Driven

There’s something inherently dishonest about films that are “based on a true story.” Phony. Not so with films that are “inspired by real events,” however. Inspired. That’s what you need to make a good movie, so you might as well admit right up front that you’re full of shit. That’s what “Driven” (2019) does. It’s a story of a poorly built automobile, a hastily arranged coke deal, and two men who are incredibly skilled at being full of shit. Lee Pace is John DeLorean, Jason Sudeikis is an FBI informant and the rest is fabricated for maximum entertainment value. Successfully.

Booksmart

Meet the new kids. Same as the old kids. Having been a teen during the Golden Age of Teen Movies, I consider myself a connoisseur of teen movies. John Hughes would be proud of “Booksmart” (2019). Two nerdish girls who abstained from fun for the sake of high school achievement find out the day before graduation they could have had just as much gain without all the pain. BTW, there’s a big, unsupervised graduation party that night. Cue the hijinks. Director Olivia Wilde creates perfect cinematic stasis, bringing in sudden comic weirdness every time things get serious, and vice versa.

Mother’s Day

Garry Marshall died a few months after the release of “Mother’s Day” (2016) and I can assure you, he took no sitcom-style plot conventions with him to the grave. They’re all here: the younger and sexier second wife, the wacky parents, the sassy black friend, the wedding scene, the hospital scene, the graveyard scene. He did everything but have Fonzie jump a shark again. But that was Marshall’s gift. He could take boilerplate romantic comedy material and pan fry it in enough schmaltz to clog an artery, yet it would always come out satisfying (not great, satisfying). It’s cinematic comfort food.