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Awix (3310 KP) rated Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) in Movies

Jul 3, 2019 (Updated Jul 3, 2019)

Seventh Spider-Man movie gets off to a slightly wobbly start, almost seeming to have been slipped a real hospital pass by Endgame: clearly it feels obliged to address the rather messy state of the MCU, in addition to making a big fuss about being a proper MCU film (much more than the non-Sony MCU films do). However, once Spider-Man and his moderately amazing friends head off to Europe the film perks up considerably, especially with the appearance of Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio (Gyllenhaal is very good value).

The film is genuinely funny and benefits a lot from a clever plot - the problem is that the nature of the plot is extremely guessable, even if you're only passingly familiar with the comics. Still, good jokes, nice performances, and the best Tower Bridge-based VFX sequence since Gorgo in 1961. I think it would be unwise to try and intuit the whole future direction of the Marvel project from this one film, but this is still good (if slightly uneven) fun.

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Awix (3310 KP) rated The Elephant Man (1980) in Movies

Apr 27, 2020

The Elephant Man (1980)

1980 | Drama, History

8.3

(18 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

Rather fictionalised bio-pic from David Lynch and Mel Brooks. A surgeon in late-Victorian London discovers a man with extreme deformities being shown as a sideshow freak. The surgeon realises this man's case could make his name, but is he really any less of an exploiter than the owner of the side-show?

Very good-looking and well-acted by a fine cast. However, the film seems a little ambivalent about what kind of effect it's going for - the build-up to the big reveal of Merrick's deformities is almost done like a horror movie, only for an abrupt change of tone to take place once it is revealed that he is a gentle, almost saintly individual (the film simplifies the facts of Merrick's life: in reality, it was his idea to join the sideshow). There's also the fact that the story is short on incident once Merrick moves into the hospital and a kidnap-and-escape subplot has to be contrived. A well-made film and very watchable, but it is in the end just a bit simplistic and sentimental.