Category: Film Reviews

Beast (R)

Idris Elba, Sharlto Copely.

Idris Elba fights a lion in this most “exactly as advertised” thriller. Sure, everybody gets a bit of backstory: Elba plays a father of two daughters (Iyana Halley, Norah Samuels), the older of whom is nearly levitating with rage at him for separating from their mother right before the mom got sick and later died of cancer. Copely is a guy in charge of a South African nature reserve who has maybe tangled with poachers. And the lion they eventually fight has the backstory of watching poachers kill his pride and then going all John Wick, lion-style. But all that is very secondary to “Elba v. Lion,” which is why we’re all here.

And on this score the movie delivers. It is fine, maybe even good if probably not great. Elba is exactly what you expect him to be — the movie doesn’t make him superhuman but does make him an Elba-amount of strong and increasingly capable at fending off the angry lion. It offers you exactly the action and suspense you expect and doesn’t get bogged down by trying to do anything more. B Available for rent or purchase via VOD.

Pinocchio (PG)

Tom Hanks, Cynthia Erivo.

The already disturbing story of Pinocchio does not get cuter in this shiny plasticine live-action adaptation of the 1940 Disney cartoon. Here, Hanks (presumably involved because of director Robert Zemeckis? Or is this a “sea witch gives you legs but at a price” situation?) is Geppetto, a sad widower made even sadder by thoughts of his young son who has also died. He makes a large-ish puppet, wishes on Cynthia Erivo (a blue star/Blue Fairy) and wakes to find that the puppet is now sorta alive (with a voice by child actor Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) but his new “son” is still wooden. Jiminy Cricket (voice of Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a cricket and the movie’s narrator with meta tendencies, is tasked with serving as Pinocchio’s conscience, which is a tough job when a kid knows nothing about the world, is chucked out the door to go to school and is immediately preyed upon by a con artist fox (Keegan-Michael Key) who sells Pinocchio to a traveling puppet show producer.

This movie sort of pokes fun at some of the crazier aspects of the story and gives us some of the songs — “I’ve Got No Strings” etc. — but that’s just not enough to make your olden-days cautionary tale to kids about the untrustworthy world entertaining or charming or funny. It’s weird — its strange spread of accents is weird, its general joylessness is weird and its ending is so weirdly abrupt I rewound to make sure I didn’t miss something. C- Available on Disney+

Luck (G)

Voices of Eva Noblezada, Simon Pegg.

In this animated movie, 18-year-old Sam (voice of Noblezada) ages out of the foster care system and has to make her own way — working a job at a gardening store, taking online classes, navigating her new apartment. But she’s worried about something that has always plagued her: bad luck. How bad? She accidentally locks herself in her bathroom, drops her toast jelly side down and gets a flat tire, all on her first day of work. But then she meets Bob (voice of Pegg), a black cat. Bob is an employee in the Land of Luck and he accidentally drops his lucky penny right next to Sam. She picks it up, planning to give it to Hazel (voice of Adelynn Spoon), a young girl she bonded with at the group home who yearns for a forever home just like Sam once did. While holding the coin (and absorbing its luck) she experiences how the other half lives, with computer uploads that work and streetlights that are always green.

When Sam accidentally flushes the lucky penny, she tracks down Bob to get Hazel a new one. She follows him to the Land of Luck to score herself another penny, and Sam and Bob reluctantly work together to try to get the coin but find themselves upsetting the delicate balance of good and bad luck.

This movie is light and generally sweet and has a lot of cuteness in the form of cats, leprechauns, a colorful dragon and adorable hazmat bunnies. It also has a fair amount of talking and while my elementary school kids basically stuck with the movie I could tell that their attention waned a bit in the middle as the movie gets bogged down in a bunch of tasks for its characters to complete. A richly textured Pixar movie this ain’t but it was acceptable for family movie-night entertainment. B- Available on Apple TV+.

Me Time (R)

Kevin Hart, Mark Wahlberg.

“Regular person in crazy situations” is the formula for this buddy movie about a stay-at-home dad who gets a week by himself. Sonny’s (Hart) wife Maya (Regina Hall) urges him to chillax at home while she takes the kids to her parents for spring break. Maybe he’ll even attend the multi-day 44th birthday party of his longtime friend Huck (Wahlberg; sure, ha, “44”), who he hasn’t seen for a while due to Huck’s “woo-hoo, Burning Man!” lifestyle while Sonny is more focused on PTA meetings and family schedules. Huck drags a bus full of his weirdly young friends out to the desert for their own off-the-grid music-festy experience full of alleged fun that just sounds like a parade of horrors (Forage for food! Sleep in this yurt! Poop in this bucket!). But this overplanned, underplumbed event is only the start to the craziness Sonny encounters now that he has taken a step into Huck’s world.

Look, I’m not, like, mad that this movie exists. It’s not terrible. Kevin Hart is in movies like this for a reason; he is skilled at being the comedy straight man who can also go a little zany. And there are nice touches — the big friend-relationship step of learning the name of a fellow parent previously only known as “Kid’sname’s Dad.” But there aren’t as many truly askew moments as you’d want to really sell the “wild ride”-ness of this movie. C+ Available on Netflix.

Easter Sunday (PG-13)

Jo Koy, Lydia Gaston.

Comedian Jo Koy plays a version of himself called Jo Valencia who is a comedian with a big Filipino-American family, a sullen teenage son called Junior (Brandon Wardell) and a shot at landing the lead in a sitcom pilot. Jo is having a hard time balancing co-parenting Junior with giving his all at his audition, where they knock him off balance by asking him to give his character a Filipino accent. He’s wrestling with this angle to the job opportunity and trying to help Junior figure out his teenage life when his mom, Susan (Gaston), asks him to travel from the L.A. area up to the Bay Area for Easter. It’s a whole to-do — church, a big meal, family drama — and Jo decides to go and drag Junior along. Family and work become even harder to balance as Jo tries to make a surprise second audition a five-hour drive away and deal with family nuttiness that includes a half-baked gangster and a stolen pair of Manny Pacquioa’s gloves.

Easter Sunday has a lot of good ideas but it still has some very rough draft-y qualities, like an impromptu comedy set Jo Valencia does at his church and some of the sillier gangster stuff. There is a subplot about Junior’s not quite fitting in with the wider community of his Filipino-American family that makes for some good “first- and second-generation American kids in an immigrant family” stuff, but it is never quite as fully realized — more a pitch for a thing that could be a part of Jo Valencia’s story than something the movie fully examines.

And ultimately, I hope that’s what Easter Sunday turns out to be — a starting point for a stronger, more fully filled in story that Jo Koy gets to tell in some future vehicle. C+ Available on VOD.

Honor Society (TV-MA)

Angourie Rice, Gaten Matarazzo.

Also Christopher Mitz-Plasse, Armani Jackson and Kerry Butler.

Rice has the energy of an unstoppable assassin as Honor, a high school senior who is laser focused on getting into Harvard. She has constructed an entire Tracy Flick-meets-all-the-Gossip Girls personality to help her excel and stay on track, getting As in everything and engaging in all the requisite clubs and activities. All she needs now is that little extra nudge, the recommendation from guidance counselor Mr. Calvin (Mitz-Plasse, really pouring on the sleaze) to his contact at Harvard to help Honor’s application stand out. Honor thinks she has it in the bag but then she finds out she’s only one of his top four candidates for the Harvard prize. The others are Victorian-gothy weirdo Kennedy (Amy Keum), the handsome and popular Travis (Jackson) and the nerdy loner Michael (Matarazzo). Honor decides that she needs to take these competitors down by diverting their attention away from their grades. She is able to pull Travis and Kennedy into a school play but with Michael she decides to be more direct and hopes to flirt him into grade-depressing confusion. He proves to be a harder mark than the others but Honor is dedicated to her cause.

When a girl who clearly thinks of herself as a teen throat-cutter who will achieve her goals is talking directly to camera about the awfulness of her hometown and the fakiness of the people she’s surrounded by it isn’t exactly a surprise that “Harvard” turns out to be the friends we made along the way. But Honor Society does this in a way that I wasn’t completely expecting, one that is actually sweeter and more optimistic than you usually get from a teen movie that sets itself up as having an acerbic heart and a conventional collection of story points. And Rice is able to carry all of this very well. She manages to make Honor feel like something approaching a real person — a heightened version of one who is maybe three notches too self-aware for her age, but still somebody who has some layers to her personality. Honor Society maybe isn’t a teen movie for the ages but it is a surprising light and fun little treat. B Available on Paramount+.

The Gray Man (R)

Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans.

Also Billy Bob Thornton, Ana de Armas, a little bit of Alfre Woodard and Regé-Jean Page, who, if this is what he declined to appear in Bridgerton for, should maybe rethink his career choices.

Ryan Gosling is Sierra Six, sort of a Jason Bourne-y, James Bond-ish super-secret CIA assassin type who joined up because it was the alternative to remaining in prison. After nearly 20 years of professional assassin work, he shows signs of not being 100 percent on Team Merciless Killers. During a mission to take out, as station chief Carmichael (Page) describes, a bad guy holding a bad thing, Six declines to take a complicated shot because a kid is nearby. Instead, he causes a whole to-do, with the fighting and the guys breaking through windows and whatnot, and when he finally faces the guy he was sent to kill, the guy tells Six that: he, the soon-to-be-dead guy, is Sierra Four (Callan Mulvey); if Six is here to kill Four someone is probably getting ready to kill Six, and he has proof, hidden in a USB hidden in a necklace (which Four gives to Six), that Carmichael is himself a bad guy.

Six may not know what to believe but he believes enough to not tell mission co-worker Dani (de Armas) about the necklace, which he quickly sends to a safe location. Then he goes on the run, knowing full well that Carmichael will come after him. For help escaping, he turns to Fitzroy (Thornton), the man who recruited him and ran the Sierra program for a while. But Carmichael knows that’s where he’ll turn for help and hires Lloyd Hansen (Evans), a professional psychopath, to put pressure on Fitzroy to get Six. Lloyd will achieve this both with traditional torture, fingernail pulling and the like, and with the psychological torture of taking Fitzroy’s young niece, Claire (Julia Butters), hostage.

“I get it, you’re glib,” Thornton’s character says at the beginning of the movie to Gosling. It’s meant to introduce us to Six but it also sums up the whole movie. The tough guy with a dryly delivered wisecrack is the gas this movie runs on. The engine is a “playing spy” vibe that includes frequent use of jargon-y terms like “wheels up” and “the asset” and “alpha team.” It all has the general appearance and flavor of a spy-vs.-spy action movie without truly being satisfying, the way a frozen personal pizza has the general appearance and flavor of pizza without at all satisfying a pizza craving. The movie is full of international locales and decent-to-good actors delivering their grim and grimly humorous lines and lots and lots of shoot-’em-up scenes and kicky-punchy scenes but everything feels about an inch deep in terms of having a story and characters we really care about to hang this all on.

Well, OK, there’s one character I didn’t really “care” about but enjoyed watching on screen and that’s Evans’ Lloyd. Chris Evans seems to be having an absolute blast with his ridiculous mustache and his even more ridiculous haircut and his general “Wheee, I get to be a jerk! Wheee!” sensibility. He is also glib but he brings a kind of sparkle to it that makes it, while no more substantial, highly watchable.

Look, if you haven’t already, you’re probably going to watch The Gray Man — it’s an Anthony and Joe Russo-directed film, it’s on Netflix, it will fill about two hours of your “what should we watch” time and ask nothing of you. Is that a great recommendation for a movie? No — but as filler entertainment it works just fine. C Available on Netflix.

Mr. Malcolm’s List (PG )

Freida Pinto, Zawe Ashton.

Also Sope Dirisu as the titular Mr. Jeremy Malcolm, Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Lord Cassidy and Theo James as Capt. Henry Ossory.

Julia (Ashton) and Selina (Pinto) are school buddies now both in their marrying years in Regency-era London. After many seasons on the marriage market, Julia thinks she’s finally found her match with the handsome and wealthy Mr. Malcolm. But then he ghosts her in a way that ends up depicted in a tabloid caricature and she’s hurt and humiliated. When she learns why, she nearly glows with rage: she did not meet the specifications on Mr. Malcolm’s list of qualities a wife must have. You see, Mr. Malcolm, in addition to being rich and handsome, is also sort of the worst. He has a list of impossibly high standards and extraordinary qualifications a woman must have — no tacky relatives, skill at playing music, forgiving nature, etc.

Julia decides that what Malcolm needs is to feel the same humiliation and rejection she does so she gets kind Selina, eager to leave her family’s country home after dodging an unwanted proposal multiple times, to come to London. With the help of Lord Cassidy — Julia’s cousin and Malcolm’s friend — Julia tries to mold Selina into Malcolm’s idea of the perfect woman in hopes that he will fall for her and then Julia can get Selina to viciously dump him.

Selina is very “meh” on this plan and halfheartedly allows it to happen around her. She seems just happy to be in London and eventually finds she genuinely likes Malcolm. She also likes Capt. Ossory, a relative of a woman Selina used to work for, who befriends her and starts hanging around with the group that is Julia, Cassidy, Selina, Malcolm and some other relatives.

Selina is a genuinely nice person; Julia, Cassidy and Ossory are goofy but interesting, and then there’s Malcolm, who is just unpleasant. And here’s the problem with this rom-com. I don’t really want Selina to be saddled with Malcolm, handsome though he is, and they’re the couple we’re supposed to be rooting for. I mean, sure, it turns out he’s got all this inner emotional awkwardness, blah blah blah, but that doesn’t retroactively make his character more appealing. This movie (which is based on a novel) has notes of Bridgerton and Jane Austen tales but you don’t get the sharpness, the comedy or the swoony romance that either of those two Regency-love-story providers offers. C+ Available for rent or purchase.

The Sea Beast (PG)

Voices of Karl Urban, Jared Harris.

A brave band of sea-beast hunters can be heroes but still be wrong — such is the message of The Sea Beast, driven home with increasing frequency as this animated movie goes along.

A vaguely pirate-y looking crew are part of a long tradition that takes to the seas and hunts the giant (very colorful) beasts that live in the oceans. Captain Crow (voice of Harris) has long sought to take down a large red beast with his ship the Inevitable. He plans to do just that and then hand command over to long-time crew member Jacob Holland (voice of Urban). But if they don’t catch the red beast there will be nothing to hand over. The king (voice of Jim Carter) and queen (voice of Doon Mackichan) have decided that instead of paying these hunters to catch beasts, they will use the navy to hunt down beasts in giant (and Crow says unseaworthy) cannon-studded ships.

The Inevitable is in a race with one such ship is in a race to find the red beast when they discover a stowaway: Maisie (voice of Zaris-Angel Hator), an orphan full of tales of the sea and the heroics of hunters, like her late parents. Because Jacob had talked to her a bit when the ship was in port, he feels responsible for this child during a beast attack. Maisie and Jacob wind up overboard and face to face with a beast. Perhaps because Maisie had just cut the ropes tying the beast to the ship so the flailing beast wouldn’t pull the ship under, the sea beast doesn’t eat them like little snacks. Later, when Maisie and Jacob find themselves washed up on an island full of similar giant sea creatures, they start to wonder if all they know about sea beasts and their war on humans really constitutes the whole story.

I’d say that this movie isn’t for the youngest kids — there are lots of beasts, some extremely cute and some large and bitey. Scarier still are the humans, with their guns and swords and British-y imperialism. But for maybe 7 or 8 and up, there is a big of swashbuckling pirate-y adventure with vaguely “it’s OK to reevaluate your history” and “hey, not so much with the animal killing” messages, which feels like a nice balance to the (animated) humans fighting with weapons. Scenes on the ocean and on the beast island are particularly eye-catching with their bright colors and picture-book images. B- Available on Netflix.

PERSUASION EDITION

Persuasion (PG)

Dakota Johnson, Cosmo Jarvis.

Also starring Richard E. Grant, Henry Golding and Nikki Amuka-Bird. The mopiest of Jane Austen’s big four novels (the others being Emma, Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice; Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park have always seemed like the Austen B-team), Persuasion is the tale of Anne Elliot (Johnson), the sensible middle daughter of a titled but indebted family, who is still mourning the loss of Frederick Wentworth (Jarvis), the Navy man she was engaged to but then broke up with at 19. He was a poor sailor, and family friend Lady Russell (Amuka-Bird), who served as Anne’s mother figure after the death of her own mom, felt the match was all wrong for Anne. Lady Russell convinced Anne to give Wentworth up but Anne never got over him and never married anyone else. Now she’s in her late twenties and, as she tells us in some direct-to-camera chatter, still self-medicating with long baths and lots of wine.

Anne is thrown back into the path of her ex when Wentworth, now wealthy and looking to marry, visits Anne’s sister Mary (Mia McKenna-Bruce, doing a lot of fun things as the whiniest Elliot sister) and her extended family, with whom Anne is staying now that her family has been forced to rent out their fancy manor house. Anne can’t figure out how Wentworth feels about her now and, despite being pretty mouthy in a way that is not exactly canon for this character, can’t seem to communicate her own feelings to him.

Acerbic chattiness and excessive drinking are two of many ways this Anne doesn’t exactly jibe with the Anne Austen fans might know from the book or earlier movie adaptations. One of the others is that she is Dakota freakin’ Johnson and an obvious knockout whereas book Anne has always felt to me like someone who thinks of herself as a wallflower who blooms according to the circumstances. I get what this movie seems to be doing, with its “what if Bridgerton plus Dickinson to the power of Fleabag” approach, but for me Anne’s character just doesn’t work. The 2020 Emma highlighted what a jerk the Emma character could be, but it did this by making that existing element of the character bolder. Here, I feel like the movie invented a new Anne (someone maybe closer to an Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice) and then shoved her in book Anne’s story, with the two elements always in opposition. It’s never clear why this Anne let herself be “persuaded” away from her bae in the first place and why she stayed that way all these years, even as she becomes a Regency-era Daria.

That said, I didn’t hate it or at least I didn’t hate this Persuasion as much as headlines suggest other reviewers hated it. It’s the first Persuasion I’ve seen that dug a little more into the Anne/Lady Russell relationship. You understand how these two women could remain close in spite of the persuasion-ing that has made Anne so unhappy.

I also liked everything to do with Mary and her in-laws, the comic-relief-y Musgrove family. They feel less goofy and more like full characters than in previous iterations. And this movie gets the tone of the William Elliot (Golding) character maybe better than any other movie I’ve seen. He is the right amount of “up to something” and charming and very open about all of it in a way that would be appealing to a brainy girl like Anne. And, for what it’s worth, the movie does a pretty good job of demonstrating how to cast actors of color in period stories that don’t include characters of color: you just do it. It works great here and allows this huffily received movie to at least get to be part of the “Henry Golding having fun on screen” film genre.

Persuasion feels like a “for Austen completists only” product but, as just such a person, I’m not mad that I watched it. B- Available on Netflix.

This newest Persuasion had me wanting to remember how other adaptations had approached the story. Here’s a look at some of the other Persuasion adaptations available for viewing. I’m not including Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, the novel of which claims a loose connection to Persuasion, for the carefully considered and scholarly reason that I don’t wanna.

Modern Persuasion (PG, 2020)

Alicia DeWitt, Bebe Neuwirth.

Also Mark Moses (a “hey it’s that guy” from like everything on TV; maybe you remember him as Duck Phillips on Mad Men) and Liza Lapira (who is fun on The Equalizer) and Shane McRae as the love interest.

Here, instead of the central family living at Kellynch Hall, Keller Keller-Lynch is the name of some kind of PR firm that has gone through hard times recently and had to downsize from offices in Manhattan to, gasp, Brooklyn. Wren Cosgrove (DeWitt), this movie’s Anne, is a loyal worker, giving her all to Keller-Lynch. Perhaps this is because she can’t get over her decision not to follow her college boyfriend Jasper Owen (I’m sure McRae is a nice person but he leaves absolutely no impression in this role) to San Francisco. Her aunt, Vanessa (Neuwirth), was insistent that Wren not give up her career for a man and while Wren agreed at the time, she has grown to wish she’d chosen differently.

Jasper, now the CEO of a company that does some app thing, interviews Keller-Lynch to run his PR, putting him and Wren back in contact. The firm’s social media girls (Tedra Millan, Daniella Pineda) stand in for the Musgrove sisters as the young women Owen flirts with, and instead of a title-protecting cousin Wren gets her flirting action from Tyler (Chris O’Shea), a guy at a rival PR firm.

This movie is incredibly lightweight and has that quickie rom-com feel of Hallmark movies and some of the more discount-y Netflix romances. It’s perfectly fine as “something that’s on”-level entertainment but it doesn’t offer much else in the way of romance or comedy or any fun twist to the original story. C- Available via Hulu and Amazon Prime and I guess you could pay money to buy or rent it but, like, I wouldn’t.

Persuasion (NR, 2007)

Sally Hawkins, Rupert Penny-Jones.

Penny-Jones, this ITV movie’s Wentworth, was apparently the mayor in the recent The Batman, IMDb informs me. Also here are Tobias Menzies (of The Crown, Outlander and Game of Thrones, among many other things), as Wentworth’s romantic rival for Anne, William Elliot. And see Watcher Giles himself, Anthony Head.

Head is pretty perfect as the vain and oblivious Walter Elliot, father of Anne (Hawkins), who believes himself to be much better than everyone despite having completely decimated his family financially. This very faithful, in story and in period, telling hits all the familiar points: Anne goes to stay with her sister Mary (Amanda Hale) and her family only to find herself reintroduced to Frederick Wentworth (Penny-Jones), the naval officer she loved but was persuaded to dump years earlier.

What this movie offers that others don’t is more of a window on Wentworth and his feelings. He’s still angry when he first sees Anne again and it’s clearer here than in other tellings that his flirtation with another woman is more about his reaction to Anne than his genuine attempts to find a non-Anne wife.

Coming in at just over 90 minutes, this adaptation is worth a watch for Austen fans — if you can find it. As far as I can tell, it’s not available for rent or purchase and only available to stream with BritBox, which I got a month’s subscription to just for this project and now excuse me while I go watch the eleventyjillion gardening-based shows that this service offices. B Available on BritBox.

Persuasion (PG, 1995)

Amanda Root, Ciarán Hinds.

This is my OG Persuasion, the one I can’t help but measure all other Persuasions against. Wikipedia says this movie appeared on TV in the U.K. and got a small theatrical release in the U.S. But I suspect it found most of its audience the way first I saw it, on VHS (ask your grandparents about ye olde video stores). Austen was having a bit of a moment in cinema — Sense and Sensibility would be released later in 1995 and the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice (or, as you may know it, “the one with Colin Firth and the wet shirt”; kids, ask your moms) aired in the U.K. in fall 1995 and on A&E in early 1996, according to Wikipedia.

Thusly, I don’t know if it’s nostalgia or some kind of imprinting or solely on the basis of the performance that Amanda Root is, for me, the just-right Anne. She isn’t a wimp but she isn’t outgoing. She’s smart and capable but she’s not some anachronistic trailblazer. Because she’s capable, she seems to get her family’s messiness plopped on her to deal with — closing up the house when the Elliots move to Bath to economize without, you know, looking like they’re economizing, and dealing with her aggrieved sister Mary (Sophie Thompson), who is always believing herself to be ill. (Is she bored with her life and illness is the only acceptable way to throw off the expected duty of a wife and mother? Or is she truly ill but society at the time sees women’s pain only as a sign of moral weakness? — Free essay ideas!)

This Wentworth (Hinds) is more of a mystery; we are definitely looking at their relationship and its effects on Anne through her eyes.

This movie might have the most malevolent-seeming group of Elliot family and associates. Whereas other Ladies Russell often seem to soften on Wentworth or at least seem to want a happy Anne more than they want to stick to their guns, this Lady Russell (Susan Fleetwood) really does not seem to budge, seeming to pressure Anne to consider the extra shady William Elliot (Samuel West). This Elizabeth (Phoebe Nicholls), Anne’s snooty older sister, is a particular sour lemon of a person.

These BBC Austens are not fast-paced laughs-a-minute but they are enjoyable adaptations, particularly if you know the books and enjoy seeing the smaller characters and details brought to life. I deeply enjoyed watching it again and, even after 27 years, I think it holds up. A Available to rent or purchase.

Rational Creatures

Kristina Pupo, Peter Giessl.

OK, technically this one isn’t a movie but a web series. The first season is available at rationalseries.wixsite.com and a second season is scheduled to drop this summer, according to the website. Here, Ana Elias (Pupo) and Fred Wentworth (Giessl) are modern twentysomethings. Ana goes to stay with her sister Marisol (Gabriela Diaz) after the travel agency owned by her father, Guillermo Elias (Armando Reyes), can no longer pay her. Ana, who seems like a sweet and gentle pleaser, isn’t sure what to do with her life now and is still thinking about her high school relationship with Fred, now a travel writer/internet personality.

Amanda Root might be the ur-Anne to me but Pupo perfectly captures the essential Anne qualities of being uncertain without being wimpy and being always predisposed to put others first without necessarily being a pushover. I found myself charmed at how the story unfolded and riffed on the source material. I am genuinely looking forward to the next season. B+ Available online.

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.