Paul Fairclough

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 

War has long fascinated filmmakers, going back to the birth of cinema, but none have proven so endlessly enthralling as World War II. It’s understandable, given the remarkable scale of the destruction, the atrocities it involved and what it represented in the grand scheme of human history. So many movies have been made about the conflict, it almost stands apart from other war movies as a genre unto itself – and we’ll almost certainly see many more over the coming decades. It’s a daunting task, then, to choose the best World War II movies ever made. That’s why, along with polling our well-studied Time Out writers, we also called in an outside expert to come up with this definitive list: Quentin Tarantino, a man who knows a thing or two about making a great WW2 film. Among the selections, you’ll find wide-scale epics, personal dramas, devastating documentaries, historical revisions and even a comedy or two. War, as we all know, is good for absolutely nothing – but at least we have these films to help make some sense of it. Written by Tom Huddleston, Adam Lee Davies, Paul Fairclough, Anna Smith, David Jenkins, Dan Jolin, Phil de Semlyen, Alim Kheraj & Matthew Singer Recommended: ⚔️ The 50 best war movies of all-time🎖️ The best World War I movies, ranked by historical accuracy🇺🇸 The 20 best Memorial Day movies

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

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