Adrian Horton

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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s all a fizzy, funny, convincingly romantic delight, a tribute to the craft of making big movies with big stunts that is heartfelt in its appreciation without taking itself too seriously.

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.

Its tender blend of emotions is evergreen. Dìdi’s final touching, soft note of growth – so much internalized and overcome already, so much to go – would be moving in any year.

Squibb is as understatedly funny and commanding as you’d expect. Both actor and character remain, despite all societal and personal forces to the contrary, absolutely vital even as the circumstances and potential of life shrink. What a joy to witness it.

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

The Outrun is the rare two-hour movie that made me forget to check the time. That it does so while avoiding the many cliches of the cinematic memoir adaptation . . . is its own achievement, a testament to the source material and Ronan’s tremendous performance.

The Kupferer-Mallens are Chicago theater stalwarts, having founded their own company, and the affection everyone involved with this project feels for the stage – as an art, therapy and practice – is so evident as to be contagious, even in the film’s most theater-y meta moments.

The film’s chief enjoyment is seeing how motivations transform, and character is forged, through the sliding doors of new people, victories and losses, and the sharpening of the young women’s disparate judgments on the genuinely disappointing differences between boys and girls state.

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.

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

At its best, the Eras Tour film manages to capture the why of that bond, the shock of her vast stardom against the startling emotional clarity of her songwriting. The Eras tour, she says, has been the most special experience of her life; in this deft rendering, it’s easy to feel the intoxication of being in her temple.