The Fantastic Four: First Steps: Directed by Matt Shakman. With Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn. Forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, the Fantastic Four must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus and his enigmatic herald, the Silver Surfer. Now out on 4k/hdr disk, this film still feels like it was written for people having trouble with fertility who find themselves gifted with the blessing of a child, just for that blessing to be threatened by outside horrors. I haven’t experienced the second half of that, but...

A Walk in the Woods: Directed by Ken Kwapis. With Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson, Mary Steenburgen. After spending two decades in England, Bill Bryson (Robert Redford) returns to the U.S., where he decides the best way to connect with his homeland is to hike the Appalachian Trail with one of his oldest friends, Stephen Katz (Nick Nolte). It’s a sad movie with some moments of levity, but it still made me sad to watch. Time comes for us all and we need to use it as best we can. Buy On Amazon!

Jurassic World: Rebirth: Directed by Gareth Edwards. With Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend. Five years post-Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), an expedition braves isolated equatorial regions to extract DNA from three massive prehistoric creatures for a groundbreaking medical breakthrough. Hey look, it’s another Jurassic World movie! It’s like the Jurassic Park films, but not restricted to just a single island, now it’s the entire planet that’s being eaten by genetically altered monsters that humanity barely understands. The story is familiar, the action is familiar, the dinosaurs are familiar, and it all works as well as it did the...

Tron: Legacy: Directed by Joseph Kosinski. With Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner. The son of a computer programmer goes looking for his father and ends up inside the digital world that his father designed. He meets his father’s corrupted creation and a unique ally who was born inside the digital world. It’s finally out on 4k/hdr and it’s just a good as I was hoping. That soundtrack is still one of the most emotive soundtracks that I’ve ever heard and the story still makes me cry like a baby. Buy On Amazon!

Tron: Directed by Steven Lisberger. With Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan. A computer hacker is abducted into a digital world and forced to participate in gladiatorial games where his only chance of escape is with the help of a heroic security program. I did this out of order, watching Tron: Ares first, then watching the first two films, but my house was a complete mess and I couldn’t find the 4k disks I just bought, but here we are! I found them! The first movie is simplistic, stylistic, and works on every level for me. I loved...

Tron: Ares: Directed by Joachim Rønning. With Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Jeff Bridges, Evan Peters. A highly sophisticated Program, Ares, is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission. As good as we’re going to get, this is by no means a bad film, but it barely holds a candle to the prior movie or even Uprising, the often unknown television series that lasted two seasons on Disney XD. The music didn’t really capture me the same way Legacy did and the story mostly took place IRL, which is just silly when you have the...

The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz: Directed by Kirk R. Thatcher. With Ashanti, Jeffrey Tambor, Quentin Tarantino, David Alan Grier. This version of The Wizard of Oz is played by the Muppets. A remake of the 1939 film. I had no idea this was even a thing until I saw it come across a movies sale page. I do miss having Muppet adaptations of these classic stories and while this one starts off in a bumpy way that hasn’t aged very well, once they got to the Land of Oz the Muppets were as good as I’ve ever seen them. The...

Long Distance: Directed by Josh Gordon, Will Speck. With Anthony Ramos, Naomi Scott, Kristofer Hivju, Zachary Quinto. It follows an asteroid miner who, after crash-landing on an alien planet, must make his way across the harsh terrain, running out of oxygen, hunted by strange creatures, to the only other survivor. Other than some tik toks, I completely missed the marketing for “Long Distance”, which is a damned shame, this is a great movie! Anthony Ramos does great in a nearly single character story, there’s only one other face we see until the last 20 minutes of the film, and it...