The Bourne Supremacy and The Manchurian Candidate  7.23.2004

What’s Good About Bourne: Damon.
What’s Not: The BIG chase scene was familiar.
What’s Good About Candidate: A fine adaptation. This is how all remakes should be. 
What’s Not: There won't be a Manchurian Supremacy.
Bourne Directed by Raw
Candidate Directed by

    Matt Damon hasn’t been lucky; he’s been good. Good in the way he approaches the art of film and the commerce of it. Good in a way his co-star/buddy Ben Affleck has been bad. Show me an actor who got what every actor wants – a breakout start— and I’ll show you one who’s screwed it up. Damon, though, has consistently proven his worth. When he does the arty film, which is often, I make a point to see it because watching him taking on anti-action star films like Gerry (great), The Legend of Bagger Vance (good), and All the Pretty Horses (overlooked), is like watching an actor with everything to lose go in over his head just to see if he can. This also means that when an actor like this is tempted to join the dark side and put his mug on a 100-foot billboard, I also make a point to see what's going on because of the fact that he’s doing a “big” film is pleasantly rare and must be fueled by a reason outside of a big Paycheck.

     Matt Damon deserves a franchise because it never seemed like he wanted one. Likewise, the first Bourne earned its upgrade to franchise status because it had no pretensions other than being a good time with no strings attached. Franchise-dom comes far too easily to far too many films that jump the gun too quickly when all they should be doing is making one good film and worrying about the rest after everyone has been properly entertained. I've said this many times but I don’t want to be forced fed another Van Helsing, or Daredevil, or Riddick, or Legally Blonde, or Charlie’s Angels, or Matrix Convolutions because those films didn’t care enough to establish a sturdy foundation.

     Bourne Supremacy picks up where the last left off, but the happy ending of Identity quickly becomes (another) nightmare when Jason B realizes that he can never leave his past behind. We get the usual crappy plot device of a rogue agent attempting to restore his good name; yet, what saves the Bourne films from genericville is that, while this series does retread on action movie clichés, the protagonist more often than not comes to realize that his forgotten past is as much a part of the problem as the solution. Bourne's search for redemption for actions he never remembers committing is a great hook for me. That also makes this the first successful action franchise to be solely based on guilt.

     While I was disappointed to learn that Doug Liman would not be returning as the director of this Bourne film, director Paul Greengrass’s command of the genre put me at ease. While the action is all that it needs to be and no more, Greengrass handles scenes of death and loss with a great visual poetry. The heart of the movie is not the car chases but the little moments that shade characters we CARE ABOUT in one light or another. For instance, when Jason Bourne loses a loved one (I totally called that this character would be gone by the first act, thus leaving Bourne to put on his broody-brood face and kick some sniper wielding ass) after a hitman (Karl Urban from Lord of the Rings) forces his car to take a nasty spill in the water. There is a watery goodbye as Bourne must let a loved one slip into the darkness. This tragedy is so beautifully composed and affecting (thanks to the acting) that Bourne’s submerged sadness (both literally and figuratively) rivals the death of a thousand Tracy Bonds (James Bond’s slain wife from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service).

     Another nice touch occurs after Bourne kills a former comrade in a brilliantly staged Kill Bill-esq apartment rumble. Afterwards, Bourne goes to the bathroom to clean up in a scene that many directors would have considered to be a useless, for a character washing his hands rarely furthers the story. But as Bourne does this a look of utter hopelessness washes over his face and again we see the weight of the world on his shoulders. We are allowed a moment that's subtle and quiet rather than over-the-top in the A Man Apart sense of the word. Another small and quiet moment I must note is Bourne’s confession to a girl whose parents he killed while under orders in his past life. Again, while moments like this don’t exactly push the story forward, they are here and more memorable than the film’s routine (yet exciting) chase scenes.

     It’s no accident that the film ended up this good. For making a rush job look and feel this competent, this director proves himself to be the real deal. Greengrass has some great instincts as a director and his ability to do big broad action as well as scaled down and intimate drama puts him above most action directors in my book. Go and rent Bloody Sunday if you seek more of the former from this guy. As able as Greengrass is though, the series would be nothing without Matt Damon and, in turn, Matt Damon’s career would be nothing without the series. The two exist in a perfect symbiotic relationship.

     This is the Empire Strikes Back of CIA thrillers and I say bring on the Bourne Ultimatum.
 

    It just hit me: I haven’t even gotten into the nuts and bolts of the plot. Well, one of the last things the Bourne series will be remembered for is its plot. While a bit shallow, convoluted and murky at times, the story of Bourne returning from retirement and being haunted by memories of a past as a sleeper assassin works because Damon sells it so convincingly. This character can never leave the life and perhaps, as much as he’s conflicted, he never wants to. Another thing just hit me: I just saw a similar film about government programmed sleeper agents only this film’s plot is anything but shallow. The Manchurian Candidate is one of the best films of the year. Why? For many reasons. Films like The Manchurian Candidate justify the usually bad idea of remaking of a film that worked the first time around. Few remakes successfully elaborate or add nuance to the original. This one gets the job done right and puts a bullet through the head of convention.

I will admit to not being sold on The Manchurian Candidate’s advertising campaign. I was dreading it, in fact, though I knew I had to give it a chance because Jonathan Demme is an important director and, much like Brian De Palma, his films, even the bad ones (even the really bad ones) are good medicine for film buffs. Anyway, Paramount sold Candidate as a watered down “thriller” that would pine after the mellow adult audiences sick of the fast-paced action junk their kids have been OD-ing on all year. And while The Manchurian Candidate may be all that in part, it is anything but watered down.

     Similar to Matt Damon running around Europe and not knowing the full extent of his past, Denzel is playing a man in limbo who has no idea what he did and even less of an idea of what he’s going to do next. The actor and director’s approach to Ben Marco is not to make him some gung-ho Frank Sinatra posing protagonist but a man who is slowly going insane in his attempt to reveal the truth about what happened to his men in the Gulf War. The cover story is that Shaw, one of his soldiers played by Liev Schreiber, bravely saved everyone in the squad and earned a Medal of Honor in the process. Now Shaw, a national hero, is running for Vice President. But Denzel’s having dreams that would indicate something different happened in the desert. I’d rather not get bogged down in describing the plot except to say Demme pumps up the paranoia factor to the point where Denzel’s worldview gets more skewed the closer he gets to what appears to be the truth. Stylistically, this film is like a cross between a Kubrick and Hitchcock and still manages to retain all the virtuoso qualities of Demme’s past films like Silence of the Lambs or The Truth about Charlie.

     This is not a standard thriller. It is down right creepy, and the dissonant mood is consistently effective in the way that it threw me off. So much so that it got to the point where I didn’t know what would happen next... which is great praise for a remake. Demme reigns in the cacophony and chaos and delivers an incisive political film on par with Frankenheimer’s 1962 version of Condon's novel. Working from a skilled adaptation by Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris, the update is more like a re-envisioning because it does all it can to honor the source material while the changes and plot tweaks in the tightly constructed narrative only help to streamline the new product. For instance, the scene where Denzel’s Capt. Marco picks up a sniper rifle and FBI agent Rosie (Kimberly Elise in the meatier Vivian Lee role) searches for him within a crowded arena is entirely different from the original yet makes a whole lot more dramatic sense and possibly plays better than the Sinatra ending. The modern, Gulf War/War on Terror twist is seamlessly integrated into the tale and the topical nature of corrupt politicians, power hungry corporations and fucked up Bush-wars only helps to enhance the story for a new generation that looks upon the cold war with a cold shoulder.

     The “bond” between Raymond Shaw (Schreiber does a lot with this character) and Marco is surprisingly compelling, maybe that’s because while one man is trying to reveal the other as a fraud (“This isn’t an election; this is a coup,” Denzel screams to anyone who will listen), both are victims of the great military mind fuck (a handy metaphor for the soldier mentality). Evil, brain washing forces are trying to make Shaw, with an implant in his head, a malleable President one day and while you could call Shaw the antagonist of the piece, Liev adds a lot of tragedy and humanizes the part. Shaw is a withdrawn and sullen and utterly defeated man who, while under orders, also comes to realize what happened as the film progresses. True to the original, the main force in Shaw’s life is his harpy of a mother. And in her usual scene stealing mode is the fast talking Meryl Streep as Eleanor Shaw. A former tough-ass senator herself, Mama Shaw, along with Manchurian Global (a shady Halliburton-like company), help orchestrate the mind-programming madness in an effort to control the world (the company wants the world and the mother wants son). Like a Greek myth in reverse, the mother swallows the subjugated son whole and Streep’s performance added touches of nagging compassion, malevolence and yes, even Freudian lust, the very definition of Oscar bait. No supporting performance will top Streep in this movie.

The Bourne Identity: B+
 

The Manchurian Canidate: A-
 

I, robot 7.23.2004

What’s Good: I didn’t expect the film to be this good.
What’s Not: These reviews are like recollections. I wrote a pretty good, dare I say earth shattering review of I, Robot and Bourne Supremacy a few days ago but the computer screwed me and I had to start over. Nothing worse than that. This can only mean that the robot conspiracy lives on.
Directed by Alex Proyas
Outline: In the year 2035 a techno-phobic cop investigates a crime that may have been perpetrated by a robot, which leads to a larger threat to humanity.

    While it’s no robo-masterpiece on par with Blade Runner I, Robot gets the job done, and I can’t imagine any fan of artificial intelligence movies, outsides of Crossroads, being disappointed. Beneath all the flashy special effects and star wattage is a solid detective mystery. Director Alex Proyas, who could do no wrong by me after Dark City, has delivered the sparkling futuristic noir that Minority Report started off as but, unlike the failed Report, I, Robot only gathers momentum as it steamrolls to a finish where robots run amuck in an attempt to take over the free world. What more can you ask for?

     Here, Will Smith delivers his best performance to date. Odd how that statement sounds funny but I’m totally serious. Smith doesn’t undermine the material with his usual smug chattiness but he also doesn’t overdo it with faux artiness  as seen in Ali. I can honestly say that after watching I, Robot I couldn’t have imagined a better lead, which is saying something because, outside of chilling out max and relaxing all cool and shooting some b-ball outside of school, Smith has never seemed truly essential to any film he was in. While mostly a sensationalistic summer action movie, Smith does a lot with the material. Will-isms like “I’m a malfunction magnet because your shit keeps malfunctioning on me,” spoken after one too many robot attacks allow the character to breath within the sometimes-stale script. And lines like “You simply don’t like their kind” growled by the obligatory hard-ass chief of police highlight a wry play on racism and tolerance. Smith’s robot hatin’ copper is troubled and weathered and even has a few robots in his closet, though I was hoping for twist where Smith was a robot himself.

     As Smith’s agent Del Spooner tries to uncover the facts surrounding the death of a seminal thinker in robot AI, the cop discovers a —what else— vast conspiracy that could potentially send an army of evil robots into the homes of every American and one day destroy the Jedi friendly Republic... oh, wait, that was Attack of the Clones. Still, there is and there should be a built-in distrust in the system (both corporate and governmental) that belongs in all good films of the distant future, and what I liked about I, Robot was its exploration of artificial morality within the realm of a robot action movie. This film pays a lot of attention to the free will of the Bjorkified automatons and goes as far as delivering a Christ figure in Sonny, a unique robot instructed by his now dead scientist "father" to stray outside his programming. And in the process he finds a soul. I'm verklempt. The final shot involving an ensouled Sonny is powerful in a way few science-fiction robots have ever been—it’s more interesting than the rest of the film, in fact.

     When Del Spooner discovers that, yes, there is a robot conspiracy and, yes, these robots have been “programmed” for evil, the film switches modes. It becomes another summer, fireball escaping, wise-cracking action movie but, within all the flashy bouts of action and swarming robots, a funny thing happens. Purpose is added to what and why these robots are doing what they’re doing. Not to give anything away but besides possessing free will, their primary goal is to protect humans from themselves and to do that they must and kill a few. I like how this idea plays itself out and I like how Spooner learns to accept other forms of consciousness that aren't human per say. This little nugget of modern AI vs. freewill philosophy beats anything from the last two Matrix films where notions of free will and man’s interaction with machines were addressed with soulless speechifying instead of intellectual joy.

     As Spooner is battling the robots, getting the girl and trying to free mankind from shackles it helped put on, there is another battle going on. The battle between action and ideas, and the ideas almost win.

 {B} 96(+me) critics recommend I, Robot, 56 don't.
 

Maria Full of Grace 7.23.2004

What’s Good: Here’s another film this year where I disagree with the consensus. If you listen to everyone else and see it you may love it. That’s good.
What’s Not: Maria is underdeveloped, unlikable. For better or worse Maria's action are not justified and I couldn’t get into her “noble” and “brave” drug running journey. Maria has as much Grace as a wrecking ball.
Directed by R
Outline: A group of

    There’s nothing worse than a message movie without a message. Maria, Full of Grace is about “A young Colombian girl accepts a risky offer in order to escape her country for the United States,” and by the time you hear the words “a young Colombian girl” I imagine you, as I, could have finished a good portion of the plot in your head before seeing a single reel of the film. If it is Colombia and if it is about a girl then any story with those two variants must involve A) illegal drugs B) abuse C) murder and D) immigrating out of this hellish place. How could it be any other way? The West envisions South America as a place of perpetual chaos and unlivable conditions. Imagine for a moment a film that starts off the same way, “A young Colombian girl…” that instead turns out to be about normal people living normal lives. Imagine a Colombian version of Say Anything... More than any of that imagine a “Third-World” film, any Third-World film, that’s not depressing as all hell. There may always exist cinematic representations of damning cultural stereotypes that are played upon (sometimes accurate, sometimes not, sometimes made and funded by “third cinema” filmmakers and sometimes not, as in the case of this film) but even if that is a given, under the care of a talented storyteller, a decent script and complex characters can stand on their own and justify almost any film’s reuse of familiar cultural settings. I’m not saying films from any country should ignore the harsh realities of life, but I am saying that, just as in the cinema of America and Europe that range from depressing to carefree, there are other sides to life in “developing” countries and we should be allowed to seem them more often.

     Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, newcomer Catalina Sandino Moreno plays the wild and free-spirited Maria, a girl who gets fired from a tough job as a flower worker after puking on a dozen roses in front of a boss who won’t let her slack off and go to the bathroom for the hundredth time. Maria is now pregnant (her choice) and jobless (her choice) and somehow this leads to the decision that, instead of getting a real job or working hard, it would be a better idea to get into the ubiquitous drug trade because there’s fast money in it. Heroic! There’s not one step this character takes where I’m with her. I don’t believe in who this character is and I can’t believe in what she does. Though it’s perfectly easy to understand and even sympathize with amoral or even monstrous character types, I find it harder to do that when a film uses its character as some latter day martyr when, in actuality, he or she is not. As with the incompetent and virtually unwatchable storytelling devices of last year’s Monster, this film presents a girl’s destructive choice as something that should be applauded and the film fails to emerge with any sane thoughts on the matter.

     When approached by a skeevy dealer about the wonderful prospects of being a drug-running “mule” that must cram sixty or so bags of cocaine down her throat only to crap them out (and at one point put a few of those cocaine bags back into her mouth after she’s excreted them… yuck!) this pregnant, PREGNANT young girl thinks about that for a beat, looks up to the dealer and has only one question to ask: “How much would I get?” Classy. With this being the primary motivation for Maria’s not-so-noble trials, I must deduce that the director/writer of this piece has very little regard for his character (perhaps subconsciously) yet he manages to disguise this film as a feminist journey with elements of a thriller when Maria gets on that plane headed to New York with a colon stuffed full of drugs that, if they don’t kill Maria or get her put in jail, will surely ruin the lives and possibly kill victims of drug addiction in the States. Look, if this film came clean about the implications and consequences of Maria’s actions or at the very least explored the idea of how “a young Colombian girl” is an unknowing criminal swept up in foolish desires to be free from a self-imposed situation (what decent human would get pregnant and shove coke into her system?) that would be one thing but none of that matters to the film because, you see, this gal doing what she wants and that’s always good thing.

     Picture Traffic without the grand vision, El Norte without the pressing social context of immigration, and Rabbit Proof Fence without the harrowing performances of young people forced to travel through hostile territories without getting caught (as Maria does, though for vastly different and vastly less noble reasons) and you may begin to see on how many levels this film fails. I mean, what, exactly, is the point of this film? It is about a corrupt and stupid girl in a corrupt and stupid system (though the film refuses to acknowledge any culpability on Maria’s part). Much could have been said about that, but Maria, Full of Grace is not about drugs or the drug trade because the implications or political issues are simply not dealt with. Neither is it about immigration because this character has no reason to immigrate other than she doesn’t get along with a working class, fatherless family that needs her help. Pobrecita. So those two reasons are moot, and even if one were to defend the film (as every American critic has) by praising the character over the externalities, I would not even consider this film a decent character study because the tone behind Maria’s actions is all wrong and handled with an embarrassingly simplistic moral mandate. But within the parameters of the director’s myopic, if stylish, vision the film is well acted and even riveting at some key points. Also, with beautiful cinematography, great locations, ethereal music that sounds like compositional outtakes from the Monster’s Ball score and a competent form of modern neo-realism casting –there’s a fine use of non-actors here— everything was in place for a grand movie experience, except the filmmaker forgot to deliver a movie! They should have called it Maria, Full of Shit.

 {D-} 56 critics recommend Maria Full of Grace, 1(+me) doesn't.
 

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy 7.11.2004

What’s Good: I am not fond of this extremely lame comedy but…
What’s Not: ...that guy laughing in the theater? Yeah, that was me.
Directed by Adam McKay
Outline: Ron Burgundy is pompous newscaster in the 1970s who's matched with an ambitious female colleague who is actually a talented journalist. He then comes to the stirring realization that his perfect hair and mustache, and the ability to read from a Teleprompter, might not be good enough at his San Diego TV station.

    For the end credits we get outtakes. In one flubbed take, after Will Ferrell’s moronic Ron Burgundy tries to impress the new anchorwoman in town with a line about how San Diego was discovered by the great people of Germany and the name is actually German for “whale’s vagina” the two actors start laughing. At this point Ferrell looks to the camera and says something to effect of: “That’s so weird.” Folks, when Will Farrell is calling a movie weird we better listen. Yes, this film is weird. More accurately, it is a mess. A weird mess. Half-formed jokes; clumsy directing; piss-poor editing; a wonky sense of comic timing; mercilessly unfunny gags that come out of nowhere and amount to nothing (including Ron’s raging workplace boner, a lame quartet version of “Sky Rockets in Flight,” the randomness that is Steven Carell, a few too many cameos, and a knowingly-bad-yet-still-bad horse riding sex montage). There's also a half-baked script (co-written by Ferrell) with such brutal comic ADD that, while there is a plot, the humor isn’t so much derived from a structured story but instead from some sort of contest where the actors in the film attempt to out-weird each other before an audience that is one big, half-laughing, half-confused test rat. I’d compare Anchorman to the big screen equivalent of a bunch of drunk high school jack asses grabbing their dad’s digital camera and fucking around with it until they pass out in a pool of their own vomit.

     Will Ferrell is the kind of comedic actor that I am still not so sure I like even after all these years of laughing at (though not always with) him. I contain the same capacity to love the minimalist comedian (running naked in Old School) as I do to hate him (running in circles in Superstar), and in this film I experienced both emotions. I guess I got the two-for-one deal. The vacuous machismo of the "legend" Ron Burgundy is kind of like Ferrell's comic persona. Blank and often aimless with a rambling arrange of stream of consciousness jokes that connect some of the time when they are not flying dangerously off course. Here Ferrell finds a character that manages to work even if the story doesn’t. And unlike his overrated last film, Elf, this film's sense of humor at least contains a semblance of continuity. By that I mean the weirdness that opens this film matches the weirdness of the end.

     Despite all my bitching, Anchorman, like this year's Starsky and Hutch and Dodgeball, manages to be successful on whatever whacked-out level it’s playing on. I suppose a fair, if not the only decent way to judge lowbrow, frat-boy approved, comedies is to ask myself, “Did I laugh?” and the answer, no matter how much my aesthetic tastes have been offended by comic incongruities and lowest common denominator scripts, is often yes. No intellectual argument can trump that simple answer. In this instance I had an undeniable weak spot for Ron calling his beloved dog a “furry little Buddha,” or for Jack Black punting that same dog off a bridge, or Ron breaking down in a phone booth after the death of his dog, or even anchorman Ron being tricked by his female rival/love interest into telling San Diego to go fuck themselves because he’ll “read anything off the teleprompter. Anything.” The final verdict is that with Anchorman, I laughed. Squealed in fact. Random as they may come across, there is an inherent comic value in Ron’s hopeless shag-nanigans. Here, Ferrell's character is a great comic fool and an even better buffoon and I'm looking forward to A Confederacy of Dunces, his next film based off a brilliant novel in which those two traits will come in handy.

     In weighing the positive with the negative I'll concede that this is the best piss-poor comedy to come along since Deuce Bigelow Male Gigolo. Know that my passing grade comes at the expense of a burdened conscious. Yes, all instincts tell me I should dislike the clunky Anchorman for all its lack of finesse but, alas, I laughed and no argument can beat that defense in the court of comedy.

{B-} 81 + a cranky me critics recommend Anchorman, 51 don't.

 
The Corporation 7.7.2004

What’s Good: Maybe it’s the timing, in the week that the rat-fuck Ken Lay got inedited, but The Corporation really got through to me. It got me informed and it got me angry--the mark of a good documentary.
What’s Not: It’s not completely thorough. I would have liked it of the film discussed how corporations make our lives easier (because they do... I mean, where would I be without Amazon?). And how about a coda where solutions to combating the evil climate of corporate power are offered.
Directed by Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar
Outline: A documentary that looks at the concept of the corporation throughout recent history up to its present-day dominance.

    If corporations can really be counted as people with invaluable rights (which they can according to the law) then this incisive documentary systematically, and from all sides of the spectrum, shows how most of the companies we know so well are, by the textbook definition, psychopaths. I've seen the end, and it will come about by corporate greed and loopholes that allow corporations more, way more power, than individuals. Here we even learn that even CEOs don't always have full control over their company's actions because they are legally responsible to the bottom line over all other things; over human beings and way over the environment, a corporation’s primary duty is to profits and shareholders first, and the world second. It is a self-sustained, well-oiled beast and this Canadian (eh?) documentary traces how it got to be this way and how, one day, we'll all have bar codes tattooed into our arms and numbers instead of names (I added that last part).

    Not an expose, not a get-‘em-angry journalistic endeavor (thank god, the crap from network news-mag shows exist to get me paranoid and ruin my Sunday nights) and there are no gimmicky selling-points (a la Super Size Me), just facts. Over two hours of stunning facts, in fact. From Chomsky and two FOX-fucked reporters on the (ir)responsibilities of the media, to Michael Moore on overseas labor practices, to CEOs of companies discussing why third world labor can be good, The Corporation does its best to be fair and, cough, balanced. This documentary takes the word “corporation” and dissects, prods, and questions it to the point where, by the end, you will want to take action—make yer own clothes, cook yer own food, take yer damn money out of the seedy damn banks and pocket mulch (TM The Simpsons) everybodah!

   The corporate-greed mood of the piece would have to be summed up with the line “In devastation, there is opportunity,” which one trader – or is it traitor?— said, as he recalls his first impression and the first thoughts going through his head after seeing two planes destroy the world trade center and about three thousand people. Indeed, money has replaced humanity and, if you ask me, we have the eighties to thank for that. Still, this film doesn't shove messages into our minds. Much as I enjoy me a good Michael Moore yarn, this documentary is not didactic in its message making.

   With a sleek presentation that almost resembles an instructional video, The Corporation paints a compressive picture that ranges from the environmental question to the moral one; from standard business practices to IBM and other companies (like Fanta, the company Coke invented to sell to the Nazis during WWII and still make money— evil); from the “psychological futility” of programming people to think they, er, want to buy things they don’t need to biotech companies buying patents on DNA and other life forms and so on and so forth. The film gets in there, too. At one point it connects the rise of fascism as being good for business. Though fear not, this is not some left wing “propaganda” piece and it is not a drab informational film, either. Rather, I like to think of it as an epic documentary that takes a subject (multi-national corporations and their responsibilities) and explores the hell out of it while allowing all sides and all walks of life to weigh in. Though the film could not possibly address all the nuances and complications of the business world, it is a piece I may never be able to forget and will certainty change the way I look at the corporatized world in which I live and thrive.

{B+} 37 +me critics recommend The Corporation, and 2 are probably employees of Fox "News."

Spider-man 2 7.1.2004

What’s Good: A great looking comic book movie.
What’s Not: Spider-Man is super, super boring! His only effective superpower is the ability to put me to sleep. And why did Michael Chabon, the brilliant author of Wonder Boys and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay put his name on this?
Directed by Sam Raimi
Outline: Peter Parker is beset with numerous personal problems while Spider-Man confronts the brilliant Dr. Otto Octavius, who has been transformed into "Doctor Octopus" (aka, "Doc Ock"), a multi-tentacled menace.

    What’s wrong with me? What am I missing? 95% of critics out there are fawning over it. Sales are going through the stadium seating roofs. Audiences are lining up to see Toby do his best impression of a toaster prop from Dawson’s Creek. And then they see it again! Spider-Man 2, with all its teen-y melodrama and perfunctory action should be the comic book fan’s bete noire. It's not, purists love it. And because is about a super-guy more than a superhero this comic book genre film has tapped the ass of a third quadrant and found yet another avenue of success... women viewers. The American male has been culturally castrated and Toby McGuire is our new poster boy.

     “Who am I? I’m Spider-Man, given a job to do. And I’m also Peter Parker,” we learn in a monotone voice over. It would be one thing if Peter Parker, who also "has a job to do," lived an interesting, conflicted or compelling civilian life (a la Mr. Wayne) but his is a life so drab, humorless an uneventful that that I'm surprised a Danish Dogma 95 filmmaker didn't pen the script. This sequel once again delves into the minutia of the domestic existence (staring endlessly at his wall), the uneventful workplace trials with boss Jenna Jameson, the spark-less relationship with Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst--as average as ever) and, alas, even the rivalry with Doctor Octopus –while potentially exciting—is underused to the point of being a neglected subplot that is only really tended to in the third act. Spider-Man 2 gets everything wrong!

     What can I say about a character... a male character... a single male character... a single male character with superpowers (presumably in the bedroom as well) that tells a somewhat cute gal “I don’t have time for girls right now” and says it convincingly!?! Peter Parker is a cold fish with a sex drive as fiery as Rain Mans. They should call him Eunuch-Man except the Man part would require that he, you know, act like one so, rather, I think Super-Eunuch fits this character quite nicely.

     In this new Spider-Man science once again creates the obligatory loose cannon monster with a frozen over heart of gold. Problem is, there’s no message beneath the use of a villains science vs. a hero's purity. Sure, each superhero and supervillian contain human qualities that will ultimately bring down or humble them but director Sam Raimi never seems to grasp or capture the aura of personal tragedy that enshrouds many, better comic book heroes. Also, while the film is based in an everyman kind of realism, the science of Doc Oct exists to justify a supernatural reality that undermines whatever realism the film had. Doctor Octopussy creates a fusion ball that inexplicably looks just like the sun; this is mindless fluff. And mindless fluff soon segues into why-do-they-even-bother when the mad scientist develops super strong tentacle arms and attaches them to his spine for the lame-o reason of helping him with, uh, all the fusion gathering that needs to be done for the FIRST(!) time in a scientific trial that involves a big ball of infinite energy and for good measure this UNTESTED(!), super secret lab work is done in front of an audience that includes Peter Parker who happens to be Spider-Man. And this is the best aspect of the movie!

     If I must say one nice thing it is the following. The film looks like a Spider-Man film should look. The production design (Neil Spisak), cinematography (Bill Pope) and spider suit are pitch perfect and mesh to create a stunning looking comic book movie. Even so, did I mention Spider-Man 2 gets everything (else) wrong.

A scene that sums it all for me:

A neighbor walks into the apartment and looks at a catatonic Peter Parker who’s staring at his wall for the third time. A bit attracted to his monosyllabic, asexual ways she takes pity on the looser and asks...
-“Would you like a piece of chocolate cake?”
-Peter answers without an ounce of charisma: “Yes... that would be nice.”
-The film cut to a few minutes later. Peter has eaten the food. All we see is crumbs in a riveting close-up insert.
-“Thank you” Peter says politely.
-She stands up and leaves.

End of scene.

     I never thought I would say this but in the case of this blockbuster summer “action” film I'd take a mindless Spider-Man over this mind numbing washout any day.

     As Peter Parker (PP or PeePee for short... which he is) looses his Spidey powers due to psychological impotence and a lack of sticky white goo being ejaculated from his wrists, the filmmaker seemingly jumps at the opportunity to make the same Spider-Man movie over again except this time there seems to be even less energy and this is due to the fact that series’ overall narrative arc is regressing rather than moving forward as it should--if you look at how much has been learned since the end of the first film all you could come up with is that a few more characters know of Spider-Man's identity and, oh okay, the dude's a little more confident now. This is not the great leap forward I was hoping for. I figured after the first, disappointing Spider-Man outing the series could only get better because all that tedious exposition/origin story stuff was out of the way but what’s not so amazing about the “Amazing” Spider-Man is that the studio and director decided not to fix what they thought wasn’t (but I thought was) broken. The result is essentially a remake of the first Spider-Man. As in the original, Spider-Man tries to hook up with MJ (not Michael Jackson, though that would have to be more interesting than the current relationship). Spider-Man tries to hold a job. Spider-Man tries to fit school into his busy schedule. Spider-Man tries to make money. Spider-Man battles a man of science and technology. Spider-Man even runs into a burning building again; perhaps the same building of the first film hasn’t stopped burning! Did I mention that Spider-Man 2 gets everything wrong.

     I caught a bit of The Quick and the Dead the other night and noticed how Sam Rami, the director of that forgotten film, not only managed to make a western shootout original but he make a total clunker of a movie watchable. Sam was once a good director. Possibly a great one. On par with the relentlessly inventive Coen Brothers, here was a guy who threw in every trick in the book and when he went through those, he invented some more. So why is it that with Spider-Man 2 Raimi seems to have directors block. His once bravura style has not only gone hopelessly commercial but quite bland as well? Raimi has lost all signs of creativity and here falls back on derivative plots, scenes of predictable superhero irony (ex. Spider-Man looses his powers and must take the elevator… ho ho) and a general creative malaise. Also bothersome is Raimi’s quaint, Eisenstein-esq capturing of the city’s diverse faces as they encounter a real life superhero; sometimes graciously, sometimes crudely. Far too often Raimi takes a break from the few scenes of action that there is to cut to uninspired shots of New Yorkers watching in wonder. By the tenth time a down-to-earth “city” dweller (90% of which are black for some reason) looked up in amazement and shouted “Look! It’s Spider-Man!” or “Look! There’s a burning building. Where’s Spider-Man?” or “Look! The script is on fire!” I had all but given up. Spider-Man 2 gets everything wrong.

    So here I am, left in the dark and wondering why the beloved Spider-Man series has grown to be the mega hit that it is. A few months back I was treated to one of the most exciting, funny and down right exuberant comic book movies of all time and it was called Hellboy. Yesterday I saw Spider-Man 2 and was treated to a film so boring that I was forced into a fifteen dollar meditation session--“did I do the trash today?”; “who will be Kerry’s running mate?”; "god damn, how am I going to beat Ninja Gaiden!"; “where can I find a copy of Christian Metz’s Imaginary Signifier… ah ha: Amazon.com marketplace should have it?”; “what episode of Alias season 2 did I leave off at?”; "How much more fake can Lindsey Lohan's boobs get?"; “hum, I wonder if the universe has one big soul as opposed individuals having their own souls?” While meditation I eventually arrived, angrily, to a question of why I was thinking about useless shit during a film of supposed escapism! I go to summer movies to get away from my mind but the tedium of Spider-Man 2 forced me to retreat back in there. Between the mysteries of fake breasts and collective human consciousness, another moment of “huh?” fell upon me when I realized that Spider-Man, in just two days will out-gross Hellboy, a film more fresh in my mind many months later than this film film which I hadn't even finished watching! Later, as I saw people eagerly lining up to see the next showing of Spider-Man 2, another thought ran through my confused head. Why Spider-Man? Are people into this because of the mob mentality that compels all of us to go because, well, all of us are going? Or could people simply tolerating this average film? But it could it be that people are genuinely in love with this character? His life and his work. Na... impossible. Whatever the reason, I can't wait until Batman comes around and shows audiences what a super hero should look like.   

 
{D} 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 critics loooved Spider-Man 2, and 1 is me.

The Spider-Man Experience:

Watch in wonder as Spider-Man talks on the phone!

Watch him stair at his hand!

There he is looking at a woman with whom he has zero sexual feelings for!

Hey look kids, he's, uh, standing and, um, really serious!

Whoa! Watch out Spidey, don't get hurt fixing that bike!

My god, those tie tying skills are uncanny! And look, he's showing human emotion!

There he is staring at his hand again!

Hey asshole, stop staring at your hands!!!

Ah, that's better, back to staring at the wall.