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May 15, 2026 
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Hey, movie fans!
This week, our attention lies in the south of France, where the Cannes Film Festival is underway. Our reporter Kyle Buchanan is on the ground, and he writes that along with celebrities on the red carpet, debates about politics are also front and center.
But what about the movies? Our chief critic, Manohla Dargis, highlights a few, including the latest from the American directors Jane Schoenbrun and James Gray, as well as a standout from the Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski.
New to American theaters are a couple of critics’ picks. “The Wizard of the Kremlin” is a political drama starring Paul Dano as a fictionalized version of an adviser to Vladimir Putin (Jude Law). In her review, Alissa Wilkinson notes the way the film digs into “someone who intimately understands how easily people’s minds are swayed and molded. That peek behind the curtain is the greatest strength of ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin,’ and also its scariest element.”
The other pick is the feature directing debut of the playwright Aleshea Harris, who has adapted her revenge play, “Is God Is.” In this bloody road movie with elements of Greek tragedy, twin sisters set out on a search for the cruel father who left them with lifetime scars. The critic Lisa Kennedy writes in her review that the film “is nimble with its pleasures and assured in its gravity.”
And “The Devil Wears Prada 2” is still going strong in theaters. Its director, David Frankel, narrated a funny and icy staff-meeting scene, and we look at how the film is a kind of elegy for magazines.
Enjoy the movies!
