Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2015 i Empire

WHY DOES THREEPIO HAVE A RED ARM? Is Luke Skywalker actually the villain? On which planet is the Starkiller Base located? Why hasn’t Chewie outwardly aged? What by Yoda’s walking stick the actual plot of The Force Awakens might be is the stuff of intense conjecture and thrilling debate in the Empire office and no doubt with you. And following our first audience with J. J. Abrams and the creatives behind the most ridiculously anticipated film of our lifetime, we nudge closer and closer to the truth. Is Darth Vader still with us? “The Force is strong in my family. My father has it…” Luke’s eerie voiceover claims on the second trailer. Not had it. That’s the magic of it though, isn’t it? The almost knowing. We’d like to paint…

Who was your first movie crush? Margaret Hamilton. On a scale of one to ten, how famous are you? A two. Because half the world has never seen my movies — and never will. I would be put to death in half the countries in this world if they saw my movies. (Laughs) Not only would I not get good reviews, I’d be put to death! Who were you in your first school play? The Little Engine That Could. It’s about a train that keeps saying, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…” I’ve never thought about it before, but that’s exactly what I’ve turned into a career! You think it sounds a bit like self-help? I believe in self-help — what do you think…

A Girl At My Door OUT SEPTEMBER 18 / CERT. 18 / 119 MINS. DIRECTOR July Jung CAST Doona Bae, Kim Sae-ron A South Korean cop (Cloud Atlas’ Doona Bae) moves to a small town and develops a complex relationship with an abused teenaged girl (Kim). It’s an atmospheric, thought-provoking, melodramatic debut from July Jung. ALS Addicted To Sheep OUT AUGUST 28 / CERT. PG / 86 MINS. DIRECTOR Magali Pettier CAST Tom Hutchinson, Kay Hutchinson, Jack Hutchinson, Esme Hutchinson This intimate but unflinching account of the travails of a North Pennine farming family captures the beauty of the changing seasons, while deftly conveying the grimier realities of the rural economy. DP Closed Curtain OUT SEPTEMBER 4 / CERT. TBC / 106 MINS. DIRECTOR Jafar Panahi & Kamboziya Partovi CAST…

THE MUST-SEE KYLO REN IS NOT A… HE WORKS for... uh, do you mind holding on for a moment?” And with that J. J. Abrams is gone. The director has been speaking to Empire from the airport at the tail end of a family holiday. For the past hour we have been been delicately teasing out information about The Force Awakens, arguably the year’s most closely guarded secret. We finally start to make headway at the exact moment Abrams reaches security. His phone, and with it Empire, is abruptly confiscated and placed in a tray alongside shoes, belt and wallet. As it trundles down the conveyor towards X-ray, only the customs official can hear our scream of frustration. Black-robed and badass, Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren is the character who launched…

NO LESS A MUST-SEE THE ROLL CALL OF FIRSTS FOR Skyfall is lengthier than 007’s Oddbins shopping list, but here’s a few: it was the first Bond to break a billion; the first to win a BAFTA in almost 50 years, and the biggest British film of all time (yes, even bigger than Sex Lives Of The Potato Men). As a reaction to that, Sam Mendes, Daniel Craig and the team at Eon have upped the ante considerably for its follow-up, the 24th Bond movie. When the dust settles from all the explosions, Spectre will be a more expansive, epic, globe-trotting endeavour than Skyfall. Whether it’s Bond reducing half of Mexico City to rubble in the film’s pre-credits sequence, driving a plane with no wings through a snowy forest, or…

THE OTHER BUSTLING BIOPIC ABOUT A MAN WHO LIVED LIFE ON THE EDGE VISIONARY, TECH WIZARD AND the man who put that little ‘i’ in front of our lives, Steve Jobs’ name sparks genuflection in Silicon Valley. To the unitiated, he was a Buddhist and a business genius, a walking TED Talk with Bono on speed-dial. But there’s a yang to this yin, and Michael Fassbender’s Jobs — a human firework attached to the shortest of fuses — could be Danny Boyle’s scariest character since Begbie. “I’ve always thought of our Jobs as a monster made beautiful by language,” explains the director. “And by two women.” The lyricism comes courtesy of Aaron Sorkin, a writer who ruffled the feathers of Mark Zuckerberg with The Social Network. His approach to bringing…

ANOTHER TWIST ON OLD-SCHOOL GOTHIC… REIMAGINED? REMADE? THIS Frankenstein is remixed, really — sampling the best of the backlog of adaptations, to create an entirely new monster. “We’re having fun with it,” says director Paul McGuigan. “We don’t have reverence to it, you know? I think sometimes the Shelley book becomes quite reverent — quite right because there’s this great idea — but when I read it I didn’t identify with it very well. It’s almost like if you hate the book, you’ll love the movie!” “I hope he means that!” says Daniel Radcliffe, who is playing Igor, confidant to the titular doctor (James McAvoy) and the man who tries to save him from his desperate plans to create new life. “There are elements from the book that have clearly…

• MARK ABRAHAMS/TRUNKARCHIVE.COM THE NEW ROAD FOR ROCKY How did you react when director Ryan Coogler approached you about playing Apollo Creed’s son? We were shooting Fruitvale (Station) when he told me about it. I was like, “Let’s do it!” Creed was very important to him — it came from his relationship with his father, a huge Rocky fan. That’s something powerful and honest, the type of film I want to be involved in. After that I started boxing training in secret. Were you a Rocky fan? I didn’t have as strong a connection as Ryan, but I’m definitely a fan. II and IV were my favourites. Did you study any other movie boxers? No, I wanted to do my own thing. Adonis is kind of an unrefined, scrappy version…

Avengers: Age Of Ultron FROM SEPTEMBER 14 / CERT. 12 DO THE ROBOT WHY ON EARTH would I make another Avengers movie? It was ill-advised. I see that now,” sighs Joss Whedon at the start of his solo commentary for Age Of Ultron’s Blu-ray/DVD. He’s joking, but not joking. During the press tour, the director made it clear that he’d found the experience extraordinarily testing, battling his producers over cuts and struggling to keep control of the titanic narrative. A vast cast has been made even vaster, via the addition of speedster Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), hex-flinging Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), mystical plum The Vision (Paul Bettany) and Stark-built Frankenbot Ultron himself (James Spader), giving this sequel more story strands than HYDRA has heads. As Whedon puts it later in the…

WINGING IT No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you — this is a knife set in the shape of an X-wing. Perfect for slicing into some Porkins, or maybe even cutting a potato Wedge. amazon.co.uk, £53.44 SLICE — THE FINAL FRONTIER This stainless steel replica of the NCC-1701D has a five-year mission: to explore strange new pizzas, to seek out new toppings and sauces, to boldly go where no pizza cutter has gone before. www.firebox.com, £24.99 ALIEN VS PREDATOR VS BOTTLE Two risible films haven’t even come close to settling the age-old battle that is Alien vs Predator. Can these snazzy bottle openers finally solve the debate? Whoever wins... we booze. forbiddenplanet.com, £16.99 each HOLY HARD-BOILED EGG, BATMAN! Gotham? How about eggs and bread as well? Then you’re all set to…

Woman In Gold FROM NOW / CERT. 12 A black-and-white account of Maria Altmann’s struggle to reclaim Klimt’s The Woman In Gold, that happens to be the portrait of her aunt taken by the Nazis. Helen Mirren’s Maria is all flurries of Jewish outrage and Ryan Reynolds the lawyer on the case, recounted with TV-movie thoroughness, zero complexity and mawkish flashbacks to wartime Vienna. IN The New Girlfriend FROM SEPTEMBER 7 / CERT. 15 François Ozon is in dark, playful mood in this Ruth Rendell adaptation about a bereaved husband (Romain Duris) with a cross-dressing secret. See it for its subversive laughs, suspense, precision filmmaking and Duris, whose central performance is by turns bravura and vulnerable. Think Mrs. Doubtfire shot by Hitchcock, art-directed by Almodóvar. WT Paul Blart: Mall Cop…

Rosewater FRO. SEPTEMBER 7 / CERT. 15 Jon Stewart’s acting career brought us Professor Edward Furlong in The Faculty and Rollerblader #1 in .ixed Nuts. His directorial debut is in another league. A smart, compassionate look at a real-life journalist’s recent detention in Iran, it reveals the fear and pettiness beneath the bombast of tyrants. .ore like this, please, .r. Stewart. NDS Far From The Madding Crowd FRO. AUGUST 31 / CERT. 12 Carey .ulligan lights up this Thomas Hardy perennial as the forthright woman choosing between three men: a simple farmer (.atthias Schoenaerts), a stuffy bachelor (.ichael Sheen, excellent) and a dashing soldier (Tom Sturridge). It is a bit chocolate-box pretty, but the cast impress. IF Accidental Love FRO. NOW / CERT. 15 A Franken-comedy bolted together several years…

Naked Lunch 1991 / FROM NOW / CERT. 18 William S. Burroughs’ classic underground novel was long deemed unfilmable. David Cronenberg’s solution was to instead deliver a dizzyingly repulsive meditation on the writing of the book itself, via insectoid typewriters, talking sphincters and lots of beetles. Relentlessly inventive and slyly funny, it’s thrillingly hardcore Cronenberg. AS The Apostle 1997 / FROM NOW / CERT. 12 A long-nurtured personal project for writer/director/star Robert Duvall, The Apostle dug its dirty knuckles into the Pentecostal preaching scene of the US South. As damaged (and damaging) preacher Sonny Dewey, on the run for second-degree murder, Duvall turns in one of his fiercest and most committed performances. DJ The Ice Harvest 2005 / FROM NOW / CERT. 15 Pairing John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton…

1. Whose films have made more money worldwide cumulatively: Sean Connery OR Michael Caine? 2. In which films does Sir Sean play the following nationalities? A THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER B TIME BANDITS C HIGHLANDER D THE UNTOUCHABLES 3.BEFORE BECOMING AN ACTOR, WHICH OF THESE PROFESSIONS DID HE NOT TRY HIS HAND AT? 4. Match the put-down to the movie. 1 “ENOUGH OF THIS USELESS BANTER... FAREWELL, DEAR SHITHEAD, FAREWELL!” 2 “THIS TOWN STINKS LIKE A WHOREHOUSE AT LOW TIDE.” 3 “IT’S AN ACT OF LUNACY, GENERAL SIR. PERSONALLY, I THINK YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT.” 4 “YOU HAVE OUR PERMISSION TO BUGGER OFF!” 5 “CAN YOU GET YOUR BUTTOCKS OFF MY TONGUE?” 6 “YOU LEFT, JUST AS YOU WERE BECOMING INTERESTING.” 5. WHICH BOND SONG DOES HE SING ON…

Ghostbusters: The Supernatural Spectacular (Richard Mueller) This bizarre novelisation includes an erotic backstory for the Library Ghost. Ghostbusters: Mass Hysteria (Erik Burnham) A new hardcover collection of 20 comic-book issues. Surprisingly light on cats and dogs living together. Designs On Film (Cathy Whitlock) The hundreds of images within span the likes of The Wizard Of Oz, Rosemary’s Baby and Jaws.…

1 Anything Goes John Williams Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom 2 Disco Inferno Trammps Saturday Night Fever 3 Trapped Colonel Abrams Coming To America 4 Lose Yourself Eminem 8 Mile 5 PTP Show Me Your Spine RoboCop 6 People Are People Depeche Mode American Psycho 7 Twist Kid Billy Fury Play It Cool 8 I Follow Rivers (The Magician Remix) Lykke Li Rust & Bone 9 Rush Rush Debbie Harry Scarface 10 End Of Line Daft Punk Tron Legacy 11 I Am The Naughty Lola Marlene Dietrich The Blue Angel 12 For What You Dream Of Bedrock Trainspotting TO LISTEN TO THE ABOVE, SEARCH ‘EMPIRE MAGAZINEs ON SPOTIFY, OR VISIT OUR YOUTUBE ACCOUNT.…

SIMON BRAUND Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro (p. 57) “Interviewing De Niro is usually like getting blood from a stone. He’s not ‘difficult’, just painfully shy. Hathaway is the opposite, and even he couldn’t resist her irrepressible perkiness.” NOMA BAR Re.View (p. 121) “Obviously extreme car scenes were my starting point for Fast & Furious 7. But I was looking for a bit more tension than a jumping car, so I drew a hand holding a gun — and the arm forms the windows and rear wing. It gave another dimension.” JOHN ROYLE Kim Newman’s Movie Dungeon (p. 133) “When I work on these illustrations I have fun picturing Kim as a Van Helsing-type individual, dispatching the various horror characters each month in a kind of modern-day Penny Dreadful…

AT THE MOMENT, THE BEST Actress Oscar race seems to be a fairly staid affair, a line-up of the usual suspects — Blanchett, Lawrence, Streep — in Oscar-friendly roles with doggedly worthy Oscar-friendly fare. But don’t rule out the darkest of dark horses just yet: Charlize Theron, for her turn as Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s unlikely, but Fury Road had such a critical impact that the film itself, and George Miller, should lodge in the Academy’s mind when it comes to nominations, so why not Theron? Her intense but layered performance gives Miller’s film its heart and balls, while the Academy is not averse to nominating blockbuster turns: just look at Johnny Depp for the first Pirates Of The Caribbean or, more pertinently, Sigourney Weaver, who…

William Friedkin will direct the movie version of Don Winslow’s cracking hitman thriller, The Winter Of Frankie Machine. After burning up the screen in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, Rebecca Ferguson could star in X-Men spin-off Gambit. Kingsman’s Taron Egerton will don a Lincoln green shellsuit for Robin Hood: Origins, one of three Hood movies in the works now. Bill Murray will be in Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters after all, it seems. Not as Peter Venkman, mind, but you can’t have everything.…

How’s this for precocious? Having kicked off his film career playing Richard Ayoade’s idea of a Welsh teenager in Submarine, Craig Roberts is now a director at the age of 24. And a writer. Oh, and the star as well. “I had stories of me growing up in Wales,” Roberts says modestly of Just Jim. “So I just put something together, and added an American.” That American is Emile Hirsch, who today is standing alongside Roberts and Aneirin Hughes in a field in the rain, pretending that it’s a golf course. Not all the locations have been cheated though: Just Jim is autobiographical enough that it’s being shot in the village of Maesycwmmer, where Roberts grew up. “I didn’t need to do any location scouting ,” he says. Jim even…

• ANDREAS ÖHLUND & .ARIA THERESE 1 The Swedish star has played most things in his career, but very rarely cops. That changes with this month’s BBC show River, in which he plays a cop haunted, literally, by his demons. “I’ve turned down a lot of police shows,” he says. “I’m really bad at saying ‘download the CCTV footage’, those kinds of lines. But this is not about procedural things. It has poetic qualities.” 2 The 64-year-old was last seen very briefly in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, showing up for a cameo that was largely incomprehensible, with footage left on the cutting-room floor. Can he shed any light? “No!” he says, helpfully. “I wasn’t supposed to be in it, but then they called me in. I can tell you what…

SEPT 1 If you go to oldvictheatre.com and buy a ticket for a play on this date, you will see Rob Brydon star in Future Conditional. SEPT 2 The world’s wettest film festival opens in Venice. Everest kicks things off. Hope they haven’t peaked too soon. SEPT 3 Take a celebratory sip of tiger blood — Charlie Sheen is 50 today. Or 489 in Charlie Sheen years. SEPT 4 Can Meryl Streep outshine the new Frank Martin? Ricki And The Flash takes on The Transporter Refuelled today. SEPT 5 Take the blue pill. “Theatrical Viagra” Nicole Kidman is back on stage in Photograph 51.delfontmackintosh.co.uk SEPT 6 It’s film festival month, alright, and Telluride — which started September 4 — is a little gem.telluridefilmfestival.org SEPT 7 On this day in 1895,…

• JASON BELL/CAMERA PRESS THE HARD-HITTING THRILLER What drew you to the part of FBI agent Kate Macer in Sicario? The thing that struck me as being profoundly sad, when I read the script, is seeing this woman’s ideals being torn to shreds by this group that she’s working with — physically and mentally. This is a very competent cop, a very competent person. She’s very good at what she does, but she’s not allowed to use any of the skills she’s learned at the FBI when she’s thrown into this incoherent world. Even though she’s got a steely edge she’s slowly overpowered by these men. What was it like being the only woman among so many men? They were sweet. I got lots of attention. But it was a…

THE TRUE-LIFE DISASTER MOVIE CROUCHED BENEATH A CRYSTALLINE-BLUE ICE buttress, rocking back and forth on crampons, Jason Clarke is showing Empire his holiday pics. “Straight down, dude,” the Australian grins, swiping at his iPad. “Literally straight down 12,000 feet. We were going along with ice-axes. Sixty-mile-an-hour winds, it was. And that’s the ridge-line there. Yeah, dude, it’s a fucking ridge-line. Marty (Henderson) was on the middle and our guide Paul was on the other side, which was still death. If one of us had slipped...” They call it ‘summit fever’: the mania that grips otherwise rational men and women, driving them to pit themselves against Earth’s most monstrous peaks. Clarke’s act of derringdo, a trek up New Zealand’s Tasman Glacier over Christmas 2013, required cojones of titanium. But next to…

Pitch Perfect 2 FROM SEPTEMBER 7 / CERT. TBC Elizabeth Banks takes Jason Moore’s seat behind the camera for this acappella encore, which sees the Barden Bellas toppled from their throne as varsity vocal champions. The central ensemble is as charming as ever, but the story ambles without purpose and the musical numbers miss the original’s high notes. JD Spooks: The Greater Good FROM SEPTEMBER 14 / CERT. 15 Graduating to the big screen, BBC drama Spooks makes its triumphant return with Peter Firth’s Harry Pearce disgraced and on the run, with Kit Harrington in pursuit. This Bond-on-a-budget thriller does the series proud while never quite expanding into a truly theatrical experience. JD Big Game FROM SEPTEMBER 21 / CERT. 15 If you thought Air Force One should have taken…

Girlhood FROM AUGUST 31 / CERT. 15 This tough, terrific French coming-of-age drama is a story of sisterhood set in the Parisian banlieues. Sixteen-year-old Marieme (Karidja Touré) copes with an abusive brother, turf wars and few opportunities with spirit, soul and flashes of La Haine-like defiance. Look out for Rihanna’s Diamonds in one of the scenes of the year. PDS A Little Chaos FROM NOW / CERT. 12 Alan Rickman’s second directorial effort is a handsome but inert period piece set in the Versailles of Louis XIV. Kate Winslet’s garden designer falls for Matthias Schoenaerts’ generously maned landscaper — think Titchmarsh meets Fabio — but it’s all too serene to captivate. Only Stanley Tucci brings joie de vivre as Louis’ younger bro. PDS White God FROM NOW / CERT. 15…

British Gangsters AS PROUDLY UNEXPORTABLE as prawn cocktail crisps, the Brit-gangster movie is the UK’s most prolific subgenre. Get this: UK Netflix has over 30 guvnor-fests in its library, a veritable oi!mageddon of mockney machismo notable for its déjà-view casting. Of the five films sampled, the ace Jamie Foreman appears in three. First up: Layer Cake . Matthew Vaughn’s directorial debut sees a million ecstasy pills bringing misery to Daniel Craig’s dealer and the none-more-British spectacle of GBH with a tea-urn. There’s the usual underworld types, but what sets Layer Cake apart is Craig’s Faustian antihero: a bourgeois chancer playing a hardmen’s game. A decade on, it feel pwopah classic, bolstered by a before-they-were-famous cast including Tom Hardy, Sienna Miller and Ben Whishaw. St George’s Day is geezer bingo and…

THAT ZOMBIE apocalypse isn’t ending any time soon, and this column is again overwhelmed by the shambling, hungry, dangerous dead. Zach Lipovsky’s Dead Rising: Watchtower, based on a computer-game franchise, has the standard zombie outbreak premise, but unusually builds its plot around something else — a military/government conspiracy involving an anti-zombie drug. Exploitative reporter protagonist Chase Carter (Jesse Metcalfe) gets a character arc as well as a superfluity of zombies to kill, and Virginia Madsen brings some depth as a mother who refuses to admit her daughter is now a monster. It also features human villains (nasty general Dennis Haysbert and punk warlord Aleks Paunovic) who are doing well out of the zombie plague and want to see it spread. No classic, but pick of the current litter... Which runs…

1988 / FROM SEPTEMBER 14 / CERT. 18 STATE OF FEAR IF ALAN PARKER has genuinely retired, it is a tragedy. He was such a firebrand, and such a stylist too. Case in point: Mississippi Burning, his incensed and captivating civil rights thriller, arguably his best film, whatever Spike Lee says. Politicised but always entertaining, it was, as Parker points out on the commentary, “fundamentally a detective story”. But the vision of FBI agents in grey G-Men suits wading up to their belts into the swamp transforms into a striking metaphor for America’s divided soul. Parker was well aware, even encouraged that he had something “rare” — a studio movie that relished its own controversy. The year is 1964, and three white civil-rights workers have gone missing, presumed murdered. Two…

Les Enfants du Paradis 1945 / OUT NOW / CERT. PG ART AND SOUL EVEN TAKING HARRY LIME’S POINT about the greatest art often emerging from the harshest portions of history, Les Enfants du Paradis is something close to a miracle. Standing alongside La Règle du Jeu as perhaps France’s greatest film and, at the time, definitely its most expensive, this sumptous historical epic was made under the watchful eye of the Gestapo, had extras so malnourished they stole food from its period banquet tables, saw its vast Nice sets destroyed by a storm, and was finally forced to decamp north to Paris. The shoot was delayed by not one but two invasions. One of its cast was sentenced to death as a collaborator. Never mind France’s Gone With The…

Dungeons & Dragons POOL OF RADIANCE (1988) Top-notch ’80s technology brought D&D to life with 3D dungeoneering and isometric wizard battles. Magic missiles all round. EYE OF THE BEHOLDER (1991) This riffed on FTL’s Dungeon Master to create a first-person romp complete with floating, spell-flinging eyeballs. PLANESCAPE: TORMENT (1999) Unsuccessful at the time but now a cult classic thanks to a dark storyline, great dialogue and its undying antihero. BALDUR’S GATE II: SHADOWS OF AMN (2000) BioWare claimed the RPG throne with this sequel, which saw the triumphant return of Minsc and Boo. NEVERWINTER (2013) The Forgotten Realms go massively multiplayer. Not as engaging as earlier titles but by far the best-looking.…

Star Wars: The Imperial Handbook AUTHOR DANIEL WALLACE / OUT NOW Including such Sith-bits as a breakdown of Imperial Navy Ships Of The Fleet, this is purportedly “A Commander’s Guide” printed just before the Battle Of Yavin, complete with (slightly naff) margin notes from the likes of Han, Luke and Mon Mothma. Despite its glossy presentation, this spoof guide to all things Imperial is more fun toilet-read than coffee-table decoration. DJ Seeking Perfection: The Unofficial Guide To Tremors AUTHOR JONATHAN MELVILLE / OUT NOW Though it has spawned a flurry of low-budget sequels and a TV show, rollickingly fun ’80s monster movie Tremors has never been treated with much respect. Super-fan Jonathan Melville sets that right with this high-access tell-all (he even got Kevin Bacon), which began life as an…

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE’S BIG BAD AND THE MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS MOVIE’S IVAN OOZE — SEPARATED AT BIRTH? PHIL BROWN (@BROWNPHILIPBROWN) Stop me if I’m wrong, but might there be the tiniest chance @EmpireMagazine’s Amy Schumer shoot was referencing Madonna? TAE MAWSON (@TMAWSM) I promise you the National Lampoon’s Vacation remake would have done much better in the UK if they’d called it ‘Holiday’ instead of ‘Vacation’. LIZ GOULDER, FACEBOOK EMPIRE AROUND THE WORLD Chichén Itzfl, Mexico MJ Gannon Chelyabinsk, Russia Sergey Letyagin Hanoi Hilton, Vietnam Rosie and Alex Wynne (They took their Born On The Fourth Of July issue specifically to Vietnam!) NUMBERS, MAN On reading the State Of The Movie Nation infographic in the latest issue, I saw that on average people have 68 DVDs/Blu-rays in a collection. I…

• DEREK KETTELA/TRUNKARCHIVE.CO. UNLIKE Bridesmaids’ Annie, life is definitely not biting Kristen Wiig in the ass right now. The actor-writer-current Ghostbuster’s cachet is measurable in that most reliable of movie-star metrics, projects she can’t really talk about. Before the ’busting (“We’re having so much fun”) comes Ridley Scott’s The Martian (“Ridley is amazing”), in which she plays a PR guru. First up is a project she can merrily discuss, The Diary Of A Teenage Girl, a frank ’70s-set coming-of-age indie that flaunts her dramatic chops. “I love doing drama,” she enthuses, “but I also love doing comedy and music. I’d prefer to do a whole variety of things.” The period setting struck a chord. “I’d have been happy to walk away in any of the bell bottoms or vintage sweaters,”…

THE LFF IS BACK IN BUSINESS The BFI London Film Festival, now in its 59th glorious year, returns this October. The full programme will be unveiled at the end of August, but we can reveal four gala screenings, including Suffragette, which will open the festival on October 7, and three other belters... HIGH-RISE The Festival Gala, sponsored by Empire, we’re delighted to bring you the first look at Ben Wheatley’s J. G. Ballard adaptation, with Tom Hiddleston and Luke Evans running amok in a tower block in the 1970s. Lands on October 9. CAROL Todd Haynes’ awards frontrunner, in which Cate Blanchett’s New York housewife falls in love with Rooney Mara’s shopgirl at a time — the 1950s – when that sort of thing was heavily frowned upon, took Cannes…

EXPERIENCE 2005 The Derby Stallion Patrick McCardle, a young aspiring jockey “Man, I was so young. I remember that I had to learn to ride a horse in two days. I’d never ridden and I had to get to the stage where I could do a three-foot jump. I’ve had a lot of fun riding horses since, all down to that movie.” 2006 High School Musical Troy Bolton, a singing, dancing basketball star 2007 Hairspray Link Larkin, a teen idol “THE FIRST TIME I MET JOHN TRAVOLTA HE WAS ALREADY IN FULL HAIR AND MAKE-UP (AS EDNA TURNBLAD). THAT WAS PRETTY BIZARRE. MICHELLE PFEIFFER AND I HAD SO MUCH FUN WITH THAT. LATER WE DID NEW YEAR’S EVE TOGETHER, AND THAT TIME I GOT TO KISS HER…” 2009 17 Again…

UNMISSABLE EXCELLENT GOOD POOR TRAGIC Legend OUT SEPTEMBER 9 / CERT. TBC / 131 MINS. DIRECTOR Brian Helgeland CAST Tom Hardy, Tom Hardy, Emily Browning, David Thewlis, Taron Egerton PLOT A portrait of East-End gangsters the Kray twins (Hardy and Hardy) at their peak, through the eyes of Reggie Kray’s wife Frances (Browning). LIKE IT OR NOT — and it’s certainly not something to be celebrated — Ronnie and Reggie Kray were as much ’60s Brit icons as The Beatles, Michael Caine or Twiggy. The identical twin crimelords may have been violent thugs and, eventually, convicted murderers, but during their rise they rubbed shoulders with the rich, famous and powerful, and encouraged a ‘they look after their own’ street-mythology that endures to this day. Like Al Capone a generation before…

LIKE A GENDER-SWAP HAROLD AND Maude for the Instagram generation (without the May-December nookie and simulated suicides) The Intern makes strange bedfellows of Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway to charming effect. Written and directed by Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated), the film casts De Niro as Ben, a recently bereaved retiree who becomes an intern at a booming online fashion company. His boss is workaholic go-getter Jules, played by Hathaway, who is no stranger to the fashion world thanks to The Devil Wears Prada and reaffirms her comedy chops here after an Oscar-winning turn in Les Misérables and forays into sci-fi with The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar. As Ben, a man’s man in a manchild’s world whose old-school gentility slowly wins Jules’ trust and friendship, De…

BB-8 STARTED LIFE AS a napkin. Specifically two circles, one large and one small, sketched on said item by J. J. Abrams. Everyone knows R2-D2 is the real hero of the Star Wars saga (he saves every major hero at least once) — this doodle was to become his successor. Enter the wizards in Neal Scanlan’s creature shop, who were determined to make BB-8 as tangible and ‘real’ as his co-stars, so set about building an articulated model. “BB-8 can cock his head over and look away, he can double take, he can look scared, he can look angry. We managed to find a whole vocabulary of movement for him,” says puppeteer Brian Herring. “We worked out a whole bunch of stuff. What would he do if you turned him…

THE ROMANTIC HORROR “For Edith, it’s about learning to fear the living, not the dead.”Mia Wasikowska THE INSIDE OF GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S MIND IS exactly what you might expect: dense, layered, cluttered and packed to the brim with astonishing, haunting imagery. But it isn’t where you might expect. It’s erupted out of his head, onto a soundstage at Pinewood Toronto, where it’s taken the form of Allerdale Hall, a crumbling English mansion built on a clay mine, that plays host to the key action of his new film, Crimson Peak. Three storeys high, virtually self-contained (only a couple of rooms are absent, located slightly off the main hulk), with a level of art design that boggles the brain, it’s an incredibly, intricately detailed nightmare-scape that might just be the most…

THE WAR FOR PANEM CONCLUDES “IT IS QUITE HARD TO BELIEVE we’re actually at the end,” says Sam Claflin, who has now been playing Finnick Odair in the Hunger Games movies for “what feels like as long as I can remember” (actually three years). It’s almost hard to credit that the first Hunger Games movie came out in 2012, given the series seems like it’s been around much longer, such is its place in popular culture. Once it was a mid-level YA adaptation that drew comparisons with Twilight, now it’s a multi-billion titan that had out-grossed the Twilight movies by film two. “I fully expect that it will stay with me for the rest of my life,” says Claflin, “which I’m fine with.” “I did not cope at all with…

1 Meet Deckard (CHAPTER 1, 1:00) We’re introduced to Jason Statham’s bad guy, Deckard Shaw, in spectacular fashion — as he levels a hospital to talk to baby brother Owen (Luke Evans). “Jason and myself were the new kids,” says James Wan. “I wanted to make a statement with my opening scene. This is a slightly different Fast & Furious film — it doesn’t involve cars to the extent that they had in the past.” 2 The Shaw Brothers (CHAPTER 1, 1:18) At the end of the film, both Shaws are still alive. It almost went a different way. “I pitched a version where, as he leaves the room, Statham unplugs Owen’s life-support and mercy-kills his brother,” says Wan. “But there’s potential down the road for the brothers to team…

The Walking Dead: Season 5 FRO. NOW / CERT. 18 With A.C’s zombies in rude health, still scaring up huge ratings, this fifth year brims with confidence, barrelling from one creepy location (cannibal trap, hospital, suspiciously sedate town) to another. There are slow bits, but enough astonishing kills to make Romero’s head spin. The best: death by firehose. NDS The Flash: Season 1 FRO. NOW / CERT. TBC Spun off from The Arrow, The Flash hit the ground running with a charming lead performance from Grant Gustin as speedster Barry Allen, a batch of clever ideas and an overarching plot that, while sometimes silly, managed to dig up real emotional stakes. Good luck to the DC film universe in making the character as fun. JW Humans FRO. NOW / CERT.…

ILLUSTRATION INFOMEN 1 The Transporter Refueled (2015) Place du Palais De Justice, Nice Ed Skrein steps into Jason Statham’s shiny brogues and scuffs them on the solar plexuses of henchmen all over the Riviera. One scene sees him pick up Loan Chabanol’s Anna at Nice’s Palais de Justice, disguised as a Monaco bank, while we also visit Nice’s airport. 2 The Jewel Of The Nile (1985) Villefranche-sur-Mer port If you’re lucky enough to have a yacht handy, perhaps bought with proceeds from the sale of a huge emerald, you could do worse than park it here, just outside Nice. That way, you can waterski by day while your other half writes romance novels, and head into town to meet rich-but-despotic rulers at night — or just admire the town. 3…

THE DROP Tom Hardy find’ a puppy in a bin. But in’tead of going all We Built A Zoo, the tale fold’ in Chechen mob’ter’ and a p’ycho named Eric (Matthia’ Schoenaert’). The re’ult i’ a ten’e thriller, with a neat twi’t and Jame’ Gandolfinis’ final role. FROM SEPTEMBER 18 JOHN WICK Keanu Reeve’ doe’nst ’ay, “I know gun-fu,” but he might a’ well. Thi’ bli’tering action movie about a vengeful a’’a’’in wa’ directed by two of Reeve’s ’tunt double’, who are now cueing up a ’py movie with Charlize Theron. FROM NOW MONSTERS UNIVERSITY A’ much of a ’cream a’ the original, Pixars’ prequel ’ee’ Sulley and Mike navigate college. The re’ult’ are Animal Hou’e meet’ Hellboy, with a line-up of lovable, weirdo creature’ competing to win the Scare…

1974 / FROM SEPTEMBER 14 / CERT. 15 TANGERINE SCREAM AFTER THE BOX-office success of Deliverance and the subsequent collapse of his plans to film The Lord Of The Rings, the result of United Artists’ almost endless financial woes, John Boorman — an eclectic, critically underrated Brit director — managed to scare up the miserly budget to make Zardoz from an apparently napping 20th Century Fox. What emerged is a batshit-insane mélange of high camp and cod-philosophising which has Sean Connery as an orange-nappy-clad brute who travels in the giant stone head of his god Zardoz to an apparent utopia, populated by bored immortals who have simultaneously lost the ability to maintain erections and any kind of taste for interior design. There are distant echoes of both the anthropological satire…

UHF 1989 FROM NOW CERT. PG A cinematic novelty record from pop spoofer ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic, whose nerdy doofus inherits a cable TV station. Cue erratic parody, set at channel-flicking speed, and gags of The Bleedin’ Obvious Kind (hello, Conan The Librarian). Any cult appeal seems restricted to ’80s nostalgia but credit to the fake-ads: Spatula City offers a rare flash of Mr. Weird’s stupid-genius. Out Of The Clouds 1955 FROM NOW CERT. U Heathrow, barely recognisable from today’s air-cattle hub, is the star of this ’50s portmanteau drama: a passport to a bygone era when air hostesses implored fliers to “fasten your lap straps”. While its timid dramas never take off, the charm lies in its romantic vision of the burgeoning jet age: shot in chalky pastels, it looks…

AUTHOR DANIEL WALLACE / OUT SEPTEMBER 25 FRIGHTENINGLY GOOD PAUL FEIG recently tweeted photos of his new Ghostbusters team’s updated accoutrements: jumpsuits (“#whatyougonnawear”), proton packs (“#whatyougonnashoot”) and Ectomobile (“#whattheygonnadrive”). Added high-viz stripes notwithstanding, the reboot’s designs hew remarkably close to those of the original movie. Its ethos — ghoul-hunting on a miniscule budget — lives on. Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History is a terrific backwards look at how a silly 1984 comedy was, to quote Dan Aykroyd’s foreword, “visually enlivened” into legend. For all its daftness, the film was bolted together with hardcore science, thanks to the involvement of big-brained people like Aykroyd, hardware consultant Stephen Dane and SFX supervisor Chuck Gaspar, aka the guy who made the eggs jump. Things don’t just look cool — they’re there for a…

SEEING DOUBLE Tom Hardy plays both Kray twins in Legend. With that in mind, answer me this: in the coming awards season, could Tom Hardy be nominated for Best Actor twice or Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor? Surely the Academy voters have enough of a sense of humour to make this happen... RICH PATERSON, TAKELEY It’s conceivable — it may even be possible — but chances are slim. There have been actors nominated for two different roles in the same year before, such as Al Pacino (Scent Of A Woman, Glengarry Glenn Ross in 1993), and there’s the odd case of Barry Fitzgerald, getting both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor nods for the same role in 1944’s Going My Way. For your lateral thinking, have some Zavvi…