Brian Lowry

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.

The third voyage in the "Priates" trilogy could be touted as "The biggest, loudest and second-best (or second-worst) 'Pirates' ever!" -- not necessarily a ringing endorsement, but honest.

Last Christmas isn't the assembly-line product it could have been, but nor is it as special as it seemingly intended to be.

The Outpost manages to be both harrowing and less than completely involving, a movie that can be admired for its visceral portrayal of war while leaving the characters underdeveloped.

A pleasant-enough all-in-one-night comedy, featuring a protagonist facing the classic "Graduate"-like existential dilemma of post-college paralysis.

A reasonably saucy action tale.

There's an unintended kick, in the current moment, watching a movie designed to make you want to flee the confines of a house.

Full of good intentions, We Are Marshall has a game plan that's hard to fault, but as with any playbook, a scheme is only as good as how well it's executed.

Makes puzzling choices in harvesting the material, mostly providing an incentive to go back and watch the last one again.

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.

Director/co-writer Robert Eggers ("The Lighthouse") has sought to make the definitive Viking movie, and while the film issues a guttural cry for theatrical viewing, it is built around such a basic revenge plot as to blunt those simple charms.

A sort of welcome throwback, a horror movie cleverly designed to be more spooky than truly grisly. That leaves it, however, in a bit of a no-man's land, as this PG-13-rated film is still too scary for the tweens that might be drawn to the challenge and not jarring enough for older horror buffs accustomed to far worse.

Not surprisingly, the pic struggles at times to flesh out even its relatively brief 90-odd-minute duration, but it delivers some genuine if generally low-brow laughs along the way.

Although the movie is visually impressive, the Chinese-American co-production suffers from a too-thin story, built upon a heavy-handed message soaked in that oldest of Disney tropes: a dead mom.

Greta Thunberg's inspiring children's crusade on the climate-change crisis receives dutiful if somewhat sluggish documentary treatment in "I Am Greta," an intimate portrait of the teenage activist that at its best conveys her courage and spirit, before bogging down in what becomes a somewhat repetitious call for action.

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

Campbell's topnotch production team yields predictably polished results, but the director's decision to revisit the late Troy Kennedy Martin's teleplay, finally, feels lacking.

A "Rashomon"-like tale that tells its story from different perspectives, this fact-based adaptation of Eric Jager's book is muddy, bloody and grim but too drawn out in filtering 14th-century feudal norms through a modern prism.

Loud, silly but kind of lame-brained fun with car chases aplenty, "Dukes" faithfully plays like an extended episode of the series, albeit with an additional gallon or so of fuel-injected raunchiness.

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.

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.”

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 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.

The movie conjures some of the goofy charms associated with the franchise, but sags in its midsection like "Endgame"-vintage Thor before nicely rallying at the finish.

Will a movie that scared the bejezus out of moviegoers 30 years ago pack the necessary wallop and carnage to satisfy fans of blood-soaked modern horror? The answer is a qualified yes.

The Pursuit of Happyness is more inspirational than creatively inspired -- imbued with the kind of uplifting, afterschool-special qualities that can trigger a major toothache.

Technically impressive but rather flat and languid storywise, Richard Rich's first feature since leaving Disney only serves to reinforce the stranglehold his old studio still has on the animation market. While a perfectly serviceable confection for small fry, "The Swan Princess" will likely have its neck wrung commercially by all the high-profile competition aimed at the children's/family market this holiday season.

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.