Ben Hardy and Jason Patel excel in Sally El Hosaini’s gritty romance as a straight single white dad and a closet Asian nightclub performer navigate their mutual attraction

The world seems a little brighter when garage mechanic Luke (Ben Hardy) first meets drag artist Aysha (Jason Patel). Before stumbling by chance into an underground “gaysian” cabaret club, Luke, a straight single dad, plods from day to identical day in a life that seems to be painted in shades of dispiriting grey. Even his sex life – a functional, no-frills grapple with a disinterested woman in a patch of wasteland – is monochrome. But once he finds himself in Aysha’s orbit, colours flood the frame.

It’s an evocative visual leap that brings a touch of magic to this London, Essex and Manchester-set story, the latest picture from Sally El Hosaini, co-directed with long-term collaborator James Krishna Floyd (star of My Brother the Devil , and the screenwriter of this film). Here are characters with real-world problems. Luke is struggling with his rambunctious son; Aysha is living a double life, concealing her sexuality from her loving but conservative Muslim family, but there’s a shimmering fairytale romanticism that softens the harder edges of the story.

Tom Hanks is an affecting lead but the popularity of Robert Zemeckis’s much-loved Oscar-winner is still a curious mystery

In the 30 years since becoming a box-office phenomenon, en route to winning six Oscars, including best picture, director, actor and adapted screenplay, Forrest Gump has settled into the culture as a significant achievement, canonized by its induction into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry – and, to a slightly lesser extent, by the few dozen Bubba Gump Shrimp Company restaurants worldwide. Other best picture nominees may be more beloved, like The Shawshank Redemption, or influential, like Pulp Fiction, but none that captured the public imagination on quite the same scale.

And yet it’s still worth asking, after all this time: What is the deal with this movie? What is it actually trying to say?

Globe-trotting in search of picture-perfect scenes for the screen is not always as glamorous as it sounds. But to better understand these unsung heroes’ shadowy art, you first have to track them down …

The script called for a tree: a magical kind that looked like no tree on Earth. It would need to look like it had been standing for thousands of years. It would need to be in a wood full of dark twisty branches and dense canopies. It would need to seem like the place that a hardened nobleman might escape to for a moment of quiet. And Robert Boake knew just the one.

Boake had been working as a location scout in Northern Ireland for a few years, when in 2008 a producer sent him the script for the pilot episode of Game of Thrones . The producer “got me in my car exploring Ireland”, Boake explains, his excitement clear over the phone. “He said: ‘Go anywhere you want, and find me cool stuff and send it back to me.’ It was an unbelievable time of exploring and getting lost and photographing castles. There’s such an array of different looks. You’ve got Georgian stuff, Victorian stuff. You’ve got cliffs, you’ve got forests, you’ve got big open plains, big grasslands.”

The stylish garment has been sported by Austin Butler in The Bikeriders, by Little Simz on stage and even by bicycle commuters

They rule the racing track but now motocross jackets are roaring up the style charts too. Featuring patchworked leather with colourful racing insignia, motocross jackets, more commonly known as biker jackets, have become a surprising summer hit, as likely to be spotted on Lime-biking commuters as on track riders.

Last weekend at Glastonbury, Little Simz took to the Pyramid Stage in a black, red and white biker jacket emblazoned with her name. Over the four-day festival, the crowd was divided between team denim jacket and team biker.

As Hollywood grapples with production delays, locally made films are boosting the industry in countries such as Thailand and Indonesia

On social media videos, audiences throw packs of tissues around the cinema halls. Tearful TikToks from across Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore show friends leaving the cinema weeping. Thailand’s latest hit film, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, has reduced audiences across south-east Asia to tears – and broken box office records.

The film, about a university dropout who offers to care for his terminally ill grandma, hoping to inherit her house, has reportedly earned 334m Thai baht ($9.1m) at the Thai box office and become the most successful Thai film ever in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.

As Pixar’s sequel unexpectedly becomes the fastest-ever $1bn movie, and with Despicable Me 4 poised to top the box office, film-makers reveal the secrets of their successes – and why adults are the new superfans of family films

Five weeks ago, Hollywood was in the doldrums. A succession of hotly tipped blockbusters – The Fall Guy , Furiosa , IF – flopped. The mood was ominous. The last time early summer box-office takings had been so low was in 2000.

Today, considerably more cheerful records are being broken, thanks entirely to children’s films. Three weeks ago saw the release of Inside Out 2 , Pixar’s sequel to its 2015 animation about the emotions jostling for supremacy in the head of an 11-year-old girl named Riley.

House of the Dragon just made eyes pop with an erect penis – but it’s not the only show going to great lengths to challenge television’s nudity equality problem

It’s not just winter that’s coming. This week’s episode of House of the Dragon featured not one but two penises: one mid-fellatio, the other post-coital. If original fantasy epic Game of Thrones became known for “sexposition” – advancing the plot against a backdrop of bare bodies – its prequel seems to be dealing in “dicksposition”.

Just past the midway mark of episode three, as a tipsy King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) arrived at a King’s Landing brothel with his jeering entourage, he strolled past a sizeable erection in the process of receiving a blowjob. The bratty monarch didn’t seem to notice. Viewers certainly did.

The actor wore prosthetic teeth, nose and glasses to experiment with anonymity – but found queueing and a lack of adoration challenging

Immersive research into the everyday lives of normal people conducted by the actor Kevin Bacon has revealed some startling results: it’s not as good as being a celebrity.

Speaking to Vanity Fair , Bacon said he had long hankered after the anonymity of the everyman, so commissioned a prosthetics specialist to enable him to do so.

It won’t be long till everything from Drag Race to Keeping Up With the Kardashians could be written without humans – and you might be able to write yourself as the hero of a new show. But will robot TV ever be up to snuff?

Justine Bateman won’t name names, but a TV showrunner friend once came to her with a dilemma: their show’s team was well into filming its second season when a network executive had an idea. A character in the pilot hadn’t tested well with audiences, so they were just going to go in, use a little AI, and swap in someone else.

The showrunner – and Bateman, an actor and director – were understandably incensed. “When you change the beginning of something, you change the creative trajectory,” says Bateman. “There’s going to be whiplash for the viewer when they get to episode three or four because what was set up in the pilot got messed with and now doesn’t make sense.” Using AI might have seemed like a simple solution to the executive, but to the showrunner, it was catastrophic.