Brian Lowry

Even for an action comedy, this Lopez-produced effort is inordinately skewed toward putting everything that might entice someone to watch in the trailer, beginning with the shot of Coolidge hoisting an automatic weapon to defend the wedding party. As hot as she is off “The White Lotus,” she can’t redeem the tiresome execution.

These two Paramount+ projects ultimately feel pretty toothless.

Missing doesn’t try to reinvent the concept so much as recycle it, and the more the audience is willing to just roll with that, the more they’ll enjoy it. Yet even making that allowance, it should be taken as a cautionary note to any plans for future sequels (or reboots) that this sleuthing-by-computer thriller is already beginning to run in low-power mode.

Granted, the overall exercise feels more efficient than inspired, but there’s something to be said for that sort of workmanlike ethic in an old-fashioned “B” movie fashion. Those attributes don’t necessarily merit rushing out to buy a ticket, but wherever and whenever one ends up boarding this flight, taken on its terms, it’s not a bad trip.

Director Gerard Johnstone builds up nicely toward those moments, smartly taking its time before the casualties and coincidences start piling up. The film is also a savvy rumination on the perils of letting technology serve as the ultimate babysitter, with Cady becoming a bit of a little monster herself when deprived of M3GAN’s company.

Pretty easy to tune out.

While the ranks of musicals brought to the screen probably does merit some family planning, “Matilda the Musical” offers a sprightly demonstration that there’s always room for another good one.

Despite a stellar cast and showy moments (given who’s involved how could there not be?), the writer-director’s sprawling, messy, three-hour-plus endurance test isn’t ready for its closeup.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish brings a playful quality to the animated feline as well as a deeper message. When it comes to long-delayed sequels it’s wise to be careful what you wish for, but overall the film manages to nimbly land on its feet.

James Cameron has done it again with Avatar: The Way of Water, a state-of-the-art exercise that rekindles that sense of wonder and demands to be seen by anyone with lingering interest in watching movies in theaters.

Despite its beauty, several of those narrative touches don’t fully work, leaving behind a movie that’s aesthetically lovely but narratively uneven.

While the haunting aspect of the photograph grounds “Emancipation” in reality, there’s a pronounced Hollywood-ized feel to the finished product, one that doesn’t compare favorably with other projects that have covered similar territory, among recent examples the biographical “Harriet” and Amazon’s fictionalized miniseries “The Underground Railroad.”

The love showered on Brendan Fraser out of film festivals inflates expectations for “The Whale” wildly out of proportion, in a movie based on a play that occurs almost entirely within a lone apartment. Weighted down not by its morbidly obese protagonist but rather its stick-thin supporting players, Fraser deserves praise for his buried-under-makeup performance, but that’s not enough to keep the movie afloat.

At the end of Sr., a documentary so personal the word “intimate” almost doesn’t do it justice, Robert Downey Jr. ponders what his 90-minute ode to his father was really all about. The simple answer, stripped of celebrity, is the painful process of saying goodbye to an aging, increasingly infirm parent, filtered through the careers of these two entertainers.

The idea of a nasty Christmas movie is nothing new, but Violent Night still manages to deliver the goods, mixing “Die Hard” and “Rambo”-style action with a fair amount of hokey ho-ho-hokum. David Harbour makes a particularly good cranky, butt-kicking Santa, in a movie that offers the sort of shared experience that should bring theaters some much-needed cheer.

Writer-director Rian Johnson again assembles a solid cast behind Daniel Craig, but it’s his use of language – where nary a word is wasted – that finally gives the sequel its edge.

Amy Adams nimbly steps back into the role of an animated princess trying to adapt to the live-action world, in an epilogue to “Enchanted” that has moments of magic without completely delivering on the premise.

It’s a strange and intriguing but ultimately unsatisfying stew.

At a time when journalism is often under siege, there’s value in displaying its noblest qualities and loftiest aspirations. Even with hiccups and quibbles, She Said achieves that central mission.

Most notable as a vehicle for Jason Momoa, this wannabe spectacle from “The Hunger Games” director Francis Lawrence serves up lots of special effects desperately in search of a story.

For those wondering who would build a giant holiday musical-comedy around Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds, the “produced by Will Ferrell” credit provides a helpful clue. “Spirited” tries turning “A Christmas Carol” on its head, and while it’s big and boisterous, the movie (hitting theaters before Apple TV+) isn’t consistently irreverent enough to feel like much more than a streaming stocking stuffer.

It’s a deeply personal chronicle from one of cinema’s greatest talents, yielding a movie that features wonderful moments within a somewhat scattered narrative.

Say Hey, Willie Mays! is the kind of treat to help tide over baseball fans through the post-season, giving Mays his due while he’s still around to take a bow. It’s a gift for baseball fans who saw him play before he hung up that golden glove nearly 50 years ago, and maybe even more so, for those who didn’t.

In the parlance of Olympic diving – a good analogy for blockbuster movie-making – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever faced an inordinate degree of difficulty, addressing the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman. That the movie manages to strike that somber chord and still deliver as Marvel-style entertainment represents a major accomplishment, though the tension created by those two forces grinding in different directions can’t entirely be ignored.

Opening up about her bipolar disorder is surely a service, but the six-year span encompassed by this intimate Apple TV+ presentation labors to flesh out its revelations into a documentary.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story certainly earns its title, operating, appropriately, not as an actual movie biography but an outlandish parody of one, filled with comedy cameos and bizarre flights of fancy.

The game is afoot (again) in Enola Holmes 2, a wonderful showcase for Millie Bobby Brown that this time manages to work the character’s famous brother, Sherlock, more organically into the mix. Throw in fact-based underpinnings about horrid working conditions during the time and you have the makings for a very polished sequel – one that makes the whole thing look elementary, and a whole lot of fun.

Making the most of its extensive access to Giancarlo Granda, the figure at the center of it all, Hulu’s “God Forbid: The Sex Scandal that Brought Down a Dynasty” pulls back the curtain on a salacious tale of sex, lies, hypocrisy, and political intrigue – for streaming purposes, a divine cocktail if there ever was one.