Phil de Semlyen

2025 nos ha regalado grandes historias para maratonear, analizar y hasta debatir. Desde The Last of Us 2 que generó mucha polémica (no tan distinto a su juego) a El Eternauta, una apuesta de ciencia ficción latinoamericana que sorprendió. En esta lista reunimos las mejores series del año (hasta ahora), tomando en cuenta su impacto narrativo, la calidad de sus producciones y ese algo especial que las hace imprescindibles. Aquí van nuestras elegidas: Deberías de ver: Las mejores películas de 2025 (hasta ahora). 

The horror movie kicked off with Robert Eggers’ vampire smash hit Nosferatu and the fanged fraternity returned in a big way with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a Southern gothic with Michael B Jordan that sunk its teeth into the box office in a big way in April. And that’s just the start for a horror resurgence: 28 Years Later, M3GAN 2.0, The Conjuring: Last Rites, SAW XI, The Black Phone 2.0 and a new Insidious movie are all adding new shocks to smash-hit franchises. Talk To Me pair Danny and Michael Philippou return with Bring Her Back and the Jordan Peele-produced Him hits in September. This list will be updated as the frights arrive, so keep checking back to see what’s worth shelling out for.RECOMMENDED: 🎃 The 100 best horror films ever made😱 The scariest movies based on a true story 🔥 The best horror films of 2024

July 2025 update: The third and final season of Squid Game – the Korean version, at least – is a highly-placed new addition to our best of the year list, with season 4 of FX’s chef drama The Bear, and the third run of Paramount+’s Star Trek spinoff, Strange New Worlds, also slotting into Time Out’s top 20.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. Stranger Things is coming to an end, there’s a second run of Tim Burton’s Wednesday, and about a zillion other things still come. Here’s everything you need to see... so far.  RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The 100 best movies ever made📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

July 2025 update: Brad Pitt racing drama F1: The Movie, a gold-plated slab of Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster entertainment, 28 Years Later and a nostalgic Jaws doc are the summer’s newest additions to our best-of-2025 pantheon. Halfway through 2025, Hollywood must be breathing a sigh of relief. At this point last year, the studios were scratching their heads at several major unexpected flops, and many analysts were left to wonder if the post-pandemic bounce-back of 2023 was simply an outlier. Now, with films like A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, Final Destination: Bloodlines and Lilo & Stitch outperforming expectations, it might be safe to say that the movies are finally, really, truly… back? Maybe we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. But there are reasons for cinephiles to celebrate beyond the industry’s financial health, whether it’s the blockbuster success of the aforementioned Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s ambitious and wholly original horror epic, or several smaller-scale achievements, from the formal invention of Nickel Boys to the animated underdog (undercat?) story of Flow to a pair of home runs from Steven Soderbergh. And there’s plenty more to come. Here are the films that have had us cheering loudest in 2025 so far.  RECOMMENDED: 📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best horror movies of 2025🎥 The 101 greatest films ever made

Like college kids and middle-aged divorcees flocking to the nearest beach or rooftop pool to reveal their revenge bods, summer is the time for Hollywood to show off. The movie industry is going into its most important time of year with some positive momentum, thanks to A Minecraft Movie, Sinners and Thunderbolts* , and the likely successes of Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning and Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch. And there’s reason to believe the money train will continue rolling, with James Gunn’s Superman rebooting the DC universe, Fantastic Four: First Steps looking to keep the Marvel revival moving and Jurassic World Rebirth bringing the dinosaur franchise back from extinction, with Scarlett Johannson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey in tow. Of course, nothing in this cinema landscape is guaranteed. Which films will actually hit big and which will have studio execs and industry watchers wringing their hands? We break it all down below with the movies we’re most excited about in summer 2025.RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025

It costs a lot to be entertained these days. Just a few years ago ‘cord-cutting’ seemed like a life hack that’d save TV watchers a tonne of cash. Once the streaming revolution truly kicked in, though, the subscriptions piled up, and with recent price increases and crackdowns on password sharing – not to mention sheer overload of choice – it’s making some of us gaze at our old cable bills with wistful longing.   But what if we told you there was an easily accessible website out there with a trove of legitimately awesome movies available to stream 24/7, and entirely for free? It’s called YouTube. Yes, the site known primarily for instructional videos about how to install a new sink and use an air fryer is hiding an impressive library of classic cinema of the sort many other streamers don’t bother with – from silent era milestones to essential deep cuts. If you don’t mind sitting through a bunch of commercials, YouTube has a full channel of ad-supported modern films as well. But for true movie buffs looking to fill some knowledge gaps, check out the 35 flicks below – with links included. Recommended: 🎬 100 best movies of all time💣 The greatest thrillers ever made🤘 The best cult classic movies of all-time🌍 The 50 best foreign films of all-time

June 2025 update: In this update, we've added one of the best blockbusters of the last decade, Top Gun: Maverick, the movie that finally brought audiences back to theaters post-pandemic and which firmly outclasses the 1986 original with some of the most thrilling flight sequences ever put on film.  Everyone loves a good action movie. Sure, film school snobs may turn up their noses, but even hardcore cineastes cannot live on indie dramas and experimental art flicks alone. No matter how cultured you are, there’s a part of your lizard brain that loves explosions and shootouts and badass one-liners – and it needs to be satisfied. And the only thing that will scratch the itch is watching something get blowed up real good.  The truth is, action is a deeply misunderstood genre. Action flicks needn’t be dumb or epic or even particularly loud to succeed. Some find beauty in violence. Others might dropkick you right in the heart. Heck, some even have character development. So light that fuse, clip that wire and batten down the hatches – these are the most pulse-pounding, heart-racing, edge of your seat action movies of all-time.  Written by Eddy Frankel, Eddy Frankel, Yu An Su, Joshua Rothkopf, Trevor Johnston, Ashley Clark, Grady Hendrix, Tom Huddleston, Keith Uhlich, Dave Calhoun, Phil de Semlyen, Dave Calhoun and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time💥 The 18 greatest stunts in cinema (as picked by the greatest stunt people)🥋 The 25 best martial arts movies

July 2025 update: In this update, we've added two recent Oscar winners for Best Documentary Feature: Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson's Summer of Soul, a stirring act of musical rediscovery covering the long-forgotten 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, and 2024's No Other Land, a remarkably powerful piece of activist filmmaking documenting one Palestinian village's fight against forced displacement by the Israeli military.     Everyone’s a documentarian these days, but the best documentary films go beyond simply filming real life and uploading it to the internet. They put real life into context. Sometimes, they reshape it and change our understanding of the world. They teach us about the people that surround us – and the truly successful documentaries make us rethink our ideas of ourselves.  It is true, though, that there are a lot of docs out there, whether streaming on Netflix or earning Oscar buzz. To make it easier for you to choose what to watch, we’ve sorted the must-sees from the glorified iPhone videos. From David Byrne in an oversized suit to Andy Warhol staring at the Empire State Building for eight hours, here are our picks for the best documentaries ever made. Written by Joshua Rothkopf, Cath Clarke, Tom Huddleston, David Fear, Dave Calhoun, Phil de Semlyen, Andy Kryza, David Ehrlich, Matthew Singer and Ava Scott-Nadal Recommended: ✅ The 20 best movies based on true stories🎸 The 19 best musical documentaries to rock out to🔎 The best true crime documentaries on Netflix🔥 T

There’s few more glorious summer activities than lying back in the great outdoors and soaking up a movie. The sun dropping beneath the horizon, the prosecco flowing, Hugh Jackman about to start singing in a top hat – let’s face it, you’re statistically likely to be watching The Greatest Showman – and a deckchair to sink into. What could be more perfect? You even get to use that comfy blanket your nan gave you. But if there’s one thing that ups the ante on the experience, it’s doing it in an eye-poppingly beautiful location – like one of the 30 starlit screens on this list. From a screen that emerges from Sydney harbour like a kind of cinematic Botticelli, to a vertiginous Colorado amphitheatre, to Cannes’s iconic Cinéma de la Plage, they cover all bases and the entire globe. Take a tour of the most spectacular screens on the planet. RECOMMENDED: 📽️ The 50 most beautiful cinemas in the world🌎 100 places every movie lover should visit

July 2025 update: Kicking off the month is a flurry of frenemy silliness is Idris Elba and John Cena action-comedy Head of State. It’s the Hugh Grant/Billy Bob Thornton bit in Love Actually by way of Executive Decision. For that reason alone, it walks straight onto this list. Admittedly, it hasn’t been the funniest year, in the world or on screen. But if you’re in need of a laugh – and who isn’t? – you can still find plenty, either at the cinema or streaming on your television. Whether you prefer your comedy political (HBO’s Mountainhead), gentle (The Ballad of Wallis Island), romantic (Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy), dark and weird (Friendship) or broad and juvenile (A Minecraft Movie), there’s been a little something for everyone to chuckle at. And there are more LOLs on the way, with the upcoming Naked Gun reboot starring Liam Neeson looking shockingly strong. For now, though, here are the movies and shows that have had us cracking up the hardest in 2025. RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

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: 🔥 Best TV and streaming shows in 2025 (so far)📺 The 40 best TV shows of 2024 you need to stream📽️ These are the must-see films for 2025 you can’t miss

Movies always find a way. It’s no secret the 21st century has so far been rough on cinema, between internet piracy, the pandemic, the strikes, the rise of streaming, etc. But while movies may no longer exist at the center of culture, over the first two decades of the new millennium, filmmakers have innovated at a more rapid clip than ever before: genres have been mixed, matched and completely exploded; more diverse stories are being told; blockbusters have reached unfathomable hugeness, and the smallest, strangest indies have won awards and reached vast audiences.  If cinema in the 21st century has been defined by tumult, it’s also exemplified the ability of those most dedicated to the medium to rise to the moment. These 100 movies represent the best of the last quarter-century so far. Written by David Fear, Joshua Rothkopf, Keith Uhlich, Stephen Garrett, Andrew Grant, Aaron Hillis, Tom Huddleston, Alim Kheraj, Tomris Laffly, Kevin B. Lee, Karina Longworth, Maitland McDonagh, Troy Patterson, Nicolas Rapold, Lisa Rosman, Nick Schager, Phil de Semlyen, Matthew Singer, Anna Smith, S. James Snyder.  RECOMMENDED: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all time🌏 The 50 best foreign films of all time🤘 The 40 best cult movies of all time📹 The 66 best documentaries of all time

The ‘Rebirth’ in this Jurassic World sequel’s title is apt because this seventh entry is a renaissance of sorts for a franchise that looked ready to curl up and turn to fossil. In 2022’s woeful Jurassic World Dominion the planet was shrugging at its proliferation of dinosaurs – and it was easy for cinema-going audiences to do the same. How depressing to watch the awe Steven Spielberg summoned back in 1993 vanish in a globe-spanning story where most of the globe was done with dinos. How, the inner eight-year-old in us wanted to scream, could anyone be bored of dinosaurs? In a dinosaur movie? Some of that dino-fatigue plays into the laborious opening stretches here. Big beasts shamble though the Big Apple and New Yorkers just beep their horns and grumble about the tails in their tailbacks. Happily, director Gareth Edwards (The Creator, Godzilla) OG screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park) soon pivot back to where the humans-messing-with-nature premise works best: on a tropical island overrun with hungry prehistoric beasties.That long-winded prelude does fill in the odd handy blank: to survive, the dinosaurs have mostly retreated to the jungles and seas near the equator, no-go areas for humans. There, a small group of adventurers must venture on the dime of Rupert Friend’s slimy exec. His pharma company is on the hunt for a potential cure for heart disease that’s carried in the blood of three dino species. Scarlett Johansson and Ali Mahershala’s

Having a bunch of tech tycoons getting set upon by killer AI dolls feels like an easy win for Hollywood right now. Who doesn’t want to see thinly veiled versions of Sam Altman and Elon Musk trying to fight off the psychotic fruits of their labours? Form an orderly queue, then, for an unceasingly silly and consistently entertaining sequel that delivers more – quite a lot more – of the knowing, campy shocks that made 2023’s original a box-office hit and TikTok sensation.  2.0 picks up a little after M3GAN left off. The murderous robot girl-doll has been vanquished; its creator, repentant toy inventor Gemma (Allison Williams) has emerged from a stretch in prison vowing to bring kids’ tech usage under control, with some help of a non-profit run by eligible altruist Christian (SNL’s Aristotle Athari giving major ketamine). Meanwhile, Gemma’s niece, Cady (Violet McGraw) has learnt some key life lessons from her doll friend’s kill spree. Namely: be more like Steven Seagal. Even her newfound martial arts skills can’t help her, or her aunt, when a power-lusting tech baron (a scene-stealing Jemaine Clement) and the FBI come knocking – the latter looking for help to track down a rogue militarised AI doll called AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) made with Gemma’s designs.  Luckily – or unluckily – M3GAN is still out there in the ether, initially as a Siri-like presence, then in a winningly daft twist, reembodied into a sulky robot companion toy, and finally as a upgraded version of her old self. Bu

It’s the morning jog that seals the deal for me with The Fontenay. With a few hours to kill before my flight home, the sun casting a golden light on the Alster Lake and a night out in Hamburg’s punky St Pauli district to shake off, I forced myself into a slow-motion circuit of one of Europe’s most picturesque artificial lakes. When I get back, I’m greeted by the doorman holding a towel and water for me. If I’d had a dog with me, they’d get the same treatment (there’s a water bowl and a little pile of doggy towels next to the lobby doors.)  A hotel that thinks of everything – including your pooch’s soggy fur – The Fontenay’s general ambience is one of soothing professionalism. Anyone eager to lean into Hamburg’s reputation as the contrarian’s European city break of the moment can find hipper, more graffiti-covered spots across town. But for understated luxury, this leafy lakeside nook, shaded by summer limes and Norway maples, is an absolute oasis. Here, nothing is any trouble at all.  Bright and curvy, with its 131 rooms hugging a dramatic central atrium that stretches seven floors up, it might have been constructed as a tribute to some Weimar-era starlet. Each corridor arches gently, like ripples on the Alster, over which many of the rooms have views. The best views belong to the rooftop bar, which curls around the top of that atrium and offers glorious vistas across the water and the grand city centre beyond. In fact, there’s not a single straight corridor here, and nothing

It’s the morning jog that seals the deal for me with The Fontenay. With a few hours to kill before my flight home, the sun casting a golden light on the Alster Lake and a night out in Hamburg’s punky St Pauli district to shake off, I force myself into a slow-motion circuit of one of Europe’s most picturesque artificial lakes. When I get back, I’m greeted by the doorman holding a towel and water for me. If I’d had a dog with me, they’d get the same treatment (there’s a water bowl and a little pile of doggy towels next to the lobby doors.)  A hotel that thinks of everything – including your pooch’s soggy fur – The Fontenay’s general ambience is one of soothing professionalism. Anyone eager to lean into Hamburg’s reputation as the contrarian’s European city break of the moment can find hipper, more graffiti-covered spots across town. But for understated luxury, this leafy lakeside nook, shaded by summer limes and Norway maples, is an absolute oasis. Here, nothing is any trouble at all.  Bright and curvy, with its 131 rooms hugging a dramatic central atrium that stretches seven floors up, it might have been constructed as a tribute to some Weimar-era starlet. Each corridor arches gently, like ripples on the Alster, over which many of the rooms have views. The best views belong to the rooftop bar, which curls around the top of that atrium and offers glorious vistas across the water and the grand city centre beyond. In fact, there’s not a single straight corridor here, and nothing,

There’s a protocol you can count on to follow a public disaster in this country. It tends to begin with a years’ long and expensive inquiry, and end with little change and none of the responsible parties being held to account. Some, if they’re lucky, may even find themselves elevated to the House of Lords.  That establishment playbook is in operation again in this poignant, winding and righteously angry documentary about the Grenfell tower fire – just as it was in ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office or Disney+’s 7/7 drama Suspect.  Directed with forensic skill and lots of compassion by first-timer Olaide Sadiq, Grenfell: Uncovered holds the survivors of the fire in one hand, honouring their anger and grief in moving interviews, while using the other to slap down the many companies and governmental bodies whose decisions led to the loss of 72 lives on the night of June 14, 2017. The title, of course, has a poignant double meaning. The aluminium cladding applied to the residential tower block for aesthetic reasons – supposedly to satisfy Grenfell’s well-heeled neighbours in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea – turned a small kitchen fire into a building-wide inferno, transforming the Fire Brigade’s ‘stay put’ policy into a death sentence for residents.  This is a poignant, winding and righteously angry documentary Sadiq pieces the night of the fire back together using audio from the emergency services, news footage, and the shakycam videos of locals. The shock and dawning hor

It’s been 23 years since Danny Boyle’s infected horror 28 Days Later changed the game for zombie flicks, and the genre has mutated plenty in the interim. The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, even Game of Thrones have prestige-ified the undead, building emotional human survival dramas around this gnawy-bitey brand of body horror. Which might explain why Boyle and returning 28 Days screenwriter Alex Garland have seen fit to spin their return to Rage virus-ridden UK into a two, possibly three, part saga. Time will tell if it’s a wise call, but from its jaw dropping opening, in which the infected apocalypse plays out over an episode of Teletubbies, this first salvo is a mostly propulsive start.   Things have changed a lot in 28 Years Later’s Britain too. The Channel Tunnel has been sealed off and the UK officially Zomb-xited from Europe. Naval patrols enforce a seaborne quarantine. Bows and arrows have replaced guns and ammo for the grizzled survivors gathered in a Lindisfarne community connected to mainland England by a tidal causeway.  From this folksy, Summerisle-like commune, dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams, a real find) head off on an ultra-violent rite-of-passage to hunt infected on the mainland. Mum, Isla (Jodie Comer), is bedridden with an ailment no one has the expertise to diagnose. Awaiting them are new species of infected, including the formidable Alphas and ‘Slow-Lows’, icky, blubbery zombies who crawl on their bellies.  D

Loosely doing for Days of Thunder what Top Gun: Maverick did for Top Gun, and filling a big Top Gear gap for your dad in the process, F1 is the Jerry Bruckheimiest thing to hit our screens in an age – and it’s a full-throttle triumph. The ’90s are officially back and they’re really, really loud.  With Brad Pitt engaging A-list god mode, a booming Hans Zimmer score, a crateload full of pop and dance bangers, and writer-director Joseph Kosinski hitting the same punch-the-air beats as his superlative 2022 Top Gun reboot, it’s a throwback to simpler days when multi-dimensional characters were a luxury no one could afford, because they’d spent all the money on helicopter shots. But switch off your brain and F1 will overwhelm your senses with spectacle, sonics and just enough human drama to hold it all together.  A sport so in love with its soapy dramatics, its team chiefs were bitching about each other at the premiere of this movie, the gleaming, hermetic world of F1 isn’t a natural fit for Pitt’s languid charisma. Which is ideal, because his impulsive veteran racing driver, Sonny Hayes, isn’t either.  When we meet him, Sonny is an ex-F1 superstar with a troubled past and a transient present as a driver-for-hire at Daytona. His old pal and F1 team owner Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem, bringing his A-game to a B-grade character) has a proposal for him: help his struggling team finish the season in something other than disgraceful fashion, and stave off the vultures on the board in

The title of Kelly Reichardt’s (Certain Women) bone-dry art heist comedy, set in the ‘70s of Vietnam War protests and waterbed sales, is strictly tongue-in-cheek. Not only is he not a mastermind, Josh O’Connor’s unemployed Massachusetts carpenter James Blaine ‘JB’ Mooney would make Fargo’s Jerry Lundegaard look like the last word in criminal competence.  Mooney plans to steal four abstract – and fairly low value – portraits by modernist painter Arthur Dove from his local gallery. We see him scoping out the place, observing the snoozy guards and using his wife (Alana Haim) and sons (Sterling and Jasper Thompson) as cover as he figures out all the angles and nails down a watertight scheme to lift the art. And the actual plan? To grab the paintings, stick them in a bag and leg it. It’s executed with the help of a gormless local contact and a hot-headed last-minute ringer who brings a gun and starts pointing it at screaming kids. To add to the tragicomic vibe, their getaway vehicle gets stuck in traffic on the way out.  Based loosely on a real-life 1973 heist of Massachusetts’s Worcester Art Museum, it’s the kind of material from which the Coens would spin a blackly comic tale of betrayal, murder and cosmic justice. But Reichardt’s interest lies in a more existential kind of unravelling. As the cops circle, more serious criminals start sniffing around, and Mooney’s circuit court judge father (Bill Camp) and exasperated mum (Hope Davis) read about the story in the papers, O’Connor

Chris Evans as a slutty evangelist. The Substance’s Margaret Qualley as a sleuth on the case of a missing woman. Aubrey Plaza as her cop lover. A stack of sex toys. A fork fight. Ethan Coen’s scurrilous new crime caper, the second part of his ‘lesbian B-movie trilogy’ co-written with partner Tricia Cooke, should be a lot of fun. Instead, it’s a sporadically funny nothingburger which, while not as bad as the lamentable Drive-Away Dolls, stills makes you wonder whether his brother Joel was the genius behind the operation all along. The clever opening credits, mapping out its Californian small-town setting to The Animals’ We Gotta Get Out of This Place, promise a level of inventiveness that just never materialises. Instead, there’s a gumshoe plot purportedly inspired by languid ’70s Chandler adaptations Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye. But where Coen’s own The Big Lebowski and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice took those same raw materials – a vague mystery, sexy dames and a criminal enterprise capable of violent nastiness – and forged enjoyably self-referential stoner noirs from them, Honey Don’t! is just a meandering yarn without a purpose.  You get the languor but not much else. Interminable Vice, maybe.  Honey Don’t! premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Prepare the Brokeback Mountain comparisons now, because Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor’s tender romance has all the ingredients of Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning queer love story. Like that Annie Proulx adaptation, it’s based on a short story (by Ben Shattuck, who adapts here) and is set in the woods and hills of rural America (Maine, rather than Wyoming). It’s full of the stifled emotions of two men who fall in love but can’t quite express it.  The only thing missing – and it’s a biggie – is the deep passion that coursed beneath the surface of that Oscar winning western. South African director Oliver Hermanus finds plenty of deep feeling and sincerity here but his beautiful-looking, measured period piece gets stifled by its own languors – especially in a first half that needs a slug or two of moonshine to inject some life into it. As he’s proved twice already, with gorgeous Ikiru remake Living and striking queer bootcamp drama Moffie, Hermanus is guided by a powerful sense of empathy and compassion. Here, he follows the story of Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor), two music students who meet at Boston Conservatory in 1917 and bond over their shared love of folk music. Lionel, a gentle country boy blessed with an ability to see music – synesthesia – is the shy outsider; David is an east coaster with easy confidence and a boyish sense of mischief. They fall into bed, but their love remains unspoken and undefined. Soon, David is in uniform and off to the Great War trenches of France,

A sun-soaked dream – okay, nightmare – of a midnight movie, this Australian survival horror asks the question: what if Steve Irwin was basically the devil? The answer would probably look a lot like Jai Courtney’s shark dive owner Tucker, a brawny bogan who takes backpackers and tourists onto his rusty old boat to enthusiastically introduce them to the bull sharks, makos and great whites that swim off the Gold Coast. First in a cage, then sedated and trapped into a harness, lowered into the water while the sweaty psychopath records it all on his VHS camera. Obviously, he gives them a Vegemite sandwich and some shark facts first. He’s not a total monster. The movie’s two heroes are American hippie-chick surfer Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) and hunky local softboi Moses (Josh Heuston). They get some cursory character details (her: estranged from parents, likes eating buns; him: sensitive rich kid, drives a Volvo; both: love Creedence Clearwater Revival), and there’s a budding romance between them that’s rendered in the cheesiest possible notes. But the two actors make them likeable enough for you to hope they don’t end up chomped on by a peckish mako. Zephyr gets abducted during a late-night surf and wakes up chained to a bed aboard Tucker’s boat. From there, we’re off on a gnarly fun ride in the dank cabins and on bloodstained decks, as the sharks, captured in some gorgeous real-life footage, circle below. This is no Sharknado CG fest – it looks and feels real. And the boat itself i

Iranian cinema is your go-to for knotty, complex morality tales. Small missteps are made, a series of seemingly inconsequential events leads to one big, defining one – and the fallout leaves characters trying to navigate the awful repercussions often made worse by the country’s suffocating social and religious codes. A gun goes missing in Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig; a handbag is stolen in Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero. Torment and tragedies ensue.In Saeed Roustayi’s Woman and Child, a carefully crafted and endlessly gripping drama that follows a Tehran family’s slow disintegration, it’s the supposedly joyous occasion of a marriage proposal that set the wheels of fate in motion. Hard-working nurse Mahnaz (Parinaz Izadyar, magnetic) is a 40-year-old widow with two kids: teenage tearaway Aliyar (Sinan Mohebi) and all-round poppet Neda (Arshida Dorostkar). She’s dating ambulance driver Hamid (A Separation’s Payman Maadi), an older man whose flirtations suddenly turn serious. He pops the question, but there’s an immediate string attached: will she pretend she’s childless when his strict rural parents come to visit them at her house?  For anyone unfamiliar with the strictures and mores of Iranian society, the answer would be ‘hell no’. But as Roustayi shows in a movie that’s sympathetic to its female protagonist almost to a fault, it’s nothing like that simple. As a single mum, Hamid might be her best bet – even if he immediately scans as something of a rogue and she’

James Gunn’s Superman is proving to be a smash-hit reinvention for DC’s most upstanding superhero.And the blockbuster has also reinvented one of America’s most underrated cities, Cleveland, in the process.  The Ohio city doubles up as DC’s other city, Metropolis, with the old Leader Building standing in for The Daily Planet offices and Progressive Field, home of the aptly-named Cleveland Guardians baseball team, starring in a big fight sequence.  It’s the perfect setting: Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first came up with the idea for their comic-book character in the city. And one of the city’s most historic spots provides the backdrop to an iconic big-screen snog too. Remember the scene where Superman (David Corenswent) takes to the air with Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane? That romantic moment was filmed inside The Arcade Cleveland. Photograph: Dan Ham/Hyatt Regency Cleveland America’s first-ever indoor shopping centre, the elegant mall was based on Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II when it first opened in 1890. Thanks to Superman, it’s now part of superhero movie lore.Fans wanting to visit the real-life Metropolis can even stay inside the arcade. The Hyatt Regency Cleveland is situated inside the building and offers standard rooms for around $237 and suites for $332. Book a room with an arcade view and drift off dreaming of the Man of Steel. And right next door is the 1913 Beaux-Arts-style Leader Building, which doubles as The Daily Planet’s HQ in th

The semi-autobiographical story of Lena Dunham and her husband Luis Felber, a British-Peruvian musician, new Netflix series Too Much is a fictionalised version of their relationship in London. How fictionalised, only they will know, but hopefully quite a lot. No one should take that much ketamine at a city zoo. It’s also a proper joy: a story of millennial love, work, sex and life in two big cities peppered with the kind of cultural authenticity that only lived experience can provide, and enough fantasy and big laughs to make it work as pure escapism too. And that’s not to mention the killer soundtrack and a stuffed-to-the-gills supporting cast that boasts Stephen Fry, Andrew Scott (hot priest turns sleazy filmmaker here), Richard E Grant, David Jonsson, Naomi Watts, Emily Ratajkowski, Rita Wilson, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Dunham herself. © "Too Much", Lena Dunham, Netflix What happens in Too Much? The show’s ten episodes follow American creative Jessica (Megan Stalter), fresh from a break-up, as she heads from New York to London in pursuit of a romanticised version of the city that only exists in the movies of Richard Curtis and the books of Jane Austen. Instead of a grand Regency estate, she finds herself in the bricky Hackney kind. Instead of a clean slate, she discovers that the emotions she’s fled from have come along for the ride. And she has no clue what a ‘tosser’ is.  Enter Will Sharpe’s striving musician Felix, a man with a few skeletons of his own, and a wild and

Lena Dunham’s new Netflix romcom Too Much is ten episodes long and rushes by in a blur. The Girls’ creator has teamed up with her real-life partner, Luis Felber, a British-Peruvian musician, to tell a fictionalised version of their relationship via Megan Stalter and Will Sharpe’s US expat in London and her punky, muso boyfriend. Along with an array of hip locations in London and New York, the soundtrack is bang on point – as you’d expect from Dunham and Felber, a musician who records as Attawalpa and whose own gigging experiences in London play into the travails of Felix’s band. You’ll catch some Attawalpa in the show (and look out for a Felber cameo as a wedding DJ in episode 8), as well as folk ballads, hip hop classics, and tracks from artists like Fiona Apple, Fred Again.., and Carole King. Here’s the Too Much soundtrack in full: Episode 1 London Bridge – FergieNo Bad Energy – Miraa MayYou Broke My Heart Again – Teqkoi & AikoDead or Alive (feat. Jimmy Jones) – Cam’ronAlways the Girls – AttawalpaSpring Has Come – aranSlow Like Honey – Fiona Apple Episode 2 Pressure to Party – Julia JacklinItty Bitty Piggy – Nicki MinajAngels Like You – Miley CyrusThe Jump Off – Lil’ KimYou Know Me More Than I Know – John CaleAre You With Me Now? – Cate Le Bon Episode 3 touch tank – quinnie adore u – Fred Again… & ObongjayarAngel Lover – Dave AntrellMaggot Brain – FunkadelicFalling Apart – Slow Pulp Episode 4 Anything – Adrianne L

From Girls to a girl, Lena Dunham’s new Netflix show is a salty​, ​s​harply observed romantic comedy about a ​dreamy New Yorker, Jess (Megan Stalter), who moves to London hoping to find love ​​amid​ a Merchant Ivory​ fantasia of posh country estates and ​men in Georgian finery. ​Instead, she finds herself navigating Hackney estates, coked-fuelled west London parties, and media hipsterdom with chilled-yet-complex indie musician Felix (Will Sharpe). True love, it turns out, is a path littered with trustafarian eco-warriors and snooty French exes. Like its protagonist, Too Much is a show with a burning love for the genre, with frequent nods to romcoms from Pretty Woman to Richard Curtis. The door from Notting Hill even makes a cameo appearance. ​B​ut what are the ​r​omantic comedies that make Too Much’s own writer-director​ weak at the knees? We asked ​D​unham to pick her three favourites. Photograph: Columbia Pictures‘Bye Bye Birdie’ 3. Bye Bye Birdie (1963) ‘It doesn’t seem like a romantic comedy, but it is: a musical romantic comedy. I’ve watched it again and again – it was one of the first times I was just rooting for the love story. I’m sure someone will say it doesn’t count, but I defy you not to cry at the love story with Janet Leigh. And I defy you not to cry at watching Kim and Hugo find their way to each other after Conrad Birdie messes the whole town up.’ Photograph: Sony Pictures ReleasingJulia Roberts, Cameron Diaz and Rupert Everett in ‘My Best

FrightFest has been a regular staple for UK horror fans since the ’90s. The horror and fantasy film festival returns this year between August 21-25. For five days, London’s Odeon Luxe Leicester Square and Odeon Luxe West End will be screening films like Macon Blair’s The Toxic Avenger reboot, starring Peter Dinklage, satires on AI and influencer culture, along with a documentary on the ever-controversial A Serbian Film. The festival opens with the UK premiere of The Home, a psychological horror from the twisted mind of The Purge franchise creator James DeMonaco. SNL mainstay Pete Davidson defies typecast as Max, a rebellious youth who finds himself working at a retirement home. Some sinister secrets and some spine-chilling geezers are to be expected. For the closing film, the focus shifts to Gen Z with sure-t0-be-depraved social media riff Influencers. A sequel to the 2022 Shudder hit Influencer, the thriller finds Canadian actress Cassandra Naud reprising her role as CW, a shadowy Tom Ripley-like figure who targets influencers. The Toxic Avenger, also on the line-up, is the much-awaited reboot of the 1984 Troma classic of the same name. Much like its campy source material, it’ll be heavy on the splatter, with Dinklage as the unsanitary superhero of the title. Directed Macon Blair, star of cracking B-movie thrillers like Green Room and Blue Ruin, The Toxic Avenger premiered at 2023’s Fantastic Fest, but has faced numerous delays with distribution. At FrightFest, UK genre fans

Resurgent and full of new energy, the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) has just dropped its full programme line-up for next month’s festival.The fest will open on August 14 with Eva Victor’s black comedy Sorry, Baby, starring Naomi Ackie, and will close six days (and nights) later with the world premiere of a new documentary about local legend Irvine Welsh, Reality Is Not Enough. Running from August 14-20, the official line-up includes 43 new feature films. There are 18 world premieres and six retrospective screenings for festival-goers to choose from, as well as a host of talks and in conversation events with an array of prestigious filmmakers. Sharing their wisdom and experience will be Andrew and Kevin Macdonald, Andrea Arnold, Ben Wheatley and his producer Andy Starke, and Nia DaCosta, director of next year’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Films to look out for on the line-up include Gerard Johnson’s new thriller Odyssey, Dominik Moll’s Cannes-endorsed police thriller Case 137, the Dardenne brothers’ new drama Young Mothers, and Helen Walsh’s windswept romantic drama On the Sea, which could be mussel farming’s answer to God’s Own Country.  The festival’s cult strand, Midnight Madness, delivers the new remake of The Toxic Avenger, starring Peter Dinklage and Elijah Wood, and the world premiere of Ben Wheatley’s new film Bulk. ‘This is a midnight film through and through,’ says Wheatley. ‘Car chases, gun fights, sci-fi and romance. Thanks to Edinburgh for havi

Crack out the crime tape because this year’s BFI London Film Festival (LFF) opener is going to be piling up the bodies on the South Bank. Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, will be opening the 69th London Film Festival at the Royal Festival Hall and cinemas cross the UK on October 8. Expect big stars and bloody murder, as Daniel Craig’s sleuth Benoit Blanc gets to the bottom of another criminal conspiracy in an as-yet-undisclosed setting.  Also starring in the Netflix movie is another killer ensemble, including – deep breath – Josh O'Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack and Thomas Haden Church.  Johnson’s entertaining murder-mystery series has a close relationship with the festival. The first Knives Out was the AMEX gala at the LFF in 2019, while the second Knives Out movie, Glass Onion, closed the festival in 2022.  ‘We’re honoured to be opening the BFI London Film Festival with Wake Up Dead Man,’ says Johnson. ‘London is the birthplace of the golden age of detective fiction and it's a thrill to be back!’   Photograph: John Wilson/Netflix © 2025 ‘[It’s a] film that twists, turns and will keep audiences guessing to the final frame,’ says festival director  Kristy Matheson. ‘The third of the brilliant Knives Out films we have presented at the LFF, we are delighted to reunite for our special Opening Night.’  The 69th BFI London Film Festival runs

Even those cinemagoers who have grumbled about the preponderance of superhero origin stories – and I’m guilty there – might feel a touch of remorse watching writer-director James Gunn’s puckish and political (but wildly overstuffed) blockbuster skip merrily past all the basics of DC’s most righteous figure. The Guardians of the Galaxy man, probably mindful of the many Super-movies that have come before his, races through Kal-El’s origins in a handful of captions over the opening frames: an Antarctic vista into which a battered and vulnerable Superman (David Corenswet) is hurled after his first defeat in battle over the skies of Metropolis. In those few sentences, establishing the existence of metahumans on Earth and the arrival of Superman from the planet Krypton 30 years prior, this DC reboot skips jauntily past the entire plot of Richard Donner’s 1978 classic.  So, there’s no orientation, none of the scene-setting Smallville stuff with Jonathan and Martha Kent (though they do get a touching later scene). We’re not getting those early flirtations with girlfriend Lois Lane (the impressive Rachel Brosnahan) either, or even Clark Kent learning how to use The Daily Planet’s nifty-looking CMS. In fact, we’re not getting much of Clark Kent at all. It’s the most in medias res-iest bit of storytelling imaginable, a gambit that feels more and more misguided as the movie slips deeper into generic superhero terrain in a packed but muddled second half. A giant chasm is carving its way t

The blockbuster of 2025 so far, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is bookended by two scenes in the heart of London. The movie opens with Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his team, including tech wiz Benji (Simon Pegg) and computer specialist Luther (Ving Rhames), emerging from Trafalgar Square tube station and into a throng of police and protestors all on the edge of a riot with armoured trucks standing by. Evil A.I. The Entity has taken control and martial law has been imposed on society. The second scene we won’t spoil, except to say that it has the IMF crew back in the same bustling corner of Trafalgar Square and exiting the same Zone 1 station.   Photograph: Paramount PicturesTrafalgar Square tube station in ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ Amid this dystopian set-up, eagle-eyed viewers will have spotted one major anomaly in the two scenes: Trafalgar Square tube station, of course, does not exist. ‘Charing Cross Station has an entrance in Trafalgar Square but to get Tom and all those extras in – and to get The National Gallery in the background – this new tube station was born,’ explains the film’s supervising location manager Niall O’Shea.  ‘All the Mission: Impossible movies are love letters to the cities they’re in – Fallout is Paris, Dead Reckoning is Rome and Paris – so Trafalgar Square picked itself. It's where a big protest would happen.’ Photograph: Paramount PicturesTrafalgar Square under martial law in ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckon

The seventh ‘Jurassic’ movie, Jurassic World Rebirth is a return to form for a franchise that was looked to be going the way of that ailing Triceratops in the Spielberg original. Props to director Gareth Edwards (The Creator) and OG screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park) for getting back to basics. Their new action-adventure flings terrifying prehistoric critters – swimming, flying and stomping – at a brave band of under-prepared humans on a lush tropical island and pulls it off in often thrilling style.  The movie spans a range of suitably exotic locations, from New York to the Atlantic to the fictional equatorial island of Saint-Hubert, Rebirth’s answer to Isla Nublar off the coast of Costa Rica. To capture its spectacular Central American beaches, valleys and waterfalls, the cast and crew travelled to… South East Asia. Here’s where, and how, it all came together.   Photograph: © 2025 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved. What happens in Jurassic World Rebirth? Dinos may be old hat in the world at large, but humanity hasn’t given up on exploiting them for financial gain in the new movie. With a potential cure for heart disease in his sight, slippery pharma exec Martin Krebs (The French Dispatch’s Rupert Friend) assembles a team to head to the forbidden, dinosaur-laden Ile Saint-Hubert and extract the blood from three different species.  On the team are Jonathan Bailey’s paleontologist Dr Henry Loomis, an acolyte of Jurassic Park’s Alan G

‘Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination…’ For director Paul King, star Timothée Chalamet and the rest of the ‘Wonka’ crew, that world of pure imagination was, well… Watford. The Galeries Gourmet and the wider world of the new Roald Dahl-inspired movie was painstakingly and grandly constructed on sound stages and the back lot at Leavesden. Once home to Hogwarts in ‘Harry Potter’, Warner Bros.’ HQ outside of London reverberated with the sounds of Willy Wonka’s song-filled odyssey from humble travelling chocolatier to confectionary king. But as ‘Wonka’ production designer Nathan Crowley tells us, the creation of the movie’s fairy tale world involved as many secret ingredients as one of Willy Wonka’s Hoverchocs. Little bridges, exits and doorways at Leavesden led to a host of real-life locations, with invisible cuts, VFX and matte work extending the world seamlessly in unexpected ways and to unexpected places.  ‘The town’s name is purposely unscripted,’ he says. ‘We scouted lots of places in Europe but none of them touched this idea of what a Roald Dahl city might be, so we decided to build it on the backlot at Leavesden,’ he says. ‘The architects of Georgian London and medieval Bruges would be very upset.’  We asked the Oscar-nominated production designer to share the story behind ‘Wonka’s real-life UK locations.  Photograph: ShutterstockOxford’s Bridge of Sighs has a close encounter with a giraffe in ‘Wonka’ Bridge of Sighs, Oxford A key part of ‘Wonka’s wo

Gentlemen, rev your Aston Martins and start shaking those martinis, because a new James Bond is on the horizon. Menthol smoke has not yet started billowing out of MGM Studios – the traditional indication that the next 007 has been chosen – with Daniel Craig’s likely replacement still a mystery. What does this mean for the future of the iconic British spy series and its upcoming 26th instalment? Information is limited, but here’s what we know so far.  What does Amazon MGM Studios’ takeover mean for the next James Bond? After months of rumour and speculation, James Bond finally got a new boss in February 2025. Not M, but Amazon MGM Studios who sealed a deal with 007’s producers, Eon’s Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, to take creative control of the franchise.  Broccoli and Wilson will remain co-owners of James Bond but crucially, will step back from controlling the future direction or execution of the franchise. ‘With the conclusion of No Time to Die and Michael retiring from the films, I feel it is time to focus on my other projects,’ Broccoli said in a statement.So what does it all mean for 007? We’re probably a step closer to a release date for Bond 26 and the announcement of a new James Bond to star in it. Maybe a radical change of direction for the whole franchise, too, with immediate speculation that Amazon will look to spin their expensive new IP into the kind of shared universe storytelling that Disney pursued with Lucasfilm and Star Wars after its takeover. Is a