Florence Pugh is the standout in fun Thunderbolts, Marvel's best movie since Avengers: Endgame
With a welcome returns to form for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a better-than-most horror video game adaptation and bonkers action thriller, it's all go in the movie world this week.
THUNDERBOLTS* (PG)
Director: Jake Schreier (Robot & Frank)
Starring: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Lewis Pullman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus
★★★★
After too much calm, Marvel zaps up a storm
For those who have kept the faith in all things Marvel while the comic-book studio powerhouse has struggled to snap itself out of its post-Avengers: Endgame slump, the wait is finally over.
There won't be any talk of so-called 'superhero fatigue' this time around: Thunderbolts* marks a refreshing reclaiming of form that hopefully augurs well for more Marvel magic to come.
While Thunderbolts* lands ever so slightly short of being truly great, its strengths as a well-acted, shrewdly-written and consistently entertaining movie experience are there for all to see and genuinely enjoy.
Conceptually, Thunderbolts is structured like a tougher, gruffer variation of a Guardians of the Galaxy instalment, where a raggedy bunch of self-deprecating, second-tier superhero types must reluctantly join forces for the greater good.
In many ways, this lot are more antiheroes than superheroes, all plucked from the substitutes' bench of earlier Marvel fixtures, and given substantial game time for the first time.
The unofficial leader of this pack is Black Widow's Yelena Belova (a fantastic Florence Pugh), a shell of her former self who has recently been making ends meet as a black-ops mischief-maker for the CIA.
The equally exiled likes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier's John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Ant-man and the Wasp's Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) have also been pulling a pay cheque from the same employer.
However, when the CIA's disreputable boss Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) tries to literally terminate all who have been doing her dirty work, the Thunderbolts begin to properly take shape.
Former Captain America associate Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) has cause to join this fledgling task force, as does Yelena's vodka-fuelled dad, the very amusing Red Guardian (David Harbour).
By movie's end, all will be pulling in unison to take down an all-new, ultra-destructive superhero named Sentry, a figure described as being the equivalent of all Avengers rolled into one.
The only advantage that might end up working in favour of the Thunderbolts is that they used to know Sentry when he was merely a meek and mild fellow named Bob (Lewis Pullman).
Longtime Marvel devotees will immediately recognise the uptick in quality achieved by Thunderbolts*.
By the end of the movie's first act, its easygoing confidence has enlivened every aspect of the production.
The better Marvel movies have always struck the right balance between individual characters and a unifying calamity, and Thunderbolts hits this all-important benchmark with ease.
While the climax of the tale arguably lags in pacing and tone compared to all that has happened earlier, the vivid feelings of relief and elation generated by Thunderbolts* at its best are not to be taken lightly.
Thunderbolts* is in cinemas now
UNTIL DAWN (MA15+)
★★★
General release
An engagingly nimble little horror movie that adequately mirrors (and sometimes, sneakily transcends) its origins as a well-known PlayStation game.
The action centres on a strange place known as The Welcome Center, where five young friends have arrived in search of a member of their circle who has mysteriously disappeared. Before long, the group find themselves stuck in a grotesque, Groundhog Day-style time loop, where their search continually leads to guaranteed death, only for time to suddenly rewind back so they can start all over again.
The key line that may help this mob make it out of this macabre maze is 'survive the night, or become a part of it'.
If they can learn from their mistakes – and hopefully, not make any new ones – they just might make it until dawn.
Yes, we have been in similar scenarios before, but there is still an energetic enthusiasm in play here that won't be denied. Director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation) is an underrated master of making little chills go a long way, and his willing cast of newbies merrily keep dying and keep trying right through to the end.
HAVOC (MA15+)
★★★
Now streaming on Netflix
It is called Havoc for one very good reason. Just as this unabashedly anarchic, all-stops-out action flick isn't here to make friends, it's not about to suddenly make sense at any given moment, either. Simple storytelling tools such as dialogue, character names and plotting are merely stepping stones to get us from one shootout, chase sequence or hand-to-head combat routine to the next.
While you will need a GPS to follow exactly who is hating on who throughout – by my count, there are at least 20 corrupt cops, crime lords, mobsters, fixers, dealers, municipal politicians and their relatives jostling for fleeting prominence here – the only figure truly worth focusing on is a down-and-out homicide detective named Walker (Tom Hardy).
That's him spending the night of Christmas Eve being funnelled through a series of implausibly deathly confrontations that would have Die Hard's John McClane laying down his guns and making a run for it.
Aside from the occasional flourish of mumbled menace contributed by Hardy, the real stars are the movie's stunt choreographers, who come up with a number of hyper-ballistic ballets that can only be applauded. Co-stars Forest Whitaker, Timothy Olyphant.
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Sydney Morning Herald
13 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Here are 10 new books to add to your reading pile
Classic espionage, an unconventional ghost story, David Attenborough's call to action for our oceans and a globetrotting search for the world's mythical creatures – there's something for every taste in this week's reviews. FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Wait Here Lucy Nelson Summit Books, $32.99 Lucy Nelson's Wait Here is a striking short fiction collection populated by female characters who aren't and never will be mothers. Some experience childlessness as a form of liberation, some a curse; for some it's barely worth mentioning, for others a lost echo that haunts them. In the title story, Ivy attends a psychiatrist's waiting room, which she visits weekly, the cause of her distress never openly discussed, the waiting itself becoming a kind of comfort. Other tales involve such scenarios as a dancer who learns she can never have children, and two elderly spinsters with a 'found family' making a fateful choice. Nelson brings variety and vigour to the characters in these pages, and she's mastered the finely contrasting use of emotional registers. Read together, the stories range from quirky hilarity to purgatorial grief, and it's one sign of a gifted short fiction writer that none of them are over-realised – Nelson often suggests rather than tells and resists simple resolution, reserving enough mystery to provoke the reader into imagining women in all their diversity and complexity. Aftertaste Daria Lavelle Bloomsbury, $26.99 An eccentric supernatural power has assailed Kostya Duhovny ever since he was a child. His mouth has long been invaded by strange tastes he has never experienced himself. It appears he relives other people's taste sensations, and when he visits Maura, a hot goth-girl psychic, she reveals it is 'clairgustance' – a gustatory connection to the ghosts of the dead and more specifically, their favourite meals in life. This uncanny ability allows Kostya to rise above his job as a humble dish pig and make a unique contribution to haute cuisine on the New York restaurant scene. Daria Lavelle's satire of the more pretentious side of that industry is deliciously spicy, although an insipid romantic arc does flatten its flavour for a time, even as the otherworldly consequences of Kostya's link with the world beyond add more than a hint of ghost story. It's an unusual mélange of genres, not always blended to perfection, but with an intriguing dark comic taste, nonetheless. Best Left Buried Neil A. White Echo, $32.99 The second in Neil A. White's Matt Latham series, Best Left Buried sets the reader onto a dark and desperate trail of international espionage. It's a thriller built upon the intrigues and misdeeds of the CIA in Latin America, and its anti-hero becomes entangled in a dangerous legacy when he agrees to ghostwrite the memoir of a friend, Bryant Callahan – previously a senior diplomat, soon to be a senator. Travelling to Dallas, his research uncovers unpalatable truths – Callahan's involvement with the CIA, and the troubling history (or lack of it) behind his wife Aleja, a former Miss Cuba orphaned as a child. When Aleja asks Matt to help find her birth family, a trip to Havana unearths scandalous secrets. Matt finds himself hunted by those determined to keep them from coming to light, as another figure implicated in the secret history travels from Mexico City to the US, hell-bent on revenge. The writing can sometimes be a bit too telegraphic for my taste, but it is a taut and rather well-paced thriller, dreamt up from the shadows of real historical events. Whisky Valley Joan Sauers Allen & Unwin, $32.99 In this sequel to Echo Lake, Joan Sauers returns to the Southern Highlands and her historian-cum-detective Rose McHugh. Understandably, Rose's narrow escape from becoming a murder victim in the last novel has left her on edge, but mysteries have a habit of seeking her out, and the latest begins when her son's best friend, a talented musician, disappears. Rose was never going to take the advice of friends and family and stay away from sleuthing, and as floodwaters surge, she finds herself unravelling threads of treachery – some of it close to home – as she takes on the missing person's case. Is this cosy crime? Not entirely. Sauers' heroine is likeable enough, there's a healthy dollop of romance, and the Highlands locale exudes rural charm and features a majestic natural setting. Still, the author does leave open the door to darkness in a way that builds suspense and should keep readers apprehensive about Rose's fate. Julie Chan Is Dead Liann Zhang Raven Books, $32.99 A struggling checkout chick swaps lives with her identical twin – an Insta-perfect influencer – in Julie Chan Is Dead, the debut novel from former 'skinfluencer' (skincare and beauty influencer) Liann Zhang. Discovering her estranged sister Chloe van Huusen dead in mysterious circumstances, Julie Chan wants to call 911 but can't resist stepping into her life of fame, fortune and followers and seizing it for her own. The twins were separated at a young age and their fates diverged, but Julie soon finds that Chloe did not live the enviable existence she imagined. The luxuries and labels come at a price – Julie must try to fit in with Chloe's beautiful influencer clique, the Belladonnas, and a week away with them reveals bizarre and disturbing behaviours that take on an increasingly sinister complexion. What really happened to Chloe? Will Julie be the next target? Zhang mixes mystery and horror and melodrama to capitalise on the market for stories about the toxicity of influencer culture. It's quite fun, but beyond the irresistible hook, I'm not sure that it does enough to make a lasting mark in a rapidly expanding subgenre. NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Ocean: Earth's Last Wilderness David Attenborough & Colin Butfield John Murray, $34.99 If you've seen David Attenborough's latest film Ocean, currently screening at cinemas, this book is an invitation to dive deeper. If you haven't seen it, you must. And then read this. While it spares us the film's graphic footage of the ruinous impact of industrial trawling, the dire implications for coastal communities and the health of the ocean in general are clear. The world's seas and their crucial role in sustaining life on Earth is a vast subject made intimate and accessible through the changes Attenborough has observed over the past century and the technological advances that have revolutionised our understanding of this watery realm. There are grim statistics – in his lifetime, almost half the world's coral has been lost – but there is also real reason for hope, as evidenced in the recovery of reefs, kelp forests and marine life in areas which have been declared sanctuaries. We know what needs to be done, say the authors, to fix the biggest problems we face as a species. 'The question is whether we also have the will and foresight to do so.' Monsterland Nicholas Jubber Scribe, $37.99 In the days when parts of the globe were still a mystery, cartographers marked uncharted regions with the phrase 'Here be monsters'. Since childhood, Nicholas Jubber has been drawn to the mythical creatures said to inhabit these margins. In this enchanting work, he travels to the shadowlands still haunted by such folk tales: to Cornwall searching for giants, Bavarian forests on the trail of dragons, Morocco in pursuit of supernatural beings known as genies or jinn, to Haiti where the story of the zombie took on chilling real life resonance as slaves, like 'living cadavers labour[ed] for their overlords'. Jubber focuses on four kinds of monster – the shapeshifter, the undead, the wild and creatures of the modern imagination – to explore the origins of these tales, what they tell us about the human psyche and how they live on in the present. With humour and flair, he probes how monsters register the 'emotional states of their epochs' and bind communities together. Michela Marzano Gazebo Books, $29.99 Michela Marzano had always thought of her grandfather as a refined, cultivated man. Then, in her 40s, she discovered that he'd also been a Fascist, a devotee of Benito Mussolini and member of his squadrista. 'Those thugs who beat up communists with their truncheons.' Marzano's parents were proudly left-wing, and her father never spoke of his father's politics. After her discovery, she is gripped by the thought that 'my grandfather must have been a monster'. What she learns about his experience as a soldier and a prisoner during the First World War helps her better understand his embrace of Fascism. As she delves into his personal archive, she also finds herself wrestling with the legacy of her father's domineering behaviour and its impact on her life. In this intense and unsettling memoir, Marzano constantly questions whether she should be exposing these family secrets, including her own mental health struggles. But the reader can only be grateful that she has braved her demons for the light they shed on how a nation's violent history reverberates down through the generations. Australia's Agricultural Identity Joshua Gilbert Penguin, $36.99 The marriage of Joshua Gilbert's convict forebear to a Worimi woman fused agriculture and culture, new and ancient ways, symbolising the aspirations of this forward-looking history-cum-memoir. From farming stock himself, Gilbert longs for the world to see that Indigenous people can thrive on the land, 'selling cattle at top prices, and golden fleece to make thousand-dollar suits'. And to recognise that their relationship with Country can evolve with new enterprises. Gilbert is a gifted yarn-spinner whose life story spans the divide between Indigenous and settler histories; a traditional rural upbringing with deeper roots. When he was a boy, his family didn't speak much of their Indigenous history. His adulthood has been a process of awakening to what it means to be an Indigenous person whose white ancestors worked for the Australian Agricultural Company that drove the Worimi people off their land. Through this personal lens, Gilbert offers a vision of what farming in Australia might become. Pilgrims have been making their way to sacred sites for millennia. These days, in the West, the destinations are more likely to be linked with the secular religion of sport. This guide to Australia's most celebrated venues is inevitably weighted in favour of team, rather than individual, sports with cricket grounds and AFL and rugby fields dominating, many of which are iconic and have international reputations. The absence of venues that host basketball, netball and soccer, however, might leave a few fans feeling miffed. Although numerous sites are products of the establishment – the MCG, SCG, Royal Melbourne Golf Club, Flemington Racecourse – the stories featured here are often the opposite. The SCG's renowned heckler known as Yabba is a prime example. At the more informal end of the spectrum are the surf breaks of Bells Beach and Snapper Rocks, and the Henley on Todd Regatta in Alice Springs, the famous waterless boat race. This is a bible for those seeking places of worship that align with their sporting values or that are of interest simply because of their legendary status.

The Age
13 hours ago
- The Age
Here are 10 new books to add to your reading pile
Classic espionage, an unconventional ghost story, David Attenborough's call to action for our oceans and a globetrotting search for the world's mythical creatures – there's something for every taste in this week's reviews. FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Wait Here Lucy Nelson Summit Books, $32.99 Lucy Nelson's Wait Here is a striking short fiction collection populated by female characters who aren't and never will be mothers. Some experience childlessness as a form of liberation, some a curse; for some it's barely worth mentioning, for others a lost echo that haunts them. In the title story, Ivy attends a psychiatrist's waiting room, which she visits weekly, the cause of her distress never openly discussed, the waiting itself becoming a kind of comfort. Other tales involve such scenarios as a dancer who learns she can never have children, and two elderly spinsters with a 'found family' making a fateful choice. Nelson brings variety and vigour to the characters in these pages, and she's mastered the finely contrasting use of emotional registers. Read together, the stories range from quirky hilarity to purgatorial grief, and it's one sign of a gifted short fiction writer that none of them are over-realised – Nelson often suggests rather than tells and resists simple resolution, reserving enough mystery to provoke the reader into imagining women in all their diversity and complexity. Aftertaste Daria Lavelle Bloomsbury, $26.99 An eccentric supernatural power has assailed Kostya Duhovny ever since he was a child. His mouth has long been invaded by strange tastes he has never experienced himself. It appears he relives other people's taste sensations, and when he visits Maura, a hot goth-girl psychic, she reveals it is 'clairgustance' – a gustatory connection to the ghosts of the dead and more specifically, their favourite meals in life. This uncanny ability allows Kostya to rise above his job as a humble dish pig and make a unique contribution to haute cuisine on the New York restaurant scene. Daria Lavelle's satire of the more pretentious side of that industry is deliciously spicy, although an insipid romantic arc does flatten its flavour for a time, even as the otherworldly consequences of Kostya's link with the world beyond add more than a hint of ghost story. It's an unusual mélange of genres, not always blended to perfection, but with an intriguing dark comic taste, nonetheless. Best Left Buried Neil A. White Echo, $32.99 The second in Neil A. White's Matt Latham series, Best Left Buried sets the reader onto a dark and desperate trail of international espionage. It's a thriller built upon the intrigues and misdeeds of the CIA in Latin America, and its anti-hero becomes entangled in a dangerous legacy when he agrees to ghostwrite the memoir of a friend, Bryant Callahan – previously a senior diplomat, soon to be a senator. Travelling to Dallas, his research uncovers unpalatable truths – Callahan's involvement with the CIA, and the troubling history (or lack of it) behind his wife Aleja, a former Miss Cuba orphaned as a child. When Aleja asks Matt to help find her birth family, a trip to Havana unearths scandalous secrets. Matt finds himself hunted by those determined to keep them from coming to light, as another figure implicated in the secret history travels from Mexico City to the US, hell-bent on revenge. The writing can sometimes be a bit too telegraphic for my taste, but it is a taut and rather well-paced thriller, dreamt up from the shadows of real historical events. Whisky Valley Joan Sauers Allen & Unwin, $32.99 In this sequel to Echo Lake, Joan Sauers returns to the Southern Highlands and her historian-cum-detective Rose McHugh. Understandably, Rose's narrow escape from becoming a murder victim in the last novel has left her on edge, but mysteries have a habit of seeking her out, and the latest begins when her son's best friend, a talented musician, disappears. Rose was never going to take the advice of friends and family and stay away from sleuthing, and as floodwaters surge, she finds herself unravelling threads of treachery – some of it close to home – as she takes on the missing person's case. Is this cosy crime? Not entirely. Sauers' heroine is likeable enough, there's a healthy dollop of romance, and the Highlands locale exudes rural charm and features a majestic natural setting. Still, the author does leave open the door to darkness in a way that builds suspense and should keep readers apprehensive about Rose's fate. Julie Chan Is Dead Liann Zhang Raven Books, $32.99 A struggling checkout chick swaps lives with her identical twin – an Insta-perfect influencer – in Julie Chan Is Dead, the debut novel from former 'skinfluencer' (skincare and beauty influencer) Liann Zhang. Discovering her estranged sister Chloe van Huusen dead in mysterious circumstances, Julie Chan wants to call 911 but can't resist stepping into her life of fame, fortune and followers and seizing it for her own. The twins were separated at a young age and their fates diverged, but Julie soon finds that Chloe did not live the enviable existence she imagined. The luxuries and labels come at a price – Julie must try to fit in with Chloe's beautiful influencer clique, the Belladonnas, and a week away with them reveals bizarre and disturbing behaviours that take on an increasingly sinister complexion. What really happened to Chloe? Will Julie be the next target? Zhang mixes mystery and horror and melodrama to capitalise on the market for stories about the toxicity of influencer culture. It's quite fun, but beyond the irresistible hook, I'm not sure that it does enough to make a lasting mark in a rapidly expanding subgenre. NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Ocean: Earth's Last Wilderness David Attenborough & Colin Butfield John Murray, $34.99 If you've seen David Attenborough's latest film Ocean, currently screening at cinemas, this book is an invitation to dive deeper. If you haven't seen it, you must. And then read this. While it spares us the film's graphic footage of the ruinous impact of industrial trawling, the dire implications for coastal communities and the health of the ocean in general are clear. The world's seas and their crucial role in sustaining life on Earth is a vast subject made intimate and accessible through the changes Attenborough has observed over the past century and the technological advances that have revolutionised our understanding of this watery realm. There are grim statistics – in his lifetime, almost half the world's coral has been lost – but there is also real reason for hope, as evidenced in the recovery of reefs, kelp forests and marine life in areas which have been declared sanctuaries. We know what needs to be done, say the authors, to fix the biggest problems we face as a species. 'The question is whether we also have the will and foresight to do so.' Monsterland Nicholas Jubber Scribe, $37.99 In the days when parts of the globe were still a mystery, cartographers marked uncharted regions with the phrase 'Here be monsters'. Since childhood, Nicholas Jubber has been drawn to the mythical creatures said to inhabit these margins. In this enchanting work, he travels to the shadowlands still haunted by such folk tales: to Cornwall searching for giants, Bavarian forests on the trail of dragons, Morocco in pursuit of supernatural beings known as genies or jinn, to Haiti where the story of the zombie took on chilling real life resonance as slaves, like 'living cadavers labour[ed] for their overlords'. Jubber focuses on four kinds of monster – the shapeshifter, the undead, the wild and creatures of the modern imagination – to explore the origins of these tales, what they tell us about the human psyche and how they live on in the present. With humour and flair, he probes how monsters register the 'emotional states of their epochs' and bind communities together. Michela Marzano Gazebo Books, $29.99 Michela Marzano had always thought of her grandfather as a refined, cultivated man. Then, in her 40s, she discovered that he'd also been a Fascist, a devotee of Benito Mussolini and member of his squadrista. 'Those thugs who beat up communists with their truncheons.' Marzano's parents were proudly left-wing, and her father never spoke of his father's politics. After her discovery, she is gripped by the thought that 'my grandfather must have been a monster'. What she learns about his experience as a soldier and a prisoner during the First World War helps her better understand his embrace of Fascism. As she delves into his personal archive, she also finds herself wrestling with the legacy of her father's domineering behaviour and its impact on her life. In this intense and unsettling memoir, Marzano constantly questions whether she should be exposing these family secrets, including her own mental health struggles. But the reader can only be grateful that she has braved her demons for the light they shed on how a nation's violent history reverberates down through the generations. Australia's Agricultural Identity Joshua Gilbert Penguin, $36.99 The marriage of Joshua Gilbert's convict forebear to a Worimi woman fused agriculture and culture, new and ancient ways, symbolising the aspirations of this forward-looking history-cum-memoir. From farming stock himself, Gilbert longs for the world to see that Indigenous people can thrive on the land, 'selling cattle at top prices, and golden fleece to make thousand-dollar suits'. And to recognise that their relationship with Country can evolve with new enterprises. Gilbert is a gifted yarn-spinner whose life story spans the divide between Indigenous and settler histories; a traditional rural upbringing with deeper roots. When he was a boy, his family didn't speak much of their Indigenous history. His adulthood has been a process of awakening to what it means to be an Indigenous person whose white ancestors worked for the Australian Agricultural Company that drove the Worimi people off their land. Through this personal lens, Gilbert offers a vision of what farming in Australia might become. Pilgrims have been making their way to sacred sites for millennia. These days, in the West, the destinations are more likely to be linked with the secular religion of sport. This guide to Australia's most celebrated venues is inevitably weighted in favour of team, rather than individual, sports with cricket grounds and AFL and rugby fields dominating, many of which are iconic and have international reputations. The absence of venues that host basketball, netball and soccer, however, might leave a few fans feeling miffed. Although numerous sites are products of the establishment – the MCG, SCG, Royal Melbourne Golf Club, Flemington Racecourse – the stories featured here are often the opposite. The SCG's renowned heckler known as Yabba is a prime example. At the more informal end of the spectrum are the surf breaks of Bells Beach and Snapper Rocks, and the Henley on Todd Regatta in Alice Springs, the famous waterless boat race. This is a bible for those seeking places of worship that align with their sporting values or that are of interest simply because of their legendary status.


Perth Now
3 days ago
- Perth Now
Sydney Sweeney has become more 'guarded'
Sydney Sweeney has become more "guarded" since shooting to fame. The 27-year-old actress has been working in show business since she was a teenager but her fame has increased over the last few years after she landed a high profile role in TV series 'Euphoria' and went on to star in 'The White Lotus', rom-com 'Anyone but You' and Marvel movie 'Madame Web' - and Sydney admits being well-known is difficult because she had "no idea" how much she valued her privacy until she lost it. She told The Times newspaper: "I've always been guarded. Definitely more so now. You let a few people in who you trust ... "A lot is gone, like privacy. Which is huge. You don't realise how much that means until you lose it. I see all the time: 'Oh, they sold themselves, they knew what they were signing up for.' But 18-year-old me had no idea what she was signing up for." Sydney went on to admit it is women who give her "the hardest time", insisting she has to work hard to be taken seriously in her work. She explained: "I have to be like, I want to be in the room, I want to sit in every single meeting and want to be involved in every decision, I want to be taken seriously as a producer. "I'm very direct, I'm very blunt ... To be honest, actually, I always find that it's the women who give me the hardest time ... "I see it all the time [in auditions] where they don't think I am right for [a role] because they watched [her character] Cassie in 'Euphoria'. "Especially because Cassie was such a sexualised character - that puts a wall up for people. I feel like I'm constantly having to be like, no, no, I'm an actor, I'm supposed to be different characters." It comes after Sydney - who now has her own production company, Fifty-Fifty Films - admitted the entertainment industry is tough, but she continues to be fascinated by it. She told Empire: "This industry is so fascinating. There are so many chats, pieces and moves to make, and I find that really exhilarating. "It's constantly changing. I love acting, but being able to step outside of that and then see how everything comes together, and understand what every crew member needs and what it takes to get a project from imagination to conception ... "When people see it in the theatres or on screen, it's been a really long, hard process, but I love it."