Tabla de contenidos para November 2023 en Empire

THE MEMORY OF seeing Seven for the first time is forever burned into my brain. It was in Bath, a far cry from the dank, rain-lashed, unnamed metropolis where the film takes place, and I popped into the cheery local Odeon with a friend to check out the new flick starring the guy from The Shawshank Redemption and the bloke from Legends Of The Fall. I was expecting a nail-biting detective story. I was not expecting that. After two hours of twisted crime scenes, sinister spaghetti, dark quips, and the scariest cardboard box in history, I staggered back out onto the street. Somerset suddenly looked a lot more menacing. David Fincher had truly arrived. It’s extremely exciting, then, all these years later, to present an issue of Empire that’s as…

NOVEMBER 2023 | EDITED BY BETH WEBB WHEN EMERALD FENNELL, looking for a name for the country residence at the heart of her follow-up to Oscar-winner Promising Young Woman, read about Saltburn-by-the-Sea, she knew she’d hit the jackpot “I just saw the word and thought, ‘Oh, that’s what it is,’” she remembers. “There’s something very sensual about the idea of salt burn. It makes you think of sex and the pleasure-pain sting of something.” Fennell had demanding requirements for her titular star. Firstly, it had to have never been put on film before (“I didn’t want, ‘Oh yeah, I recognise that from Pride And Prejudice’”); secondly, it needed to fulfil all the story requirements so the production wouldn’t need to move anywhere else, partly so she could achieve “long, meandering…

HOW EXACTLY DOES Scott Pilgrim level up yet again? Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels are 21st-century classics. Edgar Wright’s 2010 film adaptation Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is a critically acclaimed cult favourite. Even the side-scrolling video-game is so beloved that it was resurrected on current consoles for its tenth anniversary. Now, he’s back in anime form. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is bringing O’Malley’s world of evil exes, bass battles, and sleepytime tea back to the screen — this time with the boundless possibilities of animation. “There’s an extended fight sequence in Episodes 2 and 3 that, if this was a live-action movie, would cost more than Avatar,” raves co-writer BenDavid Grabinski, who’s adapted the material alongside O’Malley himself. “It would be so unbelievably big. And you don’t have to…

THEY SAY ALL’S fair in love and war, but what happens when things go way too far? Debut director Chloe Domont tackles this in her new film Fair Play, about a troubled couple battling it out for the top spot in their high-finance workplace. The Rian Johnson-produced film received rave reviews after its world premiere in Sundance on account of its fresh spin on the erotic thriller. Speaking with Empire, Domont breaks down how she created her toxic twosome. THE CHEMISTRY Central to the film is the relationship between ambitious Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and jealous Luke (Alden Ehrenreich), who are happy in their secret workplace romance until the opportunity for a promotion pits them against each other. The palpable sparks between the actors gave them the confidence to experiment on…

CHICKEN RUN WAS a feather-filled game-changer for Aardman Animation. It garnered critical acclaim, and after raking in $220 million worldwide is still the highest-grossing stop-motion movie ever. So how exactly do you top this galline titan? The answer becomes clear to Empire in February this year, as we visit the Aardman studio in Bristol while director Sam Fell and his team work on the bigger, bolder sequel. For one, Dawn Of The Nugget sees heroes Ginger and Rocky (now voiced by Thandiwe Newton and Zachary Levi), their new daughter Molly (Bella Ramsey) and their flock swapping Tweedy’s Farm for self-made utopia Chicken Island. “It’s Wakanda for chickens,” Fell tells Empire. But a new threat awaits — the mass-produced chicken nugget — and when Molly’s curiosity leads to her being taken…

THE PERFORMANCE POOR THINGS Emma Stone has been embracing the weird in recent years, from wreaking havoc in haute couture as Cruella to the scheming Baroness she plays in The Favourite. Poor Things — Stone’s second collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos — takes things to a new level, as the actor plays a resurrected woman with a brain transplant who embarks on a bizarre odyssey. THE STAR TURNED DIRECTOR POOLMAN Chris Pine has always had a funny side — think singing in waterfalls in Into The Woods or dancing with a lute in Dungeons & Dragons. With Poolman, his first film as writer-director, Pine flexes that muscle even more. The LA-set Chinatown-esque comedy mystery, which he also stars, follows a philosophical pool cleaner who becomes involved in a water heist. With…

THE KILLER Michael Fassbender plays the archetypal contract killer: efficient, ruthless, and meticulous with all manner of weaponry, from a sniper rifle to a nail gun. It’s a classic portrait of a death-dispenser, given a sleek David Fincher sheen. IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SINNERS Liam Neeson (no stranger to violent retribution on-screen) plays a gun-for-hire in Éire. With the Troubles as a backdrop, his Irish criminal regularly dispatches ne’er-do-wells, before taking stock of the moral costs of such a vocation. MR. & MRS. SMITH Donald Glover and Maya Erskine are taking on the married-murderers-for-hire previously played by Brangelina in a TV take on Mr. & Mrs. Smith. (Do not confuse it with the boutique hotel-booking website — a deadly mistake to make.) HIT MAN In Richard Linklater’s latest,…

THE BEAST Samuel L. Jackson will be playing POTUS in action movie The Beast opposite Joel Kinnaman. The beast in question is the Presidential limousine — a bulletproof behemoth — which Jackson’s character must harness when it comes under attack. The film is currently being shopped around for a home. THE ASTRONAUT Kate Mara has been cast alongside Laurence Fishburne in this sci-fi drama, which will begin shooting in October under an interim SAG-AFTRA agreement. Mara plays Sam, an astronaut who fears that she has brought some otherworldly visitors back with her from a recent mission. HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN The latest Hellboy reboot is a step closer to release now it’s been picked up by Ketchup Entertainment. Jack Kesy will front the superhero horror, which sees Hellboy travel to…

★★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+) / EPISODES VIEWED 5 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Dave Filoni STARRING Rosario Dawson, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ray Stevenson, Ivanna Sakhno, Lars Mikkelsen, Eman Esfandi PLOT Ahsoka Tano (Dawson) continues her quest to track down Force-wielder Ezra Bridger (Esfandi) — plus Grand Admiral Thrawn (Mikkelsen). ‘SNIPS’ HAS COME a long way. Back when she made her debut in Dave Filoni’s animated The Clone Wars movie 15 years ago, Ahsoka Tano (voiced by Ashley Eckstein) seemed little more than a perky throwaway sidekick for Anakin Skywalker — her appeal diminished by the execrable nickname her master gave her (surely ranking a close second to the slaughter of the Jedi younglings as his worst crime). But Filoni had bigger plans for his Togruta scrapper. During the following…

★★★★ OUT 6 OCTOBER / CERT TBC / 121 MINS DIRECTOR Matt Johnson CAST Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, Matt Johnson, Cary Elwes, Rich Sommer, Michael Ironside PLOT The story of how two inventors dreamed up a groundbreaking mobile device: the BlackBerry. And how its huge success proved short-lived. IN THE YEARS since The Social Network, many have tried to recreate that winning combination of a ‘how stuff gets made’ story and ripped-from-real-life human drama. This year alone, we’ve already seen The Beanie Bubble and Dumb Money follow the Social Network formula to a lesser or greater degree. Director Matt Johnson largely sticks to said formula with BlackBerry, but imbues it with an idiosyncratic charm and comedic bite. Based on Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s book Losing The Signal, the film…

★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNERS Kelly Marcel CAST LaKeith Stanfield, Adina Porter, Clark Backo, Samuel T. Herring The Changeling, Victor LaValle’s 2017 novel, was inspired by the fairies in folklore who steal your baby and leave a fake in its place. Apple TV+’s adaptation takes this conceit to places you’d never expect. At first, the relationship between Apollo (LaKeith Stanfield) and Emma (Clark Backo) feels like its own kind of fairy tale — but fairy tales can be monstrous. Directors Melina Matsoukas and Jonathan van Tulleken constantly suggest something sinister lurking just out of frame, while Stanfield and Backo keep things grounded — which is vital, because without their skill, the increasingly hard-to-follow mysteries of the story could easily fall apart. Despite the…

THE EROTIC THRILLER RETURNS — AND IT COMES WITH A HEFTY BILL ★★★★ OUT 6 OCTOBER (CINEMAS), 13 OCTOBER (NETFLIX) / CERT 18 / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Chloe Domont CAST Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich, Eddie Marsan, Sebastian de Souza, Rich Sommer PLOT A couple working together at a hedge fund start to turn against each other when one of them unexpectedly receives a promotion. IF THE BBC series Industry has taught us anything, it’s that the glossy, pressurised world of finance makes the perfect backdrop for tense, thrilling drama. Chloe Domont understands this, setting her feature debut at a hyper-competitive New York hedge fund, and using that environment as fuel for her twisted look at gender dynamics in a male-dominated workplace. Bridgerton breakout Phoebe Dynevor is Emily; one of the…

★★★ OUT 6 OCTOBER / CERT 12A / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Guy Nattiv CAST Helen Mirren, Liev Schreiber, Camille Cottin, Lior Ashkenazi PLOT As an attack by Egyptian and Syrian forces takes her country by surprise, Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir (Mirren) tries to get ahead. GETTING TO BE Prime Minister is one thing, but have you ever smoked more cigarettes than anyone else who ever lived? Golda Meir — in this film at least — unlocks both achievements. Secretly suffering from lymphoma and not doing too well, the Israeli PM (Helen Mirren) regardless smokes at every available opportunity. She inhales nicotine like it’s oxygen, chugging anytime, anywhere, everywhere. She smokes in bed, in her living-room, in cars, in her office, on the roof and just for good measure in…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Kenneth Branagh CAST Kenneth Branagh, Michelle Yeoh, Tina Fey, Jamie Dornan, Kerry Reilly, Jude Hill, Riccardo Scamarcio PLOT Hercule Poirot (Branagh) has retired to Venice. His old friend Ariadne Oliver (Fey) asks him to investigate charismatic psychic Mrs Reynolds (Yeoh) — opening a new mystery… BOTH THE SELLING-point and the limitation of the Poirot films is that you know exactly what you’re getting. The time-period and the tone are so set in stone that it requires a fresh A-list cast of suspects and new scenic location to differentiate each from the last (see also: Bond, Fast & Furious). So credit where it’s due to Kenneth Branagh, who has given this a shockingly different feel even while hitting all the necessary…

IF YOU WORE A BUCKET HAT IN PARIS IN THE SUMMER OF 2021, YOU MAY HAVE INSPIRED THE OUTFIT OF THE TITLE CHARACTER IN THE KILLER. Looking through snaps he took while location-scouting his new thriller, David Fincher zeroed in on a figure in a fishing hat and sunglasses, with a bland tan jacket and sneakers. As hitman headgear goes, this isn’t Alain Delon’s iconic fedora in Le Samouraï, or Tom Cruise’s striking silver mane in Collateral, but Fincher was targeting a different reality. “It’s the weirdest get-up, but he just blended in,” says the director. “I didn’t go into it going, ‘The world needs the next great assassin to look like Hunter S. Thompson.’ I just thought, ‘Oh, yeah. People are always ignoring tourists.’” To receive unlikely inspiration, you…

The life of an extra can sometimes feel like a bad dream. Michael Barnard spent the entire second season of HBO’s Westworld as a robot host stuck in cold storage, and still vividly recalls the moment Anthony Hopkins bid farewell to the set. “He was so sweet and nice, but there were 40 of us completely butt-naked,” he remembers. “Isn’t that your high-school worst nightmare? ‘Yeah, I met Sir Anthony Hopkins and shook his hand, but I was completely naked!’” As if flashing an Oscar-winner weren’t bad enough, Barnard is now also facing a potential nightmare as dystopian as the show’s own conceit. He’s been a background actor in Hollywood since 1995, and when he looks back at his time on Westworld, his biggest concern is that consenting for his…

THIS MONTH THE RED DRESS FOR MOST WORK PLACES, an infestation of flies would be a nuisance and mean a call to pest control. But for the staff at Warner Bros. Cartoons Inc during the mid 1930s, it was an opportunity. Some of history’s greatest animators would spend their days gluing tiny strips of coloured paper onto the wings of the insects and piss themselves laughing as the poor bugs circled and divebombed the workshops, leaving trails behind them like insectoid Red Arrows. Such pranks may have been outlets for letting off steam or a creative gang flexing their comedy muscles but, either way, this contributed to conjuring up some of the greatest cinematic art ever created. Welcome to Termite Terrace, the dilapidated wooden building on the Warner Bros. lot…

FILMS THAT STORM the Oscars are usually big, bombastic, about a sinking boat or laden with Serious Themes. Yet back in early 1956, the movie that dominated awards season was a far cry from all of that. It’s a film that’s rarely talked about today, but which won the Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director Academy Awards, plus the first Palme d’Or ever presented at the Cannes Film Festival. Nobody saw it coming. Because this was a quiet, gentle drama with nothing showy about it whatsoever — at 90 minutes, even the runtime is modest. This was a bolt out of the cinematic blue. This was Marty. At the heart of this warm and understated classic is a genius bit of casting. Two years earlier, a 50-minute TV-play version…

Beth: So, now we’re out the other side, how do we reflect on the legacy of Succession? Boyd: I miss it so much. We’ll probably never see those characters again, unless they do a Christmas special or something in ten years’ time. I’ve missed it partly because the characters are so interesting, and partly because the show’s that good. I’m still in mourning. Mike: What an amazing final season, and final episode, it was as well. People spoke immediately about it as one of the great TV endings. When I was thinking about my favourite episodes of the show, I feel like so many of them were in the fourth season. John: The show got better as it went along. It took me a couple of goes to get into…

NEV PIERCE TALKED THE KILLER — AND KILLER SHOTS — WITH DAVID FINCHER “I’ve visited each Fincher set since Zodiac [2007] and it remains inspiring to watch someone so determined to deliver on what they’ve promised. He demands the best, but trusts and empowers people, having created the environment to excel. And Michael Fassbender makes a mean martini.” JOHN NUGENT HUNG OUT WITH WES ANDERSON IN ITALY “Sometimes, this job has its moments of glamour — rarely more so than when I went to Venice and took a private boat to a 16th-century villa to interview Wes Anderson. He was expectedly delightful company and scrupulously polite, even when our interview was interrupted by some nearby 400-year-old church bells.” TEAM EMPIRE HOSTED AN EXCLUSIVE SCREENING OF AHSOKA “We were lucky…

MAESTRO, BRADLEY COOPER’S follow-up to his directorial debut A Star Is Born, continues the musical theme. Spanning decades, with a thematically rich story and a mix of black-and-white and colour cinematography, the film is an ambitious retelling of the life of legendary musician Leonard Bernstein (played by Cooper) and his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). Here, producer Kristie Macosko Krieger explains how they unpeeled the many layers of a complicated man. THE MUSIC Leonard Bernstein was a musical jack-of-all-trades, master of many: composer and conductor across film, theatre, ballet, opera and more. For Cooper, it was a childhood dream of a role. “When he was eight years old, Bradley got a conducting baton as a Christmas present,” Krieger explains. “He had always been obsessed with conducting. When we heard that…

TAIKA WAITITI NEVER thought he’d make a sports movie. “Especially not about a sport that I’m not passionate about,” he tells Empire at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Next Goal Wins — his adaptation of the 2014 documentary about the American Samoan football team — debuted. And yet, for all his ambivalence about “soccer” (as New Zealand also calls it, “but if anyone from England was around, they’d quickly change,” Waititi says), the writer-director found himself having to coach his own starting 11, cinematically speaking. “I love watching the games. I just don’t follow any teams, I don’t care about who’s playing,” he explains. “My main thing was to represent the players and the people of the Pacific Islands more. Which is my roundabout way of explaining why I…

IT’S GOING TO BE HUGE Devoted Taylor Swift fans were left heartbroken when the pop star’s massive (and massively pricey) 130-concert worldwide Eras Tour sold out almost instantly. So when Swift announced via social media on 31 August that she was releasing a concert film shot over three dates in California, jubilation followed. Finally, a chance to see her perform a glitzy, nearly three-hour-long spectacle that charts her evolution from country-music prodigy to vengeful bad girl to stage siren. NO, SERIOUSLY. HUGE Swift’s surprise release has the potential for the same cultural cut-through as Barbenheimer weekend: think queues, costumes, and sugar-fuelled hysteria. But while Barbenheimer was a triumph for Hollywood, scoring a combined $2.2 billion in ticket sales to date, this one’s a bit different. Swift bypassed Hollywood studios to…

BETH WEBB IS THINKING ABOUT… SERENADING BASIL Harrison Ford has revealed that he sings lullabies to his basil plants “so they won’t fear the night”. I have too many questions. What lullaby does he sing? Does he exclusively sing to his basil plants, leading to jealousy among Ford’s other flora? The mind boggles. The basil sleeps. JOHN NUGENT IS THINKING ABOUT… BIRD TEETH The first images from Hayao Miyazaki’s mysterious new film, The Boy And The Heron, arrived this month — and apparently the heron has massive teeth. A cursed image, to be sure, but Studio Ghibli has a history with Things That Don’t Belong Together (see raccoons + testicles). BEN TRAVIS IS THINKING ABOUT… LOKI’S McNUGGETS Since Sylvie is somehow working in McDonald’s in Loki Season 2, there’s now…

HARMONY KORINE, FOREVER cinema’s enfant terrible, is at it again. The director who shocked America in the ’90s with Kids and put James Franco in cornrows for Spring Breakers returns for his latest film Aggro Dr1ft, a surreal hitman-thriller shot entirely on infrared cameras. Except he would rather you didn’t call it a film. “I don’t even know if it really is a movie,” he tells Empire at the Venice Film Festival, through clouds of cigar smoke. “I mean, it is a movie, but it’s kind of its own thing.” With his new “design collective” EDGLRD, Korine remains as irreverent and experimental as ever; he spent a year working with video-game developers and VFX artists trying to find a new style and mode of working. “I wanted to make something…

CHRISTOS NIKOU IS on a crusade to erase all dating apps from the world. “I don’t think that Tinder would be very happy,” he laughs while speaking with Empire. His distaste for swiping right and all that it stands for was Nikou’s motivation to make Fingernails, his English-language follow-up to sci-fi drama Apples, about Anna (Jessie Buckley) who, after doubting the strength of her relationship with Ryan (Jeremy Allen White), begins working for a mysterious institution that sets romantic tests in order to determine true love. In the film, Riz Ahmed’s gentle instructor Amir — Anna’s mentor — cooks up the activities, which Nikou wanted to feel a little tongue-in-cheek. “[My co-writers and I] were trying to think of the most stupid ideas about how people try to find love,…

★★★ OUT 29 SEPTEMBER / CERT 15 / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Ken Loach CAST Ebla Mari, Dave Turner, Trevor Fox, Debbie Honeywood, Chris McGlade, Col Tait PLOT When asylum-seekers are rehoused in a working-class suburb, tensions flare. But bridges are soon built in the ailing Old Oak pub. SO, THIS IS it, then: the final film of a remarkable career. Ken Loach, who has long been one of Britain’s most important, uncompromising cinematic voices, bows out just as he began. The Old Oak is a vintage example of the 87-year-old filmmaker’s fixations: it is a gritty, gruelling drama and a paean to the labour movement, to community spirit and working-class pride. It also surrenders — sometimes to a fault — to the most obvious clichés of social realism, of which…

★★★★ OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / EPISODES VIEWED 3 OF 3 SHOWRUNNERS Greg Coolidge, Kirk Ward CAST Colin Woodell, Mel Gibson, Ayomide Adegun, Hubert Point-Du Jour, Jessica Allain, Mishel Prada PLOT New York, 1970s. A young Winston Scott (Woodell) challenges mobster Cormac O’Connor (Gibson) for control of the Continental hotel. “GUNS,” DECLARES COLIN Woodell at the end of episode one. “Lots of guns.” Keanu Reeves might not appear in this particular slice of the John Wickiverse, but he still casts a long shadow. What, after all, is John Wick without Wick himself ? Arriving ahead of next year’s spin-off film Ballerina, this three-part origin story for the saga’s dapper hotelier Winston Scott (Ian McShane replaced here by the fresher-faced Woodell) provides the answer. After his estranged brother Frankie (Ben Robson)…

★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT TBC / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Pablo Larraín CAST Jaime Vadell, Gloria Münchmeyer, Alfredo Castro, Paula Luchsinger El Conde boasts a wild premise: what if fascist dictator and certified bastard Augusto Pinochet was in fact a vampire? It is really only for Chileans to say whether this is an appropriate way to lampoon a leader who executed over 3,000 political opponents, but there’s a nagging sense that this kind of satire isn’t sharp enough to skewer such an irredeemable bastard — that by making him a cartoonish villain as opposed to an actual one, Pablo Larraín slightly defangs his subject’s damnation. Still, the film absolutely works as an old-fashioned horror in an arthouse cape. With veteran cinematographer Edward Lachman behind the lens, Larraín has crafted…

★★★ NINTENDO SWITCH / PC /PS4/5 / XBOX / OUT NOW A mash-up of ’90s pro-wrestling and SNES-era RPGs, WrestleQuest sees you grappling for glory — as an action figure. Little makes sense, but that’s half the fun. Bringing turn-based combat to the ring works reasonably well, while the toybox fantasy of it allows for customisable characters literally swapping body parts for stat boosts. Sadly, its half-baked mini games lack polish, but this weird rope opera still lands the three-count. MK…

MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 3 ★★ “As action-packed as a holiday nap on a hot afternoon, this is a must-see only for Portakalos family die-hards. Still, it has a warmth that sustains it through weak jokes.” HELEN O’HARA THE NUN II ★★★ “A mid-league-table Conjuring universe film, but well-constructed, with moments of inventive imagery — unlikely to make a dent in horror history, but enough to ensure it’s worth getting thee to a nunnery.” BEN TRAVIS MOB LAND ★★ “It sets out with noble No Country For Old Men aspirations; the result, sadly, is more merely ‘Some Country (And An Old Man)’, a tired genre exercise where flashes of innovation are left for dead in a pool of hackneyed homage.” JORDAN KING THE LESSON ★★★ “It is well-trodden terrain,…

“MY PROBLEM WITH THE WORD ‘ ICONIC’ IS THAT IT’S OVERLY ATTRIBUTED,” says David Fincher, cheerfully taking issue with the whole notion of this feature. “People have replaced the word ‘memorable’ with ‘iconic’.” Whichever meaning you choose, there’s no doubt Fincher’s films have permeated the culture, tapping anxieties, capturing the zeitgeist. His work consistently marks the mind, whether it’s through subject matter, or framing, or the particular ability — using a combination of all the tools available — to tie the audience to the person experiencing/leading the story on screen. “The notion with iconic shots is people are gravitating toward a single bead in a strand of beads, and it was never intended to stand out,” he says. “I like shots that are memorable, but I think context makes a…

“‘THIS MOVIE INSPIRED ME TO BECOME A N ASTRONAUT!’ — SAID NO-ONE EVER.” So reads one review of Gravity on Letterboxd, and the cyber-joker kinda has a point. Essentially Uncut Gems in space, Alfonso Cuarón’s 2013 off-planet thriller is monumentally, heart-rate-spikingly intense, charting one very bad day in the life of Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), an engineer on her first-ever space mission. Billed as “a Space Suspense in 3D” on the front page of its screenplay, written by Cuarón and his son Jonás, it moves at bullet speed — as does the incoming debris which strikes the Explorer craft in the film’s opening, wiping out most of the crew and setting Stone and colleague Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) on a seemingly hopeless quest to get back to Earth. With…

1 GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 (2 OCTOBER, DVD/BR/4K/DIGITAL) James Gunn scoffs at the very idea of superhero fatigue with this, his final film in the trilogy and his Marvel swansong. It’s a remarkably emotional epilogue, one which boldly centres a CG raccoon (and contains the MCU’s first “fuck”). A cosmic treat. 2 AFTER HOURS (9 OCTOBER, BR) Ahead of the release of Killers Of The Flower Moon, it’s always a good time to dip into Martin Scorsese’s remarkable back catalogue — and what better than this pitch-black 1985 deep cut, an underrated comedy-of-errors that shows a far more playful side to the filmmaker. 3 THE EXORCIST (9 OCTOBER, 4K BR) With the passing of the great William Friedkin last month, it feels only right to return to this…

IN A YEAR filled with cracking action movies, Jalmari Helander’s Sisu has, perhaps, gone under the radar a little. It shouldn’t have. The Finnish director’s first film in eight years is a streamlined but utterly savage World War II thriller, set in Finnish Lapland, about a one-man army (Aatami, played by Jorma Tommila) who goes medieval on the posteriors of an entire Nazi squadron when they take the gold he’s just panhandled. Helander split the film into chapters, and here he opens the book on his tale’s finest moments. CHAPTER ONE: THE GOLD “It happened during the editing, it wasn’t in the script,” says Helander of his decision to incorporate chapters, and lurid chapter headings. “It somehow felt too serious, and so chapters set the tone right away. There was…

EVEN ON A filmography as loaded with belters as David Koepp’s, one of the finest screenwriters in Hollywood, 1993 stands out by a country mile. Largely because of Jurassic Park, but it’s also the year of Carlito’s Way, the gangster film that reunited director Brian De Palma and star Al Pacino, ten years after Scarface. Initially shunned upon release, critically and commercially, the last 30 years have seen its reputation restored, and it’s now seen as an overlooked classic. “I actually wrote this before Jurassic Park,” says Koepp. Then a writer contracted to Universal, he was asked by producer Martin Bregman, with whom he had just worked on The Shadow, to take a look at adapting two books by actual-New-York-judge-turned-author Edwin Torres, titled Carlito’s Way and After Hours, with an…

News of this month’s crossword prize is bound to make you prick up your ears. Because we’ve got a pair of Campfire Audio Orbit True earbuds — worth £249.99 — to give away to one winner. With cutting-edge, big, bold audio and Bluetooth connectivity, they do the job while giving your morning commute a bit of style pizzazz, too. And they don’t just look good, having been designed for maximum in-ear comfort. Plus, they’ve got dual microphones for answering phone calls, should someone have the temerity to interrupt your listening, and a battery life of 8.5 hours. To be in with a chance of winning this premium prize, simply crack the crossword, figure out the anagram and then enter using the instructions below. Good luck! CAMPFIRE AUDIO ORBIT TRUE EARBUDS…

THE NEXT CLASSIC Disney animation due to get the live-action treatment is Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, now simply Snow White, starring Rachel Zegler. That should be cause for excitement. Instead, Zegler’s casting has triggered a lot of negativity. Aside from the predictable racist naysayers criticising Zegler’s Latine ethnicity, the anger largely stems from a resurfaced 2022 interview in which the actor spoke out against the original Snow White animation, telling Entertainment Weekly that it’s “extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power and what a woman is fit for in the world”. In a later red-carpet interview she went further: “There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird. So we didn’t do that…

“IT’S WEIRD, ISN’T IT? Why is there no sex in movies?” asked Yorgos Lanthimos at a Venice Film Festival press conference. His latest film Poor Things, which stars and is produced by Emma Stone and features scenes of graphic nudity and intercourse, had just played publicly for the first time to rave reviews. Yet in justifying the scenes, the Oscar-winning director became the latest to contribute to an increasingly loud conversation about just how necessary sex on screen is. The debate heated up upon the release of Oppenheimer in July. Scenes that involved a naked Florence Pugh, who plays J. Robert Oppenheimer’s lover Jean Tatlock, sparked controversy. Digitally altered cuts appeared in countries like India and Indonesia, with the star covered up by a CG black dress. While on social…

A QUAINT BRITISH town in the 1920s hardly seems like the setting for a trail of profanity-riddled hate mail. But that’s exactly what happened in post-War Littlehampton, and what forms the basis of Wicked Little Letters, a true-life comedy about Edith (Olivia Colman), the main victim of the ink-based attack, and Rose (Jessie Buckley), her fiery neighbour and prime suspect. “I think ‘you great big fucking onion’ is quite hard to beat,” muses director Thea Sharrock when considering which is her favourite of the many penned insults in the film. She also confirms that the majority of the letters used are exact replicas of the originals sent out in the ’20s. It’s trolling in its most traditional sense. “You can say lots of things about the language; obviously it’s evolved…

THE BOOK Writer-director Sofia Coppola based Priscilla on Elvis And Me, the 1985 memoir by Priscilla Presley detailing her whirlwind romance with, marriage to and ultimate divorce from Elvis Presley. For 25-year-old Cailee Spaeny, it was the obvious start to her research. “The first thing I did was read the book,” she says. “The script leaned heavily on it.” She was broadly familiar with the subject before she cracked it open. “‘I’m from the Southern Midwest,” Spaeny explains. “I was born in Tennessee. My mom was an Elvis-memorabilia collector. We were raised on Elvis — and I obviously knew Priscilla and Elvis go hand-in-hand.” Still, the book proved to be an eye-opener. “I knew the iconic moments and photos, but I didn’t know her story. I thought that that was…

YOU MAY NOT have heard of Cinecittà Studios, but chances are you will have seen it on screen. The legendary studio lot, just outside Rome, has played host to over 3,000 films, and in the ’50s it was the film industry’s favourite playpen, earning the nickname ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’. “Cinecittà at that time was becoming enormous,” explains Italian director Saverio Costanzo — whose new film, Finally Dawn, is set there, over the course of one eventful 1957 day and night. “Big productions like Cleopatra and Ben-Hur were shot there. So Rome was a kind of Babylon at that time. It was the centre of the world.” Costanzo decided to base his Fellini-esque behind-the-scenes story at the studio, incorporating the real-life death of Wilma Montesi, a local woman whose apparent…

MICHAEL MANN IS a certified petrolhead. It might not always be obvious, but cars and motor-racing have been in the filmmaking DNA of the legendary director behind Heat and The Insider since the very beginning. “The first little short I ever made out of film school was with Mike Hailwood,” Mann tells Empire at the Venice Film Festival. Hailwood was a world-champion motorcycle-racer, and when Mann was studying at the London Film School in the late ’60s and early ’70s, the two of them made a student film at Brands Hatch, the motor-racing circuit in Kent. “He was world champion in three classes. A fantastic character.” The screech of burning rubber on asphalt was the very thing that kicked off Mann’s career, then, beginning a fascination that has endured for…

KILLER QUOTE “Most fellas out here are crooked. Don’t make small trouble about nothing. If you’re gonna make trouble — make it big.” ★★★★★ OUT 20 OCTOBER / CERT TBC / 206 MINS DIRECTOR Martin Scorsese CAST Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser PLOT Oklahoma, the 1920s. When Native Americans of the Osage tribe are systematically murdered, federal investigators step in. IN A HEARTBREAKING recent interview, Martin Scorsese lamented his advancing years. Quoting Akira Kurosawa, he said, “I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be — and it’s too late.” Thank the gods of cinema, then, that he still found time for Killers Of The Flower Moon: a piece of work as strong and sharp and…

★★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT TBC / 39 MINS DIRECTOR Wes Anderson CAST Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, Rupert Friend PLOT Playboy gambler Henry Sugar (Cumberbatch) stumbles upon a strange and wondrous tale that teaches him to cheat at cards. “WONDERFULLY STUPENDOUS” — uttered by the brilliant Dev Patel, as Dr Chatterjee, in The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar — is that most Roald Dahl of phrases: rhythmic, emphatic and simply a pleasure to say aloud. Over a decade after his beloved stopmotion take on Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson, master of the meticulous, returns to Dahl’s oeuvre with this short but sweet film, one of four upcoming adaptations. Many of Dahl’s best-known short stories for adults have a nasty sting in their tail,…

★★★★ OUT 6 NOVEMBER / CERT 12A / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Oliver Parker CAST Michael Caine, Glenda Jackson, Will Fletcher, Laura Marcus When 89-year-old veteran Bernie Jordan ‘escaped’ his nursing home to attend the 2014 D-Day anniversary in Normandy, headlines greeted his return. Refreshingly, director Oliver Parker — who tackled World War II nostalgia in 2016 with Dad’s Army — creates an unfussy drama out of Bernie’s story, relatively lacking in sentimentality. Michael Caine was apparently tempted out of retirement when he read the moving scene in which Bernie meets some German soldiers. Meanwhile, the late, great Glenda Jackson is full of lively mischief in her final role – even when the film ultimately strikes a more poignant tone. It’s an affecting and surprisingly nuanced drama, offering far more than…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 109 MINS DIRECTOR Antoine Fuqua CAST Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, David Denman, Sonia Ammar, Remo Girone PLOT Ex-assassin Robert McCall (Washington) retires to Italy. But when local crime bosses start targeting his friends, he decides to intervene. THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT Denzel Washington as a righteous avenger of wrongs that just feels pleasingly natural. It’s an archetype that he’s perfected throughout his career, and in action movies like Man On Fire, The Magnificent Seven, and the first two entries in The Equalizer franchise, he’s added complexity to heroes with flawed pasts. Paired once again with his Training Day director Antoine Fuqua, Washington finds yet more layers to unfurl with Robert McCall in this threequel, even as the film itself at times struggles to be…

★★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNERS Steven Maeda, Matt Owens CAST Iñaki Godoy, Mackenyu, Emily Rudd, Jacob Romero Gibson The first live-action take on the manga-turned-anime pirate fantasy, One Piece has the odds stacked against it (remember Cowboy Bebop?), so it might surprise you how well Netflix’s adaptation actually works. The expansive world of Eiichiro Oda’s bestselling comic is captured in faithful detail, including all the quirks that a game cast brings to each crew member. No-one shines quite as much as Iñaki Godoy, whose enthusiasm for the lead is only matched by his character’s zeal for piracy. One Piece’s zany tone perfectly fits the Saturday-morning cartoon vibe of the original, complete with dynamic camerawork and fights lifted straight from the manga. With so much…

★★★ PC / PS4 / PS5 / XBOX ONE / XBOX SERIES X|S / OUT NOW NEXT YEAR WILL mark the 50th anniversary of Tobe Hooper’s genre-defining slasher flick. And, proving there’s plenty of buzz left in the chainsaw, this new game taps the iconic Leatherface and his cannibal clan for a fresh cut of multiplayer terror. That means there’s no story here, be it adaptation of the original film or attempt at crafting a pseudo-sequel. Instead, like publisher Gun Interactive’s Friday The 13th: The Game before it (now shuttered due to rights expiry) or ongoing horror fave Dead By Daylight, this take on the horror classic is essentially a grisly game of hide-and-seek. Each match sees three killers hunting down four victims. Members of the Family must stalk innocents…

★★★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Laurie Nunn CAST Asa Butterfield, Gillian Anderson, Ncuti Gatwa, Emma Mackey, Aimee Lou Wood, Dan Levy, Lisa McGrillis PLOT After finally declaring their feelings, Maeve (Mackey) and Otis (Butterfield) are now on opposite sides of the world. They’re not the only ex-Moordale pupils facing big changes. WITH HORMONES STARTING to settle to a less chaotic ebb and the grown-up world beckoning, it’s time to say goodbye to the teenagers of Sex Education — though not without one last burst of embarrassing incidents and awkward fumbles. The final season has lots to pack in, but comes together for a very fond farewell. It’s been two years since the last season, so to catch up on the many goings-on: Moordale Secondary…

ALMOST $3 BILLION. That’s how much The Hunger Games series made at the worldwide box office. It shot Jennifer Lawrence to superstardom, caused a surge in the popularity of archery lessons, and was spoofed by Amy Schumer at the 2015 MTV Movie Awards. There was a Capitol-inspired CoverGirl cosmetics collection, a Net-A-Porter couture fashion line, and even tie-in Subway sandwiches (the ‘Fiery Footlongs’, including a Sriracha Chicken Melt and Jalapeno Turkey, in case you’re wondering). It was a full-blown pop-culture phenomenon, sparking a boom of cinematic Young Adult dystopias, including The Maze Runner, Divergent and The 5th Wave. And at the centre of it all was director Francis Lawrence. Not that he noticed, apparently. “Honestly, I didn’t think about it that much,” he tells Empire. What he did notice was…

It’s the morning after the night before. On a deserted strip of clubs in the party district of Malia, Crete, you can all but smell the vodka-laced sweat that lingers in the air as How To Have Sex’s 16-year-old lead character Tara (Mia McKenna- Bruce), still in her party dress, walks past piles of empty cups and bottles. She stops to wipe some tears from her eyes, steadies herself, and soldiers on. It’s a bracing scene in Molly Manning Walker’s deeply personal directorial debut; a few minutes of solitary stillness following Tara’s boozy, bewildering and traumatic night out. “Some of the moments that stuck out to me the most as a teenager were [when I was] walking home,” 29-year-old Walker tells Empire when we meet in London in July. “Especially…

NOVEMBER 2023 EDITED BY CHRIS HEWITT SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS The Spider-Verse had some pretty big untied shoes to fill. Its predecessor, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, may not have set the global box office alight (at ‘only’ $384 million, it’s comfortably the lowest-grossing Spider-Man movie), but its envelope-pushing animation, and sheer vibrancy, not only saw it hailed as a game-changer for the medium, but landed it an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. But fill those shoes it did, for Across The Spider-Verse is one of the year’s most astounding triumphs, expanding the Multiverse-hopping coming-of-age story of its young Spider-Man, Miles Morales, while taking creative and storytelling risks aplenty and once again pushing the limits of what is possible in an animated movie. Not bad for a film that was cut in two…

GALE ANNE HURD has been one of the most important producers of the last 40 years, lending her Roger Corman-trained nous to any number of iconic projects, including some trailblazing efforts with her first husband, one James Cameron. We sat down with her in London recently to talk through her astonishing CV… BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980) Credited as Assistant Production Manager on the low-budget sci-fi produced by her mentor Corman, Hurd had fingers in many pies, resulting in a fateful encounter. “Roger said, ‘I need you to go down to the model shop where they’re building the spaceship miniatures and see how they’re doing,’” she recalls. “And there was this tall, blond guy who said, ‘Let me show you around.’ Show me around? I was blown away! I went…

THIS MONTH POSSESSIONS THERE’S EVIDENTLY AN epidemic of women getting possessed by evil aunts, mothers or great-grannies. If not, there must be a zeitgeist-related reason for three low-key psychodramas to tackle the theme just now. Perhaps it’s down to Hereditary — not so much plot-wise but in terms of powerhouse female actors getting roles which allow for more talent-flexing than the run of kidnapped daughter/wife roles they must tire of. Daina Reid’s impressive Run Rabbit Run has a great lead performance from Sarah Snook, of Predestination and Succession. Put-upon single mum Sarah (Snook) struggles when daughter Mia (Lily LaTorre) either develops an annoying bunny obsession (adopting a stray and wearing a disturbing mask) or is possessed by an aunt who vanished when Sarah was a child. Among the familiar but…

THIS MONTH 1 How many Oscars has Nolan been nominated for? 2 What is the highest-grossing movie of Nolan’s career? 3 Nolan boasts a connection to long-running BBC sitcom ’Allo ’Allo!. 4 This actor and sometime producer has appeared in three Nolan movies, credited as ‘The Young Man’, ‘Younger Gotham Water Board Technician’, and ‘Steward’. Can you name him? 5 And can you explain the significance of SG13 7IU? 6 Whatis the first line we hear spoken in Batman Begins? 7 Who appears as ‘Fortis Leader’ in Dunkirk? 8 Which character says, “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling” in Inception? 9 Who wrote the novel from which The Prestige was adapted? 10 What is the name of the production company Nolan co-founded with wife Emma Thomas?…

GÖRANSSON: “I remember one of the cool, amazing cinematic experiences I had as a child was when I saw the first Kill Bill. Where Daryl Hannah is actually whistling on camera, and then that turns into the score. I’d never experienced something like that before. That was a pretty cool moment.” INT. HOSPITAL — NIGHT The Bride (Uma Thurman) lies in bed. Faint whistling can be heard. EXT./INT. HOSPITAL — NIGHT Elle Driver (Hannah), clad in white and holding a red umbrella, walks into the hospital whistling ‘Twisted Nerve’ (from Bernard Herrmann’s score for the 1968 film of the same name). We see her boots (also white) in close-up as she walks down the corridor. Then there’s a close-up of the red umbrella. And finally we track with her as…