Category: 5. Entertainment

Hollywood is starving for new movie stars.

The 2010s brought with it the absolute domination of IP and franchises over all else, but the studios still yearn for the days when one name could get millions of people to the cinema without a second thought.

The arrival of the last Mission: Impossible movie, Final Reckoning, brought with it yet another round of discourse over whether or not Tom Cruise was The Last Movie Star.

Who were the undisputed A-List icons who could follow in his footsteps and headline blockbusters that would delight audiences and accrue immense profits? Who could replace the genre’s most iconic face and performer of terrifying stunts?

Certainly, many have tried to replicate the magic over the past 15 or so years (most of them tall hunky white guys named Chris). Glen Powell is eager to claim the crown. Cruise himself put forward Sinners star Michael B. Jordan as a contender. The true heir, however, has been proving herself as such for most of her life and has the box office receipts to prove it.

Now headlining the latest Jurassic World movie, Rebirth, Scarlett Johansson is here to remind us that she is a true movie star.

The multi-award-winning actress has been in the business since she was a child, earning raves in films like The Horse Whisperer and Ghost World, before graduating to worldwide acclaim before she was even old enough to drink.

For close to two decades now, she’s modelled herself into both a critic’s favorite and a money-making powerhouse. She’s the second highest-grossing leading actor of all-time and the highest-grossing woman, well ahead of Cruise as well as Bradley Cooper and Chrises Evans, Pratt, and Hemsworth. Even accounting for all roles, she’s comfortably in the top ten with well over $15.4 billion to her name. Add to that two Oscar nominations, a Tony, an honorary César, seven stints hosting Saturday Night Live, and a Time Magazine honor as one of the most influential people in the world. Ethan Hunt who?

In terms of pure savviness, Johansson is second to none. She has a sharp eye for projects and a distinct lack of snobbery. Yes, she’s got those prestige indie titles, like her work with Wes Anderson, but she’s also happy to do kids movies like Sing or Transformers One. She does comedies (Rough Night), rom-coms (Fly Me To the Moon), biopics (Hitchcock), period pieces (Hail, Caesar!)… oh, and there’s also the highest-grossing film franchise of all time.

Being Black Widow, one of the first generation Avengers, has certainly helped to keep her in the public eye over the years. She came to the franchise already a star and one could argue that she didn’t need the Marvel boost since she had a highly enviable filmography that included works with Sofia Coppola, Michael Bay, and SpongeBob SquarePants. But the MCU put her front and center as an action star and one of the few women in such a position at that time.

As Natasha Romanoff, she was the girl with a gun in the boys club that featured robot suits, genetic engineering, and literal gods. She outsmarted Loki, maced goons, and provided a much-needed emotional grounding amid the gymnastics and explosions. It’s a testament to Johansson’s commitment to the character that she was able to rise above some of the more sexist writing she was saddled with (hello, Avengers: Age of Ultron and that Hulk boob fall scene.)

A lot of MCU actors seemed to struggle to find ways to use their new star power, but Johansson, by that point a veteran of film, made fascinating choices.

2014’s Lucy, directed by Luc Besson, proved that she could headline an action movie without a superhero name in the title (a pointed move from her given that Marvel took way too long to greenlight a Black Widow due to CEO sexism.) Marriage Story gave her one of her greatest roles as a woman dealing with the traumatic fallout of a divorce. In Under the Skin, she disguised herself to drive around Glasgow in a white van and pick up strangers for this unnerving sci-fi that deliberately played around with Johansson’s image as a sex symbol.

Not every movie was a major hit or even a wise decision, as the total red flag that was the Ghost in the Shell adaptation proves, but the strategy behind each choice is evident. It’s about building a sturdy foundation of stardom with four quadrant appeal: be a financial hit, win awards, be known to people of all ages, and have the power to do whatever the hell you want. She’s putting her range to good use, not being constricted by the narrow boundaries of the A-List. ScarJo could and would do Top Gun: Maverick, but Tom Cruise couldn’t do Under the Skin.

But box office and reviews only tell half the story when it comes to Hollywood power. What is a greater sign of your strength and nerve than suing the hell out of Disney?

Johansson took on the House of Mouse, alleging breach of contract over their decision to release Black Widow simultaneously in cinemas and on Disney+. The case was settled and Johansson reportedly walked away with $40 million. She could have risked killing her lucrative relationship with the corporate giant by doing this, but she came out of it stronger, with plans to keep working with Disney (including a Tower of Terror movie.)

She also called out Sam Altman of OpenAI when he launched a chat bot with a voice that was undeniably intended to invoke comparisons with Johansson’s. This came after she declined the company’s offer to formally work with them on the project, taking inspiration from her role in Spike Jonze’s AI romance Her. It was symbolic of a major problem Johansson’s faced throughout her career: leering sexism and objectification.

In a 2022 interview with the Armchair Expert podcast, she talked about how she was “kind of pigeonholed into this weird hypersexualized thing” for much of her career. It’s not tough to find interviews or profiles where people talk about her as if she’s a piece of meat. In one infamous red carpet interview, she was groped. Even as she became one of the biggest stars on the planet, a tech bro felt entitled to steal her voice. But Johansson didn’t take that insult lying down. She worked too hard for that, and Altman paused the project.

Jurassic World Rebirth will surely make all of the money and keep Johansson’s star power sturdy. Up next, she will wield her clout in a whole new way by releasing her directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, which premiered at Cannes and has already been cued up for an Oscar campaign for its lead actress, June Squibb.

Johansson shared with The Hollywood Reporter that her dream co-star was Tom Cruise, and Cruise in return told Entertainment Tonight that he would love to work with her. What better way to truly pass the gauntlet than with a ScarJo-Cruise team-up?

As a kid, I would see a new casino every time I visited Vegas with my family. They were huge, multimillion dollar investments and even then, I knew that money had come from people losing it in machines. That’s probably why I don’t gamble. My dad only actually took us into a casino a couple of times, but I remember him believing he would win and my mother being more rational about it.

Thinking about it now, it’s absurd to take your kids to Vegas. My friend Rich remembers his parents checking him and his brother in at the Circus Circus hotel and casino – I think there was maybe a trampoline for children to jump on while the parents gambled. Afterwards, they’d hand in their ticket and pick the kids up again, like you do with your coat at the theatre.

In my 20s, I’d go to Vegas with friends and, while they were gambling, I’d be documenting, running around and taking photos wherever I could. I began to realise that the gap between the absurd commercials we have in the US for casinos that promise the world, and the reality that I was seeing, was huge, almost to a comical degree. The photographs I’d been accumulating started to form a cohesive body of work, showing the contrast between the glamour in the marketing, and the actuality – which is more like going to the airport than a big night out in Monte Carlo.

I took trips to places well known for their casinos, such as Reno, Nevada and Atlantic City, and whenever I was somewhere in the US that had one, I would seek it out. I tend to use a hit and run approach when photographing inside them. If I see security looking at me, or if other people are becoming aware of me, I’ll just move on – there’s always an embarrassment of riches to photograph, you could just go to the next table, or even the next casino. I also don’t want to be perceived as someone who might be helping someone cheat, so I try to avoid any card games.

I feel like I’m setting the stage for a story, and then you let your mind fill in the blanks. This photograph of an Elvis impersonator is an example of that – one image that says 1,000 words. It’s pretty much the iconic image of my Casinoland book. Elvis was the king but there was a darker side to him too, which reflects the difference between the marketing of casinos and their reality.

The photograph was taken in 2012 and it epitomises Vegas – not just because of Elvis, but also the lights and the colour. For some reason I feel more emotion when there’s more saturation in an image. There’s so much distraction going on here, but it all frames the king in the centre. He’s kind of slumped back at the slot machine: you see him from the back but you know exactly who he is.

Often players go into a particular mental state at the slot machines, where they seem to be aware of nothing else. They get locked into a zone where it’s just them and the machine. I could often get pretty close, and was able to capture what was happening without them seeing me. You have to be careful though – people have come at me a couple of times. On one occasion, when I was still shooting on film, the sound of my Olympus woke a guy I’d just photographed slumped across a machine, and he really wanted to fight me. There was no reasoning with him. I managed to dodge into a club and amazingly the velvet rope kept him at bay – he wouldn’t cross it.

Nowadays I carry a small Fuji, but phone cameras have got good enough for me to use for stealth work. If I pick up my Nikon with its longer lens, it’s like I’m about to point a gun at someone. In the age of social media, people are much more suspicious of a photographer’s motives than they used to be, but I am a positive person and want the best for everybody. Someone described my work as documenting the fall of an empire in the deserts of Nevada, but I’m doing it with a sense of humour and a light touch.

Michael Rababy’s CV

Born: Ohio, 1969
Trained: “Studied art history at the University of San Diego, spent many hours at the Museum of Photographic Arts bookstore in Balboa Park, and regularly snuck into film classes. I fell in love with photography while studying in Florence, Italy, in my second year of college and have been pretty much self-taught since then by looking at paintings in museums and watching great films.
Influences: “Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, Helen Levitt, Bill Owens, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Hunter S Thompson.”
High point: “As a Pollyanna optimist, I have to believe my high point has yet to happen – but having Edward Snowden share an image I created with The Yes Men stands out.”
Low point: “To survive as an artist you have to accept a barrage of rejection and move on.”
Top tip: “Chuck Close noted that photography is one of the easiest art forms to learn but the hardest to find your voice. I recommend learning as much craft as you can, but at some point you have to look deep inside yourself to carve your path.”

Stephen Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park film (1993) instilled awe and trepidation in his characters and audience alike. As his protagonists wrestled with the unintended consequences and ethical dilemmas of reanimating extinct apex predators, viewers marvelled at the novel use of CGI. At a keystroke it seemed to consign the hand-crafted stop-motion wonders of dinosaur films past to the archive.

Alongside pulse-pounding action set pieces delivered with trademark Spielberg panache, that first film flamboyantly inaugurated a new era in fantasy effects. And it solicited delight and wonder from its audience. On opening day in New York the dinosaurs’ first appearance prompted a spontaneous ovation: I was there and clapped too.

Thirty-two years, six Jurassic iterations and countless monstrous digital apparitions later, that initial wow factor is a distant memory. By Jurassic World: Rebirth (set nearly 35 years after the original film) dinosaurs are treated by their human prey as barely more than inconvenient obstacles. They’re dangerous, of course, but certainly not wondrous.

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Palaeontologist Dr Henry Loomis’s (Jonathan Bailey) delight in coming face-to-face with his objects of study is a pale echo of the giddy euphoria that overtook Sam Neill and Laura Dern’s characters all those years ago.

In fact, early in the film we’re told that the public have since lost all interest in dinosaurs. Wildlife parks and museum displays are closing and the animals themselves have mostly died off outside their quarantined tropical habitat.

As this has information has little bearing for the plot, it’s hard not to sense some ironic commentary from screenwriter David Koepp (returning to the franchise for the first time since 1997) on the exhaustion of the Jurassic Park model. Always incipiently reflexive – as a blockbuster set in a theme park – by this stage in the game, the franchise machinery is inescapably visible.

Almost as ironic is a plot line promoting the open-source sharing of intellectual property for the benefit of the whole world rather than exploitative corporations. I doubt NBCUniversal-Comcast would agree.

The Jurassic franchise

The Jurassic Park format is among the most unforgivingly rigid of any current film franchise.

Each instalment (bar to some extent the last, the convoluted 2022 Jurassic World: Dominion, whose characters and story the new release completely ignores) places humans in perilous proximity to genetically rejuvenated sauropods. And generally does so in a remote, photogenic tropical location with minimal contact with the outside world. (Will the franchise ever run out of uncharted Caribbean islands where demented bio-engineers have wreaked evolutionary havoc?)

The human characters in this new film are the usual pick-and-mix of daredevil adventurers, amoral corporate types and idealistic palaeontologists. And there are the mandatory school-age children too – important to keep the interest of younger viewers. The real stars of course, are the primeval leviathans who grow larger and more fearsome – though not more interesting – with each new episode of the franchise.

How this human-dino jeopardy comes about tends not to matter very much. Jurassic World: Rebirth produces one of the least interesting MacGuffins in movie history (meaning something that drives the plot and which the charcters care about but the audience does not). Blood drawn from each of the three largest dinosaur species in the aforesaid remote tropical island will produce a serum to cure human heart disease (dinosaur hearts are huge, you see, so … never mind).

This feeble contrivance suffices for sneery Big Pharma suit Martin (Rupert Friend) to hire freebooters Zora (Scarlett Johansson) and Duncan (Mahershala Ali) for his expedition. Along the way they encounter a marooned family (dad, two teens, one winsome but plucky grade-schooler) who subsequently have their own largely self-contained adventures before reuniting for the big climax.

Franchise filmmaking is generally an auteur-free zone. Welsh blockbuster specialist Gareth Edwards is no Spielberg (though he pays homage at several point, notably in a waterborne first act studded with Jaws references). But he handles the action with unremarkable competence.

In truth, Jurassic World: Rebirth suggests that the intellectual property so expensively vested in the franchise would benefit from some genetic modification.

This week, the 2025 Wimbledon tournament kicked off in London. Just a few days in, a number of celebrity tennis enthusiasts are already sitting courtside in their VIP seats while taking in the matches—including Cate Blanchett, David Beckham, Priyanka Chopra, and Nick Jonas, to name a few. This morning, A-list couple Olivia Rodrigo and Louis Partridge were also spotted at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

While the American singer and English actor typically have a grungier style sensibility, they both played into the signature preppy Wimbledon aesthetic for the outing. (For attendees, dressing up in a country club vibe is half the fun, after all.) Rodrigo traded in her love of mini lace and slip dresses—which she loves pairing with combat boots—in favor of a buttoned-up gingham shirt dress. She added itty-bitty shades. Partridge, meanwhile—who can often be spotted off-duty in baggy trousers or athleisure—went the snazzy route in a navy blazer, khaki trousers, and striped shirt-and-tie combo.

While there is no official Wimbledon dress code that is enforced, it goes without saying that attendees are encouraged to wear smart-casual pieces—including elegant dresses and smart tailoring. Clearly, Rodrigo and Partridge did their homework before attending the event. While it proved to be a total style-180 for them, their complementary preppy outfits totally work for them. Should this be their new summer fashion mood? Something tells us they will be going back to their downtown-cool wardrobes very soon. But, for now, it’s fun to see them cosplay as posh tennis lovers.

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There’s something bewitching about a glimpse of near-tranquillity, a feathery ripple of emotion or a chuckle in a dark room. Vermeer died young, broken by catastrophe on an enormous scale. Yet we revere him now for the way he savoured instants that would otherwise have gone unnoticed, the skill with which he chronicled flickers of deep but inconspicuous feeling.

For the first exhibition in its freshly refurbished home, the Frick has assembled a trio of blazing, murmuring Vermeers, composed of the simplest ingredients: a pair of women, a pen, a table, a sheet of paper, a ray of light. Each of these scenes of letters being written or delivered provides a tantalising peek into an inner life. We don’t know who is using what words to communicate what thoughts, but we can easily imagine how envious the painter must have been of the serenity he depicted. His own home was deluged with children — 11 of them — and his wife Catharina was surely too busy rousting, feeding, bathing and herding them to enjoy much contemplative hush. 

The three paintings are deceptively alike. A splendidly clad woman sits, a maid dressed in practical brown stands, and a letter passes between them, or is about to, on its way to or from the outside world. These works give off the poetic emanations of life’s ordinary prose, the grandeur of stilled actions, half thoughts and interrupted daydreams. The act of writing takes on a numinous halo; even a few seconds of nothing much seem saturated with significance. When you’ve come in off the boiling, roiling, stinking Manhattan streets, these immaculate domestic vignettes, hanging in the Frick’s sort-of-domestic setting, offer an interval of private grace.

In the most characteristic of the three, “Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid” (on loan from the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), an elegant, bejewelled lady in a lace-trimmed bonnet and a bodice of pale-gold silk bends over her correspondence. She is focused on the task, her concentration heightened by the sunshine that spills through stained glass, spotlighting the hand that draws the quill across the gleaming page.

The other character has something else on her mind. She turns towards the window, watching out of the corner of her eye, her lips parted in mute curiosity. The writer’s absorption and the attendant’s distraction are both encapsulated in the stick of sealing wax that’s tumbled to the floor, a lone flourish of messiness that neither of them notices.

While the maid looks out, we look in, observing from our position on this side of a curtain that now reads as a muted brown but that in Vermeer’s time shone a bright shade of green. The drape pulls back to reveal a tableau that casts viewers as voyeurs — or detectives. We can’t tell what kind of letter the woman is writing (to a shopkeeper? a lover? a family member far away?), what event in the street has caught her maid’s attention, or what hidden meaning lies in the painting on the wall depicting baby Moses being snatched from the Nile. Vermeer doles out information in drops of mystery.

The Frick’s larger “Mistress and Maid” treats the same subject in a contrasting manner. The action glows against a background so dark that it verges on the crypt-like. Vermeer first adorned the wall with a tapestry and then painted over it to keep attention on the human drama. There’s no visible window, yet light shoots in from the left, glinting off the protagonist’s globular earring and the pearls around her neck.

You can see a trace of Caravaggio in the battle between sunshine and shadow and in the theatrical composition that pushes the figures forward into the viewers’ space. And yet there’s no violence or strain, no bolt of revelation, just a polite encounter across class lines. A maid opens her mouth to speak and passes the letter to her employer, who’s sumptuously dressed in yellow and ermine. The wealthy woman has been writing, but she lays down her pen and glances up, fingers thoughtfully grazing her chin. Perhaps her life is about to change, or maybe the moment will be immediately forgotten. What remains is the exquisiteness of not knowing.

In the “The Love Letter”, which comes from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, we have been exiled from the room entirely. By accident or in secret, we peer through a darkened anteroom, spying on an intimate exchange. The fur-trimmed yellow outfit is familiar and maybe we’ve seen the model before, too, but now she’s playing the cittern — or was, until her maid popped in with a note. Vermeer charges the scene with urgency and hope. The servant reassures the mistress with a soothing smile. A fair-weather seascape on the wall signals smooth sailing ahead.

That was wishful thinking on Vermeer’s part. In 1672, two years after he painted “The Love Letter”, harsher news arrived in the form of a French invasion of the Netherlands. Suddenly unable to sell his own paintings, saddled with those of other artists that he had on consignment, and burdened with a gaggle of children, he fell apart. “He lapsed into such decay and decadence, which he had so taken to heart that, as if he had fallen into a frenzy, in a day and a half he went from being healthy to being dead,” his widow recounted. He was 43 years old.

Catharina soldiered on by trading art for bread. “The Love Letter” was one of two paintings she handed over to a local baker, hoping to redeem them later. She never did. And so this gently optimistic interior became a form of sustenance in a war zone, the instrument of physical as well as spiritual nourishment. Its survival seems like a miracle, but then man-made beauty, even the quiet kind, turns out to be a sturdy shield against desperation.

To August 31, frick.org

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Metallica just landed in Birmingham, the venue for this weekend’s Back to the Beginning concert.

The metal titans, who would be performing at the show which would also mark the iconic Black Sabbath’s final live comeback, wasted no time in taking in some of the Paranoid hitmakers’ landmarks.

Taking to their official Instagram, the Fade To Black hitmakers posted a photo featuring their bassist Robert Trujillo standing in front of the Black Sabbath logo on Mr Murals’ astonishing Sabbath mural on Navigation bridge.

They captioned the image: “The kids have landed in Birmingham.”

A second photo was uploaded minutes later, where the legendary front man, James Hetfield, could be seen throwing the devil horns while sitting between Ozzy Osbourne and Tony Iommi on the Black Sabbath Bench on Black Sabbath Bridge.

The rock band’s guitarist and co-founder, Iommi replied to both these posts with the devil horns emoji.

Back to the Beginning, which will be hosted by actor, Jason Mamoa, is set to take place at Villa Park on Saturday, a place where all four original band members of Black Sabbath grew up.

The upcoming concert also boasts arguably the greatest line-up in metal history where alongside Sabbath, Ozzy and Metallica, sets from Guns N’ Roses, Slayer, Pantera, Gojira, Halestorm, Alice in Chains, Lamb of God, Tool, Rival Sons, Anthrax and Mastodon, would all be featured in the show.

Additionally, the Back to the Beginning promoter and producer, Andy Copping, confirmed to Planet Rock that there will be an additional “two or three” surprise acts as well as a revolving stage. 

When we talk about the movies we love, every voice deserves a spotlight. So after publishing our official list of the best movies of the 21st century, compiled from the votes of 500-plus filmmakers, actors and other movie-industry professionals, we turned to New York Times readers, who cast more than 200,000 ballots of their own.

Here, you’ll find several blockbusters that fell short of the original 100 — “Sinners,” “Barbie,” not one but two “Dune” movies — and small international gems like “Drive My Car” and “The Handmaiden,” too. “Midsommar” and “Mean Girls” entered the chat, while a surprising number of rankings (“Mulholland Drive,” “The Social Network”) stood firm.

Maybe you’ve already seen them all. If not, you can click through and save the movies you want to watch as you go — they’ll be easily accessible on your watch list. You can also still create a ballot here to share with friends; it won’t count toward the final tally, but there’s no expiration date on a good debate.

The Reader Top 100

Plus, for fun, here are the next 400 movies, as ranked by our readers.

101. Synecdoche, New York  102. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World  103. Punch-Drunk Love  104. Nope  105. American Psycho  106. Poor Things  107. The Lives of Others  108. Hot Fuzz  109. Challengers  110. Inside Out  111. The Devil Wears Prada  112. In Bruges  113. Donnie Darko  114. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)  115. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse  116. Requiem for a Dream  117. Best in Show  118. Melancholia  119. Sicario  120. Manchester by the Sea  121. Prisoners  122. First Reformed  123. The Banshees of Inisherin  124. Roma  125. Frances Ha  126. The Substance  127. Incendies  128. The Piano Teacher  129. Drive  130. Moulin Rouge!  131. Shrek  132. Paddington 2  133. The Big Short  134. Chicago  135. Adaptation  136. The Witch  137. Coco  138. Toy Story 3  139. 1917  140. The Pianist  141. Anora  142. Ex Machina  143. Avatar  144. Casino Royale  145. A Separation  146. A Serious Man  147. Moonrise Kingdom  148. Burning  149. Jojo Rabbit  150. Shrek 2  151. Dunkirk  152. Finding Nemo  153. Under the Skin  154. Spider-Man 2  155. Carol  156. 28 Days Later  157. I Saw the TV Glow  158. Shaun of the Dead  158. Catch Me If You Can  160. About Time  161. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith  162. The Favourite  163. Slumdog Millionaire  164. Inland Empire  165. Avengers: Infinity War  166. Black Panther  167. Godzilla Minus One  168. Your Name.  169. Shutter Island  170. The Batman  171. Juno  172. Mission: Impossible – Fallout  173. Sideways  174. The Martian  175. Babylon  176. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story  177. The Irishman  178. Coraline  179. Legally Blonde  180. School of Rock  181. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri  182. The Act of Killing  183. Mamma Mia!  184. Mysterious Skin  185. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy  186. 12 Years a Slave  187. La Chimera  188. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl  189. Midnight in Paris  190. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World  191. Collateral  192. The Lobster  193. Decision to Leave  194. Conclave  195. Monster  196. Napoleon Dynamite  197. Volver  198. How to Train Your Dragon  199. Silver Linings Playbook  200. Borat  201. Atonement  202. Shoplifters  203. The Nice Guys  204. Wicked  205. Step Brothers  206. Dogville  207. Silence  208. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban  209. Snatch  210. Nickel Boys  211. Marie Antoinette  212. John Wick  213. Caché  214. The Fall  215. Minority Report  216. Skyfall  217. Tropic Thunder  218. Dancer in the Dark  219. Gravity  220. The Great Beauty  221. The Perks of Being a Wallflower  222. Lincoln  223. Speed Racer  224. Flow  225. RRR  226. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou  227. The Shape of Water  228. Titane  229. Good Time  230. 500 Days of Summer  231. Let the Right One In  232. Nightcrawler  233. Joker  234. The Hangover  235. The Wind Rises  236. Sound of Metal  237. The Bourne Identity  238. The King’s Speech  239. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford  240. Paprika  241. The Brutalist  242. Monsters, Inc.  243. Another Round  244. Argo  245. Kill Bill: Vol. 2  246. Amour  247. All of Us Strangers  248. Love Actually  249. The Hurt Locker  250. Training Day  251. Big Fish  252. Baby Driver  253. I’m Still Here  254. Hell or High Water  255. Zero Dark Thirty  256. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire  257. Amores Perros  258. A.I. Artificial Intelligence  259. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives  260. Talk to Her  261. The Hateful Eight  262. The Fabelmans  263. It’s Such a Beautiful Day  264. Green Book  265. A Beautiful Mind  266. Marriage Story  267. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone  268. The Hunt  269. Million Dollar Baby  270. Goodbye, Dragon Inn  271. The Revenant  272. Us  273. Grizzly Man  274. Mommy  275. Edge of Tomorrow  276. Burn After Reading  277. Tenet  278. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty  279. The Tale of The Princess Kaguya  280. CODA  281. Sorry to Bother You  282. Climax  283. Iron Man  284. Beau travail  285. Wet Hot American Summer  286. Miami Vice  287. Inherent Vice  288. Crazy, Stupid, Love.  289. Annihilation  290. The Boy and the Heron  291. Cast Away  292. Asteroid City  293. Holy Motors  294. Lilo & Stitch  295. Cold War  296. The Notebook  297. Bottoms  298. Sing Sing  299. It Follows  300. The Hours  301. Dogtooth  302. The White Ribbon  303. Bridget Jones’s Diary  304. Logan  305. The Darjeeling Limited  306. Millennium Actress  307. The Raid: Redemption  308. Train to Busan  309. Booksmart  310. All Quiet on the Western Front  311. Twilight  312. Nomadland  313. Certified Copy  314. The Virgin Suicides  315. The Gleaners & I  316. Werckmeister Harmonies  317. Guardians of the Galaxy  318. Mystic River  319. Ford v Ferrari  320. District 9  321. Spring Breakers  322. Cars  323. The Death of Stalin  324. Nosferatu  325. Love Exposure  326. The Hunger Games  327. V for Vendetta  328. Licorice Pizza  329. Gangs of New York  330. 20th Century Women  331. BlacKkKlansman  332. Tangerine  333. Promising Young Woman  334. Hidden Figures  335. Soul  336. Ponyo  337. Margaret  338. The Secret in Their Eyes  339. The Dark Knight Rises  340. Captain America: The Winter Soldier  341. Elf  342. Hundreds of Beavers  343. The Iron Claw  344. The Intouchables  345. True Grit  346. Saw  347. Suspiria  348. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy  349. Spider-Man  350. Batman Begins  351. Nobody Knows  352. Erin Brockovich  353. A Star Is Born  354. Crazy Rich Asians  355. The Green Knight  356. Birth  357. Forgetting Sarah Marshall  358. Brooklyn  359. Toni Erdmann  360. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  361. Kung Fu Hustle  362. Tropical Malady  363. Memoria  364. The Wild Robot  365. The Avengers  366. The Killing of a Sacred Deer  367. Moana  368. What We Do in the Shadows  369. Triangle of Sadness  370. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days  371. Sexy Beast  372. Remember the Titans  373. Zoolander  374. 25th Hour  375. Sing Street  376. Frozen  377. Tangled  378. Pulse  379. Into the Wild  380. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button  381. West Side Story  382. Ghost World  383. The New World  384. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story  385. The Beast  386. An Elephant Sitting Still  387. Raw  388. The Help  389. Hunt for the Wilderpeople  390. The Lego Movie  391. Pitch Perfect  392. Battle Royale  393. The Wrestler  394. A History of Violence  395. Hero  396. Before Midnight  397. Hedwig and the Angry Inch  398. Life of Pi  399. Enter the Void  400. Jennifer’s Body  401. Hot Rod  402. The Power of the Dog  403. Minari  404. Pain and Glory  405. Billy Elliot  406. The 40-Year-Old Virgin  407. Gran Torino  408. Bones and All  409. Gosford Park  410. Shin Godzilla  411. Columbus  412. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2  413. Black Hawk Down  414. Paterson  415. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish  416. Snowpiercer  417. A Ghost Story  418. Isle of Dogs  419. Wedding Crashers  420. Once  421. A Prophet  422. Mandy  423. The Wailing  424. Cloud Atlas  425. Signs  426. The Imitation Game  427. La ciénaga  428. Elephant  429. Palm Springs  430. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On  431. Blue Valentine  432. The Princess Diaries  433. The Town  434. Petite Maman  435. Millennium Mambo  436. 2046  437. Beau Is Afraid  438. Tokyo Godfathers  439. Blue Is the Warmest Colour  440. tick, tick… BOOM!  441. The Father  442. The Fast and the Furious  443. Eighth Grade  444. Force Majeure  445. American Fiction  446. Only Lovers Left Alive  447. Avatar: The Way of Water  448. The Cabin in the Woods  449. Aruitemo aruitemo  450. Fast Five  451. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days  452. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping  453. Munich  454. Unbreakable  455. Inside Man  456. Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi  457. Beasts of the Southern Wild  458. Infernal Affairs  459. O.J.: Made in America  460. Ida  461. Mother!  462. Pacific Rim  463. The Turin Horse  464. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie  465. Irréversible  466. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby  467. John Wick: Chapter 4  468. Persepolis  469. Hacksaw Ridge  470. Under the Silver Lake  471. Sunshine  472. Emma.  473. Creed  474. The Other Guys  475. Les Misérables  476. Happy as Lazzaro  477. 13 Going on 30  478. A Silent Voice: The Movie  479. 3 Idiots  480. Wild Tales  481. Lady Vengeance  482. Beautiful Boy  483. If Beale Street Could Talk  484. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga  485. High Fidelity  486. Bohemian Rhapsody  487. The Menu  488. May December  489. Pearl  490. Close  491. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire  492. Everybody Wants Some!!  493. The Holiday  494. I’m Thinking of Ending Things  495. Dallas Buyers Club  496. Downfall  497. Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time  498. Morvern Callar  499. Long Day’s Journey Into Night  500. The Farewell  

Foo Fighters have released their first brand new music after a difficult period for the band during which frontman Dave Grohl announced he had fathered a child outside his marriage, and drummer Josh Freese was let go from the group.

Today’s Song, which features artwork by Grohl’s daughter Harper, is a typically anthemic Foo Fighters track with Grohl full of existential angst: “I woke today screaming for change / I knew that I must / So, here lies a shadow / Ashes to ashes / Dust into dust.”

Grohl wrote a lengthy letter alongside the release, retelling the story of the band and acknowledging former band members, including Freese: “It should go without saying that without the boundless energy of William Goldsmith, the seasoned wisdom of Franz Stahl, and the thunderous wizardry of Josh Freese, this story would be incomplete, so we extend our heartfelt gratitude for the time, music, and memories that we shared with each of them over the years. Thank you, gentlemen.”

Freese said in May that he was “not angry – just a bit shocked and disappointed” when he was told that Foo Fighters wanted “to go in a different direction with their drummer”. Foo Fighters did not comment on Freese’s departure.

Freese was the replacement for Taylor Hawkins, who died in 2022 aged 50. Grohl paid tribute to Hawkins in his letter, saying: “Your name is spoken every day, sometimes with tears, sometimes with a smile, but you are still in everything we do, everywhere we go, forever.”

A new drummer has not been announced; a statement alongside Today’s Song says: “Foo Fighters are Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Chris Shiflett and Rami Jaffee.”

Grohl is married to Jordyn Blum, the mother of three of his daughters. In September 2024 he said in a statement: “I’ve recently become the father of a new baby daughter, born outside of my marriage. I plan to be a loving and supportive parent to her. I love my wife and my children, and I am doing everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness.”

In his announcement of Today’s Song, Grohl perhaps made an oblique reference to these widely publicised struggles, using the metaphor of a lobster shedding its shell. “The point being that life’s challenges have a way of signalling the need for change and growth, so when that time comes, you retreat, rebuild, and resurface stronger than before.”

The admission of infidelity somewhat tarnished the image of a man who was often described as “the nicest man in rock”. Foo Fighters cancelled a headline festival performance and retreated from the public eye for a time, though Grohl reunited with Nirvana bandmate Krist Novoselic in January for a benefit concert after the LA wildfires.

Foo Fighters will return to live music in October, playing four concerts across east Asia and another in Mexico City in November. Their most recent album is 2023’s But Here We Are.

Earlier this week they released I Don’t Wanna Hear It, a cover of a song by punk band Minor Threat, with instrumentals recorded in 1995 but vocals recorded earlier this year.