The Films of 2026

[The Curious Sofa]

I lasted about 25 minutes into The Sheep Detectives before I ran away screaming. Everything about that type of film grates on me: the Disneyfied version of British rural life; the relentless forced jollity and twee-overload; the ugly, digital cinematography with its garish colour scheme (not a Netflix movie but it has that look); the twinkly, reassuring score; and the uncanny valley talking animals, which never convince. And where did these British sheep learn to speak with American accents?

Remember when Carroll Ballard made soulful, poetic children's films about animals?

[Monterey Jack]

[yoshimori]

At least the sofa didn't resort to a pre-packaged ad hominem gif. Or was that somehow ironic?

[wattsup32]

At least the sofa didn't resort to a pre-packaged ad hominem gif. Or was that somehow ironic?

Amen to that! From now on, Jack, create ad hominem gifs from scratch.

[beamish14]

I can’t conceive of any film being a greater or a more pleasant surprise than The Misconceived. Ostensibly about a failed filmmaker who takes a home renovation job at his wealthy college roommate’s house, it touches upon economic anxiety faced by millennials while also acerbically addressing how studios like A24 and Neon, along with their parallels in the art world, dictate what is “important” in culture.

Oh, and the whole movie is rendered in Unreal Engine and scored with stock music, which amplifies the absurdity and somehow draws us closer to the ideas it explores.

In a Q&A with director James N. Kienitz Wilkins, he explained that the film was essentially created 5 times, with the dialogue recorded first, then actors recording physical gestures in motion capture suits, and rendered with figures that were purchased online. He was adamant that no AI was used, which makes the aural and visual qualities decidedly more uncanny and easy for the viewer to rapidly acclimate to and accept. Wilkins doesn’t consider the film to be animated, although it essentially uses a modified type of rotoscoping, in part because none of the characters were designed from scratch.

As it is an extremely dialogue-heavy film, it really demands multiple viewings, but I’m unsure as to when it will get a Blu-Ray release. It is touring in both a DCP and 35mm print, having played at Anthology Film Archives in New York, Rotterdam, and now in Los Angeles

[Never Cursed]

The Invite: Millennial Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Didn't quiiiiite work for me, but Wilde's best movie by far, and the first of her films to have properly restrained performances and a level of social commentary relatively commensurate to the broad, silly premises to which she appears to be drawn (i.e., the first of her movies to feel like it was directed by a director). It might have even been good if Wilde was willing to equate the shortcomings and failures of all four characters and their contributions to their dysfunctional relationships, but she unfortunately makes the serious error of allowing one of them to just...be right,

Spoiler

and to stop the movie at its climax to underline the others' failings in monologue. This isn't the fault of Penélope Cruz, who walks away with the film long before she explains why Rogen and Wilde's marriage is over, but it dislodges the film from its already shaky foundation (an infidelity comedy that won't let its protagonists cheat even when given license, a slow boil towards the revelation of secrets where most of the characters lack discretion or a filter) and makes its message too textual, too bluntly stated, too obvious.

Norton and Rogen are game performers (even if Norton's character gradually becomes irrelevant to the action and is given the classic compensation of a late-game tangent), but I rankled at the repeated nods to Rogen's schlubbiness ("just to be clear, you want to have sex with me?!?!?") in a movie that otherwise positioned itself as being a little more sophisticated than those kinds of dumb appeals. The weak link among the actors is actually Wilde herself, whose decision to portray her character as a nagging, mannered neurotic is somehow hammier and more tropey than Rogen's overflowing hostility towards his guests.

The movie is also blocked and edited with surprising indifference (or "efficiency," I guess) for a movie that could have benefitted from showiness and meaningful interaction. Whatever actors'-workshop qualities the material contains are undone by Wilde's insistence on filming much of the movie in claustrophobic individual close-ups. Not much of this film about the desperate struggle for intimacy from one's intimate partner contains two people interacting in the same shot; charged conversations are frequently relegated to easy shot-reverse-shots or actors talking to their partners' reflections in mirrors. I think it would have been more interesting to see the actors work through this material in more static, "play-like" master shots than constantly cutting between center-framed reactions and interjections.

Spoiler

One of the worst offenders along these lines is the final scene, where Wilde has set up a nice, aesthetically pleasing shot (a gradual zoom in on her and Rogen sharing a moment of intimacy at a piano) and clearly filmed multiple takes all the way through, but where a number of redundant close-ups of the two (and their hand doubles, I guess) have been inserted. Why do this? It ruins a natural and cinematic emotional build-up in favor of purposelessly jerking us between distance and closeness.

I wish Wilde had been confident enough in this shot to let it play uninterrupted - of all the creative choices she's made, why walk over this one? Hopefully her ability to at least create the right kind of images, if not to present them in the right order, portends that she has a good movie in her that will someday manifest (though given that her next projects are apparently a superhero movie and a "holiday movie" from the scribe of Booksmart and Don't Worry Darling, it may not be the next one), but this isn't quite it.