my biggest resource,” she says, before joking that it can be typically hard to extract personal memories from her parents’ generation. But her mum opened up. “She would talk about the fear she felt, about how she and her siblings didn’t know if they would be able to find food or shelter at any time.” The conversations further connected Erivo to Jacqueline’s determination. THE SETTING Shooting on location in Greece,…

IN WARWICK THORNTON’S The New Boy, Cate Blanchett plays Sister Eileen, a nun in the Australia Outback who has secretly taken over a Catholic school after the death of a priest. When she takes in a First Nations boy (Aswan Reid), his non-Catholic spirituality threatens Sister Eileen’s outlook. Blanchett, who also produced the film, explains what made this little movie so special. SHE’S ALWAYS WANTED TO PLAY A NUN “As a child, I came across this film with Hayley Mills [The Trouble With Angels]… as this really naughty renegade, expelled from every school, and she was sent to a convent,” Blanchett says. “She became friends with a deeply religious girl… and at the end becomes an initiate. I was always in trouble, sent out into the corridor. At the age…

Whose poster was on your wall as a kid? Paul Stanley. ABBA was my first concert, but KISS were the posters. It was a great poster. You could just get lost looking at it because he had such a man/woman thing going on. It was a beautiful shot. He wasn’t even my favourite —Gene Simmons was my favourite from the band —but that fuckin’ poster of Paul Stanley? Unbelievable. Do you have any scars? Which ones, the inside or the outside ones? Covered in ’em! I have little scars here, there and everywhere from this and that. Inside? From life. Doesn’t everyone? You can’t get to the age where you’re approaching venerable and not clock a scar or two. They’re there for a damn good reason. How much is a…

★★★ OUT 15 MARCH / CERT 15 / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Warwick Thornton CAST Cate Blanchett, Aswan Reid, Deborah Mailman, Wayne Blair PLOT Australia, the 1940s. A boy (Reid) is taken from the Outback to live in a Catholic oprhanage — where his healing powers shock Sister Eileen (Blanchett). AS AN AUSTRALIAN Aboriginal child, Warwick Thornton was sent to a Christian boarding school, run by monks and nuns. That formative experience inspired The New Boy, the filmmaker’s seventh feature —but don’t expect a straightforward slice of direct autobiography. It is a curious confection, with a tone that flits between a serious study of colonialism and religion, and something more fantastical or supernatural. It even has an unexpected Weekend At Bernie’s-esque subplot. And it isn’t the sort of film to leave…

★★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT 15 / 107 MINS DIRECTOR Johan Renck CAST Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Paul Dano, Isabella Rossellini PLOT Astronaut Jakub (Sandler) realises his marriage to Lenka (Mulligan) is on the fritz. Luckily, an alien spider (voiced by Dano) is on hand to help. THE OCCASIONALLY SPOTTY quality of his filmography means it’s easy to forget that Adam Sandler is one of the most talented actors of his generation. Though there have been some dramatic turns over the years, Sandler is first and foremost a comedian, the mind behind some genuinely hilarious comic classics. There’s none of that signature humour in his latest film, which sees the Sandman morph into the Spaceman, the titular Czech cosmonaut of Chernobyl director Johan Renck’s sci-fi drama. It’s a tale…

★★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Peter Harness CAST Noomi Rapace, Jonathan Banks, Davina Coleman, Rosie Coleman, James D’Arcy PLOT Astronaut Jo Ericsson (Rapace) returns to Earth — but her life does not appear to be the same one she left behind. QUANTUM SUPERPOSITION, EXPLAINS Jonathan Banks’ scientist in Apple’s Constellation, is the ability of something to exist in two conflicting states at the same time, until directly observed. Likewise, the series is simultaneously a gripping, precision-tooled psychological thriller and a confusing, languorously paced sci-fi yarn, depending entirely upon which episode you’re seeing it from. We join Swedish astronaut Jo Ericsson (Noomi Rapace) aboard the ISS in the middle of a year-long shift away from her husband Magnus (James D’Arcy) and her daughter Alice…

★★★★ OUT 15 MARCH / CERT 12A / 127 MINS DIRECTOR Hirokazu Kore-eda CAST Sakura Andō, Sōya Kurokawa, Eita Nagayama, Hinata Hiiragi PLOT When 11-year-old Minato (Kurokawa) begins to act strangely, his mother Saori (Andō) demands answers from his school. FOLLOWING CINEMATIC ADVENTURES in Paris (The Truth) and South Korea (Broker), Hirokazu Kore-eda returns to his homeland of Japan for another round of fractured families, isolation and loss. In essence, Monster is The Towering Inferno meets Rashomon meets Waterloo Road: the director spinning a compassionate tale from the point of view of a parent, then a teacher, then a pupil. It’s sometimes tough to follow but it is shot through with a gentle, generous spirit, lucid filmmaking and terrific performances, confirming Kore-eda as one of the best directors of children…

★★ PC, PS5, XBOX SERIES X/S THE IDEA OF the Suicide Squad, DC’s cadre of scrappy supervillains —which include among their number a clown, a fish, a gun fetishist, and a loudmouth Aussie with trick boomerangs — stepping up when the real heroes are taken off the board could make for a great game. Unfortunately, Kill The Justice League is not it. Coming from the prestigious Rocksteady Studios, developer of the much-loved Batman: Arkham games, and building on the continuity of that series — interplanetary conqueror Brainiac taking over Superman’s home turf of Metropolis and brainwashing the Justice League —it very much should be. But in shifting from story-driven single-player adventures to a loot-chasing, multiplayer-focused model, it drowns in mediocrity. Suicide Squad struggles on two main fronts: shooting and movement…

THIS IS ME…NOW: A LOVE STORY ★★★ “It is in essence a kind of bizarre visual album, with a kind of a dream logic — which is to say, not much logic at all. Songs from the new album are given blunt, on-the-surface visual metaphors; like Garth Marenghi, Jennifer Lopez clearly thinks subtext is for cowards.” JOHN NUGENT YOUR FAT FRIEND ★★★★ “In centring Aubrey Gordon, a person full of life and love and intelligence and trauma and multitudes, it does the work of transferring her gift for articulating society’s issues around fatness to a full, immersive screen experience.” SOPHIE BUTCHER MOTHER’S INSTINCT ★★★★ “Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain have starred in films together before, but here they finally get to share a frame. It’s a thrill to see them…

TYLER GILLETT AND Matt Bettinelli- Olpin are talking about blood. There’s nothing particularly surprising in this —as the men behind the last two instalments in the Scream franchise, the directing duo (collectively known as Radio Silence) are well versed in all things claret. But the amount on display in their latest offering — crime/monster mash-up Abigail —looks set to dwarf both those movies combined. We’re talking Overlook-Hotel-lift levels of crimson. “We used a consistent blood recipe on the Scream movies,” Bettinelli- Olpin tells Empire. “But for Abigail we needed several different types of blood, so we went with a whole new mix. “Plus,” he adds, matter-of-factly, “there was the pool full of corpses. That was another specifically concocted mix of very disgusting ingredients. All food-grade, of course, as the actors…

the EMPIRE Deep Drive IN OUR REGULAR SERIES, WE EXPLORE A SLICE OF CINEMA LORE THE REVOLUTION STARTED WITH A KEBAB. Sometime in the early 1970s, three men met in a Turkish restaurant in London’s Fitzrovia and set in motion a train of events that would change Hollywood forever. David Puttnam, Charles Saatchi and Alan Parker were all former colleagues at the legendary advertising agency Collett Dickenson Pearce. In the previous decade, they had been key in upending the then moribund world of commercials, transforming it from a dull cultural backwater into a white-hot creative powerhouse. CDP had produced some of the most memorable print and TV commercials of all time. The long-running Cinzano campaign, in which Leonard Rossiter dumped vermouth over Joan Collins with the satisfying regularity of Wile…

I’M WRITING THIS column towards the end of awards season, when my usual cult-cinema viewing list gets set aside so I can watch a stack of worthy pictures about serious subjects. I thought it might be an interesting exercise to suggest more outré complementary programming for this year’s crop of major motion pictures. In many cases, I’m more likely to go with the cultier version again than revisit the Oscar-BAFTA- GG-Critics’ Circle picks. Oppenheimer —quite a lot of the plot of Oppenheimer follows The Beginning Or The End (1947), which was essentially a biopic of the Bomb, with egghead Oppie (Hume Cronyn) and gruff General Groves (Brian Donlevy) as head cheerleaders. If you thought Christopher Nolan’s film a mite self-important, note that 20th Century Fox buried a print of The…

Reinaldo Marcus Green: “‘It’s not your fault.’ I cry every time. It just rips your heart out. To have someone care about you on that level, it’s rare to have, because we’re constantly our own worst enemy, we’re constantly rejecting ourselves. Man, my heart —even talking about it, I get emotional because it’s such a powerful scene. So kudos to Gus Van Sant, and Matt Damon, and Robin Williams in that scene.” INT. SEAN MAGUIRE’S OFFICE — DAY Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is visiting his therapist, Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), for the final time. Sean is holding a folder with Will’s evaluation; the report that will decide his future. Will has just asked Sean if he has had any “experience with that”. Meaning childhood abuse. Sean: My father was an…