Phil de Semlyen

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

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘TV’s golden age’ enough times over the past couple of decades to get wary of the hyperbole, but this year does seem to be shaping up to be a kind of mini golden age for the TV follow-up. Severance, Andor and The Last of Us all look like building on incredibly satisfying first runs with equally masterful second runs (even more masterful, in Severance’s case). The third season of The White Lotus has proved that, whether you love it or find it a touch too languorous, there’s no escaping Mike White’s transgressive privilege-in-paradise satire. Likewise for season 7 of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian-flavoured sci-fi Black Mirror. Watercooler viewing is everywhere at the moment,  and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Netflix has announced the finale of Squid Game this summer, along with the end of Stranger Things, a second run of Tim Burton’s Wednesday and about a zillion other things, while HBO is offering up a second season for Nathan Fielder’s genius/awkward comedy docuseries The Rehearsal. Here’s everything you need to see... so far.  RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows to watch in 2025📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

We’re living in prudish times. Cinematic sex has become an ongoing point of debate on social media – and according to the internet commentariat, sex in movies, for the most part, is bad. It’s no wonder, really, considering that movies themselves have, over the last two decades, taken a turn for the chaste.  Back in the ’80s and ’90s, though, you couldn’t throw an ice pick in the general direction of a movie theater without stabbing Michael Douglas’s bare ass. For a relatively brief moment of time, erotic thrillers – films intertwining sex and violence into a deliciously lurid, adults-only cocktail – ruled the multiplex. Sure, they were often problematic, and almost always trashy. But the onscreen sexlessness of the past 20 years has left us nostalgic for the simple, sleazy pleasures of the erotic thriller era. And we’re not the only ones, as hot-and-bothered movies like Challengers, Love Lies Bleeding and the meme-launching Babygirl were among the most buzzed-about films of 2024. So we decided to revisit (and rank) 35 of the all-time best. Many remain difficult to justify in this time of sexual puritanism – but that might be the exact reason we love them so much.  Recommended: 🍆 The 101 best sex scenes in movies😬 The 100 best thriller movies of all-time😍 The 100 best romantic films of all-time 🕵️ 40 murder mystery movies to test your sleuthing skills to the max🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

No movie genre is more misunderstood than romantic comedy. Frequently derided and dismissed as ‘chick flicks’, romcoms are, in truth, more broadly relatable than any other category of film. Who hasn’t been in love, in one form or another? And honestly, what’s funnier than the things humans do while under love’s spell? But the best romantic comedies don’t have to be straight-ahead farces to qualify – although, to be fair, many of them are. Some are sophisticated, drilling deep into the complexities of interpersonal relationships. Others are dark and cynical, because, well, love often sucks. Others are light and airy, or borderline fantastical. Love contains multitudes, and so do romantic comedies, and we considered it all when putting together this list of the best romcoms of all time.  Written by Dave Calhoun, Cath Clarke, Tom Huddleston, Kate Lloyd, Andy Kryza, Phil de Semlyen, Alim Kheraj & Matthew Singer Recommended: 😍 The 100 best romantic films of all-time🤣 The 100 best comedy movies😳 The 101 best sex scenes of all time🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

War is hell, but hell makes for great drama. Military conflict is at the centre of some of the greatest films ever made, and no wonder – few other man-made nightmares serve as such natural backdrops for suspense, horror and heroism. But the best war movies go deeper than mere cinematic bravado. They ask the important questions about the nature of war itself. Why do we fight? What happens when it’s over? And ultimately, is it ever worth it?  In considering the greatest war films ever made, we paid special attention to those movies that view combat from multiple angles. As a result, this list runs the gamut, from depictions of very real conflicts, including both world wars, Vietnam and the so-called ‘war on terror’, to fictional battles occurring on faraway planets. (We did not, however, count Star Wars – go cry into your Wookiee dolls, nerds.) If you’ve ever been on the frontlines yourself, these movies will resonate. And if you haven’t, hopefully they give you some small measure of understanding for what those who have fought have been through. Written by David Fear, Keith Uhlich, Joshua Rothkopf, Andy Kryza, Phil de Semlyen and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🎖️ The best World War I movies💥 The 50 best World War II movies🪖 The 20 best Vietnam War movies – as ranked by a military historian🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

As a parent, navigating your kid’s tweenage years is tough. No longer a kid but not yet a tornado of hormones, it’s a short-lived but awkward time that affects just about everything, up to and including movie nights. Where you happy little butterball could once be pleased with anything loud and colourful, now they’re getting more discerning. At the same time, they’re not so desperate to prove their maturity that they’re demanding a legal thriller or a Merchant Ivory costume drama. So how do you choose the right flick to please all audiences? Don’t freak out. We’re here to help. We’ve rounded up 36 movies that almost seem laser-guided to explode the pleasure centres of anyone between the ages of ten and 12. And the good news is that much of what works for that demographic is the same stuff you loved at the age, from ’80s blockbusters to silly comedies to adventure flicks to movies about young love and the struggle of growing up. Throw one of these on and you’ll be a hero, at least for one night.   Recommended: 🎒 The 100 best teen movies of all-time👪 The 50 best family films to stream on movie night🤣 The 35 best family comedy movies

When considering the best thrillers ever made, you’ll encounter many different kinds of thrills: from political intrigue and espionage to conspiracy, manipulation, gaslighting, and, of course, lots and lots of crime. As a movie genre, the thriller is also loosely defined – under its umbrella, you’ll find examples of science fiction, horror, heists, action, even comedy, along with the ever-nebulous ‘psychological thriller’ subdivision. The exact definition of a thriller may be hard to pin down, but you know one when you’re watching one. You’ll feel it, too – in your clammy palms and under your armpits, in your teeth as you grind down the enamel and your restless leg. When done right, a thriller prompts a visceral response more than just about any other genre. Here are a hundred great thrillers guaranteed to make you sit up, widen your eyes and leave your head spinning.  Written by Abbey Bender, Joshua Rothkopf, Yu An Su, Phil de Semlyen, Tom Huddleston, Andy Kryza, Tomris Laffly & Matthew Singer RECOMMENDED: 🕯️ The 35 steamiest erotic thrillers ever made😬 The best thriller movies on Netflix💰 The 60 most nerve-racking heist movies ever🧠 The greatest psychological thrillers ever made 

Summer may still feel – and actually be – a way off yet, but it’s never too early for outdoor cinema. Especially if you have warm clothes and access to a personal heater. The year’s first cab off the rank – Peckham and Stratford staple, Rooftop Film Club – is offering exactly that with its new ‘Fireside Loveseats’, with wood heaters to keep the early spring chill at bay as Londoners settle in for big blockbusters and a few old favourites. Expect more line-up announcements in the month or two ahead – and the likes of ‘Wicked’, ‘Gladiator II’, ‘Dune: Part Two’, ‘Inside Out 2’ and other 2025 hits to be big as the summer season kicks off in earnest. Watch this space for all the latest news and ticket info. Recommended: 📽️ The best cinemas in London💰 London’s best cheap cinemas

Like college kids and middle-aged divorcees flocking to the nearest beach or rooftop pool to reveal their revenge bods, summer is the time for Hollywood to show off. The movie industry is going into its most important time of year with some positive momentum, thanks to A Minecraft Movie, Sinners and Thunderbolts* , and the likely successes of Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning and Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch. And there’s reason to believe the money train will continue rolling, with James Gunn’s Superman rebooting the DC universe, Fantastic Four: First Steps looking to keep the Marvel revival moving and Jurassic World Rebirth bringing the dinosaur franchise back from extinction, with Scarlett Johannson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey in tow. Of course, nothing in this cinema landscape is guaranteed. Which films will actually hit big and which will have studio execs and industry watchers wringing their hands? We break it all down below with the 21 movies we’re most excited about in summer 2025.RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025

The horror movie kicked off with Robert Eggers’ vampire smash hit Nosferatu and the fanged fraternity are back in a big way in April with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a Southern gothic with Michael B Jordan. David F Sandberg’s (Lights Out) nocturnal nightmare Until Dawn, meanwhile, will boast as-yet unrevealed terrors as a group of friends attempt to survive a night in the woods. Don’t rule out the odd vamp in there, too. And that’s just the start for a horror resurgence: 28 Years Later, M3GAN 2.0, The Conjuring: Last Rites, SAW XI, The Black Phone 2.0 and a new Insidious movie are all adding new shocks to smash-hit franchises. Talk To Me pair Danny and Michael Philippou return with Bring Her Back and the Jordan Peele-produced Him hits in September. Oh, and Final Destination Bloodlines has delivered the second most watched horror trailer of all time. This list will be updated as the frights arrive, so keep checking back to see what’s worth shelling out for.RECOMMENDED: 🎃 The 100 best horror films ever made😱 The scariest movies based on a true story 🔥 The best horror films of 2024

The most historically complex wars have the greatest filmographies… discuss. Where World War II flicks have often been a showcase for straightforward heroism, the films of the Great War, like those of Vietnam, have had fewer moral certainties to work with. Filtered through the prism of filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Lewis Milestone, King Vidor, GW Pabst and others, the attritional grind of trench warfare has spawned more masterpieces than any other historic event – not to mention the Blackadder Goes Forth. Even 1917, the closest the cinema of World War I has to a Saving Private Ryan, ends with a bunch of men sent foolishly over the top to an unknown fate.    But which of these films have shown the conflict like it was and which have taken major liberties or just reinforced its myths? To help rank the best Great War films, we asked military historian and host of the Old Front Line podcast Paul Reed to dig into the most realistic depictions of the war on the big screen. 💥 The 50 best World War II movies⚔️ The best war films ever made🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

Outside of a few box-office smashes, 2024 was a relatively quiet year for movies, full of fascinating breakouts and leftfield successes, but few major events. But 2025 is shaping up a bit differently. While it’s still hard to spot another #Barbenheimer on the horizon, or even a Deadpool and Wolverine, the calendar is loaded with the return of monolithic franchises like Avatar, Mission: Impossible and Jurassic World and a few monolithic auteurs, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Bong Joon-ho, Lynne Ramsay, Spike Lee and Steven Soderbergh. Shoot, we might even get a Terrence Malick movie this year. Of course, the most exciting thing going into every year are the films you never see coming. Will we get another The Substance or Nickel Boys? Who knows? But that’s why we keep watching – and you can follow along with our ever-growing list of the best movies of the year below. RECOMMENDED: 📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)🔥 The must-see films for 2025 you can't miss🎥 The 101 greatest films ever made

Imagine George Clooney being coerced into playing Donald Trump in a straight-faced hagiography – perhaps directed by one of White House’s new Special Ambassadors – and you’ve got the predicament faced by the Egyptian movie star at the heart of Swedish-Egyptian director Tarik Saleh’s new thriller. George Fahmy (Fares Fares), the so-called ‘Pharaoh of the Screen’, is a much-loved fiftysomething actor carving out a comfortable, westernised living on Cairo’s soundstages and in its members’ bars, parroting Samuel Beckett quotes to the much younger girlfriend (Lyna Khoudri) who looks to him for a career leg-up. But under the repressive rule of real-life president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, that feckless lifestyle leaves him wide open to blackmail. It’s made clear that if he wants to continue having a career and keep his student son out of jail, he’ll have to don el-Sisi’s old military uniform for a propaganda film called The Will of the People. He’s already a cliché, they want to make him a tool too. ‘Nothing is for free,’ he’s told. Including his freedom.  Fares, star of the two previous films in Saleh’s ‘Cairo trilogy’, The Nile Hilton Incident (2017) and The Cairo Conspiracy (2023), is a hoot as an egotistical dilettante whose dreams of an easy life in a difficult country are scuppered in brutal fashion.  It’s an Armando Iannucci-esque send-up of something deadly serious Saleh uses the first half to poke fun at both the regime and the actor, before hairpinning into a final stretch w

After blowing us away with her cannibalism coming-of-age debut Raw and the car-fucking whirlwind that was Titane, a follow-up that even swept up the Palme d’Or in its wake, French auteur Julia Ducournau overthinks it with a bloviating, 1980s-set family drama that’s tinged with sci-fi elements but fails to strike for the heart.  Ducournau’s films already have a rep for causing extreme reactions – Raw’s premiere famously had audience members fainting – and sure enough, someone was stretchered out of the Cannes screening of Alpha.  It’s harder to know what caused the health scare this time. Sure, the needle-phobic will find the opening shot, of 13-year-old free spirit Alpha (Mélissa Boros) getting a bloody ‘A’ carved into her arm while baked at a school friend’s party, a lot to stomach – and needles are never far from the frame in a film that imagines an Aids-like virus rife among the sexually active and drug users.  In a twist that owes something to Greek mythology and something to Cronenberg, sufferers gradually turn to marble, breathing frost and crumbling to dust like alabaster statues in an ancient land. No wonder, then, doctor mum (Extraction’s Golshifteh Farahani) is worried sick that her daughter has contracted the virus from a dirty tattooist’s needle.  Sadly, Ducournau’s latest hand grenade is a dud That striking visual detail aside, Alpha represents a disappointing gear-change for Ducournau that casts a compassionate eye on the loving, angry chaos of family dynamics

No one who’s fallen for the timeless and charmingly antic worlds of Sylvain Chomet will be disappointed by this poignant eulogy to one of France’s great, if now decidedly uncool 20th century artists. Here, the French animator swaps the escapist fantasias of The Triplets of Belleville (2003) and The Illusionist (2010) for a biopic that, while more conventional, still holds wonders of its own in its depiction of an extraordinary career and 60-odd eventful years of French history. The life in question belongs to inventor, teacher, playwright, novelist and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol (voiced by Laurent Lafitte). Best know outside the Republic as the author of Jean de Florette and Manon de Sources, but a fixture on school syllabuses in his homeland, he’s introduced receiving a smattering of applause in a sparsely attended Parisian theatre in 1956. Well-meaning friends note that soaring petrol prices caused by the Suez crisis are keeping people at home. Pagnol, though, knows his star is waned. ‘The young will sweep us under the carpet,’ he later laments at a soirée at his home, a grand Parisian pile taking on the air of a mausoleum. An artist confronted by his own obsolescence, Pagnol is reluctantly forced into one final act of creation: a memoir that’s to be serialised by Elle magazine. Flashbacks to the eventful chapters he jots down make up the meat of the film. It’s a framing device you’ve seen a hundred times before, but Chomet freshens it up by introducing the younger Pagnol as

A bold new voice is born with this story of a dad and his two sons set over a single day in Nigeria as it teeters on the edge of a coup. Nigerian-British filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr taps into universal feelings – of wide-eyed childhood discovery, parental responsibility and a feeling of a world spinning out of control – and backdrops it with an immersive sense of controlled chaos.  Written by the director and his older brother Wade and fuelled with their childhood memories, the result is touching, contemplative and unsettling – a film with the gentle impressionist gaze of Moonlight, the hard-scrabble edge of Bicycle Thieves, and a fourth-wall-breaking daring all of its own. My Father’s Shadow is also coming-of-age story – an unusual one for focusing as much on its struggling but well-intentioned dad, Folarin (Gangs of London’s Sope Dirisu), striving to be a better man, as his two boys, 11-year-old Remi (Chibuike Marvellous Egbo) and eight-year-old Akin (Godwin Egbo).  It’s 1993 and Nigeria has gone to the polls to elect a new president. Folarin hopes it will be social democrat MKO Abiola, but as he travels with his sons into Lagos, word spreads of a spate of killings by a military regime looking to cling to power. The country is divided. Petrol is scarce. Tension throbs from the frame. ‘Nigeria needs discipline,’ mutters a passenger on their bus ride into the city, advocating for the jackbooted junta to come.  Davies Jr’s bold debut speaks with a murmur and beats like a drum

If being locked in the Criterion Closet for a couple of hours sounds like heaven, Richard Linklater has made the perfect film for you. It’s a playful, black-and-white making-of story for Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave classic Breathless – ‘À Bout de Souffle’ to the cinephile crowd – that captures a revolutionary moment in cinema history with reverence and a touch of cheek. You’ll probably know movies that backdrop the story: Godard’s 1960 crime drama Breathless is the key text, of course, but Truffaut’s Cannes premiere of The 400 Blows is also recreated with a wink to contemporary Cannes-goers, and Linklater offers access-all-areas visits to the sets of Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket and Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic noir Bob le Flambeur too. But chronology is king here. When he’s introduced, coolly intellectual behind his ever-present shades, Godard (played with distracted charisma by Parisian photographer Guillaume Marbeck) has yet to put someone else’s money where his sizeable mouth is. The French New Wave has begun and his fellow critics at film mag Cahiers du Cinéma, including Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, and his best pal François Truffaut, have begun to establish themselves as filmmakers. Godard is in danger of being left behind, a kind of chic troll snarking from the sidelines. But as Godard famously said, all you need to make a film is a gun and a girl. His opportunity comes via the sponsorship of his soon-to-be long-suffering producer Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyf

As Marvel has been learning, it’s hard to keep a franchise fresh and relevant. Mission: Impossible, though, may be the first to be too relevant. The idea of all-powerful artificial intelligence attempting to nuke the planet back to the Stone Age was a bit of escapist fun in the days of Terminator 2. Now? It feels like something Sam Altman might casually raise in an OpenAI brainstorming session.   If the stakes in Final Reckoning – the eight M:I movie and a full stop of sorts for the series – are triggering (and in fairness, the pilot episode of the ’60s TV series did involve a couple of rogue nuclear warheads, so World War III has been on its mind before), the execution is regularly breathtaking. Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s storytelling ambition is off the scales here – a bug as well as a feature. Not content with springboarding off the events in Dead Reckoning, The Final Reckoning stitches in call backs to the original Brian De Palma movie and even JJ Abrams’ unloved Mission: Impossible III.  This makes for an opening 30 minutes that are treacly when they need to be spry and nimble. It’s exposition served five ways, with flashbacks and flashes forward (Mission: Impossible’s ‘here’s what you’re about to see…’ opening credits makes it all start to feel like Tenet), and an entire scene where Cruise is plugged into a kind of hypobaric exposition chamber.  So, a quick reminder: The Entity, a malevolent AI, now controls the entire internet from a sunken Russian submari

Stephen Knight’s 2013 thriller Locke gave us Tom Hardy, a car, a mobile phone and the not (on paper), wildly exciting prospect of a cement pour and generated from those sparse ingredients enough tension to trigger a panic attack. Hallow Road, directed by Babak Anvari, employs the same few elements, only – and with apologies to concrete enthusiasts – with even higher stakes: at the other end of the phone line is a panicked girl and the body of a young woman she’s just run over in the dead of night on a forest road. Can her parents reach her in time, is the woman still alive, and will the trio make the right decisions along the way?  If you don’t immediately assume the answer to at least one of those is ‘no’, you’ve not seen Anvari’s terrific debut Under the Shadow, which unleashed a malevolent djinn on a mum and daughter in wartorn Tehran. The British-Iranian filmmaker does not do happy families. And this taut morality tale even adds a jittery edge of superstition and folky horror to the mix.  It opens with a deceptively serene tableau: a half-eaten stew on the kitchen table of a rural home; two parents – Rosamund Pike’s Maddie and Matthew Rhys’s Frank – asleep in separate rooms at 2am. Then Maddie’s phone rings and the panicked voice of the pair’s 18-year-old daughter Alice (Megan McDonnell) fills in the gaps: there’s been an argument, Alice has stormed off in dad’s car and hit a young woman in the woods. The British-Iranian filmmaker does not do happy families The screenpla

There’ve been a host of great rom-coms down the years, but good comedies about heartbreak are altogether thinner on the ground. Their ingredients – big laughs and quiet grief – are a tough mix, but when they land, like La La Land, they tend to linger. Welcome, then, to La La Island. Writer-actors Tim Key and Tom Basden’s three-hander, set on a remote British isle, have delivered a rare blend of unkempt charm, emotional precision and soulful folk music with this feature-length expansion of their own 2007 short, The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island.   Key, best known on screen as Alan Partridge’s befuddled Sidekick Simon and as an award-winning stand-up off it, plays Charles, a jovial but lonely lottery winner who has retreated to this remote idyll to mourn his wife and wear out the LPs of his favourite folk duo, McGwyer Mortimer. Once the ‘it’ couple on the folk music scene, Herb McGwyer (Basden) and Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) have long since split up – romantically and musically – but for Charles, their music is both the sound of happier times and the perfect articulation of his sadness. It’s Indecent Proposal, only with more knitwear and plaintive strumming In the manner of Robert Redford in Indecent Proposal, only with a lot more knitwear and plaintive strumming, he’s offered them a suitcase of cash in return for a reunion gig on his island. Only, he sold it to them both as a solo gig. It’s a funny, smart premise that pays off in myriad ways. Director Jam

Never get between Nicolas Cage and his family. The lesson most of us learned from Con Air, Face/Off and a few other Cage classics seems to elude the bullying surf posse in this lurid and enjoyably batty beach western.  Cage plays an Aussie-born, American-raised finance schleb – referred to only as ‘The Surfer’ in a script fond of cult-movie grammar – who just wants to take his teenage son surfing on the enticing Aussie beach where he once rode waves as a kid. His Lexus, crisp work attire, and a planned deal to buy back the beachfront home where he grew up all speak of a man who has everything together – even if his boy finds the nostalgic outing a bit cringe.But as Irish director Lorcan Finnegan (Vivarium) charts with fish-eyed lenses and ramping intensity, it doesn’t take much for it all to fall apart spectacularly. The gang of intimidating surf bros, led by the charismatic, guru-like Scally (Julian McMahon), block him and his son from the surf – he’s not a real local – then they steal his surfboard. ‘Dude… that’s my board,’ growls Cage, ‘and I want it back’.  It’s not quite ‘put the bunny back in the box!’ in the actor’s pantheon of quotes, but they’re still the words of a man with a game plan. Only, not so much: Cage’s thwarted white-collar joe instead retreats to the beachside car park and slowly sheds his belongings, and his sanity, under the baking Australian sun. It’s a lurid psychological horror that’ll thrill midnight movie crowds  Genre classics like Wake in Frigh

Farewell, then, Phase 5 of the Marvelverse, with your inconsequential plotlines and D-list villains (Dar-Benn and M.O.D.O.K. anyone?).  This run of movies and TV shows post-Endgame has felt like an extended middle-age for a once all-conquering franchise groping to rediscover its mojo. The joints have stiffened on the action, the temples have started to grey on the storytelling. And how do you avoid a sense of grating overfamiliarity after 35 movies?  The answer, to a point, is Thunderbolts* (aka The New Avengers). It’s a team-up superhero movie that’s ballsy enough to set aside the usual labyrinthine weave of subplots and dig into mental health, childhood trauma and domestic abuse – and do it with feeling. Sure, you’re probably arguing that all of Marvel’s superheroes are the products of trauma – even Captain America, the wholesome heart, got a brutalising serum-ing – but not quite like here. The misfit nature of its scrappy antiheroes stems from relatable psychological damage that cuts a bit deeper. An Inception-like battle inside a character’s unconscious is an especially bold touch – like director Jake Schreier (Robot & Frank) has just handed the keys to Carl Yung. And the plot? Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s scheming CIA wonk Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is facing impeachment hearings after the events of a previous movie (don’t ask, not sure). With Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) now a senator and on her case, she’s trying to bury the evidence.  It’s like director Jake Schreier has

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

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

One of London’s oldest and most storied cinemas, Curzon Mayfair, is closing for good.The venue, which first opened in the 1930s and has been a long-time venue for big West End film premieres, will cease to run as a Curzon – although there are plans for a new cinema at the site.  As reported by Time Out in February last year, landlord Fantasio (previously 38 Curzon Lease Ltd) has major plans for the historic building on Curzon Street. After a lengthy legal challenge, Curzon has announced its intention to withdraw from litigation, clearing the way for the redevelopment. ‘Sadly, Curzon has concluded that it had no option but to withdraw its legal challenge to the landlord’s plans, given the risk of meeting the landlord’s enormous legal costs should the challenge prove unsuccessful,’ says the cinema group in a statement. ‘We’re disappointed it has taken so long but relieved it’s over and that we can now progress,’ Fantasio CEO Dan Zaum tells The Evening Standard. ‘We are passionate about creating London’s ultimate cinema experience. The Mayfair cinema will always have film at its heart – and will become a vibrant venue serving the wider community, creatively, socially, educationally and beyond.’ The company, which previously refurbished Camden’s KOKO, as well as The Ned and The Wolseley, is promising to spend £15million and restore some of the cinema’s original features and install new audio and visual screen technology. The venue will remain as a two-screen cinema with redevelop

On Thursday May 8, Britain, France and other Allied nations commemorate the end of World War II in Europe. It’s been 80 years since the war’s end but the date remains deeply symbolic of the gargantuan effort that went into defeating Nazi Germany. There’s been thousands of war films to memorialise the conflict itself but in case you’re looking to mark this week’s memorials with a movie that captures the events of May 1945 in mood, if not recreation – VE Day has rarely appeared on screen – these six movies should stir the spirits.  Photograph: Nick Wall/LionsgateA Royal Night Out (2015) A Royal Night Out (2015) Set entirely on VE Day, this sprightly comedy-drama imagines that Princess Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) and her party-loving sister Margaret (Bel Powley) embarked on a wild night of West End revelry to celebrate the war’s end. On their dance cards are Soho nightclubs, gambling dens, brothels and a romantic rendezvous with an RAF pilot (Jack Reynor). The pair did famously head out into the crowds  that night, winding up at The Ritz, but there’s no record of anything quite this scandalous happening.  Photograph: General Film Distributors The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) No VE Day commemoration is complete without a Powell and Pressburger movie. A Matter of Life and Death is the legendary filmmaking duo’s most soulful vision of life during wartime and 49th Parallel is them at their Jerry-bashing. But The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and its noble but obstinate

Londoners tend to remember where they were on 7/7. A coordinated series of suicide bombing attacks across the city’s transport network – one of the biggest attacks on British soil since the Blitz – its traumatic aftermath lasted throughout the summer of 2005.   For screenwriter Jeff Pope – at a primary school that day, helping his son with a project when the news came through – it wasn’t the attack itself that piqued his interest, but what followed.Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes is Pope’s gripping recreation of that tumultuous period in London’s recent history. The four-part Disney+ drama is set in the aftermath of 7/7 and follows the lead-up to another, abortive Islamist attack on July 21, 2025, and the killing of an innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes (played by Edison Alcaide). The Brazilian electrician was mistaken for a terrorist in a blundering Metropolitan Police operation and shot dead on a Victoria Line train at Stockwell Station a day later.   At least, that’s part of the story – and it’s recreated in vivid, often upsetting detail. But for Pope, the plot thickened significantly in the ensuing days. The Met’s top dogs, commissioner Ian Blair and the head of its counter-terrorist operation Cressida Dick, presided over a cover-up and a smear campaign against de Menezes. It was reported that he’d been acting suspiciously, wearing heavy clothing on a hot day and vaulting the barriers at the tube station. That he was a drug user who’d once committed se

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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