Movie Reviews Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Gotti,” Tom Hardy in “Capone,” the entirety of “The Kitchen.” Made-man misery.Running time: 105 minutes. Rated R (language throughout and some bloody violence).

Ryan Reynolds vehicle on Netflix about a time traveler who meets his kid self. The film is drowning in sap.You yawn through the uninspired action sequences — just 30 years from now we apparently will wield cheap-looking lightsaber rip-offs — and then are nauseated by over-dramatic exchanges such as this:Running time: 106 minutes.

Ben Affleck and now Robert Pattison might, the metropolis gets worse and worse.Running time: 175 minutes. Rated PG-13 (strong violent and disturbing content, drug content, strong language, and some suggestive material.) In theaters March 4.In the latest perfunctory film, “The Batman,” Gotham is bleaker than ever. Too bleak, if you ask me.

on Paramount+, is that Troye Sivan has real acting chops. Running time: 104 minutes. Not Rated. On Paramount+.

the 2019 off-Broadway musical it’s based on. Back then I called the show, which also starred Dinklage, “black eyeliner set to music.” That’s still true, only now it’s black eyeliner set to music with lavish sets and costumes.So, it’s absolutely terrific if you press “mute.” “Cyrano” is a love story you’ve already seen even if you don’t realize you have.

The demands audiences make of cute-dog films are fairly basic. Is there a dog? And is she cute?“Dog” — can’t beat that title! — delivers on those two essential pillars.

Spider-Man” movies. The British kid’s been everywhere and nowhere lately.

on Netflix. There must be a French term that encapsulates all of that.

Murder on the Orient Express,” a miserable, poorly cast, sleepy take on the author’s most famous novel. Bad on its own terms, the film was made even worse by the fact that Sidney Lumet’s superb 1974 version, starring Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman and Albert Finney, is a screen classic.Running time: 127 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence, some bloody images, and sexual material).

out Friday on Peacock.Playing pop superstar Kat Valdez, she is about to wed a sexy singer named Bastian (played by Colombian sensation Maluma) live on TV for an audience of 20 million. Then, moments before the nuptials, Page Six reveals that her fiancé went to third base with her assistant. “Why do I always pick the wrong guys?” she says.Huh.

the hallmarks of an Emmerich blockbuster — natural disasters, parents separated from children, the total annihilation of Manhattan — but with a twist so baffling, you pinch your arm to make sure you are really awake. No need to reach for your dream journal — it’s all painfully real.The lunar-cy begins during a routine space station mission in outer space with Jocinda (Halle Berry), Brian (Patrick Wilson) and another astronaut.

picked up by AppleTV+ for $15 million and like 2020’s big Sundance seller “Palm Springs,” in a few months everybody will be watching — and adoring — it. Raiff plays Andrew, a 22-year-old recent college grad who lives with his mom (Leslie Mann) and stepdad (Brad Garrett) and still shares a bedroom with his little brother David (Evan Assante). A regular New Jersey Peter Pan. Charismatic Andrew has no life prospects and is working at a fast food joint called Meat Sticks when some local mothers realize he’d be great at livening up bar mitzvahs — getting kids on the dance floor, telling jokes and, on occasion, flirting with the parents.At one party he’s running, Andrew convinces an autistic girl named Lola (Vanessa Burghardt) to dance with him and then starts chatting up her mom, Domino (Dakota Johnson).

who died in September at age 54, is the best part of the new movie “892” — the “Wire” actor’s final film role.The edgy Williams is perfection as a crisis negotiator during a dangerous standoff. As his character Eli attempts to diffuse a hostage situation, he is measured, conversational and, most vitally, believable.

hits Hulu March 4, will more likely make you hurl than send you racing for a cold shower.The title doesn’t describe the movie very well. “Fresh” is a familiar and somewhat successful horror film in the socially conscious mold of “Get Out.” There are shocks and suspense. When the twist — which will not be revealed here — arrived, I let out a loud expletive.

Two-and-a-half starsIt’s no secret that little kids love talking animals. But is it too much to ask that there be a stated reason why a koala, elephant, porcupine and pig live happily in the same urban city and all have a passion for music?That’s the crux of the so-so “Sing” movie series — tales of a showbiz zoo in which someone’s status as a turtle is hardly ever mentioned.

was smartly about a singing contest, the new one has theater impresario and aforementioned koala Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) wants to take his enthusiastic troupe to the next level. So, he invites an agent to his variety show, “Waiting for Guffman”-style.

amped it up to a ludicrous level. An example of the no-holds-barred crazy: Julianne Moore played an international drug lord named Poppy, who, as it would happen, took Elton John as her prisoner. And now here’s a dreary prequel (aren’t they all?), “The King’s Man,” which is almost totally laugh-less, lacks a charismatic lead (Egerton’s character isn’t born yet) and is bogged down by the trench warfare misery of World War I.

fourth movie of the needlessly prolonged franchise, coming 18 years after the horrendous “The Matrix Revolutions,” is “The Matrix Resurrections,” a descent not so much into Lana and Lily Wachowski’s ever-fascinating dystopian reality as our own madness.Beyond the initial satisfaction of seeing Keanu Reeves, whom we regularly watch in plenty of much better movies anyway, and Carrie-Anne Moss return as sunglasses-lovin’ power couple Neo and Trinity, “Resurrections” is aimless, vocabulary-filled,

The Shape of Water,” he won the Best Picture Oscar.His latest, “Nightmare Alley,” probably won’t, but it is nonetheless a far more entertaining and satisfying film than its overrated science-fiction predecessor. The sinister carnival sideshow look is alluring, a perfect match for subversive del Toro.

the kvetching and moronic social media backlash about Nicole Kidman being cast as Lucille Ball in the new movie “Being the Ricardos.” You were wrong, guys. The actress is sensational in the part — and is doing the finest work of her career.She nails the off-camera Lucy in her prime: the acidic tongue, her dream of a normal suburban home life, disdain for mediocrity and especially the unparalleled power she wielded as a woman in showbiz in the 1950s.

adaptation of Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents’ musical memorable. It’s the “ET” director’s most visually exciting film in a zillion years.Still, it’s not gonna become a classic in the way the 1961 original did.

died in 2014.What we never could have imagined, though, is that Cooper’s freshman performance (he’s so green, his IMDB page doesn’t have a photo yet) would be one of the best of the year in what is easily the best film of 2021, Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant “Licorice Pizza.” This wonderful kid should be in the Oscar race, but we’re too predictably infatuated with big names. Let’s fix that.“Licorice Pizza” is a movie you will cherish for a long time after the lights come up.

Disney Plus Dec. 24. OK, it’s no “Frozen” — a “Let It Go” only comes around once every couple of ice ages — but it’s nonetheless a heartfelt and joyful take on a good old dysfunctional family. This clan, the Madrigals, happens to be magical.

Bruised,” Halle Berry’s capable directorial debut in which she also plays Jackie Justice, a once great mixed-martial-arts fighter who dropped off the face of the earth after a bad loss four years earlier. Now she works as a maid and sits outside New Jersey convenience stores.Running time: 129 minutes.

critically derided “Resident Evil” movies over 14 years, a return trip to Raccoon City wouldn’t be my first pick for a holiday.Yet the reboot of the video-game franchise, called “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City,” has been given the gift of extremely low expectations. It’s the first watchable entry in the series.

Richard Williams, the controversial father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams.Director Reinaldo Marcus Green’s grand slam of a movie is an odd duck because, generally speaking, biographies tend to be made about huge names — Judy Garland, Jackie O., Tonya Harding — and their moms, dads, bosses and old flames are merely colorful side characters who come and go. Not this one.

who died of an aortic aneurysm in the early morning on the day his iconic musical premiered at the East Village’s New York Theatre Workshop in 1996. He was just 35, and never lived to see “Rent” move to Broadway and become a worldwide phenomenon.“Tick, Tick,” which Larson wrote as a one-man show for himself in 1990, takes place well before that sad day, but his death movingly hovers over every scene. Running time: 115 minutes.

winning the Best Director Oscar for “Nomadland,” Chloé Zhao has upchucked one of the MCU’s worst movies in ages.And to what end? “Eternals,” which will no doubt become a Jon Favreau punchline in a future “Avengers” film, need not exist in a universe that already counts the Fantastic Four and X-Men among its franchises.Yet, here you go, ticket buyers — another far worse, uniformed collective of super-beings with conspicuously similar powers and a vague, grandiose mission to save humanity.

hon! hon! hon!). Its wise editor Arthur Howitzer, Jr.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck last collaborated on a movie script. Let’s make it 100 next time!The insufferable new film from the “Good Will Hunting” duo, “The Last Duel,” doesn’t make a strong argument for them as some of our greatest scribes. It does, however, torment viewers with nails-on-the-chalkboard writing and the pace of the World’s Slowest Snail. Running time: 152 minutes.

Paul Feig directed a meh all-women reboot starring Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones and Melissa McCarthy that made no money. Plans for more were quickly scrapped.Well, it’s taken 36 years and six presidencies, but with “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” fans finally have an unembarrassing sequel to love.

“Venom” is, by far, the worst comic book movie franchise out there — the black sheep, er blob, of Marvel and not even a part of the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe. Watching it, unless you’re already a demented diehard fan, is utter agony.Venom, for the blissfully uninitiated, is a symbiotic alien who’s latched onto the body of San Francisco newspaper columnist/schlub Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), and eats human brains to stay alive.

Runtime: 2 hours 43 minutes. In theaters Oct.

He’s part of a new generation poised to take over, along with Corrado “Junior” (Corey Stoll) and Johnny Soprano (Jon Bernthal). They clash with Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.), a black gangster who works for Dickie but has his own grander aspirations.

spoiled us in June when director Jon M. Chu managed to improve upon Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway show.

when he cast Kristen Stewart in a role as weighty and revered as Princess Diana.The Chilean’s game of royal roulette has paid off. Because Stewart, who we’ve always known is scores better than the average-to-wretched scripts she’s so frequently handed — “Twilight,” “Snow White and the Huntsman,” “Charlie’s Angels” — is haunting, playful and blisteringly human as Di at the end of her rope. Her princess is a broken woman so alive with promise and love and humor, but held back by mummified royals