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Total Film|November 2024TOTAL RECALLFirst issue of Total Film bought:Godzilla/Maria Pitillo (TF 19, August 1998). First issue worked on: Got in the Prince of Persia issue (TF 165, April 2010), with a DVD review of Planet Hulk. Favourite Total Film memory? Visiting the set of Tenet to watch a plane engine blow-up. Close second, watching Avengers assemble on the Infinity War set. Best interview experience: One of seven with Christopher Nolan, the pinnacle probably being in the edit suite on Oppenheimer. Worst interview experience: The monosyllabic Bob Hoskins made my first-ever set visit a challenge. The review I got wrong: Three stars for War for the Planet of the Apes was a bit harsh. Favourite film of Total Film's lifetime?The Dark Knight. First issue of Total Film bought:Minority Report (TF 67, August 2002). First…7 min
Total Film|November 2024DOG DAYSTEASERSFIRST WORD It was when writer/director Marielle Heller showed the screenplay of Nightbitch to her husband and her (male) cinematographer Brandon Trost that she stumbled upon a unique premise: 'It's a comedy for women and a horror movie for men,' she tells Teasers. While Heller sees it as more of a primary/secondary parent divide, 'it wasn't until we started showing the movie to people that I started to realise how gendered the response may be… Actually talking about the interior lives of women, and what happens to our bodies as we age – it seems like such a taboo subject matter for men.' Adapted from the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch tells the story of a stay-at-home mother (Amy Adams) driven to despair by the banality of rearing a…2 min
Total Film|November 2024NEXT BIG THINGTEASERS Culture is a universal language, so you can speak without words,' states Mark Eydelshteyn, an actor who's broken through more than just linguistic barriers. The chatty 22-year-old Russian is the star of Sean Baker's Cannes-winning Anora, playing Ivan, the spoilt son of an oligarch, opposite Mikey Madison's Brooklyn pole dancer. Already dubbed the 'Russian Timothée Chalamet', it won't take long before we're calling him by his name… How did you get on with Sean Baker when you first met? We had a connection and it's not a connection on the level of ideas. It's connection on an emotional level. I realised that he can understand my sense of humour; I can understand his. And for me, it's the most important thing - communication between people. How did you and…2 min
Total Film|November 2024MONSTER'S KINKThe big C' is a euphemism for cancer, often used to paint a less scary picture of the disease for children. In writer/director Caroline Lindy's debut feature Your Monster, cancer and repressed childhood memories are key plot points, though they are intertwined with two other crucial Cs: catharsis and… closets. Having undergone cancer treatment, actor Laura (Melissa Barrera) recovers at home, while (barely) coping with the fallout of her playwright boyfriend (Edmund Donovan) dumping her while she was in hospital. Indulging in creature comforts, she's soon faced with a creature discomfort: emerging from her closet is a furry, snarky humanoid monster (Tommy Dewey), who's lived with Laura in secret all these years, but now wants the flat to himself. Their reluctant partnership sees 'Monster' help Laura prepare for her ex's…2 min
Total Film|November 2024CAT AND MOUSEWhen producer Brian Kirk was approached to helm a reimagining of Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal (which also became an Edward Fox-led film in 1973), he couldn't say no. Sent the script for the pilot by Top Boy writer Ronan Bennett, Kirk was immediately on board. 'He'd kept all the pleasures of the original. There's a great sense of tension released through set-pieces. There's real intimacy and scale, but also an entertainment value, that wish fulfilment of the espionage genre.' The titular assassin, described by the producer as a 'chameleon', is played in this series by Eddie Redmayne. The Fantastic Beasts actor is continuing a run of villainous characters after his memorable turn in 2022's The Good Nurse, and he proves here that he can tackle…2 min
Total Film|November 2024INFECTION CONTROL1 IT'S INSPIRED BY GEORGE A. ROMERO Ben Wheatley's series begins with the accidental release of a mysterious virus - one that just so happens to turn the elderly population of the fictional town of Dambury violent with a hunger for flesh. 'It's got the DNA of classic zombie stuff like Dawn of the Dead, but it's also got the DNA of disaster movies of the 70s,' the director says, though he's quick to point out that there aren't actual zombies to be found here. 'No one's dead, so it's more like Romero's The Crazies.' 2 IT WAS DEVELOPED PRE-PANDEMIC A virus that disproportionately affects the elderly? Where have we heard that before? Strangely, Wheatley began work on the show in 2019, before COVID-19 entered the public consciousness. 'What was…2 min
Total Film|November 2024TOTAL FILM IN NUMBERS100 MOST COVERS FOR ONE ISSUE (TF 265) 13 NON-HUMAN COVER STARS MOST POPULAR COVER CHARACTER JAMES BOND (13, PLUS 21 COVERS ON ISSUE 139) £1 COVER PRICE OF ISSUE 1 (INTRODUCTORY OFFER: REGULAR PRICE £2.50) 27 YEARS SINCE THE FIRST ISSUE (FEBRUARY 1997) 20 PAGES FOR OUR BIGGEST-EVER COVER FEATURE, FOR DUNE (2021) 21 BEST PICTURE NOMINEES FEATURED ON THE COVER OF TOTAL FILM MOST FREQUENT COVER STARS TOM CRUISE 15 DANIEL CRAIG 10 CHRIS HEMSWORTH 10 ROBERT DOWNEY JR. 9 SCARLETT JOHANSSON 9 JOHNNY DEPP 8 CHRIS EVANS 8 MATT DAMON 7 HUGH JACKMAN 7 DWAYNE JOHNSON 7 ANGELINA JOLIE 7 BRUCE WILLIS 7 CHRISTIAN BALE 6 JENNIFER LAWRENCE 6 KEANU REEVES 6 5 DIRECTORS ON THE COVER…1 min
Total Film|November 2024SHORT CUTSHERE SHE COMES Samara Weaving is confirmed to be returning for a sequel to Ready or Not: 'I'm all in. I think we're all in. I don't know if we've had our blood handshake, but pretty much,' she said of the film. MAKING HISTORY Baz Luhrmann's next film is set to be about Joan of Arc. Titled Jehanne d'Arc, it's been described as 'the ultimate teenage-girl coming-of-age story, set in the Hundred Years' War'. We look forward to hearing who'll be cast. GROWING ENSEMBLE Colman Domingo is set to join Steven Spielberg's next event film. So far it's untitled, but we know the cast also includes Emily Blunt, Colin Firth and Eve Hewson, and is due for release in May 2026. MEGA CONFIDENCE Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis has been divisive…1 min
Total Film|November 2024BACK WITH A VENGEANCECOVER STORYGLADIATOR II Ridley Scott is not a filmmaker to repeat himself. It's a trait that's all the more remarkable when you consider how prolific he's been over the nearly five decades since his feature debut, 1977's The Duellists. Alien prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant are the only times he's gone back to the same world, and those films are radical departures from the original. While Scott has expressed disappointment at not being able to direct the first sequels to Alien and Blade Runner, there wasn't a chance he was going to miss out on Gladiator II, and a return to the amphitheatres of imperial Rome. 'I thought, “You know, I'm not going to let this go…”' Scott tells Total Film, speaking from his LA home a couple of months…16 min
Total Film|November 2024BORN TO BE WILDIn Brothers, the new film by director Max Barbakow (Palm Springs), Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage play twins raised by Glenn Close's career-criminal mom. Growing up, the brothers' heists become increasingly risky (and profitable) until Dinklage's Jady is caught and lands a five-year stretch. Brolin's Moke escapes and goes straight. We learn all this in a whistle-stop prologue. The main action kicks off as Jady is released from clink to find Moke living a suburban life, his first child about to be born. Only Jady has one last job he has to do if he's to get out from under the thumb of Brendan Fraser's corrupt prison guard, Farful. And it's a two-man job… Having Brolin and Dinklage play twins might make Brothers sound like goofy Schwarzenegger/DeVito vehicle Twins, but…13 min
Total Film|November 2024SICKY SITUATIONMAKING OFPADDINGTON IN PERU Paddington and London go together like… well, marmalade and sandwiches. Down at County Hall, next to the London Eye, The Paddington Bear Experience invites visitors to step inside 32 Windsor Gardens, travel to Peru and participate in an interactive street party. On the busy roads outside, a Paddington Afternoon Tea Bus Tour offers a view of the city's landmarks from inside a double-decker Routemaster. (Just the ticket when it's coming down in stair rods.) And at Paddington station itself, a bronze of the bear and his 'Wanted on Voyage'-labelled suitcase is a lasting memorial to its indelible connection with the late Michael Bond's creation. Today, though, Total Film is in another corner of the English capital that, in its way, is just as integral to Paddington's…11 min
Total Film|November 2024'I WAS, AND AM STILL, SURPRISED BY EVERY OPPORTUNITY. I'VE BEEN CONTINUOUS AND FEEL AT THE TOP OF MY FORM' JEFF GOLDBLUMJeff Goldblum, in person, is pretty much exactly what you expect from viewing Jeff Goldblum, the actor. Like The Fly's Seth Brundle and Jurassic Park's Dr. Ian Malcolm, he's all firing synapses and tumbling words that are irregularly separated by peculiar punctuation: staccato, syncopated, singular. His brain is like a brilliant computer that's not quite wired correctly. Eccentric and witty, Goldblum is also impossible to keep on track, his answers liable to take hard left turns or plunge down rabbit holes. It begins the moment he pops up on Zoom, dressed smartly in a cream silk shirt and wide brown tie while perched in front of a towering painting of a military man on a horse. It's mid-September and he's in Florence, Italy, where his jazz band Jeff Goldblum and…19 min
Total Film|November 2024SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY 12AOUT 1 NOVEMBER CINEMAS SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED SUPERMAN 1978 You'll believe a man can fly, thanks not only to FX wizardry but to Reeve's sheer commitment. McQUEEN 2018 Bonhôte and Ettedgui's earlier doc takes on another big character: fashion maven Alexander McQueen. ROBIN'S WISH 2020 Reeve's great friend Robin Williams takes centre stage in this intimate life portrait. For more reviews visit gamesradar.com/totalfilm We need all the heroes we can get,' says Christopher Reeve near the start of Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui's documentary, a film about a man who truly redefined heroism. Reeve, a handsome New York-born theatre actor, became a global superstar when he took the lead as the Man of Steel and his alter ego Clark Kent in Richard Donner's Superman in 1978. But it…3 min
Total Film|November 2024TRANSFORMERS ONE PGOUT 11 OCTOBER CINEMAS Hasbro's robo-chameleons get a shiny new upgrade in Josh Cooley's film, a CG-animated prequel that reignites the spark that's so often been conspicuously absent from the live-action Transformers flicks. Doing away with humans helps. Instead, Cooley's (Toy Story 4) Cybertron-set adventure focuses on the hitherto-untold origin stories of the heroic Optimus Prime and his nemesis Megatron. Introduced to us as lowly mining bots Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), the dynamic duo start off as friends who gain a chance to elevate their station when their overlord Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm) holds a (The Wrong Trousers-esque) road race. The frenzy that ensues makes for an exhilarating Ready Player One-like set-piece – albeit one that leaves Pax and 'D' forced to seek another route…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE CRIME IS MINE TBCOUT 18 OCTOBER CINEMAS The third in a loose trilogy of female-centric period farces (see also 2002's 8 Women and 2010's Potiche), writer/director François Ozon's latest is a lightly diverting adap of 1934 French play Mon Crime, tailored to the #MeToo era. The plot focuses on Madeleine (Rosalie's Nadia Tereszkiewicz), a penniless Parisian actor who is accused of murdering a predatory theatre producer. Briskly paced and awash with visual and verbal references to other films and plays, it's buoyed along by a fine ensemble cast, including Rebecca Marder, Dany Boon, and Isabelle Huppert as a formidable silent-movie diva.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024IN RESTLESS DREAMS: THE MUSIC OF PAUL SIMON 12OUT 13 OCTOBER CINEMAS 28 OCTOBER DVD, BD, DIGITAL Moving back and forth through the years, Alex Gibney's (Taxi to the Dark Side) documentary is an expansive portrait of one of the all-time musical greats. Through a mixture of interview and archive, it covers everything from Simon's first collab with Art Garfunkel, to the recording of his 2023 solo album Seven Psalms, keeping the creative process front and centre. The main draw, of course, is the chance to hear different versions of Simon's ageless songs – so beautiful they still stop you in your tracks, 60 years on.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024A SUDDEN GLIMPSE TO DEEPER THINGS TBCOUT 18 OCTOBER CINEMAS 'The story of the brain of a forgotten visionary': that's how Mark Cousins (The Story of Film) pitches his latest cine-essay, a lyrical tribute to Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, who died aged 91 in 2004. Two factors are offered as keys to the artist's singular vision: her synaesthesia (which meant she associated numbers and letters with colours), and a trip to the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland, where she had an artistic and spiritual epiphany. A lengthy slideshow of Barns-Graham's paintings gives a vivid sense of how she saw the world anew.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024ANORA 18SCREEN OUT 1 NOVEMBER CINEMAS Writer/director Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Red Rocket) takes another walk on the wild side with this no-holds-barred comedy-drama, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Anora (Mikey Madison), or Ani as she prefers to be called, is a Brooklyn lap dancer who gets embroiled with Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the brattish son of an oligarch who's partying like there's no tomorrow before he has to return to Russia. Ivan hires Ani to be his 'girlfriend' for the week; they get on famously and he proposes, albeit partly so he can stay in the States. Hopping over to Vegas, the pair get married, but as soon as Ivan's parents find out, trouble erupts. Enter Ivan's dad's fixer Toros (Karren Karagulian) and two…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE RUBBER-KEYED WONDER TBCOUT 18 OCTOBER CINEMAS First available in the UK in 1982, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum brought home-computing to the masses for the first time. Sir Clive Sinclair's revolutionary machine is lovingly deconstructed by documentary-maker Anthony Caulfield, who rigorously examines its creation, success and legacy. Original designers and developers offer insights into the Spectrum's rise to low-cost prominence, while celebrity aficionados reminisce about early gaming experiences. A film that's endearingly niche, but accessible enough to appeal to more than just 80s nostalgists.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE LIFE AND DEATHS OF CHRISTOPHER LEE TBCOUT 24 OCTOBER SKY ARTS Former Nazi hunter, Charlemagne descendant, definitive Dracula and all-around screen legend Christopher Lee is lovingly profiled in this biographical doc. Employing an innovative blend of traditional and experimental animation styles alongside the expected talking heads and archive interviews, director Jon Spira (Star Wars doc Elstree 1976) recounts Lee's journey in what he imagines to be the late actor's own words. With Peter Serafinowicz delivering a booming vocal impression of Lee, the mighty thespian is brought back to life in marionette form to narrate a whistlestop tour of his life… and many cinematic deaths. The star would probably appreciate how much the film glosses over his Hammer work (1958's Dracula, et al), capturing the sense of frustration he felt at being typecast. In one of the…1 min
Total Film|November 2024NEVER LET GO 15OUT NOW CINEMAS Halle Berry is Momma, a single parent who keeps her two young sons in check with petrifying stories about a soul-sucking entity that's taken over the world beyond their isolated cabin home. But could the grisly scares in this psycho-thriller-slash-fairy-tale actually be figments of her imagination? Berry immerses herself in the role, but it's young actors Anthony B. Jenkins and Percy Daggs IV who shine brightest in Alexandre Aja's (Crawl) film, a study of fear and paranoia whose iron-hold on the attention can withstand the odd dip into implausibility.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024HARDER THAN THE ROCK 12ASCREEN OUT NOW CINEMAS Founded by Jamaican immigrants in a London bus shelter, Cimarons laid the foundations for the reggae scene in 70s Britain. The origin-story portion of Mark Warmington's documentary captures the sense of musical revolution the band inspired; in the present, the director catches up with the surviving members as they stage a final performance in the wake of drummer Maurice Ellis' death. Featuring epochal tunes and recollections that are nothing short of rhapsodical, it's a vibrant, poignant tribute to Cimarons' legacy and influence.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D'ETAT TBCOUT 15 NOVEMBER CINEMAS Meticulously researched, Johan Grimonprez's rigorous doc unpicks events following the forming of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960. He shows how, as Western powers sought to disrupt Congolese independence, the US used a Louis Armstrong tour to cover the murder of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Splicing archive materials, literary quotes and more, Soundtrack can seem intimidating. But as politics and protest merge, Grimonprez uses jazz rhythms and tight editing to lend his dispatch from Cold War-era history a sense of immediacy.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024MAYA AND THE WAVE TBCOUT NOW CINEMAS An absorbing portrait of Maya Gabeira, a Brazilian big-wave surfer who has battled sexist attitudes to become a world champion in her hitherto male-dominated sport. Shot over a decade, Stephanie Johnes' doc incorporates interviews with Gabeira's family, friends and colleagues, alongside remarkable footage of her attempts to break surfing records in Portugal. It's a study of determination, focus and obsession in the face of mortal danger, in which Gabeira openly admits that her fear of riding such mammoth waves is what makes the challenge so exhilarating.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024CHILDREN OF THE CULT TBCOUT NOW CINEMAS Aiming to 'uncover the truth that [Netflix series] Wild Wild Country failed to tell', Maroesja Perizonius' powerful doc reveals the 70s/80s systemic sexual abuse of children who lived in international communes following the teachings of guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. A child of the communes herself, Perizonius travels to the UK, US and Switzerland, interviewing fellow female survivors who testify to the assaults inflicted by adult cult members under the guise of 'free love'. Male perpetrators are tracked down but express no real remorse in a film both dauntless and distressing.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024WATERSHIP DOWN PGSCREEN 1978 OUT 25 OCTOBER CINEMAS 11 NOVEMBER 4K UHD, BD EXTRAS Featurettes, Shorts, Gallery, Poster, Postcards, Book Two years on from having its original U certificate upgraded to a PG, Martin Rosen's adap of Richard Adams' novel returns to cinemas in a new 4K restoration to harrow and traumatise a fresh generation of unsuspecting viewers. Almost half a century has passed since this story of plucky rabbits seeking a utopia first hit the screen. Yet its hard-hitting images of bunnies being suffocated, snared and mutilated have lost little of their intensity in the interim. That most of its voice actors have now gone to the great hutch in the sky, meanwhile, lends a plaintive layer of poignancy to a film whose protagonists are never far away from 'The Black…1 min
Total Film|November 2024NIKITA 151990 OUT NOW 4K UHD EXTRAS Making of, Featurettes Oft-copied (even by the director himself) but never bettered, Luc Besson's breakout hit about a teenage felon transformed into a government assassin has now been treated to a killer 4K upgrade. The breathtaking restoration not only looks sharper than an executioner's blade, but also brings out the best in the richly saturated colour palette. Extras include a bonus Blu-ray platter housing new interviews with leading lady Anne Parillaud, restoration supervisor André Labbouz and others - although Besson only appears in the set's vintage features.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE HITCHER 151986 OUT NOW 4K UHD, BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Shorts, Podcast, Featurettes, Books, Art cards An elemental Rutger Hauer is at his most terrifying as the titular hiker – a cross between the Terminator and Bruce the shark, wrapped up in a supremely cool trench coat. Caught in his path, young Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) barely stands a chance, up against an unknowable tormentor who's only in it for the thrill of the chase. Robert Harmon directs from Eric Red's screenplay, amping up the explosive action and tense interplay between the leads. Restored in 4K, its intimidating desert vistas shimmer with menace.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE/THE SEVENTH VICTIM 121943 OUT 14 OCTOBER 4K UHD, BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Documentary, Featurette, Essays Ailing after the financial flops of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, RKO shipped in David O. Selznick's story editor Val Lewton to head up a unit dedicated to horror B-movies. RKO foisted tacky titles upon him (Cat People, The Leopard Man, etc), but what they got back were sophisticated pictures built on shadows, suggestion and psychosexual tension. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, I Walked with a Zombie transposes Jane Eyre to the tropics. A young nurse (Frances Dee) caring for a comatose woman on a Caribbean island falls for her husband (Tom Conway) as voodoo drums throb, sugarcane sways in moonlight and the dead walk. Mark Robson's The Seventh Victim centres on another journeying young woman,…1 min
Total Film|November 2024FRESH SPINSBEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE The Banana Boat Song is joined by the frankly bananas MacArthur Park for this cheeringly scattershot soundtrack collection. If indie-rock singer Tess Parks, falsetto faves the Bee Gees and neo-prog dreamboats Sigur Rós have anything in common, Tim Burton isn't telling – but here they all share afterlife space, alongside Pino Donaggio's gorgeous Carrie theme, Richard Harris' bizarre MacArthur and more. Two dizzily carnivalesque Danny Elfman cues match the wayward mood nicely. KNEECAP Dirty basslines propel a well-stocked soundtrack to the Irish hip-hop trio's quasi-biopic. Between dialogue snippets, Kneecap's music ranges deceptively wide, from the house-y Parful and grime-y Its Been Ages to the pummelling electric beats of Guilty Conscience and H.O.O.D. Comedown number Better Way to Live and Mikey J's flexible score add dynamism, while cuts from…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE SEARCH FOR BOND: HOW THE 007 ROLE WAS WON AND LOSTSCREENBOOKS Marvel's TVA would have its work cut out tidying up the convoluted timelines of Bond hopefuls, victorious or not. But journalist Robert Sellers does a nifty job untangling the stories of who did/didn't get to wear the tux, mapping out a fascinating history of near-misses and unlikely wannabes alongside the casting misfires and stirring successes. What emerges is a set of 'six degrees of Bond' scenarios, brimming with interconnections and branching alt-history potential. Almost every notable actor (even non-acting locksmiths, too) of their generation has seemingly entered consideration when recasting is due, so much so that most gatherings of Brit-film talent in a given era would surely include someone who'd been in serious contention. More curious ideas start early, with Blockbusters' Bob 'B, please' Holness mentioned in relation to…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE WORLDS OF WES ANDERSONADAM WOODWARD FRANCES LINCOLN Distinct as they are, Wes' worlds brim with allusion and homage. Woodward unpicks these tendrils of influence, showing how Anderson embeds his forebears into his films' frames and feelings. Pausing to drop a needle on Anderson's Brit-rock fetishism, Worlds ranges from Truffaut to tatami shots, curios to classics, artists to auteurs. Between nods to Kazan and Cassavetes, Renoir and Ray, the result is a treasure trove of connoisseur-ish pleasures for ardent Wes-watchers.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024FLOP CULTURERETURN TO OZ REEL ESTATE FOR SALE This chic modern home, located outside the bustle of Seoul, is perfect for a high-flying family looking to show off their status. The modernist architecture by Namgoong really wows: the open-plan ground floor is light and airy, all sharp lines and smart finishes. And the wall-sized window on the ground floor allows for full appreciation of the spacious garden, which is big enough to host an extremely memorable birthday gathering. This home's surprise wow factor can be found in the discreet but deceptively large basement, which is almost big enough to accommodate another family. HINDSIGHT CORNER MICHAEL KEATONDUMBO (2019) March 2019 'Soon as I showed up [on the first day], I thought, “So great I'm doing this again.” I got ridiculously excited again…2 min
Total Film|November 2024GOLDEN GRAHAMSFILM BUFF THIS MONTH Robin Redbreast and The Appointment For this month's double bill I find myself revisiting two British TV horror movies that were both lost to obscurity for many years before being rediscovered and released by the BFI. Directed by James MacTaggart and written by John Bowen, Robin Redbreast aired in December 1970 as part of the BBC's Play for Today series. Note the date – that's four months before Blood on Satan's Claw was released, and three years before The Wicker Man. Those two movies, along with Witchfinder General (1968), are considered the Unholy Trinity of folk-horror cinema, and yet Robin Redbreast shares many of their tropes. It is, in fact, loosely based on the same real-life 1945 murder in the English village of Lower Quinton that…3 min
Total Film|November 2024TEASERSSNOW TIME TO DIETEASERS If 2022's Violent Night gave us Die Hard in a Santa suit, Jake Kasdan's Red One could be retitled North Pole Has Fallen. The world imagined by Kasdan finds Saint Nick kidnapped two days before Christmas Eve. It's up to Dwayne Johnson's head of security, Callum Drift, and Chris Evans' unscrupulous hacker-for-hire, Jack O'Malley, to hunt down the man in red in time for the big day. But this is Father Christmas like we've never seen him before. 'As we started to get into it, the thought emerged that we would portray Nick with all of this warmth and charisma, but as a sort of commander figure who runs this giant operation,' Kasdan says. 'We started to think about him like a general, a president, or a head of…4 min
Total Film|November 2024BAD BLOODWhen Hutter throws open Orlok's coffin in the [F.W.] Murnau version, that was a legitimate jump scare in 1922 – seeing the putrid corpse must have been really terrifying,' muses Robert Eggers of the original Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, the eerie silent masterpiece that gorged on the blood of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Eggers frowns under his cap. 'So how do we do that now?' It's a good question, especially given the deluge of vampire movies since – there are more than 170 film versions of Dracula alone. 'Also, we've gone all the way to Edward Cullen, where vampires are not scary,' adds Eggers. 'So how do we go in the complete opposite direction of that? Vampires were scary enough that people used to dig up corpses and chop…2 min
Total Film|November 2024IT'S SHOWTIMEAfter launching the careers of countless comedy legends over five decades, Saturday Night Live is nothing short of an American institution. Set in and around the corridors, soundstages and back rooms of Studio 8H, 30 Rockefeller Plaza on 11 October 1975, Saturday Night is a frantic retelling of the eventful 90 minutes immediately prior to the show's very first broadcast, told in minute-by-minute real time. 'I got to be a guest writer at Saturday Night Live back in 2008,' director Jason Reitman tells Teasers, speaking from TIFF, where his film has just debuted to acclaim and Oscar buzz. 'And that experience of actually writing a sketch, the final countdown, being on the floor, and feeling the adrenaline as they went live… I knew then I would need to capture it…3 min
Total Film|November 2024Eddie RedmayneQ&A With the Jackal having so many facets, was it hard to get into his mindset? Normally I try to place myself in the characters that I play; you're reaching out to the character. Whereas this, I ended up going, 'OK, this guy, in order to pass, he's a mimic. He speaks these languages, he creates these characters.' He's basically an actor, so in the end I said, 'What if I was this person trying to live this double life?' Oddly, I ended up bringing the character closer to me. How would you describe the dynamic between Bianca and the Jackal? They couldn't be more different, and yet share so many qualities. The top one is obsession, and compulsion, and perhaps addiction in some ways. The framework of the piece…1 min
Total Film|November 2024CALLING THE SHOTSTEASERSEXCLUSIVE Many an established actor who's moved behind the camera will tell you that directing is a career path they've long wanted to follow. Not so with Lucy Lawless. 'It looked like such a crappy job to me,' she tells Teasers. 'In drama on television, they're just clock-watching and compromising themselves. I never wanted to do it!' So, why then has the versatile actor – known for several TV hits (Battlestar Galactica, Spartacus, Parks and Recreation) but especially for her iconic role as Xena: Warrior Princess – decided to make her directorial debut with documentary Never Look Away? 'I couldn't pay somebody to care about it in the way that I did. Margaret Moth just possessed me for a couple of years.' Lawless' fellow New Zealander Margaret Moth was an…2 min
Total Film|November 2024HUMPH DAYKathryn [Ferguson, director] called and said, “I want to make a documentary on your father,” and I thought, “Well, if it's gonna be the same old, same old, I don't want to fall asleep,”' says Stephen Bogart, only son of 40s and 50s film icon Humphrey. 'But when she came out with the premise of telling it with my father's voice and through the lives of the women that he loved, that intrigued me.' Everyone knows about Lauren Bacall, who Bogart met on Howard Hawks' 1944 classic To Have and Have Not. He was 44, she was 19, but their chemistry sizzled both on screen ('You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow') and off (she became his fourth wife, until his…2 min
Total Film|November 2024TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTICTEASERSFIRST WORD I mean, there are many Mumbais, but I have one vision of it!' says Payal Kapadia, director of new drama All We Imagine as Light. A native of the Indian city, Kapadia has crafted a dreamy tribute to this metropolis, seen through the eyes of two hard-working female nurses. 'Mumbai… for me, it's full of contradictions, as most big cities are,' she continues. 'It's a city where… for women who work, it's a bit easier to navigate than some other parts of India.' Telling the story of Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha), the film was inspired by Kapadia's own life, when she was in her final year of film school, and two family members were working in different hospitals. 'I ended up spending a lot of…2 min
Total Film|November 2024THE EMPERORS' NEW GROOVE #1What are your memories of watching Gladiator? I remember watching it – I think I must have been 11 or 12 – and being completely transported to this world with incredible performances and masterful direction. I felt very grateful at getting the opportunity to kind of get back in there with Ridley, and this extraordinary ensemble. So what was it like working with Ridley? It's extraordinary, the force that's contained within him. He's just a force of nature. It certainly felt like an interesting one to get into it with him on – going back to previous ground, and maybe having unfinished business in the Colosseum. It was very exciting. How did you build the bond with Fred Hechinger, who's playing your character's brother? I think a lot of it…1 min
Total Film|November 2024Bear in mind'When we began the first Paddington film, there were no benchmarks yet for what we were looking for. I think it was [Harry Potter production designer] Stuart Craig who said it was very important that the bear was real. If he was going to perform with live-action actors, the only way people can believe in him is if he's photoreal. 'At the time, a lot of characters that had been turned into 3D entities were very cartoony, the Scooby-Doos and the Garfields, and that was the vernacular. But here we wanted to do something a bit more different and more realistic. The challenge for us was to retain the simplicity of a Peggy Fortnum illustration and endow it with the veneer of a hyper-real bear. It's difficult to get right,…1 min
Total Film|November 2024FIVE STAR TURNSTHE BIG CHILL 1983 Lawrence Kasdan's classic comedy-drama about grief and friendship. Goldblum plays Michael, a disillusioned journalist who bemoans the fact that, 'You can't write anything longer than the average person can read during the average crap'. Imagine his thoughts on smartphones. THE FLY 1986 David Cronenberg ups the ick, pathos and romance for this superlative body horror. Like 1978's Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Goldblum's character-actor breakout – it's a rare remake that surpasses the original. JURASSIC PARK 1993 As rockstar mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm, Goldblum brought wry wit, heroism and sex appeal to Spielberg's dino classic. As well as snatching the lion's share of the film's iconic quotes ('Life, uh, finds a way'), Malcolm's defining moment – lighting the flare – was a Goldblum suggestion. INDEPENDENCE…1 min
Total Film|November 2024EMILIA PÉREZ TBCOUT 25 OCTOBER CINEMAS 13 NOVEMBER NETFLIX Director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) leaves his comfort zone far behind with his new film. A fully engaging two-hour musical set in Mexico City, complete with dance numbers and a storyline that embraces gender reassignment and cartel violence, it's as daring as they come. With a wonderful cast led by Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and terrific Spanish actor Karla Sofía Gascón, this wows in endless ways. The plot gets under way when counsellor-at-law Rita (Saldaña) encounters drug lord Manitas Del Monte (Gascón). Two years earlier, Del Monte began hormone treatment and wants Rita to find a surgeon to complete the journey to living 'the life nature wouldn't give me'. Completing the transition, Del Monte becomes Emilia Pérez and starts life…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE 4:30 MOVIE 15OUT NOW CINEMAS 21 OCTOBER DIGITAL Kevin Smith expands his View Askewniverse with a sweet but slight teen-com charting the travails of high-schooler Brian (Austin Zajur) as he tries to bring his crush (Siena Agudong) along to the titular cinema showing in 1986. Brian is essentially Smith, and all roads lead to Quick Stop Groceries via a slew of cameos, knowing (and slightly smug) film gags ('No one will ever pay to see a Batman movie', etc) and an end-credits blooper reel. Smith fans will lap up the nostalgia, but non-converts may find all the in-jokery a little tiresome.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024MILISUTHANDO TBCOUT 18 OCTOBER CINEMAS Award-winning writer Milisuthando Bongela turns first-time filmmaker with this intimate and very personal documentary essay. Spanning 30 years of South African history, it sees the director tell the story of how she grew up during apartheid, yet only became aware of it after the fact. A poetic take on the coming-of-age film, it proceeds in nonlinear fashion, conjuring a moving scrapbook of images accompanied by a chorus of voices from Bongela's past. Above all, it's an evocative and at times profound meditation on love, race and femininity.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024MIDAS MAN 12OUT 30 OCTOBERPRIME VIDEO Film's Fabs fixation continues with Joe Stephenson's sensitive portrait of 'fifth Beatle' Brian Epstein. The story unfolds like an 'Eppy' (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) best-of, box-ticking moments in the furniture salesman's life as he undergoes a Cavern Club epiphany and begins managing the band; meanwhile, he wrestles with his sexuality and addictions. Though strong turns from Fortune-Lloyd and the mop-tops endear, the under-powered plot never quite summons sufficient momentum or music: sadly, a shot of a 7” can't compensate for the lack of access to Beatles tunes.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE WILD ROBOT UOUT 18 OCTOBER CINEMAS In the near-ish future, ROZZUM 7134 is the only surviving unit of a cargo of server-robots washed up on an island wilderness. Crab-crawling up the cliff-face - using the first of many skills she'll mimic from the island's wildlife - humanoid 'Roz' (an excellent Lupita Nyong'o) makes a home in the woodland. The most striking thing about The Wild Robot is how it continues mainstream animation's ongoing visually inventive streak (the Spider-Verse movies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem). This CG-animated film has a painterly quality that's delightful to gawp at, and makes the ideal canvas for the tech-meets-nature story. Along the way, Roz bonds with Fink the fox (a spry Pedro Pascal) and Paddler the beaver (Matt Berry); the breathing, snarling life imbued into these…1 min
Total Film|November 2024TIMESTALKER TBCOUT 11 OCTOBER CINEMAS Writer/director/star Alice Lowe follows 2016's Prevenge with another bold, challenging and pleasingly bonkers comedy. This one's a 'reincarnation romcom' in which her character Agnes repeatedly falls for the same bloke, Alex (Aneurin Barnard), over the centuries. The kicker is that he's uninterested in her, but she won't take no for an answer, whether it's Victorian England or 80s New York. Nick Frost is George, an abusive husband in one era, a stalker in another. Jacob Anderson's Scipio is a servant, a pop star's manager and more. Tanya Reynolds plays Meg, the most sympathetic recurring character, who's in love with her deluded friend Agnes. Timestalker has something to say about romantic obsession: like a teenager, Agnes is slow to learn from her mistake of idolising an unsuitable…1 min
Total Film|November 2024DAHOMEY PGOUT 25 OCTOBER CINEMAS Director Mati Diop's (Atlantics) watchful, lyrical documentary literally gives a voice to the Royal Treasures of Dahomey, imagining the troubled thoughts of the fierce animal-headed statues as we follow their return from a century of looted exile in France to a joyous homecoming reception in Benin. However, their restitution sets off an impassioned discussion between local students about the political heritage of these ancestral voodoo figures. Diop's camera, darting between the towering treasures and the fizzing debate, expertly reveals the treasures' controversial place in African history.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024WOMAN OF THE HOUR 15SCREEN OUT 18 OCTOBER NETFLIX Did you hear the one about the serial killer who appeared on a 70s TV dating show? It sounds like the set-up for a grim joke - but Anna Kendrick's impressive directorial debut (in which she also stars) is in fact based on a true story. While there's humour in the film, it's no laughing matter overall. This is an acutely observed, well-judged and original take on a popular genre. The stranger-than-fiction story splices two strands: the episode of the show that the killer, Rodney Alcala, appears on is the centrepiece, intercut with (upsetting, but not overly graphic) depictions of his despicable crimes. Meanwhile, Kendrick plays Sheryl Bradshaw, an aspiring actor whose agent hooks her up with a reluctant appearance on The Dating Game (the…1 min
Total Film|November 2024FALLING INTO PLACE TBCOUT 11 OCTOBER CINEMAS German actor Aylin Tezel makes a promising directorial debut with this drama set initially on the Isle of Skye, where two 30-something visitors from London - set designer Kira (Tezel herself) and musician Ian (Chris Fulton) - meet in a pub and establish a connection before returning to their separate lives. Maintaining an effective visual contrast between island and city, this well-acted modern romance intriguingly keeps its leads apart for much of its running time, exploring how both are held back by repeated patterns of behaviour. Modest but disarming.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE MOUSE TRAP 15OUT NOW DIGITAL 14 OCTOBER DVD Following Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey's dubious lead, Jamie Bailey's Canadian horror turns 1928's Steamboat Willie – now in the public domain – into a cut-price slasher featuring a killer in a Mickey Mouse mask. After an error-filled opening crawl distancing the film from Disney, and a pointless wraparound section, the action finally begins, with Mickey (writer/producer Simon Phillips) menacing amusement arcade worker Alex (Sophie McIntosh) and her pals at an after-hours party. Unfunny and gore-light, it's desperate stuff, making Blood and Honeylook like Halloween.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE 12AOUT 1 NOVEMBER CINEMAS Adapted from the prize-winning 2021 book by Claire Keegan, this subtle Irish drama is about the so-called 'Magdalene Laundries', the mainly Catholic Church-run institutions where 'fallen women' were housed and exploited. While the shameful practice was previously fully explored in Peter Mullan's acclaimed, inmate-focused The Magdalene Sisters (2002), Tim Mielants' (2019's Patrick) 80s-set drama explores it from an outsider's perspective. Living in New Ross, County Wexford, with wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh), 'soft-hearted' father of five Bill (Cillian Murphy) is an introspective coal merchant whose past traumas resurface when he delivers to a convent where he discovers a young, dishevelled girl cowering in a coal shed. Scripted by playwright Enda Walsh (who co-wrote Steve McQueen's Hunger, 2008), this is a film where much is left unsaid. Bill's…1 min
Total Film|November 2024HEAD SOUTH TBCOUT 18 OCTOBER CINEMAS Charming if somewhat featherlight, this coming-of-ager centres on Angus (Ed Oxenbould, The Visit), a small-town schoolkid with big dreams in 1970s New Zealand. Inspired by his over-in-London brother, who sends him cool vinyl, Angus kickstarts his musical life, forming punk band the Daleks. There's girl trouble (via Roxie Mohebbi's aloof Holly) and parent trouble (Marton Csokas as Dad) and a vibe of nostalgia for a simpler time crafted by writer/director Jonathan Ogilvie. Even if some scenes flounder, the music consistently rocks; you may well feel an urge to start your own band.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024GLADIATOR 152000 OUT 11 OCTOBER CINEMAS Since its release, Ridley Scott's revivalist sword-and-sandals epic has echoed throughout film and telly. Game of Thrones reflected its taste for violence and politics, while Oliver Reed's tipsy ex-gladiator – 'Win the crowd!' – lived on in The Hunger Games' Haymitch. And while Dune: Part Two's Giedi Prime revived the Colosseum, Joaquin Phoenix's villain Commodus perhaps pre-empted Heath Ledger's Joker with his rants about scheming senators. Such is the strength of peak-form Scott. Gladiator is a thinking viewer's crowd-pleaser, capable of mobilising stars, setting, soul and subtexts within the close-fitting armour of a thumping good story. Carved from myth, that core tale is knowingly summarised on screen: a soldier-turned-slave becomes a gladiator who defies an emperor… As Maximus, Russell Crowe's magnetically measured machismo adds the…1 min
Total Film|November 2024CAGE OF GOLD PG1950 OUT NOW DVD, BD, DIGITAL EXTRAS Featurette, Gallery Not one of Ealing Studios' best, Basil Dearden's (Victim, The Blue Lamp) middling hybrid crime film/romantic melodrama stars Jean Simmons as a young woman who leaves her dependable fiancé (James Donald) for a seductive former flame (David Farrar), only for him to eventually abandon her with a bun in the oven. While Farrar gives a memorably caddish turn as an amoral user of women, the rest of the film is pretty unexceptional - which is perhaps why the sole extra of real note focuses its attention on Simmons' stylish outfits.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024CARRIE 151976 OUT 18 OCTOBER CINEMAS No one's gonna laugh at you now… Back in cinemas in all its gory glory (thanks to a 4K restoration), this tale of telekinetic teen Cassie – sorry, Carrie (Sissy Spacek, luminously heartbreaking) – exacting spectacular revenge after being drenched in pig's blood at the prom is still a flooring experience, emotionally and technically. Stephen King received just $2,500 for the rights to his debut novel, but a box office of $33m from a $1.8m budget helped turbo-charge his career. More than 50 King movies later, Brian De Palma's adap remains high in the pantheon.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024IKIRU PG1952 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentary, Documentaries, Intro, Short, Gallery Although he's best known for his samurai stunners, Akira Kurosawa's arguable masterpiece is this achingly humanist drama about a lowly, middle-aged public servant (Takashi Shimura, sublime) who, upon learning that he has terminal cancer, goes searching for some sort of meaning to his life. Deeply moving, but never overly sentimental, Kurosawa's existential study of mortality (reimagined as 2022's Living, with Bill Nighy) also offers a trenchant critique of needlessly inefficient bureaucracy that - sadly - feels more relevant than ever today.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024TECH ROUND-UPLast month, the annual Berlin-based IFA tech show celebrated its centenary - and there was plenty of new kit on display to mark the occasion. This year, the brands went big on home-cinema audio; could this be the end of mumbled dialogue on your telly? CAMBRIDGE AUDIO EVO ONE £1, 299 OUT NOW This ultra-stylish all-in-one wireless speaker from the British audio expert packs an HDMI port that can be used to boost the sound of your TV. Tuned by the same team behind the firm's award-winning hi-fi equipment, the Evo One sports 14 speakers surrounding the front, side and rear, along with a chic real-walnut veneer. You can also stream music from the likes of Spotify, Tidal and Qobuz, while a cool little 6.8in colour screen can display a…2 min
Total Film|November 2024THE WIZARD OF OZPsychedelic playground or children's fantasia? Gnarled fairy tale or Depression-era dream? Whether you shuddered at the Wicked Witch or spent too long pondering Pink Floyd-ian mysteries, you can slice into 1939's L. Frank Baum adaptation in many ways. And the wonder of it is, the multi-faceted mash-up of score with songs mapped out groundbreaking hybrid territory to carry audiences every hop, skip and step of the road. The heart of the music, of course, is the one that almost got away. MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer didn't want Over the Rainbow included, but he relented, wisely. Even if the birds and their tweets recall Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Over the Rainbow scales distinctly rarefied heights. Left-leaning lyricist Yip Harburg knew life's struggles, as did Judy Garland –…2 min
Total Film|November 20243 MORESTRONG FEMALE CHARACTER: WHAT MOVIES TEACH US A new, bonus-chapter edition of critic Hanna Flint's 'movie-memoir-manifesto', exploring what it means to survive and thrive in the industry as a feminist of mixed-race heritage. Robustly written, it's both a colourful coming-of-age story and a solid rebuttal of persistent tropes. JOEL HARLEY GHIBLIVERSE: STUDIO GHIBLI BEYOND THE FILMS Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham follow up 2021's film-focused Ghibliotheque with a bright, breezy survey of other Studio Ghibli projects, from shorts and TV shows to museums, bakeries and one really big clock. Miyazaki and co's torch-bearing successors also receive a share of the spotlight. JOEL HARLEY LIFE. HOLLYWOOD Life magazine's access to vintage Hollywood's great and good is celebrated in Taschen's two-volume tome. The photo shoots of big names at work, home and…1 min
Total Film|November 2024IS IT BOLLOCKS?Buff investigates the facts behind outlandish movie plots. THIS MONTH TWISTERS' TORNADO DISRUPTION Q In disaster sequel Twisters, storm-chasers disrupt a tornado using moisture-absorbing particles. Fact, or pure spin? A Paul Knightley, head of The Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (torro.org.uk), says… The central premise of the film is the ability of the protagonists to launch an absorbent polymer material into a tornado, to disrupt it by altering the moisture content of the parent thunderstorm. After realising this is unrealistic, they switch to adding silver iodide to 'seed' clouds and make extra rainfall, in order to create colder downdraughts of air to 'choke' the tornado. Tornadoes do tend to weaken, and then die out when destructive interference from such downdraughts (powered by rain/hail) completely encircles the updraught (warm, moist air…1 min
Total Film|November 2024IS IT JUST ME OR ARE HEIST MOVIES ALL THE SAME?In 1903, The Great Train Robbery set the stage for a subgenre of crime cinema that still abides today. Its story of steam-train-robbingoutlaws was a precursor to John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950) -widely regarded to be the first 'heist' movie as we know it. And you know what? Little has changed since. Following a fateful bank robbery from the POV of the criminals, Asphalt set in place a blueprint that Hollywood keeps coming back to, reaching undeniable heights with the likes of Reservoir Dogs (1992), Heat and The Usual Suspects (both 1995). The form peaked (with a wink) with the Ocean's Eleven remake (2001). But amid all the sequels, spin-offs and imitators, the heist film began to shed what grit previous examples possessed, replacing it with an air of…2 min
Total Film|November 2024HOT RIGHT NOWI lead by example,' actor Michael B. Jordan said of starring in and directing last year's Creed III. 'One of the beautiful things is, like, I could direct with my performance.' It's no surprise, then, that he's once again set to be in front of and behind the camera for a(nother) remake of The Thomas Crown Affair for Amazon. The tale of a rich playboy who finds excitement by stealing art, the titular character meets his match in an insurance investigator. The original 1968 movie was led by Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, with a 1999 version pitting Pierce Brosnan against Rene Russo. It's unclear who will be on Jordan's tail in the upcoming remake. Shooting to stardom after 2015's Creed revived the Rocky franchise, the actor has since made…2 min
Total Film|November 2024BRICKIN' ITTEASERSEXCLUSIVE When Morgan Neville (Twenty Feet from Stardom) was approached to make a documentary about musical genius Pharrell Williams, it was never going to be run-of-the-mill. And the man behind mega-hit Happy certainly had other ideas. 'What he said to me initially was, “Why don't you make a documentary, and then when you're done, throw out all the images and just replace them with Lego?”' Neville tells Teasers over Zoom. The result is Piece by Piece, an animated doc that tells Williams' life entirely in Lego form. Looking like The LEGO Movie and other films from this brick-built universe, Neville's doc might just be a reinvention of the form. 'It felt like it at times,' he says. 'I just felt like, “Oh, we were on to something really special.”' Still,…2 min
Total Film|November 2024THE LL WORDOne of the most fun debates you can have about a movie is deciding who the true bad guy is. I've been convinced to view Ursula as The Little Mermaid's tragic hero and Batman as the ultimate villain. Looking at things from a new angle, you can make anyone a hero. But, alongside dogs and Dick Van Dyke, robots have established themselves as being the good guys in cinema's recent years. Not all robots, of course. The Maschinenmensch from Metropolis and the original Terminator were definitely up to no good. But over the years spent watching Blade Runner, RoboCop, The Iron Giant and Wall-E, when a robot appears on screen my Pavlovian response is to root for them. Of late there's been no shortage of noble metal protagonists. Following 2023's…3 min
Total Film|November 2024RETURN TO THE SEAEight years after You're Welcome wriggled its way into our brains and refused to leave, Moana and Maui are returning to the big screen - with Auli'i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson back to voice the duo. The sequel will take Moana back out to sea to save her island from a new threat, after she restored the mystical heart of Te Fiti in the 2016 musical. A lot has changed since then, including the arrival of a young sister. David Derrick Jr. and Jason Hand, who direct alongside Dana Ledoux Miller, tell Teasers all about it. SISTER ACT Set three years after the first film, we see that the islanders have become more connected to the ocean. But the biggest change is the arrival of Moana's young sister Simea. Derrick…3 min
Total Film|November 2024A FAMILY HEIRLOOMWhen Malcolm Washington came across the play his brother was about to take to Broadway, his interest went far beyond the familial. 'It was one of those things where everything kind of just lines up for you,' he says. '[There was] that feeling for me, like when you come across a certain piece of music or something: “You're talking about me right now.”' August Wilson's Pulitzer-winning tale opens with a 1911 piano theft, before jumping to Pittsburgh in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Boy Willie (John David Washington, Tenet, The Creator) and Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler, Till, The Harder They Fall) are at loggerheads over their musical heirloom. He wants to sell it and buy up the Mississippi land their family once toiled upon as slaves; his sister, haunted by…2 min
Total Film|November 2024I, SPYAll this while the wider creative team – which includes Russo sister Angela Russo-Otstot as an executive producer – shoots Season 2 of the parent series. That's a lot to chew on, especially when all the shows are connected and have a tendency to jump around in time. 'We're doing something that's never been done before, and we're really proud of it,' Russo-Otstot tells Teasers. Each new series links to the main show in various ways – such as through the larger mythology and connections in the organisations – while more spin-offs are planned for other countries. So what's distinct about Diana? 'We're in a really beautiful, slick, modern world where the stakes of Italy as a country have been altered by the hold of [criminal syndicate] Manticore,' the executive…2 min
Total Film|November 2024TROUBLED TIMESTEASERSFIRST WORD It was quite funny,' director Michael Lennox (Derry Girls) recalls of discovering Patrick Radden Keefe's book Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. 'Someone told me there was this guy who had written a book about the Northern Irish conflict. And my first response was, “I'm not reading this.” And I found out he was an American journalist, and I was like, “I'm definitely not reading it.”' But he did, nonetheless, read it. An accounting of the abduction and murder of single mother Jean McConville during The Troubles, it also tells the tales of young IRA members Dolours and Marian Price (played in the series by Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe), Brendan Hughes (Anthony Boyle) and Gerry Adams (Josh Finan) though the latter…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE HEROAfter all the years of doing this, it's ingrained into my rhythms of life,' says Alan Menken, the 75-year-old composer extraordinaire who simply can't stop composing. Renowned for Disney classics such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, the American-born, eight-time Oscar winner is now conjuring up the music for Netflix fairy tale Spellbound, starring Rachel Zegler. Hey presto… How did you approach scoring Spellbound? It's a very world score, if you will. The influences are from so many different areas, because it's a fairy tale in a very mythical kingdom. It's a story of this girl and her parents, and, of course, she's going on an adventure because [her parents are] turned into monsters by an evil spell. But the underpinnings of the story really had…3 min
Total Film|November 2024THE EMPERORS' NEW GROOVE #2What was it like working with Ridley Scott? What I learned is, he is someone who follows his gut. More than anything, he doesn't want to lose art in the terrors of time. He doesn't want movies to slip by because he was hesitant about an idea that he, in his heart, knew was true. He's one of the fastest decision-makers I've ever met and worked with. He's very, very straight-up. Did this role involve much research? I always find that, in the research period, the details that inspire and are connected to the story, you take – and the ones that aren't connected to that story can go by the wayside. Another thing about Ridley is, he has no qualms being anachronistic. He wants historical films to feel as…2 min
Total Film|November 2024Taking WingMAKING OFBIRD Midway through talking about Bird, Andrea Arnold gets distracted by a bird. 'Oh God, it's just the most beautiful thing… I don't even know what it is,' she says, spinning her laptop around to point us out the window of her hotel room. We can't tell either, but we can see the wooded mountains of Telluride, Colorado, where Arnold is staying for the festival that will serve as the film's North American premiere. 'Apparently bears go down the alleyways at night looking through the trash cans,' says Arnold, still staring off-screen. 'I'm wondering whether I've got the guts to go out with my mobile phone.' If anyone does, it's Andrea Arnold. Making her mark with urgent, brave, coming-of-age films like Fish Tank and American Honey, Arnold is drawn…8 min
Total Film|November 2024ROLEREVERSALMAKING OFEMILIA PÉREZ Jacques Audiard doesn't sleep well at night. The 72-year-old French director behind A Prophet, Rust and Bone and the Cannes-winning Dheepan is too restless, especially when he's shooting. 'So what do I do?' he asks, rhetorically. 'I use lunch breaks in order to have a nap, a 20-minute nap, and in that time, many ideas come. So when I get up again, I go back on set, I say, “OK, let's change everything.” And now my crew are very scared when I go for a siesta.' However improvisational his methodology, Audiard clearly got his Zzzs in making his new work, Emilia Pérez. A musical, perhaps, for those who don't like all-singin', all-dancin' extravaganzas, just like Audiard himself. 'I don't have a special taste for musicals. I don't…8 min
Total Film|November 2024SCREENKENT GET ANY BETTER KAL-EL-DOSCOPIC ENTERTAINMENT NON TOO SHABBY GOES FROM BAD TO URSA SEND IT TO THE PHANTOM ZONE 78 SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY The Clark knight… 80 83 85 89 OUT NOW 11 OCTOBER 13 OCTOBER 14 OCTOBER 18 OCTOBER 24 OCTOBER 25 OCTOBER 30 OCTOBER 1 NOVEMBER 15 NOVEMBER ALSO RELEASED We couldn't see them in time for this issue, so head to gamesradar.com/totalfilm for these reviews: EXTRAS…1 min
Total Film|November 2024BLITZ TBCOUT 1 NOVEMBER CINEMAS 22 NOVEMBER APPLE TV+ A more mainstream offering than we might expect from Sir Steve McQueen (Shame, 12 Years a Slave), Blitz pinpoints intimate tales of Londoners during the bombings of World War Two, occasionally pulling back to reveal the awful scale of it all. Highlighting the best and worst of humanity with a detailed sweep that is, at times, positively Spielbergian, this gorgeously crafted but frequently intense drama will invite comparisons to Empire of the Sun (1987) – not least because much of the action is seen through a young boy's POV. In 1940, munitions worker Rita (Saoirse Ronan, excellent) packs George (strong newcomer Elliott Heffernan) off to the countryside, only for him to jump from the journeying train and embark on an incident-packed odyssey…1 min
Total Film|November 2024ROAD DIARY: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND TBCOUT 25 OCTOBER DISNEY+ Springsteen carpe diems for dear life in this behind-the-scenes portrait of his post-Covid tour. Long-haul collaborator Thom Zimny directs and a whiff of official sanction hovers nearby, but the thrill of seeing the Boss' old band whip themselves into concert shape is tangible. Emotions run deep come showtime, too, as Springsteen digs into themes of friendship and loss through a carefully structured set list. Performing is his job's 'beating heart', he says, and it beats loud and clear here.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE ROOM NEXT DOOR 12ASCREEN OUT 25 OCTOBER CINEMAS Pedro Almodóvar fans may be wrongfooted by the writer/director's first full-length English-language feature, an atypically austere entry in his canon that's nevertheless as vivid and haunting as much of his other work. Adapting Sigrid Nunez's novel What Are You Going Through, Almodóvar examines friendship and death via two reconnected ex-colleagues: author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and war correspondent Martha (Tilda Swinton). Martha is battling stage-three cervical cancer and wants a 'good death', so asks her friend to accompany her to an upstate New York rental for reading, relaxing and, ultimately, euthanasia. The women recall their past (including their romantic dalliances with John Turturro's eco-warrior), explore their relationship to mortality and cherish the wonder of life. Although restrained for an Almodóvar movie, TRND is filled with colour…1 min
Total Film|November 2024BLACK BOX DIARIES 15OUT 25 OCTOBER CINEMAS Nimbly stitched together from covert recordings, tearful video diaries and fly-on-the-wall reportage, this astonishingly intimate documentary tracks Japanese journalist Shiori Itô's culture-changing fight for justice. Investigating on camera why her 2016 report of sexual assault by a high-flying media figure was rejected by Tokyo police, Itô tenaciously battles stonewalling officials, sinister surveillance and hideous public harassment. A fascinating, close-up look at how Itô refused to be a victim of crime or the legal system, it captures her gutsiness alongside her grim ordeal.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE APPRENTICE TBCOUT 18 OCTOBER CINEMAS Spanning the 70s and 80s, this lively-if-limited study of Donald Trump's real-estate years kicks in with the ambitious Trump (Sebastian Stan) befriended by Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), an attorney who's been indicted three times and never convicted. The young Trump becomes his mentee, learning the 'rules' of business (including 'never admit defeat'), which will stand him in good stead long before he gets to the White House. As Trump's empire grows – New York's Grand Hyatt and Trump Tower are just the start of his portfolio – we get a glimpse of the man himself. Director Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider) and writer Gabriel Sherman (Independence Day: Resurgence) depict someone whose increasing love of deal-and-money-making ('Everything I do is turning to gold') comes at the expense of…1 min
Total Film|November 2024HAUNTED ULSTER LIVE TBCSCREEN OUT 14 OCTOBER DIGITAL Purporting to be a live TV broadcast from Halloween 1998, this places two presenters (Mark Claney, Aimee Richardson) in the home of an Ulster family apparently plagued by paranormal activities. What's to blame: superstition or the supernatural? Paranoia or prank? Dominic O'Neill's micro-movie is a spirited if unscary affair. If it looks cheap, it does a decent job of capturing naff local TV in the 90s. More problematic is how far short it falls of both 1992 mockumentary Ghostwatch (a key influence) and this year's ace haunted-broadcast movie LateNight with the Devil.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024ENDURANCE TBCOUT 14 OCTOBER CINEMAS TBC NOVEMBER DISNEY+ Free Solo directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, alongside fellow filmmaker Natalie Hewit, follow in the footsteps of Sir Ernest Shackleton for this solid rather than spectacular doc. It recounts how the fabled explorer kept 27 crew alive for more than a year after their vessel Endurance sank in the Weddell Sea in 1915. The directors join a 2022 expedition to find the wreck - but the real chills come from the concurrent retelling of Shackleton's story, which smartly uses AI tech to allow crew members to 'read' aloud diary entries over vintage footage.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024SOUND OF HOPE: THE STORY OF POSSUM TROT 12AOUT 11 OCTOBER CINEMAS Hope sounds like syrupy strings if this true-story melodrama from Angel Studios (Sound of Freedom) is any indication. In Texas in 1996, the Lord tells Donna (Nika King) to adopt troubled children. Her reverend husband (Demetrius Grosse) eventually concurs, but can they handle traumatised teen Terri (Diaana Babnicova)? Writer/director Joshua Weigel doesn't ignore their struggles, but his tale drags over two hours-plus of foregone conclusions: even if you can't fault the sincerity, the sappy score and message that 'love forgives' land crudely.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024TERRIFIER 3 18OUT 11 OCTOBER CINEMAS The budget is bigger for the third film in the serial-killer saga, but the grindhouse vibe remains the same, as the resurrected (again!) Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) returns just in time for Christmas. Writer/director/creator Damien Leone makes the most of the bleak midwinter setting, while adding more mythology to the mix allows for torture survivor Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) to enjoy a far bigger, Bride of Frankenstein-style role. The gleeful nastiness will be too much for some, but fans will rejoice as Art wraps intestines round a Christmas tree like tinsel.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024REBELLIOUS PGOUT 25 OCTOBER CINEMAS 'I kneel to no one, you pathetic excuse for a sorcerer!' snaps defiant princess Mina (Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld) at the wizard (Pete Zarustica) who's spirited her away to his remote phantom castle. Alas, this animated fairy tale is itself decidedly inferior, riddled as it is with shameless lifts from Beauty and the Beast, Frozen and other Disney faves. Mina is determined to buck royal tradition and choose her own hubby; if only Alex Tsitsilin's 'toon showed some of the same pluck, instead of falling back on a stock array of giants, dragons and deadly dungeons.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024SALEM'S LOT 15SCREEN Back from the dead… OUT 11 OCTOBER CINEMAS Delayed for more than two years, Gary Dauberman's adaptation of Stephen King's 1975 sophomore novel finally sees the sun. But unlike a vampire it doesn't, thankfully, burst into flames and perish. Maine, the 1970s: returning to his childhood town of Jerusalem's Lot, author Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) learns that the spooky Marsten House has been bought by the mysterious Kurt Barlow (Alexander Ward) and his helper, Richard Straker (Pilou Asbæk). Soon the local residents are turning into creatures of the night, and Mears finds himself leading a ragtag band of locals (Bill Camp, Alfre Woodard, Makenzie Leigh) in a high-stakes (ahem) operation. As Dauberman proved in writing It (2017/19), he has a deep affection for King's work. So while this movie…1 min
Total Film|November 2024SINCE YESTERDAY: THE UNTOLD STORY OF SCOTLAND'S GIRL BANDS TBCOUT 18 OCTOBER CINEMAS The majority of the groups in this incisive documentary will be largely unknown to those who see it - and that's part of the point. As well as providing a whirlwind tour through six decades of trailblazing music-making, Blair Young and Carla J. Easton's film acts as a shaming survey of the hurdles and prejudices that prevent girl bands enjoying the success their male counterparts take for granted. The McKinlays, Strawberry Switchblade and Easton's TeenCanteen are among the cult outfits it celebrates.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 151984 OUT 25 OCTOBER CINEMAS Back in cinemas for its 40th birthday, Wes Craven's slasher has had its certificate lowered from an 18 to a 15, with the BBFC highlighting the movie's fantasy context and its relative tameness compared to the violence of such modern-day horror films as the new Halloweens, Thanksgiving and Saw X. But none of those films scare like the OG Elm Street. Inspired by newspaper articles about a group of students dying in their sleep, Craven jolted the tired teen-slasher subgenre back to screaming wakefulness by blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, as a group of matchstick-eyed teens (including Amanda Wyss' inaugural victim Tina) fall prey to razor-fingered dream demon Fred Krueger (Robert Englund). Viewed now, shadow-cloaked Freddy (the effects budget was only $57,000) still…1 min
Total Film|November 2024THE FALL 152006 OUT NOW MUBI Accused of style over substance for The Cell (2000), Tarsem Singh maxed all extremes for his follow-up, a fever-dream fable of innocence and experience. Imagine The Fall Guy's arthouse flipside and you'll be close to this (4K restored) tale of a hospitalised, depressed stuntman (Lee Pace) telling magical stories to a young girl (Catinca Untaru) – with stings in the tales. Navigating reality/fantasy, Singh coats these yarns in lavish stylings that can be gaudily overbaked. But you can't fault his ambition, much less his leads' commitment: notably, Untaru wrings the emotions dry.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024HALLOWEEN 15SCREEN 1978 OUT 25 OCTOBER CINEMAS Pumpkins at the ready: John Carpenter's seminal slasher is back on the big screen. Forget all the sequels, remakes and reboots - this is the only one that truly matters, as babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is terrorised by knife-wielding sanitarium escapee Michael Myers (Nick Castle). Donald Pleasence brings gravitas to the role of the psychiatrist hunting Myers down, but it's Carpenter's razor-sharp direction and unforgettable score, together with Curtis' stunning Scream Queen masterclass, that makes this a stone-cold horror classic.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 151968 OUT NOW 4K UHD EXTRAS Commentaries, Work-print edit, Featurettes, Dailies, Newsreel, Essay Flesh-eating ghouls besiege ragtag survivors holed up in a farmhouse in George A. Romero's devastating debut, given new, um, life by Criterion's 4K restoration. This DIY movie invented the zombie subgenre as we now know it and modernised horror by feeding off the turmoil of the time (Civil Rights riots, the Vietnam War), as America ate itself. Duane Jones' Ben is a Black hero in a film that doesn't make an issue of it, and the nihilistic ending still shatters.…1 min
Total Film|November 2024WALKING WITH DINOSAURS1999 AVAILABLE ON DVD, DIGITAL Jurassic Park changed everything. Although audiences had enjoyed representations of dinos ever since animator Winsor McCay's Gertie first frolicked across screens in 1914, it wasn't until Steven Spielberg's 1993 blockbuster – and the groundbreaking visual effects used to bring its prehistoric stars to life – that we really felt we were seeing living, breathing dinosaurs for the first time. The film's success brought about renewed fascination with dinosaurs. So when, in the mid 1990s, producer Tim Haines persuaded the BBC to make a landmark natural-history series about dinosaurs, there was one key concern: how to create the creatures on a TV budget that would live up to expectations generated by Jurassic Park? For the answer, Haines approached Mike Milne (who passed away in June this…2 min
Total Film|November 2024EXTRASPRINT FILM MAP OUT NOW The landscape of cinema is ever-changing… so it's no surprise that design studio Dorothy's bestselling Film Map has been through multiple iterations. This is number eight, launched to coincide with the 12th anniversary of the original print, which is loosely based on a vintage LA street map and features the titles of more than 900 movies. New additions for '24 include Asteroid City, The Zone of Interest and Megalopolis; get your journey started at wearedorothy.com. VARIOUS DISNEY HALLOWEEN COLLECTION OUT NOW It's a Mouse House of horrors this month when it comes to Disney merch. The studio's 'scary' brands are to the fore with Haunted Mansion (plates, kitchen towels, weighted throw) and Nightmare Before Christmas (light-up ornaments, cookie jar) gear on offer. There's a variety…2 min
Total Film|November 2024EYEBROWS IN MOVIESFILM BUFF 10 OF THE BEST 1DUCK SOUP Groucho Marx's verbal dexterity and funny walk were matched only by the gymnastics he could perform with his bushy brows. Painted on, in part, for maximum heft, they were waggled (usually in Margaret Dumont's direction) more than his signature cigar. 2FRIDA Salma Hayek went full monobrow to play artist and icon Frida Kahlo in Julie Taymor's handsomely mounted biopic. Hayek painted some of the pictures in the movie herself, but sported fake brows. 'For her, it represented freedom,' said Hayek of Kahlo's appearance. 3ZOOLANDER 2 While Buff still wishes Eddie Murphy had appeared in Zoo 2 (he once joked about a look that he'd named 'Black Iron'), we'll settle for Benedict Cumberbatch playing supermodel All with long black hair and bleached blond…2 min
Total Film|November 2024MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIANFILM BUFF TOTAL FILM CLASSIC To me, it's Python's finest moment,' grins Terry Gilliam, one-sixth of legendary British comedy troupe Monty Python.He's of course talking about the group's controversial second narrative feature Monty Python's Life of Brian, a movie that somehow feels more timely than ever despite 45 years having passed since its 1979 debut. 'We were very prescient,' he tells Buff. 'Everything the modern world is railing about and unable to deal with, we were talking about back then when we were all young and healthy. It's my favourite Python film.' Perhaps Python's strongest big-screen outing, Life of Brian puts the story of Christ in its comedy crosshairs, taking aim at all of religion's wild miscommunications and contradictions without actually featuring the big guy upstairs - or their son…4 min
