While the drama-and-comedy blend “A Man Called Otto” (Sony) proves generally goodhearted, it also turns out to be formulaic.

Director Kasi Lemmons’ profile charts singer Whitney Houston’s meteoric rise as well as the gradual descent into dependence that culminated in her untimely 2012 death at age 48.

The disappearance 40 years ago of Emanuela Orlandi has haunted her family, fueled conspiracy theories and provided grist for a recent Netflix series.

The good news is that, overall, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” proves a worthy successor to its sparkling precursor, “Knives Out.”

“Babylon” (Paramount), writer-director Damien Chazelle’s sprawling recreation of Hollywood shortly before and after the advent of talkies, is a film of undeniable artistic intent. Yet its considerable aesthetic strong points are overshadowed by both overt content and an underlying tone that viewers of faith will feel compelled to reject.

Frenetic action sequences are interspersed with a series of gentle moral lessons in the entertaining animated adventure “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” (Universal).

The “Way of the Water” script returns viewers to the fictional moon Pandora and continues the story of the kickoff’s two principal characters, the avatar of Earth-born ex-Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his Pandoran warrior wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).

Tim Burton steps forward as director of “Wednesday,” a spin-off named for, and focused on, the comically macabre Addams family’s daughter. All eight episodes of the series, which stars Jenna Ortega in the title role, are streaming on Netflix.

Nicolas Brown directed “The Letter: A Message for Our Earth,” a documentary on the pope’s 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home.”

The upshot of “Violent NIght” is a strange blend of bloody mayhem and rank sentimentality that goes down like a gulp of sour eggnog.