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.

With “Smurfs,” a blend of animation and live action, director Chris Miller has given the titular blue elves, Belgian cartoonist Peyo’s trademark creatures, a big-screen reboot. Although his would-be fresh start promotes positive values and is mostly free of problematic material, it’s also numbingly uninteresting.

Adult viewers willing to grapple with harsh material will find that the well-crafted but bleak dark comedy “Eddington” (A24) inspires some uneasy laughs. Those in search of light entertainment, by contrast, should definitely look elsewhere.

In the spring of 1938, when the figure of Superman made his first appearance in the pages of DC’s “Action Comics #1,” President Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to combat the Great Depression via the New Deal were at their height. There had as yet been only one world war and Lou Gehrig was still playing for the New York Yankees.

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.

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.

Faith is put under the spotlight to a much greater degree in the auteur’s latest quirky work, “The Phoenician Scheme” (Focus), and the results are far more negative.