Spidey Swings into Action

Amazing Spider-Man 2

Amazing spider-man 2 hit theaters this weekend, and the mixed reviews came flowing into the verse; here is mine. Maybe it was the abused over plays but sequel against sequel Amazing is on top and shining. Andrew Garfield is the best choice for Peter Parker and a witty trash talking spidey, take note Toby Maguire that is how it’s done. Instead of just choosing to show mediocre emotion Garfield shines along with Emma Stone and you see a couple, a duo, two actors that enhance and mesh together so well that you believe and grow with then. Jamie Foxx and Paul Giamatti Jump in to give us two of spidey’s villains and bring them to life for us all while Spidey seems to have a touch of post traumatic stress syndrome by seeing Gwen’s father just randomly staring him down while he talks to Gwen.

Jamie Foxx plays Max Dillion an Engineer worker who seems to have no life at all. He kind of reminds me of that creepy friend that you try to use as a wingman and ends up falling in love and stalking the girl even after she said no and ran away from the major creep vibe, but I digress. You see Foxx, not even able to blend in with the crowd due to the amount of social awrkwadness, as he is saved by spidey who is in the middle of stopping a runaway semi-truck driven by Aleksei Sytsevich; played by Paul Giamatti. After a small exchange of words between Spidey and Dillion, spiderman is back on the job, but Dillion never forgets that moment in his life and develops the school girl praying to Justin Bieber complex… just 10 times worse.

Garfield and Stone bring charm to spare to their roles, and Garfield in particular shows the humor and generous spirit of Spider-Man over and over again in his interactions with strangers, loved ones, and villains alike. (He’s particularly sweet in his interaction with a boy called Jorge who, in an ideal world, should have been a black kid called Miles.)
One of the strengths of the Amazing Spider-Man franchise is that it really wants to strike an emotional chord, and it chose lead actors who can play those notes (and almost navigate the nasty stalker aspects that inexplicably appear in both movies). The romance to me, feels like cosplay at a convention; a welcome inclusion for a broader audience. One that’s going to upset a few people who want, shall we say, a more resolutely “masculine” experience.

The romantic elements of Amazing Spider-Man may be dismissed as “too Twilight”, “too CW network show”, but I think there’s ample room in superhero fiction for stories that female audiences might appreciate more than male audiences, whether it’s in the Gwen Stacy mode of romance, or the Black Widow mode of equal kickassery. (It helps that they’re both brave, complicated, and competent women.)
The movie gets it right in its leads, its emotional resonance, and its tremendous humor. That makes everything it gets wrong all the more galling. Andrew Garfield deserves better material, and it’s frustrating to think he might never be in a Spider-Man movie that’s the equal of his talents. A softer reboot of the franchise between the Maguire/Raimi movies and the Garfield/Webb movies would have served everyone so much better. To put it in James Bond terms, a Connery-to-Lazenby reboot would have served us better than a Brosnan-to-Craig. It would have avoided all the plodding reintroductions and allowed these new movies to jump with both feet into a fully realized Spider-Man universe.

 Its scrambling efforts to build a broader franchise that can support, for example, a Sinister Six movie, have only added bloat to the already over-crowded Amazing movies. Sony wants to be Marvel Studios without exhibiting the patience or discipline that Marvel Studios embraced.

Dane Dehaan makes a surprisingly good Harry Osburn/ Green goblin. Part of me still felt as if I was watching another version of Chorncile due to the roles of “not loved by father” and “have to do some bad stuff to live seems” to be Dehaan’s bread and butter. Dehaan’s goblin made me smile to see a more scary and theartening goblin and just to hear the goblin laugh brought my childhood back to me.

A Haunted House 2

A haunted house 2 or Scary movie 7. Take Haunted House 2 for what it is, nothing but a Wayans brother doing a scary movie spoof since it seems the others are tired of doing the Scary Movie Franchise, but Marlon keeps holding on to the stereotypical one liners and racist jokes that come at you at breakneck speed getting stuff down your throat. A Haunted House 2 is nothing but another nail in the coffin of the Wayans brothers acting empire that Marlon so gladly hammered in his self not once but twice.