Snared in the Spider-verse web

    Just when Oscar season has diverted attention from the ever-accumulating mountain of superhero movies, we get Madame Web. Like other entries in this highly variable genre, Madame Web seems designed to expand the list of characters who, in this instance, spin their way through other movies.

   Dakota Johnson joins Sony's version of the Marvel-verse as Cassandra Webb, the daughter of an arachnologist who, in the movie’s Peruvian prologue, discovers a rare breed of spider and dies during child birth.

    Leaping ahead, the story charts Cassandra's development from a career as a New York City EMT to her belated emergence as Madame Web.

     It doesn't take long for Cassandra -- better know as  Cassie -- to discover that she has the power to see into the future, a capacity depicted in abrupt flashes that hit the screen with the force of pumpkins smashed against walls.

     Plot twists lead Cassie to take charge of three teen-agers (Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O'Connor, and Isabela Merced) who are destined to play roles in the spider-verse's unfolding future.

     Responsible for the death of Cassie's Mom and some awkward early picture exposition, the movie's villain (Tahar Rahim) gains spider powers. He's able to walk on ceilings, for example.

     So where were we? Does it matter?  

     Not really, but for the record, Cassie becomes the girls' protector, forming a familial group dedicated to ... what? ... maybe future movies.

      At least in the early going, director S.J. Clarkson tries to ground the movie in recognizable reality. Cassie and her EMT partner (Adam Scott) deal with big-city perils, but the movie eventually forgets about Scott's Ben Parker, a name that provides a clue about the interconnected spider-verse Clarkson weaves.

     Only box office indifference will end the Marvel onslaught. Meanwhile, lame dialogue, a pervasive lack of wit, and an inability to overcome Marvel fatigue keep this one from going anywhere. 

Problems? This movie has lots of them

 

Heavy-handed and melodramatic,  A Good Person stars Florence Pugh as happy fiancee Allison,  a woman who's behind the wheel when her fiancé's sister and her husband are killed in a terrible crash. The sister happened to be the daughter of an alcoholic former policeman (Morgan Freeman) who’s left to care for Ryan (Celeste O'Connor), his teenage granddaughter. As contrivance would have it, Freeman’s Daniel, who's been sober for years, and Pugh’s Allison meet at an AA meeting when Allison decides it’s time to quit the opioids that numb her post-accident guilt and pain. Allison tries to bolt but Daniel encourages her to stay, and the two develop an unlikely, if sometimes strained, relationship. Chinaza Uche plays Daniel's son, the fiancé Allison dumped after the accident. He's estranged from his father. For added quirk and ham-handed metaphor-making, Daniel is a model train enthusiast whose hobby allows him to control the world he builds for his trains. Life, he recognizes, isn't so easily tamed. Writer/director Zach Braff 's overheated drama can't be saved by its cast or by sincere concerns about forgiveness, perhaps because the screenplay checks off an encumbering list of problems, including drug addiction, careless driving, alcoholism, child abuse, and teen sex. The result: A misfire of a movie that tries to stuff  its two-hour and five-minute running time with more issues than you'd need to stock an eight-part series. 

Power struggles at a boarding school

Selah and the Spades is a teen movie with a difference: Forget sex, these kids are into cruelty and power.

I’m always hesitant about making generalizations. No sooner do I proclaim something to be true than someone will point out the deficiencies of the observation. Having said that, I’ll take a chance and say that I haven’t seen a teen movie quite like Selah and the Spades, the adventurous directorial debut of writer/director Tayarisha Poe.

Set in an elite private boarding school, the idiosyncratic Selah and the Spades avoids the usual teen cliches as it explores the power relationships within the school’s numerous cliques, most notably the Spades, a group dominated by Selah (a terrific Lovie Simone). A senior, Selah not only presides over her cohorts in the Spades but runs an operation that sells drugs throughout the school. Selah may be running a small-time drug operation, but she's also a model student, a cheerleader who tries to excel and is pushed by her mother to do so.

Always calculating, Selah decides that it’s time to train an heir to her throne, selecting a newbie student played by an equally good Celeste O’Connor. A budding photographer, O'Connor's Paloma gradually absorbs the often-cruel lessons that Selah patiently provides as Poe advances the story toward a critical test of loyalty that requires a demonstration of ruthlessness on Paloma’s part.

The Pennsylvania boarding school that provides the story with a setting is racially integrated, but without underlining her point of view, Poe allows us to infer racial distinctions and leaves us to wonder whether Selah hasn’t picked the name of her group (a word sometimes used as a racial slur) as an act of sardonic defiance.

Selah’s second in command, a young man named Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome) does Selah's bidding but learns that it’s not always possible to please such a demanding autocrat.

Few adults populate the movie, although Jesse Williams appears as the new headmaster of the Haldwell School. Among the Haldwell students, Ana Mulvoy Ten has a nice turn as Bobby, the white girl who heads a faction of mean-spirited theater nerds. They're called The Bobbies.

Poe catches us up in this twisted teen world. By the movie’s end, which doesn’t go quite as far as it probably should have, you may find yourself fretting about the future of a generation of young people who seem all-too-adept at trying to annihilate one another. Scary stuff.