Spider-Man 2 (2004)

From the ordinariness of the real person behind the mask to his wise-cracking, playful combat style, Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man has always been to me both the most human and the most colorful of classic comic-book heroes. Nothing in the first Spider-Man movie prepared me for the sheer energy, creativity, wit and daring of this sequel. Going beyond Spider-Man's signature theme of power and responsibility, Spider-Man 2 explores the relationship between responsibility and sacrifice, even to the point of giving up one's hopes and dreams. It also offers a fresh take on the classic dilemma, definitively articulated in Superman II, of the conflicting claims upon a hero by the world and by his best beloved.

Spider-Man's opponent is Dr. Octopus, aka Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), a brilliant scientist augmented with four tentacle-like mechanical arms. Those menacing tentacles make Doc Ock a far more dramatic foe than the first film's Green Goblin. (They also make Ock more deadly; the action violence is rougher here than in the first film.)

Their most spectacular battle, involving an elevated train, is a breathless action tour de force, and highlights both the antagonists' powers and Peter's true heroism and capacity for self-sacrifice.

Content advisory: Stylized, sometimes intense comic-book violence; fleeting mild profanity.

The Seventh Seal (1956)

Long considered one of the greatest films of all time, Bergman's medieval drama of the soul can be difficult to watch but is impossible to forget. The Seventh Seal is a reflection on faith, doubt and unbelief. Having lost his faith in God, Bergman remained haunted by the horror of existence without God and faith, of life in the shadow of a death that is simply annihilation. The Seventh Seal tells the story of a knight named Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) who holds off Death by playing chess against him. Torn between inability to believe and dissatisfaction with unbelief, Block rails against both God's elusiveness and the God-shaped hole in his own heart.

Though Block longs to hear from God, we never see him do anything by way of seeking him — certainly not the sorts of things we might expect a medieval knight to do, such as praying, fasting or going to Mass. Thrashing in a vacuum, Bergman's protagonist scrutinizes life and death as a philosophy problem rather than living it as a man. Yet Bergman seems comforted by a family of blessed characters whose simple faith he can't share. One of the 15 films on the Vatican film list in the Values category.

Content advisory: Some morbid imagery and violence, references to rape, adultery, and promiscuity; an offscreen adulterous affair; much religious questioning. Subtitles.

Wild Strawberries (1957)

There's an idyllic scene in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal in which the death-haunted protagonist enjoys a brief respite in a simple meal of wild strawberries. Bergman revisits this theme in Wild Strawberries, the Swedish title of which literally translates as “strawberry patch” — an idiom for sweet memories of some happy time in one's past. For Bergman's protagonist, an elderly doctor named Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström) who significantly shares Bergman's initials, there is bitter as well as sweet in the fields of his mind. Through dream sequences and interactions with other characters, Borg is forced to confront his own coldness of heart and his need for forgiveness.

Unlike The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries isn't greatly preoccupied with the question of God or the afterlife, yet the film bears witness that unconcern for God and the afterlife is no defense against dread of judgment or longing for redemption. With unyielding moral precision no less austere for the lack of religious conviction behind it, Bergman subjects his protagonist to judgment for the crimes of indifference and selfishness, and pronounces a sentence of “the usual” punishment, loneliness — though hope of forgiveness and reconciliation get the last word. One of the 15 films on the Vatican film list in the Values category.

Content advisory: Unsettling nightmare imagery; romantic complications including marital unfaithfulness. Subtitles.