New in cinemas: a film that will make you faint, Marvel addition from the Spider universe and a musician biopic

Thursday is movie day! Well, at least in most cases. When big blockbusters start, they may start a day earlier. This is also the case with Sony’s latest Marvel adventure, namely “Mrs. Web“, the case. Since February 14, 2023 you can watch the next entry in the relatively spin-free world of the so-called Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU) in cinemas. In addition, the strong thriller “shock“. If you don’t like gangster fare or comedy spiders, you might enjoy the musician biopic “Bob Marley: One love“, which tells the life of the world-famous reggae artist.

“Madame Web” – Finally spider power for the Spider-Verse?

The Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU) is a blockbuster universe loosely tied to the MCU, focusing on stories about the characters from the Spider-Man comics. Villains like Venom, Kraven and Morbius suddenly get their own movie adventure and get the chance to step out of the shadow of the world-famous Peter Parker.

But so far, the Spider universe has been surprisingly spinless. A problem that is finally solved in ‘Madame Web’, as five new characters with spider powers appear here, although four of them are in training or have not yet discovered their powers. Unfortunately, we can only recommend the latest excursion into the world of Spider-Man and his friends to a limited extent. In our review, FILMSTARTS editor-in-chief Christoph Petersen gives it 2 out of 5 stars and comes to the following conclusion:

“Aside from the great Dakota Johnson, ‘Madame Web’ doesn’t have much to offer to combat the superhero fatigue that is clearly setting in among some of the audience.”

“Shock”: “German cinema, yes [doch] cool!”

We at FILMSTARTS have made it our mission to counter the absurd prejudice that no good films come from Germany. This month our choice fell on “Shock”. The thriller with Denis Moschitto (“Chiko”), Fahri Yardım (“jerks.”) and Anke Engelke (“LOL”) is really hard genre cinema. And when we say hard, we mean really hard: a scene in which the main character files off a protruding finger bone caused people to faint during the premiere.

However, we can only heartily recommend the brutal film Cologne noir. Fans of Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Pusher” trilogy in particular should definitely take a look here. Author Kamil Moll gave his review 4 out of 5 possible stars and came to the following conclusion:

‘Less is sometimes more. ‘Schock’ tells the story of a former doctor who, with concentration and a stylish sense of well-developed, erupting genre violence, ventures too far into the night side.

“Bob Marley: One Love”: the life of a music legend

Biopics about music greats often become real hits at the box office, especially in Germany. Freddie Mercury’s life story, which was explored in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, became the most successful film of 2018 in this country, and the Elton John musical ‘Rocketman’ also attracted more than 720,000 visitors to the cinemas in 2019. With ‘Bob Marley: One Love’ the career of the world-famous reggae artist now finds its way to the big screen. And while this is less party-friendly than the aforementioned superstar biopics, that’s no reason to avoid the film.

On the contrary: director Reinaldo Marcus Green paints a very sensitive, intimate portrait of a man who uses his music to fight for peace and understanding in his home country (and of course in the rest of the world) – and who faces hard blows from the fate in the process. We give “Bob Marley: One Love” a good 3.5 out of 5 stars in our FILMSTARTS review. Fans of the exceptional artist who also enjoy watching Marley (played here by Kingsley Ben-Adir) jam for minutes on end should not miss the film.