X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Grade: B+

Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Patrick Stewart, Peter Dinklage, Evan Peters, Ian McKellen, Shawn Ashmore, Ellen Page and Halle Berry

Premise: After years of apocalyptic war, the last surviving band of mutants sends one of their own back in time to prevent the creation of some of the most powerful anti-mutant weapons.

Rated PG-13 for intense action and disturbing images, language, brief nudity, and some suggestive material

It’s difficult to not give X-Men: Days of Future Past a higher grade in this review. It really is. For a movie that has to serve as a prequel, a sequel, and a reboot, combines themes and ideas from six previous movies, juggles multiple storylines and has about a dozen major characters, it’s incredibly well put-together. In fact, it has the overall quality package that I thought this summer’s earlier blockbusters—The Amazing Spideman 2 and Godzilla—didn’t quite have. Days doesn’t disappoint, and it fulfilled nearly all my expectations. And yet…

And yet, despite the fact that some parts of the movie are borderline flawless—and I’m tempted to say this is the best possible movie they could have made with this material—something in the movie’s second act felt a bit off to me. I’m not sure what it was. This is a sleek, polished, well-acted, well-paced movie that does justice to its franchise and makes you look forward to future installments, but, even after seeing it twice, I’m feeling that something just didn’t fit. As good as the movie was, my interest started to wan in the middle—both times. A little long, perhaps? A little too talky? Days of Future Past is very, very good, but I can’t quite give it unbridled praise.

Plot

Some time into a dark, terrifying future where nearly-indestructible mechanical beings called Sentinels have been used to hunt down and destroy almost all free mutants, a last surviving group has avoided detection using a simple mind trick. Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) has the ability to send a person back a few days or even weeks to their younger body, so that they know the future. They can know when and where the Sentinels will attack, and they and their comrades can relocate to stay alive. This has proven successful for some time, but mutant figureheads Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) know their race’s only real hope is to send someone back in time, to stop the war before it even begins.

The year to send a person would be 1973, the year of the Paris Peace Talks after Vietnam. The mutant sent back to that year is Logan, better known as Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), whose unparalleled healing abilities make him the only person who could recover from the brain trauma of such a significant time-jump. His mission is to find the younger Professor X (James McAvoy), also known as Charles Xavier, and the younger Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who’s real name is Erik Lensherr. Their mission together is to go to Paris to stop a certain vengeful mutant from cold-bloodedly executing a pioneering scientist (Peter Dinklage) who had been experimenting on mutants to try to find a suitably powerful weapon to use against them. This scientist, Bolivar Trask, had been developing the Sentinels, and history says his shocking, savage killing inspired other scientists to embrace his work, to weaponize the mutant gene, and create the weapon that would nearly annihilate mutants. With a revolving door of friends and foes like the shape-shifting Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), strong and fierce Beast (Nicholas Hoult), and lightning-fast Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Wolverine, Xavier and Magneto race against time to try and stop Trask’s killing. But they quickly find there is significant danger in trying to change the past, and they can’t help but wonder if so dark-hearted a man as Trask should really be allowed to live.

What Works?

This movie’s functionality is astounding. As I mentioned, Days of Future Past follows three original films (2000, 2003 and 2006’s X-Men movies), a prequel (2011’s X-Men: First Class), a prequel spinoff (2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and a sequel spinoff (2013’s The Wolverine). But it works. Days of Future Past remembers things that happened in all six other films and includes elements of them, but it never even slightly feels like a remake or a mere moneygrab sequel. It’s the perfect lynchpin—even while changing the texture of the franchise so that parts of the older films become arguably irrelevant, it’s Future Past’s hearkening back to those old films that makes you so excited for coming installments, because you know it’s on course.

A lot of the credit for Future Past’s quality must go to director Bryan Singer, who’s back 11 years later after directing the two best movies in this franchise, X-Men and X2: X-Men United. Future Past feels fresh and exciting, with the heart and fullness of Singer’s two great installments but also maintaining the high-energy pulse of First Class, the very solid prequel. Just in case anyone’s wondering, the special effects are topnotch, the time-traveling concept works without being oversold or too-easy, and, most importantly, Singer makes this one about the characters. Despite the amount of action and hoopla happening onscreen, it’s the generally familiar, interesting characters who are the focus, as it should be.

Undoubtedly, it helps Singer in this regard to be headlining the film with a quintet of the most charismatic actors in the world (Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Peter Dinklage), plus two always-great vets (Stewart and McKellen). It’s true some of the regulars from the early movies get short shrift, like Halle Berry’s Storm and Anna Paquin’s Rogue, but I’m still impressed with the number of layered, meaningful performances packed into this movie. McAvoy is utterly superb as the younger, more conflicted Charles Xavier, a man filled with regret over loss, injury and failure, and, most poignantly, struggling with the burden of superpowers he never wanted to have, and sometimes still wishes he didn’t have. The Scottish-born actor has starred in a handful of movies that have made a splash at the Oscars (Atonement, The Last King of Scotland, The Last Station), but I’d argue his performance here is his best yet. As his opposite foil, Fassbender reminds us he can make any role completely compelling. Jennifer Lawrence—who was still making a name for herself when she played Mystique in 2011’s First Class—is dynamite here, as usual, combining the tough-as-nails dynamo and enigmatic loner personas she’s portrayed in her most famous roles (The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook, respectively). Dinklage is suitably effective in a less-showy but key villainous role, and Jackman is solid in his seventh go-round as Wolverine.

Finally, a nod must be given to Evan Peters, who lights up several key scenes as newcomer Quicksilver. With so much drama going on in two different timeframes, Days doesn’t have a whole lot of time for jokes or fun experimentation with powers, but Quicksilver’s stint onscreen provides some of the movie’s most gleeful material. With some great writing, awesome special effects (his powers might be the new Most Wanted X-Men Powers after this) and some pretty clever visuals, Quicksilver might just be this movie’s X-factor (pun intended, obviously).

*Oh, and if you stay all the way through the credits, there's a 20 second teaser for the next movie, supposedly to be called X-Men: Apocalypse.*

What Doesn’t Work?

There were times early in the going both times I saw Future Past that I thought “this is great. I mean, this is awesome. Could it be better?” And yet, both times, about halfway through the movie, following one major altercation, something started to slip. As I mentioned before, I found myself less focused and less entertained. At 2 hours and 11 minutes, is Future Past a little long? Yes. Does it get a little talky? As good as some of the actual drama is, there are large portions without any action, so I’d say yes. If I’m allowed to be really cynical, I suppose I could say there’s something about a movie that sets up characters and action—only to lead to a big action-packed finale—that’s cliché now, because we’ve seen that kind of thing so many times. In any case, it’s not a good sign when your movie has effectively set up the characters and the stakes, and yet even a big finale that includes uprooting an entire baseball stadium fails to truly excite.

It’s also inevitable that any movie that concerns time-travel and history-changing raises about 800 billion different questions and What Ifs, and, while Days of Future Past has an answer for many of them, it can’t answer all of them.

Content

Ladies, you get to see Hugh Jackman’s butt in this one. Buy your tickets now. In all seriousness, you do see a muscle man’s bare derriere, plus you can debate whether Jennifer Lawrence, in her scenes in full blue Mystique make-up, is naked or not under all that makeup. Thankfully, though, besides these flash-in-the-pan moments, Days of Future Past has more on its mind than sex, or even kissing. There is a lot of intense action, of course, and some of our mutants die in some pretty horrible ways (some even more than once, thanks to time travel), though most of these ways happen without much bloodletting. And there’s a handful of swear words, including an F-bomb dropped by our friend James McAvoy. Things can be pretty intense, but, ultimately, it’s nothing worse than your typical Iron Man, Spiderman, Avengers-type movie.

Bottom Line (Yes, I’ve Finally arrived here)

X-Men: Days of Future Past is really, really solid, working great as a sequel, a reboot, and even a stand-alone movie, and dang if it doesn’t make you want to see the next one. The main actors are all great, there are some awesome special effects, a few pretty big laughs, and some intense drama. After the relative disappointments of The Amazing Spiderman 2 and Godzilla over the past few weeks, this one fulfilled just about all my expectations and exceeded them in other ways. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely worth seeing.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Directed by Bryan Singer

Screenplay by Simon Kinberg

Rated PG-13

Length: 131 minutes

GODZILLA

Godzilla

Grade: B

Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, David Straithairn, Bryan Cranston and Sally Hawkins

Premise: When radiation awakens several enormous creatures on the Pacific coast, the world’s scientists and militaries try to determine whether the monsters are out to destroy humanity or if they’re merely on a collision course with each other.

Rated PG-13 for intense action violence, constant scenes of peril and destruction, scary moments, and some language

Do you realize Godzilla has been stomping across movie screens longer than James Bond? Bond’s been around with more regularity, but this new big-screen production of Godzilla marks 60 years since the 1954 Japanese original. Since 1954, countless cities have been cratered, thousands of people have been stomped on or pulverized by a giant, swinging tail, at least half a dozen other radioactive monsters have been slapped around, and a certain reverberating, high-pitched roar has become one of the most familiar sounds in the history of movies. Sure, there’s always been an unmistakable element of cheesiness with Godzilla—whether it’s because early films used animatronics, stop-motion animation, models, and guys in suits to portray the monster, or because the English dialogue dubbing for Japanese-made films was always hilariously obvious—but Godzilla, like King Kong, remains a classic element of cinema.

But unless we’ve been breaking out the old VHS copies of the black and white ‘70s flicks where he fought Mothra or three-headed Gidrah, Godzilla’s gotten short shrift in movies recently. The highly-lucrative but lamely Americanized1998 version changed his look and made him a defensive, pregnant mother, and some early 2000s versions tried to recapture the campiness of the old Japanese films, with minimal success. Now, recreated in glossy CGI (with the assistance of motion-capture acting god Andy Serkis), Godzilla is back and better than ever…or is he?

Plot

When a nuclear power plant in southern Japan suffers a horrific meltdown and collapses, the world’s governments and press label it an accident. However, one of the plant’s head scientists, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston, aka Walter White from Breaking Bad), knows otherwise, as he had been carefully monitoring unusual seismic activity in the area around the time of the collapse. But with the plant closed and an entire residential populace evacuated from a now-quarantined area, Joe no longer has access to his research. Years later, an obsessed Joe is considered a conspiracy theorist and regarded with skepticism by almost everyone, including his grown son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, aka Kick-Ass), but when a confidential experiment on the old plant grounds suddenly goes haywire, a pair of scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) become desperate for his research. Armed with the old research and tracking sudden new phenomena throughout the Pacific, the scientists gather that there are at least two giant, ancient creatures out there, awakened and hungry for radioactive fuel, which likely created them or contributed to their enduring life spans. One of them leaves a wide path of destruction across the Pacific as—the scientists believe—it looks for a place to breed; the other causes a devastating Hawaiian tsunami. A nuke-packing American admiral (David Straithairn) is ready to draw the monsters back out into the Pacific and try blowing them up, but the scientists urge him to wait, believing nature will stabilize itself (i.e. the monsters will have a monster smackdown from which there can only be one winner). But as both make land in San Francisco and cause massive destruction, time appears to be running out to see if the monsters will kill each other. But if they don’t, the question remains whether humanity has powerful-enough weapons to stop them.

What Works?
I’m being intentionally vague in my plot synopsis because, as many have guessed, Godzilla happily features a number of surprises the trailers have not spoiled. Right from the get-go, when the movie opens with a superb, gut-wrenching sequence, this Godzilla proves better thought-out than most monster movies. There’s more to this flick than Monster-Is-Discovered, Monster-Kills-People, People-Try-To-Kill-Monster, which is a pleasant surprise. Godzilla also utilizes the classic Jaws hidden-monster dynamic, where the monster is built up and built up until a big reveal—and here, even when the big reveal comes, it’s not a reveal of the monster you might think.

The special effects are pretty great, making convincing the devastating wrath of a tsunami, wanton destruction in major cities, and, of course, bringing to life some huge supernatural beings. There’s definitely a wow factor as these bad boys roar, stomp, burst out of the ocean and, most impressively, come whipping down out of the sky. This movie also gets a big-time bonus point in that there’s nary a use of shaky-cam, so what’s happening is always clear and easy to determine. Ultimately, Godzilla is sleeker and better put-together than most summer blockbusters.

What Doesn’t Work?

That said, Godzilla almost completely wastes a talented cast. With the exception of Bryan Cranston, who does some fine work (no surprise there) as a mad scientist type, the other actors are given almost nothing to do. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is onscreen the most and survives various falls, explosions and Close Encounters, but his character is a blank slate. Three Oscar nominees (Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins and David Staithairn) do little other than stare at screens and provide expository dialogue, an Oscar winner (Juliette Binoche) has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, and the talented Other Olsen Sister (Elizabeth Olsen) is wasted in a generic waiting-in-the-wings-spouse role. Now, I know the star of this movie—the one people are here to see—is Godzilla himself, and not any of the humans, but it’s still a shame they brought all these talented people on board and then basically forgot about them.

Godzilla is also a surprisingly joyless affair. I know giant monsters trampling humans and causing widespread destruction is not exactly a recipe for constant laughter, but, with a grim, brooding tone, this movie isn’t very much fun, especially for something that should be a throwback to classic popcorn movies from the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s excessively talky early on, and there’s surprisingly little monster action until the third act (I couldn’t help drawing comparisons to last summer’s monster mash Pacific Rim, which was undeniably cheesy, but at least gave you the “man, that was awesome” highs you get watching monster movies like these). I’m sorry, but I’m not here to watch people watch screens; I’m here to watch Godzilla.

Content

There’s not a whole lot of blood and gore (other than a bit of creature-on-creature dismemberment in the third act) nor is there a lot of swearing or anything sexual, but Godzilla certainly has its intense moments. Whole cities are leveled, lots of people die, people run in terror from rampaging monsters or onrushing tidal waves, and people are backed into no-win scenarios. There are also a few good shocks—and some ear-splitting roars—that might scare the kiddies.

Bottom Line

Ultimately, Godzilla did the one thing right that it needed to, which was to have a Japanese man (Watanabe) be the first person in the movie to say the monster’s name—it sounded like “good-zla” and, of course, took me back to the classic English-dubbed black and white Godzilla flicks of the ‘70s. Everything else is just icing on the cake, right? Well, Godzilla could certainly benefit from having a bit more fun with its monster mash premise, and I still am disappointed it wasted such a great cast, but without the brain-dead plot and shaky-cam filming that screws up so many summer blockbusters, this one was ultimately pretty solid.

Godzilla (2014)

Directed by Gareth Edwards

Written for the Screen by Max Borenstein

Rated PG-13

Length: 123 minutes

NEIGHBORS

Neighbors

Grade: C+

Starring: Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron, Dave Franco and Ike Barinholtz

Premise: A well-to-do couple’s peaceful life in the suburbs is rudely disrupted when a fraternity moves into the house next door.

Rated R for constant profanity, strong, graphic sexual content (including nudity, graphic sex-related dialogue, and crude humor), drug and alcohol use, and comic violence

It’s not easy for me to review a movie like Neighbors, because I know a movie like Neighbors was not intended for me. If a shockingly-dirty, hard-R comedy about a wild, constantly-escalating prank war between a repressed, sex-minded suburban couple (comic Seth Rogen, and Rose Byrne of Bridesmaids) and the leaders of the hard-partying frat house next door (Zac Efron, Dave Franco, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and a few others) sounds like your kind of movie, stop reading this review now, and run—don’t walk—to the theater near you, and prepare to laugh until you’re gasping for breath. Neighbors is funny—I won’t deny that. Nor will I deny that I laughed a lot or that I thought some of its many, many gags were comic genius. It’s just that, as a consistent moviegoer, I’m generally looking for something a little more, overall, than two stoners slapping each other with dildos during a wild cockfight. As much as I may laugh and roll around in my seat at a movie like that, there’s a hollow place inside where I feel a legitimate plot, genuine characters, and a point should be.

So: if you’re like me, I wouldn’t recommend Neighbors. But if my description sounds to you like the meaning of a good time, you’re gonna have a good time.

Plot

Lovers since college, Mac (Rogen) and Kelly Radner (Byrne) have their first child, live in a nice neighborhood, and have thus far steered clear of the domestic problems that affected their best friends. But they sense trouble when the vacant house next to theirs is claimed by Delta Psi, a notorious fraternity from a local college. Immediately worried the frat’s raucous, all-night parties could disturb them (particularly as it concerns the sleeping patterns of their infant, Stella), Mac and Kelly soon arrange a pleasant meet and greet. The heads of the fraternity, Teddy (Efron) and Pete (Franco), seem friendly enough. Mac and Kelly agree to call them before the police if anything gets out of hand. But on night number one, the party gets loud. Mac and Kelly go over to complain, but, offered a few drinks and impressed by the kind of fun party they themselves haven’t experienced college, they decide to let their hair down and have a good time. Unfortunately, this gives the frat boys a sense of security, the idea that they can do whatever they want, and it’ll be just fine with the neighbors. It isn’t, and Mac and Kelly, suffering through nightly ear-blasting parties from next door, soon find themselves working with Mac’s friend Jimmy (Ike Barinholtz) to either catch the frat boys doing something so bad the fraternity will be shut down, or to frame them for something. In retaliation, Teddy and Pete, who have been hoping to make the fraternity’s Hall of Fame for their antics, decide to take things to a whole new level.

What Works?

While Rogen must be an acquired taste (mostly he just seems to me to be a sloppy guy who cusses a lot), most of the cast is terrific. Byrne’s fearlessly-funny turn is particularly inspired, considering she was the one orderly member of the Bridesmaids gal pals a few years ago. The oft-shirtless Efron is a hoot, here about as far removed as possible from the squeaky-clean High School Musical franchise that gave him his start. But the scene-stealers are Dave Franco—who fully emerges from his less-entertaining older brother’s shadow with a manic but committed performance—and Ike Barinholtz, a Mark Wahlberg-lookalike who does a terrific few impressions (Wahlberg, Barack Obama, and DMX) that rank among the movie’s smaller but more brilliant bits.

Neighbors is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, with jaw-dropping, eye-popping gags and some hilarious one-liners. It reaches a pretty great crescendo with Rogen/Efron’s aforementioned comic slugfest, which involves everything from the dildos to an aptly-placed ceiling fan.

What Doesn’t Work?

As I said, Neighbors is fearlessly, proudly, shockingly-dirty, with whole scenes dedicated to the making of dildos or the unpredictable state of Byrne’s breastfeeding-stage chest. Most all of the humor is better done than in, say, Anchorman, but it’s still wildly no-holds-barred. If that sort of crude humor isn’t your thing, this is definitely not your movie. Personally, while I laughed a lot, I soon realized the humor is all Neighbors has to offer. Rogen’s fairly bland—nothing but a potty-mouthed party-animal—and he and Byrne definitely aren’t believable as spouses or parents. Neighbors fails to even consider questions like whether anyone else who lives on the street is bothered by the frat’s music-blasting parties, whether anyone notices when Mac and Jimmy step outside their office to smoke weed, or why Mac and Kelly don’t call the police when their cars are vandalized by the frat brothers. Again, Neighbors isn’t my kind of movie—you’re probably wondering why I’m asking such questions of a movie where two guys (Efron and Franco) “fight” by squeezing each other’s testicles—but the movie fails to maintain any level of real-life plausibility even while dealing with an intriguing suburban scenario. I also can’t help feeling a little peeved that a laugh-fest comedy like this features, but barely uses, proven comic talents like Christopher Mintz-Plasse (the Kick-Ass movies) and Lisa Kudrow (TV's Friends).  

Content

I hope you’ve gotten the point by now. Neighbors backs down from nothing, with the exception of showing actual male privates (it compensates with the dildos, the grabbing, and a great many references to them). There are topless women, bare butts, gratuitous pot-smoking and drinking, insinuated sexual acts, actual sexual acts, and about five F-words a minute. I doubt most teenagers would be fazed, but I still wouldn’t recommend this one for anyone under 17.

Bottom Line (I Promise):

I can’t help feeling somewhat hypocritical—I laughed my head off at different parts of Neighbors, and some of them were funny-enough gags that I want to tell people about them, but, as a critic, I can’t help but note Neighbors has nothing to recommend it beyond copious amounts of unbelievably crude humor. It’s about as R-rated as you can make a comedy. If that sounds like your thing, you’ll love it. If it doesn’t, stay away, because this is one wild party animal.

Neighbors (2014)

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

Screenplay by Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O’Brien

Rated R

Length: 96 minutes 

THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2

The Amazing Spiderman 2

Grade: B-

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan and Sally Field

Premise: Peter Parker’s love and loyalty are tested by his guilt-ridden conscience, the strain of his double life, a close friend’s illness, and a savage new supervillain.

Rated PG-13 for intense action violence and some disturbing images

I know angst is supposed to be part of the deal with Peter Parker/Spiderman, Marvel’s moodiest and most conflicted teen superhero, but too much angst can weight a movie down and make it feel melodramatic. That’s what too much angst does to The Amazing Spiderman 2, the first sequel to the gritty 2012 reboot—it weighs it down. The movie’s got some spectacular, eye-popping action, but, of course, it’s all about the characters, so we’re treated to a lot about the characters, all of whom are angsty: Angsty hero Peter Parker, Peter Parker’s angsty girlfriend, Peter Parker’s angsty best friend, Peter Parker’s angsty some-time-acquaintance-turned-archrival, Peter Parker’s angsty aunt, and, seen in flashback and fuzzy clips of aged video, Peter Parker’s angsty father. The combined angst largely sucks the joy and energy out of the film, and almost forgets to leave room for our hero’s epic showdown with the two main villains, thus leaving it squeezed into a too-quick, really-that-was-it? finale. The result is a movie that’s not without its great moments but dares you to consider whether the cheesier but breezier Tobey Maguire Spiderman films did this whole thing a little better.

Plot

Needless to say, Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is haunted by his past. He’s haunted by the fact that his parents left him with his aunt and uncle and then disappeared, he’s haunted by the fact that he still lives in the same house his deceased uncle used to inhabit, and he’s haunted by the promise he made to the dying police chief Captain Stacy (Denis Leary), that he would stay away from the captain’s daughter—adorable Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone)—in order to keep her safe. The latter haunt is most pre-eminent on his mind, as Gwen openly loves him (even while knowing about his super alter ego), and he pines for her, but he can’t forget what he said to the dying police chief. When Gwen, tired of his two-faced act, dumps him, he’s offered a brief respite by the homecoming of his childhood best friend, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), heir of multi-billion dollar corporation Oscorp. But Harry, who’s now in charge of Oscorp after the death of his long-sick father (Chris Cooper), has more on his mind than their friendship.

Peter/Spiderman soon has more on his mind as well, when a lowly Oscorp employee (Jamie Foxx) suffers a catastrophic accident that literally turns him into a sparkplug. At first, he just seems misunderstood, but when he becomes aware of the power he wields, he goes power-hungry (again, literally), to the detriment of the city around him. Calling himself Electro, he’s briefly entombed into the high-tech bowels of Oscorp, but he’s sprung from his entrapment by Harry Osborn, who’s been stabbed in the back by money-grubbing Oscorp executives and is out for revenge. Soon, the two form an alliance, and after avenging themselves on some Oscorp gray-hairs, they decide to take on Spiderman, who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and could learn, and spill, their secrets.  Peter doesn’t want to cause any problems, but Gwen, who still has his heart, works at Oscorp, and the conflicting interests within the company could have deadly consequences for an idealistic high-riser like her.

What Works?

Amazing 2 opens with a bang, thanks to a fascinating sequence showing what became of Peter’s parents—Richard and Mary Parker (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz, respectively)—it’s the kind of eye-opening, bar-raising, high-quality opener expected from James Bond movies. I don’t know that I’d call it the movie’s unmatched pinnacle, but it gives you an idea that the proceedings will be solid, which they mostly are. Garfield is a really fine actor who can do everything this script demands of him and more. Stone is perfect as the girl he can’t give up—the actress is so innately sweet and winning the situation is totally buyable, and the two have considerable chemistry. Foxx is a great find as arch-villain Electro. While his pre-transformation dweeb Max Dillon is way too corny, he supplies most of Amazing 2’s best scenes’ energy once he becomes Electro (get it? Energy—Electro? …sorry…). With an incredible pulsating blue visage and the coolest eye contacts ever, a digitized edge added to his low grumble of a voice, Electro is instantly one of the coolest super-villains I’ve seen, aided by Foxx tapping into the steely interior the actor has allowed audiences snatches of in Collateral and Django Unchained.

It’s also worth pointing out that Spiderman looks completely believable soaring through the sky between buildings, doing all manner of acrobatics—the shaky CGI that affected some of the older Spiderman films has been unquestionably improved.

What Doesn’t Work?

To me, though a lot of the big things are done right, a lot of other aspects just don’t work. DeHaan’s portrayal of Osborn is one of them—the actor’s performance is weirdly-strained, which makes him seem really awkward when he’s supposed to be a regular, old nice guy BFF for Peter, and then sends the character through the roof once he undergoes a villainous transformation. Watching him, I got the odd sensation that I was watching the actor trying hard to act the part, rather than watching the character or even the actor playing the character. Another "off" feature of the movie are some of the lighter touches thrown into the movie to try and combat the moodiness, to try and remind everyone this movie’s based on a comic. A scene where he befriends a bullied little boy is nice, but the script has Peter yammering relentlessly when he’s in the spider suit, even while in the midst of pell-mell action—it just seems ridiculous in an early scene where he babbles and gabbles at a Russian heavy driving a stolen tractor trailer when he could just be throttling the guy. And, of course, the big-time action climax feels rushed—too much plot means both main villains have a go at Spidey one after another, which we can see coming so we know one will get defeated pretty easily…the movie also chokes on a promising third villain, shoehorning a great Oscar-nominated actor into a barely-there cameo and cutting short what promises to be a pretty sweet shootout.

*It’s also clear that Oscorp has the worst security people ever. When a whiny kid can take out too heavily-armed and suited guards at the front gate of one of the most high-tech, secure secret laboratories in the world? Yeeeeahhh….

**Fans also need to know there are no bonus scenes during the credits other than a brief teaser for the upcoming Marvel flick X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Content

There’s not much blood or anything, but Amazing 2 brings the action pretty heavily, with a lot of damage and explosions caused by Spidey/Electro’s dust-ups. Kiddies might be unnerved by Electro’s shocking plight (that hilarious punt was intended, FYI), which includes some experimental work in Oscorp’s basement. You may know this by now: people’s transformations into Spiderman super-villains are rarely pleasant experiences. There are also a few brief smooches between Peter and Gwen, but nothing to worry about.

Bottom Line

The main actors do some fine work, and supercool new villain Electro gives this film a big-time jolt of energy (I know, I know: I’m a comic genius), but Amazing 2 feels undeniably forced, with way too much melodrama and perhaps too many plot threads. There’s some neat-o action, but Amazing does nothing to make me want to see Amazing 3, which is sure to come--in fact, I could care less about it at this point--and that’s probably some of the worst criticism a movie like this can get.

The Amazing Spiderman 2

Directed by Marc Webb

Written for the Screen by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jeff Pinkner

Based on the Comics by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko

Rated PG-13

Length: 142 minutes