Total Film

And… ACTION! We love a breath-snatching, gobsmacking, spine-tingling moment in a kick-ass film when a stunt sequence stuns, and this issue we’re celebrating the men and women behind the scenes making the stars look balletic, kinetic and hardcore. I s

@JORDANFARLEY Based on David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book of the same name, Martin Scorsese’s western (yes, he’s finally made it) delves deep into manifest destiny, greed, racism, neocolonialism and misogyny in a rich, immersive masterclass that bra

With hit TV shows The Last of Us and The Mandalorian under his belt, Chilean-born American actorPedro Pascal is one of the hottest stars on the planet right now. Everybody loves him. Nobody can get enough of him. Except for his extended family, that

Jamie Lee Curtis had a true, spiritual initiation into the role of Madame Leota, the disembodied head, afloat in a crystal ball, who first offers visitors passage into ‘regions beyond’. So her co-stars had something to react to, the actor kindly agre

Before the James Gunn and Peter Safran-helmed regime change kicks in under the DCU banner, there are still several DC Extended Universemovies to come out under the old guard. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is one, due in December of this year, while Th

You talkin’ to me? I am talking to you, although my window’s open, and there’s a neighbour sitting just outside on her balcony, so I’m pretty sure she’s going to be able to eavesdrop on everything that’s going on right now. Do you have an off switch?

If you know anything about Beanie Babies it’s probably that, for a moment in the mid-90s, they were as popular as Furbies, Tamagotchis and Tickle Me Elmos combined, fuelling one of the biggest speculative crazes in American history as $5 beanbag anim

What stood out to you about the script? There are so many of these movies that are about mythological, mostly male figures. The idea that this was going to be about the‘little people’ who were the wind beneath his wings - that was really lovely. And

It would be nice to commence with optimism when you get your dream gig, a column in a magazine you’ve adored for decades. To discuss new waves of filmmakers, innovative trends or giant feats of imagination coming our way. But things are looking prett

Tennis is having its moment on screen and we’re not talking about Wimbledon, from Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming Challengers to Netflix doc Break Point. Exploring the dark side of the pro circuit is Fifteen-Love, a drama about a tennis coach, Glenn Lapth

11 MILES THE LENGTH OF A 70MM IMAX PRINT OF OPPENHEIMER. THAT’S A LOT OF MOVIE… 90 YEARS THE AGE OF ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD'S RICK DALTON WHEN HE WAS KILLED OFF BY QUENTIN TARANTINO LAST MONTH. Having just locked Killers of the Flower Moon, Ma

Getting John Boyega, Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris as the central trio in your directorial debut is an astonishing coup. But it’s even more remarkable given that Juel Taylor signed his stars to play a drug dealer, a pimp and a sex worker in They Clon

Award-winning Broadway star Andrew Barth Feldman rose to fame as the title character in the 2019 production of Dear Evan Hansen. Making the jump from stage to screen, he has ppeared in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series and A Tourist’s Guid

Oppenheimer will be Christopher Nolan’s first R-rated movie in the US since 2002’s Insomnia. The rating appeared at the end of a TV spot in the States, meaning we can expect a 15 certificate in the UK. Dwayne Johnson has taken to social media to make

Emboldened by the success of Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse, 2023 has turned into a banner year for stylistically experimental animated movies. Next up is TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, a striking new take on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from writer-prod

Growing up in Belfast in the 70s, Mark Cousins saw a lot of horror movies before he was 10 years old. ‘Local video stores had everything on the black market - I saw video nasties at a ridiculously early age,’ he says. ‘Then I saw Psycho. I could see

SPOILER ALERT! This is swiftly turning into the year of the cliffhanger ending. In 2023, we’ve already seen Dominic Toretto square off against an exploding dam, Miles Morales come face to face with himself, and there’s still Mission: Impossible - Dea

On the evening of 13 November 2015, a series of coordinated terror attacks in Paris left at least 130 people dead and more than 400 others injured. The epicentre of the chaos was the Bataclan theatre in the city’s 11th arrondissement, where a raid on

British director Charlotte Regan’s debut Scrapper is, like its title, a punchy little number. It follows Georgie (Lola Campbell), a 12-year-old living secretly alone in her flat after her mum dies. ‘I know she’s struggling with a lot. But the intenti

British writer-director Sally Potter broke through with 1992’s Orlando, starring Tilda Swinton. Her other films include the drama The Man Who Cried, teen drama Ginger & Rosa and acerbic political comedy The Party, starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Ti

I f you’ve seen the latest instalments from the DCEU and Fast franchises you’ll have clocked Gal Gadot popping up (in Fast X, quite literally) to cameo. Now, Wonder Woman herself is keen to create an action series with herself front and centre to riv

What was the attraction of Heart of Stone? I’ve never done anything on such a big scale. I’ve never done anything that’s like a spy-action thriller. I have a real attitude in this career to experience all of it. ‘The Heart’ is a superweapon that can

Yes, Tom Cruise really did shoot on top of a moving TGV train for M:I 1. A skydiving simulator was used to distort his face, creating the illusion he was travelling at high speed. Yes, Tom Cruise really did hang off a flying helicopter’s payload for

JONATHAN CROCKER, JONATHAN DEAN, JAMIE GRAHAM, KEVIN HARLEY, LEILA LATIF, MATTHEW LEYLAND, ANDY LOWE, JAMES MOTTRAM, NEIL SMITH, KIM TAYLOR-FOSTER, OERI THOMAS, JAMES WHITE 25 ‘I gotta have wingsuits in Transformers 3.' So said Michael Bay after watc

There’s one achievement that’s perhaps more jawdropping than any of the extreme stunts that star/producer Tom Cruise has completed. And it’s that - in a world of IP fatigue and diminishing returns - Mission: Impossible is a rare (unique?) franchise t

Films and TV shows are increasingly geared towards fan service, with cameos, callbacks and references littered everywhere for the amusement of the hardcore stans that are the franchises’ most devoted followers. And sometimes fans can be of service, t

picture this: you’re a pair of filmmakers from Adelaide, Australia, premiering your first feature at the Sundance Film Festival. Nobody knows who the hell you are. And then suddenly, A24 are bidding on your movie. Yep, the hip indie company behind Os

My responsibility is for all the fights – with swords, or without swords. I was a professional martial artist back in China. I’ve done stunts since 1999. I doubled all the Asian actresses in Hollywood. And in the past 10 years, I doubled Ming-Na Wen

How long do we have?’ asks Jason Schwartzman, breezing into Cannes’ J.W. Marriott hotel, looking very natty in navy suit and salmon pink shirt. ‘Sometimes I take too long and then I eat up the thing.’ First, it should be noted, Total Film has rarely

In the start of a long collaboration with director Wes Anderson, Schwartzman plays an obsessive but struggling high-schooler, Max Fischer. ‘I could relate to many aspects of the character,’ he says. ‘I’d never done anything set in the past before… I

76 INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY Time, please… @TOTALFILM_MATTL TOHTS AMAZEBALLS WELL-ROUND-ED SCOTT POTENTIAL SALLAH BIT MUCH LOAD OF BELLOQS 78 80 82 86

OUT 23 JUNE CINEMAS DIRECTOR Wes Anderson STARRING Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston SCREENPLAY Wes Anderson DISTRIBUTOR Universal RUNNING TIME 105 mins From 30s Europe to 60s France and n

OUT 19 JULY NETFLIX How do you feel about death?’ are the first words spoken in Laura McGann’s gripping documentary. The question is one all freedivers must ponder, such are the dangers of plunging too metres down into the ocean - the height of a 30-

OUT 30 JUNE CINEMAS, DIGITAL This cosy, slightly claustrophobic celebration of chattily charismatic small-town US bookseller Matt Tannenbaum embeds us in his shabby, classics-packed store just as the pandemic threatens to bankrupt him. Using fly-on-t

OUT 14 JULY CINEMAS Vinay Shukla’s gripping, sobering doc examines the challenge and cost of speaking truth to power in the misinformation age. As rival channels stoke nationalistic fervour with hysterical, ratingsgrabbing debates, Indian broadcaster

OUT 7 JULY CINEMAS French auteur Quentin Dupieux has given us absurdist horror movies about a killer tyre (Rubber), a man’s obsession with his jacket (Deerskin), and a couple buying a house with the most banal time machine imaginable in the basement

OUT NOW CINEMAS A complete reinvention of Georges Bizet’s opera, Benjamin Millepied’s feature debut strikes sparks but never quite ignites. Taking place on the Mexico/ US border, the film casts Melissa Barrera (2022’s Scream) as a grief-stricken woma

OUT 30 JUNE CINEMAS London seems small in writer/ director Sian Astor-Lewis’ debut feature To Nowhere, the city closing in on teenagers Tulip (Lilit Lesser) and Finn (Josefine Glaesel) against a backdrop of underpasses and off-licences. A brisk 85-mi

OUT NOW CINEMAS DIRECTOR Steven Caple Jr. STARRING Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback, Pete Davidson, Peter Cullen SCREENPLAY Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer, Josh Peters, Erich Hoeber, Jon l-loeber DISTRIBUTOR Paramount RUNNING TIME 127 mins How do you

OUT 7 JULY CINEMAS DIRECTOR Peter Sohn STARRING Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Shila Ommi, Ronnie del Carmen SCREENPLAY John Hoberg, Kat Likkel, Brenda Hsueh DISTRIBUTOR Disney RUNNING TIME 103 mins Pixar’s latest animation takes us to Element City, a p

OUT 30 JUNE CINEMAS A shocking true story, based on the 2019 book by Caroline Michel-Aguirre, receives a prosaic treatment in Jean-Paul Salome’s drama. Isabelle Huppert plays Maureen Kearney, an Irish-born trade union representative in France who pai

OUT 30 JUNE CINEMAS French writer-director Leonor Serraille follows Jeune femme (2018) with a novelistic immigration drama. Spanning some two decades, Serraille’s saga explores the experiences of a single mother, Rose (a vivid performance from Annabe

OUT NOW CINEMAS Rob Marshall’s sparkling liveaction makeover of Disney’s 1989 animation outswims the original. Halle Bailey shines as Ariel, the mermaid who’s lovesick for the surface world. The extended runtime gives the romance between Ariel and Pr

OUT 7 JULY CINEMAS Director Edward Lovelace (The Possibilities Are Endless) spent four years filming the subject of this moving and insightful documentary: a young Kurdish boy, deaf since birth, who travels to the UK (via a traumatic, turbulent year

OUT 23 JUNE CINEMAS 7 AUGUST DIGITAL In April 1987, the American champion cyclist Greg LeMond was nearly fatally shot by his brother-in-law in a hunting accident. And yet two years and two surgeries later, LeMond was attempting to win the gruelling T

OUT 14 JULY CINEMAS From Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon to Paul McCartney and Wings’ Band on the Run, Hipgnosis - the design studio of Cambridge mischief-makers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell - created some of the most iconic album c

OUT 30 JUNE CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA A sports film that’s not about winning or losing, Shô Miyake’s quiet but often mesmerising drama hits as hard as its heroine Keiko (Yukino Kishii), a Tokyo female boxer who is profoundly hearingimpaired. Exquis

OUT 7 JULY CINEMAS Brimming with buoyant beats and goodwill, director Shamira Raphaëla’s documentary is a feel-good winner. Based in working-class Rotterdam, Shabu is a 14-year-old who messes up when he totals his gran’s car. To cover the costs, he c

OUT NOW CINEMAS DIRECTOR Andy Muschietti STARRING Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon SCREENPLAY Christina Hodson DISTRIBUTOR Warner Bros. RUNNING TIME 144 mins Can The Flash outpace its problems? After long delays, the Scarlet

OUT NOW DISNEY+ When news went viral that a film about the making of the beloved cheesy snack Flamin’ Hot Cheetos was in development, it was treated as the punchline of a joke. However, as with the hero of the movie, you shouldn’t underestimate this

OUT 26 JUNE DIGITAL With a whopping 348 IMDb credits - and counting - to his name, Stephen King is among the most adapted writers of all time. Focusing mainly on classic King movies and miniseries, Daphne Baiwir’s documentary rounds up filmmakers fro

OUT NOW CINEMAS DIRECTORS Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson STARRING Shameik Moore, bailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac, Jason Schwartzman SCREENPLAY Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Dave Callaham DISTRIBUTOR Sony Pictures RUNNING TIME 140 mins W

OUT NOW CINEMAS Director Louis Leterrier (Transporter, Clash of the Titans) brings welcome injections of energy and inventiveness to a series that has spent eight years striving to match up to 2015’s Furious 7. Fast Five also provides a spark for a s

OUT 7 JULY CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA British-Moroccan filmmaker Fyzal Boulifa (Lynn + Lucy) returns with this engaging mother-son drama. Set largely in Tangier, it follows Selim (Abdellah El Hajjouji), a teenager who lives with his mother Fatima-Za

OUT NOW CINEMAS Since 2017’s It, the Stephen King-aissance has stressed quantity of output over quality. Now, Brit director Rob Savage (Host, Dashcam) mines a curt, cruel King story for a fitfully scary mix of mourning allegory and monster movie that

OUT 23 JUNE CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA The Nobel prize-winning French author Annie Ernaux constructed this wistful cine-memoir with her son and co-director David Ernaux-Briot. It consists entirely of Super 8mm home-movie footage from the ’70s, inclu

OUT NOW CINEMAS, 26 JUNE DIGITAL You don’t expect subtlety from Robert Rodriguez but even by his standards, Hypnotic is a lot. Ben Affleck plays a sad detective whose daughter’s abduction remains unsolved. Could a bank heist orchestrated by a reality

1990 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Featurettes, Booklet Loosely adapted from Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s late-50s crime novella The Pledge (which also inspired Sean Penn’s 2001 film), this is one of only two feature films completed by the late Hungarian director and

1986-1989 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Featurettes, Extended scenes, Booklet Despite the international success of the 1985 Hong Kong horror-comedy Mr. Vampire, its sequels have gone largely unseen in the UK, until now. If none scare up as many guf

1984-1989 OUT 26 JUNE BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Alternative versions (The Dungeonmaster), Storyboard comparison (Dolls), Featurettes, Galleries, Book, Posters, Art cards Founded in 1983, Charles Band’s Empire Pictures was, in many ways, the successor t

1986 OUT 26 JUNE BD EXTRAS Featurettes, Shorts Winner of Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize, this taut, unsettling drama was a career starter for Laura Dern, terrific as teenage daydreamer Connie. The initial focus is on Connie arguing with her parents and

1993 OUT 26 JUNE 4K UHD EXTRAS Book, Lobby cards, Poster John Woo’s first US feature looks a tad primitive by today’s action standards, but still packs a punch as Jean-Claude Van Damme’s mullet-favouring combat veteran Chance Boudreaux goes head-to-h

1993 OUT NOW 4K UHD EXTRAS None A 30th-anniversary 4K release for Sydney Pollack’s John Grisham adap which, despite its BO success, emerges as one of Tom Cruise’s lesser 90s vehicles. What should have been a straightforward thriller about a Harvard g

2001 OUT NOW BD, 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentaries, Documentaries, Deleted scenes, Alternate cut, Interviews, Featurettes Stylish to a fault and mashing together many genres (period romance, thriller, creature feature, martial arts actioner), director Chris

1983 OUT 26 JUNE 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentary, Poster, Art cards, Bumper sticker The original Griswold family adventure: not, perhaps, the most obvious choice for a 4K upgrade, but a welcome one all the same. For their annual holiday, Chevy Chase’s every

1965 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Featurettes, Essay On the extras, Bernardo Bertolucci describes Marco Bellocchio’s debut as Italy’s answer to France’s New Wave. Still startling, Bellocchio’s seismic drama casts Lou Castel as a pent-up young man planning to ki

Baby and the Tramp… 1921 OUT 26 JUNE BD EXTRAS Commentary, Featurettes, Deleted scenes, Archive footage, Short, Essay Right up to The Mandalorian’s childcare programme, the narrative template set by Charlie Chaplin’s debut feature has been widely ado

2006-2010 AVAILABLE ON DVD, BD, DIGITAL The brainchild of Teen Wolf Too screenwriter Tim Kring, Heroes was nothing short of a revelation when it exploded onto television screens in September 2006. Arriving at a time when superheroes were not ubiquito

OUT NOW You’ve heard of Build-A-Bear. Now it’s time to build-a-desert-skiff with a new pair of Pop!s, one featuring Chewie, the other Luke (showing off his new apple-green lightsaber). Funko is also marking Episode VI's 40th birthday with a new bobbl

Danny Elfman had his work cut out when he accepted his Mission. Sure, he arrived with one clear steer: he knew what not to do, given that his predecessor Alan Silvestri’s score for the 1996 film had been rejected. Otherwise, Elfman had just a month t

OUT NOW SWITCH When The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launched alongside the Switch to rapturous praise in 2017, many wondered how Nintendo could possibly top it. Six years later, we have our answer. Back then, players regularly shared 30-secon

Following the charming Arise: A Simple Story, developer Piccolo suffers a case of difficult-secondgame syndrome with this handsome but heavyhanded eco-adventure. As luminous life spirit Gaia retrieves animal spirits to bring them back from extinction

ABRAMS, BFI, BLOOMSBURY, SEAN EBSWORTHBARNES, TITAN MICHAEL KLASTORIN ABRAMS You should make Back to the Future into a musical,’ said Leslie Zemeckis to her director husband Robert after watching the Broadway production of The Producers in 2005. Fift

THIS MONTH KILL BILL VOL. 1 Q In movies people habitually rip cannulas out of their veoms when they wake up in hospital. Is this what the doctor ordered? A Dr kate Scoffings, GP A cannula is a tiny plastic tube inserted into a vein usually to give fl

WHAT? Kellerman’s - the leafy upstate New York vacation resort for Baby and her family, and home to snake-hipped hoofer Johnny, in Dirty Dancing. This is your dance space, let’s cha-cha… WHERE? Not NY: Mountain Lake Lodge nestles in a forest in Pembr

In the nick of time, a shackled Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) leaps clear from an overturned prison bus as a high-speed train smashes into it, kickstarting the wrongly convicted prisoner’s quest to track down his wife’s one-armed killer and prov

welcome to Golden Grahams, my new column spotlighting ace movies that are underseen or underappreciated. Films in the canon get enough love. Let’s talk about the finest obscurities and oddities, or the odd more-famous title that doesn’t get the respe

There’s one way to make crime pay: become a lawyer. Defend the innocent, prosecute bad guys, draw up contracts and finesse those loopholes - any way you look at it, there’s a fee involved. Whether they’re chasing ambulances or crushing the weak under

Why it was a good idea (on paper) Retro 60s fetishism was hot in the 90s. With hip and/or Oscar-grade leads (Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Sean Connery) alongside zeitgeist-y cameos (Eddie Izzard, Shaun Ryder), director Jeremiah S. Chechik’s reboot of

@JAMIE_GRAHAM9 ‘Could this possibly happen? Absolutely,’ says Sylvester Stallone on First Blood’s DVD commentary. And therein lies the secret of the 1982 film’s most heart-stopping action sequence. Well, that and the fact we’d never seen the like bef