Jack Seale

You never know quite what sort of film you’re going to get next with director Ridley Scott, but you almost always know it’s going to be different to his previous one, and more often than not it’s going to be good. The British film-maker has been at the top of the business for nearly 50 years and now, at the incredible age of 86, he has a new film, Gladiator II, that could be one of the biggest of 2024. See below for our ranking of the best Ridley Scott films and where to stream them in the United Kingdom.

Ridley Scott came out of the gate quickly in 1977 with the critically acclaimed historical drama The Duellists, and he soon had a couple of masterpieces in the bag. His second film, Alien, is still unrivalled in the genre it helped to create: creeping, monster-driven suspense horror, set in the black void of space. If creating the classic character of Ripley weren’t enough, Scott’s next film Blade Runner, a sci-fi neo-noir, made Harrison Ford equally iconic as Rick Deckard.

Scott’s career is not without its fallow periods - he had one after Blade Runner, making a few relatively forgettable films before roaring back with Thelma & Louise, a feminist road movie that has grown to become a highly influential classic. His next big hit, probably his biggest, came nine years later in the form of Gladiator, a Roman epic with the action of a blockbuster and the tight, simple story of a claustrophobic character piece. 

The great director only became more unpredictable from there, working again with Gladiator star Russell Crowe but remoulding him as a romantic lead in the surprisingly gentle A Good Year, before pivoting into tough mobster drama with American Gangster. The Alien franchise was revisited, to decent effect if not to the standard of the stellar original, in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. 

By 2015 it seemed as if Scott’s career might finally be tailing off a little, but then he came back yet again with The Martian, starring Matt Damon as a man stranded on the Red Planet. Ambitious, witty and imaginative, it’s one of Scott’s finest blockbusters.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Scott’s most recent pictures is how talked-about they are: directors who keep going into their old age tend to churn out movies that are politely well received by their fans without making too much wider impact, but Scott still has a knack for cultural relevance. In 2021, after a long absence either side of the Covid pandemic, he delivered both the challenging period drama The Last Duel and the mischievous biopic House of Gucci, following them in 2023 with a wildly ambitious epic, Napoleon. You wouldn’t put it past him to come up with a couple more hits, and perhaps a couple more interesting duds, before he finally folds away his director’s chair.

Where to watch the best Ridley Scott movies streaming online

In the meantime there is a large back catalogue to enjoy - see below for our take on Ridley Scott’s films, ranked from best to worst, and how to stream them.

It’s one of the biggest gaps between a film and its sequel in history: Gladiator II arrives in cinemas a full 24 years after the original Gladiator, also directed by Ridley Scott, was released. That film met with huge commercial success, spawned an array of catchphrases (“At my signal, unleash hell”; “Are you not entertained?”) and, in 2001, won five Oscars. Now Scott and the Gladiator brand are back, with an audience primed for the follow-up movie having either seen the original at the time, or caught up with it via streaming. If you haven’t got up to speed yet, do so via our streaming guide, below.

Gladiator made a superstar of Australian actor Russell Crowe, who had already found success in LA Confidential and The Insider, but was put on a new level by his lead role as Maximus, a Roman general who falls foul of the emperor, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) and is enslaved, with his family murdered. Swearing vengeance, Maximus takes the opportunity he is given when he is forced to become a gladiator, fighting to the death for the entertainment of Commodus and the citizens of Rome.

The new film takes advantage of the long lag between the two films by simply moving on by one generation. Paul Mescal is Lucius, the son of Maximus, played by child actor Spencer Treat Clark in the first film. Forced into slavery and then into combat when the corrupt and violent Empire invades his home in Numidia, Lucius fights in the presence of his mother, Lucilla, and the anti-corruption politician, Senator Gracchus. Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi reprise their roles, with new cast members including Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn and Denzel Washington.

Watching Gladiator and Gladiator II in a double bill is one of the more straightforward chronological binges you’ll ever complete. There is, however, one other thing you might want to stream if you want to be a real Gladiator completist: the 2000 film was based on Those About to Die, a 1958 book by Daniel P Mannix. Although the 2024 TV dramatisation of the same book is very different to Gladiator, it does have a subplot about a slave who becomes a famous arena warrior.

A third film, Gladiator III, is said to be in development - presumably Ridley Scott, who is now 86 years old, won’t wait another 24 years to make that. In case you’re wondering, films with an even bigger gap between the original and the sequel than Gladiator include The Hustler/The Color of Money (25 years), Coming to America/Coming 2 America (33 years) and Top Gun/Top Gun: Maverick (36 years), although none of those retained the original film’s director for the follow-up movie.

Where to watch all Gladiator movies streaming online

To stream both parts of the Gladiator film franchise, see our guide below.

The V/H/S franchise first hit cinema screens in 2012 with the original V/H/S, an anthology of stand-alone short horror films all on the theme of “found footage” - characters either stumble across video tape or film it themselves, with bloody consequences. Since then it’s grown into one of modern horror’s most prolific franchises, with 2024’s V/H/S/Beyond the latest addition. Find out how to stream every V/H/S movie in the right order with our streaming guide, below.

You have a choice here: release order or in story/setting order? Every movie is pretty much independent of the others, so you could keep it simple and go with the order the films originally came out, but there are some links between them - enough to make switching it up worthwhile.

If chronological order is your preference, kick off with V/H/S/85 - a lot of the franchise’s films helpfully add the year they are set in at the end of the title - while being warned that, although good and gory, it’s a little lighter in tone than some of what you’ll see later on. After that you have two of the stronger entries in the canon to look forward to: V/H/S/94 and V/H/S/99 both benefit from the 1990s video look making them extra spooky.

That brings you back to the first film to be released, V/H/S - the most popular segment of which was called Amateur Night, about a group of dudes whose plan for an evening of secretly filmed fun in a motel room ends in bloody terror, because their female companion is not at all what she seems. Fans liked it so much that the monster, Lilith (Hannah Fierman) later got her own movie, Siren, so cue that one up next. It really… fleshes out the story.

A similar process took place with V/H/S/2 - arguably the best film in the whole binge - and its story Slumber Party Alien Abduction. That became the basis for the stand-alone, feature-length Kids vs. Aliens, so place that next in your streaming schedule.

After that you are sliding messily down the home straight in the company of V/H/S/Viral, with its framing narrative featuring footage shot on smartphones and shared on social media that drives the people who watch it insane - developing the original movie’s idea of a stack of old tapes that has sinister powers. Finish off with V/H/S/Beyond, which brings the franchise up to date by including mockumentary and faked “found footage” among its themes, while also telling classic V/H/S tales about a UFO chaser and a distinctly unethical animal rights activist. Then turn off your screen and go to sleep - if you can…

Where to watch every V/H/S movie online

See below to find out where to stream the entire V/H/S franchise in the United Kingdom.

Apartment 7A takes us back to New York in the 1960s, and to a plush old apartment building with some seriously creepy vibes. There’s a young performer’s stage career hanging in the balance, a kindly old couple whose offer of help might just come with some rather onerous conditions, and a steadily mounting sense of dread. Yes, Apartment 7A is a prequel to the 1968 psychological horror classic Rosemary’s Baby, adding to the TV and film canon spinning off from the movie. Find out how to watch the Rosemary Baby’s franchise in order with our streaming guide, below.

Although Apartment 7A is set before the events of Rosemary’s Baby, and so a chronological narrative binge would start with Natalie Erika James’s 2024 film, the aesthetic and tone of the story are very much taken from what director Roman Polanski created in 1968, so we recommend watching in order of release and beginning with Rosemary’s Baby itself. Mia Farrow is Rosemary Woodhouse, who with her aspiring actor husband Guy moves into the grand old Bamford apartment block. There, the Woodhouses are befriended by the elderly couple in a neighbouring flat - soon, Guy’s career takes off, Rosemary is pregnant and all is well. But Rosemary starts to see and hear things that make her think the devil is on her tail…

A masterpiece of tension and suggestion, the film works as a comment on the never-ending struggle for domestic perfection, the alienating physical experience of pregnancy and the way women expecting a child have to deal with all sorts of people interfering in the process - but it’s mainly just a good old-fashioned horror thriller, and viewers wanted to know what happened next. They got an answer in 1976 in the straightforwardly titled Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby.

This TV movie follows the eight-year-old, and then 20 years later, the adult version of the baby Rosemary has at the end of the first film. It is the story of someone trying, through various deathly misadventures, to escape his destiny as a child of Satan - but the coven has operatives everywhere. Ruth Gordon, who memorably played the sinister Minnie Castavet in the original, reprises her role.

Then there’s the TV remake of Rosemary’s Baby, shown across two episodes in 2014. Transplanting the story from New York to Paris and making numerous small changes, it nevertheless tells essentially the same tale: Zoe Saldana is Rosemary, who comes to suspect that something is wrong with her unborn baby, her husband (Patrick J Adams) and their new friends the Castevets (Carole Bouquet and Jason Isaacs). It’s a more overtly horror-themed, gory take.

And so to Apartment 7A. If you’ve followed our advice and recently watched the original Rosemary’s Baby, you’ll be filled with intrigued dread when you learn that Julia Garner plays a woman called Terry Gionoffrio, a minor but memorable character in the first movie. As she recovers from a nasty ankle injury and moves into a nice new flat, a new kind of terror awaits.

Where to watch every Rosemary Baby’s movie and TV show online

See below to find out where to stream the entire Rosemary’s Baby franchise in the United Kingdom.

Colin Farrell could have got by on his matinee-idol looks, churning out action movies and romantic comedies and enjoying a pleasantly lucrative cinema career. Actors like that tend to toss in the odd arthouse hit or experimental cameo role to see off accusations of typecasting. In the case of Colin Farrell, the interesting films have gradually replaced the mainstream ones, but he has a knack for starring in boundary-pushing movies that still do well at the box office. See below for our pick of the ten best Colin Farrell films, and where to stream them.

Colin Farrell’s best early work was in collaboration with the director Joel Schumacher. In Tigerland, Farrell is a man of contrasts as an anti-war protestor who is drafted to fight in Vietnam and finds, at the training camp that gives the film its name, that he is a gifted soldier and leader of men. Farrell and Schumacher reunited for Phone Booth, a high-concept thriller that relies on Farrell constantly being on screen as an adulterous man threatened by an unseen sniper. In between those, Farrell cemented his Hollywood status with a crucial supporting role in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report.

Now in the big time, Farrell took a while to find his rhythm as a proper film star: the blockbusters he appeared in during the early 2000s are hit and miss. Signs of a more interesting actor started to emerge in Oliver Stone’s historical epic Alexander, and when Farrell took a lead role in provocative romantic drama The New World, directed by arthouse legend Terrence Malick, as a colonial settler helping to establish Jamestown, Virginia. Then he shone in Michael Mann’s successful reboot of the cult TV series Miami Vice, before finding the director with whom Farrell would do his best work: Martin McDonagh.

McDonagh’s first movie was In Bruges, a fantastic thriller soaked in the blackest comedy. As a hitman riven with guilt at a job gone wrong, Farrell gives his definitive performance: funny and sexy when required, but with a dark vulnerability. Those qualities had been present before but the acclaim for In Bruges crystallised what sort of actor Farrell could be - he’s never looked back.

Collaborations with daring Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos were fruitful, notably The Lobster, in which Farrell’s alpha-male urges are curbed entirely as he plays a cuckolded man sent to a hotel where singletons are forced to pair up. Farrell also stuck with Martin McDonagh and In Bruges co-star Brendan Gleeson, scoring a huge critical hit with the deceptively simple comedy The Banshees of Inisherin, with Farrell as a naive man who cannot understand why his best friend has tired of him.

Even his superhero movies are a cut above: Colin Farrell is now starring in the TV series The Penguin, having revealed the damaged man inside the Gotham City villain in the 2022 movie The Batman.

Where to watch the best Colin Farrell movies online

As The Penguin reaches the small screen, you’ll want to stream The Batman to remind yourself of how Farrell got started in the role. For those wanting to find out where to watch the other movies on our list of Colin Farrell’s ten best, see below.