Phil de Semlyen

Great movies matter. Movies have the capacity to sharpen our understanding of the world. They take us places we’d otherwise never go, and introduce us to people we’d otherwise never meet. Or they reflect our own lives back at us, and help us understand ourselves a little better. They simply allow us to place reality on pause for a few hours, which, in this day and age, should not be discounted. Thankfully, there are signs that movies still do matter, even for a generation that’s grown up watching them mostly through the television, like Letterboxd, or the growing popularity of repertory cinemas. And that is ultimately what compels us to list the greatest films of all-time. It’s not to assert our own canon, or spark quibbles about snubs and arbitrary rankings. It’s because new film fans are still being born every day, and need a place to start. So consider this a road map. Looking for something specific? Here are our favourite movies by genre: 🤣 The best comedy movies of all-time😱 The best horror movies of all-time😍 The best romcoms of all-time😬 The best thriller movies of all-time👽 The best sci-fi movies of all-time💣 The best action movies of all-time✍ The best animated movies of all-time🦄 The best fantasy movies of all-time💏 The best romantic movies of all-time🪖 The best war films of all-time 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

It’s the train tracks that stay with you.  I’m standing on the infamous so-called ramp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. A slightly elevated strip, it’s where more than a million victims of the Holocaust were unloaded from cattle carriages. SS guards and medical orderlies met 437,000 Hungarian Jews alone between May and July 1944, deciding who would live – for a time at least – and who went straight to the gas chambers.  There are several names with black crosses next to them on my family tree. Hungarian Jews. Did they once stand where I am now?  My aunt, cousin and I have come by coach from the pretty medieval city of Krakow, an hour or so away through unremarkable Polish countryside. We booked online (€30-50) – the official Auschwitz website will point you in the right direction – and a tour guide accompanies us for our three or four hours here, sharing facts and insights via individual headsets. It makes the visit a solitary business, despite the many other groups that crisscross around us. Which feels about right – you rarely feel like chatting.   Photograph: PhotoFra / Shutterstock As a film journalist, everything has a habit of coming back to movies for me. Shoah, French documentarian Claude Lanzmann’s great, nine-hour-plus opus of the Holocaust, is a big one. Schindler’s List, of course, which was partly filmed on the other side of Birkenau’s infamous Gates of Death (you can’t shoot feature films inside the camp these days).  And more than one friend has suggested that this

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 and The Last of Us all look like building on incredibly satisfying first runs with equally masterful second runs (even more masterful, in Severance’s case). 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. Watercooler viewing is everywhere at the moment,  and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Netflix has announced the finale of Squid Game this summer, along with the end of Stranger Things, a second run of Tim Burton’s Wednesday and about a zillion other things, while HBO is offering up a second season for Nathan Fielder’s genius/awkward comedy docuseries The Rehearsal. Here’s everything you need to see... so far.  RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows to watch in 2025📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

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

When it comes to TV shows, Disney+ is known for three things: Marvel, Star Wars and kids shows. But there’s much more on the streaming service than that. Granted, those are the platform’s three main tentpoles – it’s the place you got to find the new season of Andor, the revived Daredevil and the episodes of Bluey that help you survive as a parent. Given Disney’s juggernaut status, though, it also has everything from the Muppets to the Beatles to Goosebumps. Whether you’re a child, the parent of one or simply a child at heart, you’ll find something to binge. Here are the shows most worth your time. Recommended: 🇭 The best shows to watch on Hulu right now😏 The best shows to watch on Prime Video right now🍎 The best shows to watch on Apple TV+🇳 The best Netflix original series to binge🗓 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)📺 The 101 best TV shows of all-time

Cinemagoers love a good scare. That much is evident these days from the commercial and critical success of the horror genre: in 2024, some of the biggest, buzziest movies of the year – Longlegs, The Substance, Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu and the box-office shocker Terrifier 3, to name just four – were designed to scare. And that’s not even to mention leftfield smashes over the last decade, like A Quiet Place, Hereditary and basically everything Jordan Peele has done.   It’s crazy to think, then, that not long ago, horror was thought of as a euphemism for ‘schlock’. If you were alive at the height of the VHS era, you know it wasn’t totally unfounded. Churning out formulaic slashers became a way for hacks and hucksters to make a quick buck, leaving rental store shelves awash in forgettable dreck. It served to overwhelm and obscure the horror genre’s true value – because when done right, no other film experience can conjure more visceral emotions. So let’s correct the record. Here are the 100 greatest horror movies of all-time, drawn from both the current renaissance and those darker days. 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

Laughs have been a touch thin on the ground at the cinema so far this year – the only corpsing allowed during awards season was by the pope in Conclave – but prepare your facial muscles because the big lols are coming. The new trailer for Naked Gun, showcasing Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr, teases a proper studio comedy – the first in ages – and the pairing of Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd in bromance-gone-wrong comedy Friendship looks likely to give our funny bones a good whack. Of course, laughter is the best medicine – apart from actual medicine – and there’s already been a few movies and streaming shows with real healing power, from a classic Bridget Jones outing to a blast of Minecraft excess. If you’re looking for a good laugh, we prescribe one of the following. RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

Movies always find a way. It’s no secret the 21st century has so far been rough on cinema, between internet piracy, the pandemic, the strikes, the rise of streaming, etc. But while movies may no longer exist at the center of culture, over the first two decades of the new millennium, filmmakers have innovated at a more rapid clip than ever before: genres have been mixed, matched and completely exploded; more diverse stories are being told; blockbusters have reached unfathomable hugeness, and the smallest, strangest indies have won awards and reached vast audiences.  If cinema in the 21st century has been defined by tumult, it’s also exemplified the ability of those most dedicated to the medium to rise to the moment. These 100 movies represent the best of the last quarter-century so far. Written by David Fear, Joshua Rothkopf, Keith Uhlich, Stephen Garrett, Andrew Grant, Aaron Hillis, Tom Huddleston, Alim Kheraj, Tomris Laffly, Kevin B. Lee, Karina Longworth, Maitland McDonagh, Troy Patterson, Nicolas Rapold, Lisa Rosman, Nick Schager, Phil de Semlyen, Matthew Singer, Anna Smith, S. James Snyder.  RECOMMENDED: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all time🌏 The 50 best foreign films of all time🤘 The 40 best cult movies of all time📹 The 66 best documentaries of all time

In just a few years, Apple TV+ has amassed a decent selection of original movies, but where it’s really excelled is television. Since launching in late 2019, the streaming service has produced several shows and miniseries that could be deemed phenomenons, including Ted Lasso, Severance and Slow Horses. Narrowing down what it does best can be difficult, though: in just those aforementioned highlights, you’ll find a heartwarming comedy, a sci-fi mystery and a spy thriller. In truth, the platform is simply loaded with highly bingeable content spread across several genres and formats. And with buzzy series like The Studio, Lucky and Murderbot on the way, the slate is just getting more crowded. So what’s the most deserving of your precious time? Here are 20 of our current favourites. Recommended: 🍏 The 25 best movies to watch on Apple TV+🗓 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)📺 The 101 best TV shows of all-time

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

Stunt professionals put their bodies, and sometimes even their lives, on the line daily to pull off the coolest action beats in blockbusters. They’re the lifeblood of many of our favourite movies – and if you sell ice packs, they’re probably your number one customers. And guess what? The Academy has finally decided that it’s time to recognise their derring-do with an Oscar: Achievement in Stunt Design. ‘Since the early days of cinema, stunt design has been an integral part of filmmaking,’ Academy CEO Bill Kramer and president Janet Yang said in a statement. ‘We are proud to honour the innovative work of these technical and creative artists, and we congratulate them for their commitment and dedication in reaching this momentous occasion.’ We couldn’t agree more, which is why we’ve asked a few of the top stunt people in cinema to help celebrate the profession by picking one stunt that blows them away.  So which death-defying deeds most impress stunt legends like Chad Stahelski, Vic Armstrong, Simon Crane and Melissa Stubbs? Read on to find out. RECOMMENDED: 💥 The 101 greatest action movies ever made👊 The 30 best fight scenes ever filmed

Science fiction isn’t just for nerds anymore. In truth, it never really was. The best sci-fi film does what any good movie should do, and that’s tell us something about ourselves and the world around us. The only difference is that it might invent an entirely different world to do so. Sure, there may also be some convoluted time-travel involved, or fantastical technology, or odd-looking creatures. In the end, though, the sci-fis that stick out are the ones that deal with themes and issues anyone can relate to, not just the geeks writing 4000-word theoretical treatises on fan forums. To that end, in order to put together our list of the 100 best sci-fi movies ever made, we asked a wide-ranging panel of experts, from Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, to Oscar-decorated film director Guillermo del Toro, to Game of Thrones writer George RR Martin and Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, along with a few regular old Time Out writers. As a result, it’s a list that crisscrosses the sci-fi universe, from Tatooine to Arrakis, Metropolis to Los Angeles circa, uh, 2019. Recommended:🚀 Charlie Brooker’s ten favourite sci-fi movies👽 The best sci-fi shows streaming on Netflix🦄 The 50 best fantasy movies of all-time

The standout performer in The Friend sounds like he’s already a star, but you won’t have heard of him. Doleful-eyed and expressive, he articulates the deepest emotions with wordless economy. Played by a black-and-white Great Dane called Bing, Apollo is a dog with range.   Which is handy because this sincerely-felt New York dramedy, based on Sigrid Nunez’s much-praised 2018 novel, leans hard on the piebald pooch’s ability to communicate the sadness of losing someone without whom life has no colour and joy. Of course, as a dog – albeit arguably the finest dog actor since Anatomy of a Fall’s Messi – this is communicated via sad eyes, pointy ears and curling up in places he’s not supposed to be.   The devoted Apollo belongs, initially at least, to writer, professor and lothario Walter (Bill Murray, atoning for Garfield here). Then, out of the blue, we’re at Walter’s wake. He’s left instructions for the crestfallen dog to be rehoused with his friend, writer and literary professor Iris (Naomi Watts) – a pretty selfish act considering a) he hasn’t consulted her on it, and b) she lives in a rent-controlled apartment where pets are banned. How does she honour her old friend’s wishes without becoming homeless in the process? Being lumbered with a 180-pound grief metaphor isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s a classic Murray turn in the brief time he’s granted – feckless but kinda loveable all the same, and leaving a trail of broken-hearted ex-wives in (and at) his wake – but this is f

You’ve seen Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum. Now strap in for Bourne Yesterday. Meet Charlie Heller (Bohemian Rhapsody’s Rami Malek), a man who embarks on a mission of revenge with precisely none of the lethal skills he’ll need to carry it out. Not only can he not disarm an assassin with a rolled-up magazine or kill a man with a hand towel, the guy needs a YouTube video to help him break into a mark’s apartment.  That rare moment of levity runs against the grain of this straight-faced but enjoyably slick espionage thriller from director James Hawes. The British filmmaker is a veteran of Slow Horses, and while The Amateur lacks the rumpled élan and meticulous characterisation of the Gary Oldman streaming hit, it does deliver some of the same knottiness and unpredictability.   Its ‘slow horse’, Heller, is a CIA codebreaker and surveillance genius who’s allowed out of Langley’s sub-basement level for lunch breaks with his geeky work mates and not much else. Certainly not to defy his hulking Agency chief (Holt McCallany) and go on a one-man mission to avenge his wife (Rachel Brosnahan), murdered in a black-ops raid on a London hotel.   Asking you not to dwell on the massive coincidence that Heller’s otherwise unconnected wife has been randomly killed by privately contracted agents with direct links to his employers 5000 miles away, Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli’s screenplay (an update of Robert Littell’s 1981 novel) sets Heller on an off-the-books, trans-European mission to t

From Serpico to LA Confidential to Training Day, stories of straight-arrow cops navigating corruption on the force are a Hollywood staple. Will that cheeky free donut lead the principled officer spiralling into a life of backhanders and dodgy deals, or can they hold onto their morals and bring the big apples on the force to book? Ultimately, the good guy wins out – and it is invariably a guy. Sandhya Suri’s terrific slowburn drama is the non-Hollywoodised version of that story, depicting life as a woman in India’s rural police as a far murkier and less predictable affair. The British-Indian director diagnoses a problem far too deep-seated for one well-meaning, inexperienced young constable to solve, leading you into a maze of compromised ethics, police brutality, caste violence and misogyny, and refusing to point to the exit. That constable is Santosh, an emotionally bruised young woman played with tentative gumption by Shahana Goswami. When her husband of two years is killed policing a riot, she takes up the option of a so-called ‘compassionate appointment’, a real scheme in India that enables women to take up their deceased husband’s old jobs.  Suri’s sharp-edged screenplay doesn’t find much admirable in Santosh’s new police colleagues, a lazy, bribable bunch of layabouts. One bullying female officer takes particular delight in humiliating trysting couples, enforcing a strict moral code noticeably absent back at the station. The cops laugh over a meme comparing China and In

To the list of the world’s most dazzlingly imaginative animators – America’s Pixar and Laika, Japan’s Studio Ghibli, England’s Aardman, Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon – you can officially add a 30-year-old Latvian with a laptop. Flow’s Gints Zilbalodis is now a Latvian with a laptop and an Oscar, and boy, is it deserved. His DIY animation, made partly with freely-available open-source software, takes the promises of his eye-catching 2020 debut Away and fulfils it in spellbinding style. A survival epic full of mysteries and magic, it’s an animated epic worthy of Ghibli. Set in the aftermath of an inexorable, unexplained flood, it follows a small band of animals floating on a small sail boat towards an uncertain future. Its small posse of furry and feathered adventurers include a slinky, inquisitive cat; a ring-tailed lemur; an aloof secretary bird; and the hipster’s mammal of the moment, a capybara. It’s been ages since anything articulated the spirituality of the natural world as breathtakingly as this Their voyage is not Disney’s mushy The Incredible Journey redux and there’s no Life of Pi metaphor behind these characters – they behave like animals in a way that speaks to many hours’ studying at the local zoo (in one cheat, the capybara sounds were provided by a baby camel). But Flow still finds behaviourisms that are touchingly relatable. Teamwork, friendship, ingenuity and common interest are themes that run below the surface like one of the mythical whales that occasionally br

With this quick-witted and sexually supercharged espionage caper, Steven Soderbergh and his screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park) have just remade Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for the Industry generation.  Cerebral rather than action-packed, it’s like a classic le Carré (or, with its Harry Palmer allusions, Len Deighton) thriller, brought bang up to date with stylish direction, outrageously thirsty acting, and some bone-dry wit. There’s also a Ukraine invasion subplot to keep things uncomfortably topical.Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are married couple George and Kathryn Woodhouse – a pair of British spies who bring far too much work home with them. He has the calm, measured air (and glasses) of his namesake George Smiley, and a fastidiousness that’s perfect for his job but could be deeply annoying on date night. She’s cool with it – she’s cool, generally. The so-called ‘black bag’, a metaphorical mechanism employed by spooks to keep some semblance of work/life balance, helps keep the intel and intimacy apart. At least, it should. But a slick opening Steadicam sequence through a Mayfair nightclub sees George learning that there’s a traitor in his team’s midst – and Kathryn’s name is firmly on the shortlist. It’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for the Industry generation Soderbergh gathers all the suspects – agency shrink Zoe (Naomie Harris), tech whiz Clarissa (Marisa Abela), cocky field agent James (Regé-Jean Page) and morally compromised veteran Freddie (Tom Burke) – for

There’s something so bloody-minded about this workmanlike Marvel entry, you can only applaud it. Rather than bowing to grumbles that the modern-day MCU demands too much prior knowledge from its audience, Captain America: Brave New World absolutely insists you have a firm grasp on The Incredible Hulk. Yes, the 2008 one that saw Edward Norton leave the franchise before it even got started.  If, like me, The Incredible Hulk has yet to make your Letterboxd list, some head scratching awaits. Who’s the guy Tim Blake Nelson is playing? Why is Thaddeus Ross, now the President and played by Harrison Ford in place of the late William Hurt, agonising on his relationship with a daughter we never see? Why are we all here? And before you turn your paper over on entry number 35 in the MCU, you’ll also need to swot up on Eternals and its small-screen cousin, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The former will explain the mass of strategically and narratively vital space rock sitting in the Pacific Ocean; the latter sets up Anthony Mackie’s new Captain America, Sam Wilson, and Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), his chirpy sidekick now promoted to Falcon duties. Mackie makes an equally charismatic but much more mortal Captain America to Chris Evans’s Steve Rogers. His sense of inadequacy at replacing his serum-enhanced predecessor provides the movie’s best moment – a vulnerability that should be mirrored by Ross’s heartache over his estranged daughter, were she not marooned in a movie from 17 year

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy Review ‘Fourquels’ are usually where film franchises start to flirt with rock bottom. From Matrix Resurrections to Die Hard 4.0 to Batman & Robin and – shudder – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, they love to coast along on past glories and creaky story beats. One of them even gave us the phrase ‘nuking the fridge’, the perfect shorthand for a movie series blowing itself into orbit.    It’s a joy to report, then, that Mad About the Boy is comfortably the best Bridget Jones outing since Bridget Jones’s Diary. In fact, there’s barely a Silk Cut filter between this and that delightfully goofy first screen incarnation of Helen Fielding’s great singleton.  And there is absolutely no nuking Bridget Jones’ fancy new Smeg fridge. For Renée Zellweger’s still klutzy but now wiser Bridge, living in cosy Hampstead, the singleton Borough era is a distant memory. Ciggies and Chardonnay have been dispensed with (okay, ciggies have been dispensed with), replaced with a big dose of lingering grief for lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Her partner, and dad to her kids, was killed four years previously on a humanitarian mission to Sudan.  Via the attentive direction of Michael Morris (To Leslie) and a fab Zellweger turn, the push-and-pull of Bridget’s new reality – two young children needing their mum, a bunch of old pals, led by the still mouthy Shazzer (Sally Phillips), encouraging her to ‘get back out there’ – is laid out in an immaculate ope

If you have claws and an insatiable craving for human flesh, can you still be a great dad? That’s the theme underpinning Leigh Whannell’s latest go at dragging a Universal Monster into the cold light of the 2020s, a more hard-bitten and demanding age than the one Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man prowled – and a lot harder to scare. Obviously, the answer is ‘no’ – werewolves fall down in so many key parenting categories – but the Aussie horror auteur behind Saw and 2020’s terrific The Invisible Man deserves some credit for bringing a new prism to the furry critter first made famous by Chaney in 1941.  Christopher Abbott, often excellent in supporting roles, steps up in a lead role once earmarked for Ryan Gosling. He’s Blake, a country kid who’s grown up to appreciate his big-city life with workaholic journalist wife Charlotte (Ozark’s Julia Garner) and moppet of a daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). A writer who’s ‘between jobs’ and worried about his marriage, Blake pours himself into parenting, inadvertently mirroring the overprotective tendencies of his own dad – set up in flashback, along with the movie’s wolfman mythology, via a great prelude sequence. There are one or two genuinely disgusting moments of body horror here Whannell and co-writer Corbett Tuck’s screenplay helpfully twice-underlines the impending twist – ‘Sometimes as a daddy, you get so scared of your kids getting scars that you become the thing that scars them,’ Blake tells Ginger – before the trio head for his old famil

Thought William Tell was just a guy who shot apples off his son’s head? This old-fashioned Euro epic will set you straight. Here, the legendary medieval crossbowman gets placed in an action-packed historical context, showing that skewering Granny Smiths was just one of the daring feats he pulled off in the cantons of 14th century Switzerland. Played by The Square’s Claes Bang, a charismatic actor with a hint of devilry, Tell is a somewhat solemn family man, nursing old traumas dating back to his time on the Crusades. He’d rather be left in peace to hunt in picturesque Alpine valleys with his son (Tobias Jowett), while his Middle-eastern wife (Extraction’s Golshifteh Farahani) tends the hearth. But enter eye-patched Hapsburg tyrant Albert – Sir Ben Kingsley in one of those three-day’s-work-and-a-fat-paycheck roles – with dastardly plans for his corner of the mountains. An army of henchmen, led by Connor Swindells’ tax-collecting tyrant, Albrecht Gessler, is soon provoking the peace-loving Swiss to fury with their violent pillaging. In case you hadn’t guessed, Will Tell is basically Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves at altitude, though not as fun as that sounds. The crossbowman’s band of not-so-merry men (and women) includes Rafe Spall and Emily Beecham’s aristocrats, but it’s not until that famous apple scene – staged in the second half here – that Tell’s wavering gives away to full resistance.  The acting is a bubbling fondue of clashing styles Writer-director Nick Hamm (Killing

The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme is back in London next month, and it’s your chance to experience the country’s finest filmmaking without having to board a flight. The UK’s largest celebration of Japanese cinema, it will be taking up residence at the ICA – where you can catch the entire programme – and, for a more limited run, at Hammersmith’s Riverside Studios. The overarching theme this year is ‘Justice, Justification and Judgement’, with hard-hitting dramas like Yûya Ishii’s provocative The Moon and Bunji Sotoyama’s Tea Friends, based on a real-life prostitution ring bust, on the slate. For younger Japanophiles, there’s ​the charming manga-based anime Ghost Cat Anzu. Tanoshimu!

It rivals The Substance as 2024’s most arresting horror film – and it was a killer year for the genre – but you’d hesitate to call Robert Eggers’ deeply sinister, slow-burning new take on the vampire classic ‘fresh’ exactly. Plague, rats, death and moral degradation abound in a tale made with a coolness manifest by none of its out-of-their-depth characters.  The American auteur, crushing it in every film he makes, returns to his horror roots with an even darker vision. The Witch, his debut, a parable of evil penetrating a Puritan family unit in Colonial America, gave us the demonic and meme-able Black Phillip. Nosferatu gives us just blackness, shadows to get lost in (props to cinematographer Jarin Blaschke’s noir lighting) and an undercurrent of lurking villainy that’s articulated in the film’s lulling early stretches by the jittery strings of Robin Carolan’s impressive score.  As with FW Murnau’s 1922 silent adaptation of Henrik Galeen’s Dracula riff, a film spilling over with post-Great War dread, and Werner Herzog’s AIDS-era remake Nosferatu the Vampyre, the plot is set in motion by a humble real-estate deal. Wisborg realtor Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) sends his ambitious young agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) to the Carpathian castle of one Count Orlok, to complete his purchase of a new abode in their seafront town.  Wrong move. The man he meets has none of the doomed romanticism of Klaus Kinski’s vampire, a mole-toothed softboi who was prone to lamentations about ho

The most enjoyable Disney Animation movie since The Lion King (1994) – sorry, Frozen heads – 2016’s Moana dazzled with its kaleidoscopic Oceania seascapes, catchy tunes, and a coming-of-age adventure that tacked smartly around empowerment clichés. Now, eight years later and retooled from a planned Disney+ spinoff series, the sea-quel is here with… well, exactly the same. There’s nothing too much wrong with Moana 2, which ticks all those same boxes for adventure and empowerment. It’s another loving celebration of Polynesian culture, replete with mad-looking sea creatures, hummable songs, and a charming goofy streak. But the lightning that jags from its spectacular climactic tempest doesn’t end up in the bottle this time.  Hawaiian actress Auli'i Cravalho returns as the voice of Moana, now a seasoned wayfarer held in the highest esteem on her Pacific island. She even has her own fanclub – the Moana-be’s – and a direct line to her demigod frenemy from the first movie, Maui (voiced again by Dwayne Johnson). Her dream, pursued on solo journeys across the waves, is to make contact with other Pacific Islanders. It’s Star Trek with starfish.  It’s Star Trek with starfish But that’s not the adventure that Moana 2 takes us on. Instead, returning screenwriter Jared Bush and co-writer Dana Ledoux Miller serve up another deus ex machina – this time a malevolent deity called Nalo – to unleash seismic disorder on the ocean. Moana must embark on another perilous journey to restore the balan

A blood-soaked love letter to Hong Kong action cinema and gritty ’70s Hollywood crime thrillers, Gareth Evans’s Havoc is a proper brute force ballet. At its heart is Tom Hardy’s compromised detective Walker, a frustrated family man burying his softer side beneath an uncompromising exterior and the loosest possible interpretation of Miranda Rights. His unnamed US city – potentially the most violent place on the planet – is a hive of corrupt politicians, warring triads, dodgy cops and some seriously overworked coroners. To create his snowy cityscape bathed in Christmas lights, The Raid director turned to… South Wales. Somehow, Cardiff, Swansea and other South Wales locales were convincingly stitched together to create Havoc’s violent urban tableau. ‘We looked at New York, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia,’ Evans tells Time Out, ‘to find the bits and pieces that were cinematically interesting as we were creating this world. You get the odd person from America saying: “Oh, I recognise parts of this but not as a collective whole,” and then there'll be people in Wales that are like: “I think that's Swansea?”’ The director pulls back the curtain on his action spectacular to take us through the movie magic that turned a corner of Britain into a bullet-strewn US metropolis – without upsetting the locals.   Photograph: NetflixTom Hardy as Walker and Jessie Mei Li as Ellie What is Havoc? A ’70s and ’80s-coded action flick that wears its Hong Kong cinema influences on its

US indie studio A24 is taking over the The Prince Charles Cinema for a week in May for a mini festival of seven of its greatest hits.It’s a marriage made in movie heaven: the film studio behind some of the most exciting cult films in the world and arguably the world’s greatest cult cinema. Seven nights, seven films, endless credibility. On the slate? Two helpings of Robert Pattinson – Uncut Gems and The Lighthouse – Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, and a rare screening of Ari Aster’s director’s cut of Midsommar. Here’s the line-up: Friday, May 9: Everything Everywhere All At OnceSaturday, May 10: Uncut GemsSunday, May 11: Midsommar (extended edition)Monday, May 12: MoonlightTuesday, May 13: Lady BirdWednesday, May 14: Past LivesThursday, May 15: The Lighthouse Tickets are priced at £10 (or £9 for PCC members) and are on sale via the Prince Charles Cinema's website.  Photograph: A24 You can also pop by and pick up some A24 merch, with a pop-up shop at the venue open from 6.30pm-10.30pm each day. Here’s some of the goodies you can expect to find on sale. And that’s not the only good reason to catch a cult favourite at the cinema next month: Mile End’s Genesis Cinema is running a season of movies at 1999 ticket prices.  Expect to see films like Aftersun, The Matrix and The Worst Person In The World for only £2.50 at the East End gem. Support the campaign to save the Prince Charles here. Midnight marathons, plastic spoons and shagging rabbits: an oral history of Prince Charles Cinema

For anyone in the mood for a night in with an explosive, brutal and expertly choreographed action flick, Gareth Evans’ Havoc has landed on Netflix at the perfect moment. Starring Tom Hardy as a hard bitten cop navigating a world of crime and corruption, it’s an action spectacular that owes a debt to the Hong Kong action cinema of John Woo and Johnny To, as well as the US crime thrillers of William Friedkin and Michael Mann. In Evans’ trademark style, it’s a riot of furious violence that throws guns, knives and just about anything else that comes to hand into the mix – even a washing machine at one point. The soundtrack throws up some curveballs, too. Expect everything from Cantonese hip hop to Bing Crosby yuletide classics to some back-to-back club bangers from cool-kid French DJ, Gesaffelstein. There’s even a deep cut John Woo aural Easter egg for anyone with their ears peeled. We asked the filmmaker to talk through a few of the choices. Photograph: Netflix The Low Mays and Bakerie – The Mysterious Hiace ‘The Cantonese hip hop was all down to the music supervisors who put in front of me! I wanted something that was specific and localised [to Chinatown]. It was obviously important to have a track that set the tone for the scene, but also had moments that could work in conjunction with the tension and the pace of the scene itself.’ Bing Crosby – O Holy Night 'Initially, we were after a Nat King Cole version of Mary's Boy Child [for the ambush sequence], which is obviously mo

One of the best cinemas in London is celebrating its 26th birthday in generous style.   Mile End’s Genesis Cinema is offering 1999 ticket prices to an array of classic films from the past 26 years.  Between May 2-15, you’ll be able to catch an array of modern classic for only £2.50. And almost as good? Popcorn and drink prices will also be at 1999 levels for ticket holders. On the programme are a clutch of 21st century classics beloved by the cinema, including Aftersun, The Matrix, Kneecap, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, The Worst Person In The World, Crank, The Handmaiden and Persepolis.  The chance to commune with fellow Crank fans doesn’t come along very often – let alone for pocket change. Don’t let Chev Chelios down.  And Wes Anderson fans are especially well-served, with most of the American auteur’s back catalogue back on the big screen for the birthday celebration. Head to the cinema’s official site for the full line up and to buy tickets. Photograph: Genesis CinemaDesigns for the new-look Genesis And that’s not the only big news coming out of the East End picturehouse. Genesis recently announced plans to redevelop and modernise its site, incorporating student housing and potentially a second cinema elsewhere in London. Take a virtual tour of Genesis’s chic new cinema of the future. The best cheap cinemas in London. 

As any cool kid knows, South by Southwest (SXSW) is coming to London this summer for six days of music, movies and media events from June 2-7. The festival’s newly announced programme of movies will kick off with a documentary co-produced by Eminem on June 2. Stan, a inside look at fan culture that follows Eminem’s 25-year career and that of his superfans, is one of one of two world premieres and 30 UK premieres at the festival.  It’s a big week for Stephen King stans, too. Two King adaptations will be screening: The Life Of Chuck starring Tom Hiddleston (June 7) and The Institute (June 5), based on the writer’s 2019 sci-fi thriller. Another world premiere doc at the fest is Love And Rage: Munroe Bergdorf, a film about the British model and trans activist that screens on June 6.  Activism is a major theme in What It Feels Like For a Girl, too. The BBC dramatisation of a memoir by journalist and trans activist Paris Lee is getting its UK premiere at fest. Photograph: Amazon MGM Studio Also on the film slate is Deep Cover, a London-set action comedy starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Orlando Bloom and Ted Lasso’s Nick Mohammed.   It’s not movies in the SXSW film strand: The X-Files star Gillian Anderson is one of the guest speakers on the festival roster. ‘We are excited to present bold new work from across the world, celebrating boundary-pushing films across documentary, animation and narrative filmmaking, says Anna Bogutskaya, head of screen for SXSW London.  And of course,

One of the most gifted filmmakers of his generation, Ryan Coogler (Creed) has delivered another gold-plated banger with Sinners. It’s a horror film like none other this year: a heady cocktail of folklore, vampire mythology, Jim Crow-era tensions, blues-fuelled partying, bootlegging, sex, hedonism and bloody gore. Lots and lots of it. It’ll make you stomp your feet and rub your neck a little nervously. Filmed in epic-scaled 65mm IMAX, Sinners takes us to the Mississippi town of Clarksdale in 1932. Here, the locals prepare for a juke joint party thrown by the charismatic pair Smoke and Stack. Then it all goes From Dusk Till Dawn… Photograph: Courtesy Warner Bros. PicturesMichael B Jordan as Smoke What is Sinners about? Two cash-rich Mississippi exiles – the brusque, businesslike Smoke and his slick, sartorial twin brother Stack (both played by Michael B Jordan) – head back to their hometown after a stint in Chicago working as enforcers for Al Capone. In tow is a truckload of contraband liquor – Irish beer and whisky – finagled from Illinois mob syndicates and big plans to blow it all on a new juke joint outside of town.  As the pair gather party suppliers, hire musicians and spread the word of their blues blowout, a malevolent, immortal presence awaits across the bayou. Photograph: Courtesy Warner Bros. PicturesPeter Dreimanis as Bert, Jack O’Connell as Remmick, Hailee Steinfeld as Mary and Lola Kirke as Joan Who stars in the movie? Alongside Jordan is an equally charismati

Charlie Brooker’s dystopian and blackly funny Black Mirror is back on Netflix with a new bundle of scarily plausible sci-fi tales of the unexpected. There’s six of them in season 7, including Brooker’s first ever Black Mirror sequel – the Star Trek riff of ‘USS Callister: Into Infinity’ – full of timely jabs at everything from the horrors of privatised healthcare (‘Common People’) to sociopathic tech bros (‘Into Infinity’).But what kind of sci-fis inspire and/or freak out the man himself? ‘I'm a sucker for worried ’70s dystopias,’ Brooker tells Time Out. ‘I'm not a Comic-Con guy and the sci-fi I tend to gravitate towards is less of the space opera stuff. I like things that have a “Black Mirror” element to them.’ By his own admission, there’s an obsessive quality to the Brit’s love of the genre – ‘I watched RoboCop probably 2000 times when I was teenager,’ he points out – and unsurprisingly, a love of dark, Black Mirror-esque concepts. Human beings being turned into snacks? Sign him up. Here’s ten sci-fi movies he swears by. Photograph: Metro-Goldwyn-MayerPaul Weller as RoboCop 1. RoboCop (1987) ‘I first saw RoboCop when I was 15 and it reminded me of Judge Dredd, which I loved. It’s a big blockbuster but a high-concept head-fuck too – and it’s really weird. You can see the influence of RoboCop in Black Mirror; it does dystopian world-building in a sort of comic, almost Zucker Brothers way. I’d love to re-reboot RoboCop.’ Photograph: 20th Century Studios 2. Quatermass and

Somewhere between the slow-burn espionage thrills of Slow Horses and a full-bore action-thriller like Taken, you’ll find The Amateur, a spy thriller that asks what would happen if your head of IT at work suddenly turned into Jason Bourne.  That man is Rami Malek’s Charlie Heller, a CIA cryptographer who absconds from Langley’s sub-basement level to go on an off-the-books mission of vengeance when his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) is gunned down at a London hotel.  Cue a tour of European cities that boasts plenty of surprises of its own. Counterfeit passports in hand, Heller travels to London, Paris, Marseille, Istanbul, Madrid and Russia looking for the men (and women) responsible for her death.  Photograph: 20th Century StudiosJames Hawes filming ‘The Amateur’ in Paris ‘I didn’t want this to be the tourist trail of cities,’ explains director James Hawes (Slow Horses) of his choice of locations. ‘There wasn't going to be Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower and the Blue Mosque.’ With three secret service operatives as consultants and a little filmmaking sleight-of-hand, Hawes and his team set about piecing together a chess board of locations that were both authentic to the espionage world of the film and had the widescreen allure of a Bond movie. ‘I wanted to deliver the exotic, the adventurous, and the breadth of the world,’ says Hawes. He shares how they did it… Where was The Amateur filmed Photograph: 20th Century StudiosRami Malek as Heller and Rachel Brosnahan as Sarah in ‘The Amate

Sure, Cannes can feel a little hoity-toity and distant to the average cinema goer, with its weird sense of unattainability and surplus of unnecessarily large yachts. But it’s well worth keeping an eye on the films that emerge from the fest, which are often transformative – both for cinema goers and chin-stroking awards types. This year’s Best Picture winner, Anora, of course, was last year’s Palme d”Or victor, another indicator that a few films on this May’s line-up could well be packing out theaters well into 2026. Here’s ten from the newly-announced 2025 line-up to look out for. 10 Thrilling Cannes 2025 Movies   Photograph: A24Eddington 1. Eddington Director: Ari Aster Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Micheal Ward, Austin Butler, Emma Stone Finally, a film set during the COVID-19 pandemic that’s likely to pull people back into cinemas. Midsommar director Ari Aster, known for his psychologically intense horror films, takes a different turn with this western black comedy. Joaquin Phoenix is a small-town New Mexico sheriff with big aspirations and Pedro Pascal, Austin Butler and Emma Stone for charismatic co-stars. 2. Alpha Director: Julia Ducournau Cast: Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani French auteur Julia Ducournau already shook Cannes with her Palme d’Or winning Titane, and Alpha – her first English language film – promises to be just as visceral and haunting. It sounds like it’s going to hit hard as Ducournau doesn’t do surface-level. Tahar Rahim is rumoured to have

C’est vrai, Cannes peut parfois sembler un brin snob et lointain pour le cinéphile lambda, avec son côté inaccessible et son embouteillage de yachts inutilement énormes. Mais le festival reste un excellent baromètre des films à surveiller – des œuvres souvent bouleversantes, tant pour les spectateurs que pour les professionnels en quête de trophées à se frotter le menton. Le Meilleur Film des Oscars cette année, Anora, était d’ailleurs la Palme d’Or de l’an dernier. Un signe de plus que certains titres de la sélection 2025, fraîchement dévoilée, pourraient bien squatter les salles jusqu’en 2026. Voici dix films à ne surtout pas louper. 10 films de Cannes 2025 qui vont vous scotcher à votre siège 1. Eddington Réalisé par : Ari Aster Avec : Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Micheal Ward, Austin Butler, Emma Stone Enfin un film sur la pandémie de Covid-19 qui risque de ramener les foules en salle. Ari Aster, le cerveau dérangé derrière Midsommar et Hérédité, délaisse l’horreur pure pour une comédie noire façon western. Dans le rôle d’un shérif de petite ville au Nouveau-Mexique qui voit grand : Joaquin Phoenix, entouré d’un trio magnétique composé de Pedro Pascal, Austin Butler et Emma Stone. 2. Alpha Réalisé par : Julia Ducournau Avec : Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani Après avoir secoué la Croisette avec son Titane, Palme d’Or 2021, Julia Ducournau revient en force avec Alpha, son tout premier film en anglais. Et comme à son habitude, la réalisatrice ne s’arrête pas à la

The dashing-but-deadly Joe Goldberg has pitched up in London for a freshly launched fourth season of Netflix’s pitch-black comedy ‘You’ – ‘A city of art, theatre, books... and the occasional douchebag,’ is how he puts it. And, frankly, guilty as charged.  ‘Gossip Girl’s Penn Badgley once again brings his moody, deadpan charm and sexy geography teacher wardrobe to the character first created by Caroline Kepnes in her ‘You’ books. This time, Joe is masquerading as university professor Jonathan Moore and accidentally falls in with a gang of dangerously louche aristocrats. One of them, the druggy boyfriend of icily unimpressible gallery manager Kate (‘Fresh Meat’s Charlotte Ritchie), is soon bumped off and Joe finds himself caught up with another serial killer. What follows is a kind of ‘Class Onion’ of murder-mystery thrills and spills, as Joe/Jonathan tries to get to unmask the murdered across an array of London locations and quietly mourns the loss of his last true love, Marienne (Tati Gabrielle), in season 3. Expect to see London landmarks like Tower Bridge, The Ritz, Spitalfields and Sean Pertwee. Expect to see murder most horrid. Expect lusty poshos trying to get the measure of this enigmatic outsider. But first, take a tour of the show’s London filming locations... Royal Holloway Newly arrived in London, Joe’s alter ego, Jonathan Moore, lies low by working as an English professor at a London uni that looks a lot like Surrey’s Royal Holloway. And guess what? It is Royal Hol

What Sound of Metal and CODA did for American Sign Language (ASL) in indie dramas – the latter picking up a Best Picture Oscar along the way – hard-hitting BBC thriller Reunion is doing for its British equivalent – and it’s a game-changer. A four-part revenge epic starring, and made by, a partly deaf cast and crew, and making ample use of British Sign Language (BSL) in dialogue, Reunion takes representation of the deaf community to a new level on prime-time telly.  Series creator William Mager, lead actor Matthew Gurney and his co-star Rose Ayling-Ellis are all deaf, while Lara Peake and Anne-Marie Duff both worked with a sign language consultant, Brian Duffy, to prep for their parts.  ‘The deaf community has its own culture, its own ways of behaving, and its unique identity,’ Mager tells The Hollywood Reporter. ‘So [Reunion] is a thriller but it’s bringing all those things together: the sign language element, the location element – they all add different layers of intrigue, I hope.’ ‘He's a strong-and-silent type, with a lot of emotional baggage and a raging internal conflict,’ explains Mager. ‘Our lead actor, Matty [Gurney], embodies that internal struggle beautifully – while having a bit of a Jason Statham and Marlon Brando thing going on.’  Here’s everything you need to know – from the gripping storyline to its Sheffield locations.  Photograph: BBC/Warp Films/Matt SquireDaniel Brennan (MATTHEW GURNEY) and Carly (LARA PEAKE) in ‘Reunion’ What is Reunion about? Gurney pla