I sat down to write this review of Melissa McCarthy’s new comedy Life of the Party , and I was prepared to be super snarky. That generic title, the uninspired storyline -- it was ripe for me to really dig my teeth into it. But then… I couldn’t do it.

In 2007, screenwriter Diablo Cody burst onto the scene with the movie Juno . It was her first screenplay and it earned her an Oscar, as well as a nomination for Best Picture, among others.

A while back, I went to see Marvel’s Black Panther with my nephew. He surprised me when, just as the first battle scene was starting, he stood up and announced, “I’m going to the bathroom, the fights are boring.” Ah, yes, the kid takes after his uncle.

For one day, at least—last Friday—the top movie at the box office didn’t star The Rock or a Marvel super hero. No, the country’s #1 movie was a sequel to a 16-year-old quasi-stoner-comedy that made all of $18 million in its entire theatrical run. I’m speaking of Super Troopers 2 , coming hot on the heels of 2002’s Super Troopers , both made by the apparently still-existing comedy troupe Broken Lizard. Now, look, I realize the merits of critically examining a movie like Super Troopers 2 are

Once, when I was young, my dog ran away. She ran out the door into the rain and never came back. I was heartbroken. After a few days we checked the Humane Society, just in case.

We’re dumped right into the middle of the story in A Quiet Place . It’s about three months after something apocalyptic has happened, and we’re with a family taking items from an abandoned grocery store. But despite the fact that there’s clearly no one else around, they’re moving, and searching, and communicating, without… making… a sound.

We like to complain that there’s nothing new—everything we see is a retread of something else: a remake, a sequel, an adaptation, a reboot. And while this isn’t completely true, a look at the box office winners for any recent year will tell us that this is mostly true. So I have to give credit to Steven Spielberg for having the audacity to present us with a movie in which literally nothing is original.

The increasing quality of the cameras on devices like the iPhone has made it so that pretty much anyone can make a real, feature-length movie at a cost nearing zero dollars. Still, with a couple of notable exceptions, movies shot on iPhones have been seen by almost no one, and we certainly haven’t seen the big kids in Hollywood jump on board.

It’s not fair to compare a movie adaptation to the book it’s based on -- a movie should stand on its own merits. But if you’ve read the book first, it can also be a challenge not to compare the two.

When I first watched Thoroughbreds , I came away irritated. Some people seem to regard it as a black comedy, though it’s only sporadically funny. And I was surprised to learn it’s apparently not based on a stage play, because it’s only got a handful of characters, 80 percent of it takes place in a single location, and it’s very talky.