The Instigators

• Director: Doug Liman
• Writers: Chuck MacLean, Casey Affleck
• Starring: Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Hong Chau, Ron Perlman, Ving Rhames, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alfred Molina, Toby Jones, Paul Walter Hauser, Jack Harlow

Grade: C

Just as Paul Thomas Anderson’s films will forever be tied to the San Fernando Valley, and just as Martin Scorsese’s films will forever be tied to Queens, New York, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck will never be able to shake their association with the city of Boston. In theory, it makes perfect sense to pair them together in Doug Liman’s Beantown-based buddy-crime action-comedy film The Instigators – though perhaps there should have been a better reason for them to be with one another. The duo get put through the paces in a by-the-numbers caper that has enough fun, but should have been much more fun than the end result.

Break the Game

• Director: Jane M. Wagner

Grade: B

Break the Game shows a brutally honest first-person portrayal of Generation Alpha’s relationship to the internet, but it doesn’t have much new to say on the subject. It’s the kind of documentary that feels almost immune from criticism because of its deeply human observations, and what it says about the youth’s sense of community and belonging. Still, the film’s thesis on this matter essentially boils down to “internet equals good and bad”, and one can’t help but wish it was more nuanced than that.

Dandelion

• Director: Nicole Riegel
• Writer: Nicole Riegel
• Starring: KiKi Layne, Thomas Doherty, Melanie Nicholls-King

Grade: B

If nothing else, writer and director Nicole Riegel’s film Dandelion serves as another reminder that musicals don’t have to be lavish, extravagant productions in order to hook an audience. Really, all you need is some catchy songs, some well-written characters, and an engaging situation to put them in. Riegel has most of those components, even if none are the most special in the genre, but the film still manages to be a worthwhile experience because of Riegel’s attention to detail.

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.

Atlas

• Director: Brad Peyton
• Writers: Leo Sardarian, Aron Eli Coleite
• Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown, Mark Strong, Gregory James Cohan, Abraham Popoola

Grade: F

We’ve seen a great number of bad movies so far in the year of our lord 2024, but Atlas – coming to Netflix on Friday – makes a strong case for being the worst. The streamer gets a lot of flack for putting forth forgettable, derivative dreck every month, so some tempering of expectations should come with the territory. Director Brad Payton, who’s made similarly blockbuster-lite fare like San Andreas and Rampage seems to understand the assignment well enough by leaning into the B-movie schlock, but that doesn’t excuse the miserable experience of watching the film.

The Garfield Movie

• Director: Mark Dindal
• Writers: Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove, David Reynolds
• Starring: Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Nicholas Hoult, Bowen Yang, Ving Rhames, Brett Goldstein, Cecily Strong

Grade: C-

The great thing about making The Garfield Movie is that, unlike most IP-driven adaptations, director Mark Dindal isn’t beholden to a great deal of lore. Jim Davis’s long-running comic strip has seen the flabby feline eat, sleep, and torment Odie the dog and Jon the human in innumerable ways since 1978, with little variation in formula. This frees up screenwriters Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove, and David Reynolds to essentially tell whatever story they want without trying to introduce some cockamamie origin story or get to a specific point in Garfield’s timeline. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop The Garfield Movie from feeling like a lazy version of what it could be.

Thelma the Unicorn

• Director: Jared Hess, Lynn Wang
• Writers: Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess
• Starring: Brittany Howard, Will Forte, Jemaine Clement, Edi Patterson, Fred Armisen, John Heder

Grade: C-

Most of children’s entertainment is rooted in the idea of changing your circumstances when life deals you a rotten hand. From Cinderella to Dumbo, and even Angels in the Outfield, the basic formula of the fairytale is in going from nobody to somebody. Thelma the Unicorn, coming to Netflix on Friday, takes the tried and true formula and cranks the energy up to eleven thousand. Netflix has a relatively solid track record with animation, but Jared Hess and Lynn Wang’s film often feels like a rejected Illumination project that Netflix picked up off the scrap heap.

I Saw the TV Glow

• Director: Jane Schoenbrun
• Writer: Jane Schoenbrun
• Starring: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan, Danielle Deadwyler, Fred Durst

Grade: A-

Everyone wants to be seen. Everyone wants to feel like they belong. Everyone just wants to feel like they’re not alone. In I Saw the TV Glow, belonging takes the form of a young adult television show, and it’s filtered through writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s unique filmmaking style, creating a wholly original and entrancing work. It’s a purposefully bizarre film which swings for the fences, and it likely won’t work for large swaths of the moviegoing public, but it’s no less refreshing to see something original executed so confidently.