Filmhounds Magazine Summer 2020 (Sample)

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nolan’s films ranked

filmhounds.co.uk

bowie review

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issue 1 - summer 2020

summer 2020

mulan Preview | all disney live action remakes ranked

4o years: the Empire strikes back + the shining

#1

PARASITE: BLACK-AND-WHITE EDITION In Cinemas & On Demand 24 July

welcome from the editors elcome to the the very first issue of Filmhounds Magazine. I hope you've been keeping safe the last few months; it’s been a very strange time to say the least.

One of the positives has been that we’ve been able to watch A LOT of films, and with Netflix, Disney+, Amazon, NowTV, Blu-rays, UHD and even DVDs (remember those?) it’s been easier than ever to watch.

Filmhounds comes from the team behind VultureHound Magazine who have been covering film for almost 10 years, so we excited to finally share with you the new film only magazine.

Thanks for reading.

ilmhounds has been a longtime coming.

For several years now, VultureHound Magazine has had the privilege of being able to showcase some of the UKs finest up and coming writing talent. Through their hard work and love of cinema they helped build the mags Film Section into an industry trusted source.

Now, all that work and talent can’t be contained in just one section which has brought us to the first issue of Filmhounds. An impossibly large thanks goes to all the writers who have given their time and skill to make it happen, and to you for giving it a read.

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michael dickinson

David Garlick

@MD_Shoots

@davidgarlick

DAVID GARLICK Co-Editor david@filmhounds.co.uk

MICHAEL DICKINSON Co-Editor mike@filmhounds.co.uk

SOcial @FILMHOUNDSMAG /FILMHOUNDSMAG @FILMHOUNDS Copyright 2020 Filmhounds Magazine. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without the written consent of FIlmhounds Magazine. Requests for permission should be directed to: info@vulturehound.com.

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preview

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Words: Maria Lattila After what feels like a lifetime, Wonder Woman 1984 will finally arrive into cinemas later this year. Patty Jenkins returns to the director’s chair and Gal Gadot steps into the boots of Diana Prince once again to deliver another epic action film with a heart of gold. The action moves from the first World War to the neon-hued 1980s as Diana battles yet another evil. Will we see Diana sporting some funky leg warmers?

Probably not, but we can dream.

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Photos: Clay Enos/ ™ & © DC Comics

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REVIEW

DA 5 BLOODS ‘WELCOME BACK TO VIETNAM’ he first time I wanted to stand up and applaud during Da 5 Bloods happened around two and a half minutes into the movie. After a passionate, powerful and visceral montage setting the political stage around the Vietnam War and particularly the treatment of Black American soldiers, the frame elegantly expands from boxy 4:3 ratio to an ultra-widescreen 2.39:1 as the action switches to modern day Ho Chi Minh City. It’s a goosebump-inducing cinematic flourish that sets the stage for an audacious, visceral big screen epic from the uncompromising Spike Lee. Maestro, take a bow.

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Da 5 Bloods is a chronicle both of changing times and of steadfastly unmoved prejudices. The “bloods” of the title are four veterans who travel back to the forests of Vietnam, ostensibly to locate the remains of their fallen leader Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), but also to dredge up the crate of American gold they discovered and buried shortly before his death. For some, it’s about the money, while for others the memory of their deceased comrade is the driving force behind their pilgrimage.

The joy of watching Da 5 Bloods is that it boils over with ideas and, as a result, seems to metamorphose in front of its audience into something entirely new every few minutes. It’s sometimes an angry

treatise on historical racism and the insidious tendrils it still wraps around America, often a brothersin-arms road movie and, by the end, a nail-biting thriller moving inexorably towards a blood-soaked conclusion.

Lee has assembled a terrific ensemble cast, led by Delroy Lindo as Paul — a Trump supporter who blames much of modern day America’s problems on Mexican immigrants and wants to build the wall. He’s a coiled spring of rage, guilt and post-traumatic stress who seems permanently just a misjudged comment away from exploding, whether it’s at his more mild-mannered “bloods” or his son David (Jonathan Majors), who joins their journey. Lindo’s performance is as heart-breaking as it is

Now and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and infused with a jukebox soundtrack — Marvin Gaye is used to particularly powerful effect — to complement Terence Blanchard’s expertly judged score.

Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel is also on masterful form, whether it’s depicting the urgency and terror of the boxy, grainy flashbacks or by surrounding the cast with the verdant infinity of the forests to which they now return in the present day. Older? Certainly.

Wiser? Perhaps. But definitely smaller than they felt when they last walked these lands.

terrifying, with Lee positioning the character on a knife-edge that ensures he never becomes a villain, even as his questionable actions mount up. Whether he’s delivering Shakespearean soliloquies directly down the camera lens or weeping in the arms of one of his friends, Lindo is never less than achingly believable. Awards season surely beckons.

The rest of the cast is strong too, with musical veteran Norm Lewis delivering a soulful performance and Clarke Peters shining as the level-headed de facto organiser of the group. Majors, too, deserves special praise for his complex take on a young man torn between his father’s increasingly extreme views and his own perspective on the world.

Regular flashbacks depict the group’s quasi-mythical memories of the war, with the same actors portraying their younger selves — free of Irishman-style de-aging in a compelling take on the nature of romanticised, unreliable memory.

Boseman’s Norman, described as being “both our Malcolm and our Martin” to his brothers, is often depicted as if glowing, saint-like.

He’s a Messiah figure these men followed and have continued to hold up as their paragon of virtue, torn from them by a crooked war in which thousands of people who looked like them were sent to die.

Da 5 Bloods is certainly attempting to be a lot of movies at once, which makes it even more astonishing that it excels at all of them. It handles American imperialism, police brutality and the tyranny of Trump, while also slipping in poignant nods to the Black Lives Matter movement, which could not possibly be more relevant than they are right now as we are all boiled within the crucible of protest, upheaval and — one can only hope — real, longlasting change.

This would always have been an essential movie but, in a world starved of cinema as a result of a global health emergency, Da 5 Bloods feels like an even more valuable artefact. It’s incendiary, potent filmmaking conjured by an artist whose vision hums with the energy of rage, as if on the cutting edge of a historic movement. This is cinema at its most captivating, energising and galvanising. It’s less Good Morning, Vietnam and more Wake Up, World. Spike Lee has something to say, and no one can silence him.

This is every inch a Spike Lee joint and, as such, it’s raggedy and illdisciplined. But that suits the epic feel here, bathed in homages both explicit and implicit to Apocalypse

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LABYRINTH

ILLUSTRATION: DAVID GARLICK

GET THAT MAGIC DANCE BACK HOW TO MAKE A GOOD LABYRINTH SEQUEL

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Words: CHRISTIAN LYNN

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fter years of speculation, TriStar Pictures has signed Scott Derrickson on to direct a follow-up to cult 80s classic Labyrinth. However, while this news might have been met with cheers years ago, the loss of David Bowie has left many cautious about tampering with a sequel: his performance as Jareth the Goblin King is the iconic heart of the film after all. But, is there a way of creating a Labyrinth sequel that actually works in spite of Bowie’s absence, for both old fans and new? I think so, and here’s how and why.

Keep the Goblin King Let’s just tackle the elephant in the room. No, no one will ever offer up Bowie’s charisma, style and bulge, nor should they try and replicate it. However, put me in front of the firing squad if you’d like, but without Jareth and the puppetry, Labyrinth is little more than a pretty, generic 80s fantasy.

If we’re going by that argument, then a recast needs to be out of left field. Go for someone too comfortable and Bowie’s void will stick out like a sore thumb.

So, who do I suggest? Tilda Swinton. While she might have the quirky Bowie edge, her turn in The Chronicles of Narnia is what sticks out as a sort of audition really.

The Ice Queen offered that same captivating charisma to audiences as Jareth: we’d rather see more of the Ice Queen than the rather one-note teenage heroes. Doesn’t that seem like the perfect fit for the Labyrinth template?

Additionally, Swinton has a knack for playing anyone, anywhere, with any kind of accent. That versatility gives Derrickson the tools with which to create and direct an evolved version of Jareth. A more sinister incarnation perhaps, moving on from the subtly sexual aura that Bowie gave off ? It could be the best of both worlds: looks familiar but feels completely fresh.

Bring back the puppetry I said earlier that it wasn’t just Jareth that made Labyrinth as iconic as it is: Jim Henson’s famous troupe of colourful puppets helped define the look and feel of the film. Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus and more: their charm was translated entirely by their family friendly design and expressive animatronics. If CGI captured these instead, the connection wouldn’t be the same, as the blurry digital creation would be just another background image during Sarah’s (Jennifer Connolly) quest.

While Labyrinth director Jim Henson is no longer with us, his son Brian Henson has continued his legacy with the likes of The Muppets: A Christmas Carol. So, why don’t Derrickson and TriStar bring back Henson as a producer?

Under his supervision, the recognisable faces of Hoggle and company could be brought back to the utmost detail, and without any digital embellishment. And if anyone argues that puppetry doesn’t work or isn’t popular anymore, I defer you to the billion dollar Star Wars sequel trilogy, which highlighted this technique once again with new alien creations.

Make it a little darker No one’s arguing for a DC do-over.

But, if you’re going to capitalise on a sequel that delivers what fans want, you have to age the material just a little to honour the time that has passed since the original.

But the ‘little’ is key: it still needs to appeal to kids, a lot like in the way that Tim Burton’s gothic pictures are marketed for younger audiences such as Corpse Bride.

Bringing back Connolly is the key to achieving this. Rather than re-treading the kidnapped child plotline, why not have Sarah haunted by the memory of Jareth, who then returns to claim her back? Labyrinth could then be an escape rather than a rescue – now, Sarah has to get out of the maze. It’s a simplistic change that doesn’t overcomplicate the storytelling for children. But, the traumatic aspect of Sarah’s character would give older fans of the original something to cling onto emotionally.

Link up a troubled Sarah with a bitter Jareth played by Swinton (channelling that Ice Queen) and you could have a sequel that feels fresh, emotionally engaging but enjoyable, particularly with the return of the visually likeable puppets. Plus, with Derrickson directing, you have the perfect man for the job. With a history in horror but experience in the biggest family-friendly franchise with his work on Doctor Strange for Marvel, and you have a man whose palette fits with all aspects of Labyrinth, for both the adults and the kids.

The first Labrynth is available on Netflix now SUMMER 2020 FILMHOUNDS 13

X THE NEW MUTANTS

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believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said there are only three certainties in life: death, taxes and the fact that The New Mutants will never be released on cinema screens.

Josh Boone’s ill-fated superhero adventure has been afflicted by worse luck than someone who’s struck by lightning on the way to cash in their winning lottery ticket. The film went in front of cameras in the second half of 2017, but remains unreleased three years later. According to the latest plans released by Disney, The New Mutants is slated for a release on 28th August in UK and US cinemas but, given the ongoing uncertainty around the coronavirus pandemic, even that scheduling – its fifth confirmed release date – looks optimistic.

So what is The New Mutants, and why haven’t we seen it yet?

In the Marvel comics, The New Mutants first arrived in 1982 as a new, teenage group of super-powered beings separate to the main X-Men team. It’s that incarnation of the ragtag bunch that takes centre stage in the film, led by Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams as religious lycanthrope Wolfsbane and Split leading lady Anya Taylor-Joy as Russian sorcerer Magik.

Completing the zeitgeisty lead trio is Stranger Things actor Charlie Heaton as Cannonball, who has the power to shoot himself into the sky... or something. There’s also Native American illusionist hero Mirage, played by Blu Hunt, and Henry Zaga as the solar energy-wielding Sunspot.

Filmmaker Josh Boone started work on The New Mutants almost immediately after his adaptation of teen weepie novel The Fault In Our Stars became a huge success in 2014. Along with cowriter Knate Lee, he pitched the idea to X-Men franchise producer Simon Kinberg and it got

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Photos: © 2020 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN...

Words: tom beasley

THE NEVER-ENDING X-STORY

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Photos: ©1980 Lucas Films

STAR WARS

‘That’s not true, that’s impossible!’

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Words: Callum Barrington

The Empire Strikes Back at

40 he gigantic and unexpected success of 1977’s Star Wars had turned a film that initially seemed like a joke into the biggest event in the world. Suddenly, 20th Century Fox, who had initially believed they had a flop on their hands, were clamouring for more and George Lucas now had the clout to make the story he wanted to tell, knowing it would be a hit. The safest thing to do would be to replicate what had come before, but Lucas had other ideas. Forty years on, The Empire Strikes Back stands not only as the best of the Star Wars films, but a remarkable and powerful movie on its own terms.

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LET’S KILL

LET’S KILL!

Video Games & Cinematic Violence t’s been a long time since the first PlayStation console came out in 1994 and a whole lifetime since home game consoles became popular in the 80s. What started out as pixelated shapes moving on a screen has now developed into fullblown narratives and extensive worlds beyond our wildest dreams. Gone are the days of eating little colourful dots - although we all still love a game of Pac Man - as the shift has focused onto more ambitious storytelling and genre gaming.

Survival horror and action games are among the most popular ones with titles such as The Evil Within, Tomb Raider and Silent Hill garnering rave reviews from critics and gamers alike.

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Many of today’s games utilise inventive and rather breath-taking visuals as well as well-rounded and emotionally charged narratives to explore challenging and fascinating themes. Several well-known Hollywood actors have lent their voices and resemblance to video game characters, including Ellen Page, Willem Dafoe and Hayden Panettiere.

What was once regarded as “just a game” has grown into a multimillion-dollar business and a serious contender in entertainment in an era where streaming giants, movie studios and game companies all battle for the throne.

While films, whether that’d be horror flicks, thrillers or action movies, use violence as entertainment and spectacle, video games treat it differently. Even the most brutal torture-porn films use violence as a way to entertain through the shock factor and use of excessive gore, but by nature, films are passive as we sit in a dark auditorium or the

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Words: Maria Lättilä

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Ranked

ranked

Words: Liam Springate-Jones Christopher Nolan has long been one of the best modern filmmakers.

Throughout his 10-feature film career, he’s demonstrated a rare ability to marry complex, mind-bending ideas with immersive entertainment.

Wielding IMAX cameras and studio-breaking budgets, Nolan has proved he’s a master of making smart, savvy blockbusters.

He is a director that pushes the limits, challenges the audience, and redefines cinema conventions. There’s always so much to unpack in a Nolan movie and with the highly anticipated Tenet (pictured) soon to be released, what better time to rank all 10 of Christopher Nolan’s movies.

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Words: Liam Springate-Jones Photos: Melinda Sue Gordon, © 2020 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.

the films of Christopher Nolan

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RANKED

10. Following Nolan’s directional debut Following is a tense and unnerving thriller that showed early glimpses of a genius in the making.

It’s the story of a young writer who follows strangers around in London, hoping to use their lives as inspiration for his novel. Shot on 16mm stock with a £6,000 budget, it’s the movie that marked Nolan’s official arrival. While it’s certainly enjoyable, it doesn’t quite match up to the rest of his output due to its low stakes – but it’s still a great effort for a first-time filmmaker.

Following laid the foundation for Nolan’s ascent into Hollywood, showing that he was capable of creating an eerie thriller on a small canvas.

9. The Dark Knight Rises Faced with the task of following up one of the most popular movies in history, Nolan gave us The Dark Knight Rises, a film brimming with ideas and action, but in the end, failed to live up to the hype. The final chapter of Nolan’s Batman trilogy might be overstuffed and riddled with plot holes, but it’s still better than most superhero movies and blockbusters out there.

Nolan’s finale impresses in individual moments, carried forth by well-crafted performances, and a story that relies heavily on deep subtext. It’s a cold, bruising doom-shrouded movie that sinks its teeth into issues around life, death, and rebirth, and concludes with Batman passing the masked mantle onto another hero, driving home the point established in the first movie: “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”

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8. Insomnia Insomnia feels like the least essential film in Nolan’s filmography. Delivered in a very straightforward style, it’s quite the deviation from his typical mode of filmmaking – and it remains the only film that Nolan has made where he wasn’t involved in the writing. Based on the Norwegian film of the same name, Insomnia takes place in an Alaska and follows Detective Will Dormer, played by Al Pacino, who’s investigating the murder of a young girl.

It’s a film that seems to have slipped through the cracks, but it’s a great genre exercise, purporting ideas around moral ambiguity and unresolved guilt. A dark, murky film that’s designed to creep into your psyche; Insomnia is an early calling card

for Nolan’s ability to dig deep into characters and their motivations.

As Nolan’s first studio movie, it marked the beginning of a very successful career in Hollywood.

7. Dunkirk Less of a war film and more of a survival thriller, Dunkirk chronicles the mass evacuation of British soldiers during World War II. Nolan resets the hours, minutes, and seconds of history, and the result is three overlapping narratives that show the chaos and fear of war.

Dunkirk deliberately forgoes any kind of character development, jumping from one battle scene to the next, placing you right in the centre of the horror.

In many ways, the evacuation event becomes the main “character”, and as the viewers, we feel trapped and desperate

to escape. Intense, bleak and horrifyingly real, Dunkirk pushes the traditional heroics of war films aside, for a frantic human story, that’s backed by a thundering score by Hans Zimmer.

6. Batman Begins Batman Begins was a gamechanger for the superhero genre back in 2005. At the time, it felt incredibly fresh because we’d never seen a Batman so dark and believable. Nolan transformed the well-known character of Bruce Wayne into a gritty anti-hero, and it marked the dawn of new era for comic book filmmaking. All of a sudden, superheroes were being taken more seriously.

Batman Begins proved that with the right director at the helm, comic

book characters could be made grounded and realistic. Many fans would agree that Batman Begins is the greatest superhero origin movie of all time, and one of the best depictions of Bruce Wayne.

The film’s lasting legacy lies in its re-creation of Batman as a vengeful vigilante, fighting for a cause greater than himself.

events out of sequence, and it never feels convoluted.

Memento is undoubtedly one of the most unique and original thrillers to come out of the 2000s. It works so well because it’s more than just a detective story: Memento is a mediation on time, memory, and identity that only benefits from its fractured narrative. It’s a very clever movie and certainly holds up twenty years later.

5. Memento 4. Interstellar Nolan’s 2000 breakthrough Memento has become the template for his career. It’s a brilliantly executed mystery thriller that tells the non-linear story of Leonard Shelby (Guy Ritchie) who suffers from short-term memory loss. The story revolves around his desperate search for the man who killed his wife, which is the last thing he remembers. Nolan skilfully uses reverse chronology to mirror Shelby’s inability to remember, showing a series of

Interstellar, a mind-bending space opera set in the future where the Earth’s climate has failed catastrophically is Nolan’s most ambitious film to date. It’s a deep dive into the mysteries of the universe, following a group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole to try and find a new home for humanity. By design, Interstellar is head-creakingly complex. It explores the intricacies of space travel, the galaxy and beyond, and it demands multiple viewings.

Lavish and expansive, Nolan’s obsession with time is on full display in Interstellar,

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REVIEW

REVIEW

MERRY CHRISTMAS MR LAWRENCE Words: ANDREW GAUDION

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rrow Academy’s latest release gives Nagisa Ōshima’s classic POW film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence the remaster treatment, bringing Ōshima’s strange meditation on men of war to new vivid life. His first film not entirely in Japanese, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence boasts a cast containing musicians David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto (who also composed the film’s score), Tom Conti and Takeshi Kitano, all of whom are on fine form in this disarmingly moving wartime drama.

Taking place in a prisoner of war camp in Java, Indonesia during 1942, the film primarily focuses on the relationship between four men in the camp. There is the fragile balance of understanding between Sargeant Hana (Takeshi Kitano) and Japanese-fleunt British Lieutenant Colonel John Lawrence (Tom Conti), and the new arrival of British Major Jack Celliers (David Bowie) stirs curiosity in the more traditional camp commander Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto).

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Photos: Chiabella James,, © 2020 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.

preview preview

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Words: Joe Raczka

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ou have to hand it to Denis Villeneuve, ever since Incendies, he’s been on one heck of a run. Prisoners, Enemy, Sicario, Arrival, Blade Runner:2049, he’s shown himself to be a director both of skill and variety.

Now, he takes on the challenge of adapting Frank Herbert’s epic Sci-fi novel Dune, a tale of spice trading and space operatics on a desert planet. It was a challenge too big for even David Lynch whose adaptation marks the one blemish on Lynch’s cinematic track record. Even Denis can’t pull it off, right?

I wouldn’t count against him. With an all-star cast featuring Oscar Isaac, Javier Bardem, Zendaya, Dave Bautista, Rebecca Ferguson to name but a few as well as a score by Hans Zimmer and cinematography by Lion’s Grieg Fraser, it’s hard to know what to expect from Villeneuve but you can know to expect something thoroughly spectacular. If anyone can pull it off, it’s him.

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harley An Unexpected Yet Needed Evolution of One

Harley Quinn

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Photos: © 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Words: Zofia Wijaszka

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The feature below contains spoilers to Birds of Prey and DC’s Harley Quinn.

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he Hollywood industry is in disarray. As we all battle the virus worldwide - the multiplexes have closed their doors, and the production sets have all paused filming - we now turn our eyes to television, a medium flourishing, unlike at any time before.

Even though the films stopped their premieres around April (some risked premiering ondemand), we find ourselves blessed with a character whose sudden development and popularity exploded. Who are we talking about? Of course, the one-of-a-kind Harley Quinn. Why is she so popular?

Two of the main reasons are Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey, and the highly acclaimed, DC Universe, adult cartoon series titled Harley Quinn, created by Justin Halpern, Dean Lorey, and Patrick Schumacker.

Harley was introduced to audiences in Batman: The Animated Series, in the episode titled Joker’s Favor in 1992. However, her origin story was revealed in 1994’s graphic novel titled The Batman Adventures: Mad Love. It was then that the world met the legendary Dr Harleen Quinzel, Ph.D., Arkham Asylum psychologist. The doctor fell madly in love with notorious villain, the Joker, and became the one and only Harley Quinn, the madwoman wearing a black and red jester’s costume who would do anything for her lover.

The audience was charmed by this anti-heroine and her unconditional devotion, but as the world changes and our society grows, women want to be empowered. It was high time for Harley’s immense emancipation. Mistah J, you better watch out.

Harley was already a legendary female character

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