Review: 'Cookie Queens' is a sunny, heartwarming documentary that follows four girls as they strive to sell Girl Scout cookies.

There’s probably a hard-hitting documentary to be made about the system in which thousands of pre-teen girls toil away several late-winter weekends selling a sugar-filled product for $6 a box, propping up an $800 million-a-year industry for which they get paid in trips and trinkets and not in cash.

“Cookie Queens” is not that documentary. Instead, it’s a light and breezy look at four girls, ranging in age from 5 to 12, who work hard to succeed at selling Girl Scout cookies. 

Director Alysa Nahmias follows four girls from across the country working to meet their cookie-selling goals. They are:

• Olive, 12, in Charlotte, N.C., who has her own website to promote herself and her cookie sales. She holds the state record for most cookies sold in a season, around 8,700, but this year she sets herself a lower goal of 4,000 boxes sold.

• Shannon Elizabeth, 8, in El Paso, Texas, has just become a Brownie, and wants to sell 2,750 boxes so she can earn a backpack — and enough money for her troop that she can attend Girl Scout camp in the summer.

• Ara, 5, in San Diego, is selling cookies for the first time, and has set a goal of just 55 boxes this season. Ara, with her parents’ help, also is managing her diabetes – and wonders why the Girl Scouts don’t make a sugar-free variety.

• Nikki, 9, in Chico, Calif., aims to follow in the footsteps of her teen sisters, Naya and Nala, who have been champion cookie sellers in past years.

Nahmias follows the four girls through the six-week cookie season in February and March, and the cyclical nature of the selling. The first weeks are full, as customers get excited to see the Samoas and Tagalongs and Thin Mints return. But a few weeks later, the novelty has worn off and the girls have to hustle to make their goals.

The movie also shows what the parents go through in supporting their girls. Olive’s mom and Nikki’s mom are both veterans of the cookie life, and support their girls and sometimes get, sorry to say it, a little pushy. Then there are Shannon Elizabeth’s parents, who worry about whether they can afford the upfront costs of cookie selling — in which they pledge to pay for cases of cookies in the hopes they can sell them all. 

“Cookie Queens” does not approach the Girl Scout cookie season with cynicism or with a dark view of how it’s a microcosm of American capitalism. It shows these girls as saleswomen and strivers, but first and foremost it shows them as little girls, finding fun, hope and opportunity through sugary treats.

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‘Cookie Queens’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 7, in theaters. Rated G. Running time: 91 minutes.

Review: 'Wild Inside' follows an owl's journey from captivity to big-city freedom, and how humans cheered for and affected the bird's survival

The thin line between humans and nature is the boundary depicted in director Penny Lane’s absorbing documentary “Wild Inside,” whose hero was the one New York City needed and maybe deserved in 2023.

The Big Apple became taken with the story of Flaco, an owl who escaped his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo and, for a year, lived free around the park and other parts of Manhattan. For bird experts, Flaco’s life outside the zoo was remarkable because he was an Eurasian eagle owl, a species not native to North America. His story resonated in part because he was another immigrant making a life for himself in New York City.

Lane details how the zoo initially tried to capture Flaco and put him back in his home. The zookeepers reasoned that Flaco had never lived in the wild and wouldn’t be able to hunt for himself, but he soon found he could feast on New York’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of rats and mice. The zoo relented, but other bird experts warned of other dangers of being a bird in New York, such as big buildings one could hit or rodents carrying rat poison.

A fair amount of Lane’s documentary is spent following a group of bird watchers, who go out at night with cameras to capture images of the nighttime avian scene. They’re an eccentric bunch, and quite charming. (Two of the birders Lane profiles met while birding and later got married.) Their observations and infrared footage act as a barometer for the health of both Flaco and New York’s non-human population.

Lane — whose past documentaries have chronicled American quackery through animation (“Nuts!”) and the cheeky First Amendment battles of the Satanic Temple (“Hail Satan?”) — finds in Flaco more than the easy fodder for the “and finally” slot on local TV news. She finds a cautionary tale of urban living, one that ponders how humans have created an ecosystem that’s not too healthy for us and downright harmful to every other species with which we share the planet.

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‘Wild Inside’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 7, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for bloody dismantling of small animals. Running time: 95 minutes.

Review: 'I Want Your Sex' presents Gregg Araki in his familiar stance as a neon-soaked provocateur, but targeting the art world and prudish Gen Z feels beneath him

The filmmaker Gregg Araki has been pushing buttons for decades, with movies like “The Doom Generation” and “Smiley Face,” so it’s no surprise that his latest, “I Want Your Sex,” tosses out provocations like they were flyers advertising an art gallery opening.

What’s surprising, and not in the best way, is that he directs those barbs at some of the lowest-hanging fruit of all: The contemporary art market and stuffiness about sex.

Araki begins with an obvious homage to “Sunset Blvd.,” but in reverse. Here, it’s the possibly unhinged woman, L.A. artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), floating face-down in the pool, and her boy toy, a gallery intern named Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), discovering her there. Elliot also narrates the story, in the form of an interrogation from two disbelieving detectives (Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville, who give ironically the most normal performances here).

The movie zooms back 9-1/2 weeks (a 40-year-old movie reference; look it up, kids), to show how Elliot ended up in Erika’s orbit. He’s unemployed, mooching off his bi-curious best friend Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) and being ignored by his post-doc girlfriend Minerva (Charli XCX), when he interviews to be an intern at Erika’s gallery.

Erika hires Elliot, but soon the young intern realizes there’s more to the job than writing press releases and chewing gum for her next art project. Nope, Erika is soon using Elliot for her personal sexual pleasures, which venture into leather, blindfolds, paddles and the kinkier parts of the Amazon inventory. He sticks with this because it turns him on, though Erika’s top assistant, Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), warns him, “You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last.”

Araki employs a candy-colored palette to suck Elliot and us into Erika’s art world — a world Erika breezily admits floats on enough B.S. and hucksterism to make P.T. Barnum envious. The director, again working with his “Now Apocalypse” co-screenwriter Karley Sciortino, also throws in some sharp commentary about Gen Z’s monastic aversion to sex, then confronts the audience about that attitude by including enough sexual content that the credits list two intimacy coordinators. (How this movie got an R rating is for scholars to figure out.)

Where “I Want Your Sex” becomes most entertaining is in how it squares the veteran Wilde, who’s at her most uninhibited here, with the comparatively green Hoffman. There’s 19 years between these performers, and they throw themselves into that age gap with enthusiasm. 

Araki tosses so much juice into his dismantling of the art market that he has difficulty bringing the story together in the finale, which of course brings us back to that pool scene and what follows. The resolution isn’t nearly so fun as the build-up that led up to it.

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‘I Want Your Sex’

★★★

Opens Friday, July 31, at several theaters. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, and pervasive language. Running time: 90 minutes.

Review: 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' freshens up the Marvel formula, with Sadie Sink as [REDACTED] stealing the show

The title “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” gives a hint that Kevin Feige and his Marvel Studios minions understand that the Marvel Cinematic Universe needs a refresh — and Peter Parker, the kid who became one of Marvel Comics’ biggest heroes, is the web-slinger who can do it.

In the seven years since the biggest culmination of Marvel’s heroes, the mega-successful 2019 mash-up “Avengers: Endgame,” the MCU has had its ups and downs.

•  The group efforts that audiences didn’t connect with, like “Eternals” and the criminally undervalued “The Marvels.” 

• New characters plugged into old superhero roles, such as Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson in “Captain America: Brave New World” and Letitia Wright’s Shuri in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” (Both Mackie and Wright were better than the movies they were in.) 

• The attempts, some better than others, of expanding the multiverse, which had the unfortunate effect of lowering the stakes — because why should we care about a beloved character dying if they just pop up again from another plane of existence (especially when it’s played for laughs, as in “Deadpool & Wolverine”)? 

• The stretching of the MCU into TV series, some of which felt like homework between movies.

• And the intervention of real life into the effort to crown a new mega-villain in Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conquerer, which turned out to be one of several reasons not to watch “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” more than once.

What does the latest “Spider-Man” have to offer to counter all that bad karma? A surprising amount, as director Destin Daniel Cretton (who also helmed “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”) and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (who wrote the last three “Spider-Man” movies) smartly combine what we like about the character with material that lets us re-imagine some classic Marvel names in new ways.

The new movie reminds us that it’s been five years since the last time Tom Holland suited up as Peter and his red-and-blue superhero identity. Back then, in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Peter had to save the universe by asking Dr. Strange to cast a spell to make everyone forget Peter — and everyone included his girlfriend, MJ (Zendaya), and his best pal, Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon). 

Since then, Peter has been fighting crime around New York, getting tips from Det. Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas), the one NYPD cop who has him on speed-dial, and dodging a rival crime-fighter, the vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), aka Punisher. Peter also helps out Bill Metzger (Trammel Tillman), who runs the Department of Damage Control, the agency tasked with cleaning up the messes left behind by building-breaking superheroes. 

Peter has lived a solitary life these five years, keeping track of MJ and Ned college and post-collegiate lives on social media. His only other activity that doesn’t involve fighting crime is regularly bringing flowers to the grave of his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei, seen in flashbacks). Oh, and he’s noticed that his body is changing, including gaining organic web shooters (which Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man had, but Andrew Garfield’s didn’t).

The plot kicks in when Spidey tries to stop an armored military vehicle making a beeline for Damage Control’s Manhattan headquarters — and discovering that whoever’s driving the tank is not what they appear to be. That’s about all I can tell you without divulging spoilers, something Marvel quite insistently asked critics not to do — and I wouldn’t want to anyway, because I hope moviegoers can enjoy the surprises the same way I did.

Without giving away anything significant, I’ll say that Cretton and his writers approach the array of Marvel characters cleverly. Some, like Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo, as seen in the trailers) and another character seen early on, are used as callbacks to past Marvel movies. One key character, though, has appeared in past movies played by other actors — and here, “Stranger Things” star Saide Sink, this movie’s third-billed performer, brings a powerful new take on the role.

Sink factors prominently in the movie’s two biggest action set pieces — one in the middle that feels like a predictable jumble of CGI effects and falling rubble, and a more successful finale that trusts the audience to react to the characters’ emotions more than the web shooters. (The finale also involves ninjas, which are definitely cool.) 

Holland and Zendaya (just seen along with Bernthal in “The Odyssey”) have some solid scenes together, providing a thoughtful update on Peter and MJ’s relationship. It’s Sink’s powerhouse performance, though, that audiences will be remembering most fondly when the credits roll. 

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‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 31, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of action/violence and some language. Running time: 145 minutes.

Review: 'The Odyssey' is an up-close-and-personal epic, as director Christopher Nolan makes a classic both timely and eternal

Since Christopher Nolan has established that he is perhaps the greatest movie storyteller of our era, it seems fitting that he would tackle what should be considered the most influential story of any era — and not at all a surprise that his movie, “The Odyssey,” is a moving and gripping telling of Homer’s epic poem.

Even if you have never read “The Odyssey” — and somehow I managed to be in that group — it’s impossible to have lived on Planet Earth for any amount of time and not be exposed to the story’s themes or ideas. If you have any idea what a siren is, or a Trojan horse or a cyclops, you know a bit of “The Odyssey.” Even The Police and Mumford & Sons have made references to it in their lyrics.

The story starts with the hero, Odysseus, played here by a brawny Matt Damon. When Nolan, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film, introduces him, he’s not sure who he is, having eaten too many lotus flowers and grown forgetful, content in a life with the beautiful Calypso (Charlize Theron). But we know what he doesn’t, that Odysseus left Ithaca to fight for King Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) against the Trojans, and 20 years later hasn’t returned.

We learn of Odysseus’ journeys as he slowly remembers them again. Sometimes he remembers the bloody siege of Troy, started when he and his men hide inside a giant wooden horse statue — and when the Trojans drag their trophy into the city’s gates, the waiting soldiers attack Troy from within. 

Mostly, he remembers his crew, trying to make it back home after the carnage. But Odysseus and his men encounter deadly dangers, including the giant cyclops Polyphemus (Bill Irwin), the alluring sirens, the trickster Circe (Samantha Morton), and the twin perils of the multi-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Oh, and they make a trip to the underworld, where Odysseus is confronted by the many men who have died fighting at his side.

Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, Odysseus’ queen, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), has stayed faithful, hidden behind screens for 20 years to avoid the suitors who want to gain the throne Odysseus has left vacant. The most conniving suitor is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), whose schemes include killing its heir, Odysseus and Penelope’s son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), who goes on an odyssey of his own to find out whether his father is still alive.

Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (who’s shot Nolan films going back to “Interstellar”) make the epic seem up close and personal, and whoever held the bulky IMAX cameras to get the stunning handheld look got a full workout in Greece, Italy, Morocco and other places. The bone-rattling sound mix combines with a propulsive score by Ludwig Göransson (an Oscar winner for “Oppenheimer” and “Sinners”) to heart-stopping effect. 

“The Odyssey” boasts a full boat of great supporting performances, including: John Leguizamo as Odysseus’ loyal servant, Eumaeus; Elliot Page as a young soldier; Lupita Nyong’o in the dual roles of Helen of Troy and her sister, Clytemnestra; Himesh Patel as Eurylochus, Odysseus’ second-in-command; and Zendaya as Athena, who visits Odysseus in his nightmares.

Hathaway hasn’t been this compelling in ages, giving Penelope a Machiavellian guile and a widow’s grief. Holland is slowly growing up into roles like this, and Pattinson is great as an oily villain. If there’s a scene-stealer here, it’s Morton, who only appears for a few minutes but makes them indelible.

Leading the way is Damon, who conveys the gravity of command, the guilt of sending men to die, and the confusion of someone wanting to forget his past but needing to remember it.

Through Damon’s Odysseus, Nolan makes “The Odyssey” more than a video supplement to an ancient literature class. Instead, with the character’s struggle to make sense of the chaos of war — and finding there is none — this version of the old story feels as fresh as the daily news.

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‘The Odyssey’

★★★★

Opens Friday, July 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence and some language. Running time: 172 minutes.

Review: 'The Invite' is a sharp and honest comedy centering on two couples on an intensely awkward first dinner party

In the sharply funny and brutally honest comedy “The Invite,” director Olivia Wilde starts with one question — how well do you know your neighbors? — and arrestingly falls into another question: How well do you know your spouse?

The movie starts with Wilde’s character, Angela, playing Mrs. Dalloway and buying what she needs for what she hopes is a successful dinner party. Her husband, Joe (Seth Rogen), a professional musician now working unhappily as a music teacher, is on his way home, forgetting that Angela has invited the new couple in their building.

Joe gets home and immediately he and Angela get into an argument about the new neighbors, with Joe questioning why they were invited in the first place. Angela feels a late urge to change her blouse, while begging Joe not to bring up the noise they’ve been hearing from upstairs. Joe, Angela notes, has already started in on the wine.

Then the neighbor arrive: Piña (Penelope Cruz), a sexologist, and Hawk (Edward Norton), a recently retired firefighter. Things get real weird, real fast, with Joe and Angela being both put off by and strangely attracted to this couple, who seem more in touch with their emotions and their sexuality — which leads the conversation in some strange areas.

Wilde (who directed “Booksmart” and “Don’t Worry, Darling”) has some great material to work with: It’s a remake of a Spanish comedy-drama, “Sentimental,” with an American rewrite by Will McCormick and Rashida Jones (who collaborated on the 2012 romantic comedy “Celeste and Jesse Forever”). The script moves fast, and Wilde encourages her co-stars to go fast with it — and the result is a four-person comedy of manners, like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” played for uncomfortable laughs.

Wilde has her cast humming along so perfectly that it’s hard to say which actor is giving the best performance. Some moments it’s Rogen, letting Joe’s passive-aggressive loathing become not so passive. Other times it’s Wilde, whose Angela is flustered by the attention paid by these strangers. Norton gets a few shots in, playing Hawk as a smarmy hypersensitive male. And Cruz beguiles as Piña, who’s both instigator and observer in the mind games that proceed into the night.

“The Invite” is a smart ensemble piece where the tension and humor intertwine into something that’s as funny as it is unsettling. It’s a party you don’t want to miss.

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‘The Invite’

★★★★

Opens Friday, July 10, in theaters. Rated R for sexual material, language throughout, and drug use. Running time: 107 minutes.

Review: 'Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass' is a maniacally funny romp through Hollywood's desperate strivers

Ridiculously raunchy and spectacularly silly, “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is the sort of happily nonsensical and cameo-riddled comedy as one would expect from director David Wain and his friends who gave the world “Wet Hot American Summer.”

Gail Daughtry, our titular heroine (played by Zoey Deutch), is a perky Kansas hairdresser who’s very excited to marry her sweetheart since childhood, Tom (Michael Cassidy), in a few weeks. Their relationship is so picture-perfect that even an idle conversation about their “celebrity sex pass” — the one famous person either could have consequence-free sex with — wouldn’t affect them. Until Tom runs into, and fornicates with, the celebrity on his list. (No spoilers about who the celebrity is.)

Gail is appalled at first, but then resolute to save her impending marriage — by finding and bedding her celebrity sex pass partner, the ruggedly handsome Jon Hamm. By coincidence, or the designs of Wain and co-screenwriter Ken Marino, Gail’s salon pal Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) is heading to Los Angeles for a hairdresser convention, so Gail goes along to begin her quest.

The search for Jon Hamm leads Gail to befriend an odd array of characters along the way: Caleb (Ben Wang), a talent-agency intern; Vincent (played by Marino), a washed-up paparazzo; and Hamm’s former co-star Jon Slattery (played by Slattery), who seems to have hit hard times since “Mad Men” ended its run.

Meanwhile, because of a see-it-a-mile-away suitcase mix-up, Gail has a couple of Mafia hitmen (Joe Lo Truglio and Mather Zickel) tailing her, to retrieve something belonging to their wicked crime boss (Sabrina Impacciatore).

It doesn’t take long to realize what classic movie Wain and Marino are using as their plot framework. (A girl from Kansas named Gail — do the math.) One of the delights here is how they stick to that plan, referencing the movie that dare not speak its name in cleverly stupid (or stupidly clever) ways.

This being a Hollywood story, it’s no surprise that Gail and her pals run into movie stars — and Wain finds funny and outrageous ways to feature them for laughs. Wain also calls in favors, with former colleagues from the sketch comedy show “Stella” and from “Wet Hot American Summer” in some offbeat cameos.

The absurd humor veers wildly from hilarious to inappropriate. The constant that keeps it all flowing is Deutch, who gives Gail improbably sunny disposition that masks how slyly funny the actor is. Deutch gives “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” the charisma get-out-of-jail free card this sometimes bonkers comedy needs.

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‘Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 10, in theaters. Rated R for sexual content, violence/bloody images and language. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: 'Romería' is a tender and intense story of a young woman learning about the family she never knew, and finding her place among them.

Director Carla Simón’s “Romería” is much like the ocean where the main characters live — sunny and gorgeous on the surface, roiling and turbulent underneath.

Simón, who wrote the screenplay with her son, Neus Pipó Simón, tells a semi autobiographical story centering on 18-year-old Marina (played by Llúcia Garcia, in her first movie role). Marina is about to start college in Barcelona in 2004, but there’s an administrative hurdle she must clear first: She needs the family of her father, Alfonso, who died when she was little, to sign a notarized statement declaring that he’s her father.

Marina travels across Spain, from Barcelona on the Mediterranean to the Galicia area on the Atlantic, to meet Alfonso’s family. Her uncles and aunts are warm and generous, though a bit vague about certain memories of Alfonso. She spends most of her time hanging out with her teen cousins, who become the rambunctious siblings she never had. 

Meeting her grandparents (Marina Troncoso and José Ángel Egido) are a tougher nut to crack. Marina senses that there’s something about Fon, as her father is called, and her deceased mother that no one wants to talk about. 

One aunt drops a hint that Fon died in 1992, not in 1987, meaning she would have been old enough to meet and remember him. When her cousin, Suso (played by the single-named actor Mitch), lets slip that the family hid Fon away in his dying years, Marina’s uncle Iago (Alberto Garcia) reveals a hard truth: “It was common back then. … Everyone died behind closed doors.”

Simón uses a creative narrative device to let Marina learn the full story: She finds her mother’s lost diary, and visualizes her parents (played by Llúcia Garcia and Mitch) living together in a seaside tenement, in a life that starts romantic and ends tragically.

With Garcia’s heartbreaking and illuminating central performance, “Romerîa” becomes a tender and intense story of discovery — of a young woman encountering the family she never got to know, and finding herself and her place in that family in the process.

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‘Romería’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 10, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for sexuality, nudity, drug use and language. Running time: 112 minutes; in Spanish, with subtitles.