A Sexy Blog

Is there anything sweeter than a genre picture that tries to sneak a love story past a firing squad of monsters, bioweapons, and the apocalypse itself—and half-succeeds not by brute force, but by the sheer force of its leads? Hollywood, that eternal laboratory of hybrid creatures, has never tired of shoving its pretty faces into the trenches of the end times, but Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge practically begs to ask: if the world was ending, wouldn’t you fall in love if you could? (Especially if Miles Teller was across the way with a rifle and Anya Taylor-Joy was the voice in your headset?) Well, how could you not.

Romantic action comedies are supposed to be soufflés—light, airy, and just a little dangerous when the temperature rises. Jonathan Eusebio’s Love Hurts instead brings us the cinematic equivalent of a microwave burrito, piping hot in patches but mostly frozen where it matters. We’re promised a gleeful riot in the key of Jackie Chan, but what this film delivers is the sound of laughter caught in the wrong throat.

There are movies made for adults, and then there are movies that confuse “adult” with “adolescent in a wet-dream stupor.” Anora, Sean Baker’s latest stumble masquerading as a comedy-drama, is a film with all of its clothes off and nothing to show but skin. The only thing less substantial than the threadbare plot is the flimsily clad pretense that we ought to care about this endless, joyless parade of nudity and nonsense.

How often does a film promise fun, suspense, and genuine romance, and—miracle of miracles—actually deliver all three? “Hit Man” is the kind of briskly entertaining, tonally slippery, deeply pleasurable movie experience that leaves you with a big, silly grin in the dark, and a faint suspicion you might’ve just been lovingly cheated. And isn’t that the magic of movies? Richard Linklater, whose work is so often preoccupied with talky, meandering souls lost somewhere between philosophy and the parking lot, here lays down a genre bender that barrels through romantic comedy, crime caper, and existential disguise, and—against all odds—makes it look almost too easy.

Is there any modern screen fantasy more seductive than the con artist—our era’s answer to the movie gangster, only happier to work out of a hotel bar than a speakeasy, and more at home lifting watches or hearts than gunning anyone down? In Focus, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa try to fine-tune that old grift-and-romance two-step for the millennial crowd, trotting out Will Smith as a slick virtuoso of deception, whose real legerdemain ends up being the ability to keep Margot Robbie (who, here, has the sparkle and bounce of a new convertible) on her toes, and, at least for a while, the audience on theirs.