Chris Azzopardi

A winking ode to queer youth who still dream — too fiercely, too soon — amid self-discovery and family disruption, Griffin in Summer gives aching shape to a child’s need for order in a world that defies their understanding.

In this strikingly assured debut, the writer-director Georgi M. Unkovski demonstrates gentle realism, paired with luminous cinematography and a superb young cast.

By putting us inside the internet, Corrigan makes their insular world feel uncomfortably close to ours.

McCarthy’s direction is assured and lively, so clearly a homage to the films, like “She’s the Man,” that inspired this one. Some flaws, such as actors past their teenage years that would never pass as high school students, just feel like part of the movie’s detachment from reality.

Hardy peels back the layers to reveal Luke’s sexual awakening so viscerally that it’s easier to overlook the film’s narrative shortcuts.

Departures is still tender and winsome, with graphic-novel-style animation lightening the load, but is ultimately punishing in tone. It lives by a truth that might ring familiar for gay men particularly: Humor that cuts deep is a form of survival.

While the writer-director Carmen Emmi’s evocative debut relies on a nostalgically textured aesthetic that sometimes seems to mask its thin narrative, the heat builds in unexpected ways, ultimately igniting through the quiet agony of living as someone you’re not.

It’s an accessible presentation for fans. Others may find it too insider-focused, even as it renders Selena’s symbolic self more human.

Khebizi brings palpable desperation to the role of Liane, despite the limited script, while the cinematographer Noé Bach intimately frames Liane like we’re intruding on her space.

Janney veers from fury to reflection to tearfulness so vigorously it’s as if she knows that heavy lifting is required to take this story off the page.

With the same kind of sweetness and heightened stylization that he brought to “Hairspray,” the director Adam Shankman balances jokes for an in-crowd with the pleasures of spoofs like “Airplane!” and “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” plus the appeal of seeing Joel McHale in a harness (one of the better star cameos, which also include Sarah Michelle Gellar and Charo).

Though Reinhart and Pedretti chew through the scenery with dedication, the film, directed and written by Meredith Alloway, is a vibes-only pastiche that has little to add to the satirical queen-bee subgenre besides some updated slang.

While De Mornay was chilling as a woman haunted by a miscarriage and her husband’s suicide, Monroe is merely chilly, lumbering like a mopey teenager stuck with reciting unintentionally funny lines that aim for sexy but kill the mood.

Ultimately, the romance’s sentimental plotting needs more of Heather’s grounded logic and far less of Jack’s greeting card sayings. She’s much too sensible to lose herself so quickly to his brand of bland.

The movie’s intermittent flippancy is its lifeblood, with Christoph Waltz’s cheeky vampire hunter delighting even when he seems to be off doing his own thing.

While the vanilla songs lack magic, the dad jokes and brotherly roasting feel like their own kind of delightfully unserious gift.