Brian Lowry

Mulan is big, sumptuous entertainment. It's good, but not great, transforming the story associated with the 1998 animated musical into a song-free, live-action movie that's more adequate than transcendent -- a perfectly reasonable family-viewing investment that's worth seeing, but not necessarily a must-buy.

Another adventure in nostalgia that nobody really needed and yet, if not excellent, manages to be good-hearted and reasonably fun.

The film simply lurches loudly from one mundane action scene to the next.

The closing kick of The One and Only Ivan is somewhat stirring -- and certainly works hard at being so -- but it's pretty tepid until then.

A small-scale movie with a throwback drive-in feel that loses nothing in an at-home setting, and based on its minimal merit, has little to lose in any event.

The undercooked plot works just well enough to fuel this vehicle for Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, mashing up old movies in a fast-paced package.

One of the year's best documentaries, Boys State presents a fascinating look at teenagers brought together for an exercise in government, which somehow manages to unerringly encapsulate partisan divisions in the US right now. An opening medley of past participants -- including Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Cory Booker, Rush Limbaugh and Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito -- only stokes curiosity about where these youngsters will be 30 or 40 years from now.

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

Howard serves as a fitting celebration of that life and career. It's a chance for those who knew him to pause and fondly look back, in a way that merely adds to an appreciation of the parade that he helped start.

This adaptation of Simon Rich's novella has some fun contemplating how the modern world would like to a 20th-century immigrant, before scraping the barrel for deeper themes.

The Secret: Dare to Dream at best feels like a tepid distraction even for those receptive to its blueprint, far from the stuff that dreams are made of.

The American Civil Liberties Union battles the Trump administration on multiple fronts in "The Fight," an excellent documentary that captures the heady political moment for which the organization was born. Presented in a taut, tense way, it's a glimpse into what makes the ACLU tick with the pacing and stakes of a dramatic thriller.

The Go-Go's has pretty much everything you'd want in a rock documentary, presenting an oral history of the chart-topping all-female group with sex, drugs, music, money, and the intramural squabbling and wounded egos great success tends to unleash. Hard to believe it's been 40 years, but anyone who remembers the band should fall head over heels once again.

Tesla even more aggressively incorporates documentary-style techniques and weird anachronisms into the drama. His story is essentially narrated by Morgan's daughter, Anne (Eve Hewson), in a way that gives the movie a decidedly off-kilter spin. At one point, Hawke even sings a few bars of the 1980s song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," recorded decades after Tesla's death.

Neither film is especially memorable, which is too bad, squandering Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie and Ethan Hawke, very intense and brooding as Nikola Tesla.

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.

Playing an aging star estranged from her daughter might not seem like a major stretch, but Deneuve and Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda (whose "Shoplifters" took top honors at the Cannes Film Festival) spin that premise into a cinematic breath of fresh air.

Lewis -- who is battling pancreatic cancer -- was not much more than a kid when he marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr., and has seemingly lived three lives since then. That's why despite the documentary's uneven aspects, his legacy is ample motivation for any student of history to see Good Trouble as a good investment.

A central takeaway is not only about the man but the warm nostalgia that he represents -- the memories, as Miranda and others recall, of grandmothers hushing them during the minutes he came on each day, running through the Zodiac with horoscopes filled with a persistent sense of hope.

Directed by Brett Harvey, Inmate #1 has a few minor flaws, including an overly sappy musical score. Still, its subject is so inherently likable that a feature-length dose of Trejo's boundless energy feels like the kind of adrenaline shot we can use right about now.

The film turns out to be a fun but thin construct, fostering a sense of itchiness to see how and if it's going to pay off.

Greyhound is kind of an odd duck -- another World War II tale courtesy of Tom Hanks, who wrote and produced the film through his company in addition to starring in it. Old-fashioned and relatively small in scale, it's a sturdy if unspectacular depiction of the Battle of the Atlantic, streaming ashore via Apple TV+ instead of a planned theatrical release.

Granted, nothing can fully replicate the unique qualities of a live theatrical experience. But if anyone doubts that Hamilton can still deliver a Broadway wallop to the comfort of one's couch, well, just you wait.

Jon Stewart resurfaces with a politically savvy directorial effort, Irresistible, that's a bit too heavy-handed to live up to its title. Delving into the corrosive influence of money on politics, Stewart's second film exhibits passion for its topic and cleverly registers an important point before it's over, but labors too much getting there.

It is, frankly, a lot to absorb — and would risk crumbling under the weight of Lee’s ambition were it not for the second gut punch to the region that BP’s horrifying blunder delivered.

It's also a terrific showcase for star Nicole Beharie.

What sets Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn apart is the personal connection for director Ivy Meeropol, the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

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