Madame Web's slings (and arrows), new Deadpool trailer, and more from the week in film

Madame Web review: Dakota Johnson can’t spin much out of this Spidey-adjacent project

Madame Web is a laughable affair. Intentionally so, at times. But for much of its two-hour runtime, the laughs come at the expense of the arguably capable work being put in by its charming lead, and the ridiculous dialogue she’s reduced to uttering with the best semblance of a straight face. To Dakota Johnson’s credit, she emerges if not unscathed, at least having had a fun enough time playing the film’s titular character. Alas, that’s not enough to save Sony’s ill-conceived attempt at broadening its Spidey-verse. Read More

Scoop dares to go where The Crown wouldn’t in first trailer

The Crown covered a lot, but it didn’t get to the biggest scandal in modern royal history: Prince Andrew’s association with “billionaire pedophile” Jeffrey Epstein and the subsequent fallout. But Netflix’s commitment to making fictionalized Windsor drama is unparalleled, and so they’ve got some Crown alums together to create Scoop (premiering April 5), which documents how Andrew’s infamous 2019 interview with BBC’s Newsnight came to be. Read More

Amélie (not Emily) in Paris

Widely considered one of the most quintessential romantic comedies of all time, Amélie feels as if it has always been around. In truth, though, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s quirky French confection is relatively fresh in comparison to so many other classic rom-coms. Originally released in the U.S. in February 2002, Amélie is getting a welcome re-release in theaters today. Read More

28 years ago the Spider-Man animated series got really weird—thanks to Madame Web

When Sony agreed to share the movie rights to Spider-Man with Disney and Marvel Studios, it decided to capitalize on the MCU’s success with the character by developing a series of Spider-Man-adjacent films without Spider-Man. Some of these make perfect sense, since Venom is so popular that he can carry a movie easily, but other ideas … made less sense. S.J. Clarkson’s Madame Web seems to fall into the latter camp, with its focus on one of the most obscure Marvel Comics character to ever appear in a movie—let alone be the title character—but longtime Spider-fans who grew up on the 1994 animated series will know that this is far from the first time that Madame Web showed up and made everything weird. Read More

Everything we know about Deadpool And Wolverine so far

We finally have our first proper look at Deadpool 3, officially titled Deadpool And Wolverine. The teaser trailer that aired during Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday revealed some interesting new details about the upcoming superhero comedy. Read More

This Is Me…Now: A Love Story review: JLo tells a powerful tale

To understand where multi-hyphenate superstar Jennifer Lopez is today, as her new film This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is about to start streaming on Prime Video, audiences need to know where she’s been. Two decades ago, Lopez suffered devastating heartache when her engagement to Oscar-winner Ben Affleck was abruptly called off. Their two-year courtship—which earned them the moniker “Bennifer” from fans and press—was heavily documented by paparazzi, and the ensuing media circus surrounding them eventually helped to sever their romantic ties. Read More

15 other Spider-Verse characters who deserve their own movie

This month, Madame Web arrives in theaters, giving the Sony Pictures Spider-Man-adjacent fictional universe yet another crew of characters to add to a growing arsenal that includes Venom, Morbius, and the upcoming debut of Kraven the Hunter. It’s no secret that Sony has been interested in building these characters out into movies for quite some time now, and Madame Web proves that the movie studio is interested in slightly more obscure characters as well as megastars like Venom. With that in mind, we’ve got some ideas when it comes to the characters they should tap next. Setting aside the upcoming films we already know about, here are 15 characters (or teams of characters) ready to lead their own live-action Spider-Man spinoff adventure. Read More

Land Of Bad review: Liam Hemsworth goes to war while Russell Crowe goes to the store

It’s a customary cliché to say that certain actors are so compelling, a viewer might pay to watch them read the phone book. Land Of Bad, despite its hilariously simplistic title, isn’t quite that on the nose, but it does feature an extended sequence of cutaways to Russell Crowe … doing his grocery shopping. And damned if it isn’t some of the most compelling stuff he’s done in ages. Nothing crazy happens; no punches are thrown, no stacks of tins are scattered. The closest thing to a joke is Crowe standing in front of a sign that reads “dry aged meat.” It’s just Crowe in a grocery store, buying things, checking his list, and doing that stuff we all do. Somehow, it’s riveting. Read More

How Madame Web (potentially) fits into Sony’s Spider-Verse

When Madame Web arrives in theaters on February 14 it will be the fourth film in Sony’s connected Spider-Man Universe (or SSU, although no one actually calls it that). Later this year, the roster will grow to six, adding Kraven The Hunter in August and Venom 3 in November. That’s just the official lineup, though. If you follow certain threads, references, cameos, and Easter eggs across all the films, they lead to a much more complicated multiverse. So where does Madame Web fit into the franchise? What will it add to the universe Sony is constructing? And how will it connect to the other films due out this year? We have some answers, along with a healthy amount of speculation and prognostication. Read More

Who’s the cutest little baby monster? 10 creature kiddos who captured our hearts

There’s a lot to talk about in the new trailer for Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, but what caught our eye was our first look at the new character fans have already started calling Mini Kong (as coined by Brian Tyree Henry’s Bernie Hayes). Not only does the tiny titan’s appearance signal that Legendary’s Monsterverse may be building up to a Son Of Kong movie, he’s also just a cute little guy. It got us thinking about other adorable movie monsters, from Godzilla’s many offspring and adopted children, to the newborn kaiju in Pacific Rim to all those furry flerkens running around the S.A.B.E.R. space station in The Marvels. So we decided to round up 10 of the best examples of sweet young terrors we could find. Don’t let their looks or their size fool you—they’re not as harmless as they may seem. Read More