20 years on the matrix American Pie ‘The car porn is good, the action is great... just go for the ride’ Jason Statham
“It’s absurd the amount of testosterone that’s on the set!’ Dwayne Johnson
world exclusive
Hobbs & Shaw Johnson + Statham + stunt mayhem Phoebe Waller-Bridge on Bond Leonardo DiCaprio Guillermo Del Toro’s new horror Stranger Things S3 Reunited! Banderas & Almodóvar
Contents #287
This issue 54 fast & furious: hobbs & shaw In the cover story, TF gets caught between The Rock and a hard Stath to talk about the F&F spin-off. 66 Anya taylor-joy From The Witch to Playmobil and Edgar Wright’s new horror. 70 pain & glory Pedro Almodóvar and Antonio Banderas reteam for a personal meta-movie.
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74 william friedkin The ever-candid auteur takes TF on a cruise through his biggest hits. 80 the matrix Two decades after we swallowed the red pill, how has cinema changed? 118 American pie Two decades after we swallowed the sweet and salty Pie, the cast and filmmakers look back.
every issue
teasers 9 cannes film festival round-up Highlights from the Croisette: 2019 edition. 12 leonardo dicapri0 The Once Upon A Time… star is so hot right now. 14 the lion king Timon and Pumbaa speak! 16 josh hartnett The Faculty star faces our movie-quote posers. 20 onward Pixar’s tale of magic, dragons and suburbia. 27 IT SHOULDn’T HAPPEN TO A FILM jOURNALIST Jury service: Jamie reflects on the perils of sitting on a film awards panel. 35 TF hero Hirokazu Kore-eda on life after After Life.
total film buff
3 editor’s letter Find out what the team has been up to this month.
114 Is it bollocks? Could you really be hypnotised via your TV?
6 dialogue You write the letters, we provide the snarky responses (and prizes).
115 vomiting scenes Game for a barf.
86 Total Film interview Patricia Arquette on Alabama, Boyhood and turning to directing.
40 Total Film | july 2019
july 2019
126 An american werewolf in london The ultimate transformation. 130 60-second screenplay We go to a parallel timeline where Avengers: Endgame is terrible.
54 POWER COUPLE TF meets Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham to get the lowdown on new Fast & Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw.
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70 big screen
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38 toy story 4 Does the Pixar sequel live up to the Buzz? 40 the dead don’t die Jim Jarmusch resurrects the zombie comedy. 42 men in black: international Do Agents H and M make us say, ‘Hm’? 43 brightburn James Gunn imagines an evil Superman.
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44 child’s play Note to parents: don’t confuse with Toy Story 4. 49 pavarotti Ron Howard’s opera doc hits the high notes. 52 x-men: dark phoenix The beleaguered mutant saga ends with a whimper.
small screen 96 captain marvel Revisiting Marvel’s newest Cap, and catching up with the directors.
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98 rolling thunder Martin Scorsese’s second Bob Dylan doc examine’s the singer-songwriter’s 1975 comeback tour. 102 stranger things Speaking to the key players in Season 3.
‘The goal was to create a movie with a vintage throwback feel’ gamesradar.com/totalfilm
104 to old to die young Nicolas Winding Refn and Miles Teller on their ultraviolent, ultrastylish noir, which is streaming now. 106 tv reviews Our verdicts on Chernobyl, Jessica Jones S3, Black Mirror S5 and Killing Eve S2.
july 2019 | Total Film
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hot right now
is keeping it on the QT…
M
ost actors follow up an Oscar win with a slew of big projects, eager to make hay while the sun shines. Leonardo DiCaprio, meanwhile, has not appeared on screen since he finally nabbed his golden baldie at the fifth attempt by fighting a bear and freezing his pecs off in 2015’s The Revenant. Why the absence? Perhaps it’s taken four years to get over feasting on raw bison liver – Leo was still shuddering many months later, when he recalled, “The bad part is the membrane around it, like a balloon. When you bite into it, it bursts in your mouth.” More likely he just fancied a break, having been acting since the age of five, and, in his early twenties, becoming one of the most famous people on the planet with the double whammy of Romeo + Juliet and Titanic.
Total Film | July 2019
Still, what a way to re-enter the fray. In August, DiCaprio will headline Quentin Tarantino’s ninth movie, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, playing faded TV actor Rick Dalton in late-’60s LA. Brad Pitt is Dalton’s stunt double, Cliff Booth, and Margot Robbie is none other than Sharon Tate, for this Tinseltown tale will take in the infamous Manson Murders. And if DiCaprio re-teaming with QT after Django Unchained isn’t enticing enough, the 44-year-old actor is,
as Teasers goes to press, in talks to star in Guillermo del Toro’s remake of 1947 noir Nightmare Alley, about a con man and a femme-fatale psychiatrist. It will be GdT’s first gig since he won Best Picture and Best Director for The Shape Of Water. And then there are plans for a sixth and seventh union with Martin Scorsese, first playing legendary Texas Ranger-turned-federal officer Tom White in Killers Of The Flower Moon, and then President Theodore Roosevelt in the plainly titled Roosevelt. Looks like DiCaprio will be making hay in that beating sun after all. “I’m lucky to have gotten this shot,” he told Esquire in 2017, “and if I don’t do this to the best of my ability – if I don’t work my ass off – I’ve squandered this golden opportunity. That’s always been what has propelled me.” JG ETA | 14 AUGUST / ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD OPENS THIS SUMMER.
a r t s t r eiber
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
THE NEXT BIG THING
Isabela Moner
is a golden girl...
I
’m very lucky to have this happen at 17, to take on this opportunity, and to be able to say that I did it,” says carbonated teenager Isabela Moner, who’s recently impressed in Sicario 2 and Instant Family. Now, the PeruvianAmerican singer-actor is going back to her roots and heading up a franchise with Dora And The Lost City Of Gold.
Dora is a teen in this version. How is she different from the child on the TV show? I had this one way that I viewed Dora, as this Buddy-the-elf kind of character, where she hasn’t grown up yet. [She’s] super-smart, super-educated about the things she knows – different cultures and languages, which is badass. And also, she is an insanely optimistic person, with all this energy, and this unending love for creatures and humans. That was so wonderful to bring to life. This is planned as a franchise. What would you like to see Dora do as she grows up? Like, Dora getting her [driving] licence or something? Or Dora trying to handle liking somebody, whether it’s a guy or girl. That’d be pretty funny! You’re doing romance in Let It Snow. What can we expect from that? Something along the lines of a young adult version of Love Actually. It’s really great, with stories by John Green, who wrote the book. It was my first romantic kind of part ever. You don’t really know how awkward it is on set until you’re in it, and they’re doing weird shots of the kissing scene, all angles, and you’re doing it over and over again...
M a a r t en de Boer
What else would you like to do? A psycho-thriller, something where I play somebody with a mental illness, or maybe a mental advantage. You know, someone who’s got powers or gifts. It’d be really cool. And will you still keep up the music career? It’s a huge priority because it’s the one thing where I can truly express myself 100 per cent, without a studio telling you what to do. JC ETA | 16 August / Dora And The Lost City Of Gold opens this summer.
july 2019 | Total Film
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The world’s most trusted reviews CERTIFICATE TBA DIRECTOR Annabel Jankel STARRING Holliday Grainger, Anna Paquin, Gregor Selkirk, Kate Dickie SCREENPLAY Henrietta Ashworth, Jessica Ashworth DISTRIBUTOR Vertigo RUNNING TIME 107 mins
Tell It To The Bees
Love and honey…
C
OUT 19 JULY
onvention-busting romance, nature motifs, formative childhood memories, melodramatic lapses… Despite a CV that includes 1993’s Super Mario Bros. and two future-leaning Rush promo videos, Annabel Jankel’s tidy, tasteful adaptation of a novel by Fiona Shaw (not that one) takes seed in vintage and faintly precious period lit-pic norms. But its 1952-set portrait of prejudice in a small Scottish town isn’t without sensitivity and resonance. What’s more, it’s intermittently enlivened by three on-point lead performances.
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Gregor Selkirk nails the curious-to-confused measure of bullied schoolboy Charlie Weekes, whose mum Lydia (Holliday Grainger) struggles with local mill work. Charlie’s brutal dad, meanwhile, is off philandering. When Charlie becomes fascinated by the bees owned by local doctor Jean Markham (Anna Paquin), a meeting between Lydia and Jean swiftly blossoms into mutual attraction. And in a town “too small for secrets”, word spreads. An appealing chemistry of contrasts emerges between the beaten-down Grainger and brisk Paquin, aided by smooth scripting from sister act Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth (Killing Eve).
The period details seem equally fuss-free under Jankel’s direction, though you can’t say the same for the overdetermined insect metaphors or the overwrought climax, where everything goes bad at once in a fashion all-too-familiar from many an outdated lesbian romance. A quieter post-script provides a more persuasive pay-off, one that’s more in keeping with Jankel’s trad but likeable love story. Kevin Harley
THE VERDICT Paquin, Grainger and Selkirk sell Jankel’s honey-sweet portrait of free-spirited love.
She’d just discovered how expensive her train ticket was.
Total Film | July 2019
“Vegan, you say? How utterly modern of you, darling.” CERTIFICATE 12A DIRECTOR Chanya Button STARRING Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki, Isabella Rossellini SCREENPLAY Eileen Atkins, Chanya Button DISTRIBUTOR Thunderbird Releasing RUNNING TIME 110 mins
Vita & Virginia
Half Bloomsbury…
I
OUT 5 JULY
n our #TimesUp world, it’s encouraging that this elegant period drama is made predominantly by, and about, women. How disappointing, then, that a film focusing on two of the 20th Century’s most trailblazing female literary firebrands feels so curiously underpowered. Following the meeting and subsequent affair between Bloomsbury set authors Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) and Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki), Vita & Virginia explores themes of muse and artist, mental health and the sense of madness/sadness inherent in intense, short-lived attraction and eroticism. Leaning heavily on the torrid letters the women wrote to one another via direct-to-camera talking heads gives both authors their authentic voices, but this stagey device fails to connect emotionally. Perhaps inevitably, given it’s adapted by Eileen Atkins and director Chanya Button from Atkins’ play of the same name. Also, although Arterton is at her most perky and Debicki tremulous, there’s a fundamental lack of chemistry that is key to understanding the hold the couple had over each other. Meanwhile, Isobel WallerBridge’s anachronistic electronic
score only distracts. Button is more successful at conveying the Bloomsbury set’s pre-war permissiveness (hedonistic parties, enlightened husbands), which inspired Woolf’s masterpiece, Orlando, and serves as a banging drum for modern feminism. But, as the ladies themselves would no doubt agree, there needs to be as much substance as style. Jane Crowther
THE VERDICT Beautiful, well-intentioned and timely, but lacking any real passionate punch.
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The world’s most trusted reviews
THE BRINK OUT 12 JULY “I’m gonna so get crushed in your film,” smirks Steve Bannon, a former Trump chief strategist who’s now seeking to organise a global populist movement. Shot over roughly 12 months, this documentary proves quietly revealing, as the gregarious Bannon denies the dog-whistling within his own nativist rhetoric, and ludicrously compares himself and his “mission” to Abraham Lincoln. Tom Dawson
LIAM GALLAGHER: AS IT WAS OUT NOW In a more introspective sibling to Oasis doc Supersonic, singer Liam Gallagher continues his side of the story, claws back his rep and discovers he’s still a star. The frontman is good for a quote (meeting David Beckham at Glastonbury: “What the fook does he want?”) and there are tender exchanges with his mother, Peggy - but don’t expect a cinematic supernova. James Mottram
CERTIFICATE 12A DIRECTOR Ron Howard STARRING Luciano Pavarotti, Nicoletta Mantovani, Bono DISTRIBUTOR Entertainment One RUNNING TIME 114 mins
HERO
Ma OUT NOW
Born in Trinidad in 1917, Ulric Cross was WW2’s most decorated West Indian. He then became a lawyer serving African nations seeking to establish themselves as sovereign states. It’s an incredible story, zippily told here with dramatic reenactments that achieve a real sense of scale. Shame that technical limitations - including an uneven sound mix that drowns out the narration – can hold it back. Tim Coleman
Out now Created as a response to the regret Octavia Spencer and Tate Taylor felt about The Help, this dumbbut-fun horror gives the excellent Spencer more visibility and agency. She plays the titular damaged woman, seeking revenge on her high-school tormentors by boozebefriending their teen offspring. Ma lacks the dramatic ambiguity to be genuinely scary or thrilling but, as a knowing B-movie, it’s an amusing diversion. Jane Crowther
The tenor’s story is beautifully told in Ron Howard’s doc.
Pavarotti
49
A tenor well spent…
V er t igo , T hunder bir d, Dog w oof, A lt i t ude , Bl ue Dol p hin, Uni v er s a l , e One
E
OUT 15 JULY
arly in Ron Howard’s documentary, we learn that Luciano Pavarotti’s grande desire was to take “opera to the people”. Duly, Howard’s portrait of the Italian tenor pivots on this modest mission. A warm valentine, Howard’s brisk doc illuminates how high art and popular stardom converged in a man whose presence boomed with personality. Howard corrals a huge spread of singers, partners, children, business associates, fans and more to plot Pavarotti’s graduation from teacher to the Teatro Municipale in 1961. There, his performance of La bohème served notice of his charisma and seat-shaking voice, which he worked hard on until his virtuosity seemed organic. Meanwhile, Howard demythologises opera to show what made Pavarotti special. The tenor’s pathway to fame is vividly mapped out, with pinnacles including The Three Tenors, a water-logged Hyde Park concert, and his charity shows. Perhaps inevitably, a fall came as opera snobs derided his populism, and headlines flaunted his new relationship with a woman 34 years his junior. But, although Pavarotti’s issues are acknowledged, Howard gently redirects the focus to his hunger for life and outsized talent. Even if Howard only fleetingly gets under his subject’s skin, he leaves no doubt why Pavarotti touched so many on his climb to hit those high Cs. Kevin Harley
THE VERDICT A consistently enjoyable, engaging portrait of a vocal powerhouse as a humble man.
gamesradar.com/totalfilm
July 2019 | Total Film
cover story
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n the Universal Studios Lot in California, it’s an uncharacteristically grey day in May 2019. But the threat of drizzle is apt, as Total Film strolls past a huge recreation of a London street, replete with fast cars and revving motorcycles. Some filming is taking place today, but TF is in fake London to meet the cast of Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw, the franchise spin-off that follows Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham’s title characters in a side mission that takes them far away from Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto. The idea of spinning off from the lucrative franchise (total box office to date: $5.1bn) with US DSS agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson) and British special forces operative-turned-mercenaryturned-uneasy-ally Deckard Shaw (Statham) came naturally, according to director David Leitch, the former stunt coordinator who has become an acclaimed director with the likes of John Wick, Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2. “The chemistry between Dwayne and Jason was so well-received in [Fast & Furious] 7 and 8, that I think that it just felt right for [series screenwriter] Chris Morgan and the team to really just say, ‘These characters should have their own world. We want to know more about them. But the Fast movies can’t support all that story. So let’s give them their own lane.’” Hobbs and Shaw have butted heads with full force since the latter was introduced as the villain of the seventh instalment, before they became prison pals and unlikely teammates in Fast & Furious 8, in pursuit of cyberterrorist
Total Film | july 2019
TRIPLE THREAT Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson return as Deckard Shaw and Luke Hobbs, with Vanessa Kirby as Deckard's sister Hattie (above).
Cipher (Charlize Theron). During that mission, they somewhat put their differences aside, but there was still a weapons-grade level of banter between them. When we meet them today, even though they’re not in the same room, that chemistry clearly bleeds off screen. When Statham’s asked if he has a question for Johnson, he pauses in thought. “What can I say? You should say, ‘Jason says…’” He pauses again, tilting back his head and cracking a mile-wide wolfish grin. “No, no, I won’t,” he cackles. Johnson, meanwhile, is the last stop on TF’s Universal Studios itinerary for the day. “Saved the best for last,” he quips, cucumber-cool. “How was that bag of fun with Jason?” Told about Statham’s refusal to share a question for him, the artist formerly known as The Rock breaks into a gruff impersonation
– “Nah, I don’t think so, no, no, no” – with a smile. Johnson’s ascent to all-conquering movie stardom arguably cranked up a gear when he joined 2011’s Fast & Furious 5. Both Johnson’s and the series’ stock skyrocketed from then on. Today, this small, unassuming meeting room is thrumming with Big Dwayne Energy. He might be one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, but Johnson is a gracious host. He offers an Infinity Gauntlet-sized handshake at the off, and the way he holds court on all aspects of the production is a testament to his producing muscle, which he consolidated when he co-founded production company Seven Bucks in 2012. There’s been talk of a Hobbs spin-off for almost as long as the character has existed, but that wasn’t Johnson’s plan. “My number one goal and intention in Fast 5 was three-pronged,” he Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs
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says, looking every inch the power player in a striped black polo shirt and grey trousers, sporting an enormous black ring on his right pinky. “To come in and help elevate the franchise in any way that I could; to create a character that I was really going to enjoy playing; and most importantly of all of them, creating a character that hopefully fans would really love seeing.” When the film started test-screening with audiences, it was clear that audiences were responding.
Rad Bromance While talks between Johnson and the studio had been going on since Fast 5, it was the team-up with Statham that provided the impetus for the spin-off. “It wasn’t until after Fast 8 that we realised, ‘I think we have a nice creative inroad that we can start,’” says Johnson. july 2019 | Total Film
a-game From The Witch to Glass to Edgar Wright’s now-shooting horror movie Last Night In Soho, Anya Taylor-Joy has embraced her dark side. So why is being a toy in playmobil: the movie her most challenging role yet?
T R UNK A R CHI V E
Words Jamie Graham
anya taylor-joy
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MAKING OF
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Total Film | JULY 2019
PAIN and GLORY A film director stuck in a rut, with physical ailments and a past he’s still wrestling with… Pain And Glory represents a career high for a reflective Pedro Almodóvar. Total Film meets the Spanish filmmaker – and his star Antonio Banderas – to talk about his most personal project yet. Words James Mottram
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ressed in a bright yellow shirt, the silver-haired Pedro Almodóvar is also sporting two watches, one on each wrist. One is “for glamour – and to tell the time” he laughs. And the other? “This is for health reasons. They count the steps that I do every day.” It’s worth mentioning simply because Spain’s most famous film director turns 70 this year, and such issues are uppermost in his mind. Moreover, they form the backbone of his masterful new film, Pain And Glory, which has just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. This 21st film of Almodóvar’s 40-year career is unquestionably his most autobiographical – which is saying something from the director of 1999’s All About My Mother. A self-portrait of an artist, it stars his long-time collaborator
Antonio Banderas as ageing and ailing gay film director Salvador Mallo (the name contains all the letters needed to spell ‘Almodóvar’). “This is about him,” says Banderas, in no uncertain terms. “It’s about Pedro Almodóvar.” For years now, the Madrid-based Almodóvar has suffered from chronic back pain, tinnitus and sensitivity to light – ailments that have hampered his life. Finally, he poured this into Mallo, expressed elegantly early on in Pain And Glory in an animated sequence that recounts the fragile director’s health problems. But the film is far more than this; Mallo has countless dramas to contend with – repressed feelings towards his mother, past lovers and former colleagues. When we join him, he’s creatively stymied; but then the Spanish Cinemathèque proposes a screening for the newly JULY 2019 | Total Film
FILMOGRAPHY Cruising 1980
Al Pacino is a cop on the hunt for a serial killer who is targeting gay men… “Cruising was… challenging. The world of S&M hadn’t been portrayed in a mainstream movie before – but I don’t think even then people were aware of how far I was prepared to take it. In the end though, I didn’t cut anything from that film that I didn’t want to. I shot about 40 minutes of footage in the leather clubs that I knew the ratings board was going to cut. I knew if I’d left that stuff in they’d have ripped through the entire picture. “Pacino was not my first choice – I wanted Richard Gere. But Pacino read my script, because he had the same agent, and he really wanted to do it. At the time, Pacino was one of the biggest stars around, so I went with him and I guess it turned out OK. “I’m currently in the middle of re-grading the colour for the new release. The digital process is so much more accurate now – I’m seeing the picture the way I always wanted to for the first time. I’d shoot everything in digital now if I could. For me, 35mm was always just a step along the way.” 74
A r r o w V ide o
my life in pictures
William
Total Film | July 2019
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN
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As one of the most controversial auteurs of the New Hollywood era, William Friedkin rewrote the rulebook with films such as The French Connection, The Exorcist and Sorcerer. Now returning with a new homeentertainment release for his most divisive film, Cruising, cinema’s great outsider talks TF through his career. Words Paul Bradshaw
Friedkin July 2019 | Total Film
the
Interview In tervie w Mat t may t um por tr ait Benjo Arwas
Winning an Oscar was weird because people would look at you like suddenly you had a different value in their eyes
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Patricia Arquette Benjo Arwas/con t our by ge t t y
From David Lynch to Martin Scorsese, Patricia Arquette has worked with some of film’s most distinctive directors. But she also saw opportunity on the small screen just before TV’s new ‘Golden Age’, and she’s now shining in a new binge-worthy drama. Total Film meets a risk-taking talent not afraid to make her voice heard.
Total Film | July 2019
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tv
GOOD OMENS 12
KILLING EVE S2 15
show
show
2019 available now Amazon Prime
2019 available now BBC iPlayer
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n angel and a demon walk into a bar… The cosmic joke of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s “unfilmable” 1990 novel gets a faithful adaptation in Amazon’s soaring six-part comedy, four years after Pratchett’s death. Michael Sheen and David Tennant make a brilliant pairing as the celestial beings who begin an unlikely friendship, eclipsing the exploding witches, wooden kids and big-name co-stars knotted around them. Baggy as it is, this rare, wonderful slice of oddball British fantasy does Pratchett proud. Paul Bradshaw
Black Mirror S5 15
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show 2019 AVAILABLE NOW Netflix
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eturning for another, all-too-brief trilogy of technoterror, Charlie Brooker’s satirical anthology series has lost little edge, despite the real world’s relentless slide into absurdity. ‘Smithereens’ is the standout story, with a committed performance from Andrew Scott and some blunt but necessary moralising over the perils of social media addiction. ‘Striking Vipers’, meanwhile, is this year’s ‘San Junipero’ – a bittersweet tale that uses VR gaming to ask questions about modern romance. Less successful is ‘Rachel, Jack And Ashley Too’, a toothless romp with little merit beyond the curiosity of a starring role for Miley Cyrus, who never fully engages with the material. Jordan Farley
hoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Bond 25) passed on scripting duties for this second run of the Bafta-winning cat-and-mouse killer thriller. Thankfully, her absence hasn’t blunted its sharp focus on complex characters and jet-black humour. Picking up exactly where S1 left off, it sees Sandra Oh’s timid spy Eve and Jodie Comer’s wildly unpredictable psychopath Villanelle trying to adjust after their fateful encounter. Compelling plot turns and razor wit abound, but it’s Comer’s showstealing turn that really slays in every episode. Matt Looker 107
red alert
Recognising the horrors of Chernobyl.
A painstaking retelling of nuclear tragedY…
Chernobyl 15 tbc SHOW
2019 AVAILABLE NOW Now TV 4 July Digital HD 8 July DVD EXTRAS TBC
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BO’s five-part miniseries balances the personal with the political, and the scientific with the human sacrifice, as it dramatises the terrible events of 26 April 1986, when an explosion in the No. 4 nuclear reactor at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant resulted in an open-air graphite fire. The radioactive fallout resulted in thousands of deaths – first responders, nearby residents, children claimed by thyroid cancer – while plumes of fission products polluted vast swathes of multiple countries. But it could have been much worse. As seen primarily through the eyes of sceptical scientist Valery Legasov (Jared Harris), Soviet deputy prime minister Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) and (fictional) nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), the State, aided by many who knowingly gave their lives, moved fast to extinguish the flames, contain the radiation and evacuate a 30km radius – even if the swift action was largely about averting the Kremlin’s humiliation.
gamesradar.com/totalfilm
Writer Craig Mazin and director Johan Renck let the scale of the disaster seep in, with the build-up, explosion and clean-up all presented with clarity and rigour. Causes are laid bare and effects are documented. Like ’60s nuclear-war docudrama The War Game and ’80s holocaust drama Threads, Chernobyl haunts, scars and is impossible to shake. And yet for all of its horror, it is ultimately an ode to the human spirit. An instant classic. Jamie Graham
july 2019 | Total Film
The home entertainment bible “I scowl in the face of danger.”
last orders 106
Jessica Jones: S3 15
SHOW
2019 AVAILABLE NOW Netflix
W
e only have a few hours to live up to this hero shit,” says Jessica Jones halfway through her third season. Talk about an onthe-nose comment: for its final outing (on Netflix, at least), showrunner Melissa Rosenberg’s Marvel adap faces the task of providing a send-off for both the streaming Marvel-verse and Jones’ run itself.
After two seasons of grappling with her past, we find Krysten Ritter’s Jones torn between saviour and cynic as she faces her future. In her doubts about heroism, Jones’ hard-bitten introspection contrasts sharply with adoptive sister Trish’s (Rachael Taylor) hunger to flex her new powers. Elsewhere, Jones’ exchanges with a new lover stretch our interest in burger-based banter while we await some new threat to galvanise the plot. When he arrives, Jeremy Bobb’s killer Gregory Salinger is a mixed bag of fruitcake. True, his attempt to portray himself as a “single white male” target for Jones’ “feminist vindicator” anger introduces of-the-moment themes from the noxious ‘manosphere’. Yet his supposedly Lecter-ish intelligence
Total Film | July 2019
never fully registers, leaving a whiff of over-familiarity after the monstrous Kilgrave and multi-layered Alisa. As the plot settles into a holding pattern of legal wranglings, Ritter’s mordant charisma lacks anything properly challenging to bounce off. Yet just when you think this is a series in need of a shock jolt, JJ3 suddenly puts itself in a strong position to pay off its promises. Sadly, the promises of Jones’ sibling Marvel spin-offs are now in doubt after Netflix’s blanket cancellation. True, few of the six titles were without issues. If Iron Fist was too slow and silly, the team-up of Fist, Jones, Luke Cage and Daredevil in The Defenders mistook dour for deep, even managing to make backfrom-the-dead ninjas dreary.
See this if you liked… Manhunter 1986 Salinger fancies himself as a high-grade psycho: note the “Do you see…” quote. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 2012 Benjamin Walker, who played Abe, turns up as Jessica’s new lover in S3. Don’t Trust The B---- 2012-2013 JJ went one season longer than Ritter’s previous TV role.
But if the sense of wasted potential rankled, TV’s Marvel-verse did score some wins, often with movie-grade casting calls. Though over-long, Iron Fist 2 improved on its first season thanks to Alice Eve’s Typhoid Mary and Sacha Dhawan’s intense Davos. Jon Bernthal gave us the best screen Frank Castle yet in The Punisher, while Cage 1 banked a corking coup with Mahershala Ali’s Cottonmouth. Even The Defenders had Sigourney Weaver on side, though she was squandered too soon. Janet McTeer and David Tennant brought psychological depth in Jessica Jones, though it was Netflix’s first Marvel outing that ruled the roster. Proving a TV show could out-punch a patchy film, Daredevil banked killer turns (Cox, D’Onofrio, Woll, Yung et al) before bowing out on a high with the electric fights and crime-story density of Season 3. The stinger made Season 4 seem a shoo-in. Will a new streaming service bite? Tough to say, though in the meantime you can perhaps see the Marvel-verse’s legacy evolving in Disney+’s Star Wars MCU spin-off plans. As The Mandalorian and more beckon, the ’Devil and Ms Jones - at least - have set high standards for movie-grade franchise TV to live up to. Kevin Harley
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Ne t f l i x , Sk y, A m a z on, BBC
It’s closing time for Netflix’s Marvel universe…
film buff
n a c i r e Am t went by like it was only 19 years,” chuckles co-director Paul Weitz, reflecting on the two decades that have passed since he and his brother Chris served up American Pie. “I just watched the film with my 15-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son - which was perhaps an ill-advised decision, but I thought I might as well get it over with. Afterwards, my son, who has seen a few of my films, turned to me and said, ‘I’m proud of you, Dad,’” he laughs, marvelling at the absurdity of the situation. “It’s not often that you get to make something that impacts your whole life.” Back in 1999, little was expected from screenwriter Adam Herz’s raunchy high-school script. Submitted under the bold working title Teen Sex Comedy Which Your Bosses Will Hate But The Readers At The Studio Will Love, it was a small Americana story featuring a bunch of unknown stars as soon-to-be graduates desperate to lose their virginity before prom. When it was released, it was a runaway hit. Three direct sequels and four spin-off features followed, while its cast, led by newbie Jason Biggs, likeable jock dude Seann William Scott, bandcamp fanatic Alyson Hannigan and a host
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Total Film | July 2019
of fresh-faced talent became household names overnight. The Weitz brothers had created an unexpectedly warm, endearing and uncharacteristically balanced instalment in the sex comedy subgenre, a corner of cinema synonymous with crude humour and male gaze voyeurism. Look back at their debut through 2019’s politically sensitive lens, and American Pie is certainly not without its fair share of infamy and eyebrow-raising moments - however, as its directors and cast tell Buff, heart was very much at the core of their creative endeavours.
teenage kicks
“We weren’t huge fans of teen sex comedies,” explains co-director Chris Weitz. “They all seemed a bit mean spirited. Fortunately, we had Adam to guide us through that world. We went to school in England, took A-levels and went to Sixth Form, so didn’t really have the experience of American high school or prom - but I think that sense of
imminent humiliation, excitement and fear of the opposite sex was universal.” A year earlier, Chris and Paul had cut their teeth in Hollywood by writing DreamWorks animation Antz. When Herz’s script landed on their desk, talk of directing quickly surfaced. “Adam wrote a lovely script,” recalls Paul. “I remember reading it and thinking we could probably direct it without screwing it up. We sort of bamboozled the studio into letting us do it.” By working with Herz, the duo injected a little more balance into his story (“We worked hard to make sure the girls were adequately represented and there was a basic humane quality beneath it,” says Chris), before fleshing out their cast of high-school virgins. “We were lucky,” explains Paul, “because nobody was expecting anything from us, we had a fair amount of leeway in terms of casting unknowns.” Leading their group of new faces was Jason Biggs as Jim, a typical teen with a habit of finding himself in awkward situations, either with the opposite sex or his endearingly over-supportive dad, played memorably by Eugene Levy. “There’s something tremendously winning about Jason,” smiles Chris. “He can bear up under a lot of comic humiliation and still be a positive force. He worked beautifully with Eugene, who was so fantastic. That part was incredibly important for the whole movie to work.” “Seann William Scott read very early on,” says Paul on the casting of frat-boy king Steve Stifler. “There are lots of people who are great at playing jerks but he’s an incredibly sweet guy. This sounds like a made-up story but he was actually working at a Home Depot during that process.” Scott elaborates: “Saying I was working at Home Depot might be a bit of an exaggeration
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