Shalini Langer

In the DC Comics and Cinematic universe, Supergirl is a minor star – and pointedly still a “girl” when cousin Clark Kent, not much older, has always been a “Super-man”. Put that behind you. If not the stratosphere, Milly Alcock definitely hits escape velocity, breaking free of the gravity of Supergirl’s famous kin to seal her place in the firmament. The breakout House of the Dragons actor, who also got noticed for her comic skills in Upright, is a winsome combination of the two here as a superhero who, at least initially, would rather be drunk senseless than do the whole saviour routine.

Child’s play has always been serious business in the Toy Story franchise. Now, it’s just business. The fifth iteration of this profitable Pixar franchise is way past its game and, more importantly, has lost its sense of play. The central idea is that tech and tablets are replacing toys and imagination. By the end, the central takeaway is that the twain can co-exist happily. After all, says a wisened Jessie/Sheriff (Cusack), once much water has flown under the bridge, the sole mission on Earth for all of them — the ageing Woody (Hanks) to smitten Buzz (Allen) to new-plaything-on-the-block Lilypad — is to be there for the kids when they need them, at the right moment.

Hell hath no fury like a father scorned in The Furious – certainly not fury as taut, economical and razor-sharp as this film. Presumably, hell also involves a lot more chit-chat. The Furious dispenses with dialogue too; why waste your breath when you will need every ounce for the next tackle? A much-celebrated action choreographer, director Kenji Tanigaki knows that all he needs is a skeletal story with an emotional tug (in this case, kidnapped children) to set his two action stars, Miao Xe as Wang, and Joe Taslim as Navin, on a mission. Once that machine starts, it barely takes a pause.

Disclosure Day rolls out smoothly and fully formed from the atelier of the great Steven Spielberg, with humanity – once again – discovering itself in the face of the divine and the unknown. Spielberg himself has described it as the closest to his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Disclosure Day perhaps dabbles most evidently with the question of God and aliens. And because it’s Spielberg, what you see is what you get. There is talk of a government-military-industrial nexus, but it is suggestive of an older time, not now, when the President’s family and the biggest weapons profiteers are in bed together without raising a scandal. There is talk of “empathy as humanity’s evolutionary advantage”, but nothing about why and where and how fast it is eroding. The only aliens in Spielberg’s film are the ones that come from outer space, and they are the same big-headed, slender-limbed, bug-eyed creatures he favours; the director clearly hasn’t spotted the ones closer home being chased off the streets.

Little comes closer to the approximation of a full empty life than perhaps a furniture store. Dining tables to be had family meals on, sofas to sink into, almirahs to hold possessions, beds to be slept in – all waiting for someone to take them home. Little comes closer to the approximation of an empty full life than perhaps an impersonal glass-and-concrete office space. Rows upon rows of people sitting behind screens doing identical work day after day – all waiting for somehow to make it home. In the Backrooms, the twain meet in the liminal space that the Internet calls it own, where real and fake symbiotically live off each other. It is fitting then that the film should be the creation of 20-year-old YouTube find Kane Parsons, and be steered into massive commercial success by A24, a studio with a nose for zeitgeist and the pocket for zillions.

It doesn’t do to go around dressed in a loincloth, wielding a shiny sword and declaring oneself “He-Man” these days – at least not in a big-bucks Hollywood film that is hoping not to cause any affront, to he, she, they, them, or it. So how do you tap into a character that was born as a Mattel toy and largely remembered only by an audience who first encountered him as an animated TV series in the 1980s, and is now into their middle age? Director Travis Knight and screenwriters Chris Butler and Adam and Aaron Nee (who have several award nominations between them) settle on a tone that is constantly mocking the whole concept while trying to kick off a successful franchise with it It is surprising how well they are able to do this when they do it well. It is as surprising how the film still manages to feel and look like a frenetic video game being played by a bunch of compulsive teenagers.

Boy likes girl. What next? A lot of possible romances end right here. But what happens when the shy boy gets one miracle wish that can turn romance into a love story. A YouTuber on the road to fame after Obsession wowed audiences at Toronto International Film Festival, and got horror impresario Jason Blum onboard as executive producer, director Curry Barker is all of 26. He is also the writer of this tragi-comic horror film, with Cooper Tomlinson who plays one of the key characters, his long-time collaborator. Barker taps right into Gen Z’s au courant crisis and places Obsession in the irresolute territory where love is an all-consuming but never-consummate emotion. Relationships are situationships, and situations are at the mercy of just too many things. Commitment is a word – and world – too long.

The wise woman Diane (Melissa Leo) who knows all about the things that can go wrong on the road advises Maddie (Lou Llobell) seriously: “People don’t take trips. Trips take people.” That’s just her way of saying that please avoid lonely, dark roads at night, and should you have to, never, ever stop. But by then, the road trip of Maddie and Tyler (Jacob Scipio) has put them in the path of a demonic being that is mythically known as Passenger (Joseph Lopez). Once he has latched on to you, for whatever reason, he travels with you, so to speak.