61 m. ago Netflix just dropped 'masterpiece' drama hailed 'best film of 2025'

A film that has been hailed as the best of the year is now available to stream on Netflix - and it's already got a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score

Events

64 m. ago 'Masterpiece' book adaptation dubbed 'best film of 2025' now on Netflix

The drama has already earned an impressive 94% Rotten Tomatoes score

Culture

2 h. ago 'Breathtaking' book adaptation hailed 'best film of 2025' just landed on Netflix

The 'masterpiece' drama was adapted for the screen by Oscar-nominated filmmakers and features an equally impressive cast

Culture

2 h. ago Netflix’s Selena doc sensitively focuses on her incredible life over her tragic death

The 23-year-old ‘Queen of Tejano music’ was murdered just as her music was set to cross over and revealing new film Selena y Los Dinos: A Family’s Legacy finds new ways to celebrate herThe tragic circumstances surrounding Selena Quintanilla’s death are well documented. In 1995, while on the verge of US pop crossover success, the 23-year-old Queen of Tejano Music was murdered by one of her employees, Yolanda Saldívar.Selena’s life story has already been told in multiple ways, including through a movie, a musical and a podcast series. However, the touching Netflix documentary Selena y Los Dinos: A Family’s Legacy is the most empathetic and personal look at her life and career to date. Working alongside Selena’s family, who generously opened their archive of rare photos and home videos and sat for extensive interviews, director Isabel Castro uses intimate recollections and vivid primary sources to trace the artist’s ascent. Continue reading...

Events

6 h. ago Is Avatar’s main villain about to become a good guy? All the signs are pointing that way

Will Quaritch, the square-jawed representative of military-industrial destruction befriend the Na’vi in James Cameron’s forthcoming Avatar: Fire and Ash? And if so, what other unlikely character about-turns should we be prepared for?It’s almost possible to feel a little sorry for Colonel Miles Quaritch, the main villain of Avatar. Imagine: first you’re sent light years from Earth to hang out with 14ft blue space hippies, then you’re suddenly dead. Then you’re resurrected as one of the 14ft blue space hippies. And now, according to James Cameron, you might just be starting to realise that the giant tree-hugging freaks you’ve spent two films trying to erase are your kind of people after all.Speaking to Empire in an interview last week, Cameron revealed that the Quaritch we will meet in the forthcoming Avatar: Fire and Ash (although still played by Stephen Lang) is no longer the same person we first saw stomping through the rainforest in the original 2009 film. Yes, he’s a “recombinant...

Politics

9 h. ago ‘Agony uncle’ Bill Nighy leads rise of the celebrity podcast

Ill-advised, in which 75-year-old actor doles out advice and his innermost secrets, is fast becoming cult podcast of the yearBill Nighy is single. He has never read a self-help book, had no intention of becoming an actor and briefly went deaf after putting toilet paper in his ears to get to sleep. He has shutters, not curtains, in his bedroom, but has no idea what time he wakes up. If you invite him to a dinner party he will bring you exfoliating products, except don’t invite him, because he won’t come. He is good at making custard, but doesn’t cook because he lives alone “and it would be too sad”.The Surrey-born actor is as renowned for his suits as he is his singular ability to inhabit a role while remaining recognisably himself throughout. But almost 50 years into his career, Nighy is finally playing himself. A new podcast called Ill-advised casts the 75-year-old as an agony uncle, doling out advice and his innermost secrets to listeners from Italy to Mongolia to Scotland. The ac...

Politics

10 h. ago Edinburgh baker Jasmine Mitchell on Scotland, surviving Great British Bake Off 2025 and her plans after win

The Edinburgh-born baker set a new record with her 2025 Bake Off win - all while she was sitting her medical exams.

Events

16 h. ago ‘I think my mum’s going to like it’: Alexander Skarsgård on his gay biker ‘dom

In May, Cannes went weak at the knees for Harry Lighton’s tale of BDSM and bootlicking in suburbia. Ahead of its release, the director and his stars reveal the explicit shots snipped from the final cut and discuss why Pride has become too sanitisedHarry Melling knows the secret to being a good boot-licker. “You want to give a decent, satisfying, sexy lick,” says the 36-year-old actor, who has the umlaut eyes and nasal tones of Nicholas Lyndhurst. “Once you get to the toe-cap, you need to make sure they can really feel your tongue through the leather.”Melling, barely recognisable from his childhood role as wretched Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films, learned this new skill while preparing for the award-winning BDSM romcom Pillion. He plays Colin, a timid traffic warden who becomes the willing submissive to a taciturn biker named Ray. Listening intently to Melling’s boot-licking tips in this London hotel room are his Pillion partners-in-kink: Harry Lighton, the film’s 33-year-ol...

Politics

24 h. ago Ariana Grande contracts Covid during Wicked: For Good press tour

Oscar-nominated star of two-part musical forced to cancel press stops as film is predicted to deliver year’s biggest box office openingAriana Grande has tested positive for Covid amid the whirlwind press tour for Wicked: For Good, precluding some promotional appearances in New York.The Grammy award winner and Oscar nominee posted an Instagram story on Thursday captioned “moments before Covid” along with a photo from her appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon from earlier this week. Grande, who plays Galinda/Glinda in the second part of Jon M Chu’s film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, will reportedly miss a few upcoming press appearances, including a slot on The Kelly Clarkson Show. Continue reading...

Politics

30 h. ago Charli xcx plays version of herself in teaser for mockumentary The Moment

The ‘2024 period piece’ stars the Grammy-winning musician with Kylie Jenner, Rachel Sennott and Alexander SkarsgårdCharli xcx’s 2026 big screen onslaught is set to kick off with The Moment, a mockumentary starring the musician as a self-described “hell version” of herself.The film, based on an idea by the Grammy winner, is fiction but xcx has called it “the realest depiction of the music industry that I’ve ever seen”. Continue reading...

Politics

31 h. ago ‘Do you expect me to talk?’: Dick Van Dyke says he turned down playing James Bond

As the veteran actor turns 100 he reveals that he was approached to play the British spy in the early 60s, but realised his accent wouldn’t have been up to scratchFor more than six decades, the actor Dick Van Dyke has been pilloried for his attempts at a British accent in Mary Poppins (1964). Now, the actor who has since apologised for the “most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema” as chimney sweep Bert in the Disney classic has revealed he was in the running to play another UK icon on screen: James Bond.Speaking on the Today TV programme in the US, Van Dyke, who turns 100 next month, said that Bond producer Albert Broccoli approached him to ask if he fancied the role of the British spy in his first big screen outing. Continue reading...

Politics

33 h. ago ‘My husband collects pictures of old men’s faces to give me’: Keira Knightley on art, ghosts and West Ham’s prospects

As she launches her first children’s book, the actor answers your questions on Alan Partridge, her iconic green dress and thrilling 10-year-olds with a bullseye Have you read or listened to the delightful chapter in Alan Partridge’s Big Beacon where he demands: “We came for Knightley, we want to see Knightley, where’s Knightley?” dcieronNo! Do I want to see it? Or is it something that will make me cringe and want to hide under the sofa? I do like Alan Partridge. He’s kind of terrifying but amazing, so now that I know I’ve been a part of Alan Partridge, I should check it out.When you first wore the green dress in Atonement, did you realise how iconic it would be? MurdomaniaI thought it was a bloody good dress. It never actually lasted. It was so fragile that, any time you touched the front, it would completely break, so they had to make a load of different fronts. By the end, I was thoroughly sick with having the dress remade on me. But it’s a beautiful dress and I had no idea that i...

Politics

33 h. ago ‘My husband collects pictures of old men’s faces to give me’: Keira Knightley on art, ghosts and West Ham’s midfield

As she launches her first children’s book, the actor answers your questions on Alan Partridge, her iconic green dress and thrilling 10-year-olds with a bullseye Have you read or listened to the delightful chapter in Alan Partridge’s Big Beacon where he demands: “We came for Knightley, we want to see Knightley, where’s Knightley?” dcieronNo! Do I want to see it? Or is it something that will make me cringe and want to hide under the sofa? I do like Alan Partridge. He’s kind of terrifying but amazing, so now that I know I’ve been a part of Alan Partridge, I should check it out.When you first wore the green dress in Atonement, did you realise how iconic it would be? MurdomaniaI thought it was a bloody good dress. It never actually lasted. It was so fragile that, any time you touched the front, it would completely break, so they had to make a load of different fronts. By the end, I was thoroughly sick with having the dress remade on me. But it’s a beautiful dress and I had no idea that i...

Politics

35 h. ago ‘A different vibe’: New York welcomes the luxury private cinema experience

At the high-end Metro Private Cinema, a private screening room with a gourmet meal and drinks can reach $200 a person. Will people pay?On a recent trip to the cinema, I found myself annoyed. The person next to me kept sniffling loudly and, even worse, scrolling Instagram on their phone, dimly visible from the corner of my eye. The former is simply an occupational hazard of being around other people, a thing I usually love to be doing; the latter, though a violation of the theater’s no phone policy, still more preferable to the conflict-averse than confrontation. If only, one sometimes wonders, there was some middle ground between full cinema experience and the privacy of one’s couch.Enter Metro Private Cinemas, a new upscale theater in Manhattan that caters to cinephiles eager to privatize and glamorize the theatrical experience – for a price. For $50-100 a head, you can book a room at the 20-screen complex in Chelsea for a group sized anywhere between four and 20 people. Pick a fil...

Politics

52 h. ago One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at 50: the spirit of rebellion lives on

The 1975 drama, one of the only films to ever receive the big five Oscars, remains a touchstone of American cinema with a resonant message of resisting conformityA movie winning the big five Academy Awards – best picture along with honoring the lead actor and actress, writing and directing – happens so rarely that there’s not much use in examining the three movies that have pulled it off for common ground. But among It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Silence of the Lambs, it may be Cuckoo’s Nest, released 50 years ago on Wednesday, that feels like the unlikeliest across-the-board triumph. It Happened One Night and The Silence of the Lambs both belong to rarely awarded genres (romantic comedy and horror, respectively), which makes their big wins unusual but also clearcut: here is an example of the best this type of movie has to offer. Cuckoo’s Nest, meanwhile, is potentially much thornier. It’s a comedy-drama made at least in part as allegory – an anti-co...

Politics

54 h. ago Daniel Radcliffe writes supportive letter to Harry Potter successor in new TV series

The actor said he wrote wishing 11-year-old Dominic McLaughlin ‘an even better time’ growing up in the role than he had Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe said that he wrote to 11-year-old actor Dominic McLaughlin, who has been cast in the title role of the new Harry Potter TV series.Radcliffe appeared on Good Morning America on Tuesday and said: “I wouldn’t say that anyone who is going to play Harry has to [call me],” adding: “I wrote to Dominic and I sent him a letter and he sent me a very sweet note back.” Continue reading...

Culture

61 h. ago Champagne Problems review – Netflix’s latest Christmas romcom lacks fizz

The streamer continues its annual onslaught of forgettable festive films with a mostly charmless romance set in FranceAt the risk of sounding like the Grinch, I must once again bemoan the release of Christmas movies before Thanksgiving; the temperatures may be dropping at long last, but it’s still too close to the gloominess of daylight savings and too far from the belt-loosening of the actual holidays to fully indulge in Netflix’s now-annual buffet of cheap Christmas confections. Nevertheless, their content conveyor belt rolls on, offering treats about as substantial and enduring as cotton candy beginning in mid-November.Like American chocolates that no longer, in fact, contain real chocolate but sell like gangbusters on Halloween anyway, the Netflix Christmas movie, like rival holiday movie master Hallmark, is relied upon, even beloved, for its brand of badness, for its rote familiarity (nostalgic casting, basement-bargain budgets, styrofoam snow, knowingly absurd premise) and unc...

Politics

62 h. ago Sisu: Road to Revenge review – Finnish hero takes on a Red Army butcher in terrific sequel

Punchy, old-school stunt work, inventive baddie-splattering and a simple plot as our grizzled Finish prospector finds a new foe in his Soviet-occupied homelandIn 2022, the Finnish indie action movie Sisu had the look of a one-hit wonder. Pitting a grizzled prospector against an entire platoon of Nazis, writer-director Jalmari Helander heeded the lessons of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, principally that there is serious cinematic value in going pedal-to-the-metal along a single, straight narrative line. That profitable sleeper hit now yields this choice follow-up, which somehow feels more expansive while still clocking in under 90 minutes.Having seen off the SS, indomitable hero Aatami (Jorma Tommila) gains a tragic backstory and a new, vicious postwar foe in the tremendously named Red Army butcher Igor Draganov, played by wily James Cameron favourite Stephen Lang. Again, the economy of Helander’s approach proves striking and thrilling. No unnecessary obstacles have been placed...

Events

3 d. ago Wicked: For Good review – Cynthia Erivo sweeps the field in explosive second chunk of Oz prequel

Bringing her black-belt screen presence to the role of Elphaba, Erivo leads a fine cast in a zingily scored conclusion to the hit origin storyDirector Jon M Chu pulls off quite a trick with this manageably proportioned second half to the epic musical prequel-myth inspired by The Wizard of Oz – and based, of course, on the hit stage show. It keeps the rainbow-coloured dreaminess and the Broadway show tune zinginess from part one, and we still get those periodic, surreal pronouncements given by the city’s notables to the diverse folk of Oz, those non-player characters crowding the streets. But now the focus narrows to the main players and their explosive romantic crises, essentially through two interlocking love triangles: Glinda the Good, Elphaba the Wicked and the Wizard – and Glinda, Elphaba and Prince Fiyero, the handsome young military officer with whom both witches are not so secretly in love, as well as possibly having feelings for each other.Jeff Goldblum is excellent as the W...

Events

3 d. ago Stellan Skarsgård starrer Sentimental Value leads nominations for European film awards

Director Joachim Trier’s family drama has five nominations, including best actor for Skarsgård, while Oliver Laxe’s techno thriller Sirāt has four nominationsNorwegian director Joachim Trier is leading the race for a triumph at the European film awards, with five nominations in key categories for his family drama Sentimental Value.The Cannes Grand Prix winner is nominated for best European film, best screenplay and best director, with further best actor and best actress nominations for Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve. Continue reading...

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