The Franklin hotel review: A hidden gem in bustling Knightsbridge

April is finally here, which means there is no time like the present to book a quick getaway somewhere in the Scottish countryside.

I am not sure the world asked for yet another take on 20th Century Fox’s Omen franchise, the constantly regurgitated series with Damien (who made the numbers 666 iconic) and company. Since the 1976 original, when Damien first appeared in the movie with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, we have had Damien: Omen II, The Final Conflict, Omen IV: The Awakening (in which a girl becomes the antichrist for the first time), the 2006 remake The Omen, and even a 2016 Damien TV series. Of course, like all these horror franchises, it is inevitable someone would come up with the idea for an origin story, and that is what we now have with The First Omen, which is, of course, not the first, just the latest. But, set in 1971, it does attempt to take us right to the doorstep of the actual first,the Richard Donner-directed 1976 starter.

A Scottish cocktail bar has been named as "one of the best bars in the world" by a leading food and drink publication.

Coming off a well-deserved first-ever Oscar nomination, Bill Nighy has a new worthwhile movie to add to his highly impressive filmography. The Beautiful Game is, on its surface, another well-worn story of a ragtag team of misfits coming together for validation not just in their football (i.e. soccer) skills but, more importantly, in their lives. And even though we have seen countless underdog stories like this one set on a playing field, we actually haven’t seen one quite like this in terms of the welcome spotlight it puts on the homeless population among us. The timing is particularly pertinent as many major cities seem to a war going on with the homeless, a complete lack of empathy toward what gets a person to this point in life and a solution for lifting them out of it.

between lizard and monkey. A creaturely collab.But “x” is also the symbol that should have been prodigiously used to cross out the script’s many, many stupid ideas.

The utterly convoluted lengths filmmakers will go to contrive some excuse to make monsters fight has become exasperating. Moreover, the unique paradox at the heart of Legendary’s Monsterverse series continues.

There is a twist with the latest offering from the now-decade-old Monsterverse, a franchise that has featured Kong and Godzilla in their own movies and then in 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong battling each other to the death. (These monsters never really die. But you knew that). The twist this time is there an even greater threat for these iconic giant creatures to each other and the world, so instead of being on opposite sides of the ring, they team up against an evil new villain, a batshit-crazy ape on steroids named Skar King, in order to save not just Hollow Earth — where most of the action takes place in a dense rainforest — but just about everyone else.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Watching “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” I realized that the movie, a standard overly busy and mediocre blockbuster with a pretty awesome wow of a clash-of-the-titans climax, was demonstrating one of the essential principles of Hollywood movie culture today. Namely: All blockbuster movies are now connected! Kong, living in the Hollow Earth, where most of the film is set (the Hollow Earth is a place I’ve never much liked the idea of, since it seems like Earth’s version of a storage basement), is supposedly the last of his kind, but he discovers a child ape who actually looks like an homage to the cuddly creature in the 1967 Japanese film “Son of Godzilla.” This kid gorilla leads Kong to a tribe of scraggly hostile apes who are living in a slave society presided over by the Skar King, an evil ape with blotchy red hair who’s as tall as Kong and wields a skeletal bone whip that looks like it was fashioned out of the spine of a sea serpent.

Aramide Tinubu There has been no shortage of television series centering the horrors of the Holocaust. Last year alone, Netflix’s “Transatlantic” depicted a group of resistors living in Marseille, and National Geographic’s “A Small Light” offered a retelling of Anne Frank’s experience through the eyes of Miep Gies, the woman who aided the Franks during their years in hiding. Though both of these series and those like them are important, Hulu‘s “We Were the Lucky Ones,” an adaptation of Georgia Hunter’s best-selling novel based on a true story, showcases something different.

This is truly terrifying.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Does “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” count as a genre unto itself, given how many plotlines in the last half-century have relied on the suitor-out-of-water supper guest as a linchpin? That trope seemed to have reached its furthest, most subversive extreme with “Get Out,” but there are still writers who are drawn to the trope of the unwelcome boyfriend without actually extending that nervous suppertime trope into, like, horror. In the play “One of the Good Ones,” which is having its world premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse, playwright Gloria Calderón Kellett (who co-created Netflix’s “One Day at a Time” reboot) treats the basic structure of the 1967 Hepburn-Tracy-Poitier film as if it’s still as sturdy as ever.

Murtada Elfadl In “The Black Garden,” Armenian French first time filmmaker Alexis Pazoumian manages to portray his ancestral homeland with such sensitivity you’d think incorrectly that he lived there most of his life. Using the framework of three years in the life of three generations of Armenian men, Pazoumian sensitively captures the political conflicts, the social milieu and the geographical terrain of a small village on the border of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The village is Talish, located in the Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh and over the years its inhabitants have seen a lot of strife.

When is a collection of dreamy, romantic, forlorn, and crestfallen moods just that and not actually much of a movie other than a series of sequences that sum up those big melancholy feelings with achingly dreamy music? Oooh, ooh! “The Greatest Hits,” filmmaker Ned Benson’s latest feature-length effort, would like to field this one. Built one too many many groan-worthy romantic clichés like the relationship breakup phrase, “it’s time to move on,” taken to an implausibly silly genre and literal level, Benson uses a flimsy neurological time travel conceit to tentatively move forward and heal his hopelessly heartbroken protagonist’s heart.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Shayda,” a breakout indie movie from Noora Niasari, and Kitty Green’s high-temperature drama “The Royal Hotel” were named best film winners at the annual SPA Awards, presented by the Screen Producers Australia association. The ceremony took place Thursday at Queensland’s Gold Coast, during the annual Screen Forever conference. The event was hosted by actor and comedian Matt Okine. Production company Werner Film, which this week announced its acquisition by the BBC, took three awards including the coveted Media Super Production Business of the year prize. “It’s clear that our production community continues to thrive in the face of a rapidly changing landscape.

Bargain Hunt viewers were gobsmacked to see a pair of contestants uncover a valuable hidden gem during an antiques hunt that doubled their money.The duo made a whopping profit on the item, leaving even antiques expert Raj Bisram in shock at their luck in picking up such a great deal during their challenge. Contestants Nathalie and Karl made up the episode's red team, where they went up against blue team duo Adam and Jemma.The show's antiques experts asked the red team to find a profitable fashion accessory and the blue team to search for a valuable item on a Chinese theme.

Guy Lodge Film Critic An assortment of familiar life-as-sport metaphors get a healthy workout in “The Beautiful Game,” a story of underdog athletes for whom winning may not be everything, though it’s a welcome distraction from greater obstacles. For many viewers, Thea Sharrock‘s cheery Netflix entertainment may serve as an introduction to the real-life event on which it’s based: the Homeless World Cup, an annual soccer tournament bringing together displaced or dispossessed players from nearly 50 countries, playing not merely for a trophy but for a second shot at life.

Whether or not the climate activists who interrupted a critics preview of Broadway’s An Enemy of the People last week persuasively made their “water’s coming for us all” message isn’t for me to say, but I will note that the disruption spoke very well for this production.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Music has an almost magical way of transporting us back to the moment in our lives when we heard it: the pop song that underscored your first kiss, the one that played at your graduation and so on. In mopey, dopey YA weepie “The Greatest Hits,” writer-director Ned Benson takes that idea as literally as possible, treating specific tunes as triggers that launch Harriet (Lucy Boynton) back into her past, blowing her away — like that seated guy in the classic Maxell campaign — into the tragic former relationship with hunky Max (square-jawed future Superman, David Corenswet), who died in a car crash.

To say The Notebook had a devoted, built-in audience before it sang so much as a note on Broadway would be an understatement this romantic tear-jerker never attempts.

Ned Benson‘s The Greatest Hits is a poignant exploration of grief, memory and the transformative power of music, marking his foray into magical realism. At its core, this film, brought to life by a vibrant cast including Lucy Boynton, David Corenswet, Retta, Justin H. Min and Austin Crute that delves deep into the psychological intricacies of mourning and the painstaking journey toward healing and acceptance.