Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Director: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

Cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: There’s a certain kind of person who insists that Monty Python could do no wrong. To them, this is probably a perfect film. These people don’t want to hear from me, or really anybody that isn’t prepared to talk exclusively in Monty Python quotes.

Anybody want to leave after that?

Okay, now that it’s just us. I like Monty Python, I do. There are moments where, even though I’ve seen the film, I was laughing louder than anybody else in the theater*.

At times, maybe not so much. Maybe it’s an American vs. English cultural thing, maybe it’s a the fundamental reality that—this being their second film over all and first attempt at a single narrative—that things aren’t quite as cohesive as they might otherwise be. Maybe, and I’m betting this is the more like explanation, Monty Python is imperfect. In their admirable efforts to throw everything—and I do mean every single thing—at the screen, some things hit and still others probably can’t be the least accounted for after fifty year, even if we had the Pythons here to answer for it**.

Told you that if the tonnage of topics you’re able to discuss were unladen swallows and the exclaimation “Ni!” you might not have been on board with this review. You can’t say you weren’t warned.

*Yes, I did get to see it on the big screen. Let’s just say that if I were prone to epileptic symptoms, the switch in the opening credits over to llamas, I might have been in real trouble.

**If we had Cleese, he’d probably write the whole endeavor off either way. It’d be difficult to be more measured in praise for the group’s work than him.

Cars (2006)

Director: John Lasseter

Cast: Paul Newman, Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy*

Have I Seen It Before: Yes. It’s wild that it has been a full twenty years—and I come to the film again now with its 20th anniversary re-release—since I got the end of this movie and decided that a full ten years of invariably great movies had to end some time. The best I could say about the film then was that Michael Keaton was, in fact, in it.

And as we all know by now: For me, that counts plenty.

Did I Like It: This time, I wound up watching it with a room full of children (fear not; at least some of them were related to me) and although that group will tend to chatter, each of them was pretty well enraptured by the film, so it may not matter what I think

I’m not sure how into the world of Cars I might be. I get lost in the bigger questions this film rightly won’t ever answer: If Lightning McQueen (Wilson) and Sally Carrera (Hunt) can have a romantic flirtation, and Lizzie (Katherine Helmond) was married to the founder of Radiator Springs, does that mean that the Cars of Planet Earth procreate? Does no one question why all creatures big and small—indeed, including bugs—have space within them for some other kind of creature to take a seat? They apparently have a deity, or deities, as one character exclaims something to “the manufacturer.” Yet, each car is clearly a different make and model. Does that mean the world of Cars is pantheistic? Did anybody tell Larry the Cable Guy about this before he was on the hook for three films? Was Lightning McQueen born without headlights, pre-destining him to a life as a race car? Was Lightning McQueen born?

Maybe I’m no longer in my twenties, but the lack of essential cleverness in the film kind of works for it now. A longing for a simpler time—when Route 66 was the beating heart of America—gives it all a sweetness, that this proponent of typewriters** and analog cinema projection can certainly relate to…

But seriously, was Lightning McQueen born? If he wasn’t, is he the fabled manufacturer. I’ll be happy to pitch Cars 4, whenever you’re ready, Pixar.

*Yeah, I’m not wild about having to type his full name, either. Even The Rock eventually started going by something other than the name fans first knew him by. I guess before that happens Mr. the Cable Guy would have to become a big movie star. On second thought, maybe I’m fine referring to him by his full name.

**Where’s Disney/Pixar’s Typewriters(tm), you cowards!?

North (1994)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Elijah Wood, Jon Lovitz, Jason Alexander, Alan Arkin*

Have I Seen It Before: No. Sufficiently (perhaps justifiably) torpedoed upon release, the film simply didn’t have the ubiquity for we elder millennials to be watched, despite what Siskel and Ebert had to tell us.

I have seen the episode of Siskel & Ebert where they reviewed the film a handful of times.

Did I Like It: There’s a hope about the truly reviled films that if I were to view them, I would find the correct way to view it. I’d be the one that finally got what Reiner et. al were trying to do.

No such luck.

A story about a ten year old boy who—in the long line of films released in the period that I suspect Macaulay Culkin’s people turned down—masters something with which even adults struggle would, on spec, have at least some kind of charm.

It almost reaches that minimal point of joy, but never quite gets running. Unfortunately, Reiner and author/screenwriter Alan Zweibel have no ear for being a kid in the 1990s. Everything about this reads as someone in their 40s living in Brentwood trying to imitate the noises of a kid in the 1990s.

That would have yielded a movie with a discordant note about it, but unfortunately most of what isn’t North’s (Wood) inner life plays like the wheezing desperation of a Borscht Belt comic fifteen seconds away from the end of his career. Eskimos, Hawaiians, and a brief hit with the cast of Witness (1985). No one is safe from the most basic of potshots.

If those potshots were funny, then maybe I could take it all in as a guilty pleasure. Unfortunately, the only effective laugh is when one of the telephone operators answering questions about North says, without any additional context, “Don’t even get him started on the Warren Commission.”

All right, maybe Zweibel and and Reiner had one insight into the interior life of this ten-old-boy in 1994. Not enough to support an entire film, but they definitely got me there.

*Truly one of the more difficult movies to come up with a top cast. Willis should probably be in that top 4, right? It does make for a good hub to play variations of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Coyote vs. Acme (2026)

Director: Dave Green

Cast: Will Forte, Lana Condor, Tone Bell, Eric Bauza

Have I Seen It Before: Never. And there was a long stretch of time where we weren’t going to get to see the film at all.

Rest assured we’ll address that part again before we’re done.

Did I Like It: If you can get over the notion that only the Warner Bros. cavalcade of cartoon stars appear here, this film almost becomes—at least on a spiritual level—the sequel to <Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)>* we knew could have been out there.

It is zany, and dare one say, looney, and regularly funny, but it actually works within the confines of a legal drama, even if it is one largely played as satire. I’ll throw an extra bit of praise that you might not see in other reviews: There’s a slight structural parallel to A Few Good Men (1992) here, and this film avoids a mistake Reiner and Sorkin walked right into. Changing out Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup for Foghorn Leghorn**, the entire legal strategy at the end of the film is deciding that the heavy wants to admit his malfeasance, as he doesn’t think what he’s accused of should be a bad thing at all. In A Few Good Men, the final shot is telegraphed minutes before they lower the boom, deflating some of the dramatic tension. Here, Will Forte gets the idea seemingly at the last minute, giving him an almost Bugs Bunny air—thematically appropriate—of cleverness at just the right moment.

The film is easily one of the most pleasing of the summer, and indeed the year. Which brings us to the controversy. Warner Bros. nearly took a tax write-off in lieu of releasing the film at all, citing that this film, along with a Scooby Doo holiday special, and the Michael Keaton-starring Batgirl, were simply not releasable.

Well. Not only is Coyote vs. Acme obviously releasable, it’s quite good. Tell me Batgirl was unreleasable again. I’m not going to believe you***.

*And we’re likely never to see that level of inter-conglomerate cooperation, unless Disney buys up Warner Bros., or the other way around. Which is not even in the competition for strangest thing that might come to pass.

**That pitch alone should have kept the film on Warner Bros. release schedule.

***I’ll believe that it doesn’t fit in with your current continuity of DC films, but hardly anything fits into that. Now what’s your excuse?

Muppet Treasure Island (1996)

Director: Brian Henson

Cast: Tim Curry, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson

Have I Seen It Before: I come to unavoidable conclusion that I have not. It’s probably just the right mix of it coming out at that specific time in life where I would have wanted to avoid any film “for kids” and the fact that the film just doesn’t enjoy the same kind of ubiquitous cultural permeation as The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)* that I just managed to skip it.

Did I Like It: I hesitate to compare this with Carol too much, but there are some useful contrasts on display. It’s entirely possible that Dickens is just a bit more dynamic of a writer than Stevenson, and any adaptation of their works one might feel compelled to compare is going to favor Dickens over Stevenson.

While the Muppets inject their usual brand of humor into the proceedings, the fusion between nineteenth century literature and early nineties is less smooth here. There are moments where this is a comedy, and there are moments where it is an adaptation of the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. There aren’t a lot of moments that reach for both, even if to do so risks embracing cinematic paradox.

There’s a also a problem with the central performance. Tim Curry as Long John Silver here is as charming and incorrigible as he is at any other point in his career, but there’s a seduction*, for lack of a better term that feels like a mistake. Caine played Scrooge straight, as if he were appearing in any other production of Carol, where Curry almost views himself as—or desperately wants to be—one of the Muppets himself. It renders him, sadly, as one of the less intriguing Muppets, where he could have given a performance that stands the test of time.

It’s okay. He was much better in other films.

*That is the kind of thing that happens to Christmas movies, after all.

**Curry himself once described Miss Piggy as the one who got away, which in and of itself almost negates the criticism I’m reaching for here.

The Last Picture Shows (2026)

Director: Rustin Thompson

Cast: Ross Melnick, Rusting Thompson

Have I Seen It Before: On some level, I’ve lived it, but no. This is the first time I viewed the film.

Did I Like It: If movies are a great big empathy machine, and documentaries among them all the more so, than a documentary about people just like you is connecting with your fellow human beings more profoundly than you might hope to otherwise.

To even come up with a thought like that is indicative of someone who places movies above the larger swaths of human beings, or at least have the movies in outsized importance in their lives. The people of this documentary may come from different places, and be of different generations, and proceed along every other easily identifiable scale to be distinctly different people. Some are in it for the business it provides, some know that the only sane way to devote ones life to this venture is by not caring about money, as much as one living in late-stage capitalism can hope to do.

But we all love movie theaters, and we all love that they can—multiplexes be occasionally damned—be places that mean something to people, and beyond being merely the least convenient of all possibly ways to take in filmed entertainment.

It’s as close to a fool-proof documentary as one is likely to get. If you have a passion for movies that aren’t meant to contribute to a multinational conglomerate’s quarterly earnings report*, then you probably also have a strong feeling about the little place you go to to see those movies. In which case, you’re not just a kindred spirit, you’re my friend even if we’ve never met. At that point, all Thompson has to do is keep everything in the appropriate level of focus, and he’s got a winner.

*The only spoiler I will offer is that the film starts to feel—as a byproduct of when Thompson went to the movie houses—like an oblong commercial for Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023), only before reminding us that film cut itself down to size. It got a big laugh from everyone in the room, and none were bigger than me.

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Director: Frank Oz

Cast: Levi Stubbs, Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Tisha Campbell

Have I Seen It Before: It’s weird. I can’t point to a time when I definitely watched the film from start to finish, but between unending cable airings and knowing a few theater kids who expelled forth with a chorus of “Suddenly Seymour” by way of clearing ones throat, there’s little in the film that feels unfamiliar.

Did I Like It: So much so that I can’t quite conceive of any review of the film without taking a look at the ending. The vast majority of the film is almost perfect in its tone, puppetry, casting, and music. It is one of those films that if you’re not fond of it on any level, you’re liable to be distrusted by large swaths of your community.

And yet, there’s that ending.

The original final reel has Audrey (Greene*) dying and insisting Seymour (Moranis**) feed her to Audrey II (voiced by Stubbs, and puppeteered by a small army of anyone who had been even tangentially associated with the Muppet machine up until that point). After which, the alien plant grows beyond the bounds of skid row, taking over the Statue of Liberty and eventually breaking through the screen, ready to eat we the audience.

The ending we do have, with Moranis at the last moment electrocuting Audrey II into oblivion, and everyone living happily ever after, aside for one little sapling who appears to have survived would probably be the least enjoyable part of the movie, even if we didn’t know that some other ending sits out there, waiting decades to be remastered and released.

Then again, we might have gotten a very different middle act of Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), and final act of Ghostbusters II (1989) if this film had gotten there first. At least one of those would have been pretty heartbreaking.

*Why the hell we haven’t seen more of her over the years, I’ll never know.

**Never before and never again until Patrick Stewart in X-Men (2000) has there been an established actor more uniquely suited for a role.

Tony (2026)

Director: Matt Johnson

Cast: Dominic Sessa, Emilia Jones, Stavros Halkias, Antonio Banderas

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: A biopic is mostly going to depend on your view of the subject. If you never thought Andy Kaufman was funny in life, then Man on the Moon (1999) isn’t going to work for you. If you never got any joy out of b movies, you will confront Ed Wood (1994) with a certain amount of, “who cares?” If you think pornography is the knifes edge of the decline of Western Civilization (and view the decline of Western Civilization as a bad thing), then I’m not sure what you’re doing here, but I’m also fairly sure that The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) is the film for you*.

Here, things are a little different. You might not be what might reductively be called a “foodie” (if you’ve ordered Fries from a speaker in the last 24 hours, like I have, you may not qualify), and so Anthony Bourdain (Sessa) may not mean much to you. Alternatively, you might be so consciously aware of the food you take in that you might make an ethical choice to be a vegetarian. Bourdain wasn’t terribly fond of that, either, although the reasons are a little more complicated than I am painting them

In short, no matter how you might view food, you may have had occasion to view Bourdain as a jerk. And as played by Sessa in this film, he is a jerk. He’s 19, so that might be a given. But you kind of like the kid, even as he does horrible things to the people around him and only haltingly finds himself. Antonio Banderas as his unnamed culinary Jiminy Cricket is providing what might yet be a career-best performance. The supporting cast is delightful, even when they are being terrible.

In short, the movie transcends its subject matter, along with the constraints of a biopic, and becomes a vital, believable coming-of-age story. The greatest praise I can heap upon it? I actually want to read Kitchen Confidential, and hear more from Bourdain after watching it.

*Not for nothing that all three of those films share production crew, and indeed some share identical credits.

Ishtar (1987)

Director: Elaine May

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin

Have I Seen It Before: Never. There was a solid bet that I (and you, and the rest of America) was never going to see it. Then I go and create a podcast about the absolute worst that cinema has to offer, and it would appear that Ms. May and I were on a collision course for years.

Did I Like It: Well, no. It’s reputation is mostly well-earned. It’s a comedy that is all-too-often not terribly funny. More than that, I struggle to find a movie that is this interested in actively annoying its audience for most of its first act. There have been plenty of movies about bad artists before. Ed Wood (1994) immediately comes to mind, but the movie does the work to make us like the people involved, and even Wood’s bad art has its charms. Chuck (Hoffman, mildly mis-cast) and Lyle (Beatty, wildly, unnervingly mis-cast) are such an aggravating stage presence, the entire first act of the film feels like it goes on forever. This movie introduced me to a headache, and left that headache largely un-diminished.

And, yet. (And there is quite a bit of “yet”). May’s quip that if everyone who said they hated Ishtar had actually seen Ishtar, then May would be a rich woman does hold up. There are laughs to be found here. While Beatty never before or since appeared more lost amid a film (him claiming women don’t like him has all the anatomy of a joke, but only leads to eye-rolling) Hoffman is occasionally able to rise above the Coca-Cola-infused studio politics and occasionally illicit a chuckle. The supporting cast is well-filled, with Grodin and Carol Kane providing welcome appearances. The cinematography is well-done, with the New York scenes and the Moroccan desert scenes more nimbly changing the scale of the lensing better than most films which attempt to shift tones.

May might have grown into a skilled director. One wishes she had been given chances that weren’t weighed down with so much baggage.

At least more people should watch it and try to make May a rich woman.

Zodiac (2007)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Edwards

Have I Seen It Before: Maybe? Probably not.

Did I Like It: This might represent the last sustained moment of the movies before the Marvel universe took over everything. Downey in this film is practically vibrating in anticipation of leaping beyond his troubles (and more his years as an indie/and into full-moviestardom. There’s even a measure of what he brings to Tony Stark within his portrayal of newspaperman Paul Avery. Although that’s probably a very long way for me to say that there is a certain amount of sameness in the roles Downey has picked in the last twenty years, give or take a Nolan film*.

But, I can only guess that providing what many would call the last gasp of the mainstream prestige film** probably not what Fincher set out to do.

So many post-modern thrillers/horror films think they can reckon with the violence of their genre by either cynical detachment (Scream (1996) and its various sequels and imitators) or by doubling down on an unearned earnestness (David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018)*** and its sequels), but Fincher is able to just confront the violence as it likely happened. Getting shot or stabbed is a very unpleasant fate, and I’m not entirely sure why it took until the mid-aughts to bring that element into a thriller. Even Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) tried to make it a little fun.

But what I really think about as I watch this film? They pretty much figured out that John Carroll Lynch did it, there’s a whole extra hour of stuff going on before it pretty much was clear that John Carrolll Lynch did it.

*I guess the ball’s in your court, Doomsday.

**Maybe an exaggeration, although one might have trouble figuring that out if they ever expose themselves to film discourse on the internet.

***Which I still like, and you can just deal with that. Thanks.

Black Widow (2021)

Director: Cate Shortland

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz

Have I Seen It Before: Heh. Never. There remains that hazy period of Marvel movies immediately post-Avengers: Endgame (2019) and at the height of COVID that I just missed on initial release and never came back to… Which grew into a lot of the post-Endgame stuff I missed, not because I’m sitting on my hands not wanting to see the movies, but because time is finite, and it already feels like the Marvel braintrust has moved on from some of these properties.

Sorry, Eternals (2021) and The Marvels (2023). I might yet get to you one day.

And yet this film feels like the one that might have some staying power, after Thunderbolts* (2025) turned out to be a stealth sequel, Florence Pugh had a puckish cameo in Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) and the parts of the gang who still live will be back for Avengers: Doomsday.

Did I Like It: One would be completely reasonable—or I think so, as it was my initial reaction—to come away from the film thinking that it might be a little slight. The scope of the story is small. The world is not in danger at any point. Given that Natasha (Johansson) dies in the aforementioned Endgame (this film takes place shortly after Captain America: Civil War (2016), in case you wanted to spend any span of the 2020s reliving parts of 2016), there’s even less dramatic tension or danger than there normally is in these films.

But the real crucial flaw in these films is when they are weighed down by the need to set up half a dozen upcoming films, and in the process forget to be a movie on their own terms. With all of those aforementioned supposed flaws, the film is free from having to look to the future at all. It might be its secret weapon.

*No real footnote here, just what happens whenever that movie is mentioned. The format of that title is going to curse these reviews for years to come

Lorne (2026)

Director: Morgan Neville

Cast: Lorne Michaels

Have I Seen It Before: Well, that’s the real trick. Between all of the documentaries launched for the show’s 50th anniversary last year, to say nothing of his almost-hagiographic depiction in Saturday Night (2024), all the way to the recent semi-comprehensive biography, I feel like I’ve seen quite a bit from Lorne over the last couple of years.

Did I Like It: But do I know him any better? The film confronts the question of whether or not one can know the mastermind behind Saturday Night Live,  and eventually lands on the answer that one probably can’t, truly, but that there might be something there to know.

Landing somewhere in the middle of such a question in the middle of a documentary, but the failure to launch is presented entertainingly enough—largely via comedic half guesses by the people who might be in a position to know—that the film is not a bad experience. The film goes a step further when—in trying to fill in gaps—depict Michaels not as a talking head, but the Robert Smigel animated curmudgeon who chased after errant dogs at the top of TV Funhouse cartoons. The entire film seems geared to the crowd who grew up with Will Ferrell and Tina Fey, and less the ones who were coming of age when Michaels tried to re-unite the Beatles on the show.

What’s more, Neville manages to avoid the pitfalls of Saturday Night and doesn’t turn Michaels into some kind of plucky hero dancing to the beat of his own drum. The failures, prejudices, and the ever-increasing awareness of time passing permeate the proceedings. Losing Norm McDonald at Michaels’ nadir in the 1990s is re-litigated. His finger was best on the pulse of America when our parents were younger than we are now. And, ultimately, Michaels someone who withholds what he’s thinking, right up until the moment he either fires or hires you. In that sense, the film does reflect its subject.

The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)

Director: Henry King

Cast: Ronald Colman, Vilma Bánky, Gary Cooper, Charles Willis Lane

Have I Seen It Before: Never

Did I Like It: Well, my Apple Watch seems to think I got a poor night’s worth of sleep for an hour of it, so that’s not great, right?

I’ve been almost resolutely down on silent westerns as I’ve taken them in. Every once in a while, Tom Mix might be able to milk a thrilling action sequence out of the proceedings, but for the most part, I’m left with people sitting on horse not quite knowing what to do next as a camera—which was probably invented the week before they started making the picture—stares at them.

Such is definitely the case here, and I think things are definitely weighed down by the fact that it feels like the filmmakers are trying to do a faithful, and dare I say comprehensive adaptation of the Harold Bell Wright novel. The silent cinema repels the novelistic adaptation like a north pole of a magnet bumping against the south. Details of thought, setting, and nuances of character are just not something in the wheelhouse of a format more suited to mugging for the camera, which if you remember from earlier was just invented.

And so we come to Gary Cooper. It’s always weird to see an otherwise unremarkable film and have a verifiable movie star—complete with good looks and the kind of charisma that makes people throw money at them—suddenly show up in what is pretty much an unremarkable. Chalk this one up to Harrison Ford appearing as a bellhop in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966) or Jack Nicholson in The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) or Clint Eastwood as the lab tech in Revenge of the Creature (1955). It’s enough to make the film noteworthy, but maybe not enough to make it watchable in its own right.

Superman II (theatrical cut) (1980)

Director: Richard Lester*

Cast: Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty, Margot Kidder

Have I Seen it Before: Sure. I mean, I don’t think I’ve watched this theatrical cut since the release of Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (2006).

Did I Like It: There was a time when I would place this film above Superman (1978), but I’m not sure I feel the same way now. Focusing the plot in on Zod (Terence Stamp) makes the whole thing have a flow that the first film doesn’t have, with all its bouncing around from B-sci-fi movie, to John Ford on the farm, before finally becoming the superhero movie it had promised.

What I think it really does is make the text idiot-proof. This version of the movie still works, but there’s a better version out there**. All I can hear now are the long shots with Luthor far in the background where somebody’s doing a B-minus impression of Hackman for the ADR, or the B-minus copy of a John Williams score***, and it all culminates in that moment where Superman (Reeve) wraps up the whole plot by befuddling his enemies with a cellophane shield****.

Ultimately, the whole thing is kind of a B-minus affair. The series is going to take a real dip from here on in, but I think maturing might be coming to the realization that the ’78 original is the better film…

In as much as maturing can incorporate opinions about superhero movies.

*I’d use this opportunity to lodge my protest about the whole Lester/Donner kefuffle, but there’s no way we’re going to get out of this review without hitting the top a handful of times anyway.

**And it’s not like the Donner cut is without flaws. There’s a whole-ass scene (it’s crucial, and a far better way for Lois to prove Clark is Superman than what we have here) that’s just taken from Reeve and Kidder’s screen test.

***At least this film is being honest about who’s doing the music here. I’m looking in your direction, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987).

****Honestly don’t remember if that shield thing appears in the director’s cut, and at this point, I don’t really want to check.

Minions & Monsters (2026)

Director: Pierre Coffin

Cast: Pierre Coffin, Trey Parker, Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz

Have I Seen It Before: No. I was a little surprised to learn they were still making Minions movies. I was definitely surprised when I would up making this one of the few movies I actually ended up seeing in the multiplexes this year.

Did I Like It: Ready for the big shocker? I kinda liked it.

I mean, I can’t readily recall a movie that was committed to sucking up to me this much in its early minutes. The Universal logo? Roll it back to show us every iteration of the vanity card, including the one from 1990. It’s almost like I’m watching Back to the Future Part III (1990) for the very first time, again. Allison Janney is our narrator? Great! Is that Orson Welles* in the background?

All right, film. You’ve got me.

And beyond that, the degree to which we are all annoyed by the very thought of Minions, is put aside in favor of a generally winning film. The film wears its heart on its sleeve far more comprehensively than one might have assumed from the sixth film to feature these characters. Bits of Hollywood ephemera are sprinkled throughout the film, but I can’t help but marvel at how deeply in love this movie is with the idea of movies. Making them, loving them. I can’t readily come up with a film more celebratory of the very nature of what it is since Ed Wood (1994). And that’s high praise indeed, and definitely not praise I thought I would have for those little yellow things.

* My only real complaint about the film? Illumination and Company managed to animate a Welles exhibit in their Hollywood museum, but didn’t manage to give him any movement? You’re telling me Maurice LaMarche is too busy to come by the booth.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton

Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jon Bernthal

Have I Seen It Before: No. I’m a little surprised I did make it out during opening weekend, as including this film, I’ve seen precisely three films at a multiplex this year*. Those opening weekend numbers are no joke if they got me into a recliner.

Did I Like It: My standards have definitely shifted with the Marvel movies. Iron Man (2008) came out of nowhere and asserted itself with a surprising injection of movie-star coolness. The movies became appointment viewing for the better part of ten years…

…and then they weren’t. Most of the entries in the MCU I’ve seen since Avengers: Endgame (2019) I managed to see mostly because I had my car in the shop and I could walk to the theater from there. You might have varying opinions about the movies, but would you really disagree that the last movie in the series that inspired that feeling of Fear of Missing Out was, incidentally, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). In case you weren’t yet bedraggled by the temporal M.C. Escher painting that was this decade, that was five years ago. Even Deadpool and Wolverine (2024) was amusing, but hardly the thing I absolutely had to see.

It’s gotten to the point where I’ve idly wondered what might happen to the Superhero Movie Industrial Complex if the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday only managed to log in half a billion internationally.

I guess—and anybody doing more than guessing probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about—that’s not going to happen now**.

I’ve talked enough about the state of the movie (and perhaps invented the term Superhero Movie Industrial Complex), so what did I actually think of the movie? It’s not particularly interested in setting up anything that might be coming down the pike, which is usually the recipe for any of the stronger superhero films of the last 20 years. Holland still demonstrates why he was the right one to fill the role 10 years ago***, and his chemistry with Zendaya is one of the few examples of on-screen couples actually translating to the screen. The performance I was most delighted by was Bernthal as Frank Castle/The Punisher. I’ve never cared for the character, and haven’t watched the series, but he strangely channels all of the watchable qualities of Sylvester Stallone and makes the best foil for Spidey in this iteration of the series****. The movie is about people coming to grips with their problems, and that helps. A winning formula, and a decent story. Who knew that’s what all these movies needed to make a billion dollars over the course of a weekend?

*And yet, I spend most of my time at a movie theater. Ask me how!

**Oh, it absolutely still could.

***Excuse me, I need another dose of ibuprofen.

****You might be thinking you’re going to get a heaping helping of Mark Ruffalo here, but he’s just slightly more than a cameo in reality.

The Frighteners (1996)

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Dee Wallace Stone, Jeffrey Combs

Have I Seen It Before: Sure, but it was years after the release before I finally did.

Did I Like It: There’s something oddly comforting about Michael J. Fox finishing up his leading-man in features career by both returning to his roots (a high concept piece at the behest of Robert Zemeckis), letting an indie-darling take their first crack at a big studio film (Jackson, who’s a few years away from getting legally married to the Tolkien estate), and ultimately landing with an overlooked gem.

The film winds up being a perfect fusion of all those elements. Fox brings the charm that made Marty McFly a likable presence, despite ultimately being a Ferris-Bueller-class jerk for most of those films. Had health not intervened, we would have been in for decades more of Fox aging and evolving, but never quite losing the ineffable qualities which first made him a star. We’re still getting that—I refer the curious to the latest season of Shrinking—but not with a name above the title on a poster.

Jackson bridges his early themes of horror (Braindead (1992)) and dark, violent secrets of (Heavenly Creatures (1994)), coupled with an eagerness to embrace the digital effects revolution that he would wield to full effect with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and from which he’s only been recently set free. I first saw the film five or six years after its release. The effects of both the Judge (John Astin, one of the more convincing ghosts of the silver screen) and Johnny Bartlett (Jake Busey) worked pretty well then, and against all odds I’m now watching a film thirty years after the fact, and the effects still hold up.

And—not to knock any of Jackson’s other efforts—it’s less than two hours long. Brevity, be the soul of wit.

Keeping the Faith (2000)

Director: Edward Norton

Cast: Ben Stiller, Jenna Elfman, Edward Norton, Eli Wallach

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I’m more than a little surprised to learn that there were a few moments that have lived rent-free in my head for over a quarter of a century.

I thought about going to seminary once. Before you start asking whether that was decades ago, or just last week, just know I may not have a real answer to that question, especially as time quite possibly more relative for me than it is for most. But every time I stop myself from taking that leap, somewhere in the back of my memory I hear someone saying that if you can imagine yourself being happy doing anything else, you should go and do that.

I never thought that the thought was coming from Edward Norton in this film.

Did I Like It: And it’s from there where the film’s surprising strength comes. Norton could have just swung a deal to direct a feature, rest on his laurels, and offer up a competent if unremarkable romantic comedy. No one would have had a problem with that. But this manages to weave into the proceedings some reasonably well-considered thoughts about not just faith—and even reaches to explain the difference between that and religion—but about what comittment might mean in all its myriad forms.

Here’s the thing I forgot though: The second part of that conversation is about faith, committment, and love being inextricably linked by the reality that it is not just about the committment that brings you to something, but about the decision you continuously make to show up.

A lot to chew on in a film that’s probably, ultimately, not quite as good as You’ve Got Mail (1998) but tries hard enough and manages not to embarrass anyone.

Double Indemnity (1944)

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall

Have I Seen It Before: Never. I’ve been spending the better part of the last three years watching every noir under the sun (although that should probably be under the bleak, rainy sky) and this one has been on the radar the entire time.

Did I Like It: And rightly so. It is, if nothing else, the quintessential Film Noir. After a year of watching other films in the genre, its tempting to feel something like discontentment, and that I’ve seen all of this before, but the considered opinion is that this was the spring from which this format mostly sprung, and ever b-crime picture made for the next ten years was desperately trying to capture something of Double Indemnity’s magic.

And it is, indeed, all there. A working-class schmo (MacMurray) gets mixed up with an unattainable, but still somehow available—usually married—woman (Stanwyck). All of their money troubles will evaporate all of a sudden if they just kill some ultimately harmless jerk (Tom Powers). Things go mostly great, except for one little problem. Loyalties bounce around, and are schmo gets his comeuppance, reminding everyone as he goes to his fate—be it prison or the great beyond—that he wasn’t a bad guy. He just got mixed up with the wrong dame.

Mix. Repeat.

This may sound like damning the film with faint praise, but it’s a pretty good format to originate. It naturally builds tension as the world starts collapsing in on the schmo. One wonder if it might have even kept a few potential schmoes from starting the cycle in their own lives.

The only real complaint I have against the film comes, again, from the disadvantage of age and experience. Just as I came to this film late, I can’t help but look at MacMurray, remember years of Nick at Nite and the Disney channel, and seeing not a dangerous criminal in too far, but the dad from My Three Sons and various riffs on The Absent-Minded Professor (1961).

Gee, I wish I could somehow be unmoored from the constraints of time and see every movie in the context for which they were meant.

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams, Haley Joel Osment

Have I Seen It Before: I have a distinct feeling this is going to make up the majority of the review*. The film works—as so many of Shyamalan’s do—as a magic trick. The first time I saw the film, I could swear—and I mean swear, just as much as I swore that Beyond the Cabin in the Woods did an episode of Maximum Overdrive (1986) five years before we actually did one—there was a scene where Lynn (Collette) and and Crowe (Willis) have a conversation about Cole (Osment).

Has that scene—which would fundamentally undercut everything about the film that made it special—ever been in the film at any other point I’ve seen it? No. It was never there.

But as I watched the film the first time, my brain filled in the missing parts of the story. As such, the narrative sleight-of-hand that both branding and possibly compulsion have demanded from Shyamalan ever since worked like a charm here. I was looking exactly where the film wanted me to look at every single moment, so that when the boom is finally lowered, I was thoroughly fooled.

And so were you. Admit it.

Did I Like It: Judging a Shyamalan film but the success of its final reveal feels a bit reductive, if unavoidable. Unbreakable (2000) lives rent-free in my head because the magic still works, but I dismissed the entirety of The Village (2004) the moment I figured out the ending** and dismissed it as a kind of dumb. Here, the ending that we’re all dancing around is kind of beside the point. The reason this film made Shyamalan a household name is because the film that precedes it is filled with performers engaged with well-realized material, and bringing everything they can to characters we care about.

Maybe the ending of Shyamalan film never mattered, after all?

*Look at that. I was right.

**Which was about twenty minutes into the film, incidentally.