This mash-up of family drama and science fiction is a pleasant but unconvincing adventure with strong adolescent appeal and music by Mogwai.

The film has a lot to say, but it thankfully does it in a manner that is natural, gentle, and if you will, authentic.

Green's relationship with reclusive bibliophile Edmund Brundish (Nighy) is the most effective component, even if it does owe such a glaring debt to the superior "84 Charing Cross Road" (sorry, "You've Got Mail," but still the ne plus ultra of bookstore movies).

Directed and written by Austin author and horror enthusiast Owen Egerton (who also stars as the mad filmmaker behind the fest and the blood), the film doesn’t come without its setbacks. It’s a formulaic meta-horror movie that for most of its run time tries too hard, but there’s a sincerity about the movie that keeps it zipping along.

Surprisingly effective for what could easily be labeled a “gimmick film,” Chaganty’s debut feature suspenser unfolds entirely onscreen on screens.

Perhaps with a more adventurous creature design – or stakes that rose above the film’s mild ‘PG’ rating – A.X.L might have referenced better films while still finding its own voice.

This is the feature-length equivalent of an R-rated gag reel from a mainstream Muppets feature. While it might be fun  – and maybe even cathartic  –  for the puppeteers to cut loose with some sophomoric humor, the film never finds that next gear to locate these jokes in contrast to something, anything.

If you’re a fan of the two leads, it is worth your time, but if you’re a fan of the original film, it becomes more of a curio, an interesting comparison of filmmaking in the Seventies to what contemporary cinema gives us today.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so confusing if what passed as the film’s “resolution” involved something more than the antics of bratty anarchy. It’s impossible to support the girls on such shaky ground.

It's not all fun and games, and that's where Scotty can feel a little strained.

That is really the reason to see this movie: the lovely performances of Macdonald and Khan.

Night Is Short doesn't make a lot of sense, but then it's not supposed to. It's a series of crazy scenes with a daffy logic all to itself, and it is endlessly and effortlessly charming.

Yet while it's refreshing to see teen lycanthropy handled as something other than a metaphor for sexual awakening, Good Manners dawdles on its way to a surprisingly predictable and unearned resolution.

40 Years in the Making is a cliquey undertaking that leaves you mostly on the outside looking in, but after witnessing the joy of its participants at the end, there’s little to begrudge.

The problem here, and what makes it so inferior to Evans’ films, is the editing. It is a page that Berg perhaps lost, but the action is the very definition of discontinuous.

What separates Blaze from its peers, however, is the obvious affection the filmmakers have for their assortment of damaged characters. In Ben Dickey, Hawke and company have found a remarkable physical and musical double for Foley.

Where Kore-eda finds his languid but captivating pace is in the constant itch that there are no ways to quite make all of the pieces fit.

Skate Kitchen’s mild melodrama meanders all over the place, not unlike the many skateboarders who shred the skate parks and streets, carving hypnotic, slo-mo figure-eights or outrageous triple ollies on every available surface and obstacle.

Instead of aiming for biographical overview, this film strives to capture a sense of what makes Sakamoto’s music tick. (Hint: It’s not a metronome, but rather, the sounds of nature.)

Despite the often unsettling subject matter, this adaptation of Emily M. Danforth's teen novel isn’t an intense experience: no big confrontational scenes, few (if any) histrionic moments.

There’s something inexplicably soothing about the wide shots of the boys rolling along, spiraling down the levels of a parking garage or swerving around city streets at sunset.

The film opens with a camera slowly swirling around a skull. Red droplets splash on the cranium. In Michael Nyman’s score, a brass section booms rhythmically like blood in your ears. The effect is brooding and provocative. It’s pure drama. It’s perfectly Alexander McQueen.

The resulting sequences might as well be lifted directly from Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi trilogy; watching these pockets of pure cinema emerge from a "crowd-pleasing" story of a boy and his dog may just be one of the oddest experiences you have at the movies this summer.

Wu quite simply is a stunner. Best known for playing the tough-love matriarch from ABC’s "Fresh off the Boat," she betters the book version of Rachel by making her earthier, steelier, and more playful.

Considering that the whole point of the Slender Man mythos is that it is so adaptable and mutable, to pour it into the most generic of formats is just lazy. Compared to the thematically linked and superior "The Mothman Prophecies" (where Richard Gere chases a pre-digital urban myth), it's the most generic choice imaginable, and stinks of focus group thinking.

There’s an earnestness amid the well-executed jump scares and gruesome pay-off, an honesty that can sometimes be in short supply in teen-centric horror.

The film is funnier than it has every right to be, given the boilerplate premise of dogs bringing people together, but Marino and co. go for the brass ring.

The Meg is simply mediocre, PG-13 monster-moviemaking at its mind-numbing kinda/sorta best-ish. Meh.

Does the man make the uniform, or does the uniform make the man? Schwentke's conclusion is as dark as you may fear.

For all its amazing high points (and this satirically minded takedown of the ludicrousness of the American racist right has many of those) BlacKkKlansman also shows Lee at his weakest. The slight running time drags, a sensation not helped by Terence Blanchard's underwhelming score.

Never Goin’ Back and its overworked tropes should, by all rights, be a trifle of a film, but what Frizzell and her two leads deliver is more fun than a floating party boat.

True, Christopher Robin may take a little time to get to those emotions, mainly due to a scene-setting introduction that could stretch the attention of the most wriggly children. But once Pooh and Christopher are once more paw-in-hand, it's just enchanting.

A peerless fusing of dumbshow performance and background sound editing, there's a rising panic that allows the final, violent closing act to seem shockingly organic.

In another universe, the juxtaposition of family and tragedy might’ve produced something unique; instead, it feels like a pastiche of borrowed story beats from better movies.

Kunis and McKinnon don’t exactly set the screen on fire with their chemistry, and there are only the most perfunctory shadings to their characters.

It’s not entirely clear what “generation” is the guilty one being examined in filmmaker Lauren Greenfield’s third full-length documentary, but it’s safe to say that we are now several decades into the decline of Western civilization (that Creem critic was right, you guys).

This is filmmaking as polemic, and much in the same way as Michael Moore’s (much better) films have a particular agenda to puzzle out various ways in which our country has failed us, this traffics in the same vein.

The film’s basic problem is that it jumps around too much, with an array of speakers from Montana to Washington, D.C. to California.

Funny, vibrant, insightful, tragic, achingly timely, and yet with an underlying message about empathy that is timeless, Blindspotting may be the summer's most essential movie.

A relentlessly entertaining exercise in putting Cruise’s Ethan Hunt through his paces again. And again. And again. But hey, there’s much pleasure in watching him continually fall off things.

Packed with an equal amount of fart gags and jokes about the modern state of superhero films, Teen Titans is a perfect bit of escapism for families suffering from superhero fatigue.

Parker has cast credible young versions of all the original players, although in most cases vintage outperforms new grape.

Burnham’s sociological precision as a screenwriter and director, however, would likely not feel as genuine if not for Fisher in the pivotal role of Kayla. She doesn’t act the part as much as she breathes it. It may be the most honest performance you’ll see in a movie this year.

As he proves again, few directors have Jarecki's skill for pulling a massive stack of disparate themes – race, celebrity, power, wealth, drug addiction, poverty, militarism – into one coherent narrative.

It’s all mighty existential and interesting, yet the introduction of this heady topic acts as prelude to a rather bizarre, if dark, comedic situation. The timing, like everything in this movie, is a little off-kilter.

Yet it's really Phoenix that binds the whole piece together. In him, Callahan is self-piteous and sardonic, wildly inappropriate and desperate to please.

Now, four years later, Blumhouse Productions has released an anthology sequel that follows in its footsteps. The kicker? It’s even better than the first.

The Equalizer 2 tries way too hard to play the action sequences straight.

What Zierra is really exploring is the fine line between maverick genius and manipulative bully. The cult of Kubrick is such that no one still dare broach the idea that what he did to his actors, to his crew, and especially to Vitali, was cruel.

Boundaries would be a lot more charming if it was anything remotely an organic story instead of being glued to a template.

Although the dramatic scale of Leave No Trace is small as well, that trait should not be mistaken for insignificance. This film raises more questions than it answers, which can prove a turnoff to some viewers, but others will soak in its ambiguities long after the closing credits.

In the end, it’s hard to rule out any Johnson movie entirely, but Skyscraper is more disappointment than summer sleeper.

No offense to composer Mark Mothersbaugh (who is heavily involved in all three films) but the soundtrack is better this time around, thanks to some heavy, entrancing, villainous beats by DJ Tiësto.

Riley’s film is a welcome hand grenade of subversive power that often reminded me of another incendiary film, Terry Gilliam’s classic "Brazil."

Three Identical Strangers may not achieve the kind of redemptive catharsis we wish for here, but it achieves something almost as miraculous, making an otherwise unbelievable story seem believably real.

For those who only remember Houston as the train-wreck spectacle she devolved into during her latter years, this documentary will do a good job of providing the basic outline of her life.

So four episodes in, and The Purge franchise is as nakedly provocative as ever.

Yes, the action sequences are hilarious, and yes, the design department gets to cut gloriously loose with the kaleidoscopic, shifting microverse of the Quantum Realm, but this is first and foremost about family.

For better and worse, Uncle Drew feels like the kind of movie that would’ve cleaned up in the summer of 1998. We’ll see how well its game holds up 20 years later.

Austin mainstays the Zellner brothers have managed to make a Western genre film appropriate for the #MeToo era’s audience.

Nancy’s dark appeal is not just in Riseborough’s remarkable performance. It’s in how Leo (Buscemi) catches himself saying “you,” and corrects himself to talk about what he and Brooke did before she disappeared.

Even for me, an animal lover, a believer in the power of storytelling, and an advocate for meatless meals as often as possible, I just kept waiting for a revelation, or a reason (beyond the horror show footage) to care.

The film’s overarching story is solidly scripted, although it lags somewhat in the second act, and the government figure played by Catherine Keener is woefully undeveloped (an especially sore point since Emily Blunt in the original film portrayed such a formidable female lead).

Ultimately, no matter how fascinating the subject, there are only so many shots of rich people relishing amuse-bouche, especially when it never feels like the main course arrives.

As a filmed drama, Mary Shelley is sorely in need of a jolt of electricity similar to the one that reanimated Frankenstein’s monster in the author’s novel.

It all adds up for a tender and loving family portrait of growing up and letting go.

Those who just want to watch dinosaurs eat people in creative ways? They’re destined to get their money’s worth.

Antwan "Big Boi" Patton appears in an entertaining role as Atlanta’s weaselly mayor. Atlanta may have dibs on Youngblood Priest this time, but even though the character is still fly in this reboot, it would be a stretch to regard him as truly superfly.

Neville’s film isn’t making a case for canonization. But it is a call to action.

A hilariously silly comedy based on an absurd true story.

Summer 1993 reveals itself to us as if it were a scrapbook of memories tumbling forth. Some are clearer than others, yet the movie retains a subjective, childlike point of view.

The action sequences are breathtaking, and the character-driven humor is, as per usual, top notch.

It’s one of the few narration-dependent films in recent years in which the words don’t get in the way of the story.

American Animals is as much an exercise in objective truth – or the lack thereof – as it is the retelling of a single series of events.

The film’s quiet confidence in an evolved America only tells half the story; as a result, it already feels more like a prologue than a happy ending.

An exquisitely crafted box of nightmares, and once you realize that the lid has already closed with you inside, it will leave splinters under your skin.

While I was expecting a few more plot twists, Ocean’s 8 is a safe bet for some glitzy summer fun.

There's no attempt to anthropomorphize the rock and and glaciers, but they have never seemed more terrifying and alluring.

This is one of the major delights of Hotel Artemis: a plot that posits a damaged, Medicare-aged woman as its central figure. And that the role is executed by a two-time Oscar-winning actress delivering her best work in many years makes this a rare treat.

Here’s the real kick in the pants. Action Point absolutely has a point, and definitely has its heart in the right place.

It’s a daunting task to mount a stage production of the play these days, given the college-lit symbolism embodied by its hapless titular bird and the narrative arcs to which today’s audiences are accustomed, much less adapt it for the big screen and still remain true to Chekhov’s delicate dramatic sensibilities. Either way, it’s an uphill climb. This film adaptation of this seminal play (the fourth, by most counts) gets about halfway up the hill.

Quiet desperation, as Pink Floyd so adroitly observed, is the English way, and Ian McEwan's 2007 Booker short-listed novel On Chesil Beach is a soft-spoken but devastating reminder of that truth.

Amazingly, it all works up to a point, although at approaching two hours in length, it could’ve easily shaved its bifurcated mohawk down by a good 15 minutes.

While Kate Novack’s documentary suffers from a certain vagueness in the telling of Talley’s life, what’s clear is that it’s been an exceptional one.

Hamm is also the only interview subject who touches on what I found to be the film’s most egregious flaw: Considering most people barely make a living wage and food insecurity is on the rise, it seems rather tone-deaf to make a film about a hotel that charges $4,000 to $20,000 per night.

Upgrade is a welcome excuse to put Marshall-Green through some delightfully complex fight choreography.

Let the Sunshine In has many pleasures for those seeking a languorous, provocative, and enchanting look at a woman who is trying to carve out something authentic.

Like the peanut butter that serves as a primary source of sustenance in the film, Adrift can be devoured in smooth and/or crunchy modes: high-seas romance or cataclysmic adventure. There are commendable aspects to recommend each approach, yet the final result is an uneasy blend.

Pleasant. If you had to reduce this biographical documentary of the great violinist Itzhak Perlman to one word, it would be pleasant.

A new film that takes an unflinching look at a nation’s anti-Semitism that led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews.

This knuckle-whitening depiction of a man of God toppling into his own spiritual abyss is one of Schrader’s finest and most excoriating films to date.

What keeps Outside In interesting throughout is the nuanced work of its so very watchable leads – especially Duplass, who spent the first half of his career behind the camera writing, directing, and producing film and TV with his brother Mark.

Even though Mrs. Hyde loses the trees for the forest, any movie starring Huppert (Elle, The Ceremony) is radiant, and it should be evident that tossing in a special effect or a message will be superfluous.

Enthralling and effortlessly relevant, Birdboy is a searing contemporary fantasy, and often unrelenting in its savage attacks on greed, acquisitiveness, the disposable society, and some not-so-subtle jabs at Spanish Catholicism.

The relationship has the air of a reckless teen romance, but this is no Romeo and Juliet story. This is more like Snow White running off with one of the huntsmen. Although fairy tales abide by a strict sense of good vs. evil, what we have here is a configuration that’s a bit more muddled.

Stupefyingly inane buddy-cop comedy.

Solo is at its best when it keeps to the basics, and does them subtly.

The filmmakers do well to create a rich milieu, even if it is as short-lived and enigmatic as the artist’s own life.