June/July 2026 [29-5]
They Will Kill You, Avengers: Endgame, The Pagemaster, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, Spider-Man: No Way Home
- They Will Kill You [2026] - 72
A drunken Tarantino daydreams of Park Chan-wook's classic, Oldboy, while channeling the satanic in an action-thriller that would have left the world's heart aflutter had it managed its opening narrative with the same demoniac pacing and flare of what comes after.
I think I’m going to start just doing single sentence reviews like that for the weeklies… But who can never be sure. This week, it’s just this one that gets the treatment.
- Avengers: Endgame [2019] - 87
A decade in the making, Avengers: Endgame is everything you could possibly want from the franchise up to this point, and if Captain America growling, “Avengers… Assemble,” while wielding Mjölnir alongside his busted shield doesn’t get you rock hard, then I just don’t know what will. While I can see arguments that Endgame simply undoes much of the loss in Infinity War [arguments I’d also made on my original viewing], and there are certainly parts of the plot that don’t entirely line up, there’s also a real magic here that I think is pretty undeniable. 23 films and 11 years into the MCU, this isn’t a film that’s confused about the weight it carries or the culture it’s created, and maybe it’s a little snow-blindness creeping in after watching 47.95 hours of Marvel movies at this point but, I was moved, enthused, and absolutely invigorated during my time with this film. It’s been a really interesting journey, reliving one of the largest media forces of my adult life, and Avengers: Endgame is an incredibly special treat to round out the longest leg of the adventure yet.
“Part of the journey… Is the end.”
- The Pagemaster [1994] - 63
A movie I think about a lot, but never quite remember clearly, The Pagemaster is a movie that apparently I and only one other person hold with any sort of gusto. Sporting a massive 19% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, The Pagemaster is one of those rare movies with excellent ideas, but rough [and even problematic] execution. All told, it’s only 85-minutes long so, there isn’t that much to sit through if you aren’t vibing with it… But it’s also very rushed, and ends up telling a sort of weird and entirely incomplete tale that insists more than it inspires. I don’t often feel that remakes are meaningful, but I think that the ideas here are good enough that The Pagemaster truly deserves a more patient and thoughtful treatment, and modern audiences could really use a film about the magic of reading.
- Spider-Man: Far From Home [2019] - 70
Spider-Man: Far From Home might as well be called “Spider-Man: 1.2” or, sticking with the theme, “Spider-Man: Just Got Home” as it’s effectively the exact same plot as the first film, with a couple details shuffled around and names of characters changed. That said, it’s also the better of the two movies and, as with the first film, features another of my favorite [and best visually executed] MCU villains. There’s not a ton to say about this one except that it’s “solid”. VFX are mostly good, story is mostly serviceable with good twists and fun sequences, no characters are particularly annoying, and the ending does a great job setting up consequences and future issues. I like Far From Home, I just wish it was more different from the film that preceded it.
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings [2021] - 77
One of the movies I remembered liking more than most in the franchise, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a very worthy contended for “most stylish” within the multiverse. Featuring measured elements of both kung fu films and wuxia, Shang-Chi is just a downright great time and an entry into the MCU that’s been denied a sequel for far too long. It looks like chatter about that has started back up recently with director Destin Daniel Cretton again at the helm, and I don’t think there’s anything in this franchise that I’m more excited about. This is one of the only stories in the whole series that really feels like a “fantasy” in any way, and the only one that understands how to film a fight-scene — something I’ve complained about heavily with other entries [like Winter Soldier]. Looking into Cretton’s IMDB, I see that he’s also leading the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and that gives me a renewed hope that the web-slinging Avenger might have some venom left in his bite after all.
- Eternals [2021] - 69
OOF. This movie is really painful because it could have been so incredibly good… But it just isn’t. Post Endgame, the MCU really struggles with making any sort of headway towards anything that counts, and has absolutely no idea how to talk about/ deal with the fact that half of humanity just clicked out of existence for 5-years. Eternals could have been the perfect way to both set up the next era of MCU-ness and have a real conversation about life, purpose, and existence when viewed from the eyes of beings that have been around since the dawn of time. Instead, we get a half-[if we’re being generous]-baked attempt at jamming the entirety of human history, the creation and destruction of multiple worlds, an introduction into new cosmic forces, and a love story into a single film, all while balancing some of the MCU’s worst casting decisions. This sounds like a lot of complaining for a movie I’m almost giving a 7, but that’s because what Eternals does right, it does really right… Unfortunately, that mostly only surrounds its concepts, not its execution. Boo.
- Spider-Man: No Way Home [2021] - 63
And then we get to the most infuriating of all the MCU. The middle of Spider-Man: No Way Home is the best crossover of our time [and possibly any other], but the beginning and ending are the worst written garbage in any of the 27 movies I’ve completed up to this point. The entire film is catalyzed by a spell going wrong, which is fine… But that spell only goes wrong because Doctor Strange doesn’t explain any of its rules before he’s already in the middle of casting it… And the rules that Peter is trying to circumvent don’t even make any sense as a conflict anyway. I’m glad that this movie exists, because the whole thing is incredibly nostalgic and moving — especially Andrew Garfield’s redemption arc [😭😭] —, but I will never ever believe that the only way to create the greatness of that middle 2-hours was through the infantile and asinine setup of the intro; Thus, a 63, so that it can be easily flopped to a 36, depending on how upset it all makes me at any given moment.
