The late December/January/February run for movies is never guaranteed to produce a ton of quality titles, but you’re in luck with this recent stretch.
There are a decent number of movies that are wholly worthy of your time that have come out recently, including (yes) Madame Web.
There are also some really unique genre pictures like The Book of Clarence, some very sound family fare like Orion and the Dark and a movie where Jason Statham plays an action hero called a Beekeeper.
Check out some thoughts on seven films we’d recommend to various degree, including, oh yes, Madame Web.
Madame Web
Trying to turn Madame Web into the next laugh-a-minute disaster midnight movie was bound to happen. We live in a post-meme society, one where any film that’s distinctly flawed but still showing signs of real personality gets shoved into a joke box that labels it “this week’s Worst Movie of All Time.”
It’s an exhaustive discourse, as the “Morbin’ Time” effect that doomed Madame Web before it really had a chance. It’s a shame, really, because despite its clear faults, the Dakota Johnson-led spinoff is really one of the more fascinating Marvel movies in some time. Morbius was truly awful; this is not that.
Cut from a very particular cloth of risky 2000s comic book movies that likely fell victim to studio meddling, Madame Web feels haphazard and melodramatic in an oddly refreshing way. It’s not really a superhero origin story as much as it is a B-grade sci-fi thriller, and its efforts to canonize its setting into some sort of Marvel future feel so delightfully lifeless and unwilling, like someone dragging their resistant 8-year-old to a piano lesson.
The film, on purpose or on accident, shows you how contrived the continuous shared universe mentality is, and it has some (perhaps unintended, but still present and effective) fun with that in a very non-meta way. Don’t necessarily mistake its mistakes for mistakes, we’ll argue.
Kevin Feige built the MCU to absolutely avoid movies like this, ones that can fly off the rail at any given moment because of strange decisions and potentially off-putting weirdness due to the unholy blend of unwieldy creative vision, careless studio interference and Michael Bay-approved obviousness of product placement. This movie is his worst Marvel nightmare.
Bizarre springs eternal with Madame Web, and that’s kind of nice to have something so baffling in execution and lacking in uniformity sport the Marvel logo. It’s not entirely successful, but there’s not much else like it besides the Venom movies.
It’s also got a surprisingly wry sense of humor, as Johnson and S.J. Clarkson mine the corniness of the plot and the very relatable “annoyed millennial unsuccessfully trying to relate to sarcastic Gen Z kids” dynamics (in 2003, sure, but it still hits).
Johnson is really quite impressive here, as she’s wholly aware of what kind of movie she’s in and how ridiculous some of it is. Like a pro, she still powers through it by selling the drama in some really shaky dialogue and nailing the punch lines, even when they’re not necessarily there. Some of this movie is dinged from the delivery process, but it’s actually decently intact.
If anything, this is really better than most of the recent MCU movies. Madame Web might be really messy and occasionally encourage the wrong kind of audience participation, but if you go in willing to meet it on its wavelength, you might be surprised by how nice it is to watch one of these movies not necessarily know where it’s going or why it’s doing what it is.
That’s the joy of risks. They don’t always pay off, but they rarely fail without genuine entertainment value. People will say plenty about this movie, but they cannot call it boring.
Where to Watch: Theaters
Orion and the Dark
DreamWorks and Netflix bankrolling an animated movie that’s basically Charlie Kaufman’s Inside Out for neurotic kids with anxiety … respect!
The first half is pretty excellent, even if it starts to get a little lost in the sauce with the meta-narrative…however, the animation is splendid and most of the script and voice cast are very well-considered.
It’s upper-tier DreamWorks, but it doesn’t quite have the conceptual cohesion of something like Inside Out, as great as Kaufman working in this space is.
Where to Watch: Netflix
The Beekeeper
This is exactly what it should be, a rare example of the schlocky, B-grade action movie that strives to be more than a temporary meme soon lost to time. David Ayer cuts down the unnecessary plotting and keeps this humming along at an enjoyable clip, and Jason Statham understands the proper frequency here as well as any actor could.
It’s wildly fun in stretches, and being rough around the edges in a good Expendables movie way is more than forgivable. I’d watch more Beekeepers. Josh Hutcherson is a great jerk.
Where to Watch: Theaters, PVOD
Lisa Frankenstein
This is the kind of movie that would do great business on home video and develop a very loyal cult following and, in like 10 years, would be regarded as a very savvy genre picture that the youths of the time understood more than the folks who didn’t really get on its level.
Alas, that’s not the world we’re in anymore, but I sure hope this one finds a second life on streaming because it really is a shame we get a proper successor to the 80s/90s movies like Heathers, The Lost Boys, the 1990s Addams Family movies and Edward Scissorhands that doesn’t immediately find its audience.
It’s a movie made by someone who clearly loves the irreverence and aesthetics of Tim Burton, the oblong austerity of Barry Sonnenfeld, the wacky studio comedy vibes of Penelope Spheeris and the buoyant campiness of Joel Schumacher. Plenty of Joe Dante The ‘Burbs vibes in there, too.
Maybe this will take off on Netflix or Peacock or something. It’s a good movie and deserved more than what it got being dumped in February with little fanfare. Kathryn Newton, Liza Soberano and Cole Sprouse are all aces.
Where to Watch: Theaters
The Book of Clarence
Jeymes Samuel walks a tight rope here between satire and earnest heart, and he does so marvelously. He’s such a confident artist, radiant and grand in the way he envisions his stories and very deft to the touch with the emotions.
He’s got an old soul for the old Hollywood scope and booming score that sweeps you off your feet. There is a real dedication present to genre homage while twisting it around to meet his forward-thinking vision.
It’s pretty marvelous what he pulls off here, maybe not quite as tight as The Harder They Fall but just as impressive, giddy and resonant. Samuel is a special filmmaker, and this is a very good film that deserved so much more than bad-faith readings and to be dumped in January on a crowded weekend.
Where to Watch: Theaters, PVOD
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
It’s a definite step down from the insane heights of the first film, but it’s still so much fun and so much more engaging than most of the superhero films made these days. It’s a shame this will be it for the DCEU, if only because you’d rather have unwieldy variance with real risk (hello, Madame Web) involved instead of more sameness.
James Wan really did everything he could here to craft a rollicking adventure out of production issues that show the seams in the edit. This really reminded me of a less polished version of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, lacking the gravitas but making up for it in pure, chummy enjoyment. That has to count for something, right?
I’m sad to see Jason Momoa’s time as Aquaman end; he was just perfect for the part, but I’m glad he got one last chance to flex his joy in playing the role, even if the vehicle is a bit more dinged up than before.
Also, the sunken ship underworld is yet another huge example of why Wan needs to do a Star War. No director right now would be a better fit.
Where to Watch: Theaters, PVOD, Max (Feb. 27)
Migration
I’d bet $5 the pitch for this movie was “Vacation … but with ducks on migration! … but also Finding Nemo … on the quality level of The Secret Life of Pets,” and the entire room stood in applause. It’s okay!
Illumination is incapable of making anything but the same perfectly fine, risk-averse family film over and over and over again, which means you always leave reasonably satisfied but wholly static.
They clearly just want to be Blue Sky with Minions instead of Scrat, and more power to them. They’ll probably never make a great movie, but they’ll make plenty decent enough ones. 3/4-star movies for days.
This was, weirdly, the second-best animated film released in December 2023 about talking birds who must escape evil humans who want to cook them and serve them to consumers… it’s also got the second-best Mike White movie script involving the word “orange.” Go figure.
The little duckling was great. They should make a whole movie with the little duckling.
