The 10 Best Movies of 2026 So Far

2026 has not been a very interesting year for movies, and we watched enough of them to say that with some confidence. Plenty of releases had a big trailer, a famous face and a decent opening weekend, and two weeks later nobody in our group could remember how they ended.

Still, the best films this year are really good. Project Hail Mary nearly made one of us cry, and The Odyssey is the one film this year you really need to see in IMAX. The films we liked most also had something in common: you can see where the money went. Rocky in Hail Mary is a real puppet that five people move by hand, and Nolan shot every frame of The Odyssey on IMAX film when a digital camera would have been far easier.

So here are our ten, plus three bonus picks and one film we would talk you out of. Where we argued, we voted, and the votes are in here too. Horror has been the best genre of the year by a distance and already has its own list, so this page mixes everything together. That is why only one horror film made our top four, and why Send Help, which critics loved, ends up at the very bottom.

Quick Answer

The best movies of 2026 so far are Project Hail Mary, The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Obsession. Project Hail Mary is simply number one for us, Spider-Man took third place from Obsession by three votes to two, and Send Help, despite a 92% critics score, is the one film we would skip.

Critics is the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer and Audience is the Popcornmeter. Scores and US availability were checked on 23 October 2026.

1. Project Hail Mary

Rotten Tomatoes 95% critics, 95% audience · Streaming on Prime Video and MGM+

Ryan Gosling wakes up on a spaceship with no idea who he is or how he got there, and for the first stretch you figure it out with him. He is Ryland Grace, a middle-school science teacher, and he is very far from Earth on a mission the whole planet is depending on.

If you liked The Martian, this is the same writer, Andy Weir, and the same kind of fun: one clever, slightly panicking guy solving impossible problems with science and jokes. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the duo behind 21 Jump Street who also produced the Spider-Verse films, keep it light without ever letting you forget the stakes, and Gosling can be scared and funny inside the same line.

Then he meets Rocky, the rock-like alien he ends up working with, and the film gets even better. Rocky is a real puppet worked by five puppeteers, with James Ortiz leading them and doing the voice. In a year when a lot of big films looked like they had been rendered over a weekend, our favourite new character is something five people had to move by hand, and you feel it every time Gosling talks to him, because there is actually something in the room to talk to.

One of us nearly cried at the end, which is not something we expected to admit in a ranking article. A friendship between a science teacher and a rock should be ridiculous, and by the final act it is the thing you care about most.

At 2 hours 36 minutes it never drags, and it is simply number one for us, plus the easiest film on the list to recommend to someone who swears they hate sci-fi.

2. The Odyssey

Rotten Tomatoes 94% critics, 96% audience · In cinemas, with a digital release set for 17 November

Nolan made the first feature shot entirely on IMAX film cameras, more than two million feet of 70mm, and it played on all 41 IMAX 70mm screens in the world, so please see it in IMAX. If one of those is within driving distance, it is worth the drive, and if not, find the biggest screen near you, because on a laptop you are basically watching a trailer for the real thing.

Matt Damon is Odysseus, trying to get home from the Trojan War to Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and his son Telemachus (Tom Holland), in a cast that also has Zendaya as Athena and Charlize Theron as Calypso and generally looks like a fantasy draft. The Cyclops is the best part of the whole film for us. Robert Pattinson is excellent as Antinous, the head suitor who has more or less moved into Odysseus's house and is waiting for everyone to agree he is dead.

Nolan spent two million feet of film making ancient Greece feel real, and then gave every Greek on screen perfect white Hollywood veneers. It sounds like a petty complaint until you see it, and after that the Bronze Age looks like a dentist's waiting room in Beverly Hills for the rest of the film.

Before release, half the internet was arguing about Elliot Page, partly because of a fake rumour that he would play Achilles. He plays Sinon, a Greek soldier and Odysseus's cousin, it is a small role and he is good in it. The whole thing was overblown, and the box office seems to agree: Nolan's biggest opening ever and more than $1.7 billion worldwide. Not everyone in our group loves the film equally, but it was never in danger of losing second place.

3. Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Rotten Tomatoes 90% critics, 97% audience · In cinemas, and available to rent or buy digitally

After No Way Home, the whole world has forgotten Peter Parker, so Tom Holland's Spider-Man is protecting New York with nobody who knows who he is and a new threat on the way.

A Marvel film usually cuts every emotional scene with a joke about four seconds in, as if the studio is scared you might feel something, so we did not expect this one to get so serious. Destin Daniel Cretton, who made Shang-Chi, lets scenes breathe, the conversations go deeper than anything in Holland's earlier films, and for once Peter's loneliness really lands. Sadie Sink, Jon Bernthal and Mark Ruffalo are in it too, which is more cast than a Spider-Man film strictly needs.

There was also a funny moment in August, when it started sharing North American IMAX screens with The Odyssey and Tom Holland and Zendaya ended up competing with themselves for the same cinemas.

Third place went to a vote between Spider-Man and Obsession, and Spider-Man won it three to two. For the record, some of us are still Tobey Maguire guys, and nothing Holland does is going to change that.

4. Obsession

Rotten Tomatoes 93% critics, 94% audience · Streaming on Peacock, where JustWatch lists it as leaving within a month

Obsession is 100% one of the movies of the year, and it only sits fourth because it lost that vote by one. We already wrote it up properly as number one in our best horror movies of 2026, so here is the short version: a music-store clerk uses a wish-granting trinket to make his friend fall in love with him, gets exactly what he wished for, and it turns into one of the most uncomfortable things you will watch this year. Curry Barker wrote, directed and edited it. Watch it on Peacock while it is still there.

5. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

Rotten Tomatoes 82% critics, 84% audience · Streaming on Hulu for about three more weeks, according to JustWatch

A guy from the future walks into a Los Angeles diner and tries to recruit the customers to stop a rogue AI. We write about AI pretty much every day, so of course we watched it, and it is a much better time than most AI movies, which usually take themselves so seriously they feel like a tech keynote with explosions. Gore Verbinski, the Pirates of the Caribbean director, just lets the idea be fun.

Sam Rockwell is brilliant as the man from the future, with Haley Lu Richardson, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple and Michael Peña as Mark around him, and the whole team loves Michael Peña, so that helped a lot. It is the coolest future idea on the list, and it leaves Hulu soon.

6. The Invite

Rotten Tomatoes 96% critics, 89% audience · Streaming on HBO Max

Good comedies are rare enough these days that we wrote a whole piece on why Hollywood stopped making comedies like Superbad. The Invite is one of the few recent ones that made us properly laugh.

A San Francisco couple invite the people from upstairs over for dinner, and the neighbours make a proposal nobody at the table saw coming. Olivia Wilde directs and plays Angela, Seth Rogen is her husband, and the couple upstairs are Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton, which sounds like four names pulled out of a hat and turns out to be the best thing about it. It is a comedy about middle-aged couples, something Hollywood barely makes anymore, and A24 picked it up after Sundance.

7. Resident Evil

Rotten Tomatoes 96% critics, 90% audience · In cinemas

Resident Evil has a very strong start and runs a bit out of steam towards the end, but Zach Cregger, the Barbarian and Weapons guy, got the most important thing right: it feels the way playing these games felt. He skips the lore and the legacy characters and sends Bryan, a medical courier, through an outbreak in Raccoon City, so you do not need to have played a single game to enjoy it.

Austin Abrams makes Bryan a pretty funny lead. His awkwardness is a big part of the film's personality, and a lot of the comedy works because of him. The camera work is cool too, and Paul Walter Hauser is in it as well. No spoilers here, but after what the previous Resident Evil films put people through, a lot of people are going to enjoy this one.

8. Backrooms

Rotten Tomatoes 86% critics, 74% audience · Streaming on HBO Max

Backrooms started as Kane Parsons' YouTube series about those endless empty spaces the internet is obsessed with: yellow wallpaper, damp carpet and fluorescent lights buzzing forever. The film, in which a furniture-store owner and his therapist find that world through the store's basement, became A24's highest-grossing film ever, and it is finally a YouTube horror that is actually scary.

Audiences liked it a fair bit less than critics did, and it is on this list mainly for the concept. A version with 15 extra minutes hit cinemas in July, and it is number three on our horror list if you want the longer take.

9. The Drama

Rotten Tomatoes 76% critics, 78% audience · Streaming on HBO Max

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson are a happily engaged couple until a revelation lands the week before the wedding. If you liked watching rich people ruin their holidays in The White Lotus, this is the same kind of cringe on an indie budget, two good-looking people saying things that should never be said out loud while you sit there wanting to leave the room and needing to know what happens next.

Kristoffer Borgli, who did Sick of Myself and Dream Scenario, wrote and directed it. It is a small film and knows it, and it is Zendaya's third film on this list and Pattinson's second.

10. Michael

Rotten Tomatoes 38% critics, 97% audience · Streaming on Starz

Critics gave Michael 38% and audiences gave it 97%, the biggest gap on this list, and after watching it we get both sides. Jaafar Jackson, Michael's nephew, is very good in the lead, and Colman Domingo nails Joe Jackson, the father everybody knows from the stories.

It goes from the Jackson 5 to solo stardom and stops right as the Bad tour starts, with a card telling you his story continues, so it feels like half a movie, and it turns out that is pretty much what it is. According to reporting on the production, the original cut opened in 1993 with the allegations, a legal settlement clause meant that material could not be used, and the ending was reshot over 22 days in June 2025. So the last act builds towards something that never arrives. We wanted a proper ending, and Lionsgate says a sequel is in development, so maybe the second half gives us one.

Bonus Picks

Three more 2026 films that did not make the ten but kept coming up every time we argued about this list.

Primetime

Rotten Tomatoes 86% critics, 77% audience · In cinemas, with digital rental on Fandango at Home

Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen from To Catch a Predator, the Dateline segment that ran stings on men who thought they were meeting minors, from 2004 to 2007. It is his third film on this page, and he is the reason to watch it. He nails Hansen's voice and that calm, slightly theatrical way he talked in front of the cameras, with Phoebe Bridgers (her first acting role), Skyler Gisondo and Merritt Wever around him.

The strange part is what director Lance Oppenheim did with Hansen himself. The film turns him into the villain, a TV guy chasing ratings. People can argue about the show's methods, but if you have ever watched To Catch a Predator, you remember Hansen reading out what these men had written to children and teenagers, and after that there is no excuse left for them. Bending things for drama is fair in a film, and some parts of Primetime still felt misleading to us.

The story around the film is messy too. Hansen went to A24's offices in August to watch it and left without seeing it, because he would not sign the legal agreement they gave him, which he says meant signing away rights to his name and image. According to TheWrap, A24's side says it was a standard preview NDA. When he finally saw it on opening night, he called it a hit piece on him and the series and gave Pattinson's performance a D, while Pattinson said he hoped Hansen would take it as a compliment. Honestly, we understand Hansen here, and the whole thing is more complicated than the film makes it look.

Tony

Rotten Tomatoes 93% critics, 92% audience · Rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV and Fandango at Home

Tony is a niche A24 movie, as usual, although "as usual" is getting harder to say about A24. Backrooms just became their biggest hit, five films on this page carry their logo, and the studio is starting to look pretty mainstream, only with better taste. Tony is the old A24.

Matt Johnson, who made BlackBerry, follows a 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain in 1975, played by Dominic Sessa from The Holdovers. He is a college kid who wants to be a writer, lies his way to Cape Cod and ends up washing dishes and then cooking in a chaotic seafood kitchen. We like Bourdain, so that whole restaurant vibe got us, the heat and noise and bad decisions and the kind of people you only meet in kitchens. Antonio Banderas plays the chef who hires him and is fantastic, as usual, and Eric Ripert, one of Bourdain's closest friends, turns up as a cooking instructor.

Digger

Rotten Tomatoes 52% critics, 76% audience · In cinemas

Alejandro González Iñárritu's Digger reportedly cost up to $180 million plus around $100 million in marketing, then opened to $8 million in the US and $20 million worldwide. That is Tom Cruise's worst opening as a headliner since Rain Man in 1988, and trade estimates put the loss at $150 to $200 million, which makes it the money disaster of the year.

Cruise is in a fat suit and prosthetics as Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon trying to prove he is humanity's saviour before the disaster he caused destroys everything. Not all the jokes made us laugh, but the casting is great. Then you look at who else is in it: Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Jesse Plemons, Emma D'Arcy, Michael Stuhlbarg and Sandra Hüller from Project Hail Mary, all in one Tom Cruise oil satire. It is such a random mix, and honestly it is cool.

The One We Would Skip: Send Help

Rotten Tomatoes 92% critics, 86% audience · Streaming on Hulu

Sam Raimi made the Spider-Man movies some of us still swear by, which made this one harder to sit through. Rachel McAdams is an employee stuck on a desert island with her awful boss, Dylan O'Brien, after a plane crash, and the film wants to be half survival thriller and half horror.

Of everything we watched for this list, it is the weakest and the most cliché, because every survival-movie moment you can guess shows up right on time, people keep making decisions no human would make, the effects look cheap for a Raimi film, and then there is the boar scene, which is supposed to be a big moment and is just cringe. Critics gave it 92%. We would put it on in the background on a weeknight at most, and we said more about it in our horror list, where it also missed the cut.

Which Movie Should You Watch Tonight?

Final Verdict

The year's real winner might be Robert Pattinson. He is excellent as the head suitor in The Odyssey, stuck in a pre-wedding nightmare with Zendaya in The Drama and doing a Chris Hansen impression good enough to carry Primetime, which is three very different films in one year and none of them a Batman movie. A24 had a strange year too: five films on this page, its biggest hit ever with Backrooms, and still enough room left for something as small as Tony.

If you only have tonight, put on Project Hail Mary, because it is already on Prime Video and nothing else here beats it. The Odyssey is the one with a deadline, since IMAX screens will not hold it forever and a TV will shrink it, and Obsession and Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die both leave their streaming services within a month. Send Help will still be on Hulu whenever you want it, which is exactly the problem.

We will keep adding to this as the rest of 2026 comes out, and our best TV shows of 2026 has ten more things to watch in the meantime.

FAQ

What is the best movie of 2026 so far?

Our pick is Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. It has a 95% critics score and a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and it is streaming on Prime Video and MGM+ in the US.

Is The Odyssey streaming yet?

No. The Odyssey is still in cinemas, and its digital and 4K disc release is set for 17 November 2026. No streaming service has been announced yet.

Is Elliot Page in The Odyssey?

Yes. Elliot Page plays Sinon, a Greek soldier and Odysseus's cousin. Rumours before release that he would play Achilles were false.

Why does Michael end so early?

The original cut reportedly opened in 1993 with the allegations against Michael Jackson, but a legal settlement clause meant that material could not be used. The ending was reshot, and the finished film stops as the Bad tour begins. Lionsgate announced in May 2026 that a sequel is in development.

Why did Digger flop?

Digger reportedly cost up to $180 million to make plus about $100 million to market, then opened to $8 million in the US and $20 million worldwide, Tom Cruise's lowest opening as a headliner since 1988. A big-budget original satire with mixed reviews was always a gamble, and trade estimates put its loss at $150 million to $200 million.

What is the best horror movie of 2026?

We rank Obsession first. Our full best horror movies of 2026 list covers the rest.