Although unintentional, Puzzle is what its name implies. Despite an Oscar-caliber performance from Kelly Macdonald, the film is hampered by sluggish pacing and a sterile mood that sucks the life out of various emotionally-charged situations.

Blindspotting is a compelling film with much to say about subjects like gentrification and race – things it approaches with a mix of wit and seriousness. However, when it comes to punctuating a core theme of the Black Lives Matters movement, it falls short of the gut-punch delivered by a film such as "Fruitvale Station."

Although perhaps a little too long and not as tightly plotted as Rogue Nation, Fallout offers everything a viewer could reasonably expect from a Mission: Impossible production. It’s reliable.

Though not unusual for animated movies to provoke tears, Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms is perhaps the second animated film I would openly classify as a “tearjerker” (the first being Grave of the Fireflies).

Occupation accomplishes the previously unthinkable: an alien invasion film that makes "Independence Day" look smart.

The Equalizer 2 represents a solid follow-up to "The Equalizer" and an effectively understated entry into the 2018 summer movie sweepstakes.

Dark Web is a sequel only in that it mimics its predecessor’s style. The story and characters are new and, because the supernatural element has been eliminated, the movie adds a dash more suspense to go along with a heap of misanthropic nihilism.

More of the same. One senses viewers wouldn’t want anything different.

Be advised, however, that the idiotic ending doesn’t redeem the uneven middle portion.

Leave No Trace is one of the most moving motion pictures thus far of 2018 and it achieves its power without resorting to the overt manipulation favored by many movies.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Siberia is effectively well-paced, offers instances of tension, and doesn’t cheat at the end.

Like the little-seen 2004 mockumentary, "Confederate States of America," Sorry to Bother You blends conventional comedy with political satire to produce a film that will generate laughter and a sense of discomfort in equal doses.

The high production values, excellent acting, and strong writing make this a cut above what is often accorded this sort of release pattern. For those intrigued by the material, it’s worth seeking out.

Ant-Man and the Wasp offers nothing close to what we have come to expect from entries into the MCU. Plodding, repetitive, replete with technobabble nonsense and lifeless action, this is easily the worst-written of any of the 20 MCU offerings and may be the worst all-around film featuring a Marvel superhero since Sony rebooted Spider-Man.

Boiling off the divisive political subtext and its associated sociological aspects, what we’re left with is an old-fashioned exploitation thriller. Seen in that context, The First Purge isn’t half-bad. It’s competently made, delivers its share of thrills and edge-of-the-seat moments, and gives the audience an opportunity to stand up and cheer.

Day of the Soldado retains the edge-of-the-seat and nihilistic qualities of its predecessor, but there are shifts to the overall tone, which is neither as stark nor as ominous.

Despite a committed performance from lead actress Mackenzie Davis and a promising opening, the film quickly corkscrews into a death spiral of trite dialogue meant to obfuscate the lack of a coherent or meaningful narrative.

The acting in Beach House is uniformly strong and that’s one reason why the film works despite various narrative shortcomings.

Cliffhanger elements aside, I have no desire to revisit this world again. It’s played out. There’s only so far you can go with dinosaur movie and this series has gotten to that point…and beyond. Fallen Kingdom isn’t dino-myte. It’s dino doo-doo.

It’s another comedy that falls prey to two common problems: (1) predictable, uninspired humor, and (2) inept attempts to inject drama into the proceedings during the last act.

Constrained by expectations and established character/plot limitations, Incredibles 2 lacks the freshness and ingenuity displayed by its predecessor. It’s good, fun family entertainment but it’s not incredible.

By making the key participants in The Valley an Indian-American family with many traditional values and customs, Kariat emphasizes the universality of the problem.

A frustrating crime thriller that incorporates too many plot threads into the overall narrative at the expense of character identification, suspense, and emotional heft.

Bernard and Huey is a small pleasure; it’s almost always welcome to watch a character-based film crafted without pretentions.

The humor is often muted and at times almost apologetic and a subplot involving long-ago events fails in its goal of boosting the three-dimensionality of a character.

The movie spends perhaps too much time on the planning of the caper and too little time on its execution, which turns out to be on the underwhelming side. It’s also not terribly exciting.

The film functions as a time machine to take the viewer back to when (s)he watched “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” on television and re-introduces the man who functioned as a friend/mentor/father-figure.

First-time director Ari Aster hits a home run when it comes to an overall sense of impending doom. Sadly, Aster’s story isn’t as waterproof as his stylistic aptitude.

Like all B-movies, this one provides moments of visceral satisfaction while ignoring nuance and (at times) logic.

It’s as if the film’s reason to be is its aesthetic, with everything else being of secondary concern.

Although guilty of soft-peddling some harrowing aspects of the experience to achieve the teen-friendly PG-13 rating, Adrift nevertheless gives a flavor of the existential experience inherent in this situation by illustrating that surviving a shipwreck is as much about mental strength as physical endurance and stamina.

It’s an emotionally satisfying experience that brings to life a group of appealing characters and allows them to grow and expand in front of the lens.

An inelegant melding of a bland origin story with a generic heist tale, Solo never generates sufficient energy or interest to elevate it above the level of a failed curiosity.

Although there are times when the dialogue is downright insipid, it contains enough wit to provoke frequent chuckles (and maybe even a few guffaws – Andy Garcia has a laugh-out-loud one-liner) and the movie quadrupoles down on the romance element.

The caper in Carter & June is clumsy and straightforward, lacking sophistication and intelligence. Sadly, that’s an apt description of the film as a whole, which is difficult to sit through and leaves no lasting impression beyond the desire to warn people to stay away.

The bottom line is that viewers who enjoyed Deadpool will almost certainly enjoy Deadpool 2, although perhaps not quite as much.

Lelio’s subdued approach to the material robs it of potential emotional power but also keeps the story grounded.

This is not only the least funny movie in which McCarthy has appeared but the tamest and most toothless.

At its best, Terminal is a tasty, tangy parfait – a kaleidoscope of neon-tinged visuals and a twisty storyline with a tortured time line.

This is yet another chapter in “When Smart Movies Turn Dumb.”

Measure of a Man, the sophomore feature effort from British director Jim Loach (the son of the famed filmmaker Ken Loach), effectively captures this difficult-to-pin-down feeling with a largely unsentimental coming-of-age story based on Robert Lipsyte’s novel, “One Fat Summer.”

Despite its overly praiseworthy tone, there are areas of interest.

A standard-order noir murder mystery with a confused, contrived last act, Anon is more notable for how it sees the future than what it sees going on there.

The movie is rarely funny with much of the comedy being too broad, too predictable, or both.

There are good reasons to see Tully. Theron’s performance is high on the list, as is that of Mackenzie Davis. The first 30 minutes are uncommonly good, which may be why the spike of disappointment is so acute when the film fails to maintain that level for its entire length.

By compressing everything into an overheated 24-hour period, Duck Butter is able to explore the highs and lows in extreme circumstances, where the importance of every moment and action is heightened.

Supercon has its moments, although not nearly enough of them, and its grossest-of-gross-out scenes might be disgusting enough to cause John Waters to wince.

No, it’s not a game-changer like "Deadpool" or "Logan." It remains firmly anchored within the “traditional” comic book milieu. But, with an unwavering devotion to spectacle and action, the film throws down a gauntlet where this kind of mass team-up is concerned.

Colossal is 2/3 of a great movie and 1/3 of a mess. Writer/director Nacho Vigalondo is tremendous when it comes to setup and the majority of his narrative but he can’t stick the ending.

Like a well-made romantic comedy that follows all the rules, Kodachrome engages because the dialogue pops and the actors are sufficiently invested that they give breadth and depth to characters who are, for the most part, underwritten.

In the interval between the release of "Super Troopers" and its sequel, we have moved on. For better or worse, Broken Lizard hasn’t. As a result, some of what would have been side-splitting in 2001 barely provokes a chuckle in 2018.

The way in which I Feel Pretty presents its message is one of the film’s biggest problems. If there’s something less subtle than a sledgehammer, it applies here.

Every time An Ordinary Man seems to be headed into a minefield of clichés, it takes an unexpected detour and the film’s final such excursion comes like a gut-punch.

A hard-to-swallow drama about sibling rivalry, mental illness, and bad therapy. Cobbled together using clichés and contrivances, Brian Shoaf’s feature debut perceives mental illness more as a personality quirk than a sickness and treats it almost as a kind of magical realism.

Wildling starts out strongly but the qualities that make the first 20 minutes engrossing and harrowing drain away and the movie morphs into a thoroughly unsatisfying excursion into fantasy-tinged horror.

Damn, is it good to watch a movie that expects the audience to pay attention and that doesn’t pander to the least common denominator.

A godawful teen-magnet utterly devoid of entertainment value beyond the lure of its popular, photogenic cast and the dubious attraction of playing the “guess who gets it next” game. The little bit of cleverness that ends the film comes far too late to save this movie.

The problem with Rampage is that it’s not content to be mindless fun. There’s too much exposition and too many needless human villains. Plus, the tone is more lugubrious than the flippancy suggested by the trailers.

Don’t be fooled by the PG-13 rating – A Quiet Place has an adult aesthetic and younger viewers may be unprepared for its unconventional style and unrelenting intensity.

Although the movie’s foremost goal is to deliver big laughs, it gets points for taking seriously the trauma of parents who, after nurturing and caring for their children over an 18-year period, are forced to let go.

Admittedly, the typical romantic comedy thrives on tropes and clichés but the pandering in Finding Your Feet is so extreme that it gets old fast.

First-time director Russell Harbaugh presents grief as it is, in all its pain and ugliness, rather than using the convenient, uplifting short-hand that Hollywood prefers.

With a running length of 30 or 40 minutes, Isle of Dogs might have been brilliant. Unfortunately, this concept, although suitable for a short, is too thin for a full animated feature.

Spielberg has invested massive creative capital into Ready Player One and the resulting production has all the ingredients viewers expect from potential blockbusters. Whether it achieves the level experienced by Spielberg’s biggest successes remains to be seen, but it is without a question one of the year’s most energetic, visually rewarding, and ultimately exhausting motion pictures.

Like most unintended second installments, this one is superfluous – a remix of moments, scenes, and images from its predecessor infused with the need to make everything bigger and louder.

Although the ending is generic and needlessly protracted, the production as a whole is suspenseful – full of diabolical little twists as it ventures deep into an uncomfortable territory using the trail blazed by "Misery."

Madame is populated by one-note individuals and the screenplay isn’t overly interested in building them beyond their core characteristics. As a result, lonely and bored Anne (Toni Collette) becomes unlikeable because she is defined by her vapidity and venality.

Imogen Poots and Zoe Saldana add their names to the project but, although they give solid turns, their roles are secondary. The star is relative newcomer 15-year old Madison Wolfe, whose performance is note-perfect.

Despite a threadbare screenplay featuring overfamiliar motifs, the movie gains traction as a result of a committed, riveting performance by Evan Rachel Wood.

This is one of those films where the comedy prefers to accentuate characters’ deficiencies than pursue slapstick. Because of this, Buscemi, Palin, Tambor, and a deliciously pompous and over-the-top Jason Isaacs (as Field Marshal Zhukov) shine.

Tomb Raider may be the most faithful adaptation of a video game to-date. Unfortunately, faithfulness to the source material doesn’t always result in the best cinematic experience and this is one of those occasions.

Love, Simon is charming and likeable in much the same way that heterosexual teen comedies can be charming and likeable.

Although advertised as a family-friendly feature, A Wrinkle in Time is a poor choice for younger children. The glacial pacing of the first half-hour, coupled with less-than-easily-digestible chunks of exposition will cause many kids under 10 (and a few adults as well) to squirm in their seats with impatience.

The narrative contains some clever moments but the resolution somehow feels like a cop-out, perhaps because we’ve seen it so many times before.

Although there are a few missteps, the movie boasts a deliciously dark tone that makes for compelling viewing.

Ted Geoghegan’s Mohawk is taut, bloody, and uncompromising – all with a dollop of social commentary thrown in for good measure.

The 2018 Death Wish has been developed with a specific audience in mind – those who enjoy these kinds of thoughtlessly violent outings. The direction is workmanlike, although without the flourishes that have added some visual razzle-dazzle to similar orgies of brutality like "John Wick" and its sequel.

Red Sparrow is a deliciously perverse, unflinchingly violent thriller – a modern-day espionage tale that breaks with the tradition of making the spy business the purview of suave and debonair characters.

A compulsively watchable thriller that represents a calling card for the Ramsay brothers for the movie industry.

It maintains its cheekiness while poking fun at the overused concept of redemption. Most importantly, it stays funny up to the beginning of the end credits, and maybe a little beyond.

Liking "Ex Machina" is no guarantee of liking Annihilation or vice versa. In terms of tone, Annihilation is a close cousin to "Arrival." There’s the same dark atmosphere and bleak sense of discovery.

Outside of the insects, nothing else is either creepy or compelling. For a better version of pretty much the same story, invest the time in watching "Aliens."

The plot is sparse. This is about acting, dialogue, and character interaction, not narrative.

The Cured suffers from a common marketing problem that afflicts many horror-cross-something hybrids: it’s at times too slow and existential for pure blood and gore lovers and too grotesque for those with a penchant for offbeat, idea-based allegories.

There are some problems but most are related to the uneven screenplay and not the performances of Cage or his co-star, Robin Tunney.

This is the closest Marvel has come to making a stand-alone tale in many years. Even Doctor Strange felt more connected to the larger MCU.

Double Lover may not represent Ozon in peak form but it’s too weirdly entertaining to dismiss out-of-hand.

Instead of vying for a so-bad-it’s-entertaining categorization, it falls squarely into the hell of cinematic mediocrity.

This is as surprising a romantic comedy as I have seen in some time.

As for the movie itself, it’s not worth much ink. A kluge of bad science and worse science fiction clichés, it tries to be atmospheric and scary but succeeds only at being frustrating and tedious.

Although there are numerous problems with Fifty Shades Freed, the third and final installment of E.L. James’ trilogy, the fundamental one is also the most obvious: the lack of a compelling story.

Aside from being a showcase for up-and-coming action star Jason Momoa, it offers little else of note.

The promise of Before We Vanish’s early moments is never fully realized, however, as the movie plods and meanders through an overly-familiar narrative on its way to a half-baked and uneven conclusion.

If I knew definitively what the plural was for the term deus ex machina, I’d apply it here. Rarely can I remember a movie filled with so many miraculous rescues and associated contrivances.

It’s a small gem that deserves to be discovered.

Den of Thieves delivers an above-average cops-and-robbers heist film.

12 Strong represents a recent war as depicted on screen in an old-fashioned way.