‘Snack Shack’ (2024)
Adam Rehmeier’s coming-of-age story is set in the summer of 1991, and initially seems not only about that era, but of it, replicating the look and sound of ’90s teen sex comedies. (You can’t get more ’90s than a montage set to EMF’s “Unbelievable.”) But that’s a bit of a head fake; this is a movie with more on its mind. A.J. (Conor Sherry) and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle, currently seen as Lorne Michaels in “Saturday Night”) are a pair of enterprising young entrepreneurs who see a moneymaking opportunity in the concession stand at the local public pool. As often happens in these tales, a girl threatens to come between them, but that’s where we diverge from the formula; as written by Rehmeier and played by Mika Abdalla, the “cool girl” Brooke has the complexity and agency of a contemporary heroine, allowing Rehmeier to navigate a third-act flip into serious waters with grace and dexterity.
‘I Used to Be Funny’ (2024)
LaBelle’s “Saturday Night” co-star Rachel Sennott fronts this narratively and tonally tricky examination of a young woman in a free-fall. Sam (Sennott) is an occasional stand-up comic whose last day job, nannying a young firecracker named Brooke (Olga Petsa), ended badly. The writer and director Ally Pankiw takes her time (perhaps a bit too much) revealing exactly what happened there, but it took a toll on Sam, who has become a withdrawn recluse, barely able to crack the jokes that used to come so freely. Pankiw’s script perceptively captures how funny people use deflection and gallows humor to minimize the pains of their past, and Sennott, quickly becoming one of our most captivating young actors (thanks to electrifying turns in “Shiva Baby,” “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” and “Bottoms”), is terrific.
‘The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed’ (2024)
It’s easy to compare the writer-director-star Joanna Arnow to Lena Dunham; both make prickly, NYC-based comedies about the woes of young women, featuring frequent nudity, candid sexual situations and the filmmakers’ parents as themselves. But it’s more accurate to say Dunham walked so Arnow could run; “The Feeling” is, if anything, more cringe-inducing than Dunham’s “Tiny Furniture” or “Girls,” more willing to delve into adult subject matter with uncomfortable honesty, all while carving out a deadpan comic style of its own. Arnow is a 30-something Brooklynite in a dead-end job whose love life is barely more inspiring; she engages in joyless B.D.S.M. encounters, primarily with a smug regular (Scott Cohen), but they seem less a case of satisfying a kink than carrying out expectations. Arnow is quite good at capturing the inanities of everyday chitchat, resulting in several laugh-out-loud moments in and out of the bedroom.
‘Red Rocket’ (2021)
Sean Baker is credited as an executive producer on “The Feeling,” and that scans; he’s no stranger to matter-of-factly explicit material, as evidenced by his new film, the Palme d’Or winner “Anora,” and his previous feature, this razor-sharp, Texas-set comedy. The former MTV personality Simon Rex stars as Mikey, a grinning ne’er-do-well who returns to his hometown Texas City, Tex., where his estranged wife greets him with something less than open arms. Mikey spent the last several years as an adult film star, and if you think he’s come home to reform himself, well, you haven’t seen many Sean Baker movies. The director’s sprung comic rhythms are a treat, his filmmaking is energetic, and in Rex, he finds an unlikely vessel for a character that’s both loathsome and oddly empathetic.
‘Celeste and Jesse Forever’ (2012)
Andy Samberg has attracted some attention of late for his dramatic turn in “Lee,” but he’s hinted at serious acting for a while now. He gets to play both sides of his persona in this charming throwback to the screwball marital comedies of yesteryear. The screenplay is by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, and Jones stars as Samberg’s wife; they’re separated, but barely (he still lives in the backyard studio), they still go out with friends and share inside jokes, seemingly unable to really and truly sever the only romantic connection they’ve ever known. Wise and witty, “Celeste & Jesse” culminates with earned pathos, thanks to the sensitive, lived-in performances of its charismatic leads.
‘Revenge’ (2018)
If you’re a fan of the thought-provoking, stomach churning film “The Substance,” take a gander at the writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s tough, gripping feature debut. Just as her new film riffed on the tropes of body horror, “Revenge” offers her take on another exploitation mainstay, the rape-revenge thriller, as Jen (Matilda Lutz) is sexually assaulted by a pal of her boyfriend (Kevin Janssens) and goes on a good old-fashioned kill-crazy rampage. Fargeat is skilled at setting narrative mousetraps and toying with our expectations of when she’ll spring them, and she both skips the sleazier elements (the assault occurs off-camera) and amps up the satisfaction of the payoffs. The gore is abundant, which won’t surprise “Substance” viewers, but the steadily increasing psychological stakes are what make this one sing.
‘The Wolfpack’ (2015)
The “Skate Kitchen” director and “Betty” mastermind Crystal Moselle caught her big break with this simultaneously invigorating and heartbreaking documentary portrait of the Angulo brothers, a sextet of home-schooled, movie-crazy young men who use their no-budget, homemade, shot-on-video films (often affectionate homages to their favorite directors) as a way of keeping their sanity and identity in the face of overwhelming poverty and a controlling father. Moselle spent years in the company of the Angulos, and turns what could have been an exploitative portrait into a joyful celebration of the freeing power of cinema.
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