The contemplative cinema of Béla Tarr was as excruciatingly beautiful as it was brazenly original, often conjuring comparison to the work of a master painter.
His stark black-and-white imagery in assiduously long takes with creeping camera movements — hallmarks of his filmmaking — demanded that the viewer pause to look, to see, as one might in regarding a Picasso or a Bruegel.
Tarr’s revolution in form, however, cannot be separated from the radical humanity of his filmmaking. In a concentrated collection of 10 features over less than four decades, his gaze was fixed on the resolute dignity of his marginalized and downtrodden characters, which elevated his work beyond the realm of cinephile contemplation.
With the death of the Hungarian master on Tuesday at age 70, that enduring humanity makes his work as essential as ever.
“I despise stories,” Tarr once explained to an interviewer, “as they mislead people into believing that something has happened. In fact, nothing really happens as we flee from one condition to another. … There are only states of being — all stories have become obsolete and cliched, and have resolved themselves. All that remains is time.”
His films typically did not concern themselves with the plot of individual lives, which in reality are revealed in retrospect, if at all. They focused instead on human experience as it unfolds, moment by uncertain moment, capturing everyday foibles, errors and foolishness in the face of quotidian ruthlessness. As in Samuel Beckett’s tragicomic theater and novels, Tarr’s movies, by turns funny and heartbreaking, dignify human struggle with an uncommon tenacity of vision and empathy.
Some of Tarr’s most memorable scenes feature landscapes, often bleak and despairing settings of decaying Hungarian towns, punctuated with close-ups of characters’ faces. Asked by film historian David Bordwell about this juxtaposition, Tarr replied: “But the face is the landscape.”
Tarr arrived in the late 1970s declaring his intention to “kick in the door” of contemporary cinema. He did so, more than once.
He announced himself with a trilogy of domestic dramas. “Family Nest,” “The Outsider” and “The Prefab People” focused on couples and individuals trapped by commonplace struggles and social constraints, a thematic affront to late-communist Hungary. Featuring handheld camerawork and frequent close-ups, these early works evoke the quasi-improvisational style of John Cassavetes smothered in claustrophobia.
Tarr followed with a TV adaptation of “Macbeth” (1982), filmed in two shots, the second lasting more than an hour. After a brief experimentation two years later with a wild palette of color in “Almanac of Fall,” he returned to his discoveries in “Macbeth,” a stylistic transformation that would define the rest of his career.
“Damnation” (1988) opens with an extended shot of a system of towers and cables transporting vast buckets of mining materials across a desolate plain. A harsh grinding of the elevated cable system is the only sound. (In Tarr films, sound features as evocatively as image.) Slowly the camera pulls back to reveal an interior window, and then the back of a man’s head in silhouette, as our protagonist watches the monotonous procession.
The audience experiences the scene of agonizing beauty as the man does. We remain with him throughout the movie, as we follow his futile pursuit of a married cabaret singer with whom he is irrevocably in love. The story does not unfold as a typical narrative, but in a series of scenes that feel distinct yet unified, like a collection of short stories.
Tarr worked with a common team of filmmakers in nearly all his films, including his longtime partner and editor, Ágnes Hranitzky, cinematographer Fred Kelemen, composer Mihály Víg and a core group of actors.
“Damnation” marked Tarr’s first collaboration with his friend László Krasznahorkai, the Hungarian novelist and 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature winner. The pairing of literary and filmmaking masters, which spanned five features over a quarter of a century, recalled that of Graham Greene and Carol Reed, but nothing in movie history quite compares.
Tarr’s two greatest works, “Sátántangó” (1994) and “Werckmeister Harmonies” (2000), were based on Krasznahorkai‘s novels (the latter derived from his “The Melancholy of Resistance”). The books are cornerstones of Krasznahorkai’s Nobel-winning oeuvre, and the films are two of the defining movies of their era and established Tarr as a giant of cinema.
“Sátántangó” is an epic equivalent in running time to some four feature films, which Susan Sontag called “devastating, enthralling for every minute of its [more than] seven hours.” It often appears on critics’ lists among the greatest films ever made.
The movie follows a group of petty cheats, liars and drunks who are duped by nefarious opportunists who visit their crumbling town. Tarr employs the extended take to even greater lengths, creating an exquisite manipulation of our sense of time, and some of the most memorable scenes in modern filmmaking.
In “Werckmeister Harmonies,” another opportunist visits another desperate town, this time accompanying a traveling exhibit of a preserved whale. The depictions of mob violence are chilling evocations of the darkest moments of the 20th century. The culminating episode, as the mob smashes and ransacks a hospital and terrorizes its patients, ultimately reveals a frail elderly man, standing naked and alone in an empty bathtub as the club-wielding assailants approach. His appearance, stopping them in their tracks, is one of the most heartrending moments of any movie.
Tarr followed with “The Man From London,” which he and Krasznahorkai adapted from a novel by Georges Simenon, about a seaside railway signalman who confronts a moral quandary involving a murder mystery.
In 2012 came “The Turin Horse,” in which director and novelist reimagined the story of the whipping of a horse in the Italian city that was said to have triggered philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s mental breakdown. The movie follows the unfortunate horse as it is led away by its owner to his rural home he shares with his daughter. Their repetitive routines and the young woman’s daily burdens are reminiscent of Chantal Akerman’s classic “Jeanne Dielman.”
After the release of the film, among his most acclaimed, Tarr stunned the film world by announcing it would be his last feature. He was just 56 at the time.
He went on to open an international film school in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, known as film.factory, which continued until 2017, and he produced a number of movies.
Tarr was long outspoken in denouncing authoritarian governments, whether Hungary’s old communist model or the current populist nationalism of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, France’s Marine Le Pen and President Trump. He supported students at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest — his former school — who had occupied their campus in 2020 in protest of Orbán’s policies.
In 2019, Tarr embarked on one more film-related project, “Missing People,” an exhibition at the annual Vienna Festival. The film portion of the program, according to reports about the event, featured the faces of some 270 homeless people living in the Austrian capital.
The project appeared a few months after Orbán’s adoption of a Hungarian law that essentially criminalized homelessness. A final act in the radical humanity that was the art of Béla Tarr.
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
One of the bummer parts of any awards season is how it leads to a narrowing down of what movies are getting talked about and subsequently remembered from any given year. There are always way more than five or 10 titles from any given year that deserve the spotlight.
Which is why it was so exciting this week when Envelope editor Matt Brennan chose Mona Fastvold’s “The Testament of Ann Lee” and Angus MacLachlan’s “A Little Prayer” as his favorite movies of the year. “A Little Prayer” first premiered at Sundance in 2023, but didn’t get a theatrical release until this past summer. The delicate jewel of a film features warm, tender performances by David Strathairn and Jane Levy as a man and his daughter-in-law both reconciling themselves to the fallout of problems in her marriage. The movie is available now on digital platforms and is well worth seeking out.
David Straithairn and Jane Levy in the movie “A Little Prayer.”
(Music Box Films)
And we talked about “Ann Lee” here last week and will likely have more to say about it as awards season moves on. Matt’s list also included films such as “Sinners,” “One Battle After Another,” “Sentimental Value” and “Sirāt” along with “Sorry, Baby,” “Nouvelle Vague,” “Hedda,” and “The Alabama Solution.”
Meanwhile, with 2026 so fresh and new, it’s almost sacrilegious to start thinking about a future best-of-year list. But we’ve got one anyway: Here are the 14 movies we’re most excited to see in 2026. Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig, Steven Spielberg doing aliens again — at least on paper, there’s a lot of promise here.
4K premiere of Friedkin’s ‘Sorcerer’
An image from William Friedkin’s 1977 movie “Sorcerer.”
The film was a notorious flop when first released, in part because it had the misfortune of opening a week after the first “Star Wars.” An adaptation of the same novel that spawned Henri-George Clouzot’s 1953 adventure “Wages of Fear,” “Sorcerer” follows four desperate men tasked with transporting a truckload of volatile nitroglycerine through a South American jungle.
Friedkin, who died in 2023, spoke to The Times’ Kenneth Turan in 2013 before receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Venice Film Festival. The only movie shown as part of the tribute was “Sorcerer.” As Friedkin said at the time, “Every one of the films that I made, even the ones that haven’t worked, are films that I had to envision, that I had to see in my mind’s eye. And ‘Sorcerer’ is the film that came closest to my vision of what I wanted to make.”
In a January 1977 interview conducted when he had just completed filming, star Roy Scheider said that working with Friedkin “was not always to my liking as an actor. He is organized and meticulous but difficult, opiniated and tough. He can even be cruel at times. When Friedkin works on a film, nothing gets in his way, including the actors.”
Roy Scheider in the movie “Sorcerer.”
(Criterion Collection)
The film’s initial reception is perhaps well summarized by Charles Champlin’s originalLos Angeles Times review, in which he writes, “William Friedkin’s ‘Sorcerer’ is one of those movies that must make executives, no less than critics, shake their heads in stunned glum wonder. What the hell went wrong?
“A first-rate and proven piece of material. Executed with loving and meticulous care on a damn-the-cost basis by a prize-winning director with two large commercial successes behind him. But it all ends up a swollen, leaden and almost totally uninvolving disappointment that seems fairly unlikely to be saved commercially by its detonations, special effects and strenuous physical sequences.”
Champlin did seem to enjoy one element: the synthesizer score by Tangerine Dream (later of “Thief” and “Risky Business”), music that he calls “a new flavor, Latin Anxious, that works well.”
‘The Godfather Part II’
Al Pacino in the 1974 sequel “The Godfather Part II.”
(Paramount Pictures)
On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, an original I.B. Technicolor 35mm print of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II” will screen at the New Beverly. It’s a rare and unusual way to see a great movie that can sometimes be flattened by overfamiliarity but remains as fresh and revealing as ever. The movie would go on to win six Oscars including best picture (the first sequel to ever do so).
The story cross-cuts between Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in the 1950s and Robert De Niro playing his father Vito Corleone in the early 1900s. The film shows the growth of the Corleone family empire and what it takes to keep it running.
In a January 1975 interview, Coppola talked about his motivations in approaching the sequel, saying, “The finished film makes what I consider a tough statement for a $13 million mass-audience picture. It says that this country is in danger of losing its soul, like Michael did. That power without humanity is destructive. … I didn’t want Michael to be destroyed by another gang or by a Senate investigation of organized crime. I wanted him to destroy himself. And to juxtapose his fall with flashbacks of his father’s rise a half-century earlier.”
Coppola, candid as ever, continued, “And, to be completely honest, there was the possibility of my making so much money I could bankroll some of my other projects.”
In his original Dec. 1974 review of the film, our Charles Champlin wrote, “In its way, ‘Godfather II’ is more daring than the original … The risks were worth taking, and the reward is that a single monumental segment of the American experience is neither glorified nor patronized, but made comprehensible and real, transmuted into drama of both scope and depth.”
Points of interest
‘The Birds’ in 35mm
Tippi Hedren and children are attacked by crows in a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”
(Screen Archives / Getty Images)
On Monday the Academy Museum will show Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 “The Birds” in 35mm. The film is showing as part of a series about nature’s revenge on humans — a fun group of titles that also includes “Jaws” and “Orca” (both playing in 35mm), “Creature from the Black Lagoon” in 3D, “Alligator” with director Lewis Teague in person and “The Revenant” in 4K.
Transporting Daphne du Maurier’s original story to the setting of Bodega Bay in Northern California, “The Birds” presents a classic, apocalyptic what-if scenario when humans are suddenly attacked from above.
Star Tippi Hedren, who turns 96 later this month, made her movie debut in the film and over the years she has been open about how difficult the process of shooting was for her. In an April 1963 interview with Hedda Hopper, she said, “The Humane Society was there to protect the birds but there was no one to protect me.”
In a March 1963 review, The Times’ Philip K. Scheuer wrote, “Are actors people? No matter. Alfed Hitchcock, who filmed ‘The Birds’ at Universal, was once widely quoted as saying he hated actors. After his 1960 ‘Psycho’ and now ‘The Birds,’ it must be fairly obvious that he has extended his abhorrence to the whole human race.”
Oliver Lax’s ‘Fire Will Come’
Amador Arias, left, and Benedicta Sánchez in ‘Fire Will Come’
(KimStim)
Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe’s “Sirāt” has become one of the most celebrated films of the year, popping up on critics list and making a strong showing on the recent Oscars shortlists. On Tuesday, Acropolis Cinema will present the Los Angeles premiere of Laxe’s 2019 film “Fire Will Come” at 2220 Arts + Archives (its original release was curtailed by the pandemic). Laxe is scheduled to attend in person.
In the film, Amador (Amador Arias) has just been released from prison for arson, after having started a wildfire that ravaged the local mountains. Living with his mother, he has to overcome the suspicions and distrust of everyone in the community.
Reviewing the film in 2020 for a digital release, Carlos Aguilar called the film “quietly phenomenal,” adding, “Its discourse on forgiveness simmers in one’s mind inextinguishably.”
Joachim Trier tribute
Director Joachim Trier, photographed at the Los Angeles Times Studios at RGB House during the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
These are also rare opportunities to see two of Trier’s earlier films — his 2006 debut “Reprise” and 2011’s devastating “Oslo, August 31st” — in a theater.
“Sentimental Value” directly engages with the legacy of Scandinavian cinema, with Stellan Skarsgård playing an arthouse filmmaker trying to get a new project off the ground with his daughter (“Worst Person” star Renate Reinsve).
Going all the way back to “Reprise.” Trier has been making a case for a new kind of Scandinavian cinema: “I would hope young people would see this not as the old, dreary, dandruff-on-the-shoulders, slow European film,” he said in 2008. “I wanted to make something more sexy and relevant to people.”
We asked the film staff to name the titles they were most stoked for in 2026. They were happy to see the returning likes of Nolan, Spielberg, Gerwig and Wile E. Coyote.
As an editor, the lion’s share of my job is about identifying the awards season’s most compelling stories and conveying them to our readers. But I do reserve a small sliver of time for the joys of advocacy, championing work that I love and hoping that converts readers into viewers, and perhaps even voters.
So, with no new issue this week, my New Year’s Eve newsletter felt like the perfect time to reflect on the movies and TV shows that moved me in 2025. And if you give them another look before you cast your awards ballots, all the better.
MOVIES
1. ‘A Little Prayer’ and ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’
David Strathairn and Jane Levy in “A Little Prayer.”
(Music Box Films)
I am not terribly spiritual myself, but I encountered transcendence twice at the movies this year. As quiet and beseeching as its title, Angus MacLachlan’s chamber drama “A Little Prayer,” about a family man (David Strathairn) navigating marital trouble between his son (Will Pullen) and his daughter-in-law (Jane Levy), uncovers varieties of religious experience in 19th century landscape painting and small, memorable kindnesses. As sweeping as the extraordinary life it depicts, Mona Fastvold’s biographical portrait “The Testament of Ann Lee,” which follows the Shaker leader (Amanda Seyfried) and her devotees from the textile mills of Manchester to the wilderness of colonial New York, carves sensuous art from the exalted song and dance of evangelical faith. But whether the scale is intimate or epic, both capture, to quote “A Little Prayer,” that rare thing: “a powerful sense of the sublime.”
2. ‘Sinners’
Michael B. Jordan in “Sinners.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
“Sinners” has rightly been praised for its novel twist on the vampire genre, its deep investment in African and African American music, its blockbuster box office in an era largely dominated by franchise IP. But perhaps the highest compliment I can give director Ryan Coogler may be that the Jim Crow Mississippi he conjures is so richly textured, so allergic to cant or cliche, that I’d have been just as riveted if the bloodsuckers had never shown up. That’s what it’s like to be in the hands of a master.
3. ‘Sorry, Baby’
Eva Victor in “Sorry, Baby.”
(Philip Keith / A24)
Eva Victor is not the first filmmaker to face trauma with a sense of humor, but few have done it with such a gentle, humane touch. As Victor’s Agnes moves through life in the aftermath of a sexual assault on her college campus, the writer-director-star focuses squarely on the slow, ungainly, ultimately profound work of healing — and includes some of the best gags about academia this reformed graduate student has ever seen. No apology needed: “Sorry, Baby” marks the arrival of a major talent.
4. ‘One Battle After Another’
Leonardo DiCaprio in “One Battle After Another.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
With elements of action, satire, political thriller and family melodrama, Paul Thomas Anderson’s wild yarn about the members of a revolutionary group — and the fallout that comes when the past catches up with them — is well-nigh indescribable. But it’s also unforgettable. Combining high-wire filmmaking with electric performances, it never relinquishes its grip on the viewer and invites multiple viewings. Which is just as well, considering that this one is going to be on the tip of our tongues all the way through the Oscars.
5. ‘Nouvelle Vague’
Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg and Guillaume Marbeck as Jean-Luc Godard in “Nouvelle Vague.”
(Jean-Louis Fernandez)
The purest delight of the season is Richard Linklater’s mash note for the French New Wave, a zippy comedy of errors about the making of one of the most influential films of all time. As Jean-Luc Godard (the rakishly charming Guillaume Marbeck) tries to put “Breathless” together with spit, glue and attitude on the streets of Paris, “Nouvelle Vague” becomes as confident a caper as the original, with Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) and Jean Seberg (a beguiling Zoey Deutch) as the French director’s oft-befuddled collaborators — and sometimes foils. To overlook a film with this much cinematic joie de vivre would be a crime.
6. ‘Sirât’
The rave sequence that opens “Sirât.”
(Neon)
The less said the better about Spain’s acclaimed Oscar submission, which takes such twists and turns as it wends its way through the Moroccan desert that it left me frozen, after my first screening, in a sort of defensive crouch. I simply suggest that you go on the journey with filmmaker Oliver Laxe as he follows a father (Sergi López) and son (Bruno Núñez Arjona) on their search for a missing loved one, beginning with a rave so lifelike it almost had me dancing in the aisles.
7. ‘Hedda’
Tessa Thompson, center, in “Hedda.”
(Matt Towers / Prime Video)
I must admit I went warily into “Hedda.” An awards-season Ibsen adaptation had, I feared, all the makings of a fusty, dour costume drama. Mea culpa, Nia DaCosta. Mea culpa. The filmmaker’s sharp, fresh take on “Hedda Gabler,” featuring mesmerizing performances from Tessa Thompson as the devious title character and Nina Hoss as her (gender-swapped) former lover, renders the play as provocatively, and vividly, for today’s viewer as it must have been for attendees at the Munich premiere in 1891 — and in the process reminds us why the original is an enduring classic.
8. ‘Sentimental Value’
Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning in “Sentimental Value.”
(Kasper Tuxen)
No film this year has left me more eager for a rewatch than Joachim Trier’s delicate family drama, and I was rewarded with the sense that “Sentimental Value” is really two films, woven together so deftly that they can’t quite be unraveled. One is the story of two sisters (Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) bonded by generational trauma. The other is about a filmmaker, their father (Stellan Skarsgård), recruiting a sympathetic outsider (Elle Fanning) to tell the story of his own. By the time these strands reach their conclusion, on a soundstage built to resemble the family manse, Trier’s thoughtful architecture pays off in the understanding that you really can go home again, because home is a state of mind.
9. ‘The Alabama Solution’
A still from “The Alabama Solution.”
(HBO Documentary Films)
In an especially strong year for documentaries, particularly those that appreciate, emulate or chronicle the work of investigative journalism, it seems a shame to single out just one. But from the moment of its Sundance Film Festival premiere, the movie by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman registered as a prime example of nonfiction storytelling’s unmatched ability to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” starting with its unflinching use of Alabama state prison inmates’ contraband cellphone footage of the shocking conditions they’re forced to endure. As advocacy, as exposé, as portrait of the fight for justice, no documentary has stuck with me this year quite like “The Alabama Solution.”
10. ‘All That’s Left of You’ and ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
Scenes from “All That’s Left of You,” left, and “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”
(Watermelon Pictures; Venice Film Festival)
One expands its tale of the Palestinian experience across continents and decades, the other condenses its saga to just 90 minutes, balanced on a knife’s edge between documentary and drama. But for all their stark stylistic differences, both “All That’s Left of You” and “The Voice of Hind Rajab” — along with films such as “Palestine 36” and “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” — urgently communicate, in specific human terms, the life-and-death consequences of a struggle for self-determination too often abstracted in the West to its “complicated” or “thorny” geopolitics. Whether the setting is Jaffa or Gaza, the subject a multigenerational family pushed to its breaking point or the fate of a single little girl, both will leave you shaken. As they should.
TV SHOWS
1. ‘Andor’
Diego Luna and Genevieve O’Reilly in “Andor.”
(Lucasfilm Ltd. / Disney)
Turning its portrait of reluctant rebel Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) into a kaleidoscopic thriller about a simmering revolution reaching the boil — and the authoritarian forces set on stopping them — “Andor’s” second season emerged, by degrees, as the year’s most astounding political allegory — on any size of screen. Aided by an ingenious structure, which divided its four-year arc into four, three-episode miniseries, it ensnared even avowed “Star Wars” skeptics, and featured both the best action set piece and the best monologue of the year.
2. ‘The Rehearsal’
Nathan Fielder in “The Rehearsal.”
(John P. Johnson / HBO)
Another sophomore step up, this iteration of “The Rehearsal” — which bordered on cavalier about its civilian subjects in Season 1 — finds impresario Nathan Fielder with more skin in the game, and so becomes a revelatory meta-comedy that lives up to its immense ambition. Come for the elaborate re-creation of American airports, stay for a surprisingly vulnerable Fielder investigating the possibility that he’s on the autism spectrum, and be wowed by the series’ real-world implications for pilot communication. Whatever aspect of “The Rehearsal” grabs you first, it’s the inimitable, inexpressible whole that makes it essential viewing.
3. ‘Adolescence’
Stephen Graham, left, and Owen Cooper in “Adolescence.”
(Netflix)
It would be easy to be jaded about “Adolescence,” which seems likely to follow in the footsteps of “Baby Reindeer” and win just about every award it’s eligible for. (It’s already notched eight Emmys.) But from the moment I first laid eyes on its extraordinary one-shots, I was persuaded that the series’ technical wizardry was no gimmick. As written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham and directed by Philip Barantini, in style and substance “Adolescence” captures polite society’s hold on young men spiraling out of control — and invests its central figure, Owen Cooper’s 13-year-old Jamie, with both the childishness and the menace to match.
4. ‘Elsbeth’
Carrie Preston in “Elsbeth.”
(Michael Parmelee / CBS)
I was glad to hear that CBS plans to campaign “Elsbeth” as a comedy at the Emmys in 2026, in part because it may improve Carrie Preston’s chances at a nod for her turn as irrepressible investigator Elsbeth Tascioni, and in part because the designation highlights what has always shined most in the legal universe of Robert and Michelle King. Here, it’s broader and brighter than the acerbic satire of “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight,” and embedded in a “Columbo”-esque case-of-the-week structure, but the pair’s sense of humor — always keyed to punching up — continually works wonders, especially in a world where so much crime media is unrelentingly grim.
5. ‘The Pitt’
Noah Wyle in “The Pitt.”
(Warrick Page / HBO Max)
Given that “ER” was the first show my mom let me stay up late to watch, I wasn’t surprised to like “The Pitt.” But even with my high expectations, I was dazzled by the series’ ability to introduce such a wide array of characters in the pilot episode, and then to develop them all in a seemingly infinite variety of directions while solving one medical crisis after another. Indeed, forced by its “real-time” structure to keep the focus tight even as the stakes ratchet skyward, “The Pitt” registers as even richer, subtler and more relevant than its predecessor. May its heyday last just as long.
6. ‘Dying for Sex’
Jenny Slate, left, Sissy Spacek and Michelle Williams in “Dying for Sex.”
(Sarah Shatz / FX)
Since first seeing it in the spring, I haven’t been able to get out of my head the most hilarious moment in “Dying for Sex.” When Molly (Michelle Williams), early in a journey of sexual self-discovery prompted by a recurrence of cancer, falls victim to an online ransomware scam, she drops to the floor to escape the sight of her laptop camera — soon to be joined by her loyal but scattered bestie, Nikki (Jenny Slate), who is not much help but is great company. It had me doubled over with laughter, like so much of Liz Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock’s adaptation of the real-life story. The miniseries never pulls a comic punch despite the heavy subject matter, and is peppered with idiosyncratic choices and memorable performances that make it sing. Special shout out to Rob Delaney for turning a total slob named Neighbor Guy into one of the romantic heroes of the year.
7. ‘Forever’
Michael Cooper Jr. and Lovie Simone in “Forever.”
(Elizabeth Morris / Netflix)
The Emmy success of “The Studio” and the buzz around “I Love L.A.” may have somewhat overshadowed “Forever,” but they have given me consistent opportunities in 2025 to recommend my favorite L.A.-set show of the year. Mara Brock Akil’s warmhearted, meticulously wrought teen romance, channeling Judy Blume’s condescension-free interest in young people, paints a portrait of places in the city where those other series rarely go, and does so with uncommon sensitivity. I could watch “Forever,” well, forever. Plus, it features one of the year’s finest dramatic performances: Like the series as a whole, Karen Pittman’s protective mother transforms an archetype that could easily ring with cliches into a lived-in, multilayered portrait. Give me more, Netflix!
8. ‘The Gilded Age’
Audra McDonald, left, and Denée Benton in “The Gilded Age.”
(Karolina Wojtasik / HBO)
After two enjoyably low-stakes seasons, HBO’s New York-set spin on the upstairs/downstairs drama, created by “Downton Abbey’s” Julian Fellowes, breaks out of the (opera) box in Season 3. With ruined women, roguish men and more geegaws than you can shake a stick at — not to mention a character known to the internet as Clock Twink (Ben Ahlers) — the series remains a deliciously campy prime-time soap, but it now features moments of genuine romance, or regret, to accompany the social climbing. With Peggy (Denée Benton) finding love, Ada (Cynthia Nixon) finding fortune and conniver in chief Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) finding herself on the outs with her wealthy husband (Morgan Spector), “The Gilded Age” has reached glorious maturity by developing a subplot for just about every taste, even one as lofty as the Van Rhijns’.
9. ‘The Paper’
Domhnall Gleeson in “The Paper.”
(Aaron Epstein / Peacock)
Call me a homer if you like for putting a show about the survival of local newspapers on this list. And when it comes to the indignities of 21st century journalism, “The Office” spin-off, from Greg Daniels and Michael Koman, certainly passes my fact-check. But more importantly, and sustainably, Peacock’s mockumentary treats the Toledo Truth Teller as the setting for a rock-solid workplace comedy, replete with a winsome editor in chief (Domhnall Gleeson), an ace reporter (Chelsea Frei) and a perfect foil, in the form of managing editor/aspiring influencer Esmeralda Grand (Sabrina Impacciatore, in perhaps the year’s funniest performance). Sure, I’m liable to root for any film of TV show that qualifies as a “love letter” to my chosen profession, but you can’t fake credibility. “The Paper” has the goods.
10. ‘Pluribus’ and ‘Paradise’
Sterling K. Brown in “Paradise,” and Rhea Seehorn in “Pluribus.”
(Disney; Apple TV)
One is full of jaw-dropping plot twists, the other meditative, often silent. One imagines the end of the world as we know it in terms of natural disaster, the other in the form of an extraterrestrial’s utopia. What Dan Fogelman’s “Paradise” and Vince Gilligan’s “Pluribus” share, though, is far more important than what sets them apart: a commitment to postapocalyptic storytelling rooted in flawed, compelling characters, not the minutia of megavolcanoes and mRNA. Indeed, as “Paradise’s” hero, Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown), squares off against the power-mad Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) in an underground bunker, or “Pluribus’” Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) clashes with stubborn ally Manousos Oviedo (Carlos Manuel Vesga) on an Earth overtaken by happy lemmings, what becomes clear about both series — and I mean this as a high compliment — is how ordinary they are. If you want to know how you might handle doomsday, you could do worse than starting here.
A funny thing about this year’s best films: Half of them are adaptations. As a movie lover who’s always hunting for new talent, new ideas and new stimuli, I used to view that as creative inertia. But 2025 has changed my mind.
Now I see artists drawing inspiration from the past to show that Hollywood should trust the sturdy bones that have kept it running for over a century: good yarns, bold casting, films that don’t feel made by focus groups or doomsaying bean-counters (or, God help us, AI), but by blood and sweat.
Our picks for this year’s best in arts and entertainment.
From original tales to radical reworkings of classics both high-falutin’ and raucously lowbrow, these 10 filmmakers all know that the most vital part of the storytelling business has stayed exactly the same. They have to wow an audience. And they did.
1. ‘Sinners’
Michael B. Jordan as twins Smoke and Stack in the movie “Sinners.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
A period-piece-vampire-musical mashup could have been discordant, but writer-director Ryan Coogler confidently makes all three genres harmonize. In “Sinners,” Coogler double-casts his longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan as twin bootleggers Smoke and Stack, then pits them against a pack of banjo-picking bloodsuckers helmed by a roguish Jack O’Connell. We’re expecting a big, bloody brouhaha and we get it. Underneath the playful carnage, however, the question at stake is: Why suffer the daily indignities of the Jim Crow-era South when you could outlive — and eat — your oppressors? “Sinners” is the most exciting film of 2025, both for what it is and for what it proves: that fresh blockbusters still exist and people are eager to gobble them up.
The stage’s iconic mean girl glides from 1890s Norway to 1950s England in this vibrant and venomous adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler.” Tessa Thompson stars as the restless housewife who needs to secure her milquetoast husband (Tom Bateman) a promotion and has a nasty habit of playing with guns. Keeping pace with her manipulative anti-heroine, writer-director Nia DaCosta (“Candyman”) makes a few calculated moves of her own, including gender-swapping Hedda’s ex into a curvaceous career woman (a haughty Nina Hoss) whose drab and geeky new girlfriend (Imogen Poots) irritates their hostess’ insecurities. As a capper, “Hedda” stages its brutal showdown at an all-night vodka-and-cocaine-fueled mansion shebang with a live jazz band, a lake for skinny-dippers and a hedge maze where former lovers are tempted to canoodle. The original play is over a century old, but every scene feels screamingly alive.
Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in “Eddington.”
(A24)
No film was more polarizing than Ari Aster’s COVID-set satire about a mask-hating sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix), a sanctimonious mayor (Pedro Pascal) and the high-tech cabal that benefits when these two modern cowboys come to blows. “Eddington” immortalizes the bleak humor and lingo of May 2020 (think murder hornets, Antifa and toilet paper hoarders). More stingingly, it captures the mental delirium of a small town — make that an entire planet — that hasn’t yet realized that there’s a second sickness seeping in through their smartphones. Everyone’s got a device in their hand pretty much all the time, aiming their cameras at each other like pistols in a Wild West standoff. Yet no character grasps what’s really going on. (I have a theory, but when I explain the larger conspiracy, I sound cuckoo too.) This is the movie that will explain pandemic brain to future generations. With distance, I’m pretty sure the haters will come around.
Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie “One Battle After Another.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
Every shot in Paul Thomas Anderson’s invigorating nail-biter is a banger: sentinels skateboarding over rooftops, caged kids playing catch with a crumpled foil blanket, Teyana Taylor’s militant Perfidia Beverly Hills blasting an automatic rifle while nine months pregnant. It’s the rare film that instantly imprints itself on the viewer. On my second watch, I was shocked by how much of “One Battle After Another” already felt tattooed on my brain, down to the shudder I got from Sean Penn’s loathsome Col. Lockjaw licking his comb to tidy his bangs. Riffing from Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” the central drama follows flunky anarchist Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) fumblingly attempting to rescue his daughter (Chase Infiniti) from Lockjaw’s clutches. But he’s not much help to her, and as the title implies, this is merely one skirmish in humanity’s sprawling struggle for freedom that has, and will, drag on forever. Anderson’s knack for ensemble work stretches back as far as “Boogie Nights,” yet here, even his unnamed characters have crucial roles to play. His world-building has never before felt this holistic and inspirational.
(“One Battle After Another” is now playing in theaters.)
5. ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’
Jennifer Lopez and Tonatiuh in the movie “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
(Roadside Attractions)
The backstory behind this stunner couldn’t be more baroque: Director Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls”) boldly revamped a Broadway musical of an Oscar-winning drama (itself taken from an experimental novel) about two inmates in an Argentine cell who mentally escape into the movies. Each incarnation has doubled down on the sensorial overload of what came before. If you know “Kiss of the Spider Woman’s” lineage, you’ll be impressed by how Condon ups the fantasy and stokes the revolutionary glamour with more Technicolor dance showcases for Jennifer Lopez’. (She’s doing her best Cyd Charisse, which turns out to be darned good.) If this is your first taste of the tale, give yourself over to the prickly but tender relationship between prisoners Luis and Valentin, played by feisty new talent Tonatiuh and a red-blooded Diego Luna. This is go-for-broke filmmaking with a wallop. As Luis says of his own version of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” playing in his head, “Call it kitsch, call it camp — I don’t care, I love it.”
Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s Cannes Grand Prix winner opens with a haunted vacuum cleaner. From there, it gets even more surprising. Ghosts have infested a wealthy widow’s factory and are possessing appliances, seducing her son and cozying up to the prime minister for favors. Some of these people have died by accident, some by corporate neglect or worse. This droll spook show bleeds into romance and politics and, to our shock, becomes genuinely emotional. (It helps to remember that the military killed over 80 Bangkok protesters in 2010.) But why vacuum cleaners, you ask? The conceit is more than a sticky idea. Ordinary people can get crushed but the anger they leave behind lingers like fine dust.
(“A Useful Ghost” opens Jan. 16, 2026, in theaters.)
7. ‘The Roses’
Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in the movie “The Roses.”
(Jaap Buitendijk / Searchlight Pictures)
Technically, “The Roses” is rooted in the 1980s hit novel and subsequent blockbuster “The War of the Roses,” which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as an estranged couple who attack each other with lawyers, poison and chandeliers. In spirit, however, this redo is pure 1930s screwball comedy. Leads Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman are skilled verbal ninjas who hurl razor-sharp insults at each other’s egos, and although their characters’ divorce happens in California, director Jay Roach lets the actors keep their snippy British accents. The script by two-time Oscar nominee Tony McNamara (“The Favourite,” “Poor Things”) adds a cruel twist to the original: This time around, the marrieds truly do try their damnedest to love and support each other. And still, their walls come tumbling down.
Ye and Elon Musk in the documentary “In Whose Name?”
(AMSI Entertainment)
Nico Ballesteros was a high schooler with an iPhone when he entered Kanye West’s orbit in 2018. Over the next six years, the Orange County kid shot over 3,000 hours of footage as Ye (as the artist legally became known in 2021) jetted from Paris to Uganda, Calabasas to the White House, meeting everyone from Kenny G to Elon Musk on a quest to fulfill his creative and spiritual goals while incinerating his personal life and public reputation. Ye gave the documentarian full access with no editorial oversight, besides one moment in which he tells the camera that he wants the film to be about mental health. This riveting tragedy definitely is. We see an egomaniac whose fear of being beholden to anything motivates him to go off his meds, a billionaire provocateur who believes he can afford the consequences of his bigotry and, above all, a deeply flawed man who nukes his entire world to insist he’s right.
An image from the movie “Sirāt,” directed by Oliver Laxe.
(Festival de Cannes)
The techno soundtrack of Oliver Laxe’s desolate road thriller has rattled my house for months. Lately, I’ve spent just as much time contemplating the movie’s silence — those hushed stretches in which this caravan of bohemians speeds across the Moroccan desert looking like the only free people left on Earth. A father, Luis (“Pan’s Labyrinth’s” Sergi López), and his 12-year-old son team up with this band of tattooed burnouts in the hope of finding the boy’s runaway sister. Before long, Luis is just hoping to make it to safety, assuming anywhere safe still exists. Static on the radio warns that World War III might be underway. These outsiders click off the news and crank up the music. The paradox of “Sirāt” is that I’m dying to talk about it more but I’ve got to keep my mouth shut until people experience its dramatic twists for themselves.
(“Sirāt” returns to theaters on Feb. 6, 2026.)
10. ‘The Naked Gun’
Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson in the movie “The Naked Gun.”
(Frank Masi / Paramount Pictures)
Liam Neeson needed this pummeling pun-fest. So did everyone else in 2025. Director Akiva Schaffer’s continuation of the “Police Squad!” franchise let the 73-year-old “Taken” star poke fun at his own bruising gravitas. Playing the son of Leslie Nielsen’s Lt. Frank Drebin, Neeson kept us in hysterics with a stupid-brilliant barrage of surreal wordplay and daffy slapstick. The casting was as odd — and perfect — as rumors that he and his co-star Pamela Anderson started dating on set. This fourth sequel didn’t try to outsmart the classic Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker template. It simply told the same old story: Cop meets babe, cop and babe canoodle with a magical snowman, cop drops his trousers on live TV, this time minus the blimp. Goodyear? No, the worst — which made Neeson our hero.
Since I’m all jazzed-up about great movies, here are 10 honorable mentions very much worth a watch.
“The Ballad of Wallis Island” A kooky millionaire strong-arms his favorite mid-aughts folk duo into playing a reunion show on his Welsh island. Sounds cutesy, but it’s the movie I recommended most — to everyone from my mailman to my mother. They all loved it. Join the fan club.
“Bunny” This East Village indie by debut director Ben Jacobson is a scummy gem. A gigolo’s birthday goes very wrong. But all the characters racing up and down the stairs of his uber-New York walk-up hovel are a howl.
“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” Rose Byrne excels equally at comedy and drama. This audit of a breakdown smashes both together and cranks the tension up to eleven. Playing a high-stress working mom of an ill child, her try-hard heroine leans in so harrowingly far, she goes kamikaze.
“Lurker” Today’s celebrity might be viral on Instagram and unknown everywhere else. Alex Russell’s stomach-churning psychodrama stars Archie Madekwe as an L.A.-based singer on the brink of genuine fame and Théodore Pellerin as the hanger-on who endures — and exploits — the fledgling star’s power moves and hazy boundaries.
“Magic Farm” Filmmaker Amalia Ulman’s rascally farce stars Chloë Sevigny and Alex Wolff as clickbait journalists who fly to Argentina to shoot a viral video about a singer in a bunny costume and wind up looking twice as ridiculous.
Keke Palmer, left, and SZA in the movie “One of Them Days.”
(Anne Marie Fox / Sony Pictures)
“One of Them Days” Keke Palmer and SZA play broke Baldwin Hills roommates who have nine hours to make rent. I’d happily watch their stoner high jinks in real time.
“The Perfect Neighbor” Pieced together primarily from police body-camera footage, Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary unfurls in a Florida cul-de-sac where a community — adults, kids and cops — agrees that one woman is an entitled pill. The problem is she thinks they’re the problem. And she has a gun.
“Sisu: Road to Revenge” If Buster Keaton were alive, he’d hail this grisly, mostly mute Finnish action flick as a worthy successor to “The General.” It even boasts a thrilling sequence on a train, although director Jalmari Helander also brazenly poaches from “Die Hard” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
“Train Dreams” Trees fall in the woods and a 20th-century logger (Joel Edgerton) plays an unheard, unthanked but beautiful role in the building of America.
“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) teams up with a soul-searching priest (Josh O’Connor) to solve a perplexing church stabbing. From deft plot twists to provocative Catholic theology, Rian Johnson’s crowd-pleasing murder mystery is marvelously executed.
PROSECUTORS at the helm of the murder case against Nick Reiner have a chance to pull a “historically uncommon” move if they pursue the death penalty, an attorney has warned.
Nick Reiner pictured at the premiere of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues at The Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles on September 9Credit: APMichele Singer Reiner and Rob Reiner attend The Wolf Of Wall Street premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City in December 2013Credit: GettyNick Reiner, wearing a blue anti-suicide vest, made his first court appearance on December 17 days after he allegedly killed his parents, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer ReinerCredit: Reuters
A plea was not entered, as defense attorney Alan Jackson told the judge that the case against Nick was premature.
Eric Faddis, a criminal defense attorney based in Colorado, believes Nick’s legal team is teeing up for an insanity defense down the road, which he suspects they could have a hard time trying to prove.
“In order to prove that, how that works is that the defense would have to prove it’s more likely than not that [Nick] Reiner had a mental disease or defect, which caused him to not know the difference between right or wrong or to not understand the nature of his conduct,” Faddis, who is not associated with the case, told The U.S. Sun.
“So, that’s a high bar. It’s not like in the movies where people get off on insanity regularly. Prevailing on a not guilty by reason of insanity defense is uncommon. But it’s still certainly possible.”
Nick had been diagnosed with schizophrenia some time before he allegedly slaughtered his parents, according to TMZ.
The troubled middle child of Reiner, 78, and Singer, 68, was reportedly being treated by a psychiatrist for his condition, but in the month before the murders, Nick’s behavior became “alarming” as doctors switched his medication.
Weeks before the murders, Nick’s prescription was changed, making him “erratic and dangerous,” TMZ reported.
Nick had been open about his struggles with drug addiction, and admitted in a 2016 interview with People that he had been to rehab dozens of times since he was 15 years old.
Faddis said the claims of Nick’s reported mental health disorder could be “supportive of a not guilty by reason of insanity defense.”
“Doesn’t mean he’ll win, but it sounds like they’re compiling evidence in support of that defense,” he added.
UNCOMMON PURSUIT
Nick has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said he has not decided whether his office will pursue the death penalty against Nick.
However, Faddis said with Hochman at the helm, it would not be surprising if the district attorney sought to sentence Nick to death.
“It’s hard to say. Historically, Los Angeles has not been the most death penalty-friendly county,” Faddis said.
“It’s not something they pursue commonly, as compared to like Utah or something like that.
“But, with Nathan Hochman at the helm, you know, he has made some unexpected moves on different cases, including the Menendez brothers’ case that he was on.
“There was sort of this social movement to try and get the Menendez brothers released. And I think a lot of people thought perhaps Hochman would go along with that, but he didn’t.”
“So, if he did pursue the death penalty in this case, it would be historically uncommon, but not totally unexpected just based on how Hochman has made decisions in other cases.”
Rob Reiner and his son Nick pictured together at the 2015 Toronto International Film FestivalCredit: SplashThe Reiner family from front to back: Jake Reiner, Michele Singer Reiner, Romy Reiner, Rob Reiner, and Nick ReinerCredit: Instagram/michelereinerAn aerial view of Rob Reiner’s home in Brentwood in Los AngelesCredit: EPA
HOLLYWOOD NIGHTMARE
Reiner and Singer died minutes after they were allegedly brutally attacked by their son, according to their death certificates.
The iconic filmmaker’s time of death was recorded as 3:45 pm on December 14, while his wife’s was noted as 3:46 pm.
The grisly scene at Reiner’s Brentwood home was only uncovered after a massage therapist arrived at the couple’s front gate for a scheduled appointment on the afternoon of December 14, according to The New York Times.
After the therapist received no answer at the front gate, she decided to call the couple’s daughter, Romy, who reportedly lived in the area.
When Romy, 27, arrived and entered her parents’ home, she stumbled upon the gruesome scene and reportedly came across her father’s body first.
Reiner and Singer were found in their bed with their throats slashed and could have been asleep when they were murdered, the Daily Mail reported.
When Los Angeles police arrived at the scene at around 3:30 pm, Romy told authorities that her brother Nick lived in their parents’ home.
However, authorities were unable to locate Nick on the property.
Nick was eventually arrested at around 9:15 pm near Exposition Park, about 14 miles from where his parents were found dead, Alan Hamilton, the deputy police chief at the LAPD, said.
Moments later, after exiting the gas station, the video captured three police cruisers swarming Nick at a nearby sidewalk.
Nick was seen raising his hands and surrendering to police as multiple officers approached him and took him into custody.
Timeline of Rob and Michele Reiner’s death
Rob Reiner and his wife of Michele Singer Reiner were found dead in their Los Angeles home on December 14, 2025.
Timeline:
December 13, 2025: Reiner and his wife Michele attended a holiday party on the evening of December 13 with their son, Nick.
Sources conveyed to The U.S. Sun that the couple and their son were engaged in a heated public argument while at the event.
December 14, 2025: Reiner and Michele were found dead in their Brentwood home in Los Angeles at around 3:30 pm PST.
The couple’s daughter, Romy, reportedly discovered her parents’ bodies.
Online police records show Reiner and Michele’s 32-year-old son, Nick, was arrested at 9:15 pm PST on December 14.
December 15, 2025: Authorities in Los Angeles announce that Nick Reiner was arrested and charged with murder.
Nick was booked into a Los Angeles jail at 5:04 am and was being held on $4 million bail, which was later revoked.
December 16, 2025: Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman formally charged Nick Reiner with two counts of first-degree murder.
Hochman said his office would consider the death penalty in Nick’s case.
Nick’s scheduled court appearance on December 16 was postponed due to what his attorney said was a procedural issue.
December 17, 2025: Nick Reiner briefly appeared in court. A plea was not entered.
December 23, 2025: The death certificates of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner disclosed that the couple died of multiple sharp force injuries caused with “a knife, by another.”
Following a $1-billion-grossing, Oscar-winning smash could have left writer and director Jared Bush and director Byron Howard feeling like rabbits in the headlights, but they seem to have outfoxed the challenge. “Zootopia 2” has already stampeded past $1 billion to surpass its predecessor, and the awards nominations have just begun slithering in. But how did the sequel survive such high expectations, stay as socially relevant as the original and navigate the peril of too many cooks in the kitchen?
“Animation’s a team sport,” says Howard, referring to the sheer number of people who worked on the film over five years. “It’s 700 in the crew, but in this building, it’s about 1,000 and another 300 in Vancouver. So it’s everyone’s collective ideas, saying, ‘Here’s where we can do better.’ So everyone has skin in the game and they all want these movies to be great. It’s an emotional investment.”
The creative team screened “Zootopia 2” for all of Disney Animation multiple times in various stages of development. A feedback system enabled every employee to respond.
Bush says Disney regularly seeks internal reactions after screenings, “but we asked way more direct questions for this one, like at an audience preview. Then we shared that feedback, unfiltered, with the entire building. That allowed people to see that their feedback mattered because you could actually see ideas that came in [manifest] from screening to screening.”
Bush and Howard acknowledge that having that many collaborators keeps the inspiration flowing but also allows fragments of the colossal group brain to sneak into the film unnoticed. Even they aren’t sure where all the in-jokes are planted.
A “story jam” — reminiscent of a TV writers room — was just one of many avenues for collaboration in the making of “Zootopia 2.”
(Disney)
Like its predecessor, the sequel is packed with movie references and animal puns — “A Moose Bouche”; “Gnu Jersey” — and the directors are quick to spread the credit (or blame). “ ‘A Moose Bouche’ — we’ve gotten emails about that one,” says Howard. “Cory Loftis, our production designer, came up with it.”
There’s a “Star Wars” cantina bit, a soupçon of James Bond in the score at a fancy gala and dashes of Steven Spielberg in the camerawork. It’s easy to spot “Ratatouille” when an animal chef is revealed to have a rat under its hat, but Bush asserts there’s a second reference in that moment — the animal declaring “I knew it!” isn’t just any raccoon, but “Raccacoonie” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” That character is itself a “Ratatouille” reference (and, Bush points out, “EEAAO’s” Oscar-winning supporting actor Ke Huy Quan voices “Zootopia 2’s” lead snake, Gary). So it’s a reference coupled with another reference to another film’s reference to the first reference. Whew.
Those Easter eggs, including an extended callback to Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” — the realization of which they credit to animator Louaye Moulayess, a “Shining” superfan — speak to a willingness to cater to audiences beyond kids. Presumably, most children attending “Zootopia 2” haven’t watched Kubrick’s film. That’s a shoutout to the grown-ups for bringing the kids and, hopefully, discussing the historical practice of redlining with them after the show.
Byron Howard, left, and Jared Bush.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
The first “Zootopia” was not notable just for funny talking animals but also the fact that the funny animals were talking about bigotry and stereotyping. Perceptive viewers may have noticed a mammalian bias in the original — there were no reptiles to be found in its near-perfect society. It turns out they were discriminated against as a class and denied their rightful place as residents, as we learn in “Zootopia 2.” Bush said that concept fit right in with “continuing this discussion about how we as human beings have a hard time looking past each other’s differences.”
Howard says the diversity-as-strength theme plays out not just in grand terms but also in the dynamic between the two protagonists, Judy (a rabbit, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick (a fox, voiced by Jason Bateman): “Nick and Judy are such different, contrast[ing] characters that are really stronger [together] because of those differences, and that speaks to something we really value, which is differences between each other as a working pair,” he gestures to Bush and himself. “We continue to thrive in that way.”
Howard agrees with the comparison of him and Bush to conductors of a giant orchestra, listening for notes being played just right. He thinks of composer Michael Giacchino “onstage with those virtuosos at their respective instruments; we work with masters all around us, so we have a lot of trust in them.”
However, he admits with all those voices, “Writers have a tough time here because we scrutinize these movies and redo them over and over and over again. Jared is a great example of someone who thrives in this environment.”
Bush, explaining he came from the culture of TV sitcoms and all their constant revisions in writers rooms, says, “We have this amazing luxury of being able to rewrite and rethink and absorb these better ideas over years. It is an extreme luxury.
“There’s nothing else like this in Hollywood that I’ve seen — that level of deep collaboration and iteration. There’s no place I’m ever going to be that I will love as much as this.”
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
Even as the year winds down, there are still some exciting new releases hitting theaters.
Few films this year are arriving on quite the wave of expectation behind Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme,” in part because of the unhinged, go-for-broke promo push from its star Timothée Chalamet. The film tells the story of Marty Mauser, a shoe salesman in 1950s New York who dreams of becoming a champion table tennis player and will stop at nothing to make it happen.
As Amy Nicholson put it in her review, “Like Marty, Chalamet was raised in New York City, and since he arrived on the scene, there’s never been a doubt he’ll win an Oscar. The only question is, when? To Chalamet’s credit, he’s doing it the hard way, avoiding sentimental pictures for pricklier roles about his own naked ambitions. … The movie’s moxie makes it impossible not to get caught up in Marty’s crusade. We’re giddy even when he’s miserable.”
The surprise winner of the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Jim Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother” is a gently enigmatic film revolving around, as the title suggests, parents and siblings. Told in three separate stories — set in New Jersey, Dublin and Paris — the film stars Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Mayim Bialik, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Charlotte Rampling, Luka Sabbat and Indya Moore.
Tom Waits in Jim Jarmusch’s movie “Father Mother Sister Brother.”
(Atsushi Nishijima / Mubi)
In his review, Tim Grierson wrote, “The film’s persistent brittleness may make some viewers antsy. That’s partly the point, but hopefully, they’ll soon be swept away by the movie’s melancholy undertow. … Eventually, we learn to look past Jarmusch’s deceptively mundane surfaces to see the fraught, unresolved issues within these guarded families. The characters occasionally expose their true selves, then just as quickly retreat, fearful of touching on real conflict.”
Tim Grieving spoke to composer Daniel Blumberg, who won an Oscar earlier this year for “The Brutalist,” about his work on “The Testament of Ann Lee,” director Mona Fastvold’s portrait of the founder of the Shaker religious movement. Singing and dance were an integral part of the Shakers’ spiritual practice, so the music for the film was of special importance.
“Ann Lee was very radical and extreme,” said Blumberg, “and Mona is as well.”
De Los also recently published a list of the 25 best Latino films of 2025 as picked by Carlos Aguilar. His favorites include Amalia Ulman’s “Magic Farm,” Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson’s “Serious People,” Diego Céspedes’ “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” Petra Costa’s “Apocalypse in the Tropics” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent.”
All three of this year’s Envelope roundtables are now available to watch: actors, actresses and directors.
New Year’s Eve at the movies
Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps in the movie “Phantom Thread.”
(Laurie Sparham / Focus Features)
When people talk about holiday films, they typically mean Christmas. But what if the movies that featured a New Year’s Eve scene were sneakily better? To judge by the titles playing around town this week, an argument could be made.
Take for example Kathryn Bigelow’s “Strange Days.” An exciting techno-thriller set during the last two days of then-future 1999, it’s about a hustler (Ralph Feinnes) who finds himself in way over his head. The film builds to a huge millennial New Year’s Eve street party filmed in downtown Los Angeles. Still something of a rarity on streaming, “Strange Days” will be showing in 35mm at the New Beverly on Friday afternoon and then at the Aero on Wednesday 31, early enough in the evening to leave time for more fun after.
Then there is Paul Thomas Anderson’s achingly romantic and bitingly funny “Phantom Thread,” in which the controlling fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) initially refuses to leave the house on New Year’s Eve, but then races to be with his muse and lover Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps) after she goes out without him. The movie will be showing on New Year’s Day in 70mm at the Aero.
Anderson’s 1997 “Boogie Nights,” which will show in 35mm at Vidiots on the afternoon of Dec. 31, features a very different take on New Year’s Eve. In a pivotal sequence, many of the film’s characters converge on a NYE party to ring in the transition form 1979 to 1980. It does not go well.
jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in 1960’s “The Apartment.”
(Bettmann Archive / Getty Images)
Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” will play in 35mm at the New Beverly on Saturday and Sunday and also at the American Cinematheque’s Los Feliz Theater on Dec. 30. In the film Jack Lemmon is a lonely office drone who finds his complex relationship with a co-worker (Shirley MacLaine) ultimately coming to a head on a fateful New Year’s Eve.
Rob Reiner’s 1989 “When Harry Met Sally…” will likely be playing several times over the next weeks in tribute to the filmmaker. Starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal as two friends trying to figure out if their relationship can (or should) be something more, the film features not one but two memorable New Year’s Eve scenes. It will be playing at the New Beverly on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Katie Holmes, left, and Sarah Polley in the movie “Go.”
(Tracy Bennett / Columbia Pictures)
Doug Liman’s “Go,” from a screenplay by John August, is not strictly speaking a New Year’s Eve movie, but it does take place in the sort of liminal zone of ongoing partying that occurs during holiday time. With a cast that includes Sarah Polley, Katie Holmes, Timothy Olyphant and many more, the film revolves around a few grocery store co-workers, some low-stakes drug dealing, questionable choices and a lot of miscommunication. The movie shows at Vidiots on Tuesday.
In a review of the film, Kevin Thomas wrote, “When all is said and done, ‘Go’ is a film about people going too far, which works precisely because its makers know when to hold back. ‘Go’ keeps us guessing … but it never forgets it’s a comedy; if it was too serious it would burst like a bubble. So uniformly skilled and talented is the film’s cast, which has 15 featured players, that it is impossible to single out any one. ‘Go’ is perfectly titled: Exhilarating and sharp, it never stops for a second.”
Points of interest
The Marx Brothers’ eternal comic mayhem
Chico Marx, left, Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx and Margaret Dumont in the movie “Animal Crackers.”
(Universal)
It has become a tradition around town for theaters to show Marx Brothers movies at the holidays, and who are we to argue with that? For pure whimsy and comedy that hits somewhere deep in the unconscious, the Marx Brothers are still pretty much unbeatable.
The New Beverly played some Marx Brothers movies on Christmas Day. For those who still want more, Vidiots will be showing 1935’s “A Night at the Opera,” directed by Sam Wood and including the famous stateroom scene in which more and more people cram into a single room on an ocean liner.
On New Year’s Day, the Aero will show 1933’s “Duck Soup,” directed by Leo McCarey, in which the brothers take over the fictional nation of Freedonia. That will be followed by 1930’s “Animal Crackers,” directed by Victor Heerman, in which Groucho Marx plays African explorer Rufus T. Firefly.
Eric Rohmer’s ‘The Green Ray’
A scene from Eric Rohmer’s “The Green Ray.”
(Janus Films)
Initially released as “Summer” in the U.S., Eric Rohmer’s “The Green Ray” won Venice’s Golden Lion in 1986. The film follows Delphine (Marie Rivière, who co-wrote the script with Rohmer), a single woman in Paris, as she struggles to find someone to go on a holiday trip with her, leading to a series of serio-comic misadventures. The film will show Thursday in 35mm at the American Cinematheque’s Los Feliz Theater.
Reviewing the film in 1986, Michael Wilmington asked if watching a Rohmer film is really, to quote Gene Hackman on Rohmer movies in “Night Moves,” like watching paint peel? “Not at all,” Wilmington wrote. “‘Summer’ is one of the masterpieces of 1986. It’s one of the most finely wrought, stimulating films of an erratic year. It’s intellectual in the best sense: engaging you emotionally and mentally. It moves faster, wastes less time, and has more to offer than most movies now on view — and those who are skipping it are missing one of the year’s real treats.”
THERE are plenty of iconic travel moments in Christmas movies from the romantic airport chases to snowy train journeys.
But there’s one that trumps them all, and that’s Kate McCallister’s mission to get from Paris to Chicago in the Christmas classic, Home Alone.
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Kate going from Paris to Chicago has been ranked the most iconic travel Christmas momentCredit: Alamy Stock PhotoThe concerned mother travels by plans and van to get home to KevinCredit: Refer to source
Kate’s commitment to reuniting with her son, sees her boarding planes from the French capital to Dallas and Scranton before hitching a memorable ride home in a van.
And mum’s epic dash to rescue Kevin has been declared the most iconic travel moment in a festive movie, according to research by Skyscanner.
The Home Alone sequel landed in second place with a poll of 2,000 adults enjoying the scene where Kevin sprints through the airport before accidentally boarding a plane to New York, alone.
And who can forget Love Actually where Sam charges through departures to stop Joanna flying to the US? Well, that came in third spot.
Laura Lindsay, travel trends and destination expert for Skyscanner, which commissioned the research and has also created a map plotting some of these iconic routes, said: “What’s a Christmas film without a good airport scene?”
“Festive travel is a huge part of people’s lives during the holiday season, whether it’s travelling home to be reunited with family and friends or heading off for a festive break.”
Christmas movies are even inspiring travellers for their next break, with 23 per cent booking a trip to a destination after seeing it as a festive backdrop on the big screen.
The Big Apple, aka New York City, comes top of the list of destinations that people book after seeing it on TV.
Edinburgh and Vienna also ranked among the cities most associated with Christmas movies.
Festive travel has even been inspired by scenes from our favourite Christmas moviesCredit: Unknown
New York City also led the list of destinations people would feature in a festive flick if they were the writer and was the place they’d most like to spend the holiday season abroad.
Half of those who have seen a city in a movie claim the real-life sets look more appealing to visit when decked out for Christmas compared with other times of the year.
And 77 per cent said watching Christmas films helps them feel more festive, according to the OnePoll.com data.
Laura Lindsay, from Skyscanner, added: “It’s no surprise New York is the go-to destination when thinking about blockbusters set in December.”
She added that ‘set-jetting’ is becoming hugely popular with tourists wanting to ‘step into the settings and shoes of their beloved movie characters’.
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
The shocking deaths this week of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner reached far beyond Hollywood. Their legacy will go far beyond show business thanks to their committed political activism for causes they believed in.
Mary McNamara pulled together the different strands of Rob Reiner’s life and career, noting, “As an artist and a public figure, he put his money where his mouth was and remained invariably sincere, a powerful and compelling trait that has become increasingly rare in a time of the sound-bite inanities, muddy thinking, obvious contradictions and outright falsehoods that threaten our public and political discourse.
“Reiner mastered many mediums and wielded a broad palette but his signature artistic trait was empathy. No story was too small, or too brutal, to be examined with kindness and an understanding that the most grave injustice we can commit is to choose apathy or revenge when connection and transcendence are always possible.”
Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in the movie “When Harry Met Sally…”
Josh Rothkopf and I rolled out a list of his 10 best movies as a director, which includes his astonishing early run, titles like “This Is Spinal Tap,” “The Princess Bride,” “Misery,” “A Few Good Men” and “The American President.” All of those come in little over a decade.
Tribute screenings have already been announced around Los Angeles, including “When Harry Met Sally…” at the New Beverly on Dec. 30–Jan. 1 and then again on Jan. 3 at Vidiots, which will also be showing “A Few Good Men” on Jan. 6 and “The Princess Bride” on Jan. 18. More screenings are sure to follow.
‘Love & Basketball’ 25th anniversary
Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps in the movie “Love & Basketball.”
(New Line Cinema)
On Saturday, the Academy Museum will host a 25th anniversary screening of “Love & Basketball” with writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood in attendance. Starring Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps, it is one of the great romantic films of recent decades, the story of two young athletes struggling to reconcile their feelings for each other with their individual careers and ambitions.
In his original review of the movie, Eric Harrison wrote, “The movie is smarter than it has to be, but it’s the sort of low-key smart that can be easily overlooked. Writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood doesn’t care if you recognize how hard it is to juggle two distinctly different types of movies (make that three, since the romance and sports elements here don’t obscure the feminist fable that is the film’s heart). … This is Prince-Bythewood’s first feature film as both a writer and director, and she shows admirable command of her craft.”
In an interview from 1990, Prince-Bythewood talked about the difficulty of casting the two leads, worrying whether she should find basketball players who could learn to act or actors who could persuasively play basketball.
“There were a lot of sleepless nights,” Prince-Bythewood said. “Is this a love story or a basketball story? I finally realized it’s a love story first. It doesn’t matter how great the basketball is if you don’t care about the character or the love story.
In 2020, Sonaiya Kelley spoke to Prince-Bythewood, Lathan, Epps, producer Spike Lee, actors Gabrielle Union, Alfre Woodard, Tyra Banks and Regina Hall for a definitive oral history of the film.
“When I first started out writing it, my goal was to do a Black ‘When Harry Met Sally…,’” said Prince-Bythewood. “I love that movie, but I wasn’t seeing myself in movies like that.”
‘Metropolitan’ 35th anniversary
The cast of Whit Stillman’s 1990 movie “Metropolitan.”
(Rialto Pictures)
On Sunday afternoon, the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre will have a 35th anniversary screening of “Metropolitan” with writer-director Whit Stillman and actor Taylor Nichols there for a Q&A. Set during the week between Christmas and New Year’s among a very specific social set of young New Yorkers — labeled in the film as the Urban Haute Bourgeoisie — the film is a delicately detailed comedy of manners. It would earn Stillman an Oscar nomination for original screenplay.
In her original review, Sheila Benson wrote, “Filmmaker Stillman is a pointillist, working in the tiniest, most meticulous degrees. If he seems at times as controlled and distanced as his own UHBs, his impulsive, romantic ending betrays him. Stillman understands caste, class and deportment as perfectly as Audrey’s idol, Jane Austen, and by the time he’s through, so do we.”
In a 1990 interview, Stillman spoke about making a movie about such a specific social set, one that many viewers of the film will not have been a part of. “I think people will enjoy the fact that the film has texture,” he said. “They will sense that there is a joke there, even if they don’t get it.”
Points of interest
Nancy Meyers with ‘Father of the Bride’
Kimberly Williams, left, Martin Short, Steve Martin and Diane Keaton in the 1991 version of “Father of the Bride.”
(Disney / Touchstone Pictures)
Director Nancy Meyers had to pull out of a recent Q&A scheduled for a screening of “Something’s Gotta Give,” which starred her frequent collaborator Diane Keaton. Meyers is now set to appear at the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre on Saturday for a Q&A after 1991’s remake of “Father of the Bride,” directed by Charles Shyer and co-written by Shyer and Meyers. As far as we can tell, this will be Meyers’ first public appearance since Keaton’s death in October.
The film stars Keaton alongside Steve Martin, as a couple who are arranging the wedding of their daughter, with Martin Short showing up as an overbearing wedding planner.
In his original review, Michael Wilmington wrote, “Midway through ‘Father of the Bride’ … Martin Short shows up, as the effete, snobbish wedding coordinator that Leo G. Carroll played in the original, and steals the movie from Martin, steals it from everybody. Short’s handling of this silly little role — an outrageous poseur named ‘Franck Eggelhoffer’ who insists on calling himself Frawwnk and acts like a post-disco Mischa Auer — has perfect pitch and real wigged-out comic genius.”
David Lowery and ‘The Green Knight’
Dev Patel in the 2021 movie “The Green Knight.”
(A24)
On Saturday, Vidiots will host a screening of 2021’s “The Green Knight” with writer-director David Lowery in person. Based on the 14th century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” the film stars Dev Patel as Gawain, nephew of King Arthur, who, after winning a mystical challenge on Christmas, is told he has one year to complete another adventure.
In his review, Justin Chang wrote, “What does it mean to be a knight, or even just to be human? It isn’t an easy question, and ‘The Green Knight,’ in taking it seriously, isn’t always an easy film. But by the time Gawain reaches his journey’s end, in as moving and majestically sustained a passage of pure cinema as I’ve seen this year, the moral arc of his journey has snapped into undeniable focus. He plays the game; he accepts the challenge. His example is worth following.”
Oliver Stone’s ‘Nixon’
Joan Allen and Anthony Hopkins in the movie “Nixon.”
(Sidney Baldwin / Cinergi Pictures Entertainment)
On Sunday, the Laemmle Royal will have a 30th anniversary screening of Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” with the filmmaker in person for a Q&A to be moderated by Times contributing writer Tim Greiving.
Starring Anthony Hopkins as Richard Nixon and Joan Allen as his wife, Pat (both were nominated for Oscars for their performances), the film covers the political life of the politician who rose to being president only to leave the office in disgrace.
In his original review, Kenneth Turan wrote, “Mostly (though not completely) gone is the disturbing, lunatic Oliver Stone, the bad-boy writer-director who infuriated the political establishment with ‘JFK’ and outraged sensibilities nationwide with ‘Natural Born Killers.’ He’s been replaced by a filmmaker very much on his best behavior, a thorough researcher who consulted 80 books and published a heavily footnoted screenplay. If Quentin Tarantino made a film in the style of Sir Richard Attenborough, the surprise could not be greater. And ‘Nixon’ is in many ways an impressive, well-crafted piece of work.”
FROM snowy countrysides to festive city spots, Christmas movies have taken inspiration from a variety of UK locations.
And while the North Pole may be far out of the way, you can get into the spirit by visiting these iconic film spots a little closer to home.
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Some of your favourite Christmas flicks have been filmed at these sites across the UK (stock image)Credit: Getty
Before you snuggle up to watch your go-to Christmas classics, why not go one step further and visit the exact spot where it was filmed this festive season?
A variety of festive favourites were shot on-site here in the UK, from the star-studded Love Actually to Christmas comedy Nativity!
If you find yourself near any of these famous film locations, celebrate the Christmas season by stepping into the shoes of your favourite festive characters.
Shere, Surrey
Shere Village in Surrey features heavily in the Christmas classic The Holiday (stock image)Credit: Getty
This picturesque village hit the big screen when it was featured in The Holiday back in 2006.
The quaint area consists of historic timber-framed buildings and medieval charm, nestled in the idyllic Tillingbourne Valley.
It played home to Kate Winslet’s Iris who famously swaps homes with Los Angeles resident Amanda, played by Cameron Diaz.
Shere provides the romantic backdrop for Diaz as she finds love with Jude Law during her festive getaway.
And the village also featured in the Bridget Jones franchise, which is often considered another Christmas classic for Brits.
Snowshill, Cotswolds
The Cotswold village of Snowshill in Gloucestershire provides the backdrop for the opening scene of Bridget Jones’ Diary (stock image)Credit: Getty
The quintessential Cotswolds village also featured in Bridget Jones Diary, the first installment of the hit series.
In fact, the film and the entire franchise opens with with Bridget turning up at her parent’s house in Snowshill on a wintry New Year’s Day.
And it is in the same town where the quirky protagonist has her first on-screen encounter with her eventual husband Mark Darcy.
Due to the film’s success and the idyllic scenery, many people now stop for a photo outside the village church or one of the quaint houses that appear in the film.
As a result, Snowshill has established itself as one of Britain’s most popular Christmas film locations.
Brighton Pier
Brighton Pier can be spotted during the famous Walking In The Air sequence from The Snowman (stock image)Credit: Getty
While the iconic seaside attraction may be associated with summer fun, it also has ties to the festive season.
Fans of the animated film The Snowman may recognise the historic pier from the famous Walking In The Air scene.
The main characters can be seen flying over the historic pier as they make their way to the North Pole.
While the sequence may be brief, it is perhaps one of the most famous associated with the beloved classic.
Hogwarts Great Hall
Harry Potter fans can visit the Great Hall this festive season at the Warner Brother Studios in Stratford (stock image)Credit: Getty
Another children’s classic is of course Harry Potter, a film series often associated with and watched around Christmas.
And while witches and wizards may be akin Halloween characters, the cosy grounds of Hogwarts are perhaps the most enticing when they are decked out for the festive season.
Now fans of the film can step into the magic by visiting the Warner Brothers Studio in Watford.
A quick trip from London, this studio tour offers a stunningly detailed look into the making of the movies, and what better time to visit than in the lead up to Christmas when the Great Hall set is adorned with decorations?
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is featured predominantly in the rom-com Last Christmas (stock image)Credit: Alamy
And in the heart of London is of course the famous Covent Garden, which many argue is the home to the city’s best Christmas tree.
While it is already on most tourist lists, the festive season marks the best time to visit this popular spot.
With a famous Christmas market and choir performances, there’s plenty to get you in the spirit at this time of year.
And fans of the 2019 rom-com Last Christmas are sure to spot many filming spots inside this famous square, which feature heavily in the film.
Emilia Clarke’s Kate works as an Elf in a fictional year-round Christmas shop at this location, while the famous karaoke scene was shot at nearby pub The Harp.
St Luke’s Mews, Notting Hill
The iconic pink house in St Luke Mews, Notting Hill featured in the Christmas classic Love Actually (stock image)Credit: Getty
And if you’re a fan of Christmas rom-coms, you’ll want to pop over to Notting Hill too.
The beautiful cobbled street of St Luke’s Mews plays the backdrop to arguably the most famous scene from the festive flick Love Actually.
Whether you lap up Mark’s (Andrew Lincoln) cue card love confession to his friend’s new wife, played by Kiera Knightly, or cringe at the iconic scene, you’re sure to recognise this famous street.
While this street it located just off Portobello Road, home to the world’s largest antique market, it is still a residential area so remember to be respectful when visiting.
Coventry Cathedral Ruins
The nativity play in Nativity! is performed at the ruins of the Cathedral Church of St Michael in Coventry (stock image)Credit: Getty
Another British Christmas classic is of course Nativity!, which primary school teacher Mr Maddens, played by Martin Freeman, as he attempts to stage a production of the Nativity.
After telling a white lie to impress his ex, Maddens soon finds himself in the midst of a media storm surrounding the school play.
The mayor even allows the class to perform the highly-anticipated show at the historic ruins of Coventry cathedral in an atmospheric climax to the film.
Paddington Station
Paddington Station provides a pivotal setting for an iconic scene from the movie Paddington (stock image)Credit: Getty
And who can talk about beloved British festive flicks without mentioning Paddington?
The iconic bear famously made his way from Peru to the Paddington area of London, after which he was named.
Visitors can visit a statue of the bear at his namesake station, which provided the backdrop for one of the most important scenes in the 2014 film.
Elm Hill, Norwich
Elm Hill in Norwich is used as the background for Netflix’s Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (stock image)Credit: Getty
The picturesque area of Elm Hill in Norwich features heavily in Netflix’s Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey.
Snowy scenery provides a backdrop for the adventure of an old toy maker and his granddaughter.
The cobbled streets, multi-coloured houses, and quaint shops of the town provide the perfect setting for movie magic.
And they also ensure the perfect shot on Instagram, whether you’re a fan of the film or not.
Birdsall House
Birdsall Hall is a prominent filming location for the 2021 film Father Christmas Is Back, starring Kelsey Grammer and Elizabeth Hurley (stock image)Credit: Alamy
And finally, this Malton mansion plays home to the Christmas family in 2021’s Father Christmas Is Back.
Kelsey Grammer plays James, the father of Joanna, played by Elizabeth Hurley, who he abandoned years ago.
The festive family flick follows them as they attempt to navigate Christmas together, with many scenes set at the stunning Birdsall House.
This beautiful country house is surrounded by glorious Yorkshire countryside and is a popular wedding venue, with private guided tours of the property are available.
