The first half of 2026 has come and gone in a flash. Is time moving faster than before? It seems so to me. But because I evaluate the previous year’s movies in late February or early March with the Academy Awards show, I get a distorted sense of the movie year. Many small yet worthy films are released in the early part of the calendar year and can easily go missing in action almost immediately. But here at the home of the Half-Oscars™, we recognize and celebrate such films. Before turning to those movies, however, let us return briefly to my list of what I considered the best movies of 2025, updated to reflect their current streaming homes:
Money and popularity are not perfect—or even approximate—proxies for quality and importance. (Indeed, if they were, high school would have been very different!) Nevertheless, scrutiny of the ten highest grossing movies in the U.S. thus far in 2026 is interesting:
So we see the list of the top ten grossing movies of 2026 (thus far) includes three horror movies (Obsession, Backrooms, Scream 7), a genre popular with young adults, three animated movies intended primarily for children (Super Mario, Toy Story, Hoppers), and four sequels (Mario, Devil, Mandalorian, Scream). The outliers on the list—movies with new stories designed primarily for adults—are Project Hail Mary and Michael. So, thus far in 2026, there have been slim pickings for movie lovers of a certain age. Although I did not intentionally set out to do so, my Half-Oscars™ list - reflecting as it does my 67-year-old tastes and sensibilities - is largely, though not entirely, made up of movies for grownups.
($6 Prime rental) (119 min.) Essentially a story of extended grief, Helen (Claire Foy) is bereft when her father (Brendan Gleeson) unexpectedly passes away. Helen is an accomplished person, a Cambridge professor, and so we should expect she will have the life experience and a well of sufficient emotional strength to weather this storm. And that storm, to be honest, is not so unusual: Many of us, after all, have lost a parent. But she is barely holding it together, and she can manage to summon up energy for only one thing: a quixotic decision to train a goshawk to hunt. The art of falconry (goshawkery?) is ancient, and it is fascinating to watch it up close, especially in a modern setting. Some may find Helen’s choice to wallow in grief annoying—unbelievable even—but sometimes we don’t really appreciate what we have until it’s gone. Based on Helen MacDonald’s memoir, and thus is a true(ish) story.
9. EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (Paramount+, $6 Prime rental)
(96 min.)
We have recently experienced an Elvis Presley renaissance in film.
I vaguely disliked Sofia Coppola’s 2023 movie
Priscilla) about Priscilla Presley, with Jacob Elordi as Elvis.
I liked, but did not love, director Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 movie (
Elvis) with Austin Butler taking a turn playing Elvis.
Here, finally, is a movie I can get behind wholeheartedly:
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, with Elvis Aaron Presley playing Elvis.
Luhrmann apparently uncovered a treasure trove of hitherto unknown film of Presley when researching his 2022 film and, with an assist from Peter Jackson to perform a digital cleanse of the old film (Jackson having perfected his techniques while making
The Beatles: Get Back, his 2021 3-part documentary about The Beatles), we have a sparkling, behind the scenes look at the King of Rock and Roll.
We can now peek at Elvis in concert, in rehearsal, just living his life.
Late career Elvis, to be sure, but his charisma, talent and power are obvious.
Very fun.
8. Midwinter Break (Peacock, $6 Prime rental)
(90 min.)
Based on a popular novel by Bernard MacLaverty, this one is an up-close and personal look into the lives and backstories of an older couple, and the baggage and disappointments they carry with them.
Starring Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds (both terrific) as an older couple that, while sincerely trying to stay together and find some shared meaning in their lives, come to understand that they have allowed themselves to drift apart.
Might a surprise midwinter vacation to Amsterdam break the monotony and provide a healing spark?
Spoiler alert:
There are no easy answers here.
When you have built an relationship edifice over many years, it can be hard to change it, let alone walk away from it.
But as Bruce Springsteen sings in
Darkness at the Edge of Town:
Well, everybody’s got a secret, Sonny
Something that they just can’t face
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it
They carry it with them every step that they take
’Til someday they just cut it loose
Cut it loose or let it drag ‘em down.
7. Late Shift ($6 Prime rental)
(92 min.)
This was Switzerland’s submission for the International Film Oscar competition, was shortlisted for a nomination, but ultimately was unsuccessful.
(No quarrel here, as the five ultimate nominees were all worthy.)
But the movie’s quality, and the timeliness of its subject, no doubt helped it get released in 2026.
Although a foreign film, the story is relatable to American audiences:
how hospitals, even in large metropolitan areas, are dangerously short-staffed and the nurses overworked.
Leonie Benesch (
Teacher’s Lounge,
September 5, both recommended) plays Floria, who is pulling the late shift in a Swiss hospital.
The amount of multi-tasking she must undertake given the vastly different medical needs of her patients, not to mention needing to navigate the hospital bureaucracy and concerned family members, is unbelievable.
And her tasks are all potentially life-saving or deadly, depending on whether she gets it right.
How any person could do this job and not burn out in a week is a mystery.
But Benesch is a focused, compassionate and intelligent actress, and the movie is as entertaining as it is moving.
6. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (Hulu, $6 Prime rental)
(134 min.)
I’ll just say this up front:
This one is not for everybody.
If you disliked 2022’s Best Picture winner
Everything Everywhere All at Once, then you probably should not watch this.
In fact, you definitely should not.
But for those readers who like stories about the multiple parallel universes, different time lines, time travel, criticism of technology, and general chaos, well, this one may be for you.
Starring Oscar winner Sam Rockwell (
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) as a time traveler who has come to our present time to stop artificial intelligence from gaining sentience and forever changing the future (and dooming humankind).
He enlists a seemingly random group of customers one evening at Norm’s diner in West Los Angeles, a place already famous in pop culture.
This rump Justice League, of sorts, includes Juno Temple (
Ted Lasso), Haley Lu Richardson (
Montana Story,
After Yang), Michael Peña (
Ant-Man), and Zazie Beetz (
Atlanta,
Joker,
Deadpool 2).
Along the way we learn the back stories of these characters, and director Gore Verbinski (three
Pirates off the Caribbean movies,
Rango) thereby engages in several set pieces in order to comment on our modern technological society, including high schoolers turned into zombies by their cellphones, a woman allergic to technology whose boyfriend disappears into an RPG (role player video game), and a world where school shootings are so common that companies will provide the grieving parents with a clone of their lost child to ease their suffering.
As I said, it’s a wild ride.
5. Silent Friend ($6 Prime rental)
(147 min.)
I know, I know:
two-and-a-half hours about a ginkgo tree.
But trust me:
it’s not as heavy a lift as you might think, for this one is three different movies in one.
In the first segment, set in 1908, the tree is young, growing on the campus of the university in Marburg, Germany.
Luna Wedler (
22 Lengths) plays Grete, who is facing blatant discrimination in her struggle to be admitted as the first female student at the university.
The second segment, set in the early 1970s, involves a halting, maybe, could be relationship between Hanne and Gundula, the latter of whom is experimenting to see if she can sense any communications or mood changes from the potted geranium she is growing on her window sill.
The final segment stars Asian superstar Tony Leung Chiu-wai (
In the Mood for Love,
Chunking Express,
Infernal Affairs,
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) as a visiting professor from Hong Kong stranded at the university when the Covid pandemic hits.
In his enforced solitude, he decides to experiment on the ginkgo tree, which by now is enormous.
He consults with a French colleague, played by Léa Seydoux (
Blue is the Warmest Color,
Spectre,
No Time to Die,
Midnight in Paris).
Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi, whose 2018 movie
On Body and Soul was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, expertly interweaves the three stories, cleverly relying on different mediums for the three time periods:
black and white for Grete’s 1908 milieu, 35 millimeter analog film for Hanne’s Germany in the 1970s, and digital for the present day.
A fascinating, moving, beautiful, contemplative movie, winner of many international awards, and has us wondering whether plants are trying to tell us something.
4. Diamanti (Diamonds) (not yet available)
(137 min.)
The latest from Italian-Turkish director Ferzan Özpetek, this one is all about female relationships.
(Özpetek directed one of my favorite movies,
Facing Windows, from 2003.
Only $4 to rent on Prime.)
Diamanti tells the story of two sisters who run a business in Italy creating costumes for theatrical plays and motion pictures.
Pretty much everyone who works there is female, and the business is hired to create costumes for a demanding film director’s latest movie.
His chosen lead designer, played imperiously by Vanessa Scalera (
Imma Tataranni: Deputy Prosecutor), comes freighted with the reputation of having previously won an Oscar for costume design.
There are women in the house who specialize in all aspects of costume design.
But each has a back story and, in the end, we feel fortunate to have been included in this family of women who love and support each other in their profession and, if necessary, personal lives.
If you like Italian movies, female-forward stories, and/or creativity in fashion design, this one’s for you.
3. Amrum ($6 Prime rental)
(93 min.)
Just when you think you’ve seen every kind of WWII story on film, here’s something new.
The movie takes place during the dying days of the war on the island of Amrum, a remote barrier island on the North Sea Coast of Germany.
Seemingly a world away from the fighting, the film follows Nanning, a young boy whose father is a high-ranking officer away on Nazi business.
His true-believer mother is pregnant but has moved the family to the island, her ancestral home, when Allies bombed their house in Hamburg.
She clings to the vain hope of a glorious victory for the Third Reich, even though the Russian Red Army is just 50 kilometers from Berlin and everyone else knows the end is near.
Indeed, most of of the villagers are hoping for the end of the war.
But reminders are everywhere, from the wartime shortages of flour, butter, and sugar, the sudden appearance of refugees from Poland and Silesia, and the allied bombers periodically flying overhead on their way to drop their bombs over Germany.
For much of the film we follow Nanning in his quixotic quest to score a little white flour, butter and honey for his mother, who has fallen into a postpartum depression following the birth of her child and declares she will eat nothing but white bread with butter and honey.
Along the way, we see how various people are coping with the war and we get a strong sense of the geography of this unusual place.
The film won multiple German Film award nominations and was recognized as the Best Film at both the Barcelona and Bavarian film festivals.
Directed by Fatih Akin, a Turkish-German director of such movies as
Head On,
In the Fade, and
Soul Kitchen.
2. Tuner (still in theaters, but a $10 Prime rental)
(107 min.)
Here’s a movie I think everyone will enjoy.
Tuner is a good old-fashioned caper/thriller/heist movie with a new twist:
the protagonist Niki (Leo Woodall) suffers from hyperacusis, meaning he is unusually, crazily sensitive to sound.
The poor lad has to wear earplugs 24/7 and, often, noise-muffling headphones on top of them.
(Why he lives in New York, the noisiest city in the country, is a bit of a mystery, but just go with it.)
It turns out he was a musical prodigy as a child, but the onset of his rare affliction abruptly ended that dream, so now he works as a piano tuner for an old guy named Harry Horowitz.
Harry is played by Dustin Hoffman, one of our greatest actors, someone who has appeared in so many iconic movies (
The Graduate,
Rain Man,
Midnight Cowboy,
Tootsie,
Lenny,
All the President’s Men) as well as lending his voice to what seems like about 100
Kung Fu Panda movies.
He is predictably great here and his untimely heart attack provides the triggering event for the movie.
Niki needs some quick cash to pay for Harry’s medical bills and, as it turns out, his hyperacusis is quite useful for opening safes.
What could possibly go wrong?
With Havana Rose Liu (
Bottoms,
Power Ballad) as the love interest.
1. The Christophers ($6 Prime rental)
(100 min.)
Starring relative newcomer Michaela Coel as Lori, a painter struggling after finishing art school, and the towering, glowering Ian McKellen as Julien Sklar, a mix of Gerhardt Richter, David Hockney, and
perhaps Andrew Wyeth.
Sklar was the rare artist who was famous in his lifetime, both for his art and his outré personality, and his paintings sell for millions.
Now a bit of a recluse and raconteur who cynically records video greetings on Cameo for £149 a pop, he is largely disgusted with his talent and fame.
He is also nearing the end of his life.
His transparently avaricious children, played by Jessica Gunning and James Corden, want to get Lori hired as Sklar’s personal assistant so she can secretly finish 12 canvases called “The Christophers” that Sklar has long abandoned and stashed in the attic of his ramshackle mansion.
Those unfinished paintings, if finished, will be worth millions once Sklar enters the pearly gates.
It’s a fool’s errand, of course, but the dialog is crisp and biting, and the discussions about the nature of, and creating, art are fascinating.
Lori holds her own against the powerful Sklar, and the twists keep coming until you can no longer keep track.
Wonderful.
Also worth a look
Is This Thing On? (Hulu, $5 Prime rental)
(121 min.)
This one came and went in the blink of an eye, but I did not feel my time was wasted when I saw it.
Will Arnett (Blades of Glory, Arrested Development) plays Alex, whose marriage is falling apart.
He stumbles into an open mic night downtown and finds stand-up comedy is a pretty good way of coping with his situation.
Sure, it’s a bit like
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but this one is less frothy, less like a network sitcom, and Alex is angrier than Mrs. Maisel.
Or maybe it’s just the difference between Arnett’s male energy and Rachel Brosnahan’s female energy.
Still, an interesting look behind the scenes of the stand-up comedy culture.
The Testament of Ann Lee (Hulu, $6 Prime rental)
(136 min.)
This movie was mentioned as a possible nomination contender in the run up to last year’s Oscars but a quick check shows it was not actually released to the general public until 2026 so it qualifies for consideration for the 2026 Half-Oscars™.
Amanda Seyfried does a terrific job in this biopic of the titular character, one of the real-life principals of the Shaker Movement in America.
(Indeed, Seyfried should be remembered come Oscar time later this year, but that seems doubtful given that the movie was released in January 2026.)
The Shakers, a utopian religious movement, incorporated movement, song, and dance into their religious rituals, and the musical interludes seemed well integrated into the movie.
Written and directed by Mona Fastvold, one of Brady Corbett’s (
The Brutalist) collaborators.
Indeed, he cowrite this movie with Fastvold.
With Lewis Pullman (
Outer Range,
Thunderbolts*) and Thomasin McKenzie (
Leave No Trace,
JoJo Rabbit).
Palestine 36 ($7 Prime rental)
(119 min.)
I found this to be a well-made and emotionally affecting look at the British involvement in the creation of the State of Israel and a separate Palestine.
The events and political machinations in this part of the world in 1936— 90 years ago!—should feel far-removed from the present-day politics over Israel, Gaza, and the settlements.
Sadly, it does not.
A timely reminder of the problem created by Britain (and France) so many years ago and the difficulties those decisions are making for us today.
Shortlisted last year for the International Film Oscar.
Pressure (still in theaters, Peacock, $10 Prime rental)
(100 min.)
We need no additional reminders of the horrors of the Allied invasion of Normandy or of the incredible logistical endeavor that was D-Day in WWII.
Still, here’s another one, told from a rather odd angle: weather forecasting!
For a successful amphibious landing—or to even have a chance of success—the weather on the Atlantic coast of northern France that fateful June day had to be relatively mild.
And General Eisenhower, here played by Brendan Fraser continuing his late career resurgence (
The Whale,
Rental Family), relied on two meteorologists, one American and one British.
But they disagreed, and thousands of lives were at stake.
What was Ike to do?
Nothing earthshaking here, but an interesting story well told.
With Andrew Scott (
Blue Moon,
Ripley, the “hot priest” in
Fleabag) as James Stagg, the British weather forecaster, and Kerry Condon (
F1: The Movie,
Train Dreams,
The Banshees of Inisherin) as Ike’s assistant, Kay Summersby.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 (still in theaters)
(119 min.)
A bit of Hollywood fluff, but if you liked the first one in 2006, well, the good news is that they got the band back together.
Returning are not only Meryl Streep (as the imperious Miranda Priestly) and Anne Hathaway (as Andy Sachs), but the clever script also brings back Stanley Tucci (as Nigel) and Emily Blunt (as Emily), and throws in Kenneth Branagh, Justin Theroux and Lucy Liu as well.
It was fun to spend a little time in a darkened theater hating on the shortsighted corporate overlords and beancounters and cheering on the creatives.
And here’s an amazing fact:
no one seems to have aged a bit in the intervening 20 years!
Ah, the magic of Hollywood. [See Len's May 2026 full review
here]
Michael ($10 Prime rental)
(127 min.)
I was in France when this movie was released, and the only showing I could find was in French with no subtitles.
I saw it anyway, predicting that I likely already knew the story.
I was right:
The emotional power of the story of Michael Jackson’s upbringing, and lead actor Jaafar Jackson’s performances, rendered language largely irrelevant.
The movie stops just short of the time in Michael Jackson’s life when child assault charges started surfacing, but this movie of course raises the question of whether we can appreciate the art without considering personal characteristics of the artist.
The issue is far ranging and people will no doubt have differing views on it.
(Woody Allen?
Kevin Spacey?
Hugh Grant?
Peewee Herman?
Mel Gibson?
O.J. Simpson?
Sean Combs?
Chris Brown?
Bobby Brown?
Pablo Picasso?
Caravaggio?)
But the movie is quite enjoyable if you are a Michael Jackson fan, and possibly so even if you are not.
The film has been a surprise smash worldwide, grossing over $1 billion worldwide ($372 million domestically) and is now the highest grossing biopic in history, surpassing 2018’s
Bohemian Rhapsody (Freddie Mercury) and 2023’s
Oppenheimer (J. Robert Oppenheimer).
It was emblematic of Michael Jackson’s enduring popularity (despite criminal allegations) that the theater in France was packed, and the Frenchman and his wife sitting next to me, both in their 60s, sang the words to every song in the movie.
Out loud.
In English.
I Love Boosters (still in theaters, $20 Prime rental)
(113 minutes)
The latest from provocateur director Boots Riley (
Sorry to Bother You), this is a wild and crazy satire on todays corporate and consumerist culture.
If some films (like last year’s
Train Dreams) evince a naturalistic tone and contemplative emotional feel, well, this is the opposite of that.
The colors are strong, the emotions are intense, and the plot is unrealistically crazy.
Or crazily unrealistic.
The protagonists Corvette (Keke Palmer) and Sade (Naomi Ackie) decide to take revenge on a famous fashion designer named Christie Smith (a wonderful Demi Moore, continuing her fine later-career resurgence) by stealing outfits from her stores and reselling them at lower, more reasonable prices.
They call it fashion forward filanthropy [sic].
Sure, there are some weird, probably unnecessary subplots, like Riley-favorite Lakeith Stanfield as a demon who drives women crazy when performing oral sex, but when Corvette purloins a secret device from Smith’s company and uses it to teleport to her Chinese sweat shop-like clothes factories in order to remedy the dire labor conditions, you know this train has gone far, far off the rails.
Project Hail Mary (still in theaters, $6 Prime rental)
(156 minutes)
Overlong, but still quite entertaining, this story of our dying sun, one last faint hope to repair our home star, and a plucky scientist who teams up with an extraterrestrial is well made Hollywood stuff.
Based on a book by Andy Weir, whose previous book birthed
The Martian in 2015 with Matt Damon, this one follows a similar game plan:
a long shot plan with everything on the line, with science-y window dressing all around.
This one perhaps could have used director Ridley Scott’s magic touch with suspense movies, but is entertaining nevertheless.
With German actress and last year’s Oscar nominee Sandra Hüller (
Anatomy of a Fall; see also
The Zone of Interest,
Toni Erdmann) in a supporting role.
