The Amazing Spider-Man

Film critics are told to go into every movie rooting for it to be a smashing good time.  I must confess that I had no such thinking walking into "The Amazing Spider-Man." I suppose I shared the consensus view that there was no need to re-boot the franchise so soon after Sam Raimi's trilogy.  I think, though, that after the negative reaction fans had towards the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy, there has been considerable efforts from filmmakers charged with the task of rebooting franchises to do it justly, and that's why the James Bond, "Planet of the Apes," "Batman" and other reboots have been so successful. Fortunately, Marc Webb's "The Amazing Spider-Man" is another one of these successful reboots.

Andrew Garfield (from "The Social Network") is Peter Parker, the awkward boy Tobey Macguire portrayed in the original trilogy. Here, as Spider-Man (which he finally becomes at almost an hour into the movie), Garfield suffices, but I suspect he needs one more go-around before getting it completely right. He has had a lot of good training from this one, as his co-stars include Rhys Ifans, Sally Field, and Martin Sheen; those three actors are worth the watch of any movie, so to see all three here is a real treat, and they're all in top form, particularly Ifans, who's given a lot of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" moments to have fun with. It's just a shame that we don't only see this portrayal but also Ifans disguised in silly-looking GGI effects. When he's in his full metamorphosis as the Lizard, he looks rather silly (but again, as a sick scientist, he's wonderful). Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy is as likable and funny as she was in "Easy A" and "Zombieland," but unfortunately isn't given much to do here until near the end. Denis Leary also appears as Stacey's strict, traditional "law-and-order" father (who also happens to be the police chief who despises Spider-Man). Finally, Stan Lee, as he always does, has a cameo here, and it probably is the best Stan Lee cameo ever.

But as Peter Parker the teenage high school student, Garfield overdoes the awkwardness, overplaying his nervous stuttering in front of pretty girls. The audience is too smart to believe that Peter could be severely punched in the stomach and face several times and then waltz into class. But still, despite this taunting from a school bully whose behavior is way too unrealistic (and considering what demons high school bullies are, that is saying a lot), the audience is probably willing to suspend its disbelief and cheer when Peter has fun humiliating him in the school gym. That's after he gets his mutant powers, of course. And he gets those powers in a science lab when a spider bites him....oh, what's the point of discussing all the details of the plot? By now, everyone knows it.

And that's a problem Webb's "Spider-Man" has: it hastily checks through the "to-do" list of a "Spider-Man" reboot: Peter gets bullied, he's bitten by a spider, he gets new powers and struggles to understand how to use them. This is a lesson in the subtle differences in listing versus telling.  Webb and his team believe that they need to go through the check list with all this stuff, and these scenes usually are the ones that don't work. Case in point is the CGI scenes with Spider-Man flying around the city or his nemesis, the Lizard destroying the city. They are disguised as "show-me" moments. The parts that really work are the ones where we're being shown something genuine. Not necessarily the visuals, but the human element that makes up the "Spider-Man" mythology. As expected, a lot of this comes from the relationship between Peter and his surrogate father, Ben, played by Sheen. Sheen's character is a simple, working-class man, and yet he has a lifetime of powerful education to pass down to his nephew. But there are other show-me moments, like when Spider-Man must act quickly to save a boy from a burning car. It reminded me of those pictures of the window-washers at hospitals who sometimes dress up as Spider-Man to entertain the children.  It's evidence that the world not only needs heroes, but movies about super heroes.



This review is dedicated to Roger Ebert, who died on Thursday. He wrote the following about "Spider-Man 2," one of his favorite films of 2004: "Now this is what a superhero movie should be...it's a superhero movie for people who don't go to superhero movies, and for those who do, it's the one they've been yearning for." (In his opinion, "The Amazing Spider-Man" was the second best in the series.)












Movies, movies, theater, cinema, watch, watching, watches, view,  see, saw, celluloid, cine, cinema, cinematics, cinematograph, feature, film, flick, motion picture,moving picture, photoplay, picture, screenplay, show, silent*, silver screen, talkie,talking picture, videotape, Spiderman, Spider-Man, Spider Man, Martin Sheen, Andrew Garfield, Batman, James Bond, Planet of the Apes, Social Network, Emma Stone, amazing, lizard, rhys ifans, roger ebert

Read More →

Afghan Star

Havana Marking's "Afghan Star," the winner of the 2009 Best Director and Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, is perhaps the most interesting look at a country we should, but probably don't, know a lot about. As the title suggests, this is a documentary about Afghanistan. Not about the current and never-ending war there, but, again as the title hints, a documentary regarding the "American Idol"-style television contest, "Afghan Star." To say this show is dangerous for the performers is an understatement, particularly for the female ones. One of them in particular, after she is voted off the show, strips her hair of its cover and dances around the stage for one last performance. The grin of a Westerner's face would likely fade as we then see the reaction of her countrymen and women. They are not pleased. "Afghanistan is an Islamic country," one of them says. Even though she is eliminated, we see her struggle to get back home and avoid the copious amount of threats from conservatives.

Saudi Arabia is an Islamic country, as well, and yet their definition of what is acceptable for women is radically conservative, even by Afghanistan's terms. Considering also that the world has gone through great liberalization in this past decade, it's stunning to see that in a part of the world where women not only studied with men but also sang rock music to shouting fans is now a region where young girls are shot in the head for attending school. Music is forbidden? Why? I can only tell through brief conversations that conservative Muslims believe music has traditionally been seen as distracting Muslims from their religious duties. But what about video games? Why is permissible to be distracted by them? This is something I will never be able to comprehend. But this is a documentary made for Westerners who would like to get up and one second cheer and another lecture. My reaction was similar to the one I had after watching Alison Klayman's "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry." While Westerners may be encouraged, what do most folks in Afghanistan and China have to say about these topics?

As hackneyed as it sounds, you're likely to learn a bit more about Afghan culture through this documentary than you do on the nightly news. Consider that the final contestants are from different ethnic groups--Hezara, Pashtun, and Tajik. I suspect the average viewer would be a bit surprised to see, frankly, what these folks look like. Some folks, particularly Westerners, might wonder why they don't look like Arabs, as it seems the rest of the world lumps Islamic countries all together into the Middle East. I remember several years ago, there was an English language learner at our school in the Czech Republic. She was from Kazakhstan (or one of the "-stans," I can't remember which), and a colleague of mine remarked that "she looks so Asian." I think Americans need to be aware that 1) Asia is not simply Japan, China and the Koreas, but a whole host of nations, and 2) we need to rethink how we "see" ethnicity. A person from Afghanistan most likely does not look too similar to a person from Oman. Regardless, there are stories here that need to be told. Those of people who hid radios during the Taliban rule. As the war begins to end (theoretically), it would be interesting and anxiety-inducing to see what kind of stories we can expect in the next documentaries about Afghanistan.
 



Movies, movies, theater, cinema, watch, watching, watches, view,  see, saw, celluloid, cine, cinema, cinematics, cinematograph, feature, film, flick, motion picture,moving picture, photoplay, picture, screenplay, show, silent*, silver screen, talkie,talking picture, videotape, Afghan, Afghan Star, Islam, controversial, Westerners, documentary, liberal, conservative, 

Read More →

Side Effects

"The good people sleep better, while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more."
-Woody Allen's "Side Effects"

I'm calling about Emily. The doctor-patient relationship has perhaps never been so devilishly portrayed on screen as it is in Steven Soderbergh's "Side Effects," an entirely different film from Woody Allen's collection of short stories. There are four main characters in this movie--a loving husband recently released from prison, his wife who experiences mental illness, and the current and former doctors treating her. But the main focus is on the young wife and her current doctor. The wife is played by Rooney Mara, most famous for her Oscar-nominated performance in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." Mara is Emily, and her husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), is released from prison after serving a term for insider trading. Despite her reunion and a decent job, Emily is severely and hopelessly suffering from depression, to the point where she attempts to take her own life by crashing her car into a wall. In the hospital, she meets Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), the psychiatrist who will treat her. His remedies include a fairly aggressive approach using numerous pills, many of which cause her terrible side effects. After seeking advice from Emily's former psychiatrist (Catherine Zeta-Jones), he puts her on an experimental drug; its main side effect is sleepwalking.

The first half of the movie is an incredibly powerful and haunting look at our seemingly addictive lure to pharmaceutical drugs. Mara is haunting, and sympathetically so--how many of us will watch this movie and be reminded of an experience in which a patient pleaded for reason and clarity from their doctor? Why is this happening to me? Why isn't the medicine working? Will it ever stop? What's wrong with me? We've all heard the story of Pandora's Box being opened, unleashing terrible things into the world. Hope remained. While hope is, as "The Matrix" trilogy told us, both our best and worst quality as a species, hopelessness is undoubtedly a terrible state. Perhaps the drugs only make things worse.

But after an hour of messages that are borderline "Reefer Madness," Soderbergh begins his real fun. There's a thrilling twist, things become a bit wonky, and Soderbergh as he often does understands that his audience is too smart for a two-hour lecture. The feeling of hopelessness shifts from one character to another as our story twists and turns; it's reminiscent of Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and "Psycho," two thrillers which start with a MacGuffin and decide to re-write the whole thing half-way through. Beyond that, Soderbergh is a director comfortable challenging our current groupthink position on who's "good" and "bad" in society. Consider his "Contagion," from two years ago, where Law played a journalist, usually the moralistic character in today's media; in "Contagion" he spreads fear and anarchy. There's a lot of thought put into Soderbergh's characters, even in more two-dimensional movies he has done recently, like last year's "Magic Mike."

The actors are commendable, though Tatum isn't given too much to do and Zeta-Jones sometimes come across as too Cruella DeVille-like. But Law is brilliant here, obsessed with setting things right, regardless of where that moral compass points, and so is Rooney, who is creepy without being gratuitous. She's assisted by trademark Soderbergh features--the almost other-worldly cinematography by Peter Andrews (look it up to see who he really is) and Thomas Newman's cryptic score. It's one of the best films I've seen in a while.


act, acting, actor, actress, Catherine Zeta-Jones, pharmaceutical, Hitchcock, movie, movies, review, side effects, Movies, movies, theater, cinema, watch, watching, watches, view, feature, film, flick, motion picture



         

Read More →