Apollo 13 (1995)

When I saw this in a theater at 13, I didn't like it much. It's big on crisis but not on visual spectacle, apart from a brief nightmare sequence. (The impressiveness of shooting in low gravity goes only so far.) Yesterday, I finally mustered the nerve to give it another try with adult eyes.

In 1970, Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) attempt to be the next men on the moon. They're not superstitious about the mission number, but Lovell expresses concern about Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) being swapped out for Swigert at the last minute because of a positive test for rubella. At first, the voyage is too plain for TV coverage. Things start going wrong on Day 3, when an oxygen tank explodes. Under flight director Gene Krantz (Ed Harris), NASA abandons hope of a lunar landing, and even getting them home alive looks highly improbable.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

This has the same IMDb rating as The Last Jedi, which puts it a little below the median for the franchise. For years, if anyone in my circles talked about it, they were complaining. Since the stand-alone prequel wasn't integral to understanding the overarching story, I saw no need to tune in. Then I heard a positive review from someone I trust, so I finally gave it a try.

The film begins with Han (Alden Ehrenreich) as a young adult street thief for a harsh gang leader. He pays his way off planet with loot, but crush Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) gets apprehended. Han joins the Imperial Navy -- where, being an orphan, he is assigned the surname Solo -- in order to learn pilot skills and use them to rescue Qi'ra. Of course, he's too unruly for a good soldier and finds the missions questionable, so that's another group to escape. For much of the plot, he's involved in a heist with fellow ex-soldier Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) for Crimson Dawn, a syndicate under Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany), who just so happens to have enlisted Qi'ra. But once again, Han has more of a moral compass than he likes to let on....

Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

This is one of the most polarizing movies I've ever reviewed, and not just because it's about a guy who's currently running for VP (and turned 40 today, FWIW). The fact that Glenn Close was nominated for both an Oscar and a Razzie for the same role tells me it was controversial on arrival. It's also significantly more popular with general audiences than with critics. So I decided to give myself an informed opinion.

The story alternates focus between Kentuckian-descended JD Vance in his Ohio teen years (Owen Asztalos) and in his late 20s (Gabriel Basso). In both eras, he has to contend with his troubled mother, Bev (Amy Adams). In adolescence, he sometimes relies on his fairly harsh but well-intentioned grandmother, Bonnie (Close). Since they can barely make ends meet, he'll have to grow up fast. In JD's adulthood, Bev's problems threaten to make him too late for a highly anticipated job interview, with his sister (Haley Bennett) able to provide only so much support. He's reluctant to let his girlfriend, Usha (Freida Pinto), know what kind of family she might be getting involved with.

Jim Henson: Idea Man (2024)

I was just short of eight years old when Jim Henson died. To me, the Muppets have never been the same since. I already knew a fair bit about him before this documentary arrived, but after seeing enough hype, I decided it would make a nice palate cleanser.

The 108 minutes consist largely of relatives and co-workers talking about the life of Henson, peppered with brief clips of his works. Like Won't You Be My Neighbor?, it has a few supplementary simple animations. Unlike WYBMN?, it holds pretty strongly to chronological order. There's little focus on Henson's later efforts such as Fraggle Rock.

Rush (2013)

My idea of fun auto racing is the Mario Kart series; the real thing is even less on my radar than most sports popular in the U.S. So I was in no, eheh, rush to see a movie about it. But given Rush's awards and nominations, not to mention its place in the IMDb top 250, I decided to give it a shot.

Based largely on true events, it depicts two Formula 1 racers who were big in the 1970s. James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) is a party animal and ladies' man. Engineering genius Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl, convincing enough to wow the real Lauda) abandons his aristocratic Austrian business heritage and prefers not to project a congenial air; he is to be feared. By some chance, from their first race together, they form an intense personal rivalry -- but those have a way of growing to resemble friendship, especially when one of the two men has a crisis....

Cinderella Man (2005)

Perhaps the most notable thing about the second collaboration between Russell Crowe and Ron Howard is the discrepancy between its reception by both critics and the general audience (great) and its box office take (inadequate). I blame the title, which may have confused audiences on what sort of movie it would be. When Damon Runyon gave real-life prizefighter Jim Braddock the nickname in reference to his rags-to-possible-riches situation, it had previously been a known insult. Who wants to see a girly boxer?

I wasn't sure what I'd get out of it myself. Sports mean little to me, and boxing is one of my least favorite. Even highly acclaimed movies about boxers (which somehow have become disproportionate in the sports film genre) rarely entertain me much. Sports films in general are prone to exaggerating the seriousness of the climactic game, in keeping with major fans. But CM has a pretty good excuse.