A Family Affair

• Director: Richard LaGravenese
• Writer: Carrie Solomon
• Starring: Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Joey King, Kathy Bates, Liza Koshy, Sherry Cola

Grade: C

Romantic comedies only fit into so many boxes of certain sizes, and Netflix’s A Family Affair is no different. Fortunately, originality isn’t the final dealbreaker for the genre. You can only make your characters fall in and out of love in so many ways, after all. What really counts is the chemistry between the stars; we essentially know what the outcome will be by the end, but if we don’t care why it happens, we’re ultimately wasting our time. Richard LaGravenese’s film is formulaic to a fault, but it manages to scrape by because it’s populated by genuine movie stars.

Daddio

• Director: Christy Hall
• Writer: Christy Hall
• Starring: Sean Penn, Dakota Johnson

Grade: B-

It feels like forever since Sean Penn led a Hollywood picture. Not since his one-scene appearance in Licorice Pizza in 2022 has Penn shown off his star power. Dakota Johnson, however, has been all over the place recently. Whether it’s a critical failure like Madame Web or an indie hit like Am I OK?, 2024 has already been quite a busy year for Johnson. With the release of Daddio, Johnson and Penn command the screen in a tender drama about the complexities of life and feeling stuck.

Hit Man

• Director: Richard Linklater
• Writers: Richard Linklater, Glen Powell
• Starring: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao

Grade: B+

If there’s been any kind of through-line to Richard Linklater’s long and varied career – besides spotlighting his love for his native Texas – it’s been his relentless pursuit of exploring our true selves, and how it often clashes against our public persona. In his latest, Hit Man, it’s his most overt effort to showcase this, and it gives its star Glen Powell the chance to show he can be a bona fide movie star.