Many thanks to Rachel for a wonderful conversation!

My biggest complaint about “Jackpot!” is that there is no possible reason this crazy, don’t- think-just-laugh, essence of summer silliness, action comedy should be straight to streaming. We should be coming from the hot air into the air-conditioned theater, grabbing a bucket of popcorn, and joining an audience that is all there to laugh together. “Jackpot!” is a joyously goofy hoot of a movie with a killer cast. And that works very well, even if you’re watching it at home on your laptop. 

The premise is simple. Okay, deranged, but simple. A few years in the future, everything is terrible. Los Angeles has established a gigantic lottery. The twist is that when a winner is picked, everyone in the city has 24 hours to kill the winner (no guns, though, only what can be thrown) and take the money. Winners’ options are to evade a city full of murders, despite drone cameras reporting their location to everyone every 14 minutes, to escape across the city border, thus staying alive but foregoing the prize, or hiring a high-end security firm that specializes in protecting winners.

If the person with the lucky winning ticket manages to survive for 24 hours, the prize is delivered on camera, one of those cheesy giant cardboard checks. presented by a ghoulishly grinning game show host played by the delightful Murray Hill (Fred Rococo in “Somebody Somewhere”).

Think “The Purge” meets “Hunger Games.” But funny. Really.

Awkwafina plays Katie Kim, a former child actress (her best-known work was a commercial for square pasta. She has just returned to Los Angeles after caring for her dying mother and does not know anything about the lottery. She somehow finds herself in possession of a winning ticket, and the rest is pretty much jokes (often pretty funny, especially the understated throw-aways), chases, and fight scenes. See what I mean about summer silliness?

Katie still has no idea why everyone is trying to kill her when a car drives up and Noel (John Cena) opens the door and tells her to get in. When he explains what is happening, she naturally wonders why she should trust him. So mixed with the wild action (you will not believe how many lethal objects people can throw when billions of dollars are at stake) there is the development of the Katie/Noel connection to make the stakes more meaningful.

I know what you’ve been waiting to ask. Yes, the action scenes are off the hook. Did I mention John Cena? How about if I raise you a Simu Liu, as Noel’s former colleague-turned-competitor and possibly enemy? And there are some wild interactions along the way with some improbable co-stars including Dolly De Leon (“Triangle of Sadness” and also featured in this month’s “Between the Temples”), Becky Ann Baker (quite a twist as a character named Sweet Irene), Ayden Mayeri and Donald Elise Watkins as Katie’s crazy Airbnb roomies (“He’s a DJ and his name is DJ!”) and, I’m not kidding, Machine Gun Kelly as himself. Keep an eye out for the fight scene in the celebrity wax museum (nice Kardashian joke), and be sure to stay tuned for the outtakes over the credits to see that they had as much fun making it as it is to watch it.

Parents should know that this film is constant action- and comedy-style violence with many characters injured and killed and graphic and disturbing images. Characters use very strong and crude language.

Family discussion: If you were Katie, what would it take to get you to trust Noel or Louis? If you won $3.8 billion, what would you spend it on?

If you like this, try: Jackie Chan movies

For the handful of people who do not know this, It Ends With Us is a wildly popular book by Colleen Hoover, a social worker who began her career as an author by self-publishing. She was one of the early BookTok success stories, and has now published more than 20 books (plus a jewelry collection, press-on nails, and a non-profit that has donated over $1 million to promote love of reading). In 2022 her books held six of the top ten spots on the New York Times paperback fiction best seller list. She has called It Ends With Us, published in 2016, the most difficult because of its themes of domestic abuse, and it is her most popular, with a sequel called It Starts With Us.

Hoover and star Blake Lively produced the film version of the book, and it was directed by Lively’s co-star, Justin Baldoni. And so, with one exception, this is as close as a filmed version of a novel can be to a book, scene by scene, line by line. The fans of the novel who were in the audience at the screening I saw thought this was just fine, and they sighed happily along. Those unfamiliar with the story or less committed to admittedly soapy melodrama may enjoy the Hollywood gloss but come away less satisfied.

We first see Lily Blossom Bloom (Lively) on her way to her father’s funeral, greeting her mother, who is dressed in black, at the door of an imposing suburban house in Maine. Even though it is very clear where she is and why, this movie does not leave anything unsaid that can be said, and so Lily’s mother (Amy Morton) has to tell her daughter that she is glad she has arrived for her father’s funeral but sorry she was not there in time to say goodbye. Lily is supposed to give a eulogy, and her mother tells her just to say the five things she loved most about her dad. At the pulpit, she looks down at a napkin with 1 though 5 listed but without any words next to them. She leaves the church without speaking and returns to Boston.

Lily is about to make her lifelong dream come true, and open up a flower shop called, yes, Lily’s Blooms. As she clears out the store to get ready, she meets Allysa (Jenny Slate, by far the most appealing character in the story), a wealthy young married woman who impulsively agrees to go to work in the shop and instantly becomes Lily’s best friend.

Allysa’s husband (Hasan Mainhaj in his second perfect husband role in a row, following “Babes”) and brother (director/star Baldoni) come to the shop and Lily realizes that her new friend’s brother, Ryle ( Hoover gets character names straight from Bodice Ripper Central) is the handsome neurosurgeon she had a very meaningful encounter with on a rooftop, where she went to think about her father. The anonymity and their mutual hotness allowed them to share some intimate secrets (“naked truths”) and it was about to get steamy when he was called to the hospital for an emergency.

This re-meeting gets things back in gear, even though there are more red flags than in a year of NASCAR races. For example: the first seconds of Ryle’s appearance on screen he is furiously kicking a chair. Then he tells Lily he is only interested in sex, not relationships. Then Alyssa warns her. But a gal loves a challenge, so Lily slows his roll and he is almost instantly besotted.

We go back and forth to Lily’s past (played by Isabela Ferrer), where we see her devastated by her father’s abuse of her mother and her kindness in reaching out to a homeless classmate named, wait for it, Atlas (Brandon Sklenar in the present, Alex Neustaedter in the past). They fall in love but are separated by a violent attack.

Lily loves Ryle, but his insecurity and volatile temper keep her on eggshells. The film’s best insight is how easy it is for Lily to slide into feeling she is responsible for managing Ryle’s moods and accommodating his demands. Will the pattern of domestic violence stop with them? How?

The production values, like the storyline, hark back to the lush “for the ladies” films of the 50s, with expensive settings and some….choices by costume designer Eric Daman (Lily’s boots! Alyssa’s sequins!). There are many shots of the sun rising or setting over water. There are many lines of dialogue explaining what we have already gleaned from seeing.. A reader can fill in the blanks in a book as though it’s a Roarshach ink blot. If it is not carefully done (“The Bridges of Madison County” is a good example), an on screen depiction can reveal the thinness of the characterizations and revelations.

Lively brings radiance to the role, but she is stronger when she really lets loose in devilish mode (looking forward to “A Simple Favor 2.” Lily is relegated to nervous laughs, low-level quips, nervously reassuring Ryle, and growing understanding of her situation. Her co-stars are handsome in the way 40’s and 50’s divas played opposite actors who had just enough chemistry to be believable without detracting from their luster. This makes it watchable but not especially memorable.

Parents should know that this film includes strong language, sexual references and situations, and domestic violence with sexual assault and serious injury. Characters drink and smoke.

Family discussion: How was Lily different from her mother? Why did she visit her father’s grave? What will happen next?

If you like this, try: Colleen Hoover’s books and classic older films like “My Reputation” and “Now Voyager”

Actors playing kings are wearing robes of velvet, encrusted with jewels. They take their bows to enthusiastic applause. Then they go back to the dressing room, remove their costumes, and put on the clothes they wear all day, every day, their prison uniforms. These men are incarcerated in the famously bleak maximum security prison in New York, the one with the deceptively upbeat name Sing Sing (derived from the name of the Indian tribe that once occupied the land).

The RTA (Rehabilitation Through Art) program at Sing Sing was created by the men who are incarcerated. Esquire wrote an article about it called “The Sing Sing Follies (A Maximum Security Comedy),” and that inspired Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, the co-screenwriters of the indie gem “Jockey” to start from scratch with their own research, interviewing the participants in the RTA program. Colman Domingo came on as star and co-producer. Most of the cast are formerly incarcerated men cast as characters based on their own experiences. Unusually, and crucially, the producers of the film put their money where their mouths were, and everyone, including the crew and the first-time screen actors, had equal pay and has an equal participation in the film’s profits. At a screening held at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, co-star Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin told said in a post-screening Q&A that the recidivism rate of participants in RTA is 3 percent, as compared to over 60 percent for the rest of the prison population.

Domingo gives what is clearly one of the best performances of the year as Divine G, a founder of the theater program. Divine G is an author and playwright. His tiny cell includes a typewriter and stacks of books. He helps other incarcerated men prepare for their parole hearings and is seeking clemency for himself, based on a taped confession that has been discovered since his trial and appeals. He feels a genuine brotherhood with the others, but he still has a sense of pride in his education and accomplishments. We get glimpses of his sense of superiority. (Note: the character we see briefly, asking Divine G to sign a copy of one of his books, is the real Divine G.)

“The Sound of Metal’s” Paul Raci plays Brent, a patient and sympathetic outside facilitator of the small theater group, who gives them exercises (“Now walk like you just won the lottery! Now like a zombie!” “Now close your eyes and imagine a place where you feel happy and peaceful”) and guides them through the stages of production. Divine G offers them a play he wrote about corruption in the recording industry, but the men want a story about cowboys, ancient Egypt, Robin Hood, time travel, and Hamlet, and Brent agrees to write the script for them.

The RTA participants realize quickly that there is a freedom within the walls of their rehearsals that they do not have anywhere else. They realize more slowly that participation unwinds tightly coiled emotions they hid from others and did not not even acknowledge to themselves. The protective wall they have used all their lives, the one they may think keeps them alive and not obsessed with the absence of hope, the one that communicates confidence, power, and hostility — that has to be abandoned if they want to be a part of RTA. By trying on the characters they play, they explore feelings they would not let themselves acknowledge. They make themselves vulnerable to being known, by their casemates, by their audiences, by themselves. They go from being afraid of being seen to inviting others to see them.

One detail that audiences may find heartbreaking comes when Brent asks the men to close their eyes and imagine a place where they feel at peace. Some of the men cannot put themselves in a place outside the walls of the prison, even in their imagination. One they may find touching is when Divine G points to a small open square, smaller than a postcard, in the metal screen on the window. He likes to look at that square. It makes him feel in touch with the outside. Another is when a formerly incarcerated man returns to encourage the men and tell them what his experience has been like on the outside.

And one they might find jarring, at least at first, is the way the men in RTA address each other as “Beloved.” The real-life Divine G, a producer and writer on the film, told me that they chose that word to replace the n-word, which the men were using as a kind of semi-hostile, semi-insulting term of affection. His co-founder, Sean Dino Johnson, who appears as a character inspired by his own life, told me the first play the group put on was about the history and import of the n-word.

Domingo is extraordinary here, conveying his character’s struggles with the subtlest details of expression and posture. He is matched along the way with the RTA alumni, especially Clarence Maclin as a character with his name and some of his history. Two men begin to trust one another and then, unabashedly, proudly, call each other “beloved,” setting up the story for an ending of enormous power and meaning.

Parents should know that this story takes place in a maximum security prison and some characters are there because they were drug dealers, armed robbers, or murderers. They take responsibility for their choices but the focus of the film is on the human capacity to learn and get better. Characters use very strong language, including the n-word. There are sad deaths of a human and a beloved pet.

Family discussion: What is your most perfect spot? Why is laughter so important in the rehearsal room? What play would you like to be in?

If you like this, try: “The Quilters,” a short documentary about a program that teachers men in prison to make quilts for foster children, “Greenfingers,” with Clive Owen, based on a program in the UK where men in prison create gardens.

Go Team USA! Go all the athletes who have reached the pinnacle. These are some great family movies about the Olympic Games.

The First Olympics: Athens 1896, one of my very favorite sports movies ever, is a made-for-TV miniseries about the first modern-day Olympics. We take the Olympics as a given now, but there were 1500 years between the time of the ancient games and the establishment of the modern Olympics with countries from all over the world putting aside their political differences for athletic competition in the spirit of good sportsmanship and teamwork. Showing the origins of everything from the starting position for sprinters to the impulsive selection of the Star Spangled Banner as the U.S. national anthem, the story is filled with drama, wit, and unforgettable characters, sumptuously filmed and beautifully performed by a sensational cast that includes then-unknown David Caruso of “CSI,” one-time Bond Girl Honor Blackman, David Ogden Stiers, Angela Lansbury, and Louis Jourdan. It was a Writer’s Guild and Casting Society award winner when it was first released. It is a great introduction to the Olympics, a thrilling and inspiring story, and outstanding family entertainment.

Chariots of Fire This Best Picture Oscar winner is a classic, focusing on two runners in the first Olympics following WWI, both men of deep faith and integrity.  For more about the real life of Eric Liddell, see this.

Stick It This underrated gem is a stylish, smart, and all-around terrific story about gymnastics and when and when not to follow the rules.

American Girl: McKenna Shoots for the Stars One of my favorite entries in one of my favorite series — I love the way this film deals frankly with issues like disabilities (learning and physical), competition, and friendship.

Prefontaine “Modern Family’s” Ed O’Neill and Jared Leto star in the story of the Olympic runner.

Race Jesse Owens thrilled the world and defied Hitler in the 1934 Olympics. This is an outstanding film, exciting, thoughtful, and beautifully performed.

There is also a documentary about Jesse Owens.

“Eddie the Eagle” is based on the true story of a skier who became an international symbol not of winning but of trying the hardest.

“16 Days of Glory” Bud Greenspan is the master of the Olympics documentary and this one about the 1984 summer Olympics includes all-time all-stars Mary Lou Retton and Greg Louganis.