Category: cinema

Andrew Garfield has been hitting the promotional trail hard for his new film We Live in Time. Maybe, you could say, a bit too hard. There are the many, many chemistry-heavy online videos with Florence Pugh. There’s his Chicken Shop Date video with Amelia Dimoldenberg, which is less an interview and more a terrifying nexus point for one-sided online parasocial celebrity relationships. Garfield even took a cardboard cutout of Pugh to a recent red carpet event, which if nothing else signals an aggressive desire to become more meme than man.

However, one promotional pit stop has singlehandedly managed to save Garfield. Two days ago, a video of him talking to Elmo was released online. In it, Garfield discusses the death of his mother and the complicated forms that his grief has taken.

“I’m just thinking about my mum today,” he tells Elmo. “She passed away not too long ago, and I miss her a lot.” Elmo tells Garfield that he gets sad when he misses people, but Garfield replies that: “Sadness is kind of a gift. It’s a lovely thing to feel, in a way, because it means you really love somebody when you miss them … it makes me feel close to her when I miss her.”

Something like this – an actor simplifying bereavement for the benefit of a puppet – could be cloying. Yet there is absolutely no doubt that Garfield is being utterly sincere. He stumbles over some of his lines. His eyes prick with tears as he speaks. It is not, as you can imagine, something you should watch without steeling yourself a bit beforehand.

This isn’t a new subject for Garfield. A couple of years ago, he found himself discussing his mother’s 2019 death while promoting his film Tick, Tick… Boom! He fought through tears during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. He’s spoken about it with Variety, with Channel 4, with this publication, and managed to be clear-eyed and eloquent whenever the subject came up.

To some extent, I can relate. My mum died a couple of years before Garfield’s, and in similar circumstances. Like Garfield, I had to go and promote something while it was happening. In my case it was a book that I wrote because I knew she was ill and the publication coincided with the end of her life. Going in front of people to speak about her, while it was far too close to process, was a deeply complicated thing. It was nice to be able to tell stories about her, but at the same time it was a fully groggy out-of-body experience. And I was only talking to a few hundred people at a time. Garfield had to talk to the entire world, while simultaneously knowing that most people just wanted to know if he was going to be Spider-Man again. The fortitude this must have required.

However, in this most recent instance, Garfield at least had Elmo to help him. This must have been some comfort because there’s something about Elmo, some innate puppet magic, that allows whoever he’s talking with to be the version of themselves that they most are. Look at the video of Elmo talking to Ricky Gervais, in which the actor gripes about not being paid and then mentions the Holocaust, prompting Elmo to rail at the director for losing control of the interview.

Or look at the more recent video of the Today show, in which Larry David stormed on to the set unprompted and throttled Elmo because he couldn’t stand his squeaky voice. Would David have throttled a human interviewee? Would he have even throttled Big Bird? No, because Elmo grants people the gift of letting them be their truest self.

And so it is with Garfield. His Elmo segment let him take a step back from his memefication and talk about something that truly matters to him, with far more genuine emotion than stars often show while they’re out punting their movies. We should be thankful for the both of them.

‘Daring, subversive, melancholic’

I thought that this was a daring, subversive, melancholic and thought provoking film. Phillips’ decision to avoid simply churning out a repeat of the first film is admirable and Joaquin Phoenix adds more layers to the character of Arthur Fleck. Lady Gaga was captivating as Harley Quinn and together the two leads offer a compelling portrait of loneliness, yearning and human frailty. Once again, Hildur Guðnadóttir’s masterful score adds gravitas and underlines the despair at play. It’s certainly not a perfect film, but its ambition should be applauded and I’m really surprised by the coverage it has received. I’m sure it will come to be seen in a more positive light. David Markham, 37, Sheffield

‘Dire’

Dire. Two hours, 18 minutes of my life (and my husband’s) that I will never get back (plus associated grumbling time post leaving the cinema). Where to begin? The first film ended with the justification for Joker’s impending life of crime, and the second film simply didn’t follow on from that, it was so far removed from the classiest of comic book films. Joker’s character didn’t develop in any way, if anything, he became dull, insipid even. Harley Quinn was two dimensional at best, a manipulative boyband fan at worst. Lady Gaga’s voice is stunning, and so sadly Joaquin Phoenix’s voice seemed weak in comparison. I cannot recall any original songs, so it was poor karaoke. Harvey Dent was barely out of school. The violence of the prison guards was pointless. As an avid cinema goer, this is the most disappointing and the laziest film I have witnessed. Lou Browne, 48, Burton on Trent

‘Lacks a decent plot’

I loved the first film for its alternative take on superhero movies. Folie à Deux simply lacks a decent plot. The performances are top notch but to no avail. Lady Gaga is cast but not trusted. Let’s shoe horn in fantasy scenes to embellish her role. Those pointless scenes removed would have made for a much more cohesive film. It is not a car crash but not a patch on The Joker, wasting two outstanding actors. Eugene Martin, 66, Derry

‘Felt more like an epilogue’

It felt more like an epilogue to the first movie than a sequel and it didn’t have the obvious build up to a grand moment, but even so I enjoyed it for its boldness. It was a brave move to do something different to what was expected and I think that was the point. The plot somewhat mirrored the reality. If you reject what is expected of you, people will turn on you. Yes, I too would’ve liked to have seen Joker 2 be Arthur’s rise to power, and Joker 3 having him die at the hands of Batman, but this was a solid movie – and it did not feel like a musical. Gary, 42, Ipswich

‘A waste of Brendan Gleeson’

I can see what Todd Phillips was trying to do with the story. Unfortunately making it a musical and successfully pulling off that arc takes a much more subtle and creative touch that simply isn’t there. On top of that was the complete waste of Brendan Gleeson. Phil, Limerick, Ireland

‘How could so little happen in such a long film?’

When I told my friends that I was going to see Joker 2, their response was “isn’t that supposed to be kind of disturbing?” (They know I’m a sensitive soul.) Upon leaving the cinema, I sent them a message saying that the only disturbing thing about the film was how badly it was written. I left the cinema thinking maybe I just hadn’t understood the film, as it felt like I had missed something – how could so little happen in such a long film? Lydia Richardson, 22, Paris, France

‘A deeply eccentric labour of love’

I thought this was a deeply eccentric labour of love, well worth seeing. I liked the musical elements. Gaga is good and Phoenix’s voice worked well, but found it overlong. The Two Face origin story did suggest a third shot by Philips. Now that it’s been such a flop, that seems unlikely. A good-bad movie, but, hey, at least it wasn’t set in the Multiverse. I saw three 140-minute films that week. This was a lot better than Megalopolis but nowhere near as original or as much fun as The Substance. David Belbin, 66, Nottingham

‘I could have directed it better’

It was a missed opportunity to really dive into a complicated love affair. It had so much potential with such a great cast and all the subplots, mental health issues, and so on, but that was all washed over and replaced with songs and scenes that added no value. They shouldn’t have messed with the format from the previous Joker. I could have directed it better! Ellie, Oxfordshire

‘Gaga is spectacular, Phoenix incredible’

As a standalone film, I think this would have been a pretty interesting concept. Gaga is spectacular, Phoenix incredible. Going in with expectations so high after the first movie just set me up for disappointment, this film having been made so completely differently. The actors weren’t given the material they deserved. I wanted to love it, wanted it to be so much more than it was. Sadly, it was all style and no substance. Kirsty, Tyne and Wear

Conventional wisdom may dictate that you need a guy dressed up as a bat to properly defeat the Joker. But this past weekend, the indie distributor Cineverse fought fire with fire – or fought one deadly clown with another, as Terrifier 3 knocked the ill-regarded Joker sequel out of the top spot at the box office. (For that matter, ex-Batman Michael Keaton did also outshine Joker: Folie à Deux, with the sixth weekend of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.) For those who only have room in their head to keep track of one psychotic clown at a time, Terrifier is a homegrown slasher-movie franchise that began in earnest with a barely released practical-effects calling card: the first Terrifier feature, which played in a handful of theaters in 2018. (A shorter version appeared in the earlier anthology film All Hallows’ Eve.) A vastly more elaborate but still low-budget sequel followed in 2022; now a third film, still only a $2m production, has outgrossed its predecessor in a single weekend, handily taking the number one spot. It’s on track to become one of the biggest horror movies of the year.

The new entry continues the, ah, adventures of Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), a silent killer outfitted in black-and-white face paint and an accompanying clown costume, pantomiming his way through a variety of intensely grisly, sometimes stomach-churning murders. Though the movies aren’t terrifically clear about this, Art is a serial killer during most of the first film, then resurrected by a demonic entity that makes him near impossible to kill in the sequels. Not that anyone has much of a chance to try: the typical Art the Clown encounter involves him pestering, vexing or otherwise confounding people who think he’s just a weirdo in a costume before he whips a weapon out of his garbage bag and commences murders that can be, quite literally, torturously drawn out (several of the “kills” are paced out like action or dance sequences) or, on occasion, extremely concise (sometimes he just shoots people).

Either way, the Terrifier movies are not exactly taut with suspense. Rather, they traffic in spectacle, derived from their sometimes-comic willingness to tear flesh asunder – and show, not just imply, all of the gruesome damage Art inflicts, sometimes nudging audiences into disbelieving laughter. The sequels in particular are consciously designed as 80s throwbacks, increasingly parlaying their low budgets into something resembling retro ambience, even though they’re set in modern times. This isn’t the type of horror movie that has typically crossed over into mainstream success. Terrifier 3 may be the first unrated movie – it easily would have gotten an NC-17 from the MPAA – to top the North American box office, and it may be the goriest movie to ever enter wide release.

The last series to fill so many buckets of blood on such a consistent basis was the so-called “torture porn” of Saw, recently revived with a hit 10th movie. (An 11th is on the way.) Beyond the veneer of elaborate torture, the Terrifier movies don’t have much in common with the Saw pictures, which involve nesting storylines, crazy twists and a soap opera’s worth of interconnected characters and backstories, as the movies bend time to figure out how to incorporate their best-known character, the “Jigsaw killer” played by Tobin Bell. (Technically, he died way back in Saw III, and no supernatural elements have been introduced to revive him; only elaborate flashbacks.) Writer-director Damien Leone has worked some lore into the Terrifier movies, but it’s more vague than complicated; the second and third movie have a designated Final Girl, Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera), whose dead father bequeathed to her a sword capable of inflicting harm upon the malevolent clown.

LaVera brings a lot of conviction to Sienna, and she’s certainly a heroine easy to root for, no matter how much “fun” Art’s depraved antics are supposed to be. (At my showing, the audience applauded the conclusion of several kills; they also cheered when Sienna finally struck back.) But the 80s-fantasy angle of Terrifier 2 isn’t necessarily a series staple; while the third entry brings back Sienna and her sword, it’s more concerned with comporting itself as a Christmas-themed slasher movie. Yes, a bunch of children get killed when Art masquerades as Santa Claus. That we only see the dismembered body parts, and not the actual dismembering, is actually Leone exercising restraint.

So is it just more of that bad-taste envelope-pushing that has catapulted this series from depths-of-Tubi cult attraction to mainstream hit? That must be part of it: the allure of seeing something that has maneuvered around studio-movie gatekeepers. This weekend’s horror sequel Smile 2 has some truly gnarly gore of its own; for that matter, the recently canceled Chucky TV series has moments that would put plenty of R-rated movies to shame. Yet these properties feel, on some level, preapproved; the Terrifier series offers the opportunity to watch a slasher icon develop before our eyes. Most of the aforementioned titans of the genre have been around for literal decades. (Saw, the last truly galvanizing new slasher-like movie, just turned 20!) This means that many horror fans will have come to them reputation first, familiar from iconography, streaming services, cable marathons, merchandising … almost anything but fresh frights coming out in theaters everywhere, especially considering that Freddy and Jason haven’t appeared in new movies for over a decade. Art is certainly the first genuine horror icon of the 2020s – the Covid era.

The pandemic also seems to have shifted the ground of moviegoing. Some audiences seem to have more or less retired from it, happy to wait a few weeks to watch new releases at home, often leaving only the biggest franchises standing at the top of the arts. (The top 10 movies at the North American box office so far in 2024 are all some kind of sequel.) Terrifier 3 is a sequel too, of course, with two more in the works, and streaming is always there in case the next one flops. But dry spots in the release schedule – from Covid, strikes and corporate caution – have opened up some opportunities outside the five remaining major studios. The triumph of Terrifier 3 feels like it was seeded last December, when the pre-Christmas weekends were seeing upwards of half a dozen movies from outside the major studios placing in the box office top 10 – numbers unseen for as long as studios have been this consolidated, maybe longer. Among the titles: The Boy and the Heron, Godzilla Minus One, the Beyoncé concert film, a filmed Broadway production and some more traditional movies from the mini-major Lionsgate.

Many of these were events for certain specific demographics; isn’t it time that horror sickos got similar attention as a niche audience that can rally into a seeming majority? There’s been an explosion of streaming horror movies thanks to services like Shudder and Screambox (the latter was the post-theatrical home of Terrifier 2), and a wide release for Terrifier 3 invites a certain type of geek out of their home and into the weird, sometimes discomfiting world of watching Art’s transgressions with a crowd. He’s a pop star and Godzilla, rolled into one hideous package, and while any of those things can be experienced at home, that’s not the ideal venue. The clown guise might seem mocking, of both supposedly harmless children’s entertainment and a boilerplate fear that’s been overexploited. But to some degree, Art’s sicko-mode clowning is sincere: old-fashioned, unsophisticated and designed to draw a crowd.

The journalism industry today looks strikingly different to the journalism industry of 70-odd years ago, when Billy Wilder’s 1951 masterpiece, Ace in the Hole, rolled into town. But if you think its messages might be outdated, au contraire: like Sidney Lumet’s Network (another vivisectional and scathingly cynical satire of media spectacle), the film remains strikingly relevant and scorchingly hot to the touch, told with cyclonic force and style.

A sensationally smug Kurt Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, a hotshot city reporter who arrives in a small town hoping to land a story that’ll catapult him back to the big time. He marches into the news desk of a humble rag in Albuquerque, dripping bravado, bragging to the publisher about how he’s been fired from 11 newspapers. It’s clear this guy has burned every bridge, but we assume he’s good at his job.

These early moments establish the script’s cracking wit and wordplay, the film’s writers (Wilder, Walter Newman and Lesser Samuels) imbuing the dialogue with a sharp and salty tang which lays the foundation for some ripping lines and monologues to come. Take Tatum’s summary of his knack for his trade: “I know newspapers backwards, forwards and sideways,” he crows. “I can write ‘em, edit ‘em, print ‘em, wrap ‘em and sell ‘em. I can handle big news and little news. And if there’s no news, I’ll go out and bite a dog.”

Tatum is looking for “that big story to get me out of here”, and finds it when he learns that a local store owner, Leo Minosa (played by Richard Benedict) is trapped inside an old mining cave, pinned down by rocks. Tatum talks his way into the cave, befriends Leo and emerges with his story – an “ace in the hole” and “as big as they come”.

The script – inspired by the attempted rescue of real-life cave explorer Floyd Collins – simultaneously conveys the protagonist’s temperament and character motivations, wrapping them together like a double helix, delivering punchiness and brevity. Tatum thinks he needs a week to make his story a real page-turner, but there’s a problem: Leo might be rescued in 12 hours. Tatum convinces the sheriff to change plans and drill down into the cave from above, stretching out the rescue to around a week. The sheriff obliges, granting him exclusive access to the mine in exchange for favourable coverage; one hand washes the other.

Tatum’s journalistic instincts are bang-on: the story becomes a national sensation and he’s once again the man of the hour. The gathering of huge crowds outside the cave – transforming it into a carnival-like event replete with stalls and a ferris wheel – highlights the lecherous effects of capitalism; the spectacle-hungry public are complicit in whatever happens next. This is one of many evergreen elements of Ace in the Hole; that complicity can now be found in the people who buy trashy tabloids or scroll through race-to-the-bottom content on social media.

Ace in the Hole is sometimes discussed in the context of film noir, but it’s more noir adjacent, with an unforgiving plot trajectory tumbling towards tragic endings for both Leo and Tatum. There’s also the very noirish relationship between Tatum and Leo’s wife Lorraine, superbly played by Jan Sterling with a dangerous and weary energy; like Tatum, she’s lost and longing for an exit. Aesthetically, the film is noirish too, its chalky monochrome compositions emphasising sharpness and starkness.

Wilder brilliantly illustrates how stories can take on a life of their own, spiraling in uncontrollable directions, media industry mechanisms and various political factors exacerbating – even creating – tragedy. It’s in Tatum’s best interests to prolong and sensationalise the story: as he puts it, “Bad news sells best, because good news is no news.” Isn’t it funny how cynical films about the media are the ones that tend to stand the test of time and optimistic, rose-coloured takes on the fourth estate never really caught on?

• Ace in the Hole is available to rent on Prime Video and Apple TV+ in Australia, US and UK. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here

‘It’s just so weird, having children,” says Bill Nighy. “The whole thing is like science fiction. Human beings make decisions and have ideas and choose their partner and it’s all so reckless and marvellous. It’s such an extraordinary thing to attempt. Maybe it’s just my age, but I just think of all the energy involved to have and raise children, you know?”

I hear him gliding down the street, phone in hand, offering some sort of gorgeous apology to a cafe door. “And then there’s this human being who turns out to be somebody quite independently of whoever might have been involved in their creation. They’re this completely other thing. And they’re also, in the case of my grandchildren, edible.”

Nighy is a highly covetable grandfather. His date to the Oscars two years ago was a stained Sylvanian bunny (“My granddaughter’s schedule intensified,” he explained, “and I was charged with rabbit-sitting responsibilities”). This year he has lent his voice to no fewer than five children’s animations. And now he’s playing the real-life gynaecologist who pioneered IVF.

“It’s a very obvious remark,” he says, “but the world is divided between people who’ve had children and people who haven’t. Not that it’s a criticism of either group, but nothing can quite prepare you for the moment where they hand you a human being and say, this is yours, you are now their custodian.

“And as soon as you take the weight of the baby, you’re like, ‘Oh, I see, it’s entirely about this now. It’s not about me.’ So it hopefully unplugs some of our unhelpful self-absorption. There’s something outside of yourself to concern yourself with. You go down the billing.” The birth of his daughter 40 years ago was, he concludes, “the most significant thing that has ever happened to me”.

Joy is an origin story for the procedure that enabled millions of people also to become parents. It’s a movie about three good people – Dr Patrick Steptoe (Nighy), Dr Robert Edwards (James Norton) and lab technician Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie) – trying to do a good thing, which everyone knows they manage. Yet it is as gripping as a thriller. Because, explains writer Jack Thorne, it has the structure of a sports movie. The key players “were a genuine team and it cost them to be part of that team. It’s just their season ran from 1968 to 1978.”

1978 was the year the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, was born. In Joy, we don’t encounter her parents until the final reel; the film juggles primal emotions and immense restraint. One touchstone for its director, Ben Taylor, was First Man, the Neil Armstrong biopic starring Ryan Gosling. “Even the overblown trailer finishes with a countdown to liftoff,” he says. “Every second is interspersed with cuts of him and his family.” Yet the step for mankind managed in Joy is arguably more immense. “Going to the moon is one thing but what they did is more important.”

They shot it in the shadow of Oppenheimer: another film, says Taylor, with “a lot of theory, a lot of lab work” – but a more obviously cinematic climax. Filming all the chat took ages, he says, “but then you’ve got James Norton with a pipette. And you can’t just bosh it off in 10 minutes. You want to worship it because it’s the magic of the film.”

So embryos are fertilised in ecstatic closeup. The Lark Ascending booms on the soundtrack. It’s as lush and lyrical as a conventional baby-making scene, just with rather less nudity. “It was a relief there were no sex scenes,” says McKenzie. “That it’s a film not about sex.” She has just finished a film in which her character is celibate. “I was like, ‘Amazing! love it!”

The simplicity of the science surprised Nighy. “The idea of fertilising an embryo outside of the body seemed unachievable. It’s such a profound development yet the actual mechanics of it are not that complicated.” “It’s incredibly binary,” agrees Taylor. “And it’s still very much based on what these three people were doing in a shack in Oldham 47 years ago.”

Joy is Taylor’s first film; he cut his teeth on TV such as Catastrophe and Sex Education. “I’ve loved everything I’ve made,” he says, “but this was the one where I knew I had to make it.” He and his wife have two children conceived by IVF; he caveated job offers with the warning it might be too painful had you had a less happy outcome.

“It was the most emotional rehearsal process I’ve ever had in a film,” agrees Thorne. “So many tears all the way through.” Including for him and his wife and co-writer, Rachel Mason. “Things came to light that probably wouldn’t have,” he said. “Rachel told me she’d decided to leave me if we didn’t have a kid.”

“Because the issue was my issue,” says Mason quickly. “So I felt incredibly guilty: Jack could be with someone else and not go through all this.” Mason now runs a support group for women undergoing fertility treatment, and those experiences are channelled into those scenes in the film concerning the Ovum Club, the self-named group of female volunteers who took part in the gruelling trials, motivated by a desire to help future women desperate to get pregnant – and the glancing hope they themselves might.

Had they not had their son, says Mason, she couldn’t have written Joy. “The trauma, the grief: it’s in you, it never goes. It’s just a darkness. It feels weird saying it, but I still have a reaction to someone else’s pregnancy announcement.” The upset and unwelcome jealousy of others is, she says, “still quite raw”.

“Capturing that shard of ice that comes when you’re dealing with infertility was really important,” says Thorne. “And I think we only caught that because of what we’d been through.”

The film also explains how Purdy – whose crucial role was long diminished, Rosalind Franklin-style – was spurred in part by her own endometriosis. “She wasn’t able to have children,” says McKenzie. “And because of that, she felt like she didn’t deserve love. She’d grown up in a very religious household and the expectation placed on her was to have children and she couldn’t do it. So she knew how that felt, and the humanity in her drove her to want to help other women.”

McKenzie, 24, gives a remarkably mature performance as a woman whose work meant she was shunned by her church-going mother, Gladys (Joanna Scanlan). “The question of whether I’m capable of being a mother is something that’s always been on my mind,” says McKenzie. “Growing up, a lot of pressure is put on girls to be mothers. Our first toys are baby dolls. I grew up hearing that term: ‘baby-bearing hips’.

“So I wanted to bring that to the forefront, especially because it’s so relevant to what’s happening today with American politics and women’s rights, women’s health and Roe v Wade.” She invokes Edwards’ argument: infertility is a medical condition no less deserving of treatment than any other. “Technology is so advanced now that we can do insane operations like laser eye surgery, so why is it not OK for women to have more power over their bodies? It’s men who seem to want to control that, but are totally fine with the technology to remove tumours.”

The cast and crew have little time for sceptics, either of today or half a century ago. “I remember there was friction, static,” says Nighy, of the 1970s stew of misinformation and misplaced anxiety. “But no one was playing God. There is no God, so you can’t play God.”

Before he read theology at university, Norton attended a Catholic boarding school, an experience that has not made him more forgiving of intolerance. “Within the monastery there were beliefs around contraception and female priests and homosexuality I did not agree with. Just because they were embedded in an institution of the church, that didn’t make it more palatable.”

Something beeps in the background of our video call. Norton has type 1 diabetes, which necessitates a pump and a sensor and – if he’s on stage for a while – strategically scattered snacks. “I’m very aware of the importance of medical advancement and pharmaceuticals being given the attention and investment they require,” he grins. “There’s nothing in the progress of science that I feel threatened by.”

Being in a film that highlights this incredible homegrown breakthrough makes him feel “immensely proud”, he says, as well as “very reassured” he doesn’t live in the US where the IVF procedure has been variously “politicised … hijacked … and kind of weaponised”.

Joy was not conceived to be political. But its accidental relevance is, says Taylor, “exciting”. “It can’t come out soon enough for me because it hopefully just shines a light on how simple and how essential this process is and how widely people are affected by infertility.”

Nighy expresses discreet optimism it will have some effect. “Possibly marginally. To have a film that describes in detail the people and the events, rather than just reacting to an idea.”

Thorne is less moderate. “The battle in the US is savage and it’s horrific,” he says. “Doctors being scared to do their jobs is the worst thing imaginable. Yet remember that in this country, Louise Brown was born of two working-class parents who were properly supported. That doesn’t happen now. You can do IVF if you can afford it or live in the right postcode. We did seven rounds – that would be impossible on the NHS. So while the political questions for the US are interesting, there are also political questions for us.”

The women in the waiting room in Oldham came from all economic and ethnic backgrounds, says Taylor. Yet it’s now “the pursuit of the middle classes. It’s shocking to imagine how few people can continue the journey after their first attempt. The darker side of it in this country is how exclusive that club can be.”

His voice wobbles. He’s shooting in Albuquerque and hasn’t seen his children for four months. “It’s so indulgent to say, as someone who’s seen the film 200 times, but there are moments in it that still overwhelm me. There’s just something so beautiful about this idea of sacrifice and the universal desire to have a family.”

“People can and do live incredibly fulfilling lives without children. And that should be a choice. But for me, it beats everything. It feels like as close to the embodiment of love and fulfilment as I can imagine.”

In the film, the character who best articulates this is also the one most opposed to the project succeeding. “When you look back on your life,” Gladys tells Jean at something of a critical moment, “mostly all you can see is failure. But the one thing you can’t see failure in is your children because they’re always beautiful.”

Taylor composes himself. “It’s incredibly easy to say ‘I’ve got a problem with something’ if somebody else is after it and you’ve already got it,” he says. “Parents who have a moral objection to somebody else wanting to be a parent I find excruciating.”

Nighy, still gliding down the street, weighs nature and nurture and what parenthood means to him. “There is a simplistic way of looking at it,” he says, “which would suggest that children are the meaning of life. I see them as beautiful, my daughter and my grandchildren. And I do wonder how much of this is biology or narcissism or self-interest or self-absorption.

“But actually, they’re just fabulous. It’s nothing to do with me. I’m just a big fan. They’re funny and kind and smart and decent. I’m not very self-aware to be honest, but I really don’t take any personal credit. I’m pleased about certain elements, but I don’t think they’re as a result of my brilliant contribution.”

Would he be the same person had he not had a child? “I’m halfway down a very strong cup of coffee,” he says, “which might persuade me into positions I have no right to hold, and I’m not kidding, I’m super-vulnerable to coffee, but I don’t see them as a representation of me but sort of in spite of me.”

He snorts that familiar snort, which may or may not have been passed down the genetic line. “I’m quite astonished to be anybody’s father. It’s a relief. I like it. I like it rather better than being me.”

From sit-ins for peace to avant-garde happenings and covert surveillance of revolutionary sympathies, the world of John Lennon and Yoko Ono can seem removed from that of our own.

But a new documentary about the couple exposes the eerie similarities between the 70s and now, the Oscar-winning director behind the film has said.

One to One, by Kevin Macdonald, portrays Lennon and Ono’s life over an 18-month period after their move to New York in 1971, when they quickly became figureheads for the counterculture and anti-Vietnam war movements.

Showing at the London film festival, it centres around the 1972 One to One benefit concert at Madison Square Garden – Lennon’s last full-length concert and his only one after the Beatles – performed in aid of children with special needs.

“What I hadn’t realised until I started making this was that the period seems like an incredible echo of today, it’s like a mirror image,” Macdonald said.

His film incorporates newly restored 16mm film footage of the concert, archival news clips – of the Attica prison riot, Richard Nixon, the Vietnam war and the shooting of the Alabama governor George Wallace – as well as previously unheard tapes of Lennon and Ono’s private phone calls, recorded by them when they became concerned the FBI was tapping their communications.

Combined, it acted as a corrective to the idea that there is something uniquely divisive about contemporary politics, Macdonald said.

“There was a lot of stuff about the early environmental movement and ads on TV to stop oil. I thought we were only just having these conversations.

“George Wallace is such a clear Trump precedent, especially with the recent assassination attempts. Vietnam was dividing society in the same way Gaza is today. Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman running for president. I thought, ‘God, there’s nothing new in American politics,’ it’s like it’s stuck in some cycle.”

Macdonald, who has directed films including One Day in September, Touching the Void, Whitney, The Last King of Scotland, and The Mauritanian, said the realisation was “strangely reassuring”.

“We all think that today’s politics is uniquely terrible, but this shows something different will come. That maybe Trump is not the end of the world.”

He said throughout he wanted to explore the question: “What do you do once you’ve been in the biggest band in the world, and you’re only 30?”

Footage and recordings were provided by Lennon’s family, while Macdonald and his wife Tatiana Macdonald, a set decorator, remade Lennon and Ono’s West Village apartment including their posters, records and the TV at the foot of their bed.

“I heard this interview with John, where he talks about how when he first arrived in America, all he did was watch TV,” the director said. “I thought, ‘That’s a way into this.’ Let’s make the film about them watching TV and learning about America.”

The phone recordings also provide a rare insight into the pair’s thinking at the time. In one, Ono describes what it was like to be blamed for breaking up the Beatles and the racial abuse she was subject to in Britain, including being called “ugly” by the press.

In another, Lennon describes his idea for a US tour that would raise bail money for American prisoners who could not afford the fees, as well as efforts to get Bob Dylan onboard (and persuade the Dylan aggravator AJ Weberman to leave the musician alone).

Macdonald said he was particularly moved by the couple’s activism some years before they became reclusive, and even split up for a while (with John temporarily moving to LA).

There’s a moment in the concert, during the song Come Together, when Lennon shouts: “Stop the war.” During another song he shouts “Vote”, with the 1972 US election looming. Nixon won against the leftwing Democrat George McGovern.

“They campaigned to defeat Nixon. But not only did Nixon win, he received the majority of the votes of young Americans under the age of 25,” Macdonald said. “I think it’s what led to John’s big period of alcoholism and the split. They tried to change things, and it didn’t work. And that’s heartbreaking, obviously.”

But he added that there was something that stood out about Lennon and Ono’s activism compared with the modern celebrity’s: it was done at a grassroots level rather than on Instagram and X.

“People from that time told me their door was just kind of open,” he said. “You would just go in and have tea with them on their bed.”

Lennon was fatally shot in 1980. Has Macdonald thought about what the musician would be like if he were alive today?

“Quite a lot, actually. I think he would stay true to his very simple message of peace. He would have remained on the side of the underdog. But I think he would have also got himself into trouble, because he was always so honest.”

For the director, that is one of the reasons it would “have been so great” having him around today. “Too many celebrities feel the pressure of social media to censor themselves, to say the right thing, to not contradict themselves,” he said.

“But you see in the film that somebody who is actually confident knows that they’re not going to always think the same thing. They learn from their mistakes.”

Here is a frustrating film that tries to tell two stories at once, and succeeds with neither. It’s the story of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s epic Antarctic ordeal in 1915 and how he and his crew had somehow to journey to safety after their ship, the Endurance, sank. It’s also the story of how this ship was finally discovered by a hi-tech logistics team in 2022, 3,000 metres down at the bottom of the Weddell Sea near the Antarctic Peninsula. It juxtaposes Shackleton’s extraordinary battle to survive with the modern-day scientists’ struggle to locate the Endurance wreck, with tiggerish Dan Snow on board bouncing amiably about – and it is a pretty glib alignment.

Furthermore, the black-and-white footage taken at the time by Shackleton’s famous embedded cinematographer Frank Hurley has been colourised, and passages from the journals of Shackleton and others are read aloud by AI-generated voices, taken (evidently) from existing recordings by the actual adventurers themselves; this is a presumptuous and flashy way of gussying the whole drama up.

Splitting the focus between past and present has the indirect effect of showing that the strains on the modern-day explorers are of course nowhere near as awful as those suffered by the Shackleton crew. Snow et al look slightly self-congratulatory, especially as the supposed element of tension – will they find the wreck or have to turn back? – is so obviously superfluous. It would have been better, I suspect, simply to recount the modern-day exploration, which is interesting enough, with more sparing use of the Shackleton backstory – although it should be admitted that some of their Shackleton material is interesting and original. The final discovery of the Endurance wreck itself makes for some amazing and eerie images, but we don’t get enough of them. They’re the most compelling thing about the film but they’re hardly there.

Like a seasoned croupier brushing the felt off everyone’s chips, Amazon MGM Studios boss Jennifer Salke revealed this week in an interview with the Guardian that there is absolutely nothing to worry about with regard to the complete and utter absence of any significant sign of a new James Bond movie, any time soon. “The global audience will be patient,” she said. “We don’t want too much time between films, but we are not concerned at this point.”

In an era of constant content, of three Marvel movies and at least a couple of related Disney+ shows a year, it has to be said this is quite a refreshing perspective, until you remember that Amazon MGM is really the backseat-driving M to Eon Productions’ go-getting 007. It is the latter’s Barbara Broccoli, daughter of Bond legend Albert, who truly controls the creative direction of these films, and given Salke reportedly got told off for having the temerity to suggest that Her Majesty’s favourite spy might one day be seen on the small screen, it is quite clear who’s in charge.

Salke better hope that Bond fans are going to be patient, because she is not going to be able to do much about it if they’re not. If Broccoli wants to take her own sweet time over deciding Bond’s next direction, it’s unlikely anyone will (or could) attempt to stop her. Eon shepherded 007’s latest Daniel Craig-essayed iteration smartly through a five-movie, largely well-received run, culminating in 2021’s thrillingly climactic No Time to Die.

The series now stands alone as pretty much the only major film saga that has not diverted, at least temporarily, to the small screen. No Bond-themed TV show here centred on the young Q in his Oxford days, inventing gadgets to bamboozle the dons while quietly imagining a future of international espionage and bagpipe flame-throwers.

We haven’t even had a sniff of a whiff of a mention of a “Bond universe”, which means that when the next 007 flick does eventually roll around, it will feel like a glorious throwback to an earlier era of global event movies. None of the best Bonds – Goldfinger, From Russia With Love, Live and Let Die, Craig’s Casino Royale and Skyfall – would have been improved by the addition of an animated Netflix comedy spin-off in which Blofeld, having retired from the world of evil plots, opens a luxury pet spa catering exclusively to the animal companions of major supervillains.

On the other hand, by the time we do get to see a new Bond, sometime in … let’s say 2027 (if we’re lucky) might the whole shebang not run the risk of looking distinctly old-fashioned? In an age when audiences can easily binge-watch entire TV shows in just one weekend, waiting six years for another Bond flick feels a mite indulgent. While a return to 007’s 60s heyday is probably preferable to a sci-fi Bond in which Q invents apps that hack the metaverse and the bad guy hopes to destroy the world via the power of social media algorithms, there is no guarantee that either approach will bring us an epoch-defining super-spy to make us all forget we once thought Craig was the best actor to ever inhabit the role.

There is an argument that the recent films’ relatively modern and realistic approach to Bond is about as far as it’s possible to push this creaking cold war saga before it teeters over the edge and crashes down into a pool of crocodiles. A female M, Moneypenny getting to escape desk duties (at least temporarily), a black, female 007 who puts Bond to shame. All these things happened since Casino Royale ushered in the Craig era, and the only thing notable about them in five or 10 years’ time is that the average film fan won’t even notice in retrospect that these amounted to “woke” additions.

Perhaps that’s the secret to Bond in the 20s or 30s – put him in the hands of a film-making team so youthful that they don’t recognise the difference between the 1960s and the 00s, and are therefore able to deliver a genuinely revolutionary 007 that nobody over the age of 25 remotely recognises. It sounds like a terrible idea, but if Broccoli and team wait too long to get this thing moving, they might end up with a gen-Z Bond whether they like it or not.

Has there ever been a moment on set that you just can’t shake, that even now leaves you thinking: did that really just happen? NomadPoetics
Yes. At the very very end of Married to the Mob, during the credits, the director, Jonathan Demme, chose to include the harrowing moment that happened on set. I’m sambaing with Michelle Pfeiffer, she leans back over a metal railing, falls backwards head first and I manage to catch her by the feet. Luckily, I was young, strong and fast, else it could have been a disaster.

How did you train physically to play a high school wrestler in one of your first films, Vision Quest? Did you get to hang out with Madonna? Nash437 and Hooplehead1967
I trained! There’s no way around training when you’re doing a film about wrestling or boxing. I spent two months before filming doing “three a day”, meaning a workout of cardio in the morning, wrestling midday and weights in the evening. And yes, it was incredibly difficult. As for Madonna – I wish I could say yes. At that time, it was very clear that Madonna was incredibly focused on her career and work. As I recall, she came and left after maybe six hours on set. She plays a club singer, who sings Crazy for You, written especially for the film. I’m so glad she gave that song to us. It’s so sweet and so 1980s.

I’ve heard that, two-thirds of the way through filming Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick asked you for suggestions on how to end the movie. What were the best, worst and wackiest propositions? ILikeChips
Stanley didn’t ask me how to end Full Metal Jacket. He asked me what I thought of the ending, which was very different from the way the final movie was scripted and to be photographed. I defended the scripted movie until one day, after he’d asked me dozens of times over weeks and weeks, I said: “Joker should live.” He said: “What?”

In the original draft, Joker – my character – was shot and killed. I said Joker should live, because that’s the real tragedy of war – going on to see your drill instructor shot and killed in a latrine and the guy you’re trying to help get through boot camp stick an M14 in his mouth and blow his brains out. Joker should live and have to hold his one friend from boot camp in his arms as he dies. Joker should have to decide whether or not he should end the life of a young Vietnamese girl who’s bleeding to death. So that’s why I said: “He should live, Stanley, because that’s the real horror of war – having to spend the rest of your fucking life with that in your head.” And Stanley said: “That’s the end of the picture.”

I feel like we’ve moved past the lazy comparison of Christopher Nolan with Kubrick, but, having worked with both, how did the experiences with such singular film-makers affect you? leroyhunter
Every director makes love, but they all do it a bit differently. For me, there is no comparison between the two. And no, I don’t think Nolan is trying to be the next Stanley Kubrick. I feel Nolan is trying to be the best Christopher Nolan he can be.

When you work with young actors having their moment in the spotlight, such as Millie Bobby Brown in Stranger Things, what are your feelings about the life they are embarking on? Are you worried for them? Kevtb1987
The motion picture and television industry chews kids up and spits them out. With the many young actors I’ve enjoyed working with, especially Millie, I want to help them understand that they’re part of a profession. When you’re young, you can get by on charm and looks, so you simply must continue to develop your skills as a performer.

How did you find the experience of wearing Lycra when playing a cycling coach in last year’s Hard Miles? VerulamiumParkRanger
It’s icky. On top of which – as an environmentalist – upsetting. Every piece of synthetic fabric manufactured contributes to the countless billions of microplastics entering the air, water and oceans.

Is that your real hair in Stranger Things? TopTramp
Yes! Although my hair isn’t quite as white in real life. And for the flashbacks to the 1970s in season four, they added some length.

I was blown away by your performance in [the 1984 post-Vietnam drama] Birdy. What did you take away from making it and what did it bring you? Simother
It’s difficult to put into words. Birdy is simply a magical character in a movie that no one believed could be captured on film. The spirit of Birdy is transcendent. But the trifecta of the director, Alan Parker, the music of Peter Gabriel and the cinematography of Michael Seresin, not to mention my co-star Nic Cage ... it all just seems like a dream.

How did you come to direct and feature in – alongside a teenage Winona Ryder – the posthumous video for Roy Orbison’s A Love So Beautiful? Did you ever meet the Big O? McScootikins
Roy Orbison had passed when we made the music video, so no, I didn’t get to meet him. It really was a tribute to him. I knew Winona from her work and vice versa – she is a passionate fan of Birdy. It was a pleasure to meet and work with her. The song is so tragically beautiful.

I have a fond memory of [the 1990 psychological thriller] Pacific Heights and being gripped by the tension. Did Michael Keaton stay in character off set? Blammy
Michael is a charming and witty man, so playing that character may have been uncomfortable for him, as it was so against type. I’m not sure what he did while not on set. He had just done Batman and that film was a ginormous success. So I’d see him on set and we’d do our work and then he’d disappear like Bruce Wayne.

I absolutely love [the 1990 war drama] Memphis Belle, particularly your performance as the humourless captain having to keep his crew in line. Did that dynamic carry over into filming? Did you find yourself having to be more reserved or aloof than the younger actors? Hoppo
Yes, it kind of did. I think I was the oldest cast member. There was further gravitas to my position because my Uncle Wylder was a B-17 captain during world war two. He flew 17 combat missions before being shot out of the sky by anti-aircraft fire on the way back from a bombing mission.

My uncle had his crew parachute from the damaged plane over France. His right forearm arm was nearly torn off and his co-pilot was badly injured and couldn’t get out of the plane to parachute. My uncle – with one arm – landed in a field in France. I wore his dress uniform in the film. My castmates still refer to me as Captain, which is incredibly kind and flattering.

Martin Scorsese has denied he is planning to retire, telling a press conference in Italy that he has “more films to make” after reports surfaced in September that two long-planned projects had been postponed.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Scorsese, 81, was speaking before an award ceremony in Turin and countered rumours he was no longer making films. “I’m not saying goodbye to cinema at all … I still have more films to make, and I hope God gives me the strength to make them.”

Two weeks ago Variety reported that two major Scorsese feature films, a biopic of Frank Sinatra and an adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s 1973 novel A Life of Jesus, have been put on hold. The biographical account of the Jesus story by Endō (whose earlier novel Silence Scorsese has previously adapted) was thought to be Scorsese’s next movie after Killers of the Flower Moon; however, no cast has yet been announced and no start date has been scheduled.

The Sinatra biopic has been in the works since at least 2009. While at one point filming had been announced to begin in November, this too was reportedly cancelled with no new date. Reports also suggested that Sinatra’s family do not see eye to eye with Scorsese’s approach to the singer’s story, including Sinatra’s connections with organised crime.

Scorsese did, however, mention a project he is currently involved in: a “documentary about marine archaeology” called Shipwrecks of Sicily, in collaboration with underwater archaeologist Dr Lisa Briggs and filmed near Scorsese’s ancestral home. Scorsese said that recovering ancient artefacts from the seabed “moved me deeply”.

If there is anyone who knows what is happening behind the scenes in the saga over who will become the next James Bond, it’s Jennifer Salke, the global head of Amazon MGM Studios – home of box-office crown ­jewels including the 007 and Rocky franchises.

Salke was part of the Amazon team that sealed an audacious $8.5bn deal in 2021 to buy the 100-year-old MGM and its celebrated library of 4,000 film titles and 17,000 hours of TV programming – ranging from Gone with the Wind and The Hobbit to The Handmaid’s Tale and Legally Blonde.

Nevertheless, it is the future of the evergreen spy that remains the hottest topic of conversation among movie fans.

The problem is that control of James Bond – at 62 years old, one of the world’s longest-running film franchises – remains largely with Eon Productions in the UK, which is run by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson. Eon’s strict control even extends to who plays Bond.

Intense media interest has sparked a flurry of speculation naming almost any male actor who might fit the profile – from Idris Elba to Aaron Taylor-Johnson and, more recently, Barry Keoghan, the star of the Amazon hit Saltburn.

Daniel Craig’s last outing as the superspy hit cinemas in 2021, six months after Amazon announced the deal to buy MGM, and, three years on, fans are no closer to knowing who his replacement is.

Salke is neither shaken nor stirred by the hiatus. “There are a lot of ideas [about potential actors] that have popped up that I thought are interesting,” says Salke. “I think there are a lot of different ways we can go. We have a good and close relationship with Eon and Barbara and Michael. We are not looking to disrupt the way those wonderful films are made. For us, we are taking their lead.

“The global audience will be patient. We don’t want too much time between films, but we are not concerned at this point.”

Salke also gives her version of reports alleging that, early on, she got on the wrong side of Broccoli for raising the idea of a Bond TV series.

“It was never really raised in that way,” says Salke, who is conducting the interview via video at an unearthly hour in the morning from her home in Los Angeles.

“When you are looking at iconic intellectual property like that, you look at what the entire long-term future might be. Of course you look at every facet.”

She adds that the MGM deal – designed to vastly increase Amazon’s library in the streaming wars – was “definitely uncharted waters for me”.

Salke’s main office is at Culver Studios in California, which once housed Cecil B DeMille’s operations and where classics such as Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane were filmed, but she spends about a week a month travelling to parts of Amazon’s film and television empire.

Last week, she was in the UK and acknowledges the increasingly important role it is playing in Amazon’s international film and TV strategy.

Earlier this year, Amazon officially opened its exclusive studio space at Shepperton, where it has shot the third season of The Devil’s Hour. Alongside Netflix, it has made the Surrey film studio complex the second largest in the world.

And in July, Amazon acquired Bray Studios in Berkshire, once home of Hammer Films, to be the production HQ for its $1bn-plus Lord of the Rings TV series The Rings of Power, and the spy thriller Citadel.

“We are increasing our investment in the UK,” she says. “There is a lot coming out of here and it started feeling very obvious to me we needed to sort out boots-on-the-ground relationships. We work as close collaborators; I’m not meddlesome, I’m not here to babysit.”

Salke was responsible for the surprise decision to move production of The Rings of Power to the UK from New Zealand, which has history as the production home of big-screen adaptations of JRR Tolkien’s books.

She says the decision was partly based on the “homesick factor” for stars and overseas crew, due to the country’s remoteness – a feeling exacerbated by tight travel restrictions while filming during the pandemic. “We were running into a lot of issues, people feeling like they needed to be able to get home,” she says. “And as we started to invest more in the UK, it made sense to move.”

Salke began her career in television, starting out at Aaron Spelling Productions in the early 1990s, when shows such as Melrose Place were taking off. She moved to 20th Century Fox Television during the period in which shows including Prison Break, 24 and Modern Family became hits.

In 2018, Salke joined Jeff Bezos’s Amazon empire from NBCUniversal’s entertainment division, where she had helped revive the fortunes of the lacklustre streaming service Peacock with hits such as This Is Us.

Part of the reason for Salke’s most recent visit to London was to host an all-female content showcase. At the event, she said that more than 50% of Prime Video’s global original TV series and films so far this year were from female creators and directors or had majority female leads.

Salke has also had to manage the staff response to Amazon’s recent edict that employees will have to work in the office five days a week starting next year. Nick Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, published a blogpost arguing that it could result in droves of staff leaving, particularly in certain demographics such as women, “making for a white, young, male workforce”.

“[There has been] a kind of mixed response, which is understandable,” she says. “We’re really just going back to where we were [pre-Covid]. It’s not some regimented ‘you must be in the office five days a week’. But we expect the company to operate as an in-office workplace as we did. We want people to feel connected to a team.”

The topic of gender parity, and the wider theme of leadership, resonates strongly with Salke.

“I do think I am a little unique in the fact I am a very transparent, warm leader,” she says. “I demand integrity and honesty, I’m very much a no-bullshit leader as well as a no-bullshit person. I have a strong meter for that. I show up as myself and I am as honest as I can possibly be.”

CV

Age 59

Family A husband, Bert, and three adult children.

Education BA from New York University.

Pay Undisclosed.

Last holiday Summer weeks with family on the beach in Long Island, New York state.

Best advice she’s been given “Don’t be afraid to have a really hard honest conversation.”

And the best advice she gives herself? “Be a good listener, stay humble and use your voice.”

Phrase she overuses “Awesome.”

How she relaxes “I love to travel all over the world so I’m lucky to be in a global business. I have endless energy for it!”