Movie Reviews

“Batman and Harley Quinn” (Warner Bros.) is a poorly conceived and morally obtuse straight-to-video animated film from DC Comics.

If you think your trip back and forth to work is trying, consider the plight Liam Neeson finds himself in as “The Commuter” (Lionsgate).

Once again based on the series of books by recently deceased author Michael Bond, to whom the film is dedicated, the proceedings initially find Paddington far from his roots in the Peruvian jungle, having settled into a cozy domestic life with the Browns, the very British human family that adopted him in the first screen outing.

The oddest scenes in “The Post” (Fox), a nostalgic account of The Washington Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, involve Meryl Streep as that newspaper’s owner, Katharine Graham, hovering about its press and linotype rooms.

The easiest way to judge the quality of an “Insidious” film is to gauge how quickly the actors get into a poltergeist-haunted house.

About the funniest joke in the threadbare comedy “Father Figures” (Warner Bros.) concerns the fact that, in childhood, its two main characters — now-grown and estranged fraternal twins Kyle (Owen Wilson) and Peter (Ed Helms) Reynolds — had a pet cat named Chairman Meow.

An odd combination of elements makes up the offbeat drama “Downsizing.” But the residue that remains with viewers is ultimately a positive one.

“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” (Columbia) is an amusing comic adventure finds a quartet of teens magically transported into an old video game where they inhabit the avatars they chose before the start of play.