The best films of 2026 so far
Song Sung Blue View image in fullscreen Photograph: Sarah Shatz/Focus Features/Shutterstock A Neil Diamond tribute act gets a sweet treat of a movie thanks to
Song Sung Blue View image in fullscreen Photograph: Sarah Shatz/Focus Features/Shutterstock A Neil Diamond tribute act gets a sweet treat of a movie thanks to Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, in a film that follows a Milwaukee married couple as they rise to fame with a real-life band called Lightning and Thunder. What we said: “Here is a startlingly strange, undeniably entertaining true-life story from the heartland of American showbusiness; a lovable crowdpleaser whose feelgood flavour won’t prepare you for the way the plot repeatedly and savagely twists like an unsafe fairground ride.” Read the full review Hamnet View image in fullscreen Photograph: Focus Features/PA Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley captivate in Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s myth-making novel, an audacious Shakespearean tragedy that powerfully reimagines the agonising loss of a child as the source of Hamlet’s grand stage drama. What we said: “It is an unselfconsciously beguiling performance from Buckley, who gives every look and smile a piercing significance.” Read the full review 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple A murderous Clockwork Orangey gang take on the zombies in this gruesome and energised fourquel, the finest of the 28 franchise by a blood-curdling mile. What we said: “Fiennes’s dance to Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast is basically one of the most extraordinary moments of his career. At the screening I attended, we were on our feet, looking for a speaker bin to headbang into.” Read the full review The Voice of Hind Rajab Fierce, urgent docufiction in which director Kaouther Ben Hania reconstructs the killing of a five-year-old in Gaza using her real voice as she is bombarded by the Israeli army. What we said: “With startling audacity, Ben Hania has used the real audio recording of Rajab’s heartwrenching voice, while fictionally reconstructing the drama of the emergency responders in their call-centre office, with real people played by actors, talking, shouting and emoting in response to Rajab’s actual voice.” Read the full review No Other Choice View image in fullscreen Photograph: AP Sensational state-of-the-nation satire from The Handmaiden and Oldboy director Park Chan-wook, in which an unemployed paper worker hatches a cunning plan to murder his way back into the job market. What we said: “It starts out like an Ealing comedy-type caper then somehow morphs into something else: a portrait of family dysfunction, fragile masculinity and the breadwinner crisis.” Read the full review Primate View image in fullscreen Photograph: Des Willie There’s a great deal of unpretentious B-movie fun to be had in Johannes Roberts’ brief, brutal and slickly made creature feature, where a pet chimp gone wild makes for a giddy, gory good time. What we said: “Roberts, who also directed hit shark thriller 47 Metres Down and its superior follow-up, is mostly at his savviest and most ruthlessly efficient here, a confident levelling up for a genre film-maker finding his sweet spot.” Read the full review Hamlet View image in fullscreen Photograph: UPI Riz Ahmed’s tortured prince drives Aneil Karia’s intelligent and stark retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy, set in the world of a shady family business. What we said: “It’s an austerely challenging reading and incidentally nothing could be further from the richly empathetic and redemptive approach of Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, about the play’s imagined origins.” Read the full review André Is an Idiot View image in fullscreen Photograph: A24 A riotously funny, painfully honest film about facing death, in which a cancer diagnosis becomes the catalyst for gallows humour, rage and hard-won emotional openness. What we said: “There are a zillion films – fiction, nonfiction, and everything in between – about people coping with cancer, so kudos to the team behind this one for finding a relatively fresh way to tackle the subject.” Read the full review Twinless View image in fullscreen Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy James Sweeney’s dark, inventive comedy takes an unexpected path, a tightrope-mastering mix of genres and tones that is an incredibly effective film, veering from funny to creepy to devastatingly sad. What we said: “Sweeney makes his confounding and psychologically complicated film glide. He’s a delicate director but an unsparing writer, displayed most brutally in the character he creates for himself, confronting uncomfortable truths about the specific weirdnesses that can come with being queer.” Read the full review My Father’s Shadow British-Nigerian film-maker Akinola Davies Jr makes a strong directorial debut with a subtle and intelligent coming-of-age story set in 1990s Nigeria, a deft and intriguing tale of an absent father briefly reunited with his two young sons. What we said: “Is absence love? Will we all feel love for someone most intensely when they are overtaken by the ultimate absence of death? This is a rich, heartfelt and rewarding movie.” Read the full review It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley View image in fullscreen Photograph: Magnolia Pictures Amy Berg’s arresting documentary is a sympathetic, urgent look at a life cut tragically short, delving into the early life and untimely death of the 90s singer-songwriter with extensive contributions from his mother and girlfriends. What we said: “It was singing at his dad’s memorial service that astonished the congregation and kickstarted Jeff’s career; he was a superb vocalist with a range and delicacy inspired by Nina Simone and Judy Garland.” Read the full review The President’s Cake A toughly revealing story of a kid on a mission for Saddam Hussein’s birthday: a nine-year-old is obliged by her school to make a birthday cake for the Iraqi president, and meets a series of vivid characters as she shops for sanctioned ingredients. What we said: “The film saunters and meanders along, accelerating occasionally to a mad dash for the many scenes in which the children are being chased by grownups. The cake-tasting itself turns out to be an explosively important climax.” Read the full review Crime 101 View image in fullscreen Photograph: Dean Rogers/Amazon MGM Studios The pedal is pressed hard to the metal for this very stylish, high-stakes armed robbery thriller starring Chris Hemsworth and Barry Keoghan– a bracing tale of a master thief that lifts a trick or two from Michael Mann. What we said: “This is a movie that revs the engine entertainingly and loudly, though it is less convincing when it claims the moral high ground of social comment by perfunctorily showing us LA’s homeless.
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