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Phil de Semlyen

Phil de Semlyen

Global film editor

An experienced film journalist across two decades, Philip has been Global Film Editor of Time Out since 2017. Prior to that he was News Editor at Empire Magazine and part of the Empire Podcast team. He’s a London Critics Circle member and an award-winning (and losing) film writer, whose parents were absolutely right when they said he’d end up with square eyes.

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Articles (385)

The best horror movies and shows of 2024 (so far) for a truly scary watch

The best horror movies and shows of 2024 (so far) for a truly scary watch

Last year, a genre usually filled with shambling zombies and sentient mounds of carnivorous goo birthed leftfield successes like M3GAN and Skinamarink, low-budget horror hits that elbowed their way to viral status, even amid the giddy fluorescence of Barbie and prestige awardsiness of Oppenheimer.  By contrast, this year’s slate of scares probably won’t catch too many people sleeping. 2024 is loaded with genre prequels, sequels and spin-offs, from MaXXXine, the third instalment of Ti West’s cult-fave franchise, to the alien-invasion terror of A Quiet Place: Day One, to the extremely-long-awaited Beetlejuice 2. But given that horror is historically a genre of small expectations and big surprises, there’s bound to be something that pops up to frighten the bejeepers out of us when we least expect it. Here’s the best of what’s freaked us out so far.  🎃 The 100 best horror films ever made 😱 The scariest movies based on a true story 💀 The best horror movies of 2023

The best movies of 2024 (so far)

The best movies of 2024 (so far)

It’s still early days, but 2024 is already shaping up to be a stonking year at the cinema. Last year was a cracker, thanks to Oppenheimer, Barbie, Past Lives et al, but the next 12 months will see Denis Villeneuve delivering his long-awaited Dune sequel, George Miller back at the bullet farm with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a new Bong Joon-ho, and a tonne of other big-screen fare to get very, very excited about. And we’ve already been spoiled rotten, thanks to the achingly lovelorn All of Us Strangers, Yorgos Lanthimos’s riotous Poor Things, The Iron Claw, the beefcake wrestling movie with the big heart, and Dune: Part Two, the sci-fi blockbuster with the giant worms. So, the criterion for entry: some of the following movies came out in the US at the back end of 2023 – Oscars qualification requires it – but we’re basing this list on UK release dates to make sure the best movies to be in cinemas worldwide in 2024 are included. We’ll be updating it with worthy new releases as we go, so keep this list bookmarked. Anyway, enough of that – here are the year’s very best so far. RECOMMENDED: 📺 The best TV shows of 2024 (so far) you need to stream🎥 The 100 greatest movies ever made🔥 The best movies of 2023

The best TV shows of 2024 (so far) you need to stream

The best TV shows of 2024 (so far) you need to stream

Last year we bid farewell to Succession, Barry and Top Boy, fell hard for Beef, Colin From Accounts and Blue Lights. The next 12 months should help us move on – the potential impact of 2023’s writers’ strike notwithstanding – as early hits like World War II epic Masters of the Air and Mr and Mrs Smith, Prime Video’s intoxicating mix of witty marital drama and zippy espionage caper, are already proving. Ahead are hotly-anticipated new runs of Bridgerton and Squid Game on Netflix, a third season of Industry, a sci-fi prequel in Dune: Prophecy, HBO’s barbed political satire The Regime, Park Chan-wook spy thriller The Sympathizer, and The Franchise, the latest from telly genius Armando Iannucci – among many other potentially binge-worthy offerings. But there’s only so many hours in the day and you can’t spend all of them on the sofa. Here’s our guide to the shows most worthy of your time.RECOMMENDED: 🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2023🎥 The best movies of 2024 (so far)📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

Emma Stone’s best performances, ranked

Emma Stone’s best performances, ranked

A rare mix of serious star power and unselfconscious goofiness has turned Emma Stone into Hollywood’s sweetheart. In truth, there’s no moviemaking era that wouldn’t have found a space for her: it’s easy to imagine the Arizonan rivalling Katharine Hepburn and Claudette Colbert as a queen of ’40s screwball comedies, or Kathleen Turner as an ’80s action-comedy star. Despite her two Oscar wins – and at 35, she’s the youngest actor to hold that honour – she’s just getting started. Her burgeoning partnership with Yorgos Lanthimos and TV work like 2023’s The Curse show a willingness to take risks and do the kind of arty stuff that wins critical praise, while Easy A and Crazy, Stupid, Love show that she’s also got a great eye for more mainstream fare too. Here’s her best work so far. RECOMMENDED:🎭 The best Denzel Washington movies, ranked🎥 The 100 greatest movies ever made🔥 The best movies of 2024

The best Denzel Washington movies, ranked

The best Denzel Washington movies, ranked

Most Hollywood wannabes would trade their left arm for a fraction of the charisma Denzel Washington has been bringing to the screen for coming up to four decades. Cry Freedom, Mo' Better Blues, Philadelphia, Malcolm X, Crimson Tide, Training Day, The Tragedy of Macbeth… he’s equally adept at tackling serious stuff as giving upright leading man performances in multiplex hits. These days he’s kicking ass in The Equalizer movies, elevating basic genre fare with his megawatt star power and a raw physicality that borders on the supernatural for a 69-year-old. With Gladiator 2 still to come, here’s our pick of his 15 best performances. It’s true: King Kong ain’t got shit on him. Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time🎭 Emma Stone’s best performances, ranked😎 The 23 best Tom Cruise movies👩 The 12 best Angelina Jolie movies

The 50 best podcasts to listen to in 2024

The 50 best podcasts to listen to in 2024

What did we do before podcasts? Who knows, because now they’re like a right arm to most of us, making journeys seem faster and chores less painful all over the globe. You know the drill. If there’s a market for it, there’s a podcast about it. But with the incredibly vast world of podcasts throwing up new options every day, how does anyone know where to begin? Well, that’s where we come in. We’ve rounded up our favourites, from political podcasts that look behind the news to comedy podcasts with your favourite funny people, and plenty of those all-important investigative whodunnits to keep you up at night. If you’re looking to dig deeper into one genre, we’d recommend trying our specialist lists on for size (you’ll find them below). But for a full list of good, addictive podcasts of every genre, read on.  RECOMMENDED:🎧 The best podcasts on Spotify😂 The best comedy podcasts 🗞️ The best news podcasts💤 The best sleep podcasts🎶 The best music podcasts

The best cult classic movies of all time

The best cult classic movies of all time

True cult films aren’t made – not on purpose, anyway. Sure, in this era of postmodernism, a fair few filmmakers develop movies specifically to confound mainstream audiences and go straight to the midnight screening circuit. But rarely do these movies end up as real cult phenomena. A real cult movie usually starts out with the hopes of becoming something bigger, but through the vagaries that determine cinematic success or failure, only ends up attracting a small but fervent audience whose enthusiasm far outstrips its box office receipts. Hey, there are much worse fates. Because there are plenty of blockbusters that rake in the cash and are quickly forgotten. But cult films get called that for a reason – because the few that love them really love them. And these 40 all-timers are really, really loved.   Recommended:  🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time👽 The 100 best science fiction movies of all-time😱 The 100 best horror movies of all-time👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made💩 The 40 best bad movies ever made

The best movies of 2023

The best movies of 2023

Oh, we are so back. It took a few years, but 2023 felt like the year that Hollywood finally found its footing post-pandemic – which is ironic, considering Hollywood also shut down for large parts of the year. Before all the strikes hit, though, there were indications that the movie industry was coming back to life. There was the #Barbenheimer phenomenon, of course, which helped power the domestic box office to its strongest overall numbers since 2019. But in terms of pure moviemaking, the year was particularly strong. Martin Scorsese dropped another masterpiece, while Across the Spider-Verse made comic-book movies fresh again (at least until Madam Web, anyway). Past Lives made audiences swoon, while small-time charmers like Theater Camp, Scrapper and Rye Lane reasserted the vitality of indie filmmaking. And don’t forget the one about the dancing killer doll! Overall, it was a great year for movies – even the Oscars were enjoyable. But what movies were the greatest? Here are our picks. RECOMMENDED: 🫶 The best movies of 2024 (so far)📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2023🎥 The 100 greatest movies ever made

The best movies of the 21st century so far

The best movies of the 21st century so far

Movies were born in the 20th century, and the 21st century has nearly killed them. At least, that’s the common narrative. And it hasn’t seemed far from the truth: Between internet piracy, the pandemic, the rise of television as the go-to storytelling medium and the ongoing corporate consolidation that has streaming services Thanos-snapping whole swaths of their catalogues out of existence, the film industry has often felt imperilled throughout the first two decades of the new millennium.  But even among all the doom and gloom – or perhaps even because of it – film itself has continued to thrive. Perhaps it’s a stretch to say movies have never felt more vital, just given all the entertainment options that now exist at the click of the button. But it’s hard to think of a more innovative era in film history than the last two decades: genres have been mixed, matched and completely exploded; more diverse stories are being told than ever before; blockbusters have reached unfathomable hugeness; and the smallest, strangest indies have won awards and reached vast audiences. If cinema in the 21st century has been defined by tumult, it’s also exemplified the ability of filmmakers to rise to the moment, and these 100 movies represent the best of the last quarter-century so far. Written by David Fear, Joshua Rothkopf, Keith Uhlich, Stephen Garrett, Andrew Grant, Aaron Hillis, Tom Huddleston, Alim Kheraj, Tomris Laffly, Kevin B. Lee, Karina Longworth, Maitland McDonagh, Troy Patterson, Nic

The 25 best biopics of all time – ranked

The 25 best biopics of all time – ranked

Hollywood has always loved a biopic – and not just Hollywood. Abel Gance’s legendary silent epic Napoléon and Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc both created early blueprints for biographical cinema. But let’s not kid ourselves: it’s American cinema that has developed the biggest passion for putting the lives of great men and women – and some not-so-great-ones – up in lights. And the early ’80s are when the biopic really kicked up a gear, with films like Raging Bull (about Jake LaMotta), Coal Miner's Daughter (Loretta Lynn) and The Elephant Man (Joseph Merrick) all vying for Best Picture at 1980’s Oscars. This year, Oppenheimer and Maestro have continued the awards season sideline in teaching us all about Important People. But not all biopics are created equal. The list below singles out the ones that do more than just offer a Wikipedia-like trawl through a life’s events, however eventfully lived. Those flavourless films – J Edgar, Diana etc – often prove far less illuminating than a good hour-long History Channel doc. Instead, we’ve picked films that put fresh spins on famous figures, reframe their lives in insightful ways, and use the language of cinema to lend them grandeur and context in all kinds of memorable ways. Welcome to the cinema of icons.  RECOMMENDED: ✅ The 23 best movies based on true stories📹 The 65 best documentaries of all-time😱 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

How an inspiring new British drama saved its young star’s life

How an inspiring new British drama saved its young star’s life

If the transformative power of cinema often makes you think of super-serums and radioactive spiders, ‘Dirty God’ takes the idea a step beyond. The London-set drama has transformed the life of its 23-year-old star, Vicky Knight. Aged eight, she was caught in a fire in a Stoke Newington pub. She survived, but suffered 33 percent burns. Now, 15 years on, she’s starring in a film that channels her own experiences into the story of a twentysomething Londoner recovering from a horrific acid attack. The film has had the same effect on its star. ‘I was at rock bottom before this,’ says Knight. ‘I didn’t want to live with my scars any more. I was suicidal.’ She nearly didn’t do ‘Dirty God’ at all. Knight had been stung once before on screen, agreeing to take part in a documentary that turned out to be, well, not a documentary at all. ‘It was actually a dating programme called “Too Ugly for Love,”’ she says. ‘Well, I’m gay and they sent me on dates with boys – it was a shambles.’ I’m gay and they sent me on dates with boys – it was a shambles Enter Sacha Polak, a Dutch filmmaker looking for someone with real scars to play Jade. The character is grappling with her transformed appearance in an Insta-obsessed world. Prosthetics were never considered; the director needed someone who’d lived the experience. ‘If you don’t believe the scars, you have a problem straight away with the film,’ Polak says. ‘We saw every female burns survivor of the right age in the UK during casting, and I was t

The best Korean movies of all time

The best Korean movies of all time

If you were lucky enough to grow up pre-Y2K, you would have likely known little about Korea beyond the conflict in the back pages of your school history book. But that all changed when, in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the country doubled down on funding exportable pop culture in an attempt to rebrand the country on the world stage. The gambit, part designed to attract big business and tourism, was a wild success – and now we have K-Pop, K-dramas and kimchi pouring out of our ears. One of the biggest proponents of the ‘hallyu’ wave, though, has always been filmmaking – with Hollywood-style action blockbuster Shiri; brutal revenge thriller Oldboy; and Academy Awards triumph Parasite among the most resounding victories of a national cinema revitalised from the brink of anonymity. We simply can’t get enough of it today. And for good reason: South Korea is a goldmine of original ideas and storytelling talents who show no signs of taking their feet off the gas as the industry thrives. So why not huff on the metaphorical fumes? Our list of the best Korean movies of all time billows below.Recommended:🇫🇷 The 100 best French movies of all-time🇯🇵 The 50 best Japanese movies of all-time🇭🇰 The 100 best Hong Kong movies of all-time🇮🇹 The best Italian movies of all time: from Bicycle Thieves to The Great Beauty

Listings and reviews (604)

Banel & Adama

Banel & Adama

4 out of 5 stars

Most disaster movies announce themselves with vast tsunamis, spewing volcanoes or cow-flinging twisters. In Senegalese writer-director Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s tough but tender debut, balance with the natural world falls out of kilter in smaller increments – and with it, a love affair and a whole community.  Set in a tight-knit village in rural Senegal that’s baking dangerously in the 50 degree heat, Banel & Adama follows two star-crossed lovers. The fierce-spirited Banel (Khady Mane) and the mellower Adama (Mamadou Diallo) have been brought together by the death of her first husband. Their arranged marriage, fast-tracked by Adama’s status as chief-in-waiting and the community’s need for him to produce an heir, might have produced a loveless union. Instead, the pair are inseparable, spending their spare time excavating an old sand-covered abode as a new home for themselves beyond the village. Their plan, coupled with Adama’s refusal of the chiefdom, hit like an earthquake in their traditional community. It’s a powerful love story with a bruised heart  From sombre Islamic prayers to café-touba-fuelled socialising, Banel & Adama is stitched beautifully together from the fabric of rural Senegalese traditions. But just as Banel’s bright, more modern-feeling clothes offer dazzling bursts of colour in cinematographer Amine Berrada’s washed-out palette, the couple’s quest for emancipation is too confronting for their fellow villagers. The village elders – and fuelled by jealousy, some of

Late Night With the Devil

Late Night With the Devil

4 out of 5 stars

If we’re living in a new golden age of horror, then David Dastmalchian is its Christopher Lee. With his sallow countenance, laconic elegance, and general air of a man who sleeps in a crypt, the actor brings a note of eeriness to everything he does. So often an eye-catching side act in blockbusters like The Suicide Squad, Oppenheimer and Dune, he gets the perfect vehicle in this sinister, wickedly clever found-footage horror that purports to have been a real broadcast in 1977 America. Instead of a creaking coffin, it’s a creaking late-night chat show that’s trapping Dastmalchian’s host, Jack Delroy. Once a relatively successful Johnny Carson wannabe, he’s suffering from plummeting ratings and a lack of fresh ideas. The recent death of his young wife adds a layer of existential despair that he hides behind a forced smile and some lame patter with his band leader. Halloween night, though, may be his salvation. As his fancy-dress-clad audience watches on, he introduces a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon) and a young Satanic cult survivor suffering – supposedly – from demonic possession. No one’s had a demon on a chat show before – not even prime Carson – so this could be the break he’s been looking for.  A sceptic of the paranormal (Ian Bliss, supremely pompous) is invited on ‘for balance’.  This wonderfully creepy horror is like Alan Partridge by way of The Exorcist The studio itself makes a really effective setting for this one-location horror – a deceptively beige environment

Road House

Road House

3 out of 5 stars

‘People seem a little aggressive around here,’ notes Jake Gyllenhaal’s taciturn but twinkly-eyed bouncer, Elwood Dalton, of the good people in Florida’s Glass Key. Once a UFC champion, now haunted by guilt and spiritually at odds with his own violent skillset, Dalton is also a master of understatement. The punters at the sunny Florida establishment he’s been hired to manage can’t make it through so much as a quiet beer without smashing each other’s faces in. Even more than the Patrick Swayze cult classic on which Doug Liman’s fun and ferocious update loyally riffs, this Road House is a snarling beast of a thing, full of snapped limbs and faces like hamburger patties. The fight scenes, choreographed by Logan stunt man Garrett Warren, are spectacularly violent. I could swear someone yelped at one point in my screening. It could well have been me. This roadhouse is a thatched, open-plan joint in which a conveyor belt of house bands play behind chicken wire (presumably no one books this place more than once). It makes the Mos Eisley cantina look like a soft play centre. There’s a hospital 20 minutes down the road, Dalton helpfully informs a group of troublemaking biker meatheads, before pulverising them and driving them there.  The cartoonish Conor McGregor is the bad kind of stunt casting The first half is full of similarly knowing touches. Then Conor McGregor strides into the movie, serving both as Dalton’s brawny nemesis and testosterone-fuelled comic relief, and subtlety bec

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

4 out of 5 stars

Do you work to live or live to work? If you’ve got a half-decent job, it might just be the latter. For young millennial Angela, a hard-pressed PA at a Bucharest film production company in Radu Jude’s self-described tale of ‘Cinema and Economics in Two Parts’, it’s barely even the former. She’s a pissed-off but hard-working member of the gig economy, grinding through a 16-hour shift. The ‘Ode to Joy’ on her ringtone feels strictly ironic. Played by Ilinca Manolache with gum-chewing insouciance and a total absence of bullshit, Angela schlepps around the city in her car, blasting out Romanian turbo-folk and hip hop on the radio, flicking V signs at abusive motorists, and generally trying to keep her eyes open as she films victims of industrial accidents sharing their testimonies. The end result will be a corporate video encouraging workers to wear their safety gear – a message that, by implication, makes these broken-down ex-employees culpable in their own misfortune.The hypocrisy in this doesn’t quite lead to a political awakening in Angela as she travels from assignment to assignment. Instead, Jude shows how the demands of this working life turns the smallest gesture of personal autonomy into an act of defiance. Even a quick after-hours shag with an older man puts her behind the clock and scrambling for excuses. Angela’s creative outlet is a TikTok character called Bobita (Manolache’s own lockdown creation), a wildly offensive Andrew Tate-like caricature, complete with bald he

Stopmotion

Stopmotion

4 out of 5 stars

If Aardman hired David Cronenberg to reboot ’80s Plasticine scamp Morph, it might look a bit like this creepy collision of body horror and stop-motion craft. It’s a wildly inventive spurt of bug-eyed British gore that pulls the innards out of the creative process. Quite literally, at some points. Game of Thrones’ Aisling Franciosi was a torrent of female rage in rape revenge thriller The Nightingale. Here, the anguish is channelled inwardly as her stop-motion filmmaker Ella Blake grasps for the inspiration to finish her puppet film, gradually losing her moorings in the process. It doesn’t help Ella’s state of mind that her twisted fairy tale is set in a tangled wood where a trembling puppet is stalked by a grotesque figure called the Ashman. Or that she lives under the shadow of her disapproving mother (Stella Gonet), a legendary animator incapacitated by a stroke and content to sit at her shoulder pointing out what she’s doing wrong. Boyfriend Tom (Tom York) is handsy rather than helpful.  ‘Great artists always put themselves into their work,’ whispers her neighbour, played with impish glee by nine-year-old Caoilinn Springall. She’s a cheery poppet who slowly morphs into a malicious muse, with the unnamed girl soon dishing out the darkest notes imaginable – at least one involving a Stanley knife. It’s a wildly inventive spurt of bug-eyed British gore  The psychological scares stem from the medium itself by debut director Robert Morgan and are underlined by composer Lola de

Out of Darkness

Out of Darkness

4 out of 5 stars

This clever entry to the things-get-freaky-in-the-woods horror canon – fellow entries: The Blair Witch Project, Dog Soldiers, The Witch, The Ritual – turns the clock back to the misty, starvation-stalked days of early man, where a band of hunter-gatherers find themselves hunted, and in one case, gathered, by something deeply malevolent.  Actually, it’s an early woman who gives the film its spine. Extraordinary’s Safia Oakley-Green plays Beyah, a fierce ‘stray’ reluctantly adopted by a small group of nomads traversing this unpromising country to find sanctuary. She gets a few crumbs of solidarity and welcome from Kit Young’s earnest wannabe-warrior that are noticeably absent from Chuku Modu’s brooding alpha and the rest of the group. Out of Darkness wisely dedicates its early scenes to establishing that tense dynamic. These Paleolithic travellers need each other… but how much? The small fault lines quickly become chasms when the nastiness breaks out. As an outsider, Beyah is the most vulnerable once they step into a forest that seems to hold some kind of demonic presence.  Why not risk death by demon when the exposure will get you anyway? Debut director Andrew Cumming makes full use of landscape and time period. Horror often has a problem with characters’ annoyingly faulty decision-making; here, their hierarchy of needs, with food and shelter to the fore, makes self-endangering choices more than believable. Why not risk death by demon when the exposure and hunger will get you

Dune: Part Two

Dune: Part Two

4 out of 5 stars

Beyond its breathtaking battles and galactic machinations, all soundtracked by a Hans Zimmer score in which the German composer seems to have set all the nobs turned to ‘loudest possible’, what’s most impressive about this seriously-impressive blockbuster sequel takes place beneath the surface. And it’s not the colossal sandworms. No, it’s the subtle character shifts that make Dune: Part Two cerebral as well as cacophonous. The plates are always moving in Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novels: today’s heroes are tomorrow’s pile of corpses. Denis Villeneuve, a writer-director who’s been keen to get his teeth into the tough stuff since his early work like Polytechnique (2009) and Incendies (2010), gets all this. And his screenplay, again co-written with Prometheus’s Jon Spaihts, gives us a hero’s journey with real devil in it. As a sequel, it works for the same reasons that make The Empire Strikes Back so many people’s favourite Star Wars film: there’s a darkness, a bleakness, that makes the fist-pumping moments feel all-the-more earned. There’s a sense, too, that the good guys may not win out. If they’re even good.  It opens with just that stark vision of piled corpses. The vanquished Atreides clan lies smoldering on the inhospitable landscape of Arrakis, while the treacherous Harkonnen, spearheaded by Dave Bautista’s thuggish ‘Beast’, set about harvesting the place for its spice reserves. Only Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides and his mystical Bene Gesserit mum, Jessica (Rebe

Argylle

Argylle

Oh, for the misplaced confidence of a Matthew Vaughn spy caper. With Kingsman, the Brit filmmaker made a franchise of a Nuts mag Bond movie with bum sex jokes, and judging by its sequel-baiting post-credit sting, there’ll be similar hopes for Argylle. It’d be a lot more than this cocksure but overlong and under-funny espionage action-thriller deserves. For all the efforts of a bang-on-form Sam Rockwell doing his best Jason Bourne, the endless CGI and half-developed ideas satisfy neither the eyes nor the brain.  The sorta-Hitchcockian premise – Bryce Dallas Howard’s successful spy writer gets taken for a real spy and Rockwell’s agent steps in to save her, while Bryan Cranston’s bad guys hunt her down – spawns plenty of twists, some of which make more sense than others. There are some showy fight scenes presented in the Vaughn house style (needle drops, slo-mo, more CGI). It all looks so ugly, though, and cries out for more jokes. Forget North by Northwest, this smug misfire goes south. In cinemas worldwide Feb 2.

American Fiction

American Fiction

4 out of 5 stars

The Oscars get a lot of stuff wrong – envelope mix-ups, mani cam, that whole night with James Franco and Anne Hathaway that no one ever talks about, Green Book – but they regularly redeem themselves by swinging a spotlight onto the worthy, but criminally under-heralded. And this year the Academy has seen Jeffrey Wright, too often a stalwart supporting turn on the big screen, and thought: yep, this guy can do a lot more than turn up and give Batman and 007 handy intel. And what a vehicle this adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel ‘Erasure’ is for the erstwhile Felix Leiter. It’s his meatiest, and best, film role since his breakthrough as Jean-Michel Basquiat in Basquiat three whole decades ago. In fact, it’s two of them. His worthy but low-selling writer Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison creates a literary alter ego, an ex-con called Stagg. R. Leigh, when his arm is twisted into writing a stereotypical ‘Black’ novel called ‘My Pafology’ (initially, he wants to call it ‘Fuck’). There’s no money in literature, his agent (John Ortiz) reasons. But tell a story of deprivation, drugs and crime in the ghetto, preferably involving a stretch in prison? Kerr-ching. The comic potential in this scenario is more than fulfilled. Wright is hilarious both as the bemused, cranky Monk, watching on aghast as a fellow writer (Issa Rae) reads from her phony poverty memoir ‘We's Lives In Da Ghetto’ to a rapt white audience, and when he’s going full ‘gangsta’ as the growling Leigh. It crystallises in

A Real Pain

A Real Pain

4 out of 5 stars

Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg play once-tight cousins in a road trip comedy-drama that has the latter returning to his Jewish-Polish roots to get to grips with his real family history. Culkin, just as motor-mouthed and f-bombing as Succession’s Roman Roy, but here with an extra slug of despair, is the manic yin to Eisenberg’s neurotic but compassionate yang. It’s an inspired on-screen pairing that plays to both actor’s strengths and finds space for melancholy amid some deeply awkward laughs. The set-up sees Eisenberg’s digital ad salesman David leaving his beloved wife and daughter at home to accompany Culkin’s manically exuberant Benji on a trip to Poland. The pair are tracing the younger life of their now-deceased grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, and their emotionally draining itinerary holds ghettos, concentration camps and a journey to bubbe’s hometown. So what could go wrong for a man with absolutely no filter joining a tour of Holocaust sites? Obviously, everything. In an assured debut that owes a little something to the thorny naturalism of Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip series, Eisenberg-the-filmmaker leans on Eisenberg-the-actor to keep things grounded. David is a perennial worrier, and one of his major concerns is what people around him are thinking. Being stuck with Benji, therefore, is a burden. But he worries deeply for his cousin, too, and loves him too. Culkin has the much showier role as Benji. He flips out and vacates the group’s first-class train carr

The Color Purple

The Color Purple

3 out of 5 stars

If The Producers’ Max Bialystock had been looking for a different kind of keep-the-punters-away tax avoidance scheme and decided that ‘Springtime for Hitler’ wasn’t quite on-the-nose enough, he might have staged a musical about abuse, rape and incest set in the American Deep South. Surely big show tunes sharing the stage with domestic abusers would be the kind of jarring that ensures empty seats every night and keeps the IRS at bay? Except, the massive success of The Color Purple on the Broadway stage gives emphatic, Tony-nominated lie to that notion. The pared-back 2015 revival, in particular, made an ironclad case that big songs and deep sorrows aren’t necessarily oil and water. This polished new movie version of The Color Purple, adapted from the same stage musical (itself adapted from Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-winning novel), doesn’t make that case nearly as convincingly. It’s far from a ham-fisted, tasteless Bialystocky nightmare. But neither does it avoid some jarring dissonance, as Celie, a young Black woman in 1900s Georgia, goes from a deep personal hell to some hard-won peace via slickly choreographed saloon-bar stompers, banjo-picking blues numbers, and an awkwardly-staged soul ballad framed within an RKO-style dream sequence. Celie is played by American Idol breakout Fantasia Barrino, who took the role on its 2010 US tour and has the vocal and emotional range to stir the heart, even as showier characters turn up to overshadow her. The film opens with the tone-settin

The Promised Land

The Promised Land

4 out of 5 stars

The most gripping film about potato farming since The Martian, this Danish period epic has Mads Mikkelsen on imperious form as a former soldier on an impossible mission to cultivate the bleak and forbidding landscape of Jutland.  The title – its grabbier Danish name ‘Bastarden’ captures the film’s fierce spirit better – refers to a scrubby peninsular in the country’s western fringes. It’s so barren, everyone in the 18th century court of Frederick V has all but given up on it. Fortunately, there’s one thing more weathered and rugged than this forbidding landscape: Mikkelsen’s desperate army veteran Captain Ludvig Kahlen. This dogged and down-on-his-luck character has a pitch for the bigwigs: he will cultivate the land for the crown and in return, the king will ennoble him. It’s a safe bet for the crown. ‘The heath cannot be tamed’ is the received wisdom. Early scenes, framed in widescreen under leaden skies, see Kahlen grinding fruitlessly away. He builds a homestead, hiring a pair of escaped servants to help, and forlornly tries to coax life from the dead soil. Danish filmmaker Nikolaj Arcel lets us feel the biting wind on Kahlen’s back and sense the fatigue, before ramping up the stakes with an old-fashioned villain. Enter Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg, extremely hissable), a local landowner who takes a jealous interest in the farmer’s progress, eager to maintain the status quo in his corner of Denmark. The Promised Land makes for a gripping man-versus-wilderness su

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The best Easter movies to stream this bank holiday weekend

The best Easter movies to stream this bank holiday weekend

When it comes to movies, Easter definitely feels like Christmas’s poor relation. But while it may not have a canon to match all those Yuletide classics – and there’s definitely a preponderance of bunnies and Bible stories – there are a bunch of Good Friday goodies to enjoy. We’ve picked out a few for every taste to watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime and other spiritually-enhanced streaming sites. Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) Not wanting to offend the world’s bazillion Christians was the furthest thought from the Monty Python gang’s mind in this lol-rich departure from the gospel story. Instead of Jesus, we follow Brian (Graham Chapman), a young Jewish man who is hailed as the messiah, has a run-in with the People’s Front of Judea (and the Judean People’s Front), falls foul of the Romans, and finally ends up stuck up on a cross. It’s all a massive misunderstanding, because as his mum says: ‘He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.’ If you want to look on the bright side this weekend, look no further. The Long Good Friday (1980) Never mind about whether ‘Die Hard’ is a Christmas movie, the real question is whether ‘The Long Good Friday’ is an Easter movie. And fackin’ right it is. Okay, Bob Hoskins’ cockney gangster Harold Shand lacks some of the verbal niceties of a proper messiah – you can’t really see Jesus growling: ‘The Romans? I’ve shit ’em!’ – but his efforts to bring the Olympics to

Where Is ‘The Gentlemen’ Filmed? Inside the real Badminton House behind the Netflix series

Where Is ‘The Gentlemen’ Filmed? Inside the real Badminton House behind the Netflix series

Bish, bosh, wallop. That’s right: Guy Ritchie is welcoming us back into his well-heeled, loose-moraled world of English toffs, cockney geezers and shady characters up to no good in entertaining fashion. Spinning off from his own 2020 comedy-thriller ‘The Gentlemen’, the filmmaker’s new eight-part Netflix series is a story of aristocrats slumming it with society’s violent and undesirable.It’s all drug labs and black Labs as Theo James’s army officer, Edward Horniman, inherits a 15,000 acre estate called Halstead Manor only to find that it comes with its own subterranean weed farm and drugs baron. That man, Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone), is in prison, leaving his equally dangerous daughter, Susie (Kaya Scodelario), calling the shots. Two heirs, zero graces, in other words. Here’s how – and where – Ritchie created his latest criminal enterprise.   Photograph: Netflix Badminton House, Gloucestershire Halstead Manor, the ancestral seat inherited by James’s Eddie Halstead, was filmed at Gloucestershire’s Badminton House, actually the ancestral home of the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort – as well as venue for the Badminton Horse Trials. ‘Badminton felt immediately right for Halstead, because it’s a proper, lived-in home, rather than a National Trust museum,’ explains location manager Iggy Ellis. ‘There’d be walking sticks by the door or a few shotgun rounds from where they’d been out shooting. There were cracks and tired bits, as you’d get in every family home. But there were also oil

Is ‘Mary & George’ a true story? The surprising history to know behind the royal drama

Is ‘Mary & George’ a true story? The surprising history to know behind the royal drama

Turns out our history teachers lied to us – the Gunpowder Plot wasn’t the most exciting thing to happen during the reign of James I.  Happily, Sky Atlantic’s new period romp ‘Mary & George’ is here to fill in the gaps. It stars US indie cinema darling Julianne Moore as a Jacobean widow searching for a new fortune in the court of the Stuart monarch. With British actor Nicholas Galitzine (‘Red, White and Royal Blue’) playing George Villiers, her ladder-climbing smokeshow of a son, it combines the exquisite salaciousness of ‘The Favourite’ with ‘Bridgerton’s gossipy tongue – or think ‘Pride and Prejudice’ on Viagra. Or ‘Wolf Hall’ meets ‘Love Island’. Anyway, you get the idea. But how accurate is the history behind the show? And how queer was this era in British history? We’ve gone full Letts revise to fill in the gaps.  Warning: contains ‘Mary & George’ plot spoilers Photograph: Sky UKJulianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine in ‘Mary & George’ Is Mary & George based on a true story?  Yes, mainly. Adapted by playwright English DC Moore from Benjamin Woolley’s 2017 non-fiction book ‘The King’s Assassin’, ‘Mary & George’ dramatises events that took place in the court of James I (or James VI and I, to give him his full Anglo-Scottish title) in the – specifically, the affair between King James and George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. Mary’s instincts were both Machiavellian and maternal. The death of her husband – at her own hands, admittedly – left her in a parlous state, finan

The 8 Oscars night moments you need to see (and where to see them)

The 8 Oscars night moments you need to see (and where to see them)

So, the Oscars went pretty well, all in all. The right envelopes were opened, most of the jokes landed and crucially, no one got punched. It was handled by Jimmy Kimmel with his customary mix of confidence and gentle, piss-taking chutzpah, albeit without the calibre of material of his previous hosting gigs. If the awards went to the predicted winners, no one was grumbling too much about that – Lily Gladstone’s disappointing loss in the Best Actress category aside. In fact, the show felt like a straightforward win after many tricky years. Plenty of moments landed brilliantly, both in the room and with TV audiences around the world. Whether the Oscars can become a ratings juggernaut again is doubtful, but more nights like this will give it a fighting chance. Here’s what we loved about the night – and a couple of things we didn’t. 1. Ryan Gosling’s Kenergy Baby Goose was arguably the night’s MVP, the Oppenheimer crew aside. Few have combined loosey-goosey charm with A-list charisma like Gosling since prime Brad Pitt – and the Barbie star is multiples funnier. The Oscars organisers – and ABC camera crews – leant into those qualities at regular intervals. An entertainingly catty Barbie vs Oppenheimer on-stage exchange with Emily Blunt served as a precursor for the night’s grandstand moment: a rendition of ‘I’m Just Ken’ that riffed on Gentlemen Prefers Blondes’ ‘Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend’ sequence and ended with Slash, Mark Ronson and about 300 Kens on stage and most of th

Os 8 momentos da noite dos Óscares que tem de ver

Os 8 momentos da noite dos Óscares que tem de ver

Bom, no geral, os Óscares correram bastante bem. Abriram-se os envelopes certos, a maior parte das piadas funcionou e, mais importante, ninguém levou um murro. Jimmy Kimmel conduziu a cerimónia com a sua habitual mistura de confiança e de coragem, embora sem o calibre dos seus anteriores trabalhos como apresentador, e ninguém se queixou de os prémios terem ido para os vencedores previstos – à parte a derrota decepcionante de Lily Gladstone na categoria de Melhor Actriz. Na verdade, o espectáculo pareceu uma vitória clara para a Academia, depois de vários anos complicados, e teve muitos momentos brilhantes, tanto na sala como nas audiências televisivas de todo o mundo. Não é certo que os Óscares consigam voltar a ser um êxito de audiências, mas mais noites como esta dar-lhe-ão uma oportunidade de lutar. Eis o que adorámos na gala deste domingo – e algumas coisas de que não gostámos. 1. A Kenergia de Ryan Gosling O Baby Goose foi, sem dúvida, o MVP da noite, desconsiderando a equipa Oppenheimer. Poucos conseguem combinar charme descontraído com carisma de Lista-A como Gosling, pelo menos desde os tempos áureos de Brad Pitt – e a estrela de Barbie é muito mais engraçada. Os organizadores dos Óscares – e as equipas de realização da ABC – aproveitaram essas qualidades em intervalos regulares. Uma entretida troca de palavras entre Barbie e Oppenheimer, com Emily Blunt em palco, precedeu o momento alto da noite: uma interpretação de "I'm Just Ken" que brincou com a sequência de "Dia

Oscars 2024: ‘Oppenheimer’, Emma Stone and ‘Poor Things’ win big

Oscars 2024: ‘Oppenheimer’, Emma Stone and ‘Poor Things’ win big

The 96th Academy Awards delivered glory for Oppenheimer and Christopher Nolan. As expected, the Londoner’s atomic age origin story added the Best Picture Oscar to its gigantic box-office haul over the past eight months.  2023 was the year of Everything Everywhere All At Once, but Oppenheimer matched the indie sci-fi’s seven wins, dominating the acting and technical categories. Nolan, who has only been nominated once before in the category, for Dunkirk, won Best Director, and his stars Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr won Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively. Murphy became the first Irish-born actor to win an Oscar for Best Actor (Dublin-born Brenda Fricker won Best Supporting Actress for My Left Foot back in 1990). Emma Stone won her second Best Actress Oscar for her performance as Bella Baxter in ‘Poor Things’, pipping category favourite Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone to the prize.  Da’Vine Joy Randolph won Best Supporting Actress for her performance as The Holdovers’ grieving but effervescent school cook. ‘Poor Things’ went on a hot streak in the craft categories, picking up Best Costume Design, Best Hair and Make-up, and Best Production Design in quick succession. Jonathan Glazer’s German-language Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest won Best International Film, the first British film to take the honour, along with Best Sound.  And Wes Anderson finally landed an Oscar – at the eighth time of asking. His pithy Roald Dahl adaptation The Wonderful

Six life-enhancing films at BFI Flare (that you can still get tickets for)

Six life-enhancing films at BFI Flare (that you can still get tickets for)

The UK’s largest queer film event, not to mention a major fixture in London’s cultural calendar, BFI Flare returns to the BFI Southbank next week for its 38th edition, showcasing the best new LGBTQ+ cinema from around the world over ten jam-packed days. If you’ve not yet managed to grab tickets to some of the big hitters, be sure to check out the 'Best of the Fest’ programme on the festival’s final day. It just went on sale yesterday, and features additional screenings of all the most popular picks. But if you have missed out on the big, showy titles, don’t worry! There are still loads of great under-the-radar offerings worthy of your attention. Here are a few of our faves. Photograph: BFI Flare 1. Silver Haze Dutch director Sacha Polak’s fourth feature film sees her reunite with actress Vicky Knight, who previously won a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit award for her role as an acid attack survivor in Polak’s 2019 film ‘Dirty God’. Drawing inspiration from Knight’s own childhood, during which she survived an arson attack on her uncle’s pub, ‘Silver Haze’ is a powerful depiction of working-class Britain, in which Knight plays a 23-year-old nurse and burns victim who starts a relationship with one of her patients.  Photograph: BFI Flare 2. Don’t Ever Stop As a long-running resident at major gay nightclubs Heaven and Trade, Birmingham-born producer and DJ Tony De Vit was a hugely influential figure in London’s gay nightlife scene in the ’80s and ’90s, keeping a generation of young g

How to watch the Oscars 2024 in the UK – including start time

How to watch the Oscars 2024 in the UK – including start time

This year’s Academy Awards take place in their usual home of LA’s Dolby Theater on Sunday night, UK time. Yes, it may feel like awards season has been running for 76 months, but it’s finally drawing to a close with Hollywood’s night of nights. The Globes, BAFTAs, SAG and WGA awards are behind us. All that remains is to find out which of the past year’s most-praised movies will be taking home the treasure. Of course, it never fails to produce enough surprises, shocks and WTF moments to make tuning in worthwhile – even late on a Sunday night. When are the Oscars 2024? The 96th Academy Awards take place on Sunday, March 10.  What time will the Oscars air in the UK? In excellent news for movie-loving night owls in the UK, this year’s Academy Awards have moved forward by an hour. Instead of prising your eyelids open with a toothpick while some on-stage madness goes down at 3am, you’ll be able to soak it up at the bright and breezy hour of – checks world clock – 2am. Okay, so it’s not a major difference for UK reviews but it’s nice that the show will get underway at midnight. Prepare your sofa and snacks accordingly.  How to watch the Oscars in the UK Unlike in previous years, when they’ve aired on Sky, the Oscars are free to view this year. The whole ceremony, and red carpet bits, will be airing on ITV1 and ITVX in the UK. Hosted by Jonathan Ross, the shindig gets underway at 10.30pm. Tune in to find out who will be winning and maybe even finding their way onto our pantheon of Aca

Four ‘Human Rights Watch Film Festival’ screenings to stop you in your tracks

Four ‘Human Rights Watch Film Festival’ screenings to stop you in your tracks

One of London’s most powerful and urgent film festivals, Human Rights Watch is an annual showcase of the best new films tackling the kind of issues that keep us all up at night. Anyone with an interest in the state of the world, social justice, oppression, or just the creation of positive, life-affirming communities will find something to get their teeth into at the fest run by the global human rights NGO. This year – the festival’s 28th – is no exception. Screening at Barbican Cinema and Shoreditch’s Rich Mix from March 14 are ten films that put a lens on subjects from ISIS’s indoctrination of a teenage girl to the aftermath of police brutality to the upbeat adventures of LGBTQ+ teens in a remote summer camp in Canada. We asked festival programmer Frances Underhill to pick four favourites from the line-up. Photograph: Human Rights Watch Film Festival‘After the Fire’ After the Fire ‘This is an incredible drama inspired by multiple police killings in France. It’s about a Strasbourg family affected by police brutality after their son is murdered, and the burden that's placed on them after this tragedy happens. The sister is very gung-ho: you see her becoming an activist as she's called to join this fight, while her dad and younger sister don't want this to turn into years of fighting the police. Those interpersonal dynamics play out in a really interesting and heartbreaking way.See it if you loved: ‘Les Misérables’ Photograph: Human Rights Watch Film Festival‘Summer Qamp’ S

Here’s what’s inside this year’s Oscars goodie bags

Here’s what’s inside this year’s Oscars goodie bags

Oscar goodie bags are famously extra. Forget a small bag of popcorn and maybe a slice of cake wrapped in tissue, we’re talking freebies that will make your eyes pop. For her Winter’s Bone nomination, Jennifer Lawrence picked up a free luxe trip to Belize. ‘Un-Belize-able,’ was her verdict. This year’s nominees will be similarly spoiled, with a goodie bag worth an estimated $100,000 coming their way on Sunday.  Deseret News reports that the swag bag, assembled by ‘LA-based entertainment marketing company’ Distinctive Assets, will be gifting Lily Gladstone, Carey Mulligan, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Mark Ruffalo and their fellow nominees with such restorative treats as a seven-day wellness retreat, a luxury Swiss getaway and  Goodie bag purists will be happy to know that it does also include some popcorn, though obviously of the ‘gourmet’ variety. Adorably, there’s also 10,000 doggie meals thrown in, so American’s pooches won’t miss out on the treats.  Here’s what Christopher Nolan and co will be sorting through on Monday morning: A line of Miage ‘ultra-luxury transformative skincare products’ An all-inclusive Chalet Zermatt Peak ‘luxurious Swiss getaway’ A seven-day holistic wellness retreat A three-day trip to a private villa Luxury kitchen appliances  10,000 donated meals ‘from v-dog in support of PETA’s Global Compassion Fund’ A portable purse seat Upcycled designer pillows An in-home clinical sleep consultation A portable blender Gourmet popcorn A ‘red light sleep therapy devi

Where was ‘Dune 2’ filmed? All the stunning locations revealed

Where was ‘Dune 2’ filmed? All the stunning locations revealed

If you haven’t caught Dune: Part Two yet, you’re in for a treat. Epic desert battles, vicious intergalactic scheming, giant subterranean worms… it’s got ‘em all. Plus, a cast that features at least two of your favourite actors (Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgård) and one of literally everyones’ in Christopher Walken.  In common with most, our review is glowing (read it here), with the film’s widescreen real-world landscapes and striking sets drawing particular praise. Director Denis Villeneuve’s imagining of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi tomes finds new majesty as his blockbuster settles on the lethal, sand-encrusted planet of Arrakis, where the last surviving members of the Atreides dynasty, Paul (Chalamet) and his mum Lady Jessica (Ferguson), assimilate with the wary Freman people, with Zendaya’s Chani to the fore. Epic-scaled guerilla warfare kicks off as the evil Harkonnen clan attempts to secure its precious spice harvest.To film it, Villeneuve headed back to the deserts of Jordan, with its striking, wind-carved rock formations, augmented by a location in the UAE, soundstages in Hungary and even a first location in Italy to build out his sci-fi franchise as the story expands. Photograph: Warner Bros.Timothée Chalamet and Denis Villeneuve filming in the desert Where was Dune 2 filmed?  The first location used was a world away from the desert sands that have become a Dune mainstay. Br

‘Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice‘ – everything you need to know

‘Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice‘ – everything you need to know

The murder of Sarah Everard by an off-duty police officer in March, 2021, shook London – and Londoners – to the core. The shockwaves from the 33-year-old’s brutal death at the hands of Wayne Couzens, a serving police officer, still reverberate, with public trust in the Metropolitan Police plummeting since the crime and the subsequent handling of the Clapham Common vigil in Everard’s memory. Recent polling shows that only four percent of young women in London have a high level of trust in the Met.   A new documentary, ‘Sarah Everard: The Search For Justice’, will air on BBC One at 9pm on Wednesday, March 6 and promises to shine new light on the crime and its bitter fallout. The  60-minute programme will look into the 33-year-old London marketing executive’s murder and expose ‘how this devastating crime unfolded’. The production team has had Sarah Everard’s parents to call on in its research. They’ve expressed their hope that the doc will ‘contribute to the ongoing dialogue’ around violence against women’ and the policing of these kinds of cases. ‘They hope that it will bring increased focus to issues of women’s safety, and abuse of power by police and others in positions of authority,’ says the BBC. ‘The murder of Sarah Everard sent shockwaves across the country and ignited an urgent conversation about police failings and violence against women and girls,’ says Emma Loach, BBC lead commissioning editor for documentaries.  Also lending their voices to this bleak but critical Lo