Rent or buy it on most major platforms.

In Michael Tyburski’s gentle but Orwellian film, people greet one another by asking, “Are you content?” The usual answer is, “Quite content.” Neither part of the exchange involves any emotion, only polite detachment. That’s how the powers-that-be like it: All citizens must take a daily “vitamin” that effectively regulates people’s feelings so that everybody lives in bland apathy. When Joy (Bel Powley) takes a break from the white-and-blue pills while undergoing cancer treatment, her entire life changes. What are those weird feelings happening up in her head? And what about those stirring in a lower part of her body? She convinces her partner, William (Nick Robinson), to chuck the vitamin. Their libidos now unleashed, the couple fumblingly discover the magic of sex along with heretofore unknown sensations like jealousy. The script by Angela Bourassa (whose “If You Were the Last,” from 2023, was an underrated rom-com in space) has some blind spots: Are there really not any books or movies in this world that feature sex or even romance, even allusively? But “Turn Me On” works as a droll, beautifully acted fable on the perils of conformity.

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Writing this column means watching a lot of movies about things going horribly wrong: Earth is on the brink of destruction,pinaswin88 login artificial intelligence is going to supplant humanity, each multiverse is worse than the next, space is a menace. Yet some of the most depressing views of the future — or an alternative present — can be found in sci-fi’s lightest subgenre, the romantic comedy. Under their sunny, often funny exteriors lurks a world where technology has endangered interpersonal relationships to the point of near impossibility. It’s fine that water has disappeared because you can’t find anybody for a coffee date anyway. Set “many years from now,” Stanley Wong’s “Future Date” envisions an Earth so wrecked by climate catastrophe that people can’t leave their tiny apartments (coronavirus metaphor alert). Angelenos Ry (Wong) and Ria (Shuang Hu) win a contest that lets them spend three days “in an actual house,” and if they turn out to be compatible, they get to stay. Wong doesn’t dwell on the horror of the outside world, preferring to turn his bright-colored lens onto the small quarters his characters are confined to. They know the present is grim and the future grimmer, but they just can’t stop themselves from trying to find love.

Calls for school crackdowns have mounted with reports of cyberbullying among adolescents and studies indicating that smartphones, which offer round-the-clock distraction and social media access, have hindered academic instruction and the mental health of children.

Stream it on Peacock.

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