British Films

Amazon has paid more than $1bn for “creative control” of the James Bond franchise, the Guardian understands, in a deal that has met with a mixed response from stars of the films.

Amazon MGM Studios said on Thursday that it had struck a deal with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, the British-American heirs to the film producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and longtime stewards of the Bond films.

The world’s second largest corporation by revenue confirmed it had formed a joint venture with the duo to house the James Bond intellectual property with Amazon assuming “creative control”.

Amazon said the financial terms were for its eyes only, but it is understood that control of 007 was ceded for about $1bn (£790m), a figure first reported by the US Hollywood news oulet Deadline.

Daniel Craig, the most recent actor to play Bond, offered his congratulations to Broccoli and Wilson on Friday. Craig, who first appeared in Casino Royale in 2006, said: “My respect, admiration and love for Barbara and Michael remain constant and undiminished.

“I wish Michael a long, relaxing (and well-deserved) retirement, and whatever ventures Barbara goes on to do, I know they will be spectacular and I hope I can be part of them.”

The actor Valerie Leon, however, a former “Bond girl”, raised concerns that 007 would not be British any more if Amazon was calling the shots.

Leon, 81, featured in the films The Spy Who Loved Me and Never Say Never Again, alongside Roger Moore and Sean Connery. She told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that it does not worry her because “life changes and everything moves on and changes”.

“The Bond franchise was very British and it won’t be any more,” she said. “And obviously, if they make films they won’t go into the cinema … everything is so changed now, it just won’t be the same and I’m very old-fashioned anyway.”

Last month, Boyle told Empire that he was going to be directing the trilogy capper, and claimed that it wouldn’t be shot “until audiences respond to the first film.” Judging by the record-breaking reaction to the trailer, I don’t believe Boyle/Garland will have much of a problem completing their trilogy.

In fact, it actually looks like it’s now on the fast track as a recent listing has “28 Years Later: Part 3” starting production on March 31, 2025. The entire trilogy will have been shot and completed by the time Boyle starts to do press on the first one in June.

It's been tricky catching this, until now.

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On British telly in half an hour.

The US subtitles are indeed a thing:

Sparrows Can’t Sing attempts to represent the diversity of characters and cultures that were prevalent in the East End during the early 1960s, including those typically found in the local pub, as well as local tarts, Jewish tradesmen and spivs. Consequently the dialogue became a mix of rhyming slang, London Yiddish and thieves cant. It is no surprise that it became the first English language film to be released in the US with subtitles.

Also on the Internet Archive.

A24 and Alex Garland hit a home run with Civil War earlier this year. The film had pretty good reviews but did exceptionally well at the box office. There was doing well and then there were the numbers that this movie managed to pull in. If it was one of the bigger studios, they would have looked at that $124 million worldwide and probably fired someone, but for A24, that is a win. So, it's not surprising to hear that Garland and A24 are teaming up for another war-based project. This one is just called Warfare and was written and directed by Garland and Ray Mendoza, an Iraq war veteran. Whenever a movie based on modern-day warfare comes out, you always see veterans reacting to the film and talking about what aspects of the film are accurate and what aspects aren't. This time, the team for this film appears to be trying to stop that before the film even comes out by having a veteran behind the camera. It's one thing to have someone on set as a consultant; it's another to have them behind the camera and helping direct a scene. The first trailer and poster were released earlier this month, and the film will be released sometime next year, maybe in April, if they want to try and make that Civil War lighting strike twice.

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In 1953, the BBC aired a science-fiction serial that entranced the nation of Britain. It was the first of its kind, and it was such a raging success that an enterprising movie producer quickly snapped up the rights to turn the story into a feature film. Two years later, that movie raked in money at the UK box office and, in the process, helped give an identity to one of the most iconic movie studios the British Isles has ever seen. Even more impressively, the film crossed the water to the US, becoming Britain’s most influential sci-fi film ever.

When the BBC’s Head of Television Drama, Michael Barry, looked at the schedule for summer 1953, he saw something he didn’t like: nothing. A gap of six Saturday nights in a row needed to be filled with a serial, so he tasked one of the company’s screenwriters with filling that gap. Nigel Kneale had always been fascinated by the idea of science going wrong, so he wrote The Quatermass Experiment, the tale of the fictional British Experimental Rocket Group’s first manned flight into outer space. Two crew members are missing when the craft returns to Earth, and the third begins transforming into a terrifying alien creature. Professor Bernard Quatermass and Scotland Yard Inspector Lomax are forced to team up to prevent the mutated crewman from destroying the world.

Quatermass was the BBC’s first adult science-fiction drama, performed live at the Alexandra Palace studio in London. By the time the sixth and final episode aired, nearly five million people were watching. To put that into context, only a year before Quatermass, the entire television audience in the UK was four million, and in March 1953, it was estimated that the BBC’s average evening audience was 2.25m. By anyone’s standards, Quatermass was a phenomenon.

One of the five million Quatermass viewers was Hammer Films producer Anthony Hinds, who immediately knew the story would make a great film. He contacted the BBC only two days after the finale aired to ask about the status of the rights. As Kneale was a BBC employee, he didn’t receive a fee for the rights being sold to Hammer for a £500 advance, and this would stick in his craw until the company begrudgingly paid him £3,000 in 1967 to officially recognise his creation of Quatermass.

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Once again, Quatermass was a roaring success in the UK, this time at the box office. Interestingly, though, when it was shown in the US, it had another title change. The Creeping Unknown was shown as the second part of a double bill with the Gothic horror movie The Black Sheep and was so popular that United Artists immediately commissioned a sequel. Two years later, Quatermass 2 hit cinema screens, again produced by Hammer and directed by Val Guest, before Quatermass and the Pit followed in 1967.

The success of its Quatermass films helped cement Hammer’s reputation as a producer of horror movies, and the studio is still synonymous with that genre today. The films also reached a much wider audience than the BBC’s serial. Kneale’s biographer Andy Murray noted that several generations of sci-fi and horror creatives have spoken in glowing terms about Quatermass’s influence on them.

Part of the enduring appeal of Wallace & Gromit is its British charm. The quaint mannerisms of the hapless inventor and his canine pal–from their love of a cup of tea to their knowing colloquialisms–reflect an admiral sense of national pride, both at home and abroad. But while that British-ness is part of the appeal, it doesn’t defend Aardman from being able to get in jokes that might be a little too close to home.

Now that the latest entry in the series, Vengeance Most Fowl, is making its way around the world in January thanks to Netflix, some of the creatives behind the film revealed at recent press conference for the film that they did have to make some acquiescence to notes from the streamer on a joke that wasn’t going to play well outside of the UK.

“There’s some actually that we’ve had to sort of take out, because just in terms of the Britishness of the film and the sort of cultural references, there’s certain things that don’t travel,” Vengeance Most Fowl executive producer Carla Shelley said. “I remember we had a sort of gag about a bog chain at one point… for anybody that doesn’t out there, that’s like a toilet flush. We were talking to Netflix and [the note back] was like ‘what’s a bog chain!?’ There are certain sorts of references that we might pull back on now.

Len Deighton published his first spy novel, The Ipcress File, shortly after the blockbuster success of the very first Bond movie, Dr. No. When The Ipcress File became a bestseller, Bond producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli tapped Deighton to pen the script for the sequel, From Russia with Love. Not much of his screenplay made it to the final film, but the producers enjoyed working with Deighton.

Saltzman decided to adapt The Ipcress File for the screen in the hope of launching a second spy movie franchise that could run alongside the Bond films. He cast Caine to play the lead role of Palmer, with the aim of bringing him back for an endless string of sequels. The Ipcress File was conceived as the polar opposite of the Bond films, with a naturalistic style drawing from the world of kitchen-sink drama. It seemed like a sure-fire path to success, but the Palmer movies never reached the same blockbuster heights as the Bond movies.

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Palmer’s stories are the opposite of Bond’s in every way. Whereas the Bond movies offered lighthearted escapism, the Palmer movies offered gritty realism. Whereas Bond is characterized as posh and upper-class, Palmer is a working-class hero. Whereas the Bond films carried an optimistic message about good triumphing over evil and maintaining the world order, the Palmer films took a bleaker and more pessimistic approach to their storytelling. The cynical tone and grounded, naturalistic style of the Palmer movies had more in common with John le Carré’s espionage stories than 007’s globetrotting adventures.

In the hit 1990 film The Krays, the East End gangsters were portrayed as “identical twins who rose from poverty to power”, “from obscurity to fame” and “from the back streets to the attention of the world”. They were “special” boys, the film claimed, who loved their mother.

But the producer now says he regrets glamorising them and is making another film that will portray the mobsters as they really were.

Ray Burdis said he wants to put the record straight: “They weren’t folk heroes. They were just a pair of cowardly psychopathic bullies, who terrorised the East End of London in the 1960s.”

He said that films such as The Godfather, the Marlon Brando classic about the mafia, had made it fashionable to idolise gangsters.

The Krays, which starred brothers Gary and Martin Kemp in critically acclaimed performances, was a huge box-office success, taking more than £100m globally.

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The new film, which he is writing and directing, is titled Last Kings of London. It will be much darker, depicting swinging 1960s London, “where corruption plagued the police force and crime families ruled the streets”, he said.

This biopic of The Beatles‘ manager Brian Epstein ends with a famous quote from Paul McCartney: “If anyone was the fifth Beatle, it was Brian.” It’s both the raison d’être for this moderately entertaining but hollow film and, perhaps, the reason for its downfall. Midas Man is so busy hitting the familiar beats of the Fab Four’s incredible rise that it never really burrows beneath Epstein’s skin.

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As the Beatles’ popularity explodes, Midas Man follows Epstein and the band to America while paying lip service to other Merseybeat acts he managed, most notably Gerry And The Pacemakers. Director Joe Stephenson steers the story with brisk efficiency – no small feat given this film’s bumpy production. Shooting took place in fits and starts across nearly two years following the departure of two previous directors, Jonas Åkerlund and Sara Sugarman.

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The result is passable retro fodder with a glaring hole: a lack of Beatles songs. Presumably because these were impossible or too expensive to wrangle, we have to make do with snippets of Black’s biggest hits and the Fab Four covering Barrett Strong’s ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’. John, Paul, George and Ringo did indeed record the soulful rocker in 1963, but it’s hardly in their top-tier. Midas Man has some empathy for its subject and a warm performance from Emily Watson as his mother Queenie, but no real curiosity about what made him tick. For this reason, it ultimately does a disservice to both Epstein the manager and Epstein the man.

A new film about a gossipy and scheming group of cardinals who must select the new Pope has received its UK premiere at the London Film Festival.

Conclave, which stars Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini, is adapted from the 2016 novel by Robert Harris.

The film is thought to be a strong contender for the best picture award at next year's Oscars, and several of its stars could also be in contention for individual acting prizes.

Conclave is directed by Edward Berger, the acclaimed German-Austrian film-maker whose 2022 adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front was nominated for nine Academy Awards.

A passion project in the works for eight years, Alice Lowe’s follow-up to Prevenge borrows from the likes of Terry Gilliam and Stanley Kubrick to tell a story about the obsessive pursuit of love, with a healthy side of schlocky gore. Lowe has long been something of a savant of the strange and macabre, from her breakout role in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace onwards. But her imagination really runs wild here, leaping between centuries with aplomb, even if the jokes are disappointingly weak.

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Although there’s fun to be had in the whimsy and inventiveness, the comedy could have used some extra oomph. A sense of repetition inevitably creeps in after Agnes experiences a flash of recognition from a past or future self for the umpteenth time. The character herself is also too thinly drawn: her erotomania often exists more as a device to string together a collection of zany comedy sketches rather than as an intense emotional experience. And yet, for these faults, Timestalker is a genuinely unique expression of colour and imagination, one that could only come from inside its creator’s head.

Residents reported seeing flashing lights in the sky as production work began at Canal Street, St Helens, at the former Pilkington Watson Street Works.

Oblik Productions confirmed to the Star in September that filming for a Second World War Netflix film called The Immortal Man.

An article on whats-on-netflix.com suggests that the project is a 'Peaky Blinders' film.

It says that a "long-awaited Peaky Blinders movie" entitled The Immortal Man is soon heading into production and will be "set during World War II".

It says Cillian Murphy will reprise his role as Tommy Shelby from the hit TV series.

The article adds that Tim Roth is also among the cast members to have been confirmed, and it was reported that Tom Hardy has signed on for the movie.

If there is anyone who knows what is happening behind the scenes in the saga over who will become the next James Bond, it’s Jennifer Salke, the global head of Amazon MGM Studios – home of box-office crown ­jewels including the 007 and Rocky franchises.

Salke was part of the Amazon team that sealed an audacious $8.5bn deal in 2021 to buy the 100-year-old MGM and its celebrated library of 4,000 film titles and 17,000 hours of TV programming – ranging from Gone with the Wind and The Hobbit to The Handmaid’s Tale and Legally Blonde.

Nevertheless, it is the future of the evergreen spy that remains the hottest topic of conversation among movie fans.

The problem is that control of James Bond – at 62 years old, one of the world’s longest-running film franchises – remains largely with Eon Productions in the UK, which is run by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson. Eon’s strict control even extends to who plays Bond.

Intense media interest has sparked a flurry of speculation naming almost any male actor who might fit the profile – from Idris Elba to Aaron Taylor-Johnson and, more recently, Barry Keoghan, the star of the Amazon hit Saltburn.

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Salke is neither shaken nor stirred by the hiatus. “There are a lot of ideas [about potential actors] that have popped up that I thought are interesting,” says Salke. “I think there are a lot of different ways we can go. We have a good and close relationship with Eon and Barbara and Michael. We are not looking to disrupt the way those wonderful films are made. For us, we are taking their lead.

“The global audience will be patient. We don’t want too much time between films, but we are not concerned at this point.”

Salke also gives her version of reports alleging that, early on, she got on the wrong side of Broccoli for raising the idea of a Bond TV series.

“It was never really raised in that way,” says Salke, who is conducting the interview via video at an unearthly hour in the morning from her home in Los Angeles.

“When you are looking at iconic intellectual property like that, you look at what the entire long-term future might be. Of course you look at every facet.”

Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis is ending his retirement from acting to star in his son’s directorial debut.

The 67-year-old British actor quit acting after starring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film Phantom Thread, and has largely stayed out of public life since.

But he is now set to star in a film titled Anemone, directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis, US independent production company Focus Features confirmed on Tuesday.

The film will feature actors including Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley and Safia Oakley-Green, and is currently shooting in Manchester.

Father and son wrote the screenplay, which “explores the intricate relationships between fathers, sons and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds”, Focus Features said.

The Paddington films have always been imbued with a deep love of cinema. Paul King’s Paddington and Paddington 2 revelled in creating handcrafted textures, both beautifully shot and making nods to classic slapstick comedies, prison escape dramas, and soundstage musicals. Next, Paddington is venturing out of London – make way for Paddington In Peru, a threequel that sees Douglas Wilson make his directorial debut, taking the reins from King, and sending our young furry hero (and the Brown family) on an Amazonian adventure. That change of location means an influx of new cinematic touchstones.

Notably, Wilson mentions an influence from Werner Herzog’s jungle-traversing Aguirre, The Wrath Of God, and Fitzcarraldo. Yes, in a Paddington movie. It comes with the Peruvian territory – literally. “Peru has this incredible variety of landscapes, crazy geology, especially the Andes and the mysterious Incan side,” the director tells Empire. “If you’ve seen [Werner Herzog’s] Aguirre, The Wrath Of God, we go up into similar landscapes. And the people are incredibly friendly.” Part of the mission here is to portray that sense of place and culture. “Obviously there are mopeds and mobile phones and all that, but they do still seem to wear traditional-looking clothes in the rural Andes,” says Wilson. “So I tried to show some Peruvian culture; a Peruvian legend underlies our whole story.” And since Paddington In Peru features singing nuns (including Olivia Colman’s Reverend Mother), expect a bit of The Sound Of Music and Black Narcissus in the mix.

SHOCKER: Napoleon: The Director's Cut is good! It may be longer, but it improves upon the theatrical version with better pacing, restoring scenes and moments that explain the historical and political reasons for the characters' actions and is also a more complete story that makes director Ridley Scott's true intentions, which is to make an anti-Great Man story as an utterly irreverent comedy. The main character is not a Great Man but a miserable jerk, and the message of the film seems to be "Don't trust the myth of any Great Men." This makes it the most subversive historical blockbuster epic of the 21st Century. If you watch it knowing this, it is actually very funny, even if some of that laughter turns bitter.

Ridley Scott seems to have a very strong point of view here, which is in opposition to the "Great Man of History narrative." It feels like he deliberately had Joaquin Phoenix play Napoleon Bonaparte as the most unlikable, uncharismatic, insecure, incel dweeb imaginable. He's petulant and uncouth, makes weird noises with his mouth to get attention, and is prone to tantrums. He's the epitome of every unhappy twelve-year-old boy you've ever had the misfortune to babysit, made even worse that he's a horny grown man, and even sex and love don't make him happy. It's hard for me not to laugh at every scene in which Phoenix does something, either physical or verbal, that just makes this guy utterly appalling and hilariously unappealing. Phoenix plays Bonaparte as if he didn't want to be here, and Paul Schrader's complaint about his lack of charisma might be the whole point. Bonaparte's military prowess or skill does not make him charismatic or glamorous here; he doesn't even take any joy from winning. Some viewers might have found the subversion of "The Great Man" story confusing since we've all been conditioned to treat historical biopics as respectful, but this movie is very funny. The casting of many British comedy actors who are normally familiar to British TV audiences seems to be a clue to Scott's intentions here.

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The French still have a sentimental and romantic view of Napoleon and even his romance with Josephine, and Scott seemed to make it so toxic and horrible as if he really wanted to piss them off. The whole movie gets funnier when you start to think Scott spent over $100 million to piss off the French, which any Englishmen would love to do if given half a chance.

On Sunday, the Toronto film festival will hand out its prizes and roll up its red carpet, a week after the Venice film festival did the same. This means only one thing: the start of Oscar season.

And, as the dust settles on these prestige launchpads, pundits have started to notice that there’s something remarkably similar about three of the key best actor contenders. They’re British. They’re former pin-ups now hovering around 60. And they’re all awards bridesmaids, so far unfeted by Oscar and long overdue for podium toasting.

Of the three, Ralph Fiennes looks the strongest bet. Now 61, Fiennes has won rave reviews for his performance as a troubled cardinal in classy pulp thriller Conclave, adapted from the Robert Harris bestseller and directed by Edward Berger, whose All Quiet on the Western Front won four Oscars from nine nominations two years ago (and swept the board at the Baftas).

Despite his status as one of the most acclaimed actors of the age, Fiennes hasn’t been on an Oscar shortlist for almost three decades. His nomination in breakout film Schindler’s List was unsuccessful, in part because of his youth, in part because the Academy is squeamish about appearing to actively celebrate Nazis. Then, in 1997, he lost out on the lead actor gong to Shine’s Geoffrey Rush (though The English Patient, in which Fiennes starred, did bag nine other Oscars).

“Fiennes has the perception of being overdue,” says Jenelle Riley, deputy awards and features editor at Variety. She believes he was particularly egregiously ignored for his mad chef turn in 2022’s The Menu; similar outrage met snubs for roles in The End of the Affair, The Constant Gardener, Coriolanus, A Bigger Splash and, especially, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Awards expert Guy Lodge agrees. “Fiennes has the kind of IOU from the Academy that often translates into an overdue Oscar when the right vehicle comes along,” he says, “and the chewy, accessible dramatics of Conclave fit the bill.”

The nominative deterministic owners of Hammer Films, the classic British horror movie studio and library, John Gore Media Limited, have announced the acquisition of Silver Salt Restoration, a British film restoration studio, as part of what they call "our ongoing commitment to preserving cinematic history." Silver Salt, which has a long history of working with the likes of Arrow, StudioCanal and the BFI, will now take on some of the more memorable films within the Hammer Films portfolio for restoration.

And right now Silver Salt is working on the remastering of a number of rare Hammer Films cult classics, many of which have been out of circulation for years. These films will undergo 4K restoration and preservation, for new and old audiences.

This comes as Hammer Films celebrates its 90th anniversary in November, with a special documentary, Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters on Sky TV, exploring the legacy of Hammer Films, its many productions, and its impact on British cinema.

When you think of British sci-fi movies, what comes to mind? For many, it will be directors like Ridley Scott and Alex Garland being exemplary of UK filmmakers who have put a stamp on the genre with films like Alien and Ex Machina. However, outside the heavy hitters and big titles, British sci-fi movies largely go underappreciated; relegated to cult status, or completely ignored in America.

These 10 movies don't get nearly enough attention for their approach to sci-fi, whether it be innovative techniques, a clever approach to the genre, or being so over-the-top they had problems finding an audience. To celebrate the stand-out sci-fi movies, we will blast off and jump between these gems that present some of the best British sci-fi seldom seen but loved by a core audience.

1. Triangle (2009)
2. The Boys from Brazil (1978)
3. Sunshine (2007)
4. Journey to the Other Side of the Sun (1969)
5. Morons From Outer Space (1985)
6. Frequencies (2013)
7. Phase IV (1974)
8. Unearthly Stranger (1963)
9. Under the Skin (2014)
10. Xtro (1982)

The BBC has unveiled a first look at the upcoming Wallace and Gromit adventure that will air on the BBC in 2024.

In Vengeance Most Fowl, Gromit worries that Wallace has become unduly reliant on his creations, and his worries are validated when Wallace creates a "smart gnome" that appears to have an independent mind.

The League of Gentlemen and Inside No. 9's Reece Shearsmith is the voice for Norbot, who can be heard in the new teaser.

In terms of other cast members, Ben Whitehead stars as Wallace, who previously worked alongside the late Peter Sallis (the original voice of Wallace) on other Wallace and Gromit brand projects.

The cast also includes Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Diane Morgan, Adjoa Andoh, Lenny Henry, and Buzz Khan.

The BBC confirmed earlier this year that the renowned supervillain Feathers McGraw will make a comeback in the new 79-minute film.

Directed by Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham, the film will make its UK premiere on BBC iPlayer and BBC One this Christmas. Later in the winter, it will be accessible on Netflix worldwide.

A silent Sherlock Holmes film starring Arthur Conan Doyle’s favourite impersonator of the famous sleuth, Eille Norwood, is to be screened for the first time since its release in 1922, following its extensive restoration by the BFI national archive.

Titled The Golden Pince-Nez, it is a classic case of Holmes detection, based on a Conan Doyle short story that was first published in the Strand magazine in 1904.

It was among many screen adaptations in which Norwood portrayed the master detective who deduces the truth from the slightest of clues.

Conan Doyle said of him: “His wonderful impersonation of Holmes has amazed me. Norwood had that rare quality which can only be described as glamour, which compels you to watch an actor eagerly even when he is doing nothing. He has a quite unrivalled power of disguise.”

The restoration world premiere will be held on 16 October as part of the BFI London film festival.

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The Golden Pince-Nez was among 45 episodes – each lasting up to 30 minutes – that Norwood made between 1921 and 1923, as well as two features.

Its premiere will be screened with two other restored episodes – A Scandal in Bohemia, in which Holmes uncharacteristically falls for a woman, and The Final Problem, in which Holmes meets his arch-enemy, Moriarty.

These are the first titles in the BFI’s “mammoth multi-year restoration project”, Dixon said, noting that Norwood’s films were well-received in their day by audiences who flocked to the cinema back then in their millions. “This was culturally more like us watching TV,” she said.

The BFI national archive boasts the world’s largest film and television holdings. It acquired the original negatives for the Holmes series in 1938, and in the early 1950s it duplicated the two-reel camera negative of The Golden Pince-Nez on to safety stock before the original decomposed.

“The quality is pretty much as good as it gets,” Dixon said of the restoration, adding that it was close to the way the original audiences saw it.

Glasgow Cathedral is being used as the latest backdrop for Guillermo Del Toro's adaptation of Frankenstein.

We reported earlier this week that the 12th-century structure was closed for filming, and on Saturday, our photographer Gordon Terris captured more of the action.

Actors were seen dressed in Victorian garments and the famous director was pictured on the set.

Star Wars actor Oscar Isaac will play the doctor, while Euphoria and Saltburn star Jacob Elordi is set to star as 'the Monster'.

Also joining the cast are Mia Goth, David Bradley, Christoph Waltz and Charles Dance.

Kneecap is so confident and single-minded in its telling of the semi-fictionalised origins of its titular west Belfast hip-hop trio, that it may make anyone who’s never heard of them feel like a bit of a loser. It’s a film that not only signals a major musical arrival, but ends up feeling a lot bigger than the conventional (and often confining) boundaries of the “music biopic”. Kneecap is the story of Belfast and of the “ceasefire generation” – the ones who were told that all is well, that they live in “the moment after the moment”, even when their nation’s traumas are still writ into their bones. It’s a story, too, crucially, about language deployed as an act of liberation and defiance.

Seven years ago, Alice Lowe released her debut movie Prevenge, which she filmed while pregnant. It followed a pregnant widow who was convinced her unborn child was compelling her to go on a killing spree.

It was every bit as brilliant as that unique concept promised (it's available to watch on Prime Video if you haven't seen it), leaving us desperate to see what Lowe would do next. We've had to wait a while, but fortunately, Timestalker has been worth it.

The historical sci-fi rom-com – which held its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival – is another inventive and unique offering from Lowe, confirming her as one of the UK's most exciting filmmakers.

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If you're familiar with Lowe's previous written work, Timestalker's dark vein of humour won't surprise you, but otherwise, be prepared. It might be romantic and also a comedy, but a fluffy rom-com it isn't. There's a winning blend of deadpan humour, very silly (and very British) gags and pitch-black, gory laughs.

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Timestalker is the most unique British movie of the year, and it's also among the best British movies of 2024 to date. Let's hope Alice Lowe doesn't leave us waiting seven years again for her next movie.