Quietly Watching

  Let me be honest about what Apex is before I tell you why I watched all 95 minutes of it without looking at my phone. Apex is a survival thriller in which a woman is hunted through the Australian wilderness by a psychopathic stranger. The script, written by Jeremy Robbins, is not doing anything you haven't seen before. The villain's motivations are thin. The backstory is dispensed with quickly, almost impatiently, as though the film itself knows that nobody came here for character development. The plot moves in the direction you expect it to move, and it gets there without much surprise. And yet. Charlize Theron is in it. And that changes things. What the Film Is Actually About Sasha (Theron) is a grieving extreme sports enthusiast who travels to Australia's remote Wandarra National Park to scatter her husband's ashes after his death in a climbing accident. She meets Ben (Taron Egerton) at a gas station — friendly, slightly off, the kind of person you notice and then ...

  Jennifer Lopez has made a lot of romantic comedies. Some of them were great. Some of them were not. Office Romance, which arrives on Netflix tomorrow, June 5, looks like it belongs in the first category — and the reason is standing next to her on every poster. Brett Goldstein, best known as Roy Kent in Ted Lasso, co-wrote the script specifically for Lopez. That detail matters more than it might seem. This isn't a film where Lopez was cast into a pre-existing story. Goldstein wrote the role of Daniel Blanchflower with her in mind, which means the chemistry you see in the trailer isn't manufactured — it's built into the architecture of the script itself. The Setup Lopez plays Jackie Cruz, the CEO of airCruz Airlines and a woman who has made it to the top by keeping everything — including her personal life — under strict control. Her company enforces a no-fraternization policy that she herself designed. Then Daniel Blanchflower (Goldstein) joins as the company's new lawy...