Adrian Horton

Written by Colby Day, In the Blink of an Eye attempts no less than the sweep of life from big bang to unknown verdant planets, with the emotional depth of a tide pool and the complexity of a cave painting.

For a film so sincerely intent on bringing us into the process of sibling grief, I still left a stranger.

Chasing Summer at least outruns the charge of being boring, though at what cost.

In other words, smart concepts, talented people, solid blueprint. But there is too little risk – in the defanged satire, in the muddled thematic sprawl, even in a late-stage satirical swing that, for this fan, jumped the shark – to rise above its sharp-eyed construction.

This specific concoction of absurdism, sentimentality, childish humor and dark punchlines may have stayed off-key for me, but seemed to strike a chord with others, at least judging from the many guffaws at the screening I attended.

Ella McCay is, first and foremost, a mess – a clunky collection of incoherent characters and confounding plot that seem to defy basic story logic at every turn, and not in a surprising or intriguing way.

As it is, Merv is slight and sweet and entirely to expectations. Making a movie about co-parenting a dog is not a bad idea – though I wouldn’t say it’s a great one, either.

This enjoyable silver-spoon romp packs all of its 97 minutes with jokes and bits ranging from the puerile to the genuinely funny, proving that there may yet be more to wring from eat-the-rich satire.

The gimmicks are unfunny, the romance inoffensive, the happy-ever-after straightforward. For all its waxing poetic on the specific luxury of champagne, no one is pretending this is anything other than a mass market item; the things to hate are also the things to like. One might call a critic’s feelings about it a champagne problem.

Regretting You seems unsure of its own melodrama, and careens between what should be tear-jerking moments of unfathomable grief and too-cutesy romcom fluff like a teen learning stick-shift.

As a cinema experience, The Official Release Party of a Showgirl at least mirrors the album it celebrates – rote, tinnily light, with the lazy execution and first-draft quality of someone up against a deadline. Further evidence of what critic Spencer Kornhaber has termed Swift’s burnout era.

The younger Day-Lewis shows promise as a film-maker – Anemone certainly looks serious, the correct scowls and swirling skies and wordless, eerie montages to suggest weighty themes, big emotions and ominous suspense. The tools to back up that style with emotional punches that land like the real ones of the brothers – best believe they tussle it out, because of course – are not yet refined, but in this father-son duo, at least, I have faith.

Those seeking a feelgood romcom should keep looking.

The initially alluring casualness of Ohs’s project fades quickly into a mildly irksome shallowness – lots of unearned and unconvincing staring, docile conversations, should-be evocative images that do not evoke.

That Splitsville stays on track to the finish is mostly credit to chemistry – that ineffable, unpredictable thing between two, or three, or maybe four people, with just enough variation for each relationship here. Splitsville may take shots at the loose-boundaried, but they’re laced with truth: partnered or single, open or closed, we’re all working with the same raw material.

Inconsistent but never insubstantial, Materialists is far from perfect, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of a date.

McConaughey may be a capable driver, but this is an unwieldy vehicle – oversized, overlong and altogether way too many parts to run smoothly.

It squanders the talents of its star, especially for this particular brand of unsettling, on a bizarrely paced script that adds up to nothing.

By large, this beastly feature is exactly what you would expect it to be: fashioning itself different but in fact much like the others. A unicorn, this is not.

That’s mostly for the better. The Accountant 2 is a more fun affair than The Accountant, if you’re a fan of very loud shoot ’em ups, nonsensical crime webs and rogue good guys fighting obviously very bad guys, though this outing is sadly missing Anna Kendrick.

It is neither suspenseful nor thrilling, but something else: a movie so confidently ridiculous, so stylishly absurd and so self-aware of its mandate for fun that you can’t help but enjoy it, reasonable wariness – and all reason, really – be damned.

Though the two leads are capably charming – or, in the case of Tiffin, baseline attractive as a nice hometown guy not given much to do – the movie still has the imprint of a tech company’s content assembly line: cheaply made, over-lit, bumpily paced, ludicrously dialed-up characters without much comic payoff.

Kinda Pregnant finds its groove in the more grounded and honest. The tiptoeing around big changes in one’s best friendship, the tension between joy and dread, the role of a friend when another is going through something irrevocable all get mentions that hint at something sharper and stickier. But what texture exists gets steamrolled by the loud and extreme.

There’s bits of misplaced humor, a firm sense of place and promising performances, but frustratingly little magic to be found here.

At its best, writer/director Clint Bentley and co-writer Greg Kwedar have crafted a gorgeous and poignant film of quiet, bruised life in a fragile place, anchored by a magnificently sensitive and restrained performance from the still-underrated Edgerton.

It’s an altogether promising debut for Webley and should-be breakout for the young Wright, who makes you believe that though this film may ultimately fail to distinguish itself from the many tight, slight dramas at Sundance, Ella will always be remembered.

Alyssa’s self-absorption may be harder to swallow, but Palmer and SZA enjoyably ham up what could otherwise be try-hard, too gimmicky fare.

It’s a sincerely stupid idea executed sincerely, with seemingly complete buy-in from all involved that yes, this is a movie about a snowman with abs. I’ll take that type of brain freeze, for now.

Martha is, after all, the star – a fascinating narrator of her own life, sometimes direct, sometimes curiously opaque or self-contradictory, always evincing a glowing, undaunted ambition. As the OG influencer, she lived the rule: whatever happens, just keep pushing forward. The people will keep watching.

The story is, frankly, so crazy, the scheme so intricate and complex – I don’t want to spoil it for those who, like me, hadn’t heard the hit podcast it was based on, but suffice to say I remain astounded – that hearing Kirat tell it plain would be riveting enough.

It’s better, more grounded and self-aware than expected, enough to overcome the cliches and occasionally clunky dialogue. It’s a mostly enjoyable addition to the welcome sub-genre about 40-plus, desiring women as considered, desirable subjects.

It can be borderline maudlin and easily teary, though The Friend is grounded enough, and Watts sufficiently understated, to not become outright eye-rolling.

As far as zeitgeisty nonfiction goes, Winner is one of the better ones, at once entertaining and illuminative.

The Front Room does capture one delicious, rich truth: hell hath no fury like a mother-in-law scorned.

The Chernins are savvy enough to not wrap the whole thing in a neat “just be yourself” bow in the end, but Incoming could have worn a little more of its heart on its sleeve.

The mood is light, the stunts impressive and, mercifully, the film is not nearly as cheap-looking nor dull as Netflix brethren such as The Man from Toronto or Lift.

Despite the action-comedy bona fides of director Paul Feig, helmer of the far more entertaining Bridesmaids and Spy, and the comedic chops of Awkwafina and John Cena, Jackpot! is an unsteady balance of dark and light, a tinny and discordant mishmash of stunts, ridiculous characters, ludicrous stakes and attempts at zeitgeist.

In a sea of family content that’s more often than not annoying, Thelma the Unicorn surfs, for the most part, above the crowd.

For a film that very much bills itself as a comedy, particularly through the lovable and literally bumbling character of Blue, If is fairly short on actual laughs. Instead, it settles by the end into misty-eyed, mostly earned sweetness, with the evergreen lesson of remembering love and playfulness as you grow up.

The successes are in large part owed to Merced’s sensitive, grounded performance, her open face able to pass amusement, anxiety, self-loathing vitriol, panic attack and relief like quicksand. Her performance alone can absorb the film’s rougher edges, vaguer lines and dramatic whiffs, especially when assisted by a strikingly natural Cree.

The film makes cogent, sweeping sense of the record for perhaps the most illuminative, swift and damning case against the institution of policing – the real fourth estate, as one subject puts it – of the many investigations conducted in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. But there’s a dryness to its procedure.

Shirley gets the job done, though I wish it was more worthy of her complexity.

Civil War works on the level of intellectual exercise: a film clear-eyed on the horrors of war and trauma in which journalists are the unsentimental heroes, and which relies on the audience to supply their own assumptions of American politics rather than spoon-feed reality. But the distance makes for an at times frustrating watch – stimulating on the level of adrenaline, not emotions.

Little Wing is overall an odd, unaffecting mess, other than, again, the pigeons, who look majestic on camera.

If you have the stomach for singularly focused revenge and some truly graphic, visceral hand-to-hand combat, Monkey Man delivers the goods.

Mooney and Winter’s horror comedy may be all over the place, and unserious to its own detriment, but at least they commit to the bit.

You come to the Road House for a good time and some knuckle-cracking fights, and on that front, this film delivers, owing to some truly impressive stunt work, a fully convincing performance from Gyllenhaal in Southpaw form, and a crackling screen debut from UFC champ-cum-entertainer Conor McGregor.

There are a few laughs but, at nearly two hours, Ricky Stanicky far outstays its welcome.

The predominant mode of Problemista is playful, its comic sensibility curious and askew – enough to make the film, a promising if uneven debut, a delight throughout.

Players may trip on its gimmicks at times, but there’s enough lived experience beneath the rapid-fire quips to work.

In true streaming economy form, it’s a smooth, ambient operator, made more memorable than it should be by a still underappreciated Mendes, who will hopefully upgrade to more headlining adults roles sooner rather than later.

A Different Man is a slog, made worse by the fact that it seems to mistake darkness for insight.

At its best, the film skewers the potentially eye-rolling concept of white fragility with visual panache and wit.

A Real Pain is occasionally insightful on the subject of suffering, sometimes funny, a bit endearing, a little pretentious, often dry.

There’s plenty to keep many viewers watching for its 1 hour, 44-minute runtime. But given the bare characterization for everyone and the total lack of chemistry between Hart and Mbatha-Raw (despite her best efforts), not enough to elevate Lift above its many forgotten peers.

The Von Erichs endured so much loss, and Durkin manages to convey some of it.

The 99-minute film is long on yelling and guffaws, short on punchlines.

The two leads do their best here, but even they cannot scrounge enough feeling out of this desolate sci-fi.

More than two decades since the original, Rodriguez maintains his ability to invoke a child’s sense of adventure and absurdity.

Given His Three Daughters’ fidelity to the cold facts of dying, the final minutes makes a bold and uneasy logic leap that pulls on the heartstrings but feels too neat for a drama this lived in, for sibling bonds this spiky.

In the hands of director Alejandra Márquez Abella, it is impossible not to be charmed by this tale of tenacity, commitment and community

Love at First Sight isn’t a tear-jerker, rather a lump in the throat at best, and always watchable whenever Richardson or Hardy are pining on screen; the two make falling in love, losing each other, first fight and making up within 24 hours seem perfectly reasonable and emotionally obvious, if admittedly (to themselves and others) a little crazy.

Sitting in Bars with Cake careens from zany bar-hopping to hospital, cake baking ASMR to cancer weepie. You could argue that that’s life itself – a lot of chaos, bathos amid the profound – but that’s giving too much credit to the film’s murkier, underdeveloped bits. Still, it has a lasting bittersweetness to it.

It struggles to feel at all like a genuine story.

At worst, as often is the case with the finished product, it’s so focused on recapturing long past, hazily remembered magic as to be cringe-inducing.

Love Again, by ceding some space to the Queen of Feelings, has moments that play. I can’t say it was good, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.

British actor/writer Nathaniel Martello-White’s directorial debut nudges at some uncomfortable fault lines of race and class, but tends to over-index unearned suspense for character development or insight.

It may not always land and gets lost in itself on the way there, but Jackson has crafted a beautiful experiment indicative of ambitious vision, one whose magic outweighs its weaknesses.

For all the grand gestures of musical theater, there’s an odd flatness to Theater Camp, a half-hearted and lackluster comedy from a group of Hollywood friends set at a summer performing arts community.

There are many things working well in Rockwell’s debut, Taylor’s performance chief among them, but the end result doesn’t match her character’s formidable strength.

The first half is so energetically surefooted as to establish trust in Manzoor’s instincts and hopes for a second feature. But like The Fury’s would-be signature kick that Ria struggles to nail, Polite Society banks on one big swing it just isn’t able to pull off.

The Starling Girl, anchored by a bristling performance from the always solid Scanlen, is at its best when it hews to the combustible suspense of a teenage girl glimpsing her own instincts – for honesty, for autonomy, and most threateningly for pleasure.

Williamson knows how to write a horror script – Sick offers moderate to intense thrills delivered in a compact frame whose Covid 2020 specificity adds more to the tension than it distracts.

Keshishian, as in Truth or Dare, works in moments which complicates Gomez’s angelic image: being short with a too-glib interviewer, refusing to listen to a friend, reacting poorly to genuine concern. My Mind & Me is strongest, and bravest, in moments like this, illustrating Gomez’s humanity through universal capacities we don’t want recorded.

There are pieces of Luckiest Girl Alive that seem interested in a life splintered by trauma, in the relief of unburdening, the hunger for certainty over what happened, the thrill of playing on cultural expectations for women. But the story it ultimately tells is an empty, self-serving fantasy.

Although the whole concept is quite daft, Winter’s energetic and committed performance adds a bit of heft without ever forfeiting the comedy entirely.

It is as noble an execution of tragic historical record as one could hope for within the limits of a biopic – neither confirmation of doubters nor enough justification to relive it.

As hard as Cuoco and Davidson try at chemistry – and Cuoco, at least, seems to be really trying – this umpteenth spin on the Groundhog Day time loop is more irksome than endearing, cutesy than actually cute, a downward spiral of uncomfortably performed neuroticism that devolves into a borderline indefensible ending.

The film is competently crafted, dutifully acted, clearly labored over with soul, and yet, like its star, lacks a beating heart.

Love in the Villa is feel-good, not try-hard. Nothing ever rises to the level of unwatchable, but nothing has any distinctive staying power, either – you may catch the whiff of romance here and there, like passing by a bakery storefront, which constitute the most alluring shots of the movie.

Its affect is warm and reassuring, its methods for affirming that everything’s gonna be all right are cozy and tame, especially in regards to young motherhood.

There will always be room for a good, breezy romcom, and the set-up of an Indian wedding is ripe for one. As churn-able Netflix content goes, Wedding Season is on the better end of the spectrum.

Not Okay is like many “internet movies” before it – approaching uncanny valley, somewhat obvious, just a little off — but this unsettling darkness makes it a solid entry into the canon of just-okay social media films.

Anything’s Possible is another needed step in the right direction – a just-fine high school romantic comedy about an unapologetic, bold trans teenager on a major streaming platform.

Where the Crawdads Sing never really had an interest in complications, or hardship, or racism as anything beyond wallpaper for its central nature girl fantasy of self-reliance. It would rather stay above the fray, gliding prettily along the marsh without actually getting dirty.

Dosunmu, an established music video director, assembles beautiful shots of longing, pain, yearning, closeness and jealousy between Beauty and girlfriend Jazz (Aleyse Shannon). But strung together by Waithe’s too-spare script, they feel isolated and go nowhere.

Nothing is really offensive or incompetent, but it never rises to the level of funny or interesting, either.

There are moments in Along for the Ride . . . where the magic that cements a teen film seems within reach. For a few seconds here or there, you can feel it. The rest of it just passes by like the tide.

Braff and Union have passable chemistry, but Union’s charisma and confidence is magnetic in any context including this one. It’s all breezy – there are no bad actors or malicious intent (other than that one Calabasas woman), so the drama is light and the messes are quickly cleaned up.

It’s spectacle coasting on the evergreen draw of time travel paced with beats of occasionally effective human emotion – grief, regret, self-loathing and acceptance in sometimes moving, very manageable amounts.

It’s a thriller by name but less edge-of-your-seat than lounging on the couch, absorbing beats of plot like the ocean tide. A little provocation with slight commitment – that’s not a bad night in by any means.

Am I OK? is strongest when embedded in the two friends’ well-worn, effusive bond, in sickness or in health – when the fight comes the barbs are believably lacerating, the kind only best friends can wield.

Call Jane never quite rises to the level of a rousing battle cry, but does offer a studious examination of a past that could, terrifyingly, become our future.

This awkward, misjudged, occasionally sexy film has seeds of a radical, fresh story and flashes of directorial brilliance but is hobbled throughout by the confounding decision to write her 26-year-old main character as either insensitively neuro-divergent or more sheltered child than adult.

Birds of Paradise, then, settles into a weird, slightly unsettling middle-ground – beautiful yet hollow, intriguing yet distanced, skillfully performed without much of a beating heart. Like its principal dancers, its a portrait of contrasts, though the friction here doesn’t generate much heat.

The movie asks the audience to not look at two elephants in the room, and unfortunately, no amount of soaring music can relieve that heavy a burden.

It’s the same feeling, really, as watching a bunch of straight TikToks. While Rae offers flashes of promise, especially when she pops her genuinely winning smile, she doesn’t make the case for TikTok-to-film-stardom here. The chemistry between her and Buchanan is stilted, at best.

The central romance here is, on paper, a love for the ages, a story of all-consuming passion. It’s not quite so in practice.