Knee-jerk review: "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"

1. This animated special premiered all the way back in 1966.  That makes it 60 years old.  We regret to inform you that it's not aging well.  Slow, kind of flat.  (Also: there's a whole bit about Schroder playing songs from World War I that 2026 audiences will never get.)
2. It helps to realize that Charles Schulz' Peanuts comic strip was never intended to be funny.  It's power comes from offering cutesy, heart-warming musings on life.  There are no traditional punchline gags.
3. Then again, "I got a rock" is pretty funny.
4. Mixed messages: Sally is clearly smitten with Linus but moments later threatens physical violence if he tries to hold her hand.
5. The Snoopy Red Baron sequence may be artful and creative, but it goes on way too long.
6. In this world, there is no more biting insult than calling someone a "blockhead."
7. Lucy is a pretty awful kid, but she finds some measure of redemption at the end of the show by guiding poor clueless Linus to bed.
8. Falling for the yanking-away-the-football trick is 100% on Charlie Brown, y'all. 
9. The 14-year-old Fry upon seeing Pig Pen: "Why is he so dirty?"  Why indeed?
10. This was a staple on CBS every fall during our elementary school years and almost always sponsored in full by Dolly Madison, a company that was Pepsi to Hostess' Coca-Cola.  Raise your hand if you remember the Zinger Zapper.

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Knee-jerk review: "Spider-Man: Brand New Day"

1. Fantastic.
2. Proof that no matter how ridiculous or outlandish a plot may get, if a movie delivers strong characters, real emotion, and genuine humor, audiences will respond.  The movie's $3.5 billion (with a b) worldwide gross has only a little to do with the Spider-Man brand.
3. We're not crying at the end, you are!
4. Florence Pugh sighting.  Movie star crush alert.  Shows up, steals her scenes, cashes paycheck.  (For scene stealing, see also: Mark Ruffalo and Marisa Tomei.)
5. Epic-feeling movies like this that showcase technical skill and big sweeping storylines usually get award notices at the end of the year.  Of course, that's a bit trickier when the hero wears a spandex mask.  Take out the CGI and set this in wartorn Italy in 1917 and it's surefire Oscar bait.
6. Love the montage of crimefighting where at one point Spider-Man is wearing a wool beanie and a down vest over his costume.  Gets cold in New York City sometimes.
7. Tom Holland is probably underrated as an actor.  Zendaya probably is too, as much as it hurts to say it.
8. We appreciate very much a Marvel movie climax without a battle of multi-colored energy beams.
9. Surely we've all the felt some version of the awful pain that comes realizing that someone you love is with someone else. 
10. This is wholly ridiculous but Sadie Sink's eyebrows are a big distraction.
11. An important lesson in screenwriting classes is the notion that when we first meet the hero, ideally he/she is in a situation that is untenable.  That is, they will be miserable - and maybe even harmed - if they keep living the way they are.  Something has got to change.  Peter Parker's self-imposed first-act exile here is a textbook example.
12. Funny to consider how Jon Bernthal's foul mouth alone pushes the movie into R-rated territory.
13. Great stuff about the unintended consequences of leading a solitary, lonely life.
14. There's a minor character we immediately pegged as untrustworthy.  Did the filmmakers want us to be suspicious or were they hoping the big reveal at the end would be a surprise?  That is, how clever were we?
15. We think we know where Sadie Sink's character is headed on that bus at the end of the movie.  Do you?
16. Beautiful, artful images of New York City over the closing credits.
17. In some quarters it's hip to say all of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies are bad, but we think they're all pretty much perfect (we stipulate that Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 from 2004 remains the superhero gold standard) although the titles are pretty generic and unhelpful:
* Spider-Man Homecoming (2017) is the one with Michael Keaton as the Vulture using alien technology (and Peter accidentally tries to date the Vulture's daughter - awkward).
* Spider-Man Far from Home (2019) is the one that takes place during a high school trip to Europe with Jake Gyllenhaal pretending to be a hero from another timeline.
* Spider-Man No Way Home (2021) is the one where Spider-Man messes with the timeline (and Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield show up to deliver fan service amusements) and Dr. Strange resets everything by wiping everyone's memory of Peter Parker.  Which sets up this new movie.
18. If there's a flaw in this movie, we didn't notice it.

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