Monday new releases: 26 May 2025

Lilo & Stitch and Tarrac are in cinemas

Back in the day, when I obsessively watched and wrote something about every new release, I would have included Fountain of Youth which dropped this weekend on Apple TV+. Directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Natalie Portman and John Krasinski, I might have felt duty bound to pass on a opinion or two on something that will be watched – or at least started – by many thousands of people.

But Ritchie seems to putting out plenty of “content” on various streaming channels that is proving inessential or worse. The buzz on Fountain of Youth has been very low key and I’m still feeling burnt by Apple’s last foray into star-driven romantic comedy adventures. So, I chose not sacrifice another Saturday night and instead we watched Bong’s Mickey 17¹, a film that I was lukewarm on when it arrived in cinemas back in March but that at least has some originality about it (and the editor in-chief and reader SBM of Silverstream hadn’t yet seen it).

Turns out it plays like gangbusters at home – SBM gave it 10 to of 10 – and we all felt that this was a Bong film that – like Snowpiercer – audiences will find and enjoy over time. Pattinson is an absolute hoot.

Anyway, if you did watch Fountain of Youth this weekend, please let me know what you thought in the comments. It may not be too late for me to pass actual judgement.

Meanwhile, Disney’s recycling of their animated intellectual property continues apace with Lilo & Stitch, a remake of their hand-drawn family favourite from 2002. The choice of director felt positive – Dean Fleischer Camp created the charming Marcel the Shell With Shoes On stop-motion films so there was a strong possibility that this version of Lilo & Stitch would arrive with its heart intact.

I’m sorry to say that isn’t, in fact, the case. It tries hard enough and there has clearly been an attempt to reverse engineer what made the original work but it feels engineered, the result of check-box filmmaking rather than anything truly inspired.

Stitch starts life as Experiment 626, a genetically engineered super-weapon made by a galactic mad scientist (Zach Galifianakis). He’s so dangerous that he is considered to be an abomination and is exiled by the Grand Councilwoman (Hannah Waddingham). (By the way, has anyone from the Ted Lasso-verse made as much hay as Waddingham? She’s also on the big screen at the moment commanding an US Navy aircraft carrier in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and was a villainous movie producer in last year’s The Fall Guy remake.)