Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2017 i Empire Australasia

“THERE’S SUPPOSED to be a less-is-more thing in horror,” muses It’s Argentine director Andrés Muschietti. “It’s like you’re not really meant to show the monster. But Pennywise is different. With Pennywise, it’s like, ‘This is the monster, I’m showing it to you… and you’re going to shit a brick.’” As the accompanying image proves, Muschietti is very much a man of his word. For his big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel, the director was after “a baby-faced, off-balance Pennywise”, and he found him in 26-year-old Bill Skarsgård. “I was amazed by Bill’s body language,” he says. “I wanted this wall-eyed thing — the eyes looking in different directions. I thought we’d have to use VFX, but Bill’s like, ‘Oh, you mean this?’ He could already do it perfectly! I’m…

THE SHOOT FOR Netflix’s new wrestling comedy-drama GLOW didn’t have the most auspicious of beginnings. “We literally broke the ring on day three,” laughs co-creator Liz Flahive of an early snafu during filming. “We had a male wrestler running the ropes and on the third hit off the rope, the ring collapsed. There were screams and gasps.” A steel beam spanning the ring, shorn in half, was identified as the culprit. But with the show’s base, a converted Los Angeles gym, cleared and the ring rebuilt, the cast of the ’80s-set ten-parter was swiftly back in action. The GLOW — as the saying almost goes — must go on. Standing for ‘Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling’ and toplined by Mad Men’s Alison Brie as Ruth, a struggling actress pushed to audition…

AN ADAPTATION OF a 1971 Don Siegel/ Clint Eastwood Southern Gothic genre movie that’s been labelled misogynistic (and, conversely, feminist) in the intervening years, The Beguiled doesn’t seem like an obvious Sofia Coppola pick. She confirms the point with a smile in her New York edit suite. “I would never [normally] consider remaking a movie,” she concedes, “but it took such a turn that I didn’t expect. I kept thinking about it. It was just so weird.” Based on Thomas Cullinan’s 1966 novel A Painted Devil and set during the American Civil War, it’s the story of wounded Union soldier John McBurney (Colin Farrell) who’s taken to an all-girl boarding school to convalesce. There, he develops complex relationships with the pupils and the head of the school, played by Nicole…

★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 126 MINS DIRECTOR Guy Ritchie CAST Charlie Hunnam, Katie McGrath, Annabelle Wallis, Jude Law, Hermione Corfield, Eric Bana PLOT Exiled as a boy after the murder of his parents, Arthur (Hunnam) grows up on the streets of Londinium with no idea if he’s the rightful ruler of England. Then, after pulling a mystical sword from a stone, he joins a band of outlaws to take on the king — his evil uncle Vortigern (Law). YOU CAN’T REALLY fault the logic of letting Guy Ritchie bring some mayhem to the traditionally chivalrous world of King Arthur. Back in 2009, when Benedict Cumberbatch’s modern-day consulting detective was yet to usher viewers into his Mind Palace, Ritchie’s first Sherlock Holmes film proved a gleefully incendiary revelation, delivering…

★★★★ OUT JUNE 29 RATED TBC / 89 MINS DIRECTOR William Oldroyd CAST Florence Pugh, Cosmo Jarvis, Paul Hilton, Naomi Ackie, Christopher Fairbank PLOT Northumberland, 1865. Resenting her arranged marriage to older colliery heir Alexander (Hilton), 17-year-old Katherine (Pugh) embarks upon an affair with stable groom Sebastian (Jarvis) and resorts to murder when their romance is discovered. DESPITE THE TITLE, there’s nothing Scottish or Shakespearean about this tale of murderous Victorian passion. Playwright Alice Birch based the core plot on Nikolai Leskov’s 1865 novella Lady Macbeth Of The Mtsensk District, but her first screenplay also invokes the spirit of such ill-fated literary heroines as Madame Bovary, Thérèse Desqueyroux and Lady Chatterley. Yet the clearest influence on theatre director William Oldroyd’s feature debut is Andrea Arnold’s sombre 2011 take on Emily…

★★ OUT JUNE 22 RATED M / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Denise Di Novi CAST Rosario Dawson, Katherine Heigl PLOT Giving up her job and life in San Francisco, writer Julia (Rosario Dawson) moves to a Southern Californian town to live with her fiancé (Geoff Stults). But things are complicated by his jealous ex (Katherine Heigl). THERE WAS A TIME in the mid-tolate-Noughties when, if you went to see a romcom, the chances were it would star Katherine Heigl. She’s been quiet for a while, but this is her vaunted (adding the word “much” feels like a step too far) return. And it’s the funniest film she’s made in years. Sadly, it’s a psychological thriller. Proceedings start well enough. We meet Rosario Dawson’s writer, Julia, in a police interview room —…

IT SEEMED SUCH an innocuous question. A little icebreaker to start us off. When the Transformers writers room was assembled in June 2015 to plot potential sequels and spin-offs, was Michael Bay there on Day One? Inadvertently, though, Empire’s query has made the director flash back to one of the most terrifying moments of his life. “Fuck,” he whispers quietly, gazing down at his trainers. “I was in Malta…” A pause. “It was scary. Um…” He squints ahead at the LA sun. Then he snaps out of it and tells his story. It is peak Michael Bay. He was in a building in Malta, shooting a fire sequence for his real-life Benghazi drama 13 Hours. “We’d practised our escape plan three times. Firemen with hoses either side. What happened was…

THE BREAK THROUGH JOE SANTO STAY HUNGRY , 1976 After bear-wrestling under the pseudonym Arnold Strong and playing an uncredited henchman in The Long Goodbye, Schwarzenegger bagged this breakout role. As Joe Santo, a kind-hearted bodybuilder set on winning Mr Universe, he not only got to keep his name but saw off Truman Capote (nominated for Murder By Death) to win a Golden Globe for New Star Of The Year. “I wanted to be like Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood — all these action heroes. So it was a surprise, in a way, that all of a sudden I was doing films like Stay Hungry and Happy Anniversary & Goodbye, which had nothing to do with action at all. Stay Hungry was very challenging as it was my first…

ACE IN THE HOLE The darker side of Billy Wilder 1951 / RATED PG THE RELEASE OF Ace In The Hole in June 1951 marked a clutch of career milestones for Billy Wilder. Aside from being his first film without Lost Weekend / Sunset Boulevard writing partner Charles Brackett, it was also the first he’d ever written, produced and directed. And, after a string of successes, it was also his first flop, a box-office bomb detested by critics and audiences alike. It’s hardly unique in that respect; cinema is littered with the bones of movies that were critical or commercial duds (or both) upon release, before a long road to reappraisal: Citizen Kane, Vertigo, Blade Runner… hell, The Shining earned Stanley Kubrick a Razzie nomination for Worst Director of…

IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO. An unlikely one, perhaps, but go with it. It’s 1993, and you’re a film fan who has, for various reasons, managed to avoid seeing Neil Jordan’s much-ballyhooed new thriller, The Crying Game. But, perhaps more importantly, you’ve managed to stick your fingers in your ears and wilfully miss the main reason why there’s much ballyhooing in the first place: the twist. Because somewhere inside this story, of a guilt-ridden former IRA man (Stephen Rea) who falls in love with the girlfriend of a British soldier to whose death he contributed, is a twist. And not just any twist. You’ve heard it’s a doozy, the sort of twist that’s on everyone’s lips, that simply has to be seen to be believed. But avoid it you have. Until one…

★★★★★ FROM JUNE 18 ON BBC FIRST / SHOWRUNNER JOHN RIDLEY / CAST BABOU CEESAY, FREIDA PINTO, IDRIS ELBA, RORY KINNEAR, NATHANIEL MARTELLOWHITE, DENISE GOUGH LONDON IN THE 1970s wasn’t always a nice place to be, particularly for young black Britons. With extreme racial tension, disgraceful and since-widely-recognised-and-condemned police brutality, it’s little wonder that, by the middle of the decade, the situation had erupted into large-scale rioting. But it is before those real-life clashes that we begin here, back in 1971, with events quickly taking a fictionalised turn for the even worse. In the opening scene we meet Marcus Hill (Babou Ceesay): a slightly bookish, eloquent, educated young black man, struggling to find work as a teacher in the face of racial prejudice. We see him visiting his friend, the…

CAPTION COMP Write a funny caption to this image from upcoming neo-noir thriller Detour, and win a DVD prize pack! When law student Harper (Tye Sheridan) drunkenly hires a hitman to murder his stepfather Vincent, he ends up on a dark journey with the hitman and his partner in crime. To enter, email empiregiveaways@bauer-media.com.au GIVEAWAYS WIN! TRAINSPOTTING 2 ON BLU-RAY CHOOSE REWATCHING the sequel to the Cool Britannia classic. Renton, Spud, Begbie and Simon return 20 years after the first movie… and none of them have got wiser with age. We have 10 Blu-ray copies to win. TO ENTER, TELL US YOUR FAVOURITE CINEMATIC SCOTSMAN AND WHY. OR SCHINEMATIC SHCOTSHMAN, EVEN. WIN! LOVING ON DVD A MOVING and haunting film from Jeff Nichols (Mud, Midnight Special) about the couple who…

THE TALE OF how Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon got together is highly dramatic and, in their new film The Big Sick, very, very funny. There was, however, a significant difficulty in telling it: for much of the story, one of them was unconscious. When Nanjiani, a stand-up comic and Silicon Valley regular, and Gordon, a writer and producer, had been dating for just a few months, she came down with a mystery illness. She was put into a coma while doctors frantically worked out what was wrong. Nanjiani remained by Emily’s side with her parents, his emotions deepening while hers stayed frozen in pre-coma casualness. To add to a strained situation, Nanjiani’s parents did not even know he had a girlfriend — much less a possibly dying one.…

THE MOVIES HAVE never lacked for iconic gunslingers. There’s Clint, of course. Han Solo. Clint again. Blazing Saddles’ Waco Kid. One more Clint for good measure. But Idris Elba’s Roland Deschain, the hero of The Dark Tower, will give them all a run for their money. “He has a ridiculous amount of skill,” says Elba. “I did a lot of preparation on gun handling and mechanics. That aspect is definitely not ignored.” Clint Eastwood was an obvious inspiration for Stephen King when he created Roland for — yes! — 1982’s The Gunslinger, the first in an epic series King has revisited throughout his career. He’s a taciturn chap who roams Mid-World (a version of our world with vast differences that will begin shrouded in mystery), shooting first and asking questions……

★★★ OUT JUNE 22 RATED PG / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Christopher Smith CAST Tye Sheridan, Bel Powley, Emory Cohen PLOT In 19th century Massachusetts, a young Emily Dickinson (Emma Bell) struggles to be taken seriously as a poet. Later in life, Dickinson (Cynthia Nixon) enjoys the company of her family and confidantes — but lives a reclusive life as her health declines. THERE HAVE BEEN big-screen biopics of Ginsberg (Howl), Keats (Bright Star), Thomas (The Edge Of Love), Plath (Sylvia) and Eliot (Tom & Viv), but — despite being arguably America’s most celebrated female poet — Dickinson has never enjoyed proper cinematic treatment. She finds a worthy suitor in British director Terence Davies, whose well-honed lyrical approach and appetite for familial/religious conflict makes for a potent portrayal. From the fiery…

★★★ OUT JUNE 22 RATED TBC / 97 MINS DIRECTOR Christopher Smith CAST Tye Sheridan, Bel Powley, Emory Cohen PLOT Law student Harper (Sheridan) recruits a criminal, Johnny (Cohen), to kill his step-father Vincent (Stephen Moyer) in Vegas, convinced Vincent put Harper’s mother in a coma. Harper, Johnny and Johnny’s girlfriend Cherry (Powley) go on the road to Vegas, but it’s not a smooth trip. WITH BLACK DEATH, Creep and Severance under his belt, British writer-director Christopher Smith has a reputation for disturbing horror, but this American-set film has a little more in common with his time-bending thriller Triangle. Smith has assembled a fashionable cast of charismatic young talents: Tye Sheridan (Mud, X-Men: Apocalypse) as the troubled young law student Harper, Emory Cohen (Brooklyn) as his shady new cohort Johnny…

JON WATTS FIRST TRIED OUT FOR MARVEL WHEN HE WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD. WELL, KINDA. In 1988, while growing up in Fountain, Colorado, a rural swathe of the Western United States in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the future Hollywood director was given a Marvel Comics Try-Out Book. It invited its readers to pencil, ink, letter and colour a Spider-Man adventure, with the promise of a possible job at the publishing house if they sent off the results. Unbothered by the fact the DIY comic was already a good five years old and the winners had long since been announced, the young Watts dived in, spending hours obsessively drawing the wall-crawling hero. “That,” he says, “was my personal introduction to Spider-Man.” Ultimately, though, it was filmmaking rather than comics…

THE SET OF Wonder Woman is, at first glance, pretty far from wonderful. As Empire looks on, a weary column of World War I Allied troops trudge past, boots caked with filth, faces smudged with dirt. The mud — which just the day before was ankle-deep — is slowly drying under the February sun; it’s just about possible to pick your way across the crust without sinking in. In the trenches around us lie dead rats, a pungent stench suggesting that those tiny corpses represent an unhealthy commitment to realism. Everything and everyone is dirty and damp. Except, that is, for Gal Gadot, who strides past in her Wonder Woman gear looking like, well, a goddess. A gold eagle tops her red leather cuirass. A lasso is coiled on one…

“WOULD YOU EVER go back to Twin Peaks?” Empire asked David Lynch in 2001. “No,” he said. “Uh-uh. It’ s as dead as a doornail.” And it was. Or so it seemed. But this is Twin Peaks, where there is more than one reality, if there was ever such a thing at all. Twin Peaks was a genuine televisual revolution — we had never before seen its kind, with its nightmarish noir, hallucinogenic bad guys, Red Room and backwards-walking/ talking dwarf. It made stars of its actors, pop-culture icons of its inhabitants, and got under our skin like a hidden clue beneath a fingernail. Fittingly, Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost, who met in 1986 to work on a film about Marilyn Monroe that never happened, dreamed it up in a…

00.04.40 HERE COMES THE SUN __ The movie’s infectious opening number, Another Day Of Sun, in which a crowd of LA wannabes dance on the freeway, very nearly wasn’t. “You used to see Ryan [Gosling] and Emma [Stone] before it began, and there was a three-minute overture,” says writer-director Damien Chazelle. “It was making the whole sequence unwieldy.” He cut the song, but eventually dropped the overture instead. 0:10.58 EMERGING FROM THE CROWD __ The next number, Someone In The Crowd, an ensemble piece in which Emma Stone’s character Mia gradually takes centre stage from her roommates as they hit a Hollywood party, follows soon after. “The idea was to gradually allow the leads to take ownership,” says Chazelle. “From a musical numbers standpoint it becomes smaller and more intimate…

UN CHIEN ANDALOU is a real eyeopener and no mistake. The infamous opening scene of the 17 minute-long silent short was dreamed up when Luis Buñuel went to stay at Salvador Dalí’s. Buñuel was holidaying at Dalí’s home, and while out at a restaurant — as putative surrealists are wont to do — Buñuel recounted a dream in which a cloud sliced the moon in half, “like a razor blade slicing through an eye”. Dalí, not to be out-bonkered, claimed he’d had a dream where his hand was being eaten by crawling ants. Spanish artist then suggested to Spanish director they make a film by connecting as many disconnected images as they could come up with, continuity being a bourgeois fetish. “No idea or image that might lend itself to…

★★★★★ FROM NOW / DIRECTOR Maren Ade / CAST Sandra Hüller, Peter Simonischek WRITER-DIRECTOR Maren Ade’s Oscar-nommed Cannes darling works very hard to stack the odds against itself. It’s nearly three hours long. It’s set in the densely detailed world of German business consultants. It’s a comedy built around wigs, whoopee cushions and jizzing on petits fours. Yet the result is funny, perceptive, alive to life’s richness and absurdities and in its final moments, absolutely devastating. The set-up sounds like well-tooled Hollywood comedy — prankster dad cheers up his workaholic daughter through wacky personas — and indeed Jack Nicholson is attached to an announced American remake. Happily, Ade has no truck with Hollywood formula. Thanks to great writing and superlative performances, the relationship between good-hearted, hang-dog Winfried (Simonischek) and his…

1 What is your character Rebecca Payne’s job in John Q? She’s a hospital administrator-slash-bitch! I will never forget Denzel Washington, when we were doing the scene where I met him. It was so awful to be so mean to him, but he leaned across to me and said, “Get nastier!” Correct 2 In Six Days Seven Nights, what is the name of the fashion magazine you work for? Oh lord... I thought you were going to ask me the actor I worked with... Shoot. [Thinks] ‘Dazzle’? That is reaching. That came from above. I can’t believe I got that. Correct. 3 In Volcano, after an earthquake hits LA triggering the formation of an underground magma flow, where do you and Tommy Lee Jones initially want to divert the subsequent…

★★★ OUT NOW FORMATS MAC, PC, PS4, XB1 DIRECTOR Jonathan Stauder CAST Scott Porter, Emily O’Brien, Nolan North PLOT When the Guardians receive a panicked communication from Nova Corps asking them to go after a powerful artefact, they are plunged into an adventure that could see the group torn apart. HAVING TACKLED The Walking Dead, Game Of Thrones and Batman, Telltale Games turns its attention to another big pop-culture noise: Marvel’s boisterous band of star-rebels. The result is clearly modelled on James Gunn’s movies, albeit with some cosmetic differences, and is pretty successful at recreating their spiky character dynamics. But ultimately the pace of this first instalment (there are four more to go) lets it down. Whereas a slow, investigation-based story suited the Dark Knight, or even the eerily…

EXT. FAIRGROUND — DAY Peyton takes Julie to a stall festooned with animal toys. PEYTON: Oh, Julie Hastings, I’m going to win for you the biggest, fuzziest, pinkest animal doll in that rank. JULIE: Yes! PEYTON: And then I gotta run. JULIE: You always have to run. Why does it always have to be so dramatic? PEYTON: I have my hospital sessions, Jules. I’m not 100 per cent cured yet, but I soon will be. He throws the first ball. It’s a miss. JULIE: Where is this place, exactly? Peyton, I want to be involved somehow. Can I at least take you back there? Second throw. Also a miss. PEYTON: No! No, please Julie, I don’t want you to see me there. I don’t want you to think of me…

YOUR SHORTLIST of cinema’s greatest split personalities in the May issue is a terrific reminder of the outstanding cinematic crazies that have graced our screens for decades. The inclusion of perhaps the silver screen’s most notorious dual identity antagonist, dear Norman-and-occasionally-Mrs Bates had me chuckling discreetly when you referred to him as Master. This cleverly phrased homonym is in fact even more clever than you may have at first thought, especially when you watch the 1998 remake of Psycho. Put aside the fact that this shot by shot remake is largely a waste of talent and celluloid, and take a close listen to the scene where Vince Vaughn is spying on Anne Heche as Marion Crane in the shower. Turn up the volume and you should hear the telltale sound…

1 LEIA WON’T BE BACK FOR EPISODE IX Despite talk of a mix of CGI (shudder) and unused footage to recreate Leia, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy confirmed that The Last Jedi will see the character’s final appearance. At the time of her death, Fisher had completed filming for VIII and Episode IX has subsequently been written without Leia’s inclusion. Does this mean everyone’s favourite princess will meet an untimely end? Or drive off into a twin sunset in the same manner as Paul Walker in Fast 7? Either way, Leia’s absence will be keenly felt. 2 THE NEW PLANET IS CALLED CRAIT One of the striking images in The Last Jedi’s first trailer is of land-skimmers hurtling across salt flats, their stabilising fins kicking up streams of crimson dust. That…

IF YOU HAVEN’T seen Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, fear not — you’ll definitely see his next slice of dystopian sci-fi, Okja. Dodging the distribution pitfalls that dogged Snowpiercer, the Korean auteur has turned to Netflix for his latest project. “Netflix provided me with 100 per cent creative freedom,” he enthuses. The biggest budget of his career, estimated at $50 million, didn’t hurt either. A creature feature with a difference, Okja appears to take the Korean back to his first love: scary beasts. After all, he’s best known for 2006’s exuberant monster movie The Host. Okja, his latest critter, is a very different animal, though. “The Host was a scary monster,” Bong explains, “whereas Okja is very shy and introverted.” At the story’s core is the friendship between Okja and a young…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 95 MINS DIRECTOR John Butler CAST Fionn O’Shea, Nicholas Galitzine, Andrew Scott, Moe Dunford PLOT Returning to his boarding school, bullied outsider Ned (Fionn O’Shea) makes a friend in rugby star roommate Conor (Nicholas Galitzine). Yet the pair’s new bond is tested when his team mates and coach (Moe Dunford) notice that Conor is running around with the wrong crowd. “IF YOU SPEND your whole life being someone else,” suggests English teacher Mr Sherry (Andrew Scott) to his class of Irish teenagers, “who is going to be you?” This well-worn idea underpins John Butler’s predictable, coy but still eminently likeable and engaging coming- out comedy-drama. Populated by standard archetypes — the geeky outsider, the jock who is secretly gay, the inspirational teacher, the bastard-hard…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED TBC / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Mike Mills CAST Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Lucas Jade Zumann PLOT A freethinking Santa Barbara mother (Annette Bening) enlists the help of two young women (Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig) as she bids to raise her adolescent boy during a period of cultural and social turmoil. WRITER/DIRECTOR MIKE Mills is no stranger to plundering his own past to provide the foundations for a perceptive study of a family at work. In his last film, Beginners, he remembered his father. This time he recalls the tender relationship he enjoyed with his mother, using this template to explore the way in which three females — provocative ingénue Julie (Fanning), twentysomething punk Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and laidback mum Dorothea (Annette Bening)…

★★★★★ OUT NOW RATED MA15+ / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Craig Johnson CAST Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, Isabella Amara PLOT Isolated after his dad’s death, petulant loser Wilson (Harrelson) decides to reconnect with his ex (Dern). When he discovers he has a teenage daughter born after their split, Wilson attempts to reunite the family… with calamitous results. FROM JACK NICHOLSON in As Good As It Gets to Walter Matthau in, well, just about anything, American cinema has a rich history of cantankerous but loveable grouches. Adding another portrait to the grump gallery, Woody Harrelson delivers a spectacularly boorish performance in Wilson, an adaptation of Daniel Clowes’ alt-comic that depicts the mid-life crisis of a snarling underdog. The film has plenty of bark but a curiously soft, gummy bite. Wearing his failed…

Deborah Snyder: When we first started talking about the project, we thought the photograph [above] was a really interesting idea. What was the journey in getting to this moment? We kind of built the story around this photo! Chris Pine: We’re basically a ragtag bunch of ne’er-do-wells. Each [member of the squad] gets their own storyline. Ewen and Saïd especially add humour. They’re a great bunch of guys. Ewen Bremner: It was shot on the backlot at London, the first thing filmed for the movie. We had to hold our positions for an uncommonly long time without moving, because it was an authentic daguerrotype box camera from the period, with a very long exposure time. Eugene Brave Rock: It was a really great day, coming together in costume for the…

A funny thing has happened to Chris Evans lately. The man who has played Steve Rogers — the ultimate bastion of American decency, honour and nobility — in Marvel movies since 2011 appears to be morphing into a real-life righteous warrior. Or as close as we’re going to get without super-soldier serum and indestructible shields. Over the last year or so, Evans has become increasingly outspoken, standing up for what he believes in, for truth, justice and that other one. Mostly, this has been through his Twitter handle, @ChrisEvans (heaven knows how the former Top Gear host, who was given the name first after all, feels about having to do with @aChrisEvans). If Steve Rogers knew the meaning of the phrase “social media”, you can imagine that his account would…

FOR THE CAST and crew of HBO’s Veep, fiction and reality can overlap in surreal ways. On 8 November last year, some of the actors were shooting a scene at a polling station, checking the latest results of the real Presidential election while filming an imagined one. What they saw unfolding had peculiar echoes of the Emmy-winning sitcom’s previous season, in which a female politician wins the popular vote but not the electoral college. This time it was considerably less amusing, because it was actually happening. “That day our foundation was somewhat shook,” says Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who stars as Selina Meyer, the Vice President, President and now former President. “We thought, ‘Okay, can we be funny anymore? Is any of this funny? What is funny?’ A slight identity crisis.” Timothy…

★★★★★ FROM JUNE 14 / DIRECTOR Martin Scorsese / CAST Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver Hello darkness, my old friend ADAPTED FROM Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel (previously made into a film in 1971), this is a passion project as personal to the director as anything involving Italian gangsters. From 1967’s Who’s That Knocking At My Door to now, Scorsese, a failed priest, has conducted a 50-year investigation into how spiritual feeling butts up against the flesh and blood world. This is the clearest articulation of his ideas to date. On paper, Silence sounds like a devout-men-on-a-mission movie as Fathers Garrpe (Adam Driver) and Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) go in search of their missing mentor (Liam Neeson). But the actuality is lower octane. Arriving in Japan, the priests are drawn into the struggle…

THIS MONTH: VIDEO GAME ADAPTATIONS VIDEO GAMES ARE fun. Movies are fun. Movies of video games should, then, be enormo-fun, but 24 years since its first port, Super Mario Bros., Hollywood is still barely past the first level. This grind through the subgenre reveals a few gems, but as next-gen games evolve into interactive films, the video-game movie is destined for death unless it radically respawns. Mario’s bright, benign Mushroom Kingdom is a pixelated cuddle of a game-world and yet the unholy Super Mario Bros. reimagines it as murky dystopian sci-fi. Asking gamers to imagine they’re controlling a tiny Bob Hoskins is the least of its problems: Toad is a rockabilly busker, Megadeth incinerates the soundtrack and Mario’s mushrooms are personified by a soggy fungus testicle that turns out to…

#11 LAURENCE RICKARD ON THE FRENCH CONNECTION THE IDEA OF The First-Take Club is simple: we ask someone to watch a movie they haven’t seen from our Greatest Movies Of All Time list, then tell us what they thought of it. This month, Laurence Rickard — star and co-creator of Yonderland — chose a thriller with one of the greatest car chases in cinema history. So, Mr Rickard, how have you missed The French Connection — too busy picking your feet in Poughkeepsie? As both a graduate and erstwhile tutor in film studies, I am not proud to have reached the ripe old age of *mumbles* without having seen this classic crime drama. I’m even less proud of having referenced it in at least two pieces of coursework, but if…

COSTUME Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries . It was a 1920s black silk satin kimono with hand-embroidered fighting cocks on the back. Not only is it incredibly detailed, sexy and sumptuous on the skin and incredibly flattering, it was also very tongue-in-cheek. My character loved having fighting cocks dancing around her. I wasn’t allowed to keep it. I had to learn how to do a striptease fan dance for Miss Fisher . We worked it all out that you would never see my boobs. It was cheeky, but at the end I turn to the audience with my back to the camera, spread my wings and give them a good look. They taped up my boobs with bandage tape, and I looked awful. It was a beautiful…