The Amazing Spider-Man 2

We have a new winner in the race to be the weakest Spider-Man movie ever. Leading the pack for seven years was the nearly universally reviled "Spider-Man 3".  While it was certainly the least favorite of mine, I have never been a hater like so many others. It was a disappointment and at times a little silly. What it never was was boring. "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" is just that. Equally bloated with plot elements and villains, but managing to be entertaining for only about a third of it's more than two hour running time. The second entry in the reboot of a series that probably did not need to restart so soon, this film will be the biggest disappointment of the year to geeks and movie executives everywhere. The comic book fans will pick it apart for it's flaws and the money men will second guess how they took a sure thing and turned it into this.

There are long stretches in the movie where we get an ill defined domestic drama featuring Peter Parker, His girlfriend Gwen and his Aunt May. This is not what people turn out for. The back and forth love affair has a couple of sweet moments, but it all feels pointless and without any real motivation. If Peter is going to make the decision to stop seeing Gwen, why does he spend all his time following her around and mooning over her? Why does Gwen take him back when she knows how he is not able to make a commitment? Why would anyone care is the two of them have created no stake for the audience to begin with? Maybe if I had re-watched the last film right before seeing this one, it might have helped, but I don't think so.

The opening chase and battle with a barely recognizable and incoherent Paul Giamatti as a Russian gangster who may figure in the plot later, was sadly divisive for me. The way it is shown, from camera positions and Peter's perspective and then at street level if gracefully imagined. It just doesn't look very good. The animated CGI images are blurry around the edges, the colors look weak and it seemed flat. It is possible that this resulted from the effort to make this a 3D spectacular, but I did not see it in 3D and it looked cheap. The spitting gibberish uttered by Giamatti in the opening is Shakespeare compared to the "Ve av vays of making u talk" accented dialogue that comes from the "scientist" who is supposed to contain the villain "Electro" later in the film.  It was literally embarrassing to listen to this cliche speak from the screen. This movie feels slapped together in a way that "Spider-Man 3" might have been, but at least there, the seams were only visible when Peter Parker goes dark. In this movie, every villain is half thought out, every Peter Parker domestic problem is written as if it were important but plays like it is not, and all of the action scenes are less than exciting.

I think Andrew Garfield is a great choice for the part. He and Emma Stone have a nice chemistry, but their story pales in comparison to the Mary Jane material that was explored in the first series of films. The reason it does not live up to it's potential is that it was underwritten. The conflict they have should play out with more emotional investment and it is instead brittle and conventional. I am a softie when it comes to emotions. I love those Spielberg moments that deliberately try to pull a tear from your eye. A good commercial or a dog story on the news or even a piece of gossip about a kid in my wife's class can make be sniffle. The resolution of this story left me unmoved. I'm told that fans of the Spider-Man comics think the Gwen Stacy story line is the apex of the emotional journey that Peter takes. I just sat there, stone faced and wondered why it wasn't working.

There are some easy bad choices to point to. Jamie Fox gets to play nerd, but he doesn't play an engineer as a geek, he plays it as an idiot. His Max Dillon practically drools when showing how awkward he is supposed to be. It is a caricature that makes a simple hero worshiping fan into a simpleton. "Electro" could use some motivation, but the psychological roots of his rage are conveniently skipped over.    Harry Osborn is a different matter. The roots of his problems are better explained, and they are set up well. It is the manner in which he steps so quickly into the role of the "Goblin" that feels rushed. Had they left the set up for a third film and waited for this character to appear, I think it could have worked much better. In this situation, it seems like they just wanted a movie of at least two hours so they grafted an additions element to flesh it out. The "Rhino" character and Giamatti's role are throw away bits which added nothing to the proceedings. If you stick around for the credits, you will get another example of the slap dash nature of the movie. In an attempt to tie in the Marvel Universe, there is an insert that has no context, no connection, and no reason for being there. It raises some interesting questions about cross promotion, but it had nothing to do with what we just spent two and a quarter hours living through. The whole enterprise is a letdown.

Gladiator (2000)

This month appears to be sword and sandal month at the AMC Classic scheduling center. Last week there was "The Ten Commandments", this week "Gladiator" and in the next couple of weeks we are going to get "Ben-Hur" and "Spartucus". Somewhere, Captain Oveur is smiling and thinking of Joey in ways that we cannot mention. This is an opportunity to write about a film I have loved since it came out, but have never posted on before. Given that it stars Russell Crowe, was directed by Ridley Scott and won the Academy Award for Best Picture, that seems a little strange to me.

"Gladiator" is only fourteen years old, yet it already feels like a classic because it launched a hundred imitators. Before 2000, it would have been a long time between historical epics featuring legions of ancient warriors conducting combat with swords and spears. After this picture succeeded, we got "Troy", "300", Kingdom of Heaven", "The Eagle", "Pompeii", remakes of Conan and cable series based on "Spartacus" plus a dozen others that don't pop into my mind at the moment. This film was hugely influential on the subject matter of films in the last decade and a half and also on their style.

Russell Crowe won the lone Oscar of his career in this centerpiece of a three picture Oscar nominated run. His turn in "A Beautiful Mind" might have been deserving, but his work in "Gladiator" is what made him the biggest star in the world for about five years. You would need to go back to 1959 to find a winning performance in an action film. This is a raw, bloodthirsty part that required physical agility, and intellectual engagement with the motivations of the character. Maybe if you count John Wayne in "True Grit", you'd get a film role that won because the character was a hero who used violence in an active way to achieve his character's purpose. Maximus starts the film as a warrior general. Not content to sit on the sidelines but charging into battle, swinging a sword and getting bloodied up close. His moment of despair at discovering the fate of his family, reaches our hearts and hardens them to the villain of the piece, who before this may have simply been a misunderstood wannabe. The challenge he issues to the crowd in the second of his five scenes in the arena, " Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?" is both an indictment and an incitement and Crowe has just the right take on it. Everyone who has seen the movie knows that the passage that won him the award was his self revelation to the Emperor at the conclusion of the first Coliseum fight. His controlled fury is the point at which the story has been tightened to it's greatest capacity, and we await the outcome because his voice told us it would be coming, in this world or the next.

As I listened to the music, there were several passages that sounded just like the themes from "Pirates of the Caribbean" and it is with good reason. Hans Zimmer recycled some of those heroic motifs from this film in the lighter pirate movie just a couple of years later. There are some great details in the production. The dusty red hued out post that is Proximo's home feels exotic and dangerous. The blue-grey tint to the battles in Germania were cold to contemplate and you could feel the dirt on your body. The golden shaded views of Rome and the gladiator contests themselves make the setting the center-point of all the proceedings.  Richard Harris leaves the film early but still makes an impression. Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus has a terrific scene with Harris, that makes us temporarily sympathetic. He manages to turn that into revulsion by delivering the provocative description of the fate of Maximus' family in a tone that makes the words even more horrible. His work contributed to Crowe's performance substantially in that section. Oliver Reed leaves this planet with what might have been his finest performance. This movie has dozens of great elements to it that make it so worthwhile.

It was just me and one other guy in the theater today. AMC needs to build this programming up a little more. I could not figure out why I was not seeing trailers for the other films coming up in this series, instead of the two art house releases that may never make it to these local theaters. The cashier in the Box Office, was surprised when I ordered my ticket, she did not even know the fim was playing. That is at least the third time I've had that reaction when I went up to the ticket window for these showings. AMC, you are doing a great thing with this program, but get the promotion up to speed and let's get a few more seats filled. There are others like me who would make the effort a couple extra steps were taken in letting people know what is happening.

The Other Woman

I think everybody knows the answer to this before it opened, but I'll go ahead and ask and answer the question anyway. Is there any way that this movie will be any good?     No.

I have liked Leslie Mann in other films, she is an every day kind of attractive. She is a talented comedic actress. She should have looked at this script and run the other way. Having made the movie, she should now sue the producers for turning her into a whining, needy, idiot, character who is made to look unattractive and stupid in nearly every sequence in the film. I have always had a thing for women in hats, maybe I saw Casablanca and and fell in love with Ingrid Bergman at a young age. This movie may have cured me of that fetish. Whenever the director wanted her to look awful, he put her in a hat that not even Bergman could have sold.

Cameron Diaz is still an attractive woman, but she is a little older now and sometimes looks a bit well worn at times. Her smile still twinkles, and her hair is cute in whatever form it shows up in, but either the sun or plastic surgery have given her a tougher look than she probably deserves. Now I will say there was a trailer for "The Sex Tape" playing before this movie and she looked terrific in that, so maybe the director of photography needs to share some of the blame here. She has been funny in a dozen movies. Many of which I liked but others have dismissed (eg. "Knight and Day") Here she has nothing funny to do or say. There are moments when I wondered if she knew what the tone of the film was supposed to be.

I don't really know Kate Upton. She is a beautiful woman and apparently world famous, probably for being beautiful. It turns out she has made three films now and I have seen all three of them. I have no memory of her from the other two at all. So while beauty is certainly a calling card, it is not a memory card, because unless she is on the beach in a bikini, I suspect her acting career will be limited. I hope that doesn't sound too mean, I don't want it to. I was just not convinced that she needed to even be in this movie.

This could almost be a remake of "The First Wives Club" from 1996. Except instead of three philanderers, we have one serial philanderer and the women he has cheated on. It's a woman's empowerment revenge story. Unfortunately, none of the main characters is likable enough to feel much sympathy for and at times they are downright irritating. The male character in the story is played with a tone that guns from suave James Bond sex machine to doofus Jeff Daniels in "Dumb and Dumber". Nothing in the way any of these characters act is in the realm of reality, which would be alright if it was all revenge fantasy, but it isn't. There is another romance shoehorned onto the story, a superfluous character played by Don Johnson, who looks great by the way, that is distracting and totally predictable, and some cultural references to  the French that might have worked if the story had stuck to the comedy and not veered into melodrama.

It doesn't work. I did not expect it to, and the two women who went with me agreed. It's the only new wide release this weekend, so maybe it will make some money, but you can look for a quick exit from theaters and an even quicker exit from your memory.

The Ten Commandments

Nothing celebrates Easter and Passover like "The Ten Commandments". Getting a chance to see it on the big screen is also a treat. I may have done this with my kids back in the late eighties or early nineties but I can't quite remember. I do know that if I did, it was not in the pristine digital form that the movie was delivered to us today in. Although it was a theatrical release for one day, I am pretty sure this was the home Blu-ray version, complete with Entrance and Exit Music, and an intermission. The problem was that they really did not take a break at the intermission, the music played briefly and then the entr'acte for the second half started. After the whole experience was over, as I was waiting for my family to exit the ladies room, I heard a young woman speaking to her father about how long the movie was that they had just seen. It sounded like they saw "Heaven is for Real". The dad was explaining why he thought it was just long enough and she said it could have been longer. Her phrase was something like "I've seen a movie that was two hours thirteen minutes, so this could have bee longer and it would not be a problem". Having just come out of a movie that runs three hours and forty minutes, I chuckled to myself and thought about how lucky I am that I can be enraptured for that long without starting to feel ADD.

A Screen Shot from the entry way to show that I really was in the theater watching this.

The spectacle of "The Ten Commandments" starts with a stirring speech by director Cecil B. DeMille. It extols the virtues of the story as the beginning of real freedom and he makes a very pointed comparison to some of the political issues of 1956. It turns out that he sees it as a very anti-communist film because it concerns totalitarianism by one man over the rule of law that governs all men. It was an apt message then and it is equally important today. Although the photographic effects are not as impressive as they once were because of the more sophisticated tools now available, they still pack a wallop and if you are caught up in the story, the imperfections hardly matter.  The characters are quite different but you can see the seeds of Ben Hur in Charlton Heston's Moses. It was an impressive performance in the first half, but once the make-up and hair took over in the second half, he was more a cardboard hero than he had been before.

I saw that my blogging friend Eric, learned all of his Jewish traditions from this film. I guess I'd have to say that this was pretty close to my education on the matter as well. DeMille assures us at the beginning that although there is a large period of time in which we do not know the history of Moses, that his film is based on historical works by ancient scholars and theologians. I'll take him, at his word, it seems unlikely that he committed any heresy that would get him in the same hot water with religious groups as Darren Aronofsky got into with the recent "Noah". The film has stood the test of time, so there is not a lot to add. If you don't care for biblical epics, this will be a burden to you, but if you are inspired by the events of the old or new testament, than this should be a treat that you can savor for a long time (3:40 to be exact).

Cuban Fury

I looked at two other blog sites today that both reviewed this movie. That is something I do not usually do before seeing a film. I want my perspective to be untainted as much as possible. The thing of it is though, I had no plan to see this movie before today. I'd only heard of it a day or two ago, and I knew next to nothing about it except that it featured dancing and Nick Frost. I let my curiosity get the better of me and I peeked at what others had said. It was not promising. The reviews that I saw were not terrible but they were at best lukewarm to the movie. They did however fill in enough details to let me know that this might be a movie I would appreciate.

Since I have the week off at one of my work sites, I thought I'd be able to take some time and sneak in several films. No such luck and to be honest I was not excited about anything I'd not already seen. I took my AMC Stubbs points, marched down and caught the matinee of this movie. I'm 56 years old and I was the youngest person in the theater. It was on one of the four big screens at the multiplex with 17 screens. There were maybe a half dozen of us there so the house seemed cavernous. All that said, everybody had a pretty good time. I heard the 70 year old ladies a dozen seats down from me laugh several times and I was doing the same. The film was a little predictable, but all romantic comedies are. What sets this apart from most of the others is the salsa-dancing background and the star.

For some reason I have usually enjoyed movie dancing. From the classic Hollywood musicals of the golden age, to the 80's revisionism of Fame, Flashdance and Footloose (the three big "Fs" of the 80s), a little fancy footwork seemed to do it for me. This film takes a big dose of "Strictly Ballroom" and crosses it with a goofball comedy sensibility to entertain for the nearly two hours that it ran. A dancer who has lost his way and seems to have settled for a more mundane existence, gets a chance to reconnect with his roots. All the while being slighted by an obnoxious co-worker and romantic rival. I liked the dialogue that reveals what a pig the rival really is and the performance of Chris O'Dowd  as the odious Drew was at least a third of the fun in the movie. So it is an underdog story set in England centered around salsa dancing.

The underdog here is Nick Frost, as Bruce, the man who gave up salsa as a child when bullied by a group of other boys. His sweetheart of a sister was his dancing partner and she still bravely faces the world with her own quirky way of coping. It is the arrival of a pretty new American woman who stirs Bruce's romantic inclinations, and when he discovers that she also salsas, he returns to the art, twenty-five years out of practice. Frost is best known to me as Simon Pegg's counterpart in the "Cornetto Trilogy"(there is a "blink and you'll miss it" appearance by Mr. Pegg in this film as well). He is a sweet faced, overweight, lump of an actor, who manages to bring real personality to his roles and sweep aside the stereotypes of his visual image. In this film, the whole goal is to subvert those sterotypes while also exploiting them for laughs. It worked really well for me.

It is not a classic that you will want to return to over and over again, but it has it's moments. There are some great scenes with an effeminate Persian man who encourages Bruce that are very funny. The showdown between Bruce and Drew is hysterically staged and full of mad ingenuity. The peripheral characters, including Ian McShane as Bruce's old salsa coach, fill the movie with little bits of charm and mild laughter. It was better than I was expecting and the credit has to go to Nick Frost, who manages to make us care that a dumpy guy might have bigger dreams than what he seems doomed to live out. 

Academy Conversations: The Adventures of Robin Hood

So a few weeks ago, I was given a heads up by one on my friends on line that my Favorite movie was to be a subject of a Special Presentation at the TCM Film Festival. I had unfortunately not planned well enough to go to the whole festival, an issue I hope to repair next year. After looking on line for individual tickets, I discovered that you have to line up for standby on the day of the event at the venue. The screening and discussion were scheduled for  9:15 on a Sunday morning, so I felt pretty confident that we could get in, but I was concerned about where we would be able to sit, and my wife has a little trouble navigating the steep walkways and dark stairs at the Egyptian Theater.  We trekked down to Hollywood and Arrived before 8:00, just to be sure. The parking lot attendant had not yet arrived and they were just putting up the Stand-by line directions for our screening, so we ended up one and two in line. Of course that is after all the VIPs, Pass holders and other Festival attendees have been let in. Fortunately, we had a guardian angel. My friend who had told me about the screening was also attending as a Festival Pass Holder. We made plans to meet before the movie.

Michael and I had never met in person before but he and I know each other well from our respective blogs. He had let me know that he would be wearing a distinctive shirt that day, much like carrying a book and a rose to meet Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks. As we waited at the front of the line (alone I might add), I saw him approaching and recognized the shirt immediately. He had just as easy a time finding me since my presence on the internet has a variety of pictures of me and he showed me the smiling image from my gmail account on his phone. After spending a few minutes talking about the Festival that he had been attending, he offered to save us some seats when he went in. I am so grateful to him for that kindness, it made it much easier for us to relax and the seats he picked out were easily accessible for my wonderful spouse who is on her second year of vertigo.

The program started up and we were introduced to two Academy Award winning legends, Craig Barron and Ben Burtt. They were in great form as they joked and talked about the festival and the movie. They had a wonderful presentation for us that reviewed the making of "The Adventures of Robin Hood". It began with the well known story that originally Jimmy Cagney was cast in the role and the movie was to be more comedic. The director of the movie, William Keighley was replaced during the shoot and there was a clearer explanation of that than I have seen before. Craig Barron  made a point to note that Keighley had done all the work that had set up each of the main characters and that while his contribution is sometimes minimized, he really did have a substantial impact on the tone and look of the film. Being the Special effects guy, Barron led us through a visualization of the three color process used by Technicolor. There was a smooth use of tri-color graphics being merged to give us the spectacular color that then comes off of the screen. We also got a review of some of the matte work that was done for the picture. Both he and Burtt spent time out in the former Warner's Ranch location, which is now a housing development and golf course, to try and locate the hills and set locations. They made the trip entertaining as all get out by referencing the celebrities that now occupy some of that space and revealing that they did get pulled over for speeding on the road that was earlier used by the raiding party at the end to sneak into Nottingham castle.

Ben Burtt took over for a while as the discussion shifted to the sound design process for the film. He began by looking at the location sound trucks that Warner's used and he had a clever piece of history concerning the remaining trucks and their actual colors. You could hear the geek side come out in him as he longed to have one of those trucks for his own. The mock up version using a Chevy HHR looked cool but you could tell it would not have cut it as far as his lust was concerned. The most intriguing part of the tale involved his attempt to identify how the sounds of the arrows were made in the movie. There were very distinctive references in the original script to what the sound of the war arrows should be, and the effect on screen is amazingly appropriate. Burtt attempted a series of tests to try to lock down the source of the sound. Only someone as obsessed with sound as the designer of the sounds for the Star Wars films, could find this necessary and finally succeeded in discovering the truth. It turns out that the arrows used by the archery master on the film, had distinct feathering and the feathers were cut in a specific way which helped make the dramatic impact we hear from the screen. Michael shared with me a couple of secrets about velocity and rotation that made the talk more interesting as well. The next time the film gets remastered, updated, special presentation formatted or generally packaged to get fans to buy it again, I would strongly urge the producers track down a recoding of this talk, or have the two gentlemen recreate it, because it was splendid introduction to the movie itself.

After that great presentation, which was worth the trip down to Hollywood and the ticket price, all by itself, we got to take in a screening of "The Adventures of Robin Hood". We could see and hear all of the elements that had just been talked about and of course we got to cheer for Errol Flynn. As each character arrived on screen there was applause from the audience and the reactions to the actors performances was as fresh as it might have been 76 years ago. Claude Raines picking at the pomegranate, Rathbone scowling with distaste at the mere presence of Robin, and Flynn's maniacal gleam, right before the spear comes through the back of his seat, all of these set the audience ablaze with laughter and expectation. Even after seeing the film as many times as I have, I was able to notice things I missed before. The murderous Dickon was one of the men, robbed of his clothing and sent back in rags to Nottingham. He is in the background and I had not realized that he was in this sequence. I also heard the name of the tavern keeper where Marion finds the men of Sherwood and helps them plan his escape. The name was there every time I've seen it before but it stood out for some reason this time, Humility Prim.

The danger with a screening like this is that I will want to see films presented like this always. My life will disappear into a darkened theater even more often if I give in to this temptation. I should join the Cinematique, I need to plan the TCM Festival next year. I want to book some classic movie cruises in the future. The Brotherhood of the Popcorn should expect a membership application from me any day. OK, those are all dreams that I have. For now I have this recent experience, which included meeting a couple of fellow bloggers and finding out that one I was sure was a good guy, turned out to be just as thoughtful as I imagined.

Jodorowsky's Dune

I read "Dune" when I was the same age as Paul in the story, and it was one of the best things I ever spent time with. I'd heard that the movie was being planned but in 1974 or 75, I did not follow the trades, keep up with gossip and of course there was no internet, so I had no idea what was going on. This movie reveals exactly what happened. Along with the Kubrick version of Napoleon, Jodorowsky's Dune is one of the great movies that was never made, and to hear him tell it, it is the greatest movie in history. After watching this documentary, you may very well agree with that assessment.

Alejandro Jodorowsky was an avant garde artist in the sixties who turned to film making and was responsible for El Topo, the original midnight movie cult classic.  He has a dramatic visual eye and on odd philosophical perspective. After he had another smash hit in Europe with "The Holy Mountain" (a movie that features a character who can poop gold) he was asked by his producer what he would like to do next, and his answer was the Science Fiction classic "Dune" a book that he had never even read. If you were a fan of the book, you were likely to have come across drawings by H.R. Gieger that imagined what some of the worlds of "Dune" would look like. Those images came from the project that Jodorowsky was trying to put together in the mid-seventies. This movie is a compelling story about the man who tried to make a film he thought would be transformative and instead ended up being invisible for almost forty years. No scenes were shot, but a whole crew of artists, craftsmen and unlikely actors were poised to make what might very well have been an amazing movie, when the money simply did not show up to execute the project.

This film works because Jodorowsky is a natural raconteur, who has incredible stories to share about Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, Pink Floyd and a half dozen other major figures of the pop culture at the time. This movie is full of talking heads but they are all saying something interesting and Jodo, as he is referred to as, says some of the funniest things with a dry wit and sardonic smile. Even though his heavily accented English needed subtitles at times, you knew what he was saying and how he wanted you to respond to that story. For the most part you can see that he is a passionate madman. The ethos of the early seventies possessed him and he believed that he was searching for spiritual warriors to accompany him on this quest to make a movie that would enlighten the world. Yes, he really did speak that way and he did so with a fervor that might even convince you that he was right. However, the money men in Hollywood must have looked at him aghast because he is a missionary rather than a maker of product. When he does react on camera, to the unwillingness of Hollywood Studios to back his project, you can see the messianic nut job that the studios probably feared. His fit does not last long, but coming here forty years after the experience, it was intense, I imagine it was even more so in 1975.

The director of "Drive", Nicolas Winding Refn, shares an experience of visiting Jodorowsky at his home and being invited to watch "Dune". What happened is that Jodo, got out the elaborate production portfolio he had created to guide the film he planned and then led Refn through the story of the movie, using storyboards, costume designs, publicity photos and assorted other minutia. Refn may be the only person in the world to have seen "Jodorowky's film of "Dune" even though it was only in this form, but as he puts it in his interview, "it was awesome!". We are given glimpses of how terrific it could have been by creative photography of the story board drawings. The opening sequence was to have been a long shot like the take Orson Welles used in "Touch of Evil" only it occurs as the whole Universe is explored and then we pull in on a battle with a pirate spice freighter in space. The way this was shown in the film, makes your mouth water for the complete visual experience. There are several other sections that are also nicely brought to life, even though they are just still frames of drawings and Jodo speaking passionately.

Towards the end of the movie there is a montage of images from films that were made after this version of "Dune" collapsed. Many of the elements in the visualizations from the "Dune" portfolio appear to have influenced two decades worth of film makers after this, including Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott and the King of the World himself, James Cameron.  Jodorowsky takes admittedly self satisfying gratification in the failure of David Lynch's version of the story. That is another story that could be told in a different documentary, but it could not be nearly as entertaining as this movie was, because it would lack the insane vision and story telling prowess of the completely nuts but utterly charming Jodorowsky himself.