Director Matt Johnson already released one of my favorite films of 2026, with his meta sci-fi comedy Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie. Now he’s doubling down on the year with his new film Tony.
Ostensibly a biopic of famed chef and travel writer Anthony Bourdain, Tony is a coming-of-age film loosely inspired by a few chapters in Bourdain’s culinary tell-all Kitchen Confidential. Despite its title and marketing, movie’s association with Bourdain is loose. Very loose. The film really is more “inspired by” than based on, reorganizing, recontextualizing, and wholly reinventing the events of Bourdain’s youth to make a movie simply seeking to capture his vibe more than anything.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because the movie is a well-paced, well-told coming-of-age story featuring star turns from Leo Woodall and Antonio Banderas with a serviceable lead performance from The Holdovers star Dominic Sessa. But it strikes me as unfortunate that they gave the movie a title as definitional as Tony when the film seems so disinterested in exploring the intricacies of Tony Bourdain. * It seems to have as much association with Bourdain’s life as the teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You shares with William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. It’s there for sure, but you should probably change the title.
Like I said, Tony is a good movie and a good time, and it’s definitely something I’ll revisit when it hits streaming. But some of its character choices and loose interpretations of such an iconic recent figure had me scratching my head. As a movie fan, I was pleased. As a Bourdain fan, I was left wanting more. And I was left hoping that Tony doesn’t prevent someone from more accurately depicting the adventures of Bourdain’s life in the 1980s culinary scene of New York City somewhere down the line. Because that is where the true meat of his story really lies.
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