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Empire Australasia|August 2020THIS MONTH AT EMPIREAS I WRITE this editorial it feels as if Australia is teetering once more on the brink of the unknown. Trying to second-guess whether cinemas will still be up and running by the time we go on sale is only making my hair turn prematurely grey (and because I haven’t been to a barber in six months, I can’t hide it either). With that said, our UK sister publication’s decision to run a 2020 preview special in the middle of this pandemic seemed a bit… optimistic. And wouldn’t you know it? That proved to be the case. While working on the giant feature (which begins on p45), we saw film release dates change, including one so major that it forced us to drop that particular preview entirely. Headaches, headaches and…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./1 Black Lives Matter: what happens next?LAST YEAR’S ACCLAIMED romantic drama Queen & Slim , which dealt head-on with police brutality and racism, has taken on profound relevance in the wake of worldwide protests following the killing of unarmed African American George Floyd. Its searing and thoughtful take on race and intersectionality is typical of its screenwriter Lena Waithe;
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./4 What it feels like to go deafSOUND OF METAL depicts the unravelling of one man, as Ruben (played by Riz Ahmed), a heavy-metal drummer and former addict, slowly loses his hearing. It’s a process that’s rarely shown on screen. But for debut director Darius Marder (a co-writer on The Place Beyond The Pines ), it was important for the audience to feel that downward slide first-hand. “We cut in and out of omniscience to a first-person experience — a point of hearing , rather than a point of view,” Marder explains. The film forces the viewer to hear what Ruben does, muffling noise as soon as the first rupture hits; ingenious use of sound design was a key storytelling tool. “We mic’d the inside of skulls underwater to capture how Ruben would hear himself swallowing or…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./7 Four ways the Scottish Highlands could kill youFOUR BOYS, ONE Duke Of Edinburgh Award, the entire Scottish Highlands: what could go wrong? In director Ninian Doff’s energetic debut Boyz In The Wood , it turns out, everything . Reluctant hikers Ian, Dean, Duncan and Beatroot (played by newcomers Samuel Bottomley, Rian Gordon, Lewis Gribben and Viraj Juneja) encounter gale-force winds, their own ineptitude and a murderous aristocrat, played by Eddie Izzard. Here’s a guide to the obstacles they face. EXTREME WEATHER! “What they say about Scotland is that you go through every season every hour,” Doff says. “Gale-force winds, then some sun, then colossal rain.” The titular boyz encounter all of that, and even a spot of light British drizzle proves problematic when you’re wearing gleaming white trainers. But there’s also an invisible threat. “When it all…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./10 St Joel’s fire [IN MEMORIAM]IT’S DIFFICULT TO think of a filmmaker who loved life as much as Joel Schumacher did. It was evident in his work, in his off-screen exploits, and in person. The last time I spoke to him, for Empire’s retrospective on The Lost Boys , was December 2019. He was an absolute delight from the off. “Well, howdy!” he said, 80 years old, from his home in New York’s Greenwich Village. “I’ve got the fireplace roaring and I’m just about to put on Lost Boys , in case I have to make a reference.” For the next 90 minutes or so, he was a blast. He always was. Schumacher got his education on the streets, smoking and drinking from the age of ten, finding his voice among Greenwich Village’s bohemian community.…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./13 The weather according to David LynchTHE ELEPHANT MAN (1980) The tale of the deformed Joseph Merrick (played by John Hurt) is set in foggy Victorian London, where mist and smog hang heavy in the air. It’s a smoky, enigmatic backdrop to a tragic human tale. FORECAST: “People are frightened by weather they don’t understand.” DUNE (1984) The mysterious desert planet of Arrakis tends to throw up regular sandstorms and suffocating heat; the director probably hopes, however, that the sandy winds blow this early misfire off his CV. FORECAST: “He who controls the weather, controls the universe!” WILD AT HEART (1990) Lynch’s steamy road-movie romance takes in the shimmering highways of the Deep South and the desert West — but nothing in the burning sky is quite as roasting as Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern’s off-the…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./15 UNLIMITED APPEALTHE SIXTH FINGER David McCallum (above) plays a frustrated Welsh miner desperate to escape his dull hometown. He takes part in an experiment that evolves him into a super-intelligent being, gaining great intelligence, but losing his humanity in the process. ATTRACTION TOURIST A Yank millionaire captures a giant lake monster in a Latin American country run by dictator Henry Silva. We should be scared when its family turn up to rescue the creature, but the giant salamander cossies are more hilarious than horrific. I, ROBOT A human-like robot is accused of killing its creator, but a wily lawyer takes the case to court, effectively putting all of scientific progress on trial. The Frankenstein-like story stars a pre-Star Trek Leonard Nimoy as a news reporter. THE OUTER LIMITS: THE COMPLETE ORIGINAL…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020THE OLD GUARDOUT NOW (NETFLIX) CERT MA15+ / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Gina Prince-Blythewood CAST Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Matthias Schoenaerts PLOT Andy (Theron) leads a squad of elite mercenaries, taking on dangerous missions all over the world. They also happen to be immortals, who have fought in countless conflicts throughout the centuries. After their latest job goes bad, however, the team suspects someone is onto their secret. WHO WANTS TO live forever? So asked Freddie Mercury on the soundtrack to 1986’s Highlander , a film to which The Old Guard owes no small debt. That existential quandary lies at the heart of this Netflix original thriller, adapted by Greg Rucka from his and Leandro Fernández’s 2017 comic-book series. Charlize Theron’s Andromache Of Scythia (Andy to her friends) is a millennia-old…4 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020VALLEY GIRLOUT NOW (STAN) / CERT TBC / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Rachel Lee Goldenberg CAST Jessica Rothe, Josh Whitehouse This unnecessary reimagining of the 1983 romcom into a Glee-style musical fails to capture the original’s charm. The cheesy all-singing, all-dancing versions of ’80s tunes wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t awkwardly shoehorned in to drive the slim “Romeo and Juliet” plot forward. It’s a missed opportunity ’cos there are some funny lines (admittedly lifted from the first film) and great chemistry between Julie (Happy Death Day’s Jessica Rothe) and Randy (Josh Whitehouse is no Nicolas Cage, but). YouTube “celeb” Jake Paul initially seems miscast, but he actually plays a very believable douchebag — it’s almost as if he’s not acting. Despite the welcome appearance of Alicia Silverstone as an older,…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020SAINT FRANCESOUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) CERT TBC / 106 MINS DIRECTOR Alex Thompson CAST Kelly O’Sullivan, Ramona Edith Williams, Max Lipchitz, Charin Alvarez PLOT Thirty-something Bridget (O’Sullivan) doesn’t really know what she wants from life, despite considerable pressures from her parents and peers. During one fateful summer, which sees her deal with the fallout from an abortion and become a nanny to a smart six-year-old (Williams), Bridget begins to get a better understanding of what she truly wants. SAINT FRANCES OPENS, as so many movies do, with a boy and a girl crossing paths at a party, their chemistry sparking into a night of passion. But this is no meet cute. In the bleary, cold light of morning, unexpected menstrual blood smears the sheets, hands and faces of Bridget (Kelly O’Sullivan)…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020IRRESISTIBLEOUT 3 SEPTEMBER CERT M / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Jon Stewart CAST Steve Carell, Chris Cooper, Mackenzie Davis, Topher Grace, Natasha Lyonne, Rose Byrne PLOT Licking his wounds after defeat in 2016, Democratic strategist Gary Zimmer (Carell) heads to rural Wisconsin to help a grizzled former Marine colonel (Cooper) win a mayoral election in the key battleground. The only obstacle? A ruthless Republican rival (Byrne) sent to the same small town. MIDWAY THROUGH IRRESISTIBLE , Steve Carell’s hawkish political kingmaker describes his newest candidate with disbelieving glee. “He’s like Bill Clinton with impulse control,” he says, grinning into a phone. “Like a church-going Bernie Sanders with better bone density.” Two lines that, in their eyebrow-waggling vim, pretty much encapsulate both the strengths and deficiencies of Jon Stewart’s second film as…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020SPACESHIP EARTHOUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT M / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Matt Wolf PARTICIPANTS John Allen, Tony Burgess Arizona, 1991. Under the blaze of the sun, and the gaze of the assembled media, a group of eight people entered Biosphere 2, a man-made replica of the Earth’s ecosystem, into which they would be sealed for the next two years. The brainchild of sustainability devotee John Allen, and bankrolled by billionaire Ed Bass, the project — intended to test the theory of interstellar biosphere living — was beset by problems both scientific and personal. Through incredible archive footage and retrospective modern interviews, director Matt Wolf plots a traditional course through this remarkable endeavour, although it’s a shame he didn’t dig deeper on some aspects, like the back stories of the self-styled…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020ARKANSASOUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT TBC / 117 MINS DIRECTOR Clark Duke CAST Liam Hemsworth, Clark Duke, Vince Vaughn Low-level drug couriers Kyle (Liam Hemsworth) and Swin (Clark Duke) make a mistake that puts them in the sights of their boss, a local drug kingpin known only as Frog, in the directorial debut of actor Clark Duke (Clark in the US version of The Office). Duke’s adaptation of John Brandon’s cult crime novel retains the book’s offbeat characters, rambling plotting and soft-boiled philosophising, but it’s blandly directed, sabotages itself in the editing, and is slathered in an overwrought score and bad Flaming Lips covers of American classics. John Malkovich, Vince Vaughn and Michael K. Williams elevate the proceedings, but ultimately Arkansas feels like a relic from the ’90s wave…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELSOUT NOW (STAN) EPISODES VIEWED 4 OF 10 SHOWRUNNER John Logan CAST Natalie Dormer, Daniel Zovatto, Kerry Bishé PLOT In 1938, Los Angeles is an angry place, watched over by a furious supernatural entity, Magda (Dormer). Tiago Vega (Zovatto) is about to start his first day as the first Chicano detective in the LAPD. He’ll encounter murder, riots, Nazis and more in a city — a world — on the brink of eruption. THE FIRST ITERATION of Penny Dreadful mixed classic horror characters — Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll, Dracula — in Victorian London in a saga about the monstrousness of man and assorted psychosexual doings. It was handsomely produced, very creepy and a little bit camp. A marvellous combination. City Of Angels , a tangentially connected spin-off, takes a much more…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020The King Of Staten Island1 THE TRAGIC BACK STORY John Nugent: Death and grief are undoubtedly odd themes for a comedy. The sustained, lifelong trauma of losing a parent in early childhood does not immediately suggest we’re about to witness the next Airplane!. But grief can be funny, too. Aged seven, Pete Davidson lost his firefighter father while on duty in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, and while the 9/11 element is removed for the film, his character suffers a similarly traumatic episode. Davidson and director Judd Apatow are clearly keen to shift into a more dramatic gear here, even while keeping one hand on the comedy wheel, as the opening scene’s off-colour ribbing is keen to emphasise (“Knock knock!” “Who’s there?” “Not your dad!”). As Scott,…4 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020TOP GUN:MAVERICKUnder normal circ*mstances, Top Gun: Maverick would be just about ready for release. Now it’s a Christmas movie. I think everyone working on the movie was looking forward to a [northern hemisphere] summer release, because it really felt like a summer movie. The first Top Gun was May of ’86. But at the same time, we feel this is a movie that needs to be seen on the big screen. So hopefully, by Christmas, everything will be back to normal. The first movie is a competition movie and it’s a sports movie. Is that the same here? Yeah, it is. Top Gun is a competition movie. It’s about friendship and sacrifice and family, and all of those themes play into Top Gun: Maverick. But we were able to take it…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020LAST NIGHT IN SOHOEDGAR WRIGHT HAS dabbled in horror before, of course. Just look at the way Shaun Of The Dead slowly spirals into full-blown zom, rather than full-blown com, for its last ten minutes. Or the giallo -inspired jump-scarific murders in Hot Fuzz . Or Nick Frost in a nappy in his trailer for Don’t . Yet — Frost in a nappy aside — Wright has never made a movie that will haunt your dreams. That could be about to change with Last Night In Soho , his first foray proper into horror. But if you surmised from the title that it might be a stalk’n’slash movie set in the bustling heart of London’s West End (cast your minds back pre-pandemic — it definitely bustled), you would be very, very wrong. Wright…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020THE WITCHESANNE HATHAWAY GOES BIG, NOT HOME There are people out there who love to hate Anne Hathaway, and people who believe — correctly — that she is talented, hard-working and far cooler than she gets credit for. As the flamboyant, scenery-chewing Grand High Witch of Roald Dahl’s story, she may have found a way to finally unite both groups (told you she was good). She’s thoroughly evil and unbelievably hissable, which will make the haters happy, but — we suspect — should also be an absolute delight to watch laying waste to obsequious hotel staff and lording it over her fellow witches. THE EFFECTS SHOULD ROCK Much as we love Nicholas Roeg’s 1990 version, there were certain things that were difficult to do with the special effects of the day.…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020RESPECTTHERE ARE LIVES ripe for brilliant biopics, and then there’s Aretha Franklin’s. It’s an extraordinary story of a girl from a complicated Detroit family, one that takes in grief, teenage pregnancy and early gospel stardom, before her remarkable voice leads to international fame. Her signature song is Respect , a cover of an Otis Redding original, which she turned into an anthem for civil rights activists and burgeoning feminists in 1967. It’s no surprise that the forthcoming biopic shares its powerful title with the song, which also speaks volumes about the woman who sang it. Years before her death in 2018, Franklin hand-picked Jennifer Hudson to play her, then started coaching her how to do so. “We were just sitting round a table when she first asked, and I couldn’t…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020WONDER WOMAN 1984FROM ALL WE'VE seen so far, Wonder Woman 1984 looks set to be bigger, brighter and, well, more golden than its pioneering predecessor. The sequel, though, will take us back a lot further than the ’80s — all the way back to Diana Prince's childhood, in fact, to a contest that shows us precisely what she's capable of. Themyscira’s answer to the Olympic Games promises to be a showstopping moment in the film — rightly, given that the event is a staple of Wonder Woman lore and often a part of her origin story. In the comics, it was by winning the Games that Diana showed she had what it took to escort crashed pilot Steve Trevor from her all-female island of mythic, immortal warriors and back to our world…4 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020THE MAYHEM FACTORYCANNES HAD NEVER seen anything quite like it. It was May 12, 1990, early on in the town’s 43rd Film Festival, and on the famous pool terrace of the Hôtel du Cap — the swankiest, most eye-wateringly expensive of the area’s party venues — a movie bash of blockbuster proportions was in full flow. Earlier in the day, a planeload of stars and industry bigwigs had flown in from Hollywood on a specially chartered 747. The passengers had been met on the airport tarmac by a cavalcade of black Mercedes Benzes, equipped with mounted flashing lights, which negotiated tightly winding streets from the normally quiet Riviera town up to the Cap d’Antibes. That evening, speedboats roared in and out of the bay, ferrying yet more guests to the astonishing blow-out,…12 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020GIVING US THE WILLIESTHE OOMPA-LOOMPAS With their spooky songs, clown-like make-up and Trump-orange faces, the Oompa-Loompas feel far more sinister and repellent than mischievous. To quote the Futurama ‘Chocolate Factory’ parody episode: “Who are those horrible orange creatures over there? Tell them I hate them.” THE FIZZY LIFTING DRINK FAN In a sequence added to the film by Seltzer, a magical moment switches to life-endangering panic. Having imbibed some Fizzy Lifting Drink, Charlie and Grandpa start joyfully levitating… Only for them to realise they’re flying towards a huge, rapidly rotating fan that’ll chop them up into Turkish Delight if they can’t figure a way back down. THE BOAT RIDE A relatively tranquil chocolate-river boat ride plunges into the realm of bad-trip terror as Wonka subjects his guests to a full-on psychedelic assault. As…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020PIGS MIGHTFLYWHEN THE NOMINEES for the Academy Awards were announced in February 1996, more than a few people were surprised. Among the contenders for Best Picture – alongside Apollo 13, Braveheart, Il Postino and Sense And Sensibility – was an Australian film about a talking pig. In fact, Babe had scored an impressive seven nominations. One person who wasn’t surprised was Babe’s director, Chris Noonan. “I thought, ‘Well, this is good, but nothing more than I expected,’” he remembers with a laugh. “I had to act surprised when they were announced, but it was an act, because I was expecting those and more.” Noonan had to believe in Babe – the film had been such a huge part of his life for close to a decade. “When something takes as long…13 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020HAL ASHBY: FAQWHO WAS HAL ASHBY? In short, an editor-turned-director. In long, one of the most important and relatively unheralded American directors of the 1970s. WHAT FILMS DID HE DIRECT? As well as Harold And Maude, he made The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound For Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978), and Peter Sellers’ last film, the wonderful Being There (1979) [Ashby and Sellers pictured below]. His beautifully pitched comedy-dramas emphasised people over plot. WHY SO UNHERALDED? He never wanted for critical acclaim, is considered to be hugely influential on the likes of Richard Linklater, Judd Apatow and Adam McKay, and even received an Oscar nomination for directing Coming Home (he’d earlier won one for editing Norman Jewison’s In The Heat Of The Night). Four of his movies were nominated for the…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020A Dickens of a taskEVEN IF YOU haven’t read Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (and if you haven’t, you should), chances are you’ve heard of some of its greatest characters. Uriah Heep. Mr Micawber and, of course, the title character. But those are just names. When it came to turning them into flesh-and-blood creations for his adaptation of Dickens’ most personal novel, Armando Iannucci and his co-writer, Simon Blackwell, found themselves having to put meat on bones, motivations in mouths and, occasionally, making great, big whacking changes to the source material. “If we had to make changes,” he says, “we tried to make them in the spirit of the book.” Here, Iannucci talks us through some of the standout characters. 1 DAVID COPPERFIELD Long believed to have been a thinly veiled stand-in for Dickens himself,…5 min
Empire Australasia|August 20205 OF THE BESTSHORT TREKS OUT NOW / CERT PG / 118 MINS A series of shorts released on CBS All Access in the States to plug the gap between seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, the Short Treks have proved rather elusive for Aussie viewers. The first set of four did eventually drop on Netflix, but the more recent instalments make their debut on this release — only the most recent episode, ‘Children Of Mars’, is absent, likely being reserved for the Star Trek: Picard box set, to which it serves as a prequel. Ranging from the complementary (a Saru origin story), to the experimental (a love story between a man and an AI, thousands of years in the future), and the downright bizarre (a Looney Tunes-style cartoon about a tardigrade, directed by…4 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020COMMENT‘BEING’ NOT THERE I’m gobsmacked that Being John Malkovich wasn’t in the top three of 1999 (“The Ranking”, Nov. 2019), didn’t make the top ten and, worse, wasn’t even discussed! Also not discussed were Girl, Interrupted and Dogma. Sorry to complain but us old folk like movies as well. SIMON, ROCKINGHAM, WA The absence of those three fine films just goes to show the depth of quality movies produced in 1999. CRIKEY, COBBER! I LOVED July’s list of Top 50 Heroes, but where was Aussie icon Barry McKenzie? Not only did Bazza travel to England to show the Brits how to drink beer properly, but he also defeated a nasty nest of vampires in Transylvania! Deadset legend! DIGGER, AYR, QLD Stone the flamin’ crows, mate! We feel like a pack…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./2 Meet the future of movie musicalsAT THE GENESIS of generation-defining musical Hamilton , director Thomas Kail was, as they say, in the room where it happened — a small New York City theatre in 2011, where Lin-Manuel Miranda, after debuting mixtape track Alexander Hamilton at a White House poetry jam, performed new cut My Shot for a live audience. “In that moment I knew there was a live version of the show,” says Kail. Four years later, the fully formed Hamilton hit Broadway, astonishing audiences with its hip-hop retelling of America’s no-longerundersung founding father, complete with an intentionally diverse cast, and Kail as its director. Before the original cast — including breakout stars Daveed Diggs and Anthony Ramos — faced their final curtain call, Kail directed the filmed version of Hamilton , now streaming on…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./5 The anatomy of a frogTHE PERSONALITY Kermit is the unofficial leader/wrangler of the Muppets. He heads their theatre troupe but also acts as mentor, confidante and — for Miss Piggy, at least — romantic target. “He’s the calm at the centre of the storm,” says Matt Vogel, who has performed as Kermit since 2017. “He’s the one reining in the chaos. Sometimes he gets swept up in it, but usually he’s reining it in.” There can also be an irritable edge to Kermit, which Vogel says is vital to his comedy. “You see a lot of snarkiness in Jim [Henson]’s original performance. I like to bring some of that to my performance. Kermit’s not going to let you walk all over him.” THE VOICE Everybody does a Kermit impression, most of them terrible. Vogel…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./8 Can Ryan Gosling break the Wolfman curse?WHEN THE SUN set on Universal’s Dark Universe, the moon also faded on a mega-budget adaptation of the Wolfman starring Dwayne Johnson. Intriguing as The Rock in a full-body wig sounds, you can’t help but feel he dodged a silver bullet, given Hollywood’s recent werewolf history. It’s been 39 years since An American Werewolf In London , the last pedigree studio horror. Ever since, The Curse Of The Were-Movie has dogged Hollywood at every step. Mike Nichols’ Wolf was plagued by reshoots and a revolving cast; Wes Craven’s Cursed saw the Weinsteins nix FX guru Rick Baker’s work in favour of PlayStation2 CGI; and The Wolfman , Universal’s last remake, ballooned into a $150 million gothic theme park that forgot to build a ride. There’s a lesson to be learned…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020THREE TO WATCHTIGERLAND For all his reputation as a flashy blockbuster filmmaker, here was proof Schumacher could do gritty and grounded — with star-making turns from Colin Farrell and Michael Shannon. THE CLIENT Schumacher’s versatility is evident in this, the first of his two John Grisham adaptations, stripping a courtroom tussle down to its leanest, most effective parts. COUSINS This raucous romcom remake of French film Cousin Cousine showcased Schumacher’s sense of humour — with a scene-stealing turn from Airplane!’s Lloyd Bridges.…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./12 Attack The Block is back!ATTACK THE BLOCK 2 A sequel to Cornish’s acclaimed 2011 sci-fi debut, about South London kids fending off terrifying aliens “John [Boyega] and I have had on-and-off discussions about doing something else with those characters, really since we made the first one. So, yeah, without wanting to get anybody too excited, there are definitely conversations happening. We both think that there’s more to be said and done, and it would be kind of cool to revisit the surviving characters ten years later.” SNOW CRASH Long-mooted adaptation of Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi novel about a pizza delivery driver/ hacker, originally pitched as a film “That has mutated into a series for HBO Max, which is currently being written by Michael Bacall. I’m hoping [to direct some episodes]. I’d like to do it…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020ANYA TAYLOR-JOYWhat character did you play in your first-ever school play? I was about nine or ten and I played Perkin in Perkin And The Pastry Cook . It was kind of like a version of The Emperor’s New Clothes . I was playing a boy and my costume included my mum’s thigh-high leather boots. I felt like a rock star. I had a very badly drawn fake moustache that I refused to wash off because I loved it. Actually, I remember there was a moment where somebody didn’t come on stage and I freaked out and started delivering a monologue to pass the time. Afterwards, the director — our art teacher — said, “You might be good at this. You should think about doing it properly.” When in your life…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020PROXIMAOUT NOW CERT M / 107 MINS DIRECTOR Alice Winocour CAST Eva Green, Matt Dillon, Zélie Boulant, Lars Eidinger PLOT Engineer and astronaut Sarah Loreau (Green) is selected for the Proxima space program, in which she will spend a year in space — the last mission before Mars. As she trains for the mission, she must also nurture her increasingly complicated relationship with her eight-year-old daughter, Stella (Boulant). YOU’VE HEARD OF the Sad Space Dad. In recent times we’ve also been getting the Glum Space Mum. The likes of Interstellar, First Man and Ad Astra are being met by the likes of Gravity , Lucy In The Sky — and now Proxima , the latest film to grapple with the cosmic challenges of both going to space and being a…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020FAMILY ROMANCE, LLCOUT NOW (MUBI) / CERT TBC / 89 MINS DIRECTOR Werner Herzog CAST Yuichi Ishii, Mahiro Tanimoto One of Werner Herzog’s greatest talents is rooting out true, stranger-than-fiction stories and retelling them in such a way that their humanity, in all its complex fascination, shines through. Here, in an intriguing blend of doco and narrative, he tackles the real-life Tokyo-based company Family Romance, LLC, which hires out actors to portray stand-in family members and friends. Its founder, Yuichi Ishii, plays a version of himself, who riskily blurs the line between reality and performance as he takes the role of a (fictional) 12-year-old girl’s prodigal father. The film has plenty to say about the nature and arguable value of self-deception, but as thought-provoking as it is, you are left wondering what…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020ABOVE SUSPICIONOUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT MA15+ / 104 MINS DIRECTOR Phillip Noyce CAST Emilia Clarke, Jack Huston, Sophia Lowe In a Southern mining town in 1989, mother-of-two Susan Smith was found murdered after serving as an informant in an FBI investigation. Above Suspicion, from director Phillip Noyce, tells the true-life tale of Smith’s death and the harrowing events leading up to it — how she was recruited by ambitious agent Mark Putnam (Jack Huston), how their relationship turned romantic, and how she soon became entangled in an exploitative game of drug busts and deception. Emilia Clarke, deploying a Kentucky drawl that’s less Daenerys Targaryen and more Dolly Parton, is a hurricane of smudged mascara and Percocet bottles as Smith in flashback, but don’t expect a twisty nail-biter. Instead, this…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020ALICEOUT NOW (VIMEO ON DEMAND) / CERT TBC / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Josephine Mackerras CAST Emilie Piponnier, Martin Swabey Alice (Emilie Piponnier) is a seemingly happy wife and mother who one day finds the family’s finances drained and husband François (Martin Swabey) AWOL. Turning detective, Alice discovers François has frittered their money away on prostitutes, so, needing money to stave off eviction, she uses her new-found contacts to enter the world of high-end escorts. Debutant director Josephine Mackerras’ Paris-set film is terrific on both the minutiae of paid-for nookie and the double standards (especially around childcare) of the women who provide sex work and the men who use them. It’s a well-worn idea, but Mackerras handles the moral complexities deftly and is beautifully served by Piponnier, who dominates practically every…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020ARTEMIS FOWLOUT NOW (DISNEY+) CERT TBC / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Kenneth Branagh CAST Ferdia Shaw, Josh Gad, Colin Farrell, Nonso Anozie, Lara McDonnell, Judi Dench, Nikesh Patel, Josh McGuire PLOT Artemis Fowl (Shaw) is a 12-year-old genius who must negotiate between humans and fairies when his father (Farrell) is kidnapped. A giant dwarf (Gad) and disgraced fairy police officer (McDonnell) may prove key to his plans. THE FIRST OF Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books concerns a largely unrepentant criminal mastermind in its 12-year-old hero, but his illegal edges have been considerably softened for his film debut. It makes one of children’s literature’s foremost rotters less fun than he should be, in the first of a number of storytelling missteps in Kenneth Branagh’s big-budget adaptation. Set in Ireland (the film plays fast…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020HIGH FIDELITYOUT NOW (ABC IVIEW) EPISODES VIEWED 10 OF 10 CREATORS Sarah Kucserka, Veronica West CAST Zoë Kravitz, Jake Lacy, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Kingsley Ben-Adir PLOT New York record store owner Rob (Zoë Kravitz) is still recovering from a bad break-up 12 months earlier with Mac (Kingsley Ben-Adir), but she’s finally ready to jump back on that dating horse, first with strait-laced Clyde (Jake Lacy), then budding rock star Liam (Thomas Doherty). But when Mac walks back into her life — with a new girlfriend — Rob suffers an existential crisis. WATCHING THIS VERY funny television series immediately made me nostalgic for the original 2000 movie (based on Nick Hornby’s excellent 1995 novel), so I decided to watch it again on its 20th anniversary to see how the film compared to…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020The Vast Of Night1 FAY AND EVERETT James Dyer: The heart and soul of The Vast Of Night is a pair of heroes wearing horn-rimmed glasses: DJ Everett Sloan (Jake Horowitz) and plucky switchboard operator Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick). As the story slowly unspools, it’s the pair’s fizzing chemistry that retains our interest and energises the plot, dashing from one lead to the next with almost effervescent enthusiasm. 2 THE SOUNDS ON THE SWITCHBOARD Ian Freer: When finally Fay arrives at work at WOTW radio station (an homage to War Of The Worlds), she operates the switchboard, connecting and disconnecting calls until she hears an unusual sound coming through and tries to discern what it is. Director Andrew Patterson plays the drama out in one long take. Andrew Patterson: It’s 11 minutes long…4 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020FREE GUYDIRECTOR SHAWN LEVY was understandably disappointed when the release date for Free Guy , his Truman-Show -meets- Grand-Theft-Auto popcorn flick, moved from July all the way to December. But, he admits, “In the spirit of making lemonade out of lemons, I’m using that time to hone the movie in ways that I wouldn’t normally have had time to.” Luckily, his new film couldn’t be more audacious — visually or thematically. Ryan Reynolds plays the titular Guy — a cheery, obedient NPC (non-playable character) working as a bank teller in Free City, a violent shoot’n’loot video game loosely based on GTA . “Players do missions for money, points, and rewards,” Levy explains. “Bank robberies, muggings, carjackings, it’s pure anarchy.” But one day, blinkered, naive Guy is granted the ability to see…4 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020SOULExploring souls is great territory for a film — how did you approach it as an animation? Pete Docter (below second from right): I’m always looking for stuff that we could animate that is not based in reality, because we get enough of that when we walk around every day. We wanted to explore what it looks like where our souls were trained – personalities and interests and things that we seem to just be born with. What would that look like? And the characters are made out of fog, this voluminous fog that we’d never done before. You can kind of see through them. Kemp, how did you get involved? Kemp Powers (below, third from right): Well, when I came on board, the film had already been in development…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020NO TIME TO DIEIF YOU EVER happen to bump into Cary Joji f*ckunaga, tap him up for the following week’s lottery numbers. Because he saw this whole damn lockdown fiasco coming, long before it actually arrived. “There were a lot of conversations happening as early as January,” he tells Empire . “My first movie, Sin Nombre , came out during [the 2009] swine flu [pandemic], and it came out in cinemas in Mexico right when the President of Mexico said, ‘Do not go to cinemas.’ So I had trauma from that experience, and as I was following the news of this, almost every day I was asking [the producers], ‘What’s the plan, guys? Because this isn’t stopping.’” London’s Royal Albert Hall had been booked for the world premiere. Tuxedos had been ordered. Olives…4 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020WEST SIDE STORYWEST SIDE STORY is the culmination of a career ambition: Steven Spielberg is finally directing a musical. There have been abandoned attempts (musical-about-a-musical Reel To Reel ), false starts ( Hook started life as a songfest) and tiny tasters (the jitterbug contest of 1941 , the Anything Goes showstopper that opens Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom ), but this is the first time he has gotten to showcase that old razzle-dazzle for an entire feature. The film is actually less a remake of Robert Wise’s 1961 ten-time Academy Award-winner than an adaptation of the original 1957 Broadway show, the cast album of which Spielberg listened to over and over again as a kid. In the midst of a gang war between the American Jets and Puerto Rican Sharks…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020COMING 2 AMERICAMURPHY’S SWEETEST CHARACTER Eddie Murphy has played a zillion turbo-mouthed, profanity-dispensing characters, most recently in last year’s Dolemite Is My Name, in which he proclaimed the immortal line, “Dolemite is my name, and f*ckin’ up motherf*ckers is my game.” But the gentle-natured, romantic yet still effervescent Prince Akeem, his hero from 1988’s Coming To America, is a one-off. The original movie saw Akeem turn down his designated bride-to-be and head to New York to find true love. And this sequel, directed by Craig Brewer, promises to deepen the character, as he returns to Queens to find the son he never knew he had. Altogether now: “GOOD MORNING, MY NEIGHBOURS!” A BELOVED KINGDOM Way before Wakanda became cinema’s buzziest fictional African country, Zamunda captured filmgoers’ imaginations. Ruled over by James Earl…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020GOAT CORPSE POLOANIMAL CRACKERS RAMBO III (1988) The third instalment in Carolco’s decade-defining franchise upped almost everything to typically gonzo levels for a mayhem-packed 102 minutes. But its defining sequence remains a bizarre sports match in which our friendly PTSDsuffering Vietnam vet plays polo against the Mujahideen with a goat corpse for a ball. BYE BYE BABY TOTAL RECALL (1990) Having travelled to Mars (or possibly not), reality-challenged Doug Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) delivers a bloody decree nisi to his wife Lori (Sharon Stone) — accompanied with one of Arnie’s all-time great zingers: “Consider that a divorce!” Arguments about who gets to keep the dog are thus neatly averted. RIDING SHOTGUN TERMINATOR 2 (1991) Carolco’s bigger! better! shootier! ethos peaked with the motorbike-truck chase in T2. John…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020BATTLE TESTEDEARLIER THIS SUMMER, Michael Biehn addressed the world. “Listen! And understand!” he barked, lowering a striped mask covering his nose and mouth. “That virus is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or shame. And it absolutely will not stop…until we stay at home.” Then he turned away from the camera, ready for a brisk exit. “Kyle Reese — I’m out!” The 28-second video got uploaded to the Skynet-like digital consciousness that is Twitter, and locked-down movie fans everywhere exploded with excitement. “JOIN THE RESISTANCE!” posted one. “He still has his fastball,” said another. Someone even synced up the speech with Biehn’s original version from The Terminator . Biehn himself, not a social media user, was surprised by the…12 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020Trouble makerWHEN YOU LOOK at the perversions director John Waters has committed to celluloid during the past 56 years, you can see how he earned his monikers: King Of Filth and Sultan Of Sleaze, among others. There was the chicken penetration scene (exactly as it sounds), the lobster sex attack (exactly as it sounds), the eating of dog sh*t (yep, exactly as it sounds). The last was the final act of Pink Flamingos, John Waters’ transgressive 1972 hit, when Divine — the centre of his acting ‘troupe’, ‘the Dreamlanders’ — in drag, crouched down next to a dog and chewed the warm offering. When his next film, Female Trouble, arrived just two years later, the question was: how could John Waters shock us even more? But something had changed. Waters had…10 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020THE STORY OF THE SHOTIce Cold In Alex WHAT’S THE GREATEST drinking scene in movie history? Rick’s gin joint session as Sam plays As Time Goes By in Casablanca? Withnail sampling the “finest wines available to humanity” in Withnail And I? Or how about Annie (Kristen Wiig), high on sedatives and alcohol, invading first class in Bridesmaids? All good contenders, but you’d have to go a long way to beat the final scene of J. Lee Thompson’s taut World War II drama Ice Cold In Alex, a constant fixture not only in any self-respecting Best Big-Screen Booze-Up List, but also one of the greatest British war films ever made. After a treacherous journey escorting an ambulance across the hot desert from the Libyan port city of Tobruk to Alexandria, Captain Anson (John Mills), joined…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020THE VIEWING GUIDEA Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood DIRECTOR MARIELLE HELLER talks us through her heartwarming drama about children’s television legend Mister Rogers (Tom Hanks) and the journalist (Matthew Rhys) determined to figure him out. MISTER ROGERS’ NEIGHBORHOOD The film opens with a precise recreation of the set of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, down to the same foley effects and old TV cameras, and even filmed in the same studios. “It was to get the feeling right,” says Heller. “It was a very technical thing, to create something that felt right, so the one thing your brain would have to adjust to is this being Tom Hanks and not Mister Rogers. That was enough, so everything else had to be perfect.” Some of Mister Rogers’ original team worked on the film and provided…4 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020Star Trek II: The Wrath Of KhanSTEPHEN McFEELY: “For 12-year-old Steve, but really for 50-year-old Steve, when Spock and Kirk say goodbye at the end of The Wrath Of Khan, I just get chills thinking about it. The whole movie’s leading to that, and it’s a lovely, lovely moment. It’s a movie that, whether I tell Chris [Markus, McFeely’s writing partner] or not, I keep going back to all the time in our work. It’s a lovely combination of genre and heart. We keep remaking Empire Strikes Back, The Wrath Of Khan and Aliens over and over again.” INT. ENGINE ROOM — ETERNAL, ENDLESS SPACE Kirk (William Shatner) has raced down to engineering, to find that Spock (Leonard Nimoy) has sacrificed himself to save the Enterprise by restoring power to the warp engines, his body absorbing…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020LETTER OF THE MONTH1987 WAS MOVIE HEAVEN! I’m an avid reader and collector of your fantastic magazine. I particularly like what you come up with each month for “The Ranking” section. I enjoyed the rankings of 1989 (June 2020) and 1999 (November 2019), but feel the movies of 1987 are crying out to be ranked. Here’s a partial list: Lethal Weapon, Evil Dead 2, Predator, The Princess Bride, The Running Man, Full Metal Jacket, Wall Street, The Lost Boys, Fatal Attraction, Hellraiser. They are cultural milestones of outright fun. JAMES, PARK HOLME, SA You make a fair point, James. What do other readers think? Should we tackle ’87?…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./3 BURSTING OUT OF THE GATEUnhinged moved its release forward to July 30 — one of the first major films to release post-lockdown. Why? We were getting the film ready for our September release date — and then I got a call from the head of the studio, asking what I thought about going for a more aggressive release date. It was bold! My concern was obviously whether it would be safe for people to go to the movie theatre. Was this film always meant to be seen on a big screen? Absolutely. [The studio] always planned to go wide theatrically. That absolutely influenced the way that we approached everything. I saw it in a test screening with 450 people, and it’s such an immersive theatrical experience. You could feel the tension in the room.…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./6 Unleash the goblins!THROUGH DANGERS UNTOLD, and hardships unnumbered, it has fought its way here…34 years after the original was released — and six years after a follow-up was first officially mooted — the promised sequel to Jim Henson’s beloved, bizarre cult fantasy Labyrinth appears to have finally found its way out of the development-hell maze. With Doctor Strange’s Scott Derrickson replacing Fede álvarez ( Don’t Breathe ) as director, and a fresh script by Maggie Levin (writer-director of Miss 2059 ), the Magic Dance is back on. Of course, there are reasons to be cautious. The ’86 original’s core creative team are sadly no longer with us: Henson, with his vision and puppetry genius; Terry Jones, whose script was witty, edgy and boldly surreal; and David Bowie, who wrote the songs, payyed…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./9 MASKS SCI-FIOXYGEN MASK TENET At the time of writing, it’s unclear what exactly the oxygen masks are in Christopher Nolan’s mysterious thriller. Are they time masks? Do they reverse your breathing? Do the masks...wear you? WIth Nolan, nothing’s off the table. NOSE TUBE DUNE As a key part of the ‘stillsuit’ worn by the Fremen on the desert planet of Arrakis, these nose tubes help keep you cool (and handily convert sweat and pee into drinking water). If it’s good enough for Timmy Chalamet, it’s good enough for us. TASKMASTER MASK ’S BLACK WIDOW The enigmatic baddie in Marvel’s next outing mimics his enemy’s moves and weaponry — hence this hooded mask, reminiscent of Iron Man’s helmet (if Tony Stark was part of some goth bike gang).…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./11 Goodbye, dear BilboFOR A GENERATION of film lovers — maybe more than one — the late Ian Holm will be best remembered as Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. It’s not his biggest role, nor his most complex. It’s not as funny as his turn in The Fifth Element or as stoic as his role in Chariots Of Fire . But he gave Bilbo so much heart and character in just a few minutes of screen time that his presence looms large through the whole trilogy. Bilbo is the first Hobbit we meet, in Galadriel’s prologue of the Ring. But the grey-haired “eleventy-one”-year-old Bilbo who pops up a few minutes later is the image that sticks: an over-enthusiastic host and warm-hearted mentor to his young nephew Frodo…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020No./14 “I want to do a horror movie that’s different”“THINK REBECCA MEETS The Red Shoes meets Hammer horror,” teases Anna Biller. “With shades of Frenzy .” The lockdown may have paused plans for Bluebeard , the filmmaker’s follow-up to The Love Witch , but her vision for the film seems crystal clear. Her third film will be loosely based on the gothic folk tale of the same name. Originating from French legend, Bluebeard tells the tale of a woman who marries a nobleman — one who, it turns out, is not only a philanderer but harbours a murderous secret (hint: there’s a magic key, plus a room bursting with blood and corpses). Biller has chosen this narrative, she says, to shake up the genre for a modern audience. “I want to do a horror movie that’s different from anything…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020DA 5 BLOODSOUT NOW (NETFLIX) CERT MA15+ / 155 MINS DIRECTOR Spike Lee CAST Delroy Lindo, Norm Lewis, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Chadwick Boseman PLOT Four African-American veterans — Paul (Lindo), Eddie (Lewis), Melvin (Whitlock Jr) and Otis (Peters) — return to Vietnam in search of the remains of their fallen squad leader, Stormin’ Norman (Boseman). But they’re also motivated by the promise of the buried gold he helped them to hide. IT FEELS BOTH reductive and redundant to refer to a Spike Lee joint as “timely”, but his latest will feel this way to many. Da 5 Bloods recaps a long history of state-sponsored murder and abuse of Black people, and suppression of protests just like those against the recent police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and…4 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020CLEMENCYOUT NOW ( ITUNES) CERT TBC / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Chinonye Chukwu CAST Alfre Woodard, Danielle Brooks, Wendell Pierce, Aldis Hodge, Richard Schiff PLOT Bernadine Williams (Woodard) is a prison warden preparing for the execution of a prisoner (Hodge) who proclaims his innocence and is hoping for a last-minute reprieve. Her husband (Pierce) asks her to prioritise life outside work, but has her job already taken too heavy a toll? CLEMENCY’S OPENING SCENE shows prison warden Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard) overseeing the 11th execution of her career. The inmate’s face contorts in pain and he recites the Lord’s Prayer as his mother raises her cross to the glass; the injection fails, and the execution is horribly botched. The prisoner dies on schedule, but he dies anguished in his body and…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020EUROVISION SONG CONTEST: THE STORY OF FIRE SAGAOUT NOW (NETFLIX) CERT TBC / 122 MINS DIRECTOR David Dobkin CAST Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams, Dan Stevens, Pierce Brosnan PLOT Inept Icelandic band Fire Saga — made up of possible-but-unconfirmed brother/sister duo Lars Erickssong (Ferrell) and Sigrit Ericksdottir (McAdams) — are given a chance to fulfil a lifelong dream by entering the Eurovision Song Contest. Can they overcome hirsute love rivals, murderous plots and malfunctioning props in order to win? REMEMBER WHEN BLUE reformed in 2011, with the specific aim of reversing the UK’s wretched run of results in the Eurovision Song Contest? Those four loveable lads — Lee, Simon, Duncan, and the other one — carried the dreams of a nation on their backs and vocal cords. Glory was within their grasp. Victory was inevitable. They came 11th.…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020WHAT GOES AROUNDOUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO, VIMEO ON DEMAND, GENFLIX) / CERT TBC / 78 MINS DIRECTOR Sam Hamilton CAST Catherine Morvell, Jesse Bouma Timid university student Erin is drawn to mysterious and charismatic classmate Alex. She suspects he’s a serial killer and snuff filmmaker who’s offing – one by one – the awful high school jerks who bullied her years ago. As Erin’s unhealthy attraction to Alex grows, she seems unfazed by the fact that she could be the next victim on his list. Hmmm...is horror the cop-out genre for filmmakers lacking confidence in their own abilities? Watching this mediocre Australian effort, one has to wonder what director Sam Hamilton wanted to achieve. What Goes Around isn’t bloody enough to attract gorehounds and not clever enough to appeal to fans of…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020BLACK WATER: ABYSSOUT 6 AUGUST / CERT M / 98 MINS DIRECTOR Andrew Traucki CAST Luke Mitchell, Jessica McNamee, Amali Golden, Benjamin Hoetjes A quasi-sequel to 2007’s enjoyable Black Water, Abyss sends two couples (Luke Mitchell and Jessica McNamee, Amali Golden and Benjamin Hoetjes) — plus wacky guide Cash (Anthony J. Sharpe) — potholing in Northern Australia, only for them to be trapped by floods, then picked off one by one by a hungry crocodile. Original director Andrew Traucki (The Reef) creates a potentially menacing playground in the network of caves, but is let down by paper-thin characters, uninteresting relationship dynamics (there’s a third act that turns into soap opera), standard horror-film tropes (a foot gets inadvertently trapped) and a tired menace-by-numbers score. Lacking any cool croc kills, it is neither the…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020RELICOUT NOW (STAN) / CERT TBC / 89 MINS DIRECTOR Natalie Erika James CAST Robyn Nevin, Emily Mortimer Despite the talents of co-stars Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcote, make no mistake that this local effort is owned by Robyn Nevin. She steals every scene as Edna, an old woman struggling with dementia who goes missing, bringing her daughter Kay (Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Heathcote) to her rural home to find her. Edna’s sudden return a few days later is the catalyst for a growing number of supernatural occurrences that threaten all three women. This is your standard haunted house yarn – bumps in the night, sinister dark figures in the background, weird stains on the walls, demonic possession – but the performances, particularly from Nevin, make it a cut above…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICAOUT NOW (FOXTEL) EPISODES VIEWED 6 OF 6 SHOWRUNNERS David Simon, Ed Burns CAST Winona Ryder, Anthony Boyle, Zoe Kazan, Morgan Spector, John Turturro PLOT In an alt-history ’40s America, celebrity aviator Charles Lindbergh, a xenophobic populist, becomes President by leading the country away from World War II but towards fascism. The ripples of his bigoted world-view play out on the Levins, a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey. US TV IS full of alt-timelines these days. Following on from The Handmaid’s Tale and Hunters , The Plot Against America , adapted from Philip Roth’s 2004 novel by The Wire masterminds David Simon and Ed Burns, imagines a future where Charles Lindbergh, American flying ace and Nazi sympathiser, becomes the POTUS. The result isn’t high on dramatic incident and shocking…4 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020Da 5 Bloods1 THE OPENING MONTAGE Christina Newland: Offering some context of the turbulent social and racial history of the ’60s, Da 5 Bloods opens with a montage of clips and images featuring Malcolm X, anti-war riots, Martin Luther King Jr, the Kent State shootings, Ho Chi Minh and Lyndon B. Johnson. The result is instructive, concise and charged with righteous energy; for anyone of a younger generation it helps to give a preliminary look at the clashes happening at the heart of American society. Particularly trenchant is the clip of Muhammad Ali, famously declaring his defiant refusal to be drafted into the army and fight in Vietnam when white Americans would not fight for his rights at home. 2 PAUL, THE MAGA MAN Kambole Campbell: As the opening montage ends, the…4 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020AMMONITEDIRECTOR FRANCIS LEE has an uncanny knack for, if not exactly predicting world events, then making films that end up being surprisingly prescient. His debut, 2017’s God’s Own Country , which explored xenophobia in rural Yorkshire, was released into a country dominated by Brexit. And now his second film, Ammonite , concerned with isolation, is set to be released into a world shaped by COVID-19. “I hope people will find it resonant,” he says about the film, which he wrapped just weeks before lockdown dropped. “And I hope that they find it hopeful.” Hope — as evidenced by God’s Own Country — is a preoccupation for the filmmaker, and it’s not all the two films have in common, even if on the surface you’d assume there to be limited shared…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020B:LACK WIDOWHow are you doing? You should have been done and dusted by now. We were one week off finishing the edit [when] we had to stop, and then it probably took another two weeks to get the technology together so we could keep editing. The music’s all done. Almost there! Have you talked to Scarlett during this time? We text each other really silly jokes. Her partner, Colin [Jost, Saturday Night Live writer], bought a metal detector, and was walking around the living room [with it], and all I could hear was her saying, “Oh. My. God. It has come to this.” Well, you have to keep busy. So you’re starting Phase Four of Marvel with the prequel, going backwards to go forward. Is that contradiction something that you talked…3 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020MONSTER HUNTERBASED ON THE CAPCOM video game of the same name, Monster Hunter is husband-and-wife team Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich’s sixth film together as director and star. In the story, which took the couple to some seriously far-flung locations, Jovovich plays Natalie Artemis, a US Army Ranger thrown into a parallel reality where gigantic monsters roam and rampage. The beasts, as she discovers, are stalked by that world’s rough, tough human inhabitants — including ‘The Hunter’, played by Ong-Bak’s Tony Jaa. For Anderson, the film is a long-gestating passion project, as he and Jovovich explain. First, though: some exercise… Hi, Paul. Hi, Milla. How’s it going? Milla Jovovich: Sorry we’re a little late. We’ve just finished our virtual gym class. Paul W.S. Anderson: Well, I needed a moment because,…6 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020EVERYBODY'S TALKING ABOUT JAMIERICHARD E. GRANT IS GETTING ALL DRAGGED UP Any self-respecting drag movie needs a fierce headlining queen — and Jamie’s is none other than Richard E. Grant, swapping Withnail for with-heels as drag star Loco Chanelle who, by day, goes by the more down-to-earth Hugo Battersby. It should be a towering performance that allows the actor to unleash his camp side in all its glory — all still grounded in a textured, human story. AN UNAPOLOGETICALLY NORTHERN FEEL The story of the real-life Jamie Campbell — who attended his school prom in a dress in 2011 — took place in County Durham. Both on stage and screen, Jamie’s fictionalised story of Jamie New (here played by newcomer Max Harwood) transplants the tale to Sheffield, with a script and songs saturated…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020REBECCAA DIRECTOR PUSHING THE ENVELOPE Ben Wheatley has stepped outside his comfort zone before, but never to this extent. His adaptation of the classic Daphne du Maurier novel, about a young woman (Lily James) whose marriage to the tall, dark Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer) is threatened by the figurative ghost of his titular first wife, will have a scope and scale a world away from Down Terrace or A Field In England. Wheatley will also be haunted by a ghost of his own — that of Alfred Hitchco*ck, whose 1940 version won the Best Picture Oscar. Eighty years on, though, expect this to be a very modern, and very Wheatley, take on the material. AN ENSEMBLE TO DIE FOR James and Hammer should make a powerful couple at the…2 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILIN EARLY 1970S HOLLYWOOD, HORROR WASN’T CONSIDERED A DIRTY WORD. ROMAN POLANSKI’S ROSEMARY’S BABY and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist were big-budget studio movies that had scared up both massive box office and the odd Oscar. Released in 1976, The Omen would be another blockbuster, helping popularise 666, aka “the number of the beast”, with Satanists and heavy metal types, as well as making The Book Of Revelation required reading. And yet its director, Richard Donner, says he never saw The Omen as a horror film, despite a storyline revolving around the birth and early years of the Antichrist. To Donner, The Omen was, and remains, “a mystery-suspense thriller”; all the tragedy that befalls Gregory Peck’s Robert Thorn, his family and those in his orbit can be chalked up to “coincidence”…12 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020BILL AND BIEHNTHE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE (1983) Biehn and Paxton’s first big-screen teaming finds the pair scumming it as abusive, racist-asshole officers in a ’60s military academy. Their hatefully extreme hazing includes forcing cadets to spend all night standing on a ledge, and pouring petrol over them and threatening immolation. Not a fun watch. THE TERMINATOR (1984) Sadly, they never share the screen in James Cameron’s lean, mean sci-fi classic, which belongs more to Biehn as doomed future-soldier Kyle Reese, tasked with protecting Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) from the Arnie-shaped killer cyborg. Paxton doesn’t last so long against the burly robot, but his “f*ck you, asshole” blue-spike-haired punk makes an impression. ALIENS (1986) The ultimate Biehn/Paxton team-up, as Colonial Marines Hicks and Hudson, whose “bug hunt” goes spectacularly sh*t-shaped on terraformed rock…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020THE MASTERPIECEHarold And Maude A DISAPPOINTING, PREDICTABLE sort of outrage greeted Harold And Maude when it first reached cinemas in the winter of 1971. The peculiar yet enduring love story between a 20ish-year-old man and his 79-year-old girlfriend tanked financially, while critics not only brayed at the subject matter but dismissed its unbridled, vivacious approach to life entirely. “Harold And Maude has all the fun and gaiety of a burning orphanage,” read the Variety review upon release. And yet, like the sickly tree that Maude wrenches from a city sidewalk and rehomes in forest soil, this giddy rumination on life through death found a new life of its own. After a second theatrical release in 1972 (from when it went on to play for 105 consecutive weeks at Minneapolis’ Westgate Theater),…5 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020INSTANT TRIVIA1 Sylvia Syms was paid “£30 a week” for playing Diana Murdoch. “But I made a lot more when they turned it into an advert for Carlsberg,” she quipped. 2 John Mills was disappointed with the final cut of his love scene with Syms. “Up to then I had made love on the screen to virtually nothing but submarines and tanks, and this was my big chance — and then most of it was cut out.” 3 The book is based on Christopher Landon’s own experiences in World War II, serving in North Africa. 4 TV kids’ show Fireman Sam paid tribute with the episode ‘Ice Cold In Pontypandy’. Sadly, it doesn’t end with Sam getting legless on lager.…1 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020THE RANKINGThe Rocky Saga Chris: Let’s start with the age-old question. What’s the first Rocky film you remember? Terri: Mine is Rocky II. My mum used to be a barmaid in this pub and we’d sit in the lodgings upstairs while she worked. It was New Year’s Eve and we rifled through their tape collection and found Rocky II to put on. I must have been nine or ten. And it knocked my socks off. The fight scenes are incredible. The whole class element of Rocky really touches me, but I remember being blown away by the emotion and the heart of it. I think, cumulatively, I’ve seen them all over 100 times. Chris: How many times have you seen Rocky V? Terri: Only about six times. Chris: A mere six.…6 min
Empire Australasia|August 2020THE FINAL LISTROCKY (1976) Nick: “Definitive proof that punching meat is a route to success, Rocky’s iconic first outing is charming, tender and filled with delightful characters. Plus Paulie.” CREED (2015) Dan: “Director Ryan Coogler brought a modern style and sensibility to a movie which keeps the feel-good, character-driven vibe of the original.” ROCKY IV (1985) Nick: “More pumped up than a Drago bicep, this East-versus-West showdown is a deliriously ’80s treat. And however many times you’ve seen it before, Apollo’s death will break you.” ROCKY II (1979) Terri: “The Rocky film with the greatest opening credits scene — ambulances speeding the fighters through Philly — and the greatest coming-out-of-a-coma moment.” ROCKY BALBOA (2006) Chris: “This is a desperately sad film, as Rocky struggles to move on after Adrian’s death. Nonetheless, it’s…1 min
