The Amazing Spider-man 2

I had a beef with The Amazing Spider-man when it premiered in July 2012.  The update of the series (a mere five years after a three-run film franchise) seemed more out of necessity of distributor Sony keeping its prized cash cow within its fold than anything else, and still does.  The first film, which like the sequel was directed by Marc Webb, was full of raw ingredients (some good, others more sketchily drawn) that never seemed to coalesce into a firm reason for being.  While I try my hardest not to hold onto any pent-up bias when entering a movie house to see something for the first time, sometimes it's not quite so easy to let go.  To get personal for just a moment, I admit that and that my personal taste generally doesn't gravitate towards the comic book spectacle variety either-- although there is greatness engrained the fabrics of the Batman, X-Men and, yes, even the Spider-man film franchises.  That non-true believer stamp may render what follows completely unnecessary, but here goes anyway as The Amazing Spider-man 2 has marched into cinemas, ushering in the 2014 summer movie season.

To date, this marks the fifth Spider-man movie in twelve years and second in this updated faction, perhaps making the marketing tagline "his greatest battle begins" seems a bit, well, silly.  However, times have changed since Sam Raimi unveiled and first Spider-man flick back in the dog days of 2002, and now comic book franchises have grown stately in stature and demand an entire cinematic universe to hold them.  With that being said, there's a lot of ground to cover.  The constraints of doing so much heavy lifting all within the confines of reasonably light span of two-and-a-half hours almost merits a pity cause in favor of director Webb, who is fashioned to a machine bigger than the bona fides anyone could possibly earn from one go around at superhero play and as helmer of indie romantic comedy-- his first film was the charming 2009 film (500) Days of Summer.  At the very least, The Amazing Spider-man 2 (whose major downfall is overcoming its title-- The Inconsistent Spider-man 2, though more appropriate likely wouldn't have sat will with the Sony executives), while never fully recovering its sense of redundancy, improves on the first outing in the human elements of the story and is a bit sprier all around.  Plus, there's two aces in the films favor in the adroitly gifted Andrew Garfield, returning as Peter Parker, and Emma Stone, on again as girlfriend Gwen Stacey.

The Amazing Spider-man

Ten years and two months ago, the first Spider-man reinvigorated the superhero film, debuting, to at the time, the biggest opening weekend box office in movie history and igniting a regeneration of a film genre that Superman and Batman built decades before.  While the franchise, under the fastidious helm of Sam Raimi and starring a perfectly cast nerd in waking Tobey Maguire enjoyed three insanely successful stabs at the famed Marvel comic, the diminishing returns of the third film left a salty aftertaste.  Leave it up to creatively drained studio executives to establish, that a mere five years later, a reboot must commence to bring back the good name and hopeful returns to the lucrative Spider-man name.  Here comes The Amazing Spider-man, a competent re-staging, this time under the leadership of director Marc Webb, he of the inventive 2009 indie sensation (500) Days of Summer.  What's striking about the reboot is the staggering feeling of what's new is old, and while The Amazing Spider-man, this time starring Andrew Garfield, is fine for summertime popcorn fun, it never seems to settle, to catch on, to fully entice with the promise of the something new, fresh and bold.

Garfield plays Peter Parker, high school misfit, one of a troubled youth and stammering social gestures.  He's smart, for sure...a whiz for scientific whatsits, but he's longing.  For what, the film distills a bit too on the nose.  Peter was abandoned by his parents and raised by his aunt and uncle-- this time portrayed by Martin Sheen and Sally Field-- and seeks answers for the sudden dishevel of his youthful existence.  He's plagued at school by the jocks who continually harass him and hides a secret crush for comely peer Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone.)  Does anything sound familiar?  The annoying tick behind The Amazing Spider-man is that it tracks the same beats Raimi tackled a decade ago, giving off an aura of been-there-done-that deja-vu.  Through a set of circumstances that bridges Peter's past with his destiny, he, but of course, meets his maker and becomes a powerful vigilante of sorts.

There's certainly something to the origins of Spider-man that make it a such a palpable piece of pop cultural entertainment.  For ever nerd, every marginalized person, a sense that a greater power and sterner sense of self can be established when strength is handed to you.  There's a certain joie de vivre, in life, and more so in movies, when a geek finds the strength to summon up his inner hero, but there's a haphazard, seemingly by-the-numbers routine in Webb's creation, despite the meticulous bells and whistles that a big studio superhero production can afford.  The Amazing Spider-man lacks the same sense of wonder, or pop thrill of the intoxicating pleasures of showcasing the wonder of someone who seems week discovering his power.  Part of this most come from that deja vu sense, one of such that perhaps the filmmakers felt that dwelling too much into the origins of man and superman would take away from the pyrotechnics of the wizards at the special effects department.  Either by lack of trust by the tale they were telling, or the realization that starting from scratch was a sketchy idea from the start, The Amazing Spider-man never settles in to enjoy the small pleasures of Peter's awakening.

Garfield himself seems a bit out of sorts as well.  A young actor with immense charm, who in recent years has proven a solid range in differing pictures like The Social Network and Never Let Me Go is better when he's able to channel the charming, playful witty banter of superhero speck, but struggles when the gawkier, shyer Peter Parker is on screen.  The stammers feel forced and a bit more Inside the Actors Studio-y, more like a faux representation of awkward youth.  Stone, however carries a moxie and spirit that nearly matches Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane in the original film, and seemingly carries the weight in those exchanges, owning each scene.  However, unlike the first Spider-man, where the romance felt stronger than the villiany antics, The Amazing Spider-man gives ample screen time to the machinations of Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) and his transformation into the slimy Lizard.  While Ifans makes an interesting villain-- there's a full circle turn as Connors connects Peter to his father's disappearance-- the film as a whole is more interested in setting the stage for a laser show come the climatic bout than building tension or character.

And let it be said, the technicians and wizards at work in the effects team of The Amazing Spider-man are truly amazing.  What sparks in the innovation and splendor, the visuals take more away on the un-sturdy development of character and wannabe franchise motivations.  There is a pleasure in the sight of the geek soaring the Manhattan skyline, strong and capable, while his delicate internal life is messy and awkward, however, there's a suddenness and sad lack of magic to The Amazing Spider-man reinterpretation of the Peter Parker saga.  C

The Help

It's hard not to be tad cynical when entering a film like The Help.  Based on a best-selling novel that mixes comedy, tragedy and social commentary all taking place at the birth of the civil rights movement-- the film, from it's abundant advertising is positing itself as a candy-colored crowd-pleaser, tear-jerking yarn, seemingly hellbent at manipulating every Steel Magnolias-fawning emotion out there, and maybe a few Oscar nominations in the process.  The kick and surprising effect of the film is, that while far from perfect, it nearly, almost always works in making the viewer forget about it, that the emotion elicited feels, more often than not, earned and not forced and crammed down our throats, that the heart-tugging character studies, again more often than not, feel lived-in and truthful, not just like make believe hokum, and that the talented group of actresses that embody The Help, are more often than not, engaging, believable, and mostly worth rooting for, makes this film a small miracle by Hollywood, paint-by-numbers message pictures.  There's an awful lot going on here, and an awful lot of movie at two hours and seventeen minutes, and for a film that relates the Upstairs, Downstairs moans and groans of well-to-do white women and their African American help in Jim Crow-era Jackson, Mississippi, it could have been a lot worse than the sprightly, eager to please version that novice filmmaker Tate Taylor offers.

The first character we meet in this sprawling weepie is Aibileen (Viola Davis), a maid for the decidedly un-maternal young Southern belle Elizabeth (Ahna O'Reilly.)  She's got a long tradition on her shoulders...her mother was a maid, her grandmother was a house slave (one assumes, though it's never mentioned, the family tree grows much sadder afterwards), and Aibileen herself might express that while times may have started to slightly chance, her situation is not that much different from her ancestors.  She's on her seventeenth household, and raising her seventeenth white child...the child herself refers her as mom several times.  Aibileen's best friend is a spitfire named Minny (Octavia Spencer), herself beholden to another, altogether more hostile white family headed by the vindictive and slight Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard.)  Both Aibileen and Minny find their world changed when a rebellious and free-thinking recent college grad nicknamed Skeeter (Emma Stone) returns to Jackson with grand plans to become a writer.  Skeeter herself was raised by an African American maid that raised her, and was held beloved by her...she was mysteriously let go some time earlier.  Moved by advice to write about what strikes and passions her, and already felt astray from her societal friends (like Hilly), Skeeter decides to write a tell-all account from the helps point of view.

This comes reluctantly, as first mentioned by an urbane book editor (played by Mary Steenburgen, in a thankless but generous performance that adds to the big, sprawling, game ensemble of the film) and from the maids themselves, afraid of what dangers might loom by telling their less than glowing accounts of lifelong servitude.  Goaded by anger, and crazed bigots like Hilly, Aibileen and eventually Minny agree.  Minny's story is further broadened once she's ousted from the Holbrook residence (for not adhering to Hilly's initiative to make the help use a separate bathroom outside the main residence) and finds work from a societal outcast from a white-trash vixen named Celia (Jessica Chastain, of The Tree of Life.)  Skeeter, herself is ostracized from her circle of friends and even by her family...her mother (Allison Janney) is a cancer patient longing for nothing but for her grown up girl to settle down and get married.  All of these conflicts, and side stories and over-stuffed arcs explain the over-bloated running time, and a great many of them (including a brief romantic aside for Skeeter) become overkill, but The Help, for what it's worth is perhaps greater as a whole, than the sum of its parts.  For when it works, and it may all be in a sappy, made-for-television sort of way, it works thanks to the commitment of its ensemble.

The words themselves may be slightly trite and are hardly subtle, but the range of talent expressed, especially in the three leading characters has that special, uncanny feeling of coming across achingly truthful and heartbreaking.  Viola Davis is at the center, through and through, and presents Aibileen with such poise, dignity and humanity that it's like a bullet through the chest when her real pain is revealed.  She's far too skilled an actress (which her resume should confirm) to lay it on too thickly, but in her stern consternation and quiet gracefulness, it's apparent from the very beginning this is her film.  Octavia Spencer has the showier part of the sassy Minny, but she's revelatory in the sense that in lesser hands, Minny would have been a cartoon, a smart assed manny; she gets the biggest laughs but only because it's so hard not to be affected by her strife and her will-- there's a particularly pointed and somewhat cruel scene where she serves her adversary her comeuppance, and while coarse, she owns it the entire time.  Emma Stone, for her part, and possibly the trickier part of the film for she must pave the moral compass without ill-advised earnestness, is affecting because of her dynamic screen presence...it's only late in the film that we get any sense of her pain, but Stone, with her cinematic charm is heartbreaking when her motives become more clear and palpable-- she connects to Aibileen and Minny because women like them were so much more apart of her upbringing than her actual parents.  As for Howard and Chastain, one must concede that they both go for broke in interesting ways, just this side of caricatures, broad and brazen...Howard seems to be channeling Cruella De Vil and Chastain a Marilyn Monroe type...whether good or bad, neither can held for lack of drive.  The rest of the starry ensemble is backed by Sissy Spacek, Janney, and Cicely Tyson, and while incidental or not, are provided for with possible Oscar clips.  Of those three, Janney wins.

And while The Help lags, sometimes in strides, sometimes in simple beats.  And while the over-eager stitching is a bit too apparent, and the Disney-endorsed, sunny aesthetic of sadder days is a bit hard to go down a few times, the humanity and generousness of the fine women anchoring this film make everything ever so easily-digestible, and in a few times, out and out heart-wrenching.  And while the real movement outside of Jackson is mostly shoddily viewed from a few, brief television clips that feel strangely disconnected to the soapy weeper that's front and center, it's difficult for me at least, a person mostly immune to such intentional manipulation, to neglect the small but effective pleasures of The Help.  Aibileen may have only started telling her stories because a scrappy, well-intentioned white girl called upon her too, but her voice has such a striking soul and vitality that makes The Help a better movie than it really should be, and Davis, hopefully, as its driver will be the one the reap the dividends.  B

Easy A

As teen comedy send-ups of classic literature, Easy A is more of 10 Things I Hate About You (riffing on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew) than Clueless (the master class re-working of Jane Austin's Emma.)  A sunny, self aware trifling of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Easy A also works as an amalgam of nearly every teen entry of the last twenty years, calling attention to it's very cliches, before honoring them with great reverence.  However, there's an ace in the hole, thanks to it's star, Emma Stone, who ponces and roars with terrific comedic timing and nimble charm.  If the films only works as a solid starring vehicle for a gifted young actress, there are worse cinematic crimes, and all the hogwash is easily and tastefully washed down thanks to the smart, husky voiced talent of an actress owning her silly film with such wit and aplomb.

Stone plays Olive, a high school wallflower who becomes a 21st century Hester Prynne when a little lie unleashes an scandalous reputation.  Soon the virginal Olive becomes a mark for unpopular, oppressed boys who happily fete her to service their own sad high school lives-- there's the gay boy, the fat kid, the "fill-in-the-blank" minority.  Olive obliges, loving the attention and notoriety at first.  She even wears her own "A" to school.  Things of course turn very sour, thanks to a very real high school scandal.  The cluttered Easy A spouts out screen time to an over-zealous Christian clique (headed by queen bee Amanda Bynes), which is not nearly as pointed or well-observed as Saved! (2004) was, as well as other teen comedy mainstays-- kooky parents (serviced and salvaged by the acting gods of Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci), and the dreamboat suitor-to-be (Gossip Girl's Penn Badgley.)  Thankfully these predictable, duller moments are set with cinematic quotation marks, and Stone happily and blessedly spins her expository dialogue with such unexpected humor and peppery off-kilter charm.

The one part of Easy A that's a uneasy, and more my speed involves the guidance counselor (played by Lisa Kudrow) playing an uneasy game of her own, of which Olive (being the dutiful servant to the oppressed and unhappy) gets the rap for.  It's here where I felt the film could potentially be heading into the pantheon of it's ilk, but director Will Gluck (Fired Up) and writer Bert V. Royal either lost their nerve or interest in that film, deciding it best to keep the sun-sunshiny 80s pastiche going full steam.  Which is a shame considering Easy A, could have really used the whole pious Christian\The Scarlet Letter act for a stronger, more effective beat than it is.  Surely Kudrow would have been game-- in her brief appearance, she keeps her offbeat, beautifully observed absurdest humor (a nice counterpoint to Stone's) flowing strong.  I would have liked to have seen that film a lot more.

That being said, it's a pleasant, diverting movie.  And if one can get over various movie touchstones, I see Easy A being a solid TBS flick for decades.  So if one can get over a few obvious issues, for instance, the unfortunate filmic tactic of portraying beautiful, young women as homely, and the sight of 20-somethings playing high school students (I'll give Easy A a free pass on that one, for reasons I'll refrain from mentioning), the silver lining is the experience of watching a young, talented actress making her mark in a flattering and fittingly commercial way.  After years of solid supporting work is similar material (Superbad, Zombieland, The House Bunny), I humbly request that casting directors across this great land make proper use of Ms. Stone in the coming years, for I see a mature, game, seriously funny future.  However, Easy A is more of B-.