Arguably without clear frontrunners, 2025’s Oscars race, in all the major categories, appears to be wide open. Nicole Kidman will certainly be hoping to stake a claim to become a multiple winner with her performance in Babygirl. Another entrant into the revitalised ‘erotic thriller’ genre alongside last year’s Challengers, this A24 production is an interesting and thought-provoking look into desire, power, relationships and our own wishes and what we would put at stake for th

Another year where the number of albums in the below list has had to be bumped up and still doesn't do justice to what's been released. I present to you, after the customary squabbles and more shuffles than a Vegas casino, The Brighton Film Club’s Albums of the Year 2024: 35. Charly Bliss - Forever 34. Sabrina Carpenter - Short n' Sweet 33. Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven 32. Everything Everything - Mountainhead 31. IDLES - TANGK 30. illuminati hotties - POWER 29. skaiwater -

The Brighton Film Club presents the Films of the Year 2024 after another stacked year for our screens. We've opted to only include films released into UK cinemas this year in the main list to highlight the range and quality we've enjoyed. Many of these are now on streaming sites and streamers had plenty of their own excellent releases too though. After the customary squabbles and more shuffles than a Vegas casino, here then are The Brighton Film Club’s Films of the Year 2024:

Going down the ‘feature-length and theatrically-released anime’ path to continue the Lord of the Rings story is something I’m sure many didn’t see coming. After the, relative, underperformance (at least critically) of The Hobbit films, which clearly didn’t need to be a full-fledged trilogy, and Amazon’s multi-million investment in The Rings of Power which, again, perhaps is starting to already feel longer than it should, a plus-two-hour anime telling of one of Tolkien’s appen

What’s more surprising? That the superhero boom has led to a solo film for Spider-Man antagonist Kraven the Hunter? That Sony’s non-Spidey featuring ‘universe’ has made it to a sixth film? That this film hasn’t really succeeded in terms of box office and critical opinion? Certainly not the latter, but someone somewhere at Sony clearly had the expectation that this would score. It’s all too easy to continue to kick the ‘SPUMC’ whilst it’s down and, by all accounts, this film i

Releasing two films in one year is a pretty impressive feat for any director. Bizarrely, for the second time this year, a celebrated auteur has followed, arguably, a breakout work hastily with a fearsomely well made, but largely impenetrable, companion piece that will capture audiences keen to see what they did next but also may slightly alienate them. First, it was Yorgos Lanthimos following the Oscar-winning Poor Things with the beautiful but bonkers Kinds of Kindness and n

Bring your 'laugh and cry tissues' to the cinema to start the year with the Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh led We Live in Time. Levelling up the romantic comedy by throwing some serious drama into the mix, this is a thoroughly British movie set to rank in the upper echelons of British romantic film. As the narrative hops throughout the timeline of their multifaceted relationship, we learn more about Garfield’s Tobius and Pugh’s Almut as they meet-cute (well, ish, as they f

The revival of the cinema-packing musical can’t help but bring a smile to your face. Whether it’s biopics, adaptations or originals, it’s lovely to see a more traditional and old-fashioned type of blockbuster reaching so many people and packing out multiplexes. There was no doubt that Wicked was going to be a hugely popular undertaking, regardless of trends, but it looks set to take its crown at the top of this particular crop. Pushing those nostalgia buttons but still feelin

Capping a trilogy after two top-tier films often proves a difficult task. It’s easy to count those trilogies that keep the quality across three films consistent (The Lord of the Rings, Toy Story, Indiana Jones, The Dark Knight) and much harder to count those that don’t quite get there because there’s just too many. Paddington in Peru is the latest to fall foul of this and, whilst a solid movie in its own right, doesn’t stack up to its predecessors. In fairness, having films o

There’s no limit to how much time can pass, no limit to the standalone nature of an original film and no limit to the success, both critically and commercially, in terms of whether something will get a legacy sequel. Indeed, some of the more successful have been from those deemed most unlikely: Top Gun, Trainspotting, Mad Max and Blade Runner to name some of the frontrunners of the trend. It’s a nailing of the ‘tone’ that is key, modernising something whilst still retaining t

Conclave turns the process of electing a new Pope into an intense and gripping thriller. Based on the novel by Robert Harris, this is a serious film for serious people with serious actors and, as such, feels wonderfully refreshing. A pulse-pounding score intermingles with the absolutely stunning cinematography and scenery of the Vatican to create a ‘political thriller’ experience within this world of religion, differences, tradition and pomposity. By all accounts faithful to

There’s no doubt that Red One is definitely better off for being a ‘Christmas film.’ That descriptor has its limitations as well as its benefits. Sure, often there’s only one period of the year where you’d watch these films but there’s also the potential to watch them EVERY year if they stick with you. Also, the seasonal goodwill can often gloss over some more obvious cinematic defects. The idea of a generic, The Rock-starring action movie (with [sigh] ‘franchise potential’)