Film

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.)

Halfway Through 2026

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The Love That Remains

To list favorite films and albums at a year’s midpoint is to assess what I’ve consumed and what’s sticking; it’s also a speculative game of sorts—which titles will remain near the top of my eventual year-end lists?

Since prestige films both big and small tend to surface during the year’s last quarter (i.e. Awards Season), this is somewhat a lopsided exercise. Occasionally, I’ve seen my top film early in the year (Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of The World, Quo Vadis, Aida?); four films I listed at last year’s midpoint made it into my year-end top ten. Half of the 2026 releases below were seen at IFF Boston in April plus two more at that organization’s Fall Focus last October (The Love That Remains, Sound of Falling). Silent Friend also played the latter but even a recent viewing in one of the Coolidge’s smallest theaters didn’t diminish its impact for me. That leaves surprise hit (by indie standards, anyway) Pillion and Nadav Lapid’s hilarious and incendiary Yes, which I just watched and may write about at another date.

As release schedules go, albums are more luck-of-the-draw situations. At last year’s midpoint, I had already heard what would end up my year-end number one (Doves’ Constellations For The Lonely) and very much expected it to end up in that place (or close to it). Still, most of my other midyear selections ended up honorable mentions outside the top ten, so you never know. Six months in, 2026 seems pretty average for new albums; most of what’s included below are the latest efforts from artists I already love—many of them good (Gonzalez, Ware, Parks, Robyn) rather than great (the Orton just came out but I’m already feeling strongly about it.) I need to spend more time with Lu’s first release in seven years and Harding’s latest, but the key is I want to keep listening to them. The closest to a standout here is the second album from Brit RAYE (and its irresistible single “Where Is My Husband!”), which positively gives off Janelle Monae-circa-The ArchAndroid-theater-kid–vibes minus the sci-fi pretensions. With new releases to come from beabadoobee, Nicole Atkins, The Tubs, Carly Rae Jepsen and more, as usual, we’ll see where things measure up in another six months.

Favorite Films of 2026 so far (alphabetical by title):

  • Blue Heron
  • Cookie Queens
  • I Love Boosters
  • The Invite
  • The Love That Remains
  • Pillion
  • Remake
  • Silent Friend
  • Sound of Falling
  • Yes

Favorite Albums of 2026 so far (alphabetical by artist):

  • Aldous Harding, Train On The Island
  • Arlo Parks, Ambiguous Desire
  • Beth Orton, The Ground Above
  • Boards of Canada, Inferno
  • Jessie Ware, Superbloom
  • Jose Gonzalez, Against The Dying Of The Light
  • Kelsey Lu, So Help Me God
  • RAYE, This Music May Contain Hope.
  • Robyn, Sexistential
  • Tori Amos, In Times of Dragons

Top Ten Films: 1980

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My Top Ten Films of 1980:

  1. The Shining
  2. Melvin and Howard
  3. Airplane!
  4. 9 to 5
  5. The Elephant Man
  6. Raging Bull
  7. Grown-Ups
  8. Atlantic City
  9. Babylon
  10. Pixote

Honorable Mentions: Altered States. American Gigolo, Dressed to Kill, The Empire Strikes Back, The Fog, Ordinary People, Popeye, Private Benjamin, Times Square

For My Watchlist: Bad Timing, Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Long Good Friday, Permanent Vacation, Used Cars 

*

I’ve previously written about 1980 as an exceptional year for some fascinatingly bad movies (and television); in that context, the good stuff from this era feels almost miraculous. Even during such a confused, in-between period, studios were still capable of great art amongst dreck like Neil Diamond’s ill-advised remake of The Jazz Singer.

My top three titles above are all worthy of the number one slot. I ultimately went with my favorite Stanley Kubrick film, an idiosyncratic adaptation of Stephen King’s novel that at least seems completely devoid of studio tampering (save for the deleted coda/ending.) For this reason, perhaps, it’s one of the most inexplicable films ever made (although the subjects of documentary Room 237 will argue otherwise.) It courses with baffling choices (um. the painting in Scatman Crothers’ bedroom!); one certainly notices but inevitably accepts them since this entire world is wired so weirdly.

Although I haven’t seen Melvin and Howard in some time, this parable of average Americana altered by an extraordinary crossing of paths remains my favorite non-concert Jonathan Demme film for its warm, generous humor (not to mention Mary Steenburgen’s deserved, Oscar-winning breakthrough.) I also have no qualms putting Airplane! at top—it’s fiercely committed to the point where it locates the sublime within the silly at a hit rate that puts nearly all of its imitators to shame.

9 to 5 is nearly as hilarious a comedy even if little in it touches the let’s-off-the-boss dream sequences (though Lily Tomlin’s reading of the line, “That’s right, I’m a doctor… so why the hell am I talking to you? Piss off!” is of the same caliber.) On the other end of the tonal spectrum, The Elephant Man, which I hated after a high school class viewing, was revelatory on a rewatch a little over a decade later. Anyone who dismisses David Lynch as incapable of tenderness or sincerity should watch it (along with Mulholland Drive and the first season of Twin Peaks.)

The rest of my top ten is quite the assortment from Scorsese’s anti-hero biopic (decades before that actually became a thing) and Pixote’s astonishingly candid study of child criminals to Atlantic City’s intimate character study and Grown-Ups’ acidic take on young marrieds (see the latter for a delightfully, incomparably unhinged Brenda Blethyn.) A first-time watch last year, Babylon is a vital time capsule of an ultra-specific culture (Jamaican immigrants in London) that remains ever-relevant in how it examines racism from various angles.

My honorable mentions contain what is likely to be the only Star Wars film on these lists as well as one of the few John Carpenter flicks. Roberrt Altman’s looney Popeye remains a sentimental fave, its inclusion justified by its weirdness (rivaling that of The Shining, only as an intentional comedy). Once generally regarded as a written-off bomb, Times Square is increasingly ripe for rediscovery for serving as both another time capsule and slightly ahead of its time (I’d like to think young Madonna was watching and taking notes) and also for the amazing Robin Johnson, a proto-Natasha Lyonne.

For me, Used Cars is something of a great white whale. As an admirer of other early Zemeckis films, it’s been on my watchlist forever. It also rarely seems to be streaming anywhere but I’ll try to see it, soon. Bad Timing is currently on Criterion, but I may have to get over my slight aversion to Art Garfunkel-as-actor (picked up since not being fully convinced by Carnal Knowledge.) Bob Hoskins and Sissy Spacek are primary reasons for wanting to check out the films they star in; as for Jim Jarmusch’s first feature, is it worth seeing or juvenilia like Sean Baker’s first feature Four Letter Words?

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.