Love Hurts (2025)

A friendly real estate agent with a dark secret is reluctantly pulled into a world of murder and intrigue when the past comes catching up with him. This was Ke Huy Quan's first leading man role after winning best supporting actor for Everything Everywhere All at Once, so expectations were sky high, but unfortunately this was a waste of all talents involved. It's a violent action-comedy that ends up feeling like Jackie Chan Lite. I just wasn't feeling it at all.

1½ candy hearts out of 5

Kraven the Hunter (2024)

The Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU) revolves around villains and ancillary characters from the Spider-Man comics without actually involving the web-slinger himself (the character is currently on loan to the Disney MCU). What we get instead are some half-baked ideas and origin movies that don't really go anywhere. The most successful of these was Venom, which spawned two sequels, but Morbius and Madame Web were plagued by poor creative decisions which ended up cancelling plans for further films in the franchise.

The latest of these, Kraven the Hunter, is based on the villain whose power lies in his name. While attacked and left for dead by a shitty CGI lion, he receives a mystery serum which gives him heightened predatory abilities. We're also introduced to versions of Rhino, Chameleon, Calypso and the Foreigner. The result isn't terrible, but the problem with these origin stories is that they set up future tentpoles that will never come because each of these Sony films has underperformed. What ever happened to making complete standalone movies that don't rely on tying it to future IP? The movie isn't bad per se, there's just a lot of strands that never get paid off and probably never will, especially since these stories remain separate from the Marvel Spider-Man IP, confusingly enough. It's all just a big tease that will never come.

2 spider hallucinations out of 5 

Argylle (2024)

This movie was a hell of a lot of fun, at least up to a certain point where it all falls apart. I still enjoyed it, though. In the vein of Romancing the Stone and The Lost City, a mousy novelist who writes about spies soon finds herself embroiled in a real-life espionage mission. It has some great action set-pieces, especially that fun bullet ballet with all the colored smoke (which was oddly romantic and visually satisfying). The production also quickly scooped up the last-ever Beatles song ("Now & Then") as its musical centerpiece. I would call this movie stylish and cheesy (in the best possible way), but fuck it, I liked it. I'm even down with Matthew Vaughn's future plans to try and fold it into the larger Kingsman universe (as long as its poor box office performance doesn't get it cancelled first).

3 whirlybirds out of 5