Isaac Feldberg

Disney+As warm, fuzzy, and deeply felt as a hug from Fozzie Bear, Ron Howard’s new documentary takes the measure of Jim Henson, the man behind the Muppets (and Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth), as both a creative genius and a family man, exploring his revolutionary spirit and dedication to craft across a 36-year career.In Jim Henson Idea Man, which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and streams on Disney+ starting May 31, Howard tenderly eulogizes the late puppeteer and animator while traveling the span of his life—no small feat for a 108-minute documentary, but one that Howard attempts by proposing a broader paean to Henson’s ingenuity rather than diving too deeply beneath the surface.Made with the direct participation of the Henson family, and with full access to his personal archives, this very authorized documentary was never going to be a controversial or even unconventional portrait of its subject, and to that end a filmmaker as steady and workmanlike as Howard is well-suited for the task. Before moving into feature filmmaking, Howard was a child star of The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days, on television at the same time as The Muppet Show, and the filmmaker’s clear admiration for Henson comes through strongly, perhaps not because they could be considered peers but because Howard was there when it happened.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Bleeker StreetWhat’s a heavyweight cast like that—Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Robert De Niro, Whoopi Goldberg, Vera Farmiga, Rainn Wilson from The Office—doing in a melodramatic misfire like this?Ezra has its heart in the right place, but that’s the best that can be said about Tony Goldwyn’s strained family drama, which lacks trust in the intrinsic power of its depiction of parents raising a 11-year-old who is neurodiverse, stacking the audience’s sympathies with a manipulative story of parental abduction, cross-country road trips, and Jimmy Kimmel Live, squandering goodwill as it goes.Cannavale stars as New York comedy writer Max, who’s pursuing a career in stand-up but can scarcely get through his sets at the Comedy Cellar without self-sabotaging. That the jokes we hear him deliver are the types of groaners you’d never expect to leave the safety of a writer’s notepad (“I met my inner child, and he had a gun”) is par for the course with a character who’s at the mercy of his own compulsions, either oblivious to his impact on others or unable to get out of his own way.Read more at The Daily Beast.