Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2024 i Empire

SOME CALL HIM ‘Sauron’. Some call him ‘the Dark Lord’. Still others call him “that absolutely bloody terrifying massive flaming eye”. Well, arguably the most formidable villain in all of fiction (who else has world-corrupting powers and blingy jewellery?) has another name, and form — all the better with which to scam the gentle folk of Middle-earth into giving him what he wants. In the second season of The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, the biggest show on the small screen, Sauron will adopt the guise of Annatar, a being who’s as persuasive as he is malevolent. And in this issue of Empire, we take a deep dive into his dastardly doings. On our two special lenticular newsstand covers, Charlie Vickers’ Sauron changes shape before your very…

INTRODUCING THE INTERNET DECEMBER 1994 In 1994, with the World Wide Web then just five years old, a feature ran in issue #66 of Empire, introducing readers to the joys of “surfing the Internet”. We were breathless with the possibilities of this new technology: “It’s like having 30 million mates on the end of the phone!” Back then, film fans had fewer options available online. There was no IMDb yet — but there was, erm, the ‘Cardiff Movie Database’, its humble precursor (named after the university where its servers were based). There were also thriving newsgroup message boards like ‘rec.arts.movies.reviews’. Yet the potential for this new technology, we pondered, was not yet fully realised. “Further into the future,” we predicted, “you may be able to send and receive film clips,…

WHEN NAOMI ACKIE first received the script for Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, at the time called ‘Pussy Island’, she had a strong gut reaction. “I was like, ‘Yessssssss! Fuck, yes!’” she laughs, her head back. “It already gave the vibe that it wasn’t going to follow the rules.” She wasn’t wrong. The film — which has since been renamed Blink Twice — is set to be one of the year’s most audacious: a psychological thriller that follows Ackie’s headstrong cocktail waitress Frida as she charms her way onto a hedonistic getaway with tech mogul Slater King (Channing Tatum) and his inner circle. Amid major partying on Slater’s private island, Frida begins to realise that there are sinister undertones to the group. “I really responded to that feeling of being a…

“WHAT IF GUS Van Sant directed a Friday The 13th sequel?” was Chris Nash’s elevator pitch for In A Violent Nature, the new slasher that has left audiences reeling and reportedly throwing up. The twist? The film is mostly set from Freddy Krueger’s point of view. Well, actually an undead, hook-wielding masked killer called Johnny (Ry Barrett). Here, Nash charts the rise of his unique debut. JOHNNY’S GENESIS 2020 The wheels for In A Violent Nature began turning while Nash was working on Psycho Goreman. “[I] wanted to make the most straightforward slasher film that we’ve all seen a million times before,” he laughs, “[I] just wanted to see different parts of the story.” Nash is also a major Van Sant fan. “I wanted to see what would happen if…

WHERE WANDAVISION WENT big on meta, Agatha All Along is going big on mischief. To gauge the tone of the new Marvel miniseries, which spotlights Kathryn Hahn’s dastardly witch (and Wanda’s nemesis) Agatha Harkness, you need only look at its title, which in true chaos-magic-style underwent four major changes (including ‘Agatha: Coven Of Chaos’ and ‘Agatha: Darkhold Diaries’) before taking its true form. “We went really far with the ways in which she would mess with people,” laughs the show’s creator Jac Schaeffer, who confirms that reams of fake titles were concocted in the writers’ room. Schaeffer, who also served as creator for WandaVision, revelled in the chance to fully deploy witchcraft into the MCU via Agatha, who was last seen imprisoned in suburbia sans powers by Elizabeth Olsen’s heartsick…

IN NEW YORK this June, the streets were anything but mean. In fact, they were downright jolly, and all because of one event: De Niro Con. To celebrate the 80th birthday of Robert De Niro, the Tribeca Film Festival pulled out all the stops, throwing a three-day shindig that proved to be the greatest Bobby bacchanal since that Christmas party in GoodFellas. With multiple tiers of access — ranging from the Johnny Boy Day Pass at $150 to the Godfather Pass for $3,500 — there was something for every kind of De Niro fan. Live music? You could go to a concert playing tunes inspired by the film Shark Tale. Food? There was a themed sandwich competition, advertised with a shot of De Niro chomping a sarnie in Copland. Additional…

Windows can be a right pain. Specifically, the release variety. Before the one-two punch of Bad Boys: Ride Or Die and, particularly, the record-breaking opening of Inside Out 2, the summer blockbuster season had been a damp squib. The Fall Guy, which kicked off the season in early May, had fallen with a mere $30 million opening weekend. Furiosa had crashed and burned. Fingers of blame were pointing all over the shop, including (but not limited to) underwhelming marketing, exorbitant ticket prices, post-Covid wariness, and anti-social audience behaviour. And we haven’t even tackled the delicate matter of massive budgets, which then put pressure on films to post a wildly unrealistic box-office tally before they can even break even. For me, though, the streaming window is one of the biggest factors,…

HE’S GOT UNFINISHED BUSINESS Back in 1993’s The Wrong Trousers, Gromit thwarted Feathers McGraw’s dastardly diamond-stealing scheme, which the criminal penguin hoped to pin on Wallace. Instead, Feathers ended up in the slammer (or, the city zoo). You’d have to imagine he’s got Max Cady-esque plans to take down Wigan’s finest in Vengeance Most Fowl. Cinema cigar, anyone? HE’S GOT A KILLER LOOK “He’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. When he comes after ya, he doesn’t seem to be livin’.” Quint’s iconic Jaws speech could equally apply to Feathers, whose starkly minimalist design (a bowling-pin body with an eerily blank expression) exudes cold, calculating menace. As simple and perfect as villain character-design gets. HE’S GOT A PLUSHY LEGACY Over the last 31 years, Feathers McGraw has…

OUT NOW / CERT U / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Kelsey Mann CAST Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Ayo Edebiri, Paul Walter Hauser PLOT All seems happy in the life of Riley (Tallman) and her emotions. But things take a disastrous turn with the onset of puberty and the arrival of a new collective, including the controlling Anxiety (Hawke). OF ALL THE Pixar films to follow up, Inside Out seems the most risky. While the ending of the first gave a clear signal of where the general plot could go, with a pre-teen Riley (now voiced by Kensington Tallman) on the edge of puberty, aka emotional Armageddon, you had to wonder what would be the point? The original so brilliantly, with the lightest of touches, dug into the foundations of…

OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 6 OF 6 SHOWRUNNER Rapman CAST Tosin Cole, Sabrina Mills, Josh Tedeku, Eric Kofi-Abrefa, Adelayo Adedayo, Calvin Demba PLOT As a disparate group of young people develop superpowers, one of them desperately attempts to find and unite them. SUPACELL SCENES OCCUR, as perhaps all scenes should, outside Bargain Booze and Wimpy. You can practically smell the knickerbocker glories. Set and shot in South London, with a predominantly Black cast, the action takes place on the estates, on the streets and in the clubs, in Peckham, Lewisham, Brixton, Camberwell. It’s genuinely homegrown, a tribute to creator and writer Rapman’s roots and life experience, and you feel that in practically every shot. It’s an unfiltered vision, a defibrillator of a show helping to bring an increasingly…

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 99 MINS DIRECTOR Michael Sarnoski CAST Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Djimon Hounsou, Alex Wolff PLOT Sam (Nyong’o) is on a day trip to New York City when marauding aliens crash-land across the Earth. Along with fellow survivor Eric (Quinn), she tries to navigate the silent new world. BEYOND ITS HOOKY nobody-make-a-sound premise (Watch that nail! Stay outta the grain silo! You’re really giving birth in that bathtub?!), it’s easy to forget: A Quiet Place was so effective because it really made you care for the Abbott family. Since John Krasinski and Emily Blunt’s grieving parents were the original’s beating heart, spin-off A Quiet Place: Day One — dialling back to humanity’s first contact with the audibly enhanced aliens — has gaping holes to fill,…

OUT NOW (SKY ATLANTIC/NOW) / EPISODES VIEWED 4 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Ryan Condal CAST Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Matt Smith, Rhys Ifans, Tom Glynn-Carney, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best PLOT King Viserys is dead. But the storm clouds of Targaryen civil war are gathering — one side fighting for King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), the other for Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy). DESPITE THE SUCCESS of House Of The Dragon’s first season, both in terms of its burnished worldbuilding and its broadly positive critical response, the second arrives with much expectation that it can do better. Whether it was the relative lack of geographical and social scope, the big leaps forward in time, or the constant casting switch-ups as characters aged, even its biggest fans had a niggle they could mention. On…

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 115 MINS DIRECTORS Adil & Bilall CAST Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Jacob Scipio, Joe Pantoliano, Vanessa Hudgens, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhea Seehorn PLOT A message from their late former captain (Pantoliano) sets Mike (Smith) and Marcus (Lawrence) on the trail of corrupt officials. MAYBE IT’S THE Florida heat, but this series about Miami cop-buddies named Mike (Will Smith) and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) just gets ever more delirious. What started out as a flashy-but-routine police thriller got a sequel in which they invaded Cuba (probably the most restrained part of the film) and another in which they went up against a witch (an actual witch). Now, coming quick off the staggering success of part three, we get Bad Boys: Ride Or Die, in which, early on,…

OUT NOW / PRIME VIDEO / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF SHOWRUNNER Eric Kripke CAST Antony Starr, Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Claudia Doumit PLOT With supe Victoria Neuman (Doumit) now a hair from the Oval Office, time is running out for The Boys to stop her and Homelander (Starr) for good. AT THIS POINT, the formula for The Boys is well established. Take one helping of superpowered mayhem, add a side of human drama, season with a generous amount of political potshots, and voilà — you have one of the best TV dramas of the last five years. It’s a testament to showrunner Eric Kripke that in its fourth season the capacity to shock hasn’t dimmed, the political and cultural satire remains razor-sharp, and the character drama excavates new…

1. THE IDEA “Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers” wrote J.R.R. Tolkien in The Fellowship Of The Ring. In the book, the wraith-like beings terrorise the Hobbits, but the wights didn’t show up in Peter Jackson’s films, and have only been tackled in a little-seen 1991 Russian TV adaptation of Fellowship. Until now. “The Barrow-wights are ancient, reanimated heroes, acting for evil against their will,” sums up Rings Of Power VFX supervisor Jason Smith. “It was superexciting to take on something I hadn’t seen before. We’ve seen undead before, but not like this. We’re doing a little horror movie in Middle-earth.” 2. THE GARB Essentially ghouls dwelling in barrows (tombs), the basic concept of the wights is that they used to be…

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS IF YOU ONLY WANT TO SEE ONE MOVIE this year about outsized beavers causing mayhem, we’ve got you covered (if you want to see two, you’ll have to wait for the next Mike Leigh). Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews’ Hundreds Of Beavers is a no-budget, silent, black-and-white, video-game-influenced, live-action cartoon, shot through with nutty energy, boundless invention and DIY indie spirit, achieving a gag-rate to rival Airplane!. Some comedy filmmakers — Wes Anderson, say — rely on being ironic and wry. Others, like Nancy Meyers, add a bit of heart. For Cheslik and Tews, laughs are best eked from inflicting grievous bodily harm on amateur actors dressed up as the titular dam-building rodents. “We knew we had to start from a fundamental comedy crystal that…

Someone was going to revisit The Crow. We just didn’t know who. Since 2008, fans of Alex Proyas’ 1994 dark superhero movie — about a murdered rock musician back from the dead to seek revenge — have watched reports roll in about who was going to do it. Names of possible stars were attached and detached before it was ever confirmed they were true: Bradley Cooper, Channing Tatum, Mark Wahlberg (twice), Jason Momoa (that one got as far as leaked test footage). Potential directors included Blade’s Stephen Norrington, 28 Weeks Later’s Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Corin Hardy, and more. At one point in 2010, hopes were raised when there were rumours that Nick Cave was doing some form of script revision — The Crow is a graphic novel and a film…

THERE IS REALLY nobody like Peter Strickland. The Reading-born writer-director burst onto the scene in 2009 with Katalin Varga and almost immediately carved a cinematic space entirely of his own. He’s crafted atmospheric, surreal, tactile films, all full of sound and fury, food and bodies; and all in some way the product of Strickland’s retro obsessions, sly sense of humour, and uncanny sensibilities. Now, Strickland is getting his first-ever Blu-ray box set, a handsome and comprehensive Curzon-curated compendium, which gathers his five feature films to date — rape-revenge thriller Katalin Varga, sonic horror Berberian Sound Studio, sadomasochist romance The Duke Of Burgundy, retail giallo In Fabric, and culinary comedy Flux Gourmet — together in one package. Alongside those features, there is a glut of the filmmaker’s short films and music…

BASED ON BARBARA Abel’s 2012 novel, and Olivier Masset–Depasse’s 2018 French-language film, Mothers’ Instinct matches domestic family drama with Hitchcockian thrills, following neighbours and best friends Alice (Jessica Chastain) and Céline (Anne Hathaway) as their relationship deteriorates after the accidental death of Céline’s son Max (Baylen D. Bielitz). Here, cinematographer-turneddirector Benoît Delhomme talks us through some of the biggest moments and elements of his A-lister two-hander. STAR POWER Mothers’ Instinct gives us the chance to see two of Hollywood’s biggest actresses — Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway — going head-to-head on screen. Originally on board as the film’s cinematographer, Delhomme was asked to direct at the last minute, in part because of his existing relationships with the pair (he shot Wilde Salomé, The Tree Of Life and Lawless, all starring…

ALEX GODFREY INTERVIEWED DAISY RIDLEY “Daisy Ridley visited Empire HQ to talk Young Woman And The Sea for the podcast and was a delight, enduring my ridiculous questions about swimming, reminiscing about The Force Awakens, and discussing her litany of on-set injuries. I don’t know why I did that weird lean.” HANNAH EWENS SPOKE TO THE KNEECAP BOYS "Considering that I, an English-born woman, was asking an Irish rap-group to translate their native language lyrics, my chat with Kneecap about their political biopic could've gone badly. Thankfully they took the task in good humour — and now I know how to say ‘ketamine’ in Irish.” SOPHIE BUTCHER VISITED PROPSTORE “To celebrate our special-edition Christopher Nolan issue (on sale until the end of August!), I headed to movie-lovers’ wonderland Propstore to…

EXCLUSIVE INVITES TO EVENTS CURATED BY THE EMPIRE TEAM THE ULTIMATE EMPIRE EXPERIENCE Reading the magazine is only the beginning. To get closer to Hollywood than ever before, join the Empire VIP Club. Screenings with A-listers in the house, our deep-dive Spoiler Special podcast, the magazine direct to your door with bespoke covers, plus free cinema tickets. All for the incredible value of £99.99 a year. Join us today! VIP MEMBERSHIP ONLY £99.99 PER YEAR* Worth over £130! INCLUDES: ✔ Exclusive live events, including preview screenings and Q&As ✔ 13 print issues of Empire a year ✔ Picturehouse or Cineworld Cinemas’ My Cineworld Plus membership, with two free cinema tickets** ✔ Access to the Empire Spoiler Special podcast ✔ Exclusive collectible covers ✔ Digital edition of Empire ✔ Access to back issues of Empire…

NOT MANY 94-year-olds can confirm that they performed their own stunts for the starring role in an action movie. Yet here is June Squibb, in the wake of making Thelma, doing just that. “It didn’t occur to me that I couldn’t,” she tells Empire. To clarify, these are not the kinds of stunts that Mission: Impossible’s Ethan Hunt is pulling off, although he is a major motivator for Squibb’s character. Instead, Thelma’s mission involves hijacking a mobility scooter, ‘borrowing’ her friend’s firearm, and tracking down the phone scammers who swindled her out of $10,000. “I just felt that I knew who this woman was,” Squibb recalls from reading the script. For one, Thelma is 90, not that that slows her down. “She just has such grit and determination,” Squibb enthuses.…

FOR ALL ITS hopping about through different periods of history, the Terminator franchise has never ventured very far geographically. Over six films and one TV show, the action has been largely confined to California and Texas. That all changes with Netflix’s new anime show, Terminator Zero. Set in Tokyo, on the eve of ‘Judgment Day’ (29 August 1997 — the date the Skynet AI launches war against humans), the series also represents the first animated entry in the Terminator universe. Its creators reveal what we can expect from this wild new swing. NO CONNORS Sarah and John Connor — the mother-son duo at the heart of the franchise — will not feature in Terminator Zero. Instead, action revolves around Japanese tech genius Malcolm Lee. “Malcolm is haunted by visions of…

DOUGLAS IS CANCELLED THE POISE Karen Gillan was first introduced to Douglas Is Cancelled when Steven Moffat, with whom she had worked on Doctor Who, sent her the script for a proposed stage play six years ago. When the play didn’t happen he pivoted to a TV show, and asked Gillan to star. “It felt really relevant all those years ago, but it feels even more relevant now,” she tells Empire about the story of Madeline, a popular TV presenter and her hapless co-host (Hugh Bonneville) whose career is threatened after he makes an ill-advised joke. Having known the character for so long, Gillan instantly began working on suppressing her “own nerdy, frantic energy” in order to portray this “cool-as-a-cucumber, unshakeable woman” on TV. THE LOOK In a key flashback…

OUT 5 JULY / CERT 15 / 120 MINS DIRECTORS James Floyd, Sally El Hosaini CAST Ben Hardy, Jason Patel, Hannah Onslow, Nisha Nayar Star-crossed lovers are always ripe for the big screen, a fact understood well by filmmakers James Floyd and Sally El Hosaini with the vibrant if familiar Unicorns. The lovers here are single dad Luke (Ben Hardy) and drag queen Aysha (Jason Patel). Eyes lock across a dance floor, before Luke notices Aysha’s Adam’s apple and things get complicated. The film explores self-expression and the definition of family protection carefully, looking at what it means to shelter your children from harm across every age and circumstance. But the romance retreads old ground in the pair’s dynamic. Patel comes alive in moments of romantic ecstasy, but Luke and…

OUT JULY 19 / CERT TBC / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Toby L PARTICIPANTS Damon Albarn, Alex James, Dave Rowntree, Graham Coxon Best known for era-defining ’90s hits including ‘Parklife’ and ‘Girls & Boys’, Blur reunited in 2023 to make The Ballad Of Darren. Blur: To The End offers an intimate portrait of the quartet as they record, rehearse and perform — first on a short warm-up tour in small British towns including Colchester, where frontman Damon Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon met at school, then at a pair of triumphant Wembley Stadium gigs. The exhausted band are most energised playing live but maintain their good humour elsewhere. Out front and backstage, this illuminating if not quite revelatory documentary shows a vulnerable, exhausted Blur and the band at their best. Interesting…

OUT NOW (DISNEY+) / EPISODES WATCHED 4 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Leslye Headland CAST Amandla Stenberg, Carrie-Anne Moss, Lee Jung-jae, Dafne Keen, Jodie Turner-Smith PLOT Force sensitive Mae (Stenberg) is on a mission of revenge. Her targets are four people with one key thing in common: they’re Jedi. A GIRL WALKS into a bar — stop us if you’ve heard this one. Picking her way through tables crowded with a menagerie of alien patrons, she squares up to a figure in Jedi robes. The resulting fracas is something you definitely won’t be familiar with — at least not from Star Wars. A whirlwind of wuxia-inspired fists and feet, the series prologue has the flavour of Hong Kong action cinema, but with a distinctly Star Wars twist — punches and parries augmented…

OUT 19 JULY / CERT TBC / 101 MINS DIRECTOR Janis Pugh CAST Louise Brealey, Annabel Scholey, Sorcha Cusack New beginnings and a second chance at love could be on the cards for long-suffering Helen (Louise Brealey) in this familiar but charming love story set in working-class North Wales. With a mix of gritty social realism and fairy-tale musical whimsy (enter a recurring floating dandelion seed-head and sporadic Sunshine On Leith-esque singalongs), Chuck Chuck Baby’s tonal shifts can feel quite jarring. But the heartfelt and moving performances from Brealey and Annabel Scholey elevate proceedings; their sweet and affecting sapphic romance is one you can’t help but cheer for. Despite some shaky moments, this is an endearing tale of self-acceptance and liberation, wearing its heart fully on its sleeve.…

OUT NOW / CERT TBC / 181 MINS DIRECTOR Kevin Costner CAST Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Jena Malone, Sam Worthington, Danny Huston, Jamie Campbell Bower, Sam Worthington PLOT It’s the 1860s, and as the US Civil War rages back east, a loose assemblage of characters head west for a settlement called Horizon. THE WESTERN HAS been declared dead more often than Dracula, but Kevin Costner — who turned to the genre as soon as his fame allowed him to make his own movies — is betting a fair chunk of his personal fortune that there’s life in the ol’ horse yet. The result is a meandering three-hour oater that is only the opening salvo of a longer epic (Chapter 2 will follow in August; Chapters 3 and 4 are still…

ARCADIAN FILM “Nicolas Cage continues his current hot streak, turning in a great performance as a father trying to keep a stable home under impossible circumstances. Though things go off the rails in the third act, Arcadian packs plenty of scares in.” BARRY LEVITT YOUNG WOMAN AND THE SEA FILM “It’s long, and sometimes gets swept astray by currents of family drama, but Daisy Ridley’s can-do energy carries the whole thing along. The result is an old-fashioned inspirational pleasure.” HELEN O’HARA PRESUMED INNOCENT TV “A legal thriller so addictive, it’s mildly infuriating Apple TV+ isn’t making the whole thing available in one go. It’s a rare example of a TV drama which expands significantly on its original source-material yet never feels baggy or indulgent.” JAMES DYER THE WATCHED FILM “Ishana…

WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR Budget: $150,000 Built on a nifty premise — a teenager gets immersed in a horror RPG and starts to plumb the depths of her own mind — Jane Schoenbrun’s 2021 debut feature is a visually haunting, completely original coming-of-age tale. TANGERINE Budget: $100,000 Famous for being shot on three iPhone 5Ss, Sean Baker’s 2015 study of Los Angeles’ sex-trade sub-culture is a riot. It is an old-school comedy powered by great performances and that rare thing: a long-lasting iPhone battery. SKINAMARINK Budget: $15,000 Kyle Edward Ball’s 2022 supernatural chiller thrives on a classic lo-fi set-up — two kids stuck in a windowless house. Shot in a week, the decidedly Lynchian effort was pirated at a film festival and became a viral sensation.…

GRIFFIN DUNNE’S CRACKING memoir, The Friday Afternoon Club, is not your usual celebrity autobiography. It’s beautifully written and often hilarious, detailing sexual awakenings, mishaps, misadventures and his career development with the kind of wry, sardonic voice that made Dunne shine in his breakout role, An American Werewolf In London. But if you’ve picked it up in the hope that it will be one of those books that trawls through a CV with forensic rigour, you might have come to the wrong place. There’s nary a mention of many of his movies, including 1998’s Practical Magic, which he directed. Just a few pages are dedicated to John Landis’ classic 1981 comedy horror, which was Dunne’s breakout. Only a few more are given over to After Hours, the 1985 black comedy which…

FANS OF ITALIAN genre cinema tend to revere directors Sergio Leone, Mario Bava and Dario Argento — specialists in cowboy films, horror movies and a brand of twisty thriller known as the giallo. On a tier below are cultier names like Antonio Margheriti, Lucio Fulci and Sergio Martino, who enthusiastically turned their hands to whatever was the craze that year — mythic muscleman, spaghetti Western, superspy, sexy comedy, cop action, zombie horror. You have to dig deep to find enthusiasm for Alberto De Martino (1929-2015), yet the recent Blu-ray releases of a couple of his bigger films (Blazing Magnum, The Antichrist) should inspire a deep dive into his strange, exciting, derivative, weirdly endearing output. His filmography covers all the crazes (filoni, in Italian) — The Invincible Gladiator, Medusa Against The…

JULIA JACKMAN’S CHARMING coming-of-age tale Bonus Track is about the budding romance between shy schoolboy George (Joe Anders) and his charismatic, cool new classmate Max (Samuel Small). Yet the first voice we hear in the film doesn’t belong to either of them. Instead, it belongs to the former newsreader Sue Lawley, in her guise as presenter of the legendary BBC radio show Desert Island Discs. You see, in Bonus Track George is such a fan that he has recorded multiple episodes, erasing that week’s celebrity castaway and replacing them with himself. It’s an idea that sprang from Bonus Track’s co-creator Josh O’Connor (yes, that one) and his friend Mike Gilbert, who wrote the screenplay. “That was something they used to do,” laughs Jackman. “They used to record interviews, pretend they…

LETTER OF THE MONTH THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD As a mere 85-year-old movie fan I can still remember the first movie I ever saw: Son Of Kong. This was in 1949. From then on I’ve been an addict, seeing double bills twice over. Pay once and stay until closing time, unless the usherette noticed you. I remember the 3D craze, the wonder of CinemaScope, the huge Cinerama Screen and every movie I’ve seen. I’m 40 miles away from a decent cinema with IMAX, but luckily I’m also in range of the only Cinerama screen in Europe so my moviegoing continues — with help from Empire, of course. TONY COOPER, VIA EMAIL So lovely to hear your memories, Tony. Please enjoy this Picturehouse membership on us — though they…

“SALUTE TO ME, I’m your American queen,” sang Taylor Swift once. She wasn’t kidding. Entire news articles have been devoted to her dazzling statistics: net worth of $1.1 billion, a five-continent tour that has become the first ever to earn $1 billion in ticket sales, 49 Top Ten hits. US newspaper chain Gannett has even hired its own Taylor-focused reporter. And then there’s the 2.3. magnitude earthquake that was triggered by over-excited Swifties in Seattle last year. It all makes Beatlemania look like a queue at the post office. Of course, Swift isn’t the only pop titan around: in 2024, names like Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa and Charli XCX are also dominating headlines. Pop culture has become a literal term. It’s no surprise, then, that Hollywood is paying attention, with…

BEING A TEENAGER is scary. Now imagine being a teenager in 2008, when instant messaging and MySpace opened up brand-new ways to experience the highs and crushing lows of adolescence. It’s these platforms that create the anti-nostalgia minefield in Sean Wang’s debut feature Dìdi, a coming-of-age comedy-drama that follows Taiwanese-American 13-year-old Chris (Izaac Wang), whose difficulties with navigating identity are amplified tenfold by being online. “I wanted to show that you didn’t have to rely on people over-acting to show how emotional the internet can be,” the director tells Empire. Much of Dìdi plays out in tense silence, as Chris is devastated to discover that his best friend has taken him off his ‘top 8’ on MySpace (the social-media equivalent to being uninvited from a birthday party), or eagerly anticipates…

THERE’S NO FILM festival quite like Annecy. Based around a lake in the Alps, it’s famed for showcasing upcoming animation, big and small, as well as its quirky rituals: paper planes thrown at the stage before every event, and cries of, “Lapin!” whenever a rabbit appears on screen. With masterclasses from Henry Selick and Wes Anderson, and a few surprises, this year’s line-up was more eclectic than ever. Empire visited and found out what most wowed the crowd. DC CREATURE COMMANDOS James Gunn’s upcoming animated series is a pulpy mash-up of classic Universal monster movies and a military action flick. Set in the aftermath of Peacemaker Season 1, the show follows an Amanda Waller-assembled black-ops team of misfits. Gunn — who wrote all seven episodes — appeared on screen to…

IF THERE’S ANYONE who knows how malleable Batman is, it’s Bruce Timm. Having co-created Batman: The Animated Series in the 1990s, he is responsible for one of the most popular iterations of the character. And he’s set to reimagine the hero all over again with Caped Crusader, a series that has the Dark Knight tackling crime in 1940s Gotham alongside some familiar faces, Selina Kyle’s Catwoman and Commissioner Jim Gordon among them. In other words, the show — which is executive-produced by J.J. Abrams and The Batman’s Matt Reeves — is the same but different, with a greener protagonist. “Batman is so early in his career that in the first episode, he’s still an urban myth,” Timm informs Empire. “It’s not ‘Year One’ [the title of a legendary Batman graphic…

NOTORIOUS IRISH RAP group Kneecap’s core mission — as dramatised in their new self-titled biopic — is to save their native language from extinction. As a result, their lyrics are a chaotic mix of references to home, their intoxicated lifestyles, and sometimes, when there’s no Irish-language equivalent, some imaginative substitutes. “We invented certain drug references — for the ones we take, anyway,” Naoise ‘Móglaí Bap’ Ó Cairealláin tells Empire. “We recycled old Irish words that aren’t really used that much anymore and repurposed them,” adding, “[It’s] very uncommon for people to be taking ketamine back in old Ireland.” Here, the Belfast-based trio break down some key phrases from their screenworthy songs. ‘I SPENT ALL MY DLA ON MDMA’ JJ ‘DJ Provai’ Ó Dochartaigh: DLA is your Disability Living Allowance. Liam…

FRANK MILLER: AMERICAN GENIUS IT’S ABOUT TIME someone made a documentary about Frank Miller. The 67-year-old comic-book artist and writer is best known for Sin City and 300, and changed the face of superhero comics 40 years ago with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. His influence is all through superhero films today. With a new documentary covering his life and work, Empire caught up with him to find out what he still wants to see on screen. How do you think the young Frank Miller would have responded if a time traveller had told him that there would be a documentary called Frank Miller: American Genius? He would have said, “But of course!” (Laughs) No, I honestly never thought there’d be such a thing until Silenn Thomas (the documentary’s director…

OUT 5 JULY / CERT 18 / 104 MINS DIRECTOR Ti West CAST Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Bacon PLOT Hollywood, 1985. Porn star and massacre survivor Maxine Minx (Goth) gets a part in a horror film — and is stalked by a serial killer. IN TI WEST’S 1979-set slasher movie X, Mia Goth played would-be porn star Maxine and elderly killer Pearl. Spinning the film out into a triptych rather than a trilogy, the 1919-set Pearl was about the younger days of the murderess, while Maxxxine is set in 1985 and catches up with what the final girl of the Texas Porn Star Massacre did next in her life. Eventual binge-watchers will notice the way elements recur with variations across all three movies…

OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT 16+ / 100 MINS DIRECTORS Asif Kapadia, Joe Sabia PARTICIPANTS Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic The latest documentary from Asif Kapadia (co-directing with Joe Sabia) takes a far less tragic tale than those of Senna and Amy, shadowing Roger Federer from the eve of announcing his retirement to his final moment on court just 12 days later. Despite contributions from peers (Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic), family, pundits and fans, spliced with archive clips and contemporary footage, inevitably Federer can’t hit the dramatic heights of those earlier works. Still, the film does go some way to communicating the difficult feelings — warning: there are many, many tears — the goofily affable Roger suffers as he hangs up his racquet for good. A suitably respectful…

OUT JULY 9 / CERT 12A / 108 MINS. DIRECTOR Mike Cheslik CAST Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Olivia Graves, Wes Tank, hundreds of beavers If you predicted that one of the most entertaining films of the summer would be a deranged $150,000 comedy about a man battling beavers in the frozen north, then congratulations, you are more prescient than us. Essentially The Revenant meets The Road Runner, it’s more or less indescribable, but if you tune into its wacky wavelength you’ll be tickled silly by its relentless sight gags, video-game sound-effects and pure energy (think early Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson). A hit at film festivals, where people have dressed up in beaver-suits for the occasion, it’s one to see with a crowd if you can. If you view it…

OUT 25 JULY (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT TBC / 120 MINS DIRECTOR Guy Ritchie CAST Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Henry Golding, Alex Pettyfer, Cary Elwes, Rory Kinnear PLOT In the early years of World War II, a team of soldiers are sent on an unofficial, unsanctioned mission to hamper the Nazi’s U-boat programme. “REMEMBER, GENTLEMEN,” SAYS Henry Cavill’s Gus March-Phillipps in The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare, “try to have fun.” It is an instructive line. This is a very silly kind of war film, an action comedy with only a tangential, Wikipedia-skim-read level of historical reality. It is extremely loosely based on the real Operation Postmaster, the daring off-books operation which saw a crack team of commandos steal enemy warships from the Germans. In the midst of a…

OUT 14 JUNE / CERT 12 / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Matthew Brown CAST Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries, Jodi Balfour, Orla Brady An unknown Oxford don visited Sigmund Freud’s (Anthony Hopkins) London home shortly before his death in 1939. What if, this film asks, that don had been C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode)? Well, there might have been a clash of ideas as in this movie — although probably considerably sharper. The prominent atheist and Christian apologist, respectively, get into it as World War II looms. It’s not an inherently bad idea, nor an uninteresting pair of characters. The problem is that the conversation drags, with long silences punctuating brief, at times obtuse attacks on one another’s points of view. It’s not the fault of either star, but the…

OUT 19 JULY/CERT 15 / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Josh Margolin CAST June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell PLOT When 90-year-old widow Thelma (June Squibb) is scammed, she embarks on a mission to take her money back. And then some… IF SHE HASN’T earned it already by now, June Squibb certainly deserves American national-treasure status for her performance as the indomitable Thelma. Having played supporting roles for decades in films like The Age Of Innocence, Far From Heaven and About Schmidt, in 2013 she was nominated for an Oscar for Alexander Payne’s Nebraska. But, perhaps unsurprisingly for an industry that’s not very interested in women over 40, let alone over 90, this Sundance hit is her first-ever leading role. And thankfully this indie comedy/road movie/nonagenarian…

Lucifer. Darth Vader. Heisenberg. Thanos. If you were ranking the best fictional villains, no-one would baulk at finding these names near the pinnacle of the list. Each brims with intimidating presence, relentless will, complexity of character and flair for a dastardly master plan. But, in the minds of J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, showrunners of The Rings Of Power, one bad guy has them all beat — in the blink of a fiery eye. “Sauron is one of the greatest villains in the canon of literature, genre writing, filmmaking… all of it,” says McKay. “He is not just dangerous and ruthless and brilliantly strategic in all the ways that great villains are. He’s unique, in that Sauron is a seducer and a deceiver who tricks you into doing evil for him.”…

“WHAT IF THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS HAPPENED AT A TAYLOR SWIFT CONCERT?” THAT’S THE ONE-LINE, HIGH-CONCEPT, elevator pitch that writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has been using to describe Trap, his 16th feature film. It’s a brilliantly neat and typically efficient job for a filmmaker who has become the king of high concepts. This is the man, lest we forget, who brought you The Sixth Sense (what if a child could see dead people?), Unbreakable (what if superheroes were real?) and — of course! — Old (what if there were a beach that could make you old?). Trap is his latest “’90s movie throwback”, as he puts it. “I miss the high-concept movies!” he says. “Trap is meant to be that.” Like all good high concepts, its premise can be…

JAWS Prior to the bloodiest Fourth Of July in Amity Island history, we glimpse a punter hammering away at Sega shooter Killer Shark on the boardwalk. Did Brody or Hooper have a quick go later, in memory of their old pal Quint? We may never know. BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II Marooned in the year 2015, Marty McFly attempts to wow some local future-dwellers with his skills on ’70s shooter Wild Gunman. Sadly, all he gets is a withering eye-roll from an eight-year-old Elijah Wood wearing a sieve on his head. TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY John Connor’s day at the arcades is ruined when a pesky liquid-metal killbot is sent back in time to destroy him. Not only does Connor have to run for his life, he also loses…

1 THE CONVERSATION (OUT 15 JULY, 4K BR) With his new movie Megalopolis swinging for the fences, it’s a great time to appreciate this muted but magnificent effort from Francis Ford Coppola. Rattled off between The Godfather and its sequel, it’s a peerless paranoia thriller revolving around Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul, “the best bugger on the West Coast”. 2 BLOW OUT (OUT 22 JULY, 4K BR) If The Conversation has a rival for ‘finest movie about a sound recordist who gets embroiled in a conspiracy’, it’s this Brian De Palma classic. Boasting one of the best-ever John Travolta performances and absolutely the best-ever split-diopter shot of an owl, it’s also a great film about filmmaking. 3 PERFECT DAYS (OUT NOW, DVD, BR, MUBI) Wim Wenders’ drama about a toilet cleaner…

RESTORE POINT (DIGITAL) Cool, cerebral Czech sci-fi. In the future, the violently dead can be resurrected from a brain back-up, so when someone’s killed and their back-up wiped, it counts as absolute murder. Cop-with-a-grudge Andrea Mohylová investigates a double-double homicide and uncovers corporate conspiracy. RETRIBUTION (2023) (DIGITAL, BLU-RAY) Hedge-fund manager Liam Neeson is stuck in a booby-trapped car with his kids as a mystery voice forces him into an extortion scheme. It’s the fourth take on this script, after the Spanish El Desconocido, the German Steig. Nicht. Aus! and the South Korean Hard Hit. Neeson’s patented grumpy desperation is wearing thin. TIL DEATH DO US PART (DIGITAL) Bride-to-be Natalie Burn leaves Ser’Darius Blain at the altar and his tuxedoed pals — including smarmy Cam Gigandet and gloomy Orlando Jones —…