Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i Empire Australasia

WHERE’S HARRY? Upon reading the March issue of Empire, I was delighted to find a whole debate dedicated to the marvellous work of composer extraordinaire John Williams, only to find that no-one mentioned the Harry Potter scores! How these scores could be overlooked baffles me, they are clearly his most incredible, emotion-inducing compositions! I am a huge fan of Star Wars and understand how Williams’ score produces a large sense of nostalgia, and understand why it took out the number one spot, but for Harry Potter to not even be mentioned is shocking. ‘Hedwig’s Theme’ will forever be my number one John Williams composition. ANNIE MCDONALD, VIA EMAIL We played a trick on you, see: if you wave a wand over the list you’ll witness it transform into 10 Potter…

YOU MAY NOT have heard of screenwriter Jac Schaeffer. But with her scripts for Captain Marvel and the planned Black Widow movie, she’s quickly become one of Marvel Studios’ go-to writers. That status was cemented when she was appointed showrunner for the planned Vision And The Scarlet Witch series, expected to be an early title for Disney+, the studio’s upcoming rival to Netflix, in late 2019. So what does Schaeffer’s appointment mean? And what can we expect from this new wave of Marvel-related TV? We’ve heard promises before of integration between Marvel’s TV shows and film, but conflicting production schedules and competing storytelling needs have led to problems. Think the downfall of S.H.I.E.L.D. in Captain America: The Winter Soldier just as TV’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. was finding its groove. Marvel…

“HERE ARE THE all-male nominees,” said Natalie Portman as she presented the winner of the Best Director category at the 2018 Golden Globes. Another year, another series of largely all-male nominees. It’s a tedious and seemingly never-ending cycle that promotes male directors and furthers the (incorrect) narrative that women just didn’t make anything as impressive as male filmmakers. But awards shows are just symptomatic of a much wider problem: it’s really bloody hard for women to get films made. According to a recent study from The Center For the Study Of Women In Television And Film, female directors accounted for just eight per cent of the top 250 domestic films in 2018 — staggeringly, three per cent lower than in 2017. The study also shows that a mere 20 per…

Space Force sounds like some sort of thrilling sci-fi movie. Perhaps starring The Rock. And a load of aliens. Is it? No. But, good idea! In March 2018, US President Donald Trump — possibly making a policy up as he was going along, we can’t be sure — said in a speech: “Maybe we need a new force. We’ll call it the Space Force.” Sounds like he’s seen too many thrilling sci-fi movies. So, this is real? It is — and it’s subsequently inspired a new Netflix TV comedy, which goes by the name of Space Force. “The goal of the new branch is ‘to defend satellites from attack’ and ‘perform other space-related tasks’…or something,” says a brief 2001-esque early teaser. “This is the story of the men and women…

One of the many celebrity presenters at this year’s hostless Oscars was Trevor Noah of Daily Show fame, who introduced Best Picture nominee Black Panther in glorious style. Noah’s remarks included a “great Xhosa phrase” — “Abelungu abazi uba ndiyaxoka” — which Noah claimed meant, “In times like these, we are stronger when we fight together than when we try to fight apart.” The quote received polite applause from the audience in the room. But Noah was actually trolling viewers, while winking to his fellow South Africans. The phrase translates as, “White people don’t know I’m lying.”…

★★★ OUT 25 APRIL / RATED M / 86 MINS DIRECTOR Yen Tan CAST Cory Michael Smith, Virginia Madsen, Michael Chiklis, Jamie Chung AN EXTENSION OF his short film of the same name, writer-director Yen Tan’s 1985 is a restrained family affair that aims high on the dramatic stakes but falls short on the expected emotional wrenching when Adrian Lester (Smith) returns home for Christmas. Having kept his parents (Madsen and Chiklis) and best friend Carly (an excellent Jamie Chung) in the dark about his sexuality, he is now burdened with some devastating news and desperate to rekindle his broken relationships. Heartbreaking but austere, the black and white photography elevates the often staid drama. The tragic inevitability of the disease that defined an era still resonates.…

★★★ OUT NOW ON NETFLIX / 132 MINS DIRECTOR John Lee Hancock CAST Kevin Costner, Woody Harrelson, Kathy Bates THE TRUE STORY of former Texas Rangers Frank Hamer (Costner) and Maney Gault (Harrelson), who came out of retirement to take down Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, John Lee Hancock’s film is the opposite of 1967’s Bonnie And Clyde. Whereas Arthur Penn’s film is fast, freewheeling and gloriously amoral, The Highwaymen is slow, elegiac and alive to the moral complexities. John Fusco’s script lacks narrative momentum, but the two leads are on good form, the filmmaking craft (John Schwartzman’s beautiful lensing, Thomas Newman’s evocative score) is strong, and the sense of men out of their time (Harrelson’s awe at wire-tapping is a peach) but still with something to give is neatly…

When you were approached to play Okoye in Black Panther, what did they tell you about future MCU appearances? Well, I first met with Ryan [Coogler] and that was amazing. To meet him and hear his vision, I got really giddy. I forgot where I parked my car. It was during Black Panther we were approached about Infinity War. That’s when I realised I was part of this amazing universe, beyond the world we created in Wakanda. Did you find your car? I did, ultimately. I might have needed some help. Okoye has already become an iconic character. I love it when people come up to me with their daughters, or when little boys come up to me. When you see kids take to your character, that to me is…

YEARS BEFORE HE WAS HELLBOY David Harbour was a schmuck. And when there were no schmucks available, he’d become a bit-part villain. The dictionary definition of a jobbing actor, he played five different bad guys in Law & Order, a weaselly CIA agent in Quantum Of Solace and a serial killer in A Walk Among The Tombstones. And while friends such as Ethan Hawke and Billy Crudup saw their careers go stratospheric in their twenties, Harbour’s stayed resolutely earthbound. He was making a living, but he wasn’t making a name. “I always thought I’d be ‘that guy in that thing’,” he admits. “I haven’t had the Captain America, Tom Cruise career. I’ve had a career of delving into the psychology of peripheral characters. So in that way I am very…

HE’S NOT EXACTLY sure when, but at some point on or around 24 May 1991, Michael Lehmann received an unexpected phone call. “It was from Warren Beatty,” he recalls. “Saying, basically, ‘Now you know what it’s like.’ He’d been through it.” The “it” that Beatty had been through was Ishtar, one of the biggest critical and commercial failures Hollywood had ever seen. So the reason Beatty was calling Lehmann wasn’t exactly cheerful. Lehmann had just directed his first studio movie, a little Bruce Willis vehicle called Hudson Hawk that gained notoriety during production for going way over budget and falling way behind schedule. And now the finished product was being turned into a cinematic piñata by critics. Audiences would be similarly nonplussed. It made $17 million at the US box…

Chris: When did we first discover De Niro? Ian: I first discovered him in my very early teens, when I discovered Scorsese. Chris: Package deal. Ian: I immediately became obsessed. He is the greatest film actor of all time. Nick: The GOAT. He could play a goat. Terri: It was GoodFellas for me. A VHS tape. It got played over and over again. I really fell in love with girl group music and that whole ’60s vibe. Ian: Did he jump out at you? Terri: Yeah, it’s the calm and calculating menace. Where he’s most terrifying isn’t necessarily when he’s stamping someone to death in front of a jukebox, it’s when he’s staring at someone across a table in a diner. But greatest of all time? Do we not think…

WIN! BUMBLEBEE ON BLU-RAY WAIT, WHAT’S THIS? After years of focussing mostly on Blowing Stuff Up, there’s a character-driven Transformers film that people are really digging? Enter to win one of 10 Blu-rays to see what the robo-fuss is all about. Bumblebee is out on DVD, BD, 4K Ultra HD and digital 3 April. TO ENTER, TELL US WHO YOUR FAVOURITE TRANSFORMER IS, AND WHY. WIN! THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING ON DVD THE TALE OF King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are re-imagined in a modern setting in this ’80s throwback kids action flick from Attack The Block director Joe Cornish. Enter to win one of 10 DVDs. The Kid Who  Would Be King is out now on DVD 24 April. TO ENTER,…

What do you think of London, Matthew? I have started a love letter to London. The first line is: “Forgive me. I had no idea you were in such a good mood.” I’ve been to London many times, but I find it a much more confident place than it used to be. I think it changed after the [2012] Olympics. It’s got a snap to it. It’s a happening place. Heads are up. It’s putting out a good product. It’s got style. It’s sexy. But it’s still traditional. You got the protocols. You got the aristocracy. You’ve got all the hearsay, innuendo and gossip. You have those Shakespearean roots to it. I’m walking everywhere. And the food! The food is tremendous. I’m thoroughly enjoying it. New York was always my…

REBECCA FERGUSON LADY JESSICA A Bene Gesserit witch who defied the order’s breeding programme to bear a son. CHARLOTTE RAMPLING REVEREND MOTHER GAIUS MOHIAM Senior Bene Gesserit and mentor to Jessica. TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET PAUL ATREIDES Dune’s messianic central figure. Called Muad’Dib by the Fremen. ZENDAYA CHANI A fearsome Fremen warrior who catches the eye of Paul Atreides. Daughter of Liet-Kynes. OSCAR ISAAC DUKE LETO ATREIDES Leader of House Atreides and known for being a paragon of virtue. JAVIER BARDEM STILGAR A Fremen leader and Naib (or leader) of Sietch Tabr, a major tribe on the desert planet Arrakis. STELLAN SKARSGÅRD BARON HARKONNEN Ruthless head of House Harkonnen. Torturer, murderer and all-round cad. DAVE BAUTISTA GLOSSU ‘THE BEAST’ RABBAN The sadistic former governor of Dune, known for his brutality. JD DUNE…

★★★ OUT 18 APRIL / RATED M / 97 MINS DIRECTOR Robert Ryan CAST Sister Kate PART PORTRAIT, PART social documentary, and part straight-up marijuana advocacy platform, Breaking Habits takes us into the weird and woozy world of Sister Kate, the head of a Californian self-proclaimed religious order, the Sisters of the Valley, whose calling is the growing and selling of medical marijuana. Kate’s journey is an interesting one – formerly an executive, she turned to cannabis farming when her bigamist husband abandoned her – but the real meat of the film is the argument over the medical and economic benefits of growing weed. Breaking Habits is a dispatch from the front lines of the changing drug culture and while it never goes too deep, it’s fascinating, nonetheless.…

How did you get the role? I came to LA for pilot season, I had the test with Brie and then found out that night. I was at dinner with my friends and my whole team called me and I was like, “I can’t hear anything, but I think it must be good news – what is happening?!” I just fell on the floor and cried. Me and my friends went for a walk and I thought, “Life is changing. Sure.” Then we went to CVS because I realised I needed face wipes and bin liners. Tell us about Maria Rambeau. She’s a fighter pilot and single mother to Monica. Her and Carol Danvers are best friends and Carol’s taken away from her and she doesn’t know how to deal with that,…

JAMES DYER @jamescdyer Evangelical about Aliens and Nuns On The Run. Once had a wee next to Ice Cube. IAN FREER @mrianfreer Loves Jaws and The 400 Blows and Apocalypse Now. Yet to see The Big Lebowski. TERRI WHITE @terri_white Is disappointed in any film that isn’t unrelentingly grim. Apart from La La Land. NICK DE SEMLYEN @nickdesemlyen Loves film noir and Peter Jackson films. Can recite the lyrics to Magic Dance from Labyrinth. BEN TRAVIS @BenSTravis Loves films where young people find themselves thanks to aliens, magic, or pop music. CHRIS HEWITT @chrishewitt Loves horror and Marvel flicks. Freddy vs Tony would be his best movie ever. HELEN O’HARA @helenlohara Likes superheroes. And films about smart people arguing, ideally while falling in love. JOHN NUGENT @mr_nugent Big fan of…

When were you told Nebula was going to survive Thanos’ snap? I probably found out quite early on — before the shooting of the first, maybe, because of scheduling stuff. I was really excited. I definitely want Nebula to have the cathartic experience she deserves with her father. She has a score to settle with Thanos. Unfinished business. If this were your final time playing Nebula, how would you feel? I think I would be really sad to say goodbye. I’ve loved her from the moment I auditioned for her. In the audition it was a scene between her and Gamora that never made it into the first Guardians movie, but it was all about their sibling rivalry and Nebula’s jealousy. She’s evolved from a villain to someone we’ve developed…

How did you feel when you saw Infinity War for the first time? It just shook me. There was a lot of stuff I had not been able to see, and to see it all, the majesty of it, it’s so epic. It really felt almost Biblical in a way. Have you seen any of Endgame? I have. From what I can tell, what’s foremost in the Russos’ minds is really delivering something that is a poetic and beautiful Valentine to a decade of madness. When did you have your last day on the film? Recently. I finished my work and stepped around the corner and my stunt double, Heidi Moneymaker, who’s been with me the whole time, was crying. We just held each other and cried together. There was…

AS WE DRAW closer to the six-part endgame (of Thrones), fan speculation about how it will conclude grows fiercer than a pack of Ramsay Bolton’s hounds. And speculate is all anyone can do, as HBO and showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have succeeded in preventing any major information leaking. Any time anyone has been asked about Season 8, they’ve kept it enticingly vague. Peter Dinklage (Tyrion) has promised us the mother of all battles — we’re guessing that might be a White Walker-tackling showdown at Winterfell. Lena Headey (Cersei) said that at the table read for the final script, “pretty much everybody cried at one point”; her presence there seeming to confirm Queen Cersei makes it to the finale, in which the smart money’s on her brother/former lover Jaime…

Chris: You can break Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career down into three parts. There’s the Arnold The Action Hero part in the ’80s and early ’90s, where he killed everybody on the planet at least twice and became the biggest action star in the world. Then there’s Family-Friendly Arnie, where he made a series of execrable comedies, in which his edges are dulled a little bit. Then he takes the break to… Helen: Be Governor of California, then the world’s eighth-largest economy. Chris: Then he comes back and makes a whole bunch of movies. There’s a more serious side. He’s trying to stretch himself as an actor. Helen: I think that’s fair. There’s a bit of overlap between the first two periods. James: Weirdly, he’s more proud of his comedies than he…

THREE YEARS AFTER The Apartment, the dream team of director Billy Wilder and stars Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine reunited for another dark comedy. It’s a farcial sex comedy about Irma ‘the Sweet’ (MacLaine), a Parisian working girl who strikes up a relationship with an idealistic former cop (Lemmon). Now working as her pimp, he resorts to extreme measures to keep her off the streets. We asked the Hollywood legend — still going strong at 84, having made four films in the last year — to cast her mind back to those days… THE ORIGIN “The first thing [on getting the script], I thought he was going to make a musical, because that’s what [Irma] was on Broadway. I thought, ‘Of course, he wants me because I can do that,’…

RAGING BULL (1980) Ian: “Gaining 27kg to play boxer Jake LaMotta, he turns interest in an actor’s stunt into fascination with a flawed man’s life. Explosive in the ring, yet even more devastating outside it, he gradually reveals a broken soul. Spellbinding.” GOODFELLAS (1990) Terri: “Jimmy Conway is such a complex character. Full of sophistication, with moments of brutality and also great sadness.” THE GODFATHER PART II (1974) Chris: “Imagine having to play a younger version of Brando’s iconic Vito Corleone. Now imagine effortlessly pulling it off.” TAXI DRIVER (1976) Ian: “Travis Bickle is one of De Niro’s most complex creations: charming, uneasy and psychotic. He’d be a meme now.” THE KING OF COMEDY (1982) Chris: “Rupert Pupkin and Travis Bickle have much in common, but couldn’t be more different…

JOHN WICK CHAPTER 3: PARABELLUM Well, the man knows how to make an entrance. There are so many epic shots in this action-heavy trailer. John Wick in the desert! John Wick riding a motorcycle — with swords! John Wick riding a horse — with guns! John Wick running out of bullets — and thus deciding to just wallop his machine gun at a wrong ’un! But for our money, the Peak John Wick moment arrives here, when a faceless henchman attempts to throw a knife at John Wick’s crotch region. John Wick being John Wick, he manages to scoot out of the way just in time for the knife to perch inches away from his particulars, and then throw it back in the guy’s face. There’s an important lesson to…

1 __ This will be Daniel Craig’s fifth and final time in 007’s MI6-issue tux. “I just want to go out on a high note,” Craig said while on The Late Show in 2017, “and I can’t wait.” When the film arrives in 2020, he will be the longest-serving Bond in history, holding the role for 14 years. 2 __ Cary Fukunaga — who took over the directing reins from Danny Boyle in September — has said that he intends to continue the story threads established through the Daniel Craig era. “Bond is on a character arc that started with Casino Royale, and I will be carrying that on,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in November 2018. 3 __ The film reportedly had a working title of ‘Shatterhand’ —…

BY HIS OWN admission, Jonah Hill isn’t a great skateboarder. “Yeah, I suck,” he says. That didn’t stop him. Growing up in the Cheviot Hills district of Los Angeles, he was obsessed. Though never close to Tony Hawk-levels of trickery, the underground world of misfits left him smitten to this day. “It gave me a sense of humour, an ideology, a sense of how I saw the world,” he recalls. “Skateboarding is so butchered in films. I wanted to see it put on screen correctly.” The result is mid90s: a vibrant, authentic coming-of-age drama about a group of dysfunctional teenagers navigating skating and adolescence — and the latest in Hill’s transition from goofy comedy star to Oscar-nominated actor and now indie darling filmmaker. A decade-and-a-half in the business helped this…

★★★★ OUT 4 APRIL / RATED MA15+ / 94 MINS DIRECTOR Melanie Laurent CAST Ben Foster, Elle Fanning IT’S SAFE TO say this wasn’t the Galveston songwriter Jimmy Webb was imagining when he wrote the breezy country anthem of the same name. Melanie Laurent’s vision, based on Nic Pizzolatto’s novel, is of a bleak part of Texas where hitman Roy (Foster) ends up on the run with prostitute Rocky (Fanning) inadvertently in tow. That these two may be each other’s salvation is a familiar trope but the film takes you in directions you might not expect. Laurent, best known outside France as the vengeful Shoshanna in Inglourious Basterds, shows she’s an accomplishment director with her patient pacing and gorgeously framed shots, but it’s the riveting performances from Foster and Fanning…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 124 MINS DIRECTORS Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck CAST Brie Larson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Samuel L. Jackson, Annette Bening PLOT Amnesiac Vers (Larson) is training to fight a war with Kree leader Yon-Rogg (Law). But when she is captured and interrogated by the enemy Skrull Talos (Mendelsohn), she glimpses her past life on Earth as test pilot Carol Danvers. Chasing her captors there, she must save the world with the help of Nick Fury (Jackson). KICKING OFF ON an alien planet with an entirely unfamiliar cast of characters is a bold way to start your big new superhero origin story. But then directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the team behind Mississippi Grind and Half Nelson, don’t pander to audiences. So they set us…

What can you say about Endgame? Nothing! I can say nothing. We could just sit in silence. Maybe we should just talk about Roma. That was a good film, wasn’t it? Yeah! It was. Never heard so many dogs barking in the background in my life. Especially at the end when everyone disappeared. No, wait, that was Infinity War. You’re getting your endings mixed up. So you’re finally in an Avengers movie. What was that experience like? It’s exciting to be a part of the thing, to be a part of something that so many people are interested in and see. It’s compounded by the surreal vibe of the whole thing. I am a part of something that I have watched as a fan. The only thing I’ve ever experienced…

SOMETIMES BAD NEWS doesn’t come via raven. It was early 2010, winter having come and gone, when showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff screened the pilot episode for their new series to a small audience of friends. They waited nervously as an hour of political intrigue, beheadings and incest unspooled. They started feeling sick as the narrative failed to flow, Benioff scrawling on his yellow legal pad the words “MASSIVE PROBLEM”. And then their faces paled to White Walker white, as they heard the confused, less-than-giddy reactions from the audience. Screenwriter Craig Mazin, for one, had a particularly taut note for them: “Change everything.” This could have been the end, as well as the beginning, of HBO’s Game Of Thrones. Instead, Benioff and Weiss scrambled into action, determined to right…

PLAN YOUR ATTACK The two episodes of Game Of Thrones headed by Neil Marshall — Season 2’s ‘Blackwater’ (in which Stannis Baratheon launches a naval assault on King’s Landing) and Season 4’s ‘The Watchers On The Wall’ (in which wildlings attack the towering defences of the Night’s Watch) — are two of the most spectacular and complex hours the show has ever mounted. And so the British director, well-versed in action after helming such films as The Descent and Centurion, made it his priority to figure out a coherent strategy for each army. “In ‘Blackwater’, there was this army of thousands of men on boats, running up a beach and all basically attacking one door,” he remembers. “The first 20 of those might have been able to do something and…

PREDATOR (1987) TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991) James: “Two larger-than-life classics, both equally worthy of The Ranking’s first tie for top spot. Predator is the Arniest movie ever conceived and still manages to be a masterclass in ratcheting tension. T2, meanwhile, is a franchise-subverting, envelope-pushing work of genius. The two directors who knew how to draw the best out of Arnold operating at the top of their games.” THE TERMINATOR (1984) Helen: “It’s ironic that Arnold hit the A-list with a less-is-more performance. He dials everything back and it works brilliantly.” TRUE LIES (1994) Helen: “The peak of Arnold’s self-parody instincts at work, with James Cameron amping up the absurdity to glorious heights.” TOTAL RECALL (1990) Chris: “The sort of subversive, ultra-violent slab of sci-fi that only a megastar could…

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE OUT NOW / RATED PG / 116 MINS By now, we should know never to underestimate Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. The guys behind The Lego Movie and the Jump Street flicks have made a habit of Rumpelstiltskinning the hell out of less-than-promising projects. But nobody saw Into The Spider-Verse coming. Under the guidance of producers Lord and Miller, directors Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti and Rodney Rothman have basically reinvented the animation wheel with this effervescent movie which looks and feels unlike anything studios like Pixar and DreamWorks have sketched over the past two decades. That wouldn’t matter a jot if the story, which focuses on Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a young Afro-Latino who assumes the mantle of Spider-Man and teams up with a nutso group…