Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i Empire

I DON’T KNOW about you, but I wasn’t expecting to end last year being scared silly by a 122-year-old poem. Yet when the teaser trailer for Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later landed, complete with a recital of Rudyard Kipling’s anti-war ode ‘Boots’, that’s exactly what happened. “Don’t — don’t — don’t — don’t look at what’s in front of you,” rumbled a haunted, scratchy voice (actor Taylor Holmes, recorded in 1915), as we got glimpses of a UK beset by flesh-hungry monsters. “Boots — boots — boots — boots movin’ up an’ down again/Men — men — men — men — men go mad with watchin’ em/An’ there’s no discharge in the war!” It made for the most inspired and powerful trailer of 2024, and despite the advice of Kipling,…

28 Years Later adorns our cover this issue. But 23 years ago, we went big on Danny Boyle’s original Brit-horror classic. Of the film’s genesis, writer Alex Garland offered, “I had an idea about a zombie movie where the zombies ran. But there were lots of things playing into that — George A. Romero, The Day Of The Triffids, the Resident Evil games… The genre humour that ran through it had something in common with Starship Troopers.” It would become a much more serious work, the film’s opening scenes of a deserted London involving some guerilla filmmaking. “I was up on top of St Thomas’ Hospital,” producer Andrew Macdonald told us. “Terrorist police asked me to move on because I could see across the gates into Downing Street.” Happily, no…

WHEN EMPIRE IS patched into a Zoom with James Cameron, it’s on 18 December — 15 years to the day since Avatar was first released. But he’s not marking the occasion with blue balloons or a tulkun-shaped cake. He’s got the follow-up to the most successful movie in history, plus the third-most successful movie in history, keeping him busy. “Oh, good point. I didn’t even realise that milestone was upon us,” he says. “I’ve spent the last three days pulling all-nighters, getting the film ready to screen for Disney. Dealing with the sound and all that. Getting all perfectionistnerdy about the presentation.” Even 12 months out from release, Cameron is working overtime on making sure Fire And Ash scorches our faces off. He’s taking an hour out of his schedule,…

THE POWER OF Christ has compelled cinema for a long time. But things are changing in what is called “faith-based” cinema: the quality and quantity of Christian filmmaking seems to be increasing, exponentially. “It’s become much more sophisticated,” says Thomas Bonifield, editor of ChristianFilmBlog.com and director of 2020’s family caper Miracle On Christmas. “Christian movies have had a reputation for being cheesy and fairly amateurish in terms of their production values. But that has changed.” While there remains plenty of cheap-and-cheerful-and-churchgoing films, religious content is now attracting bigger budgets, mainstream studio distribution, and A-list talent. Sony has a Christian division, Affirm Films; Lionsgate has partnered with Christian production company Kingdom Story Company; Mark Wahlberg has said he is focusing on faith-based work after putting millions of dollars into 2022’s biographical…

THE EARLY ROLE Aged 22, John Magaro was a background artist in Steven Spielberg’s Munich, a film depicting the aftermath of the 1972 Olympic hostage crisis. “My big break was a scene where Eric Bana crosses the street and I walk past him,” he laughs. “I was very thin, young and hopeful.” This first experience on a movie set would stay with Magaro as he went on to play Geoffrey Mason, a TV producer in the ABC sports crew forced into covering the same unfolding tragedy. “It’s a very different movie,” he notes of the upcoming film September 5. “This is much more in the vein of All The President’s Men and Spotlight. The intrigue of the first two minutes of Munich is turned into this 90-minute story about how…

WE ALL KNOW Hollywood loves a sequel, but the imminent arrival of ‘Donald Trump: Electric Boogaloo’ has been met with a widespread sense of foreboding. In the run-up to November’s election, Harrison Ford, Julia Roberts and a whole raft of stars closed ranks behind Trump’s rival Kamala Harris, but their efforts were to no avail. Instead, the former President will return to the White House emboldened and quite possibly lugging an axe to grind. “Few people expect a Trump administration to be pro-Hollywood,” AGC Studios (Hit Man, Woman Of The Hour) head Stuart Ford tells Empire. “So we’re strapping ourselves in for likely more turbulence.” Ford fears that could spell trouble for films with politically or socially contentious subject matter. He was one of the producers of Justin Kurzel’s thriller…

“I BELIEVE THE world is not so much made up of good guys and bad guys, but bad guys and very bad guys,” Eric Newman tells Empire. It’s an understandable statement from the showrunner of cartel drama Narcos and spin-off Narcos: Mexico, but for his new series Zero Day, a conspiracy theory-plagued political thriller, the boundaries are a little blurrier. “We came up with this story [about] an investigation — the outcome of which really matters — and set it in a world where truth has become relative, and therefore the actual truth is so important,” he explains. The “we” in question is news producer and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Michael Schmidt, author of Donald Trump V. The United States: Inside the Struggle To Stop A President,…

IT’S SAFE TO say that The Gorge is the most romantic film that Scott Derrickson has made to date. Sure, it’s not the most conventional love story; for starters, there’s a mysterious, evil-dwelling void across which hired operatives Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Levi (Miles Teller) flutter their eyelashes at each other while trying to keep the world safe. But for the director behind Doctor Strange and horrors The Black Phone, Sinister and Deliver Us From Evil, it might as well be When Harry Met Sally. He tells Empire about conjuring up a crush from across a canyon. THE MEET CUTE “When it comes to romantic movies, I’m a sucker for the old American classics. I love The Philadelphia Story, I love Casablanca,” says Derrickson. His last film, 2021’s The Black…

OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT 12A / 123 MINS DIRECTOR William Goldenberg CAST Jharrel Jerome, Jennifer Lopez, Bobby Cannavale, Don Cheadle No sports-movie cliché goes unturned in this true underdog rags-to-riches story of one man’s triumph against adversity. Anthony Robles (Jharrel Jerome), born with one leg, rises up the ranks of his high-school wrestling team to compete at the highest levels; his mother, Judy (Jennifer Lopez), vows to support him even when facing poverty and an abusive husband. Jerome plays Robles with commitment and conviction, while Lopez does her best work since 2019’s Hustlers. Adapted from Robles’ book, it was unlikely to be anything less than feel-good hagiography. But there is a place for sports movies that have earnest intentions and powerful performances, and Unstoppable possesses both in spades.…

OUT 31 JANUARY / CERT 15 / 109 MINS DIRECTOR Jason Reitman CAST Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Cooper Hoffman, Nicholas Braun, Matt Wood, J.K. Simmons PLOT On 11 October 1975, in Midtown Manhattan, a group of people are preparing to put on a show. The content may be silly, but the stakes are higher than the famous 66-storey building they’re in. SATURDAY NIGHT WOULD make for a very solid double-bill with a Muppets movie. And not just because there are Muppets in it — well, primitive Muppets, at least, in the form of early Jim Henson creations King Ploobis and Vazh. Because much like one of Kermit and co’s capers, it’s all about putting on a show, and how much stress, anxiety and arm-flapping goes into playing…

OUT 17 JANUARY / CERT 18 / 107 MINS DIRECTOR Audrey Diwan CAST Noémie Merlant, Will Sharpe, Naomi Watts, Jamie Campbell Bower Audrey Diwan’s follow-up to her Venice-winning abortion drama Happening is a strange misstep. The filmmaker should be well placed to offer a nuanced exploration of female sexual agency, but Emmanuelle is a world of beautiful surfaces, with nothing substantial underneath. Noémie Merlant — who plays the titular role, bedding clients in a luxury hotel — spends the time wafting vacantly through opulent rooms. Handed a character with no interiority, she flounders. It doesn’t help that she’s stiffer in English, as is the stilted script from native French speakers Diwan and Rebecca Zlotowski. Watching this feels like flicking back pages in a book, assuming you’ve missed something, but…

OUT 17 JANUARY / CERT 15 / 140 MINS DIRECTOR James Mangold CAST Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook PLOT New York, 1961. Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan (Chalamet) aspires to be the voice of a generation. But a controversial switch to the electric guitar is beckoning… THE BOB DYLAN Cinematic Universe is a-changing. Dozens of films about the legendary singer-songwriter already exist — including two docs by Martin Scorsese, 2007’s I’m Not There (in which no fewer than six actors took on Dylan), and the bizarre Masked And Anonymous, in which Dylan played a version of himself. There have been many, many ballads of this thin man. This latest effort comes from James Mangold, the filmmaker whose Walk The Line inspired the music biopic parody Walk Hard:…

CARRY-ON FILM “Die Hard karaoke this may be, but it delivers. (The radio banter is pure McClane and Gruber.) Look forward to future eye-rolling debates as to whether it qualifies as a Christmas movie.” JAMES DYER I’M STILL HERE FILM “This explores a specific political moment through the lens of a grounded family drama. Fernanda Torres gives a striking performance, even if the film doesn’t entirely land as distinctive in its own right.” GAVIA BAKER-WHITELAW ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE TV “This adaptation of the book by Gabriel García Márquez simply should not work. Capturing its essence seems impossible. Yet capture it they have — and remarkably better than anyone could’ve hoped for.” DAVID OPIE THE ORDER FILM “Justin Kurzel’s fascination with the grisliest elements of society — massacres, serial…

IF you’re ever having an argument down the pub about the great directorial streaks, here’s one to consider alongside the likes of Coppola 1972-’79, or Carpenter 1974-’86, or Laughton 1955-’55. Between 2014 and 2019, Joe and Anthony Russo directed Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. As runs go, that’s not half bad. The Russos could do this all day, but they can’t do it alone. The input of others was crucial — Kevin Feige, for one, Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans, for two, the entire production crew, for thousands more. But arguably the most important was the contribution of the guys who wrote all four of those movies, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Thrown together when the Russos were hired…

“HEY, CHRISTIAN!” James Watkins, sitting in an office with a whiteboard of ideas behind him, beams through the screen. “Hey, James,” responds Christian Tafdrup, Zooming in from his phone, pacing around his Copenhagen apartment. What’s this? The director of Speak No Evil (2022) having a jolly old chinwag with the director of Speak No Evil (2024)? Have timelines clashed? Is the Danish filmmaker not incensed that Blumhouse remade his film but two years later? Why the hell are these guys being so damn friendly? Blame Empire. Having loved both films, we took a shot at getting them together for a joint autopsy. Turns out they’ve been mutual admirers for some time. “We’re both drawn to this sort of material,” reasons Watkins. Sickos. In Tafdrup’s unremittingly bleak Speak No Evil (native…

OLLY RICHARDS TALKED INFECTED WITH THE 28 YEARS LATER GANG “You can feel the history between Danny Boyle and Alex Garland. In the 23 years that separate 28 Days Later and 28 Years Later, their relationship has evolved and there’s a real ease between them; a confidence in their instincts. I’d have happily talked for another 28 hours.” JOANNA MORAN ORGANISED OUR KE HUY QUAN PHOTOSHOOT “Shooting Ke in LA with photographer extraordinaire Art Streiber was such a blast! He jumped into the day with such enthusiasm and good humour. This shot was him taking one of his trademark selfies as he swung down our zip-line on a gentleman’s umbrella. As you do.” ALEX GODFREY HOSTED A SPEAK NO EVIL SUMMIT “I love Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil (2022). It’s…

WHEN IT COMES to line-ups, the IMF (Impossible Mission Force, not International Monetary Fund) has seen many makeovers. Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is the captain, of course. But since the first Mission: Impossible movie back in 1996 butchered most of its team in the first 20 minutes, new faces have come and gone with alarming regularity. Ever since Christopher McQuarrie took over the franchise as director, however, the IMF has stayed relatively static. When the chips are down, Ethan’s been able to rely upon Simon Pegg’s Benji Dunn, Ving Rhames’ Luther Stickell, and Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust. Now, though, with the advent of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, Ethan and Benji are going to be joined by three new faces — Hayley Atwell’s Grace, Greg Tarzan Davis’ Degas, and Pom…

WE’VE SEEN ACTORS play multiple parts before. Alec Guinness played eight different roles in Kind Hearts And Coronets. Eddie Murphy took on seven in The Nutty Professor. But all pale in comparison to Mart Sander, an Estonian filmmaker who embodies a whopping 48 different parts in his ambitious anthology film, Dr. Sander’s Sleep Cure. “It was something that had been gnawing on my mind since childhood, together with [winning] an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize,” Sander tells Empire. The pieces began to fall into place while he was working on his PhD at Tallinn University in Estonia, which he graduated from in 2024. “Part of my study was to investigate the complicated ways [in which] sound can interact with picture. Can sound narrate a different story for your…

‘O MIO BABBINO CARO’ MARIA CALLAS MARIA Gianni Schicchi’s famous opera aria is given added beauty by the iconic performer, who proves that there’s no note she can’t reach. ‘LIKE A ROLLING STONE’ TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET A COMPLETE UNKNOWN The actor trained for years in order to nail Bob Dylan’s enduring, singular vocals, which were recorded live for the film. The results of his take on this formative classic are spectacular. ‘MILELE’ ANIKA NONI ROSE AND KEITH DAVID MUFASA: THE LION KING Lin-Manuel Miranda penned this soothing ballad, which Mufasa’s parents sing with soul and hope about the land that will become Pride Rock. ‘STARE’ ALEX SOMERS NICKEL BOYS Distorted vocals struggling to break through a wall of sound suddenly switch to a clear, angelic crescendo in this accompaniment to RaMell…

THERE ARE SOME memories you can’t wash away. They echo within. I’ve been living with the images and sounds of the interior of a house since the early ’70s. These glimpses of memory are luminous. The windows are constantly open, no lock on the door. In it my friends mingle, there are so many of them. Music is everywhere. I’m 13 and my country, Brazil, is under military dictatorship. The joy that pulsates in this house is a form of resistance in a time of gloom. Then, there are other images I can’t evade — I wish I could. The house is now shut down. Military police circle it. No-one is allowed to trespass security lines. These images define a before and an after in my life. Duke Ellington was…

I HAD THE most vivid dream the other night. I was in a restaurant, watching through a huge window as a distant tornado careened closer and closer, finally crashing through the glass. I crawled under a steel table for shelter and grabbed one of its legs as the tornado swooped in… and there I was, still and safe, in the eye of the storm. I am an anxious person, and these are anxious times: global pandemics, global warming, (potential) global nuclear war. But it’s okay, because the monsters are coming. And not just any monsters: the classic monsters. This year, we’ve already had Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu (basically bootleg Dracula) and Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man, his spiritual sequel to 2020’s The Invisible Man; there are two Frankenstein films on the way…

OUT 7 FEBRUARY / CERT 15 / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Tim Fehlbaum CAST Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch Tim Fehlbaum’s lean, tense recreation of the 1972 Munich Olympic hostage crisis pays homage to the ABC sports crew yanked into covering the unfurling horror on the ground. Keeping the crisis itself eerily distant, the film is mostly rooted in the small TV studio, with developments playing out on monitors overseen by John Magaro and Peter Sarsgaard’s producers and their team. The actors are the strongest asset here, as Fehlbaum focuses on the journalism over the act itself and its bigger, broader political context. More of the latter might have made September 5 a richer film, but as an erudite and well-performed study of TV reporting in an analogue…

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 127 MINS DIRECTOR J.C. Chandor CAST Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, Russell Crowe PLOT After being saved from a lion attack by a voodoo potion as a teen, Sergei Kravinoff (Taylor-Johnson) becomes a hunter of criminals. FOR THE COMIC-book-illiterate, Kraven The Hunter, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1964, is a Spider-Man antagonist and co-founder of the supervillain gang the Sinister Six. J.C. Chandor’s mostly flat and ludicrous origin story reimagines him as a vigilante Doctor Dolittle, an apex predator who can not only commune with animals but also takes on some of their abilities, such as increased smell, vision and strength. Surprisingly, this is perhaps the part of Kraven The Hunter that makes the most sense.…

OUT NOW (DISNEY+) / EPISODES VIEWED 4 OF 4 SHOWRUNNER Mike Jones CAST Paula Pell, Richard Ayoade, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler, Kensington Tallman This new spin-off series, riding the coattails of Inside Out 2’s billion-dollar box office, could have easily muddied the waters of Pixar’s emotional series. Happily, it’s an absolute treat, expanding the psychologically rich and comedically fertile setting of a pre-teen’s brain in deeply satisfying ways. The focus here is on the Hollywood studio-esque Dream Productions: an entire creative industry trying to come up with dreams for their 12-year-old audience-of-one, Riley (Tallman). Like the first two films, it’s witty, bright and gorgeously animated, with plenty of neat visual gags (dream workers can be seen reading ‘Snoozeweek’). It makes a strong case that Inside Out is now officially Pixar’s…

OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 7 OF 7 SHOWRUNNER Hwang Dong-hyuk CAST Lee Jung-jae, Wi Ha-joon, Lee Byung-hun, Im Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Lee Jin-wook, Park Sung-hoon PLOT Seong Gi Hun (Lee) has devoted his life to dismantling the deadly Squid Game tournament. Re-entering the trials, he struggles to unite the players and stop the bloodshed. “WE ALL LIVE in the same country,” South Korean director Bong Joon Ho said when asked about the global success of his film Parasite. “It’s called capitalism.” That theory was further proved in 2021 when Squid Game became one of the jewels in Netflix’s crown, its most watched show ever. Even coming into it with no knowledge of Korean culture, or unable to distinguish a squid game from a ddakji, a show about crippling…

OUT NOW / CERT PG / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Barry Jenkins VOICES Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison Jr, John Kani, Tiffany Boone, Mads Mikkelsen, Blue Ivy Carter PLOT Wise old mandrill Rafiki (Kani) tells Simba’s daughter Kiara (Carter) the story of young Mufasa (Pierre), and how he became… The Lion King. WITH THIS PREQUEL to 2019’s photoreal-ish re-do of 1994 Disney alpha-hit The Lion King, director Barry Jenkins (of Moonlight Oscar-win fame) has joined the ranks of cool indie auteurs going for a surprising splash in the studio guard-railed mainstream. But Jenkins seems a stranger fit for this kind of movie than most. A director who excels at portraying raw, emotional humanity and finding beauty in real, location-based settings doing an entirely computer-manufactured film about singing animals? It’s unsurprising to learn…

Crowds can be unsettling. Squeezing through throngs of London’s Christmas shoppers, all brimming with a combustible mix of festive cheer and tetchy frustration, Empire’s eye is caught by a TV in the lobby of a glass office building. A news channel displays the chyron, “Lab-made ‘mirror bacteria’ could endanger all life on Earth.” We don’t hear the details — it’s probably fine? — but it feels unwelcomely ominous, given who we’re on our way to meet. A few minutes later, thoroughly jostled, we’re sitting down at Empire HQ with Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, a duo who collectively scared cinemagoers half daft in 2002. 28 Days Later, written by Garland and directed by Boyle, began with a rage-inducing virus escaping a medical facility and ended with the UK overrun by…

JUST BEFORE ALIEN: Romulus launched in cinemas back in April, the movie’s director, Fede Alvarez, introduced a screening for Empire VIP Club members (sign up now, kids!). Directors’ intros are usually short, straightforward and fairly bland. Not so with Alvarez, who takes a different tack. His parting words to the audience: “I want you to love it, but if you don’t love it… I want you to fucking hate it.” A few months down the line, it’s clear that audiences erred dramatically towards the former. Alien: Romulus, which tells the story of a group of scavengers stuck on a space station that has Xenomorphed into a deadly hellscape, made around $350 million worldwide, becoming one of the biggest films in the franchise that launched with Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien (of…

THERE ARE PLENTY of big-name actors in That Christmas, the charming animated festive movie co-written by national treasure and one-man Christmas-content-generator Richard Curtis. There’s Bill Nighy (of course). Jodie Whittaker. Katherine Parkinson. Rhys Darby. And, as Santa Claus, Brian Cox. But when you get to the ‘Special Thanks’ section of the credits, a few more actorly names stand out. There’s George Costigan, the ‘Bob’ in Rita, Sue And Bob Too. Amina Zia. Rebekah Staton. And Marc Wootton, the man who was Mr Poppy in the Nativity! trilogy. All of whom, according to That Christmas’ director Simon Otto, played a pivotal role in getting the film underway. “After we had a full first draft, we really wanted to test it,” says Otto. “We did a table read, and we had about…

LETTER OF THE MONTH DON’T YANK THE RANK As a longterm reader (starting way back in ’89 with the Batman-flavoured issue #2), Empire remains an integral part of my passion for movies. I don’t normally have cause for complaint, but I was a little disappointed to see ‘The Ranking’ missing in January’s issue [issue #435]. Come on, guys, it is the season of goodwill. In the almost-words of Winston Wolf: pretty please, with sugar on top — reinstate the feature. AID DAWSON, VIA EMAIL Fear not, Aid — The Ranking was merely taking a brief rest, to make space for our massive 2025 Preview. It made a triumphant return in issue #436 and can be found, safe and sound, in this issue on page 102. As a thanks for your…

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HAIL MARY, DAVID LOWERY IS BACK The filmmaker’s epic melodrama will reportedly explore the twisted romantic relationship between Anne Hathaway’s pop superstar, the titular Mother Mary, and Michaela Coel’s fashion designer tasked with creating a dress for the idol. Plot details are scant but Lowery revealed that he showed Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula to his cast and crew during production, suggesting some gothic opulence to come. IT STARTED OUT A MUCH SMALLER FILM Intent on changing course after making large-scale Disney adaptation Peter Pan And Wendy, Lowery originally set out to shoot a simple two-hander for his next film. Yet once he landed on a pop-star protagonist, the story became grander and stranger, with the director describing it as “a weird, weird film” and “the hardest thing I’ve…

SETH ROGEN HAS spent decades in Hollywood as an actor, writer and director. In his new show, The Studio, he switches sides. The sitcom, made with long-time collaborator Evan Goldberg, sees Rogen play Matt Remick, a movie-studio head who’s torn between his love of film and the shareholders’ love of profit. As (real) filmmaker and (fake) exec, Rogen offers his thoughts on how to find success in Hollywood. TRUST THAT PEOPLE MEAN WELL “There’s a line I say in the first episode, which is something an executive said: ‘I got into this because I love movies, and now my job is to ruin them.’” Rogen has clashed with studio suits, but says most do want to make good things: they’re just often not allowed to. “They’re at an inflection point…

STAR POWER THE SMASHING MACHINE Dwayne Johnson will play former wrestler and MMA fighter Mark Kerr in Benny Safdie’s biopic, reuniting with Jungle Cruise co-star Emily Blunt as his onscreen wife. The supporting cast may not sound familiar but are a who’s who of A-listers in the ring (Oleksandr Usyk, Bas Rutten, Ryan Bader). MARTY SUPREME Timothée Chalamet leads Josh Safdie’s sports movie, inspired by table-tennis player Marty Reisman. An eclectic supporting ensemble includes Fran Drescher, Tyler, The Creator and Abel Ferrara, plus Gwyneth Paltrow, playing a romantic presence in Marty’s life for her first non-Marvel movie role in a decade. SCALE THE SMASHING MACHINE Both films are reported to be A24’s joint most-expensive productions to date, with budgets of $70 million apiece. Of course, this is small fry for…

A MUSICAL ABOUT a wealthy family ensconced underground after a climate catastrophe they’re partly responsible for sure seems like a departure for director Joshua Oppenheimer. Until now, he was best known for The Act Of Killing, a harrowing documentary that reenacted the mass killings in ’60s Indonesia. In 2016, Oppenheimer received an Oscar nomination for the film’s spiritual successor, The Look Of Silence. Oppenheimer never intended to make the leap to narrative film, but while conducting research for a documentary in 2016 he visited a bunker that a real oligarch had built for himself and his family. The filmmaker was fascinated by their state of denial. “[This family] was blocking out all of the questions that I found myself dying to ask,” he tells Empire. “How would they live with…

OUT 17 JANUARY / CERT 12A / 104 MINS DIRECTOR Robert Zemeckis CAST Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly, Michelle Dockery, Gwilym Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird PLOT In one house, generations of people experience joy, tragedy and hope, spanning hundreds of years of American history. FROM THE EXTRAORDINARY artistry of Who Framed Roger Rabbit to the dead-eyed children of The Polar Express, there is perhaps no greater champion for paradigm-shifting visual effects than Robert Zemeckis. With Here, Zemeckis pushes the envelope again, telling the non-linear story of different generations inhabiting the same house over hundreds of years, all from the same static view of its living room. But although the unconvincing de-ageing of Tom Hanks and Robin Wright back to their Forrest Gump days has grabbed headlines, it’s the…

OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 15 SHOWRUNNERS Tim Miller, Dave Wilson CAST Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Kevin Hart, Laura Bailey, Gabriel Luna, Ariana Greenblatt PLOT A collection of video-game-inspired stories. A band of adventurers battle dragon cults (Dungeons & Dragons); a group of robots fights for survival (Unreal Tournament); a mysterious entity is trapped in a maze (Pac-Man). ANIMATED ANTHOLOGY SHOWS are all the rage. Marvel’s What If…?, Star Wars: Visions and Love Death + Robots have demonstrated the exciting creative opportunities for unique character-driven storytelling paired with boundary-pushing animation and art styles, while allowing different studios to play in the sandboxes of established franchises. Secret Level, from Tim Miller — one of the brains behind Love Death + Robots — is a worthy…

OUT NOW / CERT PG / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Jeff Fowler CAST Ben Schwartz, Colleen O’Shaughnessey, Idris Elba, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Krysten Ritter PLOT Super-swift hedgehog Sonic (Schwartz) takes on new nemeses: the malevolent Shadow (Reeves) and evil moustachioed brainiac Gerald Robotnik (Carrey), relative of his old foe. AFTER THE PARAMOUNT logo (the stars replaced by gold rings flying towards the iconic mountain) and the Sega ident, Sonic The Hedgehog 3 rather ironically segues to a large credit for Neal Moritz’s production company, ‘Original Film’. It’s not often a production banner throws unintentional shade on the film that follows, but there is very little that is novel in Sonic 3’s subsequent 109 minutes. Director Jeff Fowler’s all-too-familiar third adventure for the Blue Blur is probably the…

OUT 31 JANUARY / CERT 12A / 97 MINS DIRECTOR Mike Leigh CAST Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber, Tuwaine Barrett, Ani Nelson, Sophia Brown, Jonathan Livingstone PLOT A reclusive middle-aged woman (Jean-Baptiste) takes her fatalism out on the world, with only her sister (Austin) able to penetrate her armour. THERE IS NO filmmaker alive who understands the mundanity and quiet grace of the human experience quite like Mike Leigh. Over a decades-spanning career he’s found poetry and pathos in the everyday business of being alive. From David Thewlis’ nihilistic Johnny in Naked to Sally Hawkins’ irrepressibly effervescent Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky, his characters feel intensely real while also reflecting a subdued desperation at the heart of British society. After taking on a larger canvas with Peterloo, Leigh makes a welcome…

OUT 24 JANUARY / CERT TBC / 85 MINS DIRECTOR Steven Soderbergh CAST Lucy Liu, Julia Fox, Chris Sullivan, Eddy Maday, Callina Liang, West Mulholland PLOT As a fractured family struggle to settle into their new home, a ghost watches their every move. STEVEN SODERBERGH HAS never been one to shy away from formal experimentation. Whether he is working within the studio system or independently, shooting on 16mm film or an iPhone, innovation is his trademark. His next audacious venture arrives in the form of Presence, which was shot in secret in the summer of 2023 and finds the filmmaker reinventing the paranormal thriller through an original point of view — in more ways than one. Soderbergh acts as his own cinematographer, and his camera assumes the first-person perspective of…

THE TELETUBBIES The Teletubbies are absurd at the best of times, but deployed here, dancing peculiarly (do they know any other way?) on TV while a bunch of kids watch, just before an adult bursts in with a terrifying warning… here, they’re a nightmare, their plinky-plonk music the sound of torture. THE TEASE Within seconds, that TV screen is splattered with blood. There’s a lot of terror in this trailer but it really is a teaser, showing us a lot while telling us next to nothing. It sets the tone and serves up some shocking imagery, but most importantly it gets our adrenaline — and our hopes — up. THE POEM Thirty-two seconds in, it begins: ye olde actor Taylor Holmes’ unfettered 1915 recital of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Boots’. The 1903…

“THEY ARE A BUNCH OF DEGENERATES. THEY ARE CHAOS.” So jokes a Saturday Night cast member, who will remain safely anonymous, about his fellow actors. (Okay, you twisted our arm — Cooper Hoffman said that.) But after talking to director Jason Reitman and ten cast members, chaos (or, at least, controlled chaos) does seem to be the overarching theme of the making of Saturday Night — to the point that even Reitman had to remind his cast that, yes, there was a method to his madness and, yes, he knew what he was doing with it. Saturday Night Live is an American institution. Currently celebrating its 50th season — think about that for a second — the show has lampooned politics and culture since Gerald Ford was President and Jaws…

THIS MONTH HAMMER HORROR 1 Who played the Count in The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires? 2 Which actor played Frankenstein’s Monster in 1970’s The Horror Of Frankenstein and 1974’s Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell? 3 The Horror Of Frankenstein was written and directed by a long-running Hammer stalwart. What was his name? 4 Which film is missing from this run of Christopher Lee Dracula movies? Dracula, Dracula: Prince Of Darkness, XX, Taste The Blood Of Dracula, Scars Of Dracula, Dracula A.D. 1972, The Satanic Rites Of Dracula. 5 In which of those movies does Christopher Lee not say a single word? 6 Hammer made an immediate sequel to Dracula. What was it called? 7 What title is missing from this run of Peter Cushing Frankenstein movies? The…