Movie Reviews

The remake of “Ben-Hur,” the cable-TV drama “Ray Donovan” and the documentary series “The Story of God” were named winners of the 2016 Catholics in Media Awards, presented annually by Catholics in Media Associates.

Popular culture’s relentless drive to portray a homosexual lifestyle as merely one more form of diversity and its view of out-of-wedlock motherhood as a respectable choice, at least for mature women, mars the otherwise unobjectionable animated comedy “Storks” (Warner Bros.).

A chivalrous parable that showcases self-sacrificing heroism, “The Magnificent Seven” (Columbia) can be read as illustrating, in microcosm, Catholic theology’s theory of a just war.

ew figures on the contemporary scene are as controversial as Edward Snowden, the former intelligence officer who, in 2013, revealed to the press the existence of a secret National Security Agency program for the collection of mass data that he considered abusive.

Turning the 1999 ultra-low-budget “The Blair Witch Project” into a franchise has meant turning the saga into a conventional slasher film with little suspense and predictable setups.

Typically, romantic comedies do not revolve around characters our youth-crazed culture tends to dismiss as middle-aged. “Bridget Jones’s Baby” (Universal) is a charming exception.

Mixing a psychological drama with the dependable haunted-house formula must have sounded appealing to the makers of “The Disappointments Room” (Rogue).

If you recall the familiar nursery lullaby, you’ll know that “When the Bough Breaks” (Screen Gems) foretells doom for both cradle and baby.

So it comes as no surprise that this lurid thriller about the desperate measures prospective parents take to start a family is, in the end, a cautionary tale about misplaced morality.