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.