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If you're a fan of 30 Rock, then Baby Mama will probably to your liking, and feel like a parallel world where Liz Lemon is desperate to get pregnant and tries surrogacy. Tina Fey turns to her real-life bestie Amy Poehler, playing some ignorant white trash that could derail her attempts, or turn into a nice onscreen friendship. From there, it heads into romcom formula and a pretty pat ending. Most of the time, it taps into Fey's brand of comedy so well, I thought she might have written it, and it could honestly have used more of her type of send-up (Steve Martin's granola nutbar and Sigourney Weaver's sales pitch are good examples of what I mean). As is, it's got some good bits and a lot of SNL performers in large and small parts, but it gets more smiles than laughs, and it's always dangerous to make one of your leads "amusingly irritating" because they can come off as simply irritating. But there's nothing wrong with a comedy that makes you smile.

Basically wildlife footage to which they set a story... well, maybe I shouldn't use "story" per se when discussing Tarka the Otter. We see Tarka being born, emancipate himself from his parents (not by choice , so if you ever wondered what Bambi's mother would play like in live action...), run into a threat (often some bloodthirsty humans and their hounds), escape, kill and eat some other creature, rince-repeat. I don't think there was enough material here for a 90-minute film (the movie proves my point by suddenly tapping into a subplot about a couple cranes), but they had all this footage! There are a couple of rather violent images, though there's no real contact between the otters and other animals with "handlers" credited. It still manages to be pretty harrowing for a "family" film. The narration, read by Peter Ustinov, is strong and poetic (though why can't Tarka's mom have a name like he does? "The otter bitch" made me cringe), I can't fault the editing, and of course, the otters are very cute. Which makes the bleak tone of the piece all the more questionable.

I'm not always keen on sports movies, whether based on true stories or fictional, but I AM usually keen on COACHING movies (given my background coaching for theater games). Remember the Titans worked both ways. It's a great story about coaching, and indeed, a strong interacial coaching partnership, as a high school in Virginia presents the first integrated football team in the state back in the early 70s. Denzel Washington is probably too hard on those kids, but he needs to break down attitudes before they can act like a team. Before long, the team's success brings the whole community together, but also attracts nasty racism from other teams, so even as winners, the Titans are an underdog. So it's also a rousing sports movie that works on its own terms, distinguishing a lot of players (including baby Ryan Gosling) and making us care about their personal successes, failures and sacrifices. And the football action is clear, varied and well choreographed. Exciting, often funny, but also pulling at your heart strings, Remember the Titans is a great entry in the sports, biopic AND race relations genres.

Pretty usual for an 80s historical biopic, Glory is a black story as told through the Messianic white character who wrote the history (in this case, through letters). It's something Denzel Washington's almost too modern black activist might have called out, and that hurts the picture in retrospect. Unfortunately, the problem is compounded by casting Matthew Broderick as Colonel Shaw - the man in charge of the first black regiment in the American Civil War - and I have a hard time buying him as any historical personage. Washington gives a strong and varied performance - and got his first Oscar for it - but props should also go to a very young Andre Braugher as his counterpart, an educated New England soldier who character arc is almost opposite. He hardens where Washington softens. Needless to say, Morgan Freeman and Cary Elwes are good too. The Civil War is from an era where, because of technical limits, they had the dumbest strategies - the whites of their eyes, indeed - but director Zwick manages to make the main battles reasonably exciting. The film takes the Rebels' perfidy for granted, and so doesn't spare the Union any criticism. It comes off as just as bad or worse, but for their cause. Well made and all, but I can't get very excited about it.

The movie Daniel Espinosa hopes to be remembered for instead of Morbius, Safe House is a pretty solid spy action thriller in which Ryan Reynolds plays a CIA safe house keeper itching for more action and gets more of it than he ever bargained for when Denzel Washington's renegade agent is caught and brought there. Seeing as Denzel's character is a master manipulator (but is he nonetheless righteous?), I imagine an alternate universe where this premise was used for a claustrophobic, one-location thriller. Instead, it goes for a more formulaic chase through South Africa, with Reynolds trying to keep his "guest" safe from unknown assassins, and himself safe from the guest. Lots of strong supporting players, violent fight scenes and stunts, and Reynolds doesn't undermine the tension with his trademark humor. Safe House is borderline bleak as the green rookie gets an eyeful of the true face of intelligence services, and wonders if he'll get burned because he really quite expendable. Better than it's given credit for.

Back when Apartheid was at its height as a global hot button issue, we got Cry Freedom. Biko's story takes place in 1977, the film was made in 1987 (South African Apartheid would only end in 1991), but it's amazing how much of Biko's language about racial equality and self-determination sounds like the way we speak about it today. Talk like white privilege and cultural genocide feels more of the "now" than they did in the 80s (but maybe it's because I was 16 when I first saw the film, which still influenced my values about racial equality as I recognized at least one argument I integrated as my own). Denzel Washington is great as Biko - this could almost be a compare/contrast performance to his landmark Malcolm X - but since the adapted book is by a white man, it's really a white man's story. There's a deep irony to a black story being told through the lens of Kevin Kline, his family, and his less than credible accent, an irony the movie seems to be aware of at times, but it's nonetheless another affront to the native Africans this is supposed to be about. By the time we've made a complete switch to the White Messiah who will bravely get the story out, it's more like Cry Me a River than Cry Freedom.

In the shadow of the Gulf War, a (fictional) woman is set to receive a Medal of Honor for combat (posthumously) for the first time. If the story of her Courage Under Fire (that's the title) can be cleared by a benched armor unit commander played by Denzel Washington. His story is fairly compelling - after a friendly fire incident and being under review himself, he becomes obsessed with getting his report on the fallen chopper pilot right, just as he feels his own culpability should come to light. Through interviews with the men who were saved in the incident, he finds discrepancies that soon turn into a Rashomon situation. So it's a little difficult to get a handle on Captain Walker, whose character changes from telling to telling, even if she weren't so obviously miscast as Meg Ryan. I'm sorry, but she just growls her way through a heavy Southern accent through every flashback and with her trendy haircut never really seems to be the person she's portraying (except when she's at home with a small daughter). And that undermines the whole affair.

A much better action thriller than one might think from the stock title, Ricochet stars Denzel Washington as a maverick cop, then maverick D.A., on his way to maverick mayor, whose most notable arrest comes back to haunt him in the form of an insane John Lithgow whose plans to destroy his humiliator's life border on the supervillain. For Daredevil fans, this is Denzel: Born Again. Russell Mulcahy (Highlander, Razorback) directs this thing with an eye for the novel and unusual, and I can safely say it contains scenes I've never really seen before - the initial arrest, the arm wrestling, the parole hearing, and Denzel Washington flashing his willy at the Bionic Woman - despite the essentially formulaic nature of the genre. Everyone is clearly having fun with the material - they even let Kevin Pollak do his Captain Kirk impression. Which is sort of at odds with just how dark the story gets, but I don't think it's a deal breaker. Lots of energy on the screen counts for something.

It's a mouthful, but Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes continues the modern franchise's unbroken string of quality films starring your favorite apes. Well, in this case, we're generations after the previous film, so a new cast has to be introduced, but we warm to them pretty quickly (and AGAIN, the orangutan is a highlight - there was a Michael Dorn quality to his voice, and then I realized it was Peter Macon, fans of The Orville will now how I crossed my wires there). Noa is a chimp in the Caesar mold from a hawking clan, whose people is forced into slavery by an ape king who wants to get at a human bunker and its advanced weapons. To free them, Noa has to team up with a human girl who hasn't succumbed to the virus and who ALSO needs to get into that bunker. A lot of world-building, taking us forward, but also harking back and foreshadowing elements of the old Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and of course strong action pieces with absolutely perfect photoreal creatures. I like its moral shades of gray. No matter what victories humanity ekes out in this, our hearts are with the hero apes, and therefore an interesting ambivalence as to our own fate as a species. Apes together strong!

Not the strongest Grisham adaptation, The Pelican Brief solves its legal mystery early, but withholds the information from the audience. Denzel Washington's reporter therefore seems to do pointless things while we wait for him to meet Julia Roberts' brilliant law student who's cracked the case wide open with instinct and research. What works in a novel doesn't always work in a movie. The editing here is often a hash, characters disappear for too long or are introduced too late, and the ending is anti-climactic exposition. There is a certain frisson to be had 30 years later, with this yarn of political corruption, the murders of Supreme Court judges to restructure the Court before an election, story ideas that could have been had today. And certainly, the all-star cast gives better performances than the material demands. I do question why the movie is so needlessly in love with Julia Roberts' character, though. That cheeseball ending. Come on now.

A sunny noir if there ever was one, Out of Time stars Denzel Washington as the police chief of a small, coastal Florida town whose affair with a married woman takes him to the brink when she dies as a result of foul play, and he's named as her insurance's beneficiary. He has to investigate, while also covering up his own connections to the murder while his estranged wife, a high-profile police detective from the Big City, is on the same trail. And it's great - give or take the unconvincing casting of Eva Mendes as the wife; Sanaa Lathan is much better presence as the other woman - until a very stupid ending ruins the whole thing for me. There's one ridiculous twist too many. There's an unearned happy ending. And while John Billingsley provided fun comic relief as Denzel's buddy medical examiner throughout, the kind of comedy they make him do at the end is dumb as rocks. What a waste!