Having pretended to be a murderer in Richard Linklaker’s breezy romp, Hit Man, Glen Powell takes to offing people for real in this loose remake of the Alec Guinness starrer Kind Hearts and Coronets – with mixed results. Telling his tale from the clink, Becket (Powell) relays all the ways in which he crawled his way closer to a family inheritance, denied to him by his mom being unceremoniously disowned by her unyielding dad (Ed Harris).
Ilze Kitshoff/StudioCanal
The Redfellows are an American East Coast dynasty of huge wealth and influence, Becket a long-lost impoverished relative consigned to New Jersey who suddenly pitches up at the family pile as ‘accidents’ start to happen. Straight out the gate, audiences are asked to accept that this is a universe where no one asks questions about the motivation of a mysterious family member who appears at funerals, inveigles his way into his cousin’s stock market firm and is slowly creeping up the family ladder to a multi-million dollar windfall. A hefty suspension of disbelief is required, despite the real-world tone of proceedings.
Ilze Kitshoff/StudioCanal
Get past the first killing – of Rafferty Law’s party boy financier – and spending time with Becket is an amusing distraction as he pines for a rich-bitch childhood friend (Margaret Qualley in conspicuous Chanel and channelling ’40s femme fatales), smartens up, has a minor crisis of conscience and thinks up wild ways to permanently relegate his relatives, most of which wouldn’t past muster with CSI. There’s the manner of dispatch of a pretentious, entitled wannabe artist, of a spa-loving matriarch, of a TV evangelist… all in service to getting to the big fish, Harris’ unhinged Whitelaw Redfellow. Snuffing out people in his family tree is framed as justified and comical simply by virtue of them being rich, so no real time is spent on their characterisation or Becket’s morality. It’s a step-change from the complicated money troubles and desperation that breeds illegality in writer/director John Patton Ford’s excellent precursor Emily the Criminal.
Ilze Kitshoff/StudioCanal
Of course there’s a reckoning of sorts, but one so signposted that audiences might expect a double bluff, and once the credits roll How to Make a Killing will either prompt questions of logic which will collapse it like a house of cards, or never be thought of again. But in the moment, Powell floats the action along with considerable charm, providing a 100-minute diversion from reality that is entertaining enough.
Ilze Kitshoff/StudioCanal
Words by JANE CROWTHER Pictures courtesy of StudioCanal How to Make a Killing is in cinemas now
Like buses, we wait ages for a Frankenstein movie, and then two come along at once. Hot on the heels of del Toro’s classic take, comes writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s reanimation, loosely inspired by James Whales’ 1935 hit, The Bride of Frankenstein. Setting her tale in the year that film dominated the box office (1936) Gyllenhaal reimagines the creation of a partner for ‘Frank’ (Christian Bale) – inexplicably still alive after his Victorian adventures – through a feminist lens, giving her Bride (Jessie Buckley) agency, rage against misogyny and a black, splattered lip that inspires a movement. Placing the action in an era where the media helped define monsters (Bonnie and Clyde references are unavoidable), in a golden age of movies, and in pre-WWII time before conflict created some equality for women gives Gyllenhaal plenty to say about Patriarchal society in a frenzied movie that includes dance numbers, head-stomping violence, numerous attempted sexual assaults and a through-line on the importance of consent. It’s a movie that wants to celebrate disobedient, ungovernable, transgressive, ‘difficult’ women, that strives to be a battle cry for a new generation still locked in a gender battle (yes, there’s a blunt ‘me too’ reference), but doesn’t quite get the disparate pieces to fit together. Like Frank’s patchwork body oozing pus from sewn wounds, The Bride! is an ambitious mess.
Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Perhaps the lack of cohesion is down to reported studio meddling, but there’s the possibility of an electrifying film lurking below the scars; Buckley and Bale commit full throttle to a film that plays like the chimera of Dick Tracy and Folie à Deux, Sandy Powell’s beautiful costumes are intriguing in their own right, Hildur Guðnadóttir’s punk-infused score is a banger and there’s a plenty of meta nods to our obsession with beauty, sex and identity. But confusion begins straight out the gate when the first person we’re introduced to is a dead Mary Shelley (Buckley again) addressing the audience to reveal her seminal novel was not the story she really wanted to tell. Rather she’d prefer to weave the tale of Ida, a sex worker for the Chicago mob who Shelley ‘possesses’, making her insolent to a violent gangster and causing her death. Is Ida a construct of Shelley’s imagination, or a real woman haunted by the ghost of a dead novelist? It’s unclear, as is the messaging; Ida rails against the systemic and casual violence towards women yet the film frequently lingers on, and shows that abuse.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Gender equality is explored in the mad scientist of the piece being a woman (Annette Bening) who agrees to reanimate Ida’s corpse as a mate for lonely, movie-loving Frank, and in a smart detective (Penelope Cruz), a Rosalind Russell clone who is always steps ahead of her male colleague (Peter Sarsgaard). As Ida is reborn as The Bride with no memory of her past and no consideration for societal norms, she questions her identity, is the catalyst for murder and embarks on a cross-country rampage that takes in cinema visits, deb balls and police shootouts – all luridly recounted in the media. ‘Imagine if they got this excited about a lady astronaut,’ a character muses.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Playing three characters (with two often battling each other inside her body), Buckley is magnetic, making some sense of a woman defined by others and moving through her arc with feral, carnal intensity while Bale aces the loneliness of a unique creature. To watch them howl and stomp is fun in itself, in a film that is certainly visually impressive. But Shelley’s question at the beginning never gets fully or satisfactorily answered; ‘Is this a horror story? A ghost story? Or, most frightening of all, a love story?’ Rather like Ida herself, it’s never entirely sure what it wants to be.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Pictures courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. The Brideis in cinemas now
Writer-director Edgar Wright delves into the operatic teenage tragedy and universal cruelty that powers Brian De Palma’s masterful Stephen King adap.
CARRIE (1976) Brian De Palma’s Carrie is my favourite Stephen King film adaptation. It is, of course, also the first published Stephen King novel and the first screen adaptation of his work. But that doesn’t mean that subsequent adaptations weren’t just as brilliant. There are many films of King’s work that I truly adore – two of my favourites were both directed by the recently, and very sadly, departed Rob Reiner. And yet Carrie remains intensely powerful, not just in the canon of King adaptations, but in how it touches something elemental. It’s a film that feels both very personal to me and, ironically, to almost everyone.
I’ve sometimes described Carrie in a slightly flippant way as ‘the Grease of horror movies’. Both films are about the high-school experience. Both establish cliques: the cool kids, the bullies, the outsiders. Both deal with the anxieties of teenage sexuality, humiliation, desire and the desperate need to belong. Such experiences translate across cultures. Even growing up outside the USA and not having had the ‘high school’ experience, I could still understand exactly what Grease and Carrie were showing me about adolescence and social cruelty. It’s sadly universal and hauntingly relatable.
But there’s another part of that analogy that gets closer to why Carrie means so much to me. The film is not a musical, but it is symphonic in its emotional scale. De Palma, at his very best here, takes raw, painful emotions and elevates them into something heightened, something almost mythic. If Grease is pop operetta, then Carrie is the film equivalent of a teenage tragedy ballad, or ‘death disc’. (The fact that it’s also scored by Italian composer Pino Donnagio, who, before his melancholic film scores, had international hits with melodramatic pop, is the blood-red icing on the cake.)
United Artists/Amazon MGM Studios
A better comparison to Carrie might actually be Robert Wise’s West Side Story. Both films centre on teenage tragedy. Both explore nascent, but forbidden, love weighed down by forces far larger than the people involved: the social systems, the peer pressure, the inherited cruelty. They mix romance and violence, sexuality and fear, innocence and brutality. They capture that volatile hormonal intensity of adolescence, where emotions feel life-or-death. They capture something that’s both deeply empathetic and deeply frightening.
Carrie tells the story of a bullied outcast. Sissy Spacek plays the titular Carrie White, a shy, socially isolated teenager raised by a fiercely religious mother whose warped beliefs have left her utterly unprepared for the world. This upbringing manifests brutally in the film’s opening, when Carrie is humiliated in the school shower by her classmates as she experiences her first period. She doesn’t understand what’s happening to her body. Blood runs down her legs, and instead of help, she’s met with cruelty, thrown tampons and echoing laughter.
That moment of humiliation, combined with her lack of understanding that she is simply becoming a woman, is the catalyst that sets everything in motion. It’s a harrowing opening sequence because it feels so horribly plausible. It feels real.
Unbeknownst to Carrie, this trauma also unlocks something else. Since childhood, she has possessed latent telekinetic powers; the ability to move objects with her mind. This ‘gift’ is not presented as a fantasy, but as an extension of her emotional state.
United Artists/Amazon MGM Studios
The bullying escalates. The girls responsible are punished with detention, but one of them, Chris Hargensen (played with delicious nastiness by Nancy Allen), receives a harsher penalty: she’s banned from attending the prom. That punishment breeds resentment that curdles into something far worse. What follows is one of the cruelest setups in film history, the plan to humiliate Carrie on, for a teenager, the grandest possible stage: the high-school prom. (Even as a Brit, one can understand the enormity of this occasion).
Carrie is paired with Tommy Ross, the archetypal golden-haired high-school prince, and manoeuvred into becoming prom queen. Suspended above the dance floor is a bucket of pig’s blood, waiting to fall. The blood is a deliberate echo of the shower scene, the narrative closing in on itself as humiliation becomes spectacle.
And here is where Carrie does something extraordinary. For a fleeting moment, hope briefly flickers.
Tommy, initially pressured into taking Carrie by his girlfriend Sue, who is unaware of the true brutality of the prank, begins to genuinely connect with her. Against her mother’s furious objections, Carrie attends the prom and gives herself a makeover, blossoming into the beautiful young woman the world has never seen.
When Carrie and Tommy slow-dance together, De Palma’s camera circles them in a hypnotic 360. And something strange happens for me every time I watch it. Much like the midpoint of Titanic, I get the whimsical notion that maybe this time things will turn out differently. Maybe the iceberg won’t be hit. Maybe the cruelty will stop here.
In theory, you could change the film here, leave the cinema, or stop the tape, and invent your own ending, one where Carrie gets to have this happiness. Because what follows is devastating.
United Artists/Amazon MGM Studios
When Carrie and Tommy are announced as Prom King and Queen, Donaggio’s magnificently sinister ‘Bucket of Blood’ cue begins, and there’s an inexorable feeling of dread. The euphoria of Carrie and Tommy’s dance is replaced by the sickening knowledge that public degradation is inevitable. De Palma’s camera cranes with Carrie and Tommy as they take the stage, then travels upward along the rope to the bucket of pig’s blood hanging precariously above them. As an audience member, you’re caught in an intoxicating mix of emotions. On one hand, you desperately don’t want the blood to fall. Carrie doesn’t deserve any of this. She’s been tortured enough throughout the film, and the idea of taking away this perfect moment feels almost unbearable. And yet, the horror-movie fan in you, and the part of you that has fully sympathised with Carrie as a bullied teenager, also wants to see her unleash apocalyptic revenge. And boy, does she.
When Carrie wreaks revenge, she does so spectacularly. De Palma uses every cinematic trick at his disposal: harsh red lighting, split-screen, slow motion, fractured lenses, and the disorienting sea of voices inside Carrie’s head confirming what her mother warned her all along: ‘They’re all going to laugh at you.’
There are several moments in this sequence that give me goosebumps. Sometimes an image from a favourite film is burned into your brain, even if it only appears on screen for a second.
United Artists/Amazon MGM Studios
One of those is the horrifically beautiful shot of the prom backdrop bursting into flames behind Carrie White. I’d seen that image in an old copy of Starburst magazine a good 10 years before I was old enough to see Carrie, and even after poring over those pages for hours, seeing it in motion was breathtaking.
Another devastating element of this climax is that Carrie’s vengeance is so all-consuming that it doesn’t just claim the guilty. Perfectly innocent people, including those who tried to help her, are swept up in the maelstrom of her telekinetic vengeance and die horribly. Everyone in the high-school gym dies except Sue Snell. And even she isn’t truly spared. She’s left with the haunting final shock of Carrie’s hand bursting from the grave, a moment ripped off so many times that its power is taken for granted.
Sue survives, but the memory of Carrie will ruin her forever.
I love that it isn’t clean or black-and-white in its morality, or in its treatment of revenge. And it makes you complicit too, a horror film where you actively want to see the violence unleashed.
In most horror films, your sympathy lies with characters you don’t want to see die. In Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis, the quintessential final girl, is such a warm presence that you’re invested in Michael Myers not killing her. In Carrie, the audience is primed in a very different way. After watching this girl endure relentless cruelty, you don’t just want to see her destruction of the prom, you crave it.
All of these elements make De Palma’s film feel like even more than the sum of its exceptional parts. It’s pure cinematic opera in every sense of the word: visually, musically and emotionally.
A modern classic that has come to define 21st-century LA, this musical monument to one of Hollywood’s most ambitious producers is an audio and visual masterwork; a striking feat of design embraced by the music community and the movies.
Hollywood Authentic reflects on the genius that inspired the Walt Disney Concert Hall – ‘the light of the Hollywood dream’.
How long does it take for a building to become a landmark? The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Bunker Hill makes the case that it can happen instantaneously, even if the journey to the opening wasn’t always smooth. Standing as a monument to two giants in their respective fields – pioneering filmmaker Walt Disney and exuberantly ambitious architect Frank Gehry – the venue, which is home to the LA Philharmonic, was conceived as ‘a living room for the city’. That contradiction between welcoming accessibility and imposing achievement defines Disney and Gehry. Both made magic that sprung from pencil sketches.
To see Gehry’s squiggly starting point for the Concert Hall, it’s almost impossible to fathom what it turned into. There’s a deconstructivist spirit to the gleaming surfaces that make up the striking exterior of the building, which remains open to interpretation. Do you see a futuristic spaceship with sails, or loose, billowing music sheets, or something else entirely? It’s an invitation to imagination, the building’s clean visual sweep belying the technical rigour required to bring it to life when it first opened in 2003. Even if you’ve never been – and a reported four million visitors flocked there within the first three years of opening – you’ve certainly seen its sleek lines in one of its many TV and film appearances. But it wasn’t all plain sailing…
The project began in earnest in 1987, with a $50m donation from Walt’s widow, Lillian Disney, which she bestowed on the Los Angeles Music Center (Lillian would die 10 years later, before the hall was completed). It was a tribute to Walt’s passion for the arts, and music in particular – classical music was central to so many of his animated works, not least the Silly Symphony shorts and his 1940 opus Fantasia, which synchronised classical pieces with shorts of varied animation styles. As Walt’s work made entertainment accessible for all, so would the Concert Hall.
Finding the architect was the first step, and Gehry was eventually chosen as the longlist was whittled down to one (other contenders had included architecture giants Hans Hollein, Gottfried Böhm and James Stirling). Canadian-American Gehry was one of the biggest names in the business at the time, and worked on the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao over a similar time period (though the Spanish building would be completed first, and its shiny metallic finish would eventually inspire the Concert Hall).
After landing the appointment, Gehry visited the Berliner Philharmonie concert hall, staying in the city for a week and attending every concert. The feeling of intimacy that architect Hans Scharoun had achieved was inspiring to Gehry, who described the German as ‘a master of people-feeling architecture’. The Walt Disney Concert Hall took the best part of two decades to come together, and there was a period of a couple of years from 1994 where construction stalled entirely, thanks to a runaway budget and reported internal feuding, before it got back on track in 1996, with help from numerous benefactors; many are named on the sweeping tiled wall inside, and the curved staircase is named in honour of film composer Henry Mancini.
Gehry had originally planned to have the Concert Hall finished in stone, which he believed would glow at night. But budgetary concerns twinned with the success of Bilbao made the now iconic metal finish inevitable. Gehry leaned on Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA (Computer-Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application) to translate the design into practical plans for contractors. Such VFX tech was necessary to bring his idea into reality; every stainless steel panel used is a unique shape. To avoid the need for rivets, 3M’s VHB Tape – a kind of super, double-sided tape also used on aircraft – held the panels in place.
When it opened in 2003 – at a total cost of $274m – it became an instant classic (despite some protests over the spending given the city’s poor and homeless population). A review in the New York Times called the Concert Hall ‘a French curve in a city of T squares’, evocatively describing it as ‘the light of the Hollywood dream’. Yes, some of the panels needed to be sanded down as they were creating too much glare for drivers and overheating some nearby apartments, but it’s no surprise that film stars and movie fans have flocked to the location.
Among its notable screen appearances, the Walt Disney Concert Hall is also the setting for a swanky event ahead of the climax of 2008’s Iron Man. Where else for genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist Tony Stark? In the same year, it was also featured in a pivotal sequence in spy comedy Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway, who are at the venue to stop a bomb threat against the president (James Caan), who’s attending a concert. ‘It’s the crown jewel of LA,’ Get Smart’s location manager Kokayi Ampah said of using it in the film. ‘It says you’re in LA.’
The project began in earnest in 1987, with a $50m donation from Walt’s widow Lillian Disney, which she bestowed on the Los Angeles Music Center
The Concert Hall also provided near-future vibes for Spike Jonze’s prescient AI-companion romance Her, as Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) and Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) people-watch, and Marion Cotillard’s tortured soprano had a residency there in outlandish musical Annette. It received the ultimate decree of pop-culture status with a parody on The Simpsons (featuring a cameo from Gehry himself).
But perhaps its most apt onscreen use was in Joe Wright’s The Soloist, which told the true story of Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a gifted cellist who develops schizophrenia and becomes homeless, before finding a path back via journalist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.). Because, for all the cinematic showiness of the building’s exterior, it is first and foremost a music venue, and while those sweeping curves continue inside, the wooden surfaces – which glow almost gold – add to a cosy, inviting space.
The acoustics were baked into the design of the building as a priority. Gehry broke away from the conventional ‘shoebox’ layout for a concert hall, to have the seating in the round. While this seating makes it slightly more awkward for visitors to file into, Gehry said that ‘the payoff is incredible’, that the musicians felt more connected to the audience, and vice versa. Testing the sound on a scale model and working with acousticians Yasuhisa Toyota and his predecessor Minoru Nagata, to ensure that there was not a bad seat in the house when it came to sound. With the sound reflection offered by the Douglas fir panelling, there’s no need for audio amplification for any of the 2,265 seats.
A focal point of the hall is the 6,134-pipe organ that Gehry designed in conjunction with organ designer and builder Manuel J. Rosales. The pipes are referred to as French fries for the way they poke out irregularly, in a riposte to the anticipated formality of such an instrument. It’s another fun personal touch in a venue where everything feels generously considered, from the lobby’s ‘trees’ (wood-clad metal beams) to the lily fountain that can be found in the Blue Ribbon Garden. The latter was a tribute to Lillian Disney from Gehry, who instructed Tomas Osinki to build the smooth, wavy structure from thousands of mosaic fragments created from specially acquired Royal Delft Blue porcelain. Gehry had said at the time of completion that he saw the Concert Hall as a ‘kind of flower’ to Lillian, and that expression finds fitting form in this graceful marvel.
Gehry died in December 2025, leaving behind an incredible legacy. Like Walt Disney, Gehry was an innovator who brought art and imagination to the masses. It’s fitting that his most iconic work pays tribute to a fellow trailblazer, and like Walt’s work it will continue to entertain and inspire.
Photographs by MARIO DE LOPEZ Words by MATT MAYTUM The Walt Disney Music Hall 111 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012 www.laphil.com
Mona Fastvold’s biopic of the leader of the Shaker religious movement is as unconventional and deliberate a piece of cinema as her last project, the lauded, bum-numbing The Brutalist, which she also co-wrote with her partner Brady Corbet. Incorporating interpretive dance and sung hymns into her story of an 18th century Manchester lass touched by God and inspiring a movement, Fastvold asks audiences to feel the fervour and radical departure presented by Lee, rather than suck up a history lesson in Shakerism. For some viewers, that may feel as though Lee is untethered, lacking in context, as she negotiates growing from a persecuted girl to a leader in the New World. For others it’s a welcome change to the usual cradle-to-grave recounting of historical figures – an invigorating glimpse into an untold life.
Searchlight Pictures
When we first meet Ann (Amanda Seyfried) in the North of England, she is poor and insignificant until she becomes famous for believing herself to be the second messiah – a bold statement in a Christian patriarchal society. Married to Abraham (Christopher Abbott), worshipped by her brother William (Lewis Pullman) and believing that the divine is channelled through devotees via involuntary, ecstatic spasms during prayer, Ann is soon leading a local sect and gathering a community together who abide by the rules of celibacy and physical veneration. In candlelit drawing rooms the cast sway, vibrate and whip their bodies around while singing and stomping, the rhythm and cinematography as seductive as the lure of a new way of approaching Christianity for Lee’s followers.
Searchlight PicturesSearchlight Pictures
Imprisoned (and singing from her cell) Ann needs to find a place where her new ideas have the freedom to blossom, where a woman can preach, where new beliefs and immigrants are welcomed. It’s perhaps ironic in today’s political landscape to watch the Shakers set sail to the promised land of upstate New York, where the community grows (and makes excellent furniture). But by the time that Ann is getting grey-haired, after grief has diminished her, it’s hard to determine the takeaway for audiences in this deliberately woozy, slippery and insular portrait. Though the cultural and sociological imprint of Lee may be untapped, audiences will be certain of one thing: that Seyfried should have been in the awards conversation this year for her full-bodied, robust performance.
Searchlight Pictures
Words by JANE CROWTHER Pictures courtesy of Searchlight Pictures The Testament of Ann Leepremiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival and is in cinemas now
You’ll get a good idea of the tone to expect from sci-fi comedy-horror Cold Storage from its opening info dump. Title cards give a reminder of the (real-life) 1979 incident in which NASA’s Skylab space station fell into the Earth’s atmosphere, with debris scattering over Western Australia. So far, so ominous, until it concludes, ‘Pay attention – this shit is real.’
Reiner Bajo/StudioCanal
From there we have another scene-setting prologue, which takes place in Australia in the 90s. Military types Robert Quinn and Trinny Romano (Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville, delightful together in the polar opposite of their last collab, weepie terminal-illness drama Ordinary Love) are called in to help Dr. Hero Martins (Sosie Bacon) investigate an incident relating to a debris site. Strap on your hazmat suit… The film quickly sets out its splattery B-movie stall, before the problematic fungus that’s causing the body horror is secured in an underground facility. Cue a timelapse to the present day where the facility is now a self-storage business, and on shift are former prison inmate Teacake (Joe Keery of Stranger Things and Djo fame) and single mum Naomi (Georgina Campbell).
Reiner Bajo/StudioCanal
The amiable, flirty co-workers go exploring and accidentally disrupt the extraterrestrially-infused sample (you’d think Campbell would know better than to go exploring creepy basements after starring in Barbarian), and this knowing genre piece conspires to bring some of the worst people in their lives – their boss, her ex – to the facility for one gross night. Contact with the fungus will turn a human (or animal, for that matter) into a bloated zombie that will spew infectious vomit before their body bursts. Director Jonny Campbell (best known for TV work such as Westworld) keeps things moving at a clip, with a sure command of tone. Not only do the jokes keep flying amid set-pieces delivered with no small amount of tension, but he understands first and foremost that this kind of high-concept throwback depends on likeable characters, and Keery and Campbell are immensely easy to root for. Neeson further explores his straight-man comedy chops after The Naked Gun, and he sparks winningly with Manville, who also got the memo (and seems to genuinely welcome) the assignment.
Reiner Bajo/StudioCanal
Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp (who adapts his own 2019 novel here) is within his comfort zone, delivering a smartly-paced 99 minutes populated with characters who are either appealing or expendable as appropriate, science that’s just about on the right side of believable, and stakes that actually feel perilous. A horror geared towards cheers and laughs over anything more genuinely unsettling, Cold Storage does a neat job of putting the fun into parasitic fungus.
Reiner Bajo/StudioCanal
Words by MATT MAYTUM Pictures courtesy of StudioCanal Cold Storageis in cinemas now
Return of the king… The maestro of movie showmanship revives the king of rock ’n’ roll with unseen footage of Elvis in Vegas to create a unique cinematic experience. Baz Luhrmann tells Hollywood Authentic how he found treasure in salt mines and made a poem of EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert.
Is it ever possible to recapture the thrill of seeing one of the greatest ever music artists live in their prime? Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert answers that question with a resounding yes. The unearthing of new footage of a cultural touchstone is a gift for die-hard Elvis fans, and offers younger generations the opportunity to see what all the fuss was about. Much more than a concert movie, EPiC sprang from Luhrmann and his team’s archival discoveries during the making of his blockbuster 2022 feature Elvis, starring Austin Butler.
There’s not a frame of AI or visual effects in this – the only visual effect is the one Elvis has on his audience
Often thought to be apocryphal, lost footage from Elvis’ famous Vegas residency turned out to be more than mere rumour during the making of Elvis. ‘Ernst Jorgensen [author and Elvis expert] said, “You know there are these lost reels of the show?”’ Luhrmann recalls. ‘And I thought to myself, “Wow, maybe we could use that footage in the [Elvis] movie itself, rather than build a stage – because of budgets.”’ The footage – originally shot for doc Elvis: That’s the Way It Is – belonged to MGM and had been stored in salt mines in Kansas, to prevent water from damaging the negative. When Baz’s team went digging, ‘not only did they find the footage,’ he explains between sips of miso soup, ‘they actually found a kind of treasure trove of materials – 69 boxes, 59 hours of footage.’
Neon/Universal Pictures
Neon/Universal Pictures
That incredible haul not only contained footage of Elvis’ 1970 Vegas shows at the International Hotel, shot on anamorphic 35mm over six nights; there was also 16mm film of Elvis on tour, and some 8mm, too. But another unexpected find was the key to making EPiC the extraordinary proposition it is. ‘We also found never-before-heard audio of Elvis telling his story in his own words, which is really unusual,’ says Luhrmann, photographed here by Greg Williams when he was at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, while premiering Elvis there.
Neon/Universal Pictures
‘Jono [Jonathan] Redman, who’s a producer on this, and my editor, and really my co-creator of this whole venture, said, “We’ve got to make something really special. We can’t just heat up the old documentaries. Can we do something unique?”’ Beyond the technical challenge of restoring the negative to a quality that would hold up on IMAX and syncing the sound, there was the unique opportunity to let Elvis speak in his own words – something fans had never heard before. ‘What we decided on was, rather than reheat old documentaries… What if we were to take this audio that we’d found, and Elvis will sing and tell his story in his own words? There have been many good documentaries, but they were always about other people talking about Elvis. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But sometimes you’ll get a guy who knew him for 10 minutes, having an opinion.’ In part, the lack of Presley speaking his own truth was down to how protective manager Colonel Tom Parker (portrayed by Tom Hanks in Baz’s film) was of Elvis. But if 2022’s Elvis told Parker’s version of events, EPiC tells Elvis’ side of the story. ‘Elvis comes to you, almost like in a dream, and he sings, and he tells his story in a way in which he’s never had the platform [for] before.’
Neon/Universal Pictures
Some of the footage in EPiC may have been glimpsed before, in black-and-white and bootleg snippets or from different takes or angles, but much of the material in the film is totally unseen, and certainly never with such clarity, offering an unprecedentedly intimate audience with an icon. ‘You will have never seen all of it reproduced at the level it is,’ asserts Luhrmann. ‘I can categorically tell you: there’s not a frame of AI or visual effects in this, other than the titles. The only visual effect in this movie is the visual effect Elvis has on his audience.’
Neon/Universal Pictures
Neon/Universal Pictures
With the images polished at Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production – where the Kiwi director memorably brought The Beatles: Get Back and Beatles ’64 to vibrant life – a huge challenge involved syncing the sound with the recovered film. ‘While we found all the pictures, it didn’t come with mag tape, which is how they used to record sound, right next to it,’ says Luhrmann. ‘What we were able to do, though, through meticulous research was to get second-generation audio sound. The audio isn’t different. While the picture is different when they strike a print – a work print, to cut and edit – the sound isn’t. So we were able to claw back the original vocal of Elvis and the band.’
Neon/Universal Pictures
It’s actually an expression, I hope, of the essence, the spirit, and the character of Elvis through song and his words. It’s like a poem more than it is a linear expression of Elvis
Neon/Universal Pictures
Luhrmann has always been a pioneer when it comes to melding movies and music, and EPiC sees him push those instincts to new levels. Where the recording of the orchestra was inconsistent, he and his team rebuilt some of the backing music via scoring sessions. The film also moves between the actual sound you would’ve heard had you been in the room to remixes Luhrmann refers to as ‘DNA’, adding his trademark sparkle and oomph to the raw material. ‘It’s more than a documentary, and it’s not a concert film,’ he muses. ‘It’s actually an expression, I hope, of the essence, the spirit, and the character of Elvis through song and his words. It’s like a poem more than it is a linear expression of Elvis.’
Neon/Universal Pictures
And while Luhrmann refuses to speak on behalf of the King of Rock and Roll, he does say that he thinks he would appreciate ‘that he’s being heard and being presented visually and sonically in the best possible quality for the audience and the fans who he dearly loved’. Having worked to craft a big-screen, big-sound cinematic experience that makes viewers feel as though they’ve time-travelled to the International Hotel ballroom with Elvis, Luhrmann intends to get viewers moving, dancing as they did in 1970 and at TIFF when the film premiered. ‘What I hope is that we’ve created a truly theatrical experience, as close to being in the audience as possible.’
From diamond tears to royal engagement rings, bracelets ready for their close-up to bejewelled crucifixes, Cartier jewels have dazzled onscreen since cinema’s inception…
Cartier is one of cinema’s most enduring characters. Since 1926 – when Rudolph Valentino famously donned an iconic Cartier Tank watch – the luxury Maison has established itself as both a cultural icon and a memorable co-star. Its timeless jewellery has appeared in classic films like Sunset Boulevard and more contemporary works like Ocean’s 8 and The Phoenician Scheme.
CARTIER ROSARY From Wes Anderson’s 2025 film The Phoenician Scheme
The elegant craftsmanship of Cartier’s jewellery has augmented the magical worlds created by skilful filmmakers for generations, helping to bring the stories to life in ways that feel as real as they do transformative. Over the years, hundreds of films and series have featured Cartier pieces – an extraordinary filmography that outshines the careers of many human actors. But Cartier’s contribution to the landscape of cinema wasn’t inevitable. It took a legacy of craftsmanship, some particularly devoted famous fans and a dedication to storytelling that has spanned time and genre.
Perhaps the link between carats and celluloid was inevitable. Maison Cartier was founded in Paris in 1847, only a few decades before the invention of cinema by Auguste and Louis Lumière, who also first presented their work in the French capital. In 1895, the Lumière brothers began filming short scenes using their newly-created cinématographe, an early motion-picture camera. Later that year, they held the first commercial film screening at a café in Paris, an historic moment that for ever changed the landscape of arts and culture. It wasn’t long after that Cartier and cinema embarked on an undeniable relationship that has lasted for a century.
Jean Cocteau
In 1926, Valentino, arguably one of silent film’s most iconic actors, played dual characters in George Fitzmaurice’s The Son of the Sheik – the final starring role of his career. Embodying both a sheik and his rakish son Ahmed, Valentino convinced the director to let him wear his Tank watch in his scenes, simply because he didn’t want to take his beloved timepiece off. Audiences were delighted by the unlikely detail and the Tank rapidly grew in popularity after its on-screen debut.
Cartier soon established itself as an indelible onscreen partner for the most popular performers of every era. In 1946, Jean Cocteau (who habitually wore two of Cartier’s trademark Trinity rings on his left pinkie finger) directed a reimagining of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, titled La Belle et La Bête. In the ethereal film, Belle wept Cartier diamonds instead of tears. ‘A fake diamond doesn’t throw fire,’ Cocteau explained of his artistic vision, ‘only a real diamond shimmers.’ The loaned diamonds underscored the emotional quality of the scene, creating a lasting, surrealist image that has since become interlinked with the history of cinema.
Grace Kelly
Gloria Swanson, too, couldn’t be parted from her Cartier. She was often photographed in her jewels, a signature of her glamorous image. The jewellery accompanied her onscreen Sunset Boulevard: ageing former starlet, Norma Desmond, still sparkled in her choice of jewels if not on the big screen. In the film, Swanson wore two of her own diamond and rock crystal bracelets created in 1930 as part of Desmond’s costume.
In High Society, released in 1956, Grace Kelly wore the jewellery house’s engagement ring, adorned with a 10.48-carat emerald-cut diamond and given to her by Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Like Valentino before her, the actor couldn’t bear to part with it while working, so added the famous ring to the film’s legacy instead. Tracy Lord’s classic platinum and diamond bauble boasted regal veracity for audiences.
More recently, Cartier collaborated on 2018’s Ocean’s 8. The plot centered on the theft of an ornate diamond necklace, made by Maison Cartier and based on a piece created by Cartier London in 1931. Named after Jeanne Toussaint, Cartier’s creative director from 1933 to 1970, the prop mimicked diamonds with zirconium oxides.
Gloria Swanson
The Maison’s skills were again enlisted for Wes Anderson’s recent output, The Phoenician Scheme to recreate a Cartier rosary from the 1880s for the nun protagonist to clutch. ‘It was interesting and fun to do it that way, and I think they look better,’ Anderson said of using actual Cartier jewels in the film.
Cartier has expanded its cinematic presence by contributing new short films to the zeitgeist, and by frequently collaborating with filmmakers such as Johan Renck and Sofia Coppola. ‘Films are made up of many details, and jewellery plays a role in this by showing you the type of character you encounter,’ Coppola noted.
BRACELET, CARTIER PARIS, 1930 Platinum, Diamonds, Rock Crystal
The Maison is also a main sponsor of the annual Venice International Film Festival, an opportunity that more deeply connects Cartier with new and important works from the global cinematic community. Over the years, the jewellery house has hosted Maison ambassadors like Monica Bellucci and Rami Malek, and bestowed the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award to legends like Wes Anderson. This year, Cartier celebrated BAFTA with a glamorous dinner held ahead of the annual EE BAFTA Film Awards, drawing a full-circle movie moment between Valentino’s watch obsession a hundred years ago.
Cinema and jewellery share a commonality in the often unseen craftsmanship that goes on behind the scenes to create the magic onscreen. Like movie productions, Cartier boasts many specialised metiers who craft their own sort of creative sorcery to produce a dazzling work of art. And BAFTA and Cartier share a similarly long history and legacy in showcasing quality and artistry. Though founded in Paris in 1847, a Cartier boutique has stood in London’s New Burlington Street since 1902 and held warrants from members of the British Royal family since 1904. Just steps away, BAFTA HQ resides with a similar dedication to creative excellence and links to the royals. Established in 1947 as the British Film Academy, the organisation became BAFTA eleven years later, with the opening of its Piccadilly home in 1976.
Together, both Cartier and BAFTA have left a lasting mark on our cultural consciousness that continues to sparkle.
Sometimes you don’t appreciate what you’ve been missing until you get the chance to sample it again. This supremely slick crime thriller is an emphatic reminder of the pleasures of smart, mainstream entertainment for grown-ups, playing in a cinema rather than episodically on the small screen. A theatrical staple for decades, this kind of star-powered vehicle has lost ground in multiplexes to franchise fare and IP with built-in awareness. But it’s good to have it back.
Amazon MGM Studios
This film marks the fully fledged ‘fictional feature’ debut of writer/director Bart Layton, who previously made terrific fact/fiction-blending documentaries The Imposter and American Animals, the latter particularly blurring the lines as it intercuts between the real people involved in a university book heist and dramatic recreations. Though not based on a true story, Crime 101 – which is adapted from a novella by Don Winslow – has the rigour of a deeply researched undertaking. It stars Chris Hemsworth, Halle Berry and Mark Ruffalo, whose narrative strands soon become entwined. Hemsworth is lone-wolf jewel thief Davis, whose MO is committing meticulously researched jobs along California’s 101 freeway. No one gets hurt, no trace of evidence remains. Detective Lou Lubesnick (Ruffalo) is working a theory that some of these robberies might be connected. Meanwhile, insurance broker Sharon (Berry) sells eye-wateringly high-value policies to extremely wealthy clients, in return for little to no respect from colleagues at her firm.
Amazon MGM Studios
This trio will soon be on a collision course catalysed by wild card crim Ormon (Barry Keoghan, reuniting with Layton after American Animals), who lobs a spanner in the works by taking on a job that Davis deemed too risky. Working with A-list and Oscar-celebrated talent, Layton seems to be a natural at eliciting top-end performances. Hemsworth tamps down his superhero rizz to play the nomadic thief living without any real social connection, and his Marvel ‘friend from work’ Ruffalo is compelling as ever as a stretched-thin cop whose obsessive nature is wrecking his homelife. Berry – in her most gratifying role for some time – gets to dig beneath the surface glamour as a woman coming to see with clarity how her experience and intelligence is being overlooked. Keoghan, meanwhile, is the firecracker popping off chaotically.
Amazon MGM Studios
Adding to the sheen of class is the fact that even minor supporting roles are filled with significant talent – Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Nolte, Corey Hawkins – and Monica Barbaro makes the most of limited screentime in Maya, a love interest who cracks Davis’ hermetically sealed shell. It’s also edited with confidence by Jacob Secher Schulsinger and Julian Hart, the separate story strands blended skilfully and often overlapping before you’ve even realised it. It all drives towards a satisfying conclusion that makes good on the build-up’s promise. And while there is a focus on character in this somewhat grounded world, there are a couple of impressively muscular, plot-serving car chases to get the adrenaline pumping, and the whole thing is shot sharply (with some innovative vehicle mounts) by DoP Erik Wilson. The pulsing electronic score by Blanck Mass also sets off the tone nicely.
Michael Mann’s Heat and Thief are clear touchstones, as is William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A., and while it’s practically impossible for any new film to live up to those genre titans, it sure is enjoyable seeing someone giving it a go.
Amazon MGM Studios
Pictures courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios Crime 101opens in cinemas on 13 February
Designed to titillate with its tongue very much in its flushed cheek, Emerald Fennell’s raunchy take on Charlotte Bronte’s doomy classic sets its stall out from the opening as a hanged man gets an erection, prompting carnality from the assembled crowd – including a shuddering nun. Death and sex continue to be inextricably linked in this tale of two Victorian pseudo-siblings who run wild on the Yorkshire moors and through each others’ dreams as they grow from children to cruel adults locked in a toxic romance. Jettisoning the novel’s bookended story of the fate of the family home, Wuthering Heights, and the generational trauma of the Earnshaws, screenwriter and director, Fennell concentrates on the lethal enmeshment of Cathy (Margot Robbie) and her adopted brother, Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) which sees them devouring each other in the rain, masturbating on rocky outcrops and smearing fingers through any wet thing they can find (snail trail, damp dough, a gelatined fish mouth, blood).
Warner Bros. Pictures
Designed in narrative and production aesthetic as a heaving Mills & Boon cover come to life, Fennell’s iteration has no interest in historical accuracy, Victorian properness or faithfulness to the source. Like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, this version of Wuthering Heights is more interested in vibe and feelings. So while Charli XCX’s anachronistic soundtrack thrums over the visuals-destined-to-be-memes, Heathcliff and Cathy pant over each other in deliberately artificial and heightened environments from Suzie Davis that will enrage purists but provide content for TikTokers. Wuthering Heights looks like a tiled abattoir, Thrushcross Grange belonging to third wheel love interest, Edgar (Shazad Latif, bringing real depth to a cock-blocked cuckold) is a pop music video dollhouse (scarlet lacquers floors, flesh walls, lurid gardens), a moors sunset is an atomic orange. And the costumes… Jacqueline Durran’s imagination is unfettered: a Gone With The Wind gown, a busty milkmaid get-up, neon ribboned fripperies for ditzy Isabella (Alison Oliver), a wedding night outfit that wraps Cathy like a boiled sweet. Put it this way, there’s plenty to go at for Halloween hot looks.
Warner Bros. Pictures
While the willful artifice will surely attract awards attention, the relationship at the (raging) heart of this tale needs to convince and Fennell is predictably unphased by making her characters complicated, messy. Cathy, in Robbie’s hands, is an intriguing OG drama queen, a prick tease, a brat. As he did in Frankenstein, Elordi does considerable heavy lifting in humanising a damaged man; seducing Cathy and audience alike with a spot-on West Yorkshire accent, palpable yearning and a mean streak a mile wide. If anyone needed more evidence that Elordi is destined to be a generational great, Wuthering Heights demonstrates his ability to play convincingly into lusty tropes (the way he says ‘I know’ at one point is likely to rival Colin Firth’s lake swim or Matthew McFadyen’s hand flex in bodice-buster obsessions) but also tap into the psychology of Heathcliff (Fennell’s most modern and interesting scene is a moment of consent in a coercive relationship) and almost single-handedly sell the tragedy of the piece. When he mourns the love lost while wind-whipped on the moors or clings to a silk bedsheet like drowning man, the truth and authenticity of Bronte’s prose is captured.
Warner Bros. Pictures
Flashy, brash, bombastic, hot and heavy – this Wuthering Heights is like no other, fully committing to its horny-teen concept with all the headlong passion of a ‘handsome brute’ falling for the wrong girl. On that level alone it’s worth seeing and debating. And as they say in Yorkshire: where there’s muck, there’s brass…
Pictures courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures Wuthering Heightsis in cinemas now
