To the world we dream about and the one we live in now. That quote hits even harder now than it did a decade ago. And never has a 21st century musical masterpiece like Hadestown shined beyond the stage with this cinematic ProShot recording of a performance filmed in London’s West End, being released a week after Christopher Nolan unleashed his own take on another epic story in Ancient Greek history.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is a festival of scale and intimacy — a crowd-pleasing blockbuster that also feels unmistakably Nolan: rigorous in structure, audacious in spectacle, and quietly human at its center. If any film is going to be remembered as the movie that owned summer 2026, this is it.

Well, I finally saw it. And it definitely was not what I, or many of us, were expecting this latest from the GOAT of filmmaking himself to be. Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg’s new original science fiction thriller, takes some of the themes and concepts previously explored in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and brings them into the 21st century for a story about the relentless pursuit of the truth, while also making an earnest plea for the necessity of empathy.

I saw Nxt Generation Theatrics’ production of Jagged Little Pill today, and as an independent filmmaker, I left genuinely impressed. This nonprofit company—run by young artists aged 16–25—chooses to pare the piece down: instead of the usual spectacle that often surrounds this musical, the production places the story and the characters front and center. That choice pays off. The emotional core of Diablo Cody’s book, paired with Alanis Morissette’s raw, confessional songs from her iconic Grammy Award-winning album, feels immediate and urgent. Without the distraction of excess theatrics, you can actually hear and feel the pain, confusion, and occasional hope that drives the narrative.

The “City of Stars” was shining brighter than ever this past Saturday, April 11 as this was the perfect way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Damien Chazelle’s 2016 Academy Award–winning modern musical classic La La Land. What made this screening singular was not simply the film itself, but the living, breathing soundtrack that accompanied every frame: composer Justin Hurwitz conducted a full orchestra and jazz band as they performed the score and songs — many co-written with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul — live in sync with the picture. The result was equal parts concert and cinematic resurrection, a rare event that reframed familiar images and sounds with the immediacy of live performance.

With 2025 about to be a year behind us, here’s a look at my most anticipated films of 2026, ranking from what I’m really most excited about to ones where I’m simply just going to go in with an open mind and see what happens.