Dana Stevens

It’s the chemistry between Banderas and Sessa that makes this gentle, low-stakes story—a summer movie in which, for a refreshing change, no one is murdered or menaced by a supernatural threat—simmer along like a cauldron of chowder.

The result is a 27-century-old legend that plays like a thrilling Saturday-afternoon matinee—swordfights, sea monsters, sexy mermaids, cosmic vengeance—when it isn’t reducing the viewer to tears with a brief dialogue exchange conducted in a whisper.

Supergirl’s strongest asset—indeed, its only consistently strong element—is the spiky charisma that Alcock brings to the role of the outwardly combative, inwardly fragile Kara.

Above all, watching the tightly plotted, satisfyingly joke-dense, and startlingly thoughtful Toy Story 5, I felt grateful for a franchise sequel that doesn’t settle for relying on the affection built up for its characters over the past 31 years.

At this point in his career, noting Spielberg’s mastery of craft is like saying that Michelangelo wielded a mean chisel. But Disclosure Day is one of those movies, like Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another last year, for which noting the cinematic prowess at work constitutes a part of the pleasure.

Ultimately, if you are a big enough fan of the first Devil Wears Prada to have ever texted a friend (or in my case a daughter) that viral video of Bowen Yang flawlessly lip-synching the “cerulean” speech, this sparkly sequel provides a satisfying balance between nostalgic callbacks and intelligent updates to suit a more contemporary, if sadder, media landscape.

The painfully literal ending struck me as a somewhat risible disappointment, and though I admired the movie’s imagination and ambition, I can’t say I ever entered wholeheartedly into its story.

As for The Drama, it runs out of big ideas—and, seemingly, compassion for its characters—before the audience has had a chance to develop our own rooting interest in, well, the drama.

Like the space mission named in its title, Project Hail Mary pulls off a seemingly impossible task, combining big-budget Hollywood spectacle with small-scale craft. The story it tells, of two lonely but intrepid problem-solvers bridging the huge cultural distance between them to collaborate on addressing a shared cosmic threat, is unabashedly humanistic and hopeful, not to mention timely.

For better or worse, it’s a Brontë adaptation for the era of Instagram and TikTok, second screens and viral memes.