Club Kid is unabashedly queer crowdpleaser cinema done oh so right

For a moment, Club Kid’s creative rhythm seems easily discernible. Clumsy thirty-something partier Peter (Jordan Firstman) is suddenly given a son he never knew. Once he has to take care of young Arlo, a series of sequences begin where the two are awkward with each other; not everything is going right, yet the individual scenes conclude on an upbeat, humorous note. This already enjoyable artistic cadence seemingly continues with an endearing scene where Peter reads Holes to Arlo. “I loved this book when I was your age,” Peter remarks, “And, look, I’m sorry, but I miss Shia on my screens.”

That last line seems like it’ll be the laugh-inducing sentence that’ll close out this particular glimpse into their evolving connection. Except the camera doesn’t cut away. Suddenly, Arlo declares, “I know how my mom died.” Peter returns to the kid's bedside and, in the span of a single unblinking shot, they have a chat about parents and inner pain. On the surface, they couldn’t be more different. Yet, through their talk, Peter reveals he too has dealt with losing a parent. In between these words, Peter is telling Arlo something pivotal: “you’re not alone.”

In this masterful sequence, Club Kid tenderly subverts viewer expectations to potently depict Jake and Arlo’s bond abruptly deepening. It’s possibly the best Club Kid scene, but it’s far from the only standout material here.

Long before that nighttime interaction, Peter is a (bigger) mess. He’s a 24/7 party promoter in New York’s gay scene whose life basically boils down to doing drugs, dancing, and keeping others aloof. Coasting through life and alienating his loved ones, Peter’s life gets turned upside down when Arlo shows up at his doorstep. Accidental sexual congress with the boy’s mother “a decade or so” ago has given Peter the last thing he wants. Immediately, their interactions are fraught with vomit-heavy problems.

Peter struggles taking care of himself. Now he’s nurturing another, much more vulnerable human being? Firstman’s script movingly follows Peter and Arlo gradually connecting, all while Peter’s queer pals provide a perfect found family for the orphaned youngster.

I now totally understand what it must’ve been like for Gen Xers to hear characters talk like themselves in 90s indie films or 60s counterculture devotees hearing their own existential concerns voiced in New Hollywood features like The Graduate. Throughout Club Kid, these characters chat and joke exactly like me and my friends do. People nonchalantly referencing tweets like they’re passages in a book, gaggles of gays reciting famous speeches from lady pop stars, the way conversations can turn from ribald irreverence to raw vulnerability on a dime…all those things I hear constantly in my social circles were finally on the silver screen. It was at once surreal and comforting.

Identification does not a great movie make. However, so vividly capturing distinctly 2020s gay social experiences encapsulates Jordan Firstman’s specificity as a writer. That quality is accentuated through Club Kid’s tremendous casting courtesy of Carmen Cuba. How is everyone in this movie so perfectly performed? Club Kid’s casting echoes Josh and Benny Safdie or Sean Baker’s works in realizing anyone can live in New York City. This place is full of colorful characters and that means anyone, no matter their screentime, can leave an impression.

In Peter’s apartment alone, Colleen Camp as Peter's kind neighbor kills it with every one of her line deliveries (her comment about watching War Horse and viewing Peter "as a friend" especially slay). As Peter's roommate Nicky, Eldar Isgandarov is similarly hilarious with his amusing mixture of meekness and decisiveness. With performances like these, just sticking around this apartment would render Club Kid a riot.

Yet there are also immensely endearing turns from further people in Peter’s life, including the captivating Saturn Risin9 as the DJ Saffron (finally, some super accurate trans girly rep). Kirby Howell-Baptiste shows up on-screen for one scene yet sears herself into your brain with her confident aura. Diego Calva, meanwhile, has such adorable chemistry as a potential love interest for Peter. On paper, Club Kid might sound like something you’ve seen before (everybody’s made the obvious Big Daddy comparisons for a reason). However, art largely is built on familiar narrative foundations. Even vintage comedies like The Shop Around the Corner or It Happened One Night were built on classical storytelling beats (even beyond those existing in their respective source materials).

It’s always execution, not necessarily the starting concept, that makes or breaks a motion picture. On that front, Club Kid passes with flying colors. Just those richly idiosyncratic performances alone imbue Club Kid with glorious originality. Firstman’s script further accentuates that individuality through lingering on Peter and Arlo’s smallest interactions. Letting their conversations simmer and uncovering the pathos in these hangout vibes tremendously benefits the proceedings. Beyond the aforementioned Holes scene, a tender conversation in an Uber home where Peter tells his son “you’re so cool” stands out as an incredibly moving example of these storytelling tendencies.

Ditto the two walking around sharing profanities, much to the chagrin of some passersby. These elements further ensure Club Kid feels excitingly original, not to mention emotionally absorbing. Such segments also allow Club Kid to demonstrate its immense visual chops even in its most intimate stretches. Firstman and cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra skills are apparent in a moment where Peter and Arlo walk into a location that will someday soon be the former character's new club. Though still under construction, they’re so excited about the space’s possibilities. Warm gold light pours in through the windows as the duo dances around in an unblinking wide shot. The joy over their connection and the future’s rich potential informs inviting and striking lighting.

Even long before this “awwww”-inducing segment, Club Kid’s opening scene establishes the visual finesse permeating the proceedings. Here, an inebriated Peter and his equally intoxicated buddies stumble into a taxi while singing a Rihanna ditty. The camera captures them in an unbroken take in a fixed position while repeatedly spinning 360 degrees around inside the automobile. It’s like the camera’s been taped down on a turntable. Constant turning conveys the disorientation all these drunken queers feel in their uninhibited state. However, the image doesn’t lapse into incoherent shaky cam to communicate this reality. On-screen visuals remain crisply coherent, vividly placing viewers into a hardcore partyer’s headspace. Plus, having the camera capture multiple characters subtly establishes Club Kid’s story stretching far beyond Peter.

All of those rich visual details emerge in a single sequence transpiring before Club Kid’s title card emerges. Such memorable imagery abounds in the ensuing film, as do vibrantly realized personalities, immensely quotable humorous lines (somehow Firstman’s script makes a joke involving someone “arrested for multiple counts of child abuse” hilarious), and immensely affecting poignancy. Best of all, these ingredients exist in a feature that doesn’t bend over backwards catering to the straights.

Something like Emilia Pérez features LGBTQIA+ characters as anomalies. There’s only one trans woman for miles. No larger queer populations exist. Club Kid, meanwhile, commits to unabashedly queer storytelling full of our culture, witticisms, and richly varied communities. Jordan Firstman’s immensely confident directorial debut is here to have a good time and move the soul rather than worry if heterosexual audience members will get certain references or alienating straight viewers who "don't mind gay people...so long as they're not in my face about it." Club Kid is like a Janelle Monáe or 100 gecs song; deeply and loudly queer, but also so artistically powerful that folks from any walk of life can enjoy it. Having its creative priorities straight (no pun intended) is one of many ways Club Kid delivers a crowdpleaser cinematic beat you’ll never forget. 

Lisa Laman's Bite Sized Reviews: Clayface, Being Heumann, Wicker

Matt Hagen looking distraught in Clayface 

Howdy folks! Time once again for some bite-sized reviews of new theatrical releases that Lisa Laman has watched recently! This time, let's talk about three new autumn 2026 movies that go all over the map in terms of genre. First up, a gooey trip to Gotham...

Clayface

The saga of Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), a handsome actor whose attempt to regain his sexy face ends up turning him into the Batman villain Clayface, underpins what’s conceptually a body horror film in Clayface. Unfortunately, this deeply competent but not necessarily chilling title’s biggest drawback is it lacks the chaos of other body horror films. Titles in this cinematic realm from Brian Yuzna, Julia Ducournau, or David Cronenberg are outright unhinged creations where anything is on the table. You never know what images, graphic deaths, or bizarre plot turns are just around the corner as seemingly “stable” human bodies are contorted.

Clayface, meanwhile, can’t get too wild lest it alienate opportunities to sell Funko Pop figures. Thus, the nastiest, nightmarish set pieces littering other body horror movies are AWOL. Remember that lady getting her bones contorted in the 2018 Suspiria remake? Or the unforgettable set piece Isabelle Adjani's Anna has a breakdown in a tunnel in Possession? Such bravura is largely absent here in a movie content delivering generic gangster baddies and roughly only 100 seconds total of Clayface’s gooey monster form from the comics/Batman: The Animated Series.

That grave flaw kept nagging at me in Clayface even while director James Watkins keeps the proceedings otherwise workmanlike. Rhys Harries and leading lady Naomi Ackie (the latter playing the scientist inadvertently responsible for Clayface’s creation) especially thrive here delivering discernibly human performances. When they’re just chatting on Gotham’s streets, it doesn’t feel like they’re just killing time until Hagen shapeshifts and slaughters again. Their rapport and individual turns are perfectly solid in their own right.

Props too to Watkins and cinematographer Rob Hardy for littering Clayface's world with various brightly colored neon lights. This quality drapes nighttime walks in green hues or urgent gazes into shop windows with yellow tints. Huzzah for not just falling back on various greys for this grim horror feature. On the other hand, composer Volker Bertelmann’s Clayface score is dreadful. Once more, he leans on blaring horns and uninspired ham-fisted music cues lending no specificity to the characters or frights. It all sounds too reminiscent of both his subpar All Quiet on the Western Front tracks and stereotypical Hans Zimmer scores. After delivering possibly the year's worst score with The Uprising, Bertelmann once more disappoints with his dreadful Clayface compositions.

Much like Hagen trying to keep his shapeshifting abilities and violent impulses in check, Clayface is a tormented movie. It generally looks sharp, the assembled performers are solid, and there’s even some nifty kills (including one involving a guy getting part of his spine ripped out). However, it also frustrates in other respects, including in leaving too much potential on the table as a gnarly body horror tale. Too often Clayface registers as a pastiche of superior frightfests rather than a spine-tingling exercise in the moment. Maybe they should’ve waited for original screenwriter Mike Flanagan to have an opening in his schedule so he could direct this one. At least then Clayface could’ve had more specificity in its bloodstream.

Being Heumann

First off, go watch the excellent 2020 documentary Crip Camp. What an extraordinary film that is! Secondly, in that title (chronicling disabled folks who bonded at Camp Jened, a New York summer camp built for disabled attendees), there's a story shared by iconic activist Judith Heumann about a burst of 70s activism where she and her disabled cohorts engaged in a sit-in protest of a federal building in San Francisco. This was in response to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 not being signed into law. This anecdote was rife with engrossing rebukes to the status quo as well as intersectional aid in the form of local Black Panther Party members and lesbians showing up to provide meals and aid to the protestors.

I always thought this was one of the coolest stories imaginable and perfect for a movie. CODA writer/director Siân Heder clearly thought so too, since she and co-writer Rebekah Taussig have brought this story to the silver screen via adapting Judith Heumann's memoir Being Heumann. The feature Being Heumann’s best moments certainly reflects this story's potency. As the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast hosts pointed out on their episode about Pride, American cinema isn't rife with movies about collectivist action or protest movements. Matewan and Barbara Kaplan documentaries, thankfully, exist, but they’re the exceptions, not the norms.

This retelling of Judith Heumann (portrayed here by Ruth Madeley) and other activists is another welcome refutation of this norm. Heder’s filmmaking thrives on leaning into the complexities of executing group protests. No marginalized group is a monolith, and disabled folks are no exception. A sequence chronicling a tense argument reflecting disparate ambitions for societal improvements from deaf and blind people epitomizes Being Heumann refusing to boil down its disabled characters to interchangeable caricatures. Emphasizing the variety amongst these protestors makes sequences depicting cooperation and folks collectively giving the middle finger to apathetic politicians extra fantastic.

Unfortunately, Being Heumann filters this story and these lives through frustratingly familiar impulses. Heder and cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay opt for standard, cramped framing, overly clean digital camerawork, and totally eschewing distinctive lighting. I yearned for scenes like a nighttime police raid on the protestors to be filmed with more visceral urgency. If you like uber-familiar medium shots of characters talking, you’ll be in Heaven. Francesco Le Metre's score is similarly derivative. His music cues are a hodgepodge of instrumentation and sounds cribbed from so many other dramas about civil rights activism in the 60s and 70s.

Judith Heumann and her fellow activists refused to assimilate or be silent. Being Heumann, meanwhile, resorts to unobtrusive and conventional imagery and orchestral music details.

On the other hand, Heder’s greatest asset from CODA (her deftness working with actors) thankfully returns here. Consistently strong performances litter Being Heumann, including Madeley’s outstanding lead turn. From the moment she first appears on-screen, Madeley infuses Heumann with transfixing IDGAF Brooklyn energy. Meanwhile, Madeline Delp, Antwan Tolliver, and D'Arcee Charington Neal all deliver star-making turns. Please, Hollywood, put them all in countless movies after this. The top-shelf casting means that the most low-key Being Heumann scenes are often its best. Particularly memorable is a third-act scene where disabled activists quietly share and laugh over various condescending comments able-bodied people keep throwing at them ("it's such a shame, you have such a pretty face!").

Being Heumann’s most rote images and storytelling impulses dilute the impact of a movie that needed more Molotov cocktail energy. What does work, though, are the riveting performances and most thoughtful explorations of communal activism. It’s no Crip Camp or Matewan, but noteworthy elements still materialize here.

Wicker

Loneliness. It's an all-consuming emotion that can make one do strange things. The Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman), the protagonist of Wicker, certainly knows that emotion well. In her village, which is all about tradition and marriage, her permanently single status is constantly joked about and commented on by people like the Tailor's Wife (Elizabeth Debicki). One day, loneliness drives that Fisherwoman to reach out to the Basket Weaver (Peter Dinklage) with a request: "make me a husband." He accepts the challenge and proceeds to carve her a Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgård).

Now the Fisherwoman has a man who truly loves her. Alas, their romance is a deviation from the village’s norms, especially in how Wicker Husband treats his spouse like a person, not an object. Folks like Tailor’s Wife quickly begin scheming to destroy this relationship.

Writer/directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson (who're adapting the Ursula Willis text The Wicker Husband) imbue Wicker with a sensibility evoking Jacques Demy's Donkey Skin. Specifically, Wicker and Donkey Skin both feel like classical fairy tales that just happened to be inhabited by flesh-and-blood people. Wicker reinforces this aesthetic through welcome screenwriting details like refusing to bequeath the various characters’ proper names (they’re just Fisherwoman or Tailor’s Wife) and embracing old-timey verbiage.

This conviction to a vintage atmosphere works divinely in Wicker’s favor. The enterprise doesn’t come off as a sleazy exercise exhaustingly winking at the viewer. Instead, it’s a sincere world imbuing earnest humanity into the outlandish. Time that could’ve been spent going “well, that just happened” is instead dedicated to exploring Fisherwoman and Wicker Man as people. Plus, sincerity allows for lovely bonding moments between Wicker’s two leads. Watching them intimately dance or share raw conversations by a roaring fire delivers the most intoxicating and “aww”-inducing sequences.

To boot, Wicker’s also so beautifully filmed, an unsurprising feat given that The Brutalist cinematographer Lol Crawley lensed this feature. Everything looks tactile and warm on-screen, with that warmth infusing the proceedings with extra romance. Similarly impressive visually is the outstanding makeup work used on Skarsgård. I don’t know how they made his Wicker Man body look like it’s actually empty inside, but that feat alone astonishes. Sarah Rubano and the other makeup artists should take a bow for their work here.

All the luscious visual details (which also include terrific costumes from designers Tóth András Dániel and Godena-Juhász Attila) coalesce to amplify Wicker’s tremendous innate charms. Naturally, the always reliable Colman and Skarsgård are also excellent here. Sure, Wicker’s plot doesn’t necessarily go anywhere unprecedented or immensely subversive. However, what the film delivers is charm and sincerity. That extends to a delightfully concocted finale that could've been ripped straight out of an old-timey fairy tale. Crowdpleaser entertainment like this resonating as finely crafted rather than manipulative doesn’t come around every day. 

How did October 2026 become one of the months for movies ever?

In March 1973, anyone visiting a record store would be greeted by a barrage of incredible tunes. As pointed out by user No_Lemon_3116 on Reddit, this month was overflowing with outstanding albums, including new releases from Led Zeppelin, The Doobie Brothers, ABBA, and The Byrds all debuted in this month. As if that wasn't enough, the first Tom Waits album and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon were also hitting shelves that month. The greatest artists of all time dropped fresh melodies that month, reflecting both immense artistry and a wide range of artistic impulses. Whatever atmosphere you'd want in your eardrums, March 1973 could deliver it. What a remarkable month for new music that just doesn't come around every year.

Movie fans are currently experiencing and reveling in their own equivalent to that seminal month for new music. October 2026 is proving to be for movies what March 1973 was for music: a landmark month absolutely crammed with extraordinary new releases. I've been going to the movies multiple times a week for at least 15 years now. I can't remember another month this good for new motion pictures. However, what's led to this exceptional month for moviegoing? How did we get here to Nathan Fielder, Mahershala Ali, and Oregon-based stop-motion animators (among others) solidifying that theatrical cinema is NOT dead but surely alive?

October 2026: An incidental collision of grand cinema

Starting in 2012 and 2013, major American movie studios began penciling release dates for then-unknown movies five or six years in advance. This unprecedented advanced planning was because the biggest corporations wanted their features to debut on the juiciest possible release dates. You want Memorial Day 2018? That already belongs to Disney, sorry. This practice was supposed to remove the financial "uncertainty" of motion pictures for studio executives and shareholders. 20th Century Fox or Warner Bros. had a big movie in this particular June weekend in 2012/2013. Now they could theoretically count on another moneymaker bowing in the same corridor in 2018.

Despite all this planning, movies rarely operate entirely according to plan. Release date delays are inevitable. Motion pictures that don't cost $200+ million and don't hail from major studios, meanwhile, often play it fast and loose with release dates. In the 2020s, smaller studios, like Neon and A24, often keep release dates close to the chest even when a movie starts releasing trailers and other promotional materials. Marvel movies make their release dates obvious years in advance. Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother and NAZA, meanwhile, make their release dates known only shortly before their debuts. Thus, a month like October 2026, dominated by smaller titles breaking out, wasn't necessarily something people had been predicting for eons would be unusually heavy on outstanding movies.

As late as July 2026, while it was clear mainstream wide releases Verity and Street Fighter (among others) would drop in this month, other aspects of the October 2026 movie scene were shrouded in mystery. Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother's exact wide release expansion date in October 2026 was unknown. Even the nerdiest film geeks with ears perched to the ground had no clue the 4K restoration of Ken Russell's The Devils and You Can See Everything even existed. All of this is to say that there wasn't a grand plan to make October 2026 a special month in cinema history. Everything dropping in this month was a fantastic coincidence, a confluence of the right events lining up at the right time.

And what a glorious confluence it is! You Can See Everything alone existing would be enough to make October 2026 an extraordinary month for moviegoing. This Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim directorial effort challenges audiences to reckon with how just how "authentic" or "real" documentary cinema is. Given that the very first documentary film, Nanook of the North, was a racist and deeply inaccurate depiction of Indigenous Canadians, You Can See Everything is basically reckoning with the DNA of Western documentary cinema (not to mention modern celebrity docs working as PR for rich people rather than exploring them as people). What images are on-screen and why? Can clarity or epiphanies be gleaned even in the most intimate visuals? All the while, this exploration of Elizabeth Holmes delivers so many phenomenal twists, turns, and masterful dry visual gags that keep one's attention glued to the screen for the entire three-hour runtime. 

Somehow, though, You Can See Everything, despite being one of 2026's greatest movies, isn't just eating up all the moviegoing oxygen in the room. There's plenty of other extraordinary features dropping in October 2026. NAZA, for instance, is one of the greatest documentaries ever made, a harrowing examination of how genocide is executed by everyday people. Meanwhile, La Bola Negra began its North American theatrical run this month. This feature from the directorial duo Los Javiers is rife with stunning imagery (all hail cinematographer Gris Jordana) used to lend an epic lens to queer lives oft-erased. 

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (after beginning a limited theatrical run in late September 2026) expanded into wide release in October 2026 and was an extraordinary second directorial effort from Bassim Tariq. Whether it's Mahershala Ali's incredible performance, the mesmerizing sound design, or endlessly creative images (like a climactic realization of two people with their heads tilted downward from the perspective of the floor), Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother rocked. After eight years away, Lee Chang-dong returned to filmmaking with Possible Love, a deeply quiet feature wringing such potent humanity out of subdued terms. Don't forget about Wildwood, which takes stop-motion animation as an artform to new, expanded horizons to serve a gloriously towering fantasy epic.

I admired Digger more than I liked it, but it clearly struck a chord with many viewers. Something this original and idiosyncratic reaching the big screen alone is an achievement. Speaking of Warner Bros. titles, Ken Russell's The Devils finally brought this long-suppressed title to the big screen and in a sumptuous 4K remaster to boot. Though released in 1971, The Devils remains a masterpiece and one of the greatest things you could see on the big screen in 2026. This long-awaited theatrical re-release dropping in October 2026 is such perfect timing. Outstanding classic cinema complementing new artistic achievements.  

Heck, there are so many acclaimed October 2026 titles out there that I haven't even caught up with everything that's generating buzz this month. Once Upon a Time in Harlem, for instance, hasn't come to a theater near me yet, and I won't be able to see Fjord until Wednesday. What a bounty for movie geeks, with the avalanche of great films excitingly exploring so many different creative avenues and tonal tableaus. Wildwood isn't the same movie as Possible Love. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother exists on a different planet than You Can See Everything. Movies can look like anything, from La Bola Negra to Wildwood. October 2026's cinema scene beautifully reinforced this truth, an accomplishment nobody could've predicted or planned out. These films just happened to land in the same month.

There is one thing permeating all of these titles, though: confidence. That's a quality that's so extra welcome in October 2026 since it's often been missing from 2020s cinema.

October 2026's cinema had engrossing confidence to spare

The 2020s have delivered plenty of great movies. Trenque Lauquen, Hundreds of Beavers, Drive My Car, there's been no shortage of outstanding motion pictures from all around the world in a decade rocked by COVID-19 and corporate consolidation. However, mainstream American films in this decade have especially been plagued by tangibly sweaty insecurity. For every boldly original and assured vision like Sinners, Barbie, or One Battle After Another, there've been projects like Deadpool & Wolverine, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, or even adult dramas like Saturday Night obsessed with looking backward. 

As countless Wall Street tycoons and prognosticators declared "theatrical movies are dead!!" in the face of 2020s-specific challenges, these films responded by trying to teleport theatrical cinema back in time. "Let's go back to before COVID and streaming!" these titles would implicitly declare with their fixations on regurgitating yesteryear media. Who needs to give modern moviegoers productions that belong and speak to them when you can just rehash the Karate Kid, Tron, and Smurfs brand names?

When theatrical moviegoing needs bold, decisive creative visions (not to mention strict commitment to the big screen and proper theatrical windows), major American studios often placed all their chips on Kraven the Hunter or Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. These reheated brand names weren't just tired franchise slop, they also didn't do anything narratively or especially visually to challenge audiences. Compare that to the best pre-2026 2020s movies (like Beavers, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, April, and No Other Choice, among many others) which embraced unique visual aesthetics that looked cool and accentuated their respective narrative means rather than leaning on cookie-cutter TikTok-ready framing. 

October 2026's barrage of modern classics has similarly eschewed the insecurity and visual stagnancy plaguing so much mainstream American 2020s cinema. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother and You Can See Everything tell their stories in 1.66:1 and 1.33:1 aspect ratios, respectively. These unusual pieces of framing aren't common in major theatrical releases (The Grand Budapest Hotel is the only pre-2026 title to clear $20 million domestically while utilizing the 1.33:1 framing). It's easy to imagine streaming service executives or shareholders sweating over these choices, since these aspect ratios automatically make Mother and Everything look unlike typical movies.

Embracing visual idiosyncrasies, though, serves both films exquisitely. The 1.66:1 and 1.33:1 tableaus inform incredibly precise and evocative blocking in both titles (like the deeply cramped close-up shots littering You Can See Everything). Meanwhile, even the grimmest of these features isn't afraid of bright colors, an element 2020s American cinema often eschews (possibly in response to the growing presence and influence of American Christofascism, which, like all right-wing facist movements, is all about draining color from the world). Movies about Supergirl or Ariel ostensibly aimed at children are now drenched in dim lighting and grey backdrops. 

In contrast, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother litters even the dingiest apartment hallways in sumptuous hues. A memorable strip club tête-à-tête between the film's hero and villain is littered with vibrant colors. Wildwood is a radiant exercise revelling in natural green and autumn-tinged colors reinforcing the gorgeousness of the natural world. In its 4K restoration, Ken Russell's The Devils practically pops off the screen even as it deals with immensely grisly and tragic material. Even the white and silver tiling of the nunnery Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) lives in shimmers. These October 2026 titles (even the ones concerning restorations of 1971 Ken Russell directorial efforts) are mighty welcome refutations of the subdued color schemes often proving inescapable in 2020s American cinema. 

Too timid to infuse your 2020s feature with vibrancy? Titles like La Bola Negra and Wildwood will show you how it's done. 

"Political relevancy" isn't a dirty term.

To boot, October 2026's titles are actually about the wider modern world. The artists behind these projects don't look at inescapable news headlines about real-world atrocities and see that as something to evade. Rather, that material informs the art and reckons with feelings, thoughts, and brutal realities viewers might feel uncomfortable reckoning with in other spaces. It's unsurprising a grim, ripped-from-the-headlines documentary like NAZA would live up to this feat. However, Digger certainly did too. Not only was the feature cognizant of human-informed climate change adversely affecting the planet. It also reckoned with how "cathartic" or "rebellious" art can be an ultimately hollow way to "fight back" against the establishment.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, meanwhile, had a villainous pastor played by John Cho whose congregation is full of American flags, dehumanizing attitudes towards Muslims, insistence that Jesus is the only way, and suspicious Nazi-like red armbands. In other words, he's a microcosm of fascist religious leaders influencing global 2020s society. Then there's You Can See Everything, which is firmly rooted in the 2020s in countless ways. For one thing, the way it challenges audiences to reckon with "what is real?" throughout its runtime mirrors how no solid truth binds America anymore (the great Marya E. Gates wrote an excellent essay about how Everything, Digger, and NAZA reflect this truth).

Meanwhile, in Billy Evans (the husband of Elizabeth Holmes), the kind of insufferable men dominating every corner of America is put on the screen. Right-wing dudes with no respect for the autonomy of women (when pressed with the idea that an AI Holmes will be used in pornography without her consent, he says, "it's gonna happen anyway, so we should be on the ground floor of it."), a burning desire to control everything, and a victim complex at odds with the enormous power (Evans can just call people at Twitter and get login information for accounts) and wealth they've procured. He's Elon Musk. He's Ben Shapiro. He's every member of the Orange Führer's cabinet. He's on-screen constantly in You Can See Everything.

Billy Evans is a specifically 2020s creation, a grown man who can't watch YouTube videos unless they're sped up or an AI version of his wife (that he can control) is hovering over him yet has a frightening amount of power. You Can See Everything lays bare this figure's patheticness (right down to showing his genitalia on-screen), much like Ken Russell's The Devils depicted its powerful French Catholic adversaries as weasely scumbags looking to settle personal scores and maintain hierarchical power structures. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's documentary puts this distinctly modern personality on screen to enormously potent effect. 

Everything joins Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother and Possible Love in also being unabashedly set in the modern world. Rather than being like so many 2020s movies and transpiring in the past to avoid talking about COVID, Trump, or other modern horrors, these October 2026 titles embrace technologies, political movements, and verbiage specific to this moment in history. They're aware of Charlie Kirk, furry porn, rideshare apps, and other 2020s-specific elements. These qualities make the individual worlds of these features feel all the more alive and specific.

Even Wildwood, though a classical fantasy movie made in the mold of Labyrinth and The Chronicles of Narnia, evokes distinctly 2020s sensibilities in its bittersweetness. Adolescent protaganists Prue and Curtis travel to the titular fantasy realm and find themselves trapped in a large-scale conflict between the various Wildwood communities. "This is all my fault," Prue bemoans once, only for a wise adult character to remark that this is all so much bigger than Prue. Like Wildwood's young leads, those under 18 in the 2020s are growing up amidst larger woes they didn't ask for (namely climate change, the normalization of fascism, and a dearth of economic opportunities for their generation). They're being plunged into chaos and the ramifications of past generations' sins. 

The often aching experiences of Curtis and Prue in Wildwood provide a mirror to younger audiences navigating growing up on battlefields carved out by their ancestors. "It's rough, it's brutal," Wildwood tells them, "But you're not alone in it and you can't let those circumstances inform apathy towards other people." Whether it's in these stop-motion characters, Possible Love's story (which, ironically, was inspired by early 2010s labor protests in South Korea) confronting the erasure of everyday workers in modern society, or everything about You Can See Everything, October 2026's avalanche of great movies commit to speaking to the here and now.

Fellow film geeks, treasure months like these

While these shared qualities of confidence and exhibiting tangible cognizance of modern existence course through several iconic October 2026 releases, what makes these movies special is how different they are from each other. There's a level of variety in the artistry of this month's exceptional new releases that's helped solidify October 2026 as a stretch of time bound to go down in film history. From the meditative Possible Love to the grandiose Wildwood to the mind-melting You Can See Everything, there's so much range in the artistic accomplishments of October 2026's cinema. The conformity normalized and encouraged by streaming services and AI slop has no room in a month housing endlessly distinctive visions like Ken Russell's The Devils and Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

Ironically, the weaker motion pictures in October 2026 have only reinforced what an uncannily powerful month this has been for movies. The Social Reckoning, for instance, with its limp visuals and groan-worthy stab at a "triumphant" ending, sticks out like a sore thumb in a month full of audacious imagery and features confronting reality's complexities. Similarly, Street Fighter's hollowness and awkward comedic impulses make it even easier to appreciate Wicker's hand-crafted and humorous charms. October 2026 isn't a legendarily good month for movies because it's been devoid of cinematic misfires. The high points, though, have been so towering and pervasive that October 2026 has resonated as something special.

Fellow film devotees, savor the final days of this month. In years to come, I have no doubt people will talk about these 31 days of cinema in the hushed whispers and wistful tones used to discuss cinema years like 1999 or 1927 or March 1973's new albums. All that forthcoming chatter will inevitably hail how October 2026 epitomized 2026 as a year where theatrical cinema consistently got its mojo back. After years of conceding to streaming (like simultaneously releasing movies in theaters and on Disney+/HBO Max/Paramount+), and obsessing over the past, October 2026's cinema scene made movies embracing the big-screen canvas while living in the here and now.

What happens to the box office when Halloween falls on a Saturday?

Nathan Fielder and The Martian's Mark Watney going off trick-or-treating

Saturday is typically the biggest moviegoing day of the week. It's the day most people have off work and school. Unlike Sunday, though, it's also the day when you don't have imminent Monday morning work breathing down your work. Instead, another half of the weekend awaits, so stay out as late as you want. Party! Enjoy existence! No wonder Saturday is the most lucrative 24 hours of a given week for movie theaters. People have so many options for when they can see motion pictures! 

However, when Halloween falls on a Saturday, as it does in 2026, things get thrown out of wack. While people like to spend Christmas Day at the movies, Halloween is more like Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve; holidays people spend focusing on timely festivities instead of what's hopping at their local multiplex. 2026 is one of those rare years where Halloween falls on a Saturday and studios are clearly girding themselves for this frame to be a weak one. The new theatrical wide releases for the imminent October 30-November 1, 2026 frame amount to Briarcliff's Christmas with the Kringles, some new Sight & Sound Christian movie slop, The Mongoose A.K.A. Liam Neeson drives a car really fast, and The Only Living Pickpocket in New York expanding into 600+ theaters.

However, is there a chance a big new movie, with some proper marketing muscle, could've made some cash over this impending 2026 weekend? To answer that, let's channel Ebenezer Scrooge and look at Halloween's past. Specifically, let's examine what happens to the box office whenever Halloween falls on a Saturday.

So, this isn't an exact science, but these are the last years since 1990 when Halloween fell on a Saturday. The domestic box office frames for each year (as well as their top ten grosses) are linked below:

2020 (COVID-19 shut down most domestic theaters, so this frame doesn't really count despite new wide release Come Play topping the box office) ($8.7 million)

2015 ($58.4 million)

2009 ($77.4 million)

1998 ($43.1 million)

1992 ($28.1 million)

Comprehensive daily box office data isn't available before the 21st century, so it's difficult to see specific and expansive pre-2009 information on how the entire theatrical ecosystem performed on October 31st in 1992 and 1998. However, the weekend frames themselves still indicate how Halloween affects the North American movie scene. Specifically, studios have spent decades scrambling away from scheduling major movies over weekends when Halloween ends up on a Saturday. Michael Jackson's This Is It in 2009 is the big exception. That title opened to $23.2 million over its three-day bow. This Is It dipped 9.7% from Friday, October 30 on Halloween before jumping up 17.7% on Sunday, November 1. Unless you have a musician as popular as Michael Jackson at your back, studios see Halloween on Saturday as a non-starter for launching a lucrative new movie domestically.

This frame can also be rough for holdovers, though, surprisingly, history suggests that Halloween on a Saturday isn't necessarily a killer for older movies in the marketplace. In 2009, for instance, four of the nine holdovers in the top ten had weekend-to-weekend drops beneath 45%. The harder drops in the marketplace belonged to titles like Saw VI and Where the Wild Things Are that were either part of super frontloaded franchises or already suffering heavy drops before this frame. Similarly, in 2015, five out of the eight holdovers in the top ten had weekend-to-weekend drops beneath 46%. The Martian and Bridge of Spies even had dips of 25.5% and 26.2%, respectively! Remember how Bridge of Spies made $165 million worldwide 11 years ago on a $40 million budget? We truly used to be a country.

This Halloween Saturday weekend in 1998 also had seven of the nine holdovers in the marketplace experiencing weekend-to-weekend drops under 45%. Granted, there are still few super strong sub-20% holds over these frames. 2009, for instance, only had one non-Paranormal Activity film (Amelia, which added 250 theaters and was aimed at older audiences who're unlikely to spend Saturday nights partying) in the top 12 dipping under 37%. Halloween Saturday nights clearly have some impact on the marketplace, but they don't suck all the oxygen out of the marketplace. 1998, similarly, had only one holdover in the top ten (the awesome Pleasantville, remember how great Jeff Daniels was in that?!?) dipping under 35% this frame.

By and large, audiences who'd see certain must-see movies on Saturday instead just end up seeing them on Friday or Sunday. Plus, studios refusing to place new movies more high-profile than Our Brand is Crisis or John Carpenter's Vampires in these Saturday Halloween frames means older movies don't have towering competition to contend with. No wonder The Martian only dipped 25.5% when one of the few new features it had to compete with was The Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. 

Here's a question I had going into this exercise: do horror films get stronger holds over Halloween Saturday weekends? It seems to vary from movie to movie. In 1998, Practical Magic and Bride of Chucky had 39.1% and 43% drops, respectively. In 2009, Paranormal Activity, Saw VI, and The Stepfather had 22.3%, 62.7%, and 48.5% drops, respectively. Finally, in 2015, Goosebumps, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, and Crimson Peak had 36.4%, 57.4%, and 45.8% drops, respectively. All of this mostly suggests that horror movies don't necessarily plummet or thrive because of Halloween falling on a Saturday. 

If something like the original Paranormal Activity is already taking off with audiences, Saturday night Halloween shenanigans might give it an extra boost (what better way to spend the creepiest night of the year than watching a horror movie phenomenon?). Otherwise, moviegoers will probably just shrug and find better ways to spend Halloween weekend than watching The Ghost Dimension or the 2009 Stepfather remake.

In the greater context of larger domestic box office years, Halloween Saturday frames are often among the worst performing weekends in a given year, if not the absolute worst. The latter outcome was apparent in the mid-2010s. Halloween Saturday weekend in 2015 was the lowest domestic weekend of that year and the only time the top ten movies in 2015 amassed less than $60 million. Halloween Saturday weekend was the third-lowest-grossing weekend of 2009, with the first two weekends of September 2009 scoring lower hauls. Halloween Saturday weekend 1998 was also the third-lowest-grossing weekend of that year. This is the most glaring evidence that Halloween falling on a Saturday adversely impacts the greater theatrical ecosystem. These weekends just fall so far behind almost (or entirely) behind every other box office frames in a given year.

Will 2026 follow suit? Currently, the lowest domestic box office weekend of the year is the $42.1 million January 23-25 frame, when snowstorms rocked the country and closed theaters (the dismal Mercy was atop the theatrical ecosystem). The forthcoming October 30-November 1, 2026 weekend has a good shot at narrowly surpassing that $42.1 million gross, but it wouldn't be shocking if it fell behind every other 2026 domestic frame.

These statistics are the starkest examples of how much Saturday Halloweens distract from multiplexes. However, taking a cue from Gandalf's wise words about how nothing is ever hopeless, there are glimmers of potential here. The very existence of a title like This Is It opening to $23.2 million over this particular frame does suggest that, despite Halloween coming first over these rare weekends, audiences will still show up to the movies over Halloween Saturday frames. It'd be fantastic if a studio had a proshoot of a famous Broadway musical or a concert movie raring to go for this frame. Those titles are perfect for this kind of weekend since they're (even under the best of circumstances) front-loaded affairs. People will largely come out just for Thursday night previews and Friday screenings anyway, let alone when Saturday belongs to Halloween. Put 'em out over these weekends and give theaters something extra to play!

Alas, the dearth of anything remotely major opening over this impending Halloween Saturday weekend (if any of the new releases crack $2+ million, I'll be astonished) means this will be a quiet weekend before Godzilla and The Cat in the Hat kick off November 2026. How will the holdovers, then, fare over Halloween Saturday weekend 2026? Judging by past examples of this weekend, it's likely most returning titles will fare fine. Clayface is the wild card of the bunch, though. Halloween weekend will almost certainly give it some kind of a boost. Still, of its $24 million domestic bow, $3.5 million of that (or 14%) came from Thursday night showings. 

The word-of-mouth seems better than usual for an R-rated horror film, but so far its day-to-day legs aren't Obsession or Sinners good. Thus, it's hard to tell where it'll go during Halloween Saturday weekend 2026. If you told me it dropped either 25% or 55% this coming weekend, I'd believe you. That's the kind of chaos that proves inevitable when you're dealing with a rare year where Halloween falls on a Saturday. 2026 is another one of those years, so pull up a chair. Get comfortable. Let's see what happens during the first non-COVID-affected Halloween Saturday weekend in 11 years. This frame is usually so wild that, who knows, maybe Christmas with the Kringles ends up opening to $94 million and topping the domestic box office.

Wildwood is a glorious, must-see fantasy epic

It’s moronic. General Western perceptions that animation is only “for children” and can “only” tell certain stories are preposterous. Anyone witnessing titles like Flee, It's Such a Beautiful Day, Whisper of the Heart, Penguin's Memory: A Tale of Happiness, or Perfect Blue (among countless other titles) knows all too well that animation is a medium housing all kinds of stories. Yet that perception festers. This sometimes creates a tragic feedback loop, where American animated features dilute their most audacious or heavier impulses to fit mainstream visions of what animated features “should” look like.

I’m so glad director Travis Knight and the Laika crew threw such creative insecurity to the wind. Their latest stop-motion animated production, Wildwood, follows its own creative drum. It has no time for what focus groups or studio executives consider “proper” American animated cinema. It’s much more enamored with sweeping, classical fantasy storytelling.

Based on the 2011 Wildwood novel penned and illustrated by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, respectively, Chris Butler's script begins in Portland, Oregon. Teenager Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is growing up. She's convinced that it's time to let go of believing in the fantastical. That's easier said than done since her parents, Mr. and Mrs. McKeel (Jake Johnson and Maya Erskine), insist magic exists in the nearby forests. Prue instead focuses on taking care of her baby brother Mac, whom she takes out to see Portland one normal day whilst her parents visit a craft fair.

A montage of Prue and Mac riding around their home and seeing trains, used bookstores, and various Portland denizens immediately establishes entrancing specificity into Wildwood. Stop-motion’s innately lived-in qualities make this city so cozy and endearing. No actual Portland tourism ad could make this place look more inviting. Plus, this sequence establishes an “anything’s possible” aura to Prue and Mac’s surroundings (you never know who you might run into on Portland’s streets, after all) even before they encounter witches and chattering woodland critters.

Things swerve into the fantastical when crows carry away Mac into that forbidden forest. She and her skittish acquaintance Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) press onward to rescue the endangered baby. The duo hasn’t just stepped into a world of bipedal, talking animals and bandits. They’ve also unwittingly stumbled into dowager governess Alexandra’s (Carey Mulligan) plans to take over the forest. Meanwhile, Wildwood’s various populations (birds, hoity-toity folks, bandits, farmers, etc.) can’t stand each other. In the middle of everything is a girl wanting her brother back.

Every ounce of praise you’ve heard for Wildwood’s visuals is true and then some. Knight, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, and an army of stop-motion animators imbue Wildwood with towering imagery. Even quiet wide shots depicting Prue and Iphigenia (Tantoo Cardinal) standing on a balcony are gorgeously composed and littered with luscious orange autumn leaves. More theatrically composed images, meanwhile, embrace draping villains in evocative shadows, characters navigating fields of corpses, or heroic figures standing on a hilltop with warm light breaking over their shoulders. These lavish frames evoke eye-catching covers for mid-20^th century fantasy texts more than the cramped iPhone-ready imagery dominating so many post-2010 fantasy films.

All these luscious visuals materialize via the magic of stop-motion animation. There’s no end to the awe-inspiring feats and images conjured up through this immediately tactile medium. However, especially impressive is Wildwood’s physical acting. There’s a moment when Alexandra clutches her breath recounting to Curtis about her lost son. This dialogue-free expression of her immense interior pain is so deftly realized. These affecting displays of nonverbal communication come from a medium where artists take several photos of a clay puppet in various poses (all to create a single second of footage) and repeat the process ad nauseum.

On paper, that sounds like it could create jagged physicality. Anyone who’s seen Mary & Max or Fantastic Mr. Fox (among countless other stop-motion gems) knows, though, that this medium is like a magic trick. So many disparate pieces and artistic contributions coalesce into glorious wonders. Wildwood is a large-scale testament to that magic. Here, uber-smooth character movements ensure complex emotions underneath these figures are even easier to absorb.

Plus, Laika’s animation team (here led by Florian Perinelle and Rachelle Lambden) have gotten astonishingly skilled at minute body language. Alexandra and Prue’s parents especially have such aching and weary physicality reflecting their decades of experience.

Wildwood’s backgrounds are also magnificently tactile and engrossing. Happily, a cinematic ode to the natural world makes these leafy tableaus look so radiant. Butler’s script also gives the animators lots of wiggle room to give each Wildwood domain a distinct aesthetic. One farm-oriented area has a warmer, autumn vibe, for instance, while a bureaucratic realm has a more restrained color palette. Whatever ambiance Wildwood channels, it all looks wondrous through exemplary stop-motion artistry.

As a visual feast and an extraordinary expansion of what stop-motion cinema can be, Wildwood is sensational. However, this enterprise also excels as a bittersweet coming-of-age story. Prue yearns to grow up, to secure a sense of security and maturity currently eluding her. Yet her journey through Wildwood isn’t about a fantasy realm providing wish-fulfillment escapism. It’s instead a vessel for her discovering adults who’re insecure, unsure of what to do, and decidedly imperfect. In this regard, Wildwood echoes Minari and The Florida Project in depicting a child forcibly discovering that the adults around her are messy human beings.

No matter how outlandish the proceedings get, Butler’s writing and especially Peyton Elizabeth Lee’s voice-over acting always reinforce Prue’s down-to-Earth qualities. That crucial normalcy makes Wildwood’s melancholy impulses really hit home. We all learn the world’s an inescapably and often overwhelmingly complex place in our teenager years. Prue just happened to do it in a place housing bank teller pigs.

Reinforcing Prue and Curtis as everyday teens also yields the benefit of enhancing the tension of various suspense-driven sequences. Their youth-informed vulnerability is clear (plus they inhabit a movie where people get stabbed and shot to death on-screen), so it’s genuinely uncertain what fate will befall them when tension ratchets up. Speaking of memorable Wildwood set pieces, Travis Knight and company deliver a phenomenal third-act battle sequence that makes the classic Lord of the Rings and Star Wars movies proud (not just because it deftly darts between simultaneous perspectives and storylines).

The way new obstacles, allies, and enemies keep appearing throughout this sequence had me utterly locked in. Rather than coming off as needlessly busy, the persistent escalation of scope and hurdles instead feels deeply organic. It helps that the artists bringing this material to life (including Christopher Murrie's crisp editing and Dario Marianelli's pulse-pounding score) are in such bombastic rare form. If only more live-action tentpoles demonstrated this showmanship in their respective finales.

Even when Wildwood’s in a quieter mode, that artistry persists. A low-key conversation between Prue and wise owl (voiced by Richard E. Grant), for instance, is still chock full of lovely voice acting and richly detailed animation. This pervasive craftsmanship informs a richly audacious film. Every artist assembled here swung for the fences. In the process, they delivered an exercise so transportive that not even the umpteenth Awkwafina voice-over role could capsize. Animation is a medium that can tell any story for any audience. Wildwood reinforces that truth in visually spectacular terms.

Possible Love's quietly moving aesthetic proves immensely and achingly captivating

Imposter Syndrome. Depression. Anxiety. Existential dread. These are some of the psychological afflictions shared by countless souls, yet rendering individuals convinced they’re the only ones in existence suffering these maladies. What a bizarre paradox. Our brains tell us we’re alone even while we’re decidedly not.

Often, it’s easier to push others away or confront our inner battles alone rather than opening ourselves to other people. What if they say I’m a “freak” or “broken” for feeling the way I do? Better just bottle up everything inside. In other cases, it’s impossible to imagine other people could feel the same way you do. Why, then, bring up your mental health struggles if it’ll inevitably sound like Latin to even your closest friends? These are the scenarios one’s mind (or at least mine) can come up with to keep arduous psychological turmoil close to the chest. Experiences and hardships potentially binding individuals together instead create further barriers.

Unsurprisingly, profoundly observational and insightful filmmaker Lee Chang-dong proves especially masterful painting a bittersweet portrait of this phenomenon in Possible Love. married couple Mi-ok (Jean Do-yeon) and Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu). They (along with their son Cheol) are grappling with a new, frustrating status quo involving Ho-seok's extended depression. His despondency stems from being laid off from his job after participating in a sit-in strike. Two years after losing this gig, Ho-seok’s anguish festers.

However, Mi-ok gets a renewed lease on life after striking up a conversation with documentary filmmaker Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong). This lady and her seemingly perfect husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) are making a feature about laid-off workers, so Mi-ok and her family are perfect interview subjects. Thus, Ye-ji becomes a regular fixture of this family's life. Mi-ok adores having someone to talk to, but Ho-seok remains silent and fixated on the past. Even when Ye-ji inquires about interviewing this man for her film, he refuses.

Possible Love’s central married couple are both licking their wounds from the past. Both, however, are taking radically different approaches to confronting those scars.

A pivotal Possible Love conversation sees Ye-ji recall a Singapore vacation that inspired her current fixation on proletariat-focused documentaries. Specifically, she was impacted by Sang-woo observing how the workers making their destination possible were rendered “invisible.” “Everyone’s comfort comes at the expense of someone else’s labor,” he pontificated. After that, Ye-ji dedicated herself to making documentaries centering oft-ignored lives. Lee Chang-dong’s filmmaking and script (the latter of which he co-penned with Oh Jung-mi) for Possible Love echoes this fascination with several memorable one-scene characters.

A meeting for laid-off workers to express their feelings, for instance, features a monologue from one male ex-employee recalling how his friends talked dirty about him behind his back because of his union activities. Told largely in one unbroken take, this riveting sequence is rich with memorable dialogue and naturalistic acting. Then there’s the groundskeeper tending to Ye-ji and Sang-woo’s beachside house. Without saying a word, he leaves an impression, especially with how he quietly makes Cheol feel at home during a trip largely centered around his parents' needs. A woman giving a speech at the strike and the daughter of Mi-ok’s boss similarly leave an enormous impression with minimal screentime.

Rich capitalists try with all their might to make working-class people see each other as enemies. The bourgeoisie especially demonizes efforts like unions that reinforce the rights and humanity of ordinary souls. Possible Love is a cinematic balm to these standards. Chang-dong offering room for single-scene characters to leave indelible impacts alone epitomizes this reality. Every character in this feature (from Ye-ji’s filmmaking crew to a currently employed worker Ho-seok briefly follows) is potently experiencing their own saga. Possible Love’s world doesn’t begin and end with Mi-ok and Ho-seok.

Chang-dong’s commitment to that subdued yet deeply human aesthetic makes Possible Love a 164-minute exercise you don’t want to end. Said commitment includes utilizing Jung Jae-il's original score sparingly (which accentuates the immersive naturalism) and refusing to barrel through even the most mundane conversations. Chang-dong and cinematographer Kim Ji-yong's craftsmanship extends to delivering memorable blocking without capsizing Possible Love’s verisimilitude. The sensation that we’re watching life organically unfold endures even with incredibly meticulous staging.

Possible Love’s palpable realism ensures that the most mundane sequences become intoxicating. As long as I live, I’ll never forget about inebriated Mi-ok joyfully singing a tune in an alleyway after her first dinner with Ye-ji and Sang-woo. When a new friendship starts blossoming, it inspires such radiance and excitement. You’re suddenly relishing not only the laughs and chatter shared moments ago, but also the social-based possibilities for the future. Jean Do-yeon’s portrayal of Mi-ok in this moment perfectly translates that internal experience to the silver screen in such endearing terms. How can you not adore someone who is so happy and free?

Similarly low-key yet endlessly compelling is a mid-movie scene concerning Mi-ok confronting her boss on starting a union. This segment reflects an unexpected but deeply welcome Possible Love focal point. Like an amazing Megan Thee Stallion song suddenly making room for an iconic Olivia Rodrigo guest verse, the already outstanding Possible Love offers viewers an extra gift in emphasizing worker rights. This material doesn’t just offer further opportunities for Chang-dong to examine this movies characters. It also informs one of Possible Love’s most achingly harrowing sequences concerning Ho-seok’s last day protesting.

Even before that glimpse into Ho-seok’s past, Sul Kyung-gu keeps this subdued character captivating. It’s always remarkable when actors take a repressed character and still render them consistently engaging. Kyang-gu does just that with his haunted Ho-seok portrayal. This actor’s portrayal of a man caked in layers of agony simultaneously echoes a more buttoned-up take on Cillian Murphy’s Dunkirk performance and the saddest basset hound ever. Kyang-gu’s deeply human manifestation of that persona, though, makes it clear there’s something more vulnerable underneath that repressed exterior.

In any other movie, Sul Kyung-gu’s work would unquestionably reign supreme over any other performances. However, the acting champion here is Jean Do-yeon. Reuniting with Chang-dong after their exceptional Possible Love collaboration, she thrives in these restrained confines. Conceptually simple moments like Mi-ok remarking the word “freedom” on the beach or observing a rainbow created by Cheol playing with a hose are so immensely affecting in her hands. You can practically reach out and touch wider interior worlds Do-yeon hints at in these tiny details. Plus, Do-yeon is so moving portraying Mi-ok coming more and more out of her shell as her friendship with Ye-ji and Sang-woo deepens.

Staggeringly impressive and unique specificities litter Sul Kyung-gu and Jean Do-yeon’s lead Possible Love performances. Yet each actor achingly reinforces one truth: Ho-seok and Mi-ok both suffer from loneliness. The latter character craves connections with others to break up her monotonous existence. Ho-seok, meanwhile, wistfully stares at his unused, handmade concrete social area (once planned for hangouts and BBQs with his co-workers) even while insisting on keeping his distance from others.

Their responses to past trauma and pervasive loneliness wildly vary. Yet similar psychological turmoil plagues these individuals who believe they’re growing apart. Possible Love’s intimate and subdued world potently realizes this melancholy reality. Once more, Lee Chang-dong has crafted sublime understated cinema speaking volumes about existence's most arduous experiences.

Possible Love begins playing in select theaters on October 23rd and hits Netflix worldwide on November 6th.

You Can See Everything challenges you to consider what's real in every reel

Nathan Fielder has spent years melting brains, inspiring GIFs, encountering wacky real-life people, and showing off those really good grades he got from one of Canada’s top business schools. Beyond inspiring unforgettable giggles, Fielder’s artistic M.O. has impressed through (among other accomplishments) pervasive rug-pulls revealing reality's immense malleability. A daycare location for a nighttime meeting between taxi drivers on Nathan For You, for instance, can suddenly be revealed as a set.

The outstanding Nathan For You series finale Finding Frances explored how much Fielder knew about and could trust elderly Bill Gates impersonator Bill Heath. This guy kept making Fielder question how much he really knew about a man who was constantly on his TV show.

Then there was The Rehearsal, which had Fielder diving through and intersecting so many layers of simulated realities. Throughout all these projects, jokes persist, but so does the sense that what you’re watching can upend itself at any moment. Who knows when Fielder will ratchet things up to the next level of insanity (like bringing a live alligator into an electronics store) or suddenly reveal that everything you’ve seen is a falsehood? Whether it’s a viral video of a pig saving a goat or recreations of Sully Sullenberger listening to Evanescence, Nathan Fielder’s comedy dares us to question what is real and what’s behind those modulations to reality.

That makes Fielder a perfect person to capture the world of Elizabeth Holmes, the former Theranos mastermind and Silicon Valley figurehead who has been convicted of fraud. This woman exists in her own labyrinthine approach to reality, one in which she maintains her innocence. You Can See Everything (which is helmed by Fielder and Primetime director Lance Oppenheimer) starts with Fielder capturing Holmes, her husband Billy Evans, and their two kids in a lavish beachside San Diego home. He arrives as this woman prepares for her imminent prison sentence starting in a month.

With every image captured in the Academy ratio (1.33:1) and the camera often resorting to close-ups echoing similarly cramped frames in Oppenheim’s Primetime, You Can See Everything starts with Fielder and his documentary subjects confined close together. Despite this intimate proximity, concrete answers elude him. Attempts to interview certain people (like Holmes’ father) only inspire ire from Evans. Holmes, meanwhile, speaks in odd statements that both seemingly only make sense to her and are weirdly devoid of malice. When she insists “I’ve never told a lie,” she says it with such assurance…even though it’s clearly false.

Even staring straight into her eyes and maintaining a conversation can’t quite part the curtains and deliver a clear-cut truth. It’s utterly fascinating watching Fielder scrounging for any kind of clarity from Holmes and Evans. He’s got to get creative trying to create a bridge between himself and these idiosyncratic souls, like using an Abbot & Costello routine to illustrate to Holmes how her communication style may create understanding gaps between herself and other people. Meanwhile, dry comedy ensues when Fielder tries cracking jokes (“I used to do a comedy show about business scams...but you actually did a business scam.”) around people who aren’t exactly joke-oriented.

Another later illuminating You Can See Everything conversation involves people talking about celebrity-based documentaries. When someone brings up a Meghan Markle doc made for Netflix, another person responds, “that’s…not really a documentary.” This comment speaks to a larger rot plaguing modern documentary movies. Streamers have saturated the market with celebrity-focused documentaries only existing to marvel at how big Eddie Murphy’s house is or provide cozy PR management for historical monsters.

Interesting visuals? Chronicling everyday people? Actually challenging viewers? These Hoop Dreams, The Gleaners and I, and All the Beauty and the Bloodshed fixtures have no room in the new streaming-approved definition of documentary cinema. Features previously chastising the powerful are now another tool normalizing the bourgeoisie. Amazon’s Melania earlier this year was the blonde-haired, dead-eyed epitome of this disgusting trend.

You Can See Everything, like fellow excellent 2020s docs Time or Crip Camp, reclaims the documentary format back to actual filmmakers. Instead of just rehashing the familiar, Fielder and Oppenheim use documentary cinema to keep audiences on their toes. The camerawork isn’t what you might expect. Various twists and turns navigated through the 170-minute runtime are similarly shocking. Even Ari Balouzian's score (which apparently leans heavily on Bernard Hermann's compositions from Vertigo) doesn’t quite sound like typical orchestral music accompanying a movie about infamous Silicon Valley residents.

Then there’s You Can See Everything’s willingness to challenge its central subjects. Previously, Fielder had no problem pushing back on Boston-originating detectives or someone dropping anti-Semitic remarks in a recreation of a Raising Cane’s. Naturally then, he’s got no issue pushing the buttons of Elizabeth Holmes or Billy Holmes. The celebrity documentary has teeth and subversiveness again. Nathan Fielder rescued the format just in the nick of time.

As for further specifics of what You Can See Everything has to offer…far be it from me to spoil the mind-melting surprises waiting in store. Even Nathan Fielder veterans like myself will be left agog over what he pulls off here. One spoiler-free element I can praise here, though, is the way Fielder poses himself on camera here. Audiences first see Fielder staring at Holmes from behind a yellow-tinted door. Like so many shots of him looming over sets or conversations in The Rehearsal, he’s framed almost like a horror movie villain.

There’s something persistently amusing about just cutting to a shot of Fielder with that blank stare on his face just watching something from afar. Yet it’s also a neat visual detail laced with many potential meanings. Are we seeing Fielder from the perspective of the Holmes family, as an intrusive “monster”? Is this supposed to reinforce Fielder as being an “other” in a space full of Silicon Valley weirdos? This surface-level amusing image’s ambiguity once more forces audiences to question what we’re looking at.

He’s a pilot. He’s saved so many American businesses. He even appeared briefly in Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Now Nathan Fielder adds another achievement to his repertoire: theatrical film director. With this documentary, he and Oppenheim balloon typical Fielder creative impulses to 170 minutes without straining in the slightest. It isn’t just that You Can See Everything avoids feeling like a bloated Nathan For You episode. Instead, a larger canvas brings out new highs in artistic proficiency from this master comedian. Trust me, You Can See Everything’s extraordinary; it may be the best movie of 2026. Why would I deceive you about that?

Ken Russell's The Devils is more of a holy triumph than ever

Matt Damon’s Odysseus spent years getting back home in The Odyssey. However, even he didn’t face as many obstacles as the original cut of Ken Russell’s The Devils endured. Warner Bros. executives, terrified of its religious commentary and extreme displays of sexuality, infamously butchered and censored The Devils. Since then, even a truncated cut of The Devils has been hard to procure. Save for one United Kingdom release in 2012, the title’s been nonexistent on 21st-century home video formats. Appearances on streaming platforms have been sporadic at best.

Then, in 2002, film critic Mark Kermode announced he’d uncovered the deleted Devils footage. It took 24 years, but that material's finally restored in The Devils proper. To boot, the entire motion picture has received a 4K restoration, a grand theatrical release, and no cuts (this one earns its NC-17 rating). Finally, this original creative vision, here titled Ken Russell’s The Devils, is available. Praise be!

The centerpiece of Ken Russell's The Devils (based on both Aldous Huxley's 1952 novel The Devils of Loudon and the John Whiting play adaptation The Devils) hinges on Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed). This real-life 1630s France figure is pivotal in the town of Loudun. Sturdy walls separate this domicile from the world. This yummy mustached religious figure is always secretly bedding women and quietly the object of lust for Sister Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave). She yearns for his body like a parched human craves water. She wants a piece of that Lord with her always, if you catch my drift.

Anywho, Agnes isn't the only figure enamored with Grandier. Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) is seeking to assimilate all French territory under the Catholic Church's power (and ensure anyone of different religious persuasions won't have any sway). His loyal follower, Baron de Laubardemont (Dudley Sutton), begins plotting with jilted Loudun residents harboring grudges against Grandier to destroy this priest. Agnes claiming Satan has possessed her and other nuns at the behest of Grandier proves perfect for disposing this man of the cloth.

Ken Russell’s The Devils hasn’t aged a day since its 1971 release. Russell’s creative vision still radiates danger, gusto, and distinctive creativity. Suppressing it for so long has only ensured it hits theaters when it’s tragically so relevant. An opening scene where Richelieu sternly tells King Louis XIII of France (Graham Armitage) that he hopes they can finally abolish "the separation between church and state" might as well be verbiage plucked from any modern right-wing Christofacist leader dominating the global political scene. The decades have changed, but Russell’s cinematic Molotov cocktail is as needed as ever.

And oh, what a fiery burst of rebellious cinema this is. Ken Russell’s creative vision is a maximalist achievement, constantly tossing middle fingers at authority and “sacrosanct” religious institutions. Actual historical individuals (like Richelieu) are deployed and turned into villainous individuals without hesitation. Religious authority figures use their power and scripture just for selfish means, and there’s nary a trace of “it’s just a few bad apples!”-style dialogue.

Such rebukes of power stand out as excitingly taboo even today. Allegedly, in the late 2010s, Apple once asked the Servant creative team not to feature crucifixes lest theologically inclined viewers get mad. In contrast, Ken Russell’s The Devils features a riotous moment where a naked nun uses a gigantic cross to bonk "witch hunter" Father Pierre Barre (Michael Gothard) on the back. All the lust, sexual pleasure, and other “deviancies” demonized by Christian-based institutions appear here fully on the screen.

Anyone who gasps at the mere sight of bare asses on-screen or bemoans “pointless sex scenes”, avert your eyes at a mesmerizing fantasy sequence where Agnes traces her tongue across the crucifixion-originating wounds of Jesus/Grandier. The rest of us will watch engrossed at the phenomenal imagery and intoxicating atmosphere.

Throughout watching Ken Russell’s The Devils, the thought “is this one of my favorite movies of all time?” raced through my brain. Even beyond its rebelliousness, everything here is just so perfectly crafted. Russell’s dialogue, for one thing, commits wholeheartedly to making these characters speak and sound like they’re from the 17th century. This produces consistently distinctive dialogue. Especially juicy are Agnes’s earliest scenes where she uses dense verbiage to mask her more primal desires.  “Communities which ought to be furnaces where souls are forever on fire with the love of god are merely dead with the grey ashes of convenience,” she notes to a prospective nun in one especially unforgettable line.

Ironically, despite being such a criticism of Catholicism, Ken Russell’s The Devils is as ornately composed as great religious artworks like the Sistine Chapel. Take any frame from this feature, and it looks like a Renaissance painting. Derek Jarman’s sets, for instance, are breathtaking. The nunnery alone is a marvel. White colors, cramped ceilings, and persistent lines lend rich specificity to every room in this terrain. The coldness of the tiling is tangible. Meanwhile, the black nun habits and chilling rails of red blood stand out against the white. Then there's the beautifully constructed sets representing Loudon’s streets and buildings, the latter of which carry striking semi-Brutalist qualities in their appearances.

It's staggering to witness all these hand-crafted wonders on the big screen. Combining Jarman's set design with the deeply precise blocking makes for a transcendent visual experience. To boot, Ken Russell’s The Devils is awash in succulent colors. Establishing shots, like one showing King Louis on a bridge shooting “bird”, practically pop off the screen with their radiant reds and yellows. Ken Russell and company have so much to say about fascism, organized religion, and the demonization of sexuality. Yet headiness doesn’t come at the expense of vibrant hues. Instead, the two elements beautifully complement and enhance each other.

Just Ken Russell’s The Devils’ inherent maximalism opens the door for a barrage of tremendous images, so too does this aesthetic give the assorted actors a chance to deliver unforgettable outsized performances. What’s especially impressive about each of these turns is how they feel organic to the characters they’re inhabiting. Of course someone like Perre Barre would always be so over-the-top. He’s a conman mistakenly convinced of his own grandiose importance. He’s constantly reaffirming his own “God-anointed” stature through his pronounced behavior. Vanessa Redgrave, meanwhile, subverts societal expectations for how nuns “should” behave with her astonishing go-for-broke work.

This legendary performer has appeared in several momentous features (including Blow-Up and Howards End), yet this is her greatest work. How absorbing she is whenever she appears on-screen, fully committing to writhing sexually, screaming in tortured pain, or monologuing to herself without ever batting an eye. She does it all with flair and, in the middle of all the madness, rich humanity. Then there’s Oliver Reed, lending an appropriate level of believable gravitas to Grandier. His immediately arresting on-screen presence makes it clear why Loudon’s inhabitants treasure him. Reed’s similarly engrossing vocals also make scenes ranging from intimate conversations with his character’s wife, Madeleine (Gemma Jones), to big climactic speeches all equally captivating.

Everyone in Ken Russell’s The Devils giving 110% creatively includes composer Peter Maxwell Davies, who litters the sonic landscape with instruments and sounds you wouldn’t expect to hear in a 17th-century period piece (like atonal trumpets). His orchestral creations especially come alive and become hypnotic in the feature’s second half. Once the possession of Agnes and the other nuns becomes “fact,” sexual havoc, debauchery, and deceit dominate Loudon's church. Davies sets these images to tracks wailing with chaos and pain. Meanwhile, Russell and cinematographer David Watkin often capture this mayhem with intentionally disorienting camerawork. This includes sudden zooms littering the infamous “rape of Christ” set piece.

Technically, this was my second The Devils viewing (I watched the truncated Criterion Channel cut a few years back). However, witnessing everything spiraling out of control left me awestruck and my mouth agape, like it was my first time. That haunting sequence where Grandier is set ablaze and the camera cuts between his screams, Loudun citizens laughing at his pain, and images placing audiences in Grandier’s point of view? Good Lord, it’s all so blisteringly realized. In this agonizing segment, Ken Russell’s The Devils perfectly conveys madness and cruelty consuming the world like quicksand ensnaring a person. This is the hideous endpoint of succumbing to fascism.  

The folks behind this 4K restoration have commendably ensured all these grim atmospheric feats and the other glorious visual achievements in Ken Russell’s The Devils remain intact. Several 4K restorations of 20th-century movies (namely James Cameron directorial efforts) have been nightmares, excessively smoothing out the images and obliterating all the idiosyncrasies tied to older eras of filmmaking (the excellent Chris Person essay “They Want You to Forget What A Film Looks Like” delves into this). This Ken Russell’s The Devils restoration, though, achieves a perfect balance between the old and new.

Images and colors on-screen are crisp, but still maintain potent tactility. Everything still looks like a 1971 feature (rather than a 48 frames per second nightmare), just with extra spiff and shine. Such glorious care ensures it’s easier than ever to savor the endless artistic accomplishments in Ken Russell’s The Devils. We still need works like this taking powerful institutions to the woodchipper, speaking out on the dangers of nationalist movements, and demonstrating the wonders of hand-crafted filmmaking. See it on the big screen and bellow "HALLELJUAH!" over what Ken Russell's The Devils offers its disciples.

Ken Russell's The Devils is now playing in theaters for a limited time through October 22nd.