🍿 21 Jump Street (2012) was fun, but its main effect was to make me want to rewatch Hot Fuzz.

🍿 The End of the Tour (2015) made David Foster Wallace less handsome — with apologies to Jason Segel — but also less neurotic and more comfortable to watch. For comparison, here is an interview with the real DFW done around the same time the movie portrays, which I dare you to watch without cringing. DFW was an introspection machine, to our benefit and his own detriment, the self-destructed proof that the unexamined life is more viable.

🍿 Project Hail Mary (2026) was the perfect family movie that pushed all the right buttons.

• Message: good things are good, bad things are bad, knowledge is power.
• Tone: earnest friendship and collaboration over cynicism and bickering.
• Visuals: Dune-level cinematography with many practical effects and no CGI-generated characters in sight.
• Sound: I don’t know which I enjoyed more, the soundtrack or the score.

Yes, you should go see it, even if you haven’t read the book. And do bring the kids.

🍿 The Plastic Detox (2026) was too sensationalist for my liking, but you can’t escape the message: petrochemicals are all around us, and their introduction coincides with the rise of some alarming health statistics. The documentary anchors on fertility; I am more concerned about the rise in some cancers that can’t be explained away by increased screening. Regardless, it is good to know that our Oral-B electric toothbrush can come with a bamboo extension.

🍿 Blue Moon (2025) was the perfect bottle movie, save for the gimmicky way in which Ethan Hawke was shortened by 10". Mandatory viewing for fans of Broadway musicals, words both spoken and written, and of E.B. White whose scenes I particularly enjoyed.

🍿 Oppenheimer (2023) was even worse on rewatch than I first remembered: disjointed, nonsensical, wooden characters, opaque motivations, telling-not-showing. There is a capital-m Movie to be made about the making of the atomic bomb but whatever Nolan did was not it.

🍿 Your Name (2016) was unexpectedly good for a movie we chose at random after kids wanted to see “an anime” and we had already seen everything from Miyazaki more than once. But then I am a sucker for — spoiler alert — time travel plots.

🍿 Sinners (2025) was as good as it gets, particularly if you are into horror-lite, From Dusk Till Dawn-type action movies that carry an added poignant message or three. What was it about 2025 that the movies I liked the most were all about monsters?

🍿 The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) was a waste of good actors, fantastic (hah!) set design and Michael Giacchino’s era-appropriate score. There are concepts that work in comic books which are just too big for movies, and Galactus is one of them.

🍿 Urchin (2025) was a decent anti-drug movie, but why the overblown praise for Harris Dickinson as a first-time director? Kudos for steadying the camera and not going too close into people’s faces, I guess.