Madame Web
Madame Web
Starring Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor
Directed by S.J. Clarkson
Thirty years after her mother was murdered in the Peruvian jungle while searching for a mythical spider that can cure diseases, Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic and is good friends with fellow paramedic Ben Parker (Adam Scott) who's sister-in-law Mary (Emma Roberts) is about to give birth to a son. One day while rescuing a man trapped in his car over the edge of a bridge, Cassandra falls into the river and nearly dies, but during her near death experience she harnesses a latent power within her to allow her to see the future.
Meanwhile Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) - the man who killed Cassandra's mother all those years ago - now has the spider and is living a luxurious life, but has visions every night of three Spider-Women coming to kill him. To stop this from happening he plans to track them down and kill them as teenagers. He finds their identities - Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor) - and sets out to kill them, but Cassandra has a vision of it happening and takes them to safety. As she investigates her powers, Ezekiel gets closer and closer to achieving his goal, but with a clairvoyant on their side it seems that the girls will prevail in achieving their ultimate destiny.
The Good:
Everything about this movie is absolutely glamorous and stupendous. It's so hard to pinpoint just one positive thing to say about the film, because from the get-go there was something either visually, auditory, or philosophically powerful that had me weeping tears of pure joy and existential bliss. It was so bad I had to go to the hospital afterward because of dehydration from all the tears that I wept throughout the film, and I'm sure the poor workers had a heck of a time mopping it all up.
First lets talk about the CGI effects and camerawork. Never before have I seen more beautiful, comprehensive, or expertly choreographed effects in any movie. The opening scene of Cassandra's mother getting whisked away by the Peruvian spider-people was harrowing in its dizzying camera work and the CGI people hopping from tree to tree at breakneck speed carrying the wounded mother-to-be-but-not-because-she-died-researching-spiders to their secret spidery lair. It only gets better from there as the fighting sequences and near death experiences and visions of the future all have this afterglow to them that literally boggles the mind, and the cameraman was someone they had to hire from Michael Bay's company because it zigs, zags, dips and dives so fast it leaves your mind in a discombobulated state and keeps you on your toes.
Then the acting, the superb acting. Dakota Johnson is a young Meryl Streep in the making in the role of Cassandra Webb, a woman burdened with glorious purpose - to protect three girls so they can achieve their ultimate destiny. Even though she doesn't want to, and even though she often leaves them alone for long stretches, she's always got their best intentions in mind. She sees the future so she knows when to come to their aid, and is an expert when it comes to pyrotechnics and understanding the ups and downs of product placement (thank you Pepsi!).
Tahar Rahim is the best villain since Thanos, a man who's such an excellent actor that he has also become an excellent ventriloquist as well. When you see him talk on screen, the words he says doesn't match his lips moving, and I was in awe with how great he's gotten at ventriloquism (I can't wait til he's the main villain in Dead Silence 2! James Wan make it happen!). His motives are as pure as they come - kill three teenage girls before they probably kill him in the future due to the visions he has after downing too many Taco Bell burritos as one in the morning, as many of us have done in the past. He's not really that villainous in that respect (after all, if you could go back and kill baby Hitler, wouldn't you do it?), and his Spider-Person costume surely wasn't found from a dime store Halloween shop - it was just tailored to look that way to add to his sense of mysterious motif.
The girls also exhibit such range of acting ability. Sydney Sweeney (best known for her roles in "Euphoria" and "Anyone But You") radiates as Julia, the shy bookworm who follows the rules and does absolutely nothing else because she doesn't have to. Isabela Merced (best known as being the live-action Dora and starring in that one "Transformers" movie) represents the Latina community as Anya, a bright, outgoing girl who's also intelligent and street smart. Then there's Celeste O'Connor, who's Mattie is a girl from a wealthy family but spends time fighting the system and riding her skateboard, because she's a future Tony Hawk in the making - or is it Tony Spider? Either way, these three girls have such intense chemistry with one another you'd think they were besties since birth, and are all completely fleshed out by the end of the film.
The story is cerebral and the Daniels could take lessons from it, as they probably wished they would've held off on making "Everything Everywhere All at Once" until they could see this masterpiece and rip off portions of it for their film. A young woman who's mother is murdered in Peru after getting bit by a spider that allowed the child to be born who suffers a near death experience that opens up her spider-like ability to see into the future to protect three future Spider-Women who will eventually get powers somehow from the clutches of the man who killed her mother but didn't know she was associated with them but wants the girls dead because he had visions they would kill him while also Cassandra befriends Ben Parker who's sister-in-law is about to give birth to the future Marvel Messiah as she abandons the girls time and again before coming back for them like a neglectful mother who returns to collect the checks the government provides that culminates in a literal explosion at a fireworks shop with a Pepsi sign out front couldn't be written by anyone other than the talented group that was also responsible for Sony's 2022 film "Morbius.
The Bad:
The hospital bill I got after being admitted for dehydration after all the tears I cried during the movie. American health care sucks.
The Summary:
If there is one movie you should see this year, or any year, "Madame Web" is it - and if you want to see another movie, you can't go wrong with "Madame Web!"
The Score: A++
And in all seriousness...
The movie was an absolute train-wreck, but at least it was an enjoyable train-wreck - like if Hitler was the only person on the train when it wrecked. That's what saves this movie from D- status - I'd actually see it again, and enjoy myself (but then again I guess I am a masochist sometimes).
The Score: D
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