Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 139 i SciFi Now

It’s hard to believe it’s only been two years since Star Wars returned to our screens with The Force Awakens, and it’s just as remarkable how, in such a relatively short space of time, we have gone from cautious optimism to expecting excellence. With the first chapter in the new trilogy and Rogue One, we have become accustomed to a certain standard, and that’s wonderful. But no series can simply sit back and coast. Nostalgia is all very well and good and having it catered to is as joyful an experience as treating yourself to a box of Weetos, but it’s vital that our movie franchises continue to push themselves and push us as an audience. There can be a danger when it comes to films like this that we…

1 Together in Electric Dreams Ruth Bradley is no stranger to sci-fi, having starred in Channel 4’s brilliant SF series Humans, and she’s part of the incredible ensemble cast of anthology series Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams. “I wasn’t familiar with the short stories at all, and what’s great is some of them are like six pages long but there’s so much other story to mine,” she says. “He just had an endless wealth of stories to tell inside him and they all start somewhere and you could go in any direction with them which I think is what’s really cool about the show.” 2 Breaking SF with Bryan Cranston She stars in the episode ‘Human Is’ alongside Essie Davis and the great Bryan Cranston, who was pulling double duty…

WHAT WOULD MAJOR MOVIE FRANCHISES BE WITHOUT RAMPANT THEORISING ABOUT WHERE THE PLOT MIGHT GO NEXT? THE LAST JEDI HAS GENERATED SOME CRACKING FAN THEORIES, SOME MORE PLAUSIBLE THAN OTHERS. HERE ARE SOME OF THE BEST… WHO IS THE LAST JEDI? According to the opening scroll of The Force Awakens, Luke Skywalker is the last Jedi. But will that still be the case by the end of this film? Current theories revolve around Luke dying or going to the Dark Side, leaving Rey as the last Jedi, or Luke – as is suggested in the trailer – disbanding the Jedi altogether, making him the last ever one. REY AND KYLO REN END UP ON THE SAME SIDE Some suggest he will join the light, others think she’ll join the dark.…

REY A lot has been made of just how much raw power she has, unusual even for a Jedi. You know who else was unusually powerful? Anakin Skywalker. Didn’t work out well for him, did it? Chances of switching? FINN Finn’s already switched sides once – is he really going to do it again so soon? That said, Boyega has talked a lot about Finn choosing his side in this instalment. Chances of switching? KYLO REN He might have an evil new face scar, but we’ve already seen him come close to wavering in The Force Awakens. He screams ‘redemption arc’, but fans will never forgive him for killing Han. Chances of switching? LUKE SKYWALKER He says it’s time for the Jedi to end, but come on – this is…

ROBOCOP (2014) Release date of original: 1987 Box office: $242,688,965 SciFiNow rating: GODZILLA (2014) Release date of original: 1954, 1998 (remake) Box office: $529,076,069 SciFiNow rating: TERMINATOR GENISYS (2015) Release date of original: 1984 Box office: $440,603,537 SciFiNow rating: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015) Release date of original: 1979 Box office: $378,858,340 SciFiNow rating: GHOSTBUSTERS (2016) Release date of original: 1984 Box office: $229,147,506 SciFiNow rating: THE MUMMY (2017) Release date of original: 1932, 1999 (remake) Box office: £409,076,392 SciFiNow rating: POWER RANGERS (2017) Release date of original: 1995 Box office: $142,337,240 SciFiNow rating:…

LAURA PALMER Twin Peaks “She’s dead. Wrapped in plastic.” That was how Laura was found at the start of Twin Peaks, and even the great Special Agent Dale Cooper couldn’t solve it until ABC decided to force David Lynch and Mark Frost to make their big reveal midway through Season Two. WILL BYERS Stranger Things Young Will vanishes on his way home from an epic Dungeons And Dragons session, marking the beginning of an adventure involving monsters, alternate dimensions, telekinetic kids and Christmas lights used as Ouija boards. Still, he’s back now, so everything is totally fine… right? SAMANTHA MULDER The X-Files Admittedly, Billy Miles is the first puzzle that The X-Files gave us, but it was the abduction of Mulder’s sister that sent everyone’s favourite deadpan detective on his…

Influencing the next decade’s torture porn, and making a generation squirm to the words 'kiri kiri kiri', Audition (1999) offers a portrait of a middle-aged widower’s guilt and gynophobia. It is a J-horror like no other, turning one man’s self-torment into a nightmare as much psychological as visceral. The first of a loose trilogy of films linked by having Riki Takeuchi and Show Aikawa in the lead roles (playing different characters in each film, who always die), Dead Or Alive (1999) sees a Triad boss and a police detective circling each other, but is best remembered for its multi-narrative opening, and for a climax that ramps up to an irrationally apocalyptic showdown. Censor-baiting manga adaptation Ichi The Killer (2001) pits the sadomasochistic lieutenant/ lover (Tadanobu Asano) of a missing yakuza…

ROBOCOP CYBORG Alex Murphy may have been shot to bits by Detroit’s baddest but thanks to Omnicorp, what’s left of him has been turned into a cyborg officer. Still, there’s more than a little Alex Murphy in there… SAM FRANCISCO ALIEN The aliens have landed and they live amongst us, and Sam is one of the very first to join the police force. Can he convince his human partner to overcome his racism and stop an evil conspiracy? JUDGE DREDD CLONE Megacity One’s unstoppable killing machine of a police officer is remorseless and fearless, so just think about the fact that he’s the good clone. NICK KNIGHT VAMPIRE It’s just as well there’s a night shift, otherwise Toronto police officer Nick Knight would find it much harder to find redemption…

Details 12A // 109 mins // Out now Director Dean Devlin Screenwriters Dean Devlin, Paul Guyot Cast Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Ed Harris, Andy Garcia, Alexandra Maria Lara Distributor Warner Bros If you think you know what you’re getting with Geostorm, well, you’re probably right. It’s big, it’s stupid, it’s got people outrunning enormous weather events, and it’s pretty bad in most of the ways that matter. However, the big surprise is that Dean Devlin’s directorial debut is, for the most part, a ludicrous conspiracy thriller in which our heroes must figure out who’s behind a scheme to turn ‘Dutchboy’, the network of satellites constructed to protect us from mega-weather, into ‘a gun’. It’s not until the final 20 minutes that the tornadoes, floods and insta-icing roll out…

Details 15 // 109 mins // 2017 // • // Released 4 December Director David F Sandberg Cast Stephanie Sigman, Talitha Bateman, Anthony LaPaglia, Lulu Wilson Distributor Warner Home Video This prequel set in the newly coined ‘The Conjuring Universe’ from director David F Sandberg is a marked improvement on the original devil doll horror released in 2014 due mainly to the fact that it’s actually scary in places. We are introduced to a dollmaker, his wife and their young daughter who tragically dies in a car accident. A few years later the couple take in some displaced orphans for no apparent reason and that’s about it. Though there’s little plot to speak of and barely any rules to adhere to, the film flings lots of tautly directed horror sequences…

Details 12 // 72 mins // 2017 // • // Released Out now Director Rick Morales Cast Adam West, Burt Ward, William Shatner, Julie Newmar Distributor Warner Bros Home Entertainment Made as a sequel to 2016’s Batman: Return Of The Caped Crusaders, Batman Vs Two-Face launches right into the action with fight sound bubbles blazing. Batman and Robin (voiced by Adam West and Burt Ward) team up again to attempt to solve a string of crimes that has rocked Gotham to the core. The Dynamic Duo have a mystery on their hands when all signs point to Two-Face (William Shatner) as the culprit, even after his alter ego, Bruce Wayne’s good friend Harvey Dent, had been successfully rehabilitated. The late Adam West’s last outing as the Caped Crusader, Batman Vs…

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is a literary rockstar. It’s a powerful presence, rhapsodised over for both its thrilling story and its brutal take-down of religious fanaticism. Now, 17 years since the original trilogy ended, Pullman is returning us to Lyra’s world with La Belle Sauvage, the first in The Book Of Dust trilogy, which is set ten years before His Dark Materials. It centres on a young boy, Malcolm Polstead, who takes it upon himself to protect a baby girl from forces that wish her harm. The baby, of course, is Lyra. La Belle Sauvage is no Northern Lights, but it isn’t trying to be. Where Northern Lights whisked Lyra off on a dangerous tour of her world, La Belle Sauvage remains in Oxford and focuses more on…

Something nasty is lurking deep below the desert town of Night Vale. Of course, something nasty is always lurking deep below the desert town of Night Vale. As anyone who has ever listened to Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor’s hit podcast Welcome To Night Vale will know all too well, Night Vale is a town that never heard a conspiracy theory it didn’t wholeheartedly believe. It’s a town where hooded figures roam the forbidden dog park at night, where no-one goes to the library because of the threat of librarians, and where black helicopters monitor absolutely everything that everyone does, on behalf of a vague yet menacing government agency. But this time, the something nasty is starting to drag Night Vale citizens down with it, and it has got something…

“NIFTY TRICKS ARE PULLED AS TRUST COMES AND GOES” As far as anyone knows, there’s never been a murder on board space station Ciudad De Cielo (CDC for short), the Earth orbiting facility/ city in space where scientists and mechanics are hard at work developing the ships that will take humanity far into the stars. Still, there’s a first time for everything, and when a deconstructed human being is found floating in zero G, the city is suddenly under intense scrutiny. Can officious newcomer Alice Blake and crooked cop Nikki Fixx find the culprit before the hammer comes down? Or will they face a similarly gruesome end? Chris Brookmyre is best known for his crime novels and there’s plenty of detective work and excellent hardboiled noir business in Places In…

Taking the reader into the heart of 19th century Barcelona, The Secret Of Vesalius tells the tale of Daniel Amat, who is drawn home by the death of his estranged father and returns to a life he had left behind in the wake of a family tragedy. At the same time, a down-on-his-luck journalist is investigating a series of murders across the city, in which young women are found with their bodies horrifically mutilated. As the 1888 World’s Fair draws closer, the pair collide with each other as it becomes apparent that Daniel’s father had been conducting a murder investigation of his own. What is perhaps most impressive about Jordi Llobregat’s debut novel is how it manages to be a cracking slice of Spanish gothic in its own right as…

Boasting a rather more serious title than his calling-card web-comic, Space-Mullet, Daniel Warren Johnson’s Extremity is a dark and thoughtful revenge tale that shows great potential in these opening six issues. The world that Johnson sketches in this first volume is a colourful and creative mish-mash of fantasy and sci-fi. Image’s back-cover blurb name-checks Mad Max and Studio Ghibli, but there are no easy points of reference for this expansive landscape filled with monsters, machinery and merciless men pushed to the brink. Abba, the head of the Roto Clan, leads his army in a bloodthirsty search for revenge against those who attacked his home and murdered his wife – and he finally has them within his grasp. His children, both marked by grief in their own ways, are along for…

“WE HAVE SUCH SIGHTS TO SHOW YOU!” LEAD CENOBITE “JESUS WEPT.” FRANK “WHAT’S YOUR PLEASURE, SIR?” MERCHANT “SO MUCH FOR THE CAT AND MOUSE SHIT.” FRANK “OH, NO TEARS, PLEASE. IT’S A WASTE OF GOOD SUFFERING!” LEAD CENOBITE “I HAVEN’T LOOKED. YOU KNOW ME AND BLOOD. I’M GONNA FAINT.” LARRY “THE BLOOD BROUGHT ME BACK THIS FAR. I NEED MORE.” FRANK “EXPLORERS, IN THE FURTHER REGIONS OF EXPERIENCE. DEMONS TO SOME, ANGELS TO OTHERS.” LEAD CENOBITE “YOU SOLVED THE BOX. WE CAME. NOW YOU MUST COME WITH US. TASTE OUR PLEASURES.” LEAD CENOBITE “WE’LL TEAR YOUR SOUL APART!” LEAD CENOBITE “I USED TO TELL MYSELF THAT. USED TO TRY AND PRETEND I WAS DREAMING ALL THE PAIN. BUT DON’T YOU KID YOURSELF. SOME THINGS HAVE TO BE ENDURED. AND THAT’S…

“IT IS IN A STRANGE WAY MY FIRST LIFE-AFFIRMING MOVIE GUILLERMO DEL TORO” The latest film from genre master Guillermo del Toro doesn’t land in the UK until next February but, having seen it at the London Film Festival, we feel confident that it’s the most beautiful fantasy love story you’ll see all year. Wonderfully performed, incredibly sensitive and fiercely timely, The Shape Of Water is absolutely lovely and so full of heart and soul. The most excellent Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky, Paddington) stars as Elisa Esposito, a mute woman who works as a cleaner in a top-secret government laboratory in 1962. Her days spent mopping floors and cleaning toilets are forever changed when a tank is brought in containing an aquatic creature from the Amazon (played, of course, by Doug…

As this issue went to print, SciFiNow received news of the death of beloved director Paddy Russell. Born in 1928, Russell trained as an actress and worked as a stage manager before making the move to television. She worked as a production assistant for director Rudolph Cartier on Nigel Kneale’s adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 starring Peter Cushing, and his groundbreaking Quatermass serials. Although only a relatively small part of her long career, Russell is perhaps best known for her work on Doctor Who. She first worked on the series early in her directorial career, in the 1966 William Hartnell adventure ‘The Massacre Of St Bartholomew’s Eve’. An unusually bleak and serious outing, Russell was integral in drawing out a different performance from Hartnell in his role as Doctor lookalike the…

THE PALLBEARER (1996) We all have to start somewhere, but this David Schwimmer/ Gwyneth Paltrow rom-com is best forgotten. CLOVERFIELD (2008) 12 years after his feature debut, Reeves returned with a bang with the secretive blockbuster that launched a franchise. LET ME IN (2010) There’s nothing exactly wrong with Reeves’ sweet-hearted and faithful remake of Let The Right One In. It’s just kind of pointless. DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2014) Reeves stepped into the Apes franchise and took it to a new level, making Caesar the focus. WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (2017) This is still one of the best films we’ve seen all year, and it’s the perfect send-off to a great trilogy.…

1 BRIE LARSON IS CAROL DANVERS Sure, we’ve known about this for ages (even before the casting was officially announced, to be honest), but we’re still pumped that Larson is taking on the role of the MCU’s first female headliner. She’s a wonderful actor with a great career both behind and ahead of her. 2 BEN MENDELSOHN AS THE VILLAIN At the time of writing, the Rogue One actor was only in talks to be playing the villain, but he’ll have probably signed the deal by the time you read this, right? Who doesn’t love Ben Mendelsohn? The villain he will be playing is yet to be confirmed. 3 THE SKRULL! It was revealed at San Diego Comic-Con this year that destructive, green-skinned alien race the Skrull would be making…

Tragically, The Last Jedi marks Carrie Fisher’s – and General Leia Organa’s – final hurrah in the Star Wars universe, following the actress’ death last year. For Gwendoline Christie, Leia was the reason she wanted the role of Captain Phasma: “When I was six years old I absolutely loved the films so passionately. I loved that character of Princess Leia. She spoke to me. She felt different. She felt new. She was smart and she was strong.” A big part of that was Fisher herself, who Benicio del Toro describes as “a ball of fire”, and who director Rian Johnson can’t praise highly enough: “Obviously there’s no way we could have known that this was going to be her last Star Wars performance but I think there are scenes that…

DAISY RIDLEY’S REY WAS THE BIG QUESTION MARK HANGING OVER THE FORCE AWAKENS. WHO IS SHE? WHERE DID SHE COME FROM? MOST OF THOSE REMAIN UNANSWERED AS WE GO INTO THE LAST JEDI, SO WE DECIDED TO SEE WHAT RIDLEY HERSELF COULD TELL US. WHAT WENT THROUGH YOUR MIND WHEN YOU FIRST READ THE SCRIPT FOR STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI? The first time I read the script, I was surprised. I had ideas about what would happen in the story, but I was taken aback by what does happen. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE STORY OF THE LAST JEDI? Rian has written a story that’s unexpected but right. Some of the story will really surprise you. Even though everyone knows it’s the second in the trilogy, it feels like…

USS CALLISTER USS Callister is a space epic, quite a romp. That’s a big episode, quite ambitious, and it’s like 74 minutes long. ARKANGEL Arkangel is about a mother-daughter relationship that comes under strain, thanks to something that appears to be ‘progress.’ It has the feel of a down-at-heel indie movie – it’s not a shiny world, it has dents and buckles and dirt and rust. CROCODILE Crocodile is a gripping, noir thriller shot by John Hillcoat in Iceland. He kept asking me why it was called ‘Crocodile’ and he worked out a whole theory and I had to tell him it was just a name I’d thought of for something else. It’s not too huge a reveal to say that it’s not actually about crocodiles. HANG THE DJ Hang…

JAPANESE FILMMAKER MASAAKI Yuasa broke out with the offbeat, adult-focused anime Mind Game. With new movie Lu Over The Wall, he’s made a play for a universal audience. We talk to the director about fantastical creatures, Adventure Time, and his upcoming horror series for Netflix… Yuasa’s background in animation goes back decades, but he’s probably best known to international audiences for his debut feature as a director. 2004’s Mind Game is a psychedelic trip of a movie that incorporates life, death, sex and yakuza feuds into one mind-bending package. Since then, the filmmaker has mostly directed TV series, shorts or contributions to anthology movies but 2017 has seen the long-awaited release of two new feature films from the director: comedy The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl and fantasy Lu…

YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE IN FOR AFTER A FEW MINUTES OF WATCHING ANA Asensio’s Most Beautiful Island. With her hand-held camerawork following Spanish illegal immigrant Luciana (also Asensio) around New York City, struggling for money, begging for a doctor’s appointment and being treated awfully by the spoiled brats she nannies, it feels like the kind of close-to-the-bone, painfully relevant social drama that wins awards. Then everything changes, and while it’s still that same thing, it’s got an entirely new personality… It’s well-crafted, beautifully observed, and guttwistingly tense. Most of all, it’s important that you know as little about it as possible going in, as the filmmaker pushes you further to the edge of your seat. We talk to Asensio at the London Film Festival and she tells us…

D AVID AYER KNOWS LA. THE LAST TWO MOVIES ON THE DIRECTOR’S RESUME may be Suicide Squad and Fury but he’s been telling stories about cops and crooks in the City of Angels for nearly two decades, both as a writer on movies like Training Day and as the director of End Of Watch and Harsh Times. So, a David Ayer LA cop movie that re-teams him with Squad star Will Smith makes sense. But riding next to Smith in the cruiser is an Orc in uniform, and the reason these two may not survive the night is because they’re being hunted by Elves, Fairies and dirty cops who want to get their hands on a magic wand. “It was something I hadn’t seen before,” Ayer tells us when we…

Details 18 // 109 mins // 1982 // • // Released Out now Director John Carpenter Cast Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilford Brimley, Donald Moffat Distributor Arrow Video John Carpenter may claim to not get much from the endless accolades and imitations he now receives, but there’s no way to discuss The Thing without going into raptures. His ice-cold and perfectly made horror only gets better with age, as its themes of mistrust and paranoia get more relevant. The performances are great, the soundtrack is incredible, and the effects are still absolutely stunning. It’s flawless. But you know all this, so what about the extras? Well, Arrow Video has kindly ported the excellent Terror Takes Shape documentary and Carpenter/ Kurt Russell commentary from the previous releases. New stuff includes a…

Details 18 // Various mins // 1971-1973 // // Released Out now Director George A Romero Cast Raymond Laine, Judith Ridley, Jan White, Will MacMillan, Lane Carroll Distributor Arrow Video There’s a point during the interview with George A Romero on the There’s Always Vanilla disc at which the legendary filmmaker seems genuinely agitated by having to discuss his second feature, such is his dislike for and bad memories of making it. As upsetting as it is to see the late and famously kindly icon riled up, this boxset of the three films he made between Night and Dawn Of The Dead show a director becoming more confident and experimental. The (non-genre) relationship drama Vanilla is messy and meandering, but Season Of The Witch is much better; an atmospheric and…

Details 18 // 96 mins // 1976 // // Released Out now Director Arthur Marks Cast Glynn Turman, Louis Gossett Jr, Joan Pringle, Carl W Crudup Distributor Arrow Video Isaac (Glynn Turman) is exhausted. He’s studying hard at college and he’s forced to work as a cab driver to pay the bills. Still, he doesn’t know what hard is yet, as he soon finds out when he’s possessed by the spirit of a vengeful pimp, the titular JD Walker (David McKnight). It starts out innocently enough with strange urges to buy a hat from a charity store, but the violent, swaggering JD is coming through and he’s going to make Isaac do terrible things to get his revenge. JD’s Revenge never really gets away from the essential silliness of its…

Details 12A // 140 mins // 2017 // • // Released 27 November Director Matt Reeves Cast Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Amiah Miller Distributor 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment It’s bleak times for the apes in the third riveting entry in the reboot franchise. Part evocative western and part violent war movie, the apes are imprisoned by a renegade colonel played by Woody Harrelson. Harrelson is an imposing presence as he squares up against Andy Serkis’ emotionally weary Caesar. Interplay between orangutan Maurice (Karin Konoval) and young mute girl, Nova (Amiah Miller) is poignantly handled with Konoval delivering a moving performance under the mo-cap. Steve Zahn as the neurotic little Bad Ape is an adorable addition to the cast who really sells his anguish. Yet his presence adds…

Details 15 // 702 mins // 1980 // // Released Out now Creator Roy Skeggs Cast Peter Cushing, Brian Cox, Jon Finch, Patricia Quinn, Denholm Elliott, Diana Dors Distributor Network Hammer’s short-lived but fondly remembered anthology series has been given a lovely Blu-ray upgrade by Network, bringing the hour-long tales of horror, madness and cars spinning wildly out of control into beautiful high definition. It’s absolutely a must-purchase for fans, although the only real special feature of note is the widescreen version of ‘Guardians Of The Abyss’. For newcomers, Hammer House Of Horror is worth a look, but we’d advise proceeding with a little caution. As you’d expect from any anthology series, the level of quality varies dramatically, but with one or two exceptions, even the better episodes require patience…

“PULLMAN HAS NEVER TALKED DOWN TO HIS READERS” 1.A Series Of Unfortunate Events “A Series Of Unfortunate Events - @ lemonysnicket! It remains timeless @Scholastic #BookClub” @djGriF8 2. The Lion Witch And The Wardrobe “The Lion Witch And The Wardrobe series because they never fail to please the inner child, or of course Swallow & Amazons. #BookClub” @johntheboy 3. Red As Blood “Tanith Lee’s Red As Blood, which I probably should not have been reading as a kid. #BookClub” @mokie 4. Tortall “Tamora Pierce’s Tortall series. A girl as a knight, a wild mage and a lady page. Girls kicking ass medieval style. @TamoraPierce #BookClub” @king_lyd 5. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, because it’s fantastical!! Also Chocolate! #BookClub” @BeardedWhovian…

“I just finished Sleeping Beauties, it was pretty good. About to start the third installment in the John Dies At The End series. #BookClub” @themeatispeople “The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson. His writing and imagination often leaves me in awe (and is vastly superior to Esslemont’s). #BookClub” @HamSpanner “The Last Days Of Jack Sparks by @JasonArnopp will be interesting to see how the movie turns out cos the book is superb! #BookClub” @Bcallar67 “I’m reading The Chemist by Stephanie Meyer. It’s pretty good. She ropes me in every time. It’s no The Host mind!! That was an epic read! #BookClub” @GaryRenton2 “Trying out new Star Trek Discovery tie in novel. Been 15 years since I’ve read a ST novel. Not bad so far. (Only 5 chapters in) #bookclub” @ludex_phil “Firestorm by…

“ROBERTS’ OPENING INSTALMENT IS A SLICK AFFAIR” There is always something chilling about a viral pandemic that operates like the flu. When out on a hunting trip, Ross MacLeod shoots a pheasant and takes it home to his vacationing family for supper. They soon return home to the United States, carrying a deadly virus with them. The pandemic, dubbed the Doom, sweeps through America and civil society breaks down shortly after. In the wake of the sickness, some survivors discover that they are developing mysterious, magical powers that threaten any new social stability. Veteran Nora Roberts’ opening instalment to a new series is a slick affair, deftly weaving the stories of her disparate characters together until they meet. Each character is distinct in their personalities, powers, and agendas, which is…

“MICHAEL KNIGHT WAS BASICALLY KING ARTHUR IN CAMELOT” DAVID HASSELHOFF Ah, Eighties action television: a time for catchy musical title themes, cheesy opening credit sequences and performed-for-real action featuring cool protagonists in supped up vehicles saving the day. A lot may have changed in thirty-odd years but the Eighties certainly set a precedent. On the cutting edge sci-fi front Glen A. Larson’s Knight Rider led the celluloid pack; from its brilliantly synthesised opening title number, the ingenious concept of an indestructible talking car and its streamlined good versus evil storylines. At the forefront of these adventures was a man formerly known as Michael Long who, following a shooting accident, had his face surgically altered and became the crime-fighting hero Michael Knight. Knight worked for the Foundation for Law and Government…

KNIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (SEASON PILOT) “It looks like Darth Vader’s bathroom!” says Michael Knight upon first sight of the interior to his technologically modified vehicle. Knight’s initially repelled about a car talking back to him too, establishing the comedic double act. The pilot commences, daringly, with our hero shot in the face, setting up the catalyst for the Michael Knight alias and his crime fighting adventures. TRUST DON’T RUST (SEASON 1, EPISODE 9) It’s always fun when a worthy adversary is introduced and this one has KARR (voiced by Transformers veteran Peter Cullen) – an earlier, menacing version of KITT with a grudge to bear. This features a memorable car chase between our two four-wheel opponents that climaxes with a tense game of chicken that puts both turbocharged personalities…

NIGHTBREED (1990) 1 Barker’s second film as a director was the notoriously troubled cult classic Nightbreed. It’s still messy, but the Cabal cut is a great improvement and David Cronenberg is damn scary. CANDYMAN (1992) 2 Bernard Rose’s film of Barker’s short story The Forbidden is one of modern horror cinema’s true masterpieces. It’s still terrifying and its social critique is as sharp and necessary as ever. LORD OF ILLUSIONS (1995) 3 Barker returned to the director’s chair to adapt his story The Last Illusion about a PI investigating the mysterious death of a magician. It’s his weakest film but it’s still pretty good fun. THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN (2008) 4 Bradley Cooper stalks Vinnie Jones on the NY subway system as the latter kills passengers with a meat hammer.…

ONCE UPON A TIME 1. Who does Buttercup agree to marry when she believes Westley is dead? 2. What does ROUS stand for? 3. Who is the six-fingered man that killed Inigo Montoya’s father? 4. Which country is Fezzik originally from? 5. What is Westley’s three-word catchphrase? HERO TIME 6. What are the cliffs Buttercup and the three outlaws climb towards the start of the film more commonly known as? 7. What does the Man In Black tell Fezzik to dream of after he renders him unconscious? 8. What is the name of the tasteless, odourless poison that kills Vizzini after he consumes it? 9. In which fictional country is The Princess Bride set? 10. What is the name of Westley’s criminal alter ego? HAPPILY EVER AFTER 11. What is…

FANTASTIC VOYAGE Del Toro is still attached to direct the remake of the 1965 classic with James Cameron as a producer, and it looks like it’ll be his next project when he wants to come back to it. CARNIVAL ROW The eight-part fantasy series is set up at Amazon with Cara Delevingne and Orlando Bloom in the lead roles. Del Toro will produce but he has been too busy to direct the pilot as originally reported. PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING Del Toro’s producing Steven S DeKnight’s sequel to his massive sci-fi spectacle, which is hitting cinemas in March next year. John Boyega leads humanity in its new battle against the kaiju. PINOCCHIO This has been in the works for years now, and it doesn’t look like it’s happening any time soon…

1 Under surveillance The unsettling opening shot tells you everything you need to know about this film – it’s a creepy teen horror. Until the voiceover asks: ‘Do you know what mutants are?’ OH SNAP IT’S AN X-MEN FILM! 2 Flame on! The flaming hand against the washing machine door is the first glimpse we get of superpowers mixing with horror – an interesting genre mash-up that looks like it’ll work. 3 Patient X Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt) is positioned as the hero of this trailer, and if the film is indeed based on the Demon Bear comic arc, we can expect her to be the film’s main character. 4 Remember to smile “This isn’t a hospital – it’s a haunted house!” Cannonball (Charlie Heaton) proclaims, just before this creepy…

JOHN BOYEGA WAS ARGUABLY THE BREAK-OUT STAR OF THE FORCE AWAKENS, WINNING PRAISE FOR HIS CHARMING PERFORMANCE. BUT, WITH FINN IN A BAD WAY AT THE END OF THE PREVIOUS FILM, IS HE STILL GOING TO BE THE SAME CHARMING RELUCTANT REBEL THAT WE FELL IN LOVE WITH? HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE FINN’S ROLE IN STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI? Finn got a back injury [in The Force Awakens] and the Resistance is at its lowest point. However, Finn has chosen to do a crazy mission and Poe has trusted him to do service for the cause. That’s why he feels like he has to go off with Rose [Tico, played by Kelly Marie Tran] and BB-8. HOW DOES THE FORCE AWAKENS’ DIRECTOR JJ ABRAMS COMPARE TO THE LAST JEDI’S…

FROM THE COMING-OF-AGE HERO IN THE FIRST FILM TO THE WISE MENTOR IN THE LATEST, MARK HAMILL HAS TAKEN LUKE SKYWALKER ON QUITE A JOURNEY IN THE LAST 40 YEARS. AFTER MAKING ONLY A BRIEF, SILENT APPEARANCE IN THE FORCE AWAKENS, LUKE IS BACK PROPERLY IN THE LAST JEDI. WE TALKED TO THE ACTOR ABOUT LUKE’S EVOLUTION, THE LEGACY OF THE FRANCHISE, NEW DIRECTOR RIAN JOHNSON, AND THE CRUELTY OF THE FANS. SO, MARK – WAS IT EASY GETTING BACK INTO THE CHARACTER OF LUKE? No, it wasn’t easy because there was such a long gap of unexplained activity. And then of course in VII it’s so enigmatic, when he turns around is he happy, is he suspicious, is he angry? When I read the screenplay I was shocked at…

HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH Okay, so it’s not technically even a sequel given that it’s an unrelated story about witches, Halloween masks and Stonehenge, but it’s genuinely brilliant and the ending is chilling. Silver Shamrock! RETURN TO OZ Anyone hoping for an experience as child-friendly and heartwarming as The Wizard Of Oz was in for a shock when they sat down to watch Walter Murch’s 1985 sequel. It is great, don’t get us wrong, but it is pure pitch black nightmare fuel. GREMLINS II Joe Dante’s harebrained sequel has finally got the reappraisal it deserves after years of being maligned. Sure, it’s dark, it’s weird, it’s crazy, and that’s exactly the point. Just go with it and embrace the madness and you’ll see it’s brilliant. BATMAN RETURNS It…

YOU MAY REMEMBER the outrage surrounding the news of the upcoming Jumanji reboot. You may have even been outraged yourself. Deemed by many as being unnecessary, kind of insulting, and potentially childhood-ruining, Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle’s production has been watched by judging eagle eyes from the start. All remakes can be considered unnecessary, really, but the idea of a new Jumanji brought with it a particularly strong brand of venom. The fact that the film was confirmed a year after the passing of original Jumanji star Robin Williams didn’t help matters. But instead of being a flat-out remake, Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle is set to take that basic idea that proved a hit in the Nineties and update it for a new generation. We needn’t worry, says director…

 grins Baran bo Odar, the director and co-creator of Netflix’s new supernatural thriller Dark. From Twin Peaks to Stranger Things, everyone loves a creepy small-town mystery and this tale, the first German Netflix series, promises to blend all your favourite small-town mysteries while bringing something entirely new to the table. “PEOPLE KNOW THAT CREEPY STUFF IS DEFINITELY HAPPENING IN SMALL TOWNS,” When we sit down with Odar and his co-creator/producer Jantje Friese in a London hotel, the show is deep in post-production and the duo has been pulled from the editing bay for an early round of press. “We still have four weeks until picture lock so it’s like the hard phase!” Friese tells us. Having now watched some of the show, we can see why putting the pieces of…

PROLIFIC BARELY BEGINS TO DESCRIBE TAKASHI MIIKE, the bad boy of Japanese indie cinema and the man who gave us such shocking visions as Audition, Ichi The Killer and The Happiness Of The Katakuris. Few directors manage to amass over 100 films to their name, even fewer do so in just over a quarter of a century, and fewer still do so with the élan, unpredictability and sheer outrageousness of Miike. Working in all manner of genres, and sometimes mixing them together and testing their limits, Miike is often associated with extremes of violence and perversion. As an outsider born in a working-class area of Osaka to Korean parents, the director likes to lionise characters who live on the margins. His latest, the manga adaptation Blade Of The Immortal, is…

What brings one of the world’s biggest movie stars to Netflix? We talked to Will Smith about cops and magic… WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO BRIGHT? I just loved how bizarre it was. We’ve been trying to figure out how to describe it and it’s like Training Day, right, because it’s down and dirty and rated R, Training Day cop drama hardcore meets Lord Of The Rings. It was spectacular for me as African American playing a police officer who is racist against Orcs. It’s like the flip of those social concepts and it’s like, as a black dude, you just don’t get a lot of movies where you’re the racist [laughs]: “I don’t want no Orc in my car!” You just never get to say that. WAS IT IMPORTANT TO…

Details 18 // 92 mins // Out now Directors Michael and Peter Spierig Screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg Cast Callum Keith Rennie, Matt Passmore, Hannah Emily Anderson, Paul Braunstein, Tobin Bell Distributor Lionsgate Ten years after the death of the notorious trap-setting Jigsaw killer (Tobin Bell), the games have begun again. Mutilated corpses are turning up with jigsaw-shaped pieces cut out of their skin and tape recordings of John Kramer’s voice embedded in their flesh. Could Jigsaw be back from the grave? It’s only been seven years since Saw 3D: The Final Chapter, but the franchise’s comeback feels almost as unbelievable as Kramer’s. Over the course of seven movies, released every Halloween between 2004 and 2010, Saw gained itself a reputation for being incredibly violent and incredibly convoluted. But…

Details N/A // 131 mins // 2016 // VOD // Released Out now Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa Cast Tahar Rahim, Constance Rousseau, Olivier Gourmet, Malik Zidi Distributor Under The Milky Way “He’s confused photography and reality for so long, he can no longer tell the living from the dead.” Marie (Constance Rousseau) is talking about her father Stéphane (Olivier Gourmet), whose obsession with daguerreotypy and his late wife Denise has made him turn his back on fashion photography, and keep to his house-cum-workshop, while she must stay still for hours so her image can be captured by the outmoded practice. Into this toxic environment comes new assistant Jean Malassis (Tahar Rahim), who has designs both on Marie and on the profits to be skimmed from selling the house. Yet Stéphane, convinced…

Details 15 // 87 mins // 1988 // • // Released Out now Director Steve De Jarnatt Cast Anthony Edwards, Mare Winningham, John Agar Distributor Arrow Video The cutesy opening montage of writer/director Steve De Jarnatt’s 1988 film sees jazz musician Harry (Anthony Edwards) fall in love with waitress Julie (Mare Winningham) over the course of a day out at the La Brea Tar Pits. Harry’s joy is short-lived, however, when he receives some seriously unwelcome news. Answering a ringing payphone, he is told that nuclear war is imminent. Harry, ‘just a guy who picked up the phone’, believes what he is told, and desperately tries to get himself and Julie to a place of safety. The film changes gear alarmingly quickly, going from almost-too-frothy comedy to something genuinely terrifying…

Details 15 // 85 mins // 2017 // // Released Out now Director McG Cast Judah Lewis, Samara Weaving, Robbie Amell, Hana Mae Lee, Bella Thorne Distributor Netfl ix The other kids at school think Cole (Judah Lewis) is a loser – not least because his parents still hire a babysitter to secret is out, there’s barely a minute that goes by without something exploding or someone dying, messily. It’s gleefully gory in a way that suggests you’re not meant to take any of it seriously. And that’s fun, but its air of ironic detachment means it’s hard to care about its characters, robbing an otherwise kind of sweet finale of any real emotional weight. look after him when they’re going out. But at least some of them are also…

 After managing to bring hard, accurate science to the masses with The Martian, Andy Weir cuts loose with a lunar-set heist caper that should both please those who enjoyed his attention to detail and those who fell for his obvious ability to spin an entertaining yarn. “WEIR KEEPS THINGS LIGHT...THIS IS A SF THRILLER THAT WANTS YOU TO HAVE FUN AND IT DELIVERS” Our (slightly anti-) heroine is Jazz Bashara, a resident on the moon’s city of Artemis. For the most part, it’s a tourist attraction, as shuttles bring the curious and the wealthy to step into the vacuum of space and wander the first landing sites. However, lawful employment isn’t cutting it for Jazz and she makes most of her cash as a smuggler, bringing contraband in for the…

How did Sweet Dreams come about? I wanted to write a straightforward, slightly comic mystery novel. And it wasn’t initially intended to have any science fiction element, I thought I could do it as a fantasy, but all of my instincts seemed to go towards a more rational explanation, so then I came up with the idea of the technology that allowed dream-hacking. But the real impulse for this particular one was more the type of story it is, about one protagonist in a kind of contemporary setting and a kind of a straightforward whodunnit, or whatdunit. Charlie’s got this great pitch at the start about what she thinks her job should be… Well, I think the thing about the character is that she’s very naïve and she’s very innocent…

“IT OFFERS UP AN ENRICHING, DELIGHTFUL LOOK AT THE FRINGES OF STAR WARS” The beauty of the Star Wars universe is that it is so expansive, providing fertile ground for a wealth of stories to grow, as evidenced in the ever-popular material that represents both the Legends and the new Star Wars canon. Into this arrives Star Wars: From A Certain Point Of View, an anthology crafted to celebrate the saga’s 40th anniversary, one story for each year. The stories work alongside the events of Episode IV, progressing chronologically. Some stories feature characters we’ve come to know and love/loathe as well as those less well-known faces. If you ever wanted to know what happened to the infamous head-bumping stormtrooper, there’s a tale in here for you. It even takes time…

ARTEMIS Phil Lord and Christopher Miller didn’t waste any time licking their wounds after leaving the Han Solo movie, as it was recently announced that the 21 Jump Street duo would be directing the film based on Weir’s latest novel. We can’t wait to see what they do with it. MISSION CONTROL CBS has nabbed the rights to Weir’s TV series pitch. It sounds more grounded than his two novels, telling the story of the astronauts and scientists at NASA who try to maintain a healthy work-life balance while sending people into space. UNTITLED FILM There’s been no word on this one since May last year, which is when Weir sold a mystery pitch to 20th Century Fox. According to reports at the time, he’ll write the script for The…

KNIGHT RIDER 2000 (1991) The components that made the original series special are absent from this attempt to relaunch a new series. That includes KITT who spends the runtime operating a Fifties Chevy! He has competition in the form of red rival the Knight 4000, which features a ‘virtual reality mode’ and can turn into a speedboat. If things aren’t bizarre enough, James Doohan turns up in a cameo; playing himself thinking he’s Scotty. Beam us up right now! KNIGHT RIGHT 2010 (1994) Only very loosely based on the television series, this apocalyptic Mad Max-style follow up film doesn’t even feature a Michael Knight character nor a KITT vehicle. Instead the protagonist is a Mexican smuggler who drives a grungy Ford Mustang that has female artificial…

“PEOPLE FEEL LIKE THE BBC IS SOMETHING YOU CAN TRUST. YOU DON’T EXPECT THE BBC TO BE SUBVERSIVE” STEPHEN VOLK GOTHIC (1986) Volk was working as a copywriter in a London advertising firm at the time he penned his first screenplay, a ripe horror about the historic meeting between Mary and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Originally down to be directed by Richard Loncraine, Volk then got a telephone call to tell him Ken Russell was taking over… “He kind of writes for the camera, Ken,” Volk says. “Once he’s on the set that’s when his creative juices get going. He would improvise sometimes, like saying: ‘Get me loads of dwarves!’ There are certain scenes in there like the animatronic belly dancer, that was a complete invention of Ken –…

“FOR ALL ITS FLESH-RIPPING AND DARTING MEAT HOOKS, HELLRAISER IS A FAIRY TALE WITH A WONDERFUL DOMESTICITY” Given what the Hellraiser franchise has become, it’s easy to forget where its cinematic life began: in a dirty old attic, clawing its way through the floorboards to shred an unhappy family. The dark heart of the first film isn’t Pinhead, though he was obviously its face. It’s the sordid, sweaty, violent forbidden love story between Frank and Julia. Later instalments, particularly II, III and IV, would explore the Cenobites’ mythology almost to the point of exhaustion, as would the comics and Barker’s recent novel The Scarlet Gospels. But the thing that gives the first film and the source novella The Hellbound Heart such staying power isn’t the corridors of Hell. It’s the…

”I love it, it’s the best horror film! Started my love of all things horror and introduced me to Clive Barker’s books.” @BeardedWhovian “Fantastically transgressive horror film. Still nothing really like it.” @Afrofi lmviewer “A gory classic. The dubbed American accents are still a bit jarring, though.” @HannahChapter1 “Fantastic ketchup-gore/ BDSM horror fest. A classic.” @hunkamunka “Brilliant movie, one of those that only gets made by debut directors. Its effectiveness as a metaphor for the AIDS crisis is under-discussed.” @whittertron “It’s even better than the book, eerie vibe, waltzie soundtrack, killer lines... a timeless masterpiece.” @major_rager_uk…