Not many non-performing contemporary songwriters are quite interesting enough to sustain a 90-minute documentary, but then, not many are Diane Warren, one of the great characters of modern Hollywood. Despite having a self-owned song catalog whose worth is estimated at up to a half-billion dollars, and despite famously having 15 Oscar nominations and a lifetime […]

Guillaume Canet makes like Bruce Willis and other past regular-guy-as-action-hero models in “Ad Vitam,” which he co-wrote. The entertaining Netflix concoction stars Canet as a Parisian ex-cop forcibly pulled into new perils connected to the shootout that got him sacked. Putting its hero through paces that embrace everything from parkour to parasailing, Rodolphe Lauga’s feature […]

Imagine an acerbic love child miraculously spawned by Addison DeWitt of “All About Eve” and Waldo Lydecker of “Laura,” with John Simon serving as midwife, and you will be prepared for Jimmy Erskine, the viciously witty and mercilessly demanding title character played with utterly delicious flamboyance by Ian McKellen in “The Critic.” Directed by Anand […]

The action’s hot but the dramatic temperature varies in “The Prosecutor,” a flashy combination of Hong Kong crime story and legal drama starring and directed by Donnie Yen (“Ip Man” series, “John Wick: Chapter 4”). The veteran action star is convincing and charismatic as a cop who quits the force to become a crusading Department […]

In a rare instance of introspection, Dylan (Ben Hunter), a rowdy bro type in his 20s, beams at the possibility that another person might genuinely be offering the kind of friendship he yearns for. A shy smile crosses his face, only for the spell to be immediately broken, leaving him feeling used. It’s a brief, […]

Over more than half a century on the market, video games have achieved true cultural ubiquity — arguably more than narrative filmmaking in the current day. How wrong it is, then, that movies have largely continued to show gaming in a shallow, nonliteral manner, portrayed as thoughtless joy buzzers, rather than indicating how a title […]

Butler’s brusque, beady-eyed, scowling-hulk charisma has aged well. A quick-fire actor in a caveman’s body, he has the ability to lift a piece of pulp so that it almost seems like a real movie.

There is a ravishing kind of beauty in Tommaso Santambrogio’s lyrical triptych of contemporary Cuban life, “Oceans Are the Real Continents.” With black and white cinematography that privileges an exacting formalism throughout, this portrait of the island works hard to defamiliarize the very sun-dappled, colorful image of Cuba that so dominates the cultural imaginary. An […]

The slow-motion footage in “Every Little Thing” of hummingbirds captured in flight, or beak deep in a flowering bud or hovering at 50 beats per second are awe-nudging. Director Sally Aitken’s nature documentary comes as a balm in a season aching for uplift. Since 2008, hummingbird sage Terry Masear has run a hotline, answering the […]

Ambition outstrips expertise in writer-director Phil Blattenberger’s “Laws of Man,” whose serpentine plot winds up seeming a wild goose chase — one whose execution should have been, well, wilder. Action and atmosphere are too poorly supplied for this stab at a noirish retro thriller to emerge as anything but talky, awkward and unconvincing. Set in […]

There have been relatively few biopics about choreographers, but it’s hard to think of a better one than “John Cranko,” about the late South African who made his name in England and Germany. Steering well clear of “Eureka!” moments and other clichés within the portrait-of-an-artist genre, Joachim A. Lang’s feature finds unusually vivid means of […]

In Netflix’s new limited series, “American Primeval,” written by “The Revenant” scribe Mark. L. Smith, audiences are thrust into the viciousness of the American West, specifically the Utah Territory in 1857. Told through the perilous journey of a young mother and her son desperate to start anew, the show examines several groups of Americans — […]

When watching the premiere of Max medi- cal drama “The Pitt,” one might feel as if they’ve stepped into a time machine. The series stars Noah Wyle, who rose to stardom in the future-celebrity-studded cast of “ER.” “The Pitt” was created by R. Scott Gemmill, who served as an executive producer on the later seasons […]

Law enforcement continues to be a polarizing topic and career in this country, but cop procedurals like “Blue Bloods,” “The Rookie” and “Chicago P.D.” are some of the most popular dramas on television. With their new Prime Video series, “On Call,” creators Tim Walsh and Elliot Wolf have add to the sprawling Dick Wolf universe, […]

In tallying up the casualties of war, there’s seldom a thought for the animal kingdom beyond our own two-legged species. It’s assumed that Mother Nature will simply “adapt,” her less-evolved populations abandoning old habitats and finding new ones on their own when forced. “Checkpoint Zoo” trains its lens on 5,000 or so beasts who didn’t […]

Tim Allen and Kat Dennings are both network sitcom royalty — he from “Home Improvement,” she from the surprisingly long-lasting “2 Broke Girls.” (It’s hardly a classic, but that show made it to 138 episodes. That’s well within the syndication zone!) With the sitcom “Shifting Gears,” a midseason debut that brings Allen back into the […]

After a year of actual normalcy (one without strikes or a pandemic), Hollywood is back to its regularly scheduled programming, which includes a fun and frenzied Golden Globes. The enjoyable but unserious cousin of the awards shows has finally found its stride, post-Hollywood Foreign Press Association scandals. Following an absolute dud of a ceremony last […]

It’s ordinary people, and not superheroes, who bring about justice and change in the real world. In “Lilly,” writer-director Rachel Feldman follows the era-defining work of one such everyday woman: trailblazer Lilly Ledbetter, a pioneer from humble beginnings who took her employer, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., to court on the basis of gendered pay […]

More than a decade after the swift cancellation of the underrated show “Enlisted,” Fox has taken another bite at the apple of a broadcast workplace sitcom set within the United States military. As with its predecessor, the midseason premiere “Going Dutch” counters the global scope of its central employer with the intimate one of immediate […]