Grae Drake stopped by this week to run through some of the new releases, and the lineup she named is a fun mix: The Dog Stars, Buddy, and Coyote vs. Acme. Three movies, three completely different moods, and honestly a decent picture of what's in theaters right now.

I want to watch the full segment before saying much more, because Drake's one of the few critics I actually trust on this stuff. She's a fan first, same as me. She's not grading movies against some festival rubric, she's telling you whether the ticket's worth it on a Tuesday night. So when she picks three titles to talk about, I pay attention.

And what a range. The Dog Stars, which I've been covering here already, something called Buddy that I need to catch up on, and a Looney Tunes project in Coyote vs. Acme. I've written before about what that last one went through just to get to theaters at all, and hearing it come up in a regular new-releases conversation, I don't know, that made me smile a little.

I'm not going to pretend I know what Drake said about each one until I've watched it myself, and I'd rather not guess. But the fact that all three landed in the same conversation says something about this stretch of the calendar. It's not a dead zone. There's more out there than the one big blockbuster eating everyone's attention.

So the question is which one you're checking out first. No wrong answers. I know which one I'm starting with, but that can wait until I've seen what Drake had to say.