Empire australasia march 2017 vk com stopthepress by Xuân Tùng Lê

KONG: SKULL ISLAND UP CLOSE WITH THE MEGA MONKEY! MARCH 2017

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CHRIS PRATT TALKS GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 INTERVIEWED:

! E V I S U L C WORLD EX

TAIKA WAITITI! MAX LANDIS! CHRISTINA RICCI! FIRST LOOK:

JUSTICE LEAGUE! T S E U Q R A E Y 5 7 R E H E D I S IN N E E R C S G I B TO REACH THE

BATTLE OF THE BATMEN! WHICH BATMAN IS THE GREATEST?

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WONDER WOMAN It’s taken 75 years to go from Diana Prince’s first comic appearance to the big screen. Here’s her epic journey.

KONG: SKULL ISLAND Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson and Sam Jackson versus a giant hairy ape. No, not John C Reilly — the other giant hairy ape.

CHRISTINA RICCI Wednesday is shaping her own destiny as Zelda Fitzgerald. She explains why you shouldn’t believe everything you read about her.

BATMAN VS BATMEN Will Arnett is Batman in the new Lego movie. The smallest superhero gives Empire the definitive lowdown on those who came before.

MAX LANDIS Future of Hollywood or rainbow-haired windbag? You be the judge.

EDGAR WRIGHT AND WALTER HILL The director of The Driver and the director of Baby Driver compare notes on car chases.

JUSTICE LEAGUE “These guys really are fun to explore,” says Zack Snyder. Can we get our hopes up yet?

RIP JOHN HURT The legendary actor passed away in January. Here’s why he will most definitely be missed.

OCTAVIA SPENCER GETS GRILLED Why is her nickname Rock? Why does she love serial killers? All is revealed.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2 Chris Pratt on what to expect in the… no, wait… he needs to start over. It’s ok, Chris.

22 4

AMY SCHUMER GETS SNATCHED Along with Goldie Hawn. We didn’t do it.

MARCH 2017

30 T2 TRAINSPOTTING ★★★★★ 32 FIST FIGHT ★★★★★ DAVID STRATTON ★★★★★ JASPER JONES ★★★★★ 34 THE SALESMAN ★★★★★ 35 LOVING ★★★★★ A CURE FOR WELLNESS ★★★★★ 36 A FEW LESS MEN ★★★★★ 37 TRESPASS AGAINST US ★★★★★ 38 ALONE IN BERLIN ★★★★★ 38 THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE ★★★★★

TAIKA WAITITI ON HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE The best bits of the best movie to be completely ignored by the Oscars.

MAKING HACKSAW RIDGE Barry Robison, production designer for Mel Gibson’s war epic, on building the sets.

CAMERON CROWE ON JERRY MAGUIRE It’s been 20 years since he showed us the money — here’s the director’s thoughts looking back.

104

SHARON MAGUIRE ON BRIDGET JONES’S BABY The director of the latest in the series on why Emma Thompson is a genius.

N A R RAT E D BY

D AV I D AT T E N B O R O U G H

★★★★★ – IMDB

★★★★★ – The Independent

★★★★★ – The Telegraph

★★★★★ – The Daily Mail

‘Cinematic’

– The Independent

‘One of the tensest chase scenes ever committed to film’ – The Telegraph

‘Truly Epic’ – Radio Times

NEW ON 4K ULTRA HD™, BLU-RAY™ & DVD 29 MAR Photograph by Emma Napper ©BBC NHU 2016 ©BBC Worldwide 2016

PG Parental guidance recommended

(...and our favourite John Hurt role)

EDITORIAL

EDITOR TIM KEEN 02 8268 4621 Max, in Midnight Express

THIS MONTH AT EMPIRE

ART DIRECTOR BLAIR PAGAN John Merrick, in The Elephant Man PHOTO EDITOR KRISTI BARTLETT 02 8114 9493 Kane, in Alien

CONTRIBUTORS

WONDER WOMAN ISN’T the first female superhero to make it to the big screen – remember Halle Berry’s Catwoman (2004) or Jennifer Garner’s Elektra (2005)? — but she is a big deal nevertheless. For one thing, she’s not a spin-off: she is her own character, her own brand, her own woman. Okay, DC introduced Gal Gadot in the role in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice (hey, the Justice League should have a secretary called Dawn who answers the phone in just that way!), but the upcoming Wonder Woman movie is not a spin-off of that — for one thing, it’s set a century earlier. In fact, the closest analogy to Wonder Woman is Captain America: The First Avenger, which was also set decades ago (during WW2, instead of Wonder Woman’s WW1), and of course completed the circuit of intro movies to kick off The Avengers, just as the next DC Extended Universe movie after Wonder Woman is set to be Justice League. So, no pressure. I imagine that Patty Jenkins, director of Wonder Woman, must both dreading and dreaming of June, when Diana of Themyscira makes her silver screen debut and Jenkins can finally relax. This is her first theatrical release since Monster in 2003, with Charlize Theron (uglified to play serial killer Aileen Wuornos) and Christina Ricci (currently starring in Z: The Beginning of Everything — check out page 56 for an interview with Christina.) Jenkins definitely has a more photogenic main character this time, and one who spends less time killing johns (we hope) — the good news is that so far, all signs point positive. Check out page 42 for Helen O’Hara’s story on Wonder Woman’s invisible plane ride to cinematic stardom. One thing I had no idea about: that the guy who created Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston, was living in an, uh, unconventional domestic situation with his wife and the woman who was the physical inspiration for Diana of Themyscira… and his wife didn’t tie a lasso of truth around his Marstonettes? Sounds like Mrs Marston is the real Wonder Woman in all this. May your Maltesers never wear a groove in the roof of your mouth,

Michael Adams, Liz Beardsworth, Elizabeth Best, Simon Braund, Jeremy Cassar, John Catania, Simon Crook, Nick De Semlyen, Phil De Semlyen, James Dyer, Danny Eccleston, Angie Errigo, Ian Freer, Ed Gibbs, Alex Godfrey, Luke Goodsell, Jethro Haynes, Chris Hewitt, David Hughes, Dan Jolin, Luke Lucas, Danny Mackenzie, Ben McEachen, Jim Mitchell, Justin Metz, Anthony Morris, Ian Nathan, Kim Newman, John Nugent, Helen O’Hara, David Parkinson, Patrick Peters, Nev Pierce, Jonathan Pile, Kate, Poole, Olly Richards, Anna Smith, Damon Wise

ADVERTISING Brand Manager, Men’s Lifestyle South Australian Advertising Queensland Advertising West Australian Advertising Director of Sales Sales Director, NSW & QLD Sales Director, VIC, SA & WA

Aaron Morton 02 9263 9744 Nabula El Mourid 08 8267 5032 Judy Taylor 07 3101 6636 Chris Eyres 08 6160 8964 Fiorella Di Santo Jo Clasby Jaclyn Clements

MARKETING AND CIRCULATION Brand Manager Georgia Mavrakakis 02 9288 9650 Subscriptions Marketing Coordinator Thea Mahony 02 9282 8583 Group Circulation Manager, Men’s & Specialist Paul Weaving Research Director Justin Stone 02 9282 8283

PRODUCTION Production Controller Ian Henn 02 9282 8333 Production Co-Ordinator Dominic Roy 02 9282 8691 General Manager Prepress James Hawkes

EMPIRE UK Editor-In-Chief Terri White Associate Editor Liz Beardsworth International Director Simon Greves

BAUER MEDIA Publisher Ewen Page Publisher Cornelia Schulze

TIM KEEN EDITOR

“I love the coffee here, and the tobacco. But my favourite is the goat-dick wine”

p.55

CLASSIC LINES OF THE MONTH

MARCH 2017

“And now the question comes, well, why are they erect?”

p.66

“We had to organise every shot so people wouldn’t wander out into the street and be hit”

p.77

Empire is published in Australia by Bauer Media Action Sports Pty Limited, part of the Bauer Media Group, ACN 079 430 023, 54-58 Park Street, Sydney, New South Wales, 2000. © 2013, under licence from Bauer Consumer Media Limited. All rights reserved. The trade mark “Empire” and certain material contained herein are owned by Bauer Consumer Media. Printed by PMP Print, 31-35 Heathcote Road, Moorebank, NSW 2170, (02) 9828 1350. Distributed by Gordon & Gotch Australia Pty. Ltd 1300 650 666. Empire accepts no responsibility for loss of or damage to unsolicited contributions. ISSN 2205-0183 PRIVACY NOTICE This issue of Empire is published by Bauer Media Pty Ltd (Bauer).Bauer may use and disclose your information in accordance with our Privacy Policy, including to provide you with your requested products or services and to keep you informed of other Bauer publications, products, services and events. Our Privacy Policy is located at www.bauer-media.com.au/privacy/ It also sets out on how you can access or correct your personal information and lodge a complaint. Bauer may disclose your personal information offshore to its owners, joint venture partners, service providers and agents located throughout the world, including in New Zealand, USA, the Philippines and the European Union. In addition, this issue may contain Reader Offers, being offers, competitions or surveys. Reader Offers may require you to provide personal information to enter or to take part. Personal information collected for Reader Offers may be disclosed by us to service providers assisting Bauer in the conduct of the Reader Offer and to other organisations providing special prizes or offers that are part of the Reader Offer. An opt-out choice is provided with a Reader Offer. Unless you exercise that opt-out choice, personal information collected for Reader Offers may also be disclosed by us to other organisations for use by them to inform you about other products, services or events or to give to other organisations that may use this information for this purpose. If you require further information, please contact Bauer’s Privacy Officer either by email at privacyofficer@ bauer-media.com.au or mail at Privacy Officer Bauer Media Pty Ltd, 54 Park Street, Sydney NSW 2000.

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FAREWELL TO A LEGEND

I pulled my Empire from the mailbox, and teared up upon seeing “A Farewell to Carrie Fisher”. Like a lot of the world, I was absolutely devastated when I heard Carrie had died. She played Princess Leia as smart, tough, independent, fearless and bold. That left a real imprint on the four year old girl watching Star Wars for the first time. I wasn’t a girly girl who went in for the Disney princesses, but Leia was my kind of princess (though I guess technically she is a Disney one now). She has stayed my princess, even when she became a General. Of course, Carrie was far, far more than Leia. Her writing, script doctoring (always wondered why I loved Russo’s character so much in Lethal Weapon 3) and other wonderful performances (Drop Dead Fred anyone?) stand the test of time. Damn I will miss her. Thank you for the tribute and the posters. LAUREN HILLIER, CANBERRA, ACT

She’ll always be remembered as Hollywood royalty, in front of and behind the camera.

LOGAN LOVER

I enjoyed reading the Logan article, Empire, February issue. I will be sad to see Logan come to an end. I have seen all the X-Men movies, and Wolverine movies, and Logan will be no exception. I will treasure this article forever. LINDA BELCHER, INGLE FARM, SA

Look how fresh-faced he was back in the early X-Men movies! Ooh, he’s just a widdle Wolvie!

LETTER OF THE MONTH

I SAW MARK Fellowes’ February letter featuring his visit to the Park Hyatt Hotel that saw Mark and his wife replicate the Scarlett Johansson/ Bill Murray New York Sky Bar Scene and felt compelled to write. I know that readers replicating movie scenes isn’t a new segment, but I thought you might like our own impromptu homage. My wife was having treatment for breast cancer and was therefore hairless; and while walking through the house wearing

Bluetooth headphones with a blinking light on the side, I became inspired. Best of all, I didn’t explain what we were doing; I asked her to stand and look at me without turning her head; then I just Lando’d my way in there and BAM! Instant Lobot and Lando. Nailed it, I feel. DAVE, VIA EMAIL

Nailed it indeed. This one is just too good, even if you managed to wear your Landafro upside down. We hope your wife is making a full recovery — we’re all pulling for you.

Every letter printed this month receives a DVD of Underworld: Blood Wars, starring Kate Beckinsale as the vampire Death Dealer, Selene.

MARCH 2017

realise the heinous crime that you have just committed. Now Empire isn’t just about the posters but it’s the poster we need, not the one we deserve. The fact that it’s March now and you’d release a poster for Kong instead of this masterpiece is just astounding. I’m sure many a fan of Empire would love to see this poster on their walls so please clear up your poster schedule and stop handing out eight Star Wars posters and give smaller films a chance! DENNIS HUI, VIA EMAIL

SHOWDOWN

When I got home and found my new empire mag with this year’s Logan, I had to take a picture of it next to the February 2016 issue with Deadpool on it. Who would win? KLAW X, VIA EMAIL

That’s an interesting question: who would win? They’ve fought in comic books multiple times, and both won some and lost some — but who would win in an onscreen showdown between Ryan and Hugh? Answers to empire@bauer-media.com.au!

NOVOVICH

I was disappointed that Empire didn’t publish a cover with Milla Jovovich for the release of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. Sure, the series has outstayed its welcome (Resident Evil: Overkill could have been a more apt title for the new instalment) but it deserves some kudos. It’s the most successful movie series based on a video game, it’s lasted 14 years, and along with 28 Days Later brought the zombie genre back from the dead and helped usher in a new wave of films and TV shows about the undead. Plus Resident Evil heroine Alice is a kick-arse female action hero that outlasted Lara Croft and Aeon Flux and is only matched for longevity by Selene from the Underworld series. LEE OLIVER, RACCOON CITY

We did run a story on Final Chapter, but we put Hugh Jackman’s grizzled mug on the cover. And we put a kick-arse female action hero on the cover this issue… and we’re sending you a copy of the latest Underworld movie! So, in summation, we’re sorry you live in a fictional biohazard and good luck avoiding the Lickers.

GOLD AND GREY

What’s with the review of McConaughey’s Gold in your January issue. It sounds great but looks more like 50 Shades Of Grey from your preview pic!

Fair enough, because everyone hates Star Wars. Stress no more, Dennis — there is a La La Land poster in this very issue! You can use it to hide your tunnel out of the cinema if Kong is on. Trigger warning: don't look at page 50.

THE ARGUMENT CONTINUES…

This is just sad to see more people disliking one of the Top 5 Best Star Trek films, in my opinion. For Jess’ point, people like John Hurt, Heath Ledger and Charlize Theron are or were (RIP Hurt and Ledger) beautiful people, who turned in their best roles in The Elephant Man, The Dark Knight, and Monster under extensive prosthetics.

Milla’s Dominatrix Carpentry was a thriving sideline.

While Elba started out being a little clunky, his character was quite involving as the movie went on, because the makeup was stripped away to reveal the man inside. And for Ann’s point, how can you not remember that explosive “Sabotage” finale? Or the tribute to Nimoy? Or the flight of the USS Franklin? I implore you to watch it again. Star Trek Beyond is better than many other Star Trek films because it gets the tone, script, action and ALL of the characters right in a way not seen since The Voyage Home. No one is given the short shift like in Into Darkness, and Beyond’s story is new and fresh. It is a fun, enjoyable movie that I even took a non-Trekkie to for her first Trek film and she absolutely loved it. What does that tell you? CHRISTOPHER SPENCER, VIA EMAIL

Okay, we’re closing this discussion before it comes to blows behind the bike shed. Let’s all agree that Star Trek Beyond is definitely one of the best 13 or 14 Star Trek movies around; and that Idris Elba is great in any accent (Stringer Bell!), under prosthetics, if you never see his face at all (Jungle Book, Zootopia) or even on The Bill (yes, he did two episodes of The Bill.)

SPINE QUOTE HONOUR ROLE SPINE QUOTE #191 “I know what it’s like to want to die … How you hurt yourself on the outside, to try to kill the thing on the inside.”

THE CONNECTION “Susanna Kaysen wrote the memoir Girl, Interrupted, which was turned into a movie by James Mangold — also the director of Logan. Which I can’t wait for. ”

THE WINNER Simon Dixon

TRENT EDWARDS, WOY WOY, NSW

In fact it was a suuuuuper close-up photo of the cigarette ash on Kenny Wells’ tie. (For those who didn’t see it, the picture unlinked from the page and printed as a grey box. Sigh.)

LA LA LOVER

Why was there never a La La Land poster? Forget that it came out in December, forget that La La Land won 7 Golden Globes, do you

THE REWARD An Empire cap for you! Send answers to empire@ bauer-media .com.au

MARCH 2017

PULSE-Q UIC KENING MOVIE AND TV NEWS

MARCH 2017

FIRST LOOK JUSTICE LEAGUE OUT 16 NOVEMBER

PREMIER LEAGUE Batman has new superpals in Justice League WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

SO HERE THEY are. After years stuck in development hell, including a George Miller version that got as far as building sets and casting (Armie Hammer as Batman! Common as Green Lantern! DJ Cotrona as Superman!), the Justice League — DC Comics’ ultimate band of costumed crusaders — have finally arrived. Well, almost. In this shot from Zack Snyder’s follow-up to Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice, one member is missing — Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, the king of the seas. But Ben Affleck’s Batman, Ezra Miller’s speedster the Flash, Ray Fisher’s cyborg, erm, Cyborg and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman are a decent foursome by any standards. And it’s their interactions that could form the surprising heart of Snyder’s sequel. “These guys — Aquaman, Cyborg, Flash — really are just fun to explore,” says the director. “They’re just so fresh. They’re on the edge of their powers at different times in this story and that’s really fun.” One other member of the Justice League is missing from this pic: Henry Cavill’s Superman, in a box at the end of Dawn Of Justice. But death is like a loss of form — merely temporary. “Superman does play a big part in this movie,” teases Snyder. “His presence, and lack of presence, are big story points…” You can’t keep a good Man Of Steel down.

MARCH 2017

JOHN HURT 1940-2017 Empire pays tribute to the talents of a true acting legend

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

HERE’S SOMETHING YOU can try at home. Gather together a group of friends and ask them to name their favourite John Hurt performance. Chances are no two people will pick the same turn. That says it all about the versatility of one of Britain’s greatest screen actors. There was no shortage of great roles in the Hurt locker. He was an actor of great tenderness and compassion, teasing tears from the toughest of ducts even when buried under a swathe of prosthetics in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (for which he was nominated for an Oscar, losing to an actor buried under a swathe of blubber, Raging Bull’s Robert De Niro). He had a gift for whimsy, as evidenced in the Hellboy movies. He could be tragic (1984 and Scandal). He could be sinister (his ranting dictator in V For Vendetta is more relevant and chilling than ever). He was an actor who could do anything, and proved it by doing everything. He was so talented, in fact, that he endured things that would have floored lesser people, let alone lesser actors. He starred in Heaven’s Gate and continued to get work. And, most famous of all, he had an alien rip its way out of his ribcage and lived to tell the tale. It’s easy to think that Alien, and the role of Kane, the first member of the crew of the Nostromo that we see and the first to die (as it was, sadly, in real life), was Hurt’s breakthrough

MARCH 2017

ANDY GOTTS/CAMERAPRESS, LONDON, ALAMY, GETTY

Clockwise from main: John Hurt in November 2015; As Max with Brad Davis’ Billy in Midnight Express; Playing Winston Smith in 1984 movie 1984; As John Merrick in David Lynch’s 1980 adaptation of The Elephant Man; The doomed Kane, alongside Tom Skerritt’s Dallas in Alien (1979).

on the big screen. In truth, he’d been around for a decade and more, with an excellent supporting turn in A Man For All Seasons under his belt. He’d even been nominated for an Oscar just the year before for his heart-wrenching performance in Midnight Express. But Ridley Scott’s Alien, and that dinner table scene where Kane’s sudden bout of indigestion turns into something no amount of Rennies could remedy, made one heck of a splash. Literal and figurative. And make no mistake — being an active participant in one of the greatest death scenes in cinema history could have confined Hurt to a career of pigeonholing, typecasting and, “Hey, aren’t you…?” encounters in the street. Just ask Janet Leigh, who struggled to emerge from Psycho’s shower. Hurt, though, strode fearlessly onwards. So much so he was even able to take the piss out of Alien, recreating the chestburster scene for Mel Brooks in Spaceballs (“Not again!”). Perhaps it was his prolific nature that dulled the impact (he had 145 movie credits to his name at the time of his death, with four more to come). Perhaps it was the diversity of a career that could take in Harry Potter one minute, Dogville the next. He just kept doing whatever interested him, whether it was a voiceover gig (he was the first actor to play Aragorn, for Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord Of The Rings; Bakshi tweeted that most of Hurt’s performance was nailed in first takes), or

TV, where he acted alongside Muppets (Jim Henson’s The Storyteller), breathed life into a dragon (Merlin) and shocked everyone by showing up as The War Doctor in Doctor Who. Or perhaps it was just that he was so bloody good. With his rumpled sofa of a face and his overflowing Friday-night ashtray of a voice, he was born to be a character actor. And few were better at imbuing their eyes with wickedness, wit and wisdom. He died in January following a battle with cancer which had forced him to bow out of what would have been his last stage role, opposite Kenneth Branagh in The Entertainer. His last screen role — as Neville Chamberlain in Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour — will be seen later this year. But he can be most recently seen in a small role as an Irish priest in Jackie. It’s a movie that’s been all about Natalie Portman’s remarkable performance as Jackie Onassis, but from the second Hurt turns up, looking understandably tired and frail with close-cropped white hair and a goatee, you can’t take your eyes off him as he guides Jackie through a major decision. It might be too slight for consideration when discussing his best performances, but it reminds us that here was an actor who couldn’t do anything other than tell the truth. Here was an actor whose intelligence and innate decency shone through. Here was an actor who will be bloody well missed.

MARCH 2017

STORM WARNING

My Cousin Rachel brings passions to the West Country. Just don’t mention the other ‘P’ word

Top: Philip (Sam Claflin) and Rachel (Rachel Weisz) ‘enjoy’ a picnic date. Left: Weisz as the alluring but mysterious widow.

WORDS PHIL DE SEMLYEN

LOOK BEYOND ITS West Country settings, Georgian finery and stormy emotions, because My Cousin Rachel is definitely not just you-know-what for the big screen. “Poldark did loom lusciously over us,” admits director Roger Michell of his take on Daphne Du Maurier’s 19th century-set romance, “but we didn’t want to invite comparisons, because we’re not quite in the same ballpark. This pushes and pulls you in all kinds of surprising ways.” The Notting Hill director is making edgier use of the source novel than the stolid 1952 Olivia de Havilland/Richard Burton version. Its central love affair, between Sam Claflin’s innocent heir Philip and the older, more worldly

MARCH 2017

Rachel (Rachel Weisz), is complex, taboo and, it turns out, sinister. “He’s intoxicated and almost obsessed by her, and then he discovers that it looks like she’s trying to kill him,” he explains. When Empire catches him, Michell is inching closer to locking the picture (“I’ll let off a firework, release a balloon, kiss the children,” he jokes. “It’s always a massive moment”). As he notes, it’s in the editing suite that a movie really “sits up and tells you what it is”. In this case, it’s a heady brew of period lushness and an edgy sexual subtext that’s pretty risqué even by today’s standards. “In the book, Rachel’s character is 35 and he’s nearly 25, but I’ve pushed that age difference,” reveals the director, who

adapted Du Maurier’s novel himself. “There’s something quite transgressive about this possible relationship between a son and his stepmother. That’s what I think the book is getting at.” Don’t expect typical prestige fare, in other words. “It’s dark and weird and fucked up and interesting,” says Michell. “Du Maurier writes with ambiguity, and there’s nothing cinema does better than be ambiguous.” Much less ambiguous is Michell’s naked marketing pitch for the film. “Imagine a Jane Austen film where people take their kit off,” he summarises with a laugh. Well, we’re sold. MY COUSIN RACHEL IS IN CINEMAS FROM 8 JUNE.

Available 8th March *While stocks Last

Order online at

www.viavision.com.au

MARCH 2017

ON-SET EXCLUSIVE CHIPS OUT 6 APRIL

BACK ON PATROL The ’70s cops mount up for an explosive new spin WORDS TONY HORKINS

Clockwise from above: Bike buddies: Officer Frank ‘Ponch’ Poncherello (Michael Peña) and Officer Jon Baker (Dax Shepard) hit the road; Shepard tries out a move with stunt performer Zedric Harris; Ponch and Jon unsaddled and in action; Shepard directs his big bad, a ruthless former cop-turned-villain played by Vincent D’Onofrio.

ONE LESSER-KNOWN fact about California’s usually sun-drenched High Desert is that temperatures can get seriously low. So as the clock ticks past midnight on the outdoor set of TV-show-to-movie project CHiPs, the temperature slips below zero as everyone involved shivers and waits. Director, star, writer and producer Dax Shepard is aware of the engulfing misery. “Worst set visit ever?” he asks cheerfully between takes. “Top five?” As it happens, not even close. Yes, extremities may have severed communication with brain, but this remote Palmdale location, an hour or so north of Los Angeles, is currently hosting high-flying motorcycle stunts and throw-him-through-thewall fight scenes. Things could definitely be worse. Many sacred cows in America’s TV back catalogue have suffered on their journey to the big screen, but CHiPs is a passion project from which Shepard wouldn’t be deterred. The original late-’70s show featured two LA motorcycle cops — Ponch and Jon — who did little more than ride around in the sun in short-sleeved shirts and tight trousers getting into minor-league scrapes. Shepard, though, had an idea. “I figured there’s a cool version of this, a Lethal Weapon / Bad Boys version,” he explains. He took it to Warner Bros., and the studio was impressed enough to offer him writing, directing, producing and starring credits, which he gleefully describes as “an ego bonanza”. Casting Michael Peña as Ponch, and his real wife Kristen Bell as his ex, he set to work defining the tone, moving away from the ironic nods of other TV-to-movie projects. The only thing he plans to pay homage to is “how much shit we blow up”. Back on set, Shepard is busy fulfilling two of his four roles, directing Peña and his stunt double in a motorbike action shot while sitting astride his own motorcycle, calling action on himself and his co-star. He couldn’t look happier. “I’ve never had more fun working,” he grins.

MARCH 2017

THE GRILL OCTAVIA SPENCER

The Hidden Figures star loves serial killers and hates skunks. WORDS OLLY RICHARDS

Do you have a nickname? I have several, but my really close friends call me ‘Rock’. When I moved to LA I was working on a movie and we would go out to karaoke. I’m not the best singer, but I can carry a note. People on the movie started calling me ‘Rocktavia’. Then it became Rock and it just stuck. Obvious next question, but what’s your karaoke song of choice? Gladys Knight’s Midnight Train To Georgia. As long as you can get the humming parts right, you don’t need to hit the notes. It’s about commitment. Which movie have you seen more than any other? There are three: The Color Purple, The Shawshank Redemption and Driving Miss Daisy. No matter when they’re on, I’m going to have to watch them and I’m going to be late. Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever thrown up? An elevator. I had a bad hotdog at a movie theatre. It was coming out of both ends, honey. I thought I was going to make it home but I did not. It was a bad time. It was bad, bad, bad.

MARCH 2017

What character were you in your first school play? It was something I wrote aged six. It was Black History Month and I was Harriet Tubman [humanitarian and abolitionist]. It was a monologue. Well, it did have one other girl in it, but I didn’t give her any lines. The spotlight was mine. I wrote it, I get the lines. As a child, whose posters did you have on your wall? Michael Jackson, Michael J. Fox and Diana Ross. I just loved Diana Ross’ long hair. This was ’80s era, when she was doing Muscles. When did you last walk out of a movie? I don’t. If I’ve spent my money and I’ve bought my popcorn, you’ve got me. If people took the time to make it, then I’ll stick with it to the end. Aside from acting, what one thing do you do better than anyone else you know? I solve mysteries, honey. I’m a sleuth at heart. I’m a forensic nut. I know everyone is a forensic nut now, but I can tell you I was into it long before it became this cool thing. You know who else is? Tilda Swinton. We were on Snowpiercer

and we were talking about all these serial killers we knew about. Do you have a speciality dish you cook? I can’t cook, but I will wash the dishes. I’m a very useful friend to have. Have you ever written fanmail? When I was a kid I would write to lots of people. I remember I wrote to Michael Jackson. I think I got back one of the posters that was on my wall. What is the worst smell in the world? Skunk is the worst. They smell worse than sulphur and they love my backyard. There are five of them stinking it up. There’s some kind of skunk party going on at my house. When have you been most starstruck. Oh, I’m still starstruck all the time. I met Steven Spielberg, who I’ve idolised since I was a 13-year-old kid. And Oprah Winfrey. I think when I stop being starstruck it’s time to get out of this business. HIDDEN FIGURES IS IN CINEMAS NOW.

A RIVETING AND REVEALING EXCHANGE BETWEEN A CRIMINOLOGIST AND A MURDERER

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MASTER BLASTERS The Guardians sequel sees Star-Lord, Gamora, Rocket and co tooling up for more mayhem WORDS DAN JOLIN

CHRIS PRATT WANTS to make one thing very clear about Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2: “You can expect to see everything you loved in the first movie, but you’re also going to… but it… oh, I should rephrase that.” Clearing his throat, the man who plays Star-Lord (aka Peter Quill) has another go: “Don’t expect to see everything you saw in the first movie. But expect to be charmed and thrilled and entertained like you were watching the first movie.” For most of us, ‘more of the same’ would have done just fine. Guardians Of The Galaxy was a triumph of group chemistry, interstellar spectacle and action-driven comedy. Still, writer-director James Gunn knew he had to push Peter, Drax and their fellow loveable spacerogues on to bigger challenges, with Star-Lord finally tracking down his long-lost dad, played by Kurt Russell. For Pratt, the experience of playing Russell Jr was “humbling and exceptional. He’s surpassed any expectation I could have had.” And if you had any doubt, Russell was bang-on casting as the mysterious and “very ancient” being referred to in the first film… “Well, I don’t know how old he is,” laughs Pratt, “but he told me that when he was [doing a] TV show as a kid, he heard about this new band. Called The Beatles…” Who knows, maybe they’ll make it onto Vol. 2’s Awesome Mix.

MARCH 2017

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SHE’S IN FASHION Personal Shopper sees Kristen Stewart make a bold career move WORDS PHIL DE SEMLYEN

KRISTEN STEWART IS putting paid to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous adage about American lives having no second acts. Aged just 26, she’s already into the third of her career. She emerged as a star of the $1.3 billion-grossing Twilight franchise, earning the kind of fame that tends to open every door in Hollywood. Then came a brief, unhappy dalliance with another studio franchise, Snow White & The Huntsman, before she began taking roles in a series of

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smaller, thoughtful indies that have showcased much more of her range than bashing CG beasties with a big sword ever could. “I think people are realising they underestimated her,” says Personal Shopper director Olivier Assayas of his new leading lady. “That she’s more than a character out of Twilight. She’s a pretty unique actor, because she’s extremely smart and she’s got sharp instincts for cinema.” Judging by reactions on the festival circuit, Assayas’ spooky art-horror will consolidate the former K-Stew’s status as an actress of serious note. Set

in the opulent arrondissements of Paris, it has her playing Maureen Cartwright, a haughty supermodel’s (Nora Von Waltstätten) personal shopper who finds herself tormented by someone — or something — supernatural. “Kristen gave a lot to it because everything you ask her to do, she has to feel it herself,” says Assayas. “It was exhausting for her because she was carrying the film.” It’s a demanding and often lonely on-screen vigil. Beyond spearheading every scene in the film, often with no other actor to spark off, Stewart was required to master a whole new skill — and in record time. “She’d never ridden a scooter before, but she had a two-hour lesson and

ALAMY

Clockwise from opposite page: Personal Shopper’s Maureen Cartwright; With Robert Pattinson in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse; Alongside Julianne Moore in Still Alice; On the set of Personal Shopper with director Olivier Assayas; In Personal Shopper. Inset: Into The Wild’s Tracy Tatro.

the next evening she was out driving around Paris in the rain,” remembers Assayas. “I thought, ‘My god, she’s courageous.’” Stewart’s gameness and willingness to pitch in on-set made a big impression. The director describes her as “the opposite” of a movie star. “She’s chatting with the technicians, sitting on a box drinking coffee, and she’s always ready to shoot.” Other established filmmakers have clocked Stewart’s gifts, too. In the last 12 months, she’s worked with Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women), Ang Lee (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk) and Woody Allen (Café Society). She turned heads with a stellar supporting role alongside Julianne Moore in her Oscar-winning drama Still Alice. Arguably, though, it was Assayas’ own Clouds Of Sils Maria that launched Phase 3 of Stewart’s

career. The 2014 drama saw her more than holding her own opposite Juliette Binoche and winning a César Award for her troubles. Assayas first spotted her as a teenager in Into The Wild. “She instantly stood out,” he recalls. “It was kind of, ‘Who’s that girl?’ It didn’t cross my mind that I would ever work with her, but she really struck me.” The impression was reinforced by watching two Twilight films, but it was via a producer they had in common that the pair finally met. “We had an informal meeting in Paris,” remembers the director. “Very early in a conversation with an actor you realise if you can function with that person or not. And I loved Kristen.” The feeling, it’s safe to say, is mutual. PERSONAL SHOPPER IS IN CINEMAS FROM 13 APRIL.

MARCH 2017

Goldie locks: Amy Schumer and screen mum Goldie Hawn on holiday. Below right: Emily (Schumer) is hanging on the telephone.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

Snatched unleashes Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer on an unsuspecting South America

WORDS OLLY RICHARDS

THERE WILL BE teenagers watching Snatched that have never seen one of its stars on the big screen before, because the last time she made a movie they were not yet born. The most recent cinematic appearance by Goldie Hawn — Oscar-winner, one of the great comic actresses of the ’80s — was in 2002’s The Banger Sisters. In Snatched, she’s leaving unofficial retirement to play the mother of Amy Schumer’s Emily, a recently dumped narcissist who takes mum on the dream Ecuador holiday she should have been enjoying with her boyfriend. Sadly, during this bonding ritual, the pair are mistakenly kidnapped.

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“Amy was doggedly pushing for Goldie from the beginning,” says director Jonathan Levine (Warm Bodies). “Not that I was resistant in any way, but I wasn’t all that well versed in Goldie Hawn’s films.” What followed was a swift cram of the Hawn back catalogue before he met his potential co-lead. “I’m embarrassed to say, but I’d never seen Private Benjamin before. My god, she’s incredible.” Schumer, who cemented herself as a big-deal comedy actress with 2015’s Trainwreck, was much more familiar with Hawn’s work and wanted a co-lead with very different, but equally polished, comedy chops. “The second I saw them together, it worked,” says Levine. Written by Schumer and her sister Kim Caramele, from an earlier script by Ghostbusters’ Katie Dippold, Snatched marries the New Yorker’s bold, unembarrassable tone with plenty of her trademark off-the-cuff riffs. It’s a style that’s only really come into fashion since Hawn withdrew from the industry. “Oh, she can do it, though,” says Levine. “She could do anything you gave her, but when Amy’s doing that kind of stuff, Goldie is essentially the straight man.” Basic mother-daughter decorum meant that Hawn was spared the most out-there Schumerisms, recalls Levine. “I mean, she’s playing her mother. Nobody is their most fucked-up self around their mother.” The action involved in the movie’s ‘wrong

woman’ set-up is a departure for both Hawn and Schumer. Being kidnapped in Ecuador entails a lot of trying to escape and running from bad guys. “Goldie probably has more experience there,” says Levine. “Goldie was 70 years old and I was concerned about her running around, but turns out I needn’t have worried. She was in better shape than any other person on that set. The only difficulty was telling her it was time to stop.” SNATCHED IS IN CINEMAS FROM 11 MAY.

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THE DEBATE

SHOULD THE OSCARS TAKE COMEDY SERIOUSLY? It’s been 39 years since Annie Hall won Best Picture. With comic performances and comedies overlooked again this year, is it time the Academy recognised its least-loved genre?

ILLUSTRATIONS DAVID MAHONEY

YES

CHRIS HEWITT, CONTRIBUTOR

THIS YEAR’S OSCARS don’t recognise some actors who put in cracking turns in 2016. Love & Friendship’s Kate Beckinsale and Tom Bennett. Hunt For The Wilderpeople’s Sam Neill and Julian Dennison. And, despite a ‘well done for making loads of money’ Golden Globes nomination, Deadpool’s Ryan Reynolds. The connective tissue between all these performances is, of course, that they’re

MARCH 2017

designed, first and foremost, to make you laugh. The Academy, though, doesn’t do comedy. The Academy doesn’t get comedy. It’s fearful of it. Slightly suspicious. Even snobbish. When it does recognise a comedy film or performance, it’s almost always in the sort of movies directed by Woody Allen or James L. Brooks. The Academy is the sort of organisation that approves of Ryan Gosling in La La Land but sneers at him when he’s equally brilliant in The Nice Guys. Anyone can lie down in a puddle, shiver a bit and grasp a gong months later. But to make people cry with laughter requires a rare combo of natural talent, technical mastery and diligent preparation. Take Steve Carell. His performance as Brick Tamland in Anchorman is one for the ages. He didn’t just turn up on set, stick on a pair of big glasses, part his hair and do a funny

voice. Yet in order to get an Oscar nomination he had to resort to staring sullenly into space in Foxcatcher. I would argue his performance in Anchorman was worthy of at least that. It’s certainly more memorable, and has had a greater cultural impact than any of the five turns that got the nod in 2005’s Best Supporting Actor category. (Alan Alda, Thomas Haden Church, Jamie Foxx, Clive Owen and Morgan Freeman, who won, in case you were drawing a blank.) And now we can add Beckinsale, Reynolds et al to a list that includes In The Loop’s Peter Capaldi (worthy of awards as Malcolm Tucker when he’s on TV; not so on the big screen it seems), Melissa McCarthy for Spy and Jim Carrey in anything where he sings through his arse. And all because of the cowardice of the Academy. It needs to stop. Frankly, it’s no laughing matter.

“Shunned by the Oscas? Oh no! I’ll have to lie down on my bed of cash to recover!”

OLLY RICHARDS, CONTRIBUTOR

THE OSCAR VOTERS do recognise comedy. To say otherwise is nonsense. Comedies don’t often win, but they’re nominated frequently. Since it’s vanishingly rare that a comedy is the best movie of the year, it’s hard to argue they’re robbed of their rightful prize. When they’re doing their job, which they don’t always, award bodies are supposed to recognise the best in filmmaking. A very funny comedy isn’t necessarily a well-structured movie.

You can remember a comedy as being terrific because it made you laugh a lot, but that’s a different thing to being a great film, in the storytelling sense. Deadpool, for example, has some very clever gags and set-pieces — the opening sequence stands out — and a born-todo-it performance by Ryan Reynolds, but as a piece of filmmaking it’s pretty scrappy. Its plot barely hangs together and its ending is a bit of a wet fart. It’s a good time at the cinema, but it’s not a shining example of filmmaking. Deadpool has a Writers Guild nod for its writers and Reynolds got a Golden Globe nom, so if anything it’s exceeding award expectation. The comedies that get a lot of Oscar love are the ones with something beneath the jokes. Movies such as Up, Inside Out, The Artist, Silver Linings Playbook, The Wolf Of Wall Street or The Big Short send you away not just amused but with something to think about.

They are, mostly, examples of exceptional craft. It’s true that some deserving comedy performances get forgotten — Paul Giamatti in Sideways comes to mind — but that’s equally true of dramatic performances. Oscar voters always give at least one slot to an unremarkable turn by someone famous — godlike as she is, this is frequently Meryl Streep — instead of the more interesting work by the lesser known. Renée Zellweger (the Bridget Jones films), Johnny Depp (the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise), Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) and Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder) were all nominated for roles that were purely clowning, and rightly so. You’ll get no argument here that Kate Beckinsale should be in the running for Love & Friendship, but not because Oscar hates comedy. It will be because Oscar always leaves out some of the best. It’s part of the fun.

MARCH 2017

THE EMPIRE GUIDE TO EVERYTH IN G IN CIN EMAS TH IS M ONT H

HHHHH EXCELLENT 30

MARCH 2017

HHHH GOOD

HHH OKAY

HH POOR

H AWFUL

T2 TRAINSPOTTING HHHHH

OUT NOW RATED R18+ / 117 MINS

Danny Boyle Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Anjela Nedyalkova DIRECTOR CAST

PLOT After living in Amsterdam for the past 20 years following his 1996 drug swindle, Mark Renton (McGregor) returns to Edinburgh to reconnect with old pals Spud/Daniel (Bremner) and Sick Boy/Simon (Miller). Yet as he moves into a business partnership with Sick Boy, Begbie (Carlyle), the psycho he betrayed, escapes from prison.

“HELLO MARK,” SAYS Jonny Lee Miller’s Simon aka Sick Boy to Ewan McGregor’s Renton near the start of T2 Trainspotting. “So what have you been up to… for 20 years?” It’s a question that felt like it would never get an answer. Danny Boyle’s 1996 adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel became the movie avatar of Cool Britannia, born out of the ashes and anger of Thatcher, hopped up on the sweaty, squalid optimism of dance culture (“Drive boy dog boy/ Dirty numb angel boy”). Yet a middling follow-up novel (Porno), well-documented director-star issues and plain old fear of botching up a beloved original have kept it from multiplexes. Until now. In a disjointed start, we learn their fates. Two decades on, Renton has swapped running from security guards to running on treadmills, high purely on endorphins. Since double-crossing his best friends in a drug deal, he’s been living in Amsterdam yet — for reasons never spelled out, possibly guilt — decides to return to Edinburgh to look up old pals; Sick Boy is running an extortion business filming the well-off with his prostitute/business partner Veronika (Nedyalkova); Spud (Bremner) is still on smack and estranged from his wife (Shirley Henderson) and kid. And then there’s Begbie (Carlyle), locked up inside but with a stomach-churning way of getting out of prison, before revisiting

his wife and son, and still harbouring a grudge against Renton. How this all builds won’t be spoiled here. McGregor and Miller play the shifting dynamics between friends well — especially given one left the other high and dry. Their mutual attraction to Veronika also adds intrigue and Nedyalkova makes her skimpy role seem rounded and likeable. Best of all is Carlyle’s Begbie, still a terrifying hard man — he is cinema’s greatest C-bomber — but especially in later scenes revealing vulnerabilities that make you feel for him. Bremner’s Spud is the least served — bizarrely he becomes the group’s stenographer but isn’t given much more to round out his endearing idiot routine. Pointedly, during Renton’s updating of his “Choose life” spiel he utters, “Choose watching history repeat itself.” It’s a mantra that pervades T2 Trainspotting. If the first film is really about the joy of being young — the hedonism, the mistakes, the camaraderie — T2 is about the disappointments of growing old — the limitations, the regrets, the need for reconnection. The shared past of these four friends is inextricably intertwined in their present and this is where the poignancy lives. Bravely Boyle has made a mostly sombre film about how fortysomething lives work out and it’s well observed and well-acted. Yet is this what you want from a Trainspotting film? There is a ten-minute section where Renton and Sick Boy have to improvise a song about the Battle Of The Boyne in a pro-Protestant club followed by a tribute to George Best scored to John Barry’s 007 theme that captures some of the old zest and energy. There is also a fantastic split-screen scene in a toilet cubicle. Stylistically Boyle still trades in the original’s blend of hard-nosed realism and flights of fantasy, but his grasp on technique and tone is not as tight as first time round. The soundtrack, a mixture of the old (Queen, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Blondie) and new (Young Fathers, Wolf Alice) also doesn’t create the same impact (what could?). The Prodigy remix of Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life in some sense sums the film up. It rides along similar lines but is just not quite as good. IAN FREER VERDICT In

some ways T2 shares elements with its Terminator namesake. It’s inventive, wellplayed and surprising, but it doesn’t reimagine the original in quite the same glorious way.

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FIST FIGHT HHHHH

OUT NOW / RATED MA15+ / 91 MINS

Richie Keen Charlie Day, Ice Cube, Jillian Bell

DIRECTOR CAST

MILD-MANNERED English teacher Andy Campbell (Charlie Day) and volatile history teacher Mr Strickland (Ice Cube) clash during an anarchic last-day-of-school — Strickland challenges Campbell to a fight, Campbell resorts to ever-more-desperate schemes to get out of it. It’s a simple premise that never gets derailed, despite unnecessary machinations that complicate matters with twisted semi-logic; but director Richie Keen (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) finds the laughs more often than not, mostly thanks to his hard-working cast (Day and Cube are on top form; Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Tracy Morgan and Kumail Nanjiani all slay), a series of improbable pranks from the graduating students, and a unique talent show performance from Campbell’s daughter (Alexa Nisenson). MB

DAVID STRATTON: A CINEMATIC LIFE HHHHH

OUT MARCH 9 / RATED TBC / 101 MINS DIRECTOR Sally

Aitken Stratton, Margaret Pomeranz, Nicole Kidman, Jack Thompson, Bryan Brown, Jackie Weaver, George Miller CAST David

JASPER JONES HHHHH

OUT NOW RATED M / 105 MINS

Rachel Perkins Levi Miller, Toni Collette, Hugo Weaving, Aaron McGrath, Angourie Rice, Dan Wyllie DIRECTOR CAST

AN ENORMOUSLY AFFECTIONATE but not obsequious look at Australia’s King Of Critics, told through the films he’s loved and anecdotes from the actors and film makers he’s worked with (and clashed with) over his long and storied career. Unexpectedly sweet and moving, as Stratton looks back over a life spent almost obsessively watching films, from growing up in the UK during WW2, to his beloved adopted home in Australia. Stratton has watched over 25,000 films in his life (he catalogues all of them) — to put that in context, if you watched one movie every day for 50 years, that’s still only 18,000 films. A remarkable life. TK

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Geeky Charlie Bucktin (Levi Miller) and town outcast Jasper Jones (Aaron McGrath) are drawn together over a mysterious tragedy, forcing Charlie to confront the undercurrent of ugliness in his small town that breaches into clear view; and his feelings for a missing girl’s sister. PLOT

IT’S ALWAYS A delicate task adapting a beloved book, but director Rachel Perkins (Bran Nue Dae) has captured the heart of the setting (rural WA in the 1960s) and of the characters of

Craig Silvey’s award-winning novel. Perkins and cinematographer Mark Wareham cannily, if not always lovingly, recreate the isolation of old country Australia: the big cities seem as remote as Vietnam, and the town is less an outpost than their entire world. The film looks beautiful; but it suffers from some pacing issues, perhaps because of the slightly episodic nature of the script — since some strands of the story barely connect with each other, Perkins has to juggle to fit them all in, and perhaps would have benefitted from downplaying some minor storylines to give more oxygen to the important ones. Charlie’s instant friendship with Jasper seems unearned, especially given the circumstances; and since all Jasper apparently needs from Charlie is to not tell anyone his secret — well, Jasper could have achieved that by not telling Charlie. Likewise, Charlie’s fledgling romance with Eliza ramps up at warp speed — some coming-ofage films would take the entire movie just on this one relationship, but here we go from first meeting

bonus feature

ART OF ADAPTATION Director Rachel Perkins on the journey from page to screen

What was it like working with Craig Silvey, the author of the book — was there any arm-wrestling over creative control? I have a great respect for writers because I think that they are the originators of the work. So I come to adaptation with a good deal of respect. What I was doing was massaging it into a very different form… but you have to hang on to what you love about the book. So it was more like, can we build the role of the mother, because that’s going to be a great Australian actress and we need that role to be fully dimensional to get the quality of actress like Toni Collette. Can we show some more lightness to her character as well as the strain that she’s under. It was a really productive collaboration and in fact we’re going to work on something else together, we’re going to try it again.

to eternal love in about four scenes flat. But there’s more than enough goodwill to carry you through the potholes, not least from a clutch of really terrific performances. Toni Collette is utterly fantastic as Charlie’s mum, torn between familial love and duty, and a restless hungry spirit. Hugo Weaving nails the role of Mad Jack Lionel, being gored by twin horns of desperation and resignation. Angourie Rice is sweetness over steel as Eliza Wishart, sister of the tragic Laura; and Aaron McGrath captures both cynicism and naivety as the maligned Jasper Jones. But it’s Levi Miller as Charlie Bucktin that you can’t take your eyes off, glowing with angelic vulnerability, his big heart growing steadily more bruised as the cruel reality of his hometown is revealed to him. TIM KEEN VERDICT Could

have focussed more tightly on the core story, but evocative set design and lenswork, and some stunning performances, brings this in for a safe landing.

What was the shoot like? It was filmed down in Pemberton in WA. That choice of location was based a lot around budget, we had to find a town that looked like it could be from that period without too much art department expense. We were fortunate in finding a town that hadn’t been changed much. But the other great thing is that the locals really embraced the story as a Western Australian work, and they got so excited that a movie had come to their town, people opened up their homes to us and volunteered as extras. Some of the crowd scenes we couldn’t have done without [the local volunteers.] The community support was a huge factor in realising the film. We were shooting interiors in one house, and the woman happened to have Craig’s book sitting on her bedside table. So we signed it for her without her knowing, and when she picked up the book there was this autograph from Craig saying “Thanks for letting us use your house.” It was really sweet. There’s some thematic similarities with One Night The Moon: there’s a missing girl and an investigation hampered by racism. It actually hadn’t occurred to me the similarities, until you said it then… Definitely the context of a small town that has certain positions on race is well-known territory for me, but the things that drew me to it are the things that drew people to the original work — the hook of the murder mystery, that’s why I couldn’t put the book down, and the humour in it, the lightness and the beautiful dialogue, and the classic coming-of-age story.

Levi Miller is amazing as Charlie. He came as a complete package, I must say, he came fully developed, more experienced than me in some ways. He did Pan, y’know? And he came along to set with his mother, he’s just a really wellrounded actor who can just reach into himself and pull those things out. Casting is 95 per cent of the job, or whatever that saying is, and getting him was key. And his age [he was 13 during filming] just makes the story that much more convincing, because he is of that age where he’s still talking about superheroes, girls are still challenging to him. He looks even younger in those shorts and sandals… Ha ha, I know, when he first came out in those shorts, the high-waisters, he just has that vulnerability. When I came to do ADR [re-recording some lines of dialogue] his voice had changed completely, it had dropped, and we had to tune up his vocals in the mix. We caught him on the cusp really. We knew in the casting, adolescents can change at any minute, they turn into young men, so we had to get him while he was boyish. And Aaron McGrath is great. Yeah, he’s a beautiful guy. He makes really good choices, Aaron, he’s subtle and he never plays cliché. He goes for a real truth, and he’s not hugely experienced but he brings life experience. He brings real heart. His interpretation of Jasper Jones is really interesting — he said early on, Jasper isn’t this hard-arse kid, that’s how people see him but he isn’t that person. And I realised that’s true, you can play this role much softer than you’d expect. He can be more gentle because he’s not what people see him as. Toni Collette is so terrific, she takes a role which could have been quite unsympathetic and makes it much more approachable. Like with the dancing scene in the kitchen. Yeah, that was one of the scenes we added to show warmth, that this lady has a life, that was something we brought to the adaptation. Her performance is incredible. We didn’t rehearse, she doesn’t like to do that, she just comes along and does her stuff… and oh my god, I thought she was incredible. So I didn’t have to do much. She moved her schedule around to do the film, which is pretty amazing since she’s a Hollywood star. She was spectacular. Compared to your body of work, the film is less concerned with race than we expected. The book talks about being a half-caste and whatever, but film is a different medium — you can see that he’s darker, the visual tells so much. And I think people understand that Australia has racism as part of its origins. We didn’t have to be so explicit, it would have been too obvious and it would have detracted from the main narrative. Racism is one of the elements that sets the story up, but it’s not essentially about that.

MARCH 2017

THE SALESMAN HHHHH

OUT NOW RATED M / 124 MINS

Asghar Farhadi Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti, Babak Karimi DIRECTOR CAST

PLOT Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) are actors in Tehran, rehearsing a production of Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman. When their flat is damaged, they temporarily move into a new flat — but a shocking encounter with an acquaintance of the previous tenant throws their lives into chaos.

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THE RAPE/REVENGE subgenre doesn’t exactly drip with prestige, tending to descend into celebrations of male rage in films such as Death Wish. But trust Asghar Farhadi, Iranian cinema’s leading light in the West since the success of A Separation, to bring some class to proceedings. There’s a seriousness of moral inquiry here that could only come from a culture where shame weighs so heavy. As the central marriage strains under the weight of the assault and Emad’s (Hosseini) clumsy reaction, the question of this shame and where it belongs grows to define proceedings — it’s not often you can call a film wise, but as our sympathies shift along with the complexities of the situation, this one certainly is. Taking off from pre-revolutionary films such as Qeysar — also a rape/revenge narrative, but far more macho — the central couple are polite, middle-class people enjoying a comfortable life in

Tehran. Censorship means the job of the woman whose former flat they move into is only hinted at, but it’s pretty clear what “promiscuous” is code for. The central assault is left vague for the same reasons, but while its exact nature is oblique, Alidoosti’s superb performance fills in the blanks — alternately stand-off-ish and clingy, she sells beautifully the disorientation of trauma, but also the decency of not wanting cheap justice. Hosseini is equally terrific as her husband, charting a both plausible and subtle decline from being the most popular teacher at his school to being the kind of man who’s tempted by simple revenge — all while conveying his bewilderment and confusion as he muddles through an amateurish search for his wife’s attacker. For all Farhadi’s commitment to Iranian film’s tradition of arty types frowning in flats, he’s actually the kind of disciplined watchmaker

LOVING

HHHHH OUT 16 MARCH / RATED PG / 123 MINS

Jeff Nichols Ruth Negga, Joel Edgerton

DIRECTOR CAST

WHEN RICHARD AND Mildred Loving married each other in 1958, the State of Virginia tried to jail them: it was illegal for mixed-race couples to wed. Their battle to be together changed US law. Jeff Nichols (Mud, Midnight Special) has taken a story that could have been a relentless tearjerker or an anthemic crowd-pleaser, and instead made an intimate story simply about a family battling adversity. By keeping the focus resolutely on the couple (played by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga) even as dramatic events unfold elsewhere, Nichols avoids cliche and ends up making a more ultimately moving story: this is not a film that builds towards third-act fireworks and incendiary courtroom speeches. It’s just a story about two people who love each other. It’s that simple. It’s that good. TK

A CURE FOR WELLNESS HHHHH

OUT 16 MARCH / RATED MA15+ / 146 MINS

Gore Verbinski Dane DeHaan, Mia Goth, Jason Isaacs, Celia Imrie DIRECTOR CAST

Hitchcock would clutch to his considerable breast, especially in the sadistically drawn-out confrontation that climaxes Emad’s investigation, where the only weapon is the threat of a phone call — it has more tension than most straight-up thrillers. Despite the low-key, observational feel, information is doled out precisely when we need it, and not a moment passes without setting up or paying off something else. Farhadi’s also not above reaching for the sledgehammer — the opening, a virtuosic long take as a collapsing block of flats is evacuated, may well be symbolic. So too might the couple’s roles as Death Of A Salesman’s Willy Loman and his wife, a pretty crystal-clear reference to another narrative where a besieged male’s adherence to bullshit ideas of masculinity get him into trouble. However, Arthur Miller’s play comes down

decisively against these codes; Farhadi seems not so sure. For all the destruction caused by Rana’s assault, it’s the impact on her husband that is dwelt on in far more detail, and the final ethical quandary is presented as his, not hers. It’s traditional in stories that think about it for more than two seconds that revenge ends up punishing the revenger just as much as their target; Emad is probed by the story, but nothing more. This is a film that flies very high indeed, and had it been a tad more interested in the horrors not only of being raped, but then having your husband make it all about himself, it could have flown higher still. ANDREW LOWRY VERDICT Flawless

performances, meticulous construction, elegant visuals — The Salesman comes close to greatness, but seems unaware of its participation in social problems it critiques.

GORE VERBINSKI’S STYLISH, icky but seriously overlong modern Gothic sends Dane DeHaan’s obnoxious Wall Street gun to an Alpine spa to retrieve his firm’s CEO (Harry Groener) in time to complete a major deal. For two hours of the runtime, the writer/director skilfully applies all the tools at his disposal to create a high-altitude world that’s queasy with atmospherics and riddled with mysteries, most fronted by the spa’s enigmatic head (Isaacs). Think a Bram Stoker reworking of The Shining or, if you will, ‘Shutter Highland’. Unfortunately, the plot turns out to be thinner than the air, as a final act unfolds that’s so jarring it feels like it’s been bolted on from an entirely different movie. PDS

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A FEW LESS MEN HHHHH

OUT MARCH 9 RATED MA15+ / 92 MINS

Mark Lamprell Xavier Samuel, Kris Marshall, Kevin Bishop, Ryan Corr, Shane Jacobson, Lynette Curran DIRECTOR CAST

PLOT A sequel (in fact if not really in spirit) to A Few Best Men: after their friend dies, three idiotic pals attempt to transport his body back to the UK for a funeral. But their plan goes awry, and they are forced to travel across the outback with corpse in tow, before the dead man’s gangster cousin can find them.

A FEW BEST MEN may not have won over many critics, but it jammed just enough laughs into a Hangover Down Under package to do fairly brisk business in cinemas around the world. A Few Less Men has A Few Less Laughs – it’d be nice to think they rushed this out, but no, it’s been five years since the original – but if you’re amused by fart gags (and let’s be honest, we all are, in the right mood) and can tolerate a story and characters whose stupidity levels are off the charts (“Don’t push this button? Huh.” Pushes button) then this is tolerable. But it’s in no danger of becoming a beloved classic. At the end of A Few Best Men, one of the four friends falls off a cliff. (It’s actually quite a grim way to end a comedy.) And so at the start of this film, the three remaining friends are planning to fly their friend’s body back to the UK to be buried. (It’s quite a grim way to start a comedy.) But – no spoilers here – circumstances and some inconceivably moronic behaviour (this film requires a suspension of disbelief that would tax Atlas) cause their

bonus feature

THE BEST MAN RETURNS Xavier Samuel on battling flies, boners and corpsing

It’s the first film we can think of that opens with a dead-man’s-boner scene. Ha, are you sure you can’t think of any others? I thought it was an old trope. How hard was it not to burst out laughing during that scene? How “hard” was it? We were in stitches. The

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“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re beginning our descent… INTO HELL!”

journey to be catastrophically waylaid, and so they have to travel across the Western Australian outback with a corpse in tow. It’s effectively a string of low-brow vignettes: the three friends struggle from one idiotic scenario to the next; it’s more sketch comedy than a film. Some are more successful than others; most drag on too long; some seem to have escaped from a Carry On movie and timetravelled to be here. But the real downfall of this sequel is that it lacks the emotional core that partially redeemed the original. That movie was about a wedding, and marrying someone whose parents disapprove of you; and so there was something

to root for. Here, there’s really… nothing. The plot is really just a thinly painted excuse for stringing together jokes about dicks and bums and shagging old women and farts and cross-dressing. It doesn’t even really have an ending — it just sort of… stops. But Ryan Corr does quite an amusing Tom Hardy-inLegend impersonation, and it might stir up some WA tourism thanks to a few gorgeous location shots.

footage in the film is the only footage of us not laughing. It’s such a ridiculous scene, and it really shows the lengths that these guys go to, and the absurd situations they find themselves in. And it really does define these characters, that they would find themselves in that situation. But it was made doubly funny that the book he’s using to, uh, swat the erection is a hardback copy of the director’s novel, it’s his own book. I couldn’t believe when we went to lunch, “Do I really get to do this for a living?” Or, “Is this what it’s come to?”

Although you did end up with a man’s bum in your face — how many takes was that scene? Ha, it was one take and that’s it.

Is it hard to play the straight man? I think it’s hard to keep a straight face, when you’ve got a front row seat to that sort of performance. Chris and Kevin are two of the funniest people I’ve ever met, so that’s the biggest challenge. The other thing you have to remind yourself is to not get in the way of it. It wouldn’t work if I was trying to be funny.

RICH YEAGER VERDICT Deeply

moronic, but not devoid of laughs, at a slapstick-and-fart joke level. But keep your expectations fairly low.

You’re attacked by flies in almost every scene. Which hopefully lends itself to the reality of the film, there were swarms of them wherever we went. I think it lends another comic element to the film. Between these films and Love & Friendship, you’ve spent a lot of time in an English accent. It’s such a contagious accent. Whenever I’m in London I start speaking like an Englishman… people must think I’m a pretentious twat. You’ve left it open for another sequel — are you already signed up for A Few More Men: Man Harder? I guess we’ll see how this one goes. I’m not sure we’d be able to top the erection swatting scene. TK

Fassbender and Gleeson: not contenders for MTV’s Best Kiss Award.

TRESPASS AGAINST US HHHHH

OUT NOW RATED MA15+ / 99 MINS

Adam Smith Michael Fassbender, Brendan Gleeson, Lyndsey Marshal, Rory Kinnear, Sean Harris DIRECTOR CAST

PLOT The Cutlers are an outlaw clan feared by others in their Gloucestershire traveller community. Patriarch Colby (Gleeson) cares nothing for authority and masterminds stately home raids. But his son Chad (Fassbender) craves a better life for his own children, and plans to break free.

OF THE FEW things Assassin’s Creed got right, the casting of Brendan Gleeson as Michael Fassbender’s father stood out in the muddled video game adaptation as one that made perfect sense. So it’s a treat to get a film so soon after which allows these two magnetic Irish actors to fully explore a father/son relationship across its entire running time, rather than during a brief respite from some magic-apple-chasing parkour.

The setting couldn’t be more different. In Trespass Against Us we find Fassbender and Gleeson in a ramshackle caravan compound, where a model of a policeman is used for target practice by catapult-wielding scamps, and Gleeson’s heavy-set, small-time crime lord Colby holds court at the campfire. As his illiterate son Chad, Fassbender has the tougher role, playing a man who knows no other life than the smash-and-grab antics encouraged by his dad, but who is desperate to slip free to do right by his own kids. Still, he pulls it off — portraying a man strong enough to start planning an escape, yet exasperatingly weak enough to still be there at his age. Gleeson, meanwhile, is a joy to behold, gifted with dialogue such as, “Nobody is about to tell me I came from the arse of an ape,” and one gloriously illogical rant at a police officer which concludes with the punchline, “Hell hath no fury like a locked-up super-goat.” Colby is monstrous, but depicted with a welcome light touch. Both men, it should be noted, are loosely based on members of real-life crime family The Johnsons, aka “the Godfathers of Cheltenham”, with Colby and Chad no more presented as typical of the traveller community than Don and Michael Corleone were of Italian-Americans. And though director Adam Smith (here making

his feature debut, after the superbly immersive Chemical Brothers concert movie Don’t Think) had once planned to make a documentary about the Johnsons, he and cinematographer Eduard Grau (A Single Man, Suffragette) allow for some gently lyrical flourishes that lift the film above the expected grimy docu-drama feel. There are a pair of inventive car-chases, too, one with Chad at the wheel of motor whose windscreen is covered in paint, but for a letterbox-sized view hole. There are missteps, though. The script is let down by its weaker female roles — Chad’s daughter Mini (Kacie Anderson) is sidelined by the narrative focus on his son, Tyson (Georgie Smith), while Lyndsey Marshal has little to do in her stand-by-your-man role. And the treatment of a mentally challenged character played by Sean Harris leaves an unfortunately sour taste. It’s also frustrating that the promised drama of the family rift never truly catches fire, instead building to a climax that never really comes. But through all this Smith remains true to his central pairing, putting that complex relationship before melodramatic fireworks. Thanks to Gleeson and Fassbender’s chemistry, he pulls it off. DAN JOLIN VERDICT A

family/crime drama with shades of Shane Meadows’ early work and a satisfying double act in Fassbender and Gleeson.

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Daniel Brühl displeases his SS superiors.

ALONE IN BERLIN HHHHH

OUT NOW RATED M / 103 MINS

Vincent Perez Emma Thompson, Brendan Gleeson, Daniel Brühl DIRECTOR CAST

PLOT WW2, Berlin. After their only son in killed in France, a German couple begins a small campaign of resistance against the Nazi party; and a Berlin policeman is under mounting pressure from the SS to find them.

BERLIN, 1940. Swastikas fly in the streets; people straight-arm salute passing limousines; the population is gloating over the Nazi occupation of France. “You know what this means? We’re going to be the richest country in the whole world!” crows a local scumbag. But not everyone is celebrating. Otto and Anna Quangel (Brendon Gleeson and Emma Thompson) receive a telegram: their son, their only child, has been killed on the battlefront. You’ve never seen so much emotion over a Nazi soldier getting shot: it’s like the “family of a henchman” scene from Austin Powers but not funny. And so Otto and Anna begin a tiny campaign of resistance, writing anti-Hitler and

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anti-war postcards and leaving them around Berlin to be found by strangers — a sort of analogue Twitter. Police detective Escherich (Daniel Brühl, seemingly condemned to play Nazis forever) is the man tasked with tracking down the postcard bandit, whom he names the “hobgoblin”. (It must have been a cracking time to be a murderer in Berlin; despite complaining that they are understaffed, Escherich has a whole team working night and day on the hobgoblin case.) Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson are a textbook study of a long-married couple enduring loss, Gleeson all hang-dog mournfulness, Thompson’s brittle exterior barely containing a howl of grief waiting to explode and never end. But their contained portrayals of very interior characters means that there’s not much of an emotional connection for the audience. There’s nothing wrong with subtlety; but this strays into bloodlessness. At one point, Otto attempts to open up about how he feels; “Please don’t frighten me,” scolds Anna, and that’s that. The whole movie becomes a purely intellectual exercise — there could have been an ever-growing undercurrent of suspense and tension, but for the most part, you understand the danger but you don’t feel it. And despite the dangers of criticising a regime where free speech is criminalised, the act of writing postcards is not, in itself, a particularly cinematic pursuit — watching Gleeson pen his

tiny acts of treason doesn’t exactly raise the pulse. For a sense of the stakes of Otto and Anna’s tiny acts of resistance, we have to rely on Brühl’s more animated portrayal of the morally torn Escherich. In fact, as the Nazi bigwigs lose patience with the hunt for the hobgoblin, we feel the noose closing on Escherich more acutely than we do for Otto and Anna, and that’s a real sign that the film has lost its focus. And although Perez manages to convey some of the horrors of war for civilians, no matter which side they’re on, it just makes it just that much harder to really root for Otto Quangel when during the day, he works hard as a factory foreman to produce as much military equipment for the Nazi army as possible, even reporting employees who try to escape military service. If all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, well, doing a little more nothing at work would have probably been a more useful form of protest for Otto. Beautifully staged and shot with a nostalgic wistfulness that belies the horrors of Nazi Berlin, it’s never hard on the eyes, but it’s never hard on the tear ducts either. It’s not a bad movie, just a bit flat. MICHAEL BROOKER

A competent exploration of two little-known anti-Nazi agitators, but could have been gripping in different hands.

VERDICT

Arnett’s Batsuit: thankfully nipple-free.

THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE HHHHH

OUT 12 JANUARY RATED TBC / 100 MINS

DIRECTOR Chris

McKay Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Ralph Fiennes CAST

PLOT Slighted by Batman’s (Arnett) refusal to recognise him as his arch enemy, the Joker (Galifianakis) hatches a plan to make him take notice — involving the Lego universe’s greatest villains descending on Gotham to take control of the city once and for all.

HISTORICALLY, THE PREVAILING wisdom about Batman is this: dark and moody is good, comedic and silly is bad. Just compare and contrast the reputations of The Dark Knight (anarchy and politics) and Batman & Robin (ice skating and Bat-nipples). The truth (as is usually the case) is more complex, but it highlights the problem facing The Lego Batman Movie — can this comedic take on the Dark Knight work? Of course, the signs were good — Will Arnett’s tongue-in-cheek take on the character was one of The Lego Movie’s many joys, and his

promotion to the lead role here takes away none of his impact. Batman is Gotham’s hero, singular, and that’s the way he likes it. But when Barbara Gordon (Dawson) succeeds her father as commissioner, she suggests Batman’s history of always foiling the villains’ evil plots, but mostly letting them escape to plot again, perhaps isn’t the ideal state of affairs and proposes a closer working relationship. Not that it matters; no sooner has she taken office than the Joker (Galifianakis), offended by Batman’s refusal to acknowledge him as his main adversary (“I’m fighting a few different people. I like to fight around”) gathers up his cronies and surrenders. But to Gordon, not Batman. Outraged, Batman decides to go rogue — breaking into Arkham Asylum to banish the Joker to the Phantom Zone. It’s a film dense with jokes, the writers riffing successfully on both this sullen, arrogant iteration of Batman and the character’s rich and varied history. The films are referenced (“That time with the parade and the Prince music”), as are the TV series and comics. And all the sources are mined for the film’s stuffed rogues’ gallery — Polka-Dot Man, Gentleman Ghost and the Condiment King among the villains appearing in cameo roles. And then, for the final battle, more are unleashed. A standard complaint about superhero films is there are too many bad guys (Spider-Man 3 overstretched by adding Venom to Sandman and the New Goblin), but here Gremlins, Daleks, The Matrix’s Agent Smith, Dracula, Godzilla,

Sauron, Lord Voldemort and more are all unleashed without any issue. Just occasionally more is more, and so it proves here. But for all the fan service and subtle jokes, this is still ostensibly a film for kids (and it’s been two decades since we had a Batman film like that) and, as such, there are lessons for Batman (and the kids) to learn. Namely, teamwork is good, friends are important, don’t spend your nights alone eating reheated lobster thermidor. This manifests itself in confirmed loner Bruce Wayne absent-mindedly adopting orphan Dick Grayson (Cera) who discovers the Batcave and wants to become his sidekick. And later, to Batman’s dismay, the Bat-team grows further. Only if they work together will they defeat the Joker’s growing army. This point does become laboured as Bats continually refuses to accept it, but there’s so much going on, it’s easy to forgive. This is the third time Batman has featured in a major cinematic release in the past 11 months. And, if anything, with the release of The Lego Batman Movie, those films have reversed the prevailing wisdom: dark and moody is bad, comedic and silly is good. Whether or not we deserve it is irrelevant — this is the Batman movie we needed right now. And it delivers. JONATHAN PILE VERDICT A

highly quotable, visual treat that’s packed with in-jokes but is entertaining enough on its own terms to work for fans and non-fans alike. The best Batman film in years.

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THE GREAT WALL HHHHH

OUT NOW RATED M / 103 MINS

Zhang Yimou Matt Damon, Jing Tian, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe, Andy Lau

DIRECTOR CAST

PLOT In medieval China, mercenary soldier William (Damon) runs into an enormous army charged with defending the Great Wall Of China from marauding monsters. He ends up getting involved in the longer-term battle to protect the human world from the beasts: creatures that must be studied as well as fought if they are to be overcome.

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AS IS PERHAPS fitting for a film based on a 13,000-mile-long stone structure, The Great Wall bears a huge weight of expectation. It is the biggest-ever China-Hollywood co-production, the most expensive film shot entirely in China, and arrives at a time when the global industry is increasingly facing towards the East. It’s also the most epic project fêted Chinese director Zhang Yimou has taken on since he directed the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, as well as his first English-language film. No pressure, then. Matt Damon plays William, a mercenary soldier whose accent suggests he’s from Ireland, or has at least spent a lot of time swigging Guinness in Irish bars. William and his fellow fighter-for-hire Tovar (Pascal) are poking around the Chinese border in search of valuable “black powder” when they run into an army deployed on the Great Wall to defend China from monsters. Via a witheringly lazy plot device — a

guard has lost the key to a cell — they end up getting caught up in the combat. The army’s fighting techniques seem as influenced by extreme sports as they are war history books — a troupe of lance-wielding, bungee-jumping female warriors provides the film’s most thrilling, rope-twanging spectacle. The acting, though, is largely as rigid as the spears thrusting in and out of leathery monster flesh. This can’t only be explained away by some of the Chinese cast having to deliver lines in English. Jing Tian, who plays the steely Commander Lin Mei, seems so detached she seems to be living life half a second off the pace of everyone else. Sporting a uniform more suited to a Power Ranger than a medieval soldier, she appears a pixel width away from being an RPG video-game character. The film was trailed as a cultural mash-up but, being set and filmed in China, the casting

Clockwise from left: ‘The Hunger Games: East Meets West — Part I’; Junkai Wang’s Emperor goes for gold; Aggressors assemble on the Great Wall; Tovar (Pedro Pascal) and William (Matt Damon) await orders.

of Damon, Pedro Pascal and Willem Dafoe (whose character, Ballard, seems there purely to explain how Commander Lin learned English) is the only element representing the West. Instead, Chinese cultural clichés abound, from speeches about working together to help the greater cause to Olympic-level gymnastics. These are more cause for complaint than the “whitewashing” Damon’s casting supposedly represents. William is not presented as a white knight, rather a mercenary caught in the chaos. A conversation about his past comes across as a tacked-on attempt to make him seem dark and set up his potential redemption but really, he’s not whitewashing; he’s just grey-dull. The vicious Tao Ties aren’t much more memorable, despite being impressively rendered and bred from the usual Lord Of The Rings / Games Workshop monster farm — the only significant design twists being Chinese-style

designs on their foreheads and having eyes on their shoulders. Every major aspect of their behaviour — such as their main vulnerability and communication methods — seems shoehorned in, designed to provide a sledgehammer-blatant path for the heroes to overcome them. If William had found a KitKat in his bag we would have no doubt discovered the monsters happen to have a kryptonite-like aversion to chocolatey wafer. The film, as a landmark China-Hollywood co-op, probably only had to be a decent popcorn action flick to be considered a success, but the

only sound louder than the Tao Ties’ screeching is that of square pegs being bashed into round holes. Its artistic failures are unlikely to put a halt to the tilting of the film industry towards China, but The Great Wall doesn’t deserve to be considered the definitive monument to this shift. JAMIE FULLERTON

There are plenty of fun CGI monsterskewering scenes, but a clunky plot, rigid script and equally stiff acting make this a crumbling disappointment, if not quite a disaster.

VERDICT

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Warner Bros. spent two decades labouring to bring Wonder Woman to the big screen, with efforts failing due to bad timing, creative clashes or spectacular bad luck. It took the relaunched and reinvigorated DC Extended Universe, starting with Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel, to give the hero, also known as Diana of Themyscira, the opening fans had been waiting for. “People had been trying to develop it, and I think the success of female-driven action films like The Hunger Games really helped people realise there’s an audience,” says producer Deborah Snyder. “There’s a longevity to the character and what she stands for. She’s stood the test of time.” Perhaps the delay should be no surprise. Both on the page or off it, Wonder Woman has never had it easy. After that strong start, she was swiftly relegated to secretary to her superhero brethren, while her comics have been attacked by sexist critics and occasionally cancelled. At her lowest ebb the character was rescued from obscurity by the unlikely pairing of a feminist icon and a beauty queen. But perhaps the most unlikely story of all was that of her creation.

within the pages of All Star Comics #8, Wonder Woman appeared to leap out of the page, one booted leg forward, arms pumping, star-spangled skirt swirling around her. She looked powerful, beautiful, unlike anything seen before. “AT LAST, IN A WORLD TORN BY THE HATREDS AND WARS OF MEN,” the accompanying text boomed, “APPEARS A WOMAN TO WHOM THE PROBLEMS AND FEATS OF MEN ARE MERE CHILD’S PLAY…” It was December 1941, the United States had just joined World War II, and this goddess had come to fight for truth, justice and a better world. She was an instant sensation, prompting a flood of enthusiastic letters from readers and winning a comic of her own. But despite that debut, in the 75 years (and change) since, she’s never had her own film on the big screen. Her fellow members of DC’s Holy Trinity, Superman and Batman, have had six and eight films respectively. Wonder Woman’s big-screen credits, however, are a supporting role in Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice, a tiny (though funny) cameo in The Lego Movie, and a blink-and-you’ll miss it spot in The Lego Batman Movie. So this year’s Wonder Woman, starring Gal Gadot and directed by Monster’s Patty Jenkins, will be a landmark. But it’s not been for lack of trying.

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conceived by William Moulton Marston, a “consulting psychologist”, screenwriter and advocate of women’s rights who co-created one of the first lie-detector machines, sparking a lifelong interest in deception that tied into Wonder Woman’s ‘Lasso Of Truth’. He was studying at Harvard when suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst spoke there and was deeply impressed by what he heard. But after graduation into the still-new field of psychology, Marston was exposed as a quack, prone to dubious experiments and wild claims that his research could not support. As his academic reputation declined, he transformed himself into a popular scientist, researching film audience responses for Universal and staging lie-detector stunts for advertisers. At home, Marston led an unconventional life. He was married to Elizabeth Holloway Marston, a Boston University-educated editor. But the couple lived with Olive Byrne, a former student of Marston’s, and both women had children with him. Part of Marston’s idiosyncratic feminism was an early sort of free love, and an espousal of ideas about “loving submission”, by which women could control men and bring about world peace. Little wonder that Marston himself is the subject of a biopic, Professor Marston & The Wonder Women, starring Luke Evans and due later this year. Byrne began Marston’s association with comics. As a freelance journalist, she interviewed this supposedly eminent psychologist about comics and he issued a robust defence. The publisher DC, under attack from family-values forces, brought him aboard to add respectability to their battered brand. But Marston took his role further when he pitched a female superhero. “It’s smart to be strong,” he explained. “It’s big to be generous. But it’s sissified, according to exclusively masculine rules, to be tender, loving, affectionate and alluring… Not

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even girls want to be girls as long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power… The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman, plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.” The resulting heroine, Wonder Woman, was shaped by Holloway and Byrne as well as Marston himself. Byrne wore wide bracelets that were a model for Diana’s, while Holloway had been a much keener student of Greek myth than her husband. There’s also some suggestion, in Jill Lepore’s book The Secret History Of Wonder Woman, that the gang were into bondage they called “love binding”, significant given Wonder Woman’s lasso and the fact that she lost all power if tied up by a man. The early strips showed a figure who was strong, independent, opposed to war but willing to fight for democracy. Wonder Woman fought milk profiteers and domineering husbands and department-store workers on strike. Her 1941 debut proved a hit, and sales soon outstripped everything bar Superman and Batman. By her third issue she was shifting 500,000 copies, and in 1944 she had ten million readers. A winter 1943 issue saw her elected President, albeit in the year 3004. In August 1942, by popular demand, she formally joined the Justice Society, precursor to the Justice League. Alas, there she was put on secretarial duties by writer Gardner Fox, who portrayed the character as a helpless hanger-on. But bigger trouble was to come. Marston was crippled by polio in August 1944 and though he continued working, couldn’t keep up with demand. He died of cancer in May 1947. Without him, Wonder Woman lost her way. Holloway’s offer to take over the comic was rejected by DC, and Robert Kanigher was hired instead, despite the fact he didn’t like “the grotesque, inhuman original Wonder Woman”. In the early 1950s, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham began a moral crusade against violence in comics and dozens of cities and states banned comic books. While Wertham was commendably hard on comic books’ casual racism, he was near-hysterical at hints of kink and considered Wonder Woman a vicious, racist lesbian. “Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry,” he claimed. Amid a tidal wave of outrage, a Comics Code was put in place to ensure decency in costumes (bye bye, hot pants) and no hint of impropriety (less bondage). So Wonder Woman made like the millions of real woman who had worked for victory in the War, and ceded her place to the men. The 1950s saw her reinvented as an advice columnist, a babysitter, a model, a movie star. By the late ’60s she gave up her powers to remain on Earth when her fellow Amazons retreated to another dimension. The mortal Diana opened a boutique. Salvation came in 1972, when Ms. magazine, under editor and feminist icon Glorian Steinem, put Wonder Woman on its debut cover, under the headline “Wonder Woman For President”. She quickly became the face of the second-wave feminist movement. And after the success of The

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Bionic Woman’s appearance in The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman landed her very own small-screen serial. There had been two false starts — 1967’s awful Who’s Afraid Of Diana Prince? and a 1974 TV movie starring Cathy Lee Crosby as a blonde spy with no obvious super-powers — but the third attempt, in November 1975, hit the spot. The New, Original Wonder Woman (re-titled Wonder Woman, re-re-titled The New Adventures Of Wonder Woman) starred singer and beauty queen Lynda Carter in the title role and ran for three seasons — one set in the 1940s and then two in the present day, to cut costs. Carter imbued Diana with kindness as well as super-strength. “When the show first started,” said Carter, “everything and everyone around

[Diana] was tongue-in-cheek. But I played her for real, and totally straight. I gave her a sense of humour about herself, so she wouldn’t take herself too seriously. I believed in her and what she was about.” Whether amid the pastel togas of homeland Themyscira or in ‘Man’s World’, Carter moved with a dancer’s grace. Her trademark spin saw her transform from street clothes into costume; she flicked bullets away with a slash of her wrist. “I wanted her to be capable and smart,” Carter said. “She didn’t have any particularly super X-ray vision or anything. She just wasn’t going to put up with anything from anybody.” Repeated for decades afterwards, Carter’s show was the entry point to Wonder Woman for many modern-day adult fans. “I have a vivid

Far left: Wonder Woman for POTUS! Left: Lynda Carter in TV’s Wonder Woman (1975). Below left: Wonder Woman Begins, in 1941’s All-Star Comics #8. Below: Adrianne Palicki in 2011’s ill-fated TV pilot Wonder Woman. Right, top to bottom: Director Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot go green for 2017; Diana with mum Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen); The mythical ‘god killer’ sword.

memory of standing in the playground,” recalls Patty Jenkins, “and arguing with another girl about who was going to be Wonder Woman.” Says Deborah Snyder: “The spin and the hands on the hips, that’s what I remember the most. I was in awe of her.” But poor ratings in the revamped third season — wherein Wonder Woman moved to LA and got an entirely new supporting cast — killed the show, and Wonder Woman went back to the page. An animated series was mooted in 1993, called Wonder Woman And The Star Riders and featuring “sparkling superheroines” called Dolphin and Starlily as well as a winged unicorn for Diana to ride, but mercifully this My Little Pony-style take never went into production.

Hollywood, a Wonder Woman movie has been a Holy Grail. In April 1996, Entertainment Weekly reported that Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman was attached to a big-screen adaptation, following his attempts in the mid-’80s to make a Batman film starring Bill Murray. Reitman stayed attached for three years before leaving the project, and it’s hard not to see 2006’s My Super Ex-Girlfriend as either a mutated version of a super-romcom he hoped to make, or a satire on the whole disappointment. The early 2000s brought further attempts. Screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island) came up with an epic, mythological take in 2003, centred around Amazons, Themyscira and a fight against Ares, god of war. Maybe that take was too fantastical: it too floundered in development

hell. Next, a pre-Avengers Joss Whedon was brought aboard to write a modern-day tale. In Whedon’s tale, Diana leaves Themyscira with human friend Steve Trevor to deliver aid to refugees — only to tangle with drug-dealers and worse back in his home of Gateway City. “I worked really hard on that movie and it meant a lot [to me],” said Whedon, “but I don’t know if what I was trying to do would fit in with what [the studio’s] vision is. I had a take on the film that, well, nobody liked… We just saw different movies, and at the price range this kind of movie hangs in, that’s never gonna work.” Next was George Miller’s attempted Justice League film, with Megan Gale set to star as Wonder Woman. In 2007 the project was cast, costumed and almost ready to go, when the fatal

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combination of a writers’ strike and a change in Australia’s tax credits killed it. Fans began to lose hope that the lady with the golden lasso would ever hit the silver screen. Enter Patty Jenkins. The same year that Justice League collapsed, Jenkins first pitched to direct a solo Wonder Woman movie. She suggested a modern-day tale, similar in tone but not in context to the period film she’s now making. “Ten years ago!” marvels Jenkins. “I was trying to make an essential origin story out of modern times. I was afraid of whole-hog doing the right thing, which is the historical origin story.” Warner Bros. didn’t bite. “People were just afraid to go into what was considered a male-dominated market with a female lead.” With the film stalled, in 2011 Ally McBeal’s David E. Kelley attempted another adaptation in the more female-friendly world of TV. It starred Adrianne Palicki as Wonder Woman, aka tech CEO Diana Themyscira, aka Diana Prince, a shy spinster who spends evenings with her cat watching The Notebook. Early stills looked slick,

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and boasted a solid supporting cast including Cary Elwes as her right-hand man and Liz Hurley as a baddie. But when it leaked onto the internet it became clear that there was a major problem: it was not remotely true to the character. Wonder Woman first appears with a snarl on her face, tortures information from a suspect, kills henchmen with abandon and delivers the line, “I never said to merchandise my tits!” Responses were savage — one critic for TV.com deemed scenes “glorious in their craptitude” — and the pilot was never officially released. “I know she’s famous as a television show, but I don’t think she lends herself to television,” noted Whedon in 2013. “I think she only works on an epic scale.” Happily, epic scale was about to come back on the menu. has been involved with DC since Christopher Nolan began Batman Begins in 2003, but Nolan’s was “a very closed universe” that didn’t lend itself to DC’s more godlike characters. With Man Of Steel and Zack

Snyder, however, things opened up. “We started to get into it,” says Roven, “and of course Zack went, ‘Let’s do Batman v Superman!’ Everyone went, ‘What?!’ [Now] you have this unbelievable exciting expansion. It’s constantly evolving.” His fellow producer, Deborah Snyder, remembers the moment her husband frst brought up Wonder Woman. “Zack was working on the [Batman v Superman] script and he was like, ‘You know what? Wouldn’t it be great to introduce this mysterious woman?’ We started talking about connecting the universes.” A worldwide search found Gal Gadot. She had briefly been mooted for a role in Man Of Steel — Zod’s right-hand woman, Faora-Ul. But she was pregnant with her daughter and the role went to Antje Traue. After that film came out, Gadot was called in for another meeting for Zack Snyder. It turned out to be a camera test. “I said, ‘Great, but who’s the character?’” Gadot recalls. “My agent said, ‘Oh, you don’t know? I don’t know either.’ Zack called me about two days before I was to travel from Tel Aviv to Los

Five astonishing things Wonder Woman’s lasso can do PREVENT the apocalypse! WONDER WOMAN VOL 2 #6, 1987

War-god Ares is bent on obliterating Earth with nuclear missiles. But just before they’re launched, Wonder Woman nets the belligerent deity with her Lasso Of Truth. Its powers show him a future in which there’s no-one around to worship him, and he steps down.

TURN THE MOON TO CHEESE! JLA #64: GOLDEN PERFECT, 2002

When the lasso is destroyed, a perception ripple sweeps across the world, turning people’s beliefs into reality. The trippy results include the appearance of Hindu god Vishnu and the moon being transformed into green cheese. Fortunately everything is soon restored to normal, ending the fromage fiasco.

ALAMY, DC ENTERTAINMENT

Wonder Woman finds trouble in a London pub. Did she spill his pint? Top right: Danny Huston’s General Ludendorff with Elena Anaya as Maru — aka Doctor Poison... Middle right: Lindy Hemming and Kimberley Pope’s cape design. Right: Concept art of Diana and Steve in London.

Angeles. Super-nonchalantly, he said, ‘By the way, you know who you’re testing for? I don’t know if you have her in Israel, but do you know Wonder Woman?’ Then I literally passed out, came back to life, tried to put on my coolest voice and was like, ‘Yeah, I know of her.’” For Deborah Snyder, the most crucial thing was to cast someone who embodied Wonder Woman’s kindness off-screen as well as on. “We narrowed it down to five women, then decided to do a chemistry test with Ben [Affleck],” she says. “The thing that resonated more than even the test — because she did an amazing job and just lit up on screen — was the fact that every single department was pulling for her, because they loved her.” They didn’t mention a solo movie to Gadot until the shoot for BvS was almost over — “I think they were still auditioning me while I was doing the movie,” she smiles — but then things started to move fast. Michelle MacLaren was brought aboard to direct, but left after creative differences with the studio, freeing the path for

PUT OUT FIRE! WONDER WOMAN VOL 1, #226, 1976

Hephaestus, the god of fire, unleashes golden robots that create raging infernos all over New York. After defeating one of the robots in combat atop the Statue Of Liberty, Wonder Woman uses her lasso to whip up the sea around Liberty Island, dousing the flames.

Jenkins. At first, she was apprehensive of having her leading lady already in place. “I was like, ‘Whoop, there goes that,’ you know?” says Jenkins. “But she’s like a miracle; it sounds like I’m just talking up my star but I can’t say it enough. I don’t know that I ever would have thought to look all over the world, but thank God they did and thank God it’s her.” So the pieces have finally fallen into place. After three-quarters of a century, Wonder Woman has completed her leap from comic-book page to the big screen. “Better late than never!” says Gadot. “I’m just grateful it took so long, because I got the opportunity to play her.” Once, the character represented all William Moulton Marston’s hopes for a future where women would be strong, independent and equal. Now Jenkins, Snyder and Gadot have taken up that same cause. If all goes to plan this summer, audiences will feel the same wonder those comic-book fans did back in 1941.

STOP BEES! ADVENTURE COMICS #463, 1979

While patrolling Texas in her invisible plane, Wonder Woman spots a swarm of supersmart, alien bees. When they attack the nearby Space Centre, she twirls her lasso at the vibrational frequency of a queen bee’s mating call, luring them into an airlock chamber.

HYPNOTISE PEOPLE! SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN VOL 1, #8, 2014

Rebooted in 2011 for DC Comics revamp The New 52, Wonder Woman acquired new powers, including the ability to control the minds of members of the military. In this issue she rescues a captured Lois Lane by telepathically commanding a soldier to release her. JOE CAMERON

WONDER WOMAN IS IN CINEMAS FROM 1 JUNE.

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THEY COULD HAVE SHOT THEIR MONSTER MOVIE IN A GREENSCREEN CHAMBER. EARTHâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S MOST FAR-FLUNG CORNERS. AND EMPIRE TAGGED ALONG, 50

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INSTEAD, THE MAKERS OF KONG: SKULL ISLAND JOURNEYED INTO SOME OF EVERY GLORIOUS, SNAKE-INFESTED STEP OF THE WAY WORDS NICK DE SEMLYEN

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HONOLULU, HAWAII L AT I T UD E 2 1 • L O N G I T UD E -1 5 7 N O V E MB E R 2 0 1 5 SURROUNDED BY PRIMORDIAL jungle, lashed by rain and dressed for combat, Tom Hiddleston is trying manfully to explain The Crystal Maze to Brie Larson. “It was a fantastic TV show from the 1990s in the UK,” he ventures. “There are four zones and you have to get a crystal in every room…” “Is it a reality show?” Larson cuts in. “A game show,” Hiddleston clarifies. “At the end you go into a big dome and grab tickets that are flying around. It’s impossible to stay calm, even though the calmer you are, the simpler it is.” “That sounds intense,” Larson says. “My favourite show growing up was called Legends Of The Hidden Temple. There was a huge stone head that would talk. And if you get enough Pendants Of Life, you win a pair of Skechers.” This unlikely conversation between the two A-list stars has been instigated by Hiddleston’s observation that the set they’re on today reminds him of the Aztec Zone from the British TV oddity. This does not do it justice. It’s Empire’s first day of five on Kong: Skull Island, and our introductory glimpse of Kong’s monster-plagued domain has not disappointed. Not least because right in front of us is a big bloody skull. The cranium of some long-deceased giant ape, it’s so large you could herd a cow through its eyesocket. The tableau around it is just as spectacular: nearby is a triceratops skeleton, while sundry other bones — many human — litter the ground. Green gas fizzes up from volcanic vents (fake); waterfalls plummet from mist-shrouded peaks (real). This is Hollywood filmmaking done the old-fashioned way. Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong trekked to Skull Island, then New York, but the production never left Wellington. Rather than aping that and conjuring up fantastical vistas in a server room, the new Warner Bros. movie has put on its wellies and called the travel agent. This radical move was largely driven by director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, a genial 31-yearold wunderkind with a beard the size of a Steadicam. It was his idea to make Skull Island a full-on war film. It was his idea to set it in the 1970s with Vietnam-vet characters. And it was his idea to hit the road. “I’m an outdoorsy guy,” he grins, pulling on a Parliament cigarette, his jeans splattered with

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mud. “To me it’s important to put the actors into tactile places. When you watch Platoon or Apocalypse Now, the environment is a character. We want people to feel the sweat, the humidity of this island.” If this is the Apocalypse Now of monster flicks — and it’s littered with references to the seminal combat-pic, such as the three orange stripes on the costume of photographer Weaver (Larson), a nod to the outfit of the snapper played by Dennis Hopper — all involved are surely aware of just how cursed that production was. The ultimate on-location cautionary tale, it saw director Francis Ford Coppola have a nervous breakdown, star Martin Sheen suffer a heart attack and the budget explode. Here, though, the only travail is heavy drizzle, which is currently delaying filming. The starry ensemble cast, which today includes Samuel L. Jackson, John C. Reilly and John Goodman, are bonding fast. This is partly due to Larson, who has taken the reins of the social scene, first organising a “Brie-kend” (go-karting, laser tag, karaoke) then a “John C.-kend” in honour of Reilly. Brie Larson, it turns out, really loves puns. “Tom sang Common People,” she confides. “But I started off the whole thing by putting on an instrumental overture from the musical Cats. It really weirded everyone out when they came in and it was just cat noises.” If there’s anyone to keep an eye on, it might be Hiddleston, who went slightly Benjamin L. Willard at the start of the shoot, holing up in his hotel room to transcribe quotes from a DVD of Apocalypse Now. “I wanted all that amazing John Milius dialogue,” he says of his preparation for playing SAS tracker James Conrad. “I now have it on my laptop, so I can stew in the juices of that material.” There’s no time right now for stewing of any kind. The rain has let up, and Vogt-Roberts orders three huge machines to start cranking out smoke. Our heroes head gingerly through what Larson calls “the bone zone”, guns at the ready. Soon enough, it all goes to hell: there are explosions, a major actor being gobbled down by a to-be-added beast, and a showdown involving a samurai sword which should elicit cheers in 18 months’ time. Kong: Skull Island is back on track.

Above left: Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts relaxes atop a giant triceratops skull. As you do. Here: Tom Hiddleston (SAS officer Captain James Conrad) is relieved his seatbelt worked. Below top: Shooting takes place on Australia’s Gold Coast. Below bottom: Vogt-Roberts and John C. Reilly with the Iwi tribe extras.

GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA L AT I T UD E -2 7 • L O N G I T UD E 1 5 3 FEBRUARY 2016

BLOOD-CURDLING SCREAMS are echoing around Village Roadshow Studios. Fortunately, the cause isn’t a monkey-related meltdown. The din is actually coming from the theme park next door, where tourists are riding Batman and Green Lantern rollercoasters. The latter is particularly gnarly, say some of the staff in the Kong: Skull Island production office, who have been popping over occasionally to let off steam. Inside Stage 8, where a rollercoaster ride of a different kind is being constructed, there’s an eerie hush. After the non-stop action of Hawaii — helicopter rigs, jungle explosions, Mariah Carey duets — the pace has slowed for the shooting of major dialogue scenes. Week 14 has been devoted to the Iwi temple, the headquarters of Skull Island’s natives. On closer inspection, the set turns out to be the rusted hulk of a massive boat, the SS Wanderer. “We have to call it something different for legal reasons,” Vogt-Roberts explains, “but this ship

is in theory the Venture from the original [1933] movie. Astute viewers will note it.” The mood is serene: a butterfly flutters around the on-set vegetation, while 40 Iwi extras sit, painted head-to-toe with tribal markings, tapping at iPads while they await instruction. But beneath it there’s some tension. This is a meaty scene, with lots of important exposition and a vast assemblage of characters. “That’s the problem with our movie — every scene has, like, nine people in it,” gripes the director half-seriously. “Everybody has their vibes and their moments. It’s just a lot of work to keep that alive.” John C. Reilly, in particular, is struggling with an enormous monologue, trying to figure out precisely how crazy his character Marlow — a castaway who’s been stuck on Skull Island for decades — should be. He cycles through 50 shades of nuttiness, chuckling, whispering, ending one take with a hearty wink, punctuating another by slapping co-star ❯ Thomas Mann on the neck 12 times.

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It’s a tough scene, the lights are hot, and at one point someone loses their cool, shouting and storming off the stage. Hiddleston, who’s sitting with Empire, arches an eyebrow and says drily, “Well, that just happened.” But the person quickly returns, apologises and the day continues. It’s brushed off like a family squabble: after threeand-a-half months together on the road, the Skull Island expeditioners have become a tight unit. Two of the team seem particularly wiped out. One is Vogt-Roberts, facing the gruelling realities of a major action movie for the first time (this is only his second film, after acclaimed coming-of-age indie The Kings Of Summer). He’s led treks into the national parks outside the Gold Coast, dodging stinging trees, venomous spiders and a rogue yellow-faced whip snake along the way. Sleep-deprived, today he’s working his way through a box of tissues, kneading his mighty beard between sneezes. The other is Larson, who has been flying relentlessly between Australia and LA, due to the many awards nominations for her performance in Room. As reasons to be utterly exhausted go, it’s a nice one, but she confesses it’s doing weird things to her brain. “My concept of time is really off,” she sighs. “I can’t tell if I’m telling the same story over and over. The other day, I said, ‘Remember that thing that happened last week?’ And everyone said, ‘Honey, that was this morning.’” But there are a few upsides to her megajet lag. Besides inspiring some excellent random chat — at one point she asks Empire if we reckon drowning in Jell-O would be a good way to go — it helped when it came time to shoot one of the movie’s big scenes: Conrad and Weaver’s first encounter with Kong. “I came straight from the airport to do that,” Larson recalls. “Sometimes for a moment involving a lot of imagination it’s really hard to get your brain to shut up. But after 20 flights or whatever I was in this weird state of surrender.” Hiddleston picked music to play on the stage: Adagio In D Minor, aka the tune from the end of Sunshine. “It became an audible presence of Kong,” he says. “It was really cool — it united everyone. The scene will be incredible: out of the fog he appears, and suddenly we’re staring into the face of a myth.” Hiddleston himself is showing no signs of flagging. Ever-chipper, he does jumping jacks between takes and regales us with acting advice from Michael Caine: “Don’t blink, ’cause they’ll cut away. And pick which eye you look into: if you go from one to the other, it conveys weakness on film.” He also reveals the latest inter-cast craze: texting each other gifs from their films. “John C. Reilly has instructed me in the way of the gif,” he laughs. “It’s fun, because you can take the piss out of yourself. I’ve been sending people a particularly humiliating dancey one of me. And John recently, when he was disappointed by something, sent a gif of me from The Deep Blue Sea. I said, ‘Where did you find that?’ He said, ‘I just googled “disappointed gif ”.’”

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A jet-lagged Brie Larson films her first encounter with Kong as Weaver. Right: Tom Hiddleston channels Apocalypse Now as he heads up river. Below top: Vietnam’s stunning karst peaks. Below middle: Samuel L. Jackson as Lieutenant Colonel Packard. Below bottom: Hiddleston and co try to work out where the hell they are.

NINH BINH, VIETNAM L AT I T U D E 2 0 • L O N G I T U D E 1 0 5 MARCH 2016 WITH UNDER TWO weeks to go, Skull Island has arrived at a place with a moniker nearly as ominous: ‘Heatstroke Island’. This is the nickname given to the Trang An location where some of the really exotic footage is being shot. An inter-department memo Empire sees is full of slightly alarming phrases: “Wind, rain and scorching sun are all possibilities… Don’t go in the water! Snakes have been spotted on the property but only very occasionally.” If there’s any view worth braving cobras and fire ants for, it’s this one. Otherworldly karst peaks tower all around us, while serene waterways wend their way through an elaborate

cave system. “There have been days where we’ve had to be rowed by local boatwomen through the caverns to get to our set,” grins Vogt-Roberts. “John Goodman looked at me and said, ‘This is the most incredible ride to work I’ve ever had.’ We scouted places like Thailand and Cambodia, but I knew it had to be Vietnam. There’s stuff we’re shooting here that people are going to think is CGI.” CGI will come into play, of course, with karst towers being digitally inserted into some of the Hawaii and Australia footage, an intricate jigsawing-together of three continents. And of course there’s the matter of the big ape and his fellow creatures. “The idea of Kong parkouring through this stuff is very exciting,” says Hiddleston. “The other day there was a helicopter sweeping through this valley like a ballet dancer. The excitement of that kind of motion around this type of landscape, it feels new.” Skull Island’s water-work largely revolves around a boat called the Gray Fox (the name is a gamer in-joke: Vogt-Roberts is attached to

a movie adaptation of Metal Gear Solid) — a rattletrap contraption that’s been built by Marlow from old World War II plane parts. An excited Vogt-Roberts ushers us on board, despite the fact it’s stuffed with stars and ultra-slippery. We inspect the many nice details — a vinyl of Led Zeppelin’s Misty Mountain Hop on a gramophone, a signed Cubs baseball on the throttle — while trying not to elbow John C. Reilly into the drink. As it chugs up-river, breaking the hush with a hubbub to rival Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the Gray Fox will face threats from water, land and sky. In one scene a stunt double is yanked high up into the air by a cable, screaming like Fay Wray. In another, our heroes face an emergency involving spear-wielding Iwi. “For the first beat here — ‘Start the boat!’ — in my head it’s Harrison Ford in Temple Of Doom,” Hiddleston explains between takes. “You know, that bit where they get out of the mine and go down the tunnel, and then he says, ‘Water! Water!’ His facial expression there is quite something.” On its 79th day, the production still appears drama-free. Although it sounds like it could have kicked off when Larson returned from the Oscars — where she won Best Actress for Room — to find everyone giving her the cold shoulder. “We played a game where we pretended to ignore her for the first five minutes,” Hiddleston chuckles, ever the god of mischief. “When she came into the make-up bus we were just telling stories and pretending nothing had happened. Then we surprised her with a big celebration. We’re all very proud of Brie.” Samuel L. Jackson (whose character, combat-crazed Colonel Packard, views Kong as a hateful ape) has entered the punning ring himself, coining the phrase “The Three Vietnamigos” to describe Larson, Hiddleston and himself. Larson has been binge-buying clothing. Goodman, meanwhile, visited a water-puppet theatre in Hanoi, before lustily joining in with a street singer outside. “I spent most of my youth trying to avoid Vietnam,” he quips, the man who played The Big Lebowski’s loony war-vet Walter (“Smokey, this is not ’Nam. This is bowling. There are rules”) finally in Southeast Asia. “I never thought I’d end up here, and now I want to come back and just travel around a little bit.” As for Vogt-Roberts, nearing the end of a shoot as big as they come, he’s back on top form, bouncing around as he orchestrates the mayhem. What’s his secret? It might just have something to do with the local delicacy he’s discovered. “I love the coffee here and I love the tobacco,” he says. “But my favourite is the goat-dick wine.” Yes, that’s right, a beverage marinated by the penis of a goat. Doesn’t sound promising, but when Empire gets a chance later to sample it we can confirm: it may smell bad, but it tastes like victory.

WHAT’S IN A NAME? MOVIE ISLANDS RANKED

SOUNDS LOVELY, WORTH A VISIT PLEASURE ISLAND First seen: Pinocchio (1940) Sounds like the best place to visit but… it’s a trap! A cursed amusement park that turns you into a donkey, allowing the owner to sell you to the circus.

TREASURE ISLAND First seen: Treasure Island (1918) A mostly uninhabited Caribbean island and one of little interest. That is, unless you happen to be aware of the vast treasure hidden beyond its shoreline. Warning: may contain pirates.

AMITY ISLAND First seen: Jaws (1975) Now we’re talking — a picturesque seaside resort. There have been occasional shark attacks, but don’t let that stop you enjoying your Fourth Of July weekend there.

SHUTTER ISLAND First seen: Shutter Island (2010) Neither scarily nor enticingly named. But you wouldn’t really want to visit, given the only buildings of note are an abandoned lighthouse and a mental hospital.

SKULL ISLAND First seen: King Kong (1933) So named for the human skull-shaped mountain in its centre — a mere quirk of geology. Nothing to be scared of, then? Nothing except terrifying large lizardthings and a certain giant gorilla.

BLOOD ISLAND First seen: Terror Is A Man (1959) An island of carnivorous plants and mad scientists creating panther-human hybrids and zombie armies (depending which film’s taking place when you visit).

MONSTER ISLAND First seen: All Monsters Attack (1969) Appropriately named. Monsters living on the island include Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra and Anguirus. Best avoided.

WHY WOULD YOU EVEN GO THERE?!

KONG: SKULL ISLAND IS IN CINEMAS FROM MARCH 9.

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OUT OF THE SHADOWS

SMALL-SCREEN ZELDA FITZGERALD BIOPIC Z: THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING SEES CHRISTINA RICCI RETURN TO THE LIMELIGHT. THE ENIGMATIC ACTRESS TELLS EMPIRE HOW SHEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S SURVIVED LIFELONG FAME WORDS HAYLEY CAMPBELL PORTRAITS MARCO GROB

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Christina Ricci, photographed exclusively for Empire in Brooklyn, New York, on 18 November 2016.

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IT’S EARLY IN NEW YORK CITY AND CHRISTINA RICCI IS DREADING TALKING TO THE PRESS . She doesn’t mean right now, of course — not to brag, but she assures us Empire is “wonderful” — but the coming weeks, as she is grilled about her new Amazon Studios show, Z: The Beginning Of Everything. She was just nine when she made Mermaids with Cher; she was Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family a year later. Although in recent years she has stepped out of the glare, generally taking supporting roles and doing fewer interviews, she’s a veteran of the game and knows just what’s coming. “You’d be shocked at the insulting things people say directly to you, and then ask you to comment on,” she says, laughing. “It’s like, ‘Fuck you!’ And I have to be polite to you still?!” But for the first time in Ricci’s life, the project she’s here to talk about is entirely her baby, so she’s sucking it up and telling herself, “It’s going to be awesome,” like a mantra. She stars in and produced Z, a series about the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist, dancer, socalite and wife of F. Scott. Zelda is currently in vogue, with both Scarlett Johansson and Jennifer Lawrence set to play the flapper icon in separate biopics, but Ricci is up first. It’s not difficult to see why this particular story would speak to her: it’s a story about an extraordinarily famous yet enigmatic woman, and the challenges she faces in navigating celebrity without being torn apart by it. As a kid, Ricci never spoke to her schoolmates about her experiences on the sets of huge movies, fearing she wouldn’t be accepted if she was different. Now 36 years old, married and the mother of a two-year-old, she is guarded in the way anyone would be if they’ve had to talk to journalists since they were a kid. She apologises for her answers sounding unpolished, but to be fair, this is her first time talking at length about her second starring role in a serial (after the cancelled Pan Am). “Come back in, like, five interviews and I’ll have it all memorised,” she says. “But right now I am just making this up as I go.” What do you find fascinating about Zelda Fitzgerald? Sometimes it’s much more interesting to go in and really explore the minutiae of somebody’s life when the flipside of their life is legendary, mythical — in story and being and character. I think we minimise real human experience in favour of fame-whoring. Like, it’s not an achievement to raise a child, but it’s an achievement to be a movie star.

Ricci as Zelda Fitzgerald in Z: The Beginning Of Everything.

She was one of the first people to become famous for almost no reason, by dint of who she was married to. Exactly. And I don’t think people really understand what it feels like to be that famous instantaneously. I mean, it’s like a drug. If you give someone that so early and effortlessly, imagine what the rest of their life is like, trying to chase that feeling forever. It’s like being a drug addict. And I think it can really make people crazy.

Playing Wednesday, aged 11, in 1991’s The Addams Family.

Did fame make you crazy? I was too young, so I don’t remember before and after. But I do remember the high: thinking the rest of your life is going to be that intense and exciting and wild. And I remember the feeling of expectation that’s put upon you, that if all these people are paying so much attention to you, you better do something. Some child stars melt down from the pressure. You’ve managed to avoid all that,

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and keep your private life private. How have you done it? I don’t know that I’ve really done anything that would have been good tabloid fodder. I didn’t marry a celebrity, and I lived in Brooklyn when I was pregnant, so I didn’t try to avoid the press — there just didn’t happen to be any paparazzi there. I’m really casual about big things in my life and I don’t make announcements, because I think that’s weird. I think it’s a weird thing to announce to the world that you’re pregnant. How do you know people give a shit? I just feel like it’s very presumptuous to think that people give a shit. Did other kids treat you weirdly at school? I was smart enough at the time to immediately understand that I would not be accepted by my peers if I spoke about my career when I came back to school, so I never talked about it. I made a point of ignoring it and avoiding it. I was able to be very focused and disciplined in a way I think people were surprised by because it’s not necessarily a trait children have very often. But other than that I think I was pretty normal. Are you sick of people still asking about The Addams Family now? I just did it. I’m so sorry. No! [Laughs] It’s a great thing, I’m lucky to have had something people are still fascinated by. I come from that school of thought of longevity, and of making an impact, so for me it’s something to be proud of, that it’s survived this long and people are still interested in it. Who’s your favourite actress? I have lots. My favourite classic — not “classic”; God, what is wrong with me? Sometimes I sound like a teenager still — is Elizabeth Taylor. My favourite movie is Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?. I love watching her. Have you ever seen her in Boom!? No! It’s John Waters’ favourite movie and he says if you watch Boom! and don’t like it, you can never be friends with him. It’s not the one where they’re all stuck at the airport together, is it? No, that’s The V.I.P.s. In Boom! she’s a rich woman and and hates Richard Burton to start off with and then they end up hooking up. It’s terrible. Oh my God. I am so excited. I’m going to watch this immediately. How do you spell it? [Writes down the title] Thank you for that.

With Elijah Wood in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm (1997).

You’re welcome. Looking back at your career, is there one film you see as having been particularly pivotal for you? I think the first movie I did that was more sort of my taste was The Ice Storm. For me that was a big turning point, because what followed after that were more serious adult projects, which was what I was looking for. As an actor, if you are able to plan your career then you are in a very, very lucky position. For the most part you are at the whim of somebody else’s desire. But I think there’s a much more entrepreneurial spirit amongst millennials and the generations coming up, and I think that is influencing the way actors feel. They’re like, “Well, I act in movies, so why wouldn’t I produce them or create them?”

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This page: Dress: Yigal Azrouel black and white knit/lace dress.

Previous page: Dress: Christian Siriano black halter dress. Cuff: Delfina Delettrez gold and silver cuff. Earrings: Noor Fares starburst diamond earrings (worn throughout). Shoes: Brian Atwood black T-strap pumps.

Have you previously been afraid to speak up in case you’re thought of as difficult? [Long pause] Ha. I was going to say a lot of things there, but yes, that is pretty much the situation. I hate to say it, but I found this to be true as an act-ress; you have to have the title to back up your opinion. Are men more likely to speak up? God, yes. That’s the case everywhere. Yeah, it’s no different. People make a big deal about women in Hollywood, but it’s every industry. Going through this process of producing was really surprising to me, even in terms of casting. There are so many act-ors that won’t come in and audition and you’ve never heard of them in your whole life! Me and my peers — other women — we go in and audition all the time for things. There’s a reason why there are a lot of women in charge of our show. You still have to audition? You’d be surprised at the people who do. I don’t hate auditioning: it’s one of those things where I’ve been doing it for 30 years and have to do it so regularly that there’s no point in having a bad attitude about it. But I do think at this point I have enough movies, and I’ve played enough parts, that you can watch them and get an idea of what I’d be like. But what do I know? Apparently you were up for the role that ultimately went to Thora Birch in Ghost World. What happened there? I wasn’t up for it, I was attached to it. It became a scheduling issue and I couldn’t do it. Were you a fan of the comic? I was! Daniel Clowes is amazing. How did you feel about Pan Am not continuing? When it started it felt like something big. I had a lot of fun on that job. But what I learned from that show and what drove me into producing my own show was that there can be a sort of diluted vision with television because of the way television’s made. A lot of people end up involved in the decision-making. Sometimes you can work on projects where you ask, “What is this scene? Should I be playing this as pure drama, or is this dark comedy?” And I’ve had the experience before where somebody will say, “Well, a little bit of both.” That’s not an answer! And then you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. In Prozac Nation you played Elizabeth Wurtzel, a woman struggling with depression and substance abuse. And Zelda Fitzgerald’s story involves infidelity and alcoholism. Do you get nervous approaching dark material? I don’t get nervous, but I kind of dread it because it’s a lot of work and I’m pretty lazy

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[laughs]. I get anxious. But it doesn’t make me nervous like I’ll worry I can’t do it. I just know it’s going to be a lot of work. You were nude in Prozac Nation, but I don’t remember there being a merkin as huge as the one in the fourth episode of Z. Oh God, I guess that they haven’t done the digital effects to your copy. It was enormous! It was bigger than your whole head. What did you think when you saw it? Well, things look very different on camera, especially at different angles, so that was something we put on knowing they could digitally bring it down. [Laughs] I’m glad it gave you a good giggle. I read that you once said, “If I hadn’t gone into acting, I probably would be one of those weird runaways on Hollywood Boulevard. No, it’d be uglier, I’d probably be dead.” When was the date I said that? Was I a teenager? Like most people in the world I’d rather not be held to statements I made as a teenager. All of a sudden people ask you to talk about things you have no experience to talk about. I felt like it was so insane and ridiculous to be asked my opinion about these things. Somebody said to me, “What would you be if you weren’t an actress?” and I said, “Oh, a prostitute on Hollywood Boulevard.” You know what I mean? It’s like, what do you want me to say? I’m 17! I don’t know what I would be! I could still be so many things. Zelda apparently made up infidelities to bring drama into her life, and in a 1998 issue of SPIN magazine you said you used to cheat on boyfriends just to create a little drama. That never happened! I don’t even remember saying that. I’ve never cheated on anybody in my whole life! I mean, at 18 I think I probably didn’t even have a boyfriend. I think I’d had one boyfriend — that was it! Again, somebody puts the microphone in front of your face, like, “Go for it!” and I don’t know what the fuck I said. I remember at the time thinking, “I have no idea about anything.” I didn’t go to college, I barely graduated high school, I’d been on movie sets my whole life. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” So that is really the explanation for all the ridiculous stuff I said early on. People seemed to get angry at me if I was honest and said I didn’t have any experience. 2011’s Pan Am, which was cancelled after one season.

With Clea DuVall in The Lizzie Borden Chronicles.

As Elizabeth Wurtzel in Prozac Nation (2001).

If you didn’t train as an actor, you couldn’t even fall back on this-is-my-process chat. Exactly! I didn’t even have a process! I was a child, and on every set you’re expected to conform to whatever the adults are doing. I’m a product of being a child on set. It’s a very different position. But you’re right, there was very little to talk about, so I just said dumb things. Once you said you had a fear of plants. I was being hyperbolic because I thought it was funny that there was a word for that! Botanophobia. I think that’s hilarious. I don’t like plants inside because I think it’s gross you’re bringing dirt inside. I don’t like dirt and I don’t like nature very much. Especially ferns. I don’t like ferns. Was there any one line you remember that you regret saying? There are a lot of them, but repeating them would only make it be printed again. I know better than that now. Z: THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING IS ON AMAZON PRIME NOW.

ALAMY, ALLSTAR, REX FEATURES

With Z and The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, you also have a producing credit. Is that so you can have more control over the material? Yes. For a woman, it’s a very difficult process psychologically to age as an actress. And I don’t want to be worried about all the petty things I’ve been worried about as a younger person — I’d rather get more into the material and the art, and have more control. Being an actor can feel very much like a powerless position and I don’t want to go into my forties being powerless anymore at work.

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Top: Sally LaPointe chiffon and cashmere blouse. Skirt: Sally LaPointe camel cashmere and wool skirt. Shoes: Lanvin pump with chain detail on toe.

Stylist: Thomas Carter Phillips @ The Wall Group. Make-up: Gita Bass @ Starworks. Hair: Matthew Monzon @ Jed Root. Manicurist: Mar Y Soul for Dior Vernis.

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AS WI LL ARN ETT PR EPAR ES TO R EPR ISE HIS R O L E AS T H E BLO CK KNI GHT I N THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE , W E AS K E D H IM TO RUN THE RULE OVER HIS F EL LOW C APE D C R U SA D E RS WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

TYPE JACEY

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ADAM WEST BATMAN (1966-’68)

ALAMY, PHOTOFEST, REX FEATURES

“Adam West was definitely the Batman I grew up with. He had the task of being the first big on-screen Batman. I’m sure he wasn’t cognisant of the fact that he would forever be referenced as the first in a long line of Batmen, and what that legacy would be. What I loved about it as a kid was that it was very kitschy, but it was representative of the time and a lot of the stuff that was out there. He brought a superhero to life and was very fun. He made superheroing, if that’s a verb, a fun, accessible experience. He was Batman in Technicolor. And that theme tune was so good. We played on it in the first trailer we put out. Alfred says, ‘Do you want to talk about how you’re feeling?’ And I said, as a goof, ‘No-no-no-no-no-no-no!’ It came out in the moment and it just seemed appropriate. “He’s the only Batman I haven’t met. I met Michael Keaton about a year ago. I met Ben Affleck a few times and know him a little bit socially. I also kinda know George Clooney as well — I’ve had the opportunity to hang out with him a few times and he’s a super-cool guy. And I’ve met Val Kilmer and Christian Bale as well. So Adam West, that has to happen.”

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MICHAEL KEATON BATMAN (1989) BATMAN RETURNS (1992) “My favourite of all the Batmen. He reset everything we know about the character. He gave it this gravitas and was able to wipe away all the kitschiness that existed before that. We live in a world now where films are dominated by these big superhero films — that only exists because of what Michael Keaton did in that first Batman film in 1989. He was able to bring the fun and the aspirational aspect of a superhero life, but at the same time he had this intensity to him. I’m not very big on impressions, but Michael Keaton is the one impression I can do. It involves a lot of physicalisation and manipulation of my face. It’s awesome that after all these years I’m tied loosely to him.”

VAL KILMER BATMAN FOREVER (1995) “He had big shoes to fill after Keaton. He wasn’t bad, it just was what it was. He probably didn’t get a fair shake. But a couple of years ago at the Oscars, the Lonely Island boys came out and performed Everything Is Awesome. I wore the Val Kilmer Batman suit and came out and performed — I use that term very loosely. I had a guitar and Questlove was dressed as Robin. It was a thrill. I was backstage at one point wearing the costume and Marion Cotillard [who played Talia al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises] passed me. As she did, she said, ‘Didn’t I kill you?’”

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GEORGE CLOONEY BATMAN & ROBIN (1997) “I know George hasn’t been virtually apologetic, he’s been actually apologetic about his performance. But I liked it! He’s aloof and charming, and I thought he was pretty cool. And I’d say he’s got the best costume because it’s got super-great abs. Could I do without the nipples? Yeah, of course. The eye is going to be drawn to that. And I don’t want to be thinking about his nipples the whole time. Because in order to highlight them they have to be erect, for lack of a better word, the entire time. And now the question becomes, well, why are they erect? And I don’t want to be going through that thought process. When I would come in for The Lego Batman recording sessions, I would have them tape my nipples down under my shirt.”

CHRISTIAN BALE BATMAN BEGINS (2005) THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012) “Christian did another reset and brought even more gravitas. It was very serious stuff. Talk about the Dark Knight… come on! Yet it probably needed that a little bit. There’s a sense of menace that to the viewer is exciting. It’s almost Batman unhinged — there’s almost that feeling of, ‘Is he a good guy?’ And then there’s the Christian Bale Batman voice. He really took that to a gruff, shouty place. When we did the first Lego film, I tried to find something in-between that and Michael Keaton. I wanted to do it in such a way that it doesn’t become monotonous. I love the idea of that guy who has the really gruff Batman voice just doing mundane things. I would love it if we just did the next film as Lego Batman At Home and he’s going to the dry cleaners: ‘WHAT HAPPENED TO MY SUIT? I LEFT IT IN ON THURSDAY. I DON’T KNOW IF I STILL HAVE MY TICKET.’”

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BEN AFFLECK BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (2016) SUICIDE SQUAD (2016) JUSTICE LEAGUE (2017) “It’s a natural progression from Christian Bale. He’s brooding and a big, strong guy in a way that hadn’t existed before. Ben is the Batman who you feel would snap your neck like a twig. And he has some issues going on. That Batman feels like he’s about to go off in a dangerous way. He has a dark, overpowering presence and a great voice.”

LEGO BATMAN THE LEGO MOVIE (2014) THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE (2017) “It was fun to take an iconic character like Batman and redefine the rules of what we know about him. One way was to record our own song [Untitled Self Portrait]. Phil Lord and Chris Miller [directors of The Lego Movie] were like, ‘Are you game to record a song?’ I’m not putting myself up there with the great songwriters of all time, but when my kids ask to play it, I see the artist section and it says my name. That’s cool. So I’m having a lot of fun. He’s trying to save the world and help people and he’s got this great life. What I always loved about Batman over other superheroes is that they were born with these gifts. Batman came

up with all this stuff himself. And we’re at the tip of the iceberg. There are complete storylines we created that are not in the film. We’ll save those for next time. “Could he take the other Batmen? Yes. Because Lego Batman is a Master Builder and could build his way around any problem. That’s what people don’t get about him — he just keeps changing things up. But I think the greatest advantage he has is that they would all underestimate him. Because he’s tiny. It’s hard to pin somebody down when you’re that small…” THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE IS IN CINEMAS MARCH 30.

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Max Landis, photographed exclusively for Empire in Sherman Oaks, California.

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Max Landis cannot walk into a room unnoticed. The LA house in which Empire meets him couldn’t be more Hollywood if Jerry Bruckheimer were standing in the middle of it smoking a stogie: there’s glass everywhere, white walls, a glittering pool, valley views and furniture that may actually be sculpture. But from the second Landis strides in — well over six feet tall, dressed like a cartoon on a date, half his hair shaved and the rest rainbow-streaked, carrying a little white dog he found on the way in — he pulls focus from everything else, including the dog. “DOES THIS BELONG TO ANYONE?” he enquires, in a voice that will prove not to have an indoor setting. You might guess he was an actor, a stylist or possibly a very young agent. You probably wouldn’t land on writer. Yet Max Landis is currently the biggest noise in screenwriting in Hollywood, and he’s adored and reviled in equal measure. Even if you’re not familiar with him, you’ll know at least one of his projects. Landis has only five released films to his name — Chronicle, Me Him Her, American Ultra, Mr. Right and Victor Frankenstein — but he reckons there are “14 or so” others in various stages of development. He recently sold an original script, supernatural cop thriller Bright, with David Ayer, Will Smith and Joel Edgerton attached, to Netflix for $3 million, a sum unheard of since the ’90s heyday of Shane Black. He’s currently showrunning his first series, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. This is not to mention the countless other screenplays stuffing up his hard drive. Yet beyond his ubiquity as a writer and his famous surname — he’s the son of John Landis, director of An American Werewolf In London (a film Max is preparing to remake) — what’s got him noticed is his personality, particularly when he throws around criticism of other people’s movies on his Twitter account, @uptomyknees. The offspring of a Hollywood big shot, contrarian, rich and only 31: you can understand why some dislike him. In person, though, Landis is much gentler than you might imagine. He’s certainly loud, but he’s friendly. More impassioned than obnoxious. As soon as he sits down he is off, talking a mile a minute and picking at the industry that made him rich. He is immediately, delightfully dramatic. “I exist in a state of constant creative frustration,” he says, leaping cross-legged onto a sofa overlooking the pool. “There’s a deep, black pit inside of me that stories come out of and I get so excited about them. I think, ‘This will be the one. This will be the one.’”

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WHEN MAX LANDIS

“THERE’S A DEEP, BLACK PIT INSIDE OF ME THAT STORIES COME OUT OF. IF I WROTE EVERYTHING I’D GO INSANE.”

was nine, he watched a Ray Harryhausen movie with his father. “It was The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad,” he remembers. “The cyclops came out onto the beach and I was mesmerised. I asked my dad, ‘That’s not real. How did they do that?’ He explained it was an effect and described the whole process: the animator is told what to do by the director, who learns from the script. I thought, ‘Someone wrote on paper that there should be a cyclops and now I’m watching it attack Sinbad in a way that’s as real as can be. I want to do that.’” And he did. He’d been writing for years already, completing his first story, an adventure about two dogs called Yelp and Dopey, at the age of four. Shortly after his 15th birthday, he started writing scripts. Rarely allowed to visit his dad’s sets — “due to being extremely badly behaved” — he still got encouragement from both parents, his mother being costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis, the creator of Indiana Jones’s look. There was plenty of non-encouragement too. “My dad is a very big critic of mine,” Landis says. “He would read my early work and be like, ‘These scripts are terrible!’ He doesn’t have much of a filter. He respects me and loves me, but his taste is very different from mine.” Empire posits that perhaps one reason he’s written all these scripts is to win approval from Landis Sr. “No!” he laughs, giving our bargain-bin psychoanalysis short shrift. “He’s my dad. He loves me. If he says it’s bad it hurts my feelings, but if he loves it — he’s my dad! You know what felt good? When Stephen King tweeted that he loved American Ultra. That felt amazing.” Although Landis first got into the industry via his father — John Landis knew a highpowered agent called David Kopple, who looked at Max’s work and liked it — he’s long since brushed off accusations of nepotism. As he says, nobody throws millions of dollars behind you because your dad was big in the ’80s. Certainly not more than once. “Everyone talks shit,” he says, rising up in his seat. “There are so many people convinced I’m filling some sort of spot that they should have. There’s so much jealousy and anger and they have all these excuses that fall apart in the light of reality. If you want to be me, write three easy-to-read, commercial scripts per year. Not scripts that your agent says everyone passed on.” Three scripts per year would actually be slow-going for Landis. He has written somewhere close to 100 screenplays, selling his first at the age of 18, a Masters Of Horror episode called ‘Deer Woman’, on which he collaborated with his father. He sold Chronicle, a gritty reinvention of superhero tales that went on to make $126 million from a $12 million budget, by the time he was 26. (He’s now the grand old age of 31.) He used to write something

on every idea he had, but says he now has so many — he came up with a movie and a TV show on the drive to his Empire shoot — that, “If I wrote everything I would go insane.” There is no real connective tissue between his projects, no overarching theme, except that none of them sound immediately like anything else. “I look for holes,” Landis explains. “There’s not a movie like Bright that exists. There wasn’t a movie like American Ultra, I don’t think. There wasn’t really a movie like Chronicle. They’re a focused attack on making movies that have not been made yet.” Unashamedly commercial, he wrote a draft for the upcoming Power Rangers reboot that went unused (he noted on Twitter after seeing the trailer that “five or so writers later, it appears they made Chronicle”). And he’s developing a Pepé Le Pew movie for Warner Bros., a new adventure for the relentlessly amorous cartoon skunk which he pitches as “a family adventure about emotional intimacy… Pepé wants the cat until he gets her; then he runs away”. An ideas machine, he’s not afraid to publicly aim his imagination at other people’s films. To his 82,000 Twitter followers he has, at length, expressed his immense disappointment with Star Wars: The Force Awakens (“A BORING AND THINLY WRITTEN PIECE OF FAN FICTION NOTHINGNESS”) and the new Ghostbusters (“3rd act gets really horribly dumb. Racist stereotype character is as advertised”). As much as he’s oddly, noisily, charming in person, in 140 characters he can read as brusque and arrogant. He’s the mouthy nerd with a platform, and that’s not often a popular thing to be. “Did you know that being an obnoxious douchebag could be a profession? It can be, and Max Landis was just paid $3 million for it,” sniped a typical attacker on movie site Pajiba in March. “I’ve never tried to be famous,” he protests. “The conversations I have on Twitter are the same ones I had in the back of a comic-book store when I was 14,” he says. “It’s never a deliberate ‘hot take’ on anything — it’s just a direct filter into my brain. It’s got me in trouble and weirdly has helped me in other ways. It’s easy to get knocked over by negativity, but if I can entertain people and inspire them, then why should I not? There’s only so much I’m willing to be punished for being myself.” For all this, that line about not wanting to be famous doesn’t quite ring true. After all, Landis could do his job just as effectively without being a Twitter star or engaging in arguments on Facebook. But he disagrees vehemently that these are the actions of a man who wants to be seen. “I’ve never had a publicist. I’ve never paid anyone to advertise for me,” he says firmly. “You guys are the ones that contacted me. I didn’t ask for that. I said yes to it because I’m not averse to fame. I’m not averse to attention, but at the end of the day, I just am who I am. And this is what ❯ happens.”

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WHAT HE ISN’T

really yet, for all his success on paper, is a hit-maker. The same thing that annoys Landis’s critics is the same thing that annoys Landis: thus far, most of the movies made from his scripts have not been very successful. Chronicle may have been a huge winner, but the rest have disappointed, critically and commercially. He knows this. Yet he keeps getting hired. “People say, ‘How does he keep getting movies?’” Landis says, his voice swelling to a shout, which it does whenever he’s particularly happy or irked. “Part of the lie is that I’m the force behind these movies. I’m the writer. There are plenty of bad scripts that become okay movies and there are many more good scripts that become terrible movies. Nobody knows how

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the system works unless they work in it.” Once his scripts have been sold, Landis says, his power over them has tended to disappear. “They’re buying a blueprint… I have no control. It can rain on the wrong day of the schedule and the most important scene in your script is irrevocably changed. An actor can say they don’t like a line on set or does a bad job of reading the most important line. There is no control.” He’s warming to his theme. “You remember that Russell Crowe Robin Hood movie? Without commenting on its quality, that started out in development as a script about the Sheriff Of Nottingham, which was great. Nine drafts later, it’s a historically accurate Robin Hood.” Next year’s Bright, set in a world where humans rub shoulders with monsters and fairies, is the most high-profile project of Landis’s career

ALAMY, GETTY, REX FEATURES

Below, top to bottom: Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in American Ultra; Landis’s biggest hit, Chronicle; James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe in Victor Frankenstein. Below left: Elijah Wood and Samuel Barnett, co-stars of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

to date. His script provoked a bidding battle which Netflix won: the streaming titan has committed an incredible $90 million to making it. Will Smith stars as a law-enforcement officer teamed with an orc played by Joel Edgerton; Suicide Squad’s David Ayer directs. Yet Landis sounds a little glum as he brings us up to speed on it. “It won’t be the movie I wrote,” he says. “That was about brotherhood and friendship and masculine sensitivity. It’s moved away from that a bit.” To become what? “I don’t know yet.” He takes several calls about the movie during our conversation, one rather terse, but makes a point of saying that Ayer is a “genius”. According to Landis, though, his days of being pushed around are numbered. He singles out 2015’s Victor Frankenstein as the tipping point. The original script had more backstory for Igor, a more comic tone and an ending that dealt with the possibilities of Frankenstein’s experiment. The version that hit screens, however, was a standard monster mash-up that was critically lambasted, eliciting lines like, “Worst film of the year? Possibly. Worst Frankenstein adaptation ever? Definitely.” (The Times.) “The film is very different from what I wrote,” protests Landis. “[Fox] wouldn’t let me see it until it was finished. I can guess why.” He has decided now that it’s no longer enough to be successful financially: he wants to be proud of his work. “I became militant,” he says. “The way I talk to my agents and manager has changed. I told them I wouldn’t draw within the lines anymore, because it hasn’t worked out well for me once.” This is part of the reason he’s taken the reins on Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, an Elijah Wood-starring adaptation of Douglas Adams’s book series about a psychic investigator. The series, however it turns out, will be mostly his vision. “Dirk Gently has been extremely creatively fulfilling, if physically and mentally exhausting,” he says. “It’s so labyrinthine and ridiculous and unique in tone, that if there was someone in charge who didn’t want to do the best possible job and control the production decisions, it would wind up being a diluted version of what it needed to be.” And then there’s the project after, the one that could be different, the one that could be entirely his, the one that could be the one. Called Deeper, it’s about a former astronaut (set to be played by Bradley Cooper) who is hired to explore the most remote depths of the ocean. There he’ll find something mind-blowing. Hopefully not Pepé Le Pew. “That will be the movie I wrote, because I have more control over it,” Landis declares. Even if it’s not, there are a million more ideas where that one came from. He’ll keep going until one of them is exactly as he imagined it. Until he reaches the bottom of that deep black pit. DIRK GENTLY’S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY IS ON NETFLIX NOW.

FIVE MORE RED-HOT SCREENWRITERS UNDER 40

NICOLE PERLMAN

She started at Marvel, working on Thor and Guardians Of The Galaxy. Now she’s toggling between Final Draft files for Captain Marvel, a Pokémon film and Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes 3.

STEPHANY FOLSOM

After making it onto the Black List in 2013 with 1969: A Space Odyssey, Or How Kubrick Learned To Stop Worrying And Land On The Moon, she was hired by Marvel to polish Thor: Ragnarok.

GRAHAM MOORE

He won an Oscar for The Imitation Game, dedicating it to “that kid out there who feels like she’s weird or she’s different”. His next film is The Last Days Of Night, about the battle in 1888 for US electricity.

KRYSTY WILSON-CAIRNS

Born in Glasgow, she cut her teeth on Penny Dreadful and is now writing features, including thriller The Voyeur’s Motel for Sam Mendes and crime drama The Good Nurse for Darren Aronofsky.

JOE ROBERT COLE

His alien-invasion movie Revok remains in development hell, but it’s doubtful Cole frets much given he’s since worked on The People V. O.J. Simpson and is cowriting Black Panther with Ryan Coogler.

MARCH 2017

IN OUR SECOND DIRECTOR-ON-DIRECTOR BEHIND CULT 1978 CAR-CHASE THRILLER 74

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WORDS CHRIS HEWITT PORTRAITS STEVE SCHOFIELD

INTERVIEW, THE MAN BEHIND THE UPCOMING BABY DRIVER TALKS TO THE MAN THE DRIVER. EDGAR WRIGHT AND WALTER HILL, START YOUR ENGINES MARCH 2017

EDGAR WRIGHT: “I FIRST SAW Walter Hill’s second film, The Driver, as a teenager, late at night on the BBC, quite possibly sitting too close to the telly. Given that this 1978 slice of neo-noir takes place almost entirely in the dark streets of a deserted downtown LA, it’s really a perfect midnight movie. I discovered it through having enjoyed Walter’s later successes, 48 Hrs. and The Warriors, and because of a short Leonard Maltin review that stated it had ‘great car chases’. That was more than enough to convince me to stay up and watch it on a school night. But 91 minutes later I was totally spellbound by this diamond-tight, minimalist masterclass, which stars Ryan O’Neal as a getaway driver (known only as The Driver) and Bruce Dern as the cop (known as The Detective) out to get him. Its influence on video games is very clear and in movies its style has echoed throughout the work of Michael Mann, James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Nicolas Refn and now me with my new film (ahem), Baby Driver. Yet it wasn’t until 2011, when I asked Walter Hill to do a Q&A with me at the New Beverly Cinema in LA, that I realised I had to convince its own director of its significant legacy. When I told Walter I was showing it, he replied, ‘I’m not sure anyone will show up.’ He was wrong and was finally rewarded with his first full house for the action classic. Six years later, at the invitation of Empire, I headed to a key location from the movie, the Westin Bonaventure, to continue reminding the legendary writer/director what a hard-boiled gem it is.” Wright: Frank Marshall [who was associate producer on The Driver] sends his love. He also sends this photo [the Mercedes door signed by members of the cast and crew (on page 79)]. I was amazed that he had this. I can’t believe you don’t have this in your house. “Ask Walter if he remembers this…” Hill: [laughs] That’s from one of our big scenes, the ‘Exhibition’ [where The Driver proves his mettle to a gang by screeching around a parking garage at high speed]. That’s the Mercedes door. That scene always got a reaction. Wright: The Driver wasn’t commercially successful at the time, but when I was a teenager I had no knowledge of that. At no point until talking to you was I even aware it was a flop. Hill: The movie actually got a very good reception in Europe, critically. I don’t think you can say the movie did commercially well anywhere, except Japan, where I believe it did reasonable business. It did not find an audience. Wright: To me, especially for your second movie, it’s incredibly confident in terms of state-of-theart action. Unlike a lot of contemporary action films, it’s geographically correct and spatially aware. Were you proud of it at the time? Hill: There’s no simple answer to that. You’re a filmmaker. You start out with a big vision, a big appetite, a dream. At the end of the day they all fall short of the dream, in my opinion. But I certainly thought I’d done a good,

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professional job in the straightforward sense. I knew when I was getting ready to do the movie that I was taking a chance. This was not meant to be an everyday action movie. I was trying to do something a little more, or a little less, but I was trying to do something else. When the movie came out, I was already making another movie [The Warriors], so I had a parachute on. You never know. You know this very well, it’s an odd way to be making a living. If they decide they don’t like you anymore, the phone may not ring. Wright: One of the things that is amazing about your scripts is the way you write. There’s almost a beat-poetry element to the stage direction.

I actually read the Driver screenplay before I started writing my movie because I wanted to know, how do you write a car chase? I have to write this thing in words which is only going to be really exciting in action on screen. However, you really write action beautifully. It’s almost like little haiku of action. Hill: You’re probably too kind in your assessment. When I was beginning as a writer, there was a bland Hollywood style that everybody seemed to appropriate for their scripts. I had the temerity to try to do a little more. I wasn’t first, I don’t think. Maybe I pushed it a little further than some of the others.

Wright: [producing the screenplay for The Driver from his bag] This is one I got from the library at CAA. What’s amazing is you have an entire page of stage directions, which is usually a no-no, but the way you laid it out is thrilling. It’s unusual to see a page like that in contemporary screenwriting. Hill: I thought that approach made people read with greater intention. It’s spare in detail but written to dramatic effect. You could maybe capture the mind of the reader a little better. Wright: It’s interesting to me that you were the second AD on Bullitt, and that’s obviously a major car-chase film. Hill: I wasn’t in charge of anything creative on Bullitt, but I was scared to death! I was there for every shot. Wright: Scared to death in what sense?

Hill: It was my job to set background and also to set it up with the police. We had to organise every shot so people wouldn’t wander out into the middle of the street and be hit. Wright: Mown down by a Mustang!

Clockwise from here: Walter Hill (right) with Frank Marshall on set; Ryan O’Neal makes standing next to a car with a gun look cool; Hill chatting with Edgar Wright.

Hill: Right. So every time we did a shot I was scared to death. I can’t tell you how many times I’d need to grab people that were innocently trying to cross the street or got tired of waiting. I was afraid something would go tragically wrong, which gave me a very different perspective when I got to direct a car chase myself. Wright: What, if anything, did you learn from seeing Peter Yates do that movie? Hill: In the simple technical sense, I was amazed at how much time and effort was committed to shooting from inside the cars. The chase took, if I remember correctly, a little over two weeks. Wright: I can say with certainty that setting car mounts is no quicker today. I stood there at the side of a road going, “How long’s it going to be, guys? An hour? Really? I’m ready!” Hill: Then I would go to dailies and quickly realise how wrong I was. What made the Bullitt chase remarkable was not just stunts. It was the technique of shooting from inside. You really felt it was a rollercoaster ride as well as something ❯ you were observing. I made damn sure that

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when I was doing The Driver I filmed an enormous amount of inside shots. Wright: The opening chase, shot right outside this hotel, is all rear-mounted, locked cameras, or the front-point-of-view camera, locked to the rear-view mirror. It’s always going with the car and his point of view of the police, seeing it from the getaway car. Hill: Mirror shots. Wright: Very tricky things to do.

Hill: What nobody had really done at that time, or I was unaware of it if they had, was a big chase at night. You have to light the streets as well as do all the maps and that business. It was a rough undertaking. The chases were all done at the end of the film. We shot the drama, then we shot the chases. Wright: So you could build up to it? Hill: We wanted to get the day stuff out of the way and then kick over to nights. I thought doing them at night would be very much more in the spirit of what the storytelling wanted to be. It’s not meant to be a realistic depiction of what real criminals are like, or what real life in the city was like. I was not interested in any of that. By the way, the first chase was, in my opinion, kind of a failure. It was meant to lead up to a much more spectacular finish. Wright: With him driving against the cops. Hill: The night we were to shoot the end of that was the last night of the movie. An electrician sadly fell off a roof and was terribly hurt. Went to the hospital. Because that happened, we just cobbled a little thing together and I never really got the chance to come back and shoot it again. It was meant to be a much bigger version of that. It was a sad thing. Whereas I think what we called the Exhibition, the thing with the Mercedes in the garage, and the end chase with the pick-up truck, they’re as fully realised as I could get them to be. Wright: Before you started directing, the other credit that has some bearing on this movie is writing The Getaway for Sam Peckinpah. How did you come to do that? Walter: Polly Platt read one of my scripts and recommended me to Peter Bogdanovich. Peter had been hired to direct The Getaway and he hired me to co-write with him on the script.

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When I was hired, he was in the last month of prep on What’s Up, Doc?. He started shooting that and then I was up in San Francisco again. Wright: All these movies have action scenes on hills in San Francisco! Hill: It didn’t work out with Peter. I never really understood it. The official version was availability. I think Steve [McQueen] wasn’t happy Peter was doing another film ahead of his film. I don’t know. Wright: How did you get to work with Sam Peckinpah? Hill: I was told, “Just keep writing, let’s get a draft.” Frankly I was in no position to walk away in a huff. I worked in splendid isolation for another five weeks, did a first draft. Steve wanted to do it and, of course, Steve wanting to do it meant the movie was going to get made. Steve had just been working with Sam… Wright: On Junior Bonner. Walter: Yep. They had gotten along. Sam was also in post on Straw Dogs, so he was very busy. But I thought he did a wonderful job on The Getaway. And Steve was terrific in it. The picture came out and critically it was not well received, but it was a huge commercial success. It was really how I got to be a director; the fact it had done so well put me in line to get a shot. Wright: Had you written The Driver at this point? Hill: Oh, no. Wright: Hard Times was written first? Hill: I got a job with Larry Gordon, who I’d known a bit. He made a deal over at Columbia.

CAR DOOR: FRANK MARSHALL

Clockwise from top left: The Driver prepares for the opening getaway in flashy style; O’Neal in the iconic Mercedes-Benz 280S (W108); The Mercedes door signed (and illustrated) by the cast and crew; The cops give chase to The Driver; O’Neal behind the wheel.

He wanted to do something about these guys who did this unofficial fighting in back alleys and warehouses. I found that subject appealing, of course, given my nature. I rewrote that script rather extensively and liked working with Larry very much. The idea that [The Driver] would be set around a guy who was a professional driver, that was Larry’s. That started the wheels turning. Wright: I guess there had been films about bootleggers before, but nothing specifically about a getaway driver. Hill: Right. So I sat down and it seems like I wrote it over the summer of 1975. We had finished Hard Times, but there was a long lag time before the studio put the movie out. They wanted to hold it because [Charles] Bronson had made several other films, and they were in the pipeline ahead of ours. So I started writing The Driver. Wright: The movie — and you’ll think I’m overpraising it again, but I’ve got you captive here so I’m going to do it — is as precise as if the main character were making it. When I think of the ‘Walter Hill style’, I think of The Driver. Maybe because it’s so clean and simple and pure. Hill: I would say I never tried to screw anything that tight again. I now like everything to be a little looser around the edges, as we say. Wright: It was written for Steve McQueen. Or you certainly had McQueen in mind. Hill: I thought he could play it tremendously well, absolutely. Wright: Ryan O’Neal is a very different presence from Steve McQueen. Even though I know it

wasn’t your intention, one of the things that is so enigmatic about the movie and to me really makes it, is O’Neal. Obviously Steve McQueen would have been great, but you know what that movie would have been. It becomes a much more beguiling movie with Ryan O’Neal in the lead. Hill: I remember I was so pleased with Ryan in the movie and I was very disappointed that people didn’t particularly give him any credit for what he did. To me, he’s the best he’s ever been. I cannot imagine another actor. When you don’t get who you want, sometimes you really do get lucky.

Wright: How close did Steve McQueen come? Hill: I sent it to him and he said, “Nah, I don’t want to do another car thing.” Wright: Too many lines! What is it The Driver says, 350 words total? Hill: I’ve no idea. Not many, I’ll say that. Wright: How did you go from McQueen to ❯ Ryan O’Neal?

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PHOTOFEST, RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE, CAPITAL PICTURES, RALPH NELSON

ADDITIONAL IMAGERY: ALAMY, COLLECTION CHRISTOPHEL/ARENAPAL,

Clockwise from top left: Rudy Ramos’ Teeth emerges gingerly from the car-chase wreckage; The Driver with Bruce Dern’s The Detective; Walter Hill and Edgar Wright discuss the intricacies of filmmaking; A mysterious Isabelle Adjani as The Player; Teeth tries to extract information from The Connection (Ronee Blakley); The film’s 1978 poster.

Hill: There was a list. There’s always a list. Because he was a big star and I had done a successful film with him, we had to go to Charlie [Bronson]. Charlie was quite mad at me, so it didn’t get very far. He thought I had edited Hard Times in a way that had not favoured Jill Ireland [Bronson’s co-star, and wife]. In a sense he was correct, so this was an area of tension, shall I say. Wright: He seems like too much of a bruiser to be a getaway driver. Hill: I never thought it was a good idea. And I never thought he’d do it. Ryan was an interesting idea and I was delighted when he said he’d do it. I thought we pulled it off, but I’m sorry to say people didn’t see that, particularly at the time.

Wright: Did you change the script for Ryan? Hill: To the best of my memory it remained the same. I changed some dialogue for Bruce. I wanted Bruce’s personality. Audiences get nervous about movies that don’t have a lot of dialogue. They like dialogue. These long, visual sequences that are the delight of film directors are not always audience-friendly. Wright: You’re making me nervous, Walter. Hill: They like a balance. I wanted Bruce to very much offset the distance of The Driver. Wright: He’s an incredibly talkative foil. He has probably 80 per cent of the dialogue in the movie. Hill: The studio recommended Robert Mitchum and I thought Mitchum would be a great idea. I went over to Talbot Productions, his company. He was in an office on Sunset, right where it bends into Beverly Hills. He had two sofas and inbetween there was a little refrigerator. He would reach in and pull out a bottle of vodka. And this was noon. So I had a long session with him and the vodka. Then he called about a day later and said, “Nah.” Wright: I love Robert Mitchum, but I cannot imagine anyone playing that part except for Bruce Dern. Hill: I can’t either. Wright: I love the ending. The cop doesn’t arrest him even though he has enough evidence to. The Detective lost the game and The Driver gets to walk away. Hill: Couldn’t say it better myself.

Wright: One of my favourite things in the movie is the magical jump-cut at the end, where the cops are all suddenly standing there in the train station and The Driver doesn’t hear them come in. That’s a little bit of magical realism. Hill: My producer and I had some interesting conversations about that. Wright: Did Larry think it was too comical? Hill: He thought it was too weird. Wright: “How the fuck did 20 cops get in here without making a sound?” Hill: He said, “Can’t we have a lot of rustling of feet and things like that?” I said, “Well, he’d look up, then.” Wright: What are your memories of the actual shoot? Something magical starts to happen when you’re doing a film that’s all nights. Hill: You get into a weird zone. Wright: Where were you living at the time? Hill: I had a small house up in the hills. I remember people always being worried that I’d fall asleep driving home and crash and die. Wright: It’s tough after night shoots. Hill: It is. It’s like you’re swimming underwater or hypnotised. And I’m a person that stays up late and wakes up early. But staying up night after night after night really threw me out. You make decisions you cannot explain. You just intuit. Wright: It makes sense to you at four in the morning. Hill: It’s probably hell for anyone around you. But it’s a question that anybody who gets a chance to direct a movie probably comes to, I think, which is: is it all choice and rational thought? Or at what point do you let your instincts take over? Which is better? There isn’t any answer. Wright: There’s that quote about the Velvet Underground Andy Warhol album — nobody bought it at the time, but the people who did buy it went on to form a band. I feel the same way about The Driver. The people who were watching are directors — we watched that movie and were excited and inspired. And I had to make a movie called Baby Driver just to prove to you that The Driver is influential. Hill: [laughs] That’s all too kind. Wright: You can’t outrun it forever!

WITH THAT, THE two directors are called away to be snapped by Empire’s photographer. While they pose, they chat about — among other things — Hill’s return to the Westin Bonaventure (recently bought by the Marriott Group) for the first time in nearly 40 years, and the 16mm print of a TV version that Quentin Tarantino owns. There’s a definite sense that Wright’s campaign of attrition is working, that at last Hill is learning to appreciate the hidden classic on his CV. “That somebody can remember something you did 35 years ago and still see some value in it?” says Hill. “It makes an old man happy.” FOR CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE INTERVIEWING WILLIAM FRIEDKIN ABOUT THE FRENCH CONNECTION, SEE ISSUE 187.

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MAKING HACKSAW RIDGE: WE TALK TO THE MAN WHO DESIGNED THE OSCAR-NOMMED WAR MOVIE FOR MEL GIBSON

new releases p84 An office Christmas party, a greasy serial killer, and Jeff Goldblum turning into the alien from District 9…

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MARCH 2017

EDITED BY CHRIS HEWITT

THE EMPIRE VIEWING GUIDE

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE It’s the best film to be ignored by the 89th Oscars. Director Taika Waititi talks us through it.

WORDS HELEN O’HARA

THE VERDICT HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE

HHHHH RATED PG

What we said: “Imaginative style and winning characters make this heart-warming (and heart-wrenching) flick a must-see. Just try to get the “Ricky Baker” song out of your head.” Notable extras: Taika Waititi commentary, making of, blooper reel.

00.14.22 THE RICKY BAKER SONG __ The birthday

song Rima Te Wiata’s Bella sings to Julian Dennison’s foster kid Ricky Baker was recently named New Zealand’s ‘Most Annoying’. It came about out of necessity when the rights to Happy Birthday proved too pricey. “I had a feeling I should be looking for something more interesting anyway,” says Waititi. “Rima started tinkering with chords and we all pitched in ideas. It took about 15 minutes.”

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00.17.54

00.18.06

00.40.47

BYE BELLA __ The shocking death of Bella

TAIKA’S CAMEO __ The first major tonal

shift comes from the smash cut of Hec (Sam Neill) sobbing over Bella to the funeral, presided over by an addled minister (Waititi himself). The eulogy, about doors, windows and Fanta, came from a real funeral Waititi attended. “This was a big discussion, whether that was too ridiculous after such a tragic death. There was a version we shot that was very straight. It was so boring.”

__ Ricky gets to play tough when he and Hec are threatened by local hunters. “He’s such a wannabe gangster [and] he’s probably the least gangster character in the film,” laughs Waititi. “Also, Julian doesn’t swear. We had a big discussion with his mum about him using the word. Me knowing Julian, it makes me laugh even more. It took a lot of courage for him to say ‘shit’.”

01.00.03

01.01.50

01.07.42

THE MEDIA HYSTERIA __ “The whole

SARAH CONNOR __ As social worker Paula

THE DOG DIES

01.11.08

01.23.03

01.33.10

THE ONE-SHOT MONTAGE

THE CAR CHASE

THE HAPPY ENDING

came from Wild Pork And Watercress, the Barry Crump source novel. “It’s what the film needed so you cared enough about Ricky to want to see what happened next,” says Waititi. But he admits he had doubts. “I was heartbroken. The more Rima developed that character, the more I wanted her to stay. I even considered having a ghost at some point.”

thing is a little boy manifesting his fantasy; it’s like he has to have a car chase and fulfil this movie he wants to live before he can become a real person,” says Waititi. Ricky’s desire for love reaches a point where the whole country is hanging on his every move. “But that’s too much, and all he needs is a warm bed and someone to give him a cuddle and a hot water bottle.”

__ Out in the wilderness ready to shoot two key scenes, the day was disrupted by heavy snow. “I secretly wanted snow; something seasonal.” Stuck for something to do, Waititi conceived this single-shot montage tracking the characters’ progress, and set it up in only two hours. “We choreographed it so people were hiding underneath the camera or running around to the other side. It was super fun.”

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(Rachel House) finally catches up with Ricky, they have a ridiculous exchange about which movie character they’re most like. Waititi believes most of the characters — notably apart from Hec — are pretending to be cooler characters from another film. “I’m like that sometimes. But the most obvious [hunter character] is Terminator.” Which leaves Ricky as Sarah Connor, forever on the run.

__ Social services’ hunt for the pair reaches ludicrous heights when Paula leads the police and army in pursuit. “I wanted to have a car chase, which wasn’t in the book, because New Zealand films of the ’80s always had one. They always flip a police car over for no reason, and it always culminates in a stand-off. We’re turning this film into the sort of thing Ricky wants it to be, and Ricky demands a car chase.”

SHIT. JUST. GOT. REAL.

__ “I think it was Ricky’s dog that dies in the book,” says Waititi, “but I wanted more of a link to Bella. Hec can’t talk about that loss. It takes something like getting your motorbike stolen or losing a dog; that’ll break men down more than losing their wives.” As with Bella, Waititi defends the necessity of the death. “I feel like you need to show how arduous the journey is.”

__ The ending could have been much darker. In Waititi’s first draft he killed Hec and both dogs. “At the end of the day, the film makes people feel like they’ve been on an adventure,” he says. “You can’t do that if you kill off your characters.”

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD.

OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY HHHHH

FROM MARCH 15 / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTORS Josh Gordon and Will Speck / CAST Jason Bateman, Olivia Munn, TJ Miller, Jennifer Aniston

Scrappy holidays

A GROUP OF misfits, geeks and weirdos throws a party (you know where, you know when) which spirals out of control. But this hit-and-miss affair is somehow less than the sum of its partiers. On paper it looks like a can’t-miss proposition: story credits include the scribes behind The Hangover and Bad Moms, and the cast is an impressive line-up of funny: Jason Bateman, Olivia Munn, TJ Miller, Jennifer Aniston, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Rob Corddry. But directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck (Blades Of Glory, The Switch) fail to capitalise on the raw materials. It’s not without funny moments, but doesn’t nearly meet its potential. Enough gags fail to land that there are noticable stretches of laughlessness, partially due to jokes being telegraphed from over the horizon (the instant you see the snow machine fed by little white baggies, you know what’s going to happen with it), and partially because, if you’ve seen the trailer, then you’ve seen most of the best bits. The set-up often feels awkward and uncomfortable, and there’s the palpable sense of the cast battling valiantly with the material on offer but coming up short. And setting the entire thing in a tech company was perhaps poorly conceived, since

Rob Corddry fails to keep his cord dry.

the plot gets bogged down in vaguely nonsensical geek-babble. We get it: throw a party to save the company. That’s all we needed to know. What good will there is, is thanks to the cast doing their respective schticks – this is a group of people safely inside their wheelhouses. Jason Bateman plays a sane man in an insane world, aka “every Jason Bateman movie ever.” TJ Miller (Silicon Valley) plays the dopey git with the heart of gold. Jennifer Aniston is in her Horrible Bosses comfort zone as an ice-hearted corporate psychopath with an MBA in Krav Maga ass-kicking. Still, her take-down of the spoiled kid in the airport should have been a gut-buster;

JOE CINQUE’S CONSOLATION HHHHH

FROM MARCH 22 / RATED M / DIRECTOR Sotiris Dounoukos / CAST Maggie Naouri, Jerome Meyer

Til death do them part

BASED (LOOSELY) ON Helen Garner’s book, which was an account of the trial of a Canberra woman accused of killing her boyfriend, this is instead a look at the crime itself, and ends before the trial begins. Anu (Maggie Naouri) is suffering some sort of serious mental disturbance, but director Sotiris Dounoukos doesn’t expend any

instead it feels limp. Jillian Bell (22 Jump St) succeeds in making her pimp more memorable than the character deserves. Some of the best moments come from the bit parts: Fortune Feimster (great name!) channelling angry Melissa McCarthy as the Uber driver is worth a cackle, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Carla the Taser-happy security guard is amusingly maniacal. Best consumed with a few drinks and with friends; it would probably make a good drinking game. Maybe Gordon and Speck should make a film out of that next. EXTRAS TBC. MICHAEL BROOKER

time exploring why: we’re thrust from the outset into the thick of Anu’s hypochondria, mind games, body issues, guilt-tripping and sense of unfocussed rage, self-pity and menace. Thus Anu comes across more like the psycho girlfriend from a horror flick than a fully rounded main character. Which is perhaps not inappropriate; but it strays a long way from the nuances of the book, and makes for a deeply unpleasant central character. It also makes it hard to imagine how her boyfriend, or anyone, could have put up with her for so long. A more deliberate build-up might also have helped explain the Stockholm-syndrome-like hold that Anu wields over her friend Madhavi (Sacha Joseph) — instead, we rocket up to Madhavi willingly helping with Anu’s deranged plan, and so it becomes less about exploring a tragic crime than gawping at it. Hapless boyfriend Joe Cinque (Jerome Meyer), who should be a vital presence, is mostly relegated to an innocuous bystander. Fascinating in a morbid way, but not really gripping. EXTRAS TBC. RICH YEAGER

MARCH 2017

MAKING HACKSAW RIDGE Barry Robison, production designer on Hacksaw Ridge, on working with Mel Gibson to produce the Oscar-nominated war epic…

Talk us through what a production designer actually does… The really short answer is that the production designer is responsible for the overall look of the film. Production designer is the first one to be hired after the director, and usually the director and I get together once we’ve read the script and we begin to conceptualise the overall visual quality of the film. So if there’s a colour palette we discuss colour; we break down scenes emotionally and how we’re going to underscore them; and then it’s my responsibility to bring on set decorators, construction, painters, plasterers, etc. And then I work closely with costume designer, director of photography, visual effects supervisor certainly. The job is a fairly large management job as well as artistic. If someone thought they wanted to become one, what would they study? There are a number of ways. I went to university and got my degree in theatre design, costume as well as scenery, so that’s a pretty classic route. You can also go to universities now that specifically cater to production design. A number of production designers in the world started out in architecture. With architecture they don’t get to do many buildings, but a production designer gets to build all sorts of worlds — period worlds, future worlds, fantasy worlds. What was Hacksaw Ridge like as a project? I have to say it was a fantastic experience. My mother was Australian, from Western Australia, so I’m half Australian. I’ve done movies in Sydney and the Gold Coast, and during Wolverine I got my citizenship, so I’m a dual citizen. It’s been very handy, it allows me to have Sydney or the Gold Coast as my home base. So I got into the meeting with Mel, and because I’ve done so much in Sydney, I really know it well. So it was a fun meeting, it was more of a production meeting than an interview, because we were able to talk about specific locations, we were able to get into the meat of the material.

MARCH 2017

What’s Mel like as a director? He’s just so great, he’s got an encyclopaedic knowledge of films so we could talk about a lot of things using different references, different directors, different films. I was nervous in the beginning because he is the real deal, he’s a master film maker… also he has a reputation, y’know, so I was a little apprehensive going in. But he put me at ease immediately. He’s generous and a very kind guy, and fun to be around. The wonderful thing about Mel is he inspires you to do your best work, I know that’s corny but with him it’s true. He never asks for anything, but you want to give him your best. He absolutely knows what he wants and how to get it. He never asks to be treated in any other way than just another bloke, there’s no ego involved. He’s hands-on, let’s-dig-deep. You were also the production designer on Pitch Perfect — that just seems like a completely different role to the scale of Hacksaw Ridge. Pitch Perfect was such a… oh… I have a love-hate relationship with that movie. It’s the same job, there was building, there were all the same elements, but you’re talking about a small piano riff versus a big chamber piece of music. You know what I mean? I had a first-time director on Pitch Perfect, so the challenge for me was guiding him through the process. I liked the script, it made me laugh, and I thought this will be fun. And it turned out not to be fun, for a number of reasons. The main reason was, there was not enough money to do that movie properly. But it was a huge hit. Why? Because the script was so good, and so funny, and the characters were so good and so endearing, it doesn’t matter you didn’t have enough money. We did not do it to my personal satisfaction, and that’s where the hate part comes in, because I have very high standards, and visually it did not meet any of my standards. It was all due to the fact that there was no money. And interestingly enough on Hacksaw, it was just the opposite: I had no money, but I had two master film makers — I had [producer] Bill Mechanic and I had Mel ❯ Gibson and these guys are masters.

THE VERDICT HACKSAW RIDGE

HHHHH RATED MA15+

What we said: “A brutal, big-hearted return for a fallen Hollywood hero, Hacksaw Ridge is a breathtaking piece of cinema.” Notable extras: Making-of featurette with Mel Gibson and Andrew Garfield, deleted scenes, original trailer

MARCH 2017

DESIGNING THE BATTLEFIELD

Barry Robison explains five different sets on Hacksaw Ridge

the cliff face We built the battle field in an old dairy farm that was about to be deconstructed and turned into suburban housing out in Bringelly [in western Sydney]. This was one of the last farms out there. So for the battlefield we had this beautiful pastureland which we had to destroy, ha ha. We had to dig down three metres into this sloping hill, and then we pushed all the dirt up to the sides. We did that because we had a lot of problems with the gum trees, we were surrounded by them, so we did an old school technique. We lowered the ground, pushed the dirt to the side to block out the trees, and then ran smoke tubing in and around the battleground to obscure the trees. We shot the cliff face in Goulburn to the south. In the film, the big wide shot of the escarpment when you arrive at Hacksaw Ridge, and there’s shelling, that was done at Goulburn. So one day we’re working on the battlefield, and I get a call from Bill Mechanic and he says, “Hey guys, I got a little challenge for you. You gotta build the cliff face at the battle field at Bringelly.” So what you’re looking at in this photograph [photo A] is, we ended up having to dig about ten metres down into the earth, and then about twenty metres across, maybe even more. The earth is very clay, so we had a lot of drainage issues. So in this photograph, we dug the trench down and then we had to erect scaffolding. Why? We had a lot of stunts that had to be performed on our cliff face… so we went down to Goulburn, we took a lot of molds off the cliff face, and then we manufactured them onsite [in Bringelly] in fibreglass and re-attached them to the scaffolding. It was a real big challenge. And what you see in the movie, the guys climbing up the rope ladders, all the close-up work, Mel was able to get a single shot of the guys going up the ropes and then seeing the battlefield for the first time, all in one shot. And that was really great for him. We didn’t have a lot of money and Chris Godfrey, our VFX supervisor, was really having to count the number of shots that we could afford. So whenever we could do something real, we did, and it made Mel so much happier. He likes it old school.

MARCH 2017

Clockwise from top left: Building the cliff face by digging down ten metres into the ground at Bringelly, in western Sydney; a 1940s barracks recreated on a Sydney sound stage; shooting a battlefield scene; the Japanese tunnels, made on a sound stage from the pieces of the fibreglass cliff face; the Japanese farm house, a repurposed dairy shed.

c the japanese farmhouse [Photos B and C] are the same place — we found an old dairy barn where cows were congregating and I took one look at it and said “Yes! Perfect!” So the old dairy barn became the basis for the structure of the Japanese farmhouse. We added to it and we changed the roof. It was perfect for us, all the interiors were shot on-site. When I read a scene I look at the action — production designers have to know how to block a scene, how the actors are going to fit within a scene. If the DP comes to you and says “Hey Barry, I’m going to use this lens, and this is the focal length, the wall needs to be removed. Can you help me with that?” And I say, “Absolutely.” If you look at photo B, you’ll see on the left hand side, there are panels are removable, so that the camera can stay outside. You build a tent around it so the light is perfect, and Mel can have the camera where he needs it to be. I don’t mean to keep harping on this, but we

had so little money to build that we just couldn’t build everything… we had to repurpose things. So this is a repurposed dairy shed and no-one questions it, it worked perfectly I think.

the tunnels We built [the Japanese tunnels] on a sound stage in Sydney because tunnels are difficult to shoot in and difficult to light. The interesting thing about [the tunnels]: these were the same molds that we took from the cliff face in Goulburn, and we repurposed them for our Japanese tunnel construction. I had done so many tunnels and some underground scenery [on previous films], I knew we could repurpose the molds without going to the expense of making brand new ones. That was done on a sound stage, but the entrances and exits were all done on our battlefield in Bringelly. We used large culvert tubing, with a two-metre diameter. They’re self-structural, we buried them into the ground

vv e

KIDS WATCH CLASSICS Big films tackled by little people ILLUSTRATION OLLY GIBBS

f Well, the paintjob is very similar, but the colour was adjusted to our colour palette. But my decorator, Rebecca Cohen, is just amazing. In Sydney, you don’t get to go to the 1940s WW2 store and buy stuff, so she built every footlocker, bed, bedding, the wood-burning stove, everything. It was amazing to watch. They are so good.

LOUIS JOLIN — 10 CASABLANCA What did you think of Casablanca? I thought it was a very good idea and was executed well. Although the beginning was quite hard to follow. The characters spoke quite fast. But as it got to the end I started to really get the plot. For some reason, I felt like the characters talked a lot slower towards the end of the film.

the pyrotechnics

and the Japanese soldiers could just come running out of them. There are three distinct sections in the battlefield sequence. There’s the day sequence when they arrive at the top, having climbed the rope ladder; then it goes into night; and then it’s day again. Well, the night sequence, that was all done on a sound stage in Sydney, adjacent to the Japanese tunnels. And the reason we ended up shooting the night sequences on the sound stages was, Simon [Duggan, director of photography] wasn’t able to get his camera down into the crater with the actors. So we were able to build the bombed-out crater where Desmond [Andrew Garfield] was, and split it apart so the camera could get it. Basically it was in two pieces. So Mel got the intimacy that he needed for that scene.

the barracks In western Sydney there’s an old munitions dump from WW2, and now it’s used more as a scout camp and a bit of a museum. We were looking for a place to shoot Fort Jackson, which is on the east coast of the United States. There were enough structures on the site that it could be a drop-dead match for 1940s Fort Jackson, without having to do any set extensions or CG work. However what you’re looking at in [photo E], is a sound stage interior. We built an interior and an exterior on stage in Sydney. Why? There were some scenes that never made it into the film that were shot there. But this is an absolutely period-correct recreation of one of the barracks at Fort Jackson.

I had done a lot of research about the battlefield but couldn’t find many photographs down on the battlefield. But I found a lot of aerial photographs. So my model maker Geoff Kemmis and I… Mel didn’t want to use modern techniques like 3D modelling, he wanted an old-school way of illustrating the battlefield, and no concept art could show it. So we built a model about two-and-a-half metres wide and three-and-a-half metres long, we built it out of the clay, and we put little trees and soldiers on there. And Mel was able to work with the soldiers and with Simon and with VFX and stunts, and design shots on the model, and then they were able to make the shot list. But the model also allowed us to work with effects and the stunt coordinators — those departments all got together on the model and said, “Mel wants to have four guys blown up here. So we need air cannons, mortars and smoke, along with wrenches and rigs [stunt equipment].” So it was a lot of meetings, but we knew what we were going to do. So our greens department began to carve the battlefield with backhoes and bulldozers, and Mel would come out and just love it. Are the craters done with machines or explosives? That’s so funny, I’ll tell you a really amusing story. We thought the same thing, why take the time to sculpt this landscape, why don’t we just get the FX guys out there with some charges and blow the heck out of it? Well, we did that, and it was hysterically funny… it did nothing to this landscape. Did nothing. There was this big charge, we all went running, we were like “Oh my god it’s going to create a crater” — it did nothing. We all laughed about it and brought in the bulldozers.

Did you like the setting? Yeah, I like how they chose a place the Germans want to get, but it’s still French soil. So it arouses the idea that if Germans want to arrest someone there, they’ve gotta get authority to do it, and in that time Rick can help Laszlo out. But he’s also got the dilemma of whether he wants to help Laszlo out, because of Ilsa. Was Rick a good main character? Yes. He was sort of an antihero. He was quite self-centred, and he actually said that he only cared about himself, which I think is cool for a hero. Who was your favourite character? I think his name is Louis? Is that just because he has the same name as you? No! I think he’s a funny character. I especially liked the bit of hypocrisy where he said, “I am shocked, shocked that there is gambling in this pub!” Then someone comes up to him and says, “Your winnings,” and he says, “Thanks.” Did you like the ending? I thought it was a good ending, but I wasn’t exactly surprised. Really? You didn’t think Rick would go off with Ilsa? I felt that wasn’t actually gonna happen. That wouldn’t really be a conclusion or a resolution. It’d just be, “Okay, the hero’s just betrayed someone and gone off.” I didn’t really think he would do it.

HACKSAW RIDGE IS OUT MARCH 15 ON DOWNLOAD, DVD AND BLU-RAY.

MARCH 2017

“My hair is an appalling mullet and… well… there it is.”

ANDROID

HHHHH FROM MARCH 8 / RATED M

“A perfect AI should be indistinguishable from a human,” lectures smug arsetrumpet and robotics prodigy David Kressen (Mark Webber from Green Room). The aim of this film is to be indistinguishable from Ex Machina; instead it’s stuck in the uncanny valley. Kressen has created Adam (David Clayton Rogers), the world’s most perfect artificial intelligence in a perfectly human-like body, and invited journo Joy Andrews (Lucy Griffiths) to spend a week in their lab-slash-home. But tensions simmer and things are not what they seem and… well, if you’ve seen Ex Machina, this will seem like a pale clone, and if you haven’t, just go watch Ex Machina. Too talky, too pleased with its own geekiness (do we really need to get into the details of how Adam digests gluten?), it’s more artificial than intelligent.

EXTRAS None. TIM KEEN

THE FLY ULTIMATE COLLECTION HHHHH

FROM MARCH 8 / RATED MA15+ / DIRECTORS KURT NEUMANN, EDWARD BERNDS, DON SHARP, DAVID CRONENBERG, CHRIS WALASI

Catch that buzz

ALL THE FLY movies have finally been reintegrated into one Blu-ray box-set with more gruesome fly action than an impatient man at a urinal. The bundlefly is made up of the original 1958 The Fly with Vincent Price, Return Of The Fly (1959), Curse Of The Fly (1965), the 30th anniversary special edition of Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986, with sees Jeff Goldblum’s hair accidentally reintegrated with a mullet) and The Fly II (1989, with Eric Stoltz as Brundle junior who has inherited his dad’s unfortunate condition).

MARCH 2017

The original Fly is more sci-fi than horror, with most of the famous bits clustered right at the end. By modern standards it’s fairly slow – watching Andre laboriously tap out messages on the typewriter is an exercise in water-torture – and suffers from having the title character off-screen for most of the movie. But it’s all worth it for that iconic ending. Only Vincent Price returns for the 1959 sequel, which is a fairly slap-dash B-movie not in the same league as the original; and the 1965 three-quel is worse again. Cronenberg’s 1986 remake still holds up 30 years later, even if Goldblum’s haircut does not. It’s a finely judged balance of body horror and love story. Seth’s slow evolution, first into Michael Jackson from Thriller and then into the alien from District 9, is shocking and brilliant – FX artist Chris Walas won the Academy Award for Make-up for the film, and then took over the director’s chair for the sequel. Walas’s The Fly II is a gorier exercise in gross-out horror, and is worth watching mainly for the shock value alone. EXTRAS Loads of extras here. The 1958 original has a commentary with David Hedison (Andre Delambe) and film historian David Del Valle, plus featurettes on Vincent Price and a makingof. David Cronenberg has recorded a director’s commentary for the 1986 film, plus there’s a making-of featurette, deleted scenes, and actor’s film tests. TIM KEEN

SHAKA ZULU HHHHH

FROM MARCH 8 / RATED M

SHAKA ZULU WAS the leader of the Zulu Empire during the early 1800s, when it became a huge and rapidly spreading force in southern Africa. This quasihistorical South African 10-part miniseries, made in the 1980s, depicts the tensions as Shaka’s (Henry Cele) advance towards British-held land forces the UK to send a maverick navy officer, Francis Farewell (Edward Fox) and a team of misfits and profiteers to intercept him. It’s epic stuff, with thousands of extras re-creating the era, as well as exploring Shaka’s backstory as an outcast who becomes a king. Being from apartheid-era South Africa, it’s a little too pleased to go on about the Zulus being savages, but it’s an eye-popping production about a clash of cultures. EXTRAS TBC. RICH YEAGER

BINGEWATCH Continuing the monthly adventures of our marathon man: half-sofa, half-boxset

this month:

CHILDREN OF THE CORN WORDS SIMON CROOK

ILLUSTRATION PETER STRAIN

FANCY A RECIPE for madness? Just try surviving 14 hours of Children Of The Corn movies. Intended as a satirical jab at America’s isolationist Bible Belt, Stephen King’s 1977 short story has somehow fertilised nine killer-kid movies that try to put the boo in taboo. Sadly, the majority of these films are corn-on-the-cobblers. Unleashed in 1984, the original sees Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton blunder into Gatlin: an eerie ghost-town run by demon-worshipping kids. John Franklin was 24 when he played 12-year-old prophet Isaac, and it’s his creepycampy menace that makes the movie unforgettable. What’s truly shocking is how the film’s motifs — crucifixions, rusty scythes, grabby vines, spooky choirs, third-act explosions and excruciatingly fruity acting — are endlessly cannibalised by its dopey sequel-spawn. Which shouldn’t really exist, seeing as agri-cult demon He Who Walks Behind The Rows is blown to bits in his cornfield lair. A decade later, the cereal-killers returned in the ironically titled The Final Sacrifice. This being the ’90s, the kids now look like a pagan Backstreet Boys. Given the thin body-count and sludgy pacing, it’s less of the same with an unhelpful new addition: a demon backstory explained in Native American mumbo-jumbo. Forget Old Testament wrath: it’s an Earth-protecting eco-demon! Really?

Well, Urban Harvest soon dumps that in the silo — part three centres on a yuppie couple unwisely adopting two Gatlin brothers, features homeboy-versus-Amish basketball action and could have been retitled Boyz N The Corn. Pitched as a black comedy, it’s a hoot, with insane FX from Screaming Mad George, the Salvador Dalí of splatter. Urban Harvest is the only time in the series He Who Walks Behind The Rows manifests itself. George’s vision? A giant Tyrannosaurus Giblet that has to be seen to be disbelieved. Parts IV and V are chiefly notable for their Before They Were A-List outings. The Gathering stars Naomi Watts as a flustered medical student unravelling an outbreak that’s turned Nebraskan kids into murderlising Midwich Cuckoos. Meanwhile, Fields Of Terror has a young Eva Mendes, who, by her own admission, was so horrified by her performance she hired an acting coach after seeing the movie — a blunt teen slasher that mutates the series beyond recognition. In a tardy bid for continuity, Isaac’s Return resurrects John Franklin with a gubbins plot device — apparently, Isaac’s been lying in a coma for four movies. I know the feeling. Tragically, even Franklin can’t halt the death-spiral — part six is so incoherent it appears to have been edited by a combine-harvester. The series continues to

plough through horror subgenres in Revelation, a haunted house spin-off subjecting Claudette Mink to ghosty corn twins. Resorting to rib-jabbing music cues to disguise its lack of scares, the best it can offer is a Miracle-Gro bubble-bath death. I now seem to be living inside my own horror movie where every road sign leads back to the same place. Anchor Bay’s 2009 TV movie remake has faith on its side (it’s based on a script by King himself) and chronic casting against it: Kandyse McClure, so deafeningly hysterical she’d scream at her own reflection, is somehow out-awfulled by Preston Bailey as Isaac 2.0 — a non-threatening, too-cute stage-school sprog who looks like he’s wandered out of a Cheese String commercial. I’m about ready to gouge out my eyes with a sharpened Twistie when there’s a sudden shock: 2011’s Genesis is genuinely unsettling. Slithery Billy Drago invites a stranded couple into his shack. A possessed kid lurks in the shed. Shivering with devious twists, the result is an incubus horror (think Rosemary’s BabySweetcorn) that hums with an insidious, abstract malevolence. It says a lot about Children Of The Corn that its scariest entry is almost entirely free of children or corn.

MARCH 2017

Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) realises that Dorothy (Renée Zellweger) completes him.

HE HAD US AT “YOU HAD ME AT HELLO” Twenty years on, writer-director Cameron Crowe looks back at Jerry Maguire

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

MARCH 2017

BILLY WILDER GOT right to the heart of it. Billy Wilder got right to the heart of a lot of things, but on this day in 1995, he was getting right to the heart of Jerry Maguire. Cameron Crowe, a huge Wilder fan, had been trying to persuade the great director to cameo in his movie as Dicky Fox, a mentor to the title character, a slick sports agent who develops a conscience, only for it to derail his life. Wilder had said no, but Crowe arranged one last meeting and brought along his wildcard: his star, Tom Cruise. “We told him the story briefly,” recalls Crowe, over 20 years later. “We get to the end and he goes, ‘But why would you care about this sports agent?’” Crowe laughs at the memory of being shot down by an idol. But he was

undaunted. “What I wanted was for people to care about that sports agent.” And they did. When it finally arrived in 1996 — with a Sony Pictures suit, Jared Jussim, in the Dicky Fox role — Jerry Maguire grossed over $200 million worldwide, and was nominated for five Oscars (winning one, Best Supporting Actor, for Cuba Gooding Jr.). More than that, though, it entered the collective consciousness in a way few films have — phrases from the movie abound to this day, and over the years it’s become regarded as a classic. It may be Crowe’s finest movie and, after supervising a new Blu-ray release, he told us how he managed to make people care about a simple sports agent…

is good,” was a benchmark of the ’80s, here’s a character that comes to Jesus, realising “Greed is good” is not a way to live a full life, and then gets fucked over immediately. Gordon Gekko was misread by people. The same with Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. Did people misread Jerry Maguire? Did they see Bob Sugar and become agents as a result? I’ve heard that. I think it’s because an actor with charisma is such a seductive thing. In the end, you can almost forget what they’re saying and get lost in the charisma, which is somewhat Trumpian. You can be seduced by the delivery and miss what’s being delivered. We always wanted the movie to be a fable about moral compromise. Even the ending, I always felt that Jerry Maguire doesn’t get everything in the movie. He still has a conflicted feeling that he’s trying to overcome about his marriage, he’s still trying out the suit of clothes of a married man. Rod Tidwell could get crunched the next week and he’d have no clients. You kinda get lost in the victories of Jerry Maguire and sometimes don’t realise the moral compromise that happens along the way with the character. Cruise was going to play the role, but you had written it for Tom Hanks. Hanks was the first guy to read it and was tempted by it, but he wanted to do That Thing You Do!. His suggestion was John Travolta. But immediately, knowing how in demand Tom Hanks was, I had started thinking about Tom Cruise pretty early on. I had met him a couple of times and he had called me after Say Anything... and said, “I really love this movie and it would be fun to do something together.” That was on my mind. “Hey, remember that conversation we had?” He responded immediately when we sent it to him. How much of you is in Jerry Maguire? There’s a lot of me in it. I felt that Jerry Maguire’s journey in the movie came from my life, for sure.

Was the film always about a sports agent? Yes, the relationship between a sports agent and his client. I remember thinking, “What if that guy is his only client?” It was great to see the nuance a sports agent has compared to an entertainment agent. But essentially the thing that was really fascinating was, the sports agent always wanted to get in the room with the family. That was pretty unique. We detoured pretty quickly into, “What can we say with this movie that makes it of the moment?” That’s how we got into the idea of starting where some movies might have ended. When we meet Jerry, he’s already successful. Exactly. We were talking about Wall Street and Gordon Gekko and, “Greed is good.” If, “Greed

From top to bottom: Sports agent Jerry finds himself conflicted; Jonathan Lipnicki, who played Dorothy’s cute son Ray, stole hearts; Cameron Crowe (left) on set with DP Janusz Kaminski; Cuba Gooding Jr. took home an Oscar for the role of football player Rod Tidwell.

Was that something you were going through at the time? You’d had success up until that point. But were you wondering about your path? A little bit, a little bit. I was also keen on getting this thing in the script that is, when you’re really down, often you’re completely surprised by the people that say, “I’m there for you.” Often the people you depend on, when you’re truly down, don’t show up. This was heavy in my mind: a good friend of mine had told me at one point, “Hey man, if you ever need me, I’ll be there for you.” I took him up on it, which I never do. I try not to ask anybody for favours, but it was like, “I need you to be there for me.” This good friend of mine said, “Well, I didn’t say I’d be there for you!” And I remember the shock of that. Wow. It’s so easy to have a misperception about who your real friends are in this life. That, I felt very strongly about.

MARCH 2017

They’d find a way to get Batman in there. Oh yeah. It would be called ‘Batman’! In terms of your filmography, it has pierced the cultural bubble more than others. So many phrases from the movie have lived on. Do people quote it around you? I see a lot of, “You had me at…” That’s always funny. The coolest thing or biggest surprise was seeing it in George Bush’s State Of The Union address. And Obama quoted, “Show me the money,” later too. That was pretty surreal. There was no attempt to do a mass-appeal movie. Where did, “Show me the money,” come from? I was sitting in a hotel room with a wide receiver named Tim McDonald. He was saying, “Man, I don’t have that much time left in my entire career. Where’s the money? Where’s the money? I gotta support a family!” It grew from that. It was a noble thing for him. It wasn’t, “Greed is good.” So I thought his plaintive, “Where’s the money?” could become a war cry. Show me the money. How did you shoot it? I shot ’em separately but they were both there for each other. For Cuba’s side, the big walking and talking shot through the house, Tom was already on Eyes Wide Shut. He was on the phone from England doing it. On his birthday. On Tom’s side, I had Cuba there in a car outside the soundstage, yelling his ass off. There was a studio security guy that tried to bust him. He was like, “Who’s this guy in a car yelling, ‘SHOW ME THE MONEY!’ and, ‘I LOVE BLACK PEOPLE!’” He had his hand on his gun walking up to the car with Cuba. Where did, “You complete me,” come from? Some people later would say to me, “Do you realise that, ‘You complete me,’ is like a narcissists’ thing? You complete me so I get to love you because you complete ME? Did you realise that it’s such a selfish way of saying, ‘I love you?’” [Laughs] It was only a couple of years ago that I realised where it actually came from, while I was listening to the Joni Mitchell album Court And Spark again. It’s from the song Court And Spark, where she says, “You could complete me,

MARCH 2017

I’d complete you.” I have a terrible fear of public speaking but I sucked it up and gave a speech honouring Joni Mitchell a couple of years ago. It was really fun to be able to say to her this line that people had developed an ambivalence for over time. But when I tell people it was actually an homage to Joni Mitchell now they go, “Oh, I get it.” It’s funny sometimes how lyrics just invade your soul and come out in different ways. It’s been parodied and quoted a lot. Does that feel strange? It’s fun. It’s used in the upcoming LEGO Batman movie too, I’m honoured to tell you. I’m humbled by the whole experience. You never know if something’s going to resonate or if it’s going to affect people. “You complete me” seems so simple. But I guess it was elemental in a way, particularly the way Tom did it. He feels it so much. He dares you to laugh at it. That’s why I added, “We live in a cynical world.” I anticipated there would be some people who would laugh at a guy who says that. Renée Zellweger’s Dorothy says, “You had me at hello,” literally seconds after that… That came in the moment writing it and never left the scene. That whole scene is influenced by the last scene in The Apartment. “Shut up and deal.” That kind of line and the way it felt when you’re watching The Apartment is the way I wanted those lines to feel if we got lucky enough in Jerry Maguire. We did it so many different ways because I wasn’t sure which one would work. I think we even reshot it. I was kinda obsessive about how it would work in the right way. Renée had nailed it early on, of course. She had me at take two, I believe. Which brings us right back to Billy Wilder. Did he ever lament passing on the role of Dicky Fox? He did. He called me after the movie, which was a big thrill. He said, “Who was this guy who played my part?” [Laughs] What was the Billy Bob Thornton movie that came out that year? Sling Blade. Yes. He said, “I enjoy your picture, I enjoy your picture. But I think I enjoyed Sling Blade more.”

THE VERDICT JERRY MAGUIRE

HHHHH RATED M

What we said: “Director Cameron Crowe has written and directed a deft, funny, shamelessly upbeat romantic comedy, and to top it all drawn out the finest performance of Tom Cruise’s career.” Notable extras: Brand-new documentary, deleted and extended scenes.

ALAMY, COLLECTION CHRISOPHEL/ARENAPAL, LANDMARK MEDIA

The name — where did that come from? It’s really true and so fun when you come up with a name that’s fun to say. I knew I wanted it to be Jerry, but I didn’t have a last name. I remembered my first editor, who was a guy who ran an underground paper, and his name was Bill Maguire, spelt the same way. It came to me standing on the street in San Diego, remembering this guy, Bill Maguire. It became Jerry Maguire and never changed. They’d probably test-market the hell out of it today and we would now be talking about ‘You Complete Me’.

Below, from top: Laurel Boyd (Bonnie Hunt) supports sister Dorothy; Jerry pulls a Say Anything... pose; Rod puts loyalty above lucre; Kelly Preston as Jerry’s fiancée Avery.

THE GREASY STRANGLER HHHHH

Jim Hosking / CAST Michael St. Michaels, Sky Elobar, Elizabeth De Razzo, Gil Gex, Joe David Walters FROM MARCH 22 / RATED R18+ / DIRECTOR

Hootie tootie disco oddity

SOME CULT MOVIES seem to fall through wormholes from an alternative universe. When folks who’ve caught them early describe what they’ve seen to friends, they get accused of making them up. Surely The Greasy Strangler can only be one of those film-within-a-film skits. But, yes, it does exist, and you do have to see it to believe it. Director Jim Hosking carefully establishes the unique mood of the film. He deploys astonishingly committed (if deliberately one-note) performances, a great deal of low-budget visual invention, distinctive music which will stick in your memory like gum to a shoe, and an admirable desire to turn stomachs by showing things few people want to look at for as long as he holds his shots. There are echoes of early John Waters or even the worst of Troma, but it’s likely to wind up classified with even further-from-mainstream oddities like Johnny Suede, Meet The Hollowheads or Big Meat Eater as either your secret favourite film or the movie you never forgive a date for taking you to. Gargoyle-like geriatric bastard Big Ronnie (St Michaels) and his weedy, whiny grown son Big Brayden (Elobar) are locked in a hideous relationship. Obsessed with greasy food, Ronnie keeps insisting repulsive fare be slathered with extra

Brayden (Sky Elobar) and Janet (Elizabeth De Razzo) whisper sweet nothings.

oil — while unconvincingly insisting he isn’t The Greasy Strangler. Naked but slathered in goop, he murders a) people who tick him off and b) people who might offer his son alternatives to hanging around being abused verbally by him. After each killing, he goes through a car wash run by his blind friend Big Paul (Gil Gex); the repetition of the act (and footage) stresses the ritual, but also the rut in which everyone is trapped. The crisis in the thin plot has Janet (De Razzo), who talks like a refugee from a hardboiled 1930s comedy, become Brayden’s girlfriend until Big Ronnie sets out to take her away… leading to an unforgettable “hootie tootie disco cutie” singing routine. The last act comes up with a perfect, inevitable-yet-unexpected tragic twist that even has a sequel hook. It is full of uncomfortable sights — not least

CUBE: SPECIAL EDITION HHHHH

Vincenzo Natali Nicole de Boer, Maurice Dean Wint

FROM MARCH 8 / RATED M / DIRECTOR / CAST

Rubik’s Deathtrap

SEVEN STRANGERS wake up inside a giant maze made of interlocking cubeshaped rooms; some are safe, some have fiendish and lethal traps. They must learn to work together to find their way out before they are killed (or starve to death.) This special edition marks 20 years since the

copious nudity or near-nudity from the sort of people seldom seen naked in films (father and son sport humongous and tiny penis prostheses respectively). The gnome-like, smugly snarling St Michaels is relentlessly monstrous, and ought to have a late-career renaissance playing grotesque bad guys. EXTRAS Regular DVD and Bluray has audio commentary with Jim Hosking, Sky Elobar and Michael St. Michaels; on-set interviews with cast and crew. The JB HiFi Exclusive Special Edition contains all of the above, plus collectable slipcase packaging and reversible sleeve; interviews with Jim Hosking, Sky Elobar and Elizabeth De Razzo; making-of featurettes; Australian promo tour footage; deleted scenes; gallery. KIM NEWMAN

release of this low-budget sci-fi horror, made in Canada by writer-director Vincenzo Natali (who has since gone on to TV work, recently directing episodes of Westworld, Hannibal and Luke Cage.) How low-budget? There’s only one set — every cube room is effectively identical — and the acting is competent at best. But the lack of name actors works in the film’s favour: there’s no way of guessing which stranger is going to fall foul of the Cube next. Cube’s filmic DNA can be found in Saw amongst others; despite its limitations, it’s an effective and even haunting thriller. One of the canniest things that Natali does is never try to fully explain the Cube: the characters may speculate about who built it and why, but there probably is no satisfactory answer, and it’s irrelevant to the story. More horror movies should be content keeping their mysteries mysterious. EXTRAS Interview with Nicole de Boer (Leaven), storyboard sequences, audio commentary with cast and crew. TIM KEEN

MARCH 2017

FOR MANY, 2016 was a bumper year of

STORY OF THE SHOT PLANET OF THE APES WORDS DAN JOLIN

awful events which left the world in a nailbitingly precarious position. And amid all the anguish on various social media platforms, it wasn’t uncommon to spy a still from a 49-year-old movie, showing a bronzed Charlton Heston standing on the sand before a half-buried Statue Of Liberty. Whether a tattered EU flag was photoshopped in, or a President Trump-related gag inserted, the text was always the same: “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” For audiences in 1968, the end of Planet Of The Apes wasn’t just an ingenious twist that revealed to them and Heston’s astronaut character, Taylor, that this crazy, ape-dominated world was Earth all along. It also spoke to them of their divided nation, shadowed by nuclear threat, torn by civil unrest and the Vietnam War. It’s an image, and a message, that’s remained relevant through the years. The scene was shot on 3 August 1967, during the final week of a tough, testing shoot that had at one time seen Heston come down with widespread poison-oak rash. And on the day, things went awry from the off. A half-scale model of the head and torch of Lady Liberty was constructed on scaffolding by art director William Creber’s team at Point Dume on the isolated, cliff-walled Zuma Beach in California. But shooting the discovery scene was delayed by thick morning fog, then interrupted by the ocean freighters that regularly hoved into frame after the mist had lifted. It was actually Creber who shot the crucial moment, where we first view Taylor’s reaction through those blackened crown-spikes. Director of photography Leon Shamroy was 69 years old, and steadfastly refused to climb the 70-foot-tall tower to achieve the shot. Assistant director William Kissell confessed to a fear of heights. So, as Creber tells it, Schaffner, dressed as ever in crisp whites and chewing a stogie, turned to him and growled, “You built it. I’ll meet you at the top.” Heston can lay claim to creating the pay-off line. As written it was merely, “My God.” So he decided to inject more rage and pathos, fleshing it out into the primal howl we have now. There were worries the “God damn you” was in violation of the Motion Picture Association of America’s production code for ‘family entertainment pictures’. But Heston argued Taylor meant it literally, and thankfully triumphed. Not that Taylor would, nor humanity itself. Earlier in the shoot, Heston’s stunt double Joe Canutt had said to the star: “You know, Chuck, I can remember when we used to win these things…” The times, they were a-changing. No wonder Planet Of The Apes’ ultimate reveal feels as devastating now as it did half-a-century ago.

MARCH 2017

THE EMPIRE MASTERPIECE THE UNTOUCHABLES It’s a lock: Ness Costner 1987 / RATED M / DIRECTOR BRIAN DE PALMA / SCREENWRITER DAVID MAMET / CAST KEVIN COSTNER, SEAN CONNERY, ROBERT DE NIRO, ANDY GARCIA, CHARLES MARTIN SMITH

AT THE HEIGHT of Prohibition, in 1930s America, Chicago was presided over by one Alfonso Capone. He ruled the town by the might of his fist, from the illegal speakeasy rackets right up through the ranks of the police and judicial system, holding them in thrall through bribery and blackmail. That was until the arrival of Elliot Ness, the incorruptible treasury agent assigned the role of bringing the Italian gangster to book. Ness surrounded himself with a team of cops dedicated to the cause: the “Untouchables”. This is all bona fide history, a series of events that were finally drawn to a close when the psychotic mobster — himself seemingly untouchable — was finally snared for simple tax evasion. He died of syphilis eight years after his release from prison. Eschewing historical accuracy (although the last surviving real-life Untouchable Albert H. Wolff acted as an advisor) director Brian De Palma, then coming off the double-whammy failure of Body Double and Wise Guys, chose to reinterpret the TV series of the early ’60s rather than the actual events. This is a morally blunt world more akin to Westerns than the complex milieu of gangsters. Yet The Untouchables is richly rewarding. It fuses the grandiose style of its director with a cool mix of established names (Connery, De Niro) and new stars (Costner, Garcia) and a feistily exaggerated script from David Mamet (“Just like a wop to bring a knife to a gunfight”) to recreate history on a movie template. Big, bold, and hugely entertaining. Sean Connery deservedly won an Oscar for his portrayal of (fictional) beat-cop Jim Malone who instills street-wisdom in Ness to defeat Capone — play him at his own game. Ebullient and wry, he wraps the Connery gravitas in an earthier, harder cloth. So convinced was De Palma that De Niro (reuniting with the man who gave him his first break in Greetings) would turn him down for Capone, that he actually signed a deal with Bob Hoskins to take the role, having to pay him off ($200,000) when the Italian method genius assented. And in typical fashion, he gained weight, slicked back his hair and, in a relatively

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short amount of screen time, managed to charge the film with exuberant menace (“I’m talkin’ about enthusiasms…” he sneers before smashing the brains out of a minion with a baseball bat.) Costner was offered less: Ness is painted in strict lines — happily married, motivated by decency — but the all-American masculinity with which he thrives fits the character like a glove. The film has a pristine sense of place, a 1930s Chicago classily upholstered like a grand opera. Inverting the moralistic colours of tradition, the bad guys wear the white suits (especially depicted in Capone henchman Nitti’s (Billy Drago) all-white get up) and the heroes black. Much was made of Giorgio Armani designing the suits — a kind of functioning product placement — but De Niro, in fact, had suits knocked up by the very same tailors who made Capone’s actual bespoke numbers. The god-like Ennio Morricone infuses the spirit of the age with a heart-quickening score that drives the drama like an express train. De Palma, ever the trickster even with mainstream material, delights in the flamboyance of his set-pieces. A sly POV shot of the assassin tracking Malone through his apartment spirals out into a glorious juxtaposition of a bloody, dying Malone crawling for safety, cross-cut with Capone’s hypocritical tears to the strains of I Pagliacci at the Chicago opera. Most celebrated (justly) is the director’s “homage” to Battleship Potemkin’s Odessa Steps sequence. Set at Chicago’s Union Station, where the Untouchables gather to snatch Capone’s book-keeper out of a hail of bullets, a pram bounces down a staircase in glorious slo-mo. It is an unforgettable slice of flashiness and pointed film history (if nothing else it brought the name Eisenstein to popcorn consumers). And, of course, there is De Palma’s ever-present obsession with Hitchcock, with a facsimile of Foreign Correspondent in a shot of the good guys flying north in a twin-prop plane, a chase up a spiral staircase (a habitual motif) playing Vertigo, and the small girl blown to smithereens at the very beginning references the boy on a bus with a bomb from Sabotage. The Untouchables is easily the most accessible of De Palma’s work and remains (with the exception of Mission: Impossible) his most commercially successful movie. In stark contrast to other gangster movies, it is less concerned with the complex fabric of the crime unit than the earnest endeavours of the good guys. Bizarrely, this makes it a guilty pleasure. IAN NATHAN THE UNTOUCHABLES WILL SCREEN ON MARCH 17 AT EVENT CINEMAS (GEORGE ST, KOTARA, BRISBANE CITY MYER CENTRE, MARION AND INNALOO) AS PART OF THE “IN THE HOUSE” SERIES. FOR DETAILS AND TICKETS, VISIT EVENTCINEMAS.COM.AU

“No, MC Hammer, we don’t need you to write us a theme song.”

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THE FIRSTTAKE CLUB

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

#8 TOM FLETCHER ON THE BREAKFAST CLUB

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THE IDEA OF The First-Take Club is simple: we ask notable types to select a movie they haven’t seen from our Greatest Movies Of All Time list, see the film in question, and tell us about it. This month, we asked Tom Fletcher — singer and lead guitarist for the rock bands McFly and McBusted — to name his shame. Turns out it’s one of the greatest teen movies of all time. So what’s the story, Tom…? When I was asked to write this there was one thing on my mind: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE let The Breakfast Club be on the list. It’s one of those movies I’ve always been embarrassed to admit I’ve not seen and, OK, I confess, I’ve even pretended to have seen it on occasion, just to fit in with the crowd. How appropriate.

I love film. The movies I grew up with have had an undeniable influence on my life, particularly ’80s movies. Flight Of The Navigator, Cocoon, Short Circuit, Batteries Not Included, Ghostbusters and, of course, the film from which we plucked our band name: Back To The Future. I’ve come back to them time and time again and now, having finally seen The Breakfast Club, I wish so much that I’d seen it earlier in my life. Watching a film for enjoyment is very different from watching it knowing you’ll be writing about it; you can’t help but analyse it, which makes it easy to miss the important stuff. For the first five minutes I even took notes. They looked like this... Yellow opening credits. Awesome soundtrack. Great Bowie quote. Shermer High School. That’s as far as I got. I put the pen down

(OK, it was my iPhone). I was hooked. It had me at yellow. The critical side of my brain disengaged and this ’80s kid got lost in detention with The Breakfast Club. Suddenly I was meeting a group of characters I already knew — I soon discovered that practically every high school story since seems to have borrowed from The Breakfast Club. But now I was seeing the original. The real deal. Everything else suddenly didn’t quite live up to it. For some reason I’m always a sucker for stories that take place on one day or at a single event. I love meeting characters for a short but significant moment in their lives, and that’s exactly what The Breakfast Club is: a defining moment for a group of kids who represent the social cliques we are all too familiar with. When

we are first introduced to them they are the perfect examples of the stereotypes described in the opening monologue: the criminal, the athlete, the basket case, the brain, the princess. They’re a little gimmicky, caricatures almost, but before I knew it they had evolved, and suddenly I was watching something I don’t think I’ve ever seen done so well in any movie, ever. Kids. Real kids. They swear, they fight, they laugh, they do drugs, they talk about sex, all the things I don’t think you see in this kind of movie anymore. It could only have been made in the ’80s. It’s just honest. OK, it’s exaggerated, but not contrived in any way. It made me want to be that age again. It made me remember what it felt like to have those sorts of problems weighing down on you, crushing your world. Those issues of my own

past that can now easily seem so insignificant but are actually the things that shaped who I am today. This film isn’t just brilliant, it’s important. It’s, dare I say, perfect. Of course, I sobbed at the confession scene, fell in love with Allison Reynolds (pre-makeover), and with possibly the most triumphant closing shot of all time I found myself fist-pumping the air and realising that, although I should have seen this film years ago, it’s actually the perfect film to watch as a 31-year-old with two young kids who, before long, will be a brain, an athlete, a princess, and a basket case. But hopefully not a criminal… THE BREAKFAST CLUB IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD. THE CHRISTMASAURUS, BY TOM FLETCHER, IS OUT NOW.

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SAVING BRIDGET JONES How director Sharon Maguire delivered Bridget Jones’s Baby and rescued a franchise

WORDS OLLY RICHARDS

THOUGH SHE’D BE far too polite to say it herself, Sharon Maguire is key to the big-screen success of Bridget Jones. After directing Bridget Jones’s Diary, the first, still much beloved, instalment of the adventures of Renée Zellweger’s lovelorn singleton, Maguire stepped aside for the second, Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason. The end result was about as amusing as the morning after a night of vodka and Chaka Khan. But when Maguire returned for the belated threequel, Bridget Jones’s Baby, the franchise was restored to rude health. Here are her golden rules for making Bridget Jones…

Act your age

From the opening scene, a cheeky reprise of Bridget singing All By Myself all by herself, the film doesn’t shy away from the ageing process. “What I thought was important was Bridget’s in her forties now and all those fantasies she had for her life haven’t come true,” says Maguire. “You think you’ll really evolve from your thirties to your forties and that’s never really the case. Bridget’s got the same problems, in a way. She’s struggling to find meaning in her life and be happy, but now it’s worse.”

Don’t cling to the past

The previous two movies hinged on the love triangle between Bridget, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver. “But when I came to the movie in 2015, Daniel Cleaver wasn’t in the script, because Hugh Grant had decided he wouldn’t be in it anymore,” says Maguire. “I loved Hugh and that character, but it’s the third go-round and I think you have to embrace the new.” So Cleaver was bumped off off-screen, given a lavish funeral, and Patrick Dempsey was brought in as billionaire Jack, a

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more amenable love rival and potential father of Bridget’s child. No punch-ups required. “We got excited about the possibility of bringing in this American, who’s the polar opposite of Mark Darcy — comfortable with feelings and very touchy-feely.”

she’s full of self-loathing and doubt, which is what she tries not to present to the world. Getting that combination right is where most of the humour comes from and what makes her so winning.”

MVP status goes to Emma Thompson, who not only came on as co-writer, but ended up stealing the show as the caustic Dr Rawlings. “She wrote Dr Rawlings as a man,” says Maguire. “She had no intention of playing [the role], but we asked her and she said yes. She played it without much eye contact, so when she did do eye contact with Bridget, it was quite meaningful.”

Find Bridget’s voice

“The voiceover is very hard to get right,” says Maguire of another Bridget staple: Zellweger’s ever-present narration. “Almost all the voiceover we had written in the original script didn’t make it to the film. It was either telling us what we were seeing, or bland, or didn’t fit with what Renée’s face was doing. You have to try and get the ironic tone right but also not be too ironic. Inside

call emma thompson

ALAMY

Use your contacts

“The idea of using Ed Sheeran started on the school run,” says Maguire of the cameo by the UK’s premier purveyor of flame-haired funk-angst. “I love Ed and so does my son. An old friend is now the head of Warner [Music Group]. So I said, “You know Ed Sheeran? We would love him for the film…” We sent Ed the scene and the more insulting we made it, the more he loved it. He gave us the one spare day he had and he was brilliant. I was worried it might be all eyebrow acting, but he nailed it.”

6 Laughs trump love Maguire has a very simple formula for making a Bridget Jones movie work. “Comedy should outweigh the romance. That’s what people show up for. Comedy has changed since the first one. Judd Apatow’s films have changed the comedy landscape with a more ‘bromancy’, politically incorrect style. We had to acknowledge that and adopt some of it.” Hence the film’s cadre of writers, including Thompson, Dan Mazer, and Bridget’s creator, Helen Fielding. “We just threw everything at the wall to see what stuck.”

Trust the creator

Fielding’s presence also helped resolve the film’s central dilemma — who’s the father of Bridget’s baby: Mark or Jack? “We actually filmed two endings with both men being revealed as the father and then tested them,” reveals Maguire. “It was about 50/50. Because it was so evenly split, I think the choice came down to Helen.”

Above: Bridget Jones, baby and Dr Rawlings (Emma Thompson). Right: With Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) in Bridget Jones’s Diary. Below right: Oh, Mr Darcy. Colin Firth’s Mark in Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason. Here: Director Sharon Maguire returns.

Keep your options open

With over $200 million in the bank worldwide, a fourth Bridget movie could happen. Fielding’s Mad About The Boy, which controversially killed off Mark Darcy, remains unfilmed. But Maguire has her sights set on an original tale. “I would do ‘Bridget Jones’s Menopause’ in a heartbeat,” she laughs. “She’s always reflected my life back at me — she was era-defining for my generation — and where I’m going next is the menopause, so I’d gladly do that with her.” BRIDGET JONES’S BABY IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD.

THE VERDICT BRIDGET JONES’S BABY

HHHHH RATED M

What we said: “You have to have a heart of coal not to laugh (a lot), cry (a bit) and leave wanting to see it all over again.” Notable extras: An extended ending, deleted and alternate scenes, making-of documentary with Zellweger, Dempsey and Firth, gag reel.

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MY MOVIE MASTERMIND CHRISTOPHER LLOYD Great Scott! Great score?

LEADER BOARD

WORDS NICK DE SEMLYEN

In One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, your character sends fellow patient Harding into a rage while he’s playing which game? Checkers? It wouldn’t have been chess. Was it a card game? That was with William Redfield. I was always picking on him, on the set and off. It was my first film so I was in a state of nervous frenzy. The correct answer is Monopoly.

What type of animal does Jim buy for his apartment in Taxi episode ‘Jim Gets A Pet’? That’s Gary the horse! I’d just joined the show as a regular and when we broke for Christmas they handed out the next batch of scripts. I remember reading this one where I take a horse home and it dies in my bed. I was still uncertain of this strange sitcom I’d joined and I thought, “No way. This is so far beyond credibility.” But it worked. Correct.

What do Doc and Clara name their two children in Back To The Future Part III? Einstein and... No, Einstein’s the dog. Oh, Jules and Verne! That movie is actually my favourite of the trilogy. Doc rides a horse and he gets the girl. Correct.

In 1999, you appeared in an episode of a TV show called ‘Back To The Future IV: Judgment Day’. Which TV show? I don’t recall the name, but I think it was the show Michael [J. Fox] did. I reunited with him in a few things after Back To The Future, and they usually wrote in little hints about the past relationship. The correct answer is Spin City.

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You’re second-in-command of which outfit in The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension? All I remember of that crazy film is that I was called John Bigbooté. BOO-TAY! But what outfit did he belong to? I don’t think I ever knew that. The correct answer is The Red Lectroids, operating under the cover name Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems. Which of these have you not played: Barnaby Jellybean, Theo Teagarden, Dr Von Gearheart, Frognose, Mr Moohead? Mr Moohead? I’ve played folks with interesting names, I guess. But that’s not how I pick the scripts. The correct answer is Barnaby Jellybean. Theo Teagarden is from Changing Habits (1997), Dr Von Gearheart is from Adventures Of Serial Buddies (2011), Frognose is from The Lady In Red (1979) and Mr Moohead is from Mrs Piggle-Wiggle (TV series, 1994).

In The Addams Family, what is unusual about the way Uncle Fester slept in his early years? Probably he twisted up the sheets or something. He was a restless fella. I loved playing him. I did a test video with Raul Julia and [producer] Scott Rudin called and said, “Chris, come in. We need to talk.” I thought, “Fuck.” I went in and there was a guy who looked just like Fester as he’d been drawn, who I was certain had been given the part. But it turned out that was my stand-in. The correct answer is he had to be chained to the bed.

9.5

Christopher Lee

9.5

David O. Russell

9.5

Quentin Tarantino

9.5

Robert Rodriguez

Guillermo del Toro

Werner Herzog

Christian Slater

8.5

Bryan Singer

8.5

John Waters

In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, how does Judge Doom meet his own doom? I drown in a puddle of Dip. The exact process of how I got there escapes me. I always hoped I’d be reanimated for a sequel. I thought I could come back as a half-melted cartoon, with one eyeball hanging down my face, like a Dalí painting. Correct. To be exact, he’s steamrolled into his cartoon form, then hosed with Dip via a boxing glove that shoots out of a mallet.

You play seedy unlicensed doctor Kroenig in Sin City: A Dame To Kill For. Besides $40, what is your fee for helping Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)? His boots. I had a ball with that. He shoots up before he does his surgery — not a good doctor. Correct.

In the third ending of Clue, Professor Plum kills someone. Who, where and with what weapon? Oh, this is going to be a disaster. I’ve seen Clue three or four times, but I’m clueless! The correct answer is Mr Boddy in the hall with the candlestick.

CHRISTOPHER LLOYD SCORES 4

“I wish there were more tests: it’s kinda exciting to have a challenge.” I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER IS OUT NOW ON DOWNLOAD, DVD AND BLU-RAY

NAM, SOLORUM ESTIN RE NOBIT, NISTEMPOS AS

Ben Kingsley

LEGION

HHHHH FROM NOW / SHOWRUNNER Noah Hawley / CAST Dan Stevens, Rachel Keller, Jean Smart, Aubrey Plaza, Jeremie Harris, Mackenzie Gray

Insane in the X-men brain

NOAH HAWLEY, THE clever-clogs behind both seasons of the Fargo TV series, has turned his attentions to the Marvel universe — but it’s not like any part of the Marvel universe you’ve seen before. As with Fargo, Hawley is trying to capture a mood or a feeling from the source material, rather than trying to replicate a

specific story-world — if you come into Legion expecting the X-Men or details from the comics, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, the comics are a springboard for Hawley to go off on his own tangent. In the X-Men comics, Legion is an anti-hero with multiple personalities, each of whom controls a different super-power. But the show is a departure not just from the comic book canon but from all previous Marvel outings. The word “mutant” is used sparingly, and there’s only subliminal uses of the “X” symbol. Where Netflix’s Marvel series (Jessica Jones et al) are grittier reimaginings, Legion is a more colourful, even campy, affair, with helpings of Seventies fashion and Bollywood dance sequences. Or as camp as any show can be that includes obese vibrating devils with yellow eyes. David Haller (Dan Stevens) is a deeply troubled man, diagnosed as schizophrenic and held inside a secure psychiatric facility. The

VIKINGS SEASON 4 VOLUME 2 HHHHH

FROM MARCH 29 / RATED TBC / PRODUCERS:

Michael Hirst / CAST Travis Fimmel, Katheryn Winnick, Alex Hogh Andersen, Alexander Ludwig

Gotta keep from going plunder

VIKINGS LOVES ITS time-jumps, but the one that ended the first half of season four was a classic. Leaping ahead seven years — seven years when Ragnar Lothbrok (Fimmel) was missing after his failed attempt to capture Paris — we saw his sons grown and his world moved on

doctors tell him he’s crazy, but he really does have some sort of power. Exactly what, and to what extent, aren’t immediately clear. And in fact, after a bravura first episode, which is one of the sharpest pieces of directing you’ll see on TV all year, the next couple eps are heavy on exposition about a few characters (including a “memory artist” with very heavy Inception overtones, and some tools that look suspiciously like Scientology e-meters) but very coy with details about the main characters, the actual plot or where the hell we’re going with all this. The confusion is compounded — not necessarily in a bad way — by an unreliable narrator: exactly how much of what we’re seeing is real, and how much is hallucination, and how much is the present, and how much is memory, is a constantly shifting sleight-of-hand trick by Hawley. It’s clever stuff, but you start hoping they’ll start moving the plot forward soon. Visually inventive, a brilliant cast, and an original take on comic book adaptations. RICH YEAGER

without him. Now he’s back, but what place is left for him? He tells his sons he plans to return to Wessex for revenge, which could be a sign the old Ragnar is still working his schemes. Or maybe it’s just the flailing of a man who’s lived beyond his time while his sons — especially Bjorn (Ludwig), currently exploring and pillaging towards the Mediterranean — move beyond him. A series never shy of blood ups the torture quotient this season, though after four seasons repetition dulls the shock factor. There’s humour here too; Ragnar and his crippled son Ivar the Boneless (Andersen) make a great double act even as their situation grows grim. Ragnar’s aura of mystery has always been a large part of this series’ appeal; even when it seems obvious the battle of Paris has broken him, there’s still a feeling he could have one last trick up his sleeve. And then, all too soon, that feeling’s gone. EXTRAS Audio commentaries; Deleted scenes; The Queen and the Shieldmaiden; Viking, Valhalla and the legacy of Ragnar Lothbrok. ANTHONY MORRIS

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HELL ON WHEELS SEASON FIVE VOLUME TWO HHHHH

FROM FEBRUARY 22 / RATED MA15+ / PRODUCERS

John Wirth Michael Frislev, Jeremy Gold, Anson Mount / CAST Anson Mount, Colm Meaney, Robin McLeavy, Christopher Heyerdahl, Angela Zhou

I choo-choo-choose you

IT’S BEEN A long and winding journey for the Union Pacific railroad across Hell on Wheels’ five seasons. And not just in front of the camera: a change of showrunners — series creators Joe and Tony Gaton killed off many of the supporting cast then left after the second year — meant the show’s direction shifted in a serious way more than once. Originally the story of former Confederate soldier turned railway construction worker turned avenger of his family’s murder Cullen Bohannon (Mount), the avenging subplot was rapidly dropped in favour of making Cullen a man who just

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wanted to get the railway built… when he wasn’t trapped by Mormons or, as he has been in this final season, working for a different railroad company entirely. Yet while characters vanished — losing Common as ex-slave Elam at the end of season three to a bear was a real blow — or changed and changed again (Union Pacific boss Durant (Meaney) became more of a cartoon bad guy with every season), seemingly unstoppable supervillain “The Swede” (Heyerdahl) kept on coming. So it’s a little surprising that the final half of Hell on Wheels’ final season begins with a showdown between Cullen and The Swede that may not end how you’d expect. Guess they just got tired of that subplot. The cult-ish Mormon backdrop to season four never quite clicked, thanks mostly to the dull wife and child foisted on Cullen by The Swede, so when he ditches them early in this final run to hook up with occasional crossdresser Mei (Zhou) there’s no looking back. The introduction of the Central Pacific railroad’s Chinese workforce in season five added some much-needed variety to the cast, and while this isn’t a series that needed another scheming businessman at least the plot by Mr Chang (Byron Mann) to turn the trans-American rail line into a link in a trans-Pacific shipping empire shows vision for someone who’s basically just another thug with a gang. The big race to the finishing line for the rival railroads never quite gathers steam, boiling down to labour disputes and land scams, but that’s

been the point of this series since the start. For all Durant’s big talk (and a flash-forward reveals his big talk doesn’t exactly pay off), building the railroad has been a grubby day-to-day exercise and we get to see the maimed workers to prove it. The series might have been derailed repeatedly, but it’s stayed true to its vision of the Union Pacific as a vast endeavour greased on blood, amongst other fluids: former Indian captiveturned-prostitute-turned-Elam’s wife-turned-card sharp-turned-madam-turned-horse obsessive Eva (McLeavy) sees a way to turn her sordid past (or a version of it) into cash and it’s not like anything else she’s tried has worked out across five seasons. Over Hell on Wheels’ five seasons, one element’s remained consistent: Mount’s performance as increasingly grizzled antihero Cullen. In a stronger series Cullen would have gotten his due as one of the classic gruff gunslingers of 21st century television; instead, fans just had to make do with him gunning down, beating up, or riding over just about every bad guy the show served up. In these final episodes things start to look like they might finally go right for Cullen and Mount, who never let Cullen’s humanity vanish even at the character’s most clichéd, makes sure the flip side of Cullen’s coin — the guilt he feels for all the bad he’s done — stays just as firmly in our view. It’s a great performance on a show that didn’t quite deserve it. ANTHONY MORRIS EXTRAS A Look At The Final Episodes; Golden Spike; Wrap Up; Inside The Episodes.

AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. SEASON THREE HHHHH

Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen / CAST Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Elizabeth Henstridge, Iain De Caestecker, Brett Dalton FROM MARCH 1 / RATED TBC / PRODUCERS

The fists of Fury

WITH AN ALIEN contagion turning regular folk into superpowered not-mutants called Inhumans, the crack team at S.H.I.E.L.D. has a new mission: track down these super-people and bring them in before they get up to no good — or no good happens to them. It’s a refreshing change of approach for the sometimes aimless series, though early on the regular superhero hunting does seem a bit formulaic. Fortunately stand-out and standalone episode ‘4,722 Hours’, which details where Agent Simmons (Henstridge) went after being dragged through an alien portal last season, cranks things up a notch. Things improve further with Coluson’s drive to form super-team the Secret Warriors while Hydra looks to revive their ancient alien-Inhuman hybrid leader, which can’t be good

“Sir, do NOT write ‘Wash me’ in that dust.”

news for anybody. Being constantly buffeted by developments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn’t been ideal for long-term plotting, but the Inhumans angle works well here (even if the MCU has since dropped the proposed Inhumans movie). While the mix of rapid-fire action and banter and character development never quite hits the heights

you’d hope for with a Whedon producing, you can expect at least one solid fight and two decent one-liners per episode. Plus Agent Mack does eventually get a shotgun-axe: that has to count for something. EXTRAS Bloopers Of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Deleted Scenes ANTHONY MORRIS

out to protect Russian interests in Afghanistan, and over these two seasons (sold separately) the cost of their double lives is repeatedly driven home. Their eldest daughter Paige (Taylor) increasingly suspects something’s up, which may not be good for her; Phillips’ second marriage to bug-planting FBI secretary Martha (Wright) definitely isn’t good for her. The ’80s details are spot-on, but there’s little

glamour in the clunky cars and bad fashions. The deftly-plotted, nail-biting plots constantly crank up the tension (and the body count), while the always on-point acting gives the high-stakes scheming an all-too-human cost. There are some amazing wigs on display here too: when these guys go undercover, they don’t skimp on the cover. EXTRAS None. ANTHONY MORRIS

THE AMERICANS: COMPLETE SECOND AND THIRD SEASONS HHHHH

Joel Field, Joe Weisberg / CAST Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, Alison Wright, Holly Taylor, Noah Emmerich FROM MARCH 29 / RATED MA15+ / PRODUCERS

The Cold War heats up REMEMBER WHEN A spy drama based on a tense relationship between the USA and Russia was a history lesson? Maybe not: it’s been three years since the first season of The Americans was released in Australia, and while it’s been gathering acclaim and awards in the US, it’s only now that we’re getting the chance to catch up on this brilliant show. Season two begins in 1982 with suburban housewife-slash-deep cover Soviet agent Elizabeth (Russell) barely recovered from a bullet while her husband and fellow spy Phillip (Rhys) gives them

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BEST OF TIMES |WORST OF TIMES DOMINIC MONAGHAN

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

COSTUME When we did Lost, we hit upon this idea, J.J. [Abrams] and I, that when Charlie puts his hood up he’s turned into a Sith Lord. I said that when this happened it should be like turning to the dark side. J.J. said, “I fucking love that, let’s do that.” I was able to take the hoodie at the end of the show. It’s in storage somewhere. It has a slightly magical element for me.

When we did Pet, there were a couple of days where I’m only wearing boxer shorts and blood, which gets a little old a little quickly. They kept saying to me, “Do you want to have a shower?” I’d say no, because then they’d need to redo the blood. They weren’t my boxer shorts. I always wear slightly more… not funky boxers, but fun, expressive boxers.

ADVICE I worked with this director [Maxim Korostyshevsky] in Ukraine [on Soldiers Of Fortune]. He’d give pieces of advice I didn’t agree with. I realised the only way to get through was to nod, say, “Okay,” then not implement his advice. But he’d thank me and say the changes were better!

I got a great piece of advice from Ian McKellen when I was brokenhearted. I saw him in London and we had a night of chatting and a couple of glasses of wine and some food. He looked at me and said, “Chin up, cock down.” That’s genius.

AUDITION When I came in for my screen test [for Lost] they had two Jacks, two Kates, two Boones, but only one Charlie. I noticed it and went over to J.J. and said, “There’s only one Charlie auditioning.” He said, “Yeah, good luck.” He filled me with confidence.

I got an audition for Cracker. I was 18 or 19. The director said, “What have you done recently?” I said, “Barbecues, hanging out with my friends down the pub, playing football.” There was a pregnant pause then he said, “What have you been doing in terms of work?” It makes me cringe even now.

LOCATION I did a film [Soldiers Of Fortune] in Balaklava, Ukraine. I was brokenhearted, I’d broken my foot, I was drinking too much. Travelling is a huge part of my life, but I know I’ll never go back to Ukraine.

On Wild Things I’ve been spoiled. We witnessed surgery on an African elephant in the savannah of Kenya. When it woke up, it tried to kill our cameraman and chase us around.

ALAMY, GETTY, PA

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When The Return Of The King won Best Picture at the Oscars, myself, Billy, Elijah and Sean were on stage, waiting for Pete [Jackson] to make a speech. And Steven Spielberg [Best Picture presenter] comes over and says, “I want you to know that my grandchildren are going to be super excited that I met you.” It’s stuck in my brain ever since.

MARCH 2017

This was post-Rings, but before it came out. I got robbed in LA at a cashpoint. I walked home, which was a long walk, and was staying in the bottom of someone’s house. I thought, “Should I go home to England?” I didn’t. I ended up playing Grand Theft Auto III all weekend. PET IS OUT NOW ON DVD AND BLU-RAY.

caption comp

giveaways WIN! OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY ON BLU-RAY THERE AIN’T NO party like an office Christmas party because an office Christmas party don’t stop... until vomits in a bin in front of someone from HR. This raunchy comedy stars Jason Bateman, Olivia Munn, TJ Miller, Jennifer Aniston and Kate McKinnon as embattled employees who have to throw the biggest party ever, to win a client and save the company. And they don’t even work in ad sales. We have 10 copies on glorious Blu-ray to give away — for best effect, watch with a drink in hand. TO ENTER, TELL US WHICH ACTOR YOU’D MOST LIKE TO PARTY WITH, AND WHY.

WIN! MOANA ON DVD

WIN!

Write a brilliantly witty caption to the image above from upcoming Scar-Jo starrer Ghost In The Shell, the remake of the anime classic, and you could be a winner! To enter, email empiregiveaways@bauer-media.com.au GHOST IN THE SHELL WILL BE HAUNTING CINEMAS FROM MARCH 30.

WE HAVE 4 THE FLY ULTIMATE COLLECTION BLU-RAY PACKS TO GIVE AWAY FOR CANNY CAPTIONEERS! CHECK OUT THE REVIEW ON PAGE 92 TO GET EXCITED, BRUNDLEFLIES!

THERE COMES A time in every young woman’s life when she must sail across the ocean with a chicken in search of a demi-god to retrieve a sacred stone to save her island home. And for Moana, that time is now. Auli’i Cravalho is the voice of Moana, and Dwayne “The Sacred Rock” Johnson is the voice of Maui; and Lin-Manuel Miranda co-wrote the songs. All of which explains why Moana made half a billion worldwide in cinemas. We have 5 copies on DVD to give away, so you can sing along at home. TO ENTER, TELL US WHICH MYTHICAL GOD YOU’D MOST LIKE TO HANG OUT WITH, AND WHY.

WIN! DOCTOR STRANGE ON DVD NOT MANY SUPERHEROES just use their real names. Would Iron Man be as cool if he was just called Mr Stark? But Benedict Cumberbatch is so cool as Dr Stephen Strange, he doesn’t need a superhero name: he just needs to learn magical techniques for manipulating reality from the Ancient One and her secret band of acolytes who protect the world from inter-dimensional evil. Just business as usual for the Sorceror Supreme. We’ve got 10 DVDs to give away.

january winner

TO ENTER, TELL US WHAT

“I’ve told you, nothing’s wrong with my eyesight, Barnaby Joyce is a perfectly attractive young woman.”

Ross Massey! You have won a Blood Father prize pack!

SUPERHERO NAME YOU WOULD GIVE DR STRANGE IF HE DECIDED HE WANTED ONE, AND WHY.

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SNIPER ELITE 4 HHHHH

OUT NOW FORMAT PS4

DIRECTOR Jason CAST

Kingsley Tom Clarke-Hill

PLOT As growly voiced Office of Strategic Services agent Karl Fairburne (Clarke-Hill), the player must aid the Italian resistance against the rising force of fascism in Italy, 1943. Mostly it’s all about fatally collapsing Nazi lungs from 200 metres.

WE CAN’T ALL go around punching Nazis, Neo- or otherwise, no matter how much some people wish we could. But everyone who gets their mitts on this fourth main instalment of British indie studio Rebellion’s Sniper Elite series can absolutely, positively look forward to blowing some Nazi nuts clean off their bodies. Ever since the second game came out in 2012, that’s been the series’ USP: grotesquely moreish close-ups of high-velocity ballistics breaking enemy bodies, courtesy of an X-raystyle kill-cam. Never mind that you can get your basic sniping kicks in all manner of other shooters. Here, a successful zoom and a calmly squeezed trigger is rewarded with an explosion of

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gore, as an enemy brain turns to mush inside a shattered cranium, or a pair of testicles burst with legs-immediately-crossed ferocity. But if you come for the slaughter, do you stay for the story? Sniper Elite 4 has one, wrapped around a generous cluster of missions set within expansive open areas with rich environmental variety and, more pertinently, plenty of cover spots for long-range head shots. But it’s not that compelling, not beside the moment-to-moment action that really has this game singing. You are the couldn’t-be-more-generic Karl Fairburne, a thick-jawed avatar like countless gaming protagonists before him — all growls, scowls and magical back-sticking guns. An agent within the American Office of Strategic Services, a very real World War II intelligence agency, he’s sent to Italy in 1943 to assist local rebels with combating the invading Nazis. But helping them is only half the picture — across the game’s campaign you’ll learn about a new weapon Hitler’s been developing, which you then have to stop reaching mass production. It isn’t going to be easy. This isn’t a gung-ho action adventure, and you simply can’t rush in. Moving slowly, sticking to cover, choosing your shots when the sound will be masked by passing planes — very strategic murder yields the best results. Get spotted, and Karl really can’t stand up to much punishment before he’s KIA. Thankfully, he’s not alone in taking on the fascists. Before each mission, Karl can talk

to supporting characters such as rebel Sofia and creepy Colonel Weaver. These conversations unlock side missions — so as well as taking out a prime target, you’ll also be locating items and equipment, and clearing out checkpoints, slowly easing the oppression of the Resistenza. Before long, each stage’s map is dotted with multiple markers — and scouting ahead with binoculars tags further targets, immobile and moving, leading to a cluttered UI. But to play the perfect game you really have to grab and gut everything, acquiring dozens of collectibles, which is a distraction from the raw thrill of the appealing elevator pitch: stay in the shadows, eliminate everyone wearing a Wehrmacht emblem, then get out alive. And this is a game of uncommon risk and reward, high-tension drama that will have you holding your breath as Karl does his, to steady an aim and make that bullet fly true. It’s fabulous when bodies are falling and the enemy has no idea where you’re hiding, and a genuinely fraught experience when Karl’s position is compromised and rushed by overwhelming forces. In those moments, Sniper Elite 4 absolutely excels. It is, truly, an elite sniping simulator. Just don’t expect a great deal more. MIKE DIVER VERDICT The

sniping itself is terrific, with a wealth of multiplayer and co-op modes. But stiff acting and occasional gameplay hiccups leave its firearms fun shorn of lasting impact.

RESIDENT EVIL 7: BIOHAZARD

HHHHH

OUT NOW / PC, PS4, XB1 DIRECTOR Koushi CAST

Nakanishi Todd Soley, Katie O’Hagan

IT’S THE FRANCHISE that originally established survival-horror as its own genre, but Resident Evil seriously lost its way in recent years. Luckily, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard marks a major rethink — the big Michael Bay-esque action sequences are out and, instead, turn-you-intoquivering-jelly horror is very firmly in, as the series veers back to the more confined settings seen in its PS1 origins. From the off, as you explore an apparently abandoned Louisiana house, the atmosphere is thickly claustrophobic, intensely creepy and never lets up on the tension. And, on PC and PS4, there’s also the opportunity to play in VR, which ratchets up the impact of the game’s jump-shocks to near heart attack levels. You have been warned. SB

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HHHHH

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OUT NOW / PS4 DIRECTORS Yosuke

Hayashi, Fumihiko

Yasuda CAST Ben Peel, Masachika Ichimura

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IT WOULD BE easy to dismiss Nioh as merely a Dark Souls clone. From the strike-and-retreat, stamina-oriented combat to the dark and foreboding environments, it certainly feels similar — for added frustration, there’s even the inability to pause the game when you need to swap out equipment. But combat is interesting, with different stances affecting power and speed, and spirit animals that you can bond to weapons to add elemental powers. And the Japanese landscapes are glorious. It does suffer in its scale though, the environments smaller than Dark Souls’ vast, maddening labyrinths. Still, despite its obvious influences, Nioh emerges more than the sum of its parts — a hardcore gem. MK

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Musical in which Vanessa Redgrave was Guenevere (7) The Cider House — (Tobey Maguire) (5) Jesse who was Lex Luther in Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice (9) Alice seen in Star Trek Into Darkness (3) Eddie Murphy starrer found amid KismetRoman Holiday double feature (5) Rose Royce had a hit disco single with the theme to this 1976 comedy (3,4) This Western teamed Burt Lancaster with Audrey Hepburn (3,10) Shrek director Andrew (7) Hope seen in Death Wish and Blue Velvet (5) Seth MacFarlane’s potty-mouthed bear (3) For which Russell Crowe won his Oscar (9) Vincent D’Onofrio, Johnny Galecki and Laura Wiggins’ favourite type of jewellery? (5) Legendary lawman-gunfighter portrayed by Steve McQueen (3,4)

ACROSS 1

NIOH

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6 10 12 13 15 17

Confused Mr Cea creates a 2014 film for ex-Corrie star Bruce Jones (5) Steven Spielberg’s 2012 award-winning historical drama (7) Did Ben Affleck make the plot of this one all add up? (3,10) Moore, Allam or possibly Rabbit? (5) He was the first actor to win an Oscar for playing two roles in one film (Cat Ballou) (3,6) Could be Dorff, Fry or Rea (7) This Derek Jarman film cast Tilda Swinton as the Madonna (3,6) This one involved bus bombers, Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce (7) Terry, director of The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (7) In which M. Night Shyamalan placed something mysterious amid the crops (5) —: The Smartest Guys In The Room (5)

FEBRUARY ANSWERS

ACROSS: 7/17 Doctor Strange, 8 Louder, 9 Pegg, 10 Budapest, 11 Stealth, 13 Frank, 15 Ethan, 20 Rob Cohen, 21 Salt, 22 Warren, 23 Oculus. DOWN: 1 Robert, 2 Stag, 3 Tribute, 4 Blade, 5 Suspiria, 6 Nelson, 12 Amarcord, 14 Stanton, 16 Thomas, 18 Gollum, 19 Shane, 21 Spun. ANAGRAM EMMA STONE

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DAVID CRONENBERG’S THE DEAD ZONE

Before The Fly (1986, see page 92) David Cronenberg made The Dead Zone, an adaptation of the Stephen King novel with Christopher Walken as schoolteacher Johnny Smith who wakes from a coma to discover he can see the future. When Johnny shakes the hand of Senator Stillson (Martin Sheen), he sees Stillson’s future: as President, he will launch a nuclear war.

INT. CAMP DAVID — NIGHT President Stillson, a five-star general (Gordon Jocelyn) and Stillson’s head of security, Sonny Elliman (Géza Kovács), stand over the “nuclear football” — the nuclear launch device.

General: As what? The world’s greatest mass murderers? Stillson: You cowardly bastard! You’re not the voice of the people, I’m the voice of the people! The people speak through me, not you! It came to me while I slept, Sonny — my destiny. In the middle of the night, it came to me — I must get up, now, RIGHT NOW, and fulfil my destiny. Now you put your goddamn hand on that scanning screen, OR I’LL HACK IT OFF AND PUT IT ON FOR YOU! DO IT! The general stares at President Stillson, who has the light of madness in his eyes; then reluctantly bends towards the nuclear football.

The President scans his palmprint and enters a code into the glowing keypad on the nuclear football. Stillson: My destiny. He presses the red button. Stillson: Thank you, Sonny. The president opens the door. Soldiers are guarding outside, holding back a small crowd of men in suits. Stillson: Let them come up. The men in suits surge into the office.

General: May God forgive me. President Stillson: Do it, Jim. The general scans his palmprint. General: You’re insane. I won’t.

Vice president (Ken Pogue): This is not necessary, Mr President. We have a diplomatic solution.

Stillson: Congratulations, General. Stillson: DO IT! Put your hand on the scanning screen and you’ll go down in history with me.

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Sonny: Complete the sequence, Mr President.

Stillson: Mr Vice President, Mr Secretary. The missiles are flying. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

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