5 h. ago Maintenance Required review – Amazon’s synthetic You’ve Got Mail rip

The beats of the 1998 rom-com, which was itself a re-imagining of The Shop Around the Corner, are shamelessly regurgitated for this charmless copycatWatching, or rather enduring, Amazon-MGM’s charmless new romantic comedy Maintenance Required, I was so convinced it was an officially sanctioned re-imagining of You’ve Got Mail that I scoured the credits for confirmation. Surely, even in this cursed AI era of copyright erosion, no one would so shamelessly regurgitate the beats of that much-adored film without giving the requisite credit?But try as I might, I could not find a “based on” or even a “thanks to”, the film a copy of a film which was itself a (legally sound) remake of a film which had been inspired by a play (the script even, cheekily, refers to “a sweet little shop around the corner”). In a film that will hopefully be used as evidence in an upcoming lawsuit, a woman tries to keep her struggling local business alive as a big brand competitor opens over the street while she se...

Politics

5 h. ago Daniel Craig joins Mila Kunis and Kerry Washington at Knives Out 3 premiere as London Film Festival 2025 opens

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery launched the 69th BFI London Film Festival, with stars including Andrew Scott and Daryl McCormack walking the red carpet

Politics

5 h. ago Saoirse Ronan to reportedly play Linda McCartney in Beatles biopic

Oscar-nominated actor rumoured to play Paul McCartney’s first wife opposite Paul Mescal in Sam Mendes set of moviesThe Oscar-nominated actor Saoirse Ronan is reportedly set to play Linda McCartney in Sam Mendes’ The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event.According to Deadline, multiple sources have claimed that the star of Little Women and Lady Bird will play the first wife of Paul McCartney in the upcoming set of biopics. The singer will be played by Paul Mescal, who starred alongside Ronan in the sci-fi drama Foe. Continue reading...

Politics

8 h. ago Migrant protest LIVE: Pink Ladies take to London streets as they demand 'protect us'

Migrant protest LIVE: Pink Ladies take to London streets as they demand 'protect us'  Daily Express

Events

8 h. ago VR headsets show teenagers reality of knife crime in Liverpool

Policing Minister Sarah Jones visited Merseyside on Tuesday, 7 October, to see first-hand how police and partner agencies are using Virtual Reality (VR) to protect young people from knife crime.

Events

9 h. ago ‘AI is here to stay and change things’: Mad Max director George Miller on why he is taking part in an AI film festival

The director believes AI has made film-making ‘way more egalitarian’ – and is set to lead the judges at Omni AI film festival in AustraliaThere’s no arguing the use of artificial intelligence in film-making is getting a bad rap. Last week’s unveiling of Hollywood’s first AI “actress”, Tilly Norwood, generated howls of protest from actors’ unions across the UK and US, where the industry is still reeling from last year’s 118-day strike over, among other issues, the threat of AI.And earlier this week, Australia’s Productivity Commission was pilloried by Liberals and Greens alike for failing to recognise the dire impact AI may have on the country’s creative industries. Continue reading...

Culture

12 h. ago Video London police dismantle international phone theft gang

Video London police dismantle international phone theft gang  ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos

Events

12 h. ago Inspired and emotional: why a drunk Ray Winstone was exactly what the Star Wars prequels needed

The Sexy Beast star has said he was under the influence when he auditioned – unsuccessfully – for Attack of the Clones. George Lucas really missed a trickThe Star Wars prequels were not particularly enjoyable to sit through. All the matinee adventure serial action of the first three films were gone, replaced by long scenes about impenetrable galactic taxation systems, as performed by characters that seemed to have been designed purely for their potential to sell toys.So bad were the prequels in fact, that realistically there is only one thing that could have possibly improved them. Of course, I am talking about the sight of Ray Winstone tearing around the set in a silly costume, drunk off his face. Only now do we understand how close this came to be. Talking to Far Out recently, Winstone revealed that he auditioned for the part of Ruwee Naberrie, the father of Padmé Amidala, in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. And he would have got it, too, except for the fact that he t...

Events

15 h. ago Grow review – polished pumpkin growing caper stuffed with perky charm and comedy talent

Featuring the likes of Nick Frost, Jane Horrocks and Golda Rosheuvel, this family heartwarmer makes for perfectly serviceable seasonal fareThis perky British kids’ movie lists five different people in the writing credits (two of whom chipped in with “additional material”); this may explain in part why its story beats arrive with such metronomic precision, and the characters feel as if they were grown hydroponically in a lab. Which is of course ironic because the setting is a family-run farm where agronomist-owner Dinah (Golda Rosheuvel) decides to go organic after being inspired by her magical niece Charlie (Priya-Rose Brookwell, adorable) who can sense plants’ emotions by touch.Having only been recently introduced, for reasons the otherwise overpolished script fails to explain, Charlie and Dinah get to know each other over the course of a few seasons – which just so happens to be the length of time it takes to grow a pumpkin for the annual village competition. Charlie hopes to use ...

Politics

17 h. ago A Want in Her review – daughter’s searing portrait of family addiction and mental illness

Film-maker Myrid Carten exposes her relationship with her mother – who has both bipolar disorder and alcoholism – in this painful but powerful documentaryFor anyone who has been close to an alcoholic, or someone with mental-health issues or, as is the case here, both at once, this is a hard watch. Film-maker Myrid Carten, who holds the camera much of the time as well as directing, exposes here the open wound that is her relationship with her mother Nuala, who has both bipolar disorder and alcoholism. Nuala often goes missing on binges, and as the film opens we hear Myrid telling someone on the phone how she just spotted her mother on a Belfast street in a total state, but recognisable because of the glamorous high-heeled shoes she was wearing.You’d struggle to realise this is the same woman we see in news footage from years earlier: soignée, composed and described as a social worker who has written a guidance paper for police on how to handle victims of domestic abuse. The Nuala of ...

Politics

24 h. ago Police storm County Lines drug gangs as record number of arrests made

A man was arrested in a dramatic police raid on a home in Liverpool as part of an operation targeting drug smuggling - as crime and policing minister Sarah Jones vowed to crack down on the “evil trade”.

Events

31 h. ago Tron: Ares review – even Gillian Anderson can’t slap this mind

Pointless threequel delivers a leaden cameo from a white-robed Jeff Bridges and an irritating turn from Jared Leto as a hipster-haired humanoid The matrix of pointlessness is reloaded in this mind-bendingly dull sci-fi, more a screensaver than an actual film. It’s a threequel to the original movie Tron from 1982, a film that was mould-breaking and boldly pioneering for its day in a way that eludes this one and its predecessor Tron Legacy from 2010. Tron: Ares (almost) comes to life just once – when Evan Peters gets a smack in the face from Gillian Anderson playing his mum, in an old-fashioned bit of analogue reality. That’s a bit of firm parenting you might feel like handing out to every producer involved in this film, and it’s sad to see the estimable Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith being made to look so lifeless.The situation now is that an evil AI corporation with the unsubtly gangster-ish name of Dillinger has become a rival to the virtual reality firm Encom, originally set up ...

Science

31 h. ago Ken Jacobs, mainstay of New York’s underground film culture, dies aged 92

Experimental film-maker’s works included Little Stabs at Happiness, Blonde Cobra, and Tom, Tom, the Piper’s SonRenowned experimental film-maker Ken Jacobs, whose works such as Little Stabs at Happiness, Blonde Cobra and Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son made him a key member of the underground film circuit of the 1960s, has died aged 92. His son Azazel Jacobs, also a film-maker, told the New York Times that he died of kidney failure in hospital on Sunday.Described by the New York Times as “the éminence grise of the American avant garde”, Jacobs and his wife Flo, with whom he collaborated on much of his work, straddled the worlds of experimental art and American new wave film-making, along with the likes of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas. He was a founding member of New York’s Film-Makers’ Co-Operative and the first director of the Millennium Film Workshop in 1966, both of which offered a space for film-makers working outside the mainstream and which are still operating today. Conti...

Events

31 h. ago Ken Jacobs, luminary of New York underground film culture, dies aged 92

Experimental film-maker’s works included Little Stabs at Happiness, Blonde Cobra, and Tom, Tom, the Piper’s SonRenowned experimental film-maker Ken Jacobs, whose works such as Little Stabs at Happiness, Blonde Cobra and Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son made him a key member of the underground film circuit of the 1960s, has died aged 92. His son Azazel Jacobs, also a film-maker, told the New York Times that he died of kidney failure in hospital on Sunday.Described by the New York Times as “the éminence grise of the American avant garde”, Jacobs and his wife Flo, with whom he collaborated on much of his work, straddled the worlds of experimental art and American new wave film-making, along with the likes of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas. He was a founding member of New York’s Film-Makers’ Co-Operative and the first director of the Millennium Film Workshop in 1966, both of which offered a space for film-makers working outside the mainstream and which are still operating today. Conti...

Events

32 h. ago Officer draws gun on man at gas station after mistaking pump for pistol

An officer drew a gun on a man in a gas station after he mistook a pump for a pistol.

Events

34 h. ago George Clooney says his children have a ‘much better life’ being raised in France than LA

The actor said that their French farm will be free of paparazzi, teach them self-sufficiency and let them see his handyman skills, such as fixing the coffee machineGeorge Clooney has said that his decision to base himself in France was informed by the desire to give his children a better start in life than if they had remained in the US.The actor, 64, who has eight-year-old twins, Ella and Alexander, with his wife, the human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, gave a lengthy interview to US Esquire magazine while staying at his Italian villa on Lake Como. Continue reading...

Politics

36 h. ago Lynne Ramsay’s passion, Jim Jarmusch’s star turn and knives come out again: Peter Bradshaw’s London film festival picks

Among this year’s must-sees Jennifer Lawrence brings gothic steam, Daniel Craig takes a new case and a constellation of luminaries get cosmicRian Johnson’s whodunnit Knives Out franchise with Daniel Craig as the eccentric Southern detective Benoit Blanc put some fizz into the London film festival a couple of years ago when the second film in the series was included. Now the threequel is the festival’s opening gala: Josh O’Connor is the principled young priest who finds himself in the frame when his fierce clerical superior is whacked – and Benoit has to find out the truth. Continue reading...

Culture

37 h. ago Night of the Zoopocalypse review – Clive Barker story becomes zombified animal caper for horror

Perhaps the first animated animal adventure based on a story by Hellraiser writer Barker, with commendably scary baddies and a lemur who is a horror-movie buffA children’s animated adventure based on an idea by Clive “Hellraiser” Barker? It’s a new one on us and yet, why not. All the best children’s stories have gory origins, from anonymous folklore to the Brothers Grimm. Here, the premise is fairly simple: zoo animals are becoming zombified and our heroes, a young wolf (Gabbi Kosmidis) and world-weary mountain lion (David Harbour) plus a growing posse of the non-zombified, must try to a) escape and b) put a stop to the zombification.It’s not the most complex premise – the Barker original, called Zoombies, is an unpublished short story – and this occasionally shows, in that there’s not an awful lot of narrative to go around. The film-makers address this by running a parallel commentary on the story beats and structure from one of the characters, a funny/annoying lemur, who is a horr...

Society

38 h. ago What week is it on Bake Off? Here's when it's on tonight as bakers tart it up for week 6 theme

Bakers will be hoping to avoid the dreaded soggy bottoms during week six - Pastry Week - of the Great British Bake Off.

Politics

39 h. ago Under the Open Sky review – absorbing portrait of a threatened way of life

Intimate, unhurried documentary follows a family of camel herders on the plains of western IndiaThe title of Sonum Sumaria’s languid film might suggest a general sense of possibilities, but her documentary in fact focuses on an indigenous way of life that has become painfully constricted. Ahmed and his family – descended from a long line of nomadic herders – raise camels on the plains of Kutch in western India. Their daily rituals, making rotis over open fires and nursing their livestock, unfold in intimate, unhurried scenes.These routines are deeply in communion with nature, but the landscape has irrevocably shifted, threatening their very existence. A drought rages, leaving little water for Ahmed’s ailing animals. Climate change is not the only cause; in impressionistic wide shots, we see glimpses of wind turbines and factories, private enterprises that turn the surrounding environment into barren land. Moreover, while laws allocate grazing ground for cows and buffalo, no such mea...

Events