I firmly believe that we should judge art based on what it is trying to do rather than what we want it to be. That is how we get this deluge of shallow, soulless art like the latest MCU films and Star Wars properties. Instead of having a singular vision, these properties are trying to be content that appeals to everyone. That is not art.

A Michael Jackson movie, admittedly, is hard to judge in that manner. It is nearly impossible to separate the art from the artist, or to go into a biopic clouded by so much controversy surrounding its main character. Regardless of your feelings about Michael Jackson, of which the internet seems to have plenty, my goal is always to engage with the art presented to us based on what it is trying to achieve rather than what I, or anyone else, may demand of it.

All that said, Michael is a travesty. If you are in the camp that believes Michael Jackson is innocent and has been unfairly maligned by the media, or if you are someone repulsed by the fact that a movie would even be made about an alleged pedophile, I can assure you it does not matter, because this film is made for no one.

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Taking place from the very start of Michael’s career to the final moments of the Victory Tour, conveniently avoiding the period when the accusations came to light, Michael is a superficial and shallow look at a person who, by all accounts, is both monumental and controversial. Given that, the only word I can use to describe this half-biopic, half-concert film is boring.

With so much to mine, the film is only comfortable painting in the broadest strokes. Wasting a truly impeccable performance by Jaafar Jackson, who completely and utterly transforms into Michael Jackson, Michael feels more like a shameless PR exercise than anything else. This obvious and uninspiring point of view paints Michael as a saint, his father as the devil, and refuses to peel back any layers or show us anything new.

The two-hour film is paced like a series of vignettes. There is no rhythm, something the King of Pop was so well known for, and the same tired conflict plays out over and over again, resulting in absolutely zero tension or drama in a film so dead set on painting Michael in a positive light. This defensive posture robs the film of saying anything at all, even as it seems desperate to say one very specific thing that is ultimately unearned.

Jaafar Jackson is great, but he cannot carry a film that feels made by committee, filled with compromises and too scared to say anything of substance. No doubt you will enjoy the music, but that is in no part the result of the film. They were simply lucky enough that Michael Jackson really was a musical genius, and the movie has every excuse to showcase his music.

Except even the music feels soulless. As much as Jaafar Jackson embodies Michael Jackson, it feels like a perfectly uncanny copycat because there is no depth to the character. At two points in the film, we see Michael spending time with ill patients in a hospital, as if the film is scared to show the audience anything remotely challenging about him. And the film is ruled by that fear. Even Colman Domingo, as the torturous patriarch Joe Jackson, is given nothing to work with. He is abusive and single-minded, with no complexity. The film revels in telling you how to feel without ever showing you—a true cardinal sin of filmmaking.

It is not even worth mentioning the other actors, who somehow manage to make almost no impression despite the film’s long runtime and its focus on the entire Jackson family, except Janet, who apparently refused to be portrayed in the film. This production was troubled. Apparently, an entire third act was excised when they realized that the settlement connected to the first child sexual assault allegations meant none of that could be portrayed on screen by the Jackson estate, and Diana Ross’s character is so obviously missing from major moments in the film. These absences are felt, though I have little faith that a more compelling version ever really existed here.

There is a moment when Jaafar Jackson, as Michael, is pulling together the iconic “Thriller” music video. He asks the director to pull the camera back and make sure everyone’s legs are captured, wisely suggesting that the special sauce is the dancing and that it needs to be seen. It is an astute observation, a good enough moment to leave in the film, and advice that Antoine Fuqua apparently never thought to implement. For all the musical recreations we see, not one captures the magic of an MJ music video or performance, instead relying on wild cuts that lack rhythm or momentum.

This film fails to capture what made Michael special, what made him controversial, or anything about the biggest pop star’s personal and private demons. If you have written Michael off, you have nothing to gain here, and if you still call yourself a Michael Jackson fan, you will not find much to enjoy either.

Despite all this, Michael is poised to be a success, likely bringing in over $100 million domestic this weekend and an even larger haul internationally. It is a shame, really. Michael, in a more deft filmmaker’s hands—I am looking at you, Spike Lee—could have, at the very least, been interesting. It could have been a commentary on his abusive childhood, its impact in his adult years, and the incentives that have made it nearly impossible to come to any agreement on who, or what, Michael Jackson really was. But there I go again, breaking my own rules. Judging this film on its own merits, it is a hard pass for fans, critics, and everyone in between.

I’ll confess I found this review a chore to write. Faces of Death has the makings of an interesting film, but this reimagining has soured even further since my initial tepid response.

I’ll start with the good. Barbie Ferreira and Dacre Montgomery are giving a rough script more than it deserves. Dacre is perfectly unhinged, clearly inspired by many famous serial killers seen on screen before him. As a social media serial killer, this is an interesting dynamic that he leans into 110%. Of course, we see glimpses of Hannibal Lecter and John Wayne Gacy—this is a terminally online psychopath taking inspiration from the most obvious of places. It’s a great modern homage to these enduring characters. And Barbie Ferreira eats up every scene, even if her character is startlingly underdeveloped. But there I go. It’s hard to stay with the good. Before this goes off the rails, I want to call out Gavin Brivik’s great retro-inspired synth score, which feels right out of a Cronenberg film. This score is flawless and deserves a better movie. It almost feels like it was made for a different version of this film—one with a more singular vision, and one that is less a hodgepodge of interesting questions met with uninteresting answers.

There is one scene that gave me hope the film was turning a corner and about to lock in. Ferreira and Montgomery are on each other’s tails, but Montgomery is one step ahead. In the film’s most tense scene, he breaks into her apartment and captures her. Montgomery gives the performance such physicality, perfectly captured in these long shots as he stalks his prey, complemented by Brivik’s masterful score—I was thrilled. This felt like the talent I knew was behind this film. Goldhaber’s last film, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, was so good it is the sole reason I was even excited for his Faces of Death take.

Unfortunately, none of the rest of the film manages to hit those highs. This film commits the cardinal sin of thriller and horror films: characters who behave so unrealistically that it completely removes the tension. All films require some suspension of disbelief, but Faces of Death demands far too much. The coincidences and the choices all feel laughable, reminding you over and over again that you are watching a movie and stopping you from getting pulled in. It diminishes the whole experience.

So what’s left when the characters behave like plot devices instead of people? I am not sure. This film has an interesting meta-premise that appears to lack any confidence in what it is attempting to do. This is never more apparent than when Dacre Montgomery is explicitly asked why he is remaking Faces of Death, and he launches into a monologue about the nature of remakes and nostalgia in the age of social media. It’s frankly offensive writing that only exists because the thesis of the film is muddled by its incongruous tone—it feels the need to explain everything to the audience, and wrongly indulges that impulse.

This is a shame, and I am only harsh because I know the team behind this film has a better version of it somewhere. I noticed Daniel Garber, editor of How to Blow Up a Pipeline and Cam, was not a collaborator on this film, and maybe it was lost in the edit. There are glimpses of something good here, and the message is timely. When Faces of Death was released decades ago, nobody could have imagined a world where we would walk around with devices that serve us actual real-life death and terror at a moment’s notice, with algorithms that make it frequently unavoidable to see tragedy and death almost daily. The film paints with broad strokes and leaves the complicated nature of our current reality off the table. It seems aware that there is a lens to be shined on the role social media companies play, and on the impact of social media on our personal and professional lives, but it is unwilling to really explore any of that. Which is shocking, considering Goldhaber’s last film, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, specifically works because he knew exactly how to shine a light on similar societal structures in the world of ecoterrorism.

If it’s not the editing, then the script itself is just weak. The multitude of confrontations the film builds to lacks all tension. The film also gives Ferreira a backstory that feels completely unnecessary; it is a perfect example of how little confidence the film has in its audience, dedicating time to revealing this very obvious trauma in a way that feels completely at odds with the film itself. And that’s a big issue here. This film purports to be critical of the violence we are so consumed by, but it also goes to great lengths to provide some very realistic gore.

I hope Goldhaber’s next film feels as confident as his previous ones. Faces of Death is a pass for me, especially in a world where Pascal Plante’s brilliant Red Rooms exists. If you are looking for a film that actually knows how to wrestle with our modern traumas and the moral ambiguity we so rarely confront, Red Rooms is where you should spend your time.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama starts out innocuously enough. We meet Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) recounting the beginning of their relationship as they work through their vows with their closest friends. This film is all about perception, and that is abundantly clear as we see the realistic ways many of us may, on purpose or not, choose to misremember the past in order to tell a better story for the present. This is our first subtle inkling that something is awry, with Charlie and Emma’s meet-cute perfectly bordering the line between romantic and creepy. Charlie, you see, is presented as a bit of a sheepish romantic, quickly sneaking a peek at the book Emma is reading and pretending to have read it to break the ice. This is innocent enough, but it colors how these little lies can become so integral to the stories we tell ourselves.

To Emma’s credit, she picks up on this lie pretty quickly, and Charlie comes clean on their first date. Emma is willing to pass this off as a romantic gesture, not a mischievous one, which reminded me of the old adage: it’s only creepy if someone ugly does it. Pretty privilege points go to you, Mr. Pattinson. Her empathy around lying becomes more understandable when we find out Emma has been keeping a pretty big secret for a very long time.

Before I get to spoilers, which is necessary given how integral this premise is to the ensuing acts, I have to say this is one of the best films I’ve seen in 2026. The Drama is the ultimate cringe-fest, played beautifully by Charlie, who really is the center of our story. Charlie and Emma, along with their two friends Rachel, played by Alana Haim, and her husband Mike, played by Mamoudou Athie, embark on a mission to become the most unlikable characters you are likely to see on screen in a while. I laughed frequently, mainly out of discomfort, and the film hits all the right notes to build tension and relieve it.

But what was most surprising to me is that the film delicately balances these unlikable characters and preposterous situations with real heart. I found myself deeply moved by the end and, for as much as the film sets up the imperfect ways these characters interact with one another, it’s the empathy on display that truly took me aback. There are a couple of hilarious moments in the film where empathy, the word literally, is front and center. One is when Zoe Winters, in a dazzling portrayal of the world’s best-worst wedding photographer, asks Charlie and Emma to say what they love most about each other. Double empathy. Love it. There is also a scene where Charlie specifically deletes the word empathyfrom his wedding speech. So as much as the film wants to shock you, and it does, there’s something deeper and rawer that elevates it far beyond where you think it will go. It’s one thing to make a film where the audience can snidely judge all the characters and walk out with an inflated sense of self, but the film doesn’t think so little of its audience. It forces you to see yourself in these characters, who are the opposite of inspiring, and empathize with them in a way that we so rarely seem capable of extending to one another.

With that said, let’s talk spoilers. At the food tasting with Rachel and Mike, which, by the way, the film inexplicably seems to be totally unaware of the mechanics behind planning a wedding—you are deciding on food literally a couple of days before the wedding? This is not the last or even the most egregious example—they bring up this “game” they played before getting married in which they told one another the worst thing they had ever done. You see where this is going. It’s played for laughs, but we all know something darker is about to happen, aided in no small part by the free-flowing wine from our caterer. Mike gives a kind of nothing-burger of an answer: he used his ex-girlfriend as a human shield against a feral dog in Mexico… on her birthday. Rachel shares what was, in my opinion, maybe the most egregious answer of them all: as a child, she trapped a young disabled child in a closet in the middle of the woods and left him there overnight, resulting in a formal police search, where he was found, ostensibly unharmed but likely traumatized. Rachel excuses this later in the film as a simple impulse, and this ultimately makes for one of Alana Haim’s most memorable roles yet. Charlie seems unable to come up with much of anything, admitting half-heartedly to cyberbullying someone as a kid, though this feels either completely fictional or largely embellished, and then attention turns to Emma. Our sweet Emma admits to planning a school shooting as a teenager, going so far as to bring the gun to school and use a webcam to record a manifesto, in a scene that nearly had me in stitches, where her computer errors out multiple times while trying to record. Rachel is the first to turn, mouth agape in disbelief, and immediate judgments are hurled across the table.

There’s no going back now. We are all on this roller coaster, and the next 70 minutes are a ride you may desperately want to escape. Charlie completely deteriorates. This is really his film, his descent into madness, as this one truth upends everything he thinks he knows about his future wife. It’s this play on truth versus lies that really gets at the film’s core.

While Emma is truly empathetic, easily dismissing Charlie’s lie that is the foundation of their relationship, Charlie is not so skilled in this realm. After the couple sleeps on it and reconvenes the next day, what stuck out to me most was Charlie’s immediate line of questioning. He asks two things of Emma. First, was that true? But second, and most damningly: why did you say that in front of everybody? And that is what gets at the thesis of the film. It’s not about what she did or didn’t do—which, by the way, she didn’t do, but Rachel fully abused and traumatized a neighbor—it’s about the fact that other people know, and now this is a thing that needs to be contained. Which, of course, it isn’t, and Charlie knows this. Lies have a way of catching up with you. Whether it’s on a first date or at a wedding, whether they are little white lies or big secrets that have never been said before, they impact everything we do, and that burden is unlike anything else.

Charlie would not be described as double empathetic. He can’t stop thinking about this revelation, and it shows up in hilarious ways. Rachel and Mike are unable to drop it, with Rachel threatening to drop out of the wedding and needing to confirm with her cousin Sam, paralyzed from an implied school shooting, that she has permission to attend this wedding, in a wonderful play on Rachel’s performative nature that feels deliciously more evil than anything any of our other cast members do. Charlie finds lying easier, and he lies to everyone. He lies to Rachel and Mike about why Emma did this, making up some story about Emma witnessing her best friend killed in a car accident and having untreated trauma, wonderfully highlighting how there seems to be some imaginary bar folks need to clear in order to earn empathy and understanding from one another. He also ends up cheating on Emma with his coworker Mischa, played by Hailey Benton Gates. Seriously, she and Zoe Winters are competing for the best supporting roles here; everything they do is some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever seen on screen. Charlie, as we come to expect, does not go through with it all the way, but his one and only line to Mischa after the almost-affair is, “Please don’t tell anyone about this.”

Charlie still has a preoccupation with how he is perceived, which is so ingrained it has even shaped his career as Head of Curation at a museum, and he does not apologize to Mischa at all. He just wants to protect himself by hiding who he is and continuing to lie so that his perfect facade remains unblemished, even if he is perfectly willing to confront other people about their lies and act aghast when they refuse to admit to them.

And this is where I have my only real criticism of the film. This is really Charlie’s journey, but it’s not quite earned. I’ve gone back and forth on this, and I’ve landed on the fact that it is not so egregious that the rest of the film doesn’t work, but his transformation is too subtle for me. When Emma and Charlie are eventually reunited after the wedding blows up in spectacular fashion—don’t worry, our wedding photographer never stops shooting—I was less convinced than I wanted to be that Charlie had changed and realized the error of his ways. Rachel, despite going through it, proves to be more than double empathetic.

Her hidden past has shaped her into being divinely understanding. She knows just how terrible people can be—she came pretty damn close herself to being the worst version of herself possible—and so she doesn’t have the same hang-ups around perception that everyone else has. I mean, I never thought I’d see a film turn almost committing a mass shooting into an emotional superpower, but here we are, and it actually works. So in the end, after everything Charlie has done—it should be said that Rachel, for her part, has not really done much of anything at all, simply committed the cardinal sin of almost doing something terrible—Rachel’s acceptance feels maybe a bit undeserved, but it ultimately aligns with what we know of her character.

And that final scene did deeply move me. The film captures how nobody really knows anybody. We all have lies and secrets, and certainly nobody really knows what is going on behind the scenes in someone else’s marriage. But for all of that, our ability to empathize with and love one another despite all our flaws is what makes that commitment, and that love we share, so meaningful. It’s a pressing reminder to stop chasing aesthetics and focus on what’s real. Even if it is messy and painful at times, it’s all we have, and we are darn lucky that this is something we are capable of.

By the way, some of my favorite moments in the film:

• Emma sharing the specifics of what defines a mass shooting or not. It’s 4 or more, by the way.

• The photographer’s “Shot” list. Grandparents TBD.

• “Smile completely naturally… like in real life”

• Everything about the replacement DJ

• “Call the police”

• Blake

• “You grew up around guns”

Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie was barely on my radar. I knew it came from Matt Johnson, who directed the brilliant and criminally under-seen BlackBerry, and that it was a follow-up to the web series Nirvanna The Band The Show, which I had never seen and knew essentially nothing about. Then I started seeing wave after wave of ecstatic praise online. My interest was piqued. I am thrilled to report the film more than earns that praise.

NTBTSTM follows best friends Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, playing themselves, as they hatch yet another absurd plan to finally land a gig at the Rivoli. If that premise sounds simple, rest assured: the reality is far stupider, and far funnier, than whatever you are imagining.

The Rivoli is, on paper, a fairly unremarkable Italian restaurant in Toronto that sometimes books musicians. Matt and Jay have spent 17 years trying to play there. They have failed spectacularly. It does not take long to understand why. Matt is a chaos agent, forever dreaming up elaborate, deeply ill-advised schemes to get the venue’s attention; Jay, with the weary loyalty of a man who has suffered enough, keeps going along with it. But after nearly two decades of disappointment, it begins to feel like Jay may finally be ready to let the dream die.

What follows is some of the most deliriously inventive filmmaking I have ever seen, and I will not dare spoil any of it. Do not watch the trailer. Do not read another synopsis. Go in as blind as possible. The less you know, the better. Few films this year will reward that leap of faith as richly as this one.

What Johnson and company pull off here is astounding. On a technical level, I genuinely cannot wrap my head around how much of this movie was accomplished, especially on what was clearly a shoestring budget. The gags are not just funny; they are feats. Again and again, the film left me wondering not only how did they think of this? but how on earth did they actually pull it off? There is a stunt early on that is so outrageous, so brazen, that I am still completely baffled by its execution.

The film’s faux-documentary style is essential to why it works so well. For all the cinematic sleight of hand involved, everything feels startlingly immediate and real. The movie has a lived-in, off-the-cuff texture that makes its wildest swings land even harder. There is a sequence in the first half, which I later learned was filmed without permission, that captures the genuine reactions of unsuspecting bystanders as Matt and Jay carry out the first of many insane ideas. That kind of commitment gives the film an electricity that cannot be faked.

And yet the real triumph of NTBTSTM is that it is operating on far deeper levels than its setup initially suggests. Yes, on the surface, this is a movie about two idiots trying to book a show at the Rivoli. But it is also a film about friendship: about the way the traits that first endear us to people can, over time, become the very things that exhaust us; about resentment, co-dependence, forgiveness, and the stories we tell ourselves to avoid looking too closely inward. It sneaks up on you emotionally because it understands something essential and painful about long-term relationships of every kind.

It is also, to be clear, hysterically funny. My husband and I have been quoting it back and forth nonstop since we saw it. There is a fourth-wall break that absolutely flattened me, and one gag set in a movie theater that I have not stopped thinking about. The film understands that comedy is rhythm, escalation, and precision, and it is paced with extraordinary confidence.

But reducing NTBTSTM to “a great comedy” does it a disservice. By the end, I was in tears. Not because the film abruptly changes modes or strains for sentiment, but because it earns its emotion with such disarming grace. What begins as a ridiculous mission gradually reveals itself to be about much larger questions: how we choose to spend our lives, who we choose to spend them with, and how easy it is to lose sight of what really matters while chasing after something else. By the time it reaches its final movements, NTBTSTM becomes something unexpectedly profound: a deeply moving story about two very different people coming to understand just how rare and how meaningful it is to have found one another at all.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come had an opportunity to be a sequel, almost a decade later, and build upon the very fun world established in the first film. This film squanders that opportunity, giving us a largely soulless retread of the first one which, spoiler alert, worked so well because the film saves the reveal that Satan is real until the very end. This twist is totally earned, reframing the entire film and landing somewhere even scarier than we could have imagined.

Going into the sequel, the film does not have the luxury of any exciting reveals. The film is certainly more. It’s gorier and more brutal than the previous one, and it may even be a bit funnier, but it wastes a great premise and setup for an ultimately safe sequel. I am most disappointed because of the pedigree behind the film. Penned by Guy Busick, who knocked it out of the park with last year’s Final Destination: Bloodlines, and directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who cut their teeth on inventive shorts in V/H/S and Southbound and reignited the Scream franchise before unceremoniously leaving for the most recent addition to the series.

I can’t say I didn’t have fun — I did. Samara Weaving is excellent as Grace MacCaulley, picking up immediately from the first film without skipping a beat. Kathryn Newton is a fine addition as her estranged sister, and I adored Elijah Wood as the devious lawyer behind the Satanic cult, though I wish he had more to do. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy, who is particularly nasty given how different his character is from The Pitt, play twins vying for control of the devil’s organization. Sarah Michelle Gellar, our wonderful vampire slayer, is also wasted by the film. She serves as a foil to her brother, but has no character growth of her own and is effectively fridged for the sake of her sibling’s rise to power.

The rest of the cast is not particularly good, serving as caricatures more than anything else, though I did enjoy Antony Hall as a bloodthirsty child dual-wielding fully automatic pistols. Even an actual cameo by David Cronenberg, as the deceased head of the Danforth family and father to Gellar and Hatosy, cruises on his star power more than anything the film gives him to work with.

And that’s really the story of the whole film. It’s a missed opportunity. The world has changed a lot since 2019, when the first film came out, and this one does not seem interested in evolving with it. We add a sister, we up the stakes, but it all feels hollow and boring. It’s a film that is ostensibly fun, but it leaves no lasting impression. It’s a shame because the first film oozed creativity, and this sequel jettisons all that made it interesting, resulting in a disappointing slasher with an inert emotional climax and a forgettable ending.

Did summer come early? Because we have our first blockbuster of 2026 on our hands.

Project Hail Mary (based on the novel by Andy Weir, author of The Martian) is a stunningly heartfelt space odyssey — Interstellar meets Disney (in a good way, I promise). Ryan Gosling plays Ryland Grace, an amnesiac astronaut tasked with saving humanity (and maybe more) from a somewhat incomprehensible threat called the Astrophage. He has some help along the way, including the wonderful Rocky (disappointing that the trailers gave this away, but what can you do), puppeted perfectly by James Ortiz, and a foil in Sandra Hüller’s Eva Stratt — the leader of the Hail Mary project, who seems to be the only one who really bears the weight of everything at stake.

It’s this small cast that taps into what made The Martian so special. This is a movie with big ideas, but it never gets dragged down by them. We are experiencing this story through a narrow lens, and it’s all the better for it. We get to know these characters on a deep level, fully understand their relationships with one another, and that’s the best recipe for a tense film that takes big swings and manages to hit most of them. Kudos to the creative team for knowing what to cut to translate this book to the silver screen.

And while I do have a few criticisms (I’ll get to that), I find myself enamored with what this film does so well. Gosling reminds us all why he’s a leading man, and the character of Ryland Grace is surprisingly complicated and likely would not have worked nearly as well with someone else in the role. Without spoiling too much, this is more than just your reluctant hero who steps up and becomes the savior we all need.

On the flip side, we have Sandra Hüller’s Eva Stratt. She’s nothing but business. She understands exactly what is at stake and will go to any lengths to achieve it. She delicately balances this mission that she wholly embodies with the empathetic side that so often seems to be in tension with her goals. She exudes control for the sake of others, and even her warm moments seem strategically calculated — at great cost to her own humanity.

What I loved so much is that these are not the usual characters you root for. Lord and Miller (and Goddard) have made one hell of a crowd-pleasing film, but they didn’t shy away from our morally gray protagonists, and it makes the film all the richer for it.

Then there is the star of the show: Rocky. Our delightful alien friend, the true companion to Grace as they team up to achieve the same mission. The film has a hard time balancing when to double down on the science and when to wave it away, and that’s most apparent as Rocky and Grace figure out ways to communicate with one another. The film needs you to suspend your disbelief, but it seems to have a hard time figuring out how to do that effectively.

This can be forgiven, though, considering the sheer ambition of the production. Rocky is a puppet. Our actors are on real sets. Of course, there is CGI, but the subdued use of green screen is such a welcome relief after years of Marvel films that feel weightless and Disney’s effusive use of the “Volume,” which feels more akin to a video game skybox than a real-life location.

For a 2.5-hour movie, the pacing is never quite right. The beginning feels clunky (which may be by design, given our protagonist’s memory loss), but it ends up hampering the experience more than helping it. Then the third act feels overstuffed, trying to capture the emotional beats of a novel but not translating them quite as effectively as it could. There are multiple plot points that end up stealing from one another’s emotional impact because they are crammed so closely together. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it has to be said given how close this film gets to being a masterpiece.

All told, this is a glorious ride that is easily recommendable to almost anyone. Worth seeing on the big screen as you, Grace, and Rocky are transported to Tau Ceti to accomplish mankind’s most important mission yet.

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I’ve shared my predictions below, though I’ll confess that I hope to be surprised this year. My hunch is that One Battle After Another will be duly rewarded by the Academy in the major categories, including Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay. I think we’ll see Sinners relegated to the more technical races, though perhaps an Original Screenplay win will keep us guessing throughout the night. Sentimental Value, despite its strong showing in the nominations, will likely be shut out outside of the International category, unless Stellan ekes out a Supporting Actor win. Given the Academy’s fondness for Sinners this year, I also think we might see another horror film rewarded, with Madigan taking Best Supporting Actress for Weapons. The Academy has been reluctant to celebrate Timothée Chalamet, and we could see a surprise upset in Best Actor. The Twittersphere is pulling for a Wagner Moura upset, but if it isn’t Timmy, it’s more likely to be DiCaprio, Jordan, or even Hawke.

I wish I were more excited about this slate of nominees. The complete absence of Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee is the year’s biggest travesty. A superb film that should have Amanda Seyfried all but guaranteed an Oscar was instead relegated to a botched theatrical release by Searchlight Pictures, which is especially shocking considering they managed to pull off an Oscar win for Adrien Brody with this filmmaking team’s last film, The Brutalist. I could not be more disappointed by what happened here, especially when I so deeply disliked Hamnet and Buckley seems all but guaranteed the statue.

One film I was pleasantly surprised to see on the list is Spain’s Sirat. It is an absolutely brilliant piece of work that deserves nominations across the board, but I’m happy to see it receive at least some recognition in the International Feature category, even if it has no real hope of winning. We’ll soon see what the show has in store. I only hope it proves a little less controversial than some of the other awards shows this year. Speaking of which, the BAFTAs controversy was addressed deftly in this article from The Guardian.

All that said, my predictions are below:

I’ll admit I’m in a bit of a movie lull at the moment. After a great Sundance weekend at the end of January — though that was too many movies in too short a span — and the usual industry slowdown during the first few months of the year, plus a brilliant little time sink called Marathon, I’m looking forward to getting back to The Movie Hall this month, starting with Project Hail Mary on Friday.

Check out my recent reviews below, and don’t forget to subscribe to The Movie Hall.

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Rebuilding:

Wuthering Heights:

Send Help:

Sundance Recap:

Josephine:

The Movie Hall

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The Movie Hall

Sundance 2026: Hot Water

Hot Water is a classic American road-trip film, following a mother and son who are strikingly similar yet feel worlds apart by the time we meet them. Lubna Azabal plays the mother, a Lebanese immigrant torn between identities and still struggling to feel at home. Daniel Zolghadri plays her son, fully Americanized, refusing to speak his mother’s native l…

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3 months ago · The Movie Hall

Chasing Summer:

The Movie Hall

Sundance 2026: The Musical

Best seen knowing as little as possible, the premise is deceptively simple: Doug (Will Brill) decides to sabotage his school’s Blue Ribbon chances after discovering that his art-teacher colleague—and ex-fling—(Gillian Jacobs, aka Britta Perry) is now dating the hunky, effortlessly cool principal (Rob Lowe). This is a revenge tale filtered through Tim Ro…

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3 months ago · The Movie Hall

The Incomer:

The Movie Hall

Sundance 2026: The Incomer

A wonderful folk tale—funny, heartwarming, and charming. I found myself holding back tears while simultaneously giggling at the absurdity of it all. This is a tiny film with a huge heart, anchored by truly excellent performances from Domhnall Gleeson (our titular incomer, Daniel) and the two isolated island siblings Isla and Sandy, played by Gayle Ranki…

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3 months ago · The Movie Hall

Disappointing in almost every sense of the word. A lackluster lead performance by Josh O’Connor was the most surprising, given his track record of, at the very least, interesting indie films (La Chimera, The Mastermind). Even if those films didn’t work for me, that hardly reflected on O’Connor’s acting pedigree. As his profile has increased (Wake Up Dead Man, Challengers), I hope he is able to be a bit pickier about his roles. A rare miss for O’Connor, but a miss nonetheless.

This really falls at the feet of writer-director Max Walker-Silverman, who writes this film as if it’s a first draft (despite this being his sophomore effort), and shoots it as if it’s a student film — though I fear that may be too unkind to student filmmakers, who often take risks and punch far above their weight given their minuscule budgets.

This script is bare-bones. It revolves around Dusty (O’Connor), a farmer caught out of time, whose heart is in the right place but who can’t seem to make the choices that back up his true feelings. He’s the misunderstood cowboy, forced to reckon with a new reality after his farm and livelihood burn down. We get glimpses of his past, culminating in the film’s central conflict: how Dusty can fit his daughter into his narrow worldview.

You’ve seen this story before, and you know how it ends. It’s not a terrible template, but Rebuilding seems so uninterested in doing anything new with it. We meet a cast of characters living in temporary trailers — new neighbors impacted by the fire who were previously acres away are now within spitting distance. These characters are so thin that it would be more accurate to call them caricatures. It’s a complete waste of Kali Reis, and the film commits the cardinal sin of making all of these side characters more interesting than Dusty while using them only in relation to his character growth.

Meghann Fahy plays Ruby, Dusty’s ex (girlfriend? wife? It’s unclear), and she simply acts circles around everyone else. I came away impressed once again. After injecting a ton of life into her season of The White Lotus and last year’s thriller Drop, I continue to be inspired by her chameleon-like ability to embody these roles and make them her own. She picks up what little there is in the script and manages to make something wonderful with it. We learn so little about her, yet you understand her perfectly. She has one scene that asks so much of her, opposite her mother — another underutilized actor, Amy Madigan of Weapons — that moved me to tears. I may just be glad this film exists so Fahy can use that scene on her reel to showcase her undeniable talent. I wish I could say it was worth watching for her performance alone, but I’d advise just prioritizing her next project.

Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” earns those quotation marks—serving as a fever-dream of an adaptation, taking extensive liberties with the source material while honing in on a very modern vibe that, I am quite pleased to say, really worked for me.

I was most surprised by how relatively tame this film is. Amy Poehler remarked on her “Good Hang” podcast about the “sexually violent third act turn” that occurs in all Emerald Fennell films. It’s easy to poke fun at Fennell’s penchant for shock (as we’ve seen in Promising Young Woman and, even more so, in Saltburn), and that’s not to say this doesn’t exist to some degree in “Wuthering Heights”—but it’s the restraint she displays in this film that makes the whole thing work even better than her previous films.

Excising almost half the book and a plethora of supporting characters, Fennell smartly focuses the story on Cathy and Heathcliff. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are just great in this film as our two doomed lovers, matching each other’s freak like these two only can. These performances are key, because neither of these characters are particularly likable. In fact, there’s hardly anyone redeemable on display, except maybe our oh-so-innocent Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), Cathy’s forlorn husband who never quite grasps what he signed up for.

Hong Chau’s Nelly and Alison Oliver’s Isabella are the true standouts. Elevated from a mere narrator role, Nelly is the most complex character on display. Her station in life as a maid to Cathy, stuck in a subordinate role while slowly accruing power through her own machinations, makes her someone you’ll find yourself rooting for one minute and hating the next.

It’s these themes of class and power that Fennell focuses on that I found particularly compelling. All our characters are trapped by the station they are born into, and as we peel back the layers, we find the ways some overcome their station while others are relegated to it. From Cathy’s ascension as the heir to the dilapidated Wuthering Heights to the lady of the opulent Thrushcross Grange; Heathcliff’s unexplained return as a well-groomed and rich man (this return is hilariously dramatic—the entire theater seemed to gasp as Elordi revealed a delicate hoop earring and a gold tooth); to Isabella’s deal with the devil, debasing herself to become a mere pet as she so frequently treated others, ultimately finding herself as she fulfills her destiny on her own terms and leaves for London (which makes me desperately want a sequel focusing on this journey).

Some may deride the whitewashed casting of Heathcliff, but if you are looking for a more faithful adaptation, I’d recommend Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film. This film works so well because it’s an adaptation rooted in memory and bias, rather than a slavish devotion to the text that inspired it. Fennell has a vision, and maybe it works for you or maybe it doesn’t, but it’s this singular vision that makes the film so compelling. Fennell, for all her flaws, is never an uninteresting filmmaker. The casting, the set design and production, the costumes—these all work because Fennell is brave enough to put everything she is on screen. She’s a risk-taker, and even when her films struggle, you can’t ever describe them as boring. I’d take this over a like-for-like adaptation any day (which, at that point, you can simply engage with the book itself).

In an age where TV and film are prioritized to fit on a vertical screen, or writers are implored to over-explain and to assume people are scrolling their phones while watching, a big-budget, loose adaptation such as this is a great respite in a world where AI slop is becoming more and more rampant. Take those quotation marks for what they are, and I implore you to engage with the art being presented to you—not some idea or expectation of what that art should be.

I could go on and on, but the one piece of the puzzle that elevates the film is the inspired collaboration with Charli XCX. Her soundtrack perfectly complements the visuals Fennell puts on display, while serving as her own interpretation of the original book. Every song elevates the scenes they accompany—and also happens to be a banger in its own right. Emerald Fennell is 3/3 in my book, and is possibly getting better and better. Whereas Promising Young Woman has a brilliant script (pushing the limits of what the costs of revenge really are), and Saltburn was a great ride but ultimately a superficial jaunt through the English aristocracy, it’s Fennell’s restraint with “Wuthering Heights” that finally allows her quiet moments to land as powerfully as her loud ones (the eggs are simply… iconic). If you are a fan of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, you’ll find a spiritual successor with Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights.”

Sam Raimi is back at it again, this time with an extended version of Triangle of Sadness’s culminating third act—filled with his well-known cinematic flourishes, avert-your-eyes gore, and iconic jump scares.

It’s a shame the script by Mark Swift and Damian Shannon can’t live up to the best of Raimi’s filmography. While Dylan O’Brien and Rachel McAdams (who they shockingly manage to make look believably unattractive, at least in the opening act) are giving 110%, the rest of the film feels like everyone is just phoning it in.

For a $40 million budget, I was shocked by how bad this film looked. Distracting CGI—especially when 80% of the film takes place in one remote location with two characters—makes it feel like everything wrong with the Hollywood machine. If this film were made for a fraction of the cost, I’d be more sympathetic, but I cannot excuse the sloppiness on display when Mona Fastvold is making an international-spanning epic like The Testament of Ann Lee for a quarter of the cost.

Yet, there is quite a bit of fun to be had here. O’Brien plays the perfectly hatable, silver-spoon-fed boss who inherits the title of President through no apparent work of his own. He’s the worst parts of corporate America rolled into one despicable “leader.” The few values he displays are purely superficial, and his comeuppance is a sight to behold.

When the tables are turned and the frumpy McAdams—O’Brien’s subordinate—seems to have been shut out of the corporate elevator, relegated to the stairs, where she has dutifully served in her role for seven years, with all the good old boys taking credit for her work and receiving her well-earned rewards, it’s almost impossible not to be entertained. Her dutiful Survivor viewing translates a little too perfectly to their tragic turn when O’Brien and McAdams are stranded on an island off Thailand after their private jet inexplicably crashes on the way to Bangkok.

On this island, Raimi hits us over and over again with his greatest hits. From the brutal hunting of a boar (including a decapitation that feels unnecessary but certainly had me smiling in the theater) to the grossest food poisoning you can think of (I’ll confess I had to avert my eyes more often than not), this retread of Raimi’s iconic filmography is entertaining for fans, but feels hollow when you realize there simply isn’t anything new on display here.

Even Danny Elfman’s score, which is perfectly serviceable, reinforces the idea that everyone here outside our two leads is simply collecting a paycheck. And why shouldn’t they? This isn’t bad by any stretch. My full theater was wincing and groaning in unison, and I found myself entertained throughout most of the runtime. But I left the theater feeling hollow. This is a fine way to waste a couple of hours, but it unfortunately does feel like a bit of a waste.

The most interesting story beats have been plumbed more succinctly—and more interestingly—in other films, including some by Raimi himself. If you are dying to see an extended cut of the third act of Triangle of Sadness, then by all means, you’ll enjoy this film. Unfortunately, I found myself losing steam by the time the final act rolled around, with a climax and conclusion that feel entirely too predictable, and downright lazy. Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien deserved better here, and I fear even those who like the film will find it’s the performances alone that make this remotely watchable.

Josephine begins with a young 8-year-old girl (our titular lead, played miraculously by Mason Reeves) jogging in the park with her father, Damien (Channing Tatum in another spectacular dramatic role), when she witnesses a brutal rape.

This scene is harrowing, and not since Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible have I seen such a gratuitous crime take place on screen. I’ll admit I found this immediately off-putting, but the perspective with which we see this crime, specifically from Josephine’s point of view, is, in my opinion, necessary for the film that Beth de Araujo has succeeded in making.

This is a film about female fear—something we all generally know about and half the population sadly experiences. The fear of walking alone at night. Entering a bathroom alone. The fear of a man losing his temper and getting violent. The film has plenty to say about that too—male violence—but it’s this specific and confident lens that de Araujo channels through Claire (Josephine’s mother, Gemma Chan) and Josephine herself that takes center stage.

An 8-year-old girl witnesses something that nobody should ever see, let alone experience, and her whole world is blown wide open. You see, in those devastating first moments, her innocence crumble, never to be seen again. As adults, a crime like this is incomprehensible. As a child, I don’t think there is even a word for it. Josephine does not have any context, any language, or any perspective—but the world does not wait for us to grow up; it forces us to, often in tragic ways.

This tragedy is seen over and over again with Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan playing her parents. Damien is fit, strong, and knows how to fight back. He is, by almost every definition, a “good” man. But he’s hard. He’s been hurt physically and has not dealt with the fact that much of his pain is now rooted in his mind. Claire is a great foil to Damien. She’s softer, more graceful. Where her husband is a fan of contact sports and self-defense, she is a professional ballerina and willing to admit the realities of the world that her husband thinks you can defend from. She knows that’s not possible. Sometimes terrible things happen. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to stop it. And those terrible things? They don’t exist in a silo—they affect us every day, in big and small ways.

Which brings us to Josephine. Frankly, I am astonished they were even able to make this film, and I have to trust the filmmakers took all precautions to protect her from the trauma this film seeks to explore. Mason Reeves, in her first role ever (the director found her at a farmer’s market), is the true standout here. She perfectly captures a child trying to understand but being just unable to do so—the fear that didn’t exist one day and suddenly is all-consuming the next. She’s observant and quiet, but it’s her unrelenting strength, slowly building through the two-hour runtime, that will leave your jaw on the floor, culminating in an excruciating courthouse scene where a diabolical defense attorney will have you pulling your hair out in chunks.

By the time the film reaches its final stretch, Josephine has tightened its grip completely. De Araujo understands that fear isn’t a single event; it’s a lifelong rearranging of the self, of a family, of what “safe” even means. The film is formally controlled, emotionally devastating, and cathartic in the way it refuses easy closure. It’s the kind of movie you walk out of shaken, then realize you can’t stop thinking about—because it didn’t just show you something horrific; it showed you what it does to a person. Expect to see this film in the Oscar conversation come year-end.

Union County is a film we’ve seen before, but it’s done so well that it’s hard to hold that against it. Will Poulter and Noah Centineo play foster brothers entering an Adult Recovery Treatment Program for addiction.

Stories like this can easily feel exploitative, but Adam Meeks, in his directorial debut, infuses the film with empathy that permeates every scene. Set in rural Ohio, the film incorporates real addicts enrolled in the program, alongside actual staff members playing their real-life roles.

Poulter delivers a quiet, devastating performance. Every pause and glance communicates pain, shame, and the overwhelming difficulty of confronting addiction. Centineo serves as his foil, arriving with an energy that puts everyone on edge, waiting for him to blow. As strong as Poulter is—and he truly is—it’s Centineo, working against his typical pretty-boy casting, who steals the film. The brothers’ emotional arcs diverge beautifully: Poulter internalizes, while Centineo combusts.

The film is steeped in tragedy, but it uses that weight to reinforce the fragile hope embedded in recovery programs. At a time when faith in institutions is at an all-time low, it’s powerful to witness real people, real struggles, and the communal effort required to make something that feels impossible marginally achievable.

This grounding in lived experience lends the film an uncommon gravity. We’re invited into group sessions where participants lay bare the damage addiction has wrought on themselves and others. Everyone feels like they’ve reached the end of the line—because they have. For Poulter and Centineo, all bridges are burned, no support exists beyond this court-mandated structure, and the stakes are absolute: this works, or it doesn’t.

Good people do bad things—some more than others—but everyone deserves a chance to make it right. Union County asks us to extend empathy to a population so often dismissed, and it does so by embracing complexity rather than moralizing. The performances are excellent across the board, but it’s the film’s commitment to community that resonates most deeply. In a world increasingly eager to dehumanize the “other,” Union County insists that empathy remains a vital skill—one we seem to be losing at our own peril.

Chris Pine and Jenny Slate play a couple reunited after years apart, their unspoken history simmering beneath the surface. Both do admirable work with a weak script and overly indulgent direction (did the cast of 30 Rock shoot the film’s dozen Cleveland establishing shots?). The visuals are monotonous, making this 90-minute film feel far longer than it is.

There are a few solid crash-outs, but the film consistently strains for a profundity it never quite earns. Long, quiet shots of our leads are intercut with what the film positions as “big” conversations involving minor characters, yet these moments feel strangely disconnected from the story at hand.

Abby Ryder Fortson plays Pine’s daughter from a previous marriage and is genuinely excellent. She captures the real emotional fallout of divorce, even when material needs are met. She’s the heart of the film, grappling with her own understanding of life while her parents seem fundamentally broken by the dissolution of their marriage.

One scene stands out: a painfully familiar argument between Slate and Pine that begins narrowly and slowly metastasizes into a referendum on everything. They speak past each other, respond without listening, and embody the quiet devastation of finally confronting what’s been simmering for years. Unfortunately, the rest of the film never approaches this level of insight, ultimately feeling more like a self-indulgent exercise than a meaningful exploration of how hurt people hurt people—and how necessary vulnerability is if love is ever to be found again.

Hot Water is a classic American road-trip film, following a mother and son who are strikingly similar yet feel worlds apart by the time we meet them. Lubna Azabal plays the mother, a Lebanese immigrant torn between identities and still struggling to feel at home. Daniel Zolghadri plays her son, fully Americanized, refusing to speak his mother’s native language and seemingly ungrateful for the opportunities afforded to him.

The problem is that this story has been told before—and told better. Hot Water feels content to mimic stronger films without offering anything new. The performances are almost too quiet, the rhythm nonexistent. The actors do their best to give weight to the film’s intended catharsis, but the script and uninspired filmmaking do them no favors.

We see all the familiar road-trip motifs—diners, landscapes, grimy motel rooms, a rotating cast of supporting characters—but none of it leaves much of an impression. When the father reenters the picture, the film’s focus shifts, only further guaranteeing a lack of meaningful closure for the mother and son we barely come to know, despite traveling hundreds of miles alongside them.

There’s very little here to chew on. The humor, like everything else, is sparse. I do appreciate Azabal’s performance, particularly in how she gestures toward the idea that at some point in life we stop trying to figure out who we are and start wondering how we ended up where we did. Unfortunately, the film explores this notion in only the most superficial ways.

Best seen knowing as little as possible, the premise is deceptively simple: Doug (Will Brill) decides to sabotage his school’s Blue Ribbon chances after discovering that his art-teacher colleague—and ex-fling—(Gillian Jacobs, aka Britta Perry) is now dating the hunky, effortlessly cool principal (Rob Lowe). This is a revenge tale filtered through Tim Robinson’s sensibilities, and it absolutely rips.

Doug is the perfect antihero—fixated on all the wrong questions, incapable of taking a hint, and fueled by spite as one of his primary motivators. It’s this deeply unlikeable character that makes the entire film work. While Jacobs and Lowe play recognizable archetypes (which is perfectly fine given what the script demands), Brill dares to foreground the uglier emotions we prefer to deny but inevitably harbor.

The film smartly centers Doug’s inner monologue, and while his revenge spiral can be difficult to fully relate to, it’s the kids who ground the story. Mikey is the MVP, and the conflict between the two leads in the school play feels genuinely lived-in. When you’re a kid, the stakes feel enormous, and the dynamic between Doug and his students works so well because, as he regresses into absurdity, he treats these minor slights with the same outsized seriousness they do.

The film is supremely confident, punctuated by an all-timer of a title card drop, and it somehow makes room for empathy without excusing Doug’s behavior. It understands how easy it is to justify your actions once anger takes hold. Art is rooted in emotion, and spite and rage are no less valid than love or empathy—but they come at a cost.

That confidence extends to the ending, which feels earned and functions as a strong denouement to a film that will likely leave your jaw on the floor for most of its runtime. We’re all human, and sometimes you really do just need to get it out of your system—and maybe there shouldn’t be quite so much shame in that.

liza Shlesinger leads an excellent cast as a disaster-response titan who moves back home to Texas after a long-term relationship ends, prompting a reassessment of the place she once tried so desperately to escape—and a realization that the reasons she left may not have been the full story.

This is a fun watch ultimately hampered by an inconsistent script, surprisingly amateur filmmaking, and a largely predictable plot. Only about half of the humor really lands, which isn’t enough to compensate for the film’s other shortcomings. As much as I generally enjoyed it, the film leaves you feeling hollow. The emotional beats rarely work—or work so faintly that they feel entirely unearned—and the ending erases much of the goodwill you may have generously extended during the preceding 90 minutes.

The opening and closing are particularly weak. The middle fares better, finding a rhythm as the characters begin to feel more lived-in and the predictable plot beats start to land more often than not. Still, so much of the film doesn’t work. While some relationships feel true to life, the film’s uneven quality consistently undermines the moments that should matter most.

You’ll find yourself wondering how one scene can so effortlessly balance humor, raw honesty, and growth (the neighborhood barbecue is a standout), while others feel completely stilted and flat—particularly anything involving her old high school fling, who reappears inexplicably and is never meaningfully used as a foil. Tom Welling plays the former beau (yes, the Smallville fantasies appear to be universal), but the character is thinly sketched. Unfortunately, that lack of depth is the film’s prevailing issue.

It’s clear Jamie has abandoned her hometown prematurely, running away from something rather than toward it. The film falters by using her return exclusively for her own growth, largely at the expense of everyone around her. It’s evident she left with unresolved business, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that nearly everyone she reconnects with would have been better off had she stayed away. That could be compelling if the film were interested in interrogating it—but it isn’t. Instead, the ending gestures toward a happy resolution without reckoning with the damage left behind. There is no real growth here, despite the film’s insistence otherwise, and this inability to examine its protagonist honestly leaves the entire project feeling like everyone involved was making a different movie

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A wonderful folk tale—funny, heartwarming, and charming. I found myself holding back tears while simultaneously giggling at the absurdity of it all. This is a tiny film with a huge heart, anchored by truly excellent performances from Domhnall Gleeson (our titular incomer, Daniel) and the two isolated island siblings Isla and Sandy, played by Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke.

The Incomer follows Sandy and Isla, the lone inhabitants of a remote Scottish island, petrified of the mainland and suddenly confronted with the very challenge they’ve been preparing for their entire lives: the arrival of Daniel, an incomer from the mainland.

Sandy and Isla are a classic sibling duo, illustrating just how different—and how alike—two people can be when raised by the same parents but shaped by vastly different childhood experiences. Rankin plays the overprotective older sister who has internalized the pressure to be the parent in their absence, while O’Rourke’s Sandy remains the innocent younger brother, still willing to play that role even as a grown adult, though increasingly aware that he may not be living the life he actually wants.

This tension, as expected, comes to a head once Daniel enters the mix, forcing them to confront what they truly want, what it might cost them to get it, and to question the fragile reality they’ve constructed for themselves—one that began from a place of love but has slowly hardened into fear.

The antagonists, brought to the island to finish the job Daniel so dutifully failed to carry out, are a welcome addition. They exude personality, even if they function largely as catalysts for Sandy, Isla, and Daniel’s growth. There is a sequence involving one of Daniel’s militaristic colleagues that plays almost exactly like dropping Dwight Schrute into this tableau, and it’s every bit as funny as you’d expect.

Ultimately, this film is about stories: how they help us make the hardest decisions in life, what a home truly is, and how refusing to grow inevitably means holding others back. The Incomer has no qualms about admitting how difficult life can be, but it faces that reality head-on, landing on a perfect ending that somehow still feels hopeful. Sometimes you need to lose everything you’ve ever known to gain something you never even realized you needed.

Appreciated more than enjoyed. Peter Hujar’s Day is a pseudo-documentary reenactment of a conversation between Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) and Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) in 1974. Linda wanted to explore the daily lives of her artist friends and recorded a number of conversations with them about their days. This book never saw the light of day, but a transcript of her conversation with Peter was found decades later in his estate. That transcript is the basis for this film by Ira Sachs, who manages to capture a stellar performance by Ben Whishaw, fully embodying the unique sensibilities of Hujar.

This film, however, is hardly a film. As an acting exercise, it’s great—but the literal translation of the transcript to the screen is just too thin, and the subject matter itself is so bare-bones that I’d have a hard time recommending this film to anyone who isn’t particularly interested in this specific time period and these artists.

That said, if you are interested at all, this is worth checking out. It’s a breezy 67 minutes, and Hujar describes his day with all the detail I wish my friends could drum up when I ask such a simple question. Hall and Whishaw also tap into something universal—how it so frequently feels like our days are filled with nothing (and how hard it is to realize our days are filled with everything when we are in the midst of living them). There is a clever fourth-wall break here, too, that shows some of Sachs’ style—a slight wink and nod to the unique enterprise we are embarking on with a film like this—but the decision to shoot in 16mm is not enough to give it a truly potent visual identity to match our idiosyncratic star. There is something slightly compelling here; I just wish it were more than slight.

By now you’ve likely seen the 98th Academy Award nominations, but if you need a refresher, you can view all the nominees here: https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2026

Before we get into my analysis of this year’s nominees, I want to flag a few things.

First — not Oscar related — but I have to highlight David Ehrlich’s Top 25 films of 2025. Ehrlich is a film critic for IndieWire, and every year he assembles a superbly edited compilation of his top films. I mark the date on my calendar and eagerly await this annual ritual, which he is generous enough to share publicly, and I’d encourage you all to watch as well. While I don’t always agree with him, Ehrlich is a sharp and deeply thoughtful critic who consistently pushes me to reconsider films and appreciate dimensions I may have otherwise overlooked. If you can, I’d encourage you to watch his video and donate to his fundraiser for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

Second, a brief primer on who the Academy voters actually are. Voters include over 10,000 industry professionals. These Academy members vote in a number of categories; some are aligned with the industry branch they belong to, while others are open to all members (such as Best Picture). The Academy Awards voting process occurs in two rounds — first to determine nominees, and then again to select the final winners. The nomination round is conducted via ranked-choice ballot, while the final round is a simple plurality vote (except for Best Picture, which also uses ranked-choice). This matters for a few reasons. First, during the nomination phase, you can begin to see which films have genuine momentum and which may have narrowly missed the threshold required for nomination. Second, the Best Picture lineup of ten nominees often closely overlaps with the five Best Director nominees. It’s not unreasonable to assume that the Best Picture nominees lacking a corresponding Best Director citation face a steeper uphill battle. That said, because Best Picture is determined via ranked-choice voting, we have seen instances where it diverges from Best Director, ultimately rewarding consensus rather than sheer intensity of support.

Third, hundreds of films were released in 2025, and 317 were deemed “eligible” by the Academy, with countless more released independently or internationally. Across 24 categories (including Best Casting, the newest addition), fewer than 50 films are represented. I mention this to underscore that while the Academy Awards are undeniably a #bigdeal, some of the most compelling and adventurous creative work of the year is routinely overlooked by Academy voters. These films often cannot compete with the costly and highly orchestrated campaigns required to secure nominations. With an increasingly international voting body, we are seeing greater representation of foreign films, but independent cinema is still frequently sidelined — let alone micro-budget and experimental work that often drives the medium forward. In fact, many of my Top Films of 2025 are nowhere to be found among these nominees.

With that — here are my initial impressions:

1. Sinners has an enormous showing, securing a record-breaking 16 nominations (and it still holds that distinction even if we remove the newly introduced Casting category). This reflects broad, cross-branch support within the Academy. While I personally did not connect with Sinners (I know, I know), I remain genuinely excited to see how it performs on Oscar night. It’s an original IP and a boldly multi-genre film that debuted as early as April 2025. As usual, most nominees skew toward Fall and Winter releases, so it’s refreshing to see a film from earlier in the year embraced in this way (a pattern reminiscent of Everything Everywhere All At Once, which also premiered nearly a year before its Oscar haul).

2. If Sinners currently holds the frontrunner position, One Battle After Another is close behind with 13 nominations. Paul Thomas Anderson continues to enjoy deep institutional support and remains one of the most frequently nominated filmmakers yet to win an Oscar. There are, however, minor signs of vulnerability — most notably its absence from Best Actress. Of course, this is an exceptionally competitive category, and I’d struggle to make a compelling case for Chase Infiniti’s inclusion. Still, my money remains on OBAA dominating the major awards, with Sinners likely prevailing in several of the technical categories.

3. Things become murkier when assessing the next strongest contender, but my instinct — somewhat surprisingly — points to Sentimental Value. Joachim Trier’s film significantly overperformed, earning nominations for Best Picture, Best International Film, Best Actress, and two Best Supporting Actress slots. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Sentimental Value walk away with multiple wins, though I do worry that the dual Supporting Actress nominations for Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas may split the vote, opening the door for either Amy Madigan (Weapons) or Teyana Taylor (OBAA).

4. This marks the inaugural year for Best Casting, making it a particularly intriguing category to examine. As with any new award, it will take time to understand how Academy voters interpret and prioritize it. Most notable to me is that Sentimental Value, despite earning four acting nominations, failed to secure a Casting nod. One might assume a natural overlap between the two (as seen with Sinners and OBAA), so I’m curious whether this award ultimately goes to a film outside the two dominant contenders.

5. One trend I’m pleased to see is a clearer delineation between lead and supporting performances. In recent years, studios have increasingly gamed the system, positioning actors in whichever category appears most winnable. This was particularly glaring last year, when Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) and Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Perez) both won Supporting Oscars despite being unmistakably the leads of their respective films. There may be a slight overcorrection this year, but it’s one I welcome.

6. You’ll likely hear two nominations cited as the most surprising: F1 in Best Picture and Kate Hudson for Best Actress. Neither strikes me as especially shocking. F1 was a commercial success, a technical showcase, and marks Joseph Kosinski’s second consecutive Best Picture nominee (following Top Gun: Maverick). Given the expanded field of ten, this feels like a fairly predictable — if somewhat uninspired — inclusion. As for Hudson, it’s worth noting that Song Sung Blue is the highest-grossing film represented in the Best Actress category, nearly doubling the box office of its closest competitor. I haven’t seen the film myself, and I would have preferred to see Amanda Seyfried recognized here, but my suspicion is that Hudson didn’t displace her — rather, that some of the other nominees are more vulnerable than they appear.

In terms of disappointments, I’m personally disheartened to see The Testament of Ann Lee and Amanda Seyfried entirely shut out. I place the blame squarely on Searchlight Pictures, whose mishandling of the release effectively extinguished its awards prospects. This is, without question, the strongest lead performance of the year, making it genuinely baffling that the same studio responsible for 2024’s The Brutalist (which secured ten nominations and three wins) walks away with zero this time. I’ve grown accustomed to this kind of frustration — particularly after the Academy snubbed Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s extraordinary performance in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, one of the most acclaimed turns of 2024.

I’m also disappointed to see two of my favorite blockbuster franchises — Avatar and Mission: Impossible — receive minimal recognition (none at all, in Mission: Impossible’s case). James Cameron, for all his stature, rarely campaigns aggressively for awards, but it’s still striking to see Fire and Ash excluded from Best Picture after its two predecessors made the cut. Less surprising is the Academy’s continued indifference toward Tom Cruise. Mission: Impossible has historically been relegated to technical categories, though I’ll take some comfort in Cruise receiving an honorary Oscar alongside the introduction of a new category — Best Stunt Design — at the 100th Academy Awards.

Additionally, you’ll notice that my favorite film of 2025, Highest 2 Lowest, is entirely absent. I’m at a loss here — both Denzel Washington and A$AP Rocky deliver nomination-worthy performances, and the score is simply untouchable. Spike Lee remains one of the most influential filmmakers of his generation, yet the Academy has long been hesitant to reward him. While this outcome isn’t surprising, it still stings. It’s unfortunate that this film appears to have slipped so thoroughly beneath the radar.

Lastly, I want to touch on international cinema. Two of the five International Film nominees (The Secret Agent and Sentimental Value) also landed Best Picture nominations, virtually guaranteeing that one of them will take home the award (my money remains on Sentimental Value). Still, many will be disappointed to see Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident confined to International Film and Original Screenplay. The film is extraordinary, and early betting markets anticipated nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. While the outcome is disappointing, I hope these nods encourage a wider audience to seek it out. I’m also thrilled to see Spain’s Sirât recognized for both International Film and Sound. It was barely on my radar before emerging as one of my favorites of the year — a film I continue to think about. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen, transforming a modest premise into a haunting, apocalyptic odyssey.

That’s all I have to say for now — though I’ll be sharing my winner predictions as we approach the ceremony in March.

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Check out my recent reviews below:

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

The Plague

Dead Man’s Wire

The Chronology of Water

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple does not quite reach the heights of its predecessor, but it boasts moments of startling power—and may ultimately be judged by the success or failure of its forthcoming finale. As a middle chapter, it feels deliberately unresolved, sometimes frustratingly so.

Nia DaCosta capably channels the grammar of Danny Boyle’s original film, though the direction too often feels uninspired. One senses a missed opportunity for a stronger authorial stamp. Still, the film’s strengths are undeniable, chief among them Ralph Fiennes, who delivers one of the most memorable climactic turns likely to grace the screen this year. His Dr. Kelson lingers in the mind long after the credits roll—a reminder of how unfairly genre performances are dismissed come awards season.

Jack O’Connell is compelling in flashes, though the film’s greatest weakness soon becomes apparent: its emotional architecture. Unlike the richly drawn family dynamics that grounded the original, relationships here feel underdeveloped, robbing several key moments of their intended weight.

The true revelation is Chi Lewis-Parry as Samson, whose arc—particularly in relation to Dr. Kelson—adds unexpected depth and pathos, expanding on ideas only gestured toward previously. While The Bone Temple is ultimately a sufficient rather than fully satisfying continuation, it deepens the world in meaningful ways. That said, I remain invested in Spike’s journey, and am optimistic about the finale of this trilogy.