Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2024 i Total Film

Loved chatting to everyone involved on The Penguin. Clancy Brown assured me that Colin Farrell's Oz Cobb will be as iconic as Highlander's Kurgan. There can be only two? A thrill to have a supersized chat with Sir Ridley Scott about his expanded director's cut of Napoleon and his relationship to editing. It's well worth a revisit on Apple TV+, if you have 205 minutes going spare… It was fantastic covering the D23 convention in Anaheim, California. The entertainment showcase featured so many famous faces, but I was genuinely star-struck by the presence of The Dude, Jeff Bridges. My summer holiday in Sweden came with an unexpected dash of Hollywood glam: Kiefer Sutherland and his band gigging at the local theme park! Had a great time exploring the Laika: Frame…

SPOTLIGHT HIMESH PATEL It's August 2024, and Himesh Patel is enjoying the quiet before the storm. While he's not shooting anything at this precise moment, he's gearing up for promo mode on a trio of new projects. ‘I have three things coming out, all being publicised in quick succession,’ he says. When Total Film quips it's often the way that an actor's long-gestating work ends up being released close together, he's quick to caveat: ‘If you're lucky. I feel very lucky to have that.’ Luck's a subject that Patel returns to again and again, whether it's modesty or a clear-eyed appreciation of how timing and circumstances influence anyone's life. ‘It's not intentional on my part in any sort of calculated way,’ he says of his sudden influx of projects. ‘As lucky…

‘NOW NOTHING IS ABOUT LOOKS OR ABOUT BEING A LEADING LADY. AND IT'S VERY LIBERATING’ I've been in short-bite mode,’ announces Emily Watson, sitting opposite Total Film on a comfy sofa in London's Corinthia Hotel. Dressed in loose-fitting black slacks and a white blouse with a giant poppy print, she's been talking up Small Things like These, the delicate new drama based on Claire Keegan's novel. A day of doing short sound bites to camera isn't ideally suited to Watson, a highly astute actress whose nigh-on three-decade career has seen her work with such mavericks as Charlie Kaufman, Paul Thomas Anderson and Robert Altman. Ever since Watson broke through as Bess, the troubled woman in Lars von Trier's 1996 drama Breaking the Waves, the die was cast. Winning her a first…

SCREEN OUT 4 OCTOBER CINEMAS Writer/director Aaron Schimberg (2018's Chained for Life) crafts one of the most original works you're likely to see this year, a meta-movie that cunningly examines issues surrounding beauty and artistic creation. Some distance removed from his MCU persona, Sebastian Stan plays Ed, a New Yorker living with neurofibromatosis. Yet when a doctor offers a miracle-drug treatment, Ed's life changes overnight: his facial tumours simply fall away, leaving him unrecognisable to all those that know him. Instead of revealing he's been cured, Ed decides to take on a new identity, recasting his life in a new image. Even his neighbour Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), a budding playwright, has no idea that it's the same old Ed. But this is just the start of Schimberg's increasingly oddball venture, which…

OUT 4 OCTOBER CINEMAS SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST 1975 If Phoenix's Fleck is a twisted R.P. McMurphy, Brendan Gleeson's belligerent guard is FàD's Nurse Ratched. Loathsome. NEW YORK, NEW YORK 1977 Though it's Golden Age musicals that are referenced throughout, Scorsese's misfire is a close cousin, as Taxi Driver/The King of Comedy were to Joker. PRIMAL FEAR 1996 FàD's melodramatic courtroom theatrics and legally dubious procedure feel like a 90s legal thriller play-by-play. For more reviews visit gamesradar.com/totalfilm Let's give the people what they want,’ says Lady Gaga's Harleen ‘Lee’ Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn) at a key juncture in Joker: Folie à Deux. It's a perverse statement for a film that seems stubbornly committed to giving audiences quite the opposite. The much-anticipated sequel to Todd…

OUT 20 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS A star student has a sexual awakening in this terrific drama, which is much more than just a coming-of-age saga. Sixteen-year-old Mira (played by an excellent Preeti Panigrahi) is the first girl to be made top prefect at a strict Indian boarding school in the Himalayas. There's an instant attraction between her and new student Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), which the pair explore in ways both playful and responsible. Endearingly, Mira treats sexual preparation much like she does her homework – and she clearly enjoys both. In her debut feature, writer/director Shuchi Talati neatly dispenses with well-worn college-movie archetypes: this seemingly prim swot of a teenager can also be horny, silly, funny, jealous, angry… The latter two feelings might be justified when it comes to Mira's mother Anila…

OUT 20 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS French cinema seems to have a particular penchant for courtroom drama at the moment. Following on from Alice Diop's Saint Omer and Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall, writer/- director Cédric Kahn's gripping feature recreates a controversial trial from mid-1970s France, in which the Jewish left-wing revolutionary Pierre Goldman (played with magnetic intensity by Belgian actor Arieh Worthalter) appealed against his convictions for two murders committed during armed robberies. Save for a brief legal-chambers prologue, the film unfolds entirely in the claustrophobic and emotionally charged surroundings of a packed Amiens courtroom. Kahn adopts a pared-down approach to his storytelling: Academy-ratio framing, no flashbacks, no musical score, and a drab colour palette. The focus is on the militant Goldman, who is defended by attorney Georges Kiejman (Arthur Harari),…

SCREEN OUT 27 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS A teenager takes mushrooms and is visited by her 39-year-old self, played by Aubrey Plaza… This Sundance hit certainly has an intriguing set-up. While it might sound like a stoner sci-fi, My Old Ass is nuanced and sensitive, unfolding as a queer coming-of-age story that muses on life choices and relationships. Maisy Stella charms as Elliott, a pleasant and faintly rebellious teen. She's also just met up with a girl she likes, and is keen to seal the deal. But when she and her mates take a trip, Elliott is suddenly visited by her future self. It's both humorous and compelling watching the two chat: one full of curiosity, the other witty caution. One of the key warnings given is to stay away from a guy called…

SCREEN 2014 OUT 27 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS Between the urban/global wars of The Dark Knight Rises and Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan rocketed off-world on a theme of love for his ninth feature, making a 10th-anniversary return voyage to cinemas. Fusing poetry and pipe organs with meditations on quantum science and temporality, Interstellar is a leap-of-faith wonder that upholds the heart as humanity's defining defence against binding cosmic absolutes: time, notably, and its attendant costs. A parent/child tale of separation and sacrifice drives the film, with Matthew McConaughey's pilot Cooper cutting himself off Batman-style from all he holds dear. Joining Anne Hathaway and others to travel through space and find humanity a new home, he discovers miracles but loses his family as time travels faster beyond the wormhole than on Earth. Coop's much-meme'd but…

SCREEN 1999 OUT NOW 4K UHD + BD EXTRAS Alternative cut, Commentary, Featurettes, Deleted scenes, Outtakes, Music video, Stills gallery, Booklet Can it really be a quarter of a century since audiences enjoyed their first slice of Pie? Amazingly, more time has now passed since the first American Pie than in the 18-year gap that separated director Paul Weitz's comedy from that former bastion of high-school horniness, Porky's (1981). Thankfully, Pie has aged slightly better than its less-than-illustrious predecessor. Although the primary focus of Adam Herz's raunchy script is the friendship between four teenage boys (Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Eddie Kaye Thomas) on a mission to lose their virginity by prom night, Pie at least makes some effort to flesh out the female characters and to foreground female…

1 A CLOCKWORK ORANGE Stanley Kubrick opens his ultra-stylised tale of gang warfare, state violence and quashed free will with Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) leering into the camera. Throughout, his gleeful narration cajoles and befriends us. Viddy well, my droogs. Viddy well. 2 FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF ‘Life moves pretty fast,’ says Ferris (Matthew Broderick). ‘If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.’ The teen truant's charming straight-to-camera chats mean we're happy to play hooky with him. 3 ANNIE HALL When Alvy (Woody Allen) and Annie (Diane Keaton) are in a cinema queue, a pompous academic spouts off about film, quoting media scholar Marshall McLuhan. Alvy complains to us, the viewer, then rustles up McLuhan himself to correct the overbearing asshat. 4 WAYNE’ S WORLD This party-time…

THIS MONTH The Fallout It's a mystery to me how a film that stars Jenna Ortega (Scream, Wednesday) and that won a Grand Jury Award at SXSW in 2021 has not been released in the UK. But here, at the time of writing, we are. I say ‘at the time of writing’ because I'm hoping that's changed by the time you read this, or will do soon after. Interviewing writer/director Megan Park in July for her sophomore feature, My Old Ass (see page 89 for the review), I pointed out that her debut is maddeningly unavailable in the UK, and she promised to look into it. That, added to Ortega starring in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to continue her meteoric ascent, gives me hope. And hey, if all else fails you can always…

FILM BUFF 1930–2024 I like difficult roles,’ said Gena Rowlands. No kidding. A stage, TV and film actor whose career spanned more than six decades, Rowlands will be most remembered for the series of coruscating dramas she made with her first husband, actor-turned-director John Cassavetes, between 1968 and 1984. Born Virginia Cathryn ‘Gena’ Rowlands in Madison, Wisconsin in 1930, she met Cassavetes at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1953. They married within a year, and she played a small role in his third directorial effort, A Child is Waiting (1963). But it was playing a sex worker fielding a series of depressed, lonely men in Cassavetes’ marital breakdown drama Faces (1968) that served as a spotlight for her detailed, emotionally intelligent work. Becoming Cassavetes’ partner on screen as in…

Jon M. Chu is transporting us back to the world of Oz for his adaptation of the Broadway phenomenon Wicked. It's something the In The Heights director has dreamt of for a long time, and it's coming to fruition as not just one film, but two, due for release in consecutive years. ‘I just remember being blown away by how cinematic it was,’ Chu says of seeing the stage show for the first time. ‘I loved, emotionally, how it moved me, the relationship between these two women.’ The two women in question are Elphaba – an ambitious girl born with green skin, who's better known as The Wizard of Oz's Wicked Witch of the West – and Galinda, who would later become Glinda the Good in the famous 1939 movie.…

Q&A Who is Declan O'Hara? He's a journalist with a wife and a couple of kids. They've had to leave London for the Cotswolds, although we're not initially sure why, and it coincides with an offer he's received to leave the BBC and work for Tony Baddingham's TV company. He's a workaholic and impetuous – he generally thinks with his pen first, fists a very quick second. We have to talk about Declan's moustache… It makes a real statement, doesn't it? You can hide behind a beard, whereas this Tom Selleck thing puts you front and centre. Weirdly, I looked very like my dad did back in the 1980s. Why did Rivals appeal? Jilly is brilliant at writing characters and, while it is wickedly funny, we cover some very serious…

TEASERS Aged 20, Maisy Stella has already starred in hit ABC show Nashville, is a bestselling recording artist, authored a children's book, appeared on numerous ‘best dressed’ lists, and launched an exclusive furniture range. And now she's wowing critics as queer teen Elliott in ace comedy drama My Old Ass, in which she meets her older self in the form of Aubrey Plaza… Why did you choose writer/director Megan Park's My Old Ass as your feature debut? I was such a fan of Megan from The Fallout. And I felt so aligned with this movie. There were so many things about the character… It was very cosmic. Everything just came out as if it was me speaking. Megan allowed you to mould the dialogue into your own words… It makes the…

‘We life-casted Colin. He has a great face for make-up. In make-up, you have to add pieces. You can't penetrate the canvas; you can't reduce. I sculpted his nose a bit, I angled his eyebrows, and I started to add some weight. ‘Colin's a pretty boy, so I added some acne scars. Al Capone had scars, so I kept that in mind and thought, “How can I incorporate a bird?” I incorporated a penguin and an eagle. In an eagle's life, at a certain point they break their beak off to be reborn. They have this damaged beak, chipped and twisted. I wanted to make his nose look like a beak. ‘The first attempt we had [on the movie], it was four hours in the make-up chair. We got faster.…

Contrary to what you might expect, Super/Man is not a documentary about Superman. Richard Donner's 1978 classic was an effects marvel, a proof of concept for today's superhero industrial complex and a launchpad for its statuesque, magnetic leading man Christopher Reeve. The documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story starts not with the soaring highs of that trailblazing blockbuster, which launched its nascent star into the stratosphere, but with the 1995 equestrian accident that shattered Reeve's first and second vertebrae and left him paralysed from the neck down. ‘You start with somebody who awakes from a coma, and discovers that he can't even move his little finger. He can't breathe on his own. There's no more superpowers,’ says co-director Peter Ettedgui who, alongside co-director Ian Bonhôte, previously helmed the documentaries McQueen…

OUT NOW CINEMAS 20 SEPTEMBER NETFLIX Filmmaker Azazel Jacobs follows up 2020's French Exit with a slow-burn study of sibling rivalry, parental mortality and the ties that bind. The trio of sisters at the heart of this stagey drama arrive in the Bronx apartment of their dying father to watch over his final moments, their differences marked. Kate (Carrie Coon) is a control freak nursing resentment for half-sister Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), a pot-smoking gambler who's cared for Dad throughout his illness and lives in the apartment. The mediator between the two is middle sis Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), who does yoga between the mismatched furniture. As the three discuss DNR orders and food prep, the true nature of their relationships comes into stark view. Though initially brittle and difficult to fully engage…

SCREEN OUT 20 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS Incredible prosthetics and a fierce performance from Demi Moore are the standouts in the thrilling second film from French writer/director Coralie Fargeat (2017's Revenge). Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a fitness guru who's about to be ousted from her TV show by oily exec Harvey (Dennis Quaid) when she gets the chance to become a ‘younger, better version’ of herself. Injecting a mysterious liquid, her back splits open and out pops another persona (played by Margaret Qualley). Reinventing herself as Sue, Qualley's youthful character is soon making a bid for TV fame, but fails to heed the instructions of ‘The Substance’, which demand she switch back to her original body every seven days. When Sue gets greedy, Elisabeth reacts adversely, prompting a battle for control – one…

SCREEN OUT 27 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS It never gets easy - it just gets less hard.’ So goes the advice to recovering alcoholic Rona (Saoirse Ronan) in Nora Fingscheidt's (System Crasher) drama, based on Amy Liptrot's bestselling memoir. We first meet Rona when she's reluctantly living back home in Orkney with her mother (Saskia Reeves). She's clearly desperate for friends, and the folks in Mum's Bible club aren't going to cut it. But returning to London would likely be too much temptation, as we see in flashbacks showing Rona's descent into an addiction that cost her everything she held dear. There's a stark contrast in style and pace between the scenes in the capital and those on the windswept islands. Some of Rona's memories have the juddery excitement of a giddy party;…

SCREEN OUT 27 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS If Neil Marshall's 2019 Hellboy had you seeing red, then this rendition by director/co-writer Brian Taylor (Crank) will come as a relief. It's the closest big-screen version yet to Dark Horse Comics’ shorn-horn superhero – creator Mike Mignola had a sizeable hand (ahem) in the screenplay – and favours gruff ‘n’ rough over the poetry of Guillermo del Toro's lovingly crafted noughties movies. Adapted from the 2008 The Crooked Man series, HTCM is set in Appalachia, 1959, as our half-human, half-demon hero (Jack Kesy, nailing the sarcasm-and-soul combo) teams up with rookie Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense agent Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph, underused) to battle the region's Devil (Martin Bassindale). This is an evocative world of mist and murk, blind preachers and sold souls,…

SCREEN OUT NOW CINEMAS Zoë Kravitz takes a thrilling leap from acting to directing with her searing feature debut. If Blink Twice doesn't quite hit the heady heights of Jordan Peele's Get Out as a socially engaged and satirical thriller, it plays in the same ballpark, dauntlessly taking on gender, class and racial dynamics that are cruel and widespread. Naomi Ackie (Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody) plays down-on-her-luck waitress Frida, who accepts an invitation from tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) to stay at his stylishly appointed private island. This luxurious setting is populated by partygoers (and poisonous snakes) – but from the first close-up on a reptilian face, it's clear something is amiss. Kravitz takes her time revealing what is actually happening there, leading to a masterful twist…

2004 OUT 27 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS Back in cinemas for its 20th(!) anniversary, Edgar Wright's first big-screen team-up with Spaced pals Simon Pegg and Nick Frost is every bit as good as you remember. Nodding to George A. Romero's undead oeuvre, this London-set horror-comedy odyssey stars Pegg as Shaun, a directionless electronics salesman whose relationship with Liz (Kate Ashfield) is going down the toilet because he'd rather spend nights in the pub with layabout flatmate Ed (Frost). Unbeknown to them, a zombie pandemic is sweeping the capital, one that's about to rudely awaken our slacker heroes’ survival instincts. Soon enough, Shaun, Ed and Liz, alongside Shaun's mum Barbara (Penelope Wilton) and stepdad Philip (Bill Nighy), plus Liz's snooty friends Dianne (Lucy Davis) and David (Dylan Moran), find themselves dodging flesh-munchers on the…

THIS MONTH DARK MATTER'S PARALLEL TIMELINES Q In Apple TV+ show Dark Matter, a scientist swaps places with a version of himself from an alternate reality. Pure fiction or sci-fact? A Professor Jim Al-Khalili CBE FRS, theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster says… The premise of Dark Matter is somewhat similar to the one in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, in the sense that it explores the idea of the quantum multiverse. Now, here is where a bit of an explainer is required. Essentially, there are two types of multiverse theories that appear in modern physics, and it's useful not to confuse them. The first is the idea of a cosmological multiverse, which is hypothesised to exist in order to explain how come our universe is so finely tuned to give…

AUTEURED IMAGES Born in 1958 in Pennsylvania, Stone parlayed a tough, traumatic childhood into a successful modelling career. Moving into acting, she scored early roles in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980) and Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing (1981), but always dreamed of being good enough to go toe to toe with Robert De Niro (watch this space…). After an eye-catching role in Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990), she went stratospheric with the director's next film… WINNING BIG After a string of duds (1993's Sliver, 1994's Intersection and The Specialist) plus Sam Raimi's quirky The Quick and the Dead (1995), Stone hit the jackpot again with Martin Scorsese's Casino (1995). Playing Ginger McKenna, the vivacious wife of De Niro's Mob gambling expert Ace Rothstein, she fulfilled that early dream, scoring a Golden…

TEASERS At just 20 years of age, Millie Bobby Brown has already starred in the global phenomenon Stranger Things, produced and starred in multiple feature films and written a debut novel alongside ghostwriter Kathleen McGurl. If that wasn't enough to put her on the map, Brown's now set to produce a feature adaptation of that novel. Titled Nineteen Steps, it's a love story set against the backdrop of World War Two. The feature should further cement Brown as Netflix's biggest star, with reports saying that the young actor is also looking to take on the leading role in the film – a character based on her grandmother. Playing the telekinetically gifted Eleven in Netflix's Stranger Things shot Brown to stardom, and since then the actor has become one of the…

You talkin’ to me? Yes, I am talking to you, and what a pleasure it is to do that. I'm sitting in my garden and the sun's out; the weather's nice, and I can't wait for the next question! Why don't you tell me the story of your life? I was born in Hounslow. Mum and dad moved out to the suburbs, then my dad told me to do law. I did that and didn't like it, so then I went to drama school. Then I got out of drama school and was out of work for years, then found work when I was in my 30s, started paying my bills. I'm 43 now, so I'd say it's been a good sort of 10, 12 years of being a working…

What do you usually take on set with you? The sides – I transfer my notes from the scripts to the sides – and your coffee if you haven't finished it. Quite often, if the thing's well-organised, what happens is you start going through the works – hair, make-up, all that stuff – and then you're pulled and you go and rehearse, so a pencil's a good idea. Do you have any on-set superstitions? No. I think luck is real, definitely. But I don't believe in magic-eight balls or tea leaves or four-leaf clovers or stuff like that. Do you go for a hot or cold lunch? See, lunch is important. Good catering makes everybody look forward to lunch, so it's actually a really important piece of the alchemical puzzle.…

Very few people win an Oscar for their first feature-film performance. Lupita Nyong'o happens to be among the privileged few, winning Best Supporting Actress for her role in 12 Years a Slave. Since then her career has been full of interesting characters, from a dual role in Jordan Peele's Us to a certain Wild Robot in DreamWorks’ latest animated adventure… In 2009 you made a documentary, In My Genes. Would you ever go back to writing and directing? I really love documentary, and I would want to do that again. I'm not particularly interested in directing fiction, to be honest. Why's that? Because I feel like you have to be interested in playing god. Directors have to be mini gods. They have to care about every single element in front of…

MATT REEVES ‘It's coming along well. We're finishing the script and talking about shooting it next year. It's going to be another detective story, another mystery, another crime story. ‘Colin's going to be in the movie, but we're leading into a whole new chapter of the continuation of the story. The reason it's called The Batman Part II is because I want the emotional part of the story to be Robert Pattinson's – to be Bruce and Batman's. We didn't do an origin film [with The Batman] but we referred to his origin. A lot of times, previously, they've done a thing that once you're past his origin, then it becomes, “Oh, this is the Riddler film,” or, “This is the Joker film.” I didn't want to do that. I'm…

OUT 12 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED STRAW DOGS 1971 Peckinpah's classic is also a tale of soft-bellied Americans being terrorised by a coarse Brit. ABIGAIL'S PARTY 1977 Mike Leigh's satire of manners has less blood, but is every bit as painful to watch. MIDSOMMAR 2019 Both versions of Speak No Evil see prey being lured in. See also The Wicker Man, Hostel, et al. For more reviews visit gamesradar.com/totalfilm Stark and unsettling.’ ‘Depraved.’ ‘I never, ever want to see it again.’ So read the reviews of Christian Tafdrup's Danish-Dutch production Speak No Evil (2022), a film so unflinching and unsparing it was immediately elevated (or should that be relegated?) to ‘bleakest movies ever made’ conversations alongside the likes of Salò, Requiem for a Dream and Cannibal Holocaust. No…

OUT 27 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS The phrase ‘vanity project’ seems fair when applied to Francis Ford Coppola's long-gestating, self-funded epic which, despite its (many) foibles, is not without entertainment value. From overblown sci-fi concepts to incest and erections, Megalopolis is a comedy of errors in a more literal sense than may have been intended, despite its Shakespeare references. Adam Driver plays Cesar Catilina, an architect in a future inspired by ancient Rome. Cesar is hellbent on transforming the selfish city into a harmonious community with his somewhat baffling plans, to the annoyance of the mayor (Giancarlo Esposito). The mayor's daughter (Nathalie Emmanuel) falls in with Cesar after he falls out with his mistress, TV presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza). Meanwhile, Shia LaBeouf and Jon Voight play characters with Trump-like qualities. Lofty ideas…

OUT 20 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS Longlegs isn't the only independent serial-killer movie to make a splash this year. Strange Darling, by writer/director J.T. Mollner, landed in the US to a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was endorsed on X by Stephen King: ‘It's really terrific… a clever masterpiece.’ Separated into six chapters presented in non-linear fashion, this horror thriller at first appears like it might be a bit too clever for its own good. But it soon emerges that the time-hopping, flip-flopping structure is in place for shrewd narrative reasons. Our readiness to fill in the story gaps and make assumptions are craftily toyed with as we're drip-fed titbits of information while watching a one-night stand spiral into a spree of killings in the state of Oregon. Boasting great music…

OUT 13 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS 27 SEPTEMBER NETFLIX At the heart of this likeable, gently moving doc is a road trip taken by Will Ferrell and his longtime friend and collaborator Harper Steele, a trans woman who transitioned later in life. Ferrell embraces his friend's identity without hesitation – but, like many would, he has some awkward questions. So when Steele decides to undertake the kind of road trip she's taken throughout her life, albeit for the first time as Harper, Will (and cameras) join. The film's biggest strength is the way it opens up a dialogue between friends, and makes space for understanding, with Ferrell a sensitive, empathetic inquisitor. Director Josh Greenbaum (Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Lazenby doc Becoming Bond) follows without intruding or making the route…

OUT 13 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS I'd rather take a picture than be one,’ barks US model-turned-photojournalist Lee Miller (a deliciously brusque Kate Winslet), revealing the extraordinary stories behind her famous WW2 photos. Exploring how a one-time art muse fought to report atrocities, this handsome but conventional biopic showcases a tip-top Winslet performance but at times meanders like a weighty Wikipedia entry. Veteran cinematographer Ellen Kuras’ first directing gig drifts lyrically through Miller's bohemian pre-war French era and a photogenic if lifeless affair with Alexander Skarsgård's Brit Roland Penrose. It leaps to life once Miller finds her wartime photographic passion, snapping Blitz firefighters for Vogue then haring across newly liberated France and Germany with the US Army, doggedly recording the horrors she finds while Alexandre Desplat's lush score hints at her despair. Kudos…

OUT NOW CINEMAS After various baggy saga entries, Alien: Romulus opens with a retrieval operation that hints at director Fede Alvarez's (2013's Evil Dead) back-to-basics, franchise-saving intentions. It's an aim that's only partly fulfilled by an in-between-quel – post-Alien, pre-Aliens – that aspires to be all things to all Alien fans. Often tense and tangible, Romulus freights its leaner pleasures with excess franchise matter, to frustrating effect. Rain (Cailee Spaeny), her synthetic ‘brother'/protector Andy (David Jonsson) and friends are preparing to flee the Jackson's Star colony, via an illicit jaunt to decommissioned space station the Renaissance. On board, however, terrible truths about the ship's salvage work and experiments emerge… Soon, our runaways are running and screaming to order. They're also hell-bent on quoting other Alien films, to increasingly corny effect. The…

1974 OUT 4 OCTOBER CINEMAS Spoof? Horror comedy? However you categorise Mel Brooks’ riff on James Whale's Frankenstein (with a bit of Bride of Frankenstein stitched on for good measure), Young Frankenstein stands among the best of its subgenre. Now 50 years Young, it's back in cinemas to elicit yummy sounds. Gene Wilder is by turns subtle and broad as Dr Frederick Frankenstein, grandson of the infamous Victor, who finds himself first invited to the late Baron's castle and then continuing his work of reanimating the dead with the help of houseboy Igor (a scene-stealing Marty Feldman). Hitting the bases of Whale's masterpiece (not all of which are in Mary Shelley's novel) – grave-robbing, lightning-fuelled experiments, kind-hearted blind man (Gene Hackman!), innocent flower girl, torch-bearing lynch mob – Brooks is generous…

ALIEN: ROMULUS Arguably, Benjamin Wallfisch's score does a sturdier job of gene-splicing homages and fresh horrors than Romulus itself. The Chrysalis is exemplary, mixing a piercing xenomorph theme with neo-liturgical awe. Raine's theme adds warmth, Andy's adds ambiguity, while variably eerie, brassy, spooked nods to Goldsmith, Horner and Streitenfeld are neatly embedded. And if the action cues lapse into generic electro-abrasive fodder, The Offspring is something new: dark, dissonant and properly alien. DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE Rob Simonsen strikes a smartly goofy/grandiose balance with his sure-footed MCU entry. The Deadpool theme is well-developed and malleable, moulded to match motifs from Beltrami, Silvestri and other multiverse forebears. Malign moodscapes and moggy miaows add menace and mirth, as needed, before He's Not Gonna Make It flexes hero pecs nicely. A separate song-track release…

THE REAL BOGIE & BACALL ‘We're going to have a lot of fun together!’ Humphrey Bogart reportedly said to ingénue Lauren Bacall as they prepared to film 1944's To Have and Have Not. And so they did, over the course of what became one of the great Hollywood romances, despite his alcoholic binges and their 25-year age gap. With only 150 pages of text, author Catherine Curzon's joint biog is patently too slim to do the relationship full justice. It's a perfectly serviceable precis, though, that leaves behind an alluring whiff of old-school glamour. NEIL SMITH STAR WARS DAD JOKES ‘How does Wicket get back to his village? Ewoks.’ Believe it or not, that's one of the subtler examples of wordplay (or War-dplay, if you will) in Kelly Knox's purposefully…

HAVE YOUR SAY TOTALFILM.COM VIDEOS • REVIEWS • TRAILERS • NEWS totalfilm.com twitter.com/totalfilm facebook.com/totalfilm totalfilm@futurenet.com STAR LETTER I've (finally!) seen Deadpool & Wolverine, and I have to say I absolutely loved it. Seeing those two beloved characters together with all the cameos and fan service was pure fun. I'll never suffer from superhero fatigue, but I can understand others do, because of one particular factor: every villain being hellbent on mass destruction. It's boring. The great thing about comic-book characters is their capabilities. Obviously a decent story is important, but seeing powers and abilities used in clever ways should also be paramount, in my opinion. More villains just messing with the heroes, or scheming for their personal gain on a smaller scale would be most welcome. PETER RENDER, VIA EMAIL If…

FILM SPOILER ALERT! FADE IN: EXT. FIELD, OKLAHOMA DAISY EDGAR-JONES and her student friends try to collapse a tornado. Despite her near-psychic ability to predict them, this tornado is bigger than normal and it kills her helpers. DAISY EDGAR-JONES Maybe these giant, raging vortexes of destruction are actually quite scary? INT. NEW YORK OFFICE – FIVE YEARS LATER ANTHONY RAMOS, the only other survivor, now has fancy tornado-scanning equipment. He asks DAISY EDGAR-JONES for help. She agrees and they travel back to Oklahoma. GLEN POWELL Yee-haw! I'm a rootin’, tootin’ tornado-wrangling cowboy and an influencer. I'm here to get me some YouTube content! DAISY EDGAR-JONES You seem insufferable, and yet there's a spark between us. While these cyclones destroy towns and lives, let's turn this into a fun competition. Both…