Stan Lee's Mutants, Monsters & Marvels (2002)

Spider-Man is this summer's biggest hit so far. Stan Lee's Mutants, Monsters & Marvels is a biography of the comic-book writer who created that character and many others on which movies and TV series have been based (X-Men, The Incredible Hulk, etc.). Writer-director Kevin Smith (Clerks) gets the elder statesmen of comic-book art to open up about the genesis of his ideas and the beginnings of the now-classic Marvel Comics publishing company.

The original intent of Lee and Marvel artists like Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, Steve Ditko and John Romita was to sell comic books to teen-age males. But their product evolved into a fictional universe complete unto itself.

They spawned a modern mythology that's characterized by a clear sense of good and evil and defines a certain kind of 20th-century super-hero.

Although the movie's primary emphasis is on Spider-Man, we also get the inside scoop on other Lee creations like The Fantastic Four and Iron Man. This 95-minute documentary is a valuable contribution to our understanding of contemporary popular culture.

Iron Will (1994)

Disney's new management still occasionally makes the kind of movie on which its reputation was built. Iron Will, directed by Charles Haid and written by John Michael Hayes (Rear Window), is an action-packed yarn about dog racing. Will Stonemen (Mackenzie Astin) loses his father in a freak dogsledding accident. As the bank is threatening to foreclose on his family's South Dakota farm, the plucky 17–year-old decides to enter the 1917 Winnipeg-St. Paul dogsledding race, with a $20,000 prize offered by a railroad magnate (David Ogden Stiers).

The adventures that follow test Will's mettle: He must win the respect of Gus, the lead dog who was loyal to his father; on the race course his fiercest rival (George Gerdes) is willing to cheat to win; and a local reporter (Kevin Spacey) smells a potential human-interest story and exploits the teen-ager to sell papers. A few of the plot twists may be predictable, but the story keeps you on the edge of your seat and the snowy landscape is gorgeous.