6 OF THE BEST
Team Empire on the month’s essential movies
BLOW OUT OUT 2 AUGUST / CERT 18 / 113 MINS
At last, Brian De Palma’s cracking thriller gets the Criterion treatment. Heavily inspired by Antonioni’s Blow-up, this tale of a sound recordist (John Travolta) who accidentally bears witness to a murder and then gets caught up in a conspiracy as he tries to save Nancy Allen’s escort is one of De Palma’s best, and most focused, films. Because De Palma can never stop being De Palma, there’s style aplenty here — check out that famous split diopter shot of an owl sharing the frame with Travolta — but it never gets in the way of the narrative, allowing De Palma to smoosh together some of his favourite preoccupations (voyeurism! Obsession! Doomed women! John Lithgow being weird!) into a satisfying whole.
WEREWOLVES WITHIN OUT 19 JULY / CERT TBC / 100 MINS
Where the hell did Werewolves Within winsomely wander in from? Seemingly out of nowhere, director Josh Ruben and screen writer/ nominative determinism-hero MishnaWol ff have arguably made the horror-comedy of the year: a terrifically entertaining spin on the monster movie mould, drenched in a genuinely enigmatic murder mystery. Among its achievements, it is perhaps the only truly good video-game adaptation in living memory, turning the relatively obscure VR game of the same name into a sharply funny genre mash-up. As nerdy forest ranger Finn, Sam Richardson is the standout of an outstanding ensemble, while the final-act reveal is as surprising as it is satisfying. Trust us: this deserves to be howled about.
PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN OUT 2 AUGUST / CERT TBC / 114 MINS
What did we do to deserve Emerald Fennell? The multi-hyphenate’s feature debut works on many levels, Promising Young Woman playing out both as biblical fable and with shocking realism. Cassie’s (Carey Mulligan) vengeful quest against predatory ‘nice guys’ takes a cocktail of romcom and thriller tropes, heightening them while grounding them in blunt truths. It’s darkly funny, surprisingly sweet (at times), supremely entertaining and beautifully designed, plus it sounds great too — from that opening Charli XCX needle-drop to its genius use of Paris Hilton’s ‘Stars Are Blind’. Its denouement, though, is one of the most shocking in recent memory — a howl of rage that dares to play out as pitch-black comedy. Promise fulfilled.
THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T OUT 19 JULY / CERT U / 89 MINS
In 1953, long before animatronic and CGI grinches and Hortons, Columbia Pictures let the actual Dr. Seuss envision this utterly strange, beguilingly subversive musical fantasy. A little boy (Tommy Rettig) who doesn’t want to do his piano practice dreams his tyrannical teacher, Dr. Terwilliker — an extraordinarily demented Hans Conried — rules a high-tech castle where he has the kid’s mom (Mary Healy) under his sway, and intends to enslave 500 little boys to the largest piano in the world. With the aid of a dancing plumber/surrogate dad (Peter Lind Hayes), the brat foments a revolution. Astonishing expressionist sets are a backdrop for wild dance numbers, while Seuss’ word-play sparkles in intricately rhymed songs. Unique.
BRINGING UP BABY OUT 26 JULY / CERT PG / 102 MINS
Comedies don’t get more screwball than Howard Hawks’ delightful farce, which pits Cary Grant’s hapless paleontologist David against motormouth heiress Susan (Katharine Hepburn). David just wants to take delivery of the last bone needed for his brontosaurus skeleton and marry his stern fiancée, but a chance meeting with Susan derails his entire life. Hepburn barely stops babbling, and soon David’s covered in feathers and trying to wrangle two leopards, occasionally in a maribou dressing gown. A flop on its initial release, this is now (rightly) considered a classic, barely pausing for breath as the objectively awful but somehow irresistible Susan wins David over. Love or lunacy, it’s delightful and still hilarious.
TRUE ROMANCE OUT 19 JULY / CERT 18 / 118 MINS
There are so many scene-stealers in True Romance, it’s a marvel there’s anything left to watch. Almost 30 years on, the performances have lost none of their flavour: Gary Oldman’s Drexl cackling at “breastses” on TV, Brad Pitt’s Floyd drowsily parlaying with mobsters, Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper’s duelling toughs, James Gandolfini’s smirking goon. In another movie, all these masterclasses might unbalance the whole thing. Here, though, with Patricia Arquette and Christian Slater perfect as the two dazed heroes navigating a Tony Scott and Tarantino-designed netherworld, pure-of-heart even as they lug around a suitcase of cocaine, it still plays as gangbusters as a Sonny Chiba triple bill.