Susan Sarandon in ‘Blue Beetle’ Is the Silliest Superhero Villain in Years
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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.
Skip: Blue Beetle
Blue Beetle is another helping of derivative superhero slush, this time with an extra sprinkling of pastiche and a silly Susan Sarandon villain as the cherry on top. It scores points for its admirable Latino representation, but this Beetle would be better off squashed.
Here’s Nick Schager’s take:
“Superhero fatigue is real, and it’ll only be exacerbated by Blue Beetle, a cut-rate programmer (in theaters August 18) that was originally slated for Max and, on the basis of its finished enervating form, should have probably remained there. It’s also the first Latino comic-book endeavor, although that doesn’t prevent it from being arguably the most derivative offering the tired genre has yet to offer, borrowing elements from so many forebearers that it plays like a conventional pastiche. If this is the end to Warner Bros’ initial DC era (before James Gunn and Peter Safran reboot the entire franchise), it's a fittingly banal and cacophonous one.
‘Blue Beetle’ Is a Shameless Copy of Every Other Superhero Movie
Fresh off becoming the maiden member of his family to graduate from college, Jaime Reyes (Cobra Kai’s Xolo Maridueña) returns to his hometown of Palmera City, a generic metropolis in which the haves reside in the glittering skyscraper-peppered downtown and the have-nots dwell in working class barrio Edge Keys. Jaime is warmly greeted by his dad Alberto (Damián Alcázar), mom Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo), sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), and Nana (Adriana Barraza), and within minutes, he’s subjected to two consecutive jokes about the secondary education debt he’s now accumulated.”
The non-profit, feature-length Spider-Man: Lotus.
Skip: Spider-Man: Lotus
Spider-Man: Lotus proves that even crowdfunded original movies are no relief for superhero fatigue. This hot mess shows flashes of promise for an amateur filmmaker, but the film’s controversial backstory and production woes are far more interesting.
Here’s Allegra Frank’s take:
“For fans of DC and Marvel heroes, the once-exciting slate of big-budget, big-screen stories to come has become shrug-worthy. For every quality release (think The Suicide Squad, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3)—there’s a flop: Eternals, Morbius, The Flash, and so on and so forth.
‘Spider-Man: Lotus’: Scandal-Plagued Fanmade Film Is a Mess
Perhaps it’s time for the fans to rectify the matter of the lackluster superhero flick themselves. But Spider-Man: Lotus, the much-hyped, non-Marvel-affiliated project by teen filmmaker Gavin Konop, suggests otherwise. Now streaming for free on Konop’s YouTube channel, Lotus is a lousy film, technically impressive in flashes but weighed down by disastrous performances, scripting, and direction. Perhaps worst of all is that, ahead of its Aug. 10 debut, Lotus outgrew its humble fan-made origins to become an internet punchline; what should have been an ambitious, little-known flop became a trending topic, a subject of discourse, and a source of online mockery.”
Gayle Rankin in Bad Things.
See: Bad Things
Bad Things twists The Shining’s premise into something quieter and more compact, but no less invigorating. Icy feminine rage drives its atmospheric horror, which burns slowly until its frightful climax shows us that there are still new ideas in older stories.
Here’s Coleman Spilde’s take:
“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A tight-knit group retreats to a snowy hotel for a relaxing getaway to recharge and rekindle their relationships, only to be confronted by psychological horrors waiting for them when the resort’s past patrons begin to haunt the halls. No, silly, not Queen Latifah’s Last Holiday, the other one, one of the most famous horror movies ever made: The Shining.
The Next Version of ‘The Shining’ Just Premiered
With Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film still regarded as one of the most chilling horror films to grace the genre, it’s a bold move to lift those basic plot points and plop them into a shoestring-budget indie movie. But writer-director Stewart Thorndike’s second feature, Bad Things—which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and streams on Shudder August 18—doesn’t have any apprehensions about the comparisons it’s bound to generate. Thorndike and the small handful of actors in her movie all operate with an indisputable confidence, twisting its inspiration into something perfectly eerie and driven by feminine rage, until it feels almost entirely new.”
(l-r) Luann de Lesseps and Sonja Morgan.
See: Luann & Sonja: Welcome to Crappie Lake
Luann & Sonja: Welcome to Crappie Lake closed out on an unexpectedly heartwrenching note for such a gloriously slapstick show. But that’s just the thing: This summer’s best new reality show surprised its viewers—and its two stars—at every single turn.
Here’s Kevin Fallon’s take:
“Something you’d never expect will happen when you watch Sunday night’s season finale of Luann & Sonja: Welcome to Crappie Lake: You will cry. It’s proof of how much of a wonderful surprise the reality series has been—and how it subverted fans’ expectations for what it was going to be.
Sonja Morgan Is a Changed Woman After ‘Welcome to Crappie Lake’
The premise was simple. Real Housewives of New York City veterans Sonja Morgan and Luann de Lesseps are sent to the small town of Benton, Illinois (population: 6,708). In the scorching heat of summer, they’d be put up in a seedy roadside motel and tasked with rehabilitating the town, which had been hit hard by COVID. It was A Simple Life meets Green Acres with a dash of Schitt’s Creek; we were meant to laugh at these two Upper East Side divas recoiling at the horrors of rural living.
But as they worked hand-in-hand with Benton locals to build a new playground, renovate the animal shelter, and put on a series of events to drive tourism and build community spirit, it became clear that, funny as Morgan and de Lesseps are together, this was not a joke to them. Over the course of six weeks, they forged deep bonds with the people of Benton, and really got their hands dirty—in one case, literally into the mouth of catfish—to ensure that they made good on their promise to help the town.”
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