What I’ve Caught Up With, February 2026 Part 1
Film: Man of Steel (2013)
I understand the desire of a director to put his or her stamp on a classic property, but I am genuinely getting tired of seeing yet another origin story for a superhero whose origin I already know and have seen before. Man of Steel is another Superman (Henry Cavill) origin tale, and a sort of re-imagining of Superman II, since our bad guy is General Zod (Michael Shannon). The cast is as stellar as you’d expect for a big, blustery superhero movie (Amy Adams, Chris Meloni, Lawrence Fishburne, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, and more). It very much feels like Zack Snyder (which it is)—far more concerned with spectacle and explosions than story and character. It’s fine, but there’s no reason to see it twice.
Film: 55 Days at Peking (1963)
War—what is it good for? Evidently, it’s good for cinema, because you can use any war to make a film. No one would remember the June Rebellion without Les Misérables, after all. 55 Days at Peking is about the Boxer Rebellion, where Chinese nationals started attacking Chinese Christians and foreign nationals to protest foreign influence in China. We’re going to have a multinational coalition fighting for its life led by Charlton Heston and David Niven, with Ava Gardner as a Russian baroness. It’s one of those odd films that feels like it takes place in no specific time (it’s 1900). It feels kind of Wild West on purpose, and is perhaps oddest to see British, French, Austrian, and German forces fighting side-by-side less than two decades before the first World War. And wait…Jūzō Itami is in this?
Film: The History Boys (2006)
A group of young men at a school in Sheffield have gotten the best test scores in the school’s history, and all eight of them have the chance to test their way into Oxford and Cambridge. This would be a triumph for the school, and while they have affection for their teachers Hector (Richard Griffiths) and Mrs. Lintott (Frances de la Tour), the school decides to bring in a tutor for them in the young Mr. Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore). The boys deal with the fact that Hector is a bit touchy and that Irwin may not be straight with them. It’s a lovely film. Frances de la Tour won a much-deserved BAFTA for the role and almost certainly should have been nominated for a Supporting Actress Oscar.
Film: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
The old wisdom is that even-numbered Star Trek movies are the good ones. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, while it doesn’t have the punch of the battle against Khan, this is the film that gives us the storyline of peace between the Federation and the Klingons, something necessary to make Star Trek: The Next Generation work in the timeline. It’s fun to see the old crew still working, and while Shatner naturally hams it up, seeing George Takei sitting in the captain’s chair of his own spacecraft is absolutely worth the price of admission. Honestly, I think they should have mothballed the original crew for this movie and let them go out with a bang. This lives up to the hype of even-numbered Trek.
Film: Zardoz (1974)
Zardoz is notorious for a lot of reasons. When I watched it, my first thought was disbelief that this was written, directed and produced by John Boorman, who also did Deliverance. Then I remembered that Boorman also did Excalibur and it made a lot more sense. We’re a few hundred years in the future, where bored immortals limp through their existence in a dull paradise, and in the rest of the world, savage “brutals” kill each other at the behest of a floating stone head called Zardoz. The film is nonsensical and bizarre, and most famous for starring Sean Connery wearing thigh-high boots, bandoliers, and a red mankini. Some people will love it specifically because it’s nonsense, but I’m not a “so bad it’s good” kind of film fan.
Film: Penelope (2006)
Penelope is a fairy tale in the guise of a modern romance. Penelope Wilhern (Christina Ricci) has been born with the face of a pig due to a family curse that can only be broken when she is genuinely loved by “one of her own kind,” which is translated as being a fellow aristocrat. All suitors recoil from her, but a broke gambler (James McAvoy) poses as a blue blood in an attempt to get a picture for a paparazzo (Peter Dinklage). You’re not going to get a lot of surprises here, but this film has a cast that is unbelievably stacked—Catherine O’Hara, Richard E. Grant, Reese Witherspoon, Burn Gorman, Nick Frost, and others make this worth the 90-minute run time.
Film: Look Back in Anger (1959)
A classic “angry young man” story, Look Back in Anger feels a great deal like a precursor to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Jimmy (Richard Burton) is college educated, but runs a shabby candy stand at a local market with his friend Cliff (Gary Raymond). Cliff lives with Jimmy and Jimmy’s wife Alison (Mary Ure) in a run-down apartment. He rages against everything, especially against Alison’s upper-middle class upbringing. When her friend Helena (Claire Bloom) arrives, tempers and passions flare, both despite and because of Alison’s pregnancy, which she is keeping from Jimmy. It’s not surprising that this is based on a stage play. It’s only surprising that it wasn’t written by Tennessee Williams, because it sure as hell feels like it should have been.
Film: The Wedding March (1928)
Erich von Stroheim had a good eye for film, but always took too long to get to the point. The Wedding March isn’t that complicated of a story. Spendthrift royalty Nicki (von Stroheim) falls in love with Mitzi (Fay Wray), but she is poor, so Nicki’s father arranges a marriage with a rich, but common woman. Meanwhile, Mitzi’s abusive ex Schani (Matthew Betz) wants to kill Nicki for trying to steal Mitzi away. It’s a pretty standard romance, but the real action doesn’t happen until there are 15 minutes or so left in the film. There’s an ending that we want to have with this film, and it doesn’t give it to us; it’s surprisingly downbeat for 1928.
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