Phil de Semlyen

Updated November 2025: From summer blockbusters to festival sleepers, these are the 25 movies our critics think define 2025 so far. Expect prestige dramas, horror gems, wild indies and some surprise streaming hits - all watched and ranked by Time Out’s film team. Quick Picks: 2025’s best films by genre: 😂 Best comedy: The Naked Gun 😱 Best horror movie: Weapons 🥋 Best action movie: One Battle After Another🎭 Best drama: Nickel Boys🪆 Best family film: Flow September brought Splitsville, a whip-smart indie screwball about two couples testing open marriages, The Lost Bus, Paul Greengrass’s tense wildfire epic starring an on-form Matthew McConaughey, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. With three quarters of the year gone, a few trends are starting to emerge. Superhero movies aren’t dead, but they’re no longer the guaranteed juggernauts they once were. Family films are booming. Gen Z is generating its own IP. Audiences still crave horror. And China’s home-grown hits are driving the global box office without Hollywood’s help. After years of post-pandemic hand-wringing, the film industry looks to be in better health than anyone expected. Sure, awards season could still change everything, but so far 2025 has given us plenty to celebrate – from genre-smashing auteur vehicles like Sinners and Weapons, to daring experiments such as The Nickel Boys, Flow and Better Man, and welcome returns from directors like Steven Soderbergh and Danny Boyle. In short, it’s been

Sure, daylight and sunshine have been replaced with the kind of icy climes only a White Walker could love, but don’t despair: your local cinema is here for you. There’s a wide array of new big-screen offerings to see this month, including Edgar Wright’s action-packed take on Stephen King’s The Running Man, a much anticipated acting return for Daniel Day-Lewis, and November’s big kahuna, Wicked: For Good. Here’s ten to get started with.  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

Horror films aren’t just for Halloween, but they certainly make spooky season that bit more terrifyingly fun. Whether you’re a hide-behind-the-cushion kind of watcher or someone who revels in every jumpscare and nightmare-inducing villain, joining a Halloween film screening with fellow horror enthusiasts is guaranteed way to get your heart racing and your blood curdling this All Hallow’s Eve. If you’re firmly against any blood, guts and gore, you can still get involved – not all Halloween screenings are focused on bone-chilling bumps in the night. There are also plenty of more lighthearted picks to choose from, like the camp-but-festive Hocus Pocus or The Rocky Horror Picture Show, that will get you in the mood without scaring you to within an inch of your life. Recommended:🎃 Our guide to Halloween in London😱 The 100 best horror movies of all time👹 The 66 greatest movie monsters of all time

Horror knows no calendar. Sure, for casual fright fans, October might be considered Spooky Season. But for the genre’s true aficionados, any month, any day – shoot, any hour – is a good time for a scary movie. Be forewarned, though: series like Stranger Things and Midnight Mass notwithstanding, Netflix hasn’t churned out too many of its own upstanding horror flicks, but the platform does have a surprisingly decent amount of terrifying classics, new-school scares and hidden gems, from monster movies to zombie flicks to slashers. Here are the best horror movies currently streaming on Netflix right now.

Updates for 2025: New monsters are made every year, so we’ve added a few modern beasties we’re sure we’ll be haunting our nightmares for decades to come, including the latest interpretation of Nosferatu, the most grotesque of many abominations in The Substance and the horrifying, multi-mouthed demon from 2022’s Smile.  The movie industry has always been crawling with monsters, and we don’t just mean predatory agents and old-school studio heads. We’re talking about the monsters borne from childhood nightmares, or the deranged imaginations of some very creative adults. We’re talking predatory aliens. We’re talking vampires and werewolves. We’re talking skyscraper-sized apes, sentient globs of carnivorous space goo, interdimensional leather daddies and razor-toothed sewer clowns. In some cases, the monsters of cinema have become as famous as any actor – movie stars unto themselves.  It’s those most iconic beasts, demons and kaiju we’re saluting in this list of the greatest movie monsters of all-time. A few caveats: this list largely follows the same parameters as our monster movies list, meaning that it steers away from non-mutated animals – sorry, Bruce the Shark and the spiders from Arachnophobia – as well as slasher villains such as Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers. But zombies? Trolls? Brundleflies? You’ll find them all below.  Quick picks: 📍 Best vampire: Nosferatu (Nosferatu, 1922)📍 Best kaiju: Godzilla (Godzilla, 1954)📍 Best zombie: Bub (Day of the Dead, 1985) 📍 Best d

November 2025 update: New Emma Thompson conspiracy thriller Down Cemetery Road kicks off another chockers month in streamingland, with the first part of the finale of Stranger Things bringing things to a shadowy end on November 26. New adds to our list include the third part of the BBC’s exceptional Belfast cop show Blue Lights and a couple of notable Netflix sequels.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, Wednesday and Poker Face have all built on incredibly satisfying first seasons with equally masterful second runs. 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. More recently, HBO’s Task hit the spot with a blue-collar crime series that wasn’t afraid to get down and dirty. Watercooler viewing is everywhere at the moment, and that’s not going to change anytime soon, with Stranger Things coming to an end and about a zillion other things still come. Here’s everything you need to see... so far.  Best TV and streaming shows at a glance: 📍 The Pitt (Emmy Best Drama winner) – watch on HBO Max in the US📍 Adolescence (Best Limited Series winner) – watch on Netflix worldwid

Updated for 2025: After a banner few years for the horror genre, several recent films have managed to claw their way into our latest update: 2023’s Talk To Me, which remixes genre tropes into something fresh, frightening and zeitgeisty; 2024’s The Substance, easily the most disgusting movie ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar; and 2025’s Sinners, a blockbuster smash that’s far from being just a ‘vampire movie’, while being an extremely awesome vampire movie at the same time. We have also moved Ari Aster's disturbing supernatural drama Hereditary into the top 12, owing to the influence it has exerted on several films to come after exploring grief and buried family secrets. Cinemagoers love a good scare. That much is evident these days from the commercial and critical success of the horror genre: in 2025 alone, the latest instalments of The Conjuring, Final Destination and The Black Phone franchises are among the highest-grossing movies of the year, while wholly original stories like Sinners and Weapons are legitimate box-office phenoms. And that’s not even to mention leftfield Halloween-friendly 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 and monster movies became a way for hacks and hucksters t

War has long fascinated filmmakers, no conflict more so than World War II. No wonder: the sheer scale of the destruction, the atrocities associated with it and its place in human history make it a natural framework for stories of resistance, survival and unimaginable loss. So many movies have been made about the war, it’s almost a genre unto itself.  For that reason, choosing the best World War II movies is a challenge. That’s why, along with polling our well-studied Time Out writers, we also called in an outside expert: Quentin Tarantino, a man who knows a thing or two about making a great WW2 film. Among the selections, you’ll find towering epics, intimate character studies, intense documentaries, historical revisions and even a few comedies. War is hell, and World War II was particularly hellish – but at least we have these films to help make some sense of it. Written by Tom Huddleston, Adam Lee Davies, Paul Fairclough, Anna Smith, David Jenkins, Dan Jolin, Phil de Semlyen, Alim Kheraj & Matthew Singer Recommended: ⚔️ The 50 best war movies of all-time🎖️ The best World War I movies, ranked by historical accuracy🇺🇸 The 20 best Memorial Day movies

How exactly does one define British cinema? It’s more difficult to nail down than it seems. Okay, so the accents usually give it away. But the essential qualities of the best British movies are as wide-ranging as the Commonwealth itself. In terms of the stories it tells, it’s basically limitless. Want a widescreen epic? Go straight to the work of David Lean or Powell and Pressburger. In the market for a smaller, more personal drama? Try Joanna Hogg or Shane Meadows. Thrillers? Comedies? Period dramas? Movies about drugs? Movies that seem to be on drugs themselves? The UK film industry has produced them all, each displaying a distinctly English slant. In compiling this list of the best British movies of all-time, we surveyed a diverse array of actors, directors, writers, producers, critics and industry heavyweights, from Wes Anderson, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Sam Mendes and Terence Davies, David Morrissey, Sally Hawkins and Thandiwe Newton. Unsurprisingly, the results are as diverse as the country itself. Written by Dave Calhoun, Tom Huddleston, David Jenkins, Derek Adams, Geoff Andrew, Adam Lee Davies, Paul Fairclough, Wally Hammond, Alim Kheraj, Matthew Singer & Phil de Semlyen Recommended: 💂 50 great British actors🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time🎥 The 100 best movies of the 20th century so far🇬🇧 The 100 best London songs 

Family movies are having a ginormous year. The top five box office hits have all been kid-friendly capers of different stripes, from the blocky mayhem of Minecraft to the alien mayhem of Lilo & Stitch and fantasy adventure of How To Train Your Dragon. And the biggest of all of them you may not have even heard of – unless you’ve been in China. Because the holidays are long and children’s attention spans are short, we’ve assembled a definitive list of 2025’s family-friendly fare worth its salt (okay, sugar) – and ranked it by how likely it is to keep all of the family entertained, not just little Billy. Sorry, Billy.     Quick Picks: 2025’s best kids films by genre: 😂 Best kids comedy: Lilo & Stitch😱 Best spooky kids movie: K-Pop Demon Hunters🪆 Best family film: Flow👧 Best for very young kids: Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie

October update: Halloween season delivers a monster month of new genre offerings, with doggy horror Good Boy, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and landline-sploitation sequel The Black Phone 2 all here to scare us semi-witless. Unlike many of its monsters, vampires and virus-y Alphas, the horror genre is alive and well. It is, you might even say, well-endowed. Because anyone who loves that shivery sensation of being spooked witless in a cinema is being a lot better served than anyone searching for big laughs. The biggest stories in horror this year – Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Zach Cregger’s Weapons – have packed in audiences and birthed a million memes along the way, but don’t sleep on the following flicks either. Best horrors of 2025 at a glance: 📍 28 Years Later – Netflix (US); also on Prime Video/Apple TV+📍 Nosferatu - US: streaming on Prime Video; US & UK: rent/buy on PVOD📍 Sinners – US: streaming on Max; UK: rent/buy on PVOD📍 Weapons – Rent/buy now on Prime Video/Apple TV (PVOD); still in some cinemas📍 Final Destination: Bloodlines – Max (US); US & UK: rent/buy on PVOD

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

Two bungalows with a shared partition, a dog, and a couple of Oscar nominees at the top of their formidable games: Paul Andrew Williams’s pared-back and bruising three-hander is a realist drama with deep undercurrents that whirlpool into a denouement you will not see coming.  On a nondescript street in an unnamed town a few metres from a set of traffic lights that seem forever stuck on red, Brenda Blethyn’s elderly, arthritic pensioner Elsie muddles along with a life, assisted by a series of box-ticking private carers and the occasional call from her distant, middle-aged son John (W1A’s Jason Watkins). Those comings and goings are observed by her wiry, sardonic neighbour Colleen (Andrea Riseborough). The distance between these two lonely souls – a stretch of lawn with a lone splash of colour provided by Elsie’s flowerbed – shortens in increments as Colleen and her beefy bull terrier Sabre pile over to help with the shopping and pick up the slack. Soon, Elsie is providing that most British sign of welcome – sticking the kettle on.Blethyn is a two-time Oscar nominee and Riseborough, of course, earned one as For Leslie’s working-class alcoholic, and they are both absolutely stellar as two strangers finding a gentle connection. Both communicate different forms of brittleness – physical for one, psychological for the other – with immense skill, but leave space for a third kind: the idea that their connection is also alarmingly fragile. Colleen’s manner and lack of back story plant

Measured rather than playing to the gallery, The Choral is Brassed Off in a minor key – an elegant, Yorkshire-set exploration of music as a spiritual morale-boost in the darkest times. With Ralph Fiennes gravely essaying the controversial choirmaster at its heart, it does a lovely job of swerving the obvious notes but misplaces its stirring crescendo. In fairness, the setting isn’t a joyous one. We’re in the fictional mill town of Ramsden in 1916, a Yorkshire community rocked by steady losses on the Western Front. Word from France comes in the form of death notices delivered by postie Lofty (Oliver Briscombe) to bereft mothers. The town is divided between those eager to do their bit and those who fear that they or their young loved-ones will soon be called on to die in the trenches. The local choral society is busy trying to lift the town’s spirits with a production of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Except local patron and mill owner Alderman Duxbury (Roger Allam) is stuck trying to replace the departing choirmaster who’s just joined up. And when everyone twigs than Bach was, in fact, a Hun, the question becomes moot. It won’t do to be getting cosy with German culture in a time of war – although, as their new musical director Dr Henry Guthrie (Fiennes) points out, that would rule out Haydn, Beethoven and most of the other options too. Guthrie’s own German past soon marks his card too, although he claws back some patriotic points by suggesting a modernised version of Elgar’s ‘The

The jury’s out on popcorn and the case has been made against phone use (time to criminalise?), but where do we stand on big, ugly, drenching-the-cinema-floor sobbing? Chloé Zhao’s (Nomadland) Tudor tearjerker makes the debate suddenly germane. ‘Take tissues’ is a hopeless cliché. Tissues won’t do. You’ll need towels.  With Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal delivering the performances of their careers, Hamnet tells the story behind Shakespeare’s great tragedy – Hamlet – and much more besides. The wild power of motherhood; the fearsome responsibility of parenting; the jolting anxiety of nurturing something precious in a time of death; the drive for creative expression. Zhao holds all these primal but relatable forces in check before unleashing them in an emotionally totalising final reel. Devotees of Maggie O'Farrell’s 2020 novel, a deeper dive, of course, into the deep wells of bewitching force-of-nature Agnes Hathaway (Buckley) and her genius-in-the-making husband William Shakespeare (Mescal), will be reassured that the author has collaborated with Zhao for an adaptation that’s the right kind of lean. Gone are narrative curlicues that enrich on the page but would clutter on screen: early dating strife; Shakespeare’s journeys to London; the establishment of The Globe; a whole flea-cam interlude that follows the plague carrier from Asia to Stratford-upon-Avon and would look awesome in a David Cronenberg film. Hamnet is a movie that finds power in simplicity.  And Zhao trusts that

An award-winning slice of life set on Paris’s margins set over 48 helter-skelter hours, Souleymane’s Story is the latest in a series of social realist dramas to tackle Europe’s migrant crisis from the perspective of African migrants. The Dardennes’ Tori and Lokita (2022), Alice Diop’s Saint Omer (2023), and Matteo Garrone’s fantastically-tinged Io Capitano (2024) have shared the stories behind the sensationalist headlines – and here’s another one to bring deep humanity and insight to this political football. Io Capitano followed two Senegalese kids on the Saharan people-trafficking route to Italy. Here, French director Boris Lojkine could almost be picking up where Garrone left off. His twenty-something protagonist, Souleymane Sangaré (Abou Sangaré), has travelled the same path – from Guinea this time – and we meet him as a cog in Paris’s exploitative gig economy, cycling frantically to deliver food orders to apartments across the city and thrusting bags of takeaway into the hands of Parisians who barely notice him. Lojkine, who co-wrote the naturalistic screenplay with Delphine Agut, has unearthed a real talent in newcomer Sangaré. A Guinean who travelled to France in similar circumstances, he obviously understands Souleymane and his fraying emotions intimately. But it takes more than first-hand experience to inhabit a character with this much subtlety and skill. Souleymane is introduced in a flash-forward to the interview with France’s asylum affairs people that will decide

Surely the first murder-mystery to pay active homage to Scooby-Doo, Rian Johnson’s latest addition to the franchise he created and presides over with irrepressible glee is the most out-there and fun so far. There’s no great Dane and no one leaps into anyone’s arms in terror, but a goofy spirit runs through its veins – along with all the usual poisons and industrial-strength tranquilisers you’d expect to find in a movie full of narrative trapdoors and Grand Guignol excesses. It’s on the long side – think bread knife, rather than something for chopping carrots – and the ending is hardly the last word in bow-tying neatness, but Johnson has assembled his strongest cast yet and provides them with entertainingly ‘extra’ characters to inhabit – and for us to tut at. Best of all, Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor form a sleuthing double act with shades of Holmes and Watson.  The Mystery Machine here, of course, is the stylish old banger belonging to Craig’s southern gent detective Benoit Blanc, a bourbon-sipping Columbo eight steps ahead of his smug suspects. He arrives in a rural New York community presided over by Josh Brolin’s bullying Catholic priest, Jefferson Wicks. Someone has been murdered but who did the deed? And does a priceless missing diamond have something to do with it? Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor are a double act with shades of Holmes and Watson The list of possibles includes Andrew Scott as a sci-fi novelist turned conspiracy theorist, Jeremy Renner’s cash-strapped

Party like its 1929 this Halloween, as musician Hugo Max provides viola accompaniment to a series of German expressionist classics at Prince Charles Cinema, Hampstead’s Well Walk Theatre and Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley. On the slate are The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, Häxan and Der Golem. Expect the unexpected in a unique and transportingly old-world cinemagoing experience. RECOMMENDED: The best scary film screenings in London for Halloween

Spectacular scares are the name of the game at Rooftop Film Club’s Halloween offering, which will be turning Peckham’s majestically appointed Bussey Building into a house of horrors (okay, roof of horrors). On the programme are everything from grown-up frighteners like Sinners, Get Out and Final Destination: Bloodlines; to more family-friendly fare like Monsters, Inc. and Hocus Pocus. Final Girl Fridays will deliver classic scream queens on a weekly basis, while Fireside screenings come with a personal wood-burning heater and hot chocolates. Tickets are £14 for adults and £8 for kids. Oh, and Rooftop Film Club is also hosting a witchy Halloween Party on November 1. Dress to distress!

The odd Twisters apart, Hollywood isn’t exactly filling our cinemas with cataclysmic visions of natural and man-made disasters these days – presumably because the TV news has got that covered. So Paul Greengrass’ (Captain Phillips, The Bourne Ultimatum) tale of humble heroism in the face of the apocalyptic 2018 Californian wildfires has a satisfyingly old-fashioned feel to go with its rousing storytelling. A callback to the days of ’70s ‘master of disaster’ Irwin Allen, it’s full of people putting themselves in harm’s way with minimum fuss, cool-headed professionals circling things on maps, and a visceral sense of rising panic. With the British action maestro behind the camera, there’s a dispassionate, procedural quality that eschews all the flag-waving that can blight the genre. The flags here are mostly on fire.  At its heart are two monumental forces: a hellish inferno that burns like the fires of Mordor across vast West Coast valleys towards the in-aptly named town of Paradise, and a sweaty Matthew McConaughey. The Interstellar man plays school-bus driver Kevin McKay, a luckless divorced dad failing to fix his painful relationship with his son, deal with his ex or figure out how to look after his ailing mum. There’s an almost sadistic level of overkill when Greengrass and Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby’s screenplay demands that he takes his dying dog to be put down, too. Then a rogue power line, bone-dry drought conditions and high winds conspire to set the area a

Comedy is often described as ‘tragedy plus time’. But what if the formula works in reverse, too? That’s one conclusion you can draw from this vain attempt to recapture the helium high of This Is Spinal Tap, one the funniest and cleverest comedy movies ever made. Forty years on, the laughs are in tragically short supply as Nigel Tufnell, Derek Smalls and Dave St Hubbins reunite for one last gig in another mockumentary that’s taken director Marty Di Bergi (okay, Rob Reiner) four decades to make and still feels half-baked.  There are jokes – well, joke-adjacent remarks – about death, drummers and lots of chat about cheese. We find Tufnell (Christopher Guest) in rock retirement, estranged from his band mates and running a small cheese and guitar shop in Berwick-on-Tweed. Bassist Smalls (Harry Shearer), meanwhile, has a glue museum in south London and writes terrible rock operas with names like ‘Hell Toupee’. Lead singer St Hubbins (Michael McKean) is lending his talents to Californian mariachi outfits and writing hold music for customer service phone lines (‘This one won a Holdie,’ he points out proudly). So far, s’okay. The band’s cricket-bat-wielding manager Ian Faith is no more (actor Tony Hendra died in 2021), leaving the band’s contract with his enthusiastic daughter (Kerry Godliman). She sets to work reuniting the bickering old rockers for a reunion gig in New Orleans, with Chris Addison’s slimy svengali figure standing by to take advantage. From there, the bum notes come t

Cheesier than a wheel of Stilton and about as edgy, Downton Abbey bows out with a cosy but loveable final instalment that will leave few dry eyes among long-time fans of Julian Fellowes’ British TV thoroughbred.  It’s a third big-screen instalment that’s one long ending: to the characters, to the house, to the certainties of Edwardian England. No movie has had this many goodbyes since The Return of the King.  It’s mostly soirées and teas and trips to the theatre, though there is a vague gesture at a plot. A handsome American (Alessandro Nivola) with Wall Street airs arrives in Blighty to stir things up; a prospective visit from Noël Coward gets everyone in a flap; and a prize or two needs giving out at the county fair – a task newcomer Simon Russell Beale’s harrumphing country type isn’t making any easier. The headline news is that Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is now divorced from her feckless husband, which gets her rudely booted out of polite society. Things have changed in 1930s England, but they’re still basically nightmarish if you don’t have a moustache.  Money is in short supply at the grand old pile, too, thanks to dopey Uncle Harold’s (Paul Giamatti) bad investments and the post-Depression squeeze, and there’s no Violet Crawley to provide snarky reassurances (the formidable old dame gazes down from a portrait, like Vigo the Carpathian). Maggie Smith’s presence always brought a sharp note to Fellowes’ melodious rhythms and it’s missing here. No movie has had this many

Spare a thought for whoever has to give this wildly obscenity-strewn biopic a rating. Not since Ken Loach’s cheery whisky heist caper The Angel’s Share got hit with a 15 certificate for dropping one too many ‘aggressive “c*nts”’ has there been such a disparity between intent and delivery in a screenplay. Here, writer-director Kirk Jones presides over a Tourette’s Syndrome (TS) story with a potty mouth but not a mean-spirited bone in its body. It’s a ‘PG’ yarn with an ‘18’ gob.Unlike, say, Rain Man, which sidelined and misrepresented the neurodiversity at its centre, the ’90s-set I Swear ushers you right into the tormented headspace of young Scotsman John Davidson as he copes with a neurological condition that leaves him with uncontrollable tics and sees him ostracised from an uncomprehending society, and even his own family. Played as a bubbly 13-year-old in ’90s Galashiels by newcomer Scott Ellis Watson and a more circumspect twentysomething by The Rings of Power’s Robert Aramayo – both delivering terrific, likeable performances – I Swear charts the onset of Davidson’s condition to an adulthood in a kind of self-imposed isolation. But it opens with him collecting an MBE from the Queen for his pioneering educational work on TS, an upbeat framing device to hold onto as the story flashes back to a life with some heartbreaking lows. It’s a ‘PG’ yarn with an ‘18’ gob Whether getting expelled from school for dropping a c-bomb on his headmaster, being shunned by his family, having

In his genius 1985 documentary Sherman’s March, director Ross McElwee follows in the footsteps of a Civil War general’s infamous advance through the Confederacy. Haunted by a recent break-up, the doleful young filmmaker ends up far more preoccupied with finding a girlfriend. The film’s Ken Burns-meets-The Inbetweeners awkwardness and charm gave him a Sundance hit and made it a cult classic (if not especially helpful in understanding the Civil War). Forty years on, the stunning Remake lays bare McElwee’s own battles, the least of which is a mooted Hollywood remake of his breakthrough doc. A tear-stained, deeply personal and utterly singular documentary, it tells the story of the young son he lost to a Fentanyl overdose, captured via home video footage taken across three decades. ‘It’s been seven years since you died,’ he says in the voiceover, ‘and I still miss you every day’. Throat meet lump.  After Sherman’s March McElwee did find his person – wife Marilyn. They have two kids: bubbly, bright-witted son Adrian and a sunbeam of a daughter in Mariah, who the couple adopts in Paraguay. Those experiences become McElwee’s 2008 documentary In Paraguay. But every experience they share gets captured. He rarely stops filming.  Inevitably, this becomes grating for Marilyn and Mariah, who start to feel like characters in a movie he never calls ‘cut’ on. There’s divorce and then a lonely relocation. Adrian, though, has caught the bug. He grows up wanting to follow in his dad’s footsteps

Like its Creature, Guillermo del Toro’s new take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is still new to the world but has been on a quest for the love that it didn’t universally find when it premiered at the autumn festivals. But after a couple of weeks in cinemas, it’s now lurching powerfully onto Netflix with a groundswell of affection behind it – and the beginnings of real Oscar buzz. We’ve loved it from day one and can’t wait to bathe again in its ornate, handcrafted world-building, gothic aura and gory slabs of body horror. The movie’s use of real-world locations and extraordinary sets are a major treat, too. Oscar-nominated production designer Tamara Deverell talks us through how – and where – del Toro’s sweeping horror passion project came together. Foto: Cortesía What is Netflix’s Frankenstein about? The Nightmare Alley director’s Frankenstein is not, of course, the first to spark onto the screen. Wikipedia places the number of feature films featuring some version of the stitched-together monster at 423, ranging from Boris Karloff's iconic 1931 interpretation to the 1990 horror-comedy Frankenhooker. The story, of course, follows conceited scientist Victor Frankenstein’s (Oscar Isaac) efforts to create new life – and the dire consequences of his success.  Del Toro’s version is a more faithful version than most – in spirit, if not always plot and location. Mary Shelley’s 1818 novella is a travelogue that spans Europe, from Italy and Switzerland to the Orkney isles in Scotland

A near-guaranteed Oscar nominee for production design, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein marries body horror, science fiction and gothic romanticism with an early 19th century period detail that deepens and enriches its world-building to hyper-immersive levels. To help create this world, production designer Tamara Deverell and del Toro explored a handful of lesser-known London museums, gathering visual references and doing what we can only describe as historical vibe-farming. Watch the film and then head to these spots for a full immersion into the science and wonder behind this new Frankenstein.  Photograph: Jess Hand for Time Out Sir John Soane’s Museum Like the British Museum’s exhibits crammed into a single Georgian townhouse, this collection founded by 18th century architect Sir John Soane is a glorious overwhelm of Ancient Egyptian antiquities, Roman sculpture and architectural models. ‘Guillermo told me to go there,’ says Deverell, ‘and everything about it was inspiring’. 📍 How to Sir John Soane’s Museum Photograph: © Hufton and Crow, courtesy of the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of EnglandHunterian Museum Hunterian Museum, Lincoln’s Inn Fields To create Victor Frankenstein’s scientific tools – and a few jars of grisly gubbins for his lab – Deverell and del Toro visited one of London’s most esoteric exhibitions. Run by the Royal College of Surgeons, the Hunterian is the legacy of 18th century surgeon John Hunter. Its Evelyn table, an original

‘Slop’ meant something different in 1600s Edinburgh. Rather than some AI nerd trying to ‘improve’ on a Studio Ghibli film, back then it was something to dodge when you were wandering down the Royal Mile. ‘Gardyloo!’ went the cry – a Scottish bastardisation of ‘Gardez l’eau’ or ‘watch out for the water’ – as someone chucked a bucket of piss (or worse) on the cobbles outside.  I know this fact because it features prominently on every tour and exhibit during my two days in the city’s Old Town. Nowhere in the world is as proud of its historic lack of plumbing as Edinburgh. And is it possible to know too much about plague? I’d say no, although, haunted by a close encounter with a raven-beaked plague doctor during our evocative candlelit tour of The Real Mary King's Close, a ghostly 17th century rabbit warren, my eight-year-old took a radically oppositional view. It’s like someone has turned up the goth on this elegant necropolis As autumn turns to winter, it’s like someone has turned up the goth on this elegant necropolis. The Fringe Festival in August celebrates a different, more cultural side to the city; now, as the days shorten and locals begin to hunker down for biting November evenings, the city’s dark past spills out like guts from a cadaver. The Royal Mile echoes with tales of murder and misadventure, stolen corpses and witch hunters, torment and tribulation.    Photograph: VisitScotlandThe Real Mary King's Close Down the hill at the kitsch yet oddly unnerving The Edin

The final part of the final season of Stranger Things doesn’t hit Netflix until November 27, but a few lucky fans will be able to get in really early on the return to Hawkins.  Netflix has announced two free fan screenings of episode 1 on Thursday, November 13 – a full two weeks before the show hits the platform:  Screening 1: Doors open 9.30pm; screening starts 10.15pm Screening 2: Doors open midnight; screening starts 12.30am Fans are encouraged to ‘embrace the “Fall of 1987”’ by dressing in ’80s-inspired get-up for the screenings.  Tickets are free but extremely limited, so move fast, hit the link here and add the promo code ST5FANS to register. Look, too, for more news of a more mysterious London ‘fan activation’ in December. Previous seasons have kicked off with all sorts of pop-ups and tie-ins (Demogorgon pizza, anyone?), but this one looks like another level of immersive.Watch this space for more details, and keep an eye on @NetflixUK on Insta. Photograph: NetflixMillie Bobby Brown as Eleven What happens in Stranger Things season 5? The final season of the Duffer brothers’ monster hit show picks up the story in the fall of 1987. ‘Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna,’ runs the official synopsis. ‘... the final battle is looming – and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone – the full party – standing

Stock up on Eggos, dust off your trucker cap and remember how young you were when it all started because Stranger Things is back in a big way. The fifth and final season of the Duffer brothers’ Netflix sensation is hitting the streaming in three spooky bursts from November 26 to January 1. And, needless to say, there are big plans to mark the finale with events and pop-ups across London – and worldwide. London is set to host two major Stranger Things season 5 events in December and November – here’s everything we know so far... Exclusive UK Screening of Stranger Things 5 episode 1 In London, it’s all kicking off with an exclusive UK fan screening on November 13 at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square. A chance to catch the first episode a full 14 days before the rest of the world. How to book tickets Keep an eye out for info on tickets via Netflix UK’s Instagram feed, @NetflixUK.  Will there be a red carpet?  No word yet on whether the show’s stars will be there for the fan event, but previous Stranger Things launches have tended to come with a full complement of cast members. And, of course, the grand Odeon in Leicester Square is the home of starry West End premieres. So don’t rule out an appearance from Millie Bobby Brown and the gang, in other words. Photograph: NetflixWinona Ryder as Joyce Byers, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler and Jake Connelly as Derek in season 5 Mystery season 5 fan activation The plot thickens still further with news of a London ‘fan activation’ taking place

If you’re on the hunt for some suitably scary Halloween viewing and don’t fancy the infinite scroll through Netflix’s catalogue of frighteners, head for the best free streaming platform out there.BBC iPlayer has a small but expertly curated library of horror movies to sink your teeth into – all, of course, free and ad-free for license fee-payers. A few of them, including Halloween, The Blair Witch Project and Robert Wise’s 1963 masterpiece The Haunting, even feature on our pantheon of all-time great horrors. Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find another, more recent horror movie – one, perhaps, with its own debt to The Haunting – that was once on Netflix but is now flaunting its freakiness on the BBC site. Writer-director Remi Weekes’ debut film His House came out in 2020 to rave reviews, and still sits on a rare perfect Rotten Tomatoes score. ‘Imagine Mike Leigh’s Paranormal Activity and you’re halfway there’ was Time Out’s own verdict. Never more topical, it follows two South Sudanese asylum seekers, played by Sinners’ Wunmi Mosaku and Gangs of London’s Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, into a council house in which dark forces reside. It’s both a pin-sharp metaphor for PTSD and the migrant experience and properly scary.  When it came off the Netflix UK platform in 2022, there were worries that it would be lost to viewers for good. But His House, a BBC Films co-production, now has a home of its own on iPlayer. Our advice? Pay a visit this weekend. The best horror movies of 2025 (so far).The 100 gr

The London Film Festival has rolled up its red carpet for another year, but that doesn’t mean the city’s movie fest season is over. Far from it, in fact. Film cultures from across the world are being celebrated in style at festivals like the Made in Prague Festival (from October 31), London Korean Film Festival (from November 5), UK Jewish Film Festival (from Nov 6) and London Baltic Film Festival (from Nov 7).  One that’s always worth a close look is the French Film Festival London. It all happens under one roof at South Kensington’s ornate red-brick Institut Français and this year it’s showcasing some genuinely exceptional new movies from France and, thanks to the vagaries of film financing, far beyond the French Republic. This year is the 33rd fest and as you’d expect, it’s a well-oiled machine but an intimate one too, where you can find like-minded film fans gathering for 76 screenings at the venue’s elegant two-screen Ciné Lumière.  And because you probably can’t see all 33 films without being fired from your job or your family, we’ve had a moustache-twiddling peruse of the line-up to pick five absolute must-sees on the programme, including a Palme d'Or winner and the year’s single most devastating drama. Bonne séance! Photograph: Courtesy NYFFIt Was Just an Accident It Was Just an Accident  Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner, a blackly funny story of kidnap and revenge set in Tehran, may not look like a French film, but don’t be fooled: it’s French financed and a worthy

Bridge was back earlier this year with the very excellent Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and now everyone's favourite giant-pant-wearing ex-singleton is getting a permanent presence in her hometown. A new statue of the legendary literary and movie character is being unveiled as part of Leicester Square’s Scenes in the Square trail. Renée Zellweger’s character will join other big-screen icons, including Paddington Bear, Mary Poppins, Harry Potter, Batman, Gene Kelly and Indiana Jones, as a monument in the spiritual home of London's cinema scene in November. Photograph: Scenes in the Square ‘For Bridget to be honoured as a British icon with her own statue alongside Paddington Bear, Mary Poppins and Admiral Lord Nelson (alright, he's down the road a bit!) is a huge thrill,’ says Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding, ‘and reason for everyone to raise a glass of chardonnay to being “just as you are”. I am touched and delighted for Bridget and hope that [her] mummy pants will ensure a sleek silhouette for this exciting statue unveiling.’ There are four Bridget Jones movies, with the latest, Mad About the Boy, a big box office and critical hit. ‘The perfect pint-glass raise to a legendary Londoner,’ is Time Out’s verdict. Catch it now on streaming, and prepare your Insta feed for the great unveiling next month. All the locations that appear in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. Find out where Bridget Jones's Diary lands on our pick of the greatest romcoms of all time. 

It’s fair to say that Kathryn Bigelow’s ticking-clock nuclear war thriller, A House of Dynamite, is not for the faint of heart. Since it premiered at the Venice Film Festival, it’s been uniting critics not just in praise – the movie currently sits on 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes – but in a shared sense of creeping dread. It’s one of those movies that once watched, stays watched. A nuclear nightmare that will trigger Boomers and Gen-X-ers who grew up under the shadow of the Cold War and younger audiences fearful for the fate of the planet alike.  But how plausible is the scenario that Bigelow and her co-writer Noah Oppenheim, a former NBC News executive, are depicting? And how accurately does it depict the likely response of the US’s national security infrastructure and President to an anonymous nuclear attack on a major American city. We asked US State Department veteran, nuclear policy expert and deputy VP at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Mark Melamed and NTI’s Deputy VP of Communications Elise Rowan to shine some light on this very scary scenario. And, well, there’s good news and bad news… Photograph: Netflix What is A House of Dynamite about? Starring Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos and Greta Lee, the movie starts out on just another day in the White House situation room. A mystery blip on the screen is dismissed as a likely missile test in the Pacific, until the blip goes suborbital and starts heading for a city in America’s

There are no gay men in the US Marines. At least, that’s what the Marine Corps wanted to believe in the 1990s.  Except, as hit Netflix series Boots and the book it’s based on, ex-leatherneck Greg Cope White’s memoir The Pink Marine, both show, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Boots follows skinny teenager Cameron Cope (13 Reasons Why’s Miles Heizer), a young, gay recruit who heads to South Carolina’s infamous Marine boot camp Parris Island in 1990 with his straight best friend, Ray (Liam Oh). Once there, Camerone is forced to keep his sexuality under wraps, enduring the shouty instruction of Sgt. Sullivan (English actor Max Parker) and survive a range of endurance tests that should be far beyond his physical capabilities. It’s also a darkly funny, unsparing and hard-hitting eight-part show that takes the ‘summer camp’ coming-of-age clichés and subjects them to assault courses, violent hazing rituals and the occasional tear-gassing – the unlikely midway point between Full Metal Jacket and Heartstopper.It’s also got an ingeniously curated soundtrack of queer anthems, grungey deep cuts and sugary pop bangers, complemented by composer’s Jongnic Bontemps score. Here’s the Boots playlist in full: EPISODE 1The Go-Go's – We Got The BeatWilson Phillips – Hold OnMarine Corps. Commercial (music)Queen – I Want to Break Free Bananarama – Venus Suzanne Vega, DNA – Tom's Diner (7" remix) Oingo Boingo – Run Away (The Escape Song)  EPISODE 2Gang of Four – What We All WantL7 – Fast and

It’s the ideal time of the year for escapist telly and Luther creator Neil Cross has understood the assignment perfectly. His new Italy-set Sky thriller The Iris Affair is exactly what a dank October calls for: Hitchcockian capers in exotic Mediterranean locations with a pair of charismatic adversaries jousting over stolen diaries, unbreakable codes and a mysterious new form of intelligence that may just herald the apocalypse. Read on to find out how Cross’s Italian job came together.  Photograph: Sky Atlantic What is The Iris Affair about? If you’ve caught him in Joe Wright’s Hanna, you’ll know that Tom Hollander is good when he’s good, but even better when he’s an absolute psychopath. Meet Cameron Beck, a silver-tongued entrepreneur who has staked the house on a new, all-powerful piece of tech he’s nicknamed ‘Charlie Big Potatoes’. He’s recruited Niamh Algar’s codebreaking genius Iris Nixon to help him break the cipher needed to awaken the dormant AI. Except… there’s a wrinkle. Iris has scarpered and gone into hiding in Sardinia, leaving Cameron is danger of being thoroughly murdered by his ruthless investors. Creator Neil Cross – along with episode directors Terry McDonough (Breaking Bad) and Sarah O’Gorman (The Witcher) – is tipping a panama hat to Hitchcock capers like North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief, another Cary Grant classic in Charade, as well as Technicolor telly shows like The Persuaders! and the ruthless Tom Ripley from Patricia Highsmith’s novels. ‘[It’

It’s one thing for a movie to scare a general audience. But a movie that can frighten, disturb and haunt a fellow moviemaker? Now that’s a real achievement. After all, those are the folks who know first hand all the tricks of the trade when it comes to scaring viewers – the cinematic sleights of hand, the narrative manipulations. If a film can suspend all that knowledge, and bring them into the moment enough to feel freaked out? Then that has to be a truly terrifying, upsetting experience. So we wanted to know: what movies have left some of the coolest current auteurs quaking in their director chairs? Everyone from Nosferatu’s Robert Eggers to Rian Johnson to Luca Guadagnino to the Oscars’ reigning Best Director Sean Baker provided responses. Not all of them are horror movies, either: you’ll find everything from intense character studies to absurdist provocations to classic Disney cartoons represented. Looking for something different to watch this Halloween? Take a tip from a few experts below. Photograph: StudioCanalIrréversible Irréversible – picked by Robert Eggers (Nosferatu) ‘Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, Gerald Kargl’s Angst, Michael Haneke’s Piano Teacher and Bruno Dumont’s Twentynine Palms all left me pretty shaken after my first viewing.’ Photograph: Disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – picked by Tomm Moore (The Secret of Kells) ‘I remember seeing Snow White when I was less than five, and I freaked out every time the Evil Queen came on. My dad told me I could