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\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Sony\t\t\t<\/p>\n
2026 won\u2019t reach its midpoint for another two months, but the summer movie season starts next Friday whether we like it or not, and so \u2014 seasonally speaking, at least \u2014 that means the film year is already halfway over. Frightening! Illogical, but frightening. The good news is that winter and spring were full of surprises, even if the majority of their best new releases invariably premiered on the festival circuit last year (including \u201cPillion,\u201d \u201cMy Father\u2019s Shadow,\u201d and a variety of other major standouts that qualified for our 2025 lists because of awards season mishegoss).<\/p>\n
Nia DaCosta\u2019s sublimely warped \u201c28 Years Later: The Bone Temple\u201d kicked things off, and set a very high bar for the year\u2019s studio fare, by iterating on its predecessor in devious and unexpected ways, while Phil Lord and Christopher Miller\u2019s dazzling \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d offered us a heroic respite from the \u201care movie theaters dying?\u201d conversation for the last two months.<\/p>\n
On the boutique front, we already knew that A24 and NEON were going to begin the year on a high, but the previously unscreened likes of \u201cThe Drama\u201d and \u201cMother Mary\u201d both delivered the kind of daring and provocative experiences that mainstream audiences are typically starved for at this point on the calendar, while holdovers like \u201cThe Christophers,\u201d \u201cExit 8,\u201d and \u201cNirvanna the Band the Show the Movie\u201d popped off in a way that made us appreciate them even more than we already did.<\/p>\n
But the lion\u2019s share of the riches have belonged to the more definitively arthouse space; Sophy Romvari\u2019s shattering \u201cBlue Heron\u201d is a debut for the ages, Sho Miyake\u2019s \u201cTwo Seasons, Two Strangers\u201d confirmed the arrival of a major new voice in Japanese cinema, and Nadav Lapid\u2019s singular, splenetic \u201cYes\u201d spoke to the insanity of the Gaza genocide with the clarity that only pure madness can provide. Also Charli xcx is a movie star now and \u201cFaces of Death,\u201d once synonymous with mondo schlock, has been retconned as a cerebral response to the inescapability of modern horror. Try to keep up.<\/p>\n
\t\u201c28 Years Later: The Bone Temple\u201d (dir. Nia DaCosta)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Sony\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The most rewardingly cerebral zombie franchise this side of George Romero evolves once more with an exquisite corpse of a new chapter that picks up where last summer\u2019s \u201c28 Years Later\u201d left off \u2014 both in regards to its plot, and also to its abstract focus on the philosophical aspects of post-apocalyptic life \u2014 while simultaneously pivoting away from the glitchy sense of grief that settled over the previous film like a burial shroud. Where Danny Boyle\u2019s long-awaited sequel was held taut by the braided relationship between death and denial, Nia DaCosta\u2019s almost immediate follow-up refracts the same existentialist streak into a very different meditation on the search for something to live for.<\/p>\n
A strange, hysterical, and thrillingly audacious continuation of a saga about the nature of faith in a godless world, \u201cThe Bone Temple\u201d might appear to be a more traditional genre offering than its immediate predecessor, but don\u2019t be fooled by the fact that it wasn\u2019t shot on an iPhone: This is very much the part two that 2025\u2019s smartest and most humane studio horror movie deserves. \u2014DE<\/p>\n
Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cBlue Heron\u201d (dir. Sophy Romvari)<\/p>\n \t\t Sophy Romvari\u2019s \u201cBlue Heron\u201d follows a protagonist as she navigates her pre-millennial childhood memories through a sea of camcorder clips and hazy recollections. But it would be reductive to belabor the comparisons any further than that, as the Canadian-Hungarian filmmaker\u2019s extraordinary debut feature defies any clear precedent or easy categorization as it ventures down structurally exciting and unexpected paths.<\/p>\n While \u201cBlue Heron\u201d is a drama that works without any knowledge of the filmmaker\u2019s history, Romvari\u2019s feature is also the culmination of a decade-long journey. An international festival favorite since the mid-2010s, her acclaimed shorts regularly fall somewhere between fiction and autobiography, the latter to varying levels of overtness. In the likes of \u201cStill Processing,\u201d Romvari herself is the primary onscreen presence. That particular short from 2020, which grappled with the loss of her brothers by sifting through a box of family photos that had been unseen for decades, shares the most DNA with \u201cBlue Heron,\u201d though Romvari is strictly behind the camera this time.<\/p>\n For her fiction feature, she deploys an onscreen avatar. Or two. Possibly three, depending on how you interpret one specific dramatic set piece. It\u2019s a thrilling formal expansion for a filmmaker who\u2019s already so sharp in examining fragmented identities, and how they might be restored with a greater understanding of how the cracks came to be \u2014 even if restoration can be an incomplete process, and \u201cgreater\u201d often means that a considerable amount of explanation and potential catharsis remain out of reach. \u2014JSW<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cThe Blue Trail\u201d (dir. Gabriel Mascaro)<\/p>\n \t\t \u201cGloria Bell\u201d meets \u201cChildren of Men\u201d is an odd elevator pitch for any movie, but Gabriel Mascaro\u2019s latest mind-bending trip out of Brazil might fit the bill. \u201cThe Blue Trail\u201d is one of those near-future-set films with trappings recognizable to our own present, where the dystopian technology is only a slight update to our own. The porta-potties have a just-so different color. There\u2019s a satellite placed here or there around otherwise underdeveloped surroundings. Told with the economy in the same number of minutes as the years this character has been alive, Mascaro\u2019s short, sharp wonder of a fourth feature after films including \u201cNeon Bull\u201d and \u201cDivine Love\u201d is an enormously moving exploration of the last chapter in a woman\u2019s life. A woman who wants nothing to do with the daughter who\u2019s been assigned to take care of her and send her off into parts unknown. An older woman whose only dream is only, at last, to fly in an airplane.<\/p>\n Mascaro\u2019s wry and witty new film will remind savvy audiences of bleak apocalyptic films about humanity\u2019s potential loss of feeling against technologies that crush them, like \u201cChildren of Men\u201d and \u201cThe Beast,\u201d where the small perturbations that amount to dystopia register in things like satellites affixed to nearby huts, or plumes of red smoke bursting into the sky above an otherwise tranquil Amazonian journey. What helps make this \u201cBlue Trail\u201d soar beyond its roots are Guillermo Garza\u2019s vivid, Academy-ratio cinematography and Memo Guerra\u2019s hauntingly wounded woodwind score. Basically, you can\u2019t tell the difference between our now and this movie\u2019s present. \u2014RL<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cThe Christophers\u201d (dir. Steven Soderbergh)<\/p>\n \t\t Ian McKellen stars as the fading artist formerly known as Julian Sklar, a once-revered painter who peaked in the \u201990s with a series of portraits of his ex-lover \u2014 the titular Christopher \u2014 before losing his luster, becoming the Simon Cowell of a ludicrous reality competition show, and finding himself on the wrong side of \u201ccancel culture\u201d for unspecified reasons. Now supposedly dying from some terminal illness, Julian has gone total hermit mode inside of his cluttered London apartment, where the walls are festooned with the relics of his success and the backrooms are a junk pile of painful memories.<\/p>\n His grubby adult kids (James Corden and Jessica Gunning) \u2014 still stinging from the casual cruelty he inflicted upon them as children, and well-aware that Julian\u2019s withholding nature will extend to their inheritance \u2014 would sure love it if they found a previously unknown trove of three million dollar paintings among their father\u2019s stuff when he died, and so they hire the best art forger in Britain (Michaela Coel) to apply for an assistant job in the hopes that she can nick the old man\u2019s unfinished masterpieces and complete them with Julian\u2019s original materials (thus making it impossible to identify them as fakes). Would that it were so simple.\u00a0<\/p>\n If nothing else, it\u2019s always wonderful to see a new Steven Soderbergh movie with some actual life in its bones. After the airless spy games of \u201cBlack Bag,\u201d the postmortem gimmickry of \u201cPresence,\u201d and the limp gyrations of \u201cMagic Mike\u2019s Last Dance,\u201d the prolific filmmaker\u2019s run of small and increasingly sterile genre exercises was starting to feel like a waste of his un-retirement. I never would have guessed that the answer to Soderbergh\u2019s listlessness might be an 86-year-old man, but Ian McKellen \u2014 delivering what\u2019s easily his most essential screen performance since \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d \u2014 is so full of vim and vigor in \u201cThe Christophers\u201d that he threatens to revitalize his director by osmosis. \u2014DE<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cThe Drama\u201d (dir. Kristoffer Borgli)<\/p>\n \t\t Imagine that you\u2019re about to marry Zendaya, or at least a book editor who looks just like her. Imagine that you met her at a Boston coffee shop a few years earlier (where you clumsily \u2014 maybe even sleazily \u2014 schemed to make an introduction), embarked upon a storybook romance, and eventually began to live together in a leafy studio apartment with one of those adorable corkscrew staircases that scream \u201cwe\u2019re not even thinking about children yet.\u201d Imagine that you know everything you could ever think to ask about this kind, radiant, and loving fantasy of a forever partner. And then imagine what she could possibly let slip just a few days before the ceremony that would cause you to think about crashing out of the relationship altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n Needless to say, there are very, very few things that could even semi-plausibly sour that dream into a nightmare with a single turn of phrase, and the wild secret that Emma (Zendaya) reveals to Charlie (Robert Pattinson) during an impromptu game of \u201cWhat\u2019s the Worst Thing You\u2019ve Ever Done?\u201d at a last-minute menu tasting is \u2014 upon first bite \u2014 indeed harder to swallow than even the driest of wedding cakes. But the brilliance of Kristoffer Borgli\u2019s \u201cThe Drama,\u201d or at least the brilliance of the sketch comedy-adjacent conceit that it exploits to mixed results, is rooted in the fact that Emma\u2019s confession is impossible to laugh off completely.\u00a0<\/p>\n Like the impish anti-romance that crumbles around it, the movie\u2019s twist is both transgressive enough to be pleased with itself and also rooted in a reality that refuses to be dismissed as a bad joke. It\u2019s shocking, yes, but mostly because it\u2019s rare to see a mainstream film so eager to stick out its tongue and lick one of the last genuine third rails of American discourse. \u2014DE<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cDreams\u201d (dir. Michel Franco)<\/p>\n \t\t Michel Franco is back in a pissed-off register about the world we live in with his crisply directed class critique \u201cDreams,\u201d where the Mexican writer\/director rails into the limousine liberal American one-percent identity with all the subtlety of a power drill. But the film\u2019s quietly disturbing power lies in how Franco packages his U.S.-Mexico border metaphor \u2014 with rich philanthropist Jennifer (Jessica Chastain) and her young ballet-dancer lover Fernando (Isaac Hern\u00e1ndez, in a striking newcomer performance) standing in for each \u2014 into an addictive and destructive love story as sharply wrought as the movie\u2019s grander political concerns.<\/p>\n Chastain gives her riskiest performance in some time as a rich arts patron who encourages Fernando to cross the border illegally in order for her foundation to give an American showcase of his art. Many of Chastain\u2019s recent movies, including her Oscar-winning \u201cEyes of Tammy Faye\u201d and even Franco\u2019s own bittersweet dementia romance \u201cMemory,\u201d have a feminist or at least redemptive streak. Not so with her turn in \u201cDreams\u201d as a woman who invites little sympathy \u2014 until she does in the film\u2019s harrowing conclusion \u2014 even while she\u2019s being played like a marionette by her father (Marshall Bell) and brother (Rupert Friend). \u2014RL<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cErupcja\u201d (dir. Pete Ohs)<\/p>\n \t\t A 71-minute wisp of a film that moves and sounds like a cartoon wind curlicue, Pete Ohs\u2019 \u201cErupcja\u201d \u2014 the Polish word for \u201ceruption\u201d \u2014 was (clearly) shot with half an outline and scripted on the fly, to the point that all four of its main actors are credited as co-writers as well. Here, that approach proves a bit more pointed than it did in the director\u2019s previous \u201cJethica\u201d and \u201cThe True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick,\u201d as its elevated mumblecore energy suits the unformed and searching nature of a wherever you go, there you are story about the ways that people try to make sense of the world around them in real-time.\u00a0<\/p>\n People like Bethany (Charli xcx, a sly and natural screen presence), a British girl who\u2019s convinced that a volcano explodes whenever she blows up her life for a biannual fling with flower shop owner Nel (Lena G\u00f3ra) in Warsaw. Her puppy dog-like boyfriend Rob (Will Madden) wanted to propose to her in Paris, but when Bethany suggested they go to Poland instead \u2014 and not even Krak\u00f3w, with all of its historic charm \u2014 some part of her was expecting the planet to crack open when they got there, as if the Earth itself were responding to her fears of heteronormative complacency.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ohs, who recently moved to Poland himself, is fascinated by the transformative power of being in a foreign space, and by the process through which people \u2014 be they transplants or just tourists \u2014 try to reconcile who they are to the new reality around them, and \u201cErupcja\u201d drifts along with the detachedness of an out-of-body experience. Claude (Jeremy O. Harris as an extroverted American painter who meets Bethany and Rob by chance at a sushi restaurant) is probably the closest thing the director has to a surrogate in this story, and at one point the camera finds him pontificating about how \u201cBeing immersed in a culture so different from my own helps me turn my brain off so I can enter a dream state more naturally.\u201d\u00a0Slight as it is, \u201cErupcja\u201d crystallizes that condition to a tee. \u2014DE<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cExit 8\u201d (dir. Genki Kawamura)<\/p>\n \t\t Ask anyone \u2014 it\u2019s easy to get lost in the Tokyo subway. The city\u2019s underground boasts ample signposting to guide commuters and tourists \u2014 but there\u2019s so much of it, the passageways and stairways all look alike, and oh, we\u2019re right back where we started. Genki Kawamura\u2019s delightful blockbuster provocation \u201cExit 8\u201d understands and exploits these frustrations, transforming these claustrophobic corridors into a site of psychological exploration, personal choice, and national anxieties.<\/p>\n Arashi superstar Kazunari Ninomiya is The Lost Man, a backpack-clad commuter seeking a way out of the underground and back to the light of day \u2014 where his once-girlfriend is waiting to hear his decision on whether he wants to keep the baby that she\u2019s carrying. Initially distracted by his playlist and a phone call, he soon realizes that the passageways are looping, a situation that he quickly and pragmatically adapts to.<\/p>\n Toho\u2019s big-screen adaptation offers a remarkably faithful translation of its video game namesake, one-to-one in its central environment and signage, to the point that the film at first feels like an FMV transmedia advertisement for its source material. But the core concept has been expanded in smart and surprisingly thrilling ways. \u2014BS<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cFaces of Death\u201d (dir. Daniel Goldhaber)<\/p>\n \t\t It\u2019s a shame the \u201cScream\u201d franchise has already bled out everywhere but the box office, because Daniel Goldhaber\u2019s similarly meta \u201cFaces of Death\u201d is sharp enough to have cut that self-cannibalizing shibboleth down to size on its own. Much uglier and more pointed than Paramount\u2019s stab-happy ATM of a movie franchise, this similarly meta reflection on media consumption \u2014 on the \u201crules\u201d of the game, and our detached relationship to ubiquitous scenes of violence \u2014 exhumes one of the most notorious horror movies ever made in order to shudder at the banality that snuff films have come to assume in the age of social media. Here is a smart, fun, and deeply unsettling post-modern slasher that know it can\u2019t manufacture anything scarier than what people scroll past on their phones every day, and leverages that awareness into a multiplex-ready meditation on the terror of living in a world where even the worst atrocities have been flattened into digital wallpaper. \u2014DE<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cFantasy Life\u201d (dir. Matthew Shear)<\/p>\n \t\t A once-promising law student whose crippling anxiety has slowed his legal career, Sam (Matthew Shear) finds himself laid off from a firm that was already asking him to do little more than alphabetize long-obsolete boxes of files. With bills piling up and a deep sense of purposelessness that hasn\u2019t improved since he took a mental health break from Fordham Law School nearly a decade ago, an offer to babysit his shrink\u2019s three granddaughters while their dad plays bass with Gov\u2019t Mule seems like an opportunity that\u2019s depressingly worthy of his time.<\/p>\n Watching the three daughters is a manageable task, but Sam\u2019s real challenge is navigating the complex relationship between his two employers, David and his wife Dianne (Amanda Peet). A beanie-loving rocker, David thinks that his life of lavish domesticity is keeping him from the life of hedonistic adventure he craves. Dianne sees him as inadequately sympathetic to the sense of purposeless that she feels after her acting career took a backseat to motherhood. Their marriage is a tinderbox, and Sam turns out to be the anxious, people-pleasing spark that lights the entire thing aflame.<\/p>\n A first-time writer-director, Shear has previously appeared in four Noah Baumbach movies (\u201cMarriage Story,\u201d \u201cThe Meyerowitz Stories,\u201d \u201cMistress America,\u201d and \u201cWhile We\u2019re Young\u201d). And \u201cFantasy Life\u201d wears that influence on its sleeve. A neurotic portrait of creative class New Yorkers who do everything in their power to drown out their own privilege with self-inflicted problems, \u201cFantasy Life\u201d pulls from Baumbach as liberally as Baumbach pulled from Woody Allen. It doesn\u2019t get any points for originality, but \u201cFantasy Life\u201d follows in the footsteps of artists who made careers out of anxious protagonists, and its portrayal of anxiety demonstrates an understanding of the disorder that feels more modern than its predecessors. \u2014CZ<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \t\u201cKontinental 25\u201d (dir. Radu Jude)<\/p>\n \t\t Shot on an iPhone with the same crew that Radu Jude had already collected for \u201cDracula,\u201d \u201cKontinental \u201925\u201d naturally feels like the scrappy and scabrous B-side to a larger project about Transylvanian self-identity. Its moral dimensions are more straightforward than those in Jude\u2019s previous work (and its form much simpler in kind), but only because their practical applications are that much knottier in return. Where \u201cBad Luck Banging or Loony Porn\u201d and \u201cDo Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World\u201d scaled their characters\u2019 personal depravities against sprawling backdrops of systemic abuse, the far more intimate \u2014 and less uproarious \u2014 \u201cKontinental \u201925\u201d filters the perversity of neoliberalism through the eyes of a well-meaning woman\u2019s attempt to do the right thing. Alas, a bold act of kindness can be a terrible cross to bear in a culture that\u2019s sustained by ambient cruelties.<\/p>\n The woman\u2019s name is Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), and she\u2019s a middle-aged, upper-middle-class bailiff who was born in Hungary before she moved to the rapidly gentrifying Romanian city of Cluj \u2014 or at least to a hilly suburb on the outskirts of town, where she lives with her husband and their two kids in the kind of house that likely priced out the local population and paved over generations of personal history. Consciously or not, Orsolya has played an active role in such urban growth; her job is to evict people from the lots that have been gobbled up by the government and\/or greedy real estate developers who want to turn them into condos, chain stores, and luxury hotels. It\u2019s a job that she tries to perform humanely, though a cynic might say that she only does so in order to live with the fact that the job itself is inhumane. \u2014DE<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cMad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)\u201d (dir. Joel Vargas)<\/p>\n \t\t There\u2019s something deeply comedic about hearing the word \u201cnutty\u201d repeatedly come up in a serious conversation about finances. Nutcrackers, as they\u2019re formally called, are homemade cocktails of sugary fruit drinks and cheap liquor that daydrinkers hide in plastic bottles for beach consumption. They\u2019re also the bedrock of Rico\u2019s (Juan Collado) burgeoning underground beverage empire. The 19-year-old Bronx resident spends his summer days combing beaches with a cooler full of nutties, selling flavors like the lemon-flavored Pikachu and the pink Kirby Punch for $15, two for $10, or if a customer is pretty enough, an Instagram follow. He\u2019s convinced that the hustle will snowball into a business that affords him a house and a car in no time at all. His looming success is such an inevitability that the details are irrelevant to him.<\/p>\n Rico\u2019s blind self-confidence imbues him with some all-American charm, but the three women in his life aren\u2019t so bullish on his career. He has quite a few problems that can\u2019t be solved with nutties \u2014 namely a baby due in seven months with his 16-year-old girlfriend Destiny (Destiny Checo). The couple still live with Rico\u2019s Mami (Yohanna Florentino) and younger sister Sally (Nathaly Navarro), both of whom are determined to make Rico understand the massive responsibilities that are coming his way.\u00a0<\/p>\n That juxtaposition between idyllic summer hijinx and adult responsibilities forms the backdrop of \u201cMad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo).\u201d Joel Alfonso Vargas\u2019 feature directorial debut is a vibrant tableau of life in the tight-knit Dominican communities of The Bronx, capturing the joys and tragedies of Rico\u2019s life with such specificity that they eventually become impossible to separate from one another. Vargas and cinematographer Rufai Alaja deploy a 4:3 aspect ratio to create a square frame that invokes the warm feeling of flipping through old Polaroids. As the young entrepreneur meanders through life, hawking nutties and trying to pick up girls when he forgets that he\u2019s spoken for, it feels like we\u2019re looking back on the final summer of his youth with the benefit of hindsight from an inevitable future that hasn\u2019t happened yet. \u2014CZ<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cMile End Kicks\u201d (dir. Chandler Levack)<\/p>\n \t\t Much like her feature directorial debut, the winning \u201cI Like Movies,\u201d \u201cMile End Kicks\u201d is based on filmmaker Chandler Levack\u2019s own experiences. Set in 2011, the film follows budding music critic Grace (a delightful Barbie Ferreira) as she embarks on a summer in Montreal. She\u2019s hoping to meet and write about rising bands in the city\u2019s vibrant music scene, while also working on a bigger project very close to her heart. Along the way, she deals with life, love (including a pair of paramours from the same band), professional disappointments, and the fallout of a horrible experience from her past.<\/p>\n Part rom-com, part coming-of-age tale, the film is bright and funny and sexy and sad, the sort of thing that could only be made by someone who lived through so much of what her heroine encounters. The film establishes Levack as a budding chronicler of coming-of-age in all its forms and also makes clear how much range Ferreira possesses. \u2014KE<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cMiroirs No. 3\u201d (dir. Christian Petzold)<\/p>\n \t\t Christian Petzold\u2018s gossamer latest film, \u201cMiroirs No. 3,\u201d is as compact as a novella, as ephemeral in its emotion, as delicate in register as one of the Chopin or Ravel pieces that float through it. A mystery woman, standing on a bridge, lost in thought. An amnesiac looking for respite. A car flipped upside down, its driver\u2019s brains spilled onto the road while its passenger stares on, unharmed. Later, she eats apples in a bed that belongs to another woman, in clothes that belong to that woman\u2019s daughter, trying on another life almost as a lark.<\/p>\n This is a minor-key drama, which burrows into the psyche despite its slim running time and almost perverse refusal to explain itself or the shapes its narrative takes. The title comes from a piece written by Ravel \u2014 yes, that one you probably know from the trailer for \u201cCall Me By Your Name,\u201d but the affiliations with the idylls of summer love and coming-of-age end right there. Writing and directing a script that evolved during the making of his last feature, \u201cAfire,\u201d Petzold has never been less forthcoming, the images from cinematographer Hans Fromm never overstating themselves. Nor does Petzold\u2019s regular collaborator Paula Beer, who shifts with silvery, slippery ease between states of bemusement and shock. \u201cMiroirs\u201d is another gorgeous showcase for what makes her alchemy with Petzold succeed so well. \u2014RL<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cMother Mary\u201d (dir. David Lowery)<\/p>\n \t\t David Lowery describes his magnificently strange \u201cMother Mary\u201d as a\u00a0film\u00a0about \u201chow art can take something terrible and turn it into something beautiful,\u201d and he would know. The writer-director may have made a name for himself with scrappy indies (\u201cAin\u2019t them Bodies Saints\u201d) and esoteric genre experiments (\u201cA Ghost Story\u201d), but he built a\u00a0career\u00a0for himself with the likes of \u201cPete\u2019s Dragon\u201d and \u201cPeter Pan & Wendy\u201d \u2014 with movies that rescued something poignant and real from the creative abyss that is Disney\u2019s live-action remake culture, a magic trick so ineffable that it amounts to a corporate act of transubstantiation.<\/p>\n At once both Lowery\u2019s sparkliest and most inscrutable film \u201cMother Mary\u201d \u2014 about a delicate pop star who begs her spurned former designer for a dress \u2014 doesn\u2019t just represent his overt attempt to reconcile and confuse those two modes, it also offers a thrilling opportunity to plunge us into the liminal space that separates them from each other. To crystallize the volatile, even violent, energy that binds artistic connections across space and time. A singular, hypnotic, and formally unbound psychodrama that\u2019s staged between a Lady Gaga-like diva (Anne Hathaway) and the only person who might be able to quiet her demons (Michaela Coel), this talky chamberpiece of a film is almost entirely confined to an unheated barn somewhere outside of London, and yet it grows to feel as vast as the synaptic gap that stretches between literalness and metaphor. A wound and its memory. A pop song and the person who wrote it. Indie movies and Disney fare. And good God\u00a0is the soundtrack full of bangers. \u2014DE<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cNirvanna the Band the Show the Movie\u201d (dir. Matt Johnson)<\/p>\n \t\t For the uninitiated, Nirvanna the Band couldn\u2019t have less to do with Kurt Cobain. Launched as a webseries in 2008, the ongoing comedy project stars Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol as fictional versions of themselves who are dying to break into the Toronto music scene. Specifically, they\u2019re dying to play a show at a legendary club known as the Rivoli. The duo is so focused on landing a gig that they don\u2019t have time to practice music. Instead, they spend every day engaging in complex publicity stunts that demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of the music industry and often end up mirroring tropes from classic films.<\/p>\n The scale of the project has gradually expanded as it morphed from a DIY webseries to a Viceland show to the feature film that premiered this week, but the format remains the same. The two friends start their day sitting around a piano and brainstorming an idea for a scheme to play the Rivoli. A documentary crew then follows them as they try and execute their plan on the streets of Toronto, utilizing unknowing actors in a format that might be described as \u201cNathan for You\u201d meets \u201cThis Is Spinal Tap.\u201d The joke only gets funnier the longer they remain unsuccessful. Here, it\u2019s stretched to truly mind-bending \u2014 and questionably legal \u2014 proportions. \u2014CZ<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d (dirs. Phil Lord & Chris Miller)<\/p>\n \t\t When he wakes up on an empty spaceship hurtling away from the sun (and thus Earth and everyone and everything he knows), temporarily amnesiac Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) has such little handle on his situation and his place within it that he takes to a dry-erase board to sort his thoughts and questions. \u201cWHO AM I?\u201d is top of the list. (Later, he will note that he is \u201cOK with cilantro.\u201d) Those three words could just as easily function as the overall theme of Phil Lord and Chris Miller\u2019s marvelously entertaining and deep-feeling \u201cProject Hail Mary.\u201d And, before you balk at the ol\u2019 important-questions-on-a-dry-erase-board gambit (sorry to \u201cA Quiet Place,\u201d we love you, but that dry-erase board has got to go), know this: The dazzling \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d earns such a heady question over the course of its adorably epic space odyssey. It even answers it.<\/p>\n Based on Andy Weir\u2019s novel of the same name, the film\u2019s comparisons to Ridley Scott\u2019s own Weir adaptation \u201cThe Martian\u201d are certainly fitting, but Lord and Miller\u2019s first directorial outing in more than a decade also weaves in shades of everything from \u201cCast Away\u201d to \u201cE.T.\u201d and just about every (good) film about unlikely friendship you could possibly name. It\u2019s everything you could ask for in a blockbuster these days. \u2014KE<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cTwo Seasons, Two Strangers\u201d (dir. Sho Miyake)<\/p>\n \t\t Sho Miyake (\u201cSmall, Slow but Steady\u201d) is one of the finest, most soulful Japanese filmmakers of his generation. His patient dramas favor characters who struggle with loneliness, often withdrawing from engaging with people much at all due to factors that make human connection harder for them. In his latest tender, beautifully textured feature, the main character\u2019s tendency to say very little is rooted in a creative slump, intertwined with cultural isolation.<\/p>\n Li (Shim Eun-kyung, \u201cTrain to Busan\u201d) is a Korean screenwriter who\u2019s experiencing writer\u2019s block and struggling to still connect to her surroundings in Japan, where she\u2019s been based for years. At a Q&A session, she seems scared to answer the first question, suggesting that her main takeaway from watching her own work is that she doesn\u2019t have much talent. Within her own mind, she\u2019s a little more articulate. Japanese is the only language that leaves Li\u2019s mouth, but her occasional inner monologues are in her mother tongue, the most crucial example expressing her growing conflict with the very act of writing itself.<\/p>\n Loosely adapting two specific manga short stories by Yoshiharu Tsuge, \u201cTwo Seasons, Two Strangers\u201d is a finely wrought film about the process of getting out of our own heads to more properly appreciate the possibilities before us \u2014 instead of vocalizing our worries and doubts to the point of blocking our progress. To nod to a famous song that, like Miyake\u2019s filmmaking, suggests enjoying the silence where possible, sometimes words are very unnecessary. \u2014JSW<\/p>\n Read IndieWire\u2019s full review.<\/a><\/p>\n \t\u201cA Useful Ghost\u201d (dir. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke)<\/p>\n \t\t March (Witsarut Himmarat) runs a successful vacuum cleaner factory in Thailand. It\u2019s a largely uneventful life, save for the occasional encounters with ghosts that haunt his place of business. But everything changes when his beautiful, loving wife Nat (Davika Hoorne) dies after being poisoned by dust in his factory. Much like \u201cTitane\u201d before it, the early discourse around \u201cA Useful Ghost\u201d might revolve around an intimate love scene between a Thai man and a Shop-Vac that\u2019s possessed by the ghost of his late wife. But like Julia Ducournau, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke has made a darkly hilarious film that deserves to be remembered for much more than its shock value.<\/p>\n The backbone of March\u2019s young family and an incredible mother to their son Dot, Nat is gone but not forgotten. And she\u2019s not even gone for that long. She soon returns as a ghost and assumes the body of one of March\u2019s vacuums. The husband and wife resume their emotional and carnal relationship, but it\u2019s clear she came back for a very specific reason: to clean the factory and prevent her child from being exposed to the particles that killed her. But her arrival poses a major emotional roadblock to March\u2019s traditional family, who are jaded from a bad experience when a dead employee returned as a vacuum and threw a metaphorical wrench into their business. Plus, they\u2019ve barely been able to wrap their minds around the fact that his older brother is gay.<\/p>\n Welcoming a human-vacuum relationship into the family is a tougher proposition. \u201cA Useful Ghost\u201d masterfully blends deadpan lines like \u201cI\u2019m less worried about the fever than the fact that he made out with a vacuum cleaner\u201d with a sincere story about the invisible workers we choose to ignore and love that doesn\u2019t waver in the face of family disapproval. \u2014CZ<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Blue-Heron_1.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Janus Films\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/blue-trail.webp.jpeg\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Dekanalog\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/THE-CHRISTOPHERS_STILL-1_ext-H-2025.webp.jpeg\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: NEON\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/The-Drama.webp.png\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: A24\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/dreams.webp.png\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Greenwich Entertainment\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/hero-image.webp.png\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: 1-2 Special\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/exit-8.webp.jpeg\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: NEON\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/faces-of-death.jpeg\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: IFC\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/fantasy-life-306534-H-2025.webp.jpeg\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Greenwich Entertainment\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Kontinental-251.webp.png\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: 1-2 Special\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/MAD_BILLS_TO_PAY_thumbnail.png\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Oscilloscope\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/mile-end-kicks.avif?w=300\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Elevation Pictures\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/miroirs.webp.jpeg\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: 1-2 Special\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/MM_16x9_Trailer_Thubmnail_2.webp.jpeg\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: A24\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/nirvanna.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: NEON\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/project-hail.webp.jpeg\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Amazon MGM Studios\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/★Main_Two-Seasons-Two-Strangers-scaled-1.avif?w=300\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” (dir. Sho Miyake)\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/useful-ghost.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\tImage Credit: “A Useful Ghost” (dir. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke)\t\t\t<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/yes.jpg\")