Tom Huddleston

Comedy gets no respect, no respect at all. Sure, everyone loves to laugh, and just about every film buff has a comedy movie they hold close to their heart. But for some reason, when it comes to awards and canonisation, comedies still get short shrift in the history of cinema. That’s probably because, more than any other genre, comedy is dependent on context. What’s funny in 1924 might land with a thud in 2024. And that’s to say nothing of varying tastes in humour.  There is no more difficult movie for a filmmaker to pull off than a comedy. No film genre ages worse: humour is largely dependent on context, and what’s funny in 2025 might be completely lost on audiences five years later, let alone a century. And as any stand-up comedian will tell you, the stuff that makes people laugh varies greatly – from country to country, city to city, generation to generation.  And so, those that have kept us cracking up for decades are truly special. Comedies might rarely win Academy Awards, but the best comedy movies stick with us longer – and get rewatched more frequently – than just about any other type of film. To put together this list, we asked comedians like Diane Morgan and Russell Howard, actors such as John Boyega and Jodie Whittaker and a cadre of Time Out writers about the movies that make them chuckle the hardest for longest. In doing so, we believe we’ve found the 100 finest, most durable and most broadly appreciable laughers in history. No matter your sense of humour – goofy,

Has movie music ever been better? With legends like John Williams and Howard Shore still at work, Hans Zimmer at the peaks of his powers, and the likes of Jonny Greenwood, AR Rahman, Mica Levi, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross knocking it out of the park, the modern film score is a Dolby Atmos-enhancing feast of modernist compositions, lush orchestral classicism and atmospheric soundscapes.What better time, then, to celebrate this art form within an art form – with a few iconic soundtracks thrown in – and pay tribute to the musicians who’ve given our favourite movies (and, to be fair, some stinkers) earworm-laden accompaniment? Of course, narrowing it all down to a mere 100 is tough. We’ve prioritised music written for the screen, but worthy contenders still missed out, including Dimitri Tiomkin’s era-defining score for It’s a Wonderful Life and Elton John’s hummable tunes for The Lion King.To help do the narrowing down, we’ve recruited iconic movie composers, directors and broadcasters like Philip Glass, Carter Burwell, Max Richter, Anne Dudley, AR Rahman, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Edgar Wright and Mark Kermode to pick their favourites. Happy listening!Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all time.🪩 The 50 best uses of songs in movies.💃 The greatest musical movies ever made.

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

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

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

If you love movies, chances are high that the first movie you ever loved was a cartoon. It may have been something from Disney’s Golden Age or the studio’s 1990s Aladdin-powered renaissance. Or possibly a Pixar tearjerker. If your parents were a bit more worldly, it could have been a Studio Ghibli masterpiece. Because animation is frequently where most cinematic obsessions start.  As proof, consider this chart of the greatest animated movies of all-time. In composing this list, we polled everyone from Fantastic Mr Fox director Wes Anderson and Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park, along with several Time Out writers and experts, and the results show just how broad the genre can be. Our list incorporates the standard-bearers from North America and Japan, plus stop-motion nightmares to psychedelic headtrips, illustrated documentaries to unclassifiable avant-garde experiments. You’ll see a lot of old childhood favourites, sure – but there might even be some new adult faves to consider as well.  Written by Trevor Johnston, David Ehrlich, Joshua Rothkoph, Tom Huddleston, Andy Kryza, Guy Lodge, Dave Calhoun, Keith Uhlich, Cath Clarke and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🐭 The 50 best Disney movies🇯🇵 The 20 best anime movies of all-time🤣 The best family comedy movies🦄 The 50 best fantasy movies of all-time  

The prudes have inherited the movies. If you’ve followed the ongoing debate over sex scenes that’s carried out 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 35 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

The geeks have inherited the Earth – and the film industry. Once thought of as the realm of shut-ins and those folks you see roleplaying in the park, fantasy movies are now huge business. All snark aside, though, that’s probably a good thing. If one of the main points of cinema is to take you somewhere else, there are few genres as transportive as fantasy. And with the real world as rough as it is today, all of us could use an escape to lands of elves, dragons, superheroes and David Bowie in a revealing leotard. But the movies on this list are limited to swords-and-orcs epics and  comic-book blockbusters. Sure, there are quite a bit of those on here. By our definition, though, fantasy encompasses many other forms of imaginative whimsy, whether it’s the surreal vision of Luis Buñuel or the cartoon chaos of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. So: wanna get away? These 50 films will take you where you want to go. Recommended: 🦸🏿 50 amazing comic-book movies🛸 The 100 best sci-fi movies of all time👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made👾 The 50 best ’80s movies, ranked

On March 25, 1925, at London’s Selfridges department store in central London, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird made the first public demo of his latest creation: a way to broadcast visual information from a camera to a screen. A full century later, Baird’s discovery has led to perhaps the most vital, creative and popular mode of artistic expression in the entire world. But it’s only in the past 25 years that television has really fulfilled its artistic potential.  The result has been the so-called ‘Golden Age of Television’, a boom kickstarted roughly around the turn of the century with the rise of shows like The Sopranos and later Breaking Bad, and continuing with awards-winners from Succession to Shōgun to Slow Horses. So while our list of the 100 greatest TV shows may pay tribute to the unmissable programs of yesteryear, you’ll find that the majority hail from our own century – meaning there’s no excuse not to watch every single one. Paring the list down to only 100 was a painful process, so we decided to omit sketch shows, talk shows, news and non-fiction in order to focus on scripted drama and classic comedy. Time to go goggle-eyed.

Young love is the greatest love. Sure, it’s often naive, misguided and fleeting. But romance never feels quite as thrilling and pure as when you’re a teenager. Hollywood, naturally, frequently mines those big feelings and puts them on screen. Of course, tapping into adolescent emotions when you’re many years removed from them isn’t easy. But every once in a while a movie gets it right – and it punches you right in the heart. These are those movies. On this list of the best teenage romances ever put on film, you’ll experience love in all its messy, complicated glory. In some cases, it’s a coming-of-age tale featuring a significant age gap. Other times, it’s between two kids trying to figure the world out. Sometimes, there’s a vampire involved. All of them, though, manage to capture the palpitations, the butterflies and especially the intense confusion of being in love for the first time. It’s something we can all relate to – no matter how old we get. Recommended: 😍 The 100 best romantic films of all-time🤣 The 70 best romantic comedies of all-time💔 The best breakup and heartbreak movies👯 The 100 best teen movies of all-time

Not all love stories have happy endings. In fact, many of the greatest romances in cinema end in either sadness, tragedy or resigned acknowledgement that sometimes, relationships just don’t work out, no matter how strongly two people feel about each other. That doesn’t make them any less romantic, of course – love and loss go hand in hand. Often, the most honest way to address the machinations of the heart is to talk about the time when it all goes wrong. That’s why, if you peruse our lists of the best romantic films and romcoms, you’ll find several of the same movies that made this list of the best heartbreakers in film history. Because as the song goes: love hurts, love scars, love leaves you a blubbering wreck. These movies will do all that – and more. Have a well-stocked box of Kleenex ready to go before watching any of these. You’ll need it. Recommended: 😍 The 100 best romantic films of all-time💑 The 70 best romcoms of all-time🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

The Academy Awards exist to piss people off. Okay, maybe there are some other reasons Hollywood has thrown itself a big, congratulatory bash every year for closing in on a century now. But in the social media era, where anger is currency, upsetting the public with bad choices keeps viewers talking far more than making good ones. Sure, nothing is more important than the Oscars – they influence box-office returns, shake up the canon of the greatest films of all time and put important notches on individual résumés. But for cinema fans, getting riled up over who wins and who doesn’t is part of the whole experience. It is the experience, really. In that spirit of debate, we’ve gone back over the history of the Oscars and picked the 20 darkest stains on the ceremony’s legacy, from Al Pacino becoming a parody of himself to Stevie Wonder’s worst song to Crash… oh good Lord, Crash.  Recommended: 🏆 The 50 most deserving Oscar winners of all-time🙌 The most anticipated movies coming out in 2025🔥 The 100 best movies of all time

It all began on a beach in Hawaii. As Star Wars exploded into cinemas in May 1977, George Lucas was far, far away: fearing negative press he’d escaped to Mauna Kea, inviting his friend Steven Spielberg along for moral support. Idly musing over their next projects, Spielberg announced that he’d always wanted to direct a James Bond movie. But Lucas had something better up his sleeve: inspired by the adventure serials that had thrilled him as a kid, he had for some years been developing the character of Indiana Smith, an archeologist-adventurer on the trail of an ancient Biblical treasure. Spielberg was hooked – just as long as Lucas agreed to change the guy’s last name.  Tom Selleck was actually offered the role only to drop out due to his commitment on Magnum, P.I.. But they landed on precisely the right guy: it’s now impossible to imagine anyone other than Harrison Ford in the role, his wry, world-weary and effortlessly charming performance the anchor that holds all the mayhem together. It’s impossible to imagine anyone but Harrison Ford in the role And what mayhem: probably the first Hollywood action movie to truly merit that description, Raiders of the Lost Ark starts full-pelt as Indy raids a South American temple only to find himself on the receiving end of arrows, snakes and that iconic rolling boulder. But it’s the central chase sequence that really ups the stakes, as Indy pursues the Ark on horseback through the Egyptian desert, pummelled and pounded by rocks, trucks

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 ‘They don't know why, they just remember. Remember that they want to be in here.’ If George Romero’s groundbreaking, self-produced debut Night of the Living Dead had worn its satirical elements relatively lightly – a Black hero, a dash of generation-gap angst, some timely, Vietnam-era newsreel-style shakeycam – by the time of this long-delayed sequel, Romero had evidently decided that subtlety was overrated. He was right, too: the tale of a group of survivors from a zombie apocalypse who hole up in a suburban shopping mall only to discover that the undead are instinctively drawn to the place, this is sledgehammer satire and all the better for it; a hilariously blunt sideswipe at unthinking consumerism. Which isn’t to imply for a moment that Dawn of the Dead is not a clever film. While it may be stuffed with cheap thrills – from buckets of inventive gore to a giddy, fist-pumping truck-based action sequence – the script itself is as sharp as a pin, plunging us head-first into the crisis and refusing to let up, while at the same time finding ample room for character development and audience identification (the fact that the terrific cast pretty much vanished without trace in the years afterwards is criminal).  A tough film to finance and a controversially violent one on release A tough film to finance and a controversially violent one on release – hence the multiplicity of different cuts – Dawn of the Dead would inspire a whole wav

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 The slasher movie had been bubbling under for a while by the time John Carpenter co-wrote, directed and scored Halloween. Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood (1971) had birthed the whole series-of-inventive-kills plotline; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) had added both the memorable (and marketable) masked killer aspect and given us our first ‘final girl’; while Black Christmas (1974) had brought not just the seasonal fun, but the teen-girls-in-peril angle. Halloween wasn’t even Carpenter’s idea: two independent producers, Irwin Yablans and Moustapha Akkad, actually approached him, asking if he’d deliver them a low-budget horror flick about a killer who stalks babysitters.  But Halloween was still Carpenter’s baby, and the entire slasher subgenre that followed - one that, in the 2020s, shows no signs of flagging – would, for better or worse, never have existed without it. Penned by Carpenter and his then partner, producer Debra Hill, the script was written in ten days, and it shows: there’s nothing remotely superfluous here, just forward momentum and driving plot. It’s left largely to the cast to lend the film personality, which they do in spades: Jamie Lee Curtis’s casting was almost accidental (Carpenter wanted someone else) but the film might not have worked at all without her grounding, relatable presence (the fact that her mum was Janet Leigh from Psycho is just a great added Easter egg); meanwhile, Donald Pleasence adds a touch of

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 Voted the greatest horror movie ever by Time Out’s expert panel of filmmakers, horror icons and enthusiasts, William Friedkin’s full-throttle adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel works because it fuses the extreme and the everyday, taking a potentially absurd tale of demonic possession and placing it in an ordinary suburban home, incorporating some of the most extreme imagery ever devised but shooting it like straight drama.  It’s also a deeply unusual movie, opening with a lengthy, near-wordless prologue in Iraq which seems to exist purely to invoke a sense of otherworldly dread, before switching abruptly into what could almost be a domestic comedy-drama about a movie-star Mum (Ellen Burstyn) and her cute, comically outspoken 12-year-old daughter, Regan (Linda Blair).  It’s perhaps the most upsetting single image in a Hollywood film The horrors start fairly subtle – a shaking bed, a spot of memorably foul language – before increasing spectacularly in intensity; the crucifix masturbation that arrives roughly halfway through remains perhaps the most upsetting and transgressive single image in a Hollywood film. It’s notable, however, that in a movie crammed with outrageous supernatural horrors – revolving heads, levitation, buckets of pea-soup vomit – the scenes that hit hardest are those in hospital, as the confused and helpless Regan is subjected to a series of invasive procedures, all under the gaze of Friedkin’s implacable

This review was updated on September 21, 2024Nobody wanted The Godfather. The list of directors approached by producer Robert Evans to oversee an adaptation of Mario Puzo’s then-unpublished novel of Mafia life was exhaustive, from Sergio Leone to Otto Preminger. Every one of them rejected the offer, until finally someone suggested this guy Francis Coppola, who might never have made a hit but at least he was Italian-American. Astonishingly, even he turned it down – the book was ‘pretty cheap stuff’, Coppola sneered – before friends prevailed upon him to reconsider, pointing out that his production company, American Zoetrope, was in $400,000 worth of debt, and that he really couldn’t afford to be choosy. So Coppola swallowed his pride. The result was not only the single most financially successful movie to date, but one that remains almost universally beloved well into the 21st century, appearing in the top rank of best movie lists in publications as diverse as Sight & Sound, Empire and Time Out, and remaining so culturally significant that Heinz have seen fit to release a range of Godfather-inspired pasta sauces bearing the film’s instantly recognisable title font.  The story is Shakespearean in its simplicity The story is Shakespearean in its simplicity: as an ageing ruler – Don Corleone, imbued with absolute authority by Marlon Brando – reaches the end of his life, he must choose which of his three sons – hotheaded Sonny (James Caan), feeble Fredo (John Cazale) or upstandin

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 Selected by Time Out as its best movie ever Stanley Kubrick’s gargantuan interplanetary pilgrimage tracks humanity’s progress from the prehistoric plains of Africa, where proto-human apes discover a consciousness-expanding alien monolith that grants them the wit to use tools, to the start of the 21st century, and a human voyage to the moons of Jupiter where the evolutionary promise of the monolith will finally be realised.  Working with British sci-fi author Arthur C Clarke – whose short story ‘The Sentinel’ provided some of the initial concepts – Kubrick’s intention was to make what he described as ‘the proverbial good science fiction movie’: a film entirely free of scaly monsters, scantily clad princesses and laser-packing heroes, where the focus was on real-world speculative science rather than space opera. Graceful, inquisitive, groundbreaking and endlessly rewatchable  Needless to say, he succeeded. Released over a year before the first manned moon mission, 2001 mirrors the Apollo project in its sense of absolute, painstaking precision: like the lunar missions, this is a film where every single element works perfectly, where every person involved – from the designers to the special effects technicians to the actors to Mission Commander Kubrick himself – has given their total focus to the project. Accusations of emotional coldness are hard to refute, but any remoteness is offset not just by the musical choices – from Richard

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 The film that changed everything. First-time director Orson Welles, 28, may not have invented all of the groundbreaking techniques he employed in Citizen Kane – from deep-focus photography to the incorporation of newsreel footage via densely overlapping dialogue and the film’s labyrinthine flashback-within-flashback structure – but he was the first to bring all these ideas together in a single work. The result is still dizzying, still enthralling, and still devastating in its emotional impact. Renowned for his work in the New York theatre and on radio, where he scandalised America with his all-Black stage production of ‘Macbeth’ and his terrifyingly realistic broadcast based on ‘The War of the Worlds’, Welles was wooed to Hollywood with a controversial contract promising him total creative control – unheard of in the days of the studio system – and the chance not only to direct, but to write and star in his own movies.  As witty, tragic, unlikely, unique and fascinating as ever Penned by Welles in partnership with screenwriter Herman J Mankiewicz – a complex relationship explored in David Fincher’s 2020 biopic Mank – Citizen Kane is at heart a satire on wealth and power in America, inspired at least in part by the life of billionaire media mogul William Randolph Hearst, whom Mankiewicz knew and loathed. Played by Welles himself in various degrees of ageing makeup, Charles Foster Kane starts out as a crusading newsman delivering t

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 In late ’70s America, silliness ruled. Vietnam was over, Nixon was gone, and those who could afford it just wanted to have a good time. Sure, there was widespread poverty, racial strife and a wider world teetering on the brink, but who cared about all that? Silly movies like Smokey and the Bandit and Grease topped the box office; silly records like ‘Disco Duck’, ‘Y.M.C.A.’ and ‘Rasputin’ rocked the charts, and silly comedies like Saturday Night Live and Monty Python’s Flying Circus were being widely quoted on college campuses up and down the country.  But in this age of silliness, no one was sillier or more popular than Steve Martin. Part lowbrow old-fashioned entertainer, part ironic, postmodern anti-comedian, Martin was already a platinum-selling recording artist and an arena-filling performer. The transition to cinema was inevitable; as was the fact that whatever he came out with, it would be spectacularly silly.  The result remains the funniest film of Martin’s career What wasn’t set in stone was whether or not it’d be funny. Martin’s live act may have been hugely popular but it was also in many ways deeply strange, relying on physical humour, repeated catchphrases (‘excuuuuuuse me!’) and moments where the jokes fell entirely flat on purpose. Luckily, he found the perfect collaborator: Carl Reiner, a comedian turned director who was able to take Martin’s stream-of-consciousness comic style and, with the aid of co-writer Carl G

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 Voted the Best Comedy Movie of All Time by a Time Out panel of filmmakers, comedy stars, critics and experts, Rob Reiner’s intimate evocation of ‘the sights, the sounds, the smells of a hard-working rock band on the road’ remains entirely unimprovable, four decades on. Shot for a relative pittance and starring three comedians pretty much no one had heard of, the film would go on to become arguably the most quotable comedy ever made, or at least this side of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. What’s remarkable about that, however, is not that Spinal Tap contains dialogue worthy of being ranked alongside the all-time great comic screenplays, but that almost every word of it was improvised. Shooting largely on location with only a basic idea of what each scene would contain, actor-writers Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer – plus a supporting cast largely made up of their friends and collaborators – would improvise at great length, shooting as much as 100 hours of footage in total. Indeed, so much of the film was made up on the hoof that Reiner wanted to credit the screenplay to the entire cast, only to be denied by the Writers Guild of America. It would go on to inspire an entire genre Reiner and his three leads would also write all the music for the film, resulting not just in some of the finest comedy lyrics ever written (‘the looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand / or so I have read’) but some of the crunc

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 Blending humour and sadness is among the trickiest balancing acts in cinema, but for a brief moment in 1987, writer-director Bruce Robinson made it look easy. Drawing on his own experiences as a struggling actor in the late 1960s – and taking inspiration from real-life figures including the great Italian director Franco Zeffirelli, whose alleged pursuit of the young Robinson fed into the character of the predatory Uncle Monty – Robinson first envisioned the material as a novel, before being persuaded to transform it into a screenplay.  Produced by Handmade Films – whose chief financier, George Harrison, personally signed off on the project, and even allowed his song ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ to be used in the film – Withnail and I was shot on location in London and the Lake District (Monty’s cottage still stands, though sadly the Mother Black Cap pub was demolished in 2011), with a largely unknown cast and an inexperienced director.  Nevertheless, it was a classic from the first: reviews at the time recognised the quality of its direction and performances – playing the louche, devious, ultimately tragic Withnail made Richard E Grant an overnight star – while huge chunks of the script instantly entered the cultural lexicon, particularly those lines uttered by Ralph Brown’s antenna-haired, permanently wasted Danny the Dealer: you could barely move for Camberwell Carrots in the early ’90s.  The louche, devious, ultimately tragi

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 The genre parody had existed before Airplane!. In the ’60s and ’70s, movies as diverse as Carry On Screaming!, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Blazing Saddles had lampooned specific genres, often very successfully. But Airplane! was the first to fully exploit the possibilities of the form, to take the by-then familiar framework of the airborne disaster movie and use it not so much as a source of humour, but simply as a skeleton on which to hang as many jokes as humanly possible. Never before had any movie displayed such a single-minded dedication to scoring laughs, at the expense of absolutely everything else: eschewing the visual splendour of Holy Grail or the political nous of Blazing Saddles, here was a film whose only reason for existing was to deliver jokes, as many of them as possible, to pummel the audience into submission with sheer overwhelming comic firepower.  What’s most extraordinary, looking back, is that the vast majority of them are really good jokes – not always clever, not always tasteful, but for the most part really damn funny. From wordplay – ‘don’t call me Shirley’; ‘I’ve been nervous lots of times’; ‘Me John. Big tree!’ – to visual gags – the magic egg; the automatic pilot; Nun’s Life – to jokes that really oughtn’t to work but do (‘Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?’), gag-for-gag it’s almost certainly the funniest film ever made. Which is an achievement that can’t be undervalued: even writer

This review was updated on September 21, 2024Of all the great cast lists in Hollywood history, pound-for-pound the best of them might very well be Alien. Of an only seven-strong ensemble, three – Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt and Ian Holm – were Oscar nominees, while two more – Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto – belong on any cinephile’s list of the all-time great character actors. Between them, they bring not just a depth and seriousness to what could have been a cheap exercise in interplanetary schlock, but a vital sense of relatability and realism: these characters are working stiffs, they’re you and me – so when they start getting taken apart, we really feel it.  Of course, the cast isn’t the only thing about Ridley Scott’s movie that’s essentially perfect. The narrative runs like clockwork, drawing us slowly, almost gently into the world of the film before unleashing a string of extraordinary, stake-raising shocks: the downed ship, the eggs, the facehugger, and of course, that dinner scene, which totally upends the film and seems to take the cast by surprise as much as the viewer. Scott’s direction is gorgeous, from the gliding grace of the early scenes to the up-close handheld ruthlessness of Weaver’s climactic race against time. It’s a workmanlike world invaded by an unstoppable force Then of course there’s the design, not just HR Giger’s predatory, leather-clad penis-with-teeth or those monstrous, fossilised ‘space jockeys’ but the costumes and the computer banks an

He’s the last of the rock star film directors, an idiosyncratic genius who brought an avant garde edge to the Hollywood mainstream. His TV show ‘Twin Peaks’ revolutionised the small screen forever, while movies like ‘Blue Velvet’, ‘Wild at Heart’ and ‘Mulholland Drive’ seduced audiences with a blend of dark humour, extreme violence, heartfelt melodrama and dangerous eroticism. Now, a unique event in London is set to celebrate the work of David Lynch with a weekend of celebrity guests, live performance, music, art, cosplay and film screenings. Running from September 14-15 at the London Irish Centre, ‘A Gathering of the Angels’ will invite attendees to enter a world both beautiful and strange. Photograph: Universal PicturesMulholland Drive (2001) Among the special guests attending the festival will be several actors from Lynch’s movies including Dexter Fletcher and Lesley Dunlop, who each made youthful appearances in Lynch’s London-set masterpiece ‘The Elephant Man’. Fletcher has of course gone on to become a highly successful actor-director in his own right with films like ‘Sunshine on Leith’ and ‘Rocketman’ on his CV, while Dunlop would go on to star in ‘Emmerdale’. The pair will answer audience questions following a special screening of the film. Also attending will be Dana Ashbrook, who played teen heartthrob and all-round bad boy Bobby Briggs in ‘Twin Peaks’ and its big-screen spinoff ‘Fire Walk With Me’, before returning as a reformed character in 2017’s ‘Twin Peaks: Th

Located in one of London’s most atmospheric local cinemas, the Lexi Film School in Kensal Rise isn’t some stuffy, snobby, nose-in-the-books cinéaste course. It’s a series of public screenings, with each film introduced by a notable expert in the field. This term runs from March to May, with six films and six speakers including Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw, who will speak about apocalyptic documentary ‘Homo Sapiens’; film journo (and Time Out alumnus) David Jenkins, who will introduce bracing Argentinian drama ‘The Headless Woman’; and excitingly, an appearance from ‘Suffragette’ director Sarah Gavron, who will present an exclusive early screening of her brand new film ‘Rocks’, a scrappy tale of London teenagers that’s been garnering great reviews at film festivals. The programme also includes British new-wave masterpiece ‘A Taste of Honey’, Beyoncé’s favourite experimental drama ‘Daughters of the Dust’ and intimate relationship comedy ‘Losing Ground’. Every £9 ticket comes with introductory notes written by the speaker, plus a month’s free subscription to MUBI. Head to the official site for all the info. Find out where the Lexi features on our poll of Londoners’ favourite cinemas.   

Secret Cinema’s latest interactive experience is a leap into the unknown for its creators as much as their audience. Can an event traditionally tied to a specific, well-loved film – and culminating in a screening – still work when the anchor is a streaming series? Is it really Secret Cinema without the ‘cinema’ part? As always, the creative team has gone to extraordinary lengths to immerse attendees in the world of the show. It’s the Fourth of July and the town of Hawkins, Indiana is hosting the biggest high school reunion party of all time. Mulleted, deely-boppered and dolled up in their shiniest ’80s threads, the students have gathered at the neon-drenched Starcourt Mall to shop, stuff their faces with Scoops Ahoy ice cream and party the night away. But in the darkness on the edge of town, something wicked is lurking… The mall is spectacularly recreated inside and out, with a video bar, a fashion emporium and an old-school arcade where punters can remind themselves how infuriatingly impossible early console machines were (I spent 25 minutes on Donkey Kong and didn’t make it past the first screen). Hits of the era blast from the public address system and those inclined can take part in dance-offs and energetic, Jane Fonda-style fitness workouts in the lobby. But it’s not just about retro rubbernecking: there are stories to follow too, mysteries to uncover and hidden spaces to explore. Actors in character weave through the crowd, pursuing leads of their own and encouraging th

He hasn't made a film since 2008's Bafta-winning Wallace and Gromit short 'A Matter of Loaf and Death'. So the promise of a new film from animator, writer and all-round national treasure Nick Park has us very excited. Set – as the title implies – in prehistoric times, 'Early Man' features Eddie Redmayne as the voice of Dug, a decent caveman whose tribe is under attack by a more advanced army of Bronze Age warriors led by the villainous Nooth (voiced by Tom Hiddleston). There's no sign of Nooth in this just-released teaser trailer, but we do get a good look at Dug and his piggy pal Hognob, who comes off a lot like Gromit with tusks. ‘Early Man’ isn't out until the start of 2018, but we’re officially looking forward to it. And we’re not the only Nick Park fans getting a bit overexcited...   Been working with the great Nick Park and Aardman on their hilarious new film, @earlymanmovie. He is absolutely as brilliant as you might expect. Sometimes he makes me laugh so much I have to leave the sound studio for five minutes and calm down and have another go. A photo posted by Tom Hiddleston (@twhiddleston) on Oct 20, 2016 at 3:45am PDT   The first clip from Nick Park’s ‘Early Man’ and A look at Tom Hiddleston’s role in ‘Early Man’.

David Lynch’s dizzying detective show ‘Twin Peaks’ features some of the most memorable villains in TV history, from double-denim demon Killer Bob in the original series to Kyle MacLachlan’s gurning greaser Mr C in the recent reboot. For its tenth birthday bonanza, the immersive, weekend-long Twin Peaks UK Festival has invited three of the show’s most notable bad boys over to London to meet their British fans. From the 1990s show, there is Kenneth Welsh, AKA impish master of disguise Windom Earle. Meanwhile, from the reboot they’re bringing George Griffith, who played murderous sidekick ‘that fucker’ Ray Monroe, and John Pirrucello, AKA Deputy Chad Broxford, the dirtiest cop in 'Twin Peaks'. They will be joined by the usual array of special appearances and live acts, from performances by the long-running Double R Club cabaret troupe to a Roadhouse stage crammed with Lynch-inspired bands. Add in movie screenings, a live owl show, doughnuts, limitless coffee and a chance to lose yourself in the immersive ‘Black Lodge Experience’ and this should be as wild, weird and wondrous as the series itself. The Twin Peaks UK Festival runs from Oct 5-6 at Stoke Newington Town Hall. See the official website for more info and tickets.What’s on this Bank Holiday weekend? Check out our guide to the best things to do in London.

How do you spot a great film? Is it widespread critical acclaim? A regular spot in all-time top ten lists? A famous director and a bunch of big stars? Or is it possible that all those things – whisper it now – don’t actually matter? A weekly programme of screenings introduced by a critic, filmmaker or academic, the Lexi Film School aims to expand the definition of ‘classic’ cinema. Sure, they show the odd established masterpiece – the upcoming run includes ‘Rome: Open City’, Robert Rossellini’s neo-realist masterwork shot on scraps of film in the wake of the fall of fascism, alongside the timeless ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, in which Albert Finney plays a Nottingham factory worker railing against the strictures of ’60s society. And art enthusiasts won’t want to miss ‘Frida’, the controversial, bracingly original biopic of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. But the season also includes a fistful of titles we’re betting you haven’t even heard of (we hadn’t, and we’ve seen quite a lot of films). There’s ‘Of Love & Law’, a recent documentary about the first openly gay lawyers in Japan and the fight they face to be taken seriously in their profession. There’s ‘Saawariya’, a Bollywood romance with an unexpectedly dark edge. And there’s the fiercely radical ‘Angela Davis: Portrait of a Revolutionary’, a 1972 doc following the woman who came to symbolise the Black Power movement. The Lexi Film School runs from April 29, every Monday at 6pm. Each screening will be preceded by an in

One of our favourite small cinemas celebrates its tenth birthday this month. Here’s everything you need to know about the lovely Lexi in Kensal Rise:1. It shows everything from blockbusters to cult classics While the main programme consists of new-release indies, arthouse titles and the occasional big-ticket blockbuster, the Lexi also finds room for more offbeat fare like their ongoing Film School project (see below). In this anniversary month there’s loads of juicy extras to sink your teeth into, including a screening of ‘The Harder They Come’ complete with a slap-up Jamaican feast. 2. It’s got heaps of celebrity fans This summer, Lexi-goers got the surprise of their lives when Tom Hiddleston showed up unannounced, to discuss his acting debut ‘Unrelated’. And regulars still speak in hushed tones of the time Mark Rylance introduced a screening of ‘Night of the Hunter’ with an impromptu calypso number… 3. It looks – and sounds – amazing From the outside, the Lexi is recognisable for its old-school marquee sign – funded earlier this year with a Kickstarter campaign - and for the graffitied front wall that reads ‘I AM A CINEMA – LOVE ME’. But it’s quality on the inside too, with a plush auditorium and great sound. 4. It’s truly independent In London, most little cinemas are linked in one way or another to the big chains like Picturehouse and Curzon. The Lexi is one of the few genuinely independent venues in the city, free to pick its own film programme.   Lex appeal: inside the

It’s been a London institution for nine years, and in the wake of last year’s dizzying, controversial TV reboot the UK’s only official ‘Twin Peaks’ festival is set to be bigger and weirder than ever. Over the weekend of September 29-30, the London Irish Centre and the adjoining Camden Square Gardens will play host to an extravagantly costumed cavalcade of Lynchian obsessives, not to mention guests from the show, musicians, cabaret artists, DJs and doughnut delivery drivers. This year’s lineup includes appearances from Kimmy Robertson, who plays scatterbrained receptionist Lucy Moran both in the original series and the 2017 reboot, and Rebekah Del Rio, the extraordinary singer who performed a haunting Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’ (‘Llorando’) in Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’. Ms Del Rio will be performing live at the festival, alongside ‘Peaks’-inspired cabaret from the Double R Club, a lineup of live bands and some actual performing owls, which may or may not be what they seem. There’ll also be screenings, an art gallery and interactive events, and for the first time, the festival will include a Virtual Reality experience, which sounds potentially bloody terrifying. Standard tickets for the festival are now on sale, starting from £85 – but grab them fast, the VIP tickets were snapped up in less than two minutes. We’ll see you in the trees… Head to the official site for the skinny, or check in with your local log lady.The biggest and best films to see this s

Des robots ! Des vaisseaux spatiaux ! Des sabres laser ! De l'inceste ! Avant 'Les derniers Jedi', et au cas où vous n'auriez pas dix-huit heures devant vous pour revoir l'ensemble des épisodes précédents, voici notre résumé de la saga 'Star Wars' en moins d'une minute...     Ceci est un Jedi. Une sorte de sorcier (d'où la barbe) qui saurait manier le sabre laser (cool) et s'occuperait parfois de diplomatie intergalactique (moins cool).   Le personnage ci-dessous est un Gungan, nommé Jar Jar Binks. Imaginez un hippocampe qui essaierait de faire du stand-up en imitant Roger Rabbit parlant patois. Autrement dit, un personnage très chiant et pas drôle du tout.   Et voici Anakin Skywalker, un sale gosse odieux qui deviendra la force la plus néfaste de l'univers.   En grandissant, Anakin travaille à devenir Jedi. Il en profite pour fricoter avec Natalie Portman, une reine qui adore se travestir en clown.   Leur meilleur allié est Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), dont le fameux passé de toxicomane fait de lui le conseiller intergalactique idéal en matière de narcotiques.   Et voici le plus grand des Jedis (qui est aussi le plus petit) : maître Yoda. Tout vert et parfois pixellisé, il se révèle étonnamment retors, un sabre laser à la main.   Malheureusement pour tout le monde, un gros blaireau ridé, le sénateur Palpatine, compte bien être le dernier à rire en dominant l'univers.   Aussi Palpatine persuade-t-il Anakin de trahir ses amis et de passer du côté obscur. Ce qui ne lu

Tickets are on sale for next weekend’s big London book celebration, the annual Stoke Newington Literary Festival. Now in its eighth year, the festival offers everything from straight-up author interviews to quizzes, panel discussions and loads of food and drink events. As ever, the focus is on music and politics – the latter is hardly surprising, given the festival takes place just a few days before the election. Here are five events we can heartily recommend. 1. Friday Night Live – Pre-election Special Comedians and commentators including Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore and ‘The Thick of It’ contributor David Quantick discuss the upcoming vote. Try to keep it light, guys.Stoke Newington Town Hall. Fri Jun 2, 7.30pm. £10. 2. John Berger: Ways of Seeing One of Stoke Newington’s most beloved sons, writer and thinker John Berger passed away in January this year. At this event, leading Berger-ologists Tom Overton and Andrea Luka Zimmerman discuss the great man’s life and legacy.Stoke Newington Library Gallery. Sat Jun 3, 12pm. £5.         3. Owen Jones The effortlessly articulate boy prince of lefty politics returns to the festival to try and persuade us that everything’s going to be fine, and the world’s not going to hell in a handcart. Sure, Owen. Sure.Stoke Newington Town Hall. Sat Jun 3, 6pm. £8. 4. ‘Game of Thrones’ Pub Quiz Test your knowledge of all things Thrones, from bastards to battles, Starks to Lannisters, dragons to Dornishmen. Any apparent similarity between this

Twenty-six years since its initial run, David Lynch’s game-changing murder-soap-thriller-fantasy ‘Twin Peaks’ returned to TV screens this weekend with the first two instalments of an 18-episode run. Screening on Sky Atlantic in the UK, the series kicked off at 2am on Monday, concurrent with the US launch. But they’ll both air again this evening for non-night owls, and are already available to stream. Our resident ‘Twin Peaks’ expert Tom Huddleston offers a few tips on how best to enjoy the new series. 1. Be realistic At 71, David Lynch is no longer the upbeat upstart who made unusual but approachable works such as ‘Blue Velvet’, ‘Wild at Heart’ and the original ‘Twin Peaks’. In old age, he’s cycled back to his roots in the American avant-garde: his last film, 2006’s ‘Inland Empire’, was his most idiosyncratic since his DIY 1977 debut ‘Eraserhead’. Anyone coming to the new ‘Twin Peaks’ expecting aw-shucks comedy and lashings of cherry pie is going to be disappointed. It’s funny, when it wants to be – but this is most definitely not comfort viewing.     2. Be patient The new ‘Twin Peaks’ doesn’t care if you like it; it is entirely itself and nothing else. This approach results in some of the most mind-blistering moments you’ll ever see on TV, indelible images of shock, horror and unearthly loveliness. But it also means that not everything happens when you think it’s going to, at the speed at which modern television usually operates. In simple terms: it can be slow. It’s not b

Londoners, you have a choice – watch ‘Twin Peaks’ or live in it. After 26 years, new episodes of David Lynch’s iconic mystery thriller debuted on Showtime in the US last night (we’ll have a full report on that soon). But there was more exciting news this weekend, as tickets for London’s annual Twin Peaks UK Festival went on sale.        This giddy, immersive two-day celebration of all things ‘Peaks’ may not be exactly cheap, but it’s worth it: not only do you get to enjoy a wide range of festival screenings while stuffing your face with complimentary doughnuts, cherry pie and coffee, you get to meet actual real-life cast members – this year's confirmed guests so far are Sherilyn Fenn, aka cherry-twisting high school vixen Audrey Horne, and Kenneth Welsh, who played season two’s madcap villain Windom Earle. There’s also live Lynchian cabaret from the Double R Club, a costume competition, a quiz and a live music stage offering ‘Peaks’-y sounds throughout the day. All this, plus the chance to mingle and get gradually, happily plastered in the company of fellow nerds. The Twin Peaks UK Festival takes place at Hornsey Town Hall Arts Centre on Oct 7-8. Get your tickets here.  Swot up with our in-depth A-Z for ‘Twin Peaks’ newbies. Check out the first images from the ‘Twin Peaks’ reboot. And did you know that there’s a cookbook celebrating the food of ‘Twin Peaks’?