May 2019

Empire Australasia

Empire, the biggest movie magazine in the world, is the movie-lover's bible.

Empire Australasia2 min read
This Month At Empire
IT’S MAY 2019, and we’re now living in a post-Avengers: Endgame world. As that particular film, we’re confidently assuming, goes on to make All The Money, it’s time for us all to ponder: what next? Stroke your beard / imaginary beard and ponder no lo
Empire Australasia3 min read
Comment
I discovered Empire in 2002 and have been a subscriber ever since. I have a collection of posters of my favourite movies and have a copy of the 2013 ‘500 Greatest Movies’ edition on the bookshelf when I am looking for inspiration of what to watch. Ma
Empire Australasia2 min read
The Founding Father
ONE OF THE greatest joys of Marvel Studios bringing Spider-Man into the MCU was seeing how well Peter Parker played with the superheroic grown-ups. But, much as we loved watching him take down Ant-Man in Civil War, or compare pop-culture notes with S
Empire Australasia2 min read
Look who’s Tolkien
FINNISH FILMMAKER DOME Karukoski is a self-proclaimed Tolkien nerd. He first read The Hobbit aged 12, and still watches Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings film trilogy every Christmas. (“The extended versions,” he is careful to point out.) So when
Empire Australasia3 min read
A Battle For The Soul Of Cinema
IT’S THE DEBATE that has divided Hollywood. After Netflix’s Roma won three Oscars, and narrowly missed out on Best Picture, Steven Spielberg was reportedly looking to use his position on the Academy’s board of governors to change the rules, forcing s
Empire Australasia2 min read
Killer Instincts
STEPPING OUT OF The Greatest Showman’s circus ring straight into the shoes of one of America’s most notorious serial killers is a transition few actors can pull off. And yet Zac Efron — star of new Ted Bundy biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil,
Empire Australasia2 min read
Raised From The Dead
AFTER MORE THAN a decade of constant comeback talk, it’s happened: Deadwood is back, now in feature-length form. Set in the 1870s, the HBO series about a small, lawless Dakota town on the up was prematurely shut down in 2006, but has only grown in st
Empire Australasia2 min read
Stanley Donen 1924-2019
WHEN DIRECTOR STANLEY Donen died in February, at the ripe old age of 94, the world felt just a little bit less romantic. His wildly inventive, boldly colourful approach to the screen musical changed the face of cinema, directing and choreographing th
Empire Australasia2 min read
The Elton John Songbook
THE DANGER WITH making an Elton John musical that mines his songs to tell his life story is that it could end up being 10 hours long. The legendary pop star has released 33 studio albums across a six-decade career. So how did Dexter Fletcher, directo
Empire Australasia2 min read
Twin Trouble
AS IMPLIED BY the title, Men In Black: International expands the intergalactic crime-fighters’ world geographically. But it’s also expanded extraterrestrially. Expect a lot more aliens in this part-sequel, part-reboot, such as Rebecca Ferguson’s many
Empire Australasia2 min read
Welcome To Paradise
YOU WON’T FIND the island paradise of Genosha on TripAdvisor. It’s not exactly the sort of place you can just hop onto a plane and visit. Even Michael Palin might find it hard to rock up there for one of his travel docs. Largely because it doesn’t ex
Empire Australasia2 min read
Warner Bros Is Right To Ditch The DCEU
THERE AREN’T MANY good things about 1997’s Batman & Robin, but there’s at least one. A single throwaway line, a cheeky little in-joke. When George Clooney’s Batman becomes exasperated by Robin and Batgirl, he grumbles: “This is why Superman works alo
Empire Australasia3 min read
How Much Is A Carton Of Milk?
Aside from acting or singing, what one thing do you do better than anyone else you know? Tidying up. I’ve been watching that lovely Japanese lady [Marie Kondo]. She’s just gorgeous. She walks into a room that’s a mess and goes, “Yay!” I’m not going
Empire Australasia3 min read
Dissing The Dystopia
Hi Damon! So there’s some unexpectedly great effects in the film used to envision what life might be like in 2040... That was the whole premise, being, if we are gonna put up this sort of vision of a future and get people excited about it, we’ve jus
Empire Australasia3 min read
Long Shot
★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Jonathan Levine CAST Seth Rogen, Charlize Theron, O’Shea Jackson Jr., June Diane Raphael, Ravi Patel PLOT At a swanky party, out-of-work journalist Fred Farsky (Rogen) reunites with Charlotte Field (Theron
Empire Australasia2 min readEnvironmental Science
2040
★★★★ OUT 23 MAY RATED G / 92 MINS DIRECTOR Damon Gameau CAST Damon, Zoe and Velvet Gameau, PLOT Now he has a young daughter, Aussie actor-turned-documentary maker Damon Gameau has a different outlook on the impact of global warming. Here he consi
Empire Australasia2 min read
Top End Wedding
★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 102 MINS DIRECTOR Wayne Blair CAST Miranda Tapsell, Gwilym Lee PLOT Lawyer Lauren’s (Tapsell) plans to marry her boyfriend, Ned (Lee), are thrown into disarray when her mother, Daffy (Ursula Yovich), disappears into the wil
Empire Australasia2 min read
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, And Vile
★★★ OUT NOW RATED TBC / 108 MINS DIRECTOR Joe Berlinger CAST Zac Efron, Lily Collins, Angela Sarafyan, Jim Parsons PLOT In 1970s Seattle, Liz Kloepfer (Collins) is a single mum, who thinks she’s found the man of her dreams on a night out. That ma
Empire Australasia3 min read
Gloriabell
★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 101 MINS DIRECTOR Sebastián Lelio CAST Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Michael Cera, Caren Pistorius PLOT Divorcee Gloria Bell (Moore) works an office job by day and gets her groove on at over-40s disco clubs by night. Roman
Empire Australasia2 min read
Missing Link
★★★★ OUT NOW RATED PG / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Chris Butler CAST Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Zach Galifianakis, Stephen Fry, Timothy Olyphant, David Walliams, Emma Thompson, Matt Lucas PLOT In Victorian London, old-school adventurer Sir Lionel Frost (Ja
Empire Australasia2 min read
Peterloo
★★★★ OUT 16 MAY RATED M / 154 MINS DIRECTOR Mike Leigh CAST Maxine Peake, Rory Kinnear, Pearce Quigley, David Moorst, Karl Johnson PLOT Manchester, 1819: a period of famine after the Napoleonic Wars leads to increasing radicalism among working pe
Empire Australasia1 min read
Making A Massacre
“When I first heard about a Mike Leigh action sequence, I thought ‘Hello, are we going to sit down in a library and throw books at one another?’ The first thing he said was I want all my actors to ride. I suggested when he auditioned his cast he’d se
Empire Australasia3 min read
Us
★★★★ OUT NOW / 116 MINS RATED MA15+ DIRECTOR Jordan Peele CAST Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Evan Alex, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Anna Diop, Elisabeth Moss PLOT During a relaxing vacation to Santa Cruz, Adelaide Wilson (Nyong’o), her husband (Duke)
Empire Australasia3 min read
The Light Knight Rises
EXAMINE ANY 15-minute section from Shazam! and you’ll find more jokes than the entirety of Man Of Steel. This fun wish-fulfilment story — lonely foster kid finds himself transformed into a brawny hero — is a world away from the faux-realism of Christ
Empire Australasia2 min read
Dumbo
★★★★ OUT NOW RATED PG / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Tim Burton CAST Colin Farrell, Danny DeVito, Michael Keaton, Eva Green, Alan Arkin PLOT Florida, 1919. Former big-top star Holt Farrier (Farrell) returns to Max Medici’s (DeVito) struggling circus having
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Line Of Duty: Season 5
★★★★ ABC / iVIEW OUT TBC EPS VIEWED 1-2 (OF 6) SHOWRUNNER Jed Mercurio CAST Adrian Dunbar, Martin Compston, Vicky McClure, Stephen Graham PLOT Hastings (Dunbar), Arnott (Compston) and Fleming (McClure) — aka anti-corruption unit AC-12 — are back
Empire Australasia3 min read
Shazam!
★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M /132 MINS DIRECTOR David F. Sandberg CAST Asher Angel, Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Grace Fulton, Jack Dylan Grazer, Djimon Hounsou PLOT A wizard (Hounsou) gives 15-year-old Billy Batson (Angel) the ability to transform into an
Empire Australasia2 min read
Hanna
★★★ PRIME VIDEO OUT NOW EPS VIEWED 7 OF 8 SHOWRUNNER David Farr CAST Esme Creed-Miles, Joel Kinnaman, Mireille Enos PLOT Raised in the wilderness and trained as a killer by her father (Kinnaman), Hanna (Creed-Miles) is thrust into civilisation an
Empire Australasia9 min read
Royal Rumbal
King Of The Monsters is not Michael Dougherty’s first Godzilla movie. In fact, the rampaging, reptilian colossus starred in the 44-year-old writer-director’s first ever film. In a sense. Thirty-five years ago, when living in Columbus, Ohio, Dougherty
Empire Australasia8 min read
Fresh Pirince
“STARK TERROR!” THIS is not an emotion you expect Will Smith, a man who has survived aliens, perps, robots and the word ‘Willennium’, to ever experience. But the thing that gave one of the biggest stars on the planet the heebie-jeebies, he divulges t
Empire Australasia1 min read
They Love Lamp
APPEARANCE: The genie (Rex Ingram) was made to tower over hero Abu using then state-of-the-art tech: an optical printer that allowed for different pieces of footage to be spliced together. Even more impressive? Ingram’s eyebrows, which resemble moder
Empire Australasia9 min read
Excess All Areas
THERE’S AN ELEPHANT in the room. Empire knows it. Dexter Fletcher, the director of Rocketman, knows it. He knows that whenever anyone talks about his movie, this comparison will be made. It’s lazy, but unavoidable. And, as with all elephants in the r
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Elton At The Movies
Pretty much Elton John’s only film acting/performing credit playing someone who isn’t Elton John. Sporting Brains-from-Thunderbirds-on-glittery-steroids specs and the Mount Everest of platform shoes, he plays the Pinball Wizard, who makes the mistake
Empire Australasia8 min read
The People Vs. Danny Boyle
In Yesterday, Jack passes off the Beatles as his own work. What films do you wish you could pass off as your own? DEBBIE MADDERS I saw Blindspotting recently, the Daveed Diggs film. I would love to pass that off as my own. Historically, I would sa
Empire Australasia6 min read
Come Together
DANNY BOYLE WAS ALWAYS JOHNI FNNON. Aged eight, living in Bury and still sharing a room with his younger sisters, they would gather under the covers pretending to be The Beatles and he would demand to be the enigmatic one. “I remember my dad having t
Empire Australasia5 min read
Choose Thriller Choose Horror Choose Romcom
THE FIRST TIME DANNYBOYLE THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT IT MIGHT MEAN TO BE A FILMMAKER WAS IN A BOLTON PORNO CINEMA IN THE EARLY’70S. Aged 16, he could pass for 18. Which meant he was the one to get the tickets, then dash round the corner to find his mate, who
Empire Australasia11 min read
Finding Her Light
Natalie Portman is used to being watched. Sitting in a restaurant in East Hollywood, so small that there is no table that isn’t in full view of every other diner, she is the target of many not-very-subtle stares. She nods and smiles whenever anyone g
Empire Australasia3 min read
Shoplifters
THE FIRST STEAL __ Shoplifters begins with Osamu (Lily Franky) and Shota (Jyo Kairi) pilfering food from a supermarket. “There’s no dialogue; it’s all action,” says writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who studied CCTV footage of shoplifting ahead of f
Empire Australasia3 min read
Ben Is Back
OUT 15 MAY RATED M / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Peter Hedges CAST Julia Roberts, Lucas Hedges, Courtney B. Vance, Kathryn Newton PLOT When recovering drug addict Ben (Hedges) unexpectedly returns from rehab to his family on Christmas Eve, his family — mom
Empire Australasia1 min read
Charlaine Harris
How did Midnight, Texas originally come together? My mother’s parents owned a hotel in a little bitty town in Texas, and I spent part of every summer there. It was a completely different culture from the one I’d known, so I was very interested by it
Empire Australasia5 min read
Singin’ In The Rain
NAME THE GREATEST musical ever made. Now, name the finest film on the subject of filmmaking. Okay, name the greatest argument ever made for the Hollywood studio system: the grand pageant of the dream factory, sun-kissed on the Californian coast and g
Empire Australasia7 min read
Miles Ahead
When we first got approached by Amy [Pascal] and Avi [Arad, producers] to do the movie, we basically said, ‘We think that’s a terrible idea!’” laughs Phil Lord, co-producer and co-writer of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. But Lord and his creative
Empire Australasia3 min read
Raising the Barbeau
NOT MANY ACTORS get to work with one master of horror. Fewer still get to work with two. Over the course of just a few years, Adrienne Barbeau got to work with three, on a series of movies that cemented her status as a cult icon. That trio was John C
Empire Australasia4 min read
Top Of The Poppins
FOLLOWING ONE OF the best-loved musicals ever is tough. Making it look easy and breezy is even tougher. Crafting the tunes of Mary Poppins Returns involved a lot of pressure and a heap of rejected songs for director Rob Marshall. He talks us through
Empire Australasia2 min read
Transformers
MICHAEL BAY’S MAXIMALIST filmmaking has never been more at home than in the Transformers franchise, where giant robots in disguise beat other robots in disguise into scrap metal. As prequel-reboot Bumblebee hits Blu-ray, let my metallic marathon begi
Empire Australasia2 min read
Free Solo
BEFORE CLIMBER ALEX Honnold tackles anything difficult like, say, free solo-climbing Yosemite National Park’s 900-metre El Capitan wall without any ropes, he meticulously visualises everything that could go wrong. “It’s important to know where it’s g
Empire Australasia4 min read
Disney Animation
Chris: This is a big subject. We haven’t had a subject that’s had this many films to consider. Dan: We’ll skip Home On The Range. Chris: That’s my number one! We’ve all grown up with Disney films. Are our choices driven by nostalgia? Have we plumpe
Empire Australasia1 min read
The Top Ten
Dan: “Disney at its musical-comedy-romance-adventure peak, with Broadway composer Alan Menken powering the tunes and groundbreaking CG work boosting the visuals. Also, it has Gaston, Disney’s most glorious bastard.” Chris: “My favourite Disney. I’m
Empire Australasia3 min read
5 Of The Best
OUT NOW / RATED MA15+ / 121 MINS To anyone who saw The Favourite, Olivia Colman’s ‘surprise’ Oscar win should be nothing of the sort. So many actors would have overdone the role of Queen Anne, an overweight, constantly sick, insecure and foolish h
Empire Australasia1 min read
Giveaways
TO CELEBRATE THE cinema release of X-Men: Dark Phoenix on June 6, we have 10 Blu-ray packs of 6 X-Men films to give away: X-Men, X-Men 2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse. All available now o
Empire Australasia3 min read
The Empire Classic Scene
STEVE CARELL: “Peter Sellers, as the President in Dr. Strangelove, is talking to the Soviet premier on the phone and apologising for bombing the Soviet Union. It’s the funniest, darkest scene — this milquetoast President saying, ‘Well, I’m sorry.’ It

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