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.

A private eye who's "a sex machine to all the chicks," as the song went back in 1971, isn't exactly tailor-made to 2019. The new "Shaft" plays with that tension but yields mixed results, in an action comedy that's neither consistently funny nor especially exciting, despite Samuel L. Jackson's second stab at the part.

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

The Goldfinch has a painting at its center, but despite a classy palette of ingredients conjures a lifeless, disjointed picture. Adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the movie represents a transparent bid to bring the book's prestige to the screen, but it's another case of literary underpinnings being lost in translation.

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.

Showcasing a thrown-together international team of female spies, "The 355" mostly feels like the pilot for a TV series, just with an inordinately good cast. Any movie in this genre that name-checks James Bond can't be all bad, but in terms of justifying a trip to the theater, nor is it good enough.

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.

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.

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.

The nostalgia factor elevates an otherwise slow-building film that maintains an eerie creepiness before fumbling through a slightly muddled climactic act.

While the film says something that matters, for a show whose press notes proclaim it a "generation-defining Broadway phenomenon," a great deal appears to have been lost in translation.

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.

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.

A movie that emphasizes its experiential and 3D qualities but lacks depth on every other front.

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.

As movies go, The Stand In certainly isn't a headliner. Yet like its title character, the movie and its star get about as much mileage as they can out of this opportunity.

For the most part, America: The Motion Picture seems too pleased with itself, an indulgence in silliness that feels woefully stretched at close to 100 minutes.

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.

Even grading on a curve, though, Murder Mystery is a tired, bordering on tiresome endeavor -- feeling like the pilot for a not-very-good TV show -- as well as a reminder that Netflix's content buffet caters to all kinds of tastes.

The movie, however, turns out to be the opposite of its central character -- namely, an underachiever, despite those advantages.

This animated sequel plucks enough of the right buttons to qualify as a reasonable addition to family movie time.

A nonstop sci-fi action movie that basically gets the job done with a plot that recalls Disney’s “Big Hero 6,” just with a lot more cursing.

The net effect is mildly enjoyable, creating a throwback caper film that showcases its stars doing what they do best, or rather for which they're best known.

Trigger Warning might not be packing anything unexpected in the chamber, but for those who come to it with the proper mind-set, the movie doesn’t wind up firing blanks either.

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.

Home Sweet Home Alone is a very odd duck -- a movie that basically replicates the three-decades-old "Home Alone" template, but in a way that feels slightly weird and ill-conceived. Dropping on Disney+ in connection with the streaming service's two-year anniversary, it's a reminder that not all well-known intellectual property ought to be let out of the house.

Cast to the hilt, the film proves inventively twisty if a little convoluted, with the modest disclaimer that it’s not as good as the trailer makes it look.

A half-baked mob drama.