Odie Henderson

Not even John Toll, who won two Oscars for cinematography, can make this movie look good. Stay home and watch the real Super Bowl instead.

Director Kenya Barris, who also co-wrote the script with Jonah Hill, intended to make an edgy, race-based cringe comedy; the result is afraid of its own shadow. This Netflix release commits an even bigger sin by wasting the considerable comedic talents of former “Saturday Night Live” castmates Eddie Murphy and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Director Jason Moore and writer Mark Hammer have fashioned an action movie/romantic comedy hybrid that’s too violent for comedy fans and not thrilling enough for thrill seekers. It’s not romantic at all, despite the best efforts of Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel.

The Son is so concerned with trying to get an emotional rise out of the audience, to choke us with its pathos, that it fails to create believable three-dimensional characters.

Turn Every Page — The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb is commendable for not only being entertaining but for also shining a light on a crucial process we don’t hear much about outside of certain professions.

Living acknowledges the bitter irony of impending death bringing a man back to life. Nighy makes it look effortless; he gives an Oscar-worthy performance that made me cry almost as much as Takashi Shimura did in Kurosawa’s classic.

Despite the film’s tendency to drag, Vicky Krieps remains compulsively watchable, as always. She almost saves the movie.

The filmmakers clearly intended this to be a goofy rollercoaster ride, so M3GAN is a success.

The majesty of this film comes from how the director and his team use an often surreal mix of music, editing, sound, and image to allow the viewer to experience the world as we assume EO does.

It’s refreshing that Lemmons focuses on the highs rather than the lows, even if it feels like buffing off the edges of her complex protagonist. But that won’t matter to Houston fans: They’ll get so emotional, baby.

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.