Phil de Semlyen

LA has Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly, New York has its share of classic picturehouses, Paris has a world of old-fashioned repertory cinemas to explore, and Amsterdam boasts the most beautiful cinema in the world. But none of them can hold a flickering projector to London’s vast array of multiplexes, arthouses, luxe cinemas and cult spots. There’s more than a 100 cinemas of all shapes and sizes, and the chances are, if you live in or outside the city, one of them is a short bus or Tube ride away. With the openings of the new Curzon Hoxton, Ealing Picturehouse, West London’s ActOne and The Chiswick Cinema, and fancy new cinemas in Battersea Power Station and Selfridges, the city’s movie-going options have continued to swell, even post-pandemic. But not all cinemas are created equal: some are worth travelling that little bit further for – whether for the incredible value they offer, the tech set-up, crazy-comfy seats, the cult programming, or the gastronomic treats on offer. To sort the elite from the just-merely-really-good, we’ve canvassed Londoners for their pick of favourites and tallied their votes, with a few of our own picks, to rank the best movie houses inside the M25. From PeckhamPlex to The Phoenix, they’re an inestimable bunch, representing London’s past and with any luck, it’s future too. RECOMMENDED: the latest movie reviews, news and interviews

It was a comeback year for the movies, but if we’re totally honest, it wasn’t a great year for comedy movies. Sure, the biggest film of the year was an off-the-wall feminist satire of the world’s most famous doll franchise. Beyond Barbie, though, true LOLs were hard to come by at the cinema – and it wasn’t much better on the small screen. But just because something is hard to find doesn’t mean it’s not worth seeking out. On the contrary: in a down year for comedy, it just made us appreciate the stuff that did make us laugh that much more. That stuff included a dancing murder doll, a coked-up bear, a giant phallic monster – and of course, Ken. Hey, come to think of it, maybe comedy in 2023 wasn’t so bad after all. Recommended: 🔥 The best movies of 2025😂 The best comedy movies and TV shows of 2025 (so far)📺 The best TV shows of 2025 you need to stream

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

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

War has long fascinated filmmakers, going back to the birth of cinema, but none have proven so endlessly enthralling as World War II. It’s understandable, given the remarkable scale of the destruction, the atrocities it involved and what it represented in the grand scheme of human history. So many movies have been made about the conflict, it almost stands apart from other war movies as a genre unto itself – and we’ll almost certainly see many more over the coming decades. It’s a daunting task, then, to choose the best World War II movies ever made. That’s why, along with polling our well-studied Time Out writers, we also called in an outside expert to come up with this definitive list: Quentin Tarantino, a man who knows a thing or two about making a great WW2 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

London is absolutely world-class when it comes to museums. Obviously, we’re pretty biased, but with more than 170 of them dotted about the capital – a huge chunk of which are free to visit – we think it’s fair to say that there’s nowhere else in the world that does museums better.  Want to explore the history of TfL? We’ve got a museum for that. Rather learn about advertising? We’ve got a museum for that too. History? Check. Science? Check. 1940s cinema memorabilia, grotesque eighteenth-century surgical instruments, or perhaps a wall of 4,000 mouse skeletons? Check, check and check! Being the cultured metropolitans that we are, Time Out’s editors love nothing more than a wholesome afternoon spent gawping at Churchill’s baby rattle or some ancient Egyptian percussion instruments. In my case, the opportunity to live on the doorstep of some of the planet’s most iconic cultural institutions was a big reason why I moved here at the first chance I got, and I’ve racked up countless hours traipsing around display cases and deciphering needlessly verbose wall texts in the eleven years since. From iconic collections, brilliant curation and cutting-edge tech right down to nice loos, adequate signage and a decent place to grab a cuppa; my colleagues and I know exactly what we want from a museum, and we’ve put in a whole lot of time deliberating which of the city’s institutions are worth your time. So here’s our take on the 25 best ones to check out around London, ranging from world-famou

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

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

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

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

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

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

The title of Kelly Reichardt’s (Certain Women) bone-dry art heist comedy, set in the ‘70s of Vietnam War protests and waterbed sales, is strictly tongue-in-cheek. Not only is he not a mastermind, Josh O’Connor’s unemployed Massachusetts carpenter James Blaine ‘JB’ Mooney would make Fargo’s Jerry Lundegaard look like the last word in criminal competence.  Mooney plans to steal four abstract – and fairly low value – portraits by modernist painter Arthur Dove from his local gallery. We see him scoping out the place, observing the snoozy guards and using his wife (Alana Haim) and sons (Sterling and Jasper Thompson) as cover as he figures out all the angles and nails down a watertight scheme to lift the art. And the actual plan? To grab the paintings, stick them in a bag and leg it. It’s executed with the help of a gormless local contact and a hot-headed last-minute ringer who brings a gun and starts pointing it at screaming kids. To add to the tragicomic vibe, their getaway vehicle gets stuck in traffic on the way out.  Based loosely on a real-life 1973 heist of Massachusetts’s Worcester Art Museum, it’s the kind of material from which the Coens would spin a blackly comic tale of betrayal, murder and cosmic justice. But Reichardt’s interest lies in a more existential kind of unravelling. As the cops circle, more serious criminals start sniffing around, and Mooney’s circuit court judge father (Bill Camp) and exasperated mum (Hope Davis) read about the story in the papers, O’Connor

Prepare the Brokeback Mountain comparisons now, because Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor’s tender romance has all the ingredients of Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning queer love story. Like that Annie Proulx adaptation, it’s based on a short story (by Ben Shattuck, who adapts here) and is set in the woods and hills of rural America (Maine, rather than Wyoming). It’s full of the stifled emotions of two men who fall in love but can’t quite express it.  The only thing missing – and it’s a biggie – is the deep passion that coursed beneath the surface of that Oscar winning western. South African director Oliver Hermanus finds plenty of deep feeling and sincerity here but his beautiful-looking, measured period piece gets stifled by its own languors – especially in a first half that needs a slug or two of moonshine to inject some life into it. As he’s proved twice already, with gorgeous Ikiru remake Living and striking queer bootcamp drama Moffie, Hermanus is guided by a powerful sense of empathy and compassion. Here, he follows the story of Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor), two music students who meet at Boston Conservatory in 1917 and bond over their shared love of folk music. Lionel, a gentle country boy blessed with an ability to see music – synesthesia – is the shy outsider; David is an east coaster with easy confidence and a boyish sense of mischief. They fall into bed, but their love remains unspoken and undefined. Soon, David is in uniform and off to the Great War trenches of France,

Chris Evans as a slutty evangelist. The Substance’s Margaret Qualley as a sleuth on the case of a missing woman. Aubrey Plaza as her cop lover. A stack of sex toys. A fork fight. Ethan Coen’s scurrilous new crime caper, the second part of his ‘lesbian B-movie trilogy’ co-written with partner Tricia Cooke, should be a lot of fun. Instead, it’s a sporadically funny nothingburger which, while not as bad as the lamentable Drive-Away Dolls, stills makes you wonder whether his brother Joel was the genius behind the operation all along. The clever opening credits, mapping out its Californian small-town setting to The Animals’ We Gotta Get Out of This Place, promise a level of inventiveness that just never materialises. Instead, there’s a gumshoe plot purportedly inspired by languid ’70s Chandler adaptations Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye. But where Coen’s own The Big Lebowski and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice took those same raw materials – a vague mystery, sexy dames and a criminal enterprise capable of violent nastiness – and forged enjoyably self-referential stoner noirs from them, Honey Don’t! is just a meandering yarn without a purpose.  You get the languor but not much else. Interminable Vice, maybe.  Honey Don’t! premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Iranian cinema is your go-to for knotty, complex morality tales. Small missteps are made, a series of seemingly inconsequential events leads to one big, defining one – and the fallout leaves characters trying to navigate the awful repercussions often made worse by the country’s suffocating social and religious codes. A gun goes missing in Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig; a handbag is stolen in Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero. Torment and tragedies ensue.In Saeed Roustayi’s Woman and Child, a carefully crafted and endlessly gripping drama that follows a Tehran family’s slow disintegration, it’s the supposedly joyous occasion of a marriage proposal that set the wheels of fate in motion. Hard-working nurse Mahnaz (Parinaz Izadyar, magnetic) is a 40-year-old widow with two kids: teenage tearaway Aliyar (Sinan Mohebi) and all-round poppet Neda (Arshida Dorostkar). She’s dating ambulance driver Hamid (A Separation’s Payman Maadi), an older man whose flirtations suddenly turn serious. He pops the question, but there’s an immediate string attached: will she pretend she’s childless when his strict rural parents come to visit them at her house?  For anyone unfamiliar with the strictures and mores of Iranian society, the answer would be ‘hell no’. But as Roustayi shows in a movie that’s sympathetic to its female protagonist almost to a fault, it’s nothing like that simple. As a single mum, Hamid might be her best bet – even if he immediately scans as something of a rogue and she’

A sun-soaked dream – okay, nightmare – of a midnight movie, this Australian survival horror asks the question: what if Steve Irwin was basically the devil? The answer would probably look a lot like Jai Courtney’s shark dive owner Tucker, a brawny bogan who takes backpackers and tourists onto his rusty old boat to enthusiastically introduce them to the bull sharks, makos and great whites that swim off the Gold Coast. First in a cage, then sedated and trapped into a harness, lowered into the water while the sweaty psychopath records it all on his VHS camera. Obviously, he gives them a Vegemite sandwich and some shark facts first. He’s not a total monster. The movie’s two heroes are American hippie-chick surfer Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) and hunky local softboi Moses (Josh Heuston). They get some cursory character details (her: estranged from parents, likes eating buns; him: sensitive rich kid, drives a Volvo; both: love Creedence Clearwater Revival), and there’s a budding romance between them that’s rendered in the cheesiest possible notes. But the two actors make them likeable enough for you to hope they don’t end up chomped on by a peckish mako. Zephyr gets abducted during a late-night surf and wakes up chained to a bed aboard Tucker’s boat. From there, we’re off on a gnarly fun ride in the dank cabins and on bloodstained decks, as the sharks, captured in some gorgeous real-life footage, circle below. This is no Sharknado CG fest – it looks and feels real. And the boat itself i

It’s a suitably arresting set-up for Jafar Panahi’s politically charged and darkly hilarious abduction movie – especially when it becomes clear what’s going on: impulsive mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) believes he’s caught the brutal interrogator who once tortured him for three months and left him scarred – a man given the epithets ‘Peg Leg’ and ‘the Gimp’ by his victims. The guy in cuffs has a prosthetic leg, just like the Gimp, who lost his fighting in Syria. It scans. But like so much else in this blackly brilliant film, a question mark hangs over this Blood Simple-style scenario. Is this man, played by Ebrahim Azizi, really the author of his suffering or is he just a family man called Eghbal, as he claims? All the Gimp’s victims were blindfolded, so how can anyone be sure?  Panahi is a formidably courageous filmmaker who has spent time in jail at the hands of his country’s repressive regime. Here, he brings deep feeling to a movie that often plays closer to a straight comedy than a fiercer indictment of the state or a Munich-like morality tale about justice and vengeance.  You can definitely sense the directorial wish-fulfilment in the carnivalesque that follows as Vahid drags the drugged Eghbal around Tehran in his beat-up transit van, gathering a small band of fellow victims to help him identify the man and decide what to do with him. Joining this increasingly hapless quest are wedding snapper Shiva (Mariam Afshari), a soon-to-be newlywed couple (Hadis Pakbaten and Ma

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guy Ritchie’s new adventure movie, Fountain of Youth, is a globe-trotting caper in the spirit of National Treasure and that all-time classic, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There’s clues, a treasure map, stolen portraits, subsea wrecks and a powerful McGuffin that people will die to keep safe – and that John Krasinski’s artefact hunter will risk it all to pinch.   A Quiet Place’s Krasinski plays Luke Purdue, an adventurer who teams up with his reluctant sister Charlotte (Natalie Portman) on a quest to find the mythical Fountain of Youth. Domhnall Gleeson’s terminally ill tycoon provides financial backing, hopeful that water from the mythical spring will cure him. Queuing up to stop them are ruthless agent Esme (Mexican star Eiza González), a detective played by Succession’s Arian Moayed, and more than is a few twists and turns. Photograph: Apple TV+John Krasinski, Domhnall Gleeson and Natalie Portman in ‘Fountain of Youth’ Fountain of Youth Filmed filming locations The Apple TV+ movie has Apple money behind it, which means big action set pieces and iconic international backdrops for them to play out against. We asked Guy Ritchie’s long-time production designer Martyn John (The Gentleman) to talk us through the film’s globe-spanning filming spots. The scooter chase – Bangkok, Thailand Fountain of Youth opens with Purdue in possession of an item that his adversaries want very badly. Cue a madcap chase through Thailand’s bustling capital city as the treasure hunter tries

Ethan Hunt is back to save the world again – and this time it really needs saving. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the eighth and biggest Mission movie yet, sees Tom Cruise’s agent pushing at the boundaries of gravity and physics once again in an attempt to foil the megalomaniac plans of evil AI The Entity and its human handmaiden Gabriel (Esai Morales). Luckily, Ethan has back-up in the equally mad/daring form of Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), Grace (Hayley Atwell), Paris (Pom Klementieff) and new guy Theo (Greg Tarzan Davis). The action, as our review will testify, is on another scale and the stakes are even higher. Fans of the franchise will not be shortchanged. Behind the scenes, the film’s production story was not a lot less bananas, with the film’s shoot overlapping with that of previous instalment Dead Reckoning, Hollywood strikes and about a bajillion moving parts for director Christopher McQuarrie and his stuntman star Cruise to corral into place. Here’s how – and where – they did it, and how to visit the movie’s incredible locations. Paramount Pictures and SkydanceMisión imposible: Sentencia final Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning filming locations  Trafalgar Square, London If there’s one thing the Mission: Impossible franchise loves even more than self-destructing messages and fast-burning fuses, it’s the city of London. From Brian De Palma’s opening entry back in 1996, which had a key scene inside Liverpool Street Station, to Mission

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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