February 2024 Movies Ranked

With February coming to a close, I wanted to share my thoughts and ranking of the movies I saw this month. This was a pretty bare month for movies and I was only able to see 3. This was partially due to there just not being much out and also me going on vacation for a week. Unfortunately, this was another dumping month for movies where studios released low-level films that weren't all that great. Starting in March, things should pick up a bit with the amount of movies coming out. With all that being said, here are my thoughts and ranking of the 3 February films that I saw.

3. Madame Web

Madame Web is easily one of the worst films I have seen this year. It is just another poor attempt by Sony to make a Spider-Man villain movie without Spider-Man in it. To its credit, the movie makes an attempt to be a mid-budget throwback action thriller and tonally it achieves it reasonably well. Where the movie lacks is in its quality of plot, writing, and characters. The movie is more concerned with setting up a Spider-Woman movie and shoehorning Peter Parker references into its story than it is actually telling a good story and then it doesn't even pay off or resolve any of the references it sets up. None of the characters have any depth to them at all. The three girls that Cassandra is protecting have about one defining character trait and could easily be combined into a single character. The villain is also just terribly written. The movie gives no details on who he is or why he is bad. All we get is that he wants the magic spider and has a vision about these three girls killing. Nothing about why he wanted the spider or what is evil about him. Overall, this is just a bad movie and proof that the only reason Sony is putting these out is to keep the rights to Spider-Man.

Score: 4.5/10 Grade: C-

2. Argylle

Argylle is the newest spy action comedy from Matthew Vaughn. This movie was very goofy but still very entertaining and a lot of fun to watch. The first half of this movie plays as a self-aware spy movie that makes fun of various spy movie tropes. I found that this first part of the movie works very well. Sam Rockwell plays a fun action star and the various action sequences and music are a lot of fun. The movie also has a stacked cast with Henry Cavil, John Cena, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Samuel L Jackson, and Bryan Cranston. I also thought most of the action sequences throughout the movie were very colorful and a lot of fun. Where the movie really goes off the rails is in the second half. It takes a hard left turn and just gets so goofy that it verges into parody territory. It just gets a bit too goofy and goes too hard in the new plot direction that it becomes a bit off-putting. Several plot points just don't make a ton of sense and come across as a bit dumb. In the end, while the movie does go a bit off the rails in the second half, it is still a lot of fun to watch and keeps me entertained.

Score: 6/10 Grade: C+

I. Lisa Frankenstein

Lisa Frankenstein was probably the weirdest movie I've seen this year, but also surprisingly the best movie of the month, but if you look at its score, was not a very high bar. Lisa Frankenstein is a bit of an offbeat love story but does it reasonably well. It had a lot more funny moments in it than I was expecting but also got surprisingly dark at times. I thought Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse were both great in this movie. Kathryn Newton gets really into her role as Lisa as she becomes progressively more dark and Cole Sprouse does a great job of portraying emotion and humor while not actually having any lines as The Creature. I also enjoyed the 1970s setting of the film and thought the movie did a great job portraying this with the costumes and music. Of course, while this movie is in first place, it still isn't a high-quality film. There are a few plot holes and Lisa's character change is a bit abrupt but overall it was a solid enough movie that was a lot better than I was expecting it to be.

Score: 6.5/10 Grade: B-