The Amazing Spider-Man

Twenty-three years ago, the modern comic book movie genre was invented with Tim Burton's Batman.  Aside from the Batman franchise, though, not a whole lot good came out of the success of that first film over the next decade.  It wasn't until 2000's X-Men that we started to see that initial promise start to blossom; it wasn 2002's Spider-Man, however, that made the super-hero movie into the Summer juggernaut that it is today.  I will admit that I absolutely love the first Spider-Man.  It was fun, dramatic, campy, and had a great cast.  Not necessarily an all-star cast, but they fit the tone perfectly.  To this day, I can't hear the Lord's Prayer without adding "Finish it!" in a Green Goblin voice.  Spider-Man 2 is a better story with a less ridiculous villain; it is up to your personal tastes as to which movie is preferable.  Spider-Man 3, though, is utter crap.  However bad that last entry was, though --- "laughably bad" is too generous --- only five years have passed since its failure and this series reboot.  Well, let's be honest --- there was going to be a reboot no matter how good the third movie was.  The question remains, how necessary is this movie?


Okay, that's not a bad trailer.  It really grabs that portion of the audience who have always thought "Enough of this Spider-Fellow, what about his parents?" 

I have some bad news for all those audience members who were hooked by the mystery of the Parker Parents.  This movie doesn't answer any of the questions that trailer raises.  Sorry.  Instead, The Amazing Spider-Man introduces us to Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield), a slightly nerdy high schooler with a taste for skateboarding and photography.  Peter isn't the coolest kid around, but he's not unpopular, either.  He is, though, very bright.  When Peter accidentally finds a briefcase belonging to his mysterious late father, he uncovers some scientific papers detailing the possibilities of cross-species genetic bonding; in other words, Pete's dad was interested in splicing animal genes with human genes.  Looking into his father's research leads Peter to Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), who was Richard Parker's one-armed research partner.  Unfortunately, Peter doesn't introduce himself right away; instead, he sneaks into Connors' research facility and gets bitten by a genetically enhanced spider.  Almost immediately, Peter realizes that he now has super spider-powers.

Including the ability to pick on handicapped jocks

After reading up on (and understanding) his father's research, Peter decides to share part of it with Dr. Connors.  This leads to a typical comic book situation: an otherwise very intelligent person opts to test an experimental treatment on themselves because it is too dangerous for others.

Yeah.  Astonishingly stupid.  I know.

Connors introduces a reptile gene splice to his system and he turns into a giant, intelligent Lizard because, you know, comic books.  Meanwhile, Peter has harnessed his super abilities to become a costumed vigilante.  Why?  Because that's what you do when you're a moody teenager and your actions indirectly lead to your Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) dying.  I believe it was Ben's dying wish that Peter get shot at by the police while wearing spandex.

Note: Uncle Ben never actually liked Peter

While all this is happening, Peter is also getting himself awkwardly entangled in a teenage romance.  The smart, sexy, and apparently allergic to pants Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) finds herself strangely drawn to the ridiculously awkward Peter, especially once his super-powers give him the confidence to be kind of a jerk.

Seriously, no pants, just skirts.  That's not a complaint.

In typical Parker luck, Gwen's dad (Denis Leary) happens to be a Captain on the NYPD and he is handling the case of the costumed vigilante, Spider-Man.  So, to recap: Peter gains super-powers by trespassing, indirectly leads to the death of his uncle, directly leads to Dr. Connors mutating himself, finds a girlfriend, and his girlfriend's dad is hunting down Pete's alter-ego. 

...which isn't hard if you don't wear a mask

The acting in The Amazing Spider-Man is surprisingly good.  I mean, yes, the caliber of actors is very solid here, but the performances are good, given the material.  As far as I can tell, this is the first real starring role for Andrew Garfield, and I really liked his take on Peter Parker.  His awkwardness around Gwen bordered on mild retardation, but aside from that I thought he was believable as A) a teen B) a smart teen and C) a smart teen who would throw on pajamas and fight crime.  Oddly, his best moments as Spider-Man came with his mask off.  And I liked that they didn't bulk Garfield up too much for this part; it was nice to see a lanky Spider-Man, in line with the whole "Puny Parker" lines from the 1960s comics.  Emma Stone definitely impressed me as Spidey's love interest.  It was nice to have a female lead in a superhero movie that wasn't vapid or whiny.  I would have liked to see more of Stone and Garfield together on-screen, because they have good chemistry, but the script kind of forces them into intimacy and that felt rushed.

Tending gaping chest wounds = sexxxy

Rhys Ifans was fine as Dr. Curt Connors.  He wasn't great, but he played up to the script well enough.  Unfortunately, that script didn't make him a particularly effective villain, for reasons I'll detail later.  Martin Sheen and Sally Field played Peter's Uncle Ben and Aunt May, respectively, and they were definitely solid.  I liked Sheen, but was surprised at how unimportant Field felt in the overall plot.  Denis Leary was okay as a hard-line cop, I guess; he was intimidating enough as Gwen's dad, but it's not like his role was all that demanding.  I was genuinely surprised to kind of like Chris Zylka as Pater's bully, Flash.  Zylka wasn't fantastic, but his character actually seemed human and multifaceted, and at least some of the credit belongs to the actor.  That's it for the important performances.  There were a couple of noteworthy/bewildering bit parts, though.  Irrfan Khan played a vaguely sinister henchman to an otherwise absent Norman Osborn, which is fine, but I would have preferred that he actually seemed mean instead of a bureaucratic jerk.  Campbell Scott shows up with Embeth Davidtz as Peter's parents and they don't do very much.  I kept expecting them to do more than look concerned in flashbacks, but no.

I was also waiting for Wesley Snipes to kill Edgar Friendly, but again, no.

This is only director Marc Webb's second feature film, after the too clever but charming 500 Days of Summer.  This is an interesting follow-up, to say the least.  A lot of focus in the advertising campaign for The Amazing Spider-Man was spent on the web-slinging scenes, specifically the point-of-view sequence.  That was justifiable, since those were both pretty cool.  Webb's biggest strength, though, was definitely the character work.  I thought Garfield's performance was very good and the relationships Peter forms in the film, while rushed, still felt genuine. 

In this case, genuine confusion

One of the things that I liked best about this movie was the script.  It wasn't fantastically witty or remarkably paced --- honestly, I think it tried to fit in a few things too many and there were too many cliches --- but I loved the overall feel of it.  In a lot of superhero movies, the hero stands up to the villain because...well, because nobody else can.  Here, it is because Peter feels responsible for the villain.  I also liked the shift toward a more tightly-knit Spider-Man universe (Spideyverse?), with everything appearing to tie into Norman Osborn.  Heck, I even liked the choice to not show Osborn in the film; the Green Goblin is the best Spider-Man villain and deserves to be built up to.  I was happy to see the story keep Peter in high school, because it makes his life that much more complicated.  I liked the little things that made Peter's invention of his web-shooters less improbable, too.

Not likely, but less unlikely

Basically, I liked the idea behind The Amazing Spider-Man.  It is significantly different than Sam Raimi's trilogy and actually deserves to exist and be appreciated.  They could have waited more than five years before rebooting the franchise, but this is still a fun and pleasant surprise.

Having said all that, this is still only my third-favorite Spider-Man movie.  My biggest problem is the villain, Dr. Connors/The Lizard.  Before the transformation, Dr. Connors was a pretty nice character with a very subtle undercurrent of something disturbing or desperate.  That undercurrent never really becomes more pronounced as the film goes on.  That would be fine, expect for the fact that he is the villain of the damn movie.  I didn't like the choice to make the Lizard persona highly intelligent; I honestly would have preferred The Lizard be more of a physical threat that Spider-Man had to outsmart.  I didn't like that The Lizard's evil plan was to transform normal humans into reptile people, which is bad because...um...it leads to sitcoms?

Actually, we don't see much of anything bad happening to the people who are transformed. If we saw reptile-people mindlessly tearing up Queens or serving as The Lizard's loyal army, I could see the threat.  The way it is presented in this movie is as an inconvenience; one minute, people are transforming, the next they are recovering from the transformation and being happy.  The film goes to such great lengths to establish Peter's sense of responsibility, but the personal threat The Lizard poses to him simply is not very compelling.  I also hated his lizard face.  Terrible design.

Bars can only improve The Lizard's appearance

And then there's the action.  While the web-swinging was fun, a lot of the action sequences --- particularly the ones with Peter Parker doing things out of costume --- were not that cool.  They added a little comic relief, sure, but they were oftentimes too over-the-top for my taste (anything with Peter and sports, I'm looking at you).  Another issue that ties into the action sequences is the inconsistent CGI effects.  As good as Spider-Man looked when traveling around the city, I was not very impressed by him in the battle sequences, particularly the final fight.  The scenes aren't bad, but they lacked the essential cool factor that fight scenes need.  I thought the fight scenes paled in comparison to some of the more creative small moments, like the cleverness of Spidey's web in the sewers.  I also saw this in 3D and I can assure you that the 3D is completely useless in this movie, save for the truly awful freeze-frame ending.

So how does Amazing compare to Raimi's Spider-Man?  It's not as good because it doesn't deliver the complete package.  Amazing has a better cast with an overarching story that promises to be better than that of the adjective-less trilogy and a Peter Parker that doesn't feel dated and stereotypical.  But Raimi's movie came out swinging and didn't hold back the best characters for a future installment.  The film, as a whole, is also less fun; I know for a fact that I have quoted Willem Dafoe dozens of times from that first film, but there is no single character that I loved this time around.  Still, The Amazing Spider-Man managed to make me not resent its existence and I enjoyed watching it.  Who knows?  With a proper villain, the next sequel might be the best Spidey film yet.

Oh, if you have any theories who the mystery man in the credits sequence was, leave a comment.  I own a few hundred Spider-Man comics, and even I can't make a convincing argument for any particular character.  What a waste of a teaser scene.

The Help

*** Included in Brian's Best and Worst of 2011 ***

Right before the Oscars, I saw all nine nominations for Best Picture in the theater.  In the span of two days.  Feeling exhausted after sitting the the dark all day is definitely a first world complaint, but it got a bit difficult at times, and ever since, I've had trouble sitting down and gathering my thoughts about those movies.  The nice thing about watching all nine films was that I watched movies that I would have otherwise avoided.  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was definitely not on my list of movies to watch, nor was The Help.  But I did see them, even if tearjerkers are not my favorite genre, and each film taught me a valuable lesson.

The lesson: white women are evil

In the early 1960s, Skeeter (Emma Stone) is finally home after four years earning her degree at the University of Mississippi.  Skeeter is different from all the other girls she grew up with; aside from settling for "Skeeter" as a nickname, she also went to school to prepare herself for a job, not to hunt for a husband.  When she came home, she was expecting to be congratulated by the woman who raised her.  No, not her mother (Allison Janney), silly --- Constantine (Cicely Tyson), Skeeter's family's black maid. 

Above: Young Skeeter.  Not Pictured: Constantine's striped socks

Mom tells Skeeter that Constantine quit and moved to Chicago to live with her family, but doing something that would be plausible in any other story sounds suspicious to Skeeter --- at the very least, Constantine would have written her a letter, right?  Even setting aside that unsettling development, post-graduate life isn't exactly what Skeeter had in mind.  Her friends and family expect her to get married and have kids immediately, but she wants a career.  And the only job she could find in her field (writing) is as an advice columnist specializing in cleaning around the house.  Too bad she doesn't know the first thing about housecleaning.  If only Constantine was around, she would certainly help Skeeter by essentially doing her work for her!

"Maybe you can write about having Mommy dress you as an adult?"

But wait just a minute...there are other black maids in Skeeter's town --- perhaps one or more of them could give her helpful advice for her column?  Enter Aibileen (Viola Davis), maid to one of Skeeter's friends.  Aibileen agrees (after being allowed by her employers, of course) to advise Skeeter.  Spending time with Aibileen makes Skeeter more aware of her town's casual racism, and this gives her an idea --- Aibileen should tell her side of things, so people could learn about life from the perspective of "the help."  This had never been done before, so it was novel enough to get Skeeter's foot in the door at a book publishing house --- now, all she needed was a variety of hard-hitting and dramatic stories from dozens of "helpers."  That should be easy enough.  After all, it's not like this story takes place right around 1962 Mississippi, where any African American adult could lose their livelihood or their life just for standing up for their legal rights, right?  Oh, wait...crap.  Writing a book about the dirt behind the closed doors of her hometown might not be the safest idea anyone ever had for a book.

Great.  Now they need a lookout to go shopping.  Thanks, Skeeter.

In any conversation about The Help, the first thing that should pop up is the performances.  Viola Davis was excellent as the film's main character, even if it isn't necessarily the lead character.  Davis carries this film's emotional content, whether it be grief, heartbreak, a feeling of injustice, or pride.  Octavia Spencer is also very, very good as the sassiest maid in town.  I realize that the sassy black woman is not a rarity in film, but it's still a pleasure to see the role done right.  Emma Stone's Skeeter acts as the audience's point of view character, and I thought Stone did a fine job with what she had to work with.  I have my reservations about her character, but I'll touch on that in a bit.  Bryce Dallas Howard was suitably evil as the biggest racist and snob among Skeeter's friends; this wasn't a deep role, but Howard made sure that the character had absolutely no redeeming qualities.  Jessica Chastain was significantly better, balancing a ditzy character's foibles with some solid dramatic points.  I'm a little curious as to how her character's appearance was explained to her, but I guess it underlined her as a social outsider.

"Love that Joker!"

The rest of the cast falls in somewhere between bit parts and extremely brief supporting roles.  It was nice to see Sissy Spacek having fun with  her role; her reactions definitely improved a few scenes.  Allison Janney was solid, but I would have liked to see her do more.  For theoretically being such a pivotal character for Skeeter, Cicely Tyson didn't have much screen time, although she was still pretty good when she was given the chance.  Other actors, like Ahna O'Reilly, Chris Lowell, Aunjanue Ellis, and Mike Vogel showed up and did whatever the script required of them, although some of their characters seemed to make choices that were awfully convenient to the plot.

That convenience is part of what frustrates me about The Help.  While the film goes out of its way to bring up some very serious issues --- racism, domestic abuse, civil rights, etc. --- most of those issues are glossed over.  When the other maids come forward and contribute to Skeeter's book, some of them have very sad tales, but they are only minor characters in this story, and their sole purpose is to say something tragic and then fade out of the story.  The otherwise indomitable Minny is afraid of her husband's rage, and we see her cowering from his blows, but that entire subplot is resolved off-camera.  Other moments, like Chris Lowell's abrupt departure from the film, come out of left field, indicating that their characters are merely props for the main characters to interact with.

Above: three main characters, two props, and a bridge table

I hesitate to blame director Tate Taylor for these deficiencies, though.  This is a film with an enormous cast, most of whom are limited to a few lines and a single costume.  Taylor did a great job with his primary cast, given their roles.  He was able to tell the story simply, without getting sidetracked in unnecessary subplots, and he made sure to hit every possible emotional moment on the head.  The Help is going to try to make you cry, and it will probably succeed.  At the very least, it should disgust you with its (presumably) accurate depiction of racism in the American South in the sadly not distant past.  The camera work is nothing special, but the voice-over and editing are handled nicely.  Given the source of the story, Taylor handled this film about as well as anyone I can imagine, given the limitations of the story.

Don't be confused, though.  The Help is not a very deep or thought-provoking film.  It goes for an emotional response and gets it, but the message probably won't stick with you for long.  Part of this is due to the simplicity of the characters.  This is a film with good people (not racist or sexist) and bad people (racist bullies), with very little grey area; yes, there are two characters who fire their maids because a bossy racist pressures them to, but they're more cowards than racists or evil.  There are working stiffs (the maids and Skeeter) and there are privileged housewives (every other female character).  There are cowards and there are brave folk.

"Bless you, Skeeter, for using my talent to find you a job."

Even the simplicity doesn't explain quite why I felt manipulated by The Help.  This should be an empowering film because the protagonists improved their lot in life and fought a grave injustice.  Instead, I was kind of annoyed by Skeeter.  I know I am supposed to root for her because she's spunky, educated, and wants to fight racism, but she kind of sucks.  First of all, the film depicts her situation as being risk-free; I realize that racists could harm her, but she is never implied to be in danger.  Aibileen and Missy are clearly afraid, but Skeeter never appears worse than socially awkward.  Second, Skeeter shouldn't even be the main character.  The most interesting character in the film is Aibileen --- she is brave, smart, and Skeeter is essentially just transcribing her story --- but we have to sit through Skeeter's tale?  I would much rather have the film focus on Aibileen than deal with the Skeeter's epic romance that boils down to a guy saying "You're different from the other girls."  Maybe Skeeter would have been more palatable as the main character if the fate of Constantine --- which is treated like a mystery throughout the film --- wasn't incredibly obvious from the start and the resolution seemed to be delayed only by the main character making a conscious choice not to pursue the matter until the end of the film. 

The Help left me surprisingly cold.  It has a happy ending, where everyone you care about is moving onward and upward, and yet it just feels like Skeeter used some poor black women to help her get the hell out of podunk Mississippi, while Aibileen apparently plans to put "a white woman anonymously included my stories in an anthology" on her next job application.  This movie simplifies complex matters, almost to an insulting degree.  While I certainly don't advocate racism, I'm pretty sure that it comes in varying degrees; Bryce Dallas Howard was so unsympathetic that she could have passed for a Bond villain.  Thank goodness the racists weren't complex characters, otherwise the audience might have to think about an unsettling issue instead of just being relieved that things aren't as obviously racist today.

...although there is still a risk of tampered food.  Tip your waiters!

The Help is worth seeing for the acting alone.  It's an emotional film, but it is an uplifting one as well, provided you don't put a whole lot of hard thought into it.  Large chunks are predictable, but every so often something or somebody will surprise you. Is this a movie that I liked?  Not especially, but there were enough strong performances to make this worthwhile, at least once.

Zombieland

I was talking with a friend at work about this movie and he said "There's nothing wrong with Zombieland."  I am going to have to wholeheartedly agree with that.  Do you need to know anything more than that?  Well, I guess I'm forcing my opinion out into the internet ether by having a blog, so I will go on, regardless.

Zombieland is set in the near future, when the inevitable zombie apocalypse has finally struck.  This movie is different from most zombie flicks (excepting, of course, George Romero sequels) because we don't watch the zombies rise up.  Zombies are a fact of life, and you have to "nut up or shut up," in the words of Woody Harrelson's character.  While the plot doesn't do anything to surprise you, it doesn't let you down either.  Basically, it's about zombies.  And awkward young love.  And zombies.  And family.  But especially zombies.

Jesse Eisenberg does a good job as the awkward Point of View character for the film.  His character has many rules for survival in the post-zombie world, and they appear on-screen whenever appropriate, serving both as reminders and subtle jokes along the way.  When you have an awkward lead male, he is obviously going to fall in love with any girl close to his age, so Emma Stone plays the part of the bad girl that he has a hell of a time trying to impress.  Not that Emma has a lot of other non-zombies to choose from, but even after the apocalypse, it's still ladies' choice.  Abigail Breslin plays Emma's little sister with her usual competence and Woody Harrelson plays a zombie-stomping bad-ass.

From those descriptions, I know it's hard to figure out which is my favorite character, but it's Harrelson.  Generally overlooked for his work (possibly because people remember The Cowboy Way and Money Train), Harrelson is always good in his movies, and he performs with relish here.  Yes, the script has a lot of good dialogue, but Harrelson's character could have been cartoon-ish in the hands of a lesser actor.  Here, he's bigger than life and is truly getting the most out of living in a world with zombies.  Jesse Eisenberg, who is sometimes unjustly seen as a low-rent Michael Cera, plays his usual awkward character here, but he has come a long way since Roger Dodger because he now has timing and delivery down pat.  I'm also enjoying the development of Abigail Breslin; while she doesn't have a whole lot to work with here, nothing seems forced.  Really, her character serves as a plot device to justify the cast traveling to a Disney-esque theme park, but on the rare occasions where Breslin is called upon to personify childish innocence and/or ignorance (the fact that her character didn't know who Bill Murray made me feel sooooo old), she delivers.  Plus, she just seems like a lot more fun than Dakota Fanning, the only other credible actress in their age group.  Emma Stone does a decent job, too, hitting all the right notes, but I didn't feel that her performance was anything special.

None of this does justice to the joy that is Zombieland, because I don't want to spoil the many small moments that make this fun and funny.  There are a number of recurring character moments that really pay off, whether it be the one food on Earth that Woody Harrelson is craving, or the thing that scares Jesse Eisenberg the most.  Here's a hint to that last one:

 Come on!  That is so awesome!  This movie has a cameo by Bill Murray that is easily the best bit part I have seen in years.  And you'll notice that I haven't even mentioned the inevitable violence of a zombie movie.  Well, there are a lot of good zombie kills, too.  This movie really has everything: violence, gore, humor (not stupid or gross humor...real humor), romance, emotional arcs for the characters, and Bill Murray being awesome.  Yes, you can see the plot twists coming a mile away, but that's not always a bad thing in a comedy.  Comedy is about setting up expectations and then meeting them...or not meeting them in a fun way.  This film could have been a Shaun of the Dead knock-off, but it instead comes across as a fun adaptation of Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide.  I can't believe that this is essentially Ruben Fleischer's first directorial work.  And I mean that in the best possible way.