Chris Knight

It’s getting harder by the movie to walk the tightrope (or spider’s web) that is the ever-crowded Marvel Cinematic Universe. But Spider-Man: Brand New Day, fourth in the Tom Holland Spidey-series, manages it. Just.

One of the problems with Brunello: The Gracious Visionary is that it spends the first half of its 127-minute runtime (that’s another problem) on the penurious Italian childhood of future fashion designer Brunello Cucinelli.

If the idea of an art-house time travel movie tickles your fancy, then hop aboard the Rose of Nevada, though with that caveat that it is closer to La Jetée than to Donnie Darko.

For about a day after I watched Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, I was dismissive of its Airplane (but not quite as good) comedic styling and the over-the-top acting, which felt like it was trying to wear me down. And yet by day two I was telling family and friends about some of the oddball moments of humour that made no logical sense but also made me laugh.

Harlin has had a long and uneven career leading up to this. Though he isn’t quite old enough to have tackled Deep Water back in 1979, he did make Cliffhanger and Die Hard 2 in the 1990s, and this feels like a kind of spiritual successor to those star-driven action movies.

Writer-director Genki Kawamura keeps his camera angles tight, the better to maintain tension at a boil, and makes the most of his minimal and repetitive set. Fans of the Canadian horror classic Cube should enjoy.

It’s your typical mistaken-identity love story, in which one pretty person must decide between two pretty people, with the choice heavily influenced by who looks best when wet.

If Logan’s Run and The African Queen had a baby, it might look something like Brazilian dystopian sci-fi drama The Blue Trail. If that’s too much of a narrative stretch, then imagine a close cousin to 2024’s Can I Get a Witness? Except, sadly, not nearly as good.

The AI Doc is visually pretty standard — lots of talking heads, B-roll of robots, and cutesy animation to make it more personal — but it’s also a grand primer on the topic, skipping the standard news headlines of Will It Take My Job? (maybe) and Does it Espouse Suicide (tragically, sometimes yes) in favour of a kind of point-counterpoint-synthesis setup.

If you want proof that hell hath no fury like an angry mom, look no further.