2 d. ago ‘We would never do that’: Ringo Starr says he asked for changes in Beatles movie script

The drummer says he met with director Sam Mendes to clarify the depiction of himself and his then wife MaureenFormer Beatles drummer Ringo Starr said that he personally intervened in the script of the forthcoming four-film Beatles biopic directed by Sam Mendes to clarify the depiction of himself and his then wife Maureen.In an interview with the New York Times, Starr said that he had met Mendes in London in April and spent two days discussing the script for the section of the project focusing on him. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago 2025’s best movies (so far) include 'Sinners,' 'Sorry Baby' and 'One of Them Days'

Often the best movies of the second half of the year come almost preordained as the Oscars Industrial Complex revs into high gear

Politics

5 d. ago Netflix is removing your favourite original series after nine years

Acclaimed title became word-of-mouth smash in lockdown

Politics

5 d. ago Netflix is about to remove your favourite original series after nine years

Acclaimed title became word-of-mouth smash in lockdown

Politics

6 d. ago ‘Joyous and uplifting’: why Chungking Express is my feelgood movie

The next in our series of writers on their go-to comfort watches looks back at Wong Kar-Wai’s unusual and profound romantic comedyChinese auteur Wong Kar-Wai is not a director you’d immediately seek out for a cosy feelgood experience. His films delve into loneliness, yearning and doomed love affairs, carried along by a melancholy undercurrent. Chungking Express, the story of two Hong Kong cops reeling from being dumped by their respective partners, doesn’t deviate from these obsessions of his but the quirky romantic comedy also manages to be his most joyous and uplifting offering.The film has a playful energy and is brimming with offbeat humour. Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro play the heartbroken policemen, both deep in denial over the end of their relationships. We watch them cope in very different ways with their heartache. Kaneshiro’s Cop 223 pines outside his ex’s flat, buys cans of pineapple because they were her favorite food and goes on jogs so his body has no wate...

Politics

7 d. ago What’s it like to be 23 and starting a new life? I’m unpacking a lot of emotions as my son heads to the US | Emma Beddington

Can he really be that old? Was I ever that young? A trip to clear out his student flat has brought back so many memoriesThere’s an accurate, if snide, thing I’ve seen online that reads “No parent on Facebook can believe their child has turned any age”, and yes, OK, not the “on Facebook” bit, but there is a rote astonishment at time passing that I sometimes slip into, contemplating my adult sons. But, allow me, just this once, a Facebook parent moment. My elder son turned 23 last month and we’ve just been to London to collect his stuff at the end of his degree. On the way, I realised I was 23 when I moved there myself.You can’t often pre-emptively pinpoint parenting “lasts”, but when you can, they’re strange and melancholy – even when they’re not, objectively, things a person would choose to do again. This trip involved (I hope) my last time standing, hips screaming from the drive, texting “We’re outside” as we waited for our son to wake up (my husband ended up throwing a ball at his...

Politics

8 d. ago Less death, more social media: Formula One films decades apart reveal a changed world | Emma John

The new Brad Pitt F1 movie offers a glossy exhilarating ride but its 1960s predecessor Grand Prix goes beneath the bonnet‘Let’s try to get the season off to a good start, shall we? Drive the car. Don’t try to stand it on its bloody ear.”Have you watched the movie? It’s about a rule-breaking American Formula One driver, the kind who blows past blue flags and crashes into his own teammate. You must have heard of it. They shot it in real race cars, across some of the most prestigious circuits in the world. It even had contemporary world championship drivers making notable cameos on the track. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago The return of the soundtrack: how original movie music made a comeback

Big summer bets such as F1 and The Smurfs are using stars like Rihanna and Tate McRae to appeal to a wider audiencePosters for the Brad Pitt Formula One race car drama advertise it, with a heavy dose of cheese, as F1 the Movie. But maybe the Spaceballs-like distinction is necessary, given the existence of F1 the Album, a soundtrack nearly as starry as the movie it accompanies. Maybe starrier: Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon and Shea Whigham probably can’t overpower the combination of Don Toliver, Doja Cat, Tate McRae, Ed Sheeran, Rosé, Dom Dolla and Chris Stapleton. This isn’t the only recent compilation to bring back the very early-to-mid-2000s moniker of “the Album”; Twisters: the Album, a 29-track country compilation, reached the Billboard top 10 in the US last summer. Rihanna, a massive pop star who hasn’t released an album in almost a decade, put out her first new song in ages on a little record called Smurfs Movie Soundtrack (Music From & Inspired By). (She plays Sm...

Culture

1 week ago F1 movie release date: Blockbuster film starring Brad Pitt drops in cinemas

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

Culture

1 week ago ‘A belter of a movie’: Guardian readers’ best films of 2025 so far

From repressive military regimes in I’m Still Here to funny French teenage delinquents in Holy Cow, readers pick films that have moved them this year• Read more of the best culture of 2025 so farSebastian is about an aspiring writer, Max, who lives a double life as a sex worker. It’s gritty and somewhat shocking, insofar as it’s not a highly discussed topic in film, yet it is also very tender. I watched it on a rainy Saturday afternoon without knowing anything about it. I was immediately hooked by how normal Max’s life was and intrigued by his decision to set up an online escort profile under the name of his alter ego, Sebastian, for the purpose of his novel, in which he details his varied sexual experiences. The film addresses issues such as shame, authenticity in fiction and consent with a refreshing lack of judgment on the topic of sex work. Ruaridh Mollica is fantastic as Max/Sebastian and I can’t wait to see him in more films. Ann-Marie, Glasgow Continue reading...

Culture

1 week ago The Donald’s bunker busters leave Lammy dreaming of his duvet | John Crace

The foreign secretary was trying to catch up, unsure whether it would be better to have been in on the plan, or have deniabilityThe situation was, said the foreign secretary, “fast-moving”. Fast-moving as in totally suboptimal. Fast-moving as in completely out of his control. Fast-moving as in he would rather have pulled the duvet over his head and pretended the whole thing had been a bad dream. That he could go back to sleep for a while and wake up to the world as it was.Maybe we all wish we could do that. These are the days that many of us would rather had never happened. Does the world feel any safer to you today? Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago F1 movie release date: Blockbuster film starring Brad Pitt set to drop in cinemas

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

Culture

1 week ago ‘Full of delightful surprises’: why Spy is my feelgood movie

The latest in our series of writers recommending their go-to comfort watches is an ode to Paul Feig’s 2015 comedy starring a never-better Melissa McCarthyIt has a plot and a cast that seem cooked up during a hallucinatory fever dream. It shouldn’t work, but it does – and so splendidly, too. In Paul Feig’s comedy Spy, Melissa McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, a timid CIA desk agent who gets sent out into the field by her fearsome boss (Alison Janney) after the death of her slick Bond-like colleague, Bradley Fine (Jude Law, in a rare comedic turn). The cast is full of delightful surprises. Rose Bryne is a stiletto-clad Oxford-educated villainess with quips so brutal that she makes Regina George look like Barney. Peter Serafinowicz does a game turn as an – admittedly very pre-#MeToo – cringey Italian pervert figure named Aldo (“like the shoe store found in American malls”).And in the film’s most magnificent twist, Jason Statham parodies the hard-as-nails action leads he’s played over the ye...

Politics

2 w. ago Brad Pitt in the paddock: how F1 the Movie went deep to keep fans coming

F1 and Liberty Media went to great lengths to assist filming, with star’s APX team embedded within the sportAfter the British Grand Prix last year the drivers took their places in the media zone to conduct interviews, with Formula One world champions Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso among them. Yet it was all but impossible not to cast a glance sideways as Brad Pitt nonchalantly strolled out to face the microphones and cameras of his own, entirely staged, media scrum.None of us in the media pack openly goggled at the fact that Hollywood’s A-list had joined the sweaty throng, because Pitt was there filming what would become F1 the Movie. And we, as with everyone else, were under strict instructions to behave normally. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘It put the fear of God in the audience’: the incredible story of how Jaws changed Hollywood

As the industry-shifting blockbuster turns 50, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary and Wendy Benchley look back on the highs and lowsHalf a century later, Richard Dreyfuss still won’t go in the water. “I have never done it, not since the film,” the Oscar-winning actor says, “because you’re totally aware of what you’re not aware of and you’re not aware of anything underneath.”The film is Jaws, whose release 50 years ago on 20 June marked a turning point in both the history of cinema and public perception of sharks. It was the movie that in effect invented the summer blockbuster, paving the way for Star Wars, Jurassic Park and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It cast sharks in the role of monsters to be feared and killed – but also stimulated interest in marine conservation. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Jill Roord: ‘I lost my happiness in football a little bit. I needed to move home’

The Netherlands midfielder, once Manchester City’s record signing, talks about rejoining the club in her heart, FC Twente, and the upcoming EurosFor Jill Roord, even after winning the Bundesliga title and getting to a Champions League final, eight years on from saying goodbye to FC Twente, there is simply no place like home. The 107-time capped Netherlands midfielder is this summer returning to the club where she began her career and, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian, she explains why the opportunity to move back closer to her family and friends was irresistible.“It had nothing to do with City. My time with City was really good,” says Roord, as she explains her decision to leave the club after two years. “I have been away for eight years playing abroad and it becomes tough being alone for that many years. In the past few years I lost my fun and my happiness in football a little bit because of being away, travelling a lot and not being able to be with family and friends, a...

Politics

2 w. ago Bride Hard review – Rebel Wilson action comedy is hard to endure

The star makes for a charmless lead in a rubbishy attempt to mash a female-led wedding comedy and an action caperIn Apple’s 2023 car crash Ghosted, things went from worse to genuinely never been this bad when the sounds of Uptown Funk erupted during another shoddily choreographed action sequence. It was a marriage so heinous that one would be tempted to think it was parody had it not existed in a film so entirely devoid of humour and self-awareness. The Chris Evans/Ana de Armas vehicle became the new nadir of the action comedy, a subgenre that has been run down into the sewer by streamers, carelessly cobbling together big stars and bad quips on an almost weekly basis.But as dreadful as it was, there was something fascinatingly dreadful about it, a cacophony of bad decisions that became almost instructive to the industry in its of-the-moment awfulness. In this week’s Bride Hard, the latest tinny genre mix to get chucked at us, when Rebel Wilson’s shoddy kitchen-based fight scene is s...

Politics

2 w. ago F1 the Movie review – spectacular macho melodrama handles Brad Pitt with panache

The cherubic sixtysomething stars as a supercool old-school driver returning 30 years after a near-fatal crash to break all the rules of Formula One racingWith that amused-cowpoke face of his squashed into his safety helmet, making his sixtysomething cherubic chops bulge in towards his nose, Brad Pitt gets behind the wheel in this outrageously cheesy but fiercely and extravagantly shot Formula One melodrama. Along with a lot of enjoyable hokum about the old guy mentoring the rookie hothead (a plot it broadly shares with Pixar’s 2006 adventure Cars), F1 the Movie gives you the corporate sheen, real-life race footage with Brad as the star in an unreasonably priced car, the tech fetish of the cars themselves (almost making you forget how amazingly ugly they are) with brand names speckling every square inch of every surface, the simulation graphics writ large, and the bizarre occult spectacle of motor racing itself.This is a movie which (like Barbie) has been licensed by the brand, with...

Events

2 w. ago ‘Always something I can watch’: why Spotlight is my feelgood movie

The latest in our series of writers drawing attention to their mood-lifting favourites is a robustly made Oscar winner from 2015Halfway through Spotlight, Tom McCarthy’s understated retelling of the Boston Globe’s investigation into child abuse in the Catholic church in Boston, is a moment that, even 30-plus rewatches later, still chills me. Spotlight editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton) travels to Providence to interview a fellow Boston College high school alumnus, where he and the victim, Kevin (Anthony Paolucci), make pleasant small talk about bygone school days. When the subject turns to the school’s hockey coach, Father James Talbot, however, the tone abruptly shifts. Kevin’s face hollows, his eyes deaden, and we see his soul drain from his body. “How’d you find out?” he says in a level, diminished tone that rings with years of trauma.It is a measure of how polished every aspect Spotlight is that, in a cast boasting Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, world’s second-best S...

Politics

3 w. ago F1 movie release date, cast and plot as Brad Pitt blockbuster hits screens soon

Here’s everything you need to know about one of the most anticipated new movies of 2025, F1

Events