I know it’s hard to believe, but there are actually other movies in theaters and on digital outside of The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. It’s a good movie watching practice to not forget about the little guy – the small indie projects that won’t be box office smashes but are more than worth your time. Dramas, satires, festival films and more are all ready to be watched, you just have to know where to look. With a little bit of effort, you can find a vast selection of underseen films. So let me be your guide! Let’s take a look at some films coming to theaters or digital and some that are available right now!
Our Hero, Balthazar – On Digital 8/11
Surprisingly, Our Hero, Balthazar is the 3rd school shooting centric film I’ve seen in 2026. I would also argue that it’s best of them, perfectly balancing the complex subject matter on a tight wire of empathy and comedy. As pitch black as black comedy can get, Our Hero, Balthazar follows an awkward teen who, in order to impress is crush begins posting videos begging for stricter gun laws. After an internet troll begins to mock him, he becomes convinced that this troll is a potential school shooter and seeks him out to try and stop him, hoping this will lead to his crush finally returning his feelings.
Asa Butterfield plays the potential shooter Solomon, giving a career best performance and dialing in to the teen angst and extreme isolation internet culture has lead so many. He’s transformative here, disappearing completely into Solomon and layering his would be abhorrent behavior with textured nuance. Our Hero, Balthazar does away with hardlines and blurs all of them, leaving the viewer to approach it with their own preconceived notions and dismantling them scene by scene. It may be a difficult watch, but it’s a really good one if you can handle the subject matter. If for nothing else, Our Hero, Balthazar breeds discussion and may actually get you to sit down and talk with your kids – who may or may not be struggling.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Namaslay – In Theaters 8/13
I’m always down to get a little weird with cinema, and Namaslay fits that bill. A masala film whose central focus is satirizing western cultural appropriation, it almost nails all of the elements it attempts. It follows Gayatri, a young Indian woman new to Los Angeles and struggling to find her way. After her friend Judy convinces her to join an upscale yoga program, she is invited to a leadership retreat as she moves up the ranks. Of course, there’s something sinister lurking beneath the juicing and sauna cleanses, and the secrets buried will force Gayatri to fight for her life. Namaslay is as weird as it sounds, and the further down the rabbit hole it goes the sillier and stranger it gets.
Namaslay is at its best when its annihilating the whitewashing of Yoga and Indian traditions. The skewing of its origins and picking and choosing traditions is quite funny, and really highlights just how silly we actually sound sometimes. When it comes to executing on its Masala cinema, however, it struggles. Not that it doesn’t’ have that – it most certainly has plenty of genre mismashing – but it doesn’t go for enough with it. Namaslay has an open invitation to go as far as writer/directors Rish and Kanish can take things but stop short before it can wholly embrace its own ideas. Honestly, a full on Hindi song and dance number – completely out of context – would’ve been enough to send this over the edge of excellence. Still, it’s a fun time and an even more fun title.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Late Fame – Select Theaters 8/6
I will always be seated for the softer side of Willem Dafoe. Late Fame is a showcase of the tenderness he’s capable of as an actor, and highlights his varied abilities to great effect. The film follows Ed Saxberger, a forgotten New York poet living a normal life and working at the post office. When a group of young poets track him down and herald him as a rediscovered genius, Ed begins to experience a different life, one where his work is championed and he’s beloved and admired. Of course, Fame is fickle and comes with consequences, and Ed will discover that it may not be all its cracked up to be.
Dafoe is excellent here, and Greta Lee – though feeling as if she’s from a different movie entirely – is quite good as an over the top, mysterious actress. It’s sadly Samy Burch’s script that is lacking, failing to do anything meaningful with its solid premise. It all just kind of putters out, Dafoe elevating every moment and lifting things off the page that may or not be there. It’s a shame, because there’s a whole lot to like about Late Fame, and Burch is an excellent screenwriter who comes up a bit short here. Still, Dafoe and Lee are more than worth a watch, even if Late Fame doesn’t stick the landing as well as its set up.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Julian – Select Theaters 8/7
Tear jerker alert! Julian is a beautiful, tragic but hopeful “right person, wrong time” exploration of falling in love and fighting against all of the odds to beat them and stay together. It follows two women, Julian and Fleur who fall in love and decide to get married in every country that same sex marriage is legal. What starts as an exciting journey together and bold statement of being free to love who we choose turns tragic when some unexpected adversity besets them both.
Julian doesn’t reinvent the wheel of dramatic love stories, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t effective. Both Nina Meurisse (Fleur) and newcomer Laurence Roothooft (Julian) give their all to their performances and have excellent chemistry. You believe in their love and root for them when challenges befall them, and it’s heartbreaking yet heartfelt ending got me in the end. Julian is a beautiful story of love and loss, and while it may be overly sentimental it is a reminder that there is never enough time, so love as much as you can while you still can.
Rating: 7 out of 10
The History of Concrete – In Theaters Sept 18th
A highly anticipated documentary at Sundance, I went in completely blind the previous series work of John Wilson’s signature style of filmmaking. A History of Concrete expands his short episodic show How To With John Wilson into a feature length examination of – you guessed it – the history of concrete. Of course, a Wilson documentary typically descends into whatever else he finds interesting, constantly diverting from its initial premise to run down random rabbit holes simply because he pointed his camera at something other than the ground he’s walking on.
While it does stretch a little too thin, A History of Concrete is actually a love letter to New York and a sharp, smart critique of crumbling society. It uses everything he learns about concrete and colorful characters he meets along the way to get a something deeper, something about our crumbling infrastructure that seems to be hanging on by a thread. Beyond the concrete the surrounds us are people just trying to live their lives as best they can. History of Concrete may not be able to sustain the runtime with Wilson’s style, but it is a funny as it is profound, and the journey is definitely worth it.
Rating: 7 out of 10
What other movies are you excited to check out this summer?
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