Alex's 2024 Cinema Corner: Week of February 12th

Before you read I know the question you all have... "am I on the right website?". "Rouge Eye SPORTS having an article about cinema?".

I assure you, there has been no typo in your search or no issue in your hyperlink.

Although sports has always been the main focus of this brand and honestly, my life, movies/television has become another massive passion in the past year or so. In 2023, I dove right into the world of cinema and was able to reach a deeper appreciation like I've never had before. It was a whole new avenue of enjoyment for me and allowed me to connect with a lot of new people. I'm glad I picked up this interest again and I plan on continuing it even more in 2024.

'Alex's Weekly 2024 Cinema Corner'  will consist of my thoughts on every bit of movie and television I watched in the past week, what I'm currently in the middle of watching(if anything) and some short thoughts on some movie news from the past seven days.

As I was hinting at earlier, I do have two rating apps that allow me to keep up with what I watch. My letterboxd account is aps12359 and my serializd account is alexschlerf. These will have every movie or TV show I've rated, ever, and also some lists beyond the ones I share here. Feel free to follow and keep up the discussion past this article! As always, comments on this article and on Twitter/X are open if you want to peacefully debate about anything I say!

Lastly, just please don't get mad if I don't rate your favorite movie five stars or don't talk about a bit of news that you read from the past week. The beauty of cinema is that everyone can enjoy certain aspects in different ways; the reason why we don't all have the exact same opinion on everything. This is MY column, meaning it will end up leaning towards the movies/TV shows that are on my list and the movie news that appeals to me the most. Let's just all have fun.

February 13th, 2024: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation(Directed by Cristopher McQuarrie)

Credit: Vanity Fair

Rating: 4/5 Stars

This is a great installment in the franchise, but doesn't reach the levels of some of the best. There's a lot of good in this film. The banter between the main cast is amazing and some of the best written dialogue you'll hear in an action movie. Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Jeremy Renner play off each other so well. There's also a really amazing heist scene towards the beginning of the movie which ranks as one of the best in the franchise. You are on the edge of your seat the whole way and there's a point where you genuinely could believe Cruise's character could die. Rebecca Ferguson's "Ilsa" is definitely up there for one of the best written female characters in this franchise. She's not at all there for a simple love plot with the main characters, she's actually there to be a spy that you can never really trust. Having a character that changes their real motives throughout the entire film is something I feel that this franchise hasn't utilized enough and it makes this one feel like a pure spy thriller. The main problem I have with this installment is how they handle the two main antagonists, played by Alec Baldwin and Sean Harris. Baldwin ends up turning to the good side at the end, but I think I've made it clear I'm not a fan of those villains who just lurk behind the whole movie and never really involve themselves into anything. Baldwin plays the role well, as expected, but it just feels like wasted character and actor potential. I get that Harris' whole character is meant to be invisible, but maybe just tone that down a little? I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion and I know I'm in the minority here. You can make him be like that for the first hour or so of the movie, but he's such an interesting and complex character that it feels lazy that we don't really get any interaction between him and Ethan until the final ten or so minutes of the film. Capitalize on that mystery aspect earlier on and you could have a serious hit on your hands. Overall, it's a great movie that just missed some of it's potential.

February 15th, 2024: Madame Web(Directed by S.J. Clarkson)

Credit: Sony

Rating: .5/5 Stars

Oh boy, strap in folks. This one will be a doozy.

Madame Web is one of the worst films I've ever seen. Morbius has held that title since I watched it on digital not too long ago, but this one gives it an insanely close run for it's money.

The thing about Morbius is that it's so bad that you can't even enjoy it. You'll sit there and struggle to get through it. Madame Web has so many bad aspects that you'll have a good time watching it just pointing out how many ridiculous choices were made by everyone involved. I seriously don't know how I'm going to voice the whole laundry list of problems this movie has in one article, but I'll try.

I think the most notable thing to me from scene one was how bad the camera work is in this film. I've never seen any movie done by a major studio filmed like this. From minute one it'll feel like you are watching a fan-made film. It's like if you took the cinematography in any of your favorite Marvel films, threw it in a blender an couple times then tossed it off a cliff. There's some scenes in here that could potentially be cool and they never get the chance because they are impossible to follow due to the way it's shot. I know I've said this extreme a lot already, but this is easily the worst shot movie I've ever seen and probably ever will see.

There is zero character development in this film. All the main four characters are exactly the same throughout the entire film and then they do a complete 180 at the end for no real reason. None of the four female leads have any depth, themes or any real reason for the audience to actually care about them. These are all talented young actors and I wonder if this was purely them trying to make something out of terrible material. I really enjoyed Celeste O'Connor in Freaky, but her comedy in this movie is incredibly hard to watch. Isabel Merced is a fantastic actor and I guess they tried to do something with her character being a bit of a nerd? It doesn't work and you completely forget about it after her first scene. Sydney Sweeney is supposed to be Julia Carpenter, a version of Spider-Woman in the comics, but the characters aren't similar in the slightest. Slight spoiler ahead (you shouldn't see this movie anyway): remember how the whole promo and discussion about the movie was the spider suits that they all get? Well, they literally only have them in a short flashback scene and we never actually get to see them in action. In fact, it never would've made any sense for them to get suits in the first place. Everyone, besides from Madame Web herself, has absolutely no powers and no connection to any spider-people. These characters are nothing like the source material and I genuinely don't even know what they were trying with them.

That brings me into my next point... this movie has genuinely zero comic accuracy. I'm not like others where I think the comics are the end all be all, but it's not like this was a small change here and then. The characters in this movie might as well be original to the movies. For those who are unaware, Madame Web in the comics is an blind old woman who sits in a dimension outside our own and sees possible futures to explain to whoever comes inside to her web. I guess she had the possible futures part? At the end they kind of brought her to what the actual character is? But Dakota Johnson is 34. Madame Web in the source material cannot be any younger than 70. They don't even really explain her power and she seems to master it randomly just so she can stand a chance in the final action scene. None of Merced or Sweeney or O'Connor have any superpowers in the film and I don't even know how you can justify saying they will become spider-people in the future. Also, why in the world is Adam Scott playing Ben Parker in this movie? He's actually probably the only enjoyable character in this film; a good actor in a terrible movie. But what is the reason to make him Uncle Ben???? It's just another attempt from Sony to make some connection to Spider-Man without actually including him in any of these movies. Every character is written awfully and who knows how anyone could've saw their "development" and thought it was anything that deserved to be released. I've attached a photo below of what Madame Web is actually supposed to look like. Go ahead and tell me if that in any way resembles Dakota Johnson's character in this movie.

Credit: Marvel

The villain in Madame Web, played by Tahar Rahim, is probably the worst character I've ever seen in any comic book movie (maybe even any movie I've ever seen). Every single line he utters sounds AI generated and his character simply makes no sense. It looks like they did a lot of line replacing in post-production because there is points where his dialogue doesn't even match what his lips are mouthing. That's just something that is either another lazy move or a sign that the movie changed a lot over the course of the making of it. I don't even want to ask who wrote this character and figured it was good enough to make one of the main characters of a blockbuster film.

I think I've said this a couple times in this review but the dialogue in this movie is painful to listen to. It's a mix of Sony attempting to connect to Spider-Man and trying to get these quirky lines that will connect with... somebody? I have no clue who this movie's target audience is. I thought it would be my fellow Spider-Man superfans, but I can't see any Spider-Man fan seeing this and not agreeing with me that it's a disgrace. I don't see any age group seeing this and walking out of the theater saying "I absolutely loved that!" or even "that wasn't the best, but it was a fun time!". I hate to say this to everyone involved but this movie should have never left the production process.

I'm not even convinced there's a good movie in here somewhere. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. There's even more problems that I could voice but I just don't have the time or the energy to do it. Sony needs to just completely rethink their entire Spider-Man plan because this clearly isn't working. Who is going to want to go watch Kraven The Hunter or Venom 3 later this year after watching Madame Web and/or Morbius?

You can watch the first scene in this movie and it will set the tone for every single problem that this movie has. I would not recommend this film to literally anyone.

February 16th, 2024: Bob Marley: One Love (Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green)

Credit: Digital Spy

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Bob Marley: One Love is an enjoyable watch. Nothing more, nothing less. It's a standard biopic movie that suffers from similar aspects of some of the other just "OK" biopics in recent years. The main positive is that the acting is fantastic. Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch are standouts in the tile roles and they really embody these real-life characters. The problem is that they don't let them really show their acting chops until the end of the movie. The first half of the film is very weak for a variety of reasons, the main one being that they don't really tackle the emotional weight of the story until the last 20-25 minutes of the second half. Ben-Adir and Lynch are so good in this movie when they aren't restricted to just traditional Jamaican banter between themselves. All the music scenes are amazing and I really wish they would have focused on them more. You don't really see the process of him making any music besides one scene in the middle of the film, which is fantastic but it makes me frustrated they didn't do that more. I think it could've used 15-20 minutes at the beginning of the story to kind of explain how Marley himself grew into this massive star instead of just throwing us into the middle of his life. I don't mind them focusing on how he turned into an icon instead of how he put himself in that spot, but the movie desperately needed to provide some context to the ones that don't know the full story. The use of flashbacks was also strange and made the pacing really feel off at times. They just show a sixty second flashback every once in a while with no context whatsoever and just hope you'll be able to piece together what it is and/or why it matters. I watched this movie with a friend who is Jamaican and he seemed to really enjoy it, telling me that maybe if I was more involved in the music world or if I knew the full story beforehand then I would have enjoyed it more. It has problems but it's overall a fun watch and I would recommend it to anyone who asked, especially a Bob Marley or music fan.

Onto the Cinema News Section...

(Disclaimer- this week's news section will all be comic book media related.)

I'm aware that this happened on Sunday so it technically isn't the week of February 12th, but it was released the night of the Super Bowl so I'm counting it. The trailer for Deadpool and Wolverine has been released and as expected, it looks fantastic. There's been the classic "Marvel is back" tagline added to basically every reaction to this trailer... as if it ever went anywhere. Either way, this is the way Marvel can get back into the good graces of the public audience that aren't mainly comic book fans. This movie is easily going to make a billion dollars and I wouldn't even be shocked if it got close to that two billion mark. If you combine Deadpool, Wolverine, an ever-growing multiverse, the MCU and much more, you are going to get a movie that has a pretty large target audience. I don't think anyone can really predict what this movie is going to be about until the actual movie releases, but it's obviously going to have the same tone and humor as the previous two Deadpool films. If this is what will get the general public back into Marvel movies again, I'm all for it. It's releasing a day before my birthday as well. An amazing birthday present that I will be watching on opening night and probably many more times after that. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, I salute you.

We have pretty much known the Fantastic Four cast for a while, but I was waiting to speak on it until it was actually announced by Marvel themselves. I was expecting them to hold an actual event or at least hold some occasion considering how massive this movie is going to be, but I'll take a random Wednesday morning announcement as well. Pedro Pascal is Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby is Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn is Johnny Storm and Ebon Moss-Bachrach is Ben Grimm. Ever since this rumored cast was thrown out there, I think the general public has been mostly negative about the choices. However... I'm a massive fan of every one of these. Kirby as "The Invisible Woman" is easily my favorite out of all of these and I think she is genuinely perfect casting. It's hard to cast "The Thing" because of the fact he's a giant orange monster for most of his screen time, but Moss-Bachrach was absolutely fantastic in The Bear and I think he's going to crush this role. Quinn has been getting ridiculed the most out of all of the four since the casting was announced, which I don't really understand at all. He's clearly a really talented actor and once he dies that hair blonde, I'm sure people will be able to come around the idea of him playing the "Human Torch". As for Reed Richards... this one is really important to me. "Mr. Fantastic" has always been one of my favorite comic book characters (I'd say he's probably third, behind Quake/Daisy Johnson and Spider-Man) and I personally was frustrated when I learned that John Krasinski wouldn't be returning in the role from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness because I thought he was perfect for the role. However, I really don't mind the idea of casting a really talented actor in Pascal and letting him fit into the role. Sure, it's not what I would've expected when this movie first was announced, but I really think he'll do a good job. Obviously he must have blown the Marvel execs away with his screen test and when was the last time Marvel really miscast a role? I'm super excited for the four to finally be in the MCU and I am counting down the days until July 25th, 2025.

I'm not sure what I did to deserve this, but Marvel just decided this past week to drop three pieces of updates about future projects that are all some of my absolute favorites. Deadpool is one of my favorite characters and seeing him team up with Wolverine is a dream come true for my inner comic book fan. The Fantastic Four have always been my favorite team of superheroes in the comics and I've already explained my love for Reed Richards. Now we have this trailer. The original X-Men animated series is one of my favorite TV shows OF ALL TIME and I honestly was worried when the planned reboot continued to get delayed. But now the wait was worth it, as this trailer showcases all the amazing things from the original show and more. The iconic score is back, most of the main voice cast returns and we got the classic "To Me, My X-Men" line. I don't think anyone understands how excited I am for this. I have every reason to believe this is going to be fantastic and I cannot wait until March 20th.