Thanks to the stylish direction by Paul Feig, a whip-smart screenplay by Jessica Sharzer (adapting Darcey Bells’ novel) and performances that pop from the screen, A Simple Favor is a sharp-edged delight.

The problem is, despite the efforts of the talented cast, the supposedly lovable former soldiers aren’t all that lovable, the primary human villain is a cocky fool with cloudy motives — and the predators don’t seem all that intimidating compared to a lot of the Earth-loathing alien invaders we see at the movies these days.

Slice is schlock, but that’s kind of the point. It doesn’t have a tenth of the production values of, say, last week’s violent thriller “Peppermint” (and no doubt it was made for even less than a tenth of that film’s budget). But it has originality, and originality goes a long way.

Writer-director Victor Levin takes an interesting although ultimately tedious and distracting approach to nearly every scene.

In the stylishly directed but gratuitously nasty and cliché-riddled Peppermint, Garner plays essentially two characters cut from the same person.

Everything unfolds pretty much as we anticipate, and at times “Operation Finale” IS gripping and involving — but more often, the story slows to a crawl and actually becomes less involving just when we should be holding our breath. This is a well-made but formulaic, by-the-numbers drama.

The editing is brilliant, as we jump back in forth in time, seeing these three as kids and then as young men, marveling at their skateboard moves and smiling at their rebellious spirit, and wondering if there’s any hope for any of them given all they’ve been through in their young lives.

At times The Little Stranger is frustratingly vague, and some of the developments don’t add up … Until they do. Quite nicely and quite eerily.

The Wife is visually arresting, but Runge wisely opts for a straightforward approach overall, giving center stage to the dialogue and the actors.

It is an impressively staged and appropriately rain-soaked, mud-splattered, bone-crunching tale, more violent and filled with rougher language than its predecessor, if not quite as powerful or moving.

Hope began to die about five minutes into this off-putting, cheap-looking, virtually laugh-free disaster. Hope was dead at the 10-minute mark.

Down a Dark Hall eventually goes Down a Convoluted Tunnel, with some admittedly creepy but also just plain crazy sequences that play like “Eyes Wide Shut” meets “The Shining.”

The real support group at this place is the one formed by a small band of students, who lean on each other and reinforce each other in the face of the small-minded bigotry of the so-called adults in their lives.

Though it crackles with energy and has some impressive albeit gratuitously bloody kill sequences, the Big Picture plot is a dud, up to and including the preposterous final scenes.

Crazy Rich Asians glimmers and sparkles, gives us characters to root for, and is pure escapist fantasy fun.

Kudos to writer-director Frizzell for demonstrating a sharp ear for comedic dialogue, a fine sense of storytelling as a director — and for incorporating Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?” as well as Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” into the soundtrack.

BlacKkKlansman is one of Spike Lee’s most accomplished films in recent memory, and one of the best films of 2018.

Bell and Grammer are wonderful playing off one another. Funny when the moment calls for funny, authentic and believable when the moment calls for substantive drama.

This is Agnes’ story, and this is Kelly Macdonald’s movie.

McKinnon has so much energy and creativity she nearly jumps out of the frame. It’s an uneven performance with mixed results — but we’re left hoping she’ll be matched up with a better film role sometime soon, one that makes full use of her unique talents.

“Fallout” just might be the best of the franchise, and what a rare thing that is for a long-running series.

Writer-director Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade is a sweet and intelligent and sometimes absolutely heartbreaking slice of modern-day, eighth-grade life, which, in some ways (hello social media), is radically different from the eighth-grade experience of 1998 or 1978 or 1958, but in many ways is absolutely relatable to audiences of any age or gender.

In The Equalizer 2 the great Denzel Washington hits a variety of notes reprising his role as McCall, in a brilliant performance that often rises above the pulpy, blood-soaked material.

We’re not supposed to think about a movie like Skyscraper. This is superficial summer popcorn fare, given a PG-13 because when innocents are mowed down, the camera lingers on the smugly smiling sociopathic villains, not the carnage.

In the alternately exhilarating and heartbreaking documentary Whitney, the Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald (“Touching the Void,” “The Last King of Scotland”) does a magnificent job of taking us through the paces of Houston’s life and times.

We’re hardly in original territory when a movie relies not once, but twice, on truth-serum humor — but even when things get ultra-corny, “Ant-Man and the Wasp” keeps merrily buzzing along.

The only thing less satisfying than the build-up is the finale, which goes from mind-boggling to you’ve got to be kidding me.

Nearly every scene takes a sideways turn, and nearly every expectation we have doesn’t work out the way we anticipate it working out, and that’s what makes the journey so much fun.