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July 10, 2026 
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Hi, movie fans!
The big release this week is the live-action “Moana,” and our critic Alissa Wilkinson is unequivocal about this remake: “the most pointless, and perhaps not accidentally the worst” of the Disney live-action outings. Yeesh.
She can, however, highly recommend the new Ross McElwee documentary, “Remake.” If you’re not familiar with his first-person work, just know that his “Sherman’s March” (1986), in which he winds up rethinking his dating life, has influenced everything from reality TV to Nathan Fielder. “Remake” is ostensibly about Hollywood efforts to turn “Sherman’s March” into another film or perhaps a TV series, but is really about his past and the drug-overdose death of his son.
Wilkinson writes that the new movie is “an elegy, a gift and something of an apology to his lost son. As such, it’s devastating. As a meditation on memory and the passage of time, it is stunning.”
Also a critic’s pick is “The Invite,” a biting relationship comedy that has been in theaters but expands much more widely this weekend. My colleague Clarissa Cruz spoke with the psychotherapist Esther Perel about her role as an adviser to the director and co-star, Olivia Wilde.
Perel got involved because, as she put it, “art can do things that therapy cannot.” She consulted on the script and was available for Zoom calls when the writers and the cast met for an intense two weeks of workshops. Wilde told us, “The movie has her DNA all over it.”
Whatever you decide to watch, enjoy the movies!
