Ian McKellen and Milo Parker in Mr. HolmesFriday, July 24, 10:40 a.m.-ish: It's been so long since my last quadruple-feature - a miraculous six months plus! - that I'm only mildly dreading today's, and only then because I know it's ending with Adam Sandler. It's beginning, however, with Mr. Holmes, and while I can't imagine the world needing yet another showcase for Arthur Conan Doyle's literary sleuth, I'm psyched knowing this latest iteration will reunite director Bill Condon with his Gods & Monsters star Ian McKellen and Kinsey co-star Laura Linney. Most of the movie consists of McKellen's 93-year-old Sherlock, in 1947, contending with failing memory and the haunting case that forced his retirement, while Linney's Irish housekeeper Mrs. Munro cooks and tidies up. But while several mysteries arise and are duly resolved in the film, I am distracted throughout by two unresolved questions. (1) Who is this little kid Milo Parker who plays Sherock's protégé (and Mrs. Munro's son) Roger? And (2) How is this boy giving a performance that might be topping those of the excellent McKellen and Linney?

Adam Sandler and Leslie Mann in Funny PeopleFUNNY PEOPLE

Leslie Mann, the wife of comedy kingpin Judd Apatow, is unfailingly awesome, and I love her in her husband's first two outings as a film writer/director: 2005's The 40-Year-Old Virgin and 2007's Knocked Up. So it pains me to say that I would've enjoyed Apatow's third auteurist venture - the current Funny People - a whole lot more if Mann's character had been excised from it completely. Of course, that would've made the movie almost a full hour shorter than it is. That would've been all right, too.