TheAll-SeeingI

Thirty-three years after the arrival of its classic progenitor, "Coming 2 America" reintroduces the signature big-heartedness that empowered the first film to capture generational audiences from one to the next. This is a witty, tonally refreshing movie that employs deft humor to deliver uplift and progressively-realized truths in a day and age yearning for both in spades.

"Coming 2 America" lifts the great comedic pairing of Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall into rarefied air, as Murphy's exquisite King Akeem of Zamunda returns to America with straight man sidekick Semi (Hall) in search of Akeem's royal (male) heir: newly-discovered adult son Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler). The setup yields terrifically humorous opportunities to skewer our racial lunacies, and when they journey back to Zamunda -- joined by Lavelle's resplendent mother Mary (a show-stopping Leslie Jones) -- we find women who refuse to suffer prototypical male foolishness while intellectually operating a step above it all.

Helmed by Craig Brewer (who directed a remarkable Murphy on "Dolemite Is My Name"), "Coming 2 America" expertly leverages and resists nostalgia in equal measure, and proves smart, funny, and radiant in its energy and warmth. Across the board, this is a surprising success. - (Was this Helpful?)

The '80s infamously gave rise to a niche sub-genre of the horror film vehicle, triggering a bloodbath of same-page slasher films that repurposed shared devices and motifs to an enduring effect. With "The Stalker," director John Giorgio gets into his time machine to pay homage to those historical tormentors in what becomes an engaging slab of horror moviemaking.

While Jason's iconic hockey mask from "Friday the 13th" doesn't make an appearance, nostalgically familiar point-of-view shots from the stalker's perspective feature en masse, along with a subterranean synthesizer score and a high gloss artifice cloned from the DNA of its influencers. Yet it's the central theme at the cold heart of "The Stalker" that most assures its transmissions of terror: Few thoughts are as unnerving as those of a predator who can't be stopped, and the characters caught in the sight lines of the film's namesake killer successfully project this with an over-the-top delivery that works.

For committed fans of horror films, "The Stalker" is prerequisite viewing. For all the rest of us, it's a guilty indulgence, and one that's queasy fun to submit to. - (Was this of use? If so, let me know by clicking "Helpful." Cheers!)

Dressed in all the vivid Willy Wonka colors of an oscillating acid trip, the wholly inspired and whip-smart class system satire "Greatland" presents two very disparate worlds in what becomes a wildly headstrong and elite piece of moviemaking from director Dana Ziyasheva.

The young Ulysses (Arman Darbo) introduces the fantastical city of Greatland, a candy-colored mecca in which the downtrodden and their gutted cityscapes are glossed over with glitter, neon, and the distracting encouragement of perpetual fun - as long as it fits the grander schemes of forces that live to assure their own indulgences. When Ulysses' soul mate is sent to Redemption Island, Ulysses leaves the veneers of Greatland to find her, and his quest soon yields the epiphanies we tend to have when we first come to realize how the other half lives.

Improbably evoking black-lit colorizations of "Dr. Strangelove," "The Wizard of Oz," and M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village" in equally warped measure, "Greatland" shows us all the warts and scars respectively worn by the privileged and the distressed, and does it with a distinctness of vision only the best satirical filmmaking has conjured. - (Was this of use? If so, let me know by clicking "Helpful." Cheers!)