John Mulderig

Capsule reviews of theatrical movies available now for streaming or scheduled for broadcast on network or cable television as well as notes on TV programming for the same week.

Gentle and family-oriented, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” (Lionsgate) offers top-flight holiday entertainment for a wide range of age groups. In adapting author Barbara Robinson’s 1972 children’s novel, helmer Dallas Jenkins blends wry humor and touching drama while also successfully conveying some valuable insights.

A trilogy of Marvel Comics adaptations that launched in 2018 comes to a dull close with “Venom: The Last Dance” (Columbia). Hobbled by the apparent exhaustion of the franchise’s trademark wit, writer-director Kelly Marcel’s wrap-up feels less like a waltz out the door than a stagger to the finish line.

Capsule reviews of theatrical movies available now for streaming or scheduled for broadcast on network or cable television as well as notes on TV programming for the same week.

Catholic viewers will naturally be interested in a TV show that features a nun as one of its principal characters. In the case of “Grotesquerie,” however, they’ll tune in, to use an obsolete term, only to be turned off — both by a welter of gore and by a treatment of the church that degenerates from mere ignorance to outright hostility.

Capsule reviews of theatrical movies available now for streaming or scheduled for broadcast on network or cable television as well as notes on TV programming for the same week.

A serious, even lugubrious, tone and a top-flight cast add heft to the ecclesiastical melodrama “Conclave” (Focus). Yet the film is fundamentally a power-struggle potboiler kept roiling by attention-grabbing plot developments — the last and most significant of which Catholic viewers will likely find uncomfortable at best.

As scripted by Mark Bomback, “White Bird” effectively tugs at the heart by showcasing altruistic heroism in the face of dire evil.