Adam revisits James Gunn’s Superman one year after its release and looks at how it holds up as DC heads toward Supergirl. We discuss why the movie’s relentlessly positive take on Superman works, why the character needed to be rebuilt before being deconstructed, and how David Corenswet’s Superman fits into a modern, complicated world without losing the “big blue boy scout” core. Adam also talks through the film’s weaker third act, the Superman clone problem, the hypno-glasses explanation, and the standout Mr. Terrific sequence. From there, the discussion shifts to DC Studios’ bigger issue: the messy selective continuity left behind by The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, Amanda Waller, Rick Flag, Harley Quinn, and the old DCEU baggage James Gunn’s reboot still has not fully escaped.

The countdown closes out Phase Two with the unlikeliest success in the run. Adam makes the case that Ant-Man works for the same reason the best MCU films always do, it follows Stan Lee's old rule and emphasizes the human, grounding a shrinking-suit heist in a father trying to do right by his daughter. Along the way: the eight-year Edgar Wright saga and the Peyton Reed handoff, the Quantum Realm and Sokovia Accords groundwork that paid off all the way through Endgame, and why Quantumania forgot everything this movie understood. A definitive Phase Two ranking and a full 5 out of 5. Next week: Civil War.

Adam revisits Lightyear, the 2022 prequel built on a premise it never delivers: that this was the movie a kid in 1995 fell in love with. A look at why the film feels nothing like a mid-90s kids' movie, how Buzz Lightyear of Star Command did the job better twenty years earlier, the Sox problem, and what Lightyear's absence from the Toy Story 5 trailer tells you. Plus the corporate context of the Investor Day that birthed it. As a standalone sci-fi it's a 3 or a 4, but chained to Toy Story, it's a 2 out of 5.

The countdown reaches the most divisive Avengers title. Adam makes the case that Avengers: Age of Ultron isn't a bad movie so much as a conflicted one, the first Marvel tentpole that put serving the wider universe ahead of being its own thing. Along the way: the tonal whiplash that kills every death scene, the Whedon dialogue problem, and a deep dive into how the Agents of SHIELD and Inhumans experiment, a Perlmutter mandate born of X-Men envy, was the original dry run for the "homework" problem that would later sink the Multiverse Saga. A solid but bottom-of-the-Avengers 4 out of 5. Next week: Civil War.

Two stories, one episode. First let's revisit Toy Story 4 seven years on, the weakest and least memorable entry in the series, and argue its real significance is strategic rather than narrative: this is the film where Pixar figured out it could mandate a sequel and have it work, the opening move in the inoffensive Pixar hit era. Then we turn to this week's box office, where an A24 horror movie made for ten million beat a four-billion-dollar Star Wars brand, Mandalorian and Grogu cratered seventy percent in its second weekend, and Masters of the Universe opened soft. I break down why creator-driven IP is eating corporate IP transplants alive, what the coming rush on YouTube properties will get wrong, and why the superhero movie is on life support rather than dead.

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Another month down, another slot in the Best of the Year Tournament to be awarded. Who is going to take the spot? The Devil Wears Prada 2 or The Mandalorian and Grogu?

The countdown continues with the film that redefined what a Marvel movie could be. Adam makes the case that Guardians of the Galaxy is the moment the MCU stopped being a factory of serviceable hits and started trusting filmmakers to author something, and why that lesson is exactly what the Multiverse Saga forgot. Along the way: how the film quietly built the Infinity Stones mythos and Thanos himself, why Ronan is the one weak link, the franchise's death-fakeout problem, and what Disney's hunger for Disney+ and the Fox deal did to the golden goose.

The children who watched Toy Story in 1995 were teenagers when Andy packed his boxes. That timing is not an accident, and it is worth asking how much of Toy Story 3's legacy belongs to the film itself and how much belongs to the audience that grew up alongside it. On today's Thirty Minute Reviews, Adam makes the case that Toy Story 3 is brilliant, moving, but the third best film in its own franchise.