MADAME WEB**

New York, 2003. A tough cynical loner paramedic resents her dead mother for conducting dangerous experiments in South America while pregnant, so dying in childbirth. After an accident, the loner discovers she can see into the future and so prevent bad stuff happening. She also finds herself taking care of three young women who are being stalked by an evil villain in a spider suit. He's also had a vision that these wastrels are gonna kill him in the future. Meanwhile, our heroine's best friend and fellow paramedic Ben Parker's sister-in-law is about to go into labour.

The well known problem with MADAME WEB is that 15 years into the Marvel revolution nobody gives a shit. Dakota Johnson - whose low-key low-energy style suits many an indie film - definitely doesn't give a shit about a lead role she is miscast in. Tahar Rahim (NAPOLEON) and Zosia Mamet (Girls) is wasted as the baddie.  The three young women are given underwritten parts that are just a bag of tropes. Spoiled rich brat, nerdy shy girl etc. The action scenes from first-time feature director S J Clarkson are uninspired. The prologue is unnecessary. And the script is overlong with too many establishing examples of how being pre-cog works. The final shot features a now blind and paraplegic Madame Web hovering, masked, with her three proteges. It's a flash forward to a film nobody wants to see. 

MADAME WEB is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 113 minutes. It is on global release.

MOLLI AND MAX IN THE FUTURE**** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Preview

MOLLI AND MAX IN THE FUTURE is an absolutely charming, funny, inventive romantic comedy for aficionados of the genre. Modelled on WHEN HARRY MET SALLY with a side-order of screwball comedy, this is the film for those of us who tried to forge relationships in the era of tinder and insta celebrity culture, against the backdrop of populist politics and the pandemic. The film may well be set in the future but it very much speaks to our times, and even our nostalgia for those janky 1980s video games.  The aesthetic is deliberately lo-fi, day-glo coloured, and square aspect ratio'd.  It's like playing with a first gen Nintendo, but with the quick-witted dialogue of the best Woody Allen movie. Massive kudos to writer-director Michael Lull Lutwak. I can't believe this is his debut feature: it's so assured and despite its heavy references, genuinely unique. But also kudos to the lead actors, Zosia Mamet (Girls) and Aristotle Athari (SNL), who have real chemistry.  I actually believed in their multi-year friendship / romance and was rooting for them to win.  But most of all, kudos to Erin Darke who absolutely steals scenes as the 1940s wise-cracking screwball heroine AI/mech Mar14 who seems to be channelling Barbara Stanwick. 

MOLLI AND MAX IN THE FUTURE has a running time of 93 minutes. It played SXSW 2023 and does not yet have a commercial release date.

BLEEDING HEART aka BOUND BY BLOOD

BLEEDING HEART is a surprisingly melancholy slow burning relationship drama between two newly united sisters. The former is a textbook bleeding heart liberal yoga teacher played by Jessica Biel. The latter is a sex worker played by Zosia Mamet.  Cinema cliche would have the former try to save the latter, but in increasingly antagonistic phonecalls to her boyfriend, we realise the yoga teacher needs as much saving as the hooker. The only tragedy is that writer-director Diane Bell can't think of a more narratively and emotionally interesting denouement for this tale of mutual female empowerment than the one she gives us.  Nonetheless, a nicely filmed and acted, if ultimately slight film.

BLEEDING HEART aka BOUND BY BLOOD has a running time of 80 minutes.  The movie played Tribeca 2015 and was released straight to video in the USA last year. It is now available on streaming services in the UK.