My 2026 In Cinema and Literature (Patreon)

This is my ongoing list of all the movies I've seen so far in 2026. This only counts movies I see for the first time this year. Sure, I'll catch the 13th Warrior, Krull, and Princess Bride each at SOME point this year, but they won't appear on this list.

The vast majority of these will have been watched in my house, on the biggest TV we've got, often during dinner. Maybe all of them. I just don't get to the theater much. Like, only twice in the past 6 years.

My binary digit-based rating system (thumbs up/thumbs down with no other context) assumes you saw the movie's trailer, and still wanted to see it. If you hate the genre, concept, or lead actor of a movie and you still watch it, don't blame my thumb. In fact, just never blame my thumb. How very dare.

Each movie gets a single line of commentary from me, which I don't intend to be focused on the quality of the movie itself, good or bad.

Since people expressed interest what else I was absorbing as entertainment, I've added a section at the end of the cinema's entries on the books I've read so far in 2026. I'll update it as the year goes on.

NEW ENTRIESThe movies I've seen since the last "My 2026 In Cinema" blog.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) 👍It doesn't come close to the genius of the original, and has weird pacing and odd choices of what characters to not bring back, but I still enjoyed it.

The Founder (2016) 👍Neither perfect nor free of dramatization and corporate shilling, but still worth seeing, and then researching what you felt when, and why.

Frankenstein (2025) 👎Moving this story up by 60-70 years from the novel allows easier narrative access to electricity... which isn't part of the novel anyway but is part of nearly every version since, and that speaks directly to why I felt there wasn't enough new here to hold my interest (as gorgeous as it all was, of course).

Grizzly (1976) 👎It was the RiffTrax version, and I still didn't get more than a chuckle out of it.

Karate Kids: Legends (2025) 👍My least favorite of all theatrical Karate Kid films, but I still enjoyed it enough for a thumb's up.

Nuremberg (2025) 👍One of those rare films I give a thumb's up but never want to see again.

Old Guard 2 (2025) 👎Wha... what happened to the fun, exciting, interesting stuff we had in the first movie?!

Sisu: Road to Revenge (2025) 👍Even more insane, and for me even more fun, than the first one.

Supercell (2023) 👎This movie has CONFUSED tornado alley geography...

War Machine (2026) 👍Sure, it's inspired by a slew of better movies... but I LIKE the tropes it borrowed.

Zootopia 2 (2026) 👍A sequel doesn't have to be as good as its original for me to still enjoy it.

THE LIST IN ORDER OF MY PERSONAL PREFERENCEALL the movies I watched for the first time in 2026... so far.

Stranger Things Finale (2026) 👍You have a theatrical release and run more than 2 hours, I'm calling you a movie.

Humane (2024) 👍How badly I now want to punch Enrico Colantoni (Mathezar, Galaxy Quest) in the nuts is proof of what a great actor he is.

Predator: Badlands (2025) 👍Without a doubt and by far this and Prey are the best Predator movies since Predator II, and for that matter they are both almost certainly better than Predator II.

Sisu: Road to Revenge (2025) 👍Even more insane, and for me even more fun, than the first one.

War Machine (2026) 👍Sure, it's inspired by a slew of better movies... but I LIKE the tropes it borrowed.

Zootopia 2 (2026) 👍A sequel doesn't have to be as good as its original for me to still enjoy it.

The Founder (2016) 👍Neither perfect nor free of dramatization and corporate shilling, but still worth seeing, and then researching what you felt when, and why.

The Running Man (2025) 👍Horrifyingly more believable than the first one.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) 👍For some child this was the right movie, at the right level of darkness, at the right time.

The Color Out of Space (2019) 👍This is the platonic ideal of an H.P. Lovecraft story adapted into a Nick Cage movie... make of that what you will.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) 👍It doesn't come close to the genius of the original, and has weird pacing and odd choices of what characters to not bring back, but I still enjoyed it.

Karate Kids: Legends (2025) 👍My least favorite of all theatrical Karate Kid films, but I still enjoyed it enough for a thumb's up.

Nuremberg (2025) 👍One of those rare films I give a thumb's up but never want to see again.

Afterburn (2025) 👍Wow, if I had a nickel for every time in the past year Dave Bautista made a post-apocalypse move that was really a romance, I'd have two nickels - which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

Frankenstein (2025) 👎Moving this story up by 60-70 years from the novel allows easier narrative access to electricity... which isn't part of the novel anyway but is part of nearly every version since, and that speaks directly to why I felt there wasn't enough new here to hold my interest (as gorgeous as it all was, of course).

Bugonia (2025) 👎This movie does what it wants to do perfectly--I just did not like what it wanted to do, which I was pretty sure about 10 minutes into the film.

Old Guard 2 (2025) 👎Wha... what happened to the fun, exciting, interesting stuff we had in the first movie?!

Grizzly (1976) 👎It was the RiffTrax version, and I still didn't get more than a chuckle out of it.

Dhurandhar (2025) 👎This movie did what it wanted to do very well... I'm just very turned off by a lot of what it decided to do.

Supercell (2023) 👎This movie has CONFUSED tornado alley geography...

MY 2026 IN BOOKSNot originally part of this series, I thought I'd go ahead and track and comment on my book intake this year as well. These are in order read, rather than order of preference, but do include binary thumbs-up-or-down ratings.

The Shattering Peace: Old Man's War, Book 7 (John Scalzi, 2025) 👍I'm a huge fan of John Scalzi books in general, and the Old Man's War series in particular. I grabbed this as soon as I could, and tore through it the way a fan does when old friends return and are just as good as ever.

Implacable: Lost Fleet, Outlands. Book 3 (Jack Campbell, 2023) 👍Last in this series so far, I've read all the Lost Fleet; Lost Fleet, Beyond the Frontier; and Lost Fleet, Outlands books. These all follow the same main character, and I skipped the spin-off and prequel series set in the same universe. I enjoyed these, but attachment to secondary characters was a big part of why I read the three Outlands books, and lack of same is why I didn't read the other series in this universe.

Foreigner (CJ Cherryh, 1994) 👍First of 22 books so far, I first read this when it came out. Now that I'm looking at doing the whole series re-reading the first one seemed smart, and my wife came along for the read. I always loved the set-up, and delighted I still enjoy it 32 years later.

Invader (CJ Cherryh, 1995) 👍Since I read a whole novel to remind myself of events so I could read this one, it was really nice I enjoyed this one as much as I did.

Inheritor (CJ Cherryh, 1996) 👍Conceptually the end of the first trilogy, and a though things pick up with the same characters and same overplot in book 4.

Precursor (CJ Cherryh, 1999) 👍I DO see why this is seen as a second trilogy, but it carries forward all the things I still care about.

Defender (CJ Cherryh, 2001) 👍I am FASCINATED how CJ is willing to have books pick up within days o the previous entry... or skip 10 years in a sentence.

Explorer (CJ Cherryh, 2002) 👍Book gets a thumbs-up, but for the first time I give the title itself a thumbs-down. That said, this title is the one that really drove home to me that the sciences in this science fiction line are linguistics, xenophilosophy, and xenopsychology, especially as they impact political science via biology, which I find fascinating and brilliant.

Operation Bounce House (Matt Dinniman, 2026) 👎You can't go into this looking for a Dungeon Crawler Carl fix. I personally think the beginning is significantly too slow and too disjointed, but overall it's a decent scifi novel, though with less to say than it thinks it does. In the end, though, not for me.

Destroyer (CJ Cherryh, 2005) 👎With two thumbs-down books in a row, both hitting while I was juggling things like a burst pipe in my game room, my wife's (planned) surgery that made her primary hand inoperable for weeks, and my badly fumbling a project that should have taken a week but dragged on for a month, maybe some of this is more about me than the books. This one felt like too little content stretched over too many pages. But it did nothing to cool my interest in the series overall.

Pretender (CJ Cherryh, 2006) 👍And, I'm back to loving these books.

Deliverer (CJ Cherryh, 2007) 👍Solid, but the title feels like a disconnect from the plot.

Conspirator (CJ Cherryh, 2009) 👍Good entry.

Deceiver (CJ Cherryh, 2010) 👍This one just barely gets a thumb's up. It felt like a big of a slog, and like it was a lot of peice-moving for future stories.

Betrayer (CJ Cherryh, 2011) 👍Enjoyed it, but again the title feels like a disconnect.

Intruder (CJ Cherryh, 2012) 👍You have to be into court politics as influenced by both nurture and nature biology for this to be gripping. luckily, I am, indeed, into that.