Nickelodeon (Peter Bogdanovich, 1976). This broad, period comedy expanded the last of the showbiz capital Peter Bogdanovich amassed with his three straight hits in the early nineteen-seventies. Leo Harrigan (Ryan O’Neal) is a hapless attorney who bumbles his way into a directing job with a run-and-gun studio in the early days of U.S. cinema. He assembles a ragtag group of collaborators, including would-be movie star Buck Greenway (Burt Reynolds) and genial cameraman Franklin Frank (John Ritter). Bogdanovich reportedly took a script by W.D. Richter and heavily reworked it into a platform for exhausting antics and relentless slapstick. The Mack Sennett–style comic excess of Nickelodeon grows tedious quickly, even as Bogdanovich’s clear affection for bygone eras of moviemaking still holds some charm. The film’s best performance belongs to Tatum O’Neal, still flashing crack timing and bold personality a couple years after her record-setting Oscar win in the director’s Paper Moon. The director’s cut is notable for showcasing the cinematography of László Kovács in entrancing black and white.

Sunday in New York (Peter Tewksbury, 1963). This soft sex comedy features Jane Fonda in an early film role, and she already radiates formidable star power, even as the role demands she play a level of naiveté so extreme it almost seems superhuman. She plays Eileen Tyler, a small-town music critic who visits her playboy, pilot brother (Cliff Robertson) in the big city, falling into a whirlwind romance with another out-of-towner (Rod Taylor). Sunday in New York was adapted from a stage play, and director Peter Tewksbury can’t liberate the work from the confinement of its origins. More problematically, the film is so coy about the sexual mores it explores that it must have felt dated from the moment it first flickered onto screens. The story keeps feeling like its on the verge of revving into farce, but it remains a snoozy idler in practically every respect.

Blue Beetle (Ángel Manuel Soto, 2023). Blue Beetle is one of the last gasping coughs in the extended death rattle of the DC Comics’ initial — and doomed — attempt to duplicate their chief publishing rivals’ success in dragging and dropping superhero characters from panels to the screen. This particular character actually holds some promise, mostly because of the engaging performance of Xolo Maridueña as the ambitious Latino college grad who is accidentally bonded with a wildly dynamic super-suit through contact with an aquamarine scarab. Most of the main cast is also enjoyable, with George Lopez doing his own heroic work in the main comic relief role. Ángel Manuel Soto proves able enough with the action sequences, and Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer’s script at least feints towards thematic worthiness with references to bigotry, gentrification, and other social ills perpetrated by white folks who see their place at the front of the line as a birthright. As the film’s corporate villain, Susan Sarandon hits a level of disengagement rarely seen apart from actors who’ve been forced into one Star Wars installment too many by contractual obligation.