Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i Total Film

This month I spent two weeks out of the office at the Venice Film Festival - one of the most beautiful cities in the world… to sit in a darkened cinema. Venice has become the starting line for awards season and there were plenty of gong-bothering films and performances to feast the eyes on - not least In Bruges follow-up The Banshees Of Inisherin. I got to hang out with the cast of that, who were a wholly delightful bunch and thankfully not as bolshy as the characters they play. I also got to spend time with Timothée Chalamet in the quiet before the storm (the scream-filled premiere) to talk about cannibalism, loneliness and vintage boots (he was wearing a pair of beauties). In between the chats and films, I…

TEASERS Barely minutes after Austin Butler left the building, another teen-telly graduate will step into a familiar pair of blue suede shoes. Perhaps you first saw Jacob Elordi in The Kissing Booth and its sequels. Maybe you shrunk before all 6ft 5in of him in high-school drama series Euphoria. Either way, you’ll soon see a lot more action from the Brisbane-born 25-year-old. Elordi will play Elvis Presley in Priscilla, director Sofia Coppola’s A24 adaptation of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley’s memoir Elvis And Me. While Mare Of Easttown’s Cailee Spaeny will play the woman who became Presley’s wife, Elordi has put in the homework for Elvis, going by a recent GQ interview in which Peter Guralnick’s biography Last Train To Memphis was spotted on the actor’s table. Looking for ways to understand…

Are you talkin’ to me? I am. I’m in Hawaii at the moment and there are tourists everywhere. I was in a restaurant last night and a woman grabbed me as I walked past, wanting to talk about Barbarian. She was drunk, so it wasn’t her fault, I guess. Do you have an off switch? I do. But I sometimes find it hard to access. Not to sound like a ‘wanker’, as you Brits might say, but I found meditation really helps. [Long’s girlfriend, Kate Bosworth, interrupts to remind him that he also enjoys mowing the lawn.] Yes! Mowing really gets me there too. Any kind of menial task like yard work or something. How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? I’ve never…

TAKING CLOVER Babak Anvari is entering the Clover-verse. The British-Iranian filmmaker has been tapped to helm the fourth Cloverfield film, from writer Joe Barton and producer J.J. Abrams. Plot details are, predictably, shut tight in the mystery box. WAY OUT WEST Regé-Jean Page and Glen Powell are saddling up for a reimagined Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. The Russos are producing the ambitious series from scribes Kaz and Ryan Firpo, which is set in an alternate America. MIND-BLOWING The year of Cronenberg continues. Hot on the heels of his screen return with Crimes Of The Future, the body horror king will exec produce a TV adap of 1981’s head-popping Scanners for HBO. ‘71’s Yann Demange will direct. BACK ON THE BEAT Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley is a go…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE What’s the opposite of a meet-cute? Whatever it is sees new couple James (Asa Butterfield) and Hayley (Cora Kirk) spending their first Christmas apart - each hoping to surprise the other with a spontaneous visit and both ending up stranded at their in-laws’ house alone. “It’s sort of a backwards romcom,” laughs director Jim O’Hanlon, making his feature debut after honing his comedy chops on the likes of TV’s Catastrophe and Trying. “Tone is the hardest thing to nail on a Christmas film. You want it to be warm and you want it to be emotional and you want it to be funny, but it also needs to feel real. I wanted it to pretty much be the opposite of whatever they run on those 24/7 Christmas movie channels…”…

Having risen to fame with David Lynch’s Dune, Virginia Madsen is best-known for playing doomed student Helen Lyle in the horror classic Candyman. Since then, she has built a genre-defying body of work. She appears in possession horror Prey For The Devil as Dr. Peters, doctor and mentor to the film’s hero, demon-busting nun Sister Ann. What stood out about your character in Prey For The Devil? I liked that I served different roles and that she was a very learned woman, but not necessarily a woman of faith. She was a woman of science in this institution of faith. I loved that I got to be a teacher and a doctor. You’ve made a number of supernatural horror films with themes of possession and Satanic terror. What is it…

The Duffer Brothers say the fifth season is the final season. Have they told you how it will end? Probably when I’m filming, I won’t even know how it ends. They’ll probably keep it a secret. I know as much as you know. I really, really am clueless. And, also, they don’t want to tell me. I’ve got a huge mouth. You’ve said before that you want Eleven to find happiness, to perhaps even marry Mike… I say things like this, but then I also said I want her to die. I really don’t know. And also, it’s not my choice. I say all these things, again, really just under my breath, and then people take them and print them. And I’m like, no, no, no - I said that…

What’s this version of Namor like? What they did with the script, and the addition [by] Ryan, is so great. It blows my mind. The representation of this… Because the thing with Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, it’s not just the characters. It’s all the context, the cultural context, of the characters - Wakanda and Talocan. As you try to understand Namor, you will understand his culture. As you try to understand Black Panther, you need to understand his culture. And Ryan is a fantastic director to create this context. For me, it’s the most attractive aspect of the script. I mean, the script is great. It’s a real tragedy. It’s an almost Shakespearean tragedy. Is your version of Namor a mutant like he is in the comics?…

It’s been a golden age for directors dipping into their childhoods, as films like Belfast, The Hand Of God and Roma have scooped awards and acclaim. As he sat down to write his own self-reflective movie, Armageddon Time, director James Gray deliberately avoided watching them. “I don’t want to be influenced at all,” he says. “I know that Steven Spielberg has made his own [film, The Fabelmans] that’s coming out in the winter. I’m sure that’ll be its own brand of wonderful… but I don’t ever think about what anybody else is doing, maybe to my detriment.” Now 53, Gray had just come off the Brad Pitt— starring sci-fi epic Ad Astra, which was his biggest in scale and highest-grossing film in a career that previously saw him trade in…

OUT 4 NOVEMBER CINEMAS Mr Zombie. Sort of dead… but not dead.” That’s one colleague’s verdict on frosty, progress-blocking 1950s planning officer Mr. Williams (a superb Bill Nighy), whose days are transformed when he receives a life-changing diagnosis. Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s delicate script turns this remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 seize-the-day classic Ikiru into a piercing portrait of a misguided life. But unlike Ishiguro’s buttoned-up The Remains Of The Day (1993), Living takes a lovely tender turn, sparked by Aimee Lou Wood’s upbeat intervention as compassionate secretary Margaret, aided by idealistic civil servant Peter (Alex Sharp). Oliver Hermanus’ thoughtful direction captures the bowler-hatted deference of ’50s Britain in sly satirical snippets of bureaucratic jostling. We also get a sure sense of Williams’ achingly stiff-upper-lip home life. The film…

OUT 4 NOVEMBER CINEMAS A sense of implacable dread pervades this Bucharest-set thriller from director Chloe Okuno, in which a young American actor’s sensation of being a peşte out of water is amplified by her suspicion she’s being watched and stalked. Is Maika Monroe’s Julia genuinely in peril? Or is her fertile imagination running away with her? The answer to that conundrum is never really in doubt. Yet the film delivers creepy enjoyment en route to its rote finale, its capacity to unsettle augmented by a brooding score and imposing production design.…

19 OCTOBER CINEMAS 26 OCTOBER NETFLIX Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne team up on screen for the first time in this superior true-crime tale from Danish director Tobias Lindholm (2015’s A War). Set in 2003, it casts Redmayne as Charlie Cullen, a new ICU nurse at Parkland Memorial in Pennsylvania. Already working there is Chastain’s Amy. A single mother, with a serious heart condition and no health insurance, she and Cullen quickly bond - both seem to want to go that extra mile for their patients and each other. Yet when a 77-year-old woman dies in suspicious circumstances, the department comes under investigation and Amy begins to feel her colleague isn’t quite the saintly medic she first believed… Adapted by Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917, Last Night In Soho) from Charles Graeber’s…

OUT 21 OCTOBER CINEMAS, DIGITAL Kristina Bouzyte and Bruno Samper’s sci-fi fairytale is set in a future where synthetic biology has triggered eco-catastrophe. While the poor live off the land, the rich hole up in towering citadels. Plucky 13-year-old Vesper (the winning Raffiella Chapman) sees salvation when an oligarch’s transport crashes in the woods, leaving lone survivor Camellia (Rosy McEwen) needing a guide. Nasty Uncle Jonas (Eddie Marsan) has other plans… With its grungy, lo-fi aesthetic and low-lit, mud-toned visuals, Vesper offers an intriguingly rough-hewn antidote to the genre’s more customary gleaming futurism.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS 7 NOVEMBER DVD, DIGITAL The daunting arena of Doctor Who fandom is explored in Vanessa Yuille’s portrait of Matthew Jacobs, the screenwriter of 1996’s divisive TV movie. Oft-derided for alleged continuity crimes, Jacobs has - understandably - avoided US con culture. But he finds a lively welcome among folks who knit Tom Baker scarves for fun, touchingly revealing how the show helped him during his troubled upbringing. With Paul McGann reiterating his own standing as the great (semi-)lost Doctor, the result is a clear-eyed, warm-hearted tribute to community, where fandom assumes a fun, friendly face.…

OUT 28 OCTOBER CINEMAS Exploring homelessness in the UK, Lorna Tucker (Westwood) helms a documentary that is part autobiography, part call for social action. Tucker herself was on the streets as a child and her story - as well as many others paints an empathic picture of the human cost of falling through the cracks. There are contributions from those working in the sector - including John Bird, co-founder of The Big Issue - and though it’s not always clear what the solution is, the appeal to our shared humanity is deeply moving.…

SCREEN OUT 21 OCTOBER CINEMAS Writer/director Ann Hu draws on her own experiences in this heartfelt family drama about a Chinese mother who travels to New York in search of adequate support for her dyslexic daughter. Lead actor Zhu Zhu carries the story as Lan, a desperate parent striving to overcome a significant language barrier in order to find the best education possible for her child. Although the plot leans at times towards the formulaic, Hu injects it with authentic emotion and astute observations about the cultural differences Lan is forced to confront.…

OUT 18 OCTOBER CINEMAS Released to coincide with a major show at New York’s Whitney Museum, Phil Grabsky’s insightful documentary explores the life of the taciturn American artist and his tempestuous relationship with wife and muse Jo. Grabsky offers clues on how to interpret his work, but the big draw here is the paintings themselves: stark, depopulated and steeped in pensive melancholy. Along the way we learn of the artist’s love of film noir and how Hitchcock reciprocated by basing the Bates mansion in Psycho on a Hopper tableau.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS, DIGITAL This powerful documentary follows two midwives from different religious backgrounds working at a makeshift clinic in western Myanmar, where violent tensions between their respective communities have escalated. Hla is the Buddhist owner, risking her life by providing healthcare to Muslim patients, while Nyo Nyo is her Muslim apprentice, facing persecution in the country. Director Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing captures their struggles over five years: even as bombs and gunfire ring in the background, their poignant story becomes one of courage and faith in the face of turmoil.…

OUT 28 OCTOBER CINEMAS, DIGITAL Ben Foster stars as Jan Žižka in this near-impenetrable retelling of the real-life Czech icon’s military feats at the turn of the 15th century (the mercenary turned commander reputedly never lost a battle). Matthew Goode and Michael Caine round out an impressive cast but Petr Jákl’s film is ultimately a slog, besieged by bland characters, dull dialogue and copious exposition. The occasional dynamic swordplay and frequent blood-spilling aren’t enough to offset the drab storytelling or passionless romance between Žižka and Sophie Lowe’s kidnapped political pawn…

12A OUT NOW CINEMAS Guess who’s coming to Bali? Only estranged exes George Clooney and Julia Roberts, united temporarily in their determination to prevent daughter Kaitlyn Dever from marrying an Indonesian seaweed farmer (Maxime Bouttier). If that sounds somewhat mean-spirited, you’re not far wrong - but charm and wit will carry the day, right? 01 Parker’s (Mamma Mia! 2) romcom, alas, is lacking in both, its attempts to emulate the screwball farces of yesteryear proving as unconvincing as the stand-in Australian locations. Billie Lourd is the saving grace as a hedonistic maid of honour.…

OUT NOW NETFLIX Adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’ fictionalised account of Marilyn Monroe’s life, Andrew Dominik’s gorgeous/grotesque drama isn’t interested in clinically dissecting the reality behind the icon’s carefully crafted persona. Instead, Blonde creates a mood board of the various narratives Monroe told herself and the public, inviting audiences to assess their own culpability in the ravenous disassembling of the famous. Those stories begin with tiny Norma Jeane Baker (Lily Fisher, wonderful), living with an abusive mother (Julianne Nicholson) who’s struggling with her mental health. When she grows up to be the pin-up with stars in her eyes (Ana de Armas, luminous), what unfolds is as old as time: casting-couch rape, daddy issues, the transactional treatment of a young woman in the studio system. De Armas recreates iconic moments with…

1997 OUT 4 NOVEMBER CINEMAS 5 DECEMBER BD EXTRAS Commentary, Featurettes, Book As the title suggests, Gary Oldman was not in Transylvania any more for his directorial bow. After gigs such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Fifth Element, he hit hard earth for a tough portrait of domestic violence in sarf-east London, whose ciggy-stained scenery killed any appetite to chew it. Here, Ray Winstone’s self-pitying father crawls between pints and terrorises wife Kathy Burke. Meanwhile, her brother (Charlie Creed-Miles) fills his veins with heroin, the cycles of abuse and self-abuse seemingly unbreakable. Oldman imbibed Alan Clarke and John Cassavetes’ influences for his fly-on-the-(peeling)-wall pitch. But his film’s power sprouts less from kitchen-sink bromides than commitment. As director, Oldman delivers on his claim to treat the leads’ faces as his…

SCREEN 1971 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentary, Featurettes, Booklet Hungarian cinema flourished in the ’70s, and this poetically shot, well-acted chamber piece was one of its highlights. Adapted by director Károly Makk, it unfolds in early-’50s Budapest. János (Iván Darvas) has been jailed as a political prisoner. Fearful she’ll never see him again, his wife (Mari Törõcsik) pays daily visits to her aged mother-in-law, who believes her son is working abroad. ‘Reality’, memories and fantasies interweave via montages of rapidly edited stills that skilfully convey the beleaguered characters’ inner lives.…

2002 OUT 28 OCTOBER CINEMAS Squished between Chris Columbus’ cheery series-starter and Alfonso Cuarón’s franchise high point, the second Potter now carries the burden of being both the longest and arguably least-loved entry in the boy-wizard cycle. Yet it’s not without its charms. The arrival of Dobby the House Elf gives Daniel Radcliffe a co-star markedly more animated than Grint and Watson combined. Jason Isaacs makes a splendidly hissable Lucius Malfoy, while the basilisk finale is genuinely sinister. Why, though, does so much of the story revolve around a toilet?…

1983 OUT NOW 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentary, Making Of, Featurettes, Deleted scenes, Prologue Often thought of as their least essential film, lacking the sustained LOLs of Life Of Brian and The Holy Grail, the Pythons’ final big-screen outing still offers much to enjoy. Ostensibly a featurelength sketch show in the vein of Flying Circus, it’s loosely structured as a cradle-to-the-grave study of human life. Not every segment lands, but there’s plenty of gold, the standouts being ‘Every Sperm Is Sacred’ and Mr Creosote’s dining experience. Extras include a Jones/Gilliam chat-track, Eric Idle prologue and Un Film De John Cleese.…

1997 OUT 31 OCTOBER BD EXTRAS Alternate cuts, Commentary, Short film, Featurettes, Galleries, Essay “The summer I killed my father, I was 10 years old,” reveals the opening voiceover to Kasi Lemmons’ directorial debut, a potent mix of feverish Southern Gothic and coming-of-age drama. Featuring a breakout turn from Birds Of Prey’s Jurnee Smollett, its discourse on the malleability of memory remains as affecting and challenging as ever - making it all the more baffling that it continues to fly under the radar of so many film lovers. Here’s hoping this superbly appointed Blu-ray gives the film the spotlight it richly deserves.…

MOONAGE DAYDREAM Which Bowie is your Bowie? Space-glam or pop, Berlin or Blackstar, you’ll find him on the maximalist soundtrack to Brett Morgen’s kaleido-doc. Between deep cuts, remixes, nifty edits, soundtrack work, symphonic tributes, live rarities and more, Morgen honours Bowie’s exploratory instincts in a 45-track fantastic voyage of dazzling depths and archive rediscoveries: even heard-it-all Bowie-heads will, surely, thrill to the barrelling live medley of ‘The Jean Genie/Love Me Do’. Blow your minds. HALLOWEEN ENDS Carpenters John/Cody and Daniel Davies give Michael a fitting send-off here. Old themes (main/Laurie’s) benefit from judicious tweaks, while newer material favours controlled dread and melancholy over lunging bluster: ‘Evil Eyes’ builds to an apocalyptic pay-off, The Fight’ glowers malevolently. Funereal flavours seeded in two “requiems” culminate in the elegant ‘Cherry Blossoms’, before Halloween…

Blown away all over again by a recent glimpse of several scenes from Avatar: The Way Of Water in 3D, HDR and HFR. Producer Jon Landau showed off his Na’vi trainers, which I’ve coveted every day since. Had a blast at D23 last month the most pleasant surprise was a live performance of ‘I Can Do This All Day’ from Rogers: The Musical during the Marvel panel. Anya Taylor-Joy was racing to the set of Fury Road prequel Furiosa as we spoke about her tasty new thriller, The Menu. What better way to burn off the calories? Enjoyed yakking with the Armageddon Time guys in Cannes, especially with Anne Hathaway practising her linguistic skills (“Merci beaucoup!”). Better than my French anyway… I went to the Don’t Worry Darling press conference…

As a rising Mexican star making his American movie debut, art imitated life for Diego Calva when he was cast as one of the co-leads in Babylon, Damien Chazelle’s crazed love letter to the golden age of Hollywood, alongside Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie. “Manny is a new kid,” Calva tells Teasers. “And me, too. So it was like metafiction.” How does Manny fit into Damien Chazelle’s vision of a debaucherous early 20th-century Hollywood? Manny just wants to work in movies. Movies, for him, are the most important, so he’s going to find any way to work on it. He doesn’t care if he has to bring the coffee to someone, or clean after the party. He just wants to be involved. Did the parallels between yourself and Manny feed…

Q&A You’re in your mid-20s, playing a dad. Was it a leap? Yeah, there’s lots of space to cross. I’m not a father, I don’t have a daughter, but from my side of things you approach every character from the same point. Sometimes there’s more distance to travel, and this was one of those. But I felt a great deal of empathy for Calum, I loved him from the minute I read it, and I felt I could give it a good go. How did you build your on-screen relationship with Frankie Corio? When you meet Frankie, you fall in love with her immediately. I met her on a Zoom and she was staggeringly brilliant. We then hung out for two weeks before we started filming and played games. Her…

What’s the first thing you do on set? I like to be early. I usually get there 15 or 20 minutes before my call time. I’m very much someone who thrives when things feel organised. I hate being rushed, too. Even going to the airport - I would rather be there hours early than deal with the stress of being late. What do you take on set with you? The backpack that I take usually just has personal items - a toothbrush, things like that. On set, I don’t want distractions. I tend to leave my phone in the trailer. So when I go to set, other than ChapStick and Nicorette, I don’t have anything else on me. Favourite on-set memories? There’s the obvious ones, like Cruel Intentions. I had…

THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE 1974 Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), in his apron, serves up a pretty mean BBQ. It’s almost a shame that Sally (Marilyn Burns) is too busy being terrorised and terrified to tuck in. OK, so those steaming sausages were her best friends just a few hours ago, but they sure look tasty. THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER 1989 Holding court in a gourmet restaurant, sadistic crime boss Albert (Michael Gambon) leaves a foul taste in the mouth with his every action and utterance. But it’s Albert who’s ultimately choking back bile as his long-suffering wife, Georgina (Helen Mirren), exacts revenge by forcing him to eat a human corpse. GOODFELLAS 1990 When blood-splattered Tommy (Joe Pesci) swings by his mum’s house with gangster pals…

OUT 28 OCTOBER CINEMAS Early on in Bros, when podcaster/museum curator Bobby Leiber (Billy Eichner) is discussing his failed attempt to write a script for a romantic comedy that’s centred around a gay couple, he opines his treatment by a studio exec who wanted him to deliver “something a straight guy might even like and watch with his girlfriend”. As Eichner’s character doesn’t seem too far removed from the acerbic comedian’s own public persona, the meta elements don’t feel distracting - it’s fair enough to highlight the fact that this is a Big Deal. With Bros marketed as the first gay romcom from a Hollywood studio, there’s no sidestepping the fact that the film is a significant milestone, and quite the undertaking for Eichner (best known for pranky game show…

OUT 21 OCTOBER CINEMAS Martin McDonagh’s follow-up to 2017 awards darling Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is another darkly amusing and heartbreakingly sad character drama from a modern master of shifting tones. Reuniting McDonagh with his two leads from In Bruges, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, it’s set in 1923 on Inisherin, an island off Ireland’s west coast. Farrell’s Pádraic is one of life’s good guys: keeper of farmyard animals and best friends with Gleeson’s more cultured Colm. Or so he thinks. As the film opens, Colm puts an abrupt end to their friendship for seemingly nebulous reasons. The baffled Pádraic persists, eventually leading Colm to lay down a drastic ultimatum: every time Pádraic speaks to him he’ll cut off one of his own fingers with shears. It’s McDonagh’s typically…

OUT 21 OCTOBER CINEMAS This smart Spanish thriller centres on a compelling performance from newcomer Laura Galán as the bullied Sara who, during a traumatic long walk home, sees her mean-girl tormentors being kidnapped by a violent stranger. In choosing to keep his secret, Sara forms an unspoken bond with the abductor that evolves into a sinister infatuation. Blending coming-of-age drama with (gruesome) slasher horror, writer/director Carlota Pereda tackles tricky topics (body image, sex positivity, adolescent anxiety) openly and sensitively, delivering a confident, unsettling feature debut.…

OUT 4 NOVEMBER CINEMAS Phyllis Nagy’s confident, thought-provoking (if slightly over-tidy) tale of a covert abortion network in 1968 Chicago usefully arrives just as the issue is red-hot again in the US. Dropping Elizabeth Banks’ posh, frightened housewife Joy into the nightmare of trying to illegally end a life-threatening pregnancy, it switches adroitly from melodrama to thriller mode once she’s stumbled on The Janes, female activists providing safe, secret terminations. Nagy creates tense, surprisingly jaunty drama from Joy’s reluctant radicalisation, as Sigourney Weaver’s charismatic Head Jane enlists her to help their hundreds of desperate clients. A snappy, unsentimental movie, it doesn’t swerve either the realities of the procedures, nor the tension between Black and white activists over access to the service. But it also keeps things pert and glossy, revelling…

OUT NOW APPLE TV+ Following his Best Picture-winning Green Book (2018), director/co-writer Peter Farrelly delivers another ’60s-set story based on true events in the Vietnam War era. On a drunken night out with his buddies in New York, Chickie Donohue (Zac Efron) resolves to visit his friends embroiled in the conflict in Southeast Asia. The plan? To bring them beers to show a bit of solidarity and support. So begins an engagingly madcap journey that sees Chickie arrive in Saigon with no contacts and no paperwork. Attempting to track down four friends in different parts of Vietnam, his patriotism gradually ebbs as he faces the true horror of war (including some vile CIA practices) and the dawning realisation that nobody quite knows why they’re out there fighting. Among those he…

SCREEN OUT NOW SHUDDER From 1975’s Deep Red to 1987’s Opera, Dario Argento has made some of the greatest genre films of all time. Following 2012’s awful Dracula, he returns with a giallo about a blind sex worker (Ilenia Pastorelli) being stalked by a maniac. Combining callbacks to his earlier films (garottings, exotic animals, a role for his daughter Asia), with some welcome surreal touches, Dark Glasses seems designed to please old rather than new fans. Though lacking the feverish quality of his best work, it serves as a much-deserved victory lap for the master.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS Patricio Guzmán directs his 20th documentary about his native Chile, the country he left in exile following the 1973 military coup. Here, the long strip of Andean mountains running between Chile and Argentina is used to spur discussions with Chilean artists, activists and intellectuals about the Pinochet dictatorship’s legacy. Most moving are the contributions of Pablo Salas, a radical who remained in Chile. Recording the dictatorship from the ground, he generated an archive of hundreds of videotapes, documenting hours of human-rights abuses.…

OUT 19 OCTOBER DIGITAL This 90-minute documentary zips through the career of Steve McCurry, the renowned US photojournalist best known for Afghan Girl, the 1984 portrait of refugee Sharbat Gula snapped in Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan War. McCurry’s startling, painterly images also famously captured the war in Kuwait and the collapse of the World Trade Center. Denis Delestrac’s film is rather less in focus, only partially revealing the man beneath the photographer who’s lived a largely lonely, peripatetic life. Viewers will yearn for a fuller picture.…

OUT 19 OCTOBER NETFLIX A film that operates on a need-to-know basis, Thomas M. Wright’s elliptical but gripping The Stranger circles one of Australia’s most horrifying crimes: the kidnap and murder of 13-year-old Queensland boy Daniel Morcombe. Thankfully, the film avoids any depiction of this 2003 atrocity. Instead, the focus is on the ensuing police operation - the sting to end them all - that took eight years to reach its conclusion. From the off, The Stranger feels worthy of comparison with such notable Aussie crime yarns as Animal Kingdom (with which it shares star Joel Edgerton) or Chopper. Henry (Sean Harris) is a nefarious drifter who is gradually, carefully, recruited into a criminal organisation. Inducting him is Mark (Joel Edgerton) who, as we come to learn, is an undercover…

OUT 14 OCTOBER CINEMAS Passion shakes the young Emily Brontë just as harshly as winds batter her Wuthering Heights in this fresh, sparky, speculative drama, which shows us the rebel in the reclusive writer. Actor turned first-time writer/director Frances O’Connor digs deeply into Emily’s (a moody Emma Mackey) revolt against oppressive vicarage life. The narrative finds her pinballing between dangerous drunken pranks with waster brother Branwell (a perky Fionn Whitehead) and one of those ultra-Victorian slow-burn bondings with flinty but flirty curate Weightman (a subtle Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Brontë buffs can find clues about what fuelled her classic novel, but O’Connor’s skill is in making Emily a recognisable frustrated teen. The camera revels in her trysts with wary Weightman and whirls about her as she takes ecstatic moorland hikes, high on…

OUT NOW SHUDDER Passivity and politeness are cruelly dissected in Christian Tafdrup’s semi-allegorical horror, which starts as character-based class satire then slowly turns deadlier. When a Danish family accepts an invitation to stay with newfound holiday acquaintances, the mood is tense. Social rules are violated, but things worsen as the Danes’ civility is exploited. While his ironies can be heavy-handed, Tafdrup winds up the dread with taut purpose. Be warned: even if his implicit subtext about the risks of inaction might be divisive, the well-seeded twists arrive with pulverising force.…

SCREEN OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Featurettes, Video diaries, Book readings, Deleted scenes, Gallery, Booklet A boy-meets-girl love story, with ’80s action homages, erectile dysfunction and a vengeful spirit… This adaptation of Indonesian author Eka Kurniawan’s bestseller makes the surreal story more linear, but otherwise ends up overwhelmed by wild shifts in tone and genre. That’s not to say that writer/director Edwin’s action-com is a failure, but it definitely feels like there’s a better, more coherent, film fighting to get out.…

OUT NOW SHUDDER A disgraced livestreamer seeks redemption in the bowels of a haunted house in this bawdy comedy horror, the writing/directing feature debut of husband and wife Joseph and Vanessa Winter. The former also stars as gobby online personality Shawn Ruddy, who wastes little time antagonising the resident evil of the spooky old shack where he strands himself. Grisly practical effects and the latest in web technology are put to good use, following our screeching hero as he livestreams every moment of his own relentless torment. An abrasive yet highly effective horror show.…

1997 OUT 31 OCTOBER BD EXTRAS Documentary, Featurettes, Book excerpts David Lynch’s brain-bending neo-noir gets the 4K Criterion red-carpet treatment - and not before time. Bill Pullman is the jazz saxophonist embroiled with a femme fatale (Patricia Arquette) and her gangster sugar daddy (Robert Loggia), who has serious road-rage issues. At midpoint, Lynch pulls a major switcheroo that brilliantly bamboozles. But even if you get lost, this eerie odyssey chills to the bone. Extras accompanying the director-approved digi-restoration include 1997 feature-length doc Pretty As A Picture: The Art Of David Lynch.…

1987 OUT 14 OCTOBER CINEMAS Released in the UK the same day as Kathryn Bigelow’s moody, murky Near Dark, Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys caught the zeitgeist with its Brat Pack cast, glossy lensing and power-pop soundtrack. The Twilight of its day, it made vampirism sexy and cool: ‘Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire,’ promised the tagline. As if you didn’t know, it focuses on teenager Sam (Corey Haim) and his older brother Michael (Jason Patric) as they move to Santa Carla, California. Michael falls in with David (Kiefer Sutherland rocking a bristling peroxide mullet) and his biker bloodsuckers; Sam teams up with the Frog Brothers (Corey Feldman, Jamison Newlander) for a high-stakes rescue mission. “This pathetic attempt at…

1960/67 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Featurettes, Isolated scores, Bonus film, Galleries, Booklet, Poster Collecting two of the four Robin Hood features made by Hammer, this feature-packed set is a must for anyone longing for the days of men in tights engaging in jaunty acts of derring-do. While nobody could claim that 1960’s Sword Of Sherwood Forest or A Challenge For Robin Hood (1967) are anything more than straightforward romps, they remain better bets than more recent screen takes on the legendary outlaw. Prolonging the fun is bonus Keith Chegwin kids’ flick Robin Hood Junior (1975).…

TEASERS MARVEL Phase 4 of the MCU is nearly over, but there’s plenty on the horizon for The Multiverse Saga. Among the most tantalising projects unveiled at D23 was Thunderbolts, an antihero team-up movie uniting Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Red Guardian (David Harbour) and more. Marvel’s The Suicide Squad? Maybe. “I think it’ll be unique in the MCU in the sense that it’s got a very different flavour to it,“ says Harbour. Talking of team-ups, Hall D23 also thrilled to the energetic trailer of The Marvels, which picks up where Ms. Marvel’s end-credits sting left off, with Carol Danvers, Kamala Khan and Monica Rambeau trading places in an epic-looking adventure. “I’m excited to get three heroes that I love together and see how they work together,”…

I wanted this to be a visual feast,” smiles director Paul Feig, inviting us into The School For Good And Evil, his new fantasy epic that takes familiar fairytale tropes and turns them upside down. Based on the novel series of the same name by author Soman Chainani - and arriving on Netflix on 21 October - this hugely popular book series adap imagines a world where everyday kids are whisked away to a magical school… Sound familiar? Well, wait; there’s a devilish twist to this sword-and-spell story. Instead of wizards and witches, Chainani’s tale splits kids into two schools: one that trains heroes and another that nurtures their villainous counterparts. Enter Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) and Agatha (Sofia Wylie), two BFFs who have their dreams answered when they’re invited…

Q&A What grabbed you from the script? I’ve never done a Christmas movie before, and I love Christmas! It really was funny, too, and this kind of felt almost more like a piece of theatre at times, with how many characters are involved and all the madness that’s going on. How was it shooting a romcom where you spend most of your scenes alone? Some of my favourite scenes in the film are actually just us talking on the phone. Cora [Kirk]’s so brilliant, too. You can see why James has totally fallen for this girl because she’s so unlike anyone he would have met in his life. How was the snow? There was a lot of it. Most of it was made out of papier-mâché so it was pretty…

MBB: “I find Enola’s voice just in my room, in front of the mirror, because we’re breaking the fourth wall. So I look in the mirror, and I pretend that I’m talking to the camera. Which is the only way to see what I’m doing and to make sure it doesn’t look crazy [laughs]. So I just say all my lines to the mirror, and find that relationship, that dynamic, between the audience and Enola, and what that means. The mirror really helps me with that.” HB: “Well, first of all, you have to have a darn good actor who understands [the technique], and who uses that approach to make a connection with the audience naturally. It shouldn’t be too posed or conscious, even though they’re talking to us. I…

What did you think when you first read the role of Pádraic’s sister, Siobhan? There’s so much subtlety to her. There’s a lot of internal stuff going on. So then I just thought about my own experience as an Irish woman, and things that I felt I could show flickers of - her frustration at not being heard, at being lonely, and just feeling like she’s not being listened to, or cared about. But without doing it from a very needy place. And then, also, I tried to play into grief, because I had experienced grief for the first time in my life guite recently. It was my dog. But it was my princess! What was the process for the rehearsal period like? It was a two-week rehearsal period, prior…

I genuinely really, really don’t have a problem about talking about Potter,” Daniel Radcliffe says, beaming over Zoom from a blank room in Nova Scotia. Some actors bristle when interviewers ask about the roles they can’t outgrow, but that’s not the case here - Radcliffe’s more than happy to discuss his time as The Boy Who Lived. In fact, he’s positively luminous while on the subject. “It was such a hugely formative part of my life,” he continues. “To see it still having such a positive effect on people’s lives is really heartening and sweet.” In the decade since his Harry Potter story concluded on the big screen, Radcliffe has gone on to play a host of weird and wonderful characters on screen, “weird” being the defining word of his…

SCREEN OUT 4 NOVEMBER CINEMAS Set in rural Chinese province Gansu, this slow-moving but subtle tale of loyalty and affection recalls the early work of fifth-generation filmmakers like Zhang Yimou. Here, industrious but kindly farmer Ma (Wu Renlin) is paired with troubled peasant girl Guiying (Hai Qing) in an arranged marriage that manages to thrive in a world where life close to Mother Nature is exceptionally tough. Writer/director Li Ruijun’s authentic touch also extends to his handling of rampant urbanisation. Skilfully braiding the personal with the political, this is a tender, moving gem.…

OUT 4 NOVEMBER CINEMAS, DIGITAL Scottish actor David Hayman wrestles with a wonky script and accent in Leon Prudovsky’s comedy-drama. A Holocaust survivor, Hayman’s Polsky lives alone in South America, 1960. But then a secretive new neighbour (Udo Kier) arrives, with familiar “greyish-blue eyes”: could he be Hitler? If hints of Rear Window show as Polsky’s suspicions stir, this near-two-hander squanders any tension on crass and low-powered comic set-pieces. The result is a film with an identity crisis, wobbling awkwardly between melancholy and ill-advised farce.…

SCREEN OUT NOW DIGITAL 24 OCTOBER DVD, BD This documentary on ABC’s game-changing miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s It (1990) boasts gold-dust on-set footage and rounds up most of the players as talking heads (including director Tommy Lee Wallace and, of course, Pennywise himself, Tim Curry). Running 126 minutes, its chronological coverage can plod - the casting section feels longer than the doorstop novel, with so many actors to get through due to the narrative’s twin-timeline structure. But it’s a joy to see key scenes anatomised and the series’ flaws (spider!), as well as qualities, discussed.…

OUT 21 OCTOBER CINEMAS Based on successful kids’ TV show Mia And Me, this ’tooner bookended by superfluous live-action segments - is a tame but well-meaning adventure, tailor-made for moppets but without much to offer any tag-along grown-ups. After being transported to a magical land full of elves and unicorns, Mia (Margot Nuccetelli) enlists the help of her colourful friends to prevent the monstrous Toxor from poisoning all and sundry. While the animation and story are relatively basic, an underlying positive message about friendship will still win over kids.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS David O. Russell’s based-loosely-on-fact tale begins in New York, 1933, with war veteran Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) practising experimental medicine to aid his fellow vets. His old pal Harold Woodman (John David Washington), now an attorney, brings news that General Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.) is dead. Their former leader was murdered, fears Meekins’ daughter Liz (Taylor Swift), and the trio sets about pilfering the corpse to perform an autopsy. The intrigue takes in detectives, politicians, big business and international intelligence agents. We also spin back to 1918 to discover how Burt and Harold became friends with pipe-smoking nurse Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie), who reappears in ’33 to help with their investigation. With its knotty plotting, untidy digressions, seesawing tone and sentiment clashed with cynicism, Amsterdam won’t win…

OUT 28 OCTOBER CINEMAS Lasse Hallström’s lush and slow-paced biopic of recently rediscovered early-20th-century Swedish artist Hilma af Klint has the reverent tone of a passion project. Many of the gorgeous, painterly scenes linger insistently on Hilma’s mystical struggles to create her vast, abstract canvases, their contents dictated by occult “spirits”. However, the director’s daughter Tora Hallström and his wife Lena Olin portray Hilma’s decades of obsession with fine, understated sensitivity, as her singing colours and radical shapes (she beat Kandinsky and Matisse to the punch) baffle the art world.…

OUT 28 OCTOBER CINEMAS By strange coincidence, writer/director Zach Cregger’s terrific horror movie begins with the same scenario as recent Netflix romcom Love In The Villa: a booking mix-up sees two strangers, a man and a woman, left with little choice but to share an Airbnb. In Villa, romance blossoms. In Barbarian, each twist and turn is more shocking, terrifying and truly messed-up than the last. The woman is Tess (Georgina Campbell), the man Keith (Bill Skarsgård, becoming something of a genre veteran after It and Castle Rock). And the house, on the outskirts of Detroit, is the only maintained building in a dark, rundown neighbourhood. To say a single thing more about the plot would be a disservice to Cregger’s curveball script - it takes a sharp left and…

OUT 7 NOVEMBER DVD, BD Shockingly presented as a white woman on one record sleeve, the ‘Walk On By’ singer emerges as an immovable icon in this conventional but engaging portrait. Tracing her career back to church, the doc takes in Bacharach, ‘Heartbreaker’, Whitney, Aids charity singles and more, with Warwick herself a forthright presence. If the result runs light on context and personal insight, it still pays vivid tribute to Warwick’s rapturous voice and presence, with Elton John, Smokey Robinson, Snoop Dogg and others showing all due reverence.…

SCREEN OUT 21 OCTOBER CINEMAS There is plenty of ice broken and ice-cold water submerged in - when Portuguese big-wave rider Joana Andrade meets up with Finnish free diver Johanna Nordblad, seeking advice from her fellow athlete on how to defeat her fear of drowning. Even at a trim 75 minutes, though, Minna Dufton’s documentary gets unfortunately stuck in the shallows. Talking heads celebrate Andrade’s elite skills, but there’s a frustrating dearth of footage of her actually on her board. Elsewhere, her historical struggles with personal demons offer intriguing avenues that go unexplored.…

OUT 4 NOVEMBER CINEMAS Returning to the well of indie sci-fi after their Moon Knight excursion, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead write, direct and star in this cosmic slacker film, playing neighbours who uncover paranormal activity in their building. The documentary the pair create is the film’s framework, complete with cleverly deployed unreliable narrator. As forest fires blacken the sky, Dirt’s vision of LA becomes enriched by doomsday cults and ancient conspiracies. But it’s the character work that entrances, layered with nuance and bittersweet humanity.…

SCREEN OUT 14 OCTOBER CINEMAS “Delhi is a gaping wound and we’re a tiny Band-Aid on it…” So says former bodybuilder Nadeem in this observational doc, describing the bird-rescue operation he and his brother Saud run from their family basement. The capital city’s skies are so polluted that black kites, who feast on the plentiful landfill sites, are literally falling to the ground. Director Shaunak Sen’s meditative film is shot with considerable artistry, its slow pans and focus shifts revealing a precarious urban ecosystem in which humans and animals are fundamentally interconnected.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS, APPLE TV+ The late Sidney Poitier gets the docu-tribute he richly deserves with Reginald Hudlin’s comprehensive, touching portrait. Though conventional in form, it covers enormous ground and, crucially, deeply considers Poitier’s position as a trailblazing Black actor (and later director) in Hollywood. Big-name contributors include Denzel Washington, Spike Lee and Oprah Winfrey (who also produced). But where Sidney really soars is in the direct-to-camera recollections by the man himself. Filmed shortly before he passed away in January, he’s a charming, illuminating interviewee, just as you would expect.…

OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Featurettes, Booklet, Art cards This awkward horror sees NYC roomies Addie (Betsey Brown) and Noelle (Madeline Quinn) moving into an apartment full of old furniture and rotting food, only for conspiracy theorist ‘The Girl’ (Succession’s Dasha Nekrasova) to tell them it once belonged to real-life sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Soon, a seemingly possessed Addie is ‘Doing The Undoable And Saying The Unsayable’. Directed by Nekrasova, and co-written by her and Quinn, it aims for provocative and topical but ends up seeming amateurish and crass.…

OUT 28 OCTOBER CINEMAS Obsessed by memories of his 1979 post-punk sibling band The Hippies, artist Matt Hulse’s playful, kaleidoscopic docu-drama recreates his fractured childhood using bemused theatre-workshop kids. The film has the scattergun energy of an ’80s fanzine, by turns self-indulgent (a therapist opines on Hulse’s runaway mum) and hilarious (Hulse French-kisses a bust of Malcolm McLaren and bops with his childhood Snoopy to the Sleaford Mods). Lacking strong direction, however, this raucous art adventure emerges as a solipsistic saunter down memory lane.…

2012 OUT 28 OCTOBER CINEMAS An 11-year-old boy’s sixth sense (he can see dead people!) comes in handy when his town is besieged by zombies in this ghoulish stop-motion caper from Coraline/Kubo makers Laika. Ten years on from its original release it’s a lively and, yes, spirited watch that’s sure to get you in a Halloween kind of mood. But strip away the nods to ’80s slasher pictures, vintage creature features and George A. Romero’s classics and you’re left with an extended Scooby-Doo episode whose characters do eventually wear out their welcome. Which is a shame, as it held great initial promise.…

SCREEN 1982 OUT 21 OCTOBER CINEMAS Once you stop worrying about who directed what, 1982’s other Spielberg production after E.T. becomes free to stand on its own merits. Sure, Spielberg’s imprint is all over Poltergeist’s light and magic, however malign; perhaps you can also see Tobe Hooper’s imprint in its jumping jolts, crawling camera and sly wit. But it’s as a slickly effective mainstream gateway-drug horror that the film works best, with Spielberg’s suburbia and the gogglebox doubling as well-chosen stages for subtextual explorations of contested territories. That theme is planted early in a TV-based fallout (Mister Rogers vs the ball game), before the fun kicks in when Freeling family moppet Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) disappears into the possessed telly. The carefully paced build-up of scares majors in dynamic tension,…

1982 OUT NOW BD, DIGITAL EXTRAS Introduction, Featurette, Video diary Billed as Michelangelo Antonioni’s “final masterpiece”, this film summons discrete flashes of his former brilliance. A divorced filmmaker needs inspiration; might the right young woman spark his fires? Queasy erotic pursuits ensue amid requisite exchanges about God and existentialism, but it’s in the mounting air of paranoia and ambiguity that Antonioni finds his film’s voice. While a mid-film mystery verges on Vertigo-esque, this fog-shrouded set-piece is a marvel of atmosphere and composition.…