Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (2026)

Tariq has quite an eye for crafting a scene and a talent for building those scenes into a compelling story. With Your Mother, Tariq blends a strong sense of family and faith with the tension that comes from the violent world of his central character, a hitman. He explores the inherent violence in religious communities through this story of a muslim hitman who gets entangled with a gun worshipping Texas evangelical church. It is a combination ripe with emotion and meaning with a powerful performance from Ali (what else would you expect) at its centre.

Beautiful and emotional Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is powerful on the big screen. My only complaint is that I did not find the narrative made a lot of sense. It felt like the script was often just trying to get us from one of the important scenes to another and didn't always feel real. The climactic battle is a bit confusing and not quite earned. But the film's strength comes more in its characters connecting, particularly Ai and his daughter. 

It is those moments where Your Mother truly shines. Young actress Adia is incredible and paired with Ali playing her father, the two really bring the story to life everytime they are together. The film's real ending, following the big climactic battle, is a quiet emotional scene that makes you realize the is far less interested in the set pieces than the film's marketing is, and that is for the best.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

Starring: Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito, Abubakr Ali, Tramell Tillman, Adia

Writer/Director: Bassam Tariq

La bola negra (2026)

Sometimes films feel more like poetry than prose. La bola negra is filmed with one foot in realism and another in impressionism. Los Javis have taken a gem of Spanish Queer Literature and built around it a soaring and gorgeous epic which imagines a legacy of queer art throughout the decades. Always made with an eye to real beauty, La bola negra wrestles with our connections to the queer ancestors, both figurative and in this story's case, literal, that have brought us to where we are. 

I kept being swept up in the majesty of this film. Without feeling overwrought, La bola negra consistently centres itself in beautiful settings and the visuals evoke the characters, and their passions and struggles. The way Ambrossi and Calvo so seemingly effortlessly  weave their story through eras and wars and passions, feels so liberating. Survival through trauma in this sort of historic queer epics, is par for the course yet La bola negra finds a freshness, perhaps in the way it embraces a realness to its queer story telling, a queerness to its epic story telling. It doesn't shy away from its purpose and beautiful paints it across the screen. 

The film's thesis, that we do not live until we embrace who we truly are, is boldly spoken and lived by the characters in this movie. There is also, through its time-spanning plot, a sense of wrestling with what we owe those who paved our way. The film's most heart-wrenching moments for me were not necessarily the pieces of drama from the historical scenes of war and fascism but the revelations of the modern relationships. There is something quite beautiful about these two modern queer artists making this film from the fragments of a past queer artist's work and building on it until it becomes something even more than either could have imagined. 

The film's cast comes together so beautifully spanning the years of the story. From Cruz's spectacular cameo, which imbues the film with a joyous yearning, through the young leads of each time period, I couldn't take my eyes off of them. They truly become who they are portraying.

La bola negra will haunt you and inspire you, asking you to reflect on how we got here and where we have come from. It is about our connections through art and beauty to our honest selves. 

La bola negra

Starring: Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes, Lola Dueñas, Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close

Directors: Javier Ambrossi, Javier Calvo

Writers: Alberto Conejero, Javier Ambrossi, Javier Calvo

Animals (2026)

Animals is the second attempt in as many years to remake Kurosawa's High and Low after Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest. The idea in each case is the same. A powerful man believes his son is kidnapped only to find out it is the son of a staff person kidnapped by mistake and the fallout from this exposes the problems inherent in our stratified societies. In this version of the story we follow a likely to be successful candidate running to be mayor of LA just as he is embroiled in the campaign. While I felt like Lee's film last year turned the questions of the story into something less interesting, this one I feel focused on more of what I was interested in. However Animals feels like it squanders those questions in its final act. 

Affleck sets up his moral dilemma quite effectively. His and Washington's characters are very much a balance between relatable to the suburban audience this film is aimed at, and compromised in ways that should make that audience uncomfortable. And as the plot works through its elements, that same audience is, with the mirror held up to it, asked to reflect on a series of problems. But the film doesn't entirely make its audience reckon with the consequences. I wish Animals had been bolder. It's like the set up was all there but then they pulled back and gave what ends up being a rather standard feeling sort of ending. 

The climax mitigates a lot of what could have been really uncomfortable circumstances. There is some Hollywood, out of nowhere "twists" which feel forced. It also gives the audience a bit of a chance to breathe, and maybe not have to wrestle as hard with what they are watching as they might have. The good guys win and the bad guys get what's coming to them. All can be right again with the world. The film sort of self-consciously attempts to suggest some doom with its very last scenes, indicating that the good guys cover it up in a way that is less than ethical, but since the film has established its happy ending as effectively as it does, it almost seems to be suggesting, and it is easy for the audience to buy into the idea that, the cover up is for the best. 

Perhaps one day there will be a truly good adaptation of High and Low that lives up to the legacy. Animals, while not entirely a lost cause, doesn't achieve this.   

Animals

Starring: Ben Affleck, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson, Adriana Paz, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Steven Yeun, Ray Fisher

Director: Ben Affleck

Writers: Connor O. McIntyre, Billy Ray, Ben Affleck

Matchbox: The Movie (2026)

One can't separate the film Matchbox from the elephant in the room, the cinematic behemoth Barbie, cause the former is the first film made by the toy company Mattel since its success making the latter. There may be a lot of commentary about Mattel and Hollywood maybe learning the wrong lessons from Barbie's success. But while Matchbox is no Barbie by any means, I was actually surprised at how much the film understands why Barbie was what it was. That being said, this is still a misfire but for a film that you can watch for free if you already have its streaming service, it's not the worst way to spend a couple hours, especially if you like (or ever liked) playing with toy cars. 

What it gets right: Nostalgia for the brand. For everything that Barbie was, a big part of its draw was the love so much of its audience had for the toy. From their memories of playing with the doll to the aesthetics of the brand, Barbie had throngs of people show up because they loved the idea of seeing a Barbie movie. Matchbox takes what is essentially a Fast and Furious story and builds in as many references, mostly specifically tied to the idea of playing with Matchbox cars, as possible. The movie actually does a good job of taking the experience of playing with the cars and translating that to the big screen. 

It also gets the casting right. Cena is the right man for this job. He has the right persona to balance the humour, the action, and the drama (yes Cena is underrated as a dramatic actor). The film takes itself seriously, as much as this sort of thing can, and adds in the right amount of heart/laughs/action to sell this story of kids who played with toy cars as kids who grow up to drive big cars fast. It's hard to think of an actor who better fits this. than Cena. 

What it gets wrong? Well the story is really very standard. It really is on the level of an FF movie and I'm not saying that as a compliment. Instead of a script that manages to pack in some substantial analysis of societal issues by Oscar winning screenwriters, Matchbox recycles the plot of a fairly disposable action movie. The film hires a first time director instead of bringing in one of the hottest, most innovative directors on the rise. While Barbie managed to capture a certain film culture cache that just isn't here for this go round. Barbie ended up being populist while also having the air of big C cinema. 

See Barbie wasn't just about the nostalgia. It delivered something else, something that was missing in cinemas. Barbie offered something to audience who weren't being served. Matchbox doesn't have that magic. The audience for this is already served and served well. It's not hard to find movies that play to the adults who were little kids who played with Matchbox cars. Movies like this are a dime a dozen. While there are many that are a lot worse, there are also many that are a lot better. So while I may feel fun to see a movie that reminds you of your love for you old toy cars, it doesn't feel necessary. 

And that's where they missed this mark. While the film feels nice as a way to touch into something sweetly nostalgic, it also just feels rather average. Audiences have shown they need a reason to watch a movie and Matchbox just doesn't offer that convincing of one. 

Matchbox: The Movie

Starring: John Cena, Jessica Biel, Sam Richardson, Arturo Castro, Teyonah Parris, Corey Stoll, Bill Camp

Director: Sam Hargrave

Writer: David Coggeshall

California $chemin (2026)

For his first directoral feature, McAvoy went with this charming little tale based on a true story and what I appreciated about it is that it didn't shy away from being honest. It doesn't paint an overly rosy picture of this duo while still telling a rather endearing story. Sometimes it feels like the journey might be a little easy (they get a shot without trying that hard) but the film moves past that part quickly into the meat of it, how easily they get pulled into a world that just isn't real. 

Ross and Bottomley are both truly charismatic and that makes the film easy to watch and enjoy. McAvoy is clearly having fun in his supporting role playing a scumbag executive. But it comes down to just how much they make you care about them and their journey through flirting with fame. The film allows each to be real people, sometimes making really bad choices, and learning from it. Often biopics sugarcoat their subjects so that we don't dislike them too much. But California Schemin lets us see them warts and all.

California $chemin

Starring: Séamus McLean Ross, Samuel Bottomley, James McAvoy, James Corden

Director: James McAvoy

Writers: Elaine Gracie, Archie Thomson

Digger (2026)

Bold and innovative but sometimes messy, Digger is an experience and it's not what you might expect. Some of it works better than other parts but when it works its quite remarkable. And yes Tom Cruise is as good as they say, giving a complex performance that embraces some of the audacity of the film while also finding a certain subtly... as much as one can with this film. 

Digger is a profound and in your face indictment of industry and government reaction to climate change in a way that is darkly (almost terrifyingly) comic while also forcing its audience to look in the mirror. This is definitely a hard pill to swallow sort of film despite how much Iñárritu brings his stylized vision to this story. And it is stylish. Digger is a beautiful film to watch filled with incredible art direction and costumes while being filmed with an artful cinematography that is playful. All of this belies the darkness behind the story, one that is a bit of a confessional told cleverly.  

Some of the stylization might have gone a bit far for my tastes but that was rectified in the moments the film comes down to earth (somewhat). *spoilers* the film is a play within a play style story where it is revealed that Digger itself is fiction and Digger the character is a character played by an actor (who is played by Tom Cruise). While some of this section feels a bit like what Iñárritu did with Birdman, it is the part where for me the film really worked. It felt more tied to the real world and perhaps the urgency. The rest felt somewhat farcical to me but these moments drove the point home.

Still Digger remains spectacle. Its entire cast truly shows up for it and it is something that just needs to be seen. In the end its power outweighs its flaws and it is the sort of film that will stay with you long after the credits role. 

Digger

Starring: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Emma D'Arcy, Burn Gorman

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Writers: Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, Sabina Berman, Alejandro G. Iñárritu

I Come Home (2026)

I was worried throughout I Come Home that the film would default into something common, that it would end up with its central family, a throuple, coming apart unable to overcome the messiness of relationships, reinforcing stereotypes of plural relationships. We are used to seeing "love triangle" be about conflict and, as the film maker has himself said, we aren't used to seeing it be a source of strength and love. I was comforted to see I Come Home not go down the well beaten path and instead offer us something differnt.  

I Come Home is a love story. It is a love story between three people who face the complexities of relationships and life and family and the unexpected by each bringing their own unique strengths together to create something stronger. I Come Home doesn't shy away from how challenging love can be but also what it offers. And the film works so beautifully, filmed as if we are glimpsing into these people's lives and seeing just how they come together. 

Cheesman is the strong centre of this film and she gives a powerful performance as a woman facing a lot of curveballs all at once. Her chemistry with her partners palyed by Gonzalez-Vio and Ali is palpable which makes the love at the centre of this story so embracing. You can truly feel it. 

The ending comes in such a beautiful and powerful way and it surprised and delighted me. That is what I want from a love story and I Come Home really does gives us a glimpse into this home and this family in a way that is beautiful. 

I Come Home
Starring: Hannah Cheesman, Carlos Gonzalez-Vio, Ryan Ali, Jordan Hayes, Sonja Smits

Director: Glen Wood

Writer: Andreas Vatiliotou