To her credit, Vikander works hard and looks the part. She also has some chemistry with Daniel Wu, who plays the guy who helps Lara get to the island and then sort of becomes her sidekick.... By the standards of video game movies, Tomb Raider is not terrible, but by the standards of video game movies Plan 9 From Outer Space is practically an Oscar winner.

Taylor’s film lacks the suspense required of a thriller. It’s a cheap exploitation of the horrors of alcoholism, depression, and domestic abuse that thinks it’s much smarter and artsier than it is.

None of the life we see J.R.R. Tolkien live in the film illuminates his great works of art — or even makes for a particularly compelling tale.

Between the haphazard zooms and the odd editing meant to evoke the way we re-stitch fragments of memory in hindsight, Porto reads like a short student film pointlessly extended to feature length.

If you want to see a lot of strange CGI visuals and the you’re interested in the groundwork of the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you’ll likely walk out satisfied (if maybe a little confused about the specifics of Kang’s larger plan). If you want to see an Ant-Man movie like the previous two Ant-Man movies — with wry humor, simple stories, and inventive uses of Ant-Man’s shrinking powers — you’re as out of luck as Scott Lang after Kang drags him to the Quantum Realm.

A film is not how it’s made; it’s how it plays. And Don’t Worry Darling plays very poorly. It’s the sort of sustained puzzle of a movie that is very hard to pull off especially for over two hours, and here, Wilde was simply not up to the task.

The premise of I Feel Pretty would work better within the quick-hit comedy structure of an Inside Amy Schumer sketch. Stretched across a nearly-two hour runtime, the joke gets old fast.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is as narratively incomprehensible as it is visually, with an even-more-talented roster of overqualified actors tasked with carrying the film’s insipid story and trying to make their characters’ bizarre decisions seem halfway plausible.

Haunted Mansion does at least represent a small measure of progress for Hollywood. People always complain that studios remake beloved movies — which do not need improvement — when it would be wiser to remake a movie that contained the kernel of a good idea but failed in the execution. Haunted Mansion is absolutely a remake of a bad movie, and it does represent a slight improvement over the previous version.

Even when the film does try to rouse emotion, it feels like a last minute attempt to make up for lack of character development.

It’s Verbinski’s eye that makes A Cure for Wellness such a wild, nightmarish treat.

Never Go Back could have used a bit more personality in the bad guy department, and the middle section sags a bit before the inevitable (and satisfying) denouement. But everyone involved seems to understand exactly what kind of movie they’re trying to make, and they deliver on just about every promise made by the title Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.

The Hitman’s Bodyguard is not the best movie of the summer, but it is easily its most pleasant surprise. An unapologetically violent and vulgar buddy action comedy, it updates the template set forth by Lethal Weapon and particularly Midnight Run for a new era.

Masterminds stars some of the funniest names in comedy. Kristen Wiig. Kate McKinnon. Zach Galifianakis. Jason Sudeikis. Leslie Jones. Too bad the movie isn’t funny.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire serves one valuable purpose: It proves once and for all that bigger is not better.

When all is said and done, The Alto Knights imparts very little about these two men that couldn’t be gleaned by reading their respective Wikipedia pages, and it does it at a sluggish pace and with little visual flair. Some of the biggest and best names to ever work in gangster movies contributed to this film; De Niro and Pileggi, obviously, but also producer Irwin Winkler and director Barry Levinson. Despite their many contributions to this genre in the past, they’ve got nothing new to say here. And they provide zero evidence that casting De Niro in both lead roles is anything more than a gimmick.

Blair Witch does deliver the requisite shocks demanded of a horror movie for a multiplex audience, but maybe it’s time for filmmakers to stay out of these woods for a while — at least until there’s a new technology for the Blair Witch to mess with.

In Mortal Kombat II I truly did not care who lived or died for a single second — mostly because the film made it very clear that death is basically meaningless in this story.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods is just sort of there, coasting on the residual good vibes and talented cast of its much-superior predecessor.

Now You See Me 2 is an essential example of how inessential movie sequels have become. It ignores what was good about the first film, abandons its defining characteristics, and tells a story nobody asked for.

For a couple minutes, it starts to feel like the film is building on top of the Super Mario mythology rather than simply regurgitating it. The rest reminded me of the attract mode that would automatically start to play on old arcade games if no one pressed start: A bunch of computerized images going through the motions over and over.

The movie around him is a mess at the best of times and a disaster at the worst, but Aykroyd always looks like he’s having fun, even if no one else is.

Like director Jon Turteltaub’s underrated National Treasure movies, The Meg has an innate understanding of its own absurdity, and is at its best when it embraces and amplifies that impulse.

At pretty much every step Folie à Deux feels like one big middle finger to fans of the original movie. I just wish it was less of a middle finger to the rest of us at the same time.

It’s a movie that loudly yells at audiences they need to have some fun, while not actually providing any fun itself.

Justice League is a collection of missed opportunities and flubbed ideas.

Rampage won’t set the world on fire (our world, at least; it sets plenty of its world on fire when George and his two giant pals arrive in Chicago), but it does exactly what it says on the tin: It’s a big, goofy romp about creatures who lay waste to a major American city while the Rock cracks jokes in a light brown shirt.

Power Rangers is fun when it leans into the original series’ campy sensibility.