Odie Henderson

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.