Fans of Kwan’s books will not be disappointed by Chu’s adaptation, as “Crazy Rich Asians” lovingly brings to life some of the novel’s standout scenes, even as Chiarelli and Lim’s screenplay snips away subplots that detract from Rachel’s journey.

Statham remains an appealing summer movie fixture, but sharks deserve better than this.

Even when Christopher Robin stumbles or steers itself into a corner, it never stops trying to understand what people lose when they let go of the things they love. The movie sells itself by keeping one foot on the ground at all times.

It’s a tough story, but told through a decidedly female gaze, Night Comes On blossoms into something beautiful.

However afraid she is to let things get too serious, Miller Rogen is powerless to erase the emotional undertow that carries this story forward. All of the pent-up animosity her movie doesn’t know what to do with becomes its greatest asset.

Less moment-to-moment funny than committed to a sustained pitch of devilish glee, Never Goin’ Back couches its silliness in a credible milieu of American malaise. The women may never understand how they might find a better place, but the movie makes the case that their unending commitment to getting there might be good enough.

The film zips through its final act at breakneck speed, doling out answers and riling up new conflicts with little care for how they impact a standalone story, just setting up for a franchise that might never come to fruition.

The meandering and insufferable Death of a Nation is little more than a greatest-hits collection of its creator’s favorite neocon conspiracy theories, which frame the Democratic Party for the fascistic tendencies embodied by Donald Trump.

It’s intermittently engaging as a B-movie, but so often strives for something more that it never finds a satisfying tone.

One of those late-summer releases that’s just good enough to make you wish it were better, The Spy Who Dumped Me aims to please every step of the way, but it never earns the nearly two-hour running time.

Age of Rage is much more potent when questioning its own purpose than it is when giving fancy racists yet another platform to espouse their bullshit.

The polished new documentary, McQueen, charts the late designer’s rise from English country boy to fashion’s enfant terrible, but the filmmaking lacks the artistic vision of its subject.

It’s hard to understand how anyone so capable of diagnosing this problem can also believe themselves capable of solving it — so hard, in fact, that the last 20 minutes of Generation Wealth might compel you to reconsider the value of the 80 minutes before them.

The good news is that the fans of Antoine Fuqua’s “The Equalizer” — a bland and pulpy 2014 riff on the ’80s TV series of the same name — are in for more of the same. The bad news is that the rest of us are, too.

Ultimately, throwing the same people in the same place with little to do and even less time to do it is emblematic of the sins of far worse, much less worthy sequels. Without Streep there to tie it altogether, well, it just doesn’t sing.

Combining first-rate skate video footage with a range of confessional moments, Minding the Gap is a warmhearted look at the difficulties of reckoning with the past while attempting to escape its clutches.

He’s only Tom Cruise because nobody else is willing to be — or maybe he’s only Tom Cruise so that nobody else has to be. Either way, Fallout is the film he’s always promised us, and it was totally worth the wait.

The result is a dull and deeply compromised movie that would rather be a mediocre crime saga than a nuanced character study, but can’t quite bring itself to commit to that choice.

Even as the story drifts off, Night Eats the World derives its power from a beguiling, provocative implication: It’s hard to confront a hostile world, but gathering the courage to do so doesn’t make the job any easier.

Skyscraper plays out like a metaphor for diminishing returns — Johnson keeps climbing, higher and higher, until there’s nowhere left to go but down.

With plenty of laughs, truly dazzling animation, and some more of the franchise’s signature dance sequences, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation is a summer treat worth savoring, and a reminder that if we can see past our differences, we’ll find we’re not that different after all.

While Zagar doesn’t force the material into many surprising places, it’s a fully realized tapestry, owing much to the complex, layered score by Nick Zammuto that hums through nearly every scene, and frequent cutaways to hand-drawn animation based on the scrapbook that Jonah stores under his bed at night.

The First Purge is another absurd B-movie, uneven and ludicrous across the board, but altogether transfixing for the way it funnels Trump-era terror into an empowering crowdpleaser.

Sanju is a reminder that putting a subject on a pedestal isn’t a biopic’s only potential pitfall. Here, it becomes problematic by portraying Sanjay as a victim of his circumstances rather than the master of his own decisions.

Custody begins with an air of documentary reality before evolving into a thriller so claustrophobic its climax fits inside the bathroom of a modest apartment.

There’s no denying the purity of Fleming’s intentions (the movie’s end credits even play over a montage of same-sex parents), but Ideal Home is too cartoonish to meaningfully celebrate the beauty of the families we choose, and too casual to accomplish much else.

When White Fang focuses on its real stars — animals, Alaska, the spread of untamed country — it’s as visionary as any animated film. Placed alongside ham-fisted humans, it loses its power.

By focusing on what binds those on the pitch and those in the bleachers, Nossa Chape doesn’t just wonder if some things are “bigger than the game” — it proves it.

The essence of Ant-Man is inherently silly, and that’s where the strength of the new movie lies.

Elijah Bynum’s debut embracing every last cliche it can find in a perverse attempt to forge its own identity. It’s a noble effort that comes up empty. Instead of something original, we’re left with a sweaty pastiche that shares its protagonist’s desire to be all things to all people, only to wind up losing any sense of itself along the way.

An electric lead performance and a growing sense of self make it worth your while to see that Izzy gets where she’s going.

From the flat battle sequence that’s shot with all the excitement of folding laundry, to the literal chess match that anchors the underwritten dynamic between Berg and his target, The Catcher Was a Spy shrugs through each bad scene as though it’s biding time for better ones to come.

Alas, all the darkness in the world doesn’t make “Day of Soldado” feel real, and errant mentions of a weak-stomached POTUS violently return us to the atrocities happening beyond the frame.

Uncle Drew is such a well-acted, warm-hearted basketball comedy that you’re liable to forget about its corporate origins.

It’s a powerful look at the durability of parent-child bonds as well as a fascinating psychological thriller about what it takes to heal such a rift when it seems irreparable.

Set It Up is a classic rom-com brought to life by a pair of wonderfully well-matched stars who seem to revel in the genre. This is cinematic comfort food, the kind we’ve been starving for.

Stuck between a hangout movie and an out-and-out caper romp, Tag settles for something in the middle — there are worse ways to spend your time, but the result is taking an outrageous premise and making it seem ordinary.

Quinn has clearly done the work to establish meaningful relationships with many of his subjects, and you can see the pain and concern in their eyes. Still, Eating Animals feels every bit as scattershot as it sounds, the film’s moral argument cornering you from all sides rather than attacking head-on.

It works because the characters keep things anchored to some kind of dramatic reality.

Connolly’s biopic isn’t a hagiography. The problem is that it’s not really anything. This is a strange thing to say about a notorious mob boss who was locked up for murder, but John Gotti deserved better.

Once the menacing and mysterious Screenslaver is introduced, inciting a Spielberg-level monorail chase that reaffirms Bird’s lucid gift for kinetic and character-driven action filmmaking, the movie blasts off and never looks back.

By all rights, it should be a heartwarming comedy with a few more tender moments. Instead, Hearts Beat Loud operates like a sad drama with a few moments that might make you smile. We knew punk was dead, but the comedy doesn’t have to be.

It’s damning, if not quite fatal, that Lee’s version works best when it’s riffing on the standout elements of the source material rather than trying to reinvent them.

A handful of amusing details in desperate need of a purpose, the film spends its first half looking for a compelling reason to exist, and its second half trying to disguise the fact that it can’t find one.

Despite a cool backdrop and a daring idea, the heist itself feels like a third-tier Soderbergh joint, one that’s temporarily bolstered by the same jazzy music and quick cuts that marked the filmmaker’s trilogy, though carried out with considerably less energy.

The Fallen Kingdom is at its worst when attempting topicality (the testosterone-fueled Wheatley refers to one of our heroes as a “nasty woman”) or when beefing up its crass plot.

Unwatchable even by the subterranean standards of a direct-to-video Nicolas Cage thriller, director York Shackleton’s 211 is the kind of low-grade schlock that leaves you with a newfound respect for the basic competence that most bad movies bring to the table.

For most of its interminable runtime, Action Point feels like a porno that deliberately ruins the sex scenes in order to stop you from fast-forwarding through the plot.

Silas Howard’s new film is nothing if not well-attuned to the difference between the purity of sharing the right values and the messiness of actually living with them.

The high school-set rom-com is a sexist and regressive look at relationships that highlights the worst impulses of the genre.

Adrift is told with an inimitable sense of place and a rare attention to detail, both of which help to ensure that we never lose sight of the terror at hand. When all else fails, which it sometimes does, Woodley is there to right the ship.

As the tension builds to its harrowing conclusion, and Alex begins to bare his teeth, Mathews pulls enough tricks from his sleeve to make Discreet a worthy digression.

The movie is able to ride a line right through so many of its genre’s worst clichés because it never stops negotiating between fear and desire, risk and reward. It’s an assured directorial debut from “The Mentalist” actor Simon Baker.

It’s as wild and unhinged as the other films in its brethren (the MPAA does not typically rate original Netflix films, but “Ibiza” would absolutely be on the receiving end of an R). However, Ibiza subverts plenty of expectations in service to a story that’s both funny and sweet.

Newton’s film knows that people are always going to be letting themselves (and each other) down, no matter how hard they try, and Nicholson’s unforgettable turn makes it impossible for us to forget it.

For a giallo riff so light on gore, Knife + Heart is still a bloody mess.

Sorry Angel doesn’t strain from too much ambition; it’s a sharp snapshot of two men at pivotal moments in their lives, and ends on a note not too different from the one it starts on. But that cycle is central to its gentle intellectual flow.

A master of threading the needle between conflict and contrivance, Kore-eda manages to turn this drama inside out without every betraying its most resonant truth.

Wanuri Kahiu’s sophomore feature is just good enough to give its modest intentions a historic purpose, bringing fresh context to an old formula while hitting the expected emotional beats.

Rise to the challenge, and payoff awaits on the other side: a formulaic story transformed into something more perceptive and profound. If only more family dramas took such care to get the details right.

Capernaum is a movie that wants its audience to empathize with its protagonist so intensely that you agree he should never have been born. It’s a fascinating (if obviously counterintuitive) approach, but one that’s frustrated by the literalness with which Labaki unpacks it.

The best thing about writer-director A.B. Shawky’s feature-length debu...is the way it burrows inside Beshay’s life without devolving into a pity party.

A hyper-stylish and unexpectedly sweet rebuke to the idea that screwing people is a good way to get ahead, Gavras’ second feature manages the almost impossible task of mining something nice from the me-first mentality that’s been sweeping across modern Europe.

This film manages to celebrate the spirit that stood in opposition to limit her to what she looked like on a poster. It’s a reminder that, even for world-famous icons, it’s pointless to reduce people to a single piece of notoriety.

If the deliciously grainy archival footage were the only thing That Summer had to offer, it would be enough. But by including Beard and Radziwill’s introspective voiceovers, Swedish director Göran Hugo Olsson (“The Black Power Mixtape”) creates a nostalgic meditation that touches on both cultural and historical memory.

The unexpected love child of Wong Kar-wai and Andrei Tarkovsky, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” transforms from a lush, slow-burn pastiche to an audacious filmmaking gamble while maintaining the pictorial sophistication of its earlier section. It’s both languorous and eye-popping at once.

It’s a shambling, transportive, and semi-tragic story about a fleeting past where anything seemed possible.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote sits alongside much of Gilliam’s late period work as a messy but singular achievement that strains to make its disparate parts fit together, but there’s a noble spirit of invention to its wackiness anyway.

More media installation than movie, The Image Book bemoans a vapid world well into the process of disintegration, and his film is engineered to simulate that process in visceral terms.

The movie lulls you into its unpredictable rhythms, and a striking poetry creeps into the material, finally overtaking it.

While it’s less than the sum of its parts, those parts know how to deliver.

Few narrative dramas (if any) have more sensitively explored the nuances of growing up transgender, the bravery required to transition, and the struggle for self-acceptance that can motivate or define that process. Likewise, few narrative dramas (if any) have more palpably distilled the pain of being deadnamed, the humiliation of being reduced to your body, and the cruelty of being misrepresented as something that you’re not.

Abbasi grounds the narrative in an emotional foundation even as it flies off the rails.

Though salvaged in parts by Lindon’s impassioned performance and a few perceptive asides that hint at a better version of the events, At War is mostly a redundant portrait of working-class struggles that does more to belittle the efforts of its subjects than position them in galvanizing terms.

Hamaguchi finds ways of crystallizing the movie’s themes, lingering on contemplative moments that position the entire story as a metaphor for the contrast between the fantasies and realities of relationships, as well as the messy negotiation required to navigate those extremes.

The debut feature from writer-director Vanessa Filho is a trite story about a walking disaster and the daughter caught her in path, the tedious melodrama only finding a heartbeat when it abandons the lead character and searches for change.

From Romero’s original zombie series to the films it inspired, this type of horror succeeds when it laces its scares with biting social commentary, and “Cargo” utilizes this formula to great success.

Subtle as a great dane, and less convincing than a show poodle that’s trying to pretend she’s an untamed stray, Dogman is an obvious and strained little movie.

It’s a brave thing, to tell a story by omission, but Pawlikowski almost pulls it off.

Burning keeps twisting back on itself, charting the path of a man waking up to the world, only to find that it won’t stop messing with him.

It’s fascinating to watch Mitchell grasp for a bigger picture with the wild ambition of his scruffy protagonist.

It’s light entertainment meant to be shared, a big glass of summer fun that goes down easy.

The House That Jack Built is an often-horrifying, sadistic dive into a psychotic internal monologue, with intellectual detours about the nature of art in the world today, and puts considerable effort into stimulating discomfort at key moments. If you meet the work on those terms, or at least accept the challenge of wrestling with impeccable filmmaking that dances across moral barriers, it’s also possibly brilliant.

For now, he’s a lone gun, but “Solo” ably lays out how and why that might change. We may know where he ends up, but for now, we can’t wait to see where he goes next.

Like so many franchise-starting first films, “Deadpool” had to push through some necessary evils to get to the good stuff, fortunately, all that subversive goodness is on wild display in Deadpool 2, which delivers on the promise of the first film (and more).

Hell, this thing is so mainstream it feels like the start of a franchise. And yet, that mass appeal is a huge part of what makes this funny and righteously furious American film so powerful.

While it never reaches the psychedelic heights of Guerra’s previous effort and relies on a more conventional pattern of events, Birds of Passage delivers another fascinating tone poem about Colombia’s fractured identity.

It’s a movie that often feels like a mega-mix of Jia’s greatest hits, but one that rehashes them with precious little of the ineffable grace that make each of them so valuable on their own.

Even as Three Faces staggers along, it maintains the unique blend of introspection and intrigue that defines this singular director’s talent.

Arctic works because it’s so believable. The movie never cheats or takes shortcuts.

Gaspar Noé’s remarkable psychedelic ride is his most focused achievement, a concise package of sizzling dance sequences and jolting developments that play like a slick mashup of the “Step Up” franchise and “Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom,” not to mention the disorienting cinematic trickery of Noé’s own provocative credits.

The film shows a refreshing interest in his current existence, rather than becoming a by-the-book retread of his pre-pope life.

People might not find it all that pleasurable, but “Get the Gringo” is, refreshingly, 100% Mel.

Beast walks the line between taut psychological thriller and doomed genre romance, smartly remaining laser-focused on Moll and her fraying sanity.

Once more for the people in the back, treating anyone’s identity like a costume is offensive and dangerous to an already-marginalized group. If the filmmakers wanted the movie to have a real impact, they should have cast a transgender actress. Instead, Anything is just a yellow lily-livered mess.

Life of the Party is proof that even the funniest actors need good material, which makes it all the more disappointing that McCarthy wrote the script with director Ben Falcone, who is also her husband.

The full force of Union’s performance pushes the film to occasional crowd-pleasing results — give this woman a real action role, and fast — and Shaun’s ability to fight back is the one reliable element of an uneven film.

It’s a taut setup that risks veering into soapy territory, but Farhadi reveals just enough involving details to pause at individual moments and rest on more intimate observations.