Phil de Semlyen

Outside of a few box-office smashes, 2024 was a relatively quiet year for movies, full of fascinating breakouts and leftfield successes, but few major events. But 2025 is shaping up a bit differently. While it’s still hard to spot another #Barbenheimer on the horizon, or even a Deadpool and Wolverine, the calendar is loaded with the return of monolithic franchises like Avatar, Mission: Impossible and Jurassic World and a few monolithic auteurs, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Bong Joon-ho, Lynne Ramsay, Spike Lee and Steven Soderbergh. Shoot, we might even get a Terrence Malick movie this year. Of course, the most exciting thing going into every year are the films you never see coming. Will we get another The Substance or Nickel Boys? Who knows? But that’s why we keep watching – and you can follow along with our ever-growing list of the best movies of the year below. RECOMMENDED: 📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)🔥 The must-see films for 2025 you can't miss🎥 The 101 greatest films ever made

They claimed that the movie musical was dead and gone. Turns out it was just resting its blisters, tacl-ing off its jazz hands and preparing for a 2020s renaissance that’s seen Wicked, Emilia Pérez, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake picking up 30 Oscar nominations between them, Wonka making a motza at the box office and the genre seems, if not quite as vital as in its RKO/MGM heydays, definitely still in rude health. And speaking of Wicked, Jon M Chu’s flamboyant reimagining of Stephen Schwartz’s Broadway smash, it’s the most recent addition to our list of the great movie musical that takes in everything from 42nd Street at the dawn of sound era to All That Jazz in the heady, hedonist era of Bob Fosse. Dust off your ruby slippers, grab your boater and take a toe-tapping tour of the greatest musicals in the movie canon. RECOMMENDED: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time✍️ The 100 best animated films of all-time🎶 The 30 best film-to-musical adaptations

Cinemagoers love a good scare. That much is evident these days from the commercial and critical success of the horror genre: in 2024, some of the biggest, buzziest movies of the year – Longlegs, The Substance, Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu and the box-office shocker Terrifier 3, to name just four – were designed to scare. And that’s not even to mention leftfield smashes over the last decade, like A Quiet Place, Hereditary and basically everything Jordan Peele has done.   It’s crazy to think, then, that not long ago, horror was thought of as a euphemism for ‘schlock’. If you were alive at the height of the VHS era, you know it wasn’t totally unfounded. Churning out formulaic slashers became a way for hacks and hucksters to make a quick buck, leaving rental store shelves awash in forgettable dreck. It served to overwhelm and obscure the horror genre’s true value – because when done right, no other film experience can conjure more visceral emotions. So let’s correct the record. Here are the 100 greatest horror movies of all-time, drawn from both the current renaissance and those darker days. Written by Tom Huddleston, Cath Clarke, Dave Calhoun, Nigel Floyd, Phil de Semlyen, David Ehrlich, Joshua Rothkopf, Nigel Floyd, Andy Kryza, Alim Kheraj and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🔪 The best new horror movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The 100 best movies of all time🤡 The 21 best Stephen King movies of all time🩸 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories

The streaming year is off to flier. For anyone who’s spent the dark winter months hibernating at home in their downtime, Netflix, BBC, HBO, Apple TV and all those other giants of small-screen entertainment have really delivered on the assignment. To help us hunker down with shows to dispel the winter blues or, in the case of Netflix’s bleak and brutal American Primeval, make them slightly worse – albeit in thunderously widescreen style. And there’s plenty more ahead. Apple TV has The Studio, Seth Rogen’s eagerly-awaited, cameo-packed Hollywood satire, Netflix has announced the finale of Squid Game this summer, along with the end of Stranger Things, more Black Mirror, a second run of Tim Burton’s Wednesday and about a zillion other things, while Disney+ delivers another series of Andor, arguably the standout show of 2022. Here’s everything you need to see... so far. You’re gonna need a comfier couch.RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The 50 best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows to watch in 2025📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

If you were lucky enough to grow up pre-Y2K, you would have likely known little about Korea beyond the conflict in the back pages of your school history book. But that all changed when, in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the country doubled down on funding exportable pop culture in an attempt to rebrand the country on the world stage. The gambit, part designed to attract big business and tourism, was a wild success – and now we have K-Pop, K-dramas and kimchi pouring out of our ears. One of the biggest proponents of the ‘hallyu’ wave, though, has always been filmmaking – with Hollywood-style action blockbuster Shiri; brutal revenge thriller Oldboy; and Academy Awards triumph Parasite among the most resounding victories of a national cinema revitalised from the brink of anonymity. We simply can’t get enough of it today. And for good reason: South Korea is a goldmine of original ideas and storytelling talents who show no signs of taking their feet off the gas as the industry thrives. So why not huff on the metaphorical fumes? Our list of the best Korean movies of all time billows below.Recommended:🇫🇷 The 100 best French movies of all-time🇯🇵 The 50 best Japanese movies of all-time🇭🇰 The 100 best Hong Kong movies of all-time🇮🇹 The best Italian movies of all time: from Bicycle Thieves to The Great Beauty

The most historically complex wars have the greatest filmographies… discuss. Where World War II flicks have often been a showcase for straightforward heroism, the films of the Great War, like those of Vietnam, have had fewer moral certainties to work with. Filtered through the prism of filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Lewis Milestone, King Vidor, GW Pabst and others, the attritional grind of trench warfare has spawned more masterpieces than any other historic event – not to mention the Blackadder Goes Forth. Even 1917, the closest the cinema of World War I has to a Saving Private Ryan, ends with a bunch of men sent foolishly over the top to an unknown fate.    But which of these films have shown the conflict like it was and which have taken major liberties or just reinforced its myths? To help rank the best Great War films, we asked military historian and host of the Old Front Line podcast Paul Reed to dig into the most realistic depictions of the war on the big screen. 💥 The 50 best World War II movies⚔️ The best war films ever made🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

Parents hear all about the difficulties of raising a teenager, but the tween years aren’t much better. Sure, they may not yet be a hormonal know-it-all insisting upon their independence, but now they suddenly have ‘opinions’ and ‘feelings about things’, and they expect you to respect them. That includes movie nights. Where your happy little butterball could once be pleased with anything loud and fast-moving, now they’re getting more discerning. At the same time, they’re not so desperate to prove their maturity that they’re demanding a legal thriller or a Merchant Ivory costume drama. So how do you choose the right flick to please all audiences? To help you through this short-lived but awkward time, we’ve rounded up 36 movies guaranteed to excite and entertain anyone between the ages of ten and 12. And the good news is that much of what works for that demographic is the same stuff you loved at the age, from ’80s blockbusters to silly comedies to adventure flicks to movies about young love and the struggle of growing up. Stream one of these and hold off on the headaches for at least another day. Recommended: 🎒 The 100 best teen movies of all-time👪 The 50 best family films to stream on movie night🤣 The 35 best family comedy movies

What makes a great thriller? Well, let’s see. Are your palms sweaty? Your teeth clenched? Is your heart pumping and your leg shaking uncontrollably? If so, the chances are that the movie you’re watching is doing its job. When done right, a thriller provokes a physical response more than any other genre, bar horror. Exactly how it initiates those reactions, however, varies greatly. In the pantheon of the best thrillers ever made, you’ll find murder, political intrigue, espionage, conspiracy, manipulation, gaslighting, and, of course, lots and lots of crime. But as a category of movie, the thriller is also loosely defined – within the genre, you’ll find examples of science fiction, horror, heists, action, even comedy, along with the ever-nebulous ‘psychological thriller’ subdivision. In other words, the thriller contains multitudes. But the best of them will always draw you in, make you sweat and leave you breathless. Here are the 100 greatest thrillers ever made. Written by Abbey Bender, Joshua Rothkopf, Yu An Su, Phil de Semlyen, Tom Huddleston, Andy Kryza, Tomris Laffly & Matthew Singer RECOMMENDED: 🕯️ The 35 steamiest erotic thrillers ever made😬 The best thriller movies on Netflix💰 The 60 most nerve-racking heist movies ever🧠 The greatest psychological thrillers ever made 

What makes a special cinema? A colossal IMAX screen, Dolby Atmos sound and cutting-edge 4K projectors are all great, but there’s something more that makes a great temple of cinema – a sense of storytelling that starts before you’ve even grabbed your popcorn and taken your seat. There are a few cinemas that truly stand apart: cine-temples so historic, beautiful and unusual that they make taking in a movie feel like an act of pilgrimage. We’ve scoured the globe, from London to Paris, Jaipur and New York to Sydney and Copenhagen, to highlight the 50 most heavenly movie theaters on the planet. From a 12-seat theatre in an old Ontario crafts shop to a 2702-seat grand salle in the City of Light, Time Out is celebrating them in all their architecturally eye-popping, Insta-friendly, just plain drop-dead-gorgeous variety. Pull up a red velvet armchair, plonk your feet on a foot stool and take a trip to the world’s most beautiful cinemas. RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The 100 greatest movies ever made🌏 101 places all movie lovers should visit

Spring is springing in cinemas this March with some blooming big new releases from legends like Bong Joon Ho, Steven Soderbergh, Raoul Peck, Sandhya Suri and the Russo brothers – as well as the green shoots of next-gen auteurs including Karan Kandhari (Sister Midnight), Gints Zilbalodis (Flow) and Mark Anthony Green. The latter is delivering an A24 horror-comedy that could be a cult hit in every sense in Opus. Here’s what to look out for at your local cinema (or on Netflix) this month.RECOMMENDED:📽️ The best films of 2025 (so far)📺 The best TV shows of 2025 you need to stream🏵️ The 100 greatest movies of all time

Netflix changed the game, and then the game changed on Netflix. A decade ago, the company broke the TV mold with House of Cards, the first significant original series from a streaming platform. In the years since, the many other services that followed their lead have stepped up their own original output, and it’s often hard to remember which bingeable phenomenon belongs to which brand. But when you sit down and really look at the legacy, it becomes clear that Netflix still has the strongest catalog out there. Even if the returns have diminished a bit in recent years, the studio is still pumping out more high-quality content than you possibly have time for. So we’ve gone ahead and put together a list of the 40 Netflix originals series you absolutely must binge before you die or cancel your subscription… whichever comes first. And before you get all upset about the absence of Black Mirror and Cobra Kai, we’ve left out shows that originated elsewhere before the platform picked them up. We’re also sticking to scripted series - though you can check out our favourite Netflix true crime docs here. Recommended: 🎥 The 35 best movies on Netflix right now🔥 The 25 best movies on HBO and Max right now👽 The best sci-fi shows streaming on Netflix

For many budding cinephiles, French movies are the final boss of film fandom. In the popular mind, it’s the most highfalutin of movie cultures, laden with philosophy, avant-garde structures and impenetrable characters. But the truth is, few countries can claim to have exerted as strong and consistent an influence over global moviemaking as France. And sure, a lot of it can be hard for non-scholars to grasp – pioneering New Wavers like Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda prided themselves on it.  Once you start digging into the history of French film, though, you’ll discover pleasures unlike those found anywhere else in world cinema. Jumping in, however, can be difficult – and ranking the greatest French films is no easy task. But whether you’re a Nouvelle Vague obsessive or just a big fan of Amélie, you’re sure to discover something new in this countdown of the best French films of all-time. Written by Tom Huddleston, Geoff Andrew, Dave Calhoun, Cath Clarke, Trevor Johnston, Joshua Rothkopf, Keith Uhlich and Matthew Singer  Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time🌏 The best foreign films of all-time🇬🇧 The 100 best British movies🛏 The 101 best sex scenes in movies of all-time

There’s something so bloody-minded about this workmanlike Marvel entry, you can only applaud it. Rather than bowing to grumbles that the modern-day MCU demands too much prior knowledge from its audience, Captain America: Brave New World absolutely insists you have a firm grasp on The Incredible Hulk. Yes, the 2008 one that saw Edward Norton leave the franchise before it even got started.  If, like me, The Incredible Hulk has yet to make your Letterboxd list, some head scratching awaits. Who’s the guy Tim Blake Nelson is playing? Why is Thaddeus Ross, now the President and played by Harrison Ford in place of the late William Hurt, agonising on his relationship with a daughter we never see? Why are we all here? And before you turn your paper over on entry number 35 in the MCU, you’ll also need to swot up on Eternals and its small-screen cousin, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The former will explain the mass of strategically and narratively vital space rock sitting in the Pacific Ocean; the latter sets up Anthony Mackie’s new Captain America, Sam Wilson, and Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), his chirpy sidekick now promoted to Falcon duties. Mackie makes an equally charismatic but much more mortal Captain America to Chris Evans’s Steve Rogers. His sense of inadequacy at replacing his serum-enhanced predecessor provides the movie’s best moment – a vulnerability that should be mirrored by Ross’s heartache over his estranged daughter, were she not marooned in a movie from 17 year

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy Review ‘Fourquels’ are usually where film franchises start to flirt with rock bottom. From Matrix Resurrections to Die Hard 4.0 to Batman & Robin and – shudder – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, they love to coast along on past glories and creaky story beats. One of them even gave us the phrase ‘nuking the fridge’, the perfect shorthand for a movie series blowing itself into orbit.    It’s a joy to report, then, that Mad About the Boy is comfortably the best Bridget Jones outing since Bridget Jones’s Diary. In fact, there’s barely a Silk Cut filter between this and that delightfully goofy first screen incarnation of Helen Fielding’s great singleton.  And there is absolutely no nuking Bridget Jones’ fancy new Smeg fridge. For Renée Zellweger’s still klutzy but now wiser Bridge, living in cosy Hampstead, the singleton Borough era is a distant memory. Ciggies and Chardonnay have been dispensed with (okay, ciggies have been dispensed with), replaced with a big dose of lingering grief for lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Her partner, and dad to her kids, was killed four years previously on a humanitarian mission to Sudan.  Via the attentive direction of Michael Morris (To Leslie) and a fab Zellweger turn, the push-and-pull of Bridget’s new reality – two young children needing their mum, a bunch of old pals, led by the still mouthy Shazzer (Sally Phillips), encouraging her to ‘get back out there’ – is laid out in an immaculate ope

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

Anything with Marlon James’ name on it is worth getting excited about and Get Millie Black is no exception. Already an acclaimed HBO show in the US, the crime drama lands on Channel 4 this week with a screenplay from the Booker Prize-winning ‘A Brief History of Seven Killings’ writer.   Set in London and Kingston, Jamaica, and gradually unpicking a knotty world of corruption and conspiracy, touched by homophobia and the legacy of colonialism, it’s already a critical hit Stateside. ‘A deeply engaging world of characters driven by their unbridled impulses and haunted by ghosts they can’t exorcise’ is how Variety describes it. Photograph: C4Tamara Lawrance as detective Millie-Jean Black What is Get Millie Black about? Tamara Lawrance plays Millie-Jean Black, a Jamaican-born London detective whose fall from favour at Scotland Yard sees her return to the Caribbean and get a job on the missing persons department of the Jamaican Police Force. (The character is based on James’s own mum, Detective Inspector Shirley Dillon-James). Game of Thrones’ Joe Dempsie is Luke Holborn, a London detective sent to Jamaica on a separate investigation. He crosses paths with Black and her partner Curtis (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr) when their search into a missing girl taps into a wider conspiracy. Black’s transgender sister Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen), meanwhile, is living a hardscrabble life in a mozzie-infested Kingston storm drain known as ‘the Gully’. Here, the city’s marginalised queer and trans comm

What makes a special cinema? A colossal IMAX screen and cutting-edge 4K projectors are all great but we also love it when there’s something more that makes a great temple of cinema – a sense of storytelling that starts before you’ve even grabbed your popcorn and taken your seat.  West London’s Electric Cinema, a super-luxe one-screener nestled among the antiques shops and boutiques of Portobello Road, has all that nailed down – as evidenced by its starring spot on Time Out’s list of the World’s 50 Most Beautiful Cinemas. The Electric, which lands at number five, is one of five London cinemas to make the list, which has been relaunched for the first time post-pandemic. Photograph: JJ Farq, Shutterstock Also making the cut are Hackney’s Rio Cinema (number 13), BFI Southbank (32), Mile End’s Genesis Cinema (39) and Curzon Bloomsbury (44).The Electric first opened in 1911, with tickets for the first screening of a 25-minute silent film, Henry VIII, costing sixpence – or £7 in today’s money – and coming with a free bun and an orange. These days ticket will set you back closer to £20, and there’s no bun or orange, although Edwardians didn’t have the choice of a bed at the front or sofa at the back.  Photograph: CurzonCurzon Bloomsbury London cinemas named the most beautiful in the world by Time Out 5) The Electric13) Rio Cinema32) BFI Southbank39) Genesis Cinema 44) Curzon Bloomsbury  From a 12-seat theatre in an old Ontario crafts shop to a 2,702-seat grand salle in the City

Últimamente, se habla mucho de 'salvar las salas de cine', una misión sagrada tanto para los cinéfilos como para los directores. Desde viejos locales con suelo pegajoso que proyectan clásicos de culto para los amantes del cine, pasando por salas independientes con cómodos sofás, multicines ubicados a las afueras de la ciudad con decenas de pantallas y enormes cantidades de palomitas o los pintorescos cines rurales que atienden al público como si fueran viejos amigos, nunca ha habido más opciones para los cinéfilos. Pero hay algunos que realmente destacan: templos del cine tan históricos, bellos e inusuales que hacen que ver una película sea casi un acto de peregrinación. Tras recorrer todo el mundo y descubrir 50 cines espectaculares, dignos de admiración por su variedad arquitectónica, estilo llamativo (apto para Instagram) y sencillamente bellísimos, vemos que hasta tres cines de Madrid forman parte de este ránking elaborado por Time Out así que, sin más dilación, acomódate en una butaca de terciopelo rojo, acompañado de un buen bol de palomitas y descubre cuáles son las salas más bonitas de la capital. Sala Equis Sala Equis (#21) En los años 80, este palacete de Tirso de Molina albergaba uno de los últimos cines porno de Madrid, el Cine Alba. Solo el bar pudo sobrevivir a la reforma de 2017 y a la posterior reinvención del cine como uno de los locales más 'cool' de la ciudad, la Sala Equis. Este espacio multidisciplinario, que acoge proyecciones de películas, encuentros,

How do you recreate a long-gone corner of street-level New York? For Daredevil: Born Again, a Marvel renaissance full of broken glass and broken bones, the answer lay across the city. Hell’s Kitchen, the spiritual home of blind lawyer/vigilante Matt Murdock, is a bit too gentrified these days to do justice to the grimy, scary corner of Manhattan prowled by Daredevil, the Punisher, Kingpin and the other OGs from Stan Lee’s comic book.  Instead, the Marvel production followed the example of Netflix’s 2015-2018 Daredevil run and redressed other corners of the city to create its grungy, ’70s-tinged Hell’s Kitchen. Here’s how they did it – and everything else you need to know about the much-anticipated Disney+ series.   Photograph: Marvel TelevisionMatt Murdock and Wilson Fisk face off What is Daredevil: Born Again about? The series follows the yin-and-yang extremes of blind lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox, reprising the role he took on for three Netflix series). His courtroom struggles for justice are augmented by some very literal, and very bruising, crime fighting in Hell’s Kitchen as superhero Daredevil. For Murdock, balance is never easy to strike and a sense of Catholic guilt eats away at him as he dispatches goons by the truckload.  The new series reunites him with an old nemesis: Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), a man who carries a similar dark passenger in his psychotic, ambitious alter ego Kingpin. This time, Fisk holds political office and is looking to sweep vigilan

There’s been Envelopegate, Slapgate, Jamesbloodyfrancogate, #MeToo Oscars, and #OscarSoWhite. Will the 2025 Academy Awards – the 97th – be entirely glitch-free and controversy-free? Doubtful – and how dull would that be? What is guaranteed is that there’ll be surprises galore in the most open and unpredictable Oscars night in recent memory. Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor… all very much up for grabs. Will Conclave continue its late dash for glory? Will the controversy-stricken Emilia Pérez sink without trace, despite those record-breaking 13 nominations? Will Cynthia Erivo complete an EGOT triumph for the ages?  Stay tuned and we’ll report the wins as the envelopes are unsealed.Recommended:How to watch the 2025 Oscars on TVEverything you need to know about the Academy Awards Rolling news from the Academy Awards 2025 And finally, the big one... Best Picture goes to Anora! Presented by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan – hot damn, it’s Harry and Sally! – the big award of the night goes to Anora. What a night for Sean Baker’s indie gem.  Mikey Madison wins Best Actress for Anora Maybe not a major surprise but still a surprise, Mikey Madison triumphs over hot favourite Demi Moore to win Best Actress. Anora’s fourth win of the night. Sean Baker wins Best Director for Anora Sean Baker accepts the award with a proper cri de coeur for the future of cinemas. ‘Right now the theatregoing experience is under threat, especially independent cinemas and it’s up to us to support them,’ he sa

Anora – and indie cinema – was the big winner at the 97th Academy Awards, picking up Best Picture among a total of five wins.  In the most evenly-spread Oscars night of recent times, Sean Baker’s screwball sex worker drama claimed the big prize, Best Picture, as well as Best Director for Baker, Best Actress for Mikey Madison, Best Editing and Best Original Screenplay. The Brutalist had a great night, too. Brady Corbet’s period epic won for Cinematography, Score and Best Actor for Adrien Brody – his second in the category after 2003’s The Pianist. As expected, Emilia Pérez didn’t turn many of its record-breaking 13 nominated into wins. Jacques Audiard’s transgender cartel musical picked up Best Song for ‘El Mal’, and Zoe Saldaña won Best Supporting Actress.  Wicked won for Production Design and Costume Design, while Dune: Part Two had a lock in the technical categories, winning for Sound and Visual Effects. Kieran Culkin won Best Supporting Actor for A Real Pain. Palestinian-Israeli co-production No Other Land was a very popular Best Documentary winner, and led to the most political moment of the night, with co-director Yuval Abraham calling for a change in US foreign policy towards Gaza. After all the controversy, shitposting and lobbed hand-grenades of a volatile and unpredictable awards season, Oscars night went off with barely a hitch. Hosted by Conan O’Brien with a deft touch and some excellent zingers, it was all fairly safe and apolitical. Adam Sandler turned up ​in sho

The most turbulent – are we okay to use the word ‘deranged’? – Oscars race in modern memory will be drawing to a close this Sunday when host Conan O’Brien gets the 97th Academy Awards underway.  Hot favourites have waned, outsiders have shot up the betting odds and extraordinary controversies have blown up in an awards season that’s lasted long enough for Conclave to have gone from hot favourite to rank outsider and then back to hot favourite and still left time for the fate of the actual Pope to become a factor in it all. If by now you’re just wildly confused by it all, well, join the club honestly. But also join the nearest viewing party, because this will be one Oscars worth staying up for. Surprises are guaranteed in race that’s too close to be called and on a night that will put heavy pressure on O’Brien to turn bitter recrimination in solid LOLs. Which he will somehow manage in that nervy-genius way of his.   Here’s what you need to know. When are the Oscars 2025? The 97th Academy Awards take place at LA’s Dolby Theatre on Sunday, March 2 – a full week earlier than last year.  What time will the Oscars air in the UK? In excellent news for movie-loving night owls in the UK, this year’s Academy Awards will again start an hour earlier than its traditional LA start time. The ceremony itself kicks off at midnight. How to watch the Oscars in the UK After a run of years of Sky broadcasting ended in 2024, the Oscars will continue on free to view this year. The whole ceremony, a

You may have seen Purple Rain but have you ever properly heard it?  Prince’s 1984 movie, widely accepted as an all-time movie musical classic, is no stranger to the big screen, with regular re-releases and repertory screenings down the years. But Odeon has a brand new Purple Rain experience revving into its cinemas on Wednesday, March 5. For one day only, the film will be screening in the UK chain’s most cutting edge cinema screens across the country – delivering classics like ‘When Doves Cry’ and ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ with all the sonic and visual majesty Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision can provide. And if you’re unfamiliar with Prince’s game, what better moment to experience this cult classic at wall-shaking volumes? Roger Ebert described it ‘the best rock film since Pink Floyd The Wall’, and Time Out called Prince ‘a teasing, hot amalgam of Marc Bolan, Nijinsky and the Scarlet Pimpernel’ as the movie’s troubled Minneapolis musician The Kid.  Catch it next Wednesday at one of the following Odeons: Leicester Square London West End Liverpool One  Leeds Thorpe Park Birmingham Head to the official site for all the timings and to book tickets. Read Time Out’s review of Purple Rain.The best movies of 2025 (so far).

O último papel de Gene Hackman no grande ecrã foi em Alce Daí, Senhor Presidente (Welcome to Mooseport, no original), de 2004. Já tivemos tempo para nos adaptarmos à sua ausência. Ainda assim, a notícia da sua morte não deixa de ser dolorosa. Indiscutivelmente o melhor actor de cinema americano do último meio século, o californiano ganhou dois Óscares, mas poderia ter conquistado mais uma dúzia. Com um charme maroto que nos papéis de vilão lhe dava um ar de lobo e de predador – terá havido melhor némesis de super-heróis do que o seu Lex Luthor com ar de Trump nos filmes do Super-Homem de Richard Donner? – e um carisma que inundava o ecrã, Gene Hackman era uma presença electrizante mesmo nos seus filmes menos importantes. De Os Tenenbaums – Uma Comédia Genial (Royal Tenenbaums, 2001) a A Firma (The Firm, 1993), a sua especialidade era fazer-nos ficar do lado do patife – embora não houvesse muito que não conseguisse fazer. A sua grandeza no ecrã era tal que foram necessárias duas outras estrelas de cinema para apresentar o seu prémio Cecil B. DeMille, de carreira, nos Globos de Ouro de 2003. Aqui estão cinco cenas que mostram os seus poderes. “I’m Captain of this boat, now shut the fuck up!” – Crimson Tide (1995) * “Eu sou o capitão deste navio, agora cala a boca!” – ‘Maré Vermelha’ Hackman foi o derradeiro rebelde em muitos dos seus melhores papéis, desde Os Incorruptíveis Contra a Droga (The French Connection, 1971) a Mississipi em Chamas (Mississippi Burning, 1988).

Gene Hackman’s last screen role was in 2004’s Welcome to Mooseport, so we’ve had time to adjust to his absence from our screens but still, boy, does news of his passing still hurt. Arguably the finest American screen actor of the past half century, the California won two Oscars but might have won about a dozen more. With a roguish charm that could switch to wolfish and predatory for his villainous turns – has there been a better superhero nemesis than his Trump-y Lex Luthor in the Richard Donner Superman films? – and charisma that flooded the screen, he was an electrifying presence even in his lesser films. From Royal Tenenbaums to The Firm, his stock-in-trade was making you side with the scoundrel, but, honestly, there wasn’t much he couldn’t do. His on-screen greatness was such, it took two other movie stars to introduce his lifetime achievement award. Here’s five scenes that show off his powers. 1. ‘I’m Captain of this boat, now shut the f*ck up!’ – Crimson Tide (1995) Hackman was the ultimate rule-bender in many of his greatest roles, from The French Connection to Mississippi Burning. But in Tony Scott’s nuclear thriller, a sweat-caked chamber piece disguised as a blockbuster, he trades power moves with Denzel Washington’s morally courageous 2IC as a submarine commander whose desire to go by the book may or may not mask a degree of psychopathy. Like a pot boiling over, he hits a tipping point in this pivotal scene where amused intellectual jousting giv

What makes a special cinema? A colossal IMAX screen, Dolby ATMOS sound and cutting-edge 4K projectors are all great, but there’s something more that makes a great temple of cinema – a sense of occasion and storytelling that starts before you’ve even grabbed your popcorn and taken your seat.  Time Out’s list of the 50 Beautiful Cinemas in the World has been unveiled for 2025, and it reveals that the UK has more than its share of gorgeous picture houses. Featuring on the list are seven UK cinemas, including the Shetland Islands’s Mareel, the most northerly picture house in the country, and the Everyman Bath (formerly the Tivoli), an opulent West Country venue that’s been keeping the city in new movies since 2018. There are five London cinemas on the list. Curzon Bloomsbury, Mile End’s Genesis Cinema, BFI Southbank and Hackney’s Rio Cinema all feature. The highest ranking UK cinema on the list is Notting Hill’s ultra-luxe The Electric, which sits at number 5. Photograph: The Stella Cinema RathminesDublin’s Stella Cinema Rathmines Also featured is a venue in Ireland: Dublin’s Stella Cinema Rathmines, Time Out’s current pick as the UK and Ireland’s finest cinema, which comes in at 14. Read the full list of the 50 most beautiful cinemas in the world here.The 50 best cinemas in the UK and Ireland.The best new films of 2025 (so far).

Golden beaches. Tasty seafood. Low taxes. Being close enough to France to steal its wifi. Foyle’s War.  Conduct a Family Fortunes-style poll of what your average Brit associates with the Channel Islands and those are some of the words likely to ‘ding’ on the big screen. But you wouldn’t be surprised if the number one spot belonged to John Nettles’ BBC cop Bergerac – especially among those old enough to remember the TV cop’s Jersey crime solving back during its 1980s run. Well, the smooth sleuth has been rebooted in a new six-episode U&DRAMA reboot – kind of like Batman, if Batman wore sports jackets and the Batmobile was a 1949 Triumph Roadster. As before, the series is about to work wonders for tourism in Jersey, showcasing the glorious scenery of the largest of the 19 Channels Islands. Photograph: BBCJohn Nettles as the 1980s Jim Bergerac What is the new Bergerac about?  Played by The Split’s Damien Molony, the new Jim Bergerac is a more troubled character than his blue-eyed 1980s predecessor. He’s lost his wife and gained a drinking habit, as well as a no-nonsense mother-in-law (acting legend Zoë Wanamaker) and a teenage daughter (Chloé Sweetlove) who needs him back on track asap. The people of Jersey need it too, with a murderer on the loose and a member of the island’s upper-crust lying in the morgue. Is the chief suspect, a ruthless local tycoon payed by Life on Mars’s Philip Glenister, really the perpetrator? Billed as ‘a knotty whodunnit that will keep the audience