John Mulderig

The latest such gambit vulgarly ventriloquizes dogs and results in the mangy comedy “Strays.”

Director Neill Blomkamp’s lively against-the-odds tale recounts the unlikely career of working-class Welsh lad Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe).

Seafood goes bad, very bad, very quickly. So, too, does the dead fish-scented sequel “Meg 2: The Trench” (Warner Bros.)

Things get dark down under in the Australian horror yarn “Talk to Me.”

Life in plastic may be fantastic but the tedious ideology-driven comedy “Barbie” (Warner Bros.) is not. Although genuinely objectionable elements are relatively few, moreover, this is distinctly not a movie for the age group to which the figurine of the title is primarily marketed.

The onset of overlapping strikes by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has put Hollywood on hiatus.

In a timely move, the folks behind the slick, vibrant espionage thriller “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” have added an experimental Artificial Intelligence project run amok to their roster of villains.