Tom Huddleston

The real world getting you down? Want to get away? Film is a powerful tool for escaping mundane reality, and no genre can transport you to a different place better than fantasy. Want to walk with elves and orcs? Learn some spells? Slay dragons? Or just get stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over until you discover the true meaning of love? A great fantasy film won’t just show you a different universe – it will take you there and plop you down right in the thick of the action. Once considered the realm of geeks playing Dungeons & Dragons in their parents’ basements, fantasy movies are now big business, thanks to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Game of Thrones and, of course, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But for the purposes of this list, we’re not limiting the definition of ‘fantasy’ to swords-and-dwarves epics and superhero flicks. You’ll find plenty of those, sure. But you’ll also find movies of a more surreal bent, and some that reimagine our own planet as a place where magic, mystery and adventure is hiding in plain sight. Recommended: 🦸🏿 50 amazing comic-book movies🛸 The 100 best sci-fi movies of all time👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made👾 The 50 best ’80s movies, ranked

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 

Unlike other streaming services, Disney+ has a very clear brand. If you’re into Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and classic Disney animation, it gives you everything you could possibly want and more. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to figure out what to watch on a night to night basis: unless you’ve got a six-year-old demanding to watch Mufasa for the 27th time, it’s still possible to spend half the evening endlessly scrolling before giving up and going to bed. And anyway, not everything that fits under those main tentpoles are worth your time. That’s why we’ve combed through the streamer’s catalogue, to compile the true can’t-miss options on Disney+. You’ll find classics and recent blockbusters, also a few hidden gems worth seeking out. Recommended: 🐭 The 50 best Disney movies for family night🦸All the Marvel movies ranked from worst to best👾 The 52 best Star Wars characters

As far back as anyone can remember, the movies have loved gangsters – and it’s not hard to understand why. Who hasn’t fantasised about living outside the law, of having money and influence, of being untouchable? Sure, all the immoral behaviour is a bit unsavory, and the crushing paranoia that comes along with the lifestyle seems like a major drawback. But getting to live vicariously through the criminals we see on screen is one of cinema’s purest thrills.  But not all movie gangsters are built the same. Some are loud and boisterous, others cold, calculating and unreadable. From fedora-sporting mobsters to pistol-packing yakuza enforcers, to street-level bosses whose empire only extends to the end of the block, cinema has seen them all and told their stories – and you’ll find all of them on our definitive list of the best gangster movies of all-time. Recommended: 😬 The 100 best thriller movies of all-time💣 The 101 best action movies ever made🔪 The 31 best serial killer movies🕵️ 40 murder mysteries to test your sleuthing skills to the max

Cinemagoers love a good scare. That much is evident these days from the commercial and critical success of the horror genre: in 2024, some of the biggest, buzziest movies of the year – Longlegs, The Substance, Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu and the box-office shocker Terrifier 3, to name just four – were designed to scare. And that’s not even to mention leftfield smashes over the last decade, like A Quiet Place, Hereditary and basically everything Jordan Peele has done.   It’s crazy to think, then, that not long ago, horror was thought of as a euphemism for ‘schlock’. If you were alive at the height of the VHS era, you know it wasn’t totally unfounded. Churning out formulaic slashers became a way for hacks and hucksters to make a quick buck, leaving rental store shelves awash in forgettable dreck. It served to overwhelm and obscure the horror genre’s true value – because when done right, no other film experience can conjure more visceral emotions. So let’s correct the record. Here are the 100 greatest horror movies of all-time, drawn from both the current renaissance and those darker days. Written by Tom Huddleston, Cath Clarke, Dave Calhoun, Nigel Floyd, Phil de Semlyen, David Ehrlich, Joshua Rothkopf, Nigel Floyd, Andy Kryza, Alim Kheraj and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🔪 The best new horror movies of 2025 (so far)🔥 The 100 best movies of all time🤡 The 21 best Stephen King movies of all time🩸 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories

Like queer culture itself, queer cinema is not a monolith. For a long time, though, that’s certainly how it felt. In the past, if gay lives and issues were ever portrayed at all on screen, it was typically from the perspective of white, cisgendered men. But as more opportunities have opened up for queer performers and filmmakers to tell their own stories, the scope of the LGBTQ+ experiences that have made their way onto the screen has gradually widened to more frequently include the trans community and queer people of colour. It’s still not perfect, of course. In Hollywood, as in society at large, there are many barriers left to breach and ceilings to shatter. But those recent strides deserve to be celebrated – as do the bold films made long before the mainstream was willing to accept them. To that end, we enlisted some LGBTQ+ cultural pioneers, as well as Time Out writers to assist in assembling a list of the greatest gay films ever made. Written by Cath Clarke, Dave Calhoun, Stephen A Russell, Tom Huddleston, Alim Kheraj, Guy Lodge, Ben Walters and Matthew Singer. RECOMMENDED: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time🎥 The 65 best documentaries of all-time😍 The 100 best romantic films of all-time🤣 The 100 best comedies of all-time

Television has been around for 70 years, but only in the last two decades has it earned true respect as an artistic medium. Up to that point, elitists referred to TV as ‘the idiot box’ or ‘the boob tube,’ and if you worked in it, you were either a hack or an upstart hoping to make the leap into the more dignified world of movies. Was its poor reputation deserved? Sure, there were blips of brilliance between The Ed Sullivan Show and The Sopranos, but by and large, the garbage outweighed the gold. Maybe it’s unfair, but the fact that it was all being beamed directly into our living rooms made the dreck more noticeable.  That’s all changed. Television has nudged film out from the center of popular culture, to the point that some of cinema’s truest believers – Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh – are making movies specifically for the small screen. The shift may have started with HBO and The Sopranos, but the advent of streaming has made it so that hundreds of new shows are now continually flipping the script every few years, if not months. But that doesn’t mean everything before 1999 is pure dross. While this list is dominated by 21st century programs, there are hundreds of shows that deserve credit for pushing TV forward into its current golden age, and chiseling them down to a neat top 100 is difficult. So we elected to leave off talk shows, variety shows and sketch comedy, focusing on scripted, episodic dramas, comedies and miniseries. Even then, it proved to b

Action is one of cinema’s most misunderstood genres. Among highfalutin cineastes, action movies are too often considered trashy, low-brow junk food, replacing all story and substance with eardrum-shattering explosions and mindless violence. In a lot of cases, that characterisation is certainly true. But anyone who’s ever allowed their senses to get shattered by the booms, blasts and breaking bones of a truly great action movie knows that there are few moviegoing experiences that can compare.   Also, not all action movies need to be loud and dumb. The right director can choreograph violence with almost balletic grace, while the right actors actually make you care about the person trying to outrun the bullets and the bombs. This list of the greatest action films ever made is proof that the genre is more versatile than it appears. We polled over 50 experts in the field, from Die Hard director John McTiernan to Machete himself, Danny Trejo, along with Time Out’s writers, and the results show just how awesome and unique the best action movies can be when done correctly. Written by Eddy Frankel, Eddy Frankel, Yu An Su, Joshua Rothkopf, Trevor Johnston, Ashley Clark, Grady Hendrix, Tom Huddleston, Keith Uhlich, Dave Calhoun, Phil de Semlyen, Dave Calhoun and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time💥 The 18 greatest stunts in cinema (as picked by the greatest stunt people)🥋 The 25 best martial arts movies of all-time🌊 The 33 best disaster movies of all-time

Comedy gets no respect, no respect at all. Sure, everyone loves to laugh, and just about every film buff has a comedy movie they hold close to their heart. But for some reason, when it comes to awards and canonisation, comedies still get short shrift in the history of cinema. That’s probably because, more than any other genre, comedy is dependent on context. What’s funny in 1924 might land with a thud in 2024. And that’s to say nothing of varying tastes in humour.  There is no more difficult movie for a filmmaker to pull off than a comedy. No film genre ages worse: humour is largely dependent on context, and what’s funny in 2025 might be completely lost on audiences five years later, let alone a century. And as any stand-up comedian will tell you, the stuff that makes people laugh varies greatly – from country to country, city to city, generation to generation.  And so, those that have kept us cracking up for decades are truly special. Comedies might rarely win Academy Awards, but the best comedy movies stick with us longer – and get rewatched more frequently – than just about any other type of film. To put together this list, we asked comedians like Diane Morgan and Russell Howard, actors such as John Boyega and Jodie Whittaker and a cadre of Time Out writers about the movies that make them chuckle the hardest for longest. In doing so, we believe we’ve found the 100 finest, most durable and most broadly appreciable laughers in history. No matter your sense of humour – goofy,

Has movie music ever been better? With legends like John Williams and Howard Shore still at work, Hans Zimmer at the peaks of his powers, and the likes of Jonny Greenwood, AR Rahman, Mica Levi, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross knocking it out of the park, the modern film score is a Dolby Atmos-enhancing feast of modernist compositions, lush orchestral classicism and atmospheric soundscapes.What better time, then, to celebrate this art form within an art form – with a few iconic soundtracks thrown in – and pay tribute to the musicians who’ve given our favourite movies (and, to be fair, some stinkers) earworm-laden accompaniment? Of course, narrowing it all down to a mere 100 is tough. We’ve prioritised music written for the screen, but worthy contenders still missed out, including Dimitri Tiomkin’s era-defining score for It’s a Wonderful Life and Elton John’s hummable tunes for The Lion King.To help do the narrowing down, we’ve recruited iconic movie composers, directors and broadcasters like Philip Glass, Carter Burwell, Max Richter, Anne Dudley, AR Rahman, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Edgar Wright and Mark Kermode to pick their favourites. Happy listening!Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all time.🪩 The 50 best uses of songs in movies.💃 The greatest musical movies ever made.

For many budding cinephiles, French movies are the final boss of film fandom. In the popular mind, it’s the most highfalutin of movie cultures, laden with philosophy, avant-garde structures and impenetrable characters. But the truth is, few countries can claim to have exerted as strong and consistent an influence over global moviemaking as France. And sure, a lot of it can be hard for non-scholars to grasp – pioneering New Wavers like Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda prided themselves on it.  Once you start digging into the history of French film, though, you’ll discover pleasures unlike those found anywhere else in world cinema. Jumping in, however, can be difficult – and ranking the greatest French films is no easy task. But whether you’re a Nouvelle Vague obsessive or just a big fan of Amélie, you’re sure to discover something new in this countdown of the best French films of all-time. Written by Tom Huddleston, Geoff Andrew, Dave Calhoun, Cath Clarke, Trevor Johnston, Joshua Rothkopf, Keith Uhlich and Matthew Singer  Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time🌏 The best foreign films of all-time🇬🇧 The 100 best British movies🛏 The 101 best sex scenes in movies of all-time

If you love movies, chances are high that the first movie you ever loved was a cartoon. It may have been something from Disney’s Golden Age or the studio’s 1990s Aladdin-powered renaissance. Or possibly a Pixar tearjerker. If your parents were a bit more worldly, it could have been a Studio Ghibli masterpiece. Because animation is frequently where most cinematic obsessions start.  As proof, consider this chart of the greatest animated movies of all-time. In composing this list, we polled everyone from Fantastic Mr Fox director Wes Anderson and Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park, along with several Time Out writers and experts, and the results show just how broad the genre can be. Our list incorporates the standard-bearers from North America and Japan, plus stop-motion nightmares to psychedelic headtrips, illustrated documentaries to unclassifiable avant-garde experiments. You’ll see a lot of old childhood favourites, sure – but there might even be some new adult faves to consider as well.  Written by Trevor Johnston, David Ehrlich, Joshua Rothkoph, Tom Huddleston, Andy Kryza, Guy Lodge, Dave Calhoun, Keith Uhlich, Cath Clarke and Matthew Singer Recommended: 🐭 The 50 best Disney movies🇯🇵 The 20 best anime movies of all-time🤣 The best family comedy movies🦄 The 50 best fantasy movies of all-time  

It all began on a beach in Hawaii. As Star Wars exploded into cinemas in May 1977, George Lucas was far, far away: fearing negative press he’d escaped to Mauna Kea, inviting his friend Steven Spielberg along for moral support. Idly musing over their next projects, Spielberg announced that he’d always wanted to direct a James Bond movie. But Lucas had something better up his sleeve: inspired by the adventure serials that had thrilled him as a kid, he had for some years been developing the character of Indiana Smith, an archeologist-adventurer on the trail of an ancient Biblical treasure. Spielberg was hooked – just as long as Lucas agreed to change the guy’s last name.  Tom Selleck was actually offered the role only to drop out due to his commitment on Magnum, P.I.. But they landed on precisely the right guy: it’s now impossible to imagine anyone other than Harrison Ford in the role, his wry, world-weary and effortlessly charming performance the anchor that holds all the mayhem together. It’s impossible to imagine anyone but Harrison Ford in the role And what mayhem: probably the first Hollywood action movie to truly merit that description, Raiders of the Lost Ark starts full-pelt as Indy raids a South American temple only to find himself on the receiving end of arrows, snakes and that iconic rolling boulder. But it’s the central chase sequence that really ups the stakes, as Indy pursues the Ark on horseback through the Egyptian desert, pummelled and pounded by rocks, trucks

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 ‘They don't know why, they just remember. Remember that they want to be in here.’ If George Romero’s groundbreaking, self-produced debut Night of the Living Dead had worn its satirical elements relatively lightly – a Black hero, a dash of generation-gap angst, some timely, Vietnam-era newsreel-style shakeycam – by the time of this long-delayed sequel, Romero had evidently decided that subtlety was overrated. He was right, too: the tale of a group of survivors from a zombie apocalypse who hole up in a suburban shopping mall only to discover that the undead are instinctively drawn to the place, this is sledgehammer satire and all the better for it; a hilariously blunt sideswipe at unthinking consumerism. Which isn’t to imply for a moment that Dawn of the Dead is not a clever film. While it may be stuffed with cheap thrills – from buckets of inventive gore to a giddy, fist-pumping truck-based action sequence – the script itself is as sharp as a pin, plunging us head-first into the crisis and refusing to let up, while at the same time finding ample room for character development and audience identification (the fact that the terrific cast pretty much vanished without trace in the years afterwards is criminal).  A tough film to finance and a controversially violent one on release A tough film to finance and a controversially violent one on release – hence the multiplicity of different cuts – Dawn of the Dead would inspire a whole wav

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 A horror film in the most punishingly literal sense, Tobe Hooper’s DIY shocker has lost none of its single-minded power in the 50-odd years since it was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public. Co-written, produced and directed by Hooper on a budget somewhere in the region of $100,000, the film utilised mostly untrained actors and a semi-professional crew, all working on a punishing seven-days-a-week schedule in blistering heat.  Envisioned by Hooper as a response to all the horrors that were being piped into American homes at the time, from footage of the war in Vietnam to graphic traffic accidents on the local news, the script was inspired in part by the acts of backwoods murderer and grave robber Ed Gein who, like the film’s childlike monster Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) made trinkets and even furniture out of human bones and skin. Entirely spuriously, Hooper’s movie even opens with a claim that the ‘film you are about to see is true’.  It’s essentially an extremely nasty Scooby-Doo episode The basic plot has been ripped off and riffed on so many times that it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that it’s essentially an extremely nasty Scooby-Doo episode: a gaggle of hippies, led by original ‘final girl’ Marilyn Burns, journey in their beat-up camper van to find their dead grandfather’s now-abandoned homestead, only to stumble across a family of cannibalistic lunatics who proceed to hack them to pieces one at a time.  Though relativ

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 The film that changed everything. First-time director Orson Welles, 28, may not have invented all of the groundbreaking techniques he employed in Citizen Kane – from deep-focus photography to the incorporation of newsreel footage via densely overlapping dialogue and the film’s labyrinthine flashback-within-flashback structure – but he was the first to bring all these ideas together in a single work. The result is still dizzying, still enthralling, and still devastating in its emotional impact. Renowned for his work in the New York theatre and on radio, where he scandalised America with his all-Black stage production of ‘Macbeth’ and his terrifyingly realistic broadcast based on ‘The War of the Worlds’, Welles was wooed to Hollywood with a controversial contract promising him total creative control – unheard of in the days of the studio system – and the chance not only to direct, but to write and star in his own movies.  As witty, tragic, unlikely, unique and fascinating as ever Penned by Welles in partnership with screenwriter Herman J Mankiewicz – a complex relationship explored in David Fincher’s 2020 biopic Mank – Citizen Kane is at heart a satire on wealth and power in America, inspired at least in part by the life of billionaire media mogul William Randolph Hearst, whom Mankiewicz knew and loathed. Played by Welles himself in various degrees of ageing makeup, Charles Foster Kane starts out as a crusading newsman delivering t

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 In late ’70s America, silliness ruled. Vietnam was over, Nixon was gone, and those who could afford it just wanted to have a good time. Sure, there was widespread poverty, racial strife and a wider world teetering on the brink, but who cared about all that? Silly movies like Smokey and the Bandit and Grease topped the box office; silly records like ‘Disco Duck’, ‘Y.M.C.A.’ and ‘Rasputin’ rocked the charts, and silly comedies like Saturday Night Live and Monty Python’s Flying Circus were being widely quoted on college campuses up and down the country.  But in this age of silliness, no one was sillier or more popular than Steve Martin. Part lowbrow old-fashioned entertainer, part ironic, postmodern anti-comedian, Martin was already a platinum-selling recording artist and an arena-filling performer. The transition to cinema was inevitable; as was the fact that whatever he came out with, it would be spectacularly silly.  The result remains the funniest film of Martin’s career What wasn’t set in stone was whether or not it’d be funny. Martin’s live act may have been hugely popular but it was also in many ways deeply strange, relying on physical humour, repeated catchphrases (‘excuuuuuuse me!’) and moments where the jokes fell entirely flat on purpose. Luckily, he found the perfect collaborator: Carl Reiner, a comedian turned director who was able to take Martin’s stream-of-consciousness comic style and, with the aid of co-writer Carl G

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 Blending humour and sadness is among the trickiest balancing acts in cinema, but for a brief moment in 1987, writer-director Bruce Robinson made it look easy. Drawing on his own experiences as a struggling actor in the late 1960s – and taking inspiration from real-life figures including the great Italian director Franco Zeffirelli, whose alleged pursuit of the young Robinson fed into the character of the predatory Uncle Monty – Robinson first envisioned the material as a novel, before being persuaded to transform it into a screenplay.  Produced by Handmade Films – whose chief financier, George Harrison, personally signed off on the project, and even allowed his song ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ to be used in the film – Withnail and I was shot on location in London and the Lake District (Monty’s cottage still stands, though sadly the Mother Black Cap pub was demolished in 2011), with a largely unknown cast and an inexperienced director.  Nevertheless, it was a classic from the first: reviews at the time recognised the quality of its direction and performances – playing the louche, devious, ultimately tragic Withnail made Richard E Grant an overnight star – while huge chunks of the script instantly entered the cultural lexicon, particularly those lines uttered by Ralph Brown’s antenna-haired, permanently wasted Danny the Dealer: you could barely move for Camberwell Carrots in the early ’90s.  The louche, devious, ultimately tragi

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 Selected by Time Out as its best movie ever Stanley Kubrick’s gargantuan interplanetary pilgrimage tracks humanity’s progress from the prehistoric plains of Africa, where proto-human apes discover a consciousness-expanding alien monolith that grants them the wit to use tools, to the start of the 21st century, and a human voyage to the moons of Jupiter where the evolutionary promise of the monolith will finally be realised.  Working with British sci-fi author Arthur C Clarke – whose short story ‘The Sentinel’ provided some of the initial concepts – Kubrick’s intention was to make what he described as ‘the proverbial good science fiction movie’: a film entirely free of scaly monsters, scantily clad princesses and laser-packing heroes, where the focus was on real-world speculative science rather than space opera. Graceful, inquisitive, groundbreaking and endlessly rewatchable  Needless to say, he succeeded. Released over a year before the first manned moon mission, 2001 mirrors the Apollo project in its sense of absolute, painstaking precision: like the lunar missions, this is a film where every single element works perfectly, where every person involved – from the designers to the special effects technicians to the actors to Mission Commander Kubrick himself – has given their total focus to the project. Accusations of emotional coldness are hard to refute, but any remoteness is offset not just by the musical choices – from Richard

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 The slasher movie had been bubbling under for a while by the time John Carpenter co-wrote, directed and scored Halloween. Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood (1971) had birthed the whole series-of-inventive-kills plotline; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) had added both the memorable (and marketable) masked killer aspect and given us our first ‘final girl’; while Black Christmas (1974) had brought not just the seasonal fun, but the teen-girls-in-peril angle. Halloween wasn’t even Carpenter’s idea: two independent producers, Irwin Yablans and Moustapha Akkad, actually approached him, asking if he’d deliver them a low-budget horror flick about a killer who stalks babysitters.  But Halloween was still Carpenter’s baby, and the entire slasher subgenre that followed - one that, in the 2020s, shows no signs of flagging – would, for better or worse, never have existed without it. Penned by Carpenter and his then partner, producer Debra Hill, the script was written in ten days, and it shows: there’s nothing remotely superfluous here, just forward momentum and driving plot. It’s left largely to the cast to lend the film personality, which they do in spades: Jamie Lee Curtis’s casting was almost accidental (Carpenter wanted someone else) but the film might not have worked at all without her grounding, relatable presence (the fact that her mum was Janet Leigh from Psycho is just a great added Easter egg); meanwhile, Donald Pleasence adds a touch of

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 Voted the greatest horror movie ever by Time Out’s expert panel of filmmakers, horror icons and enthusiasts, William Friedkin’s full-throttle adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel works because it fuses the extreme and the everyday, taking a potentially absurd tale of demonic possession and placing it in an ordinary suburban home, incorporating some of the most extreme imagery ever devised but shooting it like straight drama.  It’s also a deeply unusual movie, opening with a lengthy, near-wordless prologue in Iraq which seems to exist purely to invoke a sense of otherworldly dread, before switching abruptly into what could almost be a domestic comedy-drama about a movie-star Mum (Ellen Burstyn) and her cute, comically outspoken 12-year-old daughter, Regan (Linda Blair).  It’s perhaps the most upsetting single image in a Hollywood film The horrors start fairly subtle – a shaking bed, a spot of memorably foul language – before increasing spectacularly in intensity; the crucifix masturbation that arrives roughly halfway through remains perhaps the most upsetting and transgressive single image in a Hollywood film. It’s notable, however, that in a movie crammed with outrageous supernatural horrors – revolving heads, levitation, buckets of pea-soup vomit – the scenes that hit hardest are those in hospital, as the confused and helpless Regan is subjected to a series of invasive procedures, all under the gaze of Friedkin’s implacable

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 The genre parody had existed before Airplane!. In the ’60s and ’70s, movies as diverse as Carry On Screaming!, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Blazing Saddles had lampooned specific genres, often very successfully. But Airplane! was the first to fully exploit the possibilities of the form, to take the by-then familiar framework of the airborne disaster movie and use it not so much as a source of humour, but simply as a skeleton on which to hang as many jokes as humanly possible. Never before had any movie displayed such a single-minded dedication to scoring laughs, at the expense of absolutely everything else: eschewing the visual splendour of Holy Grail or the political nous of Blazing Saddles, here was a film whose only reason for existing was to deliver jokes, as many of them as possible, to pummel the audience into submission with sheer overwhelming comic firepower.  What’s most extraordinary, looking back, is that the vast majority of them are really good jokes – not always clever, not always tasteful, but for the most part really damn funny. From wordplay – ‘don’t call me Shirley’; ‘I’ve been nervous lots of times’; ‘Me John. Big tree!’ – to visual gags – the magic egg; the automatic pilot; Nun’s Life – to jokes that really oughtn’t to work but do (‘Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?’), gag-for-gag it’s almost certainly the funniest film ever made. Which is an achievement that can’t be undervalued: even writer

This review was updated on September 21, 2024Of all the great cast lists in Hollywood history, pound-for-pound the best of them might very well be Alien. Of an only seven-strong ensemble, three – Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt and Ian Holm – were Oscar nominees, while two more – Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto – belong on any cinephile’s list of the all-time great character actors. Between them, they bring not just a depth and seriousness to what could have been a cheap exercise in interplanetary schlock, but a vital sense of relatability and realism: these characters are working stiffs, they’re you and me – so when they start getting taken apart, we really feel it.  Of course, the cast isn’t the only thing about Ridley Scott’s movie that’s essentially perfect. The narrative runs like clockwork, drawing us slowly, almost gently into the world of the film before unleashing a string of extraordinary, stake-raising shocks: the downed ship, the eggs, the facehugger, and of course, that dinner scene, which totally upends the film and seems to take the cast by surprise as much as the viewer. Scott’s direction is gorgeous, from the gliding grace of the early scenes to the up-close handheld ruthlessness of Weaver’s climactic race against time. It’s a workmanlike world invaded by an unstoppable force Then of course there’s the design, not just HR Giger’s predatory, leather-clad penis-with-teeth or those monstrous, fossilised ‘space jockeys’ but the costumes and the computer banks an

This review was updated on September 21, 2024 Voted the Best Comedy Movie of All Time by a Time Out panel of filmmakers, comedy stars, critics and experts, Rob Reiner’s intimate evocation of ‘the sights, the sounds, the smells of a hard-working rock band on the road’ remains entirely unimprovable, four decades on. Shot for a relative pittance and starring three comedians pretty much no one had heard of, the film would go on to become arguably the most quotable comedy ever made, or at least this side of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. What’s remarkable about that, however, is not that Spinal Tap contains dialogue worthy of being ranked alongside the all-time great comic screenplays, but that almost every word of it was improvised. Shooting largely on location with only a basic idea of what each scene would contain, actor-writers Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer – plus a supporting cast largely made up of their friends and collaborators – would improvise at great length, shooting as much as 100 hours of footage in total. Indeed, so much of the film was made up on the hoof that Reiner wanted to credit the screenplay to the entire cast, only to be denied by the Writers Guild of America. It would go on to inspire an entire genre Reiner and his three leads would also write all the music for the film, resulting not just in some of the finest comedy lyrics ever written (‘the looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand / or so I have read’) but some of the crunc

No one had high expectations for Andor when it first aired on Disney+ in 2022: yet another Star Wars show, this time focusing on a second-string character from Rogue One (albeit one of the best and most acclaimed movies in the series). But in the hands of Bourne trilogy screenwriter Tony Gilroy, this galactic runt grew into something truly colossal: an epic of armed rebellion that’s not just the most exciting Star Wars story since The Empire Strikes Back, but a forensic and timely examination of the mechanics of resistance and what it means to stand up against fascism. The show’s second and final season starts this month, tracking the exploits of Rebel spy Cassian Andor – played by Diego Luna – across four years, as he wrestles both with the rise of the Empire and his own increasingly troubled conscience. We sat down with showrunner Gilroy to discuss his time on the series, from first concepts to the stunning second season – and why you can’t say ‘fuck’ in a galaxy far, far away… Photograph: Des Willie/© 2024 Lucasfilm Ltd™. All Rights Reserved.Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in season 2 Are you done with the Star Wars universe now? I think I’ve earned my stripes! It’s been 10 years, so I think that I've contributed enough. With this show we're really trying to pick up a different audience – one that won't watch because it's Star Wars. I want people to know that you don't have to know anything to come into the show and start watching it from the beginning. It's designed that wa

He’s the last of the rock star film directors, an idiosyncratic genius who brought an avant garde edge to the Hollywood mainstream. His TV show ‘Twin Peaks’ revolutionised the small screen forever, while movies like ‘Blue Velvet’, ‘Wild at Heart’ and ‘Mulholland Drive’ seduced audiences with a blend of dark humour, extreme violence, heartfelt melodrama and dangerous eroticism. Now, a unique event in London is set to celebrate the work of David Lynch with a weekend of celebrity guests, live performance, music, art, cosplay and film screenings. Running from September 14-15 at the London Irish Centre, ‘A Gathering of the Angels’ will invite attendees to enter a world both beautiful and strange. Photograph: Universal PicturesMulholland Drive (2001) Among the special guests attending the festival will be several actors from Lynch’s movies including Dexter Fletcher and Lesley Dunlop, who each made youthful appearances in Lynch’s London-set masterpiece ‘The Elephant Man’. Fletcher has of course gone on to become a highly successful actor-director in his own right with films like ‘Sunshine on Leith’ and ‘Rocketman’ on his CV, while Dunlop would go on to star in ‘Emmerdale’. The pair will answer audience questions following a special screening of the film. Also attending will be Dana Ashbrook, who played teen heartthrob and all-round bad boy Bobby Briggs in ‘Twin Peaks’ and its big-screen spinoff ‘Fire Walk With Me’, before returning as a reformed character in 2017’s ‘Twin Peaks: Th

Located in one of London’s most atmospheric local cinemas, the Lexi Film School in Kensal Rise isn’t some stuffy, snobby, nose-in-the-books cinéaste course. It’s a series of public screenings, with each film introduced by a notable expert in the field. This term runs from March to May, with six films and six speakers including Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw, who will speak about apocalyptic documentary ‘Homo Sapiens’; film journo (and Time Out alumnus) David Jenkins, who will introduce bracing Argentinian drama ‘The Headless Woman’; and excitingly, an appearance from ‘Suffragette’ director Sarah Gavron, who will present an exclusive early screening of her brand new film ‘Rocks’, a scrappy tale of London teenagers that’s been garnering great reviews at film festivals. The programme also includes British new-wave masterpiece ‘A Taste of Honey’, Beyoncé’s favourite experimental drama ‘Daughters of the Dust’ and intimate relationship comedy ‘Losing Ground’. Every £9 ticket comes with introductory notes written by the speaker, plus a month’s free subscription to MUBI. Head to the official site for all the info. Find out where the Lexi features on our poll of Londoners’ favourite cinemas.   

Secret Cinema’s latest interactive experience is a leap into the unknown for its creators as much as their audience. Can an event traditionally tied to a specific, well-loved film – and culminating in a screening – still work when the anchor is a streaming series? Is it really Secret Cinema without the ‘cinema’ part? As always, the creative team has gone to extraordinary lengths to immerse attendees in the world of the show. It’s the Fourth of July and the town of Hawkins, Indiana is hosting the biggest high school reunion party of all time. Mulleted, deely-boppered and dolled up in their shiniest ’80s threads, the students have gathered at the neon-drenched Starcourt Mall to shop, stuff their faces with Scoops Ahoy ice cream and party the night away. But in the darkness on the edge of town, something wicked is lurking… The mall is spectacularly recreated inside and out, with a video bar, a fashion emporium and an old-school arcade where punters can remind themselves how infuriatingly impossible early console machines were (I spent 25 minutes on Donkey Kong and didn’t make it past the first screen). Hits of the era blast from the public address system and those inclined can take part in dance-offs and energetic, Jane Fonda-style fitness workouts in the lobby. But it’s not just about retro rubbernecking: there are stories to follow too, mysteries to uncover and hidden spaces to explore. Actors in character weave through the crowd, pursuing leads of their own and encouraging th

He hasn't made a film since 2008's Bafta-winning Wallace and Gromit short 'A Matter of Loaf and Death'. So the promise of a new film from animator, writer and all-round national treasure Nick Park has us very excited. Set – as the title implies – in prehistoric times, 'Early Man' features Eddie Redmayne as the voice of Dug, a decent caveman whose tribe is under attack by a more advanced army of Bronze Age warriors led by the villainous Nooth (voiced by Tom Hiddleston). There's no sign of Nooth in this just-released teaser trailer, but we do get a good look at Dug and his piggy pal Hognob, who comes off a lot like Gromit with tusks. ‘Early Man’ isn't out until the start of 2018, but we’re officially looking forward to it. And we’re not the only Nick Park fans getting a bit overexcited...   Been working with the great Nick Park and Aardman on their hilarious new film, @earlymanmovie. He is absolutely as brilliant as you might expect. Sometimes he makes me laugh so much I have to leave the sound studio for five minutes and calm down and have another go. A photo posted by Tom Hiddleston (@twhiddleston) on Oct 20, 2016 at 3:45am PDT   The first clip from Nick Park’s ‘Early Man’ and A look at Tom Hiddleston’s role in ‘Early Man’.

David Lynch’s dizzying detective show ‘Twin Peaks’ features some of the most memorable villains in TV history, from double-denim demon Killer Bob in the original series to Kyle MacLachlan’s gurning greaser Mr C in the recent reboot. For its tenth birthday bonanza, the immersive, weekend-long Twin Peaks UK Festival has invited three of the show’s most notable bad boys over to London to meet their British fans. From the 1990s show, there is Kenneth Welsh, AKA impish master of disguise Windom Earle. Meanwhile, from the reboot they’re bringing George Griffith, who played murderous sidekick ‘that fucker’ Ray Monroe, and John Pirrucello, AKA Deputy Chad Broxford, the dirtiest cop in 'Twin Peaks'. They will be joined by the usual array of special appearances and live acts, from performances by the long-running Double R Club cabaret troupe to a Roadhouse stage crammed with Lynch-inspired bands. Add in movie screenings, a live owl show, doughnuts, limitless coffee and a chance to lose yourself in the immersive ‘Black Lodge Experience’ and this should be as wild, weird and wondrous as the series itself. The Twin Peaks UK Festival runs from Oct 5-6 at Stoke Newington Town Hall. See the official website for more info and tickets.What’s on this Bank Holiday weekend? Check out our guide to the best things to do in London.

How do you spot a great film? Is it widespread critical acclaim? A regular spot in all-time top ten lists? A famous director and a bunch of big stars? Or is it possible that all those things – whisper it now – don’t actually matter? A weekly programme of screenings introduced by a critic, filmmaker or academic, the Lexi Film School aims to expand the definition of ‘classic’ cinema. Sure, they show the odd established masterpiece – the upcoming run includes ‘Rome: Open City’, Robert Rossellini’s neo-realist masterwork shot on scraps of film in the wake of the fall of fascism, alongside the timeless ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, in which Albert Finney plays a Nottingham factory worker railing against the strictures of ’60s society. And art enthusiasts won’t want to miss ‘Frida’, the controversial, bracingly original biopic of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. But the season also includes a fistful of titles we’re betting you haven’t even heard of (we hadn’t, and we’ve seen quite a lot of films). There’s ‘Of Love & Law’, a recent documentary about the first openly gay lawyers in Japan and the fight they face to be taken seriously in their profession. There’s ‘Saawariya’, a Bollywood romance with an unexpectedly dark edge. And there’s the fiercely radical ‘Angela Davis: Portrait of a Revolutionary’, a 1972 doc following the woman who came to symbolise the Black Power movement. The Lexi Film School runs from April 29, every Monday at 6pm. Each screening will be preceded by an in

One of our favourite small cinemas celebrates its tenth birthday this month. Here’s everything you need to know about the lovely Lexi in Kensal Rise:1. It shows everything from blockbusters to cult classics While the main programme consists of new-release indies, arthouse titles and the occasional big-ticket blockbuster, the Lexi also finds room for more offbeat fare like their ongoing Film School project (see below). In this anniversary month there’s loads of juicy extras to sink your teeth into, including a screening of ‘The Harder They Come’ complete with a slap-up Jamaican feast. 2. It’s got heaps of celebrity fans This summer, Lexi-goers got the surprise of their lives when Tom Hiddleston showed up unannounced, to discuss his acting debut ‘Unrelated’. And regulars still speak in hushed tones of the time Mark Rylance introduced a screening of ‘Night of the Hunter’ with an impromptu calypso number… 3. It looks – and sounds – amazing From the outside, the Lexi is recognisable for its old-school marquee sign – funded earlier this year with a Kickstarter campaign - and for the graffitied front wall that reads ‘I AM A CINEMA – LOVE ME’. But it’s quality on the inside too, with a plush auditorium and great sound. 4. It’s truly independent In London, most little cinemas are linked in one way or another to the big chains like Picturehouse and Curzon. The Lexi is one of the few genuinely independent venues in the city, free to pick its own film programme.   Lex appeal: inside the

It’s been a London institution for nine years, and in the wake of last year’s dizzying, controversial TV reboot the UK’s only official ‘Twin Peaks’ festival is set to be bigger and weirder than ever. Over the weekend of September 29-30, the London Irish Centre and the adjoining Camden Square Gardens will play host to an extravagantly costumed cavalcade of Lynchian obsessives, not to mention guests from the show, musicians, cabaret artists, DJs and doughnut delivery drivers. This year’s lineup includes appearances from Kimmy Robertson, who plays scatterbrained receptionist Lucy Moran both in the original series and the 2017 reboot, and Rebekah Del Rio, the extraordinary singer who performed a haunting Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’ (‘Llorando’) in Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’. Ms Del Rio will be performing live at the festival, alongside ‘Peaks’-inspired cabaret from the Double R Club, a lineup of live bands and some actual performing owls, which may or may not be what they seem. There’ll also be screenings, an art gallery and interactive events, and for the first time, the festival will include a Virtual Reality experience, which sounds potentially bloody terrifying. Standard tickets for the festival are now on sale, starting from £85 – but grab them fast, the VIP tickets were snapped up in less than two minutes. We’ll see you in the trees… Head to the official site for the skinny, or check in with your local log lady.The biggest and best films to see this s

Des robots ! Des vaisseaux spatiaux ! Des sabres laser ! De l'inceste ! Avant 'Les derniers Jedi', et au cas où vous n'auriez pas dix-huit heures devant vous pour revoir l'ensemble des épisodes précédents, voici notre résumé de la saga 'Star Wars' en moins d'une minute...     Ceci est un Jedi. Une sorte de sorcier (d'où la barbe) qui saurait manier le sabre laser (cool) et s'occuperait parfois de diplomatie intergalactique (moins cool).   Le personnage ci-dessous est un Gungan, nommé Jar Jar Binks. Imaginez un hippocampe qui essaierait de faire du stand-up en imitant Roger Rabbit parlant patois. Autrement dit, un personnage très chiant et pas drôle du tout.   Et voici Anakin Skywalker, un sale gosse odieux qui deviendra la force la plus néfaste de l'univers.   En grandissant, Anakin travaille à devenir Jedi. Il en profite pour fricoter avec Natalie Portman, une reine qui adore se travestir en clown.   Leur meilleur allié est Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), dont le fameux passé de toxicomane fait de lui le conseiller intergalactique idéal en matière de narcotiques.   Et voici le plus grand des Jedis (qui est aussi le plus petit) : maître Yoda. Tout vert et parfois pixellisé, il se révèle étonnamment retors, un sabre laser à la main.   Malheureusement pour tout le monde, un gros blaireau ridé, le sénateur Palpatine, compte bien être le dernier à rire en dominant l'univers.   Aussi Palpatine persuade-t-il Anakin de trahir ses amis et de passer du côté obscur. Ce qui ne lu

Tickets are on sale for next weekend’s big London book celebration, the annual Stoke Newington Literary Festival. Now in its eighth year, the festival offers everything from straight-up author interviews to quizzes, panel discussions and loads of food and drink events. As ever, the focus is on music and politics – the latter is hardly surprising, given the festival takes place just a few days before the election. Here are five events we can heartily recommend. 1. Friday Night Live – Pre-election Special Comedians and commentators including Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore and ‘The Thick of It’ contributor David Quantick discuss the upcoming vote. Try to keep it light, guys.Stoke Newington Town Hall. Fri Jun 2, 7.30pm. £10. 2. John Berger: Ways of Seeing One of Stoke Newington’s most beloved sons, writer and thinker John Berger passed away in January this year. At this event, leading Berger-ologists Tom Overton and Andrea Luka Zimmerman discuss the great man’s life and legacy.Stoke Newington Library Gallery. Sat Jun 3, 12pm. £5.         3. Owen Jones The effortlessly articulate boy prince of lefty politics returns to the festival to try and persuade us that everything’s going to be fine, and the world’s not going to hell in a handcart. Sure, Owen. Sure.Stoke Newington Town Hall. Sat Jun 3, 6pm. £8. 4. ‘Game of Thrones’ Pub Quiz Test your knowledge of all things Thrones, from bastards to battles, Starks to Lannisters, dragons to Dornishmen. Any apparent similarity between this

Twenty-six years since its initial run, David Lynch’s game-changing murder-soap-thriller-fantasy ‘Twin Peaks’ returned to TV screens this weekend with the first two instalments of an 18-episode run. Screening on Sky Atlantic in the UK, the series kicked off at 2am on Monday, concurrent with the US launch. But they’ll both air again this evening for non-night owls, and are already available to stream. Our resident ‘Twin Peaks’ expert Tom Huddleston offers a few tips on how best to enjoy the new series. 1. Be realistic At 71, David Lynch is no longer the upbeat upstart who made unusual but approachable works such as ‘Blue Velvet’, ‘Wild at Heart’ and the original ‘Twin Peaks’. In old age, he’s cycled back to his roots in the American avant-garde: his last film, 2006’s ‘Inland Empire’, was his most idiosyncratic since his DIY 1977 debut ‘Eraserhead’. Anyone coming to the new ‘Twin Peaks’ expecting aw-shucks comedy and lashings of cherry pie is going to be disappointed. It’s funny, when it wants to be – but this is most definitely not comfort viewing.     2. Be patient The new ‘Twin Peaks’ doesn’t care if you like it; it is entirely itself and nothing else. This approach results in some of the most mind-blistering moments you’ll ever see on TV, indelible images of shock, horror and unearthly loveliness. But it also means that not everything happens when you think it’s going to, at the speed at which modern television usually operates. In simple terms: it can be slow. It’s not b