OLIVIA COOKE: “The dinner table scene between Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps in Phantom Thread. The way Vicky gets flustered was mesmerising. You can’t bottle that as an actor. It felt so spontaneous and such a visceral reaction. It’s what you cra

2020 MAY HAVE been a turbulent year for movies, but the small-screen industry kept chugging along nicely and, in fact, helped fill the void for locked-down viewers. If we weren’t watching top-notch television series on our favourite TV channel or str

The Suicide Squad (Empire, December) looks very male and very white. It will be interesting to give it the once-over with the Bechdel-Wallace test and view the film through the lens of diversity. ANN, NUGENT, TAS From what we could see, the Squad

I was saddened to learn of the passing of David Prowse last November. Growing up in England in the 1970s and 80s, I have fond memories of the big fella dressed up as the superhero Green Cross Man, who was used in a children’s road safety campaign. Of

Disney were not shy about revealing new footage at their Investor’s Day presentation on December 10; it’s not every day you get four shiny new Marvel trailers in one go. The first Loki trailer gave us lots of tantalising glimpses of what Tom Hiddlest

THE FIRST TIME I met Dave was when he came on set in the full Darth Vader outfit. I’d seen Ralph McQuarrie’s concept art, but to see it fully realised was stunning. A big part of that was just Dave’s size. He was a towering figure with this magnifice

TOBY KEBBELL HAS gone from junkie to monkey during his 20-year career: after hurtling onto radars in Shane Meadows’ Dead Man’s Shoes , and later as a drug addict in Guy Ritchie’s RockNRolla , he later moved into motion capture as Koba in War For The

EVEN FOR NICOLAS CAGE, an actor hardly known for his subtlety or realism, the premise for his upcoming sci-fi actioner Jiu Jitsu is a doozy. The story goes: every six years, an alien comes to Earth, and demands that nine worthy warriors fight him. Wi

As revealed in last issue’s Empire, director Paul Verhoeven is training his provocative eye on nuns for his next project — specifically, 17th century mystic lesbian nuns. Which is not something they teach in Sunday school. This classic Powell & Pres

DAVID OYELOWO hasn’t been spending much time on terra firma lately. He’s breached the realms of fantasy and fiction in Come Away — an ode to classic children’s literature co-starring Angeline Jolie — and is shooting off to space in George Clooney’s T

MALCOLM X, SAM COOKE, Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown: the thinking-person’s choice of a party you’d want to gatecrash. This irresistible concept, of four icons meeting in a racially taut 1964 America, was first realised in Kemp Powers’ 2013 play One Nigh

Pieces Of A Woman , a story of a home birth that undergoes complications, originated as a play in Poland. On stage, the birth sequence was “45 minutes long,” says Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó. “It was kind of like when you have a beautiful pai

Free Fire showed that Wheatley can handle a very complicated shoot-out. Now, pair The Stath up with a genetically mutated, giant Armie Hammer and Brie Larson, give The Meg a pair of pump-action shotguns (and some arms), and we’re off to the aquatic r

A real-life urban legend about serial killers drowning young men across Midwestern America — and leaving a graffiti-sprayed smiley face — inspired the film. Bret Easton Ellis knew this when writing the script, but director Tim Hunter liked the way th

The idea for Synchronic , the fourth film from filmmaker team Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, first began germinating in 2015. “Apparently, physicists are pretty well decided that time is not linear in any particular way,” Moorhead explains. “It’s

CHOOSING THE MOST comforting moment in Rob Reiner’s 1989 romcom is a bit like asking which is the warmest log on the fire. Who cares when everything around you is this cosy? This movie is all long walks in the park and excellent knitwear, and even th

IN EARLY 2018, Russian filmmaker Ilya Naishuller entered a top LA stunt facility to be confronted by two very different types of action star. “In front of me was Keanu Reeves, getting ready for John Wick 3 ,” the director tells Empire . “Then I turne

THE MEMBERS OF the Grave Diggers — the outlaw bikie gang who are the focus of 1974’s violent thriller Stone — were portrayed as rebels. But none were more rebellious than its producer, director, co-writer and star, Sandy Harbutt. The Aussie auteur —

Carpenter scored his debut film, 1974’s Dark Star, out of “necessity”, he says. A long-time fan of electronic music, he realised that with synths, he could make epic-sounding music on his own. “We needed original music, so we figured it out.” What ma

Do you have a nickname? There was one that I had, the weird one: two friends called me ‘Plugger’. It’s because I wouldn’t stop, I’d always keep going. I know they were mocking me, but I was okay with it. Do you have a signature dish? I’ve only got

OUT JANUARY 21 CERT PG / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Glendyn Ivin CAST Naomi Watts, Andrew Lincoln, Jacki Weaver, Rachel House PLOT When adventurous, athletic Sam (Watts) suffers a crippling accident in Thailand she becomes lost in depression. While husband Ca

OUT NOW (SHUDDER) CERT TBC / 104 MINS DIRECTOR Josh Ruben CAST Josh Ruben, Aya Cash, Chris Redd Two horror writers meet at a weekend retreat in the wilderness. Successful Fanny (Aya Cash from The Boys and You’re The Worst) is arrogant and dismiss