Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2018 i Empire Australasia

SO FAR, THE John Wick movies have given us all kinds of fu. Kung-fu. Gun-fu. Car-fu. Now, with the grandly titled sequel John Wick 3: Parabellum, Keanu Reeves and his director, Chad Stahelski, are introducing the latest, and possibly, greatest yet: horse-fu. “I thought it would be cool if John Wick escaped on a horse,” explains Reeves casually. “So we have John Wick riding on some horses. And fighting on some horses. So that’s fun.” This image, and concept, doesn’t even scratch the surface of the madness that lies in store for the world’s greatest hitman this time around. For starters, this horse-bike interface is how the movie picks up, after Chapter 2 left off with Wick on the run, escaping a huge price on his head. Cue a…

WHEN PAWEŁ PAWLIKOWSKI dreamt up the scenario for gorgeous romantic drama Cold War, he loosely telegraphed his own parents’ turbulent love story onto the story, set against the backdrop of oppressive Communist Poland in the ’50s. The result: a dazzlingly shot black-and-white masterpiece, spanning decades, which picked up the Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Here, Pawlikowski explains how it came together. How did your parents inspire the story of Cold War ? My parents inspired and reflect the mechanics of the relationship and temperament in the film. It was a love story I witnessed as a kid: the mother of all love stories, for me. So I’ve been trying to make a film about that kind of relationship for a long time. And…

BEST PICTURE WHAT SHOULD WIN: AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR The Academy may have ditched that silly popular film category (for now), but Infinity War is no less viable a ‘proper’ Best Picture than the likes of Gladiator, Braveheart or The Return Of The King. It is a vast, epic spectacle, featuring a strong ensemble cast, which tackles a big, ethical question (at what cost the greater ‘good’?) and deals emotional gut-jabs while orchestrating all its cosmic action. DAN JOLIN WHAT WILL WIN: ROMA Alfonso Cuarón’s memory movie of growing up in ’70s Mexico ticks so many Oscar boxes without consciously trying. It is deeply autobiographical, mixes the personal and political in a way that wins over the liberal base, boasts naturalistic performances that will resonate with the acting block, and has…

BARRY JENKINS KNOWS how to cast. Just look at the stars of 2016’s Moonlight, whose careers were juiced from appearing in the Oscar-winning drama. Trevante Rhodes got a plum role in The Predator, as ex-military tough-nut Nebraska Williams; Mahershala Ali stars in the upcoming Green Book as a jazz virtuoso. Both of those films, as it happens, played at the Toronto Film Festival in September, alongside Jenkins’ new movie, If Beale Street Could Talk. “I’m always in contact with those guys,” says the director, “so I was trying to find a way to get them on the carpet for a mini-reunion. But sadly, we couldn’t work it out.” The next likely recipients of a Barry Jenkins career-boost are Kiki Layne and Stephan James, the actors playing Tish and Fonny, the…

★★★★ OUT 8 NOVEMBER RATED TBC / 152 MINS DIRECTOR Luca Guadagnino CAST Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Chloë Grace Moretz, Angela Winkler PLOT American Susie Bannion (Johnson) escapes her austere Mennonite family life by heading to Berlin to join the exclusive Helena Markos Dance Company. When she arrives, the school is in turmoil: one of the students has gone missing and the teachers are being accused of witchcraft. WHEN THE FIRST whispers of a Suspiria remake made themselves heard, the internet was aghast. No one could believe that someone would have the audacity to have a stab at Dario Argento’s 1977 classic. How could they? The director’s use of eye-popping colour and grisly ultraviolence, all accompanied by prog-rocker’s Goblin’s cacophonic sonic assault on the senses, were legendary. Suspiria…

★★★★ OUT NOW / NETFLIX EPS VIEWED 10 OF 10 DIRECTED BY Cary Fukunaga CAST Emma Stone, Jonah Hill, Sonoya Mizuno, Justin Theroux, Sally Field PLOT Troubled Owen (Hill) and Annie (Stone) join an AI-controlled pharmaceutical trial intended to wipe out the need for therapy. But when a computer malfunction occurs, they are thrown together in a series of drug-induced dream-world adventures. IT’S HARD TO know where to start with Maniac. Largely because Maniac itself doesn’t know where to start. The first episode hurls us into a retro-tech world that seems to be a vision of now from the perspective of the ’80s, throwing out numerous Philip K. Dickian, dystopian touches without giving us a chance to properly absorb them. It juggles a plot about a mentally ill rich guy…

WORKING AT HOGWARTS DOES not make you immune to getting a bit overwhelmed about being in Hogwarts. The first time Zoë Kravitz walked through the entrance hall of the wizarding school, with its enormous wooden doors and crackling torches, she had a minor freak-out. The space was just as she remembered from watching it on film as a teenager. She felt a strange flash of déjà vu. “There were all these kids in their uniforms with their owls in their cages. It was… epic,” she says. “Harry Potter was the first book I ever asked my mom to buy me.” She was stepping into a world she’d held in her imagination for almost two decades. “It was completely surreal.” Kravitz is one of the new additions to the expanding world…

Walking into a room with Joel and Ethan Coen is a little like walking into the saloon of a one-horse town where nobody knows your name. The music seems to stop. There is an uncomfortable silence. Drinks are put down (in this case, Joel’s mug of herbal tea). Searching eyes assess you. Nobody’s quite sure how this one’s going to go down. But then you get the brothers talking about Westerns, and it’s as if the honky-tonk piano starts playing again. “Making Westerns somehow seems connected to that play that you used to do as kids,” says Ethan (younger, shorter, more prone to giggles). “It’s certainly part of the pleasure of doing this kind of movie,” concurs Joel (older, taller, wilder hair, hidden behind a pair of sepia-tinted 1970s shades).…

00:00:50 THE MONSTER __ Macdonald begins his documentary about iconic singer Whitney Houston with an eerie juxtaposition of slo-mo shots from the ‘How Will I Know?’ video (“For a few frames, she’s revealing her real self”) with a candid interview she gave about a dream of being chased by a monster. “The main question people have about Whitney is, ‘What was the demon that she was a victim of?’” he says. “This is a way of setting up that idea.” 00:51:32 THE BREAKDOWN __ A truly heart-rending moment comes when Houston’s Aunt Bae breaks down recalling how she took care of Whitney and Bobby Brown’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina, from when she was a baby. “It’s always a problem when you have a story and everyone knows the end,” says Macdonald.…

THERE’S NO SUCH thing as a perfect film — well, maybe Paddington 2 — but Midnight Run comes pretty damn close. Martin Brest’s 1988 movie, about Jack Walsh, a bounty hunter (Robert De Niro), transporting Jonathan ‘The Duke’ Mardukas, an absconded Mob accountant (Charles Grodin), across country under the nose of the Mafia and the Feds, is part road-trip, part-buddy comedy, part-action movie, and is utterly magnificent. It’s incredibly influential — many movies, including the Gerard Butler/Jennifer Aniston comedy The Bounty Hunter, Reese Witherspoon’s Hot Pursuit and the Ryan Reynolds/Samuel L. Jackson misfire The Hitman’s Bodyguard, have attempted to match its blend of character-based comedy, potty-mouthed humour and chaotic action, but none have come close. Its appeal lies in the incredibly quotable dialogue, the memorable, well-drawn supporting cast, and its…

JAMES WAN ISN’T really treating Aquaman as a superhero movie. It has irrefutable comic-book roots, of course, but the film — the first solo outing for hairy, boozy, fish-whisperer Arthur Curry, played by Jason Momoa — “has a fantasy approach to it,” the director tells Empire . “It shows you a part of Earth we’ve never seen before. That’s what enticed me to it: the opportunity to play on a big canvas.” Judging by the first trailer, the canvas isn’t just big, it’s also drenched in bright, salty watercolours. Not only will the movie explore Curry’s backstory, it will also plunge headlong into the subaquatic realm that helped spawn him via his Atlantean queen mom Atlanna (Nicole Kidman). A realm now lorded over…

WHEN A TV show ‘reboots’, it’s a sign its story has run out of steam. In the case of Narcos, the show is undergoing a reboot, of sorts, because its story is just too big. Its universe needs to be split into manageable parts. For its fourth season, the cocaine chronicle — which so far has followed Pedro Pascal’s DEA agent Javier Peña as he brought down Colombia’s most powerful drug cartels — is wiping its cast list clean. Agent Peña is out. The action is travelling back from the early 1990s to the late 1970s and north from Colombia to Mexico City. This season, we’ll see what led to the events of the first three seasons — how cocaine became big business. “From very early on I had a…

THE OPENING PAGES of The Hate U Give, the debut novel by Angie Thomas, describe an African-American girl named Starr struggling over which side of her identity to present at a party — her black side or her white side. “There are just some places where it’s not enough to be me,” her narration reads. “Either version of me.” Filmmaker George Tillman Jr was working on Season 1 of Luke Cage when he was given an early manuscript of the book and immediately related to her experience. “She has two worlds,” Tillman Jr explains. “She goes back and forth. It’s about a woman who was code-switching — how African-Americans change their behaviour and how they act around white individuals. This is something we haven’t really seen in film before.” Sensing…

What’s your earliest memory? I don’t know if being a photographer has anything to do with this, but memories are so caught up with the photographs that you see of yourself at a young age. I have one of myself, I think I’m about maybe four. I have an empty gun belt on, I’m holding a teddy bear, I’m standing in front of the tree that I used to love to climb, and I’ve got this intense smile on my face. And as I look at that photograph I remember the joy I used to have of just playing all by myself. Which film have you seen more than any other? It’s a toss-up between The Big Lebowski and The Godfather. When I watch TV and Lebowski comes on, I’ll…

1 __ Following on from 2016’s Star Trek: Beyond, a fourth movie in the ‘Kelvin’ reboot universe — and the 14th Trek film overall — is now in pre-production, bringing Kirk and co back to the Enterprise once more. 2 __ For the first time in the series’ storied film history, there will be a female captain at the helm — behind the camera, at least — with S.J. Clarkson having signed on as the film’s director. 3 __ Clarkson is best known for her TV work, which has included directing episodes of Life On Mars, Dexter, The Defenders and Season 2 of Jessica Jones. She also directed all four parts of Carey Mulligan BBC miniseries Collateral. 4 __ The as-yet-untitled Trek is being written by J.D. Payne and Patrick…

★★★★ OUT 15 NOVEMBER RATED TBC / 93 MINS DIRECTOR David Lowery CAST Robert Redford, Sissy Spacek, Casey Affleck, Danny Glover, Tom Waits PLOT Forrest Tucker (Redford), a career criminal in his seventies infamous for his gentlemanly demeanour while performing bank heists, embarks upon a crime spree that he endeavours to keep secret from widower Jewel (Spacek), the current recipient of his considerable charms. WHEN ROBERT REDFORD informed the world of his retirement from acting in August of this year, essentially making The Old Man & The Gun his final on-screen performance, there was a genuine sense of loss and a marked end of an era. One of the last jobbing Old Hollywood superstars, the announcement placed a certain weighty importance on The Old Man & The Gun: it was…

★★★★ OUT 8 NOVEMBER RATED MA15+ / 115 MINS DIRECTOR Joel Edgerton CAST Lucas Hedges, Joel Edgerton, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Flea, Joe Alwyn PLOT Outed to his deeply religious parents by a malicious would-be lover, closeted teen Jared Eamons (Hedges) is packed off to a gay conversion course, where he must contend with the program’s strict director (Edgerton) and come to terms with his own emerging sexuality. WITH HIS SECOND feature as director, actor Joel Edgerton drops the thriller trappings that characterised his 2015 offering, The Gift, opting instead to dive into the timely and controversial topic of gay conversion therapy. Adapted from Garrard Conley’s 2016 memoir of the same name, Boy Erased follows a trail blazed earlier this year by Desiree Akhavan’s The Miseducation Of Cameron Post, which…

★★★★★ OUT NOW / 120 MINS RATED MA15+ DIRECTOR Felix Van Groeningen CAST Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan PLOT Based on the memoirs of David Sheff and his son Nic, we witness the devastation of drug addiction from the perspective of both addict and parent, as David attempts to protect his son and save his life. “CLOSE YOUR EYES/Have no fear/ The monster’s gone/He’s on the run and your daddy’s here.” So begins John Lennon’s Beautiful Boy, a song he wrote for his son, Sean; a song imbued with the love a parent feels for their child and the primal instinct to protect, to be the one who can scare the monsters away. Beautiful Boy is also the perfectly chosen, heartbreaking title of this devastating film, as…

★★★ NETFLIX / OUT NOW 143 MINS DIRECTOR Paul Greengrass CAST Anders Danielsen Lie, Jonas Strand Gravli, Jon Øigarden, Ola G. Furuseth PLOT After killing eight people with a car bomb, far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik (Danielsen Lie) drives to a summer camp on the idyllic island of Utøya and guns down 69 teenagers. 22 July counts the ripples felt in the aftermath. PAUL GREENGRASS IS a master of the true-life story. From Bloody Sunday to United 93 to Captain Phillips, few can match his skill and sensitivity at getting under the headlines with sincerity, compassion and kineticism. His latest is a bold effort, dramatising one of the darkest days in living memory with a Norwegian cast (speaking English). But while 22 July has powerful stretches, thoughtful resonances and great…

★★★★ FOX SHOWCASE OUT NOW EPS VIEWED ALL EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Christian Colson, Simon Beaufoy, Danny Boyle CAST Donald Sutherland, Hilary Swank, Harris Dickinson, Brendan Fraser PLOT It’s 1973, and John Paul Getty III (Dickinson) — heir to an oil shipping fortune — has just been kidnapped while living in Rome. His mother (Swank) and a family security official (Fraser) try to secure his safe return but, suspecting a hoax, his billionaire grandfather (Sutherland) refuses to pay a penny. THERE’S AN UNFORTUNATE air of late arrival to this one. Inspired by the same true-life events as Ridley Scott’s All The Money In The World and thematically of a piece with recent HBO breakout hit Succession, Trust runs the risk of offering viewers the TV equivalent of a well-meaning colleague delivering a…

When Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, he jumped for joy. It was the celebration of a man who took a risk, who told a story without knowing whether anyone would be willing to listen, and found himself vindicated on the world’s biggest stage. The next day, the phone started ringing with offers from Hollywood. “‘Do you want this or that?’” he remembers. “Yeah. That’s alright. But I had an idea what I wanted to do next during the production of 12 Years, before I started shooting. I think I’ve got my own path, and I would like to follow it, if possible.” So with the Oscar wind behind him McQueen set out to make another personal passion project — even if, when…

THE FIRST THING I NOTICE WHEN CAREY MULLIGAN TAKES OFF HER COAT IN THE BAR IS THE TATTOO A simple image of a seagull, on her right wrist, subtle, but speaking volumes. In 2007, at 21, Mulligan played Nina in a production of Chekhov’s The Seagull that started at London’s Royal Court Theatre and went to Broadway, and it had a seismic effect on her. In 2010, when she met Steve McQueen to discuss Shame, keen to persuade him of her appetite for the work, she told him she might get this tattoo, inspired by Act 4 of The Seagull, when Nina loses everything but finds focus, saying, “I know now that it’s not about fame or glory or all the things I used to dream about. When I think…

THE EVERGREEN, ALL-AGES appeal of John Hughes’ 1986 school-skipping classic may be basic, but it hits a primal urge within all of us: what if, just for a perfect, single day, we could completely shirk our responsibilities and indulge in nothing but consequence-free fun? (Okay, Ferris’ gormless pal Cameron’s day may not be consequence-free given he trashes his father’s 1961 Ferrari GT California at the climax, but you get the point). As an added bonus, what if that day involves being able to thoroughly, completely stick it to The Man? (‘The Man’ here being represented in the form of driven but hapless school Principal Ed Rooney, played with shitheel relish by Jeffrey Jones.) For The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles writer-director John Hughes, it was a fantasy of a different…

“IT’S KIND OF weird,” says Steven Soderbergh, of revisiting his debut feature, 30 years since he made it and roughly 15 since he last watched it, for the previous reissue. A note on this new disc requests you destroy all previous copies. Remastered and remixed, the Criterion Collection edition is sex, lies, and videotape as spiffy as it’s ever been seen. An intimate chamber piece credited with re-igniting indie filmmaking in America, it won the Palme d’Or in 1989, causing the then-26-year-old to quip on stage in Cannes, “Well, I guess it’s all downhill from here.” That hasn’t proved to be the case — he won the directing Oscar for Traffic in 2001 and is still proving our most probing and prolific high-end filmmaker. Returning to where it all began,…

BRAD BIRD: “I like the scene in True Grit , where Mattie Ross is bargaining with the guy. He’s very satisfied with himself when the negotiations start and he’s been thoroughly schooled by the time they’re over. I think the Coen brothers’ version mops the floor with the John Wayne one. Hailee Steinfeld owns it.” INT. STONEHILL’S OFFICE — DAY Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is bargaining with Stonehill (Dakin Matthews) over three ponies and a horse owned by her recently murdered father. STONEHILL: I do not entertain hypotheticals; the world as it is is vexing enough. Secondly, your valuation of the horse is high by about $200. How old are you? MATTIE: If anything, my price is low. My Judy is a fine racing mare. I…

Hi Empire! So in your October issue you did an article featuring a count of all the times Chris Hemsworth has taken his shirt off in movies. How could you miss the classic Chris shirtless scene in Cabin In The Woods, especially since the same director, Drew Goddard, directed Chris in Bad Times At The El Royale? (Although in Cabin In The Woods he was a supporting actor, I should probably note). Here is the evidence. Hope you enjoy it! HUI, VIA EMAIL To think we missed this clearly incredibly crucial scene while tallying our results. For shame! Just out of curiosity, though, how many Chris Hemsworth shirtless film scenes have you got seared into your memory? Did you realise almost immediately that we’d missed the scene in Cabin In…

THE PITCH As glimpsed in the latest trailer, the Wreck-It Ralph sequel Ralph Breaks The Internet sees arcade hero Ralph (John C. Reilly) and pint-sized pal Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) travel to the world wide web and the official Disney website, where Vanellope encounters 13 of Disney’s princesses, from Snow White to Moana — the first time they’ve all appeared on the big screen together. The scene was “in the very first version of the film”, says producer Clark Spencer, originating from the observation that Vanellope, as heir to the throne of the Sugar Rush kingdom, is technically a Disney princess herself. In the first storyboard-based screening, “It played through the roof.” THE SIGN-OFF As Disney own the copyright to all 13 princesses, using the characters didn’t require Who…

IT’S A NEW TAKE Stan & Ollie is not a womb-to-tomb hagiography. “We had to throw out some of the biopic clichés,” says John C. Reilly, who plays Oliver Hardy. “What can’t you find out about these two on Wikipedia?” Instead, Jon S. Baird’s (Filth) film focuses on the double act’s little-remembered 1950s tour of the UK’s music halls and theatres during the twilight of their careers, giving the filmmakers a lens to examine the partnership. “I thought it was a really interesting take, because people won’t be expecting that,” says Baird. “They will be expecting the slapstick. Hence why we called the film Stan & Ollie. It was more about behind the scenes than their film characters.” IT BUSTS MYTHS If you believed the pair were best buds off…

THE OPENING _ It’s the song that sets your mood. It needs energy. It needs force. It doesn’t need the acid-washed, back-combed ’80s pomp of Kenny Loggins. It needs the stomp and arrogance of peak Kanye. THE SEX SCENE _ It’s got to be a song that will work over gauzy shots of shiny bodies in sheets and motorbikes being ridden into sunsets. Kendrick and SZA seduce where Berlin bellowed you into bed. THE VOLLEYBALL SCENE _ The scene has no other purpose but homoerotic sweaty, slo-mo pecs and flexing, so it needs a fat slab of high-energy, camp pop with zero subtlety. Sax is all this and a big, winking double entendre.…

“IT GETS QUITE bonkers,” says Olivia Colman. “[At one point] there’s a naked bloke who gets pelted with a shitload of pomegranates.” The Favourite, it seems, isn’t your average period picture. “I love it. I don’t want to see costume drama unless Yorgos Lanthimos has done it. You can almost smell what it smelt like: the sweat, the putting the wee around everybody’s skirts. It’s sumptuous but stinky.” Set in 18th century England during a war with France, The Favourite sees Colman play Queen Anne, beset by clinical obesity and characterised by a huge temper, with the real governing left to her lover Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz). Their relationship is thrown into crisis by the arrival of ambitious new servant Abigail (Emma Stone), who makes a play for Anne’s affections.…

I’LL NEVER FORGET the time I couldn’t escape Burt Reynolds’ mansion. It was a humid Saturday in late October 2015, and I’d just spent one of the most surreal mornings of my life as guest of the movie legend. After a lengthy interview in his man-cave (complete with ten-foot-tall Kodiak bear) and tour of his 20-seat private movie theatre (complete with prints of Dirty Harry and Blade Runner), I was bid goodbye and traipsed down the driveway, which seemed to never end. After at least a mile, or so it felt, I reached the set of towering entrance gates, with my taxi waiting on the other side. Then I realised the gates were locked. And I had no phone reception. So back I went, returning all the way to Reynolds’…

★★ NETFLIX / OUT NOW 129 MINS DIRECTOR Gareth Edwards CAST Dan Stevens, Lucy Boynton, Mark Lewis Jones, Bill Milner, Kristine Froseth, Paul Higgins, Michael Sheen PLOT In 1905, a man named Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens) infiltrates a strange religious cult on the remote island of Erisen after they kidnap his sister and demand a ransom. Can he find her before the commune’s wary cultists figure out he isn’t the faithful, goddess-worshipping disciple he pretends to be? WITH THE RAID , Welsh writer-director Gareth Evans took the action genre and turned it up a brutal notch, delivering a kinetic thriller that made us wince with pleasure. Now (after that film’s less successful sequel) Evans has shifted gears and aims to make us wince in a very different way…

★★★★ OUT NOW /120 MINS RATED TBC DIRECTOR Michael Moore CAST Roger Ailes, Brooke Baldwin, Ashleigh Banfield, Steve Bannon PLOT Documentary-maker and leftist activist Michael Moore sets his sights on the 45th President of the US Donald J. Trump — elected on 9th November, 2016 (hence the title). He reveals just how flimsy US democracy is right now, while suggesting what might be done about it. FAHRENHEIT 11/9 IS the Infinity War of the Michael Moore Documentary Universe (or MMDU). It mashes up his previous films, harking back to and building further on Bowling For Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11 and, above all, Moore’s personal and revelatory 1989 debut Roger & Me. Gun control, the War on Terror and the harrowing of Flint, Michigan all feed in to his latest,…

★★★★ OUT 8 NOVEMBER RATED M / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Saul Dibb CAST Sam Claflin, Paul Bettany, Asa Butterfield PLOT Northern France, 1918: Raleigh (Butterfield) requests to be sent to the company led by Captain Stanhope (Claflin), his old school friend. Once he gets there, the men agonisingly wait on the front line for a major German offensive. FIRST PERFORMED BARELY a decade after the end of World War I, at a time when the wounds were still raw, Journey’s End is a bracing and understandably angry play. This, the fourth cinematic adaptation, is fittingly bracing and angry (and superbly acted). This war occupies an uncomfortable position in our popular memory: our cultural picture of its participants reduces them to either hapless Blackadder Goes Forth characters or tragic poets dashing…

★★★ OUT 22 NOVEMBER RATED M / 105 MINS DIRECTOR Richard Eyre CAST Emma Thompson, Fionn Whitehead, Stanley Tucci, Ben Chaplin, Eileen Walsh PLOT In the midst of a marital crisis (her husband has announced he intends to have an affair), High Court judge Fiona Maye (Thompson) has to decide whether 17-year-old Jehovah’s Witness Adam (Whitehead) should be forced into having a life-saving blood transfusion. HE MIGHT NOT be approaching Stephen King levels, but Brit author Ian McEwan is racking up the book-to-film adaptations. Since 1990, The Comfort Of Strangers, The Cement Garden, The Innocent, Enduring Love, Atonement and, most recently, On Chesil Beach have all been released on the big screen with various levels of success. Despite its literary origins, the latest, The Children Act, feels somewhat stage-bound: adapted…

★★★★ OUT NOW / 140 MINS RATED MA15+ DIRECTOR Drew Goddard CAST Jeff Bridges, Jon Hamm, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Chris Hemsworth PLOT America, 1969. Four guests check in to a once-stylish, now down-on-its-luck hotel. None of them are quite what they seem — and neither is the hotel itself. The stage is set for an almighty reckoning. BAD TIMES AT The El Royale’s thrilling 1950s prologue is a noir checklist. Mysterious man up to no good in a hotel room? Check. Trilby? Check. Cigarette? Check. Sudden and extreme gun violence that almost gives you a cardiac arrest? Double-check. It’s like, how much more noir could this be? And the answer is none. None more noir. This is precisely the point, of course: Bad Times At The El…

★★★ NETFLIX / OUT NOW RATED MA15+ / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Jeremy Saulnier CAST Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgård, Riley Keough, James Badge Dale PLOT In the Alaskan wilderness, a grieving mother (Keough) hires a renowned student of wolves (Wright) to find the beast that likely killed her missing son. As the hunter begins to investigate, though, he finds much darker mysteries at play. ALASKA IS NOT a happy place. The landscape is merciless and the locals are damaged. “Do you have any idea what’s outside those windows?” asks Keough’s Medora Slone at the start of Hold The Dark. It’s a rhetorical question. “How black it gets,” she qualifies. “How it gets in you.” This is how she welcomes guests. It’s winter in Keelut, an isolated village currently blessed with five…

993AD Hogwarts is founded by Godric Gryffindor (brave one), Helga Hufflepuff (kind one), Rowena Ranvenclaw (clever one), and Salazar Slytherin (evil one). 1000AD(ISH) The founders give Gryffindor’s hat consciousness, creating the Sorting Hat. The four fall out over Slytherin’s wizard-supremacist views, and he storms off after creating the Chamber Of Secrets. 1300(ISH) Hogwarts establishes the first irresponsibly dangerous Triwizard Tournament with rival schools Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. 1892 Albus Dumbledore arrives for his first year. He later becomes a prefect and head boy. 1908 Newt Scamander enrols, but later is expelled in a beast-related incident. 1910(ISH) Dumbledore returns as Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher. 1938 An orphaned Tom Riddle, the heir of Slytherin, arrives. 1943 Riddle coins his own nickname, Lord Voldemort, and opens the Chamber Of Secrets to kill…

Oh, we’re FUCKED!” Rami Malek shouts above the noise. Then he grins, looks around the pub — the big screen, the bustle — and immediately offers to do another interview, another time, in another place, if the recording of this one doesn’t come out. “But if England win,” he adds, “you won’t mind listening to this over and over again!” Ah, soccer. It’s the hope that kills you. That Rami Malek is a fan of the beautiful game is a surprise. Not because he’s American or an actor, but because of the nature of the role that brought him to prominence: doe-eyed cybertech/anarchic digital messiah Elliot Alderson in Mr. Robot, Amazon’s prescient portrayal of a world riven by dark money and digital terror. In the opening of Season 2, watching…

ONE COLD, RAINY DECEMBER night in 1975, a young man who was dressed to blend in — flared bright-crimson trousers and a sheer black body-hugging shirt — made his way across the dancefloor of a Brooklyn nightclub, through the strutting and writhing crowd, and out to get some air. The scene on the sidewalk was no less lively: a full-on brawl was enthusiastically playing itself out. But in the middle of the familiar flying fists and knees was an entirely unusual sight. Just starting to get out of a cab was an older man wearing, of all absurdities, a tweed suit. The pair’s eyes met and they studied each other briefly, aliens from distant galaxies establishing tentative first contact. As well as the tweed, the man was wearing an expression…

IT ONLY TOOK — contrary to some reports — a day. One day, one take. “Oh my God. You can’t do that over again. How many times you think you can do that?” James Caan told Larry King, reflecting on the bloody massacre of his character Santino ‘Sonny’ Corleone, hot-headed firstborn to The Godfather (Marlon Brando), gunned down at the tollbooth on the Long Beach Causeway in New York State. Cinema doesn’t get much bloodier than this. It also, ultimately, doesn’t get much more emotional. Because although Sonny is an old-school hoodlum — peacocking and punching like he’s walked out of a ’30s Warner Bros. gangster classic — he’s also beloved. He’s funny, he’s flawed, he’s fiercely loyal. The reason Sonny is driving alone is he’s enraged, racing to attack…