Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2018 i Empire Australasia

AN ADAPTATION OF a 1962 science-fantasy novel about an American teenager who has to travel through time and space to rescue her scientist father may not initially seem like the obvious choice for award-winning director of Selma and 13th, Ava DuVernay. But there was one person who thought it was perfect for her. That person was Tendo Nagenda, Executive Vice President of Production at Walt Disney Studios. “He championed me as the director of this film and brought the material my way,” she remembers. “He said, ‘Ava, imagine the world you can build.’ I thought, ‘What is he talking about?’ Then I read it.” DuVernay herself has always enjoyed sci-fi and fantasy and speaks of its importance to marginalised people, while recognising its current and historical limitations in culture. “It…

WHEN THE FIRST trailer for Proud Mary dropped back in July — featuring two minutes of Hidden Figures star Taraji P. Henson frantically firing bullets every which way, set to Tina Turner’s Proud Mary cover, naturally — comparisons were quickly and rather unimaginatively drawn to John Wick and Atomic Blonde. As it turns out, there is a loose connection to the Wick universe (director of photography Dan Laustsen worked on both John Wick Chapter 2 and Proud Mary), but director Babak Najafi insists those films are not an influence. “To be honest, I haven’t seen them,” says the Swedish-Iranian director. “I just didn’t want to have any influence or flavour, even subconsciously.” Viewers might be forgiven for spotting similarities between the trigger-happy assassins, but a more obvious inspiration might be…

THE MAKERS OF Deep Blue Sea may have thought they had turned in the perfect shark-schlock movie — but this year, there’s a new fish in the sea. The Meg, from National Treasure helmer Jon Turteltaub, is set to make a play for the crown, and the ace up its sleeve is the megalodon of the title: a prehistoric supershark that didn’t get the memo when all its mates went extinct. Luckily, humanity has a pretty solid backer in its corner in the shape of Jason Statham, whose presence adds to the feeling that gritty realism may not be the goal here. So, what’s the recipe for 2018’s most anticipated B movie? SUPERSIZE IT “I mean, who doesn’t want to watch a film about the biggest shark that’s ever…

★★★★★ OUT NOW / RATED MA15+ 123 MINS DIRECTOR Guillermo del Toro CAST Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Doug Jones, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer PLOT Elisa (Hawkins) lives a literal quiet life. She does not speak. She cleans at a scientific facility, where she is expected to do her work and question nothing. When she sees that an aquatic, humanoid creature is being violently studied in the facility, Eliza resolves to save him, then begins to fall in love with him. HOW MANY DIRECTORS could make you root for a woman to get it on with a dead-eyed fish-man who eats cats? The list cannot be much longer than just ‘Guillermo del Toro’. Nobody makes horror quite so romantic. At his very best, del Toro’s work holds dream, nightmare and realism…

★★★★ OUT 8 MARCH RATED TBC / 102 MINS DIRECTOR James Marsh CAST Colin Firth, Rachel Weisz, David Thewlis PLOT Real-life amateur yachtsman Donald Crowhurst (Firth) enters a 1968 round-the-world race; totally out of his depth, he begins to falsify his logs to conceal his failure. Alone in the wide ocean, this choice comes at a high price. YOU’RE GOING TO need to batten down the hatches when The Mercy is released, lest you founder in the hurricane of hot takes it will inspire. But you don’t need a galactic brain to tease out a political reading from this true story of a well-spoken Briton setting sail into a situation he is neither prepared nor qualified for and whose bloodymindedness, refusal to countenance humiliation and total captivity to his financial…

★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 118 MINS DIRECTOR Wes Ball CAST Dylan O’Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Kaya Scodelario, Patricia Clarkson, Giancarlo Esposito PLOT Having escaped sinister organisation WCKD in the last film, Thomas (O’Brien) and friends try to rescue their still-captive friend Minho (Ki Hong Lee). But they’ll need to venture into the Last City left after the ‘Flare’ plague killed many and turned others into zombie-like monsters. JAMES DASHNER’S MAZE Runner trilogy of bestselling books began with an elegant premise — amnesiac wakes up in a monster-patrolled maze; must figure out what’s going on — but degenerated into an overly complex and often unsatisfying morass by the third novel. Happily, this adaptation is loose enough to dispense with huge swathes of plot and focus almost entirely on thrills.…

★★★★ OUT 15 FEB / 93 MINS RATED MA15+ DIRECTOR Greta Gerwig CAST Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Timothée Chalamet, Lucas Hedges PLOT Lady Bird (Ronan) is a precocious 17-year-old on the brink of adulthood. She simply needs to survive the bumps of friendships, first loves and her relationship with her mother (Metcalf) before she leaves for college and her life really begins. “I WISH I could live through something,” sighs 17-year-old Christine McPherson, frustrated and bored in her Catholic high school in a small town in Sacramento, or as she despairingly calls it, “the Midwest of California”. She dreams of going to an arts college on the East Coast — though her family can only really afford the local college, much to the quiet heartache of her out-of-work…

★★ SHOWCASE / FOXTEL OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED 1-6 CREATED BY Jez Butterworth CAST David Morrissey, Kelly Reilly, Mackenzie Crook, Ian McDiarmid PLOT It’s AD 43 and Roman legions under General Aulus Plautius (Morrissey) have been dispatched to conquer the British Isles. The Celts have other ideas, however, and fear of their dark arts begins to foment rebellion within the Roman ranks. WITH ITS BLOOD, boobs, body count and cocktail of regional British accents, Britannia has clearly been crafted as an attempt to repeat Game Of Thones’ success. Given George R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic was itself heavily influenced by European history (most notably the Plantagenet squabbles of the Middle Ages), it’s easy to see how taking a similarly lively slice of Britain’s past, populating it with character actors and letting…

THE COLDEST OF hearts, the sternest of looks, the reddest of tapes. Nurse Mildred Ratched is more than merely the head of administration at a psychiatric hospital. In Louise Fletcher’s Oscar-winning turn, she rules the ward with a quietly terrifying iron fist, serving passive-aggressive put-downs to break the spirits of the mentally ill, efficiently and effectively. It’s little wonder that über-producer Ryan Murphy last year looked beyond Jack Nicholson’s protagonist McMurphy in granting Ratched her own spin-off Netflix origin series. As McMurphy himself puts it: “She’s somethin’ of a cunt, ain’t she, Doc?”…

By the end of 2015, Duncan Jones was worn out. The long, long gestation of his latest film, Warcraft, was still dragging on, its production company, Legendary, having changed hands twice and its release date being bumped from Christmas to the spring of 2016 by J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Jones’ wife Rodene Ronquillo was still reeling from a harrowing — but successful — battle against breast cancer. And to top it all, there was the news that his father, rock icon David Bowie, was suffering virulent, terminal liver cancer. On the upside, Rodene was expecting a baby boy, the couple’s first. But even the good news couldn’t take Jones’ mind off what was obvious: he needed a break. In the meantime, Stuart Fenegan, Jones’ long-time producer, had…

BY NOW, WE’RE used to seeing people legging it from prehistoric beasts on screen. So Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is going to give us something fresh: people running towards them. “One of the ideas in this film is that the world has flipped upside down,” director J.A. Bayona tells Empire. “Our heroes are on a rescue mission; they’re trying to save the dinosaurs. I had a lot of fun designing shots which homage moments from the previous movies, but with humans taking the place of animals.” There’s a very good reason for this radical switcheroo. A reason that’s hundreds of feet tall, angry, and belching torrents of red-hot lava. It turns out that Islar Nublar, that ill-fated tropical island 120 miles to the west of Costa Rica, was a terrible…

“WE’RE LOOKING AT what we did the first time around and going, ‘Okay, come on, let’s push things forward,’” Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them director David Yates told Empire in February 2017. “How do we take people by surprise? We need to do that on the next one.” Flash forward almost a year, and the sequel’s surprises are still being concealed more cunningly than Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. What we do know is that while characters from the original film are back, Newt (Eddie Redmayne) and Tina (Katherine Waterston) will be encountering a host of new friends and foes. Here’s our wand-by-wand update. 1. GELLERT GRINDELWALD (JOHNNY DEPP) The darkest of dark wizards, Grindelwald caused mischief in the first film disguised via magic as Percival Graves (Colin Farrell). This…

MEET HAKUJA, RAIJIN and Shrikethorn, on the rampage through 2035 MegaTokyo. According to the classification system set up in Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 original, Hakuja (left) and Shrikethorn (right) are Category 4 Kaiju, while, Raijin, the big brute in the middle, is a Category 5 badass. “Raijin is bi-pedal, more T-Rex-like,” explains visual-effects supervisor Peter Chiang. “He’s almost got a Venus-flytrap head that enables him to close up in defence mode. He has the ability to absorb energy from any attack and then use it to power his body to use it as a weapon.” Hakuja, meanwhile, is a “praying-mantis/mole/alligator-type thing that burrows”, and Shrikethorn “has plasma spears he can fire”. To make things worse for human stars John Boyega and Scott Eastwood, the Kaiju are also sharper. “They are…

THAT THANOS HAS a serious set of stones on him. Or he will, if the sinister purple-hued alien facing off against Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in Avengers: Infinity War has his way and unites the Infinity Stones, the multi-coloured MacGuffins that have been fuelling the Marvel Cinematic Universe almost since it began in 2008. But what are they? Where are they? What will happen if they all come together? Read on for our helpful gem-guide. THE SOUL STONE AKA: TBC The only Infinity Stone we haven’t yet seen (or have we? etc etc), speculation is rife about the Soul Stone, which has the power (in the comics, anyway) to encase souls inside other dimensions. A betting man would say the smart money is on it being in Black Panther’s African kingdom…

IF YOU’RE GOING to make a comedy film centred around the none-more-Australian subject of the BBQ and are looking to cast the ultimate knockabout Aussie bloke as your lead, then all paths naturally lead to Shane ‘Kenny’ Jacobson. The star of TV hit Little Big Shots lights up The BBQ as self-proclaimed descendant of Captain James Cook Darren “Dazza” Cook, a backyard barbie enthusiast who gets mixed up in a cooking competition under the tutelage of an abrasive Scot known as ‘The Butcher’ (Magda Szubanski). Jacobson says he learned to refine his BBQ techniques thanks to co-star Manu Feildel from TV’s My Kitchen Rules, who plays Dazza’s arrogant French cooking nemesis Andre Montblanc. “I represent the average Australian male, in that I think a BBQ is a bit of heat…

Jason Reitman promises a ‘return to form’ comeback with TULLY (17 May), re-teaming with his Juno/ Young Adult partner-in-snark Diablo Cody for a “comedy about motherhood” starring Charlize Theron... Once a James Cameron movie, now a Robert Rodriguez joint (produced by James Cameron), sci-fi manga adaptation ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL (19 July) will feature cutting-edge cyborg antics… There’s no stopping Tom Cruise, it seems — not even a broken leg — as MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 6 (2 Aug) proves. Yep, Ethan Hunt is back for more rubber-mask, stunt-heavy antics, along with pretty much everyone else, plus series newbie Vanessa Kirby (aka Princess Margaret from The Crown)... Shane Black’s gone from being killed by a Predator (in the 1987 original) to directing one in THE PREDATOR (2 Aug) — his attempt, he says,…

THE IRON GIANT WAS AN outdated relic before construction was even complete. Post-Toy Story, many studios were starting to wind down their ‘traditional animation’ divisions and throwing their weight behind computer-generated techniques. With its thick lines, block colours and small-town scale, The Iron Giant looked like a cartoon from decades ago. Audiences want shiny spectacle, was the general industry line. And when Brad Bird’s film underperformed at the box office, that line seemed justified. Yet the late-flowering and lasting popularity of The Iron Giant is proof that spectacle is secondary. What audiences really want is a great story. Very loosely adapted from Ted Hughes’ 1968 novel — unlike Hughes’ book, Brad Bird’s film features zero space-dragons — The Iron Giant is about living up to your own expectations and nobody…

“IF WE MADE Singin’ In The Rain today,” the film’s co-director Stanley Donen suggested to The New York Times in 1996, “when Gene Kelly sings in the rain, I think he’d be looking around to make sure he wasn’t going to get mugged.” An incongruous notion indeed — the most iconic sequence in the Greatest Movie Musical Ever Made, Kelly’s hoofing through a rain-swept street is exuberance incarnate, exemplified by his much-copied joyous swing on a lamp post. Written in 1927, the song, with words by Arthur Freed and music by Nacio Herb Brown, was designed to be sung by Don (Kelly), Kathy (Debbie Reynolds) and Cosmo (Donald O’Connor), emerging from a restaurant following the flop preview of film- within a film The Duelling Cavalier, a celebration of changing…

ALWAYS BET ON WESLEY Everywhere I look these days I see people referring to Black Panther as “the first mainstream black superhero movie”. Has everyone forgotten the Blade trilogy featuring Wesley Snipes? I am aware he isn’t a mutant, although some could argue he sort of is a mutated vampire. He is definitely a comic-book hero though — others may say anti-hero, but then if we categorise who is what in these movies, should we stop calling them ‘superhero’ movies altogether? Superman is an alien, Batman is a rich ninja-detective, Spider-Man an infected school kid, the X-Men are mutants, Captain America a soldier science experiment, Thor a god etc. Everyone has their thing. Does that mean Blade, who protects people and kills monsters, is not a superhero? Let’s not also…

1 SKARSGÅRD’S CHARACTER HAS BEEN MUTE SINCE CHILDHOOD “Leo [Beiler] was in a boating accident, and his vocal cords were severed when he was nine. He could have had an operation to save his voice, but his Amish mom basically said, ‘God will heal Leo.’ For his entire adolescence, he was waiting for God to heal him. He didn’t learn sign language because, well, why would he? He was like, ‘God will heal me any day now.’ He has a sense of abandonment, trying to find his place in the world.” 2 LEO IS A FISH-OUT-OF-WATER “Leo left the Amish community when he was in his early twenties, bringing only one suitcase and one suit with him [to Berlin]. He doesn’t have any contact with his mom anymore. She kind…

IT WAS AROUND three years ago when Lionsgate pitched director Otto Bathurst the idea of a Robin Hood reboot. “It was the easiest ‘no’ ever,” he laughs. “Why does the world need another Robin Hood movie?” It’s a fair question. There have been more than 70 filmed versions of the folk tale, but Bathurst feels he has found a fresh way into the 800-year-old legend. Featuring a non-classically trained cast — Taron Egerton as Robin Hood, plus Jamie Foxx, Ben Mendelsohn, Jamie Dornan, Tim Minchin and Eve Hewson — his approach is decidedly modern. No tights, no thigh slapping, no Bryan Adams. This is a Robin Hood for 2018. “We’re trying to flesh out a reality to the legend that has relevance to what we see in the world today,”…

MARK HAMILL FOR BEST ACTOR (STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI) Alas, this is going to go how you think. The Academy are going to ignore the return of one of cinema’s most iconic heroes in favour of less fantastical turns. Mark Hamill reinvented the moon-eyed youngster as a tormented, ultimately inspiring mage, giving the film a heavy measure of growly gravitas. But because he milks a space-cow, he’ll be overlooked. NICK DE SEMLYEN, FEATURES EDITOR TIFFANY HADDISH FOR BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (GIRLS TRIP) The Academy doesn’t do comedy. It just doesn’t get it. So it’s highly unlikely that Tiffany Haddish’s turn as human cyclone Dina in Girls Trip will be recognised. Which is a shame: not only is it one of those force-of-nature star-making turns that come along once in…

IF YOU THOUGHT joining rag-tag, unofficial superteam The Defenders might blunt Jessica Jones’ (Krysten Ritter) edges — maybe even socialise her a little — think again. The hard-drinking, super-strong Hell’s Kitchen private eye with the permanently broken office door is as cynical and damaged as ever for her second solo beat in Season 2. Hell, it’s not even like she’s clear of her Kilgrave trauma, with David Tennant’s malevolent mind-manipulator somehow still in the show, even though — spoiler alert — Jessica snapped the smirking villain’s neck at the climax of the first season. Not that series creator and showrunner Melissa Rosenberg is complaining. “I just love him,” she says of her Purple Man. “But I’ll leave his role in this season a mystery.” That said, Rosenberg insists that while…

FROM DAZED AND Confused to Everybody Wants Some!! to the epochal Boyhood, Texan director Richard Linklater has long specialised in telling stories about flawed, interesting men having lengthy conversations about everything and nothing. Last Flag Flying certainly falls into that category, but it’s less about misspent youth: based on the book by Darryl Ponicsan, this is a melancholy, nostalgic tale about three middle-aged Vietnam vets who reunite when one of them (Doc, played by Steve Carell) loses his Marine son to the Iraq war. “That’s what I loved about it,” says Bryan Cranston, who plays fast-talkin’, fast-drinkin’ Marine-turned-bar owner Sal. “It explores male bonding, but also how men deal with pain and tragedy: how aggressive they are with it, how they find ways to justify it, how they cope…

★★★★ OUT 1 MARCH RATED M / 105 MINS DIRECTOR Paul McGuigan CAST Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Walters PLOT Once a Hollywood star, Gloria Grahame (Bening) is now doing theatre in the UK. When she collapses one night, she calls an old flame (Bell) and asks him to take her to his family home in Liverpool. As she gets sicker, he remembers the romance they had that changed both their lives. DESPITE ROLES IN It’s A Wonderful Life, The Big Heat and Oklahoma!, plus an Oscar on her shelf, Gloria Grahame’s fame hasn’t endured like other stars of her era. She’s more a good answer to a quiz question than a household name these days. Paul McGuigan’s drama is a fond look at the final years…

★★★ NETFLIX OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED 1-2 CREATED BY Mara Brock Akil, Salim Akil CAST Cress Williams, Nafessa Williams, China Anne McClain, Christine Adams, James Remar, Damon Gupton PLOT Former superhero-turned-school principal Black Lightning (Williams) is drawn out of retirement when local gang The One Hundred targets his two daughters. THE WORLD IS changing for the better. Albeit slowly. And in isolated pockets. But cast your mind back 18 months — there were no black superheroes in title roles on TV or in film. Since then we’ve had Luke Cage on Netflix, Black Panther is the next entry in the MCU and, after a false start and a rewritten pilot, the first series of Black Lightning is now streaming. For those not up to speed, this is what you’ve missed.…

★★★ AMAZON PRIME VIDEO OUT 2 FEBRUARY EPISODES VIEWED 1-4 DIRECTORS Gaia Violo, Matt Cirulnick CAST Stana Katic, Patrick Heusinger, Cara Theobold, Richard Brake, Ralph Ineson PLOT FBI agent Emily Byrne (Katic) was declared dead after going missing on the hunt for a killer. Six years later, she is found. Her husband (Heusinger) has a new wife, her son has forgotten her and she has no idea who took her. With a new spate of deaths, Emily finds herself under suspicion. THERE ARE TWO schools of TV drama now, in an age when broadcast TV and streaming services are on about equal footing. There is the slow-burn series, more common on paid-for platforms that don’t need to worry about advertising money, which tends to focus on dissecting character more that…

“I NEVER APPROACHED him as a villain,” Andy Serkis says of Gollum, the Ring-addicted wretch he portrayed via groundbreaking motion-capture techniques in three Middle-earth movies. “He’s just a weak personality and there’s a sense of ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ with him.” Perhaps that’s why he is such an effective baddie: he’s relatable, complex, sometimes even likeable. As the following Sméagolscenes surely prove… “What’s taters, precious?” THE TWO TOWERS (2002) Gollum kills rabbits for his new master, Frodo (Elijah Wood), and clashes with Samwise (Sean Astin) over the best way to serve them. “While they’re travelling together, Gollum, Frodo and Sam become a bizarre sort of dysfunctional family. So there’s a lightness and humour here. That was shot on location in the South Island, near Queenstown,…

THE PRESIDENT IS a shit Bond villain. Neo-Nazis have been profiled in The New York Times. We live in an age of dark money, information warfare, collusion and confusion, secrets and lies. The Trump Ascendancy has been bloody exhausting. In this world where vices are dressed as virtues and real news is labelled fake while fake news changes nations, there is something comforting about simple, out-and-out, good, honest villainy. After all, our number one villain — as voted for by you, dear readers — dresses in black, speaks like he’s gargled lit methane and beseeches his son to value “the power of the dark side”. His aims are out in the open. The dark side, ironically, is very, very clear. Cinema has always done villainy well. Want to know who…

FOLLOWING MIDDLE-EARTH, Skull Island, the afterlife, and wherever it was the Feebles were infesting, Peter-Jackson-watchers have been eagerly awaiting news of where he and his world-building crew might head next. The answer: London. Only it’s not the UK capital as you know it, but London 2,000 years in the future, transformed into a multi-tiered edifice from the wreckage of global obliteration. Pictured here via exclusive concept art, think Minas Tirith with Tube signage. Running on titanic wheels, it hunts down smaller, weaker cities or towns, and gobbles up their resources. “It’s called Municipal Darwinism,” says Jackson, “and I thought, ‘I have never seen this before.”’ Wait until visual-effects wizards Weta Digital get hold of not only battleship-like cities cruising the dried-up bed of the North Sea, but dog-fighting airships, cloud-level…

PRODUCED BY STEVEN Soderbergh and George Clooney in the wake of their breezy heist trilogy, Ocean’s Eight rejigs the formula again — this time featuring the mother of all-girl gangs. Directed by Gary Ross, the spin-off stars Sandra Bullock as Danny Ocean’s sister Debbie, determined to score a huge heist at New York’s glitzy Met Gala. Targeting her ex-lover (Damian Lewis), Debbie puts together a formidable crew, featuring, among others, Cate Blanchett as Lou, Sarah Paulson as Tammy and Rihanna as Nine Ball (all pictured above). “It was like being in a really good band,” Ross tells Empire of the star-packed shoot. “There were days I’d just sit back and watch the alchemy happen.” Sounds like the winning streak continues.…

WHEN YOU’VE THREATENED the planet five times, unleashed a robot with massive wrecking-ball testicles and featured the line, “How do you say, ‘Get the fuck out of the way’ in Chinese?”, there’s only one direction to turn the volume dial: down. Hence Bumblebee, the very first Transformers spin-off movie and one which promises to change the pace in drastic ways. “We’ve talked a lot about Logan,” explains executive producer Chris Brigham. “A great example of a large franchise that went small, in a successful way.” The first fresh element: a new director. After delivering a quintet of gigantically scaled robo-thrillers, Michael Bay is stepping aside (although is still on board as producer), and animation dynamo Travis Knight (Kubo And The Two Strings) is coming in, with the ambition of making…

AMERICAN PIE HAD pastry-fucking. Sausage Party had a food orgy. And this year’s big R-rated comedy, Blockers, is about to get everyone talking about “butt-chugging”. The tale of three parents (John Cena, Leslie Mann and Ike Barinholtz) desperately trying to interfere with their daughters’ pact to lose their virginities on prom night, it has as its central set-piece a sequence in which beer is pumped into Cena’s rectum. “That scene broke me,” chuckles director Kay Cannon. “It was two in the morning, John was bent over with hundreds of extras in prom dresses around him, and I was laughing so hard I couldn’t speak. He was so game, but he was very excited when it was over.” Formerly titled Cherries, the script featured on the Black List back…

PATTY JENKINS: “ The Misfits is an incredible movie. It’s a bunch of great actors, all in their last movie — Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift. There’s something incredibly truthful in each one of their performances, about themselves and their own careers. This scene is the crescendo. It’s where Marilyn Monroe realises they’re going to kill the horses. It’s the real moment of collision where a number of their needs collide with her needs. It’s an incredible drama.” EXT. DESERT — DAY Gay (Gable), and Guido (Eli Wallach) have just rounded up some loose horses. A distraught Roslyn (Monroe) looks on from beside Gay’s truck. Perce (Clift) stands to the side, taking no part. Gay and Guido bend down to tie up the legs of one…

IN A NEAR 50-year career, Dame Helen Mirren has never made a horror movie. There’s the vaguely sinister teen thriller Teaching Mrs. Tingle, and she was a bit of a beast in Monsters University, but there’s nothing on her CV too spooky. Winchester is a first for the Oscar-winning actor, with all the trappings of a good, old-fashioned chiller: a haunted house, lavish gothic costumes, jump scares — and ghosts. Mirren, however, disagrees. “I wouldn’t call this a horror movie,” she tells Empire. “It’s a psychological drama.” A beat. “With ghosts,” she laughs. Whatever genre it falls into, Winchester is based on a mysterious real-life figure. Mirren plays Sarah Winchester, the widow and heir of gun tycoon William Wirt Winchester. She spent her fortune building a vast San Jose mansion,…

TOMB RAIDER IS a big deal for Norwegian director Roar Uthaug. He’s made features before, but only in his native tongue — this Lara Croft reboot, starring Alicia Vikander, is his first big studio picture. And if that didn’t invite enough pressure, he also has to contend with the issue that there’s never been a good film based on a game. But he thinks he knows how to crack it. “It’s about making the character the focus,” he says. “It’s about what she experiences, and not just action for action’s sake. I love how they made Lara Croft vulnerable in the game, and that’s something we’re bringing to the movie. But there’s lots of great stuff in the game that’s inspired us — the authenticity and the grittiness. That’s something…

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR Assemble! Marvel’s next mash-up features more superheroes than the human eye can comprehend, and this trailer — now the most watched ever — packs a fair few of them in. This climactic shot includes Sebastian Stan’s Bucky (1), newly emerged from the deep freeze; Don Cheadle’s Rhodey (2), looking fresh after his Civil War fall; Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha (3) and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk (4), teasing a Brutasha reunion; Anthony Mackie’s Falcon (5) patrolling the air; and Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa (6) and Danai Gurira’s Okoye (7) on Wakandan hosting duties. But it’s all about Chris Evans’ Cap (8). The flowing mane! The steely look! The beard that launched a thousand gifs! Wake us up in April, please.…

★★ OUT NOW / 140 MINS RATED MA15+ DIRECTOR Christian Gudegast CAST Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Evan Jones PLOT When a gang of bandits spearheaded by the fresh-from-jail Merrimen (Schreiber) causes violent havoc across LA, compromised veteran cop “Big Nick” Flanagan (Gerard Butler) is hell-bent on shutting them down, and their execution of an elaborate bank heist... A HEIST MOVIE should be epic, riveting and muscular. First-time director Christian Gudegast at least achieves the latter in Den Of Thieves. Only, it’s the wrong kind of muscular — the kind coming with a testosterone overload that stymies any chance of nuance. On one side of the chase are the outlaws, a crack group of bank robbers made up of ex-military and ex-jailbirds. Led by…

★★★★ OUT NOW / RATED MA15+ 119 MINS DIRECTOR Craig Gillespie CAST Margot Robbie, Allison Janney, Sebastian Stan, Bobby Cannavale, Mckenna Grace, Julianne Nicholson PLOT As LaVona Fay Golden (Janney) forces her talented daughter Tonya Harding (Grace, later Robbie) into skating, the unconventional pair horrify the sport’s genteel establishment. And when a rival skater is attacked, Harding is blamed. IN JANUARY 1994, Tonya Harding ceased to be famous for figure skating and became infamous following an attack on her skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan. A media frenzy erupted, continuing throughout that year’s Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, where both women competed, before the disgraced skater was banned from major competition for good. But Craig Gillespie’s nuanced and bleakly funny I, Tonya reminds us, while it’s unclear how much or little she knew…

★★ NETFLIX OUT NOW EPISODES VIEWED 1-6 CREATED BY Laeta Kalogridis CAST Joel Kinnaman, Renée Elise Goldsberry, James Purefoy, Martha Higareda, Dichen Lachman, Kristen Lehman PLOT He died 250 years ago, but elite soldier Takeshi Kovacs (Kinnaman) gets resurrected in a new body (a “sleeve”) to work for Laurens Bancroft (Purefoy), who’s trying to solve a murder. His own. GIVEN ITS THEMES, it was hardly surprising when Netflix announced it was adapted Richard K. Morgan’s 2002 cyberpunk novel Altered Carbon. About social classes, rebellion and what it means to be human, it’s hugely relevant as a mirror to today’s world. But just because something is timely, there’s no guarantee it’ll actually be good. Set in a future where a person’s consciousness can be stored digitally on a “stack” and then…

THE CASE FOR VADER BY CHRIS HEWITT, ASSOCIATE EDITOR HERE’S A FUN little game you can play at home. Think of the great Darth Vader lines. The stuff you quote all the time, perhaps even without thinking about it. “I am your father,” of course. “We would be honoured if you would join us.” “In time, you will call me master.” For a man of few words, most of them wind up rattling around your head. Now think of the great Kylo Ren lines. I’ll wait. Of course, that’s a slightly facetious way of comparing the two Star Wars wrong-’uns, but make no mistake: Darth Vader remains the greatest villain of the greatest franchise. Which makes him the greatest villain, full stop. Everything about Vader is designed for maximum malevolence.…

SOME SAY VOLDERMORT’S name was inspired by decaying Edgar Allan Poe character M. Valdemar. In reality, though, it was J.K. Rowling’s love of French that resulted in the moniker, meaning “flight of death”. “I needed a name that evokes both power and exoticism,” she said in 2009. Those two words sum up the Death Eater Supreme nicely. Exotic, because he’s a chilling mix of man and snake, slit-nosed and cold-blooded. Powerful, because his command of dark magic is so complete he can fly without a broomstick. You sense his presence in every shadow on screen. Whatever his name means, there’s a reason no-one dares say it.…

WHEN WE FIRST encountered him in the flesh, we knew him simply as The Emperor: Return Of The Jedi’s porridge-faced, croaky-voiced overlord, who arrived draped in a heavy robe as black as his soul. Though played with grimacing relish by Scottish character actor Ian McDiarmid, Darth Vader’s less-forgiving boss was hardly three-dimensional. But with the prequel trilogy, we got to know Sheev Palpatine, the man behind the Sith Lord, and appreciate what a slick and sneaky political manipulator he was. Though the films are flawed, you can’t deny they make Palpatine a more compelling and disturbingly realistic creation.…

THE BEARDED, WELL-DRESSED European arrived in Los Angeles, ready to pull off an audacious heist. Unlike Hans Gruber, though, Alan Rickman got away with it. As the urbane, supremely confident German kingpin, a preening cat of a villain, he stole Die Hard — incredibly, his first film. “Very early on, Jackie Birch, the casting director, told me breathlessly, ‘This guy is fantastic — he can do anything,’” remembers screenwriter Steven E. de Souza. “I met him when he came in for a wardrobe fitting, got the way he spoke into my ear, and that informed everything I did from that point on.” In Nothing Lasts Forever, the 1979 Roderick Thorp novel on which the movie is based, the character’s name is Tony Gruber and he’s a blowhard, prone to extended…

1. THANOS AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (25 APRIL) HERE’S WHAT WE know about Thanos. He’s purple. He’s played by Josh Brolin. He wants the Infinity Stones, the multicoloured MacGuffins that drive the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And when he comes to Earth to get them, he’ll pose so great a threat that it’ll take the combined might of the Avengers, the Guardians Of The Galaxy, and the Warrawidgee Branch branch of the CWA to stop him. Or, at least, that’s what we’ve been told. When it comes to showing just what it is that makes him the Big Bad of the MCU, he’s been a bit of a let-down. First teased with a sinister smile at the end of The Avengers in 2012, he’s shown up just twice more: in…

THE KID WHO Would Be King has been rattling around Joe Cornish’s head for years. Thirty-five years, to be precise, since he had the simple thought as a 13-year-old: “What if a normal kid discovered Excalibur?” Now that idea has become the director’s second movie, a long-awaited follow-up to Attack The Block, in which, once again, a group of youngsters come together to save the world from unspeakable evil in the shape of Rebecca Ferguson’s sorceress, Morgana. Time to meet Alex, Lance, Kaye and Bedders, the new kinda Knights Of The Round Table… 1. RHIANNA DORRIS IS KAYE In Arthurian lore, Sir Kay was one of the first knights to join the king. Here, Kaye is a girl (played by Rhianna Dorris, star of CBBC series Secret Life…

“THE THING I said when putting this idea to people,” says director Josie Rourke, “was, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could do a Renaissance version of Heat with two women?’” This is the highly compelling pitch for Mary Queen Of Scots, a face-off between Saoirse Ronan’s titular, tragic monarch, and her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie). To be clear, no-one should be on the look out for anachronistic automatic rifles or Scottish lairds sporting Val Kilmer ponytails. But Rourke’s vision — the tale of Mary’s doomed marriages and thwarted attempt to seize the English throne, told with a somewhat modern sensibility — has permeated every corner of the Working Title production. “The language is period but the pace of it is like a thriller,” adds Ronan. Guy Pearce, David…

WHEN SOPHIE TURNER learned her Game Of Thrones cast-mate, on-screen Stark sister and real-life pal Maisie Williams, had joined the X-Men universe as Wolfsbane in New Mutants, she was overjoyed. “We compared notes, and we hoped we’d be able to do a crossover at some point, because I can’t not work with her,” Turner laughs. If they’d argued at all about whose mutant hero is the most powerful, it wouldn’t have taken long. Turner’s psychic Jean Grey is, as we saw in the OTT conclusion of 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse, off the chart. “Yeah, Jean is the most powerful mutant,” says Turner. “But it’s not necessarily a good thing. And you will see that in this movie.” This movie being Dark Phoenix, in which long-time X-Men writer-turned-first-time director Simon Kinberg returns…

OUT 14 JUNE BY THE TIME Incredibles 2 comes out, 14 years will have passed since we saw the super-powered Parr family (superstrong Bob, stretchy Helen, speedy Dash, invisible Violet) strut their funky stuff. But despite the time jump IRL, Brad Bird’s movie picks up seconds after the end of the first. “As long as people’s voices didn’t change too much, we were in good shape,” laughs Bird, who returns as writer and director. The reason for the mere blink in time? The Parrs’ baby son, Jack-Jack, who displayed all kinds of abilities at the end of the first film. “People don’t remember that Bob and Helen never see that he has powers, even though it happens in front of them,” says Bird. “In this film, they know it fairly…

TYE SHERIDAN’S WADE Watts, hero of Steven Spielberg’s upcoming sci-fi epic Ready Player One, has it tough in the real world of 2045. He lives in the Stacks, a tottering landscape of mobile homes piled high, with uncaring relatives and a perpetual struggle for food. But when he dons a VR rig and escapes into the digital world of the OASIS, he is somebody. Wade’s alter-ego is Parzival, who’s “everything Wade wants to be” and who was performance-captured by the X-Men: Apocalypse actor inside a space known as the Volume, where Sheridan spent two weeks rehearsing and learning about the process before filming. “Steven showed up on the last day of our rehearsal, and he was like, ‘Why don’t we shoot something?’” says the actor, remembering the surprise. But instead…

00:01:54 LET’S GO CRAZY __ Kingsman: The Golden Circle starts with a fight scene inside a taxi as superspy Eggsy (Taron Egerton) battles his nemesis Charlie (Edward Holcroft) to the strains of Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy. “Originally we set it to Eggsy’s playlist of guilty-pleasure songs,” says Vaughn. “The Nolans. The Partridge Family. MMMbop.” But a late change of heart brought in Prince. “It has three sections that are very different.” 00:09:25 BAN THIS SICK FILTH __ From the first film, 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, Vaughn has set out to make Eggsy the anti-Bond. And it doesn’t come much more anti-Bond than diving feet-first into a sewer. “That’s the difference in the tone of Kingsman,” says Vaughn. “Eggsy will do stuff you don’t normally see.” Don’t worry, Egerton fans…

AT LAST, DENIS Villeneuve is able to talk. “For months I could only answer questions like, ‘What was it like to work with Harrison Ford?’” the director sighs. Now, several months after the release of Blade Runner 2049, the veil of secrecy has finally lifted and he’s happy to share insights into the film’s replicants. Not that there aren’t still a few no-go areas. “Sometimes movies are like bombs,” he cautions, “and you have to be careful how you handle them. It’s important to keep some mystery around.” Tread softly. K (RYAN GOSLING) Brooding LAPD skin-job-killer, who happens to be a skin-job himself. “I needed someone who could slowly self-implode like dark matter, then create a supernova at the end,” says Villeneuve of his leading man. “Together we tried to…