14 h. ago How Sinners became the most culturally important film of 2025

Ryan Coogler’s critically acclaimed horror blockbuster had people talking all year, proving industry naysayers wrong and breaking various recordsIt was the film that was supposed to destroy Hollywood: a vampire horror about life and times in the Jim Crow south peopled by a majority Black cast, and shot on Imax 70mm. Ryan Coogler, the acclaimed director who rose to prominence steering Marvel’s colossal Black Panther franchise, was thought to be out of his depth for trying to midwife a script he himself said he cobbled together in two months. Warner Bros, the studio fronting the film’s near $100m budget, was supposedly out of its mind for not only throwing that much money behind the project, but further agreeing to singularly favorable authorship deal terms that gave him control over the film’ final cut and full rights over the film after 25 years. Hollywood machers were convinced the film would never make money and that Warner Bros’ big gamble “could be the end of the studio system”....

Culture

19 h. ago JADE, Brandi Carlile, Perfume Genius, PinkPantheress, Turnstile and McKinley Dixon on their cultural highlights of 2025

After revealing our Albums of the Year list for 2025, Hannah Ewens and Roisin O’Connor speak with some of the artists behind those records about their own cultural highlights from the past 12 months... and their hopes for 2026

Politics

19 h. ago JADE, Brandi Carlile, Perfume Genius, Big Thief, PinkPantheress, Turnstile and McKinley Dixon on their cultural highlights of 2025

Hannah Ewens and Roisin O’Connor speak with some of the artists behind the best records of the year about their own cultural highlights from the past 12 months... and their hopes for 2026

Politics

34 h. ago Avengers: Doomsday trailer – as the hype builds, has Marvel got lost in the multiverse?

Marvel has put the first official trailer for the new Avengers meetup before random screenings of Avatar: Fire and Ash. Recordings of it have leaked online – but many questions still remainIs anything real any more? For the last few weeks there have been rumours that Marvel is about to drop the first official footage for its forthcoming superhero epic Avengers: Doomsday, ahead of screenings of Avatar: Fire and Ash. And it makes a sort of sense: the latest instalment of James Cameron’s 3D mega-project about blue aliens and colonial shame is clearly a visual spectacle, so why not lure fans of Captain America and Thor into cinemas by dangling the promise of a Doomsday trailer in front of them? In a world in which everyone expects everything to be online instantly, could the most radical experiment be to put this thing in cinemas?If it once seemed like a good idea, it increasingly looks less so. There are rumoured to be multiple Doomsday trailers in circulation, to be ushered in ahead o...

Politics

34 h. ago And the 2025 Braddies go to Peter Bradshaw’s film picks of the year

Now the Guardian’s Top 50 countdowns, as voted for by the whole film team, have announced their No 1s, here are our chief critic’s personal choices – in no particular order• The 50 best films of 2025 in the UK• The 50 best movies of 2025 in the USThe time has come once more for me to present my “Braddies”, a strictly personal awards list for films on UK release in the year just gone and, as ever, quite distinct from this paper’s collegiate best-of-year countdown. These are my top 10 lists for best film, director, actor and supporting actor, actress and supporting actress, directorial debut, cinematographer, screenplay and film most likely to be overlooked by the boomer mainstream media (or MSM).As we look back over the last 12 months, there can be no doubt of the villain of 2025: Tilly Norwood, the female AI star. Launched in October, she is a smilingly bland and really very convincing non-human being who will work uncomplainingly and cheaply without ever storming off to her trailer...

Events

34 h. ago I watched Stand By Me with Rob Reiner. Both film and man changed my life

I had watched the coming-of-age weepie over and over growing up so it was an overwhelming experience to sit down with its creator and see it again. It was a magical day and he was just as warm-hearted as his movieRob Reiner beam as he greets me. “You’ve seen Stand By Me 100 times?” he asks. I nod sheepishly. “Then you probably know it better than I do.” It’s August 2006, 20 years after Reiner’s coming-of-age weepie was first released, and I’m sitting in his office at Castle Rock Entertainment, the LA-based production company he co-launched in 1987. On the walls hang posters of Reiner’s beloved movies – This Is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, Misery, A Few Good Men – but our attention is fixed on a modest TV as Stand By Me begins.I’m here in Beverly Hills to write an anniversary article for a film magazine, but it’s also a pinch-me moment. As a teen, I’d watched Stand By Me on loop, identifying with the four protagonists – fragile, wannabe-writer Gordie (Wil Whe...

Politics

37 h. ago Best movies of 2025 in the US: No 1 – One Battle After Another

Leonardo DiCaprio is a former revolutionary searching for his daughter in Paul Thomas Anderson’s exhilaratingly audacious counterculture epic• The best movies of 2025 in the US• More on the best culture of 2025Paul Thomas Anderson’s countercultural drama-thriller One Battle After Another, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, is a formal enigma that has perplexed, provoked and entranced, and the year ends with no definitive consensus as to its exact meaning. A rare naysayer is screenwriter and film-maker Paul Schrader, who commented tersely online: “Film-making at level A+, but try as I might I couldn’t muster up an ounce of empathy for Leo DiCaprio or Sean Penn. I kept waiting for them to die.”But that’s why the film is gripping: there is indeed no empathy for its two unlovely leading males, and their mortality and vulnerability has a kind of unwinding, entropic energy. They are heading for disaster. And yes, the film-making is A+ or A++; it is supercharged with pleasure at ...

Events

39 h. ago Hogmanay TV preview 2025: Paul Whitelaw's guide to the best New Year viewing

A host of TV regulars will help see the old year out, before some much loved shows appear to welcome in the new one, writes Paul Whitelaw

Events

40 h. ago The best films of 2025: Alistair Harkness picks his highlights

From Scott Cooper’s take on Springsteen to an animation about a cat trying to survive a flood, Alistair Harkness names his top ten films of the year

Politics

41 h. ago Chase Infiniti: ‘My parents freaked out more than me when I said I was acting opposite Leonardo DiCaprio’

The breakout star of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (the Guardian’s No 1 film of 2025) on learning karate, her love of car chases – and how she got her name You could hardly ask for a better movie debut than Chase Infiniti’s in One Battle After Another, even if the 24-year-old actor was very much thrown in at the deep end. As Willa, the teenage daughter of former revolutionaries, she was called on to do shoot-outs, car chases, karate, and to hold her own against heavyweights like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro and Regina King. “My whole life has literally changed in the last six months,” she says.Tell us how you got this role? Was there a giant karate tournament where you had to defeat all your rivals?No, thank God. I did six months of auditioning for the film while I was working on my first project, Presumed Innocent. So I was in California when I sent in my first self-tape. And about a month after that, the casting director called me and was like: ...

Politics

41 h. ago Best films of 2025 in the UK: No 1 – One Battle After Another

Leonardo DiCaprio is a former revolutionary searching for his daughter in Paul Thomas Anderson’s exhilaratingly audacious counterculture epic• The best films of 2025 in the UK• More on the best culture of 2025Paul Thomas Anderson’s countercultural drama-thriller One Battle After Another, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, is a formal enigma that has perplexed, provoked and entranced, and the year ends with no definitive consensus as to its exact meaning. A rare naysayer is screenwriter and film-maker Paul Schrader, who commented tersely online: “Film-making at level A+, but try as I might I couldn’t muster up an ounce of empathy for Leo DiCaprio or Sean Penn. I kept waiting for them to die.”But that’s why the film is gripping: there is indeed no empathy for its two unlovely leading males, and their mortality and vulnerability has a kind of unwinding, entropic energy. They are heading for disaster. And yes, the film-making is A+ or A++; it is supercharged with pleasure at i...

Events

45 h. ago Paddington and Wonka director Paul King to direct Labubu movie

Film based on popular plush toys is in early development after Sony Pictures acquired screen rightsPaul King, director of the global hit Paddington films and the Timothée Chalamet-led musical Wonka, is set to direct the Labubu film.In November it was announced that Sony Pictures, fresh off the global success of KPop Demon Hunters, had acquired the screen rights to the Chinese plush toy sensation with a feature film already in early development. Continue reading...

Politics

58 h. ago ‘Why isn’t everyone talking about Domhnall Gleeson?’ Irish actor wins first Hollywood award

The US-Ireland Alliance will give the actor the Oscar Wilde award at the event’s 20th anniversary in Los Angeles in MarchAfter a varied career in which he has played a psychopath, a romcom heart-throb, an intergalactic warlord and a plucky newspaper editor among others, Domhnall Gleeson has won his first Hollywood award.The US-Ireland Alliance announced that Gleeson will receive the Oscar Wilde award at the event’s 20th anniversary in Los Angeles in March in the run-up to the Oscars. It honours a body of work rather than a particular performance. Continue reading...

Events

62 h. ago Rob and Michele Reiner’s cause of death released by medical examiner

The Reiners’ bodies were discovered on Sunday at their home in Los Angeles. Their son Nick was later arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder and has since appeared in courtThe Los Angeles County Medical Examiner has released reports stating the cause of death of the film director Rob Reiner and his wife, the photographer Michele Singer Reiner.Both are listed on the organisation’s website with the cause given as “multiple sharp force injuries” and “homicide” stated as the manner of death. The date of death, which had been the subject of some speculation, is given as Sunday 14 December. Continue reading...

Events

63 h. ago ‘Criminally below the radar’: readers on their best underrated Christmas films

After Guardian writers picked their favourite lesser-known festive movies, readers shoutout Klaus, The Ref and moreI thought a real modern hidden gem is All Is Bright starring Paul Rudd and Paul Giamatti as two down-on-their-luck Christmas tree sellers. It’s perfectly played by both, with Rudd putting in, not his usual “puppy dog everyone wants to be your mate” role but a sarcastic turn, complementing Giamatti’s Christmas grinch. More a black comedy (by Hollywood standards), it’s an excellent film. Andyouwillknowme Continue reading...

Events

67 h. ago ‘Collusion does not require a dictatorship’: István Szabó on his Nazi actor masterpiece Mephisto

As his 1981 film is rereleased, the director talks about his Oscar-winning fable about an actor’s Faustian pact with the Nazi party – and its new relevanceAt the 54th Academy Awards, in 1982, Chariots of Fire was imperial, and Katharine Hepburn broke records. Less remembered today is a darkly brilliant European film about a stage actor in Nazi Germany that went home from the ceremony with the best international feature prize. Mephisto, directed by István Szabó, was the first ever Hungarian film to do so.“The moment took me by surprise,” remembers Szabó, 87, four decades later. “I didn’t expect it.” Visibly elated on the live broadcast as he took to the stage, Szabó today says that he “knew this award wasn’t just mine, but also Brandauer’s”, meaning the film’s electrifying lead actor, and the largely Hungarian crew “who contributed with their talent to the making of the film”. Continue reading...

Culture

3 d. ago Rosa von Praunheim, provocative pioneer of gay cinema, dies aged 83

The film-maker, whose 1971 feature about queer life has been described as Germany’s ‘Stonewall moment’, married his long-term partner on FridayRosa von Praunheim, a key figure of the New German Cinema movement who made taboo-breaking films about queer life and scandalised the country when he outed German celebrities on live TV, has died aged 83.German media reported that Praunheim died in Berlin in the early hours of Wednesday morning, just days after marrying his long-term partner at a ceremony in the German capital on Friday. Continue reading...

Events

3 d. ago Melania: first trailer released for Amazon’s documentary on the first lady

The $40m film – directed by Brett Ratner, who has been accused of sexual misconduct – follows Melania Trump in the days before the 2025 inaugurationAmazon has released the first trailer for next year’s documentary on Melania Trump.The film will follow the first lady in the 20 days before the 2025 inauguration and has “unprecedented access” with promises of “exclusive footage capturing critical meetings, private conversations, and never-before-seen environments”. Continue reading...

Culture

3 d. ago ‘She dreamt bigger than all of us’: is Timothée Chalamet really a Susan Boyle superfan?

The Marty Supreme star said the Britain’s Got Talent runner-up is one of the greatest Britons of all time – surely he’s not taking her name in vain for attentionTimothée Chalamet understands the true nature of greatness. In Marty Supreme, he plays a character loosely based on a former two-time US men’s singles table tennis champion. In A Complete Unknown, he played Bob Dylan at the exact moment he decided to reshape all of pop culture in his own image. His upcoming third Dune film is based on a book that is literally called Messiah. So when Timothée Chalamet singles out a figure for greatness, understand that the greatness is warranted.Which is a roundabout way of saying that Timothée Chalamet thinks Susan Boyle is great. Not only great, but one of the greatest Britons to have ever lived. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago New details emerge of how Rob and Michele Singer Reiner’s bodies were found

An unnamed source told the New York Times the Reiners’ daughter, Romy, had discovered only her father’s body, and disputed reports the couple argued with their son, Nick, at a party the previous eveningNew details have emerged about the deaths of film director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, whose bodies were discovered at their home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, on Sunday.A report in the New York Times, quoting a “person close to the family” who remained anonymous, says that a massage therapist arriving for an appointment first raised the alarm after not being able to gain access for an appointment on Sunday. The therapist contacted their daughter Romy Reiner, who lives nearby, who entered the house and found Rob Reiner’s body. The Times said that Romy “fled the house in anguish” without realising that her mother’s body was also inside, and that her roommate, who had accompanied her, called 911. Emergency responders then discovered Michele Singer Reiner’s body. Cont...

Events