Category: Film Reviews

Checking in on Supergirl and other sisterly stories

Superman is compelled to protect Earth and do good. Supergirl would like to stay out of it and get her buzz on.

Supergirl(PG-13, in theaters) builds on Milly Alcock’s cameo at the end of last year’s Superman (streaming on Prime Video and HBO Max and available for purchase or rent). After partying on planets whose red sun doesn’t prevent her from getting a little tipsy the way Earth’s yellow sun does, Alcock’s Kara Zor-El came back to her cousin Superman/Clark/Kal-El’s (David Corenswet) Fortress of Solitude to pick up her energetic good boy dog Krypto.

While Clark lives in Metropolis, fighting bad guys and, as Kara says, seeing the best in everyone, Kara just sort of dirtbags around in her RV-esque spaceship, partying on dirtbag-y planets and keeping company primarily with Krypto. She is not looking to save the day — but she can’t quite just live with bullying either. When 13-ish-year-old Ruthye (Eve Ridley) shows up at the bar where Kara is slumming it, Kara seems compelled to fight the patron who tries to steal Ruthye’s sword. Impressed with Kara’s fighting skills even in her low-power red-sun state, Ruthye tries to get Kara to join her on her quest to find and kill Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), the girl-trafficking villain who killed Ruthye’s family. Kara is all “no thanks, kid” but then Krem and his ruffians steal Kara’s ship, in the process poisoning Krypto. A healer tells Kara that she has three days to get the antidote from Krem or Krypto will die. She still isn’t interested in helping a little girl do revenge but now Kara has no choice but to search for Krem, and Ruthye tags along.

Somewhere along the way, they run into and then keep running into Lobo (Jason Momoa), a bounty hunter with some super strength and costuming that suggests off-brand KISS.

Jason Momoa here is a bit like the cinematic equivalent of what happens when you get a bottle of hot honey — it’s such a fun flavor pick-me-up that you just start randomly putting it on things. It’s not unpleasant, per se, but it doesn’t always feel necessary. Jason Momoa knows how to be in this kind of movie and has good enough chemistry with Alcock but, like, I’m not sure why we’re drizzling him on everything.

Kara’s relationship with Ruthye is nice — big sister-y at times with Kara genuinely interested in keeping young Ruthye from sliding into the same grief and loneliness pit that she has been living in since she left behind the people of Krypton. The flashbacks explain how Kara has a working memory of Krypton culture and her father Zor-El (David Krumholtz), brother of Superman’s dad Jor-El, and yet is younger than Superman. It’s all basically fine, as exposition goes. More than we get from the brief glimpse at Krypton via the Superman parents’ video message in Superman, not quite the dazzling world building that you might want for someone so tied to that part of her life.

I think this movie wants — while still being in the 2025 Superman universe, with cartoony bad guys and Superman’s grounded earnestness — to be about the same sense of hope but from shadows. Kara hasn’t had Clark’s Kansas upbringing, she doesn’t have a found family. She feels alone and adrift in a universe that is mostly crappy, full of pirates and ruined worlds and individuals picking on the weak. Caring, for her, is a road to more grief. But, as her mother told her, she may be tough and not always nice but she is inherently good. So how do you be good in a crappy world? It’s not the shock of “this is different” that I think gave Superman its sparkle but Supergirl is full of interesting ideas, with more smart or funny or thoughtful moments than weak ones. I liked it more than I didn’t and — especially with its under-two-hour run time — had fun without too much checking my watch.

Another movie with a female duo at its otherwise tonally wildly different center is Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (R, streaming on Hulu and available for purchase). Picking up pretty much exactly where 2019’s Ready or Not ended, this gooshy dark-comedy horror starts with bride Grace (Samara Weaving) smoking on the steps of her in-laws’ in-flames mansion, having survived/killed her way out of a Satan-mandated game of hide and seek on her wedding night. She is taken to the hospital, where she wakes up to find herself handcuffed to a gurney — a lot of people died, after all — and trying to explain the situation she’s in to her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton), who is still her emergency contact. Before Grace can do much recuperating or explaining, someone shows up to try to kill her and she learns what we already know, which is that the previous night’s game has leveled up. The death of her in-laws has left a hole in Mr. Le Bail’s, aka the Devil, High Council. As Satan’s lawyer (Elijah Wood) explains, now the remaining High Council families will hunt Grace until sunrise with the family that dispatches her getting to sit at the head of the High Council and basically rule the world. The local family hosting the hunt is the Danforth family, represented by twins Titus (Shawn Hatosy) and Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar, who wonderfully understands the assignment). Thus a new group of rich wieners attempt to kill Grace and, because she’s there, Faith, while Grace, outfitted once again in her blood-soaked wedding dress, attempts to fight them off. Fight them off and not get too much goo on herself when the council members explode for having broken a rule, which seems to happen a lot.

This movie, like its predecessor (which is also on Hulu, if you’re looking for a double feature), is giddy and goofy and a real good time. The addition of a sister, and thus a team member, for Grace adds a nice element. The sisters have spikey chemistry but Grace still feels responsible for Faith even if Faith is still nursing her hurt at Grace’s long ago disappearance. Weaving and Newton are also both just well suited for these kinds of characters. They are being chased and threatened and they are scared but they’re not victims.

The sister relationship is the most interesting part of Voicemails for Isabelle, a June-release Netflix rom-com movie. Jill (Zoey Deutch) is trying to figure out who she is and what to do with the rest of her life since the death of her sister Isabelle (Ciara Bravo) from cystic fibrosis. Because of Isabelle’s long history of being in hospitals and, as Jill describes it, stuck at home, their sisterhood was particularly central to their lives. Even when Jill moved out to San Francisco from their hometown of Austin to pursue her career dreams of being a baker, Jill and Isabelle constantly checked in with each other, something Jill continues even after Isabelle has died, listening to Izzy’s old voicemails and leaving new messages at Izzy’s phone number. What Jill doesn’t know is that Wes (Nick Robinson), a real estate broker or something in Austin, has inherited Izzy’s number and is getting Jill’s messages. He’s charmed by Jill and starts to follow aspects of her life like it’s his new soap opera. He hears about her difficulties with her pretentious “yes chef” boss Chef Bastien (Nick Offerman, having great fun) and her attempts at dating. And when he gets a chance, he heads to San Francisco to meet her.

The boy-meets-girl of this movie is very Amazon Essentials Rom Com. It hits all the beats but nothing about the Jill-Wes relationship is particularly exciting or memorable. Jill’s relationship with her sister on the other hand is a nice look at close sisterly bonds (a relationship somewhat mirrored in relationships Wes has with found-family-type people he calls cousins) and how the loss of someone so close is not only the cause of great grief but can change how the remaining person thinks about her whole self. Jill finding her way back to her life, and deciding if the chef-y nonsense of Bastian’s kitchen is as important to her as it once would have been, is watchable, made more-so by Deutch, who is pretty good at adding a little something extra to light lifts like this.

The sisters at the core of Netflix’s recently released Little House on the Prairie series also have a compelling relationship, though one that seems to be more built on struggling with their forced proximity than embracing it. (The eight-episode first season of the show, released in early July, has already won a second season.) Laura Ingalls (Alice Halsey) and her older sister Mary (Skywalker Hughes) have been dragged to the Kansas prairie by their father, Charles (Luke Bracey), in search of new opportunities and open land. That the land is open to settlement is news to the Osage, still hoping to prevent the settlers (and the federal government that would enforce those settlers’ claims) from taking their land. The tension between the newcomers and the land’s inhabitants is one of the interesting points of friction in this new adaptation of the classic novels. Unlike the saintly parents of the 1970s TV show, Charles and his wife Caroline (Crosby Fitzgerald) here start the show at a mom-and-dad-are-fighting simmer. Caroline seems to be all in on Charles’ plan for the family — or at least 70 percent in — but this big move to the new place with no extended family or community amenities (no church, no school, no post office for the first episode) is terrifying to her, as are the wolves that roam the area, the assorted drifter types and, at first, her Osage neighbors, whose claim on the land Caroline doesn’t know about. We see the Osage side of the tensions from neighbors White Sun (Alyssa Wapanatâhk) and William Mitchell (Meegwun Fairbrother), whose daughter Good Eagle (Wren Zhawenim Gotts) becomes fast besties with Laura.

Around the edges, the show also touches on the Civil War and its effects on the men who fought in it and, ever so lightly, on issues of race. We also get more of the frustrations of the female characters about the special restrictions and hardships of places like this for women. Caroline has to put up with a snotty neighbor, Jemma James (Mary Holland, a first-rank “hey it’s that guy” who needs to be in more things), if she wants any female friendship at all. Or at least, she does until she makes better friends with the significantly cooler Emily Henderson (Barrett Doss), the Black owner of the town’s general store, and Lacey Aubert (Rebecca Amzallag), the pants-wearing French lady whose relationship with Mr. Edwards (Warren Christie) is always discussed with raised eyebrows.

I like how show tells the story of Laura and her family with a sympathetic eye to them, particularly to the curious, open-hearted, school-averse Laura, while still being realistic about the injustice-filled situation they’ve rather naively wedged themselves into.

In tone, the show reminded me of the bits I’ve seen of Anne with an E, the Anne of Green Gables adaption from the late 2010s whose three seasons are still available on Netflix. (Little House inspired me to watch or possibly rewatch a few episodes.) There, like here, we get the familiar story but more rooted in the history of the time and reality of the characters. Amybeth McNulty’s Anne is a plucky story-teller with a big imagination but she’s also suffering from the effects of abuse she suffered as the ill-used, unpaid servant to several large families. That show, like the new Little House, isn’t quite a gritty update, it’s more a reconsideration that has you thinking about what the familiar story beats (tweenage orphan or family on the prairie) would actually mean and feel like. The Little House adaptation does have a bit more heft (both in its story and in the strength of its performances) and it seems to be working with a bigger budget, with that money well spent when it comes to setting and overall production.

If you’re looking for more sister-ish relationships on TV, check out the recently canceled Ponies(on Peacock) while it’s still accessible. Even though news came out in June that it would not get a second season, the one-season, eight-episode show, which came out back in January, tells a good, relatively complete story and is worth watching. Mother of Dragons Emilia Clarke plays Bea and Haley Lu Richardson is Twila, both women living with their husbands at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in the late 1970s. They both learn that their CIA husbands have died on assignment and are offered the choice to work in Moscow as embassy secretaries while secretly working for the CIA in hopes of learning more about their husbands’ deaths. Bea has the advantage of being a somewhat native Russian speaker, having learned the language from her Jewish grandmother (Harriet Walter) who lived in the USSR before and during World War II. Twila is a wonderfully plucky, seemingly bumbling American whose mix of street smarts and smart smarts (and curly hair) gives her a somewhat Natasha Lyonne-in-Poker Face vibe. (Poker Face is also a delightful watch, also on Peacock and also, sadly, canceled. But even if the second season doesn’t quite reach the heights of the first season, I also recommend watching all 22 episodes while you can.)

I’m a sucker for some high-quality late 1970s production design and costuming, and this definitely has that as well as some Cold War trade craft and fun character beats, particularly in the growing friendship between Twila and Bea as they work together and separately on increasingly dangerous assignments.

Featured photo: Supergirl.

Movies for family viewing

If you have kids, you will probably have contact with the newest entry in the Minionsverse, Minions & Monsters (PG, in theaters), and that is fine. I kind of view all Minions-related content as not-quite-as-clever Looney Tunes, which is I think a completely acceptable form of entertainment. No, nobody is learning or growing or imparting any life lessons, but also you don’t have to sit through any learning or growing or poorly conveyed life lessons. The Minion-speak means you don’t even really have to listen to all that much dialogue — all the better to avoid quippiness or writers’ attempts at sounding “of the youth.” It’s kinda great.

Here, the movie piles up a bunch of riffs, mostly visual, on the early years of Hollywood — you get some Roaring 20s, silent film, introduction of sound, suffragettes and Prohibition thrown at you along with some nods to 1920s, 1930s and 1940s films and also Jaws and The Day the Earth Stood Still and the existence of George Lucas. Historical inaccuracies, you ask? “Poop” the Minions would say, and I probably agree because these little touches are nice treats for the adults in the audience — probably watching this movie because it is a family outing in the air conditioning.

The Minions (all voiced by Pierre Coffin) wind up in Hollywood after their attempts at finding an evil “Big Boss” to serve fail, usually because the Minions accidentally do in the Big Boss. In 1920s-or-something Hollywood, they stumble through an elaborate action sequence in a movie being shot by director Max (voice of Christoph Waltz). You ruined everything, get out of here!, he tells them. But then the heads of his studio, the Bright Brothers (both voiced by Jeff Bridges), tell him that the Minions sequence is brilliant. You’re my best friends, come make more films with me!, Max says to the Minions after he rushes to find them. The movie focuses primarily on Minions Henry and James and their buddy Edward. Henry and James have long been amusing themselves with outlandish stories and now find in Hollywood the perfect outlet for their imaginings. When the advent of sound ends the Minions’ serious career in Citizen Kane-ish and Maltese Falcon-y films, the trio attempt to make a monster movie by conjuring a real monster, Goomi (voice of Trey Parker). Perhaps they should have paid attention when he said his full monster name, which included “the Deceiver.” (Also adding their vocals to the movie are Allison Janney, Jesse Eisenberg and Zoey Deutch.)

The monsters are fun, the Minions are fun, the callback to Harold Lloyd hanging from a clock and a building falling around Buster Keaton are fun nerdy tidbits. Minions & Monsters is a jolly entry in kid-focused entertainment that offers just enough to the adults who are also in the room.

Of course, learning doesn’t have to be a drag to a kid movie — for example, see the recent The Sheep Detectives (PG, 2026), which was released in May and is now on Amazon Prime Video. This movie, which really feels more straight down the middle all-ages fare rather than just kid-specific, contains a complex examination of grief and what it means to belong and also talking sheep solve a murder.

The sheep here — some kind of computer-generated creatures based on real sheep or something, according to some light Googling — are of the “live-action animation” variety living in an otherwise human live-action world. There is a bit of an uncanny sheep valley you have to walk through and acclimate yourself to but then you can — or at least I could — basically live with what you’re watching, because the sheep are so sweet and so cute and have such a lovely life on their English countryside farm with their shepherd George (Hugh Jackman), who only raises sheep for wool. What would another reason to raise sheep be, wonders Lily (voice of Julia Louis-Dreyfus), displaying that though she is a very clever sheep, she has been protected from some of life’s harsh realities. Well, except for the harsh reality of Murder!, due to George’s nightly reading of mystery and detective novels to the sheep. When George is found dead, Lily and her buddy Mopple (voice of Chris Dowd) and flock loner Sebastian (voice of Bryan Cranston) begin to investigate his murder, trying to nudge village police officer Tim (Nicholas Braun) in his investigation of suspects, principally the people named in George’s will. The chief suspect appears to be American Rebecca (Molly Gordon), George’s long lost daughter. But there’s also the neighboring shepherd (Tosin Cole) who is interested in George’s flock, the local butcher (Conleth Hill) and an out-of-town lawyer (a glammed up Emma Thompson, having such fun).

In addition to sheep being sheep — a Brett Goldstein-voiced pair of rams always looking for something to smash with their horns — we get a very touching and straightforward consideration of grief and how the pain of loss might be worth it to keep the memories of our loved ones. Louis-Dreyfus in particular does a beautiful job at conveying her character’s feelings with her vocal delivery, really helping to bring life to these digital creatures. The movie does a good job of bringing this serious, weighty stuff to the story without weighing it down and still giving us a very solid and fun “English village murder” murder mystery.

If your family movie nights largely involve older middle schoolers and up, Netflix’s recently released Enola Holmes 3(PG-13) is an enjoyable option, if not quite as crackling as its previous entries. Millie Bobby Brown returns as Enola, younger sister of Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill), who has been making quite a name for herself as a detective in her own right. And as the movie opens, she’s worried about that name because the wedding dress-wearing Enola is about to become Lady Tewkesbury as the wife of her longtime friend and sort of boyfriend Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge). After some debating whether she actually wants to go through with the marriage, she heads to the church only to be waylaid by Dr. Watson (Himesh Patel), who has come to tell her that Sherlock, who had also come to Malta for her destination wedding, has disappeared, possibly been kidnapped.

Of course this case quickly spreads, with another kidnapping and other nefarious events and Enola desperate to solve the mystery and also figure out how exactly to get the life she wants with Tewkesbury.

There is less Sherlock/Enola teamwork than in previous outings, perhaps one of the reasons the movie doesn’t quite have the same bouncy feel as the others. But the movie still presents its Sherlock riff with adventure and good humor.

Featured photo: Minions & Monsters.

A look at some of the tales of Sherwood Forest

The newest Robin Hood is a vibe.

In The Death of Robin Hood (rated R, in theaters now), Hugh Jackman takes the broken-down old Wolverine of Logan and goes like a hundred times more grizzled and dark with the outlaw Robin. Now an old old man with hair and beard that are completely out of control (his kingdom for a headband and some conditioner), Robin is, as he explains in the movie’s opening moments, not the heroic rob-from-the-rich economic equalizer of legend. There was no great love Maid Marian, there was no giving to the poor, and if he fought a sheriff or a bad guy here and there it was incidental because he fought, and killed, a lot of people — to include the person he soliloquies all this to, one of the many relatives of someone he once murdered who has come for vengeance.

But he does have one buddy, the equally bad Little John (Bill Skarsgård), who seeks him out to help with his own vengeance situation. Seems that years earlier, John killed a man and b asically stole his identity and his farm. Since then, Little John has been Edward, married to a good woman named Margaret and father to little Margaret (Faith Delaney). Except now the real Edward’s family has kidnapped his family and wants to take back his/their land. He asks Robin to help him get it back, which he does, with exactly the bloody results predicted.

Because he is super old, Robin is severely injured during the battle and John takes him to recover at an island priory, run by Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer). In his weakened state, Robin is quiet and still enough to find himself comforted by Brigid’s care and the safe haven she has created on the island.

But like, kind of a bleak safe haven because everything about this movie is pretty bleak. (Also bleak but pretty. Props to the cinematographer, Pat Scola, according to IMDb.) And bleak is the vibe this Robin Hood is all about — bleak like the unforgiving winter wilderness, bleak like the idea that people will always prefer a legend to the truth, bleak like a church farm run by a prioress with a superbleak past, bleak like a very grizzled old man vacillating between feeling the awful weight of his crimes and having no problem committing more of them. That that guy is Robin Hood is fine, whatever, but I don’t know that it necessarily adds anything to the story it’s telling. And it’s telling that story kinda slowly — the runtime is listed as two hours and three minutes but it feels longer than that.

The performances here are great — Hugh Jackman as a man who can’t really deal with the things he’s done in his life, Jodie Comer as someone determined to create a peaceful life from a horror-filled past. And the movie looks amazing. Just don’t go in expecting a lot of merry swashbuckling.

The lack of classic Robin Hood-ing in this latest Robin Hood movie had me seeking out other Robin Hood content.

MGM+’s Robin Hood series premiered its first season of 10 episodes in November 2025 and it’s been renewed for a second season, according to Wikipedia. I’ve seen the first four episodes and I do like that this one orients itself not around the Crusades but around the tensions between the Norman invaders who have taken positions and land from the Saxon colonized. I don’t know how historically accurate all this is, timewise, but whatever, I appreciate the new take.

We meet Rob Locksley (Jack Patten as an adult) when he is a boy and his dad, Hugh (Tom Mison), is still angry at having his family’s lands and mansion taken away by Normans. Hugh is strongarmed by the Sheriff of Nottingham (Sean Bean) into taking the job as the, like, hall monitor for the forests, keeping poachers from taking the “King’s deer.” As the years go by, Hugh puts effort into being kinda bad at his job so he doesn’t have to go around arresting his Saxon neighbors. But, by the time Robin is all grown up, Hugh’s permissive approach to poachers and the grudge he still holds toward the Norman Lord Huntington (Steven Waddington) who took Hugh’s house leads the Sheriff to go along with plans to arrest Hugh for treason. Robin’s grief quickly leads to some outlaw behavior that has him hiding in the woods with Little John (Marcus Fraser), Friar Tuck (Angus Castle-Doughty) and other only mildly merry men.

Meanwhile, in London, Huntington’s daughter Marian (Lauren McQueen) is in the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine (Connie Nielsen) and is pining for Rob, who she spent some time with before troubles flared up. The core cast also includes Priscilla (Lydia Peckham), the daughter of Nottingham, who is the frequent star of the episodes’ comically unsexy sex scenes. They feel very “check out our sex scene, we’re prestige!” without feeling particularly necessary or fun.

This whole show feels expensive-cheap. Like, this isn’t made on a dime — the actors’ costumes fit and the sets are good enough. But there is an inch-thick feel to the world and to the characters. It reminds me a bit of the 1990s and early aughts syndicated shows of the Xena Warrior Princess ilk, but grayer lighting and none of those shows’ lack of self-seriousness.

The June 15 episode of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast reminded me of the existence of the 2010 Ridley Scott-directed Robin Hood(on HBO Max, and available for rent or purchase). Rereading my review from the time, I liked it fine then and — like hosts Joe Reid and Chris Feil on the podcast — I might like it even more now. Russell Crowe plays Robin Longstride, the character who eventually becomes Robin Hood, and Cate Blanchett is Marian. They have nice chemistry and have some genuinely funny scenes together. There are some very Ridley Scott battle scenes, some nice business with Robin and all the guys who become his Merry Men and excellent villains in Mark Strong and Oscar Isaac, who at moments almost seemed to be mixing in a little Sir Hiss from the 1973 animated Robin Hood (Disney+, as well as rent or purchase). Fun is being had while a story is being told and I can totally forgive whatever bits of Gladiator it seems to be mixing in.

Over on Prime Video, you can find 2018’s Robin Hood starring Taron Egerton in the title role, Jamie Fox as a sort of Little John-esque character and Eve Hewson (who showed up in the recent Disclosure Day) as Marian. While 2010’s movie, like 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, goes for some sense of historical realism, 2018’s movie is set in a kind of alternate medieval era where armor looks more like bulletproof vest and there are touches of steampunk and, I don’t know, Megalopolis? This movie more than others really goes for the “Robin Hood equals Batman” comparison with some very Bruce Wayne and Batman universe story beats. Ben Mendelsohn plays the villain Sheriff of Nottingham/personification of the U.S. War on Terror — this also feels like an Iraq war movie, weirdly. It is sometimes surprisingly dark and sometimes a “good entertainment while you fold your laundry” level of fun.

While you’re over at Prime Video, check out 2022’s British production The Adventures of Maid Marian, which has real scrappy student film energy, with some Party City-looking costumes and “the glue is not quite dry on that” sets and a few “we cast this guy because he owned one of the cameras” casting choices. That said, I kind of had fun watching it? Marian (Sophie Craig) has spent the last three years hiding out at a nunnery, pretending to be a novitiate, while waiting for Robin (Dominic Anderson) to return from the crusades. When he does come back, they quickly learn that the former Sheriff of Nottingham (Bob Cryer) has returned, with a plan to kill Robin Hood and take back his office. Craig doesn’t have much to work with but she does a watchable job with what she’s got. This is a light B movie for when you are in a light B movie mood.

Speaking of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (rent or purchase), that movie kind of rides the line between B movie touches and big blockbuster production. Kevin Costner’s performance is exactly as remembered — he remains a weird choice for the style of playfulness and charm the role seems to need. The appearance of Christian Slater certainly takes you back to the early 1990s but Alan Rickman’s performance remains a mustache-twirling bit of goofy fun.

Featured photo: The Death of Robin Hood.

Toy Story 5 returns to fun

Summer is kids-in-the-movie-theater-air-conditioning time and Toy Story 5 offers a fun, very solidly built family moviegoing option.

I was a little apprehensive about Toy Story 5 (in theaters) largely because Toy Story 4 (streaming on Disney+ if you’re a completist)felt to me like someone at Pixar having an empty-nester, career-change crisis and trying to work it out with the toys. Toy Story 5 feels much more like an episode of Toy Story with our familiar characters having an adventure — with of course, the occasional Pixar gut punch.

Here, Jessie (voice of Joan Cusack) takes the lead of the story. She is the sheriff of the now elementary-school-aged Bonnie’s (voice of Scarlett Spears) toy room and one of Bonnie’s favorite toys to feature in her wild adventures. But these adventures just feature Bonnie and her toys — she is shy around other kids, most of whom seem to spend their“play” time on devices rather than with toys. Seeking to help their daughter break out of her shell, Bonnie’s parents buy her a Lilypad (voice of Greta Lee), a kids’-iPad-like toy with a vaguely M3gan-esque aggressively positive voice. The girls in Bonnie’s dance class all hang out on their Lilypads, playing games together in the morning. Lily is determined to help Bonnie make friends with them, learn the emoji-based inside jokes and give up on lame old toys. But Jessie knows that Bonnie needs a friend with similar interests to really connect and isn’t willing to let Lily take over.

Eventually, Jessie and her horse Bullseye wind up out in the world, running into new toys including earlier generations of tech toys that have been just as discarded as their analog brethren, including Smarty Pants (voice of Conan O’Brien), a toilet training toy. Meanwhile, Woody (voice of Tom Hanks), thinking Jessie needs his help, shows up at Bonnie’s room about the time Buzz (voice of Tim Allen) realizes that Jessie is missing.

Even though this is basically Jessie’s story, Buzz gets some nice bits of running story: with the recent marriage of Forky (voice of Tony Hale) to his plastic knife wife Karen Beverly (voice of Melissa Villaseñor), Buzz wants to propose to Jessie. And, in the movie’s opening scenes, we see a shipping container of next-generation Buzz Lightyears wash up on an island where they activate and try to figure out their mission. These scenes, which are intercut with the central action of the movie, bring a nice cartoon-antics quality to this movie. For all that the movie deals with some big issues — toys battling screens for the attention (and affection and imagination) of kids, kid-on-kid bullying facilitated by those screens, the idea that the screens are pushing kids to act grownup too fast — most of the movie is able to do this while still being lively and kid-fun, not just adult clever. The result is a movie with beloved characters that is truly enjoyable for everyone in the family.

Looking for more kid-friendly fare this summer? Here are some of the PG-rated movies slated for summer release:

• Minions & Monsters The next entry in the Minions universe opens July 1.

• MoanaDisney is going to keep making these unnecessary live-action adaptations, I guess. The Rock returns as live-action Maui on July 10.

• Paw Patrol: The Dino MovieNo job too big, no pup too small — Aug. 14.

• The Magic Faraway Tree A live-action adventure based on the books by Enid Blyton opens on Aug. 21.

• Coyote vs. Acme Trailers suggest a Who Framed Roger Rabbit?-like blend of live action and the Looney Tunes characters. See it Aug. 28.

Featured photo: Toy Story 5.

The summer movie frontier?

Who doesn’t love summer movie space aliens?

(Spoilers ahead — I don’t really know how to proceed without a little bit of secret-spilling.)

It is perhaps a mild spoiler to say that Disclosure Day (PG-13, in theaters now), directed by Steven Spielberg, is about extraterrestrial beings. It is maybe a bigger spoiler to say the movie is specifically about what happens as the existence of those aliens goes from being a secret held by the government for some 80 years to being something that a wider group of people, perhaps even the whole world, knows.

As we see in trailers, TV weatherperson Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is suddenly capable of speaking an unEarthly clicky language, which she breaks into during one of her live broadcasts. Margaret’s moment of on-air strangeness leads her to fear she’s had a medical issue. But we see the reaction that footage of the episode gets from a secretive quasi-government agency run by Noah (Colin Firth), who is already scrambling the troops after one of his tech guys, Daniel (Josh O’Connor), made off with some highly classified video footage. And we see the reaction of a group led by Hugo (Colman Domingo), who seems to be directing Daniel in his heist. As Noah’s people chase Margaret, who doesn’t understand why she’s suddenly a wanted woman any more than she understands why she can suddenly read everyone’s thoughts, and Daniel, the two seem drawn to each other. Fairly early, we learn about the big secret Daniel is so desperate to get out to the public when he shows his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) some of the stolen footage starting with, bestill Fox Mulder’s heart, the Roswell crash in 1947.

I think we’re supposed to be watching basically regular people being pulled into this big secret — how would they handle this information, how would they react to learning the part they are playing, do they think the world can handle knowledge of aliens? There are moments that exemplify this: Jane talks to a nun played by Elizabeth Marvel and they weigh the meaning of aliens, the reaction they’d expect the world to have.

My problem is that these conversations frequently can’t break off the page to feel like a real conversation, these people never quite feel like real people to me. Emily Blunt feels off-key here. It’s as though she was given too many notes about exactly what tone to strike and ends up feeling like two or three character ideas smooshed into one person. Josh O’Connor, meanwhile, feels like he’s just hitting the one character note, just a lump of doe-eyed Big Emotion. Colman Domingo is maybe doing something interesting — isn’t he always? — but it feels like it’s from a different movie. And Colin Firth is just serving up angry British authority, take it or leave it, no side of fries.

For every “that’s an interesting idea” the movie has many story elements that are unnecessary, don’t fully make sense or don’t feel like they were developed beyond the idea stage. A running subplot throughout this movie is that international tensions have the whole world on the brink of war. We see people hoarding gas and buying out supermarkets. This element is maybe meant to heighten tension or underline the destructive tendencies of humans or some other thing I just didn’t get. For me, though, it was one of the extra accessories that Coco Chanel wants you to take off before leaving the house.

There are elements of the chase that are fun and well-constructed, though the movie is never as energetic as its most John Williams-y of John Williams scores seems to want us to think it is. I feel like there are ideas here, things that could have gone in either a more popcorn fun direction or something that felt more like a stripped down gritty sci-fi adventure reminiscent of 1970s Spielberg. For me, though, the movie never pulled together into something that was either a thrilling ride or a compelling thought experiment.

A few days later I rewatched that 1977 grittier Spielberg sci-fi: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (available for rent or purchase and streaming on Peacock). In many ways, this is the spikier, low fi version of Disclosure Day. We get many of the same elements — strange occurrences, the “what’s happening to me,” a chase with officialdom — though there is more chase and a shorter timeline in Disclosure Day. Characters played by Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon see clearly not-from-here crafts flying in the sky and come away from the experience with thoughts of Devil’s Tower National Monument stuck in their heads. Desperate to figure out what they’ve seen and what they’re experiencing, the two unwind — first Dreyfuss’s character as he scares his family (including his wife played by Teri Garr) and then Dillon’s character when her young son, seeing brightly lit “toys,” runs after a UFO and is abducted. I highly recommend this double feature — I think I had more fun thinking about Disclosure Day after watching Close Encounters. The movies are, as your serious film academics might say, in conversation with each other and are both interesting reflections of their times.

I also used the outer space theme of Disclosure Day as an excuse to catch up with March release Project Hail Mary (PG-13, available for purchase). Based on the Andy Weir book, Project Hail Mary is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the team who wrote and directed The Lego Movie and wrote the animated Spider-Verse films, with a screenplay by Drew Goddard, who also wrote Weir’s other book-to-film, The Martian. This movie is exactly as good as all those names promise.

Ryan Gosling here is, similar to Matt Damon in The Martian, the one person working alone for a good chunk of the movie. He plays Ryland Grace, a middle school teacher who is also a molecular biologist and has been kicked out of standard scientific work for some kooky ideas about the conditions required for life to develop. Luckily, Eva Stratt (an excellent performance from Sandra Hüller) is in the kooky ideas business. The head of an international scientific project, Eva is trying to figure out astrophage, a substance that is traveling from Venus to the sun and appears to be dimming the sun’s light. Scientists all over the world are working on the project and she calls Grace in to study a sample of the astrophage gathered on a recent space mission. We watch as Grace joins the project to try to figure out what astrophage is and how they could possibly reverse the potentially world-ending effects it’s having on the sun.

All of this is viewed in flashback as Grace, in the movie’s present, wakes up to find himself alone on a space craft with no memory of much of anything — who he is, where he is, why he’s there, why a robot is trying to shave off his extremely long beard.

Similar to The Martian, Project Hail Mary is a movie of questions and whiteboards and smart people tackling small problems with duct tape and plywood in order to get the information needed to tackle bigger problems. It is optimistic in its view of science and people doing science — this isn’t callous tech-dinguses trying to figure out how to monetize some crappy thing that nobody really needs anyway. It’s people, all curious and fallible, working together, across borders and language barriers, to figure things out with the ultimate aim of saving the world. This might be my favorite brand of save-the-world adventure movie? No magical stuff or superpowers, just middle-aged nerds who can mock things up with Home Depot supplies. This movie does everything right — Gosling’s performance, space visuals, showing people thinking through things and showing Gosling working out a puzzle by himself that includes a really solid vocal performance (by James Ortiz).

Featured photo: Disclosure Day.

A look at Office Romance and other streaming fare

I like a rom-com that doesn’t skimp on the com.

Office Romance (R) is a movie written by Brett Goldstein (best-known perhaps as the gruff “he’s every-[bleeping]-where” Roy Kent on Ted Lasso) and Joe Kelly, whose writer/co-creator credits on IMDb include Ted Lasso and Detroiters. Despite being a Netflix release (on June 5) this movie is of theatrical release quality with a sensibility that hits a nice middle space between expected rom-com beats and the kookier sense of humor of those involved. And, in case years of superstardom and the Affleck of it all have caused you to forget, Jennifer Lopez is actually pretty good at kooky.

Here she plays Jackie Cruz, the CEO of Cruz Air, who has successfully guided the company but is still called “Gordita” by her father, Jack Cruz (Edward James Olmos), the airline’s founder, during meetings with a board of directors that is tepid on her leadership. When expansion plans lead to a frivolous lawsuit by a competing airline, Jackie meets in-house lawyer Daniel (Goldstein), asked to handle the case when the company’s head attorney (Bradley Whitford, clearly having fun doing the most) is sidelined due to a breakfast burrito mishap. Daniel and Jackie very quickly realize their mutual attraction but, in the face of the company’s “zero tolerance for intraoffice dating” policy, they know they can’t act on it. So, of course, they get drunk on a work trip and wind up in bed. The no-dating policy is really only part of the obstacle to their romance, most of which is silly, but Goldstein and Lopez have nice romantic chemistry and even better comedy chemistry as a duo involved in romance-tinged goofiness.

For me the movie’s MVP is Betty Gilpin, who plays Jackie’s extremely pregnant assistant Sydney. The role has that “early aughts Judy Greer role” vibe but Gilpin brings her specific brand of delightful lunatic intensity. Betty Gilpin is always the MVP — whether she’s intimidating Goldstein whilst in labor, as she does here, or playing a colonial era woman whose desire to escape spinsterhood leads her to marry a man who is possibly in league with the devil on a plague-ridden island (watch Apple’s Widow’s Bay, a weird-fun horror series in which Gilpin has an excellent one-episode appearance).

Office Romance is a goes-down-easy movie that seems to have put fun first — offering solid comedy along with its reality standard romance.

Elsewhere in the streamingplex is Miss You, Love You (TV-MA, streaming on HBOMax as of May 29). Allison Janney is Diane, a woman grieving her husband who just died after a battle with Parkinson’s. She is putting together his funeral and, while she’d like her son to help her, what she gets is his assistant Jamie (Andrew Rannells). With the exception of a little Bonnie Hunt here and Oscar Nunez there, this movie is mostly Janney and Rannells talking to, talking past and dealing with each other in the days leading up to the funeral — so much so that I assumed this was the adaptation of a play. It doesn’t appear to be — it was written as a screenplay and directed by Jim Nash, probably still best recognized from his role as the dean on Community, according to Wikipedia.

Though Diane and Jamie’s relationship seems straightforward — she’s a new widow, angry that her son has sent an assistant instead of coming to care for her himself, and he’s the assistant sent, like it or not — both of their backstories are more complicated than that.

“I like seeing Allison Janney like this” was a thought I had early in the movie, by which I think I meant I like seeing Allison Janney just acting, just doing the work as a smart, articulate woman without some other bit of daffy business stacked on the role. Her performance here is precise — you understand immediately who Diane is and then get to know her in a way that deepens that understanding. Janney and Rannells play off each other well, both when the characters are getting along and when they’re fighting. It’s really enjoyable to watch even if it’s watching people move through varying stages of grief.

The Home is also sort of about grief — is a not completely untrue thing a person could say about this oddball horror movie that allegedly was in theaters last summer and is currently streaming on Hulu. The Home stars Pete Davidson, of all unlikely people, whose character, Max, comes to work at a retirement home as part of a community service sentence for doing socially conscious graffiti. Max immediately begins seeing and hearing strange things as he gets to know the residents including those played by John Glover and Mary Beth Peil (Grams from Dawson’s Creek, among her many credits). For the movie’s first half, Max sort of ambles through increasing creepiness and gore, both real and (possibly) in dreams, responding somewhat like his Chad character from the Saturday Night Live sketches (fun fact: there actually was a Chad horror movie sketch and it features John Mulaney — it’s fun!). Then Max begins a campaign of obsessive observation of the residents with a series of hidden video cameras and breaking into spaces he shouldn’t go, quickly followed by a left turn into Bonkersville.

There is a world in which all of that, especially the turn into Bonkersville, could have been a wild Malignant-like ride of horror tropes and operatic goofiness. But it doesn’t quite get there; it has some “huh, that’s a fun idea” beats but can’t pull it all together into something that transcends its weaker moments.

For a look at a story in a retirement living situation that does transcend its bumpier elements — and, frankly, the reason I’m talking about The Home at all — check out The Boroughs. This eight-episode Netflix series also has something strange happening at a retirement community — the New Mexico-set The Boroughs, which feels similar to The Villages in Florida, and its full-time care facility The Manor. (This show was the reason I thought “maybe?” when coming across The Home.) In The Boroughs, Boomers drive golf carts around a resort-like setting and engage in day drinking and promiscuity. In the nearby Manor, those with memory and cognitive difficulties wait at prop bus stops and peacefully serve each other yarn-filled mugs of “coffee.” But in both places, the settings feel a little too gentle and the staff is a little too aggressively positive. The why of it all is imperfect but the stacked cast makes the show worth sticking with: Alfred Molina as the newest resident; Jena Malone as his daughter; Alfre Woodard, Clark Peters, Denis O’Hare and Geena Davis as his neighbors, and Bill Pullman, Ed Begley Jr., Anna Deavere Smith, Jane Kaczmarek and Mary McDonnell making appearances. It is, as many reviewers have observed, a murderers’ row of performers who absolutely make everything they’re given at least 30 percent better. Skip The Home and watch The Boroughs.

Also streaming on Hulu is In Cold Light (R), which Wikipedia indicates had some sort of release earlier this year. This movie is, as the title indicates, chilly and didn’t feel fully developed but I enjoyed it for the downbeat crime & family drama it is. Maika Monroe plays Ava, vibrating with barely contained rage, sadness and fear at all times. Just released from prison, Ava tries the law-abiding citizen route for like a minute before she tries to return to the drug business she ran with her twin brother Tom (Jesse Irving). She quickly learns that there are new players and finds herself plunged into a war featuring a dirty cop and unreliable allies. (And Helen Hunt, perhaps auditioning for something in the neighborhood of the Annette Bening role on Paramount+’s Dutton Ranch. If so, she should get it. She is solid. Also, meanwhile, Dutton Ranch is a hoot.) The heart of the movie is the difficult relationship between Ava and her father Will (Troy Kotsur, Oscar-winner for CODA). Their scenes offer a reminder that, whatever Covid-era baggage we attach to CODA aside, Kotsur deserved his Oscar and that, while I mostly know Monroe from the The Hand that Rocks the Cradle remake and the weird 2024 horror movie Longlegs, there is definitely something there with her.

Featured photo: The Other Bennet Sister