Andy Kryza

As the nights turn darker and the air feels cooler, it can only mean one thing: spooky season is upon us. The pumpkins are carved, the costume is finalised, and there’s only one thing left to sort out… a Halloween playlist that goes hard enough to have the afterlife dancing along too. When it comes to Halloween anthems, there are some stone cold classics that have soundtracked the spooky season for decades – we’re looking at you, ‘Thriller’ and ‘Ghostbusters’. But in recent years a new generation of pop ghouls have served up anthems befitting of All Hallows’ Eve. From Olivia Rodrigo’s ex-boyfriend bleeding her dry, to the bewitching melodies of Mother Monster, via the smooth tones of some immaculately styled K-Pop demons. Ironically, Halloween playlists have never felt more alive. Our favourite Halloween songs at a glance: Most iconic Halloween track: ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson Best new Halloween anthem: ‘Abracadabra’ by Lady Gaga Most dramatic Halloween song: ‘There Will Be Blood’ by Kim Petras Best Halloween anthem with a K-Pop twist: ‘Your Idol’ by Saja Boys Best Halloween track to dance to: ‘Monster Mash’ by Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers RECOMMENDED: 👻 The best Halloween movies of all time 🎤 The best karaoke songs 🎵 The best songs of 2025 so far 🕺 The best albums of 2025 so far

Horror knows no calendar. Sure, for casual fright fans, October might be considered Spooky Season. But for the genre’s true aficionados, any month, any day – shoot, any hour – is a good time for a scary movie. Be forewarned, though: series like Stranger Things and Midnight Mass notwithstanding, Netflix hasn’t churned out too many of its own upstanding horror flicks, but the platform does have a surprisingly decent amount of terrifying classics, new-school scares and hidden gems that’ll raise both eyebrows and goosebumps. Here are the best horror movies currently streaming on Netflix right now. Recommended: 🎃 The best Halloween movies and TV shows on Netflix UK😱 The 100 best horror movies of all-time🔪 The 31 best serial killer movies👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made🧟 The best zombie movies of all-time

Love is a funny thing. Anyone who’s ever fallen under its spell – whether reciprocal, unrequited or the classic ‘it’s complicated’ – knows the strange ways it can make you feel, and the bizarre thing it’ll make you do. No wonder, then, that romantic comedy persists as one of the most broadly appealing genres in all of film. Although frequently derided and dismissed as ‘chick flicks’, the best romcoms tap into emotional truths everyone can relate to.  But love also takes many forms. And so it goes in romcoms. Some are ridiculous farces, others  are more sophisticated, while others take a colder, cynical viewpoint – because if you’ve ever been in love, chances are you’ve also had your heart shattered. Love contains multitudes, and so do romantic comedies, and we considered it all when putting together this list of the best romcoms of all time. Written by Dave Calhoun, Cath Clarke, Tom Huddleston, Kate Lloyd, Andy Kryza, Phil de Semlyen, Alim Kheraj & Matthew Singer Recommended: 😍 The 100 best romantic films of all-time🤣 The 100 best comedy movies😳 The 101 best sex scenes of all time🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

Let’s address the obvious question right off the bat: what’s the difference between a horror movie and a Halloween movie? For us – and presumably, the folks for whom spooky season isn’t a holiday or even a month, but a whole lifestyle – there is a fine distinction, perhaps best summed up as: all Halloween movies are scary, but not all scary movies are Halloween movies. In other words, there are horror flicks worth watching basically any time of the year, but only a specific subcategory of those are ideal for viewing in October. A movie like, say, Don’t Look Now, is certainly disturbing, and a triumph of the horror genre. But its scares are perhaps a bit too cerebral for the time of year when everyone has smiling pumpkins on their porches and 12-foot Home Depot skeletons on their front lawns. You want your frights to be visceral, hard-hitting and, most of all, fun. In that spirit, here are 48 great movies to drop in your queue in the lead up to All Hallow’s Eve. Recommended: 😱 The 100 best horror movies of all-time🩸 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories🔪 The 31 best serial killer movies👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made🧟 The best zombie movies of all-time

From the time movies were invented, filmmakers have been dreaming of outer space. Mankind hadn’t even figured out how to get off the ground yet when Georges Méliès imagined voyaging to the moon, and in the century-plus since, many other directors have taken audiences on trips far deeper into the cosmos – to infinity and beyond, you might say. It’s no wonder, really. The concept of space is vast enough to allow for the exploration of all sorts of big ideas. What is mankind’s place in the universe? What lies outside our tiny little rock, and do we really want to know what’s out there? For that reason, the ‘space movie’ exists as its own genre beneath the wider umbrella of science fiction. And so, we’ve decided to rank them. Here are our picks for the 30 best movies about that big, overwhelming, sometimes frightening, sometimes beautiful void above our heads.  Recommended: 👽 The 100 best science fiction movies of all-time😬 The 100 best thriller films of all-time💣 The 101 best action movies ever made🦄 The 50 best fantasy movies of all-time 

Let’s face it: Halloween is a children’s holiday. College kids may have usurped it as an excuse to throw costumed keg parties, and fortysomethings may use it as an excuse to put pumpkin spice in everything, but at its heart, All Hallow’s Eve is still mostly about tweens and grade-schoolers cosplaying as their favorite superhero, eating candy and allowing themselves a few innocent scares. That’s why, when thinking about the best movies to watch in the run-up to October 31, you shouldn’t only consider slasher flicks. Kids like to catch a fright, too. But picking a good Halloween movie that works for the whole family is a delicate science. You want something scary, but not so scary that your children will ask to sleep in your bed until they go away to university. And you also don’t want to pick something lame because, well, spooky season is only a month long, and you really can’t afford to waste any nights. These 45 movies, however, should do the trick… or treat. Best for little kids (ages 2-7): Monsters, Inc., It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown Best for big kids (ages 7-11): The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline Best for tweens: Hocus Pocus, Goosebumps Best for teens: Beetlejuice, Gremlins Written by Hannah Doolin, Allie Early, Danielle Valente, Oliver Strand, Andy Kryza and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🎃 The best Halloween movies of all-time👪 The 50 best family films to stream on movie night🤣 The 35 best family comedies for your next movie night

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. But comedy is all about context. What’s funny in 1925 might not make a lick of sense to 2025 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 best comedies of 2024🥰 The greatest romantic comedies of all time

Cinematic monsters come in many shapes and sizes, from amorphous blobs to giant apes to Swamp Things. Some are manifestations of their designers’ deepest hang-ups or emblematic of the biggest fears of society at large. Others are uncomplicated beasts that desire to kill either for food or just for the sheer fun of it. So what makes a great monster movie? Obviously, in putting together this list of the best monster movies ever made, we had a lot of options to choose from. So we put 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 are the real monsters’ stuff. (Sorry, Freddy, Jason, Michael and Henry from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. You’re monsters, but you’re not monsters, if you catch our drift.) Instead, we opted for all the killer rabbits, killer plants, killer fish, killer clowns, killer aliens and killer giant sandworms. Here are the best monster movies of all-time. Written by Tom Huddleston, Adam Lee Davies, Andy Kryza, Paul Fairclough, David Jenkins & Matthew Singer Recommended: 👹 The 66 greatest movie monsters💀 The 100 best horror movies of all-time👽 The 100 best sci-fi movies of all-time🦄 The 50 best fantasy movies of all-time 

Zombie movies refuse to die. Ever since Night of the Living Dead invented the modern version of the genre in 1968, the undead have risen continuously over the decades, mutating as they go. Sure, there’s a well-established formula – some sort of plague infects the planet, turning the deceased into ravenous cannibals looking to feast on the flesh of the living – and plenty of hacks have exploited the template to overwhelm video store shelves and streaming platforms with mindless schlock. But a rarefied few have found ways to take the basic mythos and twist it into something wholly unique.  Others hit the beats with high style and freshness, while some are simply so energetically over-the-top that they can’t be ignored. On this list, you’ll find examples of all three: from classics to cult faves, zom-coms to gorefests, and even a few that predate George A Romero. Grab some popcorn and board up the windows – these are the best zombie movies ever made. Recommended: 😱 The 100 best horror movies of all-time👹 The best monster movies of all-time🔪 The 31 best serial killer movies of all-time🤘 The 40 best cult movies of all-time

Gathering the whole family together for movie night can be a wonderful experience – or it can be downright dreadful. It really comes down to the movie itself. But finding a film that satisfies every age group represented on the couch is no easy task. Make the right pick, and you’ll create a warm, fuzzy memory that’ll live somewhere in the young’uns’ subconscious for a lifetime. Choose poorly, and the evening can end in a flurry of tears, insults and slammed doors.  But don’t fret. It is possible to find a movie that everyone agrees on, and we’re here to help. Among these 50 picks on this list, you’ll find a mix of animated masterpieces, enduring classics  from Hollywood’s Golden Age, live-action adventures stretching across generations and comedies that’ll make both grade schoolers and grandparents laugh at the same time. Whatever floats your family’s boat, throw on one of these flicks and you’ll be a hero. RECOMMENDED: ✍ The 100 best animated films of all-time👪 The 50 best kids movies to watch as a family💻 The best family movies on Netflix for all-ages🤣 The best family comedy movies🧒 The best kids’ movies from the ’90s

Whatever you think of Netflix, there’s no denying the streamer has changed the game when it comes to original programming. Starting with House of Cards way back in 2013, the platform broke down the door for on-demand series to become their own form of prestige TV. Of course, that innovation came back to bite them, as they now have to compete with everyone from Hulu to Disney+ to – checks notes – FreeVee. But just when it seems like Netflix has been left in the dust of the revolution it started, it drops something like Baby Reindeer or Adolescence, and ends up right back at the centre of the entertainment conversation. Even factoring in its fallow periods, Netflix has already created so many must-watch shows that most of us won’t ever get to half of it. So we’ve put together a list of the Netflix original series you absolutely must make time for. And before you get all upset about the absence of Black Mirror and Cobra Kai, we’ve left out shows that originated elsewhere before the platform picked them up. We’re also sticking to scripted series - though you can check out our favourite Netflix true crime docs here. Recommended: 🎥 The 35 best movies on Netflix right now🔥 The 25 best movies on HBO and Max right now👽 The best sci-fi shows streaming on Netflix

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

Were you scared witless when the T-Rex made his first appearance in Jurassic Park? Candyman director Nia DaCosta was right there with you. Did Michael Rooker’s definitive portrait of a killer stick with you at the end of Henry? It also haunted Luca Guadagnino and that man turned a body into a bramble of crushed bones in Suspiria. The cinema is a place of vulnerability, and great horror films burrow under everyone’s skin, including the coolest filmmakers in the world.  From horror maestros to arthouse auteurs, we asked the honorees of our coolest filmmakers list what cinematic moment scared them most. And they delivered: Cinematic minds such as The Witch’s Robert Eggers and The Babadook mastermind Jennifer Kent told us what gave them nightmares while they were doing the same to us, while Rian Johnson, Edgar Wright, Lynne Ramsay, Sean Baker and others told us what chilled them to the bone. You’ll find serial killers and classic slashers. But you’ll also find more than one Disney film, too. Don’t worry, you’re in a safe space here. 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 Que

It's been nearly two years since the last Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, Spider-Man: Far From Home, hit theaters. But as fans anxiously await the July 9 debut of the long-delayed Black Widow, Disney+ has kept the superhero train going with its comic-focused series. And next week, fans will get a big infusion of MCU hijinks with the debut of Loki. The six-episode series sees Tom Hiddleston reclaim the ornate headpiece of fan-favorite anti-hero Loki, a role he's inhabited for more than 10 years. The show looks bonkers, featuring alien worlds, time travel and an abundance of charmingly sinister banter from Hiddleston. But what exactly is this show about, and how will it affect the future — and the past — of Marvel's master plan? Here's what we know going in.  First things first, when does Loki debut? Loki debuts Wednesday, June 9 on Disney+. It runs six episodes, with one episode dropping each week through July 14. Ok, so what exactly is this show about? The show will follow Hiddleston’s Asgardian God of Mischief and frequent bad guy Loki as he falls in with the Time Variance Authority (TVA), a clandestine interstellar bureaucracy tasked with ensuring that the very fabric of space and time isn’t torn apart by heroes and villains’ tendency to jump back and forth in time.  From the looks of the trailers, it appears that Loki’s time-hopping shenanigans (more on those in a moment) has led him to cause a rift across multiple timelines and dimensions. Working with Owen

After a two-year break, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has roared back to life, dominating Disney+ with an onslaught of hit shows, storming multiplexes with Black Widow and Shang-Chi, and hijacking the internet discourse with fan theories about the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home. Yet amid all the hype of Marvel’s Phase 4, the biggest questions hover around the hotly anticipated Black Panther 2. The Marvel blockbuster factory has completely changed the cinematic landscape since Iron Man debuted in 2008, but none became a bona fide cultural phenomenon quite like director Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther.  The afrofuturist tale of noble warrior king T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and the technologically advanced hermit nation of Wakanda wasn’t just a $1.3-billion hit, it was a zeitgeist-seizing moment for blockbuster cinema, leading to a Best Picture Oscar nomination and three Academy Awards. Its focus on strong Black characters – including Marvel’s best villain in the form of Michael B. Jordan – made it the kind of tectonic paradigm-shifter that only comes every decade or so in blockbuster cinema.  A follow-up was inevitable, but things became infinitely more complicated with the unexpected death of series star Chadwick Boseman, who succumbed to colon cancer in August 2020. Marvel kept quiet about the future of the franchise as fans mourned.  Here’s everything we know about Black Panther 2 so far. Image: Marvel Studios When is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s release date?  Black P

For the past two years, fans of prestige TV have been forced to spend their Sundays without the familiar comforts of torture, dismemberment, incest, dragons and deception. But soon, their hunger will be sated: In 2022, nearly three years after Game of Thrones aired its extremely divisive finale, the franchise will come roaring back with House of the Dragon.  HBO’s latest George RR Martin adaptation has fans salivating for more of what they loved about high fantasy’s most gloriously smutty big-budget hit. But will the first of six GoT spinoff series fulfill the prophecy of rekindling fans' goodwill after Game of Thrones whiffed its big finish? Here’s everything we know so far.  When will House of the Dragon be released?  The show’s release date has yet to be confirmed, though HBO has officially announced House of the Dragon is coming in 2022. The production, which is still underway, was previously shut down due to Covid, and the pandemic’s continued presence could be a reason for the network’s hesitancy in announcing an official date.  That puts House of the Dragon in a race to air with Amazon’s swords-and-serpents tentpole, Lord of the Rings, which is set to debut in September 2022. Both come pre-loaded with huge fan bases, and both share common elements such as dragons, golden wigs, broadswords and glowering. It’s a safe bet that House of the Dragon, however, will trounce LOTR when it comes to nudity: The Tolkien adaptation drew controversy when it announced it would include

We’re still a long way out from Paddington 3, but that fluffy paragon of kindness and decency from darkest Peru is never far from our thoughts. Paddington eternal because he is in the hearts of all who let him in. Similarly, he is in the feeds of all who tweet. He’s here to bring you daily joy if you just hit ‘follow.’ Some days, he’s romping in a meadow or scampering through a swamp. Others, he’s taking a stroll through the big city. Still others, he’s lurking behind a cloud of steam, staring blankly as an unsuspecting person in a hotel shower. I Photoshop Paddington into another movie until I forget: Day 224 pic.twitter.com/M9cKEXTg97 — Jaythechou (@jaythechou) October 19, 2021 No, this is not the official Paddinton Twitter, which delightfully traffics in daily affirmations and niceties without the leering voyeurism and threat of violence. We’re talking about the Twitter account @jaythechou, run by a graphic artist who has sworn to Photoshop Paddington into a different movie every day ‘until I forget.’  So far, the artist has amassed more than 230 different expert-level Photoshops, drawing 108,000 followers to images of the peacoat-sporting bear dropped into the action of Shang-Chi and Black Widow, placed him alongside Shrek and Donkey and even had him ride shotgun (and likely take some PCP) with Denzel in Training Day.  The account very directly recalls the Creepy Paddington memes of 2014, which inserted the bear into multiple horror films. We now know what tho

Marvel’s so-called Phase 4 has been pretty straightforward so far, which we fully understand is a ridiculous thing to say considering the most recent film in the 26-and-counting series is a millennia-spanning saga of demigods directed by Nomadland Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao.  Yet the post-Endgame era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been relatively grounded: both Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings kept the franchise’s shenanigans earthbound, while Eternals’s more cosmic inclinations were relatively blasé.  That’s about to change. December’s Spider Man: No Way Home is poised to rip the fabric of space, time and corporate synergy asunder by bringing back long-dead villains from previous generations of Spideydom. Thor: Love and Thunder will no-doubt continue goofball auteur Taika Waititi’s quest to transform the God of Thunder into a live-action Heavy Metal riff. And sandwiched between the two is what could be the most mind-bending, colourful and downright surreal offering yet: The long-awaited Doctor Strange sequel, In the Multiverse of Madness.  The film marks Benedict Cumberbatch’s first top-line Marvel outing since the hero’s 2016 origin story. And it could just prise open the MCU’s blast doors for a universe-shattering series of events that could ripple throughout the MCU. Here’s everything we know so far about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Photograph: Marvel Studios When will Doctor Strange 2 be released? In the Multiverse of Madnes

It’s been four years since the big screen was graced by Batman (no, the Snyder Cut doesn’t count). That’s an eternity for fans of the world’s most famous vigilante, who have been spoiled with 11 very different films since Tim Burton’s 1989 blockbuster ushered in modern superhero cinema. Now, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel: Warner Bros is set to release the latest Caped Crusader adventure in early 2022.   ‘Light’ is a bit misleading. Anyone still bemoaning the dark-and-gritty reinvention of superhero cinema following Christopher Nolan’s game-changing Dark Knight trilogy take heed: The upcoming reboot, titled The Batman, looks to make Nolan’s Gotham City look like Sesame Street. Newly minted Bruce Wayne Robert Pattinson will navigate a noir-tinged, rain-soaked city where gangs of deranged clowns stalk the shadows, gangsters run amok and serial killers taunt the police with trails of carnage. This is a place where light seems too scared to shine. Adam West this isn’t. Here's everything we know about the hugely anticipated The Batman.    When does The Batman come out? After years in development, a long shoot in the UK and multiple Covid-related delays – including a diagnosis for Pattinson himself – The Batman is set to be released on March 4, 2022. Read our review of the film here. What is the runtime of The Batman? Eagle-eyed fans spotted the IMAX Melbourne website listing its runtime as 176 minutes. If that’s accurate, and there is no reason for an IMAX to lie to us,

It’s been 18 long years since Peter Jackson wrapped his beloved Lord of the Rings trilogy (and seven relief-filled years since he put his other trilogy to sleep). Now, after a prolonged period of Hobbitlessness, fans will finally return to Middle-earth courtesy of Amazon, whose own Dark Lord has emerged with a benevolent gift for us mortals in the form of a LOTR series based on JRR Tolkien's extended mythology. It comes with the slightly clunky name The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and it is going to be huge. Even with a teaser trailer out, the show remains shrouded in mystery, with media reports generally focused on the Smaug-sized price tag ($250 million for the rights, $465+ million for production). But with filming wrapped and a release date cresting the horizon of 2022, some details have emerged. Here’s what we know so far. What is the release date? The series will debut on Amazon Prime on September 2, 2022, and will span eight weekly episodes.  Has a trailer been released? Alongside the name reveal in January 2022, a teaser trailer was launched over Superbowl weekend (another event in which the winners get rings). It showcases some swooping Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings-esque shots over the Middle-earth landscapes, as well as the more CGI-heavy effects shots of his Hobbit movies. Front and centre is Morfydd Clark as the young Galadriel. What is the series about? For those who don’t know their Silmarillions from their Sarumans, Amazon’s series will tak

Questioning whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie (it is) has become the holiday version of ‘is a hot dog a sandwich?’ (it’s not).The debate has transitioned from Christmas dinner banter to the go-to blather of pub-bores everywhere. When something’s a ‘hot topic’ for three decades, it goes colder than yesterday’s hot chocolate. The debate is over. Time to discuss the yuletide merits of The Last Boy Scout.  However, last year Die Hard director John McTiernan finally weighed in on the topic, and in doing so threw a fresh log on the fire by saying that Die Hard’s tone was informed by Frank Capra’s beloved holiday fable It’s a Wonderful Life.  ‘Specifically, the Pottersville sequence,’ McTiernan told the American Film Institute. ‘Which is what happens when the evil banker gets to do what he wants in the community without George getting in the way to stop it. And it’s the clearest demonstration and criticism of runaway, unregulated cowboy capitalism that’s ever been done in an American movie.’ McTiernan’s comments struck a particular nerve in this writer because I’ve been saying this for years: Not only is Die Hard a Christmas movie, but it’s actually a stealth retelling of It’s a Wonderful Life. Just as Scrooged retold A Christmas Carol through the lens of ‘80s corporate television, Die Hard is basically Capra’s story filtered through an ‘80s action-movie fantasia. Here is irrefutable proof.  Photograph: 20th Century Studios John McClane is basically George Bailey with bloody f

Discovering that your favourite ‘serious’ filmmaker enjoys a good chuckle – even a lowbrow one – can be a shock: It’s like catching your wine-loving cousin shotgunning a Budweiser. Not only is finding out that Christopher Nolan is a huge MacGruber fan and Terrence Malick quotes Zoolander for fun, it makes us realise that maybe our guilty-pleasure comedy flicks aren’t so guilty after all.  With that in mind, we prodded our picks for the coolest filmmakers on the planet for their favourite comedic moments across cinema history. Among them were comedically inclined auteurs like Ruben Östlund, Cathy Yan and Edgar Wright, sure, but also more serious-minded artists like Barry Jenkins, Julia Ducournau, Denis Villeneuve, Paul Thomas Anderson and Lynne Ramsay. They shot back with a decades- and genre-spanning array of laugh-out-loud moments. We also discovered that Michael ‘Amour’ Haneke really, really loves hearing Steve Martin do a silly accent. Comedy, truly, is the great uniter. Read on: The 50 coolest filmmakers in the world right now The voice coaching scene in The Pink Panther (2006) – picked by Ruben Östlund ‘I had dinner with Michael Haneke in Vienna once and it all ended up with me showing him this scene on my mobile phone. It didn’t really pay off and everything became quite embarrassing. I guess it says something about how much I like this scene.’  ‘Taxi!’ in Tootsie - picked by Céline Sciamma

It may not feel like it, but it will be only a little over two years between the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home and its immediate predecessor, Far From Home. Sure, a lot has gone down in the intervening time, but maybe a bit of a pause was what the webslinger needed. However beloved a character is, zeal levels are going to be tough to maintain when they’ve been on the big screen ten times in the space of 20 years (excluding the six super-sparky versions in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse).  Yet now, nearly a month from the release of No Way Home, Spidey discourse is dominating the internet once again. And with a second trailer fueling fan theories about what’s to come in the next, excitement has reached a fever pitch. Here’s everything we know – or at least we think we know – about Spider-Man: No Way Home When is Spider-Man: No Way Home in cinemas? Frothy, fun and crammed to the gills with big-screen spectacle, Spider-Man movies tend to be the very definition of a summer blockbuster. This one, perhaps fittingly in a messed-up year, gets a rare spin in time for Christmas: it’s out on December 17 in the US and UK. Is there a Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer? Two, in fact. The second hit the internet on November 16 after a seemingly endless period of anticipation, with some sites speculating that the delay was the result of Sony and Marvel – who are the co-conservators to cinematic Spidey (more on that in a moment) – sparring over what could and couldn’t be shown in the previ

Like a down-on-his luck schlub being yanked toward a ledge, Netflix has taken the inevitable plunge: Squid Game – the global smash that became Netflix’s biggest hit of all time – is getting a second season, according to creator Hwang Dong-hyuk.  ‘There's been so much pressure, so much demand and so much love for a second season… I almost feel like you leave us no choice!’ Hwang told the Associated Press. ‘There will indeed be a second season. It's in my head right now. I'm in the planning process currently. But I do think it's too early to say when and how it's going to happen.’  At this point, very little is known about the future of Squid Game. Hwang himself seems surprised by the success of his dystopian passion project. But season 1 left a tonne of plot threads dangling like so many Tug-of-War players suspended over a chasm. Here are the biggest questions we have in advance of Squid Game season 2, plus some theories about where the show could go next. MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR SQUID GAME FOLLOW… you’ve been warned.  Photograph: Noh Juhan, courtesy of NetflixGganbus for life What will happen to Squid Game protagonist Gi-Hun? At the beginning of Squid Game, 456 hardscrabble characters are whisked off to a mysterious island and pitted against one another in a series of deadly playground games, beginning with a rousing round/massacre of Red Light, Green Light. By the end of the games, only one player still stood: Indebted gambler, deadbeat dad and kindhearted soul Seong Gi-Hun (