3 h. ago Sky just made sure next month will be the biggest of 2025 so far for new films

An impressive lineup of titles are set to be added

Politics

15 h. ago Pope Leo XIV watched Conclave movie to prepare, brother says

In a new interview, the new pope’s brother reveals he ‘knew how to behave’ because he had seen the 2024 hit thrillerVatican watchers weren’t the only ones consulting the movie Conclave before the pivotal election of a new pope.The new pontiff himself – Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who took the name Leo XIV – watched the 2024 movie dramatizing the Vatican’s selection process ahead of the sequestration of cardinals that chose him to lead the Catholic church, according to his older brother. Continue reading...

Culture

16 h. ago The Guardian view on the impact of Trump’s film tariffs: a disaster movie waiting to happen | Editorial

The US president’s proposed levies will badly hit the UK industry just as it is recovering from a series of blowsBarbieland, the Emerald City and a galaxy far, far away were all built – at least in part – at film studios just outside London. Now the UK film industry has come crashing down to earth with Donald Trump’s threat to impose 100% tariffs on all movies “produced in foreign lands”. “Hollywood is being destroyed,” Mr Trump announced, like an action hero on a mission. “Other nations have stolen our movie industry.” In the UK the news was met with warnings that the British film sector would be “wiped out” by such a “knock-out blow”. Brian Cox, the Succession star, called the proposed tariffs “an absolute disaster”. Roll the opening credits.Mr Trump has a point. New instalments of Marvel’s Avengers and Spider-Man are filming around London this summer. No wonder the president wants “MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” The UK’s generous tax incentives, skills base and state-of-the-art ...

Politics

16 h. ago Career change: Scarlett Johansson, Kristen Stewart and Harris Dickinson to premiere directorial debuts at Cannes

Eleanor the Great, The Chronology of Water and Urchin are all in the festival’s prestigious Un Certain Regard sidebar. A first step to being the next Clint Eastwood?First-time directors with films premiering at Cannes next week would be forgiven for feeling nervous. But three of the directors who are unveiling their debut features in France are less likely than their peers to be quaking as they approach the red carpet.Actors Scarlett Johansson, Kristen Stewart and Harris Dickinson are all among the film-makers with movies screening in Cannes’ prestigious sidebar Un Certain Regard over the next 10 days. Continue reading...

Politics

18 h. ago ‘A kick in the teeth’: UK film industry’s horror at possible Trump tariffs

Prop-maker at Shepperton Studios fears for future after post by US president throws sector into uncertaintyIt is a sunny May afternoon in leafy Surrey, and Richard St Clair is carefully preparing a bomb. It is not real, but it will look like it is when shown on a Netflix TV show. Across the workshop a colleague is cheerfully sandpapering a pile of hip bones for the 28 Years Later zombie trilogy – trailers suggest a lot of skeletons will be involved.They are working at db Props, a small company based at Shepperton Studios whose handiwork – made of expanding foam, wood, or assorted odds and sods – in films and shows has ranged from weapons in Ant Man to Thor’s hammer to Alan Turing’s computer in The Imitation Game. Continue reading...

Politics

28 h. ago Ban this foreign filth! Can cinema really threaten national security?

The US president’s plan for Hollywood is full of plot holes. But when it comes to the hidden propaganda baked into movies, he may have a pointAs always with pronouncements by President Trump, once you had peeled away the xenophobia, removed the stew of resentment, ignored the sheer idiocy and asterisked the possible illegality, there was a small kernel of truth to his posting on Truth Social last Sunday. “The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote, pointing to the nefarious tax breaks other countries gave film-makers as “a National Security threat” and proposing an 100% tariff on films made oversees. “It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA AGAIN!”How would a 100% tariff on films made oversees work? Just movies shot overseas? What about movies set overseas? And who would pay? How do you impose tariffs on goods without a port of entry? “Commerce is figuring it out,” said a White House official. In fact, ...

Events

36 h. ago James Foley, director of Fifty Shades sequels and Glengarry Glen Ross, dies aged 71

The film-maker, whose credits also included many Madonna music videos, died of brain cancerDirector James Foley, whose credits included Glengarry Glen Ross and the Fifty Shades sequels, has died aged 71.According to the Hollywood Reporter, his death was confirmed by his representative who said he died “peacefully in his sleep earlier this week following a years-long struggle with brain cancer”. Continue reading...

Events

40 h. ago New film claims to identify Israeli killer of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

In Who Killed Shireen?, IDF soldier Alon Scagio is named as shooter of the Palestinian-American in Jenin in 2022A new US-made documentary has produced evidence pointing to the identity of an Israeli soldier who shot dead the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022.The documentary, Who Killed Shireen?, concludes that a member of the Duvdevan Israeli special forces unit shot Abu Akleh while she was reporting for Al Jazeera in Jenin, on the West Bank. Continue reading...

Events

40 h. ago Surgery, real sex and water sports: Louise Weard on her four

The Canadian director set out to make a 90-minute snapshot of the trans experience before it ballooned in length and scope. Nevertheless, the film’s writer, director and star is confident of reaching the mainstreamWhen Louise Weard began shooting her debut film in 2023, she envisaged it as a snappy, 90-minute portrait of a group of queer and transgender friends in Vancouver. Now, Castration Movie, a crowdfunded camcorder epic made for less than C$60,000 (£33,000), runs four-and-a-half hours. And that’s just part one. When the entire magnum opus is finished later this year, Weard estimates it will clock in at more than 12 hours. Take that, Béla Tarr. Watch your back, Rivette.Not that anyone could mistake Castration Movie for slow cinema. “It’s not as if I’m asking you to watch farmers in a field for 20 minutes,” says the 31-year-old director over coffee in an east London cafe. Indeed not: the first hour-and-a-half follows a budding “incel” as he sinks deeper into the manosphere. The ...

Politics

44 h. ago Sam Mendes’ four Beatles films to be written by Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan and Jack Thorne

The director has appointed the acclaimed Olivier, Tony, Bafta and Oscar winning talents to be the screenwriters for The Beatles: A Four-Film Cinematic EventThe award-winning British writers Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan and Jack Thorne will pen Sam Mendes’ four Beatles films, it has been reported.The four biopics, focusing on each member of the fab four, will be released in cinemas in April 2028 – with Paul Mescal playing Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson playing John Lennon, Barry Keoghan playing Ringo Star, and Joseph Quinn playing George Harrison. Continue reading...

Politics

44 h. ago Nicolas Cage: ‘I don’t think a day goes by where I’m not mistaken for Nick Cave’

As psycho-thriller The Surfer is released, the actor answers your questions about eating rats, loving pickled eggs and scaring Terry WoganWhat do you remember of that appearance on Wogan? What was Terry like in real life? Have you still got that leather jacket, and the snakeskin jacket from Wild at Heart? johnnysmooth, EddieChorepost and BigAl65I remember Terry Wogan was a very nice man and I enjoyed the interview with him, although I thought I was both obnoxious and somewhat wild. I guess it’s no secret that I was promoting a movie called Wild at Heart, so I was sort of play acting to that. I remember, as a child, I was in a car, a guy was walking down the street, and he had a leather jacket on and no shirt on underneath. I thought: “Well, that’s an interesting look.” I don’t know why that came back to me when I went on Terry’s show, but I thought: “I’m going to create that look again.” It was incredibly absurd and irreverent. I don’t have that leather jacket any more.I found the s...

Politics

46 h. ago F1 movie release date: Trailer drops for blockbuster film starring Brad Pitt

The film, where Pitt plays a lead role as a former driver returning to F1, will be shown worldwide in June

Culture

46 h. ago Luke, I am an INTJ? Darth Vader would slice hurtful colleagues in half – not take them to an employment tribunal

An NHS worker received £28,989 after being compared to the Sith Lord because of a Star Wars-themed Myers Briggs test. But I’d rather be Darth than Obi-WanThis is undeniably a bad time to be Darth Vader. A few weeks ago, Tony Gilroy revealed that Vader would not be appearing in his Andor series, despite fans assuming that he would play a significant part in its climax. A few days ago, the White House shared an AI-generated image of Donald Trump as a confusingly musclebound Sith Lord, subtly undermining Vader as the go-to Star Wars baddie. And now a woman has been awarded almost £30,000 for being compared to him.Yesterday, it was reported that NHS blood donation worker Lorna Rooke had received £28,989.61 from a Croydon tribunal after complaining that a colleague had taken a Star Wars-themed Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test on her behalf online, and then informed her that her results aligned with Darth Vader. This upset Rooke and made her feel so unpopular that she resigned...

Politics

62 h. ago Summer of 69 film review – charming, if overfamiliar, teen sex comedy

Awkward teenager strikes deal with stripper played by SNL’s Chloe Fineman in moderately entertaining throwbackIn Summer of 69, a comedy that premiered at SXSW in March, poor Bryan Adams doesn’t even get a mention. Rather than coasting on the nostalgia summoned by his 1985 hit, the title is instead a reference to the top-and-tail sex position (Adams has claimed, much to the annoyance of his co-writer, that the song was also referring to the same thing).It’s the unusual focus of awkward teen gamer Abby (relative newcomer Sam Morelos) who has a long-running obsession with her classmate Max (Disney star Matt Cornett). The best she’s been able to manage throughout their time at school is small talk, but when he breaks up with his longtime girlfriend, she sees an opportunity. Through the grapevine she hears that Max is a fan of the 69 position and Abby, whose experience of kissing has been limited to the back of her hand, seeks assistance. It arrives in the form of Santa Monica (Saturday ...

Culture

62 h. ago Summer of 69 review – charming, if overfamiliar, teen sex comedy

Awkward teenager strikes deal with stripper played by SNL’s Chloe Fineman in moderately entertaining throwbackIn Summer of 69, a comedy that premiered at SXSW in March, poor Bryan Adams doesn’t even get a mention. Rather than coasting on the nostalgia summoned by his 1985 hit, the title is instead a reference to the top-and-tail sex position (Adams has claimed, much to the annoyance of his co-writer, that the song was also referring to the same thing).It’s the unusual focus of awkward teen gamer Abby (relative newcomer Sam Morelos) who has a long-running obsession with her classmate Max (Disney star Matt Cornett). The best she’s been able to manage throughout their time at school is small talk, but when he breaks up with his longtime girlfriend, she sees an opportunity. Through the grapevine she hears that Max is a fan of the 69 position and Abby, whose experience of kissing has been limited to the back of her hand, seeks assistance. It arrives in the form of Santa Monica (Saturday ...

Politics

63 h. ago ‘A safe haven from racial violence’: Sinners shows the importance of juke joints

Ryan Coogler’s smash hit horror focuses on the opening of a juke joint, a one-time mainstay in Black southern cultureIn Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, the Smokestack twins – a gangster pair played by Michael B Jordan – return to their Mississippi Delta home town to open a juke joint and make a fast buck, only to wind up hunkered inside when danger literally comes knocking. But the juke joint is more than a safe space from vampires; for Black people during segregation, it was an escape from the horrors of the so-called “separate-but-equal” US economy. “The juke joint represents, as the film suggests, this multifaceted connection to the foundation of Black experience,” says William Ferris, a University of North Carolina history professor who has made documenting blues music and southern culture his life’s work. “It’s a safe haven from racial violence.”During the late 19th and early 20th century the juke joint was a southern social institution, the place to drink and unwind over live music. T...

Events

67 h. ago Aardman announces third Shaun the Sheep movie: The Beast of Mossy Bottom

Studio promises ‘smashed pumpkins, wayward science and a wild hairy beast’ in third big-screen outing for the much beloved animationA Halloween-themed third Shaun the Sheep film is in the works from Aardman Animations, following hot on the heels of the success of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.“Expect smashed pumpkins, wayward science, and a wild hairy beast,” said Sarah Cox, chief creative director of Aardman, about the film, which launches international sales via studio StudioCanal at Cannes next week, but has already been acquired by Sky for UK distribution. Continue reading...

Politics

2 d. ago Ocean with David Attenborough review – a passionate case against the ruination of the seas

Released on his 99th birthday and presented in the context of his remarkable career, Sir David’s authority is matched only by nature’s grandeur in this visually stunning filmA visual marvel like all his work, governed by his own matchless authority and striking a steady tonal balance between warning and hope, David Attenborough’s new film about the oceans is absorbing and compelling. He makes a passionate case against the ruin caused by industrial overfishing and the sinister mega-trawlers which roam everywhere, raking the seabed with their vast metal nets, brutally and wastefully hoovering up fish populations of which the majority is often simply thrown away, depleting developing countries and fishing communities of their share. Attenborough says that this is the new colonialism. The film is released in cinemas in anticipation of the UN’s World Oceans Day in June, which is campaigning for 30% of the world’s oceans to be preserved from exploitation – at present, only around 3% is pr...

Politics

3 d. ago Riefenstahl review – nauseating yet gripping story of Nazi poster woman

The only important woman in the Nazi movement entranced Hitler, directed Triumph of the Will – and spent the rest of her life alternately fearful and defiantAndres Veiel’s sombre documentary tells the gripping, incrementally nauseating story of Helene “Leni” Riefenstahl, the brilliant and pioneering German film-maker of the 20th century who isn’t getting her name on a Girls on Tops T-shirt any time soon.Riefenstahl was a dancer and actor in prewar movies by Arnold Fanck and GW Pabst, whose performance in 1932 in The Blue Light, her own Aryan romantic fantasy as director-star, entranced the Führer and secured her two historic directing commissions: Triumph of the Will in 1935, a monumentally euphoric and grandiose account of the Nazi party congress in Nuremberg, and Olympia, about the 1936 Berlin Games, with whose undoubtedly stunning images and choreography Riefenstahl effectively invented the modern-day Olympics with its opening and closing ceremonies and media coverage. Continue r...

Politics

3 d. ago By calling a genocide a genocide, Andor just made its most political point yet

Tony Gilroy’s Star Wars show has repeatedly felt like it was ripped from today’s headlines – but Mon Mothma’s radical speech was written two years agoWarning: this contains spoilers for episode nine of Andor season twoSince it started in 2022, the Star Wars spin-off Andor has proved an unexpectedly bolshie addition to the Disney-owned mega-franchise. By portraying worker uprisings, surveillance states, sexual violence and prison industrial complexes, showrunner Tony Gilroy added fresh political nuance and human stakes to George Lucas’s endless galactic civil war.And since its April premiere, the show’s second and final season has only doubled down. In the first episode, viewers saw smarmy spin doctors from the Empire’s “Ministry of Enlightenment” discuss how to “weaponise” galactic opinion to manufacture public approval for ethnic cleansing on the planet Ghorman. News anchors parrot Imperial talking points, while the military plots a long game: to provoke an uprising from “rebels yo...

Politics