Because I'll have so many complimentary things to say about Jane Campion's and Netflix's new slow-boil Western The Power of the Dog, I may as well get my one major irritation out of the way: Is Benedict Cumberbatch the only living Brit who can't pull off an American accent? Like, any American accent?

Upon leaving my screening of Encanto, I was convinced that I had just seen my favorite animated Disney movie since 2016's Zootopia, the Oscar-winning comedy that, maybe not coincidentally, was also co-directed by the new film's Jared Bush and Byron Howard. But when I tried thinking back to the animated Disney musical that I most loved prior to Encanto, I drew a blank.

It would be wonderful to report that Ghostbusters: Afterlife is great. Hell, it would be wonderful to report that it's nothing more, or less, than goofy dumb fun. But if you only smile four times (I counted) over the course of two hours, I'm not sure that qualifies as having fun.

With The Guardian deeming the 2015 work “a thrillingly transgressive hit,” the unorthodox and unforgettable comedy Er Ist Wieder Da – also known by its English title Look Who's Back – enjoys a December 3 screening at Rozz-Tox, serving as the final 2021 presentation in the Kinogarten series of acclaimed, German-themed works hosted by the Rock Island venue and Davenport's German American Heritage Center.

Belfast's overall tone is child's-view fanciful – a rose-tinted (albeit mostly black-and-white) love letter to the formative people and places of Kenneth Branagh's youth – but with added dollops of painful real-world experience that make for an awkward, not entirely successful blend. The movie is oftentimes touching and funny, and I was continually engaged. I just never quite bought what its writer/director was selling.

Wes Anderson may be the only living American auteur whose very name gives you everything you need to know about a movie, yet almost nothing in terms of its specifics.

A free, inaugural event organized by the Quad Cities' newest non-profit Truth First Film Illiance Inc., a special screening of the documentary Stout Hearted: George Stout & the Guardians of Art will be held at Davenport's Figge Art Museum on November 11, the film's titular figure an Iowa native whose heroic actions in World War II were memorialized by George Clooney in the 2014 movie The Monuments Men.

Currently holding a perfect 100-percent critical-approval rating on RottenTomatoes.com, Fritz Lang's classic 1931 thriller M enjoys a November 12 screening at Rozz-Tox, this breakthrough for star Peter Lorre the latest presentation in the Kinogarten series of acclaimed, German-themed works hosted by the Rock Island venue and Davenport's German American Heritage Center.

After an appealing opening half-hour, this odd, ultimately unsatisfying blend of time-travel adventure and horror yarn grows more ludicrous and lifeless as it progresses, and by the finale, you can't even recognize it as an Edgar Wright film anymore. While there's a great beat, at least initially, I'll be damned if I could dance to it.

While it may not be a “complete” entertainment quite yet (and as of this writing, no followup is contractually guaranteed), there's so much that's engaging and inventive and glorious about the Dune world according to Denis Villeneuve that the movie practically nullifies your complaints while they're occurring to you. That's not to say I didn't leave with a few; I just didn't mind them much.

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