Carla Meyer

Entertainment value and reasonable length still make the film a decent, low-effort option for home viewers — especially those already subscribed to Hulu.

Stewart’s impact is evident within the first hour of “Martha.” That’s a good thing, because the younger audience this film might be targeting lacks the patience for another hour of Cutler’s photo parade, no matter how extraordinary his subject.

Laura Dern is not a wizard. She cannot make the dumb and formulaic elements of her romance/travelogue movie “Lonely Planet” disappear. But Dern brings such authenticity to Katherine, her confident, matter-of-fact successful author character, that her performance often outweighs this Netflix movie’s flaws.

House of Spoils suffers most from genre hybridization. The more explicit horror moments feel grafted on to what is essentially a character study with mystery elements. But as “Speak No Evil” recently demonstrated, Blumhouse no longer signifies low-budget, terrifying horror. The brand has become shorthand for movies lacking clear identities.

The body-swap movie “It’s What’s Inside” dazzles up to the moment its plot gets going.

As it speeds toward conclusion, “Supremes” also stops subverting its more maudlin aspects, allowing a descent into soap operatic moments.

The buddy comedy “Babes” offers keen insights into pregnancy, parenting and longtime friendships, although many get lost in the movie’s bodily function-joke jamboree.

The whole cast is likable and the scenery lovely, making this only the second-worst Shields beach movie, after “The Blue Lagoon.”

The Color Purple now has been a movie, a Broadway show, a revived Broadway show and movie musical when it always should have been a TV miniseries.

Before it becomes entirely too Australian, the well-crafted haunted-hand horror movie Talk to Me perfectly captures the one-upmanship of social-media-fueled youth culture.

The Little Mermaid origin story lacks room for this more feminist take. It simply is not deep enough.

At its titanium core, M3GAN is a mostly on-the-mark commentary on our tech dependence.

Something From Tiffany’s rides the line between Hallmark cheese and the Hollywood gloss of big-screen rom-coms once headlined by its producer, Reese Witherspoon. It emerges as a top entry in the former category and a middling example of the latter, with lots of nice moments along the way.

A clever mishmash of Hitchcockian and 1980s and ’90s high school movie sensibilities, the Netflix dark comedy Do Revenge falters when it tries to grow a heart.

Penguin is the film’s most fleshed-out character. We know the bird’s origin story, but nobody else’s.

Despite most everything else in the movie being predictable, Bray’s mystery is hard to guess.

But most every moment Ford is in on screen is a welcome one. Buck seems more real when in Ford’s presence.

Although this story line’s turns are easy to anticipate, the seriousness with which Fellowes approaches it is refreshing in an otherwise lightweight film.

Were “Vita” better developed and edited, one might find joy in its rejection of the patriarchy. But the female-friendly dialogue relies too heavily on exposition. Nobody asks if anyone wants a cup of tea.

The relentlessly downbeat drama American Woman is a star vehicle that lets Sienna Miller (“American Sniper,” HBO’s “The Girl”) really show what she can do. But she does too much.

There is simply too much going on, in these separate storylines, for too long. There is a literal “meanwhile, back at the farm” quality to the movie, because it becomes so involved with subplots that you only remember Max and Rooster at the farm when the action shifts back to it.

The Little Stranger will satisfy a very specific audience: “Downton Abbey” watchers who thought that show would be perfect if only the manor were down at the heels and haunted.

Teen Titans never reaches that sweet spot where adult and kid humor align in a single gag.

Buscemi is characteristically likable here, when Del, mercenary in his treatment of human and beast, should not be so likable. Such is the curse of Buscemi, the delightful killer from “Fargo.”

There’s authenticity in the coach’s belted khaki shorts and in the anguish Hunt brings to a moment where the coach no longer can bear being at her star player’s wake. This moment is the film’s most moving until images of the real coach, and real Caroline Found, accompany the credits.

That story proves paper thin, and requires believing Amanda is devoid of empathy yet devoted to Lily — concepts too at odds to be plausible together.

The only clear message to emerge here is that Kruger is a world-class talent.

Here is more ambiguity, in a film that needs less of it.