Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2016 i Empire Australasia

GOOD THINGS, SUCH AS George Clooney lying on a recliner dressed in a toga, come to those who wait. And for Hail, Caesar!, the latest from Joel and Ethan Coen, it’s been quite a wait. The film was first mooted back in 2004, when Clooney mentioned that it was going to be their next movie; the closer to the ‘Numbskull Trilogy’ that so far included O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty, and which boasted Clooney playing, well, a numbskull. There was just one small problem. “It doesn’t even exist as a script,” sighed Joel at the time. “It’s only an idea. We kind of teased George with the opportunity to play another numbskull. He was totally up for it.” That idea was a movie set in 1920s Hollywood…

The Good Dinosaur had quite an overhaul mid-production — director Bob Peterson was replaced with Peter Sohn, voices were recast, the plot was redone… Yes, but it’s not a unique case. Bob had come up with an amazing idea and it was really entertaining. We had been working on it a number of years and realised something wasn’t quite right. We needed a fresh perspective on it and Pete was already the co-director, so we asked him to come in and do a fresh take. There are a number of things in it that echo the original one; the basic story is completely different but we’ve preserved the Arlo and Spot characters. Overhauling things is a luxury that animation has over live action… I think even in animation it’s difficult…

001 Mendes wanted Blofeld for Skyfall So, the Persian cat’s out of the bag. After months of Spectre-related subterfuge, Christoph Waltz’s Franz Oberhauser, to the surprise of nobody, was revealed as über-nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Yet, if Mendes had had his druthers, he’d have introduced Blofeld earlier. “We talked about it on the last movie [Skyfall], whether it was worth it or even possible,” he told Empire. “I had always loved the idea, but couldn’t work out how to make it anything more than a character turning up with the name Blofeld.” At the time it was impossible, due to a legal battle with the estate of Thunderball producer Kevin McClory, which held the rights to SPECTRE and Blofeld. That cleared up just after Spectre went into development.…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 132 MINS. DIRECTOR Ryan Coogler CAST Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson PLOT Shunning his privileged life in LA, Adonis Johnson (Jordan) — the son of deceased boxing champion Apollo Creed — heads to Philadelphia to seek out his late father’s friend and former boxing rival Rocky Balboa (Stallone) in the hopes the aging champ will train him. OVER THE DECADES, THE ROCKY franchise has displayed the same kind of resilience and underdog appeal of its lead character — just when you think it’s down for the count, it leaps up swinging. After 2006’s well received Rocky Balboa provided a fitting coda to the series, it seemed like the champ had retired his boxing gloves for good. Not so. Reimagining Rocky for Millennials…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 148 MINS. DIRECTOR Sam Mendes CAST Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Monica Bellucci PLOT British spy James Bond (Craig) discovers that a vast terrorist group has been behind several villains he has faced in the past. With MI6 under threat from homegrown bureaucracy, Bond has to strike out alone against SPECTRE. HAVING HANDLED SKYFALL, THE 50th-anniversary 007 entry, Sam Mendes is back for a direct sequel to the earlier film which also picks up story threads (and the odd character) from Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace, and retcons Daniel Craig’s run as James Bond into one slightly wonky super-saga. In effect, this is Craig’s You Only Live Twice, down to the welcome return of the white…

OUT NOW / RATING PG / 107 MINS. DIRECTOR Jessie Nelson CAST Diane Keaton, John Goodman, Ed Helms, Amanda Seyfried Whether trilling carols or hosting their brood of grown-up children, the Coopers (Diane Keaton and John Goodman) love Christmas. But do they still love each other? It’s hard to care when so many starry subplots are whizzing around them. While one daughter (Marisa Tomei) is getting done for shoplifting, another (Olivia Wilde) is flirting with a soldier (Jake Lacy) at the airport. Meanwhile everyone with a Y chromosome is hankering after a waitress (Amanda Seyfried). Despite her limited screen time and irreverent character, Wilde manages to be charming, but her co-stars’ characters are thinner than gingerbread men. A cloying narration humiliates all concerned and there’s too much going on and…

OUT JANUARY 1 / RATED G / 93 MINS. DIRECTOR Steve Martino CAST (VOICES) Noah Schnapp, Hadley Belle Miller, Alexander Garfin Carp about studio exploitation all you like, but director Martino and his animators have paid due diligence to beloved “blockhead” Charlie Brown — an American hero more Woody Allen than Shrek, felled by “a serious case of inadequacy” and the mischief of classmate Lucy and canine Snoopy (Peanuts’ Tyler Durden). Devotees will appreciate the faithful detail, how the lush 3D animation exactingly reproduces Charles Schulz’s 2D artwork. As Schulz worked in three-panel strips, so the plot is an assembly of witty skits depicting Brown’s personal hell when a new girl arrives to melt his heart and social standing. To add some Pixar-pep, we get Snoopy’s loop-the-loop daydreams, dogfighting his…

OUT NOW / RATED PG / 89 MINS. DIRECTOR Genndy Tartakovsky CAST Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Kevin James The Drac pack return for another coffin-load of family friendly funnies as Adam Sandler and chums de-fang Dracula and the classic Universal Monsters, you know, for kids. Ironically, where the Happy Gilmore star’s live-action efforts have become ever more puerile and juvenile, much to his fans’ chagrin, the films he has made for his younger viewers are showing signs of maturity. Just. With voices provided by usual Sandler cohorts (Steve Buscemi, Kevin James, David Spade et al.) and an over-riding message of acceptance as the bloodsucker tries to ensure his half-vampire, half-human grandson grows fangs, the second visit to Hotel Transylvania is full of genuine belly…

DAISY RIDLEY IS GESTICULATING LIKE A JAWA mid-haggle. The star of The Force Awakens is a whirlwind of anecdotes and gestures, words falling around us like a planetary bombardment. John Boyega, on the other hand, is a picture of calm serenity. He reclines casually in his chair, one hand hooked in the pocket of a leather jacket and a broad, toothy grin on his face. She is known mainly for cooing over a pair of calfskin gloves in a single episode of Mr Selfridge. He for running through South London wearing a dead-alien backpack as Moses in Joe Cornish’s Attack The Block. Now, as Rey and Finn, the headline duo of J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars, the pair are poised to conquer the galaxy. Although you wouldn’t know it to meet…

1977  Star Wars fans keen to re-enact their new favourite movie in 33/4 ”-high (95.25mm) plastic had to be patient. There was a nine-month gap between the movie coming out in May 1977 and the first wave of Kenner toys, which followed in spring 1978. The keenest fans ensured their fix by purchasing a coupon in 1977, good for four figures: Luke, Leia, Artoo and Chewie. Steve Sansweet, formerly of Lucasfilm and now chairman and president of Rancho Obi-Wan, the Star Wars merchandise museum, advises that, for collectors, “a sealed kit plus an open kit and send-away box with ‘doubletelescoping’ Luke would be the ideal combination.” Value: $4,275-$7,500 1978 Kenner’s success with Star Wars — grossing $100 million in 1978 — was beyond its, and George Lucas’s, wildest dreams. These…

FROM DECEMBER 30 / RATED M / DIRECTOR ANDREW NICCOL / CAST ETHAN HAWKE, JANUARY JONES, ZOË KRAVITZ, BRUCE GREENWOOD FULL METAL CONSOLE RIPPED FROM THE headlines, Good Kill is as terrifying as it is timely. Reuniting with his Gattaca compadre Ethan Hawke, writer-director Andrew Niccol drills into the moral and psychological murk of drone warfare with a cool head and a tight grip. Here the filmmaker is cleaving to his previous sci-fi vibes (the dystopian feel of Gattaca, the omnipotent surveillance of The Truman Show) but locating it firmly in the here and now, making it painfully clear that death by joystick is no longer the province of the PlayStation 4. The movie is at its best in the hothouse environment of the bland drone cubicles. Early on, Good…

FROM NOW / RATED PG / DIRECTOR PETE DOCTER, RONNIE DEL CARMEN / CAST AMY POEHLER, BILL HADER, LEWIS BLACK JOY STORY WE HAVE COME TO expect the bowling-ball gleam of Pixar’s multiverse — all those exquisite details, such as the way in this, its latest release, Joy’s skin fizzes like freshly poured champagne. Start it anywhere, and it takes just seconds to figure out that this film originates from the Emeryville dream factory. What surprises you about high-end Pixar projects like Inside Out are the ideas. After taking a year to regroup following a lapse into relative mediocrity with Cars 2, Brave and Monsters University, Pete Docter’s fantastic voyage into the brain of crisis-struck, 11-year-old Riley is a reaffirmation of Pixar’s core magic — storytelling ingenuity. Riley’s consciousness is…

1977 /FROM NOW / RATED R18+ / DIRECTOR TOBE HOOPER / CAST NEVILLE BRAND, MEL FERRER, CAROLYN JONES, MARILYN BURNS HEART RAKE HOTEL “I HOPE YOU ENJOY the colours,” drawls Tobe Hooper in the intro to the Blu-ray release of his follow up to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre feature. Using caustic red and eerie blue lighting (a year before Suspiria) — along with the unnerving polyphonic sound design that made TTCSM so indelible — Hooper heightens the nightmarish, hallucinogenic weirdness of this trashy riff on Psycho, where gibbering East Texas hotelier Judd (Neville Brand) carves up guests with farming tools before feeding them to his pet alligator. Eaten Alive! needed more dough, and it’s utterly nuts, but there is style to burn. The second half is particularly gripping; one…

OUT NOW / PS4, XBOX ONE, PC SHOOT FIRST IT’S A FANTASTIC YEAR TO BE A fan of the original Star Wars films. With J.J. Abrams behind the controls of the X-wings of Episode VII, we’ve been treated to trailers that capture the nostalgia of the first three movies almost shot-for-shot, giving fans a new hope for The Force Awakens. And now we have Star Wars Battlefront, an online multiplayer shooter that ignores the newer prequel films, recreating the epic battles of Endor and Hoth with up to 40 people online. The Force initially appears very strong in this one… provided you’re not a serious gamer. While there are a few basic singleplayer modes, Battlefront is all about playing online in a giant sandbox filled with all of the Star…

WIZARDS WIZARDING. DAVID YATES AT the helm. J.K. Rowling at the keyboard. Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them begs the question: when is a Harry Potter film not a Harry Potter film? The answer: when Harry Potter isn’t in it. And, as Fantastic Beasts is set in 1926, almost seven decades before Harry first stroked his wand in anger, don’t expect to see Daniel Radcliffe running around here. Instead, Fantastic Beasts centres on Newton Artemis Fido Scamander — or Newt for short. Played by Eddie Redmayne, he’s a young magizoologist (think David Attenborough meets David Copperfield) who arrives in New York with his magical hand luggage, which contains a variety of strange animals he’s gathered on his travels around the world. Unfortunately, some of the creatures soon escape, plunging…

OUT NOW / RATED MA15+ / 101 MINS. DIRECTOR JONATHAN LEVINE CAST JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT, SETH ROGEN, ANTHONY MACKIE Thanks to the responsibilities of adulthood, three 30-something friends (see left) are about to end a tradition spending Christmas Eve together, begun in the wake of the death of Ethan’s (Gordon-Levitt) parents in his teens. And, after years of trying, they scored tickets to New York’s most exclusive party, The Nutcracker Ball. Cue drugs, drinks and misadventure. So far, so Harold and Kumar. Well, sorta: older and wiser. Jonathan Levine’s bawdy-bongy take on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (co-written with Rogen’s producing partner Evan Goldberg) delivers a surprising and rare gross-out-cum-friendship-cum-Christmas fable that is both eye-wateringly hilarious and quite touching. The cast, including Jillian Bell and Lizzy Caplan, share an easy chemistry, cameos…

OUT DECEMBER 26 / RATED PG / 100 MINS. DIRECTOR Peter Sohn CAST (VOICES) Raymond Ochoa, Frances McDormand, Jeffrey Wright, Sam Elliott PLOT A young dinosaur gets lost in the forest and has to find his way home with nobody for company but a dog-like boy. FROM THE STUNNING OPENING shot here of water babbling over pebbles, it’s clear that Pixar’s technical animation skills are unbeatable — which is just as well, since the blobby cartoon dinosaurs who live in this idyll don’t seem quite up to their standard. This is a lesser effort from the studio, a sweet, funny, very straightforward adventure with a lot of heart but none of the sophistication of, say, Inside Out. The set-up is slightly confused — perhaps thanks to a tumultuous and rushed…

OUT NOW / RATING MA15+ / 122 MINS. DIRECTOR Angelina Jolie Pitt CAST Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie Pitt, Mélanie Laurent Swap the sizzling chemistry of Mr & Mrs Smith with a stifling discord and it’s quite staggering the difference 10 years makes. In the Jolie-Pitt’s second collaboration they play very chic, desperately unhappy married Americans on an idyllic seaside French sojourn in the ’70s. Drowning out an unspoken trauma, Nessa (Jolie Pitt) pill pops and Roland (Pitt) drinks, but a hole in their hotel room that allows them to watch their amorous newlywed neighbours (Laurent and Melvil Poupaud) may be a rejuvenator for their relationship. Not nearly as untenable as it sounds, Jolie Pitt directs a languid homage to vintage European cinema that drips with style even if that —…

OUT NOW / RATING M / 111 MINS. DIRECTOR Billy Ray CAST Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman,Julia Roberts Falling into the “remakes that didn’t need to be made” basket, Billy Ray’s Secret In Their Eyes is proof that throwing a big name cast (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts) into the thriller mix isn’t a big enough point of difference. There are tweaks to the Argentinian Best Foreign Film Oscar winner’s twisting plot that work, especially the decision to bring the horrific crime that kickstarts events much closer to home for the protagonists, but the story of three investigators and how their lives are forever changed by a brutal murder lacks the intensity and political turmoil of the superior original. The shock denouement is still as unsettling as ever and…

OUT DECEMBER 26 / RATED M / 106 MINS. DIRECTOR Sarah Gavron CAST Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Brendan Gleeson, Anne-Marie Duff, Ben Whishaw, Romola Garai, Meryl Streep PLOT In 1912, laundress Maud Watts (Mulligan) is fearful of the militant suffragettes urging her to join them. But a lifetime’s abuse and humiliation eventually drive her to act, in hope of a better future. SUFFRAGETTE BLOWS THE DUST off history in an involving, women-driven drama with a political thriller element and thought-provoking contemporary relevance for men and women equally. Somehow ‘suffragettes’ — originally a twee term for suffragists, coined in derision by a Daily Mail journalist and gleefully embraced by the women’s movement — have acquired a quaint image as shrill ladies in bloomers who chained themselves to railings. People have…

“WE HAD ONE FOR A LONG, LONG time,” says J.J. Abrams about one of the most critical aspects of any Star Wars film: the opening crawl. “We’re still playing with it now and I’m sure we will for another couple of weeks. I know we are going to be in amazing shape when that title appears. The question is not to lose that shape the second the crawl begins. Like every aspect of this movie, it’s an important challenge.” Abrams has faced a Kessel Run of “important challenges” but they are coming to an end. Star Wars: The Force Awakens has reached a landmark. It is 48 days (1,152 hours, 69,120 minutes) before it rolls out in practically every cinema in the world, and today is the day the picture…

Darth Maul The Phantom Menace (1999) Qui-Gon Jinn The Phantom Menace (1999) Ki-Adi-Mundi The Phantom Menace (1999) Mace Windu The Phantom Menace (1999) and Attack Of The Clones (2002) Saesee Tiin Revenge Of The Sith (2005) Plo Koon Revenge Of The Sith (2005) Obi-Wan Kenobi Revenge Of The Sith (2005) Count Dooku Revenge Of The Sith (2005) Obi-Wan Kenobi The Phantom Menace (1999) and Attack Of The Clones (2002) Agen Kolar Revenge Of The Sith (2005) Adi Gallia Revenge Of The Sith (2005) Shaak Ti/ General Grievous Revenge Of The Sith (2005) Mace Windu Revenge Of The Sith (2005) Finn The Force Awakens (2015) Anakin Skywalker Attack Of The Clones (2002) Anakin Skywalker Revenge Of The Sith (2005) Darth Sidious Revenge Of The Sith (2005) Yoda Attack Of The Clones…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTOR BHARAT NALLURI / CAST KIT HARINGTON, PETER FIRTH, JENNIFER EHLE, TIM MCINNERNY, TUPPENCE MIDDLETON, ELYES GABEL KEEPING THE BRITISH END UP FROM THE HAMMER Quatermass films of the 1950s through to macho spin-offs like the Sweeney movies of the ’70s, there was once a strong tradition of bringing British TV hits to the big screen. Outside of comedy, which has yielded everything from Dad’s Army to Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie, the form has tailed off lately… so this film follow-up to the 10-season post-millennial spy show is at once a pleasant revival of an old tradition and its reinvention. The format of the original series allowed for a high turnover of cast as MI5 agents were introduced, subjected to a season or…

FROM NOW / RATED M / DIRECTOR JEREMY SIMS / CAST MICHAEL CATON, JACKI WEAVER THAT’S 10M BUCKS, THANKS LAST CAB TO DARWIN split critics (usually on generational lines; we gave it a measly two stars) thanks to some clichéd Auscinema ingredients: Michael Caton, postcard outback picaresque, mouthy indigenous larrikins, earthy humour amid sadness, cute dog. Of course, the public loves that stuff: it did almost $10m at the Australian box office. But Jeremy Sims’s third feature finds moments to breathe between the hoary standards, making palms-up and frank observations on white-aboriginal relations, love and Australian machismo. The answers are individual and not always immediate — like the questions posed by the euthanasia debate at the film’s centre — but nor should they be. And the resulting film, still aiming…

Halloween 1978 / RATED R18+ / DIRECTOR JOHN CARPENTER / CAST DONALD PLEASENCE, JAMIE LEE CURTIS, TONY MORAN KNIFE AND DEATH HALLOWEEN IS OFTEN VIEWED AS A beginning: the moment a new type of horror arrived to brush away the genre’s cobwebs. This isn’t exactly true. It was released in the same year as Dawn Of The Dead; a year after The Hills Have Eyes; and four years after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. George Romero, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper and David Cronenberg were already making horror in-roads while Carpenter put together a loopy sci-fi (Dark Star) and a lo-fi thriller (Assault On Precinct 13). Halloween saw Carpenter join a peer group with which he’d soon be forever associated, but he didn’t get there first. Halloween isn’t even the first…

WIN! Christmas Evil on Blu-ray signed by Lewis Jackson JINGLE HELL! THE CHRISTMAS SLASHER CULT CLASSIC HAS been given a high-def makeover courtesy of Glass Doll Films and we have five copies to give away. To see how bad this Santa gets, just answer the question below and you could be getting a signed Christmas Evil Blu-ray from Santa’s sack. But only if you’re not on the naughty list… TO WIN, TELL US WHO YOUR FAVOURITE MOVIE SANTA IS, AND WHY. WIN! Spooks: The Greater Good on DVD KIT HARINGTON TAKES A BREAK FROM GAME OF Thrones to do a bit of action-packed sleuthing in the big screen version of the British espionage show Spooks. And he still hasn’t had…

Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope “THIS IS THE WEAPON OF A JEDI KNIGHT.” SETTING THE SCENE If Star Wars is the story of the Skywalker family, then this is perhaps the key scene in the saga. Luke Skywalker learns of his heritage and, like a galactic spin-off of Antiques Roadshow , is given the most important of family heirlooms — his father’s lightsaber. Expect this moment to be riffed on in The Force Awakens . George Lucas also delivers a poetic description of the Force, before those pesky midi-chlorians came and mucked it all up. INT. KENOBI’S DWELLING Luke (Mark Hamill) repairs C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), as Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) sits beside him. Luke: No, my father didn’t…

ZOOLANDER 2 HAS HAD SO MANY FALSE starts that it seemed the world’s dimmest male model would never return. Don’t write those eugooglies just yet: 15 years after the original, Derek Zoolander is back. So, why the long wait? “Honestly,” says Ben Stiller, who again directs and stars, “maybe if it had been a big hit when it first came out we would’ve done a sequel. It took a while for people to actually care!” The first movie, which opened shortly after 9/11 in 2001, grossed just $61 million globally. But in time it found an audience on DVD, and Stiller started work in earnest on the sequel. “The one thing I wanted to do was take the movie out of the environment it was in before, so it would…

HOLLYWOOD DOESN’T have the greatest relationship with variety shows, as anyone unfortunate enough to seek out the dignity-digesting sarlacc that is the Star Wars Holiday Special will attest. Undaunted, however, Netflix is entering the fray this season with possibly the greatest gift of them all: Bill Murray. It’s hard to say exactly how A Very Murray Christmas will end up, since the busy elves in Netflix’s streaming workshop are keeping the whole thing under wraps. But this we know: it’s part old-school variety special, as Murray puts on a Christmas show at The Carlyle Hotel in New York with a few of his closest celebrity chums; and, as it’s Bill Murray, part meta-commentary on an old-school variety special. There will be singing, courtesy of Phoenix and Miley Cyrus. There will…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 137 MINS. DIRECTOR Francis Lawrence CAST Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth PLOT The Districts, under District 13 leader Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), prepare for one final assault on the Capitol and President Snow (Donald Sutherland). Katniss (Lawrence) purely wants revenge on Snow for the brainwashing of her friend Peeta (Hutcherson) who has tried to kill her. THIS FINAL HUNGER GAMES film is so relentlessly solemn that it will occasionally make you long for the merry japes of Sicario. But the seriousness of purpose in this astonishingly tense war movie is understandable. Picking up where Mockingjay — Part 1 finished, the stakes could not be higher, nor our heroine’s trauma more profound. Of course, post-traumatic stress is pretty much the point. While the society…

OUT NOW / RATING M / 121 MINS. DIRECTOR Ron Howard CAST Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Benjamin Walker This rollicking tale of survival by the crew of the Essex — a Boston whaling vessel sunk by a gargantuan bull sperm whale in the early 19th century (and the inspiration for Herman Melville’s Moby Dick) — is not one of Ron Howard’s best, thanks to some ersatz CGI and an uneven tone. And the ostensibly no-brainer casting of Chris Hemsworth as salty hero Owen Chase is something of a backfire, as he channels 1960s matinee idol Stephen Boyd in a mondomacho performance. But, rollick it doth, with tension, thrills and moments of real horror as the whale pursues the longboat-bound survivors. Some clanging lines in the main action and the framing…

OUT DECEMBER 26 / RATED TBC / 118 MINS. DIRECTOR Paolo Sorrentino CAST Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Jane Fonda Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel reveal themselves to be a brilliant double act in Paolo Sorrentino’s (The Great Beauty) Youth, a poetic and intermittently surreal meditation on life, memory and ageing. Like life itself, it’s a collection of loosely linked moments that traverse comedy, tragedy and everything in between as retired music conductor Fred (Caine) and film director pal Mick (Keitel) spend time at the world’s weirdest hotel in the breathtaking Swiss Alps. It’s a gorgeously shot philosophical feast with much to chew on, the artier pretensions leavened by moments of bluntness and humour (see Mick and Fred’s updates on weeing). At times rudderless, it’s still an…

OUT DECEMBER 26 / RATED M / 106 MINS. DIRECTOR Eric Lartigau CAST Karin Viard, François Damiens, Louane Emera A crowd-pleasing hit in its native France, The Bélier Family is built on a high, probably Hollywood-bound concept: talented teen country girl Paula (Emera) dreams of becoming a big-time singer, the twist being that she is the only hearing member of a deaf farming family. It’s broad, predictable, surprisingly bawdy for a family-friendly comedy (Paula has to explain her parents’ sex life to a gynaecologist) and borderline insensitive (Dad wants to run for mayor with the slogan “I hear ya!”). For all that, it emerges as good-hearted. Viard and Damiens make likable parents but the César-winning Emera, a semi-finalist on France’s The Voice, adds a touching centre as the awkward teen…

THE WAY MARK HAMILL REMEMBERS IT, IT WAS during a production of The Elephant Man (“or maybe Amadeus”). It was the early ’80s, just after the Empire had struck back, and he was up there on stage, contorting his body in the classic John Merrick style (or composing music), when he noticed something in the audience. Something glowing. Back then, years before mobile phones, audiences simply didn’t glow. “Someone was wearing a home-made shirt with all the Star Wars stuff on it,” he recalls. “It was battery-operated, lit up and very distracting. The usher said to me, ‘I’ve been doing this for 40 years and I never imagined I would have to say, ‘Madam, would you mind turning off your blouse?’” Hamill laughs. It says a lot about his near…

EARLY ON IN THE PRODUCTION of The Force Awakens, Star Wars producer Kathleen Kennedy suggested that Game Of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie Google “female hero”. Together the pair looked at the resulting images. “They were all very conventionally attractive women in body-skimming outfits,” recalls Christie. Then Kennedy said, “Don’t you think that that’s so limited?” Christie is anything but limited. At 6’ 3”, she cuts an impressive figure as the First Order’s head stormtrooper, Captain Phasma (so dubbed as a nod to cult horror film Phantasm’s shiny, homicidal sphere). All mirrored plates and menace, with red-trimmed shoulder cape and nickel-plated blaster, Phasma is a sight to behold. “A chrome stormtrooper!” cries Christie. “The day I met [costume designer] Michael Kaplan for the first time, he laid out that incredible costume.…

00.39 Young Hank Pym The movie begins in 1989, introducing Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, as a crusading S.H.I.E.L.D. member. And that is Michael Douglas, blended with a younger double and some CG facelifting courtesy of FX company Lola. “That visual effect terrified me the most,” says director Peyton Reed. “Everyone knows what Michael Douglas looked like 25 years ago. But it doesn’t feel plasticky, or have that Uncanny Valley feel to it.” 18.27 Farewell, Frank In a nod to RoboCop, Joe Chrest’s businessman Frank pays the ultimate price for opposing evil CEO Darren Cross’s (Corey Stoll) plans, getting zapped and reduced to a small mound of what looks like jam. And was jam. “Pre-CGI, as a stand-in, we put some Smucker’s strawberry jam on there,” laughs Reed. “There is…

FROM DECEMBER 17 / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTOR RICK FAMUYIWA / CAST SHAMEIK MOORE, KIERSEY CLEMONS, TONY REVOLORI SUPERFLY THERE IS SOMETHING of the early work of Danny Boyle about Dope. Like Shallow Grave or Trainspotting, writer-director Rick Famuyiwa’s whirling dervish of a film is funny, irreverent and pop culturally aware, mixing up drama and comedy, styles and genres with gleeful abandon. It gets bogged down a bit in its final act but for most of its running time, Dope is an exhilarating shot of adrenaline. Set in a crime-infested LA neighbourhood nicknamed The Bottoms, Dope invokes the spirit of Boyz N The Hood-style dramas but immediately goes its own way. The teen Nigerian-American hero, Malcolm (Shameik Moore) is a straight-A geeky student, devoted to “shit white people like” —…

FROM NOW / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTOR ELI ROTH / CAST KEANU REEVES, LORENZA IZZO, ANA DE ARMAS, AARON BURNS THE JAPES OF ROTH IF FIFTY SHADES OF Grey opened the door to the return of the sexploitation movie, Eli Roth’s latest thriller is more Fatal Attraction than E. L. James’s 9 1/2 Weeks-style take. Cast perfectly against type, Keanu Reeves stars as Evan, a likable suburban dad whose work commitments prevent him joining his wife and kids on a weekend away. Late at night, two beautiful femmes fatales — Bel (Ana de Armas) and Genesis (Lorenza Izzo) — ring the doorbell, claiming to be lost. Following some initial flirting from the women (bending over provocatively, waxing lyrical about Evan’s vinyl collection) the scene is set for a raunchy…

FROM NOW / RATED R18+ / DIRECTORS ALFRED HITCHCOCK, RICHARD FRANKLIN, ANTHONY PERKINS, MICK GARRIS, RICHARD ROTHSTEIN, GUS VAN SANT / CAST ANTHONY PERKINS, JANET LEIGH, VERA MILES, MEG TILLY, VINCE VAUGHN MUM’S THE WORD WHO ON EARTH would make a sequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho? Even Hitch, no stranger (on a train) to remaking his own films with The Man Who Knew Too Much, avoided the sequel route but, as proven with this essential collection (the original, three sequels, a TV movie and a remake), his tense 1960 classic of monochrome matricide’s legacy has been well handled. Aussie Richard Franklin, a student of Hitchcock and the director of Ozploitation classics Patrick and Road Games, was given the unenviable task of taking the reins on the first sequel, Psycho II…

How To Be Single CAST DAKOTA JOHNSON, REBEL WILSON, ALISON BRIE / DIRECTOR CHRISTIAN DITTER CAPTION THE PICTURE ABOVE AND WIN BIG THE GIRLS ARE BACK IN TOWN! DAKOTA Johnson, Alison Brie and Leslie Mann all stand back in awe as Aussie funnygirl Rebel Wilson is let loose in How To Be Single, the latest crass comedy hailed as the next Bridesmaids. The caption singled out as the most fabulous will take home the behemoth that is Empire’s Greatest Movie Posters Volume 1 four-book set ($59.99 in all good book stores now). Send us your entry and while you’re waiting to see if you’ve won, build a new shelf to support its immense awesomeness, just in case. It’s huge! HOW TO BE SINGLE IS OUT FEBRUARY 11, 2016.…