Phil de Semlyen

Horror films aren’t just for Halloween, but they certainly make spooky season that bit more terrifyingly fun. Whether you’re a hide-behind-the-cushion kind of watcher or someone who revels in every jumpscare and nightmare-inducing villain, joining a Halloween film screening with fellow horror enthusiasts is guaranteed way to get your heart racing and your blood curdling this All Hallow’s Eve. If you’re firmly against any blood, guts and gore, you can still get involved – not all Halloween screenings are focused on bone-chilling bumps in the night. There are also plenty of more lighthearted picks to choose from, like the camp-but-festive Hocus Pocus or The Rocky Horror Picture Show, that will get you in the mood without scaring you to within an inch of your life. Recommended:🎃 Our guide to Halloween in London😱 The 100 best horror movies of all time👹 The 66 greatest movie monsters of all time

June 2025 update: In this update, we've added one of the best blockbusters of the last decade, Top Gun: Maverick, the movie that finally brought audiences back to theaters post-pandemic and which firmly outclasses the 1986 original with some of the most thrilling flight sequences ever put on film.  Everyone loves a good action movie. Sure, film school snobs may turn up their noses, but even hardcore cineastes cannot live on indie dramas and experimental art flicks alone. No matter how cultured you are, there’s a part of your lizard brain that loves explosions and shootouts and badass one-liners – and it needs to be satisfied. And the only thing that will scratch the itch is watching something get blowed up real good.  The truth is, action is a deeply misunderstood genre. Action flicks needn’t be dumb or epic or even particularly loud to succeed. Some find beauty in violence. Others might dropkick you right in the heart. Heck, some even have character development. So light that fuse, clip that wire and batten down the hatches – these are the most pulse-pounding, heart-racing, edge of your seat action movies of all-time.  Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time💥 The 18 greatest stunts in cinema (as picked by the greatest stunt people)🥋 The 25 best martial arts movies of all-time🌊 The 33 best disaster movies of all-time

October 2025 update: With the 2025 Emmy Awards winners crowning Adolescence and The Pitt as must-watch series, we’ve updated our list of the best new TV Shows and streaming series of 2025 so far.We’ve all heard the phrase ‘TV’s golden age’ enough times over the past couple of decades to get wary of the hyperbole, but this year does seem to be shaping up to be a kind of mini golden age for the TV follow-up. Severance, Andor, Wednesday and Poker Face have all built on incredibly satisfying first seasons with equally masterful second runs. The third season of The White Lotus has proved that, whether you love it or find it a touch too languorous, there’s no escaping Mike White’s transgressive privilege-in-paradise satire. Likewise for season 7 of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian-flavoured sci-fi Black Mirror. Watercooler viewing is everywhere at the moment, and that’s not going to change anytime soon, with Stranger Things coming to an end and about a zillion other things still come. Here’s everything you need to see... so far.  Best TV and streaming shows at a glance: 📍 The Pitt (Emmy Best Drama winner) – watch on HBO Max in the US📍 Adolescence (Best Limited Series winner) – watch on Netflix worldwide📍 Severance season 2 (multiple acting wins) – watch on Apple TV+ worldwide📍 The Studio (Best Comedy winner) – watch on Apple TV+ worldwide📍 Andor season 2 (Emmy-winning writing) – watch on Disney+ worldwide 

September 2025 update: This month’s additions include Splitsville, a winning indie screwball about two couples stumbling into open marriages, and The Lost Bus, Paul Greengrass's thrilling wildfires epic, starring an on-form Matthew McConaughey. At this point in 2025, it’s possible to look at the year in movies and draw a few conclusions. Superhero movies aren’t ‘out’ but they’re no longer guaranteed juggernauts. Kiddie flicks do big business. Gen Z is starting to generate its own IP. Audiences love horror. China doesn’t need the rest of the world to blow up the international box office. And, lo and behold, there is still a place at the multiplex for original stories. Overall, after much hangwringing post-pandemic, the film industry looks to be in decent health. Of course, many of those takeaways could still get blown up – after all, there are still four months left on the calendar, and awards season is just getting underway. But if you look at the year so far, one thing that can be said for sure is there are plenty of reasons to feel hopeful about cinema as an artform, whether it’s the blockbuster success of genre-smashing auteur vehicles like Sinners and Weapons, daring formal experiments such as Nickel Boys, Flow and Better Man and heartening returns to form for masters like Steven Soderbergh and Danny Boyle. While there’s much more to come, there’s much to celebrate already. Here are the movies we’ve loved the most so far.   2025’s best movies at a glance: 😂 Best comed

October 2025: Autumn is arguably the very best time of year for exploring London’s museums. After a quiet summer, the capital’s biggest cultural institutions burst into life again when the leaves start turning brown, with a plethora of major exhibitions on. In October, you can catch recent openings including ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ at the V&A, ‘Blitz!’ at the Design Museum and the V&A East Storehouse’s David Bowie Centre, plus some great new arrivals including ‘Wildlife Photographer of the Year’ at the Natural History Museum, ‘Emergency Exits’ at the Imperial War Museum and ‘Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World’ at the Portrait Gallery. Phew! Museums are one of the things that London does best. This city boasts grand institutions housing ancient treasures, modern monoliths packed with intriguing exhibits, and tiny rooms containing deeply niche collections – and lots of them are totally free to anyone who wants to come in and take a gander. And with more than 170 London museums to choose from, there's bound to be one to pique your interest, whatever you're in to.  Want to explore the history of TfL? We’ve got a museum for that. Rather learn about advertising? We’ve got a museum for that too. History? Check. Science? Check. 1940s cinema memorabilia, grotesque eighteenth-century surgical instruments, or perhaps a wall of 4,000 mouse skeletons? Check, check and check! Being the cultured metropolitans that we are, Time Out’s editors love nothing more than a wholesome afternoon spent

Movie monsters are a many-splendoured thing, with a strong emphasis on ‘thing’. Some may take the form of giant irradiated lizards or skyscraper-sized apes, others amphibious swamp creatures or slow-creeping mounds of gelatin. Some represent the biggest fears of society at large, others are manifestations of their creator’s personal hang-ups. Others, meanwhile, are more instinctual, killing either for food or just for the sheer fun of it. If you’ve read this far, you may be experiencing some déjà vu. Didn’t we already write a list of the best monster movies of all-time? Indeed we did! But not all of cinema’s greatest monsters inhabit great movies. Sure, there’s a good deal of crossover. But as with actual human actors, some of the most memorable creatures in film history can be found slumming it in subpar productions – and they deserve to have their moment in the spotlight. A few caveats: this list largely follows the same parameters as our monster movies list, meaning that it steers away from animals – sorry, Bruce the Shark and the spiders from Arachnophobia – as well as slasher villains such as Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers. But zombies? Trolls? Brundlefly? You’ll find them all below. Recommended: 👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made💀 The 100 best horror movies of all-time🧟 The best zombie movies of all-time👹 Cinema’s creepiest anthology horror movies🩸 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories

Horror knows no calendar. Sure, for casual fright fans, October might be considered Spooky Season. But for the genre’s true aficionados, any month, any day – shoot, any hour – is a good time for a scary movie. Be forewarned, though: series like Stranger Things and Midnight Mass notwithstanding, Netflix hasn’t churned out too many of its own upstanding horror flicks, but the platform does have a surprisingly decent amount of terrifying classics, new-school scares and hidden gems that’ll raise both eyebrows and goosebumps. Here are the best horror movies currently streaming on Netflix right now. Recommended: 🎃 The best Halloween movies and TV shows on Netflix UK😱 The 100 best horror movies of all-time🔪 The 31 best serial killer movies👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made🧟 The best zombie movies of all-time

A month that kicks off with Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear thriller A House of Dynamite, Harris Dickinson’s directorial debut Urchin and The Rock bringing the hurt to the Oscar conversation with The Smashing Machine, turns into a Letterboxd devotee’s fever dream. Kelly Reichardt, Luca Guadagnino, Guillermo del Toro and Yorgos Lanthimos all drop new films, plus there’s Jeremy Allen White playing The Boss in Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere. Oh, and the small matter of the London Film Festival (Oct 8-19) bringing new movies to all four corners of the country. Our advice? Clear your calendar.  RECOMMENDED:📽️ The best films of 2025 (so far)📺 The best TV shows of 2025 you need to stream🏵️ The 100 greatest movies of all time

When people think of 1990s movies, the first images that come to mind are usually John Travolta and Uma Thurman twisting the night away, or Keanu Reeves contorting his body to dodge a slew of slow-moving bullets. But please, save a little mental space for Michael Douglas’s ass. It was the golden age of the erotic thriller, when it seemed like you couldn’t go to the multiplex without having the option of watching a woman have sex with a man – usually Douglas, sometimes Tom Berenger or a random Baldwin – and then try to ruin and/or end their life.  Yes, erotic thrillers were often ‘problematic’ and almost always self-consciously campy, but damn, they could be fun – and fun, sexy movies are precisely what’s missing from cinemas today. But there are signs of a comeback, hot-and-bothered movies like Challengers, Love Lies Bleeding and the meme-launching Babygirl were among the most buzzed-about films of 2024. Even if a revival never comes to fruition, the 1980s and ’90s alone provide us with a rich back catalogue of steamy violence to revisit. Here are 40 of cinema’s best erotic thrillers to get your blood pumping. Recommended: 🍆 The 101 best sex scenes in movies😬 The 100 best thriller movies of all-time😍 The 100 best romantic films of all-time 🕵️ 40 murder mystery movies to test your sleuthing skills to the max🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

Let's be real, you'll probably spend most of those lazy days between Christmas and New Year watching Yuletide classics, eating chocs, and forgetting how your legs work. But there's a lot to be said for starting your Crimbo movie viewing long before the pressies get doled out. In November and December, venues across the city start putting on special xmas screenings of festive favourites, and they're the perfect excuse to get into the spirit of the season, whether you're a grumpy Grinch or a troublingly perky Elf.  These Christmas specials are full of added incentives to peel you off your sofa, too, including special snacks, live orchestras and sing-a-longs. So it's high time you put a cinema trip on your festive to-do list. Here are the best Christmas movie events the capital has to offer in 2025. RECOMMENDED:🎄 Read our full guide to Christmas in London.🍿 The 50 greatest Christmas movies.

September update: a quietish month for the genre ahead of October’s gnarly line-up does have one headline horror in The Conjuring: Last Rites, which wraps up an $800 million franchise is solidly spooky fashion. Unlike many of its monsters, vampires and virus-y Alphas, the horror genre is alive and well. It is, you might even say, well-endowed. Because anyone who loves that shivery sensation of being spooked witless in a cinema is being a lot better served than anyone searching for big laughs. The biggest stories in horror this year – Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Zach Cregger’s Weapons – have packed in audiences and birthed a million memes along the way, but don’t sleep on the following flicks either. Best horrors of 2025 at a glance: 📍 28 Years Later – Netflix (US); also on Prime Video/Apple TV+📍 Nosferatu - US: streaming on Prime Video; US & UK: rent/buy on PVOD📍 Sinners – US: streaming on Max; UK: rent/buy on PVOD📍 Weapons – Rent/buy now on Prime Video/Apple TV (PVOD); still in some cinemas📍 Final Destination: Bloodlines – Max (US); US & UK: rent/buy on PVOD

Love is a funny thing. Anyone who’s ever fallen under its spell – whether reciprocal, unrequited or the classic ‘it’s complicated’ – knows the strange ways it can make you feel, and the bizarre thing it’ll make you do. No wonder, then, that romantic comedy persists as one of the most broadly appealing genres in all of film. Although frequently derided and dismissed as ‘chick flicks’, the best romcoms tap into emotional truths everyone can relate to.  But love also takes many forms. And so it goes in romcoms. Some are ridiculous farces, others  are more sophisticated, while others take a colder, cynical viewpoint – because if you’ve ever been in love, chances are you’ve also had your heart shattered. Love contains multitudes, and so do romantic comedies, and we considered it all when putting together this list of the best romcoms of all time. Written by Dave Calhoun, Cath Clarke, Tom Huddleston, Kate Lloyd, Andy Kryza, Phil de Semlyen, Alim Kheraj & Matthew Singer Recommended: 😍 The 100 best romantic films of all-time🤣 The 100 best comedy movies😳 The 101 best sex scenes of all time🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

The odd Twisters apart, Hollywood isn’t exactly filling our cinemas with cataclysmic visions of natural and man-made disasters these days – presumably because the TV news has got that covered. So Paul Greengrass’ (Captain Phillips, The Bourne Ultimatum) tale of humble heroism in the face of the apocalyptic 2018 Californian wildfires has a satisfyingly old-fashioned feel to go with its rousing storytelling. A callback to the days of ’70s ‘master of disaster’ Irwin Allen, it’s full of people putting themselves in harm’s way with minimum fuss, cool-headed professionals circling things on maps, and a visceral sense of rising panic. With the British action maestro behind the camera, there’s a dispassionate, procedural quality that eschews all the flag-waving that can blight the genre. The flags here are mostly on fire.  At its heart are two monumental forces: a hellish inferno that burns like the fires of Mordor across vast West Coast valleys towards the in-aptly named town of Paradise, and a sweaty Matthew McConaughey. The Interstellar man plays school-bus driver Kevin McKay, a luckless divorced dad failing to fix his painful relationship with his son, deal with his ex or figure out how to look after his ailing mum. There’s an almost sadistic level of overkill when Greengrass and Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby’s screenplay demands that he takes his dying dog to be put down, too. Then a rogue power line, bone-dry drought conditions and high winds conspire to set the area a

Comedy is often described as ‘tragedy plus time’. But what if the formula works in reverse, too? That’s one conclusion you can draw from this vain attempt to recapture the helium high of This Is Spinal Tap, one the funniest and cleverest comedy movies ever made. Forty years on, the laughs are in tragically short supply as Nigel Tufnell, Derek Smalls and Dave St Hubbins reunite for one last gig in another mockumentary that’s taken director Marty Di Bergi (okay, Rob Reiner) four decades to make and still feels half-baked.  There are jokes – well, joke-adjacent remarks – about death, drummers and lots of chat about cheese. We find Tufnell (Christopher Guest) in rock retirement, estranged from his band mates and running a small cheese and guitar shop in Berwick-on-Tweed. Bassist Smalls (Harry Shearer), meanwhile, has a glue museum in south London and writes terrible rock operas with names like ‘Hell Toupee’. Lead singer St Hubbins (Michael McKean) is lending his talents to Californian mariachi outfits and writing hold music for customer service phone lines (‘This one won a Holdie,’ he points out proudly). So far, s’okay. The band’s cricket-bat-wielding manager Ian Faith is no more (actor Tony Hendra died in 2021), leaving the band’s contract with his enthusiastic daughter (Kerry Godliman). She sets to work reuniting the bickering old rockers for a reunion gig in New Orleans, with Chris Addison’s slimy svengali figure standing by to take advantage. From there, the bum notes come t

Cheesier than a wheel of Stilton and about as edgy, Downton Abbey bows out with a cosy but loveable final instalment that will leave few dry eyes among long-time fans of Julian Fellowes’ British TV thoroughbred.  It’s a third big-screen instalment that’s one long ending: to the characters, to the house, to the certainties of Edwardian England. No movie has had this many goodbyes since The Return of the King.  It’s mostly soirées and teas and trips to the theatre, though there is a vague gesture at a plot. A handsome American (Alessandro Nivola) with Wall Street airs arrives in Blighty to stir things up; a prospective visit from Noël Coward gets everyone in a flap; and a prize or two needs giving out at the county fair – a task newcomer Simon Russell Beale’s harrumphing country type isn’t making any easier. The headline news is that Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is now divorced from her feckless husband, which gets her rudely booted out of polite society. Things have changed in 1930s England, but they’re still basically nightmarish if you don’t have a moustache.  Money is in short supply at the grand old pile, too, thanks to dopey Uncle Harold’s (Paul Giamatti) bad investments and the post-Depression squeeze, and there’s no Violet Crawley to provide snarky reassurances (the formidable old dame gazes down from a portrait, like Vigo the Carpathian). Maggie Smith’s presence always brought a sharp note to Fellowes’ melodious rhythms and it’s missing here. No movie has had this many

Spare a thought for whoever has to give this wildly obscenity-strewn biopic a rating. Not since Ken Loach’s cheery whisky heist caper The Angel’s Share got hit with a 15 certificate for dropping one too many ‘aggressive “c*nts”’ has there been such a disparity between intent and delivery in a screenplay. Here, writer-director Kirk Jones presides over a Tourette’s Syndrome (TS) story with a potty mouth but not a mean-spirited bone in its body. It’s a ‘PG’ yarn with an ‘18’ gob.Unlike, say, Rain Man, which sidelined and misrepresented the neurodiversity at its centre, the ’90s-set I Swear ushers you right into the tormented headspace of young Scotsman John Davidson as he copes with a neurological condition that leaves him with uncontrollable tics and sees him ostracised from an uncomprehending society, and even his own family. Played as a bubbly 13-year-old in ’90s Galashiels by newcomer Scott Ellis Watson and a more circumspect twentysomething by The Rings of Power’s Robert Aramayo – both delivering terrific, likeable performances – I Swear charts the onset of Davidson’s condition to an adulthood in a kind of self-imposed isolation. But it opens with him collecting an MBE from the Queen for his pioneering educational work on TS, an upbeat framing device to hold onto as the story flashes back to a life with some heartbreaking lows. It’s a ‘PG’ yarn with an ‘18’ gob Whether getting expelled from school for dropping a c-bomb on his headmaster, being shunned by his family, having

In his genius 1985 documentary Sherman’s March, director Ross McElwee follows in the footsteps of a Civil War general’s infamous advance through the Confederacy. Haunted by a recent break-up, the doleful young filmmaker ends up far more preoccupied with finding a girlfriend. The film’s Ken Burns-meets-The Inbetweeners awkwardness and charm gave him a Sundance hit and made it a cult classic (if not especially helpful in understanding the Civil War). Forty years on, the stunning Remake lays bare McElwee’s own battles, the least of which is a mooted Hollywood remake of his breakthrough doc. A tear-stained, deeply personal and utterly singular documentary, it tells the story of the young son he lost to a Fentanyl overdose, captured via home video footage taken across three decades. ‘It’s been seven years since you died,’ he says in the voiceover, ‘and I still miss you every day’. Throat meet lump.  After Sherman’s March McElwee did find his person – wife Marilyn. They have two kids: bubbly, bright-witted son Adrian and a sunbeam of a daughter in Mariah, who the couple adopts in Paraguay. Those experiences become McElwee’s 2008 documentary In Paraguay. But every experience they share gets captured. He rarely stops filming.  Inevitably, this becomes grating for Marilyn and Mariah, who start to feel like characters in a movie he never calls ‘cut’ on. There’s divorce and then a lonely relocation. Adrian, though, has caught the bug. He grows up wanting to follow in his dad’s footsteps

In February 1977, a disgruntled Indianapolis man walked into a city centre tower for a meeting with a mysterious box under his arm. He then took a mortgage company executive who he felt had cheated him out of a real estate investment hostage, jerryrigging a shotgun to his head with wire and demanding an apology and millions of dollars in compensation. One false move from the cops and the man was toast.   This absolutely terrible plan and all the absurdities that ensued over 63 hours and under the full flare of first local, then national news coverage, are captured with terrific gusto in Gus Van Sant’s tragicomic thriller. It’s another perceptive state-of-the-nation movie from the veteran indie auteur to add to To Die For (1995), Elephant (2003) and Milk (2008), sharing their preoccupation with guns as a manifestation of American ambition and dysfunction. Beyond the guilty laughs, authentically beige ’70s period detail and news reportage aesthetic, there’s an offbeat anti-capitalist folk tale here that will strike a chord in the current moment.   It’s scary clown Bill Skarsgård doesn’t leave all the clownishness behind as the jittery, volatile Tony Kiritsis. He’s an aspiring entrepreneur whose efforts to develop a shopping mall were left in ruins when loans company boss ML Hall (Al Pacino) called in his investment. But the plan almost falls at the first hurdle because Hall, he learns, is in Florida. Without missing a beat, he takes his son Richard (Dacre Montgomery) hostage in

The 1960s had Dr Strangelove and Fail Safe, the ’70s had Twilight’s Last Gleaming, the ’80s had WarGames, and the ’90s had Crimson Tide. If you’ve recovered from those Cold War classics, Kathryn Bigelow’s unbelievably stressful nuclear disaster movie is sending you straight back to the basement.  The screenplay by TV news veteran Noah Oppenheim, who also co-wrote Netflix’s White House cyberattack thriller Zero Day and must surely have a bunker in his garden by this point, gives three overlapping perspectives on an unfolding nightmare. Each start at the exact same point: a regular morning in the White House Situation Room and US Strategic Command is disrupted by a spec on the radar. A single nuke has been launched over the Pacific. Is it another North Korean test? A rogue submarine commander? Nothing to worry about or the first shot of armageddon? A faint worry becomes palpable fear for Admiral Mark Miller (Jason Clarke), Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) and the team in the Situation Room when the nuke goes ‘suborbital’, its trajectory putting it on course to hit the Midwest in 17 minutes time. At Alaska’s missile defence base, Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) goes from wrestling with homesickness to trying to prevent ten million fatalities in a trice. But, as someone points out, America’s $60 billion defence missiles are like trying to ‘hit a bullet with a bullet’.  Over the world’s most high-powered Zoom call, the President (Idris Elba) and his advisors wrestle

One of Hollywood’s biggest stars in a true-life sports movie with big-time awards hopes. It’s going to be a Rocky-like story of comeback glory wrenched from the jaws of defeat, right? Except that’s not at all what Dwayne Johnson and director Benny Safdie have got cooking with this tender but tumultuous addiction and relationship drama set in the gladiatorial world of mixed martial arts (MMA). Because beyond the regular crunch of fist on bone, The Smashing Machine is an unexpectedly gentle, soulful character study that has Johnson undercutting his crowd-pleasing ‘The Rock’ persona with vulnerability and boyish uncertainty. The early Oscar buzz is certainly warranted: opposite an equally affecting, glammed-up Emily Blunt, it’s far more than just a popcorn-guy-goes-prestige novelty turn. This is his The Wrestler moment. Covering his shaved dome with a crop of black hair and with subtle facial prosthetics lending him an off-kilter look, an extra beefed-up Johnson plays real-life fighter Mark Kerr over three physically and emotionally bruising years in the late ’90s. We meet striding into the ring, basically a wardrobe on legs, and crushing opponents in short order. A journalist asks him what it would feel like to lose and he’s genuinely stumped. He can’t conceive of defeat partly because he doesn’t want to, a bubble of control he expects girlfriend Dawn Staples (Blunt) to help him maintain.   Except that the world of MMA is evolving at speed, with new rules that limit Kerr’s fire

There’s surely a more incisive, enlightening version of Olivier Assayas’ (Personal Shopper) enjoyable but strictly meat-and-two-veg recap of modern Russian political history waiting to be made. The performances are solid, with an excellent Jude Law all inscrutable psychopathy as a younger Vladimir Putin and Alicia Vikander the perfect embodiment of an amoral post-Soviet arrivista, and the chilly world-building works well enough, but there’s a missing ingredient – actual Russians.   It’s unsurprising that a French director and screenwriter adapting a book by a Swiss-Italian author with a cast of Americans, Brits and Swedes, filming in Latvia, struggles to burrow deep into the psyche of one of the world’s most secretive political cultures. The Wizard of the Kremlin never shakes the sense of being a best-guess at the cold realities of modern Russia. And there’s an ersatz quality to Assayas’s drama that’s not aided by a hackneyed framing device that has Jeffrey Wright’s US journalist summoned to a snowy dacha for a history lesson from mystery ex-Kremlin fixer Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano). He’s based on Vladislav Surkov, the so-called ‘new Rasputin’ who ruthlessly expedited the dictator’s rise to power during the helter-skelter, oligarchic post-Yeltsin days of the 1990s. You’ll feel for the American Fiction star as he’s left nodding solemnly while Dano blasts through reams of exposition. Baranov tees up flashbacks to rowdy student parties, his early career in Moscow’s avant-garde the

Jim Jarmusch, that beat poet of mellow angst, is back on familiar turf with this triptych of stories about grown-up children and the parents they don’t really want to visit. After 2019’s limp zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die, devotees will be happy to hear that the Ohioan’s stocks-in-trade – wry insights into the human condition, laconic vibes, a growly Tom Waits – come augmented with deeper heart here. It’s divided into three roughly equal length chapters: ‘Father’, ‘Mother’, ‘Sister Brother’. In the first, Adam Driver’s divorcee Jeff and his equally buttoned-up sister Emily (Mayim Bialik) take his Range Rover in the New Jersey sticks for a long-overdue visit to see their dad (Waits). Amusingly, their stiff in-car conversation is crosscut with the old man not tidying his lakeside home in anticipation of their visit, but messing it up. He ramps up the dodderiness when the pair arrive, a sly manipulation, it turns out, designed to keep his fretful son’s cash handouts coming.  The theme of gentle deception also informs a second chapter with a faint Mike Leigh quality in which two wildly contrasting sisters, Cate Blanchett’s nervy Timothea and Vicky Krieps’s half-tamed wildchild Lilith, head to their mother’s (Charlotte Rampling) immaculate Dublin home for tea. A lot of effort has been made, cakes bought and flowers arranged, but there’s something stopping any of them enjoying the get-together. The distance between the trio is the width of a tablecloth, and an ocean. Lilith lies

A shot of Earth from space seems an unexpected opening perspective for a film that zeroes in on a few square miles of the scrubby, starkly beautiful Tucumán Province in northern Argentina to tell a story of murder and courtroom drama. But Argentinian auteur Lucrecia Martel’s (Zama) finds striking universality in her first documentary, a compelling true-crime tale of indigenous dispossession and cultural erasure that could be set in a hundred different countries. Multiples more gripping than its bland English title might suggest, Landmarks is a story 15 or so years in the telling. The case at its heart (summarised in this 2009 Amnesty report) involves the alleged murder of indigenous leader Javier Chocobar by three men, two of whom were armed ex-police officers. The trio, we learn in lively court proceedings to which Martel’s cameras have total access, were trying to finagle a mining concern on ancestral land that belonged to the Chuschagasta people. When Chocobar and 20 or so others confront them on a recce, there’s a bad-tempered exchange, a scuffle and finally gunshots. At the end of it Chocobar lies dying, shot in the stomach.  It’s not Rashomon. Despite the confident testimony of the ex-cops, and even their walk-through recreation of the events in the valley that day, it’s pretty clear that Chocobar didn’t shoot himself. There’s even dramatic home video footage that culminates in the camera rolling down a hillside when shots ring out. But the question of whether justice w

Some murder-mysteries – Seven, for instance – immerse you in grisly menace. Others – Memories of Murder –  weave a web of intricate plotting and surprising feints. The Thursday Murder Club, by comparison, just wants to plump up a cushion, pour you a nice cup of tea and spin you a cosy yarn with an unusually high body count. And, honestly, you’d be a silly sausage not to enjoy it on those terms. For a movie in which people die violently every 30 or so minutes, the stakes are stupendously low, the vibe steadfastly upbeat. In fact, there’s more fuss at Downton Abbey when a fork goes missing than when Tony Curran (Geoff Bell), a flash building developer at posh retirement village Coopers Chase, gets bumped off. The dastardly deed is all the crime-solving pensioners at the heart of Richard Osman’s best selling murder-mystery novels need to set about ID’ing the culprit, in between mouthfuls of Celia Imre’s surprisingly moist sponge cakes.  Alongside Imre’s newcomer Joyce, an ex-nurse whose handy forensic knowledge sees her fast-tracked into the group, our amateur sleuths are Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth Best, a guileful ringleader with a coy espionage back story. Land-grabbing Ray Winstone’s rightful turf, a grinning Pierce Brosnan is West Ham-supporting ex-union boss Ron, and Ben Kingsley is gentle psychiatrist Ibrahim. The gang, who congregate in the orangery each Thursday to puzzle over a long-ago cold case, prove equally adept at elbowing their way into the new investigation. But w

Halloween is creeping ever closer and with it, an array of gloriously gothic, ghoulish horror movie screenings to get your fangs into across London. And this year, we’re putting our own cobwebby stamp on spooky season with a brand new outdoor cinema in a seriously fun setting. The Trick or Sweet Film Club, with Time Out x NERDS, runs from October 23-31 at London Bridge’s buzzy outdoor venue Vinegar Yard.The movies, curated by Time Out’s film editor, are tried-and-tested frighteners with a family-friendly flavour. On the line-up (see below) are ’80s classics like Ghostbusters and Gremlins, with The Cabin in the Woods adding a 21st century classic to the mix. The vibe is ‘spine-tingling but a bit silly’, and all the movies are tailor-made for a proper Halloween party. Tickets are a devilish £6.66, with lots of surprises promised and NERDS as far as the eye can see. Fancy dress is not obligatory but there will be prizes for the best costumes, so dust off your Stay-Puft suit accordingly.  Here’s the line-up in full: An American Werewolf in London (1981) – Thursday, October 23Little Shop of Horrors (1985) – Friday, October 24The Cabin in the Woods (2012) – Saturday, October 25Ghostbusters (1984) – Sunday, October 26 Addams Family Values (1993) – Thursday, October 30Gremlins (1984) – Friday, October 31 The doors will be opening at 6.30pm, with screenings beginning at 7.30pm. Our tip? Get in early, pick up some food from Vinegar Yard’s street food outlets and settle in for a scary-b

‘I think it’s a terrible idea.’  Over a cheese scone and a pot of rooibos tea, Claire Foy is not holding back on the news that an AI actress called Tilly Norwood is ‘in talks’ with Hollywood agencies. ‘If people want to watch a film with a fake human being in it, go for gold; I'll be out of a job and I'll just have to live with that, but it loses the point of why we do what we do.’If you want to know what the point of acting is for her, Foy’s thorny, emotionally ruined performance as a grieving woman who bonds with a goshawk, Mabel, in H is for Hawk is a great place to start.The adaptation of Helen Macdonald’s bestselling memoir, beloved by a small army of readers, gets its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. The Crown and Wolf Hall actress had to learn to train Eurasian goshawks – ‘the perfectly evolved psychopath’, as someone notes in the film – and channel the author’s deep, spiralling grief when her dad (Brendan Gleeson) dies. In contrast with her roles in those two period worlds, where inscrutability and decorum were everything, H is For Hawk crackles with raw emotion. Tilly Norwood could never.  The adopted north Londoner has picked a Golborne Road café, round the corner from her old Notting Hill home, for our interview. She’s come from an acupuncture session, and before that a couple of days plugging the film in Switzerland, where she divulged her girlhood Leonardo DiCaprio obsession and chatted about playing a young Elizabeth II in The Crown, still her bigges

A sun-soaked new ITV crime caper that unites two of British telly’s biggest stars, Frauds is here to deliver some Spanish balm and high-stakes heists to your October viewing. The series teams up Doctor Who and Broadchurch’s Jodie Whittaker with Gentleman Jack and Corrie star Suranne Jones in a clash of the telly titans. Expect twists galore and a robbery that even Danny Ocean would be proud of, as the duo set to work relieving Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum of a priceless masterpiece. We spoke to executive producer Katie Kelly and location manager Isidro Gonzalez to get the lowdown on the six-part series – including the sun-drenched Iberian locations that aren’t quite where you’d expect them to be.  Photograph: Monumental TelevisionSam (Jodie Whittaker) and Bert (Suranne Jones) What is Frauds about? Co-created by Suranne Jones and Anne-Marie O’Connor, the pair behind 2023’s ITV drama Maryland, Frauds is a heist thriller with a twist. The two old friends at its heart, reformed expat Sam (Whittaker) and unreformed ex-con Bert (Jones), have drifted apart during the latter’s time in prison on the Costa del Sol. Where there was once trust and teamwork, there’s now just a whole lot of suspicion and mistrust. Bert, though, wants Sam to team up for one final payday: to steal Salvador Dali’s painting The Great Masturbator from Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum. To add more complexity to an already complex dynamic, Bert has terminal cancer. This will be ‘one last job’ in every sense.  Helping

Scoring tickets to BFI London Film Festival screenings can feel like a magic trick – blink and they’re gone – but don’t despair: there are still seats available for some cracking new films when the fest gets underway on October 8. Whether you fancy living it up in the Royal Festival Hall or hunkering down in one of London’s more intimate screens, there are opportunities to get right into the heart of the UK’s biggest film fest without having to queue. Here’s five films you can still pick up tickets for.  Photograph: Davi RussoChanning Tatum in ‘Roofman’ 1. Roofman The Fugitive meets Clerks in this true-life romantic caper starring Channing Tatum as an ex-soldier who hides out in the walls of a Toys “R” Us after ripping off McDonald’s branches and somehow finds love in the process. With a doozy of a supporting cast – Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Peter Dinklage – this one looks like a big-hearted alt-romcom guaranteed to play well with a festival audience.  9pm, Tue Oct 14, Royal Festival Hall2.30pm, Wed Oct 15, Royal Festival Hall  Book tickets here Photograph: © Sabrina Lantos / Sony Pictures Classics 2. Blue Moon With not one but two films at the festival, Richard Linklater is really just showing off. His movie making-of drama about new wave classic Breathless, Nouvelle Vague, is already a sellout, but don’t sleep on the other one either. Ethan Hawke and Andrew Scott play songwriting double act Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers in a different kind of a

Were you scared witless when the T-Rex made his first appearance in Jurassic Park? Candyman director Nia DaCosta was right there with you. Did Michael Rooker’s definitive portrait of a killer stick with you at the end of Henry? It also haunted Luca Guadagnino and that man turned a body into a bramble of crushed bones in Suspiria. The cinema is a place of vulnerability, and great horror films burrow under everyone’s skin, including the coolest filmmakers in the world.  From horror maestros to arthouse auteurs, we asked the honorees of our coolest filmmakers list what cinematic moment scared them most. And they delivered: Cinematic minds such as The Witch’s Robert Eggers and The Babadook mastermind Jennifer Kent told us what gave them nightmares while they were doing the same to us, while Rian Johnson, Edgar Wright, Lynne Ramsay, Sean Baker and others told us what chilled them to the bone. You’ll find serial killers and classic slashers. But you’ll also find more than one Disney film, too. Don’t worry, you’re in a safe space here. Photograph: StudioCanalIrréversible Irréversible – picked by Robert Eggers (Nosferatu) ‘Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, Gerald Kargl’s Angst, Michael Haneke’s Piano Teacher and Bruno Dumont’s Twentynine Palms all left me pretty shaken after my first viewing.’ Photograph: Disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – picked by Tomm Moore (The Secret of Kells) ‘I remember seeing Snow White when I was less than five, and I freaked out every time the Evil Que

The BFI London Film Festival (LFF) is just around the corner, with 11 days and nights of new movies in store for those lucky enough to have tickets. But it’s not just films at the festival – and not everything costs money to attend. The LFF has a full programme of free events and screenings that you can book from 10am on Thursday, October 2, and a pretty packed schedule of events and exhibitions you won’t need to book at all. There’s Wicked costume exhibitions, dance parties and talks galore. Here’s what to look out for. Photograph: Universal PicturesMunchkinland was constructed in a Buckinghamshire village Get up close to Wicked’s Oscar-winning gowns Wicked: For Good is not on this year’s LFF line-up but you can get up close with some of the spectacular, award-winning costumes, props and rarely seen behind-the-scenes photography from the first film in the mezzanine of the BFI Southbank every day from noon to 8pm. Wizard fans can also catch director Jon M Chu discussing the movie on October 10. Tickets are free for that, too, and booking opens at 10am, October 2.  Head here for info Photograph: Netflix Solve a murder-mystery with ‘Star Wars’ director Rian Johnson Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out movie is this year’s curtain raiser and, brick that he is, the American filmmaker is sticking around for an hour-long talk about the secrets behind his murder-mystery franchise. Catch him at BFI Southbank on October 9. Head here for info Photograph: Alan Holben Photography llc B

The BFI London Film Festival isn’t just manna for movie lovers, it’s a feast for bookworms too. Of course, literary adaptations are always a major feature of any festival line-up, but this year brings a striking range of them. From copper-bottomed classics (Frankenstein, The Assistant) to modern gems (Hamnet, The Ballad of a Small Player), there’s something for every corner of BookTok. Novellas and short stories are represented, too, with Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams and Ben Shattuck’s The History of Sound on the programme. Here’s a shelf’s worth to look out for at the festival.  NB There’s almost always a chance to grab last-minute tickets, including to previously sold-out screenings and events. Check the LFF website for the details and latest ticket availability. Photograph: Time Out H is For Hawk Helen Macdonald’s 2014 memoir comes with a shelf full of awards, including the Samuel Johnson Prize for best British non-fiction. Claire Foy steps into the author’s shoes in a story of grief and goshawks that recount Helen’s grief for her dad and relationship with the bird of prey who helped her through. Brendan Gleeson co-stars as her dad. 5.30pm, Sunday Oct 12, Royal Festival Hall8.30pm, Monday Oct 13, Curzon Soho Cinema8.45pm, Monday Oct 13 October, Curzon Soho Cinema12pm, Saturday Oct 18, Curzon Soho Cinema  Photograph: Time Out 100 Nights of Hero  Adapted from Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel, a fresh twist on Middle Eastern folktales One Thousand and One Nights, Julia

Political assassinations. Anti-immigration rhetoric. Woeful personal hygiene.  Welcome back to the thrilling, funny and uncannily topical world of spymaster Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and his brilliant-but-banished Slow Horses for another six episodes of high-stakes espionage on Apple TV+. Based on Mick Herron’s fifth Slow Horses novel, 2018’s London Rules, and overseen by departing showrunner Will Smith, the new season is so topical, it could have been written last week. There’s terrorist plots, liberal and populist politicians trading blows – think Nigel Farage vs Sadiq Khan – and a British intelligence apparatus that still relies on Lamb’s broken-down spies to bail it out. But aside from being a great – and very funny – series about spying and counter-espionage, Slow Horses is also a great London show. Rather than the London Eye, Big Ben and all the usual landmarks, the new season is another tour of the capitol’s lesser-known, often grimier corners – alleys and skate parks, housing estates and underpasses. A penguin enclosure. Join us for a tour of the key locations.    Photograph: Jack English/Apple TV+Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb in ‘Slow Horses’ season 5 What’s happened in Slow Horses so far? Okay, hold onto your sidearm and half-eaten sausage roll, here’s a swift recap. Season 1 sent MI5 young gun River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) into disgrace after a botched op at Stansted Airport. He’s condemned to join the so-called ‘Slow Horses’, a group of exiled spies under the de

Netflix’s new period drama, House of Guinness, is a Succession-like saga of adult kids who inherit wealth and power when their father dies… only to discover that it’s not all its cracked up to be. The opposite, in fact.Created by Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight and starring James Norton (King & Conqueror), Louis Partridge (Enola Holmes), Anthony Boyle (Masters of the Air) and Emily Fairn (Saturday Night), the eight-parter is as bingeable as a pint of the black stuff and, like, the stout itself, rewards patience with a intriguing bundle of plot threads that tie in the rise of Irish Republicanism, 18th century political manoeuvrings, the rapid expansion of Dublin, and the vibrant, violent melting pot of post-Civil War New York. 📍 Fact-checking House of Guinness: the facts and fiction you need to know before you binge📍 House of Guinness locations: the unexpected filming spots behind Netflix’s wild period epic The anachronistic soundtrack is a selling point, too, with Fontaines D.C. and Kneecap lending raucous energy, The Mary Wallopers and The Chieftains providing Irish folk anthems, Celtic punks The Feelgood McLouds turning over a table or two.  Here’s the track listing in full: Episode 1 Starburster – Fontaines D.C. Get Your Brits Out – Kneecap Devil’s Dance Floor – Flogging Mary Hood – Kneecap   Episode 2 Cruel Katie – Lankum In ár gCroíthe go deo – Fontaines D.C.The Rich Man and the Poor Man – The Mary Wallopers  Episode 3 As I Roved Out – The Mary Wallopers Goodnight World

Much more than just the show that Steven Knight snuck in between creating Peaky Blinders and writing Bond 25, Netflix’s new period saga House of Guinness is a barrel’s worth of salty and salacious 19th century history. Filled with sex, violence, romance and scheming, the eight-part drama hits the streamer this week with a packed cast, opulent costumes, vast sets and bustling 1860s Dublin and New York locations. Except none of the series was filmed on the Emerald Isle or in America. Read on to find out the secrets behind Netflix’s ‘Succession with stout’ from production designer Richard Bullock. Photograph: Ben Blackall/NetflixJames Norton as Sean Rafferty What is 'House of Guinness' about?  The story centres on the Guinness family at a key moment in its history: patriarch Benjamin Guinness, the Dublin stout’s answer to Logan Roy, has died and his four adult children await his will. The boys from the black stuff, Arthur (Anthony Boyle), the younger Benjamin (Fionn O'Shea) and Edward Guinness (Louis Partridge), must bury their rivalries to maintain the brewery’s pre-eminence. Daughter Anne (Emily Fairn), inevitably, is to be omitted from the patriarchal business.The series is backdropped by the rise of Republican sentiment amongst the so-called ‘Fenians’, who are torn between tearing the brewery to the ground and trying to exploit the Guinness’s power to help fuel the independence movement. In America, meanwhile, a self-appointed representative of the company stirs up trouble

The best terrestrial TV series of the year so far, The Hack is Mr Bates vs The Post Office meets All the President’s Men. It’s the handiwork of Adolescence co-writer Jack Thorne and follows the 10-year investigation into the UK phone hacking scandal that culminated in the Leveson Enquiry and the closure of the News of the World. It’s cast to the nines, too. The supporting cast boasts Toby Jones, Dougray Scott, Steve Pemberton, Adrian Lester, Eve Myles, Rose Leslie, Neil Maskell and Laura Pulver, each bringing their A-game to the real public figures in this high-stakes story.  But the stars of the seven-part show are obvious: David Tennant as campaigning The Guardian journalist Nick Davies and Robert Carlyle as dogged Met Police detective Dave Cook. The pair find themselves united by a quest to uncover the widespread use of phone tapping by the News of the World newspaper in the noughties.  A rousing journalism and police procedural in one, it’s full of twists, blind alleys, epic nastiness and even more epic levels of moral courage.  Photograph: ITV StudiosRobert Carlyle as Dave Cook What is The Hack about? Nick Davies (Tennant), fresh from publishing a book, Flat Earth News, about the PR-ification of journalism, gets a tip-off from a source known as Mr Apollo (Lester) that celebrities’ voicemail messages are being hacked by private investigators. With the support of his editor Alan Rusbridger’s (Jones), the reporter pursues the story. And pursues. And pursues. The power of

Grab your Gen-X dad, jump on your lightcycle (or Lime bike) and head for Piccadilly Circus next month, because ’80s sci-fi throwback Tron is coming to town. Tron: Ares, the new sequel to the reboot of the landmark 1982 Jeff Bridges sci-fi, is zipping sleekly into our cinemas in October and to mark its release, Disney is turning Piccadilly’s The Venue into The Grid, the virtual realm of the movie. Londoners are invited – free of charge – to sample its gleaming neon wonders and listen to the movie’s Nine Inch Nails soundtrack in surround sound.  ‘Visitors will enter through a LED-lit corridor of shifting lights, immersing them into The Grid,’ runs the press release, ‘and allowing them to step into the world of Tron for a one-of-a-kind photo opportunity with the iconic Lightcycle.’ It’s not Quasar but it could be the next best thing.  Tickets are free but you’ll have to be quick, because it’s only open for one day: Thursday, October 2. Hit the Eventbrite link to sign up for tickets.  Photograph: Leah Gallo/DisneyJared Leto as Ares Tron: Ares stars Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith and Gillian Anderson, with Jeff Bridges back to reprise his role as cyber-traveller Kevin Flynn.It’s in cinemas worldwide from October 10. The 100 greatest sci-fi movies ever made. Read our verdict on Tron Legacy.