REEL | Tom Holland Resets the Emotional 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day'

"Enough of this soft-serve bullsh*t!"

Sony Pictures / Marvel Studios

Spider-Man: Brand New Day refreshes Tom Holland's enthusiastic interpretation of the webslinger superhero in the current Marvel Cinematic Universe canon and continuity. Led by the talented Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton this time around, we find a lonely Peter Parker struggling with his powers after the multiverse-changing events of No Way Home.

REEL | Olivia Wilde Teases Gen Z – 'I Want Your Sex' x SIFF 2026

"You're a sexual astronaut just exploring the outer limits of experience."

Magnolia Pictures / Elevation Pictures

I Want Your Sex, provocative New Queer Cinema pioneer and Teenage Apocalypse trilogy director Gregg Araki's highly sexual but lo-fi erotic comedy, co-written with sex columnist Karley Sciortino of Slutever fame, is another intriguing exploration of young adulthood through acts of intimacy and explicit desire.

SCREEN | Jake Johnson Slams 'The Dink' on Apple TV

"When you piss off the Hammer, everyone's a nail."

Apple Original Films / Rivulet Entertainment

Funny everyman Jake Johnson (also a producer) stars as a cantankerous and washed-up former tennis pro turned reluctant pickleballer, Dusty Boyd aka "the Hammer," in the formulaic but appealing sports comedy, The Dink. Produced by and co-starring Ben Stiller, director Josh Greenbaum focuses on the basic athletic aspects of the film's humour to mine its well-worn material clearly inspired by the similarly themed Dodgeball movie that Stiller also starred in and produced.

CABLE | Anya Taylor-Joy Runs Out of 'Lucky' on Apple TV

"I don't have time for your cowboy haikus right now."

Apple Studios / Hello Sunshine

The talented and wide-eyed Anya Taylor-Joy stars capably in the entertaining crime thriller miniseries Lucky, based on bestselling author Marissa Stapley's novel of the same name. Created by screenwriter Jonathan Tropper and showrun by Cassie Pappas, audiences are dropped into the eponymous con woman's exciting identity-swapping dealings on the run when she wakes up alone in Las Vegas with no memory of what was supposed to be a getaway after one last big score.

REEL | Christopher Nolan and Matt Damon Conquer 'The Odyssey'

"It was a song of all the promises I failed to keep."

Universal Pictures / Syncopy

Oscar-winning, visionary British-American auteur Christopher Nolan adapts The Odyssey, the second of Homer's two ancient Greek epic poems (after The Iliad), into a metaphysical but immersive action blockbuster experience. Starring regular collaborator Matt Damon as the legendary Odysseus, the departed soldier-king of Ithaca, in another hero role as a man desperate to find his way home, the dense mythical fantasy is a monumental yet accessible journey of pure cinematic spectacle, filmed on the grandest of canvases.

REEL | 90s Baby! – Still 'Dazed and Confused' After All These Years

"It'd be a lot cooler if you did."

Universal Pictures / Focus Features

Beloved Austin-based, independent filmmaker Richard Linklater's highly influential but box office disappointment of a sophomore teen film, Dazed and Confused, famously took its title from the killer Led Zeppelin classic rock song whose music rights the film was unsuccessful at securing for its bitchin' soundtrack, all the way back in the year 1993. This was one of many omens of sorts for its eventual lasting cultural legacy as a stone cold cult classic. Some three decades after its debut, its all-in-one-day, last-day-of-high-school hangout vibes remain strongly rewatchable.

REEL | Zoey Deutch Cashes in 'Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass'

"Why don't we keep it loose and freaky?"

Sony Pictures Classics / Mongrel Media

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is comedian David Wain's wild, throwback sex comedy told as a contemporary Hollywood riff on The Wizard of Oz formula. When Zoey Deutch's small-town Dorothy Gale sound-a-like title character finds out her fiancé has cashed in his "celebrity sex pass" to sleep with Jennifer Aniston, she sets out on an adventure collecting sidekicks, including Mad Men co-star John Slattery playing a comically sad sack, loser version of himself, along the way to meeting and hopefully having sex with her own free pass, one mister Jon Hamm, standing in for the Wizard.

REEL | Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde Throw 'The Invite' x SIFF 2026

"We love a contentious environment!"

A24 / VVS Films

Actress/filmmaker Olivia Wilde directs and stars alongside Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton in the comedic chamber-piece, The Invite, involving two middle-aged San Francisco couples and neighbours at a contentiously impromptu dinner party gone wrong. Adapted from the Spanish-language comedy, The People Upstairs (aka Sentimental), the stage-like production exploits our conceptions of contemporary romantic and sexual relationships.

CABLE | Javier Bardem and Amy Adams Strike 'Cape Fear' x Fantasia 2026

"I see something eating at you."

Universal Content Productions / Amblin Television

Cape Fear, the revenge miniseries adaptation of the 1957 potboiler novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald and both its classic 1962 and 1991 film adaptations, stretches the Southern gothic psychological thriller material across ten episodes. Created and showrun by screenwriter/producer Nick Antosca and executive produced by the duo of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, the eventual and originally attached director of the film remake, this contemporary television interpretation still maintains its strong Hitchcockian overtones.

REEL | Top 10 Films of 2026 So Far

"I put the not in astronaut!"

Amazon MGM Studios / Lord Miller Productions

Click on each film title to read its corresponding review:

1) Project Hail Mary ¹ (dirs. Phil Lord & Christopher Miller)

2) The Drama ² (dir. Kristoffer Borgli)

3) Mile End Kicks ³ * (dir. Chandler Levack)

4) Obsession (dir. Curry Barker)

5) Blue Heron * (dir. Sophy Romvari)

REEL | Milly Alcock Rescues A 'Supergirl' and Her Dog

"Your life will be your revenge."

DC Studios / Troll Court Entertainment

Supergirl, DC's lively, female-focused spin-off of last summer's triumphant Superman film reboot from producer James Gunn and usually reliable journeyman director Craig Gillespie, stars Aussie actress Milly Alcock as the superhero's Kryptonian cousin. It's a thin, Guardians of the Galaxy-style intergalactic big-screen adaptation of the acclaimed Woman of Tomorrow comic book run written by former CIA officer turned graphic novelist Tom King and illustrated by Brazillian artist by Bilquis Evely.

GENRE | Samara Weaving Robs Sweet 'Carolina Caroline'

"Want to go on like five hundred dates with me?"

Magnolia Pictures / Vortex Media

Together, the laidback duo of Samara Weaving and Kyle Gallner star as a sexy, Southern bank-robbing couple in Adam Carter Rehmeier's romantic crime thriller, Carolina Caroline. Both are lovable small-time con artists who dream of a simple but better life together on the road, who try not to target actual victims that might actually hurt.

REEL | Still Making Friends – Pixar and 'Toy Story 5' Play Together

"The age of toys is over!"

Walt Disney Pictures / Pixar Animation Studios

Longtime Pixar animator and director Andrew Stanton, joined by screenwriter/co-director Kenna Harris, reunites the whole gang back together for Toy Story 5. Both Tom Hanks and Tim Allen return as Woody and Buzz, but it's actually Joan Cusack's cowgirl sheriff Jessie who emotionally anchors the animated film's topical but touching story about the nature of childhood and friendship in an increasingly technological world.

REEL | Full 'Disclosure Day' – Spielberg Believes in Close Encounters

"The rejection of this understanding is leading to our extinction."

Universal Pictures / Amblin Entertainment

Disclosure Day is legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg's succesfful return to the extraterrestrial action blockbuster genre he pioneered and a spiritually thematic follow-up to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Framed around the idea of exposing seventy-nine years of (fictional) conspiratorial cover-ups of meaningful alien contact on Earth, his latest film exposes both human ideals and paranoia surrounding the disclosure and societal awakening of a history of otherworldly evidence that we are definitely not alone in the universe.

REEL | 'Masters of the Universe' Summons the Power of Nostalgia

"The universe shall quake in my shadow!"

Amazon MGM Studios / Mattel Studios

Masters of the Universe, Mattel's blockbuster live-action adaptation of the once-popular 1980s toy line and accompanying animated series of the same name, stars the affable Nicholas Galitzine as the powerful He-Man, Prince of Eternia, with a fierce Camila Mendes as Teela, his "Warrior Goddess" sidekick. Laika co-founder Travis Knight's kinetic direction propels the sword-and-sorcery action forward. However, its overabundance of violent fantasy combat stretches the wholly unnecessary two-hour-and-twenty-minute runtime.

CABLE | Nicolas Cage Investigates 'Spider-Noir' on Prime Video

"Maybe we can be alone together."

Sony Pictures Television / Amazon MGM Studios

Spider-Noir, the live-action television adaptation of Spider-Man Noir, the 2009 alternate-universe Marvel Comics spin-off webslinger character most widely seen in the Oscar-winning animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and famously voiced by Nicolas Cage, who reprises his role in the flesh this time, is an amusing throwback to the hard-boiled detective film genre. Showrun by screenwriters Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot and executive produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the television series overtly but lovingly leans heavily into its classic film noir influences.

GENRE | 'Backrooms' Finds A Psychological Horror Detour

"It's every place that ever was."

A24 / Elevation Pictures

Talented twenty-year-old YouTuber and visual effects artist Kane "Pixels" Parsons turns his nightmarish 22-episode found-footage creepypasta web series into a fully-fledged psychological horror feature. Filmed in Vancouver, Backrooms' basic premise revolves around a mysteriously elaborate but oddly abandoned series of secret interdimensional "backroom" liminal spaces found beneath a suburban discount furniture warehouse showroom located in a generic strip mall somewhere in 1990s middle America.

REEL | Tony Leung Makes A 'Silent Friend' x SIFF 2026

"I want to find out what plants sense."

1-2 Special / Films We Like

Silent Friend (aka Stille Freundin), a strange but affecting historical tale by visionary Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, follows Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung as a Chinese neuroscientist studying a beguiling gingko tree on the grounds of a medieval German university town in 2020. It's a uniquely engrossing two-and-a-half-hour film essentially about a professor befriending an old tree through science.

REEL | 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' Forges Another 'Star Wars' Way

"We'll take out every bad guy in your deck of cards."

Lucasfilm / Fairview Entertainment

The Mandalorian creator, actor/director Jon Favreau, takes his flagship Star Wars series to the big screen in The Mandalorian and Grogu. Pedro Pascal's titular veteran bounty hunter, named Din Djarin, alongside his adorable puppet sidekick orphan alien (aka "Baby Yoda"), is tasked with another basic but extended intergalactic side mission very much in the vein of the popular, heavily Western-influenced television show set after Return of the Jedi.

REEL | Keke Palmer Shoplifts 'I Love Boosters' x SIFF 2026

"Now's not the time for nuance!"

Neon / Elevation Pictures

Oakland-based The Coup rapper turned sophomore filmmaker Boots Riley brings his imaginiative tastes back to the big screen in I Love Boosters, a radically anti-capitalist heist comedy screed (complimentary) about a crew of professional female African-American activist shoplifters, dubbed the "Velvet Gang" (Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, and Taylour Paige), in the East Bay that target the designer clothing made by a cutthroat but monochromatic fashion maven played by Demi Moore.