Fa1thless

I put off watching this for ten years and I have no idea why, I fucking loved it.  I’ve loved the music for years, and watching the film only made me love it even more. The choreography and cinematography are both stunning, and truly elevate what the film is.  It’s a true feel good movie that’s also incredibly well constructed with a whole lot of love clearly put into it. The cast all kills it: with Jackman and Zendaya being the standouts.  The one thing I wish would be different though is that they’d changed all the names of the characters so it wasn’t about Barnum, directly associating the film with him is a major issue, and I feel like had they just scrubbed his name from it but made the same movie, they’d have been a lot better for it. On its own though, I love the movie, and I know I’ll be playing the soundtrack on repeat for weeks. I did find playing the reprise of million dreams about two minutes after the first playing of it to be odd, especially considering how long the song is to begin with. That’s just a minor nitpick though, a small issue in a brilliant film. I could honestly watch the film again tomorrow and enjoy it just as much, it’s that good.

I would say this is the second best live action Spider-Man movie: a little bit behind no way home. It was clearly inspired by the insomniac games which made me very happy, with some moves that are pulled directly out of the games. Punisher was awesome, and was in it much more than I expected. He didn’t feel neutered at all. Yelena was an awesome inclusion, and I couldn’t help but smile every time she was on screen. Hulk felt underused though, he was a big part of the marketing and was only really in two scenes. Sadie’s Jean was solid, although I don’t think we saw enough of her for me to be completely sold. I’d personally been hoping she was playing Wanda, but I’m sure she’ll kill it as Jean.  Zendaya was brilliant, I’ve really come to appreciate her as an actress recently. Ned’s appearances were fun, as they always are.  The weird thing is, despite all of these other MCU characters appearing, it still feels like it takes place in a bubble. The characters don’t reference any events from their own projects, if it’s not directly in the movie, it doesn’t even get mentioned. Frank never mentions Daredevil, Fisk or Sentry are never brought up, they refuse to even mention doctor strange by name. There’s no avengers tower in the background, no roxxon or A.I.M, hell, even the leader of the DoDC vanished between projects and got replaced with a new guy for this movie. It feels like Sony is refusing to even remotely advertise any MCU projects, but still wanting to use MCU characters. This leads to the film feeling bubbled and disconnected from the rest of the MCU despite the fact it has the most non-spidey characters appearing out of any of the movies so far. This is my one major criticism of the movie. Aside from this, the visual style, choreography, story and visual Spectacle are all brilliant, it’s a very well made movie, and Tom feels the most like Spider-Man in this than he ever has before. I do love an older Spider-Man, and he kills it here. I feel like the mutation plot line Will continue into the rest of the trilogy, as it’s not really concluded here. I can’t wait to see what this trilogy brings to the table, and who the mysterious other Spider-Man is at the end… I guess we’ll See in doomsday… (the definition of a big potato problem)

As someone with social anxiety this felt like a personal attack to me in particular.  I genuinely don’t know what I would do if I were in Charlie’s place, the whole situation was one absolutely gigantic clusterfuck that was masterfully constructed on screen, if it could go wrong, it went wrong, nobody was catching a break during this. I’ve really underestimated Zendaya as an actor before this, she absolutely killed this movie, especially at the ending. Robert Pattinson was brilliant too. Both are actors I’ve seen much more than the average amount you’d see in a month over this past month, so the fact I’m still not sick of either of them is genuinely impressive.  I liked this a lot, despite the impending sense of doom that violently filled my stomach the entire time I was watching it. Seeing everything slowly unravel was honestly my worst nightmare, but it was so well written and acted that I can’t help but admire its genius.

This film is a masterpiece. I hated every second of it. I’ve never watched a horror movie before; but decided to watch this due to its immense critical acclaim and to get ahead on having watched every best picture nomination for this year (let’s face it, this’ll be there) and by god was it a wild introduction to the genre. I spent every second of the film wanting it to end, then the ending left me feeling worse than anything else in the film. I wanted to throw up on two separate occasions, had to pause it many more times just to mull some things over, and quite possibly shat myself on multiple occasions too. The film has so much to say and gave me so much to think about, with several decisions made by the characters that I actually supported until I saw how fucked up it actually was. I also thought how the film slowly turns you on Bear was fascinating and really well done, you start off feeling bad for him, but as the film goes on and you realise how disgusting he really is… and the thing is, he never changes. He’s exactly the same man in the final scene as he was in the first scene. The entire concept, and message of the film is so profound in the modern day, and it’s realised in such an incredibly well shot and well written way, hell, calming myself down by admiring the cinematography ending up being my main coping strategy for getting through the film.  I hate how incredible this was. I’ve never been more uncomfortable and so amazed at the same time. Genuinely a masterpiece.