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It’s not been your standard, regular, common-or-garden year at the movies so far. The slate of big new movies remains a little (okay, a lot) skinnier than usual and release dates have continued to shift, with more than one big release decamping to the safer surrounds of 2023. But even the lingering impact of Covid hasn’t stopped it being an often crowd-pleasing, occasionally electrifying six months so far. From awards picks like Parallel Mothers and Licorice Pizza, to virtuoso indie gems like British chef thriller Boiling Point, to popcorn perfection like RRR and Top Gun: Maverick, there’s been much to celebrate. Here’s our best of the best of the year to date. RECOMMENDED:😬 The best thriller films of all-time🤣 The best funny films of all-time🌏 The best foreign films of all-time

Sometimes, when the skies turn gray and you just can’t seem to muster the energy to change out of your sweatpants, all you want is to hear is a tune that feels your pain. The best sad songs don’t just whine and gesture at bad feelings - they almost seem to wallow in the depths with you.  As they say, misery loves company, and the best songwriters know how to make it seem as though they’re in your lonely apartment with you, offering a sympathetic shoulder to weep on. Whether you’re mourning the end of a relationship or the death of a loved one, or just generally feeling down in the dumps, these 50 songs know exactly what you’re going through. It doesn’t matter if it’s an R&B tearjerker, 12-bar blues or indie rock bummer jam - the next time you feel like shutting the windows, locking the doors and curling up in the fetal position, throw on one of these songs. You may not instantly feel better, but you will know you’re not alone. Written by Andrzej Lukowski, Oliver Keens, James Manning, Tristan Parker, Hayley Joyes, Nick Levine & Andy Kryza RECOMMENDED:😭 The best breakup songs💔 The best heartbreak songs😊 The best happy songs😂 The best funny songs💫 The best inspirational songs

No season inspires songwriters quite like the summer. Sure, there are artists whose music can be described as ‘autumnal’ or ‘wintry,’ but no musician has ever competed to have ‘the song of spring.’ It’s no wonder, really. If most music is ultimately about conveying a sense of freedom, there’s no time of year that better represents that feeling.  Even if you’re long past the days of ‘summer vacation’ being a thing, there’s something about the warm temperatures, sprinklers on lawns and the smell of barbecue that brings you right back to being a kid with no responsibilities again - and the right song can transport you there even in the dreariest of months. This list covers decades of summer jams, from ‘60s soul sunshine to ‘Hot Girl Summer.’ Slather on some sunscreen and cannonball into this list of the definitive songs of summer. RECOMMENDED: 😃 The best happy songs🎶 The best ’80s songs🎉 The best party songs ever made🎤 The best karaoke songs🕺 The best pop songs of all time

Acting is a job. Even at the most elite level, Hollywood actors are still putting in work, even if, from the outside, it doesn’t look like the work the rest of us are accustomed to doing. And just like you, that means that, every once in a while, an actor is going to do something simply to collect a paycheck – and then regret it later. Case in point: Dakota Johnson. Recently, in an interview with Vanity Fair, the actress – currently set to star in the upcoming Netflix adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Persuasion – discussed the ‘battle’ of making the 50 Shades of Grey movie trilogy that launched her career. The casting of Johnson and co-star Jamie Dornan in the leading roles, along with Sam Taylor-Wood on directing duties, lent a veneer of arthouse credibility to the fetish literature blockbusters. But the final product was plagued with hammy dialogue and cringe-inducing sex scenes. ‘I signed up to do a very different version of the film we ended up making,’ Johnson said, expanding on 50 Shades author EL James’s insistence on having ‘a lot of creative control, all day, every day, and she just demanded that certain things happen. Johnson is hardly the first actor to express some embarrassment over their acting choices. Here are a few other notable occasions when Hollywood’s A-list spoke put the boot in on their own work.

When it comes to sex, the movie are currently going through a bit of a dry spell. It feels like it’s been a long while since we’ve seen a hot, steamy, taboo-shattering roll in the hay – or hot tub, or midsize sedan, or literal bay of hale – in a major studio film, at least not one that truly shocks the zeitgeist and gets audiences talking. Is it because of society’s general rightward shift recently? Or did filmmakers start listening to those misguided social media debates about the merits of the sex scene? In any case, it’s far past time the movies got back to getting it on – and here are 101 examples why. Sure, in some cases, sex scenes can seem pointless. In the best examples of cinematic boffing, though, sex tells stories. It develops characters. Sometimes it’s a punchline, sometimes it’s terrifying. Sometimes, yes, it’s simply meant to arouse – but titillation has value, too. Pour yourself some wine and slip into something a little more comfortable. Here are the 101 best sex scenes of all-time. 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 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

For a long time, horror was cinema’s most misunderstood genre. In the 1970s and ’80s, it was a vehicle for quick cash-ins to stock the emerging home video market, creating a flood of cheaply made, formulaic junk that sent buckets of blood flying at the screen and piles of dead teenagers to the morgue. Sure, there were the acknowledged classics – The Shining, The Exorcist, Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, etc – but for the most part, ‘horror’ became a euphemism for ‘schlock’. That’s changed in the last few years. A24, A Quiet Place and Jordan Peele, among others, have helped elevate the standing of horror both for mass audiences and critics, and in turn caused a reappraisal of the genre’s past as a whole. But as this list of the greatest horror movies ever made shows, the genre never truly needed such validation – because if the whole point of film is to make you feel something, nothing can conjure feelings more viscerally than a good horror flick. Among our picks, you’ll find psychological terrors that probe deep, universal human fears and traditional slashers that jab at our most elemental instincts for survival. Some are transgressive, violent and gory, yes, but others will leave you rattled using nothing more than shadows and suggestions. There is, after all, more than one way to scare someone – and these movies do it better than all others. Written by Tom Huddleston, Cath Clarke, Dave Calhoun, Nigel Floyd, Phil de Semlyen, David Ehrlich, Joshua Rothkopf, Nigel Floyd, And

No matter how snooty and highfalutin their taste in movies gets, every cineaste has to start somewhere. And we’re going to bet that, in most cases, it starts with a cartoon. Whether it’s a classic of Disney’s Golden Age, a more recent Pixar heart-tugger for the young’uns or something weirder that your parents thought was age-appropriate when they picked it off a video store shelf, most first cinematic loves are animated.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that animation is only a realm for children. On the contrary, the best animated movies work on multiple levels, for broad audiences. In composing this list, we polled Time Out writers and experts including Fantastic Mr Fox’s Wes Anderson and Wallace and Gromit’s Nick Park, and the results show just how expansive the genre can be. Our list incorporates everything from Disney to Studio Ghibli, stop-motion nightmares to psychedelic headtrips, illustrated documentaries to however-the-hell you classify the work of maverick Jan Švankmajer. Take a look and massage your nostalgia receptors – and maybe find something mindblowing you’ve never seen before. 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  

Sure, you’ve watched movies before. But have you ever watched a movie… on weeeeeed? Okay, you’ve probably done that, too. Honestly, if you partake in the devil’s lettuce at all, plopping down in front of the television with a bottomless bag of M&Ms and a side of gummy worms is basically the main leisure activity. As longtime puffers will tell you, though, not every movie is made to be watched high. Rolling the dice on whatever Netflix recommends is not advised, lest you encounter something that will make you think, feel and see things you absolutely should not be thinking, feeling and seeing in your ‘heightened’ state of mind.    Picking the right film for a stoned night in is a precarious science. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a stoner comedy, or even necessarily a so-called ‘dumb comedy’. But if you’re looking to giggle, you probably don’t want to have to think too much about a joke. And if you’re in the mood to simply trip out on some wild imagery, you don’t want to go down a hole of darkness - 2001 may have courted acid freaks by billing itself as ‘The Ultimate Trip’, but in our opinion, that’s not really a trip you want to be taking from your sofa at 1am. These 20 films, however, will hit the sweet spot… for as long as you manage to stay awake, anyway. Recommended: 🤣 The 100 best comedy movies of all-time👽 The 100 best sci-fi movies of all-time🍻 The 20 perfect movies to watch when you’re hungover

Despite being the home of Hollywood, ‘LA movies’ seem less exalted as a subgenre than ‘New York movies’, or London movies, or Paris movies, or Rome movies. Maybe it just seems a bit too meta, or perhaps it’s because the city occupies such a polarising spot in the collective consciousness. (To love Los Angeles is to hate it, and to hate it is to really, really hate it.) In any case, the list of truly great LA movies is a bit tighter than those taking place in other large metropolises. But those films cover a lot of ground, from dramas set in the showbiz world to gritty thrillers depicting the inner city, fizzy-headed musical comedies to shadowy noirs that make the most of that twinkling, imposing skyline. Here’s our ranking of the 57 best Los Angeles movies of all-time. Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies ever made.📽️ The best LA movie theaters to visit.🌕 LA’s best outdoor movies to see this summer.

In the two decades since he was let go as director of Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle – a department all the tougher to take given his fondness Hayao Miyazaki’s films – Mamoru Hosoda has emerged as the natural successor to his childhood hero, earning an Oscar nomination for 2018’s Mirai and an unprecedented 14-minute standing ovation when his latest, Belle, debuted in Cannes. It’s a breathtaking film, combining traditional cel and computer animation to tell the story of Suzu, an ordinary 17-year-old student whose online avatar becomes a global singing sensation in an online world called ‘U’. It isn’t the first time Hosoda has embraced the digital world in his work; his first film was 1999’s Digimon, a kind of digital Pokémon story. Miyazaki’s influence was evident in more recent films, including The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) and 2012’s Wolf Children, but by the time the beguiling Mirai received its Oscar nomination in 2018, Hosoda had stepped out of his hero’s shadow and was drawing worldwide recognition as an animator and an artist.  What was more satisfying, the Oscar nomination for Mirai or the 14-minute standing ovation for Belle at Cannes? ‘I was concerned for people’s hands! Fourteen minutes is a long time to be clapping. Obviously, I was really happy about that because it shows what the audience think of the film, and maybe the prize-winning films at the festival only got a four-minute ovation. But then again, who doesn’t want to be nominated for an Oscar