The “sweet girl” in question is Rachel Cooper (Isabela Merced), the daughter of Ray Cooper (Jason Momoa). Ray and Rachel have been struggling in the wake of family matriarch Amanda’s (Adria Arjona) death from cancer. To add insult to injury, Amanda’s death could have probably been prevented had a generic drug been made available to her instead of being indefinitely delayed by a competing drug company led by Simon Keeley (Justin Bartha)....

Not the streamer productions around $20 million that benefit from Hollywood resources, nor the dwindling middle class of features lucky enough to secure independent financing for $5 million-$10 million. This is about the bootstrapped, maxed-out-credit-card moviemaking that exists through the sheer will of its creators. The ones with the microscopic cast and crew (and often the cast is the crew), the minimalist narratives mandated by minuscule resources — the personal and potentially alienating visions of singular moving-image artists who somehow manage to bring their movie dreams to life....

The trailer not only introduces Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader, but also Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Colin Farrell as his own twist on the Penguin, Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Gordon, and even glimpses of Paul Dano’s Riddler. We also see Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne’s righthand man. “Right from the beginning, there’s a desperation to it. He’s really working out this rage,” Pattinson said of his character during a DC FanDome sizzle reel in the leadup to the trailer....

It’s not accurate to say that Derek Jeter never lost, despite the reputation that he fashioned for himself early in his career. The opening part of “The Captain,” a new seven-part ESPN series on the career and times of the Hall of Fame New York Yankees shortstop, does go through the struggles of his early professional days. There are tiny nods to the “what if” paths his life would have gone down had a few key injuries and pivotal second chances never happened....

Such is the clever conceit of Evan Morgan’s feature directorial debut, “The Kid Detective,” which picks up decades after Abe’s fledgling career was felled by a truly heinous crime. Oh, Abe (Adam Brody, sharing the role with young Jesse Noah Gruman in flashbacks) is still a detective — he’s even got the same office, just with the “kid” scratched off the old-school frosted glass door, he’s just “detective” now — but after his tween secretary went missing when they were still just youngsters and Abe couldn’t so much as come up with a suspect, the gloss was off his profession....

“Chapter 16 – The Rescue” is essentially the big-budget CGI equivalent of watching a small child smash their collection of action figures into one another. It’s messy, incoherent, and utterly mindless. But hey, at least the kid is having fun. “The Mandalorian” Season 2 finale marks the long-awaited showdown between Mando (Pedro Pascal) and Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) following the latter’s abduction of Grogu earlier in the season. Though the episode delivers on that front, features a team-up between many of the show’s standout characters, and resolves the quest Mando set off on at the beginning of the season, it does so with so many noisy and plodding action scenes — and aggravating unanswered questions — that the end result isn’t particularly cathartic....

“Dying: A Memoir” comes to mind early and often while watching Mike Flanagan’s latest Netflix series, “The Midnight Club,” but it’s less of a companion piece than a vastly superior delivery device of a similar message. Co-created by Flanagan and Leah Fong (with Flanagan a co-writer on every episode, save for one entry penned only by his brother, Jamie Flanagan) the 10-episode series is adapted from Christopher Pike’s 1994 novel of the same name (as well as the author’s other works)....