For the first 15 minutes of David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’re watching a movie made in an entirely different era. Happy families flood the streets for a block party in a picturesque suburban neighborhood. Kids and dogs scurry in every direction while the adults revel in middle-class prosperity amidst the smell of meat cooking on the grill.

Will Gluck’s One Night Only is, in many ways, a very standard romantic comedy. You’ve got your beautiful actors (Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro) playing two characters who are both struggling to find true love in the big city. They meet by chance and are initially repelled by each other, but after they keep showing up in the same places during a series of wacky and improbable scenarios, they slowly start to realize that maybe they’re perfect for each other.

It’s perhaps not too surprising to learn that birth rates have been declining worldwide for some time, with the majority of countries reporting higher numbers of deaths than births. There are many reasons for this, but most of them have to do with feelings of uncertainty about what it takes to simply exist in this chaotic modern world.

One of the most common themes in superhero storytelling is how our heroes often believe that they have to sacrifice relationships and personal happiness in order to succeed. Our costumed adventurers love to play the lone wolf, whether it’s because they have powers that set them apart from the rest of society or they have a secret identity to prevent their loved ones from being put in danger.

It’s always interesting to hear people talk about sex scenes in movies these days. For a lot of people, they just don’t want to see it. “It’s just gratuitous,” or “it doesn’t have anything to do with the plot,” they’ll say, as if anything that doesn’t move the story from point A to point B isn’t worthy of their time.