Honest truth as of this evening: Midlife Crisis Crossover calls Monsters University “the Best Film of the Year”! So far. Yes, the year is young. Proclamation subject to change without notice, possibly during Oscar preseason.
Seriously, though: looking back at my last several summer action blockbuster spectacular experiences, this Disney/Pixar reboot of Revenge of the Nerds requires less forgiveness of plot holes; boasts characterization truer to the original cast; doesn’t overwrite wide-scale urban destruction with perfunctory offscreen-slapdash-reconstruction happy ending; refuses to play bait-and-switch with its antagonists; and, like Toy Story 3, is a surprisingly top-notch sequel with its own topic to explore rather than acting as a hollow, superfluous extension of the original.
The trailers for Now You See Me telegraph up front that you should expect a twist along the way. You’re teased and beguiled by the possibility of having the wool pulled over your eyes, and taunted for daring to look too closely. Sooner or later, this movie swears it will fool you.
The last time my family went to the theater, the ads that ran from the film’s scheduled showtime until the moment the feature presentation began spanned over twenty minutes. Many of the ads were movie trailers, but not all of them. Ads for new cars, smartphones, TV shows, and soft drinks are routine pre-show entertainment while you’re settling into your seat, mentally preparing yourself for temporary phone deprivation, swapping notes with your companions, and consuming your snack too early. Even when it’s ostensibly showtime, the commercial parade isn’t over yet, because a lot of manufacturers want a moment of your time, in exchange for keeping your theater in business.
As with most big-budget sci-fi films nowadays, many viewers will spend half the running time of the new Tom Cruise vehicle Oblivion mentally tallying how many refurbished components they recognize from other sci-fi flicks. That doesn’t automatically make the film bad in my book, but it can be a pervasive distraction that turns my viewing experience into one long Highlights for Children puzzle. (Score one point for every borrowed element you spot! If you spot ten or more, you’re a Certified Movie Maven!) Oblivion is the second feature film from Joseph Kosinski, the director of Tron: Legacy, which was a visual wonderland and a surprisingly classy act considering it was a Disney sequel to a film I’ve disliked since I was ten. 
You’ve seen the newest trailer for Man of Steel that was just released Tuesday evening, right? The one labeled as “Trailer #3”, with lots more Jor-El in it? At least once? 
We saw the White House blow up in Independence Day. We saw it blow up again in 2012. As I type this it’s being blown up yet again in theaters in Olympus Has Fallen. Add your own memories here of the White House’s repetitive history of exploding again and again and again at the movies, whether at the hands of terrorists, invaders, or bad weather.
As unimpressed as I was with the trailer, The Croods turned out to be an unexpected delight, with a sincere message for parents who want to protect their children from the world, but struggle with the knowledge that someday that job won’t be theirs anymore. (Says the nervous guy counting down the days until his son begins college.)
As of this weekend, I can now say I’ve seen every full-length motion picture directed to date by Christoper Nolan. In December 2012 his debut, Following, earned a Criterion Collection re-release. Shot in 1998 in 16mm black-and-white, it was minimally restored for this edition, with the original aspect ratio and much of the old-media grittiness retained for historical verisimilitude. Its seventy speedy minutes contain an amateur no-star cast (as well as crowds of unwitting “extras” captured on the fly) and were shot for just five thousand dollars, a bargain compared to other self-financed B&W debut films from the same decade (e.g., Kevin Smith’s Clerks, Robert Rodriguez’ El Mariachi). With such budgetary constraints and no established names involved in the creative process, a casual browser would expect Following to feel like a young-adult vanity project fit only for YouTube.
As much as I contemplated bowing out 
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 