Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2023 i Total Film

And… ACTION! We love a breath-snatching, gobsmacking, spine-tingling moment in a kick-ass film when a stunt sequence stuns, and this issue we’re celebrating the men and women behind the scenes making the stars look balletic, kinetic and hardcore. I sat down with Gal Gadot to talk about her new spy actioner, Heart of Stone, and heard how her stunt team put her through the wringer. We also get a masterclass trom the Mission: Impossible crew on making a banger of a heartquickener, share an inside look on action-packed Ahsoka, and count down the greatest stunts of all time. (Let us know if you think we missed a corker.) Thankfully no ice baths or arnica required for reading about all this, so get stuck in… Enjoy the issue!…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE If you know anything about Beanie Babies it’s probably that, for a moment in the mid-90s, they were as popular as Furbies, Tamagotchis and Tickle Me Elmos combined, fuelling one of the biggest speculative crazes in American history as $5 beanbag animals were bought and sold by ravenous collectors for thousands. Beanie Babies turned their eccentric creator, Ty Warner, into a billionaire in short order. But for the women in his orbit, those who possessed the innovative business acumen responsible for propelling Ty into the stratosphere - represented on screen in a new Apple TV+ film by Elizabeth Banks’ Robbie, Geraldine Viswanathan’s Maya and Sarah Snook’s Sheila - the Beanie Bubble wasn’t anywhere near as lucrative. ‘The Beanie craze was this amazingly colourful backdrop for us to tell a…

It would be nice to commence with optimism when you get your dream gig, a column in a magazine you’ve adored for decades. To discuss new waves of filmmakers, innovative trends or giant feats of imagination coming our way. But things are looking pretty bleak. Most Total Film readers probably know that the WGA (Writers Guild of America) has been striking for a ‘fair deal’ with the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers). The WGA’s position is that billions are being made from their members’ work, but ‘pay and working conditions have significantly eroded over the past decade’. It’s unclear how long negotiations will take. The WGA strike in 2007 lasted too days, and 1988’s for 153, so it’s unlikely to be over by the time you read…

TEASTERS EXCLUSIVE Getting John Boyega, Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris as the central trio in your directorial debut is an astonishing coup. But it’s even more remarkable given that Juel Taylor signed his stars to play a drug dealer, a pimp and a sex worker in They Cloned Tyrone, an audacious blend of sci-fi, comedy, mystery, satire and blaxploitation. ‘We had that joke on set: a pimp, a prostitute and a drug dealer walk into a bar…’ he tells Teasers with a laugh. The characters fit into bleak stereotypes of Black Americans, but the film uses them to dive into a mystery that satirises a larger rot in America’s foundation. It speaks to everything from gentrification and gun violence to the Tuskegee experiment, where hundreds of Black men were unknowingly studied…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE British director Charlotte Regan’s debut Scrapper is, like its title, a punchy little number. It follows Georgie (Lola Campbell), a 12-year-old living secretly alone in her flat after her mum dies. ‘I know she’s struggling with a lot. But the intention we always had was to make a joyful working-class film about the resilience of kids,’ says Regan. ‘Even when people do have parents, and this isn’t exclusive to working-class environments, kids can often be raising themselves, whatever situation they’re in.’ While the story kicks into gear as Georgie’s estranged father Jason (Harris Dickinson) comes back from Ibiza to live with her, Regan’s good to her word: Scrapper is more magic realism than kitchen-sink miserablism, down to the talking spiders in Georgie’s household. ‘I’ve always loved what Taika Waititi…

I f you’ve seen the latest instalments from the DCEU and Fast franchises you’ll have clocked Gal Gadot popping up (in Fast X, quite literally) to cameo. Now, Wonder Woman herself is keen to create an action series with herself front and centre to rival all the big boys and their toys. Give Dom, Bond and Ethan Hunt a high-octane, multi-pic run for their money? Why not? ‘I must say that this whole thing was something that I had in mind for a long time, but I also always felt like, “Who knows if there’s going to be an audience for it? A female-leadingcharacter action movie,”’ Gadot admits when Total Film catches her in late May on an unseasonably grey and cold day in Los Angeles. ‘But then when Wonder…

There’s one achievement that’s perhaps more jawdropping than any of the extreme stunts that star/producer Tom Cruise has completed. And it’s that - in a world of IP fatigue and diminishing returns - Mission: Impossible is a rare (unique?) franchise that’s managed to keep getting better. The biggest challenge that two-part epic Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning faces is living up to its predecessor, 2018’s Fallout - the hands-down best film in the series, and the highest-grosser, too. Dead Reckoning Part One opens this summer, and finds Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his IMF team on a mission to stop a potentially catastrophic weapon falling into the wrong hands. As well as the likes of lisa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) returning, a figure from Hunt’s past…

picture this: you’re a pair of filmmakers from Adelaide, Australia, premiering your first feature at the Sundance Film Festival. Nobody knows who the hell you are. And then suddenly, A24 are bidding on your movie. Yep, the hip indie company behind Oscar-winner Everything Everywhere All at Once. ‘They made an offer the first day,’ says Michael Philippou, who together with twin brother Danny is the brains behind the teen horror sensation Talk to Me. Before long, the brothers uploaded the footage of that day to their YouTube channel. ‘You can see the emotion of that,’ chips in Danny. it was such a dream trip.’ When Total Film meets the Philippous, 30, and their two leading women - Sophie Wilde (The Portable Door) and Alexandra Jensen (TV’s Amazing Grace) - it’s…

SCREEN OUT NOW CINEMAS DIRECTOR Steven Caple Jr. STARRING Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback, Pete Davidson, Peter Cullen SCREENPLAY Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer, Josh Peters, Erich Hoeber, Jon l-loeber DISTRIBUTOR Paramount RUNNING TIME 127 mins How do you solve a problem like Transformers? Go big, like Michael Bay did in each of the five swaggering block-blasters he directed between 2007 and 2017, and you end up tumbling down a wearying wormhole of deafening incoherence. Go small(er), as Travis Knight did in 2018’s Bumblebee, and you’ll win back the critics - but you won’t deliver the sort of billion-dollar return Paramount expects from its Hasbro-inspired cash cow. In Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Creed II director Steven Caple Jr. tries to find a middle ground, with fair-to-middling success. A first hour based…

OUT 30 JUNE CINEMAS French writer-director Leonor Serraille follows Jeune femme (2018) with a novelistic immigration drama. Spanning some two decades, Serraille’s saga explores the experiences of a single mother, Rose (a vivid performance from Annabelle Lengronne), and her two young sons, Jean and Ernest, after they arrive in France from the Ivory Coast in 1989. Split into three chapters, with each one offering the perspective of a different character, Mother and Son astutely observes how, over time, individual identities and intra-family relationships are impacted in the struggle to belong in French society.…

OUT 23 JUNE CINEMAS 7 AUGUST DIGITAL In April 1987, the American champion cyclist Greg LeMond was nearly fatally shot by his brother-in-law in a hunting accident. And yet two years and two surgeries later, LeMond was attempting to win the gruelling Tour de France in what remains the closest race in the competition’s history. British filmmaker Alex Holmes (Maiden) orchestrates a gripping documentary retelling of these events, combining interviews with the surviving participants and sharply chosen archival footage, immersing the viewer in a truly remarkable sporting and personal comeback.…

OUT 7 JULY CINEMAS Brimming with buoyant beats and goodwill, director Shamira Raphaëla’s documentary is a feel-good winner. Based in working-class Rotterdam, Shabu is a 14-year-old who messes up when he totals his gran’s car. To cover the costs, he comes up with the idea of a block party with a star headliner - himself. Clumsy but well-meaning, this would-be rapper provides an endearing focus for the uplifting trajectory here. Sketchy local details and foregone conclusion aside, Raphaëla’s mix of sun-dappled images and resilient rhythms makes for a disarming pleasure: bright, light and full of popsiclefresh charm.…

OUT 7 JULY CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA British-Moroccan filmmaker Fyzal Boulifa (Lynn + Lucy) returns with this engaging mother-son drama. Set largely in Tangier, it follows Selim (Abdellah El Hajjouji), a teenager who lives with his mother Fatima-Zahra (Aicha Tebbae). She scrapes a living by selling her body, hiding everything from her son. Selim also becomes embroiled with a westerner who is refurbishing a riad, a transactional relationship that has consequences. A film about illusions shattered and innocence lost, the result is another smartly played character study from the impressive Boulifa.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS, 26 JUNE DIGITAL You don’t expect subtlety from Robert Rodriguez but even by his standards, Hypnotic is a lot. Ben Affleck plays a sad detective whose daughter’s abduction remains unsolved. Could a bank heist orchestrated by a realitybending psychic hold the key to the mystery? Rodriguez keeps his foot on the gas for the 94-minute running time, frantically dispatching set-pieces and twists. Committed performances (from Alice Braga, William Fichtner and Affleck) amp up the camp appeal of a sci-fi thriller that becomes more endearing the more ridiculous it gets.…

SCREEN 1993 OUT NOW 4K UHD EXTRAS None A 30th-anniversary 4K release for Sydney Pollack’s John Grisham adap which, despite its BO success, emerges as one of Tom Cruise’s lesser 90s vehicles. What should have been a straightforward thriller about a Harvard graduate working for a corrupt, cultish firm is instead overlong and overstuffed with bit-part characters. Still, Pollack’s polished direction, Holly Hunter’s Oscar-nommed supporting turn, Cruise’s boyishness and a magnetic Gene Hackman hold things together. But you can’t help feeling that, released today, The Firm would be a streaming sensation forgotten within a week.…

1965 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Featurettes, Essay On the extras, Bernardo Bertolucci describes Marco Bellocchio’s debut as Italy’s answer to France’s New Wave. Still startling, Bellocchio’s seismic drama casts Lou Castel as a pent-up young man planning to kill himself and family members so that his brother can stand a chance of fleeing the nest. Bellocchio’s taut direction contrasts keenly with Castel’s coiled energies, bringing focus to the film’s fierce institutional critiques. A radical response to neo-realism, the result lands like an arthouse horror film, its impact bolstered by the liturgical intensity of Morricone’s score.…

SCREEN OUT NOW SWITCH When The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launched alongside the Switch to rapturous praise in 2017, many wondered how Nintendo could possibly top it. Six years later, we have our answer. Back then, players regularly shared 30-second clips showcasing ingenuity or catastrophe: from unlikely but successful puzzle solutions to improvised combat approaches gone horribly wrong. Tears of the Kingdom seems to have been built with that in mind, offering up a new set of constructionbased powers that give the player almost unparalleled freedom to solve puzzles and defeat enemies their own way. The playful approach of this direct successor is prefaced by a prologue which grants the series’ elfin protagonist Link a full set of hearts and a maxed-out stamina bar… before an encounter…

BOOKS ABRAMS, BFI, BLOOMSBURY, SEAN EBSWORTHBARNES, TITAN MICHAEL KLASTORIN ABRAMS You should make Back to the Future into a musical,’ said Leslie Zemeckis to her director husband Robert after watching the Broadway production of The Producers in 2005. Fifteen years later, that shrewd suggestion became theatrical reality when the stage version of Mr Zemeckis’ 1985 classic had its premiere at Manchester Opera House. Klastorin’s book tells what happened during those 15 years - an exhausting period of trial and error that saw one director exit over creative differences and an opening scheduled to coincide with the film’s 30th anniversary that proved unfeasible. That aforementioned Mancunian try-out run, meanwhile, was curtailed by COVID-19. That Back to the Future: The Musical did eventually make it to London’s West End in 2021 is…

1 THE FUGITIVE In the nick of time, a shackled Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) leaps clear from an overturned prison bus as a high-speed train smashes into it, kickstarting the wrongly convicted prisoner’s quest to track down his wife’s one-armed killer and prove his own innocence. 2 BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III A twofer. Moments after returning from 1885, where his hijacked train plunged off unfinished tracks into a ravine, Marty McFly (Michael ]. Fox) sees the time-travelling DeLorean smashed into smithereens by an oncoming freight train. 3 THE GENERAL Nothing beats doing it for real. In 1926, Buster Keaton had one chance to get silent film’s most expensive stunt right, utilising six cameras. The bridge duly collapsed under the weight of a 26-ton train that stayed submerged…

Why it was a good idea (on paper) Retro 60s fetishism was hot in the 90s. With hip and/or Oscar-grade leads (Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Sean Connery) alongside zeitgeist-y cameos (Eddie Izzard, Shaun Ryder), director Jeremiah S. Chechik’s reboot of the kinky-booted spy show seemed well-groomed to do a Mission: Impossible. What went wrong? A self-declared fan of the series, Chechik (Diabolique) loved the ‘kooky’ aspects of Don MacPherson’s script. But had Warner Bros, read it? They wanted the coolest action hit of the summer. Surrealism and killer ted bears, less so. Chechik later recalled having fun making the film, though he conceded chemistry ran low between Fiennes and Thurman, who replaced original lead Nicole Kidman. With the robotic leads lost in a tonal muddle of action and absurdity, coherence…

EASY 1 Happy Feet Two marked the final animated role for which megastar? 2 Which actor won a BAFTA for their role in Moulin Rouge!? 3 What was the original title of the stage musical that inspired Greatest Days? 4 Which actor connects Mamma Mia! with Cinderella (2021)? 5 Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost features songs predominantly from which decade? a)50s; b)30s; c)80s. MEDIUM 1 Which members of The Beatles voice their animated counterparts in Yellow Submarine? 2 Which film did Mamma Mia! overtake to (briefly) become the UK’s highest-grossing movie? 3 In Moulin Rouge!, who is credited as the voice of the Green Fairy? 4 George Lucas has a ‘story by’ credit on which animated musical? 5 Bono covered which Beatles song for Across the Universe? HARD 1 Sunshine…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE Jamie Lee Curtis had a true, spiritual initiation into the role of Madame Leota, the disembodied head, afloat in a crystal ball, who first offers visitors passage into ‘regions beyond’. So her co-stars had something to react to, the actor kindly agreed to stick that legendary noggin of hers into an actual giant, transparent orb. Talk about dedication. When Disneyland guests first cross the pristine but gloomy portico of The Haunted Mansion, then flee the room that has no windows and no doors, and shuffle past busts whose eyes seem to follow them, it’s Leota who kicks off the ride’s ghostly jamboree. In Justin Simien’s adaptation, the latest in Disney’s attempts to bring its famous attractions to the big screen, viewers will, in his words, step into ‘the shoes…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE Tennis is having its moment on screen and we’re not talking about Wimbledon, from Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming Challengers to Netflix doc Break Point. Exploring the dark side of the pro circuit is Fifteen-Love, a drama about a tennis coach, Glenn Lapthorn (Aidan Turner), who is gunning for Grand Slam glory when an explosive accusation by his former protege Justine Pearce (newcomer Ella Lily Hyland) sends a volley through his perfect world. The series keeps the audience on a knife edge where nobody is sure who’s telling the truth. Why did you take that approach? Ella Lily Hyland: Justine’s very instinctual, and then her mind and body play catch-up, which is kind of what athletes are like, they work from a primal instinct. She’s playing catch-up the whole time and…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE Growing up in Belfast in the 70s, Mark Cousins saw a lot of horror movies before he was 10 years old. ‘Local video stores had everything on the black market - I saw video nasties at a ridiculously early age,’ he says. ‘Then I saw Psycho. I could see that it was scary, but also something else. If you want to be simple, you could call it “art”.’ While Psycho electrified Cousins’ senses, he also picked up on the bold structure, the atypical pacing, the unusual camera placement. He could sense there was ‘something hypnotic and nighttime about it’. Cut to 50 years later and Cousins is an esteemed documentarian (The Story of Film: An Odyssey, The Eyes of Orson Welles) with Hitchcock tattoos on his arm. It’s no…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE Emboldened by the success of Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse, 2023 has turned into a banner year for stylistically experimental animated movies. Next up is TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, a striking new take on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from writer-producer Seth Rogen, writer-director Jeff Rowe (The Mitchells vs. the Machines) and co-director Kyler Spears. ‘[Spider-Verse] convinced studios that you can make money, win awards and be successful,’ says Rowe, ‘all while being different.’ 1. TEENAGE KICKS There have been six movies and at least five Turtles TV shows but, for the first time ever, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael are played by age-appropriate young adults. ‘We’re delivering on “teenage”!’ Rowe exclaims. To harness the inimitable chaos that ensues when teenage boys hang out, all four young actors recorded their…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE On the evening of 13 November 2015, a series of coordinated terror attacks in Paris left at least 130 people dead and more than 400 others injured. The epicentre of the chaos was the Bataclan theatre in the city’s 11th arrondissement, where a raid on a concert by the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal saw 90 lose their lives. Alice Winocour’s brother was at the Bataclan that night and was one of those lucky enough to walk away from it. Through him she would meet and talk to other survivors, sowing the seeds for what would go on to become her fourth directorial feature. ‘I built the film around my memories and the conversations I had with my brother and others in the following days and months,’…

Films and TV shows are increasingly geared towards fan service, with cameos, callbacks and references littered everywhere for the amusement of the hardcore stans that are the franchises’ most devoted followers. And sometimes fans can be of service, too. The spot-on casting of Rosario Dawson as Star Wars’ Ahsoka Tano may have never come to pass were it not for a canny fan suggestion on Twitter (which Dawson herself promptly ran with). Outing herself as a fan and throwing her lightsaber hilt into the ring all the way back in 2017, Dawson landed on the radar of Dave Filoni, a creative powerhouse at Lucasfilm and one of the key heirs to George Lucas’ galactic empire. Filoni - who worked with Lucas on animated feature and series The Clone Wars -…

SCREEN OUT 23 JUNE CINEMAS DIRECTOR Wes Anderson STARRING Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston SCREENPLAY Wes Anderson DISTRIBUTOR Universal RUNNING TIME 105 mins From 30s Europe to 60s France and near-future Japan, Wes Anderson has travelled wide and well in the last decade. So it proves again with his 11th feature, a playfully searching delight. A sky-watching romp that contemplates infinity, Asteroid City offers a wry exploration of life’s mysteries and proves the Anderson touch can hold firm in the face of the great beyond. That arch imprint is clear from the monochrome prologue, an eastcoast-set theatrical framing device Anderson later revisits to counterpoint the film’s main action. A burst into colour then whisks us to a sun-kissed town in the US southwest,…

SCREEN OUT 30 JUNE CINEMAS, DIGITAL This cosy, slightly claustrophobic celebration of chattily charismatic small-town US bookseller Matt Tannenbaum embeds us in his shabby, classics-packed store just as the pandemic threatens to bankrupt him. Using fly-on-thewall, Frederick Wiseman-style watchful camerawork, director A.B. Zax scrupulously captures Tannenbaum’s cockeyed optimism and his passionate pitching of great literature to his dwindling customers, without swerving the debt-ridden realities of his life. The result is a tad overlong, but you’ll stay gripped to see whether it’s GoFundMe or go under the hammer.…

OUT NOW CINEMAS A complete reinvention of Georges Bizet’s opera, Benjamin Millepied’s feature debut strikes sparks but never quite ignites. Taking place on the Mexico/ US border, the film casts Melissa Barrera (2022’s Scream) as a grief-stricken woman who sets her home alight and flees across the border, into the path of former soldier Aidan (Paul Mescal). Barrera is radiant, Mescal blistering, and the chemistry sizzles as the pair are pursued by the law. Millepied stages some emotional dance sequences, too, but the plot meanders and the soundtrack suffers from a lack of earworms.…

SCREEN OUT 7 JULY CINEMAS DIRECTOR Peter Sohn STARRING Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Shila Ommi, Ronnie del Carmen SCREENPLAY John Hoberg, Kat Likkel, Brenda Hsueh DISTRIBUTOR Disney RUNNING TIME 103 mins Pixar’s latest animation takes us to Element City, a place where air, wind, fire and earth people all live together in harmony. Well, almost. The anthropomorphised blobs of ‘fire’ are rather frowned upon, as Bernie (voiced by Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder Lumen (Shila Ommi) soon discover when they arrive from their homeland. Renting an apartment is a big no-no when the landlords are all ‘earth’ people that look like tree shrubs and naturally consider fire a danger (‘Dry leaves!’ squawks one before slamming the door in their faces). Eventually, Bernie and Cinder settle outside the city in Fire…

OUT NOW CINEMAS Rob Marshall’s sparkling liveaction makeover of Disney’s 1989 animation outswims the original. Halle Bailey shines as Ariel, the mermaid who’s lovesick for the surface world. The extended runtime gives the romance between Ariel and Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) room to breathe, while Melissa McCarthy is a deliciously evil Ursula. Not every change works, and the VEX can be patchy. But the underwater realm is a treat, the voice cast charms, and some of the songs are fabulous, with Bailey’s goosebumps-raising Part of Your World the pearl in the film’s oyster.…

OUT 14 JULY CINEMAS From Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon to Paul McCartney and Wings’ Band on the Run, Hipgnosis - the design studio of Cambridge mischief-makers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell - created some of the most iconic album covers of all time. Featuring interviews with the surviving players and a suitably classy soundtrack, this documentary from director Anton Corbijn (Control) tells an anecdotepacked, if piecemeal, story of ambition and excess. If, as Noel Gallagher asserts, vinyl’s ‘artwork is the poor man’s art collection’, Hipgnosis was the music industry’s Andy Warhol.…

SCREEN OUT NOW CINEMAS DIRECTOR Andy Muschietti STARRING Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon SCREENPLAY Christina Hodson DISTRIBUTOR Warner Bros. RUNNING TIME 144 mins Can The Flash outpace its problems? After long delays, the Scarlet Speedster arrives laden with off-screen controversies at a time when the DCEU, multiverses (Spidey aside) and superhero movies seem to be losing some traction. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Barry Allen’s fitfully fun, fan-servicefreighted headline act sometimes looks like an expanded universe imploding, to ambitious but often messy effect. True, much of It director Andy Muschietti’s superhero debut entertains and surprises (less so perhaps in the latter case, thanks to those pre-release reveals). The story has emotional stakes, honed by Christina Hodson’s multi-stacked script. But The Flash also suffers from too many under-integrated…

SCREEN OUT NOW CINEMAS DIRECTORS Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson STARRING Shameik Moore, bailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac, Jason Schwartzman SCREENPLAY Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Dave Callaham DISTRIBUTOR Sony Pictures RUNNING TIME 140 mins When Spider-Mart: Into the Spider-Verse swung into cinemas in 2018, it proved something startlingly obvious, but stubbornly unchangeable: not every studio animation needs to look like Toy Story. This epiphany has been keenly felt since, but COVID-19-delayed sequel Across the Spider-Verse proves that the trendsetting series remains Miles ahead of the copycat competition. A supremely confident, ravishingly rendered follow-up, Across… dazzles from its music-infused, Gwen-centric opening moments. Since becoming ‘the one and only Spider-Man’, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) has been letting his Spider-duties get in the way of his studies. The Spot (Jason Schwartzman)…

SCREEN 1990 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Featurettes, Booklet Loosely adapted from Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s late-50s crime novella The Pledge (which also inspired Sean Penn’s 2001 film), this is one of only two feature films completed by the late Hungarian director and Bela Tarr collaborator György Fehér. Set in a heavily forested region of northern Hungary, it centres on Felügyelo (Peter Haumann), a detective on the eve of retirement attempting to track down a child killer. Shot in long takes and murky monochrome, it practically dispenses with plot, offering instead a well-sustained - if somewhat oppressive - mood of hopeless foreboding.…

1986 OUT 26 JUNE BD EXTRAS Featurettes, Shorts Winner of Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize, this taut, unsettling drama was a career starter for Laura Dern, terrific as teenage daydreamer Connie. The initial focus is on Connie arguing with her parents and fooling around with boys. But the mood turns sinister with the introduction of Arnold Friend (Treat Williams), a thirtysomething posing as a teen. Acting like a nightmarish James Dean, he pursues Connie with increasingly predatory zeal, swiftly turning Joyce Chopra’s film into a horror about lost innocence. Criterion’s package includes new interviews with key players and three vintage Chopra shorts.…

2001 OUT NOW BD, 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentaries, Documentaries, Deleted scenes, Alternate cut, Interviews, Featurettes Stylish to a fault and mashing together many genres (period romance, thriller, creature feature, martial arts actioner), director Christophe Gans’ French-language blockbuster shouldn’t work. But it does, spectacularly so, and two decades after its cinema release, this audacious epic finally has a similarly dazzling disc release. The set’s three platters serve up a stunning 4K restoration of the superior Director’s Cut alongside a wealth of bonuses, including the truncated Theatrical Cut.…

SCREEN Danny Elfman had his work cut out when he accepted his Mission. Sure, he arrived with one clear steer: he knew what not to do, given that his predecessor Alan Silvestri’s score for the 1996 film had been rejected. Otherwise, Elfman had just a month to nail an intricate blend of homage and reinvention. And he had to answer Brian De Palma’s demands for multiple themes and tones, be they dark, romantic, energetic, operatic or muscular. ‘Brian is not Mr Mellow,’ Elfman deadpanned of his intense director. Elfman’s response was something Tom Cruise might approve of: under pressure, he sized up to the intensity and worked on instinct. The ordinarily impeccable Silvestri’s score had leaned heavily on Bruckheimeresque bombast - how those guitars squealed. By contrast, Elfman aced a…

THIS MONTH KILL BILL VOL. 1 Q In movies people habitually rip cannulas out of their veoms when they wake up in hospital. Is this what the doctor ordered? A Dr kate Scoffings, GP A cannula is a tiny plastic tube inserted into a vein usually to give fluids straight into the venous system and sometimes to deliver drugs – antibiotics, or other fluids – or for blood transfusion, for example. Anything that needs to have a quick action. Really a nurse or health-care assistant hould remove them before someone is discharged. They can do it safely, with minimal pain and minimal bleeding. While you could remove it yourself, you would probably make a bit of a mess and it would sting a bit. Technically, removing them isn’t a difficult…

IS IT JUST ME? @JAMIE_GRAHAM9 ‘Could this possibly happen? Absolutely,’ says Sylvester Stallone on First Blood’s DVD commentary. And therein lies the secret of the 1982 film’s most heart-stopping action sequence. Well, that and the fact we’d never seen the like before. You know the scene; it’s iconic. But let’s recap anyway: Vietnam vet John Rambo (Stallone) has been arrested for vagrancy while passing through the mountain town of Hope, Washington. Savagely mistreated by Sheriff Teasle (Brian Dennehy) and his men, he busts out of the police station and is pursued into the woods, tracked by cops and dogs until he’s hanging from a cliff face. Sadistic Deputy Sergeant Art Galt (Jack Starrett) arrives in a helicopter and starts taking potshots… and then, shockingly, Rambo pushes off the cliff and…

TEASERS @JORDANFARLEY A) KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON Based on David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book of the same name, Martin Scorsese’s western (yes, he’s finally made it) delves deep into manifest destiny, greed, racism, neocolonialism and misogyny in a rich, immersive masterclass that braids together the interests of his past projects. Faith, persecution, racketeering, entitlement, the corrupting influence of money, the disposability of life… all are present in a nailed-on awards magnet that might be some of the best work we’ve ever seen from all involved. Set in early 1920s Oklahoma, the story centres on Mollie (Lily Gladstone), a young Osage Nation woman and the hugely wealthy owner of headrights (the inherited mineral rights to oil-rich Osage County) - no wonder lascivious white men such as feckless WW1 returnee Ernest…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE Before the James Gunn and Peter Safran-helmed regime change kicks in under the DCU banner, there are still several DC Extended Universemovies to come out under the old guard. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is one, due in December of this year, while The Flash is currently acing across screens. Next, there’s the interesting proposition of Blue Beetle – a lesser-known comic-book character and brand-new superhero for the screen – which arrives at a time when the DC Universe NNis in a state of flux. Trailers are promising – an extended look was shown to a receptive CinemaCon audience in April – but what are the film’s prospects in light of the shift at DC HQ, where does it sit among the existing movies, and how does it fit…

‘WHAT WAS REALLY COOL WAS GETTING TO AUDITION FOR BOND.’ COULD REBEL WILSON BE THE NEXT BOND WOMAN? 'Physical copies in the age of streaming area moral Fahrenheit 451 level duty.’ GUILLERMO DEL TORO ADVOCATES FOR PHYSICAL RELEASES AS TITLES ARE REMOVED FROM STREAMING PLATFORMS. 11 MILES THE LENGTH OF A 70MM IMAX PRINT OF OPPENHEIMER. THAT’S A LOT OF MOVIE… 90 YEARS THE AGE OF ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD'S RICK DALTON WHEN HE WAS KILLED OFF BY QUENTIN TARANTINO LAST MONTH. IF YOU EVER REALLY CARED ABOUT KEN. YOU WOULD KNOW THAT NOBODY CARED ABOUT KEN. SO YOUR HYPOCRISY IS EXPOSED. THIS IS WHY HIS STORY MUST BE TOLD.' RYAN GOSLING HITS BACK AT HIS KEN CRITICS. RISING SON Having just locked Killers of the Flower Moon,…

TEASERS SPOILER ALERT! This is swiftly turning into the year of the cliffhanger ending. In 2023, we’ve already seen Dominic Toretto square off against an exploding dam, Miles Morales come face to face with himself, and there’s still Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One to come, the movie with the best chance of ending on some literal cliffhanging. You can probably blame it on the Avengers: Infinity War effect. The Snap was such an anticipation-builder that it helped briefly propel Avengers: Endgame to the all-time box-office top spot. From a commercial perspective, the logic is sound; a truly great cliffhanger will guarantee bums on seats next time around as ravenous viewers clamour to discover how, for example, Dom’s bulging biceps deflect several metric tonnes of raging water. But do…

RUSHMORE 1998 In the start of a long collaboration with director Wes Anderson, Schwartzman plays an obsessive but struggling high-schooler, Max Fischer. ‘I could relate to many aspects of the character,’ he says. MARIE ANTOINETTE 2006 ‘I’d never done anything set in the past before… I wanted to do the best job I could.’ True to the spirit of his cousin Sofia Coppola’s revisionist epic, Schwartzman’s out-of- isdepth Louis XVI feels recognisably modern. SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD 2010 In Edgar Wright’s cult comic-book favourite, Schwartzman is Gideon Graves, the ultimate end-of-level boss. The star approached the character from Scott’s perspective: ‘Be his idea of he worst-nightmare ex-boyfriend.’ LISTEN UP PHILIP 2014 Schwartzman’s nervy, neurotic energy finds a perfect outlet in Alex Ross Perry’s comedy of perspective as a writer…

OUT 14 JULY CINEMAS Vinay Shukla’s gripping, sobering doc examines the challenge and cost of speaking truth to power in the misinformation age. As rival channels stoke nationalistic fervour with hysterical, ratingsgrabbing debates, Indian broadcaster Ravish Kumar stoically continues holding the government and his peers to account. With advertisers pulling out and viewing figures dwindling, the toll on this world-weary firebrand is obvious. But while he paints a (necessarily) gloomy picture of modern political discourse and media reportage, Shukla’s portrait of a modest hero ends on a cheeringly hopeful grace note…

OUT 30 JUNE CINEMAS London seems small in writer/ director Sian Astor-Lewis’ debut feature To Nowhere, the city closing in on teenagers Tulip (Lilit Lesser) and Finn (Josefine Glaesel) against a backdrop of underpasses and off-licences. A brisk 85-minute runtime charts a day of truancy and underage drinking for the duo, amid several attempts to navigate their charged, ambiguous relationship. Lesser and Glæsel provide a steady backbone for the film as uneasy adolescents playing at adulthood - the moments when they’re interrupted by tangential side characters are when the story falters…

SCREEN OUT 30 JUNE CINEMAS A shocking true story, based on the 2019 book by Caroline Michel-Aguirre, receives a prosaic treatment in Jean-Paul Salome’s drama. Isabelle Huppert plays Maureen Kearney, an Irish-born trade union representative in France who paid a heavy price for going public with her suspicions that massive job cuts were imminent in the country’s nuclear power industry. The tale should rightfully infuriate, but the film is likelier to muster an apathetic shrug as the twists unravel over a ponderous two hours. Maureen herself is a remote presence: a consequence, maybe, of the brittle froideur that Huppert emanates in every scene.…

OUT 7 JULY CINEMAS Director Edward Lovelace (The Possibilities Are Endless) spent four years filming the subject of this moving and insightful documentary: a young Kurdish boy, deaf since birth, who travels to the UK (via a traumatic, turbulent year in a Dunkirk refugee camp) to learn British Sign Language, only to see his family threatened with deportation. Only the hardest of hearts would fail to be warmed by a touching tale of struggle and survival that needs a mere 91 minutes - and an uplifting finale at a Trafalgar Square rally to reach levels of inspirational feels that arguably rival Best Picture-winner CODA.…

OUT 30 JUNE CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA A sports film that’s not about winning or losing, Shô Miyake’s quiet but often mesmerising drama hits as hard as its heroine Keiko (Yukino Kishii), a Tokyo female boxer who is profoundly hearingimpaired. Exquisitely rendering Keiko’s small world of sparring and training, Miyake’s gently paced film is more concerned with her isolation, as Kishii’s vulnerable performance suggests the fear beneath her determination. A delicate soundscape - the chat, coaching shouts and thudding flurries of punches that Keiko cannot hear - brings home her immense challenges.…

SCREEN OUT NOW CINEMAS Director Louis Leterrier (Transporter, Clash of the Titans) brings welcome injections of energy and inventiveness to a series that has spent eight years striving to match up to 2015’s Furious 7. Fast Five also provides a spark for a story that sees Jason Momoa’s vengeful Dante Reyes striking out at the Torettos. Momoa is a refreshingly flamboyant threat, while a set-piece in Rome gives X its most Xhilarating moments. The massive ensemble leaves some stars (including Brie Larson) a little short-changed, but Leterrier still makes entertainingly outrageous work of the highway to Fast XI.…

OUT 23 JUNE CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA The Nobel prize-winning French author Annie Ernaux constructed this wistful cine-memoir with her son and co-director David Ernaux-Briot. It consists entirely of Super 8mm home-movie footage from the ’70s, including clips from trips to Chile, Albania, Morocco, USSR and a droughtridden London, shot mainly by Annie’s then-husband Philippe when she was working as a teacher. Ernaux’s ever-perceptive voiceover accompanies the silent images, commenting on the dynamics in her own family as well as the wider changes unfolding across French society.…

1986-1989 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Featurettes, Extended scenes, Booklet Despite the international success of the 1985 Hong Kong horror-comedy Mr. Vampire, its sequels have gone largely unseen in the UK, until now. If none scare up as many guffaws as the original, standalone films Mr. Vampire II, III, and IV remain easy recommendations for fans of jiangshi cinema’s hopping corpses, seductive spooks and magical monks. The absence of Mr. Vampire 1992 (the only direct follow-up to the first film) is alleviated somewhat by the inclusion of exuberant 1989 franchise knock-off  Vampire vs Vampire,…

1993 OUT 26 JUNE 4K UHD EXTRAS Book, Lobby cards, Poster John Woo’s first US feature looks a tad primitive by today’s action standards, but still packs a punch as Jean-Claude Van Damme’s mullet-favouring combat veteran Chance Boudreaux goes head-to-head with a band of manhunters who kill the homeless for sport. The New Orleans locales add a distinctive flavour to the chaos that ensues, with Aliens’ Lance Henriksen and The Mummy’s Arnold Vosloo giving as good as they get as JCVD’s primary opponents. Sandwiched between Universal Soldier and Timecop, it’s the Muscles from Brussels at his Hollywood pinnacle.…

1983 OUT 26 JUNE 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentary, Poster, Art cards, Bumper sticker The original Griswold family adventure: not, perhaps, the most obvious choice for a 4K upgrade, but a welcome one all the same. For their annual holiday, Chevy Chase’s everyman Clark insists on driving wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo) and their kids (Anthony Michael Hall, Dana Barron) cross-country to visit Walley World. What could go wrong? Well, everything - not least a classic run-in with John Candy’s security guard. Directed by Harold Ramis from John Hughes’ script, it’s a very 80s but still very funny jaunt, one that lances the American Dream like a boil.…

SCREEN 2006-2010 AVAILABLE ON DVD, BD, DIGITAL The brainchild of Teen Wolf Too screenwriter Tim Kring, Heroes was nothing short of a revelation when it exploded onto television screens in September 2006. Arriving at a time when superheroes were not ubiquitous on screens big and small, Kring’s serialised drama about ordinary people developing extraordinary powers was soon being touted as the next great piece of genre TV. Across the course of Season 1, it was hard to argue otherwise. Operating under the catchy mantra ‘Save the cheerleader, save the world,’ the debut season of Heroes was a near-perfect example of televisual storytelling. Unlike so many other serialised dramas, not a single one of its 23 episodes feels wasted. The fascinating characters, intricately woven mysteries, and gripping core storyline - centred…

WHAT? Kellerman’s - the leafy upstate New York vacation resort for Baby and her family, and home to snake-hipped hoofer Johnny, in Dirty Dancing. This is your dance space, let’s cha-cha… WHERE? Not NY: Mountain Lake Lodge nestles in a forest in Pembroke. Virginia. GO? Unchanged since the 1986 filming, Mountain Lake has the gazebo for merengue lessons, the corner to not sit in, and the lift lake (which recedes and fills according to the season). Want us to investigate if a movie scenario is bollocks or snapped yourself at a film location? Contact us at totalfilm@futurenet.com…

There’s one way to make crime pay: become a lawyer. Defend the innocent, prosecute bad guys, draw up contracts and finesse those loopholes - any way you look at it, there’s a fee involved. Whether they’re chasing ambulances or crushing the weak underfoot like agents of corporate greed, the Shifty Lawyer is a cinematic mainstay and a gift for character actors. Typically presented as either a big shot with an expense account or a pennypincher wearing a cheap tie, both types are willing to fight dirty to win and lick their lips at the sight of dollar signs. Often as corrupt as the criminals they represent, to them the law is a challenge to be overcome and justice a product to be profited from. These guys will keep filling their…

I felt kind of stupid when I was doing it,’ said star James Woods of the scenes where Max Renn, the protagonist of Videodrome, gets up close and personal with his TeleRANGER TV screen. His ‘stupid’ is our disturbing and (whisper it) erotic, as a mesmerised Max approaches the televised lips of Nicki Brand (Blondie’s Debbie Harry) and the screen begins to bulge utwards as she puckers, and then billows when she blows. ‘Don’t keep me waiting,’ she murmurs, inviting Max to sink his flesh into her open mouth. This he does, meshing man and achine in a prescient horror movie that traverses the edges of reality and consciousness as it explores our fears and fascination with sex, violence and technology. Long live the new flesh, indeed. Much of Videodrome’s…

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE 1983 Given Bernard Herrmann’s Citizen Kane score for reference, Sakamoto instead offered a timeless one of his own. THE LAST EMPEROR 1987 Working with David Byrne and classical composer Cong Su, Sakamoto banked an Oscar for his score’s lyrical immersion in Chinese history. SNAKE EYES 1998 Pulp and beauty: Sakamoto rose to the challenge of De Palma’s flashy noir with a high-grade, Bernard Herrmann-esgue score. THE REVENANT 2015 With Alva Noto and Bryce Dessner, Sakamoto evoked the space and majesty of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s revenge epic with controlled power.…