Anyone But You (Will Gluck, 2023). This romcom shines its influences into the sky like a Bat-Signal, beckoning audiences to return to the form that’s been largely been relegated to half-assed, made-for-streaming junk. Though a little raggedy in its storytelling, the film works more often than it doesn’t, mostly due to the considerable charms of the two leads. Sydney Sweeney plays Bea, a sweet, fetchingly frazzled law student, and Glen Powell takes the role of finance guy Ben, whose charms seem strictly surface-level until the promise of real love reveals his inner kindness and vulnerability. Because of the baggage they individually tote, a flirtatious night between them backfires into mutual loathing. Through more convoluted twists than are found on the most head-spinning rollercoaster, Bea and Ben masquerade as lovebirds when they wind up at the same destination wedding, providing the movieland veracity of the fake it until you make it strategy. Director Will Gluck (who’s co-credited with Ilana Wolpert on the screenplay) keeps the film frothy enough to obscure the clunkier plot elements and the gags that fall flat. He strikes the right playful tone to get the most out of the film’s best moments. Sweeney’s reaction when taking Powell’s uncertain silence as confirmation that sharks are about to deliver her demise is one of a brimming handful of beats that left me soundly smitten.

Alien: Romulus (Fede Álvarez, 2024). Following subpar franchise extenders overseen by the original Alien helmer, Ridley Scott, writer-director Fede Álvarez takes the space saga centered on viscously parasitic extra-terrestrial creatures back to its horror roots. Alien: Romulus starts off promising as it skews towards dystopian science fiction in its depiction of people who are being crushed under callous capitalistic demands. A group of temperamentally varied toilers hatch a scheme to flee to freedom from the oppressive mining company that keeps them in servitude by hijacking an abandoned space station floating in orbit above the assigned planet. Naturally, it turns out the vessel was emptied out for a reason that’s familiar to any moviegoer who’s watched the H.R Giger–designed acid spitters do their worst. The mildly provocative commentary of the first act is summarily subsumed by a sludgy action free-for-all desperate to cash in on lingering affection for earlier features with visual callbacks and shamelessly reappropriated catch phrases. The cast is mostly serviceable, though Cailee Spaeny bring some authenticity to her spacefaring final girl. The inclusion of Ian Holm, as resurrected by CGI to portray a companion model of his original Alien android character, is ghoulish and distasteful.

Trapped (Richard Fleischer, 1949). Trapped is a fantastically tangled film noir that stars Lloyd Bridges as Tris Stewart, an incarcerated counterfeiter who’s approached by the feds when the streets are hit with new versions of the nearly perfect phony bills he once pedaled. The plot spins in pleasingly unpredictable directions from there, remaining soundly seedy with every new development. Director Richard Fleischer brings journeyman skill to navigation the film’s swerves between stiff depictions of law enforcement plying their and more fevered scenes of criminals and their back-stabbing ways. This is one of four 1949 films that Fleischer directed, and his small-studio efficiency is apparent in every frame. In addition to the brusque bullying of Bridges, there’s a striking turn by Barbara Payton and the counterfeiter’s compromised gal.