"Madame Web" - Review

Paramedic Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) has a terrible bedside manner and general awkwardness about her. When she falls into a river and is rescued by her partner (Adam Scott), she realises that she has the ability to see the future! Things get worse, for our plucky little weirdo, when she has visions of three women cosplaying as teenagers (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor) being tracked, hunted and murdered by a barefoot goblin named Ezekial Sims (Tahar Rahim), who may have a connection to her past. Webb must go on the run with these kids, master her powers, and find a way to stop him...

Nobody expected this to be good. But I will give it this: it's a lot better than "Argylle".
It's surprisingly coherant, I was following it scene to scene, it was never out and out incompetent, it was merely a bland and forgettable, underwritten exercise in pondering why the writers of "Morbius", "Gods of Egypt", "The Last Witch Hunter" and "Dracula Untold" keep being allowed to commit their works to the screen. The film is almost good when the three girls (superfluous characters, but welcome additions to the proceedings) are giving each other shit, bantering and bandying about with each other. Their characters are underwritten archetypes (O'Connor is the sassy, punky rebellious rich kid, Sweeney is the quiet, meek girl, Merced is the science geek) but with the little material that they have, the three steal the show. Johnson plays Webb with what can only be described as a dare: she deliberately gives the worst possible line reading, layered in sarcasm in every scene, and it kind of works as a massive prank on the makers of the film?
There's little to say about the film, in all honestly. Hyperbolic "content" goblins have their knives out describing this as "the worst film yet", and you and I and even they know that that is not anywhere near the truth. It just washes through you. The 2003 setting (I TOLD you this was going to be a thing!) is never quite prominent enough or timely enough to work, and is relegated to a few uses of a Beyonce poster and a couple of lines here and there though, INFURIATINGLY, they use "Toxic", a song which was not released until 2004. But I'll allow it, because it's "Toxic".
The use of stolen NSA surveillance technology is a cute enough little commentary, but again it's never really used or dwelt upon and is there to help our villain do his schemes. But I did appreciate that I knew what the villain was doing and why, it's you know, worryingly rare? I know that Rahim can act: I've seen "A Prophet", so it has to be a scripting issue.
Adam Scott is a genuine, unironic highlight, even if he's playing "Uncle Ben" for absolutely no reason other than corporate mandated links to a superhero I don't actually like that much but whom Sony are trying to sell a series of movies on teasing his appearance. It's corporate swill, but Scott is a funny and engaging performer, and again the film threatens to have interesting things when it's the girls staying at his place and becomes "Ben Wyatt babysitting some kids".
I honestly love Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor to death and am delighted to see them getting more work and paycheques, and I like Sydney Sweeney from "Anyone But You" (though here she's dressed in a fetishised approximation of a schoolgirl, somebody's kink I'm sure), and I wish the actors in this and director SJ Clarkson all of the best in whatever their future projects are. It never soars, but it never nosedives into oblivion either. It just treads water.

"Across the Spiderverse" - Review

Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is living as Spiderman in his Universe, trying to juggle his life as a superhero with that of a teenager. However, he is swept up into an adventure when Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), his counterpart from another parallel universe, comes to his world once more. Though told to stay out of it, he has nothing better to do than to beat up aspiring supervillain "The Spot" (Jason Schwarzmann) and get in trouble with his sweet as pie dad Lt Jeff Morales (Bryan Tyree Henry, always welcome) and sassy but competent mother Rio (Luna Lauren Velez, whom I'm glad has recovered from "Dexter") - so he finds himself thrust into a multi-universe spanning adventure, meeting various other Spiderman along the way...

The animation is spectacular, I shall start there.
As expected, the creative, wild, weird use of this kind of imagery is nothing short of spectacular. A version of "The Vulture" from Renaissance Italy shows up, entirely in papyrus and sketchbook drawings (an illustrated contrast to the world he has entered) - coincidentally a better version of "Morbius" than "Morbius" - one moment, whilst Gwen Stacy's conversations with her father are done as living mood boards, the atmosphere and colours around her leaking out and changing and morphing to reflect the characters and who they are (culminating in an excellent draining use at the end, and her father being shown with a pink tie in his otherwise black and white attire); and a particular favourite part of mine was a villain being done as pen and pencil drawings at first, then literally developing into an all absorbing, morphous oil painting style.
It's stunning.
It's also a bit much, it's an utterly overwhelming celebration of animation and animation for animation's sake, which I loved but was feeling exhausted by. Do not take any overwhelmed autistic kids or relatives to this, I'm serious.
It thrives in moments of silliness and wild mayhem (a chase invlving literally scores of Spider-Folk is absolutely the highlight, and I lost my shit at "Peter Parked-Car"), and is stuffed to the brim with references and cameos and jokes. It stumbles with its reliance on them in some cases ("the power of the Multiverse in the palm of my hand", "Hello Peter...") but has a rapid fire pace and adoration of the source material. Where "No Way Home" was the death of art and a vampiric state of unlife, this feels like a belt of hand grenades unleashed in a paint factory one after the other by a bunch of comic book addicts.
It's exhilirating to watch.
But...
I was waiting for an emotional impact, a gut punch or a plot which never came together, unlike other efforts like "The Lego Movie" (though there is a fun use OF Lego in it), "The Mitchells and the Machines" and "Kubo and the 2 Strings". Though there are some fun moments (the idea of "canon" and the Spiderman mythos being something binding and unyielding and the be shaken off and ignored was interesting) and the scenes with Gwen and her dad and Miles and his parents are the ones which come closest to soaring; the film flags in the middle, and never reaches the emotional heights I wanted or it was aiming for.
The Indian-inspired sequence is an unedeniably fun time, but does pad the runtime, and by the time Oscar Isaac arrives (though Papa is MOST welcome), it only then feels like the plot is coming into its own, belatedly. Still, the madness and creativity keep it going.
It's still a marvellously pretty and funny and engaging film, with a gag for every kind of fan.
Daniel Kaluuya steals the show.