John Mulderig

There’s much to like and even admire in the animated biography “Piece by Piece” (Focus). Most significantly, as a Lego version of singer, songwriter and music producer Pharrell Williams explores his past via an extended interview with director and co-writer Morgan Neville, the film highlights its subject’s Christian faith.

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.

The upshot is a long, grim, ultimately unrewarding slog made suitable for few — more by its gritty atmosphere than by an accumulation of objectionable ingredients.

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.

“The Killer’s Game” (Lionsgate) is a potentially entertaining, albeit ridiculous, action comedy. Unfortunately, the criminal mayhem the movie lightheartedly showcases involves stomach-churning images of gore and dismemberment that quickly cancel out any fun that might be had from it.

Any connection between the animated adventure “Transformers One” (Paramount) and the great Catholic historian Lord Acton may seem unlikely. Yet director Josh Cooley’s film is a cautionary tale that fully vindicates the Victorian scholar’s famous observation that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Oh, those creepy Christians! Such is the underlying sentiment discernible through most of the running time of the psychological horror film “The Front Room” (A24).

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.