The Amazing Spider-Man 2

In past years. I've done a post called "The Summer In Review," where I give my thoughts on the summer's offerings of blockbusters. I still plan to do that, but I decided to give two movies separate reviews in addition to that. One is Godzilla, if only because I did a fair bit of Godzilla coverage in my previous blog. I've also decided to give a review to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, for a number of reasons. Let me say this right off the bat: if you like this movie, you may not want to read this post. It's going to be equal parts review and rant. I have a ton to say about this movie. It's more than a movie, it's kind of a snapshot of moviemaking in the year 2014: and I wish there was something better to represent it than this. HUGE spoilers ahead.

I guess it makes sense to give me thoughts on the first Amazing Spider-Man movie. Like I said in the last post, I can still access my posts from the original blog. And so I'll copy and paste my Summer In Review from 2012, one of my first ever posts, rather than write a whole new bit.

 "....Don't get me wrong, I liked a lot of it. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone were great, as was Rhys Ifan. The plot worked well and I thought it was a good alternate look at Spidey. But this movie was lazy. We never find out what Peter's father was working on (that good ol' "save it for the sequel" pet peeve again), the Lizard, one of my favourite villains was weak with bad CGI. The 3D, which was supposed to be great was weak, and they killed George Stacey too early in the series. They also forgot to include Spider-Man's quips. He didn't make jokes in the last series, he was supposed to here, and they didn't really do that, except for that one scene. Uncle Ben's death scene was bad. It happened too quickly and didn't really affect me emotionally. And the crane scene sucked. Overall a moderately good reboot, but left a LOT to be desired. 2.5 Stars"

So there you go, I wasn't looking forward much to the sequel. It was the first Spider-Man movie I didn't see on opening day. I saw it a couple of weeks later, purely because I felt an obligation. What did I think? Well I think I can sum it up very easily:

I hate this movie. Hated it.

I don't just hate this movie, I disrespect this movie. And I don't disrespect many movies.

I guess hate is a strong weird, there are things about this movie that very good. The problem is that the movie as a whole is such a mess that it's easy to forget the good aspects.

What did I like? Well, I did love the two leads. Let me be clear: I don't think Andrew Garfield has quite mastered Peter Parker. He's not bad, but I do find he can be a bit too cocky and a bit too much of a showboat. That being said, I love him as Spider-Man. He's quippy, he's funny and energetic. Several of the scenes as Spidey got a laugh out of me, and that was good. The costume was great and the web slinging effects were excellent. I loved Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy. Stone nailed the character. She was very smart, competent, kind, funny and extremely charismatic. Stone and Garfield have outstanding chemistry, it should come as no surprise that the two are a real life couple. Every scene they were in was just fantastic. I also loved the visuals. Normally I don't compliment that, I think that visual effects these days kind of make all movies look the same, or at least these big budget tentpoles. That wasn't the case here. I really felt like I was in a comic book. The fights were great, the action was great, the CGI was very good, even realistic. Electro's powers were a great visual. I really bought him as a man made out of electricity, and what that means. He just looked great.

That's basically the extent of what I liked. I'm just going to go over the obvious bad stuff, and delve into more later. Electro was stupid. Yes, the effects were good, but that's it. The character was a joke. His motivations were silly at best, his dialogue awful, and his motivations terrible. I won't spoil it, but it may be the worst villain motivation I've ever seen. They clearly tried to rip off Jim Carrey's turn as The Riddler in Batman Forever, specifically the scenes before he turns evil. That movie wasn't great, but at least they set up that Edward Nygma had a real dark side before he became The Riddler, and you buy it when he turns evil. Here? Not at all. You just roll your eyes at it. And what was with that death metal song playing when he decided to become evil? Man. Green Goblin was okay. Dane Dehaan was good, in an over the top way. His design wasn't great, but I don't know what else they could have done. The Green Goblin doesn't translate to the big screen at all, so they had their work cut out for them. Biggest problem with him was his arc, or lack thereof. In the Sam Raimi movies, Harry had an arc. He starts of as Peter's best friend in the first movie, and we see that relationship devolve from there. You can say all you want about Spider-Man 3 not giving that arc a good finale, but at least the first two movies did a great job. Seeing Harry find the Goblin's room at the end of the second movie was thrilling, a brilliant way to end that movie. Now? There's nothing. He and Peter meet, talk briefly, and suddenly remember they're friends. If Peter missed his old buddy Harry so much, why was there no mention of him before? You don't care about their relationship at all, and that means we don't care when Harry turns evil. Oh, and Rhino was in this movie. Yeah. Oh, and so was Norman Osborn, in a brief and unintentionally funny cameo. Oh, and they set up Felicia Hardy, aka Black Cat. Oh, and they set up Doctor Octopus and the Vulture.

Noticing a problem? Yes, this way is way over cluttered, and this where I lose respect for the movie. Sony clearly didn't learn any lessons from Spider-Man 3. That's why I didn't really blame Raimi for Spider-Man 3, and I don't entirely blame Marc Webb for this one. Neither get away blameless, but I think it's clear Sony is more at fault here. That's why I disrespect this movie: it's not art, it's product. I know, all summer tentpoles are like that. But let's look at the Marvel movies. Are they product, meant to make tons of money? Of course. But they still try. They still put in an effort to tell good stories. They cast good actors, they hire good directors. Are all of them good? No. But they all put in an effort to be legitimately good movies, and I respect that. Even Man of Steel, as much I despise it, at least tried to be something good. It didn't try to cram Parasite, Brainiac and Luthor in there. But Amazing Spider-Man 2? This movie is just product, trying to cram in all the references they can, and trying to bring in as many characters (Read: chances to make toys) as they can. I even heard a story that the CEO of Sony was directly involved in creative decisions for this movie. Not the head of Sony Pictures, the CEO of Sony, the mega company that tries to sell you new cameras and phones. The fact he was trying to have a direct hand in this movie is telling of just what Sony wanted for this. They had no interest in making something decent. Instead, they just tried to cram in characters and set up a Sinister Six movie that nobody wants. That's why I disrespect this movie, because it's not a movie, it's not art. It doesn't deserve to be talked in decent terms.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Bare in mind, this is a huge spoiler for the end of the movie, so read with caution.

They do kill of Gwen at the end of the movie, and they do it well, at first. The scene where she dies is suitably heartbreaking, and credit to Andrew Garfield for selling it. Then, the movie does a surprisingly good job of showing Peter's mourning. They do a timelapse of Peter at Gwen's grave, and it goes through the scenes. We're lead to believe he visits her grave every day, and it really is sad to watch. We're also informed that Peter has stopped being Spider-Man. When this was happening, I kept on saying to myself "Fade to black, fade to black." I felt this was a perfect place to end the movie, a very gutsy place to end it. It would have been an Empire Strikes Back style ending, where everything is down. Peter is no longer Spider-Man, and the woman he loves is dead. They then bring us to a scene at Aunt May's house with her and Peter, and they give us an even better place to end the movie. Aunt May asks Peter what he is doing in life, and he admits he doesn't know. Garfield is great here. He plays a young man who has lost everything, someone who is just going through the motions of life, not really caring. He then walks upstairs and opens his closet, and stares at the Spider-Man mask, which presumably has been sitting there for months. Again, I found myself saying "Fade to black." End the movie. Perfect. We've had out tragic event, the great timelapse, the talk between Peter and May, and finally a somewhat optimistic ending. It subtly implies Peter is going to put the mask on and try to put his life back together. But no.They bring in the Rhino and actually bring us another action scene. Seriously. Rather than end on a powerful and emotionally subtle ending, they decide "Nope, as Spider-Man movie has to have a happy ending!" No guts. And so Spider-Man puts on the mask again, and we're treated to action and a horrendously over the top Paul Giamatti who should really know better. It clashes terribly with the previous scenes and renders the last ten minutes pointless. I was thankful it ended at this point, because I couldn't take anymore. The filmmakers had an opportunity to redeem the whole movie and they blew it. Unreal.

This movie did the incredible. It virtually killed my interest in Spider-Man movies. After growing up with these movies, I've found myself feeling apathetic towards the future of this series. I don't  care to see Amazing Spider-Man 3, Sinister Six or anything else. Well done Sony. 

Boyhood Part 2

All right, let me try this again. I had a hard time summing up why I loved Boyhood so much right after seeing it, the whole experience was too fresh. Let's try again.

Boyhood is an incredible emotional journey that everyone has been on. You weep for the death of childhood, you cheer for the birth of adulthood, and you weep again. You know this kid, you've spent his entire life with him. When he grows up, you grow up. Everyone in the world has been on this journey. It could be argued that Mason's characterization is somewhat vague throughout the whole movie, but I don't think this is the case. He's young, he's finding himself. We see him slowly develop, slowly begin to become interested in photography. We see he's become a good kid, we see that he cares for his family. It's an emotional journey. The movie begins with his mother picking him up from school when he was a toddler. I quite recognize the dialogue the two of them share, dialogue that every young child has with their mother. Then, we see him as an adult. That dialogue has stopped, and instead he and his mother are having grown up conversations. There's a part of you that wishes they could go back to the old days, when life was so much more simple.

Mason is the not the only character to grow, and I loved that. It's mentioned that his parents were in their early 20's when the children were born, nowhere near ready to become parents. The father starts of as a weekend father. It's mentioned he spent a lot of time in Alaska, and decides to become a musician rather than settling down and finding steady employment. He clearly loves his children dearly, but has no clue how to be a father. As the movie goes on, he starts to grow and mature. He tries to become more of a father, trying to set up more of a connection with his kids. Then we find out that he has found work for an insurance company. He then settles down, remarries, and buys a minivan. He really becomes more aware of what his shortcomings are. He may have been an irresponsible parent, but at least he tries to fix his own faults. I deeply felt sorry for the mother. She deeply loves her children, but is also not ready to be a parent. She makes many bad decisions throughout the movie, and spend huge amounts of time trying to fix them. That's life, it's full of trying to fix your mistakes. That being said, her mistakes do lead to various terrible situations. She marries two men a different points throughout the movie, both of which turn out to be alcoholics. She does not have a great life, and all she ever does is sacrifice for her children. We don't know what her interests and likes are, but that's okay. Neither does she. Early on she mentions she put her entire life on hold for her children, thus giving up her own enjoyment of life at times. She also goes throughout a lot of change, but not all of it is positive. She ends up becoming a sad character who you pity, but certainly don't hate. All she ever did was try to raise her children, and she should be commended for that.

As I mentioned, the mother ends up marrying two alcoholic men, and these men lead to some horrifying situations. And yet, Richard Linklater does not turn them into cardboard cutout jerks. They have dimensions. The first man originally comes off as charming and kind hearted, and later we find out about his alcoholism. His drinking gets worse from there, and he becomes abusive. And yet we do see him as a person for a while, and see more sides of him than the abusive monster he became. We certainly don't like or pity him later on, but we do at least get to know him. The second marriage is much shorter, which shouldn't be surprising. We assume that the mother would get in a divorce as soon as she saw the first hints of alcoholism. The second one however, there is a drop of pity towards. Again, he comes off at first as likeable and kind. He is a former soldier who went on several tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. We can assume his alcohol problem is a result of PTSD. We never see him hit anyone, but we do see him talking terribly to the children. It's a brief character, but I'm glad he was in the movie. Life is full of people that we know for a brief time and then forget, only to revisit in brief memories. That's what this movies feels like, memories. We briefly remember the little moments throughout the movie, as the characters would. It's like revisting memories of our own childhood.

Again, go see this movie. It's ingenious, like nothing I've ever seen before. Highly recommended.

Boyhood

I've been working on more than one post for this blog, as well as living life, thus my lack of posting. Even so, I'm going to go ahead and review this now, while it's still with me. I just got back from seeing Richard Linklater's Boyhood. In a word: masterpiece.

I loved everything about this movie, from start to finish. It's really like nothing I've seen before. 

Yup, that's my review! Shortest one ever, by far. I've been sitting at my computer screen, trying to put what is so great about it into words. That's really all I got, folks. Go see it, a pretty incredible movie. Well done Richard Linklater.

A Return And Explanation

All right, here's what happened.

This is not my first BlogSpot blog. I originally had Jon's Blog Of Reviews, Talking And Whatever. If you remember that blog and are here, welcome back. If you are new, welcome. Life had been keeping me busy and without the time to post, but I had always intended to come back. Then I open my blog, and find it had been infected with malware. I'm not even going to attempt to fix that, so I decided to just start from scratch. Some details:

The blog itself is still a movie review blog, along with whatever other topics I may want to write about.

I can still open files from the old blog, so I may repost some old stuff in a "From The Vaults" series.

I had started a series called lecture hall in which I covered long encyclopedia style topics. I had been writing a series on the Disney Renaissance and had finished the first part. I will not continue to write on the Disney Renaissance. It's just too much stuff to cover, and writing on it was becoming a chore. I don't think I'll repost the first post. I'm very proud of it, but it's too long and complicated to move over. It also ends open ended, so that would imply I'm going to write another part: which I don't plan to at this time.

I may move over the Godzilla 1998 lecture hall, I'm pretty proud of that one. I also need to add to it by reviewing the new Godzilla movie.

That's all for now. I don't know how often I'll post, but I'll try my best. All right, lets get to more blogging!