Total Film

The Modern Guide to Movies

Total Film4 min read
Snow Patrol
@JORDANFARLEY Let the games begin!’ screamed the headlines when The Hunger Games arrived in 2012, kickstarting a filmic quadrilogy based on Suzanne Collins’ trilogy of bestselling YA books. But prequel movie The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds
Total Film2 min read
Hot Right Now
The strikes may have meant actors hiding away, but the star of Elvis is everywhere right now thanks to his swaggering ad campaign for YSL's new fragrance. Striding around in black while sniffing orange blossom and talking (in interviews and ads compl
Total Film1 min read
Total Film The Smarter Movie Magazine
If you ever wanted to feel that you could achieve more, just read our chat with Ridley Scott – who, at 85, is as prolific as ever. I needed a lie-down just chatting to his collaborators as they described the energy and massive brain power of the visi
Total Film1 min read
Call Sheet This Issue's Extras
DEPUTY EDITOR MATT MAYTUM @MATTMAYTUM Loved liaising with Christopher Nolan on a tribute to Ridley Scott – work days don't get much better than that! CONTRIBUTING EDITOR JAMIE GRAHAM @JAMIE_GRAHAM9 Ridley Scott's Zoom setup was as cinematic as you'd
Total Film3 min read
You Talkin’ To Me?
You talkin’ to me? That very much depends on the future tone of your questions. At this rate, no. You've got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk? The question, rather, is do you feel lucky, punk? Because, believe me, ju
Total Film2 min read
Pitch Perfect
If you're more into films than football, you still might be aware of American Samoa's historic 31-0 loss to Australia in a World Cup qualifier in 2001, which is the starting point for 2014 documentary Next Goal Wins and Taika Waititi's loosely adapte
Total Film2 min read
Love Sciences
If there were a test that could definitively prove that you and your partner were in love, would you take it? That's the idea at the heart of Fingernails, a low-key sci-fi romance from writer/director Christos Nikou (Apples). ‘I wanted to make a comm
Total Film2 min read
Pilgrim's Progress
How can you live up to that trailer?’ ponders Eli Roth with a literal stroke of his fetching moustache. ‘It's just so nuts and so fun and goes so far into the boundaries of bad taste. How do you extend that for 90 minutes, and still make a real movie
Total Film3 min read
The Ll word
This spooky season is tinged with a little sadness: just a few weeks ago, William Friedkin passed away at age 87, shortly before his final film premiered. But while The French Connection won him Best Picture and Director Oscars, arguably his best and
Total Film2 min read
Hüller Corner
Iknow that Justine [Triet, director] watched every courtroom drama on this planet,’ says celebrated German actress Sandra Hüller of Anatomy of a Fall, a coolly intelligent and forensically detailed addition to the genre. In May it went before the jur
Total Film2 min read
Heel Turn
Subjected to a homophobic attack, drag artist Jules (Nathan StewartJarrett) exacts a unique revenge when he chances upon his tormentor Preston (George MacKay) in Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping's London-set Femme. Speaking at the Berlin Film Festiva
Total Film1 min read
Sound Bytes
MICHAEL CAINE SAYS THE GREAT ESCAPER IS HIS FINAL FILM. 146 THE NUMBER OF DAYS THAT WGA MEMBERS WERE ON STRIKE BEFORE REACHING A TENTATIVE DEAL WITH STUDIOS IN LATE SEPTEMBER. TIM BURTON WASN'T HAPPY TO SEE HIS CAPED CRUSADER POP UP IN THE FLASH. Joh
Total Film2 min read
Next Big Thing
Plucked from high school to star in Clio Barnard's The Selfish Giant, Bradford lad Shaun Thomas has since appeared alongside Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Strong in Grimsby, and Eva Green and Samuel L. Jackson in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Child
Total Film2 min read
Extinction Events
The Lazarus Project, named after Jesus's pal who was raised from the dead, is an apt title for a show that faced a pandemic, a fiercely competitive media landscape, and now returns while striking TV writers and actors fight to stop the medium's own a
Total Film4 min read
Star Power
Set in the kingdom of Rosas, Wish sees its young protagonist Asha follow in the Disney tradition of seeking celestial help, only for an actual anthropomorphised star – named, um, Star – to fall from the sky and into her life. ‘Star's this little ball
Total Film2 min read
Legends Of The Fall
Richard Linklater's out-ofcompetition romcom with murder was the audience-pleaser Venice delegates didn't know they needed, and confirmed the star wattage of lead Glen Powell. Frothy, smart, witty and sexy, the zingy script co-written by Linklater an
Total Film2 min read
Night Vision
When Jamie Childs looks out the window of his house on the Hartlepool Headland, he can see most of the locations that he used in his feature debut, Jackdaw. The wind turbines out to sea. A steelworks. The oil refineries on the road to Seaham that gav
Total Film2 min read
New World Disorder
If you know anything about Rebel Moon, it's probably that over a decade ago the idea for the film was the basis of Zack Snyder's pitch for a Star Wars spin-off – Seven Samurai with lightsabers, essentially. Now retooled as a rare example of original,
Total Film2 min read
Reinventing The Steal
‘Heist thrillers end when the culprits have succeeded or failed,’ reckons Stephen Garrett. ‘They're either dead or disappear into the sunset.’ Disney+ eight-parter Culprits, exec-produced by Garrett and created by writer-director J Blakeson (I Care a
Total Film2 min read
Can We Talk About?
SPOILER ALERT! The Creator isn't my favourite film of the year, but it is the 2023 film I'm most glad exists. Gareth Edwards’ tremendous, soulful, sentimental sci-fi about a frighteningly plausible AI future features exquisite world-building, punchy
Total Film2 min read
Adams Family Values
It's the balance of fun and danger, and a little bit of seediness as well,’ says Toby Poser when asked about the enduring appeal of carnivals. ‘I like the seedy carnivals. John and I got engaged at Coney Island.’ John Adams grins. ‘The county fair wh
Total Film3 min read
The Hero
ROBERT CARLYLE THE SCOTTISH STAR ON A TOP-CLASS CAREER Being out there, and being “on”, is something that I really enjoy,’ says Robert Carlyle. A good thing, then, that in a 30-year-plus career, Carlyle has never been ‘off’, from his 1991 breakthroug
Total Film7 min read
Emperor's New Groove
It takes cojones the size of cannonballs to make a film based on the tumultuous life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Not only will you be following in the deep footsteps of Abel Gance's five-and-a-half-hour Napoléon (1927) and Sergei Bondarchuk's sevenhour Wa
Total Film2 min read
Neif Corboufd
Scott collaborations: commercials, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Martian, Alien: Covenant, Napoleon, Gladiator 2 He's a very visual person. He draws everything. When you're just having a chat with him, he'
Total Film2 min read
Art hur Max
Scott collaborations: commercials, G.I. Jane, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, American Gangster, Robin Hood, Prometheus, The Counsellor, Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Martian, All the Money in the World, The Last Duel, House of Gucci, Na
Total Film2 min read
Janty Yater
Scott collaborations: Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, American Gangster, Body of Lies, Robin Hood, Prometheus, The Counsellor, Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Martian, All the Money in the World, The Last Duel, House of Gucci, Napoleon, Gladiator 2 I was t
Total Film8 min read
Great Scott
Ridley Scott's always been a plain and confident talker, and at 85 years of age, he's not about to change. Asked to cast an eye over his 46-year film career, he rotates his coffee cup on its saucer and says, ‘Every film I do, I have no regrets about
Total Film9 min read
Directors'cuts
The world-building auteur behind Oppenheimer, Inception and the Dark Knight trilogy on Ridley's lasting influence. AS TOLD TO MATT MAYTUM I think Ridley Scott's signatures have changed over time, which is one of the marks of a great artist. When he s
Total Film19 min read
The 100 Greatest Horror Movies Of The 21st Centuary
For numbers 51-100, see pages 62-63. Dementia haunts Australian writer/director Natalie Erika James’ affecting debut, robbing a poor matriarch (Robyn Nevin) of her memories, as her daughter (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter (Bella Heathcote) try to
Total Film5 min read
50 More Of The Greatest Horror Films Of The 21st Century
Anyone with a love of Mario Bava and Dario Argento's giallo movies needs to see this gorgeously lurid BelgianFrench homage. Death has never been so sensual. Soldiers v werewolves in Neil Marshall's raucously funny and super-gory calling card. The act
Total Film6 min read
Mum's The Word
Joanna Hogg is sheltering in a shopping centre about two hours north of Rome. The British filmmaker has taken time out from her vacation to talk to Total Film about her new movie, ghostly tale The Eternal Daughter, which she seems pleased to do. ‘I'm
Total Film6 min read
Through looking glass
How I felt reading it… was so uncertain, fascinated, troubled,’ admits Todd Haynes, talking about the script for his beguiling new film May December, when Total Film meets him pre-strike at the Cannes Film Festival. The day before, at the press confe
Total Film15 min read
‘A Filmmaker Needs To Be A Little Bit Of A Con Artist’ Alfonso Cuarón
There's no boilerplate example of an Alfonso Cuarón movie. Certain themes recur frequently (parent-child bereavement being a key motif); the environments are crucial; they're often based on books; and there's rarely a shortage of technical excellence
Total Film1 min read
Five Star Turns
Cuarón had already made English-language films before returning to Mexico for this calling-card breakout that evades easy categorisation, and wrongfoots anyone expecting simply a sexy road trip. Cuarón nailed the darker tone and introduced Sirius Bla
Total Film1 min read
Screen
@TOTALFILM_MATTL STREETS AHEAD SHINES A LIGHT NOT BAD, NOT BAD, NOT REALLY, REALLY BAD RAGING BS FUN DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE 82 KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON An American tragedy… 84 86 89 90
Total Film3 min read
Killers Of The Flower Moon 15
OUT 20 OCTOBER cinemas DIRECTOR Martin Scorsese STARRING Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Cara Jade Myers SCREENPLAY Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese DISTRIBUTOR Apple RUNNING TIME 206 mins Coyote wants money,’ Mollie (Lily
Total Film1 min read
How To Have Sex Tbc
OUT 3 NOVEMBER CINEMAS Teenage kicks get a timely #MeToo treatment in writer/director Molly Manning Walker's punchy first feature, a vividly shot, sharp-eyed take on the drunken post—GCSE Mediterranean getaway that's traditionally a frenzied, Inbetwe
Total Film1 min read
See This If You Liked
Scorsese and DiCaprio's earlier expansive exploration of America's violent past. Lily Gladstone's breakout earned her multiple awards nods; expect more to follow for Moon. Another starry period epic based on a non-fiction book by David Grann. For mor
Total Film1 min read
Quiz Lady Tbc
OUT 3 NOVEMBER DISNEY+ Sometimes you can just sense that two actors will make a great on-screen duo. And so it proves with Awkwafina and Sandra Oh in this extremely likeable Disney+ comedy. They play chalk-and-cheese sisters who are brought back toge
Total Film1 min read
Cat Person 15
OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS Courtship can be a minefield, as college student Margot (CODA's Emilia Jones) discovers when a flirty encounter escalates into a round-the-clock, text-based relationship. Is Robert (Nicholas Braun, AKA Succession's Greg Hirsch)
Total Film1 min read
Saw X 18
OUT NOW CINEMAS Set between the first and second Saws, this lacklustre 10th instalment of the horror saga sees the return of John ‘Jigsaw’ Kramer (Tobin Bell), who heads to Mexico in hopes of receiving radical treatment for his terminal cancer. Reali
Total Film1 min read
Cassius X: Becoming Ali Tbc
OUT 13 OCT CINEMAS Rather than take the conventional route of recounting Muhammad Ali's rise to sporting greatness, Muta'Ali's documentary explores the ‘secret spiritual journey’ undertaken by a young Cassius Clay that led to him changing his name. I
Total Film2 min read
The Killer 15
OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS 10 NOVEMBER NETFLIX DIRECTOR David Fincher STARRING Michael Fassbender, Charles Parnell, Tilda Swinton, Arliss Howard, Kerry O'Malley SCREENPLAY Andrew Kevin Walker DISTRIBUTOR Netflix RUNNING TIME 118 mins A perfectionist who'
Total Film1 min read
See This If You Liked
The Killer reunites Fincher with the writer of his big auteur breakout, Andrew Kevin Walker. Fassbender as a different sort of hitman, less inclined to talk about McMuffins. A portrait of Morrissey before he formed Fassbender's character's fave band,
Total Film1 min read
The Royal Hotel Tbc
OUT 3 NOVEMBER CINEMAS Kitty Green's The Assistant (2019) was set in a hellish work environment presided over by a shadowy, Harvey Weinstein-esque figure. Her potent follow-up evinces similar disdain for toxic masculinity, featuring as it does the mo
Total Film1 min read
The Pigeon Tunnel Tbc
OUT 20 OCTOBER APPLE TV+ David Cornwell – the late author better known as John le Carré (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) – gets the docu-portrait treatment from veteran filmmaker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line). The re
Total Film1 min read
Doctor Jekyll Tbc
OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS Eddie Izzard headlines a modern take on the iconic horror yarn, helmed by Joe Stephenson. Hired as a caregiver for the reclusive Nina Jekyll (Izzard), Rob (Scott Chambers) is thrust into a centuries-old battle for supremacy, ca
Total Film1 min read
Our River… Our Sky 12a
OUT 20 OCTOBER CINEMAS Set in a small Baghdad community enduring horrific sectarian violence, Maysoon Pachachi's multi-stranded drama paints a deeply moving, at times poetic portrait of the devastation inflicted. Employing an ensemble of largely non-
Total Film1 min read
Suitable Flesh Tbc
OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS, DIGITAL This outrageous tale of bodily transference finds director Joe Lynch (Knights of Badassdom) channelling the late Stuart Gordon, offering up a hearty tribute to the cult Re-Animator maker. Loosely adapted from H.P. Love
Total Film1 min read
The Miracle Club 12a
OUT 13 OCTOBER CINEMAS A fine cast – Maggie Smith, Laura Linney and Kathy Bates – spearheads this sweet-natured, if unsurprising, comedy drama. Directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan (The Heart of Me), it sees a group of women from a working-class Dublin su
Total Film1 min read
Nandor Fodor And The Talking Mongoose 12
OUT 20 OCTOBER PRIME VIDEO A true story inspired this underdeveloped curio, a film that never quite does its bizarre subject justice. Simon Pegg plays parapsychologist Nandor, a sceptic investigating claims about a talking mongoose named Gef on a far
Total Film1 min read
Time Addicts 18
OUT NOW ICON FILM CHANNEL 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS Adapting his own short film into a feature-length debut, writer/director Sam Odlum delivers an unsettling time-travel story filled with grime, mind-warping twists and a wicked sense of humour. When drug-de
Total Film1 min read
The Bystanders Tbc
OUT 3 NOVEMBER CINEMAS A sci-fi concept receives a Shaun of the Dead-ish remix in this sketchy but scruffily inventive Brit-com. Scott Haran plays Peter, a child chess prodigy turned office sad sack recruited as a ‘bystander’: an alt-dimensional ange
Total Film1 min read
Muzzle 15
OUT 7 NOVEMBER PRIME VIDEO Los Angeles cop-on-the-edge Jake Rosser (Aaron Eckhart) must break in a new partner to track down the drug dealers who killed his last one. The kicker? Both old and new partners are dogs. Director John Stalberg Jr. and co-w
Total Film1 min read
Spooky Night: The Spirit Of Halloween 12
OUT 13 OCTOBER CINEMAS 16 OCTOBER DVD. DIGITAL Staging a lock-in at real-life US mall institution Spirit Halloween, three bickering tweens find themselves besieged by murderous animatronics, each possessed by the town ghoul (Christopher Lloyd, not qu
Total Film1 min read
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood 15
OUT 13 OCTOBER CINEMAS At once intimate and intensely private, Anna Hints’ excellent doc spotlights a group of Estonian women baring body and soul in the wood-fired saunas of Vana-Võromaa. These rituals offer a kind of spiritual deep cleanse: away fr
Total Film1 min read
A Haunting In Venice 12a
OUT NOW CINEMAS Nimbly grafting an eerie Halloween spook-fest onto an old-school whodunnit, Kenneth Branagh's latest Poirot foray delivers both laughs and tingles. The former stem from Tina Fey's Ariadne Oliver, a writer of mysteries (and walking in-
Total Film1 min readInternational Relations
Beyond Utopia Tbc
OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS Madeleine Gavin's extraordinary, Sundance Audience Award-winning documentary follows North Korean dissidents fleeing for their lives from Kim Jong Un's repressive regime. They're helped by an ‘underground network’ of anonymous
Total Film1 min read
Savage Waters 12a
OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS A 19th-century treasure hunter's journal is the spur for a veteran skipper and record-breaking surfer to seek out a legendary wave in treacherous Atlantic waters. Though beautifully shot – the surfing footage in particular – Mi
Total Film1 min read
How To Save The Immortal Pg
OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS Dubbed into English following its native Russian release, this animated fantasy tells a familiar tale of distressed damsels and cuddly monsters. Blackmailed into kidnapping heiress Barbara the Brave (Liza Klimova), immortal ari
Total Film1 min read
On The Adamant Pg
OUT 3 NOVEMBER CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA The Adamant in question is a floating barge that houses a day-care centre for individuals with psychiatric disorders. Moored in the Seine in central Paris, its therapeutic programme offers workshops in art,
Total Film1 min read
HOLLYWOOD DREAMS & NIGHTMARES: THE ROBERT ENGLUND STORY 15
OUT NOW ICON FILM CHANNEL 6 NOVEMBER BD. DIGITAL Horror icon Englund proves an engaging subject in this documentary exploring not just Elm Street but his entire career. At just over two hours, the film verges on info overload. Still, there are fun an
Total Film2 min read
The Creator 12a
OUT NOW CINEMAS Gareth Edwards’ AI sci-fi starts with a bang: in 2055, we learn, a warhead was detonated that engulfed LA and led to a ban on artificial intelligence in the US. Fifteen years on, the military remains on the hunt for Nirmata, the myste
Total Film1 min read
Typist Artist Pirate King 12a
OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS I used to be in the kitchen-sink school of realism,’ says the heroine of writer/director Carol Morley's latest. ‘But now I'm avant-garde and misunderstood!’ Instead of presenting a straight biographical portrait of neglected ar
Total Film1 min read
Pain Hustlers 15
OUT 27 OCTOBER NETFLlX Helming his first non-Wizarding World film in seven years, director David Yates has the opioid crisis – which recently was also the subject of Netflix miniseries Painkiller – in his sights with this fictionalised adap of a New
Total Film1 min read
20,000 Species Of Bees 12a
OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA This gentle identity-crisis drama was recognised at last year's Berlin Film Festival for its lead performance by Sofía Otero (the youngest-ever Silver Bear winner), who plays an eight-year-old trans girl. Ma
Total Film1 min read
20 Days In Mariupol 18
OUT NOW CINEMAS Shot, directed and narrated by Associated Press video journalist Mstyslav Chernov, this is a powerful account of life in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in the weeks following the 2022 Russian invasion. The filmmaker and
Total Film1 min read
Expend4bles 15
OUT NOW CINEMAS It's good to be back,’ growls Dolph Lundgren's Gunner. Not on this evidence, it isn't. Cheap-looking and poorly scripted, this atrocious Sly Stallone-led actioner opens in ‘Gaddafi's old chemical plant’ in Libya, where a private army
Total Film1 min read
Where The Wind Blows 15
OUT NOW CINEMAS Hong Kong's 2022 Oscar submission pits two titans of Asian cinema against one another, as Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok lock horns in Philip Yung's lavish but ill-disciplined crime drama. Cast as two corrupt officers rising through the ra
Total Film1 min read
Daliland 15
OUT 13 OCT CINEMAS 13 NOV DVD. DIGITAL Cult director Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho) paints a portrait of Salvador Dalí's chaotic old age that's oddly conventional, for all the wild 70s New York orgies and rampant art fraud. Ben Kin
Total Film1 min read
The Retirement Plan 15
OUT NOW DIGITAL Michael Caine bought his mum a house with his fee for Jaws: The Revenge. Let's hope Nicolas Cage makes a loved one happy with this comedy thriller, because it surely won't leave viewers feeling that way. Cage plays an estranged dad wh
Total Film1 min read
Nobody Has To Know 12a
OUT 3 NOVEMBER CINEMAS Bouli Lanners co-directs, co-writes and co-stars in this measured, melancholy drama set in the Scottish Highlands. It offers a unique story of late love, albeit one that unfolds at a glacial pace. Lanners plays Phil, a middle-a
Total Film1 min read
Golda 12a
OUT NOW CINEMAS Whatever your take on the casting of non-Jewish actress Helen Mirren as former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, it's hard to deny that this snapshot of the steely politician's time in office during the 19 days of the 1973 Yom Kippur
Total Film1 min read
Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed 15
OUT 23 OCTOBER DIGITAL Amidwestern hick’ (his words) from Winnetka, Illinois, the matinee idol formerly known as Roy Fitzgerald lit up the screen in Douglas Sirk melodramas (see 1955's All That Heaven Allows) and Doris Day romcoms (1959's Pillow Talk
Total Film1 min read
Mind-set 18
OUT NOW CINEMAS, DIGITAL Brit-indie realism and cliché combine in this engaging but naggingly over-determined comedy drama from Mikey Murray. Eilis Cahill and Steve Oram play a couple whose love is parched; can she resist the urge to stray? A slumped
Total Film1 min read
Gravity 12a
2013 OUT 20 OCTOBER CINEMAS Awards success led some to reappraise Alfonso Cuarón's space thriller, back in cinemas for its 10th anniversary. Overrated? Not at all. From its extended opening shot onwards, this is pure big-screen sensation, a wonderful
Total Film1 min read
Blazing Magnum 18
1976 OUT NOW BD, DVD, DIGITAL EXTRAS Featurettes, Art cards Italian director Alberto De Martino made his name repurposing successful US movies, often with eyebrow-raising results (see 1974 Exorcist ‘homage’ The Antichrist, also newly available on Blu
Total Film1 min read
I Know Where I'm Going! Pg
1945 OUT 20 OCTOBER CINEMAS A newly restored print of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's romantic drama, released in cinemas as part of a BFI season celebrating the duo's extraordinary cine-legacy. It centres on Joan (Wendy Hiller), a headstrong
Total Film1 min read
Christine 15
Rolling thunder… 1983 OUT 20 OCTOBER CINEMAS Question: which 1980s adaptation of a Stephen King novel by a legendary film director made wholesale changes to the book and is reviled by the author? Answer: Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, of course… but
Total Film1 min read
Valley Girl 15
1983 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Featurettes, Music videos, Booklet If not, like, totally bitchin’, director Martha Coolidge's (Rambling Rose) teen romance holds up a lot better than many of its contemporaries. Stars Deborah Foreman (April Fool's
Total Film1 min read
Mean Streets 18 After Hours 15
New York stories… 1973 OUT 13 OCTOBER CINEMAS 1985 OUT NOW BD, 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentary, Documentary, Featurettes, Deleted scenes, Essay There's a lot to be said for working with what you know. In two films issued 12 years apart, an on-the-ropes Mart
Total Film1 min read
Peeping Tom 15
1960 OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS Michael Powell was as feted in his day as a Scorsese or Spielberg – until this seminal chiller shredded his reputation for several years. Centred on a focus-puller (Carl Boehm) who spends his free time making snuff films,
Total Film1 min read
Gregory's Girl 12
1980 OUT NOW BD, 4K UHD, DIGITAL EXTRAS Commentaries, Featurettes, Alternate music cues, US soundtrack, Booklet A world away from the highschool comedies that proliferated across the Atlantic during the 80s, Scottish writer/director Bill Forsyth's ch
Total Film1 min readDiscrimination & Race Relations
Pressure 15
1976 OUT 3 NOVEMBER CINEMAS A digital restoration of this pioneering coming-of-age drama, the first full-length British feature to be directed by a Black filmmaker, the late Sir Horace Ové. The uncompromising nature of his portrait of societal racism
Total Film1 min read
Friday The 13th 15
1980 OUT 13 OCTOBER CINEMAS Back in cinemas for one week only – starting Friday 13 October, natch – this hit slasher remains crudely effective despite nine sequels, one crossover, one remake and the original Scream telling everyone that it's actually
Total Film2 min read
Tech Preview
Even with some of the big home-cinema brands deciding to skip this year's Berlinbased IFA show, it offered a tantalising sneak peek at what's coming next. Here are a few highlights for your 2023-24 wish list… OUT TBC £TBC If you've ever wanted to car
Total Film2 min read
Extras
OUT NOW Funko has a big-bonced jigsaw for seemingly every fandom, whether you're a Marvelite (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) or a Loser, so to speak (It: Chapter One). Each puzzle is 18x24in and comprises 500 pieces – i.e. just big enough for a chal
Total Film2 min read
The Six Million Dollar Man
1973-78 AVAILABLE ON DVD, BD, DIGITAL If you were a child in the mid-1970s there were some things you just knew. French bangers could blow your hands off. A monk-like spectre haunted every pond and stream. And to look like you were running super-fast
Total Film1 min read
A Very Special Episode
The Six Million Dollar Man's very own Love Story, this tragic two-parter thrives on the easygoing chemistry between Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner, before killing off its new bionic heroine as her body rejects the implants. Thankfully, unlike Ali MacG
Total Film1 min read
Fresh Spins
Tender poise and saddened stoicism are the key notes of Grizzly Bear mainstays Christopher Bear/Daniel Rossen's score. Working with chamberpop ingredients – piano, brushed percussion, guitar, synths, vibraphone – the duo nurture sweet miracles of int
Total Film2 min read
The Exorcist
VARIOUS WARNER RECORDS/RHINO The way the late William Friedkin told it, he had to cast out some difficult contenders as he sought a composer for The Exorcist. Hitchcock vet Bernard Herrmann dubbed the film ‘a piece of shit’ and suggested church organ
Total Film1 min read
2 More
OUT NOW PC, PS4/5, SWITCH, XBOX ONE/SERIES Jeppe Carlsen, gameplay designer of Playdead's modern classic Inside, returns with this equally essential puzzle adventure. Marble-like orbs borne by the insectoid protagonist are worlds in themselves: you'l
Total Film2 min read
Starfield
OUT NOW PC, XBOX SERIES Bethesda Game Studios has a storied reputation for making vast and deep player-driven role-playing games that are rich in possibility and choice. As such, the prospect of it applying what it's learned from the post-apocalyptic
Total Film1 min read
Pandora's Box: The Greed, Lust And Lies That Broke Television
PETER BISKIND PENGUIN Need help navigating the bewildering array of streaming services, cable networks and pay-per-view options? You could do worse than read Biskind's (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls) latest. While this potted history of ‘peak TV’ may lac
Total Film1 min read
2 More
Long on (sometimes extraneous) detail but sadly short on penetrating insight, Abbie Bernstein's thorough but disjointed account of the making of David Gordon Green's reboot trilogy is one for hardcore Haddonfield fans only. For the most part, it mere
Total Film1 min read
Frightfest Guide: Mad Doctor Movies
DR JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT FAB PRESS Sporting a foreword from Tom Six (The Human Centipede), this lively compendium runs from 1908's The Doctor's Experiment to 2022's Morbius and features all the usual suspects: Frankenstein, Moreau, Orloff. The USP i
Total Film1 min read
The Wicker Man: The Official Story Of The Film
JOHN WALSH TITAN Fresh interviews and archival images flesh out this return to Summerisle. Walsh grills everyone from art director Seamus Flannery to Britt Ekland; producer Peter Snell remains a reasonable voice amid accounts of conflict. Barrels are
Total Film1 min read
Bfi Film Classics: The Red Shoes
PAMELA HUTCHINSON BFI/BLOOMSBURY Defining the Archers’ ‘ballet horror’ as a rapturous display of art for art's sake, film academic Hutchinson explores how Shoes abandons realism for a rarefied reverie on pride and punishment, delirium and dance. She'
Total Film1 min read
Is It Bollocks?
THIS MONTH GRAN TURISMO Q Is Gran Turismo really based on a true story? Sony's Gran Turismo starts by telling us that it's based on a true story, and while the story itself – that of Jann Mardenborough, an obsessive video-game player who was handpick
Total Film1 min read
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