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20 Likeliest 2026 Keepers

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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. Digger (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.

Imagine That You’re General Dwight D. Eisenhower

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And the task of somehow marshalling, organizing and leading a successful “Stop One Battle After Another” campaign — the Oscar-season equivalent of a June 1944 D-Day invasion — has become your responsibility.

A tall order, a steep uphill slog, and — be honest — almost sure to fail. But if you don’t man up and rise to this herculean challenge, the next three months will be a Bataan death march.

So you have no choice, Ike. The burden may break you, but you must become Fidel Castro in 1958 Cuba. Convince the citizenry that celebrating a leftist POC girlboss agitprop fable about a stoner stepdad trying to rescue his Zoomer stepdaughter from the clutches of her deranged biological beau pere boner pants will be against their economic interests. Warner Bros. has already eaten the bitter herbs. Let it end there.

Raise high the roof beam, carpenters! Persuade your flock that it has to be the last 25 minutes of Hamnet or the entirety of the obviously superior Sentimental Value. Save yourselves!

Painful as it may be, split your soul into two halves and become Ralph Meeker and Timothy Carey in Act Three of Paths of Glory. Meeker: “See that cockroach? Tomorrow I’ll be dead and it’ll be alive, and will therefore have more contact with my wife and child than I will.” Without a moment’s hesitation Carey squashes the bug with his right fist, and replies sardonically and sotto-voiced “now you’ve got the edge on him.”

Is it possible to flatten OBAA with the same take-it-or-leave-it decisiveness? Probably not, but as Richard Kiley’s Don Quixote once sang…

Now That Netflix Is Finally Streaming “Jay Kelly”

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Filed from Venice on 8.28.25:

Noah Baumbach‘s Jay Kelly (Netflix, 11.14) — a reflection-and-meditation piece about a 60ish movie star’s life (in some respects literally George Clooney’s, one gathers or infers, and doubly so during a tribute at the very end which presents a montage of Clooney’s films) — is actually fairly decent, and it ends in a very affecting and bittersweet way.

It’s a summary of a rich guy and his famous life and what it’s all meant or seems to mean, and the final emotional residue in terms of friends, family, selfishness, distractions, blessings, highs and lows…really the whole magillah.

It’s generally fast and fleeting and briskly assembled, and is actually reminiscent, in some respects and as curious as this may sound, of Charles Dickens‘ “A Christmas Carol” (in particular the 1951 film version that Brian Desmond Hurst directed and which Alistair Sim brought to life), especially as the film is largely about Clooney’s Kelly absorbing a series of some uncomfortable and sometimes painful realizations about how his business associates, old friends and especially his two daughters really feel about him.

It’s not a masterwork — it doesn’t feel heavy or deep enough, and seems a bit facile at times — and it’s certainly not on the corrupted-adult level of Tony Gilroy‘s Michael Clayton, in which Clooney gave his finest performance.

But Clooney plays it openly and with vulnerability — he knows this line of country like the back of his hand — and the film itself conveys, persuades, penetrates. It sells its own movie-star, “this is the life he’s chosen” narrative.

At times Jay Kelly feels a bit old-fashioned — very “scripted”, very “acted” and a little schmaltzy here and there, and the visual flashback transitions are almost on the level of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (’62).

But it finally feels whole and melancholy and solemnly considered, especially at the very end. It’s expansive and exploratory and fully felt, and is very well acted by not just Clooney but by Adam Sandler (as Jay’s manager), Laura Dern (publicist), Billy Crudup (former acting buddy), Riley Keough (daughter #1), Grace Edwards (daughter #2) and Stacy Keach (roguishly “charming” dad on the downswing).

Jay Kelly is a show and a “movie” but it works according to its own delivery terms, and is certainly better than I thought it would be, and the final line absolutely kills — it even brought a tear to my eye.

It’s therefore a solid A-minus or a B-plus, and Clooney and Sandler really touch bottom, bring the goods.

Quibble #1: Everyone in Kelly’s inner circle has pretty much written him off emotionally. They regard him as flaky, immature, undependable, self-absorbed. But that’s what many big-time actors are for the most part, no? Doesn’t everyone accept this? Many and probably most famous actors are in love with themselves first, and their family and friends second. Big deal. Roll with it.

Quibble #2: Billy Crudup plays a 50ish might-have-been actor who resents and is actually enraged at Kelly for having stolen a key part that Crudup had auditioned for and badly wanted at the time, but the annals of film acting are filled with stories about a friend who was just tagging along who wound up getting the role from an impromptu audition instead of the primary guy. Just because Crudup was extra-hungry for the role in question doesn’t mean he was entitled to it, or that he was right for it. Mature people understand that life can be an unfair.

Quibble #3: Nobody would ever refer to a big film tribute event taking place in “Tuscany”…they would say Siena or Florence or Volterra or Radda in Chianti. Just like no one would talk about a similar-type event in the States happening in the “Deep South” or the “Pacific Northwest.”

Critics Groups, Industry Gangbangers to Joe & Jane Popcorn: “Dismayed That ‘OBAA’ Is Winning All These Best Picture Trophies? Perplexed By Our Devotional Celebration of Girlboss Activist Agitprop? Well, We Don’t Care What You Think. We Live On Our Own Lefty-Ass Planet. Deal With It.”

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Put another way, we don’t want Joe Schmoe ticket buyers to feel any kind of tingly excitement when OBAA starts winning big-time.

We want them to scratch their heads and wonder what the fuck is going on here, etc.

Remember how badly most of you guys felt when Everything Everywhere All At Once won everything in ‘22? How you howled and screamed and repeatedly punched the refrigerator when Jamie Lee Curtis won for Best Supporting Actress? Well, grim up and get ready for a repeat.

Because we not only hate you, but we want you to really, truly and fully comprehend that.

Thank God, at least, that Sinners and the dragon-fingered Cynthia Erivo will almost certainly be getting the bum’s rush.

Not Necessarily HE’s Most On-Target Pan of 2025

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…but it was certainly the most fun to write, and remains to this day the most fun to re-read:

Earlier this afternoon I suffered through most of Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling (Mubi) and I want credit, dammit, for toughing it out for just short of two hours. (It runs 149 minutes.)

A hellish, multi-chapter, visually dreary, narrative hop-around from the perspective of a few suffering women and young girls at different times during the 20th Century, Sound of Falling brings the grim and the soul-drain in the usual suffocating ways.

You could say that the soft, muddy, under-lighted cinematography is meant to inject the same shitty, misery-pit, lemme-outta-here feeling the women and girls are experiencing at every turn. Sure, I’ll buy that.

Is Schilinski an auteur — a feisty, willful, go-for-it filmmaker with a persistence of artistic vision and a stylistic stamp all her own (albeit a stamp that brings you down, down, down)? Yes, she is that.

Does her film have something to say? Yep. It’s saying that 20th Century farm women in northern Germany were miserable as fuck, and that the men were either smelly pigs or abusers or both, and that most of them smoked and a few had massive pot bellies.

Sound of Falling doesn’t make you think about dying before your time, but it does prompt thoughts of escaping the mortal coil early on.

On top of which I was sitting in the Grand Lumière balcony, scrunched between two women and with no leg room at all, and my thighs and calves were stuck in a kind of purgatory, suspended between numbness and screaming pain.

But I didn’t leave for the longest time. I wanted to but I couldn’t be the first balcony-sitter to bail. I said this to myself — “no quitting until a couple of viewers go first”.

So I hung in there with the patience of Job, waiting for some intrepid soul to man up and bolt the fuck outta there, but nobody did for the first…oh, 100 minutes or so.

And then a woman got up and walked. And then another. Thank you, sisters, and thank you, my sweet Lord…glory be to God!

I stood up with my bag and retreated to the main walkway, and then decided to watch from a standing position. And then another person threw in the towel. And then another. And then a trio of Zoomers left at the same time. Hey, we’re really livin’ here!!!

I’ve never felt such wonderful kinship with strangers as I did at that moment.

Variety’s Guy Lodge, the bespectacled king of the Cannes filmcrit dweebs, has totally raved about Schilinski’s punisher.

I respect Lodge’s willingness to drop to his knees and kowtow to a feminist filmmaker who has the chutzpah to subject viewers to a drip-drip gloom virus, but at the same time I think he’s either left the planet or had simply decided to praise this fairly infuriating film no matter what.

Average Joes and Janes, trust me, are going to hate, hate, hate this exactingly assembled, artistically pulverizing tour de force.

Springsteen Flick Was Totally Blown Off by Critics Choice Noms — Not Even Jeremy Strong Made The Cut

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I knew that the Critics’ Choice bowl-lickers would deny Deliver Me From Nowhere a Best Picture nom because it flopped critically and commercially. Because they were unimpressed along with everyone else, but also (primarily?) because the CC gang knew that dismissing it would be politically safe.

I also knew they’d snub Jeremy Allen White‘s portrayal of Bruce Springsteen.

But I figured they’d at least hand Jeremy Strong a Best Supporting Actor nom for playing Springsteen manager Jon Landau, largely because it was an intelligently rendered perf and wholly believable, and because Strong is widely respected. Nope!

“Semper Fi”

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Anthony Zerbe: I was just reading your play. I liked a lot of it. I don’t like the main character though. This Marine. Sounds like a real jellyfish. I guess you’re supposed to like him because he’s against the Marine Corps. Is that it?
Michael Moriarty: Something like that.
AZ: Why doesn’t he do something? Go over the hill, refuse an order. I couldn’t sympathize with a character like that.
MM: Not everyone did.
AZ: The Marine in the play, that supposed to be you?
MM: No.
AZ: Maybe a little?
MM: Maybe on some level.
AZ: Uhn-huh. You know what I think, “on some level”? I think you’re the kind of wise-ass cocksucker that writes a tearjerk play against the Marines and then turns around and smuggles a shitload of heroin into this country.
MM: I deny that. And no more literary conversation until I call my lawyer.
AZ: You mean Ben Odell? No Commie lawyer’s gonna help you now.

With A Lament In My Heart

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What are the positive benefits for film culture in the Netflix-devours-Warner Bros. scenario? I’m not necessarily saying the buy is a bad or unfortunate thing. I’m just asking “what’s the upside?”

I felt the same way when 20th Century Fox was eaten by Disney.

Which senior WB employees are likely to get whacked? Maybe I should ask “who WON’T Get whacked?”

How Empty Can A Movie Possibly Be?

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I was more or less okay with Albert Brooks‘ Defending Your Life (’91) and I’ll always adore the last 25 minutes of Warren Beatty and Buck Henry‘s Heaven Can Wait (’78). Because, deep down, I’m susceptible to this brand of romantic fantasy…fate, happenstance, eternal connections, etc.

But I would never so much as flirt with the idea of submitting myself to an afterlife romcom as obviously puerile and vomitous as Eternity (A24, 11.26).

Which youngish afterlife dead guy (Miles “don’t be a pervert, man” Teller or Callum Turner) should the also-dead-but-reborn Elizabeth Olsen choose for her eternal afterlife partner? Jesus, man…who the hell cares?

Imagine if 2001‘s Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) had realized at the very end of Stanley Kubrick‘s 1968 classic, just he was about to transform into a cosmic star-child, that the only thing that really matters is somehow finding and hooking up with Pamela Byrge, a girl he was head-over-heels in love with in high school, etc.

It obviously required an extraordinary degree of shallowness and not even a glimmering of cosmic consciousness for cowriters Pat Cunnane and David Freyne (Freyne also directed) to dream up this crap.

I noted eight years ago that Turner has eyes like a northwestern timberwolf. This is still the case.