Phil de Semlyen

No other actor has defined the ‘worshipped by audiences, hated by critics’ dichotomy more than Adam Sandler. Breaking out of the Saturday Night Live cast in the early ’90s, he established a screeching manchild persona teenagers found irresistible and that played like a 6 am leafblower to pretty much everyone else.  Then, starting around the turn of millennium, something truly funny happened: as respected auteurs, from Paul Thomas Anderson and Judd Apatow to the Safdie brothers, started casting him in more serious roles, fans and detractors alike had to reckon with the fact that Sandler could really, truly act. He never stopped cranking out the gleefully juvenile comedies he made his star on, of course – only now, he does so alongside serious award contenders. (In 2025 alone, he’ll resurrect one of his most beloved characters in Happy Gilmore 2, then make an Oscar push in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly.)  It’s been a long, strange career. But what are Sandler’s best movies? Here are our 10 favourites.

Audiences have learned to view movies based on true stories with a certain amount of suspicion. Cinematic truth often differs from actual truth, and even the most accurate depictions of real events to appear on the big screen typically feature at least a sprinkling of dramatic license. And so, in compiling this list of the best movies based on true stories, we paid particular attention to those films that approached their subjects with something close to a journalistic eye — none of this vague ‘inspired by true events’ stuff.  Among them are Oscar winning dramas covering major moments in history, salacious crime stories drawn from magazine articles, odd character studies, psychedelic head-trips and other wild tales no one would believe if they didn’t actually happen. Sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction — and often, it makes the best movies. Recommended: 📹 The 65 best documentaries of all-time😱 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories🔎 The best true crime documentaries on Netflix🙌 The 25 best biopics of all-time, ranked

Becoming champ is one thing, staying there is something else altogether. That’s the challenge faced by the once all-conquering MCU and its belt-wearing head honcho Kevin Feige, for whom the glory days of Avengers: Endgame are now a distant memory. And it’s not the DCEU’s pale imitation that presents the big threat – even with ex-Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn in charge. The passing of time and changing tastes demands bolder swings than much of Phase 5 provided, although it’s just possible that the infectious, daring Thunderbolts*  is the start of something fresh. 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 The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Avengers: Doomsday manage to properly reset the franchise, we decided to see what’s worked best and what has fallen flat by ranking all 36 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’s all happening at warp speed for Louis Partridge. One minute he’s at school, doing his A-levels and generally being a teenager; the next, he’s sitting in the alabaster surroundings of a fancy Venice hotel, a movie star with nine million Instagram followers. If you’re nitpicking, Partridge is (mainly) a TV star right now. He broke through as Enola Holmes’s charming, foppish Tewkesbury, opposite Millie Bobby Brown, before scoring a role in Danny Boyle’s Pistol as the Sex Pistols’ snarling bassist Sid Vicious. I’m meeting him at the Venice Film Festival, where he’s promoting Alfonso Cuarón’s slippery new sexual psychodrama Disclaimer, a seven-part Apple TV+ series that comes with A-list talent sloshing over the sides – Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline and Sacha Baron Cohen included. Set partly in the ’90s and partly in the present day, he plays Jonathan, a photo-snapping teen backpacker who has a torrid affair with an older woman in Italy before meeting a sticky end. Or so, at least, it seems. Last night was the show’s world premiere, and Partridge walked the red carpet with his girlfriend, American pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo (38 million Instagram followers). He’s not showing any signs of morning-after haziness, his Prada clobber a reminder that he’s also now the face of the Italian uber-label. Cuarón and Blanchett wander past, exchanging greetings with the 21-year-old Londoner.  As a 12-year-old, Partridge made a list of filmmakers he wanted to work with, and it seems to have

Whatever you may think of Disney as a corporation, years of swallowing up other media companies has grown its streaming platform into an entertainment goldmine. Not only is it a one-stop shop for just about everything the House of Mouse has ever produced, it’s also where you’ll find all things Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel, plus insightful documentaries, concert films and live Broadway productions. With such a hefty catalogue, finding exactly what you’re looking for can be overwhelming. With that in mind, we’ve dug through all of Disney+ offerings to find the true cream of the crop. Here are 60 of the platform’s can’t-miss titles. Recommended: 🐭 The 50 best Disney movies for family night🦸All the Marvel movies ranked from worst to best👾 The 52 best Star Wars characters

July update: the newest entry on our list, the reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer, has divided opinion but we’re unwilling to find too much fault in a movie able to make gory mayhem feel quite this nostalgic.  Unlike many of its monsters, vampires and virus-y Alphas, the horror genre is alive and well. It is, you might even say, well-endowed. Because anyone who loves that shivery sensation of being spooked witless in a cinema is being a lot better served than anyone searching for big laughs. Comedies have been thin on the ground in 2025, but we’ve never been too far from the next horror flick. The biggest stories in horror this year – Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners – have packed in audiences and birthed a million memes along the way, but don’t sleep on the following genre entries either.RECOMMENDED: 🎃 The 100 best horror films ever made😱 The scariest movies based on a true story 🔥 The best horror films of 2024

There’s few more glorious summer activities than lying back in the great outdoors and soaking up a movie. The sun dropping beneath the horizon, the prosecco flowing, Hugh Jackman about to start singing in a top hat – let’s face it, you’re statistically likely to be watching The Greatest Showman – and a deckchair to sink into. What could be more perfect? You even get to use that comfy blanket your nan gave you. But if there’s one thing that ups the ante on the experience, it’s doing it in an eye-poppingly beautiful location – like one of the 30 starlit screens on this list. From a screen that emerges from Sydney harbour like a kind of cinematic Botticelli, to a vertiginous Colorado amphitheatre, to Cannes’s iconic Cinéma de la Plage, they cover all bases and the entire globe. Take a tour of the most spectacular screens on the planet. RECOMMENDED: 📽️ The 50 most beautiful cinemas in the world🌎 100 places every movie lover should visit

Love hurts. Love scars. Love can make you giddy with laughter or hot under the collar and tight in the pants. It can make you sing and dance or shoot to kill. However it’s expressed, love is perhaps the most elemental emotion a human being can feel. So it makes sense that filmmakers turn to it for inspiration more than any other. A great cinematic romance drills straight into the heart of the audience. Even if you’ve never, say, robbed a bank with your loved one, or stood by your sweetheart as they transformed into a hideous monster, the best romantic films make you understand and sympathise with the decisions of those under love’s spell. Because one way or another, we’ve all been there. Falling in love is easy, but choosing the greatest films about love is a puzzle. That’s why, to help us curate this list, we chatted to more than 100 filmmakers, actors and writers, including those from Time Out. Believe us when we say these are folks familiar with the language of amor. Who knows more about making hearts swell than Nicholas Sparks, author of The Notebook? Or Notting Hill screenwriter Richard Curtis? Shoot, we even asked the ultimate romantic, Miss Piggy. Whether you prefer comedies or dramas, horror or sci-fi, we’re sure you’ll find the following list of the 100 greatest romantic movies ever speaks to your own heart as well. Written by Cath Clarke, Dave Calhoun, Tom Huddleston, Catherine Bray, Trevor Johnston, Andy P Kryza, Guy Lodge, Phil de Semlyen, Alim Kheraj & Matthew Si

2025 nos ha regalado grandes historias para maratonear, analizar y hasta debatir. Desde The Last of Us 2 que generó mucha polémica (no tan distinto a su juego) a El Eternauta, una apuesta de ciencia ficción latinoamericana que sorprendió. En esta lista reunimos las mejores series del año (hasta ahora), tomando en cuenta su impacto narrativo, la calidad de sus producciones y ese algo especial que las hace imprescindibles. Aquí van nuestras elegidas: Deberías de ver: Las mejores películas de 2025 (hasta ahora). 

On March 25, 1925, at London’s Selfridges department store in central London, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird made the first public demo of his latest creation: a way to broadcast visual information from a camera to a screen. A full century later, Baird’s discovery has led to perhaps the most vital, creative and popular mode of artistic expression in the entire world. But it’s only in the past 25 years that television has really fulfilled its artistic potential.  The result has been the so-called ‘Golden Age of Television’, a boom kickstarted roughly around the turn of the century with the rise of shows like The Sopranos and later Breaking Bad, and continuing with awards-winners from Succession to Shōgun to Slow Horses. So while our list of the 100 greatest TV shows may pay tribute to the unmissable programs of yesteryear, you’ll find that the majority hail from our own century – meaning there’s no excuse not to watch every single one. Paring the list down to only 100 was a painful process, so we decided to omit sketch shows, talk shows, news and non-fiction in order to focus on scripted drama and classic comedy. Time to go goggle-eyed. Recommended: 🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)🍎 The best shows to watch on Apple TV+ right now📺 The best Netflix original series to binge🎮 The best ‘90s TV shows

July 2025 update: The third and final season of Squid Game – the Korean version, at least – is a highly-placed new addition to our best of the year list, with season 4 of FX’s chef drama The Bear, and the third run of Paramount+’s Star Trek spinoff, Strange New Worlds, also slotting into Time Out’s top 20.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. Stranger Things is coming to an end, there’s a second run of Tim Burton’s Wednesday, and about a zillion other things still come. Here’s everything you need to see... so far.  RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The 100 best movies ever made📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

July 2025 update: Brad Pitt racing drama F1: The Movie, a gold-plated slab of Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster entertainment, 28 Years Later and a nostalgic Jaws doc are the summer’s newest additions to our best-of-2025 pantheon. Halfway through 2025, Hollywood must be breathing a sigh of relief. At this point last year, the studios were scratching their heads at several major unexpected flops, and many analysts were left to wonder if the post-pandemic bounce-back of 2023 was simply an outlier. Now, with films like A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, Final Destination: Bloodlines and Lilo & Stitch outperforming expectations, it might be safe to say that the movies are finally, really, truly… back? Maybe we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. But there are reasons for cinephiles to celebrate beyond the industry’s financial health, whether it’s the blockbuster success of the aforementioned Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s ambitious and wholly original horror epic, or several smaller-scale achievements, from the formal invention of Nickel Boys to the animated underdog (undercat?) story of Flow to a pair of home runs from Steven Soderbergh. And there’s plenty more to come. Here are the films that have had us cheering loudest in 2025 so far.  RECOMMENDED: 📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best horror movies of 2025🎥 The 101 greatest films ever made

Even those cinemagoers who have grumbled about the preponderance of superhero origin stories – and I’m guilty there – might feel a touch of remorse watching writer-director James Gunn’s puckish and political (but wildly overstuffed) blockbuster skip merrily past all the basics of DC’s most righteous figure. The Guardians of the Galaxy man, probably mindful of the many Super-movies that have come before his, races through Kal-El’s origins in a handful of captions over the opening frames: an Antarctic vista into which a battered and vulnerable Superman (David Corenswet) is hurled after his first defeat in battle over the skies of Metropolis. In those few sentences, establishing the existence of metahumans on Earth and the arrival of Superman from the planet Krypton 30 years prior, this DC reboot skips jauntily past the entire plot of Richard Donner’s 1978 classic.  So, there’s no orientation, none of the scene-setting Smallville stuff with Jonathan and Martha Kent (though they do get a touching later scene). We’re not getting those early flirtations with girlfriend Lois Lane (the impressive Rachel Brosnahan) either, or even Clark Kent learning how to use The Daily Planet’s nifty-looking CMS. In fact, we’re not getting much of Clark Kent at all.It’s the most in medias res-iest bit of storytelling imaginable, a gambit that feels more and more misguided as the movie slips deeper into generic superhero terrain in a packed but muddled second half. A giant chasm is carving its way to

While most directors fret over final cuts and spiralling budgets, it’s more likely to be exploding mortar shells and buzzing drones that keep Ukrainian filmmaker-reporter Mstyslav Chernov awake at night.  Fresh from winning a Best Documentary Oscar for 20 Days in Mariupol, a fly-on-the-shattered-wall depiction of the brutal 2022 siege by Putin’s invading army, the insanely brave journalist-filmmaker has picked up his camera and found somewhere even more dangerous to go.  That place? A pencil-thin strip of blasted forest just outside the destroyed village of Andriivka in eastern Ukraine. The fields on both sides are sewn with landmines, making the task of capturing the village a forest crawl of hidden Russian bunkers, random shellfire and sudden death. It’s a trench-by-trench battle as brutal as Okinawa or the Somme, and Chernov and his Associate Press colleague Alex Babenko are right there with the Ukrainian assault brigade assigned to the task.  Its vérité view of combat is intense and confronting. What makes it so impactful is the first-person nature of the footage – suddenly, the tools of modern warfare have become filmmaking tools too. Footage from soldiers’ bodycams and aerial photography from reconnaissance drones puts you right in the shoes of the men – sometimes even as they fall, wounded. The result is disorientating, distressing and often surreal. It’d feel like Call of Duty if it wasn’t so grimly real. Alex Garland’s Warfare suffers by comparison Of course, there’

Muse is not your average brass-and-marble speakeasy. Just off The Strand, it’s like stumbling into an elegant little laboratory dedicated to turning small-batch and sustainably sourced British spirits into memorable (and reasonably priced) cocktails. What marks it out is its location: right in the heart of the Royal Society of Arts, a Georgian temple to creativity that once counted Charles Dickens and Benjamin Franklin as regulars. Chat to the boss, Marcis Dzelzainis, or his long-time potion master Kevin Price-Houghton about foraged ingredients, their favourite Cotswolds eau de vie or Kentish rhubarb soda and it’s clear they’ve embraced the RSA’s spirit of high-IQ invention. Or just kick back at the end of a long work day with a classic martini (£9.50) and watch the world go by in a blur outside. You might just meet a genius.

The ‘Rebirth’ in this Jurassic World sequel’s title is apt because this seventh entry is a renaissance of sorts for a franchise that looked ready to curl up and turn to fossil. In 2022’s woeful Jurassic World Dominion the planet was shrugging at its proliferation of dinosaurs – and it was easy for cinema-going audiences to do the same. How depressing to watch the awe Steven Spielberg summoned back in 1993 vanish in a globe-spanning story where most of the globe was done with dinos. How, the inner eight-year-old in us wanted to scream, could anyone be bored of dinosaurs? In a dinosaur movie? Some of that dino-fatigue plays into the laborious opening stretches here. Big beasts shamble though the Big Apple and New Yorkers just beep their horns and grumble about the tails in their tailbacks. Happily, director Gareth Edwards (The Creator, Godzilla) OG screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park) soon pivot back to where the humans-messing-with-nature premise works best: on a tropical island overrun with hungry prehistoric beasties.That long-winded prelude does fill in the odd handy blank: to survive, the dinosaurs have mostly retreated to the jungles and seas near the equator, no-go areas for humans. There, a small group of adventurers must venture on the dime of Rupert Friend’s slimy exec. His pharma company is on the hunt for a potential cure for heart disease that’s carried in the blood of three dino species. Scarlett Johansson and Ali Mahershala’s

Having a bunch of tech tycoons getting set upon by killer AI dolls feels like an easy win for Hollywood right now. Who doesn’t want to see thinly veiled versions of Sam Altman and Elon Musk trying to fight off the psychotic fruits of their labours? Form an orderly queue, then, for an unceasingly silly and consistently entertaining sequel that delivers more – quite a lot more – of the knowing, campy shocks that made 2023’s original a box-office hit and TikTok sensation.  2.0 picks up a little after M3GAN left off. The murderous robot girl-doll has been vanquished; its creator, repentant toy inventor Gemma (Allison Williams) has emerged from a stretch in prison vowing to bring kids’ tech usage under control, with some help of a non-profit run by eligible altruist Christian (SNL’s Aristotle Athari giving major ketamine). Meanwhile, Gemma’s niece, Cady (Violet McGraw) has learnt some key life lessons from her doll friend’s kill spree. Namely: be more like Steven Seagal. Even her newfound martial arts skills can’t help her, or her aunt, when a power-lusting tech baron (a scene-stealing Jemaine Clement) and the FBI come knocking – the latter looking for help to track down a rogue militarised AI doll called AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) made with Gemma’s designs.  Luckily – or unluckily – M3GAN is still out there in the ether, initially as a Siri-like presence, then in a winningly daft twist, reembodied into a sulky robot companion toy, and finally as a upgraded version of her old self. Bu

It’s the morning jog that seals the deal for me with The Fontenay. With a few hours to kill before my flight home, the sun casting a golden light on the Alster Lake and a night out in Hamburg’s punky St Pauli district to shake off, I force myself into a slow-motion circuit of one of Europe’s most picturesque artificial lakes. When I get back, I’m greeted by the doorman holding a towel and water for me. If I’d had a dog with me, they’d get the same treatment (there’s a water bowl and a little pile of doggy towels next to the lobby doors.)  A hotel that thinks of everything – including your pooch’s soggy fur – The Fontenay’s general ambience is one of soothing professionalism. Anyone eager to lean into Hamburg’s reputation as the contrarian’s European city break of the moment can find hipper, more graffiti-covered spots across town. But for understated luxury, this leafy lakeside nook, shaded by summer limes and Norway maples, is an absolute oasis. Here, nothing is any trouble at all.  Bright and curvy, with its 131 rooms hugging a dramatic central atrium that stretches seven floors up, it might have been constructed as a tribute to some Weimar-era starlet. Each corridor arches gently, like ripples on the Alster, over which many of the rooms have views. The best views belong to the rooftop bar, which curls around the top of that atrium and offers glorious vistas across the water and the grand city centre beyond. In fact, there’s not a single straight corridor here, and nothing,

It’s the morning jog that seals the deal for me with The Fontenay. With a few hours to kill before my flight home, the sun casting a golden light on the Alster Lake and a night out in Hamburg’s punky St Pauli district to shake off, I forced myself into a slow-motion circuit of one of Europe’s most picturesque artificial lakes. When I get back, I’m greeted by the doorman holding a towel and water for me. If I’d had a dog with me, they’d get the same treatment (there’s a water bowl and a little pile of doggy towels next to the lobby doors.)  A hotel that thinks of everything – including your pooch’s soggy fur – The Fontenay’s general ambience is one of soothing professionalism. Anyone eager to lean into Hamburg’s reputation as the contrarian’s European city break of the moment can find hipper, more graffiti-covered spots across town. But for understated luxury, this leafy lakeside nook, shaded by summer limes and Norway maples, is an absolute oasis. Here, nothing is any trouble at all.  Bright and curvy, with its 131 rooms hugging a dramatic central atrium that stretches seven floors up, it might have been constructed as a tribute to some Weimar-era starlet. Each corridor arches gently, like ripples on the Alster, over which many of the rooms have views. The best views belong to the rooftop bar, which curls around the top of that atrium and offers glorious vistas across the water and the grand city centre beyond. In fact, there’s not a single straight corridor here, and nothing

There’s a protocol you can count on to follow a public disaster in this country. It tends to begin with a years’ long and expensive inquiry, and end with little change and none of the responsible parties being held to account. Some, if they’re lucky, may even find themselves elevated to the House of Lords.  That establishment playbook is in operation again in this poignant, winding and righteously angry documentary about the Grenfell tower fire – just as it was in ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office or Disney+’s 7/7 drama Suspect.  Directed with forensic skill and lots of compassion by first-timer Olaide Sadiq, Grenfell: Uncovered holds the survivors of the fire in one hand, honouring their anger and grief in moving interviews, while using the other to slap down the many companies and governmental bodies whose decisions led to the loss of 72 lives on the night of June 14, 2017. The title, of course, has a poignant double meaning. The aluminium cladding applied to the residential tower block for aesthetic reasons – supposedly to satisfy Grenfell’s well-heeled neighbours in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea – turned a small kitchen fire into a building-wide inferno, transforming the Fire Brigade’s ‘stay put’ policy into a death sentence for residents.  This is a poignant, winding and righteously angry documentary Sadiq pieces the night of the fire back together using audio from the emergency services, news footage, and the shakycam videos of locals. The shock and dawning hor

It’s been 23 years since Danny Boyle’s infected horror 28 Days Later changed the game for zombie flicks, and the genre has mutated plenty in the interim. The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, even Game of Thrones have prestige-ified the undead, building emotional human survival dramas around this gnawy-bitey brand of body horror. Which might explain why Boyle and returning 28 Days screenwriter Alex Garland have seen fit to spin their return to Rage virus-ridden UK into a two, possibly three, part saga. Time will tell if it’s a wise call, but from its jaw dropping opening, in which the infected apocalypse plays out over an episode of Teletubbies, this first salvo is a mostly propulsive start.   Things have changed a lot in 28 Years Later’s Britain too. The Channel Tunnel has been sealed off and the UK officially Zomb-xited from Europe. Naval patrols enforce a seaborne quarantine. Bows and arrows have replaced guns and ammo for the grizzled survivors gathered in a Lindisfarne community connected to mainland England by a tidal causeway.  From this folksy, Summerisle-like commune, dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams, a real find) head off on an ultra-violent rite-of-passage to hunt infected on the mainland. Mum, Isla (Jodie Comer), is bedridden with an ailment no one has the expertise to diagnose. Awaiting them are new species of infected, including the formidable Alphas and ‘Slow-Lows’, icky, blubbery zombies who crawl on their bellies.  D

Loosely doing for Days of Thunder what Top Gun: Maverick did for Top Gun, and filling a big Top Gear gap for your dad in the process, F1 is the Jerry Bruckheimiest thing to hit our screens in an age – and it’s a full-throttle triumph. The ’90s are officially back and they’re really, really loud.  With Brad Pitt engaging A-list god mode, a booming Hans Zimmer score, a crateload full of pop and dance bangers, and writer-director Joseph Kosinski hitting the same punch-the-air beats as his superlative 2022 Top Gun reboot, it’s a throwback to simpler days when multi-dimensional characters were a luxury no one could afford, because they’d spent all the money on helicopter shots. But switch off your brain and F1 will overwhelm your senses with spectacle, sonics and just enough human drama to hold it all together.  A sport so in love with its soapy dramatics, its team chiefs were bitching about each other at the premiere of this movie, the gleaming, hermetic world of F1 isn’t a natural fit for Pitt’s languid charisma. Which is ideal, because his impulsive veteran racing driver, Sonny Hayes, isn’t either.  When we meet him, Sonny is an ex-F1 superstar with a troubled past and a transient present as a driver-for-hire at Daytona. His old pal and F1 team owner Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem, bringing his A-game to a B-grade character) has a proposal for him: help his struggling team finish the season in something other than disgraceful fashion, and stave off the vultures on the board in

The title of Kelly Reichardt’s (Certain Women) bone-dry art heist comedy, set in the ‘70s of Vietnam War protests and waterbed sales, is strictly tongue-in-cheek. Not only is he not a mastermind, Josh O’Connor’s unemployed Massachusetts carpenter James Blaine ‘JB’ Mooney would make Fargo’s Jerry Lundegaard look like the last word in criminal competence.  Mooney plans to steal four abstract – and fairly low value – portraits by modernist painter Arthur Dove from his local gallery. We see him scoping out the place, observing the snoozy guards and using his wife (Alana Haim) and sons (Sterling and Jasper Thompson) as cover as he figures out all the angles and nails down a watertight scheme to lift the art. And the actual plan? To grab the paintings, stick them in a bag and leg it. It’s executed with the help of a gormless local contact and a hot-headed last-minute ringer who brings a gun and starts pointing it at screaming kids. To add to the tragicomic vibe, their getaway vehicle gets stuck in traffic on the way out.  Based loosely on a real-life 1973 heist of Massachusetts’s Worcester Art Museum, it’s the kind of material from which the Coens would spin a blackly comic tale of betrayal, murder and cosmic justice. But Reichardt’s interest lies in a more existential kind of unravelling. As the cops circle, more serious criminals start sniffing around, and Mooney’s circuit court judge father (Bill Camp) and exasperated mum (Hope Davis) read about the story in the papers, O’Connor

Prepare the Brokeback Mountain comparisons now, because Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor’s tender romance has all the ingredients of Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning queer love story. Like that Annie Proulx adaptation, it’s based on a short story (by Ben Shattuck, who adapts here) and is set in the woods and hills of rural America (Maine, rather than Wyoming). It’s full of the stifled emotions of two men who fall in love but can’t quite express it.  The only thing missing – and it’s a biggie – is the deep passion that coursed beneath the surface of that Oscar winning western. South African director Oliver Hermanus finds plenty of deep feeling and sincerity here but his beautiful-looking, measured period piece gets stifled by its own languors – especially in a first half that needs a slug or two of moonshine to inject some life into it. As he’s proved twice already, with gorgeous Ikiru remake Living and striking queer bootcamp drama Moffie, Hermanus is guided by a powerful sense of empathy and compassion. Here, he follows the story of Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor), two music students who meet at Boston Conservatory in 1917 and bond over their shared love of folk music. Lionel, a gentle country boy blessed with an ability to see music – synesthesia – is the shy outsider; David is an east coaster with easy confidence and a boyish sense of mischief. They fall into bed, but their love remains unspoken and undefined. Soon, David is in uniform and off to the Great War trenches of France,

One of 2025’s best TV series is about to land on the BBC. The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a beautifully shot and emotionally devastating story of love, war and memory. It boasts a starry cast with Saltburn’s Jacob Elordi, Belfast’s Ciarán Hinds and The Babadook’s Essie Davis, and has an A-list director in Justin Kurzel (True History of the Kelly Gang, The Order) calling the shots.  Adapted by Kurzel’s long-time screenwriter Shaun Grant from Aussie novelist Richard Flanagan’s 2014 Booker Prize winner – based on his own dad’s experiences – it spans three timelines to offer an achingly romantic, if sometimes bleak vision of life and love in, and after, war.  Photograph: Curio PicturesDorrigo Evans (Jacob Elordi) and Ella Evans (Olivia de Jonge) What is The Narrow Road to the Deep North about? The story’s protagonist is Tasmanian Dorrigo Evans, played as a young medical student heading to war by Elordi and as an older surgeon stewing on past regrets by Hinds.The Narrow Road to the Deep North follows Dorrigo en route to combat in World War II, first as he proposes to his girlfriend Ella (Olivia DeJonge), and then secretly falling in love with his uncle’s wife Amy (The Stand’s Odessa Young). He’s later captured by the Japanese and sent to a jungle POW camp to work on the notorious Burma ‘Death Railway’. The final timeline is set in the 1980s and sees the older Dorrigo, now married and a respected surgeon living in Sydney, reflecting on his time during the war and his life af

The 37th entry in the MCU, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is set in a world of its own – in every sense. The movie’s Earth-828 is a planet set in another corner of the multiverse from the rest of the Marvelverse. Here, comic-book legends Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s 1961 creation the Fantastic Four comes back to action-packed life courtesy of WandaVision director Matt Shakman and his ridiculously charismatic cast.Here’s everything you need to know about how – and where – the film’s Mad Men-meets-The-Incredibles version of 1960s New York came together. Marvel StudiosVanessa Kirby What happens in The Fantastic Four: First Steps? A tale of space travel, scientific discovery, intergalactic peril and motherhood, First Steps (re)introduces audiences to Kirby and Lee’s cosmically superpowered First Family: team leader Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal); world leader Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby); stompy rock man Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach); and boyish singleton Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn).  The quartet, zapped by cosmic rays on an earlier space voyage, are all that stands between humanity and Ralph Ineson’s perpetually peckish planet devourer Galactus literally eating the Earth. Presaging this fate is the Surfer Surfer (Julia Garner), Galactus’s herald in a scene in Times Square. Photograph: Marvel StudiosJulia Garner as Shalla-Bal/Silver Surfer Where was The Fantastic Four: First Steps filmed? Legendary industrial designer Syd Mead

First, the good news: you can take your seat for this semi-standalone Marvel blockbuster and enjoy the zippy action and affectionate banter of its charismatic cast without the nagging concern that you haven’t seen 17 or so other films first, or need to go on a Google dive in the multiplex foyer. Your past failure to watch, say, The Marvels or The Incredible Hulk will not be punished via an obscure but pivotal reveal midway through. A full 36 films into the MCU, it’s a weight lifted.First Steps, the third and best go at the Fantastic Four (low bar), is set in what you might call the CDMCU (A Completely Different Marvel Cinematic Universe). We’re in the New York of Earth 828, a ’60s-coded metropolis of flying cars and stylish Mad Men aesthetics. Full marks to director Matt Shakman and his production designer Kasra Farahani for creating a retro-futuristic Big Apple that looks this good on a studio backlot. Here, Earth’s mightiest heroes are space-age pioneers too: the pregnant Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), her scientist hubby Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), her headstrong brother Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), and Reed’s best pal, hulking concrete-faced enforcer Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). There are no other superheroes to clutter up the scene, leaving the four to protect humanity together – when they’re not squabbling amicably in their gleaming HQ.  Having previously demanded near PhD-level knowledge of their interlocking stor

If the summer holidays are stretching off into the distance like one of those sweeping desert shots in Lawrence of Arabia, don’t despair. One UK movie chain is here to help. Cineworld cinemas across the UK and Ireland are offering £1 tickets to a range of family-friend fare in a special summer holiday promotion. It kicks off on July 25 and runs to August 28 (August 24 in Scotland and Belfast). On the programme are A Minecraft Movie, Oscar-winning animation Flow, Moana 2, Mufasa: The Lion King, Paddington in Peru, and other recent family fare. Something for everyone – and two things if you’re into chickens in peril.  The full line-up is: The Wild RobotMufasa: The Lion King Sonic The Hedgehog 3FlowMoana 2Transformers OnePaddington in PeruDisney’s Snow WhiteA Minecraft MovieDog Man Bad news for Dubliners and anyone eager for a West End outing in London: Cineworld Leicester Square and Dublin aren’t participating in the promotion. Head to Cineworld website for all the info on £1 Family Films and to book tickets. The very best movies of 2025 (so far).  The 50 best cinemas in the UK and Ireland.

If you couldn’t get tickets to The Odyssey in IMAX, the Barbican has something to take your mind off the disappointment. The City of London landmark’s Sculpture Court is hosting another season of outdoor cinema in August – and this unique setting will be witnessing a unique array of movies and filmmakers. On the slate are films by auteurs like David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Claire Denis, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Gina Prince-Bythewood and Koji Hashimoto. The season opens on Wednesday August 20 with David Lynch’s Dune and runs for 11 days, closing on Sunday August 31 with cult musical Little Shop of Horrors.  Look out for a rare screening of Caribbean dancehall drama Babymother, a film considered to be the  first Black British musical, and Prince-Bythewood’s influential 2000 romance Love & Basketball. Here’s the line-up in full: - Dune (1984)Wed 20 Aug, 8.45pm - Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)Thu 21 Aug, 8.30pm - Love & Basketball (2000)Fri 22 Aug, 8.30pm - The Return of Godzilla (1984) Sat 23 Aug, 8.30pm - Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)Sun 24 Aug, 8.30pm - Babymother (1998)Tue 26 Aug, 8.30pm - Grave of the Fireflies (1988)Wed 27 Aug, 8.30pm - Fire of Love (2022)Thu 28 Aug, 8.30pm - Beau Travail (1998)Fri 29 Aug, 8.30pm - Björk’s Cornucopia (2025)Sat 30 Aug, 8.30pm - Little Shop of Horrors (1986)Sun 31 Aug, 8.30pm Tickets are on sale now from the Barbican site, with standard seats priced £18 or £14.40 for Barbican members.There’s a whole host of outdoor cinemas in (a

It’s always Emmy season at Time Out, where thrusting bouquets at our favourite all-time TV and streaming shows is a year-round preoccupation.  And a new addition to our critic-picked list of the 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time has just landed. Netflix’s sci-fi thriller Squid Game has wrapped up after three fierce, addictive and satirical seasons of dystopian death and mayhem. We love it, and judging by worldwide viewing figures that make it the streamer’s most watched show, so does everyone else. Born from his aborted idea for a movie, Korean writer Hwang Dong-hyuk’s 22-episode three-season series follows down-on-his-luck chauffeur and gambling addict Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) through a battle of survival in a Grand Guignol game show run by the mysterious Front Man.  ‘Absurd, upsetting and blackly comic, it’s an excoriating indictment of human greed,’ reads the new entry on Time Out’s 100 Greatest TV Shows list. ‘It’s shot through with compelling human drama as Gi-hun clings desperately to his humanity as all around him abandon theirs.’ Photograph: Squid Game No Ju-han/Netflix © 2025Won Ji-an as Se-mi in ‘Squid Game’ season 3 Squid Game lands at number 48 on the 100-strong list.  Here’s Time Out’s top 10 in full:  1. Breaking Bad (2008-2013)2. Twin Peaks (1990–1991)3. The Sopranos (1999-2007)4. The Wire (2002–2008)5. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)7. Game of Thrones (2011-2019)8. The Office (UK) (2001-03)9. Mad Men (2007–2015)10. Succe

One of those decades-spanning love stories that puts you through the emotional wringer, Mix Tape is a perfect binge for anyone who still wistfully remembers One Day (Netflix series, book or movie).  And in a twist of fate, the BBC/Binge four-parter also stars Jim Sturgess, the lead in the 2011 One Day movie, as another lovelorn character who holds a torch for an old flame from his teenage years into his middle years. Sturgess plays Daniel and The Fall Guy’s Teresa Palmer is his long-time crush Alison in a music-soaked romantic drama that follows the pair from their partying youths (where they’re played by Bridgerton’s Florence Hunt and newcomer Rory Walton-Smith) to wobbly married lives with other people on different continents.   As its title implies, the bond of music – especially alternative anthems of the ’80s and ’90s – offers a motif for the pair’s enduring connection throughout the series. And what a soundtrack it is, reflecting the music scenes of its two cities – Sheffield and Sydney – in fairly iconic style.  In common with the novel on which its based, the show packs in a crate load of tunes: from Aussie bands like 1927 and The Church, to British post-punk legends like The Psychedelic Furs and The Cure, and Sheffield hometown heroes Arctic Monkeys and Richard Hawley. Listen out for the great Nick Drake too. Here’s the soundtrack in full: EPISODE 1Fool’s Gold – The Stone RosesHome is the Range – The Comsat AngelsBizarre Love Triangle – New OrderFluorescent Adolescen

Star Wars, Joc de Trons i Indiana Jones són algunes de les grans produccions audiovisuals que s’han gravat a diversos racons d’Espanya, i ara una altra s’ha sumat a la llista. L’equip del nou film dels Quatre Fantàstics es va desplaçar fins a Oviedo per gravar en un espectacular edifici de la ciutat asturiana. La producció es va desplaçar fins al nord de l’Estat per a un rodatge de quatre dies al Palacio de Exposiciones y Congresos, un edifici singular i impressionant dissenyat per l’arquitecte Santiago Calatrava.  Foto: Shutterstock Malgrat que la pel·lícula està ambientada en una Nova York retrofuturista dels anys 1960 i s’ha rodat principalment al Regne Unit, l’interior de la meravella arquitectònica de Calatrava es va convertir en l’escenari perfecte per al vestíbul i la sala d’assemblees de la Future Foundation dins de l’edifici Baxter 12 de l’univers dels Quatre Fantàstics.  Si hi entreu, el disseny futurista del Palau, especialment la seva Sala Principal, us farà sentir com si haguéssiu fet un viatge uns segles cap endavant. L’espai destaca pel color blanc, un element comú en les obres de Calatrava, i fusiona el disseny modern i una estètica neta que encaixava a la perfecció amb l’aspecte dels decorats de l’edifici Baxter de la pel·lícula. Foto: Turismo Oviedo “Hi ha alguna cosa en l’esperit d’aquest edifici”, assegura el dissenyador de producció Kasra Farahani en una entrevista amb Phil De Semlyen, editor global de cinema de Time Out.  “Tot i ser molt més recent q

Star Wars, Juego de Tronos e Indiana Jones son algunas de las grandes producciones audiovisuales que se han rodado en varios rincones de España, y ahora otra se ha sumado a la lista. El equipo de la nueva película de Los Cuatro Fantásticos se desplazó hasta Oviedo para rodar en un espectacular edificio de la ciudad asturiana. La producción viajó al norte del país para un rodaje de cuatro días en el Palacio de Exposiciones y Congresos, un edificio singular e impresionante diseñado por el arquitecto Santiago Calatrava. Foto: Shutterstock Aunque la película está ambientada en un Nueva York retrofuturista de los años 1960 y se ha rodado principalmente en el Reino Unido, el interior de la maravilla arquitectónica de Calatrava se convirtió en el escenario perfecto para el vestíbulo y la sala de asambleas de la Future Foundation, dentro del edificio Baxter 12 del universo de Los Cuatro Fantásticos. Si entras, el diseño futurista del Palacio, especialmente su Sala Principal, te hará sentir como si hubieras viajado unos siglos hacia adelante. El espacio destaca por el color blanco, un elemento común en las obras de Calatrava, y fusiona el diseño moderno con una estética limpia que encajaba a la perfección con el aspecto de los decorados del edificio Baxter de la película. Foto: Turismo Oviedo «Hay algo en el espíritu de este edificio», asegura el diseñador de producción Kasra Farahani en una entrevista con Phil De Semlyen, editor global de cine de Time Out. «Aunque es mucho más re

A nova série da Netflix de Lena Dunham é uma comédia romântica sarcástica e acutilante sobre Jess (Megan Stalter), uma nova-iorquina sonhadora que se muda para Londres à procura do amor – fantasiando ao estilo Merchant Ivory com casas senhoriais e cavalheiros em trajes georgianos. Em vez disso, vê-se a atravessar bairros sociais em Hackney, festas regadas a cocaína no oeste londrino, e o universo hipster dos media, ao lado de Felix (Will Sharpe), um músico indie descontraído e complexo ao mesmo tempo. Afinal, o verdadeiro amor é um caminho pontuado por eco-militantes de berço privilegiado e ex-namorados franceses snobes. Tal como a sua protagonista, É Pegar ou Largar! é uma série profundamente apaixonada pelo género, cheia de referências que vão de Pretty Woman – Um Sonho de Mulher (1990) a Richard Curtis, o realizador de comédias românticas como O Amor Acontece (2003) ou O Diário de Bridget Jones (2001). Até a porta de Notting Hill (1999) faz uma breve aparição! Mas quais são as comédias românticas que fazem tremer a própria argumentista e realizadora de É Pegar ou Largar!? Pedimos a Lena Dunham que escolhesse as suas três favoritas: 3. Bye Bye Birdie – Como é bom Amar (1963) Photograph: Columbia Pictures‘Bye Bye Birdie’ "Pode não parecer uma comédia romântica, mas é – uma comédia romântica musical. Vi-a vezes sem conta: foi das primeiras vezes em que torci genuinamente por uma história de amor. Alguém dirá, certamente, que não conta como romcom, mas desafio quem quer que

James Gunn’s Superman is proving to be a smash-hit reinvention for DC’s most upstanding superhero.And the blockbuster has also reinvented one of America’s most underrated cities, Cleveland, in the process.  The Ohio city doubles up as DC’s other city, Metropolis, with the old Leader Building standing in for The Daily Planet offices and Progressive Field, home of the aptly-named Cleveland Guardians baseball team, starring in a big fight sequence.  It’s the perfect setting: Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first came up with the idea for their comic-book character in the city. And one of the city’s most historic spots provides the backdrop to an iconic big-screen snog too. Remember the scene where Superman (David Corenswent) takes to the air with Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane? That romantic moment was filmed inside The Arcade Cleveland. Photograph: Dan Ham/Hyatt Regency Cleveland America’s first-ever indoor shopping centre, the elegant mall was based on Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II when it first opened in 1890. Thanks to Superman, it’s now part of superhero movie lore.Fans wanting to visit the real-life Metropolis can even stay inside the arcade. The Hyatt Regency Cleveland is situated inside the building and offers standard rooms for around $237 and suites for $332. Book a room with an arcade view and drift off dreaming of the Man of Steel. And right next door is the 1913 Beaux-Arts-style Leader Building, which doubles as The Daily Planet’s HQ in th

The semi-autobiographical story of Lena Dunham and her husband Luis Felber, a British-Peruvian musician, new Netflix series Too Much is a fictionalised version of their relationship in London. How fictionalised, only they will know, but hopefully quite a lot. No one should take that much ketamine at a city zoo. It’s also a proper joy: a story of millennial love, work, sex and life in two big cities peppered with the kind of cultural authenticity that only lived experience can provide, and enough fantasy and big laughs to make it work as pure escapism too. And that’s not to mention the killer soundtrack and a stuffed-to-the-gills supporting cast that boasts Stephen Fry, Andrew Scott (hot priest turns sleazy filmmaker here), Richard E Grant, David Jonsson, Naomi Watts, Emily Ratajkowski, Rita Wilson, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Dunham herself. © "Too Much", Lena Dunham, Netflix What happens in Too Much? The show’s ten episodes follow American creative Jessica (Megan Stalter), fresh from a break-up, as she heads from New York to London in pursuit of a romanticised version of the city that only exists in the movies of Richard Curtis and the books of Jane Austen. Instead of a grand Regency estate, she finds herself in the bricky Hackney kind. Instead of a clean slate, she discovers that the emotions she’s fled from have come along for the ride. And she has no clue what a ‘tosser’ is.  Enter Will Sharpe’s striving musician Felix, a man with a few skeletons of his own, and a wild and