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.

Comments

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

He is a brigand and a lout. Pay him no serious mention.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) (SPOILERS) John Milius called his second feature a boy’s-own adventure, on the basis of the not-so-terrified responses of one of those kidnapped by Sean Connery’s Arab Raisuli. Really, he could have been referring to himself, in all his cigar-chomping, gun-toting reactionary glory, dreaming of the days of real heroes. The Wind and the Lion rather had its thunder stolen by Jaws on release, and it’s easy to see why. As polished as the picture is, and simultaneously broad-stroke and self-aware in its politics, it’s very definitely a throwback to the pictures of yesteryear. Only without the finger-on-the-pulse contemporaneity of execution that would make Spielberg and Lucas’ genre dives so memorable in a few short years’ time.

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

Another case of the screaming oopizootics.

Doctor Who Season 14 – Worst to Best The best Doctor Who season? In terms of general recognition and unadulterated celebration, there’s certainly a strong case to be made for Fourteen. The zenith of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe’s plans for the series finds it relinquishing the cosy rapport of the Doctor and Sarah in favour of the less-trodden terrain of a solo adventure and underlying conflict with new companion Leela. More especially, it finds the production team finally stretching themselves conceptually after thoroughly exploring their “gothic horror” template over the course of the previous two seasons (well, mostly the previous one).

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

That’s what people call necromancer’s weather.

The Changes (1975) This adaptation of Peter Dickinson’s novel trilogy carries a degree of cult nostalgia cachet due to it being one of those more “adult” 1970s children’s serials (see also The Children of the Stones , The Owl Service ). I was too young to see it on its initial screening – or at any rate, too young to remember it – but it’s easy to see why it lingered in the minds of those who did. Well, the first episode, anyway. Not for nothing is The Changes seen as a precursor to The Survivors in the rural apocalypse sub-genre – see also the decidedly nastier No Blade of Grass – as following a fairly gripping opener, it drifts off into the realm of plodding travelogue.

They literally call themselves “Decepticons”. That doesn’t set off any red flags?

Bumblebee (2018) (SPOILERS) Bumblebee is by some distance the best Transformers movie, simply by dint of having a smattering of heart (one might argue the first Shia LaBeouf one also does, and it’s certainly significantly better than the others, but it’s still a soulless Michael Bay “machine”). Laika VP and director Travis Knight brings personality to a series that has traditionally consisted of shamelessly selling product, by way of a nostalgia piece that nods to the likes of Herbie (the original), The Iron Giant and even Robocop .

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog