Movie & Television Reviews

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 decade and a half after its popular animated namesake was released comes the live-action remake “How to Train Your Dragon.” While the basic story and some of the personnel remain the same, the new arrival, although appropriate for a wide audience, falls short of the heights to which its predecessor soared.

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.

“Lilo & Stitch” (Disney) is the latest yield of a long-term project on the part of the Mouse House to remake some of their more popular animated features of the past into live-action films. The result in this instance is a morally sound but shrill updating of a well-received — and, in some quarters, cherished — 2002 release.

Considered strictly as a piece of cinema, the genre-mashing feature “Sinners” (Warner Bros.) can be acknowledged to be a successful production in several respects. But assessed ethically from the standpoint of a Scripture-based worldview, writer-director Ryan Coogler’s film is critically deficient.

Tom Cruise takes his eighth turn as infinitely resourceful spy Ethan Hunt in the grand-scale adventure “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” (Paramount).