After sitting through all two-and-a-quarter hours of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” the latest animated adventure of the universe jumping superhero, your spidey senses won’t be the only thing left tingling.
A wild pop culture pastiche of visual styles that jumps off the screen in ways that will give your eyeballs a Charles Atlas style workout, it is a full-body experience on the big screen.
Gwen Stacy (voice of Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (voice of Shameik Moore) return from 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Both are he off-spring of police officers, and both have secret identities as Spider-Woman and Spider-Man, respectively.
When Gwen becomes estranged from her father, she disappears into the Spider-Verse, a series of connected but independent universes, each with its own brand of Spider-People. As The Spot (voice of Jason Schwartzman), a villain covered in portals that allow him to transport from place to place, threatens to shred the very fabric of the Multi-Verse, Gwen and Miles go interdimensional to fight the new threat.
There they find Spider-HQ, sore of a Quantico for all various and sundry Spider-Folks, like Spider-Woman (voice of Issa Rae), Spider-Punk (voice of Daniel Kaluuya) and alpha arachnid Miguel O’Hara (voice of Oscar Isaac). When Mile inadvertently disrupts the Spider-Verse he learns an important lesson about the sacrifice required to be a Spider-Man.
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is a spider web of Marvel mythology, relationship drama, action and some very funny moments, combined with extraordinary, state-of-the-art visuals. In the action scenes, co-directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson pull out all the stops to create a singular experience that has more to do with the anarchic spirit of the original comic books than the recent spate of superhero movies. Stylish and frenetic, the action scenes are so colourful they often look like an artist’s paint-palette exploded on the screen.
When the film isn’t in motion, it takes the time to explore the relationships between parents and kids, with the added twist of superheroes trying to figure out their place in the world (or should that be worlds?), while trying to navigate their teens. It adds themes of loneliness, responsibility vs. obligation and having autonomy over one’s own life. Through Gwen and Miles, and a heaping helping of action, the importance of writing one’s own life story is the focus of the story.
Ultimately, the success of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” isn’t simply about the eye-popping nature of the visuals or the humour or the emotional aspect of the story. All are great, but what makes it special is that it feels fresh. It’s a superhero movie, with all the world saving tropes you expect, but it feels more like a comic book come to life than most, if any, other superhero flick.
Can’t get enough Spider-Man? Check out “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse,” a mega-origin story that features not one, not two but at least seven iterations of the web slinging superhero.
Before a radioactive spider bit Miles Morales (voice of Shameik Moore) he was a half-Puerto Rican and half-African-American, Brooklyn born student with loving parents. Post bite, his world goes topsy-turvy. Unable to control his brand-new powers—he sticks to everyone and everything like glue—he needs help. Enter the real Spider-Man (Jake Johnson) who asks the younger Spider-Man to combat crime lord Kingpin (Liev Schreiber).
The evil genius doesn’t have superpowers but he does have a machine called a Collider with the power to tear the world apart. “It’s a hell of a freakin’ light show,” Kingpin cackles. “You’ll love this.” When Kingpin hits the Collider’s on switch the various portals between Spider-Verse open, sweeping alternate Spider-People including Peter B. Parker (Johnson again), a “junky, old, broke-down hobo Spider Man,” Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), an anthropomorphic animal parody of Spider-Man, Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), a Japanese-American middle school student, adopted by Aunt May and Uncle Ben and Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), a hard-bitten Raymond Chandler-esque type, into Miles’s world. The inter-dimensional Peter B. becomes a mentor of sorts to Miles—“Disinfect the mask,” he advises. “Use talcum powder. You don’t want chaffing.”—teaching his the tricks of the superhero trade. “You’re like the Spider-Man I don’t want to be,” Miles says to the frayed around the edges Peter. “I don’t think you have a choice kiddo,” Peter B. replies.
Before shutting off the Supercollider and saving the world Miles must sends the other Spider-types back to their realms or they will disintegrate.
“Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” is a cortex-boiling hit of boffo superhero theatrics. Visually it’s a pop art explosion, paying tribute, in its more restrained moments, to the work of original Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko. In the climatic multiverse showdown, however, it’s as if M.C. Escher and Roy Lichtenstein did acid and conceived a psychedelic freak-out that mixes and matches op art, anime and everything in between. It doesn’t look like any other superhero film you’ve ever seen. It’s wild and woolly, a pastiche of styles formed into one seamless whole.
It’s fresh and funny, and yes, there is a Stan Lee cameo, but despite the eye-catching animation and the flippant time of the script, there is substance; the film has a point. “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” is a coming-of-age story for Miles who must tap into his inner strength to succeed. Uncle Ben’s quote, “With great power comes great responsibility,” comes up in the film’s multiple origin stories but is amended to reflect that great power also comes with an awareness of self. “Anyone can wear the mask,” Miles says. “If you didn’t know that before I hope you know it now.” It’s a message about finding the greatness within whether you can shoot webs from your wrists or not. In a tweet the day Stan Lee died Seth Rogen wrote, “Thank you Stan Lee for making people who feel different realize they are special.” Lee didn’t write “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” but his powerful, personal message of self worth is alive and well here.
It can be tough to stay in touch with friends after college. People scatter, get married, have kids, don’t answer the phone as much. In real life Joe Tombari and his pals figured out a unique way to stay connected, an elaborate game of tag that has kept them in touch—literally—for more than two decades. “The best thing about the game,” he told “The Guardian,” “is that it has kept us in touch over all these years—it forces us to meet and has formed a strong bond between us, almost like brothers.”
A new film starring Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Jake Johnson, Isla Fisher, Annabelle Wallis, Leslie Bibb, Ed Helms, Hannibal Buress, and Rashida Jones takes Tombari’s game to an extreme.
For one month of each of the last thirty years Hoagie (Helms), Jerry (Renner), Bob (Hamm), Chili (Johnson) and Kevin (Buress) go to war, playing a game of tag with no rules and no prisoners. The last ‘it” of the season lives in shame for the rest of the year.
The latest game overlaps with the wedding of alpha dog Jerry, the only undefeated player. “He’s the best who ever played,” says Hoagie, “and now he wants to retire and make us all look like fools.” The old friends rally to put an end to Jerry’s winning streak.
The movie takes the real life premise and pushes it to extremes. These competitive fools will stop at nothing—including physical harm—to win. It’s a funny idea that does deliver some laughs but ultimately becomes a one-joke premise tarted up with some mild action, a dollop of psychological warfare, some raunchy humour and even a simulated war crime played for yuks. The bromantic chemistry between the guys is good—and Buress with his non-sequitirs and deadpan delivery steals the show—but the film works best before it overindulges in elaborate set pieces. Hoagie disguised as a woman in an attempt to take Jerry by surprise is funny. Jerry’s booby-trapped forest, à la “Apocalypse Now,” pushes the story too far from the core—a friendly movie about male bonding—and into the realm of the ridiculous.
The movie finishes with clips of Tombari and his pals playing the real-life game and suggests that a documentary might have been just as entertaining as the narrative film.
CHIPs: It’s a remake, a comedy and an action film and yet it doesn’t quite measure up to any of those descriptors. It’s a remake in the sense that writer-director-star Dax Shepard has lifted the title, character names and general situation from the classic TV show but they are simply pegs to hang his crude jokes on.
The Circle: While it is a pleasure to see Bill Paxton in his last big screen performance, “The Circle” often feels like an Exposition-A-Thon, a message in search of a story.
The Fate of the Furious: Preposterous is not a word most filmmakers would like to have applied to their work but in the case of the “Fast and Furious” franchise I think it is what they are going for. Somewhere along the way the down-‘n’-dirty car chase flicks veered from sublimely silly to simply silly. “The Fate of the Furious” is fast, furious but it’s not much fun. It’s an unholy mash-up of James Bond and the Marvel Universe, a movie bogged down by outrageous stunts and too many characters. Someone really should tell Vin Diesel and Company that more is not always more.
Fifty Shades Darker: Depending on your point of view “Fifty Shades of Grey” either made you want to gag or want to wear a gag. It’s a softcore look at hardcore BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) that spanked the competition on its opening weekend in 2015. Question is, will audiences still care about Grey’s proclivities and Ana’s misgivings or is it time to use our collective safeword? “Fifty Shades Darker” is a cold shower of a movie. “It’s all wrong,” Ana says at one point. “All of this is wrong.” Truer words have never been spoken.
The Mountain Between Us: Mountain survival movies usually end up with someone eating someone else to stay alive. “The Mountain Between Us” features the usual mountain survival tropes—there’s a plane crash, a showdown with a cougar and broken bones—but luckily for fans of stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet cannibalism is not on the menu. Days pass and then weeks pass and soon they begin their trek to safety. “Where are we going?” she asks. “We’re alive,” he says. “That’s where were going.” There will be no spoilers here but I will say the crash and story of survival changes them in ways that couldn’t imagine… but ways the audience will see coming 100 miles away. It’s all a bit silly—three weeks in and unwashed they still are a fetching couple—but at least there’s no cannibalism and no, they don’t eat the dog.
The Mummy: As a horror film it’s a meh action film. As an action film it’s little more than a formulaic excuse to trot out some brand names in the kind of film Hollywood mistakenly thinks is a crowd pleaser.
The Shack: Bad things in life may be God’s will but I lay the blame for this bad movie directly on the shoulders of director Stuart Hazeldine who infuses this story with all the depth and insight of a “Davey and Goliath” cartoon.
The Snowman: We’ve seen this Nordic Noir before and better. Mix a curious lack of Oslo accents—the real mystery here is why these Norwegians speak as though they just graduated RADA—Val Kilmer in a Razzie worthy performance and you’re left with a movie that left me as cold as the snowman‘s grin.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Movies like the high gloss crime thriller “La Femme Nikita,” the assassin mentor flick “Léon: The Professional” and outré sci fi opera “The Fifth Element” have come to define director Luc Besson’s outrageous style. Kinetic blasts of energy, his films are turbo charged fantasies that make eyeballs dance even if they don’t always engage the brain. His latest, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” not only has one of the longest titles of the year but is also one of the most over-the-top, retina-frying movies of the year. Your eyes will beg for mercy.
Wonder Wheel: At the beginning of the film Mickey (Justin Timberlake) warns us that what we are about to see will be filtered through his playwright’s point of view. Keeping that promise, writer, director Woody Allen uses every amount of artifice at his disposal—including cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s admittedly sumptuous photography—to create a film that is not only unreal but also unpleasant. “Oh God,” Ginny (Kate Winslet) cries out at one point. “Spare me the bad drama.” Amen to that.
THE UGLY
Song to Song: I think it’s time Terrence Malick and I called it quits. I used to look forward to his infrequent visits. Sure, sometimes he was a little obtuse and over stayed his welcome, but more often than not he was alluringly enigmatic. Then he started coming around more often and, well, maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt is true. In “Song to Song” there’s a quick shot of a tattoo that sums up my feelings toward my relationship with Malick. Written in flowery script, the words “Empty Promises” fill the screen, reminding us of the promise of the director’s early work and amplifying the disappointment we feel today. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Terrence Malick movie that put me off Terrence Malick movies. I’ll be nice though and say, it’s not him, it’s me.
EXTRA! EXTRRA! MOST COUNFOUNDING
mother!: Your interest in seeing “mother!,” the psychological thriller from “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky, may be judged on your keenness to watch American sweetheart Jenifer Lawrence flush a beating heart down a toilet. Aronofsky’s story of uninvited guests disrupting the serene lives of a poet and his wife refuses to cater to audience expectations. “mother!” is an uncomfortable watch, an off-kilter experience that revels in its own madness. As the weight of the weirdness and religious symbolism begins to feel crushing, you may wonder what the hell is going on. Are these people guilty of being the worst houseguests ever or is there something bigger, something biblical going on?
Aronofsky is generous with the biblical allusions—the house is a paradise, the stranger’s sons are clearly echoes of Cain and Abel, and there is a long sequence that can only be described as the Home-style Revelation—and builds toward a crescendo of wild action that has to be seen to be believed, but his characters are ciphers. Charismatic and appealing to a member, they feel like puppets in the director’s apocalyptic roadshow rather than characters we care about. Visually and thematically he doesn’t push button so much as he pokes the audience daring them to take the trip with him, it’s just too bad we didn’t have better company for the journey.
“mother!” is a deliberately opaque movie. Like looking into a self-reflective mirror you will take away whatever you put into it. The only thing sure about it is that it is most confounding studio movie of the year.
No longer content to simply offer up an endless string of remakes, reboots and reimaginings Hollywood is now in the business of creating universes. Marvel and DC lead the pack, generating big box office with movies that mix-and-match their flagship characters in ongoing and connected stories. Now others are looking to get a piece of that action.
This weekend’s “The Mummy,” a self-described “action-adventure tentpole with horror elements,” is the foundation of Universal Pictures’ Dark Universe. The studio aims to create a cross-pollinated world were their brand name monsters, like Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, are mixed and matched to infinity or at least as long as audiences will pay to see them.
The Mummy reinvents the story of ancient malevolence, presenting a new, female title character and adding Russell Crowe as Henry Jekyll, a doctor with a serum that unleashes his inner demons.
The idea of pairing up monsters is nothing new. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein saw The Wolf Man, Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster cross paths with The Invisible Man and Freddy Krueger battled fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees in a Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street combo pack but another monster movie mash up beats everything that came before it.
The Monster Squad, a fun 1987 teenage horror comedy sees Count Dracula recruit a posse of monsters — Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man and The Creature from the Black Lagoon — to retrieve and destroy an ancient amulet that holds the key to controlling the balance of good and evil in the world. Trouble is, he didn’t count on a band of fifth graders (and one chain-smoking eighth grade greaser) who call themselves the Monster Squad, driving a stake through his plans.
The boys are a geeky group who wear “Stephen King Rules” T-shirts and debating important topics like, ‘Who is the coolest monster?’ and ‘Does The Wolf Man have the biggest nards?’
The Monster Squad, despite the salty language (the boys swear, no doubt courtesy of screenwriter Shane Black who also wrote more adult fare like Lethal Weapon), the refreshing lack of political correctness, the violence and the presence of nightmare-inducing monsters this is, above all, a kid’s film. The youngsters are the heroes and battle the monsters in ways that only kids can. A garlic pizza proves to be Dracula’s undoing, and in one classic scene The Wolf Man is felled by a well-placed kick to “the nards.”
Director Fred Dekker says he set out to make an exciting teen adventure movie, but may have been a bit ahead of his time. In the post–Buffy the Vampire Slayer world we live in the mix of kids, humor and horror seems normal, but in 1987 it didn’t click with audiences.
“I like to think that Monster Squad, in its own small way, says something about what it is to be a kid and to be afraid in the world,” says Dekker, “and discovering the need for heroism.”
“It took several years before the combination of young people in jeopardy in genre-horror situations like Buffy and Goosebumps and Harry Potter really became acceptable. The audience wasn’t ready for it in the ’80s. Sure there was The Lost Boys and The Goonies, but specifically the kind of monster-slayer approach wouldn’t be popular for another ten or fifteen years. So I like to think that we were a little ahead of the curve.”
It is no longer enough for Hollywood to offer up a constant diet of remakes, reboots and reimaginings. These days the studios are franchise building, creating interconnected universes for their characters to live in. Joining Marvel, DC, Star Wars and X-Men is Universal Pictures’ Dark Universe, a new series aiming to bring classic monsters like Frankenstein and The Invisible Man back to big screen life.
The universe’s foundation is “The Mummy,” a self described “action-adventure tentpole with horror elements.” The plan is to revive the eighty-five-year-old “Mummy” franchise, insert another classic character, Dr. Henry Jekyll, thus creating a cross-pollinated world were brand name monsters are mixed and matched to infinity.
The title may signify a character unearthed from the annals of antiquity but the star of the show is ageless action man Tom Cruise. He is Nick Morton a mercenary who specializes in plundering conflict areas for priceless artefacts. Under attack in the Iraq, he uncovers his greatest find yet, the five-thousand-year-old resting place of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), an Egyptian princess in line to be queen. When her insatiable lust for power led her down a dark and dangerous path she was deposed, buried alive far from home in Mesopotamia now Iraq, in an ornate sarcophagus.
“That’s not a tomb,” says Egyptologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), of the unearthed find, “it’s a prison.” Awake and angry Ahmanet, a.k.a. the big screen’s first female Mummy, brings Nick under her spell as she tries to regain her lost power and, of course, enslave all of humanity.
It’s not hard to sense the cynicism in “The Mummy.” Bundling Cruise and legendary monsters in the movie with a few laughs, some typical blockbuster action and a CGI climax it wouldn’t be out of place in an Avengers movie, it feels like a carefully constructed exercise in marketing first and a movie second.
There is plenty of atmosphere—the screen is often so dark it’s hard to see exactly what is going on. I see why it is called the Dark Universe—and the odd spooky scene—Ahmanet’s stretching out the kinks after her 5000 year nap is suitably weird—but it never dials up the horror too high.
As a horror film it’s a meh action film. As an action film it’s little more than a formulaic excuse to trot out some brand names in the kind of film Hollywood mistakenly thinks is a crowd pleaser.
As Dave Edmunds once warbled, “From small thinks baby, big things one day come.”
In Hollywood right now no one is bigger than Chris Pratt. His films Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie were two of the top five grossing hits of last year and Jurassic World is pegged to light up the box office with an estimated $100 million take this weekend.
Esquire has declared him “awesome” and The Guardian noted “there’s a lot of love for Chris Pratt right now.” He has momentum, the kind of Hollywood heat that gets your name mentioned as the lead in every big movie, including the proposed reboot of Indiana Jones. In fact, some even label him the next Harrison Ford.
The hype swirling around the affable thirty-five-year-old actor places him at the top of the Hollywood ladder, but it certainly wasn’t always that way. A scan of the early credits on IMDB does not point toward superstardom.
Guest spots on the short-lived bounty hunter series The Huntress and a third lead in the so-little-seen-it-doesn’t-even-have-a-Rotten-Tomatoes-rating action film The Extreme Team seem positively high profile compared to his first credit.
Pratt was working as a waiter at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant in Maui when actress Rae Dawn Chong came in for lunch. She happened to be in the midst of casting Cursed Part 3, a short horror satire about a director who tries to convince his actors and crew not to flee when a mysterious killer visits the set.
Pratt was living with a group of friends in a van, doing stand-up comedy and community theatre when he approached the Quest for Fire star. “I said, ‘I know you. You’re a movie star, right?’ She said, ‘You’re cute. Do you act?’”
Chong thought he’d be a good fit for the part of “a beautiful kid to play the Brat, an actor who complains out loud about having to make out with an older actor, played by Donna Mills.”
The film was set to roll in five days and after a quick audition Chong offered Pratt a plane ticket to California and the role of Devon. “I had far more confidence than capability at the time,” he says, “but I knew I could do it.”
Shot next door to Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, Cursed Part 3 isn’t much of a movie, but Pratt made $700 for his debut, money he invested in a car so he could drive to auditions.
“I went from waiting tables in Maui to waiting tables in Beverly Hills,” he says of Cursed Part 3, “but with a little bit of movie experience under my belt.”
The film was a stepping-stone to bigger and better jobs, including the role that made him a star, Pawnee City Hall shoe-shiner Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation.
Movie stardom was harder to come by. Losing blockbuster roles like Avatar’s Jake Sully and Captain James Kirk of the rebooted Star Trek was discouraging, but he was determined to act. “People have to work,” he said. “I just don’t want it to be at a restaurant.”
With big budget movies on the way like the proposed sci fi adventure Passengers with Jennifer Lawrence and an all-star remake of The Magnificent Seven, it doesn’t look like he’ll have to dust off the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. uniform again any time soon.
For the fourth time all heck breaks loose on Isla Nublar when gene-spliced dinosaurs get loose and start chowing down on humans. And you thought genetically modified food was bad for your health.
“Jurassic World” is set in a theme park of the same name, a bigger, flashier version of the one first seen in “Jurassic Park.” For years over 20,000 people a day have come to visit the dino petting zoo and see the T-Rex in his “natural” habitat. Think SeaWorld with Archaeopteryx instead of dancing dolphins and you get the idea. Business is brisk but park director Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) feels their exhibits are old hat, as exciting as a clown in an elephant suit.
“No one is impressed by dinosaurs anymore,” she says. “Consumers want bigger, louder and more teeth.”
Her solution is to genetically manufacture a designer dinosaur, a hybrid of T-Rex DNA and bits and pieces from several other creatures. Called Indominus Rex, it’s a fearsome fifty-foot tall beast with fierce intelligence and an attitude to match. When it escapes (that’s not a spoiler, just a fact of life in the “Jurassic” films) Claire calls upon dino trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt)—he’s the Cesar Millan of the dinosaur world—to bring the situation under control before her two visiting nephews get eaten or a military contractor (Vincent D’Onofrio) who wants to repurpose the beasts as weapons.
“Jurassic World” is a respectable entry into the “Jurassic Park” genus. It’s a monster movie, with a bigger, louder and toothier villain than the previous films, but not quite as many thrills. It’s near impossible to top the visceral thrills of Steven Spielberg’s original movie so director Colin Trevorrow doesn’t try. Instead he weaves an homage or two to “Jurassic Park” into the fabric of the story and makes sure there are roaring dinosaurs and snarling Raptors on screen as much as possible. They run, leap and do battle in a climatic scene that can only be described as ridonkulous. The tempered skill Spielberg brought to the first movie is replaced by bombast, but what can we expect form a movie whose manifesto is, “No one is impressed by dinosaurs anymore; consumers want bigger, louder and more teeth”?
Pratt takes a step closer to claiming the role of Indiana Jones by playing Craig as the wisecracking but charming and resourceful hero and “New Girl” star Jake Johnson offers some welcome comic relief. Howard is self-possessed and intense, and has good chemistry with Pratt.
“Jurassic World” is a fun summer distraction, with enough of its predecessor’s DNA to be worth a look.
The old saying, “clothes make the man,” has been altered slightly for a new comedy starring “New Girl’s” alum Damon Wayons Jr. and Jake Johnson. The pair play friends Justin and Ryan, thirty-somethings trying unsuccessfully to make a go of it in Los Angeles.
A masquerade party changes everything for them. Suited up as policemen they soon realize that people treat them differently when they wear the badge. Walking down Sunset Strip they discover that women really do love a man in uniform and for the first time since they moved to California from small town Ohio, they aren’t invisible.
On a lark they use their fake badges to break up an actual crime, a shakedown by a gang on a small restaurant. The bad guys flee, and bolstered by his first bust Ryan embraces the charade, buying a cop car on eBay, sewing sergeant’s patches on his uniform and going on out real life police calls. Justin wants to hang up the uniform before the situation gets out of control, but Ryan is determined to bring down the leader of the shakedown gang, a violent thug named Mossi (James D’Arcy). When things get out of control Justin calls Officer Segars (Rob Riggle). “It started off as fun,” he says, “but now we need help from real cops.”
“Let’s Be Cops” isn’t really a police story, nor is it, by the ratio of minutes-to-laughs, really a comedy. It falls somewhere in between. It’s actually about self-worth, power, respect and getting in over your head with a bit of satire thrown in. The leads have great chemistry and Riggle is always worth a look, but as buddy-buddy as the characters are, it isn’t as funny as “21 Jump Street.”
The high energy screwball tone of the first hour makes way for a low-rent looking “Bad Boys” homage in the final half-hour, becoming the very kind of movie it attempted to satirize in the first place.
