The best new releases this week share an odd family resemblance. A 1930s private eye, a boy-band has-been, an 83-year-old Beatle and a punk band that went quiet 31 years ago all landed rave reviews at the same moment, and nearly every one of them is built on something old being dragged back to life. The screen, the stage and the bookshop are all pointing the same direction.
None of it is a coincidence. When money is tight and the headlines are grim, audiences and studios reach for the familiar, and the spring of 2026 has handed both a remarkable run of comebacks that actually earn the hype.
Revival Runs the Week’s Best Reviews
Critics have a name for what happens to genre fiction when the world feels unstable: noir comes back. Hard-boiled crime stories were born in the pulp magazines of the 1920s and surged during the Great Depression, and they tend to return whenever trust in institutions drops and the truth feels slippery. The cultural mood of 2026 has produced exactly that, and the screen is full of trench coats and moral fog again.
But the pattern this week runs wider than one genre. It covers a comedy franchise picking up old friends, three musicians who refuse to be retired by the calendar, and a translator dusting off works written nearly three thousand years ago. The thread tying the strongest reviews together is **revival**, and the surprise is how rarely it reads as tired.
What follows is a guide to the picks worth your time, grouped by how each one reaches back to make something fresh.
Noir Returns in Two Keys
The most talked-about screen releases of the week are both horror-adjacent throwbacks, and they could hardly be more different in tone.
Spider-Noir Hands Nicolas Cage a 1930s Detective
In Spider-Noir, Marvel’s homage to the hard-boiled fictions of the 1940s, Nicolas Cage plays Ben Reilly, a down-on-his-luck PI (private investigator, the gumshoe role at the centre of every noir) who gave up being the superhero known as the Spider five years earlier. The live-action series dropped all of its episodes on Prime Video on May 27, and viewers can choose between a fully colour cut and a black-and-white version, a gimmick Cage has said he hopes will send a new audience back to vintage noir. Critics bought in completely, with the show carrying a **92%** approval score from more than 80 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes (RT, the review-aggregation site).
a dazzling, stylish blend of hard-boiled storytelling and pure comic book verve
That was the Rotten Tomatoes critics’ consensus on the Spider-Noir series on Prime Video, and it captures why the revival worked: the form is old, the energy is not.
Backrooms Drags Found-Footage Into a New Maze
The other big arrival is Backrooms, the feature debut of 20-year-old director Kane Parsons, adapted from his own viral web series. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a furniture store owner who finds an infinite series of hidden rooms beneath his basement, each one creepily askew. The icily disturbing horror, produced by A24’s official Backrooms page, reached cinemas on May 29 and builds slowly toward jump scares and squirm scares. It is the rare case of a story that started online growing up into a proper film.
The Comedies Built on Comebacks
If the horror picks revive a genre, the week’s funniest releases revive relationships and reputations. Top of the pile is Make That Movie on Channel 4, a mockumentary about a director who keeps making terrible films, delivered by Last One Laughing finalist Sam Campbell. One critic called it so silly that it deserves to be paraded around the streets.
Netflix, meanwhile, brought back The Four Seasons, Tina Fey’s comedy about middle-aged friends who reunite over the course of a year, with Colman Domingo among the returning cast. Reviewers rated the second run sharper and more poignant than the first, which is its own small miracle for a revival that could easily have coasted. For viewers stacking up streaming picks, it slots in neatly alongside Jordan Peele’s Nope climbing the Netflix chart from earlier in the month.
The bittersweet standout is Power Ballad, from Irish writer-director John Carney. Paul Rudd plays a washed-up wedding singer; Nick Jonas plays an insecure ex-boy-band star who turns one of Rudd’s songs into a comeback hit, then has to answer for it. Carney makes films about buskers dreaming big, and underneath the bromance sits the hard binary of success and failure. The musical opened in limited release on May 29, with a wider break following on June 5, and you can track showtimes through the official Power Ballad site.
The Veterans Refuse to Step Aside
Music is where the revival story gets its sharpest numbers. This week alone, the loudest reviews went to artists who, by any actuarial logic, should have stepped back years ago.
- 83 is the age at which Paul McCartney released his 20th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, on May 29, complete with a duet alongside Ringo Starr.
- 31 years is how long Bob Mould’s band Sugar stayed dormant before this year’s reunion tour, a furious charge through 23 songs in 90 minutes.
- Sixth is the album count Danish quintet Iceage just reached, adding shoegaze, country and 1950s rock and roll to their punk core.
- 1990 is the year of John Woo’s Bullet in the Head, the violent Hong Kong epic getting a fresh cinema run this week.
McCartney and Sugar Lead the Returns
The McCartney record mines his Liverpool childhood, the streets around Speke where Dungeon Lane sits, then veers into a crazed Glastonbury fantasia. The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis put the stakes plainly: “If you’re going to make an album at 83, you’d better make something that counts.” By his reading, it does. Petridis also handed Iceage the verdict that they had landed “the sixth fantastic Iceage album: a hugely impressive streak,” proof that the comeback energy is not limited to legacy acts.
Sugar’s return carries an even longer silence. Bob Mould, the post-Hüsker Dü songwriter who shut the band down in the mid-1990s, brought it back for a rapid-fire UK and Ireland tour that critics greeted as ferocious rather than nostalgic. There is no time for messing around in the set, just one song after another.
John Woo Gets a Second Run
The reissue of Bullet in the Head rounds out the week, folding gangland thriller, war movie and tragic melodrama into one spectacle of greed and collapse. Woo scores brutal action with sad harmonica and woodwind, so the takeaway is futility rather than thrill. Anyone who enjoys watching catalogue work outlast its release date will recognise the pull; it is the same appeal behind these older films that still hold up today.
On the Page, Translation Leads the Reading
The books worth picking up this week carry the same backward glance. The headline title is Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea by Emily Wilson, the acclaimed translator of the Odyssey and the Iliad, a collection of essays on how the ancient world keeps intersecting with the modern one. It is revival in its purest form: making texts written millennia ago speak again.
The rest of the shelf keeps circling reunions and reckonings with the past:
- Whistler by Ann Patchett, in which a woman reconnects with her long-lost stepfather, described by its reviewer as top-shelf comfort food.
- Fieldwork as a Sex Object by Meena Kandasamy, a sharp comedy about online shaming after a deepfake sex tape.
- Dream State by Eric Puchner, a love triangle that plays out across decades in an immersive American saga.
Read in a row, they make the same case as the music and the films: memory, and what people do with it, is the engine driving the season’s best work.
Where to Catch Each Pick
The week’s recommendations span four formats and almost as many platforms. Here is the practical version, with where each title lives and its status as of late May.
| Title | Format | Where to Find It | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spider-Noir | TV series | Prime Video | Streaming from May 27 |
| Backrooms | Film | Cinemas | Released May 29 |
| Power Ballad | Film | Cinemas | Limited May 29, wide June 5 |
| The Four Seasons | TV series | Netflix | Streaming now |
| The Boys of Dungeon Lane | Album | Streaming and physical | Out May 29 |
| Sugar | Live tour | UK and Ireland venues | Touring to June 4 |
The films need a cinema and the tour needs a ticket; the rest is already streaming or on shelves. Sugar’s UK and Ireland run wraps on June 4, and after that the only revival left to schedule is your own attention.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I watch Spider-Noir?
Spider-Noir streams on Prime Video, where all episodes arrived on May 27. Viewers can pick between a full-colour cut and a black-and-white version of the same series, a choice built into the release.
When is Backrooms out in cinemas?
Backrooms opened in cinemas on May 29. It is an A24 horror film and the feature debut of 20-year-old director Kane Parsons, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, adapted from Parsons’ web series.
Is Power Ballad in cinemas now?
Yes. Power Ballad opened in limited release on May 29 and expands to a wider run on June 5. The musical comedy is directed by John Carney and stars Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas.
Where can I hear Paul McCartney’s new album?
The Boys of Dungeon Lane, McCartney’s 20th solo album, was released on May 29 across streaming services and physical formats. It includes a duet with Ringo Starr and draws on McCartney’s Liverpool childhood.
Is the Sugar reunion tour still running?
Sugar’s UK and Ireland dates continue until June 4, marking Bob Mould’s first tour with the band in roughly three decades. The set runs to 23 songs in about 90 minutes.
