February 2023

Total Film

The Modern Guide to Movies

Total Film1 min read
Call Sheet This Issue's Extras
NEWS EDITOR JORDAN FARLEY @JORDANFARLEY Spoke to Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen and loads more about John Wick: Chapter 4 this issue. Main takeaways: it's going to kick ass, and Keanu Reeves has a disarmingly highpitched giggle. DEPUTY EDITOR MATT MAYTUM @
Total Film1 min read
The Smarter Movie Magazine
Always a pleasure to have Keanu Reeves on our cover, and this month is a corker as John Wick gets a fourth outing and Reeves promises that he's more badass than ever. As one of Hollywood's longest-serving action stars (and a thoroughly decent chap),
Total Film2 min read
Hot Righ Now
Recently, Paul Mescal played Marlon Brando on stage. Well, not Brando exactly, but the brutish Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, a role Brando helped make famous. Mescal approached it as a new role, a boxing-clever str
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City Of Death
@JORDANFARLEY We don't want Scream VI to be a retread of Scream 5,” says Tyler Gillett, co-director, with Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, of last year's legacy-sequelskewering Scream and its imminent follow-up. “And there's really nothing more different to Wo
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Generational Trauma
BEAU IS AFRAID IS AWAITING A UK RELEASE DATE. ■
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You Talkin’ To Me?
IN THE CROSSHAIRS THIS MONTH… RAHUL KOHLI You talkin’ to me? Yes, and I'm on vacation | at the moment. I just did two series back to back and I'm burnt out. One of those series was The Fall Of The House Of Usher. My relationship with Mike Flanagan st
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Boy Story
When Belgian director Lukas Dhont was, in his own words, “a young queer boy growing up in the Flemish countryside,” he found himself drawing away from his contemporaries out of fear his gestures of friendship might be misinterpreted. “At a certain po
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Breaking New(s) Ground
Despite growing up in Boston, Massachusetts, it took director Matt Ruskin decades to become acquainted with the name of Loretta McLaughlin, the trailblazing reporter who broke the story with her colleague Jean Cole and coined the moniker - of the inf
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Pregnant Pause
Bound up in the many themes of Rebecca Zlotowski's latest film, Other People's Children, is the question of why failing to get pregnant is still a taboo subject. “I think there's still a lot of shame,” offers Zlotowski. “It's still painful and shamef
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Virginie Efira
Q&A What drew you to Other People's Children? When I read the script, I immediately felt something very intimate. And I recognised myself, with my own experiences. I've been in the position of [being in a relationship with] a man who then left me and
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Sky High
This film's journey has been incredible,” says debut writer/director Pawo Choyning Dorji with a befuddled grin. “I made it with first-time actors, the crew were all working on a movie for the first time, and we didn't have any budget. How crazy is it
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Best Of The Fest
Jonathan Glazer's otherworldly masterpiece was shot on the streets of Glasgow, so where better to give it a 10th-anniversary screening? To make the event more special still, Mica Levi's instantly iconic score will be performed live by the BBC Scottis
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Sound Bytes
64 THE PERCENTAGE IMPROVEMENT AT THE UK BOX OFFICE IN 2022 OVER 2021, BUT IT WON'T REACH PRE-PANDEMIC LEVELS TILL 2024. 700,000 THE NUMBER OF UK SUBSCRIBERS NETFLIX IS EXPECTED TO LOSE OVER 2022-23. Jeremy Renner is in recovery after a snowplough acc
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Next Big Thing
I feel lucky that I've been able to play quite a lot,” says Vivian Oparah, who brings the fun as messy singleton Yas in Raine Alien-Miller's South London-set romance, Rye Lane. Following a stint at the National Youth Theatre, and small-screen appeara
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Job's Worth
When Eric Gravel started writing Full Time, he was inspired by his experiences living outside of Paris. Whenever he commuted in, he saw the same faces every day. “I thought this is something more and more common. People start to live further and furt
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Can We Talk About? Trailer Trouble
@KEVINSHARLEY Released in 2019, Danny Boyle's Yesterday imagined a world without The Beatles. Now, another absence has hit the headlines: Ana de Armas. Two US movie fans saw her sitting there in the trailer. Then they rented the movie, only to discov
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Radio Days
Like Primer, Timecrimes or Safety Not Guaranteed, Andrew Legge's LOLA is a low-fi sci-fi that teases audiences with time-travel tropes. In this case, 1940s sisters Martha (Stefanie Martini) and Thomasina (Emma Appleton) invent a machine - which they
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High Plains Grifter
I'm as old as shit, but I still feel good,” says jovial 82-year-old Walter Hill when he sits down with Teasers on the balmy patio of the Ausonia Hungaria Hotel on Venice's Lido during the 2022 film festival. He's in town to bow his latest film, a bac
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Rachel Brosnahan
Q&A What was the attraction of getting on the set of a Walter Hill western? One of the things that was exciting about this film is it plays with so many of these western tropes - but when Walter and I first spoke about the project, he expressed this
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New Age
Age, they say, is only a number. Were the combined years of Allelujah's ensemble cast to be tallied, though, the resulting digits would be well in their thousands, the likes of Dame Judi Dench (88), Sir Derek Jacobi (84) and Pinocchio's David Bradley
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It Shouldn't Happen To A Film Journalist
THIS MONTH… THE DEATH OF THREE-STAR REVIEWS When Avatar: The Way Of Water sloshed into cinemas in mid-December, the first four reviews I read gave James Cameron's gigantic sequel one star, two stars, four stars and five stars. The rating I didn't see
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Marine's Core
Autofiction films always pop up from time to time, but the past six months or so have seen an unusually high number of releases inspired by the filmmakers’ lives: from Steven Spielberg and James Gray with The Fabelmans and Armageddon Time, respective
Total Film3 min read
The Hero
I have a lot of films that mean a lot to me,” purrs Charlotte Gainsbourg. Understandable, when collaborators include Todd Haynes (I'm Not There), Alejandro Iñárritu (21 Grams) and Lars von Trier (Antichrist, Nymphomaniac, Melancholia). Now, the daugh
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Let's Dance
Expected to release later this year, though officially undated, Ballerina is the first big-screen John Wick spin-off. Directed by Underworld's Len Wiseman, it stars Ana de Armas (pictured above in No Time To Die) as the titular, classically trained a
Total Film11 min read
Big Wick energy
T here's a saying on the set of the John Wick films, one that's uttered when the punishing demands of a series lauded for its best-in-league action needs to be acknowledged by all present: Wick is pain. It's an expression that comes from a place of a
Total Film10 min read
Go Big Or Go Home
In the ever-evolving Marvel Cinematic Universe, everyone plays a role. In the case of Ant-Man, the Avenger capable of morphing his human form to insect size, he's always been - to some extent - the light relief. It's hardly a surprise, with Paul Rudd
Total Film1 min read
Luck Of The Draw
John Woo's hugely influential Hong Kong actioner sees Chow Yun-Fat's assassin and Danny Lee's cop gun down dozens of gangsters in a church before coming up against Shing FuiOn's triad for one final shoot-out, as the latter grabs a damsel for a body s
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Kathayn Newton
Q&A How did you react to being cast as Cassie Lang? I was overly excited. I'm a big fan of Ant-Man and a huge fan of Paul Rudd. And then to get to work with the creative team behind it… Peyton Reed, our director, is a super mega positron! He was alwa
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The Contender
When Jonathan Majors was 14 years old in Texas, he was pushing lawnmowers, selling candy at school, working two more jobs, and striving to be class president. The drive, he says, was just a part of him, and he now thanks his career for it - a career
Total Film9 min read
PRO$ & CON$
It's not unusual for a film's publicity team to set boundaries regarding what details film journalists can and cannot reveal ahead of release. But the Sharper team take it one step further, with director Benjamin Caron and actors Julianne Moore, Seba
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Sebastian Stan
Q&A How are you finding talking Sharper while keeping its secrets? It's very difficult knowing how much to reveal. I want to preserve how I felt when I read it of sudden onion layers being peeled back. How did you prepare for all of Max's layers? I r
Total Film9 min read
The Golden Fears
When Pearl bowed at last year's Venice Film Festival, the reviews were ecstatic. “Terrifically accomplished and horribly gripping,” exclaimed The Guardian in its five-star review. “A handsome and sad horror drama, with scenes and shots and performanc
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Smile For The Camera
“That actually wasn't written in the script. It was something that Ti thought of on the day before we shot it. He came up to me and said, ‘Listen, I have this idea, rather than freezeframe we'll just keep going and see what happens. And if nothing co
Total Film8 min read
The 10 Greatest Horror Films (that No One Thinks Are Horror Films)
Ask any self-respecting horror fan what they think of terms like ‘elevated horror’ and ‘social thriller’ and they're sure to spit blood. Such nomenclature, which has been applied over the last decade to movies like The Witch, The Babadook, Hereditary
Total Film15 min read
Seth Rogen
When Total Film catches up with Seth Rogen in December 2022, he's peering into Zoom from his standing desk, leaning in and out of the digital frame with a restless energy. If he's acting like he has somewhere else to be, he probably does. Forget the
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Seth Rogen In Numbers
106 Acting credits his name. $1.6BN THE BOX-OFFICE TAKE OF ROGEFS HIGHESTGROSSING FILM, THE LION KING (2019). 13 The age Rogen co-wrote the first draft of Superbad. 9.3M FOLLOWERS ON TWITTER. 5 Emmy award nominations. ■
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Screen
88 THE WHALE Fraser glory… @TOTALFILM_MATTL EXTRAORDINARY TREASURE BEDAZZLING JOURNEY TO THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD CAN DO NO RIGHT THAT THIRD MUMMY FILM, BASICALLY
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Five Star Turns
Following earlier Judd Apatow collabs, Rogen starred in the hit accidental-pregnancy com; the same year, Apatow produced Rogen's Superbad script. “I was suddenly much higher up the food chain,” the actor recalls. The stoner-com further showcased Roge
Total Film6 min read
Disaster Artists
When rumours started circulating in early January that the production of Francis Ford Coppola's long-in-gestation passion project Megalopolis was spiralling out of control, the veteran director wasted no time shutting them down. “I don't know what an
Total Film1 min read
See This If You Liked
Fraser previously courted awards chatter in this elegant tale of director James Whale's relationship with his gardener. Aronofsky's interest in floundering fathers and wounded birds crystallised in this search-forredemption drama. Abused single mum G
Total Film3 min read
The Whale Tbc
OUT 3 FEBRUARY CINEMAS DIRECTOR Darren Aronofsky STARRING Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, Sadie Sink, Ty Simpkins, Samantha Morton SCREENPLAY Samuel D, Hunter DISTRIBUTOR A24 RUNNING TIME 117 mins As the headlines attest, Brendan Fraser's awardsbothering
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See This If You Liked
Sergio Leone's adventurers race bandits to find buried treasure… sound familiar? Banderas’ debut as Puss adds a strutting, sardonic humour to our band of fairytale misfits. Featuring Humpty Dumpty, the furry vigilante's first spin-off is an egg-celle
Total Film1 min read
Saint Omer 12a
OUT 3 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Documentary filmmaker Alice Diop (We, La Permanence) won the Silver Lion at last year's Venice Film Festival for her narrative debut, Saint Omer. A courtroom drama based on a true story, it calls “objection” to the tropes of Ho
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The Son 15
OUT 17 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Florian Zeller follows his Oscar-winning directorial debut The Father with another adap of one of his own plays. The helmer again teams with Anthony Hopkins, who only appears in a cameo (albeit a deliciously spiteful one). Thi
Total Film2 min read
Puss In Boots: The Last Wish Tbc
OUT 3 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Holy Frijoles! After more than a decade, the feline favourite is back on the big screen, fighting, flirting and… feeling the cold breath of death on his furry shoulders. This fun, frenetic and fleet-footed sequel to Puss In Boo
Total Film1 min read
Marcel The Shell With Shoes On Tbc
OUT 17 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Some premises seem almost tailor-made to raise red flags about potentially cloying levels of whimsy. A largely stop-motion-animated mock-doc centred on sentient shells could so easily face the same cutesy-landfill fate as the
Total Film1 min read
Eo Tbc
OUT 3 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Anomadic mule freed from the circus embarks on an improbable journey across the breadth of Europe in the latest from Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski (2010's Essential Killing, 2015's 11 Minutes), a homage of sorts to Robert Bre
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See This If You Liked
Sidney Lumet's tense, tight jury-room drama thrilling ly debates the value of a human life. Polley's poignant cine-memoir reconstructs her family's clashing memories. Survivors of Harvey Weinstein's sexual predation help the New York Times expose the
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The Lair Tbc
OUT NOW SHUDDER Director Neil Marshall rose to fame with the carnage and camaraderie of Dog Soldiers and The Descent. After TV success (Game Of Thrones, Hannibal) but movie missteps (2019's Hellboy), he goes back to basics with his hit-and-miss lates
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Husband Tbc
OUT 3 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Billed as being “on the cusp between autofiction and documentary”, Husband sees married couple/co-directors Devorah Baum and Josh Appignanesi again turn the camera on their own relationship (after 2016's The New Man). Baum has
Total Film1 min read
The Inspection 15
OUT 17 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Boot-camp dramas: you know the drill. New recruits are bullied, sergeants scream abuse, press-ups are enforced. While these conventions are present in Elegance Bratton's semi-autobiographical drama, his fresh viewpoint remould
Total Film2 min read
Women Talking 15
OUT 10 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Actor-turned-director Sarah Polley is gloriously unafraid of challenging film conventions. Having upended the notion of ‘real’ family truths in her piercing, playful 2012 movie memoir Stories We Tell, here she turns a desperat
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She Is Love 15
OUT 3 FEBRUARY CINEMAS, DIGITAL Patricia (Haley Bennett) hasn't seen ex-husband Idris (Sam Riley) for a decade… until she checks into a Cornwall hotel managed by him and new girlfriend Louise (Industry standout Marisa Abela). The former marrieds grad
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Alice, Darling 15
OUT NOW CINEMAS An atypically doleful performance from Pitch Perfect frontwoman Anna Kendrick brings an air of uneasiness to this disquieting feature debut from director Mary Nighy (daughter of actor Bill). And with good reason, too: the eponymous Al
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Creature 12a
OUT 24 FEBRUARY CINEMAS By Oscar-winning documentarian Asif Kapadia (Amy, Senna), this elegant film of choreographer Akram Khan's 2021 ballet - about a lovestruck human “creature” in an Arctic lab - is a tender, visceral piece. Kapadia's camerawork m
Total Film1 min read
What's Love Got To Do With It? 12a
OUT 24 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Drawing on her own experiences of living in Pakistan with then-husband Imran Khan, writer/producer Jemima Khan crafts an account of British-Pakistani culture in the form of a Working Title romcom very much in the Richard Curti
Total Film1 min read
That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime The Movie: Scarlet Bond 15
OUT NOW CINEMAS This spin-off movie from the popular anime show offers a dynamic adventure, albeit one that's only really accessible to existing fans. Steeped in previous story arcs, it follows Hiro, last of the ogres, who has to confront his own rag
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Shotgun Wedding Tbc
OUT NOW PRIME VIDEO Following Marry Me, Jennifer Lopez's wedding-flick output continues with this daft but harmless romp charting the misadventures of engaged couple Darcy (J.Lo) and Tom (Josh Duhamel, replacing the beleaguered Armie Hammer) when the
Total Film1 min read
You Resemble Me 15
OUT 3 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Former journalist Dina Amer explores the human behind the headlines in her fitfully revelatory portrait of the woman dubbed (falsely…) “France's first female suicide bomber”. Dramatising Hasna Aït Boulahcen's role in the 2015 P
Total Film1 min read
Shadow Master 18
OUT NOW DVD, BD, DIGITAL Prachya Pinkaew, the director who brought Tony Jaa's incredible stunt skills to global attention in 2003's Ong-Bak, serves as producer for this similar - on the surface, at least - actioner, which serves as a showcase for new
Total Film1 min read
Broker 12a
OUT 24 FEBRUARY CINEMAS You will never meet a kinder bunch of illegal baby traffickers than the makeshift family that Japan's Hirokazu Kore-eda assembles in his first Korean-language feature. Broker is a road movie-slash-crime yarn about a duo of inf
Total Film1 min readLGBTQIA+ Studies
Blue Jean 15
OUT 10 FEBRUARY CINEMAS A festival favourite and winner of four British Independent Film Awards (from 13 nominations), this feature debut by writer/director Georgia Oakley is set in Thatcher's Britain, a time when homophobia was part and parcel of th
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Plane Tbc
OUT NOW CINEMAS He's saved the world a few times already, so you'd imagine that landing a plane full of passengers during a nerve-shredding electrical storm would be peanuts for Gerard Butler. And you'd be right. But that's just the warmup act for th
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Atomic Hope Tbc
OUT 17 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Subtitled Inside The Pro-Nuclear Movement, Frankie Fenton's doc mounts an engaging but limited take on a heated issue. Opening with a Japanese nuclear engineer's complex feelings about nuclear power, Fenton then gives the stag
Total Film1 min read
I Get Knocked Down Tbc
OUT 3 FEBRUARY CINEMAS One-time Chumbawamba frontman Dunstan Bruce's cheerful and unrepentantly radical film memoir scores highest when nostalgically raking over Bruce's anarcho-pop past with his ‘Tubthumping’ chums. Their journey from a Leeds squat
Total Film1 min read
Town Of Strangers Tbc
OUT 10 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Experimental filmmaker Treasa O'Brien's doc explores the effects of immigration on the small town of Gort, which boasts the biggest number of different nationalities in Ireland. If O'Brien's attempts to blur real life and fict
Total Film1 min read
Nostalgia 12a
OUT 17 FEBRUARY CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA Returning to Naples for the first time in four decades to care for his ailing mother, Felice (Pierfrancesco Favino) embarks on a journey of rediscovery in Mario Martone's handsomely shot drama. In a leisure
Total Film1 min readLGBTQIA+ Studies
Joyland 15
OUT 24 FEBRUARY CINEMAS A worthy Queer Palm winner at Cannes'22, Saim Sadiq's Pakistani debut made headlines when it was banned at home, then cut for release. But although Sadiq's drama of transgender desire busts boundaries, Joyland is also the gent
Total Film1 min read
Nascondino Tbc
OUT NOW CINEMAS Shot over a four-year period, Italian filmmaker Victoria Fiore's debut feature is a “creative documentary”, which explores the world of charismatic 12-year-old Entoni, who lives in the Spanish Quarters district of Naples. His father i
Total Film1 min read
Next Exit 15
OUT 20 FEBRUARY DIGITAL After learning that death is not the end, the world struggles to come to terms with a radically changed state of existence in this sci-fi road movie. When a doctor (Karen Gillan, plus dodgy accent) begins conducting experiment
Total Film1 min read
M3gan 15
Uh-oh, h3r3 com3s troubl3… OUT NOW CINEMAS The title of this Blumhouse-backed demon-doll caper is an acronym for “Model 3 Generative Android”. Or to put it another way, M3GAN is a “Barbie on steroids”. It's this vein of knowing humour that sets the m
Total Film1 min read
Oscar Peterson: Black + White E
OUT NOW DVD, DIGITAL “The best ivory-box player I've ever heard,” said Count Basie of iconic Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. Yet this solid, archive-packed and frankly adoring portrait of his rise from wartime Montreal prodigy to racism-fightin
Total Film1 min read
Seriously Red 15
OUT 13 FEBRUARY DIGITAL The life and work of Dolly Parton run through this quirky Australian comedy drama like a streak of peroxide, serving not just as inspiration for dye-hard fan Red (Krew Boylan), but for anyone needing a spot of personal advice.
Total Film1 min read
Planes, Trains And Automobiles 15
1987 OUT NOW 4K UHD EXTRAS Documentary, Featurettes, Deleted/extended scenes, Audition footage It might not be the very best of John Hughes’ films, but this festive classic is easily the funniest, allowing Steve Martin and the late John Candy to boun
Total Film1 min read
Rememberthe Night Pg
1940 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentary, Video essays, Radio adaps, Vintage short, Booklet, Poster Four years before they teamed up in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray shared the screen in this sparkling romcom ab
Total Film1 min read
Titanic 12a
1997 OUT 10 FEBRUARY CINEMAS Sailing back into cinemas, newly remastered, James Cameron's world-conquering take on the RMS Titanic's tragic maiden voyage still wows 25 years after its original UK release. A fresh-faced Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Wins
Total Film1 min read
The Breakfast Club 15
1985 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentary, Documentary, Featurettes, Video essay, Deleted scenes, AFI seminar, Essay It's not as laugh-out-loud as Fast Times At Ridgemont High. It doesn't feel as authentic as Dazed And Confused. The finale completely betrays
Total Film1 min read
Run, Man, Run 12
1968 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Original theatrical cut, Commentaries, Featurette, Alt opening, Booklet The final entry in director Sergio Sollima's trilogy of ‘Zapata westerns', RMR sees Tomas Milian reprise his role from The Big Gundown (1966) as Mexican pe
Total Film2 min read
Seinfeld
1989-98 AVAILABLE ON DVD, NETFLIX, DIGITAL According to the Nielsen ratings for the week beginning 11 May 1998, an estimated 76 million TV viewers across the US tuned in to watch the final-ever episode of Seinfeld. To put this into perspective, fello
Total Film1 min read
A Very Special Episode
Seinfeld's funniest and most taboo-busting episode sees Jerry, George (Jason Alexander), Elaine (Julia LouisDreyfus) and Kramer (Michael Richards) compete to see who can go longest without, ahem, touching themselves. Yes, this prime-time sitcom dedic
Total Film3 min read
Tech Prev iew
Last month, the world's biggest tech companies once again headed to the bright lights of Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This year's event was heaving with the latest gadgets and gizmos, including some tantalising home-cinem
Total Film2 min read
Rocky
The way Bill Conti tells it, he had to go some rounds with producers over the score to Rocky. In a spotting session, Conti had opened the 1976 film with Rocky's fanfare. The director, John G. Avildsen, approved. The producers? Not so much: “‘It reall
Total Film2 min read
The Last Of Us
As creator and writer of the multi-award-winning Chernobyl (2019), it's fair to say that Craig Mazin knows a bit about telling stories. And while the showrunner of HBO's lavish adaptation of The Last Of Us (currently showing on Sky Atlantic and avail
Total Film1 min read
Fresh Spins
The music that drives Damien Chazelle's Tinseltown epic is also a sizzling standalone listen. Chazelle regular Justin Hurwitz modernises ‘20s sounds here, fuelling jazzband squalls with hot-wired rock ‘n’ roll and repetitive beats. Over-repetitive? P
Total Film1 min read
2 More
After making the devastating claim that a movie's original palette is forever lost over time through degradation and manipulation, film critic Charles Bramesco explores the importance of colour in cinema. With a keen focus on emotional and thematic v
Total Film2 min read
Is It Bollocks?
THIS MONTH SKYFALL Q In Skyfall, Silva tells Bond a story of rats trapped in a barrel who turn cannibal and then can be released into the wild as rat population control. True? Or rat's entertainment? A Dr Emma Robinson, FBPhS Professor of Psychopharm
Total Film2 min read
The Art Of Avatar: The Way Of Water
TARA BENNETT DK Did your trips to Pandora leave the impression that you were (re)visiting a fully formed world? If so, that sense emerged by meticulously developed design, not chance. Taking a skimwing from reef-world to Bridgehead and beyond, T writ
Total Film1 min read
On Location
WHAT? Chitty Bang Bang flies over Baron Bomburst's fairytale castle, incensing the petulant ruler who wants his own flying car. It's also the castle that was Disney's inspo for the magical kingdom pile at the heart of Disneyland. WHERE? Neuschwanstei
Total Film2 min read
Runs In Movies
Does what it says on the tin as redhead Lola (Franka Potente) legs it all over Berlin through three different timelines in pursuit of 100,000 DM to rescue her boyfriend from being killed by a drug dealer. What a difference tripping over a dog makes…
Total Film2 min read
Flop Culture
Why it was a good idea (on paper) In 2019, Gemini Man promised to bust blocks and break ground. Between a star de-aged for doubled-up action duty and a daring director, a re-Fresh'd Prince and high-frame-rate fireworks, Ang Lee and Will Smith (x2) we
Total Film2 min read
Is It Just Me Or Should Movie Characters Not Re Used In Ads?
@RICHDEDWARDS As much as Buddy the Elf loves Christmas, there's surely no way he'd choose to spend it surrounded by stressed-out shoppers in a British supermarket. If you believed Asda's recent big-budget festive ad, however, working in the UK retail
Total Film1 min read
Last Time Should Patrick Swayze Have Been A Megastar?
He was too cool to be bothered with being a megastar. He was a ROCK STAR. He was like the wind! Have I missed something? He was massive in the UK. Is your writer too young to know Swayze was one of the BIGGEST megastars? He was almost cast in Predato
Total Film3 min read
Hilts'bike Jump The Great Escape
THE BIG SHOT Steve McQueen's ‘Cooler King’ makes a last bid for freedom in John Sturges’ 1963 WWII POW drama, The Great Escape - and boy, did his attempt live up to the title. Trapped on the German border, astride a stolen German motorbike, American
Total Film3 min read
Giving Credit
GEORGE TIMMS BBFC COMPLIANCE OFFICER George Timms completed an MA in literature but knew what she really wanted to do was talk about films without going down the route of journalism or academia. While she was working as a manager at a cinema, a frien
Total Film2 min read
Jackie Chan
Born in 1954, Jackie Chan (birth name: Chan Kong-sang) was enrolled in the China Drama Academy at the age of five. There he spent 10 years undergoing gruelling (some might say abusive) physical training in acrobatics, martial arts, dance and other sk
Total Film1 min read
Key Movies
Director Yuen Woo-ping and Chan redefined the kung fu genre with this landmark fusion of balletic martial arts and slapstick comedy. Not only a stunt-tastic, franchisespawning (eight films and counting) action classic, but one Chan has declared his o
Total Film1 min read
Which Badass Cat Are You?
20TH CENTURY STUDIOS. DISNEY. DREAMWORKS. PARAMOUNT. SONY. STUDIOCANAL. WARNER ■

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