Phil de Semlyen

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

Comedies are the omelettes of the movie world: they seem easy to do, so you get very little credit when they come off – and definitely no awards – but people sure as heck notice when they’re a sticky, shell-filled mess. But we’re giving that misconception a slapstick boot to the backside, because nothing could be further from the truth. A good comedy – and definitely a great one – is a work of alchemy dependent on perfect comic timing, performances, storytelling and, obviously, a LOL-filled script all have to come together to produce gold. And a comedy that endures and appeals across different language and cultural barriers? That’s called a miracle.This may be why you’d have to be all funny bone to call this a vintage year for big-screen comedy. But things are ramping up, with Hit Man, The Fall Guy and the more PG-funny IF all delivering mid-year mirth and more laughs in prospect with Nicole Kidman-Zac Efron romcom A Family Affair and Deadpool & Wolverine ahead. Here’s where to find the uplift, silliness and pratfalls amid all the worthy Oscars fare and grown-up dramas. RECOMMENDED:  The best movies of 2024 (so far)The 100 best comedy movies of all time: from Duck Soup to Spinal Tap.The greatest romantic comedies of all time

War is a natural source of fascination for filmmakers, what with the inherent horror, heroism and human drama it presents. And if we’re speaking specifically, no conflict has intrigued filmmakers like World War II. It’s not surprising, considering the remarkable scale of the destruction, the atrocities it involved and its long-tailed aftermath. Almost 80 years since it ended, movies are still being made about it – and there are likely many more coming. Choosing the best World War II movies ever made, then, is clearly a challenge. That’s why, along with polling 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 Dubya Dubya 2 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

Romcoms are cinema’s greatest guilty pleasure. Everyone talks about them in snickering tones, or pretends to only enjoy them ironically. But the truth is that everyone has at least one they can’t get enough of – that comfort film they turn on when no one else is around, like that ratty old sweater you refuse to throw away but would never wear in public.  Really, though: what is there to feel guilty about? Although dismissed as ‘chick flicks’, romantic comedies are more relatable than just about any other category of film. Who hasn’t been in love, in one form or another? And honestly, what’s funnier than the things humans do while under love’s spell? But the best romcoms don’t have to be merely silly, even if many of them are. Some plumb the complexities of the human heart. Some are dark and cynical, others are light and airy, or borderline fantastical. As someone once said, love is a many-splendored thing. So let us count the ways, with this list of the greatest romcoms of all time. Written by Dave Calhoun, Cath Clarke, Tom Huddleston, Kate Lloyd, Andy Kryza, Phil de Semlyen, Alim Kheraj & Matthew Singer Recommended: 😍 The 100 best romantic films of all-time🤣 The 100 best comedy movies😳 The 101 best sex scenes of all time🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

Summer is here – honestly, it is – and with it the return of London’s thriving and fun outdoor cinema scene. After a brief lockdown flirtation with drive-in cinema, during which we all discovered that windscreen wipers are the sworn enemy of movie-watching, this year has an old-school feel to it: cosy blankets; tasty snacks; cocktails, if that’s your thing; headphones; and scenic spots around the city at which an array of big screens will be popping up and entertaining us with crowd-pleasing movies.  Because outdoor screenings aren’t usually the time to dig into arthouse curios and improving documentaries. Rewatching is often the order of the day, and this year it’s all about enshrining ‘Barbie’ into the outdoor cinema canon, alongside the likes of ‘La La Land’, ‘Notting Hill’ and other surefire favourites on London-wide screens. Here’s all the moonlit options for the next few months. Recommended: 📽️ The best cinemas in London💰 London’s best cheap cinemas

There’s more to Japanese movies than Kurosawa, Ozu and Miyazaki. That’s not to downplay their contributions to the country’s cinematic history – or cinema in general. All three are potential GOATs. It’s just that there’s much, much more where that exalted triumvirate came from.  Like the trailblazing silent works of Kenji Mizoguchi. Or the off-kilter pop-art crime thrillers of Seijun Suzuki. Or the bizarrely horrifying visions of Takashi Miike. On this list of the greatest Japanese movies of all time, you’ll find them all, alongside, of course, Kurosawa’s feudal epics, Miyazaki’s deeply soulful animations and Ozu’s quietly powerful domestic dramas – oh, and Godzilla too. Reading through, you can trace Japan’s unique filmmaking history, moving from the silent era to its post-war golden age to the 1960s New Wave to the anime explosion of the ’80s, all the way up to the current renaissance spearheaded by Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Mamoru Hosoda. It’s a lot to take in, so consider this list your travel guide to one of the world’s most creative movie cultures.  RECOMMENDED: 🇰🇷 The greatest Korean films of all time🇫🇷 The 100 best French movies ever made🇯🇵 The best anime movies of all time, ranked🌏 The 50 best foreign films of all-time

There are a million podcasts out there, and 2024’s releases are showing no signs of slowing down. There’s already been a load of bangers since the beginning of the year, and here at Time Out, we’re determined to listen to them all. After all, how else are you going to know which one to choose? We’ve rounded up our favourites, from political podcasts that look behind the news to comedy podcasts with your favourite funny people, and plenty of those all-important investigative whodunnits to keep you up at night. If you’re looking to dig deeper into one genre, we’d recommend trying our specialist lists on for size (you’ll find them below). But for a full list of good, addictive podcasts of every genre, read on.  We update this list with brand-new podcasts every month, so check back for more fabulous podcast recommendations from the Time Out team. Happy listening! RECOMMENDED:🎧 The best news podcasts😂 The best comedy podcasts 🗞️ The best history podcasts

If you thought Australian cinema was all Croc Dundee and tourists being terrorised by Outback nutters, think again. Not only is God’s own country a vibrant force in world cinema – producing Hollywood directors and stars at an impressive lick – it boasts more than a few bona fide masterpieces of its own. George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is just another reminder of how great – and completely unique – Aussie movies can be, with their ancient landscapes, rich light and social commentary. What other country could produce a horror movie as singular and disturbing as Wake in Fright and a comedy as boisterous and brilliant a Muriel’s Wedding? It also has a unique claim on cinematic history: in 1906, Melbourne hosted the premiere of the world’s first feature film: Charles Tait’s The Story of the Kelly Gang starring Frank Mills as the infamous bushranger Ned Kelly. Just a 17-minute fragment remains, but it’s a reminder that Australia has embraced the medium since the beginning. And as this list shows, it does it in style.  This story contains the names and images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died. RECOMMENDED: 📽️ The 50 best foreign-language films ever made.🇯🇵 The greatest Japanese movies of all time.🇰🇷 The best Korean films ever made.

Movies entered the 21st century riding a high. It’s been argued – notably in Brian Raferty’s book ‘Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen’ – that 1999 was, well, the best year for mainstream movies ever. And by and large, the films of the new millennium have kept that same energy. Sure, the combination of internet piracy, the rise of television, the pandemic and ongoing corporate consolidation may have pushed movies out from the centre of the cultural conversation. But in terms of cinematic innovation, it’s hard to think of a more progressive two-decade span. Genres have become mixed, matched and broken down to create brand new forms of movie language, and more diverse stories are being told than ever before. Blockbusters have reached Godzilla-levels of hugeness, while small, strange indies have reached mass audiences that were once considered unattainable. If cinema in the 21st century has been defined by tumult, it’s also proven the ability of filmmakers to rise to the moment. These 100 movies represent the best of the quarter century so far.  Written by David Fear, Joshua Rothkopf, Keith Uhlich, Stephen Garrett, Andrew Grant, Aaron Hillis, Tom Huddleston, Alim Kheraj, Tomris Laffly, Kevin B. Lee, Karina Longworth, Maitland McDonagh, Troy Patterson, Nicolas Rapold, Lisa Rosman, Nick Schager, Phil de Semlyen, Matthew Singer, Anna Smith, S. James Snyder.  RECOMMENDED: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all time🌏 The 50 best foreign films of all time🤘 The 40 best cu

Music is primarily an auditory medium, of course, but it’s visual, too – rock stars wouldn’t spend so much time and money on their hair and wardrobes if it wasn’t. The mix of brilliance and ridiculousness that defines the life and personalities of many successful musicians makes the artform a natural subject for filmmakers. In fact, within the wider umbrella of documentary film, music makes up some of the best examples of the form. From concert films to tour diaries to career retrospectives to more abstract explorations of genius at work, these are 25 of the best music docs ever made. RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The 66 best documentaries ever made.🤘 10 unforgettable concert films to watch from home.

Travelling with kids is, as you’d expect, nowhere near as simple as travelling without ‘em. Not only have you got other whole human beings to be responsible for, but you’ve got to keep them entertained. But ‘family-friendly’ doesn’t have to mean ‘soulless holiday park’ or ‘drab all-inclusive’.  The UK is very much the all-rounder when it comes to family-friendly breaks. It’s the kind of place that brings out the kid in anyone, from its nostalgic seaside towns and expansive national parks to its rich, complex history. And these are the pick of the bunch: the absolute best places for a family holiday in the UK right now. RECOMMENDED:🏊The best outdoor swimming pools in the UK🏔️The best road trips in the UK🌤️The most stunning hidden beaches in the UK🏰The best castles where you can actually stay in the UK🌲The best tree houses you can actually stay in For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines and check out our latest travel guides written by local experts. 

It’s still early days, but 2024 is already shaping up to be a gala year at the multiplex. Last year was a cracker – thanks to Oppenheimer, Barbie, Past Lives et al – but the next 12 months promise plenty, with Denis Villeneuve delivering a long-awaited Dune sequel, George Miller back at the bullet farm with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a resurrection of the Alien franchise, and a tonne of other big-screen fare to get excited about. So far, we’ve been spoiled rotten, with the achingly lovelorn All of Us Strangers, Yorgos Lanthimos’s riotous Poor Things, and Luca Guadagnino’s sexy AF tennis psychodrama Challengers just a few of the good reasons to get to the cinema. So, the criterion for entry: some of these movies came out in the US at the back end of 2023 – Oscars qualification required it – but we’re basing this list on UK release dates to include the best worldwide releases from between January and December. We’ll be updating it with worthy new releases as we go, so keep this one bookmarked. RECOMMENDED: 📺 The best TV shows of 2024 (so far) you need to stream🎥 The 100 greatest movies ever made🔥 The best movies of 2023

Sparky, kaleidoscopic and boldly honest about the tougher side of growing up, Inside Out 2 is Pixar’s most profound and moving movie since, well, Inside Out. Kudos, of course, to Turning Red, with which it’d make a perfect puberty prep double bill, but this cerebral coming-of-age adventure feels like the studio rediscovering its mojo and putting it to dazzling use. It kicks off with a quick catch-up to reintroduce the five anthropomorphised emotions who control the now 13-year-old San Francisco high-schooler Riley. There’s the upbeat Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), morose Sadness (Phyllis Smith), nervy Fear (Tony Hale replacing Bill Hader), snarky Disgust (Liza Lapira taking over from Mindy Kaling) and the volcanic Anger (Lewis Black). They’re the basic set of emotions who now harmoniously collaborate over a sci-fi console to help her navigate late childhood.  Only, as the flashing ‘Puberty Alarm’ on the HQ console indicates, she’s not a kid anymore. A clutch of new emotions arrive, led by the high-energy Anxiety (voiced with ten-cups-of-coffee exuberance by Maya Hawke) and egged on by Envy (The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri), while Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) provides sardonic commentary from the sofa and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) hides inside his hoodie. As Riley heads off to ice-skating camp with her besties and a posse of daunting older kids she’s keen to impress, all that delicate balance gets thrown out the window – literally – just when she needs it most. It’s Pixar’s brai

Heeeere’s (another) Johnny! Unlike his namesake in The Shining, the killer in this surprising spin on the backwoods slasher isn’t messing about with a slow mental freefall. He starts enraged and gets ragey-er, emerging, undead, from the soil of a whisper-quiet forest and having it echo with the screams of his victims as he pursues a stolen keepsake. Homaging classic horrors like Evil Dead, Friday the 13th and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, while smartly subverting their rhythms and ingeniously switching viewpoint from victims to killer, writer-director Chris Nash has delivered a debut to pin you to your seat. The Canadian filmmaker invites you to ride shotgun with a decaying, hulking and faceless monster known only as ‘Johnny’ (Ry Barrett). Camera fixed over his shoulder, third-person-shooter style, he lumbers through the woods dispatching a gang of horny, bickering twentysomethings in increasingly gruesome style. With flies buzzing around his decaying flesh, and the disquieting sound design cranking up every trudge, axe-blow and snapped bone, this remorseless ramble builds to a crescendo of violence will have gorehounds whooping and everyone else reaching for the barfbag. The implied stench is so palpable, you’re glad William Castle isn’t still around to Smell-O-Vision this one.  Someone whose hallmarks are all over this singular shocker is foley artist Michelle Hwu, a games developer-turned-sound wizard who must have got through piles of melons in creating the hollow thwack

Watching this sturdy, sensitively acted Old West drama, it’s easy to wonder how many westerns Viggo Mortensen would have made if he’d been kicking about in the ’50s and ’60s. With his rugged visage and stoical quality, no actor looks more at home on a horse, caked in dust, or chewing over a moral quandary that will inevitably end in someone being punched through a saloon window.The writer-director-star’s shakily titled but very watchable The Dead Don’t Hurt – his fourth western after Young Guns II, Hidalgo and Appaloosa – finds an affecting new way into the genre. Set mainly in the 1860s, it’s a homesteader drama nestled (literally) in a valley beyond which those age-old western staples – corrupt lawmen, vicious blackhats and innocent townsfolk – exert an irresistible and tragic pull. Mortensen’s Civil War veteran, Holger Olsen, a Danish immigrant roped into becoming sheriff of a small Nevada town, is introduced watching on when an innocent man is sentenced to hang for gunning down some locals. The murderous son of the local cattle man (Brit actor Solly McLeod) is the obvious culprit. Surely Olsen will intervene heroically and stop this miscarriage of justice? Except, no. Mortensen the screenwriter and director isn’t interested in turning Mortensen the actor into a Randolph Scott, Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper hero. The upstanding but flawed Olsen is a study in believable complexity: a taciturn ex-soldier whose gentle nature can harden into quiet anger like adobe on an outhous

Guerilla filmmaking comes with certain stereotypical connotations: small scale; shaky, handheld cameras; maybe murky lighting. None of those apply to Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s meaty and masterly family drama. Shot underground-style in Tehran in late 2023, a film decreed illegal by the country’s theocratic regime is as guerilla as they come – although from its scale, ambition and style you’d never guess it was made on the QT, in constant danger of being shut down and all concerned being chucked in jail.  Rasoulof, who has now fled his homeland and gone into hiding, has delivered an urgent message from Iran’s frontlines that’s wrapped inside a slyly funny family drama and slowly infected with clammy paranoia. It clocks in at three hours but not a scene feels superfluous as its central quartet – dad, mum, two teenage daughters – squabble, fall out and finally implode in a subversive final act. Dad is the portentously-named Iman (Missagh Zareh), an upstanding 20-year veteran of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court who comes home one day with a new job – and a sidearm. He’s now in charge of investigating those charged with crimes against God. ‘God’, of course, really means a theocratic regime that just wants him to rubber-stamp a series of death sentences.  The promotion means instant changes for his wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) and daughters, outspoken Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and the younger Sana (Setareh Maleki). Their comfy middle-class life now requires safeguardi

Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz (Futuro Beach) channels the spirit of James M Cain’s classic pulp novel ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ in a hot and heavy erotic thriller that goes like a clappers, before running out of steam in its final stretches, like a film gasping for a post-coital ciggie. Motel Destino is set almost entirely in the establishment of the title, a neon-lit lodgings frequently by horny couples in a dusty Brazilian beach town. The kind of place soundtracked by banging walls and loud groaning, it’s run by the impetuous Elias (Fábio Assunção) and his dissatisfied younger wife Dayana (Nataly Rocha). She does the day-to-day stuff; he shops for sex toys and roams the corridors in sweaty shirt and shorts, occasionally peeking in on the guests through the rooms’ shutters. It’s the Bates Motel on Viagra, and the arrival of the handsome 21-year-old Heraldo (Iago Xavier) only stirs things up still further. A gang member who messed up a job that left his brother dead, he needs a place to hole up while a ruthless mob matriarch hunts him down. But he and Dayana are soon stealing off for their own covert assignations, with the bullish but oblivious Elias none the wiser. After his so-so stab at Tudor history with last year’s Firebrand, Motel Destino has Aïnouz back on home turf, and he creates a magnificently lurid seaside setting for this three-hander to play out. With legendary female cinematographer Hélène Louvart, he makes liberal use of crimson filters and hazy light

With his sublime slice of quite-slow-cinema, Vietnamese filmmaker Truong Minh Quy has reshaped his country’s anguished recent past into an emotional exploration of what it is to be young and queer in post-war Vietnam.  We’re in 2001 and the title characters, Viet (Duy Bao Dinh Dao) and Nam (Thanh Hai Pham), are two twentysomething coal miners in love. The pair snatch tender moments 1000 metres below ground, secret lovers hiding their bond amid the dust-caked uniformity of their profession. It’s tender and romantic – Quy’s contemplative camera frames the men holding each other on a twinkling pile of coal dust as if against a galaxy of stars, and shares gently explicit moments of intimacy (and at least one fairly gross one) – but like the detonations that sporadically shake the mine’s valley, something darker lingers below the surface of the film.  Almost metaphysical in its deeper mysteries, Viet and Nam is a film where what lies beneath matters most. The subterranean nature of Viet and Nam’s work is a clever metaphor for their covert sexuality, but this isn’t a film that’s preoccupied with the risk of social ostracisation or the pain of homophobia. When Ba (Viet Tung Le), a wizened friend of Nam’s mum (Thi Nga Nguyen) asks when they’re getting married and one of them blurts: ‘What, to each other?’, it signals light relief rather than possible catastrophe. The setting is important: Nam and Viet don’t live in a thriving, modern-day Vietnam, but a politically dogmatic country st

Imagine Pedro Almodóvar directing Sicario and you’re close to the tenor of this exuberant cartel-thriller-stroke-musical – which, as if those elements weren’t heady enough, comes with a tender trans twist. That’s no slight on its actual director, Jacques Audiard, whose films tends are less authored but just as richly humanist as the Spaniard’s. It’s just so unlike anything the Rust and Bone and A Prophet director has done before. Or, really, anyone has. Zoe Saldaña is set up as the story’s heart, a hard-striving Mexico City lawyer called Rita whose professional woes are introduced through rabble-rousing musical numbers. Smart and capable, but wasting her talents getting powerful, abusive men off the hook, she agrees to a covert meeting that puts her in front of a ruthless cartel boss called Manitas del Monte. But Rita is not the angel you’d expect – her actions are humane, but also unethical and illegal – and the brooding, grill-wearing Manitas is not your conventional ruthless crime boss. Desperate to escape the shackles of his assigned sex, he needs Rita’s help to arrange gender confirmation surgery and get his wife (Selena Gomez) and kids into hiding. Obviously, there’s a shallow grave for her if she slips up.  Imagine Pedro Almodóvar directing Sicario and you’re close to its tenor Saldaña is striking in a role that showcases her dancing and vocal range (a reminder that she once played Nina Simone on screen). But it’s trans Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón who steals the

If there’s one thing this entertainingly salacious tragicomedy about the rise of Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) teaches us, it’s that Trump was going to find a way to sue it. And so it’s proved, with the ex-President’s campaign team taking exception to a scene that depicts him raping his then-wife Ivana (a long-rumoured but unproven incident).  Filmmaker Ali Abbasi, of course, will have seen this coming. After all, ‘always file a lawsuit’ is the key lesson Trump learnt from his attack dog of a mentor, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), and The Apprentice charts that master-pupil dynamic in forensic detail – complete with bribery, blackmail and mobster connections.  The result is either an inspiring Secret of My Success tale of bromance, entrepreneurship and reinvention or a gruesome origin story for a capitalist goblin who sheds his few human qualities in pursuit of the mighty dollar, depending on who’s watching. A cinematic Rorschach test, it’s more likely to reaffirm your views on the man than challenge them. And that’s not necessarily a flaw. Written by Gabriel Sherman, biographer of disgraced Fox News CEO and Trump facilitator Roger Ailes, it charts the future President's beginnings as the put-upon son of bullying real-estate tycoon Fred Trump (Martin Donovan), who encounters Cohn presiding over a Manhattan members club like a pitbull in a schoolyard, and ends with him as a highly-leveraged ’80s power player.  The gifted, shapeshifting Abbasi (check out his modern Swedish folk tale

From Serpico to LA Confidential to Training Day, stories of straight-arrow cops navigating corruption on the force are a Hollywood staple. Will that cheeky free donut lead the principled officer spiralling into a life of backhanders and dodgy deals, or can they hold onto their morals and bring the big apples on the force to book? Ultimately, the good guy wins out – and it is invariably a guy. Sandhya Suri’s terrific slowburn drama is the non-Hollywoodised version of that story, depicting life as a woman in India’s rural police as a far murkier and less predictable affair. The British-Indian director diagnoses a problem far too deep-seated for one well-meaning, inexperienced young constable to solve, leading you into a maze of compromised ethics, police brutality, caste violence and misogyny, and refusing to point to the exit. That constable is Santosh, an emotionally bruised young woman played with tentative gumption by Shahana Goswami. When her husband of two years is killed policing a riot, she takes up the option of a so-called ‘compassionate appointment’, a real scheme in India that enables women to take up their deceased husband’s old jobs.  Suri’s sharp-edged screenplay doesn’t find much admirable in Santosh’s new police colleagues, a lazy, bribable bunch of layabouts. One bullying female officer takes particular delight in humiliating trysting couples, enforcing a strict moral code noticeably absent back at the station. The cops laugh over a meme comparing China and In

Thought Coralie Fargeat’s ferocious vengeance thriller Revenge was a full-bore assault on the senses? The Substance, the daredevil French filmmaker’s latest, is here to push her extreme cinema a yard or two further in genuinely disgusting, but wildly entertaining and even thoughtful new directions. Some will run screaming – or as at my Cannes screening, muttering darkly – but if it’s your jam, this could just be your new favourite horror movie.The Substance sets out in the garb of a sci-fi full of Spandex-and-electro ’80s overtones, before mutating into something deliriously over-the-top as it explores the crushing aesthetic pressures placed on women in icky and necrotic ways. The final reel, in particular, is here for anyone who felt that The Fly’s skin-crawlingly gory climax was a little restrained. Fading star Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a long-ago Oscar-winner for a film no one can quite remember, has been fired from her job as a Jane Fonda-alike TV aerobics star and left to stew on an empty future in her vast LA apartment. Her slimy boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) wants to replace her with a younger, more beautiful model. So when an opportunity arises for her to try ‘The Substance’, a mysterious green fluid that clones from Elizabeth herself a younger, more beautiful model called Sue (Margaret Qualley), she’s too desperate to ponder the perils – or the mechanics. Which, excruciatingly, include using a four-inch needle to extract spinal fluid as daily nourishment.  This c

Ron Howard introduced his new Disney+ documentary about The Muppets creator Jim Henson at Cannes promising big surprises – and he delivered at least one: Cookie Monster used to have teeth. Big, sharp, terrifying ones. Suffice to say, removing them may have been one of Henson’s very best ideas. Other surprises, though, are rather thin on the ground in an upbeat portrait of the eternally boyish creator of The Muppets, Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. Grown-up kids of a certain age – well, most ages – will leave with a warm glow. I welled up a little during the ‘Rainbow Connection’ bit. Yet it’s all very Disneyified and polite. As the title implies, Howard zeroes in on the ideas as much as the man, adopting Henson’s animation styles to add snappy visual flourishes to its bland chronological framework. And from his zany, anarchic early marionette shows, to the notion of creating a music hall revue show in an old theatre and filling it with bickering felt creatures, those ideas were endless. Of course, everyone thought The Muppet Show was bonkers at the time, but, as Ideas Man revels in showing, such is the nature of genius. You’d have to be Waldorf or Statler not to find something to warm the heart in it The depths of the man remain hidden, though. There’s lots of archive footage showing him as a loving partner to his wife and creative collaborator Jane Nebel, his life as a devoted family man, and the highs and lows as a creator forced to take on immense business responsibility.

If Pakistani horror is not a field you’re expert in – and you wouldn’t be alone there – this chilling, socially-charged ghost story from writer-director Zarrar Kahn makes an intriguing starting point.  First-time actress Ramesha Nawal is modern-minded Karachi twentysomething Mariam. Her father dies in mysterious circumstances in the opening scene as she watches on. Even as she and her mum (Bakhtawar Mazhar) host the wake in their small city apartment, their new reality begins to bite. Life is suddenly precarious – especially with creepy Uncle Nasir circling like one of the local vultures, covetous of his late brother’s apartment.  Sudden shards of male-instigated violence keep things off-balance. An attempted car-jacking shakes Mariam up and introduces her to the useless (male) police, who only take her seriously when she namechecks her influential grandpa. The incident indirectly leads to a fateful encounter with Asad (Omar Javaid), a soft-hearted student returning from Canada with a more enlightened view of gender dynamics. His shy crush has him haunting the library as she studies and suggesting a trip to a beach house on his motorbike. The film’s horror elements seep in slowly. A probing, voyeuristic camera teases the idea that some malign force is watching Mariam, and there’s the whisper of a curse to lay waste to everything she holds dear. That beach trip ends in disastrous, but frustratingly elliptical fashion. Generously, you could call it a deliberate dip into Lynchia

Everyone has their favourite movie soundtrack or score – we have 101 of them – and an inbuilt love of the music that lifts great movies from ‘The Godfather’ to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ to a whole other level.Say hello, then, to the first ever London Soundtrack Festival, a newly announced celebration of scores from movies, TV and even games, that will be giving cinematic sounds their due in London next year.The fest is running from March 19-26, 2025, and will boast big names as well as big sounds. Legendary ‘Lord of the Rings’ composer Howard Shore and Canadian auteur David Cronenberg will be there to talk film scores, alongside Oscar-winning ‘Joker’ scorer Hildur Guðnadóttir, ‘The Martian’s Harry Gregson-Williams, and fast-rising ‘Star Wars’ composer Natalie Holt. The programme includes live performances, panels, in-conversation screenings, composer Q&As and masterclasses. A perfect forum for aspiring scorers and musicians, as well as passionate cinephiles and anyone who just wants to hear really, really loud.  There are some suitably grand venues on the programme, too, with events at Alexandra Palace, Wigmore Hall, The Roundhouse and Cadogan Hall, as well as BFI IMAX and BFI Southbank.The festival is the brainchild of concert producer, broadcaster and musician Tommy Pearson, and is inspired by the late Christopher Gunning, the composer behind the earworm that is ITV’s ‘Poirot’ theme and the BAFTA-winning score to ‘La Vie En Rose’. London Soundtrack Festival runs from March 19

The first proper look at Paddington movie – Paddington in Peru – has landed and with it a reassuring glimpse of what to expect now that franchise creator Paul King has passed the marmalade-coated baton to a new filmmaker. By the looks of things, the little bear is in safe hands with debut director Dougal Wilson behind the camera. There’s all the usual hijinks, this time involving pesky photobooths, and a new spirit of adventure as Paddington (voiced again by Ben Whishaw) heads back to his homeland of Darkest Peru in pursuit of his missing Aunt Lucy, with the whole Brown family along for the ride. Will it be a Herzogian odyssey into the dark heart of the jungle, full of crazed ambition and despair? Or just another delightful caper to join Paddington and Paddington 2 in the pantheon of family movies? Here are some of the clues from that first trailer.  1. It’s Paddington’s Indiana Jones movie  The first Paddington was a migrant coming-of-age story. Paddington 2 gave us a pink-hued prison flick. Judging by the trailer, a big-scale affair full of jungle vistas, biplanes and crashing river rapids, Paddington In Peru will be a furrier-than-normal Indiana Jones adventure – only with marmalade sandwiches, floppy hats and hard stares replacing whips, fedoras and, well, hard stares. Since we left her in London at the end of Paddington 2, Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton) has disappeared into the Amazon. Photograph: Studiocanal 2. There’s a new Mrs Brown in town If

Like a shark in a swimming pool – surely everyone’s worst nightmare – Netflix’s new aquatic horror flick Under Paris has appeared from nowhere and set about scaring viewers witless. Already a worldwide smash on the streamer, it’s a B-movie that occupies that vast space between Jaws and Sharknado in the canon of shark movies: with the slick underwater scares of one and the seemingly deranged premise of the other. Directed by Xavier Gens (Gangs of London), the plot follows a grieving oceanographer (Bérénice Bejo), a handful of Paris cops and a clutch of environmental activists as they discover that a killer shark has mutated, travelled thousands of miles and set up base in the Seine River, ready to feast on unwary Parisians. Just when you thought it was safe to be literally anywhere near water… But could this scenario actually happen? Should we be steering politely but firmly around all major waterways, from the Seine, to the Thames, to the East River, to that small but suspiciously murky-looking stream in the park? We asked James Wright, Senior Curator at SEA LIFE London Aquarium, to sort the scientific fact from the spurious-but-entertaining fiction in Under Paris.  Photograph: Sofie Gheysens/Netflix What is Under Paris about? The Artist’s Bérénice Bejo is ​​Sophia, a marine biologist whose husband is taken by a mako while the pair are on a scientific mission to chart the impact of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on shark behaviour. The impact turns out to be significant: t

Move over Sundance, Cannes et al because a brand new global film festival is coming to your city – or a city relatively near you – this summer.  MUBI FEST, a new event organised by the streaming platform and distributor, is a brand new worldwide film fest that takes in nine international cities. In the UK, it’ll be running in Manchester from July 12-13 at AKA Aviva Studios.Expect preview screenings of new films, with director Q&As, free talks and other film-fan-friendly goings-on, as well as DJs, art and food. Tickets for films will cost a very reasonable £8. The main programme is yet to be announced, but on the line-up so far are ‘Crossing’, Levan Akin’s follow-up to his 2020 coming-out drama ‘And Then We Danced’, roadtrip drama ‘Gasoline Rainbow’ from ‘Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets’ co-directors Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, and Naqqash Khalid’s British drama ‘In Camera’.  The venue is an intriguing one, too: the city’s brand new, state-of-the-art AKA Aviva Studios. The £210 million arts centre launched last year with Yayoi Kusama’s exhibition ‘You, Me and The Balloons’, and the venue’s 1600-seat Hall will host the MUBI FEST screenings.MUBI Fest Manchester runs from July 12-13. The other cities’ dates are Mexico City (Jul 12-14), São Paulo (Jul 26-28), Chicago (Aug 17-18), Bogotá (Sep 6-8), Buenos Aires (Sep 12-15), Santiago (Oct 3-6), Istanbul (Nov 7-10) and Milan (Dec 13-15).Tickets are onsale now at the official site. Watch the trailer below. The 25 best things

Big news for fans of Brummie gangland epic Peaky Blinders, newly enshrined Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy and dramatic undercuts. All three are coming to Netflix in the shape of a newly announced Peaky Blinders movie.  Show creator Steven Knight is promising ‘an explosive’ movie that will see Murphy return to the show as Birmingham crime lord Tommy Shelby, overseeing new, more opulently budgeted carnage in the second city.  ‘It will be an explosive chapter in the Peaky Blinders story,’ says Knight. ‘No holds barred. Full-on Peaky Blinders at war.’ ‘It seems like Tommy Shelby wasn’t finished with me,’ says Murphy. ‘This is one for the fans.’ ‘When I first directed Peaky Blinders over ten years ago, we didn’t know what the series would become,’ says the film’s director Tom Harper, ‘but we did know that there was something in the alchemy of the cast and the writing that felt explosive. Peaky has always been a story about family – and so it’s incredibly exciting to be reuniting with Steve and Cillian to bring the movie to audiences across the world on Netflix.’ Harper, a season one director back in 2013, is back behind the camera for this one. The Londoner is best known for Glasgow musical drama Wild Rose, a breakthrough film for Jessie Buckley. Further casting is still under wraps but is a role for the gifted Irish actress too much to ask? The movie will go in front of the cameras later in 2024.It’s the latest in a trend of UK series-to-movie adaptations that includes Downton Abbey

Eighty years ago this week, Allied forces hit the beaches of Normandy to begin the invasion of Western Europe. Cinema has thrown all its resources at recreating its epic scale, historical significance and individual heroism over the ensuing decades, with Hollywood employing a ‘go big or go home’ ethos to depictions like The Longest Day and, of course, Saving Private Ryan. But there’s been other, more reflective films about that violent day on the French coast. Here’s a few to check out to mark this year’s big anniversary.    What are the best D-Day movies? Photograph: DreamWorks Pictures 1. Saving Private Ryan (1998) The D-Day movie to watch, not least for being the film that changed the grammar of war movies in one extraordinarily visceral opening 24-minute scene. Steven Spielberg’s shakycam depiction of the slaughter on Omaha Beach, with Janusz Kamiński’s desaturated cinematography mirroring Robert Capa’s famous photographs of the battle, plunges you right into the maelstrom of D-Day’s fiercest fighting. It’s as close as you’ll get to understanding what ‘hitting the beaches’ was really like, as the German defenders fire down from bunkers on horrifically exposed G.I.s inching up the sand. Somehow Tom Hanks and his squad of US Rangers make it off intact, but 2,400 others weren’t so lucky.  Photograph: IWM 2. Overlord (1975) Something akin to the British New Wave crashes onto the Normandy beaches in this naturalistic, Tommy’s-eye view of the build-up to the D-Day landing

カンヌ国際映画祭の「パルム・ドッグ賞」は、23年の歴史を持ち、映画祭の期間中に「ワンちゃん」による最高のパフォーマンスをたたえてきた。いつもトップクラスの俳優犬たちが集まる賞の発表イベントは、映画祭の中でもハイライトの一つ。2023年に受賞した「落下の解剖学」のメッシが、ハリウッドの映画賞シーズンのアイコンになったことは記憶に新しい。 新作に向けて台本を熟読し、ミーティングを受けていると思われるメッシの賞レースへの参加はなかったが、今年も才能ある犬たちが、さまざまな作品で称賛を受けるべき見事な演技を披露。2024年5月24日、その中から栄えある受賞犬たちが発表された。 Photograph: Anna Smith/The Palm DogWinners Little Xin and Kodi on stage 2024年のパルム・ドッグ賞を家に持ち帰り、おそらく庭に埋めた大勝利者は、グリフォン種のコディ。レティシア・ドッシュが監督したスイス・フランス合作コメディー作品「Dog on Trial」（原題）で、弁護人であるドッシュと心を通わせて裁判に挑むアグレッシブな犬、コスモスを演じた。 Photograph: Cannes Film FestivalLittle Xin co-starring with Eddie Peng in ‘Black Dog’ 一方、審査員賞は、グァン・フーが監督した中国映画「Black Dog」のシンが獲得した。「共演」は、台湾のスーパースターであるエディ・ポン。彼が演じるのは、オリンピックを前に故郷の野良犬を取り締まるパトロール隊の一員で、次第に愛嬌（あいきょう）たっぷりの雑種犬に心を奪われていくという物語が展開される。ゴビ砂漠を走る彼のバイクのサイドカーに乗り、存在感を発揮しているのがシンだ。 関連記事 『The winners of this year’s Dog Oscars have been announced!（原文）』 『2024年カンヌ国際映画祭：見逃せない10本の映画』 『史上最高のロマンチックコメディ映画30選』 『「ドッグファースト」サービスを提供する航空会社が運行スタート』 『犬派？猫派？どちらも楽しい日本画の展示が山種美術館で開催中』 『回答者にはAmazonギフトカードをプレゼント、タイムアウト東京読者アンケート2024』 東京の最新情報をタイムアウト東京のメールマガジンでチェックしよう。登録はこちら  

Há 23 anos que os Palm Dog Awards de Cannes celebram, durante o festival de cinema mais famoso do mundo, as melhores performances caninas no grande ecrã. É sempre um evento divertido, cheio de cães, e já se tornou uma parte essencial do festival. O vencedor do Palm Dog no ano passado, Messi, do filme Anatomia de um Queda, acabou por se tornar uma figura da temporada de prémios em Hollywood. Desta vez, o reconhecido border collie não estava entre os nomeados (talvez esteja a avaliar argumentos), mas não faltavam excelentes performances caninas para celebrar este ano. O grande vencedor, que levou o Palm Dog para casa (para, presumivelmente, o enterrar no jardim), foi Kodi, a estrela da comédia suíço-francesa Le Procès du Chien, de Lætitia Dosch. Kodi, um griffon, interpreta Cosmos, um cão agressivo que enfrenta uma acção legal e que cria um vínculo com a sua advogada de defesa (interpretada por Dosch). Photograph: Cannes Film FestivalKodi with Lætitia Dosch in ‘Dog on Trial’ O Grande Prémio do Júri foi para Little Xin, a estrela do drama chinês Gou zhen (Black Dog). Neste conto rural realizado por Guan Hu, o actor canino divide a tela – e o sidecar de uma motocicleta – com a superestrela taiwanesa Eddie Peng. Peng interpreta um funcionário público encarregado de retirar cães da rua na sua cidade natal, antes dos Jogos Olímpicos, mas acaba por se encantar pelo adorável e desajeitado rafeiro. Photograph: Anna Smith/The Palm DogWinners Little Xin and Kodi on stage Siga o novo

For 23 years, Cannes’s Palm Dog Awards have been celebrating the finest in pooch performances over the course of the world’s most famous film fest. Always a fun shindig full of top doggos, it’s become a key part of the festival, with 2023 Palm Dog winner, Anatomy of a Fall’s Messi, going on to become a Hollywood awards season icon. Messi was not up for this year’s Palm Dog – the border collie is currently perusing scripts and taking meetings (we think) – but there were still plenty of virtuoso turns to celebrate from this year’s waggly thesps. Photograph: Cannes Film FestivalKodi with Lætitia Dosch in ‘Dog on Trial’ The big winner, carrying the Palm Dog back to its home and presumably burying it in the garden, was Kodi, the star of Lætitia Dosch’s Swiss-French comedy Dog on Trial. Kodi, a griffon, plays Cosmos, an aggressive dog facing legal action who bonds with his defence attorney (Dosch). Photograph: Anna Smith/The Palm DogWinners Little Xin and Kodi on stage The Grand Jury Prize went to Little Xin, the star of Chinese drama Black Dog. The canine actor, who shares the screen – and a motorcycle sidecar – with Taiwanese superstar Eddie Peng in Guan Hu’s rural fable. Photograph: Kaleem AftabThe first Palm Dog Awards, post-Messi, was standing room only Peng plays a government employee charged with removing stray dogs from his hometown ahead of the Olympic Games, who falls under the adorable mutt’s scruffy spell.The best films of 2024 (so far).Looking for more pooch perf

'Max Max started in Australia and it's back in Australia – as it's meant to be.’ For Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga producer Doug Mitchell the latest addition to the Mad Max canon represents an emotional homecoming. Thanks to a sudden deluge and a subsequent burst of non-dystopian-looking greenery in Broken Hill, Mad Max: Fury Road had to pack up and ship to Namibia for its shoot, but Furiosa takes writer-director George Miller and his franchise back home for its tale of revenge, conquest and post-apocalyptic chaos. ‘We shot for eight months to capture a story that takes place across 15 years,’ says Mitchell. ‘It's not Fury Road where you're outside being chased from one end of the film to the other. This one is told through the geography of the abduction of a 13-year-old from a little oasis in the Green Place.’  That presented new challenges. This time the Bullet Farm and Gas Town needed to feature, alongside a return visit to Immortan Joe’s imposing Citadel, and, of course, the Green Place – back when it was still green. All those locations had to be found, built and pieced together on screen, a mammoth task that took Furiosa and its stars, Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, across New South Wales. Mitchell takes us behind the scenes to explain how they did it. Photograph: Jasin Boland/Warner Bros.George Miller in action on the film’s Broken Hill set Broken Hill, New South Wales For George Miller, this sunbaked corner of Outback New South Wales is Mad Max’s own Valhalla – the

If you live in East London and love movies, fancy nibbles and beverages to satisfy The Dude himself, excellent news: a new three-screen Everyman is opening Stratford just in time to hole up from the winter cold.   Everyman Stratford Cross – the boutique chain’s 46th cinema in the UK – is opening a stone’s throw from Westfield shopping centre. The new cinema will boast three screens and 253 seats, all fitted with Everyman’s usual velvet sofas and armchairs. It will also have an outdoor terrace and a lounge area for those pre-movie cocktails and food. Judging by these renders, it’ll be tricky to prise yourself out of it in time for the trailers. Photograph: Everyman It’s situated in the development formerly known as International Quarter London and represents the latest in the revitalisation of Stratford. It might not be open for a while but you still join the cinema. In fact, there’s a founder membership offer that comes with free popcorn for a year. Photograph: Everyman It’s the latest new opening to bolster London’s cinema scene, following latest year’s unveiling of Ealing Picturehouse. The 25 best cinemas in London (as picked by Londoners). The best films of 2024 (so far).

Reality TV’s latest sensation is ITV’s ‘The Fortune Hotel’, a gameshow that will fill the gap for fans of ‘The Traitors’ until season 2 arrives. Machiavellian plotting is the order of the day as host Stephen Mangan sends ten pairs of contestants through a series of tasks and challenges and they attempt to figure out which of them holds the secret jackpot. And, you know, liberate it from them. The sunny twist on this one is that it all takes place in a particularly exotic corner of the Caribbean, so even the losers get to go home with a tan. Here’s where it’s filmed and the full low down on the show.  Photograph: ITV Where is The Fortune Hotel filmed?  Never mind your chilly Scottish castles, a la ‘The Traitors’, ‘The Fortune Hotel’ has gone for the Caribbean option. Grenada’s ultra luxe Silversands hotel, where a room will set you back a minimum of £720 a night, is the show’s HQ. The hotel sits on the white sands of Grand Anse Beach, a strip of shoreline described by Grenada Tourism Authority as ‘two miles of sparkling white sand lapped by calm turquoise waters on which you can carve out a space just for you under palm, almond or sea grape trees’. Which does sound nice. ‘The White Lotus’ comparisons do not end there. The contestants are spirited off to the nearby Granadan capital of Saint Georges for challenges and double-dealing shenanigans. Photograph: ©ITVGranada’s Silversands hotel plays host to the show How does the ITV show work? Ten pairs of contestants are given t