Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

This is the third time I've seen a Spider-Man movie at an out-of-the-way theater at a friend's invitation. As much as I've enjoyed the Tom Holland entries, the ads didn't make me eager to watch more after nearly five years. Little did I know how much others loved the trailer and, so far, the flick itself.

Peter "Spider-Man" Parker (Holland) is certainly more of a man now, living alone, albeit with no apparent job, and making short work of most New York villains. He's also becoming more of a spider, as his fused DNA asserts itself, heightening his senses, letting him shoot webs organically like the Tobey Maguire version, and making him more brutal under stress like a lesser Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), whose alter ego he visits for advice. Amid this identity crisis, he must contend with a foe (Sadie Sink) who gives other people identity crises by temporarily possessing them. The mystery mind-hopper is intent on infiltrating U.S. Department of Damage Control headquarters, which houses so many sensitive, potentially scandalous secrets that its director (Tramell Tillman) can hardly guess which is being targeted.

Poor Things (2023)

I've wanted to see this since I caught a few clips at the Academy Awards. My desire decreased when I learned that Yorgos Lanthimos directed. Nonetheless, almost as soon as it came to Netflix, I obliged.

In 19th-century London, heavily pregnant Victoria Blessington (Emma Stone) commits suicide. Victor Frankenstein-like Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) could simply revive her, but seeing little sense in bringing back a suicidal mind, he transplants her baby's brain into her head first. When he asks med student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to help document the behavior of this "Bella Baxter," she can barely talk or balance, but she's learning fast. Eventually, Godwin talks Max into proposing to Bella. She accepts, but since Godwin would still require her to stay on his property all the time, she first runs off on an adventure with Europe-traveling lothario Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Neither she nor Duncan knows what they're getting into.

Now You See Me (2013)

When I picked this out, I did not know that it had a threequel coming this year. I just wanted something rather different from what else I'd been watching lately. This one has been moderately popular among the general viewership, but critics are almost evenly split on it.

An anonymous, faceless source assembles four magicians -- famous card trickster Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), blackmailing mentalist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), escape artist Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), and pocket- and lock-picking prestidigitator Jack Wilder (Dave Wilder) -- to pull off a series of heists in exchange for membership in an elite society. They're actually quite open about parts of it, working robbery into their stage shows and winning mass approval as Robin Hood types by paying the live audience; the authorities can't easily prosecute them without insinuating a belief in real magic. FBI Agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is assigned to catch them somehow, with help from INTERPOL's Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent) and possibly from long-time debunker Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman).

The Adam Project (2022)

Having nothing to do with Adam, this brand-new release didn't tempt me until a friend and I were perusing our Netflix options. He's big on time travel stories (so I've recommended Time Bandits to him), and I hadn't seen one in more than a year. Plus, this one has several Marvel movie alumni.

Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds), son of accidental time travel inventor Louis (Mark Ruffalo), attempts to fly a time jet from 2050 to 2018, the last known time point for his wife, Laura (Zoe Saldana). The tyrannical Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener) forbids him, and a gunshot from her right-hand man (Alex Mallari, Jr.) forces Adam to stop in 2022, too injured to fly unassisted for a while. There he meets his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell), whom he reluctantly needs to reactivate his jet. Their mission becomes bigger than rescuing one woman: As the trailer reveals, they may see fit to use time travel to prevent its own invention.

Foxcatcher (2014)

I've seen Steve Carell in semi-serious films before, most notably Little Miss Sunshine and The Big Short. This is my first time seeing him in something not remotely humorous. Between this, the character's mental issues, and the basis on a real person, I can only assume that he was trying for an Oscar. He did get a nod, but Eddie Redmayne had it in the bag that year.

Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) and his slightly older brother, Dave (Mark Ruffalo), already have Olympic gold medals for freestyle wrestling by the start of the story in 1986. Out of the blue, Mark is invited to Foxcatcher Farm in Pennsylvania to join the new Team Foxcatcher under wealthy heir John E. du Pont (Carell) and hopefully win the World Championship. He accepts. Dave is less keen on coming, because he has a wife and kids with a life elsewhere, but John grows to want him at any price, partly because he's reputedly the better wrestler and partly because the team doesn't take practice as seriously as John wants. It seems that the three of them can hardly get along all at the same time, and especially with John's emotional issues, things will get ugly.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

What kind of Marvel Cinematic Universe fan would I be if I didn't see this, of all entries, in the theater? My dad finally came back, too. The main complaint I've seen about it is that it's hard to talk about without spoiling. Well, I'll give my typical level of skirting the edge. Chances are, if you have enough interest to see Endgame, you either already saw key previous entries or won't mind learning some of what happened in them, most notably the ending of Infinity War.

I had expected most of the movie to consist of the remaining heroes seeking out and fighting Thanos for the Infinity Gauntlet so that they could undo his sudden annihilation of half the life in the universe. Actually, they don't take long to overpower him, but the gauntlet has been emptied of the Infinity Stones, and Thanos probably isn't lying when he says he destroyed them. (What, no periodic repetitions in his war on overpopulation?) For the next five years, they have no hope of reversal -- until Ant-Man returns from the Quantum Realm and reports that it offers a possibility for time travel. (Told you he had weird physics.)

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

It's finally happened: My dad has had his fill of superhero movies, for now at least. Black Panther was only two months ago, after all. I think it's just as well that he didn't come to this one, partly because it's hard to sit through 150+ minutes without a break (I barely made it myself -- good thing the credits ran long enough to let me catch the scene afterward) and partly because he doesn't retain as much memory of prior Marvel Cinematic Universe entries as I do. This one does hark back to several.

Previously lurking in the periphery of the series was brawny alien Thanos (Josh Brolin), now all the more powerful for having acquired one of the six artifacts known as Infinity Stones. Some Guardians of the Galaxy already had the misfortune of knowing him, but only when he defeats the Asgardians at the start of this movie do any of the (ex-)Avengers learn of him. He's out for more Stones, two of them on Earth, and plans to use them to kill half the universe, not counting the many people he and his army have already killed. Thus, Earth's mightiest heroes reluctantly put aside their Civil War rift to combat him, while the Guardians respond belatedly to Asgard's distress signal. I think the only living MCU action heroes who don't play a part this time are Hawkeye and Ant-Man, off on some other business and presumably out of contact.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Thor's eponymous movies always struck me as somewhat odd compared with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He's not exactly designed for viewers to relate to, being a demigod prince from another realm. And unlike Wonder Woman, he really doesn't face any of the challenges that ordinary people typically face. This may explain why I never felt the motivation to watch his movies in a theater -- until now.

When the not-so-immortal King Odin (Anthony Hopkins) passes away, Princess Hela (Cate Blanchett), goddess of death, can finally return from a long exile, planning to expand Asgard by conquest. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) together are no match for her. Complications in their retreat send Thor to Planet Sakaar, where he promptly gets enslaved (the god of thunder is surprisingly susceptible to electrical shocks) as a gladiator. If you've seen the ads, you know that that's how he meets "a friend from work" for the first time since Age of Ultron....

Collateral (2004)

Oops, already another noir about hit men. Well, this doesn't have much else in common.

Max (Jamie Foxx), an especially good taxi driver in L.A., agrees to bend the rules and hang around to take out-of-towner Vincent (Tom Cruise) to five destinations in one night, in light of a lucrative offer. But at the first destination, Vincent accidentally reveals that he's a hit man, with four more kills to make on a contract with a drug lord (Javier Bardem). Max wants no part in it, but he doesn't have much choice anymore. An occasional other focal character is Detective Fanning (Mark Ruffalo), whose connection to the first victim draws his attention quickly.

Spotlight (2015)

Not since No Country for Old Men (2007) had I been so reluctant to watch an Academy Best Picture. It's a rather disturbing subject, especially to a member of the Roman Catholic Church congregation (I've lost faith but still sing in the choir). Besides, with only one other Oscar, how deserving could it be?

Set mainly in 2001, when allegations of child sexual abuse by priests were nothing new, this drama puts the, y'know, spotlight on The Boston Globe, particularly its four "Spotlight" section team members. New editor-in-chief Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) thinks they've given too short shrift to such scandals, not least because local Cardinal Law (whose name confused me for a while) has been implicated in trying to hide a recent one. Remember, cardinals rank higher than archbishops, just short of the Pope. If the Globe finds compelling evidence of systematic cover-ups, it'll be big news indeed. But this endeavor faces a lot of obstacles, and not just in the form of direct Church power -- which, surprisingly enough, never really issues a threat.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Some of the biggest weaknesses from the mostly great The Avengers have been reduced this time around. For example, with more screen time, more character importance, and an actual use of his code name, Hawkeye doesn't get nearly so shafted (no pun intended). The climactic battle doesn't feel quite so lacking in practical progress, nor does victory come at so little cost to the heroes. I think there's more cause for tender emotions.

But I must stop a little short of calling the latest sequel equal, let alone better. In particular, it has issues of pacing. A good chunk is either too fast or too slow, as evidenced by my dad sighing next to me. I suspect that the DVD will be loaded with deleted scenes or at least descriptions of planned moments. I almost wish director Joss Whedon threw in as much as he'd wanted, but 2.5 hours makes for a pretty uncomfortable sitting already. And you probably will prefer to see it in a theater.

You Can Count on Me (2000)

I'm pretty sure this used to be on IMDb’s top 250; that's most likely how I took notice of it. Nowadays it stands out as having the first major role for Rory Culkin. It's also the earliest I've seen of Mark Ruffalo and the latest I've seen of Matthew Broderick.

The opening establishes Samantha and Terry as having been orphaned when Sammy was a teen and Terry a bit younger. After a fast-forward, Sammy (Laura Linney) is a single mother of eight-year-old Rudy (Culkin). Her new boss at the bank (Broderick) is not very sympathetic to her need to leave early. But as luck would have it, Terry (Ruffalo) shows up just in time…to ask for money. Sammy makes him feel guilty for not replying to her letters for six months, so he agrees to stick around and help take care of his nephew. As you can imagine, the title is ironic.

Zodiac (2007)

Until Netflix announced the end of its streaming, I kept vacillating on whether to see this, because I find David Fincher enjoyable only about half the time. Another serial killer story under his direction could have invoked unwelcome memories of the popular but extremely disturbing Se7en. Fortunately, having seen Dirty Harry (which gets referenced in Zodiac), I knew that the real killer who called himself the Zodiac had more conventional murder methods. If you can take bloody stabbings and shootings, both survived and not, with no autopsy details, then you can probably take this movie.

The only professional review I'd read -- a mere blurb -- noted the large proportion of time characters spend talking, rather than...I dunno, being Dirty Harry? What did he expect? One fictionalized friendship aside, it aims for a mostly true story -- so seriously, in fact, that the producers hired a PI to find one of the Zodiac's live victims (other relevant characters were more readily reachable). That said, it does feel like they didn't need 2 1/2 hours to tell it. We get the picture: It was a hard case to crack. The mystery is still not officially solved after 40+ years, which limits the potential for satisfaction among viewers at the end. But the mere fact that the film got the case reopened does it credit.

Begin Again (2014)

Movies about fictitious musicians are a pretty big gamble for me. While biopics offer some true info if nothing else, the fiction pics don't even guarantee a single hit song. Their plots don't have a lot of variety, and some have little in the way of progression. As popular as Once was, I found it dull; as popular as Inside Llewyn Davis was, I found it numbing (and not in the Pink Floyd comfortable way).

BA, from the same director as Once, gets off to an unpromising start. Gretta's (Keira Knightley) opening song has a fine tune and lyrics but a lackluster presentation. Then we have a couple time jumps for background, which I failed to recognize as such until they made their way to the first scene. Gretta lags behind her partner-boyfriend in success and then breaks up with him in both senses. Meanwhile, drunk, divorced, deadbeat studio exec Dan (Mark Ruffalo in perhaps his least attractive role) gives teen Violet (Hailee Steinfeld) far more reason than usual to feel embarrassed by her father.

Fortunately, this is not a story about people going nowhere except maybe downward.