For the second week of May, I selected Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). I will start this review off by saying I am not a superhero movie fan; I have seen maybe five or so movies out of the entire MCU Franchise, and unless more pop up on the draft for this blog, I will not be going out of my way to watch them. Recently while tripping on mushrooms with a good friend, we got on the topic of Sleep Token and agreed that Sleep Token is music for people who line up at the midnight releases of Marvel Movies. Anyways, on to the actual review.

This movie is the SIXTH appearance of Tom Holland as Spider-Man. I have seen none of the previous five. It starts off with Mysterio having revealed Peter Parker’s true identity. This of course causes some issues for him and his friends/family.

The story of this movie is kind of all over the place, and ultimately makes little to no sense. Peter’s solution to fixing the world knowing about his true identity is to enlist the help of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast a spell that makes people forget. While in the midst of casting said spell, Peter starts yelling “But not MJ” (Zendaya) “or Aunt May!” (Marisa Tomei) “or Ned!” (Jacob Batalon) “or Happy!” (John Favreau). This makes the spell go bad, and somehow opens a portal to other universes where a whole cast of villains and other Spider-Mans come to this movie’s universe.

A bunch of actiony stuff happens, this version of Spider-Man (Tom Holland) wants to try to “save the other villains from being evil” by using some magic medicine that he created out of thin air with a fabricator to give them a second chance, despite the villains being ready to kill him and innocent bystanders without a second thought.

This plan goes to shit when The Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) goes batshit again, and ends up murdering Aunt May and escaping.

The rest of the movie is some actiony sequences, some “woe is me I’m a superhero stuff” and not much else sustenance.

It was cool seeing Toby Maguire return as Spider-Man; Andrew Garfield was also there (though I have not seen a single one of his portrayals of the character.) The ending of the “story” of this one, if you can call it that, left me completely unsatisfied. The three Peter Parkers team up to force feed the magic elixir to the villains, and then Doctor Strange sends them back to their own universes, but as part of the spell, Doctor Strange must erase everyone’s memory. This time, he doesn’t just make them forget who Spider-Man is, he makes everyone forget who Peter Parker is.

This ending and the overarching “story” are probably both extremely comic book coded, so I’m saying this as an outsider who doesn’t read the comics or pay attention to the movies at all, but they were entirely nonsensical and moronic. MJ and Peter are neighbors who grew up next door to each other, went to the same schools, fell in love, etc etc. The fact that he’s just erased from everyone’s memories is stupid. I wasn’t left feeling anything for any of the characters, especially Peter Parker, I was left in disbelief that this script was written and made at all. 

The graphics in this movie are a whole other beast, some of them look decent to fine, while others look straight out of a C Tier made for TV movie. In the opening scenes, Spider-Man is swinging around the city with MJ in his arms, and the graphics were laughably bad. The scene in the image above with Doctor Strange and Spider-Man sparring was cheesy as all get out. Especially when Doctor Strange sends his magic cape to entangle Spider-Man mid air.

This movie has an 8.1 on IMDB, and a Tomatometer score of 97%… My roommate, who grew up being into superheroes told me when I started this one that “this is the best Spider-Man movie they’ve made yet.” which to me was already a sign of bad things to come. My roommate and I have very differing opinions on what makes a movie “good”. At least my girlfriend agreed with me that this was not worth the watch.

My initial intent was to give this movie a 1.5 because I am an outsider observer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I fully understand this kind of movie isn’t for me. But the more I write this review and think back over the two and a half hours of my Saturday evening I spent watching this, I am liking it less and less. This was not a “good” movie by any means, it may be a “good” Marvel or superhero movie, but that to me means nothing. 

-1 mallard/5

-Seann

Love & Friendship (2016) is an Amazon film that is based on Jane Austen’s story titled “Lady Susan”, which I’ve never read. My only knowledge about this movie before watching it was that it was a period piece (obviously, based on the poster), and that it would likely be about the same as every other period piece (which I’ll get to later). Kate Beckinsale plays the not-quite-eponymous Lady Susan, a machinating young widow who seeks a husband for both herself and her daughter. 

I think this is the first Amazon-made movie that we’ve had on the blog, and it’s certainly the first one that I’ve reviewed, so I’ll give my opinions on the trend here. I think Amazon and, to a much lesser extent, Netflix movies all share one fatal flaw in common, and that is that they are too glossy. They’re too refined, and they lose a lot of character and uniqueness because of it. The greatest films ever made are the greatest not because they are without error, but because the errors add to the charm and artistic merit of the movie. Amazon films are of such a consistent quality that they feel like they were made in a factory, and not made as an authentic expression of artistic endeavor. This isn’t to say that I discount them entirely or that they’re bad in any way, it’s just that for my own personal taste, I like there to be a bit of roughness in the production. I like for there to be an imperfect human touch. 

Okay, on to my feelings about period pieces – I’m indifferent, generally. I find them to be rather same-ish, and a bit boring and overdone. There are exceptions, of course, but overall the movies based on this era of literature or plays tend to be pretty formulaic. The difficulty in making them lies in the decision of whether to be as authentic to the time period as possible, or to update the speech and some of the action/decor to suit modern senses and sensibilities. I don’t really care which path the producers take, so long as they’re consistent about it. In this particular movie they stick pretty close to the original, keeping the old vocabulary (which I understand can alienate some viewers who are not able to parse the antiquated speech to determine what’s actually going on) as well as the sets and settings. I think the only thing that’s not 100% authentic (based on what I know, which could be entirely incorrect) to the time is the costume designs and makeup. There’s a scene where Kate Beckinsale looks like she’s about to go to the Evanescence concert that evening – I don’t think they wore heavy black mascara back in the day. Additionally, many of the costumes worn by both the men and women seem far too flashy or ornate, with bright and vibrant colors. I wasn’t around back then, obviously, but I don’t think people walked around in lime green doublets and Tennessee orange pantaloons. 

The plot of this film is well-written (thanks, Jane), and it honestly is quite humorous at times. The initial difficulty in the film is the way in which the characters are introduced. They are shown, in profile, with text underneath them giving their name and a few small details about them, for example ‘young, rich, and handsome’. This is a very Wes Anderson-esque style of doing things, but it doesn’t really work in this context because there are just so gosh darn many characters. After the character introductions I honestly found myself more confused. As things went on I was able to determine the major players and how all of the puzzle pieces fell and who was related to whom, etc. but there was a decent stretch in the first act where the biggest challenge was just remembering what each person’s archetype was. 

Overall, this movie was pretty well-shot. There were a few repeated instances of interesting framing. Many shots in which characters are having a discussion and the screen is bisected by a partially closed door or by a threshold of some sort – it gave me the feeling that we, as the viewers, were eavesdropping on a conversation that we ordinarily wouldn’t be privy to. That was a pretty cool directorial twist in a movie which I otherwise felt was rather straightforwardly produced. The film was surprisingly funny, and I laughed aloud multiple times. I think we can thank the genius of Jane for this aspect as well. The acting is also great, Kate Beckinsale plays the vindictive schemestress very well, and she has a great track record of great performances. 

I will touch on the ending briefly, because it is easily the most questionable thing about the film. Luckily I was watching this movie with someone else, because I totally misinterpreted what happened in the final scene. There is an announcement of a wedding in the penultimate scene, and then in the final scene we are present at a wedding. Emphasis on “A” wedding, not “THE” wedding. Yes, the wedding in the final scene is NOT the wedding between the characters who were announced as being married in the scene directly preceding it. I almost never do this, but I literally paused the movie, rewinded it, and watched it again to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding or that I didn’t somehow skip a scene. Sure enough, they just cut to a different wedding than the one that was promised…very odd. Additionally, one of the vindictive characters is motivated to act brashly due to her fear of being sent back to Connecticut. Her evil machinations are discovered and she doesn’t get sent back to Connecticut. Talk about missing a payoff. 

Love & Friendship (2016) has a score of 6.4 out of 10 on IMDB, a shocking Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer score of 96%, and a score of 3.4 out of 5 on Letterboxd. In terms of my actual enjoyment of this movie I’d give it like a 2.5, but there were some actually creative directorial decisions, and some great acting. I’m not really into this type of thing, but it was fine to watch for the purposes of the blog.

-3 mallards/5

-Maxwell