10 Recent Movies NOBODY Saw Coming

At this stage in his career, did anyone expect Kevin Smith to make another movie that wasn't a dew-eyed, nostalgia-soaked cacophony of weed, dick, and fart jokes?

So, expectations weren't exactly high for Smith's new coming-of-age comedy The 4:30 Movie, which was unassumingly shot in the summer of 2023 and quietly released this past September. But The 4:30 Movie ultimately has more in common with Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans than any of Smith's "Askewniverse" movies - it's a quasi-biographical account of his own young life as a budding filmmaker, and in turn works as a solidly standalone entry into the director's filmography.

Now to be clear, The 4:30 Movie isn't nearly as well-crafted as The Fabelmans, but it is a relatively hemmed-in, even "tasteful" romp for Smith's standards, and a refreshing offering from a director who's been dining out on his prior successes for far too long.