Ian Freer

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘TV’s golden age’ enough times over the past couple of decades to get wary of the hyperbole, but this year does seem to be shaping up to be a kind of mini golden age for the TV follow-up. Severance, Andor and The Last of Us all look like building on incredibly satisfying first runs with equally masterful second runs (even more masterful, in Severance’s case). The third season of The White Lotus has proved that, whether you love it or find it a touch too languorous, there’s no escaping Mike White’s transgressive privilege-in-paradise satire. Likewise for season 7 of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian-flavoured sci-fi Black Mirror. Watercooler viewing is everywhere at the moment,  and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Netflix has announced the finale of Squid Game this summer, along with the end of Stranger Things, a second run of Tim Burton’s Wednesday and about a zillion other things, while HBO is offering up a second season for Nathan Fielder’s genius/awkward comedy docuseries The Rehearsal. Here’s everything you need to see... so far.  RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows to watch in 2025📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

Television has been around for 70 years, but only in the last two decades has it earned true respect as an artistic medium. Up to that point, elitists referred to TV as ‘the idiot box’ or ‘the boob tube,’ and if you worked in it, you were either a hack or an upstart hoping to make the leap into the more dignified world of movies. Was its poor reputation deserved? Sure, there were blips of brilliance between The Ed Sullivan Show and The Sopranos, but by and large, the garbage outweighed the gold. Maybe it’s unfair, but the fact that it was all being beamed directly into our living rooms made the dreck more noticeable.  That’s all changed. Television has nudged film out from the center of popular culture, to the point that some of cinema’s truest believers – Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh – are making movies specifically for the small screen. The shift may have started with HBO and The Sopranos, but the advent of streaming has made it so that hundreds of new shows are now continually flipping the script every few years, if not months. But that doesn’t mean everything before 1999 is pure dross. While this list is dominated by 21st century programs, there are hundreds of shows that deserve credit for pushing TV forward into its current golden age, and chiseling them down to a neat top 100 is difficult. So we elected to leave off talk shows, variety shows and sketch comedy, focusing on scripted, episodic dramas, comedies and miniseries. Even then, it proved to b

Tothom té les seves preferides, per això qualsevol debat sobre quines són les millors pel·lícules de tots els temps es pot allargar hores (o, en el nostre cas, tota la vida). Hi pot haver alguna llista que les agrupi a totes? És difícil, però hem intentat incorporar-hi des de les revolucions més clàssiques de la història del cinema fins a les més modernes, tots els gèneres, països, èpoques i per a tots els gustos... tot fent equilibris entre la racionalitat i el sentimentalisme. El repte ha sigut enormement complicat, però no ens hem pogut resistir a elaborar una bona llista, la nostra llista. Feu-nos saber fins a quin punt ens hem equivocat. Ah, també us posem en quines plataformes digitals la podeu veure... més fàcils impossible! NO T'HO PERDIS: El millor de la cartellera de cine de Barcelona Fes clic aquí si vols més informació sobre els nostres estàndards editorials i les nostres directrius ètiques per crear aquest contingut.

Cada uno tiene sus preferencias, así que cualquier debate sobre cuáles son las mejores películas de todos los tiempos se puede alargar horas (o, en nuestro caso, toda la vida). ¿Puede haber alguna lista que las agrupe a todas? Es difícil, pero hemos intentado incorporar desde las revoluciones cinematográficas más clásicas hasta las más modernas, todos los géneros, países, épocas... cine para todos los gustos, haciendo equilibrios entre la racionalidad y el sentimentalismo. El reto ha sido enormemente complicado, pero no nos hemos podido resistir a elaborar una buena lista, nuestra lista. Decidnos hasta qué punto nos hemos equivocado. Ah, para que no tengáis excusa, os hemos añadido las plataformas digitales dónde podéis verlas, ¡más fácil imposible! NO TE LO PIERDAS: El top 10 de la cartelera de cine de Barcelona Clica aquí si quieres más información sobre nuestros estándares editoriales y nuestras directrices éticas para crear este contenido

Has movie music ever been better? With legends like John Williams and Howard Shore still at work, Hans Zimmer at the peaks of his powers, and the likes of Jonny Greenwood, AR Rahman, Mica Levi, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross knocking it out of the park, the modern film score is a Dolby Atmos-enhancing feast of modernist compositions, lush orchestral classicism and atmospheric soundscapes.What better time, then, to celebrate this art form within an art form – with a few iconic soundtracks thrown in – and pay tribute to the musicians who’ve given our favourite movies (and, to be fair, some stinkers) earworm-laden accompaniment? Of course, narrowing it all down to a mere 100 is tough. We’ve prioritised music written for the screen, but worthy contenders still missed out, including Dimitri Tiomkin’s era-defining score for It’s a Wonderful Life and Elton John’s hummable tunes for The Lion King.To help do the narrowing down, we’ve recruited iconic movie composers, directors and broadcasters like Philip Glass, Carter Burwell, Max Richter, Anne Dudley, AR Rahman, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Edgar Wright and Mark Kermode to pick their favourites. Happy listening!Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all time.🪩 The 50 best uses of songs in movies.💃 The greatest musical movies ever made.

Great movies matter. Movies have the capacity to sharpen our understanding of the world. They take us places we’d otherwise never go, and introduce us to people we’d otherwise never meet. Or they reflect our own lives back at us, and help us understand ourselves a little better. They simply allow us to place reality on pause for a few hours, which, in this day and age, should not be discounted. Thankfully, there are signs that movies still do matter, even for a generation that’s grown up watching them mostly through the television, like Letterboxd, or the growing popularity of repertory cinemas. And that is ultimately what compels us to list the greatest films of all-time. It’s not to assert our own canon, or spark quibbles about snubs and arbitrary rankings. It’s because new film fans are still being born every day, and need a place to start. So consider this a road map. Looking for something specific? Here are our favourite movies by genre: 🤣 The best comedy movies of all-time😱 The best horror movies of all-time😍 The best romcoms of all-time😬 The best thriller movies of all-time👽 The best sci-fi movies of all-time💣 The best action movies of all-time✍ The best animated movies of all-time🦄 The best fantasy movies of all-time💏 The best romantic movies of all-time🪖 The best war films of all-time How we chose our 100 best movies of all time Admittedly, the process is not an exact science. Mostly, it involves a bunch of arguing, whittling and deal-making amongst Time Out

It’s been a banner year for horror movies. In fact, it seems like all the buzziest films to come out so far aim to terrify. What’s truly great about the current horror bumper crop is that none of the standouts really resemble one another.  Cannes hit The Substance icked its way into the awards conversation on the back of Demi Moore’s staggeringly strong lead turn, Osgood Perkins’ hit Longlegs mixed ’90s serial killer procedurals with the Satanic panic of the previous decade, while I Saw the TV Glow was David Lynch directing Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Late Night with the Devil made found-footage fun again, while In a Violent Nature invented a new subgenre that people called ‘ambient slasher’. And that’s to name just a few. Below, you’ll find our best and scariest movies of 2024. 🎃 The 100 best horror films ever made 😱 The scariest movies based on a true story 🔥 The best horror films of 2025 (so far)

Cada uno tiene sus preferencias, así que cualquier debate sobre cuáles son los mejores largometrajes de todos los tiempos se puede alargar horas y horas. ¿Puede haber algún listado que los agrupe todos? Es difícil, pero hemos intentado incorporar desde las revoluciones cinematográficas más clásicas hasta las más modernas, grandes estrenos, todos los géneros, países, épocas... cine para todos los gustos, haciendo equilibrios entre la racionalidad y el sentimentalismo. El reto ha sido enormemente complicado, pero no nos hemos podido resistir a elaborar una buena lista, nuestra lista, de las películas que hay que ver, al menos, una vez en la vida. Decidnos hasta qué punto nos hemos equivocado. ¡Y, ah, prohibido repetir directores! RECOMENDADO: Las 50 mejores películas para ver en familia. 

Oh, we are so back. It took a few years, but 2023 felt like the year that Hollywood finally found its footing post-pandemic – which is ironic, considering Hollywood also shut down for large parts of the year. Before all the strikes hit, though, there were indications that the movie industry was coming back to life. There was the #Barbenheimer phenomenon, of course, which helped power the domestic box office to its strongest overall numbers since 2019. But in terms of pure moviemaking, the year was particularly strong. Martin Scorsese dropped another masterpiece, while Across the Spider-Verse made comic-book movies fresh again (at least until Madam Web, anyway). Past Lives made audiences swoon, while small-time charmers like Theater Camp, Scrapper and Rye Lane reasserted the vitality of indie filmmaking. And don’t forget the one about the dancing killer doll! Overall, it was a great year for movies – even the Oscars were enjoyable. But what movies were the greatest? Here are our picks. RECOMMENDED: 🫶 The best movies of 2024 (so far)📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2023🎥 The 100 greatest movies ever made

Bob Marley: One Love es una extraña mezcla de lo auténtico y lo vulgar. El retrato de la superestrella del reggae, realizado por el director Reinaldo Marcus Green —King Richard— en medio de una nube de humo, está lleno de intenciones sinceras, pero con demasiada frecuencia cae en lo trillado. En algunos sentidos, se parece más a Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) en su inclinación a contar su historia con los trazos más obvios y torpes —cuando un personaje acude a Marley pidiendo redención, se corta al cantante tocando "Redemption Song"—. Pero, afortunadamente, al igual que Bohemian Rhapsody, se ve redimida por una gran interpretación central, esta vez de Kingsley Ben-Adir, que encuentra una gran verdad en Marley, que el guión y la dirección no consiguen. La película empieza con fuerza. En la cima de su fama, en 1976, Marley, políticamente neutral, acepta encabezar el concierto Smile Jamaica, un intento de calmar las crecientes tensiones del país provocadas por los conflictos entre el gobernante Partido Nacional del Pueblo y el Partido Laborista de Jamaica. Dos días antes del concierto, Marley sobrevive a un intento de asesinato, pero decide subir al escenario de todos modos. Es un acto de compromiso y convicción que parece el final de una película y no el principio de una. Marley decide marcharse de la ciudad y se traslada a Londres —donde tiene un encontronazo con la policía por culpa de los leones de Trafalgar Square en lugar de Zion— para grabar su álbum Exodus, que a la postre ser

There’s a reason Martin Scorsese has dedicated part of his life to championing Italian movies – and it’s not just to keep his nonna happy. It’s the national cinema that gave us Fellini, Visconti, Rossellini, Pasolini, and De Sica – where one minute you can corpse to the slapstick silliness of Commedia all'Italiana capers and the next, have your heart smashed into tiny pieces by a human drama about an old man and his dog. Where dodgy politics spawns angry thrillers and seismic historical events are tackled in sweeping epics. And where Clint Eastwood chewed on a cheroot while dispatching bad guys, and Argento and Bava gave us the lurid shocks of giallo. It’s flamboyant, glamorous, jaded, shocking and sexy – sometimes all at once.  And it’s not just sexy people standing in fountains, either. Rome’s famous old Cinecittà Studios powers on, the Venice Biennale is the world’s coolest film festival (sorry, Cannes), and modern-day moviemakers like Alice Rohrwacher, Matteo Garrone, Paolo Sorrentino and Gianfranco Rosi keep offering up fresh slices of la dolce vita (or its darker sides). With the BFI celebrating the work of the Taviani brothers in February and neorealism in May-June, a ‘Cinema Made in Italy’ season running at London’s Ciné Lumière in March, Rohrwacher’s La Chimera and Garrone’s Oscar-nominated Io Capitano coming to cinemas soon, not to mention a cinema re-release of Rome, Open City in May. There’s plenty of Italian films to sample out there. Allow us to add 50 more to t

Everyone has their favorites – that’s why any debate over what makes the best movies of all time can take hours (or, in our cases, a lifetime). Can there ever be one list to rule them all? A canon, as critics like to call it, updated with today’s game changers, that would glance upon all tastes, all genres, all countries, all eras, balancing impact with importance, brains with heart? The challenge was daunting. We just couldn't resist. Our list includes some of the most recognized action, feminist and foreign films. Please let us know how wrong we got it. Written by Abbey Bender, Dave Calhoun, Phil de Semlyen, Bilge Ebiri, Ian Freer, Stephen Garrett, Tomris Laffly, Joshua Rothkopf and Anna Smith RECOMMENDED:– The best movies on Netflix right now– The 100 best comedy movies– The best romantic movies of all time– The 101 best action movies ever made– The best documentaries on Netflix

In a surprising opening to a balls-to-the-wall combat movie, Warfare begins with Eric Prydz’s ‘Call On Me’ video (the one with the sexy ’80s aerobics sesh), as watched by a gang of grunts ogling, vibing and thrusting along to every gyration. They – and us, as an audience – need to hold onto the memory because it’s the last bit of fun anyone will be having for the next 90-odd minutes. Prydz always comes before a fall.   A military advisor on Alex Garland’s Civil War, former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza survived a full-on firefight that left his comrade Elliott Miller with a traumatic injury and no memory of the horror. Co-written and directed by Garland and Mendoza, Warfare is a forensic, immersive act of remembrance that catapults you into the heat of battle.  The pair aren’t interested in interpersonal relationships, character development or political points of view (this is very US-centric, but not tub-thumpingly patriotic). Instead, Warfare is intense, brutal, visceral, horrific. The squeamish need not apply.  The set-up is simple. On November 19, 2006 in Ramadi, Iraq, a squad of US Navy SEALs steal into an urban residential area controlled by Al-Qaeda forces under cover of night. Their mission? To clear a safe passage for the ground forces arriving the following day. For the film’s first stretch, very little happens. Warfare leaves in the bits most war films cut out, as we get to watch a squad going through their routines and protocols. There is boredom, a struggle to get a sign

There are few more divisive figures in music than Bob Dylan. To some, he is a magical mysterious minstrel, a poetic voice of a generation. To others, he is a nasal whine in sunglasses. Made with Dylan’s blessing, Walk the Line’s James Mangold’s biopic A Complete Unknown (a lyric from Like A Rolling Stone) lands closer to the former, serving up an entertaining if rarely gripping portrait of the artist as a young hipster.  It spans from Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) 1961 arrival in New York to his appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he shocked the beardy-weirdies by playing with – Gasp! Horror! – electric instruments. In between, we get Dylan drawn into the folk fold by Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), his seemingly effortless rise to stardom, his relationships with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning, playing a fictionalised version of Dylan’s real-life girlfriend Suze Rotolo) and fellow singer-songwriter Joan Baez (Top Gun: Maverick’s Monica Barbaro), and a heavy-handed depiction of the singer dealing with being pigeonholed as an acoustic troubadour. To his credit, Mangold eschews the cliches of the typical musical biopic – no-one shouts ‘Hey, tambourine man!’ to Dylan in the street – but he never imbues the story with compelling conflicts or raw intensity. It may stick close to the facts, but the storytelling is one note – the times might be a-changin’ but the tone rarely does. He also never really finds a way to articulate Dylan’s interior life – there’s lots of Dylan smok

Former investigative reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his symbiote Venom, a sticky black parasite straight out of the Deadpool School Of Annoying Quippery, return for a superhero threequel that never feels any need to be darker or more portentous, but isn’t that much fun either. The banter between Brock and Venom has the rhythm of comedy but not the wit, the plotting is episodic and nonsensical, there are call backs to characters you probably won’t remember and – surprise, surprise – it all devolves into a climax where CG things clobber other CG things for roughly 20 minutes.  So much talent across the series – take a bow Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Woody Harrelson, Naomie Harris, Stephen Graham, Chewitel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans – and so little of it hitting the mark. Perhaps it is the right time for this parasite and host to go their separate ways In US and UK Cinemas Oct 25.

‘Sultan of Splat’ Alexandre Aja’s films flit between the grimly horrific (Mirrors, his The Hills Have Eyes remake) and the pulp-y fun (Piranha 3D, Crawl). His latest, Never Let Go, cleaves closer to the former as it threads together cabin-in-the-woods malarkey, survivalist thriller and an allegory-for-motherhood parable.  It’s certainly derivative – cue Bird Box, A Quiet Place, The Babadook – and has its dull bits, but it gets by on some imaginative licks and strong turns, particularly from a game Halle Berry, whose protagonist starts as Sarah Connor in T2 (brutal, no nonsense), then goes full Carrie White’s mother in Carrie (batshit crazy) by the final reel.  The premise is built on more rules than Dungeons & Dragons. The world has been overrun by an all-consuming malevolence forcing Momma (Berry) and her two sons Nathan (Percy Daggs IV) and Sam (Anthony B Jenkins) to live in a remote, ramshackle holding in a Tennessee wood. The family can’t leave the secluded shack without a rope attached, keeping a connection to the sanctity of the love-filled house.   Add to this a mantra that has to be recited before leaving and after returning to the house and the set-up features more hammering home than a DIY show – take a drink every time someone says ‘Never let go’ and you’ll get plastered pretty quickly – rendering the first act extremely laboured. The ticking clock here is the food supply is dwindling (Ocado doesn’t deliver to cursed forests), meaning the threesome have to live on

‘Are you having a good time?’ It’s a refrain heard constantly throughout Blink Twice, always delivered by men to women as a thinly veiled threat. For the audience, the answer is never in doubt. Best known as an actor for Mad Max: Fury Road, The Batman and TV’s High Fidelity, Zoë Kravitz delivers a supremely entertaining directorial debut – a twisty-turny crowd-pleaser that’s as confident with its thrills and surprises as it is with its deftly handled sexual politics. Intelligent, funny, gory and deeply cinematic, it’s a constantly shifting delight that marks Kravitz as a storyteller of huge promise. Originally titled ‘Pussy Island’, which hints at the film’s boldness but belies its sophistication, Blink Twice centres on Frida (Lady Macbeth’s Naomi Ackie, terrific), a waitress with ambitions to build a nail-design brand. Along with pal Jess (Alia Shawkat), she finds herself invited to the private island of disgraced billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum, fully understanding the assignment). Joining a fun gang of tech bros (Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment. Levon Hawke, Simon Rex) and party girls (Adria Arjona, Liz Caribel,Trew Mullen), Frida and Jess are plunged into a high-end world of luxury: gourmet dining, designer drugs, complimentary clothes, and sheets with a thread count higher than Stephen Fry’s IQ.  Early on, Kravitz over-indulges on the indulgence. Much screen time is expended on glasses of champagne being topped up, blunts being smoked and kick-ass parties, a

‘I think my dad might be an alien,’ says Adam (Faraz Ayub) around half way through Sky Peals. This could be the premise of a crazy knockabout comedy starring Will Ferrell but in the hands of debut writer-director Moin Hussain, it’s the polar opposite. Imagine Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin filtered through the deadpan energy of an Aki Kaurismäki comedy, it is low on dramatic incident, but high on a carefully crafted atmosphere and a true feeling for people who have slipped between society’s cracks.  The film is set mostly in the confines of Sky Peals Green service station, where Adam, a painfully awkward young British-Pakistani man, works at fast food joint Big Burger Trip. His uneasy existence is complicated, first by his mother (Claire Rushbrook) selling the family home and forcing him to find new accommodation (clue: he doesn’t), and more pertinently by a phone message from his estranged father asking to meet up. Further revelations about his father suggest to Adam that his father might not be from Pakistan as he believes but instead come from much farther away. In short, another planet. Imagine Close Encounters, only from the perspective of the family left behind  Hussain has stated the film was inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but from the perspective of the family left behind after Richard Dreyfuss jumps on the Mothership. The film uses its sci-fi plot thread to play around with ideas around estrangement and not belonging, Hussain playing his cards clos

Mike Cheslik’s Hundreds Of Beavers is that rare thing in the current film landscape: a genuine cult classic. Made for just $150,000 over six years, the story of a fur trapper versus the titular century of beavers (actors in grown-up mascot costumes rather than the real thing) mashes up the old (silent comedy) and new (video games) with the nutty energy of a Looney Tunes cartoon. It found its audience in the US by making its mark at a grassroots level through canny screenings – halfway through mascots would invade the auditoria and hand out beers – but even without the gimmicks it’s a lo-fi, original, refreshing treat with a gag count that leaves much more expensive fare in the dust. Or more specifically, the snow. In the frozen wastes of North America during the 19th century, a French applejack salesman Jean Kayak (played by co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) sees his livelihood taken away when a colony of bastard beavers burn down his distillery (all this is accompanied by a catchy Davy Crockett-y ballad).  Turning to booze, Jean finds salvation when he falls in love with the pole-dancing daughter of a fur salesman (Olivia Graves). But there is a catch. The miserable merchant (Doug Mancheski) will only give his consent to the happy couple’s marriage if Jean can bring back the only valuable commodity in these parts – one hundred beaver pelts. It’s that rare thing in the current film landscape: a genuine cult classic Onto this admittedly thin premise Cheslik and Tews bring i

There is something inherently cinematic about the Quiet Place films. They’re set in a world built around aliens with ultrasonic hearing who stalk by noise, meaning the movies often take on the qualities of silent cinema, built on imagery, sound effects and music rather than dialogue. They’re built for the big screen.  With the first film starting on Day 89 of the alien invasion and Part II picking up on Day 474, the third instalment rolls all the way back to the beginning, swapping pastoral paranoia for that favourite extraterrestrial infiltration stand by, New York (a mouth-watering call as a subtitle tells us the Big Apple has the same decibel level as a constant scream). Series leader John Krasinski has passed the baton on to writer-director Michael Sarnoski, the filmmaker behind acclaimed Nicolas Cage porcine kidnap caper Pig, who delivers a well-played, kinda enjoyable but overly familiar entry in the entertaining series. Eschewing the Abbott family, the protagonist this time is Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), a terminally ill cancer patient who visits the city with her hospice to see a (charming) marionette show. As the aliens attack, the first act is suitably intense, Sarnoski mounting impressive, 9/11-flecked carnage, Nyong’o hiding under cars, her wide-eyed panic shining out of a face caked in dust, as asteroids land and the aliens with the 20/20 hearing maraud around her. In the subsequent melee, Samira is left stranded with just her poetry book, an ‘I heart NY’ tote bag

If you go into Bad Boys: Ride or Die expecting a meta Will Smith Oscar slap joke, you’re going to be sadly disappointed. Instead, the fourth instalment of the series, directed by Bad Boys For Life duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, plays the franchise playbook to a tee: bickering buddies; exploding cars; over-the-top gunplay; filtered Miami skies; loved ones in peril; Mark Mancina’s insistent theme tune. It’s the formula as advertised but Ride Or Die gets by on the well-honed dynamic between its two likeable stars. Before it settles into its well-rehearsed moves, the film does pitch a curveball. In a bold move for a Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster, the film opens with Martin Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett suffering a heart attack, dying momentarily and entering into a dreamlike afterlife (you can tell the filmmakers are Belgian) where he meets the late Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano). Once revived, Burnett feels free and immortal. But, with Burnett testing his theories by wandering into traffic, it’s an extended joke that never really lands. When the plot shows up, it’s a tired affair as Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Burnett have to clear the name of Howard, who is posthumously being framed for being in league with a drug cartel, forcing our heroes to work outside the system (if you can’t guess the Big Bad from the get-go, you’ve never seen a movie before). It gets by on the well-honed dynamic between its two likeable stars While eschewing the lurid elements of the Michael Bay films (og

Let’s be honest, not many of us had ‘Rome-set nunsploitation’ on our movie bingo cards for the piping hot genres of 2024. But hot on the habit of Sydney Sweeney’s hit Immaculate, The First Omen, a prequel to Richard Donner’s 1976 the-Antichrist-is-a-kid classic, sends another American nun on the run through effective scaremongering scenarios in another religious retreat in Italy. It’s 1971 in the Eternal City. Servant’s Nell Tiger Free is Margaret Daino, a young sister-in-waiting, who is sent to work at an orphanage at the behest of kindly Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy, redefining avuncular). In a patient opening, Margaret learns the orphanage ropes, meeting the severe Abbess (Sonia Braga, channelling Billie Whitelaw’s Mrs Baylock from the first film), going dancing with her worldly-wise roomie (Maria Caballero) and forming a bond with Carlita Skianna (Nicole Sorace), a problem kid at the orphanage who has been put in the ‘bad room’ for biting a sister and does a creepy AF line in charcoal drawings.  Director and co-screenwriter Arkasha Stevenson opens the film in the Democratic Republic of Tired Horror Clichés, kicking off with a tolling bell in a misty graveyard. Happily, this isn’t a portent of things to come. Stevenson does a sterling job of running through the scary movie playbook, creating a hinterland between the real and the imagined.  It’s horror hokum told with unswerving commitment She gives us perfect jump scares, wince-worthy Cronenbergian terrors (be warned if y

Bob Marley: One Love is a strange mixture of the authentic and the broad. Taking place in a perma-fug of ganja smoke, director Reinaldo Marcus Green’s (King Richard) intermittently engaging portrait of the reggae superstar is shot through with sincere intentions, but too often leans into the trite.  In some senses, it most resembles Bohemian Rhapsody in its inclination to tell its story in the most obvious, ham-fisted strokes (when a character comes to Marley asking for redemption, cut to the singer playing ‘Redemption Song’). But happily, also like Bohemian Rhapsody, it is (ahem) redeemed by a great central performance, this time by Kingsley Ben-Adir (One Night in Miami…), who finds a truth in Marley the writing and direction can’t.  The movie starts strong. At the height of his fame in 1976, the politically neutral Marley agrees to headline the Smile Jamaica Concert, an attempt to diffuse the country’s rising tensions brought about by conflicts between the governing People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party. Two days before the concert, Marley survives an assassination attempt, but decides to take to the stage anyway. It’s an act of commitment and conviction that feels like it would provide a satisfying end to a movie as opposed to the beginning of one.  Marley decides to skip town and moves to London (cue a run in with coppers over the lions in Trafalgar Square rather than Zion) to record his ultimately groundbreaking album ‘Exodus’. At this point, One Love sink

‘A good soldier of cinema’ is how German filmmaking legend Werner Herzog self-identifies and documentarian Thomas von Steinaecker’s portrait makes a highly enjoyable case for the description. Ultimately, Herzog’s life is far too big and untameable to be contained in a 90-minute profile, but Radical Dreamer is an excellent study of a true visionary. It nimbly doubles as delivering new food for thought for long-time Herzogheads and an accessible primer for anyone looking to get into his committed, uncompromising, occasionally bat-shit crazy worldview. Compared to his subject, von Steinaecker is timid in his filmmaking approach, exploring Herzog’s career in a linear, formally traditional fashion. But he assembles an excellent cast of talking heads – Wim Wenders, Volker Schlöndorff, Nicole Kidman, Chloé Zhao, Christian Bale and Robert Pattinson – and the source material is so rich, the film doesn’t have to try too hard. For the drama and hoopla surrounding Herzog’s life consistently throws up docu-gold; the time he walked in a straight line from Munich to Paris to visit his ailing mentor Lotte Eisner; the time he ate a boot; the time he is shot with an air rifle while talking to Mark Kermode and continues talking like nothing happened (‘It wasn’t that serious a gunshot wound,’ he says simply). If nothing else, Radical Dreamer is a never-ending stream of great anecdotes. The sections that deal with his filmography, from his days as a pioneer of the New German Cinema movement of th

After mythologising Birmingham gang warfare during the 1920s in Peaky Blinders, showrunner Steven Knight has headed south to expose the criminal underbelly of 1880s London in his new Disney+ six-parter A Thousand Blows. ‘Victorian London was the capital of the world,’ explains Knight. ‘It was a place where you literally had to fight to survive. It was just a place with a lot of mad stuff going on.’ Inspired by an idea brought to Knight by actor-producers Stephen Graham and Hannah Walters, A Thousand Blows is a vibrantly colourful world dominated by bare-knuckle boxing, opportunistic girl gangs, class warfare and ridiculously natty threads. Here, Knight explains how to make London history hip in six steps. Photograph: Robert Viglasky/Disney+Malachi Kirby as Hezekiah Moscow 1. Make it about class A Thousand Blows centres on Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall), best friends from Jamaica, who arrive in 1880s London and find themselves thrust into the bare-knuckle boxing scene of the criminal underworld. While the pair face racism, the show provides a more progressive view of London as a cultural melting pot, Hezekiah and Alec also finding kindness and acceptance in the local community.  ‘The issue in this show isn’t so much gender or race, it’s class,’ says Knight. ‘White women, Black men, Black women, white men – all of them are cold when it’s cold, all of them are hungry when there’s no food. The things that are held in common by people in the E

David Lynch, who died on January 15, 2025, was a real renaissance man, working in all different mediums (film, TV, music, painting) and putting his unique imprint on all of them. As a filmmaker, he worked in genres such as period costume (The Elephant Man) and science fiction (his version of Dune is bonkers), but he was at his best exploring cinematic universes all his own, utilising a clutch of regular actors (Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Jack Nance) and collaborators (cinematographer Frederick Elmes, sound designer Alan Splet, composer Angelo Badalamenti) to bring his fevered dreams to life. Not all of them worked (1997’s Lost Highway and 2006’s Inland Empire are considered lesser works) but what he left us is a consistent vision that once seen is never forgotten. Here’s where to start with this singular artist. 1. Eraserhead (1977) Lynch’s calling card, Eraserhead was made over a five-year period and financially sustained by donations from friends (including actor Sissy Spacek). It’s a black-and-white nightmare writ real, as a big-haired man (Jack Nance) is left to look after his hideously deformed child in an industrial hellscape. Full of unsettling sights (a menstruating roast chicken! A world behind a radiator!) and disturbing sounds, it has a nutty dream logic that made it a hit on the midnight movie circuit and a lasting cult sensation ever since.  2. The Elephant Man (1980) Hired by producer Mel Brooks (who once called the filmmaker ‘Jimmy Stewart fro

As 2025 gets into gear, perhaps the best way to fulfill that new year resolution about reading more might be going to the movies. There is a raft of book-to-film adaptations that are heading to multiplexes this year. From literary classics to book club bestsellers via dynamic graphic novels, there is a dizzying array of genres and style to explore, pitching some of literature’s greatest authors (Mary Shelley, Stephen King) with some of cinema’s most respected auteurs (Guillermo del Toro, Chloé Zhao, Edgar Wright). Below is our pick of the most mouthwatering page to screen crossovers – it’s time to curl up with a great film. Photograph: Time Out 1. The Ballad of a Small Player Fresh from the Vatican shenanigans of Conclave, director Edward Berger travels to China for another literary adaptation: this time of Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 book. The travel journalist-turned-novelist’s crime tale The Forgiven was adapted in 2021, with Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain as a married couple all at sea in Morocco, and The Ballad of a Small Player has invited further Graham Greene comparisons (think gone-to-seed Brits abroad). Colin Farrell plays a high-stakes gambler who passes himself off as an English lord while lying low in the casinos of Macau. Throw in Tilda Swinton and we’re sold. Buy the book here. Photograph: Time Out 2. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy Whether you are a singleton or smug married, who cannot rejoice at the return of everyone’s favourite everywoman? Nine years

Not since Leicester rapper Mark Morrison’s ‘Return of the Mack’ has there been a comeback to rival Daniel Day-Lewis’s decision to come out of retirement. The I actor has officially stepped in front of the camera for the first time since 2017’s Phantom Thread.  The actor isn’t the first to reverse an end-of-career announcement. Audrey Hepburn, Cameron Diaz, Jim Carrey (who came back to do Sonic The Hedgehog) and Rick Moranis have all officially declared retirement only to step back onto a set and into the limelight (Gene Hackman is still AWOL. So is Jack Nicholson but he never made a formal announcement).  The film that has lured Day-Lewis out of retirement is Anemone, directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis. Bankrolled by Focus Features and Brad Pitt’s production outfit Plan B, the film details, according to the official blurb, ‘the intricate relationships between fathers and sons, and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds’ (a quick Google reveals Anemone is a ‘a genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae,’ so make of that what you will). Photograph: Focus FeaturesPhantom Thread (2017) Day-Lewis stars opposite Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley (How To Have Sex) and Sherwood’s Safia Oakley-Green, but the actor has even more skin in the game, having co-written the screenplay with his son. Ronan initially took a different artistic tack to his father, being primarily a painter, presenting works in New York with an exhibition currently running

‘A reminder of what life and art are all about.’ That’s how Martin Scorsese describes the filmmaking partnership between Kent’s Michael Powell and Hungarian émigré Emeric Pressburger – arguably Britain’s greatest ever filmmaking partnership. Nominally Powell directed and Pressburger wrote (under the collective banner of The Archers) but their collaboration blurred standard distinctions forming a singularity of voice that remains magic. With a new documentary about the pair and their work coming out – ‘Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger’ – here is a primer for their unique brand of cinematic alchemy.   Photograph: BFI/Park Circus 1. They’re made on an epic scale P&P films are ambitious on every count; narratively, emotionally, cinematically and intellectually. ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’ charts the lifelong friendship of a British army office and his Prussian counterpart (perhaps a thinly veiled version of Powell and Pressburger themselves). ‘A Matter Of Life and Death’ tells the story of a RAF pilot on trial for his life in the afterlife (the escalator to heaven is iconic). Black Narcissus is built around a community of nuns in the Himalayas aroused by the arrival of a handsome stranger. Typically, these works are marked by wit, experimentation and maximum audacity. 2. They’re full of wonder P&P could also work in a smaller register. Shot in shimmering black and white, ‘A Canterbury Tale’ relocates Chaucer from the 14th century to World War II Br

Oscars night is but a sleep or two away. You’ve filled in your ballot sheet, stocked up on snacks, and, depending on your timezone, stockpiled caffeinated beverages. What, you’re probably wondering, is still to be done in preparation for Hollywood’s gala event? Now more than ever, the Academy Awards seem to promise new and exotic forms of televised mayhem, it’s important to expect the unexpected. But there’s a few things we can be reasonably sure of this year: a very, very long standing ovation for Tom Cruise for officially saving cinema; an extended riff on the beach football scene in Top Gun: Maverick, probably involving Seth Rogen; someone getting played off as they’re in the process of dedicating their award to a late parent; and the ‘RRR’ song to blow the roof off the place. Meet our cut-out-and-keep Academy Awards night bingo card, an easy way to play along as the craziness unfolds. Simply take a pencil and cross the following moments off as they unfold. There are no prizes. Good luck! Photograph: Time Out Filling in your ballot? Here’s what we think will win at Sunday’s Academy Awards.How to have the ultimate Oscars-themed weekend in Los Angeles.