2026 Top Ten List

The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan)

The Sheep Detectives (Kyle Balda)

Disclosure Day (Steven Spielberg)

The Invite (Olivia Wilde)

Send Help (Sam Raimi)

The Samurai and the Prisoner (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft (James Cameron & Billie Eilish)

Backrooms (Kane Parsons)

The End of Oak Street (David Robert Mitchell)

The Death of Robin Hood (Michael Sarnoski)

Additional 2026 Films By Rating

The Day She Returns (Hong Sang-soo)

Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord & Christopher Miller)

Sheep in the Box (Koreeda Hirokazu)

Rather than dramatically “unveiling” a top ten list sometime in January (as if anybody who reads this site didn’t already know what it was gonna look like), I revise the sucker as I go along. Here is what my list would look like if (god forbid) I were forced to make it today.

For archival purposes, I file everything by the year it had its world premiere. Many of these films will have been commercially released in the U.S. a year or two later, so my lists won’t always match up with other folks’ lists.

Ratings are on a needlessly precise 100-point scale.

Films I haven’t yet rated on that scale are marked with if I currently think they belong in my top ten. These films are subject to being shifted around or yanked altogether at any moment, after I revisit them and they get a numeral. If a film isn’t currently in my top ten, and I haven’t yet rated it, it ain’t here. There are a whole lot of those — if you’re wondering whether or not I’ve seen the masterpiece you can’t believe I omitted, check my master list.