Brian Lowry

The kill count generally provides the requisite thrills, but everything else seems stitched together from genre clichés.

STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie is a remarkable accomplishment, making brilliant use of film clips to seamlessly illustrate and augment reenactments and the actor’s narration of his story, having spent more than 30 years living with Parkinson’s disease. Nostalgic without becoming overly sentimental, it’s an ode to Fox’s life, career and the struggle he continues to endure.

In hindsight, the most unlikely hit among Marvel’s parade of them was all about the unlikeliest of families. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 drives home that point, with a boisterous and often emotional sequel that feels very much like a true conclusion, fueled in no small part by writer-director James Gunn having migrated his talents over to rival DC.

"Are You There God?” addresses youthful preoccupations in a refreshingly relatable manner that feels almost heaven-sent.

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.

“Chris Evans and Ana de Armas” is about all that’s required to make the sales pitch for “Ghosted,” a spirited if familiar action-based romantic comedy, where the sparring banter generally outshines the muscular stunts. Throw in clever cameos and this Apple TV+ movie delivers on its promise of unpretentious fun.

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.

While this represents a considerably lighter story than his Oscar-winning “Argo,” in terms of its sheer appeal Air flies pretty high indeed, in part because its coach is savvy enough to let his winning lineup of all-stars take the ball and run with it.

Starring Taron Egerton, this Apple TV+ movie, like the game, is colorful and engaging enough that it’s hard to take your eyes off the screen.

The near-four-year gap between movies does help in one respect, allowing people to largely forget what left them unimpressed about the original.

Ultimately, “Dungeons & Dragons” delivers enough laughs and thrills to justify braving a trip to the theater. And for these purposes, that’s game, set and match.

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.

Given the enduring fascination with such material, underscored by all the recent productions about Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, this is one of those stories that seems ripe for a redo. Because even with the uncertainty the one thing “Boston Strangler” makes clear – 55 years after the previous movie – is that when it comes to true crime, some things never go out of style.

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.

It’s more a layup than a slam dunk qualitatively, rattling around a bit before finally paying off.

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.

65 represents such an uninspired effort as to look like a fossil even before the credits roll.

If the last “Scream” movie made noise by wedding the old with the new, Scream VI reinforces how shrewd the producers were in casting the next generation, with Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega ably carrying this chapter of horror’s most self-referential franchise. Throw in a new venue and the same old thrills and kills, and Paramount should be slashing all the way to the bank.

If only the script and story were in the same kind of fighting shape as its leads. Grounding the narrative in Adonis Creed’s past does provide a weightier foundation, but the tradeoff is an element of sluggishness in a movie that, despite its impressive cast, never feels particularly light on its toes.

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.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance is less a coda to the franchise than a muted riff on it, an encore without much of a purpose. What drew director Steven Soderbergh back to material this thin is anybody’s guess, but if strippers like to talk about making it rain, this third and (for now) final entry creatively speaking yields more of a drizzle than a downpour.

The result is a humanizing look at a woman often reduced to cartoon caricature, while occasionally feeling too conspicuously like a licensed product.

The main challenge is that there’s simply not enough heft in the story to fill out this wild-and-crazy weekend, which requires a level of embellishment that alternates between cute and absurd.

As for “JUNG_E,” the film turns out to be visually striking and narratively muddled, with a story that starts somewhere in the middle, throws around lots of provocative science-fiction concepts and comes to a rather abrupt end.