Odie Henderson

Finally, a summer action movie that delivers the goods!

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.

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.

A house is just a structure; what’s inside makes it a home. This film delicately shows what happens when the powers that be decide that the home you made is no longer yours.

A more fleshed-out character might have grounded a last act burdened by an unconvincing plot twist, an odd moment of wish-fulfillment, and an over-reliance on the clichés that befall Black people in urban-set films.

Fiennes has an excellent rapport with Lewis-Parry, making their scenes as compelling and moving as anything “28 Years Later” had to offer. It’s too bad that every time the Samson-Kelson plotline gets good, we’re yanked back to dopey Jimmy’s goofy gang and its religious mumbo jumbo.

The overabundance of CGI is one of the bigger problems with Midway because, far too often, it feels like you’re watching a video game or an F/X highlight reel.

The film is essentially a two-hander between Norton and Lamont, both of whom give excellent, complementary performances. They feel like father and son from first frame to last.

Wake Up Dead Man is one of the year’s best movies. I’ve enjoyed all three movies, but this one is the best of the “Knives Out” mysteries so far.

Once again, Fastvold and Corbet have crafted a movie I admired more than I liked.

If only this movie weren’t as slow as a sleepwalkng turtle. The story is constructed like one big, dark joke whose punchline isn’t worth sitting through 110 minutes to hear.

If you can admire a movie’s technique (and its hotness) above all else, you’ll enjoy Passages. For me, it’s an intriguing near-miss.

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.

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.

The summer season rarely has room for a nice, adult comedy like You Hurt My Feelings. It is counter-programming of the finest order and one of the year’s best films.

The Meyerowitz Stories shockingly belongs to Sandler, who is absolutely fantastic.

Barbie knows it can be construed as a giant Mattel commercial. Look at how it highlights Barbie’s outfits by having them stop in midair for product identification, or how even the discontinued Barbies have houses in Barbie Land. That self-awareness is part of the charm, along with the clever way the plot unfolds and the genuine love Gerwig has for her characters.

At the center of I Am Not A Witch is Maggie Mulubwa, who says very little yet manages to convey multitudes with her face and her eyes.

This The Other Side of the Wind has a haphazard “well, he shot it, so we better include it” vibe. One wonders just how much of the existing editing Welles got to oversee himself; the answer is: probably not much. There’s a tight, 80-minute feature trapped in The Other Side of the Wind, one that Welles most likely would have exhumed had he not run out of money while filming.

This entertaining and informative documentary just might make you a fan as well.

As they discuss "how much this strip meant to me," I got the sense that Dear Mr. Watterson was as uninterested in them as I was; they're not even identified.

Song Sung Blue leans too far into biopic tropes, and Brewer rushes through tragic and life-changing events far too quickly for a film that runs almost 2½ hours.

The Brits do this type of crowd-pleaser far better than Hollywood, if only because films like “The Full Monty” and “Billy Elliot” were unafraid to temper sweetness with darker elements of reality.

I must give credit to Reijn’s screenplay for including scenes where Romy and Samuel work out the kinks in satisfying this particular kink.

The film avoids hagiography, and in doing so, brings out the undeniable humanity of its subjects.

Io Capitano doesn’t try to convince viewers whether Seydou, Moussa, and all the other migrants have a right to seek a better life. What it does do, however, is tell their story in a way that makes them far more human and relatable than most of the news stories we see nowadays.

The film makes its edgier, more uncomfortable arguments with conviction, forcing us to think about who the justice system trusts, and why.

McKellen and Coel give a master class in line readings throughout “The Christophers.” It’s a real pleasure watching two seasoned actors bounce off each other in service to creating their characters. It’s even more delightful to see this in a film made for adults that has plenty to say about human nature, love, and the inspirations that fuel our lives.