5 h. ago Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime and Apple TV Christmas films – where to find your favourite festive movies in 2025

As it gets closer to Christmas, film planning is an important thing to do

Culture

13 h. ago ‘I prepared for the role by playing in my room’: the making of Toy Story as it turns 30

The groundbreaking, smash-hit adventure was a make-or-break moment for both Pixar and computer animationWhen the Pixar studio was casting for Toy Story, children were invited to bring one toy to the audition. Seven-year-old John Morris showed up with 20: a case of his beloved X-Men action figures. He got the part.Playing Andy, a young boy whose toys include cowboy Woody and spaceman Buzz Lightyear, his was the first voice ever heard in a feature-length Pixar animation. Toy Story was released 30 years ago on Saturday, but to Morris the memory of its premiere is as fresh as ever. Continue reading...

Politics

63 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

3 d. 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

4 d. ago Mind the glitch: is Hollywood finally getting to grips with movies about artificial intelligence?

As Gore Verbinski’s AI-apocalypse film Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die hurtles towards us, it’s clear from the over-caffeinated trailer that we won’t be getting another ponderous parable about robot souls, digital enlightenment or the hubris of manIt’s easy to forget, given the current glut of robot-uprising doom flicks, that Hollywood has been doing the artificial intelligence thing for decades – long before anything resembling true AI existed in the real world. And now we live in an era in which a chatbot can write a passable sonnet, it is perhaps surprising that there hasn’t been a huge shift in how film-makers approach this particular corner of sci-fi.Gareth Edwards’ The Creator (2023) is essentially the same story about AIs being the newly persecuted underclass as 1962’s The Creation of the Humanoids, except that the former has an $80m VFX budget and robot monks while the latter has community-theatre production values. Moon (2009) and 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey are both about ...

Culture

5 d. ago Top film festival known for scouting Oscar favourites returns to Manchester this week

Features, documentaries and shorts form part of the varied line-up

Culture

5 d. ago ‘A blast of gritty, unvarnished relief’: why Breaking Glass is my feelgood movie

The latest in our ongoing series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort movies is a trip back to 1980s London and the predatory music industryI used to watch Breaking Glass when I worked a very corporate job in the City. With its vision of London at the end of punk and the beginning of the Winter of Discontent, the film provided me a blast of gritty, unvarnished relief in the light of endless training courses and encouraged groupthink.Released in September 1980, it was disliked by critics (Q magazine memorably quipped: “Breaking Glass? More like Breaking Wind ”) but through today’s eyes feels relevant again. Continue reading...

Politics

6 d. ago ‘It’s important that we tell our own stories’: how the Wicked movies are helping disability representation on screen

Marissa Bode is the first disabled actor to play Nessarose, a key character in the stage turned film franchise – but has had to respond to online abuseDisabled actor Marissa Bode, who plays the prominent role of Nessarose Thropp in the hit film musical Wicked and its forthcoming sequel Wicked: For Good, has called for improved representation for disabled performers in the entertainment industry – and specifically an end to what activists call “cripping up” – casting non-disabled actors in disabled character roles.“I really hope my casting sets precedent,” says Bode, adding: “It’s just navigating a world and a system that we have just not been acknowledged in as we should be.” A recent study by the Rudderman Family Foundation found that only 21% of disabled characters on US TV between 2016 and 2023 were played by disabled actors. Continue reading...

Politics

8 d. ago Labubu toy movie with potential to anchor franchise in the works at Sony

Viral plush toy is heading to big screen after a deal was signed with details still unclear over whether it would be live-action or animatedLabubus could be headed to the big screen. Sony Pictures has acquired the screen rights to the plush toy sensation and is in early development of a feature film which, if successful, would anchor a new franchise.The deal, first reported by the Hollywood Reporter, was signed this week between the Chinese toy makers and Sony Pictures, whose animation division is fresh off the global success of KPop Demon Hunters. No producer or film-maker is attached to the project yet, and it’s still unclear if the film would be live-action or animated. Continue reading...

Politics

8 d. ago The Carpenter’s Son review – Nicolas Cage is predictably miscast in dull biblical horror

A grim, grave-faced look at Jesus realising he is in fact the son of God is a bafflingly acted and messily made boreIt’s hard to know how seriously one should take a film that casts Nicolas Cage as Joseph, the carpenter who acted as the adoptive father of Jesus. One might expect, with the actor still relying on his trademark California intonation and histrionic outbursts, that this would be another one of his late-stage career larks, like playing Dracula or himself. But in The Carpenter’s Son, a bafflingly serious stew of horror, drama and fantasy, it slowly starts to dawn on us that this is in fact, not a joke. What it is I couldn’t tell you but entertaining it most definitely isn’t.The film, from Egypt-born, London-raised writer and director Lotfy Nathan, is inspired by the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a text seen as heretical by some, which offers highly debated “insight” into the early years of Jesus. Nathan begins by clueing us into the fact that this isn’t your vicar’s Sunday sch...

Events

9 d. ago Wuthering Heights: bold new trailer for Emerald Fennell’s epic adaptation

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi lead the Saltburn writer-director’s Charli xcx-soundtracked take on Emily Brontë’s novel, referred to as ‘the greatest love story of all time’Emerald Fennell’s vision for Wuthering Heights is coming into focus.The first full-length trailer for the Saltburn writer-director’s already controversial adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel sketches out an epic love story – “the greatest love story of all time”, according to a title card – beyond the erotic visuals of the first trailer. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago Come See Me in the Good Light review – frank, funny and inspiring documentary tackles cancer

The Sundance award-winner, now landing on Apple TV+, is a remarkably unvarnished look at a couple dealing with a devastating diagnosisIt is impossible to talk about cancer without invoking another Big C: cliche. Illness and pain, “journeys” and “battles”, finding appreciation for life while reckoning with death – these are the building blocks of cancer stories, at once uniquely devastating and devastatingly common. The poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley, romantic partners for over a decade, took divergent approaches to the Big C. As a writer and editor, Falley strived to “eradicate” cliche; Gibson, as Falley put it, would instead “double down”.Diagnosed with incurable ovarian cancer in their late 40s, Gibson, the poet laureate of Colorado thus chose to double down on mantras we often aspire to embody but forget to practice: live fully, laugh more, love harder. Savor it all. “This is the beginning of a nightmare, I thought my worst fear come true,” they say early in the exquisite n...

Politics

9 d. ago Keeper review – romance goes to hell in effectively eerie horror

Longlegs director Osgood Perkins takes us on a dark journey to the woods in a creepy and visually inventive nightmare with a killer lead performanceFor the past few years, horror cinema has sometimes felt as fraught with toxic romance as a particularly cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it’s clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple going to a secluded location together is a fresh level of it.So it’s not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we gather early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neithe...

Events

9 d. ago After the glory of Euro 2025, what happened next for Switzerland?

While there are promising signs of Swiss growth, there is some way to go to cement lasting legacy for the tournamentSwitzerland were the toast of the continent this summer as hosts of the Women’s European Championship. The national team reached the quarter-finals for the first time and a total of 623,088 were in attendance at the 31 matches, a tournament record. The hope within Switzerland was for a boost at club level similar to what England experienced three years previously. Those heights have not been reached, but there has been a definite bump.According to Switzerland’s football association, their Women’s Super League has enjoyed a 62% increase in attendances this season, with an average attendance of 787. While that does not compare with the huge spike England’s Women’s Super League had after Euro 2022 – an average attendance increase of 172% the following season – it is still encouraging.This is an extract from our free email about women’s football, Moving the Goalposts. To g...

Politics

1 week ago Sydney Sweeney addresses boxing movie box office bomb: ‘We don’t always just make art for numbers’

Fact-based drama Christy suffers historically bad opening weekend in latest string of commercial disappointments for rising starSydney Sweeney is taking the dismal box office performance of Christy, the R-rated biographical drama in which she plays trailblazing boxer Christy Martin, in her stride.The film, directed by David Michôd, opened to $1.3m this weekend, making for one of the worst US starts ever for a movie opening in more than 2,000 theaters. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago Sydney Sweeney addresses US box office bomb for boxing movie: ‘We don’t always just make art for numbers’

Fact-based drama Christy suffers historically bad opening weekend in latest commercial disappointment for starSydney Sweeney is taking the dismal box office performance of Christy, the R-rated biographical drama in which she plays trailblazing boxer Christy Martin, in her stride.The film, directed by David Michôd, opened to $1.3m this weekend, making for one of the worst US starts ever for a movie opening in more than 2,000 theaters. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago 'Joyous' film overlooked for more famous counterparts on BBC today

Starring Cary Grant alongside Loretta Young and David Niven, this Christmas film is being hailed a must-watch festive favourite — and it's all set to air on television today.

Politics

2 w. ago Nigeria head coach Justine Madugu: ‘As Africans, we love expressing ourselves’

Library science graduate who made the Ballon d’Or shortlist has Wafcon title defence and World Cup in his sightsAt 61, most top-level head coaches have nostalgic moments as they reflect on the high points of their topsy-turvy careers. But for Justine Madugu, who made the 2025 Ballon d’Or shortlist for women’s team coach of the year after dramatically leading the Super Falcons to a record 10th Women’s Africa Cup of Nations title in Morocco in July, his managerial odyssey is only beginning.Returning to Morocco to win an 11th Wafcon title for Nigeria is the next feather he desperately wants to add to his cap. It could have been so different for the library science graduate of Bayero University, in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, who looked as if he would never get a crack at international management, after being an assistant coach of the Falcons for 12 years. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘Sinners was a blast’: Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, the blues prodigy serving up electrifying riffs in the year’s biggest film

He was mentored by Buddy Guy as a teen and played for Michelle Obama in the White House. Now, the 26-year-old Mississippi guitar hero is bringing the blues back into the spotlight – and taking it to the top of the box officeFounded in 1848, Clarksdale, Mississippi, soon earned the title “the Golden Buckle on the Cotton Belt”, a place where enslaved Africans and their descendants picked cotton by the tonne. But mechanisation in the 1960s changed things. Today, the small city’s median household income is $35,210, with 40% of the populace living below the poverty line. And 80% of Clarksdale’s 14,400 residents are African American. Just another left-behind town in the poorest state in the Union? This is how Clarksdale appears to many outsiders.Or it did until one of the biggest movies of 2025 opened with the words: “Clarksdale, Mississippi – October 16, 1932”. Why was Ryan Coogler’s Sinners set in Clarksdale? Because this forgotten settlement is also a blue...

Politics

2 w. ago Miss Piggy movie on way from Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone and Cole Escola

The demanding Muppet is set to get her own movie at Disney with Oscar-winning actors producing and the Tony-winning multi-hyphenate writingMiss Piggy is getting the movie star treatment, courtesy of Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone.A feature film about the diva puppet is in the works at Disney, which owns the rights to the Muppets franchise, Variety reported on Wednesday. Lawrence and Stone will serve as producers, working with a script from Oh Mary! creator Cole Escola. Continue reading...

Politics