Ian Freer

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)

Television used to be considered one of the lowest forms of entertainment. It was derided as ‘the idiot box’ and ‘the boob tube’. Edward R Murrow referred to it as ‘the opiate of the masses’, and the phrase ‘I don’t even own a TV’ was considered a major bragging right. And for a long time, it was hard to say that television’s poor reputation was undeserved.  A lot has changed. Television is now the dominant medium in basically all of entertainment, to the degree that the only thing separating movies and TV is the screen you’re watching on. Now, if you don’t own a television – or a laptop or a tablet or a phone – you’re basically left out of the cultural conversation completely. The shift in perception is widely credited to the arrival of The Sopranos, which completely reinvented the notion of what a TV show could do. But that doesn’t mean everything that came before is primordial slurry. While this list of the greatest TV shows ever is dominated by 21st century programs, there are many shows that deserve credit for laying the groundwork for this current golden age. 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.  So don’t touch that dial – these are the greatest TV shows of all-time.

Even for someone who’s been mainlining movies since they were in diapers – and one of those film geeks who wants to know what the thousandth and second film they need to watch before they die is – I’m constantly awed by the cinematic canon. From the early silents of Keaton, Chaplin, Wiene and Eisenstein, which established the building blocks for the horror, comedy and action movies we still flock to see today, not to mention their editing and storytelling techniques, to the epic visions of contemporary auteurs like Christopher Nolan, film is an artform that continues to evolve and astonish. The medium has survived the advent of telly, the arrival of streaming and the filmography of Pauly Shore, and I’m optimistic it will continue to blow us away for decades to come. So what are those definitive masterpieces that continue to dazzle and delight many years after they first came out? Our team of experienced film writers debated, squabbled like kids and finally parsed down thousands of choices into a list of a mere hundred. It’s totally subjective, of course, but we believe this century of classics belongs in the pantheon. And even if you disagree with the picks, my hope is that every one of them will spark joy – whether for new viewers or anyone looking to revisit them. Possibly for the umpteenth time in the case of The Godfather, Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark and a few others. Have a browse and share your thoughts with us on social media.  🔥 The best films of 2024 (so f

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.

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

‘Avengers: Endgame’, ‘Joker’ and co ruled the box office but there were plenty of smaller gems that didn’t get the same airtime or budgets but offered quieter wonders. Here’s our pick of the indies and arthouse films that stood the test of time in 2019.

Why did you want to remake ‘The Wages of Fear’?‘I don’t consider it a remake. The characters are different, the situations are different, the beginning and the ending and maybe everything in between, with perhaps one exception, are different from [director Henri-Georges] Clouzot’s great movie. I thought the story by Georges Arnaud had a tremendous shelf life and it hadn’t been widely seen in America when it came out in the ’50s – and that was a butchered version. The whole ending of Clouzot’s film had been changed. I thought of it as a timeless story that could be filmed once again in a completely different set of circumstances.’ What did you respond to in the material?‘There is an overriding theme: four strangers having to co-operate in taking two loads of dynamite to put out an oil-well fire, which is clearly a metaphor for the world. Unless countries can find a way to co-operate, they will all blow up together. ‘Wages of Fear’ is a kind of metaphor for co-operation or destruction. That seemed to me to be a valid theme – even more so today.’ Is it true it started life as a small movie while you were waiting to direct the big budget ‘Devil’s Triangle’? ‘No, it started it life as the way it was intended to start life. Almost all of the stuff in it had not been done before. The essential events that make up the journey. What I did – what had not been done in the novel or Clouzot’s masterpiece – was [include] back stories for the four guys. It started life as the script that wa

1. How did Han get his go-it-alone surname?We know that Han is an orphan from the planet Corellia, who briefly tried to join the evil Empire but dropped out to find his childhood love, Qi’ra. But how did he earn that strangely specific surname? 2. How comes he speaks Chewbacca’s language?‘Solo’ reveals that our hero met his furry bestie Chewbacca in a mud fight, just like 1980s female wrestlers. But how did he became fluent in Shyriiwook, the Wookiee language? Did he take an online course or just pick it up between TIE Fighter attacks? 3. What’s the deal with Lando?Han has always been frenemies with fellow hustler Lando Calrissian – last seen played by Billy Dee Williams in ‘Return of the Jedi’ – though it’s a rivalry based mostly on who’s coolest. The correct answer, of course, is Lando – especially now with Donald Glover, aka hip hop star Childish Gambino, donning his cloak. A rumour that he raps ‘This Is Cloud City’ while stormtroopers quell a riot is sadly unfounded. 4. How did Solo get the Millennium Falcon?We know Han won his iconic spaceship from Lando in a card game. But how exactly did that showdown play out? The ship is in good nick in ‘Solo’: it has a nifty bar, walk-in wardrobes and pristine corridors. We know from the beaten-up Falcon of ‘Star Wars’ that this doesn’t last. Does Chewie throw a keg party? 5. What happened on the Kessel Run?For the uninitiated, that’s the hyperspace route used to smuggle narcotics from the spice mines of Kessel. (Best to just go w

At Easter there are only so many egg hunts and chocolate-eating sessions kids can take over one bank holiday. And while there are heaps of activities for kids happening, you can't go wrong with a trip to the movies. From pesky rabbits to battling superheroes, operatic fairy tales to time-travelling fantasy, this holiday there’s a bumper crop of new family-friendly film releases to keep kids of all ages occupied during the school break.  RECOMMENDED: Crack open the full guide to Easter in London

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

Let’s be fair, there isn’t a great movie about rowing (Marriage Story is a terrific film about rowing but that’s a whole other thing). While its cinematic zenith might have come in David Fincher’s The Social Network, the sport has yet to spawn its defining masterpiece, a Raging Bull on water or a Hoop Dreams with oars. Frankly, The Boys in the Boat isn’t it. Based on Daniel James Brown’s popular 2013 book, George Clooney’s ninth film as a director turns the story of a 1930s underdog collegiate rowing team into a predictable, anodyne but likeable and well-meaning retread of every cliché in the Sports Movie playbook.  Bookended by a saccharine Saving Private Ryan-esque framing device that sees composer Alexandre Desplat at his most twee, the action proper takes place in Seattle, Washington in 1936. Joe Rantz (Callum Turner, low-key but engaging) is a dedicated but poverty-stricken student at the University of Washington who discovers the only way he can earn money and put a roof over his head is to make his way onto the college rowing team.  Negotiating some strangely flat training montages, Joe makes the final eight, a team of square-jawed, greased-back-hair have-nots. In typically Clooney-esque social crusading mode, they not only take on the posh kids at elite schools but later go up against the might of the Nazis at the Berlin Olympics (look out for a squirm-inducing meeting with Jesse Owens, and Hitler spitting feathers as the Yanks do their stuff).  A predictable but lik

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.