Adrian Horton

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.

True to its animated predecessors, Super-Pets pulls off what other superhero entries have struggled to summon from the CGI universe: lighthearted fun and self-aware humor woven with real evergreen themes – the fear of change, learning to love friends through transitions, trusting that love will remain through the seasons.

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.

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.

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.

Decker infuses Nelson’s screenplay with a potent dose of whimsical fantasy, morphing Lennie’s tortuous bereavement into a lonely house, a romantic musical journey and a garden where other complicated, confusing emotions grow.

If you’re coming in with a blank slate, then Navalny is a feast of evermore unbelievable details and a window into a movement against a state of increasingly boldfaced, demeaning lies.

It’s trite to say a debut performance is a revelation, but the whole film simply does not work without McInerny, who is fully convincing as a girl on an emotional precipice. It’s an astoundingly calibrated turn, one of barely lidded emotions that eventually skitter about

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.

A ride somehow both warm and stressful, and an inviting mashup of familiar beats made fresh by a trio of grounded, endearing performances.

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.

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.

Its strongest element, aside from Eilish herself, is the generosity and empathy afforded to the experience of fandom.

The final serving of this three-part confection rarely strays from enjoyable, even if it doesn’t match the seductive sweetness of the first bite.

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things holds a contained, idealized world – a trove of romcom enjoyment and small treasures I had no problem looping through.

It’s an often subtle (even in its many XXX-rated shots) and surreptitious study of an industry built on explicit, aggressive imagery, an arresting film which, though it doesn’t stick the landing, thankfully delineates between the legitimate work of adult film performers and the toxicity, misogyny and abuse the male-dominated industry allows to fester and lacerate.

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