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When Spike Lee won a long-overdue Academy Award in 2019 he was never going to ignore the elephant in the room: “The 2020 presidential election is around the corner… Make the moral choice between love versus hate,” an impassioned Lee said. “Let’s do t

When Quentin Tarantino stanned Chris Pine earlier this year, he raised eyebrows with one argument. “I think a case can be made that Pine hasn’t taken the next big leap from Unstoppable,” said Tarantino, singing the praises of Tony Scott’s 2010 runawa

There are event movies and then there are Christopher Nolan movies – the delicious combo of knowing literally nothing about them with giddy anticipation and the knowledge that your mouth will be ajar in wonderment for most of the experience. And you’

No one likes laughing at themselves quite like Judd Apatow. From The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up to Funny People and This Is 40, he’s made a career out of turning his own awkward life-stages into teary, beery stoner comedies. Now moving on to s

When Black Widow, Wonder Woman and The New Mutants cleared out of the way of Covid-19 there was one inadvertent beneficiary: The Old Guard. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball), the Netflix adaptation of Greg Rucka’s Image Comics ser

Ever since the appearance of this virus, one of the questions that I have been asked consistently is, “Why is the movie so prescient and why is it so accurate?” This has come to me in the form of questions from journalists as well as from people assa

Trolls World Tour might just be the most historically significant movie since Avatar. With COVID-19 closing cinemas in March, when Universal Pictures’ promotional spend was in full swing for a 10 April release, the studio decided to release anyway, o

Guillermo del Toro makes a case for the superhero boom starting long before Blade. 43% Increase in film piracy in the UK after lockdown measures were enforced according to digital piracy research firm Muso. The amount lost by X-Men: Dark Phoenix, mak

Usually BAFTA is all about handing out gongs. In the case of Jessica Swale, the British Academy of Film and Television awarded her a bursary – eight years ago – to develop her first screenplay. The result is Summerland, a WW2 evacuee drama starring h

The award-winning adolescent abortion drama… I think the film is so much about friendship and unspoken trauma,” says Eliza Hittman, talking up her new film Never Rarely Sometimes Always. The Brooklyn-born director’s third movie, following It Felt Lik

I grew up in Guildford, which couldn’t be more suburban,” says Simon Bird with a droll wince. “We felt there was a story there that deserves to be told. There have been so many great American suburban films. I wanted to try and make something that co

My novel, Set My Heart To Five, tells the story of Jared, an android who teaches himself to feel by watching old movies. The book is set in 2054, when only a handful of old cinemas remain, lovingly showing the movies that survived the Great Crash bec

The 20-year-old son of Australian singer-songwriter-screenwriteractor Nick Cave and British model-turned-fashionista Susie Brick, Earl Cave appeared in TV shows Born To Kill and The End Of The F***ing World before leaping into movies playing Dan, you

The sun is setting, but the day has just begun. It’s September 2019, and Total Film is at an anonymous logistics airport in Victorville, California. We’re here to watch nighttime filming on ‘Merry Go Round’, the shooting codename for Tenet – the late

Blackpool-born Thewlis made a name for himself in 1993 with a bruising performance in Mike Leigh’s Naked and has been essaying complex characters since in projects as diverse as Gangster No. 1, Kingdom Of Heaven, The New World and Wonder Woman. An al

Editor-at-Large JAMIE GRAHAM lifts the lid on film journalism. THIS MONTH FILMS IN LOCKDOWN On 20 April, a month into lockdown, Guillermo del Toro and a few of his filmmaker mates had a chat on Twitter to discuss what they’d been watching, reading an

Did your experience on The Lighthouse help you prepare for lockdown life? [laughs] I mean, the thing is, on every single movie, there’s so much time just pacing around hotel rooms. I’m definitely quite well trained for it. What was the process for la

Was landing a role in Tenet a secrecyshrouded process? It doesn’t feel like it’s shrouded in secrecy, but, in fact, it is. It was as simple as Christopher ringing me up, and saying, “Look, we have this film that we imagine you might not be available

What was the audition process like? I guess I never looked at it like an audition process. I’m sure it was, but it never felt that way in the initial meeting. I was informed that Christopher Nolan wanted to meet me, so I appeared at his office, and w

How did you land the role? I had a cup of tea with Chris, and we had a chat. And there was a little pause in time. And then I read the part for him. And then after that meeting, I got the job quite quickly after that. So it was pretty simple, and a p

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A zomcom with braaains, laughs and Queen on the jukebox… “At the time, we just wanted to make our zombie film and have a premiere so our parents could come along. That was it. You don’t look into the future. So the idea that we created something with

Well, it’s kind of a funny story,” says Will Ferrell, explaining how he first happened upon the Eurovision Song Contest. “My wife has family in Sweden. Our first trip there would have been the spring of’99, and we were out in the countryside at their

In May 2002, Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible arrived at the Cannes Film Festival with all the force of a concrete wrecking ball. The Argentinean-born, French-raised director was already known for his confrontational brand of cinema after short film Carne a

a red-haired Beanie Feldstein is dressed in a top hat, theatrical skirt suit and fishnet tights with a rucksack on her back and maracas in her hand. She is spilling out of a VW van on a Watford housing estate in the hushed early hours. When she speak

When Total Film speaks with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in May, both sides of the Atlantic are in lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While the enforced isolation has some of us bored stiff, Gordon-Levitt (Joe to pals) has been firing on all cylinders, c

The perfect destination for anyone who wants to get away from it all, the complex time-travel dynamics of a trip to this particular world mean it’s going to be a one-way affair – before setting out, you should probably resign yourself to the fact tha

After acting since childhood and getting a regular role on 3rd Rock From The Sun, Gordon-Levitt showcased his leading-man chops in the teen comedy, which riffed on Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew. Gregg Araki’s hard-hitting coming-of-age drama

FILM EXTRAS OUT 1 JUNE DVD, BD, Steelbook, Digital HD EXTRA Making Of, Deleted scenes, Featurette, Black-and-white version (Steelbook only) FILM EXTRAS OUT NOW DVD, BD, Digital HD EXTRAS Featurettes, Animated prologue A mid the euphoria of Parasite’s

NET FLIX, ILLUSTRATION BY LIZZY THOMAS ■

FILM AVAILABLE 5 JUNE DIGITAL HD A Rainy Day In New York could only be a Woody Allen movie. The protagonist is milquetoast Gatsby Welles (Timothée Chalamet). He wears tweed, wields a cigarette holder and adores lounge piano. His girlfriend Ashleigh E

FILM OUT NOW DIGITAL HD The title of this powerful drama refers to the questions posed by an abortion-clinic counsellor to determine the physical and mental health of women who are contemplating termination. Ascertaining those things is difficult in

FILM EXTRAS OUT NOW BD, DIGITAL HD EXTRAS Making Of, Q&A, Video essay No, you haven’t heard wrongly. Mark Cousins’ magisterial, wideranging doc celebrating the artistry of female film directors really does clock in at an epic 14 hours (plus extras on

Space Force is not about Space Force. That is to say, Netflix’s new 10-episode sitcom, co-created by The Office US dream team Greg Daniels and Steve Carell, is not an insider’s view or exposé of the real-life space-warfare branch of the US Armed Forc

FILM EXTRAS 1983 OUT 15 JUNE BD EXTRAS Documentaries, Featurettes, Booklet In’83, a Christmas-infused WW2 heartbreaker seemed weird for Japanese New Wave radical Nagisa Oshima. Yet it’s in the fertile clash of contrasting ingredients that the Ai No C

Somewhere on London’s Commercial Road, the upstairs of a deserted office building has been turned into MI6 mission control: think blacked-out windows, computer monitors, lots of serious-faced adults in suits. We’re on the set of Alex Rider, the new e

TV horror-com What We Do In The Shadows owes its existence, of course, to Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s brilliant 2014 mockumentary about modern-day vampires. But with S2, the show is set to stride out of the source material’s, um, shadow. “The

There are challenges, and then there are 850-page Booker Prize winners set in 1860s New Zealand that explore astrology and faith, fate and science, love and death. So it’s probably no surprise that the person best placed to unravel and then reconstru

Launched in 2013, Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. marked the MCU’s first foray into TV. For seven years, the elite spies have battled baddies like HYDRA, the Kree and now the semi-robotic Chronicoms. Revolving around a team led by the resurrected Agent Coulso

SHOW EXTRAS 2019 OUT 1 JUNE DVD, BD EXTRAS Featurettes Opening with an uncompromising depiction of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, HBO’s thrilling Watchmen sequel series establishes its themes early doors: this is no longer a story about the doomsday c

With the 2020 lockdown leaving us starved of cinema trips, bringing the big screen into your living room is the perfect back-up. And with most of this year’s Oscar winners now available to watch at home, it’s a great time to invest in a projector for

Sony VPL-VW270ES OUT NOW £4,999 The most affordable true 4K projector around, this lightbox offers hardcore home-cinema specs and will give you a screen size of 60-300 inches, but you’ll need a darkened room. Optoma UHZ65UST OUT NOW £3,299 Dubbed a ‘

COLLECTIBLE OUT NOW That’s ‘A’ for adult: as the latest addition to the Ultimate Collector Series, this is aimed at older brick-heads who are up for a building challenge. Measuring 26cm x 27cm x 42cm, its brick count is 1,673 – roughly the number of

Twenty-five years back, Ice Cube aimed to transform our perceptions of South Central LA. “After movies like Boyz N The Hood, Menace II Society and South Central came out, everybody thought the way we grew up was the worst thing ever in life,” says th

GAME OUT NOW | PC Often dismissed as a meat-headed blockbuster, the Gears series has always required brains as well as brawn to survive its blood-soaked skirmishes. So it’s no great surprise that it should lend itself well to turn-based tactics. Know

BOOKS VARIOUS | BFI/ Founded in 1992, the British Film Institute’s capsule critiques have become an indispensable part of every cineaste’s bookcase. Now relaunched with snazzy new covers, the series retains both its forensic detail and its commendabl

Q In David Lean’s masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia’s young friend perishes in fast-moving quicksand. Dry truth or hard to swallow? A DR BETHANY FOX SENIOR LECTURER IN GEOGRAPHY UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD Yes, quicksand definitely exists, but the gener

In Gordie’s campfire tale, bullied Lard Ass takes revenge at a pie-eating contest by downing castor oil and a raw egg pre-tournament to prompt epic vomming. Those blueberry pies return in blue fountain form as Lard Ass sprays his cruel tormentors. Ho

on 18 November 1975, Steven Spielberg – single, beardless, unafraid to speak his mind – sat down in Los Angeles to discuss his latest movie project, Jaws. The groundbreaking thriller adapted from Peter Benchley’s novel had already shocked audiences i

Getting his ass to the red planet, Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is aboard a ship docking on a Mars Federal Colony. This shot was realised by miniature effects co-supervisor Mark Stetson with small-scale models and ‘smoky’ matte paintings to

With a March 2020 headline, mock news site The Onion aptly illustrated the problem facing satire today. “Man just buying one of every cleaning product in case Trump announces it’s coronavirus cure,” ran the story. Soon after, Donald Trump all but wen

asks Paul Tanter According to 1995’s Braveheart, King Edward I – aka Longshanks – was “the most ruthless king ever to sit on the throne of England.” Patrick McGoohan’s performance more than lives up to the billing: a masterclass by a multi-talented a

In Ang Lee’s 2012 film, The Life Of Pi, Irrfan Khan delivered a moving monologue about the difficulty of parting ways with those we’re used to having around. “I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go,” he intones, those ex

Stanley Kubrick’s last film (he died six days after showing stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman a final cut) struggled to get an R-rating thanks to the nudity and implied carnality of this showstopper of a scene; the crux of Cruise’s hurt husband’s no

1. Name the acclaimed 2018 WW1 doc directed by Peter Jackson. 2. To whom is Sam Mendes’ 1917 dedicated? 3. Which Christopher Nolan regular has a voice-only cameo in Dunkirk? 4. Which is the odd one out? There’s a prize in it… a) All Quiet On The West

TF SAVES YOU THE COST OF A MOVIE EVERY MONTH. THIS ISSUE: THE HUNT FADE IN: INT: PRIVATE JET Rich douchebags harass a stewardess until a drugged man enters asking for help. Suddenly a MYSTERIOUS WOMAN stabs out his eyeball with her stiletto. Make sur