Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Genre: Action

Directed by: Jon Watts

Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch

Running Time: 148'

Verdict: ⊗⊗⊗⊗⊗

 

Marvel and Sony put on their best lipstick and most glamorous dresses, veiling a lack of underwear, ready to provide the best fan service money could buy. Really, as a film, Spider-Man: No Way Home is probably the best Spider-Man movie. Not because of a good Peter Parker story, but because of the way it treats former movies and how it handles an amazing gallery of Spider-Man villains. It is spectacular, funny and full of surprises. It is also visually great, a lot of it coming from Doctor Strange's meddling with dimensions and the multiverse, but also from a colorful palette of the villains and general mayhem they bring with themselves. To provide all this goodness, movie sacrifices some explanations of how some things happen or work, but it's really hard to mind as it doesn't give you much time to think. It tries to further develop Spider-Man's relationships with his girlfriend MJ and best friend Ned, but they kinda fall to the background because of just a preposterous number of other individual story lines and distractions that happen in the scenes. Spider-Man: No Way Home satisfyingly concludes a lot more than this trilogy, but I still feel it is just a villain away from being the perfect Spider-Man movie.

Rokin

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Genre: Comedy

Directed by: Jason Reitman

Starring: Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace

Running Time: 125'

Verdict: ⊗⊗⊗⊗

 

Ghostbusters: Afterlife seems to exist only because of Harold Ramis' death, and actually heavily incorporates it into the plot, with his character's grandchildren taking over the ghostbusting, with a help from their as diverse as possible friends. The kids are cool and all, and this is definitely their movie, but the movie really shines on rare occasions when it presents cast members from previous films or with surprise cast as other minor characters. Unfortunately, Rick Moranis' character did not return, with Paul Rudd kind of taking his place. In the movie, set thirty years after the last one (ignoring the reboot, of course), people kind of forgot the cataclysmic events in New York and somehow ghosts are not documented enough to be scientifically proven entities. Old ghostbusters moved to obscurity, and Spengler did that literally. Setting the movie in Oklahoma instead of New York immediately removes a chunk of funny from the franchise, but offers a more suitable, although overdone, environment. Story is clumsily rushed, but it's hard to mind when the setup is clear from the start and all you want to do is watch some ghosts action. Occasionally, the film tries to promote science, but there is hardly anything scientific about it. It's ghosts. It doesn't need science. Action scenes are pretty, but some Avengers-style CGI used heavily on Ramis's character made me think of how much dead people acting is ethically questionable. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is not that funny or very polished, but it is fun and looks good when it needs to. It could have been, but maybe did not have to be, more than it is.

Rokin