Phil de Semlyen

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

Is it safe to say movies are back? Sure, there’s still plenty of anxiety around the film industry and its future. But cinematically speaking, 2026 has gotten off to, arguably, the most blazing hot start since the pre-pandemic glory days, both critically and at the box office.  Of course, for our purposes, we like to focus on the creative successes, and it’s rare for the first quarter of any year to produce so many achievements of various scopes and budgets. Any time you get both a Project Hail Mary and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – not to mention leftfield triumphs like The Testament of Ann Lee, Sirât and Little Amélie or the Character of Rain – all before the calendar’s halfway point, you know it’s a good time to be a film fan, especially when there are new spectacles from Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Marvel and the Dune franchise on the horizon.  But that’s later. Here’s the best of what we’ve seen so far.  📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2026 (so far)📕 15 book-to-movie adaptations to get excited about in 2026🔥 The 40 best movies of 2025

The horror business is booming right now. Over the last few years, it’s become one of the movie industry’s most bankable genres, financially and creatively. Ryan Coogler has already made Oscar-nomination history with a vampire flick of all things, while the combination of Barbarian and Weapons has made director Zach Cregger one of Hollywood’s most exciting new voices – and that’s to say nothing of the huge box-office success of franchise entries like The Conjuring: Last Rites, Final Destination Bloodlines and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.Only a few months into 2026, and the year in horror is already off to another good start, between 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, entertaining killer monkey ripper Primate and Sam Raimi’s return-to-form, Send Help. Nothing on the docket for the rest of the year immediately screams ‘blockbuster,’ but that’s the great thing about horror: like a bump in the night, the hits often come from unexpected places. Here’s what has stood out like a bloody knife so far. 📽️ The best movies of 2026 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2026 (so far)🧟 The 100 greatest horror movies ever made

With the return of The Night Manager, Industry and Hulu’s A Thousand Blows, the home viewing year has kicked off in head-spinning style. And with HBO’s Game of Thrones spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and Netflix’s How to Get To Heaven From Belfast, the latest from the creator of Derry Girls, the array of small-screen offerings are landing at dizzying speeds well into the spring. We have stopped at nothing – not sleep, not family responsibilities – to watch all of it and curate this list of the best shows to give your limited spare time over to. You don’t have forever to spend on the sofa so make it count with something from our list of the best of the year so far. Recommended: 📽️ The best movies of 2026 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025📺 The 100 greatest TV shows of all time

Outdoor cinema season is up and running in the capital. There’s a summer of moonlit movies ahead in an array of scenic park, rooftop and riverside spots and the projectors will soon start whirring at Rooftop Cinema Club, Adventure Cinema and many others. On the slate for 2026 are the usual mix of crowdpleasers, cult classics and recent blockbuster hits. But expect some exciting new additions from the past 12 months, too, including Sinners, Wicked: For Good, One Battle After Another and Weapons, to Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, La La Land and all the old favourites. Recommended: 📽️ The 100 greatest cinemas in the world right now🎞️ The 25 best cinemas in London💰 London’s best cheap cinemas

Updated for 2026: Whatever you think of Netflix’s theatrical strategy, it continues to produce some of television’s most formally daring works, including Adolescence, a hard-to-watch but impossible to ignore limited series about an unimaginable crime. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s HBO’s hilariously profane The Righteous Gemstones, which stuck the landing in 2025 with its final season. In addition, we have moved Andor into the top 20 after its astounding second and final season.  Television used to be considered one of the lowest forms of entertainment. It was derided as ‘the idiot box’ and ‘the boob tube’. Edward R Murrow referred to it as ‘the opiate of the masses’, and the phrase ‘I don’t even own a TV’ was considered a major bragging right.  A lot has changed. Television is now the dominant medium in basically all of entertainment. The shift in perception is widely credited to the arrival of The Sopranos, which completely reinvented the notion of what a TV show could do. But that doesn’t mean everything that came before is primordial slurry. While this list of the greatest TV shows ever is dominated by 21st century programs, from The Wire to Succession to Adolescence, there are many shows that deserve credit for laying the groundwork for this current golden age.  Chiseling them down to a neat top 100 is difficult, so we elected to leave off talk shows, variety shows and sketch comedy, focusing on scripted, episodic dramas, comedies and miniseries. So don’t touc

April 2026: It’s a massive month for London’s museums. As well as loads of great new spring exhibitions to check out – from Elsa Schiaparelli at the V&A to Water Pantanal Fire at the Science Museum – the city is about to get a major new venue. More than a decade in the making, V&A East is finally set to open on April 18 in Stratford’s Olympic Park, with a landmark exhibition on Black British music among its inaugural offerings. We can’t wait! Museums are one of the things that London does best. This city boasts grand institutions housing ancient treasures, modern monoliths packed with intriguing exhibits, and tiny rooms containing deeply niche collections – and lots of them are totally free to anyone who wants to come in and take a gander. And with more than 170 London museums to choose from, there's bound to be one to pique your interest, whatever you're in to.  Want to explore the history of TfL? We’ve got a museum for that. Rather learn about advertising? We’ve got a museum for that too. History? Check. Science? Check. 1940s cinema memorabilia, grotesque eighteenth-century surgical instruments, or perhaps a wall of 4,000 mouse skeletons? Check, check and check! Being the cultured metropolitans that we are, Time Out’s editors love nothing more than a wholesome afternoon spent gawping at Churchill’s baby rattle or some ancient Egyptian percussion instruments. In my case, the opportunity to live on the doorstep of some of the planet’s most iconic cultural institutions was a b

Whatever you may think of Disney as a corporation, years of swallowing up other media companies has grown its streaming platform into an entertainment goldmine. Not only is it a one-stop shop for just about everything the House of Mouse has ever produced, it’s also where you’ll find all things Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel, plus insightful documentaries, concert films and live Broadway productions. With such a hefty catalogue, finding exactly what you’re looking for can be overwhelming. With that in mind, we’ve dug through all of Disney+ offerings to find the true cream of the crop. Here are 60 of the platform’s can’t-miss titles. Recommended: 🐭 The 50 best Disney movies for family night🦸All the Marvel movies ranked from worst to best👾 The 52 best Star Wars characters

We know that London is the best city in the world. But like any metropolis, it can also get a bit much sometimes. Occasionally, what you want isn’t to drink cocktails in a trendy bar after seeing the hottest Gen Z bedroom popstar at the Islington Assembly Hall, but a little peace and quiet, actually. Enter: the weekend getaway, invented by the Victorians (probably), there’s a reason why Londoners have been taking sojourns to the seaside on sunny bank holidays since the 1800s.  Together, we’ve come up with a cracking list of our favourite day trip destinations near London. There’s something for everyone here, from historic cities and cute villages to sandy beaches and rolling countryside. We've included some recommendations for ace restaurants, quaint little pubs, and our favourite things to do at each destination on the list – all of which are close enough to the city that you can get there and back in one sweet day.  Best day trips from London at a glance 🍔 Best for foodies: Margate 🎭 Best for culture lovers: Stratford-Upon-Avon ⛪ Best for history buffs: Canterbury 🛁 Best for families: Bath 🐴 Best for hikers: New Forest 🍺 Best for pub crawls: Lewes 🏖️ Best for seaside fun: Brighton RECOMMENDED:✨The best day trips an hour from London👪 The best family day trips from London☀️ The best weekend trips from London🏘️ The best Airbnbs near London🌳 The best quirky Airbnbs in the UK This article includes affiliate links. These links have no influence on our editorial conte

Let the normies do their October horror marathons: for true fright fans, every season is spooky season, and anytime is the right time for a horror movie. Netflix has enough scary movies to fill your entire calendar. Unfortunately, there’s a difference between ‘horror’ and actually being horrifying, and not all of the streamer’s offerings are guaranteed to scare your pants off. If you don’t want to waste a night yawning when you should be screaming, we’ve pulled together this list of the best horror movies on Netflix. It’s a chilling mix of old reliables and modern classics, bloody blockbusters and indie shock-a-thons. All of them are sure to give you nightmares. Recommended: 💀 The best horror movies of all time🇳 The best movies streaming on Netflix💻 The best Netflix original series to binge

The prudes have inherited the movies. If you’ve followed the ongoing debate over sex scenes on social media over the last few years, then you’ll know that Gen Z has strong opinions on cinematic boning: they’re against it. The argument goes that sex scenes rarely add anything to the plot of a movie, nor develop characters. It’s a flawed viewpoint, but in fairness, given Hollywood’s general shift away from showing sexuality on screen, it’s entirely possible that younger folks have simply never seen a good sex scene.  Well, allow us to offer a counterpoint – 101 of them, to be exact. On this list of cinema’s greatest sex scenes, you’ll find multiple examples where a roll in the hay is meant to convey more than just mere titillation – it’s part of the story itself. In some cases, sex is a punchline. In others, it’s downright horrifying. Sometimes it’s supposed to make you uncomfortable. And sometimes, yes, it exists to be arousing. But there’s value in that, too. Written by Dave Calhoun, Joshua Rothkopf, Cath Clarke, David Ehrlich, Phil de Semlyen, Daniel Walber, Trevor Johnston, Andy Kryza, Daniel Walber and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🕯️ The steamiest erotic thrillers ever made🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time❤ The 100 best romantic films of all-time😬 The 50 most controversial movies ever made💪 The 100 best feminist films of all-time

Updated for 2026: Weapons, director Zach Cregger’s story of children gone missing in suburbia, proved him as the next great, original voice in horror. If it wasn’t obvious before, after Amy Madigan’s Oscar win for her portrayal of the unforgettable Aunt Gladys, we knew we had a new classic on our hands. Everyone is scared of something. It might be something specific, like spiders or heights or clowns, or something less tangible, like death or failure. But deep down, even the most posturing tough guy harbours deep-seated fears. Perhaps that explains why horror has grown into one of the most popular of all film genres. Even if a movie doesn’t necessarily touch on the things that personally scare us the most, allowing ourselves to be scared at all helps us confront and ease the anxieties and fears that keep us paralysed.   Of course, horror hasn’t always been a moneymaker. Not long ago, it was mainly a niche interest, ignored by mass audiences and shrugged off by critics. The recent artistic and commercial success of diverse films from Get Out to Longlegs to Sinners to Weapons to Final Destination Bloodlines have brought retroactive respect to a genre once synonymous with schlock. So if you’ve spent too much of your film fandom dismissing horror, consider this your guide to everything you’ve missed. Here are the 100 greatest horror movies ever made. Quick picks: 📍 Best slasher: Halloween (1978)📍 Best ghost story: The Innocents (1961)📍 Best zombie movie: Dawn of the Dead (1978

Are fans being phased out of modern football, with its eye-watering ticket prices, greedy owners, inconvenient kick-off times and corporatised stadia? Has the prawn sandwich brigade won the war for the soul of the game? Not according to this raucous deep dive into the fan culture of the hardcore ‘ultras’. Outside of England’s sanitised Premier League bubble, at least, there’s plenty of flare-lighting, choreographed-chanting life in it yet.   Director Ragnhild Ekner, an ultra of Swedish club IFK Götenborg, sets out her treatise on ‘the world’s most popular subculture’ early doors. ‘I see it as an act of resistance,’ she says in voiceover, ‘...an uprising against loneliness’. None of her interviewees are seen on screen because, she notes, it’s the collective, not the individual that matters. Opening with Italian disco-meme energy, Ekner traces the phenomenon back to Italy’s calcio in 1970s and ’80s. Travelling the globe to film fans across three continents and get beyond the hooligan stereotypes of football fans – without neglecting the violent, fascistic side of extreme fandom – she explores its various manifestations: as a political movement, a source of collective healing, even a surrogate family. People take their babies onto the terraces, elaborate tifos are unfurled, flares drown the players in red smoke, call-and-response chants thunder the stands. Watching the game feels like a minor piece of this mad tapestry.  Turning the cameras away from the pitch, Ultras captures f

No one expected this long-delayed piece of Michael Jackson pop-aganda to lay bare the man behind the myths and myriad controversies in forensic style. And yet… this soft-ball character study of the King of Pop only doubles down on the former, while completely ignoring the latter, hitting all the usual dreary biopic beats along the way. Written by Gladiator’s John Logan, directed by Training Day’s Antoine Fuqua and produced by Bohemian Rhapsody’s Graham King, Michael leaves no stone turned in its efforts to guide its subject’s reputation through all the rocky terrain. It’s an act of fan (and estate) service that deals only in black and white, omitting the final 21 years of his life.  On the side of the angels is Michael (played as a youngster by Juliano Krue Valdi and Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson as an adult), who we meet as a singing protégé and front-kid for the Jackson 5, a boy band that would conquer the hearts of America. It’s Gary, Indiana in 1966 and the Jacksons’ suburban bungalow is ruled with an iron fist and a leather belt by the boys’ draconian blue-collar dad, Joe (Colman Domingo). He’s desperate to find a way out for his family. There’s a mention of his gruelling job at the steelworks but as so often the case in Michael, one line of dialogue does all the heavy lifting. What drives him? What makes him Michael’s nemesis over the years ahead? It’s very King Richard, in which Will Smith wrestled with a raging but complex tennis dad Richard Williams, though without

It’s hard to imagine Bloomsbury’s hushed streets were once the epicentre of creative thought and literary smarts – an early 20th century hipster mind hive for brainiacs with unruly hair and epic pipe habits. Artists, writers and thinkers like Virginia Woolf, EM Forster and Vanessa Bell would gather and say clever things to each other in salons organised by society types like Lady Ottoline Morrell. Opened in early 2026, this elegantly renewed and seriously cosy 19th century townhouse evokes those ghosts in a way that will thrill anyone with a Penguin Modern Classic on their bookshelf or a love of understated Georgian grandeur in their heart. It’s even named after philosopher Bertrand Russell. Whether you have a modernist poem in you or just fancy holing up round the corner from the British Museum and theaterland for a city break, it’s a dreamy sanctuary. What are the rooms like at Bertrand’s Townhouse? The 43 rooms off its smart, tapestry-lined corridors are as quiet as the surrounding area, with four options – classic, deluxe, grand and philosopher’s chambers – spread over five floors that reflect the building’s past as a Georgian pile where the servants lived at the top and the big nobs below. The suites on the first floor have clawfoot baths, high ceilings and garden views, while the classic rooms are much snugger. All the rooms are full of luxe details (Diptyque toiletries, Smeg minifridges, Marshall bluetooth speakers, Nespresso coffee machines), with rainfall showers and

A content creator, a disruptor, a beekeeper and a teacher walk into a bar. Sounds like the set-up for the most 21st century gag – and in a roundabout way, it is. The punchline, as spun in Cédric Klapisch’s (The Spanish Apartment, Call My Agent!) amiable time-leaping comedy, is that these four people are cousins. Their family tree has sent its branches shooting off in the maddest directions. Like Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, we’re off time-travelling to a more colourful era in French history to understand their common dominator: a young Norman woman, Adèle Vermillard (a wide-eyed Suzanne Lindon), who sets off to find her own mother in Belle Époque Paris and ends up intersecting with the Impressionist masters. The four distant relatives have been appointed by their wider family to help decide what to do with their great-great-grandmothers’ broken-down Normandy cottage. A supermarket chain wants to buy the land and they must decide what to do with her legacy of art and portraits – in the process learning about her and themselves. (Entertainingly, the wider family gathers on a conference call in which an older relative has a kitten filter on – an unexpected homage to the Zoom Cat Lawyer meme, perhaps.) It’s a great excuse to revisit this gilded age in French history Klapisch is a French director who treats his characters with the care of a Frank Capra, and Colours of Time is as accessible and generous as any of his work – a family dramedy with the sprightly spirit of a romco

Faking it ‘til you make it is all well and good, but what happens when you actually make it? How do you keep the wolf from the door, the pretense alive, the lie a reality?  James McAvoy’s likeable directorial debut explores the dark side of that story, speeding off like a souped-up boy racer before wrapping around a lamp post in a moody final stretch that reveals the cost of it all. As charted in 2013 documentary The Great Hip Hop Hoax and faithfully recorded in the former’s memoir, Gavin Bain (Seamus McLean Ross) and Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley) were a couple of Dundee wannabe B-boys and bedroom hip hop heads for whom rap music was both an inspiration and a way out. Bonding over skateboarding and a shared loved of Tupac, American street culture was an exit sign from their Scottish council estate. Problem? No one wanted a pair of Scottish rappers. Solution? Reinvent themselves as a Californian rap double act called Silibil N' Brains and hope no one asks too many questions. And as recreated in this twisty rags-to-riches tale, no one did. Not their wolfish record label boss (McAvoy), who sees the dollar signs in a pair of rapping white guys in the era of Eminem and D12; not the UK media types who are take happy to take the pair’s vague Californian back story at face value – even if their professed home town, ‘San Diangeles’, sounds a bit suspicious. Only their mate Mary (The Testaments’ Lucy Halliday) is on hand to remind them that, actually, they’re full of shite.  There’s p

A filmmaker who could spin a seductive interpretation out of Bleak House, François Ozon definitely extracts all the juice from Albert Camus’ famous 1942 novella L'Étranger. The existential tale has been a holy text for angsty teenagers and Gitane-puffing sophisticates for generations. None of them will remember it being quite this horny.  The Swimming Pool and Young and Beautiful director is a visual stylist and he amplifies the sensuality of Camus’ great antihero Meursault (Benjamin Voisin) in dazzling ways, with Manu Dacosse’s gorgeous monochrome lighting finding light and shade in colonial Algiers. If there’s a better-looking film this year, it’ll be a thing to behold.  Played with an inscrutable kind of magnetism by Ozon’s Summer of 85 lead Voisin, Mersault is a clerk, a cog in the machine of French colonialism – a man for whom life is a series of motions to go through and moral and emotional judgments are meaningless. He makes little distinction between his scummy pimp neighbour Raymond (Pierre Lottin), whose abuse of a young Arab woman (Hajar Bouzaouit) brings violence to his door, and the self-pitying dog-beater upstairs (Denis Lavant’s rumpled face telling a thousand stories). He makes no outward sign of grieving his mother’s death. He is, to the eyes of his countrymen, an unsettling enigma.   If there’s a better-looking film this year, it’ll be a thing to behold His affair with beautiful young typist Marie (Rebecca Marder) is expanded from the book, injecting life b

Like John Wick, just without all the calmness and restraint, this blackly funny action-horror doesn’t come off the rails, but only because it’s barely on them in the first place. There’s a dedication to spraying blood around here that would shame an abattoir, with decapitations, severings, crawling eyeballs and something interesting involving a pig’s head all featuring. There’s absolutely no half-arsing in They Will Kill You’s relentless barrage on the senses.    Seemingly working from a brief of ‘The Raid meets Get Out, only more Looney Tunes’, Russian director Kirill Sokolov and his co-writer Alex Litvak manage to cram together a load of disparate elements – social horror, Satanic panic and nutso exploitation flick – into a muscular and surprisingly coherent whole.  Zazie Beetz’s ex-con Asia Reaves is on the hunt for the younger sister (Myha'la) she lost when she fled their abusive dad. In prison, she’s learnt how to fight like a superhero – just go with it – and emerges determined to make good with her bitter and estranged sibling. The trail has led to a Manhattan tower block adorned, worryingly, with Satanic hieroglyphs where she’s landed a job as a maid. This is cover for her snooping, an intro in a world of white privilege that’s run by unsmiling Irish superintendent Lilith Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette doing several Irish accents at once). Heather Graham and Tom Felton are among the permanent guests at this creepy Hotel California where phones are confiscated and the do

Every wondered what’s going on beneath your feet? Not in a fretful ‘is the Northern Line on the blink again?’ way but in the awestruck, Jules Verne-ish sense. To marvel at the thought of the planet’s crust extending 40-odd miles straight down. Acolytes of Robert Macfarlane’s acclaimed 2019 travelogue, Underland, will have. Viewers of this ghostly, lyrical documentary adaptation will share that wonder.  ‘Why do we seek the void?’ is the treatise spelt out early by British filmmaker Robert Petit (Upstream). His camera seeks answers in some of the planet’s loneliest, most inaccessible corners. Accompanied by Hannah Peel’s ethereal score and haunting sound design, his brisk journey to the centre of the Earth is a film of transcendent moments that never quite coalesces, like volcanic rock, into a unified whole. The answers to that question – science, poverty, thrill-seeking, anthropology, survival – are uncovered by following people who seek the same answers: an archaeologist exploring Mayan culture in the caves of Yucatán; a theoretical physicist trying to isolate dark matter in a lab at the bottom of a Canadian mine shaft; and an urban explorer risking drowning in a Las Vegas storm drain.  Sandra Hüller (Project Hail Mary) narrates the Mayan section, which has the mythic, claustrophobic quality of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. Across the American landmass, meanwhile, the quest for dark matter spins into existential angst as American scientist Mariangela Lisanti on a lifelong journe

Weird things happen up the Magic Faraway Tree. Zany characters reside in its branches, a big slide careers down the trunk with no obvious structural implications, and at the top, a long ladder leads up to a revolving carousel of equally magical kingdoms. A sugary confection for a wartime generation deprived of goodies (and their parents) during the early 1940s, it’s Enid Blyton at her most escapist, a colourful caper that makes The Famous Five look like one of the grittier episodes of Columbo.  Transplanting all the hippy-dippy goodness from a three-book series into a movie is a challenge that Simon Farnaby’s adaptation half-overcomes. With a game cast and good vibes throughout, it’s a smart update of the Blyton stories for the smartphone era, but with the plot hinging on some small-batch pomodoro sauce, the stakes never match the eccentricity levels.  Hold on to your pearls, Blyton purists, because the three children are no longer Jo, Bessie and Fanny but too-cool-for-school Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy), shy Fran (Billie Gadsdon) and sweet-natured Joe (Phoenix Laroche). And they’re not wartime evacuees but the distracted, tech-absorbed offspring of inventor Polly (Claire Foy) and cheery stay-at-home dad Tim (Andrew Garfield), a self-professed pasta sauce pioneer. The trio are whisked off for a reset in bucolic, wifi-free rural England when Polly loses her job.  It’s a jukebox of British comedy styles – for better or worse ‘Boredom trauma’ takes minutes to set in until Fran

Translated into English, ‘La Grazia’ can mean either ‘grace’ or ‘pardon’. Both words are key to understanding Italian President Mariano De Santis (Toni Servillo) as he prepares for his term’s end, grieves his beloved wife and weighs up his legacy. On his desk is unsigned legislation that will legalise euthanasia. On his conscience are two prisoners up for clemency after murdering their partners under mitigating circumstances. Finding grace and forgiveness is a journey that writer-director Paolo Sorrentino’s terrific film charts in touching style.  La Grazia sees Sorrentino at his most sober and sincere, and his doleful muse, Servillo, at his formidable best. The Great Beauty and Loro star is fabulous here. De Santis is a man weighed down by mourning, and the solitude and burden of leadership. Clad in finely cut black suits and drawing on the cigarette with his loyal adjutant (Orlando Cinque) on the presidential palace roof, Servillo cuts through the solemnity with his trademark wry amusement.  De Santis is a more serious-minded Roman than The Great Beauty’s jaded hedonist Jep Gambardella – a romantic with a forensic mind, forever trapped between head and heart. Only the briefest flashbacks show Aurora, his lost love, but her presence is everywhere, a ghost in the grand palatial corridors through which Sorrentino’s weightless dolly shots glide. He’s a man who can’t let go because he has nothing new to grab onto. Even his dying horse must linger on in this purgatory.  He’s a m

In the race for this year’s Best Animation Oscar, this hand-drawn Gallic sci-fi was always the rank outsider next to the zeitgeist-stealing Kpop Demon Hunters and box-office beast Zootropolis 2. But it has plenty of sparky charm, pops with colour, and an ending that’s more moving than either of them. ‘Dystopian sci-fi eco-fable for kids’ may not be the easiest sell, yet director Ugo Bienvenu and his co-writer, Eden lead actor Félix de Givry, have spun something distinctive and dazzling from those elements. Arco has an unflagging, Peter Pan-ish optimism despite being backdropped by a series of ecological catastrophes and absent parents.It tells the story of time-travelling tyke Arco (voiced in the English dub by Juliano Krue Valdi) who lives in a futuristic utopia built on tree-like platforms above the clouds. His parents and older sister use kaleidoscopic flying capes powered by a magical jewel to soar off on time-travelling adventures. The 10-year-old Arco is officially too young to fly but he really wants to see the dinosaurs. Sneaking out one night, he pitches himself headfirst into the unknown and hopes for the best Soon he’s crash landing into an ecologically-ravaged 2075, separated from his jewel but encountering Iris (Romy Fay), a lonely young girl keen to help. With her sassy domestic robot Mikki (Mark Ruffalo and Natalie Portman sharing voice duties), and Iris’s school pal Clifford, he has to find a way back to the future, braving a colossal wildfire and the attentio

‘If liberty means anything at all,’ George Orwell once wrote, ‘it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’. What happens, though, if you try to tell people what they don’t want to hear in an illiberal society? In this unblinking, engrossing film, it’s absolutely nothing good.  The year is1938 and Kornyev (Aleksandr Kuznetsov), a wet-behind-the-ears young prosecutor in the provincial Russian city of Bryansk, has received a letter from an inmate at the local prison. Worryingly, it’s scrawled in blood on a scrap of paper. The idealistic law graduate announces himself at the rusted iron gates of this rotting grey edifice to hear what the man has to say.  The prison warden and governor, superficially helpful, eventually allow him into the cell of a bruised and battered old prisoner called Stepniak (Aleksandr Filippenko). The man, a veteran Bolshevik, believes his abuse is a sign of rogue elements within the NKVD security forces. Why else would a dogged old loyalist like him have been beaten half to death? What neither man understands is that this is a feature not a bug of Stalin’s Russia. He is just another victim of the Great Purge. It’s a haunting, mesmerising, pessimistic piece of work Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa (In the Fog) adapts dissident writer Georgy Demidov’s novella into a collision of idealism and cold reality, as Kornyev takes the case to Moscow and sticks his head deeper into the lion’s mouth. Demidov knew of what he wrote – he spent 14 y

Luna Carmoon’s first movie, puckish coming-of-age romance Hoard, was an attention-ripper back in 2024. Now the Londoner is back with a second project as a writer-director – a horror this time – and it’s just wrapped filming. To Make Ends Meat stars Mickey 17’s Naomi Ackie, Wuthering Heights standout Alison Oliver and French actress Armande Boulanger (The Returned). The trio play three women ‘all in debt to despicable men, their pasts, and each other, who find themselves bargaining to survive in the only language these men seem to understand: consumption and violence’. ‘This film has come from the belly of my soul, of all things, tar and family,’ says Carmoon in a statement. ‘From my grandmother’s experiences in Newington Lodge, to my mother Toni and the cleaning houses she took me to where darker things lingered, to teddies and chicken farms. So much of my family and our memories seep deeper than you’d think.’ ‘I cannot think of a more prevalent time than now to paint and stitch and weave to screen, it is my rage that has fuelled this. The weatherings of being a woman and how you are cannibalised by systems, by men, women and then by debts we sometimes write ourselves into because we believe we deserve it so. This has been made with all my blood, figuratively and yes, physically of all of me. I hope I know it will rupture, splinter and cry to us all when it is stitched together.’ Saipan’s Éanna Hardwicke co-stars in the film, which shot for six weeks in and around London. ‘To

Kukaan ei odottanutkaan, että pitkään viivästynyt popagandaelokuva olisi syväluotaava katsaus Michael Jacksonin elämään. Ja silti Michael on yksiulotteisempi ja varovaisempi kuin etukäteen olisi osannut kuvitella. Elokuva keskittyy korostamaan popin kuninkaan loistokkuutta ja sivuuttaa kokonaan kaiken muun, törmäillen samalla kaikkein kuluneimpiin musiikkielämäkertojen kliseisiin. Käsikirjoituksesta vastaa John Logan (Gladiator), ohjauksesta Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) ja tuotannosta Graham King (Bohemian Rhapsody). Ansiokas tekijäjoukko tekee kaikkensa ohjatakseen päähenkilön maineen mahdollisimman ehjänä läpi karikkojen. Lopputulos on faneille (ja perikunnalle) suunnattu ystävänpalvelus, joka näkee maailman mustavalkoisena ja jättää huomiotta tähden elämän viimeiset 21 vuotta. Ja silti Michael on näkemisen arvoinen, jos ei muuten, niin upeiden musiikkijaksojensa ansiosta. Tapaamme Michaelin laulavana ihmelapsena ja Jackson 5 -poikabändin keulakuvana. On vuosi 1966 Garyssa, Indianassa, ja perheen elämää hallitsee rautaisella otteella ja nahkavyöllä isä Joe (Colman Domingo), joka yrittää epätoivoisesti löytää perheelleen tietä ulos köyhyydestä. Joen raskaasta työstä terästehtaalla mainitaan, mutta kuten niin usein Michaelissa, taustoittaminen jää muutaman vuorosanan varaan. Vastaamatta jää liuta kysymyksiä. Mikä miestä riivaa? Mikä tekee hänestä Michaelin arkkivihollisen tulevina vuosina? Tunnelma on kuin King Richard -elokuvassa – jossa Will Smith painiskeli raivoisa

O criador de Euphoria, Sam Levinson, está de volta à HBO para uma terceira – e provavelmente última – temporada do seu aclamado, cru e premiado sucesso televisivo, que tão bem capta o zeitgeist. De volta estão também todos os elementos do elenco cujas carreiras atingiram a velocidade da luz desde que apareceram pela primeira vez na primeira temporada, em 2019. Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi e, em menor grau, Hunter Schafer, tornaram-se nomes amplamente conhecidos desde então. Isso faz com que esta terceira temporada seja uma das maiores concentrações de talento de primeira linha a agraciar o pequeno ecrã nos últimos anos. O que não garante que a série cumpra as altíssimas expectativas dos “Euphoristas”, todos a torcer para ver este drama sobre drogas de jovens na casa nos vinte anos – a série mais vista da HBO desde A Guerra dos Tronos – a manter o nível para uma última temporada. Como são as críticas à terceira temporada de Euphoria? É justo dizer que as críticas não têm sido meigas até agora. HBOZendaya em ‘Euphoria’ “Um desastre desequilibrado” é o veredicto do New York Post. O tablóide norte-americano descreve a terceira temporada como uma “descarrilada montanha-russa de insanidade”, sublinhando que esta parece o “um cruzamento entre Breaking Bad os Looney Tunes”. “Sacrifica a profundidade pelo absurdo. Para Zendaya, Elordi e Sweeney, Euphoria lançou-os para o estrelato e, agora, trouxe-os de volta para material que não está à altura dos seus talentos.” “A tercei

A free artist-led festival is coming to south London next month. WePresent, WeTransfer’s arts platform, is taking over Peckham’s Copeland Gallery from May 8-10.  The three-day fest takes in panel talks from artists and directors, as well as showing work from the arts platform’s commissions and collaborations.  Centrepieces of the event include an exhibition called ‘On Belonging’, showcasing work ‘themed around belonging and identity’, and a library room featuring work like NOUR, a poetry book made in collaboration with the artist Mustafa. There’s also a cinema showing short films. It should be a must-attend event for students and creative Londoners looking for inspiration and connection.  And because creativity is thirsty work, there’ll be complimentary cocktails from Peckham Social from 5-7pm each day. Salsa Rose will be providing free brunch each morning and Happy Endings’ ice-cream sandwiches will be on offer too.  WePresent has helped cultivate the talents of filmmakers like Akinola Davies Jr. (My Father’s Shadow) and Amrou Al-Kadhi (Layla), and commissioned The Long Goodbye, an Oscar-winning short film starring and co-written by Riz Ahmed (below). Follow WePresent on Insta for more info. ‘It’s outrageous to be mentioned alongside Moonlight’: Akinola Davies Jr on My Father’s Shadow. The future of this beloved south London lido has been saved.

Euphoria creator Sam Levinson is back with a third – and likely final – HBO run for his down and dirty, zeitgeisty-surfing, Emmy-winning hit TV show. Back, too, are all the cast members whose careers have hit warp speed since they first appeared in season 1 back in 2019. Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi and, to a lesser extent, Hunter Schafer have become household names in the interim.  All of which makes the third season one of the starriest assemblies of A-list talent to grace the small screen in recent years.  But none of which guarantees that it’ll meet the sky-high expectations of the army of Euphoristas out there, all hoping to see the twenty-something drug drama, now HBO’s most-watched series after Game of Thrones, maintain its levels for one final season.  Foto: HBO'Euphoria' T3 What are the review like for Euphoria season 3? It’s fair to say that the reviews have not been kind to the third season so far. ‘An unhinged disaster’ is the New York Post’s verdict. The US tabloid describes season 3 as an ‘off-the-rails roller coaster of insanity’ that feels like ‘Breaking Bad meets Looney Tunes’. ‘It sacrifices depth for absurdity. For Zendaya, Elordi and Sweeney, Euphoria launched them into stardom, and now it brought them back for material that doesn’t meet their talents.’ ‘Euphoria season 3 is grim TV that seems hellbent on rattling us for the sake of it,’ agrees The Guardian. ‘If its cast seemed desperate to get it over and done with, well, now we know why.’ ‘Le

Never go with a hippie to a second location, as 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy once noted. But following a beloved cinema to the ends of the Earth – or at least, a few miles to the north east – can only be recommended. That scenario could be on the cards with Hackney’s Castle Cinema bidding to run a new two-screen picture house in north-east London. According to the Waltham Forest Echo, the Castle is keen to expand to a second venue in Highams Park’s new The Regal development. The Regal is getting a full modernisation taking in a cinema, café and 33 apartments. ‘With the recent news that the building’s redevelopment is on track for autumn 2027, our inbox has been overflowing with residents asking if we’ll be involved,’ says the Castle in a statement. ‘We can confirm that we would absolutely love to join the Highams Park community, and we’ve submitted a bid to operate the cinema.’ The development will open on the site of the old Regal Cinema, which ran from 1935 to 1963. Since then, it’s been a bingo hall, snooker hall, bar and nightclub.  ‘Our vision is to bring the same community spirit, curated film programme, and welcoming bar space that we pride ourselves on in Hackney,’ says The Castle of its plans for the venue. ‘The selection process is ongoing, and whilst we are incredibly hopeful we know these things take time.’One of Time Out’s 100 greatest cinemas in the world, the two-screen Homerton picture house is also taking over the running of Catford Mews cinema. The Lewisham venue

Fancy a big-screen freakout this month – completely gratis?  130 UK cinemas, including 10 in London, are offering free tickets to see much-hyped new horror movie Exit 8 as part of the BFI’s Escapes initiative. The screenings are on April 13-14 and pairs of free tickets are up for grabs now.  The Japanese horror movie is based on a bestselling video game and TikTok sensation. Time Out’s reviews describes it as ‘a cosmic purgatory not dissimilar to the time trap in Groundhog Day’. Participating London cinemas include Hackney’s The Castle, The Cinema in the Power Station in Battersea, Walthamstow’s The Forest Cinema, Genesis in Mile End, Phoenix in East Finchley, The Lexi in Kensal Rise, David Lean Cinema in Croydon, ActOne in Acton, The Chiswick Cinema and The Castle in Sidcup. Head to the official site to book tickets. ‘Exit 8 follows a man trapped in an endless sterile subway passageway as he sets out to find Exit 8,’ runs the film’s official synopsis. ‘The rules of his quest are simple: do not overlook anything out of the ordinary. If you discover an anomaly, turn back immediately. If you don't, carry on. Then leave from Exit 8. But even a single oversight will send him back to the beginning. Will he ever reach his goal and escape this infinite corridor? The BFI’s Escapes is an initiative aiming to ‘bring cinema to all’. Over 200,000 free cinema tickets have been claimed since its launch in 2024. Exit 8 is in UK cinemas on April 24. The 100 greatest cinemas in the world righ

Hackney’s Rio Cinema is celebrating 50 years as a community-run cinema this month with a series of celebrations, screenings and parties. The six-month-long season, Rio Forever, will be showcasing ‘what the Rio does best’ with ‘bold, eclectic programming; archival gems; and gatherings that bring people together’. It all kicks off with a party co-hosted with Jeremy Deller, Sports Banger and Doc’n Roll Films, three luminaries of DIY culture who will be taking over the Rio for a celebration of ‘radical creativity, outsider art, music and film’ on Friday, April 17. Movies are a big part of Rio Forever, of course, with 35mm screenings doubling up as fundraisers for this beloved venue.Legendary Londoner Sally Potter will be swinging by for a screening (and Q&A) of her epoch-hopping feminist masterpiece Orlando on Friday, April 24, with Hackney’s own Asif Kapadia (Amy, Diego Maradona) intro’ing a 35mm screening of The Godfather: Part II on May 8. Punch-Drunk Love lovers can book in for a screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s romantic-comedy presented by Molly Manning Walker (How to Have Sex) on May 19.Pretty Red Dress writer-director Dionne Edwards, meanwhile, is introducing the Wachowskis’ cult neo-noir thriller Bound on May 22.There’ll also be a tribute to Rio Cinema OG Clara Ludski, the Jewish Prussian immigrant who turned her family’s auctioneers into a cinema on Kingsland High Street – one of London’s first – in 1909.  A plaque in her honour will be unveiled as part of The Hackney

Halloween has horror, Valentine’s Day has romcoms and Christmas movies are a genre unto themselves. In cinematic terms, Easter is the odd holiday out. The day doesn’t really have a definitive movie, and those that count lean either biblical or bunny-centric. Don’t fret, though: we’ve done some searching, and dug out a basket full of treats suitable for everyone – whether you’re devout, lapsed or just in it for the jellybeans.  The Passion of the Christ (2004) It’s the goriest story ever told! Maybe the only movie to appeal equally to both ultraconservative Catholics and Fangoria subscribers, Mel Gibson’s depiction of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is praise meets torture porn. No joke: it’s two hours of the Messiah (played by Jim Caviezel) being flayed, stabbed, beaten and ultimately crucified, all of which is shown in graphic, close-up detail. Honestly, you’d have to possess Pope-level devotion to suggest throwing it on after dinner, not to mention a strong stomach – but given how much money it made, there are more people who fit that description than you’d think. Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) Not wanting to offend the world’s bazillion Christians was the furthest thought from the Monty Python gang’s mind in this lol-rich departure from the gospel story. Instead of Jesus, we follow Brian (Graham Chapman), a young Jewish man who is hailed as the messiah, has a run-in with the People’s Front of Judea (and the Jude

From The Lavender Hill Mob and The League of Gentlemen to Sexy Beast and King of Thieves, a proper London heist thriller is hard to beat. Fuze, a new action-thriller from Hell or High Water director David MacKenzie, is the latest in that lineage: a hard-bitten gangster yarn with several stings in the tail. Closing down swathes of the capital to film it, Fuze is an authentically London-feeling affair too, with sweaty, ticking-clock tension, high stakes, double crosses, and in the far background, dozens of Londoners wondering how the hell they’re going to get to the work what with all the gunmen and unexploded bombs. A highly relatable piece of escapist fun, in other words. Here’s how – and where – it came together.   Photograph: Sky What happens in Fuze? Taking that old Passport to Pimlico idea of an unexploded Luftwaffe bomb sparking chaos in the capital, Fuze opens with the discovery of a piece of Nazi ordnance on a Paddington Basin building site. In a jiffy, bomb disposal expert Major Will Tranter (28 Years Later’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his team are on the scene with stethoscopes and steady nerves to assess the danger, as Chief Superintendent Zuzana Greenfield (Misbehaviour’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw) gives the order to evacuate residents within the potential blast radius. Meanwhile, a group of thieves disguised as water engineers, including Theo James’s Karalis and Sam Worthington’s X, are setting to work with drills in a nearby basement, aiming to use the lockdown to pull of

As part of this year’s BFI Flare film festival, Russell T Davies gave a talk on his illustrious TV writing career, the state of the world and his much anticipated new series – and it was a cracker. He’s a BAFTA-winner, one-time Doctor Who show runner and creator of landmark telly like Queer As Folk, It’s a Sin and A Very English Scandal – as well as (in the interests of balance) less landmark telly like The Grand (‘it was like Downton Abbey before Downton Abbey,’ he remembers, ‘but a cheap version’). And of course, he’s been a huge voice in centring gay stories on the small screen over the past 30 years. ‘I believe in starting and ending at a kitchen table,’ he explained of his storytelling ethos. But while no one should hold their breathe for an Aaron Sorkin-style piece set in the corridors of power, Davies’s conversation-starting dramas are always holding a mirror up to the cultural moment. His next series, Tip Toe, promises to deliver another one, uniting Alan Cumming and David Morrissey at the front lines of the culture war. Here’s what we learnt about the Channel 4 thriller – and his gilded résumé – from the screenwriting titan’s BFI talk.   Photograph: Channel 4‘Tip Toe’ His new thriller will be ‘Years and Years meets Queer As Folk’ Davies’s next series is Channel 4 thriller Tip Toe, a five-parter that takes him – and us – back to the old stomping grounds of Queer As Folk. The series stars Alan Cumming as Leo, a bar owner in Manchester’s Gay Village and David Morrisse

For the seventh and final time, Tommy Shelby is saddling up to take control of Birmingham’s criminal underworld in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. World War II is raging, Luftwaffe bombs are falling and his unhinged nephew is running rackets too egregious even for the reclusive crime lord’s tastes.  For fans of Steven Knight’s Netflix crime saga, which has charted the Shelby clan’s crimes and sharply-dressed misdemeanours from 1919 to 1940, the movie-length adaption offers a meaty, expansive farewell to some much-loved characters and the introduction of a few new ones. It’s also an uptick in the show’s world-building, where old favourites like The Garrison Tavern and Charlie’s Yard are joined by docks, factories and bombed-out city streets. The film’s production designer Jacqueline Abrahams talks us through the key locations. Photograph: Robert Viglasky/NeflixCillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby and Barry Keoghan as Duke Shelby What happens in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man? The Immortal Man finds Tommy Shelby looking anything but immortal. He’s in an opium-fuelled exile, grieving lost family in a faded country pile outside Birmingham. In the city, his rash, impressionable nephew Duke (Barry Keoghan) has assumed the mantle of gangland supremo. Enter Tim Roth’s fascist fifth columnist, John Beckett, the trigger man for a Nazi scheme to flood the UK economy with counterfeit bank notes. Will Hitler’s fake cash scheme collapse the war effort and lead to Britain’s surrender? Alrea