The Best Movies of 2026 So Far

1.Project Hail Mary (2026)

• 2h 37m
• TMDB 8.7/10
• Science Fiction, Adventure

The highest-rated wide release of the year and the one most likely to still be recommended in five years. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller adapt Andy Weir's novel, with Drew Goddard on screenplay, and it is a genuinely rare thing: a big-budget science fiction film that is fundamentally about problem solving and is not embarrassed about it.

Ryan Gosling plays a science teacher who wakes on a spacecraft with no memory of who he is or why he is there. The film's structure gives you the answer in pieces, alternating between the ship and how he ended up on it, and the reveal that reorganizes the whole thing arrives roughly halfway.

Lord and Miller are best known for animation and comedy, and that instinct is what makes this work. A film about a man doing arithmetic in space should be inert. This one is funny, warm, and paced like a thriller for all 157 minutes.

At 8.7 from nearly 7,000 votes it is also the most settled high score of the year, which makes it the safest recommendation on this page.

Watch it if: you want the year's best crowd-pleaser, and you liked The Martian.

2.The Odyssey (2026)

• 2h 53m
• TMDB 8.0/10
• Adventure, Action, Fantasy

Nolan's thirteenth film and his first adaptation of a literary source. Matt Damon plays Odysseus trying to get home after the Trojan War, across 173 minutes, with Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, and Charlize Theron in support.

It is the biggest swing of the year by a distance. Homer's poem has a genuinely strange structure, told out of order with its most famous sequences delivered as a flashback narrated by a man famous for lying, which is almost comically well suited to this particular director.

At 8.0 from roughly 2,300 votes three weeks in, it is tracking well. Whether it holds is the interesting question. See it as large as you can and turn the subtitles on.

We have a fuller guide to the film covering the cast and whether you need to know the poem first.

Watch it if: you want the most ambitious film of the year and you can commit to three hours.

3.Obsession (2026)

• 1h 49m
• TMDB 8.2/10
• Horror, Thriller

The best value proposition of 2026. Curry Barker wrote and directed a small horror film about a hopeless romantic who breaks a wishing tree to win his crush, gets exactly what he asked for, and discovers the price. It sits at 8.2 from over 4,300 votes, above almost every studio release this year.

What it does well is escalation. The premise sounds like a fable and the film plays it straight for long enough that when it turns, the turn actually costs something. There is no famous face in the cast and the film is better for it.

At 109 minutes it is the tightest thing in the top five, and it is the clearest evidence that the horror pipeline is still where the best returns per dollar are.

Watch it if: you want a genuinely good horror film with no franchise attached.

4.Michael (2026)

• 2h 8m
• TMDB 8.7/10
• Music, Drama

Antoine Fuqua's Michael Jackson biopic, with Jaafar Jackson, the subject's nephew, in the lead. John Logan wrote it, and the framing covers the discovery of the talent through the early solo career.

It sits at 8.7 from nearly 3,900 votes, which is an extraordinary number for a music biopic, a genre that usually produces competent 6.5s. The performance sequences are the reason: casting someone with a genuine physical resemblance and family knowledge of the movement solved a problem that has sunk previous attempts.

It is also, inevitably, a film that had to make choices about what to include and what to leave out of a very complicated life, and where you land on those choices will shape your response considerably.

Watch it if: you want the year's best music film and you can accept a biopic making editorial decisions.

5.Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

• 2h 25m
• TMDB 7.9/10
• Science Fiction, Action, Adventure

Destin Daniel Cretton takes over from Jon Watts for Tom Holland's fourth solo outing, and the premise is a genuine reset: Peter operating in a world that no longer remembers him, watching his friends move on without him.

The cast list is the headline. Jon Bernthal returns as the Punisher, Mark Ruffalo appears as Bruce Banner, and Sadie Sink is credited as Jean Grey, which is the year's most interesting single casting question.

At 7.9 from roughly 1,100 votes it is off to a strong start, though it is the least settled number in this top ten. Our watch order guide covers what you need to see first, which is less than you would think.

Watch it if: you have seen No Way Home and want the biggest blockbuster currently in cinemas.

6.Colony (2026)

• 2h 3m
• TMDB 8.1/10
• Action, Horror, Science Fiction

Yeon Sang-ho, who made Train to Busan, returns to contained-outbreak horror. A rapidly mutating virus is released during a biotech conference, the facility is sealed, and a small group has to survive inside it.

It is doing the same thing Train to Busan did: use a confined space, keep the geography legible, and make the human antagonists the actual problem. Gianna Jun leads, with Ji Chang-wook and Koo Kyo-hwan in support.

At 8.1 from a smaller vote pool of around 415, treat the score as promising rather than proven. It is the best Korean genre film of the year so far and fits neatly alongside our Korean cinema guide.

Watch it if: you liked Train to Busan and want more from the same director.

7.Evil Dead Burn (2026)

• 1h 50m
• TMDB 7.9/10
• Horror, Thriller

The Evil Dead franchise continues its unlikely run of quality. Sébastien Vaniček directs, and the setup moves the material somewhere new: a recently widowed woman goes to stay with her husband's family, who happen to be descendants of a leading researcher into demonic possession.

Souheila Yacoub leads. What the series keeps getting right is that these films are essentially about being trapped in a house with people who used to be someone you loved, and the in-law framing is a genuinely funny and genuinely nasty version of that.

7.9 from around 570 votes. Currently the best horror sequel of the year, in a year with a lot of them.

Watch it if: you want practical-effects horror in a franchise that keeps not embarrassing itself.

8.Disclosure Day (2026)

• 2h 26m
• TMDB 7.4/10
• Science Fiction, Thriller

Steven Spielberg directing a David Koepp screenplay about aliens, which is a sentence with a lot of history behind it. A cybersecurity expert turns whistleblower after uncovering what a corporation knows, and a meteorologist experiencing unexplained phenomena joins him.

Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor lead, with Colin Firth and Colman Domingo. At 146 minutes it is a long sit for a thriller, and it sits at 7.4 from around 2,400 votes, which is respectable rather than remarkable.

It is the most conventionally satisfying big film of the year: an adult science fiction thriller with movie stars, made by someone who has been doing this for fifty years.

Watch it if: you want Spielberg doing Spielberg, competently and at scale.

9.Toy Story 5 (2026)

• 1h 42m
• TMDB 7.4/10
• Animation, Family, Comedy

Andrew Stanton directs, and the premise is the most pointed thing Pixar has done in a while: Bonnie gets a tablet, becomes obsessed with it, and the toys find themselves competing with a screen for a child's attention.

That is a film about its own audience and it knows it. Greta Lee voices Lilypad, the tablet, and Conan O'Brien turns up as a character called Smarty Pants.

7.4 from around 770 votes. The honest question is whether the series needed a fifth entry after Toy Story 3 delivered a perfect ending, and the answer is probably not, but this is a much better attempt than it had any need to be.

Watch it if: you have children, or you are curious whether Pixar can land this premise.

10.In the Grey (2026)

• 1h 37m
• TMDB 7.6/10
• Action, Thriller

Guy Ritchie doing what Guy Ritchie does, with Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal as elite operatives sent to steal back a billion-dollar fortune from a despot who stole it first.

At 97 minutes it is the shortest film in this top ten and the most purely efficient. Rosamund Pike and Eiza González round out a cast that is having a visibly good time.

7.6 from around 660 votes. Nobody will claim it is important. It is the best straightforward action-heist film of the year and it respects your evening.

Watch it if: you want a fast, funny heist film and you are done with three-hour epics.