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Stream it on Peacock.<\/a><\/p>\n After three years of buddy banter and watching the same movies over and over, astronauts Adam and Jane, marooned on a busted ship, accept the fact that they won\u2019t get back to Earth and finally give in to their mutual attraction. Of course that\u2019s when their navigation system starts working again, enabling them to return home \u2014 where their spouses are waiting. Uh-oh. Does it count as cheating if you thought you were doomed?<\/p>\n Anthony Mackie (recently seen in the \u201cTwisted Metal\u201d series) and Zo\u00eb Chao<\/a> (\u201cParty Down\u201d) convincingly, playfully connect as both sparring partners and lovers, and pairing them in a romantic comedy of the sci-fi persuasion was a felicitous move. While the story is relatively straightforward, the director Kristian Mercado puts a fun twist on it: The ship is cartoonishly designed, with flat surfaces that often look drawn, while everything on Earth is filmed in a naturalistic manner. This suggest that the space sexcapades were not part of \u201creal\u201d life. But what if they led to feelings that are simultaneously grounded and lightheaded? Never mind where Adam and Jane are: You are likely to find yourself rooting for them, which is a good rom-com\u2019s ultimate objective.<\/p>\n Rent or buy it on most major platforms.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Set in gritty, racially mixed housing projects, the banlieue movie has become a thriving subgenre of French cinema since \u201cLa Haine\u201d in 1995. It has gone through multiple variations, taking the form of thrillers, coming-of-age tales, comedies and family dramas. Now comes \u201cThe Gravity,\u201d in which teen gangs, drug dealers and people with dreams of escape confront one another against an ominous apocalyptic background. Most of the French-Burkinab\u00e9 director C\u00e9dric Ido\u2019s film takes place before a freak alignment of all eight planets in the solar system. Nobody knows exactly what will happen, but everybody is on edge. Daniel (Max Gomis) is about to move away with his girlfriend (Hafsia Herzi) and their daughter, but the pull of the neighborhood is strong \u2014 and no one is pulling stronger than his own brother, Joshua (Steve Tientcheu), a wheelchair-using tinkerer and dealer. What\u2019s most striking about \u201cThe Gravity\u201d is the precision with which Ido builds mood, using camera work and editing that are economical and precise. As Daniel faces off with his own flesh and blood as well as a quasi-mystical gang, the Ronins, the movie plays off the idea of gravitational pull, both literal and metaphorical, suggesting that people can be kept in place by implacable forces.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Kyle Patrick Alvarez\u2019s movie is pretty much \u201cThe Goonies\u201d but on the moon. Too bad \u201cMoonies\u201d has quite a different meaning because it would have been a great title. Set in 2257, the film takes place on a long-established lunar colony that\u2019s basically a glorified dormitory for miners harvesting helium, a crucial component for intergalactic travel. The mining company\u2019s treatment of the workers amounts to semi-enslavement, which this Disney production addresses in a peripheral way. (\u201cCrater\u201d premiered on Disney+ in May and was pulled just seven weeks later as part of a cost-cutting move; now it is finally available again on demand.)<\/p>\n The real focus is a band of local kids who try to help their friend Caleb (Isaiah Russell-Bailey) get to a far-flung crater that holds special meaning for him, before he is shipped off to distant Omega \u2014 an idyllic outpost reachable only after 75 years of cryo-sleep that would forever sever him from his buddies. The group, which includes the soulful heartthrob Dylan (Billy Barratt, the clairvoyant Caspar on Apple TV+\u2019s \u201cInvasion\u201d), steals a big rover and sets off on a trek. The expedition takes maybe a little too long to reach the crater, with shenanigans and pit stops at abandoned moon condos along the way. But it\u2019s all made worth it by a lovely, bittersweet coda about what awaits Caleb on Omega.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n By the time humanity limps to the year 2144 in this Canadian movie, major floods have frozen over, creating vast expanses of snow and ice. The one-eyed foundling Sumi (Viva Lee) was raised by a polar bear, so when we meet her, the little girl expresses herself in grunts and growls. It follows that when she meets strangers (only women seem to be left), she does not understand what they say. The director Kirsten Carthew fully commits to the premise and there are no subtitles for the (made-up) language we hear, putting us in the same position as our pint-size heroine. This might frustrate some viewers, but \u201cPolaris\u201d is easy to follow. Which does not mean it\u2019s always easy to understand. Carthew mixes a certain amount of realism, especially when it comes to violence and the brutal Morads and their jury-rigged snowmobiles, with a fablelike, almost mystical dimension. Sumi has a preternatural obsession with following the title\u2019s North Star, and who is the frozen girl (Khamisa Wilsher) who may or may not be human? So many questions, so few answers. Just accept \u201cPolaris\u201d on its own poetic terms.<\/p>\n\u2018The Gravity\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018The Pod Generation\u2019<\/h2>\n