Phil de Semlyen

We’re only halfway through but 2023 has already delivered some genius pieces of cinema – as well as some absolute duffers, of course. The Academy Awards eluded Tár in the end, somehow ignoring a career peak performance from Cate Blanchett, but Todd Field’s edgy music drama picks up – arguably – an even greater accolade in topping our picks of the year’s finest flicks so far. And drama is definitely the genre of the year so far: real-life race story Till showcased the virtuoso brilliance of Danielle Deadwyler; queer British gem Blue Jean introduced a bold new talent in Georgia Oakley; and Return to Seoul was a scalpel-sharp diaspora tale. At the lighter end of the spectrum, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was the superhero movie that restored our faith in superhero movies, Oscar-nominated animation Marcel The Shell With Shoes On has warmed our cockles, while Hirokazu Koreeda’s Broker turns out to be surprisingly life-affirming for a movie about trafficking babies. Donkey odyssey EO, meanwhile, has a hoof in both camps. Then there’s the meme-fest that is A.I. horror-comedy M3GAN, a sure-fire franchise starter that’s given us all a new creepy doll to fixate on. For the purposes of this list, we’re sticking with films that came out in the UK during 2023, but whatever your taste, there’s already been plenty of winners worth a trip to your local kino. RECOMMENDED: 📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2023 (so far)🔥 The 35 best films of 2022😂 The best comedies of 2023 (so far

Do our sofas need to see more of us? Probably not after the past few years, but such is the calibre of small-screen (and let’s face it, iPhone) entertainment these days, they’ll just need to lump it. Because the so-called golden age of television and streaming continues to produce nuggets with indecent and almost impossible-to-keep-up-with regularity, bingeing options are almost limitless. Some older viewers may even find themselves pining for the days where the remote control was a passport to three or max, four, channels, and it all felt manageable.   The tyranny of choice can be overwhelming, so to help, we’re narrowing things down... a long way down. We’re ranking the must-see series of the year to date to pare things down to telly’s must-watch elite.  And there’s loads of potential bingeable fare ahead too, with another season of Netflix’s warm and fuzzy Heartstopper and FX’s massively ace The Bear, a long-awaited return for Charlie Brooker’s bleakly brilliant dystopian visions in Black Mirror season 6, more regal shenanigans with The Crown, the thrilling climax of Stranger Things and an emotional finale for Henry Cavill in The Witcher. Keep an eye out for more hits to come, in other words. They’ll all be here. RECOMMENDED: 🔥 The best movies of 2023 (so far).😂 The best comedies of 2023 (so far).🎞️ The best movies to catch at the cinema this month. 📺 From House of Cards to Beef: the greatest Netflix originals,

Of any film genre, comedy has the highest depreciation rate. What’s considered funny today may elicit nary a chuckle tomorrow, let alone five, ten, 100 years from now. It’s a form highly dependent upon context, not to mention personal senses of humour – after all, one viewer’s LOL is another’s shrug emoji. In short, comedy is hard, and making a comedy that truly lasts is even harder. So you can believe us when we tell you these are the 100 best comedy movies ever. These are the laughers that have stood the all-important test of time, from the brilliant silliness of of the Marx Brothers to the unrepentant juvenilia of Jim Carrey, the rapid-fire joke-a-thons of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker to the scabrous political satires of Armando Iannucci. These are the movies that inspired intense guffaws the moment they first hit theatres and are still doing so generations later, and which we’re fairly confident will keep cracking up audiences another century from now. Or maybe not. What we are sure of is that no matter your sense of humour – silly or sophisticated, light or dark, surreal or broad – you’ll find it represented here.  Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time🥰 The greatest romantic comedies of all time🤯 33 great disaster movies😬 The best thriller films of all-time🌏 The best foreign films of all-time

Every serious cinephile eventually finds themselves in France. After all, it’s where movie culture, if not moviemaking itself, began: the first commercial film screening in history occurred at the Grand Café in Paris in 1895. Few countries can claim to have exerted such a strong influence over global cinema; the New Hollywood revolution of the 1970s wouldn’t have happened without the nouvelle vague. But in popular consciousness, ‘French film’ is effectively a slur – coded language for ‘pretentiousness’. It’s not without merit. If you dive into the French film canon, you’ll encounter plenty of philosophical musings, arty embellishments and impenetrable characters. But if you continue to immerse yourself, you’ll also discover pleasures unlike those found anywhere else in world cinema. To make it easier for you to take the leap, we’ve ranked the 100 best French movies ever made, from famous crowd-pleasers like Amélie to the more challenging – but no less rewarding – work of mavericks like Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda. Even if you’re an espresso-sipping, chain-smoking Francophile, you’re going to find something that surprises you.  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

Cutting cable isn’t as cost-effective as it used to be. New streaming platforms seem to arrive with the wind, and by the time you’re done subscribing you may realise you have spent more money than you’ll ever have time to watch all the stuff you want – or you find out there’s not that much you want to even watch in the first place. But what if we told you there was an easily accessible website out there with a trove of legitimately awesome movies available to stream 24/7, and entirely for free? This obscure gem of a site is called… YouTube. That’s right: the site known primarily as the go-to repository for cat videos and things to hypnotise your toddler with is hiding an impressive catalogue of classic cinema of the sort many other streamers don’t bother with, from silent era milestones to essential deep-cuts. If you don’t mind sitting through a bunch of commercials, YouTube has a full channel of ad-supported modern films as well. But if you’re looking to bone up on your movie history, check out the 30 flicks below, with links included.   Recommended: 🎬 100 Best Movies of All Time.💣 The greatest thrillers ever made.

What could be better on a balmy summer’s night that settling down for a movie under the stars? Rugged up in a deckchair or stretched out on a picnic blanket, there’s little better than an evening of starlit cinema for a few hours of pure al fresco escapism. Cleverly, the people who organise outdoor cinema know this and augment the fun with all sorts of perks and possibilities: sophisticated cocktails, tasty snacks and even full-blown meals are now part and parcel of the outdoor cinema experience. The UK has an ever-increasing array of them to pick from – depending on where in the country you live. London, of course, is well catered for, but thanks the like of Luna Cinema and Adventure Cinema, it’s a countrywide phenomenon these days, often taking in the most spectacular locations. Pack a picnic and head for one of these.📽️ The most world’s most remote cinemas🌒 The best outdoor cinemas in London🏊‍♀️ The UK’s most spectacular outdoor swimming pools

There’s some great reasons to go to the cinema in July and free aircon is just one of them. The big news story is a double-header for the ages when ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ go head-to-head on July 21, forcing moviegoers to choose their ultimate power source: nuclear fission or electric pink. Will Greta Gerwig’s kitsch classic in the making or Christopher Nolan heavyweight wartime drama prevail? Or will Tom Cruise leap over them both with ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1’, which opens a week earlier and involves a lot more running, jumping and freefalling. If you prefer movies a little less IMAX-sized, ‘Lynn + Lucy’ director Fyzal Boulifa’s ‘The Damned Don’t Cry’ is an intimate family drama that played like gangbusters at Venice last year, while French cinema’s joker in the pack, Quentin Dupieux, is back with another doolally delight. There’s even a new Pixar to keep the kids entertained. Happy moviegoing!  RECOMMENDED: 📽️ The best movies of 2023 (so far)📺 The best TV shows of 2023 you need to stream 🏵️ The 100 greatest movies of all time

Let’s be honest right up front: it hasn’t been the greatest year for comedy. Not yet, anyway. The second half of 2023 has some promising laughers on the docket, including the riotous road-tripper Joy Ride, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City and, of course, Barbie. But to this point in the calendar, purposeful giggles have been hard to come by. That doesn’t mean they aren’t out there, though. While we’ve had to dig a bit deeper to compile this list of the best comedies of the year so far, that just makes us more appreciative of the LOLs they provide – which, to be even more honest, we all could use, given the news these days. Here are the funniest comedies of 2023 so far, on the big and small screen. Recommended:🔥 The best movies of 2023 (so far)📺 The best TV shows of 2023 (so far) you need to stream

Some people like to watch scary movies from the safety of their sofa with a cushion in front of their eyes. We prefer the communal experience: sitting in a huge, dark space with loads of fellow thrillseekers, all reacting to every collective gasp and shriek. If you’re with us, then you need to get your brave self to one of these Halloween film screenings. And when we say scary movies, we sometimes mean genuine horrors like ‘The Shining’ and ‘The Omen’, but many now-classic Halloween films are actually camp as Christmas: think ‘Hocus Pocus’ or ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’. Whether you like to be chilled to the bone or raucously entertained, London has a Halloween movie screening for you. Recommended: 🎃 Our guide to Halloween in London👹 The 66 greatest movie monsters of all time

If you’ve followed the online discourse lately, then you’re aware that cinematic sex isn’t as popular as it used to be – even progressive-minded zoomers recoil at the thought of watching two people get it on onscreen. That was not the case in the 1980s and ‘90s, when erotic thrillers ruled the multiplex. Back then, you could hardly avoid gazing upon Michael Douglas’s bare ass whenever you stepped into the theatre, and you were always happy to see it. It was truly the glory days of lurid entertainment. And then, sometime around the turn of the millennium, it just kind of ended. It’s hard to say if the sudden disappearance of major studio erotic thrillers contributed to this current cultural prudishness or if the country’s puritanical shift is what caused the genre to fall out of favour. Either way, for those of us who lived through their heyday, they are sorely missed. For all their frequent trashiness and problematic sexual values, at least they were movies aimed squarely at adults – something that can’t be said for half the major releases coming out today. For that reason, we’ve decided to revisit (and rank) 35 of the all-time best erotic thrillers. Many of them now register as even sleazier and skeevier than they did when they first came out – but that might be the exact reason we love them so much.  Recommended: 🍆 The 101 best sex scenes in movies😬 The 100 best thriller movies of all-time😍 The 100 best romantic films of all-time 🕵️ 40 murder mystery movies to test your

Starting with the Lumière brothers, the documentary has allowed filmmakers to observe and examine life in all its glory (Apollo 11) and horror (Shoah), as well as take playful liberties with those grey areas between reality and fiction (F For Fake, Dick Johnson is Dead). You sit down expecting an objective truth, only to be reminded that there’s no such thing.That said, from the era of cinéma vérité onwards, great docs have been getting pretty damn close to the truth – and in endlessly entertaining style. DA Pennebaker’s films offer a box seat in the lives of their subjects that money can’t buy, Jennie Livingston’s legendary LGBTQ+ doc Paris is Burning captures a cultural moment for eternity, while Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme’s concert films burnish musical greats with a sense of cinematic awe. And if you’re into bruising beefs, The King of Kong and Dig! both sit proudly at the compellingly ego-strewn end of our list of the greatest documentaries ever made. People are messy and complicated. Thank goodness these films are around to help us understand them. Written by Joshua Rothkopf, Cath Clarke, Tom Huddleston, David Fear, Dave Calhoun, Phil de Semlyen, Andy Kryza, David Ehrlich and Matthew Singer Recommended: ✅ The 20 best movies based on true stories🔎 The best true crime documentaries on Netflix🤘 10 unforgettable concert films to watch from home🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time

‘I hope you’re going to call me a “c*nt” less than she did.’ Fresh from Kathy Burke’s extremely sweary podcast, Jack Whitehall arrives for Time Out’s photoshoot in unquenchably cheery spirits. We’re in a cavernous studio just down the road from the Emirates Stadium, a frequent haunt when he’s not touring, filming, sitting on chat show sofas, popping up on just about every panel show on telly, or any of the other showbiz activities that keep this comedy phenomenon busy.  With an arena tour kicking off imminently, it’d take more than a few c-bombs to rob the Londoner of his bonhomie – although the death of his beloved Arsenal’s title challenge is having a red-hot go. Whitehall built his early tour dates around being able to watch the Gunners’ fixtures and the possibility of taking in an open-top bus parade, so he’s suddenly got more stage time on his hands. ‘I texted my promoter, quite drunk and emotional, and said: “I’m available on all of the dates that I said I wasn’t”,’ he says. Luckily, he’s got some major new material to help fill those extra dates: he and his partner, Roxy Horner, have just announced that they’re expecting a baby.  When they found out, Whitehall had already nutted out its central conceit of his new tour, ‘Jack Whitehall: Settle Down’ – that of a manchild finally trying to meet adulthood head on. ‘When we found out we were having a baby, I was over the moon,’ he remembers, ‘but it wasn’t long afterwards that I was thinking: Oh, this could be a whole new a

A folk horror with hair-raising making-of tales of its own, The Wicker Man is a reminder that great art rarely comes easily. A grim winter shoot, a battle in the editing suite, an unsupportive studio and original film cans that were famously rumoured to be buried beneath the M4 motorway – you’d have got the longest of odds that it’d be back in cinemas half a century later to dazzle fans afresh. But while the movie gods did not smile on it in 1972, when it was filmed, and 1973, when it came out to mixed reviews and half-empty cinemas, the past 50 years have seen it rightly hailed as a definitively classic – not just a high-water mark of folk horror, the genre it helped birth, but of British cinema. It was originally released as the undercard on a double-bill with legendary filmmaker Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. What a week that was at the cinema.  Inexperienced director Robin Hardy, best known at the time as a director of ads, infuses Anthony Shaffer’s ingenious screenplay (adapted from David Pinner's 1967 novel ‘Ritual’) with a gathering sense of unease. The Wicker Man is deeply unsettling long before those still-remarkable final moments, as Edward Woodward’s devoutly Christian policeman, Sergeant Howie, is lured to a remote Hebridean island by news of a missing girl and then trapped by the sybaritic Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee, never better) in a seemingly ordinary community that acts as a pagan hive mind plotting his demise.  This 91-minute 4K ‘final cut’, shorter th

A sober PTSD drama with the haunting air of a ghost story, this acute character study from French director Alice Winocour (Proxima) follows the aftermath of a Bataclan-style massacre from the perspective of one survivor suffering memory loss. It’s a sensitive, careful film with real emotional intelligence, but no less gripping for swerving dramatic fireworks in favour of quieter, more observational moments. That survivor, Mia (Benedetta’s Virginie Efira), is a forty-something Parisian translator who we meet happy in her work and, seemingly, in her relationship with a workaholic doctor. And it’s his demanding job that sets in motion a fateful night that sees her caught up in a terrorist attack. He’s called away midway through a dinner date and she spontaneously decides to grab a drink in a nearby bistro. She makes eye contact with a handsome stranger (The Piano Teacher’s Benoît Magimel) celebrating his birthday on an adjacent table, then gunfire breaks out and the rest is a blank.  The film’s title translates as ‘Paris memories’ and it’s memories of the night – or the lack of them – that drives Mia in a quest for answers. It leads her back to the scene and the uneasy solace of a survivors’ support group. Erifa, who won a César award for her performance, is magnetic, essaying a woman of deep compassion who is stuck reliving the night. A tentative spark with Magimel’s rehabilitating survivor hangs in the air as she tries to fill in the gaps.That makes Revoir Paris a kind of psyc

The list of things that Jennifer Lawrence can’t do on screen is a short one – she couldn’t sell us a mop drama in Joy and The Hunger Games: Mockingay – Part 1 remains a fail-safe cure for insomnia – but this boisterous sex comedy is still a surprisingly effective showcase for her range. With a patchy script and uneven tone, it shouldn’t work, but she physically wrenches laughs out of it.  Lawrence plays Maddie, a Montauk, Long Island bartender and part-time Uber driver whose home is under threat from a pile of unpaid property tax bills. When a bitter ex (The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach, wasted) tows her car, she’s left physically and financially marooned, facing up to losing the house that her late mum left her. Then she spots a Craigslist ad placed by an affluent couple (Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti, brilliantly deadpan) who want to make a man out of their socially awkward 19-year-old son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman), before he heads off to college. This involves overlooking the 13 year age gap and hiring Maddie as an escort. In return, she’ll get to keep a car and the chance to save her family home. ‘You won’t even rent out your house and now you’re going to rent out your vag?’ is her friends’ quizzical response. Indeed, it’s a queasy deal that says a lot about the gentrifying out-of-towners who descend onto the beach community for the summer, forcing locals to become, well, sex workers to survive. In Jaws they get eaten; here, they get complained about, with Maddie a

What made Chris Hemsworth the Avengers’ MVP – and he was, don’t argue – was his natural knack for joyous self-spoofing as much as his gift for punching evil Marvel entities across the galaxy and wielding a massive hammer like it was a toothpick. The beefy Aussie is such a natural at comedy that this breakneck, stern-jawed Netflix action-thriller – again co-written by Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo – misses a trick by not employing it. Like his fellow man-on-a-mission John Wick, Hemsworth’s elite operative Tyler Rake, initially found recuperating in a snowbound cabin, doesn’t come packing too many lols. Having a pet chicken and a tragic back story is as far as he gets towards cuddly.  If that’s a major downside here, there’s plenty of upside in a sequel that improves significantly on its hit predecessor. If you like your action flicks lean, mean and to the point, director and one-time stuntman Sam Hargrave has delivered a dream night on the sofa. The spectacle comes in waves, and some of it even cries out for a much bigger screen. Fished out of the river where the first film left him, Rake is reunited with cosmopolitan but lethally resourceful brother-and-sister team, Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) and Yas (Adam Bessa), and is soon in the employ of a cameoing Idris Elba’s mysterious fixer. The new mission? To bust the wife (Tinatin Dalakishvili) and young family of a Georgian mobster out of the anarchic prison in which they’ve been incarcerated purely to keep him

It was going to take something special to distract from the controversy around Ezra Miller, but this motor-mouthed mess of a DC blockbuster definitely isn’t it. A real pixel porridge, it’s one of the ugliest superhero movies in recent times – okay, since Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – and ends in a weightless visual purgatory that a 2007 video-game developer would turn their nose up at. It’s a pity, because there are some clever ideas and touching moments. Barry Allen (Miller) messes with that superhero hobby horse du jour, multiverses, to save his doomed mum and free his dad from prison, bonding with two Batmen (Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton) and accidentally unleashing Michael Shannon’s malevolent, one-dimensional General Zod in the process. To tackle him, Sasha Calle’s emo Supergirl joins Allen’s DIY Justice League. Also along for the ride is Keaton, who has fun reprising his role as Tim Burton OG Batman. Fans of that kitsch Burton classic will have mixed emotions: the nostalgia is enjoyable, but wouldn’t you rather be watching that movie instead? In cinemas worldwide now.

The boldest blockbuster since Mad Max: Fury Road, this Spidey adventure takes the ‘anything goes’ ethos of 2018’s Into the Spider-Verse and somehow finds more boundaries to push, more visual extra-ness to tap into, more roller coasters to ride. It’s such a torrent of universes, ideas and styles that it should collapse under the weight of its own creative payload. But it all works – brilliantly. Typically, co-writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller – Hollywood alchemists who turn seemingly crazy ideas like The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street into gold – make a possible weakness a plot that revolves around the now-ubiquitous multiverse) into a major strength. Across the Spider-Verse’s central idea is what happens when you ‘break the canon’ and deviate from what’s expected. It’s a maverick antidote to the army of identikit superhero movies out there.  Here, it’s Into the Spider-Verse’s Spidey, smart, sensitive mixed-race New York teen Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), who is left facing the death of a loved one while stuck in another universe. But is that fate preordained and necessary or can comic-book narratives be defied? Like a multiversal lore enforcer, Oscar Isaac’s Miguel O’Hara – aka Spider-Man 2099 – emerges as the killjoy secondary villain, determined to keep the impetuous Miles in check. Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) is torn between duty and love for her old love interest. Even better is the movie’s main villain, the Spot. A portal-deploying superbad voiced by Jason S

A realist drama told with a fairy-tale lightness, Wim Wenders’ latest is a ruminative slice of slow cinema that requires patience but rewards it with a gentle wash of warm emotions. Set in the quieter corners of Tokyo’s bustling Shibuya district, Perfect Days follows Hirayama (13 Assassins’ Kōji Yakusho). He’s a middle-aged toilet cleaner, responsible for cleaning the city’s architecturally-designed, Wallpaper*-worthy public loos (they’re part of The Tokyo Toilet, a real-life urban renewal project). It’s a task this taciturn, diligent man approaches with the same care he affords his treasured household plants. Like a Japanese Jeanne Dielman, Hirayama’s daily routine is carved in stone: pick up a coffee from the vending machine outside his small apartment, clamber into his van for his daily rounds, soundtracked by his collection of American new wave album on the car’s tape deck (yes, Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ gets an airing). It’s a solitary life where his daily tasks act as a kind of medicine against loneliness. Wenders shows us those rigid parameters to his life in order to disrupt them with a patchwork of small but meaningful human encounters. Hirayama’s colleague (Emoto Tokio, broad) brings chaotic energy and a girl in tow, leaning on his boss to fund his date night by selling some of his treasured vintage cassettes. It feels like a false note when Hirayama aquiesces to a trip a second-hand record store. You know he’d as soon lose a limb as sell a single one.  Wim Wenders’

The force remains strong in Ken Loach, aged 86 and delivering a film as fired up and human as any you’ll see this year. The conclusion of a loose trilogy of dramas set in England’s North East that also takes in the I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You, and likely to be his final film, it’s a fitting goodbye for this most empathetic chronicler of British society. If Kenergy still blazes from The Old Oak, the filmmaker certainly has no less material to fill his kitchen sink these days than when he kicked off his career with Poor Cow 56 years ago.  Facing new challenges is TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner), the landlord of a struggling pub in an ex-mining town. Photos of the 1984 Miners’ strike line the walls, reminders both of a proud local history and jobs that have never been replaced. Money is tight. A once tight-knit community has become prime UKIP turf.  The arrival of a coachload of Syrian refugees, then, feels like another affront for TJ’s regulars. The film’s setting – 2016 – is significant. This is the year Britain opened its door, begrudgingly, to migrants from war-torn Syria. For the inhabitants of County Durham, they may as well have come from the moon. As is his MO, Loach assembles a cast of inexperienced actors who bring naturalism to their characters. Turner imbues his lonely landlord with a doughty kindness and a gathering sense of protectiveness over the new arrivals. He opens his heart to Yara (newcomer Ebla Mari is vibrant), a twentysomething Syrian photographer

For something so integral to our lives, food rarely gets its due on the big screen. For every Babette’s Feast, Big Night or Tampopo, there’s a thousand other films where the dining room is a place of conflict rather than nourishment, and a full plate is at least as likely to end up lobbed against a wall as lingered over.  Enter Tran Anh Hung, then, with a gastronomic feast so rich and romantic, it’ll leave you woozy.  The Vietnamese filmmaker takes us back to 1885, the heyday of classic French cooking, and a sun-drenched Anjou château that’s home to Dodin Bouffant (The Piano Teacher’s Benoît Magimel) and his cook, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche). He’s a renowned chef searching for new inspiration – ‘the Napoleon of the culinary arts’, though it’s not a comparison he takes kindly to – but she’s his muse and the object of all his desires. Her cooking can reduce garrulous men to hushed silence and her salty good sense and directness serves as a pin in his balloon-sized ego. Magimel and Binoche have played lovers once before, in 1999’s period potboiler Children of the Century – but they portray a more affectingly lived-in kind of chemistry here. The former is a delight as the pompous but devoted Dodin. And La Binoche is luminous even as Eugénie is ailing from an undiagnosed condition. Deep emotions bring a palpable charge to this poised, patient film. The Pot-au-Feu is thirsty as well as hungry. Anyone who thinks eroticism in cinema is dead needs to witness Dodin sitting to watch the

Probably not one that’ll end up racking up views on the Vatican Netflix account, this period thriller from Italian director Marco Bellocchio (The Traitor) evokes a shameful episode in Papal history in grippingly operatic, if slightly superficial style.  A shocking story of institutional cruelty, Kidnapped faithfully records the real-life case of a six-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara (Enea Sala), in mid-18th century Bologna. Unknown to his parents, Edgardo has been secretly baptised as a baby by the family’s young maid during a bout of colic. Her intentions are good – she fears that he’s dying and wants him to spare him limbo – but the ramifications of her actions are horrific. For the local inquisitor, and ultimately Pope Pius IX himself (Paolo Pierobon), it’s carte blanche to snatch the child and raise him as a Catholic in the Vatican.  Of course, deep antisemitism underpinned the episode and it’s tempting to wonder if Steven Spielberg, who once lingered over the project, felt that this was ground he’d already covered in Munich and especially Schindler’s List. The historically freighted vision of soldiers stomping through a Jewish family’s home in the dead of night to a soundtrack of sobs and screams is evoked powerfully in the film’s thunderous opening. Pierobon is a suitably rotten Pontiff, unctuous and dogmatic as a surrogate father figure for the young Edgardo and spiky in the face of criticism. ‘I am standing firm, it is the world that is moving towards the precipi

Deadpan Japanese maverick Takeshi Kitano – aka Beat Takeshi – has been making and starring in films for three decades and while often prolific, he’s slowed down a little of late (his last was 2017’s Outrage Coda). So it’s a joy to see him putting his explosive stamp on the samurai movie in a non-stop affair that bubbles with impish humour and basically drenches the screen in blood. It’s like Kurosawa on nitrous.  Taking the expression ‘heads will roll’ and turning it into an entire film, Kubi is awash with severed noggins. Practically the only bit of screen time without one comes in the film’s open shot, and only then because it’s of a crab scuttling from a headless torso. It’s a kind of crustacean trigger warning: the ensuing jidaigeki mayhem is not for the lily-livered. Adapting his own novel, Kitano springboards off real-life events – the Honnō-ji Incident in 16th century Japan – to chart a world in which nobility and honour have given way to a mad scramble for power and where violence is everywhere. So, unexpectedly, is queerness, with Kitano showcasing the commonplace reality of gay love between samurai in a way that few movies have.The big bad here is Ryo Kase’s Nobunaga, a psychotic feudal lord with a touch of the Joe Pescis. He demands that his loyal samurai track down rival lord Murashige (Kenichi Endō), who has narrowly escaped his army after a Ran-like battle at his castle. In return, he sets out a Succession-like scenario: the one who returns with Murashige’s head

Possibly the best thing to come out of lockdown – including that sourdough starter we finally mastered – Wes Anderson’s ’50s quarantine tale plays like the American auteur’s whimsical, surrealist answer to The Twilight Zone relocated to the dusty desert of the old West. Happily, for a filmmaker whose signature style can sometimes feel archly distancing, feeling as well as fancy courses through Asteroid City. It’s his most bittersweet film about family since The Royal Tenenbaums and hands-down his best since The Grand Budapest Hotel. The setting is the fictional desert town of Asteroid City – although in a meta twist, it’s actually the setting of a TV play that’s unfolding in film form, written by Ed Norton’s legendary playwright, Conrad Earp, and narrated with an enjoyably raised eyebrow by Bryan Cranston. It sits halfway between Parched Gulch and Arid Plains deep in John Ford country, but it’s a place that could only emerge from Anderson’s ludicrously fertile imagination. Monument Valley’s rock formations and perfect, emoji-like cacti adorn the painterly matte backdrop as A-bomb tests detonate serenely in the distance in cotton-wool mushroom clouds. Welcome to ‘Once Upon a Time in the Wes’.Here, among the symmetrical cabins, martini vending machines, toy-set gas and train stations and one giant asteroid crater, his rich assembly of characters gather under the baking Arizona sun to flirt, grieve, bicker and ultimately wait endlessly when a Junior Stargazer convention is inter

The new trailer for season 2 of Prime Video’s coming-of-age drama The Summer I Turned Pretty is more emotional than any streaming promo has a right to be, thanks in large part to the brand new Taylor Swift song that plays along to it. Swifties will be eager to give it a couple of plays to feast their ears on a world-first play of ‘Back to December (Taylor’s Version)’ that accompanies a first look of the second run of the TV series. The track is a taster from her upcoming re-recorded album ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’ as she continue to reclaim her back catalogue from Scooter Braun. Crying (Taylor’s Version) pic.twitter.com/hVPrQuRAkH — Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) June 30, 2023 Adapted from her own novel by Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty follows the romantic goings-on of a group of friends at a beach house. Sixteen-year-old Belly (Lola Tung) will navigate a love triangle and the pains of growing up. Watch the trailer below. All eight episodes of season 2 stream on Prime Video on July 14. How to get tickets for Taylor Swift’s 2024 Eras Tour.The best TV shows of 2023 (so far) you need to stream.

Take a bow, every single person involved in marketing Barbie. Greta Gerwig’s pop-art masterpiece in the making is still a few weeks from release, but it’s been all anyone can talk about online since what feels like about 2013. The latest cunning ploy to keep your social feed pink is an actual Barbie dreamhouse that has suddenly popped up on a Malibu hillside. It's on Airbnb and comes equipped with absolutely anything a modern Ken doll and Barbie could need: infinity pool, rollerblades, cowboy gear, disco, mannequin horse... you name it, it’s there and fuschia-coloured. A ‘Barbie’ dreamhouse in Malibu will be open to book a stay on Airbnb starting July 17. pic.twitter.com/LG9ttXOrX2 — Pop Base (@PopBase) June 26, 2023 Even better? There’s a competition for four lucky souls to stay there for free and probably win at Instagram forever in the process.The California dreamhouse will be available for two one-night stays for up to two guests on July 21 and July 22. Booking opens at 10am Pacific Time on July 17 at airbnb.com/kendreamhouse.  ‘We all have dreams, and Barbie is lucky enough to have a house full of them,’ says Ken in a press release. ‘But now it’s my turn, and I can’t wait to host guests inside this one-of-a-kind – dare I say, one-of-a-Ken? – digs.’ And the Kenergy doesn’t end there: Airbnb will be making a donation to Save the Children, a move very much in the spirit of Barbie and Ken. Ramping up the anticipation levels still further was a recent tour of th

Squid Game season 2 – officially just Squid Game 2 – is in full swing over at Netflix Korea. This week early casting news dropped at the streamer’s Tedum event in Brazil, via a 105-second teaser video. Lee Jung-jae returning as ex-gambling addict and season 1 survivor Gi-hun, alongside Lee Byung-hun as the shadowy Front Man, Gong Yoo as The Salesman and Wi Ha-jun as police detective Hwang. Four new members have been announced too – Yim Siwan, Park Sung Hoon, Kang Ha Neul and Yang Dong-geun – though their roles remain underwraps. Having pressed send on it, Team Squid Game probably sat back, satisfied at a job well done. At least, until social media twigged that there were no female actors or characters mentioned in the announcement. Where were the actresses to follow in the footsteps of season 1 breakouts Jung Hoyeon and Lee You Mi? ’Not a single woman in that Squid Game 2 cast when she’s the reason it even got that popular in the first place,’ ran one tweet with a gif of Lee Yoo-mi’s Ji-yeong. ’Not gonna watch Squid Game 2 if there aren't any women,’ said another. Not a single woman in that squid game 2 cast when she’s the reason it even got that popular in the first place🌚pic.twitter.com/OAjrTSpI4j — 𝙍𝙞𝙣𝙖 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙛𝙡𝙤𝙥 (@Huisstallion) June 18, 2023 I know it's too early to say thx but no girls in Squid Game 2 teaser😳. Like i get it there are so many movies were lead female actresses were supposed to be credited first than t

Channel 4’s popular crime thriller ‘Before We Die’ is back for a second season, plunging Lesley Sharp back into a mob-vs-cops battle royale as a hard bitten West Country detective up to her neck in ruthless gangsters, sneaky moles and errant sons. ‘The Full Monty’ actress plays Hannah Laing, a Bristol cop who is coming to terms with the death of her partner, fellow cop Sean Hardacre. She’s on the trail of the cocaine-smuggling Mimica crime family, Croatian expats now running the Bristol underground, and has her estranged son, Christian, to worry about. He’s fallen in love with Bianca, the daughter of Mimica matriarch Dubravka.  Season 2 picks up three months on with Christian, newly unmasked as a mole in Mimica operation, the living an idyllic but nervy life in Costa Rica, and Laing officially out of semi-retirement to sort it all out. Photograph: Channel 4She’s behind you! Lesley Sharp in season 2 of ‘Before We Die’ Where is Before We Die S2 filmed?  The series, which is based on a Swedish crime drama, unfolds mainly in Bristol. Sharp-eyed fans with local knowledge can expect to see city landmarks like Clifton’s Grade II-listed Paragon building, Victoria Square, Stokes Croft, Brandon Hill Park and York Road in Montpelier. ‘We just thought it was such an interesting, quasi-European with all this renaissance grandeur and the sea and the lovely posh Notting Hill-ish type village of Clifton,’ says executive producer Walter Iuzzolino about filming in the city. Photograph: Shut

Airbnbs don’t come much more storied than the one I’m standing in. The open staircase and light fittings haven’t changed in 50 years. Outside stands a cherry tree, summer blossoms in full bloom, and across a narrow road lies an old graveyard with a derelict Presbyterian church at its heart. Diehard horror fans will recognise it in an instant. Welcome to ‘Wicker Country’, a picturesque corner of south-west Scotland’s Dumfries and Galloway region that’s alive with film lore. Here, via the power of movie magic and some ingenious location scouting, the fictional Hebridean island of Summerisle was pieced together from a dozen or so castles, gardens, towns villages and clifftops in the 1973 British folk horror classic ‘The Wicker Man’. For the uninitiated, Robin Hardy’s extraordinary debut film – a holy text of British cinema that’s back on the big screen this week to mark its half-centennial – follows Christian police sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) to Summerisle on the trail of a missing girl, Rowan Morrison. There, he finds a deeply off-kilter community led by Christopher Lee’s Lord Summerisle, a pagan fertility cult that celebrates itself via erotically-charged folk songs. Of course – and a big spoiler warning here – the disappearance is part of a deadly game of bait and switch: Howie has been lured to the island as a human sacrifice to placate the gods and secure the island’s next harvest. Ahead lies a fiery death in a giant clifftop wicker man and one of the greatest en

If you’re one of the army of people struggling to get tickets to see ‘A Little Life’ on stage, good news: the West End smash hit will be coming to a cinema near you on September 28.  Starring ‘Happy Valley’s James Norton and adapted from Hanya Yanagihara’s door stopper novel, ‘A Little Life’ follows the lives of four college friends in New York – abused lawyer Jude (Norton), artist JB (‘It’s a Sin’s Omari Douglas), architect Malcolm (Zach Wyatt) and actor Willem (Bridgerton’s Luke Thompson) – as they cope with the pressures and pains of life in the city.It opened in March to sell-out audiences and a wide spectrum of reviews. ‘Brilliant acting, great direction, but at heart it’s simply an empty vision of despair,’ wrote Time Out’s theatre critic.  The cinematic version is being filmed over four nights at London’s Savoy Theatre in July, where it will close after a five-week run. Photo: Jan VersweyveldJames Norton as Jude And fair warning: even in the middle of Halloween season, it’ll take a strong stomach to sit through its meaty three hour and 40 minute runtime (including interval) while munching merrily on a box of popcorn. Tickets to see it on the big screen in UK cinemas go onsale from July 6.  Read Time Out’s review of ‘A Little Life’.Luke Thompson on ‘A Little Life’, working with Ivo van Hove and ‘Bridgerton’.

It was 23 years ago that Mel Gibson voiced a chicken in Aardman’s first Chicken Run movie and much has changed since then. Mel Gibson is no longer voicing chickens but Aardman, the Bristol animation house behind that stop-motion triumph, is still ticking along very nicely indeed.  With a little help from Netflix, the Wallace and Gromit animators are heading back to the farmyard with a long-gestating sequel, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. It’ll be on the streaming platform later this year and will introduce a new flock of chooks undertaking another brush with a basting. Here’s what you need to know. What’s the Chicken Run 2 release date? It’ll be landing on Netflix on December 15, just in time for Christmas Who is in the cast for Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget? In the place of Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson from the first Chicken Run come Thandiwe Newton and Shazam!’s Zachary Levi to voice Ginger and Rocky. Providing the voice of their plucky daughter Molly is The Last of Us’s Bella Ramsey, while Jane Horrocks and Imelda Staunton are returning voices from the first film as the guileless, knitting-loving Babs and cynical champion egg-layer, Bunty, respectively.  Daniel Mays and Romesh Ranganathan replace Timothy Spall and Phil Daniels as scrounging rats Nick and Fetcher, and Game of Thrones’ David Bradley voices aviating chicken Fowler. Directing is Flushed Away’s Sam Fell. Photograph: Aardman/NETFLIX Is there a trailer? Not yet. Expect something to emerge, chick-like, in t

‘The Full Monty’ is back. A bit greyer, a little wobblier around the tummy, but no less charming than when its band of Sheffield strivers first dropped trou back in 1997‘s crowd-pleasing, box-office-monstering, Oscar-nominated musical comedy.  A new small-screen version has landed on Disney+ and has the gang back together and in a better place. Gone are the days of unemployed despair and queuing at job centres; instead, the once-jobless steelworkers have jacked in the bump n’ grind – this is not ‘No Undies For Old Men’ – and carved out happier lives with jobs and families. But there’s struggles too, with the cost of living crisis biting and benefits cuts making life tough. One thing remains the same, though: the new version of ‘The Full Monty’ remains a loving celebration of life in Yorkshire – not just the steel city of Sheffield, the movie’s original setting, but other corners of the north of England.  Photograph: Ben BlackallRobert Carlyle’s Gaz in Sheffield Where was The Full Monty reboot filmed? Sheffield remains the focal point of the show and most of the locations were filmed in the South Yorkshire city. Back on the call sheet was a return to Blake Street, Sheffield’s steepest and a key location in the 1997 movie. Scenes were also shot in Parkwood Springs, Meadowhall shopping centre, City Road and Gleadless Valley in the south of the city. But it’s not just Sheffield that features: the production took in locations across the Pennines in Greater Manchester. Oldham’s T

リリー・ローズ・デップの父は、映画「リバティーン」（2004年）で放蕩者を演じたが、今度は彼女が性と創造力の解放へと旅立つ番だ。A24が制作に携わったHBOドラマ「ジ・アイドル」は、ミュージシャンのザ・ウィークエンドことエイベル・テスファイが共同製作・主演する、音楽業界の闇を描いたシリーズである。 本作では、母の死後、再び栄光の座を手にしようと奮闘するポップスター、ジョスリン（デップ）が、破滅しかねない道を突き進んでいく姿が描かれている。低俗だが純粋に楽しめる場面と眠気を催すほど退屈な場面が交互に現れる。最初の2話は、権威ある「カンヌ国際映画祭」で披露されたが、金曜の夜にソファで缶ビール片手に観るのにぴったりだ。 とはいえ、公開された2話では、作品の方向性がまだ定まっていないのだ。（風刺の利いた過激な暴力と性の描写が特徴の）ポール・バーホーベン作品から風刺だけ取り除いたオマージュか？　怪しげで感傷的な　スター再起の物語なのか？　ザ・ウィークエンドと共に行く悪の世界への旅なのか？　今のところ、これら全てに当てはまっている。 第1話は、ハリウッドにあるジョスリンの豪邸での撮影シーンから始まる。そこでは、乳首の露出があり、厄介なコーディネーターが登場し（彼はトイレに閉じ込められてしまうのだが、このドラマ自体の露骨な性描写からして、実際の撮影現場でも同じことが起こったのかもしれない）、ジョスリンの赤裸々なセルフィーが流出する。  そして、その全ての出来事は雑誌「ヴァニティ・フェア」の記者（演じるのはドラマ「トランスペアレント」で女優デビューしたハリ・ネフ）の目の前で起こってしまうのだ。 まるで、ドラマシリーズ「アントラージュ★オレたちのハリウッド」で描かれる人間関係そのもので、ジェーン・アダムス、ダン・レヴィ、ハンク・アザリア、ダヴァイン・ジョイ・ランドルフらが演じる、レーベル関係者やマネージャー、PRアドバイザーといった、ジョスリンの仕事仲間たちの早口の会話を聞くのは楽しい。  登場人物たちはそれぞれ少しずつ違った動きをしていくのだが、全員が楽しませてくれる。レイチェル・セノットは、ジョスリンの友人でありアシスタントでありどんなときにも彼女の内面の声を明らかにしてくれる、レイアを演じる。まるで「アントラージュ」に登場するロイドの神経質なニューヨーク版といった感じだ。 Photograph: HBO/Eddy Chen そして第2話では、ザ・ウィークエンドが演じる怪しげでカルト的なナイトクラブのオーナー、テドロス・テドロス（話はそれるがクールな名前だ）の人物像が描かれ、3話以降に期待を持たせた。カリスマ性はあるものの、ミュージシャンから俳優に転身した彼の演技には、邪悪な性的魅力がもの足りない。  テドロスは性的には24時間衰え知らずといったタイプの男で、ジョスリンに対して心の奥底に潜む欲望を探るよう促す。首絞めプレイははっきりと、そして無責任に、その手段に含まれている。レイアがテドロスを「レイプとかしそう」と指摘する場面があるが、このドラマがラブストーリーであるなら、テドロスは（カルト指導者で残忍な連続殺人事件の首謀者だった）チャールズ・マンソンのような雰囲気を醸し出すのは抑えたほうが絶対にいい。 広く報じられたように、製作途中でザ・ウィークエンドと、ドラマ立ち上げ時の監督のエイミー・サイメッツとの間に不和が生じ、彼女に代わってサム・レヴィンソンが指名された（暴力、セックス、ドラッグなどの過激なシーンが話題となった「ユーフォリア」の制作者は、理論上は

ウェス・アンダーソンとLUSHの共通点があるとすれば「パステルカラー」ぐらいだと思っていたが、2023年6月8日からロンドンにある「Soho Lush Studio」（住所：67-71 Beak Street）で、アンダーソンの最新作「アステロイド・シティ」をテーマにしたポップアップショップ「the Lush X Asteroid City gift shop」が開催されている。 全体が「アステロイド・シティ」を意識してデザインされているこのショップでは、「Asteroid Bath Bomb」や「“Asteroid City” Shower Gel」など、（映画の内容に合わせ）地球外からやってきたバスグッズを販売。カフェも併設されているので、そうしたグッズに興味がなくても、しゃりしゃりのドリンクでも飲みながら、クールなポーズをキメることもできる。 ジェイソン・シュワルツマン、スカーレット・ヨハンソン、トム・ハンクスなどが出演する「アステロイド・シティ」は、天体観測大会で子どもたちが集まる1950年代半ばのほこりっぽいアリゾナの田舎町が舞台。町の主要な観光地である広大な小惑星クレーターで開催される同大会が、世界を変えるような出来事によって中断され、アンダーソン的な楽しい展開が次々と巻き起こる、という物語だ。 この作品がロンドンで公開になるのは6月23日（金）から。それに合わせて、17日（土）からは「180 The Strand」で、もう一つのポップアップイベント「Wes Anderson — Asteroid City」がスタートする。ここでは映画のセットや小道具、衣装などの展示のほか、劇中の店を再現した1950年代風ダイナーでの食事などを楽しむことができるという。こちらも見逃せない。「the Lush X Asteroid City gift shop」は7月13日（木）まで開催。営業時間は平日12～18時（土・日曜日は休み）となっている。 関連記事 『Wes Anderson’s ‘Asteroid City’ is getting a Lush pop-up in Soho（原文）』 『NSで人気のウェス・アンダーソン的風景、本物はミラノにあり？』 『ウェス・アンダーソンがデザインした列車がイギリスで運行』 『ウェス・アンダーソンのようなシンガポールとは？』 『インタビュー：ウェス・アンダーソン』 『史上最高のロマンチックコメディ映画30選』 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  

Anyone who’s been enjoying Hugh Grant’s recent rich run of big-screen villains as much as us will be excited by news that he’s in talks to star in a new horror movie from A24. That film is Heretic and will follow in a line of A24 horrors that includes Hereditary and Midsommar. Plot details are thin on the ground but it’s rumoured to feature two female Mormon missionaries whose attempts to convert an eccentric man develop into a deadly game of pursuit and evasion. Presumably, Grant will be playing the film’s villain (unless he’s rocking up in Phoenix Buchanan’s nun costume from Paddington 2), which would represent an intriguing move into full-blown horror for the one-time romcom stalwart.   Co-starring with the Brit is Chloe East, according to Deadline. The actress played Sammy Fabelman’s girlfriend in The Fabelmans and will be playing one of the unfortunate evangelists in the film. Heretic is written and will be directed by rising genre double-act Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the screenwriters behind A Quiet Place and recent Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman. Also ahead for Grant stans is the enticing prospect of a role as an Oompa-Loompa for Paddington 2 director Paul King in Wonka.He’s also starring in Netflix movie Unfrosted, a directorial debut for Jerry Seinfeld based on the invention of the Pop-Tart that co-stars Melissa McCarthy and Amy Schumer.  How Hugh Grant became Hollywood’s ultimate on-screen villain. From Michael Caine to Olivia Colman: 50 Great British actor

To misquote Carrie Bradshaw, nothing lasts for ever – apart from ‘Sex and the City’. To celebrate the show’s 25th anniversary, and an impending second season of SATC spin-off ‘And Just Like That…’,  an ‘immersive fan experience’ is opening in London, a Blahniks-propelled stroll from Piccadilly.It’s called – deep breath – ‘And Just Like That… It’s Been 25 Years, A Sex and the City Experience’ and it’s taking place at 48 Regent Street. Fans can expect ‘an immersive journey through the world of the show’ in all its Manhattan-y glory.  Yes, there will be cosmopolitans, as well as a chance to take a snoop through a recreation of Carrie’s brownstone stoop and apartment, and Insta-worthy photo opportunities in front of her closet and the laptop where all those racy newspaper columns were bashed out.  The immersive experience will be open to the public from June 20-25. Tickets cost £5 and are available from the official site. Season 2 of ‘And Just Like That…’ marks the return of Kim Cattrall’s Samantha, after a major falling out with Sarah Jessica Parker – although you will not see too much of them together on-screen. The feud isn’t that over. EXCLUSIVE: Kim Cattrall makes shocking return in ‘And Just Like That’ Season 2 https://t.co/wqa0bsMc99 pic.twitter.com/St34Nqrzyc — New York Post (@nypost) May 31, 2023 It’s airing on Sky Comedy and Now TV on June 22. A new exhibition is coming to London to celebrate Wes Anderson’s ‘Asteroid City’.The best TV shows of 2023 (so far) you