Bad Moms (2016)

On the basis of other "Bad..." movies (Bad Grandpa, Bad Santa, Bad Teacher, Bad Teddybear (well, Ted)), you'd be excused for dismissing this as just the latest middling grossout comedy about responsibility-shirkers, but in fact this one is carried off by such a winning cast (Mila Kunis gives a career best performance, and Kristen Bell, Christina Applegate, and Kathryn Hahn in the Melissa McCarthy role are hilarious), and is overall such a warm and winning tribute (we discover that the bad moms of the title are mothers everywhere struggling to do their best) that you can forgive the sequences that fall flat and the comedy's frequent disingenuousness about single parents and in the way it presents Mila Kunis as a dag needing fashion and relationship help.

★★★★☆

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Captain Fantastic (2016)

A man and his too-many-to-get-to-know children whose super intellects have developed unhindered by rotisserie chickens and X-box, emerge from their lives off-the-grid to attend their mother's funeral, but their encounters with fat and poorly educated people raise questions about the father's unorthodox child-rearing techniques, in this feel-good movie so desperate to sing that in the end the kids actually do.

★★★☆☆

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