The perfect bait-and-switch of a film. Its light, sweetly frisky exterior and easygoing pace camouflages what a subtle and brilliant piece of bracing social commentary it is; a deft portrait of sisterhood existing under the thumb of capitalistic patriarchy.

The Happytime Murders is a one-joke movie, minus one joke. The year may cough up a worse film, but probably not a more joyless, witless one, raunchy or otherwise.

Freed from the respectful restraints of non-fiction, Berg goes completely hog-wild, cinematically, and it doesn't exactly work. The film is a riot of nearly incomprehensible editing, a violent melee of intertwining scenes, shots, characters, formats and timelines, straining the limits of coherence and cogency.

It's sweet, really, to imagine the kind of devotion Alpha might inspire, a film that's very simple, kind of strange, but will melt any dog-lover's heart.

Birke's script is plainly straightforward, a simple supernatural chase story. It doesn't plumb the depths of what might make Slender Man scary, so Slender Man isn't scary at all.

Dog Days is in some ways a very strange movie, in the way it straddles the worlds of weirdo comedy and family-friendly fare. But ultimately, it's the pooches who steal the show.

Forgettably entertaining/entertainingly forgettable.

The movie’s an artfully sustained guessing game, tense and rarely dull. It’s also afflicted with a jokey, jaunty tone as deliberate as it is limiting.

Much of Puzzle feels schematic and, in the convenient solution to the family’s financial problems, a bit lazy. Yet Macdonald is so good, on her own or with a scene partner, director Marc Turtletaub’s movie refuses to fall apart.

McKinnon’s apparent improvisations and inventions create a second, better movie in the margins.

The core human/bear connection is treated with respect. Pooh’s wisdom and kindness cannot be denied. The same impulses worked for the two “Paddington” movies, God knows. Christopher Robin isn’t quite in their league, but it’s affecting nonetheless.

Eighth Grade works you over, audience wincing followed by audience gratification, narrative tension followed by release, crises leading to just-in-time catharsis.

That’s Blindspotting all over: an exuberant, brightly colored, zigzagging portrait of a city, an uneasy transformation and a friendship.

McKay has worked mostly in episodic television in recent years, and “On the Seventh Day” marks his confident, neatly ordered but freshly observed return to feature filmmaking. He’s working with nonactors here, in a fruitful halfway point between documentary and conventional fictional narrative.

The movie sidesteps the conventional breadth of a documentary subject’s resume. We learn nothing about Sakamoto’s early years, and little about his private life. Yet simply by lingering with his pensive, compelling subject at the keyboard, or engaging Sakamoto (discreetly) in his thoughts on his life and his music, Schible casts a spell and captures the spirit of a uniquely gifted composer.

It's Hill who proves once again he's much more than his comedic origins, crafting a compelling portrayal of the elusive Donnie that just about steals the whole movie.

The Equalizer 2 just doesn't deliver the thrills.

Perhaps it's no fun because it's just too real. There's never a moment of wondering what is going on.

Some of it’s pleasingly old school in its reliance on formidable stunt work. Enough of it, though, gets a digital effects assist for the amazements to scale the heights of plausibility and then leap, like a gazelle, to the adjacent mountain of sublime ridiculousness.

Much like its predecessor, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is escapist fluff of the highest order — joyful, filled with beloved pop songs and incredibly bizarre. Go ahead and treat yourself to this raucous seaside summer confection, you deserve it.

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation is a visual splendor, from the fun way the creatures are portrayed to the pacing. Keeping Tartakovsky as director of all three films creates a fluid sense of comedy and look.

Skyscraper — a sort of reverse "Die Hard," where a family man breaks into an imposing structure to save his family — scoots by on the thinnest of premises, and an even thinner script.

It’s a provocative, serious, ridiculous, screwy concoction about whiteface, cultural code-switching, African-American identities and twisted new forms of wage slavery, beyond previously known ethical limits.

The latest “Purge” is an erratic, fairly absorbing and righteously angry prequel.

At its mean, snakelike best, it’s also a brutally assured commercial action picture, unburdened by the moral qualms or unnerving ambiguity of its predecessor.

It’s fun to hang out with these people for a while.

Wasikowska struggles to activate a vague notion of female disenfranchisement and victimhood, triumphant. She and Pattinson fill in as many blanks as they can, where they can.

Visually here’s the crucial thing with Ant-Man and the Wasp, and it sounds like a small thing, but really it’s a big thing: The sequel has upped the instances and exploits of the rapidly changing superheroes, and every time the movie cuts to a shot of the heroes’ miniaturized car, scooting around the streets of San Francisco, it’s good for a laugh.