Stories in Motion

Sony's plan to pull hundreds of titles from PlayStation libraries is the latest reminder that "buying" digital movies and shows was never really ownership. We dig into why physical media has shifted from nostalgic hobby to consumer self-defense — from Zaslav-era streaming purges to the "Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies" DVD rescue — and what it means when preserving pop culture becomes the audience's job, not the studios'.

"The Pitt" leads with 25 nods, "Hacks" sets a comedy record with 24, and "Widow's Bay" surprises with 19. We break down the biggest snubs (Stranger Things, Sydney Sweeney, The Bear's cast) and surprises from Emmy nomination morning, plus what's new for the Sept. 14 ceremony hosted by Mariska Hargitay.

Twenty shows, two critics' lists, one impossible ranking argument. From the Soviet space race thriller Star City to the return to Gilead in The Testaments, plus The Pitt's Emmy-sweeping second season and a vampire rock opera with The Vampire Lestat — we run down the best television of the year's first half, unranked and completely unfiltered.

We're halfway through the year, and the multiplex actually has a pulse. From Baz Luhrmann's electrifying Elvis concert doc to the criminally under-seen Is God Is, plus Toy Story 5's victory lap and the $200M horror sleeper Obsession — we run down the ten films defining 2026 so far, and argue over which ones deserve way more attention before awards season locks in.

Moshe Rosenthal's Tell Me Everything is one of the best Israeli films we have seen in years. A boy witnesses the edges of his father's secret in a pool bathroom in 1980s Tel Aviv, and the film follows what that costs both of them across nine years. It is a film about fear, shame, and the silence they enforce on everyone they touch, queer or not. We talk about the structural diptych, the extraordinary final conversation, and why this film stayed with us long after the screen went dark.

Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day is a whistleblower alien chase thriller that is really about a 79-year-old filmmaker fighting back against cynicism with the only weapon he has ever had. Emily Blunt is extraordinary, the freight train setpiece is the best Hollywood action sequence of the year, and the script can't always earn the optimism the direction insists on. We talk about where this sits in Spielberg's alien filmography, what Blunt does that makes the whole thing cohere, and whether any of us were truly resistant to being moved by it. We were not.

Kane Parsons is twenty years old, came from YouTube, and has made the best horror film of the year. Backrooms takes the liminal space internet meme and turns it into an Ejiofor-anchored psychological freakout about a divorced furniture store owner who walks through a wall and keeps walking. We talk about what makes the film so effectively unsettling, why the monsters are its least frightening element, and why Parsons is the most exciting debut director we have encountered in years.

Eligibility ends May 31st, nominations voting opens June 11th, and the Emmy picture is finally coming into focus. This week's update: "Pluribus" is the drama front-runner nobody saw coming, Rhea Seehorn is long overdue and the predictions agree, and "Beef" is eating the limited series category alive. We run through every category — who's surging, who's fading, and whether Harrison Ford can possibly win this thing again.

Fifty-two films in ten days. We break down everything that mattered at this year's festival, from Cristian Mungiu's devastating Palme d'Or winner Fjord to the quieter miracles nobody saw coming. What Cannes 2026 said about grief, complicity, and the stubborn case for cinema.

Film fifty-two of the festival and Léa Mysius' The Birthday Party is the competition disappointment of the final days. A home invasion thriller with Herzi, Magimel and Bellucci that explains itself into irrelevance. We talk about what the Bellucci subplot promises and doesn't deliver, why Herzi deserved a better film, and what happened to the renegade filmmaker who made The Five Devils.

Film fifty-one of the festival and Grisebach's The Dreamed Adventure returns to the slow Eastern European Western with a woman at its centre and a genuine discovery in Yana Radeva. The first half is atmospheric and alive. The second half doesn't fully deliver on what the first built. We talk about the film's magnificent faces, what Grisebach does uniquely well, and why the ending lands lighter than thirty years of buried history should allow. 

We open day eleven with Maria Martínez Bayona's debut The End of It, in which Rebecca Hall plays a 250-year-old former provocateur who has decided she wants to die, and her death is her final artwork. The high concept is genuinely fascinating, the birthday party sequence is one of the best scenes at the festival, and Hall is extraordinary throughout. We talk about why the film can't quite match her commitment, what the bones room says about immortality and the self, and why this is still worth seeing despite everything it leaves on the table.

Film forty-nine of the festival and Lukas Dhont's Coward is his most mature and most tender film to date. A queer love story at the WWI Belgian front, two young men finding each other in an environment designed to make that impossible, and a first kiss that is among the most purely romantic gestures the movies have produced in years. We talk about what Dhont gets right this time that Girl and Close only reached for, and why Emmanuel Macchia is one of the great debut performances at this Cannes. 

Film forty-eight of the festival and Bertrand Mandico's Roma Elastica is a kaleidoscope of Fellini riffs, carnival grotesques, feminist cannibal peplums, and one extraordinary scene in which Marion Cotillard turns before a mirror and briefly makes everything feel necessary. We talk about what Mandico does that nobody else does, why it works in flashes and exhausts in bulk, and why Cotillard is incapable of giving a bad performance even inside a deliberately incoherent film. 

Film forty-seven of the festival and Marine Atlan's La Gradiva, the Critics' Week winner, is one of the most wholly transporting films we have seen at this Cannes. French teenagers in Naples, a class trip to Pompeii, and a boy named Toni whose entire romantic self is built on a story about his grandparents that turns out to be more complicated than he knew. Colas Quignard is an extraordinary discovery. We talk about the volcano metaphor that earns its weight, the meritocracy debate scene, and the ending that Atlan handles with devastating restraint. 

Film forty-six of the festival and Los Javis' The Black Ball is a monument. Three timelines, Lorca's ghost, a Spanish Civil War love story that is simultaneously the horniest and most heartbreaking thing at this Cannes, Penélope Cruz on a tank, and Glenn Close as an American Lorca scholar. The structural achievement alone is almost impossible to fully describe. We talk about why this is one of the great debuts in recent Spanish cinema and why we sat in the theater after it ended not quite ready to leave.

We open day ten with Zachary Wigon's Victorian Psycho and Maika Monroe's complete and total villain era. A Yorkshire governess with dead eyes, a body count, and a voiceover that exists mostly for her own reassurance. The first two thirds are gleefully, dementedly perfect. The ending needed more nerve. We talk about Monroe, the keyhole cinematography, the baby, and why we want a sequel immediately.

Film forty-four of the festival and Ira Sachs' The Man I Love is the finest AIDS film in years precisely because it refuses to be an AIDS film. Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge, a ruinous love triangle in 1980s New York, and a dance floor scene shot in midnight blue that is one of the most alive things at this Cannes. We talk about what Sachs does that no one else does, and why this film will stay with us. 

Film forty-three of the festival and Emmanuel Marre's A Man of His Time is the most uncomfortable film we've seen at Cannes. His own great-grandfather collaborated with the Nazis. Not out of evil. Out of ambition and cowardice and a need to belong. Swann Arlaud gives the best performance of the festival. The 80s soundtrack is intentional and correct. This film is a warning addressed directly to the present. 

Film forty-two of the festival and Andy Garcia's Diamond has one of the best setups at Cannes this year: a 1940s gumshoe nearly flattened by a self-driving car in modern LA. It's a perfect image. The next 118 minutes can't match it. We talk about what great noir requires that this film was too fond of its own protagonist to provide, and why this cast deserved a sharper script. 

We open day nine with Clio Barnard's I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, an ensemble drama about five working-class friends from Birmingham hitting thirty with no dreams fulfilled. It starts humbly and earns everything it arrives at. Daryl McCormack, Joe Cole and the whole cast all but follow you out of the theater. We talk about friendship, disappointment, and one image of lights on water that broke us completely. 

Film forty of the festival and Almodóvar arrives in competition with Bitter Christmas, a Möbius strip of autofiction about a filmmaker who feeds on the lives of those closest to him. Three writer-directors, one screenplay, no apology. We talk about what makes this ticklingly complex and where it falls short of his greatest work, and why its abrupt ending is the most honest thing in it. 

Film thirty-nine of the festival and Zvyagintsev returns after nine years with Minotaur, a domestic thriller set in Russia in 2022 as the war in Ukraine begins. A jealous husband, a dead body, a country with no rules left to tether anyone. The greatest living Russian director has not softened. We talk about his return, the Chabrol source material, and what it means to make a film like this from exile. 

We open day eight with Nicolas Winding Refn's Her Private Hell, a neo-giallo nightmare set in a futuristic city where a diamond-knuckled demon stalks young women in the fog. Half the audience walked out. We stayed. Pino Donaggio's score is extraordinary, the neon is relentless, and the plot is absolutely not the point. We talk about what Refn is and isn't doing here, and whether staying was worth it. 

Film thirty-seven of the festival and Sandra Wollner's Everytime is the one that broke us today. A teenager falls from a rooftop and the film spends two hours in the wreckage of what remains. Birgit Minichmayr gives one of the festival's finest performances. And the final act does something impossible that the film has completely earned. We needed a few minutes outside before we could talk. 

Film thirty-six of the festival and Cristian Mungiu's Fjord is the Palme d'Or contender we did not see coming. A Romanian family, a Norwegian village, a child abuse case that refuses to resolve into heroes and villains, and Sebastian Stan giving the most deliberately unsympathetic performance of his career. We talk about why this is the film we will still be arguing about when we get home. 

We open day seven with Arthur Harari's The Unknown, a body-swap thriller about identity, transformation, and the idea that who we are is ultimately a memory we share with ourselves. Léa Seydoux plays a man in her own body. It is stranger and more honest than it sounds. We talk about the trans readings, the Antonioni influence, and why this film's ambiguity feels like a feature rather than a bug.

We close day six with Jim Queen, a raunchy French animated feature about a disease that turns gay men straight. It is not deep. It is not trying to be. The audience we watched it with laughed like people being seen for the first time in a long time, and on the last film of a very long day at Cannes, that was exactly enough. Full day six wrap from the Croisette.

Film thirty-three of the festival and Na Hong-jin is finally back. Hope is a Korean monster movie with the largest budget in Korean film history, one extraordinary hour of pure brawling joy, and a CGI creature design that looks like it belongs in a different decade. We talk about what the first hour gets absolutely right, where the film falls apart, and whether Michael Fassbender playing a motion-capture monster in Competition at Cannes is genius or madness.

Film thirty-two of the festival and Yukiko Sode's All The Lovers In The Night is the slowest and most interior film we've seen at Cannes this year. A woman who has made a life out of not being known. A physics teacher who explains how light travels. Shot on 16mm in Tokyo and utterly unhurried. We talk about what the film earns and what it occasionally costs, and why Misato Morita might be the stealth performance of the festival. 

Film thirty-one of the festival and Judith Godrèche's debut feature adapts Annie Ernaux's most intimate novel with the knowledge of someone who lived a version of it. She cast her own daughter in the lead. The film is assured, disturbing, and exactly as personal as it needs to be. We talk about the lightbulb shot, Tess Barthélemy's extraordinary performance, and what this debut says about Godrèche as a filmmaker. 

Film thirty of the festival and Jeanne Herry's Another Day is one of the most quietly honest addiction dramas in years. Adèle Exarchopoulos plays a functioning alcoholic over eight years in Paris without a single false note. We talk about what the film gets right, where the ending gets too tidy, and why this performance deserves to be in the awards conversation. 

Film twenty-nine of the festival and László Nemes brings his aesthetic brilliance to the story of French Resistance hero Jean Moulin. The photography is extraordinary, Lellouche is excellent, and the film's central idea about ordinary courage is genuinely original. So why does it flatline so often? We talk about what Moulin gets right, what it leaves on the table, and how it compares to Son of Saul. 

Film twenty-eight of the festival and Dupieux's Full Phil is his most unexpectedly sincere film yet. Woody Harrelson, Kristen Stewart, a clogged toilet, Tim and Eric as Nobel-winning mad scientists, and somewhere underneath all of it, a real family drama. We talk about what makes Dupieux's absurdist universe so distinct and why this Hollywood cast fits inside it perfectly. 

We open day six with Katharina Rivilis' I'll Be Gone in June, a German exchange student in New Mexico in the weeks after 9/11. Shot from memory, built on a breakout performance by Naomi Cosma, and one of the most quietly spellbinding debuts at this year's festival. We talk about what it means to watch a national tragedy from the outside, and why this film says things about that moment that most American films could not.

Film twenty-six of the festival and James Gray's Paper Tiger is the one we will be talking about when Cannes is over. Queens, 1986, the Russian mob, Adam Driver in a career-best performance, and Scarlett Johansson growing more hollowed out with every scene. Gray has made his masterpiece and we are still not over it.

Film twenty-five of the festival and Sorogoyen's The Beloved is one of the most satisfying films in Competition. Bardem plays a famous director trying to mend things with the daughter he abandoned, and the film uses a chaotic desert shoot as the arena for thirteen years of unfinished business. We talk about the fish stew scene, Bardem's masterful controlled performance, and why this is exactly what the making-of-a-movie genre needed. 

Film twenty-four of the festival and the Esiri brothers' Clarissa is a genuine revelation. Mrs. Dalloway transplanted to present-day Lagos, shot on 35mm, with Sophie Okonedo, Ayo Edebiri and a Septimus played by Fortune Nwafor that will stay with us long after Cannes ends. We talk about what this adaptation finds that Woolf herself could not, and why this is the film of the festival we did not see coming. 

Film twenty-three of the festival and Koreeda's Sheep in the Box is the most thought-provoking mild disappointment at Cannes this year. A couple adopt an AI version of their dead son and the film is too bright, too resolved, and too philosophically optimistic to let the grief actually hurt. We talk about what Koreeda gets right, what the sunshine drowns out, and why this is still worth seeing despite everything.

Film twenty-two of the festival and Yeon Sang-ho returns to zombies with Colony. The good news: the creature design is genuinely chilling and Jun Ji-hyun is great. The bad news: CGI primates, an unnecessary parallel investigation, and a film that keeps interrupting itself right before it becomes something special. We talk about what made Train to Busan work and why Colony can't quite get there.

We open day five with John Travolta's directorial debut, a sixty-minute love letter to a TWA flight he took as an eight-year-old in 1962. It is slim, sincere, and completely inseparable from the ten-minute career montage that preceded it. We talk about what it means to be a movie star, his daughter Ella Bleu's scene-stealing turn, and why this might be the most charming nothing at Cannes this year. Day five dispatch from the Croisette.

We close day four with The Blow, a film with two remarkable performances, a bold visual instinct, and an editing problem that undoes most of it. Twenty films into the festival, this is the one that frustrates most because of how good it could have been. Full day four wrap from the Croisette.

Film nineteen of the festival and Marie Kreutzer's Gentle Monster is one of the bravest films at Cannes this year. Léa Seydoux discovers her husband is a pedophile and the film watches her decide what to do with that knowledge, one unbearable detail at a time. We talk about Seydoux's implosive performance, Kreutzer's personal connection to the material, and why this film refuses every easy exit. More from day four still to come.

Film eighteen of the festival and Karma, Guillaume Canet's cult melodrama starring his now-ex-wife Marion Cotillard, is exactly as juicy as it sounds. Flawed, lurid, two and a half hours long, and Cotillard carries every single minute of it. We talk about what the film gets right, what it strains to sell, and why Denis Ménochet might be the most quietly terrifying presence at this year's festival. 

We continue day four with Congo Boy, Rafiki Fariala's debut about a seventeen-year-old Congolese refugee in Bangui holding his family together by sheer force of love. Shot on location with non-professional actors, it is one of the warmest and most honest films we have seen at the festival. We talk about what new voices bring to Cannes and why this one matters.

Film sixteen and Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden is the one. 196 minutes of two women talking, one of them dying, all of it in Paris, and somehow the most hopeful film at this year's festival. We talk about what Virginie Efira did learning Japanese for a role, the whiteboard scene, and why this might be the Palme d'Or to beat.

Film fifteen of the festival and Club Kid is the surprise we didn't see coming. Jordan Firstman's debut is filthy, funny, shot on 35mm in a New York that's already disappearing, and somehow one of the most emotionally honest films we've seen at Cannes. We talk found family, Arthur Russell, Cara Delevingne two inches from a breakdown, and why this is the beginning of a real filmmaking voice. Day four dispatch from the Croisette.

ilm fourteen of the festival and Reed Van Dyk's Atonement is the most morally serious American film we've seen at Cannes. A Marine. An Iraqi mother. A knock on the door ten years later. We talk about what the film gets right, where it stumbles, and why Hiam Abbass is giving one of the performances of the festival. Day four dispatch from the Croisette.

We open day four with Words of Love, Rudi Rosenberg's Un Certain Regard family drama about a girl chasing a father who won't answer the door. It's warm, it's funny, it's not trying to win the Un Certain Regard prize, and after three days of Cannes we needed it more than we expected. First dispatch from day four on the Croisette.

Film Twelfth of the festival and Farhadi's Parallel Tales is our biggest disappointment so far. Not a disaster, just a misfire, which from a filmmaker of his caliber hurts just as much. We talk voyeurism, Kieslowski, wasted greatness, and one genuinely interesting idea about sound that arrives too late. Day three dispatch from the Croisette.