The Best of Sundance 2026: Top Films, Breakouts, and Award Winners from the Final Park City Festival

February 6, 2026 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Lists, Most Popular Tagged All About the Money, American Doctor, Big Girls Don't Cry, Closure, Everybody to Kenmure Street, Frank & Louis, Ha-Chan Shake Your Booty, Hold Onto Me, How to Divorce During the War, If I Go Will They Miss Me, Josephine, Mum I’m Alien Pregnant, Night Nurse, Nuisance Bear, One in a Million, Rock Springs, See You When I See You, Seized, Shame and Money, Silenced, Sundance, Sundance 26, Take Me Home, Tell Me Everything, The Gallerist, The Incomer, The Invite, The Lake, The Last First: Winter K2, The Musical, The Weight, Time and Water, Undertone, Union County 2 Comments

Sundance 2026 delivered one last cinematic dump (in a good way, like powder on a snow-barren mountain) before packing up and leaving Park City for good. From chilling headphone horror to sex comedies with emotional rot, audacious midnight freakouts to quietly devastating documentaries, this year’s lineup proved that the festival still has what it takes to be one of the preeminent film festivals in the world. Although I didn’t get a chance to see everything I had hoped to see (Leviticus top on the list of those I’ll be anxiously awaiting), I still managed to watch more Sundance premieres this year (35 total) than nearly any other year covering the festival. As should then be assumed, I have a pretty good handle on what was what so I full more than qualified to give a complete rundown of the best films from Sundance 2026. Read More

Sundance ‘26: ‘THE GALLERIST’ is A Frenetic Art World Satire Hoisted on Its Own Petard

January 31, 2026 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Catherine Zeta-Jones, Cathy Yan, Jenna Ortega, Natalie Portman, Sundance, Sundance 2026, The Gallerist 3 Comments

Cathy Yan’s absurdist satirical comedy The Gallerist may attempt to be an on-the-nose skewering of the art world, but even committed performances from its all-star cast can’t make up for weak jokes and thin satire. Natalie Portman stars as Polina Poliski, an ambitious and unscrupulous gallerist who, in the midst of Art Basel Miami, is confronted with an absurd situation: after a colorful confrontation, a hackneyed, rival art influencer accidentally impales himself on one of the statues her gallery is featuring. Rather than call for help, Polina sees a publicity opportunity. She decides to “curate” his corpse into art. The piece goes viral almost immediately. And so begins a countdown to sell the “art” before it’s discovered for what it actually is. Read More

50+ Most Anticipated Movies of 2026

December 22, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Alpha, Artificial, Avengers: Doomsday, Behemoth!, Brides, Clayface, Digger, Disclosure Day, Don’t Die, Dune: Part Three, Good Luck, Have Fun, How to Make a Killing, How To Rob A Bank, I Love Boosters, I Want Your Sex, In The Blink of An Eye, Josephine, Judy, Mayday, Mother Mary, October, Onslaught, Other Mommy, Primate, Project Hail Mary, Ray Gunn, Resident Evil, See You When I See You, Send Help, Shiver, Supergirl, Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, The Backrooms, The Bride!, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, The Death of Robin Hood, The Dog Stars, The Drama, The Entertainment System Is Down, The Gallerist, The History of Concrete / U.S.A., The Incomer, The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde, The Mummy, The Odyssey, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, The Social Reckoning, The Weight, The Young People, They Will Kill You, Union County, Werwulf, Whitney Springs, Wuthering Heights, zi 2 Comments

With 2025 just about in the rearview window, tis the moment to take stock of what worked in 2025 before turning ahead to the most anticipated movies of 2026. As usual, the films I responded to most last year weren’t those trying to be agreeable or broad or endlessly franchisable. They were specific, abrasive, messy, and always driven by a strong sense of autership. Horror continued to be the most reliable space for ambition and risk, but plenty of dramas and genre hybrids landed too, largely when they championed mood, performance, and uncomfortable ideas over traditional polish. Even in a year where the industry still felt unsettled, some genuinely great films cut through. And though 2025 on a whole was a bit of a letdown here holistically, it featured some of the very best movies of the entire decade. Let us hope too that 2026 manages to deliver some true uncut gems.

Most Anticipated Films of the Sundance Film Festival 2026

December 10, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged American Doctor, Carousel, Frank & Louis, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, Hanging by a Wire, I Want Your Sex, In The Blink of An Eye, Rock Springs, Run Amok, Saccharine, See You When I See You, Sundance, Sundance 2026, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, The Gallerist, The History of Concrete, The Incomer, The Invite, The Musical, The Shitheads, Union County, zi 2 Comments

Sundance Film Festival 2026 officially announced its lineup on December 10 and the reveal already feels weighted with more significance than usual. This will be the festival’s final year in Park City before it relocates to Boulder—a move that ends decades of proximity to the epic Wasatch slopes and closes the chapter on a place that helped define Sundance’s identity as much as the films themselves. It also arrives in the shadow of Robert Redford’s passing. As the festival’s founder and longtime steward, Redford shaped the trajectory of American independent cinema. His absence gives the 2026 Sundance festival a real end-of-an-era energy. Read More