🎬 “I’ll stop a car, and I won’t use my thumb!”

9 min readDec 4, 2020

I hope everyone had a safe and restful Thanksgiving break last week — I gorged myself on turkey and potatoes and cranberry sauce, and then harnessed that high-calorie energy to launch a business.

No kidding: On Tuesday, I launched BumbleCast, an independent podcasting studio that you or your business can hire to produce a podcast, or to improve a show you’ve already launched. This is the big news I teased back in October, and it’s something I’ve wanted to do for much longer than that.

Thanks so much to those of you who blindly signed up last week for our launch email; if you opted out of that, but want to stay apprised now that you know WTF I’m doing with my life, you can sign up for the BumbleCast newsletter right here.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson, it’s not easy to juggle a new business, but somehow I managed to fit in seven movies over the past two weeks. Let’s get into them!

🇺🇸 Captain America: The First Avenger

Captain America: The First Avenger is a sometimes-frustrating debut for my favorite character in the Marvel canon.

Chris Evans acquits himself well as Cap through the constant adversity he faces, and it helps that he’s surrounded by an excellent supporting cast, including Hayley Atwell as his too-cool-for-you love interest Peggy Carter. The action is clean and creative (and in a couple instances, shockingly graphic), and I don’t have any major problems with the straightforward origin story.

The movie leans hard into old-fashioned Americana, which is a welcome departure in tone from the tone of the films that preceded it, but its villain — portrayed by the typically excellent Hugo Weaving — is too silly to be scary. As with Iron Man 2, it helps to know that this is only a minor stumble on the road to much greater things. Recommended. ★★★½

Captain America: The First Avenger is currently streaming on Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Epix, and DirecTV.

🐻 Paddington

After six years of hype, I’m glad I finally saw Paddington. It’s a simple — but charming — well-animated adaptation of the classic stories about a polite bear from “darkest Peru” trying to find a new home in London.

Providing Paddington’s voice, Ben Whishaw is on the right side of cute vs. saccharine, and the film is filled with faux-Wes Andersonian touches, like an explorer’s club that runs on pneumatic tubes. I wish the plot was either a little denser or a lot sparser; in almost every scene, hijinks ensue, and while these sequences are funny and sweet, they pile up and lose some of their potency.

I liked this movie enough that I will check out its more popular sequel, but on its own terms, I’d still recommend it. ★★★½

Paddington is currently streaming on DirecTV, Sling TV, TNT, and TBS.

🚕 Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a buddy road trip movie with a classic odd couple: Steve Martin as a tightly wound ad exec, and John Candy as a boisterous over-sharing salesman. They’re trying to get to Chicago before Thanksgiving, and things go disastrously wrong at every turn.

Martin yells and swears and throws things, while Candy likes to go with the flow; this is a John Hughes movie, so there are hidden layers of sweetness underneath the surface-level darkness. Still, I found Martin’s fits of anger a little tedious, even if they are mostly justified.

By the time you’re reading this, it’s been more than a week since Thanksgiving, but it’s still the holidays — give it a watch. ★★★½

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is currently streaming on Sling TV.

👍 It Happened One Night

I have heard great things about It Happened One Night for years, and now I see why.

Released in 1934, this is one of the holy scriptures of romantic comedies, the template on which countless will they-won’t they movies and TV shows that followed it have been based. Claudette Colbert stars as a young, over-privileged girl who runs away from her rich father intending to elope with an aviator (!); en route, however, she meets a smart aleck journalist played by Clark Gable, and, you know … will they? Won’t they?

Except for a few instances of and references to Colbert being hit by her father and prospective husband, the movie has aged surprisingly well, and the lead performances are charming and engaging. Recommended. ★★★★

It Happened One Night is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

🔥 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Goblet of Fire is not the worst Harry Potter movie (that distinction belongs to Chamber of Secrets), but it’s a huge step down from Prisoner of Azkaban and has some significant problems that hold it back.

Foremost are the pacing and editing; Goblet of Fire is a dense, plot-heavy book with several intertwining mysteries, and adapting them would be a challenge for any filmmaker, so much so that I think this movie is the strongest case for a TV re-adaptation of the whole series. But it doesn’t help that the movie is also laden with clumsy directorial choices and poorly explained major story beats that basically assume you’ve read the book. Someone should be able to understand your movie without doing homework!

Anyway: I liked several of the action scenes here, and the production design is excellent, as always. But overall, the Goblet of Fire book is great, while the movie is merely OK. Watch it if you must to get to the later films in the series, but otherwise, skip it. ★★★

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is currently streaming on Sling TV and USA.

🏙 The Avengers

The Avengers is much greater than the sum of its parts. The first official team-up movie in the Marvel universe, it’s a thrillingly paced, smartly executed action movie that takes full advantage of its characters’ trademark strengths and flaws.

Although the main villain is recycled from a previous movie, and the army of CGI monsters he leads are pretty whatever, the reason this movie works so well is that it exploits every opportunity to pit our heroes against each other. Plus, the ideas introduced here between the explosions laid the foundation for many (too many?) additional movies, so revisiting this film in particular is satisfying for someone who’s seen the whole series.

It also helps that the action scenes really work; I don’t think there’s yet been a single shot in the franchise quite as impressive as the tracking shot over New York, hopping from Avenger to Avenger. Recommended. ★★★★½

The Avengers is currently streaming on Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video.

🎄 Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 is a thematically muddled entry in the franchise, with a weak villain and (to the disappointment of some fans) relatively little time spent in the Iron Man suit.

However, there’s enough I still like about it to recommend it: This movie’s script is far funnier than its predecessors’; it features my favorite fight scene across the three movies, a close-quarters battle where Tony Stark is wearing only part of the Iron Man armor; and director Shane Black, as he does with seemingly all his movies, sets this one at Christmas, which lends itself to some fun gags and lovely visuals.

And this may be a controversial opinion in the Marvel fandom, but I prefer it when there’s a reason for our heroes to be out of their suits or stripped of their full powers. Movies are all fakery, but when your characters are in life-or-death circumstances, a bouncy CGI suit feels especially phony. All of which is to say, I like this movie! Recommended. ★★★½

Iron Man 3 is currently streaming on Disney+.

🔢 Every Movie I’ve Seen in 2020, Ranked

(new additions in bold)