Phil de Semlyen

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

London is absolutely world-class when it comes to museums. Obviously, we’re pretty biased, but with more than 170 of them dotted about the capital – a huge chunk of which are free to visit – we think it’s fair to say that there’s nowhere else in the world that does museums better.  Want to explore the history of TfL? We’ve got a museum for that. Rather learn about advertising? We’ve got a museum for that too. History? Check. Science? Check. 1940s cinema memorabilia, grotesque eighteenth-century surgical instruments, or perhaps a wall of 4,000 mouse skeletons? Check, check and check! Being the cultured metropolitans that we are, Time Out’s editors love nothing more than a wholesome afternoon spent gawping at Churchill’s baby rattle or some ancient Egyptian percussion instruments. In my case, the opportunity to live on the doorstep of some of the planet’s most iconic cultural institutions was a big reason why I moved here at the first chance I got, and I’ve racked up countless hours traipsing around display cases and deciphering needlessly verbose wall texts in the eleven years since. From iconic collections, brilliant curation and cutting-edge tech right down to nice loos, adequate signage and a decent place to grab a cuppa; my colleagues and I know exactly what we want from a museum, and we’ve put in a whole lot of time deliberating which of the city’s institutions are worth your time. So here’s our take on the 25 best ones to check out around London, ranging from world-famou

Have we finally reached peak streaming? With 282 million Netflix subscribers worldwide and Apple TV+ finally beginning to complement its high-calibre shows with some actual viewers, well, maybe not. And the year ahead is another feast of new and returning pop-culture powerhouses, some of which, including the finale of Stranger Things, have finally emerged after the tangle of Hollywood strikes. As ever, there’ll be some bolts from the blue – who saw Baby Reindeer coming 12 months ago? – but from this vista, there’s still plenty of good reasons to plump up those sofa cushions. Here’s 23 to kick off with.RECOMMENDED: 📺 The 40 best TV shows of 2024 you need to stream📽️ These are the must-see films for 2025 you can’t miss

Never let anyone tell you that music is only about the music. At least since the 1980s, it’s been almost equally a visual medium – just ask REO Speedwagon, Yes or any of the other blandly anonymous rock groups that got put out to pasture once MTV came around. That’s what makes music documentaries such a fruitful subgenre of cinematic nonfiction: the mix of genius and absurdity that comes along with pop stardom makes musicians a natural subject for filmmakers. With one of the music doc greats, Dig!, back in cinemas in 2025 via an extended new cut called Dig! XX, here are 25 prime examples of the genre. They run the gamut from biographies to concert films to tour diaries to more experimental explorations of sonic brilliance, but they all prove that musicians want to be seen nearly as much as heard. RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The 66 best documentaries ever made.🤘 10 unforgettable concert films to watch from home.

Thought all the good movies into hibernation in February, perpetually leaving us with just Gerard Butler throttling terrorist goons and the odd straight-to Netflix romcom? Think again! This month is a feast of cracking new cinema releases that includes everything from acclaimed foreign-language thrillers (The Seed of the Sacred Fig) to gnarly Stephen King creature features (The Monkey). And the queen of London romcoms is tripping back into cinemas this month, too. Yes, Bridge returns in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy and trust us, it’s a Valentine’s (or Galentine's) Day treat.  RECOMMENDED:📽️ The must-see films for 2025 you can’t miss📺 The best TV shows of 2025 you need to stream🏵️ The 100 greatest movies of all time

Ball is life, they say, which is what makes basketball such a popular conduit for movie drama. Because it’s never just about the game on the court – although the game itself is as fast and furious as any action scene – but the stories that surround it, from players desperate to transcend the situation they were born into to coaches in search of redemption to teams pulling together to pull off the ultimate upset. Or, y’know, a legendary athlete joining with famous cartoon characters to defeat some evil monsters. Sure, sports like baseball and boxing are more entrenched in the American mythos, and thus have inspired more classic Hollywood movies. But b-ball has its share of awesome films, too, whether they take place at the pro, college or street level, on the hardwood or the asphalt, in packed arenas or outer space. Here are 18 of the GOATs. Recommended: 🏆The 50 best sports movies of all-time, ranked🥊 The 10 best boxing movies of all-time⚾ The best baseball movies of all-time🥇 The best Olympic movies

¿Hemos llegado finalmente a la cima de las plataformas de streaming? Con 282 millones de suscriptores de Netflix en todo el mundo y Apple TV+ que finalmente empieza a encontrar espectadores para sus series de alto calibre, quizás no. Y 2025 será otro festín de grandes estrenos y regresos de tótems de la cultura pop, algunos de los cuales, incluyendo el final de Stranger Things, han salido a la luz tras el caos de las huelgas en Hollywood. Como siempre, habrá sorpresas inesperadas —¿quién esperaba Baby Reindeer hace 12 meses?—, pero, de momento, ya tenemos muchas razones para acomodar los cojines del sofá. Aquí tienes 13 para empezar. NO TE LO PIERDAS:📽️ Las 31 películas más esperadas de 2025📺 Los estrenos de las plataformas de este mes que no te puedes perder

Hem arribat finalment al pic de les plataformes de streaming? Amb 282 milions de subscriptors de Netflix a tot el món i Apple TV+ que finalment comença a trobar espectadors per a les seves sèries d'alt calibre, potser no. I el 2025 serà un altre festí de grans estrenes i retorns de tòtems de la cultura pop, algunes de les quals, incloent-hi el final de Stranger things, han vist la llum després del caos de les vagues a Hollywood. Com sempre, hi haurà sorpreses inesperades —qui esperava Baby reindeer fa 12 mesos?—, però, de moment, ja tenim molts motius per estovar els coixins del sofà. Aquí en tens 13 per començar. NO T'HO PERDIS: 📽️ Les 31 pel·lícules més esperades del 2025📺 Les estrenes de les plataformes d'aquest mes que no et pots perdre

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)

It was the best of times and worst of times for Hollywood in 2024. The first half of the year was marked by a string of box office disappointments, followed by blockbusters no one saw coming – if you claim to have known Inside Out 2 would become the highest-grossing animated film of all-time, show us the receipts, please. The lesson is that it’s always hard to predict what the year in movies will look like, financially, thematically and otherwise. And so, as we look forward to the cinema of 2025, we won’t try to concoct some grand narrative about what it all means. We’ll simply say, there are many reasons to be excited. In January alone, the docket includes a new American epic, a long-​awaited biopic of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, a fresh take on the wolfman and Nicole Kidman lustily drinking milk. Elsewhere, there are major legacy sequels, remakes, blockbuster spinoffs, long-awaited projects from big-name auteurs – and waiting for us at the end, Wicked: For Good and the third Avatar movie. Which of them will come to define the year? Who knows? But as always, we’ll be watching. RECOMMENDED:  🎥 The biggest family movies coming out in 2025📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 you need to stream🔥 The 50 best movies of 2024

As you’re already aware, travelling with kids is a whole lot trickier than travelling without ‘em. Not only have you got to be responsible for them, keep them safe and keep them fed, you’ve got to keep them entertained, too.  But before your heart sinks at the mental image of a soulless holiday park or a drab all-inclusive, you need to take a look at this list. We’ve scoured all corners of the UK, from national parks to seaside towns, and found the best family-friendly getaways that will make even you feel like a kid again. So, read on for the best of the bunch when it comes to places for a family getaway in the UK right now. RECOMMENDED:🏊The best outdoor swimming pools in the UK🏔️The best road trips in the UK🌤️The most stunning hidden beaches in the UK🏰The best castles where you can actually stay in the UK For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines and check out our latest travel guides written by local experts. This guide includes affiliate links, which have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, see our affiliate guidelines. 

Love is a funny thing. Anyone who’s ever fallen under its spell – whether reciprocal, unrequited or the classic ‘it’s complicated’ – knows the strange ways it can make you feel, and the bizarre thing it’ll make you do. No wonder, then, that romantic comedy persists as one of the most broadly appealing genres in all of film. Although frequently derided and dismissed as ‘chick flicks’, the best romcoms tap into emotional truths everyone can relate to – and some, like It Happened One Night and Annie Hall, have even been awarded Best Picture Oscars.   But love also takes many forms. And so it goes in romcoms. Some are ridiculous farces, others  are more sophisticated, while others take a colder, cynical viewpoint – because if you’ve ever been in love, chances are you’ve also had your heart shattered. Love contains multitudes, and so do romantic comedies, and we considered it all when putting together this list of the best romcoms of all time. Written by Dave Calhoun, Cath Clarke, Tom Huddleston, Kate Lloyd, Andy Kryza, Phil de Semlyen, Alim Kheraj & Matthew Singer Recommended: 😍 The 100 best romantic films of all-time🤣 The 100 best comedy movies😳 The 101 best sex scenes of all time🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

If you have claws and an insatiable craving for human flesh, can you still be a great dad? That’s the theme underpinning Leigh Whannell’s latest go at dragging a Universal Monster into the cold light of the 2020s, a more hard-bitten and demanding age than the one Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man prowled – and a lot harder to scare. Obviously, the answer is ‘no’ – werewolves fall down in so many key parenting categories – but the Aussie horror auteur behind Saw and 2020’s terrific The Invisible Man deserves some credit for bringing a new prism to the furry critter first made famous by Chaney in 1941.  Christopher Abbott, often excellent in supporting roles, steps up in a lead role once earmarked for Ryan Gosling. He’s Blake, a country kid who’s grown up to appreciate his big-city life with workaholic journalist wife Charlotte (Ozark’s Julia Garner) and moppet of a daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). A writer who’s ‘between jobs’ and worried about his marriage, Blake pours himself into parenting, inadvertently mirroring the overprotective tendencies of his own dad – set up in flashback, along with the movie’s wolfman mythology, via a great prelude sequence. There are one or two genuinely disgusting moments of body horror here Whannell and co-writer Corbett Tuck’s screenplay helpfully twice-underlines the impending twist – ‘Sometimes as a daddy, you get so scared of your kids getting scars that you become the thing that scars them,’ Blake tells Ginger – before the trio head for his old famil

Thought William Tell was just a guy who shot apples off his son’s head? This old-fashioned Euro epic will set you straight. Here, the legendary medieval crossbowman gets placed in an action-packed historical context, showing that skewering Granny Smiths was just one of the daring feats he pulled off in the cantons of 14th century Switzerland. Played by The Square’s Claes Bang, a charismatic actor with a hint of devilry, Tell is a somewhat solemn family man, nursing old traumas dating back to his time on the Crusades. He’d rather be left in peace to hunt in picturesque Alpine valleys with his son (Tobias Jowett), while his Middle-eastern wife (Extraction’s Golshifteh Farahani) tends the hearth. But enter eye-patched Hapsburg tyrant Albert – Sir Ben Kingsley in one of those three-day’s-work-and-a-fat-paycheck roles – with dastardly plans for his corner of the mountains. An army of henchmen, led by Connor Swindells’ tax-collecting tyrant, Albrecht Gessler, is soon provoking the peace-loving Swiss to fury with their violent pillaging. In case you hadn’t guessed, Will Tell is basically Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves at altitude, though not as fun as that sounds. The crossbowman’s band of not-so-merry men (and women) includes Rafe Spall and Emily Beecham’s aristocrats, but it’s not until that famous apple scene – staged in the second half here – that Tell’s wavering gives away to full resistance.  The acting is a bubbling fondue of clashing styles Writer-director Nick Hamm (Killing

The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme is back in London next month, and it’s your chance to experience the country’s finest filmmaking without having to board a flight. The UK’s largest celebration of Japanese cinema, it will be taking up residence at the ICA – where you can catch the entire programme – and, for a more limited run, at Hammersmith’s Riverside Studios. The overarching theme this year is ‘Justice, Justification and Judgement’, with hard-hitting dramas like Yûya Ishii’s provocative The Moon and Bunji Sotoyama’s Tea Friends, based on a real-life prostitution ring bust, on the slate. For younger Japanophiles, there’s ​the charming manga-based anime Ghost Cat Anzu. Tanoshimu!

It rivals The Substance as 2024’s most arresting horror film – and it was a killer year for the genre – but you’d hesitate to call Robert Eggers’ deeply sinister, slow-burning new take on the vampire classic ‘fresh’ exactly. Plague, rats, death and moral degradation abound in a tale made with a coolness manifest by none of its out-of-their-depth characters.  The American auteur, crushing it in every film he makes, returns to his horror roots with an even darker vision. The Witch, his debut, a parable of evil penetrating a Puritan family unit in Colonial America, gave us the demonic and meme-able Black Phillip. Nosferatu gives us just blackness, shadows to get lost in (props to cinematographer Jarin Blaschke’s noir lighting) and an undercurrent of lurking villainy that’s articulated in the film’s lulling early stretches by the jittery strings of Robin Carolan’s impressive score.  As with FW Murnau’s 1922 silent adaptation of Henrik Galeen’s Dracula riff, a film spilling over with post-Great War dread, and Werner Herzog’s AIDS-era remake Nosferatu the Vampyre, the plot is set in motion by a humble real-estate deal. Wisborg realtor Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) sends his ambitious young agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) to the Carpathian castle of one Count Orlok, to complete his purchase of a new abode in their seafront town.  Wrong move. The man he meets has none of the doomed romanticism of Klaus Kinski’s vampire, a mole-toothed softboi who was prone to lamentations about ho

The most enjoyable Disney Animation movie since The Lion King (1994) – sorry, Frozen heads – 2016’s Moana dazzled with its kaleidoscopic Oceania seascapes, catchy tunes, and a coming-of-age adventure that tacked smartly around empowerment clichés. Now, eight years later and retooled from a planned Disney+ spinoff series, the sea-quel is here with… well, exactly the same. There’s nothing too much wrong with Moana 2, which ticks all those same boxes for adventure and empowerment. It’s another loving celebration of Polynesian culture, replete with mad-looking sea creatures, hummable songs, and a charming goofy streak. But the lightning that jags from its spectacular climactic tempest doesn’t end up in the bottle this time.  Hawaiian actress Auli'i Cravalho returns as the voice of Moana, now a seasoned wayfarer held in the highest esteem on her Pacific island. She even has her own fanclub – the Moana-be’s – and a direct line to her demigod frenemy from the first movie, Maui (voiced again by Dwayne Johnson). Her dream, pursued on solo journeys across the waves, is to make contact with other Pacific Islanders. It’s Star Trek with starfish.  It’s Star Trek with starfish But that’s not the adventure that Moana 2 takes us on. Instead, returning screenwriter Jared Bush and co-writer Dana Ledoux Miller serve up another deus ex machina – this time a malevolent deity called Nalo – to unleash seismic disorder on the ocean. Moana must embark on another perilous journey to restore the balan

Baboins sauvages. Requins tueurs. Délire à l'opium. La suite de Ridley Scott, musclée, assoiffée de sang et parfois résolument décalée, n’est pas le Gladiator que vous connaissez – ni celui que vous enseignait votre prof d’histoire. Mais malgré ses défauts, c’est une aventure colossale qui ne ménage aucun effort pour vous épater par son ampleur et son spectacle. Là où Gladiator (2000) mêlait habilement scènes de bataille et intrigues politiques subtiles, cette suite fonctionne mieux lorsqu'elle se concentre sur des moments d’action pure, comme lorsqu'une baliste est tendue et envoie une boule de feu en direction de votre tête. L’action dégage une extravagance brutale, une volonté de mettre en lumière la violence comme symptôme de l'effondrement social, avec une dose supplémentaire de membres tranchés et de plaies ouvertes. Seize ans se sont écoulés depuis les événements de ce premier film désormais culte, et notre nouveau héros, Lucius Verus de Paul Mescal, est passé du statut de neveu de Commodus en péril à la fin de Gladiator à celui de père de famille amoureux vivant un exil heureux dans une ville côtière d'Afrique du Nord. La première bataille navale met fin à tout cela. Une flotte de trirèmes romaines sous le commandement du général Marcus Acacius, incarné par Pedro Pascal, s'abat sur la citadelle de Lucius et de sa femme au bord de la mer. Ce qui s'ensuit déchaîne l'enfer à une échelle similaire à celle de la mêlée d'ouverture de Russell Crowe en Germanie dans le premie

Is there a better or more versatile British actor at work than Ralph Fiennes? He can dial things right down in quieter dramas (The Dig), brings a spry verve to comedic roles (The Grand Budapest Hotel), and goes magnificently big when the assignment requires (A Bigger Splash, In Bruges). He’s always precisely as good as the material allows him to be. Sometimes better. Peter Straughan’s eloquent adaptation of Robert Harris’s 2016 Papal thriller allows him to be very good indeed. He’s Cardinal Lawrence, a Vatican functionary charged with overseeing the election of a new Pope when the ailing Pontiff, a much-loved and liberal-minded Holy Father, heads for the Pearly Gates. Rounds of voting – and scheming – await before a new pope is chosen and white smoke comes out of the Vatican chimney. And Fiennes is immaculate. His cardinal carries himself with the burdened obeisance of a man who knows that when he finally gets to heaven, he’ll probably be put in charge of the filing. A fellow cardinal dismisses him as ‘less a shepherd than a manager’. The actor’s reaction is perfect: the half-wince of a man who knows, deep down, that he’s probably right.  Directed with real élan by Edward Berger – going two-for-two on literary adaptions after his take on All Quiet on the Western Front – Conclave is a film for the ’they don’t make ’em like they used to’ brigade. Like a ’70s conspiracy thriller, its schemes and twists play out sotto voce: senior clergymen exchange scuttlebutt between vapes (the

There’s an urban legend – long denied by the band itself – that Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon was recorded to fit over the visuals of The Wizard of Oz, creating a trippy alternative experience known to smug muso types as ‘The Dark Side of the Rainbow’.   Even in their psychedelic Syd Barrett days, the prog legends would have been hard-pressed to record anything to match the tempo set by Jon M Chu’s high-energy repurposing of Stephen Schwartz’s Wizard of Oz origin musical.   You’d need an army of flying monkeys to find a Wicked fan with any grumbles about the results. The Crazy Rich Asians director’s screen version pops with vibrancy and energy, effervescence and sincerity, adding the odd tweak, expanding the occasional storyline, but largely visualising the musical in a way that will delight the many millions who have seen it on stage since its Broadway premiere in 2003. And the songs – especially the ceiling-plaster-loosening Defying Gravity – are belted out via vocal cords you’d pay top dollar to hear in concert, with Cynthia Erivo and a scene-stealing Ariana Grande the powerhouse double-act at the movie’s heart: one providing steel and soul as Shiz University’s ostracised green-skinned student Elphaba; the other with a nice line in perky superficiality as Galinda, a Tracy Flick type whose manifesto for life is captured in a wittily staged Popular. Of course, they’ll grow up to become the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North respectively.

Savage baboons. Killer sharks. Opium hits. Panto villains. Ridley Scott’s brawny, bloodthirsty, and occasionally wildly camp sequel is not your dad’s Gladiator movie – or your history teacher’s. But for all its flaws, it’s a colossally entertaining ride that never stints on its efforts to wow you with its scale and spectacle.    Where Gladiator (2000) deftly intercut its battle scenes with subtly plotted political manoeuvrings, this one works best when it’s just winding up one of its ballistas and launching a fireball at your head. There’s a brutal extravagance to the action, a dedication to the film’s theme of violence as a portent of social collapse that manifests in an extra slather of chopped limbs and slashing wounds.  We’re 16 years on from the events of that now-canonical first film, and our new hero, Paul Mescal’s Lucius Verus, has grown from Commodus’s imperilled nephew at the end of Gladiator to a loved-up family man living in happy exile in a coastal city in north Africa. The opening sea battle puts paid to all that. A fleet of Roman triremes under the command of Pedro Pascal’s upstanding general, Marcus Acacius, descend on Lucius and his wife’s seaside citadel. What follows unleashes hell on a similar scale to Russell Crowe’s opening scrap in Germania in the first film, by way of Kingdom of Heaven’s vast Siege of Jerusalem sequence. Scott has lost none of his feel for combat on this scale.  Most of the movie is set in a ravishingly-replicated Rome, rendered in dus

‘I’m humble now, but it tells you the story of how I became humble.’ With that magnificent faux modesty, Pharrell Williams provides the synopsis for a hero’s journey that’s rendered entirely in Lego animation. On paper, it sounds completely bonkers – The Lego Movie, only a biopic – but it somehow works a treat. Packed with the super-producer’s pop bangers, punctuating its music biz self-importance with consistent silliness, and laden with A-list cameos, including Lego Snoop Dogg, Lego Missy Elliott and most of the noughties hip hop scene (also Lego), it’s a real joyride. Hopefully it’ll inspire a few more docs to deviate from the boring old biopic formula. Pharrell invited 20 Feet From Stardom director Morgan Neville to shoot a standard documentary, complete with a meaty central interview with the man himself, and then bin it and remake the whole thing in Danish bricks. It works for two reasons: the primary colours and charmingly daffy animation technique fits its endearing subject to a tee. His genius, it charts, began with his synesthesia – an ability to see music in colours – and the Lego animation illustrates it better than a regular doc ever could. And it turns out that it’s way more fun hearing A-listers intoning about their musical genius when they’re Lego-fied. A Snoop Dogg cameo has a little Lego figure appearing with a canister of ‘PG spray’ to replicate the moment when Pharrell and his Neptunes/N.E.R.D. co-producer Chad Hugo had a woozy meeting with the weed-smoki

What would Terminator 2’s Judgment Day look like in Aardman’s world? Vengeance Most Fowl, the Bristol animators’ first Wallace and Gromit caper since 2008 short A Matter of Loaf and Death, is the typically charming, inventive and ridiculously English answer to that hypothetical. Much more upbeat, basically, and with more turnips. Instead of killer cyborgs, this tale of revenge and larceny unleashes an army of evil robot gnomes (voiced by Reece Shearsmith) under the control of still-sinister penguin Feathers McGraw. Wallace has levelled up on his inventions, flooding his house with mechanical gadgets, and enabling Nick Park and co-director Merlin Crossingham to deliver their own version of a cautionary tale on the perils of AI – albeit one that’s about as hard-edged as a tea cosy. ‘See how embracing technology makes our lives better!’ Wallace tells his long-suffering pooch, like Lancashire’s answer to a tech bro, before unleashing his new gnome helper, Norbot, on an unsuspecting town. But from behind bars, Feathers is plotting revenge against the duo who foiled his diamond heist in 1993’s The Wrong Trousers. He’s had 31 years to master computer hacking, and is soon taking control of Norbot and wrecking havoc.  It’s Aardman’s ridiculously English answer to Terminator 2 If Vengeance Most Fowl’s core dynamic – the guileless Wallace’s obliviousness to his dependence on his brainy beagle sidekick, and the pooch’s own stifled sense of frustration and hurt – hasn’t changed a jot dow

If you’re looking for this year’s answer to Barbenheimer, head straight for High Street Kensington. Here, the contents of Tim Burton’s drawers, attics and crypts – because he definitely has a crypt – have been arranged into a mind-altering residence at The Design Museum – just downstairs from the venue’s other blockbuster exhibition. Yes, Barbie upstairs, the Corpse Bride down below. Burton’s goth-ucopia has decamped to London just in time for Halloween, after a 10-city world tour. With advance ticket sales breaking records – 32,000 and counting –  the Californian’s adopted hometown is clearly already sold on the chance to eyeball 50 years of ceaselessly imaginative output up close.And eyeballs are everywhere here. They adorn monsters sketched, modelled and doodled by Burton over a career that stretches back to a restless, ambitious youth in the Burbank ’burbs. The opening section charts those ‘Anywhere, USA’ years, where the preternaturally gifted Burton was experimenting with stop-motion animation and pitching kids’ books to Disney. Pages from that book – The Giant Zlig – are on display, alongside a polite but encouraging rejection letter praising the young Burton’s imagination but pointing out its similarity to Dr Seuss’s.   The chance to peer at Edward Scissorhands’ actual scissorhands will be a rush for any movie lover Before transporting visitors into the heart of Burton’s Hollywood era, there’s a room dedicated to formative influences: Ray Harryhausen, Hammer films, G

This year is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and it’s a truth universally acknowledged that the BBC is duty-bound to produce some high-quality telly to celebrate the fact. Sure enough, BBC One has a new four-part adaptation of Gill Hornby’s 2020 novel Miss Austen landing this month to kick off a year of Austen love. Naturally, you can trust the Beeb to do a gilded job of summoning the look and feel of Regency England to the screen – and packing the series with stitch-perfect costumes and period-appropriate locations. But how did Miss Austen find its fresh evocation of Jane and her sister Cassandra’s corner of middle-class, 19th century England? Read on to find out. Photograph: Robert ViglaskyKeeley Hawes as Cassandra Austen What is Miss Austen about? Intriguingly, the series, directed by Maudie’s Aisling Walsh, is told not from the perspective of Jane Austen but her sister Cassandra. She’s a controversial figure in English literary history for having burnt Jane’s private letters after her death. The truth, though, as this elegant and human period drama will reveal, is more complex...Split over two timelines, it opens with the middle-aged Cassandra Austen (Keeley Hawes) in 1830, 13 years after the death of her sister Jane, as she heads to her young in-law Isabella Fowles’ (Rose Leslie) home to surreptitiously burn her sister’s personal letters.The motivations behind this infamous act of literary arson are shown in flashbacks to 1795 that explore the younger Cass

Two seasons in and Netflix’s South Korean sensation Squid Game is officially the biggest show in the world – and it’s going out on top. In the spirit of the Front Man himself, the streamer is keeping it lean and mean with the trilogy of seasons that draws to a close when season 3 hits the streamer on June 27.The news was unveiled at a global Netflix preview event along with a clip from the new season. In it, we saw a hundred or so blood-splattered contestants picking red and blue balls from a giant vending machine and dividing into two groups accordingly. To what purpose wasn’t revealed in the clip, but it’s unlikely to be a jaunty round of dodgeball. Squid Games’ great survivor Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) has, of course, transformed from cheery but down-on-his-luck businessman to a hardened survivalist over the course of the 16 episodes to date. Photograph: NetflixFirst look at season 3 of ‘Squid Game’ What fiendish, fatal games will he have to navigate to finally emerge into the light and bring down the cruel men behind the Squid Games? And what will Netflix do to celebrate the concluding part of the trilogy? We’ve had giant killer dolls descending on our cities, Squid Game raves, experiential Squid Game challenges. Keep your red overalls handy. Find out where Squid Game ranks on our list of the 100 greatest TV shows ever. I tried the new Squid Game challenge in Sydney and this is what it was like.

London’s legendary The Prince Charles Cinema (PCC) could be faced with closure. The off-Leicester Square two-screen indie, a beloved repertory cinema for the city’s cinephiles and cult movie lovers, is threatened with potential redevelopment. According to the PCC, its landlords, Zedwell LSQ Ltd and parent company Criterion Capital, are demanding a rent ‘far above market rate’ and a new clause which, if triggered, would leave the PCC homeless with six months’ notice. ‘We are disappointed that our landlords Zedwell LSQ Ltd and their parent company Criterion Capital have demanded the inclusion of a break clause that would require us to vacate the premises at six months’ notice, should they receive planning permission to redevelop the building,’ said the PCC in a statement, ‘which we interpret as a clear intention to do so’.  The Prince Charles ‘intends to tirelessly pursue legal proceedings to contest the landlord’s valuation, in order to secure renewal at market rate and safety from any redevelopment projects’. Criterion Capital denies ‘unreasonable intent’ in negotiating the new rent and break clause and claims that its position has been ‘mischaracterised’. ‘A break clause is standard commercial practice, reflecting long-term property planning, not unreasonable intent,’ says the company’s statement. ‘Our rental expectations are based on a fair market assessment, and we remain open to constructive dialogue within legal frameworks to resolve disagreements.’ ‘We are committed to

Charlotte from The Traitors isn’t the only one putting on a Welsh accent to ruthless effect this month. Telly stalwart Martin Clunes is delivering his most hypnotic Brecon lilt as a farmer who turns vigilante in ITV’s nerve-fraying new thriller Out There. Clunes plays Nathan Williams, a widower with a daughter living overseas and a son, Johnny (Louis Ashbourne Serkis), whose guilelessness leads him to fall in with a local wrong’un. Soon a sinister drug-running operation is looming large in the family’s life and Clunes’s farmer is cocking his shotgun to clean house. Well, barn.  Photograph: ITVMartin Clunes in ‘Out There’ What is Out There about? A no-nonsense but decent man, Nathan is battling financial headwinds to run his farm in a rural corner of Wales. Then the problems mount up even more drastically: his gamer son Johnny falls in with skeezy local drug dealer Rhys (Ludwig’s Gerran Howell) and the impressionable teenager is manipulated into handling drugs on behalf of a county lines gang run by the ruthless Turuk (Silas Carson). Nathan isn’t taking the decline of his area, his son’s involvement in gangs or the burgeoning trade of county lines gangs – symbolised by the drones that have begun buzzing over his farm – lying down. Like local bobby PC Jane Crowther (Eiry Thomas), herself facing political pressures, he’s on a mission to shut it down. A lot more violently.  ‘County lines is a particularly vicious and ruthless wave of drug dealing that uses fear and violence to

Who will be this year’s Oppenheimer at the Academy Awards?  The 2025 Oscar nominations have been announced and it’s still hard to predict the big winners from the most open race of recent years. The big candidates looking to get close to matching the seven gongs picked up by Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic include Emilia Pérez (13 nominations), Wicked (10), A Complete Unknown (10), The Brutalist (10), Conclave (8), Anora (6) and Dune: Part Two (5). Jacques Audiard’s polarising cartel musical Emilia Pérez’s 13 nominations is the most ever by a non-English language film, pipping Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Roma to the record. Man of the moment Timothée Chalamet picked up an expected Best Actor nod for his performance in Bob Dylan drama A Complete Unknown. His rivals in the category include Ralph Fiennes for Conclave, Adrien Brody for The Brutalist, Colman Domingo for prison drama Sing Sing, and Sebastian Stan for Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice. Battling it out for Best Actress at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre on March 2, meanwhile, will be Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Mikey Madison (Anora), Demi Moore (The Substance), Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez), and I’m Still Here’s Fernanda Torres. Gascón is the first ever trans nominee. Comeback queen Moore, meanwhile, represents the first acting nomination for a horror movie since Natalie Portman, who won for Black Swan in 2010. Another comeback dream didn’t materialise, with Pamela Anderson’s startling turn in The Last Showgirl no

The line-up for this year’s Glasgow Film Festival has just been revealed and there’s a bundle of big-screen goodies on offer for Glaswegians, Scottish movie lovers and visitors to the festival. Festival opens on February 26 with the world premiere of John Maclean’s Tornado, a survival thriller starring Slow Horses star Jack Lowden and Shōgun’s Takehiro Hira. The Tornado in question is not the windy kind, but the name of a young Japanese woman (model-songwriter Kōki) who crosses path with Tim Roth’s ruthless gang of bandits in 1790s Britain.  Photograph: Glasgow Film Festival The closing gala on March 9 is another world premiere from a Scottish filmmaker, Martyn Robertson’s Make it to Munich. The documentary follows teenager Ethan Walker as he defies life-threatening injuries to cycle from Glasgow’s Hampden Park to Munich Football Arena for Scotland’s opening Euro24 match.  Also catching the eye are Went Up The Hill, chilling New Zealand ghost story starring Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps, The Return, with Ralph Fiennes buffing up to play Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope, and Scottish folk horror Harvest.  Photograph: Glasgow Film FestivalJessica Lange in ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ Jessica Lange and Ed Harris offer a big ticket double-act for a new adaptation of Eugene O'Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, directed by theatre legend Jonathan Kent. A pair of new music docs, Peaches Goes Bananas and Desire: The Carl Craig Story, should help get the afterparti

January is already a feast of excellence on the big screen (Nickel Boys, A Real Pain, Babygirl) and its smaller cousin (Severance season 2), and this week continues that upward curve. The Brutalist, hailed by critics and tipped for Oscars, is a time machine back to the days of multi-reel epics complete with intermissions and overtures, epic storytelling and acting to match. Steven Soderbergh’s first horror flick, Presence, and a new Mark Wahlberg genre thriller, Flight Risk, are other big-screen options this weekend. If you’re staying home, keep an eye out for Prime Target – Apple TV+’s latest attempt to woo wavering Netflixers with its thoughtful and high-calibre, but hardly prolific output.  Photograph: A24 The Brutalist – in cinemas Jan 24 Actor-turned-filmmaker Brady Corbet’s impressive character studies Vox Lux and Childhood of a Leader turn out to be little more than guitar-tuning for the epic Jimi Hendrix solo that is this four-and-a-bit-hour 20th century epic. Exhausting superlatives and gathering Oscars buzz, it follows Adrien Brody’s titular architect as he copes with the scars of the Holocaust, the patronage of Guy Pearce’s overbearing American tycoon, and the absence of his wife (Felicity Jones). A novelist depiction of power and the immigrant experience, Corbet has thoughtfully put a bookmark in the middle, via a 15-minute intermission.  Photograph: Neon Presence – in cinemas Jan 24 Legendary filmmaker Steven Soderbergh has done pretty much everything else, b

The passing of David Lynch deprives not just movies but the arts world more broadly of one of its most singular voices. The American auteur, a latter-day Wizard of Oz, has been conjuring up ingenious, off-kilter and spellbindingly beautiful visions to get lost in since he emerged with Eraserhead back in 1977. Like Kubrick and Hitchcock, his style was worthy of its own adjective, and that ‘Lynchian’ magic spans art, photography and music as well as cinema. He even brought his magic to the often prosaic business of TV commercials. His classics are well-known but his back catalogue is a weird and wonderful place, a rabbit hole to fall down where the freaky and fantastical awaits you. Here’s a few Lynch deep cuts to investigate. Inland Empire (2006) Several years ago, Lynch said that 2006's Inland Empire had been his final film. Now that fact has sadly been confirmed, the movie takes on even more meaning – or maybe it just raises even more questions. A bizarre, hellish romp through Hollywood’s subconscious starring Laura Dern, it’s as auteur-ish as they come. Honestly, who knows what the hell is going on here? But it’s an unforgettable experience that will forever define the term ‘Lynchian’. The Straight Story (1999) The clue is in the title. Lynch’s most quote-unquote ‘trad’ film, this tender-hearted, deeply moving yarn follows Richard Farnsworth’s ageing veteran, Alvin Straight, across the Midwest on a mission to reconnect with his estranged

The latest classic Universal monster to be plugged into the circuit board and reanimated is the Wolf Man. The Invisible Man’s Leigh Whannell has just unleashed another modern take on a classic creature feature, first made famous by Lon Chaney back in the 1940s – this time set in the wilds of Oregon in America’s Pacific Northwest. Photograph: Nicola Dove/Universal Pictures What is Wolf Man about? Wolf Man opens with a flashback sequence that plunges us right into those deep, dank forests in 1995 as we follow a young protagonist Blake Lovell (Zac Chandler) and his troubled, overprotective dad from the remote Lovell farmstead in Oregon and into the woods on a hunting expedition where someone – or something – sinister is lurking. Fast-forward to the present day, and Blake is a struggling writer with a wife (Julia Garner) and young daughter (Matilda Firth) of whom he’s fiercely protective. Official confirmation of his long-missing father’s death seems like the perfect excuse to leave San Francisco and head back to that scenic spot for a break and a reset. Big mistake. Huge. Somewhere in those same woods, something furry and ferocious still lurks. Photograph: Nicola Dove/Universal Pictures Where was Wolf Man filmed? Wolf Man is a horror movie with a twist or two in its locker – including its surprising real-life setting. ‘It was a tough shoot!’ remembers lead actress Julia Garner of her stint on Wolf Man – and not just because the Ozark star spends a chunk of the film being p

The devastating wildfires that have been sweeping through suburbs of Los Angeles since Tuesday continue to threaten life and livelihoods across the city—as well as inflicting enormous destruction of property.     In a city famous as a headquarters for film and TV production, the impact has been devastating, with celebrity enclaves like Malibu and Pacific Palisades hit especially hard by the blaze. Studios have been evacuated, and TV productions and award season events deferred. Here’s what it all means for the world of pop culture and moviemaking. 1. Are L.A.’s cinemas and studios threatened by the wildfires?  As the Sunset Fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday evening, the TCL Chinese Theatre—popularly known as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre—and the current home of the Oscars, the Dolby Theatre, were included in the evacuation zone. The blaze was largely extinguished overnight, however, and the evacuation warning lifted.   The L.A. premieres for Pamela Anderson’s award-nominated The Last Showgirl, Unstoppable, Wolf Man and the long-awaited second season of Apple TV+’s Severance were called off. Even a New York premiere—of Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz’s Netflix action-comedy Back in Action—was cancelled too. Meanwhile, popular studio attractions were also closed during the week, due to the proximity of the fires. Universal Studios closed its gates to the public on Wednesday, before reopening today. Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal CityWalk will be

Netflix’s epic – and epically bloody – new western, American Primeval, is here to start our streaming year in brutal, widescreen style. With comparisons being made to Leonardo DiCaprio survival epic The Revenant, it’s the kind of series where even innocent bystanders are liable to end up scalped – or worse. It’s written by The Revenant’s Mark L. Smith and directed by Peter Berg, the A-list action auteur behind Lone Survivor and The Kingdom, who replaces the automatic weaponry with arrows, tomahawks and Bowie knives to deliver action (and blood) by the bucketload. He’s cast his old Friday Night Lights muse Taylor Kitsch as a grizzled loner with a dark back story, alongside GLOW’s Betty Gilpin as a homesteader with, well, the same thing. She and her young son are caught up in the violence as she makes her way to her husband in California. Photograph: NetflixLone survivor: Mormon pioneer Jacob Pratt (Dane Deehan) in the aftermath of the massacre What is American Primeval about? Employing a suitably murky colour palette, American Primeval recreates a dark, violent and not especially well-known chapter in American history: the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Taking place in the vast expanse of America’s west in 1857, it saw a group of bloodthirsty Mormons slaughtering at least 120 men, women and children from the Baker-Fancher emigrant wagon train as it crossed disputed territory. The Mormon militia group, known as the Nauvoo Legion, made the killings look like they were the act of l

‘What would you do if you found out your child isn’t your own?’  That’s the premise of ITV’s new thriller, Playing Nice – an idea guaranteed to send a shudder of horror through any parent.  Starring McMafia’s James Norton and adopted from a novel by JP Delaney, the slow-burning thriller follows two couples who discover that they’ve been raising each others’ three-year-old sons – Theo and David – after a hospital mix-up at birth.  On one side of this dilemma is Pete (Norton), an ex-journalist and Theo’s stay-at-home dad, and his restaurateur partner Maddie (Niamh Algar); on the other: alpha architect Miles (James McArdle) and his affluent wife Lucy (Jessica Brown Findlay), parents to David. Seemingly, at least. The story is adapted from Delaney’s novel by NHS psychiatrist-turned-TV showrunner Grace Ofori-Attah, creator of ITV medical drama Malpractice, and shifts the story from metropolitan London to the altogether more chilly and foreboding Atlantic coast of Cornwall. Read on to find out where this knotty thriller was filmed.  Photograph: ITVNiamh Algar as Maddie What is Playing Nice about? ITV's synopsis runs: ‘Living a waking nightmare, Pete and Maddie are jettisoned into the world of the other couple Miles and Lucy. At first it seems all four are agreed on a solution, but it soon becomes clear that hidden motives are at play – how far can each couple trust the real parents of their child or even each other? As Pete and Maddie are stretched to breaking point, they realise