Odie Henderson

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.