Review: 'Renaissance' lets Beyoncé take her fans on tour with her, and shows them the work behind the magic

The magnetic force of nature that is Beyoncé Knowles-Carter — also known to the world simply as Beyoncé — is on full display in “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,” a documentary that captures the performer’s high-energy stage show and the hard work behind the scenes to make it happen.

As Beyoncé says early in the film — which she directed, wrote and produced — process is as important to her as the final product, and she includes plenty of backstage and rehearsal footage to capture that process. Through those scenes, fans witness the circle of acceptance that envelops her dancers and musicians, her love for her home town of Houston, and how she recovered from knee surgery while rehearsals were underway.

Some of those moments dovetail with the songs. For example, several gay and trans dancers — veterans of the dancehall and vogue movements — talk about how they got to incorporate their styles into Beyoncé’s concert, and then we see them perform “Break My Soul” with its sampling of Madonna’s “Vogue.”

About a third of the movie’s nearly three-hour running time is taken up with interesting stuff not happening in performance. But when the cameras are aimed at the stage, Beyoncé and crew make it worth the wait with a sensual, sensational series of performances.

Beyoncé’s film crew apparently filmed every show on this year’s “Renaissance” tour, and she and her team of editors stitched them together, even when she and her dancers were wearing different costumes in different cities. There are moments when the choreography and the camera movement are so exact that it appears everyone has switched clothes in the blink of an eye.

Inevitably, comparisons will be made between “Renaissance” and “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” the concert documentary released seven weeks earlier that captured a different 2023 stadium tour. (We have Ye, and his asinine “I’ma let you finish” rant at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, to thank for the artificial and sexist feud narrative involving Beyoncé and Swift.) Both deliver the goods for the performers’ respective fans — they just do it in different, and equally fascinating, ways. 

Swift’s movie shot several shows at one location and put together a seamless document of one complete concert. With “Renaissance,” Beyoncé is going for a different effect — she doesn’t want to give us one show; she wants us to feel what it was like to be on the entire tour.

“Renaissance” is, Beyoncé says early in the film, “more than a concert. It’s a culture, it’s a state of mind, it’s a release, it’s a fantasy come true.” A concert it definitely is, in all its glory. Whether it’s everything else she promises is up for fans to decide.

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‘Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 1, in theaters everywhere. Not rated, but probably R for language and suggestive lyrics. Running time: 169 minutes.

Review: 'The Shift' mixes biblical allegory with science-fiction flash, with some interesting but not satisfying results

The Old Testament meets old-school science fiction in “The Shift,” an interesting if not entirely successful attempt at retelling the story of Job — a tale of faith tested to the limit — in a modern setting.

When we’re introduced to Kevin Garner — played by Kristoffer Polaha, who has a lot of Hallmark movies on his resumé with the word “Christmas” in the title — he’s having a bad day. He just lost his high-paying Wall Street job when his firm collapsed under him, and he’s contemplating drinking his first beer after years of sobriety. Then a young woman, Molly (Elizabeth Tabish), on a dare from her girlfriends, sits down at the bar and starts to flirt with him. They get talking, and in short order move to dating, marriage and parenthood.

Then Kevin has an encounter with an enigmatic figure (played by veteran character actor Neal McDonough), a well-dressed, suave, blue-eyed gentleman. He is identified as The Benefactor, though he comments that title is one of the nicer ones he’s been given over the millennia. We figure out pretty quickly that The Benefactor is none other than the Devil.

The Benefactor has seen that Kevin’s current reality isn’t perfect — he and Molly are in a rough place, because of a tragedy that’s explained later in the movie — so he decides to yank Kevin into a different one. The Benefactor and his minions, called “shifters,” have the ability, through a keypad device on their wrists, to shift people around the multiverse (though they never use that word). 

The Benefactor makes an offer to Kevin: Renounce his so-called God, who has been conspicuously absent during Kevin and Molly’s bad times, and The Benefactor will give Kevin a life of wealth and influence. When Kevin says no — becoming the first Kevin in the multiverse to do so — The Benefactor plunks him down in a dystopian parallel world where there’s no faith and, importantly, no sign of Molly.

Writer-director Brock Heasley, adapting his 2017 short film for his feature debut, isn’t at all subtle in presenting this biblical allegory. The ham-fisted attempts to drive the message home get in the way of some strong storytelling and solid performances by Polaha, Tabish and Sean Astin as a nonbeliever who starts to get swayed by Kevin’s remembered scripture passages.

“The Shift” is the first work of fiction to be released by Provo-based Angel Studios — unless you count their Tim Ballard biopic “Sound of Freedom,” which hasn’t aged well in the last few weeks, and their sketchy documentary “After Death.” The company is employing the same marketing gimmick those other films used, a to-the-camera appeal to viewers over the closing credits to buy tickets to future screenings, with the pitch that it will “send a message” to make more movies like this one. Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe the best way to get filmmakers to make more of one type of movie is to make a better movie.

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‘The Shift’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for violence and thematic elements. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: 'Napoleon' captures the epic scale of the French emperor's exploits and the petty jealousies of his psyche

Unlike its title figure, director Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” isn’t small — but, like the French emperor, it’s ambitious.

Scott — who has created worlds of history (“Gladiator,” “Kingdom of Heaven”) and the future (“Alien,” “Blade Runner”) — takes us into the trenches with the Corsican-born gunnery officer (played by Joaquin Phoenix) who figured out that the judicious use of cannons could take down an enemy from a reasonable distance. It nearly happens to him in one of the movie’s first battles, when he charges toward a fortress on his horse, and a cannonball hits the steed square in the chest. (Presumably, this was special effects, because one can only imagine the uproar if Scott did it for real.) 

The script, by David Scarpa (“All the Money in the World”), dutifully takes us from high point to high point, as Napoleon Bonaparte rises through the ranks during the French Revolution and after, taking advantage of the chaos brought by the guillotine and the “Reign of Terror” to position himself as a strongman. Ultimately, in a country that just got rid of its king, Napoleon works himself into the job of emperor.

Early on, Napoleon meets a noblewoman recently sprung from the Bastille — Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby). Their story isn’t the fairy-tale romance, since Joséphine had other lovers while Napoleon was away shooting cannons at the Egyptian pyramids and such. Napoleon’s attitude toward Joséphine is more of a spoiled child, jealous and sniveling, than ostensibly the most powerful man in Europe. Things come to a head when Napoleon pressures Joséphine to bear him a son and heir.

Phoenix’s performance is a curious mix of bravado and petulance, capturing both his military smarts and his personal foibles. He’s nicely matched by Kirby, who quietly manages her emperor’s mercurial moods with a diplomatic tone and a tigress’ purr. 

Much of Scott’s movie focuses on Napoleon’s military prowess and his hubris — both in his invasion of Russia, where he started with 600,000 soldiers and limped home with 40,000, and the climactic battle of Waterloo, where he was completely outclassed in tactics by the Duke of Wellington (Rupert Everett).

It’s in those battle scenes where “Napoleon” earns our attention. There are few directors still working who can bring the spectacle, the sheer bigness of a war epic like this, the way Scott does. He makes every cannon blast hit home.

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‘Napoleon’

★★★

Opens Wednesday, November 22, in theater everywhere. Rated R for strong violence, some grisly images, sexual content and brief language. Running time: 158 minutes.

Review: In 'Leo,' Adam Sandler finds humor and heart as the voice of an elementary-school lizard

It seems that Adam Sandler has found his niche in animation — first with the “Hotel Transylvania” series, and now as an insightful lizard in the quietly charming “Leo.”

Sandler voices the title character, a lizard who has lived for decades as the class pet to a rotating series of fifth-graders in a Florida elementary school. It’s a delicate time for these kids, the last year of childhood before graduating to the semi-adult world of middle school.

At parent-teacher night, Leo and his terrarium cohabitant, a turtle named Squirtle (voiced by Bill Burr), overhear two dads say that lizards live to be 75 years old. After checking with some of the other class pets — since fifth-graders don’t learn subtraction; they’re already on to fractions — Leo realizes that he’s 74. So he decides he has to escape now, and get his last bit of living done while he can.

Things don’t work out that way, though. With the teacher, Mrs. Salinas (voiced by Allison Strong), taking maternity leave, the kids are stuck with a cranky old substitute, Ms. Malkin (voiced by Cecily Strong). Ms. Malkin takes away the kids’ laptops, gives them massive textbooks, and tries to instill some old-school discipline on the kids. One way to do that is to assign one child each weekend to take Leo home and care for him.

At the house of Summer, an insecure chatterbox (voiced by Sunny Sandler, the star’s daughter), Leo breaks the cardinal rule of school pets: He talks to her. Once the shock wears off, Leo gets Summer to promise not to tell anyone — and that only she can hear him. Leo gives Summer a life lesson, about the importance of letting other people talk, by asking them questions and showing an interest in them.

The next weekend, Leo stays with Eli (voiced by Roey Smigel), whose helicopter mom (voiced by “SNL” star Heidi Gardner) has a drone watching her son’s every move. Leo breaks his no-talking rule with Eli, and advises him to break up with his drone. And so it goes at the next kid’s house. And the next. And so on.

The script — credited to Sandler, comedian-writer Robert Smigel (aka Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog) and regular Sandler scribe Paul Sado — has some holes in it, namely in its dithering about how to treat its adult characters, particularly Ms. Malkin, who goes from cartoonishly evil to sympathetic a bit too easily.

Oh, and have I mentioned this is a musical? Smigel — who co-directed with animators Robert Marianetti and David Wachtenheim — wrote the songs, which have a spiky wit and even will prompt a tear or two.

“Leo” is a simple, yet effective, animated movie, whose gentle humor disguises a sweet parable about learning from one’s elders — even the scaly ones. 

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‘Leo’

★★★

Starts streaming Tuesday, November 21, on Netflix. Rated PG for rude/suggestive material and some language. Running time: 108 minutes.

Review: Disney's fairytale prototype 'Wish' is gorgeous to watch, but skimpy as a storytelling vehicle

Disney’s newest, “Wish,” takes its inspiration from a century of Walt Disney’s animation genius — though “inspiration” is a big word for what feels like an empty exercise in corporate branding.

“Wish” sets itself up not just as a Disney animated movie, but an amalgam of every Disney animated movie, from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” to “Encanto.” Unfortunately, though the animation studio is at the top of their game in terms of animation technology and artistry, in this case the movie labors mightily and brings forth a mouse.

In Rosas, a benevolent city-state on a Mediterranean island, we meet Asha (voiced by Ariana DeBose), a tour guide who shows arrivals how wonderful their new home is. One reason it’s wonderful, Asha explains, is that everyone, on their 18th birthday, reveals their most precious wish — and gives that wish to their ruler, King Magnifico (voiced by Chris Pine). The King, who is also a sorcerer, keeps all the wishes safe, and on rare occasions grants one to come true.

Asha — who is applying to be the King’s apprentice (a sorcerer’s apprentice, get it?) — hopes that, on this occasion, Magnifico will grant the wish of her grandfather, Sabino (voiced by Victor Garber), who is turning 100. When the King denies this request, and reveals the secret that he denies nearly every wish because they might threaten his throne, Asha runs to the tree where she and her late father used to look at the stars, and she makes an unauthorized wish on a star.

This time, the star answers. It comes down to earth as a cute luminescent blob, spreading stardust around in its wake. When that stardust touches animals, it makes them able to talk — and one of the first animals we see this happen to is Asha’s pet goat, Valentino (voiced by Disney’s reliable voice actor, Alan Tudyk). When it happens to the woodland creatures, we learn there’s a deer named Bambi and a bear named John (possibly a reference to the Balou-like Little John in Disney’s “Robin Hood”).

Diehard Disney fans will watch “Wish” when it appears on home video and go through it frame-by-frame, with a checklist of Disney animated movies and seeing how many are referenced. Maybe, just maybe, this gambit will keep viewers from noticing how slight the main story is. The script is credited to Jennifer Lee (“Wreck-It Ralph,” “Frozen”) and Allison Moore (a TV writer making her movie debut), but it feels like the entire corporate structure of Disney gave notes. It’s as if Disney learned from the Marvel Cinematic Universe that you can construct an entire movie out of Easter eggs.

The song score, by lyricist Julia Michaels and composer Benjamin Rice, includes the scene-setting opening (“Welcome to Rosas”), Asha’s “I want” song (“This Wish”), and a great villain song for Magnifico (“This Is the Thanks I Get?!”), just as the formula demands. Thankfully, DeBose and Pine are talented singers, and deliver a lot of intense emotion.

The good part of “Wish” is the way directors Chris Buck (“Tarzan,” “Frozen”) and Fawn Veerasunthorn (a story artist on “Zootopia,” “Ralph Breaks the Internet” and “Raya and the Last Dragon”) deploy 100 years of Disney animation magic to make every frame pop off the screen. If you can overlook the skimpy story, “Wish” is a visual treat.

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‘Wish’

★★★

Opens Wednesday, November 22, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for thematic elements and mild action. Running time: 92 minutes.

Review: 'May December' is a tough drama that looks at a tabloid-famous marriage, and the different filters that see it

The stories we tell — in movies and to ourselves — are explored and exploded in “May December,” director Todd Haynes’ fascinating drama about the blurry line between truth and reality.

Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) is preparing for a family barbecue in their coastal Georgia town, so her husband Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) has put a bunch of hotdogs on the grill. Gracie wanted everything to look perfect, because they’re entertaining a guest: Actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman). Elizabeth, who plays a veterinarian in a popular TV series, has a specific reason to meet Gracie: She’s portraying her in an independent movie that recounts how Gracie, at age 36, began a sexual relationship with Joe, who was in 7th grade at the time.

At her hotel, Elizabeth has a stack of tabloid clippings that tell the story of Gracie going to jail for taking advantage of a teenager — and having a baby while in prison. She also watches the cheap TV movie made about the case shortly after Gracie went to prison.

Elizabeth wants to know what kind of person Gracie really is. She tries to do learn about Gracie, both by talking with her about meeting Joe and by watching her do everyday things like baking cakes and applying her makeup. Elizabeth also wants to go to the places where Gracie and Joe began their relationship, like the stockroom of the pet shop where they worked. 

Elizabeth also meets Gracie’s ex-husband, Tom (D.W. Moffett), and their son Georgie (Cory Michael Smith), whose relationship with his mom is strained at best. And she spends time with Gracie and Joe’s kids: Twins Charlie (Gabriel Chung) and Mary (Elizabeth Yu), who are about to graduate from high school, and older daughter Honor (Piper Curda), who was born in prison and is now 24 — and not thrilled with a Hollywood actress poking her nose in the family’s business, and possibly opening old wounds.

Haynes and screenwriter Samy Burch (making her feature debut) set up a fascinating story that asks us to witness Gracie and Joe’s daily life, and the self-consciousness that sets in when an outsider puts that life under the microscope. Haynes, who last examined a relationship with a substantial age gap in the hyper-melodramatic “Carol,” turns Elizabeth’s visit into a hall of mirrors — there are multiple scenes of Gracie and Elizabeth regarding each other in mirrors, whether in a bathroom or while watching Mary try on graduation dresses.

Moore — who has collaborated with Haynes on “Safe” (1995), “Far From Heaven” (2002) and “I’m Not There” (2007) — depicts Gracie as someone who tries to treat her long-ago predation of a teenager as a far-off mystery, not seeing how she treats Joe and their children now are a variation on the manipulation that put Gracie and Joe together in the tabloids and in real life. Portman is equal to Moore here, as something of a manipulator herself: An actor trying to use her talents to coerce more information out of her source. The combined heat buns slowly at first, but generates an unbearable heat. 

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‘May December’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 17, in theaters; starts streaming December 1 on Netflix. Rated R for some sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language. Running time: 117 minutes.

Review: The 'Hunger Games' prequel is overly busy and can't escape the long shadow of Katniss Everdeen

The prequel “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” rises and falls on one important question: Is “The Hunger Games,” the movie series spawned from author Suzanne Collins’ dystopian young-adult novels, a viable franchise without the presence of the magnetic Jennifer Lawrence, who became a star playing tribute-turned-rebellion leader Katniss Everdeen?

Ultimately, the answer is “no,” but there’s a lot of opportunity along the way for new stars Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler to make their presence felt.

This adaptation of Collins’ novel is set 64 years before Katniss first competed in the games. Then, Panem’s districts were being barely held together by the ruling Capitol’s occupation army, euphemistically called “Peacekeepers.” Back at the Capitol, they’re getting ready for the 10th annual Hunger Games, though the designer of the Games, Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis) — a mad scientist with different colored eyes and a shock of frizzed white hair — is concerned that the ratings are dwindling, for the lack of spectacle.

An ambitious young student in the Academy has some suggestions. He’s Coriolanus Snow (played by Blyth), and he’s motivated to win a prestigious school prize so he, his grandma’am (Fionnula Flanagan) and his sister Tigris (Hunter Schafer) don’t get evicted from the home Coriolanus’ famous father, Gen. Crassus Snow, built for them before the Dark Days.

The prize usually goes to the best Academy student, but the dean, Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage) — credited as the co-creator of the Hunger Games — has a new wrinkle. The prize, and all the money, will go to the student who is the best mentor to one of the 24 tributes chosen from the Districts to compete in the Games. 

Snow finds out his trainee is Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler, from “West Side Story”), a feisty singer from District 12. She impresses the audiences at the Reaping, the day the tributes are selected, by singing a rebellious folk song, This inspires Snow to suggest to Dr. Gaul some changes to boost the ratings — to appeal to audience attention for not just a fighter, but a personality.

Director Francis Lawrence, who directed all but the first of the “Hunger Games” movies, takes a screenplay (credited to Michael Lesslie and Michael Arndt) that hews quite closely to the book. That’s a problem, both in the second of the three acts, which spends too much time in the Games, and the third act, which takes us away from the Capitol altogether. Both choices sap the tension from the narrative, and contribute to a bloated running time of more than 2 1/2 hours.

There’s a lot of time spent with what feels like generational foreshadowing. We know who Snow grows up to become — he was the president played menacingly by Donald Sutherland in the series — so there’s not a lot of suspense there. Jason Schwartzman gets some laughs as Lucretus “Lucky” Flickertail, a weatherman-turned-emcee (and, it’s heavily suggested, the father of Stanley Tucci’s flamboyant character in the originals). Unfortunately, those moments mostly remind us of what the previous movies had that this one lacks: A drive of its own.

Blyth is a solid actor, and will be really interesting when his pretty-boy phase is behind him. We know Ziegler’s talents from “West Side Story,” and here she gets to demonstrate her singing and her charisma — even when hamstrung with an unfortunate choice of a hillbilly accent.

“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” has a decent number of exciting, breathtaking moments, as the Games play themselves out. But they can’t sustain that intensity for the full movie, which finds itself borrowing from the past — even dropping a “Katniss” reference that feels forced. The odds, alas, are not in this movie’s favor.

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‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong violent content and disturbing material. Running time: 157 minutes.

Review: 'Trolls Band Together' is a bunch of bad jokes and song cues, in search of a reason to exist

Three movies into the “Trolls” animated franchise, and someone finally figured out that voice star Justin Timberlake — the guy to took the first movie’s song, “Can’t Stop This Feeling,” to the pop charts and an Oscar nomination — used to be in a boy band.

That’s the premise — and, indeed, the only workable idea — of “Trolls Band Together,” a jumble of overworked plot points, labored gags and song cues in the place where a movie should be.

The story, what there is of it, starts “back in the day,” when the five brothers of the all-troll singing group BroZone is preparing to perform a big show. The most nervous of the five is Bitty B — the diaper-wearing younger self of Branch, Timberlake’s character. The performance, and the attempt to create “the perfect family harmony,” ends in disaster. It also ends with the brothers breaking up the band, all blaming the oldest, John Dory (voiced by Eric André).

Cut to the Trolls’ present day, when Queen Poppy (voiced by Anna Kendrick) is staging the wedding of our ogre-like Bergen friends, Bridget (voiced by Zooey Deschanel) and King Gristle (voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse). But the wedding gets interrupted with the surprise arrival of John Dory — a surprise because Poppy didn’t know Branch had brothers, let alone ones who were in her favorite boy band.

John Dory tells Branch that their favorite brother, the sensitive Floyd (voiced by singer Troye Sivan) is being held captive in a diamond perfume bottle, held by the fast-rising singing duo Velvet and Veneer (voiced by Amy Schumer and Andrew Rannells). The V twins are sapping Floyd of his talent to make themselves into famous music stars. John Dory tells Branch the only thing that can free Floyd is the “perfect family harmony,” which is so powerful it can cut diamonds.

So it’s now a road trip with Branch, Poppy, John Dory and the sparkly Tiny Diamond (Kenan Thompson) boarding a caterpillar bus to find the other remaining brothers: Spruce (voiced by Daveed Diggs), the heartthrob; and Clay (voiced by Kid Cudi), the fun one. There’s another important character found along the way, voiced by Camila Cabello, and if you pay attention to Poppy’s unsubtle foreshadowing, you can probably figure out who she is. 

What director Walt Dohrn, co-director Tim Heitz and screenwriter Elizabeth Tippet (who co-wrote the last movie, “Trolls World Tour”) put together here is a hodgepodge of interesting animation styles, an entire “Kids Bop” album’s worth of covers, and a lot of bad boy-band puns. (Example, from when Floyd declares the band’s demise: “We’ve gone from boys to men, and now there’s only one direction to go: The backstreets.”)

And, as the marketing reminds us, “Trolls Band Together” delivers the first new song by Timberlake’s former band, *NSYNC, in 20 years. Is that worth enduring 90 minutes of candy-colored nonsense? Nah, just find it on Spotify.

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‘Trolls Band Together’

★★

Opens Friday, November 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some mild rude and suggestive humor. Running time: 92 minutes.