Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2016 i Empire Australasia

THE BIG SHORT IS MANY things. It’s the first movie to tell the inside story of the collapse of the housing market in the US in 2007/08, which very nearly drove the world economy to the brink of collapse. It’s very funny, as you might expect from Adam McKay, the director of both Anchorman movies. It’s very clever, using every cinematic trick in the book, from voiceover and diagrams to celebrity cameos, to make its info dump of tricky terms more palatable. (If you don’t know what a CDO is beforehand, you will afterwards.) But what you might not expect is how sobering and nightmarish it is — anger about the incompetence, deceit and fraud that led to the collapse emanates from every frame. “It’s a hard story to tell…

OUT JANUARY 26 / RATED M / 100 MINS. DIRECTOR SUE BROOKS CAST RICHARD ROXBURGH, RADHA MITCHELL, ODESSA YOUNG An Australian movie released on Australia Day. Clever. If only this homegrown tale had more going for it than cultivating that awkward feeling of trying to like something more than you can. Writer-director Sue Brooks (Japanese Story) has intended to depict how life is messy, ordinary and uncontrollable. While such elements are apparent, the effect of watching parents (Roxburgh and Mitchell) search for their missing teen daughter (Young) heads in the opposite direction to engrossing verisimilitude. Employing the Rashomon framework without demonstrating why, Brooks’s tapestry of a family adrift suffers from its own lack of purpose. Gradually disclosing itself as an experiential movie committed to not needing a point, the characters…

OUT JANUARY 14 / RATED M / 130 MINS. DIRECTOR Adam McKay CAST Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Marisa Tomei, Melissa Leo, Selena Gomez, Margot Robbie PLOT An account of the 2008 banking crisis, focusing on the investors who saw it coming and who bet against the housing market (‘shorting’ it). HOW DO YOU MAKE THE financial crisis compelling? The challenge has largely defeated filmmakers. They’ve tried the personal tragedy (99 Homes), the documentary (Inside Job) and the ultra-serious recreation (Margin Call) — and while all had their strengths, they barely touched audiences not already interested in the disaster. But Adam McKay may have a better approach, by emphasising not just the criminality of the system but also its absurdity. From the off, McKay bends over backwards…

OUT NOW / RATING M / 96 MINS. DIRECTOR Lisa Immordino Vreeland CAST Peggy Guggenheim, Marina Abramovic While researching this captivating documentary, director Lisa Immordino Vreeland unearthed a taped interview from which flowed her long-dead subject’s velveteen voice. Magically, Peggy Guggenheim could now tell her own unique story. “Black sheep” of the American dynasty, Guggenheim was vital to 20th century art and, aided by Vreeland’s lively montages and la-de-dah experts, she is astonishingly forthcoming. She was friend to James Joyce, lover of Samuel Beckett, and married to Max Ernst. Suffering bouts of nymphomania, she had “so many abortions”. By smuggling canvasses out of Nazi Paris, she was “midwife” to Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. “Art,” the doc claims, “was a mirror of her own strangeness.” DID YOU KNOW? Peggy’s father,…

OUT JANUARY 21 / RATED TBC / 120 MINS. DIRECTOR Tom Hooper CAST Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Ben Whishaw, Matthias Schoenaerts PLOT Einar Wegener (Redmayne) is a painter happily married to wannabe artist Gerda (Vikander). After her model falls through, Einar poses in silk stockings and satin slippers, setting Einar on a path to her true self: Lili Elbe. TOM HOOPER HAS MADE A career out of tackling subjects in which audiences have an active investment before buying a ticket, be it itinerant soccer managers (The Damned United), the Queen Mum (The King’s Speech) or dreaming a dream of times gone by (Les Misérables). It may start in 1926, but The Danish Girl nails a zeitgeist-y hot-button topic of transgender issues led by (but not limited to) Caitlyn Jenner. It’s…

Day One LAST STAGE TO TELLURIDE Blood and snow: these are the only two things you can be sure of in Quentin Tarantino’s eighth movie — a film he announced quietly, after months of speculation, with an ad that featured the striking image of a six-horse stagecoach leaving a splash of crimson on a stark, white background. Tarantino has filmed in snow before, in Kill Bill and Django Unchained, but for The Hateful Eight he wants to conjure up a seething winter’s hell, a genuine, raging, terrifying no-VFX blizzard. But on a February afternoon when Empire arrives at Canyonlands Field Airport, Utah, a three-hour drive from the film’s shoot in Telluride, Colorado, the weather is troublingly beautiful. As the sandstone arches of Moab become the stately mountains of Colorado, there…

THIS IS NOT A BIOPIC,” stresses Danny Boyle, director of Steve Jobs. “That’s one of the misconceptions about this movie.” Expect no eureka moments of a young Steve messing about with circuit boards; no jubilant unveiling of that half-munched Apple logo; no bedside vigils in the last weeks of his life. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” recalls writer Aaron Sorkin. “I just knew I didn’t want to do that. The cradle-to-grave structure is tired and over-familiar.” With apologies to Sorkin, Jobs’s was a life less ordinary. Viz., cradle: born 1955, adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. Founded Apple in 1976. Forced out in 1985. Funded Pixar. Returned to Apple in 1997. Fired people. Turned it into a $300 billion company. Reconciled with daughter. Grave: died of complications…

FROM JANUARY 14 / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTOR F. GARY GRAY / CAST O’SHEA JACKSON JR., COREY HAWKINS, JASON MITCHELL, NEIL BROWN JR., ALDIS HODGE, PAUL GIAMATTI BEING FORMULAIC isn’t always a bad thing. Straight Outta Compton doesn’t so much tear up the music-biopic sheet as hug it close… before scrawling its own “street knowledge” in the margins. In a sense, F. Gary Gray’s soup-to-nuts N.W.A story is a virtual remake of Oliver Stone’s The Doors. The era’s changed and it’s a very different musical genre, but both are epic accounts of ultimately tragic groups who rose up through the fissure of American political division, challenged the prevailing cultural agenda, embraced controversy over their lyrics, and apparently had a moment when one of them noodled on a keyboard for a…

Was it a daunting prospect making a war film for your debut feature? There were so many advantages attached to this story. It was my first feature so there was a logistical reason for choosing a story set in one location. It was achievable. [Laughs] Many first-time filmmakers choose a single-room drama. And that’s what this is. Albeit the room is a big sand pit. We felt we could tell this story without spending a fortune. Also the story could be told only from the troop’s POV. There were also no fire fights... The reality is action films aren’t cheap. If we tried to compete with the Americans in terms of action, we would fail. It’s that simple. So far better to replace action with suspense. You never show the…

2015 / FROM JANUARY 27 / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTOR DENIS VILLENEUVE / CAST EMILY BLUNT, BENICIO DEL TORO, JOSH BROLIN DENIS THE MENACE LAST YEAR’S BEST thriller is memorable for its shocking opening and climax — both feature the dead; the first, corpses stored in the walls of a Mexican drug cartel safe house; the second, unforgivable assassinations — but what defines Denis Villeneuve’s hollow-eyed examination of the DEA’s pursuit of the ultra-violent Sonora Cartel is its patience and sense of inexorability. With Jóhann Jóhannsson’s thrumming, blaring score and long, floating shots of the changing landscape (Roger Deakins’s lens work is superb) we are transported from the USA to Juarez, Mexico, from civilisation into Hades, from naivete — as personified by Emily Blunt’s true-hearted DEA agent Kate Macer —…

FROM JANUARY 21 / RATED R18+ / DIRECTOR S. CRAIG ZAHLER / CAST KURT RUSSELL, PATRICK WILSON, RICHARD JENKINS ENTER A WORLD OF KURT KURT RUSSELL FANS, January is going to be your month: not only will you get to see the former Disney child star (and his resplendent moustache) in Quentin Tarantino’s gritty, violent Western The Hateful Eight, but you’ll also get to see the man f.k.a. Snake Plissken in this: gritty, violent Western Bone Tomahawk. Only Goldie Hawn should feel luckier. Without having seen Eight in action, we can still confidently make a few favourable comparisons between this and Q.T.’s modus operandi: writer (and debut director) S. Craig Zahler has a gift for memorable, erudite dialogue that is a delight to the ears, and his languid pacing gives…

FROM NOW / RATED MA15+ / CREATOR NIC PIZZOLATTO / CAST VINCE VAUGHN, COLIN FARRELL, RACHEL MCADAMS, TAYLOR KITSCH BAD COPS, BAD COPS THE CRIME TD2 commits was unavoidable. It is an anthological sequel for a groundbreaking show that captured lightning in a bottle. Series 1 was so Suth’n and spooky that any follow-up was doubtless doomed, especially when it abandons what made the first so transcendent: the whiff of the occult. Instead of Southern Gothic we get Shakespearean LA noir and a much bigger story, as evidenced by the larger A(ish)-list cast. Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch all play cops with secrets and pasts in and around the fictional Los Angeles County city, Vinci. Vince Vaughn is local crime kingpin Frank Semyon, attempting to go legitimate with…

FROM NOW / RATED MA15+ / CREATOR CHRIS CARTER / CAST DAVID DUCHOVNY, GILLIAN ANDERSON, MITCH PILEGGI THE TRUTH IS IN A BIG BOX SPREAD OVER 57 discs, this definitive Blu-ray collection includes all nine series of Chris Carter’s seminal sci-fi show plus the two not so good movies Fight The Future and I Want To Believe. Back in 1993, The X-Files sent conspiracy nut-bags into delirium and the stars became the convention-goers crumpet of choice. Fusing mutant mayhem with Moonlighting-style ‘will they? won’t they?’ sexual tension, the palpable chemistry between the truth-seeking FBI odd couple, wide-eyed believer Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and sceptic Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), ensured that The X-Files quickly left its cult origins behind to become a mainstream smash. Now, with the prospect of a new…

WIN! Sicario on Blu-ray THRILLERS DON’T GET MORE INTENSE THAN DENIS Villeneuve’s fist-clenching tension cranker. With a stellar cast that includes Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro, Sicario twists and turns like a… twisty-turny thing as a government task force tries to bring down the leader of a brutal Mexican drug cartel. We have 10 BDs up for grabs. TO WIN, TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE THRILLER IS, AND WHY. WIN! Irrational Man on DVD SCHOOL’S OUT AS THE LATEST WOODY ALLEN project hits disc with Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Parker Posey in tow. Phoenix plays a teacher living on the edge of an existential crisis(it is a Woody Allen film after all). To see what he does to…

IT’S A PERFECT SHANE BLACK situation,” says producer Joel Silver of The Nice Guys. And Silver should know — he’s presided over a few. The first was 1987’s Lethal Weapon, and the last was Black’s brilliant directorial debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, back in 2005. Now the duo have reteamed for The Nice Guys, a buddy-buddy action comedy which taps into Black’s obsession with the seedy detective novels he’d spend his lunch money on at school. “When I’m directing this action scene, I’m thinking ‘I’ve seen this as a kid on the cover of The Executioner #19: Detroit Deathwatch!’” laughs Black. The scene in question, with an Atlanta hotel standing in for Downtown LA and the Pacific Auto Show 1978 (this is Black’s first period piece), is third-act real estate,…

WHAT DO YOU DO when you’re brave enough to come out close to the new Star Wars? What can you offer to compete with a Millennium Falcon, $300 million-worth of CGI and a little rolly robot that goes ‘bloop’? “Well”, says Tina Fey, star of Sisters, which is coming three weeks after The Force Awakens, “we’ve got the ‘New Kids On The Block’, ‘The Cabbage Patch’, the ‘typewriter’. I think there’s also a ‘Roger Rabbit’ in there.” Suck on that, Kylo Ren. Fey is referring to the moves that she and close friend and collaborator Amy Poehler have displayed, for the past four hours, on the set of Sisters. Moves that might just take Han Solo down. For their first film together since 2008’s Baby Mama, Poehler and Fey are…

COSTUME BEST Ed’s costume from Shaun Of The Dead. That’s essentially what I wear. House shorts and a T-shirt. There was one that said ‘Bumpin’ Donuts’ in a Dunkin’ Donuts font, but I think they said we couldn’t use it, which was a shame. WORST The costume on Snow White & The Huntsman. It’s a beautiful costume, designed by Colleen Atwood, but it’s so friggin’ hot. There’s layer upon layer of thick wool and armour, and it takes ages to get it on. Someone has to do my boots up! MOMENT BEST  When I did the whole showdance during Cuban Fury, at Koko in Camden. Doing that was amazing. I had to go off in the corner and have a little cry, I was so proud of myself. WORST  On…

CORIN HARDY DOESN’T have a tattoo, but if he did it would be of one word: “resilient”. “The last time I saw Ray Harryhausen, I had lunch with him in Edinburgh,” says Hardy. “He suddenly said to me, ‘Are you resilient? In this industry, you gotta be resilient!’” Resilience has never been a problem for Hardy. The UK-based filmmaker has been knocking on the door of the movie industry for over a decade now. First there was a selection of acclaimed music videos with the likes of The Prodigy and McFly, then came a close call with Yeti horror The Refuge, which Sam Raimi was once on board to produce. But, it seemed, Hardy just couldn’t get a film off the ground. The Hallow changes all that. A creepy supernatural…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 124 MINS. DIRECTOR David O. Russell CAST Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, Virginia Madsen PLOT As a child, Joy Mangano (Isabella Crovetti-Cramp) wants to be an inventor. Fast-forward a decade and the adult Joy (Lawrence) pins all those hopes on her latest gizmo, a self-wringing mop. GEORGE BUSH SR. ONCE observed that American families should be less like The Simpsons and more like The Waltons. God knows what he would make of the Manganos, a small-town clan in a more-or-less permanent state of chaos, with a divorced mum (Virginia Madsen) glued to soap operas, her daughter’s ex-husband (édgar Ramírez) living in the basement and a volatile dad (Robert De Niro) at the front door looking for a sofa to crash on. And…

OUT NOW / RATED M / 135 MINS. DIRECTOR J.J. Abrams CAST Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Domhnall Gleeson PLOT Luke Skywalker (Hamill) has vanished, and both the Resistance and the sinister First Order are searching for him. Crack pilot Poe Dameron (Isaac) obtains a clue to his whereabouts, but when everything goes wrong, a droid called BB-8 becomes the centre of the search, along with scavenger Rey (Ridley) and stormtrooper deserter FN-2187 (Boyega), who have found the droid. IF YOU WERE TO MAKE A LIST OF the essential ingredients of a Star Wars film, you would find almost all in J.J. Abrams’s wake-up call to this sleeping giant of a franchise. From the biggest — dark versus light side, dogfights,…

OUT JANUARY 14 / RATED PG / 103 MINS. DIRECTOR ROB LETTERMAN CAST JACK BLACK, DYLAN MINNETTE, ODEYA RUSH, AMY RYAN Kids fiction behemoth gets the meta treatment when a sarcastic everyboy (Minnette) arrives in a new town and becomes entangled in the mysterious life of a fictionalised R.L. Stine (Jack Black). After unknowingly unleashing an array of wacky monsters from between the spines of Stine’s Goosebumps universe, the boy must help the author and his daughter (Rush) contain the surreal situation. A throwback to ’80s children’s adventure films clangs against an increasingly noisy CGI onslaught, but thanks to a fun and fluffy script that never takes itself remotely seriously and the odd genuinely amusing monster (and fleeting appearances by Amy Ryan), there’s enough here to entertain children without driving…

OUT NOW / RATED PG / 86 MINS. DIRECTOR Walt Becker CAST Jason Lee, Justin Long, Josh Green, Jesse McCartney The furry little singing critters are back for a fourth outing, hitting the road to stop guardian Dave (Lee) from tying the knot and introducing a horrible step-brother into their lives. The story is slight — albeit with a heartfelt message — and the humour broad. The kids are well catered for which makes a few wacky adult meta moments even more enjoyable — especially chipmunk Theodore (McCartney) nailing Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Baby Got Back and Alvin (Long) bumping into the Prince Of Puke himself, Mr. John Waters, on a plane, and discussing Pink Flamingos! An earworm cover of Mark Ronson’s Uptown Munk (see what they did there?) ensures your cynical…

OUT FEBRUARY 4 / RATED M / 122 MINS. DIRECTOR Danny Boyle CAST Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels PLOT In the lead up to three product launches, spread over 14 years, we plunge into the mounting crises, both personal and technical, that confront Apple head Steve Jobs (Fassbender). STEVE JOBS IS THRILLING. Which should sound counter-intuitive. Isn’t this a film about a man who made computers? Operatic in scope, breathtakingly articulate, and held firm by a snake-charmer of a central performance, it is, in fact, another ambitious reckoning with a flawed American titan; a sister parable to the Zuckerberg-autopsy The Social Network; an intricate, dazzling, zeitgeist-lassoing Citizen Kane. Or, if you prefer, The West Wing in the tech sphere. The hook is a backstage drama, Birdman’s twitchy…

SOME MOVIE SETS HAVE A TEA trolley. Suicide Squad has a gun trolley. Pushed around Toronto’s Pinewood Studios by a former SWAT officer named Mike, it groans under the weight of enough ordnance to recreate the final reel of Commando. This includes an M320 grenade launcher, equipped with “Day/Night Sight” for nocturnal use. A Chiappa Rhino revolver, customised with alternating “LOVE”/“HATE” motif on the chamber. And the colossal single-use M72 Light Anti-Tank Weapon which Empire has just been handed by David Ayer. “Never aim at anything you don’t intend to destroy,” chides the Navy submariner-turned-Hollywood director, as we wobbily point the state-of-the-art cannon towards a gaggle of grips. He surveys the mobile armoury. “Do we have enough guns on this show? That one you got’s really comfortable. But this is…

Rawhide (1951) Outlaws planning a gold robbery take over Rawhide, a watering stop on the stagecoach route, holding employee Tyrone Power and passenger Susan Hayward hostage. Eventually, Power turns the tables and mounts a one-man mission to harry the crooks. Yes, it’s the Western precursor to Die Hard. Johnny Guitar (1954) Nicholas Ray brilliantly used a limited budget in this bizarre, cheapie Western, restricting most of the action to interiors — primarily a huge, two-floored saloon — by necessity, but also ensuring his meagre setting was packed with fantastic characters, most importantly Joan Crawford as bar-owner Vienna. Rio Bravo (1959) John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan and Ricky Nelson hole up in the town jail after arresting the murderous brother of a powerful cattle baron. Howard Hawks’s template for many…

LAST FEBRUARY, EDDIE Redmayne flew to Los Angeles for the weekend. Turns out he had an Academy Award to pick up, for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything. But he couldn’t hang around, or even fully absorb the experience. He was two weeks into shooting a film. “The Oscars happened on the Sunday, and I came straight from Heathrow to do a scene where I was lying naked being X-rayed,” laughs Redmayne. “It was with a cracking hangover, so I couldn’t really process the whole thing. I was just focused on trying to tell the story.” The story which so distracted the Oscar-winner from his freshly minted statuette, and may yet put him in line for another, was that of two extraordinary women: Lili Elbe (Redmayne) and Gerda…

HIS REFRESHMENTS ARE LAID out. A cluster of grapes, a glass of ice water and a bowl of Veggie Straws potato chips (‘Zesty Ranch’ flavour), arranged lovingly on a side-table. The students are assembled. This Friday night, 18 of them have come. They include a retired Las Vegas cop, a local real-estate agent, and an actress who once played a nurse in an episode of Miami Vice. All here for the same reason: to learn from the man they sometimes call “the master”, sometimes “Mr. R”. And finally, he enters. He was once the biggest movie star in the world, partying with the Rat Pack, romancing scores of Hollywood starlets, trashing a freeway’s worth of automobiles. Now 79 years old, he may appear frail, moving with the aid of a…

Were you up against other actors to play your dad? Yeah, there were definitely a list of actors ahead of me. My father’s job as a producer is to make sure the film is as perfect as it can be and he can’t sabotage it in any way for personal gain, so there were actors ready to take the spot if I couldn’t act, if I fell flat in my auditions. There was a chemistry test where I had to outperform three other Cubes. You can throw in the intimidation factor when you introduce yourself as O’Shea Jackson Jr. to somebody who’s trying to play Ice Cube. [Laughs] That’s a great way to mess with the competition: “I know more about the character than you, pal”. I walked into the…

FROM JANUARY 13 / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTOR PETER STRICKLAND / CAST SIDSE BABETT KNUDSEN, MONICA SWINN, CHIARA D’ANNA MADAMS BUTTERFLY WEIRD, WOOZY AND beautifully shot, Peter Strickland’s tale of two female lovers living in a fairytale forest is as powerful a trip as his post-production chiller Berberian Sound Studio. Aficionados of vintage Euro sleaze will appreciate the nods to Jesús Franco and the cameo from ’70s star Monica Swinn. But even if you don’t know arthouse from an outhouse, you’re still likely to be sucked into the film’s peculiar, hypnotic, butterfly-heavy world. Strickland’s as droll as he is cerebral — on the disc’s extras he claims that one bit was inspired by a dream he had after watching Planes, Trains And Automobiles — and mischievous jokes include mannequin extras…

FROM JANUARY 14 / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTOR NEIL ARMFIELD / CAST RYAN CORR, CRAIG STOTT, SARAH SNOOK, GUY PEARCE, GEOFFREY RUSH, ANTHONY LAPAGLIA BOYS KEEP SWINGING ADAPTED BY WRITER/ stage director Tommy Murphy from the memoir by Timothy Conigrave, Neil Armfield’s Holding The Man takes a potentially maudlin premise — a tender romance tragically eroded by discrimination and terminal illness — and transforms it into sharp and deeply affecting dramatic cinema. Aspiring actor Tim (Ryan Corr) and star footballer John (Craig Stott) meet cute at a Melbourne high school in the late-’70s, but the purity of their relationship is challenged by the ugly reality of prejudice and HIV-related illness as they transition into adult life. Armfield succeeds in balancing empathy with social critique, while both Corr and Stott are…

FROM JANUARY 20 / RATED M / DIRECTOR WOODY ALLEN / CAST JOAQUIN PHOENIX, EMMA STONE, PARKER POSEY FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX WOODY ALLEN’S newie starts with the usual black-and-white title typeface (Windsor Light Condensed, font fans) but not the obligatory jazz ditty or classical movement. Instead it features the sounds of driving, perhaps a hint that for once Allen is jettisoning his hermetically sealed universe for something set in a recognisably real world. Well, he doesn’t. Irrational Man is firmly set in the Woodyverse — that witty erudite world where young hotties get besotted by “brilliant” older men — and delivers a middling but still enjoyable entry into the Allen Canon. Given that Allen’s films are so concerned with the life of the mind, it is surprising he has…

Eddie The Eagle CAST TARON EGERTON, HUGH JACKMAN, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN, TIM MCINNERNY / DIRECTOR DEXTER FLETCHER CAPTION THE PICTURE ABOVE AND WIN BIG THE STORY OF THE FIRST BRITISH SKI jumper to enter the Winter Olympics is given the uplifting comedy treatment care of Kingsmen: The Secret Service’s Taron Egerton and Wolverine himself Hugh Jackman! If you hit the slopes and send us a frightfully witty caption to the picture above, you could win the awesome 17 disc Hammer Horror Collection, featuring such terrifying classics as The Curse of the Werewolf, The Brides Of Dracula, Captain Kronos — Vampire Hunter, The Hound Of The Baskervilles and many more. EDDIE THE EAGLE IS OUT APRIL 21. HOW TO ENTER In 10 words or less email your caption with the…

BATTY FOR POSTERS I tried my best to win one of these must-have Empire’s Greatest Movie Posters box-sets from you and you’ve left me no choice but to go and acquire one for myself. I like it so much that I’ve assigned Batman to stand guard over this brilliant publication. Let no hands mark these pages! FABIAN KAHWATI, NORTHCOTE, VIC Glad you were able to get your hands on one of the (very tall) box-sets. That must be one tall Batman you’ve got there. EVERY letter printed this month scores a Blu-ray of the second series of True Detective , starring Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams. TWEET US! @JohnBoyega looking like a badass on the latest @ EmpireAust #cantwait Victoria Leane @StormyPOP Sorry #StarWars newbies but I…

AS STATEMENTS OF INTENT GO, LOUIS Leterrier, director of Grimsby, roughly the 837th spy movie to be released over the past 12 months, has a doozy. “I loved Spy, I loved Kingsman, Mission: Impossible was really fun,” he says. “But there are certain things in our movie that cannot be in any of these movies. It’s beyond anything that’s been committed to film.” Given that Kingsman ended with heads exploding to the tune of Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance, that’s saying something. But when you consider that Sacha Baron Cohen is the star, co-writer and producer of Grimsby, then maybe Leterrier might not be bluffing. Cohen, after all, is no stranger to committing outrageous acts to celluloid. “Sacha just pushes the envelope,” says co-star Mark Strong. “I’m sure everyone will manage…

IT’S BEEN SEVEN YEARS since Tom Hanks last filled the Hush Puppies of Dan Brown’s symbologist Robert Langdon, but he’ll return to the role next October in Inferno, using his archaic knowledge to solve teasers that would stump Sherlock Holmes at his most wiliest. We travelled to Florence to get director Ron Howard and his cast to decipher Inferno’s secrets in nine rings of info. 1 Inferno is the third Langdon movie, following The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Angels & Demons (2009). There are four novels in Dan Brown’s series, but the filmmakers have skipped the third in the series, 2009’s The Lost Symbol, which was set in the US. “I love the international nature of this,” says Howard of the decision. “As an American, part of the…

AS MOMENTS IN TIME GO, THIS QUICKIE SHOT from the coffee shop set of Reservoir Dogs is eloquent as hell. The one-two punch of Dogs and Pulp Fiction made him a genre unto himself, and it began here. The upstart auteur, not yet 30, surrounded by his dream cast, making his first signature picture (not counting 1987’s My Best Friend’s Birthday, which lost its final reel in a fire). Why wouldn’t he be smiling?…

OUT JANUARY 28 / RATED M / 128 MINS. DIRECTOR Tom McCarthy CAST Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery PLOT In 2001, new editor Marty Baron (Liev Schrieber) charges The Boston Globe’s investigative team Spotlight to probe child abuse by Catholic priests. They uncover a huge conspiracy of abuse and systemic cover-up by the church, abetted by the city’s jurisprudence. SOME STORIES ARE SO GOOD you should just get out of their way, which is exactly what Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor) does with this old school, true life procedural. With narrative economy and a steady, unfussy hand he allows his script (co-written with Josh Singer) to unfold elegantly over the film’s length, keeping a laser-like focus on the story and those pursuing it.…

OUT JANUARY 14 / RATED M / 118 MINS. DIRECTOR Todd Haynes CAST Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler, Sarah Paulson PLOT A chance encounter in a department store leads elegant Carol (Blanchett) and uncertain shopgirl Therese (Mara) into a forbidden romance in 1950s New York. THE SOUNDS OF A TRAIN STATION over black and then, what’s that? A fence? A cage? No, it’s a floor grille we open on — elegant and iron and covering who knows what. This is a film about entrapment and escape and finding out what is underneath the veneer — of society, of ourselves. From Strangers On A Train to the various talented Ripleys, Patricia Highsmith’s novels and short stories have proved fertile fiction for big-screen skulduggery for 65 years, but this is the…

OUT NOW / RATED PG / 96 MINS. DIRECTOR Sean Anders CAST Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Linda Cardellin, Thomas Haden Church, Alessandra Ambrosi, Paul Scheer Everything’s dandy for Brad (Ferrell). Job at a smooth jazz station, loving wife, stepdad to two adoring kids. Then in swaggers Dusty (Wahlberg), the biological father: a surly, super-hung silverback intent on reclaiming his offspring. Director Sean Anders’s emasculating dad-wars comedy lacks a killer set-piece, but still comes as a pleasant surprise. Reunited after comedy The Other Guys, Ferrell and Wahlberg have formed an improbable, viable, very funny double act. Ferrell’s the wuss, Wahlberg the bad-ass; hackneyed personas maybe, but the chemistry clicks like LEGO. If it all ends in cornball reconciliation, the dumb, fuzzy smile it leaves suggests it’s well earned. DID YOU KNOW?…

OUT NOW / RATED TBC / 118 MINS. DIRECTOR Jason Moore CAST Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Ike Barinholtz, Maya Rudolph, James Brolin, Dianne Wiest, John Cena The second movie for television’s comedy queens Tina Fey and Amy Poehler threatens to become an ordeal, but finds its funny. Two bickering sisters are flunking middle age — Poehler’s Maura is a shy square and Fey’s Kate a cash-strapped wild child — until they mount one final blowout at the family home. The preamble is laughless, however, and neither character makes a whole lot of sense. Then, as Fey calls upon her resurrected peers to abandon their jaded adulthoods for something more fun, the movie and party flip into the PC-be-damned joys of Animal House or The Hangover. The sisters fall out, the…

OUT JANUARY 28 / RATED M / 118 MINS. DIRECTOR Lenny Abrahamson CAST Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, Sean Bridgers PLOT A mother (Larson) and her son (Tremblay) live in a tiny room, but only one of them knows that there’s a whole other world outside it. BE WARNED, ROOM IS A wrenching watch. It’s a story so abhorrent and seemingly hopeless that there may be times you don’t want it to go on, but within its tight confines Lenny Abrahamson, with a script by Emma Donaghue, finds warmth and hope. It is, against all odds, uplifting. Ma (Brie Larson) and Jack (Jacob Tremblay) live in a nine square metre space. To Jack this is the entire world, where objects — Table, Rug, Wardrobe — are the only one…

The Joker Aka Mr. J Played by Jared Leto Speciality Chaos “I was just thinking,” says Jared Leto at the start of his phone conversation with Empire , “that the Joker would probably just say, ‘Fuck you,’ and hang up.” Fortunately, Leto is not the Joker. At least, not right now. It’s already the stuff of legend, how the 43-year-old became Mr. J throughout the six-month Suicide Squad shoot. He sent bullets to Will Smith, a rat to Margot Robbie, a dead hog to the crew. He assigned Jim Parrack, the actor playing henchman Jonny Frost, random errands at all hours, including spray-painting roses black and filling a backpack with nine-inch nails. And he never once broke character, prompting…

Everyone in Hollywood has a story about The Revenant. The sixth feature by Alejandro González Iñárritu has already entered modern movie mythology as one of the most difficult shoots ever embarked upon. Many of those stories paint the director as a deranged, deluded Napoleon figure driven insane by his recent Oscar glory, given he’d won for Birdman while this latest project was already struggling in the wilderness. The word “hellish” comes up a lot in these tales: remote locations exhaustively researched and then abandoned on a whim; a producer banned from the set; actors stretched to breaking point by conditions that plunged to minus 40; a stuntman dragged naked behind a horse; primitive facilities; and an impatient, ungrateful megalomaniac director demanding more, more, more… But when Empire visits the 52-year-old…

ROONEY MARA REMEMBERS well the first time she saw Cate Blanchett. She was 13 years old and she’d gone to her local cinema in Bedford, New York, to see Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth. “When she came on screen,” Mara told an audience at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival last year, “I remember the feeling that washed over me, seeing her with her piercingly blue eyes and alabaster skin. Her grace and magnetism took over, even in her silence, even in her stare.” It was the moment Mara knew for sure that she wanted to be an actor. And not just any actor — she wanted to be an actor like that. “From that day on, I remember following her and watching her,” Mara continued. “Being seduced over and over with…

FROM NOW / RATED G / DIRECTOR DANA NACHMAN / CAST MILES SCOTT, ERIC JOHNSTON, HANS ZIMMER WHEN YOU WISH UPON A BAT A DOCO THAT’S essentially Warm Fuzzies: The Movie, this covers an astounding 2013 Make-A-Wish event that went from small-scale to mega-sized. To wit: five-year-old Batman superfan Miles Scott, a leukaemia sufferer, wants to be Batman for a day and defeat some Bat-foes. Social media gets wind of it and the next thing you know, San Francisco is flooded with tens of thousands of people who want in on the fun and Miles is getting well wishes from the likes of President Obama and every Batman actor from West to Affleck. Holy insta-fame! At times you’ll wonder if it’s all for the grown-ups enjoyment rather than the kid…

FROM JANUARY 13 / RATED M / PRODUCER STEVEN MOFFAT / CAST PETER CAPALDI, JENNA COLEMAN, MAISIE WILLIAMS STEP BACK IN TIME DOES ANYONE STAY dead on Doctor Who? It’s a reasonable question after the back half of Series 9, which sees two main characters back from the (seemingly permanent) grave. At least the return of UNIT scientist Petronella Osgood (Ingrid Oliver) in the two-part paranoid thriller ‘The Zygon Invasion / Inversion’ makes sense in an episode full of shifting loyalties and shape-shifting faces. But even in a show that increasingly values emotion over coherent storytelling, the effort made to bring Clara (Jenna Coleman) back after a genuinely moving demise seems more about claiming she’s the best companion ever than the reality of a muddled character rarely used well. But…

“An endless litany of ‘beat that... oh, you have’ moments.” 1981 / RATED PG / DIRECTOR STEVEN SPIELBERG / CAST HARRISON FORD, KAREN ALLEN, PAUL FREEMAN, JOHN RHYS-DAVIES THE BEARD CALLS “ACTION” ON A CLASSIC THAT SPIELBERG CAME BACK FROM THE mauling he received over 1941 is remarkable enough. That he came back so quickly — taking just 18 months to put the budget-busting, just-in-profit farce behind him and turn out a film that would hold Paramount’s cash-raking record until the 1994 release of Forrest Gump — is astonishing. That he did so without any perceptible retreat from the wistfully innocent movie vision that had sustained him thus far, and that had irked 1941’s critics so violently has the eyes popping and the jaw skimming the carpet in an approximation…

Grizzly Man “I WILL NOT DIE AT THEIR CLAWS AND PAWS.” SETTING THE SCENE On October 5, 2003, ursine enthusiast Timothy Treadwell was mauled to death by the pack of grizzly bears he had been living with in Alaska. Werner Herzog’s acclaimed documentary, by turns funny and chilling, opens with this scene, in which the eccentric Treadwell contemplates his own mortality. EXT. KATMAI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE — DAY Timothy Treadwell is narrating his encounter with two grizzly bears. Timothy: I’m out in the prime cut of the big green. Behind me is Ed and Rowdy, members of an up-and-coming sub-adult gang. They’re challenging everything, including me. Goes with the territory. He jabs his finger into the air. Timothy: If I show weakness, if I retreat, I may be hurt.…