Phil de Semlyen

The horror business is booming right now. Over the last few years, it’s become one of the movie industry’s most bankable genres, financially and creatively. Ryan Coogler has already made Oscar-nomination history with a vampire flick of all things, while the combination of Barbarian and Weapons has made director Zach Cregger one of Hollywood’s most exciting new voices – and that’s to say nothing of the huge box-office success of franchise entries like The Conjuring: Last Rites, Final Destination Bloodlines and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.Only a few months into 2026, and the year in horror is already off to another good start, between 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, entertaining killer monkey ripper Primate and Sam Raimi’s return-to-form, Send Help. Nothing on the docket for the rest of the year immediately screams ‘blockbuster,’ but that’s the great thing about horror: like a bump in the night, the hits often come from unexpected places. Here’s what has stood out like a bloody knife so far. 📽️ The best movies of 2026 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2026 (so far)🧟 The 100 greatest horror movies ever made

It’s not easy being a teen. The specifics change from generation to generation, but the struggle is universal: you’re perched between childhood and adulthood, trying to figure out the world and yourself, as your hormones rage and your peers are at their cruellest. So it’s no surprise that filmmakers continually return to their high-school years for inspiration – it’s at once the most dramatic and hilarious time in anyone’s life. Unsurprisingly, Netflix has a ton of movies exploring the trials, tribulations and emotional turbulence of adolescence. And it isn’t all awkward sex and overblown emotions – though there’s plenty of both, of course. On this list of the best teen movies currently streaming on Netflix, you’ll find good-natured romcoms, young-adult dramas, movies about superheroes, basketball, vampires and cheating on college entrance exams.  Recommended: 🧒 The 100 best teen movies of all-time🤣 The 100 best comedy movies👪 The best family movies on Netflix for all ages🤗 The best feelgood movies on Netflix

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

In 2026, the UK’s coastline is more in the spotlight than it has been in a long, long time. The opening of the long-awaited King Charles III Coastal Path means that the entire coasts of England, Wales and Scotland are now fully walkable – giving you even more of a reason to visit this nation’s extraordinary roster of seaside towns. Of course, being an island nation, the UK has no shortage of coastal spots. Prim, proper, picture-postcard-worthy idylls? Check. Remote, blustery retreats from stormy seas?  Yep, plenty of that. Thrill-packed resort spots with something for everyone? Britain has all of the above and much more. If you’re on the hunt for British seaside towns that are worth checking out right now – the ones that should be on your radar specifically in 2026 – that’s what we’re here for. Time Out assembled our UK travel experts to pick out the country’s most exciting seaside, port, harbour and resort towns to visit this year. RECOMMENDED: 🏖️ The best beaches in the UK.📍 The best places to visit in Britain in 2026.🇬🇧 The best new things to do in the UK in 2026. Time Out’s best seaside towns, mapped Image: Time Out

With the return of The Night Manager, Industry and Hulu’s A Thousand Blows, the home viewing year has kicked off in head-spinning style. And with HBO’s Game of Thrones spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and Netflix’s How to Get To Heaven From Belfast, the latest from the creator of Derry Girls, the array of small-screen offerings are landing at dizzying speeds well into the spring. We have stopped at nothing – not sleep, not family responsibilities – to watch all of it and curate this list of the best shows to give your limited spare time over to. You don’t have forever to spend on the sofa so make it count with something from our list of the best of the year so far. Recommended: 📽️ The best movies of 2026 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025📺 The 100 greatest TV shows of all time

Is it safe to say movies are back? Sure, there’s still plenty of anxiety around the film industry and its future. But cinematically speaking, 2026 has gotten off to, arguably, the most blazing hot start since the pre-pandemic glory days, both critically and at the box office.  Of course, for our purposes, we like to focus on the creative successes, and it’s rare for the first quarter of any year to produce so many achievements of various scopes and budgets. Any time you get both a Project Hail Mary and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – not to mention leftfield triumphs like The Testament of Ann Lee, Sirât and Little Amélie or the Character of Rain – all before the calendar’s halfway point, you know it’s a good time to be a film fan, especially when there are new spectacles from Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Marvel and the Dune franchise on the horizon.  But that’s later. Here’s the best of what we’ve seen so far.  📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2026 (so far)📕 15 book-to-movie adaptations to get excited about in 2026🔥 The 40 best movies of 2025

Updates for 2026: It's not surprise that the Ryan Gosling-starring megahit Project Hail Mary has been added to our space movie canon — it's both a major-league blockbuster and an extraordinary piece of entertainment.  Space may be the final frontier, but filmmakers have been dreaming of it ever since the medium was invented. Indeed, even after humans made it there, cinema’s obsession with the universe beyond our small rock hasn’t abated, nor has interest from the general public – see the recent Artemis II mission, a rare moment of collective awe in a time of constant anger and unrest.  It’s not hard to understand why. Its infinite vastness is essentially a blank canvas on which to ponder all sorts of big ideas, whether it’s mankind’s place in the void, the human desire for exploration or the simple fear of the ultimate unknown. That’s why the ‘space movie’ deserves to be considered its own genre. Yes, many science-fiction movies are set in space. But not all movies about space are necessarily science fiction. Here are our picks for the 30 best movies that travel to infinity… and in many cases, beyond. Recommended: 👽 The 100 best science fiction movies of all-time😬 The 100 best thriller films of all-time💣 The 101 best action movies ever made🦄 The 50 best fantasy movies of all-time 

War has long fascinated filmmakers, going back to the birth of cinema, but none have proven so endlessly enthralling as World War II. It’s understandable, given the remarkable scale of the destruction, the atrocities involved and what it represented in the grand scheme of human history. So many movies have been made about the conflict, it almost stands apart from other war movies as a genre unto itself – and we’ll almost certainly see many more over the coming decades. It’s a daunting task, then, to choose the best World War II movies ever made. That’s why, along with polling our well-studied Time Out writers, we also called in an outside expert to come up with this definitive list: Quentin Tarantino, a man who knows a thing or two about making a great WWII film. Among the selections, you’ll find wide-scale epics, personal dramas, devastating documentaries, historical revisions and even a comedy or two. War, as we all know, is good for absolutely nothing – but at least we have these films to help make some sense of it. Written by Tom Huddleston, Adam Lee Davies, Paul Fairclough, Anna Smith, David Jenkins, Dan Jolin, Phil de Semlyen, Alim Kheraj & Matthew Singer Recommended: ⚔️ The 50 best war movies of all-time🎖️ The best World War I movies, ranked by historical accuracy🇺🇸 The 20 best Memorial Day movies

Outdoor cinema season is up and running in the capital. There’s a summer of moonlit movies ahead in an array of scenic park, rooftop and riverside spots and the projectors will soon start whirring at Rooftop Cinema Club, Adventure Cinema and many others. On the slate for 2026 are the usual mix of crowdpleasers, cult classics and recent blockbuster hits. But expect some exciting new additions from the past 12 months, too, including Sinners, Wicked: For Good, One Battle After Another and Weapons, to Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, La La Land and all the old favourites. Recommended: 📽️ The 100 greatest cinemas in the world right now🎞️ The 25 best cinemas in London💰 London’s best cheap cinemas

Updates for 2026: Indisputably, the two most talked-about movies of 2025 were also among the best of the century. Ryan Coogler’s gangster-vampire-blues-musical-period-piece Sinners proved that original stories can still draw huge audiences, while One Battle After Another confirmed Paul Thomas Anderson as the brightest filmmaking mind of his generation. 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 ongoing corporate consolidation, 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. Genres have been mixed, matched and completely exploded. More diverse stories are being told than ever before. Blockbusters have reached unfathomable hugeness, while 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. 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, Tro

Updated February 2026: There’s been a drought of standout studio comedies over the last five to 10 years, which makes the Liam Neeson-starring remake of The Naked Gun even more of a comedic miracle. It joins both the 1988 original and director Akiva Schaffer’s previous spoof, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, on our list of the funniest movies ever. As a general rule, comedy doesn’t age well. It’s a medium highly dependent upon context, and what’s considered funny now might be met with blank stares 100 years from now. So when a movie can still crack audiences up decades or even a century down the line, that’s the sign of a classic comedy – and given how hard it is to pull off a truly timeless comedy, it’s really one of the most impressive accomplishments in cinema.  Perhaps it’s the degree of difficulty that’s made successful comedies so rare in recent years. Gradually, though, the laughter drought is starting to recede. In 2025, absurd farces like the rebooted Naked Gun and Tim Robinson’s Friendship found enthusiastic audiences, and the first quarter of 2026 has already brought the instant cult classic Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. Will they still have us LOLing years down the line? Hard to say. These 100 great comedies, however, have already stood the test of time. Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time🤣 The best comedies of 2024🥰 The greatest romantic comedies of all time

Ball is life, they say, which is what makes basketball such a popular conduit for movie drama. Because it’s never just about the game on the court – although the game itself is as fast and furious as any action scene – but the stories that surround it, from players desperate to transcend the situation they were born into to coaches in search of redemption to teams pulling together to pull off the ultimate upset. Or, y’know, a legendary athlete joining with famous cartoon characters to defeat some evil monsters. Sure, sports like baseball and boxing are more entrenched in the American mythos, and thus have inspired more classic Hollywood movies. But b-ball has its share of awesome films, too, whether they take place at the pro, college or street level, on the hardwood or the asphalt, in packed arenas or outer space. Here are 18 of the GOATs. Recommended: 🏆The 50 best sports movies of all-time, ranked🥊 The 10 best boxing movies of all-time⚾ The best baseball movies of all-time🥇 The best Olympic movies

James Cameron has found another strong female to celebrate in this get-up-and-dance, visually electrifying burst of pop iconography.  Yes, it’s in 3D which means shelling out to put on the annoying glasses again – something you’ve probably only done for the Avatar films and the odd fancy dress party since 2013 – but at least Cameron really knows how to use the tech. Apart from the confetti-cannon finale, this isn’t the hackneyed stereoscopic where things burst through the screen, but an immersive front row and on-stage spot at Billie Eilish’s 2025 world tour.Filmed across several nights of the singer’s gigs at Manchester’s Co-op Live arena, and co-directed by Cameron and Eilish herself, it opens without preamble: a giant cube lifts up from the stage and the singer jack-in-the-boxes out and into a storming rendition of ‘Chihiro’. You could fill Manchester’s canals with the tears shed Hip-hop influences worn on her baggy sleeves, Eilish spends two hours spinning, skipping and prowling across all four corners of the stage, clad like a zoomer Gwen Stefani and purring like a Weimar chanteuse. Her stagecraft is staggering. Her below-stagecraft, too. She disappears beneath the platform clutching a camcorder and projecting images onto the four big screens above, letting her audience behind the curtain to see the magic trick as it unfolds. She’s not a pop star who finds power in mystique or distance from her fans, and her co-director has no interest in burnishing any of that. This con

In the mood for two hours of relentless fights, gory kills, clichéd McGuffins and unmemorable characters, all served up in a weightless CG environment? Mortal Kombat II punches a hole in all those boxes.Plot-wise, this sequel to the 2019 pandemic hit makes Kung Fu Panda look like Inception. The story is… well, there isn’t one. Supervillain Shao Kahn (legitimately gigantic UK bodybuilder Martyn Ford), having conquered a realm called the Outworld in the first movie, has turned his attention to the Earthrealm (that’s us, lads). Five heroes must fight him and his evil champions to save humanity. One of them is Karl Urban’s vain ex-Hollywood action star Johnny Cage, who is not the fighting champ his new brethren think he is. All the other old favourites return, including Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) and – checks notes – Cole Young (Lewis Tan).  Even Karl Urban’s Galaxy Quest ish hero’s journey falls flat Masked hulk Kahn, who looks like he shares a personal trainer with the Balrog, is just one of the under-sketched villains on offer. This is one of those video game adaptations hell bent on replicating the experience of the game, which makes it two hours of third act showdown. That’ll win over the fans, but writer Jeremy Slater and director Simon McQuoid have nothing much for non-console jockeys to latch onto beyond a burst of gravitas from Shōgun’s Hiroyuki Sanada as vengeful ninja Scorpion, and a fun turn from Josh Lawson as Kano,

Isn’t it lovely when things turn out better than you imagined? The Devil Wears Prada 2 is one of those nice surprises, a so-called legacy sequel made with love and executed with flair. Think Top Gun: Maverick with better hats.  Everything clicks like a Hermes clasp. There’s all the sass and energy of the 2006 original but none of the lazy repetition and box-ticking fan service that blights this kind of reboot (Tron, Ghostbusters, any number of Halloween movies). The plot finds fresh resonance for the era of late capitalism, tech bros and A.I. slop. So, basically a horror movie for modern journalists, but it also reaches out beyond its deadlines-and-hemlines milieu to give a timely glaze to such analogue concepts as art and beauty.  Twenty years on from Andy Sachs’ (Anne Hathaway) departure from the mag, everything is changing at Runway – for the worse. A fast-fashion piece has inadvertently given a glow-up to a sweatshop, leaving Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) facing a doxxing on social media, as her new big boss (a fabulously slimy BJ Novak) demands better numbers. Worse, she’s having to meet the finance bros in the canteen to talk budgets. Andy has come a long way from the jumper-clad noob who didn’t know how to spell ‘Gabbana’ in the first film. She’s now an award-winning reporter whose newspaper team has just got the chop. When Runway calls, needing some crisis management, she’s not welcomed back. ‘Who is this?’ sniffs Miranda. She spins through Miranda’s Rolodex of guil

A woolly family caper with a nostalgic flavour, The Sheep Detectives conjures flattering comparisons with Babe. Like that 1995 Best Picture nominee, it’s an adaptation from a well-thumbed children’s book – Leonie Swann's German-language bestseller ‘Three Bags Full’ – with talking animals to charm the stoniest soul, plus a smattering of excellent jokes. It’s not on the same level as that porcine classic but Minions director Kyle Balda does a lovely job rounding up a clever murder-mystery plot, some talking sheep and a few deeper thoughts in a way that will bring a smile to all ages.  Balda and screenwriter Craig Mazin, who adds The Sheep Detective to The Last of Us, Chernobyl and Scary Movie on one of Hollywood’s most dextrous CVs, shifts the book’s setting from Ireland to the English countryside. Like a live-action Aardman film tweaked for a US audience, it’s English village life at its quaintest – population: Hugh Jackman’s grouchypants shepherd George Hardy; a hopeless policeman (Succession’s Nicholas Braun); a rival farmer (Tosin Cole); a vegetarian-hating butcher; and a shady clergyman. When Nicholas Galitzine’s big-city reporter turns up looking for a scoop, his best bet might be the mail-tampering hotel landlady (Hong Chau), because it’s the kind of place where nothing else happens.Except that in the bucolic countryside outside of town, George has just been poisoned in the dead of night. The devoted shepherd has weaned his flock on evening readings of murder-mystery nov

Baltasar Kormákur’s Netflix action flick is not going to change the world. In fact, if you’ve already seen any number of other wilderness survival movies – Cliffhanger, The River Wild, Deliverance, and yes, Up – it’ll already feel like a familiar world, despite its spectacular array of Australian torrents, precipices, ravines and menacing bogans in pick-up trucks. But it’ll pass a taut, tightly-wound 90 minutes on the sofa in suitably blood-pumping style, and has two leads in Charlize Theron and Joel Egerton willing to get down and dirty – and very wet.  In a traumatic opening borrowed from that high-altitude Stallone action movie, Theron’s adrenaline junkie Sasha is introduced halfway up a Norwegian cliff face trying to stop her partner (Eric Bana) slipping from her grasp. Cut to six months later and she’s in the Australian outback, cradling his beloved compass and looking to channel her guilt and grief into a gruelling kayak-and-climbing adventure. In a real good-news/bad-news story for Tourism Australia, what awaits her are spectacular landscapes and spectacularly awful men. For every Kangaroo or Crocodile Dundee, there’s been a dozen more films depicting rural Aussies as a loose collection of sunburnt psychopaths, and The Purge screenwriter Jeremy Robbins does nothing to rehabilitate their rep here. Egerton’s shaven-headed outback thrill-seeker initially steps in to save her from the attention of gurning Outbackers, before revealing that he’s 10 times worse than any of th

Are fans being phased out of modern football, with its eye-watering ticket prices, greedy owners, inconvenient kick-off times and corporatised stadia? Has the prawn sandwich brigade won the war for the soul of the game? Not according to this raucous deep dive into the fan culture of the hardcore ‘ultras’. Outside of England’s sanitised Premier League bubble, at least, there’s plenty of flare-lighting, choreographed-chanting life in it yet.   Director Ragnhild Ekner, an ultra of Swedish club IFK Götenborg, sets out her treatise on ‘the world’s most popular subculture’ early doors. ‘I see it as an act of resistance,’ she says in voiceover, ‘...an uprising against loneliness’. None of her interviewees are seen on screen because, she notes, it’s the collective, not the individual that matters. Opening with Italian disco-meme energy, Ekner traces the phenomenon back to Italy’s calcio in 1970s and ’80s. Travelling the globe to film fans across three continents and get beyond the hooligan stereotypes of football fans – without neglecting the violent, fascistic side of extreme fandom – she explores its various manifestations: as a political movement, a source of collective healing, even a surrogate family. People take their babies onto the terraces, elaborate tifos are unfurled, flares drown the players in red smoke, call-and-response chants thunder the stands. Watching the game feels like a minor piece of this mad tapestry.  Turning the cameras away from the pitch, Ultras captures f

No one expected this long-delayed piece of Michael Jackson pop-aganda to lay bare the man behind the myths and myriad controversies in forensic style. And yet… this soft-ball character study of the King of Pop only doubles down on the former, while completely ignoring the latter, hitting all the usual dreary biopic beats along the way. Written by Gladiator’s John Logan, directed by Training Day’s Antoine Fuqua and produced by Bohemian Rhapsody’s Graham King, Michael leaves no stone turned in its efforts to guide its subject’s reputation through all the rocky terrain. It’s an act of fan (and estate) service that deals only in black and white, omitting the final 21 years of his life.  On the side of the angels is Michael (played as a youngster by Juliano Krue Valdi and Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson as an adult), who we meet as a singing protégé and front-kid for the Jackson 5, a boy band that would conquer the hearts of America. It’s Gary, Indiana in 1966 and the Jacksons’ suburban bungalow is ruled with an iron fist and a leather belt by the boys’ draconian blue-collar dad, Joe (Colman Domingo). He’s desperate to find a way out for his family. There’s a mention of his gruelling job at the steelworks but as so often the case in Michael, one line of dialogue does all the heavy lifting. What drives him? What makes him Michael’s nemesis over the years ahead? It’s very King Richard, in which Will Smith wrestled with a raging but complex tennis dad Richard Williams, though without

It’s hard to imagine Bloomsbury’s hushed streets were once the epicentre of creative thought and literary smarts – an early 20th century hipster mind hive for brainiacs with unruly hair and epic pipe habits. Artists, writers and thinkers like Virginia Woolf, EM Forster and Vanessa Bell would gather and say clever things to each other in salons organised by society types like Lady Ottoline Morrell. Opened in early 2026, this elegantly renewed and seriously cosy 19th century townhouse evokes those ghosts in a way that will thrill anyone with a Penguin Modern Classic on their bookshelf or a love of understated Georgian grandeur in their heart. It’s even named after philosopher Bertrand Russell. Whether you have a modernist poem in you or just fancy holing up round the corner from the British Museum and theaterland for a city break, it’s a dreamy sanctuary. What are the rooms like at Bertrand’s Townhouse? The 43 rooms off its smart, tapestry-lined corridors are as quiet as the surrounding area, with four options – classic, deluxe, grand and philosopher’s chambers – spread over five floors that reflect the building’s past as a Georgian pile where the servants lived at the top and the big nobs below. The suites on the first floor have clawfoot baths, high ceilings and garden views, while the classic rooms are much snugger. All the rooms are full of luxe details (Diptyque toiletries, Smeg minifridges, Marshall bluetooth speakers, Nespresso coffee machines), with rainfall showers and

A content creator, a disruptor, a beekeeper and a teacher walk into a bar. Sounds like the set-up for the most 21st century gag – and in a roundabout way, it is. The punchline, as spun in Cédric Klapisch’s (The Spanish Apartment, Call My Agent!) amiable time-leaping comedy, is that these four people are cousins. Their family tree has sent its branches shooting off in the maddest directions. Like Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, we’re off time-travelling to a more colourful era in French history to understand their common dominator: a young Norman woman, Adèle Vermillard (a wide-eyed Suzanne Lindon), who sets off to find her own mother in Belle Époque Paris and ends up intersecting with the Impressionist masters. The four distant relatives have been appointed by their wider family to help decide what to do with their great-great-grandmothers’ broken-down Normandy cottage. A supermarket chain wants to buy the land and they must decide what to do with her legacy of art and portraits – in the process learning about her and themselves. (Entertainingly, the wider family gathers on a conference call in which an older relative has a kitten filter on – an unexpected homage to the Zoom Cat Lawyer meme, perhaps.) It’s a great excuse to revisit this gilded age in French history Klapisch is a French director who treats his characters with the care of a Frank Capra, and Colours of Time is as accessible and generous as any of his work – a family dramedy with the sprightly spirit of a romco

Faking it ‘til you make it is all well and good, but what happens when you actually make it? How do you keep the wolf from the door, the pretense alive, the lie a reality?  James McAvoy’s likeable directorial debut explores the dark side of that story, speeding off like a souped-up boy racer before wrapping around a lamp post in a moody final stretch that reveals the cost of it all. As charted in 2013 documentary The Great Hip Hop Hoax and faithfully recorded in the former’s memoir, Gavin Bain (Seamus McLean Ross) and Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley) were a couple of Dundee wannabe B-boys and bedroom hip hop heads for whom rap music was both an inspiration and a way out. Bonding over skateboarding and a shared loved of Tupac, American street culture was an exit sign from their Scottish council estate. Problem? No one wanted a pair of Scottish rappers. Solution? Reinvent themselves as a Californian rap double act called Silibil N' Brains and hope no one asks too many questions. And as recreated in this twisty rags-to-riches tale, no one did. Not their wolfish record label boss (McAvoy), who sees the dollar signs in a pair of rapping white guys in the era of Eminem and D12; not the UK media types who are take happy to take the pair’s vague Californian back story at face value – even if their professed home town, ‘San Diangeles’, sounds a bit suspicious. Only their mate Mary (The Testaments’ Lucy Halliday) is on hand to remind them that, actually, they’re full of shite.  There’s p

A filmmaker who could spin a seductive interpretation out of Bleak House, François Ozon definitely extracts all the juice from Albert Camus’ famous 1942 novella L'Étranger. The existential tale has been a holy text for angsty teenagers and Gitane-puffing sophisticates for generations. None of them will remember it being quite this horny.  The Swimming Pool and Young and Beautiful director is a visual stylist and he amplifies the sensuality of Camus’ great antihero Meursault (Benjamin Voisin) in dazzling ways, with Manu Dacosse’s gorgeous monochrome lighting finding light and shade in colonial Algiers. If there’s a better-looking film this year, it’ll be a thing to behold.  Played with an inscrutable kind of magnetism by Ozon’s Summer of 85 lead Voisin, Mersault is a clerk, a cog in the machine of French colonialism – a man for whom life is a series of motions to go through and moral and emotional judgments are meaningless. He makes little distinction between his scummy pimp neighbour Raymond (Pierre Lottin), whose abuse of a young Arab woman (Hajar Bouzaouit) brings violence to his door, and the self-pitying dog-beater upstairs (Denis Lavant’s rumpled face telling a thousand stories). He makes no outward sign of grieving his mother’s death. He is, to the eyes of his countrymen, an unsettling enigma.   If there’s a better-looking film this year, it’ll be a thing to behold His affair with beautiful young typist Marie (Rebecca Marder) is expanded from the book, injecting life b

Like John Wick, just without all the calmness and restraint, this blackly funny action-horror doesn’t come off the rails, but only because it’s barely on them in the first place. There’s a dedication to spraying blood around here that would shame an abattoir, with decapitations, severings, crawling eyeballs and something interesting involving a pig’s head all featuring. There’s absolutely no half-arsing in They Will Kill You’s relentless barrage on the senses.    Seemingly working from a brief of ‘The Raid meets Get Out, only more Looney Tunes’, Russian director Kirill Sokolov and his co-writer Alex Litvak manage to cram together a load of disparate elements – social horror, Satanic panic and nutso exploitation flick – into a muscular and surprisingly coherent whole.  Zazie Beetz’s ex-con Asia Reaves is on the hunt for the younger sister (Myha'la) she lost when she fled their abusive dad. In prison, she’s learnt how to fight like a superhero – just go with it – and emerges determined to make good with her bitter and estranged sibling. The trail has led to a Manhattan tower block adorned, worryingly, with Satanic hieroglyphs where she’s landed a job as a maid. This is cover for her snooping, an intro in a world of white privilege that’s run by unsmiling Irish superintendent Lilith Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette doing several Irish accents at once). Heather Graham and Tom Felton are among the permanent guests at this creepy Hotel California where phones are confiscated and the do

Wes Anderson may not have a movie out this year but cinema’s arch stylist is still having a moment in his home-from-home. London’s Design Museum is hosting a big exhibition until July – Wes Anderson: The Archives – and W Hotel has teamed up with the venue for a special screening season this month. The Leicester Square hotel is putting on weekly movie screenings every Saturday. Extra Wes-world immersion is provided via a cocktail menu created in collaboration with Anderson’s graphic designer Annie Atkins.The programme in full: The Grand Budapest Hotel – 7pm, Saturday May 9Fantastic Mr. Fox – 7pm, Saturday May 16Moonrise Kingdom – 7pm, Saturday May 23The Darjeeling Limited – 7pm, Saturday May 30 There’s also a May 13 launch event that’ll feature Atkins and the Design Museum’s chief curator Johanna Agerman Ross chatting about the visual storytelling and props behind Anderson’s movies. Tickets are £25 and include a cocktail and access to a W Film  The cocktails are inspired by Anderson’s films, including ‘the Bellboy’ (Cognac, Cointreau, peach liqueur, elderflower, lemon and Champagne) and ‘The Detective’ (Amaretto Disaronno, Antica Formula, sour cherry and chocolate bitters). Tickets start from £10 for film and popcorn, or £19 with a cocktail. Head to the official site for the programme info and to book tickets. Photograph: W Hotel For anyone who really wants to push the Belafonte out, the W also has a Wes-tastic ‘Director’s Route Suite Package’ on offer. Included is a two-nig

Eikö olekin ihanaa, kun asiat menevät paremmin kuin uskalsi kuvitellakaan? Paholainen pukeutuu Pradaan 2 (The Devil Wears Prada 2) on juuri sellainen iloinen yllätys. Se on jatko-osa parhaasta päästä, tehty rakkaudella ja toteutettu tyylillä. Se on kuin Top Gun: Maverick, mutta tyylikkäämmillä hatuilla. Kaikki loksahtaa kohdalleen yhtä sulavasti kuin Hermès-laukun solki. Elokuvassa on tallella vuoden 2006 alkuperäisteoksen sähäkkyys ja energia, mutta ilman laiskaa toistoa ja väkinäistä fanien kosiskelua, jotka yleensä turmelevat tämän tyyppiset uudelleen lämmittelyt (Tron, Ghostbusters ja lukemattomat Halloween-elokuvat). Tarina löytää tuoretta tarttumapintaa myöhäiskapitalismin, teknologiaveljien ja tekoälymoskan aikakaudesta. Kyseessä on siis pohjimmiltaan kauhuelokuva nykyajan journalisteille. Samalla se kuitenkin kurottaa deadlineja ja helmanpituuksia pidemmälle muistuttaen sellaisista perin analogisista käsitteistä kuin taide, kauneus ja aitous. Kaksikymmentä vuotta sen jälkeen, kun Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) marssi ulos toimituksesta, kaikki on muuttumassa Runwayssa – eikä suinkaan parempaan suuntaan. Halpamuotia käsitellyt juttu on epähuomiossa tullut kaunistelleeksi hikipajaa, ja nyt Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) joutuu someraivon ja maalittamisen kohteeksi samalla, kun uusi iso pomo (upean limainen B.J. Novak) vaatii kovempia tuloksia. Mikä pahinta, Mirandan on nyt kohdattava talouspuolen ihmisiä henkilöstöruokalassa ja keskusteltava budjetista. Andy on puolestaan

The Devil Wears Prada is back to glow up New York City afresh, while extending its catwalk-ready touch to Milan and Lake Como for good measure too. The sequel reunites colleagues/rivals/frenemies Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) and Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) in a fabulously glossy yarn that will refamiliari​ze us within the sights and sounds of the fashion and publishing worlds.  Not on the list? The returning locations from the first movie, including Miranda’s Upper East Side townhouse (129 East 73rd Street) with its forbidden second floor, and midtown’s McGraw-Hill Building which doubles as Elias-Clarke Publications’ HQ, and Newark Airport, which features along the way but is no one’s idea of a day trip. Instead, grab your Gucci sunnies and take a tour of the new additions to the world of Runway – with some handy Time Out travel tips along the way. Where was The Devil Wears Prada 2 filmed? Photograph: Sokor Space / ShutterstockAmerican Museum of Natural History The Runway fashion gala was filmed at the American Museum of Natural History One of New York’s best family outings is transformed into a camera-ready venue for The Devil Wears Prada 2’s opening Runway Gala. The AMNH also provides Night At The Museum with its exterior shots. 📌 Our verdict on the American Museum of Natural History.  Photograph: TheStewartofNY/GC Images/Getty ImagesAnne Hathaway (L) and Meryl Streep are seen filming "The Devil Wears Prada

Fear will not be the only path to the dark side this time next year. The Piccadilly Line will be doing the job too. Because Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and their Rebel Alliance buddies will be taking on Darth Vader and the Empire afresh in late April and early May 2026 in an unprecedented weekend of ‘Star Wars in Concert’ screenings at The Royal Albert Hall. All three movies in the original trilogy will be screening with live accompaniment by the orchestra that first recorded John Williams’ iconic score, the London Symphony Orchestra. Opening with Episode IV: A New Hope on Thursday, April 29, taking in The Empire Strikes Back, and ending with Return of the Jedi on Sunday, May 2, the trilogy will be blasting off the big screen in the grandest of surrounds. Tickets start at £45 and the screenings run as follows: Episode IV: A New Hope – Thu Apr 29 (2pm, 7.30pm), Fri Apr 30 (2pm, 7.30pm), Sat May 1 (2pm, 7.30pm)Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back – Fri Apr 30 (7.30pm), Sat May 1 (7.30pm)Episode VI: Return of the Jedi – Sun, May 2 (1pm, 6.30pm) ‘From that triumphant opening chord on the first recording session for A New Hope in Anvil Studios, the Star Wars “sound” has become synonymous with the London Symphony Orchestra, which carries the DNA of John Williams’s music in its blood,’ says LSO chair Sarah Quinn. ‘What better way to celebrate this anniversary than reliving the original trilogy in full, and we look forward to sharing these momentous performances at the Royal Albert Hall.’

Luna Carmoon’s first movie, puckish coming-of-age romance Hoard, was an attention-ripper back in 2024. Now the Londoner is back with a second project as a writer-director – a horror this time – and it’s just wrapped filming. To Make Ends Meat stars Mickey 17’s Naomi Ackie, Wuthering Heights standout Alison Oliver and French actress Armande Boulanger (The Returned). The trio play three women ‘all in debt to despicable men, their pasts, and each other, who find themselves bargaining to survive in the only language these men seem to understand: consumption and violence’. ‘This film has come from the belly of my soul, of all things, tar and family,’ says Carmoon in a statement. ‘From my grandmother’s experiences in Newington Lodge, to my mother Toni and the cleaning houses she took me to where darker things lingered, to teddies and chicken farms. So much of my family and our memories seep deeper than you’d think.’ ‘I cannot think of a more prevalent time than now to paint and stitch and weave to screen, it is my rage that has fuelled this. The weatherings of being a woman and how you are cannibalised by systems, by men, women and then by debts we sometimes write ourselves into because we believe we deserve it so. This has been made with all my blood, figuratively and yes, physically of all of me. I hope I know it will rupture, splinter and cry to us all when it is stitched together.’ Saipan’s Éanna Hardwicke co-stars in the film, which shot for six weeks in and around London. ‘To

Kukaan ei odottanutkaan, että pitkään viivästynyt popagandaelokuva olisi syväluotaava katsaus Michael Jacksonin elämään. Ja silti Michael on yksiulotteisempi ja varovaisempi kuin etukäteen olisi osannut kuvitella. Elokuva keskittyy korostamaan popin kuninkaan loistokkuutta ja sivuuttaa kokonaan kaiken muun, törmäillen samalla kaikkein kuluneimpiin musiikkielämäkertojen kliseisiin. Käsikirjoituksesta vastaa John Logan (Gladiator), ohjauksesta Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) ja tuotannosta Graham King (Bohemian Rhapsody). Ansiokas tekijäjoukko tekee kaikkensa ohjatakseen päähenkilön maineen mahdollisimman ehjänä läpi karikkojen. Lopputulos on faneille (ja perikunnalle) suunnattu ystävänpalvelus, joka näkee maailman mustavalkoisena ja jättää huomiotta tähden elämän viimeiset 21 vuotta. Ja silti Michael on näkemisen arvoinen, jos ei muuten, niin upeiden musiikkijaksojensa ansiosta. Tapaamme Michaelin laulavana ihmelapsena ja Jackson 5 -poikabändin keulakuvana. On vuosi 1966 Garyssa, Indianassa, ja perheen elämää hallitsee rautaisella otteella ja nahkavyöllä isä Joe (Colman Domingo), joka yrittää epätoivoisesti löytää perheelleen tietä ulos köyhyydestä. Joen raskaasta työstä terästehtaalla mainitaan, mutta kuten niin usein Michaelissa, taustoittaminen jää muutaman vuorosanan varaan. Vastaamatta jää liuta kysymyksiä. Mikä miestä riivaa? Mikä tekee hänestä Michaelin arkkivihollisen tulevina vuosina? Tunnelma on kuin King Richard -elokuvassa – jossa Will Smith painiskeli raivoisa

O criador de Euphoria, Sam Levinson, está de volta à HBO para uma terceira – e provavelmente última – temporada do seu aclamado, cru e premiado sucesso televisivo, que tão bem capta o zeitgeist. De volta estão também todos os elementos do elenco cujas carreiras atingiram a velocidade da luz desde que apareceram pela primeira vez na primeira temporada, em 2019. Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi e, em menor grau, Hunter Schafer, tornaram-se nomes amplamente conhecidos desde então. Isso faz com que esta terceira temporada seja uma das maiores concentrações de talento de primeira linha a agraciar o pequeno ecrã nos últimos anos. O que não garante que a série cumpra as altíssimas expectativas dos “Euphoristas”, todos a torcer para ver este drama sobre drogas de jovens na casa nos vinte anos – a série mais vista da HBO desde A Guerra dos Tronos – a manter o nível para uma última temporada. Como são as críticas à terceira temporada de Euphoria? É justo dizer que as críticas não têm sido meigas até agora. HBOZendaya em ‘Euphoria’ “Um desastre desequilibrado” é o veredicto do New York Post. O tablóide norte-americano descreve a terceira temporada como uma “descarrilada montanha-russa de insanidade”, sublinhando que esta parece o “um cruzamento entre Breaking Bad os Looney Tunes”. “Sacrifica a profundidade pelo absurdo. Para Zendaya, Elordi e Sweeney, Euphoria lançou-os para o estrelato e, agora, trouxe-os de volta para material que não está à altura dos seus talentos.” “A tercei

A free artist-led festival is coming to south London next month. WePresent, WeTransfer’s arts platform, is taking over Peckham’s Copeland Gallery from May 8-10.  The three-day fest takes in panel talks from artists and directors, as well as showing work from the arts platform’s commissions and collaborations.  Centrepieces of the event include an exhibition called ‘On Belonging’, showcasing work ‘themed around belonging and identity’, and a library room featuring work like NOUR, a poetry book made in collaboration with the artist Mustafa. There’s also a cinema showing short films. It should be a must-attend event for students and creative Londoners looking for inspiration and connection.  And because creativity is thirsty work, there’ll be complimentary cocktails from Peckham Social from 5-7pm each day. Salsa Rose will be providing free brunch each morning and Happy Endings’ ice-cream sandwiches will be on offer too.  WePresent has helped cultivate the talents of filmmakers like Akinola Davies Jr. (My Father’s Shadow) and Amrou Al-Kadhi (Layla), and commissioned The Long Goodbye, an Oscar-winning short film starring and co-written by Riz Ahmed (below). Follow WePresent on Insta for more info. ‘It’s outrageous to be mentioned alongside Moonlight’: Akinola Davies Jr on My Father’s Shadow. The future of this beloved south London lido has been saved.

Euphoria creator Sam Levinson is back with a third – and likely final – HBO run for his down and dirty, zeitgeisty-surfing, Emmy-winning hit TV show. Back, too, are all the cast members whose careers have hit warp speed since they first appeared in season 1 back in 2019. Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi and, to a lesser extent, Hunter Schafer have become household names in the interim.  All of which makes the third season one of the starriest assemblies of A-list talent to grace the small screen in recent years.  But none of which guarantees that it’ll meet the sky-high expectations of the army of Euphoristas out there, all hoping to see the twenty-something drug drama, now HBO’s most-watched series after Game of Thrones, maintain its levels for one final season.  Foto: HBO'Euphoria' T3 What are the review like for Euphoria season 3? It’s fair to say that the reviews have not been kind to the third season so far. ‘An unhinged disaster’ is the New York Post’s verdict. The US tabloid describes season 3 as an ‘off-the-rails roller coaster of insanity’ that feels like ‘Breaking Bad meets Looney Tunes’. ‘It sacrifices depth for absurdity. For Zendaya, Elordi and Sweeney, Euphoria launched them into stardom, and now it brought them back for material that doesn’t meet their talents.’ ‘Euphoria season 3 is grim TV that seems hellbent on rattling us for the sake of it,’ agrees The Guardian. ‘If its cast seemed desperate to get it over and done with, well, now we know why.’ ‘Le

Never go with a hippie to a second location, as 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy once noted. But following a beloved cinema to the ends of the Earth – or at least, a few miles to the north east – can only be recommended. That scenario could be on the cards with Hackney’s Castle Cinema bidding to run a new two-screen picture house in north-east London. According to the Waltham Forest Echo, the Castle is keen to expand to a second venue in Highams Park’s new The Regal development. The Regal is getting a full modernisation taking in a cinema, café and 33 apartments. ‘With the recent news that the building’s redevelopment is on track for autumn 2027, our inbox has been overflowing with residents asking if we’ll be involved,’ says the Castle in a statement. ‘We can confirm that we would absolutely love to join the Highams Park community, and we’ve submitted a bid to operate the cinema.’ The development will open on the site of the old Regal Cinema, which ran from 1935 to 1963. Since then, it’s been a bingo hall, snooker hall, bar and nightclub.  ‘Our vision is to bring the same community spirit, curated film programme, and welcoming bar space that we pride ourselves on in Hackney,’ says The Castle of its plans for the venue. ‘The selection process is ongoing, and whilst we are incredibly hopeful we know these things take time.’One of Time Out’s 100 greatest cinemas in the world, the two-screen Homerton picture house is also taking over the running of Catford Mews cinema. The Lewisham venue

Fancy a big-screen freakout this month – completely gratis?  130 UK cinemas, including 10 in London, are offering free tickets to see much-hyped new horror movie Exit 8 as part of the BFI’s Escapes initiative. The screenings are on April 13-14 and pairs of free tickets are up for grabs now.  The Japanese horror movie is based on a bestselling video game and TikTok sensation. Time Out’s reviews describes it as ‘a cosmic purgatory not dissimilar to the time trap in Groundhog Day’. Participating London cinemas include Hackney’s The Castle, The Cinema in the Power Station in Battersea, Walthamstow’s The Forest Cinema, Genesis in Mile End, Phoenix in East Finchley, The Lexi in Kensal Rise, David Lean Cinema in Croydon, ActOne in Acton, The Chiswick Cinema and The Castle in Sidcup. Head to the official site to book tickets. ‘Exit 8 follows a man trapped in an endless sterile subway passageway as he sets out to find Exit 8,’ runs the film’s official synopsis. ‘The rules of his quest are simple: do not overlook anything out of the ordinary. If you discover an anomaly, turn back immediately. If you don't, carry on. Then leave from Exit 8. But even a single oversight will send him back to the beginning. Will he ever reach his goal and escape this infinite corridor? The BFI’s Escapes is an initiative aiming to ‘bring cinema to all’. Over 200,000 free cinema tickets have been claimed since its launch in 2024. Exit 8 is in UK cinemas on April 24. The 100 greatest cinemas in the world righ

Hackney’s Rio Cinema is celebrating 50 years as a community-run cinema this month with a series of celebrations, screenings and parties. The six-month-long season, Rio Forever, will be showcasing ‘what the Rio does best’ with ‘bold, eclectic programming; archival gems; and gatherings that bring people together’. It all kicks off with a party co-hosted with Jeremy Deller, Sports Banger and Doc’n Roll Films, three luminaries of DIY culture who will be taking over the Rio for a celebration of ‘radical creativity, outsider art, music and film’ on Friday, April 17. Movies are a big part of Rio Forever, of course, with 35mm screenings doubling up as fundraisers for this beloved venue.Legendary Londoner Sally Potter will be swinging by for a screening (and Q&A) of her epoch-hopping feminist masterpiece Orlando on Friday, April 24, with Hackney’s own Asif Kapadia (Amy, Diego Maradona) intro’ing a 35mm screening of The Godfather: Part II on May 8. Punch-Drunk Love lovers can book in for a screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s romantic-comedy presented by Molly Manning Walker (How to Have Sex) on May 19.Pretty Red Dress writer-director Dionne Edwards, meanwhile, is introducing the Wachowskis’ cult neo-noir thriller Bound on May 22.There’ll also be a tribute to Rio Cinema OG Clara Ludski, the Jewish Prussian immigrant who turned her family’s auctioneers into a cinema on Kingsland High Street – one of London’s first – in 1909.  A plaque in her honour will be unveiled as part of The Hackney