"Disfluency," that's how one character describes his stutter in Mr. Jealousy, Noah Baumbach's yuppie-scum sitcom. But despite the friendly presence of Marlanne Jean-Baptiste, these mostly white characters are even more self-absorbed than the old Seinfeld gang. Indie fixture Eric Stoltz lends his Bart Simpson cadences to Baumbach's pampered view of yuppie distrust: The target is a woman (Anabella Sciorra) but the subject is the cuteness of male vanity. The "disfluent" aggregate of styles is half-Woody Allen, one-sixteenth Whit Stillman, the…

Dolemite Is My Name Honors a Surprising Cultural Pioneer.
And the esoteric Eddie Murphy, as Rudy Ray Moore, reclaims his roots.

Promoted as a biopic about Seventies Blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore, Dolemite Is My Name is also Eddie Murphy’s comeback. Its retro subject promises a cultural essence similar to the star’s most fascinating films: Harlem Nights, his Nutty Professor movies, Norbit, Meet Dave, Boomerang, A Thousand Words, and Life (the unfairly overlooked team-up with Martin Lawrence about old-time incarceration…

Nostalgia for Arrested Adolescents.
Superheroes punch the clock in this hollow, predictable, overly long mess.

Adults no longer outgrow comic books. Hollywood prefers that they hang on to the adolescent illusion of carefree, escapist pleasure by pretending that the form’s juvenile cynicism is a sign of sophistication — replacing the traditional sources of imaginative thinking. The cultural monopoly represented by the Marvel Cinematic Universe in its latest release, Avengers: Endgame, depends on geeked-up viewers telling themselves that they are having…

A ‘Slave Land’ Thrill Ride.
It’s the Jaws of slavery movies — woke entertainment as a joke.

As Harriet Tubman — played by British musical actress Cynthia Erivo in the new historical film Harriet — inspires more and more Southern black slaves to desperately join her run for freedom in the North, a newly converted collaborator confides, “We’re gonna need a bigger cart!”

What kind of anachronistic nonsense is this? Both the history and the legend of the Underground Railroad,…