“Was it all just a dream?” Those were the first words uttered by an off-screen Michael Moore in his 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore's incensed indictment of George W. Bush's first years in office (and, because it's Moore, a bunch of other things, too). Those same words, not at all coincidentally, open Moore's new Fahrenheit 11/9, the numerically swapped title a reference to the day in 2016 that Donald J. Trump was officially named our nation's president. The difference between those identically worded openers, though, lies in the timbre of Moore's voice. In 9/11, he was recognizably sardonic and faux ingenuous, following the question with snarky references to Ben Affleck and Robert De Niro. In 11/9, however, “Was it all just a dream?” sounds like the lament of a truly sad, incredulous man – one who can't believe that, 14 years later, he's forced to ask the same damned question again, and likely to ever-less-receptive ears.

Even though Hollywood's summer tends to begin in the last days of April and end a couple weekends before Labor Day, it is, you know, still technically summer. Consequently, I feel completely within my rights to decree The Predator perhaps the happiest summer-movie surprise of 2018 – a thrillingly funny, nasty, unpretentious good time that's leagues more entertaining than any deeply unnecessary sequel/reboot of its type should ever be.

Follow along if you can: Director Corin Hardy's new horror film The Nun is the prequel to last fall's Annabelle: Creation, which was the prequel to 2014's Annabelle, which was the prequel to 2013's The Conjuring. This is what, in franchise terms, is called “universe building.” And if the popular series continues in this chronologically backward vein, I'm pretty sure that several hundred years from now, the final movie in the cycle will be titled Genesis, or perhaps The Mind of God. If only The Nun were similarly divine.

The novelty of puppets – or, in the case of Team America: World Police, marionettes – cursing and boinking and excreting was already mostly worn out by the mid-aughts, at which point Crank Yankers was midway through its five-season run and Broadway's Avenue Q a mainstream, Tony-winning hit. So The Happytime Murders was probably doomed from the start, given that its central joke, and only truly sustained joke, finds humans interacting with puppets in possession of brazenly filthy mouths, active libidos, and a wild excess of body fluids. As comic conceits go, that one's definitely a yawn. Astoundingly, though, and despite its considerable flaws, the movie itself isn't terrible – or at least, nowhere near as terrible as you may have heard.