Bob Marley: One Love – Movie Review
What’s it about?
It’s a Bob Marley biopic. I genuinely tried to think of more for this, but yeah that’s about it.
What’d we think?
The movie begins in 1976 with Bob Marley at the peak of his fame, some stuff happens, and then the movie ends in 1978 with Bob still at the peak of his fame. This period covers an attempt on Marley’s life, the band recording an album in London, then a return to Jamaica for a peace concert, and all of this is portrayed in the least interesting way possible. We’re made aware that Political Stuff is happening in Jamaica, but there’s no attempt at explaining the conflict or characterising either side. The band comes up with an idea for their new album, and then they record the new album. They discuss returning to Jamaica for a concert, then return to Jamaica for the concert. There’s no conflict, no interesting relationships, and ultimately no point.
Kingsley Ben-Adir does a fine evocation of Marley in the lead role, but doesn’t have any opportunity to imbue the role with any depth (the Marley family’s involvement likely sanitised anything that might have been interesting), and Lashana Lynch sleepwalks her way through an underwritten role as Rita Marley. While I can’t speak for the authenticity of the cast’s Jamaican accents, I can testify to the regular incomprehensibility of the dialogue as a result of their commitment to the bit, although I don’t believe that understanding the actors would have made the movie any more interesting.
Bob Marley: One Love (the movie doesn’t even have the balls to trust the audience could figure out who the movie is about unless you whack his name in there) is a meandering exercise in paint-by-numbers biopic filmmaking that completely lacks any charm or energy.
Madame Web Movie Review
What’s it about?
After a near-death experience, New York paramedic Cassie Webb starts developing clairvoyant powers that work basically the same as that Nicolas Cage movie Next. She soon finds herself protecting three 25-year-old teenagers from a poorly-dubbed villain for poorly-defined reasons. Despite the deliberately ambiguous marketing, this is a Sony “we’ve got the rights to Spider-man’s villains” movie, not an MCU movie.
What did we think?
Anthony Sherratt thinks: There are some fun moments in Madame Web; some very good acting, a fun subtle background subplot, and some genuine tension. Editor’s Note: No, it doesn’t.
Unfortunately, it also has abysmal villain dialogue and some woeful exposition. Seriously, when your spider movie jumps straight to ‘this spider’s bite will grant superpowers’ in the first few minutes of the movie, you don’t understand show-don’t-tell. Or pacing.
The bad guy could have been fun but only acts and speaks in cliches. That’s when you can understand him anyway. It feels like he’s been dubbed as there’s constantly something wrong with both sound levels and words not always matching his lips.
Dakota Johnson does a great job as the troubled but likeable lead and has great chemistry with Adam Scott who plays Ben Parker. The cast does their part but the script is a bit loose and fast. Still, it’s mindless fun; it’s just a shame there’s a bit more emphasis on the mindless.
5/10
Peter Linning thinks: Producers of the Bob Marley biopic take note – If you’re going to make a bad movie, at least have the decency to make it so fucking bad that it’s entertaining. The entire movie feels like someone was given the audio and video for a movie, and then told to assemble it into a completely different movie. Madame Web is almost overwhelming in its shittiness and I genuinely cannot wait to see it again.
From the very first minute of the movie we’re barraged with expository dialogue, crappy CGI, and sound editing so bad that it’s actually bizarre – I’ve never identified more ADR in a movie, and I’m sure I didn’t catch it all. Almost all of the villain’s lines are blatantly dubbed, and probably a quarter of all the movie’s dialogue comes from a character who is off-screen or whose back is turned in an attempt to explain why the characters are doing whatever it is they’re doing. The movie’s attempts at dynamic editing are liable to give you a headache, and if that doesn’t do it then the overuse of Dutch angles and post-processing zooms might do the trick.
The supporting actors are doing what they can with a dud script, but Dakota Johnson is fucking atrocious in the lead role, alternating between a flat monotone and a completely insane off-kilter delivery that doesn’t seem to match the context of the scene at all. It’s not even that she’s phoning it in (which would still be unacceptable), it’s that her performance is so alien that it’s hard to believe that there were takes worse than the ones used in the film.
The movie looks bad, sounds worse, and has a terrible plot that only gets worse the longer you think about it. There are so many unique elements in the movie that don’t make any sense, that trying to break them down would essentially just be a retelling of the events of the movie.
I’m not a huge believer in “so bad they’re good” movies, but Madame Web is so bad it’s fascinating. Get some friends together and watch it as soon as you can see it without paying money.
1/10
The Color Purple – Movie Review
A bold new take on the beloved classic?
The Holdovers – Movie Review
The champagne of films
Mean Girls – Movie Review
What’s it about?
The Mean Girls we know and love get a musical makeover. (And if you don’t know and love it, it’s about a teen girl who was homeschooled in Kenya learning to navigate the bitchiness of American high school.)
What’d we think?
The original Mean Girls movie (written by Tina Fey) was given the musical treatment on Broadway, and now the Broadway version has made it to the small screen… sort of.
Hollywood has a complicated relationship with musicals and Mean Girls is no exception: in fact, most of the marketing actually hides the fact that this redux is a musical at all. Mean Girls 2.0 feels like it’s half the movie and half the musical but not quite a whole of either. And, since we already have a movie version that doesn’t feel that dated, I think this iteration needed to go hard on the musical twist. Sadly, several of the show’s best and funniest songs have been cut (is it a coincidence they’re the really musical theatre-y songs? We’ll never know. But probably yes). Newcomers to the source material won’t notice this of course, but musical lovers may be a touch disappointed.
There are some excellent moments: Aulii Cravalho’s I’d Rather Be Me kicks some serious ass, and Renee Rapp is savage and talented as hell as this generation’s Regina George.
Ultimately Mean Girls is super enjoyable, but if it had leaned harder into its musical side (aka what makes it new and necessary) it could have been great. The Broadway show felt like an all-out party and this new movie feels like pre-drinks, you know?
One Life – Movie Review
Another masterclass from Tony H