Alien: Romulus ***
See feature review. Available Aug. 16 in theaters. (R)

Daughters ***
It won the overall audience award for Sundance 2024, and it’s easy to understand why; there’s undeniable emotion in the story of incarcerated men in a Washington D.C. prison getting a rare one-day opportunity to spend time with their daughters as part of a “Date With Dad” dance event. There are also some structural decisions that both add to the complexity of the story and make it slightly less powerful than it should be. Co-directors Natalie Rae and Angela Patton (the latter of whom co-founded this program) open in 2016, focusing on four men who opt to participate in the seven-week parenting program that’s a pre-requisite for the visit, as well as their children, who span a range of ages and feelings about their incarcerated fathers; 5-year-old Audrey is such a delightful dynamo of personality that an entire documentary could be built around her alone. As it turns out, splitting focus presents part of the challenge, as does the way in which the filmmakers follow up on these families over the subsequent seven years, as we see both success stories and sadder developments. The centerpiece sequences involving the dance itself are so emotionally intense that it’s understandable the filmmakers might not want to linger too long over the coda, yet it feels like more of that material might have been helpful to get a full picture of where this event succeeded, and where the system fails. Reader, I cried, make no mistake—and I also wanted a chance to explore these stories in the depth they needed. Available Aug. 14 via Netflix. (NR)

The Greatest Surf Movie in the Universe *1/2
If nothing else, I now know what would qualify as “Australian surfer humor,” which apparently amounts to “Team America: World Police, but dumber.” The ridiculous concept (as narrated by Luke Hemsworth, and played out mostly by stop-motion action figures) finds a near-future where a pandemic wipes out much of the world’s population, and the ensuing vaccination causes a mass amnesia that surfing exists. That leads Hughie the Surf God (Ronnie Blakely) to recruit some of the world’s greatest surfers to … but I’ve spent way too much time on a summary, especially considering somebody in this 81-minute movie repeats the premise approximately every four minutes. The main narrative pauses occasionally for live-action footage of the real-life surfers in action as they remember their past lives, and I suppose that’s at least theoretically kind of cool for someone who’s into surfing, in the same way I suppose Warren Miller films are theoretically kind of cool for someone who’s into skiing. Mostly, it’s a cavalcade of bro-ish humor based on bodily functions, drug hallucinations and calling people “c*nts” in that particularly Australian way. Filmmakers Vaughan Blakey and Nick Pollet don’t have remotely enough ideas for jokes to fill out a feature, and what they do have reaches it zenith at the characters tearing off their own penises to become weapons. You c*nts have been warned. Available Aug. 16 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

Jackpot! **1/2
Here’s a high-concept satire that turns into a slapstick action comedy that turns into a sincere character dramedy in the space of 100 minutes—and even though it’s mostly pretty good at all of those things, it’s really awkward having them all smushed together. Set in the year 2030, it posits a financially-strapped California where the state lottery has become not just a massive cash-cow, but a Hunger Games-like opportunity where the winner of a big jackpot can be murdered consequence-free in the 10 hours after the announcement, with the killer then getting to keep the winnings. Into this mess steps Katie Kim (Awkwafina), a one-time child actor trying to restart her career when she accidentally winds up with the winning ticket, requiring the assistance of professional protector Noel (John Cena). Director Paul Feig and screenwriter Rob Yescombe dive immediately into a bunch of attempted killings before taking a brief detour into possibly exploring this world’s income inequity, and then pivoting right back to car chases and choreographed carnage. Then, somewhere along the way, it becomes important, apparently, to dig into the respective traumas driving Katie and Noel’s behavior and facilitate their bonding. There are plenty of solid comedic bits along the way—notably Ayden Mayeri as Katie’s self-absorbed Airbnb host—and a breezy enough pace that the clunkiness is easier to forgive. Most movies are better, however, if they really understand what kind of movie they’re trying to be. Available Aug. 15 via Prime Video. (R)

My Penguin Friend **1/2
Never underestimate the ability of cute animals to carry a movie a long way, nor how relatively bland that same movie can seem when the cute animal isn’t around. Set mostly in a coastal Brazilian fishing town, the fact-based drama follows a fisherman named Joao (Jean Reno), deeply affected by the death of his son years earlier, who nurses an ailing Magellanic penguin back to health, then finds the little creature—whom he names Dindim—returning to visit every year during his seasonal migration. Reno and Adriana Barraza (as Joao’s wife) nicely underplay the lingering pain of parental grief, and director David Schurman is wise enough to give us an actual real-life penguin for most of the key scenes, allowing for an audience connection to something that’s not just a CGI creation. Unfortunately, the charm of that connection also makes the subplot involving a trio of marine biologists (Alexia Moyano, Nicolás Francella and Rochi Hernández) in Argentina feel extremely tedious by comparison; the actors feel like they’re reciting their English-language dialogue as though reading it from cue cards for the first time, just trying to get through delivering the necessary plot points. The Incredible Journey-esque arc of the third act raises the stakes again, to the extent that it kind of makes you wish that the penguin-less scenes were left on the cutting room floor. Available Aug. 16 in theaters. (PG)

Sing Sing ***
Everything about this premise is earnest, understated and inspirational—so why does it feel like it falls short of real emotional catharsis? The concept is based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at New York’s Sing Sing prison, following several incarcerated men—including aspiring playwright John “Divine G” Whitfield (Colman Domingo)—as they work on their latest production under the supervision of director Brent Buell (Paul Raci). Director Greg Kwedar and the screenwriting team take an unconventional approach to this story, bypassing a lot of potential points of manufactured conflict—including Whitfield’s role as alpha in this group being challenged by new arrival Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin (playing himself, as do most of the other actors)—in favor of something that emphasizes the program’s process of pulling angry, internalized men into emotional honesty. And it’s a solid piece of work on that level, particularly with Domingo and Maclin anchoring the narrative with powerful performances and rich cinematography by Pat Scola. It also at times feels almost too unwilling to be a genuine crowd-pleaser, as though naturalism couldn’t go hand-in-hand with deeply-felt emotions, or even more overt silliness like the broadly comedic original play we ultimately see very little of. As a tale of men learning that they might deserve to be free, it’s certainly effective; it simply feels timid about being willing to give us a place to cheer. Available Aug. 16 in theaters. (R)

Skincare **
Not every movie needs to be “about something,” but when you get the impression that everyone involved seems to believe that it is about something, you’d better be able to make it understandable. Director Austin Peters and his two co-writers draw from real events to tell the fictionalized story of Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks), a Hollywood aesthetician with a client roster full of celebrities and dreams of launching her skincare products as a retail line. But that dream appears in peril when a competing salon moves in across the plaza from hers, at the same time that someone seems to be launching a campaign to destroy her reputation. There’s obviously plenty of material to be mined from the surface-conscious culture of the L.A. beautiful people, and Banks does effectively capture the panic of someone trying to maintain the illusion of success while trying to stay above water financially. But the satirical components generally get buried in the details of the attacks Hope faces, and the trappings of a whodunnit—and it may just be the perspective of someone who watches way too many movies, but the perpetrator never seems particularly in doubt. With so much focus on plot-plot-plot, and no particular style to the filmmaking, there’s no time to serve the ideas—and the result is something that feels just as superficial as the people it could theoretically be skewering. Available Aug. 16 in theaters. (R)

The Union **
The pandering premise for this espionage thriller—what if there were a super-secret spy agency made up of regular working-class stiffs?—feels so utterly at odds with the way it’s constructed that it ends up feeling like one of those political photo-ops where a candidate goes to a county fair and ends up eating a corn dog with a knife and fork. The agency in question is known as “The Union,” and a member named Roxane (Halle Berry) returns to her New Jersey hometown to find Mike (Mark Wahlberg), her high-school boyfriend, and attempt to recruit him for work on a dangerous mission. Wahlberg feels like a natural fit for this concept, his natural limitations as an actor notwithstanding, and he walks a reasonably effective line between wide-eyed newcomer to this world and legitimate threat to the bad guys. But despite some initial attempts at blue-collar cred by playing Springsteen tunes on the soundtrack, this is simply a slick and inconsequential genre piece that keeps talking the talk about simple folk while only occasionally making that notion matter; in theory, the petty turf war between the coat-and-tie CIA agents and their Union counterparts should emphasize that idea, but no one involved here seems to know how to exploit it. So what’s left is a bunch of car chases and gunfights that generate little energy, and a stump speech for heartland values that feels like empty promises. Available Aug. 16 via Netflix. (PG-13)