The common consensus is that 2025 has been a fairly weak year. It seems safe to say, however, that 2026 will be a much stronger one, at least by intuitive HE gut criteria. At least 20 qualitative humdingers, by my count, and an impressive roster of grade-A directors (Inarritu, Fincher, Guadagnino, Spielberg, Nolan, Mungiu, Farhadi, Sorkin, Gilroy, Farhadi, et. al.).
Two days ago World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy posted a list of 70something 2026 films that struck him as noteworthy at the very least, and in some cases high expectation-level.
In this post I’ve pruned the list down to 20 safe bets — i.e., presumptions of quality based upon esteemed critical regard and/or aspirational histories. Most of these represent my idea of festival toppers or possible award-worthy titles, or both.
1. Untitled Black Comedy a.k.a Judy (d: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, p: Tom Cruise)
2. The Adventures of Cliff Booth (d: David Fincher)
3. The Oydssey (d: Christopher Nolan)
4. Untitled UFO Movie (d: Steven Spielberg)
5. Artificial (d: Luca Guadagnino)
6. Wild Horse Nine (d: Martin McDonagh)
7. Jack of Spades (d: Joel Coen)
8. The Entertainment System is Down (d: Ruben Ostlund)
9. Fjord (d: Cristian Mungiu w/ Renate Reinsve, Sebastian Stan)
10. Parallel Tales (d: Asghar Farhadi)
11. Minotaur (d: Andrey Zvyagintsev)
12. Coward (d: Lukas Dhont)
13. The Way of the Wind (d: Terrence Malick)
14. Resident Evil (d: Zach Cregger)
15. 1949 (d: Pawel Pawlikowski)
16. The Basics of Philosophy (d: Paul Schrader)
17. Switzerland (d: Anton Corbijn)
18. Michael (d: Antoine Fuqua)
19. The Social Reckoning (d: Aaron Sorkin)
20. Behemoth! (d: Tony Gilroy)
Yeah, I know…all dudes and “where are the 2026 films directed and written by women?” Anger, anguish and male-hate separatism by way of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Sorry Baby and The Chronology of Water have a place on our communal cultural serving tray.
There are many other high-intrigue titles or potential commercial hits due to open next year. I’ll try to assemble a respectable list of promising maybes and/or second-tier titles later today.
We all understand that Joe and Jane Popcorn are either totally unaware of or only slightly interested in award season favorites. The Oscar telecast heyday has long been over. Best Picture Oscar cred went out the window after Hollywood began woking itself into cultural irrelevance in 2018 or ’19 and especially after EEAAO cleaned up in early ’23.
Nonetheless it can be safely assumed that next year’s Best Picture noms will include the Inarritu-Cruise, The Social Reckoning, The Odyssey, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, Spielberg’s UFO flick and Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic…these six at least.