As contemporary romantic comedies go, The Broken Hearts Gallery is like something you'd create from a kit. The instructions are easy to follow, every expected piece is dutifully included, and there's no veering from the manual – what you wind up getting looks remarkably similar to what's pictured on the box. (Or, in this case, the poster.) But a pandemic-era lack of cineplex options can make you inordinately grateful for simple, much-appreciated qualities such as charm and wit and personality, all of which writer/director Natalie Krinsky's debut feature has in abundance.

Writer/director Josh Boone's fledgling-superhero saga The New Mutants is ironically titled considering there's nothing remotely new about it. Not the story, not the storytelling, not the overall crumminess of its execution, and certainly not the film itself, which was originally planned for release in the spring of 2018, and then was delayed and re-scheduled and delayed and re-scheduled until it was finally unleashed, like a sacrificial lamb, on August 28.

The following five films from 1957 to 1985 were all the first feature-length releases by directors who have been, or were, significant cinematic forces for more than 30 consecutive years. Don't even try fighting me over inclusion three, because you know you love it, too. Um … right?

Damned if this fiercely funny, inventive, thoughtful, and affecting release doesn't feel like the first movie comedy designed specifically for the pandemic era: a spiky yet empathetic commentary on modern life and modern romance in which “modern,” for once, genuinely means “this exact moment right now.”