​Marvel and Sony’s uneasy alliance over Spider-Man comes to a head in Spider-Man: No Way Home.  The third solo entry in Tom Holland’s run as the character can no longer rely on Tony Stark for toys and linkage to the broader MCU world, so Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange tags in for the purposes of corporate synergy mixed with nostalgia, as the sorcerer conjures a way for the last two decades of Sony franchise service to show up onscreen and prod Gen Z fans to goose the online rental sales of old Spider-Man movies.  No Way Home keeps up the inoffensive and ill-considered, albeit entertaining, tone that has marked Holland’s run as the character.  This has been a weightless series of movies helmed by Jon Watts, but massive box office receipts means more of the same will keep coming.  

Two of the greatest female tennis players, if not outright tennis players, make a biographical appearance on the big screen but the movie that contains them is about their father.  King Richard provides a baffling starring vehicle for Will Smith, whose salary eats up 80% of the film’s production budget, and though the premise is fatally flawed, the resulting film provides competence while depicting the pursuit of all-around excellence.  Reinaldo Marcus Green’s third film is aware of the tropes of sports films and biopics, and while he doesn’t subvert them in this straightforward work, he does polish them.  King Richard doesn’t reinvent anything in the way its child subjects will, but with a compelling story and the cast to inhabit the roles, it does a recognizable thing well.

​Paul Thomas Anderson can’t stay away from the San Fernando Valley.  After a brief stint in a London fashion house, he returns to his default cinematic playground with his ninth feature, Licorice Pizza, a gauzy blend of PTA’s own childhood memories and those of his Hollywood friend, Gary Goetzman.  Pre-release impressions of Licorice Pizza looked like this was going to be the iconic director’s most autobiographical film, and while the personal touches are surely there, PTA instead shifts the primary focus to a young woman in her 20’s whose experiences of disconnectedness and aimlessness are set against those of a teenager who seems like he knows exactly what he’s doing.  Their adventures through the Valley of the 1970’s make Licorice Pizza the most shapeless of PTA’s filmography, a director already known for eschewing a linear plot.  However, who needs an A-to-B plot, or really any plot at all, when the world that’s been imagined and reconstructed is populated with so many memorable characters, all led by two of the best performances of 2021?  Licorice Pizza is safely in PTA’s mid-to-low tier, but that just means it’s merely great as opposed to an all-timer.

Shaul Schwarz’s documentary Narco Cultura tracked the mid-2010’s connection between ruthless drug violence and the celebratory musical culture that arose around the cartels.  It didn’t lack for revolting people who made their living off of exploitation, and with Schwarz’s follow-up Trophy, he finds more of the deeply hate-able.  Schwarz and co-director and cinematographer Christina Clusiau gets honest and chilling access to players in the big-game hunting industry, criss-crossing the world from Texas to South Africa and Zimbabwe and meeting game wardens, conservationists, and the hunters who either support or bedevil both.  Trophy complicates an issue that most people have a knee-jerk reaction to, both supporting and contradicting those who are revolted by big-game hunting or who see it as a necessary expression of nature and culture.