Movie Review: Spider-Man: Brand New Day

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The last Spider-Man movie, “Movie Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home”, was released in December 2021, nearly five years ago. That movie had a plotline that continues into this latest franchise film, where Spider-Man’s two friends, MJ (Zendaya) and Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), do not remember who Spider-Man/Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is because, in the last film, the world discovered Spider-Man’s true identity. Peter Parker’s exposed identity caused many serious problems for his friends, forcing him to go to Doctor Strange to reverse time so that Parker could choose certain people in the world who were allowed to know Spider-Man’s true identity. Once again, for Marvel films like this, you have to suspend any level of common sense, and I considered this part of the story one of the most insane ideas within the Marvel franchise.

For this new film, Spider-Man has a new friend, Frank Castle/The Punisher (Jon Bernthal), and Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas) – who is one of the lead actors in “The Bear” Hulu series, and visits with his old friend The Hulk(Mark Ruffalo). Florence Pugh also makes an appearance as Yelena Belova/Black Widow, who has all of her scenes in a steam room, which I thought was too off-the-wall an idea.

Spider-Man is also very depressed, having lost his friends, and this time around, fighting nonstop crime is interrupted by some medical issues, with severe headaches that are suggested to be caused by his depression over losing his friends, including the love of his life MJ. He has many other medical issues, including his wrists’ spider ejector either erratically working or not working at all.

The antagonist in this story is a woman named Jean Gray, played by Sadie Sink, who has the ability to invade people’s minds and force them to do whatever she wants, with the one exception being Spider-Man. Later in this story, Gray’s brain control ability increases greatly to being able to control the minds of everybody in New York City. All this creates many scenes of impressive special effects that are as good as, or in some scenes better than, all the previous Spider-Man movies.

I mostly agree with Rotten Tomatoes’ 91% rating, with my rating at 85% and a solid recommendation.

Netflix Movie Review: 72 Hours

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The world has known for years that Kevin Hart is one of the best stand-up comedians of all time. More impressive is the years of dues he has paid to rise to the top of the entertainment industry, now as a producer and the head of his own production company, “Hartbeat,” and with a net worth of 400 million dollars.

Unfortunately, his habit of making very bad comedy movies on Netflix continues, with the latest release, “72 Hours”. While watching this waste of two hours, I was amazed that Hart or any of the other cast members could have read this screenplay and then agreed to make the movie. Just about all of the attempts at comedy failed throughout this film, including – once again – the telltale sign of a bad movie – the projectile vomiting over other people scene. Someone, somewhere in the entertainment industry, still thinks that a huge amount of vomiting is funny in a movie. It’s even funnier when someone profusely vomits all over other people. Kevin Hart has had too many of these scenes in his movies; this one is one of the all-time worst.

Kevin Hart stars as Joe Nixon, who is an up and coming advertizing executive who has had a few bad campaigns lately. The plan is to connect Joe with some young men in their 20s so he can learn what they like. These four young men are played by three cast members of Saturday Night Live, Ben Marshall (Hunter), Kam Patterson (Freshman), Marcello Hernández (Nick), and their friend who is about to be married, Mason, played by Mason Gooding. None of the attempted humorous scenes and personal connections with Joe Nixon and these younger men worked. The humor is crude, in some cases disgusting, with nothing humorous. Most amazing about this arguably the worst Kevin Hart Netflix comedy movie is that it took four screenwriters to write it: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, Kevin Burrows, and Matt Mider. Joe Nixon is also having problems with his girlfriend, Jennifer, played by Teyana Taylor – which is a sub-story that seemed more about making the movie last closer to two hours.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are an accurate, very low 14% – with my rating 1% and a must-miss-this-bad-movie recommendation.

Movie Review: Motor City

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The last post on this movie review blog, “The Invite,” was a movie that was 100% dialogue and violated the screenwriting mantra, “show don’t tell”. The new movie “Motor City” is the exact opposite, with about 8 words of dialogue, “all showing, no telling”. In the history of moviemaking, Motor City very likely has fewer words of dialogue than since silent films, making production more of an experiment about trying something new than a viable new movie idea.

Motor City stars Alan Ritchson (John Miller), a man who has just been released from probation and works in a factory in Detroit, Michigan, in 1977. John has a girlfriend, Sophia (played by Shailene Woodley), who works as both a waitress and a call girl for an evil criminal, Reynolds (played by Ben Foster). The story that follows we have all seen before, as John Miller is arrested for a crime he did not commit and sentenced to 25 years in prison. How he was set up is explained, all without dialogue, through subtle scenes, facial expressions, and an engagement ring that makes an appearance in many scenes throughout this story. There are some impressive action scenes, with a climax between John Miller and another criminal in an elevator that looked like it took some time to choreograph. Unfortunately, this “no dialogue action movie experiment” did not work.

I agree with the low 66% ratings for this movie and do not recommend it.