Tabla de contenidos para July 2023 en Empire

Ben Travis (Deputy Online Editor): I’m going to put my neck on the line and say that I’m excited for this. He’s quite good, isn’t he, Martin Scorsese? Joanna Moran (Photography Director): I can see a future for him. James Dyer (Digital Editor-In-Chief ): It gives me pause, if only because it looks really intense. It feels like it’s going to be very emotionally punishing. Beth Webb (News Editor): Well, yes, it’s about the Osage people being killed off mysteriously in the 1920s. I imagine it’s going to be pretty full-on. Sophie Butcher (Social Media Editor): I feel like this one shot, with the oil and the dancing Indigenous locals, just sums up the whole film. It’s so evocative from the get-go. Beth: And yet we’ve got three-and-a-half glorious hours…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT PG 135 MINS DIRECTOR Rob Marshall CAST Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Melissa McCarthy, Javier Bardem, Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina, Jacob Tremblay PLOT Mermaid Ariel (Bailey) is fascinated by the human world and the artefacts she finds on the sea floor. After seeing her first humans, she sells her voice to the sea witch Ursula (McCarthy) for legs so that she can spend time with the human Prince Eric (Hauer-King). LIVE-ACTION REMAKES of animated classics are Disney’s favourite trick these days; it was only a matter of time until 1989’s The Little Mermaid got the treatment too. As with most of its counterparts, it’s longer than the original, and its colours less vibrant, and it doesn’t entirely justify its existence. But credit where it’s due: a solid…

★★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A 150 MINS DIRECTOR James Gunn CAST Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Bradley Cooper, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Karen Gillen, Pom Klementieff, Chukwudi Iwuji, Will Poulter PLOT On the instruction of the megalomaniacal High Evolutionary (Iwuji), Adam Warlock (Poulter) attacks the Guardians Of The Galaxy, putting Rocket (Cooper) in jeopardy. In response, the Guardians go on an epic quest to save the life of their friend. NO-ONE EXPECTED THAT the one about the tree and the raccoon would be a highlight of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but so it proved with the first Guardians. After a weaker second instalment and a fun Christmas special, director James Gunn closes out his four-part trilogy with a triumph: a big, scrappy mix of humour and terror boasting a heart…

★★★ OUT NOW / CERT 12A 141 MINS DIRECTOR Louis Leterrier CAST Vin Diesel, Jason Momoa, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Nathalie Emmanuel, Charlize Theron, Alan Ritchson PLOT Dante Reyes (Momoa), son of Rio kingpin Hernan Reyes, has been plotting revenge on Dominic Toretto (Diesel) for killing his father and stealing his fortune. His elaborate plan brings all of Dom’s friends — and a few old foes — into his sights. THE ROAD IS long, with many a winding turn. That leads us to who knows where… who knows where. Given this is a franchise that started in 2001 with Californian street racers ripping off Panasonic VCRs, then turned them into international secret agents last seen launching a car into effing space (in 2021’s F9), it was hard to fathom…

ALWAYS TWO THERE ARE. No more. No less. A master and an apprentice. It was 2005, and with the release of Revenge Of The Sith, former Padawan Anakin Skywalker had been fried to a crisp by one mentor and turned into a mechanical maniac by another. He and Obi-Wan Kenobi were no longer compadres. But soon we would get to see Skywalker brought together with a brand-new hero — and this time he would be the master. “I want Anakin to have a Padawan,” George Lucas told Dave Filoni. It was just a few months on from Sith’s premiere and Lucas and his then fledgling director were working together on animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, set three years before that film. And just like that, Ahsoka Tano was…

Portrait: Michael Wharley BUILT-IN OBSOLESCENCE is not just for iPhones; it’s part of the human condition too. Charlie Brooker has been trying to tell us this for years now, at least since his dystopian, techno-paranoia anthology series first aired on Channel 4 in 2011. Right from the start, Black Mirror has blended genres of speculative fiction to spread existential dread, while asking us which parts of humanity’s hard-drive are essential to basic functioning, and which should be deleted in the next upgrade. After making the leap to Netflix in 2016, the show has grown from a cult hit to an Emmy-winning, international TV phenomenon, with the power to make movie stars, direct discourse and even… maybe… predict the future? Under such circumstances, the slow fade into cultural irrelevancy would now…

SCOTT BECK AND Bryan Woods are two of the hottest screenwriters in Hollywood, with their eye for a high concept begetting the likes of A Quiet Place and this month’s Adam Driver-fights-dinosaurs epic, 65 (which they also directed). It seems like they came out of nowhere — an instant overnight success — but the opposite is true: they’ve been plugging away as a partnership for over 20 years. They tell Empire how they did it. FIND A PARTNER Beck and Woods both grew up in Bettendorf, a small town in Iowa. Both were movie-mad and ploughing their own furrow until their creative eyes met across a crowded room. “We would help out each other, I would produce Bryan’s [short] films, or it could come down to holding the boom mic,”…

THE FABELMANS, STEVEN SPIELBERG’S most intensely personal film to date, isn’t called ‘The Spielbergs’ for a reason. But there’s little question who the role models for the film’s central trio — Michelle Williams’ Mitzi, Paul Dano’s Burt, and Gabriel LaBelle’s Sammy Fabelman — were. Namely Spielberg’s mother and father, Leah and Arnold (inspiration for much parental discord in his movies), and the director himself as a young bairn just discovering the joys, and welcome distractions, of cinema. THE FATHER As the put-upon Burt, receding into the shadows of a marriage on the wane and not quite able to comprehend his son’s newfound love for filmmaking, Paul Dano provides everything you could want from a Dano performance, without the yelling: delicate, compassionate, wistful, pained. But when Dano first met Spielberg, he…

Julia Roberts movies Helen: When did you first become aware of Julia Roberts? Nick: Probably the poster for Pretty Woman, which I knew about before I saw the film. I was a bit young for such tales. But the poster was extremely striking. Helen: I lived in a very small town and I still feel like it was on every street corner. Nick: Famously, they’re not actually her legs on it. Becky: I remember that very clearly on my mum’s shelf. Helen: It was an iconic poster. It did launch a thousand imitations. Nick: It has a lot to answer for. A lot of Matthew McConaughey leaning. James: I first encountered Julia Roberts with the VHS cover of Mystic Pizza. Nick: Was she leaning against a pizza? James: She may…

★★★★★ OUT NOW / CERT PG 140 MINS DIRECTORS Kemp Powers, Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson CAST Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Jason Schwartzman, Oscar Isaac, Daniel Kaluuya PLOT On Earth-1610, Miles Morales (Moore) is the only Spider-Man. When multiversal, portal-covered villain The Spot (Schwartzman) rises up, Gwen (Steinfeld) re-enters Miles’ life — revealing an elite Spider-team created by Miguel O’Hara (Isaac). OKAY, LET’S DO this one last time: five years ago, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse changed… well, everything. The big-screen arrival of Brooklyn-based Spider-Man Miles Morales not only thrillingly remixed the arachno-hero’s oft-told origin story and preluded a deluge of live-action multiverse stories — it also entirely redefined what mainstream animated movies could look like with its wildly expressive visual style. It was a cinematic lightning strike; a single…

★★★ OUT 9 JUNE / CERT TBC 107 MINS DIRECTOR Stephen Williams CAST Kelvin Harrison Jr., Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton, Marton Csokas, Alex Fitzalan, Minnie Driver PLOT The sort-of true story of the rise of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (Harrison Jr), a French-Caribbean violinist, composer and champion fencer. Roadblocks in his path are racism and a tenuous relationship with the French elite — guiding him down a revolutionary path. “YOU ARE A TOURIST in their world,” Joseph Bologne (Kelvin Harrison Jr, giving one of his liveliest performances to date) is reminded by the Black people around him, surveying his attempts to assimilate into the white French aristocracy. Directed by Stephen Williams and written by Stefani Robinson, Chevalier is most exciting when we see the virtuoso musician upending that world…

Christopher McQuarrie had a problem. He was well into production on Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One when the news came through. Berlin was no longer going to let him use an under-construction airport he had earmarked. “We were going to shoot this airport sequence and a foot chase there,” he says. “And then Berlin said, ‘No, we’re too close to the opening of the airport.’” Suddenly, the foot chase was off. The airport sequence was out. Another punch to roll with, on a production packed with them. “Then Abu Dhabi said, ‘Well, we have an airport,’” recalls McQuarrie. “And we said, ‘Great — instead of a foot chase, let’s do something in the desert.’” Which is how McQuarrie, his star/ producer/creative partner Tom Cruise, and the cast and…

WE SEE THE LOWER- FIFTH OF CHRISTOPHER NOLAN. The shoes. A bit of trouser. A small section of Christopher Nolan on the move, glimpsed through the bottom of a windowed wall, the rest blocked out by frosted glass, obscuring him until he’s ready. He stops to talk to someone, but even then, despite hearing his voice, we can’t make out the words. So here we sit, waiting for him in a small conference room, seeing and hearing bits of him, unable to piece it all together. It’s enigmatic. It’s cryptic. It’s — dare we say — cinematic. And very Christopher Nolan. He just can’t help himself. Yes, for a man who likes his films to pose questions rather than provide answers, who constructs them like puzzles, this all makes sense.…

INDISPENSABLE HOME ENTERTAINMENT RAINE ALLEN-MILLER’S Rye Lane, which tells the story of how two lost and lonely souls (David Jonsson’s Dom and Vivian Oparah’s Yas) connect over the course of one chaotic night in South London, is one of the finest and funniest romcoms in many a year. It’s a film so tied to its setting — shot entirely on location in areas like Peckham and Brixton — that it’s wild to think that writers Tom Melia and Nathan Bryon originally set it in North London and had a completely different title. “It was called ‘Vibes And Stuff ’!” laughs Allen-Miller. “But I always really believed in the idea of setting this film in South London.” Now that the film is on Disney+, we decided to bridge the North/South (London)…

Zodiac WHEN IS A SERIAL-killer movie not a serial-killer movie? Perhaps when there’s no arrest, no shoot-out, perhaps when his identity isn’t what the filmmaker is most interested in at all. David Fincher had already made the best of the genre and this, no doubt, convinced Warner Bros. and Paramount to shell out for his sixth feature. But Zodiac is, as he told everyone at the time, a “newspaper movie”. It has more in common with All The President’s Men than it does with Seven. It’s about information, mythology and the danger of being a passenger in your own life. “More people die in the East Bay commute every three months than that idiot ever killed,” says reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr), even if his dismissal of the outsized…

PICK OF THE MONTH INFINITY POOL OUT 26 JUNE / CERT 18 / 118 MINS Has Cronenberg out-Cronenberged Cronenberg? With Infinity Pool, director Brandon Cronenberg has made something so outrageous and wild that even his famously outrageous and wild father David might want to have a word. It broadly fits into the recent glut of ‘eat the rich’ satires, but this film’s sensibilities are wackier and more savage than, say, The Menu. Alexander Skarsgård’s holiday-gone-wrong features murder, orgies, breastfeeding, rudimentary cloning, full on-screen ejaculation — and the most outrageous, out-there Mia Goth horror performance since, well, her last one. This is body horror that’s as much psychologically grotesque as it is physically. A pool worth dipping your toe into — at your own risk. JOHN NUGENT LOLA OUT 3 JULY…

No./1 Inside the writers’ resistance As the writers’ strike shuts down Hollywood, Empire heads to the picket lines to find out what they’re fighting for AT 12:01AM ON 2 MAY, a sound rang out across Hollywood: the thud of 11,000 film and TV writers slamming their laptops shut in unison, refusing to work until studios and streaming platforms agree to more favourable working conditions. “It’s about extinction. It’s about survival,” Hunger Games screenwriter Billy Ray tells Empire, three weeks into a strike that has shut down movies and shows such as Blade and Stranger Things, and brought into question the release dates of many of next year’s most anticipated series and blockbusters. Not since the last writers’ strike in 2007 — which lasted 100 days and threw everything from…

When were you most starstruck? Because I have an actor crush on him, Mark Rylance. I was nominated for an Oscar one year and so was he, and as I was walking in my daughter said, “Dad, there's Mark Rylance!” She went up and said, “Mark!” then he turned and she said, “This is my dad.” [Pulls a face like he might faint] You know when you’re nervous and have adrenaline running and you’re capable of saying anything stupid, but you don’t remember? What did I say? What did I tell him? I don’t even remember! What character were you in your first school play? I was Professor Flipnoodle, the inventor of a time machine. He had flaming-red curly hair. That was in the fifth grade. I was a very…

★★★★ OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT TBC / 123 MINS DIRECTOR Guy Ritchie CAST Jake Gyllenhaal, Dar Salim, Sean Sagar, Jason Wong, Rhys Yates, Bobby Schofield, Emily Beecham, Jonny Lee Miller PLOT Sergeant John Kinley (Gyllenhaal) is serving in the US army in Afghanistan, with help from local interpreter Ahmed (Salim). When Kinley is wounded, Ahmed risks his life and the lives of his family to help, ending up on the Taliban’s Most Wanted list as a result. WHEN THE US army withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, it abandoned hundreds of Afghan interpreters who had risked their lives working against the Taliban. Instead of getting visas to relocate to the US, as they had been promised, at least 300 interpreters were killed by Taliban forces. This grim framework might…

★★★★ OUT 9 JUNE / CERT 15 101 MINS DIRECTOR Thomas Hardiman CAST Clare Perkins, Anita-Joy Uwajeh, Kae Alexander, Harriet Webb, Darrell D’Silva, Luke Pasqualino, Heider Ali PLOT At a regional hairdressing competition, a hairdresser has been murdered. Paranoia, rumours and hearsay soon spread among the assorted hairdressers, designers, stylists, models and security guards. The murderer, meanwhile, is still at large... HAIR, IT IS said in Medusa Deluxe, is the “crown that you never take off”. Yet for one poor hapless hairdresser in this killer-coiffure-comedy, that is precisely his fate: murdered via the gruesome act of scalping, taking the phrase “just a bit off the top” slightly too literally. It’s the catalyst for a surreal, stylish, strange and startlingly unique debut from writer-director Thomas Hardiman; amid the current glut of…

★★ OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 8 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER Nick Santora CAST Arnold Schwarzenegger, Monica Barbaro, Jay Baruchel, Milan Carter, Fortune Feimster, Gabriel Luna, Fabiana Udenio PLOT Luke Brunner (Schwarzenegger) is a CIA operative, his true identity hidden from his family for years. He soon discovers his daughter Emma (Barbaro) is also a secret spook. Father and daughter are forced to reluctantly work together to bring down international terrorist Boro (Luna). “WHATSA MATTER?” Arnold Schwarzenegger famously goaded in 1987’s Predator. “The CIA got you pushing too many pencils?” Well, as they say, you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the pencil-pusher. In Fubar, Arnie is CIA operative Luke Brunner, and while not quite a full-blown desk-jockey, you can’t help but wish…

THIS MONTH: The First Academy Awards LOUIS B. MAYER HAD A PROBLEM. As the head of MGM Studios, the stocky, bespectacled mogul had long been one of the richest and most powerful men in Hollywood — but by the mid-1920s he was beginning to recognise a pair of looming threats to his livelihood. The first was unionisation. A staunch capitalist, Mayer had been troubled by the signing, in 1926, of an industry-wide agreement to negotiate wages, benefits and working conditions for film-studio labourers. How long, he wondered, before the actors, writers and directors got the same idea, and started clamouring for pensions, healthcare and a bigger slice of the profits? Mayer’s other issue was image. The first half of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ had seen the motion-picture industry’s reputation take a…

Gladiator FROM, “I WILL have my vengeance, in this life or the next,” to, “What we do in life echoes in eternity,” Gladiator is not a film that’s wanting for memorable dialogue. But the line that’s quoted more than any other — so much so that it was even famously sampled by rapper Jay-Z on The Black Album — comes 67 minutes into the Ridley Scott epic. “Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?” Delivered by Maximus — his arms held aloft to the stunned crowd — it’s a defiant image that served as the basis for many Gladiator one-sheets. Interestingly, the line wasn’t intended, initially at least, for Russell Crowe’s reluctant hero. “The whole, ‘Are you not entertained?’ comment was originally…

Scream VI “NEW YORK. NEW Rules” declared the tagline for Scream VI, and for writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, that was a motto that served them well as they crafted the latest chapter of The Continuing Adventures Of Ghostface. BLOODY OPENING Every Scream movie opens with a special guest star getting eviscerated by that film’s masked killer. Here, Samara Weaving (who starred in Ready Or Not, the film that got directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett their shot at Scream) obliges, but the big twist comes when the camera lingers on this new Ghostface, who then pulls off his mask to reveal his face (hello, Tony Revolori). Strangely, both Busick and Vanderbilt came up with the idea independently of each other. “We sort of share a Scream brain, it’s…

28/8/1962 DAVID FINCHER IS BORN IN DENVER, COLORADO 2 NUMBER OF MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS, FOR DIRECTION, HE HAS FOR MADONNA SONGS: ‘EXPRESS YOURSELF’ AND ‘VOGUE’ 1983 YEAR OF HIS FIRST CREDIT, AS ASSISTANT CAMERAMAN ON RETURN OF THE JEDI 3 NUMBER OF BEST DIRECTOR OSCAR NOMINATIONS (THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, MANK ) 3 NUMBER OF FILMS HE’S MADE WITH BRAD PITT 1992 YEAR OF HIS FIRST MOVIE, ALIEN 3 12 NUMBER OF FILMS HE’S MADE AS DIRECTOR (INCLUDING THE KILLER, WHICH WILL BE RELEASED THIS YEAR) 57 TOTAL NUMBER OF MUSIC VIDEOS HE’S DIRECTED, INCLUDING AFTER ALIEN 3 $369 million AMOUNT GROSSED BY GONE GIRL AT THE WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE, HIS BIGGEST HIT TO DATE…

The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre Chosen by SAM RAIMI Sam Raimi: “There’s a great shot I remember seeing as a kid on an old black-and-white TV. Humphrey Bogart wins the lottery, money comes his way, and he decides with Tim Holt and Walter Huston to go out prospecting. There’s a shot where they agree to it, at the height of their friendship, and they shake hands. John Huston just slowly moves in on that handshake. Because it’s a story of how greed can destroy, that handshake has intense significance for me. What a great moment to mark with that subtle camera move.” INT. BAR — DAY Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is in a bar with Bob Curtin (Tim Holt) and an old man, Howard (Walter Huston), is talking…