Home//Total Film/June 2024/In This Issue
Total Film|June 2024Welcome to TOTAL FILM THE SMARTER MOVIE MAGAZINETwister was a pivotal big-screen experience for me growing up. It was one of the first films - maybe even the first - that I saw at the cinema with friends but no parents present. The VFX might creak a little now, but it still retains that ineffable ‘if I see it on ITV4 while channel-hopping there’s no way I can switch it off’ vibe. It has momentum, palpable peril, and a cast of immensely likeable character actors playing everyday heroes. Yes, the plot amounts to little more than tornadoes of ever-increasing sizes, but there’s wit and a rekindling romance along for the ride.We’ll find out soon if Twisters, a sort of sequel (we’re in the same world, but following a totally new set of characters in the present day),…2 min
Total Film|June 2024HOT RIGHT NOWThey’re both ruthless women,’ Julia Garner said of her most prominent TV roles, Ozark’s Ruth Langmore and Inventing Anna’s Anna Sorokin. She’s an artist who’s made her name playing tough and ambitious characters that she often disappears into. Now, though, Garner is being recognised for her own growing star power, becoming more than a character actor.She’s had a memorable career on the big screen, too, with her first role being in 2011 drama Martha Marcy May Marlene. More recently, she’s worked with director Kitty Green on both The Assistant and The Royal Hotel. After a well-publicised and apparently gruelling boot camp, Garner also bagged the role of Madonna in the music icon’s self-produced biopic. While that project was ultimately put on hold, even getting the part is a testament to…2 min
Total Film|June 2024YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?You talkin’ to me?I am talking to you, after I listen to you, and here’s what a movie nerd I am - I know that everyone says, ‘Oh, that’s Taxi Driver,’ but it’s [inspired by] the movie Shane and Travis Bickle is quoting the dialogue at the bar between Shane and the guy he gets in a fight with. Sorry, I’m a big nerd!Do you have an off switch?I do have an off switch and unfortunately it’s called social media and Twitter. That’s when I kind of disengage from the world and deal with this fake world of electrons. That’s my off switch.Who’s more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?That’s Ben Kenobi talking to Han Solo [in Star Wars], I think the fool is still the more…4 min
Total Film|June 2024SOUND BYTES‘ANGRY BIRDS JUST DESTROYED US.’ RYAN GOSLING CHALKS UP THE LACK OF A SEQUEL FOR THE NICE GUYS TO BOX-OFFICE PERFORMANCE.‘You look at some of the best films of the past year - what do they have in common? They’re not from America.’ JESSICA LANGE ON AN INCREASINGLY PROFITDRIVEN US FILM INDUSTRY.$14.5m THE IMPRESSIVE BOX-OFFICE HAUL OF THE PHANTOM MENACE’S GLOBAL RERELEASE.$500m ANIMALS DOING MARTIAL ARTS PROVES TO BE POPULAR, AS KUNG FU PANDA 4 HAS MADE MORE THAN HALF-A-BILLION AT THE BOX OFFICE.‘AS LONG AS I’M STILL YOUNG ENOUGH TO PLAY IT, I’LL PLAY IT. CHRIS WILL HAVE TO WAIT HIS TURN.’ CHRIS HEMSWORTH WANTS TO PLAY THE LEAD IN A NEW KEVIN COSTNER FILM. COSTNER’S HAVING NONE OF IT.GOOD THINGDOUBLE TROUBLE MARTIN SCORSESE IS DEVELOPING TWO MAJOR MOVIES…1 min
Total Film|June 2024MAKING THE HEADLINESIn a London studio, Live at Six news anchors Madeline (Karen Gillan) and Douglas (Hugh Bonneville) go through the motions, signing off with scripted zingers before the director yells cut. It’s smooth, slick and professional; yet, as recent scandals have revealed, even television’s national treasures hide guilty secrets which, should they get out, could lead to trial by social media. Sure enough, when an off-colour remark at a wedding goes viral, the title of the four-part comedy drama looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy.‘Being worried about what you might say in public is everybody’s worry, but it’s particularly the worry of a celebrity,’ says series writer Steven Moffat, who originally conceived Douglas is Cancelled as a play. ‘The producer [Ben Miles] tells Douglas, “When you’re out in public, no opinions: balanced,…2 min
Total Film|June 2024BADDIE DAYCAREIf there’s one thing animation studio Illumination is renowned for, it’s the little yellow bundles of chaos known as the Minions. They’ve so far had five outings, the most recent being 2022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru. It’s been a long time, though, since we last saw Gru in his grown-up anti-villain form. Seven years have passed since the last Despicable Me instalment, and a lot has changed for Steve Carell’s protagonist and his family. Despicable Me 4 sees them navigate life with a new baby, and if that isn’t hectic enough, there’s also a new villain threatening their safety…FAMILY BUSINESS‘The fun of it is introducing a new dynamic,’ says director Chris Renaud of adding Gru Jr into the mix. After helming the first and second movies in the franchise,…3 min
Total Film|June 2024THE HEROFrom modelling and music videos to Oscar nominations for In America and Blood Diamond, Djimon Hounsou has come a long way in his thirty-plus-year career. Epic directors (Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott) are seemingly just the norm for the 60-year-old actor from Benin, who now picks up his mysterious character in horror prequel A Quiet Place: Day One. Pray silence, please…Do you feel audiences will be shocked by what A Quiet Place: Day One has in store?For sure. I think there’s a huge anticipation about what happened on Day One. And in this instance, having Day One be staged in the city of millions. Of course, in New York City, sound is especially unpredictable and dangerous, making it even more exciting to have Day One taking place there. Having to shut…3 min
Total Film|June 2024GO BIG OR GO HOMEGARETH EDWARDSVFX artist Edwards wowed viewers with his $500,000 sci-fi road movie Monsters. Edwards made the film with a crew of five people, and rustled up the otherworldly beasts on his laptop. Its success encouraged Legendary Pictures to hand him $160m for Godzilla. Then came Rogue One. And next up is Jurassic World 4. Only MVP IP for Edwards.MARC WEBBIt wasn’t just the surname that led Sony to Marc Webb to handle the reboot of their most precious IP with The Amazing Spider-Man. Webb’s 2009 romcom 500 Days of Summer brimmed with warmth and wit, just what the studio wanted for Peter Parker. And so Webb swung from a $7.5m production to one budgeted somewhere between $200-230m.RYAN COOGLERCosting $900,000 and clearing $17m at the worldwide box office, Coogler’s hard-hitting, Sundance-winning…1 min
Total Film|June 2024HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN at 20It was not very aware of Potter’s universe and I was suprised to be offered it, coming from Y tu mamá también,’ recalls director Alfonso Cuarón, who’s talking to Total Film 20 years on from the release of his one and only dip into J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World, with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The third movie in the Potter franchise, it was, at the time, by some distance the best in the series — and the critical consensus did not alter once the dust settled on the five movies that followed.‘I was confused because it was completely not on my radar,’ Cuarón continues. ‘I speak often with Guillermo [del Toro], and a couple of days after, I said, “You know, they offered me this Harry Potter film,…12 min
Total Film|June 2024FIVE STAR TURNSPHANTOM THREAD 2017Paul Thomas Anderson knew he was right to cast the little-known Krieps as unyielding Alma opposite Daniel Day-Lewis’ Reynolds Woodco*ck because she was unfazed upon meeting the acting titan. ‘We thought, “This is the girl, how did we get so lucky?”’BERGMAN ISLAND 2021Krieps and Tim Roth excel as a couple who travel to the island of Fårö, where Ingmar Bergman resided, to write their screenplays. ‘The actress gets to unfurl the full tapestry of her talent,’ wrote The Hollywood Reporter.OLD 2021Proving she could swap arthouse for mainstream, Krieps was the mum of a vacationing family trapped on a beach where people rapidly age. Not many could maintain dignity while gasping, ‘He was six years old this morning!’CORSAGE 2022Another emphatic but empathetic performance, this time as Empress Elisabeth in…1 min
Total Film|June 2024SASQUATCH SUNSET 15OUT 14 JUNE CINEMASImagine if the monkey business at the start of 2001: A Space Odyssey carried on for the whole film. Such is the deal in Sasquatch Sunset, an absurdist comedy by fraternal filmmaking duo David and Nathan Zellner. Only instead of actors in ape suits we have actors in Bigfoot suits, living out a year in the North American wilderness.As the seasons pass, we follow a female Sasquatch (Riley Keough) and three males (Jesse Eisenberg, Nathan Zellner, Christophe ZajacDenek) as they forage, groom, play, tussle and interact with other (real) animals. Boring? Not for a second. The unrecognisable actors work wonders under excellent prosthetics, while an ever-present air of mystery and menace pervades the sun-soaked, scenic visuals of DoP Mike Gioulakis (It Follows, Us).The concept might be eccentric…1 min
Total Film|June 2024IN FLAMES 15OUT 24 MAY CINEMASModern-day Pakistan’s patriarchal society is viewed through the lens of psychological horror in this bold and unusual take from first-time writer-director Zarrar Khan. The focus rests on Fariha (Bakhtawar Mazhar) and her daughter Mariam (Ramesha Nawal), with the latter undergoing radical change after a tragic accident befalls her and Asad (Omar Javaid), a fellow student who’s taken a shine to her. Exploring themes of mental breakdown and male oppression, Khan’s film has some shocking moments – an assault in a car in particular – but its increasingly opaque nature frustrates.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024THE DEAD DON’T HURT 15DIRECTOR Viggo Mortensen STARRING Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen, Solly McLeod, Garret Dillahunt, Colin Morgan SCREENPLAY Viggo Mortensen DISTRIBUTOR Signature Entertainment RUNNING TIME 129 minsOUT 7 JUNE CINEMASSet in 1860s Nevada, Viggo Mortensen’s sophom*ore feature as writer/director is a western with all the trappings you’d expect: wide-brimmed hats, swinging saloon doors, six-shooters… But it also offers a degree of sensitivity you wouldn’t so readily associate with the genre. This duality is laid bare at the start, when we witness the last gasps of Vicky Krieps’ Vivienne, who’s dreaming of a knight on horseback (a poetic touch that returns, effectively, throughout the film).Meanwhile, a man in a long black coat shoots up a bar before fleeing. An absence of justice sees Sheriff Olsen (Mortensen) turn in his badge and leave town with…2 min
Total Film|June 2024WILDING PGOUT 14 JUNE CINEMASAward-winning nature-film maestro David Allen turns this leisurely, animal-packed account of Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell’s 20-year rewilding project into a gentle, golden-lit hymn to conservation. Beetles scuttle, Tamworth pigs learn to swim and wild Exmoor ponies crash a polo match, as the Kent couple wrestle their pesticide-drenched failure of a farm in West Sussex into an untamed haven. Limpidly gorgeous rather than engaging, this documentary lacks grabby characters (unlike 2018’s similar The Biggest Little Farm) and needs more jeopardy than a creeping thistle invasion.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024IF UOUT NOW CINEMASWarm and well-intentioned but frankly sappy, John Krasinski’s ode to childhood fantasy centres on Bea (Cailey Fleming), a tween who lost her mother in early childhood and is now bravely facing her father’s upcoming heart surgery.As if that weren’t enough to deal with, quirky characters that apparently only Bea can see (like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s creepy ant-girl Blossom) start making trouble around her. A possible solution arises when grumpy, wisecracking neighbour Cal (Ryan Reynolds) – who shares Bea’s ability – co-opts her into matchmaking the needy IFs (Imaginary Friends) with new kids to replace their grown ones.With its big, bumbling, Monsters, Inc. lookalike Blue (voiced by Steve Carell), IF badly wants to be a live-action Pixar movie, but its creaky, CGI-augmented world-building isn’t smart or cohesive enough. The sluggish…1 min
Total Film|June 2024A HOUSE IN JERUSALEM 12AOUT 31 MAY CINEMASA supernatural family drama that feels especially resonant given the current turmoil in the Middle East. Muayad Alayan’s thoughtful tale stars Johnny Harris as Michael, a British father who brings his 10-year-old daughter Rebecca (Miley Locke) to West Jerusalem as he looks to make a fresh start following the death of his wife. But when Rebecca encounters the spirit of young girl Rasha (Sheherazade Makhoul Farrell), it’s only the start of the strangeness in a film that folds ghosts and grief into a political story about the seemingly ceaseless Israel-Palestine conflict.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024UNFROSTED 12OUT NOW NETFLIXA s packed with yuks as a Pop-Tart is with fruit-adjacent filling, Jerry Seinfeld’s wacky, pastel-coloured comedy turns the sorta-true story of the 1963 Kellogg’s/Post Foods ‘boxed breakfast pastry’ wars into a hilarious, The Right Stuffstyled battle to be the titan of toaster treats.Taking on the ruthless Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer), wily Kellogg’s marketing exec Bob Cabana (Seinfeld) and freewheeling food tech Donna ‘Stan’ Stankowski (Melissa McCarthy) assemble an eccentric team of Taste Pilots, whose exploding/disgusting/downright creepy inventions splatter the film with sight gags.A knowing twist on the ‘product origin story’ trend that brought us Air, Flamin’ Hot, Blackberry et al, it’s unashamedly a gags-first film, rather than an Anchorman-esque absurdist parody. So the mad rush to see how many jokes, pastiches and celebrity cameos it can pack…1 min
Total Film|June 2024BLACK STONE 15OUT NOW CINEMAS 10 JUNE DIGITALIn this award-winning debut by Greek writer/director Spiros Jacovides, a documentary crew gatecrashes the house of Haroula (Eleni Kokkidou) to look for her missing son Panos (Ahilleas Hariskos), a civil servant accused of fraud. The mockumentary format brings a DIY energy to the chronicling of the quest, which is mainly mined for absurdist humour but sprinkled with earnest emotion: Kokkidou switches gears effortlessly. And when Black taxi driver Michalis (Kevin Zans Ansong) joins the search, Jacovides slyly skewers the casual racism that he meets daily.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024A FAMILY AFFAIR 15OUT NOW DIGITALAs the bank threatens foreclosure on the spiritual retreat owned by Edward (Joe Wilkinson) and Helen (Laura Aikman), their parents arrive for a getaway, and various potential buyers descend to purchase the country manor in an auction. Complications and romantic entanglements naturally ensue – no gong bath can cleanse the rampant lust and greed on display – and farcical scenarios arise, like Edward’s father popping Viagra to bed his gold-digging caregiver. One-part Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, two-parts John Cleese/Rowan Atkinson-style Brit-com, and almost entirely flat.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024NEW LIFE TBCOUT 3 JUNE DIGITALAiming to update David Cronenberg’s 1970s output (Shivers, Rabid) for the COVID-19 generation and – at times – succeeding, writer/director John Rosman’s debut is impressive stuff. Jessica Murdock (Hayley Erin) is a young woman on the run through small-town America; Elsa Gray (Sonya Walger) is a mysterious operative who must find her before her own time runs out. If the reasons for their actions are revealed a little clumsily, the manner in which scenes of thoughtful drama explode into bouts of sudden shrieking body horror will keep you hooked to the end.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024NEXT SOHEE TBCOUT 14 JUNE CINEMASJuly Jung’s sombre, penetrating drama puts exploitative corporate practices under the microscope. Its opening hour follows ebullient teenager Sohee (a captivating Kim Si-eun), whose gruelling work placement at a telecom call centre ends in tragedy; the second half shifts focus to a stoic detective (Doona Bae, compellingly understated) investigating the dehumanising conditions that caused it. As a string of blameshifting officials refuse to take responsibility, Jung’s film assumes the quality of a Loachian polemic – its simmering rage eddying into heartbreak for an intensely moving final shot.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024TREASURE TBCOUT 14 JUNE CINEMASA curiously cast Stephen Fry and Lena Dunham are father and daughter in writer/director Julia von Heinz’s take on Lily Brett’s book Too Many Men. A road movie of sorts set in 1990s Poland, it sees Fry’s Auschwitz survivor Edek Rothwax and Dunham’s music journo Ruth set out to tour his origins, as well as journey to the notorious concentration camp. Fry’s Polish speaking impresses, but the bickering parent-child dynamic wears thin, while Dunham’s Girls-lite angst-ridden character feels like a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit the story. Result? Alas, a zone of low interest.SEVERIN, ELYSIAN, DAY FOR NIGHT, DAZZLER, ARROW…1 min
Total Film|June 2024HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN PG2004OUT 31 MAY CINEMASHogwarts found itself schooled in darker cinematic magic when Alfonso Cuarón took the directing job for year three. Murkier and chillier than the wizard larks of Chris Columbus’ likeable but lighter opening entries, Prisoner takes flight like a reversed Dementor’s kiss, adding soul (and style) to the saga.You know the story: after too much teenage fiddling with his wand at home, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) returns to Hogwarts to find himself haunted by snarling prison escapee Sirius Black (Gary Oldman). It seems Black ratted on Harry’s late parents to Voldemort – but what secrets await in the Shrieking Shack?Oldman brings wild-eyed menace to proceedings, matched by Cuarón’s stormy, noir-ish direction. The outdoor action broods under lowering skies; indoors, skewed angles and creeping camerawork ensure Hogwarts’ corridors and…1 min
Total Film|June 2024BLACK MASK 181996OUT NOW BDEXTRASAlternate cuts, Commentaries, Featurettes, BookletUniversal Soldier meets Batman (with a dash of the Green Hornet chucked in for good measure) in this hyper-stylised Hong Kong superhero flick about a vigilante who’s impervious to pain. As enjoyable as it is to watch star Jet Li leap around on wires, kicking bad guys in the face, Black Mask’s murky colour grading, breathless editing and over-reliance on skewed camera angles renders most of the action as incoherent as the half-baked story. The Blu-ray boasts four different cuts of the film; shame that there’s not a good one among them.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST 151968OUT NOW 4K UHDEXTRASCommentaries, Featurettes, Poster, Art cards, and moreCelebrating its 56th birthday with a 4K UHD makeover (and plenty of collectable goodies to boot), Sergio Leone’s iconic western has been restored from the original camera negative and personally signed off by Martin Scorsese.Coming after the Clint Eastwood-starring Dollars Trilogy, Once Upon a Time in the West is the summation of Leone’s work in spaghetti westerns. Its loopy plotting (Dario Argento, no friend of logical narratives, worked on the story with Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci) circles some truly bravura set-pieces. So as cold-blooded gunslinger Frank (Henry Fonda), escaped felon Cheyenne (Jason Robards) and taciturn tough guy Harmonica (Charles Bronson) shoot it out for the farmstead of fiery widow Jill (Claudia Cardinale), we get panoramic landscapes, operatic camera moves and close-ups…1 min
Total Film|June 2024FRESH SPINSCHALLENGERSTrent Reznor/Atticus Ross’ hot streak shows no sign of cooling. For Luca Guadagnino’s sex’n’sports flick, they whip up sweaty techno-house volleys of beats, synths and slamming (tennis) balls, with fleeting breathers. Yeah x10 plays like LCD Soundsystem on centre court, contrasted keenly with the pensive Social Network echoes of L’oeuf. The raved-up Brutalizer lives up to its title, while the hard-driving Match Point’s synth chords sound out the right note of triumph. Played, indeed.THE FALL GUYPost-Godzilla x Kong, Kiss’ I Was Made for Lovin’ You continues its tour of duty in Yungblud’s cover and – intermittently – composer Dominic Lewis’ scoring valentine to 80s action-comedy machismo. Synths, beats, symphonics, Jan Hammer nods and poodle-rock guitars merge in mischief, with everything staying the right side of hollow snark thanks to Lewis’…1 min
Total Film|June 20242 MOREANIMAL WELLOUT NOW PC, PS5, SWITCHLone developer Billy Basso’s debut is an astonishingly assured adventure in which a tiny creature negotiates a world of danger and wonder, armed with nothing more than a series of child’s toys. Its characterful, intricate subterranean setting doesn’t so much open out as inward, each deep-buried secret you unearth transforming the way you see and explore it.HADES IIOUT NOW PC, PS4/5, XBOX ONE/SERIES X/SReleased in Early Access form, Supergiant’s successor nevertheless feels more polished and complete than most finished games. This time you’re chthonic nymph Melinoë, whose powerful sorcery gives combat a distinct tempo without disrupting its flow. With a range of new gods and enemies and a more visually diverse underworld, this is masterful sequel-making.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024TOTAL FILMBUFFIS IT BOLLOCKS?Film Buff investigates the facts behind outlandish movie plots.THIS MONTH BACK TO BLACKQ In Back to Black, Amy Winehouse relapses and dies upon learning that her former lover Blake Fielder-Civil is becoming a father. True or false?A classic case of a biopic tidying facts to aid the dramatic storytelling. In truth, Amy had been dating Reg Traviss (omitted from the film) for a year by this time, and Blake’s baby was actually born in May 2011, two months before Amy died of alcohol poisoning. Similarly, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic has been accused of taking it easy on Amy’s father Mitch: there’s no mention of him turning up with a camera crew to make a Channel 4 documentary during her post-rehab holiday in Saint Lucia in 2009, and he appears…2 min
Total Film|June 2024HINDSIGHT CORNERANG LEE 3DDECEMBER 2012‘I think 3D makes it seem more like you are together with Pi, especially the ocean part… You literally feel you are there with him. I think that really helped the movie.’APRIL 2024‘3D [is] so bad… The filmmakers are bad. The theatres are bad. The whole ecosystem is bad. It’s not made for [3D]… The theatres are stingy. It’s really dim, you can’t really see it. It’s flickering… People do a poor job, [it] gives you a headache, it’s purely bad. You can’t blame the audience for not liking it because it’s bad.’…1 min
Total Film|June 2024GREMLINSTOTAL FILM CLASSICAvoid bright lights, don’t get them wet, and whatever you do, never feed them after midnight… The rules were simple yet despite these clear warnings, we all learnt the hard way what happens if any of these mandates were broken – and it wasn’t pretty. In fact, according to director Joe Dante, no one was more dismayed at the gleefully slimy chaos that ensued in his 1984 monster-hit Gremlins than the studio that helped make it a reality.‘[Warner Bros.] just didn’t get it,’ Dante tells Buff, recalling the early days of his Steven Spielberg-produced Christmas classic 40 years after it first hit cinemas. ‘They thought the Gremlins doing stuff like blowing their nose on the curtains was disgusting. At one point they said, “The only thing wrong with…8 min
Total Film|June 2024OCTAVIA SPENCERSTART TIMEOctavia Lenora Spencer was born in 1970 in Montgomery, Alabama, the sixth of seven children. Her theatrical debut came in Joel Schumacher’s A Time to Kill (1996) amid a star-stuffed cast (Bullock, McConaughey, both Sutherlands). Although a blink/miss role - she’s credited as ‘Roark’s nurse’ - the film would be the first of several socially conscious dramas on her CV. (And she also reteamed with Bullock on the latter’s 1998 short Making Sandwiches.)MAID TO SHINEAdapted from Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help (2011) follows Black maids in civil-rights-era Mississippi and their relationships with their white employers. Although a critical and commercial hit, the film has since been heavily criticised – not least by some of the cast – for being a white-saviour narrative which, in the words of lead Viola…2 min
Total Film|June 2024INTERMISSIONThe first time I heard someone swear in a film was on the deck of the Enterprise. The stardate was 1994, and eight-year-old Joel was about to have his mind torpedoed by Star Trek: Generations.My ears were no stranger to swearing, but I was a sheltered child, having been raised on a TV diet of The Next Generation (the cuddliest Trek), and strictly banned from anything above the BBFC’s recommended age rating. I was therefore shocked to hear a man I’d watched on screen my whole life utter the words ‘Oh sh*t’ in a Star Trek film.This, coming from the wholesome, upstanding Lieutenant Commander Data of all people, was a shocking act of transgression, and my most vivid screen-swearing memory.Still, my parents’ diligence couldn’t shield me from edgier things for…4 min
Total Film|June 2024VIRTUAL REALITYEASY1 Which colour pill does Keanu Reeves’ Neo choose in The Matrix? 2 In which year is Ready Player One set? a) 2036 b) 2037 c) 2045 3 Which of these Michael Douglas erotic thrillers features a VR sequence? a) Basic Instinct b) Disclosure c) Fatal Attraction 4 In Johnny English Strikes Again, what food items does Johnny use as weapons while wearing a VR headset? 5 In which 1993 movie does Sandra Bullock have virtual sex with an action superstar?MEDIUM1 Which VR thriller released in 1992 was renamed Virtual Wars in Japan? 2 In which animated movie do characters enter the virtual world of U? 3 What’s the aquatic name of the (fictional) technology in Strange Days? 4 At the centre of The Thirteenth Floor (1999) is a VR…1 min
Total Film|June 2024REST IN PIECESI have some nasty sleeping habits that torment my wife,’ confesses South Korean writer/director Jason Yu with a guilty grin. ‘I snore very loudly and I have sleep apnoea - I stop breathing for long periods of time. I guess, subconsciously, I’ve wondered, “What would happen if the level of these symptoms gradually grow more threatening?”’It was Yu’s turbulent sleep patterns, along with his dark fascination for the kind of sleepwalking accidents you sometimes hear of in the news (‘Somebody jumping off a building, or harming a loved one’) that shaped the decidedly creepy plot of Sleep. Set largely in a single apartment, it sees the loving marriage of Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) and Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) put under strain when Hyun-su’s sleepwalking (and talking) escalates to scary extremes. Nothing is…2 min
Total Film|June 2024THE LLWORDYou only need to look at what I chose to wear in the picture for this column to know that I love a summer blockbuster. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was released in June 1975 and spent 14 weeks as the No.1 movie in America, revolutionising the release model, where previously the summer was a dumping ground for lesser films.Jaws became the highest-grossing film of all time and Star Wars broke that record in the summer of 1977. The continued success of Alien (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and E.T. (1982) would solidify that, during the summer, there’s nothing better than taking a break from the heat, settling down into a cool, dark, air-conditioned room and taking in some movie magic. They are communal experiences where we share in the…3 min
Total Film|June 2024THE XXX FACTORI t’s a much bigger, sprawling story and it exists in a very different aesthetic to the first two movies,’ says writer/director Ti West of MaXXXine, the feverishly anticipated follow up to X and Pearl. ‘It’s a 1980s aesthetic. It’s poppy, but still grounded in more of a grittier 80s than a shopping-mall 80s. You’re seeing the glamorous side of the movie business and the seedy side of Hollywood.’In March 2022, A24 released X, a slasher movie set in 1979 Texas about a group of filmmakers who set out to make a p*rn movie only to suffer from premature expiration. Mia Goth played dual roles, as final girl Maxine and geriatric killer Pearl. Then, just months later, came Pearl, a prequel that was shot back-to-back with X and focused on…2 min
Total Film|June 2024CASINO ROYALEGLADIATOR 2The Colosseum at Caesars Palace was the perfect venue for director Ridley Scott to introduce five minutes of fierce unfinished footage via video from London. The brutal scenes showcased the sequel’s top-tier cast - including Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen and a ripped Paul Mescal - as well as murderous monkeys, soldiers on rhinos and, erm, sharks. Epic! ‘Going to work every day with Sir Ridley Scott behind the camera is a good day’s work in any context,’ commented Mescal.GLADIATOR 2 OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 22 NOVEMBER.JOKER: FOLIE À DEUXDirector Todd Phillips wowed the crowds with a mesmerising trailer for Joker 2, which gave audiences a first glimpse at the alluring chemistry between Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. When quizzed about the musical element of the movie, Phillips…2 min
Total Film|June 2024RESERVATION ROADNative people are extremely vulnerable, and violent crimes committed against them often go uninvestigated,’ says writer-director Erica Tremblay. ‘There’s not a day goes by that I don’t log onto social media and see missing posters. If you look at the statistics… most crimes happen in communities, right? Violence happens within the groups that you live. But 86% of violence perpetrated on Native women is done by non-Native people.’Making her narrative feature debut with Fancy Dance after directing documentaries and episodes of Taika Waititi’s Reservation Dogs, Tremblay here uses one intimate story to examine the current crisis of missing Natives in America. The setting is the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in northeastern Oklahoma where Tremblay grew up, as Jax (Lily Gladstone), a queer 30-something subsisting on scams, and her 13-year-old niece Roki (newcomer…2 min
Total Film|June 2024SECOND WINDCrowing up in the southern state of Arkansas, Lee Isaac Chung was familiar with tornadoes. ‘At school, that was always the drill that we had to practise: the tornado drill,’ he tells Total Film. One of his earliest memories is as a four-year-old, three weeks into living on the Arkansas farm in a trailer home, when his parents called out, ‘There’s a tornado coming.’‘We didn’t have any storm shelter,’ recalls Chung. ‘So we were immediately looking for a place where we could hide it out.’ The family were unscathed, but it made a huge impression. It also meant that the 1996 blockbuster Twister resonated with the young Chung when he saw it at the cinema with his dad and sister. The opening scene in particular. ‘It was a family on…17 min
Total Film|June 2024ONCE MORE, WITH FEELINGSIt’s perfectly teed up, right?!’ says director Kelsey Mann of sequel Inside Out 2, which takes its cue from emotion Joy’s final line in the 2015 original: ‘After all, Riley’s 12 now,’ says Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler). ‘What could happen?’That’s the question that Mann and his team are looking to answer in this summer’s sequel, which finds Riley, aged 13, dealing with puberty, hockey try-outs and a brace of new emotions.‘Kelsey and I are both fathers of teenage girls which made exploring this stage in our children’s lives really meaningful, and actually really helpful,’ says producer Mark Nielsen when Total Film visits Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, California (not far from the San Francisco setting of Inside Out).We’re shown the first 30 minutes of the film in one of…10 min
Total Film|June 2024BIG BUSINESSFrom Los Alamos to Arrakis, a rumbling in the sands of cinema has been heard lately. Denis Villeneuve channelled the vibrations in Dune: Part Two. Long after a young Chris Nolan thrilled to documentaries at the Museum of Science and Industry’s giant dome theatre in Chicago, he conveyed the message with Oppenheimer. If you want to see these films how their makers intended, both preached, get thee to an IMAX.Post-COVID-19, cinema’s embattled state seems to make that gospel a tough sell. Streaming, the cost-of-living crisis, variations on ‘superhero fatigue’ (discuss) and post-strike delays have hit theatres and viewers hard. Yet as audiences embrace the piercing clarity, giddy scale and enveloping sound of IMAX – either digital or the revered large-frame 15/70 film format – IMAX’s success remains remarkable.In one sense,…9 min
Total Film|June 2024FREUD’S LAST SESSION TBCOUT 14 JUNE CINEMASAdapted from Mark St. Germain’s play, Matthew Brown’s stodgy drama stages a fictionalised meeting between a cancer-stricken Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins) and a young C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode). Shaky accent aside, Hopkins is good value as the cantankerous psychoanalyst, while Goode slips smoothly between self-satisfied and haunted as World War Two’s arrival triggers his own frontline horrors. But Brown stifles the debate with needless flashbacks and asides, and as such, the philosophical sparring lacks a knockout punch.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024BONUS TRACK TBCOUT 1 JUNE SKY CINEMA, NOWThere’s something of Bill Forsyth’s 1980 classic Gregory’s Girl in the charmingly lo-fi visuals, social awkwardness and inherently sweet nature of Julia Jackman’s debut. Set in 2006, it centres on shy, glum George (Joe Anders), whose only passion is music – at least until Max (Samuel Paul Small), the cool son of a pop star, enrols in his year at school. The trajectory is rote, leading up to a climactic end-of-year talent contest, but the leads are charming and there’s a pleasingly, ahem, old-school vibe to the whole affair.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024THE BEAST 15OUT 31 MAY CINEMASSpanning two continents, three eras and who knows how many genres, this unwieldy sci-fi drama from French auteur Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama) fully commits to its title. Loosely inspired by a 1903 Henry James novella, it stars Léa Seydoux and George MacKay as two people whose paths keep crossing through the ages.In Paris, 1910, she’s a pianist, he’s her suitor; in LA, 2014, she’s an actor/model, he’s her stalker; and in an unspecified location in 2044, she undergoes a mysterious procedure to purify her DNA - the reason, perhaps, for all the time-shifting. In each period there are common elements: pigeons recur, as do clairvoyants, nightclubs, dolls and works of art such as Madame Butterfly. And throughout, Seydoux’s character is terrified of an unspecified disaster: the eponymous beast.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024ÀMA GLORIA 12AOUT 14 JUNE CINEMASSpirited six-year-old Cléo (Louise Mauroy-Panzani) lives in Paris and worships her Cape Verdean nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego). But the latter has bombshell news for her young charge: she is returning for good to her West African island home. Drawing on her own childhood experiences, French writer/director Marie Amachoukeli delivers a heartfelt melodrama. Hand-crafted animated sequences are deftly incorporated into the rites-of-passage narrative, but what really distinguishes the film is the exceptional Mauroy-Panzani, who vividly conveys the intensity of Cléo’s fluctuating feelings.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024WILLIAM SHATNER: YOU CAN CALL ME BILL 12OUT 27 MAY BD, DIGITALFor a documentarian who has tackled Hitchco*ck (78/52), David Lynch (Lynch/Oz) and William Friedkin (Leap of Faith), the man who gave us James T. Kirk, T.J. Hooker and a spoken-word rendition of Rocket Man might not seem as weighty a subject. But in You Can Call Me Bill, essayist Alexandre O. Philippe magnanimously affords the nonagenarian Shatner the respect he’d grant any cinematic titan.Born in Montreal in 1931, Shatner grew up idolising Laurence Olivier and once fancied himself a Canadian Brando. Life, though, had other ideas, directing the actor down a campier path better suited to his declarative style. Star Trek inevitably features heavily here, with clips including the disquieting sight of Kirk in a Nazi uniform. Yet Philippe appears more intrigued by the ways ‘The…1 min
Total Film|June 2024HOUNDS 15OUT 14 JUNE CINEMASWe’re a long way from Rick’s café in this grittily atmospheric, Casablanca-set crime movie, written and directed by Moroccan first-time filmmaker Kamal Lazraq. Set over a chaotic 24 hours in the city’s rundown suburbs, this darkly amusing tale follows superstitious petty criminal Hassan (Abdellatif Masstouri) and his adult son Issam (Ayoub Elaid), who have been ordered by a local mobster to dispose of a corpse. Unfolding in a brutal, dog-eat-dog underworld, Hounds runs out of steam in its second half, but there are credible turns from the mainly non-professional cast.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES 12AOUT NOW CINEMASI s there life after Caesar? That’s the question for Wes Ball’s franchise restart, tasked as it is with following one of the strongest fantasy trilogies of recent times, albeit without Andy Serkis’ pivotal character.Set ‘many generations’ after 2017’s War…, KotPotA takes place on an ape-ruled planet that’s largely forgotten Caesar’s teachings. Yet as much as young chimpanzee Noa (Owen Teague) would like to live his life in eagle-rearing ignorance, he can’t prevent the outside world from paying him a visit that ends in catastrophe.The apes have come a long way since 2011’s Rise…, not just in guile, but in the mo-cap used to bring them to life. Yet on the storytelling front, Kingdom is a bit of a regression. Noa’s quest to liberate his tribe has a…1 min
Total Film|June 2024SORCERY 15OUT 14 JUNE CINEMASA bizarre true story from 1880s Chile provides the basis for this eerie fable about an Indigenous teen (Valentina Véliz Caileo) who turns to her island’s secret sect of sorcerers after her father is murdered by a German Christian settler (Sebastian Hülk). Steeped in unsettling atmosphere and Herzogian visuals, Christopher Murray’s film pits native traditions against the violent forces of colonialism to compelling if elusive effect. He’s helped by Leonardo Heiblum’s spooky string-based score and a riveting turn from Caileo that bristles with righteous umbrage.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024GASOLINE RAINBOW TBCOUT 31 MAY MUBIWritten, directed, lensed and edited by sibling filmmakers Bill and Turner Ross (2020’s Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets), this road-trip movie sees five high-school leavers from an unnamed Oregon town embark on a spur-of-the-moment 500-mile journey to the Pacific coast. Impressively acted by the entirely non-professional cast, who improvise much of their dialogue, Gasoline Rainbow is marked by unexpected encounters, spontaneous moments of joy and the heartening kindness with which these resilient teenagers treat one another on their epic, intimate travels.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024POOLMAN 15OUT 7 JUNE PRIME VIDEOT here are two big questions at the centre of this terminally kooky noir, which debuted to a shocking reception at 2023’s Toronto International Film Festival. The first: how has Chris Pine’s directorial debut - which he also stars in, as well as co-writing and producing - ended up such a spectacular folly? The second: how did he rope in such a great cast?Pine plays ‘poolman’ Darren Barrenman (or DB), whose main focus is cleaning the pool in the trailer park where he lives. He also receives Jungian therapy from neighbour Dianne (Annette Bening); the latter and her husband Jack (Danny DeVito) are basically DB’s substitute parents. When DB gets a tip-off about a conspiracy that affects his beloved LA, he turns amateur sleuth and sets…1 min
Total Film|June 2024LITTLE MONSTERS PGOUT 31 MAY CINEMASNot to be confused with 2019’s Lupita Nyong’o zom-com, this Russian-made, English-dubbed animation imagines a world where every home comes with its own invisible do-gooding furball. All bar one: a dilapidated dwelling in the town of Berg whose resident ‘Finn’ is a human-hating curmudgeon. What will happen when a new family arrives and his presence is rumbled by their crime-obsessed 13-year-old daughter? Nothing particularly interesting, alas, in a wholesale knock-off of Pixar tropes that’s hardly worth the two years it took to surface on our shores.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024THE MATRIX 151999OUT 7 JUNE CINEMASAs with George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, it’s hard to overstate the impact of the Wachowskis’ cyberpunk sci-fiaction classic. Rereleased in cinemas to mark its 25th anniversary, The Matrix first arrived just as Lucas’ The Phantom Menace was due, stealing some of that much-hyped prequel’s thunder with its mind-frazzling notions of ‘bullet time’ and the Matrix itself, an all-powerful simulation used to pacify humans enslaved by an army of intelligent machines.Blending subcultural conspiracy theories, postmodern philosophy (Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation), Lewis Carroll (‘Tumbling down the rabbit hole…’), and Hong Kong cinema, this was the film that also revitalised Keanu Reeves’ career: he’s pure ‘whoa’ as Neo, the computer programmer-slash-chosen one guided by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) to Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), the…1 min
Total Film|June 2024TWO FILMS BY YASUJIRŌ OZU U1932/42OUT NOW BDEXTRASCommentaries, BookletA double bill of father-son tales (mums are either making meals or dead) from Japanese master Ozu, both deceptively simple, understated, warm and wise. The director also brings the LOLs with the silent I Was Born, But…, in which two charming brats struggle with issues of power and status at school and at home. Meanwhile, There Was a Father is bookended by tragedy and heartbreak, yet eschews melodrama as it tracks the tension and affection between a teacher and his only child across the decades.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK PG1984OUT 27 MAY 4K UHD 14 JUNE CINEMASEXTRASCommentaries, Featurettes, Gallery, StoryboardsThe odd-numbered films are the weaker ones, so the argument goes; and following up the franchise-best Wrath of Khan (1982) was never going to be easy. With star Leonard Nimoy taking the director’s chair for the first time, the third Trek film sets about undoing the death of Spock via a clash with the Klingons. Forty years on, and remastered in 4K, it’s aged well. A fun, if slight, swashbuckling sci-fi adventure, it coasts affably on the well-oiled interplay between its veteran cast.BFI, EUREKA, FABULOUS, MGM, PARAMOUNT, PARK CIRCUS, SECOND SIGHT, STUDIOCANAL, WARNER BROS.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE 181974OUT 14 JUNE CINEMASSetting the (dinner) table for decades of hillbilly horror to come, Tobe Hooper’s subgenre-defining classic still packs a wallop in this 50th-anniversary 4K cinema rerelease. In Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) and Sally (Marilyn Burns) it has, respectively, a boogeyman and final girl for the ages. But what makes it so special is its gonzo atmosphere, cultivating a fetid sense of delirium amid the nerve-shredding whooping and hollering. The sequels and reboots are bloodier, but can’t match the original’s lightning-in-a-bottle lunacy.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024CLASSIC TV THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN1999-2017 AVAILABLE ON DVD, DIGITAL, iPLAYERWelcome to Royston Vasey. You’ll never leave!’ reads the sign that ‘greets’ arrivals to the fictional setting for one of the most intoxicatingly dark comedy series to ever grace TV. Part bucolic promise, part simmering threat, the sign offers the perfect summation of a place where the mundane and the macabre meet.The brainchild of the four-man comedy troupe (writer Jeremy Dyson and writer-performers Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith) whose name it adopted, The League of Gentlemen got its start as a stage sketch show before moving to radio in 1997. The jump to TV two years later saw a further evolution of the format, anchoring individual skits to ongoing narratives while also allowing its creators to pay greater homage to their inspirations. ‘Tonally…2 min
Total Film|June 2024CLASSIC SOUNDTRACK ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MINDWhen it comes to evoking feelings in film music, Jon Brion knows no fear. Speaking to Interview magazine, the US producer, songwriter and composer noted how some filmmakers dread the accusation of ‘leading the audience’ with music. But not Brion: ‘I think of it,’ he said, ‘as a job requirement.’Twenty years ago, Brion proved as much for Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry’s head-trip for the heart. After working for Paul Thomas Anderson on Hard Eight, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love, Brion’s aptitude for emotional intricacy proved match-ready for Eternal Sunshine’s alt-symphony of bruised love. As ex-lovers plunge into memories of soured romance, Brion’s score dives, too: circling memory’s playground in smoky tendrils of keys, woodwind, guitar and reversed tape loops, his fragmented music makes bittersweet feelings tangible with exquisitely artful intelligence.The…2 min
Total Film|June 20242 MOREFROM THE MOMENT THEY MET IT WAS MURDERVeteran noir-heads Alain Silver and James Ursini execute a taut history of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944). Kicking off with the true-crime story that inspired James M. Cain’s source novella, the authors then explore how the moviemakers’ tracks converged. Scripter Raymond Chandler receives due attention, alongside Wilder’s journalistic previous and Miklós Rózsa’s fatalist score. Key players’ later careers are also surveyed, but not before the road to a biting game-changer comes to vivid life.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024PLASTER CASTS IN MOVIES1 LADY BIRDSaoirse Ronan’s titular teen throws herself out of a moving car to exit an argument with her mum. The vivid pink cast she then wears symbolises her defiance. You can buy posters of the cast inscribed with the legend, ‘What if this is the best version?’2 REAR WINDOWStuck at home, nosy neighbour L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) spies murder. Perhaps. Hard to credit that Cornell Woolrich’s short story only reveals our hero has a broken leg in the last line – the cast screwed onto Stewart’s left leg is arguably the most famous in movies.3 THE BIG FIXRichard Dreyfuss’ PI hustles with a broken wrist. Repeatedly asked how he did it, he changes the story each time. Viewers learn the truth in the film’s coda, but only cinephiles will…2 min
Total Film|June 2024FLOP CULTUREWhy it was a good idea (on paper)From Marvel alumni to mutant bears, Alex Garland’s loose adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novel spliced audience appeal with arthouse ambition. A starpowered female ensemble (Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Jason Leigh and more), hard sci-fi ideas, hairy horror: here was a high-concept, mid-budget genre piece with brains.What went wrong?Too brainy for some. Some of the tension over Annihilation centred on disputes between Skydance Media exec David Ellison and producer Scott Rudin over changes following poor test screenings. The way Garland tells it, Ellison wanted Portman’s biologist, Lena, to be less self-destructive, a shift that would alter the film’s thematic thrust. Ellison also thought the final alien/Portman dance was, quoting Garland, ‘too weird’. Rudin/Garland wouldn’t budge, so Paramount released at cinemas in the…2 min
Total Film|June 2024KEY MOVIESTHE HELP 2011The first-time nominee won Best Supporting Actress as Minny, who proves revenge is best served with a slice of ‘chocolate’ cake.HIDDEN FIGURES 2016As real-life ‘human computer’ Dorothy Vaughan, Spencer is the standout in this drama honouring three of NASA’s finest minds.THE SHAPE OF WATER 2017Spencer brings no-nonsense charisma, ace comic timing and staunch empathy to Guillermo del Toro’s Best Picture winner.MA 2019Spencer startles as a teenterrorising outcast in a cult-horror meme machine (JuMAnji, The Greatest ShowMA, MAsery, et al).20TH CENTURY STUDIOS, ALTITUDE, DISNEY, SONY, UNIVERSAL…1 min
Total Film|June 2024TEASERSFOLEY GRAILA new Beverly Hills Cop movie has been in the works for a long time. Various scripts have been written and discarded over the years, but exactly three decades on from the John Landis-directed third film, a fourth iteration - Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F - has finally landed.‘It’s taken a long time to find the magic recipe for Eddie Murphy to come back and play Axel Foley,’ says debut director Mark Molloy, acknowledging the project’s long history. A fan of the franchise himself, he believes this film making it to production hinges on one thing: the script. ‘It gave me everything I wanted from a Beverly Hills Cop film but it also gave me something that I didn’t expect. There’s an emotional undercurrent to the story that really drew…5 min
Total Film|June 2024PRIMAL FEARFede Alvarez is fit to burst. No, the Uruguayan director behind Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe and The Girl in the Spider’s Web hasn’t had a run-in with a facehugger. He’s talking to Teasers shortly after the first trailer for Alien: Romulus unleashed to an egg-static reception, and the typically laid-back filmmaker is thrilled that audiences are chiming with his stripped-back vision for a series that’s found itself a long way from its roots with recent instalments.‘That’s what I wanted to see as a fan. That was what I was missing, in a way,’ Alvarez says. ‘Alien, above all, is a pure horror movie. It’s as elevated as it can be. But at its core, they’re very simple, straightforward storytelling machines that focus on just punishing the audience with horror over…2 min
Total Film|June 2024PEEP SHOWIshana Night Shyamalan readily admits that making a horror film for her debut feature was in some ways inevitable. Having spent her childhood watching her director father, M. Night Shyamalan, hard at work, and getting her first directing experience on the second unit of Old and Knock at the Cabin, it was natural that she would turn to the genre for her first film, The Watched.‘I feel, kind of oddly, a sense of peace after watching horror,’ the writer-director says. But that was far from the feeling she got from reading A.M. Shine’s novel The Watchers, the book she’s adapted for the screen with this movie, instead describing a sense of being ‘really, really uneasy’.That unease comes from the fraught situation of protagonist Mina (Dakota Fanning) who’s left stranded in…2 min
Total Film|June 2024ORIGIN STORYAfter making Their Algeria (2020), which dealt with both her paternal grandparents and the Algerian War of Independence, filmmaker Lina Soualem was faced with one question. ‘Everyone was asking, “How are you going to film your maternal family from Palestine?” I would always say, “I don’t have the courage to do it. It’s very intense.” And finally, I think it was my mission… I was resisting because I was afraid of tackling the subject.’Overcoming her fears, Soualem now presents her highly personal documentary Bye Bye Tiberias. Since 2018, the French-Palestinian-Algerian director has been combing through family archives to tell the story of four generations of Palestinian women including her mother, the actor Hiam Abbass (Munich, Succession). Mixing home movies and photos with interviews, poetry readings and new footage, the film…2 min
Total Film|June 2024NEXT BIG THINGOver the last 10 years Ewan Mitchell’s career has been set on an impressive trajectory. At just 20 he appeared in a main role in The Last Kingdom. He’s worked with acclaimed directors such as Claire Denis (in her English-language debut High Life) and Emerald Fennell (Saltbum). Now, he returns as Aemond Targaryen in Season 2 of House of the Dragon.Is there anything you can tease about Aemond’s character are in Season 2 of House of the Dragon?I don’t think we’ve seen anyone as insidious as Aemond in Westerns. He’s going to play you like a violin, and you’re either with him or against him. You can either be on Rhaenyra’s side or you can stay in one piece.As a child, you went to The Television Workshop in Nottingham. What…1 min
Total Film|June 2024BETWEEN TAKESWhat’s the first thing you do when you get to set?I put my coffee maker into the trailer, because I’m a bit of a coffee fiend and I like to be able to make my own rather than having to get nasty instant coffee!Do you have on-set superstitions?I don’t, although I like to make it a bit my own. On The Stranger my character had an office and I would get in there and move things where I wanted them, and then the art department would move them all back, and then I’d move them where I want them - so there’s sometimes a bit of a push and pull. But I like to feel like I’ve had my hands on [the props]. Then they don’t become props; they become…4 min
Total Film|June 2024TORN’ UPTHE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)Famously, it’s a tornado that whisks Dorothy and Toto away from Kansas to the land of Oz. Special effects, er, wizard Arnold Gillespie suspended a 35ft muslin sock from a steel gantry and sprayed it with compressed air while pumping earth and dust at it.TORNADO (1943)You might expect a film entitled Tornado to feature a tornado, but it seems the title is metaphorical at first, as a tale of love, betrayal and grasping greed spins out. But then? A tornado hits the town! The twister was realised by blending special effects with footage of a real tornado in Texas.THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004)Roland Emmerich’s apoco-epic features floods, hail and snow leading to a new Ice Age, but the Master of Disaster chucks in some twisters, too.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024THE WILDONESThere’s a moment in Jeff Nichols’ 60s-set hymn to open roads, purring carburettors and bad boys in leather jackets where Jodie Comer’s Kathy reluctantly gets on the back of a gleaming Harley belonging to Austin Butler’s wildcard biker Benny. As she clings to his denim jacket and he guns the hog over the rise of a highway bridge at midnight, his gang appears behind them, headlamps twinkling, engines roaring, while The Shangri-Las duskily sing, ‘Out in the street’… It’s an image and feeling seemingly transposed directly from the pages of Danny Lyon’s seminal photobook, The Bikeriders – a tome Nichols discovered on the floor of his brother’s bedroom as a teen and has been hankering to make into a film ever since.‘It was the most complete view of a subculture…12 min
Total Film|June 2024‘I REALLY BELIEVE IF I’M HERE ON THIS PLANET, I MIGHT AS WELL TRY AND CONTRIBUTE TO SOMETHING THAT IS ALIVE.’ VICKY KRIEPSAs Vicky Krieps pops up on video chat, sporting a red jumper and a big smile, Total Film’s eye immediately does a recce around the Berlin-based living room that she shares with her partner and two children. Behind her, a heaving bookshelf, including a copy of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems. It’s unsurprising to find this actor so well read; ever since she came to international attention in Paul Thomas Anderson’s finely stitched 2017 drama Phantom Thread, opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, her choices have been those of someone who cares about good writing, about quality cinema.It’s the end of April, just over a year from when TF last met Krieps at the Berlin Film Festival, when she was premiering the German film Journey into the Desert, playing the poet Ingeborg Bachmann. Then,…19 min
Total Film|June 2024STING 15 TBCOUT 31 MAY CINEMASLike E.T. gone wrong, director Kiah Roache-Turner’s underdeveloped but briskly suspenseful arachno-shocker sees a kid with family issues find solace in alien company. Only this spidery E.T. will gobble you up before it phones home…A clever opening sees a chunk of meteorite crash through the window of a New York apartment block, land in a doll’s house and crack open to release spidey. Prone to scuttling through air ducts, pre-teen Charlotte (a likeable Alyla Browne) finds it, feeds it and names it ‘Sting’, after Bilbo’s dagger. But this critter grows fast – and soon uses the air ducts itself to hunt (human) food.Alien’s influence resonates, wittily so when the shadowy environs tease hidden threats. A Ripley/xenomorph-ish congruity is also implied between girl/spider, though as Sting’s victims mount,…1 min
Total Film|June 2024THE COFFEE TABLE TBCOUT NOW DIGITALA humble coffee table becomes a monument to a family’s downfall in this nihilistic farce by Spanish director Caye Casas (2017’s Killing God). Already going through a rough patch, new parents Jesús (David Pareja) and Maria (Estefanía de los Santos) reach crisis point when they clash over the contentious furniture item in question. The ensuing tragedy is played like a perverse joke, demolishing the boundaries of good taste, then stomping the remnants into a bloody pulp on the rug. A devastatingly cruel comedy of horrors that’s not for the faint-hearted or easily offended.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024ROSALIE 15OUT 7 JUNE CINEMASLoosely inspired by the story of late-19th-century bearded lady Clémentine Delait, the second feature by Stéphanie Di Giusto (2016’s The Dancer) is a finely etched drama set in 1870s northern France. It begins as injured ex-soldier-turned-café-owner Abel (Benoît Magimel) meets and marries the younger Rosalie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) – chiefly because her father provides a dowry that’ll help settle his debts to local factory owner Barcelin (Benjamin Biolay).Then Abel discovers that Rosalie, secretly, has hair across her chest and back; appalled, he refuses to consummate their marriage. But things change when she reveals her ability to grow a beard to the café customers, who are soon entranced by this girl and her strawberry-blonde whiskers. Gradually, Abel changes his tune, although there are others in the community, including Barcelin,…1 min
Total Film|June 2024RIDDLE OF FIRE 12AOUT NOW ICON FILM CHANNEL 7 JUNE CINEMASA trio of scampish kids set the all-over-the-place pace for writer/director Weston Razooli’s winningly distinct, if wayward, feature debut. In Wyoming, a poorly mum tasks her three BMX-riding charges to fetch a blueberry pie; in return, they’ll get the TV password so they can play their (ahem, stolen) game. The quest unfolds like an Americana fairy tale, involving witches and a ‘woodsy bastard’ who steals the kids’ speckled egg. The unruly plot stretches patience, but it’s hard to deny Razooli’s Goonies-ish commitment to the kids’ over-excitable POV.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024CABRINI 12OUT 27 MAY DVD, BD, DIGITALThe life and good works of Mother Francesca Cabrini, an Italian nun who brought housing and healthcare to the slums of 19th-century New York, are dramatised in a handsomely sepia-toned but rather pious biopic. Director Alejandro Monteverde spends an indulgent two hours eulogising our dogged hero (well played, nonetheless, by Cristiana Dell’Anna) as she battles penury, prejudice and John Lithgow’s heartless mayor. But where Monteverde’s last film Sound of Freedom became a magnet for controversy, this one is more likely to slip under the radar.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024HERE TBCOUT 7 JUNE CINEMASOver a summer weekend in Brussels, two immigrants cross paths. The sensitive Stefan (Stefan Gota) is a construction worker who’s on the brink of returning home to Romania for his holidays. Shuxiu (Liyo Gong), meanwhile, is a Belgian-Chinese botanist who specialises in the study of mosses and lichen. Written and directed by Bas Devos, Here is a delicate and meditative piece of filmmaking. Shot on 16mm and in the boxy Academy ratio, it encourages viewers to dwell upon the Edenic images of the natural world it conjures in bracing contrast to its city views.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024STOPMOTION 18OUT 31 MAY SHUDDERPlaying like some unholy mash-up of Eraserhead, Censor and Morph, Robert Morgan’s audacious, disturbing debut sees stopmotion animator Ella (Aisling Franciosi, God’s Creatures) lose her mind as she digs into psyche and soul to complete her new film, in which a puppet girl is stalked by a grotesque manmonster. Soon Ella is sourcing real flesh to fashion her meatpuppet hero, and fantasy bleeds into reality as film and filmwithin-a-film meld. In movies, the creative process is often presented as traumatic; here, it’s psychopathic.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024SLOW TBCOUT 24 MAY CINEMASA sweetly tender Lithuanian love story with a difference, this Sundance favourite sticks to dancer Elena (Greta Grineviciute) and sign-language interpreter Dovydas (Kęstutis Cicenas) like a second skin, as they attempt to combine their big love with a non-typical sexuality. Director Marija Kavtaradze’s romantically grainy shots, complex characters and body-conscious filming style let intense performances from the leads work up a giddy, volatile romance. The leisurely pace sometimes earns Slow its title, yet this is a film that manages to embrace intimacy while avoiding voyeurism.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024BERMONDSEY TALES: FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 18OUT NOW CINEMAS 10 JUNE DVD, BD, DIGITAL‘All Londoners and criminals love a good story,’ says one character in this low-budget, Guy Ritchieknock-off anthology starring lots of small-screen co*ckneys plus John Hannah and Vicki Michelle (‘Oh, René!’). Written, directed and led with gusto by Michael Head, it follows the comically violent escapades of a southLondon firm. Enjoyment will depend largely on your tolerance for men scrapping and shouting ‘You slag!’, antiquated rhyming slang and the clear limitations of a meagre budget.20TH CENTURY STUDIOS, CONIC, STUDIO SOHO, SOVEREIGN, KALEIDOSCOPE, LIGHT BULB, MUBI, THE MOVIE PARTNERSHIP, VERTIGO, SIGNATURE…1 min
Total Film|June 2024THE PRESENT PG TBCOUT 24 MAY CINEMASThis time-travelling comedy adventure follows three precocious children as they attempt to prevent their parents’ impending divorce. The twist in this lowstakes Groundhog Day is that each reset of the clock follows a different family member, from youngest sibling Taylor (Easton Rocket Sweda) to mum and dad (played, respectively, by Isla Fisher and Greg Kinnear). Like the kids, director Christian Ditter has good intentions, but the repetitive structure soon grates, and the time-travel hook is underutilised. The sickly sweet resolution, meanwhile, makes you wish they hadn’t bothered.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024ENTER THE CLONES OF BRUCE 15OUT NOW DIGITAL 27 MAY BDEXTRASCommentary, Featurettes, OuttakesWhen Bruce Lee died in 1973, aged only 32, the star was at the height of his popularity. Wowed by posthumous hit Enter the Dragon, audiences were left clamouring for more Bruce, leaving studios with a void to fill… and fast.Documentarian David Gregory explores the so-called ‘Brucesploitation’ craze that followed the actor’s death, tracking down the impersonators who were hired to star in the rip-offs and pseudo-sequels to his work, each purporting to be the real-ish thing, or as good as. All the surviving Bruces, from Bruce Li to Bruce Le, reflect on their time in the industry, working on such titles as Re-enter the Dragon and The True Game of Death (both 1979).The rush to cash in on a beloved star’s passing…1 min
Total Film|June 2024PANDEMONIUM 18OUT 27 MAY ARROW‘Humanity is evil by nature and must atone for its sins,’ says the monstrous psychopomp that escorts the freshly deceased Nathan (Hugo Dillon) to Hell, where he must suffer for eternity. If the episodic structure of Pandemonium (each corpse that litters the underworld possesses a devilish backstory) is misshapen, it’s aptly so, and there’s a real power to the chilled, sulphurous visuals wrought by French filmmaker Quarxx. The creature design rocks, while slivers of sly humour never undercut the commitment to a resoundingly bleak scenario.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024TRAINSPOTTING 181996OUT 24 MAY CINEMASIn 2017, Danny Boyle’s Cool Britannia classic, based on Irvine Welsh’s zeitgeist novel, was rereleased into cinemas just ahead of the long-awaited T2 Trainspotting. Back then, revisiting the 1996 movie’s youthful exuberance, albeit peppered with crushing despair, only deepened the midlife crises on display in the belated sequel. Rewatching the OG movie now – it’s again back in multiplexes, this time in 4K – the overwhelming feeling is relief: how we need its energetic swagger, anarchic attitude and scabrous humour in these desperate post-Brexit times.The deal, as you know, is that Edinburgh junkie Renton (Ewan McGregor) is trying to kick skag and choose life. But it’s not easy when your mates are Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), Spud (Ewen Bremner) and the psychotic Begbie (Robert Carlyle). The…1 min
Total Film|June 2024THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT 151994OUT 14 JUNE CINEMASStephan Elliott’s road-trip comedy was a mainstream boundary-breaker for LGBTQ+ representation. It follows two drag queens (Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving) and a transgender woman (Terence Stamp) as they take Priscilla (their tour bus) across the Aussie outback. The scorching desert vistas are beautifully stark, striking an exquisite contrast with the queens’ extravagant frockery. Between rounds of sniping and snazzily choreographed musical numbers, a tale of friendship and acceptance emerges.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024CHOCOLAT 151988OUT NOW BDEXTRASCommentary, Documentary, Featurette, Short, BookletClaire Denis’ exploration of France’s colonial past (Beau Travail, White Material) began with her quasi-autobiographical debut, in which a woman named France (Mireille Perrier) returns to Cameroon to visit the former outpost where she grew up, the only child of the only white family. Denis’ gift for conjuring thick atmosphere and blending the political with the personal is on full display here. This lush BFI Blu treats Chocolat with due reverence: the 4K restoration is approved by Denis, who features strongly in the raft of extras.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024BACKBEAT 151994OUT NOW DVD, BDEXTRASCommentary, Featurettes, Deleted scenes, Gallery, EssayIain Softley’s (Hackers) directorial debut shifts the focus away from the pre-fame Beatles and onto original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff) and his relationship with photographer Astrid Kirchherr (Sheryl Lee). Unfortunately, despite decent performances – with Ian Hart’s John Lennon completing the central love triangle – there’s not enough dramatic meat on the bones of this story for Backbeat to come together as anything more than an enjoyable support act to the main event of The Beatles themselves.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024EXTRASCONDIMENT BARBIECUE SAUCEOUT NOWBecause the internet (apparently) demanded it, Heinz and Mattel have turned an Insta-tease into a reality with this vegan mayo-with-BBQ sauce. Smoky, beetroot-y and startlingly pink, it’s available in a limited run from Tesco, Ocado and other retailers, so make sure you’re stocked up for summer; you won’t be able to do beach without it. As for Barbie’s box-office frenemy, it’s surely time now to ketch-Opp… Pore over heinztohome.co.uk.COLLECTIBLES TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES TUBBZOUT TBC MAYAre we heading back to early-90s levels of Turtlemania? A Mutant Mayhem sequel is happening, an R-rated adap has been announced… and perhaps gnarliest of all, our half-shelled heroes have inspired a growing range of cosplaying ducks. New to the collection are supervillain Shredder (rocking armour, blades and killer frown) and supersensei…2 min
Total Film|June 2024GAMES LORELEI AND THE LASER EYESOUT NOW PC, SWITCHFive years ago, indie developer Simogo gave us the tear-streaked sugar rush of Sayonara Wild Hearts, an ‘interactive pop album’ of heartbreak songs soundtracking thrilling bursts of arcade-style action. This, then, could be considered the challenging follow-up LP: rather than aiming for the heart, the Swedish duo’s latest collaboration with boutique publisher Annapurna Interactive is setting its sights on a different vital organ. This is a much more cerebral affair – a narrative-led puzzler that stirs in inspirations from arthouse cinema and turn-of-the-century survival horror games.You play as a nameless woman who arrives at a seemingly abandoned hotel, clutching an invitation from a mysterious host seeking help for a project that he says will ‘transcend the limitation of art for humans’. The letter is dated 1963, but…2 min
Total Film|June 2024REEL ESTATEFOR SALE Constructed in 1919, this 2,700-square foot Dutch Colonialstyle home is located at 1428 N. Genesee Avenue, Los Angeles, California (or is that 1428 Elm St, Springwood, Ohio?). With its twin pillars, green-shingled facade and stairway that turns to goo when you run from the bogeyman, this property is perfect for the suburban family who likes to stay up nights setting booby traps and talking on the bedside phone with its grotesque, tongue-fitted mouthpiece. Full disclosure: there have been complaints of children singing eerie nursery rhymes outside the property in the dead of night.…1 min
Total Film|June 2024IS IT JUST ME OR DO BOXING MOVIES HIT HARDER THAN THE SPORT?Most sporting films can’t hope to match the appeal of the thing itself – football being the most obvious example. But while the best boxing movies are unmissable, it’s increasingly hard to justify the sport’s existence at all. Paying people to hurt each other is unconscionable and watching the process panders to our very worst instincts.The films, however, are often fabulous, and have done much to elevate the art form. Dating back to 1894 quasi-documentary LeonardCushing Fight, the genre played a part in the emergence of full-length features (1897’s 100-odd-minute-long The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight), as well as the coming of sound (1929’s parttalkie The Shakedown), among other landmarks. Imagine a world without the training montage – courtesy of 1976’s Rocky et al – if you can.While the sport has attracted some…2 min
Total Film|June 2024CITIZEN KANE’S MIRROR IMAGETHE BIG SHOTOne of the most mysterious and beautiful, haunting sights in all of cinema,’ is how the late, great critic Roger Ebert described it. And even those who have never watched Orson Welles’ monumental masterpiece about the rise and fall of the titular newspaper tycoon will be familiar with the shot: an ageing, broken Charles Foster Kane (Welles) reflected by parallel mirrors, into infinity.It arrives deep into the film, after Kane’s mistressturnedsecond-wife Susan (Dorothy Comingore) has left him. For years she was just another trinket gathering dust in Xanadu, Kane’s Gothic castle strewn with artefacts from all around the world. ‘Forty-nine thousand acres of nothing but scenery and statues. I’m lonesome,’ she said, stirring the pieces of a jigsaw in front of a hearth the size of a Cadillac.…2 min
Total Film|June 2024GOLDEN GRAHAMSTHIS MONTHThe Horrible Dr. Hichco*ck and The Perfume of the Lady in BlackThere comes a point in the life of every serious horror fan when they start to explore the Italian genre movies of the 60s, 70s and 80s.For me, it began with the films of Dario Argento (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, Suspiria), then widened to take in Mario Bava (The Mask of Satan, Blood and Black Lace, A Bay of Blood) and Lucio Fulci (Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond, City of the Living Dead). It’s the same for most, I imagine. These are the names that dominate lists. Just this morning, in readiness for this article, I glanced at the Top 46 Italian Horror Movies according to Rotten Tomatoes, and all of the above movies…3 min
