Jake Coyle

There’s a mean potency to the borderland noir of both Sicario films, enough that it sometimes recalls another tale of explosions and drug enforcement agents on both sides of the border: Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil.” Day of the Soldado is too sober and grim for the sweaty heat of “Touch of Evil.” But it has taken to heart one of its best lines: “All border towns bring out the worst in a country.”

While the movie isn’t quite as clever as it thinks it is, the Zellners have a sweet, likable sense of humor tinged with tragedy. And they remain filmmakers to watch.

Whannell has the talent and cunning to turn The Invisible Man into a chilling and well-crafted B-movie. But if you’re looking for anything more than that, you’ll probably come up empty.

Yet the slapdash vibe of “Day Shift” has its charms. It’s built almost perfectly to be the kind of thing you might, after some scrolling, absentmindedly click to watch on Netflix and end of watching for its sheer watchability.

As the movie grows more abstract, it loses momentum. But an impassioned melodrama and a curiously sincere belief in the transformative power of pop music wrap “Mother Mary” in a gothic garb all its own.

McKay, director of The Lego Movie, is most at home in humor, and The Tomorrow War can be funny. It’s less adept at some of the operatic notes it tries to strike, but, well, aliens can be tricky.

Fuqua’s film is often harrowing and gripping but also less nuanced and too narrowly confined in genre conventions than its real-life protagonist deserves.

Tick, Tick... BOOM! is a tender ode to Larson, just as it is a tribute to all Broadway pursuit.

The Biggest Little Farm can at times feel like a larger, better-produced version of the kind of viral video that spreads on Facebook, equal parts uplifting and self-congratulating. It’s a self-contained film about a self-contained paradise.

Despite its grainy, VHS aesthetics, “The Smashing Machine” is a surprisingly conventional and oddly untroubled movie, albeit one that gives Johnson an indie-film platform for one of his finest performances.

Renfield never lets Cage really sink his teeth into the movie, leaving us still hungry for more.

Like its subject, “Man on the Run” inevitably pales next to films of the Beatles heyday. But it’s a meaningful companion piece about the end of an era and the start of a long and winding road.

As in most sci-fi movies, the set up of “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is better than its follow through. But the movie has a kinetic kick, and you could argue that it’s obsessed with the right things. We could use more movies similarly engaged.

Blue Beetle, light, lively and sincere, is a tribute to the tenacity and indomitability of Mexican-American families that have clawed their way into an often inhospitable society. Family members, usually plot points of some animating trauma in superhero movies, are here a central part of the action.

Triple Frontier has the good sense to take a macho, Expendables-like set-up and turn it inward. It just doesn’t go far enough.

If you accept the low-bar aspirations of “Frozen Empire,” you may get a pleasant-enough experience out of it. It’s a movie that feels almost more like a high production-value TV pilot for an appealing sitcom, with Rudd as the stepfather, than it does a big-screen event on par with the original.

Written and directed by series veteran Dean DeBlois, “The Hidden World” may not overwhelm in its necessity.... There are two compelling parts of “The Hidden World” that validate it.

Ambiguous and damning at once, John Curran’s Chappaquiddick plunges us back into the summer of 1969: the season of Woodstock, the moon landing, the Manson murders and the lowest ebb of the Kennedy mythology.

This is an eminently pleasant movie, propped up by its indefatigable good cheer and King’s immaculately tidy craftsmanship.

Like any good high-concept comedy, Kinda Pregnant is predominantly a far-fetched way for its star and co-writer, Schumer, to riff frankly on her chosen topic.

The Good Liar is a kind of film one wants to love. Such old-fashioned genre movies, let alone those starring actors in their 70s and 80s, are hard to find these days. But in trying to take a simple crime set-up and stretch it into a more sweeping tale of vengeance and victimhood, The Good Liar has to make some fairly preposterous moves to get there, and it doesn’t do a very good job of cloaking them.

It could be that, if we’re talking about representing hard-to-tame adolescent urges in monster form, “Turning Red” — bold as it may be — can’t come close to matching the messy comic farce of “Big Mouth,” the far less family-friendly but much more true-to-life animated series that paired seventh graders with lascivious “hormone monsters.”

If some of King’s Wes Anderson-inspired pop-up book designs and skill with fine character actors is missing, the bedrock earnestness and unflaggingly good manners of its ursine protagonist remain charmingly unaltered.

The combination works well enough, though it’d be fairer to deem “You’re Cordially Invited” a funnier-than-average wedding movie than it would be a top-grade Ferrell comedy.

Ambulance pines for a visceral, breezily violent style of film that doesn’t slow down to ask too many questions. And while Bay’s film wouldn’t stand up to too much inquiry — this is a movie where a ruptured spleen is treated with a hairpin — it’s hard to deny its escapist panache.

While No Hard Feelings finally gives Lawrence (also an executive producer) a platform for some of the slapstick humor she’s so good at, it also feels like she’s been inserted into the framework of a quite male coming-of-age rom-com/fantasy.

What’s most disappointing about the film, considering its origins, is just how distant anything like real life feels. From the first moment Jamie slides on a pair of ruby red stiletto pumps, there’s not any doubt things are going to work out for him.

Kiri is exceptional in carrying a film in which she’s the only talking, present actor. But that a movie so threadbare manages to feel like too much is both the film’s accomplishment and its failure.

Yellow Rose sings an affecting, sorrowful and defiant song where dreams collide with a cruel reality.

As unkempt and overwrought as “Die, My Love” is, it’s not a movie that’s timidly weighing in on parenting and gender roles. There’s plenty to admire in Ramsay’s uncompromising and delirious portrait of marital hell, particularly in the bracingly raw performance of Lawrence.

Drop, a silly but suspenseful new thriller, carries on the tradition of “When a Stranger Calls” and “Phone Booth” by situating its tension around mysterious, threatening phone messages.

With some notable exceptions, this is a traditional treatment of an extraordinary life, complete with deathbed scenes that bookend the film and frequent lines, in Jack Thorne’s screenplay, in which Curie single-mindedly speaks of scientific progress less like a person than a grade-school teaching tool.

Much of F9 is kind of a slog. There are some not very dynamic car chases, a lot of flashbacks, ho-hum villains and an oddly prominent role for magnets. But when Taj and Roman reach zero gravity, the movie finally takes flight with goofy grandeur.

Opening on the heels of raging wildfires, Elemental manages to be a movie about fire and water without even a passing reference to today’s climate realities. Missed opportunities abound.

The pleasures of Uncorked are in how it gently eludes stereotype and brings a rich sense of texture to even its smaller moments.

What makes Annabelle Comes Home rise above its well-trod narrative are the actresses and Dauberman’s sensitive attention to each of them.

Like its characters, it’s drunk on what came before, relying too heavily on noir tropes. But its smart, thought-provoking concept isn’t so easy to shake off.

Taking each storyline at a time, all accompanied by flashbacks, gives each character some depth, even as the crowded film — at nearly three-hours long — verges on turning into a clown car. That sheer much-ness is in the spirit of King’s massive book. “Chapter Two” is, for better or worse, a horror carnival.

It’s a charming concoction of cliches cribbed from other movies, from Tron to Truman, without its own coding.

21 Bridges is well crafted enough to pass the time, but anything more than that is a bridge too far.

What carries it through, above all, is the great command of Bigelow (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Detroit” ), who knows perhaps better than any working filmmaker how to turn bracing real-life, or near-real-life crises into heart-pounding thrillers.

If the framework is less inspired, the story remains grand.

Alice, Darling is a little thinly sketched and lacks a strong sense of directorial perspective. But, in shirking genre contrivance, Nighy gets the most essential thing right, authentically capturing a not-uncommon real-life experience with rare nuance.

Anthony Fabian’s charming adaptation, snuggly tailored to star Lesley Manville, proves the durability of a good fairy tale and a smashing dress.

You end up questioning less why Smith and Lawrence are still making “Bad Boys” movies than wondering why such breezily watchable genre movie-star platforms more or less don’t exist any longer.

It’s no train wreck. Leitch’s film is colorful, cartoonish and well-choreographed. But the more-is-more manic energy of “Bullet Train” eventually peters out, since that’s all the movie was ever running on. Well, that and Pitt. His charm alone does wonders for the movie, raising it at least to the level of watchable.

Whether The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is enough to relight those embers remains to be seen, but it is a reminder how good a platform they offered young actors. It’s a ritual worth returning to.

Don’t Worry Darling is ultimately neither worthy of all the off-screen fuss nor quite the on-screen disappointment it’s been made out to be.

A clever concept, not a profound film. Terrifically acted and finely crafted though it is, it’s a brilliant but hollow exercise in perspective that calls more attention to its artful orchestration than it does life or loss.

Once the film — based on the nonfiction book by Damien Lewis — settles into a seedy, sunny West African setting and the nighttime heist finale, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” proves a spirited, if grossly exaggerated diversion.

Spencer may be a let down as a story about Diana, but as an exaggerated portrait of Stewart, it’s magnetic.

The film, earthy and sober, refuses to be carried aloft by sentiment, instead navigating a difficult and painful path toward self-preservation and renewal.

It’s counting on your amnesia to the past, on screen and off, and it will readily supply you with two hours of mindless escape. It does the job better than most, thanks largely to its hulking hero.

Its plot turns can be rash or implausible, and the movie increasingly feels like ideas and set pieces strung tenuously together.

The Crimes of Grindelwald is often dazzling, occasionally wondrous and always atmospheric. But is also a bit of a mess. Even magic bags can be overweight.

None of this is likely to be enough for anyone to exclaim “Oh, yeah!” while hopping up and down and doffing their cap. But it is an hour and a half’s worth of superlative marketing that will whet your appetite for more Mario back home on the couch.

Many of its twists aren’t hard to see coming, and the movie sometimes lacks the scale needed for a sprawling battle. But a mustachioed Odenkirk with a shotgun is, by most metrics, more than enough firepower for any movie.

Ibiza, scripted by Lauryn Kahn and directed by Alex Richanbach (both Funny Or Die veterans and disciples of Ibiza producer Adam McKay and Will Ferrell) has a loose, natural rhythm that easily surpasses its cliche framework.

The “Jackass” gang make for a rollicking antidote to the beautiful, unblemished people who play superheroes that never so much as bleed.

For those whose trips to Pandora have made less of an impact, “Fire and Ash” is a bit like returning to a half-remembered vacation spot, only one where the local ponytail style is a little strange and everyone seems to have the waist of a supermodel.

The real story of Ivan is more interesting even if it’s probably too dispiriting and shameful for a Disney movie. At the same time there’s some awkwardness in relating such an animal-rights tale with fart jokes and a celebrity voice ensemble.

After Yang may not reach the heights it’s seeking, but it’s easy to respect it for trying to tackle profound questions and reach a register of high-minded reflection.

Theater Camp might have worked better with a “Meatballs”-style structure, focusing on a camper and a counselor. But it knows how to put on a show. With songs written by the screenwriters and Mark Sonnenblick, Theater Camp in the end hits just the right note between satire and sincere.

Motherless Brooklyn is done well enough that you wish it had struck out on its own path, rather than crib from Robert Towne and Roman Polanski. It’s hard to forget it, but that’s “Chinatown.”

The Batman is darkly dour stuff — potent but erratic. It’s as though the filmmakers, working in the very long shadow of “The Dark Knight,” have opted not to rival the moody majesty of Christopher Nolan’s genre-redefining 2008 film but instead to simply go “harder” — blacker, more cynical, a total eclipse.

The movie isn’t always quite up to the task. It would be better if it went further and wrestled more with the online world than used it as another bits and bytes background. Really, it doesn’t quite live up to the title. Ralph could have done more damage.

Godzilla vs. Kong, the only creature feature to dare wide release in some time, is a rock ‘em-sock ’em monster-movie revival with all the requisite explosions, inane plot twists and skyscraper smashing to satisfy most lovers of gigantic amphibians. Vive le cinéma!