In more careless hands, Middle Man’s deranged farce could have resulted in an unchecked, undisciplined movie with nothing to say. But beneath the roller-coaster madness here is an earthbound terror that art is meant to reveal.

It’s a quietly competent film and a good story, and in the overstuffed summer movie season, often that’s more than enough.

It’s pretty, it’s melodramatic-verging-on-silly, and if you like this sort of thing it’s great fun.

With all of Shults’ dark-night-of-the-soul mood manipulations, the film promises more than it delivers. Its buildups are impressive, but in the end its frights are mild.

The Mummy starts off light and very quickly goes dark — fading rapidly, along with our hopes that this latest monster mash might possibly be any good.

The friendship of George and Harold is celebrated, and the cheery vocal work of Hart and Middleditch gives the picture its sprightly spirit.

Paris Can Wait isn’t exactly a feast, but it’s a snack worth having.

Diana’s a superhero without a chip on her shoulder; she was raised in love, and Gadot lets that belief shine through her eyes. You’re both drawn to this woman and in awe of her.

A riveting and illuminating documentary.

Directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg (“Kon-Tiki”) seem to not have the slightest idea how to make this material sing; instead, it’s mostly a noisy, dark 3D blur in which the characters run around a lot, seemingly looking for the exits

It’s all just a day at the beach, harmlessly fun and instantly forgettable.

Letts has some fine moments, but it’s Winger who really brings the color to this movie, creating a woman filled with disappointment and passion and wit, taking a small-scale comedy of manners to a darker, richer place.

Everything, Everything is watchable and not unpleasant, in its moony way, thanks to the chemistry of two leads, both of whom exude a genuine sweetness in the face of an absurd plotline.

You come to an “Alien” movie with certain expectations: creepy thrills, impressive production design, chest busters, acid saliva. Going back to basics, Scott delivers what we’ve come to expect in “Covenant.” And how.

Taylor-Johnson’s agonized performance holds the audience’s attention, but his portrayal doesn’t really take the character anywhere.

Thanks to its two central performances, Chuck is a solid contender.

Gere, who somehow seems to make himself physically smaller here, creates a character both infuriating and endearing.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” lumbers on for more than two hours, weighed down with oversized elephants, excessively populated action sequences, and weirdly sudden occurrence of slow motion, as if the film is yawning.

Snatched is one of those movies that feels like a rough draft of itself. A few more rewrites, a few more laughs, a little (well, a lot) more attention, and maybe it would have been an amusing summer comedy.

There are moments of astonishing lyricism.

Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent posits a revision of food history, chronicling the life of the magnetic, repellent man who changed American dining, then disappeared.

The film’s strength is its cast, and each of them finds moments of truth.

It’s a rare misstep for the usually sure-footed folks behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

With her wonderfully expressive face, Clarke carries the picture, navigating her character’s gradual transformation with grace and conviction.

"Guardians” stands apart because it’s somehow truer to a comic book’s essence than any Marvel or DC-derived picture you can name. Which is to say it’s pulpy, kind of cheesy and giddily exaggerated (and aware of it) in a way that, say, the “Thors,” the “Captain Americas” and Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies are not.

Screen chemistry is an odd thing; often you only notice it when it isn’t there. (See: far too many Hollywood romantic comedies.) But Their Finest, an utterly charming film set in World War II-era London, contains a textbook example.

The footage captured is breathtaking for its access and intimacy to these incredible creatures.

Hunnam speaks in low tones, practically murmuring his lines in many scenes, which seem at odds with the underlying fierceness of Fawcett’s resolve. His manner is almost diffident, yet he’s steadfast in his purposefulness.

Its take-no-prisoners pacing [takes] it up a notch from the average low-budget shoot ’em up.

That Unforgettable is watchable, at least before it disintegrates into generic violence near the end, is due to the touches of wit in the directing, and to the two lead performances.

Having, presumably, run out of surfaces on the ground, the mad driving crew of Furious 7 resort to backing their cars off a plane and clutching their steering wheels while driving, er, falling through thin air. Why do they do this? Because it’s fun … to watch, that is.

If “Fast Six” is as much guilty-pleasure fun as this edition, directed within an inch of its life by Justin Lin (even the occasional subtitles are excitable), it’ll do just fine.

What the movie makes clear is that that deeply spiritual moment represented a triumph of management.

Cézanne et Moi sounds more fascinating than it actually is; essentially, it’s just under two hours of exquisitely art-directed conversation, little of which is especially compelling.

The plot tries too hard to incorporate elements that drift toward melodrama.

It’s impossible to watch this film without a tapping toe and a smile.

The movie zips along quickly, full of popcorn-worthy moments.

Weaver’s Kay is a fanatic.

That’s a lot for a viewer to take in, and as pleasing as some aspects of Your Name can be, there’s no question Shinkai’s overstuffed movie often trips over itself.

It’s an agreeably generic mishmash of every old-guys-pull-one-last-heist movie you’ve ever seen.

It’s a simple, moving story about love, loss and storytelling itself.

It’s somehow only fitting that with Scarlett Johansson in the lead role, Ghost in the Shell leaves you with the feeling that something has been lost in translation.

For Here or to Go? offers an insightful group portrait but lacks imagination in a romantic subplot and (except for a requisite Bollywood-style dance number) is visually dreary.

It’s all very bizarrely, pointlessly complicated.

A coming-of-age tale like you’ve never seen, Julia Ducournau’s Raw left me intrigued, mildly nauseated and extremely curious about what passes for recreation at French veterinary schools.

It’s a remarkable story, told in a movie that doesn’t always quite live up to it; except for a few crucial scenes, The Zookeeper’s Wife feels a bit too soft-focus for the devastating story it tells.

Power Rangers maintains the essence of its origins in that it’s rather pleasantly bonkers. It errs on the side of goofy rather than gritty, and that’s to its favor.

Zandvliet is a relatively young and inexperienced director, but his spare use of music and widescreen images is assured and even inspired.

T2 is a sequel that is at least the equal of the revered original.

A character, even when he’s played by Woody Harrelson, is not a movie.

In space, everyone can hear you yawn.

Batra has assembled a strong cast, a thoughtful screenplay (by Nick Payne), a meticulous attention to detail — all of which make The Sense of an Ending a pleasure to watch. But the book ever-so-subtly slams you in the heart; the movie, just as subtly, only walks near it.

Are we alone, or is there more than we know? Personal Shopper is less interested in the answer than in, hauntingly, posing the question.

This Beauty and the Beast had me leaving the theater feeling utterly happy; like I’d spent time with old friends who’d grown and changed, and yet remained the same at heart.

I’ll admit to a weakness for this sort of thing (which Merchant-Ivory, a couple of decades back, made into elegant art), but even I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm for this one, a tepid love triangle set in the Ottoman Empire in the early days of World War I.

Along with the kids’ sorrow, Barras works uplift and lightness into the story, and there are moments of great joy. In the end, it’s positivity that prevails.

Kong: Skull Island won’t win any points for the brilliance of its writing (or for the way it reduces a terrific actor like Larson to a personality-free camera-clicker) — but oh, that ape

What’s most memorable about Kedi are the individual, self-contained moments.

Even Deutch’s charming radiance (she never entirely sells Sam’s nasty side) can’t quite get us through the slog of this plot.

Jackman and Stewart give perhaps the most heartfelt performances that they’re ever brought to an “X-Men” movie. Though the tone of the movie is pervasively downbeat, they’re both going out on a very high note.

The chemistry between the two actors is a pleasure.

What distinguishes “Girl” from most zombie pictures is Nanua’s appealing performance and a chilling scene toward the end.

Despite the stakes, Mendeluk can’t scare up any particular urgency, largely because everything is so contrived and inauthentic.

Get Out will scare you, make you laugh and perhaps make you uncomfortable. It’s supposed to.

What a pestilential little picture is Fist Fight.

The Great Wall defies any expectations — it’s absolutely bonkers wild.

Entertaining but almost too ambitious for its own sake.

The Red Turtle doesn’t answer the questions it raises, but it doesn’t need to; it’s about moonlight on the water, a hand held out to another, and the way a wave, rippling onto a shore, leaves no trace of its brief life.

If Verbinski could have trimmed about an hour from the film (which weighs in at a portly 146 minutes), he might have had something.

It’s not a terribly good idea to base a movie on a book in which almost nothing happens for 500 pages, but that’s what we have here.

A powerful new documentary.

It’s all kind of funny, actually, and deliberately so. Director Chad Stahelskii, a former stunt man, stages a flailing fight down a seemingly endless flight of stairs that is like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

You sense that a lot of the funniest stuff is flying by too quickly to land.

You feel hints of a strange energy in Emily that remind us we don’t always know why we do what we do in relationships. The hard part is holding on for the ride.

It’s not a biopic, but I Am Not Your Negro leaves you wanting to know and read more of Baldwin, to experience the language that pours from this film like a fiery balm.

The nonstop silliness of this picture leaves one choking on stifled laughter.

Every scene in this film, which stars Robert De Niro as the washed-up title character, is dragged out — kicking and screaming — far longer than it needs to be.

A haunting and lovely documentary.

I.F. Stone, an underground journalist who died in1989, left a rich legacy that is celebrated in a timely new documentary, All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I.F. Stone.

Cute and daffy enough to make your molars ache, Bakery in Brooklyn is the kind of romantic comedy that lacks all conviction.

The details of the story are often fascinating (you’ll learn a lot about burger production), and the cast find plenty of moments to shine.

What makes The Resurrection of Gavin Stone singular is its fresh and thoroughly modern approach to evangelical Christianity.

xXx: Return of Xander Cage is the movie equivalent of cotton candy: all empty calories. Excessive consumption of this product is likely to give a body the queasies.

The drama of Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women takes place in Annette Bening’s masterful pauses.

You can see why McAvoy was drawn to the role — it’s as if he’s playing every character in a very populated if not particularly well-scripted play — and he demonstrates a shellacked creepiness that’s effective. But Shyamalan can’t find much else that’s new or appealing in this overlong girls-in-peril exercise.

Driver’s performance as an uncertain man getting through the day-to-day prosaic, quietly buoyed by passion and artistic commitment, is exquisite.

For all its rough edges and gruesome touches, Patriots Day is a heartfelt and ambitious attempt to turn mayhem into something that’s emotionally valid.

Affleck sports plenty of snappy ’20s fashions, tailored double-breasted suits, often cream-colored, and elegant Borsalino-style fedoras. He’s dressed to kill for sure. Too bad his movie is so deadly dull.

The main monster communicates in noises that sound like belches. Appropriate for a picture that’s the equivalent of a cinematic burp: gassy and inconsequential.

What follows is a post-setup hour of imaginative action and dazzling stunt work, all taking place on one of cinema’s great self-metaphors: a speeding train changing scenes every few seconds and heading toward an unknown destination.

The silence in Silence is deep and profound.

Older audiences braced for tragedy may be drawn to its imaginative visuals — the stories told by the monster are rendered in delicate, painterly animation — and to the achingly vulnerable, growing-up-too-fast boy at its center.

Feels utterly fresh for our times.

It’s the kind of documentary that might serve as a perfect introduction to Lumet’s work; when it’s done, you want to watch all of these films immediately.

Though every performance is splendid, it’s Washington and Davis who create a mesmerizing symphony of emotion, finding both love and tragedy in every look, every line.

It’s a mesmerizing story, particularly that vivid first half, told with great economy and few words.

There are several ways you can watch Elle, only one of which is mildly enjoyable.

What say we tiptoe quietly away and pretend this movie never happened?