Adam Lee Davies

Movie monsters come in many shapes and sizes. Some are as big as skyscrapers, others as small as slugs. Some are fast, some are slow, some are gelatinous globs of goo with no defined shape at all. Really, there are as many kinds of cinematic monsters as there are individual human fears for them to represent.  Obviously, that leaves us with a pretty big field to choose from. Putting together this list of the greatest monster movies ever made and keeping it to a reasonable number required putting a few parameters in place. First off, no zombies or vampires. There are simply too many, and those warrant lists of their own. Secondly, no humans – apologies to Freddy, Jason, Michael and Henry from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. You’re monstrous, but you’re not monsters.  Instead, we opted for all the killer rabbits, killer plants, killer fish, killer clowns, killer aliens and killer giant sandworms – and that still made it really hard to pare down. Here’s our best shot. Written by Tom Huddleston, Adam Lee Davies, Andy Kryza, Paul Fairclough, David Jenkins & Matthew Singer Recommended: 💀 The 100 best horror movies of all-time👽 The 100 best sci-fi movies of all-time🧟 The best zombie movies of all-time🦄 The 50 best fantasy movies of all-time 

Call it a hot take if you want, but there is no greater feat in cinema than creating a timeless comedy. That’s because no film genre ages worse. Drama, horror and romance movies all tap into innate human desires and anxieties that anyone from any generation can understand. Even action flicks live longer in the cultural imagination – the thrill that comes from seeing stuff get blowed up real good is universal. But comedy is all about context. What’s funny in 1923 might not make a lick of sense to 2023 audiences. Humour is also deeply individualistic: one person’s ROTFLMAO is another’s shrug emoji. That makes coming up with the best comedy films of all-time especially challenging. There’s a lot that goes into identifying truly great comedy, but the main one has to do with durability. Is this film still funny now, and will it still be years from now? In sorting the GOATs from the groaners, we enlisted the help of comedians like Diane Morgan and Russell Howard, actors such as John Boyega and Jodie Whittaker and a small army of Time Out writers. And the films we came up with represent the 100 most hilarious – and most lasting – laughers ever made. We can’t be sure they’ll all make you laugh. But if they don’t… well, that sounds like a ‘you’ problem. Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time🥰 The greatest romantic comedies of all time🤯 33 great disaster movies😬 The best thriller films of all-time🌏 The best foreign films of all-time

A whole genre in their own right, World War II movies come in all shapes and sizes: from gung-ho men-on-a-mission movies like Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare to the bleaker, more complex visions of war that usually emerged from the vanquished nations (Fires on the Plain, Kelly’s Heroes, Stalingrad, et al). There are gripping stories of resistance movies like Army of Shadows and Kanal, a whole canon of Holocaust masterpieces and a number of seminal documentaries that employ real-life footage to bring it all home. What some of the very best have in common is the first-hand experiences of their filmmakers: men like Sam Fuller, Jean-Pierre Melville and John Huston saw it all for themselves and brought that authenticity to their films.  In fact, there are so many World War II movies that we needed help narrowing them down to a mere 50. And who better to ask than the man behind Inglourious Basterds and walking war-kipedia of combat flicks, Quentin Tarantino? He’s helped us parse hundreds of films down to a mere 50 all-timers. On the slate are wide-scale epics, personal dramas, devastating documentaries, historical revisions and even a comedy or two. Written by Tom Huddleston, Adam Lee Davies, Paul Fairclough, Anna Smith, David Jenkins, Dan Jolin, Phil de Semlyen, Alim Kheraj & Matthew Singer Recommended: ⚔️ The 50 best war movies of all-time🎖️The best World War I movies, ranked by historical accuracy💣 The 101 best action movies of all-time🇺🇸 The 20 best Memorial Day movies

The best comedies in the history of cinema achieve more than just making you laugh (although, granted, it’s not a great comedy if it barely makes you crack a smile). Classic romcoms like ‘Notting Hill’ have us yearning for true love while teen movies like ‘Mean Girls’ get us cringing at memories of being too dorky to join the cool gang at school (and ‘10 Things I Hate About You’ ticks both boxes). Then there are the political satires, like ‘The Death of Stalin’, which serve up uncomfortable truths alongside the funnies. And finally, when we need to get into the festive spirit, the Christmas film archives are crammed with titles that leave you giggling into your eggnog.  All of which makes choosing the 100 best comedies of all time a little tricky. To help us with the task, we enlisted the help of comedians (such as Russell Howard and Diane Morgan), actors (John Boyega and Jodie Whittaker, among others), directors and screenwriters (including Richard Curtis), as well as several Time Out writers. So the next time you need something to turn that frown upside down, you’ll know where to start. RECOMMENDED:  London and UK cinema listings, film reviews and exclusive interviews

1 The time before reckoningYou never thought it would happen to someone as worldly and wise (read: lazy and snarky) as you. It might, as Huey Lewis always assured us, it's hip to be square these days, but isn’t Game of Thrones the preserve of block-quoting nerds in egg-stained Red Dwarf t-shirts and earnest girls with henna tattoos? We’re none of us strangers to the box-set/Netflix-dump/dodgy download, but whereas The Sopranos was cask-aged in gushing claret and “family” values, and The Wire made us feel all “word” and “street” and “legit,” surely GoT is just an excuse for Brit thesps to mess around with the Lord of the Rings dressing-up box. And yet. And yet… You’ve heard rumors that there’s the occasional flash of skin and that someone is graphically deprived of a limb/head/codpiece/loved one every ten minutes. So it is that you find yourself happening across a random episode while flicking around during an ad break in Family Guy. Maybe just give it five minutes. Can’t hurt, can it?2 A song of vice and ireIt’s three weeks later. You’ve steadily caught up on all the precious episodes you have missed. You find yourself in increasingly animated debate over Friday-night drinks with colleagues you’ve never really bothered with before. The depth of knowledge exhibited by your fellow Throneheads (your term) makes you realize how little of the Seven Kingdoms you have explored. There’s nothing else to it. You need to learn more. This means reading the big, thick source novels. Which

Here, as the dark cloud of Halloween descends, we showcase the horror movie scenes that have made us cower in our boots, dash for the exit sign and – in the case of ‘Guest House Paradiso’ – weep for the very future of humankind. Some of these terrifying moments are on here for personal reasons (‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’, ‘The Vanishing’), some constitute lesser-known gems (‘The profound Desire of the Gods’) and some are simply chilling horror classics which no list of this nature should be without (‘Jaws’, ‘The Exorcist’). WARNING: The most terrifying scenes of these scary movies often tend to take place at the end. Some of the following entries contain major spoilers – we’ve flagged them up, but we urge readers to proceed with caution. RECOMMENDED: The 100 best horror films By Dave Calhoun, Tom Huddleston, David Jenkins, Adam Lee Davies, Derek Adams

Check out our definitive list of films guaranteed to kill even the cosiest evening stone cold dead. If you've got a bad-date-movie experience of your own you'd like to share, or think there's a woefully unromantic movie we've missed out, let us know in the comments below.  

If you’re stuck with a date you don’t really want – or just keen to make your cosy night in that little bit more 'experimental' – check out our definitive list of films guaranteed to kill even the cosiest evening stone cold dead. If you've got a bad-date-movie experience of your own you'd like to share, or think there's a woefully unromantic movie we've missed out, let us know in the comments below. RECOMMENDED: The 100 best romantic movies

We've got 007's number. Ahead of the release of 'Spectre' on October 26, Adam Lee Davies provides the vital stats for Her Majesty's go-to gunslinger.     'Spectre' is out in the UK on October 26. Read our interview with Daniel Craig on Sam Mendes, ‘Spectre’ and his advice for the next bond. Or watch our exclusive video interview with the Bond star.