A powerful teenage heroine, a male teen enamored with computerized female companionship, and a twisted view of deity: If you told me this tale was set in the mid-26th century, I’d say it sounds conspicuously present-day. But I’m game for futuristic sci-fi, as long as it’s more than cyborg combat and revved-up roller derby. Regrettably, the new film Alita: Battle Angel isn’t much more than that.

It’s safe to take the kids to see The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part: The PG-rated film has little bad language (“heck” twice), one instance of borderline innuendo, and a message (“You have to find your own way”) easily corrected. But ask your kids afterward what the movie was about, and they’ll probably only say, “It was cool!” A plot and a plot twist gradually emerge from the mania, but it takes a saint’s patience to piece it all together. Like those complicated Lego kits, I suppose.

Remember being a kid, charging through the woods, thrusting a plastic sword at imaginary foes? If not, the new film The Kid Who Would Be King will take you there. Set in present-day England and starring a middle schooler, the charming Arthur-legend update delivers a mixed bag of make-believe and modern boyhood.

Pro-lifers might find inspiration in the new biopic about liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. On the Basis of Sex focuses on the 1972 landmark case Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue that Ginsburg, then a law professor, successfully argued. Ginsburg exposed how scores of federal laws discriminated against an entire class of people—women. Her brilliant tactic? The client she took on, Charles Moritz, was a man.

American stage and screen actress Carol Channing died Tuesday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Publicist B. Harlan Boll said the actress died of natural causes just days before her 98th birthday. Channing stepped into the national spotlight in 1964 as Dolly in the musical Hello, Dolly!—a Tony Award–winning role she would reprise on Broadway more than 5,000 times. Her big eyes, high-heaped hair, and carved cheeks endeared her to fans, and her wide mouth served as the accomplice to her raspy voice.

A Dog’s Way Home is a mostly family-friendly film about man’s best friend. But liberal dogmas drag down this otherwise sweet story.

Clint Eastwood’s characters play by their own rules. Take, for instance, his unconventional gunslingers—vengeful police detective Harry Callahan (Dirty Harry) and fatherly hit man William Munny (Unforgiven). In the new film The Mule, Earl Stone (Eastwood), too, is just doing his job—although the job involves transporting illegal drugs across the country. He’s a “mule” for a Mexican drug cartel. Eastwood is at his best when his protagonists have a sense of their fallenness. Stone, though, seems oblivious to his sins.