The Amazing Spider-Man

Written at the time of the film's release.

Don't worry. New stuff tomorrow....

Spider-man v. 2.0
or
"With Great Power Comes Sequels, Re-Boots, Etc....(A Spider-man's Work is Never Done)"

It may be a web-strand too soon to be doing a re-boot of the "Spider-man" franchise, but The Amazing Spider-man does do one thing that justifies its existence—it's better than the Tobey McGuire/Sam Raimi first film in the original trilogy, and right off the ledge manages to have the fun, energy, pop-soapishness, and inventiveness of the second film in that series, the one with Dr. Octopus. We have to go through the origin story again (but that's okay, we seem to have to with every "Superman" film, and evidently will with the next one).

The story is basically the same—Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a smart high school geek with a photog' hobby, and his first encounter with an industrial science lab manages to put the bite on him, arachnidally-speaking, then strange things start happening as he does whatever a spider can, conflicts, conflicts, conflicts (of the physical and angst variety), "with great power comes great responsibility," yadda yadda yadda. But there's a lot of "Spidey"-history to draw on, and the writers (James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent—who added a lot to Spiderman 2—and Steve Kloves—who mentored Harry Potter) have tinkered and brought a lot of missing pieces to the table. 

This time the love interest is Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone, who appears to be the oldest person in school, but that may be part of the appeal of the character, certainly to Parker), daughter of an NYPD captain (Denis Leary, who plays it straight, tough, and with impeccable comic timing), and bowing to the fan-boyish, his web-powers are not so organic—he's got the little web-shooters now, although interestingly, he doesn't develop the web-goo. Oscorp is still around, although we never see its CEO (or do we?), so's the Daily Bugle—but Parker doesn't have a job there yet, so there's no J. Jonah Jameson (how could replace or improve on J.K. Simmons' interpretation?). The villain is another industrial bio-scientist, Curt Connors (played as if was Peter O'Toole by Rhys Ifans and he's terrific), who—not giving anything away here—eventually turns into the Lizard.

What's different is motivation and sub-text. Echoing the Potter series, attention and emphasis is paid to what happened to Peter's parents (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz) that put him in the care of Uncle Ben and Aunt May (Martin Sheen and Sally Field, both extraordinarily good) and indications are that is the story which will run throughout this movie-arc (as well, I suspect, as the consequences of keeping secrets (as I said, there's a lot of history to drawn on). 

What's also different and good is how everybody's perfected the formula, including director Marc Webb (who made the, to me, extraordinarily fine (500) Days of Summer): Garfield's Parker is more in line with the comic character, mood-swinging as well as web-slinging, and his Parker is awkward, stammering, frequently inarticulate and perceived outwardly as something of a jerk, a simp, or worthless* (hey, wow, they got the character of a misunderstood teenager down), and the fights, which in the past have been rushed and often unfollowable, now flow and, frequently—thanks to CGI—in one continuous shot that swoops, loops and parallels Spider-man's flight patterns.

The pace is still there, but thanks to stunt arranger and second-unit director Vic Armstrong (a few of the Bonds and Indiana Jones), it's not all a blur. Also, under Raimi, some of these fights were brutal and sadistic, and, don't get me wrong, these are no less savage, and take more of a toll on the participants.** But the desperation is there, and the "wrong-ness" of the abuse of power, which kept my moral compass (or is it "Spidey"-sense?) from peaking out in the red zone.  

So, yes, it's the same story, but more sure-footed (by having its hero less so), and also intriguing for what it might hold in the future. The first trilogy seemed to be a little wobbly as it went along, searching for story. This one already feels like it knows where its going, and will find the best and most opportune path to get there.***

* And—a nice touch—he's thin and ungainly, not buffed-out, like the typical "strong-man" super-hero, which is the way he was when Steve Ditko first drew him.  Nice.

** This does bring up something that will be difficult to sustain: Parker is frequently shown battered, bruised, and slashed from these fights, which makes his encounters post-fight with Aunt May a little illogical.  And at some point, when will she clamp down on him, or child-protective services step in? 

*** A couple more things: there's no interpretation of the "Spider-man" theme from the 60's cartoon ("Hey there, there goes the Spider-man!") but James Horner's score is his most inventive in a long time—if a little needlessly bombastic in rare instances; there is a "coda" of sorts, but early in the credits (so you won't be missing anything if you don't stay for the full credit roll); and the Stan Lee cameo actually made me smile and feel affectionate towards the man.  Now, that's amazing.

Lincoln

Noisy and Messy and Complicated 

or 
WWLD?

At the end of John Ford's Young Mr Lincoln, "the jack-legged country lawyer" (as played by Henry Fonda) walks up a blighted horizon in the darkening gloom, as thunder rolls in the background, the rough-hewn fence he trudges along taking on the look of military barricades, as the young Lincoln walks with his long stride into the storm of history awaiting him. Steven Spielberg's Lincoln starts where Young... left off—with the sound of thunder over credits, which evolves into cannon-fire before placing us straight on in the middle of the Civil War, blue-on-gray, white-on-black (and the reverses) amid the blood and the mud of the Earth. The shots of the battlefield are tight, confusing, with no sense of place, no horizon—just a frame filled with humans killing each other by any means. No glory. No higher purpose. Just the immediacy of conflict. 

War is the point at which politics breaks down, and politics is where Spielberg's film is concerned to compare and contrast with today's stew of chicanery, graft, and playing fast and loose with the facts to the purpose of getting your way.  'Twas ever thus, and it was no different in Lincoln's time—they just didn't have cameras documenting everything then.

Young Mr. Lincoln: walking into a History still to occur.

\The approach is as good a starting place as any—that is, ending with Ford's last gambit—linking the two, as both films' main goal is to take the monument out of the man, and put him within reach of attainability, wart and all. The canonization of Lincoln began at the moment of his death with the pronunciation "now he belongs to the ages" and his visage, homely, homespun, ragged sunken and contemplative, has been preserved in nickel, bronze, marble, granite to the point where one can hardly imagine it as flesh and blood anymore. 

As portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln is pitch-perfect, not only in his make-up, but his high tenor rasp of a voice, and—the remarkable part for me—in his still-legged gait that kicks and plants itself on the earth, not too steps away from the ragged dance of Wyatt Earp (Fonda, again) in My Darling Clementine. It's a big, robust cast—I had error alerts for all the names I tried to cram into this article's meta-data labels—but the hub of it all is Day-Lewis' Lincoln. Soldiers (including Lukas Haas) quote his Gettysburg Address back to him (which the President tries to staunch: "Been there, delivered that."*) His wife (Sally Field) constantly badgers him—but then she consistently badgers everybody, his cabinet is frequently frustrated by him, by his prevarications, his story-telling that constantly derails conversations to his agenda, and his thought processes which annoy them. "Actually," says Secretary of State Seward (David Straithairn) after Lincoln quotes verse, "I have no idea what you mean by that."

What he means may be too pragmatic for them, it's just how he expresses it that confounds. In one exceptional scene—Tony Kushner worked on this script for a long time and it shows—Lincoln explains in minute, often harsh, detail how he employed his newly granted War Powers Act and it comes down to what he thought he could get away with, legally.

His concern, in the waning days of the war, is to pass the 13th Amendment, thereby abolishing slavery, and it takes every trick, every dodge, every promise and appointment in the middle of a lame-duck Congress before the war could end. The timetable is critical: Lincoln has just been re-elected and is riding a wave of popularity; a crucial number of Congressmen are in their last days of their jobs and are looking to their futures and not to the wishes of their constituents; and, if the war ends, the urgency to pass the Amendment will dwindle, amidst the rebuilding of the Nation. Lincoln's Republicans will vote for it, but they need to tone down their rhetoric. The Democrats are dead-set against it, but getting Democrats to agree on anything is like herding cats and Lincoln wants to exploit the party's fractures into fissures.  

So, the problem is attacked from several fronts (if only the war had started that way): Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook), prominent Republican and journalist, is sent to the South to negotiate a Southern settlement, which the South is anxious to do (although Lincoln is reluctant). Meanwhile, he wheels and deals with the largesse of power, offering appointments, threats, anything to curry votes, and unleashes a trio of stooge-lobbyists (James Spader, John Hawkes, and Tim Blake Nelson) to press the flesh and pass the greenbacks (not "officially," though). Votes are critical. On the home-front, Lincoln's son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is back from college, but feeling the weight of his kinship with the President and wants to enlist, which sends wife Mary Todd into another accusatory tailspin as she has barely survived the death of their son, Tad.

Throughout, Lincoln keeps his counsel. but sometimes erupts into spasms of frustration—with "Molly" (as he calls her), the congress and his cabinet, choosing his moments and pressing his advantage, knowing no peace except what he can create for himself.

As good as Day-Lewis is, he's matched by Tommy Lee Jones as House Republican Thaddeus Stevens. In chambers, Stevens sits and fumes, then reaches his limit and bursts out in loud insulting harangues, just in control enough to get his point across, and even smiling tightly—very tightly—when when dressed down by Mary Lincoln over his tight reins over The White House purse strings. Jones finds different ways to make his speeches crackle, while never betraying any sense that the words haven't sprung originally from his head. And Spielberg has given special attention to casting key roles with the like of great character actors like Bruce McGill, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Lee Pace who make their relatively small parts punch out and become memorable.

And Spielberg's eye for painterly detail shines, as Lincoln moves through the gloomy corridors of The White House or sets up an eerie dream sequence for the President. And in one lovely scene, between Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant (Jared Harris), where the war's toll on Lincoln is expressed in Day-Lewis' exhausted eyes and the shadows of a long rank of soldiers trudging in front of a setting sun play across his face.  

You can't see the moving shadows

Spielberg's regular team of artists: Kaminski, Kahn, Carter, and Williams construct a great quilt of imagery and dynamics, making Lincoln a fascinating display of historical intimacy writ large.  It would make a superb triple bill sandwiched between Young Mr. Lincoln and The Conspirator.

* There's a nice contrast of Lincoln delivering a dedication at a flag-raising ceremony that lasts a measly few lines.  "That's my speech" he says as he tucks his paper back into his stove-top hat. They can't all be gems.

Places in the Heart

Places in the Heart (Robert Benton, 1984) Robert Benton's distillation of life growing up in Waxahachie, Texas during the Depression begins with an unfortunate accidental death, which expands to an unfortunate deliberate act of evil, but ends, after Earthly trials—from both Man and Nature—with an ambiguous epiphany that extends the simple gift of community into a surprising, almost shocking, expression of spiritual healing and harmony--one of the gutsiest segues from hard-scrabble reality to the Mystery of Faith ever put to film.

The cast is impeccable with unsentimental work from Sally Field, to pitch-perfect early performances from Danny Glover and John Malkovich, to excellent work by Ed Harris, Amy Madigan and Lindsay Crouse. All portray an extended family that forgo the boundaries of blood and race to pull together and survive the deprivations of Nature and man. It's a movie that doesn't shy away from showing people at their worst and quietly displaying them at their best.

Sure sounds like heavy stuff, but the artists behind and in front of the camera make it compelling drama that stays clear-eyed and rarely sinks into easy sentimentality. Quite the opposite, actually; Glover plays the role of a poor share-cropper with a tentativeness that awaits disaster, and Malkovich makes his blind war vet a petulant jerk. Plus, there's a collection of townsfolk that includes greedy bankers, murderous racists and opportunists of every stripe. In To Kill a Mockingbird, racism seems like bad manners and poor up-bringing, while in Places in the Heart it's a way of life and charity is the exception, rather than the norm.

For the Spalding Family, it's a story of tragedy and accommodating, changing and "making do" when they lose their stability in the community and become charity outcasts, banding together with other unfortunates to, as in the parlance, "pull yourself up by your boot-straps" and discovering along the way that charity is something you give in equal measures to accepting. Something about the quality of mercy being twice blessed (now, where have I heard that before?). It's a story of perseverance in the face of great change, and, if not welcoming and embracing change, at least having the grit to roll with it. It's one of my favorite films from a fine, often disregarded film director.

And that ending. It comes out of nowhere, punches you in the ventricles, and leaves you with a final image that is, at first, shocking and confounding, but, as it sinks in, moves beyond the factual to the spiritual and embraces time and memory and the broader outreaches of community—beyond mere property lines and borders and extends to the heart...and the soul. 

Gets me every time.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Oh, Snap!
or
Why Gwen Stacy Wears Such an Ugly Coat

The best of the Tobey Maguire "Spider-man" movies was the second one. It was a nice combination of melodrama, humor, Spidey "tropes" ("I will be Spider-man...no...more!" *Choke!*), some ingenious action sequences, and a great villain in Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus. Credit writers Gough and Millar (the guys behind the "Smallville" TV show) and Michael Chabon and Alvin Sargent for hammering it out and director Sam Raimi for a rather graceful directing job. After the first film took itself so seriously, the second one was like a tonic.

Now, the second of the Andrew Garfield-starring "Spidey" movies is out (The Amazing Spider-man 2) and I thought the first one was a big improvement over the "Tobeys" for a couple reasons: the casting, which made Garfield's Parker thinner, geekier and more neurotic, and Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy Garfield's match in awkwardness; also, there was a through-story about the secret behind Oscorp and the disappearance of Peter's parents.  The second film begins with a sequence expanding on that (with some interesting foreshadowing right off the bat) and then as soon as the title hits the screen, it is abandoned in favor of this chapter, featuring Parker's dithering about his promise to the late Captain Stacy (Dennis Leary) about staying away from Gwen, his struggles with his notoriety in New York, and a new villain, Max Dillon aka "Electro" (Jamie Foxx, playing, frankly, a minor villain, and they way they did it caused some wincing over memories of Richard Pryor in Superman 3). Meanwhile, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan, who reminds one of Leo DiCaprio's demented brother) returns to his family home in time to see his father Norman (Chris Cooper), the head of Oscorp, kick the bucket, and promising Harry that he's going to meet the same fate. Gee, thanks, Dad.

W-wow, dude.  That's a lot of back-story!
When do we get to the review?

What makes this one good is what made the first one good—Garfield's scattered Peter Parker has the best comics timing since Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark, and he's matched here by Emma Stone spasm for spasm, and even by Sally Field, who does some nice sparking off him.*  There was a danger with this one of being top-heavy with villains—not only is there Electro, but also an appearance by Harry's version of The Green Goblin (much improved, I have to say) and even an appearance by a Spidey villain called The Rhino, which, thankfully, is thrown away for laughs (despite Paul Giamatti's trying to do something with it). The other thing is Garfield tries to make Peter Parker a genuwyne New Yawker, which is a nice touch. These Spider-man films feel more ingrained with The Big Apple than the first trilogy, which is essential in the Marvel Universe, especially with Spider-man.  New York is more than a backdrop (as it was in The Avengers), it's a part of the movie, even the not-so-attractive parts of it.  I like that.

It's also a good mix of comedy and tragedy. Spider-man not only swings between skyscrapers, but between moods as well. The focus on Peter's parents keeps an under-current of sadness throughout, of conflict, and his struggles with the folks in his life (mirrored by the physical altercations with the villains) makes his life a very tangled web, indeed. The gang-ups he participates in on the streets work their way into the hang-ups in his civilian guise.** Yeah, Spidey's always been a weisenheimer super-hero, but like so many of them, their origins are based on tragedy and their efforts to ensure that such things never touch others. Spider-man has the worst luck, though, with friends and family constantly at risk due to his "great power" (and subsequent "great responsibility").

Anybody familiar with the character may have some suspicions about this one, and I won't say anything (other than they already pulled the trick in the very first "Spider-man" movie, and they haven't repeated themselves), but director Webb still manages to build invisible suspense in the film that will set "spider-senses" tingling, and some brilliant execution in the action scenes. We've seen way too many super-fight scenes to get excited about them anymore, but Webb and crew manages to make them easy to follow, whether they're sped-up, slowed-down, "Sherlocked," or bullet-timed. And they're reasonably short, not out-wearing their welcome, as there's too much story to fit in. I did check my watch at one point (in the extended Time Square sequence), but most of the time, I didn't quite care, involved with what was happening on-screen.

* Here's how good Garfield is: he makes a comic cliche funny and surprising.  When Aunt May enters Peter's room—he's still in his Spidey-suit and hiding under the covers, protesting he's naked—she notices his face is grimey from all the crime-fighting he's been doing in the not-too-clean city of New York.  "I-I was cleaning the chimney!" "Peter, we don't HAVE a chimney!" Garfield's shocked and surprised "Whaaaaaaaat?!" is full of "I did all that for NOTHING?"

** BTW, I mentioned in my review of the first "Amazing Spider-man" movie the absence of the "Spider-man song."  It's here—it's Peter's ring-tone when Gwen Stacy calls.  Talk about blowing your secret ID.