Minding the Gap, which is brilliantly edited by Liu and Joshua Altman, has a floating, grab-bag style that collapses the time frame into a kind of momentum-driven arc, but while the pieces are often bite-sized, and not always delineated by a year or person’s age, the collage has a distinctive chronological feel.

Alpha comes close to greatness, specifically that rare kind of greatness that we reserve for timeless epics, or at least gorgeous Frank Frazetta illustrations. The story and protagonist aren’t quite rich enough to take it to the next level.

Peter Berg’s Mile 22 is an angry, hyperviolent downer of an action flick that is the August blowout-sale of its ilk: loud and desperate.

Ultimately, Crazy Rich Asians doesn’t need to subvert all its predictable elements, because even if we know where it’s going, we’ve never seen that story told this way.

Audiences in the mood to be scared will certainly send their popcorn flying during a few tense moments of The Meg. But they’ll also wish the movie had bothered to find an equivalent to Robert Shaw’s USS Indianapolis speech in “Jaws.” When the human characters are reduced to chum, it’s hard to care about them getting eaten.

There’s a refreshingly contained, deadpan sass to many of the characters’ personalities – and even Marino’s direction of the actors — that makes these people appealing, not abrasive, and which never devolves into the needlessly crude or ham-fistedly improvised, as so often happens in the more raucously engineered R-rated comedies.

What ultimately works most profoundly for the film is that its intimacy, its specificity, feels less like the culmination of Joan’s life experiences and more like an epiphany, or maybe an origin story, for what’s yet to come from her.

It’s a slow, sluggish and whimsy-deficient movie that seems designed to entertain neither children nor adults, and the film’s script opens a Pandora’s Box of a plot twist.

So we have a compelling storyline, and characters we genuinely care about. But since Akhavan doesn’t drill deeply enough, the movie ends at what should be its midpoint. And her lovely final shot winds up feeling as avoidant as it is poignant.

It’s Dyrholm’s performance that anchors everything.

Never Goin’ Back, which Frizzell has admitted is in ways an honest, personal reckoning with incidents in her own fumbling adolescence, has something many comedies simply fail to care about: a spark-filled joie de vivre about the stupidity of youth that lifts it above many more cynically crass (and typically male) examples of the genre.

The Darkest Minds is smart. It has a lot to convey to its young audience, and the strong cast does everything in their power to illustrate those themes and to bring their characters to earnest, believable life. But it’s not quite thrilling enough to sneak its mission statements under anyone’s noses, so it plays a bit more like a manifesto than a sci-fi thriller.

Finding an enthralling equilibrium between hard numerical data and heartrending testimonials, Dick masterfully weaves together both the expert statements you’d expect in a documentary like this and first-hand accounts from victims; the results are alarming and essential for anyone even remotely invested in their own physical and psychological wellness.

Activist in tone, and paced like a thriller, Reed’s movie painstakingly details how an election can be brusquely seized and swayed by unseen forces. Candidates need do little but sign on to be successfully co-opted.

Not every eccentric tweak of hers lands, but it’s a wonderful feeling knowing McKinnon sees potential for humor every time the camera’s on her, even for a reaction shot shoved into an action sequence.

It’s a kind and thoughtful drama that respects its characters and has faith in them, letting them live and breathe and find the meaning in their own lives.

The characters, the dumb dialogue, and the story mechanics are the biggest problems with “Hot Summer Nights,” which never convinces, while it uses an annoying, legend-building voiceover narration from an unseen local to keep hawking the notion that we’re seeing life-changing, mythic events.

Even those who object to Bowers’ revelations may find themselves unexpectedly empathetic to his life story, and that’s thanks to Tyrnauer’s compassion. There’s plenty of gossip to be found here, but there’s also no shortage of humanity.

Teen Titans GO! to the Movies never wears out its welcome, from the hilarious skewering of some of DC’s most sacred cows (Kryptonite, Crime Alley) to a range of musical numbers that include an 80s-style you-can-do-it anthem (compete with sax solo) and hip-hop-flavored self-aggrandizement.

McQueen is formally traditional, and guided by a respectful approach to a complicated man. It’s lovingly told, even as it refuses to gloss over ugliness.

Generation Wealth is ultimately a string of subjects in search of a binder. And the director’s interests don’t count.

For the most part, writer-director Stephen Susco (“The Grudge”) sees the Internet as a gimmick, a way to get some attractive, disposable protagonists from Point A to Point B. (Point A is “alive,” so…).

As for the writer-director, Ol Parker, he doesn’t come up with any urgent artistic reasons for the existence of its follow-up, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, but he does make it surprisingly watchable, and he manages to overcome some mountainous obstacles.

The Equalizer 2 makes more-or-less the same impact as “The Equalizer.” It’s a reasonably satisfying mid-budget action thriller, with slick style and an intriguing hero, who only uses violence when necessary, and as a means of redemption for himself and his community.

Despite the film’s good intentions it’s an underwhelming adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, with cute side gags that make more of an impression than the characters or the story.

At nearly two and a half hours, it’s designed to test your patience for the things that matter in these movies — violent confrontation, deception, jokey camaraderie, and over-the-top action — but it does so with a remarkably re-engaged fluidity of purpose.

Skyscraper doesn’t change the action-movie game the way “Die Hard” did, but it’s a solidly entertaining summer diversion best enjoyed on the biggest theater — or even better, drive-in — screen you can find. And if you’re afraid of heights, make sure there’s an armrest — or even better, an arm — that you can grab.

Whitney is at its most powerful when it focuses on reminding us what we all lost, because the more you think about how outstanding her gift was, the more tragic her absence feels.