Phil de Semlyen

October 2025 update: With the 2025 Emmy Awards winners crowning Adolescence and The Pitt as must-watch series, and a return for Norwich’s finest in How Are You? It's Alan (Partridge), we’ve updated our list of the best new TV Shows and streaming series of 2025 so far.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 worldwide📍 Severance season 2 (multiple acting wins) – watch on Apple TV worldwide📍 The Studio (Best Comedy

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

Everyone is scared of something. It might be something specific, like spiders or snakes or heights, 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 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. Written by Tom Huddleston, Cath Clarke, Dave Calhoun, Nigel Floyd, Phil de Semlyen, David Ehrlich, Joshua Rothkopf, Nigel Floyd, Andy Kryza, Alim Kheraj and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🔪 The best new horror movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The 100 best movies of all time🤡 The 21 best Stephen King movies of all time🩸 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories

Movie monsters are a many-splendoured thing, with a strong emphasis on ‘thing’. Some may take the form of giant irradiated lizards or skyscraper-sized apes, others amphibious swamp creatures or slow-creeping mounds of gelatin. Some represent the biggest fears of society at large, others are manifestations of their creator’s personal hang-ups. Others, meanwhile, are more instinctual, killing either for food or just for the sheer fun of it. If you’ve read this far, you may be experiencing some déjà vu. Didn’t we already write a list of the best monster movies of all-time? Indeed we did! But not all of cinema’s greatest monsters inhabit great movies. Sure, there’s a good deal of crossover. But as with actual human actors, some of the most memorable creatures in film history can be found slumming it in subpar productions – and they deserve to have their moment in the spotlight. A few caveats: this list largely follows the same parameters as our monster movies list, meaning that it steers away from 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? Brundlefly? You’ll find them all below. Recommended: 👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made💀 The 100 best horror movies of all-time🧟 The best zombie movies of all-time👹 Cinema’s creepiest anthology horror movies🩸 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories

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

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

We are living in puritanical times. If you’ve followed the ongoing debate over sex scenes that’s carried out on social media over the last few years – and if you haven’t, well, congratulations – then you’ll know the one thing that unites progressive-minded zoomers and pearl-clutching conservatives is an aversion to cinematic boning. The argument goes that sex scenes rarely add anything to the plot of a movie, and exist simply to gratify the perv in the director’s chair. 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

Science fiction isn’t just for nerds anymore. In truth, it never really was. While often marginalised as a niche interest, the best sci-fi films do what every good movie strives to do: tell us something about ourselves and the world around us. The only difference is that it might invent an entirely different world – if not an entire universe – to do so. Ultimately, the sci-fis that stick out are the ones that deal with themes and issues anyone can relate to, not just the geeks writing 4000-word theoretical treatises on fan forums – and that was true even before it became one of entertainment’s most bankable genres. To that end, in order to put together our list of the 100 best sci-fi movies ever made, we asked a wide-ranging panel of experts, from Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, to Oscar-decorated film director Guillermo del Toro, to Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin, along with a few regular old Time Out writers. As a result, it’s a list that crisscrosses the sci-fi universe, from Tatooine to Arrakis, Metropolis to Los Angeles circa, uh, 2019.   Recommended: 🚀 Charlie Brooker’s ten favourite sci-fi movies👽 The best sci-fi shows streaming on Netflix🦄 The 50 best fantasy movies of all-time

Updated October 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 a

June 2025 update: In this update, we've added one of the best blockbusters of the last decade, Top Gun: Maverick, the movie that finally brought audiences back to theaters post-pandemic and which firmly outclasses the 1986 original with some of the most thrilling flight sequences ever put on film.  Everyone loves a good action movie. Sure, film school snobs may turn up their noses, but even hardcore cineastes cannot live on indie dramas and experimental art flicks alone. No matter how cultured you are, there’s a part of your lizard brain that loves explosions and shootouts and badass one-liners – and it needs to be satisfied. And the only thing that will scratch the itch is watching something get blowed up real good.  The truth is, action is a deeply misunderstood genre. Action flicks needn’t be dumb or epic or even particularly loud to succeed. Some find beauty in violence. Others might dropkick you right in the heart. Heck, some even have character development. So light that fuse, clip that wire and batten down the hatches – these are the most pulse-pounding, heart-racing, edge of your seat action movies of all-time.  Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time💥 The 18 greatest stunts in cinema (as picked by the greatest stunt people)🥋 The 25 best martial arts movies of all-time🌊 The 33 best disaster movies of all-time

October 2025: Autumn is arguably the very best time of year for exploring London’s museums. After a quiet summer, the capital’s biggest cultural institutions burst into life again when the leaves start turning brown, with a plethora of major exhibitions on. In October, you can catch recent openings including ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ at the V&A, ‘Blitz!’ at the Design Museum and the V&A East Storehouse’s David Bowie Centre, plus some great new arrivals including ‘Wildlife Photographer of the Year’ at the Natural History Museum, ‘Emergency Exits’ at the Imperial War Museum and ‘Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World’ at the Portrait Gallery. Phew! 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

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

In February 1977, a disgruntled Indianapolis man walked into a city centre tower for a meeting with a mysterious box under his arm. He then took a mortgage company executive who he felt had cheated him out of a real estate investment hostage, jerryrigging a shotgun to his head with wire and demanding an apology and millions of dollars in compensation. One false move from the cops and the man was toast.   This absolutely terrible plan and all the absurdities that ensued over 63 hours and under the full flare of first local, then national news coverage, are captured with terrific gusto in Gus Van Sant’s tragicomic thriller. It’s another perceptive state-of-the-nation movie from the veteran indie auteur to add to To Die For (1995), Elephant (2003) and Milk (2008), sharing their preoccupation with guns as a manifestation of American ambition and dysfunction. Beyond the guilty laughs, authentically beige ’70s period detail and news reportage aesthetic, there’s an offbeat anti-capitalist folk tale here that will strike a chord in the current moment.   It’s scary clown Bill Skarsgård doesn’t leave all the clownishness behind as the jittery, volatile Tony Kiritsis. He’s an aspiring entrepreneur whose efforts to develop a shopping mall were left in ruins when loans company boss ML Hall (Al Pacino) called in his investment. But the plan almost falls at the first hurdle because Hall, he learns, is in Florida. Without missing a beat, he takes his son Richard (Dacre Montgomery) hostage in

The 1960s had Dr Strangelove and Fail Safe, the ’70s had Twilight’s Last Gleaming, the ’80s had WarGames, and the ’90s had Crimson Tide. If you’ve recovered from those Cold War classics, Kathryn Bigelow’s unbelievably stressful nuclear disaster movie is sending you straight back to the basement.  The screenplay by TV news veteran Noah Oppenheim, who also co-wrote Netflix’s White House cyberattack thriller Zero Day and must surely have a bunker in his garden by this point, gives three overlapping perspectives on an unfolding nightmare. Each start at the exact same point: a regular morning in the White House Situation Room and US Strategic Command is disrupted by a spec on the radar. A single nuke has been launched over the Pacific. Is it another North Korean test? A rogue submarine commander? Nothing to worry about or the first shot of armageddon? A faint worry becomes palpable fear for Admiral Mark Miller (Jason Clarke), Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) and the team in the Situation Room when the nuke goes ‘suborbital’, its trajectory putting it on course to hit the Midwest in 17 minutes time. At Alaska’s missile defence base, Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) goes from wrestling with homesickness to trying to prevent ten million fatalities in a trice. But, as someone points out, America’s $60 billion defence missiles are like trying to ‘hit a bullet with a bullet’.  Over the world’s most high-powered Zoom call, the President (Idris Elba) and his advisors wrestle

One of Hollywood’s biggest stars in a true-life sports movie with big-time awards hopes. It’s going to be a Rocky-like story of comeback glory wrenched from the jaws of defeat, right? Except that’s not at all what Dwayne Johnson and director Benny Safdie have got cooking with this tender but tumultuous addiction and relationship drama set in the gladiatorial world of mixed martial arts (MMA). Because beyond the regular crunch of fist on bone, The Smashing Machine is an unexpectedly gentle, soulful character study that has Johnson undercutting his crowd-pleasing ‘The Rock’ persona with vulnerability and boyish uncertainty. The early Oscar buzz is certainly warranted: opposite an equally affecting, glammed-up Emily Blunt, it’s far more than just a popcorn-guy-goes-prestige novelty turn. This is his The Wrestler moment. Covering his shaved dome with a crop of black hair and with subtle facial prosthetics lending him an off-kilter look, an extra beefed-up Johnson plays real-life fighter Mark Kerr over three physically and emotionally bruising years in the late ’90s. We meet striding into the ring, basically a wardrobe on legs, and crushing opponents in short order. A journalist asks him what it would feel like to lose and he’s genuinely stumped. He can’t conceive of defeat partly because he doesn’t want to, a bubble of control he expects girlfriend Dawn Staples (Blunt) to help him maintain.   Except that the world of MMA is evolving at speed, with new rules that limit Kerr’s fire

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

One of the UK’s most historic cinemas has announced plans for a £5 million upgrade to secure its future. The Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) is looking for ‘significant investment’ to bring the 1939 venue up-to-date and future proof it with a net zero fit-out, reports The Glasgow Herald.  On the plan is full refurbishments for the two main cinema screens, including new seats, and a new net zero energy systems that will take in new heating, lighting and ventilation.  ‘The GFT is a jewel in the crown in the city centre,’ the cinema’s outgoing CEO Allison Gardner tells the Herald. ‘The GFT cannot be turned into anything else; it’s a custom-built cinema.’ ‘Things are still at the planning stage,’ she says. ‘The first step will be to start fundraising and then there will be a timetable for the work.’ ‘It will be about how to weather-proof the building, conserving energy, looking at how there can be cold air in the screens.’ The GFT is one of the UK’s most prestigious and storied cinemas. When it opened as the Cosmo in 1939, it was the first purpose-built art house cinema outside of London. It’s home to the Glasgow Film Festival and has hosted movie luminaries like Richard Linklater, Ken Loach, Baz Luhrmann, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Tilda Swinton and Quentin Tarantino down the years. The cinema will remain open during the renovation work, which will take place under the leadership of new CEO Seonaid Daly, the executive director of Glasgow Film. Fundraising is expecting to get under

Halloween is creeping ever closer and with it, an array of gloriously gothic, ghoulish horror movie screenings to get your fangs into across London. And this year, we’re putting our own cobwebby stamp on spooky season with a brand new outdoor cinema in a seriously fun setting. The Trick or Sweet Film Club, with Time Out x NERDS, runs from October 23-31 at London Bridge’s buzzy outdoor venue Vinegar Yard.The movies, curated by Time Out’s film editor, are tried-and-tested frighteners with a family-friendly flavour. On the line-up (see below) are ’80s classics like Ghostbusters and Gremlins, with The Cabin in the Woods adding a 21st century classic to the mix. The vibe is ‘spine-tingling but a bit silly’, and all the movies are tailor-made for a proper Halloween party. Tickets are a devilish £6.66, with lots of surprises promised and NERDS as far as the eye can see. Fancy dress is not obligatory but there will be prizes for the best costumes, so dust off your Stay-Puft suit accordingly.  Here’s the line-up in full: An American Werewolf in London (1981) – Thursday, October 23Little Shop of Horrors (1985) – Friday, October 24The Cabin in the Woods (2012) – Saturday, October 25Ghostbusters (1984) – Sunday, October 26 Addams Family Values (1993) – Thursday, October 30Gremlins (1984) – Friday, October 31 The doors will be opening at 6.30pm, with screenings beginning at 7.30pm. Our tip? Get in early, pick up some food from Vinegar Yard’s street food outlets and settle in for a scary-b

‘I think it’s a terrible idea.’  Over a cheese scone and a pot of rooibos tea, Claire Foy is not holding back on the news that an AI actress called Tilly Norwood is ‘in talks’ with Hollywood agencies. ‘If people want to watch a film with a fake human being in it, go for gold; I'll be out of a job and I'll just have to live with that, but it loses the point of why we do what we do.’If you want to know what the point of acting is for her, Foy’s thorny, emotionally ruined performance as a grieving woman who bonds with a goshawk, Mabel, in H is for Hawk is a great place to start.The adaptation of Helen Macdonald’s bestselling memoir, beloved by a small army of readers, gets its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. The Crown and Wolf Hall actress had to learn to train Eurasian goshawks – ‘the perfectly evolved psychopath’, as someone notes in the film – and channel the author’s deep, spiralling grief when her dad (Brendan Gleeson) dies. In contrast with her roles in those two period worlds, where inscrutability and decorum were everything, H is For Hawk crackles with raw emotion. Tilly Norwood could never.  The adopted north Londoner has picked a Golborne Road café, round the corner from her old Notting Hill home, for our interview. She’s come from an acupuncture session, and before that a couple of days plugging the film in Switzerland, where she divulged her girlhood Leonardo DiCaprio obsession and chatted about playing a young Elizabeth II in The Crown, still her bigges

A sun-soaked new ITV crime caper that unites two of British telly’s biggest stars, Frauds is here to deliver some Spanish balm and high-stakes heists to your October viewing. The series teams up Doctor Who and Broadchurch’s Jodie Whittaker with Gentleman Jack and Corrie star Suranne Jones in a clash of the telly titans. Expect twists galore and a robbery that even Danny Ocean would be proud of, as the duo set to work relieving Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum of a priceless masterpiece. We spoke to executive producer Katie Kelly and location manager Isidro Gonzalez to get the lowdown on the six-part series – including the sun-drenched Iberian locations that aren’t quite where you’d expect them to be.  Photograph: Monumental TelevisionSam (Jodie Whittaker) and Bert (Suranne Jones) What is Frauds about? Co-created by Suranne Jones and Anne-Marie O’Connor, the pair behind 2023’s ITV drama Maryland, Frauds is a heist thriller with a twist. The two old friends at its heart, reformed expat Sam (Whittaker) and unreformed ex-con Bert (Jones), have drifted apart during the latter’s time in prison on the Costa del Sol. Where there was once trust and teamwork, there’s now just a whole lot of suspicion and mistrust. Bert, though, wants Sam to team up for one final payday: to steal Salvador Dali’s painting The Great Masturbator from Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum. To add more complexity to an already complex dynamic, Bert has terminal cancer. This will be ‘one last job’ in every sense.  Helping

Scoring tickets to BFI London Film Festival screenings can feel like a magic trick – blink and they’re gone – but don’t despair: there are still seats available for some cracking new films when the fest gets underway on October 8. Whether you fancy living it up in the Royal Festival Hall or hunkering down in one of London’s more intimate screens, there are opportunities to get right into the heart of the UK’s biggest film fest without having to queue. Here’s five films you can still pick up tickets for.  Photograph: Davi RussoChanning Tatum in ‘Roofman’ 1. Roofman The Fugitive meets Clerks in this true-life romantic caper starring Channing Tatum as an ex-soldier who hides out in the walls of a Toys “R” Us after ripping off McDonald’s branches and somehow finds love in the process. With a doozy of a supporting cast – Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Peter Dinklage – this one looks like a big-hearted alt-romcom guaranteed to play well with a festival audience.  9pm, Tue Oct 14, Royal Festival Hall2.30pm, Wed Oct 15, Royal Festival Hall  Book tickets here Photograph: © Sabrina Lantos / Sony Pictures Classics 2. Blue Moon With not one but two films at the festival, Richard Linklater is really just showing off. His movie making-of drama about new wave classic Breathless, Nouvelle Vague, is already a sellout, but don’t sleep on the other one either. Ethan Hawke and Andrew Scott play songwriting double act Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers in a different kind of a

The BFI London Film Festival (LFF) is just around the corner, with 11 days and nights of new movies in store for those lucky enough to have tickets. But it’s not just films at the festival – and not everything costs money to attend. The LFF has a full programme of free events and screenings that you can book from 10am on Thursday, October 2, and a pretty packed schedule of events and exhibitions you won’t need to book at all. There’s Wicked costume exhibitions, dance parties and talks galore. Here’s what to look out for. Photograph: Universal PicturesMunchkinland was constructed in a Buckinghamshire village Get up close to Wicked’s Oscar-winning gowns Wicked: For Good is not on this year’s LFF line-up but you can get up close with some of the spectacular, award-winning costumes, props and rarely seen behind-the-scenes photography from the first film in the mezzanine of the BFI Southbank every day from noon to 8pm. Wizard fans can also catch director Jon M Chu discussing the movie on October 10. Tickets are free for that, too, and booking opens at 10am, October 2.  Head here for info Photograph: Netflix Solve a murder-mystery with ‘Star Wars’ director Rian Johnson Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out movie is this year’s curtain raiser and, brick that he is, the American filmmaker is sticking around for an hour-long talk about the secrets behind his murder-mystery franchise. Catch him at BFI Southbank on October 9. Head here for info Photograph: Alan Holben Photography llc B

The BFI London Film Festival isn’t just manna for movie lovers, it’s a feast for bookworms too. Of course, literary adaptations are always a major feature of any festival line-up, but this year brings a striking range of them. From copper-bottomed classics (Frankenstein, The Assistant) to modern gems (Hamnet, The Ballad of a Small Player), there’s something for every corner of BookTok. Novellas and short stories are represented, too, with Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams and Ben Shattuck’s The History of Sound on the programme. Here’s a shelf’s worth to look out for at the festival.  NB There’s almost always a chance to grab last-minute tickets, including to previously sold-out screenings and events. Check the LFF website for the details and latest ticket availability. Photograph: Time Out H is For Hawk Helen Macdonald’s 2014 memoir comes with a shelf full of awards, including the Samuel Johnson Prize for best British non-fiction. Claire Foy steps into the author’s shoes in a story of grief and goshawks that recount Helen’s grief for her dad and relationship with the bird of prey who helped her through. Brendan Gleeson co-stars as her dad. 5.30pm, Sunday Oct 12, Royal Festival Hall8.30pm, Monday Oct 13, Curzon Soho Cinema8.45pm, Monday Oct 13 October, Curzon Soho Cinema12pm, Saturday Oct 18, Curzon Soho Cinema  Photograph: Time Out 100 Nights of Hero  Adapted from Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel, a fresh twist on Middle Eastern folktales One Thousand and One Nights, Julia

Political assassinations. Anti-immigration rhetoric. Woeful personal hygiene.  Welcome back to the thrilling, funny and uncannily topical world of spymaster Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and his brilliant-but-banished Slow Horses for another six episodes of high-stakes espionage on Apple TV+. Based on Mick Herron’s fifth Slow Horses novel, 2018’s London Rules, and overseen by departing showrunner Will Smith, the new season is so topical, it could have been written last week. There’s terrorist plots, liberal and populist politicians trading blows – think Nigel Farage vs Sadiq Khan – and a British intelligence apparatus that still relies on Lamb’s broken-down spies to bail it out. But aside from being a great – and very funny – series about spying and counter-espionage, Slow Horses is also a great London show. Rather than the London Eye, Big Ben and all the usual landmarks, the new season is another tour of the capitol’s lesser-known, often grimier corners – alleys and skate parks, housing estates and underpasses. A penguin enclosure. Join us for a tour of the key locations.    Photograph: Jack English/Apple TV+Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb in ‘Slow Horses’ season 5 What’s happened in Slow Horses so far? Okay, hold onto your sidearm and half-eaten sausage roll, here’s a swift recap. Season 1 sent MI5 young gun River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) into disgrace after a botched op at Stansted Airport. He’s condemned to join the so-called ‘Slow Horses’, a group of exiled spies under the de

Netflix’s new period drama, House of Guinness, is a Succession-like saga of adult kids who inherit wealth and power when their father dies… only to discover that it’s not all its cracked up to be. The opposite, in fact.Created by Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight and starring James Norton (King & Conqueror), Louis Partridge (Enola Holmes), Anthony Boyle (Masters of the Air) and Emily Fairn (Saturday Night), the eight-parter is as bingeable as a pint of the black stuff and, like, the stout itself, rewards patience with a intriguing bundle of plot threads that tie in the rise of Irish Republicanism, 18th century political manoeuvrings, the rapid expansion of Dublin, and the vibrant, violent melting pot of post-Civil War New York. 📍 Fact-checking House of Guinness: the facts and fiction you need to know before you binge📍 House of Guinness locations: the unexpected filming spots behind Netflix’s wild period epic The anachronistic soundtrack is a selling point, too, with Fontaines D.C. and Kneecap lending raucous energy, The Mary Wallopers and The Chieftains providing Irish folk anthems, Celtic punks The Feelgood McLouds turning over a table or two.  Here’s the track listing in full: Episode 1 Starburster – Fontaines D.C. Get Your Brits Out – Kneecap Devil’s Dance Floor – Flogging Mary Hood – Kneecap   Episode 2 Cruel Katie – Lankum In ár gCroíthe go deo – Fontaines D.C.The Rich Man and the Poor Man – The Mary Wallopers  Episode 3 As I Roved Out – The Mary Wallopers Goodnight World

Much more than just the show that Steven Knight snuck in between creating Peaky Blinders and writing Bond 25, Netflix’s new period saga House of Guinness is a barrel’s worth of salty and salacious 19th century history. Filled with sex, violence, romance and scheming, the eight-part drama hits the streamer this week with a packed cast, opulent costumes, vast sets and bustling 1860s Dublin and New York locations. Except none of the series was filmed on the Emerald Isle or in America. Read on to find out the secrets behind Netflix’s ‘Succession with stout’ from production designer Richard Bullock. Photograph: Ben Blackall/NetflixJames Norton as Sean Rafferty What is 'House of Guinness' about?  The story centres on the Guinness family at a key moment in its history: patriarch Benjamin Guinness, the Dublin stout’s answer to Logan Roy, has died and his four adult children await his will. The boys from the black stuff, Arthur (Anthony Boyle), the younger Benjamin (Fionn O'Shea) and Edward Guinness (Louis Partridge), must bury their rivalries to maintain the brewery’s pre-eminence. Daughter Anne (Emily Fairn), inevitably, is to be omitted from the patriarchal business.The series is backdropped by the rise of Republican sentiment amongst the so-called ‘Fenians’, who are torn between tearing the brewery to the ground and trying to exploit the Guinness’s power to help fuel the independence movement. In America, meanwhile, a self-appointed representative of the company stirs up trouble