Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2024 i Empire

AMAN WALKS into a bar… Classic joke set-up, right? Except, this isn’t a joke you’ve heard before. For one thing, it’s not a man but an X-Man who’s nursing his drink, and a resurrected X-Man at that —clawed berserker Wolverine. For another, he’s about to encounter the most chaotic force in comic-book history —red-suited meta-imp Deadpool. And this joke is the biggest, wildest one you’ll ever experience, spilling out from that bar into the entire MCU. Yes, Ryan Reynolds is no longer just the Merc with a Mouth. He’s the Merc with a Multiverse. Hold onto… well, everything. In 2024, superhero fatigue is real. There’s spandex everywhere. Multiple Batmen. Dark rumours of a Morbius 2. You’d be forgiven for wanting to lie down and take a super-nap. But Deadpool &…

MAGAZINE MEET-CUTE Back in 2004, at the age of 19, my new girlfriend gave me a copy of Empire on Christmas morning as part of my present. I thought this was a great gift. I didn’t realise that she had set up a subscription for me. Every month since that day I have received a new Empire magazine in the post. It is the best present anyone has ever bought me. Anyway, she was obviously a keeper. This summer will be our 20th year together. Love you, Jan. JORDAN WILLIS, BALLYCLARE Daaawwww! This is so sweet. It’s true what they say: couples who read Empire together, stay together. Have a Picturehouse membership on us, the pair of you. Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, valid for one year at…

IT WAS INSPIRED BY THE POPE Just days after Killers Of The Flower Moon premiered in Cannes last May, Scorsese met with Pope Francis (as you do) and soon after announced that he was working on a screenplay about Jesus, to be shot later this year. He more recently revealed that the screenplay is based on the novel A Life Of Jesus by Shūsaku Endō, the author of Catholic missionary saga Silence, which Scorsese adapted in 2016. IT’S DEEPLY PERSONAL Scorsese — who first depicted Jesus in 1988’s The Last Temptation Of Christ — was raised as a Catholic and pursued becoming a priest. Father Antonio Spadaro, a consultant on the film, told Variety, “It’s not just a reflection on the figure of Jesus but also a reflection on [Scorsese’s]…

BETH WEBB IS THINKING ABOUT… A NEW BOY GENIUS  When I was ten I was blasting Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla soundtrack and trading Pogs. Meanwhile, Connor Esterson has written a six-page treatment for Little Wiseguy, a film about a kid befriending his mobster neighbour, that’s sent Hollywood into a frenzy. Be afraid, Scorsese. ALEX GODFREY IS THINKING ABOUT… SANDY SEQUEL STARS Dune: Part Two’s sandworms were fine, but they weren’t stripy. The one in Beetlejuice very much was, and I bet it returns for September’s sequel. Could these two breeds be friends? Maybe a team-up’s on the cards. ‘Sandworm X Sandworm: The New Empire’, anybody? JOHN NUGENT IS THINKING ABOUT... SHAKI R A ' S HOT TAKE ON BARBIE A mere eight months since its release, Shakira has finally…

JASON YU IS a poor sleeper. On the brink of getting married, and conscious of the effect his “annoying sleep habits” were having on his fiancée, the inspiration for his debut horror film arrived. Sleep sees a nasty case of sleepwalking threaten the relationship —and lives —of newlyweds Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) and Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi), who is also pregnant. Speaking with Empire, Yu breaks down the three stages of how he summoned shocks from the sheets. LIGHT SLEEP Yu extensively researched the symptoms of somnambulism for the film, from the minute to the most violent, but wasn’t going for a realistic depiction. “There’s no case like this,” he laughs. Hyun-su begins to develop sinister symptoms early in Sleep’s story, which evolve from puzzling (violently scratching himself ) to downright disturbing…

‘X-MEN ’97 THEME’ THE NEWTON BROTHERS X-MEN ’97 This revamped version of the classic animated series intro adds drums and an electric guitar to an already infectiously catchy theme. The ‘Skip Intro’ button has never been so redundant. ‘BEHIND THE SCENES’ MICHAEL ABELS THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES A satirical comedy-drama about racial tensions demands a nimble score. Here, the prancing strings and gentle percussion feel light but dynamic. ‘WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE’ TOM JONES JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX TRAILER This cover of Jackie DeShannon’s classic is bolstered by an orchestral punch that underlines the fact that Joker’s sequel is indeed a musical. Here’s hoping this banger is in the film too. ‘MY ISLE OF GOLDEN DREAMS’ DABNEY MORRIS SOMETIMES I THINK ABOUT DYING A dreamy…

THERE HAVE BEEN many screen stories about the Vietnam War. But nobody has tackled the conflict quite how Park Chan-wook does with his new espionage-themed TV show, The Sympathizer. Based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the show centres on a half-French, half-Vietnamese Communist spy called the Captain (Hoa Xuande), who travels to the US as a refugee and double agent after Saigon falls in 1975. “Both [Nguyen and I] are Asians and both our countries have been under the control of imperialism,” the South Korean auteur tells Empire. “I felt a great commonality with the novel.” And in true Park fashion, his adaptation is throwing out some major curveballs… IT'S NOT YOUR AVERAGE WAR DRAMA Even Hollywood’s greatest treatments of the conflict, such as Apocalypse Now and Platoon,neglected…

9 MAY - 5 JUNE 2024 | EDITED BY JOHN NUGENT WATCH FIRST The Beast In The Jungle, Henry James’ 1903 novella on which this film is loosely based, has been adapted before — most recently as 2023’s nightclub-set film of the same name, by Austrian director Patric Chiha. ★★★★★ OUT 31 MAY / CERT TBC / 146 MINS DIRECTOR Bertrand Bonello CAST Léa Seydoux, George MacKay, Guslagie Malanda, Dasha Nekrasova, Martin Scali, Xavier Dolan PLOT In 2044, Gabrielle (Seydoux) navigates the memories of her past lives — repeatedly encountering Louis (MacKay), with whom she feels a strong connection. OPENING WITH AN actress screaming at an invisible attacker while filming a green-screen scene, The Beast immediately reveals its primary ideas: the eeriness of technological advancement, a feeling of deep anguish…

★★★★ OUT 10 MAY / CERT 15 / 131 MINS DIRECTOR Alice Rohrwacher CAST Josh O’Connor, Carol Duarte, Vincenzo Nemolato, Isabella Rossellini Writer/director Alice Rohrwacher fuses mischief, myth and melancholy in this playful contemporary folk tale that’s light on plot but infused with wonder. Josh O’Connor has never been better as Arthur, a British archaeologist just released from prison and grieving his lost love, looking like a ghost himself in a grubby white linen suit. He falls in with a ragtag band of grave-robbers plundering pre-Roman tombs in the Italian countryside. Hijinks and narrow escapes ensue, punctuated by moments of transcendent beauty, such as the flicker of candlelight illuminating a sculpture unseen for thousands of years. Enigmatic and absorbing; this is a beautifully crafted, grown-up Indiana Jones steeped in its…

★★ OUT NOW (SKY/NOW) / EPISODES VIEWED 6 OF 6SHOWRUNNER Will Tracy CAST Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Andrea Riseborough, Hugh Grant As a portrait of dysfunctional politics, The Regime is itself somewhat dysfunctional. Kate Winslet plays a paranoid autocrat who turns to a disgraced soldier (Matthias Schoenaerts) to become her advisor. It aims for Succession by way of Veep, with flashes of Dr. Strangelove; yet while the HBO show wears its influences on its expensive sleeve, it possesses little of their wit or insight. This is a comedy that has forgotten to include the jokes, a polemic without much of a point of view. Winslet, as you’d expect, is excellent: a comedic performance that feels grounded, with an accent that’s Tim Nice But Dim by way of Jennifer Coolidge. But…

★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT 12A / 122 MINS DIRECTOR Zack Snyder CAST Sofia Boutella, Ed Skrein, Djimon Hounsou, Michiel Huisman, Bae Doona, Staz Nair PLOT With Admiral Noble (Skrein) resurrected, Kora (Boutella) and her crack team have a battle to fight on the humble farming planet of Veldt. ZACK SNYDER’S REBEL Moon — Part One was an enthusiastic but derivative mess: a ‘gather the team’ yomp through an overly familiar yet logically inconsistent galaxy, which brought together a bunch of vaguely defined characters as a not-so-Magnificent… Seven? Eight? Even that wasn’t clear. Aside from one neat twist, the occasional pretty shot, and the presence of underused robo-knight Jimmy (voiced by Anthony Hopkins), there was little to recommend it. Part Two is, at least, an improvement, given some much-craved…

★★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 18 / 109 MINS DIRECTORS Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett CAST Alisha Weir, Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, Giancarlo Esposito PLOT A crew are hired to kidnap a little girl (Weir) and keep her in a secure location. A slight wrinkle: the little girl is a vampire. IN 1907, TWIST-in-the-tale specialist O. Henry published The Ransom Of Red Chief, a short story about kidnappers whose victim is so obnoxious they wind up paying the brat’s family to take him back. It’s been repeatedly adapted, officially and unofficially, including versions by Yasujirō Ozu and Howard Hawks. Abigail offers a new spin. This 12-year-old ballerina —Alisha Weir, in a ferocious how-not-to-be-typecast-forever-as-Matilda-from-Matilda-The-Musical turn —is actually an ancient, bloodthirsty, rage-fuelled vampire with extreme…

THE ROAD TO Deadpool & Wolverine — the movie that teams up two of Marvel’s most iconic characters, Deadpool and Wolverine — began with Deadpool (but not Wolverine) pitching a movie about Deadpool and Wolverine, but not Deadpool & Wolverine. That would come later. Much later. Confused? So are we. But we’re in this together, so let us explain. In 2018, Deadpool 2 is released. It’s the second (technically third — we’ll get to that later) film starring Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson aka Deadpool, a mutant mercenary who, thanks to a healing factor and a brain that Reynolds compares to a “half-eaten omelette”, has become a crazy, unpredictable, unkillable killing machine. Who, somehow, also knows, or at least believes, that he’s in a movie, and who breaks the fourth…

PETE DOCTER FINALLY FELT RELIEF. For 2015’s Inside Out, the director had extrapolated personal experiences of parenthood and relocation into a moving, mind-melting adventure. Eventually arriving six years after being greenlit, it was instantly hailed a Pixar classic —the studio’s most emotionally intelligent work, in which intelligent emotions run amok in the head of youngster Riley. It delivered a whopping $858 million worldwide, won Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay to boot. And then, Docter moved on. “I just said, ‘Alright, well that one’s done. Now, what’s next?’” the filmmaker-turned-Chief Creative Officer at Pixar tells Empire. He wasn’t the only one feeling relieved. Amy Poehler, the voice of Joy —the chief emotion in Riley’s head, who’s forced to understand and embrace the role…

WILL SMITH JUST walked in on his mum doing something a little unexpected. “My mother watched Bad Boys last night,” he laughs. “She said she needed to catch up before the new one comes out.” Presumably, though, this wasn’t her first time watching the action comedy that, back in 1995, turned her son from the Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air into a freshly minted movie star, did the same for his co-star Martin Lawrence, and saw Michael Bay unleash his patented brand of Bayhem on an unsuspecting, unprepared world? Thankfully, no. “It was the first time she ever heard me curse, when Bad Boys came out,” continues Smith, with a chuckle. “She was shocked and appalled. She’s forgiven me.” Improbably, Bad Boys —which tells the story of maverick Miami narcotics cops…

1 THE TASTE OF THINGS (OUT NOW, DVD/BR/DIGITAL) This 1880s-set, Juliette Binoche-fronted sensory romance bakes desire into the sumptuous offerings of traditional French cuisine. Co-starring Binoche’s former partner Benoît Magimel, Tran Anh Hùng’s film delights in the chemistry sparked by their collaboration. Not to be watched on an empty stomach. 2 MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (OUT 3 JUNE, 4K) George Miller’s road-chewing prequel Furiosa is nearly upon us, and what better way to get your BPM soaring than revisiting this bracing, brutal masterpiece? May the image of Charlize Theron screaming into the ether be forever burned onto your brain. 3 TRAIN TO BUSAN (OUT 27 MAY, 4K) This propulsive zombie rager packs a surprising emotional punch (as well as very literal ones, both thanks to Ma Dong-seok). Stuffed with white-knuckle…

TALK TO ANYONE who’s seen it and — possibly through hacking sobs —they will tell you that Andrew Haigh’s All Of Us Strangers is one of the most moving, unusual films of the decade. It centres on Adam (Andrew Scott), a lonely man who returns to his childhood home and finds his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) waiting for him, even though they died over 30 years earlier. He tries to process his relationship with them while also attempting to build a new one with his melancholy neighbour, Harry (Paul Mescal). Ghosts, love and despair interweave in a story that’s both heartbreaking and headscratching. Here, Haigh casts light on some of the film’s secrets. HEAD IN THE CLOUDS We open on an eerie shot of Adam’s face seemingly floating…

STEVE ROGERS MAY be gone (or, at the very least, retired, spending his days watching The Chase), but the Captain America business is still going strong. That’s the message of next February’s Captain America: Brave New World, the fourth film in the franchise, but crucially, the first to feature Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson as the new Cap. “It’s really his coming-out show,” director Julius Onah tells Empire. “It’s about putting him through the paces.” In case you haven’t been keeping up, Wilson was handed the shield by an aged Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) at the end of Avengers: Endgame in 2019. However, it took six episodes of Disney+ show The Falcon And The Winter Soldier before Sam fully embraced his new identity. The final title card of that show read…

you can’t get out for big chunks of time. On that first day, waiting for the rig to reposition, we TO BE FLUNG into any 40-year-old movie started talking about the song ‘Let The Good franchise as a key new character is a daunting Times Roll’. The original version, the Harry prospect. To be flung into Beverly Hills Cop, the Nilsson cover, and then other songs with that most iconic Eddie Murphy series there is… well, phrase in, by Sam Cooke and Jimi Hendrix… let’s just say that for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, cast Eddie’s kind of a nerd about those things, as am I.” as Axel Foley’s new LAPD partner Bobby Abbott, The actor, like everyone in the ’80s, grew up the heat was on, and on, and on. loving Murphy.…

IT’S THE ANNUAL event where the big studios show off all their newest and shiniest wares. It is where franchises are launched, sequels are announced, footage is unveiled, big stars present and studio bosses dress up in silly costumes. Currently held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the gathering formerly known as ShoWest (it was renamed in 2011, presumably to be more like Comic-Con) is organised by NATO. No, not the international military alliance, silly: the National Association of Theatre Owners. What footage got the biggest reaction? The king (or rather emperor) of this year’s Con was Gladiator II, which Sir Ridley Scott, via video message, claimed was “possibly even more extraordinary than the first”. The reportedly thrilling footage shown backed this bold claim up, with scenes of gladiators fighting…

“I HEARD MY hand snap and I was like, ‘Oh, this is bad,’” Dev Patel tells Empire, describing the moment a bone broke while making Monkey Man. Anyone who’s seen the visceral revenge movie (also Patel’s directorial debut) can attest to its bone-splintering sense of realism —the tale of a street kid in India seeking vengeance on wealthy villains, its action is kinetic, brutal and based on strenuously rehearsed choreography. It’s the latest in a long tradition of action movies, orchestrating fights practically on set. But also out recently is Doug Liman’s Road House, Prime Video’s most popular original movie, which uses a very different approach. It sees Jake Gyllenhaal and UFC star Conor McGregor trading blows in VFX-assisted combat, filmed —in Gyllenhaal’s words — “in a way that’s never…

Dan Jolin (Contributing Editor): I love the fact that M. Night Shyamalan, ‘the twist guy’, has now put out a trailer with a twist in it. Graham Jones (Deputy Art Director): Unless there’s gonna be a twist on the twist. You don’t know what to expect with him. Ben Travis (Deputy Online Editor): I think he’s on a bit of a streak. Like, Old was absolutely batshit but I had quite a lot of fun with it. Knock At The Cabin was really good, apart from the ending… Alex Godfrey (Features Editor): Yeah, he’s been having a renaissance for a few years now, since he started making low-budget films and having complete creative control. I love that he exists. Ben: This is M. Night Shyamalan in peak dad-mode. He has…

WHEN YOU’RE MAKING a movie about a fake moon-landing, there are no half measures. You have to fake it for real. “We had to actually pull off what people assume might have been pulled,” says Greg Berlanti, director of upcoming comedy Fly Me To The Moon. “We built the structure they landed in on the moon, and we worked with choreographers and wire work and stuntmen who were in the suits, simulating every movement that happened for two-and-a-half hours. It was pretty crazy.” The deception is all in the details. Berlanti’s (Love, Simon) slice of historical fiction is set during NASA’s historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969. It was originally a Jason Bateman project, but when he stepped away due to creative differences, Berlanti — a self-described “space nut” —…

THERE’S AN IRVINE Welsh short story which has been jammed, like a shard, in my memory since I read it many years ago. It’s about a man named Ian who endlessly consumes films, sitting in front of them one after another, methodically ticking off each entry in his well-worn copy of the Halliwell’s Film Guide. Unwilling or unable to engage with the world outside of his TV, he simply cannot stop watching, any sense of joy long gone… and eventually he meets a bleak fate (of course he does: it’s an Irvine Welsh short story). There have been a few times lately when I’ve thought of Ian. Mostly since I downloaded the Letterboxd app, with which I have developed a Gollum/One Ring-like relationship. It is addictive. Horribly addictive. Because as…

★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT 12 / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Jerry Seinfeld CAST Jerry Seinfeld, Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Amy Schumer, Hugh Grant PLOT Kellogg’s boss Bob Cabana (Seinfeld) recounts an outlandish origin story for a revolutionary 1960s breakfast item: the Pop-Tart. HOLLYWOOD’S RECENT PREDILECTION for depicting the invention of particular products has, so far, relied on demonstrating the gravitas of said product’s eventual existence: Nike’s Air Jordans in Air; the dawn of the smartphone in BlackBerry; Tetris in, well, Tetris. Unfrosted, Jerry Seinfeld’s Pop-Tarts movie (yes, that’s a Pop-Tarts movie starring, directed, co-written and produced by Jerry Seinfeld) takes the opposite approach. It is, by design, extremely silly —an exaggerated parody of those tropes that ascribes history-altering importance to the creation of a fruit-goo-filled rectangle. For kids, Unfrosted…

★★★ OUT 17 MAY / CERT 18 / 131 MINS DIRECTOR Luna Carmoon CAST Hayley Squires, Joseph Quinn, Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Lily-Beau Leach, Cathy Tyson PLOT Foster kid Maria (Lightfoot-Leon) finds herself drawn to an elusive visitor (Quinn) — triggering a hoarding habit passed down from her mother (Squires). PERHAPS IT COMES as no surprise that a film named Hoard is, well, disgusting. Everyday trash is one young woman’s treasure, and muck and grime communicate the extremities of humanity in Luna Carmoon’s prickly drama, which draws inspiration from the director’s own life. This is an uncompromising film that’s unafraid to wade in discomfort, for better or for worse. In its bisected story, Hoard first introduces the young Maria (initially played by Lily-Beau Leach), whose close loving relationship with her mother (Hayley…

★★★★ OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNERS Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Graham Wagner CAST Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Walton Goggins, Kyle MacLachlan, Leslie Uggams, Matt Berry PLOT Los Angeles, 2296. Lucy (Purnell) leaves the comfort of her Vault to find her father in a world destroyed by nuclear war. ONE OF THE most fundamentally good things about Fallout, the television edition, is that it’s not content to simply be a fawning retread of any one of the various games. The game series, which began in 1997, is simply too expansive for that to work (“Thou shalt always get sidetracked by bullshit,” as one character puts it). Creators Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, along with executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, instead reconfigure the hallmarks of the…

Here: Fighting fit — Bill Skarsgård. Below: Famke Janssen takes aim. ★★ OUT NOW / CERT 18 / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Moritz Mohr CAST Bill Skarsgård, Famke Janssen, Michelle Dockery, Yayan Ruhian, Jessica Rothe PLOT In a dystopian totalitarian state, deaf and mute Boy (Bill Skarsgård) seeks revenge against those that killed his family years earlier. THE ‘BADASS GUY goes on rampage after his family and/or dog is murdered’ genre is anything but original at this point —see the John Wick franchise as one of the ultimate examples, and Dev Patel’s Monkey Man as a recent one. Director Moritz Mohr tries to put a new spin on it with Boy Kills World by transplanting the setting to a zany, capitalism-fuelled dystopia, infusing it with video-game elements, and turning the violence…

★★★★ OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT TBC / 115 MINS DIRECTOR Michael Showalter CAST Anne Hathaway, Nicholas Galitzine, Ella Rubin, Reid Scott, Annie Mumolo PLOT After chaperoning her teen daughter to Coachella, divorced art dealer Solène (Hathaway) strikes up an unexpected romance with boyband heartthrob Hayes Campbell (Galitzine). FANS OF BOYBANDS love to fantasise. When rich emotional worlds can be spun from vague lyrics that anyone can see themselves in, wild daydreams soon follow, conjuring dreamy strangers-to-lovers scenarios (or even romances between the pop stars themselves —google “Larry Stylinson” at your own peril). It’s the kind of fantasy given feature-length treatment in The Idea Of You, a story about a romance between the 24-year-old frontman of fictional boyband August Moon and the 40-year-old divorced mother of a former fan.…

BABY REINDEER ★★★★★ “Richard Gadd confronts and processes his real-life trauma in a brave, moving and often disturbing watch that’s rooted in comedy. Yet the tears you’ll shed won’t be tears of joy or laughter.” DAVID OPIE IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SINNERS ★★★ “It’s refreshing to see Liam Neeson turn off his usual action autopilot — even if this is perhaps not the best forum to confront the pain of The Troubles.”  JOHN NUGENT I.S.S. ★★ “It’s not a disaster — well, its setting is — but you’re left with the nagging suspicion that what should have been a meaty psychological drama has been turned into an insipid thriller instead.”  HELEN O’HARA DARK MATTER ★★★ “A meditation on the corrosiveness of regret as much as it is a…

LILY GLADSTONE HAS BEEN PUTTING HER FEET UP You’d be forgiven for assuming that Gladstone — the first Native American actress to have been nominated for an Academy Award — has a lot on her plate. And she has, but at home in Seattle, post-Oscars, she’s spent some well-earned time on the sofa, specifically watching The Bear Season 2. She’s not likely to be hanging around watching Carmy in his Chicago kitchen for too long, though. After her staggering, soulful performance as Mollie Burkhart, the beleaguered woman at the centre of a vast murder plot in Martin Scorsese’s epic drama Killers Of The Flower Moon — and the Oscar nomination to go with it — there are few Hollywood career trajectories more exciting. But Gladstone, an indigenous actor born and…

ADIL EL ARBI can pinpoint the exact moment he knew that he and Bilall Fallah were going to ride together, die together. It was at art school in his native Belgium, a place where, as he recalls, “they would only look at European festival movies, Cannes Film Festival movies”. All good, of course, but his real passion was for popcorn. So, when he spotted Fallah, another student who, like him, was Belgian-born but descended from Moroccan parents, he took a chance and popped the big question. “Do you like Jerry Bruckheimer movies?” The answer was a resounding yes. They became the entity known as Adil & Bilall and, after catching the eye in 2015 with their vibrant, energetic Belgian debut Black, found themselves in a room with Actual Jerry Bruckheimer.…

Helen: So, Paul Thomas Anderson. Talk me through your first encounters with PTA. Alex: My first dalliance was in 1997 at the Prince Charles Cinema. Boogie Nights came out and people I knew were saying, “You’ve got to see this film, you’re gonna love it.” And I did, and it’s like, “Where did this guy come from?” It’s probably one of my top five films. Nick: I missed Hard Eight. But Boogie Nights was such a mission statement. It feels like a first film, in a way. It’s got so much energy. The firecracker scene hits you in the face. Dan: It was the first great film of my film-journalist career. And like everyone else, I was utterly blown away, utterly convinced of this amazing new talent. Helen: It was…

PREVIOUSLY… I INPUT the keyword “vampire” and spent a weekend streaming anything I’d not already seen. I’ve covered the Empire cult beat for nearly 300 issues, right? I must have watched pretty much every fang flick. I’d be done by mid-afternoon Saturday, leaving the rest of the weekend free for improving literature (comics), fine foods (custard creams) and long, healthy walks (to the fridge and back). Uh, no. Here’s what I sat through (with notes). SATURDAY… Vampires Vs. The Bronx: vampire metaphor for gentrification, Zoe Saldaña cameo, Sarah Gadon with fangs (plus), Goonies-esque Blade wannabes (minus); V For Vengeance: vampire vigilante sisters, Graham Greene —vampire hunter; Billie The Kid: cheap Western with Nosferatu lookalike in a silly Stetson hat; Dark Seduction: black-and-white private-eye parody, surprisingly smart; Black As Night: better…

THE ORIGIN “I need 50 eggs.” So begins the greatest scene in eggsploitation cinema. The most famous moment in sees Luke Jackson (Paul Newman), incarcerated in a Southern prison for breaking the heads off several parking meters, claiming he can eat a half-century of eggs in an hour, followed by a flurry of betting (one rule: no throwing up). What follows starts as a comedy montage, builds like a tense sports movie and ultimately makes Rocky Balboa’s five-egg protein shake look like Saturday Kitchen. “Luke is the myth of Sisyphus, which is the guy who had to roll the rock up to the top of the hill and every day it would roll down and he would have to repeat it,” recalled director Stuart Rosenberg. “Luke’s attitude is: ‘I’m…

SEPTEMBER 2000 It was way back in 2000 that Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine first graced our cover, just before the release of the original X-Men film. The landscape for superhero movies was very different back then: we reported that Marvel had been struggling for years to get films made. “Producers seemed to be lining up Marvel’s creations in development hell,” we wrote. (Deadpool was still a way away — though producer Lauren Shuler Donner rather prophetically noted that “there’s a million stories in the X-Men world… we very much see it as a franchise”.) Jackman, for his part, recalled winning the role the day before his 31st birthday, and thinking, “I wish I’d read X-Men. What’s the character’s name again?” But even back then, he recognised it as a pretty big…

TI WEST HAS long been fascinated with reviving horror history. His interconnected duology of X and Pearl —telling the twin stories of wannabe-star-slash-porn-performer Maxine Minx and wannabe-star-slash-serial-killer Pearl, both played by Mia Goth —brought fresh blood to ’70s classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and early Technicolor ’30s masterpiece The Wizard Of Oz, respectively. Now, with trilogy-capper MaXXXine, West and Goth are taking Maxine —and maybe even Pearl too —forward in time, into the seedy heart of 1980s Hollywood. “The ’80s aspect of it was a natural, chronological thing,” says West. Set six years post-X, we’ll find Maxine trying to break beyond porn, stepping into scary sequel ‘The Puritan II’. “She’s trying to transition into the next phase of her career towards becoming a star. Her way into that is…

ROUND ONE: MONSTER MADNESS GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S FRANKENSTEIN Inspired by Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations, del Toro’s monster — played by Saltburn’s Jacob Elordi — will be less ‘neck bolts and platform boots’, more book-accurate bulging musculature and lustrous black locks. And with Elordi 6’ 5” tall, this Creature will have the height advantage. MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL’S THE BRIDE Rocking edgy tats and slicked-back hair, the ‘Frank’ of Gyllenhaal’s film has big ‘Jared Leto’s Joker’ energy. But the gnarly Karloff-reminiscent stitchwork and brooding looks of Christian Bale leave us hopeful this reinvention will be no joke(r). WINNER:FRANKENSTEIN ROUND TWO: STAR POWER FRANKENSTEIN With Oscar Isaac (as Victor Frankenstein) and Mia Goth (in a yet-to-be-revealed role) joining Elordi, the line-up for this Promethean tale is, aptly, hot. But it’s in the character-actor-rich ensemble —…

MAGGIE SHANNON ADRIA ARJONA KNOWS just how scary it can be to meet your heroes. One of her all-time favourite movies is School Of Rock, and when she first met Richard Linklater, not even the relative safety of a Zoom call could save her. “My hands were sweaty,” she admits to Empire. “I was really trying to play it cool and that lasted for about ten minutes.” After a series of supporting turns in genre fare (Pacific Rim: Uprising, Good Omens), crime dramas (True Detective), and recently as the forthright Bix in Andor, the 31-year-old actor is stepping into fresh territory with Linklater’s romcom Hit Man. Alongside Glen Powell, she stars as Madison, a housewife with a controlling husband who falls for the contract killer (Powell) she hires to take…

THE SUBSTANCE SOPHIE BUTCHER — SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR If one thing can be said about Coralie Fargeat’s 2017 rape-retribution thriller Revenge, it’s that it goes hard. So, the prospect of her new movie The Substance, described as an “explosive feminist take on body horror”, is an incredibly exciting one. Throw into the mix a cast including Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, and you’ve got yourself one unmissable part of the Cannes 2024 line-up. Bring on the blood. ANORA ALEX GODFREY — FEATURES EDITOR Very little is known about Sean Baker’s latest, but it doesn’t matter: after Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket, his name alone guarantees a singular experience. All his films explore dying American dreams, all boast guerrilla energy, and all give the spotlight to relative unknowns. A…

THE INSPIRATIONS Quinn and director Luna Carmoon discussed ’70s films from directors like Alan Clarke and Joseph Losey during their early conversations about Michael, a 30-year-old former foster child who develops intense feelings for Hoard’s troubled teen protagonist, Maria (Saura Lightfoot-Leon). Alan Bates and Oliver Reed were also references when it came to the darker side of Michael’s personality, as his passion for Maria deepens despite having a pregnant partner at home. “It’s no secret that when Oliver Reed was conducting himself in his personal life, there were unsavoury aspects,” says Quinn (Reed, along with having anger and alcohol issues, was 42 when he met 16-year-old Josephine Burge, his future wife). Yet he believes that reserving judgement against his character proved key. “It’s not on really,” he admits, laughing, of…

What’s the best advice you’ve been given?  “Don’t take advice.” (Laughs) “Take more pictures.” Someone told me that a long time ago, and I have done. Subsequently, I now have a house stacked with film photography. I’m a big film nerd. I have very heavy boxes full of prints. That, and I’ve come back to a memory of acting advice from Jason Isaacs, who played my father in the Potter films. Just before I headed off to Los Angeles, he reminded me to keep working on my American accent —just encouragement, really. Helpful, fatherly advice. He’s a good man. Who’s the best Tom: Cruise or Hanks? You missed out Felton! (Laughs) It’s Hanks for me. Forrest Gump was one of the first films that I was utterly enthralled by and…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 91 MINS DIRECTOR Curtis Vowell CAST Aimee Lou Wood, Lolly Adefope, Nick Frost, Nicola Coughlan When you consider the pantheon of comedies with exclamation marks in the title, Curtis Vowell’s Seize Them! sits in the middle of the pack: a sweary, enjoyable medieval romp that hits and misses in equal measure but gets by on appealing actors and its unapologetically puerile spirit. It sees spoilt, bratty Queen Dagan (Aimee Lou Wood) overthrown by despot-in-waiting ‘Humble’ Joan (Nicola Coughlan, having a ball), before looking for sanctuary with attendant Shulmay (Lolly Adefope). It's as cheap as ye olde chips, but Seize Them! turns the Dark Ages into the daft ages, delivering a mostly entertaining, female-centred comedy enlivened by winning performances.   IF…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Arkasha Stevenson CAST Nell Tiger Free, Bill Nighy, Charles Dance, Ralph Ineson It’s always the way — you wait years for a pregnancy-focused nunsploitation movie, then three come along within about a month. We’ve had Immaculate, Deliver Us, and now there’s The First Omen, a prequel to the 1976 landmark horror about a boy who could be the devil incarnate. Here, Nell Tiger Free plays the young nun whose convent is hiding a conspiracy that could bring about pure evil. It’ll all feel recognisable to anyone with a passing familiarity with religion-themed horror movies, but Free gives a sympathetic performance, while Bill Nighy makes a welcome appearance in full cassock as an urbane cardinal. For veterans of the genre, it’s…

★★★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 131 MINS DIRECTOR Luca Guadagnino CAST Josh O’Connor, Zendaya, Mike Faist PLOT Meeting as teenagers, three ambitious tennis players embark on a journey of lust, love and ruinous competition. Game on. SKIN GLIMMERS IN Challengers. Tongues entwine, sweat drips. Dicks dangle. Spit is spat. In faces. Luca Guadagnino likes to get up close and personal. Of late he has blessed us with Call Me By Your Name’s juicy peach erotica, Bones And All’s ravenous finger-munching cannibalism and Suspiria’s, well, everything. But even by the director’s standards, Challengers is one tactile piece of work. Its cameras survey and worship the human body, its strength, its sexiness and its vulnerabilities, but it is supremely physical across the board, with bones crunched, tennis-balls pounded and racquets…

A SPOONFUL OF COLIN FARRELL MAKES THE MEDICINE GO DOWN ★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Mark Protosevich CAST Colin Farrell, Kirby (formerly Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Amy Ryan, Alex Hernandez, James Cromwell, Sydney Chandler, Anna Gunn, Jason Butler Harner PLOT Private investigator John Sugar (Farrell) is hired to find a missing woman who is part of a powerful Hollywood dynasty. He has no idea what he’s getting himself into. ONE OF THE most wearying things to be told about a new show is that “you have to stick with it”; that you should give it time to get good. A story should earn your continued attention, not expect it. It would be easy to give up on Sugar after a couple of episodes if you’re…

DRAGON’S DOGMA II ★★★ PS5 AFTER YEARS OF fans clamouring for an Assassin’s Creed entry set in feudal Japan, Ubisoft finally confirmed that its stealth-action series would indeed be heading to the land of the rising sun for its next entry, due in 2025. Getting the drop on that game by a full year, however, is this PlayStation 5 exclusive from Team Ninja, which may have just stolen some of its katana-wielding thunder. Rise Of The Ronin is an open-world, samurai action-role-playing game that will feel immediately familiar to anyone who’s strategically sliced, diced, dodged and countered their way through the studio’s more recent efforts, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and the Nioh series. Similar to those titles, Rise Of The Ronin is a combat-heavy affair that finds you regularly engaged…

★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Kirk Ellis CAST Michael Douglas, Noah Jupe, Daniel Mays, Eddie Marsan, Ludivine Sagnier, Thibault de Montalembert, Assaad Bouab PLOT 1776. Benjamin Franklin (Douglas) embarks on a secret mission to France to garner backing in the war for independence against the English. MICHAEL DOUGLAS TOOK the title role of Benjamin Franklin in this enjoyable Apple TV+ series because he “wanted to see how I looked in tights”. This sartorial experimentation sees Douglas elevate the eight-episode period drama, having a costumed ball of a time playing one of America’s Founding Fathers. The haphazard switching between English and subtitled French suggests a Euro-pudding but, well-played by an international cast, Franklin is an entertaining sortie though powdered wigs and power politics without…

OUT OF NOWHERE, a portal opens. A figure, clad in black, steps out, wielding fire in his hands. His prey, someone possessed with super-speed, stands ready for the ensuing fight. Empire is looking at what’s come to be a familiar sight —a superpowered action sequence. Except this time, there’s one key difference: this isn’t your usual iconic cityscape. It’s North London’s Finsbury Park. Just around the corner from the tenpin bowling alley. For years, the likes of Marvel and DC have ruled the superhero roost on screen, giving us villains out to conquer the world and champions duty-bound to save it, the final battles often taking place in a US metropolis (or Metropolis itself ). But in Supacell —a series focusing on five Black South Londoners who unexpectedly develop powers,…

THE RED DRESS IN THE CITY of dreams, two of the town’s most talked-about movie stars were embarking on a first date. An excited photographer, bent on capturing every moment, followed in hot pursuit, capturing the A-listers driving down Hollywood Boulevard, enjoying a drink, catching a movie, having dinner at a buzzy restaurant, and finally dancing. The resulting snaps were published in the September 1934 issue of Hollywood magazine, where for ten cents fans could pore over the shoot and share it with friends. So far, so standard-issue gossip-mag folderol. Except, these photos were different. Because the two stars in question — Baby LeRoy and Shirley Temple — were respectively two years old and six. And each shot was a twist on the usual type of celebrity-in-the-wild image: Baby LeRoy…

“THEY DON’T MAKE ’em like they used to” is a popular refrain, but applied to the sturdy Hollywood filmmaking of the 1990s, one movie stands out as emphatically representative: Jan de Bont’s 1994 summer action thrill ride, Speed. You remember the plot. There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. “What do you do?” madman Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) quizzes LAPD officer Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) in a hair-raising second-act set-up. That moment, still embedded in the fabric of pop culture, follows a riveting first-act appetiser staged in a compromised elevator shaft and soon gives way to an equally gripping underground finale that quite literally explodes out onto Hollywood Boulevard. Consider those…

ONE OF THE few films to briefly halt the runaway Oppenheimer train on Oscars night back in March was American Fiction, which triumphed in the Best Adapted Screenplay category (also besting Barbie, Poor Things and The Zone Of Interest). And rightly so —because writer/director Cord Jefferson’s screenplay is not only something of a marvel in its own right, but a masterclass in adapting a novel for the big screen. The novel in question was Percival Everett’s Erasure, which shares a basic story with American Fiction —a frustrated African-American writer, Thelonius ‘Monk’ Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), decides to fashion an alter-ego for himself — Stagg R. Leigh —and write a stereotypically Black book in disgust at the way he sees the industry going; but of course, the book becomes a huge hit.…

MOST MOVIES PLAY it safe when it comes to their Special Thanks sections. A couple of names here, maybe an organisation or two there. But not Nandor Fodor And The Talking Mongoose (renamed The Detective on certain platforms). As the credits roll on the Simon Pegg drama, about a real-life paranormal investigator who travels to the Isle Of Man to dig into an apparent manifestation of, well, a talking mongoose called Gef, a new section appears, headed by “The Producers, Cast, And Crew Wish To Thank The Members (And Mongooses) Of Gef’s Army”. And then thousands of names appear, presented alphabetically. This is Gef’s Army. It takes nearly three minutes to get through all 3,500, all of whom invested a minimum of $40 in Legion M, one of the production…