Last night, as morning slowly approached, I curled up on the couch in my comfy Hello Kitty bathrobe and turned the TV over to the Retro Channel, where I watched a film from 1983. The name of that film? Eddie Macon’s Run.
Why Was I Watching It?
The short answer is insomnia. The long answer is that, when I checked the guide to see what was on TV at 3 in the morning, Eddie Macon’s Run was the only film listed that I had never heard of before. Since my life’s goal is to see every single film ever made, I knew I would have to watch this mysterious Eddie Macon’s Run at some point so I figured, “Why not tonight?”
What Was It About?
Eddie Macon’s running! Okay, well, there’s actually a little more to it than that…
Eddie (played by John Schneider, who has appeared in countless SyFy films) is a nice, blue-collar guy who finds himself wrongly imprisoned in Hunstville, Texas. During the prison rodeo, Eddie manages to escape and soon, he’s running down to Mexico where his wife and son are waiting. Kirk Douglas plays the cop who chases Eddie across Texas. Whenever Douglas shows up on screen, we hear a saxophone playing on the soundtrack. Scenes of Eddie thinking about his family are accompanied by country songs that, the credits reveal, were sung by John Schneider. Yes, it’s that type of film.
What Worked?
To be honest, the main thing that worked for me about this film is that it was shot on location in rural South Texas. That’s the same part of Texas that my mom grew up in and whenever I would bug her to tell me a story about when she was “my age,” the stories always took place in South Texas and I always enjoy seeing it in films (even if that film, as in the case of this one, goes out of its way to make South Texas seem like the 9th circle of Hell).
John Schneider, all hot and sexy here, gave a surprisingly good performance.
Kirk Douglas, meanwhile, didn’t really give that good of a performance but my God, that man could grimace with the best of them.
A kind of youngish John Goodman shows up for about 2 minutes and the whole process of going, “Oh my God, is that John Goodman!? I think that is John Goodman!” provided a nice break from the film’s general monotony.
What Did Not Work?
This is one of those films that, though it was filmed in Texas, was obviously made by Yankees. As such, the movie is full of actors who were obviously imported from up north and who are painful to listen to as they attempt to recreate the accents of South Texas.
The film, itself, moved about as slowly as the sun going down over the flat plains in North Texas. Seriously — for a film that featured nonstop running and Kirk Douglas finding about a hundred different ways to clench his jaw, Eddie Macon’s Run sure was boring. There’s a scene where Eddie is menaced by two ranchers and I swear to God, it seemed to last for a few hours.
It also quickly became apparent that the only way for the film’s plot to be believable was for every single character in the film to be a complete idiot.
“Oh My God! Just Like Me!” Moment
Eddie eventually meets the niece of the governor of Texas (played by Lee Purcell) and she agrees to help Eddie run because it’s “just a slow Wednesday.” That’s totally why I would get involved with an escaped fugitive as well.
Lessons Learned
Give me a couch and put me in a Hello Kitty bathrobe and I’ll watch anything.
Killer Joe, the latest film from William Friedkin (who, 40 years ago, won an Oscar for directing The French Connection), is rated NC-17 for “graphic disturbing content involving violence and sexuality, and a scene of brutality.” That, more than anything, was why I wanted to see Killer Joe. I wanted to see just how extreme a film starring Matthew McConaughey could possibly be. However, I also knew that the NC-17 rating would mean that I would have to show my ID before being allowed to have my mind corrupted. See, I might be 26 years old but most people seem to assume that I’m 17. That is, until I speak. At that point, they usually realize that they’ve guessed incorrectly and decide that I’m actually 15.
Sure enough, when me and my BFF Evelyn bought our tickets to see Killer Joe earlier this week, I was asked to show my ID. Smiling my sweetest smile, I held up my driver’s license. I was expecting that the ticker seller would just glance at the ID and then say, “Thank you,” but instead, he literally appeared to be studying my picture. His eyes shifted from the license to me and back to the license. I was starting to get nervous because, after all, it’s not like I was trying to get through airport security. I just wanted to see a forbidden movie.
Behind me, I heard Evelyn say, “That looks like a fake to me.”
“Ha ha,” I cleverly replied.
Evelyn responded with, “I don’t trust her. Maybe you guys should strip search her…”
Finally, the ticket seller looked away from my driver’s license and, as he handed me my ticket, he told us that the theater’s management had instructed him to make sure that we understood that we were about to see an explicitly violent film. He also told us that there were free donuts available at the concession stand. That was nice of him.
So, after all that, I finally got to see the forbidden film Killer Joe and you know what? Killer Joe earns its NC-17 rating, not so much because it’s any more exploitive than any other mainstream film released this year but because it’s actually honest about being an exploitation film. Killer Joe may be playing in the arthouses but it’s a grindhouse film and proud of it.
Killer Joe takes place in my hometown of Dallas (though it was filmed in New Orleans) and it features perhaps the sleaziest group of losers that you’ll find on a movie screen this year. Chris (Emile Hirsch) is a drug dealer who lives with his mother and who moves, talks, and thinks with the scrambled energy of a meth addict. His father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) is an affably stupid alcoholic who lives in a trailer park with his second wife, Sharla (Gina Gershon, who gives a ferociously good performance here) and his daughter, 16 year-old Dottie (Juno Temple). Dottie is a spacey girl who is given to sleep walking and who doesn’t appear to be quite all there. Chris is creepily overprotective of her and, though it’s never implicitly stated, it quickly becomes obvious that there’s a rather disturbing subtext to her relationship with both Chris and her father.
Chris has managed to get into debt with some local criminals but he’s got a plan. As he explains to Ansel, his mother has got a sizable life insurance policy and if she dies, the money will go to Dottie. Chris and Ansel hire a hitman to carry out the murder for them. That hitman is Joe (Matthew McConaughey, giving the performance of his career), a demonic charmer who always dresses in black and who has a day job as a homicide detective. When Chris and Ansel explain that they don’t have the money to pay him in advance, Joe agrees to take Dottie as a retainer.
Soon, Joe is living in the trailer park with Dottie, Chris is getting brutally beaten up every time he goes out in the daylight, and the murder doesn’t seem to be any closer to actually happening. When Joe finally does make his move, it all leads to a lot of very brutal violence, a series of betrayals, and a very disturbing scene involving a drumstick from Kentucky Fried Chicken. As I said before, Killer Joe earns that NC-17.
William Friedkin, who has had a rather uneven career, dives right into the film’s sordid atmosphere. The majority of the film takes place in that Hellish trailer park and Friedkin perfectly captures the feeling of a society made up of people who are trapped by their own lack of intelligence, imagination, and status. There’s been a lot of films made about white trash but Killer Joe gets it right, creating an all too believable Hell where everyone can afford to buy a pit bull but not a decent suit (or, in the case of Dottie, a bra). When the violence does come, Friedkin doesn’t shy away from showing it nor does he try to pretend that violence doesn’t have consequences. When people get hurt in Killer Joe, they stay hurt.
Matthew McConaughey is a wonder as Killer Joe. Whereas many actors would tend to go overboard with such a psychotic character (and you’d be justified in expecting McConaughey to go overboard as well), McConaughey is actually rather restrained for most of the film. The power of his performance comes from the fact that, while everyone else is going crazy, McConaughey is subdued and steady. It’s only when he speaks to Dottie that we get a few clues of just what exactly it is that lurks beneath Killer Joe’s coolly professional manner. It’s only towards the end of the film that McConaughey allows his performance to get a bit more showy but, by that point, the entire film has gone to such an extreme that Joe still seems almost sensible.
Killer Joe, however, is not a perfect film. Though the film is set in North Texas (and, in fact, the Texas-setting is pretty important to the film’s overall plot), it was filmed in Louisiana. Speaking as someone who has lived in both of those fine states, trust me when I say that, visually, there’s a huge visual difference between Texas and Louisiana. (Evelyn and I shared a laugh when we spotted Palm Trees in the film’s version of Dallas.)
While the clumsy use of Louisiana as a stand-in for Texas probably won’t be noticeable to anyone outside of the Southwest, a far more noticeable problem with Killer Joe is that the film is based on a stage play and, despite some efforts to open up the action, the film still basically feels rather stagey. This is the type of movie where people tend to deliver semi-poetic monologues about their childhood at the drop of a (cowboy) hat. To a certain extent, the staginess made it easier to handle the film’s violence (and perhaps that was Friedkin’s intention) but, at other times, it just caused the action to drag.
Ultimately, Killer Joe is a film that I would recommend with reservations. It’s definitely not for everyone and I don’t know that it’s a film that I’ll ever want to sit through again (seriously, I’ll be surprised if I ever manage to eat another drumstick) but it is a movie worth seeing. If nothing else, it’s the closest were going to get to a true grindhouse film this year.
I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting much from the new animated film ParaNorman. As much as I love animated films, ParaNorman‘s trailer had never really captured my imagination. (Or, at the very least, it hadn’t captured my imagination in the way that the trailers for Brave and Wreck-It Ralph did.) For the most part, the only reason that ParaNorman was even on my radar was because it was advertised as being the latest film from the creators of Coraline and the only reason that Jeff and I ended up seeing this film last Friday instead of The Expendables 2 was because I had a slight headache and didn’t want to have to spend two hours listening to men yelling, guns firing, and bombs exploding.
In other words, I saw ParaNorman with low-to-no expectations and sometimes, that’s the perfect way to go to the movies because I absolutely loved ParaNorman.
ParaNorman tells the story of Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a shy boy who has the ability to talk to the dead. This talent comes in handy because Norman happens to live in the haunted New England town of Blithe Hollow.
I fell in love with ParaNorman during the opening credits, in which we watch as Norman talks to the spirts of everyone from an unfortunte aviator to a squished dog, all the while simply trying to get to school on time. In this short, wonderfully animated sequence, we learn everything that we need to know about Norman and the town of Blithe Hollow. We learn that Norman is shy, he’s lonely, and he’s also one of the few people in the world nice enough to actually be polite to a pushy ghost demanding his attention. As for the town of Blithe Hollow, it’s a memorably ugly creation, full of ominous buildings that seem to have sprung straight from a nightmare of German Expressionism.
Blithe Hollow, we soon learn, is a town that’s haunted by a lot more than just a few restless spirits. The town was founded by Puritans who, as the film begins, are mostly remembered for their witch hunts. Centuries ago, the town founders burned a witch at the stake and that witch cursed the town. While it wouldn’t be right for me to give away too many details of the plot, it turns out that the witch’s curse is very much real and, as a result of a several complications and mistakes on the part of both Norman and the citizens of Blithe Hollow, the town is soon overrun by zombies.
In a twist that would make George Romero proud, the citizens of Blithe Hollow soon prove themselves to be a hundred times more monsterous and dangerous than the film’s actual monsters. However, as only Norman can actually talk to the dead, he soon discovers that there’s more to the “zombie rampage” then meets the eye. Soon, it becomes apparent that Norman’s the only one who can give the witch what she wants and save Blithe Hollow from the sins of the past.
Not surprisingly, there were a lot of children at the showing that Jeff and I attended and ParaNorman had enough silly moments to keep them entertained. They seemed to enjoy the comedic relief provided by Norman’s fat and loyal friend Neil (voiced by Tucker Albrizzi). That said, ParaNorman isn’t really a film for children. It starts out slow and wisely devotes a good amount of time to establishing the oppressive atmosphere of Blithe Hollow. The film’s resolution comes not with the spectacle that we’ve been conditioned to expect from animated films but instead, the movie ends on a rather subdued, almost mournful note. ParaNorman‘s humor is combined with a very real sense of melancholy and loss. This is a film that can be enjoyed by kids but only truly understood by adults.
(If Dellamorte Dellamore is ever remade as an animated film, I expect the end result will look a lot like ParaNorman.)
Don’t get me wrong, ParaNorman is a funny film that’s full of clever details and smart vocal performances. Along with Smit-McPhee and Albrizzi, the voice cast includes Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, John Goodman, Jeff Garlin, and Leslie Mann. All of them deliver their lines with just the right combination of sincerity and melodrama. However, the film is really stolen by Jodelle Ferland, who voices the condemned witch and who brought me to very real tears towards the end of the movie.
ParaNorman is hardly a perfect film but’s a nicely ambitious one and it has a good message about tolerance. I wasn’t expecting much from it and I ended up adoring it. Perhaps I should lower my expectations more often.
Opening last weekend, The Campaign is the latest comedy from director Jay Roach. The film tells the story of North Carolina Congressman Cam Brady (played by Will Ferrell), a Democrat who will remind viewers of such previous party statesmen as John Edwards and Anthony Weiner. The complacent Brady has been in office for nearly a decade and he is regularly reelected without opposition. However, when Brady accidentally leaves an obscene message on a random family’s answering machine, the multimillionaire Motch brother (John Lithgow and Dan Ayrkroyd) see a chance to replace Brady with a congressman who will essentially belong to them. They recruit the naive and well-meaning Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis) to run against Brady. While Huggins is initially an awkward and unimpressive candidate, his image is soon transformed by a possibly demonic campaign manager (Dylan McDermott). As Huggins starts to move up in the polls, Brady reacts by having a nervous breakdown of his own and soon the campaign gets very personal as both Huggins and Brady go to increasingly outrageous lengths to win the election.
As a work of political satire, The Campaign is fairly uneven. This is largely because, while the film raises some valid points, those points are still the same points that have been made by hundreds of other films about the American political system. If you didn’t already know that the American political system was controlled by wealthy corporations before you saw The Campaign then you probably shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the first place. At its best, the film reminds us that both the Democrats and the Republicans pretty much answer to the same corporate masters. At its worst, the film’s “message” just feels like a stale and predictable lecture that one might hear while visiting an old Occupy camp site.
But if the film doesn’t quite come together as a satire, it does work wonderfully well as a comedy. Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis are two of the funniest guys around and they are at the top of their game in this film. Both of them bring such a sincerity to their absurd characters that even the most predictable of punchlines feel fresh and hilarious. Zach Galifianakis is surprisingly likable and earnest as the painfully sincere Marty. It’s no surprise to see Galifianakis playing someone who could charitably be described as a weirdo. However, Galifianakis also bring a gentleness of spirit to the role and it’s impossible not to root for him. Meanwhile, Will Ferrell not only manages to master a North Carolina accent but also manages to capture both the arrogance and the ignorance that’s necessary for a truly mediocre man to become a succesful politician.
However, the film’s best comedic performance comes from, believe it or not, Dylan McDermott. Playing a slick political operative who always dresses in black and who, occasionally, appears to be possessed by the devil, McDermott is a wonder to behold in this film. He steals every scene that he appears in and the prospect of his return alone should be reason enough for some brave film executive to greenlight The Campaign Part 2.
The Campaign works best when it’s content to simply make us laugh. When it attempts to make a serious statement about the state of American politics, the film often feels flat. But as a laugh-out-loud comedy, The Campaign is a definite winner.
Last night, I watched a little film called Shark Week on the SyFy channel.
Frankie Cullen in Shark Week
Why Was I Watching It?
I was watching for a few reasons. Number one, it was on the SyFy Network and that’s always a good sign. Number two, it’s the latest film to be produced by the folks at the Asylum and that’s usually another good sign that the film, if nothing else, is going to be an interesting viewing experience. Finally, some of the wittiest people on twitter were live tweeting this film and they were tolerant enough not to block me when I decided not to join in.
What’s It About?
It’s Saw Meets Jaws!
So, there’s this evil millionaire guy named Tiberon (played by Patrick Bergin) and he apparently owns a private island just south of the Florida keys and he’s a little bit upset because his son is dead and there’s 8 people that he holds responsible for the death. Those 8 people all have individual names but, to be honest, they’re all pretty interchangeable and I found it easier just to refer to them all by nicknames like Blue Shirt, Tattoo Girl, Skinny Vin Diesel, Ugly Katy Perry, and my personal favorite character in the entire film, Psuedo Arquette (who was played by Frankie Cullen).
Tiberon and his assistant Elena (played by Yancy Butler) kidnap our 8 victims and dump them on an island where they’re forced to fight for their right to live while having to deal with several shark-related booby traps. Why? I assume because the evil guy is named Tiberon (and yes, that’s how he spells it, according to the imdb). Just imagine if the guy was named Kittens. It would have been a totally different movie.
What Worked?
Speaking of the imdb, one reviewer over on that site has already declared that Shark Week is the worst film ever made. To him, I say, “Calm down, your judgmental toadsucker.” Shark Week is a low-budget film with a bunch of hammy acting and obviously cheap special effects. It’s also a lot of fun. Shark Week, like the best SyFy offerings, is a film that’s been specifically designed to inspire you to talk back to your TV. Shark Week is not a film that you watch alone while jotting down critical observations in your Hello Kitty notebook. Shark Week is a movie that you watch with a bunch of friends and you have a good time while doing so. Shark Week doesn’t take itself seriously and neither should you.
Plus, I absolutely adored Frankie Cullen, who played a character named Frankie. I, however, referred to him as Pseudo Arquette throughout the entire film because he really does look like a less goofy, more manly version of David Arquette. I mentioned on twitter that I thought Pseudo Arquette was the cutest guy on the island. “Sweetie, he’s a porn star,” someone tweeted back, referring to the fact that, outside of Shark Week, Cullen’s filmography is made up of movies like Celebrity Sex Tape, The Breastford Wives, The Devil Wears Nada, and Busty Coeds Vs. Lusty Cheerleaders. Well, no matter. I still loved my Psuedo Arquette.
Speaking of which, if I ever take up a second career as a super-powered crime fighter, I hope that the newspapers call me, “Busty CoEd.” As in, “Thank you, Busty CoEd, you saved our town! YAY!”
What Didn’t Work?
The title was a bit of a problem because the film appeared to take place over the course of just two or three days. Certainly, they weren’t on that island for an entire week. Add to that, we were using the #SharkWeek hashtag on twitter to talk about the film while we were watching it and, as a result, we had to deal with other people making random comments like, “I can’t wait for #SharkWeek to start on the Discovery Channel!” Seriously, it got a little annoying after a while.
“Oh my God! Just Like Me!” Moments
Much like Tattoo Girl and Ugly Katy Perry, I’m scared of sharks, too. That’s one of the many reasons why I always stay in the shallow end of the pool.
Lessons Learned
Two lessons learned: First off, you can literally do anything as long as you’re in international waters. Secondly, baby sharks are seriously cute.
Earlier today, Jeff and I went down to the AMC Valley View and saw the new sci-fi comedy The Watch. The Watch has been getting universally negative reviews and it’s proving to be a bit of a bust at the box office (including Jeff and me, there were about 10 people at the showing we saw) but it was still a film that I was looking forward to seeing. This is largely because the film stars three actors — Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, and Vince Vaughn — who are rarely popular with film critics but who almost always seem to find a way to make me laugh.
In The Watch, Ben Stiller plays a suburbanite who deals with his frustrating existence by forming clubs and obsessing over his job as the manager of the local Costco. (Costco, by the way, is actually a major plot point in the overall film and I would say that close to 60% of the actual film either takes place in Costco or involves characters talking about how much they love Costco. Unlike a lot of critics, I’m not morally offended by blatant product placement but, even for me, The Watch went a little bit overboard with all the Costco hype.) Wen the security guard at the Costco is brutally murdered, Stiller decides to form a neighborhood watch so that he can track down the killer. After giving an impassioned speech at a high school football team, Stiller is able to recruit three more members of the neighborhood watch. Vince Vaughn is a goofy guy who is overprotective of his daughter. Jonah Hill is a psycho with a knife and a frustrated desire to be a policeman. And Richard Ayoade is … well, he’s kinda strange but that’s explained away by the fact that he’s apparently English.
And together, they solve crimes!
The solution in this case is that the suburbs have been invaded by aliens. Those aliens have a diabolical plan of their own and it’s up the Neighborhood Watch to stop them. And did I mention that all of this somehow involves Costco?
Because it totally does.
I think The Watch can best be summed up in one word: Forgettable. It’s not a great film but it has a few funny moments. Director Akiva Schaffer got his start directing comedic short films for Saturday Night Live and that’s pretty much the same approach that he brings to The Watch. Every scene feels like a self-contained short film and the end result is a wildly uneven movie that never finds a consistent tone or really seems to be sure just what type of story it’s trying to tell. The mix of raunchy comedy, sci-fi drama, and sentimental bromance never quite gels and, as a result, watching the film almost feels like being forced to try to concentrate on three different movies at once, never being allowed to truly focus on a single one of them.
However, taking all of that into account, I still have to say that I laughed out loud several times during The Watch. I may not have laughed quite as much as the 300 lbs. gentleman, sitting two rows behind us, who sounded as if he might choke to death every time Vince Vaughn delivered the line, “It feels like cum,” but I still laughed. The Watch is a funny movie. Quite frankly, with a cast like this, there’s no way that the movie couldn’t have been funny. The main thing that I love about watching Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill is the way that both of them bring an almost earnest sincerity to even the most ludicrous of roles. As a result, Hill and Vaughn are actors who can get laughs out of even the weakest of jokes and they certainly get a oppurtunity to prove it in The Watch. Meanwhile, Ayoade gives a wonderfully bizarre performance, scoring a lot of laughs just from being so consistently odd. Ben Stiller does his usual uptight suburbanite routine and makes a good straight man for his 3 co-stars. The Watch is at its best when it just lets its four stars hang out and play off of each other.
For such a forgettable film, The Watch has been the subject of some controversy. The film was originally titled Neighborhood Watch until, earlier this year, Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by a member of a real life neighborhood watch. The title was changed to avoid being “insensitive.” Regardless of the film’s title, I have to admit that I did cringe a little at a rather lengthy joke that involved the film’s heroes — all wearing their “neighborhood watch” jackets — firing several bullets into the body of an apparently dead alien. That said, The Watch is ultimately neither pro nor anti-neighborhood watch. In the end, the only thing that the film seems to truly believe in is the universal importance of Costco.
That’s what some people are already calling the upcoming James Bond film, Skyfall. Based on the just-released official trailer, you can see why.
Despite the fact that the trailer seems to highlight everything that annoys me about Daniel Craig’s interpretation of James Bond as being a humorless thug (and yes, I know that’s the way he was presented in the original novels but dammit, I don’t care!), I still have to admit that Skyfall looks like it’ll be a more memorable film than Quantum of Solace. Javier Bardem seems like a perfect choice to play a Bond villain, though I want to slap whoever did that to his hair.
Skyfall will open in the U.S. on my birthday, November 9th.
No offense to anyone who read or writes for this site but if I have to choose between watching The Dark Knight and the Room, I’m going to choose the Room every time. It’s not that I don’t think that Christopher Nolan’s Batman films make for a good trilogy. I enjoyed all three of the Dark Knight films. It’s just that The Room is a film that I can watch over and over and over again. This is largely because The Room is only 90 minutes long whereas the Dark Knight trilogy is closer to 8 hours.
Anyway, for those of you who simply cannot accept The Room’s superiority to the Dark Knight, check out this trailer for The Dark Room.
One of the upcoming films that everyone’s been predicting will be a major Oscar contender is Ang Lee’s Life of Pi. To a certain extent, I thought some of that hype might be because everyone knows that, even though Lee was named best director, Crash totally stole the award for best picture from Brokeback Mountain.
(Seriously, even my cousins from South Texas — the majority of whom wear cowboy hats and take the term “real man” quite seriously — have commented to me that Brokeback Mountain was a better film than Crash. And you know what? I agree with them but I also think that Capote was a better film than both of them.)
However, I’ve just seen the trailer for Life of Pi was I have to admit that I was blown away and, by the end of it, I was nearly moved to tears. In many ways, this trailer feels less like an advertisement for a movie and more like a touching and powerful short film that could easily stand alone as a work of art. After seeing this trailer — despite the fact that, as I’ve probably mentioned before, I’m just a little bit terrified of the water (or, more specifically, drowning in the water) — I can say that Life of Pi is a film that I’m very much looking forward to seeing.
I know, I know — it’s really not even fair, is it? To review director Marc Webb’s probably-happening-to-quickly relaunch of Marvel’s Spider-Man franchise in the wake of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises seems like setting this flick up for defeat. Truth be told, though, I actually saw this flick on opening night, and held off on reviewing it here on Through The Shattered Lens because, well — everybody else was already having a crack at it on here. I swear. I think this is the fourth or fifth review of this film to go up here. So I held off. And honestly, the fact that I wasn’t rushing home to sit down and review it right away should tell you something right there, shouldn’t it?
Not that The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t a perfectly decent little superhero flick, it is. But that’s all it is. I can’t find much fault here, really — Webb’s directive from Columbia seems to have been to, in effect, Nolan-ize the Spider-Man story with this reboot, and on the surface, he seems to have done that. The tone is darker and more somber. James Garfield’s take on Peter Parker is altogether more haunted and troubling than was Tobey Maguire’s. He’s less likable, too — a development I actually welcome. Emma Stone does a nice job as high-school love interest Gwen Stacy. Martin Sheen’s Uncle Ben in an altogether more realistic and involving take on the character than we got in Sam Raimi’s first flick. Sally Field is great as Aunt May. Dennis Leary does a fine job as Gwen’s dad, police Captain George Stacy, who has a hard-on to arrest Spider-Man. Campbell Scott, in flashback scenes as Peter Parker’s dad, cuts both a kindly and haunting figure, and the decision of the filmmakers/studio to concentrate on the mystery surrounding the elder Parkers is a good one that gives the series a little bit more depth.About the only two serious knocks against the film are the normally-reliable Rhys Ifans’ take on the villainous Curt Connors/Lizard, his performance in both roles being of a distinctly lacking/mail-in-in nature, and the CGI effects in general, which are of middling quality, particularly in terms of their realization of Connors’ Lizard persona (or maybe that should be reptile-ona). They’re not bad, but they’re not up to the level we expect in our summer blockbusters at this point, and I would say they’re pretty of a piece, quality-wise, with, say, the second Hulk flick.
Anyway, by and large, the word we’re looking for here, across the board, is competent. Not inspired, by any means, and not groundbreaking — just competent. I’ll be honest and admit I liked this flick better than Joss Whedon’s Avengers, since it at least provided some level of human melodrama to back up the action, but it seems that the lesson studios have taken from Nolan raising the bar on the entire superhero genre is not that we want more complex, challenging, higher-quality, more technically-brilliant, more multi-faceted fare, but that we just want these flicks to be “darker” and “more realistic.” They “get” what the success of the Batman films means on a surface level, but they really don’t “get it” at all.
For those of you who are old enough to remember the “evolution” of the comics medium in the mid-to-late ’80s with books like Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, assuming you were paying attention to comics back then, this will all seem terribly familiar — after the success of those two books, the “Big Two” publishers said they got the message and that people were ready for “superheroes to grow up.” And what did we get? Not more intelligent, thought-provoking, boundary-pushing, stories and characters that challenged the conventions of the genre itself the way those works did, but a steady stream of “darker,” more “mature,” somber, soul-less versions of the same kind of crap the industry was already cranking out — a state of “creative” affairs that continues unabated to this day. Nolan’s raised the bar on superhero storytelling on the silver screen the same way that Miller, Moore, and Gibbons did on the printed page, and Hollywood seems to have taken the same “lessons” from it that Marvel and DC did a quarter-century ago.
in other words, welcome to a new age of superhero sameness. On the one extreme we’ll have pure, unfiltered, two-dimensional, check-your-brain-at-the-door, CGI-heavy slugfests, a la The Avengers. Comics could always do these and do ’em well, and now so can the movies. On the other hand, we’ll have ostensibly more “mature,” “realistic,” “darker” stuff like this. But don’t expect another series with the innate intelligence and willingness to push the envelope in new directions that we’ve gotten with the Dark Knight films anytime too soon. Meet the new boss — same as the old boss.
Mind you, all of this was pretty much written and ready to go before I saw The Dark Knight Rises — and now that I have, my initial view still stands. Reaction to one flick shouldn’t change one’s opinions on another, after all. So yeah, this is perfectly adequate, acceptable superhero fare — but in the wake of DKR , do “adequate” and “acceptable” still cut it? Should they ever have? And are we willing to settle for movies like The Amazing Spider-Man that think that all DKR and its ilk prove are that audiences want the same old stuff, albeit with “darker,” more humorless trappings — or are we going to reward work that does what Nolan’s done with his Batman series in terms of pushing the genre itself in directions we’d never before expected? Let’s vote with our dollars, and vote wisely.
