Phil de Semlyen

Whatever you think of Netflix, there’s no denying the streamer has changed the game when it comes to original programming. Starting with House of Cards way back in 2013, the platform broke down the door for on-demand series to become their own form of prestige TV. Of course, that innovation came back to bite them, as they now have to compete with everyone from Hulu to Disney+ to – checks notes – FreeVee. But just when it seems like Netflix has been left in the dust of the revolution it started, it drops something like Baby Reindeer or Adolescence, and ends up right back at the centre of the entertainment conversation. Even factoring in its fallow periods, Netflix has already created so many must-watch shows that most of us won’t ever get to half of it. So we’ve put together a list of the Netflix original series you absolutely must make time for. And before you get all upset about the absence of Black Mirror and Cobra Kai, we’ve left out shows that originated elsewhere before the platform picked them up. We’re also sticking to scripted series - though you can check out our favourite Netflix true crime docs here. Recommended: 🎥 The 35 best movies on Netflix right now🔥 The 25 best movies on HBO and Max right now👽 The best sci-fi shows streaming on Netflix

Family movies are having a ginormous year. The top five box office hits have all been kid-friendly capers of different stripes, from the blocky mayhem of Minecraft to the alien mayhem of Lilo & Stitch and fantasy adventure of How To Train Your Dragon. And the biggest of all of them you may not have even heard of – unless you’ve been in China. Because the holidays are long and children’s attention spans are short, we’ve assembled a definitive list of 2025’s family-friendly fare worth its salt (okay, sugar) – and ranked it by how likely it is to keep all of the family entertained, not just little Billy. Sorry, Billy.    

Everyone is scared of something. It might be something specific, like spiders or snakes or heights, or something less tangible, like death or failure. But deep down, even the most posturing tough guy harbours deep-seated fears. Perhaps that explains why horror has grown into one of the most popular of all film genres. Even if a movie doesn’t necessarily touch on the things that personally scare us the most, allowing ourselves to be scared at all helps us confront and ease the anxieties and fears that keep us paralysed.   Of course, horror hasn’t always been a moneymaker. Not long ago, it was mainly a niche interest, ignored by mass audiences and shrugged off by critics. The recent artistic and commercial success of diverse films from Get Out to Longlegs to Sinners to Final Destination Bloodlines have brought retroactive respect to a genre once synonymous with schlock. So if you’ve spent too much of your film fandom dismissing horror, consider this your guide to everything you’ve missed. Here are the 100 greatest horror movies ever made. Written by Tom Huddleston, Cath Clarke, Dave Calhoun, Nigel Floyd, Phil de Semlyen, David Ehrlich, Joshua Rothkopf, Nigel Floyd, Andy Kryza, Alim Kheraj and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🔪 The best new horror movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The 100 best movies of all time🤡 The 21 best Stephen King movies of all time🩸 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories

August update: horror fans are spoiled for choice this month with Weapons, Zach Cregger’s indefinable and relentlessly brilliant missing kids mystery, and Alison Brie/David Franco relationship horror Together making singledom look like a really good idea. 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.RECOMMENDED: 🎃 The 100 best horror films ever made😱 The scariest movies based on a true story 🔥 The best horror films of 2024

August 2025 update: Zach Cregger’s vanishing-kids fable Weapons, a must-see small-town mystery with a bitumen-black sense of humour, immaculately-played Swiss hospital drama Late Shift and Eva Victor’s stunning trauma drama Sorry, Baby are the newest additions to our best-of-the-year 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

August 2025: We're in peak summer, which means that visitors from all the world are thronging London's biggest museums. But that doesn't mean you should steer clear. There are loads of special exhibitions which are well worth catching before they close in autumn: like the flamboyant, iconoclastic Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern, or the joyful celebration of swimwear Splash! at Design Museum. Escape the British Museum crowds at its intimate, gorgeous look at the world of Japanese printmaker Hiroshige. Or get even more exclusive by signing up for Open House London's ballot by August 18, to be in with a chance of getting a sneak peek round the new Museum of London, come September.  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 m

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* and the infectious The Fantastic Four are 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 Avengers: Doomsday manages to return the Marvelverse to its Endgame high point, we’ve 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

Cada uno tiene sus preferencias, así que cualquier debate sobre cuáles son los mejores largometrajes de todos los tiempos se puede alargar horas y horas. ¿Puede haber algún listado que los agrupe todos? Es difícil, pero hemos intentado incorporar desde las revoluciones cinematográficas más clásicas hasta las más modernas, grandes estrenos, todos los géneros, países, épocas... cine para todos los gustos, haciendo equilibrios entre la racionalidad y el sentimentalismo. El reto ha sido enormemente complicado, pero no nos hemos podido resistir a elaborar una buena lista, nuestra lista, de las películas que hay que ver, al menos, una vez en la vida. Decidnos hasta qué punto nos hemos equivocado. ¡Y, ah, prohibido repetir directores! RECOMENDADO: Las 50 mejores películas para ver en familia. 

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

August 2025 update: The year’s first comedy classic has landed – and it has a straight face and a zero tolerance attitude to crime. The Naked Gun, with Liam Neeson playing the son of Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin, is a giddy, unmissable joy. Admittedly, it hasn’t been the funniest year, in the world or on screen. But if you’re in need of a laugh – and who isn’t? – you can still find plenty, either at the cinema or streaming on your television. Whether you prefer your comedy political (HBO’s Mountainhead), gentle (The Ballad of Wallis Island), romantic (Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy), dark and weird (Friendship) or broad and juvenile (A Minecraft Movie), there’s been a little something for everyone to chuckle at. And there are more LOLs on the way, with the upcoming Spinal Tap sequel and even Darren Aronofsky locating his funny bone with his new crime caper Caught Stealing. For now, though, here are the movies and shows that have had us cracking up the hardest in 2025. RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

For outsiders, Australia can feel like an undiscovered country, or another planet altogether – and when it comes to the nation’s cinematic output, that image works to its advantage. While the prevailing idea of Aussie film internationally is still defined by Crocodile Dundee, Oz has produced a trove of great films and filmmakers, many of which are informed by a unique perspective – whether it’s Peter Weir’s ethereal visions, the balls-to-the-wall action of the Mad Max franchise, or movies like Ten Canoes and Walkabout highlighting the indigenous experience. And sure, Crocodile Dundee is still a charming lark, and the popular films about unsuspecting tourists tormented by nutcases in the Outback are also a significant part of Australian movie history. But as this list of the country’s greatest films proves, there is much more to that history than that. This story contains the names and images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died. RECOMMENDED: 📽️ The 50 best foreign-language films ever made.🇯🇵 The greatest Japanese movies of all time.🇰🇷 The best Korean films ever made.

August is off to a flyer with blistering Ukrainian war doc 2000 Meters To Andriivka, A24 horror Bring Her Back and Liam Neeson’s comedy masterclass The Naked Gun all landing on day one. From then on, the month serves up an array of intriguing new releases, with something for all tastes and a couple of things for horror fans. Look out for Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman uniting for the first time in a spiky update of ’80s black comedy The War of the Roses and a tasty-looking Darren Aronofsky crime caper. 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

If laughter is the best medicine, this gut-twisting tale of vanishing kids from American comedian-turned-horror auteur Zach Cregger comes with its own built-in cure.  Put simply, if Weapons wasn’t the best horror movie of the year – pipping even the mighty Sinners – it would probably be the best comedy. The last 30 minutes alone is hands down the most satisfying final reel I’ve winced through – and corpsed at – in absolutely ages, a whirlwind of laughs and scares that ties up the movie’s knotty narrative in a singular fashion. Of course, Weapons is a less-you-know-the-better experience. Suffice to say, at 2.17am on an otherwise unremarkable night in the fictional US town of Maybrook, 17 classmates spontaneously get out of bed, leave their parents’ homes and run into the darkness, arms outspread like sycamore seedlings blown by some unseen tempest (in suitably macabre fashion, the pose was inspired by photojournalist Nick Ut’s legendary Vietnam War snap Napalm Girl).  When teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) turns up to class the next morning, there’s only one pupil to greet her: a taciturn boy called Alex (Cary Christopher). Is his silence down to shock or is there something else going on?  Who – or what – is the Pied Piper behind this bizarro event is the mystery that Weapons works its way towards in unhurried but enthralling fashion. Cregger’s camera sweeps, wraith-like, through a town whose shock is turning to anger and recrimination, with the besieged Gandy in the crossh

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

After 15 years of high drama, seismic historical events, love affairs, births, deaths and a thousand withering looks from Violet Crawley, the epically popular TV-turned-movie series is coming to an end with Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale… and everything must go. To mark the end of the Downton, London’s auction house Bonhams is holding a farewell exhibition and sale of props, costumes and assorted Crawley-bilia. The sale runs online at bonhams.com from August 18 to September 16. The free exhibition will run simultaneously at the auctioneer’s New Bond Street premises.  Catalogue items include everything from Lady Mary’s (Michelle Dockery) wedding dress (estimated price £3-5000) to Lady Rose’s (Lily James) ‘coming out’ ball gown (£800-1200). Bids for a copy of the script from the first ever episode, signed by the cast, will start at £6-800, while a clapperboard from Downton Abbey: A New Era will fetch in excess of £1-1500. Photograph: Bonhams ‘Downton Abbey is an exceptionally well-researched piece of storytelling on aristocratic society in the early 20th  century, and the costumes and props show the impressive attention to detail that brought the world to life on screen and making it so beloved by millions across the globe,’ says Bonhams’ Charlie Thomas.  Downton production house Carnival Films will be donating its auction proceeds to the charity Together for Short Lives. Photograph: Bonhams ‘The world of Downton Abbey is beloved around the globe for its rich, timeless sto

Brendan Fraser’s career renaissance has already taken in a Oscar win for his performance in The Whale and now his new movie is getting a big gala at this year’s BFI London Film Festival. Rental Family, which stars Fraser as a struggling American actor living in modern-day Tokyo, will be the LFF’s American Express gala on Thursday, October 16. Directed by Hikari, the Japanese filmmaker behind Netflix drama 37 Seconds, Rental Family has Fraser’s down-and-out thesp finding work with a Japanese rental family company, playing stand-in roles for strangers. ‘As he immerses himself in his clients’ worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality,’ runs the festival’s synopsis. ‘Confronting the moral complexities of his work, he rediscovers purpose, belonging, and the quiet beauty of human connection.’ ‘While it’s inspired by a real, and sometimes unusual, business in Japan, it’s ultimately about people longing for connection, and discovering the meaning of true friendship in modern Tokyo,’ says Hikari. Photograph: Courtesy of James Lisle/Searchlight PicturesBrendan Fraser in ‘Rental Family’ Co-starring with Fraser are Shōgun’s Takehiro Hira, as well as Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman and Akira Emoto. The gala takes place at London’s Royal Festival Hall, with simultaneous screenings at cinemas across the UK.  The 69th BFI London Film Festival runs from October 8-19. Tickets will be on sale to the general public from September 16 via 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

It’s been a tumultuous 2025 at London’s greatest cult picture house, but the Prince Charles Cinema (PCC) could be ending it on a high – with plans for a second venue in east London just announced.  The off-Leicester Square cinema, a beloved fixture with movie-loving Londoners and famous fans like Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, is planning a second venue in the space occupied by the now-shuttered Stratford Picturehouse. ‘Stratford has always been a hub,’ the Prince Charles’s head of programming Paul Vickery tells The Guardian. ‘There are plenty of students and loads of new-build properties that have sprung up recently. But it also feels like it’s still trying to find its feet and figure out what it is.’ The PCC was faced with the threat of closure in January when its landlord’s redevelopment plans came to light, but found some protection in being listed as an asset of community value (ACV) in May. But according to Vickery, the plans for a new venue are unconnected with those legal wranglings. ‘Given what’s happened this year, I understand how it could look like we’re trying to shift operations but that’s not what’s happening,’ he says. ‘We were looking for a pre-existing venue that needed a bit of love which we could turn into a new site. Ideally, we’d want to go on to add a third or fourth space.’ The Prince Charles had previously looked at taking over Edinburgh’s historic Filmhouse cinema, which reopened this summer under new management.  And the PCC isn’t the o

Wednesday season 2 is here – the first half, at any rate – with more deliciously dark and spooky shenanigans in the accursed Vermont town of Jericho. Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) is back at Nevermore Academy for more lessons of the deeply alarming kind. This time, it’s werewolf roomie Enid (Emma Myers) under threat from a mysterious force. There’s dark deeds and even darker magic – and that’s just the official school syllabus.  The task of soundtracking these dark and dismal goings-on fell to music supervisors Jen Malone and Nicole Weisberg – and the pair have gone big with some knowing, surprising and tonally spot-on new musical choices. ‘We took the energy of what we did for Season 1 and opened another door,’ says Weisberg. ‘So now season 2 feels more expansive musically.’ Look out for tracks from pre-emo alt rockers Sixpence None the Richer, goth rock legends  Sisters of Mercy, K-pop girl group Mamamoo, and even classical OGs Mozart, Wagner and Prokofiev. There’s also a classic movie cue from Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo score and a couple of zombie-themed bangers to make Pugsley Addams’s pet shuffler Slurp feel right at home. Here’s the tracklisting in full for episodes 1-4: Episode 1 My Favourite Things – The Lennon SistersUn Mundo Raro – Chavela VargasTropical Island – Berry Lipman SingersKiss Me – Sixpence None the Richer No Time to Cry – Sisters of MercyUm Oh Ah Yeh – MamamooThe Dance of the Knights – Prokofiev’s Romeo and JulietNevermore Alma Mater – Pitch

To mark the release of Wednesday season 2 this month, a Thames paddle steamer is being transformed into a floating temple of the macabre in the spirit of Nevermore Academy – and everyone is invited aboard.  The Dixie Queen (below) will be hosting a free Wednesday-inspired 90-minute ‘gothic voyage through London's darker past’, promising ‘bleak history, drier commentary, and fellow passengers who also find joy in the morbid, comfort in the eerie, and humour in things better left buried’. The cruises leave from Butler’s Wharf Pier on Wednesday, August 20. There are four sailing times, leaving at 9.30am, 1pm, 4.30pm and 8pm. There’ll be onboard entertainment of the eeriest kind, ice cream (black, natch) and photo opportunities for anyone wanting to bring a touch of Wednesday Addams’ unsmiling aura to their IG feed.  Head to the official site to sign up for up to four seats aboard the good (ie bad) ship Wednesday. All under-18s must be accompanied by an adult.  If you can’t snag tickets now, don’t unleash your inner Hyde. There’ll also be a walk-up queue on the day.  Photograph: Thames Luxury ChartersThe Dixie Queen is being commandeered for Netflix’s Outcastaway Cruise The first four episodes of Wednesday S2 stream on Netflix on August 6, with the final four episodes landing on September 3. The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far). Inside Wednesday season 2’s Ireland filming locations.

Wednesday’s first season is Netflix’s third biggest show of all time, clocking up a 1,237 million hours of viewing in its first 28 days alone.  Season 2 has the challenge of magicking up similar numbers, but it’ll pack plenty of gothic superpowers to help do it. Psychic student Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) is heading back to Nevermore Academy to get to the bottom of more macabre goings-on in a second run that has Tim Burton back to lend his ooky, spooky touch to things.  This time, Wednesday’s bubbly werewolf roommate Enid (Emma Myers) is under threat from a mysterious force that manifests via a murder of murderous crows. It’s The Birds meets The Breakfast Club, where everyone is Ally Sheedy. Photograph: Jonathan Hession/Netflix © 2025Emma Myers as Enid Sinclair and Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Alongside Ortega, all the Wednesday gang returns to join the black-hued fun, including Catherine Zeta-Jones as overprotective mum Morticia Addams, Luis Guzmán as dilettante dad Gomez and Isaac Ordonez as Wednesday’s eccentric younger brother Pugsley, this time busy rearing a zombie called Slurp. Gwendoline Christie, Christina Ricci and Fred Armisen are all back too. Outcasts assemble! Photograph: Helen Sloan/Netflix © 2025Joonas Suotamo as Lurch, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, Jenna Ortega as Wednesday, Isaac Ordonez aș Pugsley Addams, and Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams Where was Wednesday Season 2 filmed? The sharp-eyed will spot one major change for season 2. Instead of

Gentlemen, rev your Aston Martins and start shaking those martinis, because a new James Bond is on the horizon. Menthol smoke has not yet started billowing out of MGM Studios – the traditional indication that the next 007 has been chosen – with Daniel Craig’s likely replacement still a mystery. What does this mean for the future of the iconic British spy series and its upcoming 26th instalment? Information is limited, but here’s what we know so far.  What does Amazon MGM Studios’ takeover mean for the next James Bond? After months of rumour and speculation, James Bond finally got a new boss in February 2025. Not M, but Amazon MGM Studios who sealed a deal with 007’s producers, Eon’s Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, to take creative control of the franchise.  Broccoli and Wilson will remain co-owners of James Bond but crucially, will step back from controlling the future direction or execution of the franchise. ‘With the conclusion of No Time to Die and Michael retiring from the films, I feel it is time to focus on my other projects,’ Broccoli said in a statement.So what does it all mean for 007? We’re probably a step closer to a release date for Bond 26 and the announcement of a new James Bond to star in it. Maybe a radical change of direction for the whole franchise, too, with immediate speculation that Amazon will look to spin their expensive new IP into the kind of shared universe storytelling that Disney pursued with Lucasfilm and Star Wars after its takeover. Is a

Curzon Wimbledon, SW19 cinephiles’ destination of choice, is getting a major refurbishment this summer. The three-screen cinema will be closing on August 11 for about six weeks, with a reopening date scheduled for September. The cinema’s renovation plans involve a full upgrade of the screens, the introduction of new reclining seats and expanded facilities to allow for an expanded food and drink menu. In-screen service will be part of the new look Curzon Wimbledon offering, as well as a new photo booth.  According to the press release, design company Inside Out will be ‘focusing on a rich palette that plays with pattern and texture, as well as brass finishes’ in its refurbishment. ‘A bespoke banquette introduces soft lines to the space, complementing the curves of the carefully curated loose furniture.’  Photograph: Curzon ‘Curzon Wimbledon has been a successful fixture of the local community for 15 years, and we’re delighted to be able to invest in the site and offer the best possible experience for cinemagoers,’ says Georgia La Trobe, Curzon’s head of property and development. ‘The designs that Inside Out have created will offer a real sense of luxury and comfort.’  ‘We’d like to thank our customers in advance for their patience, and we look forward to welcoming them to our new-and-improved cinema soon.’ The 25 best cinemas in London – as picked by Londoners. It’s official: London is home to one of the most beautiful outdoor cinemas in the world.

From Girls to a girl, Lena Dunham’s new Netflix show is a salty​, ​s​harply observed romantic comedy about a ​dreamy New Yorker, Jess (Megan Stalter), who moves to London hoping to find love ​​amid​ a Merchant Ivory​ fantasia of posh country estates and ​men in Georgian finery. ​Instead, she finds herself navigating Hackney estates, coked-fuelled west London parties, and media hipsterdom with chilled-yet-complex indie musician Felix (Will Sharpe). True love, it turns out, is a path littered with trustafarian eco-warriors and snooty French exes. Like its protagonist, Too Much is a show with a burning love for the genre, with frequent nods to romcoms from Pretty Woman to Richard Curtis. The door from Notting Hill even makes a cameo appearance. ​B​ut what are the ​r​omantic comedies that make Too Much’s own writer-director​ weak at the knees? We asked ​D​unham to pick her three favourites. Or read her answers in full below. Photograph: Columbia Pictures‘Bye Bye Birdie’ 3. Bye Bye Birdie (1963) ‘It doesn’t seem like a romantic comedy, but it is: a musical romantic comedy. I’ve watched it again and again – it was one of the first times I was just rooting for the love story. I’m sure someone will say it doesn’t count, but I defy you not to cry at the love story with Janet Leigh. And I defy you not to cry at watching Kim and Hugo find their way to each other after Conrad Birdie messes the whole town up.’ Photograph: Sony Pictures ReleasingJulia Roberts, Camer

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