Sep 23, 2026 · 33 min
Fall’s boldest films and series face the culture test
Fall Guide
The panel’s 2026 fall guide maps a season where awards contenders, strange genre experiments, and ambitious television compete for attention.
- 1The film slate ranges from intimate mortality dramas to vulgar romantic fantasies and politically charged dark comedies.
- 2The panel values distinctive visual worlds, including Bitter Christmas’s vivid melodrama and Wildwood’s tactile stop-motion fantasy.
- 3Television brings an icy London legal thriller, a new Avatar continuation, and a three-timeline heist series.
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The panel embraces Wicker’s premise: Olivia Colman’s lonely fisherwoman commissions Peter Dinklage to make a wicker husband shaped like Alexander Skarsgård.
The brief
Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, Aisha Harris, and Glen Weldon survey fall 2026 through films and series that favor strong premises, unusual visual styles, and performances with awards potential.
The film conversation moves from a hitman forced into fatherhood and an actor confronting mortality to Jordan Firstman’s unlikeable comic lead and a deliberately strange wicker romance.
Dark humor and political critique shape Wild Horse Nine, while Bitter Christmas and Possible Love offer vivid melodrama and slow-building unease around emotional and social expectations.
Wildwood expands stop-motion fantasy to epic scale, and The Scout turns location scouting into a story about how ordinary homes acquire emotional meaning.
Television closes the guide with an icy London legal thriller, Avatar: Seven Havens, and 12-12-12, whose heist unfolds across planning, execution, and aftermath.