“Two” Steps Backwards

Two years ago, the reboot of the Spiderman franchise was a pleasant surprise. It cut down on the angst that was a weakness of the Sam Raimi version, particularly when it came to Spidey’s love interest, so in the end Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) ignore her father’s request that they stay apart. There was also less of the trash talk on Spidey’s part, and while the plot was fantastic, as is most every superhero movie, it was handled in a more realistic and less cartoony way. There was hope that the sequel would build on this good start. Instead, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 steps backward. It’s well-filmed, the special effects are top-notch, and the chemistry is wonderful between Garfield and Stone, but the problem is the script. It was pounded out by four writers, and they ended up with a clichéd mishmash. At nearly 2 ½ hours, it’s also bloated.

The movie begins with scenes repeated from the first film, when Peter was dropped off with his Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) by his parents Richard and Mary (Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidtz). The movie then shows what happened to Richard and Mary afterward in a scene that involves a plane falling from the sky, though they must have been traveling near the edge of space since the astronauts of the 1960s took less time coming down than does this plane.

In the first set-piece with Spidey, he (along with apparently every NYPD police car) is trying to catch three Russian mobsters, led by Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti). The script gives Spidey a constant string of wisecracks that turn the action into a cartoon. Actually, some of the action seems cribbed from the Warner Brothers classics, though Bugs Bunny and the Roadrunner did it better. Peter’s also late for his graduation ceremony, where Gwen is the valedictorian. He misses her speech, but arrives just in time to collect his diploma. Even as he’s cracking wise, Peter keeps flashing to visions of Captain Stacy, so the angst rushes back in and Peter must break up with Gwen to honor her father’s dying wish. One giant step backwards right there.

During the chase, Spidey saves dweebish electrician Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), who’s wandering around the streets carrying multiple rolls of blueprints for absolutely no discernable reason. He’s a male version of Michelle Pfeiffer’s “Selina Kyle” from Batman Returns 22 years ago, but without the sympathy she engendered, or the edge she projected once she turned into Catwoman after being killed by Christopher Walken. Dillon works as an electrician for Oscorp, the evil corporate empire of the Spiderman saga, and is picked on by his manager (B.J. Novak). It’s stated that Oscorp has stolen his design for a power grid, but he shows no resentment against the company, even after the industrial accident they cause that turns Dillon into Electro. Why doesn’t Electro get some revenge against his manager? Apparently the writers forgot about Novak’s character.

Dane DeHaan is Harry Osborne, the role James Franco played in the Raimi films. Harry is written as a black sheep who’s disappointed his father (Chris Cooper in a small, uncredited role) and was shipped off to boarding schools when he was eleven, though somehow he’s still Peter Parker’s BFF. Soon Harry’s old man dies of a genetic disease that he’s lived with for decades, but when Harry begins to manifest symptoms, he acts like he’ll die tomorrow. Eventually he takes on the Green Goblin persona, but it feels like an afterthought. The writers have set up Oscorp as this powerful corporation with strong security and evil henchmen, but it seems like whenever someone needs to get some carefully protected item, they can walk right into the building and pick it up.

When you compare Amazing Spider-Man 2 to April’s superhero movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the problems with Spider-Man become clear. With Winter Soldier, the writers took the Marvel world and stood it on its ear. (I won’t go into how just in case you’re one of the three or four people in the world who haven’t yet seen the movie.) The action always has a purpose, the plotting is deft and it mirrors real concerns in the world that give it a topical edge. The first Captain America was a bit of a period piece (though a very well-done period piece) whose purpose was to set up the character for The Avengers. With Winter Soldier, though, the franchise jumped from afterthought to the level of the Iron Man series, and came close to the quality of The Dark Knight.

In contrast, Amazing Spider-Man 2 feels like it was cribbed from the other Marvel movies. The writers even lift a scene from Iron Man 2 where a kid steps in for the hero, though Iron Man did it much better. The Spidey banter is annoying because the writers use it in place of characterization. The film will make money, but if they make a third movie, the filmmakers will have to work hard to get rid of the bad aftertaste this movie leaves in your mouth when it’s finished.

(Note: It’s common now for Marvel movies to have two tags during the credits. This time, though, the only tag is a scene from X-Men: Days of Future Past that comes midway through the credits. It’s almost like the filmmakers are saying, “Yeah, this one stunk, but there’s a good movie coming in a couple of weeks.” There’s no tag at the end.)

Anticipation – Summer ’14

Rather than make a long list of movies for my summer preview blog this year, I’ve decided to focus on the films I’m excited about seeing. These are the movies I’d line up to watch on their opening day over the course of the next four months, in the order of their release dates. At the end I’ve included the titles of some movies I may also see, as well as a few that strike me already as turkeys.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (May 2)

With the reboot of Spider-Man two years ago starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, director Marc Webb cut out the camp of the Sam Raimi films and replaced it with a harder edge. This time you have three excellent actors – Jamie Foxx, Paul Giamatti, and Dane DeHaan – as the bad guys Spidey must defeat. DeHaan was excellent in Chronicle, which was something of a deconstruction of the genre – super powers won’t solve your problems, it will just super-size them. He’s an actor to watch.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (May 23)

After the classic The Usual Suspects, director Bryan Singer made the first two X-Men movies, which were wonderful. His recent oeuvre (Valkyrie, Superman Returns, Jack the Giant Slayer) hasn’t done well. After Singer, the X-Men series made a bad misstep (“Curse you, Brett Ratner!”), but came back strong with X-Men: First Class. Now we have the best of both worlds, with Singer directing members of his original cast as well as their earlier versions from First Class. Days of Future Past is based on a classic story line from 1980, so it has a strong plot as a starting point. The first trailers look like it’s a winner.

Maleficent (May 30)

This movie does a “Wicked” twist on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale by giving us some sympathy for the Devil – or at least the delightfully devilish Angelina Jolie. It gives backstory that makes the cursing of Princess Aurora more understandable than simply an overlooked birthday shower invitation. Elle Fanning plays the teenaged Aurora, while Jolie’s daughter Vivienne Jolie-Pitt plays the princess as a toddler.  Vivienne had to take the role since all the other children who auditioned for it were completely freaked-out by Angelina in full Maleficent mode. Audiences may be as well.

The Fault in Our Stars (June 6)

One of the pleasures of The Descendants was Shailene Woodley as George Clooney’s eldest daughter. Woodley not only held her own with Clooney, but matched him in magnetism on screen. Now she’s starring in this movie, based on the Young Adult bestseller. Usually in the summer there’s a movie that breaks the blockbuster format for releases, such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel three years ago. The Fault in Our Stars may be the movie for this summer.

Begin Again (July 4)

And if The Fault in Our Stars isn’t the antidote to movies filled with explosions, then this one might be it. Director John Carney scored a few years back with the movie Once, that has now become a hit as a musical on Broadway. Here he again explores music and the effect it can have on people. (The original title for the film was “Can A Song Save Your Life?”) He has a wonderful cast to work with: Kiera Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Catherine Keener, Hailee Steinfeld, and “Maroon 5” frontman Adam Levine.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (July 11)

2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes successfully rebooted the series, after Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes crashed and burned. The advances in CGI, as well as Andy Serkis’ incredible ability with performance-capture special effects, made Caesar believable as an ape with enhanced intelligence. In this sequel, humanity has been decimated by a pathogen. The survivors in San Francisco, led by Gary Oldman, come into conflict with Caesar’s clan of intelligent apes.

A Most Wanted Man (July 29)

This thriller is based on a John le Carre novel and stars Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his last roles. That’s enough to make me to want to see this film, though it also stars Robin Wright, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, and Daniel Bruhl. One caution, though, is that it’s directed by Anton Corbijn, who made the George Clooney misfire The American. Hopefully Corbijn learned from that experience.

Get On Up (August 1)

The trailer for this bio-pic of the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, is reminiscent of Ray and Walk The Line, but with better dancing. It stars Chadwick Boseman, who had a star-making turn in the Jackie Robinson bio-pic 42 last year. The movie also has The Help of Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer as Brown’s mother and aunt respectively.

What If (August 1)

This movie was originally titled “The F Word” and was shown at some festivals last year, but is only now being released. It stars Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan as two people who form a platonic bond of friendship. Radcliffe moved on from the Harry Potter series with an effective performance in The Woman in Black, but the real attraction here is Zoe Kazan. The granddaughter of Elia Kazan wrote and starred in the excellent and inventive film Ruby Sparks. Apparently much of the dialogue for What If was improvised on the set, which with Kazan could be a strength.

Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (August 22)

The original Sin City opened the door for semi-animated movies both good (300) and bad (Sucker Punch). Now co-directors Miller and Robert Rodriguez have returned to town to deliver another story from Miller’s series of illustrated novels. Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis and Jessica Alba reprise their roles from the original movie, and are joined by Eva Green, Lady Gaga and Josh Brolin.

Others movies that I’m on the fence about: Godzilla, Jersey Boys, Edge of Tomorrow, A Hundred Foot Journey, The Giver, Guardians of the Galaxy, Lucy, and If I Stay.

And there are some movies this summer that you’d have to pay me to see: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Haven’t they reached their twenties yet?), Transformers: Age of Extinction (This franchise should have reached the age of extinction two movies ago), The Expendables 3 (More expendable than ever?) and Hercules (The Rock should have rolled past this one).

Agree? Disagree? Are there other films on your list? Please feel free to leave a comment.

 

The Telling of the Tale

Georges Polti was a French writer who famously enumerated the 36 plots that make up all literature.  (He actually based it on a list identified by the German writer Goethe, who said it was the work of an Italian, Carlo Gozzi…but that’s another story.)  The point is that as far as plots, they’ve all been done.  The challenge for everyone in the arts, including filmmakers, is to handle the plot in a fresh way.  That’s what the makers of Chronicle have done, and in doing so they’ve created one of the best superhero movies ever made.

Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan) is a shy Seattle high school student.  His father (Michael Kelly) is an abusive drunkard living on a disability pension while his mother is bedridden and slowly dying.  Andrew has bought an old video camera that soon becomes his constant companion.  His only other friend is his cousin Matt Garetty (Alex Russell), who gives Andrew rides to school.

Matt invites Andrew to a rave party one night.  While there, they meet Casey Letter (Ashley Hinshaw), a video blogger with whom Matt shares a bit of history.  After an encounter with a bully, Andrew leaves the party and sits outside waiting for Matt.  Instead he’s found by Steve Montgomery (Michael B. Jordan), a popular jock in the school who’s running for school council.  Steve and Matt have found a cave in a field behind the rave location and want Andrew to document what they find with his camera.  All three go into the cave, where they discover a large star-shaped crystal that’s humming with power.  When they get close to the crystal, the force inside it floods into them.

They find they have the power of telekinesis – moving objects by the power of their minds.  Their first thought is typical for teenaged boys.  They’ll use it to pull pranks on people, such as making a teddy bear fly towards a little girl or move a car to a different parking spot from where the driver left it.  As their powers grow and expand, they’re faced with possible deadly consequences of their actions.  For Andrew, though, his new talent becomes a way to payback the abuse he’s suffered for years.

Chronicle is the brainchild of Josh Trank and Max Landis, two 27-year-old L.A. natives who’d been paying their dues in the film industry.  Trank had co-produced, edited, and acted in the indy film Big Fan (and was an uncredited 2^nd unit director), and he’d written, directed and edited a few episodes of the Spike TV series The Kill Zone.  Landis had written, directed and edited several short films, and had appeared as an actor in Blues Brothers 2000 when he was twelve.

Together they came up with the idea for Chronicle.  Landis then wrote the screenplay and Trank directed the movie.  They took the conceit used in The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield of recovered film/video, but they turned the single viewpoint of those films into a panorama.  Rather than just using one camera to tell the story, they acknowledge that we are a video society, so in addition to Andrew’s camera, you have Casey’s video blog and eventually a number of surveillance cameras capturing the story.  Andrew also uses his telekinesis to “hold” his camera while filming, so he’s not trapped behind it.

The script is intelligent and deals with the moral questions that are so often glossed over in this genre.  While Uncle Ben may simply tell Peter Parker that “With great power comes great responsibility,” Chronicle wrestles with that responsibility head on, leading to one of the most thrilling climaxes ever filmed.

Dane DeHaan is perfect in the role of Andrew, capturing both his social awkwardness and inner rage.  After roles on HBO’s In Treatment and True Blood, he’s poised to be a breakout star.  Chronicle will provide him a jumpstart.  Michael B. Jordan has the largest resume of any of the actors, having been on such TV shows as The Wire, Parenthood, and Friday Night Lights (along with 3 years on All My Children).  He brings energy and delight to the role, and for a while there’s a chance he will release Andrew from his destructive world.  Alex Russell has only done a few short roles, but his Matt provides a strong counterbalance and a moral compass to Andrew.  His scenes with Ashley Hinshaw, another relative novice, are wonderful moments of text and subtext.

Much of the film was shot in South Africa, though you’d only know it from reading the credits.  The special effects are exceptionally well done for a fairly low-budget movie.  Fan buzz helped Chronicle debut on top of the box office for its initial week in release.  Hopefully that will continue, and more people will see this exceptional film.