Movies, Film, and Chili

  Madame Web  is an adaptation of a comic book character. The movie is very loosely based on a Spider-Man heroine but lacks everything that made the comic book character acceptable.  The director S.J. Clarkson is probably best known for having her unaired pilot rejected by HBO for the Game of Thrones prequel. She was coached directing through many TV shows only being given one episode for many of the projects she worked on.  Matt Sazama  and Burk Sharpless  are known for horrible to barely okay movies: Morbius, Gods of Egypt, Power Rangers, the failed reboot of Lost in Space,  and The Last Witch Hunter.  Madame Web was okay for five minutes before I burst out laughing from the cringe. There are logical inconsistencies, boring dialogue, and a lack of meaningful character development. "Am I on the right train?" should become a meme. Dakota Johnson 's delivery of many lines was so bad that they had to be dubbed in and conveniently had the shot changed. She performed better

  Lisa Frankenstein is a romantic comedy with eighties goth vibes. Diablo Cody  wrote Lisa Frankenstein who you probably know from Juno, Jennifer's Body , and Tully . The film has a great flow from scene to scene and keeps a logical consistency. The characters feel grounded and fleshed out. The director is pretty young with Zelda Williams.  She had done The Legend of Korra  and some other, never heard of, movies but as an actress.  Kathryn Newton of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania  fame plays the main character. I didn't like her as Cassie Lang in that but here she's good as well as her performance in the Detective Pikachu movie. Her in-character step sister Liza Soberano  performs much better in her likable role as the loveable cheerleader. The film is funny and got a few laughs out of me. My wife enjoyed it and we had a good experience. I wouldn't ever watch it again though. Result: B-

  The Beekeeper is an action movie released in the dumping ground for movies.  David Ayer  has a good amount of movies under his belt and the production of this film didn't have the faith to really put any marketing behind it, especially with the risk of using Emmy Raver-Lampman , who overacted her way through Umbrella Academy . Ayer notoriously had issues with production with Suicide Squad and this just cements the fact that Ayer can't carry a film by name alone. The film had a solid action writer in Kurt Wimmer  but the scenes that were supposed to be dialogue-heavy or character-developing were lacking. Wimmer  wrote  Equilibrium, Expend4bles , the Point Break and Total Recall remakes, and the bizarre Ultraviolet . There is some pretty cringe-worthy dialogue and there are some weird allusions to both Donald Trump and Joe Biden with the son of the president even snorting coke in the white house. Jason Statham plays the Beekeeper, basically James Bond who lives in America.