There's rumor of a new species in New York. It can be aggressive, if threatened...

The Amazing Spider-Man
(2012)

Tonally, Marc Webb’s reboot of Marvel’s comic book hero this is all over the place. This is in part surely a symptom of the kind of “too many cooks” meddling that marred Sam Raimi’s third Spider-Man film. But it’s also due to the absence of a director with a clear vision for the series. Webb seems to have got the job through the assurance that he could work magic with the Peter-Gwen relationship, having scored a minor hit with young love comedy (500) Days of Summer. And that aspect works reasonably well, but he comes unstuck blending it with the requirements of superhero storytelling. In particular, he's uncertain how to approach the action.

At times the film goes for the Nolan Batman aesthetic, with stuntman Spider-Man seeming almost as grounded and unspectacular in his capabilities as the '70s TV version. And getting very beaten up, which takes him much longer to heal from than you'd expect (this Spidey really suffers, you know). But there are also sequences where I got the impression that the more real-world approach was used as a crutch to hide Webb's inexperience, evidence by choppy editing and confused geography. Having dissed him a bit, I'll give credit it where it's due, he does manage to build up a palpable sense of threat from the villain at times, most notably when Spider-Man is perched in wait in the sewers. And his rescue of the child on the bridge also sees suspense chosen over wall-to-wall CGI to good effect. But Webb lacks Raimi's skill with making the separate elements of a film flow together; even the overloaded Spider-Man 3 is more coherent than this.

Then there's the choice of the Lizard as villain, which actively works against keeping a foot (or missing arm) in the real world. Everything about the character, from choice of actor for Dr Curt Connors to design of the creature, pulls towards the cartoonish rather than the believable. If Dylan Baker had been swapped places with Rhys Ifans they'd both have felt more at home in the different Spider-verses. Ifans is okay, but nothing about his Connors makes much of an impact. He struggles against the over-familiarity of yet another damaged scientist with yet another diabolical ticking clock plan. Design-wise the Lizard has been compared to Goomba from Super Mario Bros, and that's not far from the truth. He's not a patch on the design of the comics; they've adopted change for change’s sake.

I could merrily pick away at elements of the plot, but if reports are to be believed big chunks of it went AWOL in the editing stage. I didn't particularly mind the unnecessary rewriting of the origins, but I found it difficult to believe the genetically modified spiders had been weaving away for 10 years without further investigation into their properties. Maybe they encouraged them to bite a few volunteers and they all died?

Of the rest of he cast, Emma Stone stood out and brought enormous charm to a largely reactive role. She had fantastic chemistry with Dennis Leary too; there was no stretch at all in seeing them as father and daughter. Martin "dentures" Sheen and Sally Field were also very winning.

I was less convinced by Andrew Garfield. His natural charisma worked in the character's favour, but he over-invests in a role where that level of turmoil felt inappropriate and indulgent (I know he’s a teenager, but really). It belonged in a different movie with a different character (the Nolan-verse, perhaps). In any emotionally charged scene the characterisation felt over-cooked and overwrought. Maguire may not have brought enough wise-cracking fun to the part, and Garfield makes the most of the scenes where he gets to indulge that side, but at least he didn't run the danger of becoming a tiresomely petulant brat. After yet another bruised and taciturn entrance at the end I was wondering why on earth Aunt May was putting up with him. The last scene between Peter and Mary only compounded this. I can accept that Parker has a lot to learn, but was the best way to tell us this having a laugh about breaking his vow to Captain Stacey (promises you can't keep are "the best kind")?

A few random thoughts. The music was rather sucky (I'm surprised to see James Horner was the composer); intrusive and simultaneously unmemorable. The Stan Lee cameo was blissful (Webb directs this scene with aplomb - so why do other sequences feel so flat?) The New Yorkers unite to aid Spider-Man with their cranes was appalling; the writers appear to have been inspired by various other nauseating scenes of plucky and rousing American spirit winning out (The ferry sequence in The Dark Knight and protecting Spidey in Spider-Man 2). And the most bizarre moment. So unexpected and bad taste it could have been excised from an early Peter Jackson film; the lizard mouse, snarling amid the remains of his poor cage mate. More warped inspiration along those lines might have given The Amazing Spider-Man the edge it needed to wash away the memory of the Raimi trilogy.

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Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983)
(SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. That doesn’t mea…

You keep a horse in the basement?

The ‘Burbs (1989)
(SPOILERS) The ‘Burbs is Joe Dante’s masterpiece. Or at least, his masterpiece that isn’t his bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you masterpiece Gremlins 2: The New Batch, or his high profile masterpiece Gremlins. Unlike those two, the latter of which bolted out of the gate and took audiences by surprise with it’s black wit subverting the expected Spielberg melange, and the first which was roundly shunned by viewers and critics for being absolutely nothing like the first and waving that fact gleefully under their noses, The ‘Burbs took a while to gain its foothold in the Dante pantheon.

It came out at a time when there had been a good few movies (not least Dante’s) taking a poke at small town Americana, and it was a Tom Hanks movie when Hanks was still a broad strokes comedy guy (Big had just made him big, Turner and Hooch was a few months away; you know you’ve really made it when you co-star with a pooch). It’s true to say that some, as with say The Big Lebowski, “got it” on fi…

You can’t keep the whole world in the dark about what’s going on. Once they know that a five-mile hunk of rock is going to hit the world at 30,000 miles per hour, the people will want to know what the hell we intend to do about it.

Meteor (1979)
(SPOILERS) In which we find Sean Connery – or his agent, whom he got rid of subsequent to this and Cuba – showing how completely out of touch he was by the late 1970s. Hence hitching his cart to the moribund disaster movie genre just as movie entertainment was being rewritten and stolen from under him. He wasn’t alone, of course – pal Michael Caine would appear in both The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure during this period – but Meteor’s lack of commercial appeal was only accentuated by how functional and charmless its star is in it. Some have cited Meteor as the worst movie of his career (Christopher Bray in his book on the actor), but its sin is not one of being outright terrible, rather of being terminally dull.

I take Quaaludes 10-15 times a day for my "back pain", Adderall to stay focused, Xanax to take the edge off, part to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again, and morphine... Well, because it's awesome.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Along with Pain & Gain and The Great Gatsby, The Wolf of Wall Street might be viewed as the completion of a loose 2013 trilogy on the subject of success and excess; the American Dream gone awry. It’s the superior picture to its fellows, by turns enthralling, absurd, outrageous and hilarious. This is the fieriest, most deliriously vibrant picture from the director since the millennium turned. Nevertheless, stood in the company of Goodfellas, the Martin Scorsese film from which The Wolf of Wall Street consciously takes many of its cues, it is found wanting.

I was vaguely familiar with the title, not because I knew much about Jordan Belfort but because the script had been in development for such a long time (Ridley Scott was attached at one time). So part of the pleasure of the film is discovering how widely the story diverges from the Wall Street template. “The Wolf of Wall Street” suggests one who towers over the city like a behemoth, rather than a guy …

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies.

"Predalien" The Alien-Predator-verse ranked
Fox got in there with the shared universe thing long before the current trend. Fortunately for us, once they had their taste of it, they concluded it wasn’t for them. But still, the Predator and Alien franchises are now forever interconnected, and it better justifies a ranking if you have more than six entries on it. So please, enjoy this rundown of the “Predalien”-verse. SPOILERS ensue…
11. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
An almost wilfully wrongheaded desecration of both series’ legacies that attempts to make up for AVP’s relative prurience by being as transgressive as possible. Chestbursters explode from small children! Predaliens impregnate pregnant mothers! Maternity wards of babies are munched (off-screen admittedly)! It’s as bad taste as possible, and that’s without the aesthetic disconnect of the Predalien itself, the stupidest idea the series has seen (and that includes the newborn), one that was approved/encouraged by ra…

Well, it seems our Mr Steed is not such an efficient watchdog after all.

The Avengers 2.7: The Decapod
A title suggesting some variety of monstrous aquatic threat for Steed and Julie Stevens’ Venus Smith. Alas, the reality is much more mundane. The Decapod refers to a Mongo-esque masked wrestler, one who doesn’t even announce “I will destroy you!” at the top of his lungs. Still, there’s always Philip “Solon” Madoc looking very shifty to pass the time.

Madoc is Stepan, a Republic of the Balkans embassy official and the brother-in-law of President Yakob Borb (Paul Stassino). There’s no love lost between him and his ladies’ man bro, and dark deeds are taking place with the embassy confines, but who is responsible proves elusive. Steed is called in, or rather calls Venus in as a replacement, when Borb’s private secretary is murdered by Mongo. Steed isn’t buying that she slipped and broke her neck in the shower; “I shouldn’t like a similar accident to happen to you” he informs the President.

The trail leads to wrestling bouts at the public baths, where the Butcher…

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