Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2016 i Empire Australasia

WELCOME TO A corking issue full of legends — McCartney and Starr, Howard, Burton, Redford — and legends-to-be — our Hollywood Hot List, and the cast of Rogue One, poised to enter immortality as part of one of the most beloved sagas of all time. But somehow the most inspirational character in this issue for me, is Dennis Woodruff. Who? Check him out on page 78 — in his trademark gold jumpsuit and bedazzled space helmet. In a world of focus groups and test screenings and demographic analytics, he’s a beacon of illogical fantasy, a mutant strain of rampant optimism, powered by dreams. How many film lovers harbour a desire — maybe life-size and sleeve-worn, maybe heart-deep and carefully nurtured in midnight reveries — to actually be part of creating…

THE STORY In 1930s London, Michael Banks is all grown-up with three children of his own. But when the family suffers a loss, magical nanny Mary Poppins returns to help. “It’s an all-new story,” says producer Marc Platt. “It is, however, based on other PL Travers books.” THE HEROINE Emily Blunt reunites with director Rob Marshall, after the equally musical Into The Woods. That showcased her singing; add a dash of her The Devil Wears Prada strictness and you have a promising Poppins. As for original star Julie Andrews, Marshall has teased, “She is a very dear friend. If she could be involved in some way, it would be very special.” THE HERO Lin-Manuel Miranda plays Poppins’s lamplighter friend Jack. He’s huge on Broadway, writing and starring in smash-hit Hamilton.…

EXCELLENT GOOD OKAY POOR AWFUL OUT 15 SEPTEMBER RATED TBC / 90 MINS DIRECTOR Adam Wingard CAST James Allen McCune, Valorie Curry, Callie Hernandez, Brandon Scott, Wes Robinson, Corbin Reid PLOT Determined to find his missing sister, a college student (and brother of The Blair Witch Project’s Heather) ropes his friends into going to search for her in the woods she disappeared in. It turns out, unsurprisingly, to be a very bad idea. WEARABLE TECH IS a godsend. At least, it is for a certain type of filmmaker. A longstanding problem with found-footage films has been that, when the shit hits the fan (or the monster takes Manhattan), there’s that nagging question — “Why are you still filming?” A close relative of, “Why the hell aren’t you trying much harder…

OUT TBC OCTOBER / RATED TBC / 85 MINS DIRECTOR Ira Sachs CAST Theo Taplitz, Michael Barbieri, Jennifer Ehle, Greg Kinnear FOLLOWING UP LOVE Is Strange with another heartfelt slice of urban Bohemia, Ira Sachs’s latest gem is a New York real-estate parable with lots to say about friendships, families and teenage growing pains. Schoolmates Jake (newcomer Taplitz) and Tony (Barbieri) are unlikely pals — the former shy, arty, dressed like Max from Rushmore; the latter extrovert, fiery, “with a thing for redheads” — and their friendship is soon tested by their parents’ feud over the lease on an inherited property. Both kids are terrific, holding their own within a seasoned cast, but it’s Sachs’s clear empathy towards all of his characters, both young and old, that makes this such…

OUT 15 SEPTEMBER / RATED PG / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Bob Nelson CAST Clive Owen, Jaeden Lieberher, Maria Bello, Patton Oswalt, Robert Forster WHEN UNDEREMPLOYED CARPENTER Walt (Clive Owen) tells his son Anthony (Jaeden Lieberher) that God is in the details, he could be talking about Bob Nelson’s approach to films. Writer-director Nelson wrote Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, and like that movie, this is a small story — small in a good way, in that it exists in the nuances of the characters and the tiny orbits of their lives. The plot is trifling — the search for some stolen tools — and the real action is internal: Walt hanging on to his dignity with his fingernails, and Anthony trying to prop up his ailing father without tipping him off his…

OUT 1 SEPTEMBER / RATED M / 135 MINS. DIRECTOR Terence Davies CAST Agyness Deyn, Peter Mullan, Kevin Guthrie SUNSET SONG, LEWIS Grassic Gibbon’s 1932 novel detailing Scottish rural life, has long been a passion project for director Terence Davies. Swapping his regular milieu of ’50s Liverpool for turn-of-the-century Scotland, he takes all the grandiloquent passions and emotional turmoil of his domestic dramas (The House Of Mirth, The Deep Blue Sea) and transcribes them onto the rugged landscape of The Mearns. The result is overlong but beautiful and heartfelt, anchored by a stunning turn by Agyness Deyn as hardy heroine Chris Guthrie. Deyn’s task is a daunting one. The film tracks Guthrie’s journey from an idealistic bookworm to farmer to a loveless marriage with a husband brutalised by the ravages…

OUT 8 SEPTEMBER / RATED PG / 82 MINS DIRECTOR Conor Horgan CAST Rory ‘Panti Bliss’ O’Neill PANTI BLISS IS the drag alter ego of Rory O’Neill, and this entertaining documentary is as much about growing up gay in Ireland — a country were same-sex sexual activity wasn’t decriminalised until 1993 — as it is about the charismatic, effervescent O’Neill’s bawdy adventures and noteworthy moments. And there’s been a few: 2014’s ‘Pantigate’ where comments made on TV by O’Neill about homophobia led to Irish broadcaster RTÉ giving payouts, leading to outrage and support from Madonna; an eloquent speech the same year from O’Neill about homophobia going viral and gaining even more celeb support and O’Neill being a figurehead for Ireland’s 2015 referendum for same-sex marriage. A fun, moving and highly…

OUT 1 SEPTEMBER / RATED MA15+ / 88 MINS DIRECTOR Fede Alvarez CAST Stephen Lang, Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto THREE ROBBERS (LEVY, Minnette, Zovatto) target a house, believing a blind combat veteran (Lang) has a large cash sum to hand. Once inside, they discover the homeowner is dangerously resourceful. Having dashed off the Evil Dead remake, director-writer Fede Alvarez doesn’t break new ground with this ‘original’ — but demonstrates profound understanding of how to prolong the agony. Whenever one of the robbers has a chance to get away, something pulls them back. An intense, streamlined exercise in gruesome thrills, with a glimmer of social context (it’s all about the economy) which doesn’t take away from the exciting struggle to get out of this house of horrors.…

1_JUSTICE SMITH LAST SEEN : PAPER TOWNS Adding new talent to a vibrant Baz Luhrmann musical drama is a star-making proposition — just ask Leonardo Di Caprio how it worked out for him. So Justice Smith should be on the fast-track to the A-list after wowing us as the lead in Baz’s Netflix series The Get Down. This “pre-history” of hip-hop is set in the Bronx during the 1970s and stars the 21-year-old as its lovelorn teen hero Ezekiel. Not bad for a kid who graduated high school in 2013 and only made his film debut as Radar in last year’s Paper Towns. NEXT UP : THE GET DOWN 2_JUNO TEMPLE LAST SEEN : VINYL HBO’s Vinyl provided the long-overdue breakout role for British actor Juno Temple,…

THE PROPOSAL There were what Alien producer David Giler calls “preliminary discussions” about a sequel in 1979. He gave no credence to the most popular theory — that an Alien impregnated Jonesy, the cat — but he and co-producer Walter Hill had discussed how the Alien, ejected from the airlock, might have clung to the outside of the shuttle. There were also discussions of a new expedition to LV-426, the appearance of the space jockeys, and the planet exploding. THE DIRECTOR Ridley Scott was keen to return to the franchise he established. He felt Alien had missed “prognosis” scenes, explaining the creature’s origin. In 2003, he revealed to Empire how he saw the eggs as “biomechanoid weapons”, which “you would seed… onto the surface [of a planet] and then sit…

FROM SEPTERMBER 14 / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTOR Peter Atencio / CAST Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Tiffany Haddish Say hello to my little feline friend KEY AND PEELE are your typical TV comedy double-act with a knack for riotously funny skits and memorable characters. Unlike most TV comedy double-acts, they’ve done a riff on “paint titties” and are strangely obsessed with Liam Neeson. Amped-up action comedy Keanu sees them transfer from the small screen to the big one, with mixed results. They play two roles a-piece: dweeby relatives Rell and Clarence, and the deranged, dreadlocked gangster assassins they impersonate in an attempt to get back the titular cat (it’s complicated). It’s the latter duo that appear first, in an impressively kinetic, Matrix-style action sequence that makes clear Key and Peele’s…

FROM SEPTEMBER 28 / RATED M THIS IS A patchy affair that leaves a sour taste. Zoe Saldana (in shoddy dark make-up) does a decent job with what she has, but it’s tough going. Director Cynthia Mort could have spent more time showing Simone’s battles with racism, and Simone at her peak, to create a more sympathetic character. Instead, after a brief glimpse of her as a child, we’re thrust straight into Nina in decline, a boozy unpleasant weirdo. Some biopics are too worshipful; this goes the other way. EXTRAS None.…

FROM SEPTEMBER 14 / RATED MA15+ YOU KNOW THAT French remake of Ray Winstone’s lacklustre 2012 The Sweeney movie you were clamouring for? Finally, it’s arrived. Jean Reno takes the role of Buren (previously Regan, previously played by Winstone and, further back, on the classic British TV ’70s cop show, by John Thaw), the head of a Parisian police commando squad hunting a gang of armed jewellery thieves and dealing with a new boss who doesn’t approve of his gun-toting methods. So far, so Sweeney (though the relocation makes the rhyming slang — Flying Squad/Sweeney Todd null and void) but without the cheeky cockney charm that made the television characters so enjoyable. The gun battles are well staged (if set in a weirdly empty city), but there are few twists…

ELLA BERRY — 9 THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK You’ve just seen The Empire Strikes Back for the first time. Did you like it? I thought it was really cool. But without the music it wouldn’t be as good. If there wasn’t any music there’d just be loads of people rustling their jackets. So what was your favourite bit? I liked the start when they were all trying to fix the big plane. The Millennium Falcon. Yeah, I liked that bit. What didn’t you like? I didn’t like the bit when they ripped the animal’s stomach open and put Luke in it and there were guts everywhere. That was yuck. Did you like Yoda? Yeah, he’s really funny. I liked the bit when he pretended not to…

THIS MONTH: KIERON GILLEN Comic book writer WATCHES: #2 DRIVE THE IDEA OF The First Take Club is simple. Every month, we ask someone to select a film that they haven’t seen from Empire’s 500 Greatest Movies Of All Time list (published in 2013). They correct this egregious oversight by watching it, then tell us what they thought. This month, Kieron Gillen — writer of cutting-edge comic books such as The Wicked & The Divine, Phonogram and numerous Marvel publications including their Darth Vader solo title — gets his teeth, eyes and ears into a little movie that finished 340th on the list. It launched its director, Nicolas Winding Refn, into the mainstream, sent its star, Ryan Gosling, into the stratosphere, and made shiny jackets with scorpions on the back…

1979 — 1983 / FROM SEPTEMBER 28 / RATED M AFTER THE SUCCESS of The Exorcist and The Omen, horror was hip again in the ’70s and every studio wanted demonic possession on their slate. American International Pictures put their money behind The Amityville Horror, an adaptation of Jay Hanson’s 1977 bestseller about a family terrorised by their new house, the scene of a mass murder the year before. Based on actual events, the first film in the series still chills as black slime oozes from the walls and James Brolin goes postal with an axe. Impressively weird prequel Amityville 2: The Possession, directed by Damiano Damiani, ramps up the flesh-ripping demon gore and adds an icky line in incest, but the 3D fad-jumping third film offers little apart from…

1994 / FROM NOW / RATED PG THE COEN BROTHERS’ fifth film is visually spectacular, with some of the most gloriously inventive and perfectly choreographed tracking and dolly shots you’ll see anywhere; but the characters and story never really connect. It should, by rights, be a rousing triumph of an everyman over The Man — the Coen Brothers’ own version of It’s A Wonderful Life — but it’s all glitter and no heart, with one of the clunkiest two-part deus ex machina endings ever: you could accept either the clock trick or the blue letter, but not both. Nothing against the Coen’s magic realism tendencies, but in this case, it feels like they just threw their hands up and said screw it. Still, it looks tremendous on Blu-ray, and it’s…

FROM NOW / RATED M SEASON EIGHT OF The Big Bang Theory ended with two big relationship twists. While only one was seriously followed up this season, even that shows a sitcom still trying new things after almost a decade. The pop culture references and geek jokes still come thick and fast (and hit and miss), while the roster of quality guest stars expands to include Judd Hirsch, Stephen Merchant and in the 200th episode, Adam West. After a rocky start Leonard and Penny’s marriage soon predictably settles down, while Raj’s romantic antics keep him a one-note character and — one big twist aside — Bernadette and Howard’s relationship is wasted space. But Shelton’s slow growth and his developing relationship with Amy has real emotional depth. Their early episodes are…

OUT NOW / PS4, XB1, PC DIRECTORS Phil Duncan, Oli De-Vine THE END OF the world is nigh! The giant pasta god has devoured all! Only by placating its infernal hunger can the Onion Kingdom be saved! Surprisingly, not the set-up to an oddball Japanese RPG based on Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, but rather this couch-based multiplayer cooking game. Players navigate busy, themed kitchens, chopping and cooking ingredients, serving orders, and washing dishes, all to build the skills to save the world via the medium of food. Equally surprising, it’s hugely chaotic fun, although only with a full complement of four players. Anything less, and managing the flow of orders starts to feel like being Gordon Ramsay’s commis on a particularly bad episode of Kitchen Nightmares — stressed,…

WIN! HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE ON BLU-RAY TAIKA WAITITI PROVES once again that he is one of the finest directors working today with this joyous and charming delight and if you haven’t seen it already, enter right now. Altogether now, “Ricky Baker! Ricky Baker!” TO ENTER, TELL US WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE KIWI ACTOR, AND WHY WIN! THE AMITYVILLE COLLECTION ON BLU-RAY RETURN TO THE golden age when Hollywood horror was all about demonic possession and a spooky house in Amityville told everyone to get out! We have 10 collections to win for those brave enough to enter. TO ENTER, TELL US WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE HAUNTED HOUSE MOVIE, AND WHY WIN! THE REMAINS OF THE DAY ON BLU-RAY WITH A CAST THAT includes two Oscar winners and Superman, what more…

@EMPIREAUST — SADLY JARED LETO’S JOKER IN SUICIDE SQUAD WAS ABOUT AS MANIACAL AS A BOX OF KITTENS #NOTTHEJOKERWENEEDED @SHANNON1FORD HE AIN’T AFRAID OF NO GIRLS I am one of the biggest hardcore Ghostbusters fans in the world and have watched the movies hundreds of times. So, when I heard the new Ghostbusters movie was going to be made into a chick flick, I was the angriest man on the planet. How dare they destroy one of the best movies from my childhood? What other movies were they going to convert into chick flicks? The 3 Amigas? The Blues Sisters? Teenage Mutant Women Turtles? So, reluctantly I went to watch the movie with my kids (they had to drag me, kicking and screaming). But then the unimaginable happened. I walked…

OUT 8 SEPTEMBER / RATED M / 77 MINS DIRECTOR Rosemary Myers CAST Bethany Whitmore, Harrison Feldman, Matthew Whittet, Amber McMahon PART COMING-OF-AGE drama, part suburban farce, and part fantasy dreamscape, this trippy confection is what you might get if you put Napoleon Dynamite, a Judy Blume novel, Alice In Wonderland and some LSD in Seth Brundle’s telepod, then dressed the result in kitschy ’70s Australiana. Greta (Whitmore) is negotiating the social minefield of mean girls, family tensions and love on the eve of her 15th birthday, when she falls into a hallucinogenic world of papier-mache forest spirits, hellhounds and a Finnish warrior girl; it’s like a live-action version of Princess Mononoke. Director Myers has crammed the film with whimsical touches that mostly delight, but just occasionally feels cloying with…

OUT SEPTEMBER 15 / RATED M / 92 MINS. DIRECTORS Tim Ferguson, Marc Gracie CAST Xavier Samuel, Morgan Griffin THE REV-HEAD ROM-COM you never knew you wanted has arrived. Mixing unrequited love with chucking donuts, the cliché-ridden Spin Out heads to rural Australia and fills the screen with fair dinkum, beer-swilling over-acting. The rom of this ‘com’ takes place over one night at a B&S Ball as long-time friends (and ute stunt drivers) Billy (Samuel) and Lucy (Griffin) finally realise that they are in love. Meanwhile the rest of the cast get ‘hilariously’ drunk, flash their arses and get covered in excrement. Samuel and Griffin both shine as the leads, and while there’s no denying the Aussie comedy lineage behind Tim Ferguson and Marc Gracie’s ocker ordeal, it quickly spins…

BABY, YOU’RE A RICH MAN THE SOCIAL NETWORK The Beatles provide the kicker in the final scene, as an alienated Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) repeatedly checks to see if his ex has accepted his friend request. TWIST AND SHOUT FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF One of the most jubilant, exhilarating scenes in film history sees truant teen Ferris (Matthew Broderick) co-opt an entire parade to lip-sync this early hit. COME TOGETHER A BRONX TALE The rolling bass and slow build of one of the group’s more sinister songs perfectly fits this clash between an unruly biker gang and Chazz Palminteri’s Mob. ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN SUPERMAN III Beatles collaborator Richard Lester gives this a brief blast at a school reunion dance: Clark Kent keeps…

FROM NOW / RATED M THOUGH RUSSELL CROWE IS in fine form as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author struggling with a mental breakdown as he brings up his young daughter, the all-star cast, also including Jane Fonda, Aaron Paul and Octavia Spencer, cannot save The Pursuit Of Happyness director Gabriele Muccino’s latest heavy-handed weepfest. Playing on the cute-verging-on-cutesy chemistry between Rusty’s Jake and young Kylie Rogers’s Katie and throwing in Diane Kruger as, boo hiss, Jake’s psychotic sister-in-law who wants to adopt Katie out from under him, the clichéd, soap-opera script is barely redeemed by a parallel storyline adding an all-grown-up Katie (now played by Amanda Seyfried), 27 years later, facing her own life struggles. A sad waste of the considerable talents involved. EXTRAS None.…

FROM SEPTEMBER 21 / RATED TBC VISUAL EFFECTS GURU Steven Gomez’s debut feature is something of a Terminator- meets-Robocop, survival of the fittest, sci-fi mish mash. By embracing the futuristic weaponry and technological advances that first gripped audiences in the aforementioned sci-fi classics, Gomez is able to crank up our mistrust of machines and create a visual spectacular that belies the film’s low budget. The plot, on the other hand, is rather vanilla and predictable, as we follow a team of marines who are sent out on a training mission against, yes, renegade robots. However, the addition of Mills, an omniscient human-turned-robot, played by the ever-capable Vanessa Kirby, is a masterstroke as she showcases and questions the future of robotic warfare and the dangers of relying too heavily on technology.…

THIS MONTH: TOM HANKS’ ’80s COMEDIES YOU FORGET, DON’T you? Long before Gump and multiple Oscars, Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was an ’80s comedy colossus. The closest he’s come to giving us a good laugh recently is Robert Langdon’s LEGO Dracula mullet in The Da Vinci Code, so this marathon is dedicated to The Earlier, Funnier Ones. Stranded in a lounge with only a TV, snacks, hot beverages and WiFi to survive on, I feel as if I’m in the loafer’s version of Cast Away. If Tom Hanks were a superhero, he’d be Captain Ordinary. That’s not a criticism: it’s the key to his everyman appeal. Few actors can convey normality and charisma: he really is our generation’s Jimmy Stewart. Take Splash, a blue-collar fairytale and Hanks’s lead debut. He’s a…

IN JULY, JAPANESE company Funai announced it would cease manufacturing the VCR player. “The VC-what?” we hear you say as you Netflix and chill. Well, for many the VHS tape was their entry point into a weird and wonderful cinematic world off the Hollywood grid. Head down to your local video store — remember them? — in the ’80s and a wealth of exploitation, horror and trash greeted you in the most delightfully bonkers packaging. VHS outlived Betamax and Laserdisc, but now it has unspooled for the final time. Fixing tracking, however, will not be missed.…

OUT NOW / RATED PG / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Travis Knight CAST Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Ralph Fiennes, Matthew McConaughey, George Takei, Rooney Mara STOP-MOTION ANIMATION studio Laika is now four from four, with no sign of a dud between its debut, Coraline, in 2009 to its latest, Kubo And The Two Strings. Lumbered with an unwieldy title (perhaps better suited to an introspective indie-folk band), Kubo is an original story presented as an ancient Japanese myth — hunted by his grandfather, the evil Moon King (Fiennes), Kubo (Parkinson) goes on a quest to locate a magical suit of armour. It’s beautifully animated (look out for the way Kubo’s hair moves), and while there are laughs and moments of effective (if light) horror, its emotional heart is what makes the…

OUT NOW / RATED MA15+ / 113 MINS. DIRECTOR Luke Sparke CAST Dan Ewing, Tim Pocock, Jessica Green KUDOS TO ANYONE who takes on Hollywood at their own game, but Luke Sparke’s home-grown Aussie creature feature lacks bite — but not for the reasons you would expect. Indeed, despite the low budget, Sparke shows an aptitude for the tightly wound set-piece and his CGI beast growls in all of the right places. While the director’s love of ’80s thrill-fests is palpable, sadly these juicy bits are squandered in this self-proclaimed “biggest Aussie action film of the year”. Sparke is less at ease with the feuding siblings and Aboriginal land rights social commentary that form the backbone of his monster mash, not that his actors don’t deliver. With a sharper pair…

RELEASED 8 SEPTEMBER / RATED M / 99 MINS DIRECTOR John Dower CAST Louis Theroux, Marty Rathbun BRITISH JOURNALIST LOUIS Theroux has made a career out of gaining access to some of the world’s weirder corners for his always compelling documentaries, but entry into the guarded Church Of Scientology has so far eluded him. His irreverent solution is to hire actors to recreate supposed events that occurred behind the Church’s walls with the aid of whistleblower Marty Rathbun, a former COS higher-up who alleges horrific abuse doled out by COS head David Miscavige. Theroux is as impish and incisive as ever in an entertaining doco that’s hilarious, often disturbing and, once Theroux begins to be tailed, confronted and filmed by Scientologists, illustrative that the COS’s alleged strong-arm tactics may not…

OUT 16 SEPTEMBER / RATED TBC / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Ron Howard CAST Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon (archive), George Harrison (archive), Whoopi Goldberg WHAT NEW IS there to say about The Beatles? Not much, if Ron Howard’s documentary covering the years from 1962 to 1966 is anything to go by. Beatlemania, Shea Stadium and “more popular than Jesus” are all covered, but the ‘touring years’ structure leaves the impression it’s a story half told. That said, it’s never less than entertaining — a reminder of just how talented and charismatic the Fab Four were. And, of course, the great advantage it has is The Beatles’ music, so concert footage is a delight rather than a chore. Which wouldn’t be the case in, say, a Nickelback documentary.…

MISS PEREGRINE Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children Winds back time, turns into a falcon, likes to smoke opium. ANGELIQUE BOUCHARD Dark Shadows A witch who casts spells, holds sex romps up walls and whose face cracks like glass. SERAFINA PEKKALA The Golden Compass A flying witch. A snow goose is her spirit animal. Can control the wind. ARTEMISIA 300: Rise Of An Empire Beheads victims, kisses severed heads and dresses like Catwoman. EMILIA/SALLY Franklyn Films suicide attempts for use in an art installation. Has red hands. ISABELLE The Dreamers Has sex with her brother, has a distant relationship with clothes. SIBYLLA Kingdom Of Heaven Just your bog-standard murder-plotting Jerusalem Queen. Has a thing for blacksmiths. VESPER LYND Casino Royale Tendency to shower fully dressed, double crosser. Has a thing…

Robert Redford turned 80 this month. But the two-time Academy Awards winner (one for directing Ordinary People and a Lifetime Achievement Award) feels like he’s just hitting his stride as an actor. “I’m in a period of my life where I like to act,” he explains during a recent interview, dressed casually in a black pullover and jeans and a light jacket, his blondish-grey hair tousled like he just wandered in from the ranch. Redford has appeared in blockbusters for nearly five decades — from Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid in 1969, to playing antagonist Alexander Pierce in 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he’s appeared in some of the most iconic and successful movies of every decade in between. But he’s more than just an onscreen heartthrob: one…

ANGELYNE Singer-actress-model Angelyne grabbed attention during the mid-1980s by promoting herself on Hollywood billboards. Also dabbling in art and even politics (in a 2003 California election she ranked 28th out of 135 candidates), she’s referred to herself as a “unicorn icon” and is often seen tooling around LA in her hot pink Corvette. LA JESUS Real name Kevin Lee Light, the Messiah-impersonator has wandered the streets of Los Angeles since 2009, posing for photographs and dishing out advice, and even came to London to ‘bless’ Oxford Street shoppers in 2014. It’s still not clear why, and fittingly he refuses to accept cash. In 2012 Aerosmith wrote Street Jesus about him. THE TREE MAN OF VENICE Stroll along Venice Boardwalk, and you won’t mistake Lionel Powell for anyone else. He is…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTORS Anthony Russo, Joe Russo / CAST Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Chadwick Boseman War — what is it good for? Quite a lot, it transpires… HEAR THAT DISTANT scream of what sounds a lot like a boardroom full of Hollywood execs going into a Hulk-like rage? That’d be the Warner Bros. top brass, trying to figure out how pitting two of the (if not the) biggest names in comic book history against one another (while chucking in appearances from a few other heroic heavyhitters) turned out so wrong, while Marvel dumped a few tonnes of salt on the wound by getting it so effortlessly right. A seemingly sure-fire hit like Batman v Superman going off the rails really does serve to…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTOR Marc Abraham / CAST Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen, Maddie Hasson Hiddleston goes honky tonk in by-the-numbers biopic ONE OF THE great country singers, Hank Williams was an enthusiastic womaniser and, thanks to a back problem, also an alcoholic and painkiller addict whose all-too-short life was filled with bust-ups and scrapes and colourful encounters. On stage, he was renowned for the trademark yodel that propelled songs like Lovesick Blues with a jaunty, irresistible energy. Precious little of that energy is evident, sadly, in Marc Abraham’s overly austere and pedestrian biopic. Although beautifully shot by Dante Spinotti, it’s a slow trek through scenes we’ve seen a thousand times in a thousand biopics about a thousand tortured musical geniuses — the determined rise to fame, the…

FROM SEPTEMBER 7 / RATED MA15+ MORE AT HOME in a video shop circa 1994 than on a big screen in 2016, Precious Cargo is a compendium of DTV action tropes masquerading as a movie. Based on his short, Max Adams’s debut feature pitches — for the first time — Saved By The Bell’s Mark-Paul Gosselaar (he was Zack Morris) against Die Hard’s Bruce Willis (he was John McClane) and sits back to watch the sparks fly. Unfortunately they don’t, leaving just reheated action licks, wooden dialogue and eminently guessable twists. We have been here so many times before: John Woo slow-motion wooshes, villians in black 4x4s, screaming electric guitar and a barrage of blunt bon mots: “Look alive people”, “It’s showtime” and “Let’s rock ’n’ roll” all get an…

Do you ever get tired of people telling you they like the movie? I never get tired of that, why would you get tired of that? You could easily get tired of — here’s the things that make me tired, well, here’s one. I think I’ve developed, if I get asked about if I would’ve liked to be James Bond. But I’ve developed a sleep apnoea thing that triggers, and I just fall asleep for five minutes. That gets you tired. I can imagine, after, what, a decade? Oh, no, thirty something years of that. What was it like working with Julian? We became very good friends. Was it as equals, or avuncular? No, there was nothing avuncular about it. We were equals from the beginning. And it was apparent…

1984 / FROM NOW / RATED M LOOKING FAR BETTER than it has ever deserved to in this lovingly restored special edition (complete with toilet menu icons), this Charles Band production positively glistens in this new high-def transfer, especially the copious slime on John Carl Buechler’s dodgy animatronic critters. These pint-sized monsters are summoned by Jonathan Graves (Peter Liapis) after he discovers his father’s occult paraphernalia in the family mansion, little knowing that his father is a warlock! It’s all very silly but a certain charm remains. A bonkers death by tongue, the iconic ghoulie in a commode shot and performances by David Lynch regular Jack Nance and a pre-SVU Mariska Hargitay ensure that the ’80s sunglasses remain rose-tinted. EXTRAS Interviews with actor Scott Thomson, editor Ted Nicolou and director…

1981 / FROM NOW / RATED M CONCEIVED ON THE set of Ozploitation classic Patrick as a “Rear Window on wheels” by writer Everett de Roche and Aussie Hitchcock Richard Franklin, Road Games remains a delightfully macabre twister that delights in sending the audience down the wrong path. In the early ’80s the slasher movie was king, and despite the presence of the genre’s poster girl Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween, Prom Night) as a hitchhiker and a limb-lopping serial killer on the loose, Franklin’s tension soaked ride has more in common with Steven Spielberg’s Duel as a truck driver played by Stacey Keach takes part in a wicked game of cat and mouse. With McGuffins aplenty, a creepy score by Brian May and excellent turns by the leads, this astounding…

FROM NOW / RATED MA15+ CUT DOWN AND polished from a slightly sloppy Stephen King novel, eight-part series 11.22.63 is a reminder of just how good King’s storytelling can be. As always, he starts with a great hook: what if you — well, English teacher Jake Epping (James Franco) — could go back in time to stop the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? But the time travel only leads to a fixed point in 1960, so Epping will have to live almost four years in the past to save JFK. What if he likes it there? And what if the past keeps throwing obstacles in his way? The period setting is perfectly depicted and Franco gives a great everyman performance, but it’s the big twist — that this is…

OUT NOW / FORMATS PS4, XB1, PC DIRECTOR Arnt Jensen INSIDE STARTS WITH a nameless child running through the woods, pursued by men with guns. By the time it ends, you’ll have encountered mind-control, genetic experiments, and vast conspiracies — all without a word being uttered. After a timed Microsoft exclusive, PS4 owners can now finally experience Playdead Games’ follow-up to 2010’s Limbo. It’s a similar blend of 2.5D platforming and puzzle solving and while the controls may be basic — just run, jump, and interact with environmental objects — that in no way diminishes the delight (and shock) as you delve into its sinister world. Murky and oppressive, with a pervading sense of terror, Inside is more atmospheric than any number of games with 10 times the budget. A…