Superman (Richard Donner, 1978). There are few lines in cinema history more load-bearing for the films they’re in than “You’ve got me? Who’s got you?” Luckily, Margot Kidder absolutely nails it. The progenitor of the era of superhero movies that set multiplexes askew, Superman contains every brand of good and bad creative decision that still define its bevy of offspring. Like the modern Marvel movies, the most convincing superpower on display is in the casting. In addition to Kidder’s already mentioned turn as Lois Lane, Christopher Reeve is pretty great as Clark Kent and Superman, Ned Beatty makes a gluttonous feast of a throwaway comic henchman role, and Gene Hackman is a delight as he skates through his work as Lex Luthor. Director Richard Donner handles the storytelling with such bright deftness that it almost escapes notice that the film runs for almost a full hour before it introduces the main cast and gets into the meat of the plot (here, I feel obligated to reiterate almost). But there are portions of this movie that are brutally bad, led by the middle school-level poetry recited during the flying scene with Lois and the pure nonsense of Superman’s solution to the tragic outcome of an earthquake. That the film rightly stirs deep fondness in many people, including me, despite its most disastrous choices is an illustration of how high it leaps in its most artful bounds.

Holland (Mimi Cave, 2025). Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman) is a schoolteacher in the town of Holland, Michigan, which shapes its community culture in a kitschy borrowing of tropes from its Netherlands namesake. She’s suspicious that her husband (Matthew Macfadyen) is having an affair, so she engages in amateur sleuthing in collaboration with a fellow educator (Gael García Bernal) with whom she has her own flirtatious relationship. From there, matters get twisty and dark. Working from a screenplay by Andrew Sodroski, director Mimi Cave strives for the tone of Noah Hawley’s Fargo television series, but she can’t quite get it there. Where Holland wants to be a devious delight, it’s instead antic in a strangely flattened way. Many of the movie’s flaws are spackled over by the performances of Kidman and García Bernal. They manage to bring emotional authenticity to their work while simultaneously toying with the colorfully comic moments.

IF (John Krasinski, 2024). John Krasinski evidently decided to use the clout he amassed from the box office success of the first two A Quiet Place features to make this treacly kiddie concoction about imaginary friends. Bea (Cailey Fleming) is a sweet, sad tween in need of a distraction while she frets about her hospitalized father (Krasinski). While staying with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw), she befriends Cal (Ryan Reynolds), an addled free spirit she encounters in the hallway of the apartment building. The two of them endeavor to re-home a bevy of fanciful companions who were long ago forgotten by youngsters who grew up. The premise and the execution are inane, and the whimsy is so forced that the CGI characters might as well swim into frame on waves of flop sweat. Most of the performances — including the work from an absurdly starry cast voicing the imaginary friends — are middling at best, and the hamminess of Ryan Reynolds reaches unbearable levels here. IF is exhaustingly lousy.