The Amazing Spiderman 2

It took quite a lot of stabs, but this reboot finally seems to have gotten Spiderman right. Andrew Garfield actually gets the persona right, being a wisecracker with a goofy sense of humour who is nonetheless both likeable and formidable - easily the hardest thing to do well with Spidey, and the thing that can totally sink the film when it goes wrong...just like Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four. Garfield's fast-talking but often dumb-sounding Parker is just enough of a wise-ass to not be loathesome, vulnerable enough to be identifiable and awkward enough with romance for the central relationship of the film - with Emma Stone's Gwen - to work very well. 

On the other hand, this is a film that I very much enjoyed for its first two acts only for the third to tear down a lot of the good work. I really like what the film has done with the radioactive spider concept, making it very, very specific: Spiderman got his powers not at random but because the spider had been modified in a very specific way that would work with him and him only. At the end, though, the film doesn't really deal with how it seems that if you give the spider venom to someone dying of a debilitating disease and then quickly put them into an expensive suit that heals injuries, they will survive their disease - albeit with other side-effects. I'm sure many dying of terminal illnesses would take that trade. With Gwen, there was a clever tension between Peter wanting to push her away in order to protect her and the empowering notion that putting herself in danger was her choice - but the empowerment is rather undercut by, well, Gwen having the fate Gwen always has. Electro had a very interesting story arc about an ignored, undervalued talent screwed over by a big corporation finally getting attention for once, but that sort of gets thrown aside when he becomes the secondary villain and the way he's dealt with - somehow connecting some power cables with webs while he's attacking makes electricity feed back into him and overload him despite the fact he previously absorbed entire cities' worth of power - was horribly Saturday-Morning-Cartoon-cop-out. And honestly, having Peter's mourning period essentially dealt with in a few minutes at the end of the film rather than at the beginning of the next one, boiling down to a fight with a cameo baddie and a nice but thinly-veiled 'get over it' speech from Aunt May, felt horribly rushed: are they that keen to get MJ in?

These problems really stood in the way of my truly being able to say I liked the film, but there was a lot of good stuff here. Three iconic villains made it in - not counting hints at Doctor Octopus and Vulture and a post-credits scene that seems to continue from the last film's post-credits scene - and all had updated designs that thankfully took them a long way from their goofy original designs. I mentioned Electro's mask, but then we have the new Green Goblin in a cool battlesuit - along with a good motivation for his actions and a sweet hint at a childhood friendship and some hints at homoeroticism for the crowd that likes that sort of thing (don't kid yourself, the studios see what the Avengers fandom churns out!) - and also a gleeful cameo for an actor of the stature of Paul Giamatti clearly having a marvellous time doing a silly voice for a battlesuit-armoured Rhino. Some fans seem disappointed at the short shrift Rhino gets, but for me that little cameo appearance did the trick nicely. 

There was a very cohesive balance of cheese, clever humour and romance here, and I have high hopes for the sequel and any Sinister Six developments. But for this one - well, satisfying as it was, I feel like it fell a little short. 

Noah

Noah was somewhat better than I expected it to be, given the trailer, and it's a film I'm glad was made, but ultimately, I feel that there was a much better film that could and should have been here. 

I like the idea of taking Bible stories and making them epic fantasies or sci-fi. So many of them are such huge, absurd and yet meaningful stories. And perhaps none more so than the story of the Flood. It's a familiar story to most Christians: after a few generations, God decided that the world was so corrupt it needed to be washed clean. Noah and his family were chosen as the sole survivors, and were charged with building a vast arc and filling it with breeding pairs of every animal species. The other men with their wicked hearts laughed at him, usually with their legs waggling in the air, but then the rains came and they all perished. After almost losing hope in the endless water, a dove brings back an olive branch and the family knows they are saved, the arc eventually running aground on a mountaintop. 

This film is from a tradition that I enjoy, one that says 'hold on, if this is taken as a story, allegorical or otherwise, shouldn't we be asking other questions? Was everyone killed really wicked? Even the small children? Could Noah and his family see or hear their fellow men dying, desperate and praying for help, and yet ignored them? Was it really right for all the newborn babies of the world to be drowned in their mothers' arms? 

This film also expands its running time - perhaps a little too far - with other similar questions. What made Noah so certain God wanted him and his family to survive - especially since the world with humans in it, with their original sin, isn't likely to get much better anyway? In the tradition of Abraham, should a man be prepared to kill his own family if he thinks that is the correct course of action? How does a man look on those he knows are condemned to die when he goes out amongst them, especially if they seem like good human beings?

What I hoped we would get to answer these interesting questions would be a primarily political epic. I thought we would have some Game of Thrones conniving when a local king sees what Noah is building and becomes interested - yet, of course, sceptical of the story of the flood. How will Noah manage to keep an army at bay and protect his arc? Unfortunately, the answer that quirky Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky comes up with is that he has Watchers on his side, fallen angels encased with rocks that make for one of the sillier genre-fiction elements of this piece. There is also some guff about a magic mineral that seems to function a bit like gunpowder, and the completely underdeveloped line that Noah and family virtuously eschew meat and somehow live on the bounty of an almost desolate land. 

There is also Methuselah, Noah's grandfather, who does indeed live until a week before the Flood in the Bible. Here, mischievously played by Anthony Hopkins, he has a repository of magical seeds, can cure lifelong injuries with a touch, and dies not of old age but accepting death from the Flood, as though he were one of the wicked. He's a bit of a daft plot-mover, but Hopkins just about makes him work. 

In terms of characters and performance, this works pretty well. Ray Winstone as the local king is a bit overly cheesy, and while Emma Watson does well, she probably needs to do some character roles soon so that she doesn't just seem to be doing the exact same performance in everything she does, but the focal point is really Russell Crowe, and he does burdened, pained authority figure extremely well. I can't fault how he is both the hero and the menace of the film at different parts, while remaining a consistent character. 

This isn't the Bible story - it's inspired by it, and by the time rock angels appear...even before they start bashing brains...you know it's not meant to be a straight rendition. The film even makes the point of pairing the creation story with a time-lapse-style CG animation of evolution, and pushes its point about man continuing to bring disaster to the Earth with soldiers of many post-diluvian real-world cultures, right up to the twentieth century, which I found jarring. Thus, I don't think it ought to offend many religious types, and there was something to admire in its silent God who nonetheless demonstrates His presence in a world that after all has far less cause to doubt its creator than we do. 

A more thought-provoking and gritty Hollywood action film than most, asking some very interesting questions about theology, it was nonetheless a little undermined by its unnecessary length, its sometimes lazy storytelling, its lack of real exploration of the issues it raises, and some very cheesy genre fiction inclusions. Nonetheless, well worth seeing - and discussing. 

We Need to Talk About Kevin

I missed We Need to Talk About Kevin when it was released with a fair amount of hype here in the UK. I also never read the acclaimed book. So really my only contact with this story until now was all the outcry that the film was snubbed at the Oscars and the answer to 'what else has that guy been in?' when going to see The Perks of Being a Wallflower. And, well - yes, the Oscar snub was egregious, yes, this film made Ezra Miller one to watch, though the kid who plays the younger version of him did much of the work for him. And yes, if you're a person looking to be put off having children, this is probably a good place to start. 

This is the story of a successful travel writer whose world crumbles when she has a son she cannot connect with, who displays a lot of the signs of being a sociopath and who ultimately does what all broken teens in stories of American suburbia do. This is a hard film to watch, as a hard woman crumbles thanks to her demon spawn, who only gets worse and worse as he gets older, and the other unfortunate victims who happen to be around him. The clever way that the boy makes his father think he is relatively normal is perhaps the most chillingly effective part.

If I've heard criticism of this film - other than that it's tough to watch - it's that the denouement is a step too far, that it would have been more effective if there had just been an ending that didn't involve such high drama, that the chilling broken relationship would have been far more chilling remaining as it was without end rather than having a big incident take it to an extreme. But I also realise that there's a sense of a book needing a hook, a film needing a hook, an easy sell that was fulfilled here.

The film, perhaps similarly, swings between subtlety and obviousness. The film doesn't have to let you know what's been stuffed down the plughole, but it also has Kevin munching lychees after his sister loses an eye, and the endless repetition of the image of red splattering, which isn't exactly the ultimate in subtlety. 

This is certainly the kind of story that allows actors to really shine, and directors to play tricks - there's a nice sequence at the start where cuts are misleading, and of course the film enjoys telling its story in flashbacks...though of course there are really no surprises from the very early scenes and everyone knows where, inevitably, the story is going. 

It's a tough film to watch. If it is lacking anything, I'd say that it is more of Kevin's life outside his family. I know that the film is from Eva's point of view - the original book being delivered in letters - but I was very curious about how he interacted with his peers up until the gym scene, how he managed to survive being as he is in the notoriously brutal American schooling system, if there was more to him than being a sociopath who has significant contempt for his mother. The film is meant to feel insular and claustrophobic, of course, but I feel that's taken a little too far. 

But it still hits very hard indeed and is centred on a superb performance from Tilda Swinton - so assured compared with how I just saw here in Jarman's The War Requiem - so the film is a confident, if horrifying, success. just don't expect it to offer solutions, give an in-depth analysis of the problem of mothers not bonding with children or attempt to fix rather than glorify the scariest members of society. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Post-Avengers, the second Captain America film now has him in the present day, which makes for a significantly less cheesy film - although I did enjoy the first one, especially the difficult transition from absurd pantomime figurehead to genuine force to be reckoned with. Though Cap is now bang-up-to-date - and thankfully the 'he's not up to date yet' humour was limited to the opening scenes - the shadow of Hydra has not quite dissipated. 

The problem with Captain America is similar to that of Superman - he's overpowered, and bland. Not quite to the same extent, but it's difficult to make his stories really work because he's so indestructible and such a paragon of goodness...possibly excepting when there's a civil war or an attack on the X-Men to be thought about. Thus, the challenge is to find something relevant to say about the world, and what the writers seized upon here was conspiracy theories and the very American concern that civil liberties are being eroded in favour of greater security. This has been a huge point of contention post 9/11, even recurring again and again with claims that it was set up purely so that the government could excuse going to war for oil while also tightening their grip on their own populace for their own 'safety'. Thus, casting Hydra in the illuminati/hidden government/lizard people role seems relevant and timely - the main plot of this film is that working from inside SHIELD, members of Hydra have set up a project involving advanced weaponry that on the surface looks to be 'protecting' the people, but will actually massacre any judged to be even a potential threat to their absolute dominance. 

Since the plan is so definitive, it will also mark the point Hydra no longer need to be in the shadows, so can cease to hide - useful for making it a grand enough gesture that it can be stopped with lots of explosions. When Nick Fury gets too close to uncovering the reality of the project he has been working on, his assassination is arranged, and Cap - along with Black Widow - ends up on SHIELD's wanted list. Luckily, with a little help from Falcon and some techno-fiddling courtesy of Maria Hill, they come up with a plan. 

Standing in their way, however, is the Winter Soldier - made to look very much like his mid-2000s comic book busting-the-everyone-stays-dead-except appearance, grungy hairstyle and all. Despite the farcical early appearance with a ray of light just artfully falling across his eyes, ole Bucky is actually pretty awesome as an amnesiac bad guy foil to Cap, fighting on equal footing with him. It looks like we'll see more of him in the Marvel movie universe - and I'm pretty interested in that. 

Lots of big fights and explosions, but also a coherent plot with decent mysteries and political intrigues. This was just right for a superhero film...although I must say that it's not one I'd care to rewatch in the short term. I am very happy with the place the Marvel universe is at just now, and very much looking forward to Guardians of the Galaxy. 

Then, of course, there was the stinger scene, centred on von Strucker but taking me completely by surprise with two characters I thought would be vetoed from the Avengers universe because of their origin in another, with rights owned elsewhere. Thus, my Facebook status after my viewing: Enjoyed the second Captain America film...but it's the stinger that has me thinking. Even if the dialogue screamed THEY'RE NOT MUTANTS THEY'RE NOT MUTANTS!