Movie Reviews

The low-budget Faustian fable that is “Wish Upon” (Broad Green) has a bullied teen girl fulfilling her earthly desires for vengeance, money, popularity and a surprisingly chaste romance in exchange for maybe her mortal soul.

A Protestant filmmaker, Nick Hamm, returned to Northern Ireland to film “The Journey,” a fictionalized telling of how McGuinness and Rev. Paisley came to a political solution in 2006 to bring decades of Christian-on-Christian sectarian violence to a halt.

There’s much to like about the vibrant comic-book adaptation “Spider-Man: Homecoming” (Columbia). Besides an unslacking pace and a clever central plot twist, there’s the fact that the mayhem on display is kept virtually bloodless.

Light on the yucks but heavy on the yuk, “The House” (Warner Bros.) becomes an onerous trial of the viewer’s attention span.

There is good news about the Director Pierre Coffin’s animated comedy “Despicable Me 3” (Universal), though it has a weak central plot this is offset by amusing side stories and by strong values as well.

Stylish and energetic, the high-octane crime drama “Baby Driver” (TriStar) blends pop music, dizzying car chases and some dark humor to impressive effect.

A documentary titled “The Shepherd Cannot Run: Father Rother’s Story,” about U.S. priest who worked in Guatemala for 14 years until he was brutally murdered in 1981 will be shown prior to his beatified in September.

Grown-ups who yearn to connect with their inner 11-year-old boy are given a two-and-a-half-hour window of opportunity to do so in “Transformers: The Last Knight” (Paramount).