Ian Freer

Updated for 2026: Whatever you think of Netflix’s theatrical strategy, it continues to produce some of television’s most formally daring works, including Adolescence, a hard-to-watch but impossible to ignore limited series about an unimaginable crime. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s HBO’s hilariously profane The Righteous Gemstones, which stuck the landing in 2025 with its final season. In addition, we have moved Andor into the top 20 after its astounding second and final season.  Television used to be considered one of the lowest forms of entertainment. It was derided as ‘the idiot box’ and ‘the boob tube’. Edward R Murrow referred to it as ‘the opiate of the masses’, and the phrase ‘I don’t even own a TV’ was considered a major bragging right.  A lot has changed. Television is now the dominant medium in basically all of entertainment. The shift in perception is widely credited to the arrival of The Sopranos, which completely reinvented the notion of what a TV show could do. But that doesn’t mean everything that came before is primordial slurry. While this list of the greatest TV shows ever is dominated by 21st century programs, from The Wire to Succession to Adolescence, there are many shows that deserve credit for laying the groundwork for this current golden age.  Chiseling them down to a neat top 100 is difficult, so we elected to leave off talk shows, variety shows and sketch comedy, focusing on scripted, episodic dramas, comedies and miniseries. So don’t touc

With Obsession and Backrooms the latest smash hits at the box office, the horror business is booming right now. Over the last few years, it’s become one of the movie industry’s most bankable genres, financially and creatively. Ryan Coogler has already made Oscar-nomination history with a vampire flick of all things, while the combination of Barbarian and Weapons has made director Zach Cregger one of Hollywood’s most exciting new voices – and that’s to say nothing of the huge box-office success of franchise entries like The Conjuring: Last Rites, Final Destination Bloodlines and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. It’s shaping up to be another blue-ribbon year for the genre, with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, entertaining killer monkey ripper Primate, Sam Raimi’s Send Help and, of course, Curry Barker’s Obsession scoring big with critics and audiences alike. Here’s what has stood out like a bloody knife so far. 📽️ The best movies of 2026 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2026 (so far)🧟 The 100 greatest horror movies ever made

Is it safe to laugh again? Over the last decade, comedy movie from all but disappeared from cinemas – and those that emerged on streaming weren’t exactly keeping us in hysterics. But so far, 2026 is looking like something of a rebound for both big- and small-screen comedies. Granted, nothing is breaking the box office like back in the aughts, but surprise hits like The Drama and under-the-radar gems like Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie have cracked us up harder than anything we’ve seen in a few years – and there’s more on the way. For now, here are funniest movies we’ve seen in 2026 so far. RECOMMENDED: 📽️ The best movies of 2026 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2026😂 The 100 greatest comedy movies ever made

If writing about music is like ‘dancing about architecture’, what is writing about movies like? Painting about biology? Rapping about the tides? Cinema is an artform that contains all other artforms, and it aspires to tell us about ourselves and the world we live in. How can puny letters and punctuation marks ever hope to measure up? Well, you’d be surprised. Books about movies have been around almost as long as the movies themselves – shout out to Hugo Münsterberg’s 1916 tome The Photoplay – providing insight into a medium that can seem like pure magic. But books demystifying the process – from screenwriting to cinematography to editing – are only one part of the rich history of the literature of film. There are tell-all memoirs and making-ofs. In some cases, like Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, the books have come to define the period they cover as much as the movies themselves. We cover all the must-reads in this list of the best film books ever published. It’s the rare moment when we’ll tell you to stop watching, and get to reading – and then watch again.RECOMMENDED:🍿 The 100 greatest films ever made📚 The world’s 20 best cities for art and culture in 2026

Great movies were made to be debated. All right, maybe that’s not their primary function, but all art deserves to be argued over. If you’re passionate about something, you’re going to feel compelled to fiercely defend your favourites and shout down whatever you think is undeserving. Inflaming public discussion is one of the reasons we’ve put together this list of the greatest films ever made. It gets you thinking, and, when reasoned and civil enough, perhaps rethinking your own opinion.   It seems like a particularly good time to get the discussion going, too, given that movies are, slowly but surely, inching back toward the center of popular culture. Young people are going to cinemas again, particularly for repertory screenings, and making hits of original movies from fresh filmmakers like Ryan Coogler's Oscar-record-breaking Sinners. Letterboxd is growing in usage, and the Criterion closet is all over social media. New cinephiles are being made every day, and we’ve always thought of this list mostly as an educational tool for burgeoning film buffs. It covers a lot of ground: over 100 years, multiple countries, and just about every genre imaginable. So let’s get talking – and most importantly, watching.   Jump to list: 100-91 |  90-81 | 80-71 | 70-61 | 60-51 | 50-41 | 40-31 | 30-21 | 20-11 | 10-1 How we chose our 100 best movies of all time Admittedly, the process is not an exact science. Mostly, it involves a bunch of arguing, whittling and deal-making amongst Time Out’s mo

From winter blockbusters to festival sleepers, these are the movies our critics think define 2025. Expect prestige dramas, horror gems, wild indies and some surprise streaming hits – all watched and ranked by Time Out’s film team. What even was last year in movies? A rollercoaster is the most obvious cliche, full of exhilarating successes, puzzling disappointments and news stories that’ve left us wondering if there’s even going to be much of a movie industry left in the next few years. Artistically, it was a top-heavy 12 months, producing one surefire Best of the Decade candidate, with a few others not far behind, then a vast middle-class of films that max out at ‘very good’. As always, though, if you’re willing to do the work, you’ll find dozens of small and medium-sized gems to fill you with hope for the future of moviemaking as an artform, no matter what happens to the business itself. Here are the movies that made us gasp, swoon and shout the loudest in 2025. Quick Picks: 2025’s best films by genre: 😂 Best comedy: The Naked Gun 😱 Best horror movie: Weapons 🥋 Best action movie: One Battle After Another🎭 Best drama: Nickel Boys🪆 Best family film: Flow

As a European filmmaking capital, Italy is second only to France in historical importance. In terms of the kind of movies it’s given the world, though, there may not be a country more diverse. The masterpieces of Italian cinema range from hot-blooded romances to surrealistic dreamscapes, gut-busting commedia d'italia to gritty neorealist docudramas, spaghetti westerns to giallo horror. (Italian-Americans still have the edge on gangster flicks, though the mother nation has produced a few classics of the genre on its own.)  The big names still exert a massive influence on filmmaking culture: Fellini, Visconti, Pasolini, Argento, Leone. But Il Bel Paese is still producing major talents, from Alice Rohrwacher to Paolo Sorrentino. Clearly, narrowing down the greatest Italian movies of all-time is a tall task. But for our lira, these are the 50 best the country has to offer.RECOMMENDED: 📽️ The 50 best foreign-language films ever made.🇫🇷 The greatest French movies of all time.🇰🇷 The best Korean films ever made.

Unlike many of its monsters, vampires and virus-y Alphas, the horror genre is alive and well. It is, you might even say, well-endowed. Because anyone who loves that shivery sensation of being spooked witless in a cinema is being a lot better served than anyone searching for big laughs. The biggest stories in horror this year – Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Zach Cregger’s Weapons – have packed in audiences and birthed a million memes along the way, but don’t sleep on the following flicks either.Best horrors of 2025 at a glance: 📍 28 Years Later – Netflix (US); also on Prime Video/Apple TV+📍 Nosferatu - US: streaming on Prime Video; US & UK: rent/buy on PVOD📍 Sinners – US: streaming on Max; UK: rent/buy on PVOD📍 Weapons – Rent/buy now on Prime Video/Apple TV (PVOD); still in some cinemas📍 Final Destination: Bloodlines – Max (US); US & UK: rent/buy on PVOD

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘TV’s golden age’ enough times over the past couple of decades to get wary of the hyperbole, but this year does seem to be shaping up to be a kind of mini golden age for the TV follow-up. Severance, Andor, Wednesday and Poker Face have all built on incredibly satisfying first seasons with equally masterful second runs. The third season of The White Lotus has proved that, whether you love it or find it a touch too languorous, there’s no escaping Mike White’s transgressive privilege-in-paradise satire. Likewise for season 7 of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian-flavoured sci-fi Black Mirror. More recently, HBO’s Task hit the spot with a blue-collar crime series that wasn’t afraid to get down and dirty. Watercooler viewing is everywhere at the moment, and that’s not going to change anytime soon, with Stranger Things coming to an end and about a zillion other things still come. Here’s everything you need to see... so far.  Best TV and streaming shows at a glance: 📍 The Pitt (Emmy Best Drama winner) – watch on HBO Max in the US📍 Adolescence (Best Limited Series winner) – watch on Netflix worldwide📍 Severance season 2 (multiple acting wins) – watch on Apple TV worldwide📍 The Studio (Best Comedy winner) – watch on Apple TV worldwide📍 Andor season 2 (Emmy-winning writing) – watch on Disney+ worldwide 

Cada uno tiene sus preferencias, así que cualquier debate sobre cuáles son los mejores largometrajes de todos los tiempos se puede alargar horas y horas. ¿Puede haber algún listado que los agrupe todos? Es difícil, pero hemos intentado incorporar desde las revoluciones cinematográficas más clásicas hasta las más modernas, grandes estrenos, todos los géneros, países, épocas... cine para todos los gustos, haciendo equilibrios entre la racionalidad y el sentimentalismo. El reto ha sido enormemente complicado, pero no nos hemos podido resistir a elaborar una buena lista, nuestra lista, de las películas que hay que ver, al menos, una vez en la vida. Decidnos hasta qué punto nos hemos equivocado. ¡Y, ah, prohibido repetir directores! RECOMENDADO: Las 50 mejores películas para ver en familia. 

Cada uno tiene sus preferencias, así que cualquier debate sobre cuáles son las mejores películas de todos los tiempos se puede alargar horas (o, en nuestro caso, toda la vida). ¿Puede haber alguna lista que las agrupe a todas? Es difícil, pero hemos intentado incorporar desde las revoluciones cinematográficas más clásicas hasta las más modernas, todos los géneros, países, épocas... cine para todos los gustos, haciendo equilibrios entre la racionalidad y el sentimentalismo. El reto ha sido enormemente complicado, pero no nos hemos podido resistir a elaborar una buena lista, nuestra lista. Decidnos hasta qué punto nos hemos equivocado. Ah, para que no tengáis excusa, os hemos añadido las plataformas digitales dónde podéis verlas, ¡más fácil imposible! NO TE LO PIERDAS: El top 10 de la cartelera de cine de Barcelona Clica aquí si quieres más información sobre nuestros estándares editoriales y nuestras directrices éticas para crear este contenido

We scoured the galaxy – well, Greater London – for half a dozen locations that have helped make the ‘Star Wars’ franchise what it is. Pack your virtual Oyster card and join our tour de Force...

You might feel your done with Robin Hood – takes from the rich, gives to the poor, yadda yadda yadda – but Michael Sarnoski’s film finds new textures and humanity in the stock figure. The ‘death’ of the title refers to the demise of the legend, peeling the narrative and folklore from the so-called hero to reveal the fragile, troubled man beneath the myth. Bold, brutal yet surprisingly sensitive, it’s about as far away from Errol Flynn’s Technicolor tights or Kevin Costner’s mullet as you can imagine. Beginning in 1247 A.D. (the onscreen date roots it in reality) in the rugged, miserable landscapes of the Celtic Fringe, Sarnoski’s rich film is divided into two diametrically opposed halves. We meet Robin (Jackman) sporting a big coat and a bigger beard, barely existing on a mountainside, roasting rabbits on an open fire and brutally murdering a vengeance-seeking assailant – it doesn’t matter that she is a young girl.  Robin is found by former cohort Little John (an unrecognisable Bill Skarsgård) whom he hasn’t seen for 15 years. Now with a wife, child and a new identity as ‘Edward’ – everyone in this world has fake names to hide their murky pasts – John recruits Robin to help him fend off some killers hell-bent on retribution for previous misdemeanours. Working in a similar downbeat register to his previous films Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One, Sarnoski and long-time cinematographer Pat Scola paint a portrait of a grim world. The palette is cold and grey until the night-time fi

There is a double meaning behind the title Kim Novak’s Vertigo. While, of course, it alludes to the actor’s pivotal role in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece, it also suggests the swirl and disorientation of being at the centre of the Hollywood dream machine. Swiss filmmaker Alexandre O Philippe has previously made deep dives into the minutiae of Alien (Memory: The Origins of Alien), David Lynch’s relationship with The Wizard Of Oz (Lynch/Oz) and Psycho’s shower scene (78/52), but he takes a wider perspective here than just Novak’s iconic dual role as Judy and Madeleine for Hitch. Using film clips, objects from the actor’s archive, and an intimate in-depth interview with the star in her home, Kim Novak’s Vertigo emerges as a brisk (76 minutes) but warm and appealing profile of a survivor of the studio system and all the glamour, madness and misogyny that suggests. The film opens with a voice note from Novak, here 92, in gloomy reflective mood (‘I’m feeling very close to the end’). This is a cheeky misdirect as the person we subsequently meet emerges as vibrant, intelligent and curious. The story kicks off in bog-standard bio fashion – the early years detailed by photos, home movies and voiceover – but details an upbringing that is anything but average.  A warm profile of a survivor of the studio system – and all its glamour, madness and misogyny Her father kept the miscarried foetus of her brother in a jar in her garage; her mother tried first to abort her and then, as an i

There’s a wicked little premise at the dark heart of Corin Hardy’s latest horror flick. If you are present to hear the spine-tingling shriek of an Aztec death whistle, death is coming for you – chiefly the way you will inevitably die in the future is accelerated to bring you down in the present. Neat and nifty, right? Whistle has a ton of fun remixing three decades worth of horror carnage — ‘80s (A Nightmare on Elm Street), ’90s (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer) and early 00’s (Final Destination, The Ring) – but, for the most part, without an ironic wink. It doesn’t all work but it is well-mounted, throwback fun that delivers welcome Halloween hijinks in mid-February. After an intense prologue, the well-designed whistle, all skull-like eyes, intricate carvings and emblazoned with the motto ‘Summon Your Death’, finds its way into the locker of new high-school student Chrysanthemum (Logan’s Dafne Keen). Relocating to the sleepy steel mill town of Pellington, Dafne is a troubled soul, rumoured to be a former junkie just out of rehab and implicated in the murder of her father. Still, accompanied by her cousin Rel (Sky Yang), she makes fast friends with Grace (Ali Skovbye), Dean (Jhaleil Swaby) and Ellie (Yellowjackets’ Sophie Nélisse) who almost immediately vibes with Chrys. When one of this likeable Gen Z Breakfast Club decides to use the whistle at a late-night revision pool party, the clock starts ticking and the body count starts climbing. Corin Hardy delivers a pacy

The Shepherd And The Bear is a powerful non-fiction look at the natural world in its broadest possible sense. Max Keegan’s film combines a picturesque study of nature with an equally perceptive look at human nature as it explores two very different ideologies. The result is thoughtful, empathetic and languorous, and always beautiful to look at. Keegan’s premise is economically laid out in three captions: 1) following the killing of the last brown bear in the Pyrenees in 2004, the EU, Spanish and French governments have reintroduced the animal back into the region; 2) the Pyrenees’ rural communities have grazed their animals in the mountains for thousands of years; 3) few young people remain to continue the tradition.  The chief dramatic flashpoint arises between the farming community of the Ariège uplands of southwestern France whose livelihoods are undermined by the bears killing their livestock and the ecologists who want to protect and nurture the endangered species. Keegan’s film embodies the conflict in two lead characters. On Team Farmer is taciturn 63-year-old shepherd Yves who rocks a flat cap Tommy Shelby would envy, loves his cute-as-hell dogs Djembe, Kala and Baga, and mentors young shepherdess Lisa in the tricks of the trade. On Team Ecology is Cyril, a teenager doing exams who spends his days wearing camo trying to take a photograph of the elusive bears all the while arguing with his mother, a big voice in the anti-bear lobby.  The cinematography is ravishing, ca

Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams is a peach of a picture. At once miniaturist yet epic, it’s an exquisite film that touches on every human emotion – agony, ecstasy, discovery, surprise, togetherness, loneliness – without contrivance or strain.  A film of captured moments – some that feel much more important in the rear-view mirror – it’s an elegiac character study that perfectly expresses the emotions its protagonist is unable to articulate. Until he does. Based on a 2011 novella by Denis Johnson, Train Dreams is one of those rare films that tackles a so-called ordinary life and illuminates it as rich, complex and extraordinary. Joel Edgerton is Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker in the US at the turn of the century.  We follow him from being a soft-spoken orphan unaware of who his parents are to his death in the late ’60s (he gets to marvel at space travel) meaning, as well as everything else that is going on, Train Dreams is also a snapshot of a nation during a period of radical change and growth. But mostly sophomore director Bentley and co-screenwriter Greg Kwedar (the pair co-wrote Kwedar’s Sing Sing) concentrate on Robert’s days clearing the forests and pathways for train tracks in the Pacific Northwest. Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso finds stunning image after stunning image – a mist rolling across a landscape, a locomotive barrelling over a bridge at night – but these sections thrive on Robert’s encounters with fellow itinerant workers, each interaction offerin

If the warm, funny and fuzzy Colin From Accounts represents one extreme of Australian popular culture, then Bring Her Back is its polar opposite. The second feature from directors Danny and Michael Philippou, the brothers behind Talk To Me, takes the gore and frights of their debut and ally it to an examination of maternal instincts gone batshit crazy. Anchored by a terrific Sally Hawkins, it firmly cements the Australian duo as fresh, interesting voices in the over-saturated, often cookie cutter horror market. The set-up is economically sketched: following the death of their single father, teenage siblings Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong) are sent away to live with quirky foster parent Laura (Hawkins) in a spacious, secluded cabin in the woods replete with an empty swimming pool. Because it’s never a luxurious townhouse with a fancy hot tub, is it? Laura is already a parent to another adopted, seemingly mute orphan Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), while grieving the mysterious death of her own daughter Cathy, who was blind. Andy, who is just shy of being old enough to become Piper’s guardian, has vowed to look after his sister, who is also visually impaired, but begins to suspect their new custodian might have her own agenda. It doesn’t reassure anyone – Andy or the audience – that Laura keeps her dead stuffed dog in the living room and Oliver in a locked bedroom, or that she throws a dance party plying her underage wards with whisky. Bring Her Back doesn’t rely on ju

In a surprising opening to a balls-to-the-wall combat movie, Warfare begins with Eric Prydz’s ‘Call On Me’ video (the one with the sexy ’80s aerobics sesh), as watched by a gang of grunts ogling, vibing and thrusting along to every gyration. They – and us, as an audience – need to hold onto the memory because it’s the last bit of fun anyone will be having for the next 90-odd minutes. Prydz always comes before a fall.   A military advisor on Alex Garland’s Civil War, former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza survived a full-on firefight that left his comrade Elliott Miller with a traumatic injury and no memory of the horror. Co-written and directed by Garland and Mendoza, Warfare is a forensic, immersive act of remembrance that catapults you into the heat of battle.  The pair aren’t interested in interpersonal relationships, character development or political points of view (this is very US-centric, but not tub-thumpingly patriotic). Instead, Warfare is intense, brutal, visceral, horrific. The squeamish need not apply.  The set-up is simple. On November 19, 2006 in Ramadi, Iraq, a squad of US Navy SEALs steal into an urban residential area controlled by Al-Qaeda forces under cover of night. Their mission? To clear a safe passage for the ground forces arriving the following day. For the film’s first stretch, very little happens. Warfare leaves in the bits most war films cut out, as we get to watch a squad going through their routines and protocols. There is boredom, a struggle to get a sign

There are few more divisive figures in music than Bob Dylan. To some, he is a magical mysterious minstrel, a poetic voice of a generation. To others, he is a nasal whine in sunglasses. Made with Dylan’s blessing, Walk the Line’s James Mangold’s biopic A Complete Unknown (a lyric from Like A Rolling Stone) lands closer to the former, serving up an entertaining if rarely gripping portrait of the artist as a young hipster.  It spans from Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) 1961 arrival in New York to his appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he shocked the beardy-weirdies by playing with – Gasp! Horror! – electric instruments. In between, we get Dylan drawn into the folk fold by Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), his seemingly effortless rise to stardom, his relationships with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning, playing a fictionalised version of Dylan’s real-life girlfriend Suze Rotolo) and fellow singer-songwriter Joan Baez (Top Gun: Maverick’s Monica Barbaro), and a heavy-handed depiction of the singer dealing with being pigeonholed as an acoustic troubadour. To his credit, Mangold eschews the cliches of the typical musical biopic – no-one shouts ‘Hey, tambourine man!’ to Dylan in the street – but he never imbues the story with compelling conflicts or raw intensity. It may stick close to the facts, but the storytelling is one note – the times might be a-changin’ but the tone rarely does. He also never really finds a way to articulate Dylan’s interior life – there’s lots of Dylan smok

Former investigative reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his symbiote Venom, a sticky black parasite straight out of the Deadpool School Of Annoying Quippery, return for a superhero threequel that never feels any need to be darker or more portentous, but isn’t that much fun either. The banter between Brock and Venom has the rhythm of comedy but not the wit, the plotting is episodic and nonsensical, there are call backs to characters you probably won’t remember and – surprise, surprise – it all devolves into a climax where CG things clobber other CG things for roughly 20 minutes.  So much talent across the series – take a bow Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Woody Harrelson, Naomie Harris, Stephen Graham, Chewitel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans – and so little of it hitting the mark. Perhaps it is the right time for this parasite and host to go their separate ways In US and UK Cinemas Oct 25.

‘Sultan of Splat’ Alexandre Aja’s films flit between the grimly horrific (Mirrors, his The Hills Have Eyes remake) and the pulp-y fun (Piranha 3D, Crawl). His latest, Never Let Go, cleaves closer to the former as it threads together cabin-in-the-woods malarkey, survivalist thriller and an allegory-for-motherhood parable.  It’s certainly derivative – cue Bird Box, A Quiet Place, The Babadook – and has its dull bits, but it gets by on some imaginative licks and strong turns, particularly from a game Halle Berry, whose protagonist starts as Sarah Connor in T2 (brutal, no nonsense), then goes full Carrie White’s mother in Carrie (batshit crazy) by the final reel.  The premise is built on more rules than Dungeons & Dragons. The world has been overrun by an all-consuming malevolence forcing Momma (Berry) and her two sons Nathan (Percy Daggs IV) and Sam (Anthony B Jenkins) to live in a remote, ramshackle holding in a Tennessee wood. The family can’t leave the secluded shack without a rope attached, keeping a connection to the sanctity of the love-filled house.   Add to this a mantra that has to be recited before leaving and after returning to the house and the set-up features more hammering home than a DIY show – take a drink every time someone says ‘Never let go’ and you’ll get plastered pretty quickly – rendering the first act extremely laboured. The ticking clock here is the food supply is dwindling (Ocado doesn’t deliver to cursed forests), meaning the threesome have to live on

‘Are you having a good time?’ It’s a refrain heard constantly throughout Blink Twice, always delivered by men to women as a thinly veiled threat. For the audience, the answer is never in doubt. Best known as an actor for Mad Max: Fury Road, The Batman and TV’s High Fidelity, Zoë Kravitz delivers a supremely entertaining directorial debut – a twisty-turny crowd-pleaser that’s as confident with its thrills and surprises as it is with its deftly handled sexual politics. Intelligent, funny, gory and deeply cinematic, it’s a constantly shifting delight that marks Kravitz as a storyteller of huge promise. Originally titled ‘Pussy Island’, which hints at the film’s boldness but belies its sophistication, Blink Twice centres on Frida (Lady Macbeth’s Naomi Ackie, terrific), a waitress with ambitions to build a nail-design brand. Along with pal Jess (Alia Shawkat), she finds herself invited to the private island of disgraced billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum, fully understanding the assignment). Joining a fun gang of tech bros (Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment. Levon Hawke, Simon Rex) and party girls (Adria Arjona, Liz Caribel,Trew Mullen), Frida and Jess are plunged into a high-end world of luxury: gourmet dining, designer drugs, complimentary clothes, and sheets with a thread count higher than Stephen Fry’s IQ.  Early on, Kravitz over-indulges on the indulgence. Much screen time is expended on glasses of champagne being topped up, blunts being smoked and kick-ass parties, a

‘I think my dad might be an alien,’ says Adam (Faraz Ayub) around half way through Sky Peals. This could be the premise of a crazy knockabout comedy starring Will Ferrell but in the hands of debut writer-director Moin Hussain, it’s the polar opposite. Imagine Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin filtered through the deadpan energy of an Aki Kaurismäki comedy, it is low on dramatic incident, but high on a carefully crafted atmosphere and a true feeling for people who have slipped between society’s cracks.  The film is set mostly in the confines of Sky Peals Green service station, where Adam, a painfully awkward young British-Pakistani man, works at fast food joint Big Burger Trip. His uneasy existence is complicated, first by his mother (Claire Rushbrook) selling the family home and forcing him to find new accommodation (clue: he doesn’t), and more pertinently by a phone message from his estranged father asking to meet up. Further revelations about his father suggest to Adam that his father might not be from Pakistan as he believes but instead come from much farther away. In short, another planet. Imagine Close Encounters, only from the perspective of the family left behind  Hussain has stated the film was inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but from the perspective of the family left behind after Richard Dreyfuss jumps on the Mothership. The film uses its sci-fi plot thread to play around with ideas around estrangement and not belonging, Hussain playing his cards clos

Everyone’s favourite time traveling high school comedy-science fiction-oedipal-fantasy mind-bending masterpiece is back. Now 40 years old, Back to the Future returns to cinemas worldwide this week so we can experience the adventures of Marty (Michael J Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) as they should be seen – on the biggest screen possible.A crowd-pleasing classic, you don’t need any excuse to return to Robert Zemeckis’s timeless charmer. But here’s 5 reasons why you must experience it as God – or Steven Spielberg – intended. Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads… Photograph: Ralph Nelson/Universal Pictures 1. It’s the ultimate crowd-pleaser Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s screenplay is a masterpiece of screenwriting whose genius is rooted in its patient yarn-spinning. Early on, the film might seem slow – the set-up of Hill Valley, the long dinner scene in which we learn the McFly family history – but it’s actually setting up narrative skittles to knock down later on in the most satisfying way. The thrill of watching a perfectly constructed story unfold – all the twists and surprises – in a packed auditorium is just magical. It’s why we go to the movies.  Photograph: Universal Pictures 2. The old-school spectacle is off the charts Unlike the 2025 version of the blockbuster – which has 3000 pixel-filled effects shot and counting – Back to the Future used its visual effects sparingly (there are only 30 VFX shots). Still, it’s a film full of stunning spectacle. F

Receiving a rapturous reception at the New York Film Festival earlier this month, Ben Stiller’s Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost is an affectionate but clear-eyed portrait of the actor-filmmaker’s late parents, US showbiz royalty Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. Pieced together through performance footage, TV interviews, home movies and long kept correspondence – Jerry Stiller was an inveterate hoarder of professional and personal mementoes – the film also emerges as an insightful look at how the younger Stiller has taken on the passions and foibles of his folks. Here’s some documentary gold from the Stiller family archive. Photograph: Paramount Pictures 1. Ben Stiller’s mum is not a Zoolander fan Stiller may have found fame creating iconic comedic characters such as Derek Zoolander, White Goodman and Gaylord Focker, but his mother Anne Meara never liked the early funny ones instead preferring Stiller’s more serious turns – see Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg. There’s no sense of what she thought of Alex the Lion in the Madagascar movies. Photograph: Apple TV+ 2. Sibling rivalry is an issue for the Stiller family In a revealing discussion – and typical of the documentary’s openness – Stiller’s older sister Amy opens up about the deep-seated jealousy she felt watching him become successful while she was struggling to break into the industry. To his credit, Stiller as both interviewer and director gives her space to tell her story.  Photograph: 20th Century Studios 3. Ben Stiller

After mythologising Birmingham gang warfare during the 1920s in Peaky Blinders, showrunner Steven Knight has headed south to expose the criminal underbelly of 1880s London in his new Disney+ six-parter A Thousand Blows. ‘Victorian London was the capital of the world,’ explains Knight. ‘It was a place where you literally had to fight to survive. It was just a place with a lot of mad stuff going on.’ Inspired by an idea brought to Knight by actor-producers Stephen Graham and Hannah Walters, A Thousand Blows is a vibrantly colourful world dominated by bare-knuckle boxing, opportunistic girl gangs, class warfare and ridiculously natty threads. Here, Knight explains how to make London history hip in six steps. Photograph: Robert Viglasky/Disney+Malachi Kirby as Hezekiah Moscow 1. Make it about class A Thousand Blows centres on Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall), best friends from Jamaica, who arrive in 1880s London and find themselves thrust into the bare-knuckle boxing scene of the criminal underworld. While the pair face racism, the show provides a more progressive view of London as a cultural melting pot, Hezekiah and Alec also finding kindness and acceptance in the local community.  ‘The issue in this show isn’t so much gender or race, it’s class,’ says Knight. ‘White women, Black men, Black women, white men – all of them are cold when it’s cold, all of them are hungry when there’s no food. The things that are held in common by people in the E

David Lynch, who died on January 15, 2025, was a real renaissance man, working in all different mediums (film, TV, music, painting) and putting his unique imprint on all of them. As a filmmaker, he worked in genres such as period costume (The Elephant Man) and science fiction (his version of Dune is bonkers), but he was at his best exploring cinematic universes all his own, utilising a clutch of regular actors (Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Jack Nance) and collaborators (cinematographer Frederick Elmes, sound designer Alan Splet, composer Angelo Badalamenti) to bring his fevered dreams to life. Not all of them worked (1997’s Lost Highway and 2006’s Inland Empire are considered lesser works) but what he left us is a consistent vision that once seen is never forgotten. Here’s where to start with this singular artist. 1. Eraserhead (1977) Lynch’s calling card, Eraserhead was made over a five-year period and financially sustained by donations from friends (including actor Sissy Spacek). It’s a black-and-white nightmare writ real, as a big-haired man (Jack Nance) is left to look after his hideously deformed child in an industrial hellscape. Full of unsettling sights (a menstruating roast chicken! A world behind a radiator!) and disturbing sounds, it has a nutty dream logic that made it a hit on the midnight movie circuit and a lasting cult sensation ever since.  2. The Elephant Man (1980) Hired by producer Mel Brooks (who once called the filmmaker ‘Jimmy Stewart fro

Not since Leicester rapper Mark Morrison’s ‘Return of the Mack’ has there been a comeback to rival Daniel Day-Lewis’s decision to come out of retirement. The I actor has officially stepped in front of the camera for the first time since 2017’s Phantom Thread.  The actor isn’t the first to reverse an end-of-career announcement. Audrey Hepburn, Cameron Diaz, Jim Carrey (who came back to do Sonic The Hedgehog) and Rick Moranis have all officially declared retirement only to step back onto a set and into the limelight (Gene Hackman is still AWOL. So is Jack Nicholson but he never made a formal announcement).  The film that has lured Day-Lewis out of retirement is Anemone, directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis. Bankrolled by Focus Features and Brad Pitt’s production outfit Plan B, the film details, according to the official blurb, ‘the intricate relationships between fathers and sons, and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds’ (a quick Google reveals Anemone is a ‘a genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae,’ so make of that what you will). Photograph: Focus FeaturesPhantom Thread (2017) Day-Lewis stars opposite Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley (How To Have Sex) and Sherwood’s Safia Oakley-Green, but the actor has even more skin in the game, having co-written the screenplay with his son. Ronan initially took a different artistic tack to his father, being primarily a painter, presenting works in New York with an exhibition currently running

‘A reminder of what life and art are all about.’ That’s how Martin Scorsese describes the filmmaking partnership between Kent’s Michael Powell and Hungarian émigré Emeric Pressburger – arguably Britain’s greatest ever filmmaking partnership. Nominally Powell directed and Pressburger wrote (under the collective banner of The Archers) but their collaboration blurred standard distinctions forming a singularity of voice that remains magic. With a new documentary about the pair and their work coming out – ‘Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger’ – here is a primer for their unique brand of cinematic alchemy.   Photograph: BFI/Park Circus 1. They’re made on an epic scale P&P films are ambitious on every count; narratively, emotionally, cinematically and intellectually. ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’ charts the lifelong friendship of a British army office and his Prussian counterpart (perhaps a thinly veiled version of Powell and Pressburger themselves). ‘A Matter Of Life and Death’ tells the story of a RAF pilot on trial for his life in the afterlife (the escalator to heaven is iconic). Black Narcissus is built around a community of nuns in the Himalayas aroused by the arrival of a handsome stranger. Typically, these works are marked by wit, experimentation and maximum audacity. 2. They’re full of wonder P&P could also work in a smaller register. Shot in shimmering black and white, ‘A Canterbury Tale’ relocates Chaucer from the 14th century to World War II Br

Oscars night is but a sleep or two away. You’ve filled in your ballot sheet, stocked up on snacks, and, depending on your timezone, stockpiled caffeinated beverages. What, you’re probably wondering, is still to be done in preparation for Hollywood’s gala event? Now more than ever, the Academy Awards seem to promise new and exotic forms of televised mayhem, it’s important to expect the unexpected. But there’s a few things we can be reasonably sure of this year: a very, very long standing ovation for Tom Cruise for officially saving cinema; an extended riff on the beach football scene in Top Gun: Maverick, probably involving Seth Rogen; someone getting played off as they’re in the process of dedicating their award to a late parent; and the ‘RRR’ song to blow the roof off the place. Meet our cut-out-and-keep Academy Awards night bingo card, an easy way to play along as the craziness unfolds. Simply take a pencil and cross the following moments off as they unfold. There are no prizes. Good luck! Photograph: Time Out Filling in your ballot? Here’s what we think will win at Sunday’s Academy Awards.How to have the ultimate Oscars-themed weekend in Los Angeles.