Empire March 2021
NEWS! Empire brings you world-exclusive movie news and first-look pictures of the films you want to watch and care about. REVIEWS! Empire delivers the most independent and authoritative movie reviews in the world - period. ACCESS! Empire's incredible insider-access brings you the interviews with A-list Hollywood stars that no-one else can get. All served with an irreverent sense of humour and unparalleled movie knowledge...
in this issue
this month
It began with a tweet from director Edgar Wright in November — “Saw Fatal Attraction again & remembered when I’d seen it with a packed crowd, Anne Archer’s line: ‘If you come near my family again, I’ll kill you’, made the place ERUPT in applause. Made me miss the roar of the audience. Name some scenes that memorably brought the house down.” It’s a tweet that took on a life of its own as film fans, actors and filmmakers alike shared their own amazing movie moments experienced in packed picturehouses. In a time of such uncertainty and difficulty, it was wonderful to take a few moments to pay tribute to something that, yes, we missed, but we didn’t mourn. For we knew, know, it’ll be back again. Edgar approached us about…
talk to us
CHADWICK FOREVER I’m sitting on a beach in Barbados reading your tribute to Chadwick Boseman. You are correct when you say his legacy will be more profound than we know. As a ‘young’ Black man his life and his death touched me. It has forced us to look at how we view our health, our discipline and our commitment. It also made me put my own story of cancer to paper, which I hope will help other young Black men. (https://link.medium.com/zswNLOEcqcb). Thank you for shining a light. MATTHEW WILSON, VIA EMAIL Thanks, Matthew, we’re so happy you’ve made it through your battle with cancer, and that Chadwick has inspired you. He was one of a kind. Picture house Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend! Valid for one year at…
no./1 meet the mother of all action movies
INDIANA JONES AND his old man; John McClane and John Jr; Peter Quill and a planet-sized Kurt Russell... the father-son action film is a fairly well-worn trope in Hollywood. Its mother-daughter variant, less so. Which is precisely what makes Gunpowder Milkshake so intriguing — and borderline radical. Told largely over one ultra-violent night, the film is the English-language debut of Israeli director Navot Papushado, whose darkly comic thriller Big Bad Wolves was hailed as 2013’s best film by no less than Quentin Tarantino. And happily, that movie’s blend of sharp humour and brutal fisticuffs is still very much in place in his follow-up. The film’s genesis lies in the director’s fascination with “the gun for hire, the samurai ronin figure”, and a desire to put that character into situations we wouldn’t normally…
no./2 how chris rock restored saw’s edge
A FUNERAL MIGHT have made more sense. But in fact, the story behind the latest instalment in a grisly horror franchise began at a wedding. After the nuptials of a friend, comedian Chris Rock spotted the head of Lionsgate — the studio which owns the Saw films — and spied an opportunity to offer his two cents on the series. “Chris is like, ‘If Saw had had a joke or two, it would have landed much, much better,’” says director Darren Lynn Bousman, as it was told to him. “‘Add a joke and you got yourself a bigger hit than you already have!’ So it started there.” This chance encounter led to Spiral: From The Book Of Saw: a fresh revival of a horror series that had been written off. After…
no./3 the british filmmaker who blurs the lines
“IT’S A LOVE story inspired by 1940s melodrama,” Clio Barnard tells us of her upcoming Ali & Ava. A pretty traditional throwback, then. Or not. “It’s seeing what happens if you take that genre and set it in Bradford with characters based on two real people.” This is Barnard’s fourth feature, and every one of them blurs those boundaries. This one, though, takes things further than ever. The Arbor, her 2010 documentary about Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, had actors lip-synching to audio of real voices (of Dunbar’s friends and family). Since turning to dramatic fiction with 2013’s The Selfish Giant and 2017’s Dark River she has continued to wrangle realism, using non-actors to augment her stories, embedding herself in communities, with real-life environments seeping into the productions. In Ali & Ava,…
no./4 adoptive fathers
CAPTAIN JEFFERSON KIDD NEWS OF THE WORLD In this old-school Western, Oscar-winner Tom Hanks plays a grizzled, old tough guy forced to look after a shy child in a harsh, unforgiving environment. Plus, there’s newspaper reading! AUGUSTINE LOFTHOUSE THE MIDNIGHT SKY In this new-school sci-fi, Oscar-winner George Clooney plays a grizzled, old tough guy forced to look after a shy child in a harsh, unforgiving environment. Plus, there’s astronauts! GEORGE BLACKLEDGE LET HIM GO In this neo-Western, Oscar-winner Kevin Costner plays a grizzled, old tough guy forced to look after a shy child in a harsh, unforgiving environment. Plus, there’s a psychopathic Lesley Manville!…
