Tabla de contenidos para July 2025 en Empire

“OhmyGod. OH MY GOD. He’s gonna say it. Oh my God, he’s gonna say it!” exclaimed Deadpool in last summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine, excitedly eyeballing a robed Chris Evans. As the latter threw off his cloak, Deadpool yelled, “AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!” Simultaneously, Evans shouted, “FLAME ON!” As he blasted into the air, transformed into a human fireball, a disappointed Deadpool muttered, “I’m sorry, what now?” The big joke was that he was expecting Captain America — the king of superheroes — but instead got Johnny Storm, the scorch-powered guy from the maligned Fantastic Four movies. Two decades back, in the burgeoning days of super-movies, those two films had their fans, but were undeniably flawed (let’s face it, Michael Chiklis looked like he had a pebble driveway glued to him). Let’s not…

THIS MONTH WE ASKED: AFTER KRYPTO AND SUPERMAN, WHICH SUPERHERO/ANIMAL TEAM-UP DO YOU WANT TO SEE? We absolutely need to have Batman teaming up with Detective Chimp. @DTHESLOP. BSKY.SOCIAL We’re long overdue Kitty Pryde getting a starring role in the X-Men films, and I’d like to see her front and centre, complete with her dragon, Lockheed. @ERRPODCAST. BSKY.SOCIAL Squirrel Girl & squirrels. I know nothing about the character but am intrigued as to what the superpowers of a squirrel might be. @NAT54.BSKY.SOCIAL Animal Man (Buddy Baker) and all of them. @KELLY-KNOX.COM Batman and Batbat. @MRNEILALCOCK. BSKY.SOCIAL WATCH OUT FOR THE NEXT QUESTION VIA OUR BLUESKY ACCOUNT: @EMPIREMAGAZINE.BSKY.SOCIAL…

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE COUNCIL ARE used to getting letters: complaints from residents about the roadworks outside Lidl, questions about bin day, that sort of thing. What they’re probably less used to in their mailbag are letters from one of the biggest box-office icons of our time, sent all the way from Pandora. Last April, James Cameron took time out from production on his upcoming Avatar sequels to urge local powers-that-be to grant planning permission for a huge new complex of soundstages, known as Marlow Studios. “The next iteration of screen storytelling requires a purpose-built working space of exceptional quality,” wrote the director, detailing plans to base a division of his company Lightstorm there, should the proposed 1.8-million-square-feet facility get greenlit. Why is the man who brought us The Terminator and Titanic looking…

RICHARD LINKLATER WAS in his twenties when his dad first took him to see Breathless (À Bout De Souffle), Jean-Luc Godard’s groundbreaking film of the French New Wave. “I didn’t totally get it,” he recalls. “It was the next time I saw it, a few months later, [that] I saw the radicalness of it.” Now, the filmmaker has made Nouvelle Vague, a fictionalised account of how Godard’s debut revolutionised cinema. In Cannes, the day after its world premiere, Linklater tells Empire about his homage to these cinema-changing icons. GUILLAUME MARBECK AS JEAN-LUC GODARD Godard is the hero of Nouvelle Vague. In 1959, he was still a critic at French journal Cahiers du Cinéma, bursting with creative drive and desperate to make the leap into filmmaking. Linklater needed an actor with…

IN 2022, WRITER-DIRECTOR Zach Cregger’s Barbarian — which saw a woman get more than she bargained for from her double-booked Airbnb — was a word-of-mouth hit packed with twists and turns that crept up from nowhere and surprised and delighted horror fans. Cregger returns with the mysterious Weapons, in which almost every child from elementary school teacher Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) class goes missing at the same time one night. It is, Cregger tells Empire, a more “creatively ambitious” movie, and “a lot bigger and weirder than Barbarian”. Strap in, folks — here, he explains how. LETTING IT RIP Cregger didn’t intentionally set out to make Weapons a more ambitious film. It instead came from a very personal place, when a very close friend unexpectedly died during post-production on Barbarian.…

DURING A 2021 screening of Michael Mann’s Manhunter at London’s Prince Charles Cinema, head programmer Paul Vickery looked out across the audience. The film, which had played many times at the venue, would usually pull in a typical repertory or ‘rep’ audience (cinemagoers who favour classic or cult movies). “Of which I would be a representative as an old white man,” laughs Vickery, who’s in his forties. Yet this time he was stunned to find that almost all of the crowd consisted of people in their early twenties. And they kept on coming. Today the cinema’s matinée screenings, which used to draw in smaller numbers, now rake in between 100 to 200 largely Gen Z patrons daily. Weekly screenings of Wong Kar Wai’s 2000 romance In The Mood For Love…

★★★ OUT NOW/CERT 12A/118 MINS DIRECTOR Jonathan Entwistle CAST Ben Wang, Jackie Chan, Ralph Macchio, Sadie Stanley, Ming-Na Wen, Joshua Jackson, Aramis Knight PLOT After teenager Li Fong (Wang) moves from Beijing to New York City, he must learn to master both kung fu and karate techniques. FUN FACT: ORIGINAL Karate Kid and Cobra Kai star Ralph Macchio is now older than Pat Morita was when he last played Mr Miyagi (1994’s The Next Karate Kid). Meanwhile, the Karate Kid remake’s Miyagi-surrogate Jackie Chan (aka Mr Han) is now only two years younger than Morita was when he passed away in 2005. Age has been super-kind to both, but given this long-running franchise has always focused on its youthful protagonists, it should really come as no surprise that, despite their…

★★★★ OUT 12 JUNE (PRIME VIDEO)/CERT 18/100 MINS DIRECTOR Tom Kingsley CAST Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, Nick Mohammed, Paddy Considine, Ian McShane, Sean Bean, Sonoya Mizuno PLOT Three struggling improv comedians are hired by the police for low-level sting operations. They quickly find themselves in way over their heads. THERE’S AN INGENIOUS thought at the centre of Deep Cover: if undercover work is, effectively, Method acting, what would happen if you put an improv group — whose very instinct is to ‘yes, and’ a situation — into minor sting operations? Tom Kingsley’s comedy feature not only commits conceptually to that idea — it does so structurally, too, barrelling forward as it throws our heroes into situations of increasing danger and absurdity. That initial idea came from Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic…

★★★★ OUT NOW (SKY/NOW)/EPISODES VIEWED 10 OF 12 SHOWRUNNERS Nora Zuckerman, Lilla Zuckerman CAST Natasha Lyonne, Benjamin Bratt, Cynthia Erivo, Melanie Lynskey, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Rex, Katie Holmes, Rhea Perlman PLOT Back on the run, Charlie Cale (Lyonne) continues to solve mysteries using her lie-detecting ability on a road-trip across America. WITH HER SIGNATURE BS detector and a “voice like a rusty clarinet”, casino worker and sleuth Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) is back in search of new mysteries to solve, making a very welcome return in showrunner Rian Johnson’s other detective-fiction franchise. This time, Charlie is looking for somewhere to hide: on the run again, this time from Rhea Perlman’s mobster, who wants her dead following the events of last season. But a few things have changed. Lyonne’s inquisitive road-tripper…

★★★★ OUT NOW (SKY ATLANTIC/NOW)/CERT TBC/109 MINS DIRECTOR Jesse Armstrong CAST Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, Ramy Youssef, Hadley Robinson PLOT Four moguls spend a weekend in a mountainside mansion while the world descends into chaos caused by their tech innovations. AYN RAND’S 1943 novel The Fountainhead, a paean to capitalist self-interest, has become a bible for right-wingers and entrepreneurs from Donald Trump to Steve Jobs. In his latest skewering of the super-rich and his first feature film as a director, Succession’s Jesse Armstrong borrows the title of Rand’s book for a Bond villain-style lair where a group of amoral, mega-powerful tech magnates watch a global crisis unfold, one that they insist they aren’t at all responsible for. We find host Hugo (a wonderfully weaselly Jason Schwartzman), aka…

★★★★★ PC, PS5, XBOX SERIES X|S OVER HALF A CENTURY ago, the world was torn apart by the Fracture, the only known survivors eking out an existence on the small island of Lumière. Each year since, in the furthest reaches of the old continent, a mysterious being called the Paintress awakens to etch a number into a monolith, turning everyone of that age to dust — and she’s counting down. With only a year until his number’s up, inventor Gustave leads an expedition to those distant shores in the hope of stopping the godlike figure — even though none before have returned. A dark fantasy draped in gorgeous Belle Époque livery, Clair Obscur dives straight in with complex lore, but effortlessly draws players into its haunting world. Death permeates everything,…

★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+)/CERT 12A/125 MINS DIRECTOR Guy Ritchie CAST John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza González, Domhnall Gleeson, Carmen Ejogo, Stanley Tucci PLOT Adventurer Luke (Krasinski) reconnects with his estranged sister Charlotte (Portman) on his quest to locate the mythical fountain of youth. TREASURE-HUNTING action-adventure films are like precious relics: highly prized, surprisingly rare, only occasionally solid gold. Guy Ritchie’s Fountain Of Youth consciously tries to muscle in on Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy and Uncharted (the games). Sadly, despite some winning elements, this old-school, globe-trotting, MacGuffin-hunting expedition ends up more Sahara, or The Mummy Returns, or Uncharted (the movie). It’s not for lack of trying. All the ingredients are here: a wisecracking American adventurer in John Krasinski’s unfortunately named Luke Purdue; a find-the-clues quest…

The second episode of The Studio, Apple TV+’s biting industry satire, opens with misfiring studio boss Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) in a race against time. He’s speeding towards a movie-set in his vintage Corvette convertible to make it for filming — all for just one shot. Specifically, a ‘oner’ — an extended scene with no cuts. Not that Sal Saperstein (Ike Barinholtz), Remick’s spineless sidekick riding shotgun, is excited in the slightest. “Who cares if we miss the stupid magic-hour oner?” he whines. Remick does. “This shot is going to be epic,” he says, before getting all schmaltzy. “The oner is the ultimate cinematic achievement. It’s, like, the perfect marriage of artistry and technicality.” Remick isn’t alone in his appreciation of the oner. Single-shot scenes — or, in some cases,…

MICHAEL PHILIPPOU IS stood on a platform roughly the height of a double-decker bus. A big, burly man throws him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. A crowd watches on, breaths held, phones poised. The man leaps off the platform, plunging Philippou through the air, down into a plate of glass — on actual fire — propped between two fold-out chairs. Shards fly in every direction. The crowd yells in unison: “Ohhhhhhh!” Over a year later, Michael has a confession. “I wasn’t technically on Bring Her Back. They couldn’t insure me, or something,” he says, as his identical twin brother Danny puts away the phone on which he’s just shown Empire that bonkers footage. Such is life when you’re a rising director with a side-hustle in ‘deathmatch wrestling’. Welcome…

JULIUS ONAH IS exhausted, and it’s not hard to see why. The last few years of his life have been dedicated to directing Captain America: Brave New World, the 35th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the first to solely spotlight Anthony Mackie as the new Cap, Sam Wilson. It’s a movie that sees Wilson do a lot of running, and Onah — a big proponent of pavement-pounding — would have loved to follow suit. “I’m trying to get back my running mojo,” he tells Empire over a Zoom from his home in Berlin. “These movies take a lot out of you. I tried to go for a run this morning, and I’m just like, ‘I want to nap.’” Onash’s solid MCU entry sees Sam and his new sidekick,…

VAMPIRES AND WEREWOLVES, our favourite monsters, are always with us. Nosferatu and Wolf Man — remakes of remakes — have scared up box-office coin in cinemas before reaching your home screen on disc or via streaming platform, boosted by the glory of what VHS boxes used to call a “major theatrical release”. But they haunt another part of the magazine. Less promoted, more affordable creatures are the remit of this column. Vampires are represented by The Radleys, a ‘Sky Original’ which got advertised on bus stops. Based on Matt Haig’s novel, which read a lot like a screen treatment, it’s about a family of bloodsuckers who have resolved to be ‘abstainers’ and live a normal, non-predatory life in a small Yorkshire town. Peter (Damian Lewis), a GP, and Helen (Kelly…

JOHN NUGENT VISITED THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS SET “My Fantastic Four experience was, well, fantastic. I hung out in Reed Richards’ lab, took some interior-design inspo from the Baxter Building living room, met H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot and the Fantasti-Car, and witnessed a Pedro Pascal dance party. Sadly he doesn’t stretch in real life.” BEN TRAVIS KICKED BACK WITH THE PHILIPPOU BROTHERS “When I saw Talk To Me, it absolutely ripped my head off (in the best way). So I’m not only thrilled that the Philippou brothers didn’t drop the ball on Bring Her Back, but also that they proved just as wildly entertaining in real life — talking wrestling, possession and sharp knives.” MONICA MAY PHOTOGRAPHED NICHOLAS HOULT “A day collaborating with Nicholas left me inspired. He was generous…

APRIL 2007 This isn’t Empire’s first Fantastic Four cover. Back in 2007, we ran a set-visit cover feature for the Fox-era sequel Rise Of The Silver Surfer. It’s a fascinating look at a superhero boom still in its infancy, with director Tim Story candidly acknowledging to us that the childlike tone of his first F4 effort got “a pretty good whipping”. While that era’s Sue Storm, Jessica Alba, argued that “this is definitely more grown-up than the last one”, our reporter nevertheless witnessed the film’s Reed Richards, Ioan Gruffudd, catching a case of the giggles during a take. “I was laughing at it myself,” he told us. “I was thinking ‘God, this is so cheesy.’ But it’s what’s needed for this sort of movie.” Will the MCU-era Fantastic Four offer…

THE DRIVING Idris had to put his driving skills to the test before he’d even been cast opposite Brad Pitt in the racing actioner. During his audition process in 2023, the actor was sent to the PalmerSport racetrack in Bedford, England to see how he could handle a Formula 3000 car. “I have three older brothers, and my whole life I looked up to them with regards to driving,” Idris tells Empire. “They had Porsches and [Audi] R8s and BMWs. As soon as I was able to drive, the first thing I did was buy fast cars. Any little bit of money I made from [crime drama show] Snowfall would go on a car.” This flashy pastime helped Idris master speeds of up to 180 miles per hour while shooting.…

‘MAIN TITLES’ MAX ARUJ & ALFIE GODFREY MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — THE FINAL RECKONING Lalo Schifrin’s iconic, tense theme gets a brass-heavy revival with an ominous and percussive final flourish. ‘THE BIX IS BACK’ NICHOLAS BRITELL ANDOR: SEASON 2, EPISODE 6 Adria Arjona’s vengeful Bix gets a big cheer-worthy moment in the Star Wars spin-off’s second chapter. Brittell imbues it with a triumphant, drum-laden rendition of the main theme. Glorious. ‘IT’S SO HARD TO SAY GOODBYE TO YESTERDAY’ BOYZ II MEN M3GAN 2.0 TRAILER This sombre R&B classic scores a violent montage of M3GAN-enforced murder to hilarious effect. An unserious homage to this famous bad bot. ‘IT’S BUCKY!’ SON LUX The epic entrance to Sebastian Stan’s super soldier is bolstered by his very first heroic theme. Escalating strings and a thunderous…

RYAN COOGLER’S SINNERS is an unprecedented success story. The original, R-rated, genre-fluid picture — starring Coogler’s muse and frequent collaborator Michael B. Jordan, and a host of Black stars — has (at the time of writing) grossed $242 million in North America and $320 million globally, against a $90 million budget. It scored the biggest opening weekend for an original film since Us in 2019. Reviews about the ’30s-set vampire movie have been glowing and word-of-mouth buzz only growing louder. Meanwhile, social media has lit up with discussions about the film’s themes and technical brilliance. It’s everything that Hollywood says it wants more of — an ambitious, big swing of a movie that isn’t a sequel or connected to any IP. And yet, early reporting on the film seemed more…

AS A YOUNG filmmaker, Julia Ducournau dreamed of one day bringing bold, transgressive visions to the Cannes Film Festival. “When I was a kid, you didn’t always see horror or sci-fi in this sort of [festival],” she tells Empire. “I always thought it was a great challenge to bring genre to this competition.” The French filmmaker has ultimately debuted all three of her feature films at the festival, including 2016’s carnal-cannibal chiller Raw and 2021’s wildly provocative body-horror Titane — in which, among other things, a character has sex with a car. The latter defied the odds to win the Palme d’Or, Cannes’ top prize. This year, she returned again with her new film, Alpha. It’s a different tack for the filmmaker. Raw and Titane were “completely genre”, she says,…

★★★★ OUT 13 JUNE/CERT 12A/100 MINS DIRECTOR Daisy-May Hudson CAST Posy Sterling, Idil Ahmed, TerriAnn Cousins, Tegan-Mia Stanley Rhoads Daisy-May Hudson’s debut fiction feature Lollipop is about homelessness. Courtesy of its discerning script, it will surprise nobody that it is anchored in the writer-director’s experience. Because of a legislative loophole, Molly (Posy Sterling), who is sleeping in a tent, can’t get her children back without a home, but is low priority to get a house without her kids. Any time Molly spends with them is supervised, and Sterling excels as a woman unravelling under the strain of social workers’ judgemental gaze. A straightforward hardship tale this is not, though. Lollipop settles on a message of holding onto hope in a crushing system. Blistering and impressively even-handed, Lollipop crackles with energy.…

★★★★ OUT NOW/CERT 15/110 MINS DIRECTORS Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein CAST Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Brec Bassinger, Tony Todd PLOT College student Stefani (Juana) dreams of hundreds of strangers dying. But the real threat is closer to home as the Grim Reaper goes after her family. YOU DON’T NEED ESP to know that Final Destination Bloodlines will start with a premonition. And this one’s a belter, eclipsing the plane crash (1), roller coaster derailment (3), speedway crash (4) and suspension bridge collapse (5) that have previously acted as the franchise’s gory-glory curtain-raisers. Heck, it perhaps even rivals the second instalment’s Route 2 pile-up that made driving behind a logging truck such a no-no for all right-minded motorists. The precog carnage this time takes place atop…

★★★★ OUT NOW (DISNEY+)/EPISODES VIEWED 6 OF 6 SHOWRUNNER Dave Filoni CAST Nika Futterman, Corey Burton, Artt Butler, Lane Factor The animated Star Wars: Tales Of… series has explored the paths of notable Jedi and then took a walk on the dark side; this third set of stories turns its focus to the underground, where Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman) and Cad Bane (Corey Burton) reside. With the six episodes ranging from 12 to 17 minutes long, split evenly between the two headliners, it’s another slickly packaged bundle from creator Dave Filoni that does a lot with a little. Ventress’ story is thin, but sweet; the more impactful narrative is reserved for Cad Bane, giving some fascinating insight into one of the galaxy’s most mysterious blasters-for-hire. It’s an illuminating journey into…

★★★ OUT NOW/CERT U/108 MINS DIRECTOR Dean Fleischer Camp CAST Maia Kealoha, Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Hannah Waddingham, Billy Magnussen, Zach Galifianakis, Courtney B. Vance, Tia Carrere PLOT An alien genetic experiment, designed as a superweapon, escapes to Earth and befriends a lonely Hawaiian girl called Lilo (Kealoha). ONLY A FEW years ago, when considering new projects, the Pixar and Disney teams would ask, “Why does this story need to be told in animation?” The idea was that the art form should only be used to tell the stories that demanded to be animated. That question is perhaps less necessary in this VFX-assisted era. But it might be time to bring it back in reverse form: does this animation need to be live action? Some recent remakes can’t help but feel…

CLEANER ★★ FILM “The action feels so slight, especially compared to the ambitious set-pieces of director Martin Campbell’s Bond entries. This British attempt at a Die Hard ends up just being a bit of a mess. Yippee-ki-nay.”JOHN NUGENT UNTIL DAWN ★★ FILM “It leans hard into the generic, playing all the horror hits we've seen before and leaving you waiting desperately for the moment it’ll take things up a notch. What should have been a twisty ride ends up feeling like it’s bursting at the seams to move up a gear — but never does.”HARRY STAINER SIRENS ★★★★ TV “Yes, it’s trashy, but deliberately so, using camp twists to keep us on our toes while digging deeper into uncomfortable truths. A deranged look into the strange dynamic formed between three…

HEISTS ARE DIFFICULT. Prisons are full of people who found that out the hard way. Similarly, movie heists aren’t a cakewalk either. And movie jail is filled with directors who found that out the hard way. In a world where Ethan Hunt can bounce into the Vatican, or the Kremlin, or an underwater vault, and use all kinds of hi-tech hocus-pocus to make off with the goods, it’s somehow even more difficult to come up with an interesting, compelling movie heist that feels fresh, tense, and thrilling. It’s even more difficult to do that when said heist is largely silent and set in France, instantly conjuring the spectre of Rififi. Yet that’s what Christian Gudegast has managed to do in Den Of Thieves: Pantera, the much-delayed sequel to his 2018…

PAUL FEIG CREDITS are not like normal credits. Not for him a wall of black with line after line after line (after line) of white text. The credits on Feig’s movies are colourful, playful affairs, often with cutouts of characters from the movie, or some added-value text to ensure the viewer doesn’t nod off. “It’s still the movie,” says Feig. “I want people to watch the credits, and to see all the people that worked on a movie. So let’s make it a fun thing.” He laughs. “I keep waiting for somebody to notice how much work we put into our end-credit sequences. Thank you.” Not at all. But it’s not the only thing we noticed. When it comes to the Special Thanks sections in his movies, Feig’s approach has…

CALLING ALL TREKKERS! Bit of a scoop in Crossword Corner this issue, as we have the first glimpse of the brand-new Destination: Star Trek — The Next Generation Interstellar Board Game. Reliving the adventures of the Enterprise-D and her crew, the assignment is pretty simple — plan the best route around the galaxy and complete your mission before the other players. And yet… there will be complications and hazards to be overcome: malfunctioning holodecks, sentient computers and Klingon civil war. Only the best Starfleet officer will win! Destination: Star Trek will be boldly going on sale in autumn — and we have ten copies to give away before it’s available to buy. To enter, crack the crossword and follow the instructions below. Live long and prosper! DESTINATION: STAR TREK —…

LETTER OF THE MONTH DON’T PULL THE PLUG Longtime reader and listener here: I’ve listened to every episode of the Empire Film Podcast, including most of the Spoiler Specials, and it’s always a highlight of my week. I’ve also now listened to the first two episodes of ‘The Shameless Plug’ and really enjoyed them! I think it’s great you’re promoting the current issue, while also giving us a peek behind the curtain. ADAM D. JAMESON, VIA EMAIL A shameless plug for ‘The Shameless Plug’! How extremely meta. For your kind and insightful words, Adam, have a Picturehouse membership on us. (The Empire Podcast and The Shameless Plug are available wherever fine podcasts are available.) Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, valid for one year at all Picturehouse Cinemas across…

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MATERIALISTS FEW COULD HAVE predicted the trajectory of Celine Song’s Past Lives. Her feature debut about the emotional reunion between a married writer (Greta Lee) and her first love (Teo Yoo) went from one of the most acclaimed films of 2023 to a Best Picture nominee. It’s a tough act to follow, but with Materialists, Song returns with a new romantic drama that once again probes into the thorny premise that made Past Lives so devastating: the love triangle. At its centre is Dakota Johnson’s Lucy, a skilled matchmaker who treats romance like a corporate merger. Standing at six feet tall and having a six-figure salary are assets in the “marketplace” of dating in her world. But Lucy’s own love life isn’t quite so calculable, as she finds herself drawn…

A MATTER OF TIMING It’s taken nearly 30 years for Adam Sandler’s iconic, rage-fuelled golfer, Happy Gilmore, to return for another round. While the actor is no stranger to sequels, he’s taken his time returning to one of the two characters who launched his career and lent their names to his production company, Happy Madison (the other being Billy Madison). “With every passing year, the stakes got higher,” says director Kyle Newacheck, who is reuniting with Sandler after crime comedy Murder Mystery. “He was waiting until the time was right.” A MODERN MAN It would have been the easiest thing in the world to simply make a rough copy of the first movie. And while there are plenty of familiar faces (Julie Bowen, Ben Stiller and Christopher McDonald), Newacheck was…

CHRIS HEWITT IS THINKING ABOUT… THE RETURN OF THE NO-FRILLS ACTIONER Den Of Thieves 2, The Accountant 2 and HAVOC all coming out in the UK on the same day made me realise that we might be in a golden period of handsomely mounted, character-driven action flicks. This action-movie junkie is in hog heaven. BETH WEBB IS THINKING ABOUT… PEAK PEDRO Every screen that I have sat down in front of over the past month has had Pedro Pascal on it. I look in a baby’s pram and there’s Pedro Pascal. I open the curtains and Pedro Pascal is in the sun. Just flick through this issue. Pedro Pascals everywhere. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. JOHN NUGENT IS THINKING ABOUT… POPE MOVIES Since the death of Pope…

★★★★ OUT NOW/CERT 15/80 MINS DIRECTOR Babak Anvari CAST Rosamund Pike, Matthew Rhys, Megan McDonnell, Paul Tylak Keeping things interesting in a confined space is an impressive cinematic feat. In Babak Anvari’s excellent fourth feature, the vast majority of the 80-minute runtime focuses entirely on two actors in a car — making for a lean, mean, tension-filled ride. The set-up is simple but effective: a panicked phone call from Alice (Megan McDonnell) rouses her parents Maddie (Rosamund Pike) and Frank (Matthew Rhys); after driving off following a disastrous family dinner, she’s accidentally hit a girl with her car in a pitch-black forest. What unfolds is a parent’s worst-case scenario, but Anvari’s tight, precise direction keeps things unpredictable. An unsettling ride worth taking.…

★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+)/ CERT TBC/86 MINS DIRECTOR Andrew Dominik PARTICIPANTS Bono PLOT On a near-empty stage, U2 lead singer Bono recounts stories of his life, shares his fears and doubts, and sings some of his most famous songs. LET’S GET THE obvious joke out of the way first: no, despite being produced by Apple, this film will not be automatically and nonconsensually forced onto your iPhone. Unlike U2’s notorious 2014 album Songs Of Innocence, which one day magically appeared on the world’s Apple devices whether you liked it or not, you actually have a choice over whether to watch Bono: Stories Of Surrender. Which way you go with that choice rather depends on how big a fan you are. This is an unusual proposition. A filmed version of…

★★★ OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO)/CERT 15/121 MINS DIRECTOR Paul Feig CAST Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding, Allison Janney Paul Feig’s sequel to A Simple Favour heads overseas, as supermom/detective hero Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is blackmailed into becoming maid of honour for her frenemy, convicted murderer Emily (Blake Lively). Stephanie suspects Emily wants revenge, but soon she’s a murder suspect and has to unravel a plot as nonsensical as that of the first film, but more predictable. Happily, Feig leans in to the ridiculous elements, decamping to Capri and staging the drama at an over-the-top wedding; Lively in particular has great fun swanning around suspiciously in outrageous couture. It feels like a holiday, and a fun one at that, but could have used a few wilder turns just to keep…

★★★ OUT NOW (APPLE TV+)/EPISODES VIEWED 10 OF 10 SHOWRUNNERS Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz CAST Alexander Skarsgård, David Dastmalchian, Noma Dumezweni, Clark Gregg, John Cho, Jack McBrayer PLOT When a security cyborg (Skarsgård) gains sentience, he craves a life away from humans. Sadly, he winds up on a hostile planet with some particularly stupid ones. DON’T READ TOO much into the name. There is not a huge amount of murder in Murderbot, but there’s plenty of thinking about it. At the heart of this comedy sci-fi — based on the Murderbot Diaries books by Martha Wells — is a synthetic lifeform (Alexander Skarsgård) that has had it with humans. This lifeform is a fleshy artificial being tasked with defending humans, who treat it like crap. A governor module in its…

★★★★ OUT NOW/CERT 15/101 MINS DIRECTOR Wes Anderson CAST Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson PLOT After yet another assassination attempt, tycoon Zsa-zsa Korda (Del Toro) appoints his daughter Liesl (Threapleton) as his sole heir. WITH EVERY WES Anderson film, the growing concern is that the idiosyncratic filmmaker is becoming a parody of himself. That is, if you don’t buy into the fun. Yes, in the director’s latest caper, the hallmarks of a Wes film are still there: the framing is as precise as ever, the production design is immaculately detailed, the performances delightfully offbeat. But when mainstream cinema threatens to become more monotonous, lifeless and homogenised with each passing year, why go after a singular artist so settled into his…

The Fantastic Four are preparing to launch. “How long to get Excelsior launch-ready?” asks Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) of the Fantastic Four’s spaceship, pacing with urgency. “Twenty hours,” replies Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), heavily pregnant, springs into action. “We have to make a statement,” she says. “We need to get ahead of this.” Meanwhile, Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) is looking pensive: “The herald” — referring to the mysterious shiny alien the Silver Surfer — “spoke to me in her language,” he says. An intergalactic threat is looming. The cosmos is calling. It’s 9 September, 2024. Empire stands in Reed Richards’ laboratory at the top of the Baxter Building, the midtown Manhattan skyscraper that has always been the home of the Fantastic Four, aka Marvel’s ‘First Family’.…

BEVERLY HILLS COP In the early 1980s, Cronenberg was in contention for Flashdance, Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop — the last, he said, “was sent my way when Sly Stallone was supposed to play the part”. He dismissed all three as too mainstream, insisting that he’d only consider such movies if “I suddenly don’t have anything to say”. TOTAL RECALL Cronenberg, a Philip K. Dick fan, was at one point adapting his 1966 source story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. Cronenberg’s version would feature William Hurt, a big, glowing vagina and mutant, sewer-dwelling camels. He got his ass out of there, though, because, he said, the studio wanted “‘Raiders Of The Lost Ark Goes To Mars’”. AMERICAN PSYCHO Later, he wanted to tackle Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991…

George Miller thought he was done with pigs. It was the (curly) tail end of 1984, and the Australian director had spent the past few months surrounded by oinking farm animals on set of his third Mad Max movie, Beyond Thunderdome. “I’d eat lunch with pigs all around me,” Miller chuckles. “I came to learn how sensitive they are. We bred them for their meat, but we didn’t breed out their intelligence.” Porkers had played an integral part in Beyond Thunderdome, which saw Max infiltrate an underground refinery that transforms pig poo into methane. But with production wrapped, Miller assumed his days of sharing a call sheet with porcine performers were over. One long-haul flight proved him wrong. “I was somewhere over India, looking down at the campfires on the…

28 Size of their thighs in inches, prompting David to say, “On the day we decide to show our legs, people will cry.” 500 Weight, in pounds, of David’s signature bench press, done with a reverse grip. In 1982 he demonstrated it at an exhibition at Disneyland. 0 Bodybuilding titles they won. Unlike their burly peers, they refused to enter competitions such as Mr Universe or Mr Olympia. Although they liked the sound of a new contest called ‘Mr Infinity’. 3,000,000 People who bought a copy of their Sports Illustrated cover story in summer 1982. 184 Words in the baffling narration at the start of The Barbarians, explaining how an enchanted ruby contains “the secrets of music, of joyful laughter, of human kindness”. 1 Album released by the Barbarian Brothers:…

1 BLACK BAG (OUT 16 JUNE, DVD/BR/4K) Steven Soderbergh’s stylish and sardonic spy thriller is his best movie since he came out of retirement, and one of his best movies overall. Crammed with slick David Koepp dialogue, beautiful people (Fassbender! Blanchett! Page! Harris! Brosnan!) doing beastly things, and the most awkward dinner party this side of Ben Wheatley. A must. 2 BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY (OUT NOW, DVD/BR/DIGITAL) I did not see this coming. Having tolerated the second Bridget Jones film and skipped the third entirely, I rolled my eyes at the prospect of having to watch Renée Zellweger (perfect British accent notwithstanding) navigate yet another love triangle. Instead, what we have is a beautiful essay in dealing with loss and grief that also manages to be a warm and…