The Film Junkie

I realize I had huge expectations, but why shouldn’t I?  ‘Spider-Man 2′ (2004) is one the best comic book movies of all time.  It raised the bar and it stands beside ‘X2′ (2003) as my two all-time favorites of the genre.  Thus I went to the theatre this weekend expecting nothing less than brilliance from Sam Raimi…and he simply did not deliver.

The film follows Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) in the aftermath of Harry Osborn (James Franco) and Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) discovering his secret identity.  Parker is happy that he can share this side of his life with Watson and he must now face the wrath of Osborn who blames Spider-Man for his father’s death.

The story becomes swiftly bloated with new characters from the Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church in an underdeveloped and sappy role) to Venom (Topher Grace does the best he can with a character designed as pretty one-note in what an asshole he is) to Gwen Stacy (the lovely Bryce Dallas Howard is criminally underused).  Raimi seems to be trying to employ every Spider-Man character all at once and ends up with a pretty empty film.

There are a few good action scenes, but none can compete with the great train scene in ‘Spider-Man 2′.  The fights are good, but the CGI stands out as not being as strong as before.

The most frustrating aspect of this film is how Raimi wastes the characters.  Maguire has a lot of fun playing Parker under the Venom influence, but he looks like Peter Petrelli from ‘Heroes’ doing an impression of John Travolta in ‘Saturday Night Fever’.  There is a ridiculous scene in a jazz club that had nothing to do with anything other than tarnishing the Spider-Man name.

Dunst tries her best with the broody MJ, but she comes off annoying and selfish for most the film, when she is not playing the victim, of course.

The ending is awful in its moralistic posturing.  I won’t give it away, but it left me completely unsatisfied and cheated.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  This is a good film, it is flashy and glossy and many of the things a great summer movie should be, but it falls far short of my expectations, especially the second half.

Grade: B-

I get what everyone was so up in arms over this movie.  It is nothing like the movies Shyamalan has made before.  With ‘Lady in the Water’ he has created a bedtime story that also fights back against the critics who have blasted his movies.

I love Shyamalan movies.  With the exception of ‘Unbreakable’ (2000), his films are great thrillers, modern Hitchcocks.  Yet I am split with this movie.

The story follows Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) a building manager with a dark past who encounters a narf (Bryce Dallas Howard), a sea nymph, and uses a fable to understand how to save her.

The problem with the movie is that it is pretentious, self-important and annoying.  Shyamalan himself is a major cast member, where before he only made Hitchcock-like cameos.  He is a decent actor, that is not the problem, the problem is that is comes off very masturbatory.  The bad guy is a film critic for god’s sake.

The good parts of this movie are the interesting characters in the building and the fable itself.  I actually liked those parts.

However, on the whole it is nowhere near the caliber of movies he has made before.  It is a disappointing, self-indulgent movie the likes of which a director might make in the latter half of his career (see Scorsese’s ‘Gangs of New York’ (2002)), not in the early stages.

Grade: C+