‘Madame Web’ Is Officially the Worst Superhero Movie of All Time
There are roughly 47,000—oh, wait, a new Netflix Original just dropped; make that 47,001—TV shows and movies coming out each week. At Obsessed, we consider it our social duty to help you see the best and skip the rest.
We’ve already got a variety of in-depth, exclusive coverage on all of your streaming favorites and new releases, but sometimes what you’re looking for is a simple Do or Don’t. That’s why we created See/Skip, to tell you exactly what our writers think you should See and what you can Skip from the past week’s crowded entertainment landscape.
Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) in Madame Web
Skip: Madame Web
Madame Web is worse than its trailers let on, a collection of incoherent vignettes about a clairvoyant Dakota Johnson that ironically can’t predict its failure. But hey, all superhero movies could learn a thing or two about making these inherently silly films less earnest and a little more moronic.
Here’s Nick Schager’s take:
“Sony’s animated Spider-Verse films have been amazing, which is more than can be said about the studio’s stabs at creating their own MCU-adjacent live-action movie series centered around Spider-Man. That process got off to a goofy start with Venom and its sequel before running aground with 2022’s Morbius, and it now fully crashes and burns with Madame Web, a torturous saga that haplessly spins about in circles trying to fashion a competent tone or coherent action sequence. No matter its heroine’s clairvoyant super-powers, it’s a debacle incapable of seeing—and thus avoiding—its every subsequent misstep.
‘Madame Web’ Is More Hilariously Bad Than Everyone Predicted
Madame Web begins in the Peruvian Amazon circa 1973, with Constance (Kerry Bishé) searching for a rare spider that possesses potentially magical healing powers (thanks to its peptides!). Upon finding what she’s looking for, Constance is promptly betrayed by her bodyguard Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who wants the spider and its abilities for himself. Left for dead, Constance is rescued by the jungle’s legendary spider-people, who spirit her back to their spider cave, put her in a pool and compel their pet spiders to bite her—none of which protects her from death but does allow her unborn baby to live. This is as absurd as it reads, and director S.J. Clarkson stages it with all the grace of a runaway train, her snap zooms, whiplash cinematography, canted angles, and overly theatrical lighting turning this prologue embarrassingly comical.”
See: This Is Me…Now: A Love Story
This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is a must-see ode not just to love, but to taking yourself so seriously that you spend $20 million to tell your life’s story. J.Lo delivers 65 minutes of expertly choreographed CGI slop. Its fun lies in the pop star’s sincerity.
Here’s Coleman Spilde’s take:
“Do you remember when Avatar was released in theaters, and audience members reportedly experienced depression after they saw it? Viewers had to leave Pandora and return to their lives on Earth outside of the theater, and it made them so miserable that they formed an entire online community just for support. That’s precisely how I feel about the fantastical world that Jennifer Lopez has crafted in This Is Me…Now: A Love Story. Romance rules in Lopez’s chimeric version of Earth, and follies of the human heart can have such cataclysmic results that they may end the world as we know it.
J.Lo’s ‘This Is Me...Now’ Is a Masterful, 65-Minute Rebuttal to All the Doubters
Released in conjunction with her first studio album in a decade—which shares the film’s title, minus its post-colon descriptor—This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is a Marvel-grade cinematic spectacle that matches the album’s extravagant emotional base. It’s a long-form extension of the record and a standalone work by Lopez; think Beyoncé’s Lemonade film for ivory tower romantics. But this isn’t merely a series of music videos, strung together with a weak narrative thread. The movie is an introspective look at Lopez’s public life, tabloid-favorite romances, and her deepest desires, thrust through an autofictional lens and abstracted into her version of Homer’s The Odyssey. That is to say: It’s exactly as gloriously tacky as its trailer makes it out to be.”
Utkarsh Ambudkar as Jay and Rose McIver as Samantha
See: Ghosts Season 3
Ghosts is back for a third season of blissfully uncomplicated sitcom brilliance. This look at the variety of hilarious specters inside of an old manor is still fresh and as cunningly funny as ever, proving that there is some life left in the network sitcom after all.
Here’s LaToya Ferguson’s take:
“The second season of CBS’ supernatural sitcom Ghosts ended on a cliffhanger, with one of the apparitions—presumably one of the major series regulars—at Woodstone Manor finally crossing over. For the uninitiated or even just forgetful, ghosts that move on to the afterlife in the world of Ghosts are, in official parlance, ‘sucked off.’ You can rest assured that the first two episodes of the new season do well to make sure every person watching remembers that delightfully juvenile word choice.
A Big Cliffhanger Changes ‘Ghosts’ Without Killing Its Charms
A remake of the British comedy of the same name, Ghosts hinges on new homeowner Sam (Rose McIver, who gets the Pregnant Actress Special this season, hiding her baby bump behind big coats, laptops, and comically large boxes) helping the various deceased neurotics occupying her country manor gain closure and move on, with the help of her husband, Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar). In theory, it’s a good thing to see one of the ghosts finally achieve that goal. But a large part of the charm and comfort of this series has been the consistent ensemble of spectral characters. Wouldn’t sending one of them on affect the entire chemistry or dynamic of the series moving forward? As a living person or a fellow ghost, what do you do when someone gets, ahem, sucked off? How do you move on with your life or afterlife? Those are questions the series hasn’t had to answer until now.”
Amy Schumer and Michael Cera in Life & Beth
Skip: Life & Beth Season 2
Life & Beth, Amy Schumer’s semi-autobiographical dramedy, returns for its second season with more hints of something interesting just below the surface. Too bad Schumer’s execution is all too plain to draw them out. Time to go back to life before Beth.
Here’s Vikram Murthi’s take:
“As the title implied, the first season of Amy Schumer’s semi-autobiographical Hulu dramedy series Life & Beth began with a death and ended with a spiritual rebirth. Following the sudden loss of her mother, Beth (Schumer)—an aimless wine merchant in her late thirties stuck in a committed relationship with a dopey co-worker—reevaluates her seemingly ideal urban life. She breaks up with her partner, moves out of Manhattan and back to her hometown of Long Island, and mentally revisits stories from her traumatic childhood, told via flashbacks featuring a teenaged Beth (Violet Young). Painful encounters with bullies and boys are juxtaposed with scenes from her parents’ rocky relationship and eventual divorce, all inspired by Schumer’s own childhood.
Amy Schumer’s ‘Life & Beth’ Isn’t a Trainwreck, But It’s Not Far Off
Over the course of the season’s first 10 episodes, Beth slowly but surely learns one of the most valuable coming-of-age lessons: that parents are people with their own flaws and baggage, and though they might never change, it’s possible to love them in spite of the damage they caused. (Only in death can Beth forgive her mother for her boundary-less, post-divorce dating history, which ultimately cost her a childhood best friend.) Amidst her grief, she learns to reconnect with old friends and also quickly falls for forthright, compassionate farmer John (Michael Cera), who helps her to (literally) reconnect with her roots by teaching her the ins and outs of cultivation.”
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