Grown-ups To make up for all the B-movies I've been seeing (and will attend later this year), we went to see Mr. Holmes last week. Ian McKellan makes a very fine Sherlock, but for all the Holmes of the movie, this is about memory, how it is a trap of shame and an opportunity for redemption. All the players are terrific, and the movie doesn't really falter in any way until the very end, and even then, it hardly matters, and is of a piece with the MacGuffin of the mystery.

Movies The winter blockbuster season continues. Serious movies have to start coming out soon, or my brain will rot. Terminator Genisys continues the fine tradition of unnecessary misspellings, unless it’s just that Skynet’s spellcheck failed in its mission, as its robots usually do, but manages to entertain, largely with its revisions to the original film, playing with alternative realities like a good time-travel movie should. (Did you know that Twelve Monkeys was made into a television show? Neither did I.) The human heroes of the movie have zero chemistry and the villain doesn’t get really villainous until fairly late, but it doesn’t stop moving and Arnie’s as good as he ever was. For a B-movie, it’s not half bad. Call it a B+. Meanwhile, the Marvel juggernaught keeps churning out enjoyable films. Ant-Man , like Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t take itself too seriously, with decent comical characters, mostly, and gags tossed through to the point where it might as well have been played entirely as a comedy. Certainly the personal-lives plot parallels between the original, Hank Pym, and the replacement he recruits, Scott Lang, are lightly sketched enough to have been dispensed with. I guess it would be asking too much for the sountrack to have been modeled on Guardians. I know I said I was done with comicbook movies, but this is still a movie to see if you’ve got time and a discount voucher, and I had both. So, in another couple of weeks, out comes the latest franchise reboot, with Fantastic Four. Yes, I will go see this.

Bad Burger So David Chang, celebrity chef, thinks Australians can’t make a good burger (except at Mary’s? I’ve had theirs, and once was plenty). Anyone recommending American cheese as the sole cheese for a burger has no taste, or no tastebuds, so I’m pretty well inclined to discount all Chang’s cuisine in consequence, although I agree with the inclusion of pickles – something Mary’s burgers neglect (so go figure why he gives them a pass). American cheese should be called “cheeze”. Is McDonald’s his paragon burger restaurant? On the other hand, scientist chef Heston Blumenthal makes an effort: his burger does it all. I watched this episode of his program, and he was even testing the bite radius. O.k., the grinding and patty formation is a little over the top, but we’re talking science! Notice, however, the use of gruyere cheese. How good is that? Oh, well, it’s not like I was even going to try any David Chang food: his Sydney branch is in a casino. He ever starts selling his recommended burgers, he’s going to lose those stars.