Category Archives: Film Review

A Lesson From The Past: A Date With Your Family (1950)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s lesson from the past comes from 1950.  Harry Truman was in the White House, UN peacekeepers were in Korea, and Gloria Swanson was killing William Holden on Sunset Boulevard.  Meanwhile, the American family was apparently built upon a foundation of repression, conformity, and good table manners.

Or, at least, that’s the impression that one gets from watching A Date With Your Family. 

A Date With Your Family is a 10 minutes education film that was apparently meant to encourage families to eat more and talk less.  Not only does this film explain the importance of the family dinner but it also makes several other relevent points.  For example:

1) “Pleasant, unemotional discussion helps digestion.”

2) “With your own family, you can relax.  Be yourself.  Just make sure it’s your best self.”

3) “These boys greet their Dad as though they were genuinely glad to see him, as though they really missed him”

This film also explains the importance of looking “pleasant” for your husband when he gets home from a hard day at the office, of not spending too much time on the phone, and of not talking about anything that might upset the family’s patriarchal unit. 

Personally, my favorite moment is when “Daughter” won’t stop talking at the dinner table and the rest of her family gives her the exact same look that my older sisters always used to give me.

A Warning From The Past: Joy Ride: An Auto Theft (1976)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’ve mentioned in the past how much I love the old “educational” film from the past that were designed to keep stupid people from doing stupid things, like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, attempting to steal copper wiring, or driving too fast without a license.

That last issue is the one that is dealt with in the 1976 short film (and time capsule), Joy Ride.  In Joy Ride, two teenagers go to a little league game, have an existential crisis, steal a car, talk about the inherent weirdness of names, and play lots and lots of pinball.

It’s easy to make fun of a film like Joy Ride but I have to admit that I’m strangely fascinated by this short film.  Between the ennui-soaked conversation of the two protagonists and the frequent use of jump cuts and zooms, it’s hard not to feel that if Jean-Luc Godard ever made a driver’s ed film, it would look something like Joy Ride.  

I also have to admit that I enjoyed the use of the “You broke my car so I broke your jaw,” song.

A Dissapointing One Night Stand: Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World (dir by Lorene Scafaria)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As a film, Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is kinda like this cute guy that I once sat behind in a creative writing class.  He talked so passionately about his writing that it made it even more disappointing when he finally showed me what he had written and it turned out to be the blandest rip-off of Kerouac that I had ever read.  Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World has such a  great trailer and such a great cast that it’s impossible not to be disappointed even more than usual that the actual film is mediocre.

The opening scene of Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World finds Dodge (Steve Carell) and his wife parked off the side of the road, listening to a news report informing them that, in 20 days, a gigantic asteroid named Matilda is going to crash into the Earth and end existence as we know it.  Dodge responds to the news by saying that he thinks that he missed their exit on the highway.  His wife responds by silently getting out of the car and running away into the night, never to be seen again.  It’s a brilliant opening and it filled me with false hope for the rest of the film.

Anyway, Dodge continues to go about his life even as the countdown to end of it commences.  He goes to work, he goes to a depressing dinner party, and occasionally, he stops moving long enough to watch another random person commit suicide in front of him.  Yes, Dodge is pretty depressed but luckily, there’s a manic pixie dream girl (Kiera Knightley) living in the apartment below him.  When rioting breaks out, he and Knightley escape to the countryside where they search for both Dodge’s high school girlfriend and an airplane to allow Knightley to fly back to England and see her parents.  Along the way, they fall in love and the entire film pretty much falls apart.

Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is at its best during the first fourth of the film when the emphasis is on dark humor and the absurdity of the situation that Dodge has found himself in.  Unfortunately, once Carell and Knightley leave the city and find themselves traveling through the most prosaic countryside imaginable, the film seems to be unsure of just what exactly it wants to be.  The mix of dark humor and uplifting message is an awkward one and the end result is an uneven film that, ultimately, is just too bland to suggest that we should care that the world’s going to end.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to truly forgive Steve Carell for leaving The Office and turning my favorite TV show into The Ed Helms Show.  However, when I blink enough times that I can actually look at things from a perspective beyond my own selfish concerns, I can see that Carell made the right decision.  Steve Carell is a film star and that’s proven by the fact that, even when he’s appearing in a mediocre film, he’s still compelling to watch.  As uneven as Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is, Carell gives an excellent performance.  I think the secret to Steve Carell’s on-screen charisma is that he’s got the saddest eyes in the movies.  There’s a sense of real sadness and regret to every character that Steve Carell has ever played and, as a result, he can make the weakest of material seem poignant.  As disappointing as Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is, it remains watchable and that’s almost totally due to Steve Carell.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Savages (dir. by Oliver Stone)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For the past 5 months,  every time I’ve gone to the movies, I’ve seen the trailer for Oliver Stone’s new film, Savages.  It’s a pretty exciting trailer, featuring sex, violence, and Taylor Kitsch’s abs.  Despite Oliver Stone’s recent track record of making preachy, boring films, that trailer got a lot of people excited about the prospect of seeing Savages. 

Well, the film has been released, I’ve seen it, and you know what?  Sometimes, trailers lie.

Savages is the story of Chon, Ben, and O.  Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and Ben (Aaron Johnson) sell the greatest weed in the world and O (Blake Lively) is the woman who loves both of them at the same time.  O, by the way, is short for Ophelia and she narrates the film in such a monotonous style that I have to admit that I was shocked to discover that she actually knew she was named after Hamlet’s doomed girlfriend.  Chon is a violent former Navy SEAL while Ben is a laid-back buddhist who wants to get out of the drug business so he can devote his time to environmental activism. (Zzzzzzzzzz….)

Ben’s marijuana becomes so legendary that soon, a Mexican drug cartel led by Salma Hayek decides that both Ben and Chon are going to work exclusively for them.  Ben and Chon refuse so Hayek sends Benicio Del Toro to kidnap O and hold her hostage until Ben and Chon come around.  Ben and Chon, however, have plans of their own…

On the positive side, Hayek, Del Toro, and John Travolta (playing a corrupt DEA agent) all give excellent performances that would seem to indicate that they — as opposed to everyone else involved with Savages — understand that they’re appearing in an expensive B-movie.  They openly devour every piece of scenery in the film and have a fun time wringing every ounce of melodrama out of their pulpy dialogue.  These three actors are fun to watch and it’s a shame that the same can’t be said for the other half of the film’s main cast.

Jennifer Lawrence was originally cast in the role of O but she dropped out of Savages so that she could star in The Hunger Games.  The role was recast with Blake Lively, who looks like she could be Jennifer Lawrence’s older sister but who, as an actress, has never exhibited the type of wounded determination that has become Lawrence’s trademark.  As played by Lively, O is such a passive character that it’s difficult to really care that much about whether she survives or doesn’t.  Instead of being a strong, independent woman who is unashamed of her lifestyle, O just comes across as a spoiled and vapid pawn, a possession who is traded between the film’s various players.  It doesn’t help that Lively delivers her heavy-handed narration in a flat monotone that makes her come across less like a hard-boiled survivor and more like a spoiled rich girl trying to sound jaded.  Every time I heard her refer to Chon and Ben as being “my guys,” I just wanted to scream at the screen, “No, you stupid bitch, you belong to them!  They don’t belong to you!”

As for “her guys,” Taylor Kitsch is believable as a killer but not as a stoner.  (Kitsch’s character comes across as if he’s been snorting cocaine as opposed to smoking weed.)  Aaron Johnson, meanwhile, is a very believable stoner but he’s a lot less believable once his character becomes a killer.  Unfortunately, neither Kitch nor Johnson show much in the way of charisma in this film and that’s a shame because both of them have shown in the past that they are capable of giving good performances.  (Seriously,  just check out Aaron Johnson’s performance in the criminally underrated John Lennon biopic, Nowhere Boy.)  With neither Chon nor Ben being all that interesting, the film ultimately becomes a rather empty display of style.

And there’s no denying it — Savages has got style to burn.  Oliver Stone shows here that — despite such anemic recent films as Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps — he still knows how to film an explosion.  Unfortunately, there’s not much going on beneath all of that style and the end result is a film that mostly succeeds in making both sex and violence boring.

Review: The Amazing Spider-Man (dir. by Marc Webb)

Posted on by Arleigh

It was in the summer of 2002 that the superhero film genre finally entered it’s Golden Age (or Silver Age for some). X-Men had come out two years before to positive acclaim and, most importantly, in the box-office. It wasn’t until Sam Raimi released the first in what would be his trilogy in the Spider-Man film franchise that superhero comic book films became the power in Hollywood it remains to this day. The first film from Raimi easily captured the pulp and campy sensibilities of the source material and for an origin story film it was done quite well in that it introduced the titular character and what made him tick. In 2004, Raimi and company released what many consider the best comic book film with Spider-Man 2. The film brought a level of Greek tragedy to the fun of the first film and it definitely brought one of the best realized comic book villains on film with Alfred Molina as Dr. Octopus. Then the franchise hit a major bump in 2007 with Raimi third entry in the franchise with the bloated Spider-Man 3.

Sony Pictures, who owned the film rights to the Spider-Man franchise, were so quick to churn out a fourth film, but in doing so lost the filmmaker and cast that made the trilogy happen. In the studios’ thinking they needed to get a fourth film up and running in order to keep the rights to the film from reverting back to Marvel and Disney. So, out goes Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and in comes Marc Webb, Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. Instead of getting Spider-Man 4 we get The Amazing Spider-Man which doesn’t continue what Raimi had established with the first three films, but reboots the franchise all the way to the beginning.

Marc Webb takes the screenplay worked on by a trio of screenwriters (James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent, Steve Kloves) and reboots the origin story of Peter Parker’s transformation into Spider-Man. We find Peter Parker back in high school as a student and still getting bullied by Flash Thompson while remaining awkward around girls (especially one Gwen Stacy played by Emma Stone). yet, before we even get to this part of the film we get an introductory coda where we find a preadolescent Peter Parker playing hide and seek with his scientist father. These early scenes show hints that the enhanced spider thatwill bite and give eter his abilities may have had his father’s research and work written all over it.

This intro influences much of the storyline and leaves a huge impact on the character of Peter Parker which the previous three films never explored. The rest of the film has Peter investigating the circumstances of his parent’s disappearance and his adjustment to having been given the superhuman abilities by the spider that his father may or may not have been responsible in breeding.

First off, the film does a good job in re-establishing Peter Parker as a high school student. The original film spent some time in this part of Peter Parker’s life but never truly explored it. We see Peter not just the class genius, but also one who also shows an affinity for photography (something that the original trilogy never really explained other than he needed the job and money). There’s also some added layers to the character as this version of Peter Parker is more than willing to stand up to the bullies picking on the weaker students other than himself. It’s a huge departure from the meek and geeky Peter Parker of the past. We still get a geeky and smart Peter, but one who is also a sort of a well-intentioned slacker. We also get a proper introduction for Gwen Stacy (something the third film criminally mishandled)

The film introduces once again many of the characters the first film in the series had already done. From Uncle Ben (played by Martin Sheen this time around) and Aunt May (Sally Field) right up to the robber who runs into Uncle Ben and changes Peter Parker’s outlook on his role as a hero forever. Again these were character that had already been explored by the first three films and they’re scenes that had an air of familiarity to them though Sheen performance as Uncle Ben added more layers to the character who becomes Peter Parker’s moral center.

Another thing that the film did a good job with was the design of the film. It has been ten years since the first film and the technology in CGI-effects has leapfrogged exponentially since. The look of the OsCorp Tower was a beautiful piece of architectural design. The building loomed over New York City like something dark with a hint of malice. There were changes to the suit Peter wears that really harkens back to the McFarlane years of the Spider-Man comics. Even the return of the web-shooters was a nice surprise that I had some reservations when first hearing about it.

A third good thing about the film was the extended montage when Peter Parker realizes he has gained new abilities and begins to test them out. It’s familiar territory from the first film, but Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield adds a new level of youthful exuberance to the proceedings. Even the use of parkour by Peter Parker to show his growing abilities didn’t come off as silly. Garfield’s performance as Peter Parker in this montage was pretty great. One could believe at how much fun he was having at discovering each new level of abilities. Even some of the growing pains he goes through after getting bit were some of the more hilarious moments in the film that ultimately lacked much of it in the end.

Which brings us to what made this entertaining film end up becoming a failure in the end.

I admit that the film entertained me in the end, but there were things aboutThe Amazing Spider-Manwhich nagged at me throughout and afterwards. While the film was entertaining the story self and most of the characters were inconsistently written. Once one looked past the action and some of the witty dialogue in the beginning the film’s many plot-holes and head-scratching moments become too glaring to ignore.

The character of Peter Parker does get some new layers of characterization in the beginning, but as the film played out the more the Peter Parker of this film began to stray away from not just what Raimi had created and guided through the first three films but also most of the character’s decade’s long growth in the comics. Yes, we see Peter Parker as the science-genius and even moreso than the one portrayed by Tobey Maguire, but we also don’t get the awkward teen who grows into his abilities, but most importantly, one who learns through tragedy that he has a responsibility to the people around him to protect them even if it means sacrificing his wants and dreams to do so. We don’t just see Peter Parker saving people, but also one who seemed to relish beating up and abusing those who used to do the same to him and/or others. Spider-Man in this film acts more like a bully than a reluctant hero by film’s end. Even the events that should’ve taught him the lessons of self-sacrifice and heeding the needs of the many fail to make much of an impact on the teen superhero. All one has to look at as the perfect example of this darker and more selfish turn to the character was Peter’s whisper to Gwen about promises not being kept being the best ones.

Other characters get inconsistencies in how they’re written. The other big one being Dr. Curt Connors who begins the film as a scientist so intent of not just curing his disability but also helping the world. It’s a character similar in tone to Alfred Molina as Dr. Octopus, yet where that villain remained a tragic one throughout the film and we could see the path which led him to become a villain with Dr. Connors in this fourth film there’s such a huge turnabout in the character’s motivations that whatever sympathy we may have had for Connors was squandered.

Not every character fails to impress. Martin Sheen and Denis Leary as Uncle Ben and Capt. Stacy respectively were fully realized characters who become Peter Parker’s moral centers and voice of reason. In fact, both Sheen and Leary helped anchor the scenes they appeared in and thus made their characters’ fate have the sort of emotional impact that a growing hero needs to move from being reluctant to accepting of his lot in life. It’s a shame that the writers failed to capitalize on the performances of these two character actors to help make Peter Parker more a hero and less a teenager more in love with what he can do instead of realizing that he has more to offer those who are weakest.

This is not to say that the performances by the cast was bad. From Garfield and Stone right up to Ifans, Sheen, Leary and Field, the cast did a great job with an uneven and inconsistent script that was too full of themes and ideas but no focus on any one of them. It’s a wasted opportunity to build on what the previous cast of the three films had created. Even the third film which many would agree as being a huge, bloated mess actually had a singular focus. It was a story that tried to explore Peter Parker’s darker side andhow his life as a superhero negatively impacts everyone around him he cares for. With this Marc Webb production we get a Peter Parker who at times was compassionate when it came to others being bullied and then we get one who relished on doing the same to those he now sees deserving of payback. Even Parker’s hunt for his uncle’s killer which the film spent a considerable time following just got dropped without any sort of resolution. One of the most significant events in Peter’s life gets dumped to the wayside to concentrate on finally pitting Spider-Man against the film’s Lizard.

Did The Amazing Spider-Man need to have gotten made? The answer to that would be a yes.

Did Marc Webb, the three writers in Vanderbilt, Sargent and Kloves and the new cast get the reboot correctly? I would say no.

This was a film that spent too much time reintroducing characters both comic book and film fans already knew intimately. The storyline itself shared many similarities to the second film in the series yet none of the cohesiveness which made that first sequel such an instant classic the moment it premiered in 2004. The Amazing Spider-Man spent so much time trying to come off as a grittier and edgier version of the character (I call this the Christopher Nolan-effect) that what should’ve been coming off as a fun-loving, albeit self-sacrificing hero, came off as a dick once he finally got the full costume on. The people in charge of this reboot sacrificed what was fun about the film franchise for realism that the character and his universe were never steeped in to begin with.

Gritty, edgy and realism may work for Nolan’s take on the Batman film franchise, but for Spidey it fails and just turns what could’ve been a fresh new take on the franchise into another entertaining, but ultimately forgettable entry in the series. Maybe it’s time Sony just realize that it’s just pushing this franchise downhill and let the rights revert back to Marvel who seem to have found a balance between pulpy camp and serious realism.

It’s Time For The Annual Self-Important Post About The Year In Film So Far

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For the entire past week, something has been nagging at me.  I knew that there was something that I needed to do but I couldn’t remember what it was.  Earlier today, however, I was reading the latest critical blathering about the state of cinema over at AwardsDaily.  As usual, that site’s editors were whining about the fact that the Social Network didn’t win best picture and also the fact that my generation is apparently the “WORST.  GENERATION.  EVER” and blah blah blah. 

Fortunately, however, reading that  post reminded me of what I had forgotten: We are now at the halfway mark as far as 2012 is concerned.  This is the time of year that self-important film critics (both online and elsewhere) tell their readers what type of year it’s been so far. 

So, without further ado — what type of year has 2012 been so far?

(By the way, you can also check out my thoughts from July of 2011 and July 2010 as well.)

(Also, please understand that the act of me posting this in no way guarantees that I won’t change my mind several times within the next hour.)

Best Film Of The Year (So Far): Cabin In The Woods. Compared to both 2010 and 2011, this has been a pretty slow year so far.  There really hasn’t been a Hanna or an Exit Through The Gift Shop type of film so far.  Instead, there’s been a handful of nice surprises, quite a few pleasant but somewhat forgettable films, and then quite a few films that i wish were forgettable.  Cabin In The Woods, however, was a nice little valentine to horror fans like me and it’s a film that actually gets even better with repeat viewings.  Runners up include Bernie, Damsels in Distress, Brave, The Hunger Games, Safety Not Guaranteed, Moonrise Kingdom, For Greater Glory, Jeff, Who Lives At Home, and the Avengers.

Best Male Performance Of The Year (So Far): Jack Black in Bernie.  Runners up include Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man and Jason Segal in Jeff, Who Lives At Home.

Best Female Performance of the Year (So Far): Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games.  Seriously, just try to imagine that film with someone else in the lead role.  Runners up include Susan Sarandon in Jeff, Who Lives At Home, Aubrey Plaza in Safety Not Guaranteed, and Greta Gerwig in Damsels in Distress.

Best Voice-Over Performance Of The Year (So Far): Kelly MacDonald in Brave.

Best Ending Of The Year (So Far): A 3-way tie between The Cabin In The Woods, Safety Not Guaranteed, and Jeff, Who Lives At Home.

Best Horror Film Of The Year (So Far): The Cabin In The Woods

Most Underrated Film Of The Year (So Far): The Five-Year Engagement, a sweet and funny movie that was just a tad bit too long.

Best Bad Film of the Year: Battleship.  Yes, the movie represented some of the worst impulses of big-budget filmmaking but I had a lot of fun watching it and Alexander Skarsgard was to die for in that white Navy uniform.

Worst Film Of The Year (So Far): The Wicker Tree.  I could make an argument for both Rock of Ages and The Devil Inside here but no…just no.  As the Trash Film Guru put it, “BURN THE WICKER TREE!”

Biggest Example Of A Missed Opportunity For This Year (So Far): Seeking a Friend For The End of the World.  A great performance from Steve Carrel can’t save a film that has no idea what it wants to be.

The Get Over It Already Award For The First Half of 2012: The Devil Inside, for being the most tedious example of a “found footage” horror film yet.  Coming in second: Rock of Ages, for reminding me that my parents had terrible taste in music.

The Trailer That Has Most Outgrown Its Welcome: The Perks of Being a Wall Flower.  “Be aggressive…passive aggressive…” Okay, shut up, already.

The Cameron/Fincher Bandwagon Trophy (Awarded To The Upcoming Film That, Regardless Of Quality, Will Probably Be So Violently Embraced By People Online That You’ll Be Putting Your Life In Danger If You Dare Offer Up The Slightest Amount Of Criticism): The Dark Knight Rises

The Ebert Award (Awarded to the upcoming film that will probably get  positive reviews based on the film’s political context as opposed to the film itself): Zero Dark Thirty

The Sasha Award (Awarded To The Film That I Am Predicting Will Be The Most Overrated Of The Year): Lincoln.

The Roland Emmerich/Rod Lurie Award For The Film That I’m Predicting Will Be The Worst Of 2012: Honestly, it’s really hard to imagine a worse film than The Wicker Tree (though, to be honest, Rock of Ages comes pretty close). 

Films I’m Looking Forward To Seeing In The Future (An incomplete list): On The Road, Lawless, The Dark Knight Rises, Cosmopolis, Django Unchained, The Hobbit, The Great Gatsby, and especially The Master and Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina.

And there you have it.  2012 hasn’t been a great year so far but there’s still a lot of time left.

Unless, of course, the Mayans were correct.

The Amazing Spider-man

Posted on by Viktor VonGlum

Image

The Amazing Spider-Man

I am pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the film. The only thing that interested me from the trailers was his new fangled compact web shooters.  It was not a perfect film but it gave me a more authentic Peter Parker than the previous films.

What I Loved:

  1. Garfield’s Peter Parker… he gave the character a soul. He made the audience empathize with Peter’s joy and pain.
  2. The scientifically gifted Peter Parker: the film clearly and smoothly demonstrated throughout the film.
  3. Eugene “Flash” Thompson had some depth… he wasn’t another generic one dimensional bully. He offered Peter a proverbial shoulder to cry on after his uncle died and he reacted gently to Pete’s outburst. He even went the extra step of checking up on Pete some time after.  These acts of kindness redeemed Flash in my eyes.
  4. The introduction of Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker’s true love and intellectual equal: Emma Stone was a better fit in this role than Kirsten Dunst was as MJ.
  5. The compact web shooters: I loved this design. It makes sense and wouldn’t mind if the comic Peter Parker refined his classics to this model.
  6. The chemistry that Garfield and Stone had on screen, it didn’t feel wooden or forced like some other super hero romances.
  7. Captain Stacy centering Peter by telling him that Spider-Man’s blind vendetta put innocent people’s lives at stake. He prevented this film from going to the dark places that the previous films have traversed.
  8. I loved Sally Field and Martin Sheen as May and Ben Parker.  I was visibly shaken when Ben wrestled the crook and was shocked. I don’t recall being emotionally moved in the Raimi films.
  9. The animal motiff, like Peter hunting like a spider and using his web to track his prey.

What Irked Me:

  1. Curt Connors wasn’t a very interesting or compelling villain. He lacked a certain spark and his motivation wasn’t believable either. I felt that depriving Connors of his family weakened his overall potency in addition to lumping him with Norman Osborne. His passion would have been more believable if he wanted to be whole for the sake of his family, especially his young son.  I would have loved if the Lizard was a separate personality instead of an uninhibited and unhinged Connors.  If they fleshed out the Lizard as Golem to Connor’s Smeagol would have added some depth but I guess time constraints prevented this.  The mysterious guest at the end was more interesting that Connors… I will end my rant now… forgive me for exposing my geek.
  2. The web fluids: I disliked the fact that Peter didn’t invent it.  He just lifted it from OsCorps. It takes something away from his overall brilliance IMO.
  3. The lack of accelerated healing (well not quite Wolverine but faster than the average human’s).
  4. The loose ends like the people on the Q train that saw Pete display his powers or the first thug & his gang who got their collective arses kicked by Pete. Wouldn’t they have gone to the police or tabloids after Spider-Man debuted. How come only one spider escaped? It would be interesting if some more escaped and we ended up with some more Spider-People.

Lisa Marie Does The Amazing Spider-Man (dir. by Marc Webb)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have to admit that, before I saw The Amazing Spider-Man on Tuesday, all I knew about the character was that he could climb walls, shoot webs, and that Tobey Maguire played him in three films, two of which were fun and one of which wasn’t.  However, my boyfriend is a Spider-Man fanatic so, on Monday night, I asked him to tell me everything that he knew about the character and everything that I should know before I even tried to write a review of this latest film.

“Everything?” he asked.

“Everything,” I replied, “I mean, I know about the spider bite and his uncle and Kirsten Dunst and all that.  How much more could there be?”

Well, he told me how much more there was.  A few hours later, I threw up my hands in exasperation and jealousy while shouting, “Well, if you love Spider-Man so much, why don’t you take him to the movies!?”  Being the wonderful and patient guy that he is, Jeff explained to me the many reasons why he prefers my company to Spider-Man’s.  While most of those reasons would probably be considered too TMI for me to go into too much detail about on this site, it was still nice of him to reassure me.  The fact of the matter is that Spider-Man has became a cultural icon, a figure that is now known not only to the cute guy who grew up with him but also to people, like me, whose knowledge of costumed super heroes is pretty much limited to what shows up on the movie screen.

Perhaps that’s why Marc Webb’s reboot of The Amazing Spider-Man has been so highly anticipated.  Having seen it, I’m happy to say that the film, while uneven, has plenty to please both fans and newcomers alike.

The first part of the film pretty much retells the familiar origin of Spider-Man.  Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a nerdy high school outcast who lives with his aunt and uncle (Sally Field and Martin Sheen).  A scientific genius, Peter is bullied by jocks and spends his time pining for a girl who he can’t work up the courage to talk to.  One day, Peter gets bitten by a radioactive spider and soon, he has all the powers of a spider.  At first, Peter has a selfish reaction to his new powers and he sees little reason why he should use them to protect a society that has rejected him.  However, that all changes once Peter’s saint of an uncle is killed by a criminal that Peter earlier refused to help capture. 

As many critics have pointed out, this is all familiar to anyone who saw the first Spider-Man film but that familiarity doesn’t detract from the film’s effectiveness.  The fact of the matter is that Spider-Man, much like Batman, has become a part of American folklore.  These are stories that are meant to be told and retold with each teller bringing his own unique spin to the material.

The film works best during this first half, when Peter is first discovering and learning how to deal with his powers while pursuing a tentative romance with Gwen (played by Emma Stone) under the disapproving eye of her father (Denis Leary), who just happens to be a police detective obsessed with capturing Spider-Man.  This is largely because the first half of the film is dominated by Andrew Garfield.

Andrew Garfield has been one of my favorite actors ever since I first noticed him in Never Let Me Go and he brings a wonderfully unpredictable energy to the familiar story of how Peter Parker became Spider-Man.  To his credit, Garfield plays Peter as such an awkward teenager that he’s actually somewhat creepy when we first see him.  Whereas Tobey Maguire just came across like a shy nice guy, Garfield’s performance establishes Peter as a classic outcast and that gives his heroic transformation an extra poignancy.  Unlike a lot of critics, I don’t feel that it’s necessary to praise Garfield’s performance by attacking Maguire’s.  Maguire was the perfect Peter Parker for Sam Raimi’s unique brand of pop art.  Marc Webb, for the first half of the film, take a far more realistic approach to the material and it’s an approach that’s well-suited to Andrew Garfield’s far more neurotic and internalized approach to the role.  If Maguire’s performance owed a lot to Jimmy Stewart, Garfield’s performance reminds one of a young Dennis Hopper.  It, of course, also helps that Garfield has a wonderful chemistry with both Martin Sheen and Emma Stone.

Though the audience I was with seemed to disagree, I found the film’s second half to be significantly weaker than the first.  The latter part of the film is dominated by a pretty standard super-villian, a one-armed scientist (played by Rhys Ifans) who knew Peter’s parents and whose attempts to regenerate his missing arm leads to him turning into a lizard man who lives in the sewers.  Though Ifans is a talented actor and he certainly has the mad scientist look down, his character remains something of a cipher.  You’re never quite sure what Ifans is attempting to do or why he’s attempting to do it and, as a result, his final confrontation with Spider-Man is never quite as compelling (or fun) as one would hope.  It all feels rather oddly generic.

Complaints aside, I enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man and I’m looking forward to the inevitable sequel.  I’m just hoping that the next film in the franchise has a villain that can match up to Garfield’s interpretation of the lead role.

A Warning From The Past: Six Murderous Beliefs

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I don’t know about you but I love watching those old short films from the 50s, 60s, and 70s that were designed to terrify my mom and dad into living a safe, upright, drug-free, patriotic, and community-centric life.  These were the short films that were designed to make sure that everyone understood just what exactly the wages of sin were. 

What I love about these films is just how melodramatic and judgmental they often were.  It wasn’t enough, apparently, to point out that people occasionally made mistakes.  No, instead, every mistake had to be accompanied by a very judgmental narrator saying things like, “No, Jimmy didn’t think before ran across that street.  And now, he’s dead.”

Seriously, if I had been raised on a steady diet of these films, I would be even more of a fragile, neurotic little thing than I am now!

One of my favorites of these films is presented below.  Clocking in at nearly 12 minutes, the classic 1955 scare film Six Murderous Beliefs is designed to make sure that we understand that not only are young people stupid but they’re dangerous as well.  The film presents 6 examples of people foolishly believing one of 6 beliefs that are (as the narrator informs us), “wanted for … MURDER!”  My personal favorite is the second example just because I’ve had the exact same conversation with my sister Erin.

(I also love how, during the first example, the pilot so clearly despises the jock who doesn’t want to wear a parachute.)

And remember … “One of these beliefs might be about to murder you!  So watch carefully…”

 

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Men In Black 3”

Posted on by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

 

Right out of the gate, Men In Black 3 feels dated. Not like something out of the 1960s, which is when most of this film’s story is set, but like something out of the late 90s/early 2000s. Director Barry Sonnenfeld —- who’s had a hell of a time getting other projects off the ground in Hollywood despite helming up two incredibly successful “blockbuster” franchises (MIB and The Addams Family — just in case, like apparently most studio execs, you’d forgotten) — jumps into this thing with so much gusto that you’ll forget within minutes that it’s actually been 10 years since Will Smith’s Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones’ Agent K ran around chasing men from Mars (and even further afield) across the silver screen.

Oh, sure, a lot’s happened in that decade as far as the principals here are concerned — Smith’s been pretty quiet the last few years, for one thing, and Jones has aged pretty visibly and is more or less consigned to supporting roles these days (including here, given that his younger 1960s alter ego, played with impeccable precision by Josh Brolin, actually gets far more screen time than Jones’ present-day version), but it’s pretty clear that when it comes to carrying the load in big-budget brainless summer fare, neither of them has left a step — nor has Sonnenfeld, who puts his foot down on the gas immediately and never once lets up long enough to allow us to do the one thing that’s guaranteed to pulverize the credibility of any glitzy megamiilion-dollar Hollywood FX extravaganza : think.

And ya know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Sure, there’s some sappy “bromance”-type crap shoehorned in here, and a love-interest subplot involving the Agent Ks of both the swingin’ Sixties and the present day, but that’s all fine and good too in the limited doses tha Sonnenfeld serves them up. By and large, though, to the shock of absolutely no one, this flick is all about big, flashy, lighthearted, comedic fun, and that’s something that’s sorely been lacking in the midst of all these dour summer movies this year, like Prometheus, for instance, that take themselves just sooooooo seriously.

Men In Black 3, quite clearly, doesn’t, and that’s perhaps its greatest virtue.The plot’s pretty basic time travel stuff — J goes back in time to prevent K from being killed, various hijinks ensue — but this is one of those films that isn’t so much concerned with doing anything new as it is just doing what everybody and their brother (or sister, or cousin) knows it’s there to do and doing it well. Give us a likable cast, some cool eye-candy effects, a couple little nifty quirks like Andy Warhol actually being a “Man In Black” himself, and you know what? You’ve got the recipe for a very familiar, but nonetheless pleasant, little serving of celluloid. It’s not at all filling on an intellectual, or frankly even artistic, level, but come one — does everything absolutely need to be? Sometimes you just want to go out to the movies, shut your brain off, and have a good time. If that’s the kind of mood you’re in, there’s nothing else out there this summer that will satisfy you quite like Men In Black 3.