Robin Hood, but he’s a bloodthirsty killing machine,” seems to have been an irresistible pitch that led to the curious if watchable drama The Death of Robin Hood. This Robin is anything but a merry man, and the film is anything but a fun adventure.

A virtual two-hander, Miss You, Love You is a rare accomplishment—just enough of a good thing.

There’s an idealist’s energy here that grows a bit too earnest, but the information is accessible. And basic.

“Macabre” doesn’t begin to describe “Maternal Instinct,” one of the more gruesome entries in the catalog of true-crime TV. In terms of nonfiction storytelling, however, it is a virtuous undertaking, as long as one can separate the subject from the storytelling.

Flag Day may train its cameras on a small town, but its vision is expansive.

As attempted profundity, this doesn’t quite land, and neither does much else. Mr. Spielberg combined fairy tale with sci-fi beautifully in his 2001 masterpiece, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Disclosure Day is underwhelming when it tries to do the same.

None of the band members interviewed are out to beatify White—he didn’t pay them fairly; he took the publishing rights; he routinely overspent on tours, to the tune of half a million dollars at a clip. But he created an institution. Even when they’re shrugging off his sins with a smile, his old bandmates have to give him that.

Best to keep in mind that the whole franchise exists not to advance the craft of storytelling but the magic of merchandising. Forget it, friends, it’s Toytown.

The cast’s choices are like weather-balloon data that presage the disaster of the movie’s climax, when everyone behaves like an emotionally incontinent millennial.

Backrooms may not be a fully explained wonder but it’s well worth the wander.

Mr. Carney steers things back in a more pleasing direction in the end, but for a light comedy, “Power Ballad” contains far too much perplexed agony.

The movie takes on some formulaic thriller trappings in its final act, relying too heavily on strained coincidences. So its second half is more conventional and less grounded than its first. What both halves have in abundance, however, is Mr. Woodall’s unforced charm. He strikes every chord like a virtuoso, and he’s going to be a major player in the movies.

Director Jon Favreau’s film, which he wrote with Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor, features a grindingly simple plot that provides the weakest possible pretext to staple together a series of uninspired monster and droid fights.

Ladies First invites pointed as well as pungent jokes, and the opportunities are fully exploited, sometimes with enormous wit.

Considering the gravity of the subject, and its immense potential, “The Wizard of the Kremlin” is not just a letdown, but something more like an insult. The film will do less damage to Mr. Putin’s reputation than to those of Mr. Assayas, Mr. Law and Mr. Dano.

Minus the flash, the neon, the tailoring and the quipping, LifeHack is a kind of Ocean’s Eleven for Gen Z: a breathless, ingenious caper that moves at about 200 megabits per second.

This soft, sedate mystery comedy seeks nothing more than to be like its heroes: warm and fuzzy. Less attractively, it’s also a bit cloddish and tame, falling into that unsatisfying category of children’s entertainment that seems to be styled in accordance with the tastes of old people.

Mr. Urban has natural swagger and he’s the best aspect here, although that’s like singling out the most fragrant part of a swamp.

The film has a remarkable formal and narrative fluidity, not presenting its three stories as discrete chapters but cutting effortlessly from one to the other, with Ms. Enyedi sometimes dipping into a period for the length of only a shot or two before spinning off to a different storyline.

Much of this roams pretty far from Orwell’s vision, but that’s not the reason the film fails. It fails because it’s obvious, witless and dull. The animation is charmless and bland.

The film seeks no more than to be fan service, a two-hour hangout with favorite characters and situations. Like many a runway trend, it isn’t going to last more than a season in anyone’s memory.

Everyone is doomed in Mr. Diaz’s account of European colonialism and exploratory naval history—not just the primitive Filipinos and Indonesians but the Portuguese on the mission from their silent God. And their covetous king.

Writer-director Kirk Jones doesn’t do a great job finding anything fresh to say about this unnerving situation, with one exception.

Mr. Tirola has fashioned a portrait of the man that is engaging if not exactly revelatory, and occasionally a little broad in its attempt to fill out the social context, with footage of Hitler, Vietnam and the KKK coming in sweeping succession early on.

Those too young to remember Jackson will get what they want, which is a fantastically effective introduction to the talent.

It will prove a literally breathtaking adventure, depending on one’s phobias about heights, water and psychopaths. But it is an ordeal saga, a predator thriller with horror-film accents—and a considerable amount of violence and pain for the character played by the ageless Ms. Theron, who may be giving the most athletically demanding performance of her action-movie career.

The tale doesn’t need any artificial twists. They occur naturally. There’s character development. Foreshadowing.

Even a day later, contemplating this willfully nauseating work carries much the same sensation as having ingested a plate of bad clams.