In over three years at Collider, senior author Jake has now penned over 3000 articles covering a wide range of TV and film for the resources, lists, utilities, news, and interview teams. Alongside interviewing stars such as Selin Hizli, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Harlan Coben, and Chelsea Peretti, Jake was lucky enough to visit the set of Aardman and Netflix's Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl in 2024, getting the chance to chat with four-time Academy Award winner Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. Jake has also worked for other publications, including Agents of Fandom. You can also hear Jake every week as the resident film and TV journalist on Track Radio.
It's hard to believe we've already been graced with so many future classics, and there's still almost half a year to come. However, due to so many movies in 2026 stealing the spotlight, others have fallen slightly under the radar and deserve much love. One such film, Olivia Wilde'sremake of the Spanish-language The People Upstairs, is one such film that deserves even more flowers, despite earning plenty of praise following this year's Sundance Film Festival and even scoring a respectable box office run.
Titled The Invite, Wilde's third directorial feature – following her debut Booksmart and the divisive Don’t Worry Darling — adapted the simple premise of a pair of neighboring couples with opposing lifestyles and relationships, who come together one evening in explosive, hilarious, and darkly dramatic fashion. Wilde stars in the film alongside Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penélope Cruz, with each delivering note-perfect performances. Two months since its theatrical debut, The Invite is now available to watch at home and is proving a hit. At the time of writing, the film is the most-streamed movie on iTunes in the U.S.
COLLIDER.
Collider · Quiz
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture QuizWhich Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie?Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
QUESTION 1 / 10TONE
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want?The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind.
QUESTION 2 / 10THEME
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film?Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?
QUESTION 3 / 10STRUCTURE
03
How do you like your story told?Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
QUESTION 4 / 10VILLAIN
04
What makes a truly great antagonist?The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
QUESTION 5 / 10ENDING
05
What do you want from a film's ending?The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
QUESTION 6 / 10WORLD
06
Which setting pulls you in most?Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible.
QUESTION 7 / 10CRAFT
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most?Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
QUESTION 8 / 10PROTAGONIST
08
What kind of main character do you root for?The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
QUESTION 9 / 10PACE
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time?Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
QUESTION 10 / 10AFTERMATH
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has DecidedYour Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
BEST PICTURE 2020
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
BEST PICTURE 2023
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about.
BEST PICTURE 2024
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
BEST PICTURE 2015
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
BEST PICTURE 2008
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
How Did Critics React to 'The Invite'?
Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton laughing together in a living room in The Invite.Image via Sundance
Audiences loved it, and star Rogen even admitted the film made him appreciate his marriage, such is the tense relationship-based chaos at its core. But how did critics react? For Collider, Ross Bonaime awarded the movie a strong 8/10, writing, "The Invite is a mature, attractive-looking comedy, which we rarely get in this day and age," and praising Wilde's ability to direct detailed comedy. Other critics agreed, with the film averaging a near-perfect 97% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
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