The best movies of 2026 so far

01 / Movie · Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Project Hail Mary

In theaters March 20 · Amazon MGM

A science teacher wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there, and slowly works out that he is Earth's last chance. Ryan Gosling carries long stretches of the film by himself, and he is very funny doing it.

Drew Goddard adapted Andy Weir's novel, and the directors of The Lego Movie and the Spider-Verse films kept what made the book a word-of-mouth hit: a hero who survives by working problems out, one at a time, while scared out of his mind. Audiences agreed. It opened to about $140 million worldwide, had one of the best second weekends in modern box office history, and reviews stayed around 95 percent positive on Rotten Tomatoes. It is the easiest recommendation on this list, because it works for people who never watch science fiction.

Gosling plays it light, and the jokes keep coming even in scenes that might have hit harder played straight. Some viewers find that charming and some don't.

02 / Movie · Christopher Nolan

The Odyssey

In theaters July 17 · Universal

Christopher Nolan's version of Homer, with Matt Damon as Odysseus trying to get home from the Trojan War. It is the biggest-feeling film of the year, and it does not shy away from the monsters and gods.

Critics expected Nolan to make the story realistic. Instead he went for the strange and supernatural parts of the poem, and reviewers loved him for it: the film sat at 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 88 on Metacritic in its opening weeks, and Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it a classic in every sense. Damon gives Odysseus a worn, stubborn quality, Tom Holland plays his son Telemachus, Anne Hathaway plays Penelope, and critics singled out Robert Pattinson's conniving supporting turn.

It runs close to three hours (about 2 hours 52 minutes), and Variety's review was among those that felt the length. See it on the largest screen you can.

03 / Movie · Daniel Chong

Hoppers

In theaters March 6 · Disney and Pixar

An animal-loving student borrows her professor's experimental technology, moves her mind into a robot beaver, and ends up rallying the local wildlife against a mayor who wants to run a highway through their home.

In a year full of sequels, Pixar's best film was an original. Daniel Chong, who created We Bare Bears, brings that show's dry, slightly odd humor to his first Pixar feature, and Bobby Moynihan steals scenes as King George, the beaver monarch. One reviewer called it maybe the best Pixar film in years. It is also one of the few films here that a whole family can watch together.

Rated PG. The script piles on rules and world-building as it goes, and some critics found it less visually ambitious than Pixar's best work.

04 / Movie · Nia DaCosta

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

In theaters January 16 · Sony Pictures

The second film in the new 28 Years Later trilogy picks up right where the first left off. Young Spike falls in with a cult of tracksuited killers, while Ralph Fiennes's Dr. Kelson keeps tending his memorial built from the bones of the dead.

January is usually where studios bury films. This one opened the year and stayed on critics' lists all the way to October. Nia DaCosta shot it back-to-back with Danny Boyle's 2025 film and gave it her own tone: CGM's reviewer called it the darkest and most brutal entry in the series, and also the funniest. Fiennes is the reason most people mention first. His scenes with Samson, an infected giant, are strange and moving in a way horror sequels rarely try.

Very violent, even by this series' standards. Watch 28 Years Later (2025) first. Eye for Film's critic felt it does less with young Spike than the first film did.

Twin sisters, scarred by a fire when they were children, are summoned by their bedridden mother and told to find and kill the father who left them that way. Aleshea Harris adapts her own stage play as a modern western about revenge.

Is God Is was one of the best-reviewed films of the year and one of the least seen: it made under $5 million against a budget of about $15 million. That is a good reason to look for it now. Kara Young and Mallori Johnson play the twins, with Sterling K. Brown, Janelle Monáe and Vivica A. Fox around them, and Harris directs like someone who has been making films for years. Screen Anarchy called it a remarkably assured debut. It runs about 100 minutes.

Rated R for a reason: the violence is sudden and graphic. The heightened, theatrical dialogue comes from the play and will not suit everyone.

A Hungarian-Canadian family moves to Vancouver Island in the late 1990s, and the youngest daughter watches her older brother's behavior grow more troubling. Years later, grown up and a filmmaker herself, she goes back through the photos and home videos to understand what happened.

Blue Heron premiered at festivals in 2025 but reached US audiences this April, and it is the best-reviewed film most people have not heard of: 92 on Metacritic, which named it the best-reviewed film of the first half of 2026, and 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Sophy Romvari's first feature is drawn from her own family's history, and the second half, where the grown-up Sasha tries to make sense of her childhood on film, is what lifts it above a good family drama.

Quiet and slow, with very little plot in the usual sense. It deals directly with mental illness and grief within a family.

07 / Movie · Sam Raimi

Send Help

In theaters January 30 · 20th Century Studios; now on Hulu

An overlooked office numbers expert and the boss who gave her promotion to his college friend are the only survivors of a plane crash. On the island she is suddenly the one in charge, and she knows it.

Sam Raimi's first horror comedy in years is nasty and very entertaining, and Rachel McAdams is the reason to see it. RogerEbert.com called her work possibly the best performance of her career, and Time Out called the film a major return to form for the director of Evil Dead. Dylan O'Brien makes the boss detestable and, for a while, almost sympathetic. The script keeps changing who has the upper hand, and you rarely see the next turn coming.

Rated R for strong, bloody violence. The tone swings between slapstick and cruelty, and some of the effects look rough.

08 / Movie · Curry Barker

Obsession

In theaters in May · Focus Features

A shy young man uses a novelty wishing charm to make the girl he likes fall for him. The wish works, and her devotion soon turns possessive and then frightening.

Curry Barker, who built an audience making horror shorts on YouTube, shot Obsession in 20 days for about $750,000. Focus Features bought it at the Toronto festival, and it became the studio's biggest film ever, growing in its second weekend, which almost never happens with horror. Inde Navarrette's performance as Nikki is the one reviewers single out, and the film's question of who is really obsessed with whom is sharper than its premise suggests.

Rated R. A TIFF reviewer noted that the ending is telegraphed early, and Scott Mendelson's review was warm but cooler than most.