Screenshot

Remakes continue to proliferate on our screens. Over the last few months, we’ve had live action remakes in cinemas of classic animations Snow White, Lilo And Stitch, and How To Train Your Dragon, along with legacy reboots of the horror hit I Know What You Did Last Summer and DC’s Superman, and - coming soon - a new spin on the 1980s comedy The Naked Gun. So is this all just evidence of a dearth of...

30 years after Mel Gibson's Braveheart cloaked Hollywood in fake tartan, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode take the high roads and the low roads to look for the real Scotland on screen. Ellen talks with Tayside journalist Kayleigh Donaldson about the trouble with Braveheart, why veteran Scottish director Bill Forsyth's hyper local comedy dramas Local Hero, Gregory's Girl, and That Sinking Feeling hav...

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode celebrate 25 years of In The Mood For Love - director Wong Kar Wai's acclaimed romantic drama starring Maggie Cheung as Mrs Chan and Tony Leung as Mr Chow - two neighbours in 1960s Hong Kong, bonded by a revelation about their respective spouses. Critically beloved on its first release back in 2000, the film is now reaching an entirely new generation of young film fa...

As music festival season takes hold of the summer, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode look at festival films from Woodstock to Summer of Soul. Can you really capture the spirit of a music festival on screen? Mark speaks to legendary editor Thelma Schoonmaker about her era-defining, Academy Award-nominated work on the documentary film Woodstock. He then talks to maverick British director Julien Temple...

Fifty years ago this summer, Jaws was released in the US. Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the bestselling novel by Peter Benchley, the film - about a coastal resort town threatened by a great white stark at the busiest time of the year - was a groundbreaking box office phenomenon. Jaws changed the industry overnight - pioneering new marketing and release patterns, and altering the focus...

The Brutalist has been one of the most talked about films of the year and taps into a rich vein of films and television that dramatise the immigrant experience. From The Godfather Part 2 to Small Axe, The Emigrants to Home and Away and An American Tail - Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode examine how filmmakers have investigated and portrayed the perils, patterns and adventure of human movement across...

Pretty Woman was released in 1990. One of the most beloved and successful romantic comedies of all time, the film tells the Cinderella story of a sex worker, played by Julia Roberts, who finds love with a slick businessman - Richard Gere - after he picks her up on Hollywood Boulevard. Fast forward to 2025 and the astonishing Oscar success of Anora - director Sean Baker’s tale of a young sex worker...

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode waltz into the magical world of Studio Ghibli, as the animation giant celebrates its 40th birthday. Ellen speaks to the film, TV and video game critic, Kambole Campbell about Studio Ghibli's origin story and key aspects of visual style. Also, the animator and co-founder of Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, Nora Twomey discusses the emotional impact of films like...

With the latest series of the much-discussed drama The White Lotus recently wrapped up, Screenshot asks why cinema and TV make so many return visits to hotels as a setting. Whether sinister and scary like in The Shining or Psycho, fabulous but faded like The Grand Budapest Hotel, or comically chaotic like in Fawlty Towers, hotels offer a myriad of possible opportunities for drama. Ellen E Jones an...

With the Robert Pattinson starring film Mickey 17 fresh out in the cinema, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the world of doppelgangers and doubles on screen. Ellen speaks to academic and doppelganger scholar Adam Golub about the difference between clones and doppelgangers and what the doppelganger tells us about life in 2025. Ellen then talks to an actress about what its like playing a clone...

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode celebrate weddings in film and TV, from Muriel's Wedding to Married at First Sight. Mark speaks to Richard Curtis about the inspiration behind the classic British wedding film, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and about Curtis' own recent wedding to long-term partner Emma Freud. And he gets critic Manuela Lazic's rundown of some of the most memorable cinematic weddings,...

With physical media sales on the rise and streaming fatigue setting in, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the life, death and rebirth of the video shop. Ellen takes a trip to one of the UK's few remaining stores, 20th Century Flicks in Bristol, which has a strong claim to being the longest-running video shop in the world, first opening in 1982. She speaks to manager Dave Taylor about the evol...

The last few years have seen a number of new entries on the cinematic hit list, from David Fincher’s The Killer to Richard Linklater’s Hit Man. TV has also seen its fair share of hitmen in the last year; the reboot of the 2005 Brad and Angelina film Mr and Mrs Smith; Eddie Redmayne donning various elaborate disguises in a Day of the Jackal update, as well as Black Doves. It seems these days hitmen...

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the visionary world of veteran British filmmaker Mike Leigh, as he returns with Hard Truths - his first film in six years. Born in 1943 and raised in Salford, Leigh started his career in the theatre, before moving to TV in the 1970s, making a string of plays and films for the BBC.  Since his very first film Bleak Moments in 1971, Mike Leigh has been at the cu...

How does film and TV make time travel real? Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode take a quantum leap into the world of time travel and time loops on screen, from Back To The Future to Groundhog Day. Mark speaks to theoretical physicist Sean Carroll about how movies like Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Interstellar have handled the science of time travel - and whether it really is just the stuff...

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore how therapists have been portrayed on screen throughout cinema and television history. From the benign care of Claude Rains’ Dr Jaquith in Now, Voyager (1942), and the neuroses of Woody Allen, to the deadly Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs (1991), they survey the archetypes, the foibles, and the dramatic potential of the psychotherapist - both fictiona...

In the year that Jacques Demy’s beloved Umbrellas of Cherbourg turns 60, Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones reflect on their favourite aspects of the screen musical. According to some, we’re currently in the midst of a movie musicals revival, with Jon M Chu’s Wicked hot on the heels of Emila Perez and Joker: Folie à Deux, but will any of them match what Ellen considers to be the pinnacle of the form,...

Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner Anora is the latest in a long line of movies to use Las Vegas as a setting. So why is the desert gambling city such catnip for filmmakers? Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore Vegas on screen. Ellen speaks to author Shawn Levy about the unparalleled showbiz glamour of midcentury Las Vegas and the quintessential Rat Pack Vegas movie - Ocean’s 11. And she talks to DJ...

As November marks the TV premiere on BBC 2 of Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, as well as a season of films on the BBC and iPlayer, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the films of these two titans of British Cinema. Film and culture writer, Lilian Crawford shares with Mark why the works of Powell and Pressburger are a matter of life and death, and how the duo's technicolou...

With Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu - a remake of the 1922 adaptation of Dracula - hitting UK cinemas in the new year, Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones take a look at one of cinema's most enduring monsters, the vampire. Mark talks to friend of the show and vampire expert, Kim Newman, about the evolution of vampires over the last century. They discuss everything from Bela Lugosi’s career defining performan...

To mark the tenth anniversary of BBC sitcom Detectorists, Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones dig into archaeologists and treasure hunters on screen. Mark speaks first to stand-up comedian and actor Alexei Sayle about his small, but pivotal, role in the third Indiana Jones film The Last Crusade. Mark then talks to Italian director Alice Rohrwacher, whose recent film La Chimera is the story of a down-at...

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode look at the impact of Saturday Night Live, or SNL, as the long-running US sketch show prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Just how important is SNL in the history of American comedy? And why have we never quite understood it over here? Ellen speaks to actor and former SNL writer Paula Pell about how it felt to get a job on the show after growing up as an obse...

As The Shawshank Redemption turns 30, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore life behind bars as seen on screen, investigating how film and TV have shaped our ideas about the prison system. Why do prisons make such good settings for cinema? Ellen investigates the relationship between prison exploitation and prison reform, talking to director S Craig Zahler about his ultra-violent 2017 film Brawl I...

Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones ask if we still go to the movies to be shocked. As Caligula: The Ultimate Cut hits cinemas, Mark talks to stars of the notorious cult classic, Dame Helen Mirren and Malcolm McDowell. They discuss the film's long journey to the new version, and what it was really like on set of one of independent cinemas most controversial productions. Ellen examines what shock value...

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode take a deep ‘dive' into the world of water to mark the 40th anniversary this summer of the joyous romantic comedy Splash hitting our screens. Splash features Tom Hanks' leading man debut as he meets and falls for mermaid Daryl Hannah in New York, before they finally swim off into the sunset together. From The Little Mermaid through Miranda to The Lure, mermaids have...