Disclosure Day (Steven Spielberg)

Despite how divided the reaction to Steven Spielberg’s latest imagining about extraterrestrials has been online and even in my own social circles, I fully agree with Chris that it’s among his best work. It’s also the film that appeared the most among our individual picks for this round-up. The government conspiracy and espionage elements are a bit of a MacGuffin, a flashier structure within which Emily Blunt’s television meteorologist awakens to the repercussions of an extraordinary event from her childhood. While the structure is Wikileaks, the arc is closer to a superhero origin story. Josh O’Connor is great as always, but it’s her dextrous performance of both bemused comedy and deep emotional wonder that grounds this visually spectacular adventure of transformation and discovery through its potent conclusion. — Josh

Disclosure Day is so reminiscent of Spielberg’s older films and showcases his talent for making beautiful films; it’s hard not to fall in love with it. I absolutely love alien abduction stories and love to think about what would happen if they turned out to be true, so Disclosure Day was a fun way to believe that for a few hours. Speaking of the 2 and a half hour run time, you’d never guess this film was so long. Spielberg is a true expert at moving the film along at the perfect pace, never lingering on a moment too long or rushing through one. — Marina

Disclosure Day is now playing in theaters.

Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord & Christopher Miller)

Lord & Miller’s interstellar bromance about two lonely little guys far from home, working together to understand each other (and themselves) to save their planets (and each other) via ingenuity and interpersonal communication surprisingly rocketed to the top of my list. Ryan Gosling and Rocky (who I refuse to believe isn’t real, despite too many behind-the-scenes features on puppeteering) are a perfect duo in this emotionally potent, ingeniously choreographed, comedic space ballet. Sandra Hüller makes me reconsider my blanket disdain of karaoke. Daniel Pemberton’s original score absolutely rips. And the sequence where Gosling’s reluctant astronaut “takes a moment” amid an infrared star field is among the most beautiful sequences I’ve ever seen on film. Realized largely with practical effects, the film is a strident rebuke to so much CGI/AI slop we’ve come to accept in blockbuster entertainments. Amaze, amaze, amaze. — Josh

I wasn’t expecting my favorite film of 2026 to be released in the first quarter of the year, but I’m almost positive that’s what happened with Project Hail Mary—and the further into the year we get, the more confident I am that this will remain true. Project Hail Mary is a true blockbuster like we haven’t seen in a while, and it reminds me why I love movies, theaters, and the chance to see and talk about movies with my friends. — Marina

Project Hail Mary is streaming now on various platforms.

I Love Boosters (Boots Riley)

Tony: Full disclosure: I haven’t yet had a chance to catch the majority of films that’d likely make this list for me. Which means the majority of my Year’s Best So Far is mainly drawn from the now-released SIFF ’26 festival films that have since seen release, and the (largely genre-related) stuff I’ve already seen and reviewed here so far this year. That considerable caveat/myopia considered, I’ll still readily go to the mat for all five movies I’ve picked here.

Boots Riley’s absurdist satire fires off so many fascinating and provocative ideas, at such a lightning speed, and with such a sensory assault of color and image, it’s almost too much to take in in one viewing, in the best possible way. I try to avoid hyperbolizing, but there’s something about what Riley’s doing here that feels like he’s rewriting cinema language in a way we haven’t seen in a while. — Tony

I Love Boosters is now available on various streaming platforms.

The Invite (Olivia Wilde)

Olivia Wilde directs and stars (along with an exceptional cast of Penelope Cruz, Seth Rogen, and Edward Norton) in this tense dramedy about a neurotic couple who invites their more-freewheeling upstairs neighbors over for dinner. What could go wrong? Pretty much everything. Wilde draws inspiration from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf but is more overtly funny but equally as biting. — Chris

The Invite opens in Seattle theaters on Thursday, July 9.

Deadline (Kiwi Chow)

While there have been other films about being in high school and the immense pressure kids, especially those in Asian nations like China, Japan and Korea, none really got to the heart of the matter as if we were seeing what was happening through their eyes. Each of the main characters came from varied backgrounds like high achievers, popular kids and near drop-outs, but each had a compelling story to tell. Films like this can easily fall into cliches but despite the high school tropes, their personalities were anything but shallow and that attention to detail is what brought this film to life with stark, uncomfortable reality. — Morgen

Deadline isn’t currently available for viewingo or streaming

April X (Michel K. Parandi)

One of my favorite movies at SIFF this year. It stars Connor Storrie, who was luckily cast before his star turn in the gay hockey drama, and Lilly Krug as brother and sister roommates. He works in the totally legit underground body parts industry and tries to track her down when she goes missing. Very compelling. — Chris

The release date for April X on streaming services has not been announced yet. 

Yes (Nadav Lapid)

A series of incendiary howls in three acts, Nadav Lapid casts Ariel Bronz as “Y”, a performance artist, comedian, and musician in Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks. We watch as he and his dancer wife (Efrat Dor) throw themselves into the service of entertaining the rich and powerful, navigating the periphery of a society of ostentatious wealth by saying “yes” to everything, including a commission to compose a new national anthem. Their performances are both outlandish and soulfully realized. Satire that cuts with a sharp rusty blade, it’s visually stunning and ever-propulsive maximalism in service of communicating even the tiniest sense of how insane it feels to be alive now. — Josh

Yes is available to rent VOD

Valentina (Tatti Ribeiro)

At this point immigration issues have reached every corner of this nation. Even if you are in a small town bubble, it’s almost impossible to have escaped the fallout of ICE raiding our country like their kids in a candy store. Valentina offers an up close and personal perspective of living in this country as a “foreigner” or “alien”. The lines are blurred between friend and enemy, especially in border towns like El Paso, Texas. Valentina lives an every day life that’s colored by friends, family, confidants and stresses of just trying to get by. With a really unique blend of documentary and performance art, she has pulled us into her world. — Morgen

Valalentina isn’t currently available for streaming

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die! (Gore Verbinski)

I’ve prattled on in greater length about Gore Verbinski’s marriage of Kurt Vonnegut humanist satire/sci-fi action movie at greater length in these virtual pages back in February, but suffice it to say, I’ve yet to see a movie this year that more cannily subverts the genre-blockbuster template with this kind of humor and–dare I say it?–heart. — Tony

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die! is streaming now on various platforms, and is available on physical media from various retailers besides Amazon.

The Drama (Kristoffer Borgli)

This film is absolutely wild, but I can’t help but love it, not least because of the chemistry between Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. They create scenes that make me believe their characters will be okay, no matter how much their lives start to crash and burn. In the best way possible, the film is like a train wreck you can’t look away from. — Marina

The Drama is available to rent or purchase digitally on various platforms.

The Seoul Guardians
(Cho Chul-young, Kim Jong-woo, Shin-Wan Kim)

This was one of the most affecting documentaries I’ve seen in a long time. I have had an affinity for Asian cultures and specifically for South Korea. I “lived” the near dictatorship of this nation unfold in 2025 with a mix of horror and fear. I should have had more faith in the strong, unified power that they hold amongst themselves and are determined to keep their country in line. With the May 17th coup in ’79 still fresh in the memories of the older generation, there’s no way they could allow such massive injury and killing of their own people because of the ego of one man. This film takes you from the moment President Yoon Seok Yul calls for martial law on the evening of December 3rd, 2024 until the final moments when he calls back the military he had deployed against the people of his own country and the assembly-people trying to uphold the law of the people.

The Seoul Guardians isn’t currently available to stream, but keep an eye out at SIFF.

Mārama (Taratoa Stappard)

Again, I already devoted a surplus of words in praise of Taratoa Stappard’s socially-charged gothic thriller, and a second viewing post-SIFF just cemented its efficacy as a horror film, and as an impassioned frontal assault on the horrors of colonialism. — Tony

Mārama is now streaming on various platforms.

The Bride (Maggie Gyllenhaal)

I went into this Maggie Gyllenhaal joint expecting literally nothing. I had kept my ears and eyes fresh to form my own opinion. I knew it had the potential to be very polarizing and I’m so glad I took the extra step to avoid discussion. It was a fresh, disturbing, feminist, co-dependent take on the age-old Mary Shelley story. I think in my review I even said “I think Shelley would approve”. It’s so macabre, but Jesse Buckley as the titular character made this new and unique exploration entirely her own. Plumbing the depths of what it means to be human, embracing it and then running in the opposite direction. I didn’t expect it, which makes it even better. — Morgen

The Bride can be streamed on HBO and other popular services

Obsession (Curry Barker)

The best part of Obsession was how genuinely funny it was—not in the I’m laughing at a low-budget horror film kind of way, but it was a truly hilarious, creepy experience. The filmmaking highlights how this new generation of filmmakers are pushing the boundaries and innovating the art already, and it’s exciting to see. I can definitely see Obsession becoming a recurring film for me during spooky season. — Marina

Obsession is now playing in theaters.

Leviticus (Adrian Chiarella)

What a year it’s been for indie horror with cutting social relevance! Although I appreciated the Obsession‘s grim twist on the wish fulfillment of toxic male longing, my pick for this season of innovative scary stories goes to Adrian Chiarella’s coming-of-age metaphor that casts religious intolerance as a demon that stalks you in the form of who you most desire. As a duo of young lovers pushed apart, Stacy Clausen and Joe Bird are terrific, elevating the material beyond big scares to something resonant and powerful. — Josh

Leviticus is now playing in theaters.

The Furious (Kenji Tanigaki)

One of the most exhilarating, masterfully choreographed action movies to hit theaters since Jet Li and Jackie Chan ruled international screens, and a complete blast of a theatrical experience. Full stop. — Tony

The Furious is now playing in theaters everywhere.

The Christophers (Steven Soderbergh)

Not the best Soderbergh in recent memory (Black Bag is) but still a tightly-wound dark comedy about a legendary painter in his cranky old man era, a would-be forger who wants to finish a series the old artist never finished, and his greedy failchildren who need the unfinished paintings to be finished to have an inheritance. — Chris

The Christophers is available on VOD.

Color Book (David Fortune)

David Fortune’s unpretentious, wonderful dramedy about a recent widower taking his young son with Downs Syndrome to a ball game was completed in 2024, a festival favorite in 2025 (including that year’s SIFF Fest), and recently released as a Netflix streaming release. But for that chaotic release history, it’d easily be the #1 thing I (re-) watched so far this year. Fortune’s crafted the kind of small but powerful, damn near perfect movie that deserves to be seen (and wholeheartedly embraced) by a much larger audience — Tony

Color Book is now streaming on Netflix.

Toy Story 5 (Andrew Stanton)

As I reflect on my top five films so far, I’m realizing a common theme is that I’m loving films that remind me why I love movies and going to the theater. Toy Story 5 is also one of those movies. It feels nostalgic and harkens back to the original film without feeling overdone or repetitive. The filmmakers found a creative way to address the tech boom taking over the world (and our kids’ worlds) without making tech the true bad guy and still letting toys shine. Plus, it was just as entertaining for me as an adult as it was for the kids in the theater with me. — Marina

Toy Story 5 is now playing in theaters.

Franz (Agnieszka Holland)

I’ve always loved Franz Kafka. I came across him in high school where Metamorphosis was required reading and I’ve never been the same. His work is evidence that allowing your subconscious and consciousness roam free and run off with wild abandon can be a good thing. While this film was an estimation of his life, enough was known to create a mostly complete picture of this incredible oddity of a man. It lead us through his young adulthood where his family set expectations to which he complied until he was convinced otherwise by his supportive sister. He allowed himself to love and follow his passions, but it wasn’t an easy road. He was far from perfect, and I loved getting to know the man behind the myth. — Morgen

Franz available on VOD

The Sheep Detectives (Kyle Balda)

I had a lot of movies vying for this fifth spot: Blue Heron, Sophy Romvari a deeply personal Canadian drama about reinvestigating a complicated childhood as an adult (think of it like Aftersun for siblings, except far more direct in its messaging and stylistic choices). Or maybe Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, Matt Johnson’s deeply personal Canadian comedy about interrogating the shape of a lifelong intertwined friendship and artistic collaboration, and also Back to the Future. Or even Tuner, a whip-smart crime caper about different ability as a superpower? All played at Toronto last year and are worth your time!

But I wanted to keep this list to films I saw during 2026 and simply couldn’t let this roundup go without praising the myriad charms of The Sheep Detectives, a cozy mystery which a flock of CGI sheep kindly tended to by a gentle shepherd played by Hugh Jackman are required to solve a murder through knowledge gained through bedtime stories. On paper this self-aware meta-mystery sounds preposterous, and that’s before mentioning that it also includes Nicholas Braun affecting a British accent as a local policeman. But from nose to tail it is an utter delight: clever without cloying, a testament to memory and forgetting, acceptance and resilience, and my goodness — just so many cute sheep doing sheep things while getting to the bottom of some dastardly schemes.

The Sheep Detectives is available on Prime Video.