Table of contents for February 2024 in SFX

GODZILLA PLUS ONE Jonathan Harvey, email Oh no, not another Godzilla movie! But hang on, this one is different. The humans are interesting, flawed people you can’t help but feel for in their struggles with everyday life, not just the threat of being stomped on by a giant radioactive lizard. Setting it in post-war Japan makes it feel refreshingly different after a diet of Hollywood Godzillas and mechanical monster mayhem from various movies including Transformers and Pacific Rim. The biggest problem of recent Godzilla movies has been the dull, tedious humans. This one not only solves that problem but gives us a big, scary, destructive Godzilla that smashes up cities and battleships alike. As an extra bonus there is a mad scientist with a wild and crazy plan to kill…

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◆ The new series of Doctor Who has been confirmed to launch on BBC One and Disney+ in May. ◆ Filming continues for series two, due for release in 2025. ◆ Cast and crew attended the world premiere of “The Church On Ruby Road” at London’s BFI on 11 December. Guests enjoyed a post-screening reception with live music, and Polaroids left behind by goblins. ◆ Prior to the premiere, the cast and crew made a special appearance at the London Eye, where the landmark was lit up in the colours of the time vortex. ◆ “The Goblin Song” by Murray Gold reached number one on the iTunes chart on day of release, also reaching number 12 in the official singles sales chart and number six in the official singles download…

A RARE SUNNY DAY IN Manchester, and SFX is on set for new BBC YA drama Domino Day. Even the cast admit they’re surprised by the weather, revealing that they’ve never seen anything quite like Manchester rain before. Welcome to the north, ladies and gentlemen. Not that they see much of the light anyway, as Domino Day is a celebration of creatures of the night: witches. The six-part series follows a powerful young witch named Domino (Siena Kelly) as she’s haunted by an increasing need to feed off the energy of others, using dating apps to track down targets. In doing so, Domino is endangering the magical realm, threatening to reveal to mankind that witches live among them. A coven is therefore following her every move, trying to learn exactly…

For Highman it was the jungle scenes, “just because of the amount of detail in the set already. You also have 10 Thal characters over-crossing. The more moving colour elements you have, the more difficult it is. Things like that you can’t take a lot of shortcuts with.” Tipple nominates a scene in the Dalek city’s radiation room. “You can’t cut it because it’s essential to the plot. Scott Burditt had his work cut out because it’s really dark with really bright spots of colour and you’ve got characters moving in and out of colour – moving in and out of the light. So that was a really, really difficult one to do.”…

From first reading and initial chats with [lead director] Otto [Bathurst], we soon built a vision for the series. We’re not blessed with huge amounts of reference regarding post-Roman, Dark Age Britain, but we had Bernard Cornwell’s incredible novels – that’s enough inspiration for anyone to work with. It was clear that the books would need serious adaptions to align with our time and financial restraints, so we set out world-building from the ground up. The world we created was grounded, visceral and raw. The series is a mix of the epic and the intimate, and I tried to mirror this within the environments. It was tough – like, really tough – reimagining a world so far from our own, and that so little is really known about. ENTERING CAER…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 124 minutes ▸ Directors James Wan ▸ Cast Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Nicole Kidman → It’s tempting to imagine a pirate’s curse was placed upon this tardy sequel to 2018’s wildly successful Aquaman, with rumours of major reshoots, rumblings of a fractious set and a release date bumped back by an entire year. On arrival it finds itself the final, dying remnant of the original Snyderverse, overshadowed by anticipation for how James Gunn will reshape the DC pantheon on the big screen. All connective tissue to the wider franchise has already been snipped away. For once there are no multiverse-bending Batcameos, not a hint of the rawk guitar riff that always cued a welcome injection of Gal Gadot. Any trace of…

▸ RELEASED 9 FEBRUARY TBC | 97 minutes ▸ Director Andrew Cumming ▸ Cast Safia Oakley-Green, Chuku Modu, Kit Young, Iola Evans → As an elusive, unseen presence picks off a group of hunters lost among the trees you might imagine you’ve stumbled upon the stealthiest of stealth prequels to The Predator (spoiler: it’s not). Pitching a primitive culture against seemingly superior power, Andrew Cumming’s feature debut has unmistakable echoes of 2022’s Prey, but this proves an altogether bleaker, rawer take on a historical survivalist thriller. Rewinding the millennia to 45,000 BCE, it finds a ruthless young tribesman leading his fellow Stone Age wanderers in search of a promised land, only to discover a barren realm where shrieking demons wait in the shadows to bump up the body count. Played…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1959 | 12 | Blu-ray ▸ Director Arthur Crabtree ▸ Cast Michael Gough, June Cunningham, Graham Curnow BLU-RAY DEBUT It’d surely be a hoot to read the ’50s censor’s report on this; one can imagine the air of supercilious revulsion. The opening sets the tone. A woman receives a parcel: a pair of binoculars. When she puts them to her eyes, metal spikes spring out. A memorably cruel device, worthy of a Saw film. The man responsible is a crime writer who gets his kicks besting the police, devising murders inspired by Scotland Yard’s collection of mementos. Michael Gough’s performance is entertainingly oversized. With its prurient interest in London’s seedy underbelly and aberrant psychology, the film anticipates Peeping Tom. Both also feature Shirley Ann Field, whose…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 15 | Download ▸ Director Laura Moss ▸ Cast Marin Ireland, Judy Reyes, Breeda Wool, AJ Lister → Frankenstein has captured the cultural imagination for over 200 years, and in Birth/Rebirth is viewed through the cruel prism of grieving motherhood. Our unorthodox scientist comes in the form of socially awkward mortician Rose (Marin Ireland). Labour nurse Celie (Judy Reyes) has just lost her young daughter Lila (AJ Lister) to meningitis, but discovers that she’s been resurrected in Rose’s apartment. Despite her reservations, Celie cannot resist doing whatever she can to save Lila, and moves in with Rose to aid the “experiment”. The film eschews the well-worn tradition of the previously dead coming back as monsters, and instead focuses on the increasingly unhinged dynamic between the…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | 18 | Download → This British slasher makes strong use of its combined Clacton, Hastings and Brighton locations to capture a feeling of seedy seaside decrepitude. Alina Allison is Frankie, a young woman torn between looking after her troubled mother and the desire to escape to university – but that’s the least of her troubles when a killer in a Punch mask (which often renders his quipping unintelligible) starts offing the local youth. Nasty, brutish and short, Punch is rather effective, and peppered with a dash of folk horror.…

▸ RELEASED 29 JANUARY 2023 | 15 | Blu-ray ▸ Director Reiki Tsuno ▸ Cast Shô Mineo, Yûya Matsuura, Ayane, Michael Aaron Stone → Reiki Tsuno strove to make his directorial debut a film with “no nationality”, shooting in locations such as a French-style rose garden and a stately home transported brick by brick from the UK. Its eccentricity, however, is very Japanese. The plot (such as it is) sees a cowardly slacker pairing with a homeless man to rescue his archaeologist brother from the clutches of some “cat monsters”. These slinky females are given names like “Silent Knife” and “Insane Nunchaku” in the credits, but no dialogue – well, it’d only distract from all their leather-clad posing with Uzis. What exactly these sullen hotties are (cats somehow transformed into…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 12 | Download ▸ Director Sophie Barthes ▸ Cast Emilia Clarke, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rosalie Craig, → Nobody seemed to see the iPhone coming, and we’re still waiting for flying cars, but even taking into account the ways that technology often zigs when we think it’ll zag, The Pod Generation has a profoundly unconvincing vision of what lies ahead. Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor play happily married couple Rachel and Alvy. She’s an ambitious executive, while he’s a tree-hugging botanist, content to support his wife’s climb up the corporate ladder. Where they disagree is on the matter of Rachel’s desire to use a “pod” to grow their much-desired offspring, so she secretly hires an artificial womb owned by a sinister tech firm called Pegasus. This…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 160/176/224 pages | Paperback/ebook ▸ Authors Gary Russell, Mark Morris, James Goss ▸ Publisher BBC Books → Remember Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary specials? Have yourself checked for concussion if you don’t; it wasn’t exactly many moons ago. Ebook novelisations for each followed within a week of transmission; now all three are available in paperback, in the classic Target range format. Safe pair of hands Gary Russell tackles The Star Beast . In the tradition of Who writer Malcolm Hulke (his prologue to The Dinosaur Invasion springs to mind), he weaves a new character throughout – steelworks cleaner Stew Ferguson. Addressing how giant cracks across London miraculously heal themselves, meanwhile, he comes up with an economical gloss worthy of Target stalwart Terrance Dicks: “What happened next made no…

▸ RELEASED 8 FEBRUARY 304 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Wole Talabi ▸ Publisher Gollancz → At its heart, this fantasy novel is a heist caper. Nneoma is a succubus, and her partner Shigidi is a minor nightmare god employed by the Orisha Spirit Company. The pair branch out as freelancers, accepting a dangerous assignment: retrieving an artefact from the British Museum. Given recent discourse, righteous anger at the museum’s possession of plundered treasures feels apt. The characters’ dynamic is terrific, and this is also the story of their relationship, with a well-constructed arc that starts in medias res, yanks us back through history, and returns to a satisfying conclusion. The book joins the canon of literature set in a world behind our own. Fans of Neil Gaiman and Kate…

▸ RELEASED 1 FEBRUARY 368 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Molly McGhee ▸ Publisher Fourth Estate → As Blur said, modern life is rubbish. Workers’ rights are being eroded; our natural environment is increasingly perilous… Living in a capitalist society feels like a waking nightmare. Molly McGhee’s satirical sci-fi explores these ideas, creating a modern-feeling world where the working class are so trapped by their economic circumstances that they’re forced to take government jobs that put them into literal nightmares, removing the elements holding dreamers back to make them more productive. Abernathy is a troubled young man so in debt that he has to work as both a nightmare cleaner and serving junk food in a soulless mall. Sounds depressing, and it is, but the narrator has a wicked sense…

▸ RELEASED 6 FEBRUARY 288 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Jason Pinter ▸ Publisher Severn House → The Ready Player One parallels are clear in this near-future thriller where the human race spends most of its spare time in a vast VR simulation called Earth+. In place of the wall-to-wall nostalgia of Ernest Cline’s hit novel, however, Past Crimes taps into another, rather more grisly 21st century obsession: true crime. Cassie West finds herself at the epicentre of one of the most notorious mass suicides/murders in history when her late husband Harris is pegged as the instigator of the so-called “Blight”. A decade later, Cassie realises another attack may be imminent, but nobody wants to listen to the wife of a universally vilified monster – even though Past Crimes, a…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher DC Comics ▸ Writer Kelly Thompson ▸ Artist Leonardo Romero ISSUES 1-5 The latest Birds Of Prey series takes flight with a new creative team and a revised line-up of characters. Black Canary’s sister Sin has been wrongfully imprisoned on Themyscira by the Amazons. Determined to rescue her, Dinah must assemble a new band of allies: Batgirl Cassandra Cain, Big Barda, Zealot, the mysterious Meridian (intriguingly revealed to be a future version of Gotham Academy character Mia Mizoguchi) and Harley Quinn – who brings a touch of comedy and good-natured chaos to the book. Despite this large regular cast, everyone feels distinct and well-realised. There’s a real freshness to writer Kelly Thompson’s dialogue, and a pleasingly pulp look to Leonardo Romero’s art that’s massively enhanced by…

“Charlie Kaufman’s just able to kind of go deeper and add additional layers” SOMEWHERE IN THE multiverse, there exists a version of Orion And The Dark that’s a straightforward retelling of Emma Yarlett’s adorable picture book – a simple story about a boy who’s scared of the dark but ends up befriending a mysterious entity that embodies the night. This is not that universe. “You give that book to 99.9% of the other screenwriters in Hollywood, you get that version of the film,” says producer Peter McCown. “Charlie Kaufman just takes it to a different level.” Yes, he’s talking about that Charlie Kaufman, the writer behind Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Considering that his last animated feature, the stop-motion film Anomalisa – about a…

LIVING UP TO A legendary parent is no easy task, as both Jake Sisko and Alexander Rozhenko – the respective offspring of Benjamin Sisko and Worf – discover in IDW’s new miniseries, Sons Of Star Trek. “It’s very much about the pressures that come with being the son of someone important in the Star Trek universe,” writer Morgan Hampton tells Red Alert. “But that means different things to Jake than it does to Alexander, for example.” With Hampton describing it as “a natural progression”, Sons Of Star Trek spins out of last year’s Day Of Blood crossover, which encompassed both IDW’s flagship Star Trek title and Star Trek: Defiant. “It’s really awesome to be able to pull from events from these comics and expand on them and use them to…

“The decision to end the season the way we did, I felt brought up a lot of challenges” MASTER CHIEF’S BATTLE-HARDENED, straight-talking persona must be wearing off on Pablo Schreiber, because the actor – who plays the iconic Spartan warrior in Paramount’s Halo series – does not mince words. For instance, when asked about the first season’s infamous sex scene between Chief, aka John-177, and the undercover Covenant agent Makee, he firmly criticises the narrative decision. “The decision to make the connection between Makee and John a romantic connection was a huge mistake,” he tells SFX. “I felt it was a huge mistake at the time and I argued against it and fought against it. But I am who I am. I don’t write the scripts. I only give my…

EVER SINCE NETFLIX announced in 2018 that they were making a “reimagined” live-action adaptation of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans have been stressing out that their beloved fantasy series was going to get done dirty… again. In its two decades of existence, animation has remained the safe haven of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko’s critically acclaimed, award-winning original fantasy series. It was created for Nickelodeon, where it became a huge hit with teens and adults, and ran for three seasons (2005–2008). Fusing Asian-inspired ancient lore with epic, elemental-based world-building and stellar characters, Avatar: The Last Airbender became an instant classic, one which continues to generate fresh waves of fans via streaming. EXIT STRATEGY But attempts to adapt the animated series to live action have been bumpy,…

As executive producer on His Dark Materials, Joel Collins helped steer one of the most ambitious fantasy series ever created for the BBC to worldwide acclaim. As the EP on Doctor Who, he’s part of the team taking the beloved sci-fi juggernaut to new global heights. He’s had multiple award nominations and has BAFTA-wins under his belt but his cool credits go further still, encompassing work on Black Mirror, The Day Of The Triffids, the 2005 film of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and even Muppet Treasure Island. Oh, and just some music videos with the likes of Madonna and Pet Shop Boys. Now he’s dealing with the likes of Janis Goblin and a whole new series of adventures that he promises will blow viewers away – that is,…

◆ Were you a Doctor Who fan? I didn’t watch many episodes when I was growing up and there’s a good reason for that: they frightened the life out of me! I was a bit of a wuss. As I got older and less fearful, my interest grew. I’m a fan. I’d say everyone on the show is, really. It’s an amazing production to work on. It’s iconic. ◆ You played Rosa in Russell T Davies’sIt’s A Sin… I was in awe of the young talent in the room when I had my first read-through – kudos to Andy Pryor, the casting director; he’s a genius. It was there that I met Russell. It was a big deal – you’re meeting one of the biggest men in television, the room…

“I REALLY FOUND MY FAITH WHEN I heard that the government was opposed to the film. If NASA took the time to write me a 20-page letter, then I knew there must be something happening,” director and self-proclaimed UFO fanatic Steven Spielberg once said, regarding the impetus for making his 1977 epic Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Originally envisaged as a low-budget sci-fi movie titled Watch The Skies that was inspired by his childhood memories of witnessing a spectacular meteor shower, Close Encounters ultimately took its philosophy and elongated title from the 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Written by astronomer and former UFO skeptic turned advocate Dr J Allen Hynek, the book stated that a Close Encounter of the First Kind was a UFO sighting with…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 98 minutes ▸ Director Bryce McGuire ▸ Cast Kerry Condon, Wyatt Russell, Nancy Lenehan, Amélie Hoeferle → In the past year or so, Blumhouse has brought us a killer doll, a scary creature in the closet and some haunted animatronics, to name but a few. So why not a spooky swimming pool? Writer/director Bryce McGuire, here adapting the short he created with Rod Blackhurst, pitches the idea of a family moving into a home boasting a backyard pool with a dodgy history. Early on, as you can guess if you’ve seen the trailer, the film follows the predictable jump-scare route (it’ll certainly make you rethink playing Marco Polo in a darkened body of water, though that’s probably not a good plan anyway). But as…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | 15 | SVOD ▸ Directors Daniel Kaluuya, Kibwe Tavares ▸ Cast Kane Robinson, Jedaiah Bannerman, Hope Ikpoku Jr, Ian Wright NETFLIX In a dystopian near-future where all of London’s social housing has been outlawed, it is not, at first, clear why The Kitchen’s titular estate is worth fighting for. Protagonist Izi (a flawless Kane Robinson) describes his home as a “shithole”. There are long queues for the showers, the power rarely works, and the residents are subjected to brutal attacks by the police. But over the course of the film (which glimpses at the sinister, sterile nightmare that the rest of the city has been gentrified into) it becomes clear that the Kitchen is worth protecting at all costs, representing the last flickers of…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1958 | PG | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT A ’50s B-movie deserving of MST3K mockery. Super-sized by a giant in a glowing sphere, a wife enacts stompy vengeance on her two-timing hubby. Questions abound. Why does she also get a glamorous make-over? Why does her doctor buy chains, not inform the authorities? Risible execution – huge papier mâché mitt; optical effects which lend figures a ghostly transparency – supplies further chuckles. Extras Critical commentary; trailer.…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | TBC | VOD → Oozing slacker charm, this micro-budget indie comedy finds aspiring photographer Clay reuniting with old pal Whit, who takes the LA deadbeat schtick a touch too far by actually being dead. “You’re the only guy who can see me,” Whit’s ghost tells Clay, setting up what’s essentially Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased), Dude. It’s a wryly amusing watch with a dry, self-effacing vibe that gives way to something darker, making the afterlife a potent metaphor for a generation’s existential crisis.…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1954 | PG | Blu-ray ▸ Director David MacDonald ▸ Cast Patricia Laffan, Hugh McDermott, Hazel Court BLU-RAY DEBUT A remote Scottish inn is the unlikely site for first contact in this low-budget British B-movie, which takes a pulpy sci-fi scenario, mashes it up with melodrama, and stirs in some put-the-kettle-on stoicism. A great deal about it feels familiar, particularly when it comes to the subplots. One concerns an escaped prisoner who we’re given no particular reason to believe is not responsible for murdering his wife; the other, an implausibly speedy romance between a journalist and a model. Main reason to watch: the titular Nyah (pronounced Nigh-a), knocked off-course on a mission to find virile examples of British masculinity. Those expecting red skin or horns will…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 304 pages | Paperback/ebook ▸ Author Tim Lebbon ▸ Publisher Titan Books → Here’s a cheerful thought: as the icecaps continue to melt, so the chances of humanity being exposed to dangerous toxins or even prehistoric viruses increase. In Tim Lebbon’s latest horror-thriller, a group of illegal miners accidentally unleash such a plague when they venture into an ice cave on the remote Hawkshead island. Also caught up in this drama is a group of environmental protestors, including Bethan, who has a history with one of the miners, and Goyo, who’s quick to realise exactly how much trouble they are all in. Among The Living starts at a run and never lets up as the dwindling group fight for survival in the harsh frozen landscape, and…

▸ RELEASED 6 FEBRUARY 384 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Jasper Fforde ▸ Publisher Hodder & Stoughton → This sequel’s been a long time coming, though it doesn’t appear to be an afterthought. When Shades Of Grey was published in 2009, Jasper Fforde said he had two further books planned. He just seems to have taken his time. So welcome back to Chromatacia, which is what the UK will become in the far future after some unknown catastrophe. It’s a place where people can see only a limited range of the spectrum, and your place in society is determined by which colours you can perceive. “Greys” are the lowly working class; “reds” and “yellows” rule the roost. It’s a cosy middle-England dystopia but a dystopia nonetheless, with corruption rife. Can…

▸ RELEASED 18 JANUARY 384 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Rebecca Thorne ▸ Publisher Raven Books → If ever a horror novel was an argument for favouring real therapy from a qualified professional over non-traditional treatments, this is it. Three years after the death of her mother, Blue is still struggling to come to terms with her loss. Bereavement retreat Hope Marsh House sounds like the ideal place to get some closure: located on a beautiful and remote country estate, it’s a technology-free haven for the heartbroken. Thing is, Blue has a particular psychic gift that means she sees the ghosts of murder victims, so when she starts seeing dead people at the house, it can only mean one thing: someone at the retreat is a killer. Tense and spooky,…

▸ RELEASED 1 FEBRUARY 480 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author David Hair ▸ Publisher Jo Fletcher Books → There’s much that feels familiar in The Burning Land, with its magic, knights and mythical creatures, but author David Hair writes with sufficient vigour to imbue this fantasy adventure with personality and momentum. Jadyn is a Vestal Knight, sworn to defend the Triple Empire from their enemies, the shapeshifting Vyr. When he breaks the rules to interrogate a captured Vyr, Jadyn starts to question the orthodoxy, forcing him and his companions to flee their former masters. The protagonists are colourfully drawn and the evolution of the relationships between the members of the party takes some pleasantly unexpected turns. The villains are drawn more broadly, particularly antagonist Yoryn Borghart, an inquisitor charged with…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Marvel ▸ Writer J Michael Straczynski ▸ Artists Jesus Saiz, Lan Medina ISSUES 1-5 While he’s still best known for creating Babylon 5, writer J Michael Straczynski has also done lots of work in superhero comics over the last three decades. After a lengthy hiatus, he’s back with Marvel to take on the sturdy heroics of Steve Rogers. This new run on Captain America is paying just as much attention to Steve’s past as to his future, giving us a detailed look at his pre-Supersoldier-serum life in 1938 New York, as he battles both his poor health and the rise of Nazi-inspired fascist groups. Meanwhile, in the present day, the consequences of Steve’s 1938 struggles result in a series of mysterious killings that pitches him…

IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE WE heard from Peter Harness, the writer behind the TV adaptation of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and 2019’s period take on The War Of The Worlds (plus four Doctor Who episodes for Peter Capaldi). Now he’s back, with an original eight-part series. Described as a “conspiracy-based psychological thriller”, Constellation centres on Jo, a Swedish astronaut who returns to Earth after surviving a disaster on the International Space Station, only to find that “key pieces of her life seem to be missing”. Harness got involved after the producers asked if he’d be interested in writing something related to astronauts coming home. “It felt like it enabled a lot of different things that I was interested in to collide with each other,” he tells Red Alert.…

BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL! In 2021, Kevin Smith (Clerks creator, professional geek and newly appointed guardian of the secrets of Castle Grayskull) held aloft his magic sword and introduced the world to a He-Man we’d never seen before. Masters Of The Universe: Revelation was packed full of heroes and villains who’d populated many a toybox back in the ’80s – most of them still wearing those strange, Conan-esque fluffy pants that were the fashion at the time – but the new Netflix series also tapped into emotional depths previously unseen in Eternia. While Revelation was a direct follow-up to the events of the popular Filmation cartoon – still arguably the most successful toy commercial of all time – Smith’s paymasters at Netflix and toy manufacturer Mattel briefed their showrunner…

TO CELEBRATE 60 YEARS OF Doctor Who, the BBC not only gifted fans a brand-new Doctor in Ncuti Gatwa, but a brand-new way to experience the original: William Hartnell. The Daleks: In Colour, broadcast on BBC Four in November, marked the series’ very first official colourisation. The 1963 story has special significance, being the one that introduced the Doctor’s most notorious enemies, and this month it’s released on disc. According to lead colourisation artist Rich Tipple, the idea came from Russell T Davies, whose plan upon returning to the show was to “put the entire back catalogue on iPlayer and begin to colourise the archive”. Who executive producers Joel Collins and Phil Collinson sounded out Tipple in early 2022 after they saw some of his unofficial work on YouTube. He…

FOR SEAN KONRAD, GODZILLA IS something large, green and primal. “I know that I saw Godzilla at an age when I didn’t understand it all,” he tells SFX, remembering his first brush with Toho’s Tokyo-trampling kaiju superstar. “I think I saw the narrated American version on TV when I was seven or something. It was like, ‘Whoa, that’s scary!’, but I didn’t really grasp what an important thing it was. “I think I really started appreciating Godzilla properly after watching Bong Joon-ho’s The Host, which is a really terrific, emotional movie in the way that the monsters are used. It made me start thinking about monsters as a parable. I went back to Godzilla and I’ve been a devotee since that point.” A digital effects veteran with credits on everything…

“Steven was unhappy with the movie and he released the Special Edition and it really bothered me,” says Joe Alves. “When Richard Dreyfuss is with Melinda [Dillon] at the end, and he goes off in the spaceship after her little boy comes running out, that was so touching. She grabs the little boy and he goes ‘Goodbye’, and the spaceship closes and that’s the end of the movie. “For the Special Edition, Steven decided to go inside the spaceship, and it looked like a Holiday Inn where you go to this lobby [with] all these weird creatures looking down. I thought, ‘Why are we in the spaceship?’” Due to his dissatisfaction with the original version of Close Encounters, Spielberg had requested that the studio allow him to work on a…

CINEMA 76 T V 78 HOME ENTERTAINMENT 80 BOOKS 86 COMICS 92 GAMES & STUFF 94 76 AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM Sorry, the Curry’s off Highlights 78 DOCTOR WHO We slip on a kilt, a crop-top and a biker jacket to rewatch “The Church On Ruby Road”. 80 COFFIN JOE A new Blu-ray box set collects Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins’s outrageous oeuvre. 87 SHIGIDI A god tries to steal an artefact from the British Museum in Wole Talabi’s impressive debut. → RATINGS…

▸ UK/US Apple TV+, streaming now ▸ Showrunners Matt Wolpert, Ben Nedivi ▸ Cast Joel Kinnaman, Wrenn Schmidt, Krys Marshall EPISODES 4.01-4.10 This might feel like an unlikely criticism coming from SFX, but the more sci-fi this alternative history of the space race becomes, the less good it gets. With the series now set in a futuristic 2003, For All Mankind has lost much of the pioneering Right Stuff spirit of its brilliant early years, and morphed into a smaller, less exciting version of The Expanse. In the show’s parallel timeline, interplanetary travel has become so easy that Mars is home to a thriving community of astronauts, cosmonauts and private contractors. In fact, the Red Planet threatens to become the bright centre of the Solar System when an asteroid packed with…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1964-2008 | 18 | Blu-ray ▸ Director José Mojica Marins ▸ Cast Various lumpy Brazilians BLU-RAY DEBUT Brazilian director José Mojica Marins is a saint of psychotronic cinema, but his output is more known of than it is seen. This eye-opening set of immaculate 4K transfers should help to change that. His most famous creation was Zé do Caixão, aka Coffin Joe: an undertaker who features in five of these 10 films. An iconic figure, with his stovepipe hat, cloak and talon-like fingernails, he considers himself a Nietszchean superman, and spurns morality, happy to drown his best friend in the bath (At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul), or pour acid on a woman’s face (This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse). He’s a monster – but one…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 15 | Download ▸ Director William Brent Bell ▸ Cast Tuppence Middleton, Ralph Ineson, Matt Stokoe → The classic tropes of folk horror are so familiar by now, so well-grooved, that this most disquieting of genres is in danger of feeling cosy. New British chiller Lord Of Misrule dutifully ticks the boxes: a rural idyll that conceals a bloody past; a missing child and a murderous conspiracy of village folk; undying pagan rituals that lurk at the edges of the modern day. Yes, all the faithful trimmings are here. Poppets. Antlers. Carved masks. There’s even a local boozer that falls deathly quiet when somebody enters – though in this case it’s not a stranger but the vicar, Rebecca Holland (Tuppence Middleton). Her daughter Grace…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | TBC | SVOD SHUDDER Gleeful excess is the MO of this cartoonish horror-comedy, which sees prog-loving nebbish Will suffering snowballing misfortune. Accidentally killing his troll-like neighbour Vlad (Bill & Ted’s Alex Winter, buried beneath warty prosthetics) is only the start… Designed to make you wince-laugh, it’s a luridly colourful affair that finds some effective ways of bashing the funny bone, while maintaining a genial feel.…

The biggest movie hitting disc this month is Gareth Edwards’s THE CREATOR (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, out now) – also, take note, now on Disney+. Set during a war between the Western world and AI, it sees John David Washington’s character tasked with tracking down a weapon… which turns out to be an AI child. We said: “At times it feels more like a remix than something truly fresh” – but also “the visuals are the very definition of sumptuous.” Bonuses: one 55-minute Making Of. In horror-comedy THE BLACKENING (Blu-ray/DVD, 29 January), a masked killer forces a group of friends to play a boardgame that involves answering questions about black culture. We said: “A nuanced and highly intelligent satire of the African-American experience.” A decent spread of extras includes commentary, a featurette on…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 464 pages | Paperback/ebook ▸ Author Ally Wilkes ▸ Publisher Titan Books → Skip this Arctic horror if you ever hope to enjoy a bacon sandwich again. The smell of cooking pork is definitely going to lose its appeal… After a doomed expedition to the legendary Open Polar Sea forces his men into cannibalism, explorer William Day is reviled by polite society. More than a decade later, his former second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has gone missing on a similar voyage, so Day is offered a chance at redemption: he just has to bring Stevens home. But inevitably, history begins to repeat itself, and this time Day might not survive it. This is author Ally Wilkes’s second novel after All The White Spaces, which was also about historical…

▸ RELEASED 6 FEBRUARY 400 pages | Paperback/audiobook ▸ Writer Kacen Callender ▸ Publisher Faber & Faber → Imagine that you’re Harry Potter and you get caught by Professor Snape while breaking into his office. He spots that you’re talented in magic, and thereby blackmails you into helping him search for a dangerous magical book. And then? You fall in love… Okay, so that’s not quite what happens here: for starters, there isn’t much of an age difference between our young protagonist, Ash, and the academic, Ramsay. Then there’s the fact that Ramsay changes genders at will, so “he” and “she” swap places all the way through the prose. It’s to author Kacen Callender’s credit that this barely even impacts on the reader after the initial switch; it just happens…

▸ RELEASED 25 JANUARY 340 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Georgia Summers ▸ Publisher Hodderscape → Family curses, fallen angels, magical cities filled with scholars… there are a lot of fairy tale and fantasy tropes in this debut novel, and most of them are done well. The Everly family is under a curse, forced to hand over the best of each generation to the powerful, unageing Penelope. However, Marianne Everly fled, leaving behind her daughter Violet in an attempt to find a way to break the debt. She never returned, and now Penelope is almost ready to claim Violet – assisted by the lonely and tormented Aleksander, a young man desperate for validation from his mistress and a place amongst the scholars. Violet travels the world in her last months…

▸ RELEASED 2 February ▸ 65 minutes | Vinyl ▸ Label Varèse Sarabande/Craft Recordings SOUNDTRACK It’s easy to forget now, in these days of MCU and Star Wars Disney+ shows, just how cinematic Lost seemed when it debuted in 2004. A big part of that was Michael Giacchino’s score, which brought a sense of mystery and menace. It’s been available on CD and via streaming before, but this handsome “Oceanic Black Smoke” edition (basically a blue/black splatter effect LP) is the first time it’s been pressed to vinyl. (A plain black vinyl edition is also available.) We’ll skip over the 17-second title music and go straight to “The Eyeland”, which opens with the THUD that would become a familiar part of Lost’s sonic landscape, before moving into far creepier territory.…

Marvel UK stepped in a new direction in 1988, and it was Doctor Who that reeled me in. Death’s Head, their pre-established Transformers-battling bounty hunter – ahem, freelance peacekeeping agent – was sent to Earth in 8162, shrunk to human size by a Tissue Compression Eliminator-wielding Seventh Doctor and thrown through time. This set the wheels in motion for a very different type of Marvel Universe. Completely caught up in such crossovers, I was immediately on-board with their new launch title, Dragon’s Claws. Described as a “dystopian science fiction comic”, it was created by Simon Furman and Geoff Senior and centred on titular character Dragon, a former famous player of The Game, a violent pastime banned in 8162. I was never sure what The Game actually was, but it involved…