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Omaha, The Librarians, Andre Is an Idiot, Ricky, GEN_, Prime Minister, One to One: John & Yoko
(Reviews by Scott Renshaw except where noted)
Omaha **1/2 [U.S. Dramatic]Well-acted, well-meaning miserabilism is still miserabilism, and director Cole Webley—working from a script by Robert Machoian—can’t find enough notes to play beyond “well, this is all going to end in tears.” It opens with widowed single dad Martin Harper (John Magaro) waking up his two kids—9-year-old Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and 6-year-old Charlie (Wyatt Solis)—and packing them into the car for an impromptu road trip to Nebraska, precipitated by getting evicted from their Nevada home. Most of what follows involves Martin trying to make the trip seem like an adventure when it’s clearly not, and young Wright is particularly impressive as we spot her gradual realization that Dad doesn’t fully have things under control.
By Scott Renshaw, Aimee L. Cook and Benjamin Wood
Jan 25, 2025 7:00 am
Jimpa, SLY LIVES!, Twinless, By Design, Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, The Dating Game
Jimpa **1/2 [Premieres]
Early in writer/director Sophie Hyde’s feature, Australian filmmaker Hannah (Oliva Colman) tries to pitch her latest idea to potential financers, saying she wants to do a story that’s about kindness, not conflict. It’s a pretty bold up-front statement for what Hyde is attempting here, and I’m guessing it will work for some viewers—I’m just not one of them.
Star Trek: Section 31, The Colors Within, Presence, All We Imagine As Light, Brave the Dark
All We Imagine As Light ***1/2
There’s a satisfying inversion at the core of Payal Kapadia’s character study, one that challenges the idea of how much more liberating it must inevitably be to live in a big, metropolitan area than out in the boonies. The narrative primarily follows two roommates-of-convenience who are also nurses working at the same hospital in Mumbai: Prabha (Kani Kusruti), long-separated from her husband who went to work at a factory in Germany; and Anu (Divya Prabha), who is carrying on a secretive romance with a Muslim man (Hridhu Haroon).
New music from David Lindes, Eyes of Eva and The Alpines
David Lindes, "Peace With a Lion" & "Jardineros"
Guatemalan born singer/songwriter David Lindes is back with two new healing and heartfelt tracks. "Peace With a Lion" is the title track of his upcoming album, and the song is a moving folk ballad, Lindes likens his father’s abandonment to a vicious, crippling attack by a predator, asking with both urgency and bafflement, “How do you make peace with a lion?” Lindes sings.
Wolf Man, The Brutalist, Hard Truths, Nickel Boys, September 5 and more
Back in Action **
The problem with co-writer/director Seth Gordon’s action-comedy isn’t that it’s just the latest iteration on a seemingly endless string of movies with the basic premise “person living as a mild-mannered suburbanite is secretly a current spy/former spy/professional killer/other form of badass;” it’s that the movie does absolutely nothing with that concept that isn’t boring. In this case, the mild-mannered suburbanites are Matt (Jamie Foxx) and Emily (Cameron Diaz), raising their adolescent kids Alice (McKenna Roberts) and Leo (Rylan Jackson) 15 years after fleeing their jobs as CIA operatives when they were presumed dead during a mission.
Den of Thieves: Pantera, Better Man, The Last Showgirl
Better Man ***1/2
Count me all-in on the trend—after the “Pharrell-as-LEGO” documentary Piece by Piece and this oddball endeavor—of bypassing the Walk Hard musical biopic clichés through imaginative representation of the central figure.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Porcelain War
Porcelain War **1/2
It’s not surprising that being caught in a war zone should yield a tangle of thoughts and ideas, but that tangle manifests itself in a documentary by directors Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev that never finds a specific focus. At the outset, we meet Leontyev and his personal/artistic partner Anya Stasenko, as well as their friend and fellow artist Andrey Stefanov as they navigate living through the Russian assault on Ukraine, specifically their home city of Kharkiv.
A Complete Unknown, Nosferatu, The Fire Inside, Babygirl
Babygirl ***
Writer/director Halina Reijn is hardly the first filmmaker to address characters exploring a submissive kink—Secretary and Phantom Thread, among others, beat her to that punch—but she’s still able to find a couple of unique angles in the psychology of desire. Her protagonist is Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman), a corporate CEO with a husband (Antonio Banderas) and two daughters who finds herself drawn to new intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson) when he provides her with the chance to release her inner bottom.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Mufasa: The Lion King, Homestead, The Six Triple Eight
Homestead **
Perhaps it's on me that I didn't realize the full story behind this faith-based apocalyptic drama, but it’s hard to overstate the bitterness one can feel when you’re watching what you think is a movie, but instead is the pilot for series. Ben Kasica and Jason Ross created this tale set in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the United States, as various characters—including military veteran Jeff Eriksson (Bailey Chase) and his family—converge on the Rocky Mountain compound owned by Ian Ross (Neal McDonough), one of the few places in the region with a secure food supply.
