The Great, the Terrible and the In-Between

Every July, I like to look back at the first half of the year to take the temperature of our current cinematic landscape. By this time last year, we already had the dizzying peaks of “Sinners” and “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” and the subterranean lows of “Jurassic Park: Rebirth” and “Snow White.” Will 2026 ultimately prove to be a more artistically daring year at the cinema? It’s still too early to tell. But the past six months have birthed several remarkable triumphs and hideous failures that have made sitting in the dark with a group of strangers worthwhile, or at least intermittently interesting. Here is an exceedingly non-comprehensive look at some of the best and worst of 2026 so far.

Best— “Project Hail Mary”: While the narrative is essentially just a loving, big-budget mashup of “E.T.,” “Interstellar” and “The Martian,” this nearly two-man show between Ryan Gosling and a faceless rock alien possesses so much genuine empathy that it’s impossible to begrudge its more predictable storytelling beats. Propelled by Drew Goddard’s breezy script and the visual alchemy of Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the film makes a very strong case for why the theatrical experience remains a vital, wonderful necessity in 2026.

Worst—“Michael”: I’ve never received more hate mail in my life than I did for my negative review of this film, so let me double down and dig this ditch a little deeper. When the inevitable sequel arrives to cover the second half of Michael Jackson’s life, it will not retroactively fix this sanitized opening chapter, regardless of how unblinking and honest it is about his allegations. “Michael” is an aggressively generic biopic given a free pass solely because the soundtrack is stacked with banger after banger. Antoine Fuqua stages the musical numbers well and Jaafar Jackson lip-syncs and dances admirably, but you’ll gain more psychological insight into MJ’s life from a cursory glance at a Wikipedia page. If a lavishly produced music video is all you want out of a Michael Jackson biopic, more power to you.

Best—“The Sheep Detectives”: If you had told me this was one of the best movies of the year just based on the trailer, I would have said you were crazy. Yet, against all logic, this absolute marvel about a computer-animated flock of anthropomorphic sheep solving their shepherd’s murder is a hilarious, heartbreaking, emotional powerhouse that I’ve already watched three times. The vocal work from Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chris O’Dowd and Bryan Cranston is flawless, drawing immense soul from the beautiful words of writer Craig Mazin. Two decades from now, we will speak of this film with the same reverence we reserve for the “Babe” duology.

Boots Riley (“I Love Boosters”) needs to make so many more movies. Credit: Neon

Worst—“Post-modern horror movie parodies and satires”: The irony here is thick enough to choke on. Two of the worst movies of the year so far are “Scream 7”— the sixth sequel to a classic horror movie that brilliantly deconstructed and rebuilt the slasher genre— and “Scary Movie,” the fifth sequel to a comedy that originally parodied “Scream” by mocking those exact horror tropes. “Scream 7” has so little meat on the bone and such a fundamental misunderstanding of Wes Craven’s original that it has actively transformed into the very thing it used to mock. Meanwhile, the new “Scary Movie” is so painfully out of touch and regressive that it’s significantly less funny than the movies it attempts to spoof. It’s depressing as hell, no matter how you slice it.

Best—“Horror that takes the genre seriously”: Even for audiences who detest horror movies, I still cannot recommend watching “Obsession” and “Backrooms” highly enough. Both films take a simple premise—a wish gone wrong in “Obsession” and an endless, liminal nightmare in “Backrooms”— and infuse them with enough thematic weight to reward endless rewatches. While “Backrooms” boasts flashier, more experimental filmmaking, “Obsession” is an instant classic we’ll be dissecting for decades.

There are plenty of other bright spots scattered throughout the first half of this year. We witnessed a deeply layered, heartbreaking performance from Ralph Fiennes in “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” Callum Turner’s effortlessly charismatic turn in “Rose of Nevada,” and David Lowery’s characteristically virtuosic filmmaking in “Mother Mary” (which also features a career-best performance from Anne Hathaway). Add to that Boots Riley’s madcap vision in “I Love Boosters” and the squirmy uncomfortable morality play of “The Drama”—anchored masterfully by Zendaya and Robert Pattinson— and it becomes clear that 2026 is off to quite a solid start.

Hopefully, by December, we’ll be looking at a historic, banner year for cinema on par with 1999 or 2007, but it’s still too early to tell. Among many others, we still have Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” Fincher’s “The Adventures of Cliff Booth” and David Robert Mitchell’s “The End of Oak Street” waiting in the wings. Coming soon, I’ll take a look at the upcoming releases for the back half of 2026 and break down exactly what you should be excited to see!

This article appears in the Source July 2, 2026.