Category: Film Reviews

Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (PG-13)

Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen.

Also Benedict Wong and Rachel McAdams return and Xochitl Gomez joins the gang as America Chavez, which is maybe a spoiler if that name means something to you. But since this movie has been in theaters since early May (and is now available on Disney+ and VOD), you have likely had that and the selection of fun surprise cameos spoiled. I had and really that was fine — this is definitely a movie that benefits from footnotes and the additional reading that is the various Marvel, in-the-MCU TV series. I will admit that I only partially did the homework, as I gave up on Wandavision after a few episodes.

Dr. Stephen Strange (Cumberbatch) goes to Wanda/Scarlet Witch (Olsen) for advice when America shows up being chased by a giant octopus and telling stories of some evil hunting her through the multiverse to attempt to gain her multiverse-hopping powers. Because magic is somehow involved, Dr. Strange thinks Wanda may have the know-how to help him, an assumption that is correct but — well, But.

In many ways, this is another MCU movie dealing with the aftermath of the Thanos fight and the trauma of all that was lost but without the emotional punch of the two post-Endgame Spider-Man movies. In other ways, this is a Sam Raimi-directed movie with an obligatory Bruce Campbell appearance and some fun zombie business and cameos that even mostly-movie-Marvel fans can enjoy. Like, don’t worry too much or think too hard and you can just go along for the ride of sorcerer light-fights and Strange’s friendship with America, who brings some of that Peter Parker energy. B- Available on Disney+.

Spiderhead (R)

Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller.

Also starring Jurnee Smollett and Mark Paguio, in this movie based on a George Saunders short story and I might have just told you all the most interesting things about it.

Steve Abnesti (Hemsworth) is the oiliest of oily, obviously evil and broken-as-a-person tech bros. In this case, his specific brand of evil is pharmaceuticals, which he is beta testing on prisoners who agreed to be a part of his experiments in exchange for comfy modernist accommodations and eats cooked by incarcerated chef Lizzy (Smollett). There’s the concoction that makes test subjects find everything hilarious, the drug that makes them desperately afraid, the drug that improves their ability to verbalize all their feelings, the drug that makes them super horny. For example, despite Jeff’s affection for Lizzy, when Steve puts him in a room with Heather (Tess Haubrich), who is as uninterested in Jeff as he is in her, a dosing with the love drug has them making out almost instantly. The scariest drug of them all is Darkenfloxx, a drug that makes you physically sick and seems to sink you into a kind of internal horror.

Or is that the scariest drug? What is Steve’s real motivation here? And why does his assistant Mark (Paguio) look like whatever they’re doing has caused him to already put legal representation for the inevitable Congressional hearings on speed dial?

This movie’s best aspects are its atmospherics: the creepy-beautiful facility the subjects are kept in, the general sense of tech-corporate sinisterness, the American Psycho-like way 1980s pop music is used to suggest that someone is a psychopath. These elements are lightweight fun. But the movie itself sort of meanders and feels like it loses the thread of whatever it is it wants to do. I found myself thinking (as I often have with movies like this over the past two years) that this is another middling thriller that might have once gone to theaters in the lull of September before awards movies have really taken off or in early March, as sort of half-hearted counter-programming to some family fare. And while its absence from theaters is probably a bad sign for theatrical diversity, streaming might actually be where a movie like this is better received. Its mildly enjoyable elements can be appreciated on a “what should we watch” Wednesday evening and its fizzling out can be shrugged off. C+ Available on Netflix.

Fire Island(R)

Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang.

Five friends head to Fire Island for what might be their last weeklong summer visit with Erin (Margaret Cho) at her beach house with a pool. Erin has been bad with money and may have to sell this spot that has been this found-family’s retreat, so she tells the kind Howie (Yang), opinionated and spirited Noah (Booster), bookish Max (Torian Miller) and flirty and party-ready Keegan (Tomas Matos) and Luke (Matt Rogers). And if, in those descriptions, you’re getting hints of Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia Bennet, that is by design in this absolutely charming riff on Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. Howie doesn’t have much expectation for finding love — and he wants the full rom-com love, not just Noah’s emotions-free style of one-night stands — on Fire Island but he and the sweet and handsome Charlie (James Scully) become instantly smitten with each other. Charlie’s friends, on the other hand, are kind of a nightmare — snobby, vain and, in the case of Charlie’s bestie Will (Conrad Ricamora), standoffish and seemingly elitist. That’s right, Will’s the Mr. Darcy and he’s Mr. Darcy-ing with the best of them, giving Mr. Darcy gold standard Colin Firth a run for his money in being both prideful and a stone-cold hottie.

As is required, there is also a Wickham-type in the form of Dex (Zane Phillips), a man who turns Noah’s head and about whom Will has some kind of shady information.

Great performances across the board, with Ricamora and Booster bringing the electricity and Yang just a national treasure. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a lit major in possession of an Austen-appreciation is in want of a fun variation of a beloved tale. A Available on Hulu.

Cha Cha Real Smooth (R)

Cooper Raiff, Dakota Johnson.

Andrew (Raiff, who also wrote and directed this movie) has graduated from college and is ready for his next step — though what that is he isn’t yet sure. His not-quite-girlfriend has gone to Barcelona for a year and Andrew is back living with his mother (Leslie Mann), sleeping on a mattress on the floor of his 13-year-old brother David’s (Evan Assante) bedroom and exchanging passive-aggressive insults with his mom’s husband, Greg (Brad Garrett). He finds himself tasked with taking David to a friend’s bar mitzvah, one of many scheduled for the coming months. At the party, he finds himself unofficially taking over the role of party starter, getting kids out on the dance floor and having fun. He impresses the many moms in attendance, especially Domino (Johnson). They have an easy rapport, as do Andrew and Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), Domino’s daughter, who is on the autism spectrum and who finds party situations difficult.

After this first event, Andrew becomes the guy to hire for future bar and bat mitzvahs and he spends even more time with Domino and Lola, finding himself drawn into their lives.

This movie gave me serious Metropolitan and Kicking and Screaming (the Noah Baumbach movie) vibes, with its “season” of parties and its post-college uncertainty. But the tone of the movie feels fresh and modern too, with its odd (but appealing) mix of sadness and optimism and the emotional vulnerability and maturity of Andrew. These are just enjoyable people to spend time with, even when they’re struggling with their emotions or how to move forward in their life. B+ Available on Apple TV+.

Hustle

Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah.

Plus a bunch of real-life basketball players, including Juancho Hernangomez, who plays Bo Cruz.

Cruz is a super-tall guy in bad shoes, playing basketball on street courts in Spain to hustle money. Stanley Sugarman (Sandler) is sent by the Philadelphia 76ers, the basketball team for which he is a scout, to Spain to check out a different player when Stanley happens on Bo. He tracks him down and convinces him to begin the grueling process of preparing to try out for the 76ers.

What Bo doesn’t know is that Stanley’s boss, Vince (Ben Foster), the son of the man Stanley had long worked for and who recently died, leaving the team in Vince’s control, has already told Stanley he’s not interested in Bo. Vince wants Stanley to get out there and find another diamond in the rough — or, really, Vince seems to want to punish Stanley for his good relationship with his late father. But Stanley believes in Bo and is determined to get him into the NBA. Also, he’s hoping that being the man to discover such a superstar will get Stanley where he really wants to go: a coach spot.

This movie has all of the energy that Sandler brought to his performance in Uncut Gems without that anxiety-attack feeling that movie had. You get the sense that Sandler knows who Stanley is all the way down to the core of this person — his hopes, his dreams, his relationship with his wife (played by Queen Latifah) and daughter (Jordan Hull), his love of basketball. It’s a strong performance in a movie that gives you, to some extent, a classic sports story but with so much genuine, geeky love of the game that it feels loose and exciting. A Available on Netflix.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (R)

Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack.

Nancy Stokes (Thompson), not her real name, and Leo Grande (McCormack), also not exactly his name, meet when Nancy hires him to provide, er, his company for a few hours. A widow who only ever had sex with her husband, Nancy is determined not just to have sex with someone else but to recapture a bit of youthful romance by sleeping with a younger man. Hence Leo, whom she picked for his good looks but whose handsomeness she finds kind of intimidating in person. Actually, she seems to find everything about their situation intimidating — terrifying even — now that she’s actually in this hotel room with him. And that is really the movie, Thompson’s Nancy working through a lifetime of Stuff while also determined, rather unromantically so, to get the job done. Her defensiveness veers into insult on occasion and she ignores Leo’s attempts to wave her away from his boundaries about talking about his “real” life. She also makes the most amazing expressions, say, looking at herself in the mirror or trying to relax into something like a “mood,” all twitchy discomfort and weighed down by decades of negativity and shame.

I realize that might not sound like the best of times, but this movie — which is mostly just those two actors in a hotel room — is a real pleasure. Nancy reminds me a bit of Michelle Yeoh’s character in Everything Everywhere All At Once in that she is a full and complete grown person and also at times a bit of a mess. It’s nice to see older women, well, at all in movies but it’s nice when they are drawn as people with all this life happening in the present, not just as people The Notebook-ing back on some prior time. Thompson makes Nancy into someone we get to know and by the end of the movie we’re able to see her life from her perspective. B+ Available on Hulu.

Father of the Bride (PG-13)

Andy Garcia, Gloria Estefan.

Billy (Garcia) and Ingrid (Estefan) Herrara are moments away from announcing to their family that they’re getting a divorce — or, rather, Ingrid is moments away from telling her grown daughters Sofia (Adria Arjona) and Cora (Isabela Merced) and assorted abuelas and tios and other members of their large Cuban-American Miami family that she’s had it with Billy. But then Sofia announces that she’s engaged and that she wants to marry fiance Adan (Diego Boneta) before they move to Mexico, where he’s from, to work as a lawyer for an immigration-related nonprofit. Billy has several problems with all of this, including who the heck is Adan, and “non” profit? But Sofia is determined that they can pull off the intimate wedding she wants in the two months before she starts her new job. Billy, full of father-of-the-bride traditions, wants something grander; even grander still are the plans of Hernan (Pedro Damián), Adan’s father and, as it turns out, one of the richest men in Mexico.

This HBOMax version of Father of the Bride is pleasant — full of pleasant characters and the occasional light chuckle. Garcia and Estefan might be parents of the bride but they are the true leads and they’re entertaining enough together. If you can’t go to Miami but want a quick hit of light Miami-ness, you could do worse. B- Available on HBO Max.

Jerry and Marge Go Large (PG-13)

Bryan Cranston, Annette Bening.

Somewhere between the coupon-scam movie Queenpins and the townfolk-buy-a-racehorse movie Dream Horse exists this tale of a retiree who finds a mathematical path for a sure-thing lottery win. Jerry (Cranston) reluctantly retires from his job and finds himself just sort of kicking around his small Michigan town, not quite sure what to do with himself or how to connect with his wife, Marge (Bening). While drinking coffee at the local general store, he stumbles on the rules to a lottery game called Windfall. He figures out that by purchasing a large number of tickets when the jackpot hits a certain level and the rules about how many matching numbers get payouts become more player-friendly he can nearly ensure that he will win back more than the cost of the tickets.

He runs a few experiments and manages to make $15,000, but then Marge finds out. He thinks she’ll be upset but she’s sort of delighted. Not only are they making money, but it’s something for them to do together. When Michigan ends the Windfall game, they discover that the closest state with the game and the same rules is Massachusetts and Jerry realizes that they can make bigger hauls if they bet with more money. Soon he’s created a betting corporation with friends and family from his town chipping in and reaping the rewards.

Of course, a loophole like this isn’t something only Jerry can find. Harvard student/bro-villain Tyler (Uly Schlesinger) finds the mathematical quirk while working on a project about the lottery. He gathers together some students to run a similar scheme, but when he finds out about Jerry and his group, Tyler decides this small-stakes lotto isn’t big enough for the both of them.

You could also throw your old-men-bank-robbery movie Going in Style into the tank where this movie is swimming. Like all those movies, this isn’t fresh or surprising storytelling but it is, basically, affable. Just because most of the characters have a bit of a cartoon quality to them in terms of their lack of dimension doesn’t mean they aren’t still mildly enjoyable to watch on screen. Jerry and Marge Go Large is light but acceptable. B- Available on Paramount+.

Senior Year (R)

Rebel Wilson, Sam Richardson.

Also Mary Holland, Zoe Chao, Justin Hartley and Chris Parnell.

In 2002, cheer squad captain Stephanie Conway (Angourie Rice) is days away from achieving her vision of the perfect life: She’ll be going to prom with her handsome boyfriend, Blaine (Tyler Barnhardt), where she fully expects to win prom queen and then they’ll get married and move into her dream house and live happily ever after.

Except at the pre-prom pep rally, Stephanie’s rival Tiffany (Ana Yi Puig) causes a stunt to go wrong and Stephanie lands with such a thud that she’s sent into a coma for 20 years. When she wakes up she’s horrified to learn that the strange 37-year-old woman looking at her is actually Stephanie’s (Wilson) own reflection in the mirror and that the world around her has moved on. Uncertain of what to do with her life, she capitalizes on the fact that her childhood friend Martha (Holland) is now the high school’s principal and she goes back to school to finish the one month left of her senior year. While Martha and Seth (Richardson), another friend from the old days, are still around (Seth is now the school’s library), so is Tiffany (Chao), now married to Stephanie’s old boyfriend Blaine (Hartley) and the mom of Bri (Jade Bender), the school’s new queen bee.

This comedy offers a blend of Big/13 Going On 30-type kid brain in adult body comedy, Strangers With Candy and its inappropriate adult in a high school setting, and the 21 Jump Street movie with its comedy about Gen X/elder millennial-types encountering modern high school culture. It is not quite as smart, funny or sharp as any of those properties, but it has its moments. What Wilson lacks in emotional range she makes up for, to some degree, in willingness to be as ridiculous as the scene requires.

Senior Year isn’t a good movie but it feels like the kind of movie that could hit you at the right moment and be a thoroughly satisfying movie, with its occasionally successful bits of silliness, multiple dance numbers, turn-of-the-millennium jokes and the affability of its cast. C+ Available on Netflix.

The Bubble (R)

Karen Gillan, Pedro Pascal.

Also Peter Serafinowicz, Rob Delaney, Maria Bakalova, Leslie Mann, Iris Apatow, Keegan-Michael Key, David Duchovny, Fred Amisen, Kate McKinnon and so many more in this Judd Apatow-directed and co-written endeavor. Gillan, Mann, Duchovny, Key, Pascal and young Apatow play the central characters shooting the sixth movie of a dinosaur-based action franchise in a pandemic movie-set bubble at an English estate. Their time on the shoot begins with a 14-day quarantine wherein we watch actress Carol (Gillan) nearly lose her mind. Then the actors continue to drive each other crazy while they begin the movie itself, what with all the jockeying for a better lines, the various dramas of their personal lives and the cabin fever of being confined to a hotel.

Coming in at more than two hours, The Bubble very much feels like an extended director’s cut on a concept that was still being worked out even as the movie was being shot, with lots of flabbiness and seemingly every idea that anyone had depicted on screen. Particularly in the first half or even first two thirds, you almost feel like you’re watching a collection of sketches on a theme more than a straightforward narrative. The movie pulls itself together toward the end, finding a (relatively) tighter pacing and more laughs.

While I would be happy to never watch another pandemic-related bit of content ever again, The Bubble is more of a “movie set” movie than a “pandemic” movie and its affability builds as it goes along. And it helps that the cast is full of people who seem to understand the assignment and are having fun. It’s a perfectly serviceable bit of comedy to have on when you are looking to devote 40 to 63 percent of your attention to something. B- Available on Netflix.

The New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival kicks off Thursday, March 31, and runs through Sunday, April 10, with 16 films in all — 11 features, five shorts and four in-person screenings. Most of the movies also will be available virtually, either during the festival itself or during a bonus week, April 11 through April 24.

Tickets start at $12 for individual screenings or you can buy packages for screenings of all movies, virtual only ($118) or in-person and virtual ($130 for one person, $180 for two). See nhjewishfilmfestival.com for details and check out Meghan Siegler’s story on page 10 of the March 24 (last week’s) issue of the Hippo (which you can find at hippopress.com).

Thanks to the organizers, I got advance screenings to a few of the films.

The festival kicks off with an in-person screening of The Automat at the Rex Theatre (23 Amherst St. in Manchester) on Thursday, March 31, at 7 p.m. with a post-film discussion with director Lisa Hurwitz and collector/restorer Steve Stollman. If you can’t make it to that screening, you can also watch the movie during the virtual screening bonus week.

Either way, this movie, like the coffee it so lovingly describes, is well worth the price. This is an absolute charmer of a documentary about the Horn & Hardart chain of automats, which dominated the New York and Philadelphia restaurant scene in the early and mid 20th century. Put a nickel in a slot and open the compartment to reveal the pie or sandwich or creamed spinach you’d been craving, and another nickel gets you coffee so good that Mel Brooks sings a song about it over the documentary’s closing credits. Brooks appears throughout the documentary along with Carl Reiner and Elliott Gould explaining the place of this democratizing but also stylish eatery in their youth and young adulthood. (Descriptions of the restaurants’ gleaming floors, brass fixtures and high ceilings reminded me of discussions of similar era movie palaces and suggest a real luxury-for-all approach to design in public spaces — in case anybody is looking for a senior thesis.) Also appearing here are Wilson Goode, former mayor of Philadelphia, as well as Colin Powell and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, discussing both the food (there’s a lot of pie talk, be prepared to get hungry) and the social vibe created by a space where a business exec, a member of New York’s booming (in the 1920s) female workforce and a blue-collar worker would share a table and where recent immigrants to New York could feel welcome.

You also get the business side of the restaurant — how it rose and the forces that led to its fall. It’s a delightful story told with great fondness and humor.

I had the great good fortune of watching Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen at the start of Oscar weekend and it was a perfect way to kick off a weekend of thinking about the art and craft of movies. This documentary (which will be available during the bonus week) offers a great examination of all parts of the movie-making process as it looks at how the successful Broadway musical was translated into the 1971 movie. The songs and the way director Norman Jewison wanted to block a scene influenced the production design, just as the casting of the actresses and finding their comfortable key influenced the way John Williams brought the music of the stage musical to the screen. How do you recreate the look of a turn-of-the-20th-century shtetl in Ukraine some 60-plus years later, after wars and during the Cold War? Jewison discusses finding an Anatevka-like village in the former Yugoslavia.

Jeff Goldblum narrates this documentary, which features interviews with the three actresses who played the older daughters, Topol (the actor who played Tevye), and members of the film crew as well as people, like critic Kenneth Turan, talking about the story and the movie from a cultural-relevance perspective.

The shorts program features five films and you can purchase 48-hour access to the five-film block at any time from March 31 to April 10. The films are Ganef, Beefies, The Shabbos Goy, Mazel Tov Cocktail and The Tattooed Torah and they are a diverse mix in terms of style, tone and theme.

The Tattooed Torah presents as an animated storybook, with the screen panning across pictures but with people popped out from the background to give depth and blinking eyes and other small animated details that add a liveliness to the scenes. Ed Asner narrates the story of a boy and a beloved Torah in Czechoslovakia before and during World War II. The story is based on a book of the same name written by Marvell Ginsburg and illustrated by Martin Lemelman.

As with that movie, Masel Tov Cocktail slips bits of history into its tale about a teenager named Dima (Alexander Wertmann), a post-Cold War Jewish-Russian immigrant to Germany. He wrestles with his frustration, all teenage righteousness and humor, over the way Germans — the prejudiced and the well-meaning — pull him into their views of World War II and what their ancestors did (or, as some claim, definitely weren’t a part of). The short is the fourth directing credit (all shorts) for directors Arkadij Khaet and Mickey Paatzsch, according to IMDb, and it has that entertaining, scrappy indie film energy.

Ganefwill be familiar to viewers of the 2021 Manhattan Short Film Festival. It’s a tight drama about the residual effects of trauma that features Sophie McShera (best known as Daisy from Downton Abbey) playing Lynn, the housekeeper to the Hirth family, who live in an upper-class house in England. Mrs. Hirth (Lydia Wilson) tells her young daughter Ruthie (Izabella Dzeiwanska) that people can’t take what they don’t know you have — a lesson she learned as a child in Frankfurt, Germany. It’s a smartly told story that clocks in at about 14 minutes.

Beefies is a charming tale about Josh (Adam Lebowitz-Lockard), a man trying to figure out the recipe to his late mother’s “beefies” dish. (Lebowitz-Lockard wrote and directed Beefies; on the website he describes the dish as his own mother’s “sort of beef stew/stroganoff dish of meat and veggies” which he hasn’t been able to reverse engineer since she died.). In Beefies, Josh finds clues in his mother’s papers but realizes that to get answers he’ll have to call Mark (Goran Ivanovski), the brother he’s been estranged from. The movie is a sweet family tale that gets bonus points for the rare good use of pandemic as story point.

The Shabbos Goy is my favorite of the pack. This movie stars Milana Vayntrub, perhaps still best known as the lady from the AT&T commercials. As the movie poster explains, the titular person is a non-Jewish person who performs certain tasks that religious law prohibits a Jewish person from doing on the Sabbath or, more succinctly, “a human loophole.” During a gathering with her family and her future in-laws, Hannah (Vayntrub) is desperate to keep her engagement on track but won’t break the Sabbath by turning off her, er, personal device when it is accidentally activated. She runs out to find a non-Jewish person to help her, leading her to Davian (Devere Rogers), who first tries to ignore her when she crazily tries to wave him down. The movie is written and directed by Talia Osteen, who has a director credit on the Hulu movie Sex Appeal (also a fun trailer) and it is executive produced by Paul Feig.

Oscar wrap-up

If there’s one thing you’ll remember from last Sunday’s Oscars, it’s that you need to watch CODA.

OK, one other thing.

Truly, though, if you have “meh-ed” at Oscar nominees — which isn’t an unfair response in 2021 when the movies never fully felt back — hopefully CODA’s wins will entice you to check it out. It won for best picture, best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor for Troy Kotsur, who co-starred with Marlee Matlin as the deaf parents of a hearing teen (Emilia Jones) in this truly heartwarming movie. It’s on Apple TV+.

Another winner worth seeking out is Summer of Soul (… Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), the documentary that won Questlove an Oscar (which you may have missed while Googling “Chris Rock Will Smith was it a bit?”). That excellent documentary about the multi-concertHarlem Cultural Festival is on Hulu and Disney+ and is available for rent or purchase (and you can also purchase the very excellent soundtrack).

Another winner that might have gotten lost in the evening’s proceedings for a different reason (it was one of the awards cut from the broadcast and then deep-faked back in, as writer Chris V. Feil described in a tweet) was The Queen of Basketball, the winning documentary short, which is available on nytimes.com. It’s a charming profile of Lucy Harris, a star college (and Olympic) basketball player in the 1970s who was drafted by, but never played for, the New Orleans Jazz.

Then feel free to shut the book on the whole messy 2021 in the Oscar-verse, with its category strife, its lack of real surprises among the winners (though my swing-for-the-fences guesses led to my still only correctly predicting a little more than half the winners) and all-over-the-place ceremony even before the infamous slap. Or, at least, shut the book after one more watch of the beautifully staged Beyonce opener and the uneven but lively at least “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” remix.

The Adam Project (PG-13)

Ryan Reynolds, Jennifer Garner.

This Netflix action-comedy also stars Zoe Saldaña, Catherine Keener and Mark Ruffalo.

Ryan Reynolds plays that one Ryan Reynolds character again in this movie about time travel, fathers and sons and digital de-aging. Adam Reed (Reynolds) is a pilot from 2050; Adam Reed (Walker Scobell) is also a present-day tween getting in fights at school and sparring with his mom, Ellie (Garner), due in part to his anger and grief over the death of his scientist dad (Ruffalo). When his mom goes out one night for a date, Adam ventures into the backyard to investigate strange sounds only to find a man bleeding in his late father’s workshed. The man knows where to find the first aid supplies, knows the special trick to closing the refrigerator and has the same scar on his chin as young Adam. The man also has the same “Deadpool but PG-13” speaking style as the kid so even if we didn’t know going in it was grown-up Adam, we’d know young Adam had just met his older self.

Neither Adam seems particularly delighted to be in their own company — younger Adam is excited that he gets ripped in the future but is annoyed older Adam won’t give him any information; older Adam meanwhile is embarrassed at having to re-experience his tween self and is annoyed that he’s landed in 2022 as he had meant to go to 2018. In this future where time travel is possible, Adam has ventured back in search of his wife, Laura (Saldana), who was lost (or was she?) during a time traveling mission.

How exactly time travel has affected the world is one of many things that’s sort of yada yada-ed here (generally, it’s not good, is what the movie tells us) along with pretty much everything about what 2050 is like and why Maya Sorian (Keener), Adam’s boss, is such a big noise in the future. Basically, she becomes another evil tech villain whose big accomplishment is becoming rich with destructive technology and follows the Adams into the past to protect her own personal future.

This is some extremely middling fare whose success as entertainment is wholly determined by how much you like that one Ryan Reynolds character. Reynolds is fine and he has a good rapport with the kid who is his younger self (who in turn is doing a pretty good Ryan Reynolds impersonation, really hitting all the beats of the Ryan Reynolds Chatty Insult TM). Sort of like the recent “Channing Tatum + dog” movie, the affability of the lead is fuel that runs this movie. But The Adam Project, while possessing of a more elaborate story than “man and dog road trip,” has less nuance to it. From the very shallow world-building to the third-best dad-rock music choices, The Adam Project feels like it was given about half the effort it needed. While Channing Tatum’s Dog was sort of enjoyably mediocre, The Adam Project feels more like something inoffensive to have on while you drift in and out of a nap. C+ Available on Netflix.

Lucy and Desi (PG)

If Being the Ricardos is too idiosyncratically Aaron Sorkin for you but you like Lucille Ball and/or television history, this documentary, directed by Amy Poehler, is a nice way to examine the working and personal relationship of the couple and their impact on television with all the men-explaining-comedy-to-women stuff stripped away. Here, largely narrated by interviews and tapes of Lucille and ex-husband Desi Arnaz talking about their life, you get a more straightforward look at their professional partnership, which, much like their friendship, outlasted their at times rocky marriage. Also adding commentary is Lucie Arnaz, their oldest child, as well as the children of some of their behind-the-scenes collaborators and women like Carol Burnett and Bette Midler talking about what Ball meant to them professionally. Without getting tabloidy, the movie has some interesting insights about the Ball-Arnaz marriage and the difficulty of building something big in their professional lives while also trying to keep their marriage together and the way work and family clashed. B+ Available on Amazon Prime.