Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2018 i Empire Australasia

Congratulations on Sweet Country, which seems to be collecting awards left, right and centre. Thank you. Yeah, all fun and games. It’s good for the film, bad for my ego. Can you tell us about the real-life events the film is based on? It’s based on my sound recordist David Tranter’s grandfather’s story. We grew up together in Alice Springs and he’s done sound on every film I’ve ever made. He said, “I’ve got a really good idea for a film.” I kinda get that a bit from grips and gaffers and the occasional make-up artist, you know, “I’ve got an idea for a film.” And you go, “Okay, well go and write it.” That’s how I kind of get out of it. But then David did something about it.…

THERE ARE TWO reasons Daniela Vega should be one of the most talked-about actors of 2018. The first, and most important, is her performance in A Fantastic Woman. For Sebastián Lelio’s drama, the 28-year-old plays Marina, a waitress and lounge singer whose much older boyfriend suddenly dies. Marina is left homeless and questioned about her involvement in his death. She just wants to grieve as any other girlfriend would, but her boyfriend’s family and various government authorities won’t allow it. The reason? Marina — like Vega herself — is transgender. The vast majority of people she meets treat her with suspicion, like some curiosity they’re trying to work out, and Vega plays the raw pain and determination of someone who battles every day just to be accepted as who she…

OUT NOW RATED MA15+ / 115 MINS DIRECTOR Martin McDonagh CAST Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Lucas Hedges, Clarke Peters, Abbie Cornish, Peter Dinklage PLOT Mildred Hayes (McDormand) is seeking justice for her dead daughter, provoking local police — including sympathetic Chief Bill Willoughby (Harrelson) and racist officer Jason Dixon (Rockwell) — into action by paying for messages on three giant billboards. But will Mildred ever get that justice, and who’ll still be standing when she’s through seeking it? THE THIRD FILM written and directed by profane poet Martin McDonagh is a rough meditation on the true nature of loss, grief and vengeance. Yet, it is not a tale simply of loss, grief and vengeance. And it’s certainly not the simple tale you presume it to be at heart:…

OUT 8 FEBRUARY RATED MA15+ / 119 MINS DIRECTOR David Gordon Green CAST Jake Gyllenhaal, Tatiana Maslany, Miranda Richardson, Clancy Brown PLOT Jeff Bauman (Gyllenhaal) loses both his legs after the Boston Marathon terrorist attack. Hailed as a hero by his hometown after he helps to identify the culprits, Bauman must begin a tumultuous journey to walk again, aided by his mother (Richardson) and girlfriend (Maslany). HOLLYWOOD HAS ALREADY rushed one dramatisation of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings to the screen — but while Peter Berg’s Patriots Day invented a composite cop character for us to root for, David Gordon Green’s Stronger chooses a more personal and more authentic route. Based on the painfully honest memoir by Jeff Bauman who lost both his legs because of the attack, the focus…

OUT NOW RATED PG / 109 MINS DIRECTORS Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina CAST Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach PLOT Miguel (Gonzalez) is a 12-year-old boy whose family have banned music. He longs to play, but when he steals a guitar belonging to his deceased icon, Ernesto De La Cruz (Bratt), he’s transported to the Land Of The Dead and must escape before dawn. AFTER INSIDE OUT, Pixar dips again into the metaphysical with a trip into the afterlife. Of course, being Pixar, it doesn’t simply slip beyond a veil but stride across a gigantic arched bridge made of marigolds, because there’s no concept so difficult that Pixar can’t make it breathtaking. Powell and Pressburger would cheer. While this film packs in adventure and desperately colourful characters,…

OUT 8 FEBRUARY RATED PG / 82 MINS DIRECTOR Joshua Z. Weinstein CAST Menashe Lustig, Yoel Falkowitz, Ruben Niborski PLOT Menashe (Lustig) is a thirtysomething widower in New York’s Hasidic community. Tradition forbids single parenthood, so he reluctantly embarks on a search for a new wife while striving to preserve his relationship with his son, who is being forced to live with strict relatives. BROOKLYN’S HASIDIC JEWISH community is famously closed off to the outside world, so it’s a minor miracle this film exists at all. Not only is it a wonder of access — the entire cast are non-actors and all dialogue is in Yiddish — but, even more impressively, it manages to be a generous-spirited examination of how practicality can rub up against tradition and culture while never…

OUT NOW RATED M / 93 MINS DIRECTOR Trish Sie CAST Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, Hailee Steinfeld, Ruby Rose, Elizabeth Banks, Brittany Snow PLOT Post-college life is no picnic for the former Barden Bellas acapella group, so they leap at the chance to reunite for a USO tour of Europe. But up against bands with actual instruments, how will they cope? IT’S WORTH REMEMBERING how charming and fresh Pitch Perfect felt in 2012. It gave Anna Kendrick a role that played to her sceptical strengths, offered a female-led ensemble that didn’t have a weak link and showcased Kay Cannon’s sharp-witted script. The follow-up was still funny, but this third outing sadly follows a law of diminishing returns. Perhaps the problems are baked in to the premise. Having all…

NETFLIX OUT NOW DIRECTOR David Ayer CAST Will Smith, Joel Edgerton, Lucy Fry, Noomi Rapace PLOT In an alternate Los Angeles where fantasy creatures are a fact of life, Detective Ward (Smith) and his orc partner Jakoby (Edgerton) respond to a call, only to discover a terrified elf (Fry) with a magical artefact that practically everyone is willing to kill for. IF YOU CAN imagine a world in which Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings is classed as a historical documentary, then you’re not far off the setting of David Ayer’s Bright. Two thousand years after ‘The Dark Lord’ was defeated, a menagerie of fantasy creatures co-exist in modern America. Elves swan around Rodeo Drive shopping for Gucci loafers, fairies sift through rubbish like sparkly, winged raccoons, while orcs…

MERYL STREEP (20 OSCAR NOMINTATIONS, THREE WINS) AND TOM HANKS (5 NOMINATION, TWO WINS) CAN’T REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME THEY MET. It might have been at a Shakespeare In The Park production of Macbeth. Or at one of the countless awards bashes where they probably gave ridiculously witty acceptance speeches. Streep thinks she met Hanks’ wife Rita first, but isn’t sure. The only cast-iron fact is they have never shared the big screen together. Until now. Fittingly, it took a filmmaker of Steven Spielberg’s stature to bring the titans together. Set in 1971, The Post centres on The Washington Post’s race against The New York Times to publish the previously suppressed ‘Pentagon Papers’, revealing the level of US involvement in Vietnam. Streep is the Post’s publisher Katharine Graham, a singular…

NICOLE KIDMAN CONFESSES that she chooses not to mark time by years. But if she did, she would probably think how pretty damn remarkable 2017 was, with two critically acclaimed films and two buzzy TV shows, which amassed a clutch of awards between them. Kidman chooses instead to measure it by her own “artistic journey”, as well as those travelling beside her. “It was exquisite to share it with my husband [musician Keith Urban],” she tells Empire. “To have somebody to go, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ My family are so embracing of my artistic path. I’m not a single woman, so my decisions are made as a collective.” What, then, does the Kidman Collective hope for the next collection of months that we shan’t call a year? “I hope women…

What was the best thing about playing Laura? I think it would be how hard it was, because she was a very complex character. She was a child, but she had this beast inside her, which made her unable to be that child. Do you have a favourite memory from the shoot? I loved being in the make-up trailer, seeing how they put the fake blood on everything. Also, on the last day, they put me up on a wire, as high as I was allowed to go. That was my reward for being good! Have you kept in touch with Hugh Jackman? Yes. I love him. We write emails to each other. He was really nice to work with. He was always singing and happy. I never saw him…

ASK TAIKA WAITITI to give his 2017 a mark out of 10, and you’ll get a fairly simple answer. “I would rate it 17 out of 10,” he says. “It’s been amazing.” That’s an understatement. It’s the year when the Kiwi director broke into the mainstream in flamboyant style with Thor: Ragnarok. It was the year when he became something of a fashion icon. It was also the year he was convinced he was going to cark it. “I had a pain in my shoulder for a couple of months, and I couldn’t lift my arm up,” he tells Empire. “I thought I was having a heart attack. I went to a barbecue and was explaining it to someone, and another guy went, ‘Are you talking about the pain and…

ON 27 JUNE this year, three dozen supporters of campaign group Planned Parenthood converged on Capitol Hill to protest a bill which would restrict funding to healthcare centres that provide birth control. All the protesters were women. None spoke a single word during their protest. And they were all dressed in long red robes, their bowed heads clad in crisp, white paper bonnets. It’s the striking, disturbing uniform of The Handmaid, as worn by Elisabeth Moss’ Offred — a once-independent woman reduced to a depersonalised breeding chattel for Christian fundamentalist fascists — in Hulu and MGM’s astonishing TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale. “That was really extraordinary,” says Moss, speaking to Empire in late October at the end of a long day filming an episode…

Mention actor Hong Chau to her Downsizing director Alexander Payne, and his face lights up in an involuntary smile. “Isn’t she great?” he says, before adding, with absolute certainty: “Birth of a star.” Time will tell on that, of course, but Chau isn’t off to a bad start. She had already made memorable contributions to David Simon’s HBO series Treme and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, as well as popping up in this summer’s Big Little Lies, but it’s Downsizing that should supersize her stature. Her performance, as indefatigable one-legged Vietnamese dissident Ngoc Lan Tran — who forms an unlikely friendship with Matt Damon’s everyman Paul Safranek after they both decide to be shrunk down to a mere five inches and live in a vast community of small people —…

1987 / RATED R18+ THERE’S A SCHOOL of thought that, in order for a movie to be considered a masterpiece, it has to be about more than just sight and sound. It has to have something to say. It has to be about something. It has to illuminate insight into this crazy little thing we call the human condition. Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II is the glorious exception to this rule. It’s the crazy, coruscating Ofsted report that shuts down that school of thought. It doesn’t have a profound message, or a weighty theme, unless that message is “don’t turn on a tape recorder in a creepy old log cabin in case it contains a message that will resurrect an evil spirit you’ll spend the entire night battling”. It doesn’t…

COREY CONFUSION Just thought I would point out a bit of an error in your Coreys article Empire #199, October 2017). I would not normally do this but I am a huge fan of the lads and since Corey Haim is no longer with us I thought it would be the right thing to do by him. The article early on clearly points out that Corey HAIM dies in 2010. In the last few paragraphs at the bottom of page 61 it goes on to say “Everyone was on drugs,” Haim told Stratford in a Vice Interview in 2012. Now I have read the whole part of this a few times and thought maybe its how I have perceive things, or maybe it is Jennifer Stratford that has been quoted…

THE OLD REPUBLIC? THE CASE FOR: First mentioned by Obi-Wan in A New Hope, the Old Republic saw the Jedi as the guardians of peace and justice “for over a thousand generations”, before the Empire royally ballsed things up. It’s an ancient epoch in Star Wars mythology, covered extensively in non-canon video games and novels — but never on screen. Could it prove fertile ground for a new series? THE CASE AGAINST: The stakes are inevitably lower, as we know that the Old Republic is ultimately doomed to fall to the Empire. Plus, the phrase “Star Wars prequel” still sends shivers down certain spines. THE UNKNOWN REGIONS? THE CASE FOR: Head west, just beyond the Outer Rim, and you’ll find yourself facing the Unknown Regions: a largely unexplored corner of…

WE SHOULD HAVE seen The Death Cure by now. The final entry in the post-apocalyptic Maze Runner series was due for release in February 2017, and was on track to hit that date — until its lead actor, Dylan O’Brien, was hit by a moving vehicle while filming an action sequence, and reportedly left with “concussion, facial fracture and lacerations”. Director Wes Ball, who has been with the trilogy from the start, is clearly still distressed by the ordeal. “It was shitty,” he says of the experience. “He’s my buddy. The image of it is locked in my brain forever. I felt like, ‘What have I done? It’s my set.’” Production paused for a year to allow O’Brien to recover, both physically and mentally, and Ball assures Empire that, “Once…

Is it difficult keeping a horror film fresh when you’re up to the fourth in a series? We’d gone through different iterations of a haunted house movie in the past, but I’d never approached it like a mystery before. That was really the key that unlocked this film, to use a metaphor that relates to the movie itself. If you’re talking in terms of the horror genre itself and keeping that fresh, I think the only thing that’s going to keep the horror genre alive is filmmakers who are doing new things. I think Get Out, which was a huge hit in the US, is a perfect example of how you can use social issues that are dominating the headlines as a fertile ground for horror films. Going right back…

THIS MIGHT COME in handy down a pub quiz one day: who’s the director Liam Neeson has worked with the most? Not Neil Jordan, with three. Not Christopher Nolan, nor Martin Scorsese, nor even the great Olivier Megaton (two each). No, the honour goes to Spanish film-maker Jaume Collet-Serra who, with The Commuter, has racked up his fourth movie with the greatest living Northern Irishman. This late-blooming beautiful friendship began in 2010 when Neeson, scouting for a director for Unknown, was shown Collet-Serra’s bonkers horror thriller Orphan by producer Joel Silver. “It just scared the shit out of me,” laughs Neeson. “After that, I was really excited to work with him. We love each other’s company on set. We have this shorthand going on between us.” At first glance, The…

OUT 25 JANUARY RATED MA15+ / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Warwick Thornton CAST Hamilton Morris, Natassia Gorey-Furber, Sam Neill, Bryan Brown, Ewen Leslie, Tremayne Doolan, Trevon Doolan, Gibson John, Matt Day, Thomas M. Wright PLOT The Northern Territory Outback, 1929. Aboriginal stockman Sam (Harris) and his wife Lizzie (Gorey-Furber) are sent by their boss Fred Smith (Neill) to assist landowner Harry March (Leslie). When Sam kills March in self-defence, he and Lizzie go on the run, pursued by a small posse led by the steely Sergeant Fletcher (Brown). SWEET COUNTRY OPENS with an unblinking close-up of a billy on the boil. A handful of white sugar is poured into a froth of black tea, the mix soon bubbling rapidly to the top. Off camera, a tense scuffle is heard; the racial…

OUT NOW RATED M / 116 MINS DIRECTOR Steven Spielberg CAST Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Sarah Paulson PLOT When a classified government study about the Vietnam war is leaked to the press, Washington Post owner Kay Graham (Streep) and editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks) are keen to publish exposés. Standing in their way? Only the US government. THE WASHINGTON POST and the US government have previous. Famously. It is, after all, the paper that brought down a presidency — its months-long investigation into a break-in at the Watergate Hotel forcing Nixon into a no-win ‘resign or be impeached’ quandary. (He resigned.) But that’s not the only run-in it’s had — before Watergate, there were the ‘Pentagon Papers’. First, the history lesson: commissioned by JFK and…

OUT 8 FEBRUARY RATED TBC / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Michael Haneke CAST Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Mathieu Kassovitz, Fantine Harduin, Franz Rogowski, Laura Verlinden, Toby Jones PLOT Following the hospitalisation of her mother from an overdose, 12-year-old Eve (Harduin) goes to live with her father’s (Kassovitz) twisted family in Calais. Did we mention Eve might have poisoned her mother? Welcome to Haneke country. MICHAEL HANEKE’S HAPPY End features the greatest performance by a hamster ever depicted on screen. In the second scene, disturbed 12-year-old Eve (Harduin) is experimenting on the family pet by feeding it her mother’s anti-depressants. Livestreamed on Eve’s camera phone, the hamster delivers a death scene Daniel Day-Lewis would be proud of; surprising, heart-breaking and true. This year’s Best Rodent In A Supporting Role category is…

OUT NOW RATED MA15+ / 132 MINS DIRECTOR Ridley Scott CAST Michelle Williams, Charlie Plummer, Mark Wahlberg, Christopher Plummer, Andrew Buchan, Romain Duris, Marco Leonardi, Olivia Grant PLOT 1973. After John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) is kidnapped, his mother (Williams) struggles to convince his grandfather, frugal oil tycoon J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), to pay the ransom. Instead, she is assigned the services of his security advisor, Fletcher Chase (Wahlberg). IT’S HARD NOT to view this film through the lens of its much-publicised behind-the-scenes woes. Director Ridley Scott faced an unprecedented task when he had nine days to replace Kevin Spacey’s meaty supporting role after those allegations of sexual harassment came to light. As a feat of damage control, this film is a marvel as the substitution is not…

OUT NOW RATED M / 152 MINS. DIRECTOR Rian Johnson CAST Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, Andy Serkis, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, Benicio Del Toro PLOT The Resistance, led by General Leia (Fisher), are on the run. As the First Order close in, their only hope is if Rey (Ridley) can tempt Jedi Master Luke Skywalker (Hamill) back to the fight. “THIS IS NOT going to go the way you think!” Luke Skywalker warns Rey on the Jedi Temple island of Ahch-To. It sounds like a quote designed for a trailer but now feels like the opening line from Rian Johnson’s pitch. The Last Jedi delivers everything you want from a Star Wars movie — fierce lightsaber action, space dogfights,…

Steven Spielberg is a happy man. It’s Wednesday 29 November, the morning after the National Board Of Review Awards, and The Post has won Best Film, Best Actress for Meryl Streep and Best Actor for Tom Hanks. “We are so thrilled, it feels like we never won anything before,” he says. Here, the director gives us the lowdown on Streep, making her on-screen debut for the filmmaker, and Hanks, now on his fifth Spielberg film. SPIELBERG ON HANKS: “My favourite performance of Tom’s is always the last performance he gives. Fortunately, in this case, it’s once again for me! “Without any broad strokes, just by making subtle adjustments, Tom can be completely swept into an entirely different characterisation. He’s not only one of our great leading men; he is one…

BEFORE GET OUT, director Jordan Peele was best known for being one half of comedy double act Key & Peele. The closest he’d come to making a movie was co-writing and starring in catnapping caper Keanu with Keegan-Michael Key; the nearest thing he’d done to a thriller was appearing (alongside Key) in the first season of Noah Hawley’s Fargo… as comic relief. So you can forgive him for thinking his directorial debut, a thriller in which one black man’s visit to his white girlfriend’s family home turns into a surreally twisted nightmare, might not do well. “I didn’t know if people would go to see it,” he tells Empire. “I worried I’d be putting the audience through these tense moments and stressful scenes.” But there was something even bigger going…

He has practised the voice for over a year,” whispers producer Eric Fellner as Gary Oldman steps up to the despatch box for another take, the South Londoner nearly but not quite unrecognisable beneath layers of prosthetics. Like a wind machine roaring into voice, the throng of MP extras begin a chorus of heckles and cheers, waving wads of white paper in the air. Calm is gradually restored. As the camera glides upwards, the British actor, arguably our finest, strides the floor of the House Of Commons in the guise of arguably the UK’s finest Prime Minister. He begins pontificating, showboating, and changing the course of history. “We shall fight… On the beaches…” Theatrical pause. Oldman-Churchill spins on his heels, a sprightly 65-year-old politician thrilling to the moment, an actor…

Rome, July 2017. The Italian city is being vulcanised by a vicious, beating heat wave. In fact, it’s 36 degrees even in the shade on the set of Getty kidnap thriller All The Money In The World, and Empire is sweating from pores we never knew we had. The location for today’s shoot is the Giannini depot in Magliana — an artisan garage that restores vintage super-cars for the super-rich. Upstairs in Giannini HQ, Ridley Scott is doing some vintage restoration himself. Seemingly pickled in the 1970s, the Giannini offices have never been refurbished, frozen in the era’s oppressive beige and a perfectly eerie double for the Il Messaggero newsroom circa 1973. That’s 10 November 1973, to be exact — precisely four months to the day since 16-year-old oil heir…

“THAT IS ALL backlot,” recalls Ridley Scott, the memory intact. He had scoured Los Angeles for Deckard’s shabby-chic Downtown block, but nothing matched his imagination. The two sections of retrofitted rooftop were built on wheels so cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth could vary the backgrounds. The windmills were Scott’s idea: defunct power generators, failed life-support. “This would be the last night,” he continues. “They would pull the plug on me at four in the morning. By then I was very unpopular and they were very unpopular with me. So there was a battle royal, because I was determined to get what I needed — what I wanted.” Put simply, Rutger Hauer’s replicant rebel Roy Batty grabs Harrison Ford’s desperate detective, losing his grip on the rain-slicked girder. An unseen cable, attached to…

NETFLIX OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED 6 CREATED BY Charlie Brooker CAST Kiran Sonia Sawar, Andrea Riseborough, Joe Cole, Georgina Campbell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jesse Plemons, Michaela Coel PLOT A memory-scanning insurance claim investigator, two singletons navigating a matchmaking platform, a retro space adventure and the parental filter you can insert into a child’s head... Charlie Brooker’s dark tech-themed anthology series returns with six more twisted tales. FOUR SERIES AND six years into its disquieting existence, Black Mirror returns at something of a critical stage. It’s not only that real life is increasingly putting Netflix’s dystopian anthology series out of business. No, more specifically, plenty of viewers will simply be wondering how creator Charlie Brooker will follow a breakthrough like ‘San Junipero’: the uncharacteristically hopeful 2016 episode that became an instant pop-culture…

INT. CAFÉ RISPOLI — DAY Lt Jim Perry (David Niven) is addressing his platoon, who have gathered in the Café Rispoli. PERRY: I had hoped we would have seen rather more enemy aircraft around here than we have done, so that you could have kept up with your aircraft recognition without using these model things. However, all we have seen is a couple of rather dreary-looking reconnaissance planes, so we’d better just run through the German types to make quite sure you haven’t forgotten them. He unfolds a chart and points at the airplane on it. PERRY: We’ll start off with a few questions. What’s this one? Davenport? DAVENPORT (Raymond Huntley): Messerschmitt 109-F, sir. PERRY: That’s right. This one. Luke? LUKE (John Laurie): Stuka, sir. PERRY: That’s right. He picks…

IMAGINE SOMEONE, OR something, that hunts by sound: able to suss out a decibel across miles just as a shark can sense a drop of blood in the ocean. It’s a situation where dropping a plate could be deadly, a sneeze fatal. Swear because you stepped on one little piece of Lego and you’re a goner. Now imagine that you’re a parent to three small kids, and one of them is deaf. That’s the terrifying situation for the Abbott family in A Quiet Place, played by real-life husband and wife John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. “We’ve always talked about working together,” says Krasinski, who’s also writing and directing on the film. “But our whole theory was, you don’t want the headline of ‘they’re working together’ to be bigger than the…

IMAGINE IF DEATH was not the end of your life but merely a minor inconvenience. That’s the world that Netflix’s new sci-fi-noir series Altered Carbon imagines: set 500 years in the future, it depicts a society in which humans can live indefinitely, with memories saved to a digital ‘stack’ in your spinal column and constantly re-uploaded to a new body (a ‘sleeve’). Originating as a novel by British writer Richard K. Morgan, it was planned as a movie, but the vastness of Morgan’s 26th-century universe could not be contained in two hours. “Frankly, it was too dense,” says executive producer and showrunner Laeta Kalogridis, who approached Morgan directly for the rights. “The world he created is too deep and rich.” So it became a 10-hour Netflix show, with more than…

IT’S AN ABSURD old afternoon in Manchester. On a crate masquerading as the bow of the Titanic, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith are playing Tubbs and Edward playing Leonardo and Kate. Tubbs is wide-eyed with joy, arms outstretched, Edward hugging her tightly. Off-camera, dressed as a female council worker, Mark Gatiss looks on, delighted. “Edward should be pushing Tubbs off the ship,” he grins. Royston Vasey’s very own Rose and Jack are recreating the scene for a special Empire photoshoot, which also includes Gatiss recreating (and possibly ruining) American Beauty’s most iconic moment. It can only mean one thing: The League Of Gentlemen is back. When the show appeared on TV screens in 1999, we’d never seen anything like it, and nor have we since it ended — three series…

OUT 1 FEBRUARY RATED TBC / 130 MINS DIRECTOR Paul Thomas Anderson CAST Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville PLOT An acclaimed 1950s dressmaker (Day-Lewis) meets his latest muse in an out-of-town waitress (Krieps), and the two carry on a romance that not only interferes with the former’s fussy creative process, but also threatens to undo his worldview. REYNOLDS WOODCOCK (DAY-Lewis) is a man who knows exactly how his day should play out. Without his meticulous daily routine, he would never have sewn his way to the top of post-war London’s competitive haute couture scene. It’s not merely that he needs his overblown breakfast menu met down to the particular flavour of jam, but that he requires those that join him butter their toast with the utmost discretion. His work…

OUT 25 JANUARY RATED TBC / 140 MINS DIRECTOR Aaron Sorkin CAST Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Chris O’Dowd PLOT Former competitive skier Molly Bloom (Chastain) moves to Los Angeles in search of a fresh start, and finds a career running a high-stakes celebrity poker game. Initially she has wild success, but as she gets deeper, the temptation to cross a line into illegality grows. POKER IS A game of skill rather than chance, but despite the fact that livelihoods and lives can hang on the turn of a card, it has given us no end of heavy-handed and uninvolving films, without even the visual panache of sliding into home base to lift the storytelling. Aaron Sorkin’s based-in-fact directorial debut cleverly sidesteps this by focusing on the…

OUT NOW RATED PG / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Jake Kasdan CAST Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, Madison Iseman, Alex Wolff PLOT Four teenagers serving detention are sucked into a video game called Jumanji. Finding themselves embodying avatars, they must find a way back to the real world before they run out of lives. SO, IT’S COME to this: Hollywood’s increasingly desperate search for IP — any IP — that can be mined for a few coppers has led to Jumanji. The 1995 Joe Johnston original, based on Chris Van Allsburg’s book, is perhaps best remembered for groundbreaking (at the time) CGI and a fun Robin Williams lead turn, but it was built on the fascinating idea of a mischievous board game that comes to life. That’s a…

OUT NOW RATED PG / 105 MINS DIRECTOR Michael Gracey CAST Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Zac Efron, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson PLOT P.T. Barnum (Jackman) is a near-penniless dreamer determined to build a better life for himself and wife Charity (Williams). A circus brings profit but not respectability — so he gambles it all on a tour for opera star Jenny Lind (Ferguson). A YEAR AGO, La La Land was hailed as the saviour of the movie musical, but it only went so far, aping the look but not the tone of the old classics. The Greatest Showman, on the other hand, is an unabashed throwback, consciously modelling itself on the likes of Carousel and The Greatest Show On Earth, but adding modern pop tunes and a whole heap of…

THERE’S A SENSE of discomfiture when watching The Last Jedi. It’s a subtle, nagging feeling; hard to pin down but impossible to ignore. It’s a sensation of unfamiliarity: that, having expected to see an old friend, you’ve just met someone new. Someone interesting and magnetic, who you’d like to know a whole lot better. And you’re going to get the chance, because that person is Rian Johnson and in November, Kathleen Kennedy, devourer of film directors, handed him the keys to the Star Wars universe. On the strength of The Last Jedi, he was granted carte blanche to forge a fresh trilogy of his own devising, one that will form the basis for Star Wars going forward. No writers’ room, no story groups, no world-building by committee. Rather, the singular…

BASED ON THEIR SILHOUETTES alone, Guillermo del Toro and Doug Jones are a match made in heaven. One is tall and almost cartoonishly thin; the other is shorter and, by his own admission, squatter. It’s a classic combination. Little and Large. Del Boy and Rodders. The Pixar lamp and ball come to life. Silhouettes, though, only matter if you’re a comedy duo with music halls to pack out. Instead, del Toro and Jones are judged by a different metric — their unforgettable work together on six of del Toro’s meticulously crafted fantasies. Here’s how it works: del Toro, the Mexican maestro, comes up with characters that seemingly nobody on Earth could play: ethereal, eerie, elegant. Then Jones, a 57-year-old American who doesn’t look remotely like he’s 57, somehow plays them,…

THE MAKE-UP __ “The shape is like Salvador Dalí’s moustache, taken to an extreme. It’s almost like hooks, they look dangerous because of the bright blood-red points passing right through the eyes.” THE TEETH __ “One of [director Andy Muschietti’s] first drawings had enlarged incisors, long and pointed, but we dulled down the points because we didn’t want to carve up the inside of Bill’s [Skarsgård] mouth. When he put them in, his lips embraced them and they pulled back. It’s literally like you’re looking at a CG effect sitting in the make-up chair.” THE HAIRLINE __ “[The receding hairline] is just to conjure up that weird, unsettling feeling of looking at a character and feeling both the horror and innocence. Babies are often born with full heads of hair…

SOME FILMMAKERS WANT to be anywhere but near their film when it opens. There’s the famous story of George Lucas, who couldn’t face Star Wars’ opening weekend, so he took his best bud, Steven Spielberg, to Hawaii, and while they were on the beach avoiding news of grosses, came up with Indiana Jones. Patty Jenkins didn’t fancy that. When Wonder Woman opened on 2 June, she knew exactly where she wanted to be: New York. “I was there for a long time before I moved to LA,” she tells Empire. “It’s where my heart is. I lived off of Central Park and spent so many days in that park thinking about the filmmaker I wanted to be.” Opening night found Jenkins wandering around the city with her leading man, Chris…

1 INSPIRATION “I found a quote from Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party that inspired me: ‘There was one thing about his appearance which pleased Hercule Poirot, and that was the profusion of his moustaches.’ Because she called them ‘moustaches’, Ken [Branagh] liked the idea of having a double effect.” 2 REFERENCES “We looked at hundreds and hundreds of photographs, dating right back to the 17th century. Some were from the Wild West, because in the books Poirot is quite physical and vital. There was a Danish astronomer who was quite a big inspiration.” 3 CONSTRUCTION “Ken grows brilliant moustaches: when we did [stageplay] Winter’s Tale he grew it for real. But this one was so magnificent, it had to be built. It was made of many, many contingents: human hair, cashmere,…

THE EMPIRE VERDICT BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 ★★★★ RATED R18+ What we said: “Takes its time with its set-up, but that only makes the action that follows all the more effective. And Vaughn as an action hero works surprisingly well.” Notable extras: Journey To The Brawl and Making-Of featurettes. 00:01:21 MONSTER, INK __ The opening scene of S. Craig Zahler’s insanely violent Brawl In Cell Block 99 showcases its usually wisecracking star, Vince Vaughn, in a way that lets you know this is not going to be Dodgeball 2: shot from behind, with a massive cross tattoo on the back of his shaven head. “That’s a strong way for the character to enter,” says Zahler. “Coming at him back to front is a way in which you’re going character…

COSTUME The Crossbones costume [from Captain America: Civil War]. It’s the character my kids identify most with. Putting that costume on was the best. Nobody needs to see my face. It was just cool to be in that costume. A couple of times I’ve had to wear a cop uniform. End Of Watch was one. I don’t like wearing uniforms. Whenever I had a cop uniform on, it didn’t feel right and it’s hard for me to get into that character. I could never be a cop. AUDITION I auditioned for The Pacific for Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. We literally played for 40 minutes, improvising, and I got lost in the process. It was so organic and phenomenal. Steven hugged me when I left. A…

WORDS JAMES WHITE 1 Where did the Rolex watch your character wears in Nocturnal Animals come from? Switzerland. Final answer. Wait! Let me think about it. It was Tom’s [Ford, the director]. Everyone got fake everything, except for my character. And I drove his car, but only about six feet. Correct. 2 What movie does your character, Clyde Tolson, watch in J. Edgar? ‘G’ Men. Correct. 3 You appeared in Arrested Development as Student #2. What line did you deliver to George Michael? “Hey, Star Dork!” It’s all been downhill from there, that’s for sure. I have a plan to get back on the show. Student #2 is a nothing name, so I’m going to show up and say, “It’s actually my name. I have hippie parents and my name…