Supergirl (2026)
It's a fine line between snappy and sloppy. All the elements are here, piled in, run off, but without any particular flow or pace, and it's especially noticeable in the beginning when you're trying to get oriented. Plus, there's the diminishing returns. We've seen this act so many times now -- the mixed bag of Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars, a back i.e. origin story (I thought we'd actually gotten away from that), toss in some Mad Max Fury Road -- that if it's not decent it gets tiresome easily. And though this is from the comics, too, and probably literally from the comic they based this on, there's all that usual Superman contrivance. When you basically make Superman, whatever super-person version, the catch-all of wish fulfillment, you have to concoct ways to reduce the absurd lack of limit, pull things out of -- er, the air. A green sun? What, a Kryptonite sun? Or it's like Green Lantern now, with color involved in the powers?

Comedy(d)rama

Little Brother (2026)
Stock comedy with delivery sometimes so rote it's like they're reading the treatment. John Cena has to bear the brunt of this because he's the ostensible straight man, but it's director Matt Spicer who makes it worse for Cena, requiring dragged out modular reaction shots. Eric Andre doesn't go over big as the source of chaos/laughs mainly because of the material. He's dropped into a vehicle that uses his persona readymade and the attempts at building a character are forced clownishness, when not pure leaps of zany.

Game Night (2018)
All in the delivery. The premise is obvious, seems commonplace even if it's not re-used, and the structure doesn't add anything particularly novel. But there's still plenty of wit in the dialogue and in the handling of it by cast and directors, so it's firing off and rolling along all the way. The dash of it all keeps it from self-conscious cutesiness or cloying caricatures.

Power Ballad (2026)
Mercifully shifts from two beaten paths, the wedding singer comedy and the big public come-clean. It's more serious in the feel-good way, but also does a nice job playing that more lightly for the ending. There's one great scene where Paul Rudd's character seeks help from a band mate he'd slagged off, that takes a path less sculpted and thus gives a more candid chain of reactions. The rest of the movie never quite reaches that level, and the payoff moment for the meeting with the star doesn't match it, and shows most a vacillation of modes, madcap, caper and earnest.

Lorne (2026)
Director Morgan Neville and co-writers Alan Lowe and Jake Hostetter use the limitations of the subject -- the well-established and professed refusal of Lorne Michaels to be a main subject, about Saturday Night Live or even his own story -- and the medium to make a sly portrait and tribute to the man who perhaps more than anyone is worthy of the term "showrunner."