My Most Anticipated Films of 2026 Part II

Continuing from my previous anticipated films post, this installment covers the smaller indie and foreign films, and a couple of titles from the streamers that may end up falling through the cracks.  

There is a lot that I didn't have room for.  We have new movies coming from Lee Chang Dong, Terrence Malick, Werner Herzog, Andrew Haigh, Agnieszka Smoczynska, Jane Schoenbrun, and many more.  As always, release dates are difficult to pin down this far in advance, and some of these films may not make it to theaters until 2027 or later.  "Klara and the Sun" and "The Bride!" were on last year's list.

The History of Concrete - This one just premiered at Sundance.  I've missed the documentary series "How to With John Wilson," and I'm looking forward to Wilson's latest feature project, which is definitely going to be about concrete, but is probably also going to include some of those wild tangents that the filmmaker is famous for.  Apparently Wilson arrived at this subject after failing to write a Hallmark movie.

 

I Love Boosters - I love that Boots Riley keeps making these wild, wonderful movies that don't look like what anybody else is doing.  In "I Love Boosters," it's a crew of shoplifters against a "fashion maven," with Keke Palmer in the lead role.  It's being classified as a "sci fi comedy," so I expect a few twists and turns.  "I Love Boosters" is set to premiere at SXSW, so we should see it sometime late in the year.

Wild Horse Nine - Martin McDonagh is reteaming with Sam Rockwell involving CIA agent shenanigans on Easter Island/Rapa Nui in the '70s.  John Malkovitch, Parker Posey, Steve Buscemi, and Tom Waits are also reportedly involved.  McDonagh is hit or miss for me, but his hits are some of my favorite films of the past decade.  And the last time he made a movie set on an island, we got "Banshees of Inisherin."

Tony - Matt Johnson, who made "Blackberry," is helming the Anthony Bourdain biopic with Dominic Sessa as Bourdain and Emilia Jones playing his love interest.  I'm not a foodie or an Anthony Bourdain fan, but I'm definitely on board with another biopic from Johnson, who made "Blackberry" into one of the best tech industry tell-alls, and gave his cast a chance to give some very memorable performances.  

Hope - Several directors are making their English language debuts this year, including Cristian Mungiu and Na Hong Jin.  I'm keeping an eye on Na Hong Jin's latest thriller in particular because it's going to include several international actors in the cast, including Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander.  This is expected to be another supernatural thriller, hopefully not one as soul-destroying as "The Wailing."  

The Uprising - An all star cast will appear in Paul Greengrass's dramatization of the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381, including Andrew Garfield, Thomasin McKenzie, Katherine Waterston, Tom Hollander, Stephen Dillane, Jonny Lee Miller, Jamie Bell and Cosmo Jarvis.  This one's gone through a lot of cast changes and a lot of title changes over the years, and I'm excited to see it reach screens at last.

Artificial  - And speaking of Andrew Garfield, Luca Guadagnino is making a Sam Altman movie, with Garfield playing Altman.  It seems a little early for a movie charting the rise of OpenAI, but I want to see what Guadagnino and screenwriter Simon Rich do with this.  This is being described as a comedy-drama, and Ike Barinholtz is playing Elon Musk, so there's plenty of potential here for something fun.

Jack of Spades - Josh O'Connor did so well as the lead of a Gothic mystery film last year, I assume he'll do great as the lead of another Gothic mystery film this year, directed by one of the Coen brothers.  This is Joel Coen's first film since "The Tragedy of Macbeth," and it will be set in Scotland in the 1800s.  Not much else is known, except that Frances McDormand, Lesley Manville and Damian Lewis are in the cast. 

Mayday - John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein have made several fantastic comedies in a row, most recently the "Dungeons and Dragons" movie.  Their new one is a Ryan Reynolds action movie about a downed American pilot in Soviet Russia.  This would probably be on the blockbuster list if this weren't made by Skydance and being distributed by Apple TV+.  Crossing my fingers that this bucks the trend. 

October - And finally, a new Jeremy Saulnier movie by itself would be reason for anticipation, but this one is Halloween themed too?  And it's going to be Cory Michael Smith's first stab at being a leading man?  Sign me up!

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My Most Anticipated Films of 2026 Part I

As usual, this feature is being split into two parts.  The first will focus on the bigger budget studio films and the second will focus on the indie, foreign, and arthouse films that may end up breaking into the mainstream, but right now are only anticipated by film nerds like yours truly.   

This year's list features more franchise films than I'd like, but I couldn't in all honesty leave any of them out.  The entries below are listed by estimated release date.  "Coyote v. Acme" was on the 2024 list.  And here we go:

Project Hail Mary - I have such hopes for Ryan Gosling to finally have an unambiguous hit where he's the lead, because it is so overdue.  "Project Hail Mary" has all the makings of a winner, with Phil Lord and Chris Miller adapting the excellent Andy Weir novel.  However, it's an original science-fiction film, and audiences aren't great with those, so I'm trying to temper my expectations.  

Disclosure Day - At the time of writing, not much is known about this movie except that it's about UFOs and it stars Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor.  There was even some speculation that it might be a stealth remake of Hitchcock's "The Birds" after the teaser poster debuted.  This appears to be Spielberg's first contemporary genre film in a long while, though, so fingers crossed.

The Odyssey - The closer this gets, the less sure I am that this is going to work.  How can you have that cast and that budget and possibly meet expectations?  Only Christopher Nolan could even attempt something on this scale anymore, and he's never made anything like a sword-and-sandals epic before.  Maybe "Dunkirk" is kind of in the same ballpark?  Well, however it turns out, I gotta see it.  

Ray Gunn - Skydance Animation is giving Brad Bird the chance to finally make one of his dream projects, an animated neo-noir mystery set in a retrofuturist city called Metropia.  Netflix has this on the slate for sometime this year, but no release date yet.  Skydance Animation hasn't had the best track record so far, after two films, but maybe they just need to try something more ambitious and creator driven.  

Digger - This is the Alejandro G. Iñárritu film, led by Tom Cruise, Sandra Hüller, and John Goodman.  Details are scarce, but a synopsis from last October suggests that this is some kind of comedic thriller that will give Cruise a chance to do more chase and action scenes.  In any case, the teaser is fantastic and it's good to see Cruise moving on to better things after the last "Mission: Impossible" flopped.

The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender - This is the big one, folks.  This is the new sequel movie to the original "Avatar: The Last Airbender" Nickelodeon series, featuring all the main characters a couple of years after the defeat of the Firelord.  Everyone's a little older with some new voice actors, including Steven Yeun as Zuko.  This would be a guaranteed trip to the theater for me - if it does go to theaters.

The Social Reckoning - David Fincher is not coming back for this quasi-follow-up to "The Social Network." which immediately has me on guard.  I'm still interested though.  Aaron Sorkin will be directing and writing instead, and Jeremy Strong is taking over the role of Mark Zuckerberg.  Word is that we get to see the events of January 6th from the POV of everyone behind the scenes of Facebook.  

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping - Let's hear it for the last dystopian YA franchise standing.  I thoroughly enjoyed the last "Hunger Games" prequel, and the book this one is based on is supposed to be even better.  The cast list is absolutely wild, and there's already a teaser that's been out for months.  That's all I know and that's all I want to know until I can see this one for myself.  

Narnia: The Magician's Nephew - Greta Gerwig's new Narnia film for Netflix is based on the prequel to "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" that has never been adapted.  It's a weird book with a lot of Biblical allusions, and I'm expecting a weird movie, potentially much weirder than general audiences are expecting.  I trust Gerwig though, and I hope more Narnia films will follow as a result.  

Dune: Part Three - Let's see if Denis can land the ornithopter.

Happy watching

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My Top 25 of the Last 25: Remakes and Reboots

I've thoroughly enjoyed all the "Best of" lists celebrating the superlatives of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. And I'm going to be fashionably late to the party and make some of my own lists this year, looking at movies and television from 2001 to 2025.  However, I'm not going to make "Best Movie" or "Best Show" lists.  No, I'm going to do the fun stuff.  This month, I'm spotlighting my favorite remakes and reboots.

Each list will get 25 entries, but only the top ten will get write-ups.  

What counts as a remake or reboot?  This gets a little tricky, but I'm looking for cases where a specific IP is being brought back to capitalize on audience nostalgia, so no remakes of foreign media, like the US version of "The Office" or "The Departed," unless the creators appear to be specifically going after the original fanbase, like "One Piece" (2023).  New adaptations of the classics like "Frankenstein," or obscurities like "Nightmare Alley" and "Widows" aren't what I'm after either. 

Also, the new version has to significantly transform the original to some extent. "Dexter: New Blood" is a pretty straightforward "Dexter" sequel or revival because it has the same lead character being played by the original actor.  Meanwhile, "Watchmen" and "Creed" are technically sequels with some of the same characters, but have entirely different lead characters and dynamics, so that's more in the spirit of a new take on familiar material.  

For the record, I'm not counting Steven Moffatt's "Dracula," "Jekyll," or "Sherlock" series, though I enjoyed them all.

1. Doctor Who (2005) - A big factor in what ended up in the top ten was impact, and the 2005 "Doctor Who" was one of the biggest genre shows worldwide for years.  In addition to acquainting a new generation with Daleks and Cybermen, it launched many careers, set many precedents, and despites some ups and downs, managed to hang around for over twenty years.  Its immediate fate is uncertain, but there's no doubt that The Doctor will be back eventually, even if it takes a few tries.    

2. Casino Royale (2006) - Remember when Daniel Craig was being criticized as the pick for the new Bond because of his blond hair?  There were many 007 reboots and revamps over the years, but none felt like it was really turning a corner the way that "Casino Royale" did.  This is easily one of the best films to ever come out of the franchise, setting a high standard for Bond films for the next two decades.  And this wasn't only most audiences' introduction to Daniel Craig, but Mads Mikkelsen and Eva Green too.   

3. Battlestar Galactica (2004) - I'm not very far into the series yet, but it's already obvious that "Battlestar Galactica" is one of the best remakes ever made.  It took a family-friendly '70s adventure series and turned it into a bleak, harrowing survival story about the human race desperately trying to endure in the face of an implacable threat.  From a fan standpoint, this is the series that made science-fiction cool again, as "Galactica" broke into the mainstream in a way that none of its contemporaries ever did.  

4. Mad Max Fury Road (2015) - George Miller and Mad Max returned with a vengeance after a thirty year hiatus, delivering what was not only the best installment of its franchise, but one of the most beloved action films ever made.  It's not a particularly good film about its title character, who is a bit of a nonentity, but the unhinged "Mad Max" universe definitely got a major upgrade.  And some of us older fans had to wonder, is this what "Mad Max" looked like inside George Miller's head the whole time?  

5. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010) - I love it when a piece of intellectual property that everyone wrote off makes a comeback in a big way.  The redesigned, significantly modernized "My Little Pony" created by Lauren Faust instantly caught on with its target audience of kids, but also attracted a surprisingly loyal following of adults.  This created some inevitable fandom weirdness, but it also meant a great franchise for little girls got a lot of attention, and several others were rebooted in its wake.  

6. Fargo (2014) - Noah Hawley turned a Coen brothers movie into an anthology of larger-than-life crime stories, all involving desperate characters in the American Midwest, with a few touches of the preternatural to keep things interesting.  Sometimes the particular chemistry of the casts or the themes of each season haven't quite worked, but when "Fargo" is at its best, it's unmissable television.  It's given us Lorne Malvo, Peggy Blumquist, V. M. Varga, and Dot Lyon among its many, many fantastic characters.   

7. Westworld (2016) - The resources put into this series were incredible.  HBO created the first ongoing television series that truly felt like it had a feature film cast, populating a much harder-edged take on the premise of the 1973 Michael Crichton film, with unapologetically adult content throughout.  I watched all four seasons and found all of them well worth my time, even though the show changed considerably from the theme park-centered first season into a more conceptually thorny dystopian drama.  

8. Watchmen (2019) - An edge case, because this is actually a sequel to the graphic novel "Watchmen," and not in the same continuity as the 2009 film, "Watchmen."  However, Damon Lindelof and his collaborators definitely put their own spin on the material, using the "Watchmen" universe to explore additional racial and generational dynamics that weren't part of the original Alan Moore story.  It's so niche and requires so much additional reading, I'm amazed that this got produced in this form.  

9. Creed (2015) - Okay, so it's technically a spinoff of the "Rocky" franchise, but despite Stallone's presence and influence, this isn't his movie.  "Creed" was a major turning point in the careers of both Michael B. Jordan and Ryan Coogler, and was successful enough to spawn two decent sequels.  It would have been easier to follow the template of "Rocky" more closely, but Coogler made some canny choices to ensure that "Creed" could stand on its own, while evoking the nostalgia for the originals. 

10. IT (2017) - Finally, "IT: Chapter Two" was clearly a bust, but that doesn't take away from this wonderfully brutal adaptation of Stephen King's "IT," which sticks to the parts about the kids thirty years in the past.  Horror reboots are very common, but "IT" stood out by being an unusually nasty film where terrible things happen to children.  It helped to shepherd along the resurgence in Stephen King media, and gave us one of the best cinema monsters of the last decade - Pennywise the Clown.

The next 15: 

True Grit (2010)

Ocean's Eleven (2001)

A Star is Born (2018)

Cobra Kai (2021)

Ripley (2024)

West Side Story (2021)

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

Duck Tales (2017)

Godzilla (2014) and Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Suspiria (2018)

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Matilda: the Musical (2023)

One Piece (2023)

Mickey Mouse (2013) and The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse (2020)

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My Favorite Neil Jordan Film

My favorite Irish film director is Neil Jordan, who has received a lot of attention for his contemporary melodramas, historical biographies, and sensitive transgender narratives.  He also has a habit of regularly making some really gnarly horror and fantasy films, including the '90s version of "Interview With the Vampire."  However, it was his werewolf picture that I was obsessed with as a teenager.  In 1984 he made an adaptation of Angela Carter's short story "The Company of Wolves," a feminist take on The Little Red Riding Hood.  He directed and co-wrote the film with Carter.  

"The Company of Wolves" unfolds as a literal fever dream, offering several stories about monsters, wolves, and sexual awakening through a dark fairy tale lens.  Most of the film is concerned with the familiar figures of a girl in a red hood, her storytelling grandmother, and the wolfish stranger met by chance in the woods, but in the nested realities of the additional stories told in the film, we also meet the distinguished Devil who arrives in a white Rolls-Royce, an enchantress who turns her betrayer into a beast, and multiple unfortunate creatures who are both human and wolf, or perhaps something in between.  

The film is best known among special effects aficionados for its spectacular werewolf transformation scenes, including one where a snarling wolf muzzle erupts from the mouth of the huntsman as he violently sheds his humanity.  However, other images have stayed with me longer - a woman's face smashing into pieces of porcelain when she's attacked, a wedding feast attended by wolves in human clothing, and human babies hatching from bird eggs.  Jordan purposefully leans into the psychosexual symbolism, creating this uneasy twilight world where idyllic childhood fantasies are easily twisted and corrupted into nightmares.  He also used this approach in later films like "The Butcher Boy," and "In Dreams," both exploring the psyches of disturbed killers. 

Dark fantasy films were popular in the '80s, but few were as richly rendered as "The Company of Wolves."  The surreal imagery appears throughout, often using disturbing juxtapositions and dream logic to impart a lasting sense of horror.  This reflects the origins of many folk tales as morality plays and cautionary tales, the whimsical allegories having roots in much grimmer reality.  Jordan's visuals have a beauty and a lyricism to them that is mesmerizing.  I'm not fond of most werewolf films, because they're usually so focused on the monstrosity and gore.  "The Company of Wolves" certainly has its share of blood and guts, but it doesn't forget about the seduction, that sweetest tongue comes before sharpest tooth.     

In addition to the central narrative, the film features four stories told by various characters to each other, and there were a few more in early scripts that didn't make it into the film.  They're variations on the same themes of love gone wrong and maturation bringing unexpected horrors, except the very last, which offers a more hopeful, conciliatory message.  I love that "The Company of Wolves" heavily features the act of storytelling, and it's important who tells which story to whom, and what the motives for each telling might be.  And characters who aren't telling stories are always offering advice and adages and explaining their own ideas of how the world works.  

The budget on the film was low, and clearly most of the wolves in the film are actually large dogs with dye jobs.  However, the practical effects work, the art direction, and the cinematography are all excellent, and the cast is fantastic.  Having sturdy UK thespians like Angela Lansbury, Stephen Rea, and David Warner delivering the dire warnings about never trusting men whose eyebrows meet in the middle goes a long way towards setting the mood and tone.  And it's astounding that this was Sarah Patterson's screen debut, playing our heroine Rosaleen, one of her only appearances in any film.

The moral, ultimately, is to beware of wolves in their many shapes and guises.  However, wolves lurk everywhere, as the embodiment of our deepest unconscious minds, both in men and women.  And I've never seen them summoned to the screen as beautifully as they are in "The Company of Wolves."

What I've Seen - Neil Jordan

The Company of Wolves (1984)

Mona Lisa (1986)

The Crying Game (1992)

Interview with the Vampire (1994)

The Butcher Boy (1997)

In Dreams (1999)

The End of the Affair (1999)

Breakfast on Pluto (2005)

The Brave One (2007)

Byzantium (2012)

Greta (2018)

Marlowe (2022)

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"Hedda" and "The History of Sound"

Let's look at two more LGBT romances today that aren't in the awards conversation, but probably should be.

"Hedda" is based on the Henrik Ibsen play "Hedda Gabbler," but altered to the point where it's as much a commentary on the original play as it is a new version of it.  For one thing, the story now takes place in England in the 1950s, and Hedda is played by Tessa Thompson.  This isn't race-blind casting, and Hedda is now a black character, one acutely aware of the difficulties of being a black woman in a world dominated by white men.  Hedda is married to George Tesman (Tom Bateman), a white academic whose fortunes hinge on getting a job that is likely going to go to his rival, Lovborg.  In the play Lovborg, Hedda's ex-lover, is a man.  In the film, Lovborg is a white woman, Eileen (Nina Hoss), and currently in a relationship with one of Hedda's old schoolmates, Thea (Imogen Poots). 

Most of "Hedda" takes place at a lavish party that Hedda throws to try and impress Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch), who will decide the course of George's career.  Eileen, Thea, and Hedda's current lover Brack (Nicholas Pinnock) are all in attendance, giving Hedda the chance to manipulate the situation to her own advantage.  Hedda Gabbler is one of the great antiheroines of the stage, and Da Costa and Tessa Thompson have done their very best to bring her fascinating, complex nature to the screen.  This Hedda is a passionate woman of great appetites and terrible regrets, who is introduced to us at the beginning of the film deciding to abandon a suicide attempt.  While the races and sexualities of the various characters in play have been adjusted to match changing audience sensibilities, Hedda continues to be a provocative figure simply because she's a bold, often unsympathetic woman who refuses to behave.       

The cast is excellent.  Eileen, Hedda, and Thea are now three brilliant, ambitious women whose actions and worldviews we can compare and contrast as they fight for their place in the social order.  Eileen is a recovering alcoholic, and we see her at her best and at her worst as she falls under Hedda's influence.  Nina Hoss delivers her most substantive performance in the English language that I've seen to date, and it's a tremendously brave one.  Imogene Poots is firmly in a supporting role, but effortlessly becomes sympathetic or threatening as the situation demands.  Tessa Thompson, however, is the main event as Hedda, a woman who can be a careless social butterfly, a shrewd social climber, a lovelorn unfortunate, and a jealous brat all at the same time.  But not without a cost.    

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the production design, with its gorgeous costuming, lavish settings, and invigorating musical performances.  "Hedda" follows in the steps of "Babylon" and "Saltburn" by having most of the action revolve around a party that goes out of control.  While this doesn't appear to have the budget of either of those pictures, it certainly nails the intoxicating hedonism.  I also appreciate that this is another example of a story and characters that are traditionally associated with a very European milieu that is being reinterpreted and reexamined through the lens of the black and queer experience.  In film, that's still a perspective that barely exists, and every new addition is a precious one.  

"The History of Sound," directed by Oliver Hermanus, is almost the polar opposite of "Hedda" in style and approach. While "Hedda" is loud and colorful and full of incident, "The History of Sound" one of those gentle, contemplative, completely earnest historical romances that is a little difficult to take at face value.  Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor play a pair of young musical academics, Lionel Worthing and David White, who meet in the 1910s and form a lasting bond, despite several long separations.  The most significant time they spend together is a journey through rural Maine on an ethnomusicology song-collecting mission.  The structure and the themes are similar to "Brokeback Mountain," except with folk singing taking the place of the sheep herding.

There's a very old fashioned feel to "The History of Sound" in its pacing and tone.  The film isn't afraid of long silences or letting its characters just exist in moments of rest or conversation.  It's clear from very early on that Lionel and David are in a homosexual relationship, but their connection often comes across as more fraternal than passionate, as a deep friendship rather than a romantic pairing.  Their initial attraction to each other is based on their mutual appreciation of music, and the music in the film is mostly vocal pieces, often rough and unaccompanied.  Likewise, the filmmaking is very sedate, with a limited color palette and a lot of time spent in dim interiors or the natural world.  The film is lovely, but it takes a while to acclimate to the severity and the minimalism of its elements.  

I like the performances - Mescal gets the majority share of the screen time as we largely follow Lionel's POV.  He handles the musical requirements of the part and the Kentucky accent without any issue.  More importantly, he does a great job of showing his character adapting and changing as he moves between worlds - his humble beginnings on a tiny farm in Kentucky, his apartment in Maine where he progresses in his academic career, and then loftier environments in Italy and England.  O'Connor's David presents more of a mystery, or rather he's giving us an incomplete impression of a charismatic, lively man who Lionel is obviously going to fall in love with.  It's a familiar concept, but O'Connor plays it well enough that it worked for me.

"The History of Sound" is traversing well-tread ground, but I was charmed by its willingness to go against the grain and give us an old-fashioned epic romance, filled with more longing than intimacy.  And like "Hedda," movies like this are still rarer than you'd think.

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A Bewitching "Kiss of the Spider Woman"

One of the major box office bombs of 2025 is Bill Condon's adaptation of the "Kiss of the Spider Woman" stage musical, and it's a terrible shame.  Initially, I was apprehensive about the story being turned into a splashy screen musical, only being familiar with Hector Babenco's non-musical film adaptation from 1985 that starred Raul Julia and William Hurt.  However, the new approach works, specifically the way that it manages to pay homage to Hollywood's golden age, while giving the main characters some important modern updates.

Molina (Tonatiuh), a queer window dresser, and Arregui (Diego Luna), a studious revolutionary, are forced to share a cell during their incarceration by the Argentinian military dictatorship in the late 70s.  Initially, Arregui wants nothing to do with the "frivolous" Molina, who is obsessed with movies and fashion.  However, Molina is persistently friendly, and passes the time by telling Arregui about his favorite actress, Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez), and the plot of his favorite Luna musical, "The Kiss of the Spider Woman."  As their time in prison becomes more harrowing, Molina and Arregui grow closer, though all is not what it seems.

It's interesting that "Kiss of the Spider Woman" was pushed so heavily as a Jennifer Lopez vehicle when she has the least interesting role in the movie.  Sure, she's at the center of the gorgeous song and dance numbers that feature in Molina's fantasies, and is perfectly lovely to watch as both the glamorous Hollywood star and the looming spectre of death in her Spider Woman guise.  However, she's a cipher rather than an actual character.  The real lead of the picture is Tonatiuh, whose Molina is not explicitly said to be a transwoman or nonbinary in this version of the story (so I'm using male pronouns), but is given much more narrative space to express himself in ways that strongly suggest that this may be the case.  I don't think that Tonatiuh is as good an actor as William Hurt, but there's a welcome authenticity to the performance that is undeniable.  Arregui and Molina's dynamic is also more romantic, because it's not the '80s anymore.

Tonatiuh's character is expanded through the fantasy sequences, which are his escape from the harsh reality of the prison.  This is the biggest improvement on the previous screen version, where the "Kiss of the Spider Woman" movie within a movie was a Nazi propaganda/romantic melodrama pastiche with very sinister overtones.  In the new version, "The Kiss of the Spider Woman" is a full blown Latin themed MGM musical tribute, with elaborate staging and cinematography, vibrant colors, and a far more coherent plot.  Molina gives himself and Arregui roles within the movie too, so their real and fantasy selves can mirror one other throughout the story.  And this works because the filmmakers were very, very careful to maintain the line of demarcation between the two halves of the film until the very end.  Song numbers from the stage musical that occurred during the prison sequences were all removed, so songs only appear in the fantasies.  And the more vibrant and artificial as the musical sequences are, the more starkly unpleasant the prison scenes are.  Anyone going to "Kiss of the Spider Woman" for a fun romp may be in for more than they bargained for.  

Like many musical adaptations, the second half slows down and gets unwieldy.  It doesn't help that I don't find any of the songs memorable, and we lose Arregui for a few key scenes.  This is where it probably would have helped to have a more seasoned lead, as Tonatiuh delivers moments of great vulnerability and humor, but there were aspects of Molina's character - like his fear of the Spider Woman - that didn't land for me at all.  Still, witnessing the joyous finale where he gets to be himself at last, it's hard to argue that there was anyone more suitable for the role.  And once you've seen "Kiss of the Spider Woman" as a musical, how could it be anything else?  

Like Lars Von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark," "Kiss of the Spider Woman" functions as a metamusical, critiquing and commenting on the musical form, common movie tropes, and the function of fantasy as an escape.  Add its queer hero, and themes of surviving a Totalitarian regime, and "Kiss of the Spider Woman" couldn't be more timely.  The bungled release means it has an uphill battle, but I have no doubt that this one will become a classic - it's too good not to find its audience eventually.   

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"Peacemaker," Year Two

I'm not quite sure what to do with the second season of "Peacemaker," which has shifted from being less live-action "Venture Brothers" to more generic superhero antics, and also being used as a connector piece between the big screen "Superman" movies, which is the exact sort of thing that got the MCU in so much trouble.  There is a compelling hook for the season, which is that Peacemaker has to confront more fallout of his past misdeeds while dealing with his romantic feelings for Harcourt, with the added complication of discovering that the quantum portal his father left him happens to lead into other dimensions.  And one of these other dimensions is a world where his father and brother are still alive and well.

I like all the secondary characters in Peacemaker, including Adebayo, Economos, Vigilante, and Harcourt, who have taken to referring to themselves as the 11th Street Kids.  They get a bunch of new antagonists, including ARGUS agents played by Tim Meadows and Sol Rodriguez, plus Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., the new ARGUS leader.  There are a ton of cameos from James Gunn regulars, and a few faces from "Superman" too.  Judomaster (Nhut Le) is back, and as lovably annoying as ever.  And I have absolutely no issue when the show is focusing on any of them.  The trouble is that Peacemaker is the central character, and he's in an absolute funk this year that is no fun to watch.  When he's not mooning over Harcourt, grieving family members, or feeling guilt-ridden over killing Rick Flag's son, he's allowing himself to avoid his problems by being drawn deeper and deeper into the alternate dimension, where everything is obviously too perfect to be true.  

Some of the new concepts are interesting, but in general everything's a lot more toned down than the previous season.  It feels like Gunn has to be more budget conscious, so only the finale really features any expensive CGI setpieces and creature effects.  This isn't a bad thing in the least, but it does mean that this round of "Peacemaker" is less about fantastical comic-book adventures, and more intent on focusing on the real, personal problems of its oddball crew, and it's not very good at that.  I don't fault any of the actors, and John Cena remains wonderfully committed, but the material just isn't working a lot of the time.  The banter and the silly team dynamics are as good as ever, and Vigilante is quickly moving up the ranks of my favorite characters in this show, but every time we cut back to Peacemaker in existential crisis, it really takes the wind out of their sales.

It doesn't help that there is a lot of indulgent fanboy excess going on.  It feels like that since James Gunn got away with certain things in the first season of "Peacemaker," he's doubling down in this one.  For instance, there was that great opening dance sequence everybody loved in season one.  Season two gives us a new one, set to Foxy Shazam's "Oh Lord."  It's a perfectly fine song, but it doesn't deliver that big dose of bombast that Wig Wam's "Do You Want to Taste It" did.  And the music references and playlist curation are a lot more prominent this time around.  Foxy Shazam even shows up in the finale, where the camera lingers on their performance for an uncomfortable length of time.  Maybe Gunn is more interested in being a deejay than a showrunner for this crew.  

Sophomore slumps like this are pretty common, and I have no reason to think that future seasons of "Peacemaker" won't improve from here.  There's plenty about the second season that I did enjoy.  However, I think that it's pretty telling that certain brief cameos were the best parts of the episodes they appeared in, and I finished off the season much more interested in the further adventures of pretty much everyone except Peacemaker.  Frankly, it was rough finishing this batch of episodes, and now both of James Gunn's DC television projects have thrown up some major red flags for where the rest of the new DC franchise is going.  

At least "Peacemaker" is better than "Creature Commandos," but not by as much as it should be.

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