Welcome to

CALL SHEET
THIS ISSUE’S EXTRAS

Loved liaising
with Christopher
Nolan on a
tribute to Ridley
Scott – work
days don’t get
much better
than that!

DEPUTY EDITOR

MATT MAYTUM
@ M AT T M AY T U M

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

JAMIE GRAHAM
@JA M I E _ G R A H A M 9

f you ever wanted to feel that you could achieve
more, just read our chat with Ridley Scott – who,
at 85, is as prolific as ever. I needed a lie-down
just chatting to his collaborators as they described
the energy and massive brain power of the visionary
director, and that was before we tracked back through
his résumé of game-changing, world-building iconic
movies with the man himself. That’s why we’ve
dedicated our issue to a man whose cinematic imprint
is huge and who is still creating more with this month’s
epic-scale Napoleon and the incoming Gladiator 2 (yes,
we will be entertained). And he’s already prepping his
next movie – to paraphrase that impressed onlooker
in When Harry Met Sally…: ‘I’ll have what he’s having.’
Elsewhere, we leaned into the Halloween month with
our countdown of the greatest horror movies of the 21st
century, which caused as much hexing and cursing in
the office as any demonic entity. Though it’s rarely
recognised by awards bodies, horror is a shudderinducing ride that reframes the world when done well.
These 100 films are TF must-sees so put your All
Hallow’s Eve to good use by ticking off some
you haven’t seen yet. All treats, no tricks...

I

NEWS EDITOR

JORDAN FARLEY
@J O R D A N FA R L E Y

REVIEWS EDITOR

MATTHEW LEYLAND
@ T O TA L F I L M _ M AT T L

ONLINE
ENTERTAINMENT WRITER

EMILY MURRAY
@ E M I LY V M U R R AY

Enjoy the issue!
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

JAMES MOTTRAM
@JA M E S M OT T R A M

Ridley Scott’s Zoom setup was as cinematic as
you’d hope. No peering
into a laptop here. He sat
at a boardroom table,
shot by an eye-in-thesky camera as he talked
Napoleon and his sixdecade career.

Had a cracking time at the
UK premiere of The Creator
held in London’s Science
Museum. No striking cast
in attendance, so Gareth
Edwards sent a video of
the audience to a cast
text chain, filmed in IMAX
widescreen, naturally.

The A Haunting in Venice
screening had a spirited
intro by Agatha Christie’s
great-grandson James
Prichard, who lauded Sir
Kenneth Branagh’s many
gifts: ‘He was put on this
Earth to make everyone
else feel inadequate...’

My chat with Neil Maskell
about his directorial
debut, Klokkenluider,
probably wins the prize
for my sweariest and
funniest interview – his
words: ‘I’m the fucking
cookie monster,’ will live
in my head forever.

Chatted to Todd Haynes
for his new movie, May
December. Loved the
fact he was proudly
carrying the catalogue
to the recent Pompidou
Centre-staged
retrospective of
his work in Paris.

JANE CROWTHER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
@JA N E VG C R O W T H E R

TOTALFILM.COM

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 3

Contents
#343 NOVEMBER 2023

THIS ISSUE

TEASERS

34 NAPOLEON
Rxu#hqruprxv#Ulgoh|#Vfrww#
celebration opens with an
h{foxvlyh#qhz#orrn#dw#klv#
odwhvw#Ľop/#dq#hslf#wdoh#ri#
dq#doo0frqtxhulqj#ohdghu#
+dqg#Qdsrohrq,1

7 THE BALLAD OF
SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES
Let the new, Snow-centric
Hunger Games begin!

40 GREAT SCOTT
Frqwlqxlqj#wkh#Ulgoh|#
special, the man himself
wdnhv#xv#wkurxjk#wkh#
vwdqgrxw#Ľopv#rq#klv#FY1

12 NEXT GOAL WINS
Wdlnd#Zdlwlwlġv#ihho0jrrg#
vsruwv#prylh#nlfnv#rļ1

46 DIRECTORS’ CUTS
Wkh#Ľqhvw#gluhfwruv#
zrunlqj#wrgd|#sd|#wulexwh#
wr#d#pdvwhu#vw|olvw/#zruog0
exloghu#dqg#zrunkruvh1
52 THE 100 GREATEST
HORROR MOVIES OF
THE 21ST CENTURY
Rxu#pdvvlyh#frxqwgrzq#ri#
wkh#ehvw#iuljkw#ľlfnv#wklv#
vlgh#ri#wkh#ploohqqlxp1
64 THE ETERNAL
DAUGHTER
Wlogd#Vzlqwrq#dqg#Mrdqqd#
Hogg reteam for a ghost
story that only TF is
calling The Boo-venir1
68 MAY DECEMBER
Qdwdolh#Sruwpdq#dqg#
Mxoldqqh#Prruh#khdg#xs#
Wrgg#Kd|qhvġ#uhľhfwlyh#
phorgudpd1

EVERY ISSUE
3 EDITOR’S LETTER
Soxv#Whdp#TF’s latest
dqwlfv#dqg#dqhfgrwhv1
72 TOTAL FILM INTERVIEW
Alfonso Cuarón on coming
edfn#grzq#wr#Hduwk#diwhu#
the Oscar-winning Gravity1#
112 DIALOGUE
Pdlo/#udqwv/#wlfnhw#vwxev1

11 THANKSGIVING
We’re grateful for a new
Hol#Urwk#kruuru#ľlfn1

14 YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?
Jduwk#Pduhqjkl#wdnhv#
this chat to a Darkplace1
15 FINGERNAILS
D#vfl0Ľ#urpdqfh#wkdwġoo#
jhw#lwv#fodzv#lqwr#|rx1
22 WISH
Disney continues its
centenary celebrations
zlwk#d#vwduu|#dqlpdwlrq1
26 REBEL MOON
]dfn#Vq|ghuġv#wdnh#rq#d#
Star Wars0vw|oh#vsdfh#vdjd1
31 ROBERT CARLYLE
The Scot hero on politics,
Ehjelh#dqg#Gdqq|#Er|oh1

TOTAL FILM BUFF

34
THE EMPEROR STRIKES BACK
Ridley Scott’s behemoth Bonaparte
biopic stars Joaquin Phoenix
as Napoleon

102 IS IT BOLLOCKS?
Is Gran Turismo: Based on
a True Story#dfwxdoo|#edvhg#
on a true story?
103 10 OF THE BEST
Pluuruv$#Uhdg#wklv#Ľyh#
wlphv#dqg#wkh#TF#vwdļhu#ri#
your choice will appear!
106 DEMOLITION MAN
Orrnlqj#edfn#rq#wkh#
iruzdug0orrnlqj#Vo|2
Vqlshv#vfl0Ľ#ehowhu1#
109 GOLDEN GRAHAMS
Our Jamie exhumes two
fxow#4<:3v#kruuruv1#

SCAN TO GET
OUR WEEKLY
NEWSLETTER
4 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

7
40
SCREEN

52

82 KILLERS OF THE
FLOWER MOON
Why Martin Scorsese
vkrxog#vwduw#pdnlqj#vsdfh#
lq#klv#dzdugv#fdelqhw1
84 HOW TO HAVE SEX
Brit-teen tale of sun,
vhd#dqg#vhoi0glvfryhu|1
84 QUIZ LADY
DznzdĽqd#soxv#Vdqgud#Rk#
equals LOLs? Correct!
85 FOE
Scenes from a future
pduuldjh/#zlwk#Sdxo#
Phvfdo#dqg#Vdrluvh#Urqdq1
86 THE KILLER
Fincher’s latest thriller
kdv#wkh#pdun#ri#txdolw|1#
88 BEYOND UTOPIA
Vwxqqlqj#grf#iroorzlqj#
idplolhv#ľhhlqj#Q#Nruhd1#
89 THE CREATOR
Mrkq#Gdylg#Zdvklqjwrq#
phhwv#Urer0wrw1#
90 PAIN HUSTLERS
Skdupd#gudpd#shukdsv#
ehvw#wdnhq#lq#vpdoo#grvhv1#
91 EXPEND4BLES
Li#|rx#rqo|#vhh#rqh#Dqg|#
Garcia movie this month,
pdnh#lw#Pain Hustlers1

68

‘VISUAL NARRATIVE
IS MY STRENGTH.
I FIND IT VERY
EASY TO HANDLE
EIGHT OR 11
CAMERAS AT ONCE’

72

92 ROCK HUDSON: ALL
THAT HEAVEN ALLOWED
Sruwudlw#ri#wkh#Kroo|zrrg#
lfrq/#klv#olih#dqg#Vlun1
93 RERELEASES
Vfruvhvh/#FxduÕq/#Srzhoo/#
Suhvvexujhu#dqg#d#juhdw#
khur#qdphg#Nhylq#Edfrq1
95 TECH
Vrxqgeduv/#vxshu0vfuhhqv#
dqg#d#whoo|#lq#d#vxlwfdvh1
97 CLASSIC TV
When a bionic man loves
d#elrqlf#zrpdq111
98 SOUNDTRACKS
Krz#d#fodvvlf#zdv#vdyhg#
by Tubular Bells1

TOTALFILM.COM

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 5

EDITED BY
JORDAN FARLEY
@J O R D A N FA R L E Y

SNOW PATROL
THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES
Music and mayhem as the Games get off to brutal beginnings…
et the games begin!’ screamed the headlines when The Hunger Games
arrived in 2012, kickstarting a filmic quadrilogy based on Suzanne Collins’
trilogy of bestselling YA books. But prequel movie The Hunger Games:
The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes gives us the real start, showing how Panem’s
Capitol rises from the ashes of war to become a shiny, soaring powerbase, and
how the Games progress from rudimentary violence to mass entertainment.

L

Set 64 years before The Hunger
Games, we meet an 18-year-old
Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) as he’s
assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird
(Rachel Zegler) for the 10th annual
Hunger Games. The future tyrannical
president is initially alarmed, given that
TOTALFILM.COM

Lucy is a tribute from impoverished
District 12. But when she defiantly
sings during the reaping ceremony,
he spies an opportunity to turn the odds
in their favour – her by surviving the
deadly combat, and him by growing the
Games from their grubby gladiatorial

roots into a show-stopping event
full of theatre and spectacle.
‘We start in a very different place
with Snow,’ says Francis Lawrence, who
returns as director after helming the
second, third and fourth instalments of
the series. ‘We see a young man who’s
struggling, and who’s part of a family
that’s lost their fortune. He’s putting on
an act that he still has money, still has
status. He also starts in a much more
positive place than you would imagine.
It’s part of what’s fun about the story,
that you see him break bad.’
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 7

As for Lucy, she’s a different
proposition to Jennifer Lawrence’s
Katniss Everdeen. ‘Katniss is stoic, and
very capable in terms of hunting and
archery,’ points out Lawrence. ‘Lucy’s
an entertainer. She can sing, she’s a
performer. She has a different kind
of charisma. She has a sexuality. She
knows how to manipulate. She knows
how to flirt.’ He offers a wry smile. ‘The
[romantic] relationship between Snow
and Lucy Gray is a big part of the film,
but there’s a mystery to it all. They both
need certain things from each other…’
Surgxfhu#Qlqd#Mdfrevrq#zrunhg#rq#
all four of the previous Hunger Games
movies. Back for this prequel based
on Collins’ same-titled book, she feels
that the central relationship will
enrapture viewers, and that Lucy
might just become as iconic as Katniss.
‘She’s a very charismatic, brave, defiant
character. She believes in love, and is
also able to shapeshift, which I think
she has in common with Snow, and
is really how they connect. But her
defiance, and the way it’s expressed
through her music, is pretty irresistible.’
Taking place 10 years after the war,
the film is grittier than its predecessors,
with a retro-futuristic vibe, given
it’s a period piece set in a dystopian
future. German production designer
Uli Hanisch (Babylon Berlin, The Queen’s
Gambit) desired a certain reality, and
so counted back 64 years from now to
look at the 50s and 60s for inspiration,
studying how cities like Berlin looked
15 years after World War Two.
‘There’s a point of comparison,’ he
says. ‘We started comparing all the
20th-century fascist regimes – like the
Third Reich in Germany, and Italy with
Mussolini, and Spain with Franco – and
the Soviet Union. Every fascist regime
has that idea of style, which is always
between seduction and intimidation.
If you look at Germany in the late 50s
and 60s, nobody wanted to look back.
Everybody was looking into the future.
Every successful fascist regime is very
good at creating this kind of “we are the
greatest, we are the first to go” – and
you can only create this feeling of being
superior if you have a clear enemy.
I think that’s the way the Capitol
works. So it’s very shiny and elegant.
At the same time, it’s intimidating.’

‘It explores the allure
of authoritarianism.
And that could not
be more timely…’
NINA JACOBSON

8 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

Lucy and the other tributes
prepare to do battle

Hanisch had 2-300 people working
for him over a 13-month period. For
the film’s showpiece sets, the arena,
they extensively redressed the gigantic
Fhqwhqqldo#Kdoo#lq#Zurfôdz/#Srodqg1
‘The Games started out as just a
walled-in arena,’ explains Lawrence.
‘Much more rooted and grounded.
Nowhere for people to hide.’ Jacobson
nods. ‘The Games are brutal and
upsetting, and people don’t want to
watch them. There are not any bells
and whistles to distract people from
the foundational horror of what these
children are being forced into.’ Back to
Lawrence: ‘And that starts to change in
our film. You see it start to open up.
That’s really exciting.’
Also exciting is how Collins finds
room for adult themes in her YA fiction.
Her original Hunger Games trilogy
explored the consequence of war.
Songbirds & Snakes ogles human nature.
‘There’s the Hobbes-ian view of,
“Are we savage by nature?”’ says
Lawrence. ‘Or the Locke-ian view
of, “Are we all individuals deserving
of rights and freedoms?”’
‘It explores the allure of
authoritarianism, and that could not
be more timely,’ Jacobson chips in.
‘You’re seeing it around the world – the
fragility of democracy, and why loads
of people are drawn to alternatives.
Democracy is on the wane, globally. And
authoritarianism is on the rise. But [the
film] is certainly not on a soapbox. It’s
much more an exploration of our ability
to find a common cause with each
other, no matter how disparate our
experiences and worldviews might be.’
Fascinating themes and fierce
action? Let the games begin, indeed.

Hunter Schafer as Tigris
Snow, Coriolanus’ cousin

Jason Schwartzman as TV host
Lucretius ‘Lucky’ Flickerman

JAMIE GRAHAM

THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD
OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES OPENS
IN CINEMAS ON 17 NOVEMBER.
SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow and
Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird

LIONSGAT E

Snow with close friend Clemensia
Dovecote (Ashley Liao). Below, left:
Peter Dinklage as Casca Highbottom

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 9

HOT
RIGHT
NOW
AUSTIN BUTLER
IS RIDING HIGH

T

10 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

release date into next year, the 32-year-old’s
next turn is as a moody 60s biker in Jeff
Nichols’ star-laden The Bikeriders, based on
Danny Lyon’s seminal photo-essay book.
With ecstatic reviews out of Telluride
(‘cooler-than-cool’, ‘a bona-fide movie
star’), Butler could be on the campaign trail
again this year as well as fronting Apple TV+’s
Band of Brothers follow-up Masters of the Air as
a heroic WW2 pilot in the new year. He’s also
making his move to producing with an
adaptation of Don Winslow’s addictive Danny
Ryan trilogy, kicking off with City on Fire.
Potter’s David Heyman is co-producing and
Butler will play Danny, a mob muscleman
whose world is upended by turf warfare.
A former teen star who admits to
despairing of his output in his 20s, Butler

pragmatically chose to focus on quality over
quantity, treading the stage opposite Denzel
and playing against type in Tarantino’s Once
Upon a Time… in Hollywood to hone his craft.
‘I’ve been working as an actor since I was
12 years old, and hoping to do certain types
of work, and work with certain people,’ he
told TF before the strikes. ‘The thing that’s
been guiding me is directors and other
actors that I would just adore working with.
I’m doing that.’ Sometimes you need
a crooked road to get your head straight…
JANE CROWTHER

THE BIKERIDERS RELEASES IN CINEMAS
ON 1 DECEMBER. DUNE: PART TWO OPENS
ON 15 MARCH 2024. MASTERS OF THE AIR
AND CITY ON FIRE ARE CURRENTLY TBC.

SHUT TERSTOCK

he strikes may have meant actors
hiding away, but the star of Elvis is
everywhere right now thanks to his
swaggering ad campaign for YSL’s new
fragrance. Striding around in black while
sniffing orange blossom and talking (in
interviews and ads completed pre-strike)
about his multifaceted self-expression,
Butler will be showing that his range
extends considerably further than his
award-winning portrayal of the King.
He should have been following the rockand-roll wiggles with the murderous moves
of a ‘psychotic Mick Jagger’ as bald Big Bad
Feyd-Rautha in Dune: Part Two, which he told
TF flexed similar acting muscles in terms of
presence and ‘when you need to own a room
with your energy’. But since Dune moved its

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

The Pilgrim stalks
teenagers over
Thanksgiving

EXCLUSIVE

PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
THANKSGIVING Eli Roth plans some nasty
surprises as he reboots a non-existent classic…

‘I wanted
to make a
movie that
was fun for
everybody’
ELI ROTH

ow can you live up to that trailer?’ ponders Eli Roth with a literal
stroke of his fetching moustache. ‘It’s just so nuts and so fun and
goes so far into the boundaries of bad taste. How do you extend
that for 90 minutes, and still make a real movie?’

SON Y PICTUR ES

H

He’s talking, of course, about
his 2007 Thanksgiving trailer, one
of four promos for fake exploitation
movies that served as added (coming)
attractions in the Grindhouse double
bill by Quentin Tarantino and
Robert Rodriguez. Set in Plymouth,
Massachusetts over the titular
holiday, slasher film Thanksgiving
promised ‘no leftovers’ as masked
killer The Pilgrim offed nubile teens.
It included a scene in which a topless,
trampolining cheerleader does the
splits and lands on The Pilgrim’s
upturned knife.
Shot for $100,000 in two days at the
end of the Hostel: Part II shoot, Roth’s
degraded (in every way) trailer delighted
horror fans to such an extent that he’s
been trying to turn it into a feature
ever since. But ‘joining the dots’ of
the ‘crazy kills’ proved a thankless
task. Then lightning struck…
TOTALFILM.COM

‘We said, “Let’s pretend Thanksgiving
was a movie from 1980 that was so
offensive that every print was destroyed.
All the scripts were burned. The director
disappeared. The crew members
changed their names. One person saved
the trailer and uploaded it to the darkest
corners of 4chan, and now it’s made
it out. So this is a 2023 reboot.” And
once we said that, it freed us up.’

The film poses as a modern
reboot of a ‘cancelled’
1980 sexploitation movie

The thought of Roth returning to
horror after a 10-year hiatus with a
straight-up slasher film is exciting:
few are made these days, and fewer still
get a mainstream release in theatres.
Roth adores the subgenre – he and pal/
co-writer Jeff Rendell have dreamt of
making Thanksgiving since they were
13 years old, hiring out The Mutilator,
Make Them Die Slowly and Three on
a Meathook, and they’ve populated
Plymouth with the likes of Patrick
Dempsey, Gina Gershon and Rick
Hoffman as they paint it red. But
will there still be a sexploitation vibe
to this post-#MeToo production?
‘You better have a good reason for
it, because it’s going to have different
connotations in 2023,’ says Roth. ‘Look,
I’ve been the guy that made something
that was offensive and exploitative for
the sake of being shocking. I’ve had
that experience. So I wanted to make
a movie that was fun for everybody.
‘So the trick, for me, was to come up
with: “What is shocking in a different
way?” I don’t want anyone to think my
work is sanitised, because it’s certainly
not. But how can I surprise people, and
be distasteful and offensive in a way
they don’t see coming? And I think
that we did it.’ JAMIE GRAHAM

THANKSGIVING OPENS IN CINEMAS
ON 17 NOVEMBER.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 11

EXCLUSIVE

PITCH PERFECT
f you’re more into films than football,
you still might be aware of American
Samoa’s historic 31-0 loss to Australia
in a World Cup qualifier in 2001, which is
the starting point for 2014 documentary
Next Goal Wins and Taika Waititi’s loosely
adapted film of the same name.
Like the doc, Waititi’s new comedy follows
the hapless South Pacific team’s fortunes as
they try to qualify for the 2014 tournament
under the leadership of US-based coach
Thomas Rongen, played here by Michael

I

12 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

Fassbender. Next Goal Wins’ premiere at the
2023 Toronto International Film Festival in
September had been a long time coming;
shot at the end of 2019 and the beginning
of 2020, the film was delayed by both the
pandemic and Waititi’s Marvel Cinematic
Universe commitments.
‘After [the pandemic], I went off and
shot and put out Thor: Love and Thunder [the
MCU sequel released in July 2022],’ Waititi
explains to Teasers at TIFF. ‘And then once
that was done, I then got back into finishing

this. There was a good year and a half when
I didn’t edit on this – I didn’t do anything.’
It was, he says, ‘quite a nice experience…
It was nice to come back to it with a little bit
of time and distance. Everyone likes to rush,
and thinks their first draft is genius… You’ve
become a different person by the time
you come back. You know exactly what’s
wrong with the story.’
Talking of coming back, this autumn festival
season saw Fassbender return with a double
whammy (he also starred in David Fincher’s
SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

SE A RCHLIGHT

NEXT GOAL WINS Taika Waititi teams with Michael Fassbender for an underdog comedy.

The Killer at Venice), having not been in
a film since 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix.
‘He’s living his best life, racing Le Mans
and being a Porsche driver,’ says Waititi of
his leading man. ‘He was about to take a big
break and just race cars, and then I talked to
him. He graciously came back for a bit longer.’
Fassbender’s better known for intense
dramas than knockabout comedies. Rongen
is something of a straight man compared
to the winningly goofy, self-deprecating
American Samoa players he coaches, but
TOTALFILM.COM

there are still plenty of opportunities for
Fassbender to get comedy shots on target.
‘I’ve always just loved watching him, and
I knew, deep down, that he could be funny,’
says Waititi. ‘And he is an incredibly funny
guy. I like finding
‘[Michael
actors and doing
things with them
Fassbender]’s
that maybe isn’t
one of the best
what they’re known
improvisers
for, or isn’t their
I’ve ever seen’
comfort zone. It’s
TAIKA WAITITI

really lovely with him, discovering that
he’s got a real knack for comedy.’
It sounds like he was right at home in
Waititi’s improvisational squad. ‘I know it
sounds crazy, and also it sounds like I’m just
promoting something,’ says the director,
‘but he’s one of the best improvisers I’ve
ever seen.’ And when it comes to scouting
comedy talent, he’d know. MATT MAYTUM

NEXT GOAL WINS OPENS IN CINEMAS
ON 26 DECEMBER.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 13

You’ve got to ask
yourself one question:
‘Do I feel lucky?’
Well, do ya, punk?
The question, rather, is do you
feel lucky, punk? Because, believe
me, junior, you should. I am the
greatest, if not the only truly great
horror writer of both the 20th and
21st centuries (plus the 19th and
18th, if you include my previous
incarnations). Yet here I am,
spending valuable time away from
my writing and dreaming schedule
to answer the second of these
extremely vague and borderline
insulting ‘questions’. I note, also,
that you have failed to provide me
with an answer to my question.
How much can you know
about yourself if you’ve
never been in a fight?
I’m unable to answer that question
because I have been in numerous
fights since birth. From before
birth, in fact. When I was a sperm,
I fought off a wild pack of rival
sperms and eviscerated all of them.
And I’ve been fighting ever since.
I fought against oppression
throughout my nursery years and
battled logic and reason throughout
school. I fought daily and nightly
and oft betwixedly ’gainst a
publishing industry which has
attempted to silence my mind
from the get-go. Therefore, I can’t
answer you. Ask a better question.
Why so serious?
Why so frivolous? That’s another
of my questions to you, by the way.
Aren’t you a little short for
a stormtrooper?
I’m six foot three. Depends how
tall stormtroopers are. If they’re
generally in the region of six foot,
then no, I’m about average for a
stormtrooper. If they’re under six
foot, around the five-foot margin,
say, then I’m technically a little
tall for a stormtrooper. And I’m
not a stormtrooper, by the way,
so this question, like so many
others here, are irrelevant to the
promotion of my new book, Garth
Marenghi’s Incarcerat. And I don’t

YOU TALKIN’
TO ME?
FILM QUOTES POSE AS QUESTIONS.
FILM STARS TRY TO COPE.

earn a fortune from them. Yet
there are a few things still capable
of freezing my nuts in the dead of
night. Twins (especially my own
daughters); my wife Pam on
perming day; my wife Pam in her
new leathers; my wife Pam when
reading my first drafts, and also the
winds of change currently swirling
through the horror industry and,
more specifically, awards season.
You talk the talk – do you
walk the walk?
Both, and frequently at the same
time. Writing a novel generally
adds over two stone to my overall
body mass, so it’s important to
generate a good amount of that
wordage on the trot. Therefore I’ve
rigged up one of my word processors
to an exercise bike and use that
for half an hour in the morning
while shouting down to Pam to
bring me up a decent breakfast.

IN THE CROSSHAIRS THIS MONTH…

GARTH MARENGHI
even know what a stormtrooper
is. Plus I don’t care.
Have you ever danced with the
Devil in the pale moonlight?
Yeah, I dance with the Devil nightly
and daily, though do generally
prefer it when he’s sporting a
female form. As a horror writer,
it’s part of my job to parry and
parley with Old Nick. Truth ’tis,
frequent bouts of satanic cut
and thrust come with the territory,
in case any of your readers are
contemplating a career in horror
publishing. The Devil is a trickster,
mind, so watch your wallet, and
above all else, wear one.
So what are you afraid of?
Apart from my tax bill? Heh heh
heh. Not much, friend. I can’t
afford to be frightened of my own
visions, or I wouldn’t be able to
write them down and subsequently

What’s your favourite
scary movie?
Garth Marenghi’s The Premonitioner,
an adaptation of my own novel
concerning precognitive doomsayer
Tray Stichton, a man cursed with
terrifying precognitive visions of
his own terrifying precognitive
visions, which themselves foretell
the uncanny real-life playing out of
said terrifying precognitive visions.
It’s yet to be filmed, or written, but
reviews are already in from the
Institute of Psychic Seers, who all
confirm that it’s a masterpiece.
We all go a little mad
sometimes. Haven’t you?
Indeed I have, friend, briefly,
during the writing of my latest
book Garth Marenghi’s Incarcerat.
I shaved myself from pate to
perineum, locked myself in
a toilet for two days and ate
oatmeal. But I’m fine now.

C4’s Garth
Marenghi’s
Darkplace
(2004)
and, right,
Marenghi’s
new novel

My books are all essentially
about ‘what ifs’… ‘What if
a rat could drive a bus?’
Funny. Go read the book and
find out. SIMON BLAND

GARTH MARENGHI’S
INCARCERAT IS AVAILABLE
FROM 31 OCTOBER AND GARTH
WILL BE ON TOUR ACROSS THE
UK THROUGHOUT OCTOBER
AND NOVEMBER 2023.

QUESTIONS TA K EN FROM: TAXI DRIVER, DIRTY HARRY, FIGHT CLUB, THE DARK KNIGHT, STAR WARS: EPISODE IV – A NEW HOPE, BATMAN, CREED, FULL METAL JACKET, SCREAM, PSYCHO, GARTH MARENGHI’S DARKPLACE
14 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

HODDER & STOUGHTON

You talkin’ to me?
That very much depends
on the future tone of your
questions. At this rate, no.

The writing’s on the
wall for Anna…

EXCLUSIVE

LOVE SCIENCES
FINGERNAILS Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed
are put to the test in an intriguing sci-fi love story.

‘You have to
feel a little bit
hurt in order
to feel love’
CHRISTOS NIKOU

f there were a test that could definitively prove that you and your partner
were in love, would you take it? That’s the idea at the heart of Fingernails,
a low-key sci-fi romance from writer/director Christos Nikou (Apples).
‘I wanted to make a comment on our society, and how we experience love right
now, and how we are trying to find love through different ways, and dating
apps, and social media,’ says Nikou when we meet at the Toronto International
Film Festival. ‘It’s one of the most elusive things we cannot analyse.’

APPLE T V+

I

Testing the thesis, quite literally, is
Jessie Buckley’s Anna, who takes a job
at a ‘Love Institute’, unbeknownst to
her boyfriend, Ryan (Jeremy Allen
White). There she meets fellow tester
Amir (Riz Ahmed), who makes her
wonder if her positive result with Ryan
was accurate. Fingernails isn’t set in
a specific year - ‘Maybe at the end
of the 90s… We don’t know exactly
when, but it’s timeless’ - and Nikou
namechecks The Truman Show and
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as
touchpoints of conceptual stories
that are very grounded, rather than
futuristic or distant.
Anna and Amir get to know each
other when he mentors her at the
institute, as they go through (often
funny, often surreal) exercises with
couples ahead of their tests. While

TOTALFILM.COM

you might predict that two actors as
individually electric as Buckley and
Ahmed would have great chemistry,
it’s still a leap of faith.
‘I just followed my instincts on that,
to be honest,’ says Nikou, who didn’t

Meet-cuticle? Stars
Jessie Buckley and
Riz Ahmed

screen-test them. ‘But I really felt that
they would have amazing chemistry.
When I approached both of them
separately, they both told me that they
were looking for years to make a project
together.’ During their first meeting at
Cannes, where the film package was
sold, ‘We all felt the chemistry [between
them] already,’ says Nikou.
As for the title, that refers to the
ultimate test itself, in which a fingernail
is extracted from each lover and run
through a machine to determine the
match. Initially, co-writer Sam Steiner
had suggested extracting something
from the participants’ hearts, which
they quickly realised would be
unworkable. ‘I started thinking that
somehow the extension of our hearts are
our cell phones,’ says Nikou. ‘I always
wanted to connect this story a little bit
with our fingers, because, in order to
find love, people are swiping right and
left on dating apps. And then we found
this scientific fact that when you have
a problem with your heart, there are
small white spots on your nails.’
It’s a wince-inducing aspect of a film
that’s otherwise understated and gently
moving. ‘I mean, you have to feel a little
bit hurt in order to feel love,’ concludes
Nikou. ‘Because I think that love hurts
when it’s real.’ MATT MAYTUM

FINGERNAILS IS IN SELECT CINEMAS
AND ON APPLE TV+ FROM 3 NOVEMBER.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 15

Contributing editor
LEILA LATIF has
something to say…
his spooky season is tinged
with a little sadness: just
a few weeks ago, William
Friedkin passed away at age
87, shortly before his final film
premiered. But while The French
Connection won him Best Picture
and Director Oscars, arguably his
best and best-known film is
1973’s The Exorcist. However,
Friedkin rejected its ‘horror’ label
at first, saying, ‘I never intended
The Exorcist to be a horror film.’
He isn’t alone in being wary of
accepting the ‘horror’ label.
Jordan Peele insisted that Get Out
was a ‘social thriller’, and Julia
Ducournau said her cannibal
coming-of-ager Raw was not
a horror film as ‘I did not write
this movie to scare people’.
!ÌEJ¼ A=@ star Bruce Campbell
once told me: ‘When I started
out there, horror was just above
porno.’ While we’ve progressed
beyond horror being sex-work
adjacent, it still doesn’t get the
respect it deserves.
Around the time The Babadook
premiered in 2014, the label
‘elevated horror’ emerged – one of
the most passive-aggressive terms
imaginable, used to describe the
likes of Hereditary, It Follows, Saint
Maud and The Witch. Even though
these films were brilliant and bold
horror films, a caveat had to be
used to acknowledge the genre’s
value. This wasn’t ‘horror horror’
but something more sophisticated,
and heaven forbid they use the art
form of cinema to do something so
base as to try to scare people!

Talk to Me’s Mia (Sophie
Wilde) settles in for another
fantastic horror film

T

THIS MONTH

When it comes to actually going
to the cinema, horror’s impact
is also underserved. Sure, big
explosions are more successful
when the seat shudders, but what
is more intense than being trapped
in a pitch-black room, unable to
escape your worst nightmare? One
of the most visceral and cinematic
experiences I’ve ever had was
taking a then-boyfriend to see
TheyDescent. As the characters were
unable to escape subterranean
predators, I found myself wrapping
my arms around my eyes, holding
my breath until I felt dizzy and
audibly committing to never going
near a cave again. Upon reflection,
he was even more scared than
I was, and the break-up that
followed a few weeks later was
probably down to a brilliantly
brutal experience that meant
leaving an underwhelming
relationship didn’t seem so scary.
So for Halloween, and for every
day, every month and every year in
the future, it’s time to kill the idea
that horror movies are lesser. It’s
time to disembowel the notion,
hack it to pieces in a cabin in the
woods and hang around for a few
minutes to shoot it in the head and
guarantee it’s really, finally dead.

LEILA WILL BE BACK NEXT ISSUE.
FOR FURTHER MUSINGS AND
MISSIVES FOLLOW @LEILA_LATIF
ON TWITTER.

GE T T Y

How filmmakers
are finally
embracing horror

As a result, the past decade has
seen many pale imitations of the
‘elevated horror’ trend, with films
so caught up in messaging and
intergenerational-trauma
metaphors they felt like dramas
tangibly embarrassed to throw in
a scare lest they be labelled as
‘torture porn’. They were films that
forgot torturing your characters
does not necessarily mean
torturing your audience.
And now, the genre seems to be
shaking loose that embarrassment,
and new, gnarly filmmakers are
making their mark. Speak No Evil
director Christian Tafdrup brazenly
embraced the label that so many
had previously rejected and said
he intended to make the ‘most
unpleasant experience ever’ (mission
accomplished). With Evil Dead Rise
and Talk to Me being adored by
audiences and critics, it is an utterly
thrilling prospect to consider a
pivot away from ‘good taste’ and a
pivot into gorgeously grisly cinema.
We also talk often about the
movies that ‘save cinemas’ – your
Top Guns and Barbenheimers – and
keep the industry profitable. But
horror films regularly perform
near-miraculous returns on
investment with budgets that
wouldn’t cover many films’
catering costs. Yet no one
is crediting Evil Dead Rise’s
Lee Cronin for saving the
movie-going experience.

16 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

Sandra (Sandra Hüller)
stands accused of her
husband’s murder

EXCLUSIVE

HÜLLER CORNER
ANATOMY OF A FALL Sandra Hüller fights
for her life in a quality courtroom drama…
know that Justine [Triet, director] watched every courtroom drama on this
planet,’ says celebrated German actress Sandra Hüller of Anatomy of a Fall,
a coolly intelligent and forensically detailed addition to the genre. In May it
went before the jury of the Cannes Film Festival. It won the Palme d’Or. ‘So she
knows the traps. She knew what she wanted to avoid.’

PICT UR EHOUSE ENT ERTA INMENT

I

Like Alice Diop’s Saint Omer, Anatomy
of a Fall avoids cliches. In place of
grandstanding speeches and lastminute reveals, we have Hüller’s
calm, complex performance as Sandra,
a successful author, German by birth,
who lives in the French Alps with her
husband Samuel (Samuel Theis)
and their son, Daniel (Milo Machado
Graner). Or at least she did. Then one
day Daniel returns home from a walk to
find his father dead with a head wound.
His cries awaken Sandra and pitch her
into the nightmare of being the prime
suspect in a murder trial.
Ambiguity is key. Daniel is blind but
also the key witness, with both the
prosecution and defence reliant on what
he heard. And not even Hüller had all
of the facts at her disposal… ‘I panicked
a few days before shooting, and I asked
TOTALFILM.COM

Justine if Sandra was guilty or not,’ says
the actor, who became an international
sensation with her performance in Toni
Erdmann and can next be seen playing
‘the Queen of Auschwitz’ in Jonathan
Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. ‘Justine
avoided answering that question. And
then I realised it doesn’t matter to me
as she believes she’s not guilty.’
Hüller worked with Triet previously
on Sibyl (2019), and here relished taking
to the witness stand to speak in French
and English (‘When I’m working in
German I tend to be too precise, and
I’m bored by myself’). She also
appreciated that the film digs into
the artistic process given that Sandra
is a writer, and examines the
unknowability of people.
‘Did I recognise the fighting for
the time to do what we do? Yeah.

The author’s relationship
with her family comes
under close scrutiny

The misunderstandings? Yeah. You
always need a space where you can
work. And it’s a private space. For
example, when I go off to shoot for two
months, that doesn’t mean I have time
for myself. To explain to other people is
hard. I was not relaxing. It was time for
the team, the project.’ And does she
agree that we all have our private spaces
that we don’t reveal to anyone? ‘Yes,
and isn’t it great? I find that thought
really soothing. It means I don’t even
have to try to find out everything – they
will tell me what is meant for me.
There’s a space between two people, or
more when you’re a family. The space is
private. That’s a good thing.’

‘She believes
she’s not
guilty’
SANDRA HÜLLER

JAMIE GRAHAM

ANATOMY OF A FALL OPENS IN
CINEMAS ON 10 NOVEMBER.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 17

George (Paapa Essiedu), with
Lukas Loughran as Erik Eriksen
AKA The Dane (below)

EXCLUSIVE

EXTINCTION EVENTS
THE LAZARUS PROJECT S2 Paapa Essiedu
returns for more end-of-days, time-loop drama…
together, were in their 50s! So as a
collective, we were buoyed by the new
intimacy and freedoms we now had.
JB: It was nice of them to give us
another series! This one was pandemicfree but ironically, time was our biggest
enemy. It was a very quick turnaround
– they announced we’d got a second
series and [then just] two months later
was the first day of shooting.

T

How does George continue to
navigate his unusual circumstances
as the show returns?
Paapa Essiedu: George always enters
these situations with his eyes open,
and he emotionally feels the time
loops. It means we see an emotional
journey. With another character or
genre show, it could be much colder.
How does that change with the time
loops now going from six months
to three weeks?
Joe Barton (creator): People speaking
about the first series often referenced
Groundhog Day because it’s the most
famous time loop, but The Lazarus
Project was a much more linear story
18 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

about George’s moral journey. But now
they’re stuck in this loop, so it starts
off much more Groundhog Day and
explores that effect on the character’s
psychologies. But as the series goes on,
it becomes much more of a time-travel
show, and by the end, it’s even bigger.
You made the first series when the
world felt pretty apocalyptic. How
was it making Series 2 without that?
PE: Joe’s got quite a scary aspect to his
writing, where pretty much anything
bad that he writes [about] ends up
happening in real life [laughs]. The first
series we were in peak lockdown. With
the masks, people I thought were 28,
I found out, after six weeks working

‘It becomes
much more
of a timetravel show’
JOE BARTON

We left on such a great cliffhanger.
Does Series 2 do the same?
JB: I don’t think it ends on a cliffhanger.
It ends on a question mark, perhaps?
What do you think, Paapa?
PE: People are definitely hanging
off a cliff! Are you kidding me? Joe’s
been ambitious with Series 2, and
in the final episodes, he leaves the
audience guessing, and left us actors
guessing, but provides a final beat
that felt so satisfying. LEILA LATIF

THE LAZARUS PROJECT S2
AIRS ON SKY MAX AND STREAMS
ON NOW THIS NOVEMBER.
SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

JA MES PA R DON, SK Y

he Lazarus Project, named after Jesus’s pal who was raised from the dead,
is an apt title for a show that faced a pandemic, a fiercely competitive
media landscape, and now returns while striking TV writers and actors
fight to stop the medium’s own armageddon. For the uninitiated, Joe Barton’s
show presented George (Paapa Essiedu) joining the Lazarus Project – a secret
group who can turn back time six months whenever the apocalypse is nigh.
Series 1 featured betrayals-a-plenty, which put the fate of the world at stake.
Now Barton and Essiedu speak to Teasers about what lies in store for Series 2.

‘The
character
is the star.
You’re
there, but
you don’t
feel the
burden
of it.’

‘I SORT OF
AM RETIRED
NOW… I AM
BLOODY 90.’

CHRIS EVANS AGREES WITH
QUENTIN TARANTINO: THE STARS
OF MARVEL MOVIES ARE THE
CHARACTERS.

MICHAEL CAINE SAYS THE GREAT ESCAPER
IS HIS FINAL FILM.

146
THE NUMBER OF
DAYS THAT WGA
MEMBERS WERE ON
STRIKE BEFORE
REACHING A
TENTATIVE DEAL
WITH STUDIOS IN
LATE
E SEPTEMBER.

25,000
The month in dialogue
alogue and digits.
DEAR JOHN
John Carpenter is directing
again! Sort of. He’s helmed
an ep of John Carpenter’s
Suburban Screams, an
unscripted horror anthology
on Peacock in the States.

THE NUMBER OF YEARS BEFORE
STAR WARS THAT DAVID GOYER’S
UNMADE ‘SCRIPTMENT’ FOR
AN ORIGIN-OF-THE-JEDI
STORY WAS SET.

‘I met a witch,
who said she
could help
me get it
made.’
ACTOR AND SUMMER OF SAM
CO-WRITER MICHAEL IMPERIOLI
ADOPTED UNUSUAL METHODS TO
GET
T THE MOVIE GREENLIT.

‘THEY CAN TAKE WHAT YOU DID,
BATMAN OR WHATEVER, AND
CULTURALLY MISAPPROPRIATE
IT… I’M IN QUIET REVOLT
AGAINST ALL THIS.’
GE T T Y

TIM BURTON WASN’T HAPPY TO SEE HIS
CAPED CRUSADER POP UP IN THE FLASH.

TOTALFILM.COM

PRIME AND
PUNISHMENT
Want to watch Prime Video
without ads? In ‘early 2024’
you’ll have to pay an
extra fee – on top of the
subscription – for the honour.

‘STOP
YELLING AT
T
ME! WE JUST
T
STOPPED
DOING IT
BECAUSE
IRON MAN
DIED.’
GWYNETH PALTROW IS FED UP
OF BEING ASKED ABOUT
PEPPER POTTS.

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 19

George MacKay plays
homophobic thug Preston

EXCLUSIVE

FEMME George MacKay and Nathan StewartJarrett discover revenge is a dish best served bold…
ubjected to a homophobic attack, drag artist Jules (Nathan StewartJarrett) exacts a unique revenge when he chances upon his tormentor
Preston (George MacKay) in Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s
London-set Femme. Speaking at the Berlin Film Festival before the SAG strike,
MacKay (1917) and Stewart-Jarrett (Candyman) tell Teasers about one of the
year’s most thought-provoking thrillers…

S

Femme is a powerful watch.
What was it like to make?
George MacKay: It was really emotional
but thrilling. There was a real energy.
It was a very young crew, as well. And
the whole film, the volume is turned
up to 11. And it’s also very real, and we
didn’t have a huge amount of time to
make it. So we just threw ourselves
at it. The whole thing was a sprint
in a really thrilling way.
After Jules is beaten by George’s
character, Preston, he undertakes
risky revenge. Why?
Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: Jules wants to
take something back. There’s something
taken from him. And he does it in such
a way that doesn’t bring him happiness.
I don’t think I believe in revenge. I
think I believe it in theory, but actually,
I wouldn’t end up doing it.
20 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

NATHAN STEWARTJARRETT

How was it playing in drag?
NS-J: It was very painful [in heels] – my
feet hurt! There was a point where I was
like, ‘I can’t take them off because if
I take them off, they’re not going back
on!’ But it really, really informed who
Jules was. The heels, the nails, the wig,
the make-up – the movie starts with
that ritual of putting on and becoming.
GM: It’s about drag as much as anything
and about performance and identity and
creating big personas, performative
personas, to then live – very realistically
– inside of. And that’s what I mean, in
terms of it being up to 11. For both
Preston and Jules, the masculine and
feminine personas that they’ve created
and explore are big.

What was it like becoming Preston?
GM: I’m not particularly aggressive in
my day-to-day… so it was like having
a big shout. You know when you just
roar, and it actually feels really good?
I couldn’t really feel like him until
I had my hair shaved, until I wore the
costume, until I had the jewellery.

Nathan-StewartJarrett donned drag
for his role as Jules

What does the film say
about homophobia?
NS-J: It’s still everywhere. That is part
of what the movie is saying… that
people exist in their own worlds and
are very safe in those worlds. On the
football terraces, a gay bar, a sauna,
wherever that would be. But they step
outside of those worlds, that context,
and there are dangers. And I think
London, arguably, is one of the most
progressive cities in the world, but it’s
still very dangerous for certain people
at certain times. JAMES MOTTRAM

FEMME IS IN CINEMAS ON 1 DECEMBER.
SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

SIGN ATURE ENTERTAINMENT

HEEL TURN

‘London is
still very
dangerous
for certain
people at
certain times’

NEXT BIG THING

SHAUN THOMAS
IS ALL GROWN UP
lucked from high school to star
in Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant,
Bradford lad Shaun Thomas has
since appeared alongside Sacha Baron Cohen
and Mark Strong in Grimsby, and Eva Green
and Samuel L. Jackson in Miss Peregrine’s
Home for Peculiar Children. Now 26, Thomas
is winning rave reviews for ITV1 drama The
Long Shadow, about the five-year manhunt
for serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, and Canneswinning drama How to Have Sex.

JOSEPH SINCL A IR

P

Badger, in How to Have Sex, is
an interesting character…
He’s fun and outgoing. But on the flipside,
he’s emotionally intelligent – aware of his
surroundings and the effect that words
and actions can have on others. He’s quite

TOTALFILM.COM

a heartfelt person, but likes to take risks. I think
he gets caught in the trap of wanting to be liked.
How was it going to Cannes with the film
and winning the Un Certain Regard award?
Like, ‘Whoa!’ But when I first read the script,
I could sense there was something really special.
It was always going to open people’s eyes and
get attention. When I was 15 years old, I went to
Cannes with The Selfish Giant. But to go back at
26 and experience it as an adult, to indulge in
the atmosphere… It’s been a blessing.
The Long Shadow is excellent. Did you
hear much about the case when you
were growing up in Yorkshire?
The stories and rumours were always lurking
around. I’d always known that women and

families had to suffer because of a despicable
predator. They’ve done an amazing job with
The Long Shadow. It’s not through the eyes of
the media. It’s not through the eyes of the
police. It’s a voice for the victims.
So, how do you plan to follow
these two triumphs?
I’ve got exciting stuff coming up, but I can’t
speak on anything yet. And once I establish
myself wholly as an actor, I want to go
on to write and direct my own things,
and tell my own stories, from my own
experiences. JAMIE GRAHAM

THE LONG SHADOW IS ON ITVX NOW.
HOW TO HAVE SEX OPENS IN CINEMAS
ON 3 NOVEMBER.

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 21

SOLAR FLAIR



Set in the kingdom of Rosas, Wish sees its young protagonist
Asha follow in the Disney tradition of seeking celestial help, only
for an actual anthropomorphised star - named, um, Star - to fall
from the sky and into her life. ‘Star’s this little ball of energy,’
says director Chris Buck (who co-directed the Frozen films with
Jennifer Lee). ‘Star doesn’t talk. It’s all going to be pantomime
animation, which, for me, is just kind of animation gold, because
I started as a hand-drawn animator, and always loved it when we
were able to do pantomime. Star is there to help Asha, but… Asha
still has to do a lot of work to make her wish come true.’
‘It’s not the way you’d expect,’ adds fellow director Fawn
Veerasunthorn. ‘It’s so chaotic.’

EXCLUSIVE

WISH Disney marks its
centenary with a feature
honouring its heritage…
here are few of us now who would’ve
been alive before Disney, and a lot of
us grew up with it,’ says Jennifer Lee,
the chief creative officer of Walt Disney
Animation Studios (WDAS). She is also one
of the directors of Frozen, and screenwriter on
upcoming feature, Wish, which opens in the
studio’s centenary year. It’s an original new
musical, with an art style and Easter eggs
galore that hark back to Walt’s heyday. ‘In
the beginning, I remember someone saying,
“Good luck! This is ambitious, but good
luck.”’ But that spirit of persevering in the
face of a challenge dovetails neatly with the
theme of Wish. A wish is ‘a declaration of,
“I’m going to try,”’ says Lee.

T

22 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

THE G.O.A.T.



It wouldn’t be classic Disney without
a cute animal sidekick, and Wish has
Valentino the goat (voiced by Alan
Tudyk, who’s been something of a good
luck charm in recent WDAS movies).
‘He’s kind of the family goat, but it’s
really Asha’s goat,’ explains Buck. ‘So
Valentino will be with her the entire
way.’ He’ll also act as a metaphorical
stand-in for one of the film’s biggest
themes, given how much goats love to
scale mountains. ‘You can reach the
peak, and that’s fine. But really, the
more important thing is the climbing.’
From the message, to the characters,
to the art style, Wish is all about classic
Disney. ‘Even just the concept of wishing
is something that celebrates our 100th
anniversary,’ says Buck. ‘And we’ve all
been inspired by the spirit of Walt, and
what he’s done with the studio as an
artist,’ adds Veerasunthorn. ‘We feel like
we’re in a position to [honour that].’
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DISNE Y

STAR POWER

ART AND SOUL

FIT FOR A KING

the concept art for early Disney films for animation inspiration.
Wish is CG animation with a watercolour texture (one of
several toons prodding the boundaries of the form this year).
‘It almost, in a weird way, feels like you’re going to simpler
times where things were hand-drawn,’ laughs Lee. ‘But those
weren’t simple times!’ Buck says you get the feeling of handdrawn ‘even though you realise this probably isn’t hand-drawn
because of all the detail that we can get in there’.
‘Really, it’s continuing to find ways that we can keep
making the hand-drawn [animation] that we love work with
the technology that we have,’ says Lee.

Chris Pine voices Wish’s villain, King Magnifico. But you
need a special bad guy when you’re standing in the shadow of
Disney’s legacy. ‘What was important was: “How do we make
him different? How do we make him his own?”’ explains Lee.
‘So what you really get to watch is the journey of the sort of
heroic figure, and his descension, and watching the choices
he makes along the way.’ For Lee, an understanding of those
choices - over a straightforward bad-to-the-bone character
- was key. ‘I think that’s a big part of where storytelling has
evolved: the motivation behind it matters to people, in a way
that we may have not needed in the past.’ She also confirms
that Pine will show off his pipes in his own musical number.

Honouring the studio’s heritage, the team harked back to



EASTER-EGG



Within the world of Rosas, there are going to be Easter eggs
everywhere, from an overt nod to the seven dwarfs, to much
more besides. ‘[Our artists will] add things in the backgrounds,’
says Buck. ‘They’ll add things to characters – whatever they do
or however they move. Whatever it is, we’ve encouraged our
artists to really play with this one.’ ‘A lot of people who work at
Disney are Disney nerds themselves,’ laughs Veerasunthorn.
‘But the level of their knowledge… Sometimes I’m like, “Which
one is this one?” They’re at the next level. I respect that.’

BRIMFUL OF ASHA



Voicing the protagonist - who’s referred to as ‘a sharpwitted idealist’ - is West Side Story Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose.
‘I already knew she was kind of a powerhouse,’ says Buck. ‘Her
energy, obviously her talent when it comes to the singing, the
voice – just everything was right. I think we offered her the
part right before West Side Story came out.’
‘And she brings so much of herself to this film, to the
character – her youthful energy, and her being real about
things,’ says Veerasunthorn. ‘She’s not too precious. We
really like that.’ MATT MAYTUM

WISH OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 24 NOVEMBER.
TOTALFILM.COM

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 23

HIT MAN



Richard Linklater’s out-ofcompetition romcom with murder
was the audience-pleaser Venice
delegates didn’t know they
needed, and confirmed the star
wattage of lead Glen Powell.
Frothy, smart, witty and sexy,
the zingy script co-written by
Linklater and Powell provided
psychological and philosophical
musings alongside daft disguises
and romantic entanglements that
played like a 90s gem. One of
four hitman films to hit the fest
(Fincher’s The Killer, Korine’s Aggro
Dr1Ft, Lorenz’s In the Land of Saints
and Sinners), Linklater’s is the
movie that truly slayed.

FESTIVAL ROUND-UP

LEGENDS OF THE FALL
VENICE & TIFF Five essential films from this year’s fall festival season.
FERRARI

MAESTRO

strike agreements for its cast to
attend the Lido, Michael Mann’s
study of the titular Italian
racing-car designer at a business/
personal crossroads in 1957
boasted Adam Driver bringing his
House of Gucci accent back, hot-rod
road battles and a horrific crash
scene. Like Ferrari’s motors, the
production is sleek, expensivelooking and runs handsomely.
But Mann’s film takes time
to run the tyres in, only really
reaching top gear in its second
half, and it lacks a certain
something under the hood
to really make it fly.

Cooper’s portrait of the marriage
between Leonard Bernstein
(Cooper) and Felicia Montealegre
(Carey Mulligan) over four decades
is pure awards bait. Venice was the
gongs starting point for Tár last
year and it’s likely Cooper’s shifting
ratio, stagey, long-takes, vivid
love letter to music and soulmates
will follow a similar tempo.
Worth seeing for a masterclass
scene set in a Manhattan
apartment at Thanksgiving
alone; a verbal opera as melodic
as any of Bernstein’s works and
showcasing two performers at
their very best. Encore!

Nose-gate aside, Bradley

WOMAN OF THE HOUR THE BOY AND
THE HERON
One of several films by an

actor-turned-director at TIFF,
Anna Kendrick’s debut was
snapped up by Netflix. Don’t be
fooled by the kooky premise,
based on the true story of a serial
killer who appeared on The Dating
Game (the US Blind Date) in the
70s - while not without fun
moments, this tense true-crimer
spotlights various different ways
in which women must negotiate
male toxicity. Kendrick also stars
as ‘bachelorette’ Cheryl Bradshaw,
while Daniel Zovatto chills as
prolific predator Rodney Alcala.
Avoid reading up on the real
story until you’ve seen it.



Hayao Miyazaki’s final feature
(well, maybe) was a runnerup for TIFF’s coveted People’s
Choice award. The Studio Ghibli
animation is very much in keeping
with their classic themes: here,
12-year-old Mahito moves to
the countryside after the death
of his mother during the Pacific
War. There he meets the titular
bird, who directs him towards
a fantasy realm that promises a
maternal reunion. That there are
autobiographical elements only
make it all the more poignant as
a (possible) Miyazaki swansong.
JANE CROWTHER/MATT MAYTUM

BL ACK BE A R , ELYSIA N FIL M GROUP, NE T FL IX

One of the few films that had

24 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

Oliver Jackson-Cohen reunites
with Jenna Coleman to play
army veteran Jackdaw

EXCLUSIVE

NIGHT VISION
JACKDAW Jamie Childs turns to a nocturnal
life of crime for a super-sleek feature debut.
hen Jamie Childs looks out the window of his house on the Hartlepool
Headland, he can see most of the locations that he used in his
feature debut, Jackdaw. The wind turbines out to sea. A steelworks.
The oil refineries on the road to Seaham that gave Ridley Scott visual impetus
for Blade Runner’s LA skyscapes…

V ERTIGO R EL E ASING

W

‘The refineries are basically these big
Christmas trees of lights and fireballs,’
he smiles. ‘They lit the car chase for us.
Jackdaw is a relatively low-budget film
so I tried to make something that
looked more expensive than it was.’
Jackdaw looks good. It looks great.
Though set in the northern rustbelt, it
has no interest in social realism, instead
offering mythical landscapes, strippeddown action, and dialogue and
characters reduced to an essence.
At its centre is former motocross
champion and army veteran Jackdaw
(Oliver Jackson-Cohen), returned to
his hometown to look after his younger
brother. Broke, he agrees to do an openwater pick-up of an illegal package,
but is double-crossed, his brother
kidnapped. Bad mistake: Jackdaw
is the archetypal avenger of many
westerns and thrillers, and he’s now
after not just his brother, but blood.
TOTALFILM.COM

‘I love spaghetti westerns, and Ollie
does have that Clint Eastwood thing,’
nods Childs. ‘Jackdaw is a kind of
neo-western, really. It’s got guys on
horses shooting guns. And I was trying
to create an enigmatic character.’
He didn’t have much time to create
anything, which only makes his
streamlined thriller all the more
impressive. Approached in August 2022,
Childs was asked to write and shoot a
genre piece by Christmas. He did just
that, using the experience gained from
making shorts and high-end genre TV
(The Sandman, His Dark Materials) to go
at the 23-day shoot ‘all guns blazing’.
Also flaming bright is a supporting cast
that includes Thomas Turgoose, Allan
Mustafa, Rory McCann, Vivienne
Acheampong and Jenna Coleman,
the last of whom also acts alongside
Jackson-Cohen in Prime Video
series Wilderness.

Jackdaw heads to the
streets in a bid to find his
brother – and take revenge

‘I was trying
to create an
enigmatic
character’
JAMIE CHILDS

But it’s the look and vibe that’s
the thing. Childs wears his references
on his blood-flecked sleeve, namechecking Mad Max and Akira before
zooming in on his primary influences.
‘My references were Walter Hill
survive-the-night movies like Streets
of Fire or The Warriors, and John
Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 and
Escape from New York,’ he says. ‘So
I was trying to create this sort of
fictional world. Nobody really does
[these kinds of movies in Britain].
And I can understand why. Seeing
how they’re trying to advertise the
film now, they don’t really get it!
I guess it’s quite niche.’
Who wants cookie-cutter cinema?
Niche is good. Jackdaw is very good.
Get on it. JAMIE GRAHAM

JACKDAW OPENS IN CINEMAS
ON 26 JANUARY 2024.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 25

EXCLUSIVE

NEW WORLD
DISORDER
REBEL MOON – PART ONE:
A CHILD OF FIRE Zack Snyder
returns with a two-part sci-fi epic.
f you know anything about Rebel Moon, it’s probably
that over a decade ago the idea for the film was the
basis of Zack Snyder’s pitch for a Star Wars spin-off
– Seven Samurai with lightsabers, essentially. Now retooled
as a rare example of original, galactic-scale sci-fi worldbuilding for Netflix, Rebel Moon couldn’t be further from
a galaxy far, far away. ‘Tonally, it’s just a different thing,’
says producer Deborah Snyder. ‘I always felt like he was
going to be contained in a box [with Star Wars]. We got to
create our own canon, and create our own rules.’

I

That’s why, in the universe of Rebel Moon, griffin-riding
musclemen, humanoid spider-creatures and centuriesold robot knights with the voice of Anthony Hopkins can
comfortably coexist. They’re all part of the, ahem, rebel
alliance assembled by Sofia Boutella’s Kora to fight back
when Imperium forces land on the titular moon of Veldt and
requisition their next harvest. Kora knows the risk of defying
the Mother World’s authority better than anyone – she’s a
former Imperium soldier in hiding, and seeking redemption.
‘Kora lives in a grey area. I mean, she’s had such a
complicated life. She’s had such guilt that she’s carrying
around,’ says Snyder. ‘Thematically, it’s about forgiveness,
and it’s about finding the strength to move on, and
finding something to fight for.’
In Snyder’s words, the scale of Rebel Moon is ‘enormous’,
eclipsing even the pair’s contentious work on the expansive
DCEU, and packed with enough story to fill two movies. Part
Hg^3y:<abe]h_?bk^ will land in December while IZkmMph3Ma^
L\Zk`bo^k will drop just four months later in April, after both
films were shot and edited simultaneously.
‘We have the hugest style guide… three languages that we
created, all this information,’ Deborah Snyder smiles. ‘Every
character, every costume, every place didn’t exist. We had
to create it. And, in creating it, it was also like, “OK, what
is their government? What is their belief system?” It’s a lot
more questions that we had to ask ourselves.’
Co-starring Charlie Hunnam, Michiel Huisman, Djimon
Hounsou, Bae Doona, Ray Fisher, Jena Malone and Ed Skrein,
in classic Snyder fashion the director is already working on
R-rated director’s cuts of each film that will offer deeper
character beats and even more gloriously violent speedramped action. ‘The difference [this time] is that we’ve
planned for it… it’s not an afterthought,’ Snyder notes. ‘We’re
still tweaking, but they’ll probably be
‘It’s about
45-minutes to an hour longer, each one.
finding the
You get more character. You get a lot
strength
more of everything. It’s not just a few
to move on,
deleted scenes.’ JORDAN FARLEY

and finding
something
to fight for ’
ZACK SNYDER

REBEL MOON – PART ONE: A CHILD
OF FIRE STREAMS ON NETFLIX
FROM 22 DECEMBER.

26 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

Jena Malone plays
Harmada, a humanoid
spider warrior

The story echoes The
Magnificent Seven, as Kora
fights to save a community
from the Imperium

Charlie Hunnam is
mercenary pilot Kai,
hired by Kora

Farmer Gunnar (Michiel
Huisman) joins Kora
in her fight

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

Ed Skrein plays the Imperium
Admiral Atticus Noble

TOTALFILM.COM

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 27

NE TFLIX

Sofia Boutella stars as
Kora, a soldier seeking
redemption for her past

Isn’t it just so nice to
see something we
haven’t seen before?

ILER
SPOERT!
AL

CAN WE TALK ABOUT?
The Creator isn’t my
favourite film of the year,
but it is the 2023 film I’m
most glad exists. Gareth
Edwards’ tremendous,
soulful, sentimental sci-fi
JORDAN FARLEY
about a frighteningly
@J O R D A N FA R L E Y
plausible AI future features
exquisite world-building, punchy set-pieces,
ever-topical commentary on American
imperialism, thoughtful musings on the
nature of humanity, a compelling emotional
throughline… but, most importantly, it’s
a too-rare example of original big-swing,
big-screen filmmaking.
For anyone who has fond memories of a
time before they heard the term ‘intellectual
property’, The Creator feels like a throwback in
the best possible way. I’d almost forgotten the
thrill of entering an imaginative, thoroughly
realised new world with zero pre-conceived
notions of what to expect. Sure, there are
28 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

‘THE CREATOR
FEELS LIKE A
THROWBACK IN THE
BEST POSSIBLE WAY’
model of
still joys to be had from the Marvel-model
comfort viewing, where everything is the same
aker
but different, or seeing a great filmmaker
ng
achieve something special with existing
material. But wholly new experiences
were a staple of my cinema-going diett
growing up, and I’ve been severely
malnourished for too long.
e
Few things will stick with me more
from this year than The Creator’s
NOMAD – a low-orbit space station
that hovers menacingly over the New
Asia landscape – emitting cold, blue
targeting beams before raining death
from above. Or the anticipation

that builds ahead of the village assault, when
something unseen starts steamrolling the tree
line, and the near-limitless potential for what
monstrously efficient murder machine is about
to emerge now. That the film also definitively
and satisfyingly en
ends, with no sequel-baiting
loose ends or unre
unresolved plot threads, feels
like a sad exception for films at this level.
Why there aren
aren’t more films like The
Creatorr sho
should be obvious from one
glance a
at the box-office charts
– they scarcely register in a sea of
sequels
sequels, adaptations and franchise
extens
extensions (Elemental stands alone
in the top 10 this year). And the
risk post-strike
pos
is that studios are
going to be doubling down on safe
bets to co
cover their losses. But with
audience toler
tolerance for low-hanging fruit
IP filmmakin
filmmaking at an all-time nadir,
now is the perfect time to take
audiences to brave new worlds.
SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS
SU

20T H CENT URY ST UDIOS/DISNE Y

THE CREATOR AND THE JOYS OF ORIGINAL MOVIEMAKING

5 THINGS

REINVENTING
THE STEAL
CULPRITS NATHAN STEWART-JARRETT LEADS
A HEIST THRILLER – BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT

1 PLOTTING THE HEIST

‘Heist thrillers end when the culprits
have succeeded or failed,’ reckons
Stephen Garrett. ‘They’re either dead
or disappear into the sunset.’ Disney+
eight-parter Culprits, exec-produced by
Garrett and created by writer-director
J Blakeson (I Care a Lot), follows Joe
Petrus (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), aka
Muscle, over three timelines: signing
up for, pulling off and, for the majority,
reckoning with the consequences of
raiding a bank vault when his fellow
thieves are targeted, one by one, by a
killer three years on. ‘This was full of
“what ifs”,’ enthuses Blakeson. ‘What
would you do if you had a huge amount
of money? If you could have any life you
wanted, what would you choose?’

THE
2 PICKING
MAIN MAN
‘Joe is the guy who has two lines, then
gets killed in episode two – if he’s
lucky,’ laughs Garrett. ‘He’s normally

invisible for so many different reasons.’
Stewart-Jarrett brought versatility to a
role that required him to adopt different
personas in different timelines. ‘I’ve
seen Nathan in lots of things, but never
seen him do this,’ adds Blakeson. ‘He
has a soulfulness, as well as the Griffin
Dunne in After Hours quality of, “What
the fuck?!”, because in every episode
Joe’s having a very intense day!’

3

PULLING THE CREW
TOGETHER

Joe’s co-conspirators include Officer
(Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Psycho (Niamh
Algar) and Gemma Arterton’s criminal
mastermind, Dianne Harewood. ‘I’d
worked with Gemma near the start
of our careers in The Disappearance
of Alice Creed,’ says Blakeson. ‘It was
a joy to work with her again. Look
at Ocean’s Eleven and it’s pretty
much a bunch of white guys
in their 30s and 40s – we only
have one of those and he’s not

‘Our first
day of filming
was cold,
wet and
crack-den
central’
STEPHEN GARRETT

a main character, so for me, it was
about subverting assumptions.’

AROUND
4 SCATTERING
THE GLOBE
‘Our first day of filming was in the
Toronto suburbs,’ Garrett recalls. ‘It was
cold, wet and crack-den central – the
most depressing place on the planet to
begin!’ After this inauspicious start, the
shoot moved on to Spain, the UK and
Norway. ‘If these people could run to
the four corners of the globe, you’ve got
to show the four corners of the globe,’
shrugs Blakeson. ‘They can’t just run to
the four corners of Yorkshire.’

AWAY
5 GETTING
WITH IT
Delivering high-octane action, smart
dialogue and sinuous plotting, Culprits
has rewarded the efforts of its creators.
‘I’ve really never come across a writer
like J in his attention to detail,’ adds
Garrett. ‘It’s a nightmare to have to
produce and facilitate, but there’s a
whoop of joy when you finally see
it all come together.’ ‘Kind of like
pulling off a heist!’ Blakeson
grins. GABRIEL TATE

CULPRITS STREAMS
ON DISNEY+ FROM
8 NOVEMBER.

DISNE Y+

Gemma Arterton as crime boss
Dianne, with Karl Collins as Fixer.
(Inset, above) Nathan StewartJarrett in the main role of Joe

TOTALFILM.COM

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 29

The Adams Family write,
star in and direct their
films, including latest
Where the Devil Roams

EXCLUSIVE

WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS Roll up, roll up
for Total Film’s FrightFest Best Film winner…
t’s the balance of fun and danger, and a little bit of seediness as well,’ says
Toby Poser when asked about the enduring appeal of carnivals. ‘I like the
seedy carnivals. John and I got engaged at Coney Island.’ John Adams grins.
‘The county fair where we’re from [the Catskills] is super-big, but it’s also
super-dirty and the characters working it are super-shifty, but wonderful.
That’s great soil for a storyteller.’

I

Indeed it is, as evidenced by the likes
of Freaks, Something Wicked This Way
Comes and Nightmare Alley. And now the
Adams Family – husband and wife John
Adams and Poser, along with daughters
Zelda and Lulu Adams – are peddling
an eye-widening attraction, Where the
Devil Roams. Set in 30s America, it tracks
the Axon Family (Poser, John Adams
and Zulu Adams), sideshow performers
travelling on the dying carnival circuit.
Teasers is not about to offer a peek until
you pay your entry fee, but we promise
home invasions, serial killings and
black magic galore.
Deliriously idiosyncratic and
rhapsodically hand-crafted (the Adams
Family write, direct, shoot, edit and
score all of their movies, as well as
performing), Where the Devil Roams is
hard to categorise. ‘A dark morality
30 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

play?’ ponders John. ‘A dark poem –
there’s a lot of [actual] poetry in it,
and there’s spirituality weaved into
the storyline,’ says Zelda. ‘For me,
it’s its own little theatre piece within
a film piece,’ muses Poser. Teasers,
meanwhile, suggest it’s also a musical,

Zelda Adams in the
new 1930s-set movie

JAMIE GRAHAM

WHERE THE DEVILS ROAMS
IS AWAITING A RELEASE DATE.
SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

T HE A DA MS FA MILY

ADAMS FAMILY VALUES

of sorts, with killer tunes provided by
the Adams Family’s grungy lo-fi metal
band, H6LLB6ND6R. John nods. ‘We
think of all of our films as musicals.
I don’t like musicals, but we laugh that
we secretly make musicals!’
Shot in muted colours with stretches
of monochrome that actually look like
a 30s picture, Where the Devil Roams is
as beautiful as it is grisly, and oddly
touching. It’s also contains, if you desire
it, social commentary on today’s broken
America. But here’s the big question:
do the Adams Family pour their own
lives into their work? This and their
two previous films are about families.
‘We make documentaries,’ laughs
John. ‘The Deeper You Dig was our first
foray into horror, and it was our worry
about this kid [indicates Zelda] getting
hurt, or losing her. Then Hellbender was
about her turning into a woman. This
one, she wanted to make a movie that
was more reflective of her looking at
her parents. It’s about us getting older,
and her finding her voice.’ Zelda smiles
pensively. ‘We made this film when I
had one year left of high school before
I went off to college,’ she nods. ‘It was
one last thing we could hold on to, to
throw us together a little bit longer.’

THE HERO
You’ll be reprising Begbie for
TV series The Blade Artist…
This is the first time I’ve really
been there, at the concept of the
thing. At this stage, as Irvine
[Welsh, writer] said himself, no
one knows the character like me.
The plan is that it’s going to be a
six-part story. We have the first
script but we’re not settled on it
just yet. The next draft is due to
come to me in a couple of weeks.

eing out there, and being
“on”, is something that I
really enjoy,’ says Robert
Carlyle. A good thing, then, that
in a 30-year-plus career, Carlyle
has never been ‘off’, from his
1991 breakthrough in Ken
Loach’s Riff-Raff, through the
phenomenon of Trainspotting and
beyond. Carlyle will soon return
as embattled British PM Robert
Sutherland in Sky Max thriller
series COBRA: Rebellion.

B

How have you found the
experience of playing the
Prime Minister during
such a fraught period
for British politics?
Well, I mean, some of the stuff
that goes on in the real world,
you couldn’t write it. Honestly,
it’s been fantastic, but who
would have thought that I’d
be a Conservative Prime Minister?!
I’m lucky if they let me back into
Scotland at this rate.
Are you drawn to political
stories when reading scripts?
If you can find a project that does
have some kind of value like that,
then that’s going to be something
I’m always drawn to. The Full
Monty is seen as politics-lite, but
it’s actually really important to
talk about those issues. It’s the
opposite side of the coin to go
from playing someone like Gaz
to playing Robert Sutherland.

A L A M Y, GE T T Y, SK Y

Riff-Raff is also a sympathetic
story about the working class.
What are your memories
of landing that role?
The audition for that was insane.
It’s the way Ken [Loach] does it.
He looked for the character of
Stevie in Belfast, Liverpool,
Manchester, Birmingham,
Glasgow, and London. When

ROBERT CARLYLE

Was it Danny Boyle’s connection
to 28 Weeks Later that led to your
involvement in that film?
It was Danny that called me, in
actual fact. He said, ‘Come and do
this. I’m not going to be directing
it.’ I was like, ‘What?’ But Danny
directed most of – actually, all
of – the second unit. And, in
particular, the opening. Danny shot
all of that. It’s a terrifying film.

THE SCOTTISH STAR ON
A TOP-CLASS CAREER
I turned up, it was a central hotel
in Glasgow. There were about
1,000 actors there. I thought,
‘There’s no chance.’ But Ken’s
seen something in myself.
Did Begbie cast a shadow
on your career after
Trainspotting?
Obviously, I was delighted with the
success of Trainspotting. But for
about four or five years after that,
the scripts coming through were
like Begbie 1, Begbie 2, Begbie 3…
I thought, ‘I can’t get stuck here.’
I was lucky that the next thing
I did was The Full Monty. I was
seen as an actor, rather than just
someone who plays a villain.

‘WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT
THAT I’D BE A CONSERVATIVE
PRIME MINISTER?!’
TOTALFILM.COM

What was your Bond
experience like?
It kind of felt like you were working
for MI6! The way people appeared
on set – that was extraordinary.
One day, I was in a scene with
Pierce Brosnan, and I noticed that
this person was quite close as we
were in the middle of a take. I was
distracted by this. I was going to
turn around and go, ‘Excuse me.’
And it’s fucking [footballer] David
Seaman, standing there!

COBRA (top),
The Full Monty
(centre), and
Trainspotting’s
Begbie (left)

You went uncredited for your
cameo as John Lennon in
Boyle’s Yesterday – why?
When Danny called me up he said,
‘I’m not going to tell you what the
role is. I just want you to read the
entire script.’ Most actors are like,
‘Where am I?’ [laughs] As I flipped
the page, and there was John,
I was in tears. That notion of
seeing John again, just for a brief
moment, I thought was amazing.
To keep that back, and to get that
surprise, I thought it was definitely
worth it. JORDAN FARLEY

COBRA: REBELLION IS ON SKY
MAX AND NOW FROM 12 OCTOBER.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 31

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ƏɮƏǣǼƏƫǼƺ ɯǣɎǝ Ə ƳǣǕǣɎƏǼ ɀɖƫɀƬȸǣȵɎǣȒȇِ Áǝƺ ǔɖǼǼ ɀɖƫɀƬȸǣȵɎǣȒȇ ȸƏɎƺ ǣɀ ǔȒȸ ‫ א׏‬ȅȒȇɎǝɀ ٢‫ ב׏‬ǣɀɀɖƺɀ٣ ƏȇƳ ǣȇƬǼɖƳƺɀ ȵȒɀɎƏǕƺ ƏȇƳ ȵƏƬǸƏǕǣȇǕِ Xǔ Ɏǝƺ ȅƏǕƏɿǣȇƺ ȒȸƳƺȸƺƳ ƬǝƏȇǕƺɀ ǔȸƺȷɖƺȇƬɵ ȵƺȸ Əȇȇɖȅً ɯƺ ɯǣǼǼ ǝȒȇȒɖȸ Ɏǝƺ ȇɖȅƫƺȸ Ȓǔ ǣɀɀɖƺɀ
ȵƏǣƳ ǔȒȸً ȇȒɎ Ɏǝƺ Ɏƺȸȅ Ȓǔ Ɏǝƺ ɀɖƫɀƬȸǣȵɎǣȒȇِ IȒȸ ǔɖǼǼ Ɏƺȸȅɀ ƏȇƳ ƬȒȇƳǣɎǣȒȇɀً ɮǣɀǣɎ ɯɯɯِȅƏǕƏɿǣȇƺɀƳǣȸƺƬɎِƬȒȅٖɎƺȸȅɀِ IȒȸ ƺȇȷɖǣȸǣƺɀ ȵǼƺƏɀƺ ƬƏǼǼ‫ גגڷ ي‬٢‫׎‬٣ ‫ ِב׏׏׏ בבב ׎בב‬nǣȇƺɀ Əȸƺ Ȓȵƺȇ xȒȇƳƏɵ‫ ٮ‬IȸǣƳƏɵ ‫ח‬Əȅ‫ד ٮ‬ȵȅ Èk Áǣȅƺ
Ȓȸ ƺ‫ٮ‬ȅƏǣǼ‫ ي‬ǝƺǼȵ۬ȅƏǕƏɿǣȇƺɀƳǣȸƺƬɎِƬȒȅِ !ƏǼǼɀ ɎȒ ‫ ׎בב׎‬ȇɖȅƫƺȸɀ ɯǣǼǼ ƫƺ ƬǝƏȸǕƺƳ ƏɎ ȇȒ ȅȒȸƺ ɎǝƏȇ Ə ȇƏɎǣȒȇƏǼ ǼƏȇƳǼǣȇƺ ƬƏǼǼً ƏȇƳ ȅƏɵ ƫƺ ǣȇƬǼɖƳƺƳ ǣȇ ɵȒɖȸ ȵǝȒȇƺ ȵȸȒɮǣƳƺȸ‫ټ‬ɀ ƬƏǼǼ ƫɖȇƳǼƺِ

OCTOBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 41

34 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

NAPOLEON

Ridley Scott takes on
Napoleon Bonaparte
in his biggest and most
challenging film yet.
Total Film sits down with
the legendary director to
discuss the humongous
battles, yes, but also how
he got to the heart of the
famed dictator and
explored his complicated
relationship with
his wife, Joséphine.
Saddle up…
WORDS JAMIE GRAHAM

It takes cojones the size of cannonballs to
make a film based on the tumultuous life
of Napoleon Bonaparte. Not only will you
be following in the deep footsteps of Abel
Gance’s five-and-a-half-hour Napoléon
(1927) and Sergei Bondarchuk’s sevenhour War and Peace (1966/7) – two of the
masterpieces of cinema – but you’re daring
to tread where the great Stanley Kubrick
failed. After conquering the stars with 2001:
A Space Odyssey, the visionary filmmaker
famously set out to make his Napoleon film.
He read extensively. He scouted far-flung
locations. And he cajoled the Romanian
People’s Army into committing 40,000
soldiers and 10,000 cavalrymen for the
battle scenes. But Kubrick, who promised
‘the best movie ever made’, was ultimately
defeated, brought to his knees by the
prohibitive cost of the mighty endeavour.
Enter Ridley Scott. Scott, of course,
mounts gargantuan productions (Gladiator,
Kingdom of Heaven, Exodus: Gods and Kings)
like they’re bread-and-butter soldiers
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 35

RIDLEY SCOTT

Special Effects Supervisor
Scott collaborations: commercials, Gladiator,
Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven,
Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Martian,
Alien: Covenant, Napoleon, Gladiator 2

He’s so prolific…
He’s already thinking about two jobs in
advance. And the way he switches between
projects is unreal; I’m talking to him about his
next one after Gladiator 2. I was in Australia
on Alien: Covenant, and I said, ‘Why do you
keep doing this?’ And he said, ‘Because I love
it. Making movies – that’s my drug.’
What’s the biggest challenge
working with him?
He does these large-scale things, but he
shoots them in a super-quick time. So the
hardest thing is keeping up with him, because
he shoots multi-cameras. The minimum
he’ll have on a set is five cameras, the most
15. In those big battle scenes in Napoleon,
you’ve got to get an effect in front of every
one of those cameras. Ridley, very politely,
doesn’t stand for slackers. When I hire a crew,
I tell everybody upfront, ‘This is going to
be the hardest job you’ve ever worked on.’
Gladiator 2 is even harder than Napoleon.
He’s taken it to another level and he’s 85.
He’s unbelievable.
How is he unique?
He’s very academic. I think he’s got a
photographic memory as well. He’s very
precise with what he wants. He’s passionate.
He’s fast. I just hope he goes on forever,
and keeps on making the movies that
he does. I’m so surprised he’s never
won an Academy Award.
What can you tell us about Gladiator 2?
It’s a pretty simple story, but the set-pieces
are huge. It was like stepping back in time,
because we built the same Colosseum again.
JANE CROWTHER

36 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

Joaquin Phoenix
reunites with Ridley
Scott to play Napoleon

to be dipped in his morning eggs. Whip
Napoleon into shape? No biggie. ‘I knew Stanley
Kubrick,’ he tells Total Film. ‘The script was
sent to me by his estate, to say: “Do you want
to look at this?” But it was birth to death –
the whole nine yards. Napoleon did 66 battles.
You can’t do 66 battles [on screen]. So you’ve
got to make some choices.’
Scott announced that he’d be turning his

‘He was such a powerful man who was,
without question, a dictator, and hardly
benevolent – what he said, had to go,’ muses
Scott. ‘And yet he was vulnerable on one side
of his life to a woman. He was enchanted,
blown away. I don’t think he was a particularly
sexually driven kind of character. Joséphine, as
a courtesan, was physically impressive, and
had survived in jail. She was put in jail when

‘He was such a powerful man, and yet he was vulnerable
on one side of his life to a woman. He was enchanted’

attention to Napoleon on 14 October 2020, the
same day that The Last Duel wrapped filming.
He works fast, and had begun the 62-day shoot
– yes, just 62 days, ridiculous for a film of this
scale – by February 2022. By then, all of the
aforementioned choices were made. Gone was
the childhood (‘Third-rate aristocracy without
money, from Corsica,’ shrugs Scott). The film
would focus on the years of 1793, when
Napoleon routed the Royalist rebels in the siege
of Toulon, and when Marie Antoinette was
executed by guillotine, to 1821, when Napoleon
died in exile on the island of St. Helena. It
would stage six major battles, including,
naturally, Waterloo, but the key to unlocking
this unwieldy war chest was in making it
a character study. The focus would be the
relationship of Napoleon and Joséphine.

her husband [Alexandre de Beauharnais, a
politician and general of the French Revolution]
was executed. The children were taken away
from her. In jail, she learned that to avoid the
guillotine, you better get pregnant. So she had
to, as it were, put herself about, to find the
most agreeable man she might want to bed
with, and try to get pregnant.
‘The best way was finding a man who would
love her, and who would pay,’ he continues.
‘She realised she had no other choice than to
accept this mediocre lieutenant, who actually
was on the verge of becoming a general because
he had taken Toulon. He adored her, which was
the beginning of his letters when he was away
from her, which were almost childlike in their
sexuality and their naughtiness. By the time he
started to grow in stature and rank, she started
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SON Y

How does Ridley convey what
he needs you to create?
He’s a very visual person. He draws
everything. When you’re just having a chat
with him, he’s doodling. His attention to detail
is second to none. When you’re in a meeting
with him, you have to listen to his every word,
because if he says, ‘In the back of this scene
there’s this little dog in the corner, and he’s
nibbling an apple,’ you’ll get to the day of that
shoot, and he’ll say, ‘Where’s the dog? Where’s
the apple?’ It’s all in his head, the genius.

NAPOLEON

to pay attention. He became the Emperor of
France, and she became the Empress. She’s
now clearly impressed. Does she love him?
I don’t know. Does she need him? Certainly.
So, already, I think this story is more
interesting than lots of battles.’
Scott and his team showed due diligence
when it came to their deep-dive research of
the man that the filmmaker calls ‘the most
researched or over-researched person in
history’. But between the agreed-upon facts
were gaps and contradictions, meaning dots
needed to be joined. Applying a bit of guesswork
is not something that Scott is about to fret over.
‘The rest becomes conjecture,’ he shrugs.
‘I’ve done a lot of historical films. I find I’m
reading a report of someone else’s report 100
years after the event. So I wonder, “How much
do they romance and elaborate? How accurate
is it?” It always amuses me when a critic says to
me, “This didn’t happen in Jerusalem.” I say,
“Were you there? That’s the fucking answer.”’

To play the big man – or rather the short man
(though in truth, 5ft 7in wasn’t short for the
time, and the Brits wickedly exaggerated
Napoleon’s diminished stature) – Scott turned
to Joaquin Phoenix. The pair had previously
teamed on Gladiator, when Phoenix played
Emperor Commodus. Scott had dangled a few
things since, but Napoleon was the one that
made the mercurial actor bite. Here was a
role of real riches for any actor who longs for
complexity. Just as Napoleon was an autocrat
who instigated many liberal reforms, so
contradictory elements warred within him:
ambition, rampant ego, doubt, loyalty, violence,
vulnerability. Jodie Comer, meanwhile, was
cast as Joséphine, also a plum role full of
slippery contradictions. But the Last Duel actor
had to withdraw due to a schedule clash when
COVID-19 forced filming dates to be rearranged.
In her place came Vanessa Kirby.

Vanessa Kirby plays
Empress Joséphine, taking
over the role when Jodie
Comer dropped out

TOTALFILM.COM

Production Designer
Scott collaborations: commercials, G.I. Jane,
Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven,
American Gangster, Robin Hood, Prometheus, The
Counsellor, Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Martian,
All the Money in the World, The Last Duel,
House of Gucci, Napoleon, Gladiator 2
Does Ridley still surprise you after all
these years working together?
He’s always surprising. That’s what keeps me
around. He’s such an original thinker. His take
– when you think you understand the subject,
he opens the door. That’s always refreshing
and inspiring. He’s the same multidimensional
character, and in terms of his acuity, I met all those
years ago. The challenge is to keep up with him.
What was the biggest challenge
he set you on Napoleon?
Not to go to France! That’s too easy. That’s how he
wanted to approach it, because not only is he a
director, he’s also a producer. He’s a consummate
professional in every way. It’s very annoying how
much he knows about everybody’s department.
It’s like going to film school, working with him.
He has such a vast amount of experience on
many, many levels – of production design, camera,
post-production, of production itself. There’s
nothing about making films that he isn’t really an
expert about. So you’re constantly on your toes.
What makes him a unique director?
I’ve worked with a few other directors in my career:
they talk. Ridley talks and draws. Give him a pen
and a piece of paper, and he’ll do what is famously
known as his Ridleygrams – on the hood of a car
on location, in the middle of a desert… He’ll jot off
a quick doodle, or he’ll spend more time with his
coloured pens, doing quite elaborate storyboards.
Scorsese does storyboards, but they’re stick
figures, on a very elementary level. Ridley’s
drawing skills are amazing. He’s an artist. He still
paints in his free time. But he likes nothing better
than to sit around a table with all of his department
heads, and talk and draw and speculate.
What can you tell us about Gladiator 2?
We’ve gone bigger in scale with it than we did on the
first one; we’re building bigger and more sets. But
the standards and density of detail are the same as
ever, no matter what film we’re on. Ridley’s at home
on enormous scales of cosmos, but the refinement
of microdetail – those standards are extremely high
as well. That’s the genius of the man.
Is there anything he’s not good at?
Remembering names! He remembers faces but
not so many names. JANE CROWTHER
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 37

RIDLEY SCOTT

Costume Designer
Scott collaborations: Gladiator, Kingdom of
Heaven, American Gangster, Body of Lies,
Robin Hood, Prometheus, The Counsellor,
Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Martian, All the
Money in the World, The Last Duel, House
of Gucci, Napoleon, Gladiator 2
Napoleon is another huge-scale
epic – is that daunting?
I was thinking the other day, ‘I’d love to do a
two-hander with no costume changes.’ But
Ridley’s never going to… I have done from
space to 17th century to the 1200s to space
again. It’s always been huge, and that’s the
way he thinks. He is such a visual genius.
What’s it like on a Ridley set?
He’s always created an extraordinary
storyboard, which is such a shortcut into
his mind. We’ll go on set, and he’ll probably
spend an hour just redressing the set – it’s
just inevitable. He might do one or two
rehearsals, but very rarely do you have a
rehearsal session of two weeks beforehand.
I think he imbues the actors with confidence,
and he just expects them to deliver. He’ll do
three takes at the most. It’s extraordinary.
He knows exactly what he wants.

‘Now, as an Emperor, he has to have
a successor,’ says Scott of a film that hops
between bedroom and battleground. ‘But the
successor wasn’t coming from her. That was
impossible. Because of the past history of
probably several abortions. And abortions, in
those days, were brutal. They used sulphur and
arsenic. So they had to divorce. The divorce was
emotionally catastrophic for Napoleon, who
hated having to do that, but the pressure was
clear: he had to do it.’
It makes for meaty drama that demands
both actors bring their A-game. Only how did
it work? Scott is renowned for shooting fast,
from storyboards, while Phoenix is the polar
opposite, insisting on exploring every line from
every angle, and refusing to hit marks.
‘When I’m reading a scene, I’m getting the
geometry and even the movement,’ states
Scott. ‘So I’ll start drawing the dialogue scene.
And you’ve got to watch it with actors. They’ll
say, “Hang on, can’t we at least talk about it?”
I’ll say, “Well, we can talk about it. But do you
like this?” They go, “Yeah.” So I say, “Why are
we talking about it? Let’s fucking do that.”’
Scott will never admit it, but he has a
tender side. He might pass off the many
great performances in his films with a single
throwaway sentence (‘I’m very good at
casting’), but you don’t get characters like
Thelma and Louise if a filmmaker isn’t skilled
with actors, and full of respect for them.
Primarily thought of as a stylist, the director
can break down a scene’s mechanics and
dynamics with the best of them. And so it was

when Phoenix came to him two weeks before
shooting to say that he was lost, and together
they workshopped every scene.
‘Joaquin keeps me honest,’ Scott grins when
it’s put to him that Phoenix would surely never
accept turning up on set to recreate storyboards.
Not many people would dare to contradict Scott,
with all of his knowledge and achievements, his
decisiveness and bulletproof self-confidence,
but Phoenix is one. ‘He will say, “You really
want to do this?” I will say, “Yeah.” Joaquin and
I have a very good relationship because it’s a
tit-for-tat discussion. My biggest compliment
ever will be, “Christ almighty, I never thought
of that.” That’s the best compliment.’

And so to the battles. They are, after all, what
the punters will come for, even if they stay for
the politicking and the pillow talk. A brilliant
commander whose campaigns are still studied
at military academies worldwide, Napoleon
took on the Austrians and their Italian allies,
led a military expedition to Egypt, fought the
War of the Third Coalition against the United
Kingdom, the Austrian Empire, the Russian
Empire, Naples, Sicily and Sweden, and more,
much more. As Scott said up top, 66 battles.
Bonaparte was responsible, you might say,
for the six million civilian and soldier deaths
during the Napoleonic Wars – this biopic is
no celebration, and is at pains to avoid cliches
such as rousing speeches – but his strategising
was unmatched. In the Battle of Austerlitz,

Each scene is meticulously
storyboarded by Scott

He seems to have amazing energy…
Exactly. When the strikes happened he said,
‘Great, I can go and scout the next movie.’
We were in Rabat on Body of Lies, and we
were in the same hotel. It was a Sunday. I
went, ‘Good God, Ridley is lying by the pool.’
I walked behind him, and I saw that he was
reading another script. He just never, ever can
switch off, and he doesn’t want to, either. He
just wants to create. He’s a walking dynamo.
But he’s not a grand director at all.
What’s it like returning to Gladiator 2?
We were dressing 3,000 extras a day on the
first one. So it meant getting up at 2am, and
dressing them through to 11am. Now our
maximum is 750. Now we can scan our actors,
and we can make armour for them easily. And
Paul [Mescal] is a very good Russell. As the
lead, he’s very good and very charismatic.
And Denzel [Washington] just rules the roost.
Is there anything Ridley can’t do?
He can’t play tennis any more. He used to
play four times a weekend when we were in
Ouarzazate doing Kingdom of Heaven. He’s
got new knees, and new knees don’t help
a tennis player at all!
JANE CROWTHER

38 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

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NAPOLEON

From such dizzying heights
there’s only one way to go…

Scott cut down the original
story’s 66 battle scenes, but
doesn’t scrimp on spectacle

Director Scott has been
known for action work
throughout his career

astonishingly recreated here, he brought the
War of the Third Coalition to a rapid close by
luring enemy forces onto an iced lake then
bombarding it with cannon fire.
In Napoleon, each battle scene is staged
differently, and each one wows. Scott, like his
subject, is a master strategist, and even after 128
years of cinema and countless stunning battles
mounted by the likes of Welles, Kurosawa, Lean,
Peckinpah and Jackson – not to mention Scott
himself – he manages to capture new images
that hit like a musket ball between the eyes.
‘Thank you for saying that, but that’s who I
am,’ he says. ‘As a commercial director [in the
70s and 80s], I was very, very successful. I used
to get shipped out to the US regularly to shoot
commercials like this star bloody commercial
director. I tended to be very action-orientated.
I was always shooting sport. I shot a lot of
American football. The action thing, I think,
also comes from…’ A rare pause. ‘The best
thing for my career I could ever have done was
to go to the art schools I went to. I can really
draw. After seven years of art school, you
bloody better well be able to. I’ll draw all my
own storyboards. Every frame is drawn from
close-up to medium shots. The locations I
haven’t found yet – I’ll imagine the location.

‘Joaquin and I have a very
good relationship because
it’s a tit-for-tat discussion’

So we’ll look for that location. Visual narrative
is my strength. I find it very easy, therefore,
to handle eight or 11 cameras at once.’
Scott used to shoot two commercials a week
and would operate the camera on all of them. He
took that into his filmmaking. ‘I was the only
operator – one camera – on Alien,’ he says.
‘I was the only operator – one camera – on
Ma^y=n^eeblml. Legend. Thelma & Louise. On all
these things, I operated the camera. And so I
know exactly what a lens will give me. Today,
that has evolved into six to eight to 11 cameras.
So I’ll sit in my trailer. I’ll have monitors like
this [spreads arms to indicate a bank of screens].
I’ll be sitting there, talking to each operator.’
He’s warming to his theme. ‘Every scene is
geometry. By having 11 to 14 cameras, we shot
Napoleon in 62 days. I’m doing Gladiator 2 now
in 54 days, because I’m not doing 50 takes with
one camera, on one shot, and then turning
around. This normal fight [scene] that could
take anything up to a month, I’ll take six days.
So the savings are colossal.’
Yes, if any man was going to command
Napoleon into shape, it was Scott. What is it
they say about film directors? They need to
be like a general in charge of an army.

NAPOLEON OPENS IN CINEMAS ON
22 NOVEMBER.
TOTALFILM.COM

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 39

FILMOGRAPHY

38 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

RIDLEY SCOTT

Ridley on his biggest hits of
the past (and the future)…

GAV IN BOND/BA F TA /CONTOUR BY GE T T Y IM AGES

WORDS JAMIE GRAHAM

Ridley Scott’s always been a plain and confident
talker, and at 85 years of age, he’s not about to
change. Asked to cast an eye over his 46-year film
career, he rotates his coffee cup on its saucer and
says, ‘Every film I do, I have no regrets about
anything. I think they’ve all been, without
question, pretty fucking good. My films tend not
to age. I can flick on [1977 debut] The Duellists
and I’m blown away because it could have
been made last week.’
He’s not one for false modesty, and fair play
to him. With 27 movies under his belt, earning
a combined $4.3bn at the worldwide box office
(making him the 11th highest grosser), he is a
genuine visionary. Whether stepping into the
future (Alien, Blade Runner, The Martian) or the
past (Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, The Last Duel),
he constructs immersive worlds that transport
viewers and influence other filmmakers. Nestled
below the handful of masterpieces – most
directors don’t have one – is a bunch of excellent
films across various genres and styles, including
Someone to Watch Over Me, Hannibal (seriously,
revisit it), Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men,
American Gangster and The Counsellor.
And then there are the iconic characters:
Ripley, Deckard, Maximus, Mark Watney, and,
of course, Thelma and Louise. Heck, even Alien’s
cat, Jonesy, is a legend. All have sparked countless
and endless conversations. So let’s see what
Scott has to say about them, and his films,
in his own words…

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 39

FILMOGRAPHY

1979
In space, a blue-collar crew fight a truly terrifying ET…
‘I was fifth choice [as director] on Alien. The last guy
they’d given it to was Robert Altman. Robert Altman went,
“What the fuck? Are you kidding me?” But I read it, and
I went, “I know what to do.” Because a lot of it, on face
value, is art direction. If you don’t have that alien, you
ain’t got shit. You’ve got a dodgy B-movie. The simplicity
of the story – seven people locked in a tin can in space,
and not being able to get out – is about as B-movie as
you can possibly get. Alien is a B-movie horror movie
done in an A-plus way.
‘Ripley was written as a guy. And then [studio boss]
Alan Ladd Jr. said, “Listen, what happens if Ripley’s
a woman?” I thought, “That’s a great idea.” So I went
on the hunt for a woman. Somebody mentioned that
there’s this young woman on the boards in New York
off-Broadway called Sigourney Weaver…
‘The first time I talked to Kubrick was a week after
Alien came out. Somebody said, “Stanley Kubrick is on
the line.” I said, “Hello?” “Hello. Stanley Kubrick here.
How are you? I just saw Alien.” Straight in. “How on earth
did you get that thing coming out of his chest? Because
I’ve got a print, and I’ve run it on the machine, and I
can’t see the cut.” So I said, “Well, I had John Hurt cut
a hole in the table, lie in a horrible, awkward position,
and I made a fibreglass shell... ” He said, “I got it,
I got it, I got it. Brilliant.”

40 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

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RIDLEY SCOTT

1991
Two best friends make the patriarchy eat their dust…
‘I’m very conscious of strong women. It probably came from
my mum, who ran the roost.
‘Thelma & Louise was brought to me by Callie [Khori, screenwriter].
I read it, and I thought it was a comedy. She said, “Comedy?” I said,
“Callie, a lot of this is pretty funny.” She’d brought it to me to produce.
So I went around various directors. There were very few female directors
at that point. Whereas today, I’d have gone for a female director. So I
went to guys. One of them said, “I’ve got a problem with the women.”
I said, “Well, that’s the whole point of the story, you dope. They have
a voice.” Funnily enough, it was Michelle Pfeiffer [who passed on
Thelma & Louise because it clashed with Love Field] who said, “Why
don’t you come to your senses, and you direct it?”
‘Off that, I did. And that’s when Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis
came in. We went on the road. I still saw it as being – I don’t like
using this sleek word but I’ll use it now – a “dramedy”.
‘We had the Time magazine cover, and I was the only one who
wasn’t mentioned. But I happened to have been there, doing it. And
I also cast Brad Pitt, by the way. And I was the camera operator. I’m
not irritated or angry, but when you get a Formula One car, you
better have a good driver.’

1982

ALAMY

Replicant or human, you’ll see things you wouldn’t believe…
‘Blade Runner was a monumental, five-month, day-by-day
evolution with Hampton Fancher, who was a very special
writer. He had this peculiar cadence with the rhythm of his
style, which I loved. But I brought the world to it, because
he’d written a play that was set in an apartment, where
the hunter has kept his quarry, and fallen in love with her.
I said, “But what’s going on in the world outside?” So it
evolved from that moment on.
‘[The shoot] was a very bad experience for me. I had
horrendous partners. Financial guys, who were killing me
every day. I’d been very successful in the running of a
company, and I knew I was making something very, very
special. So I would never take no for an answer. But they
didn’t understand what they had. You shoot it, and you edit
it, and you mix it. And by the time you’re halfway through,
everyone’s saying it’s too slow. You’ve got to learn, as a
director, you can’t listen to anybody. I knew I was making
something very, very special. And now it’s one of the
most important science-fiction films ever made which
everybody feeds off. Every bloody film.
‘I hadn’t seen Blade Runner for 20 years. Really. But
I just watched it. And it’s not slow. The information coming
at you is so original and interesting, talking about biological
creations, and mining off-world, which, in those days,
they said was silly. I say, “Go fuck yourself.”’

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NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 41

FILMOGRAPHY

2000
A slave fights for vengeance. You will be entertained…
‘On Gladiator, a buddy of mine, Michael Mann, said, “You’ve
got to pay attention to this guy I’ve just finished working
with on a film about the tobacco industry. He’s called Russell
Crowe.” So I met Russell, who spent two hours talking about
the fact that he was overweight, and that he would lose
weight. And off I went with Russell.
‘Then during it, I was staring at how to avoid the clichés
of what they call “spear, sword and sandal” bullshit. Because
mostly they’re pretty bad. I suddenly thought – the golden
oldies: Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius; Oliver Reed as
a slave trader; David Hemmings as the impresario of the
Colosseum. Russell said, “Who the hell are these guys?”
And I said, “Wait and see.” And he was blown away by Harris.
‘I knew it would be a hit. I smell the essence. I learned to
do that in commercials. I did some very good period things
for commercial-making, where it’s a very strong marriage
between wardrobe, how you shoot it, the technique you
use. You’ve got to smell it.
‘My films always [influence other movies]. “Oh, he’s got
a hand on the wheat field! I wonder where that fucking came
from?” Of course, I’m very aware of how influential Gladiator
is. But it’s a compliment, so I don’t mind.’

2013
A lawyer loses his head when he tries a spot of drug-trafficking…
‘Blood Meridian we couldn’t get going – because it was so dark and
bloody. Cormac [McCarthy, author] then sent me The Counsellor.
It was the best dialogue I’d ever had. I was blown away. How do you
think I got Penélope Cruz, Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Brad
Pitt, Cameron Diaz, on a deal? We made that whole bloody film for
$32 million, all in. Not $200 million – $32 million.
‘You’re drawn into this sense of, “This is going to go to a bad
place.” I think it’s fascinating. Even when you’re seeing Michael
Fassbender buy a diamond for a very special person, there’s somehow
a warning in the discussion. Bruno Ganz, the diamond seller, says,
“Be careful. Is she worth it? If she’s worth it, be careful you don’t lose
her.” Then Brad Pitt is warning him: “I wouldn’t do this if I was you.
Once you’re in, you’re in.” Only Cormac can write like this. He died
[in June this year, aged 89], so God bless him.
‘It’s Guillermo del Toro’s favourite movie. I think it’s one of my
best movies. The Chicago Tribune said it was the best film they’ve seen
in years. Chicago Tribune usually kills me, and there were four pages of
accolades. You know, 42 years ago, Pauline Kael saw Blade Runner, and
the article begins with: “Oh, baby, let it rain.” Which is a serious case
of sarcasm. She destroyed the film in four pages. I was so crushed.
I had a hard time making it, and yet I thought I delivered something
special. And then to have it killed… It actually affected the release of
the movie. I took the four pages and I framed them on the wall of
my office. They’re still there today, because there’s a lesson in that,
which is: “When you think you’ve got it, you don’t know shit.”’

42 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

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RIDLEY SCOTT

2024 TBC
The son of Maximus and Lucilla goes into battle…
‘Why now? It didn’t have a script [before]. We tried, actually,
four years ago, and I chose a very good writer who couldn’t get
his head around it. He wrestled. He was terribly upset that
he didn’t deliver. He’s a friend of mine. I said, “You’re not
getting there?” He said, “No.”
‘That took 10 months. So it went dead. And then we circled
the wagons again, coming back with a very obvious idea, and
why not? There’s a survivor. The survivor is the son of the
union between Lucilla and Maximus.
‘Can I see Paul Mescal being as big as Russell Crowe? For
sure. I watched Normal People. It’s not my kind of show but
I saw four episodes in a row – boom, boom, boom. I was
thinking, “Who the hell is this Paul Mescal?” And then I
watched the whole series. And then, suddenly, Gladiator 2
came up, because the script was working pretty well. And
I kept thinking about Paul. And that was it.
‘I respect Denzel Washington tremendously [after working
together on American Gangster]. I shouldn’t call Denzel a golden
oldie – he’d fucking kill me – but he’s gold dust. As for Denzel’s
character… There were businesses of gladiators who could
indeed earn their freedom if they stayed alive. That was the
deal. That’s not fiction. So we went right into that, in depth.
Where did he come from? How was he taken? He was branded
with marks, and registered with a brand on his chest as a slave.
So that’s how he comes into the story. And he’s unforgiving in
terms of anything Roman, except, ironically, he’s built a very
rich and wealthy career of earning his way out into freedom,
and now he has slave schools himself. He’s an arms dealer.
He supplies food and merchandise for the armies in Europe.
So he’s a rich guy who’s still carrying a grudge.’

2015

ALAMY

An astronaut stranded on Mars survives on
home-grown poo-tatoes…
‘The Martian had been sat on the shelf for about 18
months, and then somebody said, “Could you look
at this script, and see what you think?” I said, “It’s
a comedy.” They said, “What?” I said, “Yeah. What
could be more comedic than staying alive, and using
your own poo to grow food?”
‘Matt is brilliant at playing John Doe. His humour
is very cool. He’s got this really marvellous touch of
realness in whatever he does. But he can carry off that
dry humour. He doesn’t go for the laugh – it’s there.
‘The stage we shot in is in Budapest. It has a bigger
cubic capacity than the Bond stage. I made a brand-new
green screen, and spent a lot of money on the deserts
and the living spaces – the igloos, right? I’d already
chosen a place in Jordan, and I’d photographed
everything in Jordan from the same position. So we
registered these positions so that they dovetail into
that green screen. Wasn’t it perfect?
‘So I shot the film first, and having been to the
location, then I shot it all again. When he’s outside
at the very beginning of the film, that’s all in Jordan.
The stuff around the igloo living quarters is in a studio.
If you know what you’re doing, digital is a tool.’

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NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 43

Cinematic
visionaries pay
tribute to the
genius of
Ridley Scott

The world-building auteur behind Oppenheimer,
Inception and the Dark Knight trilogy on
Ridley’s lasting influence.

I think Ridley Scott’s signatures have changed over time, which
is one of the marks of a great artist. When he started, the
painterly quality of the imagery was the primary thing that you
were looking at, and there was a revolutionary aspect to what he
brought to pop visual iconography in the late 70s and early 80s.
The use of smoke on set. The backlighting. The use of certain
motifs, like spinning fan blades. They were really taken up by the
culture as a whole. But it’s been amazing to see his evolution as
an artist through the years. He’s never really repeated himself,
which is almost unique amongst filmmakers. Even with
something like Prometheus, where he’s actually doing a prequel
for Alien, it’s got a very different look and a very different feel.
My personal relationship with his work started when I was at
school. I first encountered Blade Runner when I was 12 or 13, in
the days when VHS was new, and I saw it in discrete chunks on
a very poor-quality pirate VHS. The freshness of that vision, the
world that was created: it came across, even in that format.
I think that would probably be the equivalent today of a
teenager discovering a great film on their phone. When the
vision is truly as outstanding as Blade Runner, and when the
world creation is so complete and so radical and new, it just
came across in any format.
And when I was able to see the film as a whole, I watched
it again and again and again. I always had to watch it on VHS.
But when I went to London as a student, I was able to see it at
46 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

PORT R A IT WA R NER BROS./MELINDA SUE GOR DON, A L A M Y

AS TOLD TO MATT MAYTUM

In 1982, Ridley Scott created
an endlessly influential
vision of the future…

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TRIBUTES

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NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 47

RIDLEY SCOTT

the National Film Theatre on a 35mm print, and that was just
fantastic. It was the first time I was able to see it in ’Scope, and
I was noticing things in the edges of the frame that I’d never
seen before. And that was a couple of years prior to the 1992
rerelease. It’s a film that I know very well and that I’ve seen
literally hundreds of times.
It’s one of the films that helps reconnect me to the potential
of movies. Every year or so, I will put it on, and have another
look at it. There’s always something new to find. Your
relationship with great movies evolves over time.
I saw Alien soon after watching Blade Runner. I had been
too young to see it on its initial release. These were two very
different films - they’re both science fiction, but they have
different actors, different stories, set in different worlds - and
yet I could see something was connecting them. The same mind
was behind them. That was really the first time that I ever took
on board the idea of what a director is, and what a director can
bring in terms of a personal vision to films. Those films are so
clearly made by the same primary creative force, and that’s the
force of a director. That was when I started to figure out what
I wanted to do in the film business.
So much of the obsession of people considering his work was
about the purely visual, but I think it was always more than that.
It was always about texture. It was about creating a world, and
letting the audience come into that world. You watch his films,
and you know what things will smell like, and what they feel
like. There’s a wonderful texture to it, with the costume design,

with the hair and make-up, with the choice of casting, and
the wonderful performances in those films.
His use of music is second to none. It’s like Stanley Kubrick:
he’s just got this absolute control of how music needs to function
in the narrative. And the layering of the soundtrack on Blade
Runner – there are just little fragments of voices and machine
noises and things, with the type of music by Vangelis that
blends seamlessly into sound design.
I’m hugely influenced by the sound design in his films.
Watching his films is never like listening to a radio play. It’s a
complete world where the details of the frame – the other things
going on in the frame – are given equal weight. There’s a very
immersive quality to it. It’s quite wonderful.
When you consider the individual innovations that Ridley
brought to first the advertising world and then the movie
business, it’s reductive to try to pull them apart because just
as soon as you’ve got a handle on things that are in Alien,
things that are in Blade Runner or Black Rain, along comes
Thelma & Louise, which is connected to them by its extraordinary
visual sense – and its sense of world-building, and creating
a time and place that the audience goes into – but utterly
different in terms of subject matter, and in terms of emotional
connection with the material.
I’ve been honoured to meet Ridley a couple of times, and have
always had nice, cordial exchanges. But I’m such an enormous
fan, I’ve never really wanted to burden him with my outpourings
of enthusiasm for his body of work. But I’d love to, one day, sit
down and pick his brain on a lot of his attitudes and approaches
to cinema, because I think he’s one of the most unique voices
that’s ever existed in film, and his darkest visions are implanted
in my subconscious with as much weight as real memories.
48 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

The modern master of fantasy and horror behind
Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water and Pinocchio
on Ridley’s peerless craft and discipline.
AS TOLD TO JAMIE GRAHAM

I heard repeatedly that Stanley Kubrick was very, very fond,
and very much in admiration, of both Ridley and [his late
brother] Tony Scott, in different ways.
Ridley is, in my opinion, the superb stylist, visually, of that
generation. You have Adrian Lyne, you have Alan Parker, you
have Tony, you have Ridley – this influx of English directors
that came from commercials. But Ridley Scott brings a gravitas
to the image. He’s not worried about just things looking good,
but things looking beautiful as storytelling devices. So the
way he designs wardrobe to tell the story, and the way he
designs sets to tell the story. His incredible command of
light and lensing and staging.
He’s a superb, unstoppable craftsman. To me, it’s just
stunning. We talk about the golden-era craftsmen like Victor

Ridley Scott on the set of his
debut feature, the period
drama The Duellists

GE T T Y, A L A M Y

He’s never really repeated
himself, which is almost unique
among filmmakers

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TRIBUTES

En garde! The Duellists’
Keith Carradine and
Harvey Keitel

Ridley Scott is 85 and he remains
a film-shooting machine

Fleming or Raoul Walsh or William Wellman, who shot one or
two movies a year and were unstoppable; Ridley Scott is 85 and
he remains a film-shooting machine. The amount of discipline
and the amount of craft and tools and artistry that come with
a career that long is just staggering. I’m not talking just about
his classics like The Duellists or Blade Runner or Alien or any of
those. Also his later work. I saw The Last Duel at the theatre,
and I had to pick up some popcorn with my jaw! The final
duel, particularly the moment with the horse kick to the
helmet… I just go, ‘How is he still coming up with these
moments? How is he still designing moments that are
visceral?’ Every decade, you can go and see two or three
of his movies that are right up there.
He fights for his vision. I love that he has been that way
from the beginning. When I think about his shooting of
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Alien… It was fraught with influences that were trying to shape
him. And he resisted everything. He resisted strong producers.
He went in for a sort of Gothic look for the spaceship that was
medieval science-fiction, almost, and he contrasted it with
areas of the shoot that were Kubrickian. He was innovating the
language. It was strong. He was very direct, very simple in his
strengths. It was only his vision. From then until now.
I always say that the director is someone who assembles an
orchestra. You can take from fine art like he did with Giger, or
you can take from pulp or comics like he did with Moebius.
When a visual language includes a sliding rule that goes from
pop culture all the way to fine art, and you discuss both with
equal ease, that’s the vocabulary you want as a director. Ridley
Scott can give you the visual punch of pop art, like Chris Frost
or Moebius, or he can give you classical-painting references.
And that’s because he was from the Royal College of Art. He
understands the vernacular of fine art and the vernacular of
pop art. I think he’s one of those directors that knows more
than many of his heads of departments, so he’s not asking,
he’s arranging, and he should not have patience with anyone
else if that’s what he thinks is right. And that is admirable.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 49

RIDLEY SCOTT

An icon is created:
Sigourney Weaver as
Alien hero Ellen Ripley

The British filmmaker who has built immersive sci-fi
worlds in Monsters, Rogue One and The Creator on
being inspired by Ridley’s unbeatable visions.
AS TOLD TO JAMIE GRAHAM

50 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

Those early films achieved the ultimate
high score – they are unbeatable
imprinted itself in my brain, but I didn’t race to revisit. I saw
it again when I was about 16 or 17 when it got rereleased as
a director’s cut, and I went with my dad to the cinema. I’d
watched it a fair bit on VHS, but that was the time when it really
hit me: ‘Wait a minute, this is a masterpiece.’ I think that’s
what’s true of really great films – whatever you think of them
the first time you watch them, they then impregnate your brain,
subconsciously. And then you find yourself trying to emulate
them. And you think it’s your idea. Like, ‘You know what, it
would be great if one day someone made a movie a bit like an
anime, but photoreal.’ Then after a while you go, ‘What am I on
about? Ridley did it fucking years ago. It’s Blade Runner.’ It’s
really hard to watch films like Akira and all these other amazing
groundbreaking movies that are exceptional at world-building,
and separate them from Blade Runner. Blade Runner, basically, is
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GE T T Y, A L A M Y

I think the first Ridley Scott film I saw was Alien. But I think
I did it backwards and watched Aliens first, and then Alien.
With every movie I make, I basically gather a whole bunch
of reference images. I go to every film ever made, and every
photography book I’ve ever bought, and I start going through
one by one and highlighting anything that looks good. And by
the end of the process, you can essentially see what got a high
score, and every single film ever, it’s a close call between Blade
Runner or Alien. It’s the high benchmark of cinematography and
production design, in one. And what’s funny is, they’re not the
kind of films that… It’s not so much how you feel the first times
you watch them; it’s the fact that you can revisit them 300
times, and you’re still in that world. It’s that perfect mix of
high art and commerciality. People say The Empire Strikes Back,
but Alien and Blade Runner have that award, I think.
To be honest, Blade Runner crept up on me. I saw it as a kid
and I was probably the wrong age to see it. Obviously I was a big
Star Wars fan, and a big Indiana Jones fan, and there was going
to be a science-fiction film with that guy in it. I think it was lost
on me as a kid. I understood that it was an amazing world that

TRIBUTES

The celebrated director of Arrival, Blade Runner
2049 and Dune on a sci-fi legend.
AS TOLD TO JANE CROWTHER

responsible, I think, for the whole anime/manga genre.
Ridley’s got a phenomenal eye. The best eye there’s ever
been in cinema, potentially. I don’t know how you can work that
fast and so constantly. I think his weapon of choice is having all
these ingredients in front of the camera and then he’s curating
them to get this perfect cinematic moment. And that’s
something he can do to his dying day. It’s not something you
lose over time. A lot of people as they get older, their skill set
diminishes, but a lot of painters did their best work until their
last days. And I think he’s very painterly in the way that he
makes films and visualises them.
What’s most heartbreaking about Ridley Scott is, in those
first, early films that inspire you to want to make films, he
achieved the ultimate high score. They are unbeatable. It’s
a double-edged sword because he’s inspired me and other
filmmakers like me to aspire to that greatness, but we can’t beat
him. You’re doomed to failure. So it’s kind of a love-hate thing:
‘Damn you, Ridley, what’s the point of carrying on, because
we’re never going to make something better than
Alien or Blade Runner.’
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Ridley Scott is an absolute visual master. He is by far one of
the greatest world-builders of our time. His level of aesthetic
sophistication can be matched by very few in cinema history. For
sci-fi filmmakers of my generation, he’s a legend, an enduring
reference. He revolutionised science fiction by blending it with
other genres, by bringing a disturbing realism. He is also one of
the first filmmakers, after Kubrick, who made science fiction
for adults without concession.
He is a force of nature. His level of energy and his work ethics are
impressive. He is one of the most prolific filmmakers I’ve known.

Scott with Blade Runner 2049
collaborators Denis Villeneuve,
Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 51

EDITED BY JAMIE GRAHAM
WORDS JORDAN FARLEY, MATT GLASBY, JAMIE GRAHAM, KEVIN HARLEY, SIMON KINNEAR, LEILA LATIF,
MATTHEW LEYLAND, JAMES MOTTRAM, RAFA SALES ROSS, KIM TAYLOR-FOSTER

HORROR MOVIES

For numbers 51-100, see pages 62-63.

2020
Dementia haunts Australian writer/
director Natalie Erika James’ affecting
debut, robbing a poor matriarch (Robyn
Nevin) of her memories, as her
daughter (Emily Mortimer) and
granddaughter (Bella Heathcote) try
to intervene. Taking cues from The
Shining, James gives the family home a
malevolent character of its own, the
walls creaking and choked with mould.
BEST BIT Heathcote gets trapped in
a labyrinth without end.

2001
Before Nicole Kidman played Grace in
Lars von Trier’s seminal Dogville, she
played Grace in Alejandro Amenábar’s
skin-tingling suspenser about a mother
living with two photosensitive children
on a haunted Victorian estate. Weaving
themes of religion, subservience and
disability, The Others is aptly described
by its director as a ‘story about human
ghosts… and that can be even scarier.’
BEST BIT Grace finds the Book of
the Dead…

2014
‘Mulholland Drive meets Rosemary’s
Baby, with gnarly body horror’ might
have been the pitch for a film that tracks
struggling actress Sarah (Alex Essoe)
as she sells body and soul to land
a role, then falls apart – mentally and
physically. ‘I was ravenous to be a part of
it,’ said Essoe, which is all rather meta.
Directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis
Widmyer landed studio horror Pet
Sematary off this low-budget stunner.
BEST BIT Vomiting maggots.
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2019

2000

The novel and film of The
Shining are both brilliant
but very different, with Stephen
King famously loathing Stanley
Kubrick’s take. So kudos to Mike
Flanagan for lovingly adapting the
author’s personal sequel novel
while also ensuring it follows in
the (snowy) footsteps of the
director’s iconic creation. The
three-hour Director’s Cut of Doctor
Sleep is especially good, digging
deeper into the characters as
Danny, all grown up to look like
Ewan McGregor, helps young Abra
(Kyliegh Curran) to control her
power and turn it on the cult of
nomadic psychic-vampires (led by
a chilling Rebecca Ferguson) who
seek to devour her.
BEST BIT Heeere’s the
Overlook Hotel!

The bond between two
sisters can be profound,
but in the case of Brigitte and
Ginger Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins
and Katharine Isabelle), it’s also
kind of all they have. The gothy
siblings are outcasts in their
wholesome Canadian town, and
even before any werewolves make
their presence known, things are
looking bleak. The first words its
scribe Karen Walton wrote down
were, ‘Being a teenage girl is
a nightmare,’ and this astute
Canadian horror captures the
alienation, the rage and the
hormones – lycanthropes have
monthly cycles, after all. That it’s
also funny and gory is a bonus.
BEST BIT Piercing a werewolf’s
naval with a silver ring proves
a massive error.

2021
2003
Known as Haute Tension
(High Tension) in its
native France, and fully living up
to the billing, Alexandre Aja’s
turbo-charged slasher is like a
banger you can’t help dancing to,
even if the words don’t make
sense. Students Alex (Maïwenn)
and Marie (Cécile de France) head
to Alex’s parents’ house, only for a
psycho (Philippe Nahon) to break
in, kill the spares and kidnap Alex.
A frenzied chase follows, spiked
with ultra-violence and building
to a reveal that infuriates even
the faithful – critic Richard Roeper
called it, ‘An extremely wellmade, very grisly and ultimately
dishonest slasher film.’
BEST BIT Heads do more than
roll during the home invasion...

Tangled remade by Ben
Wheatley is a near fit for
the Adams family’s homegrown
marvel. Teenager Izzy (Zelda
Adams) is kept isolated by her
mother (Zelda’s mum Toby
Poser), who claims the girl has
an autoimmune condition. But
it turns out they’re not exactly
human – and once Izzy realises
she’s a supernatural being who
draws power from fear-laced
blood, all bets are off. Co-written/
directed by Zelda, Poser and father
John Adams, the result is a woodsy
riot-grrrl freak-out, powered by
raucous tunes from Izzy and Mum’s
in-film garage band. ‘Witchy and
dark and crooked and gnarly,’ as
Toby puts it, Hellbender rocks.
BEST BIT ‘Now it’s my turn…’
Izzy raises hell.

2019
‘Nothing good happens when two men
are trapped in a giant phallus,’ quipped
director and co-writer Robert Eggers.
His film is clear evidence to the contrary.
Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson star
as a pair of 19th-century ‘wickies’ driven
insane by isolation, their full-bore
commitment a perfect match for
Eggers’ exquisitely ornate dialogue.
BEST BIT ‘Hark Triton, hark!’ Thomas
Wake blows up over an indifferent
review of his lobster.

2009
‘I wanted it to feel like this is something
that could have really happened,’ said
writer/director Ti West of his babysitterin-peril flick. Against her better instincts,
cash-strapped teen Samantha (Jocelin
Donahue) agrees to spend the night
looking after a spooky old lady called
Mother, the slow-burn set-up building
to a gratifyingly gonzo climax.
BEST BIT Samantha meets Mother
for a drink – of blood.

2007
Most time-travel films’ internal logic
eventually breaks down, but writer/
director Nacho Vigalondo’s horror
sci-fi is both clever and coherent. In a
torturously twisted tale, Hector (Karra
Elejalde) has his holiday ruined when
he’s attacked by a man with a bandaged
face. As time begins to spiral and Hector
repeatedly quests for answers, each
loop only thickens the atmosphere
and sharpens the scares.
BEST BIT Scissors!
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 53

TF LIST

2016
The rise of Iranian horror (see also #33)
has reminded us that the genre is never
more potent than when scratching at
societal itches. Tehran-born director
Babak Anvari mined his roots for
his 80s-set tale of a mother (Narges
Rashidi) under siege three-fold: from
Iraqi bombings, the clerical thoughtpolice, and her daughter’s possession
by a malevolent djinn.
BEST BIT The perfectly executed
smashed-window jump scare.

2012
Need to soundtrack a torture? Snap
a radish. That’s the gig facing mildmannered Foley wizard Gilderoy (Toby
Jones), in Peter Strickland’s playful,
perplexing giallo homage. The
masterstroke is that, while we hear
everything, we never see what Gilderoy
sees – a disassociation that mirrors
his disintegrating sanity.
BEST BIT A voice actor records his
role as an ‘aroused goblin’.

2018
‘An extraordinary piece of work,’ raved
Stephen King. ‘The SILENCE [sic] makes
the camera’s eye open wide in a way few movies
manage.’ A Quiet Place also made audiences behave in
a way few movies manage, compelling soda-slurpers
and crisp-crunchers to stow their appetites lest they
break the unnerving spell cast by a story where
sightless ETs with super-hearing stalk humanity.
Birthing a franchise (Day One is next on the cards),
AQP established director/actor/co-writer John
Krasinski as a triple threat and made a star of deaf
actress Millicent Simmonds, central to the film’s
success as a layered and deeply felt portrait of
(post-apocalyptic) family life.
BEST BIT Lee’s final sign-off. ‘I have always
loved you…’

2004

2014
Dan Stevens turned his TV persona
upside-Downton here as ex-army
man David, who charms his way into
a dead soldier’s family. His increasingly
deadly antics reap both alarm and dark
LOLs: ‘The humour comes from the
situation itself,’ says director Adam
Wingard. ‘The expectation that builds is
funny because you’re always wondering
where we’re going to take things.’
BEST BIT David owning a bar fight:
beatings, broken bottles, bribery.
54 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

Despite being culpable for the largely
regrettable ‘torture-porn’ era, James
Wan’s Saw is far craftier than the films that rode
its blood-soaked coattails – including the nine Saw
movies to follow. Jigsaw killer John Kramer has
imprisoned two men in a grotty bathroom. The
question ‘why’ is answered by Leigh Whannell’s
sly script through a series of flashbacks-withinflashbacks, and twists-within-twists. Shot for just
$700,000, Wan envisioned a classically Hitchcockian
thriller, but adopted a ‘more gritty and rough around
the edges’ shooting style ‘due to the lack of time and
money’. Add Jigsaw’s iconic traps, and the result is
the most influential horror of the early 21st century.
BEST BIT ‘Game over’ for Adam.

2018
‘I did a lot [of drugs] in high school.
I smoked weed and did mushrooms and
acid.’ No shit. Visionary writer/director Panos
Cosmatos followed his psychedelic debut Beyond the
Black Rainbow with this bizarro midnight-madness
feature, in which Nicolas Cage’s lumberjack
embarks on a roaring rampage of revenge after
being forced to view his wife’s death at the hands
of a hippy cult. Set in 1983, in a ‘mythological
landscape’, and shot on 16mm with colour filters
to a synth score by the late Johann Johannsson,
the whole thing look like the covers of a rack of 80s
heavy metal albums, viewed through an opium
haze. A bloody, druggy masterpiece.
BEST BIT Chainsaw fight! Or Cage sat on the
loo unleashing guttural howls of anguish.

2021
Phil Tippett is a VFX wizard who’s won
two Oscars and worked on RoboCop, Jurassic
Park, Starship Troopers and various instalments of
the Twilight Saga. But it’s this obsessional work,
30 years in the making, that most plummets
jaws, as much for its technique as the fact it’s so
imaginatively, viscerally, relentlessly grim. Set in
an underworld, this dialogue-free mix of puppetry,
stop-motion and fleeting live-action dishes non-stop
cruelty and horror, as hundreds are killed, pulped,
relieved of their innards, and worse. ‘It’s like Pasolini
made a Pixar movie,’ wrote Sight and Sound.
BEST BIT: The diving bell taking our ‘hero’ to
hell (?) goes down and down and down. And down.
And down and down and down. And down.
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HORROR MOVIES

2011
2014
Born in Britain to an Iranian family and
raised in the US, writer/director Ana Lily
Amirpour had quite the cultural mix of references
growing up. They cleverly permeate her feature
debut, a vampire movie set in Iran by way of Jim
Jarmusch with a touch of Gus Van Sant. The result
is a heavily stylised black-and-white chronicling of
the illicit activities of an abaya-wearing vampire
(Sheila Vand) who roams the derelict streets of
fictitious Bad City to a sharply curated soundtrack
that would become synonymous with Amirpour’s
daring, vibrant work. ‘You’re free to extract as
much subtext as possible,’ said Amirpour.
BEST BIT Our vamp on a skateboard. It’s how
she rolls.

2015
Karyn Kusama’s fraught horror-thriller plays
out like a drama for most of its runtime – it’s
only in retrospect that the true awfulness becomes
apparent. Grieving dad Will (Logan Marshall-Green)
takes his new girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi)
to a party hosted by his ex-wife, Eden (Tammy
Blanchard), and her new too-perfect partner David
(Michiel Huisman), who are keeping an almighty
secret. ‘What The Invitation allowed me to do was
go straight into the heart of the concerns of my
nightmares,’ said Kusama. ‘What does it mean
to be human, and what are humans capable of?’
The results positively jitter with dread.
BEST BIT Will escapes for some fresh air
– there goes the neighbourhood.
TOTALFILM.COM

Five pals-slash-archetypes book a weekend
at the titular locale… then find themselves
in what could be described as H.P. Lovecraft’s The
Truman Show. After writing gigs on Buffy, Lost and
Cloverfield, Drew Goddard made his directorial bow
with a movie as genre-savvy, twisty and monster-y
as any of the above, and then some. ‘We love horror
movies, and we sort of set out to make the ultimate
version,’ he revealed. Indeed, the affection is so
palpable, Cabin never risks being skewered by its
own knowingness – the jolts are genuine and those
archetypes invite emotional investment, especially
‘Virgin’ Dana (Kristen Connolly) and scene-stealing
stoner ‘Fool’ Marty (Fran Kranz).
BEST BIT Every elevator ‘ding’ yielding
a new nightmare.

2010
Gareth Edwards’ debut maps out
fresh, fertile creature-feature turf.
A photographer (Scoot McNairy)
escorts a woman (Whitney Able) across
‘infected’ Mexican terrain to the US
border; tentacular aliens occupy the
territory. Awful and awesome, Edwards’
off-world octopi are low-budget
wonders, looming luminously and
ominously over an improv love story.
BEST BIT From beauty to time-loop
terror, the climax kills.

2007
The fear of abandonment haunts J.A.
Bayona’s elegantly gothic debut, which
follows a couple re-opening the
children’s home she grew up in, but
losing their adopted son in the process.
Equal parts scary – hello, creepy
sackcloth-clad child – and sad, the film
retains a powerful ambiguity. Critic
Roger Ebert called it, ‘A superior ghost
story, if indeed there are ghosts in it.’
BEST BIT Evil Benigna is knocked
down by an ambulance. GOTCHA!

2017
Horror fans thought they’d seen It all before,
thanks to the well-remembered 1990 TV
adap of Stephen King’s source novel. But they soon
found themselves feasting on Andy Muschietti’s
fresh reinterpretation, which cannily rode Stranger
Things’ 80s-set wave. Muschietti’s movie is grislier
and more intense than that King-influenced series,
anchored in Bill Skarsgård’s viciously gleeful turn as
Pennywise the Dancing Clown, who aims to make the
kids of Derry his Maine meal. ‘Pennywise
is constantly on the level of bursting,’ Skarsgård told
the New York Times. ‘At almost any moment,
he could lunge at you…’
BEST BIT He may be evil incarnate, but
Pennywise sure can bust a move.

2016
Julia Ducournau’s coming-of-age body
horror sees Justine (Garance Marillier)
navigate veterinary school, hazing
rituals and sex – learning more about
herself and her family than she can
chew on. ‘I could have made a gore-fest.
But no, I wanted the audience
to understand that it’s actually very
human to be like this,’ said Ducournau
of her cannibal drama.
BEST BIT Justine eats her sister’s
middle finger.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 55

TF LIST

2019

2016
2007

If Gaspar Noé and Abel Ferrara
combined to remake Phantom
Thread as a grindhouse vampire flick with
a doom metal soundtrack, it might be
something like this. More-is-more director
Joe Begos shoots on grainy, neon-drenched
16mm for this frenziedly intense tale of
Dezzy (Dora Madison), an LA artist
who binges on drugs, sex and murder to
shift her creative block, and awakens
from blackouts to a macabre masterpiece
daubed in blood. ‘A gritty-ass fucking
drug movie [with] vampire shades to it,’
is how Begos describes his hallucinogenic
horrorshow. Quite.
BEST BIT Dezzy cruising seedy LA in an
open-top convertible.

Part-drawn from truth, Ben Young’s
terrifically-played kidnap thriller
is no Kate Bush tribute. His 1987-set tale
pulls us grimly close to murderous spouses
(Stephen Curry, Emma Booth) whose sick-pup
home life in suburban Perth takes all the
fun out of dysfunctional. As they kidnap
17-year-old Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings),
her eyes become our harrowed POV. Hounds
bites hard, Young generating a distressed
intensity from his washed-out images and
controlled leads, favouring taut, tortured
restraint over gratuitous shocks. ‘It’s not
about what does happen, it’s about what
can happen,’ the director explained.
BEST BIT ‘Always danger…’ Joy Division’s
Atmosphere features to fiercely cathartic effect.

2020

Like The Blair Witch Project relocated
to the bedroom, Oren Peli’s foundfootage frightener is a demonic display of
low-budget, high-focus dread. In San Diego,
a static camera watches Micah and Katie as
they sleep. Doors move, duvets are tugged…
might the demon that disturbed younger
Katie’s nights be here? Peli churns up
psychological ambiguities to draw us in,
then deploys ingenious uses of pacing (those
fast-forwards…) and perspective to max our
immersion until – slowly, surely – home
becomes right where the horror is. ‘You
can never avoid being asleep at your own
home,’ said Peli. Sweet dreams.
BEST BIT ‘I think we’ll be OK now…’ Or not.

2019
2001

How do you make H.G. Wells’
19th-century creation scary again?
‘You’ve got to make him mysterious,’ says
writer/director Leigh Whannell, whose film
centres not on the title character but on
his ex, whom he seemingly persecutes from
beyond the grave. This is a fantastical but
horribly recognisable study of abuse, driven
by Elisabeth Moss’ astonishingly committed
performance as a woman enduring untold
(and unseen) trauma before fighting back.
Universal’s scaled-back standalone emerged
in the wake of its failed Dark Universe…
so at least we have The Mummy (2017) to
thank for something.
BEST BIT The restaurant kill leaves innocent
Moss with blood on her hands.
56 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

Transposing a classic spook story
to Civil War-torn 1930s Spain,
Guillermo del Toro’s masterly horror finds its
monsters in men, and vice-versa. Beautifully
shot, tenderly acted and, in places, properly
creepy, it concerns an orphanage haunted by
a childish spectre known as ‘the one who
sighs’. Perhaps del Toro gained inspiration
from once hearing the ghostly sighs of his
deceased uncle as a youngster? But it’s a
political, as well as a personal, work, with
the director calling it ‘a gothic tale set
against the backdrop of the greatest ghost
engine of all: war’.
BEST BIT Santi gets his final, watery
revenge on his killer.

Scandi pagan rituals get the Ari
Aster treatment in his sophomore
film, an ambitious folk horror that riffs
on The Wicker Man while torching toxic
masculinity. ‘It’s such a large film – the
colour, the sound, the quality, the content,’
says Florence Pugh, who plays Dani, a
traumatised American student who attends
a midsummer festival with a group of
friends in rural Sweden. Bad move. Or is
it? What we know for sure is that Aster’s
drama is a trip: sex, drugs and WTF
brown bear costumes. We prefer the
theatrical cut, but the Director’s Cut
should also be seen.
BEST BIT The elders jumping from
the cliff truly rocks.
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HORROR MOVIES

2016

2002
‘Cinematic navel-gazing,’ huffed The
Washington Post, but the protagonist
played by Marina de Van, who also
directs, is obsessed with all parts of her
body, poking and pulling, pricking and
cutting, biting and chewing. This
stomach-churner explores self-harm as
a form of release, of self-control, and of
pleasure. It’s body horror to make
Cronenberg shiver.
BEST BIT Rolling sensually in
her own blood.

The pitch: zombies on a train. Sometimes, it
really is that easy. Yet Yeon Sang-ho’s action
blockbuster transcends such apparent simplicity by
sweating the details. No wonder Edgar Wright called
it the ‘best zombie movie I’ve seen in forever’.
Key to its freshness is setting. Yeon’s aim was to
give it ‘elements of Korean emotion and tone that
aren’t felt in Hollywood films’. Like fellow Korean
Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, Yeon’s train is a
metaphor for class difference, the film’s plot a
parable about helping others instead of being selfish.
Yeon milks every source of tension from putting
fast zombies in a confined space; the film’s inventive,
relentless set-pieces are logically structured as a
station-by-station, carriage-by-carriage survival
odyssey. Yet by adding characters we care about, it’s
moving in both senses of the word.
BEST BIT The passengers attempt to leave the train
at Daejeon station. Bad idea.

2007
Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s [Rec] is
horror cinema at its breathlessly intense
best. A Spanish found-footage gem, it follows a TV
reporter and her cameraman who are quarantined
inside an apartment building where an unholy
infection is turning the residents into feral
creatures. A zombie movie in all but name, [Rec]
unfolds in real time over its pacy 78 minutes –
an ethos worlds away from methodical genre
grandaddy Night of the Living Dead. Taking a page out
of Ridley Scott’s playbook, many of the surprises
were sprung on the cast in the moment. ‘Don’t
stop, react to anything that’s going to happen,’
were Plaza and Balagueró’s instructions. The result:
pure terror. ‘The film corners you with the ferocity
of a Spanish inquisitor with a branding iron and
holds you there to the bitter end,’ noted late
Observer critic Philip French.
BEST BIT What’s lurking in the attic?

2020
‘We were being told that outside is scary
and inside is safe,’ says director Rob
Savage, whose seance horror upended
that COVID-19-era wisdom in
sensational fashion. Six friends invite a
medium to their weekly Zoom call;
unexpected guests join, too, yielding a
succession of resourcefully mounted
no-budget shocks. The cast’s authentic
chemistry heightens the impact.
BEST BIT The final session-expiry
countdown: 3, 2, WTF!

2007

2002
‘I found zombies a bit daft,’ reckoned
Danny Boyle, before screenwriter Alex
Garland’s canny reimagining changed
his mind. Mining John Wyndham’s
speculative sci-fi and Brit-grit realism,
Boyle’s ‘zombies’ are anything but
daft. They’re angry, they’re infected
and – uh-oh – they go like the
clappers. Ruuuuun!
BEST BIT Cillian Murphy wanders
a deserted London in scenes eerily
prescient of lockdown.
TOTALFILM.COM

Does The Mist – Frank Darabont’s sublime
Stephen King adaptation – have the best
horror-movie ending of the 21st century? There’s
a strong case to be made. Writer/director Darabont
was so committed to his soul-crushing send-off
– a King-approved change to the original novella
– that he accepted an $18 million budget to
keep his ending intact, when $40 million was
on the table. Great call. Set largely in a Maine
supermarket, where locals seek refuge from the
nightmarish eldritch abominations that have
descended on their town (perhaps from a
Lovecraft story) in a thick mist, the film’s true
monsters are the people walking the aisles who
forget their humanity at the end of the world.
As Darabont puts it, ‘It’s Lord of the Flies that
happens to have some cool monsters in it!’
(Note: the black-and-white version kills.)
BEST BIT The cavalry arrives… too late.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 57

TF LIST

2008

2022
The Exorcist for the TikTok age?
Vividly and cinematically playing with
the theme of possession, writerdirectors Danny and Michael Philippou
pair this with grief, as 17-year-old Mia
(Sophie Wilde) is offered a hand in
communing with her late mother...
or not. “We wanted it to feel dangerous
and unpredictable,” says Danny.
Mission accomplished.
BEST BIT Handshakes all round
for the ballsy ending.

The vampire movie gets reborn in this
Scandinavian tale as chilly as a Stockholm
winter. Adapted from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s
novel, it tracks bullied Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) as
he finds comfort in his friendship with Eli (Lina
Leandersson), a new kid on the block who only
appears at night, carries a strange odour and
thirsts for blood. As they bond, Eli becomes
Oskar’s protector. ‘I see them as the same
character,’ said director Tomas Alfredson,
suggesting that Eli is somehow a manifestation of
Oskar’s muted anger at the world. Putting its own
unique spin on vampire lore – these creatures
even send cats into a frenzy – Alfredson’s
minimalist masterpiece may have inspired an
American movie remake and TV series, but neither
boasted its sensitivity and strangeness.
BEST BIT The underwater-POV swimming pool
attack, as Eli takes out Oskar’s tormentors.

2008
Perhaps the most bruising film of the
New French Extremism movement, writer/
director Pascal Laugier’s masterwork is wreathed
in pain. Beginning in the realms of J-horror, as
kidnapping victim Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) is
tormented by a mysterious figure from the past,
it moves towards torture porn (or ‘anti-torture porn’
as Laugier put it) when she and childhood friend
Anna (Morjana Alaoui) kill a seemingly innocent
family, only to discover [SPOILERS AHEAD!]
a subterranean chamber beneath their home…
‘Horror shouldn’t be a unifying genre,’ said
Laugier, who doesn’t flinch from exploring the
aftershocks of abuse, and the brutalities perpetrated
in the name of religion. ‘It must divide, shock,
make cracks in the certainties of the audience.’
Consider that a warning.
BEST BIT Skin flayed, eyes aflame, Anna finally
sees the truth. Both troubling and transcendental.

2011
Essentially a cursed kitchen-sink thriller,
Ben Wheatley’s second feature closes
around you like a trap. Two contract
killers take a job, but do they know why
they’re signing in blood? No, and the
blackly comic horrors that ensue
steadily intensify. Come the climax,
there’s no escape, no catharsis:
‘You’re supposed,’ says Wheatley,
‘to be suffering.’
BEST BIT The Librarian.
It’s hammer time.

2014
Powered by a spectacular synth score,
this ultra-stylish chiller puts a
contemporary spin on Ringu by
swapping a haunted VHS for a cursed
STD. Maika Monroe is the unlucky
victim, pursued by a relentless,
shapeshifting slow-walker that turns
every background player into a
potential heart attack. ‘The best horror
film in years,’ screamed Vice.
BEST BIT The Tall Man makes
an entrance.
58 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

Jennifer Kent’s outstanding debut
tackles grief, loss, guilt, mental health,
motherhood and the absent-father theme – by
terrorising a mother and son via a supernatural
monster with a taste for fine millinery.
Amelia (Essie Davis) has raised six-year-old
Samuel (Noah Wiseman) alone after her husband was
killed in a car accident, and must watch in horror as
his behaviour spirals when a sinister pop-up book
– Mister Babadook – mysteriously appears.
Made for just $2.5 million, The Babadook based its
top-hatted monster on stills of Lon Chaney’s vampire
in lost silent film London After Midnight, and brought
it to life via stop-motion animation and practical
effects. Boy, does it work. ‘I’ve never seen a more
terrifying film,’ said The Exorcist’s William Friedkin.
BEST BIT When Amelia goes full big bad Babadook,
uttering unimaginable things to her son.

A L A M Y, GE T T Y

2014

HORROR MOVIES

2005

2001

Who’s afraid of the dark? In Neil Marshall’s hands, we all are.
The power of The Descent is that (unless you’re watching the
punch-pulling US cut) the title is a hideous promise. Down we go.
Jangling nerves from the opening scene, Marshall dials up the
tension as a sextet of friends go spelunking in an uncharted cave system.
They’re in trouble long before they realise they’re not alone.
‘There was malicious intent on my part,’ admitted Marshall.
‘I wanted to scare the shit out of people.’ In impressively cramped,
soundstage-built locations, Marshall heightened realism and
claustrophobia by only using appropriate light sources (flares, glowsticks) wielded by his cast. And that’s without mentioning his inspired
decision to make his heroes women, offering an authentic portrait of
frazzled friendship undone by grief, betrayal and troglodyte predators.
BEST BIT The night-vision reveal.

2004
A great comedy, yes, but also a great horror film. Raised
on Raimi and Romero, Edgar Wright and star/co-writer
Simon Pegg understand every trope of the zombie movie, and that’s
why Shaun is so effective. From having to brain friends and family
before they turn, to the cathartic disembowelling of the arsehole
in the group, the film doesn’t stint on guts, emotional or literal.
Shaun’s genius is to bring these familiar beats across the
Atlantic. ‘In American zombie movies, everyone had high-powered
weapons,’ pondered Wright. ‘What would someone do without
all that?’ Hence the climactic siege takes place in the local pub,
a zombie bite can be dealt with simply by ‘running it under
the tap’, and the reaction to a blood-stained shirt is to politely
point out that ‘you’ve got red on you’.
BEST BIT The jukebox plays Don’t Stop Me Now.
TOTALFILM.COM

‘When I’m told that Kairo predicted the future, I have to say
that was not my original intention,’ says Japanese director
Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Well, we can only assume that his intention was
to reduce terrified viewers to whimpering wrecks, because it’s the
only thing this does better.
Made as the world was getting to grips with the internet, Kairo
(Pulse) anticipated 21st-century disconnection. Its young protagonists
set out to find why Tokyo is growing emptier by the day, and learn that
malevolent spirits are entering our world through these portals. As
suicides rack up and the shadow-drenched city – all stains, scratchy
sound design and dissonant spaces – becomes more and more sinister,
Kairo seeps wider and deeper until it feels apocalyptic. Along with Hideo
Nakata’s Ringu, this is the apex of J-horror.
BEST BIT A distorted ghost walks towards us in slow motion. Terrifying.

2015
Suffused with dark magic, Robert Eggers’ chiller was inspired
by the 17th-century Salem Witch Trials, which took place
near to where he grew up and haunted his childhood dreams. For his
directorial debut, the former production designer strikes a rich seam
of realism, using natural light, accurate sets and authentic (British)
accents to anchor the more fantastical elements.
In 1630s New England, young Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) and
her god-fearing family are banished by the other settlers following
a religious disagreement, and forced to fend for themselves in the
unforgiving wilderness. But when their baby is stolen by something,
it’s not God who’s pulling the strings. ‘I wanted this film to be like
a nightmare from the past,’ said Eggers, ‘like a Puritan’s nightmare
that you could upload into the mind’s eye.’ Amen to that.
BEST BIT ‘Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?’ asks a mysterious figure.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 59

TF LIST

2013
‘The human skin in their [alien] eyes is similar to a carrier bag
of shopping,’ says director Jonathan Glazer, explaining how
Scarlett Johansson’s visitor perceives us. With inky style, Glazer’s
otherworldly chiller makes us see humanity and horror anew, unsettling
audience certainties. Johansson’s ET stalks Scotland, a predator seeking
naturally occurring resources: men.
Glazer asserts his intent to derail perceptions right from his cosmic
prologue, paring cinema down to the base matter of light, darkness,
eyes… Johansson also takes shape before us, putting on new skin for
stalking in. And when she brings home the bacon – ‘vodsel’, in source
author Michel Faber’s term – Glazer’s gloopy abstract images suggest
just enough of the abattoir to horrify. Surprise twists seed hints of hope
for humanity, but not before Glazer has made us feel terribly small.
BEST BIT The baby on the beach haunts for years.

2008
Appearing out of nowhere like a face in the darkness, Australian
writer/director Joel Anderson’s insistently spooky 2008 debut
lingers long in the mind. A fake documentary exploring the mutability
of grief and truth, it introduces us to the Palmers, a family living in
smalltown Ararat, Victoria, whose 16-year-old daughter, Alice (Talia
Zucker), drowns while swimming at the local dam. Only Alice isn’t
really gone, returning to haunt them in dreams, home movies and old
photographs as they try to process their loss.
Inspired by Twin Peaks and the eeriness of the Australian outback,
Anderson presents a psychologically convincing ghost story shot
through with a deep vein of dread. ‘I like the idea of disquiet,’ he said.
‘I don’t find jumping-out-of-the-closet moments scary.’ To his credit,
Lake Mungo isn’t just disquieting; it’s heartbreaking, too.
BEST BIT Alice captures something terrifying on her camera phone.

2017

60 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

ALAMY

Who would have thought a former
puppeteer turned comedian who was
best known for an Obama impersonation would
make the most searing horror satire of the 21st
century? Jordan Peele, with then barely-known
British actor Daniel Kaluuya, brought to the
screen a portrait of race in America, where
Black bodies are prized while Black lives aren’t.
Talented photographer Chris (Kaluuya)
somewhat reluctantly agrees to spend a
weekend with his white girlfriend’s family
in upstate New York. At first, all he faces
are microaggressions, but soon, things get
dangerous. Part of Peele’s mission was to
acknowledge just how ridiculous the image
of America being a post-racial utopia
was.‘We’re in the Obama presidency,
and race was not supposed to be discussed,’
he explained. ‘It was almost like, if you talk
about race, it will appear!’
Get Out not only got audiences to take in
the unspoken horrors that African Americans
face but also received love letters from
critics, won Peele a well-deserved Oscar,
and brought the Black horror genre back from
The Sunken Place.
BEST BIT ‘I would have voted for Obama
a third time if I could.’
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2018
Hail, Paimon! Ari Aster’s petrifying debut has been
crowned Total Film’s #1 horror movie of the 21st
century; don’t lose your head over it. Combining
elements of The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby and Don’t
Look Now into a ferociously effective new beast,
Hereditary is a devastating family drama, where the
everyday horrors of loss and grief are – in a way –
even more distressing than a demon with a proclivity
for shock decapitations. In a just world, Toni
Collette’s fiercely committed performance wouldn’t
only have been nominated for an Academy Award,
she’d have won.
Exemplary through to its dizzyingly bleak finale,
Aster’s wildly assured script is matched by his

mploying destabilising day/
strikingly artful visuals, employing
lhouse motif that takes on
night match cuts and a dollhouse
he foreknowledge that
sinister new meaning with the
the Graham family are little more than playthings for
ower.
an incomprehensible higher power.
s out of Sundance
After receiving ecstatic notices
terpiece,’ said USA
2018 (‘A modern-day horror masterpiece,’
Today) the myth of Hereditary was assured when the
creening of Peter
trailer accidentally played before a screening
es fleeing. ‘It’s
Rabbit in Perth, sending young families
n Scorsese.
just wonderful filmmaking,’ said Martin
ms.’ You and
‘It reminds me of the best of horror films.’
us both, Marty.
BEST BIT Off with her head.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 61

TF LIST

2009

2016

Anyone with a love of Mario
Bava and Dario Argento’s
giallo movies needs to see
this gorgeously lurid BelgianFrench homage. Death has
never been so sensual.

If ghosts invade your holiday
home, who you gonna call?
Not this exorcist. A delightful
horror-(cringe)com with
likeable characters and
consistent chuckles.

2002

Soldiers v werewolves in
Neil Marshall’s raucously
funny and super-gory calling
card. The action is fast,
furious and admirably
gutsy: ‘Sausages.’

2016

A modern-day witch uses
magic to bamboozle the
patriarchy. Anna Biller wrote,
directed and edited. She also
handmade the spellbinding
sets and costumes.

2022

2009

2023

Lee Cronin relocates the
gnarly action to a rundown
LA tower block and gives
us the best Evil Dead movie
since the 80s. Now, where’s
our cheese grater…

021

2016

2002

A woman is paralysed by
visions of murders. So far, so
Eyes of Laura Mars. Then a
bonkers final act accelerates
James Wan’s movie straight
on to this list.

2017

As slick and postmodern
as any Scream movie, this
entertaining slasher-comedy
focuses on two social-media
obsessed teens. Should have
been a mainstream hit.
62 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

2007

The most fun horror
anthology since heyday
Amicus – or at least since
Creepshow – serves up serial
killers, werewolves and more.
There’s warmth to the chills.

Jeremy Gardner writes,
directs and stars in a lowbudget, existential zombie
movie with real pathos. The
extended one-take climactic
sequence is extraordinary.

2017

The family that slays
together… Bill Paxton’s
directorial debut locks onto
a religious fanatic (Paxton
himself) who forces his sons
to join him in killing ‘demons’.

Mike Flanagan cracks Stephen
King’s ‘unfilmable’ novel about
a woman left handcuffed to
a bed after her hubby carks
it during spicy lovemaking.
One word: degloving.

2022

A lonely, socially awkward
young woman builds herself
a friend. Like if Carrie was
Victor Frankenstein. The
dark humour will have
you in stitches.

2011

Never mind a haunted
house, how about a haunted
psychiatric hospital? Brad
Anderson turns the screws
tight as things get freaky for
an asbestos-cleaning crew.

2012

Two strangers find they’ve
double-booked an Airbnb.
And that’s the least of their
problems in Zach Cregger’s
outrageous fright ride full
of sharp left turns.

2001

Simon Rumley makes
off-beam horror as
imaginative as it is intense.
This fractured breakdown of
a clothes-obsessed woman
would unnerve Nicolas Roeg.

001

Just when you thought
it was safe to go back to
Woodsboro… This ‘requel’
repackages the essentials:
smarts, scary set-pieces and
Neve Campbell’s Sidney.

2022

Arthouse meets torture
porn in Lars von Trier’s
cabin-in-the-woods shocker.
Punishment, forgiveness,
ejaculating blood, a talking
fox. Chaos reigns, indeed.

Spanish auteur Pedro
Almodóvar applies his
scalpel-sharp talents to an
Eyes Without a Face-alike
tale of surgery, sex and
shifting identities.

2019

Jordan Peele proved he was
no one-hit wonder with this
potent doppelgänger(s)
movie full of nightmarish
imagery. It’s not outsiders
who are terrifying, it’s…

2008

Set in 1918, during the
Spanish Flu, Ti West’s prequel
to X nods to the Golden Age
of Hollywood and features
a deliriously unhinged Mia
Goth in the title role.

A virus that’s passed
through language? This
claustrophobic Canadian
zombie flick is all talk (in a
good way) and boasts a top
turn by Stephen McHattie.

2011

[Rec]’s Jaume Balagueró
slows things down to a holdyour-breath standstill, as a
doorman lets himself into
a woman’s apartment and
sleeps under her bed.

2022

This bleak Danish offering
will put you off ever making
friends on holiday. The
dread grows and grows until
we reach the most horrific
climax since The Vanishing.

2020

A troubled woman returns
home and seeks revenge in
one of the toughest films on
the list. The rape-revenge
sub-genre gets a morally
complex, artistic overhaul.

2016

‘Luis Buñuel spliced with
Hieronymus Bosch,’ yelped
TF upon the release of this
hellish vision. Provocative
in the extreme.
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HORROR MOVIES

2021

An 80s film censor views
a video nasty that speaks
to her own buried trauma.
Prano Bailey-Bond’s debut is
an oppressive study of grief,
guilt and gratuitous violence.

2018

2008

Spiced sangria whips a dance
troupe into a bloodthirsty
orgiastic frenzy in Gaspar
Noé’s danse macabre. Seems
like the camera operator
drank most of it.

2016

A deaf and mute writer is
terrorised by a masked man
in her isolated house. Mike
Flanagan has two other
movies on this list, but this
is his scariest offering.

2009

Jaume Balagueró and
Paco Plaza return to the
quarantined building to
deliver 90 dread-drenched
minutes. [Rec] 3 went for
something different.

2021

The cruelty of children is
quietly explored as kids with
dark powers begin to flex
their abilities. A slow-burn
Norwegian chiller that rightly
became an international hit.

2012

Found-footage movies
normally seek intimacy and
realism. Matt Reeves and J.J.
Abrams applied the format
to a giant monster movie.
There goes New York…

2013

James Wan’s super-slick
suspenser thrust real-life
paranormal investigators
Ed and Lorraine Warren into
spine-icing action, launching
a cinematic universe.

2007

2010

Home alone, a heavily
pregnant woman is besieged
by a crazed Béatrice Dalle,
who’s after her baby. Grisly
AF, with the technical control
of a Fincher movie.

The successful horror
franchise that James Wan
and Patrick Wilson conjured
up first. Haunted-house chills
and an inspired jump-scare
cameo from Darth Maul.

2017

Deconstructing genre tropes,
the DIY debut of Justin
Benson and Aaron Moorhead
(see also Spring, below) is
a cabin-in-the-woods
horror like no other.

2016

Sorcery and grief. This
Irish occult horror starring
Steve Oram and Catherine
Walker should be much
better known. A seriously
atmospheric chamber piece.

A hunting trip goes horribly
south in this taut, stylish
French thriller. Writer/
director Coralie Fargeat
brings a female perspective
to the rape-revenge film.

2019

All shadow, shimmer and
synth soundscapes, Jennifer
Reeder’s beguiling teen noir
evokes echoes of Lynch as
a young girl disappears in
a Midwest town.

2017

Bickering friends go hiking
in Sweden and stumble
into a superior creature
feature. The reveal does that
rare thing of matching the
atmospheric build-up.

2019

Rose Glass’ attentiongrabbing debut sees nurse
Morfydd Clark try to save the
soul of a dying patient. Think
Persona meets Repulsion.
The climax scorches.

WORDS JAMIE GRAHAM

2014

Imagine, if you can, a walking
and talking romantic drama
in the Richard Linklater vein,
spliced with H.P. Lovecraft
or Andrzej Żuławski’s
Possession. WTF, basically.

2008

The poster child of modern
home-invasion movies.
When the victims ask their
tormentors why they’re
doing this, ‘Because you were
home’ is the chilling reply.

2006
2003

Two sisters, one creaking
house, a creeping camera
and masterful art direction
make for a super-scary
South Korean chiller.

There are stylish, propulsive
serial-killer movies, and there
are grubby character studies.
Tony squats firmly in the
latter camp. Post-viewing
shower obligatory.

2018

Young filmmakers shooting
a porno in rural Texas get cut
down to size in Ti West’s wellcrafted ode to 70s slashers.
Prequel Pearl was released
later the same year.

2001
2013

An elegant US remake
that actually improves on
the original – in this case
Mexican cannibal-family
film Somos lo que hay.
TOTALFILM.COM

Producer/director/actor Larry
Fessenden is a god of indie
horror. Wendigo shows why,
blending city folks’ fear of
rural locals with a folkloric
monster tale. Brrr.

2009

Many home-invasion movies
are graphic and grim. This
fast-moving French effort
instead relies on intense
suspense and is all the
more terrifying for it.

2022
2014

‘We drink virgin blood
because it sounds cool.’ Ace
vampire mockumentary by
Jemaine Clement and Taika
Waititi. See also the TV show.

Writer-director Andy Mitton
makes wonderfully delicate
films. This is his best, a ghost
story as a father and son flip
an old Vermont farmhouse.

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 63

64 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

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NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 65

66 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

Where the film really twists is that Swinton
doesn’t just play Julie. Aged up, sporting
tweeds, she is Rosalind as well. Taking on
multiple roles is nothing new to her, having
featured in various guises in Luca Guadagnino’s
remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria. But Hogg
never intended for something similar: ‘It
never entered my head that she would also
be Rosalind.’ After discussing various actors
who could take on the part, it was only when
Swinton casually suggested it that the idea took
form. ‘The thing I was worried about is that
it would seem like a gimmick,’ says Hogg.
For Swinton, it was anything but. ‘This idea
of them being played by the same person…
makes it an entirely different film.’ Returning
to this idea of the dynamic between a mother
and a daughter, it morphs into something more
profound. ‘How much do we separate? And how
much of our mother is our projection, how
much of our daughter is our projection? This
whole question then became alive for us. And
so once we’d had this idea, we didn’t look back.’
Hogg originally thought about writing
The Eternal Daughter back in 2008, but at that

point it wasn’t a ghost story. ‘I eventually
put it aside… out of guilt and not wanting to
trespass on my mother’s life. So framing it
as a ghost story helped to remove it from my
own experience and my own relationship with
my mother.’ When she picked it up again,
during the first lockdown, she had help from
one Martin Scorsese, who had been executive
producer on her 2013 movie Exhibition and
the Souvenir films.
‘I asked him to recommend me some short
ghost stories – not films, but books. And he
gave me a fantastic list of stories to read,
including one by [Rudyard] Kipling called They,
which ended up having a big influence on the
film because it’s a very moving story, partly
based on Kipling’s own experience of losing
a child. And that was the first time I’d read a
ghost story that reduced me to tears and made
me think this film, The Eternal Daughter, can
have an uneasy atmosphere. But also,
hopefully, go very deep emotionally.’
Uneasy is the word. Kipling aside, Henry
James’ classic tale The Turn of the Screw and
the ghost stories of Edith Wharton were also
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BFI DISTR IBUTION

oanna Hogg is sheltering in
a shopping centre about two
hours north of Rome. The
British filmmaker has taken
time out from her vacation
to talk to Total Film about
her new movie, ghostly
tale The Eternal Daughter,
which she seems pleased to do. ‘I’m not very
good on holiday,’ she says. ‘I wish I was better
at just relaxing, but I just can’t do it.’ Still, it
feels apt to speak during such an excursion,
given The Eternal Daughter follows the story
of a mother and her grown-up daughter
holidaying in an isolated hotel where things
really do go bump in the night.
The idea grew out of personal experience.
From the age of 12, Hogg and her mother would
go on short trips together, for a few days at a
time, often venturing north of the border to
attend the Edinburgh Festival. ‘We’d go and
stay in a little hotel or a pub with rooms above
it… We’d go and stay somewhere,’ she recalls.
‘And it was always really nice, but there was
also always a point where things got… It wasn’t
always easy. And of course, my mother’s not
around any more now. So I miss those times
together. They were really precious.’
She’s not the only one. Tilda Swinton, the
star of The Eternal Daughter, has been a close
friend of Hogg’s right back to 1971, when they
were both in dorms at West Heath Girls’ School.
As Swinton explained at last year’s Venice Film
Festival, long before the SAG-AFTRA strike:
‘Joanna and I have spoken for 50 years about
our mothers and neither of our mothers are
with us any more. My mother moved on earlier
than shooting this film. And Joanna and I had
talked a lot about the entanglement of a mother
and a daughter – even after the mother has
left – and the projections involved.’
Previously, Swinton featured in both The
Souvenir (2019) and The Souvenir Part II (2021),
Hogg’s acclaimed, autobiographical tales from
her time as a young film student. In those,
she played Rosalind, mother to Julie, the film
student played by her own offspring, Honor
Swinton Byrne. In The Eternal Daughter, the
mother and daughter are also called Rosalind
and Julie, the latter a middle-aged filmmaker
looking to document her parent’s life. So is this
some kind of warped sequel to the Souvenir
films? Is Hogg playing a little game with us?
‘I mean, not even a little game. The only
names that rang true for this story, which
I never saw as an extension of The Souvenir
actually… Well, the only names that rang true
were Rosalind and Julie. And then I feel…
Well, maybe you see it a different way. But
for me, the connections stopped there because
it’s in a very different key. Stylistically and
thematically. I was playing with something
different. So in some ways, I now think,
“Oh, I wish I’d given them other names.” So
people didn’t think that it was a third part or
something. Very much in my mind, it isn’t.’

THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER

them both in the same frame, but otherwise,
they’re very much individuals.’
As Swinton puts it: ‘It’s inspired…
to have no over-the-shoulders, to have no
paraphernalia, no doubles. No somebody else
with a similar wig. None of that. Just this
person. And then this person. It’s a very
brave and inspired artistic choice and not
only on her behalf, but the team. I mean,
Ed Rutherford, who’s the extraordinary
director of photography, just committed
to that and lit it in such a way that for my
money, you don’t question.’
Even more remarkably, the dialogues were
improvised by Swinton, who role-played the
conversations, fleshing out the exchanges
between the two characters.
‘Tilda was incredible, keeping the energy
going from the first half of the conversation,’
says Hogg. ‘And then I didn’t mind if what the
mother responds to isn’t exactly the same; the
fact that it didn’t always match, I thought was
interesting. We’re not always on the same
wavelength in [life].’ Says Swinton: ‘[It’s a]
glorious way of working, because it means
that you can go any which way.’
Less audible than the dialogue, though just
as crucial, was the meticulous sound design.
Hogg worked in Dolby Atmos for the first time,
creating an immersive soundscape for the
hotel. ‘It really goes beyond just surround
sound. It really does envelop you,’ she says.

‘THIS IDEA OF THEM
BEING PLAYED BY THE
SAME PERSON MAKES
IT A DIFFERENT FILM’
TILDA SWINTON
mood-setters for a tale based in a fog-shrouded
hotel. As the floorboards creek and the wind
groans, Julie is rattled by a faint but persistent
thumping. The hotel, she’s told, is full, but
where is everyone? Aside from Rosalind’s dog
Louis (Swinton’s spaniel in real life), the only
other souls are the frosty receptionist (CarlySophia Davies) and the hotel’s kindly night
porter Bill (Joseph Mydell), very much
channelling vibes from Stanley Kubrick’s
own masterly hotel horror, The Shining.
ntriguingly, Hogg also makes use of
Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and
Celesta, which Kubrick also mined for his
film. ‘It’s another movement from the same
piece of music,’ she says, outlining that she was
careful not to choose exactly the same music
‘because it’s got such direct connections with
The Shining’. You won’t find rivers of blood
flowing through the maze-like corridors, but
this space appears to be haunted by events
of the past. As we discover, the hotel was
Rosalind’s former family home, the walls
witness to more than one painful memory.

I

TOTALFILM.COM

In reality, Hogg’s team shot in Soughton
Hall, a Grade II-listed country house in
Flintshire, Wales, an experience that left her
‘spooked’, she says. ‘I made myself stay there
while we were filming. There were just a
handful of us who opted to stay in the hotel,
and I did it, a lot out of convenience, because
it meant I could just jump out of bed and be
on the set straight away. But also, I thought,
well, maybe something useful will come out
of it. And I didn’t sleep very well. Everyone’s
imaginations got more and more active. And
I don’t know whether it’s because of the film
that we were making, but, yeah, all sorts of
things were heard and not quite seen.’
Aside from the technical challenges of
creating a landscape drenched in fog (‘A fair
amount of effort and money went into making
sure that was always there,’ says Hogg), the
biggest decision was how to shoot Swinton in
both roles. Filmed in story order, there were to
be no tricks, no over-the-shoulder shots where
you’re aware of mother and daughter both in
the frame. ‘I had to do it very simply,’ says
Hogg. ‘I think twice or three times you see

‘The sound was a huge part of it… It’s really
elaborate.’ She even asked Davies, when she
wasn’t playing the receptionist, to help out
by creating a unique, ethereal groan. ‘Carly
is also a singer and has a wonderful voice,’
explains Hogg, ‘and she’s sometimes the
sound of the wind.’
It all feeds into The Eternal Daughter’s
disquieting atmosphere, conjuring up a ghost
story – or a grief story – with an emotional
core. If it’s a film about fears of mortality, of
the inevitable pain of losing a parent, Swinton
points out there’s catharsis to be had: ‘Making
the film was partly an exercise in making
friends with projection, not being frightened
of it, not being frightened of being haunted.
And also acknowledging that just because
someone exits the building, the conversation
can continue. It doesn’t have to end.’

THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER OPENS IN CINEMAS
ON 24 NOVEMBER. Tilda Swinton was speaking
at the Venice Film Festival 2022, ahead of
the SAG-AFTRA strike.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 67

An actor researches
a decades-old, tabloidfuelled scandal with
disturbing consequences
in MAY DECEMBER,
Todd Haynes’ devilish and
delicious story of identity,
duality and morality.
Total Film meets with
the director and his cast
to discuss one of the
slipperiest movies
of the year.
WORDS JAMES MOTTRAM

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 69

Elizabeth (Natalie Portman)
and Joe (Charles Melton)

70 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

awaiting sentencing. A plea agreement was reached meaning
she only spent three months in jail, but shortly after she was
released, police caught her with the boy again. This time, she
served six years, giving birth to their second daughter while
incarcerated. A year after her release, they married,
remaining together for a further 14 years.
Yet that is just the inciting incident for May December, which
twists on the notion that Gracie has consented for her and
Joe’s story to be told in a new movie. The actor playing her –
Elizabeth Berry – arrives at Gracie’s home in Savannah, Georgia,
to shadow her. ‘You think Elizabeth will be our way into this
weird story and this crazy lady and this young man, and that
she’ll be our kind of stable proxy,’ continues Haynes. ‘And then
as the story unfolds, you start to question Elizabeth, her
motives, the way she treats the people around her.’
This notion stood out for Haynes when he first received the
script from star Natalie Portman, after launching her production
company MountainA. Portman, 42, was desperate to play
Elizabeth, especially having experienced what it’s like to explore
real-life characters – whether it’s Anne Boleyn in The Other
Boleyn Girl or former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie,
which gleaned her an Oscar nomination. ‘I mean, it definitely
has felt like my entire life’s work has been research for this
role,’ she nods, sporting a chic black trouser suit when we
speak in a rooftop space of Cannes’ J.W. Marriott hotel.
For Portman, though, May December touched on so many
issues beyond the potentially vampiric nature of acting. ‘I think
that the movie really is asking if art can be amoral,’ she states.
‘We make so many movies and television shows about serial
killers, about all sorts of human transgression. And we have this
approach of, like, we just want to depict human behaviour. And
we’re curious about human behaviour even when it’s a crime.
But can we really depict it without passing judgement?’
When Portman and Haynes met, they began to talk about
who might play Gracie. ‘That was an easy choice,’ grins Haynes,
who went to his long-time collaborator Julianne Moore. The
same age – they’re both 62 – they first worked together on
Haynes’ 1995 virus drama, Safe. ‘For me, personally, I feel like
I understand Todd,’ Moore says. ‘I see his point of view.’
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SK Y

H

ow I felt reading it… was so uncertain, fascinated,
troubled,’ admits Todd Haynes, talking about the
script for his beguiling new film May December, when
Total Film meets him pre-strike at the Cannes Film
Festival. The day before, at the press conference, the
esteemed American filmmaker behind Carol and Far
from Heaven brought the house down when he explained the
meaning of the film’s title – a relationship, of course, defined by
a huge age gap. ‘Some people in France called it “Le Macron”,’
he quipped, alluding to the French President’s much older
partner, Brigitte, whom he met when he was 15.
Scripted by casting-director-turned-writer Samy Burch, May
December also turns on a coupling between a young man and
an older woman. As the film’s opening informs, Gracie Atherton
was 36 when she met Joe Yoo, a 13-year-old who worked in the
same pet store she did. When they were caught having sex,
she was arrested, later giving birth to his baby in jail. Yet they
remained together, marrying when she was released – defiant
in the face of a national scandal that, even 20-or-so years
later, still sees them abused with hate mail.
Loosely, the story is inspired by Mary Kay Letourneau, a
teacher from Washington who pleaded guilty to felony seconddegree rape of a child in 1997, after having sexual relations
with a 12-year-old boy. She gave birth to their first child while

Actor Elizabeth (Natalie Portman)
visits Gracie (Julianne Moore)
while researching a movie role

MAY DECEMBER

tourists with open-container beers at all hours. And so I wanted
some of that ugliness in the movie to de-romanticise and take
the piss out of Savannah a little bit, too.’ The Atherton-Yoo
house was found at nearby Tybee Island. ‘Every place we shot
was a real place,’ adds Haynes. ‘No sets at all.’
Haynes provided his cast with a list of movies to watch as part
of their prep – films like British infidelity drama The Pumpkin
Eater, starring Anne Bancroft and Peter Finch, and Ingmar
Bergman’s Persona, a film that deals with duality in much the
way May December does. In this case, in one crucial scene, Haynes
films Gracie and Elizabeth next to each other as they stare into
a mirror, adjusting their make-up. ‘Using the camera as a
mirror,’ suggests Portman, ‘it had a sense of reflecting the
performance, even when you’re alone. How do we even perform
for ourselves? How do we wear masks for ourselves?’
As the scene unfolds, they go from looking directly at the
audience to seeing themselves reflected in one another’s eyes.
An ‘X’ tape mark aided the actors’ eyelines shooting the scene,
‘so it was technically not intuitive,’ explains Portman, ‘but it
was really just an incredible way to have to face the camera and
be bare in a weird way, even though you’re self-conscious –
exactly like a mirror. Because you’re self-conscious in the most
profound sense, looking at yourself. But you’re also alone
with yourself. And so there’s a real exposure and rawness
you can have. So it was a really interesting exercise.’
Another film that shaped Haynes’ vision here was Joseph
Losey’s 1971 film The Go-Between, and in particular the score
by Michel Legrand. ‘I saw the movie a year ago and it made me
think, “Oh, this is the kind of music I want to try to use in the
film,”’ he says. Noting that it puts the viewer on high alert, the

‘I THINK IT’S MAYBE MY ONLY
COMEDY – A VERY DARK COMEDY’
TODD HAYNES
Moreover, this is one actor tailor-made for risqué material – be
it a porn star in Boogie Nights or an incestuous socialite in Savage
Grace – which explains her fascination in Gracie’s transgressions.
‘The reason this movie feels so dangerous, I think,
hink, watching
ndaries
it, is that people don’t know where anyone’s boundaries
body does
are,’ she says. ‘You’re in a social situation, somebody
y do I feel so
something wildly inappropriate, you’re like, “Why
uncomfortable? I really feel uncomfortable, I wantt to get out of
ocial boundary,
here.” It’s because someone has transgressed a social
nd that’s
or an emotional boundary and you feel unsafe. And
his film.
what I think Todd has captured so beautifully in this
And that I think is most compelling to me.’

T

o play Joe, Haynes brought in Alaskaaor
born Charles Melton – best known for
erdale.
playing Reggie on The CW series Riverdale.
lirty
When we first see Joe, he’s texting flirty
messages to someone else, suggesting all is not well in
erves as
paradise. ‘The arrival of Natalie’s character just serves
-year-old,
this catalyst for his own awakening,’ adds the 32-year-old,
a comment that chimes with Haynes’ notion thatt the film ‘is
ned ‘to put
ultimately Joe’s story’. A devoted father determined
st a footnote
his family first’, adds Melton, Joe is more than just
,’ he adds.
in a scandal. ‘Life does go on beyond the tabloids,’
nd co.
When the production got underway, Haynes and
en been
decamped to Savannah, Georgia, a city that’s often
used in ‘very gothic’ films like Clint Eastwood’s murderous
es. ‘It’s
tale Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, he notes.
reserved
beautiful; the antebellum architecture that was preserved
ow it’s
and has never changed since the Civil War. But now
a tourist town 365 days of the year with roaming white
TOTALFILM.COM

dramatic piano strains being ‘so full of dread and foreboding’,
Haynes began by writing cues
cu from Legrand’s music into the
script, then played it on set
set. ‘It’s very bold and airy,’ says Melton.
‘It really had an influence in just how those scenes went.’
Later, Haynes’ regular editor
e
Affonso Gonçalves began using
Legrand’s work as temp mu
music. ‘By the end, the film was built
on the score,’ says the direc
director. ‘The tone of the film was resting
compose Marcelo Zarvos, then rerecorded
[on it].’ The film’s composer,
origina music he’d written. ‘It really
it, folding it into the original
betwe Marcelo and one of the great
was a collaboration between
masters of music and film,’ Haynes adds. Still, moments
exclaimi
like Gracie exclaiming,
‘I don’t think we have enough
hotdogs,’ as the music booms and the camera
zooms play for laughs.
It’s what m
makes May December one of Haynes’
most complex films
f
– funny, tragic, tawdry and
tender. ‘I think iit’s maybe my only comedy,’ he feels.
‘I think it is a very dark comedy. It also has real
sadness. It is an incredibly
inc
witty script. But it took
these actors playing it straight and subtly to allow for
all of the big gestures around them to make you go,
allow to laugh at this!” It gives you
“Oh, OK. We’re allowed
w
permission to enjoy watching
it… and not feel too
ev though it’s dealing with very
bogged down in it, even
disturbing and comp
complex and disquieting themes.’
simp puts it: ‘The movie’s risky.’
Or as Portman simply

MAY DECEMBER O
OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 17 NOVEMBER
AND IS ON SKY CINE
CINEMA FROM 8 DECEMBER. All interviews
completed ahead of tthe SAG-AFTRA strike.
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 71

INTERVIEW MATT MAYTUM

‘A FILMMAKER
NEEDS TO BE
A LITTLE BIT OF
A CON ARTIST’

ALFONSO
CUARÓN
A multihyphenate who often also writes, shoots and edits his
own movies, Alfonso Cuarón is the full moviemaking package.
As Gravity prepares for re-entry with a 10th anniversary
re-release, Total Film meets a director who’s always able to
beguile audiences without leaving them feeling cheated.

V IT TOR IO ZUNINO CELOT TO/GE T T Y IM AGES

PORTRAITS VITTORIO ZUNINO CELOTTO

72 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

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INTERVIEW

T
here’s no boilerplate example of an Alfonso
Cuarón movie. Certain themes recur
frequently (parent-child bereavement
being a key motif); the environments
are crucial; they’re often based on books;
and there’s rarely a shortage of technical
h{fhoohqfh1#Exw#orrn#dfurvv#klv#Ľoprjudsk|/#
dqg#qr#wzr#Ľopv#duh#txlwh#dolnh1#Iurp#
intimate black-and-white family drama
wr#julww|/#srolwlfdoo|#fkdujhg#vfl0Ľ/#wr#
a superlative franchise blockbuster
hqwu|/#khġv#ghprqvwudwhg#frqvlghudeoh#
range from humble beginnings.
Starting out as a crew member and an
dvvlvwdqw#gluhfwru/#kh#fxw#klv#whhwk#rq#WY#
dqg#Ľop#lq#klv#qdwlyh#Ph{lfr1#ĠWkhuhġv#qr#
question’ that working his way up through
various crew roles informed his approach
dv#d#gluhfwru/#kh#whoov#Total Film. In 1991 he
made his directorial debut with Sólo con tu
pareja/#fr0zulwwhq#zlwk#klv#eurwkhu#Fduorv1#
Wkh#dwwhqwlrq#wkdw#Ľop#dwwudfwhg#ohg#wr#
Kroo|zrrg#lqwhuhvw/#dqg#kh#gluhfwhg#dq#
hslvrgh#ri#WYġv#Fallen Angels before landing
A Little Princess/#wkh#Ľuvw#ri#pdq|#olwhudu|#
dgdswdwlrqv#wkdw#zrxog#ghĽqh#klv#fduhhu1
Wkdw#fkduplqj#idplo|#ľlfn#wkhq#ohg#
to Great Expectations (with Ethan Hawke
dqg#Jz|qhwk#Sdowurz,/#dqg#diwhu#wkdw/#

2001’s Y tu mamá también
helped put Diego Luna and
Gael García Bernal on the
path to superstardom

74 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

lq#5334/#fdph#wkh#Ľop#wkdw#uhdoo|#pdgh#
cinephiles sit up and take notice: Y tu mamá
también/#zklfk#khudoghg#qhz#wdohqw/#lq#
FxduÕq/#klv#fdvw/#dqg#wkh#qhz#jhqhudwlrq#
ri#Ph{lfdq#gluhfwruv#hduqlqj#joredo#
uhfrjqlwlrq#+FxduÕq/#Dohmdqgur#Jrq}Ãoh}#
LÓÃuulwx#dqg#Jxloohupr#gho#Wrur#zhuh#
dļhfwlrqdwho|#gxeehg#Ġwkh#wkuhh#dpljrvġ,1
Given that Cuarón’s career has never
vwxfn#rq#d#suhglfwdeoh#wudmhfwru|/#lw#
perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that
Y tu mamá también was followed up by
the third instalment in the Harry Potter
iudqfklvh1#Wxuqlqj#vkduso|#ohiw#djdlq/#The
Prisoner of Azkaban was followed up by
Children of Men/#d#vfl0Ľ#zkrvh#uhohydqfh#
and stature grows with each passing year.
Dqg#43#|hduv#djr/#FxduÕq#gholyhuhg#d#
eorfnexvwhu#rqh0rļ#wkdw#zdv#rqh#ri#wkh#
ehvw#Ľopv#ri#wkh#ghfdgh1#Gravity told a
vlpsoh#vxuylydo#vwru|/#lq#zklfk#dvwurqdxw#
Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is left
adrift in space after debris crashes into the
Hubble telescope during a routine service.
Wr#vxuylyh#vkh#pxvw#jhw#wr#wkh#Lqwhuqdwlrqdo#
Vsdfh#Vwdwlrq/#ehiruh#vkh#fdq#dwwhpsw#wr#
make her way back home. It was one of
wkh#ghĽqlqj#Ľopv#ri#6Gġv#uhfhqw#kh|gd|/#
a breathlessly claustrophobic and
vflhqwlĽfdoo|#uljrurxv#wkuloohu#wkdw#
was immersive and cinematic in the
purest sense.
Nominated for 10 Academy Awards (and
zlqqlqj#vhyhq/#lqfoxglqj#Ehvw#Gluhfwru,#wkh#
lqvwdqw#fodvvlf#fhphqwhg#klv#uhsxwdwlrq/#
before he spun to the Roma/#d#ghhso|#
shuvrqdo#surmhfw#wkdw#lv/#lq#prvw#uhvshfwv/#
the polar opposite of Gravity (and earned
him another Best Director Oscar to boot).
When we catch up with Cuarón in
September ahead of Gravityġv#uh0uhohdvh/#
he’s between post-production sessions
in London (where he has lived for the
past two decades) on upcoming Apple
WY.#plqlvhulhv#Disclaimer1#WY#lv#krjjlqj#

klv#dwwhqwlrq#dw#wkh#prphqw/#dv#khġv#dovr#
attached to shows Ascension and Fall of
the God of Cars. Whichever medium he
zrunv#lq/#zhġoo#dozd|v#iroorz1#Klv#lqvwlqfwv#
have their own gravitational pull…
Gravity is turning 10 years old, and is back
in cinemas. Do you see it as an essentially
cinematic, big-screen experience?
Zhoo/#|hv/#ehfdxvh#iurp#wkh#prphqw#zh#
zhuh#zulwlqj#lw/#zh#zhuh#ghvljqlqj#lw#iru#6G1#
We were dreaming of this experience. It was
jrlqj#wr#eh#d#flqhpdwlf#h{shulhqfh#lq#6G1#Zh#
were trying to take advantage of the depth
of what we believed could be the potential
ri#6G1#Lw#zdv#qrw#ixoo|#h{sorlwhg#yhu|#riwhq1
How do you feel about people watching it
at home - or even watching it on planes
or phones - in the intervening 10 years?
Zhoo/#wkdw#lv#lqhylwdeoh1#Dfwxdoo|/#L#wklqn#wkh#
experience on a plane is good. With a little
wxuexohqfh/#Lġp#vxuh#wkdw#frxog#frpsohphqw#
the experience… And maybe thinking that
you may fall [laughs].
Could you ever see yourself making
d#6G#Ľop#djdlqB
\hv/#suredeo|1#L#wklqn#wkdw#wkh#ehvw#
dssolfdwlrq#ri#6G#wkdw#lv#uduho|#xvhg/#lv#wkh#
srwhqwldo#iru#lqwlpdf|1#L#wklqn#wkdw#6G/#
xvxdoo|/#kdv#ehhq#xvhg#iru#elj#vhw0slhfhv/#
dqg#L#wklqn#wkdw#wkh#juhdw#srwhqwldo#iru#6G#lv#
pruh#lq#mxvw#vfhqhv#derxw#shrsoh#Ğ#shrsoh#
wdonlqj/#shrsoh#being#Ğ#mxvw#wr#jlyh#d#vhqvh#ri#
space and depth to the relationship between
those people and the environment.
You co-wrote the Gravity screenplay with
your son, Jonas. Do you remember where
wkh#Ľuvw#vhhg#ri#wkh#lghd#fdph#iurpB
Zh#kdg#zulwwhq#d#Ľop/#dqg#kdg#wkh#exgjhw/#
wkh#orfdwlrqv/#d#fdvw#Ğ#dqg#wkhq#suhww|#pxfk#
lw#ihoo#dsduwĩ#Wkh#vkruw#dqvzhu#lv#wkdw#L#
qhhghg#wr#sd|#wkh#uhqw1#Dqg#wkdw#Ľop#zdv#d#
vpdoohu/#nlqg#ri#pruh#duwkrxvh#Ľop1#^L#vdlg/`#
ĠL#grqġw#kdyh#wlph#wr#olfn#p|#zrxqgv1#Zloo#
|rx#khos#ph#zulwh#dqrwkhu#Ľop#uljkw#dzd|B#
Something that I feel I can attract studios
dqg#elj#lqyhvwruvBġ#
We started talking about what it could
eh/#dqg#zh#vwduwhg#wdonlqj#derxw#Ľopv#Ğ#wkh#
hprwlrq#ri#wkrvh#pdlqvwuhdp#Ľopv#wkdw#zh#
have seen throughout the years that deliver
a certain experience: an emotional
h{shulhqfh/#dqg#hprwlrqdo#lpsdfw1
Iluvw/#kh#kdg#zulwwhq#d#vfuhhqsod|#wkdw#
L#kdg#mxvw#uhdg#iru#d#Ľop#wkdw#kh#odwhu#
directed called Desierto1#L#vdlg/#Ġ\hdk/#
something like that.’ In the sense that the
whole grammar and the whole thematic
elements were led by the action.
^Zh#zhuh`#wdonlqj#derxw#Ľopv#wkdw#zh#
oryhĩ#Wkh#wzr#prghov#wkdw#L#wklqn#zh#wrrn#

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The Oscar-winning
Gravity is celebrating its
10th anniversary with
a cinema re-release.

were Duel#e|#Vslhoehuj/#dqg#A Man Escaped by
Urehuw#Euhvvrq#Ğ#lq#wkh#vhqvh#wkdw#zh#zdqwhg#
wr#gr#vrphwklqj#wkdw#zdv#flqhpdwlf/#lq#whupv#
of the language of cinema conveying the
uhdo#wkhpdwlf#hohphqwv1#Wkdw#lq#wkh#dfwlrq/#
it’ll contain some other kind of attempt
to explore things about human nature. I
think that that was the point of departure.
Lv#lw#d#ohds#ri#idlwk#zkhq#|rx#pdnh#d#Ľop#
like that, hoping that the technology will
be able to live up to your vision?
Zhoo/#L#wklqn#wkhuhġv#d#sduw#ri#
d#Ľoppdnhu#wkdw#qhhgv#wr#
be a little bit of a con artist
[laughs]. You have people
around you that have the
answers and solutions.
Lq#uhdolw|/#lwġv#|rxu#
uhvsrqvlelolw|/#exw#|rx#
have no idea what the
heck you are doing.
Zkhq#L#Ľuvw#wrog#Fklyr#Ğ#Hppdqxho#
Oxeh}nl#^flqhpdwrjudskhu#dqg#iuhtxhqw#
frooderudwru`#Ğ#wkdw#zh#kdg#d#gudiw/#L#vdlg/#
ĠWklv#lv#vrphwklqj#wkdw#L#zdqw#wr#gr#lq#wkuhh#
weeks. I want to do it in a very contained
vwxglr1#Lwġv#rqo|#rqh#fkdudfwhu1#Wzr#
characters tops. And I think we can do it
djdlqvw#d#eodfn#edfnjurxqg/#zlwk#d#frxsoh#
of blue screens. And we can do it very
quickly and contained.’

Zkhq#kh#uhdg#wkh#vfulsw/#kh#vdlg/#ĠDuh#
|rx#vxuhBġ#Dqg#kh#zdv#pdnlqj#ixq#ri#ph1
Dqg/#|hdk/#zh#glg#vrph#whvwv1#Wkh#zd|#
that I thought it could be done was not the
zd|1#Iurp#wkhq#rq/#lw#zdv#d#zkroh#mrxuqh|#
ri#Ľyh#|hduv#wr#wu|#wr#Ľjxuh#rxw#krz#wr#gr#lw1#
L#jrw#dgylfh#dqg#frpphqwv#rļ#shrsoh#olnh#
Mdphv#Fdphurq#dqg#^Gdylg`#Ilqfkhu1#Dqg#
both said the technology is not ready yet.
Dqg#wkh|#zhuh#uljkw1#Dfwxdoo|/#wkh|#zhuh#
vr#dffxudwh/#ehfdxvh#lw#wrrn#xv#qhduo|#Ľyh#
|hduv/#dqg#zkdw#wkh|#vdlg#lv=#ĠL#grqġw#wklqn#
the technology is there yet.
Pd|eh#lq#Ľyh#|hduv1ġ#Dqg#
pretty much it was the time
it took us to develop the
whole thing.

ALAMY

‘GRAVITY WAS
LITERALLY LIKE
DOING AN
ANIMATED FILM’

TOTALFILM.COM

Is there a trick to great
FJLB#Vr#pdq|#Ľopv#grqġw#
manage it, but the VFX in
Gravity hold up really well.
Zhoo/#rqh#wklqj#lv#Wlp#Zheehu/#wkh#ylvxdo#
hļhfwv#vxshuylvru1#Khġv#d#jhqlxv#lq#klv#Ľhog/#
dqg#d#wuxh#duwlvw/#dovr1#Khġv#qrw#rqo|#d#
whfkqlfldq/#khġv#dq#duwlvw1#Xvxdoo|/#p|#
eljjhvw#frooderudwlrq#lv#Fklyr1#Lq#wklv#fdvh/#
lw#zdv#wkh#wkuhh#ri#xv/#zrunlqj#doo#wkh#wlph/#
taking every single decision together.
Something that is fundamental for visual
hļhfwv/#dqg#vrphwklqj#wkdw#zh#zhuh#yhu|#
vshflĽf#derxw/#Fklyr#dqg#L/#lv#wkdw#lq#rughu#

wr#fuhdwh#lqwhjudwlrq/#|rx#qhhg#Ľuvw#wr#
kdyh#oljkw#lqwhjudwlrq1#Wkhuh#fdqqrw#eh#d#
discrepancy between the light that you’re
creating practically and the light that your
hļhfw#lv#jrlqj#wr#kdyh1
It’s not only about the direction of light;
lwġv#wkh#txdolw|#ri#oljkw1#Wkdwġv#vrphwklqj#
that was very challenging on Gravity/#
ehfdxvh#|rx#kdyh#d#vlqjoh#oljkw#vrxufh#Ğ#wkh#
vxq1#Zkhq#|rxġuh#vslqqlqj/#lwġv#lq#frqvwdqw#
prwlrq1#Dqg/#dovr/#|rx#kdyh#vxuidfhv#olnh#wkh#
spacesuit bouncing the light into the face of
rxu#fkdudfwhu/#sod|hg#e|#Vdqgud#Exoorfn1
So was it, in a sense, a bit like making an
dqlpdwhg#ĽopB
Not in a sense. It was literally like doing an
dqlpdwhg#Ľop1#L#jxhvv#wkdw#;3(#ri#wkh#Ľop#
is animated. I think the most important
wklqj#zlwk#ylvxdo#hļhfwv#lv#qrw#rqo|#wkh#
whfkqlfdo#hohphqw#ri#lw1#Wkdw#lv#yhu|#
lpsruwdqw/#exw#lqhylwdeo|#whfkqrorj|#lv#
going to be dated. It’s going to age. And
you have comparisons with the latest
whfkqrorj|/#dqg#wkhq/#dovr/#|rxu#vwxļ#vwduwv#
to look old. But what prevails is the
flqhpdwlf#frqfhsw1#Wkdwġv#zk|#vr#pdq|#
Ľopv#lq#wkh#vlohqw#hud/#|rx#fdq#vhh#wkdw#wkh#
hļhfwv#duh#pd|eh#qrw#wkh#prvw#whfkqlfdoo|#
dgydqfhg/#exw#qhyhuwkhohvv#|rx#fduh#derxw#
lw1#Lq#wkh#hqg/#L#eholhyh#wkdw#wkh#odqjxdjh#
goes above the technique.

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 75

INTERVIEW

Lwġv#kdug#wr#lpdjlqh#dq|rqh#hovh#rwkhu#
than Sandra Bullock in the lead role now.
Was it a long process to settle on her?
Zhoo/#lw#zdv/#mxvw#ehfdxvh#ri#wkh#wlph#wkdw#
lw#wrrn#iru#xv#wr#eh#uhdg|1#L#kdyh#wr#vd|/#
I couldn’t imagine any other person
shuiruplqj#dqg#grlqj#wklv#Ľop#wkdq#
Sandra. It is incredible how she holds the
zkroh#Ľop#wrjhwkhu1#Dqg#dovr#khu#dpd}lqj#
emotional intelligence. Once she got
lqyroyhg/#wkhq#zh#zhuh#irxu#pdlq#
frooderudwruv1#Lw#zdv#Fklyr/#Wlp/#Vdqgud/#
and me. She started challenging some
ghflvlrqv/#dqg#vkh#zdv#devroxwho|#uljkw1#
Vr#lw#zdv#derxw#wu|lqj#wr#Ľjxuh#rxw#krz#
to make those decisions work.
Dqg/#dovr/#lq#rughu#wr#eh#deoh#wr#
programme the computers and the robots
that were going to be performing the
whfkqlfdo#dvshfw#rq#vhw/#zh#glg#wkrvh#
dqlpdwlrqv#zlwk#suh0uhfrughg#wlplqj/#vr#
dq|#dgmxvwphqw#zdv#yhu|#glĿfxow1#Vrph#
gd|v/#Vdqgud#vdlg/#ĠGrqġw#zruu|/#L#zloo#pdnh#
wklv#kdsshq1ġ#Dqg#lw#zdv#lqfuhgleoh/#krz#khu#
glvflsolqh#zdv#wkdw#ri#d#gdqfhu/#zlwk#yhu|#
suhflvh#fkruhrjudsk|#lq/#sk|vlfdoo|/#yhu|#
challenging situations.

FIVE STAR TURNS
Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN 2001
Cuarón had already made English-language
films before returning to Mexico for this
calling-card breakout that evades easy
categorisation, and wrongfoots anyone
expecting simply a sexy road trip.

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER
OF AZKABAN 2004

Was it intentional that after Gravity, the
qh{w#Ľop#|rx#gluhfwhg#zdv#Roma, which
was a much more ground-level, familyvshflĽf#vfdohB
Zhoo/#L#grqġw#nqrz#li#lw#zdv#Ġlqwhqwlrqdoġ#lq#
the sense that… Sometimes I think I have
qhyhu#wdnhq#pxfk#ghflvlrq#lq#wkh#Ľop#wkdw#
Lġp#pdnlqj1#Wkh|#mxvw#kdsshq1#Exw#lq#wkdw#
rqh/#|hv/#L#jxhvv#wkdw#diwhu#Gravity/#L#mxvw#
needed to keep my feet on the ground. After
doo#wkh#whfkqlfdo#dvshfwv/#dqg#dovr#krz#lw#
qhhgv#wr#eh#vr#suhfrqfhlyhg#Ğ#L#zdqwhg#wr#gr#
vrphwklqj#wkdw#L#zdv#glvfryhulqj/#dqg#wkdw#
L#glgqġw#nqrz#zkdw#lw#zdv#jrlqj#wr#eh1#Zhoo/#
lq#pdq|#zd|v/#zh#glgqġw#nqrz#li#Gravity was
going to work until a few weeks before we
frpsohwhg#wkh#Ľop1#Zh#wkrxjkw#wkdw#lw#
was a gamble. But with Roma/#lw#zdv#d#
frpsohwho|#glļhuhqw#jdpeoh1#Lw#zdv#d#
gamble more from the standpoint of
a creative approach to the piece.

76 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

CHILDREN OF MEN 2006
‘Children of Men is not a prophetic piece,’
says Cuarón. But viewed post-Brexit and
against the backdrop of an ever-intensifying
climate crisis, Cuarón’s skilfully immersive
vérité sci-fi feels more resonant than ever.

GRAVITY 2013
Cuarón picked up his first Best Director
Oscar for the space-set sci-fi that sees Sandra
Bullock stranded where no one can hear her
scream. It’s that rare thing: a monumental VFX
achievement that’s also profoundly moving.

ROMA 2018
Exploring his own childhood, Cuarón’s semiautobiographical tale pays tribute to the
woman who raised him. The director/writer/
producer/DoP/editor describes the film as ‘a
year in the life of a family and a country’. MM

ALAMY

Ghvslwh#wkdw#glļhuhqfh#lq#vfrsh/#Roma
still has a lot of really technical aspects to
it as well. Are those technical challenges
part of the fun for you?
L#grqġw#vhh#wkrvh#iru#wkh#vdnh#ri=#ĠL#zdqw#wr#
gr#d#ylvxdo#hļhfw1ġ#\rx#kdyh#vrphwklqj#lq#
plqg/#hyhq#lq#dq#hqylurqphqw#wkdw#lv#
absolutely naturalistic like in Roma/#dqg#|rx#
want to achieve something. And it becomes
vhfrqg#qdwxuh1#\rx#vd|=#ĠRN/#Lġp#jrlqj#wr#gr#
it like this.’ And it’s a combination of the
glļhuhqw#wrrov#wkdw#flqhpd#rļhuv1#L#phdq/#
ylvxdo#hļhfwv#lv#qrwklqj#exw#d#wrro1#L#grqġw#
kdyh#dq|wklqj#djdlqvw#ylvxdo#hļhfwv1#Wkh#

Cuarón nailed the darker tone and introduced
Sirius Black in the best of the Potter movies.
‘The most important thing was to be faithful to
the spirit of the book,’ Cuarón said at the time.

ALFONSO CUARÓN

ixqq|#wklqj#lv/#zkhq#shrsoh#wdon#derxw#
ylvxdo#hļhfwv/#dqg#juhdw#gluhfwruv#derxw#
ylvxdo#hļhfwv#Ğ#L#wklqn#wkdw#hyhu|erg|#wdonv#
derxw#elj/#erpedvwlf#Kroo|zrrg#Ľopv1#Iru#
ph/#wkh#ehvw#gluhfwru#ri#ylvxdo#hļhfwv#lv#
Qxul#Fh|odq/#wkh#Wxunlvk#Ľoppdnhu1#Klv#
Ľopv#duh#Ľoohg#zlwk#ylvxdo#hļhfwv1#Lwġv#mxvw#
wkh#zd|#wkdw#kh#lqwhjudwhv#wkh#ylvxdo#hļhfwv#
into his story.
The extended takes in Children of Men are
viewed as some of your biggest technical
achievements. How did you think about
those sequences when you were putting
them together?
Zhoo/#wkh#lqwhqwlrq#lv#qhyhu#whfkqlfdo1#Wkh#
technical is the pain in the ass you have to
make to achieve what you have in your
khdg1#Wkdw#kdv#wr#gr#pruh#^zlwk`#frqfhswv#
wkdw#|rx#lpsrvh#rq#|rxuvhoi/#wrjhwkhu#zlwk#
your collaborators.
Wkhuhġv#d#orw#derxw#Children of Men being
prophetic. But it also feels very British.
Were you thinking about Britain
vshflĽfdoo|#zkloh#pdnlqj#lw/#ru#glg#|rx#
see it as something more global?
Qr1#Wkh#vrxufh#pdwhuldo#0#L#
phdq/#L#kdyh#wr#frqihvv#L#
never read [the P.D. James
errn#lwġv#edvhg#rq`/#exw#L#uhdg#
the one-page cover of it. And
I found that there was
vrphwklqj#yhu|#vpduw1#Dqg/#
dovr/#ehfdxvh#S1G1#Mdphv#lv#
obviously a British writer. But
e|#vhwwlqj#lw#lq#Eulwdlq/#lw#zdv#
vrphwklqj#wkdw#zdv#yhu|#vshflĽf#wkdw#uhdoo|#
dwwudfwhg#ph1#Wkh#reylrxv#jhrjudsklfdo#
reason is that it’s an island. It can keep
lwvhoi#lqvxodwhg/#dv#rxu#srolwlfldqv#duh#wu|lqj#
wr#suryh#wr#xv1#Dqg/#vhfrqgo|/#lw#lv#d#qdwlrq#
that refuses to give up. [But] what I’m
trying to say is that it’s not exclusively
about Britain. We were trying to explore the
things that were shaping the 21st century.
Exw/#ri#frxuvh/#wkh#XN#jdyh#xv#wkh#shuihfw#
geographical landscape.

dpd}lqj#lqqrydwru1#Lwġv#qrw#ehfdxvh#khġv#
frqvlghuhg#d#whfkqlfdo#Ľoppdnhu1#Lwġv#
a vision of what he wants to achieve in
flqhpd1#Dqg#vrphwlphv#kh#glgqġw#Ľqg#wkh#
wrrov#durxqg#klp#wr#pdnh#wkdw#kdsshq/#vr#
he needed to create those new tools.
You broke through around the same time
as Alejandro Iñárritu and Guillermo del
Toro. How impactful was that friendship
with those guys on your career?
I think my friendship with Guillermo goes
iurp#zd|/#zd|/#zd|#ehiruh1#Zh#vwduwhg#
zkhq#zh#zhuh#dvvlvwdqwv/#dqg#zh#zhuh#
eoxh#frooduv#ri#Ľop1#Zh#zhuh#zrunlqj#zlwk#
wkh#fuhz#rq#glļhuhqw#wklqjv#Ğ#Jxloohupr#
prvwo|#zlwk#vshfldo#hļhfwv#dqg#pdnh0xs1#
I travelled from being the boom operator to
camera to production assistant. And then
L#vhwwohg#rq#ehlqj#dq#dvvlvwdqw#gluhfwru#Ğ#d#
Ľuvw#DG#Ğ#iru#d#orqj/#orqj#wlph#lq#Ph{lfr1
Vr#wkdwġv#krz#zh#phw/#rq#wkdw#vwxļ1#
Dqg#wkhq#zh#vwduwhg#dw#wkh#vdph#wlph/#
pdnlqj#rxu#Ľopv1#Lw#zdv#doprvw#wkh#vdph#
|hdu#Ğ#rqh#|hdu#dsduw#Ğ#rxu#Ľuvw#ihdwxuhv1#
And then we ended up kind of getting
into the eyes of Hollywood. It was not so
much my plan. But then we
vwduwhg#rxu#mrxuqh|#wkhuhĩ
L#phdq/#ehfdxvh#|rx#vd|#
Ġeuhdnwkurxjkġ#Ğ#L#grqġw#wklqn#
wkh#Ľuvw#43#|hduv#ri#rxu#fduhhu#
uhsuhvhqw#rxu#euhdnwkurxjk/#
because we were struggling
olnh#fud}|1#Rq#wkdw#mrxuqh|/#
zh#phw#Dohmdqgur/#dqg#zh#
became very close. When
Dohmdqgur#eurnh#Ğ#kh#zdv#suredeo|#wkh#
Ľuvw#rqh#wkdw#eurnh#^zlwk#5333ġv#Amores
Perros`/#d#|hdu#ehiruh#Jxloohupr#dqg#L#Ğ#zh#
were already very close. It’s not that we
became close after we broke through.

ALFONSO CUARÓN
IN NUMBERS

7

Different categories in which
Cuarón has been Oscarnominated (a record he shares
with Sir Kenneth Branagh)

5

FEATURES ON WHICH
CUARÓN HAS BEEN
CREDITED AS EDITOR
AS WELL AS
DIRECTOR

2

‘VISUAL
EFFECTS IS
NOTHING BUT
A TOOL’

Was conquering Hollywood something
you had in your sights from the very
beginning of your career?
Qr1#Djdlq/#xqiruwxqdwho|/#L#grqġw#wklqn#olnh#
wkdw1#L#phdq/#Lġp#qrw#wkdw#vpduw#derxw#p|#
fduhhu1#Lwġv#ehhq#pruh#ri#d#surfhvv1#Wkh#lghd/#
zkhq#L#zdv#vwduwlqj#p|#fduhhu/#ri#grlqj#
ylvxdo#hļhfwv#Ğ#lw#zdv#frpsohwho|#rxw#ri#wkh#
txhvwlrq1#L#dozd|v#hqmr|ĩ#qrw#wkh#whfkqlfdo#
dvshfwv/#exw#wkh#zkroh#wklqj#ri#krz#flqhpd#
zloo#Ľqg#wkh#wrrov#wkdw#lw#qhhgv#iru#wkh#
creative requirements. If you see cinema
iurp#wkh#rog#gd|v/#dqg#li#|rx#vhh/#iru#
lqvwdqfh#zlwk#Pxuqdx1#Zkdw#shrsoh#irujhw#
derxw#Pxuqdx#lv#wkdw#Pxuqdx#zdv#dq#

TOTALFILM.COM

Did that help keep you grounded, having
friends who were in a similar place?
\hv/#ri#frxuvh1#Exw/#|rx#nqrz/#li#|rx#kdyh#
iulhqgv#wkdw#gr#wkh#vdph#wudgh#dv#|rxĩ#Wkh|#
duh#yhu|#krqhvw1#L#phdq/#zh#duh#euxwdoo|#
honest with each other. But it comes from a
place of love and generosity. We know that.
Exw#wkdw#lv#qrw#derxw#Ľop/#lwġv#derxw#olih1
Ryhu#wkh#|hduv/#|rxġyh#dgdswhg#vhyhudo#
books and, early on, you did A Little
Princess and Great Expectations. Does that
process fascinate you, or were you drawn
wr#wkrvh#surmhfwv#iru#glļhuhqw#uhdvrqvB
A Little Princess Ğ#L#kdyh#wr#frqihvv#wkdw#L#kdg#
suredeo|#vhhq#wkh#Vkluoh|#Whpsoh#Ľop/#dqg#
it was kind of blurred in my memory. But I
read the screenplay by Richard LaGravenese
that was really beautiful. It spoke to me.
And Great Expectations was one of those
wklqjv#wkdw/#L#jxhvv/#diwhu#orrnlqj#iru#

Best Director
Oscars won

798 M

$

BOX-OFFICE TAKE OF
CUARÓN’S HIGHESTGROSSING FILM,
HARRY POTTER AND
THE PRISONER OF
AZKABAN

0

Amount
of times
Films
withhe had
read P.D. James’ novel The
Robert Altman.
Children of Men before
writing the screenplay
adapted from it.

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 77

d#surmhfw#iru#d#zkloh/#lw#zdv#vrphwklqj#
wkdw#fdph#lqwr#p|#kdqgv/#dqg#L#ihow#olnh#L#
qhhghg#wr#pdnh#d#Ľop/#ehfdxvh#wlph#zdv#
passing. But it was a period that I consider
p|#orvw#shulrg#Ğ#p|#orvw#ghfdgh1#Zkhq#
L#jrw#dwwhqwlrq#iurp#Kroo|zrrg/#L#irujrw#
vrphwklqj#wkdw#lv#ixqgdphqwdo/#ehfdxvh#
lwġv#sduw#ri#zkdw#wkh|#whoo#|rx#Ğ#wkh|#vd|/#
ĠGrqġw#vd|#wkdw#|rxġuh#d#zulwhu/#ehfdxvh#
wkhq#wkh|#zrqġw#dwwdfk#|rx#wr#surmhfwv1ġ#Vr#
L#zdv#lq#gdqjhu#ri#ehfrplqj#d#uhdghu/#ru#
uhdfwlqj#wr#zkdw#surmhfwv#zrxog#idoo#lq#p|#
hands. And unless you’re in a very powerful
srvlwlrq/#|rx#whqg#wr#uhfhlyh#d#surmhfw#zkhuh#
another 15 directors have passed on it.
Vr#wkhuh#zdv#d#gdqjhu#wkdw#L#zdv#mxvw#
wkdw1#Dqg#lw#zdv#mxvw#diwhu#Great Expectations
wkdw#L#vdlg/#ĠHqrxjk#ri#wklv1#Wkh#uhdvrq#L#
olnh#flqhpd#lv#ehfdxvh#ri#Ľopv#wkdw#L#oryh1#
L#oryh#wkh#surfhvv/#dqg#L#oryh#zulwlqj1ġ#L#
ghflghg#wr#jr#edfn#wr#Ph{lfr/#dqg#gr#Y tu
mamá también1#Wkdw#uhnlqgohg#p|#sdvvlrq#
for writing.
Did it surprise you that Y tu mamá también
broke out in the way it did?
\hdk/#ghĽqlwho|1#Lw#zdv#olnh#dq|wklqj#Ğ#dq|#
wlph#rqh#ri#|rxu#Ľopv#frqqhfwv/#lwġv#d#
vxusulvh/#sduwlfxoduo|#li#|rxġyh#kdg#wkh#
other experience. If you’ve had the other
h{shulhqfh/#|rxġuh#olnh/#ĠDk/#RN1ġ#L#mxvw#
stop second-guessing the reason why
it connects. I don’t think you can make
d#Ľop/#wklqnlqj#lwġv#jrlqj#wr#frqqhfw#ru#
qrw#frqqhfw1#\rx#mxvw#gr#zkdw#|rx#eholhyh#
is truthful to yourself… I tend not to know
zkdw#wkh#uhvxow#lv#jrlqj#wr#eh/#dqg#wkhq#
Lġp#lqwuljxhg1#Vrphwlphv#wkh|#zrun/#dqg#
sometimes they don’t.
Did you feel a lot of pressure when it
came to directing Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban? The books were so
ehoryhg/#dqg#wkh#Ľuvw#wzr#Ľopv#kdg#ehhq#
vxfk#elj#klwv#dw#wkh#er{#rĿfh1
Qrw#uhdoo|1#Djdlq/#sduw#ri#Ľoppdnlqj#lv#wklv#
part of being completely responsible. You
kdyh#wr#eh#d#olwwoh#elw#ri#d#frqpdq/#dqg#gr#
make-believe that you have everything
xqghu#frqwuro/#hyhq#li#|rx#qhyhu#nqrz#zkdw#
the heck you are doing.
One of our writers argued that Prisoner of
Azkaban#lv#d#kruuru#Ľop#^TF 334]. What
gr#|rx#wklqn#derxw#wkdw#wdnh#rq#wkh#ĽopB
Zhoo/#ghĽqlwho|1#Zkhq#L#uhdg#wkh#errn/#wkhuh#
zhuh#wzr#hohphqwv#wkdw#L#olnhg1#Wkhuh#zdv#
wkh#kruuru#Ľop#hohphqw/#exw#dovr#wkh#qrlu#
dvshfw#ri#lw1#Lq#d#zd|/#zkhq#L#zdv#grlqj#lw/#wkh#
model was more of the German cinema at
wkh#hqg#ri#wkh#vlohqw#hud/#dqg#wkh#wudqvlwlrq#
lqwr#wkh#wdonlhv/#olnh#Iulw}#Odqj#wr#Pxuqdx1#
\rx#fdq#vhh#wkdw#vrph#ri#Iulw}#Odqjġv#Ľopv#
duh#nlqg#ri#qrlu/#exw/#dw#wkh#vdph#wlph/#wkh|#

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

ALFONSO CUARÓN

kdyh#nlqg#ri#kruuru#hohphqwv#wr#wkhp1#Dqg/#
pruh#lpsruwdqwo|/#sduwlfxoduo|#zlwk#Iulw}#
Odqj/#wkurxjk#wkh#jhquh/#kh#zdv#wu|lqj#wr#
frqyh|#Ğ#ru#mxvw#wr#surmhfw#Ğ#wkh#dq{lhwlhv#ri#
klv#wlph1#L#wklqn#wkdw#zkdw#M1N1#Urzolqj#glg#
zlwk#Srwwhu/#lw#zdv#d#uhihuhqfh#ri#rxu#wlphv/#
of human behaviour.
The Harry Potter series is being turned
into a TV show. Could you ever be
tempted to return to that world, or is
it one and done for you?
Zhoo/#zkhq#L#glg#p|#Ľuvw#rqh/#L#zdv#yhu|#
nlqgo|#rļhuhg#wr#gr#wkh#qh{w#rqh1#Dqg#L#vdlg#
qr/#ehfdxvh#L#ihow#wkdw#L#zrxog#eh#ryhuvwd|lqj#
p|#zhofrph1#Iru#ph/#Kduu|#Srwwhu#zdv#dq#
dpd}lqj#h{shulhqfh1#Lw#zdv#dpd}lqj/#dqg#
I found that I was learning every day. It was
d#juhdw#vfkrro#iru#ylvxdo#hļhfwv1#Lġp#yhu|#
judwhixo#iru#rwkhu#wklqjv#zlwk#Kduu|#Srwwhu/#
ehfdxvh/#diwhu#wkdw/#wklv#zkroh#wklqj#zlwk#
ylvxdo#hļhfwv#ehfdph#vhfrqg#qdwxuh1#Zkhq#
I went to do Children of Men - before Harry
Srwwhu/#L#zrxog#kdyh#ehhq#gdxqwhg#derxw#
grlqj#lw1#Lw#jdyh#ph#wkh#frqĽghqfh#iru#wkdw1#
And then I felt like I had learned so much.
Lw#zdv#vxfk#d#mrxuqh|#ri#glvfryhu|1#Exw#
wkhq#L#ihduhg#wkdw#li#L#vwd|hg#iru#orqjhu/#
L#zrxog#pd|eh#jhw#frpiruwdeoh1#L#olnh#Ľopv#
wkdw#nhhs#ph#rq#p|#wrhv#Ğ#lq#rwkhu#zrugv/#
^Ľopv`#wkdw#L#grqġw#nqrz#krz#wr#gr1#
Wkhuhġv#d#p|vwhu|#wkdw#L#grqġw#xqghuvwdqg#
and that I cannot resolve.
You have a TV miniseries,
Disclaimer, coming up,
which is also adapted from
a novel. What can you say
about that?
Zhoo/#qrw#pxfk/#uljkw#qrz1#
Lġp#vwloo#zrunlqj#rq#lw1#Wkdw#
was another thing for me.
Part of the challenge was to explore the
irup#lq#d#orqjhu#irupdw#^ri#WY`1#L#phdq/#
L#fdqqrw#wdon#pxfk#derxw#lw/#exw#L#krsh#wkdw#
|rx#jhw#wr#vhh#lw/#wkh#nlqg#ri#vwuxfwxudo#wklqj#
that we play with.

Liam Cunningham, Liesel
Matthews and Eleanor Bron
in 1995’s A Little Princess

|rx#grqġw#kdyh#d#fduhhu#pdvwhusodqĩ
Zhoo/#qr1#Lwġv#olnh#hyhu|wklqj1#L#zurwh#
Children of Men before Harry Potter but
qrerg|#zdqwhg#wr#gr#lw#wkhq1#Wkhq/#diwhu#
Kduu|#Srwwhu/#L#jrw#wkh#rssruwxqlw|#wr#gr#lw1#
And I think that that’s what happens with
prvw#Ľoppdnhuv1#Wkh#Ľopv#frph#zkhq#
they come. You can see with Scorsese that
khġv#pdqdjlqj#wr#gr#Ľopv#wkdw#kh#frxogqġw#
do before. And obviously your experience as
d#Ľoppdnhu#lq#olih#lv#jrlqj#wr#lqirup#wkh#
result of that other thing that maybe he
conceived in his youth.

‘ANY TIME ONE
OF YOUR FILMS
CONNECTS, IT’S
A SURPRISE’

V IT TOR IO ZUNINO CELOT TO/GE T T Y IM AGES, WA R NER BROS.

Zh#zrxog#dvn#li#lwġv#ehhq#lqwhqwlrqdo#wkdw#
|rxġyh#hqghg#xs#zrunlqj#rq#d#ihz#WY#
vkrzv#uhfhqwo|/#exw#|rxġyh#douhdg|#vdlg#

‘A CHILD’S VOICE,
HOWEVER HONEST AND
TRUE, IS MEANINGLESS
TO THOSE WHO’VE
FORGOTTEN
HOW TO LISTEN.’
DUMBLEDORE
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

TOTALFILM.COM

Do you think some stories
are better suited to the
small screen or big screen?
To bring it back to Gravity,
does it require something
with that kind of
spectacular scale and
visuals to get people into a cinema?
I think that what the big screen requires
is an emotional experience. You can make
the argument that some of the best
writing nowadays is in television.
Exw#jhqhudoo|#vshdnlqj/#L#phdq/#zlwk#
h{fhswlrqv/#whohylvlrq#lv#vwulfwo|#d#zulwhuġv#
medium. You can see so much of it in
series where directors come and go. It’s

ALFONSO CUARÓN LINE READING
‘Everything is a
mythical, cosmic
battle between
faith and chance.’
JASPER
CHILDREN OF MEN

more the narrative that is leading the story.
L#eholhyh#wkdw#iru#flqhpd/#wkh#uhtxluhphqw#lv#
for cinema to be driving the piece. I mean
wkdw#flqhpd#lqfoxghv#Ğ#dprqj#pdq|#rwkhu#
wklqjv#Ğ#qduudwlyh1#Lq#qduudwlyh#flqhpd/#
obviously narrative is very important. I’m
not saying that it’s one format or the other.
If you think of Twin Peaks/#wkdw#lv#dq#dpd}lqj#
cinematic experience. Or if you think of
L\^g^l_khfZyFZkkbZ`^/#wkdw#lv#dqrwkhu#rqh1#
And those were originally shot for
television. I think it’s more about the
fuhdwlyh#dssurdfk#ri#wkh#Ľoppdnhu1#Dqg#
the creative intent.
Dqg#Ľqdoo|/#|rxġyh#zrq#wzr#Ehvw#
Director Oscars, among many other
accolades. Do those awards mean a lot
to you?
Lwġv#dozd|v#yhu|#sohdvlqj/#wkh#uhfrjqlwlrq/#
sduwlfxoduo|#iurp#|rxu#shhuv1#Dqg/#dovr/#
reylrxvo|/#wkh|#kdyh#dq#lpsdfw#rq#pdnlqj#
lw#hdvlhu#wr#sxw#wrjhwkhu#|rxu#qh{w#surmhfw1#
Exw/#|rx#nqrz/#dzdugv#duh#vrphwklqj#wkdw#
duh#^ri`#d#vshflĽf#prphqw1#Wkh#rqo|#wklqj#
that tells the truth about cinema is time.
Wlph#lv#wkh#rqo|#mxgjh1

GRAVITY IS BACK IN CINEMAS FROM
20 OCTOBER.

‘YOU GOTTA PLANT
BOTH YOUR FEET ON
THE GROUND AND
START LIVIN’ LIFE.’
MATT KOWALSKI
GRAVITY

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 79

82
EDITED BY
MATTHEW LEYLAND
@ T O TA L F I L M _ M AT T L

KILLERS OF THE
FLOWER MOON
An American tragedy...

★★★★★
STREETS AHEAD

★★★★★
SHINES A LIGHT

★★★★★
NOT BAD, NOT
BAD, NOT REALLY,
REALLY BAD

★★★★★
RAGING BS

★★★★★
FUN DOESN’T
LIVE HERE
ANYMORE

THE WORLD’S MOST TRUSTED MOVIE

OUT NOW

84

p91
p89
p91
p92
p88

★★★★
20 Days in Mariupol
The Creator
★★★★
Expend4bles
★
Golda
★★
A Haunting in Venice
★★★★
Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares:
★★★
The Robert Englund Story
★★★
Mind-Set
The Retirement Plan
★
Saw X
★★
Time Addicts
★★★★
Where the Wind Blows
★★★

p89
p92
p92
p85
p88
p91

13 OCTOBER
Cassius X: Becoming Ali
Daliland
The Miracle Club
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
Spooky Night:
The Spirit of Halloween

★★★
★★
★★★
★★★★

p85
p91
p87
p88

★★

p88

★★★★
★★★★★

p85
p82

★★
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p87
p87
p85

★★★

p92

★★★★
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★★★

p91
p88
p85
p87
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p86
p90
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p90

★★★★
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★★★★
★★★★
★★★★

p87
p84
p92
p89
p84
p87

★★★

p87

20 OCTOBER
Foe
Killers of the Flower Moon
Nandor Fodor and the
Talking Mongoose
Our River... Our Sky
The Pigeon Tunnel

86

23 OCTOBER
Rock Hudson: All That
Heaven Allowed

27 OCTOBER
20,000 Species of Bees
Beyond Utopia
Cat Person
Doctor Jekyll
How to Save the Immortal
The Killer
Pain Hustlers
Savage Waters
Suitable Flesh
Typist Artist Pirate King

3 NOVEMBER

89

The Bystanders
How to Have Sex
Nobody Has to Know
On the Adamant
Quiz Lady
The Royal Hotel

7 NOVEMBER
Muzzle

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he
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TITLE
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Th
Out now
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25 October
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REVIEWS

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 81

Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio
star in this true story of the brutal injustices
faced by the Osage Nation in the 1920s

82 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

15

Blood and oil…
★★★★★ OUT 20 OCTOBER CINEMAS
DIRECTOR Martin Scorsese STARRING Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De
Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Cara Jade Myers SCREENPLAY Eric
Roth, Martin Scorsese DISTRIBUTOR Apple RUNNING TIME 206 mins

C

SEE THIS
IF YOU
LIKED

GANGS OF
NEW YORK
2002
Scorsese and
DiCaprio’s earlier
expansive
exploration
of America’s
violent past.
CERTAIN
WOMEN 2016
Lily Gladstone’s
breakout earned
her multiple
awards nods;
expect more to
follow for Moon.
THE LOST CITY
OF Z 2016
Another starry
period epic based
on a non-fiction
book by
David Grann.
For more reviews
visit gamesradar.
com/totalfilm

oyote wants money,’ Mollie
(Lily Gladstone), a young Osage
Nation woman, notes sagely
when feckless WW1 returnee Ernest
Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) starts
courting her in early 1920s Oklahoma,
the setting for Martin Scorsese’s period
epic. He’s a former infantry cook with
no cash or discernible talent; she’s
a wealthy owner of headrights (the
inherited mineral rights to oil-rich
Osage County) who understands the
motives of the lascivious white men
tumbling off the train in town trying
to marry so-called ‘full-bloods’.
Ernest may project vulpine avarice
(‘I just love money!’ he admits
repeatedly) but Mollie might as well
fall for him as any of them; after all,
her sisters are all ‘blanket’ wives to
unscrupulous layabouts, and the
disenfranchisement of First Nation
people is operating on an industrial scale.
A tribal generation is being eradicated
and stolen from via widespread
conspiracy and murder - a movement
spearheaded by local white ‘saviour’
William ‘King’ Hale (Robert De Niro),
who masks his insidious imperialism
with benefactions and a performative
love for the Osage, whom he describes as
‘the most beautiful people in the world’.
Torn between faithfulness to her
beau and terror at the devastation
happening on her own lands, Mollie
hopes that authorities outside of the
complicit local cops might be able to
stop the killing of people and culture.

PREDICTED INTEREST CURVE™
Unravelling

THRILLED
ENTERTAINED
NODDING OFF
ZZZZZZZZZ
RUNNING TIME

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Spouse-slaying
Gladstone
scene-stealing

DiCap/DeN
reunited!

Headright wrongs
START

35

70

105

FBI
infiltration
DiCap
spanking
140

175

All the
Oscars
FINISH

But as one observer notes: ‘Gotta better
chance of convicting a guy for kicking
a dog than killing an Indian…’
Based on David Grann’s 2017
non-fiction book of the same name,
Scorsese’s western (yes, he’s finally
made it) delves deep into manifest
destiny, greed, racism, neocolonialism
and misogyny in a movie that braids
together the interests of his past
projects. Faith, entitlement, persecution,
racketeering, the corrupting influence
of money, the disposability of life…
all are present in a nailed-on awards
magnet that might be some of the best
work we’ve ever seen from all involved.
De Niro is sheer understated
elegance as Hale, a master-manipulator
uncle to dumb pawn Ernest. Peering out
of wireframe glasses, he imbues the
character with a repulsive righteousness
that is mesmerising to watch. DiCaprio,
meanwhile, dials down the charisma as
an unrepentant, fidgety sad sack. To see
two of Marty’s muses spar in front of
fireplaces, across dinner tables and in
masonic lodges, evoking memories of
1993’s This Boy’s Life, is a genuine thrill.
They’re part of an ensemble that
feels vividly period-authentic and
unreconstructed. Gladstone is a
firebrand as Mollie, her silences as
instructive as the way she pulls her
blanket around her shoulders. And
Jesse Plemons, a third-act arrival as FBI
agent Tom White, evinces integrity and
kindness in only a handful of scenes.
It’s a shame Brendan Fraser (as a
pernicious lawyer) didn’t get the memo
about subtlety, but his appearance
is so fleeting that it’s a minor blip.
Weaving the Tulsa race riots, the
KKK and the Masons into its tapestry,
Scorsese’s opus questions the misdeeds
of America in the last century while
linking them to the pressing issues
of today. Addressing racial violence,
nationalism, the continued epidemic
of missing and murdered indigenous
women and even our lurid obsession
with true crime, Killers of the Flower Moon
paints a robust picture of a moment in
history that invites viewer introspection.
As Ernest asks portentously when
reading from a book on Osage history:
‘Can you see the wolves in this picture?’
Well, can you? JANE CROWTHER

THE VERDICT Scorsese’s rich,
206-minute, multi-layered epic
is worth every second.

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 83

APPLE

KILLERS OF THE
FLOWER MOON

HOW TO HAVE SEX TBC
Summer loving…
★★★★★

OUT 3 NOVEMBER CINEMAS

T

eenage kicks get a timely #MeToo treatment in writer/
director Molly Manning Walker’s punchy first feature,
a vividly shot, sharp-eyed take on the drunken postGCSE Mediterranean getaway that’s traditionally a frenzied,
Inbetweeners-style rite of passage for British teens.
Hungry for parties, passion and fishbowl cocktails, BFFs Em (Enva
Lewis), Skye (Lara Peake) and Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) throw
themselves recklessly into Malia’s frenetic tourist nightlife. Walker’s
fearless camera dives after them into bacchanalian pool parties,
shrieking karaoke sessions and neon-strobed bars thumping with EDM.
When they team up with their hard-partying hotel neighbours, goofy
Badger (The Selfish Giant’s Shaun Thomas) and self-styled shagger Paddy
(Samuel Bottomley), the film skilfully tracks the sudden cracks in the
trio’s friendship, as they vie for these Northern likely lads’ attention.
Tensions are ratcheted even higher when bubbly Tara, the baby of the
group, finds herself unwittingly swept into a chaotic night or two of bad
choices and tough truths. Alongside the wild carousing and sweary banter,
Walker’s unflinching close-ups of McKenna-Bruce’s wary, watchful face
showcase how her piercing performance covers Tara’s disorientation with
wobbly bravado. Refusing to become a cautionary tale, the film explores
the pitfalls as well as the pleasures of teen-holiday hook-ups; it also
brings a fresh, female POV to the subject of sexual consent. KATE STABLES

Everyone heads for the dance
floor when the DJ puts on
Agadoo by Black Lace

THE VERDICT This eye-catching, Cannes-crowned tale
offers a complex, authentic take on teen hedonism.

‘And if someone coughs in
the audience, that’s the
answer to go with…’

QUIZ LADY TBC
Family feud…
★★★★★

OUT 3 NOVEMBER DISNEY+

S

ometimes you can just sense that two actors will make a great
on-screen duo. And so it proves with Awkwafina and Sandra
Oh in this extremely likeable Disney+ comedy. They play
chalk-and-cheese sisters who are brought back together when their
mother’s gambling debts require a get-rich-quick scheme. The fastest
way to recoup some cash? Get the nerdy, insular Anne (Awkwafina)
to compete on the TV quiz show she’s been obsessed with her whole
life. Wild-child older sis Jenny (Oh) eggs her on, while their
personalities clash and past tensions still simmer.
Yes, it’s extremely formulaic – you could predict all the major plot
beats and emotional moments with the same automatic precision Anne
uses to answer all the questions on Can’t Stop the Quiz from her sofa but it’s so consistently funny and the leads such a winning pair that it
doesn’t really matter. Whether they’re at each other’s throats or finding
common ground, Awkwafina and Oh are a hoot.
Will Ferrell (also a producer) adds to the charm as the avuncular longterm host of the show, while Jason Schwartzman smarms it up as a
contestant on a record-breaking winning streak. Director Jessica Yu (best
known for documentaries and prolific TV work) directs in an unshowy
way, allowing the simple concept to serve the star chemistry and
handling the surreal OTT flourishes with a light touch. MATT MAYTUM

THE VERDICT A highly appealing comedy that makes good
use of its playing-against-type leads. Like your favourite
quiz show, this is easy, cosy couch-viewing.

84 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

Paul Mescal and Saoirse
Ronan star as a couple
threatened with separation

CAT PERSON 15

THE PIGEON TUNNEL TBC

★★★★★ OUT 27 OCTOBER

★★★★★ OUT 20 OCTOBER

CINEMAS

APPLE TV+

Courtship can be a minefield, as
college student Margot (CODA’s
Emilia Jones) discovers when
a flirty encounter escalates into
a round-the-clock, text-based
relationship. Is Robert (Nicholas
Braun, AKA Succession’s Greg
Hirsch) the man of her dreams, or
is she making the biggest mistake
of her life? Based on a 2017 short
story that became the most-read
piece of fiction ever published in
The New Yorker, Cat Person uses
a 20-year-old’s doubts and fears
as a springboard for a perceptive,
funny and occasionally terrifying
delve into the potential hazards of
modern dating. Isabella Rossellini
co-stars. NEIL SMITH

David Cornwell - the late author
better known as John le Carré
(The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) - gets
the docu-portrait treatment from
veteran filmmaker Errol Morris
(The Thin Blue Line). The result is
an at times revealing tête-à-têteslash-duel between two great
thinkers, though you wish Morris
had dug deeper. He does a
competent job of raking through
Cornwell’s background (the
influential-but-shady dad;
recruitment by the British Secret
Service). But it’s clear who’s in
control - not least when Morris is
stonewalled by Cornwell over his
private life. JAMES MOTTRAM

FOE 15
Clone on the range…
★★★★★ OUT 20 OCTOBER CINEMAS

SAW X 18

A M A ZON, A PPLE, COSMIC CAT, DISNE Y, LIONSGATE, MUBI, STUDIOCA N A L

★★★★★ OUT NOW CINEMAS
Set between the first and second
Saws, this lacklustre 10th
instalment of the horror saga sees
the return of John ‘Jigsaw’ Kramer
(Tobin Bell), who heads to Mexico
in hopes of receiving radical
treatment for his terminal cancer.
Realising (long after the audience)
he’s been duped, he embarks
on bloody revenge, employing
fiendish contraptions that demand
a series of set-piece self-surgeries,
staged with ghoulish aplomb.
The bits in-between, though, are
talky and dreary; there’s also an
unexpected descent into sickly
sentimentality. Bell’s comeback
may please some, but it’s not
a sufficient X-cuse to see Saw
resuscitated. NEIL SMITH

TOTALFILM.COM

W

hy does the unknown have to be a burden?’ asks Terrance
(Aaron Pierre, The Underground Railroad), the handsome
government operative who arrives at the Midwest
farmhouse of Henrietta (Saoirse Ronan) and Junior (Paul Mescal).
It’s 2065, and Junior has been selected (or conscripted) to try out for
off-world habitation; the planet is dying, and humanity is looking for a
way off this rock before the dust storms kill us all. So far, so Interstellar.
Much to the couple’s initial horror, Terrance suggests Junior’s
protracted two-year absence in space will be eased by the arrival of a
‘human substitute’, an exact AI copy. ‘We set out to create consciousness,’
he beams, seemingly unconcerned by the moral implications.
Adapted from Iain Reid’s 2018 novel by the author himself and
director Garth Davis (Lion), Foe is less interested in what lies beyond
than in tensions beneath the surface. This three-hander is at heart
a relationship portrait, in which Hen and Junior must deal with issues
of jealousy. Meanwhile, Terrance’s presence – like an on-tap marriage
counsellor – becomes increasingly unsettling. Ronan and Mescal make
for a convincing, volatile couple, although it’s Pierre’s mysterious
interloper who steals it. Admittedly, the film’s oddly paced, elliptical
middle section may leave you scratching your head. But then the twisty
third act pulls it all together, sending shivers down the spine.
JAMES MOTTRAM

THE VERDICT Thoughtful, provocative and powerfully acted,
Foe is a cunning drama that you’ll want to puzzle over.

CASSIUS X:
BECOMING ALI TBC
★★★★★ OUT 13 OCT CINEMAS
Rather than take the conventional
route of recounting Muhammad
Ali’s rise to sporting greatness,
Muta’Ali’s documentary explores
the ‘secret spiritual journey’
undertaken by a young Cassius
Clay that led to him changing his
name. Influenced by Nation of
Islam leader Elijah Muhammad
and friend Malcom X, Clay’s
evolution from trash-talking
boxing amateur to politically
aware cultural icon is charted via
interviews and arresting archive
footage. But in limiting the focus
to the period 1959-64, this
ultimately feels like more of a
snapshot than a complete, fully
satisfying portrait. MATT LOOKER

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 85

Oddly, no one complained about
Michael’s back-seat driving

SEE THIS
IF YOU
LIKED

THE KILLER
SE7EN 1995
The Killer
reunites Fincher
with the writer of
his big auteur
breakout, Andrew
Kevin Walker.

Fass-assin’s creed…

For more reviews
visit gamesradar.
com/totalfilm

PREDICTED INTEREST CURVE™
New York Swinton

Florida cheese grater

ENTERTAINED

ZZZZZZZZZ
RUNNING TIME

Paris
precision

New Orleans
nail gun

Dominican Republic resolve
START

20

86 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

40

60

Chicago
home
invasion
80

‘Never
yield an
advantage…’
100

FINISH

straightforward gig goes south,
compromising the hitman’s practised
regime, he finds himself hunted
and breaking his own rules on a
globetrotting revenge mission.
The notion of a contract murderer
making things personal isn’t new. But
Fincher has fun with the genre, loading
his propulsive narrative with cool
needle drops, pop-culture hat-tips
(Antiques Roadshow, aliases that are all
TV characters) and Bondian ingenuity.
Split into seven chapters that play out
in different global cities, the action may
be serious but the gags are plentiful,
from Tilda Swinton telling a bear joke to
the comedic appearance of a parmesan
grater during a terrific house brawl. The
pragmatic approach to death required
by the job is lightly handled, too.
Fassbender talks of mortality statistics
and refers to body disposal in carpentry
terms; those in the business
understand, without undue fuss, that
their time is up when he shows his face.
That’s not to say Fassbender isn’t
brutal. Dressed in nondescript tourist-

chic beiges and driving pedestrian hire
cars, he may fade easily into crowds, but
he’s a lethal weapon – no hesitation,
no mercy. Dispatching loose ends
with nail guns, stair falls and backseat
executions, he allows his victims to
talk while he listens, unmoved.
Conversely, Fassbender’s voiceover
is the main draw for viewers: the
internal monologue of an agnostic man
who assures us from the start that luck
and justice are not real. Moving and
scarfing protein like a predator, he
offers no real context for his job; no
backstory except an allusion to legal
academia. His very blankness allows us
to project meaning onto him, giving one
of the filmmaker’s more commercial
movies a layer of added nuance. And if
you’ve ever wondered what a Fincher
Bond movie might look like, this could
be it. JANE CROWTHER

THE VERDICT Fincher in fun
mode and Fassbender, ahem,
killing it. An assassin thriller
that really hits the mark.

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BLUE DOLPHIN, H A MMER , LIONSGATE, NE TFLIX , SCR EENBOUND, SHUDDER , SIGN ATUR E, TULL STOR IES, UNIV ERSA L , V ERTIGO

A

perfectionist who’s never
without a banging playlist,
the assassin at the centre of
David Fincher’s latest is clearly a man
after the filmmaker’s own heart.
Based on the graphic novels by Matz
and Luc Jacamon, the film itself
shares DNA with Fincher’s Fight Club
(nihilism, anti-materialism) and
SJJAR¼0P=EL (same hat, similar
hitman problem).
The Killer follows Michael
Fassbender’s monastic freelancer as
he explains his craft while prepping
for a job in Paris. Holed up in a vacant
WeWork office, this unnamed agent
of death outlines the discipline required
to successfully off a mark and melt back
into a city. But when a seemingly

ENGLAND IS
MINE 2017
A portrait of
Morrissey before
he formed
Fassbender’s
character’s fave
band, The Smiths.

NODDING OFF

DIRECTOR David Fincher STARRING Michael
Fassbender, Charles Parnell, Tilda Swinton,
Arliss Howard, Kerry O’Malley SCREENPLAY
Andrew Kevin Walker DISTRIBUTOR Netflix
RUNNING TIME 118 mins

★★★★★ OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS 10 NOVEMBER NETFLIX

ASSASSIN’S
CREED 2016
Fassbender as a
different sort of
hitman, less
inclined to talk
about McMuffins.

THRILLED

15

THE ROYAL HOTEL TBC

DOCTOR JEKYLL TBC

★★★★★ OUT 3 NOVEMBER

★★★★★ OUT 27 OCTOBER

OUR RIVER…
OUR SKY 12A

★★★★★ OUT 13 OCTOBER

THE MIRACLE CLUB 12A

CINEMAS

CINEMAS

★★★★★ OUT 20 OCTOBER

CINEMAS

CINEMAS

Kitty Green’s The Assistant (2019)
was set in a hellish work
environment presided over by a
shadowy, Harvey Weinstein-esque
figure. Her potent follow-up
evinces similar disdain for toxic
masculinity, featuring as it does
the most loathsome collection
of supporting male characters
imaginable. Young Canadian
backpackers Hanna (The Assistant’s
Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica
Henwick) take up a gig at a pub
in a remote Australian mining
community. Soon we’re engulfed
in an all-too-familiar nightmare
of booze, bad vibes and misogyny,
played out over a brisk but
harrowing 91 minutes. LEILA LATIF

Eddie Izzard headlines a modern
take on the iconic horror yarn,
helmed by Joe Stephenson. Hired
as a caregiver for the reclusive
Nina Jekyll (Izzard), Rob (Scott
Chambers) is thrust into
a centuries-old battle for
supremacy, caught between
the doctor and her sinister alter
ego. Canny casting and spirited
performances enliven the
Hammer brand’s latest, with
Izzard hamming it up in a series
of outlandish monologues. Though
sluggishly paced and missing the
classic story’s requisite Gothic
atmosphere, it redeems itself with
an OTT finale and lashings of
camp. JOEL HARLEY

NANDOR FODOR
AND THE TALKING
MONGOOSE 12

SUITABLE FLESH TBC

MUZZLE 15

THE BYSTANDERS TBC

★★★★★ OUT 27 OCTOBER

★★★★★ OUT 7 NOVEMBER

★★★★★ OUT 3 NOVEMBER

CINEMAS, DIGITAL

PRIME VIDEO

CINEMAS

This outrageous tale of bodily
transference finds director Joe
Lynch (Knights of Badassdom)
channelling the late Stuart
Gordon, offering up a hearty
tribute to the cult Re-Animator
maker. Loosely adapted from H.P.
Lovecraft’s 1933 story The Thing on
the Doorstep, it’s an erotic body
horror that centres on a pair of
psychiatrists (played by Heather
Graham and Gordon fave Barbara
Crampton) who become entangled
in a freaky (Friday) occult ritual.
Lynch’s lurid pastiche delivers all
the sex and splatter of ’80s-era
Gordon, while injecting an ample
dose of his own metalhead
sensibilities. JOEL HARLEY

Los Angeles cop-on-the-edge Jake
Rosser (Aaron Eckhart) must break
in a new partner to track down the
drug dealers who killed his last
one. The kicker? Both old and new
partners are dogs. Director John
Stalberg Jr. and co-writer Carlyle
Eubank (2014’s The Signal) take
this Simpsons-esque concept
very seriously indeed, which
leads to several laugh-out-loud
moments, such as when our hero
grumbles, ‘There’s something
you’re not telling me!’ to his
four-legged pal. Eckhart deserves
better, but there’s fun to be had
with what basically amounts to
a po-faced K9 sequel that wants
to be Training Day 2. MATT GLASBY

A sci-fi concept receives a Shaun
h_yma^=^Z]-ish remix in this
sketchy but scruffily inventive
Brit-com. Scott Haran plays Peter,
a child chess prodigy turned
office sad sack recruited as a
‘bystander’: an alt-dimensional
angel tasked with guiding a
subject’s earthly life. His bond
with recruiter Frank (Seann
Walsh) adds Wings of Desire-ish
touches, which extend to writer/
director Gabriel Foster Prior’s
colour/black-and-white images.
Though stronger on set-up than
story, Prior’s mix of workplace
comedy and self-help satire has
style, charm and wit on its side.

Set in a small Baghdad community
enduring horrific sectarian
violence, Maysoon Pachachi’s
multi-stranded drama paints a
deeply moving, at times poetic
portrait of the devastation
inflicted. Employing an ensemble
of largely non-professional actors,
Pachachi (a documentarian here
making her narrative debut)
illuminates the lives of those
who suffer the consequences
of geopolitical powers willing to
sacrifice others for their own gain.
Unsurprisingly, it makes for an
intense two hours, yet delivers an
experience that is upsetting for all
the right reasons. LEILA LATIF

A fine cast - Maggie Smith, Laura
Linney and Kathy Bates spearheads this sweet-natured,
if unsurprising, comedy drama.
Directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan
(The Heart of Me), it sees a group
of women from a working-class
Dublin suburb make the
pilgrimage to Lourdes, France,
where thousands flock in the
hope of witnessing a religious
miracle. What follows isn’t
exactly radical, but the script
serves up some fun moments,
largely at the expense of the
hapless husbands left behind.
Smith is her usual puckish self,
while Linney injects genuine class.
JAMES MOTTRAM

★★★★★ OUT 20 OCTOBER
PRIME VIDEO

A true story inspired this
underdeveloped curio, a film
that never quite does its bizarre
subject justice. Simon Pegg plays
parapsychologist Nandor, a sceptic
investigating claims about a talking
mongoose named Gef on a farm in
1937. Writer/director Adam Sigal
flirts with themes of faith/belief
and celebrity/hysteria but struggles
to refine his intent, ending up in
a handsome but hollow nowhere
zone between whimsical comedy
and sincere drama. Despite
on-point casting and period detail,
this mystery remains stubbornly
opaque. KEVIN HARLEY

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KEVIN HARLEY

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 87

TIME ADDICTS 18
★★★★★ OUT NOW ICON FILM
CHANNEL 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS

Adapting his own short film into
a feature-length debut, writer/
director Sam Odlum delivers an
unsettling time-travel story filled
with grime, mind-warping twists
and a wicked sense of humour.
When drug-dependent BFFs
Denise (Freya Tingley) and Johnny
(Charles Grounds) undertake a job
to steal some mysterious dope,
they discover that dipping into the
stash lets them jump backwards
and forwards in time, leading to
trippy revelations fraught with
danger. A genuinely clever plot
and terrific performances make
for a funny, original sci-fi,
bracingly laced with immorality.
MATT LOOKER

SPOOKY NIGHT:
THE SPIRIT OF
HALLOWEEN 12

SMOKE SAUNA
SISTERHOOD 15

A HAUNTING IN
VENICE 12A

★★★★★ OUT 13 OCTOBER

★★★★★

★★★★★ OUT 13 OCTOBER

CINEMAS

CINEMAS 16 OCTOBER DVD, DIGITAL

Staging a lock-in at real-life US
mall institution Spirit Halloween,
three bickering tweens find
themselves besieged by murderous
animatronics, each possessed by
the town ghoul (Christopher
Lloyd, not quite phoning it in, but
not fully present either). From
kids on bikes to a cap-gun arsenal,
David Poag’s family-friendly
horror hits all the beats
established by the likes of The
Monster Squad and Stranger Things.
The action sequences are well
staged, but this corporate tie-in
lacks the essential wit and bite of
those it imitates. JOEL HARLEY

At once intimate and intensely
private, Anna Hints’ excellent doc
spotlights a group of Estonian
women baring body and soul
in the wood-fired saunas of
Vana-Võromaa. These rituals offer
a kind of spiritual deep cleanse:
away from societal dictates, the
women feel empowered to discuss
their innermost thoughts, from
motherhood to queer identity.
Though laughs are abundant (one
woman wonders if ‘dick pic’ is a
social-media site) it culminates
in a dark personal anecdote that
feels like a cathartic, cleansing
exorcism, toxins dissipating in
the smoke. CHRIS SCHILLING

OUT NOW CINEMAS

Nimbly grafting an eerie
Halloween spook-fest onto an
old-school whodunnit, Kenneth
Branagh’s latest Poirot foray
delivers both laughs and tingles.
The former stem from Tina Fey’s
Ariadne Oliver, a writer of
mysteries (and walking in-joke).
The chills, meanwhile, arrive
after she’s coaxed Branagh’s
moustachioed detective out of
retirement to attend a seance in
a palazzo, where the mood soon
turns murderous. The eventual
solution to the central puzzle is
somewhat bemusing, but there’s
plenty to savour en route, from
the opulent production design
to the eclectic cast. NEIL SMITH

BEYOND UTOPIA TBC
Seeking sanctuary…
★★★★★ OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS

M

This chilling documentary
follows families attempting
to escape North Korea

88 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

adeleine Gavin’s extraordinary, Sundance Audience
Award-winning documentary follows North Korean
dissidents fleeing for their lives from Kim Jong Un’s
repressive regime. They’re helped by an ‘underground network’ of
anonymous brokers overseen by Chinese pastor Seungeun Kim, a true
guardian angel whose aim is to get them through fellow Communist
countries China, Vietnam and Laos to the safety of Thailand. Along the
way, they face untold potential dangers - being shot by border guards,
captured by organ harvesters, or lost in the jungle - but staying means
torture, imprisonment and death, so what choice do they have?
Skilfully edited together from various clandestine sources, Beyond
Utopia focuses on Kim’s attempts to help the Roh family, whose
harrowing, heart-in-mouth progress is captured in panicky snatches
of camera-phone footage. Other defectors - such as anguished mother
Soyeon Lee - aren’t so fortunate. In between, Gavin builds a damning
portrait of North Korea, the ‘utopia’ of the title, where abject poverty
and state-sponsored violence keep the people obedient.
During a rare moment of calm, we see the Roh family blithely singing
a North Korean propaganda song. It’s beautiful and chilling at the same
time. How do you escape a prison so all-encompassing it’s been drilled
into your brain? As Grandma Roh puts it, sorrowfully, ‘We were born in
the wrong country.’ MATT GLASBY

THE VERDICT An unblinking exploration of human courage
– and kindness – in the face of unthinkable tyranny.

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

HOW TO SAVE THE
IMMORTAL PG
★★★★★

OUT 27 OCTOBER

CINEMAS

HOLLYWOOD DREAMS
& NIGHTMARES: THE
ROBERT ENGLUND
STORY 15
★★★★★ OUT NOW ICON FILM

SAVAGE WATERS 12A

ON THE ADAMANT PG

★★★★★ OUT 27 OCTOBER

★★★★★ OUT 3 NOVEMBER

CINEMAS

CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA

The Adamant in question is
a floating barge that houses a
day-care centre for individuals
with psychiatric disorders. Moored
in the Seine in central Paris, its
therapeutic programme offers
workshops in art, dance, poetry
and music-making. Winner of the
Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear,
this empathetic documentary
from Nicolas Philibert (Être et
Avoir) isn’t concerned with clinical
diagnoses. Eschewing voiceover
commentary, it instead allows
its vulnerable subjects to talk
candidly about their lives and
to display their creativity, thus
challenging our preconceptions
about mental illness. TOM DAWSON

Dubbed into English following
its native Russian release, this
animated fantasy tells a familiar
tale of distressed damsels and
cuddly monsters. Blackmailed into
kidnapping heiress Barbara the
Brave (Liza Klimova), immortal
aristocrat Drybone (Andrey
Kurganov) soon begins falling for
his plucky captive. Entire chunks
of dialogue are fumbled thanks
to wooden performances, while
the blocky animation fails to
bring the characters to life. The
madcap action may keep little
ones entertained, but much is
seemingly lost in translation.

Horror icon Englund proves
an engaging subject in this
documentary exploring not just
Elm Street but his entire career. At
just over two hours, the film verges
on info overload. Still, there are fun
anecdotes, insights from colleagues
and surprising revelations about
his connections to the Star Wars
and Halloween franchises. There’s
also a rewarding throughline about
how Englund’s initial frustration
with being typecast as Freddie
gave way to new career highs once
he fully embraced the character.

A 19th-century treasure hunter’s
journal is the spur for a veteran
skipper and record-breaking
surfer to seek out a legendary
wave in treacherous Atlantic
waters. Though beautifully shot –
the surfing footage in particular
– Michael Corker’s documentary
is never quite as thrilling as its
premise suggests. But even when
their seemingly chimeric quest
suffers crushing setbacks, the
protagonists are amiable
company. Meanwhile, as Charles
Dance reads from the original
tome, Corker smartly plays up
the unlikely symmetry between
modern and Victorian adventurers.

JOEL HARLEY

MATT LOOKER

CHRIS SCHILLING

CHANNEL 6 NOVEMBER BD, DIGITAL

THE CREATOR 12A
What’s it all about, Alphie?
★★★★★ OUT NOW CINEMAS

DOGWOOF, ICON, DA ZZLER MEDIA , PA R A MOUNT, CONIC, K A LEIDOSCOPE, TULL STOR IES, CUR ZON, 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS

G

areth Edwards’ AI sci-fi starts with a bang: in 2055, we learn,
a warhead was detonated that engulfed LA and led to a ban on
artificial intelligence in the US. Fifteen years on, the military
remains on the hunt for Nirmata, the mysterious figure behind
a weapon that could turn the tables on America.
Enter Sgt Joshua Taylor (John David Washington), dispatched to the
Republic of New Asia to look for Nirmata, but more eager to track down
lost love Maya (Gemma Chan). Instead, he finds a Simulant - the most
advanced AI yet - in the form of a child (soulful newcomer Madeleine Yuna
Voyles). Despite his hatred of AI, Joshua has no choice but to pair up with
this young girl (whom he dubs Alphie) in hopes she’ll lead him to Maya.
If the bond that evolves between our two heroes isn’t as tear-jerking
as the film wants it to be, the world-building certainly hits the mark.
Accompanied by Hans Zimmer’s ornate score, the visuals encompassing Thai locations beautifully lensed by Oren Soffer and
garnished with ace FX - offer a stunning snapshot of the future.
The pacey action – especially a scene involving monstrous-looking
tanks and AI bombs that run like Usain Bolt – is also killer. True, some
of the character dynamics needed more fleshing out. But with this blend
of spectacle and big themes, Edwards has created something hugely
original and imaginative. JAMES MOTTRAM

THE VERDICT Even in an overcrowded AI-movie market,
Edwards’ stellar sci-fi is a terrific achievement. See it on
the largest, loudest screen possible.

TOTALFILM.COM

Once a protagonist,
always a protagonist

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 89

PAIN HUSTLERS 15
Lacks substance…
★★★★★ OUT 27 OCTOBER NETFLIX

H

elming his first non-Wizarding World film in seven years,
director David Yates has the opioid crisis – which recently
was also the subject of Netflix miniseries Painkiller – in his
sights with this fictionalised adap of a New York Times Magazine article.
It opens in 2011: the dangers of opioids are well known, but
unscrupulous pharma types continue to peddle them regardless.
Our guide to this world is Emily Blunt’s Liza Drake, a single mum
scraping a living at a lap-dancing club, where she gets a job offer
from Pete Brenner (Chris Evans, fun if one-note), a sleazy sales rep
for a pharma start-up. Liza’s gift of the gab makes her a natural fit
for the company, whose stock is soon soaring.
So begins a familiar trajectory. But despite a typically strong
performance from Blunt, neither the rise nor the inevitable fall ever
feels all that compelling. There are no great revelations, and the
fictionalised sheen makes it feel a bit toothless. True, Liza’s wrongdoings
aren’t entirely glossed over. But Blunt’s sympathetic turn and the
presence of a sick daughter who desperately needs expensive medical
treatment do go a considerable way to absolving Liza of her involvement
in a heinous situation, muting the movie’s overall message.
Featuring support from Catherine O’Hara and Andy Garcia, Pain
Hustlers is competently put together - but there’s surely a more vital,
more electrifying version of this story that could be told. MATT MAYTUM

Take your hands out
of your pockets, guys!
You’re in Total Film!

THE VERDICT Blunt is the main selling point in a largely
ineffectual satire that does more pharm than good.

Monica Dolan and Kelly
Macdonald star in this playful
and yet poignant drama

TYPIST ARTIST
PIRATE KING 12A
Two for the road…
★★★★★ OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS

THE VERDICT Dolan’s outsized performance may prove
divisive, but this remains a tender-hearted eulogy.

90 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

CENTR A L CIT Y MEDIA , CUR ZON, DOGWOOF, ICON, LIONSGATE, MODER N FILMS, NE TFLIX

I

used to be in the kitchen-sink school of realism,’ says the
heroine of writer/director Carol Morley’s latest. ‘But now I’m
avant-garde and misunderstood!’ Instead of presenting a straight
biographical portrait of neglected artist Audrey Amiss (played here by
Monica Dolan), however, the Out of Blue director aims at something
more kindred with her neglected subject’s oeuvre: an expressionistic,
heavily fictionalised road movie that uses an impromptu journey from
London to Sunderland to explore Audrey’s troubled personal history.
Both behind the wheel and along for the ride is Sandra Panza (Kelly
Macdonald), a psychiatric nurse who, as her name suggests, becomes
Audrey’s accomplice on her quixotic quest to have her pieces exhibited in
her Wearside hometown. The episodic odyssey that follows takes many
a detour as strangers take on the form, in Audrey’s mind at least, of
figures from her past: one that encompasses years in care, a traumatic
childhood and a painful estrangement from sister Dorothy (Gina McKee).
As Audrey, Dolan is indefatigably chatty and high-spirited – a
performance some may eventually find exasperating. But with humour
and compassion, Typist Artist Pirate King (the occupation Audrey gave
herself in her passport) makes a plausible case for affording her the
respect in death she was denied while living. NEIL SMITH

20,000 SPECIES
OF BEES 12A

WHERE THE
WIND BLOWS 15

★★★★★ OUT 27 OCTOBER

★★★★★

OUT NOW CINEMAS

CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA

This gentle identity-crisis drama
was recognised at last year’s
Berlin Film Festival for its lead
performance by Sofía Otero (the
youngest-ever Silver Bear winner),
who plays an eight-year-old trans
girl. Marking a mature feature
debut from Spanish writer/director
Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, it
follows Otero’s Aitor – a name she
rejects – as she wrestles with the
expectations of gender binaries
while on holiday with her mum
(Patricia López Arnaiz). Offering
a thoughtful child’s-eye view of
self-discovery, Solaguren’s film
is slow-paced but executed with
great sensitivity. MATT LOOKER

Barney Ross is as confused
as the rest of us over the
spelling of the film’s title

Hong Kong’s 2022 Oscar
submission pits two titans of
Asian cinema against one another,
as Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok
lock horns in Philip Yung’s lavish
but ill-disciplined crime drama.
Cast as two corrupt officers rising
through the ranks of Hong Kong’s
police force, the charismatic
central pair manage to carry the
film over its bumps, of which
there are plenty. Still, if Yung
regularly seems to lose interest in
all the bribery and double-dealing
– flitting between black-andwhite flashbacks, soft-focus
romantic interludes and even
tap-dancing sequences – his film
rarely bores. CHRIS SCHILLING

EXPEND4BLES 15
Christmas turkey…
★★★★★ OUT NOW CINEMAS

20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL 18
★★★★★ OUT NOW CINEMAS
Shot, directed and narrated by
Associated Press video journalist
Mstyslav Chernov, this is a
powerful account of life in the
besieged Ukrainian port city of
Mariupol in the weeks following
the 2022 Russian invasion. The
filmmaker and two colleagues –
the last remaining international
journalists – dauntlessly filmed
the destruction inflicted on
Mariupol’s civilian population.
As you might imagine, it’s tough
viewing, but also a vital reminder
of why war correspondents must
bear witness to such atrocities
- not least when Russian officials
dismiss Chernov’s distressing
images as staged ‘information
terrorism’. TOM DAWSON

TOTALFILM.COM

I

t’s good to be back,’ growls Dolph Lundgren’s Gunner. Not on
this evidence, it isn’t. Cheap-looking and poorly scripted, this
atrocious Sly Stallone-led actioner opens in ‘Gaddafi’s old
chemical plant’ in Libya, where a private army steals some nuclear
detonators to kickstart what Andy Garcia’s suit later suggests will be
‘a World War Three shitshow’ (and that’s one of the better lines).
After Stallone’s Barney Ross and his fellow aging Expendables fail
to catch the nuke-snatchers, losing one of their members in the
process, the fightback gets personal.
The second half is very much the Jason Statham show, following
his grouchy Lee Christmas as he sneaks aboard an enemy vessel to
rescue his buddies (including newbies Megan Fox and Curtis ‘50 Cent’
Jackson). There’s a moderately exciting bike chase through the ship,
but mostly director Scott Waugh (2014 crime flick Need for Speed)
brazenly borrows from Under Siege and Die Hard.
At least Ong-Bak’s Tony Jaa and The Raid’s Iko Uwais inject charisma,
though neither gets much chance to flaunt their martial-arts prowess
amid all the sub-par stunts and visual effects. The plot, meanwhile,
hinges on a telegraphed ‘twist’ that’ll leave you groaning. Sly and
Statham are always watchable, not least when the latter takes a job
as security for an odious social-media influencer. But they can’t save
this mission from going painfully pear-shaped. JAMES MOTTRAM

THE VERDICT A grimly predictable fourth outing for Sly
and co. What was once a fun OAP action series is now DOA.

DALILAND 15
★★★★★ OUT 13 OCT CINEMAS
13 NOV DVD, DIGITAL

Cult director Mary Harron (I Shot
Andy Warhol, American Psycho)
paints a portrait of Salvador Dalí’s
chaotic old age that’s oddly
conventional, for all the wild
70s New York orgies and rampant
art fraud. Ben Kingsley and
Fassbinder veteran Barbara
Sukowa are deliciously spiky as
the moustachioed maestro and
his bullying wife-muse Gala, aided
by Ezra Miller’s brilliantly outsized
cameo as the young Dalí. But
filtering the story through the
(fictional) disillusionment of
Christopher Briney’s Dalíworshipping young gallery
assistant sucks all the freaky
fun out of it. KATE STABLES

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 91

‘A great performer’: screen
legend Rock Hudson

THE RETIREMENT
PLAN 15

GOLDA 12A
★★★★★ OUT NOW CINEMAS

★★★★★ OUT NOW DIGITAL
Whatever your take on the casting
of non-Jewish actress Helen
Mirren as former Israeli prime
minister Golda Meir, it’s hard to
deny that this snapshot of the
steely politician’s time in office
during the 19 days of the 1973
Yom Kippur war never really gets
off the ground. Obscured by
cigarette smoke, a grey wig,
and prosthetic nose and jowls,
Mirren never seems fully at ease,
bar her enlivening, imploring
exchanges with Liev Schreiber’s
US secretary of state Henry
Kissinger. Recalling Mirren’s
earlier war-room drama Eye in the
Sky (2015), albeit without the same
nervy tension, this is a plodding
affair. JAMES MOTTRAM

Michael Caine bought his mum
a house with his fee for Jaws:
The Revenge. Let’s hope Nicolas
Cage makes a loved one happy
with this comedy thriller, because
it surely won’t leave viewers
feeling that way. Cage plays an
estranged dad whose daughter
(Ashley Greene) seeks his help
when she gets caught up in a
criminal enterprise. It’s lame and
cheap-looking, but at least gives
us the Cayman Islands to ogle.
Shooting there during the early
part of the pandemic surely
explains a cast that includes
Ron Perlman, Jackie Earle Haley
(misspelt in the credits) and
Ernie Hudson. JAMIE GRAHAM

ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT
HEAVEN ALLOWED 15
Idol moments…
★★★★★ OUT 23 OCTOBER DIGITAL

★★★★★ OUT 3 NOVEMBER
CINEMAS

Bouli Lanners co-directs, co-writes
and co-stars in this measured,
melancholy drama set in the
Scottish Highlands. It offers a
unique story of late love, albeit
one that unfolds at a glacial pace.
Lanners plays Phil, a middle-aged
farmhand who suffers a stroke
and subsequently loses his
memory. Cared for by Millie
(Michelle Fairley), he discovers
that the two were recently
romantically involved. Thoughtprovoking scenes explore ideas
about identity and missed chances,
but the tone - by turns twee and
maudlin - hampers much of the
tension and intrigue. MATT LOOKER

92 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

A

midwestern hick’ (his words) from Winnetka, Illinois, the
matinee idol formerly known as Roy Fitzgerald lit up the
screen in Douglas Sirk melodramas (see 1955’s All That Heaven
Allows) and Doris Day romcoms (1959’s Pillow Talk). ‘He was a great
performer,’ notes one contributor in Stephen Kijak’s breezy
documentary. ‘Not just in acting, but in life.’
Hudson (1925-1985), who was gay, arrived in a post-World War Two
Hollywood fixated on hyper-masculine heroes. Gradually, he turned
himself into one of the biggest but, as noted here, to fully become
Rock, he had to erase Roy. Although he was forced to keep his sexuality
secret, it was coded into films such as Pillow Talk, which saw him
camping it up to get close to Day. It also proved a source of conflict with
James Dean on 1956’s Giant, for which Hudson was Oscar-nominated.
Mixing archive footage, well-chosen clips and new interviews with
Hudson’s ex-partners and pals, the film moves nimbly from celebrating
his many achievements to offering details about his love life, albeit
in somewhat salacious fashion.
In 1985, Hudson would die from AIDS-related complications, but his
heroic admission to go public with his diagnosis would help those silenced
by the stigma – something he understood all too well. MATT GLASBY

THE VERDICT An entertaining and, at times, moving profile
of one of Hollywood’s most charming and conflicted stars.

MIND-SET 18
★★★★★ OUT NOW CINEMAS,
DIGITAL

Brit-indie realism and cliché
combine in this engaging but
naggingly over-determined
comedy drama from Mikey
Murray. Eilis Cahill and Steve
Oram play a couple whose love
is parched; can she resist the urge
to stray? A slumped Oram and
a superbly acerbic Cahill provide
spiky focus amid Murray’s crisp
black-and-white images, but the
subtexts (mental-health issues),
set pieces (bad parties, really bad
sex) and supporting characters run
to the contrived. Despite Murray’s
persuasive flair for cringey
intimacies and masturbation
scenes, the sour finale overplays
the film’s hand. KEVIN HARLEY

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

UNI V ERSA L , SIGN ATUR E, PA R K L A ND, V ERTICA L , B UL L DOG

NOBODY HAS
TO KNOW 12A

GRAVITY 12A

BLAZING MAGNUM 18

2013 ★★★★★ OUT 20 OCTOBER

1976

CINEMAS

BD, DVD, DIGITAL

1945

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Featurettes, Art cards

CINEMAS

Featurettes, Music videos, Booklet

Italian director Alberto De Martino
made his name repurposing
successful US movies, often with
eyebrow-raising results (see 1974
Exorcist ‘homage’ The Antichrist, also
newly available on Blu). Part Dirty
Harry, part giallo, this Ottawa-set
thriller (aka Strange Shadows in an
Empty Room) stars Stuart Whitman
as a take-no-prisoners cop on the
hunt for his sister’s killer. Though
the film’s attitudes – which
require a pre-credits disclaimer
– are dated, there’s able support
from a flock of B-movie favourites
(John Saxon, Martin Landau, Tisa
Farrow) and the car chases are
extraordinary. MATT GLASBY

A newly restored print of Michael
Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s
romantic drama, released in
cinemas as part of a BFI season
celebrating the duo’s extraordinary
cine-legacy. It centres on Joan
(Wendy Hiller), a headstrong
young woman travelling from
Manchester to a Hebridean island
to marry her industrialist boss. En
route, she runs into bad weather,
but also charming Scottish laird
Torquil (Roger Livesey)... Playfully
blending ‘reality’ and fantasy, the
filmmakers conjure up a magical
universe marked by ancient
curses, wild storms and sublime
natural beauty. TOM DAWSON

If not, like, totally bitchin’,
director Martha Coolidge’s
(Rambling Rose) teen romance
holds up a lot better than many of
its contemporaries. Stars Deborah
Foreman (April Fool’s Day) and
Nicolas Cage (in his first lead role)
make for convincing star-crossed
lovers - she a cool valley girl, he
a dorky punk - which helps to
offset the story’s familiarity.
The affection all involved still
have for the film shines through
in the hours of interviews included
here, which also packs in two
commentaries (one by Coolidge)
and a handy glossary (‘Pukeoid’,
‘Kiss my tuna’). ANTON VAN BEEK

Awards success led some to
reappraise Alfonso Cuarón’s space
thriller, back in cinemas for its
10th anniversary. Overrated? Not at
all. From its extended opening shot
onwards, this is pure big-screen
sensation, a wonderfully taut,
spectacle-driven pulse-quickener
delivered with bravura technique
that fully earned its seven – from
10 nominations – Oscar wins.
It arguably deserved an eighth:
as harried medical engineer Ryan
Stone, Sandra Bullock deftly
combines panic and pathos,
giving us a relatable hero you can’t
help but root for, as implausible
as her journey home occasionally
seems. CHRIS SCHILLING

★★★★★ OUT NOW

Malcolm Danare as Moochie:
quite possibly about to be
‘reduced to roadkill’

I KNOW WHERE
I’M GOING! PG
★★★★★ OUT 20 OCTOBER

VALLEY GIRL 15
1983

★★★★★ OUT NOW BD

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Commentaries,

CHRISTINE 15
Rolling thunder…
1983 ★★★★★ OUT 20 OCTOBER CINEMAS

BFI, COLUMBIA, EUR EK A , STUDIOCANAL, PA R K CIRCUS, WA R NER BROS.

Q

TOTALFILM.COM

uestion: which 1980s adaptation of a Stephen King novel
by a legendary film director made wholesale changes to the
book and is reviled by the author? Answer: Stanley Kubrick’s
The Shining, of course… but also John Carpenter’s Christine,
which now motors back into cinemas for its 40th anniversary.
Set in late-70s LA, this tale of bullied teenager Arnie Cunningham
(Keith Gordon) and his unhealthy relationship with his first car –
the titular 1958 Plymouth Fury that he restores to gleaming glory
– is an unashamed B-movie, blasting 50s rock ’n’ roll as Arnie’s
tormentors are reduced to roadkill. Is Arnie behind the wheel?
Or is Christine doing it all by herself?
While Kubrick, an intellectual filmmaker, brought all of his art
and ambition to The Shining, Carpenter, an emotional filmmaker,
took a streamlined, no-nonsense, fun-filled approach. Both pictures
received poor to middling reviews upon release, and both have since
grown in stature, though it took Christine a good deal longer – only
in the last 10 years has it been recognised as a top-tier King
and/or Carpenter movie, or thereabouts.
Impeccably crafted, Christine is packed with quotable dialogue,
cinematic kills and oh-so-cool moments (‘Show me...’), and compares
to De Palma’s Carrie as a portrait of an alienated teen pushed into
a roaring rampage of revenge. JAMIE GRAHAM

THE VERDICT Bryan Fuller’s working on a new model
of Christine. It’ll have to be truly special to compare.

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 93

MEAN STREETS 18
AFTER HOURS 15

Marty marvels: Mean Streets
(top) and After Hours

New York stories…
1973 ★★★★★ OUT 13 OCTOBER CINEMAS
1985 ★★★★★ OUT NOW BD, 4K UHD
EXTRAS ★★★★★ Commentary, Documentary, Featurettes, Deleted scenes, Essay

T

here’s a lot to be said for working with what you know.
In two films issued 12 years apart, an on-the-ropes Martin
Scorsese proved as much, operating on lean, keen instinct
to galvanising punk-rock effect.
After Scorsese made Boxcar Bertha (1972), indie godhead John
Cassavetes told him he’d spent a year on ‘a piece of shit’. Marty’s
answer was to make magic from home turf with Mean Streets, dissecting
the American Dream via an anthropological study of Little Italy. The
result bristles with urgency and hunger. As Harvey Keitel’s crook
wrestles with religion, male bonds and loose-cannon Johnny Boy (Robert
De Niro, electric), the spectacle of Scorsese’s voice-forming thrills.
A decade on, The King of Comedy flopped and The Last Temptation of Christ
collapsed (temporarily). Cast adrift, Scorsese turned to a script about a man
adrift. After Hours is a black comedy with Griffin Dunne pitch-perfect as
a desk jockey navigating NY’s underworld after a meet-cute goes weird.
With his Cannes hit, Scorsese rediscovered his low-budget know-how and
his career footing. That’s him with the spotlight in the nightclub: lighting
his path out of the darkness, the way only he could. KEVIN HARLEY

THE VERDICT With style and swagger, Scorsese marks
his territory in two brisk, bracing Big Apple bangers.

GREGORY’S GIRL 12

PEEPING TOM 15

PRESSURE 15

FRIDAY THE 13TH 15

1980 ★★★★★ OUT NOW

1960 ★★★★★ OUT 27 OCTOBER

1976 ★★★★★ OUT 3 NOVEMBER

1980 ★★★★★ OUT 13 OCTOBER

BD, 4K UHD, DIGITAL

CINEMAS

CINEMAS

CINEMAS

Michael Powell was as feted in his
day as a Scorsese or Spielberg –
until this seminal chiller shredded
his reputation for several years.
Centred on a focus-puller (Carl
Boehm) who spends his free time
making snuff films, it’s relatively
tame by modern standards, yet
what the viewer is left to imagine
is far more troubling: the most
frightening thing, its mantra goes,
is fear itself. This 4K restoration
suits a big-screen rewatch – not
least for the unsettling way it
conflates cinema’s inherently
voyeuristic nature with our
appetites as viewers. Little
wonder it left critics spluttering
in shock. CHRIS SCHILLING

A digital restoration of this
pioneering coming-of-age
drama, the first full-length British
feature to be directed by a Black
filmmaker, the late Sir Horace Ové.
The uncompromising nature of his
portrait of societal racism led to
Pressure’s original release being
delayed for a time. Shot in London’s
Ladbroke Grove, it tracks teenaged
second-generation Caribbean
immigrant Tony (Herbert Norville),
who’s caught between the
conformism of his Christian parents
and the Black Power militancy of
his older brother (Oscar James).
The film’s anger at the injustices
experienced by young Black Britons
remains undimmed. TOM DAWSON

Back in cinemas for one week
only – starting Friday 13 October,
natch – this hit slasher remains
crudely effective despite nine
sequels, one crossover, one
remake and the original Scream
telling everyone that it’s actually
(spoiler alert!) Mrs. Voorhees, not
Jason, who’s slaying young Kevin
Bacon and pals at summer camp.
Sure, it misplaces the wit and
sophistication as it rips off Mario
Bava’s A Bay of Blood and John
Carpenter’s Halloween. But
whichever way you slice it,
Sean S. Cunningham’s film
delivers its fair share of fear,
including one all-timer of
a jump scare. JAMIE GRAHAM

Featurettes, Alternate music cues,
US soundtrack, Booklet

A world away from the highschool comedies that proliferated
across the Atlantic during the
80s, Scottish writer/director Bill
Forsyth’s charming sophomore
feature is a joy to revisit, courtesy
of the BFI’s exquisite new 4K
restoration. One of the few
films to accurately capture the
anticipation and awkwardness
of adolescent infatuation, Gregory’s
Girl eschews familiar genre
tropes and stereotypes to craft
something that feels altogether
sweeter, funnier and emotionally
authentic. ANTON VAN BEEK

94 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

A LTITUDE, BFI, ICON, SPIR IT, WA R NER BROS.

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Commentaries,

TECH PREVIEW
Home-cinema kit to suit(case) all tastes…

SAMSUNG THE
FRAME: DISNEY
100 EDITION
OUT NOW £1,999

E

ven with some of the big home-cinema
brands deciding to skip this year’s Berlinbased IFA show, it offered a tantalising
sneak peek at what’s coming next. Here are a few
highlights for your 2023-24 wish list…

EPSON EH-LS650
OUT TBC OCTOBER £2,299.99

Bring the big screen into your living room with this
new short-throw laser projector. Designed with
smaller spaces in mind, the catchily named LS650
can project a picture up to 120 inches, even when it’s
one
sitting close to the wall. An easy-set-up smartphone
so
app does all the hard work for you, and there’s also
g
built-in Android TV and Chromecast for streaming
s
and casting. What’s more, it has Yamaha speakers
er.
on board, so it works as a standalone smart speaker.
Choose from black or white to match your decor.

As well as showcasing an
impossibly large 98in 8K QLED
TV, Samsung recently unveiled
a limited-edition version of its
‘The Frame’ TV to commemorate
Disney’s 100th anniversary. Acting
as a piece of art when it’s not being
used as a TV, The Frame gives
you access to a range of famous
artworks from the likes of the
Louvre and the Tate to display on
your wall. This particular edition
offers 100 pieces of Disney artwork,
including graphics from Pixar,
Marvel and Lucasfilm. Packing
a super-slim design and matte
display, the TV also sports a
premium silver-metal frame.

SONY HT-AX7
OUT NOW £499

LG STANBYME GO

SENNHEISER , EPSON, SA MSUNG, LG, SON Y

OUT TBC £TBC

SENNHEISER AMBEO
SOUNDBAR MINI

If you’ve ever wanted to cart your TV around in
a suitcase, you’re in luck. LG’s rather bizarre
StanbyME Go is a 27-inch touch display that comes
in a sturdy carrying case, which also houses a 20w
four-channel speaker system. Designed to be used
outdoors, the TV-in-a-suitcase sports LG’s webOS
smart TV platform and connects to your iOS or
Android device. A built-in battery gives you up to
three hours of watching time (so Oppenheimer is
just about possible), but you can also lay the screen
flat if you fancy playing a digital board game.

Looking for a top-notch soundbar to sit under
your telly? Audio expert Sennheiser has brought its
awesome Ambeo tech to a more compact gadget that
also has a more wallet-friendly price tag. Packing a
250w output, the Ambeo Soundbar Mini is less than
half the size of its Soundbar Plus sibling. Support for
Dolby Atmos and DTS:X means you can get 3D spatial
sound from just the one speaker, making moviewatching more immersive without having to invest
in a whole set of speakers.

TOTALFILM.COM

OUT NOW £699

This nifty little portable sound
system is designed for cinematic
audio anywhere. It comprises three
speakers, two of which pop off
from the top, and packs Sony’s 360
Spatial Sound Mapping technology.
This clever tech creates virtual
speakers at the front, rear and
overhead, giving you an immersive,
cinema-like sound. Bluetooth
connectivity and up to 30 hours
of battery life mean you can place
it pretty much anywhere in your
home. The speaker fabric is made
from recycled bottles, so it’s ecofriendly, too. LIBBY PLUMMER

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 95

EXTRAS
GAMES

POP! PUZZLES
OUT NOW

Funko has a big-bonced jigsaw for seemingly every
fandom, whether you’re a Marvelite (Black Panther:
Wakanda Forever) or a Loser, so to speak (It: Chapter One).
Each puzzle is 18x24in and comprises 500 pieces - i.e. just
big enough for a challenge that won’t leave you sobbing
into the box. One especially seasonal eye-catcher is The
Nightmare Before Christmas, whose colours gain an extra
Pop! when viewed under a blacklight. Boys and girls of
every age, see something strange at funkoeurope.com.

ACCESSORIES

HALLOWEEN MINI-BACKPACKS
OUT NOW

PRINT

COLLECTIBLE

MOVIE MAP OF AMERICA
OUT NOW

X-MEN 100 COLLECTIBLE COMICBOOK COVER POSTCARDS

Talk about a map to the stars… This A2 pop-art
print features more than 270 golden-age actors
- and not just crammed in any old how, but
positioned in the US state of their birth or
upbringing, from Marilyn Monroe (California) to
Sidney Poitier (Florida). It’s available in 28 hues,
from coral to copper to the colours of the American
flag. And yes, it comes with a numbered guide so
you can put a name to every whatsherface and
That Guy. Look up artandhue.com.

It’s 60 years since Professor X marshalled his mighty
mutants; spread the word to 100 of your friends with
this box of postcards showcasing comic-book covers
with major X appeal. Kicking off with Jack Kirby’s
seminal issue-one illo, the collection runs from ’63 to
the modern day, taking in myriad line-up/costume/artist
changes. It’s all packed in a satin-ribboned box with a
30-page X-plainer booklet. Available from all places of
retail X-cellence (OK, we’ll stop now). MATTHEW LEYLAND

96 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

A RT & HUE, CHRONICLE, FUNKO, LOUNGEFLY, © 2023 M A RV EL

Two Loungefly products from opposite ends of the scare spectrum. At
the less-frightening-than-lettuce end we have the Pooh and Piglet
Halloween mini-backpack, with its cute ghost costumes and benignly
smiling jack-o’-lantern. And then straight out of Satan’s cloakroom
there’s the Michael Myers cosplay mini-backpack, featuring not just the
face of evil, but evil’s childhood home and evil’s favourite knife (which
is now a metal zipper charm - nice/nasty touch). Adorably/alarmingly,
both backpacks glow in the dark. Bag ’em at funkoeurope.com.

OUT NOW

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

Lee Majors as Steve Austin –
the 30 billion dollar-plus
man, by today’s prices…

CLASSIC TV

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN

A VERY
SPECIAL
EPISODE

Building a better action series…
1973-78 AVAILABLE ON DVD, BD, DIGITAL

FA BULOUS FILMS

I

f you were a child in the mid-1970s there were
some things you just knew. French bangers
could blow your hands off. A monk-like
spectre haunted every pond and stream. And
to look like you were running super-fast you
actually had to move in slow motion while going,
‘Cht-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh…’
The latter, of course, was all thanks to The Six
Million Dollar Man, a small-screen phenomenon
whose legacy stretches much further than that
iconic bionic sound effect. Based on Martin Caidin’s
1972 novel Cyborg, the show starred Lee Majors as
Steve Austin, a former astronaut left close to death
after a crash during a test flight. But, as the iconic
opening sequence says, ‘We can rebuild him. We
have the technology. We have the capability to make
the world’s first bionic man…. Better than he was
before. Better. Stronger. Faster.’
Beginning life in 1973 as a trio of hit features in
the ABC Movie of the Week line-up, The Six Million
Dollar Man made the leap to an ongoing series the
following January, catapulting its ruggedly laid-back
and self-effacing leading man to stardom. Across
five seasons, viewers tuned in to watch Austin pit

TOTALFILM.COM

his bionic enhancements against everything from
gangsters and spies to fembots, a seven milliondollar man, aliens and even Bigfoot. In the process,
the series cemented the concept of cyborgs in the
popular consciousness, paving the way for the likes
of The Terminator and RoboCop.
A spin-off series, The Bionic Woman, arrived in
1976 and proved just as big a hit, the two productions
generating a deluge of toys, lunch boxes and other
merchandise. Character and story crossovers became
a regular feature of the two shows; a familiar concept
today, but largely unheard of at the time. The focus
on a female action hero, Lindsay Wagner’s Jaime
Sommers, was even more revolutionary - opening
the door to other female-oriented action series such
as Wonder Woman and Charlie’s Angels. The less said
about Max the bionic dog, though, the better…
While both shows appeared to have run their
course by 1978, Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers’
enduring popularity eventually led to the franchise
bowing out in the same manner that it had begun,
with a trio of made-for-TV reunion movies (19871994) that finally gave the bionic lovebirds the happy
ending they deserved. ANTON VAN BEEK

THE BIONIC WOMAN
PTS 1 & 2, S2, 1975
The Six Million Dollar Man’s
very own Love Story, this
tragic two-parter thrives on
the easygoing chemistry
between Lee Majors and
Lindsay Wagner, before
killing off its new bionic
heroine as her body
rejects the implants.
Thankfully, unlike Ali
MacGraw, Wagner’s Jaime
Sommers was able to
return from the dead
following complaints
from viewers.

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 97

CLASSIC SOUNDTRACK

THE EXORCIST
VARIOUS WARNER RECORDS/RHINO
Memories of love
and murder...

PAST LIVES

★★★★★
Tender poise and saddened
stoicism are the key
notes of Grizzly Bear
mainstays Christopher
Bear/Daniel Rossen’s score.
Working with chamberpop ingredients – piano,
brushed percussion,
guitar, synths, vibraphone
– the duo nurture sweet
miracles of intangible
sorrow from understated
soundscapes. Melodies
hover just beyond reach,
like slippery memories; See
You brings the emotions
at stake to a soft, spacious
crescendo. Sharon van
Etten’s controlled slowburner Quiet Eyes adds a
pitch-perfect closing note
to a score of exquisitely
contained feeling.

T

he way the late William Friedkin told it, he
had to cast out some difficult contenders
as he sought a composer for The Exorcist.
Hitchcock vet Bernard Herrmann dubbed the film
‘a piece of shit’ and suggested church organs might
help; Friedkin demurred. And when the director
requested music resembling ‘a cold hand on the
back of your neck’, Lalo Schifrin (Bullitt) responded
with bullish, almost Herrmann-esque scare
scoring, to Friedkin’s despair.
Much too vulgar a display of power? Clearly. With
subtlety, Friedkin’s answer was to pare the film’s
music of steering melody and strip it back to first
principles. While editing, he had used avant-garde
modern classical music – Krzysztof Penderecki,
George Crumb, Hans Werner Henze and others - as
temp tracks. Rerecorded by Leonard Slatkin (with the
National Philharmonic Orchestra), integrated with
the sound mix and spliced with producer/composer
Jack Nitzsche’s abstract noises, this music became
Friedkin’s soundtrack. He used the compositions
sparingly, almost subliminally, but their atonal
registers took possession of his film.
Not ‘scored’ in a traditional sense, The Exorcist
doesn’t rely on character themes or developed
melodies. Sounds buzz like insects and throb with
portent, building aural worlds alongside snarling
dogs, calls to prayer and chill winds. Some of

Penderecki’s Polymorphia accompanies Father
Merrin’s prologue stand-off with the Pazuzu statue,
seeding a demonic presence in the film. For Regan’s
body-language plea (‘Help me’), Crumb’s unnerving
Night of the Electric Insects pierces the cold air.
When Friedkin used melody, he did so carefully.
Looking for an almost childlike refrain reminiscent
of Brahms, he found 19-year-old Mike Oldfield’s
prog-rock concept album Tubular Bells and became
seduced by the elegant opening section on piano/
synths. Friedkin used Bells fleetingly but ingeniously,
to hugely resonant effect. As Chris walks home,
Friedkin spotlights the anxiety in Oldfield’s music
with suggestive sounds: wind blowing nuns’ habits,
motorcycles revving angrily. For the film’s climax,
a hint of Bells is swiftly sidelined by Henze’s Fantasia
for Strings – the closest the soundtrack comes to
Herrmann, albeit Herrmann possessed.
Otherwise, the soundtrack’s influence outreaches
any precedents, touching any horror movie that uses
dissonant sound clusters. John Carpenter’s DIY
scores for Halloween/The Fog arguably echo Oldfield.
Kubrick later followed Friedkin’s example by using
Polymorphia in The Shining. Lynch also drew on
Penderecki, as did Scorsese’s modern classical Shutter
Island music. Whether or not the Devil has the best
tunes, he certainly gave horror history some damn
good esoteric sound worlds. KEVIN HARLEY

JOHN CARPENTER:
ANTHOLOGY II

★★★★★

A 24 MUSIC, SACR ED BONES, WA R NER BROS.

Must be the season of the
witch, as horror’s punksynth pioneer revisits old
haunts with a killer set of
rerecordings. Another?
Yes, but Carpenter’s urgent,
bluesy and brooding DIY
ingenuity justifies these
deep, driving makeovers.
Halloween III’s Chariots of
Pumpkins sets the pulsing
agenda, collaborators
Daniel Davies and John’s
son, Cody, adding muscular
thump to the arrangement.
Two tense, throbbing
Halloween II cues prove
Carpenter Sr. could build on
perfection, while haunting
closer Laurie’s Theme distils
his genius for minimalist
menace timelessly.
‘Look lively, people. Tubular Bells has just
piped up. Things are about to get real…’

98 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

Starfield: the Bethesda space epic is the
first new universe by the studio in 25 years

2
MORE
Recent thumb-twiddlers...

COCOON

★★★★★
OUT NOW PC, PS4/5,
SWITCH, XBOX ONE/
SERIES
Jeppe Carlsen, gameplay
designer of Playdead’s
modern classic Inside,
returns with this equally
essential puzzle adventure.
Marble-like orbs borne by
the insectoid protagonist
are worlds in themselves:
you’ll dive into them to
burrow your way deeper
inside a biomechanical
realm constructed with
mesmerising intricacy.

GAMES

STARFIELD
How high does one of 2023’s biggest launches go?
FINITY

★★★★★

BETHESDA
BE
THESDA , AANNAPUR
NNAPUR NNA,
A , SE ABA
A BA A

OUT NOW
IOS (VIA APPLE
ARCADE)
Every move counts in
this devious twist on the
match-three puzzler. Tiles
in the rows or columns you
slide get closer to locking
with each turn: the trick is to
remove them before they
stick, limiting your available
moves. Finding the going
too tough? The musical
mode might be more
your tempo.

★★★★★ OUT NOW PC, XBOX SERIES

B

ethesda Game Studios has a storied
reputation for making vast and deep
player-driven role-playing games that
are rich in possibility and choice. As such, the
prospect of it applying what it’s learned from the
post-apocalyptic wastelands of Fallout and the
high-fantasy trappings of the Elder Scrolls series to
a sprawling, much-hyped space epic – its first new
universe in a quarter of a century – is tantalising.
Those stratospheric expectations, however, are
quickly sent crashing earthward. An inauspicious
beginning sees your emergence onto a grey-beige
planet (a far cry from the reveals of Oblivion’s
Cyrodiil and Fallout’s Capital Wasteland) followed
by the discovery of a somewhat sterile opening city.
Wh
What’s
more, your character regularly becomes
ove
overencumbered
with the abundance of weapons,
gea and resources they gather up, and the game
gear
fee similarly burdened by its own glut of (often
feels
poo
poorly
explained) mechanics.
The wonder of space exploration, meanwhile,
am
amounts
to picking destinations from menus and
fas
fast-travelling
there: you can manually lift off
fro a planet but there’s no flying your ship out of
from
its atmosphere, while landing and docking are also
aut
automated.
It’s like piloting the Millennium Falcon
wit a busted hyperdrive. Like the Falcon, however,
with
Sta
Starfield’s
got plenty of character.

The game’s retrofuturist aesthetic gives every
bustling spaceport and abandoned facility
an appealingly lived-in feel – and once you’ve
acclimatised to its idiosyncrasies, it’s not nearly
as unwieldy as it first seems. A central quest for
a series of astral MacGuffins is an effective way to
bring you into the orbit of a wide range of characters
and factions, leading to a tangle of branching
subplots within which you’re free to choose your
role: do you infiltrate a gang of space pirates as
a mole, or willingly partake in their pillaging?
Technological abilities or persuasive techniques
come in useful when it’s time for some corporate
espionage: develop your social skills sufficiently
and, even in combat scenarios, you can intimidate
enemies into submission or use diplomacy to get
them to lower their guns. Not that you’ll necessarily
want to – gunfights, augmented by celestial
superpowers, are punchy and exciting.
Though anyone who’s seen a superhero film
in recent years will see where the story is headed,
an ambitious, surprising ending gives you a second
chance to rediscover your own place in this universe
– whether that’s as a space botanist or a luxury
penthouse owner in a gaudy metropolis. As a galactic
odyssey, it disappoints; once you’re planetside,
however, you’ll find that Starfield makes space for
every type of player. CHRIS SCHILLING

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 99

2
MORE
From slaughter
to auteur…

HALLOWEEN: THE
OFFICIAL MAKING
OF HALLOWEEN,
HALLOWEEN KILLS &
HALLOWEEN ENDS

★★★★★

CHRIS SCHILLING

GOD AND THE DEVIL:
THE LIFE AND WORK
OF INGMAR BERGMAN

★★★★★
Described in the intro as
a ‘novel about Bergman’s
life’ rather than a standard
biography, this is a
commanding portrait of
the Seventh Seal director,
one that consistently ties
events in his life to specific
scenes, themes and
locations in his movies.
Having met Bergman in
1969 and corresponded
with him until 1995,
veteran film author Peter
Cowie is able to channel
first-hand knowledge
of Bergman into a book
that’s respectful without
being overly reverential.
MATT LOOKER

100 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

The cast of Orange Is the New
Black (from left, oh forget it…)

BOOKS

PANDORA’S BOX: THE GREED, LUST
AND LIES THAT BROKE TELEVISION
★★★★★

PETER BISKIND PENGUIN

N

eed help navigating the bewildering array
of streaming services, cable networks and
pay-per-view options? You could do worse
than read Biskind’s (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls) latest.
While this potted history of ‘peak TV’ may lack the
precision of his previous works, it’s still a witty,
fast-paced chronicle of how decades of play-it-safe
telly got usurped by tech-savvy upstarts who used
algorithms, open cheque books and binge-watching
to attract both audiences and talent.
What HBO, AMC and others stumbled upon was
the appeal of the ‘good-bad guy’: anti-heroes like
Tony Soprano and Walter White whom viewers

would root for no matter how heinously they
behaved. Netflix and Showtime also explored the
flipside (‘females with failings’) in Orange Is the
New Black and Homeland. The Netflix formula,
Biskind observes, has always been to ‘spend its way
to profit’. (Something Apple/Amazon, with their
lucrative alternative income streams, don’t require
from their original programming.)
Biskind has lost none of his gift for pith: take his
description of one exec’s tenure as a ‘reign of error’.
The closer his tome gets to the present day, though,
the grumpier it becomes, making later chapters
harder to get through than they should be. NEIL SMITH

THE WICKER MAN:
THE OFFICIAL STORY
OF THE FILM

FRIGHTFEST GUIDE:
MAD DOCTOR MOVIES

BFI FILM CLASSICS:
THE RED SHOES

★★★★★

★★★★★

★★★★★

DR JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT

PAMELA HUTCHINSON

JOHN WALSH TITAN

FAB PRESS

BFI/BLOOMSBURY

Fresh interviews and
archival images flesh
out this return to
Summerisle. Walsh grills
everyone from art director Seamus
Flannery to Britt Ekland; producer
Peter Snell remains a reasonable
voice amid accounts of conflict.
Barrels are scraped (an extra’s
breakfast reminiscences) but
details are plentiful. A tribute to
composer Paul Giovanni and some
lush pagan artwork help justify
reopening the case on the cultist’s
cult film. KEVIN HARLEY

Sporting a foreword from
Tom Six (The Human
Centipede), this lively
compendium runs from
1908’s The Doctor’s Experiment to
2022’s Morbius and features all
the usual suspects: Frankenstein,
Moreau, Orloff. The USP is that
it’s written by an actual clinician,
who knows his stuff. A consultant
urologist surgeon, Probert
seems as happy discussing the
unconvincing innards in 2009’s
Grotesque as he does taking the,
ahem, piss. MATT GLASBY

Defining the Archers’
‘ballet horror’ as a
rapturous display of
art for art’s sake, film
academic Hutchinson explores
how Shoes abandons realism for
a rarefied reverie on pride and
punishment, delirium and dance.
She’s en pointe on everything
from the ballet’s ecstatic agony
and queer readings to the film’s
influence, and at her best showing
how Shoes frames a key question:
‘How far would you go for art?’
KEVIN HARLEY

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

LIONSGATE, BFI/BLOOMSBURY, PENGUIN, TITA N, FA BER & FA BER , FA B PR ESS

Long on (sometimes
extraneous) detail but sadly
short on penetrating insight,
Abbie Bernstein’s thorough
but disjointed account of
the making of David Gordon
Green’s reboot trilogy is one
for hardcore Haddonfield
fans only. For the most part,
it merely recounts plot points
in chronological order with
quotes from cast and crew,
reading like an extended
director’s commentary.
The highlight is the BTS
photography (on-set candids,
grisly prosthetics); otherwise,
this longs for an editor as
brutal as Michael Myers.

CINEMA
CINEM
M A CELEBRATED
C E L E B RATEDD AND DEBATED.
DEBBA
B AT E D . BOO
BOOSTING
O ST IN
IINGG YYOUR
O U R MO
MOVIE
OOVIE GENIUS TO SSUPERHERO
U P E R H E R O LEVELS…

IS IT BOLLOCKS?
Buff investigates the facts behind outlandish movie plots.

ALTERNATIVE
BOX
OFFICE
The biggest movies…
WITH HALLOWEEN-Y TITLES

01 THE MASK 1994 .............................................................................................$351.6M
02 MICHAEL 1996.................................................................................................$119.7M
03 JACK 1996...........................................................................................................$58.6M
04 ORANGE COUNTY 2002 .......................................................................... $43.3M
05 OCTOBER SKY 1999..................................................................................... $34.7M
06 HARD CANDY 2005 ............................................................................................$7M
07 KNOCK KNOCK 2015 .....................................................................................$5.6M
08 STORYTELLING 2001......................................................................................$1.3M
09 PARTY MONSTER 2003 .............................................................................. $0.8M

H
MONT
THIS TURISMO
GRAN

10 PUMPKIN 2002..................................................................................................$0.3M

Sony’s Gran Turismo starts by telling us that it’s based on a true story,
and while the story itself – that of Jann Mardenborough, an obsessive
video-game player who was handpicked by Nissan to drive professional
race cars – has some basis in reality, a key moment in Neill Blomkamp’s
retelling has proven controversial. In Gran Turismo, Mardenborough’s
car catches a pocket of air while racing the Nürburgring, leading to his
vehicle flying off the track and ultimately killing a spectator. In the film,
the event paves the way for Mardenborough to step onto the podium
at Le Mans during the final act. While the Nürburgring incident is
depicted accurately, it actually happened two years after the racer’s team
came third at Le Mans. Various publications have since argued that using
the tragedy as a piece of character development is tasteless, though
others have remarked that it makes sense on a cinematic story level.
Other untruths: David Harbour’s charismatic trainer is almost completely
fictional, though potentially inspired by sports psychologist Gavin Gough,
while Orlando Bloom’s marketing man Danny Moore isn’t real, but
instead based on former Nissan executive Darren Cox, who also happens
to have a producing credit on the film alongside Mardenborough.

VERDICT SEMI-BOLLOCKS

ON LOCATION REEL SPOTS BEHIND THE CAMERA

WHAT? In Niagara, duplicitous Rose Loomis (Marilyn Monroe)
uses a resort’s carillon bell tower to communicate with
her lover as they plan her husband’s murder at the Falls.
WHERE? Rainbow Carillon Tower, 5702 Falls Avenue,
Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
GO? At the Canadian entrance to the Rainbow Bridge,
which spans the Falls and connects Canada and the US,
the 1947-built tower still plays its 55 bells three times
a day. Just don’t ask for Kiss...

Want us to investigate if a movie scenario is bollocks or snapped yourself at a film location? Contact us at totalfilm@futurenet.com
102 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

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DISNE Y, ENT ERTA INMENT, SON Y, WIK I

Q Is Gran Turismo really based on a true story?

10 OF THE BEST

MIRRORS IN MOVIES
Mirror mirror, on the wall…

1

3

5

DUCK SOUP

TAXI DRIVER

One of cinema’s most iconic
mirror sequences doesn’t even
have a mirror in it at all. Hiding
within a non-existent looking
glass, spy Pinky (Harpo Marx)
masquerades as the reflection of
dictator Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho).
A masterclass in absurdity.

Robert De Niro’s signature
moment was improvised on
the day, as he locked himself in
a room with Martin Scorsese and
a full-length mirror. ‘It was like
a jazz riff,’ the director recalled.
The star spoke, and distilled
Travis Bickle tumbled out.

2

IT: CHAPTER TWO

ENTER THE DRAGON

Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) terrorises
an all-growed-up Bill Denbrough
(James McAvoy) in a carnival mirror
maze. The scene, invented for the
film, allowed Bill to confront his
feelings about brother Georgie’s
death… by watching another
young child die before his eyes.

After a sound beating from
Bruce Lee, off-brand Bond baddie
Han (Shih Kien) shrewdly flees
to his own private hall of mirrors.
This helps the clawed villain
get some nasty licks in, but
ultimately can’t keep Bruce at
bay once he starts kicking.

4

SNOW WHITE AND
THE SEVEN DWARFS

DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE
MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS

Playing on the Queen’s insecurities,
her Magic Mirror stirs the pot, pitting
stepmother against young ward. To
achieve the mirror’s booming voice,
actor Moroni Olsen delivered his
lines by encasing his head within
a frame of old drum skins.

Trying to fend off the Scarlet Witch
(Elizabeth Olsen), Doctor Strange
(Benedict Cumberbatch) banishes
her to a broken and jagged Mirror
Dimension. Unfazed, Wanda
continues to wreak havoc, glaring at
her captors from a puddle of water.

6

COLUMBIA , DISNE Y, M A RV EL ST UDIOS, PA R A MOUNT, SE A RCHLIGHT, T R ISTA R , WA R NER BROS.

THE LADY FROM
SHANGHAI

7

9

Over 100 plate-glass mirrors were
used to build the distorted maze
in which O’Hara (Orson Welles)
finally confronts the duplicitous
Elsa (Rita Hayworth). As the layers
of Elsa’s deception come crashing
down, so do the mirrors.

CANDYMAN

8

BLACK SWAN

INCEPTION

Mirrors are all over Darren
Aronofsky’s tale of ballerinas
gone wild, each reflecting Nina
Sayers’ (Natalie Portman)
increasingly shattered psyche.
The filmmaker’s cameras were
hidden from shot using digital
trickery and one-way mirrors.

In her introduction to the world of
the dreaming, Ariadne (Elliot Page)
turns the streets of Paris into an
infinite reflection. Drawing two
gigantic mirrors together on the
Bir-Hakeim bridge, the film
achieves one of its most astounding
visual effects. JOEL HARLEY

10

Did we miss something? Let us know on
TOTALFILM.COM

Doing for mirrors what Psycho
did for showers, the Tony
Todd-starring horror classic
ensured that generations to
come would never look at a mirror
the same way - let alone say that
name into it. You don’t have to
tell us five times.

@totalfilm
NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 103

FLOP CULTURE

R E EALT E
EST

FOR SALE Rustic wooden retreat
perched above Santa Carla town with
great views and proximity to local
wildlife. A warm family home with
roll-top tub, spacious hall and garage.
Features a workshop area that’s
perfect for taxidermy and other
hobbies. Dirt track to property is great
fun for motorbikes and jeeps. A great
place for a retirement home or as a
spot for a flying visit. Pervading smell
of garlic but home cleaners confident
of removing this before sale.

CAR FOR SALE

FILM: THE GREAT GATSBY
VEHICLE: 1928 ROLLSROYCE PHANTOM I ASCOT
DUAL COWL SPORT
YEAR: 1974
Simply marvellous yellow RollsRoyce with green leather interior
– perfect for trips to New York
via the Valley of Ashes. Some
previous damage to front fender
that has now been repaired but
a perfect ride for a careful driver
and an ‘old sport’. The car was
the subject of a scandal so price
reflects notoriety. Previous owner
unavailable to sell. Call Nick
Carraway for a test drive.

PSYCHO (1998)
Mother isn’t quite herself in director Gus Van Sant’s bad cover version
of Hitchcock’s proto-slasher classic…
Why it was a good idea (on paper)
Self-conscious exercise in futility or, as Gus
van Sant said, ‘Weird science experiment’?
However you slice it, Van Sant’s note-for-note
1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960
shower-power thriller couldn’t help but
generate a little curiosity.
What went wrong?
But even morbid curiosity couldn’t justify the
budget. After Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting
success, the studio lobbed $60m at his
arch motel renovation programme. The
thinking was far removed from Hitchcock,
who shot his original in pulpy monochrome
for under $1m, using the crew of TV’s Alfred
Hitchcock Presents. Van Sant favoured soft
pastels, a kind of pop-art design makeover
that sucked any hint of murky mood down the
plughole. Recasting proved equally tricky.
While Anne Heche’s Marion Crane was too
perky, Vince Vaughn’s Norman Bates replaced
Anthony Perkins’ wrongfooting fragility
and repressed turmoil with bulky presence.
Perhaps there was no way around the issue:
after all, the film’s twists had become so
embedded in the cinemagoing psyche that
surprising an audience would be impossible.

BUDGET

BOX OFFICE

60m $37.1m

Redeeming feature
Re-arranged by Danny Elfman, Bernard
Herrmann’s thrusting score remains
piercingly good.
What happened next?
Preferring their scares scary, not smart-arsed,
audiences stayed away. After 2000’s Finding
Forrester, Van Sant fully embraced arthouse
principles with his ‘Death’ trilogy. Meanwhile,
Robert Downey Jr. has been circling a Vertigo
remake, another Hitchcock peak that might
prove perilous to scale.
Should it be remade?
After the sequels, TV prequels and Van Sant’s
curio? Maybe we should we let mother RIP.
KEVIN HARLEY

AWARDS

TF STAR RATING

ROTTEN TOMATOES

0

★★★
★★

41%
ALAMY

$

Even so, Van Sant tried by inserting WTF
surreal shots of clouds, cows and erotica
into murder scenes. He also showed more
flesh in the shower and put the Bates in
masturbates with an onanism episode,
transforming Norman from tragic figure into
an unambiguous creep. For disinterested
audiences and damning critics, this Psycho
was a self-indulgence too far.

104 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

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IS IT JUST ME?

From left: Guillermo del Toro’s
Pinocchio, Wolfwalkers and
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

IS IT JUST ME OR IS THIS THE
GREATEST ERA FOR ANIMATION?

A PPL E T V+, DISNE Y, NE T FLIX , SON Y

For many people,
Disney’s Golden
Era (1937-42)
remains the
apex of cinematic
animation.
TIM COLEMAN
Comprising an
@ F AT S C O L E M A N
almost-unrivalled
quintet of classics - Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo
and perennial tear-jerker Bambi - it’s a
dazzling run that did much to define the
medium for generations. And though
the House of Mouse has since enjoyed
other periods of creative brilliance particularly from 1989 to 1999 (The
Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast,
The Lion King et al) - that early era has
long been the benchmark. Until now.
Over the last few years there has
been an embarrassment of riches.

LAST TIME
SHOULD
SUPERS
BE LESS BUFF?
TOTALFILM.COM

Expanding, redefining and subverting
the form in much the same way that
Snow White’s life-like movements did
in ’37, films such as Spider-Man: Into/
Across the Spider-Verse, Wolfwalkers
and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio have
all advanced animation in different
ways. Firstly, there are the aesthetic
variations: whether it’s cell animation,
CGI, stop-motion or a mix of them
all, the plurality of styles is incredibly
vibrant. But what’s also thrilling is
the variety of voices on show. Rather
than the largely white, patriarchal,
heteronormative world of Uncle Walt,
today’s landscape includes masterpieces
from people of every walk of life.
Some of the most exhilarating work
from the last 10 years has been from
studios such as Laika (Coraline, Kubo
and the Two Strings) and Cartoon Saloon

JONATHAN BEESON
Fully agree with the writer’s point about
female heroes... There are a few instances
where musculature is important (e.g.
She-Hulk) but in most cases it’s more
about titillation than narrative.

OFFICE-OMETER
THE TF STAFF
VERDICT IS IN!

IT’S
JUST YOU

IT’S NOT
JUST YOU

(The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea),
who’ve been quietly reshaping the
landscape in their own image and
bringing culturally specific stories to
the fore. That’s not to say that diversity
wasn’t present before – Japanese giant
Studio Ghibli has a canon of classics
stretching back to the mid-80s
(My Neighbour Totoro, etc) – but the
current accessibility of different types
of animation, and the rate at which
modern masterpieces continue to
be made, is now unparalleled.
So yes, Disney is still an important
force in animation, but as the world
moves on, we’re now arguably in the
greatest era of animation yet, the
perfect convergence of style, form
and content. Or is it just me?
Share your reaction at www.gamesradar.
com/totalfilm or on Facebook and Twitter.

RICHARD STRONG
Superheroes are supposed to be larger
than life, beyond normal as it were.
SLARTIBARTFAST
Everything Everywhere All at Once won

seven Oscars so there is a market for
ordinary people to save the world.
SVEIN JOHNNY FEDJE
We should celebrate striving to
be better, not apathy!

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 105

BUFF

ILM
AL FECTIVE
T
O
T
P
ROS
RET

DEMOLITION
MAN
As Stallone and Snipes’ explosive and surprisingly prophetic action classic turns 30, director
Marco Brambilla turns back the clock with Buff to reflect on a sci-fi with satirical muscle.
WORDS SIMON BLAND

ineties cinema had some wild
predictions for our future but
none feels as eerily resonant as
the one depicted in Demolition Man.
Imagine a crime-free world that lives in fear
of personal insult or social faux pas, where
video conferencing is commonplace and
the few criminals that still exist are hidden
away in cryo-pods to serve their time, like
social-media blocking but in real life.
‘One of the things that makes the movie
so relevant today is a lot of its commentary
about political correctness and how society

ALAMY

N

106 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

has evolved,’ suggests Marco Brambilla, the
filmmaker-turned-artist who helmed this
now-classic sci-fi satire. ‘The exaggeration
that existed back in 1993 is no longer an
exaggeration; I think that’s why people
still connect with it.’
Produced by Die Hard’s Joel Silver,
Demolition Man gave Sylvester Stallone one
of his most successful action films of the
decade. He starred as the brilliantly named
John Spartan, an LAPD supercop and the only
guy hard enough to take down the equally
brilliantly named Simon Phoenix, an eccentric

blond-haired baddie played by Wesley Snipes.
Spartan’s explosive, collateral-damagecausing antics are so wild as to earn him
the nickname of the movie’s title.
When a fiery scuffle goes awry, both are
sentenced and cryogenically frozen in 1996,
only for Phoenix to escape in 2032 in what’s
now San Angeles, a fictional megalopolis
where violent crime has been abolished. With
future cops unable to recapture a dangerous
21st-century criminal, Sandra Bullock’s rookie
Lenina Huxley convinces her superiors to
defrost Spartan to help out. Cue explosions.

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RETROSPECTIVE

Wesley Snipes brings
the action as crime boss
Simon Phoenix

Sandra Bullock as
Lieutenant Lenina Huxley

‘I was both apprehensive and excited,’
remembers Brambilla, casting his mind back
to when he started the film at just 27 years
old. Brambilla cut his teeth in commercials
alongside David Fincher, and Demolition Man
served as his Hollywood calling card and an
opportunity to show what he could do with
a $70m action-movie budget. ‘It was a great
opportunity,’ he tells Buff. ‘At the time, it was
rare to have a young guy be given that kind
of budget. It was a little bit horrifying to deal
with that pressure, but at the same time it
was just filmmaking to me. I wasn’t worried
about politics or anything like that.’
That last element came in handy when
working with Stallone and Snipes, both of
whom were at the height of their powers
in the early 90s. ‘Stallone was incredibly
easy to work with. He loved the fact that he
was in a movie with a guy who had attention
to detail and I was the only director to ask him
to do 14 takes on things,’ laughs Brambilla.
‘When you’re that young, you don’t really
understand how daunting a project like
this can be, you just jump in.
‘Wesley was also fantastic,’ he continues.
‘He’d show up and improvise and do things
that were off the page. We were rewriting his
dialogue based on what he’d done and the
direction his character was taking. It was a
very free-form experience. Before the fight
scenes, we’d play the Rocky and New Jack City
music, and he and Stallone would get into
the mood. It was a really fun shoot.’
That’s not to say it was without its stresses.
In addition to going over schedule, an early
clash on set led to a last-minute cast shuffle.
‘Lori Petty was originally playing [Huxley] but
after the second day of shooting, we realised it

just wasn’t working with Stallone. Luckily, we
saw Sandra two days later and she jumped in
with the most enthusiasm I’ve ever seen,’
recalls Brambilla. ‘She brought this innocent,
goofy sense of humour, which was very much
her own personality. She’s essentially playing
herself in the future.’
Casting aside, Brambilla - now a successful
contemporary artist with works in New York’s
Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim - had
fun crafting his vision of a near future: from
glycerine-filled cryo-prisons (‘[Stallone]
insisted on being nude for the freezing,’ he
chuckles) and high-end Taco Bell restaurants
(‘McDonald’s turned us down,’ he says) to
those mysterious toilet seashells. ‘I wasn’t
expecting people to believe this was actually
the way people would use toilets in the future,’
admits Brambilla on Demolition Man’s bizarre
and never-explained toilet paper alternative.
‘It’s basically a McGuffin and something
that had no answer.’
As Demolition Man turns 30, Brambilla’s
pleased it has endured in unexpected ways:
‘Whenever I work with younger people, it’s
the first thing they mention,’ he smiles.
‘Many moments of technological advancement
came out of 70s pop culture and we’re now
living in that future, and I think it’s the
same with Demolition Man. We’re actually
living in another aspect of that future where
everything has to be sanitised, no one can be
offended and people are very fragile,’ argues
Brambilla. ‘Demolition Man is similar to how
many of these cautionary tales about
technology used to be made.’

DEMOLITION MAN IS AVAILABLE ON DVD,
BLU-RAY AND DIGITAL DOWNLOAD.

Phoenix (left) finds himself
36 years in the future

Bullock, Stallone and
co-star Benjamin Bratt

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 107

THE WORLD’S NUMBER ONE SCI-FI,
FANTASY & HORROR MAGAZINE

NEW
IS S U E

ON SALE
NOW!

Subscribe & save at
magazinesdirect.com/sfx

BUFF

THIS MONTH
Lemora and Messiah of Evil
he 1970s were full of micro-budget,
et,
one-off, oddity horror movies thatt
looked to play the drive-in circuit
and enjoy the kind of success thatt
ng
came to George A. Romero’s Night of the Living
Dead and Bob Kelljan’s Count Yorga, Vampire.
e
In the 90s and noughties, as my love of genre
ne
movies took me ever deeper on a labyrinthine
quest for obscure titles, many of these films
were not available on DVD in the UK, and so I’d
have Amazon packages arriving almost daily..
Two of the greatest treasures I’ve ever
stumbled upon are Messiah of Evil and Lemora:
A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural. Oddly, both
s,
movies were shot by Californian grad students,
both are influenced by H.P. Lovecraft tales
oth
(especially The Shadow over Innsmouth), and both
ht
concern daughters entering dangerous twilight
worlds as they search for missing fathers.
Messiah of Evil was directed by husband-andndwife team Willard Huyck and Gloria
Katz, buddies of George Lucas who
wrote the screenplays for American
Graffiti and Indiana Jones and the
Temple of Doom and directed
infamous comic-book
dud Howard the Duck.
The film favours mood
over plot, as Arletty
(Marianna Hill) travels
to the coastal town of
Point Dume in response to
her father’s increasingly
doom-laden letters. She arrives
to find his house empty and the town all but
deserted. Waves roll, winds whistle, and when
any locals do shuffle into sight, they have the
discombobulated air of ghouls or zombies.
Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural is
Richard Blackburn’s only film as director,
though he would go on to co-write cannibalcom Eating Raoul. Set in the American South
(but shot in California) in the 20s, it sees
teenager Lila (Cheryl Smith) head into the
woods when summoned by her dying father, a
gangster. What she finds is a land decimated by
plague and, like a spider at the centre of its web,
Lemora (Lesley Taplin), a feminist libertine
who presides over a fairy-tale world of warring
vampires and werewolves (yes, decades before
the Underworld and Twilight franchises pitched
fangs v claws). Or perhaps it’s all in Lil’s fevered
imagination? Our heroine was raised by a
baptist preacher (played by Blackburn himself)
and now discovers sexual promise and threat
in her every interaction.

A L A M Y, GE T T Y

T

TOTALFILM.COM

O N E M O R E…
VALERIE AND HER WEEK
OF WONDERS 1970
This Czech New Wave poetic
fantasy blends sex, religion
and vampires.

Editor-at-Large
Jamie Graham unearths
underrated classics…
See this if you liked…
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER 1955
Journeying kids face peril in this Southern gothic
classic. Director Charles Laughton, like Blackburn,
never made another movie.
LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH 1971
Ghosts, vampires and crumbling sanity
in a dark lullaby of hippy horror.
SUSPIRIA 1977
There’s something witchy to Lemora’s vampire,
while Messiah of Evil cribs from Argento’s
earlier giallo movies.
THE COMPANY OF WOLVES 1984
A teenage girl, wolves in woods, sensuality…
Neil Jordan’s lavish fairy tale is film as fugue.

Both films are clunky
and amateurish and harbour
pretensions, but both
are also gorgeously
atmospheric. ‘Nightmares
are like dreams perverted,’
intones Arletty’s voiceover at
the start of Messiah of Evil, and the
somnambulant paranoia that shrouds the
(in)action recalls Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr.
Meanwhile, two sudden assaults – one in a
starkly lit supermarket, one in a spacious
beachside home – are the illogical, frenzied
stuff of giallo movies, and a scene in a deserted
cinema that slowly fills up with ghouls is a
masterclass of suffocating tension. Similarly,
Lemora narcotises viewers with its soft
blue-grey night-time photography, and a tone
that conjures up Val Lewton’s RKO pictures
(Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie) or Charles
Laughton’s Night of the Hunter.
‘People were jeering!’ said Blackburn, years
later, of Lemora’s preview screening, and
Messiah of Evil likewise met with contempt and
indifference. Both are genre masterpieces.
I’m so glad I found them. You will be, too.

JAMIE WILL RETURN NEXT ISSUE…
FOR MORE RECOMMENDATIONS, FOLLOW
@JAMIE_GRAHAM9 ON TWITTER

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 109

BUFF
REEL LIFE

INTERMISSION
A WRITER TAKES PAUSE TO CONSIDER....
The Banshees of Inisherin and male friendship at the movies

JOEL HARLEY
@J O E L H A R L E Y

just don’t like you no more.’ So declared
Brendan Gleeson in last year’s BAFTAwinning fable and Irish Civil War allegory,
The Banshees of Inisherin. A devastatingly
matter-of-fact dismissal, coldly delivered,
and one that sent Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin
Farrell) spiralling into existential crisis.
It was a sequence of events I recalled as a
once-dear friendship of my own fell apart, less
than 12 months after I saw the film. I’m lucky
enough to have cultivated a wide and diverse
group of friends, gathering chums from all
avenues of life, from childhood through to
university and various dead-end jobs. Not a
sporty guy, I bonded with the men I’m closest
to over a mutual love of film, crude comedy,
and, as we mature to a certain age, board-game
nights and conversations about grouting.
Until recently, I had never experienced the
breakdown of a friendship first-hand. Sure,
I had drifted apart from people I used to be
close to (especially as we near middle age and
rightfully prioritise families and mortgages).
This one, formed and sustained over 15-plus
years, was born of a mind-numbing retail job
and the beers which followed one particularly
crushing day in the office. We bonded as we
drew comically veiny dicks on rolls of till paper
(how very Superbad) and bitchily gossiped about
a mildly terrifying co-worker we dubbed ‘the
Penguin’ (so called for his habit of quacking
and leering at women like Danny DeVito in
Batman Returns). ‘Did we just become best
friends?’ we quoted, tongue not entirely in
cheek, as we discovered a shared love of
zombie movies and Peep Show. It was a
friendship that would abide long after we left
the job and waved goodbye to our early 20s.
As Martin McDonagh’s depiction of a
friendship gone sour began with a rejection
in the pub, so our own died with a whimper
rather than a bang. No heated conversation,
no blazing row. But even The Banshees of

I

110 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

‘Male friendship may be
comforting in its apparent
simplicity, but it’s precarious
in what goes unspoken’
Inisherin had its incident in the end.
No lopped-off fingers, no dead donkeys
here – ours crumbled with a disappointing
absence of drama. It was as though we skipped
straight to the beach scene, and that sombre
understanding between former friends.
Things came to a head over one fateful
weekend, a sad situation, by then too late
to rectify. We had slowly been drifting apart
over months and years, quietly becoming
different people without taking each other into
account. Like many a friendship founded on
mutual interests, we always held ours to the
standard of that ultimate male ambition –
the Drama Free Relationship. Feelings never
came into it, although they were certainly
there at some point. We had always been
there for each other in all the ways that
mattered (consoling me during my most
notable break-up; multiple housewarmings;

birthdays, barbecues and house moves). I had
assumed that would always be the case.
As Pádraic struggled to comprehend what
had gone wrong, so I found myself tormented
in the weeks and months that followed. My
own Colm Doherty hadn’t gone so far as to call
me ‘dull’ (not that this hadn’t crossed my
mind), but the cold dissolution of a friendship
had been no less devastating nor confusing.
Even Pádraic got his explanation – I had only
the distinct awareness that one of my dearest
friends didn’t like me no more.
I could push the point: stalk him about
the island (or, in this case, Birmingham);
set fire to his hut; or force a direct
confrontation. But, after so many years
of not talking about anything meaningful,
male stubbornness and habit wouldn’t allow
me to start now. No drama, right to the end.
‘The starting point was to capture the
sadness of a break-up, be it a love break-up
or a friendship one,’ McDonagh said of
Banshees’ central conflict. ‘Being on both
sides of that is an equally horrible position.’
And it’s this message that resonated as
I mourned. We’d passed the point in the
bromance movie where the pals part ways
after a painful falling-out: Jay and Simon’s
furious separation in the Inbetweeners movie;
Dale and Saul storming off in a huff in
Pineapple Express. Except, in this case, there was
no triumphant reunion or grand gesture. I’d
like to believe that there’s still a Catalina Wine
Mixer on the horizon, but the grim ceasefire
between Colm and Pádraic seems more likely.
The male friendship may be comforting
in its apparent simplicity, but it’s precarious
in what goes unspoken. Any relationship
takes work, and we had taken ours for granted.
A friendship cannot survive on Step Brothers
references and dick drawings alone. I should
have said it sooner, and now it’s too late.
I loved you, man.

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INSTANT EXPERT

FOLK HORROR

A L A M Y, BFI, ENT ERTA INMENT, NE T FLIX , SECOND SIGHT, ST UDIOCA N A L , TIGON, UNIV ERSA L

Lore of the land…

UNHOLY TERROR

OUT WITH A LAMB

The phrase ‘folk horror’ was coined
by critic Rod Cooper to describe
Piers Haggard’s The Blood on Satan’s
Claw (1971). The director himself
later adopted the term, although it
didn’t enter the mainstream until
2010, when Mark Gatiss used it
as the descriptor for an entire
subgenre. Discussing key works
of folk horror, Gatiss collectively
dubbed Haggard’s film,
Witchfinder General (1968) and
The Wicker Man (1973) as
‘the unholy trinity’.

Two tropes readily associated with
the subgenre are human sacrifice
and downbeat endings - thanks
in no small part to Sergeant
Howie’s fiery demise at the end
of The Wicker Man, which feels
both shocking and inevitable.
The protagonist isn’t always
destined for doom, though:
The Witch (2015) and Midsommar
(2019) both conclude with
their abused heroines on the
up as their friends/relatives
meet grisly fates.

OCCULT MOVIES

FIELDS OF WHEATLEY

Lost in a Swedish forest,
four friends stumble across a
monster-worshipping tribe in
The Ritual (2017); a man attempts
to rescue his sister from a sinister
community in Apostle (2018); and
there’s necromancy afoot as
Sean Bean searches for a plague
cure in Black Death (2010)…
A key preoccupation of folk
horror is occult or pagan belief
systems; over and over again,
characters will eschew
conventional religion in favour
of ancient gods, arcane ritual
and the supernatural.

If anyone is a modern keeper of
folk horror it’s Ben Wheatley,
whose 2011 breakout Kill List
sees hitmen stray into the orbit
of deadly cultists. Though
Wheatley’s CV has remained
eclectic (from Doctor Who to
Rebecca to Meg 2: The Trench),
he’s made vivid returns to the
subgenre with the psychedelic
A Field in England (2013) and
pandemic chiller In the Earth
(2021). ‘I’ve always been wary
of the woods,’ he says.
‘They can kill you…’

IN A LONELY PLACE
‘What if the landscape was not only alive, but sentient?’ asks director Mark
Jenkin, whose Enys Men (2022) explores the fascination of the Cornish
standing stones. Jenkin’s question resonates across folk horror, so much of
which is concerned with the rural and the isolated. Examples range from
1977 ITV fantasy drama Children of the Stones (a precursor of sorts to Enys
Men) and The Wicker Man (remote Scottish island) to 2022’s Men (English
village where everyone looks like Rory Kinnear).

JOEL HARLEY

KEY MOVIES

WITCHFINDER GENERAL 1968

THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW

THE WICKER MAN 1973

★★★★★

1971

★★★★★

★★★★★

Of all Vincent Price’s villains, none is
more memorably sadistic than his
titular witch-hunter in Michael Reeves’
English Civil War shocker.

★★★★★

Prudish plod takes on heathen hordes
(led by a messianic Christopher Lee)
in a genre-defining classic, where
everything leads up to that reveal.

Ignorant Americans go on holiday by
mistake in Ari Aster’s soul-battering
solstice epic. Anchored by Florence
Pugh’s traumatised tour de force.

TOTALFILM.COM

Satanic panic consumes a 17th-century
community when their kids become
devil worshippers. Eerily gorgeous.

MIDSOMMAR 2019

NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 111

H ARV ES AY
YOU

Dialogue

.COM
LFILM WS
T O TA S • R E V I E W S
E
O
VIDE ILERS • N
• TRA

Mail, rants, theories etc.

twitter.com/totalfilm

★ STAR LETTER
I’ve developed a coping mechanism for
when I’m feeling anxious during tense
action scenes in the cinema. In such
situations I find it useful to hum a cheery
ditty. Some examples: during Top Gun:
Maverick’s finale, I soothingly broke into,
‘Those magnificent men in their flying
machines, they go up tiddly up up, they
go down tiddly down down.’ For Meg 2’s
jet-ski frenzy it was, ‘Baby shark
doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo’, and for
Oppenheimer’s atomic-test tension I went
with Lulu’s ‘Boom-bang-a-bang…’
Unfortunately, I have had a few strange
glances from others in the audience. Do
you think studios could perhaps put on
special showings with these calming
tunes as part of the soundtrack? Or
include a tension-releasing five-minute
interval to let me go for a short walk?
WAVEY DAVEY, CALVERLEY
We’ll certainly ask our
Hollywood pals. Although
we’re still waiting for them
to get back to us over
whether they might
consider putting mid/end-credit
stings at the start of films, or getting
someone with lots of cred (Denzel
Washington, say) to record little intros
telling us honestly whether said stings
are worth staying for. Wavey and
everyone with a letter printed here will
receive a copy of classic spooker The
Others, out now on 4K UHD, BD and
DVD via StudioCanal. Didn’t send an
address? Email it! Or you can fog-get it!

PHYSICAL THERAPY
In response to Kevin’s letter on physical
media [TF 342], I do have the same
concerns about film and television
becoming streaming-only. When I enjoy
a film, I like to have it on DVD for that
feeling of ownership; I also like knowing
that I won’t have to scramble through
different streaming services and paywalls

112 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

facebook.com totalfilm

totalfilm@futurenet.com

‘I can see my house
from here!’

@Zvez17
‘If Robert Pattinson can
manage Bruce [Wayne] and
James’ filming schedules
and hairstyles, he would
be the best [new Bond].’
to watch it. I’m in the Gen Z/millennial
bracket, but after a childhood building
up my film collection, I’d hate not to
be able to continue it in the future.
SHARNA YOUNG, VIA EMAIL
The future of physical media may be
uncertain, but for now at least we
have labels like Arrow, BFI, Indicator,
StudioCanal and more still flying
the flag - often with super-deluxe
packages where a flag is just about the
only thing not included. (We still have
our Kiki’s Delivery Service tea towel,
even if it would take witchcraft to
return it to its original pristine state).

EVERYDAY HEROES
Is anyone else out there fed up with the
constant roll-out of Marvel/DC films?

WHAT YOU
MISSED ON
THE POD
LAST MONTH

The trouble with most of these movies
is that the superhero is generally either
some top scientist (Bruce Banner, Hank
Pym, Reed Richards) or unbelievably
wealthy (Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne).
I’d love it if, just once, studios gave us
a superhero with an ordinary job, whose
ordinary life is the main focus of the
film rather than the usual CGI-laden,
pyrotechnic-filled slug-fests.
STEPHEN MCCARTHY, GLASGOW

An exclusive
chat with The
Creator director
Gareth Edwards;
Batman
memories;
the latest Bond
candidates;
Fincher’s best
movies ranked;
and multiple
nun puns. Plus
spoiler-free
reviews and
more, every
week!

That does sound refreshing; it is
sometimes hard for audiences to
relate to characters that are, to quote
Florence Pugh in Black Widow, gods
from space (not that TF readers are
anything less than divine). Maybe we
could get an Iron Man reboot where,
instead of opening his briefcase to

REFLECTIVE INTEREST CURVE™
THRILLED
ENTERTAINED
FLIPPIN’ ECK!
BAD TIMES
RUNNING TIME

Venice Film
Festival:
biopics,
hitmen
WEEK 1

Toronto Film
Festival: more
hitmen,
herons, dicks
WEEK 2

London Film Harvest Festival:
Festival: bikers,
none of the
volcanoes,
above,
h*t*m*n
thankfully
WEEK 3

DEADLINE

SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

SCOT T HA LES, PA R A MOUNT, STUDIOCA NA L , WA R NER BROS.

totalfilm.com

GROUP EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
JANE CROWTHER
jane.crowther@futurenet.com

@janevgcrowther
DEPUTY EDITOR MATT MAYTUM

OFFICE SPACED

matt.maytum@futurenet.com @mattmaytum
REVIEWS EDITOR MATTHEW LEYLAND

matthew.leyland@futurenet.com @totalfilm_mattl
NEWS EDITOR JORDAN FARLEY

CHATTER ‘GEMS’ OVERHEARD IN THE TOTAL FILM OFFICE THIS MONTH…

jordan.farley@futurenet.com @JordanFarley
ART EDITOR MIKE BRENNAN

‘I can’t bear the heat… I just close all the curtains
and watch miserable films.’ * ‘I’m going to
start using “You dope!” a lot more in my
day-to-day and working life. You dope!’
reveal a Mark Umpteenth mega-suit,
there’s a battered spiral notebook,
a packet of expired Nurofen and
his 11am banana.

SACRED PROFANITY
Re: last month’s letter about the use of
profanity in cinema [from David Patrick
Moore, TF 342]. My mum used to say that
the use of swear words showed a person
to have an inadequate vocabulary. Sorry,
Mum, but their effectiveness on the big
screen can’t be denied, starting with
movies from her day, like Rhett Butler
not giving a damn or 1970’s M*A*S*H
dropping the first F-bomb heard in
a mainstream US movie. Many great
movies have a lot of cussing: Casino,
Uncut Gems, The Wolf of Wall Street… And
I’m not really sure some classic movie
quotes would have the same power if
you cleaned them up: ‘Yippee-ki-yay,
mother-fudge-knockers!’; ‘Go flopperdoodle yourself, San Diego’; ‘How the
fiddlesticks am I funny? What’s so
frying-fishcake funny about me?’
Darnation, they just don’t quite
sound the same!
JACK HARGREAVES, ADDINGHAM

Goodfellas uses the F-word
300 times in 146 minutes
– can you quote them all?

Bryan Stahl
‘I’m just going to say it… I love
[Ahsoka] but Thrawn is one of
the most ridiculous-looking
villains I’ve ever seen. I just
can’t take him seriously.’
True enough, although taking the
opposite approach - injecting filth
into innocuous quotes - feels equally
wrong: ‘Oh crap, Auntie Em, there’s
no chuffing place like home’;
‘Houston, we have one giant arseboil of a problem’; ‘That’ll do, pig.
That’ll do. FFS’; ‘Rose-bleedin’-bud.’

FILM GROUP
Editor (SFX) Darren Scott Art Editor Jonathan Coates
Deputy Editor Ian Berriman Production Editor Ed Ricketts

CONTRIBUTORS
Editor-at-Large Jamie Graham
Art Catherine Kirkpatrick
Prepress and cover manipulation Gary Stuckey
Hollywood Correspondent Adam Tanswell
Contributing Editors Kevin Harley, Leila Latif, James Mottram, Neil Smith, Paul Bradshaw
Contributors Simon Bland, Tim Coleman, Tom Dawson, Matt Glasby, Joel Harley,
Simon Kinnear, Matt Looker, Libby Plummer, Rafa Sales Ross, Chris Schilling,
Kate Stables, Gabriel Tate, Kim Taylor-Foster, Anton van Beek
Entertainment Editor, Gamesradar+ Emily Murray
Senior Entertainment Writer, Gamesradar+ Bradley Russell
Senior Entertainment Writer, Gamesradar+ Lauren Milici
Entertainment Writer, Gamesradar+ Molly Edwards
Entertainment Writer, GamesRadar+ Fay Watson
Photography Alamy, CameraPress, ontour, Getty, Shutterstock,
Thanks to Rhian Drinkwater, Ian Farrington, Heather Seabrook,
Matt Yates (Production), Nick Chen, Richard Jordan
Cover image Scott Council

ADVERTISING
Media packs are available on request. Please contact Chris Mitchell.
Commercial Director Clare Dove clare.dove@futurenet.com
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Account Manager, Gaming & Film Nick Hayes nick.hayes@futurenet.com

INTERNATIONAL LICENSING
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Head of Print Licensing Rachel Shaw

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MARKETING AND CIRCULATION
Global Trade Marketing Director Victoria Chappell
Head of Subscriptions Sharon Todd
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GOLDEN TICKET
In response to your game of ‘Who has
the oldest ticket stub?’ [Dialogue, TF
341], I would like to submit my almost
35-year-old ticket for Who Framed Roger
Rabbit. I used to keep all my ticket
stubs back in the day, as it was a great
reminder of all the films I had seen over
the years. Paperless tickets are now the
norm and better for the environment.
But who knows, maybe in years to come
you could suggest a game of ‘Who
has the oldest virtual ticket?’
SCOTT HALES, HORNCHURCH
Yes, imagine Dialogue-bot asking
if anyone remembers QR codes…
Thanks for throwing down the
old-stub gauntlet, Scott; our eyes
telescoped Looney Tunes-style when
we saw the ticket price: £1 actual 50!
That would barely buy you the dust
off a cheesy nacho in today’s world.

YOU CAN ALSO WRITE TO Total Film, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace,
London, W2 6JR (postal addresses will be used for the sole
purpose of sending out prizes)
TOTALFILM.COM

mike.brennan@futurenet.com @mike_brennan01

PRINT, PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION
Production Manager Frances Twentyman
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Production Project Manager Clare Scott
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Distributed by Marketforce, 2nd Floor, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HU.
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MANAGEMENT
Managing Director, TV & Film Matthew Pierce
Content Director, Games & Film Daniel Dawkins
Head of Art & Design Rodney Dive
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ISSN Total Film 1366-3135
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25,779 (Jan-Dec 2022)
18,019 Print
7,760 Digital

60 SECOND
SCREENPLAY

ILER
SPOERT!
AL

TF SAVES YOU THE COST OF A MOVIE EVERY MONTH. THIS ISSUE: MEG 2: THE TRENCH…
WORDS MATT LOOKER

FADE IN:

escapes to the surface, but so do some Megs,
e
sea dinosaurs and a giant octopus.
s

EXT: LAND BEFORE TIME
A Megalodon eats a T-rex to remind us that
giant sharks are dangerous. Sixty-five million
years later, rescue diver turned eco-warrior
JASON STATHAM sneaks aboard a freighter.

JASON STATHAM
Great. Now I have to kill all the deadly sea
monsters by riding a jet-ski around and
stabbing them all with harpoons strapped
to bombs. It’s the only possible way.

JASON STATHAM
You pillocks are illegally dumping radioactive
waste in the sea. I’m here to stop you because
I care about the planet and my fellow man.

EXT: FUN ISLAND
There are lots of people partying on a nearby
island with an incredibly unimaginative
name. Several of them die in horrific yet
admittedly entertaining ways.

JASON beats the crew to a pulp. He then dives
into the sea, now contaminated with toxic
waste, to get rescued by his pal CLIFF CURTIS.

INT: OCEANIC INSTITUTE, CHINA
JASON STATHAM’s previous love interest
is dead, but he is raising her teenage daughter
SOPHIA CAI with the help of her uncle WU JING.
Mostly all underwater.
WU JING
Thanks to my rich and suspicious investor
SIENNA GUILLORY, we have an actual Megalodon
in captivity. You know, just like the one that
endlessly terrorised my dead sister!
SOPHIA CAI
I’d love to dive with you one day to see the Meg up
close and risk death or grievous injury. I’m 100%
sure it’s what mum would have wanted.
WU JING goes for a swim with the Meg. He uses
a clicker pen to train the humongous predator
not to eat him. It nearly eats him anyway.
WU JING
Y’see? It’s all under control. I easily survived that
near-fatal predicament I placed myself in.
INT: MARINE RESEARCH CENTRE
JASON and co dive to the Mariana Trench in tiny
subs and find several Megs as well as a mysterious
base. A sudden explosion forces them to crash.

SOPHIA CAI
Hi everyone! By the way, I stowed aboard just for
fun. Hope that’s OK.
JASON STATHAM
Well, we have no power or air. The only way to
survive is to wear special suits and walk to that
mysterious base. What could possibly go wrong?
Several people die in horrific ways. Their suits
start running out of oxygen and, at one point,
JASON STATHAM has an actual fist fight with
a sea dinosaur.
JASON STATHAM
Phew! We made it! Well, some of us did, anyway.
But at least we’re all safe now.
INT: UNDERWATER BASE
Someone’s head explodes. JASON and co discover
that the base is mining rare valuable materials.
Suddenly TRAITOR SKYLER SAMUELS – from
back at HQ – calls them up.
TRAITOR SKYLER SAMUELS
Ah-ha! I’m actually working for the rich investor
SIENNA GUILLORY! I now have to kill you,
even though we could probably just do all
of this legally anyway.

114 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

JASON STATHAM
Wow, that was sheer incomprehensible chaos
for a really, really long time. I take it all the bad
guys were killed? Good.
EXT: THE BEACH
JASON STATHAM and all his friends enjoy beers,
presumably all surrounded by human bodies.
WU JING
Well, I think we all had that under control.
Hahahahaha!
Everyone joins in with the laughter.
SOPHIA CAI
Guys, a LOT of people just died. Including some
of our own close friends and colleagues.
EVERYONE
What? [PAUSE] Hahahahaha…
FIN

She floods the base, but JASON STATHAM just
swims outside and opens the door. The group

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People die in the sea, on land and even in a
helicopter. Eventually, JASON STATHAM
stabs the giant octopus with a bomb and kills
the alpha Meg with a rotor blade.

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CLIFF CURTIS
Now we’ve got the film’s environmental message
out of the way, let’s get on with the bloodlust!

CLIFF CURTIS
Everyone get out of the water!
Get yourselves onto dry land – you’ll
definitely be safe there!

See page 32 for details

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9000

9023