YNOT at the Movies

What if the fate of the free world came down not to a general, a battle plan, or a bomb, but to a weather forecast?

"Pressure" (UK/France/USA 2026 | 100 min.), directed with extraordinary precision and urgency by Anthony Maras, could not be better timed to open around Memorial Day and the anniversary of D-day. This gripping World War II thriller offers audiences something rare: a chance to honor heroes whose names history never quite got around to celebrating.

It has been over 82 years since the Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, and yet here is a story from those same consequential days that most of us have never heard. That is, frankly, a regret that this film corrects beautifully.

The film follows the tense 72 hours leading up to D-Day, centering on the collision of two forceful minds: James Stagg (Andrew Scott), a brilliant and stubbornly principled Scottish meteorologist, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser), the supreme Allied commander carrying the weight of the entire free world on his shoulders.

With Operation Overlord hanging in the balance, Stagg must convince Eisenhower and his skeptical high command to delay the largest seaborne invasion in history, based on a weather forecast that contradicts the far sunnier predictions of the General's trusted consultant, Irving P. Krick (Chris Messina). Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon), Eisenhower's sharp and indispensable aide, serves as the human bridge between the General's private doubts and his public authority. Meanwhile, the imperious Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (Damian Lewis) pushes and prods from every angle. The result is a pressure cooker of a film where the stakes could not possibly be higher, and where the weapon of choice is data, not firepower.

Who knew a weatherman could save the world? That is the astonishing revelation at the heart of this movie, and it is delivered with a storytelling confidence that makes the film feel both intimate and enormous. There are no machine guns in the war room. There are teleprinters and weather charts, and two men who cannot afford to be wrong. The drama builds with the slow, gathering force of the very storm systems Stagg is trying to predict, and by the time the film reaches its climax, audiences will find themselves as breathless as if they had been watching a full-scale battle sequence.

Andrew Scott delivers a performance of remarkable depth and restraint as James Stagg. He plays the man as prickly, demanding, and difficult, someone not immediately easy to love, yet utterly impossible to look away from. Scott makes you feel the particular agony of a man who knows he is right and must somehow make powerful, impatient men believe it before time runs out. It is a mesmerizing portrait of scientific conviction under fire, and one of the finest performances of his already stellar career.

Brendan Fraser is equally commanding as Eisenhower, bringing unexpected warmth and vulnerability to a figure we often think we know. Fraser's Ike is not a marble monument but a flesh-and-blood leader wrestling privately with the terrifying burden of command, a man who has already written his letter accepting personal blame if the invasion fails. It is a performance of enormous humanity. Kerry Condon brings her trademark intelligence and steely composure to Kay Summersby, and Damian Lewis is deliciously combustible as Montgomery, a man who seems to relish every argument he starts.

"Pressure" is captivating and engaging from its first frame to its last, a film that never loses its grip even as it tells a story built almost entirely from argument, data, and the courage to hold firm. It is a reminder that heroism takes many forms, and that sometimes the bravest thing a person can do is stand in a room full of generals and say: not yet, the weather is not right. On this Memorial Day, give James Stagg the recognition he deserved all along. This is the film that makes sure you never forget him.

"Pressure" opens in theaters on Friday, May 29, 2026.

There is a specific kind of dread that doesn't announce itself with a jump scare or a shriek. It creeps in quietly, the way a fluorescent light buzzes just a little too loudly in an empty hallway, the way a room feels familiar and deeply wrong at the same time. "Backrooms" (USA 2026 | 110 min.), the extraordinary feature debut from 20-year-old visionary Kane Parsons, is that kind of horror. It is mysterious, arresting, and mind-boggling all at once, and its set pieces could easily be mistaken for exhibitions at a modern art museum.

Set in 1990 in the Silicon Valley suburbs, the film centers on Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture salesman drowning in mass-produced recliners and liquidation clearance signs at his pirate-themed store, quietly falling apart from a failed marriage, a failing business, and vanished architectural dreams. He attends therapy with Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), a self-help author who urges her patients to break the cycles keeping them trapped, all while being unable to break her own.

One night, flickering lights lead Clark into the basement of his showroom, where he discovers something that should not exist: a doorway opening into an infinite, labyrinthine expanse of office rooms and corridors. The Backrooms. He enlists his skeptical employee Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett) to help map this impossibly constructed space. When Clark disappears inside it, Dr. Kline crosses every professional boundary she has and follows him in, confronting her own deeply buried childhood memories along the way.

What director Kane Parsons has achieved here is something genuinely rare in modern horror: a film that uses its surreal and intriguing surroundings to scare you, leaning far less on the tired mechanics of the genre than most. While there are a handful of jump scares, they feel earned rather than cheap, deployed sparingly against a backdrop of sustained, creeping unease that does the heavier lifting.

The horror lives in the drop ceiling, in the yellowing wallpaper that shifts patterns for reasons that don't quite add up, in the stop sign inside the Backrooms that reads in reverse, as if its emergence there has been lost in translation. It is like being inside a Dalí painting—you look at some detail and see a distorted image staring back at you.

The film doesn't fully explain everything, as if you are in a dream that cannot be fully figured out no matter how hard you analyze it, but its disturbing power lingers long after you wake up.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is extraordinary, portraying what could have been a purely conceptual film with human feeling. His Clark is not simply a victim. He is a man who finds something darkly comforting in the Backrooms, who lets this strange infinite space mirror his fractured psychology back at him. Renate Reinsve, fresh off her Academy Award-nominated turn in "Sentimental Value" (2025) is equally compelling. She plays a therapist who cannot heal herself, a woman watching her childhood home demolished to make way for suburban development. Her descent into the Backrooms carries the weight of genuine psychological collapse.

The technical achievement is staggering for a debut. Production designer Danny Vermette constructed 30,000 square feet of Backrooms across four soundstages, and the space doesn't just sprawl outward horizontally into an oppressive, maze-like infinity, it also reaches vertiginously upward, with one centerpiece set appearing to stretch 40 stories high, lined with M.C. Escher-like stairs leading nowhere. Anyone with even a passing fear of heights will find themselves gripping their armrest. Cinematographer Jeremy Cox shoots with a wide-angled scope that makes every human figure look small and swallowed, emphasizing the crushing spatial relationship between the characters and the indifferent architecture surrounding them.

This is not a film that wants to explain itself. It wants to get under your skin, rearrange something in your brain, and leave you checking the corners of ordinary rooms a little more carefully than you used to. It is scary, it is beautiful, and it announces Kane Parsons as one of the most distinctively unsettling new voices in horror cinema today.

"Backrooms" opens in theaters on Friday, May 29, 2026.

Few films this year will make you feel as much through your ears as through your eyes. Director Daniel Roher's narrative feature debut "Tuner" (Canada/USA 2025 | 109 min.) is captivating and terrifically made, and in a proper Dolby house it is one of the most immersive sensory experiences cinema has offered in recent memory.

Niki White (Leo Woodall) is a gifted piano tuner with hyperacusis, a painful disorder that makes him acutely sensitive to sound. As he crisscrosses New York City with his blunt and charismatic mentor Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), he meets Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a driven composition student who challenges his musical and moral compass. When security contractor Uri (Lior Raz) discovers that Niki's hypersensitive hearing is worth more for cracking safes than tuning Steinways, he offers a risky opportunity to Niki that could help Harry and his devoted wife Marla (Tovah Feldshuh) manage a mounting medical crisis.

Academy Award-winning sound designer Johnnie Burn has placed us entirely inside Niki's perception, where every creak, overtone and held breath carries psychological weight. When Niki snaps at a client mid-session, "Now shut the fuck up, so I can get back to work," it lands as the film's thesis in miniature: sharp, a little funny, and rooted in the particular loneliness of someone who hears everything. The sound design does not just accompany the story. It is the story. It's a film that doesn't just ask you to watch — it asks you to listen.

Leo Woodall is absolutely stunning. His charming yet unassuming presence makes Niki immediately likable, but he goes far beyond likability. He masterfully builds a character full of heart and genuine emotion, someone flawed and real that you root for even as he makes questionable choices.

His commitment extends to the piano itself: he learned a three-minute piece from scratch and is entirely convincing as a man for whom music is both vocation and wound. Niki is more fully convincing as a pianist than Ruthie is as a composer. When Niki disappears entirely into the world of sound, Ruthie occasionally feels a step removed from the world of music.

Leo Woodall already established himself in "Nuremberg" (2025) for what he is capable of: in a film packed with seasoned veterans, he is able to be the only truly mesmerizing presence on screen. He confirms what that performance first suggested. He is one of the most exciting rising stars to watch in the years ahead.

The film weaves heist mechanics into a story that is, at its core, about identity and loss. There are moments of genuine, unexpected emotion in what is also a propulsive, montage-driven thriller with a real comedic backbeat. There is one plot point involving a watch that feels slightly too convenient for where the story needs to go, but the acting and character work are strong enough that the contrivance dissolves quickly.

This is a heist film with a soul, a romance with real stakes, and one of the best sound experiences you will have in a cinema this year.

"Tuner" opens in the San Francisco Bay Area theaters on Friday, May 29, 2026.

After multiple Emmy-winning seasons on Disney+, Din Djarin and Grogu finally make the leap to the big screen in "Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu" (USA 2026 | 132 min.), directed by Jon Favreau and filmed for IMAX. It is a move that feels both inevitable and overdue, bringing the beloved duo out of the living room and into the theatrical space where Star Wars was born. The question is whether the transition earns that upgrade. The answer, more often than not, is that it falls short.

For the uninitiated, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his adopted son and young apprentice Grogu are bounty hunters working for the fledgling New Republic, in the era after the Empire's fall. When the battle-hardened Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver) recruits them for a dangerous mission targeting Imperial remnants, the pair are thrust into new worlds and new threats. Along the way they cross paths with Rotta the Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), a massive blubbery creature that looks strikingly like an oversized seal.

The production design is ambitious, with sets like the Chicago-inspired Shakari and the swamp planet Nal Hutta built at warehouse scale. But compared to the grandeur and genuine awe of earlier Star Wars films, this one rarely lands the kind of images that burn themselves into memory. The IMAX frame is filled, but not always with something worth the size. And for a universe supposedly set in the future, the technology looks oddly dated. Real-world robotics have evolved dramatically in recent years, yet the droids here carry the clunky retro charm of something assembled in the 1950s, still bristling with big, square, chunky buttons that would look at home on a Cold War-era control panel.

The deeper problem is human connection, or the lack of it. Nearly every significant character is either hidden behind a helmet, buried under layers of CGI, or both. Pedro Pascal removes his helmet in only a handful of scenes, leaving the Mandalorian's emotional presence to be carried mostly by voice and firepower. For the bulk of the runtime, the character functions less like a flesh-and-blood hero and more like a video game avatar completing objectives. The supporting cast fares little better, with most creatures and figures existing at a digital remove that keeps the audience at arm's length throughout.

Grogu remains the exception. Brought to life by a team of over 30 servo-driven operators, the little guy steals every scene he inhabits through sheer expressiveness, a twitch of the ear here, a wide-eyed blink there. He is the film's only genuinely felt presence. A brief encounter with a food stand cook, voiced by the legendary Martin Scorsese, also manages to generate more humanity in two minutes than most of the action sequences do across the entire runtime.

Three time Academy Award winner Ludwig Göransson's score, performed by a 106-piece orchestra and 64-person choir, does its best to fill the emotional gaps the visuals leave behind. It is the most fully realized element of the film, and sometimes the only thing making a scene feel like it matters.

As a television episode stretched to feature length, the film would feel adequate. As a theatrical Star Wars event meant to justify the price of an IMAX ticket, it falls short. The craft is undeniable, but craft alone does not make a great film. The force, this time, is only mildly with it.

"Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu" opens in theaters on Friday, May 22, 2026.

Let's start with the title, shall we? "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War" (USA 2026 | 105 min.). Three proper nouns, a possessive, and a colon, all to let you know, in no uncertain terms, that this film considers itself very important. The brandishing of Tom Clancy's name up front feels less like a tribute and more like a desperate plea for credibility, as if the movie already knows it can't earn any on its own merits.

And it can't.

What unfolds over the next however-many-minutes is a breathless, chaotic scramble that somehow manages to be both relentlessly busy and profoundly boring. Jack Ryan (John Krasinski, doing his best with very little) is pulled, reluctantly of course, back into the spy game to chase down a rogue black-ops unit tangled up in some deadly conspiracy. Or something like that. The film's story is so muddled that keeping track of who is hunting whom, and more importantly *why*, quickly becomes a fool's errand. Characters are either running toward things or away from things, and the movie seems largely indifferent to explaining the difference.

Reunited with CIA operative Mike November (Michael Kelly) and former CIA boss James Greer (Wendell Pierce), the team at least has a certain lived-in chemistry. Add MI6 officer Emma Marlowe (Sienna Miller, sharp and underused) and you have a capable cast with an incapable script. When the guns aren't firing, the characters are talking at length, with great urgency, about almost nothing. Dialogue that sounds like it means something rarely does, and by the third act you may find yourself unable to recall a single line worth remembering.

The action, such as it is, follows a well-worn playbook: relocate the characters to an exotic locale (Dubai and London this time), then fill the runtime with gunfights and car chases assembled with kinetic editing that prioritizes noise over clarity. It's a formula that worked twenty years ago in franchises that at least pretended to have something to say. Here it feels like set dressing, expensive wallpaper.

What makes the theatrical experience especially puzzling is the press screening at the Regal Stonestown Galleria. The theater has a perfectly capable sound system, yet the presentation ran with only the front speakers engaged, giving this globe-trotting action film the audio signature of something you'd half-watch on a tablet while doing laundry. If the studio intended this movie as premium streaming content dressed up for cinemas, the mission was unfortunately accomplished.

By the time the credits roll, the question lingers not as dramatic irony but as genuine bewilderment: what was all of this for? The conspiracy is resolved, the bad guys are presumably stopped, and yet the film leaves no impression, no resonance, no reason to have existed. This is less a movie than a content delivery mechanism, and even on those terms, it falls short.

Tom Clancy's estate deserves better. So do you.

"Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War" starts streaming on Wednesday, May 20, 2026.

There's a special kind of horror movie that doesn't need ghosts or slashers, just the creeping, sickening sensation of watching a human being spiral. "Obsession" (USA 2026 | 108 min.), the latest feature from writer-director Curry Barker, is exactly that kind of film, and it is deeply, relentlessly effective at making you uncomfortable in the best and worst possible ways.

Bear (Michael Johnston) is a hopeless romantic who uses a mysterious novelty item called the One Wish Willow to make his longtime crush Nikki (Inde Navarrette) fall in love with him. The wish works. Terrifyingly well. What follows is something bizarre and escalating, as Nikki's devotion curdles into dangerous obsession, and Bear finds himself increasingly unable to undo what he has set in motion, all while hiding the truth from friends Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sara (Megan Lawless).

The characters sink into deeper and deeper mental states as the film progresses, and Barker has a rare gift for pacing that descent. Just when you think you've found the floor, the story drops another level. Navarrette is a force, raw, committed, and at times frightening in her intensity, and Johnston matches her well, playing a protagonist who is sympathetic enough to follow but morally compromised enough to make you squirm. The film is smart in that way. It never quite lets you off the hook.

Barker's direction leans heavily on long takes and tight framing, a style that mirrors the claustrophobia of the story itself. You can barely look at the screen sometimes, and that is largely his doing. The world of the film feels physically inescapable, the production design favoring overstuffed, suffocating spaces that externalize what is happening inside the characters. It is filmmaking that understands how the environment shapes dread.

The blood and gore, when it comes, is hard to watch. This is not a film for the faint of heart, and Barker doesn't soften his punches. By the third act you will find yourself desperately wanting to escape these characters and their world, wanting it all to stop, and that is precisely the point. That discomfort is the film working exactly as intended.

The film occasionally struggles to balance its tonal ambitions, part dark romantic comedy, part visceral horror, and some supporting beats feel underdeveloped. None of that, however, takes away from what Barker is building here. This is not for everyone, but for horror fans who are willing to let it crawl under their skin, it offers something rare.

"Obsession" opens in theaters on Friday, May 15, 2026.

Who knew sheep could be more capable detectives than a trained police officer? It turns out they can, and quite convincingly at that. "The Sheep Detectives" (Ireland/UK/Germany/USA 2026 | 109 min.) is a warmhearted, witty romp that never pretends to be anything more than what it is. And for the most part, that's perfectly fine.

The story follows a flock of sheep who, after years of their shepherd reading them detective novels each night, have secretly developed the ability to solve mysteries among themselves. When their beloved owner George Hardy (Hugh Jackman) is found dead one morning, the flock takes matters into their own hooves.

On the human side, an ambitious young reporter Elliot Matthews (Nicholas Galitzine) abandons his assignment covering a local cultural festival to chase the murder story, while the awkward Officer Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun) stumbles through the official investigation.

The arrival of Rebecca Hampstead (Molly Gordon), George's previously unknown daughter, immediately raises suspicions, as does the sharp-tongued lawyer Lydia Harbottle (Emma Thompson), who sweeps into the village in a Mercedes-Benz to read George's will and ends up far more entangled in the mystery than she expected.

Lurking in the background are the village butcher Ham Gilyard (Conleth Hill), who makes no secret of wanting the sheep for himself, the neighboring shepherd Caleb Merrow (Tosin Cole), with whom George had an unresolved quarrel before his death, and Beth Pennock (Hong Chau), who is secretly in love with George. It's a classic whodunit setup, and the film leans into it with genuine affection for the genre.

The sheep themselves are the undisputed stars. Brought to life through photorealistic CGI by a London-based visual effects studio specializing in computer-generated characters, they're undeniably cute and fluffy, with advanced body simulation tools used to capture the natural movement and texture of real sheep. The voice cast makes them even more compelling. Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the self-described smartest sheep in the flock, leads the investigation with sharp intelligence and warmth, while Sebastian (voiced by Bryan Cranston), the brooding loner sheep , provides a sidekick. Sir Ritchfield (voiced by Patrick Stewart), the elder statesman of the flock , delivers his lines with magnificent pomposity, and Ronnie and Reggie (both voiced by Brett Goldstein), the rowdy sheep brothers, steal every scene they share with rapid-fire bickering.

Nicholas Braun is a comic highlight as the hapless Officer Derry, and Emma Thompson brings an effortless authority that elevates every scene she's in. Hugh Jackman, by contrast, has comparatively little to do, the unfortunate consequence of playing the murder victim. He's warm and charming in his limited screen time, but George exists primarily to be mourned and investigated rather than truly known.

Director Kyle Balda, whose previous work was entirely in animation including "Minions" (2015, makes his live-action directorial debut here, and handles the transition with confidence. The Oxfordshire setting is picturesque without being distracting, and crucially for younger viewers, the accents never veer into incomprehensible British thicket territory.

This film is unambiguously aimed at school-age children, and on that front it largely delivers. It's an entertaining popcorn movie, the kind you happily sit through with a kid on a weekend afternoon, occasionally laughing louder than they do.

"The Sheep Detectives" opens in theaters on Friday, May 8, 2026.

After watching "Deep Water" (Spain/New Zealand/USA/China 2026 | 110 min.), you might think twice before boarding an airplane, and that is precisely the kind of unease a disaster film should leave behind. Renny Harlin, the director who gave us "Die Hard 2" (1990) and "Deep Blue Sea" (1999), knows this genre very well, and the film's airplane crash sequence is among the more viscerally effective set pieces he has staged in recent years. The cabin buckles, the ocean rushes up to meet the fuselage, and for a breathless stretch of minutes, the chaos feels convincing enough. Practical stunts lend the sequence a tactile credibility that the rest of the film, unfortunately, does not always sustain.

Ben (Aaron Eckhart) is a first officer on an LA-to-Shanghai flight with its captain Rich (Ben Kingsley). When a fire tears through the aircraft, the plane plunges into the ocean. Besides Ben, the survivors clinging to the wreckage include the captain of a Chinese sport team Sheng (Li Wenhan) and his teammate Lilly (Rosie Zhao) who has a crush on him, the insufferable fellow passenger Dan (Angus Sampson), and a mix of others simply trying to stay afloat long enough to be rescued. The wait, however, proves far more dangerous than anyone anticipated, as Mako sharks begin to circle, and it ultimately takes a passing Chinese fishing boat to bring the ordeal to a close.

Once the fuselage settles on the surface, the film pivots into a second chapter of aquatic survival that is effective in bursts but uneven in execution. The choice of Mako sharks over the more familiar great white is a smart one on paper: Makos are faster, more aggressive, and sport a particularly nightmarish tangle of hooked teeth. In practice, the sharks are largely CGI, and while the jump scares land with reasonable, gruesome reliability, the computer-generated creatures never quite shake the artificiality that keeps the tension from fully boiling over. The sound design does much of the heavy lifting, giving each attack a percussive physicality the visuals cannot always match.

Where the film falls short is in the quieter stretches between attacks, where Deep Water reaches, with mixed results, for the emotional depth of the 1970s disaster films that clearly inspired it. None of the characters leave a strong impression. Aaron Eckhart leads the film with a steady enough presence, but the script gives him nowhere interesting to go. Ben Kingsley, an Academy Award winner capable of commanding a scene with very little, is frustratingly underused. And Dan (Angus Sampson), a passenger whose naked selfishness makes him the most grating figure in the water, exists more as an irritant than a dramatic counterweight. The ensemble floats, but it never truly connects.

This is emphatically not Jaws (1975). It does not have that film's patience, wit, or understanding of how dread is built slowly and then released all at once. Composer Fernando Velázquez wisely avoids chasing John Williams' immortal shadow, but the score, like much of the film, is competent rather than memorable. The human drama never lands with the force it needs to, and what the screenplay gestures toward as character depth is little more than a surface ripple.

This is a passable genre exercise from a director who has made better films and who is clearly capable of more. It delivers on the crash and the creatures, which is more than some shark thrillers manage, but it leaves its talented cast and its more ambitious ideas stranded somewhere between spectacle and substance, never quite rescuing either. Watchable, occasionally gripping, and ultimately forgettable, it is the cinematic equivalent of surviving a wreck only to tread water for the remainder.

"Deep Water" opens in theaters on Friday, May 1, 2026.

Twenty years is a long time to wait for a sequel, but "The Devil Wears Prada 2" (USA 2026 | 119 min.) earns every one of those years. Returning director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna have crafted something that feels less like a cash-grab and more like a genuine, considered continuation: sharper and punchier than you might expect, and consistently, delightfully witty. If it lacks some of the cold, delicious cruelty that made the original such a phenomenon, perhaps that is simply what twenty years does to people. Life softens some edges, hardens others, and these characters have lived.

The film reunites the original cast as Runway Magazine faces an existential threat from a crumbling print media landscape. Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) finds herself presiding over a legacy empire with an earthquake beneath her feet, while Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), twenty years after throwing her phone into a fountain and walked away from Runway, is pulled back into this glamorous, treacherous world. Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) has landed a senior position at Dior with all the power she always craved, and Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) is still plugging away in an industry that has transformed beyond recognition around him.

Meryl Streep navigates Miranda's evolution with breathtaking precision, finding new vulnerability in the character without sacrificing an ounce of her formidable armor. Anne Hathaway's Andy returns as a woman who chose integrity over ambition and has no regrets: professionally confident, clear-eyed about who she is, and still the most relatable person in any room she walks into. Emily Blunt is an absolute riot, completely unhinged in the best possible way, while Tucci grounds every scene he is in with a dry, lived-in ease that feels utterly effortless.

What truly elevates the film is how seamlessly the new additions slot into the ensemble. Amari (Simone Ashley) is less cowering supplicant and more Miranda-in-training: a razor-focused assistant who has absorbed both the best and worst of her boss, which makes her both formidable and unsettling to watch. Charlie (Caleb Hearon) is the wide-eyed newcomer who clearly grew up reading Runway under his bedcovers and still cannot quite believe he is there. Jin (Helen J. Shen) is all coiled ambition beneath a thrift-store aesthetic, angling to prove herself in a magazine world that is running out of time.

What is particularly remarkable is how the film handles its newer power players: none of them dominate the screen, and yet not one of them feels like a prop. Stuart (Kenneth Branagh) is a composer and violinist who owes Miranda a personal debt and is, unusually for the men in her orbit, not afraid of her, and every moment he is on screen carries a distinct, considered presence. Jay (B.J. Novak) turns up in expensive synthetic activewear as the kind of tech entrepreneur who thinks of himself as perpetually modern and perpetually on the move.

The film's sense of occasion is significantly bolstered by a parade of real-life fashion luminaries and musicians, including a memorable appearance from Lady Gaga, lending scenes set in the world of high fashion an authenticity that no amount of set dressing alone could achieve.

When the film moves to Milan for its spectacular second half, it fully ignites. The Runway fashion show, staged at the grand Accademia di Brera, is a genuine showstopper: a feast of Italian couture from the likes of Prada, Fendi and Dolce & Gabbana, set to the pulse of Madonna's Vogue, which floods the sequence with an electric, euphoric energy that will have audiences grinning from ear to ear.

And then there are the clothes beyond the runway itself. Costume designer Molly Rogers has outdone herself here. With Andy alone logging upwards of 47 outfit changes, the wardrobe is a film unto itself: archival Jean Paul Gaultier, Armani Privé, Dolce & Gabbana, a one-of-a-kind Balenciaga ballgown for Streep, and an inspired "feminine menswear" throughline for Andy that perfectly captures who she has become. This is costume design as pure storytelling, and an Academy Award nomination next year would be thoroughly deserved.

This sequel justifies its own existence, not by repeating the past but by reflecting honestly on it. It may not be quite as deliciously mean as the original, but it is sharp, wise, and arguably emotionally satisfying. Go see it on the biggest screen you can find.

"The Devil Wears Prada 2" opens in theaters on Friday, May 1, 2026.

He moonwalked his way into history, and now he moonwalks his way onto the big screen, though this time, the moves are safer than ever.

"Michael" (USA 2026 | 127 min.) is a cinematic portrayal of one of the most influential artists the world has ever known, tracing his extraordinary journey from a young boy discovering his gift as the lead of the Jackson Five to his ascent as the biggest entertainer on the planet.

The film follows Michael (Jaafar Jackson) from his childhood under the iron grip of his domineering father Joe (Colman Domingo), through his breakout years with his brothers, and into his explosive solo career, highlighting both the iconic performances that defined an era and the personal cost of a life lived entirely in the spotlight.

But a spectacle is largely what remains. The film chronicles that rise while completely scrubbing away the sexual assault allegations that have shadowed Jackson's legacy for decades—not a whisper, not an acknowledgment, not even a fleeting shadow of doubt. That calculated omission transforms what could have been a genuinely complex portrait into a sanitized celebration that prioritizes tribute over truth.

This is a film made for the faithful, not the curious. And in that sense, it carries a quiet irony: it cannot escape the controlling hands behind it, suffering the same fate it depicts young Michael escaping from his father, never quite free enough to become the bold, searching work its subject deserved.

Jaafar Jackson is a remarkable physical presence and bears an almost uncanny resemblance to his uncle, but too often we seem to be watching a gifted impersonator rather than a fully inhabited human being.

Colman Domingo, a formidable talent, plays Joe as a controlling and greedy patriarch, yet the character stays frustratingly on the surface. We never truly understand what drove him beyond naked ambition, and the film offers little psychological depth to make him a villain worth grappling with. The rest of the supporting cast is given even less to work with, drifting in and out without leaving much of an impression.

When the music plays and the choreography ignites, the film earns its keep. The recreations of iconic performances carry genuine electricity, and hearing some of the greatest hits in a theater is its own reward. But when the curtain falls, we realize we have learned very little about the man himself.

This film is not a biopic so much as a nostalgic rerun, a greatest hits package dressed up in cinematic form. For fans wanting to relive the magic, it delivers. For anyone hoping to understand what lay beneath it, it keeps that door firmly shut.

"Michael" opens in theaters on Friday, April 24, 2026.