Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2016 i Empire Australasia

AFTER FINDING NEMO, I thought I was done,” says Andrew Stanton. But just when he thought he was out, he pulled himself back in. “About seven years later, I found myself watching the film again and realised I was worried about Dory.” Dory, of course, was the forgetful fish, voiced memorably by Ellen DeGeneres in the first movie, who tagged along with Albert Brooks’s Marlin as he tried desperately to find his son. Spoiler: he did. So, Nemo was found, and Stanton had long since moved onto his ultimately ill-fated John Carter. It seemed, like Brad Bird before him, that he was making the transition from animation to live action. But he just couldn’t forget Dory. Even as he started work, Stanton refused to so much as think the words…

IT’S BEEN SIX YEARS SINCE Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland became a billion dollar-grossing sensation. Surprisingly, in this era of instant sequels, it’s taken that long for Disney to press the button on a follow-up — but it’s finally here in the shape of Alice Through The Looking Glass, inspired by, rather than slavishly based on, the Lewis Carroll book of the same name. “The book is fantastic in its own right,” says James Bobin, the British director (The Muppets, Flight Of The Conchords) who’s calling the shots now the previous incumbent has gone for a Burton. “But it’s largely based around the game of chess. And Alice meets various people, none of whom have cause and effect, and therefore it doesn’t make a great narrative for a film.” Bobin’s…

THE EMPIRE MOVIE GUIDE UNMISSABLE EXCELLENT GOOD POOR TRAGIC OUT NOW / RATED TBC / 146 MINS. DIRECTORS Joe and Anthony Russo CAST Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Sebastian Stan, Scarlett Johansson, Chadwick Boseman, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Daniel Brühl PLOT After Captain America sidekick-turned-assassin Bucky Barnes (Stan) resurfaces, tensions between Steve Rogers (Evans) and Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) turn into a full-on Avengers schism. WHEN THE AVENGERS FIRST assembled four years ago, it felt like a grand culmination, the ultimate Marvel superhero event: its Big Four characters united (well, eventually) against a colossal planetary threat. Since then, the studio’s ever-expanding Cinematic Universe has delivered sequels of varying quality and introduced new heroes in stand-alone movies (well, as close to stand-alone as Marvel can ever get), but it’s never quite…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 120 MINS. DIRECTOR Michael Moore CAST Michael Moore, his three chins Michael Moore “invades” other countries to plunder their ideas for the US. A hazy thesis — “Some places do some things better than America” — leads to an unfocussed ramble across many topics, compared with his laser-guided polemics in earlier films. Sadly, Moore only talks to people he agrees with — none of the film shows the problems (or problem-makers) in the US, so his slyly subversive everyman shtick, used in other films to draw out hypocrisy, is pushing on an open door here. Moore’s at his best when fuelled by outrage, not jovially nodding along. It’s also obvious that Moore misses George W. Bush as a comic foil; there’s multiple Dubya references…

OUT MAY 5 / RATED PG / 109 MINS. DIRECTOR Matt Brown CAST Dev Patel, Jeremy Irons, Toby Jones, Stephen Fry, Jeremy Northam The true story of an unlikely partnership between self-taught Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel) and Cambridge don G.H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons) in Edwardian England. A near-miss attempt at another The Theory Of Everything, it plays out like a sports movie with Hardy as Srinivasa’s coach, teaching him the need to methodically prove his spontaneous insights. Yet while it nails the racial stuffiness of 1910s England and the difficulty of Srinivasa’s achievement, it wastes time in awkward scenes in India where an arranged marriage is fuzzily observed. The exact nature of Srinivasa’s ideas is barely sketched, too, which obscures just why he was so great — the…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 112 MINS. DIRECTOR Jeff Nichols CAST Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Jaeden Lieberher, Adam Driver, Sam Shepard PLOT Eight-year-old Alton (Lieberher), a boy with unearthly abilities, is on the run from both the cult that exploits him and the US government. With the help of his father (Shannon), he must fulfil his destiny. YOU MAY HAVE MISSED IT amongst all the domestic drama, but there’s often been a supernatural tinge to writer-director Jeff Nichols’s work. His last film, Mud, teased that its fugitive title character (played by Matthew McConaughey) might be a little more than human, while the man hunting him was described as “the devil his’self ” (our attempt at writing an Arkansas accent). The movie before, Take Shelter, conjured vast visions…

THIS IS LIKE A DRUNKEN FIGHT at a wedding,” says director Anthony Russo. “They dredge up all those horrible things that have existed for years, and suddenly somebody throws a punch.” The difference between what Auntie Doreen said about Our Sharon and the almighty feud that erupts in the third Captain America movie, Civil War, however, is that most nuptial knockdowns don’t involve enough firepower to reduce entire cities to rubble. With some fans dubbing it ‘Avengers 2.5’, Civil War features almost all the main, terrestrial Marvel characters, with newcomers like Black Panther, Ant-Man and the freshly rebooted Spider-Man more than making up for the sizeable holes left by Hulk and Thor. Not merely a sequel to one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s finest films, 2014’s Captain America: The Winter…

CHADWICK BOSEMAN IS best known for losing himself in astonishingly convincing portrayals of real-life historical figures. He broke through as Jackie Robinson in 2013 baseball drama 42 and went on to embody Godfather Of Soul James Brown in Get On Up a year later. Both roles were, it turns out, good preparation for Civil War, which sees Boseman take on another groundbreaking historical figure: the first black superhero lead in comic books, Black Panther. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, Black Panther first appeared in the pages of Fantastic Four in July 1966 (predating Huey P. Newton’s black nationalist movement of the same name by three months), before joining The Avengers in 1968. Decked in sleek, high-tech combat armour and possessing catlike agility and senses, he faced…

IN ANY RETROSPECTIVE OF STUDENT BEDROOM POSTERS — HELLO, Che Guevara, Betty Blue, Kurt Cobain — 1996 would belong to Trainspotting. A collaboration between design company Stylorouge and photographer Lorenzo Agius, it was stunning wall-candy to announce to any prospective housemate/conquest that you were edgy, cool, and in no way had a damp spot above the bed. While being “From the makers of Shallow Grave”, Trainspotting was in many ways a hard sell: its subject matter was tough, and it had a mostly unknown cast. It was Stylorouge’s Mark Blamire who came up with the elegant solution: striking black-and-white imagery adorned with spare orange type. Influences included the minimalist modernist work of Swiss designer Josef Müller-Brockmann, the signage of British Rail, the orange of toxic warning symbols, ’90s club culture,…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTOR DAVID GORDON GREEN / CAST SANDRA BULLOCK, BILLY BOB THORNTON, ANTHONY MACKIE, SCOOT MCNAIRY, ZOE KAZAN A BRAND YOU CAN TRUST IT’S RARE ENOUGH THAT A political documentary (Rachel Boynton’s 2005 film of the same name) inspires a biting fictional satire, but it’s more remarkable that it should become a vehicle for an A-list star whose usual taste in comedy is more broad. The setting is Bolivia 2002, where a right-wing politician has hired legendary US spin doctor ‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) to come out of retirement and mastermind his election campaign. Her nemesis is the equally formidable Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), reigniting an old feud that puts score-settling before politics. Sparks fly, but the grim cynicism of modern politics adds…

OUT MAY 10 / PS4 / RATED MA15+ A FORT MISSION IN THE FOURTH AND FINAL outing in the Uncharted series, Nathan Drake is dragged back into the fortune hunting business when — bit of a spoiler alert here — his dead brother turns up, surprisingly still breathing, in search of — not really a spoiler here — a massive pirate treasure. We only played a half-hour snippet of the game, to taste the new and expanded features, some influenced by the studio’s acclaimed The Last Of Us. So take these impressions with a pinch of salt — but what we’ve seen looks very good. Firstly, driving a Jeep — driving anything is a first for the Uncharted series, unless you count jet skis and, er, horses — across the…

WIN! The Division on Xbox One THE DIVISION PROMISES TO IMMERSE YOU INTO a universe where the stability of the world’s economy will shatter, along with the rest of civilisation. And you can blow shit up. If you can handle the pressure, enter to win one of 10 copies. TO WIN, TELL US HOW YOU WOULD SURVIVE AN APOCALYPSE. WIN! Sydney Film Festival double passes ONE OF THE BIGGEST CULTURAL EVENTS of the year, the Sydney Film Festival runs for 12 days and plays feature films, documentaries, short films and animation from filmmakers from across the world. Enter now to win one of 10 double passes! TO WIN, TELL US WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE FILM FESTIVAL, AND WHY. WIN! Ip Man 3 on…

IN LITTLE MORE THAN A loincloth, Christiaan Van Vuuren introduces himself to EmpireTV and takes a seat next to a split screen. He’s covered in dusty muck to play tomb slave Amram, one of the central quartet of new characters for the second season of Soul Mates, created by Van Vuuren, brother Connor (who both write and direct) and Nick Boshier. Currently all three are in an inner-western Sydney studio on the ancient Egypt-styled set of Queen Hatshepsut’s palace, as the team takes aim at big budget, sexed-up fantasy dramas. Boshier has transformed into Seti, the bald, bronzed and very needy master of, and best mate to, Amram. Seti is tomb architect and bastard son to Hatshepsut (Doris Younane, who sits on a throne amid sphinxes and other props from…

ALONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY... As it did in cinema, merchandising and census completion, Star Wars changed everything in TV. But the repercussions on the small screen took decades to get us here: a world where dragons and zombies rule the mainstream. In 1977, Star Wars’ popularity broke the mould as to what and how people watched movies. The ‘blockbuster’ was born, and stories aimed at kids, but enjoyable for everyone, redefined cinema. But Star Wars also had an impact on the kids who saw it. Thirty years later, they got into TV in a big way, and started calling the shots, with George Lucas’s vision in their DNA. Meanwhile, in the late ’80s and ’90s, sci-fi on TV took off, becoming part of the mainstream…

1 Girona LOCATION: Catalonia, far northeastern part of Spain (100km from Barcelona) DOUBLES AS: Braavos and King’s Landing POINTS OF INTEREST: 12th Century preserved Jewish Quarter, which will serve as parts of King’s Landing; the Cathedral, from where the Tyrells will battle the Sparrow and the Faith Militant; and the narrow winding cobblestone steps through Sant Marti and Claveria Street, which will transport you to Braavos. GEEKY COOL: Ice cream parlour Rocanbolesc has made an ice cream shaped as Jaimie Lanister’s golden hand. WEBSITE: http://www.girona.cat/turisme/eng/ 2 Castell de Santa Florentina LOCATION: Near Canet de Mar, Catalonia, an hour drive south of Girona DOUBLES AS: Horn Hill, the stronghold of the Tully family POINTS OF INTEREST: Drive an hour south from Girona and you arrive at St. Florentina’s castle, an…

IT WAS A TANTALISING notion, but it could have gone either way. Tell an original story from The Walking Dead universe without a Robert Kirkmanpenned comic book source, do it in big city Los Angeles instead of gothic south Georgia, do it from the beginning of the infection during the month Rick’s unconscious, do it with an ensemble from the get go, do it as a dysfunctional family drama. That’s more meat than a walker could chew, surely. And yet, the odd wobble aside, Fear The Walking Dead worked, and is back for a 15 episode run. “I've never really worked in this kind of genre before — no big weekly events and no horror or anything remotely gory. So, I was surprised [with S1’s success],” says Cliff Curtis, the…

I DON’T THINK IN TERMS OF topping what we did last time,” says Roland Emmerich, director of Independence Day: Resurgence, the sequel to 1996’s epic science fiction disaster movie. Correct us if we’re wrong, but doesn’t that large spike headed directly into the Thames look suspiciously like the Burj Khalifa? Go on — turn the magazine upside down. And, last time we checked, that was in Dubai. And on the ground. Whatever it is, it’s clear it’s not going to end well for London, and evidence that topping what he did last time is very much on Emmerich’s agenda. But for the director, a man who’s never seen a major landmark he didn’t want to pulverise like a piñata, it’s not just about blowing things up in new and interesting…

MOST SATIRICAL FILMS hide their points about sticking it to The Man under the guise of something completely different. Let’s talk about subtext, baby. Not The Purge: Election Year. The third (and possibly final) part of the low-budget but successful Purge trilogy about a near-future America in which all crime is legal for 12 hours once every year, James DeMonaco’s movie is about a female politician (Elizabeth Mitchell) who wants to change the system, and is targeted by a hardcore right-wing element. Sound familiar? “I wanted to do genre movies that had a little social commentary,” says DeMonaco. “That’s what we were doing, sneaking ideas into this genre piece. But we’re not sneaking anymore — now we’re openly saying shit out loud, and nobody’s stopping us!” Subtext is for wimps.…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 114 MINS. DIRECTOR Cedric Nicolas-Troyan CAST Chris Hemsworth, Emily Blunt, Sam Claflin, Charlize Theron, Jessica Chastain, Nick Frost PLOT Seven years after Snow White defeated the evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), Eric the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) tries to keep the Magic Mirror away from Ravenna’s sister — the equally cruel Ice Queen (Emily Blunt). ALTHOUGH SOLD HEAVILY IN trailers as a prequel to 2012’s dark fairytale remix Snow White And The Huntsman, the bulk of this follow-up actually takes place after that film’s events. It’s a small detail, but an important one, in the sense that it speaks to a wider confusion of intent that turns Winter’s War from a fitfully enjoyable hunk of fantasy nostalgia into a perplexing tangle of different timelines and…

OUT MAY 5 / RATED M / 106 MINS. DIRECTOR Nanni Moretti CAST Margherita Buy, John Turturro, Giulia Lazzarini, Nanni Moretti Margherita (Margherita Buy) is directing an earnest social-realist drama starring an unpredictable American actor (John Turturro) while caring for her dying mother (Giulia Lazzarini) and discovering how she sabotages all of her personal relationships. Initially director Nanni Moretti (The Caiman, We Have A Pope) satirises the business of filmmaking quite amusingly. But as real life seeps into the artificiality of the world of filmmaking and we get to know these people intimately, insights and emotions build beautifully, poignantly ruminating on the ties that bind us and the things that matter. Among the excellent principal cast, top-billed Turturro enlivens things wonderfully, but the real star, Buy, is magnificent.…

OUT NOW / RATED PG / 106 MINS. DIRECTOR Jon Favreau CAST (VOICES) Idris Elba, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Scarlett Johansson, Neel Sethi PLOT Raised by a pack of wolves, man-cub Mowgli (Sethi) is forced to return to “the man village” when bloodthirsty tiger Shere Khan (Elba) gets his scent in his nostrils. IT’S ALWAYS A RISK REIMAGINING beloved classics — whether it’s childhood touchstones, sci-fi icons or comic book adaptations, there will always be nostalgia fundamentalists who insist any change to the Sacred Original Text is heresy. But Jon Favreau has found the sweet spot between reverence and reinvention — and created a technical benchmark to boot. What’s most impressive in Favreau’s world-building is his restraint — and if that sounds odd in a film with a singing 20-foot…

OUT MAY 12 / RATED TBC / 112 MINS. DIRECTORS Glenn Ficarra, John Requa CAST Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Billy Bob Thornton PLOT In 2003, cable TV underling Kim Barker (Fey) travels to Afghanistan to work as a frontline war reporter and is slowly entranced by the thrill of the battlefield. DESPITE HAVING A cupboardful of Emmys, Tina Fey arguably hasn’t quite found big-screen work to match her TV hits. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, written by her regular collaborator Robert Carlock, mostly succeeds in its aim to set this right. Based on blackly comic 2011 memoir The Taliban Shuffle, it tells the true story of Kim Barker (Fey) — a jobbing cable news reporter who, at the advent of the Iraq War in 2003, swaps her airless New York…

THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE IS A 1990 STORY IN WHICH CAPTAIN AMERICA TEAMS up with Daredevil to protect a smalltown inventor from the FBI and government goons. Voicing the opinions of Daredevil’s unapologetically liberal writer Ann Nocenti, he opened his heart to the Man Without Fear about the sins of Reagan and Bush’s America and fretted, “How can they expect me to continue to wear the flag of a country that does such things?” Even Daredevil was taken aback. One reader was so unhappy with this bleeding-heart Cap that he sent a curt letter to the editor: “Get the commie off the book.” People take Captain America very seriously. In 2007, writer Ed Brubaker said, “What I found is that all the really hardcore left-wing fans want Cap to…

MAGNETO. It’s always Magneto. Since 2000, when Bryan Singer first turned the X-Men from comic book heroes into a big-screen franchise, numerous villains have attempted to terrorise Professor Charles Xavier and his team of mutants over the course of five movies. But in the end, whether it’s Kevin Bacon’s Sebastian Shaw, or Peter Dinklage’s Bolivar Trask, or the Sentinels, they’ve always been superseded by one man. It always comes down to Magneto, standing alone, indomitable, sneering at the X-Men. Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough. So, as Singer and his writer/producer Simon Kinberg were dotting the Xs and crossing the Xs on 2014’s Days Of Future Past, in which you-know-who ultimately, once again, becomes the true villain of the piece, they started looking ahead to…

EVERYBODY REMEMBERS THEIR first time. And Taron Egerton is no different. It was October 8, 2013, when he first walked onto the set of Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service. It was memorable for a few reasons. He wasn’t just popping his cherry as a leading man on the big-budget spy caper — right there on the call sheet alongside venerable acting types like Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Firth; this was his first time on a film set doing anything. Oh, and Vaughn was also planning to drop him from a 18-metre-high crane. “It was the final part of the descent from a sky-dive,” laughs Egerton. Well, he can laugh about it now. “I don’t quite know how I got through that, really. It was a baptism…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTORS SEVERIN FIALA, VERONIKA FRANZ / CAST LUKAS SCHWARZ, ELIAS SCHWARZ, SUSANNE WUEST MUM’S THE WORD LONG BEFORE THE RECENT resurgence of arthouse-crossover horror films — from The Babadook to It Follows and, more recently, The Witch — Austrian cinema has been staking out those very borders. A genre pioneered by Oscar winner Michael Haneke, whose 1997 home invasion thriller Funny Games casts a long shadow here, this cinema of unease plays around with the mechanics of horror in a way that both fulfils and subverts the audience’s expectations. In the case of Goodnight Mommy — originally titled much more appropriately Ich Seh, Ich Seh (I See, I See) — this results in a tightly wound mystery that constantly toys with our sympathies: should…

FROM MAY 4 / RATED M / DIRECTOR WILSON YIP / CAST DONNIE YEN, LYNN HUNG, JIN ZHANG, MIKE TYSON, PATRICK TAM WAITING FOR THE (IP) MAN THE FINAL PART OF WILSON Yip’s Ip Man trilogy is a beautifully shot send off for the master of the Wing Chun Fist. The series may have had its thunder stolen by Wong Kar-Wai’s majestic The Grandmaster, but Ip Man 3 is still an action-packed bone-cruncher of a good time full of astonishing set pieces, breathtaking martial arts skills and an ear-biting boxer looking for a career change. Whereas the first film focused on Ip’s experiences in the Sino-Japanese War and the second his life in British colonial Hong Kong, the third seems to take a far more fanciful view of his life,…

FROM NOW / CREATOR NOAH HAWLEY / CAST PATRICK WILSON, KIRSTEN DUNST, JESSE PLEMONS, TED DANSON, NICK OFFERMAN, BRAD GARRETT HAIL, HAWLEY! THERE IS MUCH FILM-NERD joy to be squeezed out of Easter egg-hunting in Noah Hawley’s second “10-hour movie”, which broadens his treat-planting remit even further beyond the borders of Coen-Minnesota than the first. Season 2’s soundtrack includes covers of Man Of Constant Sorrow (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) and Kenny Rogers’s Just Dropped In (The Big Lebowski), while there are strong visual and thematic echoes of No Country For Old Men throughout, and of Miller’s Crossing in Episode 7 especially, where the Gabriel Byrne/John Turturro “look in your heart” scene is virtually restaged. But Hawley is as concerned with building his own world as he is riffing on…

Everybody Wants Some!! CAST BLAKE JENNER, RYAN GUZMAN / DIRECTOR RICHARD LINKLATER CAPTION THE PICTURE ABOVE AND WIN STUFF! CAPTION THE IMAGE FROM EVERYBODY Wants Some!!, Richard Linklater’s spiritual sequel to Dazed And Confused, and you could be taking home an awesome prize! We have actual movie props from Deadpool up for grabs. Yes, one lucky caption comper could be the proud owner of two glasses and a mug from Sister Margaret’s Bar! That may have touched Ryan Reynolds’s lips! Deadpool is available on Digital HD on May 11 and disc on May 25. EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! IS IN CINEMAS JUNE 23. HOW TO ENTER In 10 words or less email your caption with the subject May 2016 Caption Comp to empiregiveaways@bauer-media.com.au. The winner…

HAVING ESTABLISHED impeccable comic chemistry playing Michael Kelso and Stephen Hyde on retro sitcom That ’70s Show, Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson re-team for Netflix’s original comedy-drama The Ranch. Co-starring Debra Winger and Sam Elliot (could you have a TV show called The Ranch and not cast Sam Elliot?), the 10-episode first series (a second is already planned) stars Kutcher as a retired football player who returns to Colorado to run the family farm with his brother (Masterson) and father (Elliot. Winger, if you hadn’t guessed, plays mum, or mom). “We did eight years of ’70s Show,” says Masterson, explaining how he and Kutcher came to be working together again, “then spent a few years doing different projects. But we always talked about getting back together to do something else.…

There are a few unwritten rules when it comes to the denizens of Westeros. Think twice before entering a place called the House Of The Undying. If you receive a wedding invite, politely RSVP with an, “I’d love to, but I just booked a holiday to Skagos in the Shivering Sea.” And perhaps most crucial of all: never, ever, ever interrupt a Bolton. EmpireTV is across a table from not one but two of them. Namely Roose (Michael McElhatton), the treacherous snake who stabbed Robb Stark in the heart; plus his bastard son, icy-eyed sadist Ramsay (Iwan Rheon), who since his debut in Game Of Thrones’ third season has trained dogs to rip innocent young girls to shreds, and chopped off a man’s penis before sending it to his family.…

IN MARCH 2006, WHEN showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss first sought George R.R. Martin’s blessing to transform A Game Of Thrones and its best-selling sequels into an HBO series, the author tested their worthiness with a question. Who did they think the mother of Jon Snow might be? Given the subsequent television phenomenon, we can take it they were in the ballpark. Yet this very question points to why we face Season 6 with a hitherto unknown sensation — doubt. Season 5 ended in high drama. Snow, the mysterious bastard son of Ned Stark, lord commander of the Night’s Watch, genuinely decent cove amid a multitude of venal swamp-rats, was seen toppling into the snow, stabbed by his own men, the most outrageous victim of the show’s custom of…

In Game Of Thrones , there is really only the one throne that matters. It sits in the Red Keep of King’s Landing, the mighty seat of royal power from which, in HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s epic series of novels, kings have ruled Westeros for 300 years. Forged out of swords melted by dragon breath, it commemorates the feat of conquest that saw a single, continent-spanning realm fashioned out of seven previously discrete kingdoms. Throughout, it serves as a menacing stage-prop: a reminder of what is at stake. No-one can hope to be crowned as victor in the game of thrones until he — or she — sits on it unchallenged. “The swords of the vanquished, a thousand of them, melted together like so many…

WHERE’S OUR Walking Dead ?” exclaims producer Rosemary Blight from Goalpost Pictures, the Aussie production company behind The Sapphires and Holding The Man. “Where are our home grown stories? Why haven’t we done this before? These stories have been around for 60,000 years. It was like being struck with a lightning bolt,” she exclaims. “We just had to find the right story.” EmpireTV is talking to Blight in a car park surrounded by graffiti-covered urban sprawl. She, along with Sally Riley from the ABC and Ryan Griffen, the man who found the right story, are part of the welcome party that greets us. We have arrived on the set of Cleverman, a new dystopian Aussie thriller, at the disused rail yards of Sydney’s Carriageworks, a rusted vision of twisted…

GREENWICH, LONDON, and it’s absolutely bucketing down. Or should that be bucketing up? Flanked by the two pillared blocks of the Royal Naval College, Jesse Eisenberg is pulling off a mighty impression of a meteorological Moses. “I’ve been told I have control issues,” Eisenberg, as prestidigitator J. Daniel Atlas, bellows into the crowd. “Well, if I can’t control people, I might as well control the weather...” Then, with arms raised, he does exactly that. The downpour reverses and the rain starts fizzing back up into the night sky. Okay, so the rain’s from a rain machine, but it’s an impressively brain-boggling display of (apologies in advance) eau-cus pocus. “Believe it or not, this is a real trick,” Eisenberg tells Empire as he dries off between takes. “As in the first…

HIS IS A TALE OF TWO biopics. Both involve actors playing musical icons. Yet only one has become mired in controversy. I Saw The Light tells the tale of Hank Williams, the Alabama country singer responsible for classic songs like Lovesick Blues, who died at the height of his fame aged just 29. He’s played in Marc Abraham’s movie by Tom Hiddleston, a man so British he bleeds warm beer. “He was the real deal,” says Hiddleston of Williams. “His music was just so searingly honest.” Yet, despite not seeming the most obvious fit for Williams’s unique brand of Americana, only a minor relative has come forward to suggest that Hiddleston might not be the most authentic choice. Compare and contrast with Nina, Cynthia Mort’s movie about the final years…

IN WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT (army-alphabetese for “what the fuck?”), Tina Fey plays real-life US journalist Kim Barker, who was sent to the Middle East as a war correspondent, narrowly avoided being blown up, was propositioned by Pakistan’s former president, and found herself living with fellow journos who lived every day as if it were their last. Because, well, it might have been. It all sounds a bit Oscar-baity. It all sounds like the first serious role for Hollywood’s Queen of Comedy. It all sounds a bit WTF. Thankfully, it isn’t. “Oh, it’s really funny. It’s a comedy,” says WTF (Wonderful Tina Fey) on the film’s Santa Fe set, standing in for Afghanistan. “This is not truly a war movie, it’s more political. I’m just looking for things where it’s remotely…

OUT NOW / RATED TBC / 97 MINS. DIRECTOR Jeremy Saulnier CAST Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart PLOT Backwoods Oregon. Punk band The Ain’t Rights have to fight for their lives when a group of neo-Nazi thugs lay siege to the bar they’re playing in. WRITER-DIRECTOR JEREMY Saulnier is among the most inventive, versatile filmmakers working in low-budget, indie genre movies. Following break-out black comedy Murder Party and revenge noir Blue Ruin, he’s expertly turned to siege mechanics with this powerful suspense picture. An opening sequence deftly establishes our heroes, The Ain’t Rights, as defiant followers of the punk flame while explaining the Blues Brothers-like misunderstandings that get them booked to play a far-right club. Opening their set with a cover of the Dead Kennedys’ Nazi Punks Fuck Off…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 121 MINS. DIRECTOR Robert Schwentke CAST Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Miles Teller, Jeff Daniels By presenting a future based around the equivalent of Cosmo personality quizzes (Shailene Woodley: mainly Cs) and made up of people with no surnames, Divergent didn’t begin with the most lucid of premises. Insurgent muddied things further and Allegiant adds yet another layer of mythology to flummox and bamboozle. Jeff Daniels’s Bureau Of Genetic Welfare heralds a eugenics überplot, which escalates the conflict at the expense of internal logic and good sense. What’s worse, Shailene Woodley’s Tris is largely ignored, relegated to bovine acquiescence while Theo James’s Four unravels the whole conspiracy. With the finale’s second half, Ascendant, still to come, this is Competent but neither Consistent nor particularly Coherent.…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 151 MINS. DIRECTOR Zack Snyder CAST Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Jesse Eisenberg, Gal Gadot, Jeremy Irons, Amy Adams, Holly Hunter, Laurence Fishburne PLOT In the wake of Zod’s assault on Metropolis, Superman (Cavill) is eyed by many with suspicion, not least Lex Luthor (Eisenberg) and Bruce Wayne (Affleck). Both formulate schemes that could see the alien destroyed for good. IN THE LEGO MOVIE, WILL Arnett’s Batman sang an ode to being glum in Gotham, which included the lyrics, “Darkness! No parents! Continued darkness! More darkness, get it?” But even he’s out-moodied by the iteration in Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice. For those who thought Man Of Steel was too gloomy and navel-gazing, we have some bad news: the addition of Bruce Wayne to…

Jeff Nichols likes to compare Midnight Special to a matryoshka doll — those wooden Russian nesting figurines that open up to reveal smaller and smaller versions of themselves. Except this one goes in reverse. “It starts with a kind of indie feel,” he explains, “and then it gets progressively bigger and bigger — until it practically falls off the edges of the frame.” After three rural dramas set in his home state of Arkansas, the last one being the Matthew McConaugheystarring Mud (2012), it’s about time Nichols, 37, entered the big league, and his latest is his most ambitious movie to date. A smart, sci-fi-skewed chase thriller, it aims for the throwback vibe of the films he grew up with and loved. It has the warm synth fuzz of John…

01.58 Spaced As the crawl ends, the camera pans across to a Star Destroyer in silhouette, gliding over the surface of Jakku like a shark. It’s a traditional way to open the movie — all three original films begin with a Star Destroyer — but J.J. Abrams did explore other options. “There was consideration that we’d open with Luke’s lightsaber flying through space,” says editor Mary Jo Markey, “landing on Jakku and Maz [Kanata]’s hand pulling it out of the ground.” 06.40 Meet Kylo At various stages in development, Kylo Ren sported an elongated Vader mask, a metal hose coming out of his face, and a red oval helmet that ended up being worn by the Guavian Death Gang. “We originally called him ‘the Jedi Killer’ as a placeholder,” says…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTOR RON HOWARD / CAST CHRIS HEMSWORTH, CILLIAN MURPHY, BRENDAN GLEESON, BENJAMIN WALKER, BEN WHISHAW A WHALE OF A TIME IF YOU ARE TELLING THE story that inspired Moby-Dick, what can possibly go wrong? Framed by the mechanism of having Brendan Gleeson’s old salt recount the fate of the Essex to Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw), author-to-be of the Great American Novel, this promises a sea-faring epic told with all the doodads of modern cinema. So why so dramatically soggy? So overstretched? Who sidelines a 100-foot psychopathic sperm whale in search of truth? With the non-fiction book by Nathaniel Philbrick (a name destined to write about 1820s whaling) providing verisimilitude, screenwriter Charles Leavitt musters a flotilla of yarns. Here is a clash of egos between…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTOR RYAN COOGLER / CAST MICHAEL B. JORDAN, SYLVESTER STALLONE, TESSA THOMPSON, PHYLICIA RASHAD RESTING BULL THE BEST PUNCHES ARE THE ones you don’t see coming. Following the failure of the underrated Rocky Balboa, the Rocky series was on the canvas, the count nearing 10. Creed not only gets it — and Sly Stallone — back on its feet, but completely reinvigorates it. The smelling salts have been delivered by Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan, the directing/acting duo who made their mark with the excellent Fruitvale Station. That their second act should be to revamp a franchise that started before they were even born is surprising, but welcome. And if, at times, Creed follows the tracks of the first Rocky a little too…

FROM NOW / RATED PG / DIRECTOR HOU HSIAO-HSIEN / CAST QI SHU, CHEN CHANG, SATOSHI TSUMABUKI, YUN ZHOU, DAHONG NI NEVER SAY NIE TAIWANESE DIRECTOR HOU Hsiao-Hsien (The Puppetmaster, Dust In The Wind) ventures into the wuxia genre of period martial-arts movie — which, in Australian terms, is a little like Rolf de Heer making a sci-fi. The Assassin, adapted from a ninth-century text about a legendary female martial artist, is beguiling yet baffling. It’s steadily paced, with more long-held contemplative shots of natural beauty than bursts of impressive action, and an elastic, dream-like sense of passing time. It’s mostly in old-fashioned Academy ratio, though the frame opens out for a few significant shots. Hou often stages and photographs key scenes in unusual, elliptical manners which are striking —…

1925 / FROM NOW / RATED PG / DIRECTOR SERGEI M. EISENSTEIN / CAST ALEKSANDR ANTONOV, VLADIMIR BARSKY, GRIGORI ALEKSANDROV EISENSTEIN A GO-GO THE FAVOURITE FILM OF Charlie Chaplin and Billy Wilder, Battleship Potemkin is so much more than a film where a pram rolls down some steps. In just 69 minutes it conjures up the drive and fever of revolution, from a mutiny on the titular vessel sparked by maggot-infested meat to a senseless massacre in Odessa to a nail-biting sea-set showdown, with a relentless energy that makes most blockbusters seem arthritic. It is a film full of memorable faces (non-actors), original compositions (cameraman Eduard Tisse strapped the camera to an acrobat who back-flipped to create vertiginous imagery), stunning juxtapositions and thrilling set-pieces (the flotilla of skiffs speeding to…

“A ludicrously violent, fantastically loopy action classic.” 1992 / OUT NOW / RATED 1R18+ BULLET TIME BACK IN 1992, EMPIRE UK’S REVIEW SLIGHTLY over-enthusiastically proclaimed Hard Boiled to be “more exciting than a dozen Die Hards”. Two decades on, we can confirm that, adjusted for inflation, it’s more exciting than 84 A Good Day To Die Hards. John Woo’s bird-stuffed bullet ballet has been imitated by Hollywood, Kowloon, even Woo himself. It spawned a video-game sequel, Stranglehold. But there’s only one Hard Boiled: a vastly stylish, ludicrously violent, fantastically loopy action classic in which a baby saves the day by peeing on a cop’s flaming trousers. For all its iconic moments and images, it was built on the fly. After releasing his equally masterful The Killer in 1989, Woo began…

Night Of The Demon “MY TIME ALLOWED?” SETTING THE SCENE While let down by a demon that looks like a dodgy B-grade monster, Jacques Tourneur’s 1957 horror classic remains a supremely creepy watch. Based loosely on M.R. James’s short story Casting The Runes, it pits questioning academic John Holden (Dana Andrews) against diabolical Satanist/part-time children’s entertainer Dr. Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis). After a visit to Karswell’s country abode descends into chaos after it’s hit by a freak storm, conjured by the host, it’s revealed to Holden that he’s been cursed — and hasn’t got long to live. INT. KARSWELL’S COUNTRY HOUSE — DAY Holden: Where are the others? Karswell: They probably went round by the back. Holden: I didn’t know you had cyclones in England. Karswell: We don’t. You probably…

ON THE DAY EMPIRETV visits the Toronto set of Ricky Gervais’s latest film, he’s overseeing a scene where two journalists are on their knees, with guns pointed at their heads. It would be tempting to read symbolism into the set-up. Gervais has had a shifting relationship with the fourth estate over the years. In the days of The Office he could do no wrong, rightly celebrated for creating one of the best sitcoms in history. Since then, a perceived cockiness has turned certain parts of the press against him. Is he about to take his revenge? Well, no. Special Correspondents is a comedy, a very loose remake of 2009 French film Envoyés Très Spéciaux, and the two men with guns to their heads are Eric Bana and Gervais himself. The…

CALL IT A COMEDY, CALL IT A DRAMA. HELL, call it a dramedy, but either way Orange Is The New Black is arguably Netflix’s most bingeable original series. Over the past three seasons, we’ve seen nice-girl Piper (Taylor Schilling) go from wide-eyed noob in Litchfield Prison to a criminal kingpin (ruling an empire selling inmates’ used panties to web pervs — it’s that sort of a show). Along the way, the show has been praised for its unflinching portrayal of issues such as gender identity, racism and rape. Last season turned a spotlight on the US prison system itself, as a for-profit corporation took over Litchfield with predictably horrendous results. And it looks as though Season 4 will turn that screw even harder. On our tour of the set, EmpireTV…

A GROUP OF ELDERLY Australians are standing in a little civic park off Fraser St., the main road in Clunes, a pretty colonial town about 30 minutes north of Ballarat. But it’s not their hometown they are seeing. In front of them is a skin-crawling mayhem on the main drag: smoke billows from shrapnel-shredded, overturned cars including a completely monstered police paddy wagon, jackbooted goons in sinister military kit and balaclavas warily investigate destroyed shopfronts (the newsagent spruiking the fictional Wirrawee Standard newspaper), assault rifles at the low ready. The crack of distant gunfire beats out and a machine-gun-mounted armoured truck turns onto Fraser. The older folk are oddly relaxed, chatting and laughing. A loud bang precedes a commotion: a terrified Asian youth carrying a rifle weaves pell-mell down the…