It’s been 12 years since Gregg Araki’s last film, White Bird in a Blizzard (2014), a work that felt only faintly recognizable as a Gregg Araki picture. I Want Your Sex not only serves as his first feature since then, but also marks a major return to form for the auteur. It’s refreshing to see a movie with Araki’s signature style on the big screen in 2026, and equally refreshing to see a film embrace horniness and sexuality with such unapologetic enthusiasm. It’s as if Gregg Araki heard the discourse about how Gen Z wants less sex in movies and TV and decided to push back. With I Want Your Sex, he seems to be shouting from the rooftops that there’s nothing wrong with being horny and that we need to make movies sexual again.

Adam Carter Rehmeier’s Carolina Caroline plays like the country companion piece to his punk rock Dinner in America (2020). Like that film, Kyle Gallner once again stars as a troublemaker on the run. However, Carolina Caroline feels like a more mature entry in Rehmeier’s filmography, which is fitting, since one key difference is that this isn’t a coming-of-age story or a comedy like his last two films. This romantic crime thriller is a stylish tale of young lovers on the run that draws easy comparisons to Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973). While it doesn’t reinvent the genre, the chemistry and commitment of its leads elevate the material, breathing new life into a classic formula. I’m not typically one to resort to superlatives in my reviews, but Carolina Caroline might just be the sexiest movie of the year.

Spoiler-free video review of Jan Komasa’s movie Heel (originally titled Good Boy) starring Stephen Graham, Anson Boon, and Andrea Riseborough.