July 2024

Total Film

The Modern Guide to Movies

Total Film2 min read
The Smarter Movie Magazine
This year's Marvel Cinematic Universe content might be limited, but if we're only going to get a single MCU film in 2024, what a film to be getting! Deadpool & Wolverine marks the team-up of two of the comic-book movieverse's most beloved figures, bo
Total Film1 min read
Call Sheet This Issue's Extras
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR LEILA LATIF @LEILA_LATIF I had so much fun talking to Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. I've loved them both since the 1990s. Who would have thought one day I'd get to talk to them about clowns, shame spirals and pegging? NEWS EDITO
Total Film4 min read
The Wild Bunch
@LAUREN_M1LES Video-game adaptations have levelled up of late. Arcane, The Last of Us and Fallout all proved that pixel-powered source material doesn't have to mean an instant game over on screen. The latest game movie gunning for glory is Borderland
Total Film2 min read
Hot Right Now
I feel like the work that I'm just interested in doing is more in the grey areas,’ Andrew Scott told GQ, reflecting on a time in his career when he was mainly playing villains – first Jim Moriarty in the BBC's Sherlock and then C in James Bond movie
Total Film2 min read
Snakes On A Plane
If there's one thing the past seasons of The Karate Kid sequel series Cobra Kai have taught us, it's that even when you've won a major battle, there's always another conflict just around the corner. The end of Season 5 saw Cobra Kai sensei Terry Silv
Total Film3 min read
French Fancies
Audible gasps were heard in the press screening as Coralie Fargeat's feminist body horror unfolded in glorious Technicolor. Demi Moore excels as a TV fitness instructor who injects a mystery liquid and, quite literally, births a younger self (played
Total Film2 min read
Next Big Hing
The star of last year's charming Peckham-set romcom Rye Lane, David Jonsson is a stage-trained actor with his sights on the screen. About to make his first major franchise play as ‘artificial person’ Andy in Alien: Romulus, the in-demand performer is
Total Film2 min read
Apocalypse Vow
After Allison brained her father at the end of [Season 3] and he didn't get to reset the universe quite the way he wanted, we know the world might be a little different,’ says Steve Blackman, showrunner of Netflix's superhero smash The Umbrella Acade
Total Film1 min read
Q&A
How does Luther react to not having powers any more? The big thing for Luther is that he's not had this body for so long. I think there's a part of him that wants to embrace the lost years, and he's got this youthful body back. The main thing for Lut
Total Film2 min read
Return Of The Rings
We like to say that Season 1 was primarily about our heroes,’ Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, showrunners of The Rings of Power, tell Teasers. ‘But Season 2,’ they add, ‘is all about the villains.’ Indeed, the first season of Amazon's ambitious The Lor
Total Film3 min read
The Ll word
As the old saying goes: men would rather make an arthouse horror movie that explores their psychosexual obsession with motherhood than go to therapy. Darren Aronofsky's Mother!, David Cronenberg's The Brood, Lars von Trier's Antichrist… and Ari Aster
Total Film1 min read
Sound Bytes
30 THE NUMBER OF LINES OF DIALOGUE ANYA TAYLOR-JOY HAS IN FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA AFTER STARRING IN 2002'S 28 DAYS LATER, CILLIAN MURPHY IS OFFICIALLY RETURNING FOR DANNY BOYLE'S 28 YEARS LATER. PIXAR HAS LAID OFF 175 WORKERS – 14% OF ITS STAFF. 60 T
Total Film2 min read
Bloodsport
Developed by Saving Private Ryan scribe Robert Rodat, sword-and-sandal series Those About to Die shows the ruthless, bloodthirsty side of the Roman era. Roland Emmerich and Marco Kreuzpaintner take on directing duties, following the tales of gladiato
Total Film2 min read
New Beginnings
I had no idea what I was about to read,’ says director Justin Baldoni (Five Feet Apart, Clouds) of Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us, which he picked up in his search for a moving story to adapt for the big screen under his Wayfarer Studios banner. He
Total Film2 min read
Pier Pressure
I wanted to put unfiltered female rage on screen,’ says screenwriter Cat Jones about her new BBC thriller The Jetty. Arriving later this summer, her dark drama sets Jenna Coleman's rookie cop Ember Manning the job of figuring out who torched her lake
Total Film1 min read
Q & A
What was it about The Jetty that spoke to you? The character of Ember. As soon as I read [Jones’ script] I felt her voice on the page. Ember felt so fully formed; she was a human before she was a detective, which was important. It felt poetic, too. T
Total Film3 min read
Between Takes
What do you always take to set? I need to be thinking about my character from the moment I arrive on set: I find objects can be an endless supply of inspiration for that. I might take a photograph, use a certain scent, but often for me, it's usually
Total Film2 min read
The Italian Job
I don't want to tempt fate,’ director Peter Segal says of planning sequels too soon after a film's release. It makes sense, especially with the hand fate dealt him when it came to 2020 action comedy My Spy. After the film opened in cinemas in mid Mar
Total Film1 min read
Fixer Upper
Called by a panicked Margaret (Amy Ryan) to dispose of a dead body, sleek professional fixer Jack (George Clooney) arrives on the scene declaring, ‘There's nobody that can do what I do.’ Knock, knock. Who's there? Why, it's fixer Nick (Brad Pitt). Ye
Total Film2 min read
Motorway Madness
When writer-director Moin Hussain left school, he got a job in a McDonald's drive-thru. ‘It was a lot of night shifts and lonely burgers,’ he tells Teasers. Little did he know this experience would feed into his feature debut, Sky Peals. Faraz Ayub p
Total Film2 min read
Dad Dancing
Having been the CEO of non-profit Girls for a Change since 2012, Angela Patton never thought she'd have the time to make a documentary. And yet the release of Daughters, which she's co-directed with Natalie Rae, is on the horizon. Chronicling a progr
Total Film2 min read
Can We Talk About?
@JOELHARLEY ‘It's a cautionary tale!’ sing best pals Damian and Janis (Jaquel Spivey and Auli'i Cravalho) within the opening seconds of 2024's Mean Girls, moments before the story swings to the African plains – and another big musical number. Wait, w
Total Film2 min read
Turkish Delight
No one ever said making independent movies was easy. ‘Every time you make a movie, you're like, “Why am I doing this? It's horrible!”’ laughs Swedish filmmaker Levan Akin (And Then We Danced). ‘You know what I think? Making movies is like a bad plane
Total Film3 min read
The Hero
Few people have a career as varied as Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. In over two decades the Pakistan-born director has been a journalist, then a documentary filmmaker, before moving into animation and live-action narrative fiction. Oh, and she's also won tw
Total Film13 min read
The Super-odd Couple
Wade Wilson goes by many names: Deadpool, The Merc with a Mouth, The Regenerating Degenerate and now… Marvel Jesus. Not only is he the self-proclaimed messiah and saviour of the MCU, but he has also performed his own miracle – the resurrection of Hug
Total Film1 min read
Dream Team-up
Titania, played by Jameela Jamil in She-Hulk. She's such a heightened, hilarious character and also an actor who can improv and is razor-sharp and can banter. I can't imagine being an actor, period, but I can't imagine having to work opposite someone
Total Film8 min read
Pioneer Spirit
Kevin Costner is riding out once again. More than two decades after his last film as director, the absorbing 2003 western Open Range, he's returning to the Old West once more. Horizon: An American Saga is not just ambitious, it's the culmination of a
Total Film1 min read
Self-made Movies
A film Francis Ford Coppola has dreamed of making since 1977. He spent $120 million of his own moolah on this sci-fi/fantasy set in New Rome. How? By selling off a ‘significant piece of his wine empire’ in Northern California, a truly ballsy move. Af
Total Film7 min read
To The maxxx
Just over two years ago, Ti West was a filmmaker admired by horror fans but unknown to most mainstream viewers. They'd not had the pleasure of such genre-savvy festival favourites as The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, let alone his killer-bat
Total Film7 min read
Heist Stakes
Doug Liman is diligently scouring a brimming set of shelves in his airy New York loft, searching for an important artefact to show Total Film. Just as he's about to give up, he finds it – a framed illustration from a May 2002 Wall Street Journal stor
Total Film7 min read
The Blair Witch Project At 25
In 1999, The Blair Witch Project scared the world. ‘It was so profoundly terrifying that I didn't watch it again for another decade,’ Host director Rob Savage remembers. Co-directed by duo Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, who met during university,
Total Film15 min read
Natalie Portman
It's May 2024, and Natalie Portman is speaking to Total Film having wrapped another day's shoot in London on Guy Ritchie's globe-trotting adventure, Fountain of Youth. If it feels like an unexpected choice, well, that's to be expected from Portman, w
Total Film8 min read
One Do and Ne
MATTHEW LEYLAND REVIEWS EDITOR As Scary Movie 3 so sagely reminded us, ‘Great trilogies come in threes.’ They don't need a half-hearted part four. And they definitely don't need a part five that tries to relive past glories (that messy, overextended
Total Film1 min read
Five Star Turns
Talk about a killer debut. Precocious Portman beat out 2,000 wannabes to the role of Mathilda, a 12-year-old orphan who becomes the protégé of Jean Reno's eponymous assassin. Trade bible Variety noted Portman's ‘appealing spontaneity’. Portman scored
Total Film1 min read
Screen
@TOTALFILM_MATTL GETS YOUR MOTOR RUNNING RACES WITH THE WIND (ALMOST) CLIMBS SO HIGH DOESN'T MAKE IT HAPPEN BORN TO BE REVILED 78 THE BIKERIDERS Austin horsepower… 80 82 84 88
Total Film1 min read
See This If You Liked
Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper go looking for America in this seminal counterculture hit. Tom Hardy feels the need for speed in George Miller's epic revival of his iconic franchise. An interracial marriage comes under attack in Jeff Nichols’ previous
Total Film3 min read
The Bikeriders 15
OUT 21 JUNE CINEMAS As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a biker…’ All right, so nobody actually says that line in Jeff Nichols’ absorbing study of a Chicago motorcycle crew living their lives on two wheels at the tailpipe of the 1960
Total Film1 min read
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 Tbc
OUT 28 JUNE CINEMAS Kevin Costner made his directorial debut with Dances with Wolves (1990), but he hasn't helmed a film since 2003's Open Range. Now he's back with the gargantuan Horizon, a classical horse opera in the John Ford mould that will repo
Total Film1 min read
Sleep 15
OUT 12 JULY CINEMAS The marital bed turns into an arena for one woman's waking nightmare in writer-director Jason Yu's feature debut. When Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) begins sleepwalking and uttering threats in the night, his wife Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) fea
Total Film1 min read
Eternal You Tbc
OUT 28 JUNE CINEMAS AI looks grimmer than ever in this disquieting doc, charting the growth of ‘death capitalism’. Filmmakers Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck (The Cleaners) mount a respectably objective take on the developing market for simulations
Total Film1 min read
Unicorns 15
OUT 5 JULY CINEMAS Following swiftly on the heels of psychological thriller Femme, this is another contemporary British drama focusing on a queer, cross-cultural love story. Twentysomething Luke (Ben Hardy) is an Essex garage mechanic and single fath
Total Film1 min read
BREAD & ROSES TBC
OUT 21 JUNE APPLE TV+ This Jennifer Lawrence-produced documentary draws attention to the period of upheaval that followed the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, when millions of women were suddenly stripped of their basic rights. As helmed by
Total Film1 min read
It's Raining Men Tbc
OUT 12 JULY CINEMAS Frustrated in a sexless marriage to her workaholic husband, dental practitioner Iris (Laure Calamy, Call My Agent!) takes a friend's advice to seek extramarital company so that she can feel desirable again. As Iris’ phone buzzes m
Total Film1 min read
Bad Boys: Ride Or Die 15
OUT NOW CINEMAS Nearly 30 years after the original Bad Boys, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence bounce back with a fourquel that sees their Miamicop characters Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett fighting to clear the name of their boss Captain Howard (Joe Pa
Total Film1 min read
Fancy Dance 15
OUT 28 JUNE CINEMAS, APPLE TV+ A companion piece of sorts to Killers of the Flower Moon, Erica Tremblay's narrative feature debut finds its star Lily Gladstone in a contemporary yet familiar role: that of an Indigenous woman railing against prejudice
Total Film1 min read
Nightsiren 18
FILM OUT NOW ARROW, BD EXTRAS Commentary, Video essays, Booklet, Poster Witchy folk-horror drama gives way to more real-world terrors in Tereza Nvotová's ferocious study of parochialism and patriarchal oppression, filtered through the lens of Slovaki
Total Film1 min read
The G 15
OUT 21 JUNE CINEMAS Dale Dickey's glorious, granitetough performance as Ann Hunter, a revenge-seeking grandma, gives real heft to this gritty Coen-esque noir about a ruthless elder-care guardianship scam. Director Karl R. Hearne (Touched) wrings love
Total Film1 min read
Tell That To The Winter Sea 15
OUT NOW CINEMAS 1 JULY DIGITAL Saltburn vibes abound in this tale of a teacher reunited with her old girlfriend in a leafy country pile. Actor Jo (Greta Bellamacina) is about to get hitched, to a beau we never see. Yet having Scarlet (Amber Anderson)
Total Film1 min read
Damaged 15
OUT 12 JULY DIGITAL Burnt-out Chicago detective Samuel L. Jackson comes to (checks notes) Edinburgh to help local policeman Gianni Capaldi (who also co-wrote and produced) catch a serial killer in Terry McDonough's tepid thriller. But besides that ey
Total Film1 min read
Loop Track Tbc
OUT 8 JULY BD EXTRAS Commentary, Featurettes, Promo video, Short film, Booklet, Poster Wellington Paranormal‘s Tom Sainsbury writes, directs and stars in this well-crafted wilderness horror about a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown whose trek t
Total Film1 min read
Bye Bye Tiberias Tbc
OUT 28 JUNE CINEMAS ‘Don't open the gate to past sorrows,’ director Lina Soualem remembers her mother, the actor Hiam Abbass, chiding her whenever she asked about Abbass leaving the village she was raised in to pursue her chosen career. This moving a
Total Film1 min read
What Remains 15
OUT NOW DIGITAL 5 JULY CINEMAS Inspired by the true story of a Swedish serial killer, this Nordic noir stars Andrea Riseborough and Stellan Skarsgård as the therapist and policeman tasked with making sense of the case. No easy feat when the killer hi
Total Film1 min read
Rose Tbc
OUT 28 JUNE CINEMAS, DIGITAL Set in the weeks after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, this compassionately observed drama from Danish writer/director Niels Arden Oplev (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) concerns a pair of sisters, Inger (
Total Film2 min read
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga 15
OUT NOW CINEMAS Do you have it in you to make it epic?’ asks crazed antagonist Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) of heroine Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) as their fury roads intersect in blazing flames. No need to ask that question of director George Miller, wh
Total Film1 min read
Kinds Of Kindness Tbc
OUT 28 JUNE CINEMAS Hot on the heels of the Oscar-winning Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos delivers another eccentric feature with Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley. But aside from sprinklings of sex, the similarities end there. Rather than
Total Film1 min read
See This If You Liked
Mad Max movies owe a debt to westerns, and riff, repeatedly, on Stagecoach‘s carriage-drag stunt. Furiosa goes huge on desert-scapes swarming with ant-like armies. Another traumatised woman conducting a roaring rampage of revenge. For more reviews vi
Total Film1 min read
The Nature Of Love Tbc
OUT 5 JULY CINEMAS Two very different milieux collide in this amusing midlife-crisis comedy from Quebecois filmmaker Monia Chokri. Forty-year-old Sophia (Magalie Lépine-Blondeau) is a married philosophy professor, whose existence is turned upside dow
Total Film1 min read
Heart Of An Oak U
OUT NOW ICON FILM CHANNEL 12 JULY CINEMAS A calming ‘forest bath’, this glossy and charming but slightly contrived wordless documentary gets very up-close and personal for a year with the animal, bird and bug inhabitants of a 200-year-old French oak.
Total Film1 min read
A Greyhound Of A Girl U
OUT 28 JUNE CINEMAS A girl tries to come to terms with her granny's illness in this uplifting family animation. Unable to accept the news, 11-year-old Mary (Mia O'Connor) cooks a batch of colcannon and kicks off an adventure involving four generation
Total Film1 min read
Green Border 15
OUT 21 JUNE CINEMAS The flux of migrant stories we've seen on our screens in the last few years speaks to the terror and division of our times. Green Border, directed by Polish veteran Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa), is an urgent, gruelling additi
Total Film1 min read
The Moor 15
OUT NOW CINEMAS 1 JULY DIGITAL Twenty-five years after his young son disappeared, Bill (David Edward-Robertson) still seeks answers on the Yorkshire Moors, calling in a dowser, a psychic and one of his son's old childhood friends to look for… what? A
Total Film1 min read
Problemista 15
OUT 8 JULY DIGITAL I'm the thorns that protect the rose,’ insists gentle Alejandro (Julio Torres), shielding his monstrously rude critic boss Elizabeth (a roaring, magenta-haired Tilda Swinton) from the New York art world's naked hatred. In this whim
Total Film1 min read
Arcadian 15
OUT NOW CINEMAS We all know by now that a Nicolas Cage film has the capacity to be a rollercoaster of ups and downs. Benjamin Brewer's Arcadian is no exception. It throws us into a world in a state of noisy upheaval, as Cage's Paul scavenges what he
Total Film1 min read
Deep Sea Pg
OUT NOW CINEMAS Following a lonely girl's adventures aboard a floating restaurant filled with fantastical creatures, Deep Sea resembles Spirited Away, James and the Giant Peach and Life of Pi in its story. In execution, director Tian Xiaopeng's (Monk
Total Film1 min read
Inspector Sun And The Curse Of The Black Widow Pg
OUT 21 JUNE CINEMAS Set in 1934, this CGI animated noir adventure imagines a bug's life as an Agatha Christie-esque mystery. Taking a much-needed holiday after being fired from a case, Inspector Sun (voiced by Ronny Chieng) – a spider, by the way - b
Total Film1 min read
Dance Revolutionaries Pg
OUT 26 JUNE CINEMAS Documentary-maker David Stewart and the Yorke Dance Project pay tribute to visionary choreographers Robert Cohan and Kenneth MacMillan in this 74-minute double-bill. Exploring themes of grief and revenge, the second part adapts Ma
Total Film1 min read
The Imaginary Pg
OUT 5 JULY NETFLIX Seven years after Mary and the Witch's Flower, Japanese animators Studio Ponoc's return is 2024's best imaginary-pal movie so far. Like IF, the focus is a sorrowful girl, Amanda (Rio Suzuki), who becomes separated from her ‘Imagina
Total Film1 min read
Orlando, My Political Biography 12a
OUT 5 JULY CINEMAS Stand down, Bloom fans: this experimental French-language doc is in fact inspired by Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography, memorably adapted by Sally Potter in 1992. Telling of an Elizabethan nobleman who lives 300 years, ne
Total Film1 min read
Young Woman And The Sea Pg
OUT NOW CINEMAS Cinema's recent roster of female long-distance swimming stories, such as Nyad and Vindication Swim, gets a medalworthy entrant in this handsomely-produced biopic of Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, in 1926. V
Total Film1 min read
My National Gallery, London 12a
OUT NOW CINEMAS Perhaps best known to film fans as the place where Daniel Craig's Bond meets Ben Whishaw's Q, the National Gallery in London means something to millions. This contemplative documentary sees a range of voices, from visitors and employe
Total Film1 min read
Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In 15
OUT NOW CINEMAS Having languished in development hell, Soi Cheang's technically impressive, if narratively underwhelming, ass-kicker finally reached Cannes last month. Budgeted at $40m, it's one of the most expensive Hong Kong films ever made and it
Total Film1 min read
Atlas 12
OUT NOW NETFLIX Jennifer Lopez makes a foray into sci-fi action as Atlas Shepherd, a data analyst on an off-world mission to capture the world's first AI terrorist (Simu Liu). When things go awry, she must learn to trust her AI mech suit. Director Br
Total Film1 min read
The Boy In The Woods 12
OUT NOW DIGITAL Richard Armitage takes a break from Harlan Coben adaptations to take a supporting role in this World War Two tear-jerker. Based on a true story, it tells of Jewish boy Max (Jett Klyne), who survives Nazi persecution by hiding out in t
Total Film1 min read
The Conversation 12a/12
1974 OUT 5 JULY CINEMAS 15 JULY 4K UHD, DIGITAL EXTRAS Commentaries, Featurettes, Interviews, Short, Posters, Soundtrack, Booklet Newly restored for its 50th anniversary, Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 Palme d'Or winner – made between the first two Godf
Total Film1 min read
Network 15
1976 OUT 28 JUNE CINEMAS Some films get more relevant with each passing year. Nighon 50 years old, Sidney Lumet's merciless stab at the media hasn't lost any of its savage edge. At its black heart is Peter Finch's masterful turn as Howard Beale, the
Total Film1 min read
WITHNAIL & I 15
1987 OUT 24 JUNE 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentaries, Documentaries, Interviews, Booklet I hate jokes,’ is not the sort of utterance you'd necessarily expect to hear from the brains behind a film often hailed as one of the best British comedies of all time. B
Total Film1 min read
The Lawnmower Man Collection 15
1992-95 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Featurettes, Deleted scenes, Galleries, Storyboard comparison Subjected to a lawsuit after the filmmakers ignored the Stephen King story its title comes from, this 1992 techno-thriller was forced to remove the
Total Film1 min read
The Italian Job Pg
1969 OUT NOW 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentaries, Making Of, Deleted scene, Poster, Collectibles Michael Caine, Mini Coopers and bloody doors being blown off feature in a 4K collectors’ edition of Peter Collinson's iconic British comedy caper, restoring the f
Total Film1 min read
Hidden City 15
1987 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentary, Archival shorts, Booklet ‘I've lived in London my entire life and it still surprises me nearly every day,’ says filmmaker Stephen Poliakoff. That idea drives his 1987 feature debut, which sees Charles Dance's apathe
Total Film1 min read
Madman 18
1981 OUT 24 JUNE 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentaries, Intro, Documentary, Featurettes, Gallery, Booklet Released in 4K with extensive extras, Joe Giannone's cut-price 1981 slasher is one of the most fun Friday the 13th rip-offs, as long as you don't mind some
Total Film1 min read
Merry-go-round (körhinta) 15
1956 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Featurettes, Booklet Praised by François Truffaut and Lindsay Anderson on its unveiling at Cannes in 1956, this Hungarian melodrama from writer-director Zoltán Fábri thoroughly merits its digital restoration. It relates the lov
Total Film1 min read
The Sacrament 15
2013 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Making Of, Featurettes, Book, Art cards Long before his feted X trilogy, director Ti West trod less surely with this found-footage faux-doc. Three Vice journos investigate a seemingly idyllic ‘sober-living community’, where one
Total Film1 min read
Army Of Shadows 12
1969 OUT NOW BD, DVD EXTRAS Documentaries Although adapted from a novel by Joseph Kessel, Jean-Pierre Melville's suspenseful portrait of Resistance operations in Nazioccupied France draws power and authenticity from the filmmaker's own wartime experi
Total Film1 min read
The Small Back Room Pg
1949 OUT NOW DVD, BD, DIGITAL EXTRAS Commentary, Documentary, Featurettes A year after their 1948 classic The Red Shoes, Powell and Pressburger toned down the Technicolor for this black-and-white tale of home-front WWII bravery. Based on the 1943 nov
Total Film1 min read
Slacker 15
1990 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Short, Debut feature, Featurettes, Auditions, Deleted scenes Richard said “Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy,”’ sang REM on 1994's What's the Frequency, Kenneth? Richard Linklater's characters said t
Total Film2 min read
Curb Your Enthusiasm
2000-2024 DVD, BD, DIGITAL, SKY/NOW After making history with sitcom mega-hit Seinfeld, series co-creator Larry David could have sat back and retired on his television fortune. Instead, he went on to do it all over again with Curb Your Enthusiasm. Th
Total Film1 min read
MVP
Curb is oft-regarded by fans as having two eras – before and after Leon Black. After Larry's wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) finally tired of his antics, a new foil was needed. Meet charismatic freeloader Leon Black, as played by J.B. Smoove. ‘It works fo
Total Film2 min read
Extras
OUT NOW If you're one of the folk who's made Episode I reportedly the most-streamed Star Wars movie on Disney+, these vinyl figures will have your eyes on stalks like a certain goofy Gungan. Mr. Binks is captured in a dynamic hammer-throwing pose, re
Total Film2 min read
Inside Out
When it comes to scoring films, Michael Giacchino has a question for his directors. ‘What is the saddest moment in the story to you?’ he'll ask, finding a hotline to a movie's heart. With Pixar's pitch-perfect 2015 emotion picture, he clearly got a g
Total Film1 min read
2 More
‘Football is war, basketball is a dance, but baseball is cinema.’ So writes critic Noah Gittell in this studious treatise on how the movies have portrayed – and occasionally betrayed – America's favourite pastime. Selective rather than exhaustive, th
Total Film1 min read
Fresh Spins
Fury Road composer Tom ‘Junkie XL’ Holkenborg's follow-up spends more time spinning its wheels than its attack-mode predecessor. The first half stresses slow-build malevolence and mood, low on momentum and melody, with a Dune-ly duduk complementing t
Total Film1 min read
2 More
OUT NOW PC Joining the dots – somehow – between the hollowness of meta-game progression mechanics and the tenets of the Russian Orthodox church, this audacious third-person narrative adventure follows the eponymous nun on a quest for redemption that
Total Film1 min read
Amnesiac: A Memoir
NEIL JORDAN APOLLO Idon't trust memory,’ Neil Jordan writes in a fascinating memoir that finds the filmmaker ransacking his own for clues, coincidences and connections. ‘What is real is not as important as what is imaginary.’ No surprise, then, to fi
Total Film2 min read
Paper Mario: The Thousand-year Door
OUT NOW SWITCH This GameCube-era RPG has been attracting calls for a remake or remaster seemingly since the day it came out. As it approaches its 20th anniversary, Nintendo has finally caved in to fan demand – albeit, you suspect, for pragmatic reaso
Total Film1 min read
Desperately Seeking Something
SUSAN SEIDELMAN ST. MARTIN'S PRESS Spurred by a question on her Wikipedia page ‘Whatever happened to Susan Seidelman?’ - the director answers in her own words, splitting her story into two acts: the first covering her 60s upbringing, the second her f
Total Film1 min read
The Avengers: The First 60 Years
VARIOUS TITAN COMICS Where next for the onscreen Avengers? For ideas, dip into Titan's decade-by-decade survey. This highly readable history counts up various departures/debuts to map out the heroes’ journeys as a moveable feast. As writers also fluc
Total Film1 min read
Don Coppola
AMAZING AMÉZIANE TITAN COMICS The second instalment in graphic novelist Amazing Améziane's ‘Cineaste Trilogy’ purports, like its predecessor Quentin by Tarantino, to be the filmmaker in his own words. Thus, here we get an imagined version of Francis
Total Film1 min read
Is It Bollocks?
THIS MONTH THE FALL GUY‘S CARB CONUNDRUM Q In The Fall Guy, Ryan Gosling's Colt Seavers tells Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Tom Ryder that a lack of carbs has impaired his cognitive function, as the brain runs on glucose. True? A Caroline Farrell, registere
Total Film1 min read
Alternative Box Office
The biggest movies… STARRING LUPITA NYONG'O
Total Film1 min read
On Location
REEL SPOTS BEHIND THE CAMERA WHAT? Danny Boyle's Trainspotting opens with a flashforward to Renton (Ewan McGregor) and Spud (Ewen Bremner) fleeing the cops on a foot chase through Edinburgh. WHERE? Regent Bridge, Waterloo Place, Edinburgh EH1 3AT GO?

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