At two-and-a-half hours the new Spider-Man movie is almost equal parts action and story. The first fifteen minutes contains not one, but two wild action sequences that’ll make your eyeballs dance. If you haven’t had your fill of special effects for the week your thirst will be quenched early on. Then the onslaught of story begins. Jammed packed with plot, bad guys and lots and lots of moony-eyed love, it’s the busiest superhero movie in recent memory.
Fresh out of high school Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is being pulled in two different directions. He loves Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) but is troubled by a promise he made to her late father (Dennis Leary) that he would never let anything bad happen to her.
Meanwhile, Peter’s old friend Harry Osborn (Dane De Haan), heir to the OsCorp fortune, is battling a hereditary genetic disease he thinks can be cured with a dose of Spider-Man’s blood and Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), a low level OsCorp electrical engineer, has an accident that rewires him into Electro, a highly charged villain with the power to control electricity.
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is this is a movie with several well-crafted dramatic moments. Too bad most of them feel like they’re lifted from another movie and dropped into this one as placeholders for the action sequences. Peter Parker is shedding tears over his love life one minute, swinging on webby vines through the streets the next. Both tones are well executed, but they often feel forced together.
Garfield works to distance himself from Tobey McGuire’s Spider-Man. First thing you notice is that he’s not as mopey as McGuire; as Parker Garfield is nerdy and angsty, not downcast and ennui ridden.
Secondly, he’s witty when playing the web slinger. The Sam Raimi “Spider-Man” movies didn’t use Spidey’s comic book sarcasm but Garfield’s Mach 2 version isn’t shy to let loose with some entertaining trash talking.
His portrayal is bright, punchy and more akin to the comic books than anything McGuire or Raimi put on film.
Emma Stone’s football-sized eyes and smart smile rescue Gwen from the simply fulfilling the girlfriend role. She brings some spark to the character and shares some good chemistry with (real life boyfriend) Garfield.
Speaking of sparks, Foxx could have used a few more as Electro. A bundle of neurosis before his electro charged accident, Max becomes one of the rare villains who was more interesting before he got his powers.
De Haan, who was so good in “Chronicle,” is interesting as Harry / Green Goblin. His obsession with finding a cure for his disease is a springboard for his transformation into the Goblin and Da Haan embraces a malevolence that makes the character memorable.
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” has good actors—plus a fun cameo from Paul Giamatti—a love story and some good action—you will believe a man can swing above the streets of New York—so why does it feel somewhat unsatisfying?
Maybe it’s the two-and-a-half-hour running time, or the something-for-everyone mix of action, heartbreak and comedy, or perhaps it’s the fact that it feels like a well made copy of the first Garfield “Spider-Man” movie, which itself was a riff on the McGuire movies.
The message behind “Draft Day,” Kevin Costner’s last sports flick, is that technical ability is one thing, but having heart is just as important. It’s a key message for the story but also vital when considering the movie as a whole.
This film is technically proficient, but loads of technically proficient flicks aren’t as entertaining as this one. This movie works particularly well because it has heart, just like the players that Kevin Costner’s character recruits for his football team.
On the day of the NFL Draft, Cleveland Browns general manager Sonny Weaver Jr. (Costner) is faced with some tough choices. His team is not doing well, sports radio talking heads are beating him up for ruining the franchise his late father, the legendary coach Sonny Weaver Sr, built up and his girlfriend (Jennifer Garner) is angry with him. His future and possibly the future of the team hinges on one deal; a massive trade for hotshot quarterback Bo Callahan (Josh Pence).
Like “Moneyball,” “Draft Day” scores authenticity points by casting a number of sports figures and insiders playing themselves. Cleveland Browns Center Alex Mack appears as does San Francisco 49ers defensive player Delon Sanders, but it’s the supporting cast of professional actors who really score a touchdown.
Frank Langella, playing the anything-for-a-buck owner of the Browns plus Ellen Burstyn and Dennis Leary as Sonny’s mother and grumpy coach respectively, are all great. Sean Combs as a smarmy sports agant didn’t even bother me. But of course, this really is Kevin Costner’s movie. He’s easy to watch at the best of times but particularly so when he’s in the genre that works best for him, and that’s sports movies.
He plays Weaver much differently than Brad Pitt handled real life manager Billy Beane in “Moneyball.” Unlike Beane, who used an algorithm to put a team together, Weaver works on a combo of instinct, experience and guts, which makes for an all round more emotional trip for him and the audience. “There’s no such thing as a ‘sure thing,”” the movie tells us. “All that matters is your gut.”
Story wise this is a pure sports film, complete with lingo and all kinds of stats, but it’s also a mystery. As Weaver digs into Callahan’s past, questions arise, leaving the movie’s central bit of action—will Weaver draft Callahan or not—up in the air until the closing minutes of the movie. It’s not Hitchcock, but it will keep you guessing.
Sports illiterates might need subtitles to understand some of the goings on. For me it didn’t matter if I followed the intricacies of the trades because the underlying emotion that comes along with changing someone’s life by drafting them into the NFL is very powerful and well played here.
I loved “The Longest Daycare,” the Simpson’s short that plays before Ice Age. It’s a funny, gently paced thriller for kids with jokes that parents and film geeks will love. In fact I wanted more of that and less of “Ice Age: Continental Drift.” The main feature is nicely animated but is saddled with a story so by-the-book it feels like it would have been old hat even in the ice age.
The movie begins when Ice Age regular, the saber-toothed squirrel Scrat’s efforts to protect his only possession—his prized acorn—lead to the great Continental Drift. As the earth shifts and breaks apart woolly mammoth Manny (Ray Romano), Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) and Diego the sarcastic smilodon (Dennis Leary) get separated from their families. Their journey to reunite with their kin puts them directly into the path of ape pirate Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage) and his murderous band of misfits, including Shira (Jenifer Lopez), a female saber-toothed tiger who learns the meaning of friendship and love.
Manny and friends are not aided by a lazy script which feels like it was run through the Cliche-O-Matic ™ Prehistoric Model. The continental divide device is novel, but the theme–family and friends mean everything–has been done before and better.
There are some funny sitcom gags at the beginning—Manny tells his daughter she’ll be allowed to go out with boys when “I’m dead plus three days to make sure I’m dead”—but may of the jokes in the main part of the film come out of nowhere and feel tacked on. In the middle of the great land divide apropos of nothing a bird asks a mammoth if water tastes like boogers when they drink through their trunks. It has nothing to do with anything, except to insert a laugh to maintain audience interest.
It feels cheap and not nearly as sophisticated as the gags in any of the Pixar movies that are always organic to the story. There is one self-aware comment, however, that works. “We fought dinosaurs in the ice age,” says Sid, “it didn’t make sense, but it was fun.”
The voice work is by-the-book, with the exception of Peter Dinklage whose Caption Gutt brings some life to this museum piece.
He’s a horrifying and ghastly seadog (or, more rightly, ape), but in a good and kid friendly way. But the most horrifying thing about the “Ice Age” series is that they still have 20,000 years of history and sequel potential to go until Manny and company retire.
