Original stories are winning again at the box office. Following countless uninspired superhero blockbusters and legacy sequels, a new wave of young filmmakers is selling out movie theaters with fresh ideas. Last weekend, indie horror films Backrooms and Obsession outpaced the newest Star Wars film by a wide margin—and on a fraction of their competitor’s budget. The two horror darlings aren’t the only recent films to buck the tired Hollywood trends of the last decade. Film critic Max Cea named over a dozen more movies worth your time in his list of the best films of 2026 so far. Find his picks below. —Josh Rosenberg, editor, news and entertainment
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Between Obsession and Backrooms, the kids are taking cinemas by storm.
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The kids may not be alright, but they’ve got some filmmaking chops. The biggest story in cinema right now is a pair of first features from impossibly young new directors. Obsession, from 26-year-old Curry Barker, was made for under $1 million and is making history at the box office. It saw a 39.4 percent jump in its second-week gross on its way to briefly holding the top spot. The film’s popularity has been driven primarily by young moviegoers, who, as it turns out, will indeed show up to theaters if you give them something to talk about.
And now here comes the much-hyped A24 film Backrooms, from 20-year-old Kane Parsons. Backrooms is projected to outperform Obsession, and is similarly provoking impassioned discourse. Your mileage may vary on these two films—as mine did—but, regardless, it’s very exciting to see new blood making waves with original work.
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I want you to temporarily forget about all the superlatives that get thrown at pens and stationery. I’ve had everything from a Montblanc Meisterstück to a Parker Jotter, really iconic pens, pens that I would put up against other pens on pure merit. Even my Lamy Safari could stand against other pens with its smooth writing and that ergonomic triangular grip.
But I would never put any of that burden on a Kaweco Sport. My love for this pen—which is best as the brass model shown—is more sentimental than anything. The heft of the brass, the patina it acquires, and its pocket size make this a pen that sticks with you. When I’m packing for a trip or on autopilot walking out the door, this is the pen that gets stuck in a notebook or wedged into a passport case. It gets tossed into a jeans pocket or in my car’s cup holder.
So don’t expect me to tell you that a Kaweco Brass Sport is a good value or the best pen you can buy under $100. Don’t expect me to write 500 words on the nib or tell you that this is absolutely the pen you need in your life. What I want to say is this: This pen is a no-scholarship walk-on in a world obsessed with flashy five-stars. It’s ready to jump in when you reach for it, it doesn’t care if you beat it up, and more than anything, it makes itself hard to get rid of. That’s why I love it.
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Chances are you’ve never seen hundreds of grooming products laid out on the table of a conference room as a group of eager editors hovers overhead, ready to snatch up each new release and take it home for extensive testing. Around the Esquire offices, though, it’s not such a novel sight. Each year, we endeavor to identify the very best stuff in the worlds of skin care, hair care, body care, fragrance, and so much more.
This year, we went big, tapping a larger-than-ever group of testers to try out hundreds of new releases and winnow the list down to the winners of our latest annual Grooming Awards. Some testers were organic obsessives. Others just wanted the most effective thing at the best price. Every single one was passionate as hell—leading to more than a few spirited conversations and no fewer than a dozen arguments about who got to try what. But we worked it out. And after lots of spritzing, scrubbing, sniffing, and sloughing, we managed to build our list of winners.
That list, like the effort, is our biggest ever.
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