This feels a lot like a movie version of Episodes where David Duchovny is a writer trying to get his deeply personal, semi-autobiographical TV show onto one network’s fall schedule. Sigourney Weaver is the executive who can make it happen, but not without suggesting a few changes. It’s an amusing look at getting a TV show to air and has Judy Greer playing his optimistic assistant and Justine Bateman his very pregnant wife. I wish it were a bit longer and some of the side stories fleshed out more.

During World War II an experiment to render a Navy ship invisible to radar crosses with a related experiment being conducted in 1984, resulting in the ship being sucked into a time vortex and two of the ship’s sailors being thrown into the future. It’s the type of movie that’s best if you don’t question it too much. It’s an awful-fun mix that includes dated special effects and American militarism all presented in a way that screams 1980s science fiction. In better hands, it probably could have been a big budget summer blockbuster. 

I had a chance to see this at the drive-in during the earlier days of COVID. I’m glad I didn’t, because after Free Guy and Space Jam, I need a little bit of reassurance about modern filmmaking. In this indie, Sunita Mani and John Reynolds are a Brooklyn couple who take a break from technology and head to upstate New York. Unfortunately while they are gone, Earth comes under attack and they are the last to know. They also quickly realize how ill-suited they are to protect themselves when they don’t have a way to search the internet. They have great chemistry as a couple and are familiar in their moments of support and exasperation with each other. It’s really funny and the alien critters are terribly cute.  

I have never really followed professional basketball, but I can say that in terms of acting ability LeBron James is no Michael Jordan. LeBron and his son are sucked into the internet by an AI played by Don Cheadle. No one even seems to remember what made the original film fun, except the toons. For some reason, the Looney Toons remember this all happened before but no one else does. The writing is so lazy that I’m fairly certain Warner Brothers movies are indeed created using an algorithm. The film is so jammed with WB IP, you can hear the creators of Free Guy saying ‘Why didn’t we do that?’ The grand match-up in the end has so many extras dressed as characters from every WB film imaginable that I’m pretty sure they gave every cosplayer in the universe $5 to show up in whatever they could find lying around the house.

Someone in the tiny Irish village of Tulaigh Mhór has won the lottery. Unfortunately it turns out to have been Ned Devine, who died from the shock, so the entire village of 52 individuals conspires to cash in the ticket. It’s a very lovely, cozy film about friendship and community that’s both amusing and heart-felt.