Nine Reasons to Celebrate the Movies (and Life) in 2026

The Knicks are NBA champions and my heart is open. Let’s go to the cinema.

Welcome back to Projections, an emotional outpost of the NBA champion New York Knicks.

I am having an incredibly unfamiliar feeling. I believe normal people call it … joy. After the Knicks’ historic victory on Saturday night closed out a whirlwind of a month for me, I’m trying to take stock.

• Last week, I watched my daughter kill it at a dance recital. No stage fright, big smiling energy.

• Today she graduates from preschool and gets ready to begin kindergarten, a huge moment for any parent. So proud of her.

• I went to the Cannes Film Festival, a lifelong dream, with my pal Amanda and we had a blast.

• I spent an afternoon with Steven Spielberg talking about 2001: A Space Odyssey, an experience only made better by his exuberant buy-in during the discussion.

• I have witnessed the first major sustained boom at the box office since before the pandemic. That it’s powered in part by my favorite genre, horror, makes it all the more sweet.

• And of course I got to witness the extraordinary run to the title for the Knicks, which was done in unprecedented fashion against a genuinely terrifying and hateable opponent in a series of astonishing and inspiring comebacks.

This really is satisfaction. I’m so confused. I was lucky to go on The Zach Lowe Show to do some series analysis and talk about my earned-over-decades Knicks feelings in-depth. It was a wonderful discussion with a few heater monologues from Zach. Check it out:

And at the risk of crossing the beams too aggressively here, I see some strong parallels between the Knicks and the movies right now.