Annual (2024) - Vol.6

Total Film

The Modern Guide to Movies

Total Film2 min read
Welcome To The Film
After more than a decade of superhero domination, this was the year when the tables well and truly turned on Marvel and DC. While the likes of Ant-Man 3 and The Flash dramatically underperformed at the box office, it was Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Chr
Total Film15 min read
Trial by fire
If genius is patience, as Sir Isaac Newton once attested, Total Film witnesses genius in abundance on the dub stage at the Warner Bros. lot, Burbank, California, on an uncharacteristically rainy day in January. It's in here that the sound mix is bein
Total Film1 min read
Howard's Way
When I wrote my Howard Hughes script, it was the first time I'd taken on a real-life figure, and tried working from a book, and tried to find a structural approach and a cinematic approach that would give you the experience of this guy's life. I was
Total Film1 min read
Testing Times
I start really early with Chris, because, quite often, he wants to talk about the process and the methodology that he wants to use, really quite a long time before actual pre-production starts. It's always better to start early for me. Traditional co
Total Film1 min read
Total Film
Bookazine Editorial Editor Jrdan Farley Senior Art Editor Mike Brennan Head of Art & Design Greg Whitaker Editorial Director Jon White Managing Director Grainne McKenna Magazine Editorial Group Editor-in-Chief Dane Crowther Art Editor Mike Brennan Co
Total Film1 min read
Fire Power
It was my sixth film with Chris. Compared to a lot of the other ones we've done, it was definitely not as rigorous with day-to-day filming. He said, ‘There's not as much stuff for you on this as the other one, but there's a couple of things we do hav
Total Film2 min read
Can We Talk About?
In the weeks leading up to Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer – both of which hit UK cinemas on 21 July – anticipation reached nuclear levels. Dubbed collectively as ‘Barbenheimer’, the pair set social media ablaze with everyth
Total Film2 min read
All Dolled Up
At first glance, a live-action movie based on an iconic fashion doll might feel like a project aimed at toy-loving tweens, but Barbie director and cowriter Greta Gerwig has much bigger plans for her candycoloured new film. Factor in Margot Robbie in
Total Film11 min read
Big Wick Energy
There's a saying on the set of the John Wick films, one that's uttered when the punishing demands of a series lauded for its best-in-league action needs to be acknowledged by all present: Wick is pain. It's an expression that comes from a place of af
Total Film1 min read
Luck Of The Draw
John Woo's hugely influential Hong Kong actioner sees Chow Yun-Fat's assassin and Danny Lee's cop gun down dozens of gangsters in a church before coming up against Shing FuiOn's triad for one final shoot-out, as the latter grabs a damsel for a body s
Total Film2 min read
Let's Dance
Expected to release in 2024, though officially undated, Ballerina is the first big-screen John Wick spin-off. Directed by Underworld's Len Wiseman, it stars Ana de Armas (pictured above in No Time To Die) as the titular, classically trained assassin,
Total Film2 min read
Modern Marvel
I would say Tess is a little bit of a mystery. She is part of the Agency, but she also goes rogue and edges more towards the family side, but that means she has a lot to prove. When Dom gives her an impossible task that's going to require a lot of th
Total Film12 min read
Road To destruction
It was 11pm on Thursday 28 April 2022 when director Louis Leterrier received the phone call that turbo-charged the next year of his life. Forty-eight hours prior, veteran Fast & Furious franchise filmmaker Justin Lin had abruptly resigned as the dire
Total Film13 min read
Achieving The Impo ssible
There's one achievement that's perhaps more jawdropping than any of the extreme stunts that star/producer Tom Cruise has completed. And it's that – in a world of IP fatigue and diminishing returns – Mission: Impossible is a rare (unique?) franchise t
Total Film2 min read
Mean Machine
‘There's nothing that we put as much effort into as Dom's Dodge Charger. Obviously, it's the most important car in the film. The designs always vary a little bit [from film to film]. If you've seen the trailer for Fast X, there is a shot of a car tha
Total Film10 min read
Rake's progress
What is the greatest action scene in modern cinema? John Wick fighting his way up the 220 steps of the Sacré-Coeur in John Wick: Chapter 4? Either of the bus fights in Nobody or Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings? Ethan Hunt scaling the Burj K
Total Film14 min read
Ford Focus
I don't believe in magic, but a few times in my life, I've seen things,’ glowers Indiana Jones in his latest adventure, Dial of Destiny. Magic of various kinds is embedded in the DNA of the Indiana Jones franchise. Without the alchemy of the perfect
Total Film1 min read
No Spin
‘That's not my goal on movies [to set up spin-offs], I am really old-fashioned. I'm very classically minded, and I think Steven [Spielberg] is, too. I make the movie very conscious about the movie being its own self-contained, functioning work of art
Total Film1 min read
Mads Mikkelsen
He's a mathematician. His love for that craft oversees his political ideologies. But if you can combine them, eventually that will be enormous for him. It's a fantasy world. I mean, I'm a history buff, so I know quite a bit about history. But I didn'
Total Film1 min read
Boyd Holbrook
For me, in terms of why this person is the way they are – that was just the time and era, and what was going on in the country and the world. I think, really, he's a very confused individual who doesn't know who he is. There's a sense of him wanting
Total Film1 min read
Phoebe Wallerbridge
She comes and turns everything upside down, basically. But she was a lot of fun to play, and they really nailed a humour and wit that is already in the DNA of the series. They created a really fresh character to carry that through again. I think they
Total Film2 min read
Jackie Chan
Born in 1954, Jackie Chan (birth name: Chan Kong-sang) was enrolled in the China Drama Academy at the age of five. There he spent 10 years undergoing gruelling (some might say abusive) physical training in acrobatics, martial arts, dance and other sk
Total Film1 min read
Key Movies
Director Yuen Woo-ping and Chan redefined the kung fu genre with this landmark fusion of balletic martial arts and slapstick comedy. Not only a stunt-tastic, franchisespawning (eight films and counting) action classic, but one Chan has declared his o
Total Film15 min read
‘I Was Reading A Whole Bunch Of Scripts That Wanted Me To Fly Somewhere Or Save A Planet…’ John Boyega
In Atlanta prepping for Gavin Hood's suspense thriller The Test, in which he'll play a behavioural psychologist confronted by far-right terrorists in a near-future fascist state, John Boyega is a busy, focused man. But he's happily cleared a window i
Total Film1 min read
Five Star Turns
Boyega made his startling movie debut as teenage gang member Moses in Joe Cornish's unique sci-fi comedy actioner. ‘At first I thought it was stupid,’ he said at the time. ‘But I fell in love with the script.’ ‘It feels like a blessing to be part of
Total Film7 min read
Vision QUEST
Writer/director Ari Aster exploded onto the scene at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018, his domestic drama Hereditary drawing comparisons to such masters as Stanley Kubrick and Ingmar Bergman even as it pivoted into becoming an occult horror movie,
Total Film6 min read
‘Women Are underestimated…’
Wearing a sleek silver dress and matching heels as she strolls into The Ritz-Carlton, Sydney Sweeney is basking in the Berlinale. It's just after midday and she's in glam mode for a mad dash across the German city for a Q&A for her new movie, Reality
Total Film7 min read
My Life In Pictures DARIO Argento
Argento embraces fairy tales and the fantastique with a vivid tale of an American ballet dancer attending a German academy run by witches. ‘After Deep Red [1975, marking the fourth giallo movie Argento had made in five years, starting with his debut
Total Film14 min read
‘It Took A Very Original Thinker To Think Of Me For Certain Parts.’
When Sigourney Weaver strides into the Hollywood Celebrities Lounge at the Venice Film Festival, there's no ceremonial entrance. She may have been on our screens for well over four decades, but she's learnt how to separate the glitz from the grit of
Total Film1 min read
Five Star Turns
In Ellen Ripley, Weaver fashioned the most iconic female protagonist in sci-fi cinema, challenging gender roles and Academy bias. Her Oscar nom for Aliens was a game changer. ‘It was a huge surprise,’ she said. Weaver's cellist Dana Barrett was beset
Total Film3 min read
The Hero
Rita Moreno burst on to the scene in West Side Story, making history by becoming the first Latin actress to win an Oscar for her performance. She's had a long and distinguished career (The King and I, Carnal Knowledge, HBO's Oz), but don't expect the
Total Film1 min read
Future Worlds
‘Honestly, I think it's a terrible thing to try to make a film with the idea of a sequel in mind. This was designed to be a single story with a beginning, a middle and an end. And that's it. ‘That said, I do really love the world, and there are so ma
Total Film1 min read
Mr. Robot
‘Gareth wanted to come away from principal photography, and then choose different characters to be simulants, and to be robots. We knew, obviously, Alphie and a couple of the other principals. But for other characters in the background, there's somet
Total Film13 min read
Kid ai
When Gareth Edwards is not making science-fiction films – and what science-fiction films, his first three movies being Monsters, Godzilla and arguably the best Star Wars movie this side of the original trilogy, Rogue One – he likes to annoy family an
Total Film9 min read
Spielberg on E.T.
Back in October 1982, Steven Spielberg sat down in Beverly Hills to discuss his latest blockbuster, E.T. The ExtraTerrestrial. The heartwarming story of a suburban kid (played by Henry Thomas) and his homesick alien buddy had already won over America
Total Film9 min read
Return Of The Ex-jedi
Films and TV shows are increasingly geared towards fan service, with cameos, callbacks and references littered everywhere for the amusement of the hardcore stans that are the franchises’ most devoted followers. And sometimes fans can be of service, t
Total Film2 min read
Ming Qiu: Stunt Fight Coordinator
My responsibility is for all the fights – with swords, or without swords. I was a professional martial artist back in China. I've done stunts since 1999. I doubled all the Asian actresses in Hollywood. And in the past 10 years, I doubled Ming-Na Wen
Total Film9 min read
Multiverse Of Rad-ness
When Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films first swung into the multiplex, the concept of ‘superhero fatigue’ was unimaginable. The trilogy had audiences champing at the bit to see who, or what, our friendly neighbourhood superhero would be battling next. In
Total Film1 min read
Unfamiliar Faces
Peter Parker's wife and daughter who fight alongside him in their timeline, going by the aliases of Spinneret and Spiderling. A valued member of the Ape-vengers. This isn't a metaphor; he really is a monkey. A terminally ill Otto Octavius swapped bra
Total Film7 min read
Demons Neo
In the year of our Lord 2023, a half-century after William Friedkin changed the horror genre with The Exorcist, just how the hell do you make a worthy sequel – or, as the filmmakers prefer to put it, a ‘new chapter’? Think about it. Back then, no one
Total Film6 min read
Unholy communion
Picture this: you're a pair of filmmakers from Adelaide, Australia, premiering your first feature at the Sundance Film Festival. Nobody knows who the hell you are. And then suddenly, A24 are bidding on your movie. Yep, the hip indie company behind Os
Total Film2 min read
Videodrome's Organic TV
I felt kind of stupid when I was doing it,’ said star James Woods of the scenes where Max Renn, the protagonist of Videodrome, gets up close and personal with his TeleRANGER TV screen. His ‘stupid’ is our disturbing and (whisper it) erotic, as a mesm
Total Film9 min read
The End THE 25 GREATEST MOVIE ENDINGS EVER
The final scenes of a movie can make or break an entire picture. However good the previous couple of hours, if the last five minutes go spectacularly wrong, you could be looking at the difference between a classic and an also-ran. The best movie endi

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