Olly Richards

The horror movie kicked off with Robert Eggers’ vampire smash hit Nosferatu and the fanged fraternity are back in a big way in April with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a Southern gothic with Michael B Jordan. David F Sandberg’s (Lights Out) nocturnal nightmare Until Dawn, meanwhile, will boast as-yet unrevealed terrors as a group of friends attempt to survive a night in the woods. Don’t rule out the odd vamp in there, too. And that’s just the start for a horror resurgence: 28 Years Later, M3GAN 2.0, The Conjuring: Last Rites, SAW XI, The Black Phone 2.0 and a new Insidious movie are all adding new shocks to smash-hit franchises. Talk To Me pair Danny and Michael Philippou return with Bring Her Back and the Jordan Peele-produced Him hits in September. Oh, and Final Destination Bloodlines has delivered the second most watched horror trailer of all time. This list will be updated as the frights arrive, so keep checking back to see what’s worth shelling out for.RECOMMENDED: 🎃 The 100 best horror films ever made😱 The scariest movies based on a true story 🔥 The best horror films of 2024

Television has been around for 70 years, but only in the last two decades has it earned true respect as an artistic medium. Up to that point, elitists referred to TV as ‘the idiot box’ or ‘the boob tube,’ and if you worked in it, you were either a hack or an upstart hoping to make the leap into the more dignified world of movies. Was its poor reputation deserved? Sure, there were blips of brilliance between The Ed Sullivan Show and The Sopranos, but by and large, the garbage outweighed the gold. Maybe it’s unfair, but the fact that it was all being beamed directly into our living rooms made the dreck more noticeable.  That’s all changed. Television has nudged film out from the center of popular culture, to the point that some of cinema’s truest believers – Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh – are making movies specifically for the small screen. The shift may have started with HBO and The Sopranos, but the advent of streaming has made it so that hundreds of new shows are now continually flipping the script every few years, if not months. But that doesn’t mean everything before 1999 is pure dross. While this list is dominated by 21st century programs, there are hundreds of shows that deserve credit for pushing TV forward into its current golden age, and 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. Even then, it proved to b

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

For over a decade, it often seemed like the only movies being made were Marvel movies. Beginning in 2008 with the introduction of Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man, new offshoots, franchises and ensemble pictures arrived with the sun, each raking in more cash than the last – a testament to both the comic monolith’s meticulous world-building and, of course, its marketing budget. Things have changed recently, however. Ever since peaking with Avengers: Endgame, the MCU has been on a downward trajectory, commercially and creatively – and it’s not just the Martin Scorseses of the world saying so. In truth, though, even in its glory days, not all Marvel movies were created equal. For every box-office-dominating event picture, the studio would churn out a few inessential space-fillers. So while we wait to see if upcoming entries Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps manage to pull the franchise out of its doldrums, we decided to see what’s worked best and what has fallen flat by ranking all 35 official MCU flicks released so far. As the list demonstrates, the glory days are still where the gold/vibranium lies. Recommended: 🦸🏿 The 50 best comic book movies of all time💣 The 101 best action movies ever made🕵️ 40 murder mysteries to test your sleuthing skills to the max

It started slowly but 2024 came through for us at the cinema – and, to a lesser extent, on streaming. Nothing quite matched the cultural behemoth that was Barbenheimer – much as noble marketing folk tried to turn Gladiator II and Wicked into something called ‘Glicked’ – but there were monster hits and critical raves aplenty. The huge success of Deadpool & Wolverine and Despicable Me 4 surprised almost no one, but who saw Inside Out 2 becoming the 11th biggest film of all time? And Moana 2 – once intended as a Disney+ series – smashing box office records like Maui on a rampage?Our list of the best films of 2024 offers the perfect chance to give flowers to the lesser-heralded cinematic offerings of the past 12 months too, like the superb A Different Man, brilliantly boisterous documentaries like Grand Theft Hamlet and Scala!!!, and the odd fun flops like The Fall Guy. Genre fans, meanwhile, got a mighty kick out of inventive new horrors like Longlegs and Late Night With the Devil, and any year with new offerings from Hirokazu Kore-eda, Alice Rohrwacher, Yorgos Lanthimos, Andrew Haigh, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi is not short on riches for the arthouse crowd either. Here are 50 gems to track down. NB We’ve included a few films that were released towards the end of 2023 for Oscar qualification purposes. RECOMMENDED: 📺 The best TV shows of 2024 (so far) you need to stream🔥 The best horror movies and shows of 2024🎥 The 100 greatest movies ever made

To count Mikey Madison’s movie roles would not even require all the fingers of both hands, but what the 25-year-old’s CV lacks in length, it more than makes up for in depth. Over the past five years or so she’s been making the kind of career advancement people dream of but few achieve. In just four roles she’s grown from unknown to potential Oscar-nominee.  The run began with a supporting role in Pamela Adlon’s cult, critically loved sitcom Better Things, which concluded its sixth and final series in 2022. When not filming that, Madison began dipping her toe into the world of film. Or perhaps ‘dipping’ is the wrong word, given the immediate splash she made. In Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, she had a brief but incredibly memorable scene as a disciple of Charles Manson who’s mauled by a dog, shot and burned to death in one of cinema’s all-time most horrible deaths. Then in 2022’s franchise reboot Scream, she inflicted some deaths of her own, playing co-Ghostface Amber. But those were just samples of her capabilities. Anora, her first major lead, is the announcement of an astonishing talent. Directed by Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project), Anora stars Madison as ‘Ani’, an exotic dancer in a club that would like to think of itself as high-end. When time spent (on the clock) with the son of a Russian billionaire leads to a shock proposal, Ani thinks her life is becoming a fairytale. Instead, it becomes a mixture of thriller, comedy, chase movie and he

En general, las precuelas son algo horrible, que despojan a los personajes del misterio o, en el peor de los casos, arruina precisamente lo que los hizo grandes (ver Maléfica convirtiendo a un villano clásico o las precuelas de Star Wars que nos dan el papel quejoso de Darth Vader) pero en este caso, Wonka es una precuela rara que lo hace bien. La visión del director de Paddington, Paul King, sobre la vida anterior a la fábrica de chocolate de Willy Wonka —de Roald Dahl— no intenta dar ningún retoque impactante ni ningún guiño astuto. Simplemente se siente como una extensión del mundo que creó Dahl, lleno de encanto, villanos silbadores y pura imaginación. La cinta comienza con Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) llegando a su metrópolis anónima, acogedoramente dickensiana y siempre cubierta de nieve, con un frasco de dulces en la mano y el sueño de abrir su propia tienda de chocolates. Su plan se ve inmediatamente frustrado por dos cosas: primero, un posadero intrigante (Olivia Colman, masticando espléndidamente el paisaje con una dentadura postiza amarillenta) que lo engaña para que se dedique a trabajar en su lavandería, y un trío de magnates del chocolate (Paterson Joseph, Mathew Baynton y Matt Lucas) que no quieren a Wonka en su parcela. Con su mente brillante y su perspectiva infinitamente optimista, Wonka idea planes elaborados para superarlos a todos y llevar su chocolate a las masas. Chalamet es un Wonka fantástico, poseedor de una voz digna de cantar (las canciones originale

Esta semana es el estreno de Cacería en Venecia, basada en el libro Agatha Christie, te damos razones para verla.  Después de dos viajes arruinados por la obligación de resolver asesinatos, Hércules Poirot (Kenneth Branagh), francamente, ya está harto. La tercera de las adaptaciones de Branagh de Agatha Christie, después de Asesinato en el expreso de oriente (2017) y Muerte en el Nilo (2022), encuentra a Poirot tratando de mantenerse solo en Venecia. Ignora a las personas que ruegan por sus servicios e incluso contrata a un guardaespaldas (Riccardo Scamarcio) para golpear a cualquiera que se acerque demasiado; sin embargo, por más que intente evadirlo, la muerte siempre encuentra su camino hacia Hércules. ¿Por qué ver Cacería en Venecia?  Lo encuentra gracias a Ariadne Oliver (Tiny Fey), una amiga novelista policíaca que invita a Poirot a una fiesta en casa de la excantante de ópera Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), en la que Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) dirigirá una sesión de espiritismo de un renombrado psíquico fraudolento. La sesión sale tremendamente mal, alguien muere y Poirot no está del todo seguro de que no haya fuerzas genuinamente de otro mundo en acción. Al igual que las películas anteriores, todo es muy atractivo, con Branagh aprovechando el miedo innato de Venecia, llenando todo con muchas velas parpadeantes y nubes de tormenta turbulentas solo para asegurarse de que el pastel no quede sin huevos. Su elenco, que incluye a Camille Cottin de Call My Agent, Jamie Dor

En los primeros minutos de Háblame (Talk To Me), el debut como directores de los gemelos de YouTuber, Danny y Michael Philippou, parece bastante claro lo que nos espera. Comienza con el tipo de travelling largo y espectacular que adoran los nuevos cineastas; sigue a un joven a través de una fiesta mientras busca a su hermano menor. Lo encuentra con los ojos en blanco y ensangrentado, mirando a una pared. Mientras la multitud graba con sus teléfonos, el joven apuñala a su hermano y luego a sí mismo. Es una configuración efectiva pero bastante estándar para "adolescentes malditos". Pero es sólo una de las muchas veces que este horror aterrador e inventivo te lleva por un camino familiar y luego te arrastra por una ruta nueva e impactante.  La historia luego se centra en Mia (Sophie Wilde), una adolescente un poco extraña que toma malas decisiones. Está de luto por la muerte de su madre. En su soledad, se aferra a su mejor amiga, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), y a su familia: su hermano menor Riley (Joe Bird). Mia y Jade, además de Riley, van a una fiesta donde alguien saca una mano aparentemente maldita. "Agárralo y podrás darle la bienvenida a un fantasma en tu cuerpo". Pídele que se vaya antes de los 90 segundos o querrá quedarse. El reloj, por supuesto, corre… Los Philippous interpretan las escenas de posesión no como una comedia de terror sino como una comedia adolescente con drogas. La posesión se siente "increíble", un viaje que altera la mente, por lo que todos quieren hacerlo

A estas alturas, probablemente sepas si la saga de Transformers es para ti. Van seis películas (siete, si cuentas el spin-off de Bumblebee ) y esta no es una franquicia que busque reinventar las ruedas. Cada entrega tuerce y reorganiza los mismos elementos; una baratija que podría destruir la Tierra; un malo de plata; un humano con mala suerte; una vaga alusión a la civilización antigua, y los rodea con una acción de bot contra bot impresionantemente animada.  Rise of the Beasts está directamente ligado a la misma fórmula, pero resulta ser uno de sus activos. Le da a la audiencia para qué están aquí y nada más. No hay nada de la complicación excesiva de las películas de Michael Bay, que a menudo presentan una trama humana demasiado rebuscada, y no infla el tiempo de ejecución. Esta entrega comienza en un pasado no específico con un grupo de animales Transformers, los Maximals, que huyen de su planeta de origen mientras es atacado por el dios robot devorador de planetas Unicron y su secuaz Scourge. Escapan con la llave transwarp, un dispositivo que permitiría a Unicron viajar a través del tiempo y el espacio, comiendo planetas a voluntad. Después de esconderlo en la Tierra, el escondite favorito de los Transformers, desaparecen. Corte a 1994, donde la guía del museo, Elena (Dominique Fishback), encuentra la llave y la activa accidentalmente. Eso despierta a los Maximals y los Autobots, que han elegido a un nuevo amigo humano, Noah (Anthony Ramos), y todos se embarcan en una mi

⭑⭑⭑✩✩ Sin duda hay personas que memorizan cada parte de la historia de los asesinos y su intrincada estructura de poder, pero la trama de John Wick nunca ha sido realmente el fuerte de la serie. Su principal atractivo está en las escenas de acción, las peleas y en lo escenarios cada vez más ridículos. Y esta cuarta película ciertamente no defrauda a los espectadores.  Hay escenas en un gran hotel lleno de vitrinas y reliquias antiguas; a través de un edificio en llamas; un club nocturno ridículamente grande en Berlín; peleas en el Arco del Triunfo en hora pico; sin olvidar los escalones de Sacré Coeur. El recuento de cadáveres es enorme. Hay tantas peleas que ocasionalmente puede dejarte insensible a los golpes, agotado por un montón de puños. John Wick (Keanu Reeves, mostrando nuevamente que puedes ser una estrella de cine fascinante sin actuar mucho) fue dado por muerto al final de la última película. Ahora, emerge de su escondite para librar la guerra definitiva contra The High Table, la organización de asesinos que efectivamente lo posee. Finalmente, cree que ha encontrado una manera de ganarse su libertad. En su camino se interpone el último villano de The High Table, impecablemente formado por el marqués de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) y alrededor de un millón de secuaces.  El director de la franquicia, Chad Stahelski, una vez más monta todo de manera impresionante, con el aspecto tecno-gótico característico de la serie al máximo. Si bien todas las escenas de acción son e

En medio de la melancolía de la mayoría de las películas de DC (Batman, Superman, Justice League), Shazam de 2019 fue una dosis de alegres tonterías. La historia de Billy (Asher Angel), un niño huérfano que puede convertirse en un superhéroe adulto (Zachary Levi) gracias a un don mágico, fue una fantasía. Esta secuela tiene más o menos el mismo trato. A veces se esfuerza por dar el mismo grado de emoción ahora que sus personajes son adultos jóvenes, en su mayoría lo logra junto a algunas bromas ingeniosas. Ha pasado bastante tiempo desde la última película, Billy ahora vive felizmente con su familia adoptiva, pero se acerca su cumpleaños número 18 y no sabe qué le depara el futuro. Por ahora, vive una vida de adolescente normal mientras lucha contra el crimen en secreto con sus hermanos adoptivos, quienes comparten su habilidad para transformarse en superhéroes. Billy quiere que hagan todo juntos, pero los demás quieren forjar sus propios caminos, tanto los superhéroes como los normales. Mientras tanto, un par de dioses furiosos (Helen Mirren y Lucy Liu) han venido a reclamar el poder que creen que Billy les robó. Hay mucho que discutir aquí, con seis héroes y múltiples villanos, y el director que regresa, David F. Sandberg (Lights Out), hace un buen al mantener las cosas enérgicas y sin enredos. En un elenco fuerte, Jack Dylan Grazer se destaca como Freddy adolescente, que se desliza a través de la adolescencia como un pato sobre cemento húmedo.  Y Levi nuevamente presenta

To an extent, you know what you’re getting with a documentary film called Ocean With David Attenborough. And that is no complaint. What you’re getting, even if you’ve seen versions of this before, is an always welcome thing: a well-researched, visually sumptuous celebration of nature and examination of the ways we’re ruining it.  Attenborough, who turns 99 on the day of the film’s release, explains how the world’s oceans, and our understanding of them, have changed in his lifetime. Once full of both mystery and fish, our planet’s waters are now better understood than ever – though there are still vast depths unexplored – but their wildlife populations have been decimated by pollution and careless, excessive fishing.  The cinematography, as with just about anything Attenborough puts his name to, is stunning (directors are Toby Nowlan, Keith Scholey and Colin Butfield). As Attenborough describes the huge variety of species that live beneath the waves, we see gorgeous shots of turtles munching on coral reefs, giant whales sailing through the darkness, and seaweed forests teeming with most of the cast of Finding Nemo. If you’ve watched BBC nature documentaries over the last decade, you’ll have seen similar images, but only the coldest of souls could ever tire of the sight of dolphins and seabirds all swarming around an undulating ball of silver fish. On the cinema screen it looks more breathtaking than it ever could on TV. ​We see seaweed forests teeming with most of the cast of

O filme de animação Branca de Neve e os Sete Anões (1937) da Disney foi lançado há quase 90 anos, por isso faz sentido que precisasse de uma actualização para este remake em imagem real. Há um esforço determinado em tornar esta história mais moderna, mas apesar de muita criatividade e algumas vivazes actuações, esta Branca de Neve ainda parece curiosamente antiquada e, no final de contas, um pouco confusa. Escrito por Erin Cressida Wilson (A Rapariga no Comboio) e realizado por Marc Webb (O Fantástico Homem-Aranha), a versão actualizada também começa com uma jovem princesa, Branca de Neve (Rachel Zegler), confinada a uma vida de servidão quando o rei viúvo casa com uma feiticeira malvada (Gal Gadot). Após o desaparecimento do rei, a rainha má, ciumenta da beleza de Branca de Neve, manda a enteada para a floresta, com intenção de a matar. Em vez disso, ela é acolhida por um grupo de sete estranhos. A partir daqui, a história começa a complicar-se na tentativa de eliminar as partes antiquadas e problemáticas. Branca de Neve, agora uma jovem corajosa e decidida, quer recuperar a sua coroa e liderar o seu povo, em substituição de uma ingénua indefesa que faz tarefas domésticas para estranhos, enquanto espera por um príncipe que a vá salvar. As suas canções sobre desejar o amor foram substituídas por canções novas, que falam simplesmente sobre o desejo. No entanto, a rainha continua a ser movida pela vaidade pura e pelo terror de envelhecer. O sexismo está tão entranhado em Branca

Disney’s animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was released almost 90 years ago, so it makes sense that it would need a fair bit of updating for this live-action remake. There’s a determined effort to make this story feel modern, but despite plenty of invention and some very spirited performances, this Snow White still feels peculiarly old-fashioned and ultimately quite confused.  Written by Erin Cressida Wilson (Girl on the Train) and directed by Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man) the retooled version still begins with a young princess, Snow White (Rachel Zegler), confined to a life of servitude when the widowed king marries a wicked sorceress (Gal Godot). After the king disappears, the evil queen, jealous of Snow White’s beauty, casts her stepdaughter into the forest to die. Instead, she’s taken in by a group of seven strangers. From here, it begins tying itself in knots trying to undo all the iffy outdated bits. Snow White is now a strong young woman who wants to reclaim her crown and lead her people, rather than a helpless naif who does housework for strangers while waiting for a prince to rescue her. Her songs about wishing for love have been replaced with new ones about simply wishing. The queen, however, is still driven by pure vanity and terror of ageing. Sexism is so baked into Snow White that you can’t eradicate it all without destroying the premise. Equally, Disney’s reluctance to use people with dwarfism for comic relief seems entirely right, but then wh

One of the great joys of Steven Soderbergh is you never know what you’re going to get. He has his slumps, but any time it looks like he might just have lost it, he comes back with something thrillingly playful. And so, after a dull run, culminating in 2023’s limp Magic Mike’s Last Dance, he’s on the upswing again with this highly original ghost story. Actually, ‘ghost story’ may not be entirely apt. It is, as the title says, about a non-specific presence. We view everything from the perspective of something that’s confined to an empty house. It’s not clear how long it’s been there, nor what it wants, but through Soderbergh’s creeping camera we see everything it sees. And what it mostly sees is a family suppressing ghosts of their own. Rebekah (Lucy Liu), Chris (The Knick’s Chris Sullivan), and their two children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang), move into the house, apparently driven to relocate after one of Chloe’s friends died in horrible circumstances. Chris is worried that Chloe isn’t dealing with her pain. Rebekah is more focused on her beloved son and his school athletic career, as well as staying out of trouble for some unspecified illegal activity connected to her work. Chloe is quietly going on with her life, but the presence seems fixated on her, watching her from her closet and moving her things around. It’s the most exciting thing Soderbergh’s done in some time If you’re expecting something akin to Poltergeist or The Conjuring, that’s not what this i

A follow-up to 2019’s The Lion King, a $1.7 billion box-office beast, was inevitable. But despite much clear effort to give it some soul, this prequel never offers a good reason for its existence. Its big selling point is that it’s directed by Barry Jenkins, who won an Oscar for 2016’s Moonlight, an achingly tender story of a boy going through the pain of growing up different. In a very – very – loose sense, Mufasa has a similar story in its young lion hero’s (Braelyn Rankins, then Aaron Pierre) journey from displacement to brotherhood with a timid cub from another pride (Theo Somolu, then Kelvin Harrison Jr.), via an untimely flood, more tragedy and the menace of an evil white lion (Mads Mikkelsen). This prequel never offers a good reason for its existence Told in flashback, Mufasa’s story is frequently interrupted by cuts back to the ‘present’ and some capers involving Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumba (Seth Rogen), suggesting the film is aware that its new characters aren’t as appealing as the old ones and need a little help – especially on the comedy front. Jenkins puts together some beautiful shots, but he seems at a bit of a loss for what to do with this. The musical sequences largely imitate those from the first film, although Lin Manuel Miranda’s – surprisingly very lacklustre – songs give him little to work with. And the ‘photo-real’ technology, while undeniably technically impressive, remains cold and characterless. Jenkins cannot make these uncanny valley critters l

It’s important to clarify what kind of documentary No Other Land is. It follows the life of Basel Adra, a young Palestinian man living in Masafer Yatta, a collection of 20 small villages in the West Bank. Since childhood, Basel has filmed life in the village. As he’s grown up, he’s been predominantly recording the destruction of his home and those around it. Masafer Yatta is disputed land. Repeatedly, Israeli soldiers come to tear down the houses of Palestinians, stating that they’re illegally built on an Israeli military training ground. From 2019 to 2023, when the film ends, this cycle continues. Every time a home is rebuilt, it’s destroyed. This is not an objective documentary. There’s no voice of the Israeli military or government position. The only Israeli voice in the film is that of Yuval Abraham, a journalist who says upfront that he believes the destruction of the houses is a crime. There is no attempt to view things from both positions. And that is entirely valid, because it’s not presenting itself as anything else. This is essentially a video diary compiled by Basel and Yusuf (they share director credit Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor – the full quartet are an equal split of Palestinian and Israeli) showing life through their eyes.  It’s a moving, challenging watch It’s a moving, challenging watch. A girl stands crying as her home is ripped apart by a digger. A family makes a home in a cave, the only solid home available to them. Masked Israeli ‘settlers’ throw rock

It’s a horror movie with Hugh Grant as the bad guy. Need we really say more? Grant is an inspired piece of casting for this spooky house chiller, bringing all his charm, which has developed a delightfully eccentric bent in the latter part of his career, and twisting it into something distinctly unsettling. It’s an overused phrase, but this is genuinely Grant as you’ve never seen him before. The film begins with two young Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) making their way round a pretty, rural town, attempting to convert people to their church – with unsurprisingly low success. When they knock on the door of Mr Reed (Grant), who lives in a remote spot high in the hills, they’re tired and deflated, so they’re instantly buoyed when, in his blustering, tweedy way, he seems only too happy to chat with them. They’re so taken with his friendliness that they bend their rule of only entering a house if a woman is present, because Mr Reed promises his wife is somewhere inside. Within minutes of stepping inside, they sense they may have made a serious mistake. As Mr Reed tries to engage them in spirited debate about the finer points of religion and its place in the world, it becomes apparent they’re trapped with something truly horrifying: a mansplainer with a lot of time on his hands. And he may be something, if you can imagine, even worse. And there’s no sign of Mrs Reed… You may never be able to enjoy Paddington 2 in the same way again Writer-directors Scott Beck

Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) is having a dreadful time. His wife has died. He’s living with his two mothers, who coddle him like a small child and for some unmentioned reason make him sleep in the garage of their huge house. Worst of all, he can no longer sing, which is his entire job. Ben is the cantor at a small Jewish temple in upstate New York, meaning it’s his task to sing the scripture and lead the congregation in prayer. Unable to perform or muster any enthusiasm for anything but drinking – alone, in busy bars – Ben has lost all purpose. Then he meets Carla (Carol Kane), who wants Ben’s help preparing for her Bat Mitzvah. Most Bat Mitzvah students are 12 years old. Carla is a little late to her party. She’s 68. There’s something quite old-fashioned about Nathan Silver’s film. It has a bit of an early ’00s indie tone to it, from its softly-lit, almost sludgy visuals, to its loose, sardonic, mopey nature bringing to mind everything from Garden State to Ghost World to Lars and the Real Girl. It’s sometimes cloying in its studied quirkiness and slips into self-indulgence, especially in scenes set around family dinners, which give the impression of being largely improvised, reaching for punchlines that aren’t always found. But if at times it’s irksomely twee, at its heart there’s a great deal of charm. If at times it’s irksomely twee, there’s a great deal of charm Schwartzman and Kane make a very loveable double act. He’s schlumpy and seemingly ever on the edge of a nap

Loosely based on his own life, Sean Wang’s beautiful coming-of-age drama follows a boy trying on different identities, desperate to find one that fits.  Chris (Izaac Wang) is a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American boy living in California. At home, his mum (Joan Chen) and grandma (Chang Li Hua) speak Taiwanese, while Chris and his older sister, Vivian (Shirley Chen), only speak – or rather stroppily shout – English. He even pretends to be only half-Taiwanese, so keen is he not to seem different. Among his friends, he feels like the tag-along, the kid who hasn’t worked out any of the stuff everyone else seems to find easy. Chris is growing up at a tricky time. It’s 2008 and social media is in its infancy. People can see how many friends you have – or don’t. There’s a burgeoning expectation that you cultivate not just a real life persona, but a flawless, hilarious, apparently effortless online one. Chris doesn’t even know how to walk into a party comfortably. When he encounters a girl he likes, real life and online interactions give him double the opportunity to humiliate himself.  Director Sean Wang gets all the details hilariously, palm-sweatingly right There are strong shades of Bo Burnham’s 2018 movie Eighth Grade here. That’s not to call Dídi derivative at all, but to say that it nails that high-school yearning to be cool and complete lack of any idea how to get there, making things worse for yourself with every attempt. It’s all intricately observed, from the way Chris code-shi

Part comedy, part environmental lament, all vibes – Sasquatch Sunset is a very weird, largely gross, yet somehow very charming chronicle of a year in the life of a group of sasquatch, or bigfoots (bigfeet?). Directed by David and Nathan Zellner (2014’s Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter) it follows a family of these apparently mythical beings as they face threat from the natural world and the encroachment of humans on their habitat.  The group of four sasquatch are an alpha male (Nathan Zellner), a pregnant female (Riley Keough), a second male (Jesse Eisenberg), and a child (Christophe Zajac-Denek). Although, you would be unlikely to ever guess that Keough and Eisenberg are in the cast as they’re beneath prosthetics and the sasquatch speak only in grunts and hoots. Their days pass with in-fighting – often because one male or another wants to have sex with the female – searches for food, encounters with other animals, and occasional straying into areas where humans have decimated the forest.  There’s not a great deal more to it than that. Its humour is of the puerile kind, with plenty of farting, vomiting and pathetically wagging sasquatch erections. In one scene, when the sasquatch encounter a road, a sight that terrifies them, they show their distress by taking it in turns to pee and crap all over it. But if there are times when the joke feels rather repetitive, or the screentime stretched a little thin, even at 88 minutes, there is also some well-earned poignancy to it.  It’s very

Bertrand Bonello’s sci-fi epic-cum-period-romance-cum-stalker-thriller is absolutely teeming with ideas. That they don’t all come together in an entirely convincing way doesn’t spoil the overall effect of something thought-provoking, very handsomely made, and appealingly weird. To explain it in its most basic terms, in 2044 France, A.I. has taken charge, following an unspecified event that left the atmosphere apparently inhospitable (everyone wears masks outdoors) and the population heavily depleted. Human emotion, which is blamed for the event, is now considered dangerous, and any person who wants to advance in this new society has to purge themselves of all complex feelings. Not just the feelings they have now, but anything they might be hanging onto from past lives. Keen to get out of her boring job, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) submits to a process of ‘purification’, stepping back into previous existences in an effort to make peace with them.  In each lifetime she encounters a man, Louis (Femme’s George MacKay), to whom she is always attracted. In 2044, he’s an alluring stranger with whom she keeps crossing paths. In 1910, he’s an old acquaintance who turns her head, even though she’s apparently happily married. In 2014, he’s a furious incel to whom a deeply lonely Gabrielle is drawn. It’s loosely inspired by Henry James’s ‘The Beast In The Jungle’, about a man whose life is crumpled by his unshakeable belief that something terrible is going to happen to him. In Gabrielle’s ca

Nobody cares about the plot. That’s the arguably depressing but also self-aware lesson the King Kong/Godzilla franchise seems to have learned. After a number of entries that half-tried to create humans you cared about or allegories for whatever, 2021’s Godzilla Vs. Kong was primarily just a showcase for big things hitting each other and was far more entertaining than any of its predecessors. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire has a greater number of big things and a smaller number of humans. Its brainless brawn is again pretty entertaining, until the credits roll and you can instantly forget the whole thing. Its set-up is that Kong is now living in the Hollow Earth, a parallel world full of giant monsters. He is lonely, continually hunting for others like him. When he eventually finds kin it’s no great family reunion. They’re led by an evil ape, who looks kind of like an orangutan going through an awkward teenage growth phase and is plotting to make his way to the world above. Thwarting this requires Kong to team up with Godzilla, who is gallumphing around the world looking for fights, and a few humans who fill in the bits between the CGI. That’s about as complex as it gets. There’s no human antagonist. There’s no significant development in the existing characters (Rebecca Hall as a scientist, Kaylee Hottle as her adopted daughter, and Brian Tyree Henry as the requisite comedy screamer). There’s a pleasing addition to the cast in Dan Stevens’ kaiju-handling veteran, introduced v

The Batman, the latest reinvention of the Dark Knight, gives us a new take on the comic character known as ‘the world’s greatest detective’. But how good are your own detecting skills? The film is packed with nods to other movies, music and art, and holds some sneaky hints about the characters and the future of the franchise. How many of these did you spot? Warning: contains spoilers for The Batman throughout Photograph: Warner Bros. Pictures/© DC Comics 1. Kurt Cobain was a major inspiration for the movie Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne is a lot more grungy than previous iterations, with his emo eye make-up, floppy fringe and sulky demeanour. Matt Reeves said the touchstone for Wayne was the late Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain. He told Esquire, ‘Early on, when I was writing, I started listening to Nirvana, and there was something about ‘‘Something in the Way”… What if some tragedy happened and this guy becomes so reclusive, we don’t know what he’s doing? Is this guy some kind of wayward, reckless, drug addict?’ And the truth is that he is a kind of drug addict. His drug is his addiction to this drive for revenge. He’s like a Batman Kurt Cobain.’ Cobain also inspired Paul Dano, who plays the Riddler. He told NME he listened to ‘‘Something in the Way” a lot, absorbing the lyrics about a lonely man living on the street: ‘That song, those words, that refrain, became hugely important to me. Nirvana became a part of that [character].’ Photograph: Universal PicturesJimmy Stewart’s

It took a lot longer than anyone expected but finally, after 15 years, the Daniel Craig Bond era has come to an end. From Casino Royale to No Time to Die, it’s been an uneven run, but one full of ambition and some spectacular highs – arguably the greatest highs in Bond history. Now that we’ve watched Craig’s farewell, this is what No Time to Die tells us about the future of Bond. Warning: contains mild spoilers for No Time to DieBond has (hopefully) finally solved its sexism problemWith rare exception, women in Bond films have been devices to move the plot along rather than agents of their own destiny. As much as the Craig era has tried to right that (Judi Dench’s M getting a larger role; Vesper Lynd becoming the first Bond love interest with her own full story), it’s still had its bleakly misogynist moments. Bérénice Marlohe’s Sévérine being surprised by Bond in the shower in Skyfall, shortly after telling him about her life as a sex slave, was a low point. In No Time to Die, the franchise finally establishes new female characters who exist outside of Bond’s gaze. He beds nobody new. Ana de Armas’s CIA operative Paloma may be in the traditional ‘Bond girl’ vein – beautiful, half his age, dresses impractically for action – but, crucially, she shows not a glimmer of sexual interest in Bond. It’s Lashana Lynch’s Nomi, the new 00 agent, who really shakes things up, though. She can do Bond’s job as well as him, she’s not in awe of him and she can match him on kiss-off lines. It

After years of pop-ups around London, starting in a literal back garden, Backyard Cinema has found a permanent home. The popular immersive movie company has taken over the old Capital Studios building in Wandsworth. Once used to record music videos for David Bowie, as well as several series of ‘Ready Steady Cook’ – yes, the Ainsley Harriott once walked its halls – the vast space reopens on Friday September 13 with a 250-person cinema and an enormous bar. ‘This is something we’ve wanted for years,’ says Backyard Cinema’s co-founder Dom Davies. ‘When we found this building, with two huge studios, we couldn’t believe it. We want it to become an entertainment hub with the cinema at its heart.’ The venue has the same feel as previous Backyard Cinema venues, but finessed. The cinema space resembles a crumbling theatre, strewn with vines and lit by huge chandeliers. A special-effects-heavy pre-show will include lightning and glowing, smoke-filled bubbles drifting over the audience. Seasonal elements like the hall of Christmas trees have been supercharged, but we won’t give away all the secrets. The bar at Backyard Cinema. Photograph: Andy Parsons The cinema, bar and courtyard, with food offerings from Honest Burger and Motherclucker, are just phase one for the building. Given three storeys to play with, Davies and his partner James Milligan plan to add karaoke booths, a second screen, another bar and possibly a theatre space and mini-golf. Their hope is that the cinema becomes ju

Three stars ‘Pet Sematary’ is exactly the kind of horror movie that is ripe for remaking. The 1989 version of Stephen King’s creepy novel is fairly well remembered, but it’s far from a classic, not even the cult kind. You can reinvent it without really annoying anyone. That’s exactly what the creative team on this movie have done. They’ve hacked up the narrative and resurrected it in a slightly different, weirder form.  The script keeps the same rough shape as King’s novel. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke), his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and their young daughter and son move to a quiet Maine town in the hope of a simpler life than the one they had in Boston. Louis learns of a spooky burial ground behind his house, which he discovers has the power to raise the dead. First, he buries his dead cat, which comes back whiffy and mean, but soon grief drives him to test its powers on someone human. In the details, the writers have some mischievous fun, changing key elements to give the film its own surprises (avoid all the trailers if you want some major ones preserved).Directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer make the tone just a little cheesy, as the premise deserves, but not overripe. The scares are easy – sometimes literally a cat jumping from the shadows – but cleanly done. Helped by intense performances from Clarke and Seimetz, there’s a deep human sadness running beneath the silliness.  Head here for ‘Pet Sematary’ screening times in London.

Born and raised in Surrey, Lily James has starred in 'Baby Driver', 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' and 'Downton Abbey'. She's played Cinderella and Winston Churchill's secretary, and this week is headlining the handsomely-named 'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society'. Next up she's in Danny Boyle's new comedy. But did we want to ask her about any of these things? No we didn't. We wanted to know whether she eats popcorn at the cinema and hear about that time she had a spontaneous dance party during a screening of 'Moulin Rouge!' Click below to find out more. 'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society' is out on Fri April 20. Read our review here.Ten new films to see in April