Adrian Horton

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.

It accomplished what few of its peers have been able to do: make me believe in a teenage romance, actually remember the confusion of growing up and feel satisfied with an ending that points to an open-book future.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

In making the worst stereotypes of America’s political poles as extreme as possible, and America’s divide as literal and violent as possible, The Hunt feigns a viewpoint rather than actually having one. It takes aim at everyone, redeeming no one. Which feels circular, and queasy, and right back where we started: some empty talk about a divided nation, and a film thats probably not worth this much conversation.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Reminders of Him does, in fact, remind of that earlier time, when It Ends With Us over-delivered on sweeping sentimentality, a brief glow before everything curdled. We cannot go back there, but I’ve heard far less pleasurable echoes.

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.

Where Godmothered should coast, it stumbles – swerving between unwieldy earnestness to something edgier and settling on something duller than it should be.

As comedy writers and movie actors, the members of Please Don’t Destroy – Martin Herlihy, John Higgins and Ben Marshall – are out of their depth. That’s not a knock on their brand of comedy, which works in small doses.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

What sweetness and charm Prom Dates does muster is thanks to Lester alone, whose comic timing is sharp and whose performance of a girl growing comfortable in her sexuality over one crazy night actually conjures the sense of a real person.

It’s a visually verdant but emotionally flat film whose confusing friction between two miscast leads frustrates rather than engrosses.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

It struggles to feel at all like a genuine story.

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

Though it supposedly argues against human beings turned into synthetic quasi-droids, Uglies feels like just another throwaway product.

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.

There are kernels of something interesting here: an interracial best friendship and business partnership in today’s America, or navigating best friendship on the cusp of middle age, or maintaining the ethics of your business and passion under the growth mandate of capitalism. It would take thought, and jokes constructed with a motivation other than how to include the word coochie. It would take an understanding that women want to see sex and their bodies talked about filthily on screen, but are smart enough to know that’s not always enough.

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.

The low stakes of the camp drama and the soundtrack’s indistinguishably familiar pop (adaptations of contemporary Christian hits, plus four original songs) aim for easy, catchy, comfortable fun – a breezy intention which casts some of the script’s insensitive moments in even harsher light.

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.

It’s a weird facsimile of a movie – plot with no momentum, plenty of character facts without substance, a pastiche of better movie moments and classic romcom notes. Even for lowered expectations or couch-day fluff, this is a skip.

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

Middleton’s film makes the case for remembering the Apollo 13 mission in all its mundane, dated, precise details – a real, rare and breathtaking tale of survival and ingenuity, clearly and painstakingly told.

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.