When a group of random strangers wake up outside together scattered across a lightly forested meadow, it's not long before bullets start whizzing and blood starts splattering. Surprising deaths and blunt punchlines fill this dark comedy as unwitting Americans scramble for survival. But the literal hunt of this film is not an ordinary fight with just guns and knives. The gleefully nasty violence is also delivered with arrows, grenades, stiletto heels, and kitchen utensils.

Ben Affleck (Gone Girl, 2014) is evidently not afraid to embrace a difficult leading role in this plaintive drama directed by Gavin O'Connor (The Accountant, 2016). Ben Affleck's movie star power was almost lost forever in the mess of the DC Comic films Justice League (2017) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). But The Way Back has shown us he can still offer good performances. Affleck plays a lonely aching man who begrudgingly accepts an offer to coach basketball in his former high school in southern California to help the immature players improve their game.

Universal Studios officially launched a new movie campaign in 2017 called Dark Universe advertising upcoming films retelling classic monster stories through a contemporary lens. This campaign began with The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, and it was one of the worst movies of 2017. The Dark Universe campaign ended as soon as it had begun.

Based on Jack London's novel first published in 1903, this book has been the homework for many junior high and high school English students. The Call of the Wild centers on a mischievous domestic dog who is kidnapped from his home, taken to the outskirts of Canada, and sold as a sled dog to work in the unforgiving winter of the Yukon Territory during the Gold Rush of the 19th century. As various humans pass through his life, the dog learns perseverance and courage in the differing faces of danger and gradually embraces his wild ancestral nature. This book is based on the author's own experiences working as a gold prospector in uncharted areas of Canada.

First of all, let me clarify the full title of this film shown on the poster and in the film's credits.

When a place crash kills a young Englishwoman's family, she spirals into depression and prostitution (and not the fancy kind with leather boots and perfume). Actress Blake Lively (A Simple Favor, 2018) shows us she can embrace the "de-glam" of a woman come undone. But the spiral stops when the young woman learns the plane crash was orchestrated by terrorists. Vengeance will be hers!

People might think they've seen this movie before, but the passion and realism in it might make you think again. Just Mercy is based on Bryan Stevenson's 2014 book titled Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption about the author's experience moving to rural Alabama as a Harvard Law graduate in 1989 to offer free legal representation to men wrongfully convicted or unfairly sentenced to death row. Being an idealistic, young, black man, the new lawyer in town has to survive discrimination against him as well as his clients. Just Mercy feels like a neighbor between two other real-life, legal, racism dramas To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and Ghosts of Mississippi (1996).

Something about the genre of war films always seems to create a catalyst for exciting and different storytelling, and our latest example of this catalyst is 1917. Two young British soldiers make a dangerous journey into enemy territory during WWI to deliver a message that will stop their fellow fighters from entering an outnumbered battle.

It seems no topic today is more polarizing, and more incendiary, than politics. And Jay Roach (All the Way, 2016) is still building a name for himself as a talented and topical director uniquely adept at telling political stories. But instead of showing us the high-stakes complications of mainstream political lives like he did with Recount (2008) and Game Change (2012), Bombshell tells a story about the politics of the workplace and the politics of gender.

If you couldn't get enough of the adolescent humor and wild visual effects of the previous Jumanji film from 2017...then have no fear! There's more computer-generated animals, more jokes about private parts, and more casual brushes with death.