The customary protests

THE LAST DUEL

2021

Directed by Ridley Scott

Written by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Nicole Holofcener (based on the book The Last Duel: A True Story of Trial By Combat In Medieval France by Eric Jager)

Spoiler alert: pretty much inapplicable, but I don't say who dies!

They told us our gods would outlive us, but they lied

JUSTICE LEAGUE ZACK SNYDER'S JUSTICE LEAGUE

Directed by Zack Snyder

Written by Chris Terrio, Will Beall, and Zack Snyder

Spoiler alert: oh, N/A

Yes, he died for your sins, too (but, if we're being honest, mostly Batman's)

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

Well, let's leave aside the fact the sole good thing to come out of this movie's hilariously awful name is the subtitle of a Deadpool miniseries currently being published by Marvel ("The V is for VS"!).  Let's also leave aside all the grating little issues that seek to tear down the towering edifice of this film, one brick at a time.  Because if we do leave that aside, it's certainly the best superhero film of 2016 so far (including the one that came out today)—and by no small margin, too.

Directed by Zack Snyder

Written by Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer (with a lot of distant assistance from Frank Miller, Dan Jurgens, Louise Simonson, and Roger Stern, amongst others)

With Henry Cavill (Clark Kent/Kal-El), Ben Affleck (Bruce Wayne), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Gal Godot (Diana of Themyscira), Jeremy Irons (Alfred Pennyworth), Laurence Fishburne (Perry White), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), and Jesse Eisenberg (Lex Luthor)

Spoiler alert: high

Content warning: this one clocks in at about 2900 words, because three years later, and I still can't talk about Superman at a length that wouldn't make any cognitively normal person run for the hills; does it help any if I say that it's also a long movie?

Dial M for Marriage

GONE GIRL

Or Dial M for Misogyny, if you'd prefer, because I certainly wouldn't argue with you.  But, bent toward satire, it's such fun misogyny.  Gone Girl can be all things to all people, if you let it: it can be the dark comedy with macabre laughs, or the psychological melodrama with teeth, or, maybe best of all, the kind of gnarly, plot-mechanical thriller Hollywood hardly ever makes since Brian De Palma stopped being good at his job.  Often it is all of these things at once, and it is one of 2014's best.

2014
Directed by David Fincher
Written by Gillian Flynn (based on the novel by Alfred Hitchcock)
With Rosamund Pike (Amy Dunne), Ben Affleck (Nick Dunne), Carrie Coon (Margo Dunne), Neil Patrick Harris (Desi Collings), and Tyler Perry (a reference joke so dated it's very mildly funny again)

Spoiler alert: mild