Indholdsfortegnelse for Christmas 2023 i Total Film

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE Shortly after the release of 2013's The Wind Rises, Hayao Miyazaki announced he was calling it quits. ‘I actually believed that was going to be his last film,’ says producer Toshio Suzuki. ‘That he wasn't coming back, that he would retire…’ Happily, Miyazaki U-turned in 2016, starting work on a new feature film that formally entered production the following year under the banner of Studio Ghibli, the anime colossus he and Suzuki co-founded. Centred on a young lad's odyssey through a fantastical land filled with peril, heart-piercing beauty and militant parakeets, The Boy and the Heron occupies a unique perch in the writer/director's canon. ‘For the first time [Miyazaki] is telling his own story,’ reveals Studio Ghibli executive Junichi Nishioka. ‘So although there are fictional elements, more than half…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE If we told you that Expats is, in part, a show about a missing boy, you're probably picturing the resolution already – a tense rescue, tearful reunion and the promise of a brighter future. Without busting open the spoiler seal, Expats isn't that show. ‘It's not what audiences might expect, or be used to,’ says Lulu Wang, director of 2019's The Farewell and all six episodes of this limited series. ‘This show is a meditation. It's so many other things that are not “what happens next?” In life, we don't often get closure.’ It was the show's star, Nicole Kidman, who brought Expats to Wang, after optioning Janice Y.K. Lee's source novel. Kidman plays Margaret, the mother whose son has recently gone missing. The young woman responsible for the…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE Prepare for a gritty, bloody and rather violent surprise with Echo, the latest entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The five-part series marks an exciting new era for Marvel Studios, with the show's creative team promising a more mature and raw approach. Whether it's the grisly splattering of blood during a street brawl or the gruesome snap of a victim's neck in a bone-crunching death, this isn't the family-friendly heroics of the past. ‘We knew the show was going to have a more grounded approach tonally, visually and aesthetically,’ explains Echo director and executive producer Sydney Freeland. ‘We knew we wanted to have much more of a street-level version of storytelling. When we were in the edit bay, we were playing with how far to push things. We've definitely…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE FELINE GROOVY Feeling neglected and skittish, Mog dozes off on the roof. Her dreams are soundtracked by a toe-tapping paean to community and acceptance from David Arnold and Don Black, who first collaborated on The World is Not Enough. ‘As soon as David sent the song over, I pictured this little cat curled up on the roof, looking at all the little windows and people wrapping their Christmas presents,’ smiles Sophie Ellis-Bextor, who sings it and whose five children know the books by heart. ‘The essence of Christmas is being where you feel you belong, with the people you love. It's been a dream project.’ Judith Kerr's series of Mog picture books began in 1970 and has sold more than four million copies around the world. Now Lupus Films,…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE My way of feeling or relating with the world is contemplative,’ admits Lois Patiño, the Spanish director behind Samsara. Part documentary, part transcendent journey, it began when Patiño encountered The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the most popular book on Tibetan Buddhism in the Western world. ‘I'm interested in how different cultures relate with death, with dead people, with the afterlife – myths, legends or stories they create around these afterlife experiences,’ he tells Teasers during the London Film Festival. After visiting the Buddhist-following country of Laos, where he met templedwelling teens, Patiño decided to centre the first part of the film there. Shot in 16mm, this observational work sees young monk Be Ann (Toumor Xiong) aid an ageing, ailing woman called Mon (Simone Milavanh) as he reads to…

2024 PREVIEW DUNE: PART TWO DIRECTOR DENIS VILLENEUVE STARRING TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET, ZENDAYA, REBECCA FERGUSON, JAVIER BARDEM, AUSTIN BUTLER, FLORENCE PUGH ETA 1 MARCH This second film is not a sequel,’ director Denis Villeneuve says of his highly anticipated follow-up to 2021’s Dune. ‘It's really a second part of the same film.’ That much is plain to see when Villeneuve treats Total Film to an early glimpse of Dune: Part Two's thrilling opening 12 minutes which, following a brief pre-title sequence, picks up right after Part One's inconclusive final moments. ‘The first movie was more meditative and contemplative. We were following a young man discovering a new planet, a new culture,’ Villeneuve says. ‘The second movie… it's more of an action film than the first part. It's more muscular.’ To that…

ALIEN: ROMULUS DIRECTOR FEDE ÁLVAREZ STARRING CAILEE SPAENY, ISABELA MERCED, ARCHIE RENAUX, DAVID JONSSON, AILEEN WU ETA 16 AUGUST In space, no one can hear you scream. In Hollywood, everyone's giving it the silent treatment regards the plot of Alien: Romulus, which is rumoured to take place between the events of Alien and Aliens, but acts as a standalone story. So far, all that Disney and 20th Century Studios have teased is that it zeroes in on ‘a group of young people on a distant world, who find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe’. Presumably the release isn't referring to Total Film's News Editor Jordan Farley, but rather the infamous Xenomorph. The towering beast with a nice line in dental work is back,…

Godzilla and Kong fight off a new threat… GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE DIRECTOR ADAM WINGARD STARRING REBECCA HALL, DAN STEVENS, BRIAN TYREE HENRY, RACHEL HOUSE, ALEX FERNS ETA 12 APRIL We've so far seen four movies and two TV shows in the MonsterVerse. The last big-screen outing, 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, delivered on its title, and then concluded with everyone's two favourite Kaiju teaming up to hand Mechagodzilla his ass on a stadium-sized plate. So how do you get bigger than that? Well, shooting the whole thing in IMAX 1.90:1 is a great start. What's more, this sequel - made in Queensland, Australia - looks set to pit our titanic buddies against a new threat. Mechagodzilla, it seems, was just a warm-up bout. And though the nature of…

MUST-SEE, BECAUSE What is that beast coming out of the misty ice in the trailer? We need to know! GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE DIRECTOR GIL KENAN STARRING CARRIE COON, PAUL RUDD, ERNIE HUDSON, BILL MURRAY ETA 29 MARCH The sting at the end of the Oklahoma-set Ghostbusters: Afterlife suggested that any sequel would take the action back to New York, and so it proves in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Yes, Ghostbusters HQ will again be real-life Tribeca firehouse Hook & Ladder 8. ‘I love this building so much,’ posted Gil Kenan on social media. Kenan here directs after co-writing Afterlife with Jason Reitman. It warms the cockles we're back – bustin’ really does make you feel good – but the Big Apple is under a deep freeze, with an ancient artefact threatening…

THE FALL GUY DIRECTOR DAVID LEITCH STARRING RYAN GOSLING, EMILY BLUNT, AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON, WINSTON DUKE, HANNAH WADDINGHAM ETA 3 MAY Few people know stuntwork like David Leitch. The director of Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and Bullet Train cut his teeth as a stunt performer, before becoming a stunt coordinator and founding 87eleven Action Design with Chad Stahelski (with whom he made John Wick). So when an adaptation of 80s TV series The Fall Guy - which starred Lee Majors as a stuntman-turned-bounty-hunter - leaped on to his desk, it was a no-brainer. ‘[Producer Guymon Casady] was like, “I got The Fall Guy. Would you be interested?”’ Leitch tells Total Film. ‘We were like, “Uh, yes, of course. It's totally a story that's near to my heart.”’ Working again with his…

DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS DIRECTORS ETHAN COEN, TRICIA COOKE STARRING MARGARET QUALLEY, GERALDINE VISWANATHAN, BEANIE FELDSTEIN, MATT DAMON, PEDRO PASCAL ETA 15 MARCH Me and Trish read a lot of those pulpy noir novels by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain,’ says Ethan Coen over Zoom. ‘Well, me and Joel [do too], but also me and Trish.’ Tricia Cooke jumps in: ‘Maybe because those have a good antihero. And there's a darkness.’ Ethan nods. ‘Well, sure. We gravitate towards the unimportant stuff, well done.’ Like much of the Coen brothers’ output, Drive-Away Dolls – written, directed and edited by Ethan and his wife of 33 years, Cooke, who's edited several of the Coens’ movies – promises to be a twisty-turny crime movie populated by colourfully incompetent oddballs. It's set between Philadelphia…

JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX MUST-SEE, BECAUSE It's likely to be the water-cooler conversation of the cinematic year. JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX DIRECTOR TODD PHILLIPS STARRING JOAQUIN PHOENIX, LADY GAGA, BRENDAN GLEESON, ZAZIE BEETZ, CATHERINE KEENER ETA 4 OCTOBER With the subtitle Folie à Deux (meaning Madness for Two in French), Todd Phillips’ sequel to his billion-dollar-earning 2019 movie is giving Joaquin Phoenix's failed clown Arthur Fleck a dance partner – and it's none other than Harley Quinn. Don't expect an all-singing, all-grinning-and-grimacing Margot Robbie, though. Phillips’ Joker was set in a different timeline to other DC movies, and it's Lady Gaga who'll bring the bonkers. ‘I think she'll do something incredible with it,’ says Robbie, and we at TF Towers agree because a) the singer-songwriter has already proven herself a…

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME DIRECTOR THEA SHARROCK STARRING BILL NIGHY, MICHEAL WARD, SUSAN WOKOMA, VALERIA GOLINO ETA 2024, NETFLIX When director Thea Sharrock (Me Before You) read the script for Frank Cottrell Boyce's The Beautiful Game, she was bowled over. The story tells of a team of English players venturing to Rome to compete in the four-a-side Homeless World Cup. ‘I loved it as a football fan and as a film fan,’ she says. ‘It's got so much heart and soul. Frank is a wonderful writer; he really gets into the heart of characters.’ Then she discovered that the Homeless World Cup was a real phenomenon, a tournament first held in 1999 to advocate for a global solution to homelessness. ‘I couldn't believe the size of it, the scale of it,’…

2024 PREVIEW MUST-SEE, BECAUSE An on-fire cast in another Spielberg/ Hanks epic. MASTERS OF THE AIR CREATOR JOHN ORLOFF STARRING AUSTIN BUTLER, CALLUM TURNER, BARRY KEOGHAN, NCUTI GATWA ETA 26 JANUARY, APPLE TV+ (TWO-EPISODE PREMIERE FOLLOWED BY WEEKLY EPISODES) Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ hit WWII miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific focused on US troops on the ground in Europe and on the marine campaigns of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, respectively. Now the duo look skyward with an adaptation of Donald L. Miller's sweeping book. Focusing on the men of the 100th Bombardment Group stationed in Norfolk and carrying out dangerous daylight raids over Germany in B-17s (so-called flying fortresses), Masters of the Air follows the multi-story narrative of its predecessors to create a tapestry of warfare experience…

SCREEN Finding their feet… SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED BOY 2010 Waititi mines humour and heart from an offbeat group of Pacific Islanders in his sophomore directing effort. NEXT GOAL WINS 2014 The original, spirited doc by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison, who serve as producers on Waititi's film. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN 2021 You don't need skill to be an inspiring sports-movie subject, as Mark Rylance's golfing goofball proves. For more reviews visit gamesradar.com/totalfilm Taika Waititi's latest shares its title and premise with a 2014 British documentary about the American Samoa national football (as in soccer) team, notoriously one of the worst in the international game. As retold here, the team received a 31-0 thumping from Australia in 2001. Cut to a decade later: ahead of the 2011…

SCREEN When director Mel Stuart's Roald Dahl adaptation arrived in 1971, many critics dismissed the songs as mere aural confectionery. ‘Fair,’ sniffed one; ‘forgettable,’ wrote another. Fifty-two years on, fans remember otherwise. Willy Wonka now resembles the everlasting gobstopper of kids’ musicals: sweet, tart and secured by sticky melodies to childhood memories. Not that the soundtrack was without risk. Stuart was ambivalent about incorporating songs. Composerlyricist Leslie Bricusse (who co-wrote the score and songs with Anthony Newley) felt intimidated working on the stage next to where 1972’s Cabaret was being shot, believing Wonka to be ‘amateur’ by comparison. But when Bricusse/Newley presented Stuart with a few songs, the results helped shape and define a film that didn't have a completed script yet. Revisited, the brightly irresistible tunes bring feeling and…

IS IS BOLLOCKS? Film Buff investigates the facts behind outlandish movie plots. THIS MONTH DUMB MONEY Q Did Dumb Money’s Keith Gill (AKA Deep-Fucking-Value, AKA Roaring Kitty) actually bring Wall Street to its knees from his bedroom? Keith Gill (played by Paul Dano in the film) managed to start a movement by betting against Wall Street. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a bunch of Jordan Belfort-types started ‘shorting’ GameStop stocks – essentially, they were betting that the American video–game retailer would go bankrupt and the share price would drop to zero. Gill foresaw that GameStop's fundamentals were not pointing towards bankruptcy and started buying shares. He then posted videos on YouTube about his investment, leading to Reddit users also investing money in GameStop, increasing the share price further. Those Jordan Belfort-types…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE You've got to hand it to Blitz Bazawule. Since releasing his micro-budget debut feature The Burial of Kojo in 2018, the Ghanaian director has worked with Beyoncé, and now he's the first person to remake a Steven Spielberg film with The Color Purple. No pressure. ‘They were deeply generous in letting me make my movie,’ Bazawule tells Teasers. He's not only referring to Spielberg, but also Oprah Winfrey, Alice Walker and Quincy Jones – The Color Purple’s all-star producers. ‘They let me make risky choices. This is my vision on screen.’ Rather than a remake of Spielberg's 1985 drama, about an abused African-American woman's journey to liberation in early 20th-century Georgia, it would be more accurate to call The Color Purple an adaptation of the 2004 Tony Award-winning musical.…

semi-autobiographical, and this Home and, in the meantime, I hope assumption is disproportionately Cote's dream comes true and we made about Black artists. I've since get films from Osage filmmakers For film journalists, this time of year means near-constant ranking and re-ranking of our bestfilms-of-the-year lists. This year, a noticeable pattern has emerged. Among those jostling for my top spot are Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Io Capitano and Occupied City – the latter two due to hit UK cinemas next year. They are all brilliant, and they are all made by filmmakers who aren't members of the communities they are depicting. Christopher Nolan isn't Jewish, Matteo Garrone isn't Senegalese, Steve McQueen isn't Dutch and Martin Scorsese isn't a member of the Osage Nation. This has raised a few…

‘NO EVIL STREAMING SERVICE CAN COME STEAL IT FROM YOU.’ THE REAL REASON YOU SHOULD BUY OPPENHEIMER ON BLU-RAY, ACCORDING TO CHRISTOPHER NOLAN. $843k THE SALE COST OF ANTHONY DANIELS’ ORIGINAL C-3PO MASK, WHICH WENT UP FOR AUCTION IN CONJUNCTION WITH PROPSTORE LAST MONTH. ‘HE WAS IN THE AMAZON WITH MY MOM WHEN SHE WAS RESEARCHING SPIDERS RIGHT BEFORE SHE DIED.’ MADAME WEB (DAKOTA JOHNSON) DELIVERS AN EARLY CONTENDER FOR 2024’S DIRE-LOGUE OF THE YEAR. 4KAMERCON Six James Cameron classics are being released on 4K Blu-ray, with Titanic and both Avatars out in December, followed by Aliens, True Lies and The Abyss on 12 March. GOOD THING BAD THING MUSK WE? Darren Aronofsky will direct an Elon Musk biopic for A24, based on Walter Isaacson's authorised biography of the Twitter-tanking…

ADVERTORIAL Christmas is the perfect time for sharing with your nearest and dearest, whether it's a favourite film, a box of chocolates or a board game from the cupboard that's opened once a year. This festive season, instead of dusting off the old favourites, why not level up your play time with two new video games from Sega, which are guaranteed to keep the whole family entertained, and make for the perfect Christmas present. SUPER FAST, SUPER FUN, SUPERSTARS The first is the return of bona fide videogame icon and box-office juggernaut Sonic the Hedgehog, in Sonic Superstars. A fast-paced, fun-filled nostalgia hit, Sonic Superstars takes fan-favourite characters, including Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy Rose, to the mystical Northstar Islands, a wondrous new land where action-packed adventure awaits. Dr Eggman…

TEASERS On paper it looked like a sure thing: take established Looney Toons character Wile E. Coyote, give him a new story worked on by James Gunn and starring John Cena, then let him loose in a Roger Rabbit-esque meta-mash-up of animation vs. live action. Test audiences certainly thought so, with Dave Green's film receiving positive scores, according to reports. And then, out of nowhere, the project got shelved. The move by Warner Bros. Discovery prompted widespread dismay, with Green posting on Twitter/X that he was ‘beyond proud of the [film], and beyond devastated’ by the decision. The studio initially defended kiboshing Coyote in order to secure a $30m tax write-off, having made similar moves with Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt last year. However, they had perhaps underestimated the backlash.…

MUST-SEE, BECAUSE Worm-riding desert warfare on a galactic scale. KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES DIRECTOR WES BALL STARRING OWEN TEAGUE, FREYA ALLAN, WILLIAM H. MACY, KEVIN DURAND, DICHEN LACHMAN ETA 24 MAY From what I've heard and what I've seen… it's gonna blow people's minds,’ said Andy Serkis of this continuation of the Apes trilogy in which he starred as Caesar. And while Serkis isn't returning in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which is set several generations in the future, he's been advising the star of the show, Owen Teague. ‘I remember Andy being like, “You get used to it and you stop worrying about it after a week”,’ said Teague of sporting a motion-capture suit with a camera strapped to his head. ‘And he was…

MUST-SEE, BECAUSE You can't be left hanging after Part One's climax. REBEL MOON – PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER DIRECTOR ZACK SNYDER STARRING SOFIA BOUTELLA, DJIMON HOUNSOU, CHARLIE HUNNAM, ED SKREIN ETA 19 APRIL, NETFLIX The compressed release strategy for Zack Snyder's two-part ‘science-fantasy’ space opera Rebel Moon, means that there's a good chance you're reading this preview of Part Two: The Scargiver (out 19 April) before Part One: A Child of Fire (out 22 December) has even released. But spoiler-phobes fear not, even Total Film has yet to take the trip to the planet of Veldt at the time of writing. So what can Snyder say about Part Two that won't give the game away? ‘The truth is that movie one is a set-up for movie two,’ Snyder teases. ‘The…

INSIDE OUT 2 DISNEY/PIXAR, WARNER BROS. INSIDE OUT 2 DIRECTOR KELSEY MANN STARRING AMY POEHLER, PHYLLIS SMITH, MAYA HAWKE ETA 14 JUNE If ever a Pixar film screamed out for a sequel, it was Inside Out. The concept - in which the emotions inside a young girl's head are personified as colourful characters seemed like such a rich seam to mine. A critical and commercial success, it ranked eighth overall on TF’s ‘films of the 2010s’ countdown (the highest-placed animated film). ‘Every movie here is hard, and every movie is difficult,’ says director Kelsey Mann, a Pixar veteran making his feature directorial debut on Inside Out 2. ‘But especially when you have to follow-up a film that's as beloved as the first Inside Out. We wouldn't do another movie unless…

BEETLEJUICE 2 DIRECTOR TIM BURTON STARRING MICHAEL KEATON, JENNA ORTEGA, WINONA RYDER, WILLEM DAFOE, MONICA BELLUCCI ETA 6 SEPTEMBER Before Batman, before Edward Scissorhands, before, er, Planet of the Apes, Tim Burton gifted the world horror-comedy Beetlejuice. Instantly iconic, it was the movie that made him, and there's been talks of a sequel since its 1988 release. ‘I love Lydia so much,’ said Winona Ryder in 2013, referring to her teen Goth who can see the ghosts of the couple who previously lived in her family's new house. They then turn to unruly, untrustworthy, undead ‘bio-exorcist’ Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) to scare off these pesky humans. ‘She was such a huge part of me,’ continued Ryder. ‘I would be really interested in what she is doing 25 years later.’ And now…

THE BIKERIDERS MUST-SEE BECAUSE Buzzy awards contender with plenty of horsepower. DIRECTOR JEFF NICHOLS STARRING TOM HARDY, AUSTIN BUTLER, JODIE COMER, MICHAEL SHANNON, BOYD HOLBROOK ETA 2024 Originally due to be released in December 2023, Jeff Nichols’ love letter to 60s biker culture was pushed into 2024 during the SAG-AFTRA strike, in the hopes the cast would be able to promote it during awards season. But now its release date is TBC as Disney is no longer distributing and Universal have taken hold of the handlebars. Based on Danny Lyon's photoessay book, the film tracks a Chicago bike gang via the observations of one of the wives, Kathy (Jodie Comer). Falling for bad boy Benny (Austin Butler), Kathy watches as the group violently implodes under leader Johnny (Tom Hardy) –…

MUST-SEE, BECAUSE We love plane-to-plane action. See Executive Decision and The Dark Knight Rises. LIFT DIRECTOR F. GARY GRAY STARRING KEVIN HART, GUGU MBATHA-RAW, SAM WORTHINGTON, VINCENT D'ONOFRIO, JEAN RENO ETA 12 JANUARY, NETFLIX My aim from the start is to make sure the audience fall in love with the characters, so when I put them in jeopardy, the audience care.’ So said director F. Gary Gray when he remade The Italian Job. That time it didn't work out, but Gray – who's had much better luck with films like Set It Off, The Negotiator and Straight Outta Compton, and who handled action on a grand scale with Fast & Furious 8 – is back trying to crack another audacious heist movie. Netflix thriller Lift sees Cyrus Whitaker (Kevin Hart)…

ONE DAY LEAD WRITER NICOLE TAYLOR STARRING AMBIKA MOD, LEO WOODALL, ELEANOR TOMLINSON, ESSIE DAVIS ETA 8 FEBRUARY, NETFLIX Being hired to write the script for Netflix's new adaptation of David Nicholls’ much-loved novel One Day was a real pinch-me moment for Nicole Taylor. ‘It's my favourite novel of all time, so I still can't believe it,’ she tells Total Film excitedly. The epic love story between two friends, Emma and Dexter, played out over 20 years on 15 July - St. Swithin's Day - was a word-of-mouth sensation when it was published in 2009. Danish director Lone Scherfig then turned it into a hit film in 2011 starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. Netflix's adaptation will span 14 episodes. ‘I wanted to give it the most faithful adaptation I…

ON SET TRUE DETECTIVE What's in the box? Jodie Foster, arms folded, dressed in the beiges and browns of the Alaska State Troopers, is staring intently at a series of cardboard containers scattered across the floor of a cramped office. Joining her is boxerturned-actress Kali Reis (Catch the Fair One), her partner-in-crime-solving. ‘Let's do this,’ mutters Reis’ Evangeline Navarro, as they don black gloves and begin sifting through folders of evidence. The true detective work is about to begin. It's 1 March 2023 – day 87 of 112 – and Total Film has travelled to Reykjavik, Iceland, where the fourth season of HBO's procedural anthology series True Detective has been filming since the previous September. Outside, daylight is in short supply, something the cast have had to adjust to. ‘It's weird…

TRAINING DAY 2001 ‘I wrote that script on spec out of frustration,’ says Ayer. His tale of a rookie cop (Ethan Hawke) spending his first day as a narcotics officer with a rogue detective won Denzel Washington a Best Actor Oscar. DARK BLUE 2002 Hired to rework a James Ellroy script, Ayer streamlined the action. He wrote it for Kurt Russell to play a third-generation officer who plants evidence and shoots false suspects. ‘He knocked it out the park,’ says Ayer. HARSH TIMES 2005 Ayer's directorial debut is naturally set in his old stomping ground (in life and film), South Central LA, as violence comes between friends Jim and Mike (Christian Bale, Freddy Rodriguez). ‘It's the world I know,’ he says. END OF WATCH 2012 A cop friend showed Ayer…

SCREEN SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED WATERLOO 1970 Rod Steiger donned the tricorne hat for this Hundred Days epic. The battle scenes – featuring 15,000 costumed extras – still dazzle. GLADIATOR 2000 Russell Crowe got the plaudits, but Phoenix's Commodus is a villain for the ages in Scott's iconic hit. BEAU IS AFRAID 2023 Fewer battles than Napoleon, but Oedipal issues are similarly central in Ari Aster's Phoenixstarring odyssey. For more reviews visit gamesradar.com/totalfilm OUT NOW CINEMAS TBC APPLE TV+ Before spiralling costs forced him to retreat, Stanley Kubrick famously claimed that his planned Napoleon biopic would be ‘the best movie ever made’. Ridley Scott hasn't reached those unimaginable heights with his own account of the French autocrat's life, but this masterfully marshalled, entertainingly playful historical epic is one of…

CHEERS BELA Born in 1914 and orphaned by 1925, the young William Schloss got his first taste of showbiz when he met actor Bela Lugosi, who invited the teen to join a touring stage production of Dracula. Changing his Germanic surname to Castle when war broke out, he subsequently met director George Stevens, who hired the charismatic young man as dialogue director on his 1941 Cary Grant picture Penny Serenade. HIRE AND LOWER Castle spent the 1940s and 50s as a director-for-hire at Columbia Pictures, shooting cheapies like The Whistler (1944) and 3D western Fort Ti (1953). Any unhappiness with his career progression was further cemented after he acquired the rights to Sherwood King's novel If I Die Before I Wake. Castle was passed over for the director's chair, which…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE When BAFTA-winning director Mahalia Belo (Ellen) read Megan Hunter's 2017 novel The End We Start From, even before it was published, she immediately wanted to bring it to the screen. ‘I was nervous about how it'd be adapted, partly because there's this background [of an] ecological disaster,’ she explains. ‘I thought that if they wanted to make the film, they'd want to make a disaster thriller! And I felt that the most exciting part of that book was what it's talking about: the devastating [feeling] and beauty of having a first child.’ The story begins with London partly submerged after a great flood. Food is scarce but Hunter's book isn't so much about survival as what happens to two young parents (Jodie Comer, Joel Fry) who have a newborn.…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE We didn't have a Series 2 in mind,’ promises Harry Williams, the co-creator – together with brother Jack – of BBC1 hit The Tourist. Dropping in January 2022, this Australian-set thriller with Jamie Dornan racked up 11.4 million viewers, holding off all comers to remain the most watched TV drama of the year. ‘Obviously,’ adds Harry, ‘when something goes really well, you start talking more and more: “Ah, we love these characters. We love this world. We love this tone. We'd love to do more of it.” They got their wish. Picking up the story, Series 2 sees Dornan's shady amnesiac Elliot return to his native Ireland after receiving a message that may help him unlock his past. Arriving there with Helen (Danielle Macdonald), the Outback cop from S1…

TEASERS EXCLUSIVE Knowing what I know about narcos-trafficking, it's unconscionable that a woman would be able to sit on the throne,’ says Eric Newman, co-creator of Netflix hit Narcos and new, thematically connected, miniseries Griselda. It's what makes the story of Griselda Blanco, aka The Cocaine Godmother, all the more remarkable – she rose to the top of a world more male-dominated than the Catholic priesthood. Colombian ‘queenpin’ Griselda was a key figure in the Miami cocaine trade in the late 70s and early 80s, earning a fearsome reputation in the process. Six-episode series Griselda, starring Modern Family’s Sofía Vergara, aims to do for Blanco what Narcos achieved for Pablo Escobar – humanise a notorious criminal. ‘Everyone who wrote about her depicted her as an absolute monster. And in my experience,…

FURIOSA DIRECTOR GEORGE MILLER STARRING ANYA TAYLOR-JOY, CHRIS HEMSWORTH, TOM BURKE, ANGUS SAMPSON ETA 24 MAY Back in 2015, George Miller raised the bar for action spectacle with Mad Max: Fury Road, its outrageous vehicular carnage accelerating past, and vaulting over, what he achieved with 1981’s Mad Max 2. Prequel Furiosa will give viewers the origin story of Charlize Theron's feminist warrior, showing how she's snatched from The Green Place, once home to The Many Mothers, falls in with the Biker Horde that's led by Dementus, and is taken to The Citadel, presided over by a young Immortan Joe. ‘This is an epic,’ says Anya Taylor-Joy (Last Night in Soho, The Queen's Gambit), who plays young Furiosa. And while she promises ‘you kind of get to know [her] better’ in…

2024 PREVIEW NOSFERATU MUST-SEE, BECAUSE Even Eggers likes it. He says it's the first of his films, in postproduction, that ‘I haven't hated’. James O'Barr's graphic novel THE CROW (TBA) wings its way to the screen with Bill Skarsgärd stepping into Brandon Lee's shoes as Eric Draven… Forget Avatar, there's a new Pandora in town. Eli Roth directs Arain Greenblatt, Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis in game adap BORDERLANDS (9 August)… NOSFERATU DIRECTOR ROBERT EGGERS STARRING BILL SKARSGÅRD, LILY-ROSE DEPP, NICHOLAS HOULT, WILLEM DAFOE, AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON ETA COMING 2024 Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse, The Northman) was nine years old when he first watched F.W. Murnau's silent masterpiece on VHS. He, like many of us, was haunted by the atmosphere of undiluted dread that emulsifies the celluloid, and by Max Schreck's…

THE IRON CLAW THE IRON CLAW DIRECTOR SEAN DURKIN STARRING ZAC EFRON, JEREMY ALLEN WHITE, HARRIS DICKINSON, MAURA TIERNEY, HOLT MCCALLANY ETA 9 FEBRUARY MUST-SEE, BECAUSE Zac Efron could be in line for an Oscar nom. Writer-director Sean Durkin continues his obsession with families (Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Nest) with this biopic of the Von Erich brothers, who became legends in the world of wrestling in the 80s and 90s. A rise-and-fall tale of tragic dimensions, The Iron Claw – named after a signature wrestling move – is being tipped as a major awards contender. While undoubtedly a sports drama that's pumped with action and refreshingly stripped of clichés, the film is also, says Durkin, much more besides. ‘It's a family drama, a celebration of brotherhood and wrestling, a…

MUST-SEE, BECAUSE Buzzy awards contender with plenty of horsepower. GLADIATOR 2 DIRECTOR RIDLEY SCOTT STARRING PAUL MESCAL, DENZEL WASHINGTON, PEDRO PASCAL, CONNIE NIELSEN ETA 22 NOVEMBER There have been rumblings of a Gladiator sequel ever since Ridley Scott's 2000 original took a tiger-sized bite out of the box office and conquered the Academy Awards. But how do you bring back Maximus? Is it set in the afterlife? So it was that Gladiator 2 only really got any traction three years ago, as Scott accepted the ‘very obvious idea’ of making it about the son of Maximus (Russell Crowe), from his union with Lucilla (Connie Nielsen, returning here). The script took shape as the legendary director was, like the rest of us, bingeing Normal People, and there was his lead –…

ON SET NEXT GOAL WINS t's a bright and sunny day on the picture-perfect island of Oahu, Hawaii, where Taika Waititi is wandering around a football pitch in shorts, flip-flops and a fluorescent orange baseball cap. The Jojo Rabbit director sports a huge smile on his face as he weaves his way through players and movie cameras. He's clearly in his element. It's December 2019 and Total Film is on the set of Next Goal Wins, a low-key comedy about the American Samoa football team and their attempt to qualify for the 2014 World Cup. This comes after the squad's embarrassment of a notorious 31-0 defeat to Australia years prior in what's described as the ‘worst loss in international football history’. Inspired by a British documentary of the same name, Waititi…

MAKING OF THE KITCHEN When Londoners get together the conversation inevitably turns to how the city ‘ain't what it used to be’. The evidence provided usually includes house prices, the Circle Line and the gentrification of Brixton. Oscar-winning actor Daniel Kaluuya is no exception and asks Total Film, ‘What happened to King's Cross?!’ The Camden native shakes his head and continues, ‘I grew up right up the road, and it's been drained of its nuance, intricacies and identity. They made it generic to impress people coming off the Eurostar.’ Kaluuya has co-written and codirected the dystopian thriller The Kitchen, which takes place in a near-future London where social housing is outlawed. Most of the city is a pristine, bland nightmare devoid of messy humanity, but The Kitchen estate has endured despite…

OUT NOW PC, PS5, XBOX SERIES (DIGITAL ONLY) Back in 2010, Remedy Entertainment's Stephen King–inspired action–horror saw the eponymous thriller author decamp to a quiet town in the Pacific Northwest to cure his writer's block, only to fall into a nightmare of his own making. Thirteen years is a long wait for a follow-up – but rather than sweep that under the carpet, the Finnish developer boldly uses it as a metatextual plot point: where has Wake been all this time…? We're made to wait longer still for our hero's reintroduction: a disturbing prologue concludes with a ritualistic murder, prompting the arrival of new playable protagonist, FBI agent Saga Anderson. Her half of the story takes the form of a gripping, slow-burn procedural – True Detective’s first season filtered through…

SCREEN LAURENT BOUZEREAU TITAN Charting the first decade (or so) of one man's movie career may seem like a strange choice. But then how else do you approach a body of work that, as composer John Williams notes in the foreword, ‘may never be surpassed’? Running from Duel (1971) to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), this officially sanctioned cinematic scrapbook features a packed chapter on each of Steven Spielberg's first seven films, plus interviews with the man himself and an introduction by his friend and collaborator George Lucas. It's the work of French documentarian Bouzereau, who has directed ‘Making Of’ videos for the Indiana Jones movies, among others. Perhaps because he's writing about his boss, there's a slightly gee-whizz quality to the text – apparently Spielberg giving notes on set is…

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