Each year of late seems to bring some new horror milestone, and 2026 continues the trend. After The Substance wowed Cannes in 2024 and Sinners burst out last year, 2026 has seen a horde of unprecedented horror hits. Original films, franchise entries, debuts, auteur returns – thus far this year the genre has been a large tent.

At this point in the year, a few trends have emerged. The Youtuber-to-director pipeline has been established. Found footage genre continues to churn them out, but its sub-genre of analog TV shows descending into madness (the V/H/S/ franchise, Late Night with the Devil, Mr Crocket) reached new heights. Broad, gory horror comedies are on the up. Sequels span the sad to the sublime while some thrillers blur the line between genres with fantastic returns. Uniting all of these is a wonderful resurgence of weird, as the genre leans into its most unnerving and visceral qualities to show why horror can be such a unique viewing experience.

Few genres are able to capture the box office, zeitgeist, and meme-o-sphere the way that horror does today, and this year has already wielded enough hits and discourse-shapers to satisfy a lesser year. With 2026 now officially more than half over, these are the 10 best horror movies of 2026 so far.

10. They Will Kill You

They Will Kill You takes the spot for the broad, gory horror/action/comedy. Coming out weeks before the very similar Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Kirill Sokolov’s bloody brawler stole that film’s thunder and takes a place that might’ve also been occupied by the better-than-it-needed-to-be Faces of Death by keeping this film one bloodied bare foot ahead of the audience for most of its runtime.

They Will Kill You isn’t scary so much as it ghoulish and kinetic. It jumbles together Eat the Rich satire, trauma porn, and John Wick-style action in the story of a struggling woman who takes a job as the help at an exclusive high-rise apartment building. The wheels thankfully come off early as Sokolov, understanding that the audience has seen so much of this before, offers up a macabre odyssey that uses familiarity like a judo throw. It shares some DNA with other single-location journey films a la Snowpiercer, mother!, and The Raid, and while its horror is somewhat tempered by the action and comedy, it’s still a whole lotta fun.

9. Honey Bunch

In what’s shaping up to be a banner year for weird cinema, here’s to Honey Bunch which manages the odd feat of being gothic horror about cloying people. Canadian directing duo Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer follow up the relentlessly grim Violation with this puzzle box of a film that explores modern relationship dynamics with a healthy dose of humor and atmosphere. On this site we called it one of last year’s underrated horror movies. This year, it’s one of the best.

Diana’s recovering from a coma. Husband Homer whisks her off to a remote clinic for an experimental treatment. Naturally, all is not what it seems. Honey Bunch succeeds where many of this year’s weirdest and most fascinating horror movies (among them Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round, Obex, Redux Redux, Marama, Saccharine) faltered: its pacing and consistency. Thus far, 2026 has had no shortage of small, creative films that peter out as well as big budget fare that’s familiar and effective but somehow lacking. With Honey Bunch, the filmmakers calibrate something that intrigues and repulses in equal measure.

8. Exit 8

This has been a big year for liminal horror, and Exit 8 was one of its biggest pushers. After making our list of the most underrated horror of 2025, it’s back here with its wide release. Genki Kawamura’s adaptation of the video game is a surprisingly light, even sweet affair, with a simple, even trite arc but oodles of atmosphere.

A young man commuting to work gets off the subway only to find himself in an endless loop of a corridor. The film then places him, and us, into the trappings of the game. This is likely one of the best video game adaptations ever made, and the film deftly translates the ambiance and quiet into an experience that feels unnerving. Exit 8 peppers in little flourishes of the bizarre and makes the banal terrifying. Like Backrooms, it finds horror in normal, unremarkable spaces and drab lighting that suggest that being anywhere is the same as being nowhere. Even when some aspects feel a bit too pat, Exit 8 gets under the skin.

7. Undertone

Another recent film to make a star out of its sound design, Undertone is the opposite of analog horror. It’s decidedly digital in its tale of a podcaster who returns home to care for her ailing mother. Evy is working remotely on the horror podcast she co-hosts with Justin. They discuss alleged cases of supernatural activity — Justin is a true believer to Evy’s skeptic.

As they work on their latest episode centered around mysterious audio clips, things start to unravel. Evy’s mother is comatose, but something’s going bump in the night. Undertone is an exercise in cinematic economy. There are few characters and fewer locations yet the film feels intimate rather than small. Aurally-focused, its sparseness becomes a secret weapon with intimacy becoming emotional rawness then claustrophobia and finally terror. In a half-year of horror movies that took big swings with uneven results or, as with some franchises, played it safe and sunk low, Undertone excels in execution.

6. Send Help

Send Help’s horror status has been debated online, with some arguing that it’s more survival thriller. While it lacks director Sam Raimi’s usual supernatural trappings, the jump scares, gore, and misanthropy on display make the case for horror. But the real tell-tale sign is the tone. Send Help is a wag of a film, showing off the wicked pleasure of an escalating game of wits and inviting the audience to revel in the bitter and the brutal.

Dylan O’Brien is the new CEO of his late father’s company. Rachel McAdams is the indispensable office drone promised a promotion by said late father. They end up stranded on a tropical island where the power dynamic reverses. From a horrifying plane crash to the game of wits that gives the film its core, Send Help is a blast. A welcome entry into the Eat-the-Rich canon, it’s also effortless, breezy work from Raimi that shows the master well in his comfort zone and elevating every moment.

The 1980s were a great decade for thriller cinema, building on the new blockbuster sensation set down by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws back in 1975. The decade saw rip-roaring cinematic classics, but as a result of the box-office dominance of huge titles, several smaller offerings were hidden in the shadows.

The 1990s continued that trend, with box office records being blown out of the water following the release of Titanic (1997), a film that followed in the footsteps of Jurassic Park (1993) and Independence Day (1996) in setting the box office alight. But there were, once again, hundreds of low-key thrillers, many with bankable box office stars front and centre, that simply never saw the light of day.

In this list, we look back at ten films that fall into that category, along with a few others that were wrongly dismissed on their release.

1. Desperate Hours (1990)

Mickey Rourke was still being laughed at by many four years on from 9½ Weeks (1986), itself a film that was nowhere near as bad as critics claimed. And as a result, they couldn’t wait to jump on Michael Cimino’s remake of a 1955 hostage thriller. Rourke plays a dangerous fugitive who takes a suburban family hostage and forces his way into their home.

Anthony Hopkins is excellent in a role that is often forgotten: the father, trying to maintain order as the situation deteriorates. But it’s Rourke who leans into the parody the critics almost created for him, and Desperate Hours, as a result, becomes a far more interesting film than it might otherwise have been. Directed by the able hand of Cimino, the film switches between the criminals, hostages, and law enforcement in Rourke’s tale, making for a thoroughly entertaining thriller.

It’s undoubtedly flawed, but the claustrophobia that Rourke himself seems to bring is what makes it work. You can laugh at it; you can laugh at Rourke, but for some reason, you feel very uneasy doing so. Just like 9½ Weeks, Desperate Hours is a much better film than anyone gave it credit for, directed by someone who doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone.

2. Consenting Adults (1992)

A much lesser-known Kevin Spacey vehicle directed by Alan J. Pakula? When you add Kevin Kline, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Rebecca Miller, it seems bizarre that Consenting Adults wasn’t storming the box office.

Kline’s Richard and his wife Priscilla (Mastrantonio) move into a quiet suburban neighbourhood and quickly strike up a friendship with their wealthy, charismatic neighbours Eddie (Spacey) and Kay (Miller). But what begins as casual specialising takes a dangerous turn when Eddie proposes that the couple swap partners for the night, a question that eventually leads to a web of manipulation, deception, and blackmail. The usual.

Pakula’s film builds on the property thriller subgenre that was popular at the time; films like Pacific Heights (1990) and subsequently Single White Female (1992) share similar themes, yet Consenting Adults is arguably both the least known and most effective. The performances are all terrific, and Spacey absolutely relishes the opportunity to play such a character. It’s tremendous fun and deserves a wider Blu-ray release.

3. Guilty as Sin (1993)

If Kevin Spacey is enjoying himself in Consenting Adults, Don Johnson goes one further in Sidney Lumet’s fantastic Guilty as Sin. He plays David Greenhill, a wealthy businessman who is accused of murdering his wife, and nothing in the way he behaves suggests he’s innocent. Rebecca De Mornay’s defence attorney, Jennifer Haines, agrees to represent him and initially has no idea what she’s getting herself into.

Convincing herself that she’s defending an innocent man, Haines realises too late she’s in far too deep, and once you allow yourself to be engulfed in the madness of what’s unfolding, Guilty as Sin is one of the most enjoyable thrillers of the nineties. After convincing yourself that Greenhill must be guilty, for the middle section of the film, you genuinely keep changing your mind. Johnson is just fantastic, chewing the scenery for all its worth in a film that is worthy of far bigger critical praise than it ever received.

This is slick, pulpy, tremendously enjoyable trash that is raised far above what it should be by a pair of terrific performances and a thoroughly engrossing plot.

4. The Client (1994)

Joel Schumacher’s legal thriller is one that often gets cast aside in favour of bigger hitters within the drama. The film tells the story of an eleven-year-old boy, Mark, who, along with his younger brother, witnesses a suicide attempt in the woods. Before dying, the man reveals the location of a murdered senator’s body, leaving Mark caught between the FBI and the Mafia.

Enter Tommy Lee Jones’s federal prosecutor Roy, who wants the information at any cost, while mob lawyer Barry (Anthony LaPaglia) is determined to silence the boy permanently. Desperate for help, Mark turns to attorney Reggie (Susan Sarandon), who becomes the boy’s ally as the situation threatens to get out of control. The impressive cast is firing on all cylinders, and Sarandon is the one who, as Mark’s support, gives the film its emotional heart.

There are far more strings to Schumacher’s bow than people give him credit for, and with The Client, he adds another genre to his oeuvre, one that he would add to two years later with the equally impressive A Time to Kill (1996).

5. Just Cause (1995)

Just Cause is finally seeing some sort of renaissance (however small) on streaming, and Arne Glimcher’s film is worthy of exposure. Sean Connery puts in one of his best performances in years as law professor Paul Armstrong, who is drawn into a disturbing case when a death row inmate claims he was wrongly accused of murdering a young girl.

As he digs deeper, he uncovers a case that’s built on prejudice and coercion, and what begins as a legal investigation gradually turns into something far more dangerous. So, it’s not a setup that’s particularly innovative, but Glimcher’s film takes its courtroom roots and transports them through something that becomes more uneasy—and effective—as it progresses.

The impressive cast includes Laurence Fishburne, Blair Underwood, Kate Capshaw, and Ed Harris, with each of them offering something riveting to proceedings, resulting in a film that might seem formulaic at first glance but is a far more thoughtful piece than many might think.

A24 has a cultural footprint beyond most movie studios or production companies. Since opening their doors in 2012, the company has come to define a certain type of movie and aesthetic: weird, kinetic, fiercely independent. Its fans are compared to cult members. Its aesthetic is sometimes described as its own genre.

Yet the first A24 release was inauspicious. Roman Coppola’s A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III came and went without much fanfare. It was Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers that helped capture the company’s vibe and served as its calling card: a weird auteur crossed with teen idols, bikinis and balaclavas, tonal shifts, needle drops, big stars making wild turns, and a sterile, opiate-fuzzy warmth. A24 initially cut through with its horror offerings, but it made its bones through fruitful relationships with directors like Ari Aster, the Daniels, Ti West, the Safdies, the Philippous, and Alex Garland.

The last few years have seen the company expand. Civil War in 2024 became its biggest opener. In 2025, A24 had more than 15 releases, with Marty Supreme becoming its highest grossing release. In 2026, The Backrooms shattered expectations to overtake the Safdie/Chalamet box office crown while broadening A24’s appeal in the modern cinema marketplace. Given that, now is as good a time as any to look back on 16 years of cinema. These are the 30 best A24 films:

30. A Ghost Story (2017)

David Lowery’s A Ghost Story is an ideal example of the role A24 played in 2010s indie cinema. It’s hard to imagine any other studio (except maybe Neon) greenlighting this story of a ghost (Casey Affleck under a sheet) lingering in the apartment he once shared with his wife played by Rooney Mara. Naturally, Lowery’s film uses a ghost as a vehicle to explore grief and the shared human experience.

A journey through time and space, A Ghost Story is a unique experience that finds narrative in observation and transcendence. Released five years after A24 opened its doors, A Ghost Story wasn’t the studio’s first, most celebrated, or most acclaimed release, but it is one of the best and most idiosyncratic. A Ghost Story is a meditative, challenging film that encapsulates so much of what people hate about independent cinema. It also has probably the most iconic pie-eating scene on celluloid since American Pie.

29. Lean on Pete (2018)

While most A24 films are privy to clever marketing campaigns and enjoy having a cultural footprint, Lean on Pete is one that didn’t make it far out of the stables. It premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival to respectful reviews but got lost among the strong competition slate. By the time it landed in theaters, a film called The Rider by a certain up-and-coming director named Chloe Zhao, had captured all the thunder for horse-centric cinema in that year. Andrew Haigh’s later projects, particularly All of Us Strangers, would fare better, but Lean on Pete is an unfortunately overlooked part of his filmography.

Lean on Pete centers on Charley, a bright-faced teenager whose precarious life with his well-meaning but irresponsible father finds new meaning after a chance encounter with a race-horse owner. He takes a gig looking after the titular horse, finding a sense of agency and belonging. When circumstances send Charley spiraling into desperation and then poverty, the film goes on a wild tour of contemporary America from the great plains to the tent cities of the Pacific Northwestern. It’s an understated, beautiful film that depicts the harsh economic realities of life in the United States without feeling pedantic or overwrought.

28. American Honey (2016)

With American Honey, writer/director Andrea Arnold traded British public housing for the American road but kept her eye for the kitchen sink firmly intact. American Honey spends time with mag crews, groups of youth who go around the country selling magazines. Like the American cousin to her own English-set Fish Tank, American Honey is a sprawling, naturalist road trip that’s deeply moving, sad, and joyful.

Star is young and poor in Oklahoma looking after kids that aren’t hers for parents who are abusive and absentee. After seeing a group of young people dancing in the local big box store, her curiosity’s piqued and it’s not long before she joins them as they go from town to town hawking magazines. Arnold’s film captures the anticipation of youth and the powerlessness of not having the money or resources to make the most of it. Like many a European filmmaker, she takes an incisive, wide gaze of both the American landscape and its poverty. American Honey is a movie that feels real, both in its use of mostly non-professional actors and in the pettiness of human behavior it captures on screen. But it’s most precise in how it captures the ache of wanting for something more and how systems are set up to lure in young woman without much concern for the dangers it puts them in.

27. Krisha (2016)

Trey Edward Shults went from intern for Terrence Malick to one of A24’s breakout filmmakers, and his debut Krisha is proof of the A24 concept: a psychological drama shot as a horror film. Looping camerawork, tight close-ups, and an ominous score make for a manic experience that swirls until the tension can’t be contained.

Shults used nonprofessional actors, most of them his own relatives, to create a blended version of reality. It’s Thanksgiving, and Krisha (played by Shults’ aunt) has been invited. The tension is palpable, even if the reasons for it aren’t immediately clear, and Shults puts us in Krisha’s perspective and ramps up the pressure. This is anxious viewing, as the family’s skepticism and a contentious past creep into the proceedings while a roasted turkey serving as a ticking time bomb. Krisha is a blistering family drama but also probably the best Thanksgiving-themed horror movie out there.

26. The Disaster Artist (2017)

The Disaster Artist is the story of one delusionally confident director made by a now-disgraced director that still manages to play as hilarious, warm, and riotously entertaining. The Room is one of the most celebrated bad movies ever made. Franco’s film starts off with talking heads describing the magic of the film’s sincere awfulness, but The Disaster Artist quickly becomes a paean to Los Angeles and the dreamers of Hollywood.

That sweetness offers a nice balance for The Disaster Artist. If this were just a takedown of The Room, it would be rude. If it was only a testament to the love of movies, it would be cloying. Instead, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber’s script, based on Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell’s 2013 non-fiction book, merges both. It’s one of the best movies about making movies, showing how shared delusion and utter trust in the process can make something magic, even if it’s not technically good. Tommy Wiseau, the mysteriously-accented director played by Franco, may not be a talented actor, writer, or director, but dammit if he didn’t make something special.

25. Sing Sing (2024)

Sing Sing is often so emotionally raw that you forget you’re watching a movie. Greg Kwedar’s drama is based on “The Sing Sing Follies” a 2005 magazine story about the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program in Sing Sing Prison and the cons who found some version of solace in it. The film mixes professional actors with formerly-incarcerated participants in the actual program as it depicts the cons ideating and performing “Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code”.

Sing Sing is a beautiful, empathetic depiction of the redemptive power of art and creativity. Deeply felt and anchored by strong performances, there’s a viscerality and truth that shines through the raw emotions in this picture, so much so that the more dramatized elements – like Colman Domingo’s arc – sometimes feel tacked on or artificial against the rehearsals for the program. Domingo is the film’s anchor and his journey, both emotional and legal, guides the film, but it’s Clarence Maclin’s performance – a fictionalized version that carries his real name – that doubles the film over.

24. Zola (2021)

Zola was notable for being based off of a Twitter thread and for actually being good. Famous authors have written novels on Twitter and other microblogs, but no serialized story so captured online attention as Zola’s 148-tweet #TheStory. Bravo and cowriter Jeremy O. Harris largely let the 148-tweet tale unfurl as it did online. Like its source material (the tweets, but also the Rolling Stone article “Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted”), Zola masks itself as a ridiculous viral epic but is ultimately more disturbing, sad, and deep than that description lets on.

A’Ziah “Zola” King (Taylour Paige) was working part-time as a stripper in Detroit when a chance encounter with fellow dancer Stefani (Riley Keough) led to a wild road trip to Florida. Zola’s comedic facade gives way to a sobering depiction of how sex workers are exploited and trafficked. It’s also bolstered by a strong cast. Paige as the titular character is a welcome guide. A pre-A-list Colman Domingo is unnerving, but it’s Riley Keough as the disarming and disorienting Stefani who gets the showiest role as both victim and enabler. She walks away with the movie as its ridiculous beating heart of madness.

23. Aftersun (2022)

Aftersun is one of many assured debut features that A24 shepherded to great success. Charlotte Wells’ semi-autobiographical tale of a father and daughter on holiday at a Turkish resort in the late 90s is a sort of magic trick of a film. Equipped with a committed, subtle performance from Paul Mescal, Wells traverses space and time as she tells a story through motif and collage.

Aftersun is thoroughly A24 in look and feel: subtle, slightly sterile, emotionally tense and raw with moments of tenderness. As the film’s grammar settles and we get a better grasp on the mysterious darkness that flashes on the screen, Aftersun becomes more interesting because narrative is only one way in which it tells its story. And while that central story is, in itself, quite gutting, the scaffolding around has its share of craft, nuance, and joy.

22. Civil War (2024)

One of A24’s highest grossing films, Alex Garland’s Civil War divided audiences and certainly has its flaws. Some of the dialogue is clunky and there’s a beat towards the end that feels forced. But while the bulk of the criticism focused on Garland’s decision to not telegraph America’s current politics onto its narrative, Garland clearly understood the assignment: with Civil War, he denies the USA its current histrionics to show that civil war in America looks mostly like it does anywhere else.

As a grizzled, disenchanted photojournalist, Kirsten Dunst gave the performance of the year. An excellent Wagner Maura is a fellow journo who she joins on a road trip to DC, and the rest of the cast, including Stephen McKinley Henderson and Nick Offerman as the tin-pot dictator president, are equally excellent, with Jesse Plemons’ cameo as a fascist ultranationalist nearly stealing the show. Civil War is an intense pocket story of an epic. It’s as much a road trip movie and a study of photojournalism as it is a war film. The film’s secret weapon is how it makes space for the weirdness of war and the mundanity of evil that pervades it – aimless killing, revenge justified as politics, Dunst’s third-act PTSD – to make something that’s more honest and probably accurate than it gets credit for.

21. High Life (2019)

Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity started a trend of respected directors tackling heady sci-fi, and that cycle firmly came to a close with Claire Denis’ bizarre, sexual but not really sexy High Life. While A24’s known for launching edgy filmmakers, they’ve also become a home for storied auteurs with out-there projects, and High Life is one of them. Denis leaves post-colonial domesticity for outer space, delivering one of the strangest and most mournful of all of A24’s slate.

High Life is about a group of criminals sent into space ostensibly to explore a black hole but more so to be experimented on by Juliette Binoche’s scientist. At the center is Robert Pattinson, here firmly completing his serious actor tour with a film that’s dour, dark, and frequently flirting with insanity. From “The Box” that requires intimacy from each astronaut/guinea pig to discussions on spaghettification, High Life is heady, perverse, and daring. It’s the kind of work that A24 was made to steward, and a surprising cast – beyond Binoche and Pattinson, there’s Outkast’s Andre Benjamin and future scream queen Mia Goth – make for one of the most interesting ensembles of the decade.

Steven Spielberg is undoubtedly one of the great directors. Not only that, but he’s also one of the most reliable in terms of consistent quality. Disclosure Day is his seventeenth release of the twenty-first century, which is impressive in itself, but when you look at the range of this output, it’s even more impressive.

Sure, they haven’t all been bona fide masterpieces, but with Spielberg at the helm, you’re always guaranteed something that is, at the very least, hugely enjoyable. Of the sixteen features released since the turn of the millennium, not including his latest, we take a look at the top ten.

10. The Terminal (2004)

There are many who dismiss The Terminal as sentimental rubbish, but that’s simply not true of the film. Tom Hanks makes the whole picture sing as Viktor Navorski, a man from the fictional country of Krakozhia who becomes stranded at New York’s JFK Airport when a political coup invalidates his passport.

Unable to return home, he ends up living in the terminal for months, forming relationships with staff while trying to somehow survive in what becomes an increasingly absurd scenario. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Stanley Tucci offer splendid support as Hanks navigates the seemingly never-ending yet obviously contained maze of the airport; this is something he could do in his sleep, and yet he’s terrific as Navorski, a man whose literal acceptance of things he’s told is often laugh-out-loud funny.

Despite accusations of saccharin absurdity, Spielberg balances comedy and sentimentality effectively, using the airport setting brilliantly to draw us into a tale we can’t help but get on board with. It’s the hardest of hearts that dismisses The Terminal.

9. The Fabelmans (2022)

The Fabelmans is based on his own childhood and introduction to film in post-war America and centers on Sammy (Gabriel Labelle, terrific in his first major role) growing up, firstly in New Jersey and then Arizona, with his three sisters and their mom and dad (Michelle Williams and Paul Dano).

Although the film is a coming-of-age story of sorts, it’s mainly an homage to cinema wrapped in a family drama, and for the most part, Spielberg achieves this fusion rather expertly, harking back to past greats such as Cinema Paradiso (1988) or 8½ (1963), and it’s also impossible to miss the influence of Man With A Movie Camera (1929).

The early scenes of The Fabelmans, however, show Spielberg going back even further to the arrival of cinema itself. After attending a screening of The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) with his parents, Sammy receives the gift of a train from his father, which he then becomes obsessed with crashing and later filming the crashes with the help of his mother. This is Spielberg’s nod to Arrival of a Train (1896), Georges Méliès’ silent actuality film, and coincides nicely with Sammy’s discovery of film.

It might not be up there with his best work, but it’s certainly an example of Spielberg at his most consistent, and he lets the audience take a glimpse of how an astonishing career in cinema began.

8. War of the Worlds (2005)

Considering the appalling recent adaptation of H.G. Wells’ book, Spielberg’s own vision of it looks even better now than it did two decades ago. Tom Hanks’s dockworker is forced to protect his two children when Earth is suddenly invaded by alien tripods; we all know the basic premise.

But it’s the size and scale of Spielberg’s version that really impresses, throwing audiences into a situation that emphasises the seeming hopelessness of the situation. This is an alien invasion movie that focuses more on the ground-level panic and offers character development for Cruise and Dakota Fanning that feels genuine, placing you at the centre of their turmoil.

Released only a few years after the events of 9/11, the scenes of panicked evacuation and dust-covered survivors are horribly eerie and remain one of Spielberg’s most unsettling sci-fi films, and perhaps doesn’t get the credit it deserves.

7. Lincoln (2012)

There’s no doubting the efficiency and compelling nature of Spielberg’s Lincoln. Set during the final months of the American Civil War, the film follows the titular president as he attempts to secure enough votes to pass the Thirteenth Amendment and permanently abolish slavery.

The supporting cast of Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, David Strathairn, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are all tremendous, and the film explores the compromises and complexities involved in achieving meaningful change, all of it applicable to today’s society. Spielberg presents Lincoln not as someone who was flawless or the hero he’s held up as today, but rather as an individual whose stoic approach to life stood him in good stead to still be remembered in such a way today.

But none of it would work without the towering Daniel Day-Lewis performance as Lincoln. He won his third Best Actor Oscar for it, and there was no surprise about the decision whatsoever. Day-Lewis simply becomes Lincoln before our very eyes, drawing us into a film that, while engrossing, would perhaps otherwise be middling Spielberg. Day-Lewis elevates it spectacularly.

6. The Post (2017)

Probably one of Spielberg’s most underrated films and, in some ways, one of the most un-Spielberg-like features we’ve seen. Based on true events, the film tells the story of the Pentagon Papers, classified documents that have been leaked, leading to The Washington Post facing a historic decision. Publish information exposing decades of government deception about the Vietnam War or bow to political and legal pressure.

At the centre of the tale is Meryl Streep’s publisher, Katharine Graham, who must decide whether to risk her company and career in defence of a free press. She’s terrific as you’d expect, and she’s joined by Tom Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee, with the pair offering a compelling reminder of why free press matters. There are obvious parallels with All the President’s Men (1976), and while no one would claim that The Post hits the heights of Alan J. Pakula’s film, this is one of Spielberg’s most assured yet low-key films.

He turns The Post into a fast-moving newsroom drama, one that’s gripping, tense, and completely engrossing, anchored by some reliably excellent performances.

Steven Spielberg returns to our screens in a familiar way, informing us that aliens do indeed exist and, in the case of Disclosure Day, that humans have secretly been abusing these extraterrestrial beings for nearly 79 years and keeping it a secret from the world. You’d be hard-pressed to claim that the idea is original; it’s not even a new idea from the man’s own filmography. It feels like a personal project in many respects; Spielberg dipping a toe back into his own sci-fi flicks of the seventies. The 79 years also feel very poignant; it just happens to be Spielberg’s age.

This global cover-up has mainly been achieved by a corporation called Wardex, headed by Colin Firth’s Noah, and in the film’s opening sequence, he and his team have just tracked down Josh O’Connor’s Dr. Daniel Kellner, a Wardex whistleblower who has stolen all the files necessary to unleash the companies’ secrets on the world, giving the population the “full disclosure” that the title suggests. He’s constantly receiving instructions on burner phones from his former boss, Colman Domingo’s fellow whistleblower Hugo, all the while on the run with his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson).

We then meet Emily Blunt’s Margaret Fairchild, a weather reporter with plans of becoming an anchor who, after the appearance in her kitchen of a little red bird, realizes she can suddenly read minds and speak any language she chooses. Following this, while live on air, she begins to make strange and unnerving clicking noises, seemingly a language only she—and as it turns out, Kellner—can understand. The two must surely meet and presumably offer the world the truth.

The most interesting aspect of Disclosure Day is the central conflict between Wardex and the whistleblowers themselves. As soon as Kellner reveals his plan to Jane, the first thought I had was that this is surely a terrible idea. With the world on the brink of World War III, as background news bulletins inform us, would the release of such documents make things far worse and send the world into a blind panic? Spielberg thinks not and, true to form, offers us a well-known path.

This would all be very well, but as Disclosure Day trudges on, you’re reminded more and more of films that have already ventured down this well-trodden path, and not just from Spielberg’s own back catalog. Jeff Nichols’s underseen Midnight Special (2016) jumped out at me, as perhaps inevitably did Neill Blomkamp’s excellent District 9 (2009), a film that has far more to say than Disclosure Day. While Blomkamp’s film felt like a timely and fascinating allegory about immigration, Spielberg’s world-weary message about countries working together and listening to each other (as well as arguably touching on immigration) feels tired.

The film that perhaps looms largest over Disclosure Day is Denis Villeneuve’s superb Arrival (2016), a film that took the concept of connection and supernatural diplomacy and weaved it into something truly original. The characters and audience were made to work to untangle the film’s mysteries, whereas here, Margaret and Daniel are simply handed their powers through the prism of childhood trauma, a theme that Spielberg has delivered perfectly in the past, but here it feels very forced.

Although Blunt has a blast with Fairchild, when she puts her mind-reading skills into practice towards the end to ensure an escape for her and Daniel, it’s laughable. It’s one scene of many when the jeopardy disappears completely, in the same way a superhero film’s climactic battle between two indestructible people hitting each other often does. Firth, O’Connor, and Domingo are always good value, and they do their best to sink their teeth into material here that’s perfectly solid in principle but is badly lacking in execution.

As for Eve Hewson, her performance is one of the film’s best, yet the early revelation about her character being a former nun has you rolling your eyes at the inevitability of another science versus religion debate, which is always in the background but is never explored beyond the usual surface-level questions. “You never lost your faith in God,” a fellow sister tells her late on. “You lost faith in people.” How many times have we heard a version of that before?

It does feel like a while now since Spielberg has reinvented himself or offered us something truly interesting. You’d arguably have to go all the way back to Munich (2005) for something that sparked serious debate. And although it seems churlish to suggest that one of the cinematic greats needs to prove anything at all, Disclosure Day feels like it takes themes from his own past classics like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), while touching on more recent and far more ambitious science fiction films, yet somehow offers us nothing new at all.

Author Bio: Christian Keane is a film critic who explores overlooked gems, cult classics, and cinema’s hidden corners. He believes it’s great to disagree — everyone’s perspective matters — and shares his thoughts on his website and across his socials at Keane on Film, which you can find here https://linktr.ee/christiankeane7. You can also find him on Tiktok @keane.on.film and Instagram @keaneonfilm.

For those unfamiliar with the origins of Backrooms, going in blind offers quite the experience. Kane Parsons’ debut feature has its origins on the imageboard website 4chan, with the ‘backrooms’ portrayed as an impossibly large extradimensional complex of empty rooms. The idea began with a single image of a large empty room taken at the former site of a furniture store in Wisconsin over two decades ago and has since become its own online entity.

Fans have expanded the initial ideas into indie video games and short films, and in 2022, YouTuber Parsons began publishing his Backrooms series on the platform. And now, we have a cinematic full-length release.

Apparently, for fans of the series, there are plenty of easter eggs here, and it seems the audience’s response has been favourable. But going in knowing next to nothing about it, Backrooms offers an eerie and sometimes disturbing tale of memory, reality, and fear that successfully leaves you with more questions than answers by its finale.

Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Clark is a lonely middle-aged man whose rapidly failing furniture emporium isn’t just down to lack of customers. He’s currently living in the store after being kicked out by his girlfriend, and every night has electricity issues, with lights flickering and the power somehow staying on and costing him money, something that a visiting electrician can’t explain. Clark is also seeing a therapist, Renate Reinsve’s Mary, who appears to have her own demons while trying to help Clark get his life back on track.

One night, Clark discovers a porous section of a wall in the store’s ample basement, seemingly a portal into what appears to be an infinite expansion of the store itself, but one that has been designed by someone, as Chris Morris might say, with a mind as bent as a bad hedge. What he finds inside these backrooms, one could almost argue, is for the viewer to decide. This is a horror film in which the architecture and furniture are far more unsettling than any monster or ghost lurking in a dark corner.

You’re reminded of the blackness of rooms in the work of David Lynch; most notably, Parsons invokes Inland Empire (2006), not something that you’d advise to anyone, and yet here it makes total sense. Both Ejiofor and Reinsve are terrific, each expressing plausible bafflement and terror at what they find in this increasingly unnerving hellscape of a maze with its alarming characters and startling furnishings. The first time we enter through the wall, a pile of furniture instantly reminds you of Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982), but while Backrooms toys with the supernatural, the scariest thing is the idea that the twisted problems are perhaps of our own making, our memories as porous as the wall Clark initially falls through.

One could make the case that the Backrooms is about misremembering trauma, humans desperately trying to refresh their memories, yet we as the audience know there’s only pain and suffering in trying to revive such things that the mind has desperately sought to forget. This is amplified by Danny Vermette’s haunting production design that offers one brain twister after the next, and there’s little doubt that the expansion of Clark’s store is a character in itself.

Backrooms is a hugely impressive feature debut, and although I found myself less immersed in the story when it’s taking place outside of the titular architectural ordeal, this is a frequently intoxicating work, and it will be fascinating to see how Parsons evolves for his next directorial work.

Author Bio: Christian Keane is a film critic who explores overlooked gems, cult classics, and cinema’s hidden corners. He believes it’s great to disagree — everyone’s perspective matters — and shares his thoughts on his website and across his socials at Keane on Film, which you can find here https://linktr.ee/christiankeane7. You can also find him on Tiktok @keane.on.film and Instagram @keaneonfilm.

Great sports films are not easy to pull off, and when it comes to the most popular sport on our planet, cinematic portrayals have not always been kind. Soccer, as it’s known to some, or football to others, is a sport that captures the imagination, brings the globe together, and can offer joy and pain in equal measure. But could you say the same thing about on-screen depictions of the sport?

With the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Mexico, and Canada upon us, it’s a great time to look back at some of cinema’s best films about the beautiful game, whether they be breathtaking documentaries, hilarious parodies, or superb dramas. These ten films capture the sport in very different ways, and all of them are worth your time.

1. Gregory’s Girl (1980)

Bill Forsyth is one of Britain’s finest directors, having helmed such classics as Local Hero (1983) and alternative Christmas beauty Comfort & Joy (1984). Before both of those, he gave us Gregory’s Girl, a wonderful coming-of-age film surrounding the budding relationship between a shy Scottish schoolboy, Gregory (John Gordon Sinclair) and Dorothy (Dee Hepburn).

Dorothy is the new star striker of the soccer team, leading to a series of awkward, charming, and comedic encounters as Gregory tries to win her attention. Soccer isn’t the driving narrative of the film, but it works perfectly as a backdrop to Forsyth’s tale of teenage romance, and its charm has endured for decades.

The deadpan comedic tone that Forsyth has made his own is evident here and would only grow with the films that followed, and while this might not be the most conventional film on a list about cinematic soccer outings, it fits in just the same way as Forsyth’s films themselves.

2. Escape to Victory (1981)

No list of films about soccer would be complete without John Huston’s 1981 classic, despite the fact that it’s clearly a flawed film. Starring Sly Stallone, Michael Caine, Pelé, Bobby Moore, and Ossie Ardiles, the film tells the tale of a group of Allied prisoners of war during World War II who are coerced into playing an exhibition soccer match against a German team as Nazi propaganda.

We all know how it plays out as the prisoners plan a daring escape under the guise of the match but Escape to Victory is more than the sum of its parts and remains a rousing (if hugely overblown) piece of wartime escapism. The soccer action itself is often ludicrous as you might expect, and the quality of everything unfurling is sometimes questionable, but it would be a hard heart indeed to dismiss John Huston’s film as anything other than a terrific romp.

3. Mike Bassett: England Manager (2000)

“England will be playing four-four-fucking-two!” Mike Bassett’s iconic cry is not one that we’ll be hearing from Thomas Tuchel or, indeed, arguably any manager during this summer’s World Cup. It’s a style of soccer that has died an absolute death with the introduction of Pep Guardiola’s possession-based, playing-out-from-the-back approach to the sport.

But in the 90s, it was synonymous with the Premier League and the English game. Steve Barron’s hilarious parody of “the impossible job,” that is, the England head coach, is utterly ridiculous, hilarious, and a surprisingly accurate satire of England’s fan culture and media campaigns. Ricky Tomlinson is brilliant as Mike Bassett, the man appointed as England manager after a series of contrivances and tasked with leading the national team to the World Cup.

It’s an exaggerated, chaotic, and deliberately silly show, yet it captures what’s very real and often accurate about the pressures and mythology surrounding the England job, and it’s worth a watch every single time a major tournament approaches. No other country in the world has the media scrutiny that England does when it comes to soccer, and Barron’s film is a surprisingly effective portrayal of exactly that.

4. Shaolin Soccer (2001)

A former Shaolin monk reunites his estranged martial arts brothers to form a soccer team that combines ancient kung fu techniques with modern soccer, entering a high-stakes tournament where they face increasingly outrageous opponents and often supernatural-style soccer abilities in Stephen Chow’s hugely entertaining film.

This is one of the most wildly inventive sports comedies ever made, blending slapstick humour with martial arts fantasy and soccer spectacle, resulting in something truly unique. It often feels like playing a Super Mario sports game, with matches escalating into near-mythical battles while soccer as a sport remains, somewhere, in the background.

Shaolin Soccer was rightly lauded on its release, with a unique selling point that you didn’t need to be remotely interested in soccer to enjoy the film. It also attracted martial arts fans, with its visual excess appealing to people worldwide.

5. Bend It Like Beckham (2002)

Bend It Like Beckham remains one of the best British comedies of the 21st century. Gurinder Chadha’s superb film tells the story of a young British-Indian girl, Jess Bhamra, who secretly joins a local women’s soccer team despite her traditional family’s expectations. Starring Parminder Nagra as Jess and Kiera Knightley as her friend Jules, both in breakout roles, Bend it Like Beckham is one of the most influential modern soccer films, balancing sports comedy-drama with an exploration of cultural identity, something that had rarely been put on screen up until Chadha’s film.

It was almost another decade until the formation of the Women’s Super League in England, and while you couldn’t possibly claim that Bend It Like Beckham had a direct influence on it, the film brought the idea of structured female leagues to an audience that had never before had it promoted in the public sphere.

Kiera Knightley went on to have quite the decade, starring in several huge blockbusters, yet Bend It Like Beckham might well be her most important (and arguably best) role to date, while Nagra went on to star in several seasons of ER.

One of the biggest stars of Hollywood’s Golden Era, and likely the quintessential Film Noir leading man (next to Edward G. Robinson of course), Humphrey Bogart grew up in a chaotic period of American history in an upper-middle-class family that had high expectations. He roamed from different career paths, most famously serving as a military seaman, where he reportedly got his trademark facial scar (although the exact story is debated).

Finally he found a hold in the New York theatre scene, where he made a splash and eventually got film and radio gigs, although, he wasn’t seen as leading man material. He was relegated to gangsters and psychos for the majority of the 30s during his contract with Warner Bros. But, a strange thing happened, while studio execs weren’t fond of him, critics and audiences wrote his praises, and an upcoming star suffering from hubris, George Raft (Scarface), accidentally paved Bogart’s trajectory; Raft turned down roles in “High Sierra” (1941) and “The Maltese Falcon” (1941). Bogart took on both roles, which made him one of the most exciting leading men on the Warner’s payroll.

Famed novelist Raymond Chandler said of Humphrey Bogart, “All he had to do to dominate a scene was to enter it.” And therein lies the pull, he was an odd-looking man, but the camera loved him, and he truly knew how to command it, as he rose from scene-stealing bit parts from the 1930s, to major marquee roles through the 40s, to a strong but brief stint in the 50s, before his untimely death from cancer in 1957.

Bogart was a true presence that could own any kind of role, although, his trademark rough-edged alpha persona is what he is best remembered for, in seismic films like “Casablanca”, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, “Key Largo”, “The Big Sleep”, “The African Queen” and “To Have and Have Not”. But, the man was able to play anything from comedy to romance, the milestones are so big that one forgets the rest, let’s explore some of those other hidden gems he turned in within his brief but legendary stint at the top…

1. Dead End (1937)

After finally making a sizeable impression on critics and audiences in “The Petrified Forest” (1936), Bogart had begun building some heat. This project was meant to be a launching pad for the Dead End Kids, and romantic leads Joel McCrea and Sylvia Sidney, unfortunately for them (but not for us), Bogart basically takes over the entire movie in a villain role.

Set over the course of a day in New York’s riverside slums that are becoming gentrified by the wealthy. We follow intersecting plot-lines, that of a group of dead-end kids (played by… well, the Dead End Kids), a failed architect (McCrea), and a romance with a neighbourhood girl (Sidney). Most fascinating, though, is the story featuring an infamous hood (Bogart), returning to the neighbourhood.

Whilst Bogart is the B-plot, similar to events in “The Petrified Forest”, his villain story manages to hijack proceedings, as his gangster goes through an arc of arrogant pride to bitter disappointment, expecting the red carpet to be rolled out on his return, instead he finds a mother who hates what he’s become, and attempts at rekindling a childhood love only lead to her squeezing him for cash. He spirals down a self-destructive path with it all paying off in a stunningly filmed finale.

The appeal of the film is certainly helped by the fact it was directed by William Wyler (Ben-Hur, The Desperate Hours) and shot by Greg Toland (Citizen Kane), visually it’s absolutely stunning, especially when the sun sets on the tenements, and the two of them paint the setting with light. The foot chase/shootout between Bogart and McCrea at the end, is inventive and enrapturing due to the creativity on display between the collaborators.

Whilst back in the day this was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, it’s forgotten in retrospect, likely due to Bogart not being the main star. Still, from his late 30s period, where he was building a rep as an enigmatic onscreen player, this is likely one of the best, next to better-known titles like “The Roaring Twenties” and the aforementioned “The Petrified Forest”.

2. Black Legion (1937)

Coming out the same year as “Dead End” is this impressive lead role for Bogart, a movie that dealt with an extremely hot potato subject for the time, based on real events. It’s an essential watch for his pre-stardom period.

Bogart plays an honest factory worker and family man in small-town America, who turns bitter due to being passed over for promotion by a Polish immigrant. He falls into the hands of the Black Legion, an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan, and he goes down a doom-laden path as they manipulate him in the worst way possible.

After years of playing wildcard supporting roles, this really was the first proper leading man role Bogart landed, and, not surprisingly, he’s captivating. We follow this earnest man, as he grows cynical and violent, turning his back on his family and friends, yet are able to sympathise and understand every dark step forward. Bogart’s power as a performer is on full display, while most of his popular peers leaned on theatrics and showmanship, he was able to deliver a performance that feels real and relatable, not shying away from the ugliness, while hammering home a tragic coda in the movie’s final scene. It’s baffling he didn’t get offers left and right after this movie, but he was also an actor ahead of his time, and that time needed to catch up.

Archie Mayo (The Petrified Forest) directs, and from all of Bogart’s repeat collaborators, he was the least interesting visually; however, he did know to simply point the camera at the actor and not let other things get in the way, essentially resulting in a showcase for his early acting.

Interestingly enough, Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, We’re No Angels) would do some secondary work on the film, making it the unofficial first, of eight, collaborations with the actor.

3. All Through the Night (1942)

By 1941, Bogart had enjoyed success with critics and the box office; however, Warners were still trying to figure out what to do with him. This led to him being cast in this absolutely baffling, bizarre, and incredibly fun comedy/thriller that saw the actor in a whole different gear than we’re used to (interesting note; this was yet another role George Raft had turned down).

Bogart plays a likeable racketeer and gang-boss, whose comfortable existence gets upended when his favourite baker ends up dead, and he isn’t willing to leave justice in the police’s hands. Over the course of one insane night, he gets dragged into a spiralling plot involving spies, femme fatales, foreign aristocrats, and even the Nazis themselves.

Directed by Vincent Sherman, after Bogart had an unpleasant experience of making “Return of Doctor X” (1939) with him (the only film Bogart played a horror movie monster), this collaboration, however, was an enjoyable experience for both, and the feeling is contagious from the jump. Despite the comedy trappings, Sherman shoots the film like an A-level mystery, with sharp lighting and strongly executed action scenes. The humour comes from off the page, the machine-gun dialogue delivery, the silly plot, and the ensemble cast who are fully in on the joke.

This casting of Bogart surprisingly isn’t a 180 shake-up, he’s essentially playing his trademark likeable rogue, yet in an altogether different type of film, and when he’s meant to be funny, he absolutely kills it (with a highlight scene having him winging German dialect when in an underground Nazi meeting). The ensemble is incredible too, with Maltese Falcon veteran Peter Lorre, and an early Jackie Gleason, amongst several others.

The film baffled audiences on release but got lost in the shuffle, not surprisingly, with it swinging from mystery thriller to comedy to spy action, yet it sticks the landing, and really holds up in modern eyes, with this likely the strongest recommendation on this list.

4. Sahara (1943)

At this point in time, WW2 was at full tilt, and Hollywood was doing their best to make morale-boosting pictures with their big stars like Gary Cooper and John Wayne. Bogart didn’t really fit that mould, but wanting a change of pace, took on that type of job, and surprisingly, fits the assignment like hand in glove.

Set in the North African desert, Bogart is a commander of a tank squad, as they retreat from a fierce defeat, and collect ragtag survivors on the way. Things suddenly turn into a determined mission to get to safety as they are pursued by a relentless battalion of Germans, not to mention the scorching heat, dwindling supplies, and lack of water.

Beautifully shot by Zoltan Korda (The Four Feathers), this is a stripped-down, stark, and sweaty war movie that has a strong ensemble cast bounce off each other as all the elements act against them. It’s tense, gripping, and at times, effectively emotional (Angelo D’Angelo’s final moments come to mind as powerfully heartbreaking).

The entire piece is anchored by Bogart, playing the tough but weary captain, a man who holds the responsibility of his entire squad on his shoulders, and the actor slips into the role-type with ease; his gruff persona and no-nonsense attitude seal the deal as a man of authority who hides internal conflict. While he did a few more frontline movies (Across the Pacific, Passage to Marseille), this was likely the best and well worth digging up, with strong action, beautiful black and white photography, and some effective emotional pathos.

5. Conflict (1945)

By the early 40s, Bogart was an in-demand leading man finally. With Warners he was contracted to do this stylish Noir, filmed in 1943 around when Casablanca released. Bogart personally hated the experience of filming, likely due to closely linked personal issues at the time, and the studio almost buried it. Luckily that didn’t happen, because it makes for a cracking and deliciously dark morality tale.

Bogart plays a weary husband in a toxic marriage; his wife (played by Rose Hobart) won’t let him divorce her, so he takes matters into his hands and shuffles her off this mortal coil, covering it up as a perfect crime. However, as time passes, he begins to be haunted by the possibility she lived, not to mention the relentless prying of Sydney Greenstreet’s canny investigator.

Bogart was going through an infamously messy divorce during filming, and frankly, this movie hit too close to home for him. Yet, this is what makes it fascinating, as it is likely one of his most personal, the bitter conflict between the married couple in the first act allows us to peer into his own experience. His hollowed-out husband is a husk of a man, bitter and morose, yet, as always, Bogart makes him fascinating to watch, as his world falls apart, and his cat-and-mouse scenes with regular collaborator Greenstreet are fiery and tense.

Curtis Bernhardt (Possessed) directs, and unlike several of his filmmaking countrymen, like Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak, who fled Germany for Hollywood pre-WW2, he didn’t hit the same level of success stateside. It’s a grand shame because he’s absolutely stunning behind the camera, the movie oozes tension and dread from the word go, with stunning camera moves and stylish lighting sparking off the screen, making for an involving underseen Noir thriller that needs more appreciation – even if the appreciation wasn’t shared by the star himself.

Paolo Sorrentino is one of the finest filmmakers working in cinema today. Wherever he points his camera, beauty flows; whether that be Rome, Naples, or even the Swiss Alps, Sorrentino infuses gorgeous visuals with fascinating characters—both real and fictional.

His films never run at breakneck speed, yet they always seem to be thrilling, and his latest release, La Grazia, captures his very best in a nutshell. Working once more with long-time collaborator Tony Servillo, Sorrentino returns to Rome for his latest work for the first time since 2013’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty. It’s proved one of the most fruitful partnerships in modern cinema, with the pair working together on seven films.

Sorrentino himself describes some of his films as experiments and concedes that they possibly might not be much more than that, looking back in the cold light of day. And of course, there are personal projects; 2021’s The Hand of God was a sentimental and partially autobiographical tale set in Naples, while his last film, 2024’s Parthenope, took an even more extravagant and exotic look at his home city. He has even dipped his toes successfully into television, with The Young Pope (2016) and The New Pope (2019).

In this list, we rank all eleven of his feature films, including his latest work.

11. This Must Be The Place (2011)

Sean Penn is almost unrecognizable as a retired rock star living in Dublin, still dressed in full goth makeup and black clothes decades after his fame faded. He wanders around shopping centers and talks to teenagers and hasn’t really done anything with himself in years. When his estranged father dies in New York, he travels to America and ends up taking on his father’s unfinished mission to track down a former Nazi war criminal who humiliated him in Auschwitz.

While it’s arguably Sorrentino’s least accomplished film, there’s still much to like about This Must Be The Place, not least Sean Penn’s extraordinary performance. Sorrentino builds the whole film around it, and the road trip across America that the film becomes is unlike anything we’ve seen from Sorrentino before or since.

The tonal shifts in the film are frequently absurd, and some of them work rather well, while some of them feel slightly askew. In the end, it’s an odd film even by Sorrentino’s standards, but there’s still more than enough in here to warrant your time.

10. One Man Up (2001)

Sorrentino’s debut feature holds the DNA of everything he’d go on to produce. It might come in fits and starts, and it’s far from a masterpiece, but it remains a hugely significant work. Starring Andrea Renzi and Tony Servillo as two men in Naples sharing the same name (Antonio Pisapia), One Man Up follows their two parallel stories. One is a fading pop star watching his career collapse (Renzi) while the other is a retired footballer (Servillo) haunted by a match-fixing scandal that ended his time in the game.

The two men are defined by what they used to be and are crushed by the gap between that and what they are now. Both performances are excellent, Servillo especially proving why he would go on to work several times with the director, and while the film doesn’t all hang together, this was very much a marker set down by Sorrentino.

9. Loro (2018)

Tony Servillo stars as Silvio Berlusconi in Sorrentino’s epic partial biopic of the Italian media tycoon and politician who served as the prime minister of Italy in three governments. It’s also a tale of young hustler Sergio Morra (Riccardo Scamarcio), who tries to work his way into Berlusconi’s inner circle by supplying him with girls and favors, hoping to trade this for real power.

It’s worth noting that Loro was originally released in Italy as two separate films, Loro 1 and Loro 2, before being edited into a single international cut of around two hours. Sadly, it shows, as Loro’s two-hour run time feels like it’s missing a lot—and perhaps more frustrating is the knowledge that a longer cut exists, somewhere.

But what we do get in Loro is a sensational performance from Servillo, who captures something far more than just an impression of the man. The first half of the film is the story of a young chancer, while the shift to Berlusconi in the second pulls the rug out from under the film completely—in both positive and negative ways.

Loro could have been a masterpiece, but ultimately, the decision to chop and change it makes it feel rushed and incomplete. In its full version, this might very well be much higher up this list.

8. The Family Friend (2006)

Geremia (Giacomo Rizzo) is a loan shark operating in a small southern Italian town. He’s old, physically repulsive, lives with his bedridden mother, and the entire community despises him while simultaneously depending on him for money. When a young bride-to-be named Rosalba (Laura Chiatti) comes to him for a loan to pay for her wedding, Geremia becomes obsessed with her.

With The Family Friend, Sorrentino manages to build an entire film around a man who is completely repellent yet successfully keeps you engaged for its duration. The power dynamics in place are something we’ve seen before from Sorrentino, but not this dark, and he never attempts to dismiss them as anything else. Spending time with such a character might well have been a tricky ask under another director, but not this one.

It’s not up there with his very best, but this is a very interesting piece of filmmaking from Sorrentino, and with it, you could see the potential of his finest work.

7. Parthenope (2024)

The tale of a young Neapolitan woman who traverses the trials and tribulations of womanhood amongst Naples’ most vibrant and bizarre characters, wowing everyone in her path with her own beauty—it certainly sounds like something from the Sorrentino stable.

Many accused Sorrentino of falling foul of self-parody and self-indulgence for this, his tenth full-length feature, and yet while Parthenope doesn’t reach the heights of his best, what it perhaps lacks in emotional pull, it makes up for in cinematic beauty.

In the end, backed up by a truly stunning final third, Sorrentino delivers his message that he has subtly been aiming for all along with Parthenope. Beauty is stunning and can propel your entire life if you so choose, but it can lead to a certain vacuousness. Intelligence and understanding, gained by the art of curiosity and learning, eventually drive Parthenope, both the character and Sorrentino’s truly beautiful film.

It’s a testament to his astonishing ability to fool you into thinking you’re simply in love with the visuals and that it’s all surface beauty—and before you know it, you’re completely invested in everything that’s going on.

The Cannes Film Festival is one of the most revered in cinema and undoubtedly one of the most notorious in terms of controversy and audience reaction. The history of the festival is littered with films that have produced twenty-minute standing ovations, as well as being held up in such a light that God himself could only wish for.

But of course, there’s the other end of that reaction spectrum, with titles being booed so aggressively that it genuinely becomes uncomfortable, or people either walking out or fainting due to the extreme nature of what’s unfurling in front of them. Gaspar Noé, I’m looking at you.

It’s a festival that even seems to bring out the very worst in film’s most respected critics. Just think of British critic Mark Kermode, for example, who was so disgusted by Lars von Trier’s The Idiots (1998) that he stood up and shouted, “Il est merde!” before being removed from the screening.

This is a festival that seems to be different from any other, for a whole range of reasons. In this list, we take a look at ten of the most controversial films ever to screen at Cannes.

1. La Dolce Vita (1960)

Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece, following gossip journalist Marcello Rubini over seven days and nights in Rome drifting through the city’s decadent society, caused an uproar before it even got to Cannes. When it premiered in Italy, audiences spat on Fellini in the street, while the Vatican condemned it. Italians saw it as a direct attack on their capital as well as the Catholic Church, and the director was accused of dragging the countries reputation through the gutter for wider audiences.

At Cannes, it won the Palme d’Or, but back in Italy this only made things far worse. The jury at Cannes was divided with some feeling that the film was far too long and episodic whilst others were bowled over by Fellini’s masterful eye behind the camera. So, while it caused some unhappiness at Cannes, no film has arguably come into the festival being so hated by the very country it came from.

Now of course, it’s seen as one of Fellini’s greatest works, but at the time it caused all sorts of bother.

2. Wild at Heart (1990)

Despite the studio mess of Dune (1984), Lynch had already proved his worth with Eraserhead (1977) and The Elephant Man (1980) before taking on Frank Herbert’s novel. After the mess of Dune, Lynch went back to doing what he did best, giving us the 1986 masterpiece Blue Velvet before venturing into the world of Twin Peaks. As the second season descended into chaos with more studio tampering, Lynch spent less time on set and more time working on Wild at Heart, which was in competition at Cannes.

Despite the film’s self-aware nature (and the fact that it’s a terrific film), when it was announced as the Palme d’Or winner, there was uproar. The decision was met with a mix of cheers and loud, sustained booing, with a significant number of critics feeling it was one of Lynch’s lesser works, gratuitously violent and sexually extreme without the depth of his previous work.

It remains one of the most divisive winners of all time, and even though it’s admittedly violent, looking back, it does seem odd that the fourth film by Lynch was the one that caused this much controversy. It’s far from the most gratuitous film to play at Cannes and is a far better Lynch film than it’s perhaps given credit for.

3. Crash (1996)

David Cronenberg’s Crash is a film whose reception at Cannes is a far more understandable one than that of Wild at Heart. Adapted from J.G. Ballard’s astonishing novel, the film tells the tale of a film producer who becomes drawn into an underground subculture of people who are sexually aroused by car crashes.

Francis Ford Coppola presided over the jury at Cannes and awarded Crash a Special Jury Prize, but reportedly only after a heated battle, with some jurors pushing hard for the Palme d’Or and others wanting it nowhere near the prizes. It’s hardly surprising that the film was met with a chorus of boos at the climax of the screening, with critics being divided straight down the middle. Some thought it was genuinely an interesting and original cinematic work, while others accused it of simply being pornography dressed up as art.

The storm didn’t finish at Cannes, with Westminster Council in the UK banning it outright, meaning it could not be shown in any cinema in the West End—even though they had earlier given special permission for the film’s premiere. The press had a field day with all of it, cementing its reputation as a film you simply had to see. It remains one of Cronenberg’s best films, heightened by the reputation it was given at Cannes.

4. Funny Games (1997)

Michael Haneke’s Funny Games is a nasty piece of work. Whether it’s any good or not is up for debate, although there’s no doubting whatsoever that it’s successful in what it sets out to do. Almost the entire film is set in a holiday home in which an Austrian family arrive for a relaxing break. Two polite young men in white gloves turn up at the door asking to borrow some eggs, and what follows is psychological and physical torture of a hideous nature for the film’s duration.

Haneke repeatedly makes the characters break the fourth wall, essentially asking the audience why they’re still watching, and the whole thing is impressively provocative and deeply disturbing. At Cannes, the result was mass walkouts with people visibly shaken and very angry. The film is designed to gain such a reaction, a finger pointed at audiences who consume screen violence as entertainment.

What made people so upset was the total lack of empathy or reason behind what they were watching, a problem that was echoed by some critics. But there were plenty that championed it as a masterpiece in confrontational cinema, and it continues to split opinion today. Just don’t bother with the remake.

5. Irréversible (2002)

Arguably the most controversial on this entire list, Gaspar Noé’s shocking yet brilliant 2002 film opens with one of the most violent scenes ever put to film, as a man has his head caved in with a fire extinguisher; even more incredible, as it’s shot in a way that makes it look like there are no cuts. The film is shot in reverse, and we learn that this horrifying beginning comes full circle from the appalling attack that we eventually see towards the film’s ending. That nine-minute extended assault in an underpass is even more horrendous.

But the gimmick of the film’s structure is what makes it work because it changes how the film makes you feel about what’s unfurling. But at Cannes, legend claims that over 200 people walked out during the premiere and several audience members needed medical attention. Critics were split between those who thought it was a masterpiece and those who thought it was simply beyond the pale. In the UK, it’s a film that is one of the very few to ever receive an ‘Extremely Strong’ rating for its violence from the British Board of Film Classification.

Over twenty years on the film has lost none of its infamy, with the film continuing to divide audiences and critics. Noé is a filmmaker who knows how to provoke, but there’s no doubting he can also create cinema of the highest quality. Whether you think Irréversible is good or not is very much down to personal opinion.