Brian Lowry

There’s something unfortunately symbolic about Jurassic World: Dominion, which combines old and new DNA from the near-three-decade-old franchise and generates a pretty mindless mess … an XL-sized mediocrity out of the gene pool’s shallow end.

It’s the kind of star-driven vehicle that yields obvious benefits to Netflix even if, qualitatively speaking, it doesn’t deserve to see the light of day.

Again rated R after softening the rougher edges the last time, the body count is certainly off-the-charts high, but the action – under the guidance of stunt coordinator-turned-director Scott Waugh (“Need for Speed”) – is about as generic as these things get.

Horror movies are no strangers to social commentary, or the desire to be cathartic in how they use violence. Yet the latest example of those impulses, They/Them, illustrates how tricky that proposition can be, in a story that at various times feels creepy, exploitative and preachy, without becoming particularly tense or scary.

This is one of those movies that’s forgotten almost as soon as it ends, and it doesn’t even require any chemical intervention in order to erase the memory.

Watching The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe serves as a reminder, to paraphrase Elton John’s musical tribute, that her candle burned out long before the exploitation of her ever did.

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

Debates over LeBron James' greatness compared to Michael Jordan on a basketball court will continue in perpetuity, but "Space Jam: A New Legacy" won't fuel much chatter about who's the better actor. Putting James in Jordan's shoes, as it were, isn't a bad idea in theory, but despite the odd moment of inspired Looney Tune-acy, this reboot shoots a very loud and thudding airball.

Even taking it as a given that Disney’s animated classics will all receive live-action makeovers eventually, Pinocchio feels like an unnecessary exercise – a movie so flat that it never sparks to life, and barely feels as if it’s making the leap into a different medium.

Cats isn't quite the unmitigated disaster that some feared -- or perversely hoped -- but it's not good, delivering a mostly incoherent adaptation of the long-running musical. An eclectic roster of stars claw out a few meager moments, but as screen experiences go, this is a memory best forgotten.

An understated, uneventful slog of a movie that feels like a misguided merger of "Gran Torino" and "Bronco Billy."

Splitting the movie into three chapters seems appropriate, since the film delivers a trifecta: overwrought, overacted, and overlong.

For Cox, a veteran actor with no mountains left to climb and few concerns about speaking his mind, Prisoner’s Daughter plays like one of those movies where you just take the money and run.

The result is a movie with an exceedingly narrow target audience that should test Will Ferrell's appeal among boys maybe ages 12-14 -- about the only demo likely able to endure this laborious mess.

So episodic and flat it should be a letdown even to those amused by the original.

A lifeless, workmanlike comedy conceived to provide holiday shoppers an inoffensive respite from the mall.

While some might find it possible to have fun by surrendering to the silliness, this bad moon doesn't quite rise even to the level of a guilty pleasure.

If the previous movie conjured a bit of excitement by eradicating everything that had transpired after the original, that sense of novelty has quickly worn off.

Peaks early -- like, during the first three minutes -- and rapidly goes downhill from there.

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.

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

The Forever Purge's once-over-lightly politics don't merit much of a fuss, playing like a cynical exploitation of real-world issues.

Apatow serves up some clever lines, but they're mostly lost in the overall noise and manic tone. While it's not necessarily too soon for a funny Covid movie, The Bubble labors to achieve a sought-after level of zaniness right up until the ending.

A sort-of psychological, semi-erotic drama that, despite its literary pretensions, possesses roughly the intellectual heft of a perfume ad.

Pic is at best a relatively harmless way to enjoy air conditioning for those who admire Williams' ability to riff, even at his most irritating.

Ultimately, it's a marketing pitch in search of a movie that proves punishingly flat.

Spiral, however, doesn't chart its own course as much as simply try to have it both ways. And if the title implies a certain motion, the main direction the movie heads is essentially down the drain.

Although streaming provides a logical venue for this small-scale film, it's hard to think of a time or platform where this adaptation from British director Joe Wright ("Darkest Hour," "Atonement") would have felt satisfying, with an ill-considered, twisty finish that's a sizable letdown from the already so-so material preceding it.