Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2023 i Total Film

Have I written this missive or did I just get AI to do it for me? And how much of our lives are we giving over to a digital force? As someone who obsesses over my screen time (yep, via a screen), Gareth Edwards’ dystopian look at where AI might take us in The Creator is something that gives me chills. We talked to the flesh-and-blood creatives behind this near-future thriller as well as a host of other artists bringing stories to life on screen. I was fortunate enough to sit down with two of my personal favourites this month to discuss their careers: nerding out over Godzilla with director Ben Wheatley and joking about Soup Nazis with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Their thoughts on the industry, fame and the creative process…

TEASERS Nowadays, the 1978 Superman might seem like the stuff of nostalgia. But even back then, Clark Kent and Lois Lane exuded old-fashioned, out-of-time charm. Lois might have been found rat-a-tat bantering with her leading man in a 30s screwball comedy; Clark was the kind of guy who would say ‘swell’ guilelessly. Whatever James Gunn plans for Superman: Legacy, David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan seem like – you might say – swell picks for modern-classic variations on Lois and Clark. Both actors brim with vintage pep and presence, and they’ve got the experience to prove it. Everyone now knows the prophetic 2019 EW interview where Corenswet expressed his ‘pie-in-the-sky ambition’ to play Superman: ‘I love the Henry Cavill dark and gritty take, but I would love to see the next…

FIVE GO BONKERS Enid Blyton’s book series The Famous Five is being rebooted for the BBC. Three 90-minute episodes will be created and executive produced by Nicolas Winding Refn, who plans a ‘reimagining’ for a ‘progressive’ new audience. RIP JULIAN SANDS Remains found in the mountains of California were confirmed to be those of missing actor Julian Sands. Sands, 65, was best-known for roles in A Room with a View, Leaving Las Vegas and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. EVAN ALMIGHTY Evan Peters has signed on to the third chapter in the Tron franchise, currently titled Tron: Ares. The X-Men actor, who chilled as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the hit Netflix show, will star opposite Jared Leto in an undisclosed role. GREAT BEYOND Producers Phil Lord and Chris…

The youngest SNL cast member at 21, a scenestealer in Seinfeld and a prescient White House leader in Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is one of TV’s most-awarded actors. This month she reunites with her Enough Said director Nicole Holofcener to play a NY novelist who discovers her husband has lied about liking her work in You Hurt My Feelings. Do you relate to that idea of people’s reaction to your work impacting your ego? Yes, because I’m a creative person, and when I go out there with my work, I’m selling a part of myself. So learning how to navigate reaction to it is an ongoing challenge. It’s something I’m better at now than I was when I was younger. I can’t give it too much weight, because otherwise you’re going…

‘Honestly, I think it’s a terrible thing to try to make a film with the idea of a sequel in mind. This was designed to be a single story with a beginning, a middle and an end. And that’s it. ‘That said, I do really love the world, and there are so many things you see in the movie where you go, “Who’s that? What are they doing? What’s that thing?” That’s what I love about films like Star Wars. They don’t answer those questions. You know what I mean? They let your imagination go a bit wild. So, as a result, I would love to play in that sandbox again, but I don’t want to, because I think the film should be a standalone story. ‘I don’t watch TV…

Xolo Maridueña reportedly didn’t have to audition for his first movie role in a Hollywood superhero blockbuster. The Cobra Kai actor disputes this. ‘I posted this video, when I found out this movie was getting announced, of me doing a one-armed push-up,’ says Maridueña. ‘I can’t do a one-armed pushup. The caption was, “This is my audition for Blue Beetle.”’ Months later, he found himself at a dinner with the previous head of DC, Walter Hamada. ‘He was like, “That video that you posted on your story was pretty funny,”’ continues Maridueña. ‘And I was like, “You saw that?” He said it kind of felt like the character. I was like, “What the what…?” I suppose that was my audition.’ But there’s slightly more to it. Director Angel Manuel Soto…

OUT 28 JULY CINEMAS Give a group of drunken teenagers a supernatural artefact, light the touch paper, retreat and observe… It’s a set-up that has worked for horror films many times, perhaps with a dusty Ouija board to hand, often with quotable rules and rituals attached. Now, Australian director twins Danny and Michael Philippou add the pursuit of viral infamy for a flawed but full-blooded twist on horror lore: even if the brothers are operating with formula, they know how to make the clichés work for them. With YouTube experience under their belt from their RackaRacka channel, they know how to get a fast, tight grip on viewers, too. We start with a bumping party in full flow, where an agitated hunt for someone leads to a sharp-edged barrage of…

OUT 8 AUGUST PRIME VIDEO Cult creator of character-driven films about the woke, worried and wealthy, Nicole Holofcener found a perfect lead in Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus for 2013’s neurotic romance Enough Said. This beautifully restrained and relatable cringe-comedy teams them again for the more thoughtful, slow-build tale of Beth, an insecure New York author sideswiped by a sudden revelation about her marriage to kind but bored therapist Don (Tobias Menzies, in fine midlife-crisis mode). Don’t come looking for snappy, Woody Allen-style gags, or sweary Veep-ish snark, though, despite the film’s plush Manhattan setting and its satirical side-eye on navel-gazing writing classes and frustrated interior designers. Holofcener is more fascinated by life’s small dramas, the everyday disloyalties and white lies that trip up Beth and Don as they circle enraging…

OUT 4 AUGUST CINEMAS How do you recover from the trauma of terrorism? It’s a question that lingers at the heart of the latest drama from French director Alice Winocour (Proxima). Paris Memories was inspired by the experiences of her own brother, who was caught up in the terrifying events in Paris on 13 November 2015, when 130 people were killed in a series of coordinated attacks across the city, including at the Bataclan theatre. Winocour doesn’t directly reference that horrific night. Instead, she offers a fictionalised narrative that sees translator Mia (Benedetta’s Virginie Efira) in a restaurant at the very wrong moment. As machinegun fire goes off around her, she hides and survives. In the aftermath, the bewildered Mia attends a support group, bonding with fellow survivor Thomas (Benoît…

OUT NOW CINEMAS Your body’s going through changes!’ soothes the well-meaning father of this DreamWorks animation’s awkward teenage heroine. Well, that’s one way of putting it. After jumping into the sea to save a boy from drowning, insecure mathlete Ruby (Lana Condor) discovers that she’s a kraken – a huge, tentacled sea beast with bioluminescent skin and laser eyes. Turns out Ruby’s mum (Toni Collette) has been hiding her brood on land since her daughter’s childhood to prevent them being sucked into an ‘interspecies vendetta’ with the krakens’ sworn enemies. And who might they be? Why, mermaids of course, eager to get their hands on a fabled trident that decrees who rules both above and below the waves. Cannily surfacing in the wake of The Little Mermaid, Kirk DeMicco and…

OUT 24 JULY DVD, BD, DIGITAL After his nimble John Wick outing, Donnie Yen directs himself in this stodgier wuxia epic about a respected gang leader accused of murder. Out to find the real killer (and explore his own parentage), Yen’s wind-wielding martial artist falls for a servant (Chen Yuqi) and uncovers her boss’ wicked schemes. Thinly plotted but also convoluted, talky and longwinded, Sakra leans heavily on its star, spectacle and action, to mixed ends. Yen’s charisma and the lush visuals sing, but the fantastical fight scenes slowly lose punch: when the wires do half the work, interest sags.…

OUT NOW NETFLIX Released in 2020, the first outing for Chris Hemsworth’s black-ops mercenary Tyler Rake remains one of the mostwatched original films in Netflix history. Extraction 2 ups the action ante but - like its predecessor - suffers script and story issues. We pick up with Rake shortly after the events of E1, as he recovers from his major - but evidently not fatal - injuries. ‘Retirement’ doesn’t last long, though: enter swaggering man of mystery Alcott (Idris Elba), who makes Rake a job offer that can’t be refused. Yep, this time it’s personal: Rake’s mission involves having to face the past he has long been running away from. The higher stakes inspire a more vulnerable performance this time out from Hemsworth, whose layered portrayal ensures our hero isn’t…

OUT NOW CINEMAS/24 JULY DIGITAL When sleazy London politician Dick Hardy (Patrick Baladi) is kidnapped by two hard-up losers (Kelly Wenham, Jack Parry-Jones), he senses opportunity in the chaos, quickly spinning the situation to his advantage. Actor-turnedwriter/director Dan Clark’s (How Not to Live Your Life) comedy thriller is a particularly mean-spirited take on kidnap-farce conventions, delighting in its characters’ cruelties. Nothing groundbreaking, but the venomous dialogue impresses, while Baladi (Ted Lasso, David Brent’s boss in The Office) oozes suit-and-tie smarm as tricky Dick.…

OUT NOW DIGITAL Like the second Fear Street movie, this is a return to the summercamp horror flicks that were supremely popular back in the 80s. Played here for laughs as much as scares, Erik and Carson Bloomquist’s film features not some masked killer with an axe to grind but rather a supernatural force unleashed by campers performing a rites-of-passage ritual. The camp counsellors, led by Peter (Spencer List) and his girlfriend Lauren (Clare Foley), are likeable enough and there are decent jumps, gore and 80s needle-drops. The breakout appeal is low, but genre fans will enjoy…

OUT NOW CINEMAS A rambling and at times surprisingly cheerful documentary about joining Extinction Rebellion, in which filmmaker Josh Appignanesi channels his fears about climate change and his fading career into direct action. As he corrals his celebrity mates into Writers Rebel events (where Zadie Smith and Juliet Stevenson rail against big-money climate deniers), an ever-present camera slyly laps up his frustrations and banner-waving triumphs. Far less playful-slash-cringey than his docu-comedy memoirs The New Man and Husband, the film is an absorbing call to arms for anyone worried about our burning world.…

1974 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentary, Featurettes, Radio plays, Booklet After dismantling private-eye conventions in 1973’s The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman unpicked outlaw clichés with this underseen gem, about on-the-lam criminals laying low in the Depression-era south. As Keith Carradine’s crook falls for Shelley Duvall, Altman stresses behaviour and setting over plot. The auteur neither romanticises nor judges: instead, he contrasts background radio shows with drowsy truth to pick out the gaps between fantasy and reality. His flawed but likeable characters emerge as innocents adrift, their fates portrayed with a touching lyricism.…

TOYS/COLLECTIBLES BARBIE THE MOVIE DOLLS OUT NOW The merch-circle is complete with this line of dolls based on a movie based on a line of dolls. The signature styles modelled by Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and co have been replicated to a tee – along, of course, with enough accessories to fill a Dreamhouse swimming pool. From gingham Barbie to all-denim Ken, we’re struggling to find a look that’s less than 110% fabulous. C’mon, readers, let’s go part with your hard-earned at shop.mattel.com. COLLECTIBLE LEGO CAPTAIN AMERICA’S SHIELD OUT 1 AUGUST No, it’s not made of vibranium, and you can’t wang it round the living room. But this is otherwise a faithful recreation of Steve Rogers’ starred, striped shield, made from 3,128 Lego pieces (you’ll literally be doing it all…

CHIABELLA JAMES TITAN BOOKS That sand should feature in half of the 280-odd images unit photographer James includes in this handsome record of her BTS efforts on the 2021 epic tells its own dusty story. (According to James herself, ‘We carried sand with us in our clothes, equipment and ears for months after’.) But for all the Lawrence of Arabia-esque vistas on display, it’s the shots of Stellan Skarsgård in his oil-slathered Baron Harkonnen body suit that leave the most lasting impression.…

MARVEL VALUE STAMPS In the mid-70s, Stan Lee captured not just Marvelites’ imaginations but their cutting skills, by dotting the letters pages with (non-sticky) ‘stamps’ that could be redeemed for discounts, posters of variable quality and other goodies. Where this book reaches nerd-vana is in its commitment to context, ferreting out the source art for the stamps plus the original, oft-impassioned letters pages themselves. Marvel legend Roy Thomas’ candid, ‘we-made-thingsup-as-we-went-along’ intro adds extra value. MATTHEW LEYLAND VIDEO GAME OF THE YEAR Jordan Minor’s guide to the most significant and influential video games – one for each year since 1977 – works best as a (slightly haphazard) potted history of the medium for younger players and newcomers. Wren McDonald’s characterful art captures the essence of each entry and personal picks from…

1 PINK FLAMINGOS Trash can be art, insisted John Waters, and as film censorship relaxed in the late 60s and early 70s, he gave us Divine eating dog shit and, our favourite, a close-up of a man’s singing anus. A spluttering Roger Ebert gave the film no stars. 2 ANIMAL HOUSE If Pink Flamingos was an FU to the status quo, Animal House showed how the mainstream might appropriate such humour. ‘I’m a zit!’ cried John Belushi as he stuffed his gob with mashed potatoes and smacked his cheeks to gob out ‘pus’. 3 ACE VENTURA: WHEN NATURE CALLS Who can forget Jim Carrey’s pet detective being ‘birthed’ by a mechanical rhino in the 1995 sequel? A lot of people wanted to, but just look at the comic genius of his rubbery expressions…

MAKING THE CUTS ‘I often wonder at directors who have never been editors,’ pondered David Lean (1908-91) in 1988. ‘I just don’t understand how they go to work.’ Indeed, it was as an editor that Lean began his filmmaking journey, first on newsreels and then films, including Powell and Pressburger’s 49th Parallel (1941). He made the leap to directing in 1942 with war movie In Which We Serve, taking charge of the action scenes while Noël Coward handled the rest. DICKENS ABOUT After making multiple films based on Coward’s work between 1944-45 – This Happy Breed, Blithe Spirit and Brief Encounter – Lean directed a duo of Dickens adaptations. Though Roger Ebert hailed his version of Great Expectations (1946) as ‘the greatest of all the Dickens films’, Lean’s Oliver Twist…

totalfilm.com twitter.com/totalfilm facebook.com totalfilm totalfilm@futurenet.com STAR LETTER In issue 339, you asked if any ‘corkers’ were missing from your list of the 25 greatest movie stunts… Well, yes: a Guinness Book of Records-recognised stunt from the 1974 Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun. A stuntman did the broken-bridge jump, spinning an AMC Hornet 360 degrees in mid-air across a river, in one take…! Apparently, it brought Roger Moore to tears. KEITH WHITTAKER, WESTON-SUPER-MARE The story also goes that composer John Barry later regretted adding a (very 70s) slide-whistle sound effect to the big moment. If you ask Dialogue, it only adds to the fun, and makes us wish others had followed suit: imagine Cliffhanger’s high-altitude zip-line stunt with a joyful ‘Wheeeee!’, or GoldenEye’s dam jump accompanied by an extra-long, letting-air-out-of-a-party-balloon…

DEPUTY EDITOR MATT MAYTUM @MATTMAYTUM Had a blast on the set of Gran Turismo in Budapest – whipping round a racetrack at 140mph in a Nissan GT-R driven by a stunt coordinator, pinned to my seat by the G-force. ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR EMILY MURRAY @EMILYVMURRAY I spoke to Jamie Dornan about Heart of Stone for our website – on Father’s Day, aptly, as he told me he made the film for his three daughters. Also learned David Harbour loves playing Gran Turismo. ACTING NEWS EDITOR JAMIE GRAHAM @JAMIE_GRAHAM9 I caught up with director Gareth Edwards to discuss The Creator and we recalled my 0.5-second cameo in his 2014 Godzilla. Blink and you’ll literally miss it. ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT WRITER MOLLY EDWARDS @MOLLYCAROLINE7 Talking Indiana Jones with Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and…

You talkin’ to me? I am talking to you, and I’m glad to be talking to you. Oh, I know where that’s from. Is that Taxi Driver? A little fun fact: I had this talk show, Between Two Ferns, and the theme of it is from Taxi Driver. Do you have an off switch? I think if you were to really know me, the question would probably be, from my friends and family, ‘Do you have an “on” switch?’ I’m pretty quiet in real life. I’m not that ‘on’, usually. Maybe when I was younger, I probably was, to try to make an impression. But I’m 53 now, and you change. I have to dial it up on screen, and that’s hard for me to do. I had to amp…

The film version of Broadway musical In the Heights made Mexican actor Melissa Barrera a star, and she doubled down by playing Sam Carpenter in Scream and Scream VI. Now she’s back singing and dancing in a bold reimagining of Carmen, and is also moving into producing: ‘My dream is to have a production company,’ she says. ‘I also want to be a studio executive!’ What excited you about Carmen? It has a lot of dancing in it, but it’s not a musical; it’s a drama told through dance. I’m always drawn to creatives and stories that feel a little bit outside the box. I just finished shooting a romcom [Your Monster] that’s about a woman who falls in love with the monster in her closet. I love weird things.…

Q&A What attracted you to this project? It was a very elevated script – big ideas, wellwritten and a really interesting story. This dynamic that develops between these characters, and the ideas of attraction, what love really is, and also adding in this AI element – what these very human emotions would be like to a robot who is learning human emotions. Viewers don’t yet have humanoid robot helpers, but we’ve all had relationship issues… I think everyone can relate to trying to mend a relationship. Is she holding on to something that she should have let go? How was it acting opposite a ‘robot’ who’s just that bit ‘off’? I’m in awe of Eamon. I really enjoyed the scenes that we had together, trying to create this relationship. Sometimes…

HARRIS DICKINSON SPOTLIGHT a black cat is on the prowl, marching across a kitchen counter. The kitchen belongs to Harris Dickinson, who is currently sitting in his living room talking to Total Film on Zoom. The actor immediately senses some feline thievery is about to go down. ‘One sec – my cat’s getting my food! I just did some chicken wings on my barbecue and he’s trying to get at them. He’s impolite.’ As the actor carries his laptop into the back to secure the food, TF can’t help but remark that it’s lucky to have a black cat crossing his path. ‘I’ll take that,’ nods Dickinson. ‘I’m quite superstitious.’ So far, though, Dickinson’s career has been built more on talent than good fortune. Still only 27, this Walthamstow-raised lad has…

‘NONE OF IT IS TAKEN FOR GRANTED… IT’S ALL TERRIFYING ALL THE TIME’ When Total Film catches up with British writer-director Ben Wheatley at his home in Brighton in late June, he’s enthusing about his recent binge viewing. ‘I’ve just spent the last couple of weeks watching the Criterion Godzilla box set. Fucking hell! I just want to see big shit smashed up!’ he chuckles, mussing his salt-and-pepper hair. A devoted film fan with an all-encompassing taste, 51-year-old Wheatley has only been making movies since 2009, arriving at features relatively late compared to some Sundance wunderkinds and Hollywood nepo babies. Having built up his experience working in TV and ads, he decided to make the leap to film without waiting for someone else to give him an opportunity. His initial…

SCREEN OUT 4 AUGUST SKY CINEMA, NOW John Slattery directs his old Mad Men mucker Jon Hamm in a comedy noir inspired loosely by real events and more obviously by Fargo. In place of William H. Macy we have a sandwich-shop-owning scumbag (Micah Stock), who decides the answer to his woes is to have two women with the same name (one his wife) bumped off. Low-key to a fault (modest tension, zero mystery), its trump card is the hook-up between Hamm’s police chief and witness Tina Fey. The 30 Rock reunion adds a wisecracking warmth to a film crawling with low lifes as unsavoury as Stock’s sarnies.…

OUT NOW PRIME VIDEO The latest from Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke hews closer to the energised indies with which she made her name (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown). It’s a family melodrama about a terminally ill inmate (Brian Cox) offered compassionate leave to live under house arrest with his estranged daughter (Kate Beckinsale) and her troubled young son (Christopher Convery). Sincere performances convince, though the script bets on clichés as Cox’s gruff grandad seeks redemption for a history of violence… while teaching his bullied grandson to box so he can pummel his tormentors.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS The seventh instalment of the Mission: Impossible franchise sees Tom Cruise’s superspy Ethan Hunt face his most dangerous enemy yet: AI. This ‘godless, stateless, amoral’ foe is ‘everywhere and nowhere’, having infiltrated the Federal Reserve, the stock market, the national power grid, the world banks, the military and the intelligence network. It’s variously described as ‘a ghost in the machine’, ‘digital chaos’, a ‘worm’ and a ‘self-aware, self-learning, trutheating digital parasite’. Or, as Simon Pegg’s technician-turned-field agent Benji Dunn puts it, ‘Monday.’ Benji’s being flippant, of course. Because the mission Ethan accepts in Dead Reckoning Part One – to retrieve both halves of a mysterious key that is the means of controlling this untold power – really might be impossible. Yes, even for the guy who scales…

OUT NOW CINEMAS, NETFLIX How could these two idiots become so bloody massive?’ asks George Michael, rhetorically, at the beginning of this joyous docu-portrait of 80s pop sensation Wham! In just four years, Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, teenage buddies from Bushey in Hertfordshire, became global superstars with hits like Club Tropicana, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Last Christmas. Tracing the band’s stratospheric rise, director Chris Smith (American Movie, “Sr.”) delves deep into the archives, excavating rare footage of the band performing on their debut Club Fantastic Tour from 1983. Eschewing talking heads, the film is narrated (via pre-existing audio) by Ridgeley and Michael. That the latter passed away in 2016 makes the film’s achievement all the more impressive; there are times when it feels like the two former…

OUT 28 JULY CINEMAS If you’ve ever complained about your commute, Lucas Millard and Kate Stryker’s slice-of-life documentary might just make you eat your words. Baato follows Nepalese woman Mikma and her family on the arduous 300-mile journey from their home in the Himalayas to sell medicinal plants at market. Meanwhile, construction has begun in their roadless valley of a new highway to China that might – eventually – transform their way of life, for good or ill. Like progress on the journey itself, it’s slow-going at times, but this is a warm, enlightening study of the kind of lives we rarely see on screen.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS From the burst of mace she gets in the face to the various blows she receives to her gullet and crotch, Jennifer Lawrence takes a lot of slapstick punishment in this bawdy, regressive comedy from Good Boys director Gene Stupnitsky. Yet that’s nothing to what the audience is put through by this tawdry tale of a hard-up 30-something who accepts a wealthy couple’s (Matthew Broderick, Laura Benanti) offer to befriend and deflower their nerdy Princeton-bound son (Andrew Barth Feldman). J-Law performs with gusto while Feldman endears and charms, but laughs and taste are in equally scant supply.…

OUT NOW NETFLIX A week before his wedding, mild-mannered bank manager Owen (Adam Devine) meets his future in-laws (Pierce Brosnan, Ellen Barkin); could the pair secretly be the infamous bankheisting ‘Ghost Bandits’? Hailing from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions, this caper-com favours crass gags over plot and action. Devine’s wussy hero becomes wearying; Julie Hagerty and Richard Kind similarly overstay their welcome as his prissy suburban parents. Still, Brosnan/Barkin are coolly deadpan as the dodgy duo, while an outlandish chase through a cemetery throws up a few LOLs.…

OUT NOW DISNEY+ As a kid, Stanley Lieber used to watch his unemployed dad desperately scanning newspaper ads for a job. Duly, Stanley decided early that he wanted ‘a steady job’ for life. And, perhaps, gained an early understanding of life struggles. As a 17-year-old, Stan banked a job and a life in comics, and made sure his work spoke to people. Slickly assembled using archive footage (claymation fills any gaps) and Lee’s recorded voiceover by director David Gelb, this Disney+ doc is a surface-level celebration more than a complex study of the Marvel man’s story. But it’s a winning one, unpicking the throughlines of Lee’s thinking with spider-nimble clarity. Gelb ushers us from New York, 1922 to Timely Comics in 1939, where Stan became - effectively - his own…

SCREEN 1977 OUT 31 JULY 4K UHD, BD, DVD, DIGITAL EXTRAS Commentary, Featurettes Sam Peckinpah’s late-career WW2 drama views the conflict from the POV of a platoon of ragged German soldiers facing Soviet forces on the Eastern Front in late 1943. James Coburn excels as veteran officer Rolf Steiner, who clashes with Maximilian Schell’s captain, a man desperate to earn the Iron Cross. James Mason and David Warner bring extra class, while Peckinpah stages two staggering, Wild Bunch-level battles. If you ignore zee dodgy German accents, it’s a powerful look at wartime honour and inhumanity. Includes filmhistorian commentary and a fleet of featurettes.…

2007 OUT 24 JULY BD EXTRAS Commentary, Featurettes, Making of, Storyboards, Deleted scenes, Short film, Book A pivotal work of New French Extremity (Irréversible, et al), Xavier Gens’ (Hitman) bloodbath came as the horror genre was in its noughties ‘torture porn’ boom. This harrowing thriller sees petty criminals trading riot-torn Paris for a countryside inn-slashabbatoir run by cannibal neoNazis. What the film lacks in subtlety it makes up for with sheer ferocity, bludgeoning its point home in a blizzard of violence and fascist imagery. A gore-decorated slipcase adorns this limitededition set, packed with extras and a 70-page essay book.…

VARIOUS TASCHEN A lovingly - if eXpensively - packaged omnibus of Marvel’s mutants’ first 21 issues. Underdog pains, Xavier’s morals, teamwork, team crushes: it’s all here, along with some mixed-bag villains. Standouts include the Mimic’s tale, which neatly gene-splices sci-fi concepts with soapy drama. Some aspects have aged poorly (Jean Grey’s apron duties) but as Fabian Nicieza’s detailed intro argues, Lee and Kirby showed comics ‘the way it should be done’.…

I really think that the Nun is a classic movie monster,' says director Michael Chaves, an animated figure whose every word and gesture brims with passion. ‘She reminds me of Pennywise and Dracula and Nosferatu. I see every classic monster when I look at her. I feel like she’s absolutely up there in that pantheon. So I was really excited to dig into that…’ Having already played twice in the Conjuring Universe sandpit with spinoff movie The Curse of La Llorona and threequel The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Chaves is now stepping into the shoes of Brit helmer Corin Hardy, whose The Nun took $366m at the worldwide box office. Set four years after that movie concluded with Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) facing off against the demon…

Q&A What did you make of the triangle in Passages? Well, the thing that’s unusual about this film, I suppose, is that the woman is straight. She’s only interested in one member of the [three]… It’s not a harmonious thing. That doesn’t mean that it couldn’t work. Because I think anything could potentially work. But it’s unusual. I don’t know of someone in that situation in my life. How did you find Ira as a director? He wouldn’t say very much. Occasionally, he’d beckon and take you into a corner and whisper something. But very, very little, and it was always to make it more complicated, more paradoxical, more messy… like everyone’s riven. You feel this and you feel the opposite, you know? Was it difficult to do the intimate…

What’s the first thing you do when you arrive on set? I drop my bag in whatever room or trailer is my home for the morning. Usually, the only thing I’ll ever ask for is one coffee [laughs], and I’m ready to go. What do you take with you on set? The bag used to be more [full] – it’s almost like when someone has their first child and the hospital bag is packed to the brim, and by the third, they’re like, ‘I think I forgot my phone. I don’t have any socks.’ I used to be really prepared with everything I could ever possibly need and now I’m like, I sometimes bring my script [laughs]. Do you sleep on set? If I’m in a trailer, I cannot stay…

I, ROBOT ‘Gareth wanted to come away from principal photography, and then choose different characters to be simulants, and to be robots. We knew, obviously, Alphie and a couple of the other principals. But for other characters in the background, there’s sometimes ones that get elevated to simulant status, and they were just shot normally.’ OK COMPUTER… ‘So, the way we do that is, we do a scan of our actors and actresses, and then we come out of that scanning process with a model – you know, a physical computer representation of them. Then we fit that model head to our actor, in the computer. So, those things are lined up and then we animate our CG representation to match as much of the performance of our actors as…

OUT 21 JULY CINEMAS Mark Cousins’ voice – perceptive, playful and incisively inquisitive – comes across loud and clear in his latest deep-dive documentary. Yet the voice we hear belongs to Alistair McGowan, the TV mimic giving a pitch-perfect impression of Alfred Hitchcock’s distinctive drawl in what puckishly purports to be a beyond-the-grave missive from the late auteur himself. It’s a neat conceit that gives a phantom façade of authority to the film as it picks apart the tricks, tropes and themes Hitchcock explored. Movies, this Hitch suggests, are ‘beautiful countries you can go to’ that allow ‘a holiday from your life’. Yet they are also ways to vicariously satisfy secret whims and compulsions: a section dubbed Desire compares the libidinous lust inspired by the likes of Rear Window’s Grace…

OUT 24 JULY DVD, BD, DIGITAL Jackie Chan saddles up for this soft-centred tale of a stuntman brought out of retirement alongside his lovably obstinate horse Red Hare. When a clip of the pair taking down a group of debt-collecting thugs goes viral, Chan’s Luo senses a second chance – and an opportunity to reconnect with estranged daughter Bao (Liu Haocun). Meanwhile, issues over the nag’s ownership loom large… Ostensibly an ode to the art of practical stunt work, writer/director Larry Yang’s film is for the most part cloying and muddled, but its relentless heartstring-tugging pays off in the final furlong.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS Tomohisa Taguchi’s wistful, eye-ravishing anime romance sends prickly 90s high-school loners Kaoru (Oji Suzuka) and Anzu (Marie Iitoyo) stumbling into the mythical wish-granting Urashima Tunnel, which could change their lives… for a high price. A slow, delicate piece, it threads its more realistic teen trauma through gorgeous rural landscapes. If it’s not in the same league as Shinkai’s Your Name. or Yamada’s A Silent Voice, it shows off a similar blend of emotion and escapism as its heroes battle to find the tunnel’s secrets.…

OUT 4 AUGUST CINEMAS Opening with a barn-burner of an anecdote – a stranger-thanfiction encounter that pivots between funny, troubling, tense and finally surprising – music producer D. Smith’s audacious directorial debut instantly commands your attention. Over the next hour or so, she holds it, too: focusing on four Black trans sex workers in Georgia and New York, her restless, entertaining documentary is unabashed in its frankness, offering a refreshingly forthright snapshot of its subjects’ day-to-day lives. Strikingly shot in black and white, Smith’s interviews eschew the conventions of a typical doc – it feels more like the women are confiding in a close friend. As such, we’re afforded some eye-opening insights into the challenges and risks of a profession most are looking to escape at the earliest opportunity. These…

OUT 21 JULY CINEMAS ‘This is not an adventure, it’s a quest!’ cries the irksome young hero of this Australian fantasy, a derivative mishmash of His Dark Materials, The NeverEnding Story and The Chronicles of Narnia that will leave its young target audience unenchanted. Inferior FX and wooden acting don’t help its tale of two siblings who tumble through floorboards into a magical realm populated by timorous pangolins, a two-headed turtle and a deferential dragon. A needlessly convoluted plot, meanwhile, will have both children and grown-ups consulting their timepieces.…

OUT 11 AUGUST CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA Italian writer/director Emanuele Crialese’s (Golden Door) semiautobiographical coming-of-age drama is set in 1970s suburban Rome, where a 12-year-old (Luana Giuliani) who was assigned female at birth has begun to identify as a boy. The adolescent is deeply protective of Spanish mother Clara (Penélope Cruz), who is trapped in an abusive marriage and prone to distressing mood swings. Though Cruz’s performance has garnered praise, this unwieldy combination of kitsch aesthetics (including disco-scored black-and-white fantasy sequences) and raw emotional pain struggles to make a sizeable impact.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS Following a recent slew of adaptations of the classic fairy tale, this Russian animation purports to be the ‘true story’ of Pinocchio: a bold – and baffling – claim, given that it still centres on a sentient puppet and features multiple talking animals. The English dub might boast the voices of Pauly Shore and Jon Heder, but their offbeat slacker energy gets lost amid generic story(re)telling and stilted dialogue. Some early meta-nods aside, this is substandard stuff: best to stick with the Disney original or Guillermo Del Toro’s 2022 stop-motion marvel.…

SCREEN OUT 21 JULY CINEMAS Not a sequel to the 1948 Powell/ Pressburger classic, but a perfectly serviceable, if somewhat formulaic, coming-of-age dance drama from Australian directing duo Jesse A’hern and Joanne Samuel. Our hero is Sam (Juliet Doherty), an aspiring ballet dancer whose life spirals out of control after she witnesses a tragic event just as she’s about to dance the lead in The Red Shoes. Doherty’s terrific performance helps to offset the rather forgettable storyline, but the real standout is Carolyn Bock, scarily charismatic as firm-butfair ballet-academy head Miss Harlow.…

OUT 28 JULY CINEMAS A box-office sensation in its native Ukraine, this animated take on Lesya Ukrainka’s oft-adapted play (1912’s The Forest Song) sees human villagers coaxed into war with nearby woodland spirits; meanwhile, star-crossed lovers nurture their blossoming romance. Despite vibrant visuals and a strong score, this is a sadly below-par remix of FernGully: The Last Rainforest, Moana and Frozen II that lacks emotional depth: a result, perhaps, of its eschewal of the classic play’s more tragic elements. Available in both its original Ukrainian version (with subtitles) and as an English dub.…

1998 OUT NOW 4K UHD EXTRAS Making of, Featurettes, Deleted scenes, Gallery Peter Weir’s prescient tale of Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) – the unwitting everyman star of the world’s most popular reality-TV show – gets the 4K treatment for its 25th anniversary. Carrey reins in his more exuberant tendencies to capture the poignancy of a man gradually realising that his entire life is a candid-camera set-up. Fine performances from Ed Harris as the show’s god-like director and Laura Linney as Truman’s ‘wife’, but this is the Golden Globe-winning Carrey’s show. Predating Big Brother, it remains as dazzlingly witty and timely as ever.…

1971-78 OUT NOW BD, 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentaries, Documentaries, Featurettes, Deleted/extended scenes, Galleries, Memorabilia Joining forces with Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest in 1971, former child star and Green Hornet sidekick Bruce Lee would go on to star in four martial-arts thrillers in the space of only three years, establishing himself as a cinematic presence like no other. This astonishing run is collected in a handsome 10-disc set by Arrow Video, starting with Lee’s debut feature, The Big Boss, remastered in 4K and in its extended Mandarin cut. After the revenge thriller Fist of Fury and The Way of the Dragon (look out for a young Chuck Norris) comes Lee’s signature film, the ambitious martial-arts/spy-movie hybrid Enter the Dragon (also back in cinemas for its 50th anniversary, from 11 August).…

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE Besting the whiplash vim of Into…, Daniel Pemberton’s Across… score is a multi-canon event of ingenious wit and invention. Leaping off from the worlds/characters in play, Pemberton interweaves themes with dexterity – nimble new-wave synths for Gwen, medieval operatics for Vulture, future-proofed beats for Miguel, electro ragas for India. To My Son and the climax stake out soulful and moody extremes, while Miles’ infectiously scratchy theme welcomes fresh flavours: spot the guest goose. Glorious. ASTEROID CITY Wes Anderson straddles contrasting notes beautifully with his sci-fi meta-comedy: Earth/outer space, wistful/witty, country/ western… Alexandre Desplat’s elegantly spare orchestral cues sit alongside cowpoke laments, swing frolics, bopping bluegrass and crooner gems, affirming music supervisor Randall Poster’s deep-cuts know-how. Fellow Anderson regular Jarvis Cocker adds two on-point songs: Dear Alien…

NAT SEGALOFF CITADEL PRESS Having worked as a unit publicist on the 1973 film, Segaloff is well-qualified to chronicle its eventful production, record-breaking release and much-contested legacy. (Late screenwriter William Peter Blatty likened the whirl of claim and counterclaim to Rashomon.) Though Exorcist obsessives will find little new here, the inclusion of the sequels, prequels, TV series and David Gordon Green’s upcoming Believer makes this a solid one-stop shop for the uninitiated.…

FILM BUFF THIS MONTH Alan Clarke’s Christine and Road One of my favourite British directors is Stephen Frears, but boy, he’s a tough interview – grouchy and terse. Until, that is, on my fourth go-around, when I happened to mention Alan Clarke. ‘Clarkey!’ hollered Frears, beaming from ear to ear. There followed a 10-minute eulogy detailing the tremendous merits, and spirit, of the filmmaker who died in 1990. It’s often said that Clarke, unlike his contemporaries Frears, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, is not well-known outside the UK, and yet his work never received a single award in the UK while he was living. So where does that leave him? I, like many, had only seen his most famous titles – Ray Winstone as the daddy of borstal in Scum (1979),…

BRIEF ENCOUNTER 1945 Lean’s first Oscar-nominated film, centred on an extramarital almostaffair, retains the power to set the stiffest upper lip trembling. GREAT EXPECTATIONS 1946 Lean’s Dickens adap was the first Brit-flick to win the Oscar for cinematography. Martita Hunt remains the definitive Miss Havisham. THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI 1957 Alec Guinness is among the bridgebuilding POWs in this Best Picture winner. Complex, riveting, iconic. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA 1962 Another Best Picture winner, and perhaps Lean’s most influential work; its famous ‘match cut’ was recently homaged in John Wick: Chapter 4.…