My Courses

Can you call a film formulaic if it’s based on things that really happened? Maybe. As with any movie, it’s all about the tone and style: the choices made by the storytellers. “Next Goal Wins” is a case study, unfortunately. It’s an inspirational football comedy, co-written and directed by Taika Waititi (two Thor films, “Jojo Rabbit,” et al) with Iain…

Is Tyler Perry running for office? Despite a few moments that allow critical or at least skeptical views of the actor/writer/director/studio mogul, “Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story” is like a nearly two-hour ad for Perry, the sort of thing you’d play at a political convention to hype the crowd. There’s no denying at this point that…

If Gelila Bekele and Armani Ortiz’s “Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story,” the origin documentary about the rise of the divisive mogul, could deliver on one promise, it arises as an undeniable crowd pleaser. Despite its intrusive, cacophonous score and its heavy-handedness—deployed to burnish another laurel to Perry’s noted career—the broad film still felt quite…

Movies about giant monsters have a legacy of being talkier than expected, and I’m usually willing to go along with them because there’s a purpose behind the long segments of bureaucratic nonsense in films like “Shin Godzilla” or even the forced POV of a movie like “Monsters.” And it’s understandable, even with the open wallets of…