LOS ANGELES, CA — This weekend's watchlist bounces from quiet skies to campus chaos, with a couple of gloriously unhinged detours along the way.
"The Dog Stars" sets the pace with a post‑apocalyptic road‑movie, following a pilot and his prickly companion across wide‑open country where danger and beauty share the same horizon. "Finding Emily" brings a burst of campus energy, turning a wrong number into a full‑tilt chase for romance, optimism, and maybe a little trouble.
Then things get delightfully weird. "Buddy" dives headfirst into a deranged kids'‑show universe, where a bright‑orange unicorn host melts down in spectacular fashion — a candy‑colored nightmare with a wicked grin.
And "Coyote vs. Acme" takes animated mayhem to court, as Wile E. Coyote finally calls out the company behind his long history of backfiring gadgets.
Ready to dive in? Scroll down for the full lineup, with deeper explorations below that unpack performances, themes and craft in greater detail.
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Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley; directed by Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott's "The Dog Stars" adapts Peter Heller's post-apocalyptic novel into a wide-open survival drama, following Hig (Jacob Elordi), a grief-struck pilot navigating the quiet wreckage left by a flu pandemic that has erased most of civilization. Hig shares a fortified homestead with Bangley (Josh Brolin), a hard-edged survivalist whose rigid pragmatism keeps them alive even as it threatens to harden into isolation. Their uneasy partnership forms the film's spine — one man holding onto memory and hope, the other to discipline and control. Elordi plays Hig with a muted, inward focus that suits the character's loneliness, while Brolin's brusque authority gives the early scenes a welcome jolt of energy.
Hig's routine breaks when he intercepts a faint radio signal, a whisper of life that draws him out of the compound and into the wider, emptied world. His journey unfolds across vast, beautifully shot landscapes, with aerial sequences that give the film a sweeping, meditative quality. Along the way, he encounters Cima (Margaret Qualley), whose warm, searching performance softens the film's harsher edges and nudges it toward something more humane. Scott leans into atmosphere and scale, letting the open sky and long silences carry much of the emotional weight.
But as the film expands, its narrative thins. The familiar genre beats — the lonely wanderer, the fragile oasis, the flicker of hope — arrive with a certain inevitability, and the story's momentum never fully matches its visual ambition. Elordi's restraint sometimes leaves the film without a strong emotional anchor, and the characters drift through beautifully rendered emptiness. What begins as a quiet, elegiac survival tale ultimately feels diffuse, handsome, and a little hollow, searching for a deeper resonance it never quite finds.
Angourie Rice, Spike Fearn, Minnie Driver; directed by Alicia MacDonald
Alicia MacDonald's "Finding Emily" is a spring-bright British rom-com built on a knowingly contrived premise: a lovesick musician, Owen (Spike Fearn), is handed the wrong number for the girl he's convinced is his perfect match. His search for her spirals into a campus-wide caper, pulling in psychology student Emily (Angourie Rice), whose thesis on romantic attachment gives the film a sly, self-aware backbone. Their dynamic — warm, lightly awkward, and unexpectedly grounded — becomes the film's emotional engine, and both actors bring an easy charm that keeps the story buoyant even when the plot leans into farce.
MacDonald directs with a confident, playful touch, especially for a feature debut. She balances a sprawling ensemble, a handful of big comedic swings, and a gentle romantic throughline without losing the film's sweetness. The Manchester setting adds texture, and the script's nods to classic British rom-coms give the whole thing a nostalgic glow. Rice brings a thoughtful steadiness to Emily, while Fearn's earnest, slightly chaotic energy keeps the film moving; Minnie Driver, Phil Wang, and Sadie Soverall add color around the edges.
Still, the film's grand gestures can feel more engineered than organic, and the search-for-a-stranger conceit occasionally strains under its own whimsy. A few supporting turns land flat, and the story's final flourish doesn't quite match the breezy confidence of its setup. Yet even with its cheesy detours and moments of overreach, "Finding Emily" remains a warm, good-natured campus romance — messy in places, but hard to resist.
Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Patton Oswalt, Michael Shannon; directed by Casper Kelly
Casper Kelly's "Buddy" takes the deranged, nostalgic sensibility of his cult short "Too Many Cooks" and stretches it into a full-length horror-comedy set inside a warped 1990s children's TV show. In this universe, a group of kids sing, dance, and learn life lessons from Buddy, a giant bright-orange unicorn whose cheery persona fractures when one child refuses to follow the script. What starts as a candy-colored throwback to Barney-era edutainment mutates into a violent, surreal nightmare, twisting familiar kids'-show tropes into something gleefully grotesque.
Kelly directs with a blender-style energy, mashing together nostalgia, slapstick, gore, and a midnight-movie sense of escalation. The production design leans hard into saturated TV-studio artifice, and Keegan-Michael Key's vocal performance gives Buddy a manic elasticity — comforting one moment, unhinged the next.
Cristin Milioti provides the film's grounding force as Grace, a woman convinced the show is connected to a missing child, giving the chaos an emotional counterweight. The film's willingness to push its premise into stranger territory is part of its appeal; it's a loud, weird, imaginative ride that embraces its own absurdity.
But the high-concept setup shows its seams. The mayhem can feel repetitive, and the tonal whiplash between goofy violence and eerie melancholy doesn't always land. Some sequences play like inspired midnight-movie lunacy; others feel like variations on a single joke stretched past its limit. Even so, "Buddy" remains a vivid, deranged TV fever dream — uneven, overextended, and still hard to shake.
Will Forte, John Cena; directed by Dave Green
After a lifetime of rocket skates, exploding gadgets, and gravity‑defying wipeouts, Wile E. Coyote finally decides he's done being the punchline. Convinced Acme's malfunctioning products have sabotaged him for decades, he files a lawsuit that pulls him out of the desert and into a live‑action world where animated grit meets corporate muscle. His unlikely partner is Kevin Avery (Will Forte), a down‑on‑his‑luck attorney who sees the case as his own shot at getting back on track. Their odd‑couple dynamic gives the story its spark, pairing Kevin's frayed optimism with Coyote's silent, stubborn drive.
Acme fires back with its top fixer (John Cena), kicking off a string of escalating showdowns that fuse classic Looney Tunes mayhem with real‑world physicality. The hybrid format lets Coyote's animated chaos collide with human environments, turning familiar gags into fresh, high‑energy set pieces.
The result is brisk, playful, and surprisingly heartfelt — a lively underdog adventure that reframes Wile E. Coyote as more than a perpetual fall guy. He's a survivor who refuses to quit.
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