Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2024 i Total Film

Twister was a pivotal big-screen experience for me growing up. It was one of the first films - maybe even the first - that I saw at the cinema with friends but no parents present. The VFX might creak a little now, but it still retains that ineffable ‘if I see it on ITV4 while channel-hopping there’s no way I can switch it off’ vibe. It has momentum, palpable peril, and a cast of immensely likeable character actors playing everyday heroes. Yes, the plot amounts to little more than tornadoes of ever-increasing sizes, but there’s wit and a rekindling romance along for the ride. We’ll find out soon if Twisters, a sort of sequel (we’re in the same world, but following a totally new set of characters in the present…

They’re both ruthless women,’ Julia Garner said of her most prominent TV roles, Ozark’s Ruth Langmore and Inventing Anna’s Anna Sorokin. She’s an artist who’s made her name playing tough and ambitious characters that she often disappears into. Now, though, Garner is being recognised for her own growing star power, becoming more than a character actor. She’s had a memorable career on the big screen, too, with her first role being in 2011 drama Martha Marcy May Marlene. More recently, she’s worked with director Kitty Green on both The Assistant and The Royal Hotel. After a well-publicised and apparently gruelling boot camp, Garner also bagged the role of Madonna in the music icon’s self-produced biopic. While that project was ultimately put on hold, even getting the part is a testament…

You talkin’ to me? I am talking to you, after I listen to you, and here’s what a movie nerd I am - I know that everyone says, ‘Oh, that’s Taxi Driver,’ but it’s [inspired by] the movie Shane and Travis Bickle is quoting the dialogue at the bar between Shane and the guy he gets in a fight with. Sorry, I’m a big nerd! Do you have an off switch? I do have an off switch and unfortunately it’s called social media and Twitter. That’s when I kind of disengage from the world and deal with this fake world of electrons. That’s my off switch. Who’s more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him? That’s Ben Kenobi talking to Han Solo [in Star Wars], I think the fool…

‘ANGRY BIRDS JUST DESTROYED US.’ RYAN GOSLING CHALKS UP THE LACK OF A SEQUEL FOR THE NICE GUYS TO BOX-OFFICE PERFORMANCE. ‘You look at some of the best films of the past year - what do they have in common? They’re not from America.’ JESSICA LANGE ON AN INCREASINGLY PROFITDRIVEN US FILM INDUSTRY. $14.5m THE IMPRESSIVE BOX-OFFICE HAUL OF THE PHANTOM MENACE’S GLOBAL RERELEASE. $500m ANIMALS DOING MARTIAL ARTS PROVES TO BE POPULAR, AS KUNG FU PANDA 4 HAS MADE MORE THAN HALF-A-BILLION AT THE BOX OFFICE. ‘AS LONG AS I’M STILL YOUNG ENOUGH TO PLAY IT, I’LL PLAY IT. CHRIS WILL HAVE TO WAIT HIS TURN.’ CHRIS HEMSWORTH WANTS TO PLAY THE LEAD IN A NEW KEVIN COSTNER FILM. COSTNER’S HAVING NONE OF IT. GOOD THING DOUBLE TROUBLE MARTIN…

Q&A How did you react when Lina came to you with this? I said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ Of course, it wasn’t an easy task, really. It’s not like if she came and she said, ‘OK, I’m doing a feature and I want you to play a part.’ Playing myself in a movie, it’s not really something I’m used to. And exposing my life, my family and my intimacy somehow wasn’t something that I was expecting to do. Did making this change your relationship with Lina? Not really, we’re very close. For me, as a mother, I’m really happy because I see that Lina is a confirmed filmmaker with her own style. And I see that she improved, even in the style and the way she’s telling the story,…

GARETH EDWARDS VFX artist Edwards wowed viewers with his $500,000 sci-fi road movie Monsters. Edwards made the film with a crew of five people, and rustled up the otherworldly beasts on his laptop. Its success encouraged Legendary Pictures to hand him $160m for Godzilla. Then came Rogue One. And next up is Jurassic World 4. Only MVP IP for Edwards. MARC WEBB It wasn’t just the surname that led Sony to Marc Webb to handle the reboot of their most precious IP with The Amazing Spider-Man. Webb’s 2009 romcom 500 Days of Summer brimmed with warmth and wit, just what the studio wanted for Peter Parker. And so Webb swung from a $7.5m production to one budgeted somewhere between $200-230m. RYAN COOGLER Costing $900,000 and clearing $17m at the worldwide…

OUT 14 JUNE CINEMAS Imagine if the monkey business at the start of 2001: A Space Odyssey carried on for the whole film. Such is the deal in Sasquatch Sunset, an absurdist comedy by fraternal filmmaking duo David and Nathan Zellner. Only instead of actors in ape suits we have actors in Bigfoot suits, living out a year in the North American wilderness. As the seasons pass, we follow a female Sasquatch (Riley Keough) and three males (Jesse Eisenberg, Nathan Zellner, Christophe ZajacDenek) as they forage, groom, play, tussle and interact with other (real) animals. Boring? Not for a second. The unrecognisable actors work wonders under excellent prosthetics, while an ever-present air of mystery and menace pervades the sun-soaked, scenic visuals of DoP Mike Gioulakis (It Follows, Us). The concept…

OUT 24 MAY CINEMAS Modern-day Pakistan’s patriarchal society is viewed through the lens of psychological horror in this bold and unusual take from first-time writer-director Zarrar Khan. The focus rests on Fariha (Bakhtawar Mazhar) and her daughter Mariam (Ramesha Nawal), with the latter undergoing radical change after a tragic accident befalls her and Asad (Omar Javaid), a fellow student who’s taken a shine to her. Exploring themes of mental breakdown and male oppression, Khan’s film has some shocking moments – an assault in a car in particular – but its increasingly opaque nature frustrates.…

OUT 14 JUNE CINEMAS Award-winning nature-film maestro David Allen turns this leisurely, animal-packed account of Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell’s 20-year rewilding project into a gentle, golden-lit hymn to conservation. Beetles scuttle, Tamworth pigs learn to swim and wild Exmoor ponies crash a polo match, as the Kent couple wrestle their pesticide-drenched failure of a farm in West Sussex into an untamed haven. Limpidly gorgeous rather than engaging, this documentary lacks grabby characters (unlike 2018’s similar The Biggest Little Farm) and needs more jeopardy than a creeping thistle invasion.…

SCREEN OUT NOW CINEMAS Warm and well-intentioned but frankly sappy, John Krasinski’s ode to childhood fantasy centres on Bea (Cailey Fleming), a tween who lost her mother in early childhood and is now bravely facing her father’s upcoming heart surgery. As if that weren’t enough to deal with, quirky characters that apparently only Bea can see (like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s creepy ant-girl Blossom) start making trouble around her. A possible solution arises when grumpy, wisecracking neighbour Cal (Ryan Reynolds) – who shares Bea’s ability – co-opts her into matchmaking the needy IFs (Imaginary Friends) with new kids to replace their grown ones. With its big, bumbling, Monsters, Inc. lookalike Blue (voiced by Steve Carell), IF badly wants to be a live-action Pixar movie, but its creaky, CGI-augmented world-building isn’t smart or…

OUT 31 MAY CINEMAS A supernatural family drama that feels especially resonant given the current turmoil in the Middle East. Muayad Alayan’s thoughtful tale stars Johnny Harris as Michael, a British father who brings his 10-year-old daughter Rebecca (Miley Locke) to West Jerusalem as he looks to make a fresh start following the death of his wife. But when Rebecca encounters the spirit of young girl Rasha (Sheherazade Makhoul Farrell), it’s only the start of the strangeness in a film that folds ghosts and grief into a political story about the seemingly ceaseless Israel-Palestine conflict.…

OUT NOW NETFLIX A s packed with yuks as a Pop-Tart is with fruit-adjacent filling, Jerry Seinfeld’s wacky, pastel-coloured comedy turns the sorta-true story of the 1963 Kellogg’s/Post Foods ‘boxed breakfast pastry’ wars into a hilarious, The Right Stuffstyled battle to be the titan of toaster treats. Taking on the ruthless Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer), wily Kellogg’s marketing exec Bob Cabana (Seinfeld) and freewheeling food tech Donna ‘Stan’ Stankowski (Melissa McCarthy) assemble an eccentric team of Taste Pilots, whose exploding/disgusting/downright creepy inventions splatter the film with sight gags. A knowing twist on the ‘product origin story’ trend that brought us Air, Flamin’ Hot, Blackberry et al, it’s unashamedly a gags-first film, rather than an Anchorman-esque absurdist parody. So the mad rush to see how many jokes, pastiches and celebrity cameos…

OUT NOW CINEMAS 10 JUNE DIGITAL In this award-winning debut by Greek writer/director Spiros Jacovides, a documentary crew gatecrashes the house of Haroula (Eleni Kokkidou) to look for her missing son Panos (Ahilleas Hariskos), a civil servant accused of fraud. The mockumentary format brings a DIY energy to the chronicling of the quest, which is mainly mined for absurdist humour but sprinkled with earnest emotion: Kokkidou switches gears effortlessly. And when Black taxi driver Michalis (Kevin Zans Ansong) joins the search, Jacovides slyly skewers the casual racism that he meets daily.…

SCREEN OUT NOW DIGITAL As the bank threatens foreclosure on the spiritual retreat owned by Edward (Joe Wilkinson) and Helen (Laura Aikman), their parents arrive for a getaway, and various potential buyers descend to purchase the country manor in an auction. Complications and romantic entanglements naturally ensue – no gong bath can cleanse the rampant lust and greed on display – and farcical scenarios arise, like Edward’s father popping Viagra to bed his gold-digging caregiver. One-part Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, two-parts John Cleese/Rowan Atkinson-style Brit-com, and almost entirely flat.…

OUT 3 JUNE DIGITAL Aiming to update David Cronenberg’s 1970s output (Shivers, Rabid) for the COVID-19 generation and – at times – succeeding, writer/director John Rosman’s debut is impressive stuff. Jessica Murdock (Hayley Erin) is a young woman on the run through small-town America; Elsa Gray (Sonya Walger) is a mysterious operative who must find her before her own time runs out. If the reasons for their actions are revealed a little clumsily, the manner in which scenes of thoughtful drama explode into bouts of sudden shrieking body horror will keep you hooked to the end.…

OUT 14 JUNE CINEMAS July Jung’s sombre, penetrating drama puts exploitative corporate practices under the microscope. Its opening hour follows ebullient teenager Sohee (a captivating Kim Si-eun), whose gruelling work placement at a telecom call centre ends in tragedy; the second half shifts focus to a stoic detective (Doona Bae, compellingly understated) investigating the dehumanising conditions that caused it. As a string of blameshifting officials refuse to take responsibility, Jung’s film assumes the quality of a Loachian polemic – its simmering rage eddying into heartbreak for an intensely moving final shot.…

OUT 14 JUNE CINEMAS A curiously cast Stephen Fry and Lena Dunham are father and daughter in writer/director Julia von Heinz’s take on Lily Brett’s book Too Many Men. A road movie of sorts set in 1990s Poland, it sees Fry’s Auschwitz survivor Edek Rothwax and Dunham’s music journo Ruth set out to tour his origins, as well as journey to the notorious concentration camp. Fry’s Polish speaking impresses, but the bickering parent-child dynamic wears thin, while Dunham’s Girls-lite angst-ridden character feels like a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit the story. Result? Alas, a zone of low interest.…

SCREEN 2004 OUT 31 MAY CINEMAS Hogwarts found itself schooled in darker cinematic magic when Alfonso Cuarón took the directing job for year three. Murkier and chillier than the wizard larks of Chris Columbus’ likeable but lighter opening entries, Prisoner takes flight like a reversed Dementor’s kiss, adding soul (and style) to the saga. You know the story: after too much teenage fiddling with his wand at home, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) returns to Hogwarts to find himself haunted by snarling prison escapee Sirius Black (Gary Oldman). It seems Black ratted on Harry’s late parents to Voldemort – but what secrets await in the Shrieking Shack? Oldman brings wild-eyed menace to proceedings, matched by Cuarón’s stormy, noir-ish direction. The outdoor action broods under lowering skies; indoors, skewed angles and creeping…

1996 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Alternate cuts, Commentaries, Featurettes, Booklet Universal Soldier meets Batman (with a dash of the Green Hornet chucked in for good measure) in this hyper-stylised Hong Kong superhero flick about a vigilante who’s impervious to pain. As enjoyable as it is to watch star Jet Li leap around on wires, kicking bad guys in the face, Black Mask’s murky colour grading, breathless editing and over-reliance on skewed camera angles renders most of the action as incoherent as the half-baked story. The Blu-ray boasts four different cuts of the film; shame that there’s not a good one among them.…

1949 OUT NOW 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentaries, Intro, Featurettes, Alt ending, Galleries The subversive heart of Ealing Studios’ output is fully evident in Robert Hamer’s dark masterpiece. Dennis Price shines as the serial killer attempting to murder his way to dukedom, while Alec Guinness showcases several scene-stealing turns playing Price’s eight aristocratic victims. An acerbic and ruthlessly witty delight – one described in the extras by director Whit Stillman (Love & Friendship) as being ‘more of a Wildean sort of film than the actual adaptations of Oscar Wilde plays we occasionally get’.…

1968 OUT NOW 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentaries, Featurettes, Poster, Art cards, and more Celebrating its 56th birthday with a 4K UHD makeover (and plenty of collectable goodies to boot), Sergio Leone’s iconic western has been restored from the original camera negative and personally signed off by Martin Scorsese. Coming after the Clint Eastwood-starring Dollars Trilogy, Once Upon a Time in the West is the summation of Leone’s work in spaghetti westerns. Its loopy plotting (Dario Argento, no friend of logical narratives, worked on the story with Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci) circles some truly bravura set-pieces. So as cold-blooded gunslinger Frank (Henry Fonda), escaped felon Cheyenne (Jason Robards) and taciturn tough guy Harmonica (Charles Bronson) shoot it out for the farmstead of fiery widow Jill (Claudia Cardinale), we get panoramic landscapes,…

CHALLENGERS Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross’ hot streak shows no sign of cooling. For Luca Guadagnino’s sex’n’sports flick, they whip up sweaty techno-house volleys of beats, synths and slamming (tennis) balls, with fleeting breathers. Yeah x10 plays like LCD Soundsystem on centre court, contrasted keenly with the pensive Social Network echoes of L’oeuf. The raved-up Brutalizer lives up to its title, while the hard-driving Match Point’s synth chords sound out the right note of triumph. Played, indeed. THE FALL GUY Post-Godzilla x Kong, Kiss’ I Was Made for Lovin’ You continues its tour of duty in Yungblud’s cover and – intermittently – composer Dominic Lewis’ scoring valentine to 80s action-comedy machismo. Synths, beats, symphonics, Jan Hammer nods and poodle-rock guitars merge in mischief, with everything staying the right side of hollow snark…

ANIMAL WELL OUT NOW PC, PS5, SWITCH Lone developer Billy Basso’s debut is an astonishingly assured adventure in which a tiny creature negotiates a world of danger and wonder, armed with nothing more than a series of child’s toys. Its characterful, intricate subterranean setting doesn’t so much open out as inward, each deep-buried secret you unearth transforming the way you see and explore it. HADES II OUT NOW PC, PS4/5, XBOX ONE/SERIES X/S Released in Early Access form, Supergiant’s successor nevertheless feels more polished and complete than most finished games. This time you’re chthonic nymph Melinoë, whose powerful sorcery gives combat a distinct tempo without disrupting its flow. With a range of new gods and enemies and a more visually diverse underworld, this is masterful sequel-making.…

REBEL WILSON HARPERCOLLINS From formative childhood moments to celebrity encounters, the Bridesmaids/Pitch Perfect star relates her life story with an unsurprisingly high degree of candour - although this UK version redacts the widely reported allegations concerning Grimsby co-star Sacha Baron Cohen. Wilson somewhat over-eggs the rags-to-riches narrative, and some may find her garrulous, hyperbolic writing style a turn-off, but this is nonetheless a fun, fast-paced read.…

Andy Serkis turning up to the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes launch event to conduct a Q&A with the cast was thrilling, but the whole room singing Happy Birthday to him was even more unforgettable. It was a true privilege to speak to Vicky Krieps for her new film The Dead Don’t Hurt. So rare to get an actor so outspoken, so unguarded and so funny. What a star! I had an ace time picking Gremlins director Joe Dante and producer Michael Finnell’s brains about ignoring the rules, putting up with puppets and creating an 80s gem. Gizmo wouldn’t approve! Had a blast chatting about The Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt for the Inside Total Film podcast – and the premiere at the BFI IMAX…

DIRECTOR Richard Linklater STARRING Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Molly Bernard SCREENPLAY Richard Linklater, Glen Powell DISTRIBUTOR Netflix RUNNING TIME 115 mins OUT 24 MAY CINEMAS 7 JUNE NETFLIX Like David Fincher’s The Killer, Hit Man centres on an introspective assassin who likes to narrate his work ethic. Unlike Fincher’s film, Richard Linklater’s romcom-with-guns plays like an update of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (the Brangelina version). Funny, sexy and smart, it only amps further the star wattage of our current cover star Glen Powell, who also co-wrote. Powell plays Gary Johnson, a nebbish New Orleans psychology lecturer who tops up his income with undercover tech work for the NOPD. Divorced Gary, with his ‘perfectly forgettable face’, unremarkable clothes (two words: comfort shoes), birdwatching hobby and car so ordinary…

SCREEN OUT 14 JUNE CINEMAS Adapted from Mark St. Germain’s play, Matthew Brown’s stodgy drama stages a fictionalised meeting between a cancer-stricken Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins) and a young C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode). Shaky accent aside, Hopkins is good value as the cantankerous psychoanalyst, while Goode slips smoothly between self-satisfied and haunted as World War Two’s arrival triggers his own frontline horrors. But Brown stifles the debate with needless flashbacks and asides, and as such, the philosophical sparring lacks a knockout punch.…

OUT 1 JUNE SKY CINEMA, NOW There’s something of Bill Forsyth’s 1980 classic Gregory’s Girl in the charmingly lo-fi visuals, social awkwardness and inherently sweet nature of Julia Jackman’s debut. Set in 2006, it centres on shy, glum George (Joe Anders), whose only passion is music – at least until Max (Samuel Paul Small), the cool son of a pop star, enrols in his year at school. The trajectory is rote, leading up to a climactic end-of-year talent contest, but the leads are charming and there’s a pleasingly, ahem, old-school vibe to the whole affair.…

SCREEN OUT 31 MAY CINEMAS Spanning two continents, three eras and who knows how many genres, this unwieldy sci-fi drama from French auteur Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama) fully commits to its title. Loosely inspired by a 1903 Henry James novella, it stars Léa Seydoux and George MacKay as two people whose paths keep crossing through the ages. In Paris, 1910, she’s a pianist, he’s her suitor; in LA, 2014, she’s an actor/model, he’s her stalker; and in an unspecified location in 2044, she undergoes a mysterious procedure to purify her DNA - the reason, perhaps, for all the time-shifting. In each period there are common elements: pigeons recur, as do clairvoyants, nightclubs, dolls and works of art such as Madame Butterfly. And throughout, Seydoux’s character is terrified of an unspecified disaster:…

OUT 14 JUNE CINEMAS Spirited six-year-old Cléo (Louise Mauroy-Panzani) lives in Paris and worships her Cape Verdean nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego). But the latter has bombshell news for her young charge: she is returning for good to her West African island home. Drawing on her own childhood experiences, French writer/director Marie Amachoukeli delivers a heartfelt melodrama. Hand-crafted animated sequences are deftly incorporated into the rites-of-passage narrative, but what really distinguishes the film is the exceptional Mauroy-Panzani, who vividly conveys the intensity of Cléo’s fluctuating feelings.…

OUT 27 MAY BD, DIGITAL For a documentarian who has tackled Hitchcock (78/52), David Lynch (Lynch/Oz) and William Friedkin (Leap of Faith), the man who gave us James T. Kirk, T.J. Hooker and a spoken-word rendition of Rocket Man might not seem as weighty a subject. But in You Can Call Me Bill, essayist Alexandre O. Philippe magnanimously affords the nonagenarian Shatner the respect he’d grant any cinematic titan. Born in Montreal in 1931, Shatner grew up idolising Laurence Olivier and once fancied himself a Canadian Brando. Life, though, had other ideas, directing the actor down a campier path better suited to his declarative style. Star Trek inevitably features heavily here, with clips including the disquieting sight of Kirk in a Nazi uniform. Yet Philippe appears more intrigued by the…

OUT 14 JUNE CINEMAS We’re a long way from Rick’s café in this grittily atmospheric, Casablanca-set crime movie, written and directed by Moroccan first-time filmmaker Kamal Lazraq. Set over a chaotic 24 hours in the city’s rundown suburbs, this darkly amusing tale follows superstitious petty criminal Hassan (Abdellatif Masstouri) and his adult son Issam (Ayoub Elaid), who have been ordered by a local mobster to dispose of a corpse. Unfolding in a brutal, dog-eat-dog underworld, Hounds runs out of steam in its second half, but there are credible turns from the mainly non-professional cast.…

SCREEN OUT NOW CINEMAS I s there life after Caesar? That’s the question for Wes Ball’s franchise restart, tasked as it is with following one of the strongest fantasy trilogies of recent times, albeit without Andy Serkis’ pivotal character. Set ‘many generations’ after 2017’s War…, KotPotA takes place on an ape-ruled planet that’s largely forgotten Caesar’s teachings. Yet as much as young chimpanzee Noa (Owen Teague) would like to live his life in eagle-rearing ignorance, he can’t prevent the outside world from paying him a visit that ends in catastrophe. The apes have come a long way since 2011’s Rise…, not just in guile, but in the mo-cap used to bring them to life. Yet on the storytelling front, Kingdom is a bit of a regression. Noa’s quest to liberate…

OUT 14 JUNE CINEMAS A bizarre true story from 1880s Chile provides the basis for this eerie fable about an Indigenous teen (Valentina Véliz Caileo) who turns to her island’s secret sect of sorcerers after her father is murdered by a German Christian settler (Sebastian Hülk). Steeped in unsettling atmosphere and Herzogian visuals, Christopher Murray’s film pits native traditions against the violent forces of colonialism to compelling if elusive effect. He’s helped by Leonardo Heiblum’s spooky string-based score and a riveting turn from Caileo that bristles with righteous umbrage.…

OUT 31 MAY MUBI Written, directed, lensed and edited by sibling filmmakers Bill and Turner Ross (2020’s Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets), this road-trip movie sees five high-school leavers from an unnamed Oregon town embark on a spur-of-the-moment 500-mile journey to the Pacific coast. Impressively acted by the entirely non-professional cast, who improvise much of their dialogue, Gasoline Rainbow is marked by unexpected encounters, spontaneous moments of joy and the heartening kindness with which these resilient teenagers treat one another on their epic, intimate travels.…

OUT 7 JUNE PRIME VIDEO T here are two big questions at the centre of this terminally kooky noir, which debuted to a shocking reception at 2023’s Toronto International Film Festival. The first: how has Chris Pine’s directorial debut - which he also stars in, as well as co-writing and producing - ended up such a spectacular folly? The second: how did he rope in such a great cast? Pine plays ‘poolman’ Darren Barrenman (or DB), whose main focus is cleaning the pool in the trailer park where he lives. He also receives Jungian therapy from neighbour Dianne (Annette Bening); the latter and her husband Jack (Danny DeVito) are basically DB’s substitute parents. When DB gets a tip-off about a conspiracy that affects his beloved LA, he turns amateur sleuth…

OUT 31 MAY CINEMAS Not to be confused with 2019’s Lupita Nyong’o zom-com, this Russian-made, English-dubbed animation imagines a world where every home comes with its own invisible do-gooding furball. All bar one: a dilapidated dwelling in the town of Berg whose resident ‘Finn’ is a human-hating curmudgeon. What will happen when a new family arrives and his presence is rumbled by their crime-obsessed 13-year-old daughter? Nothing particularly interesting, alas, in a wholesale knock-off of Pixar tropes that’s hardly worth the two years it took to surface on our shores.…

1999 OUT 7 JUNE CINEMAS As with George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, it’s hard to overstate the impact of the Wachowskis’ cyberpunk sci-fiaction classic. Rereleased in cinemas to mark its 25th anniversary, The Matrix first arrived just as Lucas’ The Phantom Menace was due, stealing some of that much-hyped prequel’s thunder with its mind-frazzling notions of ‘bullet time’ and the Matrix itself, an all-powerful simulation used to pacify humans enslaved by an army of intelligent machines. Blending subcultural conspiracy theories, postmodern philosophy (Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation), Lewis Carroll (‘Tumbling down the rabbit hole…’), and Hong Kong cinema, this was the film that also revitalised Keanu Reeves’ career: he’s pure ‘whoa’ as Neo, the computer programmer-slash-chosen one guided by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) to Morpheus…

1932/42 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Booklet A double bill of father-son tales (mums are either making meals or dead) from Japanese master Ozu, both deceptively simple, understated, warm and wise. The director also brings the LOLs with the silent I Was Born, But…, in which two charming brats struggle with issues of power and status at school and at home. Meanwhile, There Was a Father is bookended by tragedy and heartbreak, yet eschews melodrama as it tracks the tension and affection between a teacher and his only child across the decades.…

1984 OUT 27 MAY 4K UHD 14 JUNE CINEMAS EXTRAS Commentaries, Featurettes, Gallery, Storyboards The odd-numbered films are the weaker ones, so the argument goes; and following up the franchise-best Wrath of Khan (1982) was never going to be easy. With star Leonard Nimoy taking the director’s chair for the first time, the third Trek film sets about undoing the death of Spock via a clash with the Klingons. Forty years on, and remastered in 4K, it’s aged well. A fun, if slight, swashbuckling sci-fi adventure, it coasts affably on the well-oiled interplay between its veteran cast.…

1974 OUT 14 JUNE CINEMAS Setting the (dinner) table for decades of hillbilly horror to come, Tobe Hooper’s subgenre-defining classic still packs a wallop in this 50th-anniversary 4K cinema rerelease. In Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) and Sally (Marilyn Burns) it has, respectively, a boogeyman and final girl for the ages. But what makes it so special is its gonzo atmosphere, cultivating a fetid sense of delirium amid the nerve-shredding whooping and hollering. The sequels and reboots are bloodier, but can’t match the original’s lightning-in-a-bottle lunacy.…

FROM THE MOMENT THEY MET IT WAS MURDER Veteran noir-heads Alain Silver and James Ursini execute a taut history of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944). Kicking off with the true-crime story that inspired James M. Cain’s source novella, the authors then explore how the moviemakers’ tracks converged. Scripter Raymond Chandler receives due attention, alongside Wilder’s journalistic previous and Miklós Rózsa’s fatalist score. Key players’ later careers are also surveyed, but not before the road to a biting game-changer comes to vivid life.…

KELLY KNOX CLAYTON SANDELL TITAN There’s perhaps not too much left to uncover about the Holy Trilogy’s last gasp (J.W. Rinzler’s 2013 Making of remains definitive), but this Hutt-sized hardback offers some fresh context, tracing Jedi’s legacy from 80s Ewok spin-offs through to current shows like The Mandalorian and Andor. A smattering of inserts/ pull-outs/overlays up the fun, and kudos to the picture researchers for digging up some wildly obscure merch: glue sticks, Dijon mustard, dog chow……

IS IT BOLLOCKS? Film Buff investigates the facts behind outlandish movie plots. THIS MONTH BACK TO BLACK Q In Back to Black, Amy Winehouse relapses and dies upon learning that her former lover Blake Fielder-Civil is becoming a father. True or false? A classic case of a biopic tidying facts to aid the dramatic storytelling. In truth, Amy had been dating Reg Traviss (omitted from the film) for a year by this time, and Blake’s baby was actually born in May 2011, two months before Amy died of alcohol poisoning. Similarly, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic has been accused of taking it easy on Amy’s father Mitch: there’s no mention of him turning up with a camera crew to make a Channel 4 documentary during her post-rehab holiday in Saint Lucia in…

ANG LEE 3D DECEMBER 2012 ‘I think 3D makes it seem more like you are together with Pi, especially the ocean part… You literally feel you are there with him. I think that really helped the movie.’ APRIL 2024 ‘3D [is] so bad… The filmmakers are bad. The theatres are bad. The whole ecosystem is bad. It’s not made for [3D]… The theatres are stingy. It’s really dim, you can’t really see it. It’s flickering… People do a poor job, [it] gives you a headache, it’s purely bad. You can’t blame the audience for not liking it because it’s bad.’…

Over the last 10 years Ewan Mitchell’s career has been set on an impressive trajectory. At just 20 he appeared in a main role in The Last Kingdom. He’s worked with acclaimed directors such as Claire Denis (in her English-language debut High Life) and Emerald Fennell (Saltbum). Now, he returns as Aemond Targaryen in Season 2 of House of the Dragon. Is there anything you can tease about Aemond’s character are in Season 2 of House of the Dragon? I don’t think we’ve seen anyone as insidious as Aemond in Westerns. He’s going to play you like a violin, and you’re either with him or against him. You can either be on Rhaenyra’s side or you can stay in one piece. As a child, you went to The Television Workshop…

What’s the first thing you do when you get to set? I put my coffee maker into the trailer, because I’m a bit of a coffee fiend and I like to be able to make my own rather than having to get nasty instant coffee! Do you have on-set superstitions? I don’t, although I like to make it a bit my own. On The Stranger my character had an office and I would get in there and move things where I wanted them, and then the art department would move them all back, and then I’d move them where I want them - so there’s sometimes a bit of a push and pull. But I like to feel like I’ve had my hands on [the props]. Then they don’t become…

Q&A Jax isn’t always easy to like. Was it liberating to not play squeaky clean? Absolutely. Especially as a Native woman. I feel a lot of non-white, non-male actors, when we do get leading roles, they’re too perfect. It’s the model minority – we have the space on screen if we’re an example of our people. So it’s great to show a character that’s doing what needs to be done, with the hand she’s dealt. Killers of the Flower Moon was excellent but this feels like a step forward, to have a director telling a story pertaining to her own culture… Martin Scorsese broke the door down and got people falling in love with a Native woman, then you go into Fancy Dance and every ounce of screen time is…

THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) Famously, it’s a tornado that whisks Dorothy and Toto away from Kansas to the land of Oz. Special effects, er, wizard Arnold Gillespie suspended a 35ft muslin sock from a steel gantry and sprayed it with compressed air while pumping earth and dust at it. TORNADO (1943) You might expect a film entitled Tornado to feature a tornado, but it seems the title is metaphorical at first, as a tale of love, betrayal and grasping greed spins out. But then? A tornado hits the town! The twister was realised by blending special effects with footage of a real tornado in Texas. THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004) Roland Emmerich’s apoco-epic features floods, hail and snow leading to a new Ice Age, but the Master of Disaster…

THE TOTAL FILM INTERVIEW VICKY KRIEPS As Vicky Krieps pops up on video chat, sporting a red jumper and a big smile, Total Film’s eye immediately does a recce around the Berlin-based living room that she shares with her partner and two children. Behind her, a heaving bookshelf, including a copy of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems. It’s unsurprising to find this actor so well read; ever since she came to international attention in Paul Thomas Anderson’s finely stitched 2017 drama Phantom Thread, opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, her choices have been those of someone who cares about good writing, about quality cinema. It’s the end of April, just over a year from when TF last met Krieps at the Berlin Film Festival, when she was premiering the German film Journey into the…

OUT 31 MAY CINEMAS Like E.T. gone wrong, director Kiah Roache-Turner’s underdeveloped but briskly suspenseful arachno-shocker sees a kid with family issues find solace in alien company. Only this spidery E.T. will gobble you up before it phones home… A clever opening sees a chunk of meteorite crash through the window of a New York apartment block, land in a doll’s house and crack open to release spidey. Prone to scuttling through air ducts, pre-teen Charlotte (a likeable Alyla Browne) finds it, feeds it and names it ‘Sting’, after Bilbo’s dagger. But this critter grows fast – and soon uses the air ducts itself to hunt (human) food. Alien’s influence resonates, wittily so when the shadowy environs tease hidden threats. A Ripley/xenomorph-ish congruity is also implied between girl/spider, though as…

OUT NOW DIGITAL A humble coffee table becomes a monument to a family’s downfall in this nihilistic farce by Spanish director Caye Casas (2017’s Killing God). Already going through a rough patch, new parents Jesús (David Pareja) and Maria (Estefanía de los Santos) reach crisis point when they clash over the contentious furniture item in question. The ensuing tragedy is played like a perverse joke, demolishing the boundaries of good taste, then stomping the remnants into a bloody pulp on the rug. A devastatingly cruel comedy of horrors that’s not for the faint-hearted or easily offended.…

OUT 7 JUNE CINEMAS Loosely inspired by the story of late-19th-century bearded lady Clémentine Delait, the second feature by Stéphanie Di Giusto (2016’s The Dancer) is a finely etched drama set in 1870s northern France. It begins as injured ex-soldier-turned-café-owner Abel (Benoît Magimel) meets and marries the younger Rosalie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) – chiefly because her father provides a dowry that’ll help settle his debts to local factory owner Barcelin (Benjamin Biolay). Then Abel discovers that Rosalie, secretly, has hair across her chest and back; appalled, he refuses to consummate their marriage. But things change when she reveals her ability to grow a beard to the café customers, who are soon entranced by this girl and her strawberry-blonde whiskers. Gradually, Abel changes his tune, although there are others in the community,…

OUT NOW ICON FILM CHANNEL 7 JUNE CINEMAS A trio of scampish kids set the all-over-the-place pace for writer/director Weston Razooli’s winningly distinct, if wayward, feature debut. In Wyoming, a poorly mum tasks her three BMX-riding charges to fetch a blueberry pie; in return, they’ll get the TV password so they can play their (ahem, stolen) game. The quest unfolds like an Americana fairy tale, involving witches and a ‘woodsy bastard’ who steals the kids’ speckled egg. The unruly plot stretches patience, but it’s hard to deny Razooli’s Goonies-ish commitment to the kids’ over-excitable POV.…

OUT 27 MAY DVD, BD, DIGITAL The life and good works of Mother Francesca Cabrini, an Italian nun who brought housing and healthcare to the slums of 19th-century New York, are dramatised in a handsomely sepia-toned but rather pious biopic. Director Alejandro Monteverde spends an indulgent two hours eulogising our dogged hero (well played, nonetheless, by Cristiana Dell’Anna) as she battles penury, prejudice and John Lithgow’s heartless mayor. But where Monteverde’s last film Sound of Freedom became a magnet for controversy, this one is more likely to slip under the radar.…

SCREEN OUT 7 JUNE CINEMAS Over a summer weekend in Brussels, two immigrants cross paths. The sensitive Stefan (Stefan Gota) is a construction worker who’s on the brink of returning home to Romania for his holidays. Shuxiu (Liyo Gong), meanwhile, is a Belgian-Chinese botanist who specialises in the study of mosses and lichen. Written and directed by Bas Devos, Here is a delicate and meditative piece of filmmaking. Shot on 16mm and in the boxy Academy ratio, it encourages viewers to dwell upon the Edenic images of the natural world it conjures in bracing contrast to its city views.…

OUT 31 MAY SHUDDER Playing like some unholy mash-up of Eraserhead, Censor and Morph, Robert Morgan’s audacious, disturbing debut sees stopmotion animator Ella (Aisling Franciosi, God’s Creatures) lose her mind as she digs into psyche and soul to complete her new film, in which a puppet girl is stalked by a grotesque manmonster. Soon Ella is sourcing real flesh to fashion her meatpuppet hero, and fantasy bleeds into reality as film and filmwithin-a-film meld. In movies, the creative process is often presented as traumatic; here, it’s psychopathic.…

OUT 24 MAY CINEMAS A sweetly tender Lithuanian love story with a difference, this Sundance favourite sticks to dancer Elena (Greta Grineviciute) and sign-language interpreter Dovydas (Kęstutis Cicenas) like a second skin, as they attempt to combine their big love with a non-typical sexuality. Director Marija Kavtaradze’s romantically grainy shots, complex characters and body-conscious filming style let intense performances from the leads work up a giddy, volatile romance. The leisurely pace sometimes earns Slow its title, yet this is a film that manages to embrace intimacy while avoiding voyeurism.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS 10 JUNE DVD, BD, DIGITAL ‘All Londoners and criminals love a good story,’ says one character in this low-budget, Guy Ritchieknock-off anthology starring lots of small-screen cockneys plus John Hannah and Vicki Michelle (‘Oh, René!’). Written, directed and led with gusto by Michael Head, it follows the comically violent escapades of a southLondon firm. Enjoyment will depend largely on your tolerance for men scrapping and shouting ‘You slag!’, antiquated rhyming slang and the clear limitations of a meagre budget.…

OUT 24 MAY CINEMAS This time-travelling comedy adventure follows three precocious children as they attempt to prevent their parents’ impending divorce. The twist in this lowstakes Groundhog Day is that each reset of the clock follows a different family member, from youngest sibling Taylor (Easton Rocket Sweda) to mum and dad (played, respectively, by Isla Fisher and Greg Kinnear). Like the kids, director Christian Ditter has good intentions, but the repetitive structure soon grates, and the time-travel hook is underutilised. The sickly sweet resolution, meanwhile, makes you wish they hadn’t bothered.…

OUT 27 MAY ARROW ‘Humanity is evil by nature and must atone for its sins,’ says the monstrous psychopomp that escorts the freshly deceased Nathan (Hugo Dillon) to Hell, where he must suffer for eternity. If the episodic structure of Pandemonium (each corpse that litters the underworld possesses a devilish backstory) is misshapen, it’s aptly so, and there’s a real power to the chilled, sulphurous visuals wrought by French filmmaker Quarxx. The creature design rocks, while slivers of sly humour never undercut the commitment to a resoundingly bleak scenario.…

1996 OUT 24 MAY CINEMAS In 2017, Danny Boyle’s Cool Britannia classic, based on Irvine Welsh’s zeitgeist novel, was rereleased into cinemas just ahead of the long-awaited T2 Trainspotting. Back then, revisiting the 1996 movie’s youthful exuberance, albeit peppered with crushing despair, only deepened the midlife crises on display in the belated sequel. Rewatching the OG movie now – it’s again back in multiplexes, this time in 4K – the overwhelming feeling is relief: how we need its energetic swagger, anarchic attitude and scabrous humour in these desperate post-Brexit times. The deal, as you know, is that Edinburgh junkie Renton (Ewan McGregor) is trying to kick skag and choose life. But it’s not easy when your mates are Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), Spud (Ewen Bremner) and the psychotic Begbie…

1994 OUT 14 JUNE CINEMAS Stephan Elliott’s road-trip comedy was a mainstream boundary-breaker for LGBTQ+ representation. It follows two drag queens (Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving) and a transgender woman (Terence Stamp) as they take Priscilla (their tour bus) across the Aussie outback. The scorching desert vistas are beautifully stark, striking an exquisite contrast with the queens’ extravagant frockery. Between rounds of sniping and snazzily choreographed musical numbers, a tale of friendship and acceptance emerges.…

SCREEN 1988 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentary, Documentary, Featurette, Short, Booklet Claire Denis’ exploration of France’s colonial past (Beau Travail, White Material) began with her quasi-autobiographical debut, in which a woman named France (Mireille Perrier) returns to Cameroon to visit the former outpost where she grew up, the only child of the only white family. Denis’ gift for conjuring thick atmosphere and blending the political with the personal is on full display here. This lush BFI Blu treats Chocolat with due reverence: the 4K restoration is approved by Denis, who features strongly in the raft of extras.…

1994 OUT NOW DVD, BD EXTRAS Commentary, Featurettes, Deleted scenes, Gallery, Essay Iain Softley’s (Hackers) directorial debut shifts the focus away from the pre-fame Beatles and onto original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff) and his relationship with photographer Astrid Kirchherr (Sheryl Lee). Unfortunately, despite decent performances – with Ian Hart’s John Lennon completing the central love triangle – there’s not enough dramatic meat on the bones of this story for Backbeat to come together as anything more than an enjoyable support act to the main event of The Beatles themselves.…

CONDIMENT BARBIECUE SAUCE OUT NOW Because the internet (apparently) demanded it, Heinz and Mattel have turned an Insta-tease into a reality with this vegan mayo-with-BBQ sauce. Smoky, beetroot-y and startlingly pink, it’s available in a limited run from Tesco, Ocado and other retailers, so make sure you’re stocked up for summer; you won’t be able to do beach without it. As for Barbie’s box-office frenemy, it’s surely time now to ketch-Opp… Pore over heinztohome.co.uk. COLLECTIBLES TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES TUBBZ OUT TBC MAY Are we heading back to early-90s levels of Turtlemania? A Mutant Mayhem sequel is happening, an R-rated adap has been announced… and perhaps gnarliest of all, our half-shelled heroes have inspired a growing range of cosplaying ducks. New to the collection are supervillain Shredder (rocking armour, blades…

Despite being endlessly compared to Marilyn Monroe during her 1950s heyday, ‘the Siren of Swindon’ was never able to rival her film success or global fame. On home soil, however, the actor born Diana Fluck was embraced as a national treasure. Huw Prall’s biography lists her on-screen credits and off-screen mishaps with commendable fidelity. As prose goes, though, it’s on the clunky side, with an annoying! surfeit! of exclamation marks! pervading multiple chapters.…

GLENN KENNY HARPERCOLLINS How did Howard Hawks’ 30s gangster classic get reborn 50 years later as a violent Miami cocaine saga? With help from its director, writer Oliver Stone and star Michelle Pfeiffer, Kenny’s tome painstakingly relates how Brian De Palma’s 1983 epic became the cult it is today. An eventful shoot that saw Al Pacino hospitalised, a lengthy impasse over its rating and the pic’s subsequent championing by the hip-hop community all feature.…

1 LADY BIRD Saoirse Ronan’s titular teen throws herself out of a moving car to exit an argument with her mum. The vivid pink cast she then wears symbolises her defiance. You can buy posters of the cast inscribed with the legend, ‘What if this is the best version?’ 2 REAR WINDOW Stuck at home, nosy neighbour L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) spies murder. Perhaps. Hard to credit that Cornell Woolrich’s short story only reveals our hero has a broken leg in the last line – the cast screwed onto Stewart’s left leg is arguably the most famous in movies. 3 THE BIG FIX Richard Dreyfuss’ PI hustles with a broken wrist. Repeatedly asked how he did it, he changes the story each time. Viewers learn the truth in the film’s coda, but only…

START TIME Octavia Lenora Spencer was born in 1970 in Montgomery, Alabama, the sixth of seven children. Her theatrical debut came in Joel Schumacher’s A Time to Kill (1996) amid a star-stuffed cast (Bullock, McConaughey, both Sutherlands). Although a blink/miss role - she’s credited as ‘Roark’s nurse’ - the film would be the first of several socially conscious dramas on her CV. (And she also reteamed with Bullock on the latter’s 1998 short Making Sandwiches.) MAID TO SHINE Adapted from Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help (2011) follows Black maids in civil-rights-era Mississippi and their relationships with their white employers. Although a critical and commercial hit, the film has since been heavily criticised – not least by some of the cast – for being a white-saviour narrative which, in the words…