Odie Henderson

Craig may be the main character, but “Glass Onion” belongs to Monáe. Johnson has scripted one hell of a role for her, and she plays it with such a wide range of emotions and tones while modeling a stunning array of power suits that she drops the audience’s jaws. Monae’s performance turns on a dime with whiplash precision, so when the film folds in on itself, we grab hold of her hand for dear life. She pulls us along with such glee that it makes one giddy.

Descendant is worth seeing no matter who you are. For viewers like me, however, it engenders the reality that, no matter how hard anyone tries to whitewash history, our stories will forever continue to be told in full, by us and for us.

If nothing else, see it for Danielle Deadwyler’s incredible performance. She truly is unforgettable.

God’s Creatures is yet another movie about a mother realizing too slowly that her son may be a dangerous sociopath. Screenwriter Shane Crowley’s thin characterizations do little to make this tired trope worth revisiting, instead opting to shroud the film in mystery regarding its central crime.

Riotsville, U.S.A. is certainly not an objective documentary. It’s angry and it dares the viewer to argue back. The freeform nature of it may seem faulty, but I felt it served the purpose of forcing me to interrogate what I was being shown.

When Ebo concentrates on the satirical aspects that mock the hypocrisy she’s exposing, “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” hilariously fires on all cylinders. It’s when the film tries to juggle the darker aspects that its seams start to show.

Samaritan proves, to paraphrase Tina Turner, that we don’t need another superhero.

I suspect people want to be distracted by something that makes them stand up and cheer. “Beast” serves that purpose well-enough.

Chol Soo Lee’s complicated story deserves to be told; this film does a good job telling it.

It’s a scary and fun amusement park ride that also elicits a surprisingly tender emotional response.

Ron Howard’s latest directorial effort is a tedious, mediocre retelling of the June, 2018 incident where 12 Thai adolescents and their soccer coach were trapped in a flooded cave for 18 days.

It’s a puzzle with a few pieces missing; standing back from it, you can still see the picture. But does it give the viewer exactly what they want? See the title.

What I saw was a racially suspect disaster and another exploitation of Black pain for cheap, lazy thrills. Good Madam is a bad movie.

Even if you can’t stand the Minions (who are once again voiced in “Minionese” by Pierre Coffin), you might find this one tolerable. Especially if you’re old enough to get the 1976 jokes yet feel young enough to find bemusement in all the goofy slapstick.

Director Patrick Hughes’ latest is both 112 minutes, and a hodgepodge of so many other movies that it becomes the most obnoxious of cinematic collages.

CIVIL won’t change any minds about its subject, but it does a good job of delivering “fly on the wall” observations of the year it covers.

Not since Morgan Freeman’s Joe Clark in “Lean on Me” has a real-life person’s ass been kissed more by a movie. At least that movie had superior lips.

As far as spin-offs go, “Lightyear” is a lot of fun. The voice talent is topnotch, especially Palmer and Evans.

Benediction bears the distinctive stamp of its writer/director, Terence Davies, a man whose films feel more like poetic meditations on moods, emotions, and events than straightforward narratives. It’s as if we are floating above the material, touching down in different places at the filmmaker’s discretion.

Director Andrew Ahn proficiently handles the numerous plot lines, character conflicts, and the tonal shifts between raunch and sweetness.

The excellent and infuriating Hold Your Fire has all the twists and turns of the best hostage movie thrillers.

The Last Victim plays like a bet between the filmmakers and some sadistic bully who triple-dog-dared them to fit all its disparate plotlines into a cohesive whole.

The Aviary experiences a drop in quality during its attempts to goose the audience, but its two lead performances remain consistent.

What’s most refreshing about Petite Maman is that it doesn’t play coy with its magic, nor does it separate it from the sadder, darker reality that surrounds it.

How can we be interested if the movie we’re watching is as unimpressed with itself as we are?

Gagarine plays like a mournful lament for a community that banded together during hard times before being separated and scattered to the winds, leaving no trace of its communal existence behind.

Black folks don’t need the classes in Racism 101 “Master” offers; life gives us PhD’s early on. It’s not for horror fans because it’s a complete failure as a horror movie.

If this film were a person, it would tell you it had a Black friend and voted for Obama twice. That’s how insultingly simplistic it is about race.

Dear Mr. Brody does a fine job of showing how the financial chasm between rich and poor people is as wide and insurmountable today as it was in 1970.

The prior end to this series, “A Madea Family Funeral,” was actually a decent movie. Madea should have quit while she was ahead.

This “Macbeth” is as much about mood as it is about verse. The visuals acknowledge this, pulling us into the action as if we were seeing it on stage. But nowhere is the evocation of mood more prominent than in Kathryn Hunter’s revelatory performance as the Witches.

This is the same "young man's coming-of-age story" you’ve seen over and over. Nothing new has been added. The poster calls this “a feel good movie,” but who is supposed to feel good here? Certainly not the average viewer, who has seen this tired material so many times they can practically recite the dialogue.

You need a blackboard full of X’s and O’s to keep track of the petty plays this movie's running.

By the time we get to Ashe’s AIDS-related activism, and the horrible way USA Today twisted his arm into revealing his diagnosis, Citizen Ashe has taken us on a complex, sometimes infuriating tour of its subject’s life. It begins with the birth of an athlete, then morphs into the creation of an activist. The transition is so subtle that you only realize it after the film ends.

This is three movies in one, each of which is progressively worse.

King Richard is half sports movie, half biopic. As such, it hits the sweet spots and sour notes of both genres.

To be honest, the cynic in me thought “Paper & Glue” was going to be a piece of fluff that would make me roll my eyes at the notion of this type of art having an effect on society at large. But the film turns out to be a lot sharper, more pointed, and more poignant than its subject matter may imply.

Stanley Nelson’s documentary Attica is a harrowing, infuriating look at racism and the abuse of power by people who see others as inhuman.

Snakehead entices you with a lurid premise, but the empathy that shines through the cracks of its tough exterior is the real surprise.

Hall, Grau, editor Sabine Hoffman, and composer Devonté Hynes do an excellent job of casting a hypnotic spell on the audience. This is a deliberately paced film with enveloping moods that feel like symphony movements.

Had this been made back in the 1940s, it would have fit nicely in the same genre as Detour or The Maltese Falcon. It has a streak of hopeless nihilism that’s characteristic of the finest noir.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a love letter to the art of spinning a good yarn, but it’s also a sharply observed paean to the lies and truths we tell ourselves so that we may function from day to day.

It does what all good documentaries do: it made me want to read up and be educated more on its subject. And what a great and inspiring subject Pauli Murray is.

Umair Aleem’s script is so paint-by-numbers familiar that it leaves you wishing you’d watched one of the better movies it’s ripping off.

Candyman caters to fans of the original without sacrificing its own vision and story.

Whether it’s in a nightgown or in the full, glorious regalia Aretha Franklin adorned in her concert appearances, Hudson performs with the same tireless intensity Re was known for throughout her career. It’s a damn good performance and this is a damn entertaining movie.

If you didn’t know Beckett was a thriller, you’d think it was about two mismatched people with dry interests, mundane conversations, and zero attraction.

Unfortunately, the film gets derailed by tonal inconsistencies and a clichéd plot that undermines the strength of its memorable outlier sections.

On paper, it sounds iffy; in execution, however, it’s absolutely glorious, a gleeful glide through adolescence that doesn’t gloss over pangs of grief or grimmer thoughts.

Whether you think Casanova's a hero worth idolizing, or a dull-as-dishwater man whore from a sexist past, Casanova, Last Love will make you believe he deserved better than this.

Working the grill, and not letting anyone else touch it, is musician and music lover, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson making his directorial debut. Not only does he give us a concert film, we get a history lesson, too.

Like the DisneyNature films, it’s strikingly pretty, not just in its gorgeous views of the Austrian countryside, but also in the interiors populated by talking heads and delectable foodstuffs. It’s also startlingly tame, as if its subject, famous celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, was a commodity whose brand needed to be protected.

Fatherhood is at its best and most watchable when it’s just Hart and Hurd onscreen. Matt and Maddy’s undeniable and reciprocated love for one another radiates from the actors, even in their broadest scenes of comedy.

Summer of 85 plays like a bad parody of movies like Love Story and Summer of ’42, stories where some undeserving male learns a valuable lesson from a love affair and death.

Akilla’s Escape is undone by its own lack of faith in the viewer, opting to explicitly tell rather than rely on its fine actors to show us who their characters are.

It’s full of pure, unadulterated love for “The Greatest,” so much so that the viewer can’t help but get enveloped in its adoration.

The main goal of Port Authority is the simple but unfortunately necessary message that “hey, trans people are people, too!” It’s too bad this film isn’t really about them.

The Outside Story is barely 85 minutes long, but Henry's performance is rich enough to make this small film feel rather epic.

This is one of those super-convoluted conspiracy theory movies where nothing makes sense and you simply stop caring. Saviors show up inexplicably at just the right time. People come off as evil for the sole purpose of misleading us. There’s no character development, a lot of patriotic posturing and the villain gives a lecture that must have been written before they cast a Black actor as its recipient. Despite endless gunfire and a lot of shit blowing up, most of the action sequences fail to quicken the pulse.

Hippie-swooning temptations aside, I remained tethered to The Marijuana Conspiracy thanks to the excellent performances by the actresses playing the main roles. They transcend their thinly-drawn characterizations and display the convincing level of camaraderie shared by a group who have gone through trouble together and emerged victorious at the end.

The three leads do a good job creating their characters, with cinematographer Kristian Zuniga giving each of their tales a specific look and color scheme. But this also suffers from that indie fever where the camera and framing goes askew and "documentary style" for no reason except to distract you from how familiar the story is.

A film with this incendiary of a title needed to have more to say about being LGBT in a hostile environment.

While I admit I would have preferred a documentary about the people who have passed this tradition down from generation to generation, director Ricky Staub’s fictional feature serves as a worthwhile introduction.

Horror movies don’t have to make a lick of sense as long as they get under your skin, engage in some intriguing myth making, gross you out, or simply terrify you. The Toll tries to do several of these, failing so badly that you may be angry at yourself for watching it.

Though there’s nothing new or transformative here, The Courier stays afloat due to the acting by Buckley, Cumberbatch, and Ninidze.

How can a movie this visually glossy be so devastatingly uninteresting and dull?

Coming 2 America is like attending your high school reunion: You’ll enjoy seeing the familiar faces of those with whom you once shared such fond experiences, but then you’ll realize that the nostalgia of that past is far more fulfilling than the harsher realities of the present.

The beats play in a suspense thriller’s register, creating a heightened tension that is often unnerving. We are living the story through the eyes of a lover desperate to reconnect with her beloved, and her feelings of desperation, concern and fear bleed directly into the frame.

In Judas and the Black Messiah, Daniel Kaluuya gives an electrifying performance that raises the hairs on the back of your neck.

The archival footage Pollard uses has people saying the same things they’re saying today, and the same negative ideas are being thrown around in regard to the rights of Black and brown people.

This is a very good film, full of memorable performances and thought-provoking speeches and arguments. The accomplishments of King and her actors are even more impressive when you stop to think about the shadows these men cast, both in their real-life incarnations and their cinematic representations.

This is heavy material, to be sure, but it’s not without dark humor.

Even as a standalone feature, this installment falters by keeping its main character at arm’s length. We never get close enough to Alex Wheatle to feel as if we know him. Despite my mild dissatisfaction, I believe that distancing is on purpose, a part of the film’s design.

Uncle Frank commits the unforgivable sin of giving us one evil character whose demise suddenly unleashes a wave of understanding amongst family members who were, until this point, perfectly happy to enforce the harmful status quo that traumatized one of their own.

Boseman never gave less than one hundred percent to his often demanding roles. His work here as the trumpet player, Levee, is no exception. It’s no stretch to say his last performance may be his finest.

Come Away evokes memories of “Radio Flyer,” the equally appalling 1992 child abuse drama where fantasy and cruel reality merged in ways that were shockingly offensive.

All you need to know is that this slow-moving, sci-fi origin story was made by Norwegian co-writer/director André Øvredal, the man who previously gave us the far more entertaining “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.”

Though this isn’t very gory, the intensity level is impressive in the haunting scenes, so much so that, at one point, I caught myself watching through my fingers. The sound design also deserves mention, because a haunted house is only as good as its noises, creaks, and moans.

Where Bad Hair is not so successful, however, is in reckoning with the hornet’s nest it kicks regarding its subject matter. At almost two hours, Simien has time to interrogate the natural vs. processed hair argument instead of only hinting at it occasionally.

It’s a slog at over two hours, much of it spent with Marinelli screaming or acting coarse.

Totally Under Control will become a useful document for the study of this pandemic in its eventual aftermath. It’s a bit too surface-level to be completely satisfying, but it was enough to overwhelm and upset me so much that I had to turn it off several times to decompress.

With these scenes highlighting growth and resilience, Time refuses to be some kind of tragedy porn. Sibil and her brood demand justice, not pity. Her strength carries the film and elevates her sons toward success.

Red, White and Blue got under my skin in ways I was not expecting. McQueen uses the police procedural format to interrogate what it’s like to be the only Black person in a hostile and racist job environment.

I prefer, and recommend, the original, but I’m on the fence about this one. Your mileage may vary.

Mangrove becomes a full-on courtroom drama. The standard, expected beats and tropes are hit, but what happens within those elements makes the film so powerful and so rewarding. The lead actors also step up their game here, with each getting juicy dramatic moments that linger long after the credits roll.

Alone gives us little reason to care if our hero makes it out alive, but I have to give credit where it’s due: Jessica isn’t written as some damsel in distress. Though she does make a questionable choice or two, she’s more crafty and engaged than a standard victim.

The viewer is not only a fly on the wall at this party, they are also on the dance floor being carried along as the music moves them.

But the true strength of Residue is in its images. Gerima finds a poetic grace in his framing while forcing you to focus on unexpected things.

All In: The Fight For Democracy is a valuable public service wrapped in an educational, informative and engaging documentary.

I am always game for a movie that makes me reckon with my personal feelings and biases, and I’m glad this one exists because representation will always speak volumes. If nothing else, Critical Thinking reminds you what a chess player can look like.

I suppose director Paula van der Oest was trying to go for some kind of European Gothic feel, but something this unsavory needs to move a lot faster than this. This contraption is slower than molasses in winter.

You won’t forget any of the young men who populate this film, nor will this be the last you’ll hear from them.

If nothing else, Black Is King is a jaw-dropping visual achievement.

For those who like their romance movies filled with unnecessary mysteries, murdered dogs, poached lobsters and the ghosts of deceased little girls, Dirt Music will fit the bill. All others need not apply, not even if you’re into the kind of Nicholas Sparks-style drama this movie shamelessly marinates in for an interminable 105 minutes.

In addition to observing the humanity of its heroes, The Old Guard also employs Prince-Bythewood’s penchant for grandiose, melodramatic gestures that shouldn’t work at all yet play out masterfully.

The Truth doesn’t have very much of a plot. What little there is serves as a clothesline for its two excellent leads to hang their performances out to dry.

Massively entertaining.

Nobody Knows I’m Here wants to make a statement about the harsh price of fame and the awful, hurtful machinations that settle the bill. It just takes too long to get these ideas into the plot thanks to the clichéd handling of its protagonist’s dark past.