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Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

I try to write a review immediately after watching a film, but for this one, I wanted to wait a few days. We got to the theater the second week of its release, and I had managed to stay ignorant of how everything in the movie would play out. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by who showed up in this film. I certainly wouldn't have predicted it.  Okay, so there's a 5-year window between this and the last movie, but Aunt May's (Marisa Tormei) gravestone listed 2024 as her year of death. That means Peter (Tom Holland) has been keeping the secret of his identity from MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) for less than 2 years -- which still feels like a crazy amount of time.  Going back to the last movie: Why does Peter not tell Zendaya who he is when he entered the coffeeshop? Is he trying to protect her, which is probably what he would say he's doing, or is he afraid that he will be rejected -- that she will tell him that the MJ he loved is not the MJ she is now? W...
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Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

If Far From Home missed a step, then No Way Home tried to overwhelm us with three franchises and a glimpse into the multiverse.  No, this movie isn't perfect. It would be easy to pick on this or that different plot point. But I'm not going to do that here. Topping all that is just how cool it was to see old friends from the earlier Spider-Mans. I wasn't expecting it, and I'm not sure if anything quite like that's ever been done before. Just imagine a bunch of James Bonds standing around together. Wouldn't that be cool? I noticed that a lot of reviewers in my friend group have watched this film multiple times. It always interests me to see that, because not every film gets that wide-ranging repeat viewing treatment. Star Wars, sure, but even the reviewers offering criticism on this one found some reason to keep re-watching it again and again.  This is one of those films that I don't remember watching when it was originally released in theaters. It's possi...
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Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

Far From Home is the follow-up to Homecoming (2017), and that's how I watched them on this re-watch. But a lot has happened between these two Spiderman movies that's "explained" in more detail in other Marvel movies. Not that you need to watch every Marvel movie released in order to understand what's going on, but "the blip" and the death of Tony Stark are pretty big deals that this film mentions but doesn't address in any detail.  I re-watched Homecoming and loved it from beginning to end. It was well-paced, focused, funny. Far from Home isn't horrible; it's still funny, but I wasn't as into the humor this time as I was for Homecoming.  I'm also not sure how I feel about the European setting, and the completely lack of any supporting superheroes for Spider-Man. When Peter Parker is living his normal life in New York, who has the responsibility to protect Europe? If the world was really facing an apocalyptical event, would it really b...
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Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

How many Marvel movies have they made now? Maybe 40? And this is the 3rd Spiderman franchise made this century... I'm not complaining, but I did take a little break from watching superhero movies. I still watch all of them, but it did become a little much to watch each as it came out in theaters.  On this re-watch, I found myself appreciating the humor. A good superhero movie usually benefits from the humor. To me, that's probably what makes Spider-Man: Homecoming a Top 5 Marvel movie. I mean, that's a big claim, but the movie hummed the entire time without one flat note.  Watching it this time with my daughter, I loved seeing her cringe at all the awkwardness of high school it depicted. That tells me that the script writers got it right.  Michael Keaton as Vulture: Keaton is one of my favorites, and he played his part here perfectly. Makes me want to go back and watch Birdman.  Out of all the dudes to recently play Spider-Man, Tom Holland might be the only one I don...
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Night of the Living Dead (1968)

These humans. Maybe they are the weird ones. Maybe they are the zombies -- a term that's never actually used in the film. Instead of "zombies," the undead are called "ghouls." They are also called "mass murderers." We will eventually see them eating the flesh of human beings.  But the humans are not so noble, either. They bicker and argue. They complain. They stab each other in the back. And, they walk across the landscape, killing anything in their way without much thought. What's maybe the most interesting aspect of the film is the casting of Duane Jones (Ben). I don't know how 1960s audiences reacted to him, but he's the lead of the film, and he's black. The only other lead black actor of the period that I can think of is Sidney Portier, and Jones is not Portier. Which is not to say he's a horrible actor -- he's just not a known quantity. In a film featuring mainly horrible actors, he's actually not too shabby.  My guess ...
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Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

The sequel came out 35 years after the original, but I've got to say, the visual continuity of the films is pretty amazing. When I was reviewing Blade Runner (1982), I wondered about the "emptiness" and "loneliness" of Los Angeles. I was curious about the darkness and the perpetual rain. The sequel doesn't necessarily go into much more detail, but we get to see brief glimpses of life outside the city center. We are also told about the "blackout," which is a rather vague but ominous event. And, of course, there is the outer planet colonies, which may indicator that the rich people have gotten the hell away from a destroyed Earth. The sequel makes it a little bit clearer: All forms of life, from trees to animals, have become extinct. Somehow humans survive. Los Angeles, or maybe "Lost Angeles," is a community that feels diverse, but maybe it's a diversity of survivors. Maybe they ended up stuck in Los Angeles during the blackout and the...
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Blade Runner (1982)

Los Angeles in 2019 is oddly empty. Yes, the market areas are full of people, but where do the real people live? The big company that makes the Replicants, it only has the owner and J.F.?  Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a retired Blade Runner. He's asked to do one more job, I guess, and he agrees, I guess. Why? What's in it for him, or does he just fall into doing it?  The Rogue Replicants are dangerous, which might be why Deckard is okay hunting them down. But Rachael (Sean Young) isn't? What does he feel about her, other than the attraction that a man would feel for a woman? This is where the "object" point of view doesn't help, because it would be nice to know why Deckard becomes so invested in, well, a robot. She's not human, but she's enough for Deckard. This, again, makes me wonder where all the humans are. J.F. (William Sanderson) has to make friends just to have friends, and we never see Deckard interact with anyone but marketplace vendors and the ...
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