Coyote vs. Acme (2026)

Smart, funny, and delightfully charming, Coyote vs. Acme may not be quite the masterpiece Who Framed Roger Rabbit is but it is very much in that spirit and captures something both lovingly nostalgic and cleverly discerning from a modern lens. Capturing the irony and wit of the classic Looney Tunes while infusing a great deal of love for these characters, Coyote vs. Acme gets why we love the old cartoons and brings us something new to love with it. And at the heart of it Coyote vs. Acme is just a damn good time at the movies for almost all ages. 

One doesn't have to be an aficionado of the WB cartoons to truly love this, but it certainly helps. Filled with little easter eggs and featuring some pretty deep cuts, Coyote vs. Acme is a treasure trove for long time fans. But it is also completely accessible for someone fresh to the material. From a small child (who may have many of the jokes go over their heads - just like the original cartoons) to adults of all ages who may not be overly familiar, this film is just really entertaining and watchable with a pretty direct plot. The characters are likeable and fun and mostly its story is presented without getting too complicated. But perhaps there is a bit of complications which make this richer than your average Hollywood nostalgia sequel. 

Like the reference I made earlier to the most famous live action/animation classic, Coyote vs. Acme might have something a little more sophisticated to say than simple humour. There is a court case at the centre of this film which is mostly handled on a fairly curface level but what underlies that is some interesting social commentary on class, capitalism, exploitation. The film doesn't get too bogged down in the weeds, keeps things rather straight forward, and its metaphors aren't as sublime as Roger Rabbit's but they are there and they are smart and like the old Looney Tunes cartoons they might just teach us something.

Coyote vs. Acme is a little gem that overcame the odds (read into the history of this film being made, cancelled, and then resurrected... it's fascainting) and we are lucky that it's here so don't sleep on this. 

Coyote vs. Acme

Starring: Will Forte, John Cena, Lana Condor, Tone Bell, Luis Guzmán, Eric Bauza, Candy Milo, Jim Cummings

Director:  Dave Green

Writer: Samy Burch

Tony (2026)

Director Johnson has mastered the right balance of humour and heart in his dramadies. While BlackBerry ran right down the middle, his last film Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie leaned into the comedy while wearing a big damn heart on its sleeve.  With Tony he explores a more dramatic side while keeping the story rooted in the sort of organic humour that keeps you smiling even when what you’re seeing is rough. 

I often don’t enjoy biopics cause of their tendency to lionize their subjects and sugarcoat history. Tony feels a little different. Yes it’s treating its beloved subject in a very sympathetic way but it also deprecates him enough to get a pass. Young Tony is a bit of an ass and yet we care about him anyway. For a man we know is going to end his own life eventually we get to see him full of human joy and errors and passions and anger. The film doesn’t address his death instead focusing on his formative years and referencing his later successes. As it should be. 

And the story works because it doesn’t have to be a true story. The characters and plot lines are engaging and interesting enough to be fiction. The cast is great. Sessa continues to shine and those supporting him all bring their A game. 

Tony overcame my apprehension about biopics by being genuine and finding, at its heart, the right story to capture a bit of who Bourdain may have been. 

Tony

Starting: Dominic Sessa, Emilia Jones, Dagmara Domińczyk, Rich Sommer, Stavros Halkias, Leo Woodall, Antonio Banderas

Director: Matt Johnson 

Writers: Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels, Lou Howe, Matt Johnson

 

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)

Horror has a very complicated and closely aligned connection to queerness. From the idea of othering the “monster” to how films stitch us into identifying with certain points of view, certain characters, horror as a genre has playing a significant role in identify formation for those who fall outside of the dominant cultural groups. The documentary The Celluloid Closet covers how Hollywood has queer coded villains, and specifically aligned transness with villainy. Current online discourse has been a backlash against any film which centres characters that aren’t straight white cis-men. Camp Miasma arrives amid this history and this current climate with something profound and haunting to say, something complicated and self-reflective, and it does this while making a gorgeously unsettling, wittingly funny film that somehow sees the beauty in the monster.

Miasma refers to a foreboding, a danger. We are all more familiar with the meaning of camp. Writer/director Schoenbrun plays with language here, including in the name of her movie serial killer, Little Death, a translation of a French phrase for orgasm. Some of what is going on here is a search for the ability to cum. But it’s not that simple. It is about reaching a level of connection to experience something as fulfilling and satisfying as orgasm, connection with others, connection with one’s self. This isn’t as straight forward as you might assume. For many exiled from their own identities, their own selves, through cultural oppression, reaching this state represents a liberation. 

The slasher genre, so full of history of condemning sexual liberation, is the perfect vessel for finding that very freedom. Schoenbrun inverts so many of the assumptions of the genre in the way that queer/trans audiences have been inverting the characterizations of themselves in these movies. While the film doesn’t try to be scary (most of the horror movies elements are played for… well, camp) the film is unsettling in otherways; in how it gives permission to explore, to see things differently. This is the very opposite of how a morality play works.

Einbinder and Anderson are excellent here, with Anderson doing both a tribute and pastiche on Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard, even down to the turban. She is ethereal and spilling over with subtext and presence and gives the film a larger than life feeling. Also incredible is Jack Haven as Little Death himself. This character blew away any expectations I may have had and even without hardly any lines, Haven delivers a haunting portrait that balances all the pathos and humour captured in he character. 

And Camp Miasma is a simply gorgeous film. Schoenbrun utilizes classic horror film styles and combines the artificial sets with practical in a manner that creates something visually incredible and beautiful to look at. It creates the world in which this specific story can exist and gives it room to breathe, allowing the audience to reflect and absorb the layers of the story.

So much of what Camp Miasma was saying feels familiar yet unsaid, perhaps having been fleeting thoughts we’ve had while consuming horror media from outside the mainstream perspective. Miasma offers it to us explicitly, even if not literally or without some room for personal interpretation. It further entrenches Schoenbrun as one of the most compelling film makers working today.  

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Starring: Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson, Jack Haven, Patrick Fischler, Kevin McDonald, Eva Victor, Dylan Baker

Writer/Director: Jane Schoenbrun

The End of Oak Street (2026)

I love a good monster movie and that is what The End of Oak Street is. It’s not trying to be anything more than just a fun running from dinosaurs film. That doesn’t mean it’s dumb. It rises to the occasion with smart dialogue, real feeling characters (who have decent arcs), and a plot that invests us in our heroes survival. What it doesn’t do is get distracted or weighed down by anything too esoteric. Instead it sets is sights on entertaining and telling a damn good story. That’s what you get in The End.

The End of Oak Street commits to its bit. It goes full into 80s mode, evoking the era without feeling stereotyped and reflecting a sort of family oriented action film that really feels like an 80s movie. In many ways this is a love letter to films like E.T. or Short Circuit; a kind of film that was popular in that era before the seriousness and irony of the 90s took over. 

But it doesn’t talk down to its audience or just rely on nostalgia. Instead it invests us in its tale through building the characters (who feel very relatable, imperfect but likeable). The film gets right into its story, and once it gets going doesn’t slow down for much. It even through a few curveballs at us that you might not see coming. Is the plot a bit over the top and sometimes the beats feel a bit convenient? Sure maybe. And I wouldn’t start thinking about the implications of the time loop that the ending creates (a problem with most time travel movies). But if you can just let yourself enjoy the story it will be very satisfying and likely rewatchable. 

In an era when we thought we’d seen all the dinosaur movies we needed to, The End of Oak Street ales a pretty compelling case for a new one. 

The End of Oak Street

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery

Writer/Director: David Robert Mitchell

The Last House (2026)

It's been 5 years since the 2021 height of Covid (as we remember Covid) and a movie about being trapped in your house with your family, unable to go outside because something out there will kill you still feels incredibly on the nose. Attempting this is bold in that it could tap into the angst we now tie to that time or it could feel like retreading ground we don't want to revisit? I'm not sure we have good memory of that time as our politics and emotions have coloured everything we discuss and exchange regarding lock down. There hasn't been a lot of appetite for films which touch on what it felt like to live through that time. 

Leterrier's film is ostensively horror but attempts to be more hopeful in its treatment of its themes, flirting with some darkness without getting too deep into those weeds and eventually making its way to its happy ending of being outside in the sun again. It takes no political positions in its analogy, picking a metaphor that doesn't implicate are argument for or against anything specific. Instead it is about survival and togetherness at least on a family level. In the end that means it doesn't really have a lot to say beyond celebrating enduring and coming out the other side, no matter who you are. 

The Last House ends up feeling a bit surface level and safe. The film works better than it should due to the strong performances of Lee and Moura who are both up for bringing gravitas here that might not be in the script entirely. The film's basic premise is interesting enough to keep you invested and the final act has pretty decent action movie set pieces so that it isn't boring. That's not the same as being interesting. When the film does reach its final moments its ending takes a pretty big leap that I'm not sure it earns. Leterrier really tries to push that it does but it feels a bit forced. Still, The Last House, with its central performances ends up being entertaining enough, even if its story carries less weight than one might hope. 

The Last House

Starring: Greta Lee,Wagner Moura

Director: Louis Leterrier

Writer: Matthew Robinson

One Night Only (2026)

One Night Only is a very high concept rom-com, set in a world where pre-marital sex is illegal, everyone has a chip in the body which measures if they are having sex or not, and there is a Purge like night where singles can have sex for a 12 hour period. On that night our two heroes meet, bicker, and fall in love (the perpetual rom-com formula) while the clock for their window to have sex ticks down. Does it work? My answer would be sort of....

One Night Only struggles to figure out what it is trying to be. Is it a straight up rom-com just set in this dystopian plot or is it a critique of social norms told through the lens of love in a 1984-yet-modern world? It will occasionally have moments of sharp commentary on sexual control by societal norms. One of my favourite lines is when a queer woman says to (her friend) our leading lady "Tonight is for the straights. We have been dancing around your laws for many years." But more often than not the film leans into its rom-com sensibilities where we're obsessed with the will-they-or-won't-they even though we konw damn well they will cause they always do in these things. 

And when it is being its most rom-comy it's kind of rote. It pretends to have an edge by having its leads keep being distracted with potential hook-ups with other characters that come along. But in its over-predictable way the film keeps bringing them back together, going through the motions of trying to create some barrier to their eventual "Empire State Building moment" which we all know is coming. If it wasn't for its two charming leads the film likely would fail entirely but Turner and Barbaro are just so damn cute together. Both are better than this film and they elevate it making it rather watchable despite its predictability. 

Director Gluck hasn't really directed a strong film since way back with Easy A and One Night Only isn't a return to greatness. Is One Night Only going to be bring back the rom-com genre? No. There are some questionable choices (such as a 12 year old character that keeps making sexual innuendo?!?). But there is also a pairing that feels like it needs a better movie who at least make this one as watchable as it is. 

One Night Only

Starring: Monica Barbaro, Callum Turner, Maya Hawke, Molly Ringwald, LeVar Burton, Michelle Hurd, Pete Davidson, Bobby Cannavale

Director: Will Gluck

Writer: Travis Braun

 

Peter Hujar's Day (2026)

There are certain films that just align all the right stars for my personal tastes, in all their weird configurations, and I sit there fascinated throughout. The film Peter Hujar's Day, with its idiosyncratic premise and conceit, is that sort of film, a film like few others, that works despite all the factors working against it. 

For those unfamiliar, in 1974, writer Linda Rosenkrantz had photographer Peter Hujar over to discuss how his day went (the day before). She had an idea to do a book about the daily lives of artists she knew. That book never happened but she had recorded the conversation and a transcript was discovered decades later and published. This film is a recreation of that conversation. It's just two actors, Whishaw as Hujar giving a tour de force, and Hall as Rosenkrantz. It's just him talking about the day he had just had. And the whole time I'm enraptured. 

Yes films where people just talk to each other are my kryptonite, especially when exploring queer or counterculture themes. But Sachs' film is brilliant in how visually engaging he is able to make a film about one man rambling. The film is gorgeous to watch while you listen to the remarkable story being recounted. It is an understatement to describe Hujar's day as anything other than outstanding. He encounters Sontag, Ginsberg, Orlovsky, Burroughs, Lebowitz, and others... it is breathtaking to just contemplate what a day like that would have felt like. The film captures both its audacity and its mundaneness. The film infuses all these contradictions.

I am often struck by Whishaw's work but here he is so deeply impactful. He is asked to carry a whole film just through a running monologue, and not one that was crafted to be a compelling speech but a reproduction of the real Hujar's words as he describes something so remarkably personal but also so routine, the events of the past day...

The fact that Peter Hujar's Day works as a film at all is a marvel. The fact that it manages to be such a beautiful little piece of cinema that I can't stop thinking about makes it a miracle.  

Peter Hujar's Day

Starring: Ben Whishaw, Rebecca Hall

Writer/Director: Ira Sachs