Spider-Man: Homecoming

It’s not a huge secret that Spider-Man’s last few movies haven’t been massive hits. In fact, until his appearance in Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man’s kind of been taking a backseat to Iron Man, Captain America, and the rest of the Avengers—the X-Men, too, come to think of it.

That’s going to change with Spider-Man: Homecoming.  Tom Holland’s back as Spidey, you’ve got Michael Keaton as The Vulture, Fargo’s Bokeem Woodbine as Shocker, and a whole whack of others. This is Spider-Man’s return to the Marvel fold (Marvel Studios and Sony reached a deal to share the character rights of Spider-Man, bringing him into the “Marvel Cinematic Universe), so there’s a lot riding on it.

Personally, I think it looks good.

The Mummy

The Brendan Fraser series is over, and this is an entirely new start. In fact, it’s supposed to kick off a Marvel/Avengers style shared universe—so you might eventually see, like, The Wolfman popping up in a Dracula movie.

Monster cameos are probably a ways off, though (or not! Russel Crowe is playing Dr. Jekyll in this one), so let’s focus on this; it’s a large-scale, big budget movie starring Tom Cruise, so you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve seen it a dozen times before. Here’s the thing, though: it actually looks like it could be really good.

The tone in the trailer is much darker than you might expect from another Mummy movie, Tom Cruise isn’t the least bit over-the-top, and it looks like it might be a little scary in parts. These are all good things causing me to be cautiously optimistic.

War for the Planet of the Apes

Cards on the table: I did not expect this series to be as good as it is. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was really, really good, and then Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was somehow just as good, if not better. This one looks like it could end up topping them all.

Look, you’ve got increasingly intelligent apes led by the incredibly expressive Caesar, Woody Harrelson looking sinister, and a whole bunch of ape vs human action. Even if this were not a serious, dramatic, and overall great film, it would still have all the ingredients for a wonderful B movie.

So, yeah, it’s OK to be excited for this one.