Odie Henderson

Maiden excels as a suspenseful sports tale and a record of a historic first, but its biggest strength is in its warts-and-all character study of the Maiden crew. One can’t help but feel seen, moved and empowered once the credits roll.

The plot is completely forgettable and Story’s direction is atrocious here. He can’t balance the numerous attempts at unfunny comedy with the sudden outbursts of extreme gunplay. The action sequences lack any sense of excitement and only once do the stars of comedy and action align.

Jimmie’s story is a slow ballad, a tragic ode, a dirty limerick, a wistful lament and a heartbreaking elegy. It’s a tribute to the notion of home that we all carry. This is one of the year’s best films.

Say what you want about his onscreen vices, but Branagh has always been a charitable director and it really shows here.

At a scant 84 minutes, you’d think it would move fast enough to make you forget its massive lapses in logic in favor of chills and thrills. Alas, that’s not the case here.

This is a very personal documentary that occasionally has the intentional feel of a home movie.

To feel seen is a potent, potentially life-changing emotion, and only those who were never in the dark would have a moral problem with it. Rafiki makes this serious point quite effectively, never losing its ebullience.

This movie isn’t just tone-deaf, it’s ass backwards.

Elba’s skills as a helmer are not yet as refined as his considerable acting chops, but his firsthand knowledge of London’s Hackney borough gives the film a lived-in feeling, a sense of intimacy that registers onscreen in both quiet and violent moments.

This one works overtime, shifting gears repeatedly without once providing enough substance for the viewer to engage.

I cop to laughing out loud numerous times, and I was captivated by Vianne’s big “what’s good for the goose” style speech at the end. If “A Madea Family Funeral” is indeed the final “Hallelu-YUHRR” for Madea, it’s not that shabby an exit.

I can’t recommend Mega Time Squad but it does have a few things going for it.

Here is a movie that wants to traffic in Coen Brothers-style nihilism yet lacks any of their storytelling skill.

This is a very bad movie that manages to be as insulting as it is stupid.

The result invites confusion and ultimately indifference on the viewer’s part. When one character makes a joking reference to Alec Guinness’ brilliant Ealing comedy “The Lavender Hill Mob” the comparison does this film no favors.

For a movie that is supposedly about the consequences of absentee fathers, it sure has little of importance to say about the families they desert. The Moon deserves better symbolism.

This film succeeds because it knows how to strike the right balance between laugh-out-loud comedy and quiet, effective drama. The clichés are there, but its heart beats loud enough for us to embrace and forgive them.

Not much has changed for people of color, which probably wouldn’t surprise the author. And yet, he’d demand we not give up. This film powerfully conveys that message. The struggle is real, but so is the joy. We live, we laugh, we love and we die. But we are not gone. Our story continues, carried onward by our storytellers.

So listless and dry that the only jolt of electricity I experienced was when the screener blew up seven minutes before the end. The half hour I spent fighting with the Magnolia Pictures website was more suspenseful and interesting than anything I saw in their product.

Unless you’ve a vested interest in New York City or, like me, you were born and bred within its confines or in its neighboring shadows, The World Before Your Feet may seem like a hard pass for you. But this well-made and intriguing documentary isn’t about New York so much as it is about an unusual idea seen to fruition.

It’s commendable that the film is committed to the character-based world building evident in the first “Creed.” With this sequel, however, the Creed franchise seems destined to travel the same road the Rocky franchise did; the intensely personal and original vision of its creator is slowly being corrupted by the seductive demons of fan service.

This film is a powerful love letter to the Black Church, offering a soul-shaking introduction for the unfamiliar and a grandmotherly yank of the arm for those who know—it drags you from the theater straight into the pews.

I know that this type of culinary experience is in fashion nowadays, but I’m a fat guy who can’t muster much excitement for a $160 meal I can fit in my navel.

The bigger sin here is that “Nobody’s Fool” wastes its comic goodwill and performances by wallowing in the same tired story elements Tyler Perry has been milking on TV and in his movies for decades. He’s done this before, and you’ve seen it before.

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.

Viper Club is being released by YouTube Original Films, which is appropriate because it looks like it was shot and framed for the tiniest YouTube window possible. This is an ugly looking film filled with headache-inducing, shaky close-ups and questionable editing.

The Oath seems to build to that moment where Haddish grabs the screen and takes control. But when her big scene comes, it’s completely unsatisfying and muted, a missed opportunity floating among other missed opportunities.

Studio 54 is at its best when detailing the history of the New York City clubbing scene.