Some fairy tales have a dark side and are thus better suited to grown-ups than to kids. The narrative that unfolds in “Bramble: The Mountain King” (Merge) is one example of this.

In their latest big-screen variation on the eponymous CBS-TV series starring Edward Woodward that ran for four seasons beginning in 1985, screenwriter Richard Wenk and director Antoine Fuqua have a few things going for them.

The tale of Texan Rickey Hill’s against-the-odds struggle to become a major league baseball player should, potentially, make for an engaging film.

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

The resilience of the indestructible loving family, in this case, a Mexican American clan, forms the heart and soul of “Blue Beetle” (Warner Bros.).

The recently released cinema biopic “Oppenheimer” dramatizes the progressive development, assembly, testing and detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb which then led to the dropping of two such bombs over Japan in the twilight days of World War II.

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

The Last Voyage of the Demeter registers as competent but uneven, with its evident artistic intent barely justifying the quarts of blood spilt as its plot unfolds.

“With This Light,” a documentary releasing in theaters Aug. 11 and then to streaming platforms, tells of the apostolic dynamism of Sister Maria Rosa Leggol, a Franciscan sister known as the “Mother Teresa” of Honduras.

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