Spider-Man: Homecoming (a movie review post)

 

MCU #16

Should I mention again that Spider-Man is my favorite super hero of all time? Yeah, I probably should. I say that for this reason: My standards for any kind of Spider-Man adaptation are really high. I mean, I may think pretty much all of the Batman movies to date are pretty dumb, but I am also not invested in Batman so, you know, who cares? Don't get me wrong, Batman is... Well, he used to be fine as character: I don't know anymore. I have the feeling that Batman is no longer also "the detective," he's certainly not in the movies, which takes away a lot from the character. Look, what I'm saying is that they can screw Batman up as much as they want to (which they seem intent on doing), and it's no big deal. Spider-Man is a different story.

That said, so far, Spider-Man has been handled wonderfully.  Across the board, not just in the MCU.

But let's talk about Homecoming...

I think Marvel did a brilliant job with Homecoming. Spider-Man presented some problems considering that there had already been five Spider-Man movies, two of which were origin stories. Of course, none of those versions were MCU, so... what? Do you do another origin story, one specifically for the MCU?

Obviously, they chose not to. As I noted in my last review of Homecoming, summing it up with "I got bit by a radioactive spider" was a great way of bypassing the whole thing.

And so as not to rehash my previous review, the cast were all great. Holland is perfect, completely relatable as a nervous teenager. Which is the origin of Spidey's patter, by the way, nervous chatter.

I think the thing I would most say about Homecoming is that it is actually a different take on Spider-Man, not just from the previous movies but from the comics as well. It's a different take while actually remaining true to the character and to the personality of the character. Spider-Man as Iron Man's protégé is, actually, an interesting way to approach the story and fits well into the MCU. And it allows for it to be believable that Peter is still in high school. And high school Spider-Man is a very interesting Spider-Man and not one that has ever had much focus. Even in the comics, Peter moves on to college pretty quickly.

Plus there are all the ramifications of Tony Stark taking a high school student out of the country to help capture Captain America, putting him in incredible danger, that I have never bothered to talk about before.

And which I am going to continue to not talk about other than to say that this is part of what causes the tension in this movie. Tony dragged Peter off to... wherever... and Peter got hurt and it freaked Tony out, as it should have. So Tony clamps down on Peter, giving him "training wheels," and Peter bristles under what he feels like is being treated like a child. Which is valid. And it takes Ned to point out to Peter that he is, actually, just a kid. Not that either of them pay any attention to that in the end.

I suppose all I can really say is that I love this movie. It's not even mostly the Spider-Man bias. They really handled all of this so well. Giving Peter a father figure in Tony Stark was amazing (yeah, I did it), and it works. It works because Peter becomes the son Tony never had. There is a lot of emotion wrapped up in the relationship, and the scene at the ferry when Peter yells something like, "Well, if you were really here...!" at the Iron Man armor and, then, Tony steps out of it, are the kinds of things that make this movie not just work but rise to the top.
And now I want to watch it again! And I just watched it!

I just have one question... When is Donald Glover going to finally become The Prowler?!?!

Okay, let's get this stuff ranked:

1. Captain America: Civil War

2. The Avengers
3. Captain America: The First Avenger

3. Spider-Man: Homecoming
5. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
6. Iron Man

7. Doctor Strange

8. Ant-Man
9. Thor: The Dark World
10. Thor

11. Guardians of the Galaxy

12. Avengers: Age of Ultron

13. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
14. Iron Man 3
15. Iron Man 2
16. Incredible Hulk (Spider-Man once knocked out the Hulk but not even Hulk could knock out Norton's ego)

Note: I'm listing this as a tie with Cap, but I may change my mind later. I'm stuck between which one I think is the better movie and which one I just like more. Because, you know, Spider-Man.

Spider-Man: Homecoming (a movie review post)

I don't think I've made a secret of my longtime love of Spider-Man. Spider-Man goes back before Star Wars for me, back to at least when I was four. As such, I waited a long time for a Spider-Man movie. When that movie finally came in 2002 -- the Sam Raimi/Toby Maguire feature -- it was pretty perfect. Toby Maguire really captured Peter Parker, and I couldn't have been happier.

I was less happy when Sony decided to reboot the series. It's not that Andrew Garfield didn't do a fine job -- he wasn't as good as Maguire, but he was fine -- but a reboot just wasn't needed. Sure, change the actors, but keep the continuity of the series going.

Needless to say, I was a little unsure of how I felt about another reboot of the series. On the one hand, Marvel Studios was taking a hand in it, and Marvel has proven themselves a master at handling their own characters. [Unlike Warner Brothers, who continually show they don't know crap about how to make a super hero movie. For their one real success so far (Wonder Woman), they had to steal the plot of Captain America: The First Avenger to make it work.] On the other hand, it was going to be another reboot.

But Marvel, evidently, felt the same way I do about the idea of doing another reboot and went around it by not doing another origin story. It was pretty brilliant, actually. They summed it all up with one line, "I was bit by a spider." It was great.

And Tom Holland was... Okay, I'm going to skip the "amazing" joke. Tom Holland was incredible. Better than Toby Maguire, which I didn't think was actually possible. Of course, I thought that might be the case after Civil War, but I wasn't certain. Homecoming dismissed any doubt within the first few minutes. Seriously spectacular. [Sorry, I had to slip something in.] It's not that he's a wisecracking super hero; he's a nervous teenager. I'm looking forward to more from him.

All of the cast was great, though I wish Donald Glover had had a bigger part. I hope he becomes a recurring character. However, summing up everyone with "great" is probably devaluing Michael Keaton, and I wouldn't want to do that. Keaton was a better Adrian Toomes than Toomes ever was in the comics. Yeah, I was never much of a Vulture fan. But Keaton was wonderful and believable. And more than a little frightening. And I'm not going to say more than that because of spoilers (but my son was in full suspense mode as we watched, so I know it was working; he's a tough audience, even tougher than me).

I also really liked Bokeem Woodbine as The Shocker.

Oh, and Damage Control. That they introduced them was pretty great. I have the original limited series from 1989. Not that it seems it's done anything for the prices of the issues. It's still fun.

My daughter came out of the movie saying it's her favorite Marvel movie ever. I think Homecoming probably lands in my top three super hero movies. I'm not sure what that order is, actually. The top five, at this point, are all pretty great movies, and it's very difficult to tell which is better than another. It might be somewhat flexible depending upon how I'm feeling at the time. Right now, I just want to go see Homecoming again. Seriously great movie. And you don't really need to have seen any of the other Marvel movies to "get it," so don't let that get in the way if you haven't seen the other movies or aren't up to date on them. Just take the Tony Stark bits in stride and enjoy the movie.

Oh, and the Steve Rogers cameos are brilliant. Especially the one at the end.

Spotlight (a movie review post)

It might be early, especially since I haven't finished seeing all the potential best picture nominees, but I'm going to go on record with Spotlight being my pick for best picture this year. Looking at lists of other potential nominees, I'm just not seeing any that I believe will have what it takes to be a better movie. That's not to say that some other movie might not win, because, hey, Eddie Redmayne got best actor last year for sitting in a chair and drooling. (Yes, I'm still upset about that.)

So, just to be clear, Spotlight is not about what it's about. I think the perception or, at least, the easy way of saying it is to say that Spotlight is about the scandal in Boston over the abuse of mostly young boys by priests in the Catholic church. That is the easy way to say it, but the movie isn't really about that. It's the story of the reporters who broke the story about the abuse going on within the Catholic church.

In part, it's about how hard it is to sit on information while you dig for even more information. It's about what it's like to think you have one story, the story of one man abusing his power, to find out that what you have is a much larger story, the story of a whole institution supporting that abuse by that man and many others just to avoid embarrassment. What do you do when you fins out what is already a horrific story goes so far beyond that?

One of the telling things for me is that the actual reporters involved in breaking the story are saying that this movie really nails what happened. They're saying that this movie, more than any other, really gets at the heart of what it's like to be a reporter and to investigate a story.

The acting is amazing. I'd like to say that Mark Ruffalo, as Mike Rezendes, stole the show, but he really doesn't. Which is not to say that Ruffalo puts in a performance that is less than to be expected, because he doesn't. Ruffalo is superb. It's just that all of the actors are performing at that same level. So, in the scene were Rezendes loses it at Robby, Michael Keaton shines just as brightly as Ruffalo.

Stanley Tucci, an actor who never seems to get as much credit as he deserves (I mean, compare this role to his role as Caesar Flickerman), is perfect: understated and intense. Liev Schrieber is commanding. John Slattery is conflicted; you never know which way he's going to go as things unfold, and that's a huge credit to the actor, as he did all of that non-verbally. You can see, almost feel, his conflict as the depth of the scandal unfolds. And Rachel McAdams, an actress I've never really had a care for one way or the other, has demanded respect from me.

All things Marvel aside, if you can only see one movie this year, this is the one it should be. As an overall film, nothing has had better performances from an entire cast, and no other movie has dealt with a topic like this. And the movie does that well. It could have been just about hammering the Catholic church; it could have stayed at that level and focused on how horrible the church is for allowing that kind of abuse to go on for, at least, decades, but, by showing us the story through the eyes of the reporters, it rises above that. It becomes something human and personal. We don't have to see the horror to know the horror (unlike, say, 12 Years a Slave, which felt the need to show us all the brutality in explicit detail). As such, Spotlight is more subtle and, by way of that, more powerful.

The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance (or Birdman) (a movie review post)

Remember the 80s and how Michael Keaton was "the man"? My first Keaton movie was Mr. Mom; now, thinking about it, I want to see it again. He was perfect in the role as this rather disheveled husband shoved into being the stay at home dad. He had this persistent look of panic that was appropriate.

But then came Tim Burton's Batman, and the look shifted from "panic" to "vacant," which really wasn't appropriate for Batman. He failed completely to pull off a believable Bruce Wayne, the reason he was chosen for the role. Then after Batman... well... nothing. For a long time. Nothing "real," at any rate.

All of that to say that on a certain level I love this movie for the sole reason of having Michael Keaton as Riggan. It brings with it a certain amount of awesome. But he was also excellent in the role. He brought with him just the right amount of desperation to make you wonder wether Riggan is completely sane or not, something necessary for the film to work. In fact, it's this question that elevates the movie from just being about a washed up actor trying to revitalize his career to being a great magical realism story. Keaton was terrific.

In fact, all of the cast were great. Some of them in the ways they normally are, like Emma Stone and Amy Ryan, but a couple of them really stood out.

Zach Galifianakis did not do his normal eccentric weirdo; instead, he was a rather fretful lawyer too heavily invested in Riggan's show. He did a good job. A really good job. If he wasn't so physically distinctive, I might not have known who he was.

But the real surprise of the show was Edward Norton. I should point out that I am not a fan of Norton. At best, I find him annoying. Rarely do I find that he lives up to his own vaunted opinion of himself. Okay, never do I find that he lives up to his opinion of himself. Except this time. His first scene is priceless and I have to think intended as a bit of self-mockery. Whatever it was, it was genius. His portrayal of Mike, a character who can only really be human when he's onstage (not a good human, mind you, but that's the only place he becomes real), is amazing. I would actually love to see Norton pull a best supporting actor nomination for this.

The camerawork is worth noting, too. It has a continuous flow to it leaving you to feel as if you are moving along with the actors, possibly stopping to glance at things that grab your attention along the way. It's not always a smooth flow, lending to the feeling of walking with the actors. The change of character perspective is often accomplished by two of the characters running into each other and the camera following the new character when the two separate.

If you want something with a clear story and no unanswered questions, though, this is not your movie. There are pervasive questions about what is real and what is imagined, and the movie doesn't really answer those. Or even try to. It's the kind of film that will leave you questioning and wanting to see it again just to see if you missed anything. Or to see the Keaton/Norton scenes again. Or to figure out the jellyfish. That's the one I want to know, so, yeah, I'm going to need to see it again.