Best Movies of 2026 So Far

There are memory movies (think Roma, The Fabelmans), and then there’s Canadian writer-director Sophy Romvari’s feature debut, which rewinds to a fateful summer for an eight-year-old named Sasha (Eylul Guven). It’s the mid-1990s, and her family is trying to settle into their new home in Vancouver Island; the fact that her mentally unstable teenage brother (Edik Beddoes) is becoming more violent and volatile isn’t making the adjustment easy. Around the halfway point, the story shifts to a filmmaker (Amy Zimmer) who bears more than a passing similarity to Romvari — and who happens to be making a movie about the way her self-destructive sibling slowly tore the family apart. The metafictional conceits never dampens what’s clearly a personal story for its creator in more ways than one. And no sooner has Romvari mapped out this hall of mirrors than she delivers one hell of an emotional wallop by literalizing the idea of comforting your inner child. See this ASAP.

Look, we’d have been perfectly happy if Steven Soderbergh had simply given us a solid art-heist movie starring Michael Coel and Ian McKellen. His moody, more-meditative-than-usual drama about a young artist hired to find, pilfer, and “finish” some unfinished works from a controversial painter goes the extra mile, however, and delivers a pensive piece about creative blockage, the burden of legacies, and how the anxiety of influence can be a boon instead of a burden. And the hot-cold dynamic between its stars, with McKellen in full cantankerous-old-coot mode and Coel offering a cool and aloof counterpart, fits the specific tone Soderbergh and Ed Solomon’s script to a tee.

One might have assumed that Baz Luhrmann had gotten Elvis out of his system with his 2022 biopic on the King of Rock & Roll. But after coming across boxes and boxes of footage originally shot for two Presley concert films — Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (1970) and Elvis on Tour (1972) — he began crafting a free-form documentary that would make good use of these unseen snippets from the King’s Vegas residency. And because the maximalist director lives by the credo “go big or go home,” he was going to supersize the whole thing and show it in IMAX. The result feels is more than just a companion piece or DVD-bonus feature to Luhrmann’s earlier movie. Rather, it’s a corrective to the notion that the Seventies being nothing but the era of “Fat Elvis,” and a reminder of what a singularly electric performer Elvis was. You’d think IMAX had been invented just for this, given how the larger-than-life presentation is exactly the type of larger-than-life showcase the singer deserves.

The concept is simple: You’re walking down a corridor in a Tokyo subway underground. You notice everything around you, from advertisement posters to a passing fellow commuter. After turning a corner or two, you find yourself in the same hallway — but if you notice any “anomalies,” such a different billboard or an extra door, turn back. If everything is the exact same way it was the first time, proceed. Do this successfully eight times, and you can exit the building. The 2023 Japanese cult game doesn’t exactly scream “movie adaptation” when you play it, but director Genki Kawamura not only captures the feeling of existential panic and the flexing of deductive muscles. He also constructs a parable about parental anxiety and the peril of making bad choices — in and out of this strange prison — as he puts his hero, the “Lost Man” (Kazunari Ninomiya), through his paces. It’s fun and stylish and creepy and oddly touching, in all the right places.

Filipino filmmaker and slow-cinema legend Lav Diaz comes not praise Ferdinand Magellan, the 16th century explorer who crossed the Pacific. He’s here to bury him — or at the very least, along with his collaborator Gael García Bernal, put a stake through the heart of the colonialism-as-salvation myth he personified. Less a biopic on the Portuguese sea captain than a police blotter of historical crimes committed against indigenous communities, Diaz’s languorous look back in anger concentrates on the final years of Magellan’s life, with special attention paid to his campaign to force Christianity on the native residents of Cebu island in the Philippines. Bernal plays the explorer like a cross between Colonel Kurtz and a Keystone cop, puncturing any heroic notions around the adventurer who left dozens of bodies in his wake. Diaz, meanwhile, keeps grinding his axes until it’s time to swing them in earnest. This is what austere protest art looks like.

Set in 1993 Nigeria, Akinola Davies Jr.’s drama follows two preteen brothers (Godwin Egbo, Chibuike Marvellous Egbo) who go on a rare trip from rural Nigeria to Lagos with their father (Sope Dirisu) as he tries to collect backpay. Over the course of a day, they get to know him in a way that opens their eyes regarding their dad’s long absences from home. The turmoil surrounding the presidential election of MKO Abiola, however, is about to come to a full boil. Partially a memory film of sorts — even if you didn’t know that the director wrote it with his sibling, or that one of the boys shares his first name, it feels achingly personal — and partially a coming-of-age story that frames historical upheavals through the eyes of children, it’s an introduction to a major talent.

The surprise hit of 2026 is indeed worth the hype, and you can see why a bidding war broke over writer-director Curry Barker’s breakout feature after its film-fest premiere in Toronto last year. It’s a spin on the old when-you-wish-upon-a-monkey’s-paw chestnut: A boy (Michael Johnston) is head over heels for a girl (Inde Navarrette). Worried that he’s stuck in the friend zone, he buys an item at a curio shop that will apparently make his dream of true love come true. It works not wisely but too well. Way, way too well. Barker takes his time with the wind-up, which only makes the eventual shift into high gear that much more of a jolt. Whether or not this kicks off a new wave of Generation YouTube genre flicks remains to be seen, but Barker’s horror movie is already the sort of head turner that suggests there’s an audience hungry for original voices willing to push envelopes. Just be careful what you wish for.

Finally, a mainstream blockbuster that knows how to balance sci-fi spectacle and old-school emotional engagement in a way that makes you think 1985 never ended. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The LEGO Movie) adapt Andy Weir’s novel about a science teacher named Ryland (Ryan Gosling) who wakes up in a spaceship light years away from the Earth. This reluctant astronaut was part of a three-person crew sent to the outer reaches of the galaxy to find out what’s slowly killing our sun; he’s now the only thing standing between humanity’s salvation and certain doom. Luckily, he runs into an alien made of rocks named — what else? — Rocky, and the two combine efforts to save the universe. It’s a blast, largely thanks to Gosling’s ability to deftly leap, glide, and bounce off everything the film throws at him. Outrageous absurdist comedy, outright sentimentality, survivalist-thriller action, life-or-death drama, chin-stroking philosophizing, the need to bond with an otherworldly rubble buddy — he can handle it all. It’s a genuine star vehicle in more ways than one.

Shot in gorgeous black-and-white and unfolding like a post-church, pre-supper Sunday afternoon, Brittany Shyne’s debut chronicles the everyday lives of modern Black farmers, working the land and trying to sustain their agrarian livelihood in the 21st century. The mood is neither morose nor blindly optimistic, even as the film celebrates the sense of family and community among these Southerners (and calls out the Biden administration re: the lopsided racial politics involving timely subsidy payments). Instead, Shyne observes the men at work and at home, giving them a chance to tell their stories, air anxieties about generational inheritance or simply let the long, silent shots of them going about their business speak for the way they’ve endured. It’s a work of political activism through sheer lyricism.

Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid has always cast a critical eye on his country’s political stances and social policies — see: Policeman, Ahed’s Knee, Synonyms… his whole filmography, really. His latest has not exactly won him any friends back in his home country. A songwriter (Ariel Bronz) and his wife (Efrat Dor) enjoy every hedonistic pleasure that’s available to the nation’s elite. When he’s asked to write an anthem extolling the nation’s moral superiority, he takes the gig. Soon, the combination of that commission and reconnecting with an old musical partner/friend-with-benefits (Naama Preis) begets a serious crisis of faith. It’s an angry scream-into-the-void of a movie, and one that rages against the normalization of daily atrocities and escalating death tolls blaring out from people’s phones. Not even the gonzo early scenes of sex, drugs, and dance battles can temper the sting.