From what I can recall (I read it 20 years ago), this also happened in the Wicked book, and was precisely why I decided it was not a good book at all.
The Sheep Detectives (2026) I expected this movie to be funny, but I did not expect it to be sweet as well. I like a good murder mystery, and this definitely had a good one. The visuals are quite amazing when you give it any thought, but you tend not to because everything, actually looks real and natural. A lot of the characters are of course one dimensional, but on the whole it works and leaves you with a nice little feeling after watching it.
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Another viewer of the new Spider-Man film and I agree - it’s excellent (assuming you like this sort of thing).
For the record there is very brief after-credits scene but it’s nothing terribly exciting.
ETA: It was nice to see Liza Colón-Zayas in a prominent role. I loved her in The Bear.
Masters of the Universe
My expectations had been raised (from pretty low) due to all the positive feedback I’d heard about this one. It was…fine. Made me laugh a fair bit and we were both entertained but I’d agree with an earlier comment that it is too long. Played for laughs, thankfully (I think if they’d made it earnest then it would’ve been funny for all the wrong reasons). We were trying to work out who the voice of Skeletor is, and I’d said it’s either a Brit doing a deliberately bad posh English accent, or someone else butchering it. My partner looked it up and I couldn’t guess it. Somone who has been in the news very recently for all the wrong reasons!
6/10
Count me among those wrong people then 
First one was great, second was pretty decent. Third onwards, boring and/or ridiculous beyond belief!
Mayday at 40000 Feet! (! is in the title) FeTV
A 1976 made ior TV disaster film, a simpler entry into the Airport genre.
A bunch of mid level actors all crammed together in one tiny plane and overly soapish plot. My only complaint is it moved a bit slow (the plot, not the plane) but that was the norm back then.
A cast of good actors: David Janssen, Christopher George, Linda Day George*, Don Meredith, Ray Milland, Broderick Crawford.
Interesting point: Janssen’s wife had a suspicious lump in her breast, and they had her under full anesthetic for the biopsy. Man, now they do that as an office outpatient test.
Fun fact: you actually can fly a 727 without hydraulics. It has mechanical flight controls backing up the hydraulics. I did not know that (or forgot, after Flight 232).
*The two married at the time Georges were not cast as each others’ love interest.
The New Yorker at 100 (2025). Just for a change of pace, this is a documentary showing behind-the-scenes operations at the New Yorker magazine as they prepare for their 100th anniversary edition, but it’s also a general look at how the magazine operates, with many interviews with staff and contributors and especially with editor-in-chief David Remnick. Definitely worth seeing if you’re a fan of the magazine, which I am, and also fascinated by how they’ve stayed successful while other print media have been failing all around them. Part of the reason is an obsessive dedication to quality.
The fourth one was very, very loosely based on Tim Powers’ quite good book On Stranger Tides, hence the name. It’s a good book, well worth reading if you like the fantasy genre and books set near the end of the classic Caribbean age of piracy. But the plot’s quite different from the film and the writing is far superior.
The Presidio 1988 Sean Connery, Mark Harmon, Meg Ryan, Jack Warden
Rented on Prime
I’d forgotten about this excellent movie. A short clip on YouTube reminded me.
Connery is Lt. Colonel Alan Caldwell. A MP under his command is killed investigating a break-in. Two SFPD patrol officers were killed pursuing the suspects.
Harmon is a former MP and San Francisco PD detective. He had served under Caldwell on the same base.
Meg Ryan is Caldwell’s daughter.
There’s a lot of interesting conflicts between the three characters. That conflict almost over shadows the joint SFPD and Military investigation.
I recommend watching.
8.5 out of 10
btw There are many similarities in Harmon’s portrayal of the detective and Leroy Gibbs in NCIS. Many of Gibbs facial expressions and reactions are the same in this movie.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
The mid-film reveal was a little like having chocolate syrup poured on my pizza, but overall enjoyable I even liked the Punisher. That’s a first.
The Last of Sheila
Recommended.
I’ve seen this movie before, but I had forgotten the reveals. It’s not quite a murder mystery, but there is at least one murder in it. A bunch of friends(sort of) are called to a yacht to play a game of secrets.
Many secrets come out and a fairly interesting mystery plays out. It’s 120 minutes. Should have been 90.
Rian Johnson cites it as an inspiration for his Knives Out movies. I definitely see that.
Pretty good stuff.
Speaking of James Coburn…(I love The Last of Sheila)
Tonight’s was 1972’s The Carey Treatment. Thanks to The Other Waldo Pepper 8 years ago for IDing it for me, I finally got around to watching it.
It must have been the 70s, and on TV, when I last saw it. Watching now the complex “adult” themes (abortion, drug abuse, corruption, underage sex, adult extramarital sex, office politics) I am pretty sure most of the film must have flown over my head at 20K feet. No wonder I only remembered one scene.
The movie was extensively recut by the studio, pissing off director Blake Edwards so much he moved to Europe.. While I liked it, I did find the plot somewhat underdone, with unexplained character actions that sort of made no sense. I wonder what the original cut was like.
And I was surprised to see it was a Michael Crichton story.
Masters of the Universe (2026). On Prime. This movie had no reason to be this enjoyable. I vaguely remember watching the cartoon at one point or another, so although I had enough knowledge to catch some of the references, for the most part it was an opaque world. For that reason a lot of it probably worked for me because I wasn’t comparing it to the original. The visuals for this movie where great, with Skeletor being particularly good. It was both campy and ridiculous with some elements of personal growth and family dynamics mixed in. While it was a fun watch, I do think it was a bit too long, though given the visuals I would have liked to have seen it in the movie theater which I missed doing because of timing on my part.
One thing that I did not realize at the time of viewing was that Nicholas Galitzine was also in The Sheep Detectives, which speaks to his ability to inhabit a role differently. Of course there is a different costume, etc. but I feel his body motion and mannerisms are different enough to make it more of a difference.
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Onw of my all-time favorites, which I frequently recommend. It was one of the main events at a “twist ending” film festival a couple of us had. Others were:
Body Heat
Charade
Rough Cut
TCM recently aired Paul Simon’s vanity project One Trick Pony (1980) about a musician whose music is no longer in style. Not really much more to it than that. A couple of gratuitous nude scenes courtesy of Mare Winningham and Joan Hackett, but that was probably a lot more common back then.
I remember seeing this with a group of friends when it first came out. It was the second half of a double feature, and the first film was the one we’d wanted to see. About halfway through, we were all so bored we decided to leave.
A few years later I gave it another chance on HBO or something. I did watch the whole thing, but still found it rather dull.
The ABCs of Death
Twenty-six different directors each get a letter and make a movie that has to have “death” in it. Interesting concept, horrendous execution; only two episodes are worth your time, the rest is mostly inane bathroom humor. However, spawned two (so far) sequels, so what do I know?
Skip it.
I brought it up recently in another thread and my comment was along the lines of the best thing in the movie was the opening few minutes with the B-52s 
. It’s not an actively bad movie. But it is a bit boring.
Wife and I are watching the Hobbit films, extended editions.
Everyone who disliked them is wrong. We love all three of them. Not as good as Lord of the Rings, but not the huge step down so many seem to think. I hear people compare them to the prequels to Star Wars and that is…well, insane.
The Hobbit movies are great; I’m glad Peter Jackson directed them.
Repo Man. I saw this one in the theater when it was released, and it didn’t much resonate with me. I’m not saying I thought it was bad, but it just didn’t draw me in. Then, just a couple of days ago, I saw that it was on the Criterion Channel, so I thought I’d revisit it and see how I’d react after all these years. Same thing, really. I just can’t get into it, and I don’t know why. “On paper,” I should.