Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011)

This title had turned me off for a long time, especially with the silly punctuation, which does not appear on the poster. Nonetheless, it still enjoys fairly high ratings after 14 years. I chose it last night because it was the first movie to come up on my Netflix list and promised to be rather different from what else I'd seen lately.

In an unspecified town that might be in California, Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) is taken aback when his wife of 25 years, Emily (Julianne Moore), tells him she committed adultery with coworker David (Kevin Bacon) and wants a divorce. He wallows in self-pity in bars until annoyed lothario Jacob (Ryan Gosling) offers to teach him how to attract women again. Cal becomes a successful player, but he can't stop thinking of Emily.

Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning (2025)

So much for calling it Dead Reckoning Part 2. Just as well. Once again, I watched at the earliest opportunity, only this time, it was to celebrate my birthday.

The movie begins two months after the end of the previous. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has acquired a key for apprehending the Entity, but he doesn't know where to use it yet. Murderous Gabriel (Esai Morales), having fallen from the Entity's favor, now hopes to gain everything needed to control the Entity himself. Both had better hurry, because the Entity is gradually seizing all the nuclear missiles in the world, evidently planning to annihilate humans but not itself. The CIA director-turned-U.S. president (Angela Bassett) gives Ethan three days before she launches a preemptive attack on the other nations. To make matters more difficult, the chaos sown by the Entity's expert deep fakes has inspired a considerable pro-apocalyptic movement, and not all its members are overt....

Blue Giant (2023)

This title is better known for a manga series. Indeed, the film adaptation doesn't get its own Wikipedia page; it rates merely a few paragraphs on the manga's page. Nonetheless, it enjoys high ratings on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, so I got curious.

At 18, Dai (Yuki Yamada) moves in with long-time friend Shunji (Amane Okayama) in modern Tokyo, hoping to succeed as a largely self-taught saxophonist. He discovers Yukinori (Shotaro Mamiya), a same-age yet mature jazz pianist who started taking lessons at age four. They take to practicing together, and Shunji joins in as a complete tyro of a drummer. Despite Yukinori's misgivings, they perform publicly as a trio called JASS. (Hey, it's Japan, where many adults have never heard jazz.)

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023)

Judy Blume's classic was one of my favorite assigned reads in junior high. My sister probably liked it better still, and my mom has looked forward to seeing the movie. As it stands, I remembered enough to notice a few minor deviations, mostly to save screen time.

Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) is unhappy to move from New York City to New Jersey right before sixth grade begins, partly because it puts distance between her and her favorite grandma (Kathy Bates). In no time, classmate Nancy (Elle Graham) inducts her into a secret club with two other members (Amari Alexis Price and Katherine Kupferer). They mostly talk about matters of puberty, whether bodily changes or a growing interest in boys. Margaret also has a growing interest in religion, having been raised without one by a lapsed Christian mom (Rachel McAdams) and a lapsed Jewish dad (Benny Safdie). But it's hard for her to keep praying civilly when things don't go her way.

Thunderbolts* (2025)

When I first saw an ad for this, I didn't realize I already knew the teammates as prior supporting characters: Yelena (Florence Pugh) and the Red Guardian (David Harbour) from Black Widow; Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), most prominently from the Captain America outings; Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) from Ant-Man and the Wasp; and U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell) from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Most of them have only slightly enhanced abilities, and all have been jerks if not villains, but that didn't mean they wouldn't be fun to watch.

Another previous low profile comes to the fore as Val de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is on the verge of losing her CIA directorship due to growing, justified suspicion of unethical activity for "the greater good," like a smilier Amanda Waller. She tries luring Yelena, Ghost, U.S. Agent, and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) into a death trap to hide incriminating evidence. This scheme does not account for Bob Reynolds (Lewis Pullman), who initially appears to be a mere forgetful stoner mysteriously in the wrong place but has actually survived Val's otherwise abortive Sentry Project to attain untold powers. The gang shakily comes together in order to escape. Then they realize that with the Avengers scattered, they're the best hope for protecting Manhattan from Val's new wild-card superweapon.