Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2019 i Empire Australasia

JAMES CAMERON’S FIRST two Terminator films both rested upon the shoulders of a powerful female hero. But even the black-clad paramilitary Sarah Connor of T2 couldn’t hope to go punch-for-punch with a Terminator and come out on top. That all changes in Dark Fate, with the arrival of Mackenzie Davis’ Grace. “She’s been specially enhanced to fight Terminators,” explains director Tim Miller. “In the movie’s first big action sequence she’s just beating the living fuck out of him with a sledgehammer. It’s great!” Last seen changing nappies and downing shots in Tully, Mackenzie Davis’ latest role is a million miles from Jason Reitman’s super nanny. As a battle-worn fighter she’s all muscle and menace: a saviour from the future who’s neither human nor Terminator but somewhere in-between. “Mackenzie is fantastic,”…

PETER MAYHEW STARTED his working life as Chewbacca on Friday 9 April 1976. The scene, shot at Elstree Studios, was the infamous Han-Jabba confrontation in Docking Bay 94. It marked a 43-year association that saw Mayhew take an alien sidekick character to the second lead and turn him into a pop culture phenomenon. If you want proof, look at how the word “Wookiee” has proliferated into common usage. That is in large part down to Mayhew’s charisma and performance. Mayhew was a 7’ 2” hospital porter by trade (he juggled his day job and the New Hope shooting schedule), so Chewbacca is arguably an extension of himself, Mayhew imbuing the character with a humanity beneath the yak hair/mohair costume; look at Chewie’s fear in the Death Star corridor, his anguish…

THERE AREN’T TOO many production companies in Hollywood who would take a chance on Casa De Mi Padre (a comedy made entirely in the Spanish language) or Tim And Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (giving the notoriously anarchic Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim complete creative freedom) — and almost none who would have rubberstamped Holmes And Watson (although that’s probably a good thing). Gary Sanchez, the company formed by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay in the wake of Anchorman’s success, was all those things. But it will soon be no more, and McKay and Ferrell are going their separate ways. “It was amicable,” says McKay to Empire. “We both felt it had got pretty big and it was time to start up anew. It’s the best time. And all the producers…

★★★★ OUT 25 JULY RATED M / 130 MINS DIRECTOR Asif Kapadia CAST Diego Maradona PLOT How a poor Argentinian boy became Diego Maradona — one of the greatest and most controversial footballers of the 1980s. It’s a saga with it all: women, drugs, fame and despair. But does it have anything new to add to a story the world knows so well? THE OPENING OF Diego Maradona cuts right to the chase: with a lo-fi set-piece of the footballer driving through Naples the day he signed for the club — the high point of his galloping, giddying rise in the beautiful game. But, as becomes clear: not everything about the game, or those who play it, is beautiful. Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia has established his not-insignificant skill at revealing…

★★★★ OUT NOW / RATED MA15+ /121 MINS DIRECTOR Dexter Fletcher CAST Taron Egerton, Richard Madden, Jamie Bell, Bryce Dallas Howard PLOT While in rehab, a middle-aged Elton John (Egerton) recalls how he went from being a shy boy from Pinner to one of the most popular recording artists in history — via a wild, unmoderated journey of drugs, drink, sex, and music. ROCKETMAN IS A music biopic that doesn’t like to stray from the music biopic formula. It is, first and foremost, the life and times of Elton John. But director Dexter Fletcher has found a fresh, slightly bonkers way to present a familiar blueprint. Yes, we’ve all seen the music biopic where a popstar finds fame and fortune before descending into drink-and-drugs hell. But have we ever seen…

★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Simon Kinberg CAST Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Jessica Chastain PLOT It’s 1992. The X-Men are sent on a space rescue by Presidential decree. During the mission, Jean Grey (Turner) is cosmically imbued with special powers, the ramifications of which soon take a toll on the family of superheroes. BREAK OUT THE hankies, 2019 is the year of sad goodbyes; to the Avengers, the Night Watch, the Skywalkers and to the latest incarnation of X-Men. Taking over from Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman and co in 2011’s X-Men: First Class, the stellar line-up, led by James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence, have had highs (Days Of Future Past) and lows (Apocalypse).…

Shawn Levy (director of the Night At The Museum trilogy and Real Steel): I was a film student when Jerry Maguire came out in 1996. It knocked me out. It had this almost magical blend of humanity, humour and heart that was uniquely alchemical and moving. It’s a cliché to say a great movie will make you laugh and cry, but Jerry Maguire actually did it. And still does it, every time, probably 50-plus viewings later. If you look at it through the lens of 2019, there’s no IP, no branded title, no pre-awareness, no huge idea, really, beyond, “Sports agent has a crisis of the soul and writes a mission statement.” It’s so low-concept, but it’s high art. And that’s the kind of movie we don’t see anymore. I’ve…

WHO IS THE real star of Imitation Of Life, the crowning glory of director Douglas Sirk’s long-misunderstood Hollywood career, Lana Turner’s biggest pay day and for a long time Universal’s highest-grossing film? Turner, who shared top billing with the now mostly forgotten John Gavin (the poor woman’s Rock Hudson) seems the obvious answer. By 1959, however, the 38-year-old Turner was ‘The Sweater Girl’ no longer. At least a decade past her 1940s heyday, she’d been dropped by MGM after a series of flops, and though her career briefly revived with a 1958 Best Actress Oscar nomination for Peyton Place, her personal life was mired in scandal. A matter of months before production began, Turner’s Mafioso boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, was stabbed to death by her 14-year-old daughter, and the ensuing media…

“TO ME, THEY got away,” says Callie Khouri, reminiscing about a light-blue Ford T-Bird soaring in slow motion over the Grand Canyon, one of popular cinema’s most radical farewells. Yearning to write a screenplay, one night Khouri pulled into her Nashville drive and thought, “Two women go on a crime spree.” In a flash, she could “feel” their story: what led to a freewheeling trip across the desert states; who Thelma and her best friend Louise were at the start and who they were at the end; the central theme of liberation a road movie offered. “The other thing is,” she recalls, “I had the image of the car flying into the Grand Canyon. So I knew that was where it was going.” A Ridley Scott-scale budget gave them Geena…

RICKY GERVAIS: “That scene in The Godfather, when Michael Corleone says, ‘Who says we can’t kill a cop?’ It’s the twist that he was the civilian, he was the good boy of the family but he has to save the family now. That gave me an adrenaline rush the first time I saw it.” INT. CORLEONE FAMILY COMPOUND — DAY Following another attempt on Vito Corleone’s life, the Corleone family have gathered. Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sonny Corleone (James Caan) are having an argument, while Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), Clemenza (Richard Castellano) and Tessio (Abe Vigoda) look on. TOM: I found out about this Captain McCluskey, who broke Mike’s jaw. SONNY: What about him? TOM: Now he’s definitely on Sollozzo’s payroll, and for big money. McCluskey has agreed to…

IN THE LATEST trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home (out 1 July), Nick Fury casually drops a bombshell: new pal/ potential villain Mysterio has come from another dimension. And while much of what Mysterio claims should be taken with a rather large pinch of salt, it seems to confirm a longstanding rumour: the MCU now exists in a multiverse. A long-established feature of Marvel comics, the ramifications for the MCU are huge, and far-reaching. Infinite universes mean infinite possibilities; nothing is off the table. So what is on the table, then? SPIDER-WOMAN — AND MORE! The thing about multiverses, as illustrated neatly by Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, is that it gives you options. What if Gwen Stacy were bitten instead of Peter Parker? Or Aunt May? (Aka — seriously —…

TALLY THE LONG, long list of viewer grievances that greeted the final season of Game Of Thrones and you enter a dense, discursive forest, thick with heated arguments about hereditary madness, the plausible accuracy of giant crossbows and the best trench-digging strategy when facing a horde of undead soldiers. All fair enough. But the thing that most frustrated me in this run happened during an episode 2 scene within the wallsof Winterfell. Missandei catches a look of prejudiced revulsion from some begrimed Westerosi natives. She voices her feelings of hurt alienation to Grey Worm. And his response? To racist smallfolk who were insinuating that he, Missandei, the Dothraki and all the other non-white people who had crossed the Narrow Sea beneath Daenerys’ banners should, essentially, go back where they came…

WITH LAST YEAR’S Hereditary, debut feature director Ari Aster made one of the darkest horror movies of the decade. Family secrets, that decapitation scene, and visuals that rarely let light in made for a film of extreme, oppressive dread. For his second film, Aster is again trying to redefine horror. And making life really, really hard for himself in the process. Midsommar takes place entirely in daylight, the natural enemy of horror. Set in a sun-drenched Swedish village, the film follows Florence Pugh’s Dani, a young woman “at a very difficult time in her life,” Aster says. “She’s clinging to a relationship that’s on its last legs [with a boyfriend played by Will Poulter].” Joining him at a festival in the village, the couple’s romantic problems become the least of…

IT’S AN IDEA JOHN KRASINSKI HAD FROM THE START Nobody expected a sequel to A Quiet Place — least of all its writer-director-star, John Krasinski. But then it became the sleeper horror hit of 2018, earning $340 million worldwide against a reported $17 million budget. “I have my idea for [a sequel],” Krasinski told Empire on the film’s set, back in 2017, way before its success. The idea, he says, was spurred by forward-thinking execs at the studio. “I never wrote it to be anything with a sequel — and then the studio and the producers talk to you about it. I have a really good idea for how to do it, but growing up with really level-headed parents, I was brought up to be really thankful for what you…

★★★★ OUT 18 JULY RATED G / 793 MINS DIRECTOR Todd Douglas Miller CAST Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins PLOT Crafted from a freshly discovered treasure trove of 65mm footage and more than 11,000 hours of audio, Apollo 11 documents man’s greatest adventure: the mission to put a man on the moon. APOLLO 11 SHOULD be compulsory viewing for the wackadoodles who think that Danny Torrance’s rocket ship jumper in The Shining is proof positive that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landings. Drawn from thousands of hours of never-seen-before 65mm film shot fly-on-the-wall style, telling the Apollo 11 mission story from sunrise on launch day to splashdown, Todd Douglas Miller’s enthralling film is as engaging and gripping as any Tom Hanks-produced documentary or Damien Chazelle drama. “Experiential” and “immersive”…

★★★ OUT 18 JULY RATED M / 127 MINS DIRECTOR Ralph Fiennes CAST Oleg Ivenko, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Ralph Fiennes PLOT After lowly beginnings being born on a train in Siberia, Rudolf Nureyev (Ivenko) rises to be the virtuoso star of Russia’s Kirov Ballet. Never one to play by the rules, in 1961, on a groundbreaking tour of Paris, he makes the decision to seek political asylum in the west at Le Bourget airport. RALPH FIENNES’ THIRD film as a director is his most ambitious to date. After Shakespearean update Coriolanus and Charles Dickens love story The Invisible Woman, The White Crow explores more recent history — ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev’s defection to the West in 1961 — yet mixes it up in a crosscutting of timelines, life decisions, visual textures…

ROCKETMAN IS everywhere. Elton John’s songs are perennial, but this film seems like perfect timing, hot on the three-inch heels of Queen’s silver-screen success. There were reports of people — actual British people — dancing in the aisles at Bohemian Rhapsody screenings, as if they’d been infected by some sort of good mood virus. Anyone voicing concerns about the film’s dramatic shortcomings was faced with, “But the MUSIC!” Those songs sounded great in cinemas, great enough to iron out any kinks. And for its final 15 minutes, Bohemian Rhapsody gave up the ghost completely, forgetting it was a film at all and just wallowing in its own meticulous replication of Live Aid. For many, that was more than enough. They were having such a good time. Having a ball. Bagging…

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is your favourite film. But what is your favourite shot from it? ABIGAIL TANNER That’s easy. During the three-way bullring showdown at the end, the music builds to the giant orchestra crescendo, and when it gets to the first big explosion of the theme there’s a wide shot of the bullring. After you’ve seen all the little shots of the guys getting into position, you suddenly see the whole wideness of the bullring and all the graves around them. It’s my favourite shot in the movie, but I’ll even say it’s my favourite cut in the history of movies. What inspired Drexl Spivey [Gary Oldman] in True Romance? DANNY WELCH Well, I wrote Drexl for myself to play. Because I didn’t think it…

SUCH IS THE ALMOST unlimited power of Netflix, they’ve transported Empire back to July, 1985. We’re strolling round the Starcourt, a newly built mall in middle America. Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ is pumping out of the speakers, Back To The Future, Cocoon and Fletch are playing at the multiplex cinema, boomboxes line the shelves of the Radio Shack store, there’s a Jazzercise outlet above the food court, and a bunch of little kids are exploiting the free sample offer at the Scoops Ahoy ice-cream parlour, much to the annoyance of the older teens who work there. School’s most definitely out for summer. In the middle of this retina-scorching whirl of neon and strip-lighting is a teenage girl with a drop of blood at her nostril. This is, of course, the fictional…

AS I SAT in the packed auditorium, with my family and my partner Jason to one side, and my co-writer Katie Silberman to the other, I could barely breathe. I was having an out-of-body experience. The movie playing on screen sounded slightly out of sync. The theatre we were in — the Paramount at SXSW — wasn’t designed for films: the seats start 50 feet back from the screen and aren’t stadium-tiered. There was a slight delay in the audio that was driving me insane. Why? It was my film. In the place I had always dreamed of for premiering my debut. I almost stopped the screening three times, but somehow forced myself not to move. And of course, literally no-one else noticed. Instead, I watched 1,100 people cheer for…

He is, after all, the actor who has menaced us all for years as slithery sorcerer Voldemort — not to mention as Schindler’s List’s Amon Goeth, one of theatre’s best Richard IIIs and, er, Holmes & Watson’s Moriarty. So much so, in fact, that when he arrives for his Empire photoshoot and I stand up to shake hands, I manage to awkwardly drop my voice recorder. Bending down while still shaking my hand, he retrieves the fallen object and passes it back. Considerately, he doesn’t even laugh. It turns out that the real Ralph Fiennes is not quite so scary. THE PROSPECT OF MEETING RALPH FIENNES IS AN INTIMIDATING ONE. Empire meets Fiennes near the National Theatre in London, where he’s currently appearing opposite Sophie Okonedo in an acclaimed version…

ANY ACTOR’S CAREER can be boiled down to a few moments; those times when a scene is elevated or transformed by the choices they make. With over 250 credits to his name, Ron Perlman has more moments than most to choose from, but we still managed to whittle it down to six, and asked him to talk us through them. THE NAME OF THE ROSE (1986) Wrongly condemned to burn at the stake, Perlman’s hunchback, Salvatore, bursts into a lullaby, ‘Ninna Nanna Sette E Venti’… “That is me singing. When we were rehearsing lighting the fire, Jean-Jacques Annaud was describing how the fire would come up. I said, ‘Wouldn’t I blow on it? It’s a bright, shiny object.’ Then somebody came up with that lullaby, which is a real lullaby,…

OVER A MORE than 50-year career, Sam Elliott has shown himself capable of adding humanity, depth and (when the occasion requires) a big, bristling moustache to any role, from Road House (1989) to The Big Lebowski (1998). Recently he’s having a killer second, or possibly even third, act, getting a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his heartbreaking turn in last year’s A Star Is Born. And now there’s his latest film, The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot, which may sound like an exploitation monster movie but is actually a thoughtful and rather melancholy character study about a guy who, er, admittedly does slay the Führer and the Sasquatch. We asked the man with the best voice in Hollywood to narrate his own life for a change...…

I wanted to say thank you to Eloise for politely and articulately responding to Daniel (‘Don’t Drop The Politics’ in ‘Comment’, Empire June issue). I had to give up after several drafts of unpublishable expletive-riddled angry-ness. I absolutely love the inane, but I think there’d be few in the business of making film who didn’t want us arguing about their creations beyond the technical. If they have ‘human’ players they are political – the word comes from ‘polis’ = city / ‘polites’ = citizen: if it’s about us, it’s political. If someone doesn’t say something that pisses me off each and every month I feel ripped off – keep it up... sometimes you actually change my mind. ANN STUHT, VIA EMAIL Thanks for your articulate response, Ann (although we kinda…

DIRECTOR MICHAEL DOWSE grew up watching, and loving, action comedies. To him, the genre never got better than 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon or Midnight Run: movies which were “steeped in realism” and which punched hard before delivering their punchlines. “They weren’t initially comedies,” says the Canadian filmmaker behind scrappy ice-hockey comedy Goon, “but then they would put a comedy person in it and it would become an action comedy.” Now, with Stuber, Dowse hopes to bring the genre roaring into the 21st century. It stars Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick) as Stu, a Los Angeles Uber driver whose car is commandeered by rogue über-cop Vic (Dave Bautista). Vic’s just found out his partner’s killer (The Raid’s Iko Uwais) is in town, but is recovering from laser eye-surgery and can’t see…

THAT PRIMROSE hair, the highlight in her eyes, that satin complexion, the honeyed vocals. Doris Day seemed to be the definition of Hollywood’s soft beauty and utopianism. Such optimism had its downside, of course. It portrayed a mostly white, straight world (though Day doesn’t seem to have been wholly heterosexual) which looks dated now. Day’s films, such as On Moonlit Bay (1951), I’ll See You In My Dreams (1951), Calamity Jane (1953) and Young At Heart (1954), seem like classic Eisenhower conformism; the Black Panthers and Jane Fonda killed all that, didn’t they, and with it Day’s world? I wonder. When she died I tweeted that she meant as much to me growing up as Paul Weller or David Bowie. I wanted to compare her to men, angry, creative, androgynous…

SARFRAZ MANZOOR WROTE a memoir about his Bruce Springsteen-obsessed childhood in Luton in the UK; a memoir he then adapted for the big screen. The resulting film, Blinded By The Light, was a smash at Sundance in April, landing the biggest deal of the festival. Here he writes exclusively on the biggest surprises along the way. 1 __ THINGS WILL MOVE VERY SLOWLY — AND THEN VERY FAST My memoir, Greetings From Bury Park, was published in 2007. I always hoped that my story — of being a working-class British Pakistani teenager from Luton, whose life is transformed by the music of Bruce Springsteen — might have the potential to make a movie, but it wasn’t until 2010, when I met Springsteen and he told me how much he loved…

DON’T WORRY ABOUT EXPECTATIONS “There was a period where the book was ubiquitous. I was aware definitely of [people’s expectations], and you feel a responsibility. Having come from a much smaller [adaptation] with Brooklyn, you get a glimpse of that. But when you start actually doing it, and carry what you loved about the story with you, you get too busy to worry about it. You just think: get on and tell the story.” GIVE IT A CINEMATIC STRUCTURE “The first big decision was to not follow the structure of the book — to not be linear, which allowed us an entrance to a more cinematic storytelling form. The past and the present sit on top of each other a lot more than they perhaps do in the book. That…

★★★★ OUT NOW RATED G / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Josh Cooley CAST Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Madeleine McGraw, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, Joan Cusack PLOT Woody (Tom Hanks) is struggling to adjust to his new position in Bonnie’s toybox. He’s no longer in charge, and is getting left in the cupboard with increasing regularity. But when Bonnie creates her own toy, Forky (Tony Hale), Woody finds new purpose: teach the confused newborn the ways of toys. One that is complicated when, during a road-trip, the pair get separated from the rest of the gang. FOURTH INSTALMENTS HAVE never been easy. The likes of Rocky IV and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home are easily outnumbered by such fourquel farragoes as Superman: The…

★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 115 MINS DIRECTOR F. Gary Gray CAST Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson PLOT Newly recruited Agent M (Tessa Thompson) is seconded to MIB’s London office and partnered with swaggering hotshot Agent H (Chris Hemsworth). But when an alien VIP is assassinated and a superweapon stolen, the pair must face the fact that there’s a mole among the MIB. LANDING IN 1997, Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men In Black landed amidst the second wave of UFOlogy. An affectionate wink at conspiracy paranoia stoked by The X-Files and early dial-up internet, it proved both dapper and disarming; funny, with a sinister edge. But zeitgeist-y as it undoubtedly was, MIB’s masterstroke lay with the unexpected chemistry of its leading men. Will Smith’s wisecracking Agent J and…

★★★★★ OUT 11 JULY / 102 MINS / RATED MA15+ DIRECTOR Olivia Wilde CAST Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein, Billie Lourd, Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte, Jason Sudeikis PLOT The day before graduation, straight-A students Molly (Feldstein) and Amy (Dever) realise they could have spent more time partying than studying — while still getting into impressive colleges. With less than 24 hours to change things, they embark on one first, and last, wild high-school night to remember. IN 2019, ‘HAVING fun’ involves a crucial mission to make sure the entire world sees you having fun. Shy students make sure cool kids can take notice, and it’s a truly euphoric thrill to experience this anxiety deployed with so much joy in Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart. Faking it sometimes works, as shy pre-teen Kayla learns…

★★★★ AMAZON PRIME VIDEO OUT NOW / RATED MA15+ EPS VIEWED 1-6 (OF 6) SHOWRUNNER Neil Gaiman CAST David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Adria Arjona, Miranda Richardson, Michael McKean, Jack Whitehall, Jon Hamm, Frances McDormand PLOT After becoming accustomed to their life on Earth, angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and demon Crowley (David Tennant) team up to stop the arrival of the Antichrist and the coming of Armageddon. RESIDING ON THE shelf labelled “potentially unfilmable” for years since its publication, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s cult apocalyptic comedy tome was perhaps always going to be best served by the boosted running time of a TV series and the deep pockets of a streaming service such as its final home with Amazon. After all, people such as Terry Gilliam had tried to turn…

The residence resides on a hushed, leafy street in Central Los Angeles. South is the New Beverly movie theatre, which tonight is playing a bloody double bill of Near Dark and Jennifer’s Body. North is the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, where two days earlier Lucy Liu planted her fingers in cement. Both are exciting places to be. Neither, however, compares to what’s going on inside this house. It’s fair to say, in fact, that of all the many, many cool locations in the sprawling mass of LA, this very ordinary-looking domicile is, in early May 2019, the absolute coolest. There are clues. Like the small group of people beavering away at complicated-looking equipment, mellow music playing softly in the background. Or the whiteboard crammed with technical codes (“LFOP”, “KEM CHECK”,…

THE FIRST ENCOUNTER I met him during the Toronto Film Festival at a panel we were on together about violence in the movies of the ’90s, (even though it was only 1992) where we defended our films Reservoir Dogs and El Mariachi. Looking back, I can see that Quentin was always Quentin. He was hilarious and raw and super-confident on the panel and yet incredibly gracious and friendly and supportive to all the other filmmakers who already looked up to him. He was making kick-ass vital work, and we all knew Reservoir Dogs already showed the force that he would become. He and I hung out afterwards and he attended my screening of El Mariachi and I attended Reservoir Dogs. He laughed so much during El Mariachi, that during the…

THE ‘SET’ OF JON FAVREAU’S Lion King couldn’t be less impressive. It’s a big, black room in a dull building in Playa Vista, California. It looks like somewhere more likely to host a zumba class than a zebra herd. Yet within this room exist acres of African land: lush jungles, scorching desert, a big rock from which a baboon dangles a baby. We just can’t see it yet. It’s December 2017. Favreau is remaking one of the most famous animated movies ever and using mad technology to do so. In this room exists a ‘virtual world’ in which Favreau is directing his movie. He pops on VR specs and he’s inside a computer-generated world where he can set up any shot he can imagine. He’ll use no on-screen actors nor…

00:00:36 STATEMENT OF INTENT __ If you thought Adam McKay’s Vice, a biopic of former US Vice President Dick Cheney, would be “traditional, by-the-numbers [and] dusty”, that’s ruled out with the opening disclaimer, which declares Cheney is a shadowy figure, “but we did our fucking best”. “I wanted to show that this is an unusual story,” says McKay. “There were areas of Cheney’s life where we had to go, ‘We don’t know this part!’” 00:22:06 DISBELIEF SYSTEM __ “That proved to be a fairly controversial scene here in the States,” says McKay of a young Cheney (Christian Bale) asking his new boss, Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), “What do we believe?” The response is a howl of laughter. “If you look at Rumsfeld’s career, God bless you if you can find…

STAN & OLLIE is, more often than not, about Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy when they were being themselves, in the twilight of their career as they toured the UK, rather than the lauded Laurel & Hardy. But that doesn’t mean that director Jon S. Baird shied away from showing exactly why the duo became (and remain) the most beloved comedy double act this side of Hale And Pace. The film is packed with nods to, riffs on, and even extensive recreations of, some of their best-known routines. THE HOSPITAL SEQUENCE Taken from a short film called County Hospital, Baird included this sequence, in which Stan visits an incapacitated Ollie and proceeds to drive him mad with nothing more than a hard-boiled egg, “because on their stage tours they used…