Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (2026)

Direction: Bassam Tariq
Country: USA

Written, directed, and co-produced by Pakistani-born American filmmaker Bassam Tariq, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is an entertaining action thriller that takes a chaotic plunge into underground crime, religion, and violent cults in a grim, multicultural setting. The story revolves around Latif, played by Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, 2016; Leave the World Behind, 2023), a devout Muslim and remorseless hitman who faces a crisis of faith following the loss of his wife and the urgent need to find a breast milk donor for his baby daughter.

In his sophomore feature, Tariq deliberately embraces a Tarantino-esque style, relying on kinetic action sequences, dramatic stakes, and moral ambiguity to drive the story forward. Films such as Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) and Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri (1962) are cited as influences, and the film ultimately brims with offbeat tones, bitter irony, and a keen sense of its own absurdity.

Though this tale of revenge and forgiveness can be gripping at times, it flows like a somewhat opaque and tumultuous river. Just don’t expect anything particularly original.

Tenzing (2026)

Direction: Jennifer Peedom
Country: USA / Australia / other

Australian documentarian Jennifer Peedom is known for documenting risky expeditions in films such as Solo (2008), Sherpa (2015), and Mountain (2017). Tenzing, which revisits the 1953 ascent of Mount Everest by Nepalese-Indian Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary, is her first feature-length narrative film. Written by Luke Davies, this biographical account stars Genden Phuntsok, Tom Hiddleston, and Willem Dafoe in the main roles.

In addition to leaning too heavily on sentimentality, Tenzing offers few thrills. Its narrative is constantly slowed down by clumsy flashbacks, while its characters lack nuance. It pays tribute to a forgotten hero through a conventional formula, carried by a capable cast bundled up in warm clothes. The film is actually more of a psychological portrait than a spectacular adventure.

The tensions revolve more around origins, class, and rivalries than the dangers of the mountain, and the best the film has to offer is its stunning vistas. This inspiring story deserved better treatment on screen, making for a somewhat frustrating experience. Still, the real heroes—those who see the mountain as an extension of themselves rather than as an enemy—are rightly celebrated.

Digger (2026)

Direction: Alejandro González Iñarritu
Country: USA

An almost unrecognizable Tom Cruise, seemingly on steroids, plays Digger Rockwell, an eccentric, ostentatious oil tycoon whose cavalier company faces an ecological catastrophe of tremendous proportions in Greenland, where it conducts excessive drilling. The impact extends to Europe and the rest of the world. There’s some truth behind the plot’s outlandish nature, and these madmen look and sound familiar. Yet we eventually discover that all this is part of a stage play called Fossil Fools, and that Cruise is actually playing Curtis Harkson, an actor desperately searching for his daughter.

The mise-en-abyme strategy forces us to redefine our relationship with the characters, but that’s not enough to make us swallow this wacky portrait of an America in complete dereliction. The intentions may be laudable and justified, but the tone is so caricatured, forced, and aggressive that it’s easy to lose focus. What is meant to be satirical and darkly humorous soon becomes an indigestible, flawed mess: an unpolished, persistently uneven farce that unfolds at a frantic pace but never quite lands convincingly.

Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director of Babel (2006), Amores Perros (2000), and The Revenant (2015), turns this carnivalesque excess into an exhausting spectacle for the ears, eyes, and brain. Everything is too histrionic in its posture, too dense and pedestrian, with a deluge of images and dialogue that leaves some viewers behind. Even when approached as a casual comedy, Digger is not fun at all, but rather irritating and borderline intolerable.

Late Fame (2026)

Direction: Kent Jones
Country: USA

Kent Jones’ Late Fame, based on Arthur Schnitzler’s posthumously published novella of the same name, was written by Samy Burch and stars Willem Dafoe, Greta Lee, and Edmund Donovan.

Living in downtown Manhattan, Ed Saxberger (Dafoe) long ago traded a literary career for a steady job at the post office. When Meyers (Donovan), a wealthy NYU graduate, approaches him and reveals his admiration for the poetry collection he published fifty years earlier, Ed feels both honored and fascinated. Meyers and his literary group organize a special event in his honor, hoping he might contribute some new material. Under pressure to write again, Ed also finds himself unable to conceal his attraction to Gloria (Lee), the group’s sole female member.

Simple yet broadly effective, Jones’ small-scale realism makes for a narrative well worth seeing. Its effect is sardonic and somewhat shocking, yet gentle and poignant enough to be genuinely touching. There are sharp observations about pretentious influencers addicted to their phones, considerable changes in the neighborhood, egos and vanities, and the ways in which the world may be fucked up but we still have to keep cool and carry on. Dafoe plays his character to perfection, inhabiting a dream come true that may not turn out to be quite what he had hoped for.

Late Fame speaks to an older crowd whose hearts are broken and dreams put on hold, while also making room for young, overambitious opportunists.

Mother Mary (2026)

Direction: David Lowery
Country: USA

American writer-director David Lowery has given cinephiles plenty of reasons to smile with accomplished features such as Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013), A Ghost Story (2017), The Old Man & the Gun (2018), and The Green Knight (2021). Unfortunately, that praise doesn’t extend to Mother Mary, a sloppy psychological drama starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel.

The plot follows the complex relationship between a renowned musical artist (Hathaway) and a fashion designer (Coel), but their personal involvement suddenly takes a ghost-story turn that feels as pretentious as it is ridiculous. Invocations, memories, and resentment are wrapped in a tedious play of imagination and perception, attack and defense, making Mother Mary Lowery’s weakest film to date.

This hopelessly erratic piece of work is too preoccupied with being more than it can possibly be. It never held my interest, dragging me through sequences that lead nowhere and ultimately fail to click.

I Want Your Sex (2026)

Direction: Gregg Araki
Country: USA

Gregg Araki, the director of Mysterious Skin (2004) and Kaboom (2010), returns with I Want Your Sex, a frustrating, pedestrian comedy that awkwardly mixes criminal investigation, satire of the contemporary art world, and sexual power games. Despite its provocative premise, the film struggles to turn its transgressive impulses into anything genuinely daring or entertaining.

Olivia Wilde kills it here as a manipulative dominatrix and artist fraud, while Cooper Hoffman is just ok as a fresh out of school who falls for his provocative boss, discovering new pleasures. None of them were able to save the film from vulgarity and boredom.

The director’s ten-year old project as a comedic riff of 50 Shades of Grey promised much but delivered little. Araki co-wrote it and co-produced with Karley Sciortino, a former Vogue sex columnist and author of Slutever.

Heart of the Beast (2026)

Direction: David Ayer
Country: USA

Heart of The Beast is a mawkish, uninspired survival thriller centered on the bond between James Belmont (Brad Pitt), a retired Special Forces veteran, and his loyal dog, Odin, a combat-trained German shepherd who, like his owner, suffers from PTSD. After his plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness, James must battle a roaring giant bear, a pack of hungry, ferocious wolves, and nature itself in order to survive.

Director David Ayer seems more concerned with putting the dog’s cute antics at the center of the film than with building genuine tension. The very modest screenplay is by Cameron Alexander, while the score by Jared Michael Fry verges on the unbearable. Pitt, who previously worked with Ayer on Fury (2014), is not particularly memorable either.

The film is bogged down by constant pathos and repetitive episodes, quickly overtaken by commercial ambitions at the expense of the punchy impact it so desperately needs.

Resident Evil (2026)

Direction: Zach Cregger
Country: USA

Though I’m not a huge fan of video games or horror franchises, I have to take my hat off to Zach Cregger, the director of Barbarian (2022) and Weapons (2025), for his work on this new installment of Resident Evil. This is quite definitely Cregger’s most technically proficient film to date, blending spectacular, visceral visuals, bantering humor, and oodles of effective thrills.

The plot revolves around one nightmarish night in the life of medical courier Bryan Hodukavich (Austin Abrams), who bravely battles G-Virus-mutated monsters as he attempts to make a vital delivery and survive the uncontrollable outbreak. A cruel finale leaves things deliberately unresolved, ending on a jarring yet perfectly executed note.

Cregger’s wit and love for the game are evident as every scene—fantastically shot and staged—delivers exactly what it sets out to, drawing deeply from gaming culture. He knows how to tighten the screws. At the same time, the film operates on a canvas that reaches far beyond what we’re used to seeing in pictures of this kind.

To sum up, Resident Evil brings a lively sense of gameplay and tense excitement to the screen, giving both gaming and horror enthusiasts plenty to feast upon.

The Rivals of Amziah King (2026)

Direction: Andrew Patterson
Country: USA

American filmmaker Andrew Patterson did a much better job with his critically acclaimed alien-centered debut, The Vast of Night (2019), than with The Rivals of Amziah King, a revenge neo-western set in Oklahoma (the director’s home state) and centered on a devoted beekeeper and enthusiastic folk musician with a health condition. 

Matthew McConaughey plays the title character, supported by newcomer Angelina LookingGlass as his former foster daughter, who returns to town, and Kurt Russell as a powerful businessman. 

There’s rural dark poetry here, splashed with an indie touch, but it fails to impress, as the briskly edited first part of the film—its bluegrass swagger contributing little—proves to be a total snooze-fest. The second half is a tiny bit more exciting, but the story returns to bloated form, culminating in a cold, insipid manner.

Patterson uses the pseudonym James Montague to credited himself as writer and producer.

The Weight (2026)

Direction: Padraic McKinley
Country: USA

The Weight marks a promising directorial debut by Padraic McKinley, who brings a confident sense of atmosphere and tension to a screenplay by Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines. Set in 1933 Oregon, amid the hardships of the Great Depression, this historical drama combines rugged period detail with a compelling survival story, anchored by strong performances from Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, and Julia Jones.

Evoking the spirit of ’70s classics such as William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977), John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), and Sydney Pollack’s Jeremiah Johnson (1972), the film follows single father Sam Murphy (Hawke), who is evicted, arrested, and forced to leave his young daughter in a children’s home. Sent to a labor camp, he soon reveals his cleverness, confidence, and resourcefulness, prompting warden Clancy (Crowe) to make him an irresistible proposition: smuggle bars of gold through the wilderness. More people become involved in the operation, but can they be trusted?

Laid out with pulse and atmosphere, The Weight is a gripping, taut, and effective western-style adventure thriller that puts McKinley on the list of filmmakers to watch in the future.

Tony (2026)

Direction: Matt Johnson
Country: USA

Matt Johnson’s biopic about celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain is neither superb nor particularly special, but rather a quite honest and comforting work. This real-life ballad delivered in a minor key begins with a lump in the throat and ends with a smile, pairing Dominic Sessa and Antonio Banderas as Bourdain and the quiet “chef” José Vatel, respectively, in 1975 Provincetown, Massachusetts. The film focuses not only on their boss-employee-turned-partnership relationship but also on the complicated romance between Bourdain and Nancy Putkowski (Emilia Jones).

Avoiding pathos and sentimentality, Johnson succeeds with an understated stylistic exercise that manages to blend a certain acerbic tone with a delicacy that is never feigned. Tony rightly entertains at a pleasantly superficial level. More than a technical feat, it’s a strong story with adequate dramatic power.

Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma (2026)

Direction: Jane Schoenbrun
Country: USA

In this sex-charged meta-slasher directed by Jane Schoenbrun (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, 2021; I Saw the TV Glow, 2024), a young female writer-director (Hannah Einbinder), embracing queerness and monstrosity, diligently focuses on the remake of Camp Miasma, a cult horror franchise. Her fascination for the gore and campiness of the original film leads her to its main actress (Gillian Anderson), now a reclusive woman who has made the abandoned, isolated sleepaway camp where the film was shot her home.

Packed with unexplained mysteries and forced dualities, Teenage Sex and Death At Camp Miasma occasionally feels immersive in its mood—its atmosphere satirically beautified by magical A.I. backdrops—but falls short on laughs. It fails to produce the desired disturbance, instead leaving me annoyed by its abundance of slasher clichés rather than genuinely provoking me with something outside the box. Notwithstanding, the film won the Queer Award at Cannes.

The End of Oak Street (2026)

Direction: David Cameron Mitchell
Country: USA

The fourth feature by David Robert Mitchell, The End of Oak Street, is a silly, scattered Spielbergian endeavor set in the early 80s, blending Jurassic Park with Jumanji, and enigmatic time portals with histrionic family dynamics. 

When the brave author-wannabe Denise Platt (Anne Hathaway) finds herself trapped in her suddenly isolated suburban neighborhood—now transformed into a prehistoric forest—alongside her husband Greg (Ewan McGregor) and their two children, Brian (Christian Convery) and Audrey (Maisy Stella), she must find a way to get them home.

Mitchell, who deserved all the accolade with It Follows in 2014, stumbles here into aggressive reptiles, uninspired details, and uncompelling situations. Facing such a lame script, the actors’ performances are far from memorable, while occasional humor proves to be the most redeeming element of this otherwise conventional survival film. All the rest is a cheap reproduction of things already seen, in a way that feels insipidly recycled.

The Invite (2026)

Direction: Olivia Wilde
Country: USA

The Invite, the third directorial feature by Olivia Wilde, who also stars, is a ballsy, raunchy comedy-drama filled with tension and direct, funny lines. The plot, co-written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones (collaborating 14 years after Celeste & Jesse Forever), is an adaptation of the Spanish film The People Upstairs (2021) and focuses on Angela (Wilde), a housewife who frequently forgets to breathe when anxious, and her husband, Joe (Seth Rogen), a frustrated music teacher. Their marriage is irreparably strained, and they definitely need something new and exciting in their lives. That opportunity arrives when Angela invites their noisy, nosy upstairs neighbors, Hawk (Edward Norton) and Pina (Penélope Cruz), a former firefighter and a psychotherapist/sexologist, respectively, to a dinner party.

Complaints, apologies, and unexpected revelations are fueled by joints, tequila, and intense libido. Astonishingly acted by all four actors, this provocative, fast-paced film impresses with the power with which it frames contentions, different points of view, embarrassments, and resolutions. This is finely judged filmmaking by Wilde.

The Odyssey (2026)

Direction: Christopher Nolan
Country: USA

The notable Christopher Nolan returns with a widely known mythological epic that uses modern visuals and techniques to become fully engrossing. The Odyssey stars Matt Damon—who had worked with the director in Interstellar (2014) and Oppenheimer (2023)—as Odysseus, the feared Greek king of Ithaca who gets lost on his way back home after the Trojan War. His wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), patiently awaits his return, refusing all the avid suitors who pressure her, while her son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), departs in hopes of finding out what happened to his father.

Grandiose and introspective, the film is not concerned with blood-shedding battles, instead using emotional struggle to reinvent itself. Nolan’s The Odyssey is a cinematic pleasure, with no exaggeration or over-stylized panache, preferring natural settings and real locations over studio sets. Its three hours fly by, leaving us with the certainty that our time was not wasted. 

The Drama (2026)

Direction: Kristoffer Borgli
Country: USA

Bold Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli, who previously generated meaningful emotional friction with films such as Sick of Myself (2022) and Dream Scenario (2023), stumbles heavily in his latest feature, The Drama. The plot follows the happy-turned-turbulent relationship between Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson), which is shaken by a serious revelation. Its block-like, fragmented narrative and forced tension make almost every scene feel fabricated.

The messy script obsesses over judgment, fear, and fixation in increasingly ridiculous ways, while forgiveness and hope—introduced for a bogged-down feel-good finale—feel completely out of place.

The Drama is a humorless, mediocre, and laborious exercise that offers little of genuine interest. Borgli bites off more than he can chew and struggles to digest it. After all, sarcasm alone does not make a film.

Michael (2026)

Direction: Antoine Fuqua
Country: USA

Michael is a bland, tasteless, and stereotypical biopic about American superstar Michael Jackson. Directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, 2001; The Magnificent Seven, 2016) with obvious commercial ambitions, the film focuses on the first half of Jackson’s life—from his difficult childhood in Gary, Indiana, performing alongside his brothers under the supervision of a stern father, to his Motown breakthrough and eventual rise as a solo artist through record-breaking albums such as Off the Wall and Thriller. It also follows his decisive rupture with his opportunistic father.

Michael is not only unexciting and artificial—both musically and emotionally—but also self-congratulatory, choppy, and overly mellow, leaving its subject’s darker chapters and legal controversies safely behind the curtain. The extended musical sequences, recreating several of Jackson’s iconic performances, quickly become excruciatingly overlong. Despite the committed performance of Michael’s nephew, Jaafar Jackson, the film remains a sanitized, dramatically inert portrait that never truly captures the brilliance and contradictions of its subject.

The History of Sound (2025)

Direction: Oliver Hermanus
Country: USA

South African helmer Oliver Hermanus, best known for the dramas Beauty (2011) and Living (2022), returns with The History of Sound, a bittersweet love story between two men bound by their passion for folk music in early 20th-century America. Based on two short stories by screenwriter Ben Shattuck, the film unfolds in sepia hues and dusky textures, yet takes too long to develop, ultimately struggling to find the emotional perspective and dramatic momentum necessary to fully engage.

The story follows Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal), who leaves his family farm in Kentucky to pursue his dream of becoming a folk singer. At the New England Conservatory in Boston, he meets David White (Josh O'Connor), whose passion lies in collecting folk songs from rural communities. The two are involuntarily separated by World War I, reconnecting in Maine two years later, only to drift apart once more after a year of unanswered letters.

While the narrative remains frustratingly superficial—technically polished yet dramatically inert, most of the film feels trapped in repetition, particularly during the musical interludes, which tend to weaken rather than deepen the emotional current. Hermanus’ direction is elegant and controlled, but also strangely hollow, leaving key emotional threads to dissolve into the surrounding fog. Hermanus and Shattuck clearly approach the material with sincerity, yet the result rarely cuts deeply. Likewise, despite the undeniable talent of Mescal and O’Connor, neither is given the opportunity to deliver truly memorable work here. It’s a disappointing outcome.

After the Hunt (2025)

Direction: Luca Guadagnino
Country: USA

Italian helmer Luca Guadagnino, who caused surprise with Call Me By Your Name (2017) but has recently disappointed with films like Challengers (2024) and Queer (2024), stumbles again with After the Hunt, a psychological thriller weighed down by dramatic excess, intellectually convoluted dialogue, and an overreliance on ambiguity.

Relying on close-ups that fail to bring intimacy, and a depth of field that reinforces emotional detachment, the film wallows in both dark morass and bitter coldness. Julia Roberts stars as a polished philosophy professor at Yale, while Ayo Edebiri plays an ambitious and privileged student who accuses one of the university’s assistant professors—portrayed by Andrew Garfield—of sexual assault.

The picture, struggling to create a true identity of its own, feels hollow as many of the narrative suggestions are tucked away in sub-contexts. Coldness reigns, revelations abound, confidences are shared, and tempers flare in After the Hunt. Sadly, the film continually drifts into inconsequential detours, ultimately failing to deliver the impact it strives for. Despite a solid performance from Roberts, Guadagnino’s thriller remains frustratingly inert, and I struggled with it up until the end.

The Plague (2026)

Direction: Charlie Polinger
Country: USA

The Plague, a psychological horror drama centered on a youth water polo team, marks a convincing debut for writer-director Charlie Polinger, who received accolades in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Delving into a neurotic pre-adolescence steeped in anxiety, the film draws from the director’s personal diaries written during a summer camp in 2003.

As an astute—if at times dreary—examination of youth culture within a sports camp setting, the film confronts uncomfortable realities such as bullying and the challenges of integrating into a new group. It is also notably atmospheric, ambiguous, and faintly bizarre, with a darkness that probes into grim, rarely explored emotional corners.

Polinger avoids sensationalism, maintaining a restrained, low-key approach, while the ensemble cast delivers strong performances. Young actors Everett Blunck and Kayo Martin are particularly remarkable, and a composed Joel Edgerton also contributes both on screen and as a co-producer. 

It’s a strange movie—one that may initially feel elusive in its appeal, yet gradually reveals its intrigue through lingering enigmas. A bolder ending might have elevated it further, but The Plague, carrying an unexpected emotional weight, emerges as a pleasant surprise.