The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise of Electro
Did nobody at Sony remember Spider-Man 3? I could have sworn that turkey solidified the rule that an origin and conclusion story for three villains plus a romantic subplot did not a cohesive and coherent movie make. Perhaps it did, and they concluded the ideal solution was to chuck a mystery about our hero's parents' shady past on top of the pile. Yeah, that'll make shit easier to understand. Fret not, however. The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise of Electro is not Spider-Man 3. Nothing in this film feels uncharacteristic or out of place or, for lack of a better word, bad. There's just so much happening that you barely have a chance to register any of it. It seems bizarre to say of a two and a half hour film that it felt like there wasn't enough, but it's true. There's a scene about halfway through where Electro has been locked up in an asylum, and I couldn't for the life of me remember if he'd been captured in his previous conflict, because the very second the fight was over, the movie was pushing me along into the next subplot. It runs through the whole movie. Peter's submitting photos to The Daily Bugle, but the only hint we get that J. Jonah Jameson exists is an email he sends. The very second a thought has been communicated, the film bounces off into something completely different because it simply doesn't have time to breathe.
Where Spider-Man 3 dropped the ball with Venom, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 does the same for the same reasons with Green Goblin. This is a character that should have been introduced and established so that he may have the spotlight in the next flick. Instead, he's conspicuously absent during the supposed final conflict with Electro only to pop in straight after to give Spidey another fight, and as a result, something detrimental gets ruined in the crossfire. Now, I don't usually do this, but what I'm about to discuss is pretty significant to the Spider-Man universe, and if you're not familiar with anything but the movies, there's a gigantic spoiler ahead. When Green Goblin swoops down on his glider and takes Gwen Stacy, it's pretty obvious what's coming. Her death scene was handled fucking beautifully. She's falling from a clock tower, and Peter shoots his web. He catches her just one second too late. She hits her head on the concrete and when he has her in his arms and sees that thin line of blood come from her nose, it's been done. It was so perfect, as a single scene. Unfortunately, everything preceding and following it was so rushed that almost all emotional resonance was sucked out of it. Its effect on Peter and, more importantly, Spider-Man should have been monumental, and as far as the plot summary goes it was six months of grieving, but it's all tidied up in a quick montage. Of course he'll be Spider-Man again in two minutes, because the movie has no time for him not to be Spider-Man for any more than two minutes.
The reason for this speedy story is obvious. Time that could have been spent making you feel something in the film's final moments is replaced with a Sinister Six hint, which makes it apparent that Sony's trying super hard to catch up to Disney. What a shame that such a good movie is tarnished in the process. And don't read me the wrong way: there is so much good in this movie. The opening scene nails perfectly the appropriate mix of CGI and real effects, giving us perhaps the most exhilarating web-slinging scene yet while real cars flip and crash down below. Every single one of Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone's scenes exude genuine chemistry and warmth that once again made this cold-hearted cynic smile and giggle endlessly. They deserved more than this. They could have had it too, because perhaps the saddest thing is how well the movie understands Spider-Man. There's a scene where a kid is being bullied in an alley. Spider-Man appears and the bullies scatter. He pieces together the kid's science project and says he'll walk him home. As the two begin to walk out of the alley, the kid introduces himself. "I, well, I-I'm Spider-Man," Peter replies. In the final scene, the same kid steps into Rhino's path in a Spidey costume, standing boldly in the face of missiles and machine gun fire. Spider-Man appears behind him, puts a hand on his shoulder and says, "You are the bravest kid I've ever met." I'm crying as I type this. It's such a disappointment that a business strategy forced three really good movies to congeal into one mediocre movie. I liked everything about The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but I didn't love anything. I wasn't given enough time to.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
In the final scene of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the titular character is talking to journalist Jane Winslett-Richardson about her baby. "In twelve years, he'll be eleven and a half," she says. "That was my favourite age," Zissou replies. This line destroyed me. I'd spent the film thinking at the back of my head that the entire experience was kind of like all the stories and games I would think up with my friends in the backyard, running around pretending to be secret agents and hunters, and I was just watching adults act those stories out. That one line confirmed my suspicions, and moved me to tears. I'm a fan of Wes Anderson's entire body of work, but it's his efforts in the last ten years that have really resonated with me. I'm obsessed with the idea of holding onto emotional youth while adulthood looms, and small or large, this concept has popped up in almost all of his works since The Life Aquatic, none so much as in The Fantastic Mr. Fox, a family drama about a father going through an existential crisis born from a children's book about a cheeky mammal. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a movie about being a child, but it's also, in tandem, a movie about stories, and how they're passed down.
It begins with a young girl visiting the grave of an author. She has a copy of his book, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Perspective then shifts to the author, ruminating before his death about the nature of a storyteller. Perspective then shifts again to the same author a few decades ago, and how he came to meet Zero Moustafa, the curious owner of a dilapidated hotel in impoverished Europe. The author asks Zero how he came to be in possession of such a building, and perspective shifts back a few decades once again, when Zero was a fresh lobby boy under the command of Gustave, his eccentric concierge. Zero's recount of the story moves at an energetic pace, and hops genre at a whim, from adventure to romance to murder mystery to action film to even horror at one point. What it results in is a tale with small details that couldn't possibly be believed, if only for how cartoonish they seem. But that's because this is a story being told by an old man, pulled from his memories of when he was a child, and how he would have perceived them at the time. Why wouldn't he remember being shot at as an all-out gunfight between the entire floor of the hotel? To that end, Gustave's unrealistic personality is probably also being pulled from Zero's perception of him at the time. He's a mature kid, so he can see the man as a Peter Pan who was born in the wrong decade. He knows his lifestyle is bullshit and outdated, and so is he, but he's so determined not to let the facade fall, and in that way becomes heroic in Zero's eyes.
As always, Wes Anderson communicates these themes on a technical level as well. Aspect ratios change based on who is currently narrating at what time. When Zero is young, the ratio is lower, to reflect films of that time, but to also communicate that he was steadfast in his professional ambitions at this point of his life, with little thought for anything else. When he is old, the screen is far wider because he has a greater understanding of life's importance. In tandem, the author's is so wide at this same point in time because the world is his playground, and he's treating it as such, but it shrinks in old age because these wonders are no longer in front of him and his life has settled down. Wes Anderson still puts a fucking boatload of information and thought into every second of film. My favourites include a shot of Gustave and Zero standing in front of two wagons, one slightly shonky with small, washed out blue wheels and the other freshly built, with two huge, bright red wheels, and, as a result, the staggering colour palette: every scene built of two perfect colour wheel contrasts. But my absolute favourite thing about The Grand Budapest Hotel comes from one man asking another a question, and like a good storyteller, he knows that a question is just an opportunity to tell a tale. How did Zero come to own the building? That isn't really answered until the last couple of minutes. Does that make it a bad story? We come to the last shot of the film. The young girl is still sat by the grave, reading the book. The film is the author's retelling of Zero's account of his childhood memories. There must be something worth hearing in a story so old.
Muppets Most Wanted
It is a fucking great time to be a kid. Ignoring bullshit cash-ins like Walking With Dinosaurs, The Smurfs 15 and Planes: Why Aren't There Any Humans?, there is a constant stream of top quality cinema being made for them. Marvel's keeping the rate steady with its Universe, Warner Brothers just made a movie about rectangular bricks that made me cry and Disney are still sticking (mostly) to their ridiculously high standard. Two years ago, they took a real long shot and gave The Muppets' biggest fan, Jason Segel, the keys to the theater, simultaneously reviving a cinematic franchise that had been dead for over ten years. It turns out all Muppets from Space needed was a scriptwriter who got it. Someone who understood why The Muppets used to be such beloved icons. Jason Segel played the music, lit the lights and gave us The Muppets: a movie so tuned in to the soul of the universe that it may have gone beyond the quality of the 1979 original. It was a gorgeously written cinematic love letter that made me cry on multiple occasions. Muppets Most Wanted is just another episode, and it wears that badge proudly for all the good and bad that means. Jason Segel's absence is felt everywhere the moment it begins. There's a lot of humour, but there's not a lot of heart. There's not a total absence of love for the Muppets, but it's clear and obvious this wasn't written by as devoted a fan as Segel. You can call it snobbish, but I can't help feeling privileged after being treated so well two years ago. Even if I wasn't holding far too high expectations though, there is a distinct sense of lacked effort in the film. The first song acknowledges that this will never be as good as what came before it, and there are themes of coming second and the nature of sequels throughout the whole film, including villain and Kermit lookalike Constantine constantly deriding his sidekick Ricky Gervais, who he literally calls 'Number Two', for living in his shadow, and the sheer ridiculousness within the amount of celebrity cameos poking fun at a studio sequel always demanding more. But that's kind of where it ends. It seems the writers were content to just acknowledge they'll never be as good and continue being not as good. There's not even aspirations to at least match what came before. It's undeniable that there's a slight disappointment in this. But here's the thing: if Muppets Most Wanted came out before The Muppets, I wouldn't be saying this. It's a really good movie. It understands when and how to use which character, the songs are clever and it remains consistently funny throughout. There's a scene where Swedish Chef plays a game of chess with Death, for fuck's sake! You don't get a reference much better than that. The fact is, we didn't deserve everything extra that The Muppets gave us. Muppets Most Wanted is all we deserve. It's just as shame it comes on the coat tails of something far superior. But at the end of the day, a not-the-best Muppets movie is still better than almost every other kid's movie. And hey, a Muppets movie without Jack Black's stupid solo scat singing is the best, so I should just shut the fuck up and be happy.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
There's a scene fairly early on in Captain America 2: Electric Boogaloo where Steve Rogers is talking to Robert Redford. If you're unaware of Samuel L. Jackson's deal with Marvel to appear in a further 349 of their movies, you may be led to believe that Col. Nick Fury is dead. Robert Redford, one of SHIELD's senior officers, wants to know details of Fury's last conversation with the Cap. The Cap, recalling Fury's final words - "Don't trust anyone." - plays dumb. The two share some very subtle threats between each other in an exchange reminiscent of an old political thriller. Then Captain America grabs his invincible boomerang shield and walks out of the office. That's a pretty good example of what this movie is. It functions really well as a 70s paranoia flick, but your capacity to enjoy it will depend highly on your ability to tuck that stuff away when it's time for a guy with a robot arm to punch a car off the road, or when our heroes use a magic shovel to disappear into the ground when they're in a pinch. It's pretty smart when it suggests that HYDRA's intent to enslave the human race failed in WWII when people resisted a forceful takeover, so they retreated to the shadows and slowly laid the pieces to us accepting enslavement without even knowing it. You don't have to look further than our total complacence at being told the NSA is observing every selfie and chain mail we send to get the feeling that maybe there's a shred of truth to this. It makes for some genuinely high stakes when it's revealed this surveillance is part of an algorithm designed to detect the possibility of future insurgents so that the few million of them may be wiped out in one quick hit to ensure the survival of the human race forevermore. It's pretty clever. But all of this information is delivered by a talking super computer built from the implanted mind of a dead Nazi mad scientist. Actually, I can't even muster a complaint about that. I've just one question, though: isn't this supposed to be a kid's movie? Bar two or three action set pieces, the majority of this flick is spent in a corporate setting, with a bunch of people in normal clothes talking about politics. Kids are going to be bored shitless by this, and why shouldn't they be? I needed something as dumbed down as "HYDRA bad, CAPTAIN AMERICA good" to start paying attention, so why should the children be asked to consider the ethical dilemma of one sole organisation holding the kill switch? This hearkens back to an earlier review of mine, where I talked about our demand that our heroes grow up with us, and while I myself got a lot of enjoyment out of this, I can't help but feel sorry for the kid with the Cap shield tossing in his seat because he just wants someone to fucking punch something. And he's right: these are comic book movies. Above everything else, they should know what fun is. Captain America 2: The Rise of Electro does every now and then. The action scenes are ingeniously constructed, and oh so gloriously full of real effects that generates genuine excitement and tension. It's just a shame that it comes in exchange for a paranoid political thriller that no-one but the adults are going to get anything out of. Sit tight though, kids. Guardians of the Galaxy has a fucking uzi-toting raccoon. Marvel still remembers how to have fun.
The Raid 2
Towards the end of Andre 3000's masterpiece, Hey Ya!, he says, "Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance." He wrote a beautifully tragic song about the pitfalls of modern love and hid it behind a criminally infectious groove to prove the point that people only hear what they want to hear, but to also communicate that even if he may want more from his audience, he knows his place. The Raid knew its place. A showcase for an Indonesian martial art known as Pencak Silat, it was perhaps the best film about video games made to this day. One dude makes his way to the top of one tower to take down one man, with guns for the grunts, machetes for the mini bosses and two fists for the big boss, whilst showing off all the super cool stuff his training has taught him to do. That's it. One of the only criticisms that could be drawn from it was that the poorly written expository scenes at the beginning, middle and end were a bit boring. The Raid 2 does what every shit sequel does: tries to give you more of everything. That means bigger, crazier and bloodier fight scenes that go above and beyond the physical limitations of the first, but unfortunately, it also means a dipshitted expansion of a universe you don't give a fuck about, which leaves you snoring come the action scenes. And it's a shame, too, because some of the fight scenes are really good. While director Gareth Evans kind of exhausted all the cool shit you can do with a knife, a leg and a fist in the first film, he finds a whole bunch of new ways to make you go, "Oooh! Aaah! Ecch!" with a shiv brawl in a slippery mud pit, a cramped 1 vs. 4 fist fight in a speeding car and a hallway fight with a baseball bat and two hammers, not to mention the final fight: a fifteen minute one on one in a kitchen that starts as a test of various fighting stances and finishes with the two of them cutting each other open using tiny sickles. It all comes too late, though, on the tail of a story too dumb to realise it's not welcome. The various assassins have interesting eccentricities to them, and look really good posed all cool in the well-composed shots, but they each fall flat on their face when it comes time to talk. You only have to look so far as the complete and total lack of dialogue in the fight scenes to realise you're watching two movies here, and one of them sucks. I would have had a much better time with The Raid 2 if it was just an anthology of fight scenes, with brief bookends to introduce the new challenger and his or her unique quirk. I would have left the cinema nothing but impressed, but more importantly, with enough time to go home and catch an episode or two of Twin Peaks before bed.
The Lego Movie
I don't know about you, but I hated instruction manuals for my Lego. I could never follow them right, the wing of my ship would somehow always end up a space or two to the right of where it was supposed to be and I'd always end up forcing a brick where it shouldn't go to try and gain some semblance of the picture on the box. Inevitably, every single time, I'd take a hammer to my work and build whatever the fuck I wanted. And yeah, it looked like total arse, a far cry from the perfectly symmetrical constructive bliss on the box, but it was mine. And I could break it down at any moment and start all over again. I like to think there's a lot of people like me. The Lego Movie certainly does. It becomes pretty apparent early on in the flick that you're watching the visual representation of a child playing with his Lego. The writing perfectly captures the play time dialogue you used to make, adding gloriously innocent depth and excitement to what is a bunch of pegged pieces of plastic stuck to a mat. It makes it all the more heartbreaking when the reveal comes that this isn't the child's Lego. It's his dad's: a man who always followed the instructions, who created perfect little universes that didn't stray a single brick from the box, who glued his pieces to the board so that there can never be any irregularities or innovations. Because he's afraid. Afraid that if he tries to be creative, he'll fail. Afraid that if he goes against the instructions, he'll be ridiculed. But that's the beauty of Lego: you can't fail. If it looks bad, just pull it apart and try it again. Pull it apart anyway! The possibilities are endless. The Lego hero stares up at the Lego villain, as the scene is mirrored with the child looking up at his father, and he says, "You don't have to be the bad guy. You are the most talented, most interesting, and most extraordinary person in the universe. And you are capable of amazing things." Jesus, I cried buckets. In that moment, The Lego Movie became everything and more that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty wanted to be. Walter Mitty dumped a naive, dopey, corporate-sponsored denouncement of corporations and proclamation of individualism in front of you and impatiently tapped its foot waiting for you to be changed forever. Bizarrely (or perhaps not), the children's movie that's about toys is the one with intelligence and subtlety. Lego paid for The Lego Movie, and Lego is going to sell a lot of boxes in the coming months. But they're not trying to pull the wool over your eyes. The hero of The Lego Movie spends the whole film wishing he could be as independent and creatively unchained as the people that surround him, who can build a vehicle in seconds without a shred of instruction, but he realises, when all of this freedom isn't helping to save the day, that they also need a plan, and that requires unification which means, God help them, following the instructions. You need freedom and creative expression, but sometimes you need rules too. You shouldn't try to denounce corporations, because you can't. Instead, you should accept them and allow them to work with you and in turn, for you. And it's once you understand the rules that you can see how far they'll bend. Lego could have cashed out on this movie and made one big advertisement. There's no way people weren't going to see it. But they knew that people buy Lego with the thought at the back of their mind that maybe they can maybe make something amazing with this. Why not give them the thumbs up? Lego swallowed fear and accepted some humility for the sake of a good story with a beautiful message, and in that way, they became the good guys. It's still an advertisement, but in all the right ways. Take the toy out of the box. Who cares if it may be worth something? It's a toy. Play with it.
Noah
Kevin Smith was once talking about his wordy biblical epic Dogma, and the negative criticism it received from the Catholic church. He endured protests and the occasional death threat for, as he so eloquently put it, "A movie with a fucking rubber poop monster in it." Jokes aside, the point he was making is that when it comes to alternate depictions of religious material, people are really quick to jump on the attack without first getting a firm grasp on what it is they're attacking. Dogma was a story about the importance of faith as a concept, whatever that may be in, and the dangers of organised religion in the wrong hands. Noah is a similar film. It too has it's "rubber poop monster" in the form of The Watchers: banished angels encased in stone and filth for helping humanity after their banishment from Eden, or as I like to call them: giant rock lobsters. The presence of these rock lobsters within the first thirty seconds of the film and the following sense of prevailing fantasy that bubbles underneath the surface should serve as a solid indicator that this is just a story and, as a result, negate the need for any sort of boycotting. Let's be honest, though, that's not going to happen. The thing people often forget about a story like Noah is that it is, at it's core, just a story. It never really happened, or at least, certainly not to the extent that scripture dictates, because logic dictates. What matters in the story, wherever you may read it, and in the film is the message that it's sending. Early on in the flick, Noah seems like the hero. Earth is a desolate wasteland and the majority of humanity has decided to sook in the corner and blame God for being hungry. Noah's got the right idea; he knows it's our fault we're in this mess. We ate the forbidden fruit (read: fucked the planet) and we're paying the price. When he receives the vision that leads him to believe the world is about to be drowned, he doesn't ask "Why?", he acts to prepare nature for its second shot. You almost believe God really was talking to him, until he begins to get it into his head that God believes humanity is beyond redemption and isn't after a planetary repopulation, leading Noah to plan the death of him and everyone else on the ark. That's when you start to remember that his actions are the result of his interpretation of the pictures he sees when he sleeps. When his grandfather Methuselah cures their adoptive daughter Ila of her barrenness, allowing her to fall pregnant, he sees it as direct defiance of God's will, and vows to kill the baby should it be a girl (if it's a boy, it gets to live only to die as the last man on Earth). He's contrasted with the self-proclaimed King of Earth, Tubal-Cain, who starts the movie as a villainous, slimy murderer out to prolong humanity's sinful behaviour. But as Noah begins to become a more tyrannical and didactic patriarch, Tubal-Cain's actions too begin to shift, into the behaviour of a man who believes humanity deserves to survive, regardless of how they have chosen to be. In an attempt to explain his motivations to his family, Noah tells the story of Genesis. When Noah gets to humanity, he speaks of Cain's murder of Abel, and that it ran down the ages, resulting in people's inherent compulsion to kill one another. Despite my gripe that such a drive is the result of one icon, no arguments here. Where his rationale begins to lose us is when he draws the conclusion that because humans are a bit fucked in the head, they don't deserve another go at it. After a failed escape attempt, Ila has twins on the ark, both girls, and Noah approaches them with a knife. He can't bring himself to murder newborns, and looking up at the sky, he says, "I cannot do this." Soon, they find land, and Noah ostracises himself from his family because he believes he has failed God but more importantly, his family. Ila puts forth the notion that maybe he needs to pull his head out of his arse and realise that he saw good in a species he previously could not and that he chose to give humanity another chance. I don't know about you, but I choose to believe humanity still has a shot. We just need to stop putting power in the hands of those that believe the pictures in their dreams are more important than yours. Oh, and if you don't care about any of this, you should at least see Noah because Darren Aranofsky has once again made a hugely entertaining, big-budget epic with the attitude of an experimental film student that fucking blew my mind on a technical level over and over again. If you still don't care, you must be stupid.
