Empire UK - September 2016

ISSUE 327

EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOKS WONDER WOMAN KONG: K SKULL ISLAND

SEPTEMBER 2016 suicide squad • the 50 greatest villains • bridget jones’s baby • wonder woman

ON SET FANTASTIC BEASTS

“You’re the first of the official death squads to whom we’ve been formally introduced. How do you do?”

THE SICKEST, F O IN K S E H T R E BURROW UND E W ! IN OK MOVIE EVER EMBER 2016 £4.5050 $10.99 O S E -B V L IC E M S O R C U O N Y U F SEPT USLY STRAP MOST RIDICULO

USD

PLUS THE 50 GREATEST VILLAINS OF ALL TIME

© 2016 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX.

Nick de Se

mlyen, horrifying in a Suicide Squad goon mas k.

THIS MONTH AT EMPIRE

and Helen O’Hara Tilda Swinton at hanging out Glastonbury.

WELL, WHAT A month it’s been in the UK.

We’ve had Brexit, a new Prime Minister, something approaching a complete revolt in the Labour Party (Jeremy Corbyn was still leader as we went to press) and some truly frightening divisions cracking the country open with consequences that have shocked most people, on either side nd, ma of the political divide. And, maybe a little tangentially, it got me thinking about why I love actually why I think we all love film. At film. And, nd, actually, A its best, it can offer up two seemingly contradictory things: first, a mirror to what is going on in our society. Which you would hope at least gives fuel to movies from those voices currently underrepresented or disaffected in our culture. And secondly, secondly escapism: a leap down the rabbit hole into a place that resembles a world so very different than the one you occupy. Sometimes that refuge can feel essential — I know it has for me in my life. But, actually, at its very best it does something much more fundamental: it unifies us. When you’re sitting in the cinema with 200 other people, the thing that joins every single one of you is that you’ve laid down your hardearned cash to spend a couple of hours in the clutches of the movie unfolding on the screen. A And whether it’s realism, escapism or a shared experience, we are entering the greatest period for movies so far this year: Doctor Strange, Rogue One, I, Daniel Blake, A Monster Calls, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, The Greasy Strangler angler (Google it) and this month, Suicide uicide Squad. Squad We broke the first look at the squad (and Joker) in our December issue last year and the response from you lot was incredible. It’s fair to say we were excited, too. Now it’s finally here and promises to be as brilliantly bonkers and downright fun as we imagined. In it, David A Ayer has pushed the limits of the comic-book movie right to its edges. Fancy a trip down the rabbit hole? Let’s go, then.

Dan Jo lin says ye to th e office after 12 years. Banan as aloft !

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es Dye r, S Peg imo ga n nd itt d Ch o th sal ris ute eV pos ulc an t-p odc ast .

’s Illustrator Jock bespoke type for our Suicide Squad feature.

TERRI WHITE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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ILLUSTRATION: DAVID MAHONEY

Hew

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SUICIDE SQUAD The cast endure psychological breakdown, cigarette burns and Jared Leto at his most Method. Let’s hope the result is sufficiently #SquadGoals to be worth the pain.

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THE JOKER What’s murderous, green-haired and read all over? This history of the Joker! Thank you, try the veal, don’t forget to tip your waitress.

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THE 50 GREATEST MOVIE VILLAINS We asked the stars behind cinema’s most terrifying bad guys to vote for the best villains ever. Their answers will terrify you! Or so we assume; we were too scared to read them.

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BRIDGET JONES’S BABY Pages: six, vg. Glasses of wine: none; because, pregnancy. Boyfriends: two, bit excessive. Returning star & director: excellent.

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NOEL CLARKE After Kidulthood, idulthood, Adulthood and now Br Brotherhood hood,, Noel Clarke’s next trilogy: Unlikelihood, Neighbourhood, Knighthood.

Clockwise from left: Tom Hiddleston is weary; The Ghostbusters are back!

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ALIENS James Cameron’s pitch for Aliens (he added an ‘S’) is the stuff of legend, yet when we pitched ‘The Revenants’ everyone laughed at us.

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MICHAEL KEATON He was Batman. He was Birdman. He’s about to play Vulture. And he is plagued by owls. Bet Michael Keaton’s favourite band is Wings.

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FIRST LOOK: KONG: SKULL ISLAND Funny how they never find lost worlds full of giant gorillas and terrifying dinosaurs on islands the shape of, say, puppies.

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FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM These fantastic beasts seem like a lot of work. What if you jus just want to find average beasts? Where can they be found, wizard-folk?

SAUSAGE PARTY Also known as every big-budget movie made between 1949 and 2009, am I right ladies? (Wait, this one is about actual sausages? Huh.)

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SEPTEMBER 2016

STAR TREK BEYOND Its full name is ‘Star Trek Beyond, the rim of the star-light / My love, is wandr’ing in star-flight.’ (Yes, those are the lyrics to the original theme.)

POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING Empire: Never stopping, always reviewing. GHOSTBUSTERS Will the internet haters be vindicated? No.

STRANGER ER THINGS Come on, we all know Winona Ryder has seen stranger things. She was in Beetlejuice.

THE EMPIRE E VIEWING GUIDE: HIGH-RISE Tom Hiddleston opens a second section of the magazine, this time with his clothes off. Stop cheering, Taylor Swift! STORY OF THE SHOT: ATONEMENT Joe Wright explains why he drove his Steadicam operator through a war zone, and why there was a Ferris wheel in the middle of it.

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ALAN ARKIN ON ARKIN Rejected headlines: Larkin’ With Arkin. Arkin The Covenant. Little Mr Sunshine. Catch-22... Minutes With Arkin. Argo On.

SPINE LINE ANSWERS ISSUE 326: “WELL, CAN’T HE JUST BEAM UP?” IS FROM E.T. TH T E EXTRA-T T TE TE ERR E TRIAL T . RRES SUBSCRIBERS’ COVER: “I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THIS BEAMING STUFF. F. IS IT SAFE?” IS FROM SPACEBALLS. F E EBALLS.

Jared Leto is the Joker;

AND

WITH

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RALPH ROONEY CHARLIZE MATTHEW THERON FIENNES MARA MCCONAUGHEY

BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. BE EPIC. IN CINEMAS SEPTEMBER www.KuboMovie.co.uk

#KuboMovie

Editors Editor-In-Chief Terri White

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Simon Braund, Angie Errigo, Ian Freer, Will Lawrence, Ian Nathan, Kim Newman, David Parkinson, Nev Pierce, Adam Smith, Damon Wise

CONTRIBUTORS Deputy Editor Jonathan Pile 020 7295 6722

PLUMBING THE DEPTHS Regarding “Marriage is buying a house for someone you hate” from The Nice Guys in The Quote Quota. Funny line. Even funnier in the Aussie comedy Kenny back in 2006. Kenny the plumber (Shane Jacobson) talking about marriage: “Cut out the middleman. Find someone you hate and buy them a house.” david t taylor, via email

I Shane Black a fan of the Antipodean pipe-master, or is this purely Is a coincidence? Jury’s out, but this has reminded us to fix the office toilet. Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend. Valid for one year at 23 Picturehouse Cinemas across the UK, including the brand-new Picturehouse Central in London’s West End, each membership comes pre-loaded with four free tickets, and gets you access to priority booking and exclusive discounts on everything in the cinema. When you write to us, please ensure you include your full contact details so we can arrange delivery of your prize.

Art Creative Director Chris Lupton 020 7859 8642 Photographic Director Debi Berry 020 7208 3705 Designer Olly Gibbs 020 7295 8595 Junior Designer Ally Wybrew 020 7295 8570

dreams lover

“LAST WEEK I SAW A CUFFED PLISSKEN WALK A CORRIDOR ON SCREEN AS CARPENTER PERFORMED THE ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK THEME LIVE. IT WAS THE COOLEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN.” Julian brayson

Sali Hughes’ article on couples having clashing tastes in films reminds me of an item in Empire where you asked reviewers to pick a favourite. I still tell friends about Angie Errigo’s uncompromising reason for choosing Field Of Dreams: “I could never love a man who didn’t like this film.” Jeremy perkins, via email

Fun fact: Angie actually lives in Fenway Park stadium!

words Associate Editor (Features) Dan Jolin 020 7520 6439 Associate Editor (News) Nick de Semlyen 020 7295 5437 Associate Editor (Re.View) Chris Hewitt 020 7295 5354 Editor-At-Large Helen O’Hara

MISSION STATEMENT I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Man On A Mission’, about Steven Seagal’s On Deadly Ground. It brought back memories of stumbling into Jerusalem’s G&G Cinema years ago. Three things remain with me: 1) Michael Caine’s bad hair 2) Seeing Hebrew subtitles, the language of the Biblical patriarchs, spelling out profanities in English and 3) Billy Bob Thornton asking one of his co-henchmen if he prefers the retractable stock on his weapon in or out and saying, “When it’s out I feel like a pussy, you know what I’m saying? And when it’s in, it just feels meaner.” Words to live by. Jim long, arkansas

A classic bit of firearm-based philosophy. Still doesn’t beat, “Now I have a machine gun. Ho-ho-ho.”

WITH @GHOSTBUSTERS GETTING GOOD REVIEWS, DOES THIS MEAN MILLIONS OF CHILDHOODS WEREN'T RUINED? @official_a fficial_ ntony fficial_a

Copy Associate Editor (Production) Liz Beardsworth 020 7295 8543

Online Editor-In-Chief (Digital) James Dyer 020 7295 8558

ANTON HONOURED I’m sure fans appreciated your obituary for Anton Yelchin. I’d like to urge anyone out there to check out his work in Rudderless, the best incarnation of the wide-eyedkid role he perfected, and 5 Too 7 , in which he’s a moving romantic lead. His talent will be missed! alice sidgwick, via email

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“Cheers, Dan and Debi, live long and prosper!”

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PULSE - QUICKENIN G MOVIE AND TV NE WS

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EDITED BY NICK DE SEMLYEN

FIRST LOOK KONG: SKULL ISLAND OUT 10 MARCH, 2017

GORILLA WARFARE

Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson brave Earth’s gnarliest ecosystem WORDS NICK DE SEMLYEN

YOU’VE SEEN SKULL Island on screen before. But never like this. Kong: Skull Island re-imagines the mysterious location, which first appeared in 1933’s King Kong, as a beautiful hellscape, teeming with alien creatures. “There are jungles, sulphur pits, bamboo forests, a variety of different environments that are both wondrous and incredibly dangerous,” says producer Alex Garcia. V At the behest of director Jordan VogtRoberts, cast and crew trekked to remote areas in Hawaii and Australia, before heading to Vietnam. “We wanted places with an otherworldly feel,” V ogt-Roberts saaays. ys. “It was so important to be Vogt-Roberts able to put the actors in a tactile space.” Vietnam plays a major role in the movie’s story too. Skull Island sland takes place in 1973, just as the war is winding down, and its characters are mostly veterans of the conflict. SAS tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) has been recruited to accompany a platoon of US troops on their expedition; photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) is on hand to document what they find. Among the island’s perils: a humongous primate. And given he’ll have to face down a certain radioactive lizard in 2020’s Godzilla Vs King Kong, it may be no surprise that this is Kong’s largest iteration to date. “He’s his own species; he’s going to be 100 feet tall,” confirms Garcia. They’re going to need a bigger banana.

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13 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT… LUKE CAGE

Feel the power of Marvel/ Netflix’s street-level hero

WORDS DAN JOLIN

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Created by Archie Goodwin and John Romita Sr in 1972, the super-strong and invulnerable Luke Cage was, explains showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker, “Marvel’s answer to Shaft.” But don’t expect the Marvel/ Netflix series to riff on the blaxploitation genre, as did original comic Luke Cage, Hero For Hire. “I felt there was a way to invoke some of the stuff Shaft represented in terms of masculinity, power and justice,” says Coker, “but at the same time give it a modern feel.” giv

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Feeling uninspired by the original ’70s Luke Cage titles, Coker looked more to Brian Michael Bendis’ graphic-novel series Alias — on which last year’s Jessica Jones is [Luk based. “I grew up reading [[Luke Luke Cage comics] but there were very few times that character had the opportunity to be philosophical, or live in the real world. That was w the one thing I really liked about Brian’s update of the character.” character

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We can expect numerous sly winks to the comic book. For example, in the first firs episode someone actually offers to hire Luke — “That was very tongue-in-cheek,” admits Coker Cok — while his corny hero name ‘Power Man’ is referenced, albeit sarcastically. Can we expect a cameo from Nic Cage, who changed his name from Coppola because of the character?

Standing tall: Mike Colter as superhero Luke Cage. Below: Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter).

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It is, apparently, impossible to take a bad photo of Mike Colter. “Good God, the man is handsome,” laughs Coker of the show’s star (who was also a series regular in Jessica Jones). Jones ). “I’ve tried to take bad photos of him. But he always ys looks like he’s being backlit!”

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Don’tt expect Luke to end up running around in an open, canary-yellow shirt, like his comic-book counterpart. “What Marvel el didn’t want [as showrunner] is the fanboy that says, ‘Luke can only wear yellow!’ They wanted somebody who was gonna respect the evolution of the character, but at the same time tweak it in their own special way.”

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The Harlem setting is hugely significant. Which is why they shot the show there, specifically in

the area of Lenox Avenue and 118th Street. “It’s the same block that American Gangster was shot on,” Coker says. “That vibrancy is the one thing you can’t make up. Even in Marvel.”

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While drawn from the comic books, the show’s villains are inspired by real historical figures from Harlem’s history. Gang boss Cottonmouth (Mahershala Ali) was modelled on Nicky Barnes, head of ’70s heroin-dealing syndicate The Council, while Black Mariah (Alfre Woodard) was based on Stephanie ‘Madame Queen’ St. Clair, who ran the Harlem numbers rackets in the late ’20s.

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The antagonist most likely to impress fans is the knife-wielding Diamondback, played by Erik LaRay Harvey. “He is the character we’re keeping close to the vest,” admits Coker. “He is so cool. I’m not gonna know if the series is a success unless there are rappers calling themselves Diamondback and Cottonmouth.”

Above: Kubo (Art

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Parkinson) with

A major inspiration for the series was the crime-writing of novelists such as Richard Price, George Pelecanos and Walter Mosley. “I’m a huge Walter Mosley fan,” says Coker. “And Walter is a close friend of mine. He even gave me permission to use his book, Little Green — it’s a book you see Luke holding.”

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Luke Cage is more than a TV series; it’s an LP. “My main influence is music,” says Coker, who before writing for shows such as Southland and Ray Donovan was a music journalist for Vibe and The Source magazines. “I realised binge-watching is akin to what it used to be like when an album came out and you’d shut down and listen to the entire thing. That’s why every episode is named after a Gang Starr song.”

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The soundtrack is a collaboration between A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Black Dynamite composer Adrian Younge. It’s all “analogue” says Coker, with “a 30-piece orchestra... You’ve got two old souls together making records for this show that has a very old-school feel.”

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There’s a strong roster of British directors behind the 13-episode series. The first two parts are directed by Paul McGuigan ). Episode six was directed by Sam (Sherlock lock ( lock). Miller (“He directed all the important episodes of one of my favourite series, Luther”), and episode seven by Doctor Who veteran Andy Goddard.

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The show exemplifies the Marvel difference, insists Coker. “What makes Marvel heroes special is very few want their powers. Luke Cage certainly didn’t ask for his. What makes them heroes is there’s something in their spirit that compels them to do the right thing. And that’s what permeates the first season of Luke Cage: what is a hero? Why even be a hero?” LUKE CAGE IS ON NETFLIX FROM 30 SEPTEMBER

monkey mate (Charlize Theron). Here: Kubo and man-bug Beetle (Matthew McConaughey).

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE STRING A boy, a beetle and a monkey team up in Kubo And The Two Strings WORDS NICK DE SEMLYEN

TRAVIS KNIGHT, NIGHT, HEAD of animation studio Laika, likes to quote a line from director Zhang Yimou. “He said that every boy wants either a train-set or to make a martial-arts movie,” Knight says. “And I never had a train-set.” So when character designer Shannon Tindle suggested they make a film set in the far East, his face lit up. “A sweeping stop-motion samurai epic is something we’ve never seen before. It just exploded with possibilities.” Of course, this being Laika, the people behind such winningly off-beat movies as Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls, this isn’t just Kurosawa with puppets. The hero of Kubo

And The Two Strings is a boy (Art Parkinson), who starts off as a street entertainer, using a samisen (a kind of Eastern banjo) to bring origami to life. But before long, Kubo’s swept away on an adventure, teaming up with an odd assortment of allies. Matthew McConaughey voices Beetle (“A big, brawny, befuddled manbug,” specifies Knight),while Charlize Theron is Monkey (“A savage, sword-wielding snow monkey... because when people think of a flearidden simian, they think of Charlize Theron”). There will be comedy, largely thanks to the dopey Beetle, but expect scares and sadness too. “I saw it in Dublin recently and it had my mum crying,” says Parkinson, aka Game Of Thrones’ Rickon Stark. “What I love about Laika movies is they’re great fun, but also have a bit of heaviness and emotion.” Knight confirms that Kubo goes to some dark places. “We’ve soaked more than a few bunk-bed mattresses in our day, but you can’t have joy without a little pain,” he shrugs. “In this movie, those childhood fears of the unknown manifest themselves as actual monsters. And they are pretty cool monsters.” Watch out in particular for a giant skeleton, inspired by the army of bone-warriors in 1963 gonauts ((brilliantly film Jason And The Argonauts brought to life by visual effects master Ray Harryhausen). “It’s the biggest stop-motion puppet ever made and the most ambitious thing we’ve ever taken on,” Knight says. “I’m incredibly excited for people to see it.” Get ready for some new nightmares. KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS IS IN CINEMAS FROM 9 SEPTEMBER

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ON-SET EXCLUSIVE FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM OUT 18 NOVEMBER

CREATURE FEATURE The ’20s are literally roaring in the epic Harry Potter spin-off WORDS NICK DE SEMLYEN

INSIDE A RITZY New York department Y

Clockwise from above: Director David Yates on set with Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander; Newt unleashes his wand; “Is that a fantastic beast?” Yates with Dan Fogler, Redmayne and Katherine Waterston; Jacob Kowalski (Fogler) with Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol), sporting stylish punch-bowl headgear.

store, all hell is breaking loose. Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) has just slid across the floor at breakneck speed. Her sister,, Queenie ((Alison Sudol), is cowering in a storeroom, a silver punch bowl atop her head. And next to her is baker Jacob alski (D ( an Fogler), limbs flailing. Despite all Kowalski the evidence, Empiree is not watching the Fantastic Beasts And Wher Where To Find Them characters navigate a clearance sale, but a situation even more stressful. Magical creatures have escaped throughout the city, and several have ended up here, causing havoc with the Christmas displays. “There’s a lot of mayhem happening,” confirms Sudol when the scene is wrapped, bowl now removed from bonce. Fogler is more forthcoming. “A “A Att that moment I was being crushed by a tentacle-beast,” he explains with a grin. “It’s a very large creature which eats bugs, so Newt has told us to round up something for it to eat. I come from theatre and I love this stuff.” The Newt in question is magizoologist Newt edma Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), edmayne), the hero of this feverishly anticipated 1920s-set Harry Potter spin-off. He and his trio of pals are faced with the formidable task of rounding up the critters accidentally unleashed from his suitcase, before Central Park turns into an enchanted safari park. Redmayne, edmayne, who has been watching the edma department-store chaos from the sidelines, admits to having struggled with the fact said critters are absent from the set. “We did some work before we started shooting on the scale of the animals,” he says. “I’d stand against a big white screen and they were projected next to me. It was useful, because I have a bit of a shoddy imagination!” One person with too good an imagination: aavid Y director David Yates, who found the menagerie invading not just the Big A Apple but his downtime. “I direct in my sleep,” the Potter otter veteran laughs, “and my wife kills me ’cause sometimes I go, ‘No, no, no, we have to go wider… I’ll find another shot…’” Why count sheep when you can count beasts? Wh

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MEAT THE TEAM

FRANK THE SAUSAGE __ SETH ROGEN Goldberg: It’s a hero’s journey for Frank. when we meet him, he suspects everything’s not right. Rogen: The sausages have been led to believe that if you stay in your package and behave, one day a human will come to take you and your destiny will be fulfilled. Frank has this feeling in the back of his head that it doesn’t quite add up. He goes on a quest to discover the truth about what happens to food.

BRENDA THE BUN __ KRISTEN WIIG Rogen: The common belief is that when you’re chosen and go to ‘the great beyond’, each sausage will be matched with a bun. Brenda, who is more of an independent thinker than the other buns, believes it can be a mutually respectful and loving relationship. she is very much in love with Frank.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, co-creators of raunchy animated comedy Sausage Party, give us a tour of the shopping cart

words OLLY RICHARDS

BARRY THE SAUSAGE __ MICHAEL CERA DON’T PLAN ON taking the kids to Sausage Party. It may be an animation, but the latest movie from the depraved minds of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg is for adults only. Part coming-of-age story, part horror, part filthy comedy, it’s a saga in which anthropomorphic foodstuffs learn that outside their safe, refrigerated world lies not a land of promise, but a savage one where their people are literally eaten alive. We asked Rogen and Goldberg to serve up the skinny on their cast of characters — their delicious, delicious characters.

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Rogen: Barry is a deformed sausage. He’s missing half his head, so he has an inferiority complex and the other sausages pick on him. Goldberg: Frank sticks up for him. He’s his protector. But Barry really wants to believe in the great beyond, because his life is so shitty. He hopes that when a human chooses him his dreams will finally all come true.

THERESA THE TACO __ SALMA HAYEK Rogen: she is a very religious taco who firmly believes in the system that is laid out for the food, which is that humans are their saviours. we find she does not have the feelings a taco should have, and perhaps wishes she might wind up with another food product, maybe even a bun.

SAMMY BAGEL JR __ EDWARD NORTON Rogen: He is a neurotic, New York Jew bagel, basically. Edward Norton is an old friend, so we told him about the movie when we came up with it. And maybe more than anyone else, he’s been our champion for it. He chose this character.

Above: Escobar (Wagner Moura) nears the end. Here: A kiss before dying for wife Tata (Paulina Gaitán).

KILLING PABLO

Wagner Moura says farewell to one hell of a role in Narcos: Season 2

WORDS DAN JOLIN

“PABLO DIES.” TWO words, stark white

TEQUILA __ BILL HADER Goldberg: Bill is also playing Firewater. He is playing all the alcohol! Plus he is voicing a tub of guacamole called El Guaco, who used to be a bigger character in the movie but now is a bit player. SAUSAGE PARTY IS IN CINEMAS FROM 2 SEPTEMBER

on black, right at the heart of Narcos’ advertising campaign for Season 2. The Netflix docudrama, which during its first season charted the rise of Colombian ‘narco-terrorist’ Pablo Escobar by mixing real footage with lightly fictionalised events, has always embraced its true-life roots. So it’s not about to play the ‘spoiler warning’ game. Medellín Cartel head Escobar is the most toweringly infamous figure of the W On Drugs, and his death was one of that War conflict’s defining events. Why try to hide it? No narrative twist is going to spare this show’s main character. “Pablo dies, yeah,” shrugs W Wagner Moura, the Brazilian actor who learned to speak fluent Spanish (in Medellín, no less) and put on 46lbs to play the Colombian kingpin. That he knew his

journey was ending only made him keener. Whereas the first season covered just over a decade, from Escobar’s entry into the cocaine trade to his prison escape in July 1992, this one focuses in tight on his final year. “It’s now about this guy running,” says Moura, “while he’s being hunted by everybody: the Cali Cartel, the CIA, IA, the DEA, EA, the Colombian army...” arm And also a new vigilante group known as Los Pepes, which Moura describes as a “joint venture” of cartel hitmen and the Colombian police. “They were very, very violent.” Of course, the man they’re hunting was the one who tore up the playbook in the first place. And now we’re going to see him get really vicious. “The most precious thing in Pablo’s life is his family,” says Moura. “So when he sees them in real danger, it makes him more dangerous than ever. That’s what makes him start planting bombs in Bogotá. He starts a war against not only his enemies, but the country itself.” While it’s the end for Pablo, it may not be for Narcos. “The idea since the beginning was to keep talking about the drug trade,” Moura says, “and there are so many things to talk about. They could stay in Colombia and talk about the Cali taly Cartel, or they could move to Mexico, or Italy, taly, or Russia, or the United States. It’s a big deal in the world.” Yes, Pablo dies. But the drug war he helped start rages ever on. NARCOS: SEASON 2 IS ON NETFLIX FROM 2 SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER 2016

17

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FIRST LOOK EXCLUSIVE WONDER WOMAN OUT 2 JUNE, 2017

COMBAT READY DC’s superhero goes to war in her 1918-set solo movie WORDS HELEN O’HARA

ONLY ONE CHARACTER TER in Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice drew nearuniversal praise, skipping the brooding of her teammates for straight-up brawling. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, aka Diana Prince, combined W ferocity in battle with serious civilian cool (not to mention a kick-ass theme), building serious excitement for her stand-alone outing. “Wonder Woman is tonally very different from Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad,” Squad promises producer Charles Roven, who worked on Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy before this interlinked Justice League era. “It took us a while to get the script really working, but once Patty [Jenkins, director] came aboard, things started to click. You Y have to give these characters problems the audience doesn’t see coming.” Diana’s particular problem is culture shock. The film sees her emerge, for the first time, from her all-female home on the island of Themyscira onto the male-dominated battlefields of World War I. It is the eve of the 1918 Armistice and, W along with pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), she embarks on a mission that, if successful, will save many lives. But is she prepared for the horrors of total war? “She’s been isolated almost to the point of naivety, yet she’s got these amazing abilities,” continues Roven. “If your mother is Hippolyta [Connie Nielsen], Queen of the Amazons, and your aunt is Antiope [Robin obin W Wright], the greatest Amazon warrior of all time, what are you going to do? You Y can’tt sit at home and pla playy with dolls.” Dolls, no. Sword, shield and magical lasso? Now those are toys worthy of an Amazon.

SEPTEMBER 2016

19

TREASURE HUNT Taika Waititi shifts gears with Kiwi gem Hunt For The Wilderpeople WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

IF YOU HAPPEN to live in a small town in New Zealand — a Te Puke, perhaps, or a Taihape, or even a Tokoroa — you may have been lucky enough to witness a rare phenomenon. A car ha pulled up, and the driver, a greywould have haired man with a beard, would have got out and stretched, before addressing the assembled population. And may have nd at some point you ma realised that the driver was actually Sam Neill, come to spread the gospel of Hunt For The Wilderpeople. F

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“It was his own weird little press tour,” laughs Taika Waititi, the movie’s writer/director, of his star’s unusual promotional method. “He took it upon himself to rent a car and drove all around the country by himself, telling locals about this movie that was coming out. People really love the personal touch.” It certainly seems to have paid off. Upon its ew Zealand earlier this year release in New year, Hunt For The Wilderpeople ilderpeople quickly became the highestgrossing Kiwi production of all time. Not bad for a small movie (it cost just NZ $2.5 million, or a smidge over a million quid) where the emphasis is on character, dialogue and breathtaking scenery, rather than action and car chases. (Not that it’s lacking in either department.) Based on the novel Wild Pork And Watercress by New Zealand author Barry Crump, Hunt For The Wilderpeople (Waititi changed the name because “nobody wants the words ‘pork’

and ‘watercress’ in a movie title”) tells the story of Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison), a truculent teenager who’s one last misstep away from a life in juvenile care. Sent to new foster parents, a series of unfortunate events lands Ricky on the run in the New Zealand wilderness with his grouchy, temporary father figure. Hec (Neill), pursued by a bumbling array of cops, hunters and child welfare officers. What unfolds is a joyous road movie in which the outgoing Ricky gradually bonds with the ornery Hec, but which also dares to be unpredictable, unconventional and tonally ambitious. One scene of heartbreaking loss is immediately followed by an outrageously funny funeral (featuring a cameo by Waititi himself as an addled minister). “It makes me feel awkward doing hardcore drama and sadness,” says Waititi, “so I always have to undermine it. Sadness isn’t cool. And if we’d done it by the

Clockwise from left: Ricky (Julian Dennison) and Hec (Sam Neill) head off into the New Zealand bush; Taika Waititi sports his director’s hat on set with Dennison; Waititi switches to acting mode as a minister; Rhys Darby (left) also stars in the film, as Psycho Sam.

book, that would have been pretty boring.” That ethos underpins Waititi’s overall approach. Hunt For The Wilderpeople comes hot on the heels of the director’s last movie, the hilarious vampire comedy What We Do In The Shadows, and it couldn’t be more different. “I’m trying to do things that are least expected,” he explains. “After Shadows, I got sent zombie and werewolf and vampire scripts. I always try to move away from what I’ve just done.” Strangely, Hunt For The Wilderpeople could well have become his debut around ten years ago, when he was first approached to adapt Crump’s book. “After about a year, I realised I wanted to do my own stuff,” he says of his 2005 draft, which was a much darker affair — a major character died at the end. “It was probably good that I didn’t make it back then. Like most of my projects, it took a few good

years for me to realise the right way to make it.” So, when he was looking for something to do after the gore and grue of What We Do In The Shadows, he suddenly remembered Crump’s novel, got in touch with the producers who’d once hired him to adapt it, bought the rights off them and set about putting the film together in double-quick fashion. “I loved the idea of doing something that was very New Zealand, that could be quite fast to shoot and turn around.” So he, Neill, Dennison and a small crew headed into the bush north of Auckland and the volcanic area around Mount Ruapehu for a tough, cold, relentless shoot. “We were out shooting in the snow and rain,” says Waititi. “The men on the crew mostly grew beards. Big, smelly beards full of trail mix.” The film debuted to a rousing reception at the Sundance Film Festival this January, then went on to take New Zealand by storm.

Waititi, meanwhile, has already moved on to his next movie, Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok. “It’s bigger than anything I’ve ever done, and a lot more pressure, but even then it doesn’t feel very different,” he says. And people shouldn’t be fooled by the title. “Ragnarok” may be the Norse apocalypse, but just like sadness, Waititi reckons darkness isn’t cool. “I think doing really dark films in the superhero genre is really risky,” he says. “There’ll be a lot of crazy things happening, but there’s no reason why we can’t have fun doing it.” And if all goes well, perhaps people living in small Australian towns will get the surprise of their lives next year, when Chris Hemsworth rocks up in a rented car, ready to spread the good word… HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE IS OUT ON 16 SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER 2016

21

ANOTHER SPOONFUL OF SUGAR GAAR G

Rachel (Emily Blunt), heavy-drinking commuter and

Blunt’s lunt’s next project: What we know about the Mary Mary Poppins sequel

not-necessarilyreliable witness.

OFF THE RAILS

Rachel spots something awry.

Emily Blunt reunites with director Rob Marshall, after the equally musical . That showcased her Into The Woods W singing; add a dash of her The Devil Wears Prada strictness and you have a promising Poppins. As for original star Julie Andrews, Marshall has teased, “She is a very dear friend. If she could be involved in some way, it would be very special.”

WORDS NICK DE SEMLYEN

A COMMUTE COMMUTE-BASED murder mystery,

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In 1930s London, Michael Banks is all grown-up with three children of his own. But when the family suffers a loss, magical nanny Mary Poppins returns to help. “It’s an all-new story,” says producer Marc Platt. “It is, however, based on other PL Travers books.”

THE heroine

Emily Blunt goes on a journey as The Girl On The Train

The Girl On The Train follows the events that transpire when alcoholic Rachel (Emily Blunt) sees something shocking out of a train window on her way to the office. “I’ve been calling it a ‘driller’ — a dramatic thriller,” laughs director Tate Taylor. “It has suspense, but it’s also a deep character piece. The lead character is just heartbreaking.” In Paula Hawkins’ hit novel, the tale takes place in and around London. The movie shifts the action to New York, but Rachel remains a Brit. “I wanted Emily to be in The Help [which he directed in 2011], but she wasn’t available,” says Taylor. “For this I decided to let her keep her accent, as a wink to the novel and to add to her isolation. She’s a fish out of water in this foreign place. It worked out great.” When we meet her, Rachel is a mess. Her marriage has fallen apart, with ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) now living with another woman (Rebecca Ferguson), and she relies on cans of pre-mixed gin and tonic to get through the day. “Emily went for it,” Taylor enthuses. “I will tell you this, though: it’s really hard to rough up Emily Blunt. A lot of work was done to the whites of her eyes and the puffiness of her face. On set I would say, ‘Hold the roll! She looks too pretty.’ She’d ha no make-up on!’” say, ‘But ut I look horrible. I have The story (which could be pitched as Rear Window meets Strangers On A Train) will be

THE STORY

THE hero

Her husband (Justin Theroux) with his new partner (Rebecca Ferguson).

relatable to anyone who’s ever had a morning routine. “I used to be a marketing executive in Tennessee and had the same round every day,” says Taylor. “It’s funny how we as humans try to break up the monotony with our minds. And the train is the perfect spot. Peek at someone through a window, and you can’t help but be swept away wondering who they are. The only thing that’s better is an airport terminal.” With the movie virtually complete, Taylor aylor is aawaiting the inevitable rail-based gags. “When you write this up, please don’t make a corny joke about travel,” he pleads. Too late, Tate: ate: that train has left the station. THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN IS IN CINEMAS FROM 7 OCTOBER

Lin-Manuel Miranda plays Poppins’ lamplighter friend Jack. He’s huge on Broadway, writing and starring in smash-hit Hamilton. He also wrote the songs for Disney’s Moana (see p.26).

THE songs Surprisingly, Miranda isn’t working on the musical numbers. Hairspray and Smash composers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman are on tunes duty, with scriptwriter David ‘Finding Neverland’ Magee. THE MARY POPPINS SEQUEL STARTS SHOOTING IN LONDON IN EARLY EARLY 2017

FIRST LOOK EXCLUSIVE THE GREASY STRANGLER OUT 7 OCTOBER

GREASE IS THE WORD

Get ready for the year’s oiliest, sickest comedy WORDS NICK DE SEMLYEN

“PEOPLE SEEM QUITE assaulted by it,” muses Jim Hosking, director of festival hit The Greasy Strangler. “Some find it very funny, but others look shell-shocked. I’m not sure why I find that surprising. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. That’s definitely possible.” The film — both hilarious and deeply gonzo — involves loser Brayden (Sky Elobar) and his homicidal dad Ronnie (Michael St. Michaels), who lathers himself in fat before kill-sprees and frequently exposes his penis. There is farting, psychotic disco-dancing and a twisted monologue about Michael Jackson. It’s not one for your gran. Perhaps surprisingly, Hosking is a well-spoken, amiable Brit. “Someone said it’s like Steptoe & Son on a psychedelic substance,” he says. “But there’s loads of stuff in there: LA films from the ’70s, old cartoons, David Lynch, dirty amateur porn...” Produced by Ben Wheatley and Elijah Wood, it’s fast acquiring cult status. As for those who run screaming, Hosking can’t understand the fuss. “I saw Deadpool recently and found it graphically violent,” he says. “Then I make this and people say it’s the most disturbing film in the world because there are saggy bottoms, prosthetic penises and an exceptionally hairy mirkin.” Spoiler: there’s also some greasy strangling.

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SEPTEMBER 2016

25

Maui (Dwayne Johnson): and he’s just a demi-god.

MUSCLE BEACH Meet Disney’s new South Seas double act in Moana

WORDS HELEN O’HARA

FOR DECADES, MOST Disney princesses seemed to hang out together in a vague version of Europe. Directors Ron Clements and John Musker have bucked the trend twice before, with Aladdin and The Princess And The Frog, and now their latest, Moana, is set halfway around the world, among the island nations of the P Pacific. Chieftain’s daughter Moana (newcomer Auli’i Cravalho) lives on the fictional island of Motunui, and wishes to become a great navigator like her ancestors. There’s just one problem: ‘wayfinders’ haven’t had a place in her society

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for a thousand years. She needs help, and finds it in the marooned Maui (Dwayne Johnson), a demi-god with a history of great exploits who has been stuck in one remote spot for a millennium. “The heart of the movie is the relationship between Moana and Maui,” says Clements. “Maui is not particularly impressed by mortals, but starts seeing the qualities that make her special. Part of Moana’s mission is to enlist Maui to help in her goal, which is basically saving the South Pacific. It’s a fun dynamic because she’s fearless and relentless. No matter what obstacle is put in her way, she just keeps going.” Musker adds: “They try to outwit each other. It’s a little bit like True Grit.” Maui is a real figure in Oceanic mythology, so the filmmakers were keen to root their version in local culture. Just one problem: the legend varies from island to island. “There are certain things in just about every myth,” says Clements. “Like the way he slows down the sun and pulls up islands with his magical fish hook. But there’s a lot of variety.” From the options on offer, they selected a trickster nature, short stature and long, lustrous hair, a mark of his “mana”, or power. The mythological Maui also has tattoos. Chatty ones. “His whole life is laid out on his body,” says Clements. “But the tattoos come to life, particularly one we nicknamed Mini-Maui.

He’s Maui’s alter-ego, almost his conscience.” Amazingly, this is only Johnson’s second movie voice role (ten points if you knew the other one was Planet 51). The directors recreated one of his wrestling monologues as an animation test, while in one scene Maui busts out the star’s old signature move. “It seemed only natural to give the People’s Eyebrow its day,” laughs Musker of the casting. “Dwayne is part-Samoan and the character fit his bigger-than-life charisma. So why not hire a demi-god?” MOANA IS IN CINEMAS FROM 2 DECEMBER

the quote quota The month’s most notable TV and movie bon mots

“NEVER COMPARE ME TO THE JAWS MAYOR! EVER!” NYC MAYOR (ANDY GARCIA) IN GHOSTBUSTERS

“USE YOUR TITCHY LITTLE FIGGLERS.”

Thomas Middleditch as love-triangle corner H.

THE BFG (MARK RYLANCE) IN THE BFG

“YOU SOUND LIKE RICHARD PRYOR DOING AN IMPRESSION OF A WHITE GUY.” RELL (JORDAN PEELE) IN KEANU

Two humans try to make sense of Benjamin’s purple

“GUYS, I FOUND HELP! SIGOURNEY WEAVER IS GOING TO TELL US WHERE WE ARE.” DORY (ELLEN DEGENERES) IN FINDING DORY

prose. Below right: The AI bard ‘him’self.

ROBOPLOT Meet Benjamin, the world’s first computer screenwriter

“IF I MAY ADOPT A PARLANCE WITH WHICH YOU ARE FAMILIAR, DOCTOR: I CAN CONFIRM YOUR THEORY TO BE ‘HORSESHIT’.” SPOCK (ZACHARY QUINTO) IN STAR TREK BEYOND

“WHY IS MY HOUSE FILLED WITH SEXY ORCAS?”

BOJACK HORSEMAN (WILL ARNETT) IN BOJACK HORSEMAN: SEASON 3

WORDS ANTHONY LOWERY

OU’RE UNLIKEL UNLIKELY Y TO see him on YOU’RE the Oscar red carpet, yet Benjamin is one of 2016’s most interesting filmmakers — because Y as he’s a machine. Built last year in New ew York a smartphone AI by ‘creative technologist’ Ross Goodwin, he was fed a mass of sci-fi scripts, including Independence Day and Alien, and asked to create one of his own. Director Oscar Sharp shot the result over 48 hours, struggling slightly with stage directions such as, “He is standing in the stars and sitting on the floor.” Running nine minutes long, Sunspring is set on a space station and stars Thomas Middleditch ((Silicon Valley alley). alley). It features no extra-terrestrials, although characters do vomit eyeballs ( just like in The Neon Demon!). As for the dialogue (“I think I could ha have been my life”), it’s even more oblique than To The Wonder. Says Sharp: “I was

more respectful to the writer than I think any director has ever been.” Does Benjamin have a future as an arthouse favourite? Sharp doesn’t sound convinced: “A central idea is almost impossible, as Benjamin doesn’t have that capacity.” Even less encouraging are the results of Empire’s attempt to interview the auteur-bot himself. When we ask if he’s planning to write a full-length film, he shoots back, “What are you talking about? My father was a singer. What do you think?” There’s clearly a way to go before Hollywood blockbusters are written on Final Draft, by Final Draft. At least if that happens we can expect a peaceful collaboration. Right, Benjamin? “You got the right to be forgotten,” he replies. Quick, hide! SUNSPRING IS AVAILABLE TO WATCH NOW ON YOUTUBE

SEPTEMBER 2016

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PERFECT SPECIMEN Director Luke Scott introduces us to sci-fi thriller Morgan WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

STOP US IF you’ve heard this one before. A group of people are trapped in a single location with a ggenetically superior being that has violent designs on them. And it’s directed by a Scott. “Yes, there are comparisons with Alien,” laughs Luke Scott, director of Morgan and son of Ridley. “But it’s not the same kind of fear. It’s not a horror, but it is very violent.” Morgan — the film — tells the tale of a risk analyst (Kate Mara) summoned to a remote retreat to assess an incredible scientific breakthrough. Morgan — the character — is an artificial human being. Although she’ she’s just five years old, her cells have been enhanced and equipped for accelerated growth, so she looks like a teenager. “She’s a genetic facsimile of a human being,” says Scott. “She’s not a robot, or an android, or a clone.” And Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy), like many petulant five-year-olds, has done something terribly wrong, triggering Mara’s arrival. What unfolds is a ps psychological thriller-cumexistential debate, as Mara and the team of scientists discuss whether or not to let what

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Clockwise from top left: Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) explores the outside world; Kate Mara’s risk analyst analyses: a risk; Morgan takes a time-out.

Scott calls “humans part two” thrive, or to terminate the experiment. But what if an experiment won’t let itself be terminated? “There’s an element of Frankenstein in there. It really asks questions about the philosophy, morality and ethics of genetic work,” says Scott. For the past few years, Luke has been balancing a fair amount of commercial work with the best on-the-job training there can be: as second-unit director on his dad’s movies, including Alien: Covenant. “It’s been a great

education,” he says. “I’ve never stopped learning.” Scott says he has been partially influenced by his dad’s style. While Sir Ridley was a producer on Morgan, “He was pretty hands-off. I think he felt very comfortable with me getting on with it.” Scott did get the ultimate seal of approval when the film was completed, though. “He gave me two thumbs up and said, ‘Well done, son,’” he recalls. We might just have another great Scott on our hands. MORGAN IS OUT ON 2 SEPTEMBER

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24 - 30 July See Star Trek Beyond and all the films Blackpool Opera House

Was Jon Snow’s (Kit Harington) return to life predictable?

YES

JONATHAN PILE, DEPUTY EDITOR

BE HONEST. DID anyone expect Jon Snow to die during the Battle Of The Bastards? Even at his lowest ebb, when he was being crushed under the weight of countless corpses, it simply wasn’t going to happen. Especially as he’d only just been brought back to life seven episodes earlier. Speaking of which, did anyone expect Jon to stay dead after he was betrayed by the Night’s Watch at the end of Season 5? Of course not. For W two episodes he lay cold and lifeless on a slab, but it mattered not – it couldn’t last. The question was really about how he’d come back, rather than if. (Most people guessed Melisandre, and most people were proven right.) So here’s the issue: there’s now an air of inevitability encompassing Game Of Thrones.

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Whether on screen or in the books, think about how you felt when Roose Bolton told Robb Stark: “The Lannisters send their regards,” before thrusting a blade into him. Shocked? Outraged? Anguished? All three? That was a rug-pull – our hero, the character whose rise we’d been following, was suddenly dead. Proving what the beheading of Ned Stark suggested: this was a show where the good guys could lose. And then just a couple of episodes later, at another wedding, King Joffrey (a man we were praying would get his comeuppance, but thought never would get his comeuppance) was poisoned. This wasn’t just a show were the good guys could die, while bad guys prevailed. Now no-one was safe. But kill off enough major characters, and whoever’s left must survive. Showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss are in a position where certain characters can’t die, otherwise all you’re left with is Podrick, Jorah and Missandei contesting the Iron Throne. Jon must remain, and has done against all the odds. So must Daenerys. And, at least until we’re approaching the end game, so must Cersei. Because with the Boltons gone, Walder Frey murdered and the

High Sparrow vapourised, she’s now the last remaining human villain. Daenerys needs to fight someone of whom we can boo and hiss at. There’s obviously a question over who will ultimately prove to be victorious, but from here on out, our main characters will be around until the end game. Any deviation from that would be a shock, but it simply isn’t going to happen.

NO

DAN JOLIN, ASSOCIATE SSOCIA EDITOR (FEATURES) ON THE MAPS of old, wherever there was a patch of unexplored territory, cartographers ha scrawled, “Here be dragons.” There here have, of course, been dragons in Game Of Thrones since the Season 1 finale. But only in the

PRODUCTION NOTES

THE DEBATE

HAS GAME OF THRONES LOST ITS SHOCK VALUE?

Movies and TV shows in the works

1 Kate Mara is set to appear in Chappaquiddick, about the 1969 car accident involving Senator Ted Kennedy. She’s signed for the role of Mary Jo Kopechne, the Kennedy aide who was in his passenger seat at the time.

2 Woody Allen’s list of favourite things (“Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, those incredible apples and pears by Cézanne”) now includes Justin Timberlake, who has joined Allen’s 48th film, set in New York in the 1950s.

Ice or fire? We assess whether George RR Martin’s hot property is cooling off

recently concluded sixth season have we truly entered unexplored territory – at least, in terms of the source novels already published by Thrones creator George RR Martin. For much of Season 6, nobody, from late adopters to veteran fans, knew what was about to happen next. Nobody. So it’s a strange time to be accusing this phenomenally successful series of losing its sting. Sure, the shock value of, say, Ned’s beheading in Season 1’s ‘Baelor’,, or Season 3’s 'Red Wedding', was little diminished by a significant portion of viewers knowing what was coming. But even if your Thrones-love hasn’t urged you to devour the books, there must be an exquisite thrill in realising we are now in a phase of this epic drama that exists beyond the printed page. And not just any phase – over the next two seasons we will hear the final verses of this Song Of Ice And Fire. Does that mean it’s going to become predictable? That the back-on-the-rise Starks and dragon queen Daenerys will team up and turn the White Walkers to toast? If you think it’s now that straightforward, you haven’t been

paying attention. As historian Tom Holland wrote in our May issue, Martin’s inspiration flows not from the epic-fantasy playbook, but from the mercurial narrative of history itself. Here, great rulers rise only to be cut down before their destiny becomes manifest. Jon Snow may have been proclaimed King In The North, but we’ve seen that dark look on Littlefinger’s face before… just before he held a knife to Ned Stark’s throat. (Plus Jon sent Melisandre packing, so welcome back jeopardy!) And, as we saw in the Season 6 finale, Margaery Tyrell’s slow-burning secret plot against the High Sparrow all went up in a breathtaking instant of green flames, courtesy of Cersei Lannister. Don’t you think Cersei’s going to have something pertinent to say about the Targaryen restoration? The last season of Game Of Thrones was admittedly a crowdpleaser, more about sofa fist-pumps than viral videos of viewers wailing in disbelief. But that death toll’s rocketing upward, and the climax is in sight. Don’t get too comfy. Last acts are always the most dangerous for heroes. There will be blood. And, of course, fire.

3 Flatliners is getting a new jolt of life via a big-screen reboot, and original cast member Kiefer Sutherland will be in it. He’ll play a doctor, joining Ellen Page, James Norton and Diego Luna. It’s currently shooting in Toronto.

4 Michelle Williams has joined the circus: she’ll co-star with Hugh Jackman in The Greatest Showman On Earth, a long-mooted PT Barnum biopic. She’s rumoured to be playing singer Jenny Lind, aka ‘the Swedish Nightingale’.

SEPTEMBER 2016

31

ON-SET EXCLUSIVE THE CROWN OUT 4 NOVEMBER

PALACE INTRIGUE Netflix gambles big with its royal soap opera WORDS OLLY RICHARDS

THIS to be the Harry Potter “WE WANT W otter of British TV,” V,” says Andy Harries, exec producer of V The Crown. It won’t feature the Queen turning people into boggarts or conjuring a patronus but, looking around the set, it’s clear what Harries pla means. In Ely ly Cathedral, which is playing A in the wedding of Elizabeth W Westminster Abbey II (Claire Foy) and Philip Mountbatten (Matt Smith), a scan of the congregation reveals Jared Harris (King George VI), Eileen A Atkins (Queen Mary), Greg Wise (Lord Mountbatten) and Harriet Walter (Clementine Churchill). As with P otter, this latest Netflix series, which at a cost Potter of more than £100 million is reported to be its most expensive ever, has attracted the cream of British acting talent. And this is only Series 1. The Crown’s glittering cast is unsurprising, given its pedigree. It is Peter Morgan’s latest attempt to pick apart the life of our monarch and her changing relationship with government and country, a journey that started with The Queen in 2006 and continued with 2013 play The Audience. Yet The Crown is more ambitious than Audience either. While it’s primarily the story of ERII, it’s also a portrait of her entire world, including Prime Ministers, other royals and sundry lords. Her Maj doesn’t even appear in all the episodes. “With The Queen and The Audience you got parts of the story,” says exec producer Andrew Eaton, as Winston Churchill (John Lithgow) makes a dramatic entrance to the scene. “This is the complete version. There’s a soapish element to it. Peter has that gift of going behind closed doors and inferring what might have happened there.” This first batch of ten hour-long episodes will take us from the wedding in 1947 to the midw ’50s. Netflix has already committed to a second series, and if it’s a major hit the plan is to tell the Queen’s entire life story, with different women playing her at various ages. Any British actresses with ev even a passing resemblance to the lady on the money should brush off their CV now, because competition will be stiff.

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Clockwise from above: The Netflix marriage of Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy) and Philip Mountbatten (Matt Smith); John Lithgow as Winston Churchill on the steps of Number 10; Harriet Walter (Clementine Churchill) and Lithgow discuss the referendum (probably) with executive producer Stephen Daldry; Foy tries on the crown.

MONTH 2016

33

HIGH PLANE DRIFTER Clint Eastwood’s Sully is the feel-good air-disaster movie of the season WORDS IAN FREER

THERE ARE MANY reasons why filmmakers choose to make a film: personal expression, a change of pace, career advancement, the chance to drench Elle Fanning in fake blood. But when Todd Komarnicki’s Sully screenplay landed on Clint Eastwood’s desk (probably solid oak), the 86 year-old director-actor-composericon said yes for a far simpler reason. “I read it and I liked it,” explains Eastwood with trademark economy.. “A “ nd then I started on it the next day.”

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Not a Monsters, Inc spin-off about furry blue heffalumps, the film details a thrilling and uplifting event from recent history. On 15 January 2009, US Airways flight 1549, carrying 155 passengers, was struck by a flock of geese. The impact took out power in both of the plane’s jet engines. Deciding they wouldn’t be able to reach the closest airfield, the pilot — Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) — made the decision to land the Airbus A320 on the Hudson river, a highly risky manoeuvre. Happily, appily appily, all 155 passengers survived. People around the world watched news reports with relief. “I remember very distinctly thinking about what was avoided,” says Hanks. “Man, the Y country and New York City dodged something big. In 2009, New Y York didn’t need to see another plane crash and hundreds of people dying. I thought, ‘Whoever that guy is, if he didn’t stick that landing, it would have been

another candlelight vigil and a huge blow to America’s psyche.’ In the blink of an eye, that prospect disappeared.” Sullenberger’s forced landing — though dramatic enough to be described as “the most successful ditching in aviation history” by a member of the National Transportation Safety Board — didn’t make for a film’s worth of compelling drama. So Sully details what happened next, pulling details from Sullenberger’s bestselling memoir, Highest Duty: My Search For What Really Matters. For a while the captain was lauded a hero by the public, becoming a talk-show favourite, pitching the first baseball at the first game of the 2009 season, and getting praise from two Presidents (Bush Jr and Obama). But there were also darker consequences: he became afflicted with symptoms similar to PTSD and his actions were subject to an 18-month investigation by the US

Clockwise from left: Tom Hanks as hero pilot Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger; The recreated Airbus A320 goes in for landing on the Hudson river in New York City; Hanks and director Clint Eastwood work out logistics on set.

aviation authorities. “It was a question of, ‘Why didn’t you land at La Guardia exactly?’” says Hanks. “‘Are you sure you couldn’t? Well, you are going to have to defend that.’ He lost a lot of sleep. There was a lot of pressure.” When he was first offered the project, the star ummed and aahed, despite being tempted by the prospect of working with Eastwood for the first time. After shooting Bridge Of Spies, A Hologram For The King and Inferno in quick succession, Hanks was ready for some wellearned R’n’R. But he calls Komarnicki’s script one of the “finest, leanest, most pure stories I’ve ever read”. He recognised that it sat firmly in his wheelhouse. “I like non-fiction stories about procedure,” he says about taking on the project. “This is about all the motivations and inner conflicts that Sully feels. I don’t think the story needs any kind of embellishment. It’s elementary.”

If the interior dramas didn’t need any “embellishment”, Eastwood felt that the exterior spectacle did. Eschewing what was laid out in the screenplay, the director made the decision to portray differing re-enactments of the crash, starting with a ‘what if?’ version that ends badly, getting closer to the truth each time. To amp up the danger, he shot the film entirely with gigantic IMAX cameras, as he put Hanks through a landing even more intense than the one he suffered in Cast Away. “It’s the ultimate thing,” says Eastwood of the format. “It’s a little overwhelming. I looked at sample shots down at IMAX. If I’d done that earlier I probably wouldn’t have had so many close-ups. It’s HUGE.” “We are going to have a contest: count the hairs in the moustaches,” jokes Hanks. “Whoever is closest in total is going to win two free first-class tickets to New York City.”

Good luck to anyone trying to win that. Hanks describes the moustaches sported by Sully and co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) as “bodacious”, and he relished the chance to transform physically, including Sully’s striking white hair. “That was a bitch, man,” Hanks laughs. “I spent more time in a beauty-parlour chair than I did filming the cockpit scenes. There’s only one way to make hair white and that’s chemical dyes and bleaches. I didn’t have to get a haircut. I just had to snap the hairs off one by one.” Empire has seen 30 minutes of footage introduced by the director’s editor, Blu Murray. Even unfinished, it’s impressive. Given that it is a beloved star undergoing a physical change to play a real-life hero afflicted by an internal crisis, the flight path seems obvious. Sully, you are clear for take-off. Destination: Oscar race 2017. SULLY IS IN CINEMAS FROM 2 DECEMBER

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HOW MUCH IS A PINT OF MILK? DANNY DEVITO Does the Penguin know his cold stuff?

WORDS OLLY RICHARDS PORTRAIT NIGEL PARRY

Which movie have you seen more than any other? Miracle Of Milan. It’s a Vittorio De Sica movie and I’ve seen it so many times I can’t even count. Do you have a nickname? People call me D. When have you been most starstruck? I was about nine. I was riding my bicycle — this was probably when I had one of my accidents — and I saw a guy called Van Heflin. He was a star in Eager old movies [including Shane and Johnny ohnny Eager]. He rented a house down the shore in Jersey and we would go drive on his lawn and wave at him. Do you have a favourite joke? I do, but I can’t tell it. It’s far too rude. I know you guys in the UK are pretty liberal — or 48 per cent of you are, right? — but this joke would be too much.

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How much is a pint of milk? Honestly, it’s been so long since I’ve shopped on my own that I wouldn’t have the first idea.

What is your favourite animal? Right now my favourite animal is Silvio and the first runner-up is Zorro. One of them is a cat and one is a dog.

What is in your pockets right now? I have trousers on, as you call them. I have no pants on, but I have trousers on. I have absolutely nothing in my pockets. What a time. I’m so excited.

What’s your earliest memory? Almost suffocating under a baby blanket.

When did you last walk out of a movie? I would never do that. I haven’t done that since I was a little kid and I would just go to the movies because it was a dark place where girls would be.

On a scale of one to ten, how hairy is your butt? Oh wow. I could tell you someone you could ask. I don’t look at my ass. Why are you looking at my butt? In an English accent t? [[In accent]] Why are you lookin’ at mah bum?

When were you last naked outdoors? I’m naked right now! No, it was about a week ago. I was enjoying the sun. I like to lie in the sun naked. I went swimming and laid in the sun. When did you last clean your own bathroom? Well, I shaved two hours ago and cleaned the sink. How about that? What’s the last TV show you gave up on? Well, it gave up on me: Deadwood. There weren’t enough seasons. I was very upset they stopped making that. You say there might be a movie? With Ian McShane? For real? Well, today just got better.

What is your signature dish? Pasta with anchovies, garlic, oil, hot pepper and bread crumbs. Did you say, “Is that puttanesca?” How dare you! We were getting on, but not now. What was your role in your first school play? My one and only school play, I played the lead character: St Francis of Assisi. I went to a Catholic high school. That was where it all started. St Francis of Assisi and then it all went downhill from there. WIENER-DOG IS IN CINEMAS FROM 12 AUGUST

CPI SYNDICATION

Do you have any scars? I have one on my right knee. A big one. That came from a big accident with a motorcycle when I was on my bicycle. I was about 15 years old. I also have a scar just above my left eye, from another vehicle accident. I’ve done a lot of crashing.

R EV I E WS O F N E W F I L M S, S H OWS A N D G A M E S ON EV E RY S I Z E O F S C R E E N

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EXCELLENT

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GOOD

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OKAY

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POOR

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AWFUL

EDITED BY JONATHAN PILE

cinema

STAR TREK BEYOND HHHH

OUt NOW CErt 12A A / 122 MINS

DIRECTOR Justin

Lin Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin CAST

PLOT

After answering a distress call in deep space, the Starship Enterprise is drawn into a trap by the mysterious Krall (Elba). Stranded on a barren planet, can Captain Kirk (Pine) and his crew find a way to save the universe?

ROSES RA R RELY LOSE their bloom

Spock couldn’t tear himself away from

as quickly as Star Trek Into Darkness. Well A received upon its initial release, JJ Abrams’ sequel has since undergone a recalibration and a re-evaluation. It was famously voted worst Trek movie ever by one group of Trekkers, and has been criticised for being too dark, for its karaoke-style riffing on previous Trek films such as The Wrath Of Khan, and for simply not feeling like a Star Trek movie. Star Trek Beyond ond feels like a reaction to that reaction. Here is a movie where the emphasis is on good, old-fashioned fun, and that feels, in a good way, almost like an extended episode of the Trek TV show, right down to stranding the crew of the Enterprise on an alien world where the sets sometimes feel fashioned out of polystyrene. It’s a movie that, in almost every word of Simon Pegg and Doug Jung’s script, responds to the fans’ criticisms and says, “We listened.” That kind of fan service can, of course, be dangerous, and Beyond ond is not without its flaws. But the key tweak here is a welcome one; namely, a new focus on Chris Pine’s Kirk, Zachary Quinto’s Spock, and Karl Urban’s Bones. That trio were the beating heart of the original iteration of Star Trek, but in terms of scenes together, they’ve been largely lacking in this new, younger, sexier guise. Indeed, Urban has talked about his reluctance to return for this instalment, and given how McCoy was reduced to virtual cameo status in Into Darkness, you couldn’t have blamed him if he had walked. But here, he’s given so much more to do, as Bones and an injured Spock become a virtual double act, a space-age A Abbott and Costello, bantering and bickering with each other as they face what seems to be near-certain death. Quinto is also excellent in these scenes, which allow him to further showcase Spock’s humanity without compromising the character’s emotional core. Pine is the stand-out here, though, as Kirk wrestles throughout with the ghost of his father, and a monumental career decision. Once � again, the actor strikes the perfect blend of

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Even at the fourth time of asking he still refused to play Angels.

swaggering action hero, thoughtfulness and occasional Shatnerism. There’s a moment during a third-act action scene that should, by any rights, be utterly ridiculous (it may yet prove divisive, but we loved it; you’ll know it when you see it), yet Pine sells it with nothing more than a gleam in his eye and a slight smirk. In an ensemble movie, heavy emphasis on some characters may mean others are somewhat underserved, and that does happen here. Even though the movie’s structure allows new director Justin Lin to split the Enterprise’s crew into different mini-factions and place the emphasis on resourcefulness and teamwork as they try to figure out a way off the rock they’re stranded upon, there’s still not a huge amount for Zoe Saldana’s Uhura, John Cho’s Sulu (who is revealed to be gay in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it way) and the late Anton Yelchin’s Chekov to do. Pegg’s Scotty is a little more involved here, but it’s not like Pegg has suddenly written himself a hero’s role. Abrams may have gone from Trek, but his biggest legacy was in casting these roles perfectly, and there’s a joy to be gleaned from watching them interact. If there’s one area in which the film suffers as a result of push-back against the previous movie, it’s in the choice of bad guy. For all his faults, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Khan was a glorious highlight of Into Darkness, always needling away at its heroes, always front and centre, so much so that at times it seemed that Kirk and co were occasionally cameoing in their own movie. Krall, again, seems like a direct response to that. After an eyecatching entrance worthy of a master villain, he retreats to the edges of the movie, his motivations initially unclear, his grand plan somewhat shonky in design. He is

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Idris Elba as youÕve never seen him before.

a mystery rather than a fully fledged character, and when we do catch up with him, he monologues in the standard Evilspeak of a hundred nondescript nemeses. You sense that he’s a character whose anti-Federation viewpoint is designed to spark debate — “Is Starfleet really a good thing?” But the answer is so obviously, overwhelmingly, “Yes,” that the debate quickly dies. Sadly, there’s precious little in Krall’s words or deeds to suggest why an actor as talented as Idris Elba would subject himself to hours of prosthetics. He’s just a reheated version of Eric Bana’s similarly unmemorable Nero from the 2009 reboot. Those concerned by the hiring of Lin to replace Abrams need not be. Yes, he is the man who revitalised the Fast And Furious franchise by taking it in a gloriously OTT, ridiculously

stupid direction, but here he dials down that freneticism for something more considered. It’s relatively low on the explosions front, and there are whole scenes here where the camera doesn’t move. But when the action starts, he’s more than capable of handling it, most notably in the bravura extended sequence when the Enterprise is ripped to shreds by Krall’s seemingly unstoppable swarm of beelike ships. And throughout it all, there’s a lovely reverence for the legacy of Trek. Chances are this rose won’t be losing its bloom anytime soon. CHRIS HEWITT VERDICT A return to fun, and a return to form for the new version of the old Trek. The 13th T Trek rek movie is also the second good oddnumbered instalment in a row. Lucky for some.

Any resemblance to any persons, living,

cinema

dead or Justin Bieber is purely intentional.

POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING HHHH

OuT 26 AUGUST CeRT 15 / 86 MINS

DIRECTOR Akiva

Schaffer, Jorma Taccone Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, Sarah Silverman, Tim Meadows CAST

The life of superstar musician Conner4Real (Samberg) appears to be a charmed one, filled with groupies, screaming crowds and sacks of cash. But trouble is on the horizon in the form of a scheming rapper (Chris Redd), a disastrous merchandise deal and a swarm of killer bees.

PLOT

THE SPIRIT OF This Is Spinal Tap looms large over the latest comedy from the Lonely Island crew. Like Rob Reiner’s masterpiece, it’s a mockumentary following three likeable idiots as they navigate the choppy waters of the music biz. There is even an update of Tap’s ‘Shit Sandwich’ scene, as Conner4Real (Andy Samberg) checks out reviews of his new album:

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rather than a star rating, Rolling Stone awards it the poop emoji. Happily, rather than coming off as a pale imitation, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping squeezes laughs out of its tale like juice from a plum. If the music industry was silly back in the ’80s, it’s really daft now, and Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer gleefully go to town sending up its absurdities. Conner4Real is an ear-studded jackass, whose humongous entourage includes an eyebrow specialist, a scarf caddy and a guy who punches him in the nuts to remind him where he came from. He has an army of personalised holograms that caper around the stage. He is a narcissist who uploads daily videos to YouTube, and who forces his best friend Owen (Taccone) to wear a deadmau5-like helmet that emits a terrifying laser beam. There is no length he will not go to get attention — a trait that is consistently hilarious — and, given Miley’s twerking and Kanye’s tweet-based rants, all too plausible today. Hot Rod, the same team’s film about a wannabe Evel Knievel, was at times hysterical, but lumbered with a weak narrative. Popstar’s set-up is simpler and more effective. It turns out Conner4Real used to be just Conner, a decent guy who formed a boy band with Owen and his other buddy Lawrence (Schaffer). When he got

a taste of fame, he became a monster: Owen became his DJ-slave and Lawrence retired to a farm to whittle woodcarvings. The story, as Owen attempts to reunite The Style Boyz, is surprisingly sweet and engaging. It helps that there are inspired cameos peppered throughout, from the worlds of music (Arcade Fire, Justin Timberlake, Seal) and comedy (Will Forte, Bill Hader) or both (Weird Al Yankovic). There is also a penis that, if reports can be believed, belongs to an A-list director. This Is Spinal Tap, of course, was pinned around several gloriously bad songs, lampooning different genres of music. And Lonely Island certainly know their way around a big juicy hook, as anyone who’s watched their Saturday Night Live videos can attest. Highlights here include Finest Girl, l, a sex jam with relentless references to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, and Equal Rights, a paean to gay marriage filled with assurances that the singer is straight. The tunes in Popstar opstar are simultaneously whip-smart and stupendously dumb. Derek Smalls would approve. NICK DE SEMLYEN VERDICT An absolute blast, with a frenetic strike-rate and songs that will worm their way into your ears for days. Like Conner, onner onner, this comedy’s for real.

BOBBY SANDS: 66 DAYS HHHH

OUT 5 august / CERT tbc / 105 miNs

Brendan J Byrne Fintan O’Toole, Raymond McCord, Dennis Sweeney, Richard English director cast

A LOT OF filmmakers can be seduced by the idealism of Irish Republicanism, forgetting it’s one of the bloodiest movements in post-War Western Europe (Alan J Pakula’s The Devil’s Own leaps to mind). This superior doc does well — mostly — in avoiding the romantic clichés, presenting dissenting voices to the much-mythologised narrative of Bobby Sand’s fatal hunger strike, and examining how this mythologising came about. Touching everything from the process of starvation to the Book Of Job, and skilfully editing archive footage with talking heads and re-enactments, it proves to be compelling material. Unmissable for anyone with even a passing interest. al

cinema

THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR HHH

OUT 26 august CERT tbc / 105 miNs

James DeMonaco Elizabeth Mitchell, Frank Grillo, Mykelti Williamson, Joseph Julian Soria director

cast

America, 2025. As public sentiment rises against the Purge, ruling class the New Founding Fathers Of America target Presidential candidate Charlotte Roan (Mitchell), who’s lobbying to end the annual lawless mayhem. She’ll need help from Leo Barnes (Grillo) if she’s to survive the night.

plot

THE CONFESSION: LIVING THE WAR ON TERROR HHH

OUT 12 august / CERT tbc / 90 miNs

Ashish Ghadiali Moazzam Begg, Azmat Begg, Conor Gearty director cast

DESPITE SPELLS IN Bagram, Guantanamo and Belmarsh, alleged Al-Qaeda sympathiser Moazzam Begg has never been convicted of a terrorist offence. In this instructive documentary, he defends his beliefs and activities in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Director Ghadiali’s questioning is occasionally incredulous, but rarely rigorous, while his mix of music and archive can feel manipulative. But Begg’s measured responses make clear his views on such contentious topics as torture and the West’s demonisation of Islam. Some will remain unconvinced, but the evasions and contradictions only make this insight into an embattled mindset more compelling. dp

WITH HIS SCARY vision of a near-future United States where all crime is legal for one night in order to keep the peace the rest of the year, writer/director James DeMonaco has crafted a successful, thrifty franchise. As real-world America slides further into electoral madness, the latest Purge feels more apt than ever, even as it ramps up the terrifying politics and the slow-motion violence. Election Year ear veers dangerously close to coming off as a remake of 2014’s first follow-up, Anarchy: we’re once again out on the streets (this time Washington, DC as opposed to Los Angeles, though it could really be ‘A ‘ nycity, USA’ SA’ SA and was shot in Providence, Rhode Island) as our heroes try to find safety. Barnes, Grillo’s reliably relatable tough guy, must this time shepherd Mitchell’s determined Roan through the madness to keep her political chances — and, more importantly, her — alive. The added wrinkle here is that the rule protecting governmental people has been relaxed, and the New Founding Fathers have not only paid off a chunk of her security detail, they’ve also sent a mercenary team to take her out. Roan and Barnes are soon confronting both their heavily armed pursuers and anyone else looking to have a little illegal fun.

Mitchell and Grillo give the lead roles their all, and fortunately don’t have to go down the romance route — no time for love when you’re on the run from a skull-emblazoned drone. And, to his credit, DeMonaco has some fun finding new ways for people to be terrorised, including Williamson and Soria as store owners who have to deal with some particularly vengeful female shoplifters denied a quick grab-and-run during the daylight hours. Then there’s Betty Gabriel’s Laney, an ex-gang member-turned-freelance medical tech who offers her services during the period that the regular emergency services are shut down. While DeMonaco falls prey to a few of the archetypes we’ve seen many times before (especially plucky locals defending their property), there are enough layers to this lot that you don’t mind tagging along with them. The group ends up meeting political activist Dante Bishop (Edwin Hodge, a veteran of both previous films, though normally seen as one of the masked vigilantes causing chaos), who runs a secret underground shelter for the homeless and those who don’t have the funds to protect themselves. theme is one The he haves-versus-have-nots ha that ran through the previous movies, but it’s especially pronounced in Election Year, which makes sense given the current political climate. There are more sharp jabs to be found here, particularly the idea that the people in charge can change the rules to suit themselves on a whim and are using religious screeds to back up their twisted point of view. This said, it would help if the message were delivered in a way that didn’t reduce everything to the sort of comic-book clash Marvel or DC would view as simplistic. The idea of the New Founding Fathers is scary enough without having to turn them into a pack of psychopaths who possess all the nuance of a panto villain twirling his moustache and riling up the audience before the big sing-along. William thomas Verdict Election Year maintains the nervy tension that made the first films entertaining, but doubles down on the political metaphors, overwhelming you with its soap-box rhetoric.

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PETE'S DRAGON HHH

OUT 12 AUGUST CERT TBC / TBC MINS

DIRECTOR David

Lowery Bryce Dallas Howard, Oakes Fegley, Wes Bentley, Karl Urban, Oona Laurence, Robert Redford CAST

PLOT

After his parents die in a car accident, toddler Pete is raised in the woods by a big friendly dragon. Six years later, their happy existence is upended when people from the local town discover Pete (Fegley) and try to take him back to civilisation.

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PERHAPS REMEMBERED MORE with a hazy affection than any kind of passion, 1977’s Pete’s Dragon was second-tier Disney — a mix of live action, animation, horrible acting and humdrum songs. It was a fun idea — a lonely boy makes friends with a dragon — but one that wasn’t properly fleshed out. As such, it’s an ideal target — and a notable point of difference — in Disney’s current sweep of remakes, which has so far given us satisfying live-action updates of Cinderella and The Jungle Book, with Beauty And The Beast still to come. If Disney dares to revisit the classics, then why not also make something good from the mediocre? Pete’s Dragon is a very loose reworking. There are no songs and the setting is entirely different from the original’s coastal town, as is the young boy’s origin story. The only real similarity is the retention of a dragon and a Pete.

In this version, Pete is a young boy whose parents are killed in a car crash while driving through an unnamed woody area in the north-west United States. Pete scuttles weeping into the woods and is almost eaten by wolves, but is instead rescued by a huge, fuzzy green dragon, whom he christens Elliott. Thanks to Elliott’s ability to turn invisible and an awful lot of trees, the pair live undetected for six years — building an impressive tree house in the meantime — until loggers come a-chopping in their part of the forest and Pete is ‘rescued’ by a kindly ranger (Howard) and her family. Separation anxiety and musings on the meaning of family ensue. a David avid Lowery might seem an odd choice of director for this CGI-heavy children’s movie, his last film being the dusty romantic crime drama Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which was far

COSMOS HHH

Out 19 AUGUST / Cert TBC / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Andrzej

Zulawski Jonathan Genet, Jean-François Balmer, Sabine Azéma, Victória Guerra CAST

returninG FrOm A 15-year hiatus for what would be his final feature, Polish maverick Zulawski pays homage to a range of cinematic and literary heroes in a teasing but typically challenging adaptation of a Witold Gombrowicz novel. Aspiring novelist Genet travels to a Portuguese guesthouse run by Azéma and her gobbledegookspouting spouse, Balmer. Parodying the whodunnit and the country-house farce, this gleefully deranged ‘metaphysical noir thriller’ is stuffed with quirky characters and strange symbols, whose significance is shrouded in ambiguity. But the precise meaning of the connections, imperfections, imaginings and transformations matters less than the dizzying sensations Zulawski conjures up. DP

SWEET BEAN Playing fetch can be difficult with dragons.

HHH

Out 5 AUGUST / Cert PG / 113 MINS DIRECTOR naomi

Kawase Kiki, masatoshi nagase, Kyara uchida, miyoko Asada

CAST Kirin

more inclined to visual poetry than swift plot movement. Yet he’s an inspired pick. He gives a lived-in, left-behind weight to the setting. The town doesn’t seem fantastical, but it does feel isolated from society, a place that’s as unseen and out of time as the creature living in its miles of surrounding forest. Lowery’s handed a slight story that follows obvious beats, but he works hard to make the characters within it sturdy. Take that opening crash scene. Lowery doesn’t shy from its horror, showing the crash fully, in graceful slow-motion, then staying with Pete as he crawls from the site of his parents’ death and into predator-filled woods. It is dark. And it tells you immediately what this child is made of. He also coaxes exemplary work out of Oakes Fegley as the older Pete, who turns in a mature performance beyond his years. As for the dragon, Elliott is

not an especially convincing effect on its own, the weird fuzziness of the design making him ideal for plush merchandising but making him appear demonstrably fake on screen. However, when Fegley is playing alongside him he is believably there. Despite all this good work, Pete’s Dragon is nonetheless still not quite rich enough to sit alongside the Disney classics it’s being remade alongside — it’s still lumbered with no more than a short story’s-worth of plot, which has been stretched to feature length. Still, this version has a lot more fire in its belly than the original. OLLY RICHARDS VERDICT A

cute but not cutesy boy-and-his-dog story, with the dog played by a very big green dragon. Strong performances and direction make the most of a lightweight tale.

the BOnd BetWeen humanity and nature is a recurring theme in Kawase’s divisive canon, but she eases up on her trademark dense lyricism in this charming adaptation of durian Sukegawa’s novel. initially, the focus falls on the making of the sweet adzuki bean paste that septuagenarian Kiki lovingly prepares for nagase’s dorayaki (pancake)kiosk. But the story edges towards melodrama after it’s discovered that Kiki has been treated for leprosy. Some may find the contemplative shots of bubbling pans and cherry blossom as twee as nagase’s friendships with Kiki and schoolgirl customer Kyara uchida. But Kawase's points about ostracism, dedication, taste and fads are delicately, but incisively made. DP

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INGRID BERGMAN IN HER OWN WORDS HHHH

OUT 12 AUGUST / CERT TBC / 113 MINS

Stig Björkman Isabella Rossellini, Pia Lindström, Liv Ullmann (voice), Alicia Vikander DIRECTOR CAST

cinema

THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER HHHH

OUT 19 AUGUST CERT 12A / 116 MINS

Brady Corbet Bérénice Bejo, Liam Cunningham, Robert Pattinson, Tom Sweet DIRECTOR CAST

France, 1918. When a US diplomat (Cunningham), his wife (Bejo) and young son (Sweet) decamp to France for the Versailles treaty negotiations, it’s not long before the boy’s behaviour takes a dark turn.

PLOT

A HISTORICAL HISTORIC STUDY Y set partly in a fictional world, 27 year-old Brady Corbet’s directing debut is impressive, unsettling and elusive. It’s a family drama in which the family in question barely functions and a period parable about the rise of fascism that feels seriously current. Opening with a Pathé-style montage showing the end of World War I and the beginning of the Versailles peace conference, we meet its central Versailles characters in familiar terrain. Liam Cunningham’s gruff diplomat is distracted by his job as a member of Woodrow Wilson’s negotiating team; his wife Bérénice Bejo a society beauty resentful at having left New Y York life. Only when Robert Pattinson's flirtacious newsman breezes by for brandies and shop talk does she stir from her froideur. Bored and neglected, their son, mop-topped ten year-old Prescott, amuses himself by lobbing stones at parishioners (a childhood hobby of Mussolini’s), before graduating to mind games with his tutor (Nymphomaniac ( ’s Stacy Martin) and lazily twisting adults around his little finger. Played with eerie calm by English newcomer Tom Sweet, he’s possibly cinema’s scariest child since Damien. With a jarring score written by ’60s pop star Scott Walker and shot with the shadowy elegance of a Rembrandt by 45 Years cinematographer Lol Crawley, rawley, ra it’s full of moments of dark magic.

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Prescott drifts through an unwelcoming adult world, rattling around the family’s rickety country pile, witnessing its diplomatic plotting and whispers of illicit affairs in a way that recalls loss-of-innocence classics such as Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol dol and Joseph Losey’s The Go-Between. But growing, bit by bit, into an id-driven brat of terrifying self-will, he doesn’t have much innocence to lose, absorbing the friction like an AI on the verge of achieving sentience. Corbet, who wrote the script with his partner Mona Fastvold, cites French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre (the title is taken from a Sartre short story) and the austere films of Robert Bresson and Carl Theodor Dreyer as influences. Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon offers a more recent touchpoint. Like Haneke’s Third Reich origin story, Corbet’s film presents his grand metaphor for totalitarianism with chilly detachment. There are moments of humour — the golden-locked Prescott is mistaken for a girl by a string of visitors, to his annoyance — but as the story progresses, the shadows gather. All this psychoanalysis can feel a little reductivee — ‘‘Boyhood with Adolf’ — but Corbet subverts his Freudian nightmare in unexpected ways. Plot threads are discarded, red herrings sprinkled and tiny moments ring with greater significance. The dismissal of his nurse, the boy’s only ally, unleashes a burst of fury so pure it practically knocks you off balance. A hideously awkward encounter with his beautiful young tutor, meanwhile, has even more excruciating — and possibly sinister — ramifications. The misshaping of this young mind is troubling to witness. The greater irony is that it takes place among adults too immersed in peace talks to note the tiny dictator-in-the-making in their midst. Itt adds up to a defiantly unconventional uncon piece of storytelling. The only letdown is a fastforward ending set in a fictional state a decade or two later that feels a touch too knowing. It offers a glib punchline to a story that’s just a bit too frightening to laugh at. PHIL DE SEMLYEN VERDICT The ending doesn’t quite land, but this timely right-wing allegory promises there’s much more to come from Corbet.

An InTImATE A PORTRAIT of Swedish actress ATE Ingrid Bergman, Stig Björkman’s vivid and affecting documentary employs home movie footage, rare stills, talking head interviews and extracts from Bergman’s diary (read by Vikander) to tell her personal rather than her professional story. So we get little on Casablanca and her work with Hitchcock but tons on her difficult upbringing, her ostracisation from Hollywood after she left her family for director Roberto Rossellini and her arms-length approach to motherhood. The portrait that emerges is one of a spirited, courageous woman unfairly pilloried in her own lifetime, vividly etched through the fascinatingly candid footage and a gorgeous michael nyman score. IF

UP FOR LOVE HH

OUT 5 AUGUST / CERT 12A / 98 MINS DIRECTOR CAST Jean

Laurent Tirard Dujardin, Virginie Efira, Cédric Kahn

AS A WOmAn takes a creepy-flirty phone call from a stranger who’s found her lost mobile, Up For Love kicks off like a domestic thriller. But, once the maybe-stalker is revealed as twinkly charmer Jean Dujardin, it instead charts the safe, tepid waters of romantic comedy. With a single twist. As in the 2013 Argentian movie (Corazón de León) on which it’s based, Dujardin’s character is revealed, via unconvincing VFX and abovewaist framing, to be four-foot-five. Which makes courting lawyer Diane (Efira) more challenging, despite the fact he’s implausibly awesome in every other way. It’s all a bit trite, and mildly offensive, we suspect, to actual little people. It’s not that there isn’t potential with the idea, but the execution is numblingly predictable. DJ

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TH E T IM E S

TOTAL F I L M

THE CARER HHH

OUT 5 AUgUSt / CERT tbc / 89 minS

János Edelényi Brian Cox, Coco König, Anna Chancellor, Emilia Fox, Karl Johnson, Andrew Havill director cASt

cinema

JULIETA HHHH

OUT 26 AUgUSt CERT 15 / 99 minS

director Pedro

Almodóvar Emma Suárez, Adriana Ugarte, Rossy de Palma, Daniel Grao, Inma Cuesta, Michelle Jenner cASt

Julieta (Suárez) plans to move out of Madrid with her boyfriend, but stays when she hears news of her daughter Antía, whom she hasn’t seen in years. As Julieta searches for her, flashbacks show how young Julieta (Ugarte) met Antía’s father.

plot

LOVE, LOSS, MELODRAMA ODRAMA and a dash of camp: Julieta is unmistakably the work of iconic A Spanish director Pedro Almodó var. A Although not as crazy and frenetic as the likes of 1988’s Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown — the film that made his name on the international scene — it’s instead closer in spirit to 1999’s All About My Mother centred around maternity and the search Mother, for a loved one. Set across two time periods, Emma Suárez plays the older, soulful, and doleful Julieta as she longs for her missing daughter, revisiting memories that begin happily but gradually reveal the source of her pain. An air of mystery feeds the tension: how did Julieta and her daughter part company? And what exactly went on with the father? Despite this, Julieta’s chief pleasures are in simple storytelling and strong characters: this is a film about people, and how they handle the problems in their lives. demeanour Ass we might expect from her demeanour, the flashbacks into Julieta’s ’80s past are a good deal more exciting than her present. Beautifully played by Adriana Ugarte, the young Julieta is a single, punky teacher who meets two men on a long, nighttime train journey. One is awkward and older, nervously attempting to strike up a conversation with her. The other

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is a handsome young fisherman, Xoan (Daniel Grao), in the dining car. Who to chat to? Julieta’s choice is a fateful one that sends her story spinning in a romantic direction, but leaves her full of regret and guilt at the same time. The decision also bring her into contact with Almodóvar regular Rossy de Palma, who plays Xoan’s imposing housekeeper, Marian, who takes to looming over Julieta in a disapproving fashion, and warning her off Xoan in thinly veiled terms. De Palma’s unforgettable features will raise an instinctive laugh for fans of her work in everything from Women On The Verge... to Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, wn!, and she brings delightful dark comedy to the film. Slightly less involving are Julieta’s family dramas, namely a sickly mother and a father who seems to be very close with his housekeeper. This is a world in which men seek comfort where they can: like most of Almodóvar’s men, those in Julieta feel a pressing need for young, vibrant women in their lives. Women, meanwhile, are dominated by their attachment to family and emotions: the older, sadder Julieta is a slave to hers, having been repressing feelings about her daughter for years. There is hope, however: her present-day boyfriend Lorenzo (Darío Grandinetti) is heroically understanding and represents a solid potential future where support and kindness are more important than passion and unpredictability. Despite its downbeat heroine, the aesthetics are visually bright and cheerful, from enviable designer Madrid apartments to fashions sported by the stylish Julieta in both eras. There are also bursts of humour — as ever the director can find gentle comedy in tragedy — and as much colour and character in bad times as in good. Julieta may have a hard-luck story to tell, but it’s related with a light touch — it’s a celebration of elegance and good living as well as motherly love and romance. AnnA Smith verdict A slick, stylish melodrama with an involving story and a cracking cast, that skews closer to pedro Almodóvar’s more restrained films such as Volver olver and Talk To Her. And star Adriana Ugarte is a real find.

THE STORy STOR OF the bond between a theatrical knight suffering from a rare form of Parkinson’s and his Hungarian cleaner with stage aspirations is ideal Sunday night drama — if only it had the courage to maintain its convictions. The cantankerous Cox and no-BS König work well together, with Cox relishing the reams of Shakespeare in a script he’d worked on. Sadly their relationship drama reaches its full potential halfway into the film, and from then it descends into whether he’ll accept a lifetime achievement award where the main obstacle is an unusually stark depiction of incontinence. There’s good stuff here, but the filmmakers seem unaware of where it is. Al

THE SHALLOWS HHH

OUT 12 AUgUSt / CERT 15 / 86 minS

Jaume Collet-Serra Blake Lively, Óscar Jaenada, Sully ‘Steven’ Seagull director

cASt

A BIKINI-CLAD surfer battles a shark: sounds like what a coked-up Hollywood exec could come up with in a panic just before a meeting. yet y The Shallows turns out to be a perfectly decent piece of Fridaynight schlock, with a few clever wrinkles. Director Collet-Serra gives it an arty sheen, with nifty visuals (phone messages pop up mid-air) and a tragic backstory for heroine Nancy (Lively, back on form). Despite an effective and surprisingly gory first half, it slides into over-caffeinated action hokum for the final stretch, with an unconvincing CG beast. MVP: the seagull Nancy befriends and dubs ‘Steven Seagull’. It’s now surely only a matter of time before we get a bird-only remake of Under Siege. ndS

It was a frankly dismal rendition of Three Blind Mice.

WEINER-DOG HHH

OUT 12 auguSt CERT 15 / 93 minS

Director Todd

Solondz Greta Gerwig, Zosia Mamet, Danny DeVito, Ellen Burstyn, Julie Delpy, Tracy Letts caSt

A dachshund is bought by a dad (Letts) to cheer up his sick son, but the arrangement doesn’t work out. Then she makes her way across the country and through several different eccentric owners, from a vet’s assistant to a screenwriter, all experiencing a range of miseries.

plot

TODD SOLONDZ HAS built a career on making his audiences squirm, nudging them to laugh at things that are at best sad, and at worst horrifying. Whether it’s a teenage girl’s clumsy requests for love being cruelly refused in Welcome To The Dollhouse or a boy having a frank chat about his paedophile father’s intentions in Happiness, Solondz gives his audience situations no other director does. Because no other director’s really sure if

anyone actually should. He’s been causing discomfort for more than two decades now, so much so that most of his fanbase is now entirely comfortable with it. He doesn’t try to outdo himself with Wiener-Dog. By Solondz standards it’s a lark. Which is to say there’s a bleak, mushy death, a great deal of loneliness and a long, slow tracking shot of dog diarrhoea baking on a sunny street, but it’s not as oppressively nihilistic as his films can be. In its way, this is a Todd Solondz sketch show, which is sometimes very funny, always intriguingly strange, but doesn’t leave you with much once you’ve stopped laughing. A series of short, unrelated life stories are connected by the titular dog. She’s initially adopted by tightly wound parents (Letts and Delpy) keen to make their sick child feel better, but so horrible that they can’t manage it with their own love. Their son, by contrast, has too much love to give and nearly kills the dog with it. So on she goes to Dawn Wiener, the sad teenager from Welcome To The Dollhouse who died in Palindromes but has apparently walked it off. Wiener has had the good fortune to grow up to look like Greta Gerwig and now works as a vet’s assistant. She is still searching for love. The dog trots on via a miserable failed screenwriter (DeVito) and

an old woman (Burstyn), spending her final days regretting her life. None of these stories are particularly fleshy, aside from DeVito’s segment, but they feature some wonderful jokes. A lot of them are just silly, such as a visual gag with a dog wearing a dress and a suicide vest. But a few are lacerating — an aloof white teenager bemoaning people’s phoniness while wearing an “I can’t breathe” T-shirt is in its quiet way as witty and appalling as anything Solondz has done. He can still say a lot without shouting it. There’s also hope laced into this, or the closest Solondz gets to that — this is not an emotion he usually explores. The dog presents each of her owners with the possibility of happiness of a sort, either in the shape of real affection or as a conduit to cathartic revenge. They all balls it up, but the chance is there. Maybe Solondz is softening in his old age. Although based on the final shot, which we won’t spoil, he’s not softening up too much. olly richarDS verDict this is a gentler, less confrontational Solondz. it makes you laugh, but probably won’t leave you reeling after. Some fans of his might consider that a disappointment, others might find it a relief.

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Clockwise from here: The Dukes Of Hazzard were wearing well; Where was the postman with the new Next Directory?; Positioning the can two miles away was a tad ambitious.

cinema

HELL OR HIGH WATER HHHH

OUT 26 AUGUST CERT 15 / 102 MINS

DIRECTOR David

Mackenzie Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gil Birmingham CAST

PLOT

With their mother recently deceased and their family’s West Texas farm facing foreclosure, two brothers — ex-con Tanner (Foster) and divorced dad Toby (Pine) — embark on an audacious bank-robbing spree to raise some cash. The only thing in their way? A wily Texas Ranger (Bridges) and his put-upon partner.

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MIDWAY THROUGH HELL Or High Water ater there’s a shot of a Stetson-wearing cowpoke unhitching his horse at a gas station as a lime-green abomination straight out of Pimp My Ride rolls into view. It’s a throwaway moment and you could argue that it’s as subtle as, well, a tricked-out muscle car, but that juxtaposition of old and new is key to what stops this lean, complex Cannes competitor being just another Southern-fried tale of desperate men and dirty deeds. The story — a Black List script from actor and on-a-hot-streak Sicario screenwriter Taylor familiarity Sheridan — has a pleasing ring of familiarity. aavid Mackenzie (on his own British director David hot-streak after his gut-punch of a prison drama Starred Up) throws us straight into a twitchy, sun-baked West W Texan bank robbery. W We soon meet the two brothers behind the heist — Toby

(Pine), a former gas company worker and divorced father of two, and Tanner (Foster), an unpredictable career criminal — and discover they’re on a meticulously planned mission to gather enough unmarked bills to prevent the foreclosure of their late mother’s farmland. If you’ve seen No Country For Old Men (or, for that matter, Heat Heat) you’ll know what happens next. Enter Marcus (Bridges reviving his marble-gargling Rooster Cogburn drawl from the Coen brothers’ True Grit remake), an uncompromising, zinger-ready Texas Ranger who, alongside his part-Comanche partner Alberto (Twilight’s wilight’s Birmingham), saddles up to wilight track down the brothers before their next big score. From here, as Tanner and Toby squabble through preparations for the final part of their plan, there’s a compelling, almost mythic quality to the inevitable collision between these

SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS HHH

OUT 19 AUGUST / cerT TBC / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Philippa

Lowthorpe rafe Spall, Kelly Macdonald, Andrew Scott, Jessica Hynes CAST

THe SecOnd cineMAT MA ic adaptation MAT of Arthur ransome’s hymn to childhood adventure and innocence, Swallows And Amazons faithfully transcribes the spirit of the 1930 novel as the Walker children — John, Susan, Tatty and roger — camp on a small island in the middle of the Lake district and commence battle with nancy and Peggy Blackett, aka the Amazons. Solid rather than exciting, director Lowthorpe and screenwriter Andrea Gibb do try to amp up the drama with an espionage plot involving russian spies on the trail of a travel writer (Spall). The result is confident and cosy, well played by Spall, Macdonald and Scott, but it never really does anything to set the pulse racing. IF

Big friendly tealight just out of shot.

BEHEMOTH HHHH

OUT 19 AUGUST / cerT TBC / 91 MINS DIRECTOR Zhao CAST

mismatched duos on opposing sides of the law. The creeping dread is helped along by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ typically foreboding score. Yes, there are abundant crime flick clichés (Marcus is due to leave the force, obviously) but, like that vignette at the petrol pumps, they’re nearly always served up with a sardonic modern twist. Mackenzie has a painterly eye for the surreal in the everyday and presents a postrecession world of looming debt-management billboards, unemployed Iraq veterans and men in cowboy hats puffing e-cigarettes. What’s more, there’s an irresistible seam of Texan black comedy running through the whole thing: after one robbery, for example, a passerby casually offers to string up the perpetrators. Bridges is having a ball. He can probably play this kind of cantankerous old badass in his sleep now, but here he salts Marcus’ one-liners with

a weary vulnerability and the desperation of a reluctant retiree. Pine and Foster impress too, with an easy fraternal chemistry and faultless Southern accents. The face-off, when it arrives, comes amid a hail of bullets and, with the current debate around US gun control raging, the way the film plays a gaggle of pistol-wielding bystanders for laughs feels somewhat unfortunate. But this is a minor quibble. Sheridan once again proves adept at expertly managed tension as well as earthy, economic dialogue and this classy neo-Western ends as enjoyably and distinctively as it began. JIMI FAMU F REW REWA tense and burnished nished by Jef Jefff Bridges at his best. This is a deceptively simple tale of T Texan cops and robbers that drags the Old West into the modern age. ld W

Taut, VERDICT T

Liang Zhao Liang (narrator)

BLUrrinG THe Line between documentary and video art, Zhao Liang traverses inner Mongolia like a latterday dante to explore the environmental and human cost of china’s economic boom. Juxtaposing sheep grazing on islands of greenery with scarred landscapes and workers toiling in cavernous mines and sweltering foundries, Zhao muses on how the monstrous appetites of global consumerism have condemned exploited migrants to a living hell before succumbing to lung-blackening disease. Serving as his own narrator and cameraman, Zhao achieves a poetic potency whose seething fury is encapsulated by the climactic visit to a deserted modernist paradise that hammers home the insanity of a system driven by rampant greed. devastating. DP

SEPTEMBER 2016

51

THE FOUNDERS HHH

OuT 5 August / cErT tbc / 89 mins directors charlene

Fisk, carrie Schrader Marilynn Smith, Shirley Spork, Louise Suggs, Marlene Bauer Vossler cAst

cinema

MIKE AND DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES HH

OuT 10 August cErT 15 / 98 mins

director Jake

Szymanski Zac Efron, Anna Kendrick, Adam Devine, Aubrey Plaza cAst

With their sister’s wedding approaching, Mike (Devine) and Dave (Efron) are forced into finding respectable dates for the big day. They ultimately settle on Tatiana (Plaza) and Alice (Kendrick) — but it soon becomes clear the girls are far from good choices.

plot

“I’M REALLY DUMB,” says Mike (Devine), during a confessional moment in Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates. It’s hard not to feel Dav like he’s speaking on behalf of the movie itself. In both concept and execution, it wears its idiocy on its sleeve proudly, and hammers home its raunchiness with the gusto of a teenage boy. It’s a sex comedy with plenty of the former and not nearly enough of the latter. The titular Mike and Dave aave (Efron) are bros, in both senses of the word: two brothers living on a consistent diet of high-fives and high jinks. Ostensibly tequila salesmen, much of their time and energy is spent ruining family get-togethers, as destructively as possible. And, as their sister’s wedding approaches — as that ruthlessly efficient title suggests — these guys need dates. But not just any dates — a couple of demure sweethearts, something demanded by their despairing parents, who hope that might drag them towards a state of relative maturity. Enter Tatiana (Plaza) and Alice (Kendrick), two hard-drinking waitresses who are going nowhere. Tatiana is a near-alcoholic and compulsive liar; Alice is the more bashful of the two, still licking her wounds from being jilted at the altar. When the pair spot Mike and Dave’s ave’s a

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september 2016

rallying cry of enforced romance, they pounce at the opportunity for an all-expenses jolly to Hawaii. Thus begins a process of nice-ification, in which the ladies adopt fake clean-livin’ personas (as only characters in comedy movies do). There’s certainly something to be said for the gender parity here: it’s not often we see female characters shown to be as gleefully awful as their male counterparts. But for all its zeitgeisty jokes, the film is not quite as progressive as it thinks it is. The camera leers over naked flesh and the ultimate lessons learned — bad girls learn to be good girls — feels somewhat like a latter-day The Taming Of The Shrew. Thank goodness, then, for its four leads, each of whom could each easily command a movie alone. Efron — shirtlessness now apparently a contractual obligation — went from Disney darling to comedy kingpin without anyone noticing, and oozes charm. So does Kendrick, who frequently elevates the material beyond its worth. Devine’s contorted facial expressions echo Jim Carrey in the ’90s, while Plaza offers a curiously broad twist to her trademark deadpan delivery. But Jake Szymanski, in his debut as director, seems unsure how best to use his cast, and too often mistakes risqué for witty. Wacky set-piece follows wacky set-piece. Dialogue ranges from the shouty and vulgar (“If you don’t get in here, I’m going to start masturbating”) to the hopefully improvised (“She looks like a waffle that the chef threw away”) to the head-slappingly hackneyed (“Cheque, please!”). The masseuse industry, meanwhile, will surely be dismayed at yet another tired “happy ending” gag. Truth, it seems, can be dumber than fiction; the whole sorry thing is, in fact, loosely based on the real-life larks of two actual brothers. But it’s far more indebted to the Frat Pack comedies of the noughties — explicitly so, given that one character namechecks Wedding Crashers. Perhaps it might have felt fresh in 2005. Today, the schtick feels a little weary. john nugent verdict A strong cast can’t rescue the repetitively crude and recklessly derivative material. mike and dave need a lot more help than in merely finding wedding dates.

GiVEn ThE LAcK K of equality that still exists in golf — Muirfield in Scotland voted against accepting women golfers in May this year — it seems remarkable that the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) was founded as far back as 1950. That’s testament to 13 women who battled deep-rooted prejudices just to play (and make money — why not?) from the game they loved. This is their story, told in talking heads by the remaining women and the golfers on the tour today. There’s a charm in hearing how matter of fact the women are about what they achieved, but this focuses too much on celebrating their achievement rather than exposing the sexist establishment that blocked their way. jp

LIGHTS OUT HHHH

OuT 19 August / cErT 15 / 80 mins director David

F Sandberg Teresa Palmer, Maria Bello, Alexander DiPersia, Billy Burke cAst

LiGhTS OuT, T GhOST appears. Lights on, T, it’s gone. Building on the simple, strobing premise of his viral YouTube short, David F Sandberg’s fear-of-the-dark debut is a lean, mean scare-machine that torches the nerves for 80 memorable minutes. under attack: Teresa Palmer’s dysfunctional family, T mercilessly stalked by a shadow-dwelling spirit — a lurking silhouette with glowing eyes, nosferatu nails and a punishing backstory to justify the malevolence. While Sandberg has a wicked gift for ambushing audiences with jump-scares, it’s his human touch that really strikes: all his characters are flawed and damaged but hugely likeable, making the ordeal cut all the harder. One of the year’s best horrors. sc

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cinema

GHOSTBUSTERS HHH

Out NOW Cert 12A / 116 MINS

DIRECTOR Paul

Feig Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Chris Hemsworth, Andy Gar Garcia, Charles Dance, Neil Casey CAST

PLOT

When ghosts suddenly start appearing around Manhattan, three scientists (and a subway worker) form a team to try to find out what’s causing it. But as City Hall attempts to keep the increase in paranormal activity under wraps, it’s not only the spirits the group have to contend with.

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SEPTEMBER 2016

IT’S SAID THERE’S no such thing as bad publicity. Paul Feig may well disagree. Since his version of Ghostbusters was announced in 2014, the ill will being bashed into internet comment sections has been unprecedented — the first trailer even gained the dubious distinction of being the most disliked trailer on YouTube. It couldn’t be simply because the film has the temerity to feature four women as its ghostbusting quartet, could it? Not in 2016? This gender-focused trolling is something the movie plays on. Our new team of Ghostbusters post video evidence of one of the first ghosts they encounter, and the disbelieving comments (“A (“ in’t no bitches gonna hunt no ghosts”) mirror the real-life ones the filmmaking team were besieged with. When Melissa McCarthy’s A Abby Yates Y tells Kirsten Wiig’s Erin Gilbert, “You

shouldn’t be reading this stuff, it’s just a list of what crazy people write in the middle of the night online,” it’s difficult to disagree. That they manage to wring a knowing chuckle out of the situation is a testament to them. If the film’s funny and successful, they’ll have the last laugh. After an effectively scary opening, the A film does prove to be funny (as Feig and McCarthy collaborations tend to be). It aims for a broader humour than the original films, which is most obvious with Chris Hemsworth as Kevin, the team’s impossibly stupid receptionist who enjoys far more of a central role than Annie Potts ever did as Janine Melnitz. He’s responsible for many of the film’s biggest laughs as he struggles with simple tasks such as answering the phone, making coffee or covering his ears so he doesn’t hear something.

ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS: THE MOVIE

HHH

Out now / Cert 15 / 91 mins Director Mandie

Fletcher Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Julia Sawalha, Indeyarna DonaldsonHolness, Jane Horrocks, June Whitfield cast

BrItISH SItCOMS Fa F Ce particular challenges when they attempt the big screen, since the charm of our comedy is that it tends to be small scale, but Ab Fab largely escapes that parochial feel thanks to its implausibly wealthy fashion setting. It initially suffers from the same overload of no-laughs celebrity cameos as Zoolander 2, but things pick up when attention turns to its dastardly duo of eddie (Saunders) and Patsy (Lumley). at its best when it focuses on two women behaving badly, downing Bolly with fags in their hands and drugs in their hair, their fizzing chemistry carries us along even when the plot meanders. It’s scatty, scrappy and Ott, tt tt, just like the characters themselves. hoh

It was a Friday night and spirits were indeed high.

THE LEGEND OF TARZAN HH

Out now / Cert 12a / 110 mins Director David

Yates Skarsgård, Samuel L Jackson, Margot robbie, Christoph Waltz

cast alexander

Instead, he opts for his eyes. McCarthy and Wiig — two of the finest comedy actors currently working — are on good form as usual, but Leslie Jones also snags some of the best lines as Patty Tolan, the subway worker-turned-fourth member of the team. “I guess he’s going to Queens,” she says of a ghost that escapes into a subway carriage. “He’s going to be the third-scariest thing on that train.” But unlike Winston Zeddmore’s non-scientist, who was just in it for “a steady paycheque”, Patty’s knowledge of the city and its history makes her a key member of the group — she’s the one who confirms Erin’s theories of where the city’s spiritual hub will be with some real knowledge of previous goings-on. Not everything hits, though — most notably Kate McKinnon as mad scientist Jillian Holtzmann, whose wacky antics garner very

few laughs. And the ever-growing number of cameos are wasted opportunities, while the final battle is oddly tension-free, despite the stakes, as the group mow down ghost after CG ghost with their various toys. Still, the film works for the most part, and even though the laughs notably dry up as the CGI spectacular kicks into gear, its feel-good vibes will most likely have already won you over. The online haters didn’t have unparalleled insight about a film they hadn’t seen, then. Who’d have thought it? jonathan pile verDict an

effectively spooky opening gives way to a film that’s fun, funny and full of energy. energy it’s almost as if it never mattered that the four main characters were women. strange, that.

tarzan HaS PrOveD to be a tough t character to crack on the big screen. t too pulpy, and you’re in George Of The Jungle territory. resist that and the result could be a lifeless affair. this attempts to balance the two, but ends up toppling firmly into the latter category. It’s an adventure story without the adventure, as Jane (robbie)— despite vowing she’s not going to be a damsel in distress — is immediately kidnapped by the nefarious Leon rom (Waltz eerily convincing as a man who’ll do anything for a pile of cash). So t tarzan (Skarsgård) d) sets of offf to rescue her. It’s hampered by rough CGI (you won’t believe a man can swing on vines). Luckily, Skarsgård needs no such CG help. Man, does he look the part. ch

september 2016

55

Dwayne couldn’t contain his glee at having downloaded Pokémon Go

cinema

to his phone.

BALLERS: SEASON 2 HHH

SKY ATLANTIC STARTS 9PM, 26 JULY L LY epiSODeS vieWeD 1-5

SHOWRUNNER Stephen

Levinson Dwayne Johnson, Rob Corddry, John David Washington, Omar Miller, Donovan W Carter CAST

Spencer Strasmore (Johnson) — NFL star-turned-financial manager to elite American Football players — continues to make his way up Miami’s glitzy corporate ladder. The only thing standing in his way? Accident-prone clients, a possible addiction to painkillers and a rival money man with a serious grudge (Andy Garcia).

PLOT

WITH THE MASSED corpses of the Game Of Thrones finale in sight and the quiet euthanisation of muddled rock drama Vinyl, inyl, inyl there’s an argument that Ballers, unexpectedly enough, could emerge as one of HBO’s most sustainable hits. Starring Dwayne Johnson (and made by his fledgling production company), the debut series of this flashy sports dramedy proved

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a surprise success story last summer — in the US it was the cable company’s most watched half-hour series in six years — and this follow-up mostly picks up where that first run of slickly produced episodes left off. Those terminally allergic to Entourage should tread carefully, though. Ballers shares that show’s love of celebrity cameos, gratuitously nude female extras and low-stakes plot threads that play like a kind of First World Problem Olympics (“Will they improve on the $30 million contract offer?!”). But there’s occasional darkness amid its endless champagne-drenched boat parties (sports industry sexism, Vicodindependancy, absentee fathers), and in Johnson, Ballers has a true star player. His character, Spencer Strasmore, a former NFL star-turned silver-tongued financial manager, could so easily be a cipher or slimeball but Johnson foregrounds the scars that led to Strasmore’s early retirement. And his megawatt charm is in full beam. Last year Spencer successfully parlayed his old friendships into a career, and we rejoin him and his partner Joe (Corddry) very much out to cement their position while putting out various occupational fires. But the main engine for conflict, in the first half of the series at least, is corporate rival Andre Alan (Andy Garcia) — a full-bearded, smirking

bigwig who has history with Spencer and doesn’t take kindly to new competition for clients. The decision to add a big bad is a shrewd one and Garcia is a beguiling presence, able to sell the most preposterous of lines (“I’m too big to fail, Spence”) with style. Also, the rat-a-tat script is still packed with profane pearls (Joe at a ritzy tennis tournament: “[I] like how I feel uncomfortable around this many white people nowadays”), but that problem of inconsequentiality — or, at worst, vapidity — never truly goes away. Even as Spencer’s habit of crunching painkillers to combat a playing injury becomes more pronounced, there’s still the sense that Ballers favours neat resolution over anything truly nuanced. What’s more, knowing attempts to nod to Johnson’s real-life persona (“Are you Vin Diesel?” “No, I’m bigger and better-looking”) occasionally feel strained. That said, this is intoxicating, hard-charging escapism. And, like the mad bombast of a Super Bowl half-time show, it’s hard to take your eyes off it. JIMI FAMUREWA W WA VERDICT Entourage hits the NFL? Perhaps. But Ballers is lavishly produced televisual junk food that’s elevated no end by Andy Garcia’s new villain and the irrepressible charisma of Dwayne Johnson.

ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO

TV & streaming

STRANGER THINGS HHH

NETFLIX OUT 15 JULY UL ULY EPISODES VIEWED ALL

SHOWRUNNER Shawn

Levy Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Millie W Bobby Brown, Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Matthew Modine

CAST Winona

PLOT Rural Indiana, 1983. When a boy vanishes, his family, the local police chief and his friends all help with the search. Could a local US government facility and a mysterious girl with telekinetic powers know mor more? SPOILER: yes.

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IF THE ICONIC films of the era are to be believed, you couldn’t go outside your door in ’80s America without running into something supernatural — be it a stranded alien, an ancient Native American burial ground, or a demonic clown that turns into a spider. And okay, technically that last one’s neither a film nor from the ’80s (it’s a 1990 TV mini-series), but as the book on which it was based was released in ’86, we’re going to count it. This mystical America is the starting point for Stranger Things, an eight-part Netflix original series by sibling team The Duffer Brothers (Matt and Ross), previously notable in the UK for claustrophobic bomb-shelter thriller Hidden (direct to video here) and writing the odd episode of Wayward Pines. Which is to say — not very notable. Still, they’ve conjured up an intriguing premise and given Winona Ryder her most high-profile lead role since that payment

mishap in a Fifth ifth Avenue A department store. Pre-release anticipation was high. Ryder is Joyce Byers, the mother of Will (Noah Schnapp), a boy who goes missing one evening while cycling home from a friend’s house. It’s a mystery to the townsfolk what’s happened to him, but we’re less in the dark — a deliberately out-of-focus monster (for the first few episodes anyway) has escaped from a nearby government facility (run by the harmlesssounding but thoroughly evil US Department Of Energy). Will’s actual fate is never shown, though — raising the immediate possibility he’s not actually been killed. Something that gains traction as Joyce starts getting phone calls she’s sure are from Will, and lights begin to turn on and off — seemingly without cause. As is standard, Hopper (Harbour), the chief of police, is initially sceptical about this being a missing person’s case (“You wanna know the

Here: mike (Finn Wolfhard) with hideaway eleven (millie bobby brown). Below: Chief Hopper (David Harbour, middle) and team find a lead.

Joyce (Winona Ryder), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and Nancy (Natalia Dyer) make desperate attempts to contact missing Will.

worst thing that’s ever happened here? An owl attacked Eleanor Gillespie’s head because it thought her hair was a nest”). Of course, he soon discovers it’s not the only untoward thing going on in town — including a death which looks like a suicide (that we know is actually the work of government agents), and sightings of a strange, short-haired runaway child which Hopper believes could be Will. Again, we know it isn’t, because by the time Hopper’s on her trail, she’s already been discovered and taken in by Will’s friends — and revealed she has supernatural powers. They name her Elle, short for Eleven — the number tattooed on her arm — and the four of them quickly take it upon themselves to find Will themselves. Despite Ryder’s first billing, it’s this group, led by Mike (Wolfhard) — or ‘Frogface’ to his bullies — who are the heart of the show and

make it clear the type of coming-of-age adventure films The Duffer Brothers are honouring. They travel around on bikes, talk to each other over walkie-talkies and, at one point, take a journey along some railroad tracks. It’s clearly a show made with love for the pop culture of the era it’s set in — a The Thing poster can be spotted on a wall, He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe comes on the TV, characters talk about going to see Poltergeist geist and All The Right Moves at the cinema. One of the group even looks like Stand By Me-aged Wil Wheaton. Where this approach falls down is when these references are no longer used as entertaining background details, but instead are swiped wholesale. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial estrial is the biggest victim — a subplot sees Mike trying to keep Elle hidden from his parents, and a later action sequence sees them attempting to escape government agents on their bikes — but a scene

from Aliens gets lifted too, and at one point a character, marvelling at what’s unfolding, asks, “You read any Stephen King?” It would be a fair bet to say The Duffer Brothers have. There are also too few surprises. We learn so much before the characters do that we watch them realising things long (sometimes multiple episodes) after we’ve worked out (or just been shown) what’s actually going on. But despite all this, there are enough human dramas, soapy teenage love triangles and nostalgia-coated kids’ adventures to make it an engaging eight episodes. The ’80s, man — dangerous yes, but what a time to be young. JonAth A An pile Ath verdict it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the films it aspires to, but Stranger Things pays homage to, borrows — and steals — from the best. And that sees it through.

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THE SECRET AGENT HHHH

BBC ONE / On 9PM, 31 JULY ULY / EPiSOdES ViEWEd ALL ULY DIRECTOR Charles

Mcdougall Jones, Vicky McClure, ian Hart, Stephen Graham, Charlie Hamblett

CAST Toby

TV & streaming

BOJACK HORSEMAN: SEASON 3 HHHH

NETFLIX OuT NOW EPiSOdES ViEWEd ALL

Raphael Bob-Waksberg Will Arnett, Amy Sedaris, Alison Brie, Paul F Tompkins, Aaron Paul SHOWRUNNER CAST

PLOT Former star of beloved sitcom Horsin’

Around BoJack Horseman (Arnett) has spent 20 years in the Hollywood Hills, desperate for a return to the spotlight. But after years of self-loathing, drunken nights and career sabotage, can an Oscar nomination finally give the horse a sense of worth?

WELCOME TO HOLLY HOLLYW YWOO, a version of Los Angeles where humans and humanoid animals coexist, a cat called Princess Carolyn manages a depressive, alcoholic horse actor named BoJack, and no-one bats so much as an eyelid about any of it. The screwball creation of writer and comedian Raphael Bob-Waksberg (and his animator collaborator Lisa Hannawalt), unlike many animated comedies BoJack Horseman has a linear narrative (rather than the episodic nature of, say, The Simpsons or Family amily Guy), Guy which means jus just jumping in at Season 3 is a tricky proposition. The writers instead take great pride — and its audience, great pleasure — in layered in-jokes that will leave newcomers well and truly stumped. And the comedy is all the richer for this painstaking attention to detail. This season has BoJack on the Secretariat etariat press tour — the biopic for which he hopes to receive his first Oscar nomination alongside acting heavyweights Bread Poot and Jurj hea Clooners. The Oscar race is the perfect target for the show’s razor-sharp media satire, but it’s not a comfortable fit for renowned self-saboteur BoJack. “Don’t fetishise your own sadness,”

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No more wine? Stop being such a nag.

revered awards whisperer Ana Spanikopita (Angela Bassett) tells BoJack as he navigates Hollywoo’s (not a typo: the ‘D’ was destroyed by a helicopter) upper echelons. For the other characters, it’s not all doom and gloom. BoJack’s perennial houseguest Todd (Aaron Paul) is still caught up in madcap schemes (such as his female-only cab service ‘Cabracadabra’), and Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris) is finally learning to balance work with her severely lacking personal life. The marriage of celebrity Labrador Retriever Mr Peanutbutter (Paul F Tompkins) to the very may still be rocky, human Diane (Alison Brie) ma but the writers’ decision to have him spend more time with Todd adds a welcome new source of comedy, including a running mystery regarding spaghetti strainers that culminates in one of the season’s biggest laughs. Other highpoints this year include an episode set entirely underwater, and regular flashbacks to 2007, which provide a rich source of knowingly dated pop culture references (“What’s that? There’s a panic? At the disco?”). And if you’ve always wanted to see a killer whale give a private dance, this is your opportunity. But BoJack Horseman has always been at its best not when it’s being funny, but when it turns dark — exploring the sadness of its characters and the emptiness of their lives. This 12-episode batch has the grimy residue of BoJack’s previous missteps lingering in the background (including his attempt to sleep with the daughter of a former girlfriend at the end of Season 2), but also gives him all-new reasons to re-examine his life. Not that he ever gets anywhere with them. And the writing team’s skill at switching between the light and the dark, sometimes within the space of a line, is a feat few comedies can match. Or even try to. And for that reason alone it should be treasured. EMMA THROWER VERDICT Delectably meta — just like Arrested Development and Archer before it — this is a show that can carry an in-joke like few others. But it’s when it reveals its surprising depths that it really shines.

JOSEPH COnRAd’S PRESCiEnT novel of terrorism and betrayal gets a well-acted, classy, if polite adaptation from the BBC. Toby Jones is a pro as usual as Verloc, a shopkeeper in 1890s London involved in the anarchist underworld, as is Stephen Graham as the policeman on his tail. Vicky McClure’s sensational, however, in a rare trip into period fare — as Jones’ wronged wife, her talent for suffering reaches new heights. The show around them all, considering it’s an adaptation of the book that introduced the suicide bomber into literature, is perhaps a tad tame — the broiling madness of Conrad’s characters a tad muted poured into a Sundaynight drama — but the BBC has long had this kind of production stitched up. AL

VICE PRINCIPALS HH

SKY K ATLANTIC / STARTS 9.35PM, 26 JULY KY JUL EPiSOdES ViEWEd 1-6

Jody Hill, danny McBride McBride, Walton Goggins, Georgia King, Kimberly Herbert Gregory

SHOWRUNNERS CAST danny

EA E STBOUND & DOWN-ERS danny McBride and Jody Hill return with a sitcom centred on an obnoxious Vice Principal. McBride is neal Gamby, a bitter disciplinarian who forms an unholy alliance with his greatest rival to oust their South Carolina high school’s new principal (Gregory). despite the odd inventive gag and welcome glimpses of humanity beneath Gamby’s dickish exterior, these first six episodes are predominantly distasteful. They essentially present two entitled white guys trying to hound a single-mother out of a job she does really well. You hope that by the story’s conclusion, McBride and Hill will have supplied a much-needed sense of redemption. DJ

CARMAGEDDON: MAX DAMAGE HH

Out NOW / PS4, XB1 DIRECTOR Dave

games

LEGO STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS HHHH

Out NOW FORMAt ORMA S: PS3, PS4, XB1, 360, ORMAt Wii U, 3DS VITA IT ITA

DIRECTORS Jamie

Eden Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill CAST

Luke Skywalker has vanished. Princess Leia has sent her best pilot to Jakku in search of clues, meanwhile Kylo Ren leads the First Order on the dark side. Finn, a Stormtrooper deserter, and Rey, a scavenger waif, are whipped into the centre of the drama, which now involves bricks. Lots of bricks.

PLOT

YOU COME EXPECTING the youthful exuberance of Finn, Rey and BB-8 and instead you’re treated to a thick shot of greatest hits nostalgia. The first 30 minutes of LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a victory lap of every battlefront featured in Return Of The Jedi’s Battle Of Endor. It’s a fitting start. Eleven years ago it was in Star Wars’ universe that TT Games established a template for its multi-billion-dollar business: recreating megawatt movie franchises P in digital LEGO. Harry Potter , Indiana Jones, The Lord Of The Rings, Jurassic Park — few big blockbusters have avoided the brick treatment. Understandable, then, that in returning to the galaxy where it all began, the studio should first pay tribute to the Empire that built an empire. No cinematic blockbuster fits the LEGO template quite so snugly. snugly LEGO’s elemental appeal, as any child can tell you, is the joy of building a house then knocking it down again in a shower of plastic bricks — something particularly suited to a Jedi’s unique abilities. With a humming sswish they can wreak destruction with a lighsaber. Then, with a quiet wave of a hand, reassemble the wreckage. In this way LEGO Star Wars allows us to smash a tree

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into its plastic molecules, then rebuild it as a ladder, an anti-aircraft gun, or a switch for BB-8 to turn with his gyrating torso. The game follows a now familiar rhythm. It breaks the film’s story into a series of chapters, providing a slapstick but faithful take on the original work. You control a vast and expanding cast of characters — everyone from the marquee stars to the bit-part characters that only the most studious Star-gazer will recognise. Each has an ability that must be used like a key to solve the lock of specific puzzles. Rey, for example, is a natural gymnast, able to fling her staff into cracks where it becomes an impromptu pole, which she can swing on to reach ledges. Chewbacca can lob grenades that explode otherwise impervious silver bricks. When it comes to faraway switches that can only be reached with a blaster bullet, Han Solo always shoots first. You can switch between characters with ease, while each level strains at the seams with secrets that can only be accessed when you’ve unlocked the requisite personas and returned for a second play-through. For veterans, The Force Awakens introduces a clutch of new ideas to go along with its pristine new game engine, which renders the LEGO world with unrivalled weight and sheen. One example being the sections when you must hide behind cover in a shoot-out, the game switching to an overthe-shoulder camera view as you line up headshots as if playing Gears Of War. Those piles of bricks can now be used to build more than one object at a time as well, breathing fresh air into the puzzle design. Not every level sparkles (one, in which you must tediously load the Millennium Falcon, sticks out), but the wit, ingenuity and fan-service ensure that, in the ever-expanding Star Wars galaxy, one of its brightest stars is now made of bricks. SIMON PARKIN P VERDICT The Force Awakens is a glorious return to form for the storied LEGO games, one that freshens the familiar yet no less joyous formula with a clutch of ingenious ideas.

Hosier

t CERtAIN tAIN tHINgS, SuCH as global Hypercolor t t-shirts and the Saturday Night dance, are ’90s relics that are happily yet to be revived in the modern day. Sadly, the same thing cannot be said about Carmageddon. Pitched as a video-game take on Death Race 2000 on its release in 1997 (albeit without the licence), this fourth game in the series is as gleefully violent as ever — bodies explode in a mass of blood and limbs as you hit them. the problem is, it still lacks any attempt at satire to justify this carnage. Instead its raison d’être seems to be simply to offend — witnessed in the names of the power ups and the gameplay, which has you mowing down pedestrians, cows or people in wheelchairs in your car. the last-gen graphics don’t help its cause much either. JP

MONSTER HUNTER GENERATIONS HHHH

Out NOW / 3DS DIRECTOR Yasunori

Ichinose

HugE IN JAPAN AP APAN in a ‘this game will sell your console’ kind of way, the Monster Hunter series has so far attained nothing more than cult status in the uK. And while the 3DS-only Generations may not change that, it is a good starting point for newcomers wanting to test-drive the franchise as it incorporates some of the best elements from previous games. that’s not to say it’s a simple ride, as new players (or even ones who are a bit rusty) may find the first few hours daunting as they grapple with the game’s systems. But that’s all part of the challenge — and the enjoyment — as you strive to become a better hunter, able to tackle increasingly difficult beasts. And Generations is as slick and compelling as the series has ever been. JP

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ECTOR R I D , T R A ARK HE EXTREME, D S ’ D A IDE SQU AKE THE MOSTR SEEN C I U S T EROES AMISSION: TO MIE YOU’VE EVE H I T N A V E A LIKE TH ID AYER IS ON UPERHERO MO DAV -UP S MESSED SN

WORD

LYEN

SEM ICK DE

OCK

TYPE J

MONTH 2016

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NE HOT SUMMER’S night in 2014, David Ayer had a dream. A bad one. “There was a black pool of oil, with a human shape rising out of it,” he remembers. “All shiny and covered with liquid.” As the hulking figure loomed towards him, oil dripping from its misshapen body, Ayer saw it was coated with what appeared to be frogspawn. Then a moment of realisation: those were eyeballs all over it. Staring at him. He woke with a start. And instead of calling a therapist, he smiled. “I’m a veteran of weird dreams,” the director says. “It takes a lot to rattle me.” In fact, a major problem had just been solved. The next morning he drove onto the Warner Bros lot in Burbank, strode into the pre-production office of Suicide Squad, Squad and grabbed a black marker pen. Then, as producer Richard Suckle stared in amazement, Ayer drew the creature from his nightmare on the whiteboard. “I’d never had a director do that,” recalls Suckle. “We’d been talking a lot about what the bad guys in the movie would be. And the crude drawing he did that morning was the origin of what we call the EAs.” The grotesquely over-ocular Eyes Of The Adversary, to give them their full title, but dubbed “the flying monkeys” of the movie by Ayer, are minions of evil the heroes must battle. (The nature of the Big Bad himself, herself or itself remains highly classified.) They are, for a PG-13 comic-book movie, pretty messed-up. Then again, there’s plenty about Suicide Squad — in which major DC villains are despatched by the US government to complete an impossible mission, all while surviving the diabolical machinations of the Joker (Jared Leto) — that fits that description. In a summer crammed with reboots and sequels, it represents a rare mega-budget gamble, populated by characters never before seen in live action, and defined by bold creative decisions. There’s a simple reason Suicide Squad is what it is: David Ayer. The writer-director, used to shooting crunchingly brutal lo-fi thrillers, has been turned loose on a summer blockbuster. And to his astonishment he hasn’t had to tone down his style. “This is an insane movie,” he tells Empire. “It’s kind of a miracle they let me make it. It’s beautiful, soulful, fun… but fucking insane.”

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Clockwise from above: Katana (Karen Fukuhara) confronts one of the Eyes Of The Adversary; The Joker (Jared Leto), nightclubbing; Director David Ayer makes his point to Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, in full Killer Croc regalia.

It’s another hot summer’s night, roughly two years after his dream, and we’ve joined Ayer at the place where he had it: his home in Los Angeles. Rather than residing in Malibu or Beverly Hills like many Hollywood power-players, he lives in Los Feliz, a less opulent neighbourhood, in a hillside house he’s owned for 15 years. He ushers us onto the back porch, points out a hummingbird sipping from a water dispenser, then offers us a snack. In a wonderfully incongruous touch, the man behind the most extreme blockbuster of 2016 has laid on milk and cookies — the latter baked by his daughter. His four kids are in the TV room watching Arrow; his wife Mireya is cooking up Mexican food. It seems he now has an idyllic family life.

But as a kid growing up in Minnesota and Maryland, Ayer was often deeply unhappy. unhappy “My childhood fucking sucked,” he says. “I was exposed to a lot of wild shit.” He was kicked out of home by his parents as a teenager, moved to the crime-addled environs of South Central LA, then at 18 he joined the Navy. There he had experiences aboard a nuclear attack submarine he still won’t talk about. “It’s a pretty intense place to be,” he says quietly. “People get torn down for sport. You start to see what people are made of.” Those experiences have fed into his filmography, fuelling movies such as LA cop thrillers Training Day (written by Ayer) and End Of Watch, and Fury, about a military unit under

immense stress. He is fascinated by psychology, law w enforcement and criminal gangs — all of which loom large in Suicide Squad. It’s based on a cult series of DC comic books, but where most movies of this type are devised by committee, Ayer says he was given free rein to make the film about the super-powered fuck-ups he had in his head. “My first interview with David was like sitting down with Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now,” laughs costume designer Kate Hawley. “We met in this room full of war stuff and he started talking about all these mad, incredible characters. I went, ‘Yeah… yeah…’ And then he said, ‘It’s like a Jodorowsky film.’ I gasped, ‘You’ve got me now.’”

The acid-drenched visuals of cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky J sky are just one design influence. The look of the Joker draws on the Instagram feeds of gaudy Mexican cartel-lords. His paramour, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), doodles love letters to ‘Mr J’ on her clothes, inspired by two 19th-century women diagnosed with clinical psychosis Hawley once read about. Trippy sorceress Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) has a costume that incorporates witchcraft symbols. The Joker’s gang, meanwhile, features a tubby cosplay Batman (that’s really going to make Ben Affleck sad), plus crooks dressed up as a devil goat and a sea urchin. “It’s all about psychological warfare,” Hawley says of the group’s aesthetic. “They’re nightmarish.”

The detail-obsessed Ayer designed the uniforms worn byy the mo movie’s Navy vy SEALs. SEALs “I did it with my mate Owen,” he says. “It’s geeky stuff, but we wanted to design our own specialwarfare urban night-operations camouflage. I don’t like shopping off the rack.” He even picked the film’s codename, Bravo 14. “It’s like my generic classified government programme,” he smiles. “The most horrible shit is hidden behind the most banal names.”

IF PRE-PRODUCTION on Suicide Squad was out there, things really got intense on set. Ayer has become renowned for encouraging actors to push themselves into dark territory. On Fury, Shia LaBeouf cut his own face and

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

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NOT AS FAMOUS AS METROPOLIS OR GOTHAM, BUT WE’VE MUCH TO OFFER!

HISTORY Midway is a bustling hub in the state of Michigan. We can trace our roots all the way back to the 17th century when we were a trading post for fur trappers, growing exponentially through the Industrial Revolution until it became the Midway City we know today. Our vibrant, diverse population (800,000 at the last census) even includes prominent citizens from the planet Thanagar.

FAMOUS RESIDENTS Gotham has the Batman and Metropolis has Superman. Here in Midway we’re proud to be the base for the various heroes to have adopted the mantles of Hawkman, Hawkgirl and Hawkwoman. The city was also the former home of the controversial Doom Patrol. For sports fans, Midway is proud to host the Chiefs (baseball), the Cardinals (football), the Sprints (basketball) and the Wolverines (hockey).

Clockwise from above: Diablo (Jay Hernandez) should have gone easy on the Silvikrin; Deadshot (Will Smith) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) step out in Midway; Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), the squad’s badass boss.

ATTRACTIONS Our most astounding point of interest is perhaps Grinder’s Bluff, a natural rock formation once used as a Thanagarian hideout and pockmarked by countless meteor showers. The phenomenon has been studied extensively at the nearby Mount Tobar Observatory, which is open to the public for fascinating tours. The immense gorge at Hawk Valley is also a must-see — look out for Hawkman! The Doom Patrol’s brownstone stands in the Downtown area.

RE-DEVELOPMENT Since 2008, following the devastating events dubbed the Final Crisis, Midway has seen massive regeneration, with clean-up crews and developers working hard to bring the city gleaming into the 21st century — and beyond! In recent months, the activities of the so-called Suicide Squad have been greatly exaggerated by our local newspaper The Graphic. Please feel confident that you can visit in complete safety! OWEN WILLIAMS

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had one of his teeth pulled out. For Sabotage, a movie vie about decep deception within the ranks of a SWAT team, Ayer told Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sam Worthington lies to pit them against each other. He had no intention of changing his MO just because of his new movie’s pumped-up budget. “I made sure everyone was emotionally and physically exhausted going in, because that’s when you find the truth,” he says. “You break people down and then you lay on the programme. It’s Military 101.” Another of his friends, Jaime FitzSimons, the sheriff of Summit County in Colorado, was brought in to go to work on the film’s stars. One by one they were summoned to a room, where the sheriff delved deep into their psyches. “He’s

probably one of the best law-enforcement interrogators out there,” there, says ys Ayer. Ayer “But the process isn’t adversarial. It was cathartic. People form layers, and you have to go in and stir it up.” Will Smith, aka turbo-charged assassin Deadshot, was at first baffled by the process; now, he extols it. “You sit around talking for hours and hours about yourself and you think you’re wasting time,” he says. “But when we got into the shoot, David started pulling things out. He knows what makes you tear up, what makes you laugh, the things you don’t want to talk about. He has a treasure chest of your deepest experiences, a rainbow spectrum of emotions, and he can pull out the colours he wants.”

The actors were prescribed peculiar exercises; none involved ed passing an invisible in beach ball. “David called me up and said, ‘If you have the opportunity, go to a forest alone at night, under the full moon, and become like an animal,’” says Delevingne. “So I ran naked through woodland, howling like a wolf, getting stung by stinging nettles. To be honest, I do weird shit like that all the time anyway.” Joel Kinnaman, who plays special-ops commander and squad babysitter Rick Flag, endured classified military videos he describes as “horrific shit I would otherwise never watch”. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, prepping for crocodile/man hybrid Killer Croc, listened endlessly to tapes of a Japanese cannibal

named Issei Sagawa, even during his five-hourlong make-up sessions. sessions “I drove myy prosthetics pros team mad,” he admits. Jai Courtney went even further as the unhinged Boomerang, an Australian armed with a morbid sense of humour and drone throwingsticks for aerial attacks. Courtney signed up for the comic-book movie warily, expecting a micromanaged, tame experience. What he got was David Ayer. “I turned up to discuss my look, expecting we’d have a long discussion and slowly refine it,” says Courtney. “David just walked right in, picked up some clippers and started shearing chunks of hair off my head. Eventually he said, ‘You look like bad news.’ Then he left.” Later, after an intense conversation

with Ayer over Skype, Courtney outdid his mate LaBeouf byy putting out cigarettes cigare on his arm as psychological prep-work. “That night I happened to eat some mushrooms and I did self-inflict some burns,” he says, shaking his head at the memory. “I’ve done a few franchise films and so often it’s nine phone calls for every decision, a panel of judges deciding what’s going to be the message. Here everyone is trusting in David’s vision. We’ve been left alone.” On set in Toronto, over the course of three days, Empire witnesses Ayer in action. He confiscates Will Smith’s cell phone, then encourages him to use blue language in a take that definitely isn’t PG-13. Then he chivvies  along a slow camera set-up by yelling, “At some

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point let’s try to sell some popcorn here!” He quips, “Where are the fucking Avengers?” And during a situation-room scene involving Rick Flag and Enchantress he motivates Kinnaman by getting him to scream between takes, telling him to visualise someone he cares about being engulfed in flames, and goading him from behind the camera. Afterwards, Kinnaman comes over to Empire, puffing on a watermelon vape pipe. “A common David Ayer direction, for me at least, is, ‘Try to make me hate you less. Please don’t add to how much this movie is going to suck,’” he laughs. “I’ll say, ‘What am I feeling at this moment?’ And he’ll say, ‘You’re not feeling anything, because you’re a soulless actor. Just do your face thing.’” Ayer, who’s in earshot, fires back a deadpan retort. “Well, in this scene you were supposed to be confused and angry, so it worked! Or I could be like every other director: ‘Oh, that was lovely! That was amazing!’” His unconventional methods, which he likens to “a North Korean prison camp”, draw universal praise from the Suicide Squad cast, with Will Smith calling him “the number one or number two director I’ve worked with”. Margot Robbie, who looks set to steal the show as Harley Quinn, a bubble-blowing mischief-maker with a combat mallet, panics when she loses an earring before a scene: “Oh shit, David’s going to have an absolute melt!” But she calls Suicide Squad “one big happy family... We’ve all got really tight. And it was actually really cool to be at the gun range on Christmas Eve instead of hanging with my relatives.” But perhaps the greatest meeting of minds was between Ayer and Jared Leto, who needed little encouragement to dive into the role of The Joker. Leto refused to break character during the shoot, cackling during his off-camera conversations and even eating lunch as ‘Mr J’. Nearly a year after the film wrapped, he’s found the Clown Prince of Crime is still hanging on. “He still pokes his head out sometimes,” admits Leto. “I keep coming out with a line or two that sounds like something he would say. To live as someone else, it creates habits, from the way I laughed to the way I thought about the world. But it was also refreshing and intoxicating. The Joker is so nuts: when he was around, people had fun watching the madness.”

EMPIRE ’S VISIT TO Ayer’s house comes mere hours after he finishes work on Suicide Squad: the movie is print-mastered and en route to the lab. He admits to feeling weapons-grade jitters. “I’m still bleeding in the delivery room, you know?” he says, looking at the city sprawl below. “And I won’t know what I’ve made until audiences see it. That’s the problem. It’s like giving birth and they take the baby out of the delivery room. They don’t tell you whether it’s alive or not.” This particular baby, of course, has siblings, being part of the burgeoning DC Comics/Warner Bros cinematic universe. The Man Of Steel

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is now the Man In Coffin (at least for now), but Kal-El gets a namecheck on set, as squad nemesis Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) manipulates a room of politicos by hypothesising, “What if the next Superman decided to become a jihadist?” Batman, meanwhile, will get an honest-to-God cameo, though no-one is saying at this stage whether that’s Affleck or a Batdouble inside the suit. Ayer’s nerves have been worsened by Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice getting pummelled by critics and the public alike. “Zack is the biggest fucking [comic-book] fan I know, and he got hit by a two-by-four,” he says. Batman v Superman underperformed at the boxx office, cranking up

Clockwise from above: Deadshot, Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and Killer Croc spot a really big spider; Harley Quinn on the town; Cara Delevingne as the eerie Enchantress.

the already-considerable pressure on Suicide Squad. “When it started out, this was as supposed to be the funny, smart-talking, cool little brother,” Ayer reflects. “That movie was the big brother, the football hero. I feel like a lot of scrutiny has swung onto us.” The upside of that is that Suicide Squad could be exactly what the world has been waiting for. If what Empire has seen is any indication, it’ll be fresh, wild, funny and stuffed to its gills with berserker combat. Shooting one enormous battle sequence set in the fictional city of Midway (see sidebar, p.68), the production expended 6,000 shells a day and unleashed up to 40 stuntmen on wires, wearing full-body prosthetics to portray the grisly EAs. “It’s a beast of a movie,” says Ayer,

who shot a million-and-a-half feet of film, then g the castt back together got tog to shoot even more action this year. “Finishing it was brutal; it handed my ass to me. But day by day you do your job and complete the mission.” In the end credits, the first ‘thank you’ will go to the USS Haddo, the submarine he served upon as a young man and the place where he learned to cope with incredible pressure. Warner Bros is pleased enough with the results that a Harley Quinn spin-off is, according to producer Charles Roven, “at a very nascent stage”. Each member of the squad, in fact, has signed up for several possible films; it’s a rogues’ gallery with limitless potential. “Killer Croc has an extensive background with Batman,” says

Akinnuoye-Agbaje. “You never know when or where he might appear.” appear ” No word yet ye on a Boomerang/Crocodile Dundee team-up. As for Ayer, he’s on to the next thing. He celebrated the final shot approval on Suicide Squad by hosting a production meeting for Bright Bright, a Netflix-produced reunion with Will Smith that will take him back to the world of cops, but with added orcs and fairies. There’s no time for a holiday, he says. “I’m already late for the next train.” But before he boards that, he can at least get a decent night’s sleep. Who knows what he’ll dream about? SUICIDE SQUAD IS IN CINEMAS FROM 5 AUGUST AND WILL BE REVIEWED IN THE NEXT ISSUE

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AL EXPERIENCE… D ON THEIR SUICID EACH OF THE SQUA

US

AGI PorTrAIT LORENZO

VIOLA DAVIS AMANDA WALLER

JOEL KINNAMAN RICK FLAG

“You go in with some expectations because it’s a superhero movie. But there is so much edge to this, while also having levity. David’s a mad genius.”

ADEWALE AKINNUOYEAGBAJE

“I always want to be hip: that’s why I did a Tyler Perry movie and the cover of Jet magazine. But this is the hippest thing I’ve done.”

WILL SMITH DEADSHOT

“Every once in a while you get a group of people with magic chemistry. When you throw a couple of Aussies in, it’s like adding spice, this special seasoning that makes the whole thing taste better.”

KILLER CROC

“Always keep one eye open when Croc’s around, because you might lose an arm.”

CARA DELEVINGNE ENCHANTRESS

“This isn’t like any other comic-book film. Every character is flawed and vulnerable, which is very beautiful.”

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JARED LETO

THE JOKER

“There was a lot of laughter on set. Much of it from me, at me: the Joker is his own favourite comic.”

KAREN FUKUHARA KATANA

“What does Katana bring to the squad? Protection, death, assassination. She’s hardcore.”

JAI COURTNEY BOOMERANG

“The best bit of direction I got was, ‘Boomer, reset the unicorn. Pull it out slow. Give her a kiss.’ I’ll let you find out what that means.”

JAY HERNANDEZ

DIABLO

ADAM BEACH SLIPKNOT

MARGOT ROBBIE HARLEY QUINN

“When I started I went from smiley to sad, ’cause it was fucking hard. But before long we were a proper gang.”

“There’s a crazy amount of stuntwork. And the difference between this and most movies on this scale is it’s not computergenerated. The action is the action.”

“It’s The Dirty Dozen, souped up. I used to love that movie when I was a kid.”

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Why, 76 years after being created as a one-off bad guy, the Joker has endured as one of our most terrifyingly compelling villains WORDS ALeX GODFreY

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illuStRatiOn & type jOck

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HE AGGRE AGGR SSION FROM ISIL was escalating. By spring 2014, the terrorist group was a global threat, so President Obama gathered his advisers to discuss the next step step. He gave them a scenario. “There’s a scene in the th beginning in which the gang leaders of Gotham are meeting,” said Obama. “These are men who had the city divided up. They were thugs, but there was a kind of order. Everyone had his turf. And then the Joker comes in and lights the whole city on fire. ISIL is the Joker. It has the capacity to set the whole region on fire. That’s That’ why we have to fight it.” Yep, there’s your President of the United States of America talking about Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, night,, comparing one of night the world’s biggest threats to a Batman villain created in 1940. Mind-blowing Presidential metaphor aside, it’s also worth noting that the villain almost didn’t make it into contemporary culture. After all, this villain was to be killed off at the climax of his first appearance until, at the last minute, DC Comics editor Whitney Ells Ellsworth thought this homicidal clown had legs, legs and hastily added an extra panel, in which paramedics discovered the Joker was still alive. Good mo move: in the 76 years since, he has become a popculture icon, constantly evolving, forever forev flitting between amusing tomfoolery and sadistic s ultraviolence, maiming, torturing and killing without remorse. But never without a jok joke. Cesar Romero as the

m IF THE JOKER R feels almost mythic that’s because, well, he is. The character is a variation on a theme to be found across cultures, throughout history: he’s the trickster, he’s Loki, he’s the tarot’s Fool. Indeed, Jerry Robinson, who conceived the character with Batman creator Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, was inspired by a Joker playing card. Batman had first appeared in May 1939’s Detective Comics #27, and had proved so successful his own title was about to be launched. Robinson, a 17 year-old journalism and literature student at Columbia University, recognised the power of contradictory characters, and wanted someone as colourful as he was callous, an extravagant figure to contrast with Batman’s broodiness. Someone to truly test him. “We wanted to use more clever devices for him to fight Batman,” he told iFanboy in 2010. “He was more in a literary tradition of great villains, like Moriarty.” The Joker playing card provided Robinson with the visual germ, but Finger brought the character to fruition after remembering Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine in Paul Leni’s 1928 film of

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first great on-screen Joker, circa 1966.

Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs,, surgically disfigured to have a permanent grin on his face. Finger and Robinson were also inspired by the real-life and fictional bank robbers and stick-up men that dominated US culture at the time, and thus in spring 1940’s Batman #1, the Joker was born as a grinning, murderous gangster. In his debut appearance, he went on a killing spree, his toxic gas inflicting his victims with a rictus grin before almost dying when he confronts Batman and falls on his own knife. He continued to kill indiscriminately throughout the 1940s, although the character softened as the decade went on. After World War II, DC veered away from dark social commentary and more towards fantastical fun. By way of lighthearted stories like 1952’s The Joker’s Millions and The Joker’ss Utility Belt Belt, he became a goofy prankster, diverting cops with hand-buzzers and Mexican

jumping beans. beans He was further tempered in 1954 after the industry’s industry s self-regulatory body, body the Comics Code, intervened in reaction to societal socie fears of comic books corrupting young minds — fears that were fuelled in particular by Dr Fredric Wertham’s book Seduction Of The Innocent. Murder completely made way for comedic oneupmanship, and the Joker lost his mojo. Batman began facing more ridiculous threats — aliens, dinosaurs, robots — and the Joker’s appearances gradually thinned until, in 1964, DC editor Julius Schwartz was assigned to reinvigorate the Batman titles, and jettisoned him from the comics. Two years later, though, the Adam West Batman TV series hit screens and the character’s campness suddenly went mainstream, thanks to Cesar Romero’s fantastically OTT turn. “It’s a lot of fun!” the actor enthused in an interview at the time. “You can get as hammy as you like.”

Above: Scott Snyder’s “evil” clown in 2012’s A Death In The Family Left: The, early, not-so-nasty Joker in The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge!. Far left: Jack Nicholson in 1989’s Batman.

The show ended in 1968, and it wasn’t until 1973 that DC decided to reclaim the Joker, reintroducing him in Batman #251 with The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge!. Writer Dennis O’Neil and artist Neal Adams were fans of his original incarnation and, keen to pull him back to his roots, they once again made him a murderer, killing his traitorous associates before feeding a handcuffed Batman to a shark. It was writer Steven Englehart, though, who completed the Joker’s makeover. “I really wanted to get that homicidal maniac, scaryunder-a-full-moon-at-3am feeling back to the character,” says Englehart now. He began writing for the Joker in 1977, and the following year published, in Detective Comics #475, The Laughing Fish, which had the villain chemically inflicting rictus grins on, yes, fish. “I wanted you to understand the depth of the mania in him,” explains Englehart. “I wanted to demonstrate that he was completely unhinged, so I took him from 0 to 60, for want of a better analogy. Obviously later people took him to 120 and 3,012. He got crazier and crazier after I turned him around.” Over the next decade, all hell broke loose. In Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986), he gassed people to death before committing suicide to incriminate his bat-cowled nemesis; in Jim Starlin’s A Death In The Family (1988) he teamed up with the Ayatollah Khomeini and killed Robin by beating him unconscious with a crowbar then blowing him up; in Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke (1988), he shot Commissioner Gordon’s daughter Barbara, aka Batgirl, rendering her a paraplegic, stripped her naked and photographed her, then kidnapped her father to torture him with said photos. Cesar Romero’s stagey cackle was but a memory. The Killing Joke was also the first story to really explore the Joker’s origins. In 1951’s Detective Comics #168, Bill Finger wrote that the Joker had formerly been the Red Hood, a criminal whose face was scarred when he fell into a vat of chemicals. Moore expanded on that, detailing a failed comedian who helped with a heist for cash to support his pregnant wife, who later died along with the baby. After that and his acid accident, the Joker goes insane. Yet, after recalling his own backstory, he rubbishes it: “Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another… If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!” With some exceptions (notably Tim Burton’s Batman, which kept that vat of acid), this denial  of definitive history has become canon, most

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colourfully in Nolan’s The Dark Knight, night, where night Heath Ledger’s Joker provides various explanations for his facial scarring. And that, explains Dr Robin S Rosenberg, clinical psychologist and author of the book Superhero Origins: What Makes Superheroes Tick And Why We Care, is what really makes him scary. “We can’t define his motivation,” she says. “We try to do it with serial killers in real life, question why they do it. And because Joker has no official backstory, and the story he tells changes all the time, we really have no idea. That is part of what’s so terrifying. We have no idea where he’s coming from. He’s like a Rorschach device, but sinister. We as human beings try to make sense of things in the world, and we can’t make sense of him.” Yet that puzzle in itself is fascinating. Is he insane, or just evil? Englehart says his Joker is certainly certifiable. “He likes being insane. If he’s gonna rob a bank he doesn’t say, ‘I’m going down to the corner with a couple of guns to rob the bank.’ He says, ‘I’m gonna get a pony and a parachute and Prince Charles and hand cream and work out a plot with all that because it amuses me to do that.’” Grant Morrison’s graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth (1989) describes the Joker’s condition as “super-sanity”, a constant reinvention of himself (which would explain much). One of the craziest things the Joker ever did was getting his own face cut off (in 2011’s Detective Comics Vol 2, #1) and then, in Scott Snyder’s Death Of The Family (2012), wearing his own skin as a mask. Yet Snyder believes he’s sane. “He stands for a surrender to the madness of the world,” says Snyder. “He’s not crazy, he’s evil. He’s the person out to convince you that anything you think matters doesn’t matter and ultimately amounts to nothing.”

“They should have reined me in, but they didn’t”: Alan Moore on The Killing Joke.

Heath Ledger, having just made a pencil disappear in The Dark Knight.

The Joker, as voiced by Mark Hamill, in 1992’s Batman: The Animated Series.

would care for sanity semantics. He just likes to torture, both mentally and physically, and never more so than in The Killing Joke. Bruce Timm’s upcoming feature adaptation of that graphic novel, directed by Sam Liu, is R-rated, faithful to its source material, and likely to polarise. Timm was, he says, “terrified” of making the film. The comic always disturbed him, particularly the fact that Barbara Gordon was “just a victim with a capital V; basically there to be maimed so that Commissioner Gordon and Batman could be angry about it. Also the way the Joker hurts her is just so banal, it’s so non-Jokery, it’s too real-life. That’s what’s really appalling about it. It’s so unexpected.” Mark Hamill describes it as “grim stuff”. Hamill, who voices the Joker in The Killing Joke, after having portrayed the character in various series, films and games, starting in 1992 with Batman: The Animated Series, sounds scarred by both the story and performing it. “It’s not for kids,” he insists. “It’s R-rated for a reason. It’s so unrelentingly harsh. I do have misgivings, because I’m thinking maybe we have gone too far.”

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Even Alan Moore was unsure when he wrote it. “I asked DC if they had any problem with me crippling Barbara Gordon, who was Batgirl at the time,” he told Wizard rd magazine in 2006. DC editor Len Wein, though, told him to go for it. “It was probably one of the areas where they should have reined me in, but they didn’t,” said Moore. Nevertheless, The Killing Joke was enormously influential, on the character, the comics, and the films, its darkness inspiring both Burton and Nolan’s Bat-movies. Burton has said it’s his favourite comic, and the casting of Jack Nicholson as the Joker just after the book’s publication was a statement: this was adult territory. Nolan, meanwhile, wanted a truly scary Joker, and gave Heath Ledger The Killing Joke as reference for his The Dark Knight night preparation — as well as Francis Bacon paintings and a copy of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. Ledger decided his Joker was “a psychopath, someone with no empathy”, as he told Empire in 2007, and his arresting, nuanced performance won him a posthumous Academy Award. “He

played him as both joyless and almost like a heroin addict,” says Hamill. “Fantastic!” Yet there are some who, despite being in awe of Ledger’s work, think his Joker was too nihilistic. “The tagline was, ‘Why so serious?’ Well, yeah, but he was,” says Englehart. “He was insinuatingly crazy but he wasn’t as flamboyant as I think the Joker should be.” Timm, too, was “ambivalent” about the characterisation. “There wasn’t anything particularly playful or over-the-top about him, he was just this insane-genius anarchist. I like him to be funny even when he’s being absolutely horrible.” Up next is Jared Leto, in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad Squad, and this Joker, the director said recently, is “a modern-day gangster, because… he’s always been a gangster.”

THAT HE HAS. A gangster, a clown, a killer. He is, says Scott Snyder, a very personal demon. Snyder’s Death Of The Family arc, in which the Joker mocks Batman’s mortality and attempts to kill his allies, mirrored the writer’s own fears. “We were pregnant with our second child when

DC COMICS

YOU DON’T IMAGINE the Joker himself

ACID FLOWER

ONLY THE OSE T O N TH AN’S ALL BATM O GETS TOYS WH FUL ONE DER N O W

“He’s not crazy, he’s evil”: from Scott Snyder’s Death Of The Family.

I wrote that. My fear was that I didn’t have it in me to be a good father, that maybe being a good father would disrupt my work, all those selfish thoughts you have. Joker is the character who hears those thoughts and says, ‘They’re all true, and I’ll show you. I heard you just say that you want your kids dead, so let me kill them for you.’” The character is forever mutating, forever spiralling into madness, forever flummoxing Batman. The Joker is whatever he needs to be at the time — sane and insane, horrific and hilarious, not just from one incarnation to the next but often from one panel to the next. We will never understand him, and we will never tire of him. Snyder says he has even more terrifying Joker stories to come. The clown who began as a homicidal maniac became a jester, then returned to his roots, and is today darker than ever. He went full circle, then sliced off the top of that circle, leaving only a grin. THE KILLING JOKE IS OUT ON 8 AUGUST ON DVD AND BLU-RAY

Not just for facial disfigurement, this is the Joker’s take on a Swiss Army knife. In 1975’s debut issue of The Joker, he uses it to burn away some rope bindings; in Tim Burton’s 1989 film he uses it to drop a cathedral bell on Batman; in TV’s animated 1997 series The New Batman Adventures he disintegrates Superman’s Kryptonite-proof lead suit with it.

A PENCIL

BANG GUN

“How about a magic trick? I’m gonna make this pencil… disappear,” says Heath Ledger’s Joker to a table of Mob bosses in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. You know what happens next. Into the eye of a goon it goes. Screenwriter Jonathan Nolan came up with the idea, and the director was unsure of its potential effectiveness. Ledger, though, insisted it stayed. Magic, indeed.

Not as harmless as it seems. Take both Batman #321 and the 2000 animated feature Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker, in which relieved henchmen thank their lucky stars upon seeing the flag pop out of the gun instead of bullets. Seconds later, though, the flag shoots out, spearing the henchmen, now not so relieved. Because they’re dead.

JOY BUZZER

RAZOR PLAYING CARDS

Fitting snugly in the palm, no murderous clown should leave home without one. “It’s my lethal Joker buzzer!” says Cesar Romero’s Joker in 1966, and lethal it is. Nicholson’s Joker burns a Mob boss to death with it, while in 1991 comic Robin II: Joker’s Wild #1 he kills Mr Freeze with one, squealing, “Adios, glacier face!”

On the cover of 1975’s The Joker #2, you’ll find him hurling playing cards at criminal mastermind Willie The Weeper, yelling, “Take a card, any card!” Probably best not to take any at all, Willie. Right back in 1940’s Batman #1 we discover the Joker’s cards have bladed edges. And sometimes he dips them in acid.

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FROM NASTY NURSES TO PSYCHO KILLERS, EMPIRE PRESENTS THE 50 GREATEST MOVIE VILLAINS — AS CHOSEN BY SOME OF THE GREATEST BAD GUYS TO GRACE OUR SCREENS WORDS OWEN WILLIAMS

illuStRatiOnS BILL McCONKEY

type JOCK

it WaS an iDea nOt WithOut RiSk. We wanted to create the definitive list of the greatest movie villains, but we didn’t want to simply poll the Empire staff, starting another office feud over the comparative merits of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. instead we went to the men and women who would know, the actors behind the most ferocious film and tV characters of the last five decades. We sent our requests and shivered, but it turns out villains are generally delightful people. this list is compiled from their responses — 26 top tens in all. Our thanks to them — especially to Highlander’s Clancy Brown, who sent over 2,000 words of explanation for  his (very solid) choices.

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50. DRACULA CHRISTOPHER LEE (DRACULA ( , 1958)

Hammer’s suave, ruthless Dracula was in many ways the defining role of Christopher Lee’s career: most of his life would be spent playing versions of the Count, elegant figures capable of terrifying violence. His towering height and deep voice made his Dracula an intimidating presence even before the blood started to flow. WICKED WORDS: “Sleep well, Mr Harker.”

49. VITO CORLEONE ART II, 1974) ROBERT DE NIRO (THE GODFATHER THER T HER P PAR

The Godfather vote was split between Brando, Pacino, De Niro, James Caan and Gastone Moschin, and yet only Young Vito makes the Top 50. And then, only just. But perhaps it’s the spiky energy and unstoppable drive that De Niro brings to the focused gangster as he violently rises to the challenges of a life of crime. WICKED WORDS: “I make an offer he don’t refuse.”

48. FREDDY KRUEGER ROBERT ENGLUND (A ( NIG N HTMARE TMARE ON E T ELM STREE T T, 1984) T

Wes Craven believed that the greatest monsters are recognisable just in silhouette, so the hat and glove might have been enough. But the sweater and grievous burns help make the icon too. Freddy became a twisted comedian over seven sequels, but in the original Nightmare, much talked-about but seldom seen, he’s diabolically powerful. WICKED WORDS: “I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy.”

47. JACK COLBY LEE VAN CLEEF (HIG ( H NOON, 1952)

Some actors exude dark screen charisma without obviously doing anything. Van Cleef drew the eye in only his second screen role as a wordless, hawk-featured gunman laconically preparing for battle. He had dialogue in later movies, but that brooding persona never changed much. WICKED WORDS: None, but he has a mean glare.

46. GUY WOODHOUSE Displaying the shallow vanity of a seldomemployed actor, Guy’s credulity leads him to be seduced by the Satanists next door. Then he quietly gaslights his wife (Mia Farrow). The point where that becomes his agenda, rather than mere insensitivity, remains tantalisingly ambiguous. WICKED WORDS: “It was kind of fun, in a necrophile sort of way.”

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“You are all my children now!” Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), dream-destroyer.

GUTTER CREDIT

JOHN CASSAV ASSA ETES (R ASSAV ( OSEMARYÕS BABY, 1968)

THE 50 GREATEST VILLAINS OF ALL TIME

45. DRACULA

40. JUD CASPER

BELA LUGOSI (DRACULA ( , 1931)

FREDDIE FLETCHER (K (KES KES, 1969)

Lugosi’s lugubrious Count is quite unlike his bloodthirsty successors. Dwarfed by his decrepit castle, he’s a sorrowful beast, all too aware that “there are worse things than death”. The accent and odd intonation render him truly other, but there’s something eerily seductive, too. WICKED WORDS: “Listen to them: children of the night. What music they make!”

Ken Loach elicited a performance from Fletcher every bit as naturalistic as that of David Bradley — but nobody remembers Fletcher as fondly, since he plays Billy’s bullying older brother. He’s such a bastard that he kills the bloody hawk! Hey Jud, here’s a kitten for you to kick too, eh? WICKED WORDS: “It were his own fault!”

44. MARY POPPINS JULIE ANDREWS (MARY ( POPPINS, 1964)

Yeah, you read that right. Just consider: Poppins infiltrates the Banks family and radicalises the children against their father. She takes them on dangerous rooftop trips, and possibly feeds them hallucinogens in the form of “sugar”. How else to explain the penguins? WICKED WORDS: “The children will find my games extremely diverting…”

43. ERNST STAVRO BLOFELD DONALD PLEASENCE (YOU YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, 1967) Y

Blofeld is finally revealed — scar across eye, cat across lap — late in the fifth Bond film, having been heavily foreshadowed in the previous four. Pleasence’s twitchy maniac became the Bond-villain template for two decades, although he’s actually less eloquent than his successors. WICKED WORDS: “It won’t be the nicotine that kills you, Mr Bond.”

39. ERIK, THE PHANTOM LON CHANEY HANEY (THE PHANTO TOM OF THE T OPERA, 1925) T

While Chaney’s phantom is a fully fleshed and largely sympathetic figure, it’s the reveal of his monster face that’s terrified for nearly a century. His self-designed make-up involved fish skin, egg membranes over his eyeballs and a wire painfully slicing into his nose. For Chaney, prosthetics were an extreme sport. WICKED WORDS: “Feast your eyes!”

38. IAGO KENNETH BRANAGH (OTHELLO OT OTHELLO , 1995)

Oliver Parker’s truncated Othello struggles for authenticity in all but one respect: Branagh. The lines between protagonist and antagonist in Shakespeare’s tragedy are already blurry, but Branagh’s rip-roaring Iago leaves no doubt who’s driving the narrative. And he makes it look effortless while some co-performers struggle. WICKED WORDS: “Ideas can be like poisons.”

42. DAD LONGWORTH KARL MALDEN (ONE-EYED K YE JACKS, 1961) YED

Loosely based on the legend of Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid, Malden’s sheriff Longworth is conflicted: plagued with guilt, but also defensive about his betrayal of the youthful Rio (Marlon Brando) years before. However, he attempts to assuage his conscience by smashing Rio’s gun hand and setting him up for a lynching. WICKED WORDS: “Your gun days are over.”

GUTTER CREDIT

41. BILL GILLESPIE

37. DWIGHT HANSEN ROBERT DE NIRO (THIS BOY’S LIFE, 1993)

One of De Niro’s more underrated turns, Dwight is the quintessential little man who bolsters himself by bullying others. Early on he’s likeable and almost comic, charming his way into a new family. But once he is completely embedded, the paranoid sadist inside is given free reign. WICKED WORDS: “I know a thing or two about a thing or two!”

36. THE ID ANIMATED ATED BY JOSHUA MEADOR A

ROD STEIGER (I ( N THE T HEAT T OF THE T NIGHT, 1967)

(FOR (F FORBIDDEN PLANET, 1956)

He isn’t exactly the film’s villain, but Chief Of Police Gillespie is still a loathsome racist, delighted to fit up innocent black guys with circumstantial evidence to close a case. Forced to work with Sidney Poitier’s detective, the pair achieve a grudging respect. Gillespie wasn’t irredeemable. WICKED WORDS: “I got the motive which is money, and the body which is dead.”

An invisible enemy is briefly revealed, sketched in beautiful crimson strokes when exposed to an electrical gubbins. The beast that’s been causing havoc on Altair IV turns out to have been the subconscious mental projections of the Prospero-like science wizard Morbius. The monster is in all of us!  WICKED WORDS: “Grrraaarrrrgh!”

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35. BLACKIE JACK PALANCE P ((PANIC ANIC IN THE STREET STREETS S, 1950)

This was Palance’s first role, but his black-hat persona arrived fully formed. Elia Kazan’s noir casts him as an unknowing plague-carrier on the run: criminal enough that he knows he’s probably guilty of something. Stark lighting makes his gaunt face all the more skull-like. WICKED WORDS: “I don’t like nobody putting anything over on me.”

34. JAMES ‘FATSO’ JUDSON ERNEST BORGNINE (FROM ( HERE TO ETERNITY, 1953)

The pugnacious Borgnine was best known as a heavy, and they don’t come much heavier than Fatso. The staff sergeant’s beef with Frank Sinatra begins with the threat of a switchblade, and progresses to appalling — and ultimately fatal — abuse in the stockade Fatso runs. WICKED WORDS: “Some day you’ll walk in, I’ll be waiting. I’ll show you a couple of things…”

33. DARTH VADER DAVE PROWSE (STAR WARS, 1977)

Almost 40 years on, Darth Vader’s name is instant shorthand for villainy. He’s a perfect amalgamation of Dave Prowse’s stature, James Earl Jones’ voice, the rasping wheeze, the samurai costume under a flowing cape, and that iconic mask. A perfect Sith synthesis. WICKED WORDS: “The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”

32. ANNIE WILKES

Misery’s Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) brings new meaning to the term “tough love”.

K BATES (M ( ISERY, 1990) KATHY

The ‘hobbling scene’ — in which Bates smashes James Caan’s ankles to keep him from escaping her clutches — is justifiably infamous. But Bates, against all the odds, makes Annie Wilkes sympathetic. It’s a monstrous portrayal of loneliness and dull wits, and how an obsession has mutated horribly beyond fandom. WICKED WORDS: “I’m your number one fan.”

a glimpse of a chink in her formidable armour. WICKED WORDS: “Find me that piece of paper

I had in my hand yesterday morning.”

29. ALEX FORREST GLENN CLOSE (FATA ( L ATTRACTION, 1987)

31. RED GRANT ROBERT SHAW HA (FROM HAW ( RUSSIA WITH LOVE, 1963)

Shaw plays it urbane, but the “old man” geniality is the practised performance of a Russian killing machine. When the gentlemanly mask slips (“Red wine with fish; I should’ve guessed,” observes Bond) the gloves come off to reveal a vicious sadist who comes as close to killing Bond as anyone ever has. WICKED WORDS: “Crawl over here and… kiss my foot!”

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30. MIRANDA PRIESTLY MERYL STREEP (THE THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA T D , 2006) DA

With Priestly, Streep took a caricature and made her human. Inspired (loosely) by US Vogue ogue editorin-chief Anna Wintour, she’s ferocious, mercurial, solipsistic and tyrannical. And also a nightmare boss. But she’s also charismatic, with, occasionally,

The personification of “Hell hath no fury...”, Close’s ferocious performance here is almost enough to mitigate the film’s misogynist streak. We might cheer as she protractedly dies, but she’s the only one for whom the attraction proves fatal (apart from the tragically boiled rabbit), so is arguably the real victim. WICKED WORDS: “I love animals. I’m a great cook.”

28. FRANK BOOTH DENNIS HOPPER (B ( LUE VE VEL ELVET, 1986)

Hopper had been in movie jail for decades after The Last Movie, but broke out here thanks to

THE 50 GREATEST VILLAINS OF ALL TIME

David Lynch. His performance — mesmerising like a car crash — as a sadomasochist sociopath is absolutely fearless. “I have to play Frank,” Hopper disturbingly insisted. “I am Frank!” WICKED WORDS: “Baby wants to fuck!”

26. ASA WATTS BRUCE DERN (THE COWBOYS, 1972)

John Wayne enlists a troop of local school children to help with his cattle drive, but reckons without the hindrance of Dern’s brutish antagonist. Unmoved by his enemies’ youth, he’s a palpable threat, not least to one boy who gets perilously dunked in the river. The Method-loving Dern was apparently as mean to the children offscreen as he was on. WICKED WORDS: “I’m gonna come to you some night when it’s real dark.”

25. VINCENZO COCCOTTI CHRISTOPHER WALKEN (TRUE ROMAN M CE, 1993) MAN

27. HARRY LIME ORSON WELLES (THE THIRD MAN, 1949)

Lime is absent for most of The Third Man, though he’s much talked about. A study in the danger of charisma, the man everyone admired turns out to be a ruthless war racketeer, selling diluted penicillin. He has a queasy line in self-justification, yet retains that Welles twinkle. WICKED WORDS: “The dead are happier dead.”

After years of seeing him in comic roles, or musicals where he’s dancing and laughing, it’s hard to remember the days when Christopher Walken was scary. But his ‘Sicilian scene’ with Dennis Hopper in True Romance is the purest Walken bad guy, a classic Tarantino-scripted sequence of surface bonhomie underscored by terrible threat. WICKED WORDS: “I haven’t killed anybody since 1984.”



Alex (Glenn Close) wishes she’d never met Dan (Michael Douglas) in Fatal Attraction.

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Robert Helpmann’s Child Catcher, many a youngster’s worst nightmare in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

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THE 50 GREATEST VILLAINS OF ALL TIME

24. TRAVIS BICKLE ROBERT DE NIRO (TAXI TAXI T DRIVE RIVER RIVE ER, 1976)

Disquieting even before that haircut, Bickle is a fictionalised Mark Chapman or John Hinckley Jr, a quiet psychopath whose unfocused inner rage will eventually find a random, bloody outlet. “God’s lonely man” coasts through his monotonous days until “suddenly, there is a change”. But it’s not one for the better. WICKED WORDS: “Are you talkin’ to me?”

lank of hair, unimposing of posture, nihilist of philosophy and dry of wit. Some critics struggled to understand his plan, missing the point that he only wants “to watch the world burn”. WICKED WORDS: “How about a magic trick?”

18. CHRISTIAN SZELL LAURENCE OLIVIER ((MARATHON MAN, 1976)

William Goldman’s screenplay is unusually unfocused, but there’s a drill-like precision to Olivier’s diamond-smuggling Nazi antagonist. If it weren’t bad enough that he’s an SS war criminal, he’s also a dentist. The torture scene is almost unendurable, and Szell’s line in nonsequitur questioning is almost more disturbing. WICKED WORDS: “Is it safe?”

23. COLONEL KURTZ MARLON BRANDO (A ( POCALYPS C CALYPS E NOW, 1979)

Brando, sensitive about his size, insisted on being in shadow for the bulk of his short time in the jungle. His mumbling cult-leader, living off-grid in remote ruins, is guilty of terrible war crimes perpetrated as intellectual exercise. He dominates — and arguably, derails — the entire film. WICKED WORDS: “Horror and moral terror are your friends.”

22. THE CHILD CATCHER ROBERT HELPMANN (CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, 1968)

Suddenly, in the middle of this twee musical fantasy, the tone horrifyingly changes. It’s all fun and games until a beaky Pied Piper flounces into town dementedly promising sweets. After that, it’s a cage-bound journey to a dank castle dungeon. Never talk to strangers, kids. WICKED WORDS: “Come and get your lollipops!”

21. THE JOKER HEATH LEDGER (TH T E DARK TH D K KNIGHT , 2008)

Taking little from the comics (or Jack Nicholson) beyond the colours, Ledger’s astonishing Joker is a unique creation. This is the grunge version:

testament to McDowell’s success in making the abhorrent Alex weirdly sympathetic. WICKED WORDS: “It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now to give it the perfect ending was a bit of the old Ludwig van.”

20. JANE HUDSON

17. THE MONSTER

EN BETTE DAVIS (WHAT T EV EVE ER HAPP ER H E E ED TO BABY

IN, 1931) BORIS KARLOFF K (FRANKE FRANKENST ENSTE NSTE EIN (FRANK

JANE?, 1962)

Jack Pierce’s make-up is iconic, but it took Karloff to act his way out from behind the greasepaint and mortician’s wax. He delivers a nuanced portrait of a child-like creature, prone to rage but capable of great tenderness. This monster is a bewildered victim; the lumbering caricature a misconception based on later versions. WICKED WORDS: “Uhhhhnnnrrrr!”

Jane is a former child star, psychologically stuck in her glory days but now living in obscurity and playing heinous, bullying mind games with her paraplegic sister — also a former star. There’s pathos and tragedy not far below the surface, but Davis’ baby-woman is monumentally grotesque and increasingly unhinged. WICKED WORDS: “But you are, Blanche! You are in that chair!”

19. ALEX DeLARGE

16. TOMMY UDO ISS OF DEATH RICHARD ICHARD WIDMARK (K (K KISS DE , 1947)

MALCOLM McDOWELL (A ( CLOCKWORK WORK ORANGE, 1971) W

Villain or victim? The answer is, of course, both, as McDowell’s proto-punk moves from ghastly rapist thug to broken shadow of his former self via eye-watering aversion therapy. Somehow, it feels like a win when he breaks his programming, Villain or victim? Boris Karloff as the monster in Frankenstein.

Widmark made an indelible impression in his screen debut as sniggering psychopath Udo. He seems to positively enjoy terrorising a wheelchair-bound woman before pushing her down a flight of stairs to her death. And that’s just the first act in a drama that sees him implacably stalking and killing. WICKED WORDS: “You know what I do to squealers?”

15. HENRY F POTTER LIONEL BARRYMORE (I ( T’S A WONDER E FUL LIFE,1946) ER

A banker and property magnate. Boo! Hiss! Proving that moneymen were viewed as the scourge of society decades before recent banking crises, the corrupt Potter deprives his decent rival George Bailey (James Stewart) of crucial capital and, for a time, gloatingly reaps the rewards. Even worse is the film’s alternatereality hell-on-Earth that is Pottersville, a depraved capitalist nightmare. WICKED WORDS: “You’re worth more dead than alive.”

14. NORMAN BATES SY HO, 1960) ANTHONY PERKINS (P ( SYC

Perkins’ twitchy psycho runs the gamut from likeable awkwardness to murderous, crossdressing lunacy. The fascinating thing is that, for Norman, neither is an act: they’re both expressions of his true self. It’s a portrait of truly unsettling madness, played to perfection by Perkins — who never escaped Bates’ shadow to reclaim his clean-cut career. WICKED WORDS: “A boy’s best friend is  his mother.”

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13. JOHNNY FRIENDLY LEE J COBB (ON THE WATERFRONT, 1954)

America’s distrust of trade unions stems from historical reports of Mob ties, as personified by Cobb’s slap-happy gangster here. The archly named Friendly rules his Hoboken longshoremen with an iron fist and the odd murder until former contender Marlon Brando stands up for a bruising knock-down confrontation. WICKED WORDS: “Gimme!”

12. FRANK

HENRY Y FONDA (ONCE UPON A T TIME IN THE WEST, 1968)

Sergio Leone cast Hollywood’s quiet hero Fonda jarringly against type as a steely killer, henchman to a corrupt railway magnate. His introduction is unforgettable. Following the massacre of a farm family, and just before he shoots a child, Leone’s camera homes in on Fonda’s freezing blue eyes. WICKED WORDS: “People scare better when they’re dying.”

11. THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST MARGARET HAMILTON L LTON (THE THE WIZARD OF OZ, 1939) T

Although in many respects it’s a pantomime performance, Hamilton’s green-skinned crone made a lasting psychological scar on generations. Make no mistake: she would kill Dorothy for those slippers. And if there were any doubt of her villainy, she threatens to drown Toto the dog and sets the Scarecrow on fire. Now that’s just mean. WICKED WORDS: “These things must be done delicately… or you hurt the spell.”

10. TOMMY DEVITO JOE PESCI (GOODFELLAS, 1990)

There’s a business-like vibe to the gangsterdom in Scorsese’s classic. But pinballing through is Pesci, so unpredictably psychopathic that he intimidates even his friends — sometimes for kicks, turning on a dime back to menace. Every other word’s an F-word, too, which makes his final, non-profane, “Oh no,” strangely touching. WICKED WORDS: “Funny how? How am I funny?”

9. RICHARD III LAURENCE OLIVIER (R ( ICHARD III, 1955)

Shakespeare’s dialogue helps, of course, but Olivier’s take on the Bard’s great anti-hero is as much about what he doesn’t say, expressed with masterful physicality and subtle facial expressions. He dominates his own film almost to its detriment. The rest of the cast look

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Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch Of The West casts her evil spell in The Wizard Of Oz. Watch out, Toto.

resigned to being acted off the screen. WICKED WORDS: “I have her. But I will not keep her long.”

8. JACK WILSON JACK PA P LANCE (SHANE, 1953)

It’s a good hour into Shane before Palance rides into town as hired muscle against pint-sized hero Alan Ladd — but from then on all eyes are on him. Then only 34, he wasn’t as craggy as the legend we’d come to know. But he already had that odd, breathy delivery, and the smiling eyes of a killer. WICKED WORDS: “Prove it.”

7. ANTON CHIGURH JAVIER BARDEM (NO ( COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, 2007)

The character comes from Cormac McCarthy’s novel. The look — that bizarre haircut — is

courtesy of the Coen Brothers. But Chigurh is brought to eerily placid life by Bardem. He makes the enigmatic, frighteningly onedimensional force-of-nature perplexingly real as he philosophises over coin-tosses and shoots people with a cattle gun. WICKED WORDS: “Call it.”

6. HANS BECKERT PETER LORRE (M ( , 1931)

The toad-like Beckert squats at the centre of Fritz Lang’s bleak fable about a child murderer and the mob that brings him down. His crimes are disgusting enough, but Beckert is also outrageous in his grievance at being brought to book by a kangaroo court. At the end it doesn’t even feel as if ‘justice’ achieves much. WICKED WORDS: “Who knows what it’s like to be me?”

THE 50 GREATEST VILLAINS OF ALL TIME

5. AMON GOETH

3. HARRY POWELL

RALPH FIENNES (SCHINDLER’S LIST, 1993)

ROBERT MITCHUM (THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, 1955)

Discussions of the Nazi machine sometimes touch on the “banality of evil”, so Schindler’s List perhaps oversteps the mark by apparently making Amon Goeth insane. But whatever the truth of the real man, Fiennes is absolutely chilling as the concentration camp commandant, playing cruel psychological games and, in one scene, using Jews for casual target practice. WICKED WORDS: “You are not a person in the strictest sense of the word.”

Mitchum’s self-ordained fire-and-brimstone preacher, clad in black, has “LOVE” and “HATE” tattooed on his knuckles and a switchblade in his pocket. He roars through The Night Of The Hunter, seducing women, threatening children and murdering in his pursuit of a doll full of stolen loot. A villainy masterclass, pure and simple. WICKED WORDS: “There’s plenty of killings in your book, Lord.”

4. CODY JARRETT

RA CHED 2. NURSE RAT LOUISE FLETCHER (ONE FLE F W OVER THE CUCKOO’S

JAMES CAGNEY AGNEY (WHITE HEAT, 1949)

NES E T, 1976) ES

Cagney’s Cody Jarrett is an incendiary performance, culminating in a blaze of — if not exactly glory — something pretty darn close. A psychopath saddled with a mommy complex, recently escaped from jail and undertaking a gonzo heist on a chemical plant, he’s alarmingly charismatic but wildly out of control. WICKED WORDS: “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”

It could almost have been a Nicholson one-man show, but his iconoclastic Randall P McMurphy would be nothing without an authority figure to rebel against. Personifying the institution is Fletcher’s infuriatingly placid Ratched, running her awful regime from within a steely shell of quiet equanimity. She can’t be bargained with; she can’t be reasoned with… WICKED WORDS: “The meeting was adjourned and  the vote was closed.”

Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched needs to work on her bedside manner in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

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1. Hannibal lecter

Anthony hopkins (The Silence of The lambS, 1991)

There have been other Hannibal Lecters, but somehow there’s still only one that matters. That basilisk stare, that stillness, that peculiar delivery and devastating psychological insight: Anthony Hopkins’ iteration is comfortably the villain most lauded by his peers. Hopkins’ take on Hannibal The Cannibal dominates the cultural perception to such an extent that even original author Thomas Harris couldn’t separate actor and character in his own mind. His follow-up novel, Hannibal, was a sequel to the film of The Silence Of The Lambs more than his own book. Silence had been a bestseller but Hannibal was a juggernaut, with an unprecedented first print-run of a million copies. That was the Hopkins effect. But Hannibal was a slightly sillier affair than its predecessor. Somehow, Lecter was more powerful when caged, more frightening on lockdown. Trapping him (in Jonathan Demme’s gothic dungeon; very different from the gleaming cell in which Michael Mann housed Brian Cox’s version) gave him that devastating, laser focus. Strapping and masking him on that trolley makes a promise of the danger he represents, one fulfilled in the Grand-Guignol escape sequence where he steals and wears a cop’s face. Harris’ later prequel, Hannibal Rising, weakened him by giving him context. Hopkins’ Lecter was most effective when he was inexplicable. Wicked Words: “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

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the 50 greatest villains of all time

the villains who voted Tobin Bell Jigsaw

Clancy Brown the kurgan

Steven Berkoff victor maitland

William B Davis cigarette smoking man

Rebecca De Mornay peyton flanders

Christopher Eccleston malekith

Robert Englund freddy krueger

Louise Fletcher nurse ratched

Alan Ford brick top

Michelle Gomez the master

Sid Haig captain spaulding

Daryl Hannah elle driver

Michael Ironside darryl revok

Jason Isaacs lucius malfoy

Famke Janssen xenia onatopp

Hugh Keays-Byrne immortan Joe

David Patrick Kelly sully

Ben Kingsley don logan

Alice Krige borg queen

John Lithgow eric qualen

Mads Mikkelsen le chiffre

David Morrissey the governor

Robert Patrick t-1000

Joseph Pilato captain rhodes

Andrew Robinson scorpio

Kurtwood Smith clarence boddicker

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THE LONG GESTAT ION PERIOD IS OVE R AND THE THIRD PART OF BRIDGET JONES , ONE OF TH E MOST SUCCES SF UL B RIT ISH COME DY FRA NCHISES OF ALL TIM E, HAS A RR IV ED . AND IT TOOK A VILLAGE TO B RING IT INTO TH E WORLD WORDS TERRI WHITE

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FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

WITH A SCANT SENSE OF WHAT SHE WAS starting, Sharon Maguire — first-time director, sweary broad and friend of acclaimed author Helen Fielding — brought Bridget Jones to our screens. Renée Zellweger was Bridget: a single woman trying to navigate work, friendship and sex in her thirties, while Colin Firth and Hugh Grant battled for her affection. It was a surprise smash, and three years later in 2004, the sequel, The Edge Of Reason, hit cinemas minus Maguire. While it managed a respectable box office, it was bruised by critics, many of whom missed the filmmaker’s touch. In ha been births (Maguire), the decade since there have Oscars (Firth) and a six-year career break (Zellweger). Now, with the addition of Patrick Dempsey as new romantic complication Jack (though the departure of absolute rotter Daniel Cleaver) and the return of Maguire, Bridget is back. The he world may have changed — she’s in her forties now and clutching an iPad rather than her trusty diary — but from face-planting in mud to awkwardly juggling two potential baby daddies, it would seem she’s still the same old Bridget. Here is how she was resurrected by the woman who first brought her to life (with the help of a few old friends, of course).

Sharon Maguire: [[A A third film] was being developed for 11 years. Various scripts had come and gone and then, when they had a script they were almost ready with, not all of the cast were going to be available. It was on the back burner, then the front burner, then the back burner again. I wasn’t involved until 2014 when I’d just moved back to London from LA, A, and it plopped W into my inbox. I thought, “Wow Wow ow,, this should be interesting.” Colin Firth: This thing has evolved and transformed countless times over the last few years. I’d had conversations with Helen Fielding about where it might go, I’d talked to Hugh and then Renée and we had exchanged ideas. So there was never a script that didn’t have the vestiges of some idea from the past and this script was another stage in that long progression of ideas. We W had a structure and certain key scenes pla and things that I thought were playable. It was a question of whether you’ve got someone who’s notionally the same character. The draft that I agreed to do, the thing that struck me most, was that I did recognise him. That he was somebody I felt belonged to the films we’d done.

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Clockwise from top left: Bridget (Renée Zellweger) is once again caught between two lovers, Mark (Colin Firth) and Jack (Patrick Dempsey); Bridget Jones’s iPad; Zellweger with returning director Sharon Maguire.

Sharon Maguire: I think [the first film] was supposed to be an indie guerrilla project; it wasn’t quite meant to be the commercial prospect it has become. I think [producer and co-chairman of Working Title] Eric Fellner’s words were: “Okay, you can do it, but don’t fuck it up.” By the time Hugh Grant signed up for it and then Colin and Renée, the whole thing started swelling up into something else. Now, looking back at it, they had a first-time director, a Texan playing a beloved English character… They must have been having some sleepless nights. It was quite mad. Colin Firth: I hadn’t seen either of the films since the premieres. I really enjoyed doing them, but don’t feel that I’m the target audience for romantic comedies on the whole, which might surprise people given how many of them I’ve found myself doing! When I put on the first one, I was struck by how good it was as a film. Never mind genre, I just liked it as a film and as a story. I thought it was beautifully made. I thought it was beautifully judged. Sharon Maguire: When we were in prep [for this one], Gogglebox came on and the [first] movie was on it. It was a really emotional moment. When the two characters come flying through the window in the fight scene, one of the guys said, “This was the best bit in it. They should have just put this up the front and rolled the credits!” [laughs]. laughs]. But laughs so many others had so much affection for it and I had no idea about that. I was like — whoa! Renée Zellweger: It was a disappointment [when Maguire didn’t return for the sequel] because I looked forward to sharing the experience with her again. But I understood that she wanted to try some other things and was busy with other things. Sharon Maguire: It was two-fold, really. Firstly, I was having babies because I’d left all that way too late, for a career and all the rest of it. And the other reason was I was making something else, which in the end didn’t happen.

Sharon Maguire: Once I’d had my next baby, I went to live in LA for four years, because my husband was out there with DreamWorks. It was a slight dream come true. As if someone had said, “Okay, you can take your foot off the career pedal, get off the runaway train and go and bring up your children and learn to surf in Malibu.” I was writing, but really it was very nice not to do that so I could be Mrs Mum. Renée Zellweger: [On her acting break] eak eak] I wasn’t living very, um, healthy. I wasn’t working all the time, I was only working. It’s quite a commitment — there are many phases to making a film, you don’t just make it and then you’re done. So if you do a couple or a few a year, the cycle starts to fold in on itself and there’s no time for real life. I was at an age where I wanted to grow, and not just as a consequence of research I might be doing for  a character. I wanted to make some choices

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about what other kind of work I might do in that respect. It required that I would take some time to do it. It became a priority for me. You can’t be successful, creatively, if you’re not drawing from life experience. And my life experiences were pretend. Colin Firth: I thought letting a bit of time go by was probably going to be helpful. If we had left it five or six years it would have felt too long. But when you leave it more than ten, it’s [then] not a question of too long — it almost feels like it takes on a nostalgic or retrospective feel.

Fun with the firemen

Sharon Maguire: I literally did nott expect it to turn up. My husband and I had just come back to England to start our television company and then Bridget happened. Colin Firth: I was always open to it. It had to feel worthwhile on its own terms. While it was just an abstract idea of doing a third, it felt a bit nebulous. We had to work out what it was and have reasons for doing it other than just having another go at those characters. Sharon Maguire: It didn’t take [much to convince] Renée once she heard about the story we were developing, how we were developing it and how the script was coming along. Renée Zellweger: What better excuse to go back than that happy reunion of friends in London, with these characters that you love to play? Sharon Maguire: When I came to it, Hugh’s character was not a big part of it, this particular chapter was not involving him anyway. I love Hugh, he’s so funny. Colin Firth: It was never guaranteed that any of us were coming back, it was always in the air as a question. There were so many discussions about what form the whole thing would take, that it became a lot broader than just one character’s involvement. In the end I think the critical element is Bridget herself. You can take her into all sorts of areas of life and tell all sorts of stories about Bridget Jones without either Daniel Cleaver or Mark Darcy. Patrick Dempsey: [Hugh Grant] is such an important part of the success of the first two films: his character, his persona, his comic timing and his genius in that. It’s always very concerning because you’re coming in to something that’s already established. Will you be able to find your way and will the audience embrace this character?

Patrick Dempsey: Jack was very successful with an online dating service and he took that money and decided to give back to the community in a philanthropic way. He’s at a point in his life where he’s been alone for a very long time and he’s surprised at his connection to Bridget and what she does for him. Sharon Maguire: I didn’t see it as taking [Hugh’s] place, as he’s such a diéerent character.

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in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary.

More mayhem in follow-up Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason (2004).

Is it time for Bridge to grow up in Bridget Jones’s Baby?

Patrick plays it brilliantly. He’s an American stepping into this world and he finds it quite curious and everyone finds him quite curious. He’s very funny and he’s got a thousand-watt smile. Colin Firth: Rather than trying to replace Daniel Cleaver, which would have been impossible — I think he’s a wonderful character and Hugh defined it completely — [we decided] to do something else altogether. Jack seems like a pretty nice guy — that in itself is pretty threatening. He’s credible and a valid prospect for Bridget. [Mark’s] disadvantage is he’s feeling a bit washed up and disillusioned and jaded. This guy seems full of optimism and energy. The lines are drawn very differently between the two. Patrick Dempsey: They’re like night and day in a sense, which is what I think makes it interesting — the complete contrast between the two men. It’s like apples and oranges.

Sharon Maguire: The firstt read-through, when we all sat down, not having all been in a room together for a long time, was quite scary. I think I just said, “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m fucking crapping myself! But let’s do it, let’s try and get on with it and see if it works.” Renée was probably very scared as well. I remember her first read-through 15 years ago and nobody knew if it was going to work, whether I was going to be fired in the first week… Everyone was waiting for the voice to happen and she’d never spoken it publicly in a room before. She came in and did it in the tiniest voice, we couldn’t hear a thing. Everyone was being too polite to say, “Can you speak up, love?” So we were miles ahead 15 years later — she came in and she belted it out and she was just such a very different person. She says the jokes and then laughs uproariously and she does it in this big, loud voice and the accent’s flawless. So I think on the read-through we were all waiting to see what Patrick would do and whether he was going to work and thank Jesus, he worked too. Renée Zellweger: The accent [was in place] from August until when we wrapped at Christmas time. It’s easier for me if I begin before we begin. Then when we’re rehearsing I’m not thinking about how I’m saying things, I’m telling the bit of the story that we need to that day. It’s lazy, really, if you think about it! I don’t want to work on it every day, so I cheat before we begin. Sharon Maguire: Having had the gap, I can see why I was so invested: in this character, in this life. Why I know some things feel right and why some situations don’t, it’s just all instinct. I inhabit the characters and Renée does that job, too. The first time, Renée and I were both groping our way towards interpreting the words and the actions in the script — we didn’t know if the character would work, we didn’t know if the humour would work, it was untried and untested. This time we’re just older and wiser and a bit more experienced. I was less anxious

about how ho to bring it in on time and on budget and more concerned with being in the moment of the creative creativ process.

Sharon Maguire: [Renée and I] both approach things in the same way. We both do loads and loads of research and are very conscientious in our preparation and then on the day we like to surrender to the process and see what happens. It’s like hanging out with one of my sisters; I come from a family of three girls and we have a big trust in each other. She talks about an American perspective on things and I talk about an English perspective — ie the right perspective — and we find something else and it’s rather nice. Renée Zellweger: We immediately clicked, immediately became fast friends, had shorthand. We had a lot of trust and a shared sense of humour, which I think is really helpful in any working relationship, especially when making a comedy. Sharon Maguire: I can just look at her when she’s about to do a take and she’ll say, “Oh yeah, I know what you mean,” when I haven’t even said anything, but she says, “Yeah, yeah, but I know what you want.” Our minds work the same way when it comes to this character. Renée Zellweger: We met to discuss it at a London hotel — our hopes for the script and all that — and it was immediate, like no time had passed. There was laughter from the first cup of tea to the 20th. Sharon Maguire: In the first film, it was about women being in their thirties, not having settled for marriage and children like our mums and dads did. And thinking, “Okay, what do we do now? We’re still looking for the meaning of life.” Now she’s in her forties, there are a lot of women that have got their careers but are still out there; still haven’t solved the marriage/ children thing. We’re offered so many other choices now, but are still out there looking for meaning in our life. Bridget mirrors those changes that are going on.

Sharon Maguire: I’m m a working-class girl from the industrial midlands, Renée is a girl from Texas, Helen [Fielding] is a middle-class Yorkshire girl. Bridget crosses cultural and class differences. Lots of people relate and have in common that they get the character. That unifies everybody. She’s this unique combination of misguided self-belief and terrible selfloathing. I think everybody relates to that. Renée Zellweger: It’s her humanity. She’s true. She’s an authentic person. She’s flawed, but it doesn’t become a hindrance — she carries on. She’s quintessentially British. BRIDGET JONES’S BABY IS IN CINEMAS FROM 16 SEPTEMBER AND WILL BE REVIEWED IN A FUTURE ISSUE

T H E B R I T PAC K BRITISH MOVIE ACCENTS RANKED

1 RENÉE ZELLWEGER

__ Bridget Jones trilogy (2001-2016) The Texan Zellweger not only worked with voice coach Barbara Berkery to nail Bridget’s Sloane-y tones, but also interned at Macmillan Publishers (as Bridget Cavendish) to hone it further. The result is as English as failing at football.

2 GWYNETH PALTROW

__ Shakespeare In Love (1998) Paltrow had previously pulled off round vowel sounds in Emma but was further tested here by tricksy Shakespeare/Tom Stoppard language. As Viola de Lesseps, her effortless delivery bagged her an Oscar.

3 __ NOOMI RAPACE

Prometheus (2012) Swedish Rapace found the plummy voice of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw — British-born but raised in South Africa — a challenge. She made a valiant effort, but doesn’t quite land it.

4 __ ANNE HATHAWAY

One Day (2011) She had a decent upper-class accent for Becoming Jane, but the Yorkshire tones of One Day’s Emma Morley were a stretch too far for Hathaway. She reputedly watched Emmerdale for research. Might as well have watched The Clangers.

5 __ RUSSELL CROWE

Robin Hood (2010) “You’ve got dead ears, mate, if you think that’s an Irish accent,” Crowe told journalist Mark Lawson. Crowe’s stab at the Nottingham hero starts in Dublin, then hovers around Yorkshire like a wayward drone.

6 KEANU REEVES

__ Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) To play English solicitor Jonathan Harker, Francis Ford Coppola chose Canadian Reeves. The resulting vocal performance is more mannered than all of Downton Abbey.

7 DICK VAN DYKE

__ Mary Poppins (1964) Sorry, Basher Tarr. Dick Van Dyke’s cockney accent, as cheery chimney sweep Bert, is the worst movie accent of all time (“Alwight, laydeez and gentz”). “I was working with an entire English cast and nobody offered a word,” he said in his defence.

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exclusively for Empire in

Ladbroke Grove, London,

on 16 June, 2016.

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Noel Clarke, photographed

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It’s a bitter December night, and Kensington Memorial Park has been transformed into an unlikely urban battlefield. As various crew play on the swings, Noel Clarke is choreographing a fight with actor Jack McMullen. Clarke’s armed with a fake nail gun. McMullen’s terrified cries sound sharply authentic. After a few rehearsals, Clarke switches from directing to acting. Off goes the cable-knit jumper. On comes Sam Peel’s signature streetwear. He flips his hood up, like an innercity Jedi, and, with the Steadicam hunting behind him, rages into McMullen. A killer in Kidulthood, idulthood, atoned in Adulthood, Sam Peel’s gone medieval again. Five months later, Empire meets Clarke at Soho House. Back from a Brighton night-shoot on police drama The Level, el, he’s barely slept. Not that you’d know it. We talk for three hours. Clarke’s production company is called Unstoppable, an echo of the director’s relentless drive. Unguarded, bullish and bullshit-free, Clarke is every bit as outspoken as his films. When we ask why he chose a playground that night — a contrast of innocent backdrop and brutal violence, maybe? — Clarke laughs. “Nah. I insisted on that particular park. I used to get blow-jobs there when I was bunking off college, 200 yards away.” To say Clarke’s idulthood trilogy is personal to him is something of an understatement. Kidulthood

TO FULLY UNDERSTAND just how entwined Clarke is with the series, you have to wind back to 1999. Clarke was 24, writing in-between acting jobs. He’d seen Kevin Smith’s Clerks, and been left wondering why teens didn’t speak authentically in British films. Then he watched Notting Hill, a rom-com set in a fairy-tale, white-washed London. “I’ve met Richard Curtis since and told him, ‘I lived five-minutes from there — that’s not my experience.’ Kidulthood idulthood was based on me and two friends growing up in West London, stuff I’d heard on the streets.” His script read like a Grime remix of Larry Clarke’s Kids — a ferocious, unblinkingly bleak reflection of urban teen life that took on bullying, suicide, teenage pregnancy and gang-crime, delivered in raw, fizzy street-slang. Film companies loved it but wouldn’t open their wallets. “They were scared,” recalls Clarke. “Kids weren’t supposed to be this sexual or violent. They thought I had an authentic voice they could mould. Almost like, ‘Look, we ha have a new black writer!’” After five years of false starts, recastings and rejections, Menhaj Huda shot Kidulthood idulthood in 2004. By that time, Clarke was too old to play Trife, the role he wrote for himself. “I was like, ‘Fine, I’ll be the older bully, Sam Peel.’” A shrewd choice, as it turns out. Sam, after all, kills

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Top: Olivia Chenery (Sariya), Noel Clarke (Sam), Steven Cree (Brick) and Ashley Thomas (Calvin) in Brotherhood. Right: New dangers and challenges face the friends in the trilogy’s final instalment.

Trife during the film’s tragic climax. “Exactly. I mean, we wouldn’t be here now, would we?” Released in 2006, Kidulthood idulthood was a modest hit: shot for £450,000, coined £1,500,000. On DVD, however, the film barrelled into a word-ofmouth phenomenon: over a million copies, a record for an indie release. With a thundering soundtrack featuring Plan B, Roots Manuva and Dizzee Rascal, Kidulthood idulthood captured a cultural flash-point — the UK’s burgeoning

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Grime scene. At a time when knife-crime, supposedly feral kids and “happy slapping” were dominating headlines, Clarke’s portrait of untamed youth also turned it into a political-punch bag. Accusing it of “glamorising violence”, The Sun even launched a ‘Ban This Hoodie Movie’ campaign. “But it was about the consequences of violence,” argues Clarke. “I had kids contacting me after seeing the film, saying the ending caused them to re-evaluate their lives. Film doesn’t inform society, you know? It’s the other way round: the film exists because society informed it. All Kidulthood did was highlight issues already there.” Eventually, even David Cameron waded in. Clarke puffs his cheeks when we mention Cameron’s infamous ‘hug a hoodie’ speech. “Him holding up the DVD was good publicity, but I don’t care what he said. I mean, he probably rode a horse to school. What can he tell me about how I live?” Kidulthood’s idulthood’s impact on British cinema was seismic. Clarke, unwittingly, idulthood created a ‘hoodie’ subgenre but is wary of taking credit. “Pretty soon I was getting grief for films I hadn’t even made,” he groans. “I still haven’t watched any of them — that way I can’t have an opinion.”

RESHAPING SAM FROM murderer to remorseful ex-con with a bounty on his head, and shifting the sequel into a time-bomb urban thriller, Clarke wrote Adulthood’s Adulthood first draft in seven days, 9am ’til 9pm, sat on his couch. Problem was, the film couldn’t land a director. When a Pathé executive suggested he do it himself, Clarke refused. Not now. In a decade maybe. His wife, Iris, supplied the wake-up call. “She said, ‘Five years ago I was buying you travel cards to get to auditions. What makes you think in ten years’ time you’ll be in a position to direct a film?’ So I said I’d do it. If it failed, I didn’t give a fuck: I had nothing to lose.” Clarke proved his chops by passing a test set by the UK Film Council. He had to make a short, which featured Sam surviving an assassination attempt by his own brother. By November 2007, he was redirecting that sequence on his first feature. “You know the analogy, when one door closes another one opens? Well, why wait? If one door closes, get in through the window,” Clarke says. He learnt on the job: his film school was a movie set. (“I had my shot list,” he cringes, “written on a scrappy piece of paper.”) Rookie or not,  Adulthood was a striking, fearless directorial debut: soulful, propulsive,

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WHAT HAPPENED NEXT TO CLARKE’S ORIGINAL HOOD CRE REW W

MENHAJ NHAJ HUDA

(DIRECTOR) Huda has sadly struggled to match his debut feature. Written by Noel Clarke, his ace, gritty TV pilot West 10 LDN missed out on a series commission. Then his grim, gloomy slasher Comedown flopped. He’s planning a return to horror with Soul Survivor. Last seen in soap-land, directing 29 episodes of Corrie.

NOEL WEARS T-SHIRT: DuCK AND COVER. SWEATER: ZADIG AND VOLTAIRE. BELT: ANTONY MORATO. JEANS: ANTONY MORATO. TRAINERS: ADIDAS

GROOMING BY JENNIE ROBERTS @ FRANK AGENCY uSING MAC PRO. STYLING KRISTINE KILTY. LOCATION: LOCATION WORKS

AMLL AMEEN (TRIFE) Killed off in Kidulthood, Ameen reappeared in The Bill as Hackney streetkid-turned-copper Lewis Hardy. A burgeoning Hollywood career includes Red Tails, The Butler and playing Glader leader Alby in The Maze Runner. Recently starred in the Wachowskis’ brain-wormy Netflix series Sense8, but quit during Season 2.

JAIME WINSTONE (BECKY) Winstone turned down reprising Becky in favour of Brit orgy-thriller Donkey Punch (the character was reimagined in Adulthood as Lexi, played by Scarlett Alice Johnson). Since, Winstone’s starred in Elfie Hopkins alongside dad Ray, but has yet to top her signature role in Charlie Brooker zom-com series Dead Set.

FEMI EMI OYENIRAN

(MOONY) As well as co-directing 2013’s It’s A Lot starring Kidulthood’s Red Madrell, and directing upcoming thriller The Intent, Oyeniran has become a powerful political voice: his motivational workshops at Young Offenders Institutions have had such an impact he’s even delivered a TED talk on the subject.

ADAM DAM DEACON

(JAY) Deacon’s won a BAFTA Rising Star award, worked with Professor Green and Paloma Faith, directed comedy Anuvahood and appeared in countless British films (including Clarke’s 4.3.2.1.), but was convicted of sending abusive messages to Clarke in 2015. Now plotting an acting comeback in To Dream, due later this year.

CHOLAS HOULT NICHOLAS T

(BLAKE) Clarke aside, Kidulthood’s biggest success story (Blake was Hoult’s first proper juicy teen role — he was 12 in About A Boy). To Hoult’s credit, he’s forged a brilliantly eclectic career, playing zombies (Warm Bodies), mutants (X-Men) and Brit-pop psychos (Kill Your Friends). He’s just wrapped JD Salinger biopic Rebel In The Rye.

even cheekily innovative. For one audacious split-screen montage, Clarke took inspiration from the just-released iPhone’s sliding screen. It’s easy to forget that Adulthood was also way ahead of the curve in terms of marketing — at a time when Hollywood couldn’t tell its Facebook from its Myspace, Clarke was audience-building on those very platforms with shoot updates. Old hat now. Pioneering back then. Released in 2008, Adulthood went toe-to-toe with The Incredible Hulk and Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal stal Skull and posted impressive numbers. “Hollywood were calling up saying, ‘What is this film?’” he says. “America didn’t get it, other countries did. In South America, it’s called Juvenile Rebels; in Germany, Streets Of London.” When Empire suggests the excellent Adulthood could be The Godfather Part art II of urban youth movies, Clarke doesn’t miss a beat. “Well, hopefully Brotherhood hood isn’t art III Godfather Part III...”

HA E passed since Adulthood. Why return to it now? EIGHT YEARS HAV “Truth is, I didn’t want ant to make another one,” says Clarke. “I was offered a lot of money to direct a third [immediately] after Adulthood but I didn’t want to be the guy who just made ‘urban’ films. I’ve grown up since, I’ve got three boys, changed as a person. Now I’ve got something to say.” Set ten years after Adulthood, Brotherhood hood could well have been titled Fatherhood. Sam Peel is married with two kids, surviving on odd-jobs, haunted by the stigma of his violent past. Fate and time have shaped its characters in various ways. David Ajala, Adulthood Adulthood’s PCSO cop Desmond, is now a detective; Alisa (Red Madrell), who nearly had an abortion in Kidulthood, idulthood, has a 16 year-old daughter; Henry (Arnold Oceng), brained by a brick in Adulthood, now suffers P PTSD; and the mean streets of Ladbroke Grove, arguably the trilogy’s biggest character, have been gentrified. Sam descends into nail-gun retribution, the defensive reaction of a father protecting his family — a feud sparked by series villain Curtis (the formidable Cornell John), fresh out of prison and goading Sam back into the underworld with a new generation of gangsters. It’s not only Sam’s cycle of violence that’s come full circle. The Grime scene, which fell dormant after Adulthood, has suddenly exploded again. Clarke says the timing’s pure luck, but his radar must have sensed a resurgence: a big fan of Stormzy, he’s cast the Grime MC as a gangster who sounds like an eerie reincarnation of Sam in Kidulthood. Sam can’t escape the shadow of his past. In a sense, neither can Clarke. “I’ve always been massively disrespected. Always. I was seen as the Kidulthood idulthood guy but then it’s like, off you go, back to West London, back in your box. I’ve taken risks, tried new genres. Why is it in this country, you act, write, produce and direct, and are a ‘jack-of-all-trades’, whereas in America you’re called a ‘multi-hyphenate’?” Indeed, Clarke is intensely prolific, often dubbed a one-man film industry. He’s made Anomaly), a horror ((Storage a sports film ((Fast Girls ls), ls Storage age 24), 24), ), a sci-fi (The Anomaly), a rom-com (The Knot), not), a heistt flick ((4.3.2.1.). “I’ve written and directed quite a few films since Kidulthood idulthood and felt angry all that time. Less so now. I’ve made lower-budget films because I’ve been forced to. But when you’ve been told to eat with spoons your whole life, you get good at it. I park the ego and self-analyse a lot: maybe those films weren’t quite good enough. Brotherhood, hood, though, is good. Here, take a look...” Clarke flips up his MacBook and shows us Brotherhood’s hood hood’s first act. Fans will be in for a shock with its dramatic opening jolt. Equally surprising is Brotherhood’s hood’s hood slick aesthetic: sharp, super-crisp, almost Drive-like. “I honestly feel like this is another debut,” Clarke says. Stylistically, perhaps, but with his Hood movies, Clarke has created something unique: a decade-spanning trilogy that chronicles the social shifts and cultural swings of millennial urban life. British cinema should value his voice. Like Sam Peel, Noel Clarke is back with a vengeance. BROTHERHOOD IS IN CINEMAS FROM 2 SEPTEMBER AND WILL BE REVIEWED IN A FUTURE ISSUE

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WORDS IAN NATHAN

TAYLOR ILLUSTRATION BRIAN TA T AYLOR AYLOR

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James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver establish just how

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n the day Alien opened, Cameron and his friend, former combat journalist Randal Frakes, headed out in Cameron’s battered Chevrolet to see it. After the credits rolled, they sat dumbstruck, truck, blown away by Ridley Scott’s film. “It had a great effect on me,” says Cameron. “It created such a benchmark for visual design in science-fiction.” Cameron didn’t respond as an avid fan boy, though. He felt like a rival, sick with envy. “It was like someone had reached into my brain and yanked out a whole lot of stuff,” he recalls. “I was pissed off. That’s when I got busy.” So began the intense period in which the Cameron legend is rooted. He got his break as

a model-maker at Roger Corman’s B-movie New World Pictures, where he was tasked with replicating the junkyard genius of Alien for Corman’s killer stowaway knock-off Galaxy Of Terror. He went on — as a matte artist and director of photography: special visual-effects — to help fashion a dystopian Manhattan for his hero John Carpenter’s Escape From New York. Meanwhile, he wrote a story about waterdwelling aliens called The Abyss. And in the throes of a flu-born fever dream, he envisioned a ravaged metal endoskeleton crawling from flames, and The Terminator erminator was born. Significantly, Cameron also wrote a science-fiction treatment he intended to call ‘ET’ before he heard about Steven Spielberg’s latest movie and retitled it ‘Mother’. That saw a genetically engineered alien attempt to protect her young. There was an evil company — the Triworld Development Corporation — building better worlds. And there was a female lead, says Cameron, “very much like Ripley”. When hero and alien eventually fight, the hero is “encased” in what Cameron later called a “power-loader”. Two years later, his creative surge temporarily stalled, Cameron was at a loose end. He was ready to shoot The Terminator erminator with rising star Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the Austrian bodybuilder was contractually forced to make a sequel to Conan The Barbarian first, so

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TERMINATOR CLIMBED up the WHEN THE TERMINA 1984 box office and established James Cameron’s Cameron’ name, the director held a meeting to pitch his follow-up. In attendance were three producers — David Giler, Walter Hill and the late Gordon Carroll — whose outfit Brandywine had produced Alien. The trio were expecting the works from the young Canadian: a hard sell, perhaps a draft budget, maybe a slideshow. In walked Cameron, not so much as a sheet of A4 about his person. He strode to a chalkboard and wrote “ALIEN” in capital letters. Pausing to allow the perplexed producers to take that in, he added an “S”. Another pause, and Cameron drew another line — “ALIEN$”. And grinned. “We greenlit the project that day for $18 million,” Carroll later recalled.

“I was writing away and it was, ‘Aliens this, and aliens that,’ and it was just right right,” recalls Cameron. “It had all the power of the first title, and it also implied the plurality of the threat.” The sheer mic-drop hubris of the gesture only adds to the Cameron myth. The college dropout and former truck driver, fired from his (disowned) directorial debut Piranha II: The Spawning, was now on track to become one of the most successful filmmakers ever. And it was Aliens that confirmed not only his prodigious talent but his unrelenting will to do things entirely on his own terms. Getting to that meeting had been a battle — one in which self-belief was his weapon of choice.

© TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMEN T TAINMEN T LLC.

gooey the alien goo is.

Above: The Alien Above: Cameron

The Terminator’s rampage was put on hold for eight months. Rather than relaxing, Cameron went looking for scriptwriting work and ended up in the Brandywine offices. Giler and Hill were old-school producers who had risen to prominence during the ’70s. Giler had written political thriller The Parallax View and the crime comedy Fun With Dick And Jane. Hill was a director renowned for terse thrillers such as The Driver er and The Warriors. They were unsentimental types, whose reworking of Dan O’Bannon’s Alien had given the film its gritty aesthetic. The LA setting and chase-movie thrust of The Terminator appealed to their sensibilities, so Giler persuaded Hill to get this guy in for a meeting — but not about ‘Alien 2’. Instead, the pair offered the young director a Spartacus remake set in space. Cameron, being Cameron, arrived with a host of mechanised, heavy-metal ideas. However, as he recalls ruefully, Giler quite literally wanted swords-andsandals on another planet. There, the meeting stalled. It was more out of social awkwardness than intent that, as Cameron gathered his notes, Giler mentioned they also had ‘Alien 2’. Cameron describes “pinball machine lights and bells” going off inside his head. He and ‘Alien 2’, he says, went together like “peas and carrots”. Keeping his cool, he asked what they had in

Queen prepares for

gives Michael Biehn

her close-up.

and Ricco Ross

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a pep talk.

Henn and Sigourney

Here: Alien roar.

Weaver take pointers.

mind. Giler replied, “Ripley and soldiers”. That pretty much covered it, as their notes had just a half-page description roughly corresponding to the opening 20 minutes. “There was nothing specific,” recalls Cameron. Ripley meets these vague military types and heads back to the planet LV-426, where Kane (John Hurt) had seen hundreds of eggs. There was no real sense of story. He laughs, “I’ll never forget this. It just finished saying, ‘And then some bullshit happens…’” fter receiving Giler and Hill’s blessing to write a treatment for ‘Alien 2’ that very day, Cameron was commissioned by Carolco Pictures to write Rambo: II then called The First Blood Part art II, Mission.. And in the delay, he was also reworking The Terminator erminator script. For three months in 1983, Cameron wrote the three simultaneously. To compartmentalise, he used different desks for each and listened to specific music. The Apocalypse Now soundtrack boomed for Rambo, while it was Gustav Holst’s The Planets for ‘Alien 2’. Living off pots of coffee and Big Mac coupons his mum sent, Cameron thrived. “He was like a kid in a candy store,” recalls his friend Michael Biehn, who would join him at a shooting range to blow off steam. As ‘Alien 2’ took shape, ‘Mother’ came in handy. Cameron transformed that

story’s lead into Ripley and added an outfit of cocksure Marines. “I just grabbed all the stuff that I had been thinking about and slammed it together,” he says. “It felt very mercenary at the time.” Not only that, but concepts from Rambo began bleeding into outer space. Re-watching Apocalypse Now and reading reportage such as Michael Herr’s Dispatches, the Vietnam war was on his mind. LV-426 became a metaphor for America’s foolhardy campaign in Southeast Asia. “There was a definite parallel to Vietnam,” says Cameron, “a technologically superior military force defeated by a determined, asymmetric enemy.” The Aliens are the Vietcong. The gungho Marines, so confident in their firepower, are humbled. And Rambo and Ripley both confront their trauma. On 9 July 1984, Lawrence Gordon, an old compatriot of Hill’s who had produced The Driver, became head of 20th Century Fox. He was staggered that an Alien sequel still hadn’t been made, and fast-tracked the project. “It was a no-brainer,” he shrugs. Giler remembers the greenlight differently. He recalls a studio executive stopping him in the car park and asking where they were with the sequel. “I told him the story was a cross between Southern Comfort ort and The Magnificent Seven.”  After that, he says, they were on.

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The Alien Queen in a royal rage.

s far as Cameron was concerned, from that very first meeting this was a director-writer deal. But there had been no written commitment from Giler and Hill, or Fox, to that effect. Cameron would have to make his own destiny. With the success of The Terminator, which he finally made during the spring of 1984, Cameron made it impossible for Gordon to say no. “Sometimes a director fits hand in glove,” the Fox chief claimed later, with 20/20 hindsight. Cameron didn’t buy lunch for months. “I had all these agents and producers calling me,” he recalls. “Suddenly I was a viable director. It instantly cemented the ‘Alien 2’ deal. So, naturally, then I had people trying to talk me out of doing ‘Alien 2’.” One was Julia Phillips, co-producer of Taxi Driver er and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, ind, who lured Cameron to a hip restaurant for some frank talk. They had barely opened the menu when she told him he shouldn’t do the sequel. “I said, ‘Why?’” remembers Cameron. “And she said, ‘Because anything that is good in your movie will be attributed to Ridley Scott.’” He was unperturbed. “Yeah, but I want to do it. It’ll be cool.” It never crossed Cameron’s mind to give the London-based Scott a call. He knew he was going to honour Alien. “I didn’t see how talking to Ridley would help me make my story.”

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There remained one final hurdle. Given that expectations for Alien had been low, Fox hadn’t signed Sigourney Weaver for a sequel. That was a worry for Cameron, who had kept her picture on his desk as he wrote and was led to believe that she was all signed up. “The movie was about her,” he says. “Every scene.” Cameron called Weaver in France, where she was shooting a comedy called One Woman Or Two with Gérard Depardieu. “Look, you don’t know me from Adam,” he began, “but I just wrote this script I’m calling Aliens.” He asked if he could send her a copy of the script. Weaver had always said no to a sequel. “Why do something that’s already been done?” she kept saying. Giler half-joked that they would open her hypersleep capsule lid and Ripley would “dissolve into dust”. Even after Cameron’s overture she remained dubious, worried the project had been handed to a young hothead to cash in on what was now seen as a genre classic. But she agreed to a meeting, and showed up with ideas for Ripley. She instructed the director on the things she wanted to happen. “She wanted to die in the film, she wanted not to use guns, and she wanted to make love to the Alien,” remembers Cameron. For Cameron, the script was a fait accompli and he stood firm, nixing every one of her ideas (all of which would colour the next two sequels). He was terrified she would bolt, but she listened

carefully. Changed irrevocably by the events on the Nostromo, he said, Ripley was fighting for her future. “The story was about someone who has to regroup,” said Weaver on release, “who goes back because if she stays inside her room, she knows she will slowly unravel.” Cameron admits that his “tug of war” with Weaver had a positive effect on the final script. It got him to think outside the box and see that, as he puts it, “her motivation was on a higher plane.” He respected that she knew Ripley better than anyone. For her part, Weaver was won over. “Jim is incredibly open to things,” she says. “I always felt he trusted my instincts.” The characterisation of Ripley is one of the film’s great strengths. She is not simply an action hero; her gender is both a defining characteristic and completely beside the point. Ripley takes charge because she is the one most capable of doing so. She thrives under pressure — not so different from Cameron. Still, the deal was not yet done. Weaver knew she was worth more to the sequel than the original, and financial negotiations with Fox reached an impasse. Cameron, about to head to Maui to marry his producing partner Gale Anne Hurd, told Fox that by the time he returned, if Weaver hadn’t been locked in, he was out. His bluff was called, for when he got back there was still no deal. Time for Plan B: he called to Schwarzenegger’s

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ORIGINAL DIRECTOR SCOTT’S ALIEN SEQUEL?

The proposal There were what Alien producer David Giler calls “preliminary discussions” about a sequel in 1979. He gave no credence to the most popular theory — that an Alien impregnated Jonesy, the cat — but he and co-producer Walter Hill had discussed how the Alien, ejected from the airlock, might have clung to the outside of the shuttle. There were also discussions of a new expedition to LV-426, the appearance of the space jockeys, and the planet exploding.

Above: Cameron oversees his puppet masters at work. Here: Human

the director Ridley Scott was keen to return to the franchise he established. He felt Alien had missed “prognosis” scenes, explaining the creature’s origin. In 2003, he revealed to Empire how he saw the eggs as “biomechanoid weapons”, which “you would seed… onto the surface [of a planet] and then sit back and watch as the planet’s population is overrun by Aliens.”

the delay Why didn’t he make ‘Alien 2’? “They didn’t ask me!”, he said. “To this day I have no idea why. It hurt my feelings, really, because I thought we did quite a good job on the first one.” To be fair, his dance card was full. He had been hired by Dino De Laurentiis to adapt Dune before bowing out to make Blade Runner, and was in post-production on Legend when Cameron began Aliens. So timing really wasn’t on Scott’s side here.

THE back-burner The truth is that in 1979 and the early ’80s, Fox just wasn’t interested in making the sequel. After Alan Ladd Jr (who greenlit Alien) has been deposed as studio head, his replacement, Norman Levy, a real company man, wouldn’t even hear about it. “He thought it would be a disaster,” grumbled Giler. It took Cameron to change things, with Scott waiting until 2012’s Prometheus to explore his own ideas.

incubator postchest-burst.

agent, who happened to work at the same firm as Weaver’s (ICM), and told him he had decided to drop Ripley to go with an older version of the LV-426 colony’s sole survior, Newt. Later that day, y, Weaver signed on for $1 million — 30 times more than she received for the first film. Weaver is emphatic: without Cameron Ripley would still be drifting in space. “[The sequel] was always a joke, and I think it took someone as confident as Jim to attempt it.” hooting from September 1985 to April 1986 at Pinewood Studios and at the decommissioned Acton Lane Power Station, the making of Aliens became its own legend, with its own bullshit. Cameron tussled with a British crew who had worshipped Scott, and who were instantly riled byy this Canadian interloper. He led by example, throwing himself into the melee, hands on with everything (he was especially adept with Alien goo), and bonding with his Marines. Bill Paxton recounts how his director, wanting to test the soldiers’ body armour, had the actor repeatedly run full tilt into the nearest wall until it cracked. By taking Scott’s haunted-house-in-space and making it a combat movie, Cameron was able to “graft on my own filmmaking style”. It’s still scary as hell, but with an emphasis on character and momentum. Cameron says, “We

tried to deflect criticism by making the film more thematically consistent with Terminator erminator than with Alien. A follows B in a domino principle where, once something starts, nothing can stop it.” As the late critic Roger Ebert said, “I have never seen a movie that maintains such a pitch of intensity for so long; it’s like being on some kind of hair-raising carnival ride that never stops.” n 1992, in the aftermath of Alien 3, Sigourney Weaver eaver took its deflated director, David Fincher, to dinner. Unhelpfully, she also brought James Cameron. They’d barely swapped apped pleasantries when Cameron challenged his replacement: “You killed Newt?” Truthfully, when Cameron saw Alien 3 he wanted to wring Fincher’s neck. “But I got over it because he’s such a good director,” he says. Still, Cameron knows how much of a disappointment it was to fans. “I think there’s an art to making sequels — you’ve got to make it cool and fresh, but not at the expense of the things people really cared about from the previous film.” Aliens made $131 million worldwide and earned Weaver an Oscar nomination with six others (it won Visual Effects and Sound Effects Editing), and is now considered a benchmark for sequels. No-one puts that down to Ridley Scott. ALIENS IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD

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HE BEGAN AS A COMEDIAN. HE BECAME THE FIRST MODERN SCREEN SUPERHERO. NOW MICHAEL KEATON IS AN AWARDS-SEASON REGULAR WHOSE LATEST FILM DISMANTLES THE LEGEND OF A FAST-FOOD PIONEER. EMPIRE SITS DOWN WITH THE REAL BIRD MAN WORDS JIMI FAMUREWA

PORTRAITS ART STREIBER

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AUGUST

the empire interview

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angling a honey dripper over his cup of coffee, Michael Keaton is telling Empire how an owl kept him awake last night. “I turn on the light because I can hear what sounds like calling,” he says, ferrying his drink to our table in a bustling Livingston, Montana café. “I keep a door open by my bed to let air in at night, so I look over and he’s there, just watching.” Those arched eyebrows go up and the head turns, mimicking a haughty winged intruder. “I’m like, ‘Dude, come on.’ And then suddenly he flew away. But he didn’t go too far. He just sat in the yard, called to another owl and kept me up.” If the Birdman star sees any extra significance in the fact that it was a feathered presence haunting him in the night then, well, he’s keeping it to himself. Instead, Keaton, who has spent much of his downtime in Montana since buying a ranch here during the ’80s, is bounding playfully from one tangent to the next — the time a grizzly bear was at his window; an urban legend about Sam Peckinpah firing his gun in a local hotel; riding a milk float home from a rowdy London pub in his youth — and frequently lifting off from his chair to act out rapid-fire anecdotes. He’s inquisitive, impish company, holding forth on everything from the Obama family to his love of fly fishing while fiddling with his battered baseball cap. This surplus energy will serve him well. Having broken through in 1982 as the fast-talking morgue assistant in Ron Howard’s Night Shift, Keaton Shift eaton made his name in comedies (Mr. (Mr. Mom, Beetlejuice). Beetlejuice Then the cowl came calling and he reunited with his Beetlejuice director Tim Burton for two mould-breaking Batman adaptations, whose recordbreaking box-office took him to another level of stardom. tardom. Cult hits ((Jackie Jack Frost Brown, Out Of Sight), Sight clunkers ers ((Jack ost,, Herbie Fully ully Loaded) Loaded and amiable cameos (The Other Guys, Toyy Story 3 3) duly followed until his gleefully meta, Oscar-nominated lead role in Alejandro G Iñárritu’s gilded kinetic masterpiece changed everything. (Spotlight) A soulful turn at the heart of another Bestt Picture winner (Spotlight Spotlight) only underlined his credentials as the new face of grown-up awardgobblers. And now, here comes The Founder, a blackhearted Academy

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magnet that sees him sparkle as Ray Kroc, the huckster who turned McDonald’s from a lone California burger stand into a multi-milliondollar institution. Then there’s his upcoming villainous role — in a bird costume, no less — as The Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Yes, the Keatonaissance is in full swing. And Keaton himself is throwing himself into this latest career high. The Founder ounder is your sixth film in just two years. Was it always the plan to stay busy or was Ray Kroc just too good a role to turn down? I was worn out from Birdman and I think I had just finished Spotlight so I wasn’t really thinking about doing anything. But I just couldn’t resist The Founder ounder because the more John [Lee Hancock, the film’s director] and I talked about it, the more I really thought I should do it. And I’m glad I did because it’s kind of beautiful. Beautiful, but bleak. How much did you know about the story of Ray Kroc franchising the original McDonald’s and essentially muscling out its original owners? I had no idea that there really were McDonald brothers. What’s arguably most interesting about it is that Mac and Dick McDonald, and especially Ray Kroc, changed America culturally. When you think about what we do all the time, you just take for granted that things are local, that they’re temporary, that they’re fast. It was the Starbucks of its time. Flash forward to how we live now and it’s not just about fast food, it was a cultural shift. I remember when I was little, a couple of times one of my eldest brothers drove us maybe 20 miles to go to the closest McDonald’s. It wasn’t like there was one that was just there. It was an event, to get to those glowing lights. As biopics go, it’s pretty damning. Was that key for you? The first thing I said to John was, “If I do this, I don’t want to have it softened.” You’ve got to have the courage to play the person without having to go, “Can we make him likeable, can we make him loveable?” I said I had

Far left: As The Founder’s Ray Kroc, who supersized McDonald’s into a global phenomenon. Above left: Superhero #1: A publicity shot for Tim Burton's Batman (1989). Left: Superhero #2: In Alejandro G Iñárritu’s Birdman (2014).

no interest in doing that. You know, if the guy’s a prick, the guy’s a prick. That’s the end of the story. But what kind of surprised me is that there’s a big part of me that really admires Ray Kroc, the early Ray Kroc. He was a hard-ass worker, man.  There has been awards buzz pretty much since the start of production. Do you feel pressure to keep up this incredible run of critical success? [Laughs] [Laughs Laughs] I’d be a liar if I [said I] never thought I should keep this run going. But it depends on the individual offer. Does it appeal to me creatively to the point where I can’t say no? Or does it scare me, have I never played this before? Then there’s how it feels monetarily or lifestyle-wise. I’m going to play this role in [bestselling thriller adaptation] American Assassin and it’s definitely something I haven’t done, for sure. I hope it’s good, as it’s a decision I’ve made in terms of running my business but it also appealed creatively because I’ve never played that kind of character. There’s no set policy. Although I do miss comedy a lot. Speaking of comedy, what’s the state of play with the Beetlejuice sequel? It keeps coming back. I don’t even talk about it because I don’t know how many other ways I can say to people that they probably know more about it than I do. I was probably ahead of everybody when I said, “Man, that movie was so good. If I ever did something again, it might be that.” That was probably 15 years ago and then they never did it. Then I hear these things, like everybody else. But I have no idea. Tim’s off doing movies, I’m off doing movies, so I always assume it’s a no. But I don’t know. Looking back, what were the toughest things about making those Batman films with Tim Burton? Back then I wouldn’t take certain movies because my son was young so I’d pass on certain locations. I almost passed on Batman because I was already

separating [from my wife] and it was extremely hard on me and everyone. I was this close to saying, “This is not a good time.” But at the suggestion of a friend of my son’s mom, I changed my mind. Filming was about as lonely and hard a time as I’ve experienced. London was a different city then. My jetlag never really caught up and it was hard to make that movie. No-one was making movies like that at the time so it was gruelling, particularly for Tim. Anyway, I would fly home on the Concorde, not every weekend but a few times, and then turn around after a day-and-a-half and come all the way back. It was wearing me down: long shoot, long nights. In that regard, I was glad when it was over, but I felt part of something that was pretty groundbreaking. It was really risky. On my part, on Tim’s part, on Jack [Nicholson]’s part. Jack’s way out there, man. If that goes down it goes down big. You’ve also signed on for Spider-Man: Homecoming. As someone who helped invent the modern comic-book adaptation, what’s your take on the dominant new era of superhero franchises? It’s extraordinary. You’re talking to a guy who basically knows nothing about the lore of that world. But my friend has two girls who are fascinated by superheroes. One in particular is way, way into them. I’m not kidding. I asked her about Spider-Man and she told me the movies I need to watch. Was it a big decision to re-enter the comic-book game? Not really. I think it’s going to be cool and I’m really looking forward to it. Tom Holland [who plays Spider-Man] is a wonderful actor and, I’ve got to say, from the early conversations I’ve had with Marvel, they’re really serious about how they approach their stuff. Tarantino was another visionary director you collaborated with, on Jackie Brown. What was your experience of working with him? Oh, man. That guy’s a major leaguer. I’d seen Pulp Fiction and Reservoir  Dogs and I said, “Wow. Here’s an original voice.” Then the offer came

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Clockwise from left: Last year’s Spotlight, Keaton’s second Best Picture-winner in a row after Birdman; A colder reception greeted 1998’s Jack Frost; All dolled up with Winona Ryder in Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988); Alongside Pam Grier in Tarantino’s 1997 hit Jackie Brown.

along and I didn’t know him, so I wasn’t aware of how he worked. I read it and, although I was sure it would be good, I just didn’t have any real interest because I didn’t get it. They said, “Just meet him.” And so I said, “Sure.” So we had a meeting and I said, “I don’t really have an original idea for this.” More time passed and the agent said, “Just meet him again.” So we go out on Sunset Boulevard, Quentin has us drinking Jägermeister. Firstly, who drinks Jägermeister, man? Anyway, I don’t know what happened but the next thing I’m heading home and I’m doing the movie [laughs]. laughs]. laughs So I go, “I guess I’m doing it.” My agent is all excited and goes, “Really? Why?” And I’m like, “I don’t know, I just woke up an hour ago and I don’t remember.” But it was fun.  Also, it led to the very cool moment where you reprised your character Ray Nicolette in Steven Soderbergh’s Out Of Sight, another Elmore Leonard adaptation. Nobody had ever done it then and that was what appealed to me when Soderbergh called. I told him, “It has to have the feel that this guy is literally out in the world. I need to have a little bit of the wardrobe from Jackie Brown so you go, ‘Oh yeah, there’s Ray Nicolette again.’” I wanted it to be like you might be in a Starbucks and see Ray Nicolette and not think anything of it. You turned down some big roles over your career, such as Jack Shephard in Lost, and a third Batman film. How do you look back on those decisions? I feel like people have misinterpreted ted that [Lost [Lost]] thing. I liked JJ Abrams’ original idea but I hadn’t said yes. Look, I do what I do. I always think you’ve got to at least stay in the gym a little bit. You can’t totally disappear. I took one little movie because there was going to be a strike, they offered me a nice cheque and I only had to work about 12 days. I just thought, to be very honest, “I better grab this money and put it in a bank.” Then there were other movies I did that I thought, “What the fuck was I thinking?” Just horrible, horrible movies. And frankly, if you’re not in

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a movie that makes a lot of money then you’re not on the list, so it wasn’t like people were pounding down my door to do certain movies. So it was self… I wanna say self-inflicted [laughs]. laughs]. laughs Basically some of it was my choice and some of it wasn’t my choice. Does it feel like that pickiness is paying off with your current hot streak? Yeah, but there was no guarantee that it would. I think there’s an argument to be made that, if I had done the third Batman, which on the page was horrible, then I’m not sure that a Birdman ever happens. The business is so much bigger than any one person. Who knows? I’m just so glad I did the first two, in terms of being part of film history. Finally, we’ve heard you’re a fan of Armando Iannucci’s show Veep. Is that right? I fucking love Veep. I adore it. Iannucci is really great, but that cast... I was at something, maybe it was the Oscars, I forget, but it was a big room and I ran into two of the actors from Veep. I think I may have freaked them out a little bit. They were looking at me like, “Why are you talking to us so much about this?” I cornered them both and I think I was talking about their timing and really going into detail. They were looking at me like, “You’ve got to back off.” I’m a fan and in fact I got in touch with Iannucci as I had this thing I wanted to do with him, but he wasn’t able to do it. So you’re into that brand of splenetic British comedy? Oh yeah. The Thick Of It is so good and biting and uncomfortable. It’s like the UK [version of ] The Office. When I saw that I’d never seen comedy like it. I had a friend who sent me an early DVD before it came to America and, man, I just showed it to everyone who would talk to me. THE FOUNDER IS IN CINEMAS IN OCTOBER

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SPOILER WARNING

THE INDIS PENSABLE GUIDE TO H OME ENTERTA INMENT

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EDITED BY CHRIS HEWITT

THE EMPIRE VIEWING GUIDE HIGH-RISE

Director Ben Wheatley takes us inside his towering achievement

words CHRIS HEWITT

THE VERDICT HIGH-RISE

HHHH

What we said: “This is a dazzling and unsettling film. don’t expect a thriller in the seat-edge sense, but you will be thrilled — and repulsed — by this bold adaptation of Ballard’s ever-prescient picture of First world strife.” Notable extras: Commentary with Ben wheatley, Tom Hiddleston and producer Jeremy Thomas; JG Ballard featurette; cast interviews.

00:02:25

HAIR OF THE DOG __ The film opens with Tom Hiddleston’s dr. r robert Laing chowing down r. on some prize pooch. After the dog/knitting needle interface in Sightseers, does wheatley have anything against man’s best friend? “No, it features heavily in the book!” he laughs. “There’s an equal amount of dog and cat death in the book, but Jeremy Thomas, the producer, is a cat lover � and told me not to kill any cats in this movie.”

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00:04:43

00:13:42

00:35:15

The scene that launched a thousand GIFs, as Sienna Miller’s Charlotte spies on a sunbathing Laing, and we almost — almost — catch a glimpse of Tom’s Hiddlestones. “It’s in the book, so it’s not gratuitous,” insists Wheatley with a smile. The tome Laing uses to preserve his modesty is the welcome guide to the apartment block.

__ The slowmotion sequence where Laing dances down a corridor with air stewardesses was improvised at the end of the first day. “The hostesses were meant to walk up and down the corridor, then we threw in the dance. Then Tom said, ‘I should get in there,’ and suddenly everyone was at the monitors watching. The only time I’ve had that before was on Doctor Who, when we blew up a load of Daleks.”

characters watch a fake TV show featuring Sienna Guillory’s actress character, Jane. “We had a real laugh with that,” says Wheatley. “It would have been a show running on Sunday nights called The Bastards Of Dansford. It’s about the Lord of Dansford, and every week a new bastard turns up from Europe and demands money from him.”

00:38:36

00:51:36

01:08:38

Richard Wilder’s (Luke Evans) apartment is host to several film posters, most prominently 1960s comedy, Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment. “Wilder was a film fan who wanted to make movies and had been inspired by the English New Wave,” says Wheatley. “But he’d got sidetracked into documentaries. So the poster was where he was going, but this is where he ended up.”

__ The shocking death that proves the trigger for the degradation of society within the high-rise is that of Augustus Prew’s Munrow, as he tumbles off a balcony and crashes onto the bonnet of a Triumph Stag. “We built the bonnets out of tinfoil and shot them in really slow motion,” reveals Wheatley, “so the tinfoil would deform and look like heavy steel.”

__ The supermarket scrap sees Peter Ferdinando’s newsreader Cosgrove batter Wilder with a BAFTA. Wheatley had to write to the British Film Academy for permission. “I had to say we wouldn’t defame the BAFTA design or name, and then we bash someone over the head with it!” The BAFTA had three names inscribed on it: Cosgrove, DP Laurie Rose and Wheatley.

01:17:36

1:27:34

01:46:15

__ If the policeman who turns up to ‘investigate’ the ruckus in the tower block looks familiar, that’s because he’s played by Neil Maskell, aka Jay in Wheatley’s breakout movie, Kill List. “I had an idea that he’s Jay’s father,” laughs Wheatley. “I had a line to that effect.” However, Amy Jump, the film’s editor/ writer, was not impressed. “When I got back to the edit suite, Amy went, ‘Fucking take that out.’”

the movie and written into the script,” says Wheatley of Portishead’s stunning cover version of ABBA’s SOS, which accompanies Wilder’s torment of Charlotte. At first, Portishead refused to release the song commercially. “They wanted it to be special for the film,” says Wheatley. But they did release a video in memory of murdered MP Jo Cox.

kaleidoscopic,” says Wheatley of the climax, which sees Louis Suc’s Toby witness a murder through the 1970s toy. “The kid sees with a different vision.” The effect required a special lens: “Basically a Toblerone of mirrors inside a carpet tube.”

THE GIF THAT KEEPS ON GIFFING __

POSTER CHILD __ Feral documentarian

PRE-KILL LIST

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STEP UP 6: HIGH-RISE

FALLING SLOWLY

SOS __ “The song was commissioned for

APPOINTMENT TV __ At various points,

“BAFTA HIM!”

THE KALEIDOSCOPE __ “The story itself is

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THE EMPIRE MASTERPIECE CYRANO DE BERGERAC

The best version of the classic tale — by a nose

1990 / CERT U WORDS HELEN O’HARA

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AS A BOY Y during World War II, Jean-Paul Rappeneau went to see a production of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play, Cyrano de Bergerac, at the Comédie-Française. “The provincial young boy I was discovered Paris, the theatre and Cyrano all at once,” he recalled. “It was the kind of shock one never quite gets over.” When a 1983 production at the Théâtre Mogador got film producers excited — especially since the play was finally in the public domain — Rappeneau, now firmly established in the French film industry, saw his chance to turn it into a film. It took a few years, but when his adaptation hit the screen in 1990, the result was a glorious tale of unrequited love and near-suicidal bravery told through flowery, passionate dialogue. Despite his enthusiasm for the play, after starting work Rappeneau became concerned

that all previous film versions seemed so static and repetitive. Could it be brought to life on screen? It was only when he learned Orson Welles had spent a year developing an rson W unproduced take that he felt reassured that the play had cinematic potential, and that he could recapture his own boyish sense of wonder. The next challenge was the text. The play is written largely in ‘alexandrines’, rhyming couplets of 12 syllables that sound “like music running throughout the scenes”, in Rappeneau’s words. While that worked fine around a rehearsal table in Paris, the first few days on location in Hungary were a disaster. “How do you expect me to run fast and speak slowly?” demanded one actor. But star Gérard Depardieu, as Cyrano, quickly discovered the rhythm, and soon

KIDS WATCH CLASSICS Big films tackled by little people ILLusTraTION ra raTION oLLY LLY gibbs LLY

Nasal gazing: Roxane (Anne Brochet) is proxy-wooed by Cyrano (Gérard Depardieu).

everyone was also lilting through the verse with him. The real Cyrano de Bergerac was a 17thcentury French novelist and one of the first science-fiction writers, and the play is only loosely based on his life — though his fancies of travelling by rocket to the moon are reflected in one comedy scene. In Rostand’s hands, Cyrano became a hero capable of composing poems while duelling or of defeating a hundred men without a scratch. Alas, he was held back from his romantic dreams by an enormous nose. The object of Cyrano’s affections is his witty, beautiful cousin Roxane (the radiant Anne Brochet). But instead of declaring himself, he agrees to help the man she believes she’s in love with, Christian (Vincent Perez), to woo

her, writing letters and speaking for the tongue-tied hunk. The tragic irony is that both Cyrano and Roxane are truly passionate about language itself. Had he been more open and she less blinded by Christian’s considerable charms, they could have been happy together. That aside, this is a rare love triangle that has a compelling reason to exist, with Cyrano the self-loathing enabler for two bright young things just dying to get inside each other’s frilly shirts. All three lovers are good people trying not to hurt each other, and if there’s an interesting undercurrent in Perez’ performance suggesting Christian’s love is less than pure, he still does the decent thing and marries Roxane on request. The story never enjoyed much literary respect, with academics dismissing its rhymes as doggerel (harsh) and its plot as melodrama (probably fair). But they miss the power of Cyrano himself, an avatar for romantic underdogs everywhere. From the opening scene he is a full-blooded creation, ridiculous and heroic in equal measure. He mercilessly attacks those who mock him, with words or sword or both. But he lampoons himself more lavishly than they ever could, the better to rob their words of sting. It’s a remarkable mix of towering ego and bitter self-loathing; the bitterness is what sets it apart from, and above, Steve Martin’s modern, American take Roxanne (which beat Rappeneau to the punch in 1987). When a friend asks if Cyrano is crying at one point, he replies, “Oh no, that would be intolerable / A tear on this nose, horrible!” (English translation courtesy of Anthony Burgess’ rhyming subtitles). Depardieu was dream casting for the role — it’s hard to imagine anyone else who could combine hard-edged verbal brilliance and noble suffering with that unmistakable lust for life. Rappeneau’s take on theatre’s second-most famous balcony scene, where Cyrano romances Roxane under cover of Christian’s hat, beats most versions of the other balcony scene hands-down. Depardieu’s voice is passionate, but there’s a whisper of hopelessness in it too. He’s the reluctant model of the chivalrous ideal, loving passionately but only from afar. And the success of his seductive language means that another man climbs up to kiss the girl, so his triumph is also a moment of despair, and he walks away, alone, in the rain. It’s that melancholy air, even in the funniest and fastest scenes, that gives substance to Rappeneau’s sumptuous style. Cyrano, for all his gifts, is a glorious failure in love and that gives comfort to all the rest of us as we flail about in our lesser attempts at romance. Yes, it may be a melodrama — but it is one with endless panache.

ELLA BERRY — 9 THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

You’ve just seen The Empire Strikes Back for the first time. Did you like it? I thought it was really cool. But without the music it wouldn’t be as good. If there wasn’t any music there’d just be loads of people rustling their jackets. so what was your favourite bit? I liked the start when they were all trying to fix the big plane. the millennium Falcon. Yeah, I liked that bit. Y What didn’t you like? I didn’t like the bit when they ripped the animal’s stomach open and put Luke in it and there were guts everywhere. That was yuck. Did you like Yoda? Yeah, he’s really funny. I liked the bit when he pretended not to be Yoda. He taught Luke to be patient and that he just needed to believe in himself, which is a really good message. What about Darth Vader? scary? No! Well, W he was when he killed people but he could be good. He just needs to learn how. He should go to see Yoda. Did you know he was Luke’s father? Yeah, so that wasn’t very surprising. How did you feel about Han and Leia being in love? Did you like all the kissing? That was like, yuck. I want Luke and Leia to get together. Do you want to watch the next Star Wars movie? There’s another movie? Oh my God. I’d watch another one if it was a bit shorter. What star rating would you give this? Three stars.

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Batman and Superman up the aggro in the Ultimate Edition.

Is Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice — Ultimate Edition better than the first? WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

HERE’S A DIAMOND absolute, just like the ones Bruce Wayne wangs on about in the opening voiceover of Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice. Zack Snyder’s movie was, to put it mildly, a disappointment upon its release in March. Shunned by many critics (it ranks just 27 per cent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes), it also underwhelmed at the box office. It seems faintly ludicrous to apply that label to a movie that made $872 million worldwide, but $872 million is a long w way short of a billion dollars, and Warner Bros did not bring together its most iconic and lucrative superheroes to make anything less than a billion. There was even a fan petition — there are always petitions — lobbying Warner Bros to fire Snyder from his job directing Justice League, the massive DC hero team-up which started filming

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soon after Dawn Of Justice came out. While that didn’t come to pass, it’s been hard to escape the whispers that the tone of Justice League has been radically revamped (there may even be ve become jokes), while Ben A Affleck have ffleck seems to ha a new creative force in the DCEU as executive producer on Justice League, and director of his own Batman movie. Now, four months on, comes Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice — Ultimate Edition, boasting 30 minutes of new footage for a mammoth three-hour running time, and a more adult edge that won an R rating in the States. Over here, we’re made of sterner stuff and it’s still a 12, despite digital blood splattering against walls, a bloke being shivved to death in a prison yard, Scoot McNairy saying the F-word, and other wholesome things you want from a Superman movie. And while this isn’t a diamond absolute, it’s hard to escape the feeling that had Warner ha been Bros released this in March, arch, it might have more warmly received. This is a richer, fuller, more satisfying experience that goes a long way to answering many of the criticisms levelled at the theatrical version. There are no barnstorming additions here, no major changes (Superman’s introduction is

slightly tweaked), and certainly nothing too visual effects-heavy. The late scene between Ben Affleck’ A s Batman and Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor is given a new wrinkle about Luthor’s ultimate destination (rhymes with Snarkham Asnylum) which may or may not play into Squad, while Justice League or even Suicide Squad the one brief addition involving Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman sees her on the wrong end of some serious mansplaining. But the new scenes do elucidate character motivations that were previously murky or completely unclear. Luthor’s Machiavellian achiavellian achia masterplan makes more sense now, thanks to a restored subplot which shows that Superman’s actions at the beginning of the movie — when he rescues Lois Lane from an A African warlord — were a set-up. Elsewhere, Snyder has added no-holds-barred scenes of hot and heavy journalism, first as Henry Cavill gets to pound the Batbeat in Gotham in his Clark Kent guise, which gives more justification for his beef with the Dark Knight, and then as Amy Adams’ Lois Lane digs into Luthor’s dirty dealings and trades banter with Jena Malone’s sarky scientist. And poor Jimmy Olsen lsen — poor, poor doomed, tragic Jimmy Olsen — finally gets named on

MAN ON TRAIN The bit-part players who stand out

Perfect weapon Doomsday goes full beam.

THIS MONTH: JIMMY OLSEN IN BATMAN v SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

Jena Malone’s Jenet Klyburn, cut from the theatrical release, is a welcome addition.

Batman (Ben Affleck) in a tight spot. Where’s Supes when you need him?

screen. Jimmy, we hardly knew ye. It hasn’t become a masterpiece. The flaws of Snyder’s movie remain: the depiction of Superman as a morose, withdrawn, tortured soul; a bland and seemingly interminable third act full of sound and fury; and the whole Martha coincidence, where Batman and Superman put aside their differences upon realising their mothers share the same first name, is still shockingly clumsy. You can’t blame Warner Bros for deciding not to release a three-hour comic-book movie. And the Ultimate Edition may certainly restore some of the film’s damaged reputation, but it’s probably too little, too late for justice to be done. BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE — ULTIMATE

THE VERDICT BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

HHH

What we said: “There’s nothing wrong with a little angst but here it’s doubled down: pitting Batman against an insecure and self-doubting Superman, Zack Snyder’s movie is a spectacle that proves heavy on visual pizzazz, but markedly light on fun.” Notable extras: Featurettes galore, including spotlights on the Batmobile, Wonder Woman and the first meeting of two super-icons.

Michael Cassidy isn’t your typical Man On Train. For one thing, he’s got a character name. And not just any old character name: he’s Jimmy Olsen, intrepid Daily Planet photographer, comic-book icon, and Superman’s pal. At least, that’s what he’s been for over 70 years in comics, movies and TV shows. Not in Dawn Of Justice, though, where he was re-imagined as a CIA badass and dispatched with a bullet to the brain. “Zack told me there wasn’t a place in the story for Jimmy Olsen, and he wanted to surprise everybody,” recalls Cassidy. Cassidy, who learned to speak the Berber dialect of Tamasheq for the nine days it took to shoot his scenes in New Mexico, says the character wasn’t referred to by name when he auditioned. “Zack mentioned Jimmy Olsen almost in passing,” he says. “So I didn’t think about it in a historical context. I just thought of him as a guy doing a job.” Cassidy also differs from previous occupants of this slot in that Olsen isn’t the pinnacle of his career. He started out with a run in Season 2 of The OC, and has since been busy across film and TV, including a stint on, of all things, Smallville. “My specific level of notoriety is that people aren’t sure if I’m their cousin they’ve heard about from another cousin, or whether they’ve seen me on TV,” he laughs. Next, he’s in People Of Earth, a sitcom produced by Conan O’Brien and Greg Daniels. And, given that we never see a body, might Olsen return in further DC movies? “My interpretation of events is that he’s dead,” he says. “But I would love to get that call!”

EDITION IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD

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MOVIE MEMOIRS Sali Hughes on the films that shaped her life

#2 AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON — THE FIRST-TIME FILM

ILLUSTRATION DAVID MAHONEY

WHEN W WAS YOUR OUR first time? Mine was with a werewolf. W We went from awkward flirting in a gro grotty London bedsit, to tender snogs and boob-groping in the sho shower, to full-on shagging in bed. Agonisingly — but fortunately since I was barely 11 years old — J Jenny Agutter’s Nurse Alex got the action on my behalf, while I sat in a South Wales living room, watching her and David Wales Naughton’s David get it on in John Landis’ as astounding An American Werewolf In London (1981). And yet this, my first sexual experience, was in no way a passive one. My stomach churned w giddily in a w way it hadn’t before, my eyes barely

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blinked, and to paraphrase Withnail in gross understatement, I felt unusual. I sank deeper into the armchair, a cushion obscuring my flushed face, while my mortified stepdad desperately identified continuity errors until he could take no more and fled to boil the kettle. My first film ladyboner is indelibly printed on my nethers as, I expect, is your equivalent. For you it may have been Kelly Le Brock’s gym class in Weird Science, Richard Gere’s factory rescue in An Officer And A Gentleman, Jamie Lee Curtis’ wabs in Trading Places or Patrick Swayze’s chest in Dirty Dancing. It could be the train scene in Risky Business, Kenickie and Rizzo dry humping in Grease, or Betty Blue before it went terribly wrong and she performed DIY Y eye surgery. Whichever piece of celluloid first got your rocks off is a pivotal moment in a young person’s life; it never really leaves you, nor can its dizzy, awakening arousal ever be replicated. The magic of the first film turn-on is that one is invariably nowhere near ready for the real thing, so there is an inherent safety in being aroused by fantastical characters involved in an almost incidental sex scene. It allows a kid (and yes, I was too young to be watching what was then an 18 certificate. It’s basically true that no one really gave a shit about kids in the ’80s) to explore sex safely and without consequences. When you’re 11, you’re too inexperienced to

Sexy beast: David NaughtonÕs American werewolf.

really understand what’s going on — you could just as easily be watching Martians or replicants for all a sex scene says about your life. And on that tip, kinks and predilections are born. Age hasn’t yet hammered out one’s sense of imagination, society hasn’t yet steered us towards fancying Taylor Swift or Tom Hiddleston types. For those formative years, it’s perfectly fine to want to get off with devil-possessed Sigourney Weaver or be loin-stirred by the patently energetic but caring lover Chewbacca (my gateway to non-human lust objects such as Edward Scissorhands and Disney’s vulpine Robin Hood — truly, no species is safe), and neither will break the law, get you pregnant or tear your heart in two. Porn, at least for me, had nothing like the impact of An American Werewolf In London. The former came later via a dodgy VHS, put on at a teenage party while everyone got cider giggles over gross men and women in knee socks and a full bush. It was a funny bonding ritual, sure, but far too self-conscious and graphic — even by the standards of 1988 — for comfort or arousal. I worry that in an internet age, kids will watch graphic scenes of anal penetration before they get to enjoy fizzy knickers over the sight of Jessica Rabbit peeling off an evening glove. Formative film turn-ons are as much about what you don’t see as about the exciting things you do.

what did i miss? Werner Herzog

MURDER IN SUCCESSVILLE: SERIES 2

favourite Close-Up. Below: Kiarostami on the set of Certified Copy in 2010.

The very best of BBC Three’s bizarre sitcom

1 HEAVY SLEET

A part-improvised murder mystery/sitcom in which a real-life celeb teams up with a hardbitten cop to investigate crimes in a town populated by celebrities shouldn’t work. But it does, thanks to Tom Davis as DI Sleet. episode four charts his hilarious attempts to launch curry-finding/dating app Vindr.

ABBAS’ GREATEST HITS The Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami passed away in July. Here are his best films WoRDS DAVID PARKINSON

2 GORDON’S ALIVE

The only other staple of the cast is Liam Hourican with his scarily spot-on impression of Gordon Ramsay, who’s Sleet’s beleaguered boss. Constantly exploding in rage, Hourican is a delight. Highlight: calling The Only Way Is Essex’s Mark Wright a “buffed-up pissspoon” in episode two.

3 THE DOUBLE BISHOP

Series 2 attracted some big names, but Kevin Bishop’s achingly cruel take on John Bishop, playing the comic as a paranoid bookie, is the standout. His conversation with himself in a mirror in episode three is the darkest oneon-one since Gollum’s in The Two Towers. CH MURDER IN SUCCESSVILLE SERIES 2 IS AVAILABLE NOW ON BBC iPLAYER

ACCoRDInG To JeAn-LuC Godard: “Film begins with DW Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami.” Kiarostami started out making films for children in Iran, either side of the Islamic Revolution. But he became a sly commentator on his restrictive society through witty and wise studies of ordinary people. Blurring fact and fiction, his style is deceptively simple but daringly subversive. He passed away in July aged 76, leaving behind an astonishing body of work. THE TRAVELLER (1974) obsessive pursuits fascinated Kiarostami and his feature debut explores the resourceful amorality of provincial tweenager Hassan Darabi, as he connives to raise money to see a football game in Tehran. Having made shorts for young audiences, Kiarostami playfully presents this neo-realist fable from the perspective of a scamp with a burning sense of frustration and injustice. CLOSE-UP UP (1990) UP Werner Herzog rates this the best documentary about filmmaking. But it’s actually a scripted reconstruction of Hossein Sabzian’s efforts to convince a family that he is the famous director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, which self-reflexively challenges the procedures and purpose of cinema. Kiarostami also appears as himself and, as with everything else he did, is excellent.

TASTE STE OF CHERRY ST Y (1997) Kiarostami apparently never rewatched this Palme d’or-winning rr-winning account of would-be suicide Homayoun ershadi’s bid to find someone to bury his corpse. Shame, as it’s a cracker. Built around conversations held through ershadi’s car window, it examines thorny religious and political issues. TEN (2002) Subverting both the conventions of the road movie and preconceptions about Iranian womanhood, this ‘docufiction’ is Kiarostami’s most audacious achievement. Recording workshopped encounters with a pair of dashboard cameras, he forces the audience to gaze upon female faces and listen to their impassioned and often witty views, as divorcee Mania Akbari ferries her sister, a widow, a spinster, a prostitute and her chauvinist son around Tehran. CERTIF TIFI TIF FIED IED COPY OPY (2010) In his first fiction feature made outside of Iran, Kiarostami explores themes of originality and authenticity, for which Juliette Binoche won Best Actress at Cannes. one of the director’s most personal pictures, his refusal to disclose the nature of Binoche’s relationship with scholar William Shimell ensures it’s as beguiling as it’s beautiful. THE ABBAS KIAROSTAMI COLLECTION IS OUT NOW ON DVD. CERTIFIED COPY IS OUT NOW ON BLU-RAY

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23-25 SEPTEMBER, 2016. THE 02, LONDON Immerse yourself in the world of cinema with events and activities such as exclusive film screenings, Q&As, workshops, live events and much, much more!

EXCLUSIVE SCREENINGS

With 36 special screenings including previews of new releases, blockbusters, cult classics, comedies, thrillers and documentaries including…

ADVANCE SCREENINGS

Including War On Everyone

MEET THE MOVIE MAKERS!

LIVE COMMENTARIES Including The Raid

Your chance to meet the people who make the movies and those who star in them! Enjoy Q&As, director commentaries, live script reads, film introductions and more.

MOR E A NNOUNCEMEN T S COMING SOON!

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BEST OF TIMES |WORST OF TIMES MADS MIKKELSEN

words helen o’hara

COSTUME the costumes when I was playing Hannibal. they were hand-tailored suits, and there was a fantastic one with a scottish pattern in reddish and grey. It was so gorgeous [creator] bryan Fuller had one made for himself.

It’s so good for the film, but my badminton outfit in Men & Chicken. It highlights my incredible skinny legs and looked like something from the ’70s. that was the idea, but I wouldn’t bring it back home.

AUDITION I did one audition where I was like a rubber man. The scene was only about having long arms, picking someone up and throwing him around. I don’t have long arms and I felt like a complete idiot: four years of drama school down the drain! Needless to say, I did not get the part.

For King Arthur, I had to do a shakespearean monologue sitting on a horse. I had a hard time understanding what that scene was about, so to everybody's shock, apparently, I stopped and asked the director ector [Antoine [ Fuqua]. People seemed to like that I had the balls to do that.

DEATH SCENE the best is actually an alternative finish we had for The Hunt, that’s not in the film. We had a finish where my character actually got shot, and went down like a deer, just a collapse, face in the mud, over. It was brilliant, but I also understand why it’s not in there.

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed with the way my character died in Casino Royale. For a bond film, it was abrupt. I loved the film; you just expect a little unforgettable thing there. someone came up to me and thought le e Chiffre Chif was still alive.

LOCATION I don’t think I’ve been on any set I didn’t like. I mean, I’ve been in drug addicts’ apartments but they served the purpose of the film. I did a scene in a brothel for Pusher II. It was a real place, and it was terrible, but it suited the film.

Locations are always wonderful if you find the right spot. I’ve been in Iceland twice [for Star Wars: Rogue One and Wildside], and it’s the most beautiful place in the world. The light... they have the magic hour constantly.

MOMENT there have been so many. obviously getting bond was fantastic, and the warm reception we got for the hunt. shooting hannibal, working with anders thomas Jensen [on Men & Chicken and three more features as director]... there are so many things; I’m just in the middle of it right now and enjoying it tremendously.

When I’d just graduated I did a disastrous play. half the script wasn't there here and the crew left because it was run by an impossible person. the worst thing was it was on an island, so we had to catch the last boat home with the audience. I remember saying, “From now on my career can only go up.” MEN & CHI CHICKEN HI HI Is out on 8 august on DVD anD blu-ray

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LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS SEPTEMBER 2016

S I D & NAN C Y D I R E CTO R A L E X COX R E F L E CTS ON T H E DO OM E D DUO

WORDS IAN NATHAN A ATHAN

ALEX COX’S SID & NANCY is often ALE held up as the quintessential document on the ill-fated romance of punk icons Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, but its director — and former Mo Moviedrome host — maintains his heroincurdled love story is truly a study in selfdestruction. To his eyes, Vicious, the erstwhile and, frankly, talentless Sex Pistols bassist (aped with uncann uncanny levels of stupefied gurning by Gary Oldman) is ultimately more fool than icon. The film’s depiction of his deep dive into drugs, fuelled by a tempestuous relationship with American junkie Spungen (a squalling, vivid bottle-blonde Chloe Webb) is a morality tale hloe W staggering into tragedy. Thirty years on, Cox shares his thoughts on this iconic couple.

SID

Gary Oldman’s Sid Vicious and Chloe Webb’s Nancy Spungen get their punk on.

Cox was in Los Angeles, studying film at UCLA, CLA, when he discovered Sid Vicious. “A w A friend, Bill Wood, who had come over to act in my student film brought me a copy of the Pistols’ double A-side, Cosh The Driver/My Way,” he recalls. But if Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols’ erstwhile impresario, declared the nihilistic bassist to embody ”the attitude of punk”, Cox was having none of it. “At the time I viewed him as a drugaddled traitor to the punk movement. Still do!” Vicious had the potential to be a punk icon, he contends, but ended up a ridiculous junkie loser. What Cox couldn’t deny was that by the end of the 1970s, the snarling, skeletal, self-harmed Vicious (formerly J John Ritchie) had his own, distinctive look. And when it came to filling his drainpipes, casting director Lucy Boulting — who introduced Cox to all the London cast — offered him two great choices for the role of Sid: Gary ldman and Daniel Da Day-Lewis. Oldman “Gary had no interest in the punk scene, but he was desperate to get the part,” says Cox. “It was the first film role he ever had. I wanted him w because he was a very good actor. I’d seen him on stage at the Barbican [in Edward Bond’s The edding Pope’s P Wedding edding]] — and he came from the same ondon, Bermondsey poor area of London, Bermondsey, as Sid did, from a similar, though not drug-addicted, working-class back background.” To Cox’s mind, Oldman would understand some of what Vicious felt when offered the opportunity to join the Sex Pistols, and to find his way out of there. “Dan would have been great as well,” he notes, “but in a different way.” If the film’s depiction of Vicious’ brief, intense existence has been questioned by many, there is no doubting the gunpowder chemistry hloe Webb W generated between Oldman and Chloe as Nancy. Cox acknowledges they were able to improvise around the script “and greatly

improved upon the roles as they were written.” Sid and Nancy were in love, and they were drug addicts. Such circumstances do not turn out well. It was a tragedy built on a mutual self-destruction that began in their respective childhoods. Vicious’ mother, Anne, was another substance-abuser. Spungen had been diagnosed as schizophrenic at 15, her life proceeding in a litany of violence, prostitution and heroin. She died from a stab wound on 12 October, ctober, 1978, aged just 20 years old. Vicious was arrested and charged with her second degree murder, although he died of a heroin overdose before the case came to trial. Cox’s film mournfully evokes the inevitability of their squalid end (and with it the snuffing out of the magnesium flare of punk). “Looking back, I think it is a fairly unromantic telling of the tale,” the director says. “The only place I romanticised the story is at the end, with the ridiculous ‘taxi to heaven’ scene.” The film’s now notorious ‘happy’ postscript features Oldman’s Vicious fantasising (hallucinating?) being picked up by his now dead girlfriend in a cab, to drive off through the New York dawn heavenwards. Cox admits it was “cowardice” that stopped him ending with Vicious’ death shortly after. One of the fiercest critics of the film’s portrayal of Vicious is one John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, the Sex Pistols’ vitriolic frontman. On his website, johnlydon.com, you can still find a definitive statement from Lydon about the “sadly, sickeningly depressing” fate of Vicious and Spungen, and the movie itself, “which a lot of people refer to being factual, which it is not.” Surprisingly, urprisingly urprisingly, perhaps now he’s had three decades to reflect, Cox is in agreement. “John’s criticism was entirely justified!” he says. “Imagine if someone made a film about your close friend’s horrible demise, and chose to make you a character in it.” Even so, Lydon was briefly involved with the movie. “He was very generous to us, reading the script, talking to me about it, and inviting Andrew Schofield [who pla played Johnny in the film] to come to New York and hang out with him,” adds Cox. “His negative reaction also generated controversy, which helped publicise the film — just as it had helped his own career, and the early progress of the Pistols.”

NANCY Cox admits his memory is sketchy when it comes to Nancy Spungen, the hot-tempered Philly escapee who had hitched herself to the New York punk scene before following the trail to  London and the Sex Pistols. It’s been 30 years,

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Sid & Nancy director Alex Cox praised Oldman and Webb’s great on-screen chemistry.

Oldman works on his Vicious bass-playing.

he protests. “I’d have to go back to my two volumes of notes — interviews with the Bromley contingent and other people who knew them both in London and New York — to answer those questions. The notebooks are at the National Media Museum in Bradford if anyone would like to look...” He does contend that Spungen was already an addict before she met Sid, and the film certainly posits the argument that she was responsible for getting Vicious hooked on heroin. “Others have said Sid’s mother gave him heroin, but I don’t know,” says Cox. “I think perhaps Nancy has been blamed unduly. Heroin is a terrible drug and once you fall into it things only go one way, unless you’re wealthy and can take an expensive cure.” Indeed, Spungen was smart and funny. She went some way towards managing Vicious as a solo artist in the caverns of the New York scene. In another life, free of dope, who knows what she might have achieved? “It’s hard for me to say at this late stage what qualities she had as a person,” shrugs Cox. “What were Sid’s qualities? He looked good, could barely play the bass, had a certain charisma. Those were pretty much Nancy’s qualities, too. I think they were in love, but the drug thing put paid to that.” Heroin was bad for Sid and Nancy. Childhood trauma was, too. After Spungen’s death the Village Voice ran an article titled ‘A Tale Of Two Patsies’. For Cox, that says it all. “Did she have a death wish?” he wonders,

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and the film ruminates over the idea there was a suicide pact. “I don’t know the answer to that one. What is a death wish?” When casting his Nancy, Cox had met Courtney Love, who declared, “I am Nancy Spungen,” in her audition. Cox now says she was never his first choice — “She didn’t have the experience or the acting chops to go head-tohead with the actor playing Sid” — but he was impressed enough to cast her as an orbiting junkie named Gretchen. Had Love been cast, the irony would be almost unbearable given Love’s tragic future relationship with Kurt Cobain Instead, he cast Webb via Miguel Sandoval, who was reading opposite potential cast members at the LA auditions. Sandoval had worked with Webb before and encouraged her to audition for the part. Cox was impressed. “She was a great actor, very sexy, very intelligent,” he says. “Chloe and Gary were equally excellent actors with strong wills and clear voices. They were a great pair from the beginning to the end.” Cox, who so admired punk, does not see his film as a love song to that era. He points out a scene in which Sid and Nancy go to a methadone clinic and are lectured by a medic “about how they have thrown away their opportunities and betrayed the forward-looking, revolutionary potential of punk. That is the message of the film, the most important scene in the film.” He sees it as a film of two halves, where the London portion presents a positive picture

Andrew Schofield gets into character as John Lydon wth Oldman.

LISTEN TO YOUR FRIEND BILLY ZANE He’s a cool guy. He’s trying to help you Hi billy, I’m being bullied at school. Nothing physical yet, but every day some other girls are nasty about how I look, or how I’m doing in class. I’m trying to show that they’re not getting to me, and I haven’t told my mum about it, but it’s hard. I don’t want to let them win. Yours, Vm

In Paris, Studded but not leather: quite everyday always lovebirds. a hit.

of the punk movement. “As mediated by my own experiences of the Los Angeles hardcore scene, thereby rendering it all a fantasy,” he says. Then there is the New York half, “where they throw all that away and die a pair of drug buckets.” Sid & Nancy’s greatest achievement may be beating a rival biopic to the punch. “One of the reasons Abbe Wool and I wrote the screenplay was because of the threat of a big-budget Hollywood movie about Vicious and Spungen, starring Rupert Everett and Madonna,” Cox says. “No matter what the failings of our film, at least we derailed that one.” The world will be forever grateful. SID & NANCY Is OUt ON 22 AUGUst ON DOWNLOAD, AND ON 29 AUGUst ON DVD AND bLU-rAY

THE VERDICT SID & NANCY

HHHH

What we said: “Works as both spirited punk biopic and tragically touching love story. Hard to watch at times, but told with skill and compassion which make up for the onscreen squalor.” Notable extras: New interviews with DP Roger Deakins, Cox, and director/ DJ/punk expert Don Letts.

It takes nothing to be an idiot, Vicky. they are acting out of insecurity and fear. respond with love, and detachment, because it’s the hardest thing to do and carries the greatest reward. remember, emember, it’s the individuals emember who thrive and innovate in this life, not the lemmings. You will probably recognise a good friend in this process, who will help you defuse your angst with laughter. Who are those sad chicks to get under your skin anyway? Anyone lame enough to gang up on someone doesn’t deserve the energy. However, if you are feeling strong enough, then silently bless them with your eyes. seriously. eriously mean eriously. it. Love is just more powerful than hate. they’ll turn, or melt into ooze. Use the Force, Vm. And if it looks like it’s all going pete t tong, or about to get physical, and faculty or staf staff are not intervening in time, and there is no other option concerning your safety? t take out the biggest one, fast and hard... but try love. Hi billy, I’ve just become a mother for the first time, and while it’s everything I dreamed it would be, I’m going a bit stir-crazy. My local cinema is running regular ‘Mother & Baby’ screenings. I’m concerned about taking my young daughter — three months now — to a dark room with lots of noise and bright lights. Any advice? Yours, Fm

sorry, you are going to be indoors for a while. I know your pain. seen it up close. t try two years of that! right, ladies? but try to get out, girl. there are lots of groovy options for a break away between feedings with the help of your partner or family. You need it. Just don’t go bombastic with the bundle just yet. but thank you for supporting local cinemas. Dear billy, This is going to sound weird, but I’ve developed a huge phobia of beards. Yes, beards. I work in an office where a lot of the guys have beards of all different shapes and sizes, and just being around them makes me want to run out screaming. Can you help me, please? Yours, Js OmG! I thought I was the only one! effing fffing beards and skinny jeans! And small plates at farm-to-table restaurants that I’m suggested to order many of and share, but are entirely too small to share! sorry, I digress. Ah yes, beards. Like cigarette smoke, I hate everyone else’s but my own. It’s not so much the beard itself, Js. I love mine so much I’m going to grow one right now. No, it’s the constant reminder of how unimaginative we really are as a species. How truly herd-like we are. When body ink and piercings adorn the masses at record levels, yet are supposedly still considered a symbol of one’s individuality, I must take pause. Can we not escape this lame sameness? Lemming bastards, all, and I am the first one off the cliff! At least I’m looking at the fastapproaching rocks and not a frigging bearded barista in Capezios catching air. run, Js! run! seND YOUr qUestIONs tO bILLY ZANe

t young, mum. they can’t see the too chair in front of them, and their ears are still too sensitive. Keep it soft.

VIA [email protected]. bILLY HAs DONAteD HIs Fee FOr tHIs COLUmN tO CHArItY

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BINGEWATCH Each month, our marathon man straps himself to a sofa for a viewing fest. Pray for him

this month:

TOM HANKS’ ’80s COMEDIES WORDS SIMON CROOK ILLUSTRATION PETER STRAIN

YOU FORGET, DON’T you? Long before Gump and multiple Oscars, Thomas homas Jeffrey J Hanks was an ’80s comedy colossus. The he closes closest he’s come to giving us a good laugh recently is Robert Langdon’s LEGO Dracula mullet in The Da Vinci Code, so this marathon is dedicated to The Earlier, arlier, Funnier Ones. Stranded in a lounge with only a TV, snacks, hot beverages and WiFi to survive on, I feel as if I’m in the loafer’s version of Cast Away. d be Captain If T Tom Hanks were a superhero, he’ he’d Ordinary. rdinary. rdinary That’s not a criticism: it’s the key to his everyman appeal. Few actors can convey normality and charisma: he really is our generation’s Jimmy Stewart. Take Splash, a blue-collar fairy tale and Hanks’ lead debut. He’s a fruit-and-veg salesman. Daryl Hannah’s a mermaid. Against the odds (and, let’s face it, biology) they fall in love. Grounded by Hanks’ gangly, lovelorn performance, it’s .T with a lady-fish, and an undiluted joy. E.T. .T. Hanks followed up that tale of chaste, unconditional love with, of all things, a merrily filthy frat-boy comedy. Bachelor Party features coke-snorting donkeys and cocks in hot dogs (cock dogs?) and I’m still eating breakfast. Fidelity tested by a prostitute-laden stag do, Hanks’ groom remains oddly puppyish. As a bonus, he also throws in a one-man variety act (he juggles! he sings!). Volunteers is next, and it’s a strange one: the

film’s a mess, but Hanks briefly snaps from his everyman schtick. Cigarette clamped to his lip, Hanks is splendidly louche: the kind of nonchalant shit-heel role Bill Murray excels at. If only the film was as sure of itself: somehow, Hanks ends up a Poundshop Indiana Jones battling drug barons and a dominatrix with Freddy Krueger claws. er cla Volunteers’ saving grace are the sparks Hanks generates with co-star (and future wife) Rita Wilson. The exact opposite happens in The Money Pit. Hanks and Shelley Long are yuppies falling off the housing ladder — the mansion they buy falls apart like a clown-car, and while the chemistry’s not there, the collapsing house does trigger some tremendous slapstick. Every Tom-com features a gasket-blowing scene: he delivers the mother of them here in a spectacularly funny meltdown, honking like a tasered moose. Next up: cop spoof Dragnet. Hanks is the slacker cop, Dan Aykroyd his pompous partner. It’s a literal battle of wits: Hanks’ sarcasm versus Aykroyd’s ruthless deadpan. There are porn kings, devil cults and the unforgettable credits song, City Of Crime, which, with apologies to Chet Haze, is the pinnacle of rapping in the Hanks family. It’s now getting to the point where every time I blink I see that wonderfully squishy face. The

next two movies see Tom tackle two staples of ’80s comedy: the bodyswap farce (Big (Big Big)) and the buddy comedy (Turner & Hooch). The latter teams his OCD cop with a slobbering, beerguzzling monster dog. Howlingly mawkish and burping with cop clichés, it’s a kids’ movie in adult clothing. Big, on the other hand, is an adult movie in kids’ clothing. After making an unwise wish, a 12-year-old finds himself trapped inside a grown-up’s body. Cue Hanks’ funniest turn. Big is crammed with iconic moments (the piano dance, the Shimmy Shimmy rap) but you forget how relentless the laughs are, all showcasing Hanks’ gift for physical comedy. The sequence where he picks up a baby sweetcorn and nibbles it like a tiny harmonica is a silent routine worthy of Buster Keaton. By 1989, Hanks was approaching comedy burnout. In The ’Burbs, he’s convinced his new neighbours are serial killers. I’ve got a lot of time for Joe Dante and his cartoon-gothic noodlings. There’s a sly in-joke lurking in every frame. As for Hanks, surrounded by freaks and gun-nuts, he slowly gets cornered into a straight-man role — and he’s been there ever since. DRAGNET, THE ’BURBS AND THE MONEY PIT ARE NEWLY OUT ON BLU-RAY

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“LOOKING BACK ON it,” reflects director Joe Wright, “it was a crazy idea, but outside of getting married and having children, that was the most exciting day I ha have ever had.” As scripted, Atonement Atonement’s surreal Dunkirk sequence involved 40 different set-ups. But ut with one day to shoot, Wright knew he didn’t have time for that. So this celebrated Steadicam shot, fiveAvoy’s cA cAvo and-a-half minutes long, tracking James McA Robbie, was the result of pure necessity. With Dunkirk too modernised, Redcar on the Yorkshire coast provided the expanse of beach, and a row of houses that resembled period France. Moreover, with high unemployment and few prospects, movie productions were particularly welcome. “It “ is probably entirely ego-inflation,” admits producer Paul Webster, “but we felt we were doing a lo lot of good there.” They recruited many of the 1,000 extras from Middlesbrough FC Supporters’ Club. Families brought picnics, and sat back to watch the end of the world. The sense of anarchy comes from the novel. Ian McEwan’s father was on that beach; these were his memories — all these men at the edg edge of the world, celebrating madly. Wright thought of British football fans, drunk and despondent in loss. On a deeper level, it is the moment around which the entire heartbreaking narrativ narrative pivots, just as the camera does. Robbie “is walking through jus hell to arrive at his grave”, notes the director. The choice of motifs was a mix of history (the smashing of trucks before the Germans arrived), collective brainstorming (production designer Sarah Greenwood came up with the naked men slathered in oil), Wright’s personal signature (doll’s houses, the burned-out cinema, a marooned Thames barge named after his mum, Lyndie) and pure serendipity: when word got out, army re-enactment nuts turned up in period vehicles; a collection of antique Ferris wheels was spotted literally beside the M25 motorway. Wright reckons that he, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey and heroic Steadicam operator Peter Robertson paced that route 600 times through the day. Then, in early evening, just as the time came to shoot, the sun dipped scenically behind the clouds and the clock started ticking. “I was running beside the camera trying to keep a view of it all,” laughs Wright. “I’ve never felt more alive in my life.” The first take was poor, the second okay, then on the third take something magical: the light, the emotion, and not a single man looked at the camera. Wright turned to Robertson and said, ‘Well, fuck me, I think that worked.’” They tried for one more take, but Robertson stumbled, exhausted. Third time was the charm. ATONEMENT IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD

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STORY OF THE SHOT ATONEMENT WORDS IAN NATHAN

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ARKIN ON ARKIN The In-Laws star and Oscar-winning legend Alan Arkin revisits his most significant roles

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING __ (1966) CHARACTER: LIEUTENANT YURI ROZANOV, A WARMHEARTED RUSSIAN SUBMARINE COMMANDER

The highlight of my life. All my life I’d wanted to be a film actor, and that was my first film. Norman Jewison fostered such a sense of community and trust, and had such a love of actors. They’d offered the part of Rozanov to Peter Ustinov. I owe my career in film to the fact he had made too much money the previous year and turned it down.

INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU __ (1968) CHARACTER: INSPECTOR JACQUES CLOUSEAU, INCOMPETENT FRENCH POLICEMAN

That was a terrible mistake. Peter [Sellers] didn’t want to do it, I got offered it and said, ‘Sure, I can w do the accent and I’ll spitball it as I go along.’ Very early on I realised there are some things I can’t do.

CATCH-22 __ (1970)

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the character that I never got to play. I saw him as a tough guy, a little like Joe Heller [who wrote the novel]. There are scenes that are wonderful, but it’s just not what I had hoped it was going to be.

THE IN-LAWS __ (1979) CHARACTER: SHELDON KORNPETT, AN UPTIGHT DENTIST EMBROILED IN A CIA IA PLOT

I had never met Peter Falk, but I saw him on a talk show and had an instinct about him. I called him and said, ‘I have a feeling you and I would be able to work together, let me see if I can put something together.’ I called Andrew Bergman, the writer, and he said, ‘What should the film be about?’ I said, ‘No idea!’ But it would be funny if Peter drove me insane. He came back two months later with this genius script. With Peter, after a couple of weeks it was as if we’d known each other a long time. When I’m strangling him in the taxicab, I didn’t ask if it was okay, I just started doing it. He was fine.

Very often in Mamet you have a line that would consist of, “I… I… I…”, and if you only said “I… I…”, the script supervisor would stop you. It had to be every syllable Mamet wrote. Most of my work was with Ed Harris, and when we weren’t on set, we’d run to our trailer and rehearse and rehearse. I never rehearsed so much in my life.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE __ (2006) CHARACTER: FOUL-MOUTHED, DRUG-TAKING GRANDPA RANDP HOOVER RANDPA

I love playing loud-mouthed blowhards who have a heart somewhere. It’s a brilliant role, even though his most potent moments are when he’s not even alive anymore! It was a rough shoot. We were locked in the camper van sometimes for four or five hours at a time, and we had to turn the air conditioning off in case it ruined the soundtrack. But what a glorious experience.

CHARACTER: CAPTAIN JOHN YOSSARIAN, A SOLDIER

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS __ (1992)

ADRIFT IN A SEA OF INSANITY ADRI

CHARACTER: GEORGE A AARONOW, A HARASSED

ARGO __ (2012)

I had a very bad time on that. I was scared of Mike Nichols, and I feel it shows. I had a whole idea for

REAL-ESTATE -ESTATE SALESMAN -EST

CHARACTER: LESTER SIEGEL, FILM PRODUCER

David Mamet is harder than Shakespeare to me.

Lester was a composite character. He was

SEPTEMBER 2016

KIM NEWMAN’S VIDEO DUNGEON The very best (and, occasionally, worst) movies making their DTV debut

PICK OF THE MONTH AVA’S POSSESSIONS

Clockwise from main: With Peter Falk (left) in The In-Laws; In Norman Jewison’s The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming — “the highlight of my life”; As Yossarian in Catch-22; With John

based on a real guy, but nobody knew the real guy very well so I could be freer with where I wanted to take him. So he’s a little bit like Jack Warner, who I’d met a couple of times. Ben Affleck’s a brilliant director, one of the best I’ve ever worked with. I don’t know why he’s wasting his time doing Batman. Well, I do know why…

Goodman in Argo. THE IN-LAWS IS OUT ON 15 AUGUST ON BLU-RAY, AS PART OF THE CRITERION COLLECTION

THE VERDICT THE IN-LAWS

HHH

What we said: “This original romp features Peter Falk and Alan Arkin as a crazy CIA agent and repressed dentist. It’s light, broad comedy, with Falk and Arkin inviting plenty of smirks but few belly laughs.” Notable extras: 2003 commentary; new interview with Arkin; featurette.

There are so many possession/paranormal/ demon movies, it’s refreshing to find one with an original premise. Ava’s Possessions opens where these stories usually end. In a violent exorcism, New Yorker Ava (Louisa Krause) is rid of Naphula the Anointed, a demon who has been controlling her for weeks. She wakes up to find she has assaulted her parents, alienated or terrified most of her friends, and pretty much trashed her job in the music industry. She has a stranger’s watch in her sofa cushions, bloodstains under the rug and no memory of how they got there. To avoid prosecution, she has to attend counselling sessions run by tough-talking Tony (Wass Stevens). Among the other possession survivors in the group is Hazel (Annabelle Dexter-Jones), a fun blonde

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE LYPSE OF L THE MONTH John Suits’ first-person shooter POV pic Pandemic, with Rachel Nichols, Alfie Allen, Mekhi Phifer and Missi Pyle.

who wants to get back together with her demon. Several mysteries develop as Ava tracks down the son of the man who owned the watch — a slightly sinister gallery owner (Lou Taylor Pucci) — and begins to suspect someone may have used a ritual to sic the demon on her in the first place. The fresh after-theexorcism idea throws up amusing angles: Ava returns to work to find a callow band recording a song based on her experience; a knifewielding pimp wants her to pay the demon’s bill but backs down when she flashes some of that devilish spirit at him. A feature of writer-director Jordan Galland’s oeuvre is his long-standing collaboration with Sean Lennon, who contributes original songs to all his films — the Ava’s Possessions soundtrack is highly recommended too.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH “Go on, get out of it you jiving, drivelling scum!” Beat Girl.

GHOST STORY OF THE MONTH Oliver Frampton’s The Forgotten, with troubled Clem Tibber and streetwise Elarica Gallacher investigating a haunted squat.

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MYMOVIE MY MOVIE MASTERMIND DEXTER FLETCHER D The actor/director quizzed on his career. Is he Doomed?

LEADER BOARD

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

1

What’s the name of your character in ild Bill? Bill Wild Mysterious Barry. The producer put that credit on because someone called Barry gets mentioned a couple of times and you never know who the fuck he is. I’m only in it for a second, buying crack. In a mysterious way. Correct.

2

In which movie do you say, “I’m a big movie star now”? All of them, but only in m my head. I said it out loud in Bugsy Malone. It’s the one line that wasn’t in the script. Alan Parker told me to use it on the day, saying, “When you get to this bit look in the camera.” I’d been told never to look at the camera. As a kid you gget that drummed into you. Correct.

3

You play Pinky in Doom. But what’s his full name? Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Something Pinzerowski. What the fuck is his first name? I don’t know. Dave? Norman! Gary! Leonard! Half a point. The correct answer is Marcus Pinzerowski.

4

What’s significant about the manner of Cody’s demise in Kick-Ass? It echoes Layer Cake, in that I’m in a yellow Range Rover. It’s Mr Matthew Vaughn’s in-joke, and my character even has the same name in both movies. Correct.

5

In Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, you play Soap. Can you name the characters played by Jasons Flemyng and Statham, and Nick Moran? Eddy is Nick Moran, Bacon is Jason Statham and Tom, or Fat Tom, is Jason Flemyng. That was too easy. I’ve seen it a few times, that film. I’m fairly familiar with it. Correct.

6

At the end of The Rachel Papers, Charles tries and fails to remember a quote from which poet? You bastard. How perfect that I can’t remember it. The correct answer is William Blake.

7

In Sunshine On Leith, which song do The Proclaimers cameo in? It’s I’m On My Way, which is also in Shrek. That just happened to be the day that Craig and Charlie [Reid] were visiting, so as I was putting it together I said it would be really great if you stepped out of the pub. They were well up for it. Correct.

8

You narrate a song by The Divine Comedy on their 1998 album, Fin de Siècle. What’s it called? Here Comes The Flood. The only reason I know this is because the drummer, Miggy Barradas, who was my great school friend and the only reason I did that song, died

Ben Kingsley

10

Christopher Lee

10

David O. R Russell

10

Quentin Tarantino

10

Robert Rodriguez

9

Guillermo del Tor Toro

9

Werner Werner Herzog

9

Christian S Slater

8.5

Bryan Singer

8.5

John Waters

8

very suddenly recently. Neil Hannon [The Divine Comedy’s frontman] was at the funeral, as was I, and we said hello and shared our condolences, and that made me think of the song. Correct.

9

In how many movies are you credited in the cast list with Jason Flemyng? [Counts ounts them off] off Below, Lock Stock… There’s a couple of those clonky old gangster ones, and that terrible vampire one, Dead Cert. I’ll go for seven. The correct answer is ten: Kick-Ass, Stardust, Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, Layer Cake, Below, Wild Bill, Dead Cert, Jack Falls, Tube Tales and Sunshine On Leith.

10

In Eddie The Eagle, what is the name of the song on which Hugh Jackman and Taron Egerton duet? Thrill Me, because Mr Gary Barlow would kill me if I didn’t know w that. [Sings [ ] “Come on, thrill me!” Correct.

DEXTER FLETCHER SCORES 7.5

“As long as I beat Jason Flemyng, that’s good enough for me.” (He did.) EDDIE THE EAGLE IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD

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THE FIRSTTAKE CLUB

Filling in those filmic blind spots, one person at a time

#2 DRIVE # 140

SEPTEMBER 2016

THE IDEA OF The First Take Club is simple. Every month, we ask someone to select a film that they haven’t seen from Empire’s 301 Greatest Movies Of All Time list (published in 2014). They correct this egregious oversight by watching it, then tell us what they thought. This month, Kieron Gillen — writer of cutting-edge comic books such as The Wicked & The Divine, Phonogram and Marvel’s Darth Vader ader solo title — gets his teeth, eyes and ears into a little movie that finished 49th on the list. director Nicolas Winding Itt launched its director, Refn, into the mainstream, sent its star, Ryan Gosling, into the stratosphere, and made leather jackets with scorpions on

the back cool again. And we haven’t even mentioned the iconic soundtrack. It is, of course, Drive. Over to you, Kieron. I’m not sure if I’d try being an inconspicuous getaway driver if I had Ryan Gosling’s face attached to the front of my own potato-shaped head. “Do you remember the Driver at all?” “Yes, I do. He had a face like the very sun itself. He made me want to do a film that lingers lovingly on his features for — oooh — about one hour 40.” I have no idea why I hadn’t seen Drive. I’m pretentious enough to like Refn’s previous movie, Valhalla Rising. Presumably 2011 was one of the years I dedicated to solemn, solitary crying

and masturbation. I’m a writer. We do that occasionally. In retrospect, I can’t help but link the films — Drive needed Gosling in the same way Valhalla Rising needed Mads Mikkelsen. Both wouldn’t have worked without a face for the lens to fetishise for its length. It’s striking that both films that are so deeply embedded in an examination of masculinity objectify their paragon so much. It’s interesting to compare and contrast that to Drive’s treatment of a crime trope as hoary as going backstage with strippers — where the lens shows no interest in all the boobs. This isn’t male gaze. This is a movie that’s predominantly gazing at males. It’s a deeply old-fashioned, traditional form of masculinity. This isn’t even Han Solo.

Gosling’s Driver would always let Greedo shoot first, because that’s what real men do. With the greatest of love for Empire, it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that it’s in your Top 50. Running through this movie is a lesson in how to square being a good man in a world which often isn’t — the fantasy of hyper-competence with the longing for peace and home. In the film’s most memorable visual tour de force, the kiss/fight elevator scene where action meets the doomed, mythologising romance, the doors shut on the possibility of squaring those two worlds. However, as we head into the credits, with College/Electric Youth’s A Real Hero playing out, you do pause. This is so glossy, so hyper-stylised, so about the idea of all this, you can’t help but

read some irony into it. “A real human being — and a real hero.” I’m unconvinced that there’s a real human being anywhere in here. That the movie manages to fetishise so much about being male while leaving a question mark may be the most interesting thing of the many interesting things about it. I’m glad I watched it. I’ll watch it again. I’d recommend it to others. I would have probably have ended up writing about it after seeing it even en if Empire hadn’t asked me to. That said, there’s an alternate universe where slow-motion hasn’t been invented where Drive is about a half-hour long. DRIVE IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD

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Revenge of the nerds: (l-r) Amy (Mayim Bialik), Howard (Simon Helberg), Penny (Kaley Cuoco), Sheldon (Jim Parsons), Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Raj (Kunal Nayyar) and Bernadette (Melissa Rauch).

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THE BIG BANG THEORY PROPUGNATION PRO It’s the most popular sitcom in the world. Yet The Big Bang Theory hasn’t quite won the critical acclaim to match. Here comedy writer David Quantick ((Veep) offers his defence

THERE ARE SOME people who believe that no great sitcom exceeds a dozen episodes. This year, The Big Bang Theory reached its 200th episode, long surpassing that fabled number 12 along with other televisual disasters like Friends Friends, Dad’s Army, The Office: An American Workplace orkplace, Peep Show, Porridge, Steptoe And Son,, Roseanne, Only Fools And Horses, Seinfeld, Son eld, The IT Crowd d and Cheers. It was a pretty good episode, too, maintaining the show’s unique balance of warmth and waspishness while adding a note of unexcessive self-celebration. The show’s initial premise was an interesting one that seemed hard to sustain — a group of nerds, who were scientists by day, spend the restt of their time obsessing about Star Wars, Star Trek Trek, comics and girls. Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Howard (Simon Helberg), Raj aj (Kunal (K Nayyar) yyar) and the breakout character, the possibly Parsons), were joined in autistic Sheldon heldon (Jim ( classic-sitcom style by Penny (Kaley Cuoco), their polar opposite — unacademic, sexy and female. This set-up made the show look like a geek eek version of creator Chuck Lorre’s big hit, Two And A Half Men Men, an impression soon corrected by the show’s sharp and witty dialogue (most reminiscent of the bitchiest sitcom of all time, Frasier) asier) and by a decision to bring in more asier female characters, most notably Mayim aayim Bialik as superbrain Amy Farrah Fowler. By the time it entered Season 4, The Big Bang Theory was a relationship comedy about men who didn’t know w how to grow up and women who were getting ting fed up waiting for them. And it’s this dynamic that has kept the show A going. oing. Sitcoms that never change often find it hard to progress beyond 12 episodes, but shows where the characters remain daft yet enter into relationships, get married, have children and even en die can last almost as long as soaps. The Big Bang Theory came along at a time when suddenly the very nature of sitcoms was being questioned. After A The Office had shaken up the way comedy was filmed (no audience, single camera, fly-on-the-wall) on both sides of the Atlantic, A tlantic, some people saw saaaw this as proof that the traditional sitcom (audience, multi-camera, obviously viously staged) was dead. As trad sitcom was

the medium that gave us everything from great, great shows such as Father Ted ed and Fawlty Towers to, in my far from humble opinion, the best sitcom of all time, Roseanne, I was not happy about this. But The Big Bang Theory simply ignored this idiot theorising. It’s unashamedly traditional. It’s an audience show, it has long story arcs and short B- and C-plots that are resolved in the course of one episode (impressive in a show that’s sometimes only 18 minutes long. 18!), and — best of all — it has gags. 18! Gags are not always part of comedy. It can be argued that in real life people don’t go round saying hilarious things or acid put-downs. But in The Big Bang Theory, all things bright and bitchy happen. It’s in a long tradition stretching back to Hollywood movies such as All About Eve, through, as noted, Frasier, and onwards (in some ways, the bizarre genius/innocent family set-up of The Big Bang Theory reminds me of another underrated show, the quirkier Third Rock From The Sun). I shan’t quote any lines here, because, you know, lack of context breeds tumbleweed, but suffice to say, the moment in Season 9 when Sheldon reveals what his birthday present to Amy is going to be — and Penny’s classic silent-comedy reaction — made me spit my own lungs out in surprise and laughter. That good. And the final reason? The whole thing is a kind of homage to another show Chuck Lorre worked on, the aforementioned Roseanne, which is, of course, the greatest sitcom of all. Galecki was David, the boyfriend of Roseanne’s daughter Darlene, who was played by Sara Gilbert. She’s been a recurring guest star on The Big Bang Theory since the first season. And then there’s Laurie Metcalf, who was Roseanne’s sister Jackie, as Sheldon’s mum. Best of all, on the back of the couch in Penny’s apartment is a throw rug that bears a pretty close resemblance to the one in Roseanne’s front room. Traditional? The Big Bang Theory is totally meta, from cast to rug. And it’s utterly, entirely, classically brilliant. THE BIG BANG THEORY SEASONS 1-9 ARE OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD. DAVID QUANTICK’S NEW NOVEL, THE MULE, WAS PUBLISHED BY UNBOUND THIS YEAR

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THE GUIDE Everything else coming your way this month

22 AUGUST

SPOTLIGHT! THE COMPLETE COUNT YORGA

AENIGMA DVD, BLU-RAY THE BLOODSTA LOODST INED BUTTERFLY LOODSTA UTTERFL DVD, BLU-RAY UTTERFLY CRY OF THE CITY DVD, BLU-RAY CUBA BLU-RAY DON’T LOOK BACK CK BLU-RAY GHOULIES I AND II BLU-RAY THE GLASS SHIELD DVD, BLU-RAY JANE GOT A GUN DVD, BLU-RAY, DOWNLOAD THE JUNGLE BOOK DVD, BLU-RAY, DOWNLOAD KNIGHT OF CUPS DVD, BLU-RAY LIMITLESS: SEASON 1 DVD

DVD, BLU-RAY Fun double bill featuring America’s answer to Hammer’s Dracula. Includes a chat with Empire’s Kim Newman.

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1 AUGUST

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(DVD, BLU-RAY AY 8 AUGUST) A

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EXTRA A EXTRA! WOMEN IN LOVE DVD, BLU-RAY A 2K upgrade of Ken Russell’s controversial drama — Alan Bates/Oliver Reed nude wrestling and all. Also includes Second Best, a 1972 short starring Bates.

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EXTRA A EXTRA! THE EARLY WORKS OF RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER DVD, BLU-RAY, DOWNLOAD Four films from the great German director. Includes a 1970 documentary. Do not confuse with Michael Fassbender.

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01 Big Trouble in Little China 02 Ferris Bueller’s Day Off 03 Predator 04 Escape from New York 05 The Dark Knight Rises 06 The Karate Kid 07 Aliens 08 Dredd 09 Kill Bill 10 Almost Famous 11 Office Space 12 The Dark Knight Rises 13 Inglourious Basterds 14 Big Trouble in Little China 15 The Martian 16 Hot Fuzz 17 Aliens/Facebook 18 Green Room 19 Close Encounters of the Third Kind 20 The Witch 21 The Big Lebowski 22 O Brother, Where Art Thou? 23 Aliens 24 The Thing 25 Star Wars 26 Tarantino Films 27 Kill Bill 28 The Blues Brothers 29 Whiplash 30 High-Rise 31 Blade Runner 32 The Wicker Man 33 What We Do in the Shadows 34 Raiders of the Lost Ark 35 Back to the Future Part II 36 High Fidelity 37/38 Aliens 39 Groundhog Day 40 Ghostbusters II 41 The Last Starfighter 42 Big 43 Scanners 44 Aliens 45 An American Werewolf in London 46 Jurassic Park 47 Ex Machina 48 Army of Darkness 49 Blade Runner 50/51 Star Wars 52 The Crow 53/54 Jaws

crossword

competition

ACROSS

1 Spielberg’s fishy thriller (4) 3 The — —, Carol Reed film which sent us all of a zither (5,3) 9 Ghostbuster McCarthy (7) 10 Mortensen who’s Aragorn in The Lord Of The Rings (5) 11 Ingmar Bergman’s wild fruit (12) 13 Four-time Oscar nominee actress Mason (6) 15 Numbered, like a Jet Li sci-fi action movie (3,3) 17 Were these the proceeds from a Denis Leary-Sandra Bullock heist? (6,6) 20 007 Daniel (5) 21 A fishy place to find Sacha Baron Cohen and Rebel Wilson (7) 23 Steel hat morphs into an Alfred MolinaHelen Slater comedy thriller (3,5) 24 Danny Cannon’s kick-about triology (4)

DOWN

1 Could be Jarmusch, Broadbent or Carrey (3) 2 William — the most nominated director in Oscar history (5) 4 Steve Martin made it blue in 1990 (6) 5 Creepily, the anagram of his name is Viper Heroin X (5,7) 6 McKellen/Fassbender’s X-Men villain (7) 7 The Passion Of Darkly — (Br (Brendan endan Fraser) (4) 8 In which Hiddleston played Hank (1,3,3,5) 11 This John portrayed Bernard Sumner in 24 Hour Party People (4) 12 Warren Beatty’s biopic of radical journalist John Reed (4) 14 Rowan Atkinson’s rodent run (3,4) 16 Code machine in The Imitation Game (6) 18 Rene who was Frigga in Thor (5) 19 Cool rapper seen in T Tank Girl (3,1) 22 Brynner located amid Ronny Yu-Laura Dern meeting (3)

Season 3 of hit crime drama The Blacklist is out on Blu-ray & DVD on 1 August, and we’ve got a 43” full HD smart LED TV, Blu-ray player and a copy on Blu-ray up for grabs. FBI Agent Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone) is now on the run with criminal Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington (James Spader). As they struggle to stay one step ahead of their former colleagues, Liz immerses herself into Red’s underworld of disreputable contacts and covert operations... Extras on the Blu-ray include commentaries, deleted scenes, and featurettes including ‘From The Shadows: Villains Of Season 3’ and ‘Creating The Stunts: Script To Screen’. Both formats include ‘Outside The Box: Making The Blacklist Comic Book,’ ‘All About Aram’ and ‘Red’s Gems: Favourite Lines From Season 3’. To be in with a chance of winning, simply complete the crossword, solve the anagram and text your answer to the number below. THE BLACKLIST SEASON 3 IS OUT ON 1 AUGUST ON DVD AND BLU-RAY A AY

COMPETITION ENDS 22 AUGUST HOW TO ENTER Take the letters from each coloured square and rearrange them to form the name of an actor, actress, director or character. Text ‘EMPIRE’ to 83070, followed by your answer, name and address (with a space between each element of your message!). Texts cost 50p plus standard operator costs. Lines close at midnight, 22 August. Winners are selected at random. See below for terms and conditions. AUGUST ANSWERS ACROSS: 1 Created, 5 Ashes, 8 Alfie, 9 Madonna, 10 The Jungle Book, 12 Friday, 13 Escape, 16 Ryan’s Daughter, 20 Valiant, 21 Alien, 22 Ronin, 23 Actress DOWN 1 Coast, 2 Elf, 3 The Human Stain, 4 Damage, 5 Andrews, 6 Hondo, 7 Sparkle, 11 Eli, 12 Forever, 14 Astaire, 15 Martha, 17 Allen, 18 Giant, 19 Rings. ANAGRAM WINONA RYDER TERMS AND CONDITIONS: One entry per person. Texts cost 50p + standard network rate. Ask the bill payer’s permission before entering. Entries must be received before 23 August or will not be valid (but the cost of the text may still be charged). One winner will be selected at random. The model of the TV and Blu-ray may vary. Competition promoted by Bauer Consumer Media Limited t/a Empire (“Empire”). Empire’s choice of winner is final and no correspondence will be entered into in this regard. The winner will be notified, by phone (on the number the text was sent), between seven and ten days after the competition ends. Empire will call the winner a maximum of three times and leave one message. If the winner does not answer the phone or respond to the message within 14 days of the competition’s end, Empire will select another winner and the original winner will not win a prize. Entrants must be over 18, resident in the UK and not be employed by Empire. The prize is non-negotiable with no cash alternative. Empire is not responsible for late delivery or unsatisfactory quality of the prize. Entrants agree to the collection of their personal data in accordance with Empire’s privacy policy: http://www.bauerdatapromise.co.uk/. Winner’s personal details will be given to prize provider to arrange delivery of the prize. Bauer reserves the right to amend or cancel these terms or any aspect of the competition (including the prize) at any time if required for reasons beyond its control. Any questions, please email [email protected]. Complaints will not be considered if made more than 30 days after the competition ends. Winner’s details available on request (after the competition ends) by emailing [email protected]. For full Ts&Cs see http://www.bauerlegal.co.uk/competition-terms.html.

152

SEPTEMBER 2016

© 2016 SONY PICTuRES TELEVISION INC. AND OPEN 4 BuSINESS PRODuCTIONS LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

A 43" FULL HD SMART LED TV, BLU-RAY PLAYER PLUS THE BLACKLIST SEASON 3 ON BLU-RAY

© 2016 Warner Bros. Ent.  All rights reserved.  TM & © DC Comics

ON BLU-RAY & DVD AUG 1 ™

INCLUDES EXTENDED CUT WITH AN EXTRA 30 MINUTES NOT SEEN IN CINEMAS!

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RAISING ARIZONA CHOSEN BY EDGAR WRIGHT

“When I first watched Joel and ethan Coen’s Raising Arizona on VHs in the late ’80s, I rewound it immediately and started all over again,” says edgar Wright. “this moment where John Goodman and William Forsythe muddle their words as they bungle their way through a bank robbery is a truly classic scene that subverts every movie stick-up ever.”

one of the customers speaks up. OLD mAN: Well, which is it, young feller? You want I should freeze, or get down on the ground? Meaning to say, if’n I freeze, I can’t rightly drop, and if’n I drop, I’m a-goin’ to be in motion. You see —

put the fear of God into Gale. From behind them, we hear some female voices. teLLers: We’re down here, sir. eVeLLe: They’ve over there on the ground like you commanded, Gale.

GALe: Shut up!

Gale turns to Evelle, exasperated.

OLD mAN: Okay, then!

GALe: I told you not to use my damn name. Can’t you even try to keep from forgetting that?

INt. t bANK t. ANK — DAY DA GALe: Everybody down on the ground! Evelle [Forsythe] and Gale [Goodman] burst through the door of the Farmers And Mechanics Bank of La Grange. Evelle is carrying the Arizona baby in a carr carry chair. Both have shotguns.

Gale looks around, at a loss. The customers start to comply. eVeLLe [knowingly]: Not even your code name? eVeLLe: Y’all can just forget that part about freezing now.

GALe: Alright, you hayseeds, it’s a stick-up!

GALe [catching on]: Oh yeah. Yeah. My code name.

GALe: That is until they get down there. We see the bank — an old wooden building that’s seen better days — only has a few customers, none of whom quite seem to know what to do. GALe: Everybody freeze! Everybody down on the ground! The customers don’t do anything. Gale and Evelle look at each other uncertainly. Eventually,

154

september 2016

eVeLLe: Yeah. Y’all hear that, dontcha?

eVeLLe: Y’all hear that? We’re using code names.

Gale hands Evelle a sack.

Satisfied, Gale steps forward.

GALe: Wanna fill this up, pardner. We gotta — SHIT! WHERE DID ALL THE TELLERS GO!

GALe: Alright, everybody. We’re just about ready to begin the robbery proper.

We see the tellers’ windows are empty, which has

Evelle whoops in delight.

EW

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