Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i Empire Australasia

WE’D HEARD THAT GERARD BUTLER had a big chopper, but this is ridiculous. It’s a blustery Sunday in March, and Butler has had quite the day of it shooting London Has Fallen. He started off by accidentally driving onto the set of Spectre, which is filming in the same area. Now he’s ending it by landing a helicopter in London’s historic Somerset House. Okay, he may not be piloting it, but he’s definitely inside the Sikorsky S-76 as it glides over the courtyard of the glorious 18th-century building, the rotors whipping up a miniature hurricane so fierce that Empire has to duck inside for shelter. Then it lands and disgorges Butler, playing Secret Service badass Mike Banning, along with co-stars Aaron Eckhart (as President Benjamin Asher) and Angela Bassett (as…

OUT APRIL 21 / RATED PG / 105 MINS. DIRECTOR Dexter Fletcher CAST Taron Edgerton, Hugh Jackman, Christopher Walken, Jo Hartley PLOT Based on the true story of Eddie Edwards (Taron Egerton), a plumber from Cheltenham who had dreams of making it to the 1988 Winter Olympics, as Great Britain’s first-ever Olympic ski jumper. THEY SAY THAT GOD LOVES A trier. If that’s true then Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards will be guaranteed a seat at Heaven’s top table when he eventually skids off his mortal coil. At the 1988 Winter Olympics, Edwards became the first person ever to represent Great Britain in ski jumping. That’s not to say he was actually any good at it. It’s no spoiler to say he was not victorious. Far from it. Yet, encapsulating the…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 102 MINS. DIRECTOR Ben Stiller CAST Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Penélope Cruz, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig PLOT Someone is killing the most beautiful pop stars in the world. The only person who can help Interpol find out why is, surprisingly, retired male model Derek Zoolander (Stiller). IT’S 15 YEARS SINCE ZOOLANDER first sashayed into cinemas, dying on initial release but gradually building a devoted following. The sequel sticks to the formula that (eventually) worked last time. Like its predecessor, Zoolander 2 is stitched together from some teeny scraps of plot, studded with a few really smart jokes and a lot of very stupid ones, then heavily studded with dazzling star cameos. It’s a likable mess, although it lacks the memorable lines of the first,…

OUT MARCH 17 / RATED TBC / 108 MINS. DIRECTORS Byron Howard, Rich Moore CAST Jason Bateman, Ginnifer Goodwin, Idris Elba, Alan Tudyk, J.K. Simmons PLOT In the mammal city of Zootropolis, rabbit rookie cop Judy Hopps (Goodwin) is forced to team up with fox Nick Wilde (Bateman) when civilised animals start turning savage. IN THE FURRY FACE OF IT, Zootopia sees Walt Disney Animation Studios on safe ground. This is the Disney of Robin Hood and Mickey Mouse — cute, anthropomorphised animals, walking on hind legs, talking up cosy platitudes. A familiar formula ready to delight pre-teens and be packaged for enthusiastic toy merchandisers. But Zootopia has more in common with Pixar than it first appears. The fictional universe it presents — a human-free world where mammals have…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 102 MINS. DIRECTOR Tim Story CAST Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Olivia Munn, Ken Jeong Ice Cube and Kevin Hart reprise their roles of surly pitbull detective James Payton and yapping chihuahua trainee cop Ben Barber in this follow-up to the 2014 surprise hit Ride Along. The flashy but artless sequel pulls a bunch of worn moves from the buddy-cop playbook: relocate the action to somewhere bigger and brighter (the gaudy beach ’n’ babes of Miami), pull out a bad guy with a dodgy accent (Benjamin Bratt doing his best Tony Montana-lite) and, in the most Lethal Weapon 3-esque way imaginable, adds both the goofy Joe Pesci comic sidekick (Ken Jeong doing maximum Ken Jeong) and Olivia Munn channelling Rene Russo’s sexy-but-tough love interest cop.…

OUT MARCH 17 / RATED MA15+ / 99 MINS. DIRECTOR Babak Najafi CAST Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Angela Bassett, Morgan Freeman, Alon Aboutboul, Radha Mitchell PLOT The funeral of Britain’s PM has world leaders flocking to London, US President Asher (Eckhart) among them. But his protector, Mike Banning (Butler), has concerns… and for good reason. THERE’S NO ALGORITHM TO measure it accurately, but London Has Fallen may just be the most daftly plotted action movie of recent years. Outstupiding both Taken 3, which had characters navigating the streets of Istanbul using hand grenades, and Fast & Furious 7, in which Vin Diesel drove his car off a cliff on purpose, is no mean feat. It’s a film that doesn’t so much invite you to switch off your brain as take…

THERE HAD BEEN WHISPERINGS DURING THE PRESS TOUR FOR MAN OF STEEL. Nothing official, so he could still put them down to mere Hollywood gossip, but Henry Cavill was getting a sense that the sequel to his debut as Superman wasn’t going to be Man Of Steel II. “That was when they started talking about the nature of what the second movie may be,” he remembers. “Or what could be called the first movie in this series…” ‘Batman versus Superman’ was what people were saying, and Cavill just thought, “Okay, that is interesting.” Though he wasn’t going to jump to any conclusions as to whether this was going to be a Batman movie or a Superman movie, or something else entirely. Hard-edged yet still epic and fantastical, Man Of Steel…

BUILT BY AUSTRALIAN historical figure and pastoralist John Macarthur just outside Sydney in 1831, Camden Park House looms in the growing dusk like a colonial Shangri-La. A gorgeous Palladian pile amidst mature trees, sculpted gardens and a crunching path, its interior is even more spell-binding. One hundred and seventy years of history peek from bookshelves, portraits and china cupboards. Macarthur’s descendants still live there, the only family in the country to have survived the generations in situ. Secrets and forgotten lives threaten to appear around every corner. Hence it’s been a favourite location for filmmakers and commercial producers for decades: the 1950s Smiley movies, My Brilliant Career and Sleeping Beauty have filmed there, offering depictions of timeliness and wealth. But The Daughter, a film bruised with secrets about family, identity,…

“FROM BOTH THE ‘PRO’ AND ‘ANTI’ REACTIONS, WE KNEW WE’D TOUCHED A NERVE.”DAMIAN JONES, PRODUCER IT WAS SATURDAY evening in Damian Jones’s living room and the telly was on. Surfing the channels for something, anything, that didn’t involve the caterwauling hopefuls of The X Factor, the History Boys producer, half paying attention, landed on a repeat of Dad’s Army, the ’70s sitcom about a group of elderly and hapless Local Defence Volunteers set during the early days of World War II. Rather than being musty and tired, Jones was surprised to discover its laughs remained evergreen. Well, everkhaki. “Yes, it was still funny,” he remembers, “and the characters were timeless, but to be on at prime time? It was mad for a 40-year-old TV show.” The madness was compounded when…

IN AUGUST 1985, George Lucas announced he was working on “the ultimate movie experience”. He said it would involve “spaceships and space battles”, but also “singing and dancing”. Collaborator Francis Ford Coppola pitched things a bit more loftily. He described this new directorial project as the tale of “an adventurer or an emissary of light — almost a messiah — going to some dark place in the universe… An attractive theme for pretty much anyone who seeks to bring about change to the world in areas where things are dark or oppressive or unsatisfactory. It really is culture that has the power to lead issues of economics and politics.” Sure. However you frame it, Captain EO sounded bonkers. Lucas and Coppola were talking about a project instigated by recently appointed…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTOR STEVEN SPIELBERG / CAST TOM HANKS, MARK RYLANCE, ALAN ALDA, AMY RYAN BERLIN CHAIR ACCEPT THAT THIS MISSION was last year’s best on-screen spy outing. Played for thoughts not jump-starts (Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation), fandom pleasing (Spectre) or belly laughs (Spy), Steven Spielberg’s stately re-enactment of a Cold War case kept us glued to the extraordinary lengths that one man went to in an effort to do the right thing. Steering another Spielberg vehicle, everyone’s everyman Tom Hanks personifies integrity as a local lawyer rocketed into the frozen heart of US-Russian espionage. Hanks’s sit downs with wryly enigmatic Mark Rylance (as the captured Russki) sing, as steam gathers behind the sting of justice being applied to ALL. Shame that the Berlin-Wall-hopping second-half…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTOR MARC FURMIE / CAST JAI KOUTRAE, KENDRA APPLETON, TODD LASANCE ARMAGEDDON IT NOTHING IF NOT AMBITIOUS, low-budget, Sydney-shot Terminus is about a dead-end American town grappling with extra-terrestrial contact in the face of atomic apocalypse. While such sci-fi has been grist for the B-movie mill since Roger Corman’s mid-1950s epics, director/co-writer Marc Furmie takes an unusual approach, focusing on complex characters, strong performances and arthouse production values Against a backdrop of imminent Middle East conflagration, a depressed widower and a bitter war vet find that an alien organism from a meteorite site has powers that might save the world from Armageddon. Unsurprisingly, ruthless military intelligence types will do anything to unlock its secrets. Action-packed it ain’t, but Terminus intrigues as a Sundance drama…

TARZAN TURNS 104 THIS year, and he’s never looked better. The ‘dad at the beach holding it in’ look favoured by Johnny Weissmuller has gone, and Alexander Skarsgård has brought his washboard abs to The Legend Of Tarzan. “They’re really making the most of Alex’s body,” laughs his Jane, Margot Robbie. “Jane ends up in tatters too, but not quite to the extent of Tarzan.” Cinema has given Edgar Rice Burroughs’s creation short shrift recently, as you’ll know if you’re one of the few who saw 2014’s mo-capped Tarzan (starring Kellan Lutz), or the fewer still who saw Casper Van Dien out-acted by his own loincloth in 1998’s Tarzan And The Lost City. But director David Yates’s lavish blockbuster hopes to show that there’s more to the Lord Of The…

DIRECTING SIBLINGS Cameron and Colin Cairnes are not fans of reality TV. After tackling cannibalistic rednecks in the horror comedy 100 Bloody Acres, the pair have set their sights on the much-maligned format, replacing gory guffaws for serious ultra-violence in Scare Campaign. “It’s an ‘up yours’ to the genre!” laughs Cameron as he sits with his brother to discuss the film. “The truth be known,” adds Colin, “I actually worked on a candid camera show a few years ago. My first job out of university was in Singapore. The first show I worked on was called Gotcha. It was like Candid Camera and I was coming up with those awful gags and sometimes ended up in front of the camera if they couldn’t find any actors, so some of that…

COSTUME BEST Any period film, like Alan Rickman’s movie A Little Chaos. It’s incredible looking, although if you have to use the restroom, that’s half an hour gone. They should provide a valet. WORST  A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Michael Hoffman. I was playing Puck, and my tights kept ripping in the worst place. They were nylons, and [I had] some leafy things strapped onto a belt that went around my chest. MOMENT BEST  The Lovely Bones was really hard to do, so to be nominated [for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2010] was great. My parents were able to be a part of it. WORST  But the hard part was my first wife [Kate Tucci] passed away [afterwards]. All that positive stuff that happened, I wasn’t able to…

OUT APRIL 21 / RATED M / 129 MINS. DIRECTOR Xavier Giannoli CAST Catherine Frot, André Marcon, Michel Fau, Christa Théret Festival darling Xavier Giannoli’s riff on the US true story (also to become a Meryl Streep film) of a perpetually off-key opera singer in 1920’s France, is a colourful feast for the senses. As the pitch-ignorant Marguerite, Catherine Frot nails what could have been a hammy, attention-seeking role, building the outwardly ridiculous on a solid foundation of genuine inner-conflict. Supporting players orbiting Marguerite’s dreams spend the film either placating or manipulating her, and Giannoli ensures her skin-crawling vocals are used sparingly — only ever to new effect. A funny, charming, and surprisingly suspenseful film, Marguerite is somewhat inhibited by its length, and bit-character/ sub-plot set-ups that don’t go anywhere,…

OUT MARCH 17 / RATED MA15+ / 90 MINS. DIRECTOR Robert Eggers CAST Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw PLOT In their new home, by a wood in 17th-century New England, a God-fearing English family experience a run of tragic misfortune. Is a witch to blame for their woes? ON PAPER, A HORROR FILM starring Finchy from The Office and a goat called Black Phillip doesn’t seem especially promising. But Robert Eggers’s astonishing directorial debut is the kind of horror that favours creeping dread over cheap jump scares. Eggers, whose next film is a Nosferatu remake, is one to watch. The premise is quickly established — devout ex-pat Northerner William (Ralph Ineson — or Finchy if you prefer) and his family (wife, five kids, including newborn baby) are…

OUT NOW / RATED PG / 119 MINS. DIRECTOR Mamoru Hosoda CAST Aoi Miyazaki, Shota Sometani, Koji Yashuko Nine-year-old Ren (Miyazaki), angry and alone after the death of his mother, stumbles from reality into the fantastical land of Jutengai, populated by anthropomorphic creatures who can shape-shift, Hulk-like, into fearsome fighting beasts. Brutish bear-man Kumatetsu (Yashuko) takes the headstrong Ren on as his apprentice in what will become a battle of light versus darkness. It’s Odd Couple meets reverse Karate Kid (Kumatetsu is a bumbling Miyagi and Ren, renamed Kyuta, his unruly student of swordplay) meets Digimon (which director Mamoru Hosoda was heavily involved with), and it can make for a sometimes uneasy mix of comedy, action and melodrama. The animation, though handsome, doesn’t have the same consistency or ornate richness…

OUT MARCH 17 / RATED M / 95 MINS. DIRECTOR Simon Stone CAST Geoffrey Rush, Odessa Young, Ewen Leslie, Miranda Otto, Sam Neill, Paul Schneider, Anna Torv Sydney-based actor and theatre director Simon Stone has taken his successful stage adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1884 play The Wild Duck and has adapted it yet again — this time as a morality tale played out in modern day Australia — for this, his feature directorial debut. The combination of Stone’s assured eye and a murderer’s row of largely local thesps (Rush, Neill, Otto, Leslie) ensures this sumptuously shot excavation of dark family secrets is a convincing showcase for the talents of those on both sides of the camera. Odessa Young is a revelation as the titular daughter in a performance to be…

ZACK SNYDER REMEMBERS THE MOMENT HE TOLD CHRISTOPHER NOLAN ABOUT BATMAN BEING A BAD GUY. “You’ll tell me if you don’t want me to do it,” the Man Of Steel director, as animated as Nolan is composed, had implored his executive producer. The silence grew, until finally the Dark Knight mastermind said, “Well, we don’t own these characters. When you’re done making Batman movies, someone else will [make them].” “I think at first he found it a little bit hard,” Snyder admits. “I would feel the same way.” Nolan, of course, had been responsible for the second coming of the Dark Knight. So smart and uncompromising was Nolan’s trilogy, it set Batman apart as something more dramatically concrete than any other comic book adaptation. For many it felt like the…

If you’ve followed my career, you’ll know that I’m a bit of a Luddite,” admits Jon Favreau. “But now I only think in zeros and ones. I’m using a lot of RAM. I think that’s good for the brain. It helps with ageing…” The various technology-based challenges facing Favreau on The Jungle Book are enough to turn him into Benjamin Button. It is early December 2015, and that strange whooshing sound in Favreau’s ears is the film’s April release date hurtling toward him. Favreau is in the UK checking in with Soho effects-house MPC, which is carrying the lion’s share of the workload. He has spent the morning talking Empire through some impressive footage — including astonishingly life-like digital birds, a terrifying stampede and a bear floating down stream with…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTOR PAUL WEITZ / CAST LILY TOMLIN, JUDY GREER, MARCIA GAY HARDEN, JOHN CHO, JULIA GARNER, LAVERNE COX PICTURES OF LILY GRANDMA IS A SMALL movie by almost any reasonable definition: tiny cast, low budget, brief in both time frame and running time. But it’s so fearless in tackling big issues that it dwarfs much larger films and their self-conscious attempts to impart some worthy message. What’s more, it does so with endless humour and a lightness of touch you’d expect more from some indie darling than an established veteran like Paul Weitz. Lily Tomlin, on a hot streak after Netflix’s Grace And Frankie, is an irascible old poet still grieving for her long-term partner. As we meet her she has just broken up…

1985 / FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTOR TAYLOR HACKFORD / CAST GREGORY HINES, MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV, HELEN MIRREN COLD WALTZ CONSIDERED A COMMERCIAL success by making over $42 million in 1985 money and coming adorned with an Oscar-winning hit song (Lionel Richie’s Say You, Say Me), you’d be forgiven for thinking White Nights is a dance-centric, razzle dazzle crowd pleaser. Instead, director Taylor Hackford head-scratchingly creates a footwork showcase for dancing talents Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov… and then builds around said showcase a dour two hour-plus Cold War drama that’s a heavy slog to get through. Both give solid performances and are formidable dancers, but the plot — about the pair’s attempt to escape Leningrad and the oppressive clutches of a manipulative Colonel (Jerzy Skolimowski) — is basically…

Central Intelligence CAST DWAYNE JOHNSON, KEVIN HART, AARON PAUL, AMY RYAN / DIRECTOR RAWSON MARSHALL THURBER CAPTION THE PICTURE ABOVE AND WIN BIG REUNITING WITH AN OLD FRIEND THROUGH FACEBOOK, A MILD MANNERED ACCOUNTANT finds himself thrust into the world of international espionage. Starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, can you figure out who plays the number cruncher and who kicks spy ass? Caption the above pic and you could be taking home an awesome swag of discs including Mr. Robot, Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse, Hotel Transylvania 2 and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE IS OUT JUNE 30. HOW TO ENTER In 10 words or less email your caption with the subject April 2015 Caption Comp to empiregiveaways@bauer-media.com.au. The winner will be published in the June…

THERE HAS BEEN AN awakening — and we all felt it. J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened in December and demolished virtually every box-office record in existence. But it also left a few unanswered questions (and honest-to-goodness cliffhangers) for Rian Johnson to tackle when he takes the reins on Star Wars Episode VIII. Beware: here be SPOILERS! 1 What is Rey’s surname? We never learn Rey’s surname during The Force Awakens. Yet someone left her on Jakku in the care of Simon Pegg’s Unkar Plutt. But who was it? Making her Rey Skywalker seems too obvious (and would Luke just abandon his offspring rather than entrust them with Leia?). One theory suggests Rey could be Rey Kenobi, the granddaughter of Obi-Wan. They have similar fashion sense, Obi-Wan’s voice…

IT’S A GLORIOUS DAY IN CAPE Town (doubling for a country road in Hertfordshire), and Helen Mirren’s Colonel Katherine Powell is driving a Range Rover and making a momentous decision over a speakerphone: “Simon,” she tells her husband. “I will not have the boys bringing friends home for the night without asking me.” Okay, so that’s not momentous. But the rest of Gavin Hood’s thriller, Eye In The Sky, will see Powell agonising over a life-and-death call at a command centre miles — actually, continents — away from where any blood will be spilt. “She’s running operations — pretty secretive operations involving drone warfare,” says Mirren, “And what our film investigates is the moral issues surrounding an operation like that. It’s a great script about war, but unlike any I’ve…

WHEN JEFF NICHOLS announced that his fourth film, after three dramas set in the South, would be a sci-fi thriller, eyebrows were raised. The story of a little boy with special powers who is pursued by the government, it sounded like a risky departure for a director with three solid titles to his name. Thankfully, Midnight Special — a “mood” title, borrowed from an old song covered by the likes of Van Morrison and Creedence Clearwater Revival — not only looks likely to be his biggest hit to date, it also sits comfortably with the thoughtful, nuanced likes of Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter and Mud. “Much to the chagrin of the studio,” laughs the director, “it’s still very much a Jeff Nichols film.” Though the film does indeed feature a…

THE EMPIRE MOVIE GUIDE UNMISSABLE EXCELLENT GOOD POOR TRAGIC OUT NOW / RATED PG / 106 MINS. DIRECTORS Joel Coen, Ethan Coen CAST Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Scarlett Johansson, Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum PLOT Hollywood, the ’50s. Capitol Pictures is making prestige picture Hail, Caesar! A Tale Of The Christ when its star (Clooney) disappears. Studio fixer Eddie Mannix (Brolin) has to bring him back, while also dealing with other daily issues. IF SELF-PLAGIARISM WERE A criminal offence, the Coen brothers would be facing a long stretch in San Quentin. Hail, Caesar! shares the Hollywood-studio setting of Barton Fink, and, no doubt to the delight of Coenverse theorists everywhere, the exact-same fictional studio: Capitol Pictures (they’ve come a long way from Wallace Beery wrestling flicks). Its…

OUT NOW / RATED MA15+ / 108 MINS. DIRECTOR Tim Miller CAST Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, T.J. Miller, Ed Skrein, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapicic, Gina Carano PLOT Riddled with cancer, former special forces operative-turned-mercenary Wade Wilson (Reynolds) submits himself to an experimental, off-the-books treatment with a useful side effect: regenerative powers. And a bad one: severe disfigurement. WE HAVE, OF COURSE, MET RYAN Reynolds as Deadpool before — scrapping with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, retractable swords melded into his arms and, in a leftfield creative decision, his mouth sewn shut. The “Merc With A Mouth” reduced to simply the merc, his reason for being taken from him, the character rendered impotent. This Deadpool is different (and more like the comics) — talkative, quick-witted (if dick gags can be classed as wit)…

OUT MARCH 24 / RATED TBC / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Gavin Hood CAST Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul, Barkhad Abdi PLOT From several “situation rooms” in the UK, USA and Kenya, an international military team zeroes in upon wanted terrorists in Nairobi. As mission commander Katherine Powell (Mirren) lobbies hard for a drone strike, the many parties involved are rocked by the implications of collateral damage. MORE THAN TWO MILLENNIUM ago, Greek playwright Aeschylus coined an enduring observation: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” Gavin Hood’s ethical dissection of drone warfare opens with this quote on-screen yet what follows doesn’t explore that casualty. Yes, truth comes under fire and sustains injury. But Eye In The Sky builds grippingly to dwell upon the human toll of being a cog…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 110 MINS. DIRECTOR Christian Ditter CAST Dakota Johnson, Leslie Mann, Rebel Wilson, Damon Wayans Jr., Anders Holm, Nicholas Braun Newly single paralegal Alice (Johnson) hits the Manhattan bar scene with her broody gynaecologist sister (Mann) and wild party girl pal (Wilson). This zippy comedy based on Sex And The City writer and producer Liz Tuccillo’s book of the same name is crowded with characters and conflicting messages about gender and relationship etiquette — it’s easy to spot the influence of both male and female screenwriters. But it taps into a few realistic dating dilemmas and for every cliché there’s a sharp, silly improvised aside from Wilson in a sexed-up version of her Pitch Perfect persona. With its themes and locations, cocktails and heels, this…

OUT MARCH 24 / RATED PG / 95 MINS. DIRECTORS Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Alessandro Carloni CAST Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Bryan Cranston, J.K. Simmons, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan This megabucks trilogy ends winningly with an instalment that sticks with the overarching theme of being true to oneself, particularly when kicking ass. But it also finds enough ideas to differentiate it from the first two. Po (Jack Black) has been tracked down by his long-lost father (Bryan Cranston) — great news if it weren’t for the god-like warrior who has come from the spirit realm to destroy every kung fu master around. Although there is now a huge number of characters, and expensive household names voicing them, everyone gets something to do. The production design is gorgeous and there’s confidence in…

“TO GO UP AGAINST HEROES LIKE BATMAN AND SUPERMAN,” SAYS ZACK Snyder, “we wanted to introduce one of the DC universe’s most iconic and powerful villains.” By act three of his comic book epic he would require a baddie so powerful he would force the squabbling superheroes to set aside their ethical differences and unite against him, establishing The Justice League in the process. “He is essentially an unstoppable force,” adds Snyder. “He poses a real threat to the world within the film.” By comic book lore, Doomsday was born in the fiery depths of prehistoric Krypton like a sort of DC Balrog. Traditionally, the Hulk-sized monstrosity possesses enormous strength, agility, highly accelerated healing (in some renditions he actively resurrects) and an extremely bad temper (hate is all he knows).…

You’ll search long and hard to find a major acting award in the English-speaking world that Helen Mirren has not won, whether for film (The Queen bagged her the Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe), TV (she ruled the Emmys with Prime Suspect and Elizabeth I ) or theatre (The Audience saw her receive Tony and Olivier awards). But the Essex girl who became the entertainment world’s go-to monarch has interests that range far beyond the sensible shoes of Elizabeth II or Prime Suspect’s Jane Tennison. She’s played assassins (RED, Shadowboxer), sorcerors (Excalibur, The Tempest) and cold-blooded manipulators (The Long Good Friday, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover), and virtually every major Shakespearean heroine on stage. You don’t have to look too hard though to find a common…

FROM MARCH 9 / RATED M / DIRECTOR SAM MENDES / CAST DANIEL CRAIG, CHRISTOPH WALTZ, LÉA SEYDOUX, MONICA BELUCCI, RALPH FIENNES DON’T MENTION THE SONG AT VARIOUS POINTS DURING its 145 minutes, Spectre delivers a baddie’s base in a hollowed-out crater, a watch that does a thing and a run-in with a comedy Italian. It hasn’t gone full safari suit, but this is another small step towards the values of Bond BC (Before Craig). If it keeps going in this direction, three more films and James Corden will be mo-capping a double-taking pigeon. Perhaps because Skyfall was so rooted in Britain, this time Sam Mendes happily displays a demented wanderlust. Kick-started by a revenge mission gifted 007 by Judi Dench’s M, Bond hops from Mexico (the stunning Day Of…

FROM MARCH 10 / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER LANDON / CAST TYE SHERIDAN, LOGAN MILLER, JOEY MORGAN, SARAH DUMONT, DAVID KOECHNER DIB DIB, STAB STAB IT’S ALL THERE IN THE title, though scouts Ben (Sheridan), Carter (Miller) and Augie (Morgan) seem the least prepared of anyone for the zombie attack on their town when a lab experiment goes awry. Fortuitously, they join forces with butt-kicking cocktail waitress Denise (Dumont), tooling up for a badge in zombie extermination. It’s proudly teen boy fantasy: flailing undead bosom, dick jokes, gore galore and a gun-totin’ female lead cling-wrapped in a singlet and short shorts. It’s a zom-com that doesn’t reinvent the wheel but does live up to its promise: crude, schlocky fun. EXTRAS: Deleted scenes, more.…

FROM MARCH 24 / RATED PG / DIRECTOR JON M. CHU / CAST AUBREY PEEPLES, STEFANIE SCOTT, HAYLEY KIYOKO, JULIETTE LEWIS, MOLLY RINGWALD STARDUST MEMORIES TRULY OUTRAGEOUS IN ALL the wrong ways, this big screen adaptation of Jem And The Holograms makes the classic mistake of equating “keeping it real” with truth, misunderstanding the transformative nature of performance and eviscerating the fantasy empowerment that made its ’80s cartoon ancestor a cult touchstone. Reimagining Jerrica Benton (Aubrey Peeples) and her band as overnight internet stars, 2015’s Jem awkwardly leeches off the perceived zeitgeist (YouTube, Instagram) and tosses passing scraps to period nostalgia (Molly Ringwald, Synergy recast as robot sidekick), while forging a dreary morality tale that feels patterned after the sharper and more cynical likes of Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous…

FROM MARCH 23 / RATED PG / DIRECTOR DAVIS GUGGENHEIM / CAST MALALA YOUSAFZAI FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS NAMED AFTER A MYTHICAL 19th-century resistance fighter, Malala Yousafzai has survived a journey from sheer hell, and thrived, to tell her own story. A Nobel Peace Prize winner, now aged 18, she was shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan and was not expected to survive. Yet, as this well-intentioned doco shows, Yousafzai has since vocally and fearlessly campaigned for women’s rights and for the rights of children in war zones — something that feels incredibly timely today. Unfortunately, director Davis Guggenheim isn’t the most subtle filmmaker — the tone is overly mawkish and bombastic, when a delicate approach would have made more sense — but the subject matter is…

FROM NOW / RATED MA15+ / DEVELOPED BY ROBERT RODRIGUEZ / CAST D.J COTRONA, ZANE HOLTZ, WILMER VALDERAMA, MADISON DAVENPORT, EIZA GONZÁLEZ, JAKE BUSEY TV WITH BITE TURNING QUENTIN Tarantino-scripted thriller From Dusk Till Dawn into a series seemed a smart way for director Robert Rodriguez to lure viewers to his El Rey cable TV network. One problem: the original film was built around a big twist, swerving from gritty crime thriller to blood-soaked monster fest. So where does a second season go after that? Having survived monster-filled strip club The Titty Twister, the lawless Gecko brothers have now split. Smooth criminal Seth (Cotrona) is paired with fellow survivor Kate (Davenport), while maniac Ritchie (Holtz) is on a crime spree with Mayan goddess Santánico Pandemonium (González). The cast chew the…

The Incredibles “NO CAPES!” SETTING THE SCENE If Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice features a scene in which one of the heroes gets his cape stuck in a door, they won’t be able to say Edna Mode didn’t warn them. This throwaway but show-stopping sequence from Brad Bird’s 2004 animation pokes fun at a superhero trope, with retired fashion designer Mode (voiced by Bird himself) explaining exactly why it’s a bad idea to fight crime while clad in a long, flappy cloak. INT. EDNA MODE’S RESIDENCE — DAY Edna is with Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) in her sumptuous lobby. Mr. Incredible: E, I just need a patch job. He hands her his suit. Edna: Hmm, this is megamesh. Outmoded, but very sturdy, and you’ve torn right through it.…