D.O.A. (Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, 1988). This remake of the 1949 classic of film noir retains the basic hook of the original but somehow jettisons all style and tension in the updating. Dexter Cornell (Dennis Quaid) is writing professor whose world is knocked sideways when a promising student (Robert Knepper) dies after plummeting from the top of a campus building. Already struggling with several problems — including a crumbling marriage (his estranged wife is played by Jane Kaczmarek) — Dexter responds to the tragedy by going off on a bender. He awakes the next morning feeling sick and soon determines his queasy condition isn’t a hangover but is instead the result of a slow-acting poison in his system. Informed that there’s no antidote and no therefore no hope, Dexter resolves to at least find his killer before he expires. There are a couple nice meta gags early on, such as starting this remake in black and white before switching to color with the flourish of Quaid’s professor character writing the word “COLOR” on the chalkboard. Otherwise, this D.O.A. isn’t very good. Directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel are capable, but the plot is both shaky and predictable. Meg Ryan at least brings some welcome liveliness to a thankless part as a coed who is drawn into Dexter’s desperate quest. “You know I don’t get off on this Rambo shit!” now has an honored place in my list of Top Five All-Time Meg Ryan Line Deliveries.

Tokyo Pop (Fran Rubel Kuzui, 1988). Wendy Reed (Carrie Hamilton) hits a dead end with her gig as the singer in a New York City rock band. A postcard from a friend who previously relocated to Japan prompts Wendy to impulsively abandon her life in the U.S. Wendy flies to Tokyo expecting to connect with her friend only to discover that person is gone and she’s on her own. She fitfully finds her way in Japan, securing employment at a sketchy karaoke bar. She also connects with Hiro (Yutaka Tadokoro), a wannabe rock star who knows that having a white, blonde, American girl fronting his group will generate curiosity in their music. Tokyo Pop is a charming and effective fish-out-of-water romantic comedy, bolstered significantly by the winning lead performances from Hamilton and Tadokoro. It plays the culture clash sympathetically from both sides and never resorts to gawking at foreign novelty to get a laugh or land an emotional beat. Director Fran Rubel Kuzui — who also shares a screenplay credit with Lynn Grossman — brings a real zing to the storytelling.

Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 2026). Well, Sandra Hüller is great is this anyway. I have rarely turned so hard so fast against a movie I was previously enjoying as I did this one. Project Hail Mary begins promisingly enough as it alternates between two story threads. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up as the sole survivor on an interstellar craft on a deep space mission. Ryland’s attempts to find his bearings alternate with the origin story of him joining that mission following the discovery of a cosmic threat that could wipe out life on Earth. Like Ridley Scott’s The Martian — also adapted for the screen by scripter Drew Goddard from an Andy Weir novel — the film gets a lot of mileage out of capable professionals problem-solving with science that’s plausible even as it sometimes comes across as smart-sounding gobbledygook. The fiction’s faith in a spirit of levelheaded collaboration in dangerous times is so alluring and unlikely as to be pornography for the soul in our irretrievably broken era. For me, the film falls apart with the arrival of a space alien nicknamed Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz, who was also the lead puppeteer for the creature who resembles interlocking stones). Rocky alone isn’t the problem so much as he exemplifies and therefore exposes all the other flaws in the script: characterization so inconsistent that it might as well be nonexistent, science shortcuts that are practically wishful magic, and a cloying and pervasive cutesy quality.