While the film traffics in thoughtful ideas as well as spectacle, it doesn’t complete the vital emotional connections between its head and its heart.

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.

Dumb Money might lose a little nuance and complexity in corralling all its facets into movie form, but boiled down to what will please an audience (in theaters, or more likely later at home), the smart money says most people won’t care.

Still, as first impressions go, “Love at First Sight” works nicely on the intended level for those sent in its “You might like” direction. For Netflix’s purposes, the odds are that adds up to all the love it needs.

“A Haunting in Venice” continues a brand of breezy entertainment that suggests whatever the detective’s goals, retirement doesn’t appear to be in the cards.

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

The Equalizer 3 might not be totally convincing as a “final” anything; still, the latest outing does have the benefit of feeling like it reaches a nice point at which to close the books for now on Robert McCall, all things, you know, being equal.

Choose Love strains the storytelling to fit the gimmick, in a special that does its central character no favors by making her race through the trio of suitors suddenly in her life.

A familiar but very nicely done coming-of-age story.

Set in Berlin, the Speed-like conceit possesses a crisp and efficient stupidity before, predictably, running out of gas.

As underdog car-racing movies go, think of “Gran Turismo” as “Nerd v. Ferrari.” Solidly assembled but less stirring than it should be – in part because it takes too many laps – the film moves, ironically, too slow to deliver as a big-screen attraction but might fare better with its eventual pitstops on at-home platforms.

Those who give in to the gleeful crudeness of it all will be rewarded with some funny moments courtesy of the near-unrelenting dog’s-eye view, although fair warning, most of the best stuff is in the red-band trailer.

Blue Beetle tends to fare best in its smaller moments, which merely reinforces the concept’s limitations thanks in part to the sheer glut of similar fare driven by streaming. The cultural specificity is also an asset but feels rushed in a format that, unlike the pacing of a series, creates a greater imperative to get to the next battle.

A self-conscious effort to build a spy franchise around Gal Gadot, Heart of Stone plays like a poor woman’s “Mission: Impossible,” mostly thwarting even its star’s Wonder-ful charisma. Despite solid action moments scattered over its two hours, this Netflix movie plays like an inoffensive but lifeless addition to the “You might like” feature that, alas, you probably won’t.

The film goes from Shark Week to shark weak – from playfully amusing to just plain stupid, eliciting enough laughs in the wrong places to make an advance screening virtually interactive.

Energetic and sporadically funny, it’s a passable effort to jump-start a comic-book franchise that has enjoyed a long if uneven crawl across the screen.

Despite its satirical tone, The Beanie Bubble largely plays things pretty straight – indeed, a little too straight, when a bit more humor and whimsy would have helped – with Galifianakis portraying Warner as the kind of self-absorbed, ruthless narcissist who’ll say anything to get what he wants (or really, needs) without necessarily possessing the savvy or discipline to hold onto it.

Disney’s latest renovation of “Haunted Mansion” is certainly clever in building off the foundation of the theme-park ride, with a darker streak than the last stab 20 years ago that starred Eddie Murphy. Yet even with a solid cast yielding good moments, there’s a general flatness to it, and a sense the movie is seeking to scare up what it can in theaters before settling into its natural haunting grounds on Disney+.

Slow to start, the movie taps into a genre of “What’s behind the curtain?” paranoia that’s provocative, if a little slim on detail.

Unlike most biographical documentaries, “Stephen Curry: Underrated” benefits from having two very distinct windows in mind, both buttressing its underlying point: Curry as a barely recruited, under-sized high school prospect, before merging as a college star at Davidson; and his most recent title with the Golden State Warriors. Either would be good enough, but put together, “Underrated” shoots and scores.

Writer-director Christopher Nolan’s epic film essentially consists of three chapters, with the middle, Atlas-like, holding up the weaker, drawn-out beginning and end.

“Barbie” comes roaring out of the gate with an inventiveness and energy the movie perhaps inevitably can’t sustain. Amid all the hype that has made its release an increasingly rare movie-going occasion, director Greta Gerwig’s film proves an admirably ambitious attempt to ponder where Barbie fits in the 21st century – less than it could be, but pretty close to being what it should be.

The requisite thrills are there, as well as the flourishes that audiences have come to expect from the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, from the ornate masks and disguises (a staple of the original show too) to the death-defying stunts (clearly a made-for-the-movies upgrade to the formula).

Built around a predominantly Asian-American cast, it’s so determined to be crude and edgy that while its friendship dynamic lingers, its initial cleverness gets left in the rear-view mirror.

While the documentary doesn’t break much new ground, Kijak generally finds the right balance between the salacious elements and Hollywood nostalgia that remain inextricably intertwined in Hudson’s story.

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 story certainly doesn’t break new ground, and given the modest nature of the movie, there’s a bit of impatience to get where it’s going; still, thanks to Snook and LaTorre’s beyond-her-years performance it’s never less than watchable.

Feeling the years and the miles, Harrison Ford cracks the whip for the last time, in a film that offers the requisite thrills and proves fairly emotional before it’s over.

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.

Part French sex comedy, part “American Pie”-like coming-of-age story, this raunchy vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence also possesses darker and deeper streaks that elevate it above its “Pretty. Awkward.” posters.

The sequel, Extraction 2, hammers away at the same basic outline, while feeling particularly simple minded even by the standards of the genre.

Like other self-referential horror/comedies (the “Scream” franchise come to mind), the film ably delivers on its premise, mining enough life from its satirical concept to deliver plenty of crowd-pleasing moments.

“Stan Lee” is obviously intended to be celebratory in nature, but by allowing Lee to tell the story largely in his own words, it conveys a genuine sense of what made him as big and colorful as any of the spandex-clad figures that he helped birth and spring off the page.

Elemental doesn’t quite join the studio’s hallowed top tier, but it does yield moments of magic and beauty – reflecting both the immigrant experience as well as the power of love – worthy of that legacy.

Playfully presented, it’s the kind of mildly tasty cinematic snack that doesn’t exactly stick to your ribs.

DC finds itself at a bit of a crossroads. Yet that timing makes it all the more impressive to see how “The Flash” has managed to click on all cylinders, pay respect to the company’s past while achieving the kind of balance that could and perhaps should point the way to its future.

A simple-minded strain of giant-robot combat. Much in need of a script tune-up, it’s a less-than-meets-the-eye summer-movie machine, and not a particularly well-oiled one.

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.

As is so often the case with these movies, the buildup is generally more terrifying than the payoff, and Savage doesn’t scrimp when it comes to jump-at-you scares.

Reality might have benefited from widening the play’s tight, almost-claustrophobic focus a little bit more for this medium, but what’s there remains stark and compelling, with Sweeney’s discomfort speaking volumes even though the character says very little.

The Little Mermaid is both slick and satisfying, meeting the primary challenge of allowing parents and kids to create memories around seeing it together. Setting aside its other assets, Bailey’s out-of-this-world contribution alone serves up the kind of splashy entertainment that justifies getting out of the summer sun, and in terms of being enjoyed far beyond that, might even have legs.

Even in a boom time for musical profiles, this HBO presentation shines brighter than most.

At its best this White Men Can’t Jump conveys the fragility of hoop dreams, while tackling what former players do with their lives once the promise of signing bonuses and sponsorship deals appears to have fizzled. (NBA star Blake Griffin, incidentally, is among the producers, joining several of his contemporaries in establishing a Hollywood toehold while still suiting up.)... On that level, at least, the movie works reasonably well. It’s the hitches in the rest of its game that prevent it, even as a streaming proposition, from being anything close to a slam dunk.

Yet for all its high-octane action this tenth film is really just revving its engine for more sequels to come, kicking off a multi-part story that offers an appropriately bloated way to bring this very loud enterprise to a (no doubt temporary) finish.

While there are some new details in the telling, the net effect leaves the Smith that people didn’t know, other than those meticulously airbrushed photo spreads, largely untouched.

A spare thriller from director/co-writer Robert Rodriguez that has the feel of a “Twilight Zone” episode, with no shortage of twists along the way.

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

STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie is a remarkable accomplishment, making brilliant use of film clips to seamlessly illustrate and augment reenactments and the actor’s narration of his story, having spent more than 30 years living with Parkinson’s disease. Nostalgic without becoming overly sentimental, it’s an ode to Fox’s life, career and the struggle he continues to endure.

In hindsight, the most unlikely hit among Marvel’s parade of them was all about the unlikeliest of families. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 drives home that point, with a boisterous and often emotional sequel that feels very much like a true conclusion, fueled in no small part by writer-director James Gunn having migrated his talents over to rival DC.

"Are You There God?” addresses youthful preoccupations in a refreshingly relatable manner that feels almost heaven-sent.

Peter Pan & Wendy wants to conjure magic but turns out to be low on fairy dust, yielding a dreary live-action adaptation of the 1953 movie that transforms Neverland into what vaguely feels like a discount version of Pandora.

“Chris Evans and Ana de Armas” is about all that’s required to make the sales pitch for “Ghosted,” a spirited if familiar action-based romantic comedy, where the sparring banter generally outshines the muscular stunts. Throw in clever cameos and this Apple TV+ movie delivers on its promise of unpretentious fun.

Written and directed by Lee Cronin, the wit and humor that Campbell brought to past incarnations (including a Starz series revival) is in relatively short supply here. The film rather relies upon lots of jump scares and gruesome makeup effects, as well as the prospect of Ellie’s possessed form trying to do in her kids. That includes her very-young daughter (Nell Fisher), a semi-distasteful element even by the standards of the genre.

What’s billed as a horror-comedy thus can’t entirely decide where it wishes to land on that spectrum, in a movie that benefits from letting Cage cut loose without fully capitalizing upon his full-throated performance.

While this represents a considerably lighter story than his Oscar-winning “Argo,” in terms of its sheer appeal Air flies pretty high indeed, in part because its coach is savvy enough to let his winning lineup of all-stars take the ball and run with it.

Starring Taron Egerton, this Apple TV+ movie, like the game, is colorful and engaging enough that it’s hard to take your eyes off the screen.

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

Ultimately, “Dungeons & Dragons” delivers enough laughs and thrills to justify braving a trip to the theater. And for these purposes, that’s game, set and match.

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.

Given the enduring fascination with such material, underscored by all the recent productions about Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, this is one of those stories that seems ripe for a redo. Because even with the uncertainty the one thing “Boston Strangler” makes clear – 55 years after the previous movie – is that when it comes to true crime, some things never go out of style.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods provides a lightning-bolt-shaped exclamation point on the realization this comedic superhero franchise was, in fact, a one-trick pony – fine for a playful origin story, without enough voltage for an encore. Everything that worked in the original works less well in this so-so sequel, blunting even the star power emitted by its high-profile villains.

It’s more a layup than a slam dunk qualitatively, rattling around a bit before finally paying off.

Champions has its heart in the right place, trying to teach the audience, through Marcus, to see his players and the actors portraying them without condescension. It’s possible to admire the message, though, without thinking much of a movie that, Marcus’ aspirations notwithstanding, belongs in the minor leagues.

65 represents such an uninspired effort as to look like a fossil even before the credits roll.

If the last “Scream” movie made noise by wedding the old with the new, Scream VI reinforces how shrewd the producers were in casting the next generation, with Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega ably carrying this chapter of horror’s most self-referential franchise. Throw in a new venue and the same old thrills and kills, and Paramount should be slashing all the way to the bank.

If only the script and story were in the same kind of fighting shape as its leads. Grounding the narrative in Adonis Creed’s past does provide a weightier foundation, but the tradeoff is an element of sluggishness in a movie that, despite its impressive cast, never feels particularly light on its toes.

The title, however, feels particularly apt in describing a series that burned quite brightly when it first arose, and despite the light and heat cast by its charismatic lead, gradually fizzled, faded and flamed out.

Director Elizabeth Banks conjures bursts of absurdist energy and humor without delivering anything approaching a sustained rush.

Ant-Man is a somewhat ironic choice for a very, very big job: Kicking off the next phase of Marvel movies. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania works on one key level, establishing Kang the Conqueror as a truly formidable and worthy villain. Yet with its plunge into inner space, “Ant-Man” comes up short in almost every other way that matters.

Your Place or Mine will probably do just fine for Netflix, standing out from a pack of Valentine’s Day-timed rom-coms because Witherspoon is her, and Kutcher is him. But those awkward red-carpet photos weren’t the only part of this exercise that didn’t quite work, whatever place one happens to watch it.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance is less a coda to the franchise than a muted riff on it, an encore without much of a purpose. What drew director Steven Soderbergh back to material this thin is anybody’s guess, but if strippers like to talk about making it rain, this third and (for now) final entry creatively speaking yields more of a drizzle than a downpour.

The result is a humanizing look at a woman often reduced to cartoon caricature, while occasionally feeling too conspicuously like a licensed product.

The main challenge is that there’s simply not enough heft in the story to fill out this wild-and-crazy weekend, which requires a level of embellishment that alternates between cute and absurd.

As for “JUNG_E,” the film turns out to be visually striking and narratively muddled, with a story that starts somewhere in the middle, throws around lots of provocative science-fiction concepts and comes to a rather abrupt end.

Economically told and cleverly calibrated to maximize its claustrophobic setting, it’s among the most effective films the director has delivered since his mid-career slump, making this a door well worth opening.

You People relies on cringe-inducing moments as the crux of its comedy, as a Jewish guy and a Black Muslim woman (neither of them particularly observant) get engaged, then endure the push and pull of their respective families. A topnotch cast – down to the tiny cameos – can’t fully redeem material that gets lost somewhere between satire and sitcom as assembled by star Jonah Hill and director Kenya Barris.

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.