Brian Lowry

Loyalists should be there for the premiere, but after that, one suspects it’s game over.

A 90-some-odd-minute adrenaline rush that gets stretched out a bit beyond its weight even with its modest running time.

"Michael" conveys the feeling of a slickly produced licensed product.

The basic premise could have been called “Lee Cronin’s The Exorcist,” although that probably wouldn’t have cleared legal.

Unlike its protagonist, there’s a refreshing lack of guile or pretense here about what this modest but breezy movie is and wants to be.

Frankly, I’d begin with having future me warn the present-day version to skip this.

The movie rises and falls on Monroe and Withers’ workmanlike performances, leaving it to the heart-tugging subject matter, mostly, to carry it across the finish line.

The stitched-together concept proves too bizarre and disjointed to catch lightning in a bottle.

Deftly serves old wine in an equally old bottle.

Fennell ratchets up the volume to 11, with more emphasis on smoldering and sexuality than literature, at the risk of bastardizing Bronte’s tale beyond recognition.

Whatever the A.I. judge’s verdict, this human one says to wait for streaming.

Landing on Netflix, it’s not terrible, but by the time the credits roll it’s pretty clear why it landed directly on Netflix.

The latest installment is insanely weird, gruesomely violent, and features incredibly hammy roles for Ralph Fiennes and “Sinners’” Jack O’Connell.

A 197-minute epic that piles on breathless rescues and battles in a manner whose ultimate goal seems to be exhaustion as an artistic choice, if not outright “Kneel before Zod” submission.

James L. Brooks has no creative mountains left to climb, but watching the ill-conceived “Ella McCay” it’s hard not to wish he had quit while he was ahead.

Think of “Jay Kelly” as a taller and better-looking version of Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories."

While it’s worth watching, what clearly aspires to be the definitive telling of the story ultimately isn’t.

It feels ready-made fodder for streaming’s “You might like” tier.

In what amounts to damnation with the faintest of praise, Tron: Ares is slightly less incoherent than its most recent predecessor (granted, not a particularly high bar), while taking advantage of the passage of time to improve on the visuals, since “Legacy’s” de-aging process involving original star Jeff Bridges served as a lifeless distraction.

A vehicle with roughly the weight of a stiff breeze.

“Axel F” only turns up the heat to a low simmer, but as breezy escapism goes, those armed with the proper attitude might find themselves doing the neutron dance, or a version of it, all over again.

A tired, disjointed medley of madcap visual gags, the animated film yields roughly as many legitimate laughs as can be counted on a Minion’s three-digit hand.

Even setting the expectations bar at a modest height, though, the movie doesn’t quite clear it – another case, in rom-com terms, where the idea of them, as a marquee matchup, proves superior to the execution.

“Horizon” tells such a sprawling story that this introductory chapter, despite strong moments, proves especially scattered, rolling out numerous characters on separate fronts without connecting them.

Trigger Warning might not be packing anything unexpected in the chamber, but for those who come to it with the proper mind-set, the movie doesn’t wind up firing blanks either.

While it’s fun seeing “The Breakfast Club” as they near “The Early-Bird Dinner Club” years, this is one of those projects that would have benefited from a more journalistic tone.

The result has that calculated, tired feel about it, with a few moments of kinetic action but not enough to make the film play like anything more than a relic.

A nonstop sci-fi action movie that basically gets the job done with a plot that recalls Disney’s “Big Hero 6,” just with a lot more cursing.

The best parts should strike a mildly receptive chord with parents while potentially boring younger kids, a prescription that could subject the movie’s imaginary friends to a harsh reality once audiences in summer-movie mode get a good look at it.

Far from a passion project, this Netflix film distinctly feels – as one of its writers says in the production notes – like a punchline in search of a movie, built on a soggy parade of sugary cameos that doesn’t provide much snap, crackle and pop.

The Idea of You will likely be most satisfying for those who choose not to sweat the details, enjoying the scenery and fantasy wrapped up in it. Think of it as one of those movies that really reinforces the adage there are no new ideas, just fresh versions of old ones set to different beats.

The Fall Guy is too flat in the early going to fully meet that challenge, rallying toward the end without reaching the heights required to make a really big splash.

Alas, the characters and dialogue remain clunky, which shouldn’t be surprising given how derivative almost every beat of this is, down to the robot voiced by Anthony Hopkins.

As war movies go, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare ends up in a kind of no-man’s land, draping elements of “Mission: Impossible,” “Inglourious Basterds” and director Guy Ritchie’s brand of violent action-comedy over the bones of a fascinating World War II true story. The underwritten, somewhat messy results are broadly entertaining if not fully seaworthy from a dramatic point of view.

“Scoop” juggles so many timely balls it’s a bit of a shame the film doesn’t accomplish that task with more dexterity.

The result is a sturdy but unspectacular film, one that honors Chisholm’s place in history while representing just one, too-concentrated facet of her giant shadow.

For an actor known for having led his crew as it boldly explored humankind’s final frontier, “You Can Call Me Bill,” somewhat disappointingly, takes its extensive access to Shatner and doesn’t go much of anywhere.

Sweeney ably carries the film on that level, though there are beats courtesy of director Michael Mohan and screenwriter Andrew Lobel as likely to elicit uncomfortable chuckles from the audience as fear.

Granted, the cast is too talented not to conjure a few amusing moments, but it’s hard to escape the sense of a movie that’s sleepwalking through the old neighborhood as opposed to playfully strolling down memory lane.

The challenge with any reboot invariably involves capturing what people liked about its inspiration while bringing fresh wrinkles to it. On that level “Road House” moderately works – specifically, for the intended audience – with the disclaimer that trying to look bigger and being bigger aren’t necessarily one and the same.

Built atop a provocative-sounding title and premise, The American Society of Magical Negroes starts and ends quite well. Almost everything in between, alas, proves uneven and inert in a way that dilutes its satirical punch, making this an interesting introduction for first-time writer-director Kobi Libii but a less than satisfying one.

Ricky Stanicky might be imaginary and doesn’t measure up to its promise, but in terms of that basket within the wrestler-turned-actor’s filmography, it at least fits Cena like a glove.

Spaceman feels a little too weighty in its reliance on emotional cliches. Whether that’s ultimately due to the underlying material or the heavy hand brought to translating it, the net effect is a failure to launch.

What “One Love” doesn’t do, ultimately, is provide enough material to distinguish the movie from the contours of an authorized biography or documentary. In that sense, the film pays tribute to Marley’s work but winds up hampered by a love for its subject that works against its ability to deliver major insights or rock-star-level drama.

Ultimately, Madame Web might have sounded like an interesting experiment, and it sort of is, but the execution feels less like a fully realized film than an extended prologue for a movie to come.

The result is an interesting misfire, yielding a few amusing moments while adding up to considerably less than the sum of its parts.

Despite the gravity of the situation (or lack thereof), the promising idea feels too weightless in the spare, underdeveloped execution, operating at the edges of a good movie without reaching that orbit.

Intermittently amusing and surely interesting, "Lebowitz" falls victim to the classic faux pas of overstaying its welcome.

Both in its cultural specificity and the passage of time, Society of the Snow delivers a credible take on a remarkable story – augmented by the prolific Michael Giacchino’s score – while hampered somewhat by the limitations imposed by how those events unfolded.

“Ferrari” doesn’t click on all cylinders, featuring a miscast Adam Driver as the automotive mogul, in a Michael Mann-directed movie with some arresting moments that add up to less than the sum of its parts.

Steeped in old-fashioned virtues and a feel-good underdog story, The Boys in the Boat isn’t bad, but it doesn’t ever navigate its way out of the shallow end of the sports-movie pool either.

The best one can say about this mildly fun film is that it runs a brisk 80-something minutes, meaning parents can take the kids and have time left over for other holiday errands.

Mostly, this fun-in-the-sun romp in Australia (because hey, it’s summer there) serves as a showcase for Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, who amiably meet the demands of the exercise even if the script only occasionally follows suit.

“Rebel Moon” might look big and splashy, even on a TV screen, but in terms of working as drama, it’s less a rebel yell than a low-key rebel grunt.

Director James Wan again fills the screen with spectacle, some of it unevenly rendered, though even eye-popping digital effects couldn’t compensate for the frequent flatness of the dialogue and situations.

The story plays like a rather tired excuse to redo the first story with a few cosmetic tweaks, hoping to tap into adult nostalgia while potentially attracting a new generation of kids.

The movie’s earnestness can’t wriggle away from the pretty powerful temptation to tap out.

In the charitable spirit of the season, Candy Cane Lane serves as a passable addition to the annual parade of holiday movies trotted out each year. Yet even by that unexacting standard, there’s barely enough juice here to keep the lights on.

Despite a glittering pedigree, the result is an earnest film deficient in the inspirational qualities of its subject matter.

There’s obviously some talent at work here, but not much in the way of stretching, and the initial energy and sheer dorkiness doesn’t generate enough laughs – some decidedly low-brow (like John’s fascination with videos of mating animals), others cleverer – to sustain a movie.

Clocking in at a welcomely brisk 105 minutes, it’s Marvel’s shortest film, but a lighter tone that occasionally borders on a sort of cosmic “Freaky Friday” doesn’t consistently make the movie fly, much less soar.

Sly possesses value as a pop-culture record, letting an influential talent tell their story to those weaned on their work. Compared to the best of that fertile genre, though, it’s more of a lightweight than a genuine contender.

A fairly limp documentary.

The dramatic height difference between the leads accomplishes a great deal of work in “Priscilla,” visually conveying the power disparity between superstar Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu, who he began wooing when she was just 14. Unfortunately, writer-director Sofia Coppola’s version of this oft-told story moves at a snail’s pace, offering fine performances but little to set one’s soul – or anything else – on fire.

Like “It,” “Five Nights” wants to milk horror out of something associated with the innocence of childhood, and on that level the quirkiness of the visuals and initial moments of wit likely provide enough of what audiences want to survive, commercially speaking. Even so, the net result is another slice of horror that at best feels a little half-baked.

Burr’s fans will doubtless find plenty to like in “Old Dads,” even if the movie sandpapers down his rough edges and causes him to question his cave-man mentality.

There’s a difference between “long” and “epic,” although in movie terms the two frequently get confused. Martin Scorsese delivers the former but not the latter with Killers of the Flower Moon.

Expanding upon King’s creepy concept represents a reasonably solid October-timed diversion amid the latest gluttonous wave of movies and TV derived from his writing.

While the film traffics in thoughtful ideas as well as spectacle, it doesn’t complete the vital emotional connections between its head and its heart.

The Nun II doesn’t trifle with the formula, which relies heavily on jump-out-at-you scares, vivid nightmares and spooky spectral visions.

Choose Love strains the storytelling to fit the gimmick, in a special that does its central character no favors by making her race through the trio of suitors suddenly in her life.

Set in Berlin, the Speed-like conceit possesses a crisp and efficient stupidity before, predictably, running out of gas.

As underdog car-racing movies go, think of “Gran Turismo” as “Nerd v. Ferrari.” Solidly assembled but less stirring than it should be – in part because it takes too many laps – the film moves, ironically, too slow to deliver as a big-screen attraction but might fare better with its eventual pitstops on at-home platforms.

Blue Beetle tends to fare best in its smaller moments, which merely reinforces the concept’s limitations thanks in part to the sheer glut of similar fare driven by streaming. The cultural specificity is also an asset but feels rushed in a format that, unlike the pacing of a series, creates a greater imperative to get to the next battle.

A self-conscious effort to build a spy franchise around Gal Gadot, Heart of Stone plays like a poor woman’s “Mission: Impossible,” mostly thwarting even its star’s Wonder-ful charisma. Despite solid action moments scattered over its two hours, this Netflix movie plays like an inoffensive but lifeless addition to the “You might like” feature that, alas, you probably won’t.

The film goes from Shark Week to shark weak – from playfully amusing to just plain stupid, eliciting enough laughs in the wrong places to make an advance screening virtually interactive.

Energetic and sporadically funny, it’s a passable effort to jump-start a comic-book franchise that has enjoyed a long if uneven crawl across the screen.

Despite its satirical tone, The Beanie Bubble largely plays things pretty straight – indeed, a little too straight, when a bit more humor and whimsy would have helped – with Galifianakis portraying Warner as the kind of self-absorbed, ruthless narcissist who’ll say anything to get what he wants (or really, needs) without necessarily possessing the savvy or discipline to hold onto it.

Disney’s latest renovation of “Haunted Mansion” is certainly clever in building off the foundation of the theme-park ride, with a darker streak than the last stab 20 years ago that starred Eddie Murphy. Yet even with a solid cast yielding good moments, there’s a general flatness to it, and a sense the movie is seeking to scare up what it can in theaters before settling into its natural haunting grounds on Disney+.

Built around a predominantly Asian-American cast, it’s so determined to be crude and edgy that while its friendship dynamic lingers, its initial cleverness gets left in the rear-view mirror.

The Perfect Find falls well short of perfection, but it’s the kind of low-key romance that often finds an appreciative audience on Netflix.

The sequel, Extraction 2, hammers away at the same basic outline, while feeling particularly simple minded even by the standards of the genre.

Playfully presented, it’s the kind of mildly tasty cinematic snack that doesn’t exactly stick to your ribs.

A simple-minded strain of giant-robot combat. Much in need of a script tune-up, it’s a less-than-meets-the-eye summer-movie machine, and not a particularly well-oiled one.

While the movie remains a dazzling experience in terms of what the animation achieves, it indulges in what feels like sensory overload, seeking emotional heft in ways that slow down the action. The movie also falls victim, somewhat, to the blessings and curses associated with the multiverse, which offers infinite possibilities but also the occasional sense that there are so many permutations none of them matter all that much.

At its best this White Men Can’t Jump conveys the fragility of hoop dreams, while tackling what former players do with their lives once the promise of signing bonuses and sponsorship deals appears to have fizzled. (NBA star Blake Griffin, incidentally, is among the producers, joining several of his contemporaries in establishing a Hollywood toehold while still suiting up.)... On that level, at least, the movie works reasonably well. It’s the hitches in the rest of its game that prevent it, even as a streaming proposition, from being anything close to a slam dunk.

Yet for all its high-octane action this tenth film is really just revving its engine for more sequels to come, kicking off a multi-part story that offers an appropriately bloated way to bring this very loud enterprise to a (no doubt temporary) finish.

While there are some new details in the telling, the net effect leaves the Smith that people didn’t know, other than those meticulously airbrushed photo spreads, largely untouched.

Peter Pan & Wendy wants to conjure magic but turns out to be low on fairy dust, yielding a dreary live-action adaptation of the 1953 movie that transforms Neverland into what vaguely feels like a discount version of Pandora.

Written and directed by Lee Cronin, the wit and humor that Campbell brought to past incarnations (including a Starz series revival) is in relatively short supply here. The film rather relies upon lots of jump scares and gruesome makeup effects, as well as the prospect of Ellie’s possessed form trying to do in her kids. That includes her very-young daughter (Nell Fisher), a semi-distasteful element even by the standards of the genre.

What’s billed as a horror-comedy thus can’t entirely decide where it wishes to land on that spectrum, in a movie that benefits from letting Cage cut loose without fully capitalizing upon his full-throated performance.

A more-is-less epic that showcases the dazzling stunt work for which the franchise is known while piling on the action to near-exhausting extremes.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods provides a lightning-bolt-shaped exclamation point on the realization this comedic superhero franchise was, in fact, a one-trick pony – fine for a playful origin story, without enough voltage for an encore. Everything that worked in the original works less well in this so-so sequel, blunting even the star power emitted by its high-profile villains.

Champions has its heart in the right place, trying to teach the audience, through Marcus, to see his players and the actors portraying them without condescension. It’s possible to admire the message, though, without thinking much of a movie that, Marcus’ aspirations notwithstanding, belongs in the minor leagues.

The title, however, feels particularly apt in describing a series that burned quite brightly when it first arose, and despite the light and heat cast by its charismatic lead, gradually fizzled, faded and flamed out.

Director Elizabeth Banks conjures bursts of absurdist energy and humor without delivering anything approaching a sustained rush.

Ant-Man is a somewhat ironic choice for a very, very big job: Kicking off the next phase of Marvel movies. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania works on one key level, establishing Kang the Conqueror as a truly formidable and worthy villain. Yet with its plunge into inner space, “Ant-Man” comes up short in almost every other way that matters.

Your Place or Mine will probably do just fine for Netflix, standing out from a pack of Valentine’s Day-timed rom-coms because Witherspoon is her, and Kutcher is him. But those awkward red-carpet photos weren’t the only part of this exercise that didn’t quite work, whatever place one happens to watch it.