This is a vital, original, and emotionally potent chapter to one of the longest-running movie series out there. It will easily be one of the summer of 2017’s best films and, at the end of the year, it will likely find a space on many respectable Top 10 lists.

The Big Sick has the qualities that could make it a sleeper hit. It’s funny, touching, and perceptive.

While the Peter Parker stuff is enjoyable, that’s only part of what the movie is giving us. Every time Peter puts on the Spidey suit, we know exactly what we’re going to get, beat-by-beat.

All-in-all, however, even though Chaplin is fitfully entertaining, it fails to touch enough emotional chords to make it of more than passing interest.

Despicable Me 3 is an example of how even the most promising animated franchises can hit a wall if allowed to continue too long.

Despite being broadly classified as a “monster movie” and featuring sequences that are as wildly bizarre as any Monty Python skit, Okja has serious messages about consumerism, ecology, and food production.

At its best, The Journey is riveting drama, with Paisley and McGuinness acting as proxies for the two sides in the long-simmering, bitter civil war that divided Northern Ireland for 40 years along sectarian lines.

It’s a near-miss that offers a captivating atmosphere and strong performances to go along with an uneven tone and a climax that’s so overcooked that it bursts at the seams with unintentional humor.

Wright is savvy enough to realize that suspense and tension require characters that are more than human figures in a CGI playground. He does just enough with the men and women populating Baby Driver for us to get a sense of who they are.

For better or worse (emphasis on the latter), it was unlike anything else on the multiplex landscape. In 2017, it’s becoming difficult for Bay to distinguish his brand of brain-dead spectacle from the brain-dead spectacle of many other sequels, prequels, and remakes.

The final chapter of the trilogy has saved the best for last and will at least deflect the most serious concerns of those who think this series has taken too many extra laps.

There’s enough variety here that everyone’s funny bone should be tickled from time-to-time.

Like Jeff Bridges in "Crazy Heart," this is an opportunity for a sometimes-underrated actor (Elliott has never been nominated for an Oscar) to show his range and capabilities.

Suspension of disbelief is an oh-so-tricky hurdle for a movie like this to overcome and The Book of Henry fails to achieve it.

Narratively incoherent and full of cheese and camp, this movie makes it clear that the mummy should have remained dead and buried.

With impeccable period detail, strong character development, superior acting, and a surprisingly fast pace, this film represents welcome counterprogramming to the typical loud and vacuous summertime multiplex fare.

Horror isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s not a child’s genre. It isn’t meant to be comfortable. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of a recent movie that’s as uncomfortable and disturbing as It Comes at Night.

The movie is fresh, fun, and breezy.

While having a female director perhaps gives Wonder Woman a subtly different perspective, the real strengths of this production are its lead actors, the period piece setting, and an unexpected emotional resonance that one doesn’t expect from a popcorn movie.

The waterlogged end product is an example of lazy writing and direction with the vague hope that perhaps the involvement of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will attract viewers.

It’s fast paced but goes nowhere new and the film’s “bigness” makes it hard to remember what an amazingly unexpected treasure The Curse of the Black Pearl was.

At its best, this film echoes the creepiness and tension of "Alien." At its worst, it sinks into the pretentiousness that at times threatened to derail "Prometheus."

As YA romances go – and there are plenty to choose from – this is a lesser option.

With Legend of the Sword, the filmmaker isn’t remaking or adapting anything. This is his version of Arthur’s origin story and, if nothing else, it’s kinetic and attention-grabbing.

In a curious way, Snatched is a little like an Amy Schumer stand-up routine: sometimes edgy, occasionally hilarious, and lessened by the bits that fall flat.

Volume 2 can claim to be bigger and better than its predecessor, although it still suffers from some of the narrative sleight-of-hand issues that kept Guardians of Galaxy from achieving greatness.

The end result is a meandering story featuring shallow, unconvincing characters attempting to illustrate the evils of technology in its undermining of individual liberties. The Circle offers a lot of good bullet arguments but this is a movie not a Powerpoint presentation.

Free Fire isn’t a “Reservoir Dogs for the 2010s” but there are enough similarities in approach, tone, and style to warrant a comparison. The violence, the cavalcade or profanity, the testosterone & adrenaline – they’re all present and accounted for.