Film Reviews

2026 Movie Review Capsules, #3

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Another ten 2026 released films, roughly in order of preference from best to worst, all of them streamed at home apart from Backrooms and Sheep In The Box, the latter with a brief in-person intro from Kore-eda himself.

Omaha

Not one minute wasted in this impressive, well-constructed debut feature. The reliable John Magaro is outstanding here and this makes one want to gift him Josh O’Connor-level ubiquity.

Dead Man’s Wire

Solid for-hire work from Van Sant recreating a time and place (Indianapolis, 1977) with pinpoint accuracy. I just wish they hadn’t shown archival footage of the real guys at the end for Skarsgard and Montgomery are just too pretty in comparison, exceptional as the former’s performance may be (Elwes’ gruff, grizzled cop is far more believable.)

The President’s Cake

Revives the tradition of kids having to complete ridiculous tasks in an adult world going back to Kiarostami and further still to The 400 Blows. Looking forward to more from this director (and more Iraqi cinema in general.)

Magellan

What better way to celebrate the 250th birthday of my home country than with this damnation of colonialism as I did? One of the more visually striking and composed films I’ve seen of late, and I can only imagine its impact doubling when viewed in a cinema.

Backrooms

Deeply unnerving more than explicitly horrific and at times, better for that. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve are both essential to this film’s surprise success although the suitably eerie production design (is this how Gen Z perceives the aesthetics of my high school years?) contributes just as much.

Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story

Sex-positive pioneer Byrd is a national treasure which makes this hard to fault for being essentially a hagiography. Still, the excess of archival footage is a reminder that we need more documentaries about cable access TV before memories of it completely ebb from our collective consciousness.

Sheep In The Box

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s inessential but pleasant sci-fi/AI fable is perhaps the highest concept he’s forged since After Life but he doesn’t do enough with it, utilizing it as a catalyst for a family drama without fully realizing its potential. If the story overall lacks urgency (or coherence), at least his directorial prowess makes this an engaging watch. The production design’s nearly as striking as, say, Almodovar’s (though more Japanese, obv.) and the references to The Little Prince lending the film its title are thoughtful. Also, as the father, Daigo Yamamoto exhibits just the right blend of pragmatism, snark and genuine feeling.

Project Hail Mary

What a peculiar mashup of 2001: A Space Odyssey and E.T. Makes smart use of Ryan Gosling for his comedic talents and also of Sandra Huller for her nimble gravitas. Rocky proves a tad too much of a good thing as the film wears on. Mostly deserving of its success even though it’s clearly Made For Schoolchildren (to quote a phrase an old friend often used in his film criticism.)

Andre Is An Idiot

Sincere if somewhat banal but its candidness in talking about death and dying is admirable. Can we please get Jason Mantzoukas to play him in the biopic?

She’s The He!

Raunchy teen sex comedies just aren’t for me but co-lead Misha Osherovich has some potential—hook them up with Jane Schoenbrun (or any good director, really.)

2026 Movie Capsule Reviews, #2

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Reviews for ten more 2026 released films, roughly in order of preference from best to worst (though there are no masterpieces or any real duds.)

Blue Film

Between this and his cameo nervously copping a feel (!) in Martha Coolidge’s Not a Pretty Picture fifty years ago, Reed Birney’s had quite the career. On the basis of his work here, Kieron Moore should have a notable one as well. A nuanced, thoughtful film regarding sex and identity and we can never have enough of those.

Fantasy Life

A solid feature debut from actor/director Matthew Shear with excellent work from Amanda Peet, playing a washed-up actress with wisdom and familiarity. Also, it’s the rare affluent NYC film that nakedly acknowledges its characters’ privilege rather than treating it as a given. If that’s not enough, Bob Balaban plays an asshole and does so with much of the finesse of his stock meek beta-males.

Yes

Presenting a crazy and cruel world where it’s okay to laugh at the insanity and simultaneously feel utterly conflicted about doing so. Nadav Lapid really Goes For It here, but he comes out the other side in an earned state of redemptive catharsis, maybe even some enlightenment. Who’s up for making an American equivalent of this about the state and culture of its dubious government?

Mr. Nobody Against Putin

One person can’t necessarily change the world, but they can make enough of an impact to encourage others to support them. Where the film makes its impact is in showing how the personal is political. Not sure I would’ve given this the best documentary feature Oscar, but I’m not mad it won.

The Ozu Diaries

The literal diaries actually elevate this beyond your standard narrated/talking heads/film clips documentary overview; it also helps that the calm, measured style is like a cousin to Ozu’s own.

Islands

“Some of them want to use you, Some of them want to get used by you.” Annie Lennox may have sung these words 40+ years ago, but they’re forever relevant. Here, the used is an ex-pat tennis instructor in the Canary Islands and the users are a wealthy vacationing couple, or is it the other way around? Little here resembles director Jan-Ole Gerster’s earlier character study A Coffee In Berlin but this understated Hitchcockian thriller shows he’s not a one-trick pony.

Disclosure Day

Notable for Spielberg attempting to capture the magic of Close Encounters and E.T. and very nearly getting there at the end, even if it means a lengthy buildup that occasionally relies on too much spectacle and not enough exposition. Also, I’ve rarely liked Emily Blunt more. Colman Domingo’s in every single film now and that isn’t a complaint.

OBEX

As with Computer Chess, it’s a kick to see (even with the sci-fi elements on display) the 1980s closer to what they actually were (darker apartments, analog equipment) than the usual neon color-accented redo. Was hoping for something more novel than the immersive video game it becomes from director/star Albert Birney (Reed’s nephew!); still, I couldn’t argue with the final takeaway which confirms the value of getting out of the house once in a while.

The Stranger

Not fully convinced of the necessity of Ozon’s Camus adaptation which too often veers towards the aesthetics of those pretentious Calvin Klein Eternity ads; I wasn’t too keen on Voisin either until he revealed the long game he played with his performance in that alarming, purgative moment near the end.

Stop! That! Train!

Almost grudgingly giving this purposely silly RuPaul-meets-Airplane! thing a pass because it’s fun, the cast is superb and it’s slightly better than The Bitch Who Stole Christmas (if not by much; same screenwriters after all.)

Silent Friend

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I love cities and have never not lived in one; however, reasonable proximity to a botanical garden, natural reserve or even a leafy neighborhood park is essential. To spend an hour or the better part of an afternoon soundtracked by birdsong and surrounded by a spacious weeping willow or paths lined with flowers and other plants is a serene, near-meditative reminder of a planet populated by species other than us dominating mammals.

I suspect Hungarian writer/director Ildikó Enyedi had this in mind when she conceived of Silent Friend. Its main “character” is a voluminous ginkgo tree in a garden in the University town of Marburg, Germany—a constant presence across three time periods. The first follows visiting Hong Kong neurologist Tony Wong (In The Mood For Love’s Tony Leung in his first European film) who’s stranded on campus during COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. The second centers on Grete (Luna Wedler) whom in 1908 becomes the first female student accepted to the University. Set in 1972, the third story features Hannes (Enzo Brumm), a young male student from a rural background. Introduced in this order, the three narratives soon overlap, their narratives eventually bouncing off each other, often in obvious ways (the settings), occasionally only gradually surfacing (all three characters come off as likable misfits in terms of how others perceive them.)

While all three form attachments to the ginkgo tree, the common motivator extends more to how plant life transforms their understanding of their world. Wong, whose research involves tracking newborn brain activity via a digital scanner, is moved to perform a similar experiment on the gingko tree with assistance via Zoom from French botanist Alice Sauvage (Lea Seydoux); this is much to the bewilderment of the only other person on campus, janitor Anton (Sylvester Groth). Grete, who faces sexism at nearly every turn due to her pioneering presence at the university, finds solace in studying botany before stumbling into an apprenticeship as a photographer’s assistant where she soon combines her two budding (so to speak) interests. Hannes befriends a female classmate, Gundula (Marlene Burow), who, like Wong, tracks the development and behavior of plant life (in this case, a sole geranium’s activity recorded via an analog printer.) Hannes steps in for her when she leaves town for a long camping trip and also has a breakthrough from attending to the plant (his actions mostly scoffed at by his male, would-be-radicals classmates.) 

At two-and-a-half hours, Silent Friend is slow cinema in the most palatable sense: immersive, thoughtful, deliberate and occasionally surprising (I’ve surely never been so invested in a geranium’s well-being before.) The digital scans in Wong’s narrative first serve as a transition to the beginning of Grete’s story; then, they become a motif: gorgeous, hypnotic, swirling strands of color adding texture, working in tandem with the film’s soothing electronic score. It requires patience—in particular, the Hannes sections, which feel somewhat less profound than the other two until Gundula leaves town and Hannes more or less finds himself. Rather than escalate each narrative to a conclusive, triumphant end, Enyedi cumulatively arrives at something more metaphysical and resounding—a connection between us and the natural world that, if so inclined, carries an emotional charge and perhaps a spiritual one as well. Not for nothing is Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants a key text utilized here.

IFFBoston 2026: The Invite

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Any resemblance between The Invite and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is not coincidental. From a screenplay written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones and directed by and starring Olivia Wilde as Martha surrogate Angela, it is almost entirely set in her and Joe’s (Seth Rogen) San Francisco apartment.  One night, Joe returns from his job as a music teacher to learn that Angela has invited a neighboring couple, Pína (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) over to dinner within the next hour. Their bickering-cum-full-out-arguing hits a wild crescendo just as the doorbell rings announcing Pína and Hawk’s arrival.

While it roughly follows the trajectory of Mike Nichols’ classic film of the Edward Albee play, this is not a remake of it (actually, it’s a remake of the Spanish film The People Upstairs.) For one thing, despite the earlier film’s gallows humor, The Invite is unashamedly hilarious (the words “screwball cringe” came to mind early on) with its rat-a-tat-tat dialogue, one-liners and sight gags (Rogen struggling to bike up the city’s infamously hilly streets is a highlight of the latter.) It’s not long before sex-therapist Pína and ex-firefighter Hawk feel like near-kindred spirits to Angela and Joe, especially in their own neuroses. All four actors are a delight to watch with a reminder of still-otherworldly Cruz’s often obscured talent for comedy.

As the night lingers on, events become more outrageous before the film pulls back for pathos and some catharsis. The shifting tone is handled elegantly even as it slows the built-up momentum to a crawl. As for Wilde, this makes the misguided Don’t Worry Darling feel like an aberration in her filmmaking career. While more fun than profound, The Invite is worth sitting through to arrive at an affecting if ambiguous détente of a conclusion between two of its four characters.

IFFBoston 2026: Blue Heron

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“Write what you know” has become a cliché but it’s still valuable advice for anyone telling a story no matter how fantastical or accurately reflective of one’s own experience. At IFFBoston this year, I saw at least two features falling under this category: Romeria and Blue Heron. Both begin steeped in realism before unexpectedly shifting into dream sequences. The former imagines a meeting between the main character and her parents from before her birth; the latter, however, presents something more complex, using a sort of psychodrama to reinterpret a defining incident from one’s past.

In Blue Heron, filmmaker Sophy Romvari’s 1990s childhood comes to life in the form of a Hungarian family settling into a new home on Vancouver Island. Her surrogate, Sasha (Eylul Guven) is the youngest of four children and the only one to be born in Canada. Her oldest brother, Jeremy (Erik Beddoes) blatantly doesn’t resemble any of his siblings, much less his parents (his actual father was someone whom his mother previously dated; he didn’t have any involvement in raising him.) As the rest of the family studiously works on assimilating into this new environment, Jeremy acts out. At first, his behavior is that of your average frustrated teen (moody, argumentative). Then, it escalates. He gets caught shoplifting. He climbs on his home’s roof, refusing to come down. He smashes his hand through a window. He refuses to communicate, at all. His family becomes worried for his safety, and also their own.

The shift from a near-neorealism to a far more dreamlike scenario occurs when Sasha as an adult (played by Amy Zimmer) appears and attempts piecing together the decisive actions her parents took to deal with Jeremy. I don’t want to spoil exactly what happens, for it unfolds as an act of discovery but also one of analysis, sifting through facts to arrive at some conclusion even if it’s a subjective truth. Romvari paints as an impressionist, dotting her frames with cultural signifiers both shared (pop songs, ambient sounds, suburban talismans such as freshly cut grass) and singular (the elaborate fake maps Jeremy draws which are actual ones from Romvari’s own brother.) As a filmmaker/storyteller, Romvari fully grasps the slipperiness of memory. Following a series of acclaimed shorts, Blue Heron is a remarkable first feature due to such an understanding and her ingenuity in expressing it.

IFFBoston 2026: Romería

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In 2004, 18-year-old orphan Marina (Llúcia Garcia) visits the port city of Vigo, Spain. She’s meeting with her paternal grandparents to obtain a notarized signature for her to be recognized on her father’s death certificate so that she can attend university. Until now, she’s never met any of her blood relatives. They seem eager and welcoming to her—perhaps overly so as her grandparents want to shower her with money out of guilt or maybe as encouragement for her to keep silent about what little she knows of her parents, along with scattered clues she picks up on from her similarly-aged cousin Nuno (the single-monikered Mitch).

She gradually pieces together a version of what happened between her parents that varies slightly from what she’s officially told. Then, the film shifts into magical realism at the initially casual appearance of a stray cat, an impetus for Marina and the audience to discover the truth, or at least a version of it (maybe Marina’s idealized one?). As with previous feature Alcarràs, director Carla Simón has a keen eye for composition and framing naturally beautiful landscapes with more depth than your average pretty picture. Despite that, Romería is pleasant but sometimes dramatically static until that shift in the third act. Apparently based on Simón’s own experiences, it didn’t entirely express the urgency of why it was being told or how it may have shaped her adulthood and career. However, the post-cat material nearly saved it; I would not have minded seeing an entire feature (or at least a short) squarely focused on that story.

IFFBoston 2026: Remake

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Given our current tendency to document just about everything (especially ourselves) with our smartphones, will younger and future generations retain a seemingly infinite treasure trove of recorded media to reference, look back on and cultivate into living histories? Or will the ephemeralness, marginality, and sheer excess of it all render much of it forgotten detritus, lost to time, not anything worth sifting through and (re)discovering?

North Carolina born, Boston based Ross McElwee wasn’t the first filmmaker to conceive of documentary as memoir but his landmark first feature Sherman’s March (1986) suggested a manifesto of possibilities. Without the access and options we have today, he’d simply film himself and others with his 16mm or video camera and provide commentary. His mild southern accent and droll, self-deprecating humor were endearing identifiers as he tracked the titular Civil War route; in a parallel narrative, family and friends set up the still-single-in-his-mid-30s Ross with an array of (often questionable) female suitors. A surprise hit, McElwee followed it with a series of check-ins where he continued recording his life as seen through the prism of marriage and fatherhood (Time Indefinite, 1993) and as a middle-aged man parsing his family’s ancestral connection to the tobacco industry (Bright Leaves, 2003).

“I used to be a filmmaker” are his initial words spoken in Remake, his first feature in about 15 years. During that time, McElwee got divorced and remarried but the real focus is on his son, Adrian, whom in his mid-20s died of a drug overdose about a decade ago. Given his tendency to film himself and his family, McElwee has that treasure trove of footage; here, he includes it discriminately, often cutting from footage of himself and/or Adrian from one point in time to another to make sense of such life and loss. As a result, it almost resembles McElwee’s own version of Michael Apted’s Up series, which checks in on a dozen subjects every seven years with each subsequent film in the series incorporating previous footage to exhibit growth and change over a lifetime. Like Apted, McElwee has a knack for making connections and earning an emotional charge from viewing the same person at different life phases.

Remake has its own dual narrative. McElwee began work on it when a producer contacted him to buy the rights to turn Sherman’s March into a fictional feature, the process of which he intended to document, perhaps as a bonus feature. Naturally, this premise foregrounds McElwee’s sly humor as we see the adaptation-in-progress shuffle through many, many iterations (where it finally ends up is too good to spoil.) Putting everything aside after Adrian’s death, McElwee eventually resumed the project but with a different focus. Working through his grief and considering the events leading up to this tragedy, the adaptation material serves as a tonic of sorts while also expounding on the idea of remaking a life out of memories and archival footage.

While not as definitive as Sherman’s March, Remake could be the other primary bookend of McElwee’s career if it ends up his last feature. Incorporating Adrian’s own footage (he was also an aspiring filmmaker), drawings, animations and even some of his musical contributions to the soundtrack, McElwee’s rarely been this formally adventurous in his own aesthetic. Not all of it works (time-lapse sequences, Ross?), but what resonates is an impetus to firmly exist in and make sense of the present no matter how much the past informs or haunts it.

IFFBoston 2026: Rose of Nevada

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Having directed features since the early 2000’s, Mark Jenkin wasn’t on my radar until Enys Men (2022), which earned scattered raves (particularly from UK-based critics). Upon viewing it a year later, I appreciated the cinematography, editing and sound design, but couldn’t parse what the experimental narrative was attempting to achieve, and didn’t glean much meaning or feeling from it in the end.

I was hoping this follow-up would build on such promise, but Rose of Nevada is frustratingly more of the same. I’ve concluded that as an artist, Jenkins is a master technician—his compositions remain striking, the immersive, intricate sound design provides momentum and the often chaotic editing gives at least the impression that something exciting is happening.

Unfortunately, his approach to narrative remains fragmented (not necessarily bad in itself) and curiously remote and cold (a big problem). Without Jenkin offering much of an invitation to connect, I became a little bored, making snarky comments to myself such as “Hey, it’s Edgar Winter!” at the first sight of ancient Mrs. Richard with her long, straight white hair. George Mackay is serviceable with what he’s given (and a sight gag centered on him early on is a rare moment of actual physical humor), but I don’t recall anything about Callum Turner other than his abrupt act of violence at Mackay late in the film.

It’s especially disappointing given that Jenkin potentially has the skills to become a beloved weirdo auteur like Peter Strickland but films, no matter how challenging, must give audiences a reason to care about what’s going on.

IFFBoston 2026: I Want Your Sex

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Once renowned for his guerilla-style New Queer Cinema flicks (such as 1992’s The Living End), filmmaker Gregg Araki shifted to something more mature and earnest with Mysterious Skin (2005), still his best in my opinion. Since then, where he’d go next has been more difficult to foresee. Consider Smiley Face (2007), a loveably stoopid stoner comedy starring Anna Faris, or Kaboom! (2010), almost a Millennial update of his 90s work.

His first feature since the far more serious White Bird In a Blizzard (2014) fully resembles an Araki picture but it really has no logical precedent in his filmography. It is his wackiest comedy since Smiley Face, but it also borrows liberally from the structure of Sunset Boulevard as it begins near the end and flashes back to how just-out-of-college Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) scores a job as an assistant to Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), a boundary-pushing visual artist whose risqué outfits, outrageous installations and over-the-top sexual forwardness faintly resemble Truth Or Dare-era Madonna. That she’s grooming Elliot from the start is obvious long before they begin a BDSM relationship (with Erika the Dom, naturally) that’s only clandestine on the surface; Elliot’s flamboyant co-worker, Zap (a funny, feline-esque Mason Gooding) suspects as much right away, given Erika’s torrid history with past assistants.

The film works because of its leads. Wilde is a near-revelation after a few years spent primarily behind the camera, clearly relishing the opportunity to play such a juicy part; her knack for comedic timing and commanding the screen has rarely gone this hard. Hoffman’s also developed as a performer since his debut in Licorice Pizza—of course he resembles his father but one may not necessarily make that connection without knowledge of it. If there’s a problem here (besides not including the classic George Michael tune of the same title on the soundtrack), it’s that Araki and co-screenwriter Karley Sciortino have little new to say about how titillating and ultimately empty modern art can seem. Without the twisted, misguided but palpable spark igniting between Erika and Elliot, I Want Your Sex might have ended up as fatuous as the scene it satirizes.

IFFBoston 2026: Cookie Queens

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I’d be hesitant to trust anyone who doesn’t like Girl Scout Cookies, so I understand its mass appeal as a documentary subject; my expectations, however, were moderate at best. Would there be enough story and dramatic weight to sustain an entire feature about four girls from different backgrounds selling Thin Mints, Trefoils and Peanut Butter Patties over one season?

Happily, Cookie Queens is as charming as one could hope and far deeper than one might expect. Director Alysa Nahmias deploys the tried-and-true formula pioneered by spelling bee documentary Spellbound over twenty years ago, cutting back and forth between a few primary subjects all working on a common task. Where this film varies is that they’re not necessarily competing against each other; instead, each subject has a personal goal in terms of how much they will sell. For precocious overachiever Olive (age 12), it’s 5,000 boxes (which she continues to increase as she sells that amount and more.) Little Ara (age 5), on the other hand, sets a more realistic goal (for her) of 45 boxes. Nikki (age 9) and her much older sisters all want to sell enough to earn money for the three of them to travel to Europe. Meanwhile, Shannon Elizabeth (age 8) just wants to sell enough to attend summer camp but has limited resources to do so compared to some of the other girls.

As these four narratives develop, they touch upon themes of sisterhood (Nikki), societal (and self) pressure (Olive), economic hardship (Shannon Elizabeth) and health-related issues (Ara). With each subject, Nahmias also focuses on both the various day-to-day struggles and often transformative wonder of simply being a kid. One roots for each of them because one comes to understand their hopes and fears via their backgrounds, environments and personalities. Crowd pleasing films occasionally get a bad rap for viewing everything through rose-tinted lenses; with humaneness and some nuance, Nahmias pinpoints unexpected substance in her subjects along with ample heart.