Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2019 i Empire Australasia

“A FOURTH FILM is never easy,” admits producer Walter Parkes. In the late ’90s, Parkes, along with his partner Laurie MacDonald, bought the film rights to a then obscure, out-of-print comic-book series about exquisitely well-dressed secret agents working for an extraterrestrial police force. Three Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones-starring Men In Black films later, the franchise’s future seemed unclear; at one point, a perplexing crossover with 21 Jump Street was proposed. “We gave it a shot,” says Parkes of the abandoned project. “It turned out to be an impossible match-up.” So they went back to the intergalactic drawing board, starting afresh with a spin-off, and began hunting for a new duo to slip into those iconic black-and-white suits. “These are buddy comedies,” explains Parkes. “The rapport and energy and comic timing…

CIVIL WAR! At the end of Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning Gladiator, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) is killed. Where could the now-greenlit sequel go? Despite what the original implies, Rome does not become a republic. “There’s no real republican feeling in the 2nd century,” says historian Dr Benet Salway, of University College London. What follows is a power struggle and the so-called ‘Year Of The Five Emperors’. “When Commodus gets stabbed in the back, there is no obvious successor. It’s very unstable for a year. Then there’s a more long-term civil war which lasts for three years.” GLADIATORIAL COMBAT! It’s not unreasonable to expect gladiators in a film with the working title of ‘Gladiator 2’. This is not historically inaccurate. “Games go on being held in the Colosseum until the early 4th century,”…

JAMES CAMERON REVEALED recently he was only hours away from purchasing the rights to Jurassic Park before Steven Spielberg beat him to the punch. Promising a much “nastier” take, here is what his version might have looked like. We imagine... THE GREATEST SHOWMAN John Hammond (Arnold Schwarzenegger), the billionaire entrepreneur behind Jurassic Park, starts the movie naked, asking passers-by, “I need your white suit, hat and cane.” THE BADASS BOTANIST Ellie Sattler would have played a much more upfront role in the action, Laura Dern going through months of physical prep for the role. Her big moment sees her take down T-Rex with an almighty, “Get away, you bitch.” THE SET-PIECE A middle-of-the-movie set-piece would have seen a CG thing riding on the back of another CG thing. The Pterodactyl…

HE CAN HANDLE A BIG ENSEMBLE Suicide Squad’s premise hinges on a dysfunctional group dynamic, which the film struggled to capture. James Gunn’s Guardians Of The Galaxy had no such problem. Gunn took joy in the interplay between wise-crackers like Star-Lord and sarcasm-deficient brawlers like Drax, allowing room for the chemistry to fizz; even minor characters such as Kraglin and Rhomann Dey were allowed dimensions and arcs. Gunn is more than capable of not including forgettable also-rans that burdened the original Suicide Squad. (Remember Slipknot?) HE UNDERSTANDS MORAL AMBIGUITY What sets Suicide Squad apart from other super-teams is that they categorically aren’t heroes: they’re murderous villains, forced into a job they don’t want to do. Though not quite as bad, the Guardians were still a band of thieves and mercenaries…

★★★ OUT 7 FEBRUARY RATED M / 120 MINS DIRECTOR Mimi Leder CAST Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justin Theroux, Kathy Bates, Sam Waterston PLOT It’s 1956 and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Jones) is one of nine women in a class of 500 law students at Harvard, and faces discrimination despite her stellar brain. But she eventually finds her path: challenging sexist laws across the US. BEFORE US SUPREME Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg became a feminist hero and internet meme (as ‘the Notorious RBG’), she was an unlikely revolutionary. She never looked like a rebel, but as an an early female student at Harvard Law School, the lawyer-to-be, played here by Felicity Jones, unflinchingly stood up to a world hostile to her mere presence. Eventually, her quiet determination to forge her…

★★★ EPISODES WATCHED: ALL / NETFLIX OUT NOW SHOWRUNNER Steve Lightfoot CAST Jon Bernthal, Ben Barnes, Amber Rose Revah, Giorgia Whigham, Josh Stewart PLOT Frank Castle (Bernthal) is crossing the US when he rescues a teenager (Whigham) being hunted by killers. Meanwhile, Billy Russo (Barnes) is in a coma, after a beating from Frank, and Agent Madani (Revah) is worried what he’ll say when he wakes up. THERE IS A character who dominates our screens despite barely existing in real life. Outwardly gruff, he hides a big heart under his all-American work wear, with a particular soft spot for imperilled women and children. His masculinity is undeniable, but toxic only to bad guys and himself because his tragic backstory has made him relatable. From Wolverine to The Equaliser to TV’s Supernatural,…

“WHEN ARE WE MAKING THAT sequel, motherfucker?” Samuel L. Jackson is not backwards about coming forwards. No shrinking violet, he. So, if he’s keen to make a sequel to a movie — let’s call it Unbreakable — and there’s no sign of that sequel after many years, and then he happens to drive past the director of that movie — let’s call him M. Night Shyamalan — on a studio lot, he’s going to wind down his car window and bring up the subject. In the way only Samuel L. Jackson can. “That happened twice,” laughs Shyamalan. “Literally at a light in Los Angeles, same thing again. He rolls down the window. ‘When we making that film, motherFUCKER?’” It was a damn good question. When it came out in 2000,…

PAUL SCHRADER’S FIRST Reformed is boldly, beautifully batshit. Reverend Ernst Toller, loyally trudging on at his tiny, mostly empty First Reformed church, might well be a distant cousin of Schrader’s own Travis Bickle, consumed with existential malaise, tipped over the edge after meeting a man nihilistically obsessed with climate change. The film is infused with doom, darkly hilarious in its extremities. And as Toller, Ethan Hawke radiates utter conviction, revelling in the madness. Hawke is magic here. For the most part, in line with Schrader’s style this time, he is patient, still, focused — yet a man possessed. There’s a moment where he is being offensively aggressed by somebody, and the look in his eyes could kill you. And when he flips, it is joyous. Hawke…

THERE’S A LINE of thought that to win a Best Supporting acting Oscar you need one standout scene and no bad ones. In Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, Regina King’s standout scene is a humdinger. As Sharon Rivers, the mother of Tish (KiKi Layne), she confronts the woman whose accusation of rape has seen her daughter’s fiancé, Fonny, thrown behind bars, pleading with her to reconsider. It’s an astonishing emotional exchange between Sharon and the victim (Emily Rios), King managing to express both anger and empathy. And the result has been a flurry of nominations and awards (including a Golden Globe in early January) for King, hitherto best known for playing the loquacious Shalika in Boyz N The Hood and supportive spouse Marcee in…

OUT 13 FEBRUARY RATED M / 134 MINS PLOT Before they met Freddie Mercury (Malek), Brian May (Lee) and Roger Taylor (Hardy) had a band nobody cared about. With Mercury they became one of the biggest bands in history. As Queen grows ever larger, Mercury becomes its star, but fame is not always as fun as he’d hoped. FOR ALL ITS behind-the-scenes drama and scandal, with original director Bryan Singer removed from the production (although still credited) and replaced by Dexter Fletcher very far into filming, Bohemian Rhapsody is a safe, competent, decidedly non-scandalous biopic. It treats the life of Freddie Mercury with cautious affection, happy to play within the rules when depicting a man who did anything but. This is the story of Queen more than it is of…

ONE OF THE most significant movies of 2018 was also one of the most fun. Crazy Rich Asians, based on Kevin Kwan’s bestseller, was the first major Hollywood movie with an all-Asian main cast in a quarter of a century. It was as important a cultural milestone as Black Panther or Wonder Woman, further pushing open the doors for a more diverse Hollywood. It was also an absolute hoot. A global box-office haul of $238 million came from audiences enjoying the best romantic comedy in years. Sequels are inevitably in the offing (the book is the first of a trilogy). As the film arrives in living rooms across the country, director Jon M. Chu reflects on the struggles and joys of making movie history. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s…

THE PREDATOR FRANCHISE has Shane Black bookends: he met an early end in the 1987 original as potty-mouthed soldier Hawkins, but 31 years later Black returned to direct The Predator, the latest attempt to make the dreadlocked dread-dealer relevant for a new generation. But what of the movies in-between? As a welcome break from pushing too many pencils, I’m about to find out... 8.30AM: PREDATOR (1987) Start the day with a testosterone breakfast: the original Predator is a goddamn sexual tyrannosaur of a movie. One of those rare ramshackle sci-fis where the low budget and the challenging conditions work in its favour, John McTiernan’s rumble in the jungle is raw, rough and easily the manliest film ever made. Arnie’s dialogue is hyagh-ly quotable, the Silvestri score…

TWENTY-ONE YEARS after GoodFellas came roaring into our lives, Martin Scorsese reflected that he’d always seen the film as “being a kind of attack”. Speaking with film historian Richard Schickel, he elaborated: “I wanted to seduce everybody into the movie and into the style. And then just take them apart with it. I guess I wanted to make a kind of angry gesture.” There is no moment in the film that feels more like “an attack” than the violent demise of poor young Mob bar boy Spider (Michael Imperioli). One which, like much of Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi’s adaptation of former Lucchese family associate Henry Hill’s memoir, was based on a real event. Having been shot in the foot a week earlier by pint-sized loose cannon Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci),…

“I JUST DIDN’T want it to look like a bad Doctor Who episode.” These are the sage words of West Australian director Grant Sputore, a man laser-focussed on creating one of the most credible big-screen robots yet - along with the help of the practical effects wizards at WETA Workshop - for his feature film directorial debut, I Am Mother. “I always wanted to realise Mother practically as a love letter to the science fiction films I grew up watching like Alien, Predator and RoboCop,” says Sputore down the line from Adelaide where the film was shot and the busy filmmaker is putting the final touches on the movie. “I knew having a practical robot for our actors to respond to would be so much better than using something digital.”…

STEPHEN MERCHANT KNOWS what Empire is going to ask before we ask it. Namely, how did he — a 6’ 7” comedian from Bristol, best known for The Office and Extras — wind up directing Fighting With My Family, a movie about the multi-billion-dollar WWE wrestling franchise? “It started with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, as all good things do,” explains Merchant. So, something good came out of 2010’s Tooth Fairy, then: as well as pictures of The Rock in a tutu, a friendship between the megastar and Merchant. When a 2012 Channel 4 documentary aired called The Wrestlers: Fighting With My Family, Johnson saw it and decided to shepherd it to the screen. He picked Merchant as his director, and enlisted him to watch the documentary, too. “I sat down…

US , JORDAN PEELE’S second movie after Get Out, looks perhaps even more disturbing than his first. It sees a family of four, headed by Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke, being harassed by four intruders. Those intruders turn out to be hellish doubles of each member of the family. They are effectively being hunted by themselves. Peele tells us how he created his terrifying new treat. THE IDEA THAT SPARKED IT ALL The idea for Us came to Peele when he began “to follow the thread of ‘we are our own worst enemy’.” Who he exactly means by “we” — everyone? Americans? African Americans? — he doesn’t want to specify. “The movie itself is answering that question. I can’t say it’s not specifically about race, but I don’t want…

BEGINNING AS WORLD War II ends, The Aftermath is the tale of a country and people shattered. Centred on a British officer and his wife, who are placed in Hamburg as part of a mission to restore a defeated Germany, it sees them as two corners of a love triangle with a German citizen in whose house they live. The film’s director and cast talk us through the key characters. RACHAEL MORGAN KEIRA KNIGHTLEY Rachael has very little control over her own life. During World War II she lost her only son. Desperately longing for connection and feeling like a stranger to her own husband, Rachael falls into a potentially disastrous relationship with Stefan. “Rachael’s not some ingénue,” says director James Kent. “She has a wisdom from all she’s gone…

IT ALL BEGAN so well. Netflix’s much-heralded collaboration with Marvel kicked off with Daredevil, a triumphantly dark and satisfying reboot of a character ill-served by the big screen. The line-up that followed — especially Jessica Jones and Luke Cage — somewhat balanced the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s focus on white male leads. But with the news this week that Daredevil follows Iron Fist and Luke Cage into cancellation, it’s clear that the partnership of the two giants was not destiny after all, and that — with the onset of Disney’s own streaming service — we’re entering a new era of entrenchment in the streaming wars. Admittedly, the shows didn’t always deliver. Most seasons were too long, with a noticeably weaker second half. The first seven episodes of Luke Cage, for example,…

★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 129 MINS DIRECTOR M. Night Shyamalan STARS Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, James McAvoy, Sarah Paulson PLOT Super-powered beings David Dunn (Willis), who’s been keeping Philadelphia safe as ‘The Overseer’, and Kevin Wendell Crumb (McAvoy), who’s been doing the opposite, are arrested and sent to a psychiatric hospital. There they meet the wheelchair-bound Mr Glass (Jackson). AT THE VERY end of his last film, 2016’s Split, M. Night Shyamalan pulled off a twist that made his previous ones look like gentle curves. Revealing that multi-personality serial killer Kevin Wendell Crumb (McAvoy) exists in the same universe as Unbreakable’s David Dunn (Willis), it was the equivalent of Ripley turning up at the end of Avatar or Vera Drake teaming up with Mr Turner. Gasp-inducing, yes,…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED PG / 132 MINS DIRECTOR Joe Cornish CAST Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Dean Chaumoo, Tom Taylor, Rhianna Dorris, Angus Imrie, Patrick Stewart, Rebecca Ferguson PLOT Alex (Serkis) thinks he’s got his hands full with homework. Then he gets said hands on Excalibur. Cue a quest to stop a witch (Ferguson) from getting medieval on the entire United Kingdom. “STRANGE WOMEN LYIN’ in ponds distributin’ swords,” pronounces a character in Monty Python And The Holy Grail, “is no basis for a system of government.” Evidence also suggests it’s not much of a basis for successful filmmaking. There have been a few great movies inspired by Arthurean lore, including Excalibur and Holy Grail itself, but more often than not it’s led to ponderous misfires such as the recent Guy…

THERE ARE MANY words to describe the rise of Taika Waititi, the Kiwi writer/director/actor/fashion icon/quadruple threat. Taikarific, while apt, is technically not a word, so we’ll plump instead for “stratospheric”. When Empire was born in 1989, Waititi was still at school. He didn’t make his first film until 2007, with the sensitive lo-fi rom-com Eagle Vs Shark, then followed that up in 2010 with the warm and winning Boy. But things have accelerated since then, with the one-two punch of 2014’s vampire comedy What We Do In The Shadows and 2016’s funny/daft/tragic/profound Hunt For The Wilderpeople (Empire’s film of the year back then, folks), showing that here was a rare and prodigious talent. They put him on Marvel’s radar, and he promptly made Thor: Ragnarok, a studio movie that managed…

ADAM McKAY IS at the midpoint of what he calls his ‘What The Fuck Is Going On Trilogy’. He didn’t intend to even start a trilogy, but the world kept presenting reasons to ask what the fuck was going on, so he felt compelled to try to in some way answer his own questions. It all began with 2015’s The Big Short, which asked what the fuck was going on with the global financial markets and the economy. His interrogation won him an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. His new film, Vice, asks what the fuck has been going on with the US government for the past couple of decades. His answer to that could well win him this year’s Oscar for Best Picture. If there is a type of…

BARRY JENKINS FIRST heard he’d been nominated for an Oscar after stepping out of the shower in a hotel room in Amsterdam. “Moonlight was the number-one film in the Netherlands,” he laughs. “A film by a black dude from the projects about a black gay dude in the projects was number one, which was insane.” On Oscar-nomination morning (afternoon in Amsterdam), he wanted to avoid the hoopla and asked his publicist to slip notes under the door with the news, good or bad. When he came to face the music dripping wet, he found eight paper slips on the wooden hotel room floor — Moonlight had been nominated in every category it was eligible for. The subsequent events of 26 February 2017 became the biggest in Oscar history. Jenkins recalls…

It’s 10am and he spares no detail, describing the “late ’40s, early ’50s sedan” he stole in a small town, and now he’s hiding in a house from the cops, and he wishes he’d covered the car in branches, and now the car has turned into a horse, and he wishes he’d brought the horse inside the house. “Do you know dreams?” he asks me. “What does that mean?” I don’t know what the hell it means. This sets the tone. Mortensen enthusiastically spins stories, jumping about; Ali carefully considers each thought before uttering it. They met two years ago on the awards circuit, culminating with the 2017 Oscars, where Mortensen was nominated for Best Actor, for Captain Fantastic, and Ali for Best Supporting Actor, for Moonlight (he won). They’re…

CANDYMAN IS RARELY mentioned in the same breath as the great screen monsters of the ’80s and ’90s: the Freddys, the Jasons and the Pinheads. He should be. Bernard Rose’s adaptation of Clive Barker’s short story, about a woman (Virginia Madsen) who becomes a target for a spectral urban legend (Tony Todd) who can be summoned by saying his name five times into a mirror, is haunting, lyrical, and more relevant than ever. We spoke to Madsen and Todd about their Candyman experiences. THE CASTING Madsen wasn’t Rose’s first choice to play Helen Lyle, the University Of Chicago grad student who falls foul of Tony Todd’s hook-handed killer in the 1993 horror classic. Rose had written the role for his then-wife, Alexandra Pigg, and had cast Madsen as…

STEVE PEMBERTON: “One of my absolute favourites is the Danny Boy sequence in Miller’s Crossing . I remember seeing that in the cinema at Notting Hill Gate and being open-mouthed at the beauty of it, the audacity of it, the use of music. That’s been a big influence on me. I love allowing a piece of music to score something. That sequence, which is wordless, is perfect. It fits the song from start to finish. It puts a smile on my face, just thinking about it.” INT. LEO’S HOUSE — NIGHT Through billowing curtains, we track across a room as two things play out on the soundtrack: ‘Danny Boy’, by Frank Patterson, and the sounds of a violent struggle. We come to rest on the body of…

Great Empirical scribes, I notice that your January edition features many glowing reviews. Specifically, three movies earned five stars, 14 scored four, seven earned three and only one scored a mere two stars, which makes me wonder: are movies getting better? Are you guys especially favourable toward movies because they’re your pride and passion? Is it simply a good month for movie releases, or a combination of all factors? Now I wonder whether movies will become even better in years to come, and will five stars be enough? Perhaps Empire will be the first to break the five-star ceiling and ascend to six, seven, 10 or googolplex stars. Take it and run with it, I say. RAY MILCZARSKI, HAMILTON, VIC December and January are always cracking months for film on…

IT’S THE REAL STORY For many people, Arthur Penn’s classic 1967 film Bonnie And Clyde, with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the impossibly beautiful outlaws, is the definitive take on the story. But what about the people who caught them? The Highwaymen focuses on Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger who tracked and ultimately killed the Barrow Gang; the film’s director, John Lee Hancock, considers it “a different lens” from the Penn movie, which depicted Hamer as something of a bumbling idiot. (Hamer’s widow would later sue the studio for defamation, settling out of court.) The Highwaymen, Hancock hopes, is something of a cinematic redemption. “This is Frank Hamer, front and centre,” he says. “I’m from Texas originally. The lore of the Texas Rangers is huge there. And he’s probably…

What did you know about van Gogh before taking this role? I think I knew as much about van Gogh as the average person. I do love painting. My understanding, I would say, compared to now, was limited. When I was a young man and starting to form ideas about art in general and visual art in particular, he was very much in my mind. And then of course he’s kind of the poster boy for the tortured artist, and when you’re a young man that’s a very attractive thing. Have you learned a lot from this experience of playing him? I think so. I mean, to learn a lot is to tempt the devil and brag! But yes — making this movie changed how I look at things; visually,…

“I WROTE A part for this girl who’s ginger and angry and chaotic but she pulls herself together when she sings,” says BAFTA-winning TV writer Nicole Taylor (Three Girls) of her debut film script, Wild Rose. “I really thought it might be quite difficult to find somebody who can do that. Then I heard Jessie’s voice. From that moment on I was like, away you go. She’s just pure.” That’s Jessie Buckley, the rising star lately acclaimed for her role in Beast and — happily for Taylor — someone who Wild Rose director Tom Harper immediately thought of, having worked with her on TV’s War & Peace. Buckley had the pipes — she came second in the BBC musical competition I’d Do Anything before starting her acting career proper —…

ERIC IDLE What one thing do you do better than anyone else you know? Put up with having to take the dogs out for a shit. What’s your favourite word in the English language? I’d say “sillographer”. It’s a satirist. But I do also like “Daddy”. I always liked being called Daddy. It was always good fun. When were you last naked outdoors? Well, every day. ’Cause I swim naked. Why? What’s the point of putting on pants to get wet? I don’t shower in my underwear! You have to keep guests and people away, obviously, and I try not to frighten the dogs, but it’s one of the nicest things I think there is. What’s your earliest memory? I have to say a Mickey Mouse gas mask, which they…

★★★★★ OUT 14 FEBRUARY RATED TBC / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Barry Jenkins CAST KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King, Colman Domingo, Michael Beach PLOT Alonzo ‘Fonny’ Hunt (James) has been jailed for a crime he did not commit, and his girlfriend Clementine ‘Tish’ Rivers (Layne) works to get him freed before their baby is born. Her parents and his father rally around to support them and clear his name. TWO YEARS AGO, Barry Jenkins won Best Picture at the Oscars for Moonlight, a devastatingly emotional look at identity, deprivation and the search for connection that binds us all. For his follow-up, Jenkins returned to a project he’s been trying to make for years, an adaptation of James Baldwin’s passionate depiction of love and loss in 1970’s Harlem. The result is…

★★★ OUT 7 FEB / 111 MINS RATED MA15+ DIRECTOR Yann Demange CAST Richie Merritt, Bel Powley, Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Jason Leigh PLOT The based-on-fact story of Detroit teenager Richard Wershe Jr (Merritt), aka ‘White Boy Rick’, who became a drug dealer and FBI informant, much to the concern of his small-time arms dealing dad (McConaughey). RICHARD WERSHE JR is the very embodiment of the phrase “too much too young”. As the facts of his rather crazy, real-life case aren’t widely known, we won’t go into the full details; suffice to say, the kid known as White Boy Rick didn’t so much come of age as headlong crash into it. It’s a fascinating story — high-school drop-out joins a Detroit drug gang and informs on them for the FBI —…

★★★★ OUT 21 FEBRUARY RATED TBC / 97 MINS DIRECTOR Jon S. Baird CAST John C. Reilly, Steve Coogan, Shirley Henderson, Nina Arianda, Danny Huston, Rufus Jones PLOT In 1953, Laurel (Coogan) and Hardy (Reilly) are past their prime but embark on a tour of the UK, only to play to near-empty houses. Has the world forgotten them or can they regain their affection once more? JON S. BAIRD’S last movie, 2013’s Filth, was a wild fit of directorial excess, throwing rattling editing, disturbing fantasy sequences and cross-dressing animated pigs at a madly sleazy story that demanded more more MORE. One might think he’d gone soft in following up with a biopic of Laurel and Hardy, the most wholesome double-act in cinema history. Instead Baird shows he’s a director who…

★★★ OUT 7 FEBRUARY RATED TBC / 121 MINS DIRECTOR Nadine Labaki CAST Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw Sedra Isram, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole PLOT In a Lebanese courtroom Zain (Zain Al Rafeea), a Syrian child refugee, already imprisoned for assault, petitions the judge to sue his parents. For what, exactly? “For giving me life!”. As the hearing unfolds, the boy’s tragic past is revealed. FOR HER THIRD feature directorial outing, Lebanese actor turned director Nadine Labaki (Caramel, Where Do We Go Now?) brings us a film that is part neorealist drama, part broad allegory. Yes, it details in often harrowing detail the hardscrabble life of young refugee Zain, forced to eke out a living on the unforgiving streets of Beirut, but it’s also clear that the kid is supposed to…

POLITICS AND CINEMA can be a commercially risky mix. As Samuel Goldwyn supposedly once said, “If you have a message, call Western Union.” Besides, which studio is going to risk alienating a significant proportion of its potential audience by daring to take a stance on an issue? Especially the biggest political issue of all, one that’s currently looming over America — the world, in fact — like an angry monster baby. Adam McKay’s Vice is suffused with Trumpian overtones, but two year’s into the current administration, we’ve so far only had one widely released film that tackles the 45th President head-on. And that movie flopped. Fahrenheit 11/9 should have been agitprop-doc master Michael Moore’s crowning glory. Trump is, after all, the blue-collar crusader’s ideal nemesis. Moore’s film is scattershot and…

OF THE MANY standout moments in Yorgos Lanthimos’ 18th century-set comic-drama The Favourite, its tour de force is the film’s simplest shot. For an agonising length of time, the camera stays fixed solely on Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne as she watches her political advisor/ lover Lady Sarah [Rachel Weisz] energetically dancing with a man. Joy turns to sadness and then grief, Colman’s expressions shifting in such a way that it becomes hard to keep watching. The scene is a microcosm of Anne’s ever-changing temperament — everything on the surface, all of the time — and Colman’s performance (which has already won her the Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy) is staggering. She is riotous and devastating, playing a fragile, selfish, spoiled character with various physical…

THIRTY-TWO YEARS after he demanded the finest wines available to humanity in Withnail And I, Richard E. Grant is back on the sauce. In Can You Ever Forgive Me?, an adaptation of the tragicomic memoir by Lee Israel, Grant plays Jack Hock, the hedonistic, hard-drinking foil to Melissa McCarthy’s misanthropic literary forger. Funny, sad and full of humanity, it’s Grant’s best role in years, and one that has put him in serious awards consideration, for the first time in his career. The boozy parallels with Withnail, Grant’s debut film role, are obvious, but as he explains, there’s much more to Jack than that. The first major nomination you got was for the Golden Globes. Did you do anything to celebrate? Yes — I levitated. [Laughs] I couldn’t believe it! I’ve…

00:03:50 SETTING THE SCENE __ Bart Layton’s account of a real-life college-heist-gone-wrong starts with cryptic shots of its four anti-heroes preparing for the deed by donning old-age make-up. Meanwhile, Layton layers this with voiceover from the boys’ real parents. “That does two things,” he says. “It makes you think there’s something weighty coming down the line, and we’re going to set up the backstory.” 00:09:07 MEET WARREN LIPKA __ When we see the real Warren Lipka, suddenly it’s clear how he persuaded three sensible students to go along with his crazy plan. “The first time I met Warren, I could see he had a few daft tattoos,” says Layton. “He got up to go to the loo… so my DP, Eric Wilson, rolled the camera. When he came back, I…

EVERYBODY INVOLVED IN making Who Framed Roger Rabbit should have given up long before cameras rolled or brush met paint. All the effort could not possibly be worth it. As a filmmaking challenge, Roger Rabbit is up there with some of the most lunatic in history, as mad as Cleopatra, Waterworld or Avatar. As Robert Watts, one of Roger Rabbit’s producers, once said, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit is an epic movie. Not because we’re going to have an army of 15,000 people and blow up an entire village in one shot, but because we’re trying to have an animated rabbit pick up a crumb.” Getting that crumb between those yellow-gloved fingers took the work of many hundreds of people (there were 300 animators alone), and required such a complex shoot…

A HORROR FAN since he was knee-high to a Leatherface, director Corin Hardy has spent a lifetime figuring out how to scare people. Recently, he’s begun to put those ideas into practice, first with his haunting low-budget debut, The Hallow, and last year’s The Nun, in which Bonnie Aarons’ demon wanders around an ancient convent scaring the bejesus out of anyone unfortunate enough to get in her way. Here’s Hardy’s guide to making audiences watch a film betwixt their fingers. MIX IT UP Although you might think that The Nun has more jump scares than a vampire on a trampoline, Hardy says that’s not the case. “I’m not a great jump scare fan,” he admits. “One of my favourite scares in The Nun isn’t a jump scare. It’s when a…