Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Arica Himmel, Bonnie Mbuli, Dax Rey, Giancarlo Esposito, Ivan Mbakop, Paula Malcomson, Skeet Ulrich, Zackary Momoh
Sometimes, you just need a good movie that poses neither an emotional rollercoaster, nor an intellectual challenge. Here are the best no-brainer movies and shows to stream now for a carefree and uplifting watch, from the funny to the offbeat.
Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Arica Himmel, Bonnie Mbuli, Dax Rey, Giancarlo Esposito, Ivan Mbakop, Paula Malcomson, Skeet Ulrich, Zackary Momoh
Beat for beat, word for word, Love is in the Air moves just like any other romantic comedy. Within that genre, it slots easily into the category of romcoms that follow a city guy who falls in love with a country girl, eventually learning and preferring the ways of small-town living. But Love in Air is even more improbable than usual because of how eerily perfect the two leads are. Goodrem, in particular, is always manicured to perfection, which makes her role as a down-to-earth no-nonsense go-getter very hard to believe. Still, the movie isn’t entirely unwatchable. There are pockets of humor to be found, and the stunning visuals almost make it worth the watch. Almost.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Actor: Craig Walker, Delta Goodrem, Hugh Parker, Joshua Sasse, Mia Grunwald, Roy Billing, Simon McLachlan, Steph Tisdell
Director: Adrian Powers
There's an entire category of children's television that essentially functions as little more than white noise that parents can use to distract their kids with—which many Little Baby Bum videos wind up being. This Netflix spin-off, however, has just a little more to it: noticeably improved animation, and creative takes on nursery rhymes and other children's songs. Each episode contains three segments focused on a different sound or song, with one of the five main characters learning a simple lesson by the end. The format isn't particularly exciting and each of these roughly seven-minute long segments already feels stretched somewhat thin, but the show still clearly has more effort poured into it than one might expect.
Genre: Animation, Kids, Music
Actor: Eve Ridley, Hannah Jane Fox, Raj Ghatak, Rishi Kuppa, Siu-see Hung
Genre: Comedy, Romance, TV Movie
Actor: Aadila Dosani, Alison Sweeney, Benjamin Ayres, Corina Bizim, Debbie Podowski, Eduardo Britto, John Prowse, Kehli O'Byrne, Kendra Anderson, Lynn Whyte, Matthew Kevin Anderson, Nevin Burkholder, Vivin Oommen, William Vaughan
Director: David Weaver
To be fair to this visibly low-budget adaptation of H. G. Wells' seminal science-fiction novel, it doesn't always settle for the cheap way out. Though it still leaves much to be desired in its visual effects, awkward action scenes, and generally unimaginative direction, Fear the Invisible Man makes a valiant effort to deepen its story by placing a strong, unlikely protagonist at its center (played in all seriousness and with admirable resolve by Mhairi Calvey). Since the titular villain isn't actually the star of the show—nor is he made out to be an ever-present threat, like in the modern 2020 adaptation—this version of The Invisible Man is able to circle relatively newer ideas about a woman's "invisible" place in the world, and how she's tempted to go down a path of pride and violence. If only the rest of the film could keep up with the script's ambition.
Genre: Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller
Actor: David Hayman, Delroy Brown, Emily Haigh, Grahame Fox, Joe Tucker, Marc Danbury, Mark Arnold, Mhairi Calvey, Mike Beckingham, Simon Pengelly, Wayne Gordon
Director: Paul Dudbridge
At its core, The Trust is everything you expect from American reality TV, complete with several highly irritating contestants and drama that just never hits as hard as it tries to. So it's good that the central game mechanics are simple yet designed to have the players sow as much discord among themselves as possible. With the constant temptation of higher individual shares dangled in front of them, and each contestant having the power to send somebody home with a single, anonymous, uncontested vote, the paranoia runs rampant fairly quickly. Unfortunately, the players themselves aren't the most interesting bunch to watch, and their strategies are decent at best, completely illogical at worst. There's still lots of excitement surrounding every voting session, but getting to know the players becomes a slog.
Genre: Reality
Actor: Brooke Baldwin
Genre: Comedy
Actor: Steve Trevino
Director: Renae Trevino
Genre: Action, Thriller
Actor: Arturo Castro, B.K. Cannon, Beau Knapp, Billy Magnussen, Bruce Buffer, Candy Santana, Catfish Jean, Chad Guerrero, Conor McGregor, Craig Ng, Daniela Melchior, Darren Barnet, Dominique Columbus, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Hannah Love Lanier, J. D. Pardo, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jay Hieron, Jessica Williams, Joaquim de Almeida, Jonathan Kowalsky, Kevin Carroll, Lukas Gage, Post Malone, Ruairi Rhodes, Travis Van Winkle
Director: Doug Liman
In a time where the Metaverse feels more and more a looming presence, hoping to crown our complex realities with its utopian promise, it's only natural to expect a film set precisely there. Director L.E. Staiman took a chance with Love Virtually, but his attempt to make a zany, absurdist rom-com (riffing off the title of your aunt's annual Christmas rewatch) simply fails. The premise sees a few couples on the brink of breaking up reconnect with the help of VR headsets, challenging each other's commitment, or cheating with each other (without knowing it of course). A rather funny gambit gets sucked into a vortex of dullness when the characters speak, their dialogues irksome to the point of second-hand embarrassment. Instead of exploring the possibilities of VR relations through an ironic lens, the film seems to not even care enough to look for the genuine comedic potential of the Metaverse as a concept-turned-space. Even the three separate references to Timothée Chalamet don't make a difference to how surprisingly retrograde and somehow banal all of this feels.
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Actor: Adam Ray, Cheri Oteri, Danielle Krivak, Henry Dittman, Nikki Alexis Howard, Paul F. Tompkins, Peter Gilroy, Ryan O'Flanagan, Stephen Tobolowsky, Tom Virtue, Vincent Washington
Director: L.E. Staiman
The idea of a fitness instructor suddenly discovering the thrill of selling military armaments is promising in its absurdity, so it's unfortunate that Los Farad doesn't maintain this offbeat sense of humor for too long. It moves relatively quickly into tense criminal activity, but the series isn't able to really capture the magnetic pull that this world of luxury has on protagonist Oskar. Without enough table-setting, the crime family he finds himself becoming a part of can't help but seem ordinary, and the last-minute solutions he finds weaken the urgency of the situations he's in, as cinematic as they appear on screen.
Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Adam Jezierski, Amparo Piñero, Fernando Tejero, Igal Naor, Miguel Herran, Nora Navas, Omar Ayuso, Pedro Casablanc, Susana Abaitua
With every chaotic fight scene, ridiculous stunts, and crazy scheme, All-Time High is a wild ride where two scammers lie to each other and fall in love. It’s fun to see these irresponsible people reap the consequences, and it’s fun to see the way Youssef and Stéphanie recognize that they’ve met their match, made all the more fun with the natural chemistry between Nassim Lyes and Zoé Marchal. That being said, the film’s irreverent humor depends a bit too much on stereotypes and gags, and can be a bit too specific for viewers outside of France.
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Actor: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Adrien Essamir, Alexandre Kominek, Ciryl Gane, Guillaume Canet, Gustave Kervern, Hakim Jemili, Hedi Bouchenafa, Ichem Bougheraba, Kenza Fortas, Nassim Lyes, Panayotis Pascot, Yassine Stein, Yousef Ramal, Yovel Lewkowski, Zoé Marchal
Director: Julien Royal
With a premise that just seems inherently emotionally manipulative, it should take an especially sensitive touch to make a story like this work on screen. Unfortunately, See Hear Love—itself based on a South Korean webcomic—is both overdramatic and not nearly stylized enough in any meaningful way to help its subject matter evolve beyond melodrama. It remains a well-shot and decently acted film that, at the very least, treats its characters as adults and not as caricatures with disabilities. But the movie makes little effort to place these characters in believable situations that should shed a light on what it's like to live with blindness or as a Deaf person. See Hear Love takes the easiest (and slowest) way out, bringing its two lovers together under somewhat creepy circumstances, and having them endure cartoonishly exploitative "antagonists"—all for the sake of portraying the romance as grand and artificially tragic.
Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: Dai Watanabe, Daikichi Sugawara, Mahiro Takasugi, Maika Yamamoto, Mari Natsuki, Masaya Kato, Motoki Fukami, Sayaka Yamaguchi, Tomohisa Yamashita, Tomoki Kimura, Yuko Araki
Director: John H. Lee
Sayen is the kind of film that ultimately feels like it was written by a focus group: ample representation for a worthy cause funneled into the sort of escapism that should theoretically hit the widest demographic possible. But even with its solid production values and a determined performance by Rallen Montenegro, the film lacks the emotional bite that a less corporate-driven project likely would've had. It's not that Sayen comes off insincere about the plight of Indigenous peoples in Chile; it's that its desire to appear sincere stops most of its good ideas halfway. The action isn't particularly thrilling, the story doesn't develop so much as it stretches itself thin, and its supposed representation begins and ends with some terribly obvious—borderline tokenistic—scenes and character types.
Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller
Actor: Alejandro Trejo, Álvaro Espinoza, Aron Piper, David Gaete, Eduardo Paxeco, Enrique Arce, Loreto Aravena, Rallén Montenegro, Ramón González, Roberto García Ruiz, Serge Santana, Teresa Ramos
Director: Alexander Witt
Yet another drama designed to be emotional without actually doing the heavy lifting to get us invested, Prisoner's Daughter takes the easy way out at every turn, mistaking its use of capital-I Issues and dramatic plot points for substantial writing. This doesn't mean that the film itself isn't still watchable and competently performed (by a typically strong Brian Cox, but especially by Kate Beckinsale); it just fails to make a statement about any of its disparate parts mashed together. At the end of the day, it feels as if the film doesn't have enough faith in the already complex and difficult relationship at its center, so it attempts to dress it up with prison, cancer, drug addicts, and epilepsy—which only cheapens what's already there.
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Actor: Brian Cox, Christopher Convery, Chuti Tiu, Cinthia Moura, Ernie Hudson, Jon Huertas, Kate Beckinsale, Mark Kubr, Mark Oliver Everett, Tyson Ritter, Yonel Dorelis
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
More an extended episode of the Polly Pocket TV series that started in 2018 than a self-contained movie, Sparkle Cove Adventure really only exists to showcase various adventure sequences and magical powers possessed by Polly and the other characters. It's all harmless fun, with a last-minute message about working together that could've been much more subversive in a better written story. Unfortunately, there really isn't much else in this crudely structured, one-hour film to recommend, as lots of on-screen hustle and bustle threatens to blur into white noise. It doesn't help that the animation hasn't been upgraded in any way; after 60 minutes, the Flash-animated 2D style only begins to look flatter.
Genre: Adventure, Animation, Family, Fantasy, Kids
Actor: Cherlandra Estrada, Emily Tennant, Shannon Chan-Kent
Director: Brent Bouchard, Thom Mckenna