The Invite (2026): I vaguely recalled seeing the original Cesc Gay movie, which I stumbled upon as a fan of Javier Cámara. It was more a sense of the familiar than anything else though, which made The Invite feel fresh and new. Directed and starring Olivia Wilde, alongside Seth Rogen, Ed Norton and Penelope Cruz, the gist is that an ailing married couple invites the exotic neighbours over, which leads to the cracks in their relationship finally breaking. This is the kind of script that’s a perfect sandbox for actors to play to their strengths, and do these guys deliver! I was wiping tears left and right from all the laughing in the first half hour, as Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen were absolutely on a tear. Friction in the oh-so-familiar dynamic of (other) couples has rarely been as funny and on point. Even as the laughs subside, the movie stays on course and ultimately sees out what I would consider its natural conclusion. It’s never easy to go from light and breezy foolishness to heavy-duty psychotherapy-talk, and it does affect the rhythm and flow of the movie, dampening the mood. The fact that it feels emotionally justified allows you to accept and even embrace it – the bill’s got to come some time. So I will concur with the consensus: this is a heck of a boisterous movie and one of the best of the year. 9
Amanda Knox (2016): Hot on the heels of The Jinx (2015), Netflix wanted its own dramatic true crime story, at a time when the craze around them was still on the rise. What better than the tale of Amanda Knox, a tale in which even if the legal culprit is at times obscured by the faults in the Italian criminal justice system, there is never any doubt about the dehumanizing way in which parts of the media covered it. To its credit, the documentary lets everyone “be themselves”, to whichever degree this is possible in edited materials: the philosophical Amanda, the naive Raffaele, the self-aggrandizing lead investigator, the shamelessly hypocritical journalist. As with most (good) true crime stories, I think this needed a mini-series to be fully fleshed out. The documentary fast-forwards through the confusing post-acquittal, re-condemned phases of this crazy situation and it also lacks a strong (female) voice to delineate the kind of patriarchal prejudice that was flung throughout the appraisal of Amanda’s character. And I’m not one to talk much about the patriarchy. Alas, this was put out before #MeToo, so that angle didn’t have the same appeal as it would demand today. All said and done, a solid entry in “the genre”. 7
Aces: The ATP No.1 Club (2026): The ATP decided to do a docuseries featuring (most of) the former world number ones in the modern era, starting with our good fellow Ilie Năstase and going all the way down to Jannik Sinner. It’s a four-part series that clocks in at close to four hours, but its approach of having each player take the screen for only a few minutes, with just bits of era context, made it feel perfunctory to me. I started following tennis after the Safin-Federer match at the 2005 Australian Open – arguably one of the greatest matches played in the last twenty-ish years – so it was a lot more interesting to see the stories and players that came before. Clearly, many of these guys could easily warrant their own feature-length documentaries, and I think quite a few already have. There is an inherent story in how the passing of the ATP leader torch occurs, yet most of the show is siloed, in the sense that direct rivals might be mentioned without much cross-generational perspective. I would put it down as more of a curiosity in tennis history than a proper piece of filmmaking, one that acts with intention toward the weight it carries and the feelings it elicits. 6
Scary Movie (2026): It’s tough for me to be “historically correct” in rating something like SM6. I have never been a fan, but the parody genre is so dead these days that it makes me want to become one. Unfortunately, it won’t be off the back of this movie. A lot of it is just painfully unfunny, with everyone looking worse for wear. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s a good gag – or, heck, a whole good scene, which is what this Scary Movie ends on. I am willing to accept that it won’t all be good, which is not to say though that I don’t think a lot of it could’ve been better. Despite the few moments of joy it provides, it’s very hard for me to say this is redeemable. 4
Supergirl (2026): There have been some bad superhero movies along the way, since all the phasing began. But I think this one takes the cake. We follow Supergirl, aka Kara, and Superman’s cousin, who is casually binging to forget her pain and loss on her 23rd birthday. At about the same time, young Ruthye’s family is slaughtered by the bad guy, Kreme, and the desire for revenge blossoms within her, even though she lacks any skills that would allow revenging. Thankfully for her, Kara gets roped into this when bad guy poisons her dog Krypto with a slow acting poison, so, you know, the movie starts happening. This is all painfully average, filled with tropes and cheap copies of ideas better developed in other movies. It also doesn’t help that its characters are mostly void of charisma if not downright annoying, and there’s no decent moment of levity throughout. I can’t imagine how they managed to mess this up so badly, but they sure did. And this is coming in a week where I already had a very low bar set by Scary Movie. 3
tributary stu 
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