Superhero Fatigue, My @$$: A Review of Spider-Man: Brand New Day

 directed by Destin Daniel Cretton

written by Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna

After the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, in which Peter Parker asks Doctor Strange to erase him from everyone's memory to prevent a cataclysmic collision of different worlds, I was always interested to see what was going to come next for the character. He ended that film and starts this one with absolutely no one; his aunt has died, and all of his friends and even acquaintances have no idea he even exists. Literally the only thing left is his life as Spider-Man, and on Spider-Man: Brand New Day, we get to see exactly what that's like for him.

The film starts where the last one ended with Peter Parker (Tom Holland) living alone in a dingy New York apartment from which he operates as Spider-Man, with homemade tech presumably fished out of dumpsters or bought online.  His only contact with the outside world, apart from the criminals, super or otherwise, whom he pummels or who pummel him, is NYPD Detective Jean de Wolff (Liza Colon Zayas) who supports his crime fighting, even if she's never seen his face.  Peter's pretty much immersed in his life as Spider-Man at this point, with his only guilty pleasure being video reels of his former best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and his former girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) as they navigate life at MIT.  Before Peter knows it, they have graduated and moved back to New York.  He cannot help himself as he crashes a party they attend, and of course, neither of them remembers him. The loneliness is hard enough, but then Peter's homemade tech, complete with a talking AI named EV (Naomi Watts) detects extreme changes in his physiology; his spider DNA has begun to assert itself in new, extreme ways. To top it all off, Peter finds himself facing against a new, unseen menace: someone who can jump into people's minds at will, and who will apparently stop at nothing to break into Damage Control, no matter who gets hurt. Will the help of Professor Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) be enough to help his increasingly monstrous power, and will the help of Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) be enough to help Spidey take down this mysterious new villain? 

Since opening around the world last Wednesday, this movie has been shattering box office records left and right, with reviewers and box-office numbers crunchers alike talking about it nonstop. I don't know what I can write that hasn't already been written elsewhere, other than to say I loved this film.

To be clear, I thoroughly enjoyed Jon Watt's "Home" trilogy of films, warts and all.  They each told coherent standalone stories that didn't require encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even though they featured other characters from that universe. And in all of those, Watts knew how to coax some pretty engaging performance from his cast of mostly young actors. The thing is, though, that as competent as these films were, they did not quite stand out from a craftmanship perspective.

This movie, in that sense, is truly a breath of fresh air. Everything from the practical costume that Peter wears (as opposed to the CGI ones from the previous movies) to the meticulous stunt work and fight choreography to the more saturated color grading marks a noted shift from Marvel's infamous desaturated house style.   Director Cretton paints a prettier picture than Watts ever did.   These are, first and foremost, action movies, and Cretton, who had previously directed Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings, brings all of his experience on that exemplary martial arts film to bear here, and recruits Jackie Chan's legendary stunt team to help frame the action. It also helps that Cretton also had a whole lot of Spidey-philes on his crew, people who went then extra mile to capture Spider-Man's most iconic visual moments, from recreating classic comic book covers to designing a swinging style that is, quite frankly, outstanding, and unlike anything that's been seen in the MCU before.  

Better still, however, Cretton has a script that from series veterans Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers (with a helping hand from Holland himself) that allows him to bring the absolute best out of his actors, especially Holland, who apart from his obvious A-game, brings his years of experience with this character to the table, imbuing him with a sense of pathos that we've never seen from this character before.  The supporting cast gets a chance to shine, too, and it's really the relationships between the characters that truly drives the story forward, from Spidey's bickering with the Punisher or exchanging pleasantries with DeWolff. 

Of course, the central relationship of the story is between Peter and MJ...or more precisely, the memory of that relationship and how its basically torments Peter. It's hard to go into the specifics of how this plays out without spoiling plot details, but suffice it to say that Peter and MJ benefit tremendously from Holland's and Zendaya's chemistry as real-life spouses and from topnotch acting from the pair of them. It's beautiful and painful to behold. 

This was a really great time at the movies for me, and I absolutely want to see it again. 

10/10 

Worth All the Fuss: A Review of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey

 written and directed by Christopher Nolan

inspired by the poem by Homer

I honestly would not have had "controversial Christopher Nolan film" on my bingo card, as nearly every movie the British filmmaker has made since his breakout film Memento at the turn of the millennium has been received with near-universal anticipation and acclaim, with the possible exception of his third "Batman" movie. There has been so much noise surrounding his latest film, an adaptation of Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey"  that it was honestly hard to watch the film without being even just a little bit affected by it, but I gave it the old college try.

Well, I liked it.  I can't rate how well it adapts the source material, never having read Homer's poem, but I definitely appreciated it as a story.

The story, in a nutshell, is about the journey home of Odysseus (Matt Damon) from Troy, where he helped Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) wage a ten-year war against the Trojans, ostensibly for stealing his sister-in-law Helen (Lupita N'yongo) from his brother Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) but really in furtherance of his own ambitions. The war has scarred Odysseus, and even though his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway), his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) his loyal servant Eumaeus (John Leguizamo) have been waiting for him for twenty years, he still can't find his way home because of how deeply he has been affected. In fact, for several years he's been held prisoner by both his own personal trauma and the bewitching Calypso (Charlize Theron) who has kept him enthralled with lotus flowers, even as he struggles to remember the many terrifying adventures has had since leaving Troy which ultimately left him marooned with Calypso. Odysseus desperately need to hurry home, though, as a gaggle of suitors led by the slimy Antinous (Robert Pattinson) simply will not leave Penelope alone until he either returns or she chooses one of them.

For me, the film, which clocks in at three hours, took a while to get going, but once it did, it had me completely engrossed all the way to the end. There have been a number of critiques on the storytelling, and there are valid criticisms of this film, but for my money it was an effective piece of narrative, with remarkable attention to craft.  The film looks great, and Nolan's dedication to realizing the story's more fantastical scenes using practical effects rather than the ever-ubiquitous computer-generated imagery are much appreciated.  

For me, the film's real strength, though, comes from its actors. Particular standouts for me were Damon as Odysseus, Himesh Patel as his right hand Eurylochus, and John Leguizamo as Eumaeus, but there were strong performances all around...yes...even with the American accents.  I can admit the dialogue felt a little strange at times, but in most cases, the cast carried the story with utter conviction.  Samantha Morton as the creepy Circe was another particularly remarkable performance for me. 

Could the film have been better? Well, as I said, the first part dragged quite a bit and it could have been shorter, but as it was, I enjoyed watching this film and would certainly recommend it. 

9/10

Could Have Been Better, Could Have Been Worse: A Review of Supergirl

 directed by Craig Gillespie

written by Ana Noguiera

based on "Woman of Tomorrow" by Tom King and Bilquis Evely

This movie was already on my radar from the time the trailer dropped last year, but for some reason, I found myself even more interested in watching it when a particularly toxic section of fandom decided that it was a terrible movie before it even came out, clinging on to every tidbit of negative news that came out about the movie and gleefully prognosticating its failure at the box office.  What really sealed the deal, though, was when I picked up the collected edition of the "Woman of Tomorrow" miniseries, or the first ever Supergirl comic I had aver actually read.  I knew I had to check this movie out.

Having seen it, I can say while I definitely enjoyed it, there was actually more to the criticism than misogyny and rage-bait.  

Like the story it adapts, the film tells the story of Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) aka Supergirl, traveling to a solar system with a red sun in order to cancel out her super powers so that she can get drunk, something she can't do in Earth's solar system with its yellow sun.  Kara is both celebrating her birthday and continuing to mourn the loss of her planet, Krypton, and just wants to drown her sorrows in alcohol with her faithful dog, Krypto, by her side. Unfortunately, her quest to get drunk gets disrupted when a young woman named Ruthye (Eve Ridley) approaches her, asking her to avenge her family against the brigand Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts). Kara refuses at first, but in a whirlwind of events, Krem steals Kara's ship (which she needs for space travel when she's depowered), and shoots Krypto with a deadly poison, with Krem carrying the antidote on his person.  Kara then finds herself joining Ruthye on her quest to find Krem, albeit for different reasons altogether. Will she be able to save Krypto? Will Ruthye get her revenge, or will Krem and his fearsome brigands prove to be too much, even for Supergirl?

As someone who likes to end my reviews on a high note, though, I'll delve into the negatives first. 

It's honestly such a cliche by now to deride "Marvel humor" as a storytelling negative. When done well, it can help give life to excellent films like the first Iron Man film and the Guardians of the Galaxy films. It just requires the filmmaker to balance the humor and the seriousness of the film, and unfortunately, in this case, director Craig Gillespie and writer Ann Noguiera just don't quite strike that balance. 

Supergirl actually tackles some pretty heady themes, like the pain of loss and grief, and could in the hands of better storytellers, served up a pretty powerful narrative, but the human drama is frequently undercut by humor that borders on bathos at times, and even though Milly Alcock gives a sterling performance as Kara and Eve Ridley is a bit of a revelation as Ruthye, most of the rest of the cast just seems to phone it in, especially Schoenaerts as Krem, who, despite his character having a much more striking visual design than the comic-book villain on which he was based, feels like one of those generic space goons that Rocket Racoon would have shot dead in a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Visually, the film has a western aesthetic, but it really didn't come close to capturing the beauty of Bilquis Evely's artwork.  

Then, unfortunately, there's utterly gratuitous and quite frankly superfluous cameo by popular DC character Lobo, played here by Jason Momoa who appears to have made the jump from the Snyderverse to the Gunn-verse.  He wasn't in the original "Woman of Tomorrow" series and it's painfully obvious that his presence  here is nothing more than poorly-executed fan service.  

All that said, I still enjoyed this movie thanks to Alcock's and Ridley's performances, and some glimpses at the world-building going on here, specially Kara's flashbacks to Krypton. Again, I appreciate that Gunn's DC Universe has actually developed a Kryptonian language, and I quite like David Krumholtz as Zor-El, Kara's father, who is basically the benevolent Kryptonian patriach that previous incarnations of Superman's father Jor-El used to be.  Even speaking in a completely made-up language, Krumholtz is still able to convey the kind of compassion that would inspire his daughter to take up a life of heroism, no matter how difficult it might be.  Those scenes, to my mind, gave me a glimpse of how much better this movie could have been, so it's hard to dismiss it altogether. 

There's a better movie that could have been made from the ingredients that went into this one, but unfortunately, this was what we got. Still, I managed to enjoy it. 

7/10

This is How You Do It: A Review of Masters of the Universe

 directed by Travis Knight

written by Christ Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, and Dave Callaham (screenplay) and Alex Litvak and Michael Finch (story) 

There's something strange (to me) about having strong nostalgic feelings for a cartoon from the 1980s which was created to sell a toy line despite never having owned a single toy from that line.  That said, Amazon Prime/MGM Studios' live-action adaptation of the popular 80s sword-and-sorcery franchise Masters of the Universe was among my must see films for 2026.  

The film begins with Adam Glenn (Nicholas Galitzine) a worker in a human resources, reminiscing wistfully about where he's really from: the fantastical world of Eternia. where as a child (Artie Wilkinson-Hunt) he lived with his parents, King Randor (James Purefoy) and Queen Marlena (Charlotte Riley) and their subjects. Adam struggles to live up become the man his father thinks he should be, even as the king's man-at-arms Duncan (Idris Elba) tries to train him and his best friend, Duncan's daughter Teela (Eire Farrell) tries to encourage him, but all of that is forgotten when Skeletor (Jared Leto) and his minions attack, in search of the mystical power of Eternos located in the mysterious Castle Grayskull, which is guarded by the Sorceress (Morena Baccarin).  With Eternia's forces overwhelmed, the Sorceress and Queen Marlena cast Adam and the sword of power, key to unlocking the power of Eternos, into a portal that takes Adam to Earth, where he's been trapped ever since, unable to leave without the Sword of Power, which he lost in transit. When, after years of searching, Adam finally finds the Sword of Power at a hobby store, he seizes it, hoping to be instantly transported home. What happens instead is a series of harrowing events that involves him being chased by one of Skeletor's minions, rescued by the now grown-up Teela (Camilla Mendes) and taken home to Eternia, which, he discovers, has turned into a desolate wasteland under Skeletor's rule. Will Adam and his friends be able to unlock the secrets held by the Sword of Power to bring peace back to Eternia, or is the might of Skeletor simply too much for them?

I was a huge fan of its director, Travis Knight, who has delivered two memorable films for me, namely 2016's animated film Kubo and the Two Strings, and the only truly decent live-action Transformers movie to date, 2018's Bumblebee.  I walked in expecting a nice, light and frothy nostalgia trip, callbacks galore, and people running around in brightly colored costumes. I'm happy to report that I was not disappointed. For me, the filmmakers knew exactly what kind of tone they had to go for to make this story work, which is completely goofy and irreverent. After all, we're talking about a film based on a toy line involving sword-wielding barbarians and spaceships. There was no way to pull this off without dollops of self-awareness and self-deprecating humor, and while there are a number of jokes that don't quite land, I am convinced this was still very much the way to go.

It helps that, for all of the silly dialogue and story contrivances, none of the actors in this movie is phoning in it. Nicholas Galitzine shines as Adam, with some wonderful earnestness and some pretty great comic timing, while Jared Leto does some delightful scenery chewing as Skeletor, very much going for the mustache-twirling bad guy, complete with the British accent. Idris Elba does a surprising, somewhat against-type turn against Duncan, who has a surprising bit of a character arc in this film. Camilla Mendes delights as Teela; not only is she easy on the eyes but she has some pretty serious action chops as well as great chemistry with both Galitzine and Elba. Alison Brie is quite fun as Skeletor's right-hand Evil Lyn but could have been so much more if the script had only let her. 

For all the silliness in the script, apart from some really solid acting, this movie boasts some pretty impressive  production value as well. The fight scenes are well-staged, the color-grading is nice and vibrant, and the music score by Daniel Pemberton which even features Queen guitarist Brian May is simply magnificent, with just the right amount of drama and 80s vibes.  There are a few needle-drop moments that are completely on-point.

This is the kind of movie that's easy to pick apart upon closer analysis, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself as to my mind, it did exactly what it was supposed to do; tickle the audience's nostalgia bone and provide heaping servings of some good, silly fun.  If I had nitpicks, it would be that the movie was a touch too long, and that at least one the jokes (the one involving a character's name) was repeated to the point of wearing out its welcome, but that's about it. I really wasn't expecting high art, and this movie delivered on my modest expectations. 

For  ANYONE who enjoyed the 80s cartoon or played with the toys, this is definitely for you.

9/10     

Space Buddies: A Review of Project Hail Mary

 directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller 

written by Drew Goddard

based on the book by Andy Weir

As one of the more hyped-up movies of 2026, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's Project Hail Mary had a lot to live up to, as an adaptation of the best-selling book by Andy Weir, who also penned the book The Martian, which was adapted by Ridley Scott with much success about a decade ago.  The good news for me is that this film pretty much lived up to the hype.

The film opens with a disheveled man (Ryan Gosling) waking up in deep space to discover that he is the sole survivor of a manned space mission with no memory of who is or how he got there. As he slowly wakes up he remembers that he is Dr. Ryland Grace, a mild-mannered, middle-school science teacher who, after one of his classes, was approached by government agent Eva Stratton (Sandra Huller), with a mission to save the sun from a mysterious phenomenon that seems to be consuming it.  The phenomenon has been dubbed the Petrova line, a trail of organisms stretching the sun to the planet Venus, filled with some kind of creatures that eat stars. Ultimately, the solution that Earth's best and brightest have come up with is to have astronauts travel to a distant star, 11 light years away from Earth, which also has a Petrova line but is not dimming, as the sun is.   As Grace remembers more and more of how he ended up here, so far away from home, he is startled by the discover that someone else, in another ship, from another planet, has traveled to exactly the same place. He will soon discover that they are there for the same reason, and that they need to cooperate if their worlds are to have any chance of survival. Fortunately, Grace and his new colleague, whom he names "Rocky" after his stone-like appearance, hit it off pretty quickly, but they'll need more than just good vibes to save the day: they'll need ingenuity, courage, and the willingness to basically lay it all on the line. 

I loved The Martian, so when the trailer for this film dropped, it was an easy call to go check it out at the nearest movie theater.   

Like The Martian, which was also adapted by screenwriter Drew Goddard, this movie features an affable, relatable lead character in Ryland Grace, who is very much out of his element as an academic who has been sent on a deep space mission for reasons that we, the audience, only discover quite late in the film. He's an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and his journey is utterly compelling. Ryan Gosling does a brilliant job of playing Grace as an everyman, even though he actually holds a doctorate in molecular biology.  He basically carries the film on his shoulders, as his co-star Rocky is part puppet, part digital effect and part voice actor (James Ortiz). It helps, though, that his earthbound co-star Sandra Huller plays an effective "straight" man to Grace's wisecracking schoolteacher. Lord and Miller do an outstanding job of exploiting the chemistry between their actors, which is not the easiest thing to do in film like this, with such limited human interaction. 

Visually, the movie is a treat, with art direction and visual effects which still manage to give the film its own distinct aesthetic at a time when science fiction movies set in space like Dune and the Star Wars film have already thrown down the gauntlet in terms of how space should look on the big screen. 

For me, though, the technical standout of this film was Daniel Pemberton's soaring musical score. Even though it admittedly felt slightly heavy-handed at times, it was wonderfully evocative and, like the film's unique visual design (best exemplified by Rocky's ship), it really made sure the movie was its own thing, and not just some redux of the astronaut-in-peril trope that we've seen fairly often over the last decade or so (e.g. Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian, to name a few).   The movie's strongest selling point, for me at least, is its humanity, which is embodied in the bond between Grace and Rocky. Kudos therefore go out not just to Gosling but to the team of puppeteers, effects artists and the voice actor who gave him something palpable to play off, even when he was probably just talking to a tennis ball.

It's not often I say this about a science fiction movie, but it's something that the whole family can enjoy. There's no swearing, sex or extreme violence, and thematically, it's actually got the kind of values that parents would want their young children to imbibe like selflessness. So in short, to the Gen-Xers and millennials worried about where to leave their kids, rest assured, you can take them to see this with you.  That said, at two hours and thirty-seven minutes, it does run a tad long. 

 When I rewatched The Martian on DVD years  after I had enjoyed it in theaters, I was pleased to see how well it had aged.  I am pretty sure I'll be able to say the same thing about this movie. 

10/10  

Animals on the Court: A Review of Goat

 directed by Tyree Dillihay

written by Aaron Buchsbaum, Teddy Riley, Nicolas Curcio and Peter Chiarelli

Since Sony Pictures Animation basically rewrote the animation rulebook with 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, they've just gone from strength to strength with one outstanding film after another, with last year's KPop Demon Hunters adding to their Oscar trophy cabinet with not just one but two Oscars, including their first-ever Best Original Song Oscar. Their offbeat story choices and their now signature animation style have pretty much cemented their position as one of the animation industry's major players.

As a result, I guess it's inevitable that they'd eventually come up with a movie that was basically just "OK."

The film Goat, the title of which is basically a play on the sports acronym GOAT or "Greatest Of All Time" centers around an anthropomorphic young goat named Will Harris (Caleb McLaughlin), who lives in a Zootopia-like world populated by anthopormorphic animals, and who aspires to play roarball, his world's equivalent of basketball, albeit a much more extreme version. His big dream is to play for the Vineland Thorns like his hero, Jett Filmore (Gabrielle Union). He's a talented shooter, but as a "small" animal, he'll never be accepted in a league where only the "big" thrive.   This changes, however, when a video where he plays streetball and scores against one of roarball's most respected players, Mane Event (Aaron Pierre) goes viral, and Thorns team owner Flo (Jenifer Lewis), sees an opportunity to spruce up the Thorns, that have yet to win a championship (called a "Claw" here) basically because Jett is a complete ballhog.  Flo recruits will as a sixth player, and he joins Jett and her teammates, the giraffe Lenny (Steph Curry, yes THAT Steph Curry), rhinoceros Archie (David Harbour), ostrich Olivia (Nicola Coughlan), and komodo dragon Modo (Nick Kroll). It's an uphill battle for Will, who is constantly bullied by Jett and who can't even count on the proboscis monkey coach Dennis (Patton Oswalt), so he basically has to make his own breaks. Through his sheer grit and plucky spirit, however, Will may yet show the Thorns the value of teamwork, and take them into uncharted territory.

As that little blurb suggests, the film is basically loaded with sports underdog movie cliches, and is completely okay with that. So am I, to be frank, especially since they bring their patented visual flair to the game, and some pretty enjoyable voice acting. The animal world this crowd of animals moves in is no Zootopia clone; it's rough and tumble and pretty "extreme" in it s orientation, even more so when the various animals are facing off in the roarball court.  The whole thing really is a treat, especially when watching it with one's kids. 

Maybe down the line I could see myself calling Sony Animation out for making movies like this, but for now, this is just fine. 

 

8/10

Yet Another Missed Opportunity: A (VERY LATE) Review of Wake Up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

 written and directed by Rian Johnson

As someone who considers himself a fan of Rian Johnson's "Knives Out" movies, I'm a little sheepish to admit that I didn't catch this latest one, Wake, Up, Dead Man, until several months after its release on Netflix, and I'm even more embarrassed to admit that I haven't gotten around to reviewing it until just now. I'll explain why later, but I am glad I eventually caught the latest mystery adventure of Benoit Blanc, played once more with aplomb by Daniel Craig.

Writer-director Rian Johnson takes us to Church for this film, which actually focuses on a different character this time: Catholic priest Fr. Jud Duplenticy, played by an excellent Josh O'Connor.  Fr. Jud's a bit of a hothead, having been a former boxer before joining the priesthood, and his temper still manages to flare up as he punches a deacon and lands in a backwater with a dwindling congregation and a very cantankerous old priest, Father Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin).  Fr. Wicks preaches to a tiny handful of parishioners who include his secretary Martha (Glenn Close), a doctor Nat (Jeremy Renner), washed-up author Lee (Andrew Scott), cutthroat lawyer Vera (Kerry Washington), ailing musician Simone (Cailee Spaenee) and aspiring influencer Cy (Daryl McCormack).  Sparks fly almost instantly when Fr. Jud sets foot in the new parish, with Fr. Wicks determined to provoke him into even more violence with his incendiary words and even physical abuse. When Fr. Wicks mysteriously dies during a mass, as a result, Fr. Jud is an instant suspect, and Benoit Blanc is once again on the case, much to the chagrin of the local sheriff (Mila Kunis).  As always, though, the situation is far more complicated than it appears, and the real killer could have been anyone from among Fr. Wick's remaining parishioners.

More than either of the previous two movies, Wake Up, Dead Man is very much a whodunit, rather than Johnson's social commentary disguised as one, and while Johnson's swipe at religion, as embodied by the very worldly, very corrupt Fr. Wick, was very much expected, the fact that he centers the narrative around the idealistic Fr. Jud and (no spoilers, I promise), makes his crisis of faith a central tenet of how the film's conflicts are resolved is something I would not have expected form a modern Hollywood film.  Benoit Blanc is a supporting character in his own film; this is all about how Fr. Jud navigates the extremely trying time he faces in the film as a murder suspect, and Josh O'Connor truly rises to the occasion with a performance that is just superb in its nuance.

I said earlier that I almost passed this movie up, and it's simply because I am annoyed that it wasn't available on the big screen. These Knives Out movies may not be action extravaganzas, but this is, for me at least the kind of meat-and-potatoes storytelling that deserves a good, long run in movie theaters. Decisions like Netflix's call to keep this almost exclusively to their streaming service with a token theatrical release make me so very glad that Netflix didn't end up buying Warner Brothers. 

9.5/10