Clint Eastwood’s excellent new film, Richard Jewell (rated R for heavy language and brief, realistic violence), has a moment early on where a perfectly pressed FBI agent looks around in disgust at a mass of doughy people doing the Macarena and grouses, “I’m made for better things than this.” The beautiful, young reporter trying to scrape up a story at the same Atlanta park during the 1996 Olympics shoots back, “You think I’m not?”

Except for a few sleeper hits, the streaming era has offered little by way of family viewing. By that I mean shows complex enough to entertain both parents and older children, not just kids’ programming that adults have to suffer through. Judging by its tremendous popularity, The Mandalorian, a new Star Wars series streaming on Disney Plus, is filling that gap.

On its surface, Ford v. Ferrari is about making American cars great again. But look underneath the hood and you’ll see this ripped-from-history story is really about making men great again. Or, better stated, cheering what masculinity is at its best.

If you’re a parent of children under 10, you might be dreading it or looking forward to it, but there’ll be no avoiding it. Six years after it blew the doors off the box office, Frozen is back.

The good: The sequel is gorgeous and funnier than its predecessor and has enough positive messages to outweigh the negative. The bad: It’s 20 minutes longer than it needs to be, the plot is a magical muddle, and there’s not a song in it that can hold a candle to “Let It Go.”

Feel-good movies come in two kinds. One kind simply offers fun escapism. It features car chases, characters with superpowers, and declarations of love in the rain. The purpose is to let you forget your problems for a couple of hours. 

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is the other kind of feel-good movie. 

Among the many genres that have suffered in our age of superhero domination, perhaps none has been harder hit than the romantic comedy.

If anyone can bring holiday romance back to the big screen in a big way, however, it’s screenwriter/actress Emma Thompson. In her latest, Last Christmas (rated PG-13 for language), Thompson steals every scene she’s in as the domineering, immigrant mother of the lovely but self-destructive Kate (Emilia Clarke).

Nothing is more satisfying than a good superhero origin story. And the tale of how the slave Araminta “Minty” Ross became American freedom fighter Harriet Tubman is more than a welcome change of pace from fictional caped crusaders.