Spider-Man: Homecoming rises above the swamp of summer super heroes

So how many are there now? Spider-Man movies I mean - 5, 7, 38?  No one really knows. I understand several grants have been given to Ivy-League academics to study the question. And that’s usually a problem for an action film series and particularly super hero franchises – version fatigue.  Unless you’re one of those bright young people, it gets hard to keep up with the iterations.  Add on having to track the superhero’s place in the evolving “Marvel Cinematic Universe” and on its chaotic super team The Avengers and it all gets very close to brain surgery. Although there’s been less turnover than in the flavor-of-the-month Batman franchise, we’ve still had three different Spider-Men since we got serious with Toby McGuire at the turn of the century. And it’s not just different actors – these are different types of Spider-Men with different back-stories, slightly different settings and super powers, and a broad range of aunts and uncles. So yeah, continually rebooting different versions of the same hero can be a problem – but it’s not a problem this time. Spider-Man: Homecoming is a good Spider-Man… quite good!

And who knew? We’d seen the dorky-high-schooler-to-Spider-Man story before. And there wasn’t much in the film’s creators’ pasts (Director Jon Watts (Cop Car) and writing team Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (Vacation)) that would hint at Homecoming being anything more than another very average link in the never-ending Marvel movie chain. But I’ll be darned if the new crew didn’t produce the most charming, funny, and clever Spidey film of the bunch – Go figure? Homecoming stands out from the current drone of super-hero films with strength in both story framework and delivery. Watts and his writing team do an excellent job balancing the interesting new with Spider-Man’s classic foundational story. In this new backstory, the very-young Spider-Man (Tom Holland… who?) has been sort of discovered (see Captain America: Civil War) by Iron Man and is being groomed under Tony Stark’s mentorship to be a future member of the Avengers. That’s new – as is all the cool Stark Industries gear built into Spidey’s shinny suit. This and other new vibes are injected into familiar and important scenes and ideas from the original Stan Lee comic book which include a fine mechanical bird villain – The Vulture (Michael Keaton), a girl friend from some of the first Spidey comics (at least in name), and, of course, Aunt May (significantly upgraded by Marisa Tomei). Watt’s keeps the kid-genius part of the Peter Parker story and the fresh-face and unknown Tom Holland pulls it off with flash and minimal awkwardness. Keaton is great as the bad guy and new-comer Jacob Batalon kills as Parker’s nerd, Lego-Death-Star-building buddy (and “chair guy”).

The new and the old come together in Homecoming to make a very entertaining and witty, as it turns out, summer film. But it’s not just chuckles and grins (although Captain America’s public address announcements and the built-in Spidey suit assistant are dead funny); there are some seriously tense scenes in Homecoming with well-utilized CGI for you crash-and-bash freaks. I like this new Spidey – I hope he comes back. And I hope he stays true to his comic book self and returns as a solo act. The real Spider-Man of comic-book lore was not a huge fan of the whole Avengers thing and had a rocky relationship with that group throughout my young comic book reading years. Here’s to the Marvel-movie-making powers not throwing him in with Iron Man and the rest of the Avengers too soon. If Holland and the gang are as good in future films as they all were in Homecoming, I think Spider-Man will sell a lot of tickets all by himself. 8 out of 10.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales – Not great but a little better

I’ve been busy, OK? Not a lot of time to keep the six people that read these blogs/reviews (that’s right, I’ve gained a couple of readers in the last year or two) up to date on some of the latest films. But it’s summer don’t you know – “blockbuster” season – and time to grab the steady or the whole family and go see some tremendously-average action film, be mildly entertained, and promise yourself, as you refill your jumbo popcorn bucket (butter throughout), that you’re going to see something a bit weightier next time. So, if you’re into that all-American tradition, Dead Men Tell Know Tales is just the ticket. And if you’re an easy-to-please sort of summer movie going person like me, you may even find Dead Men to be slightly better than tremendously average.  

It wasn’t all about the summer-blockbuster tradition with me though – I had some ulterior motives for going. After following Pirates star Johnny Depp’s downward spiral into his own personal Devil’s Triangle these last few years – money woes, failed marriage, sobriety issues - I was interested to see what type of Jack Sparrow the damaged star would produce. Turns out Depp’s latest version of Captain Jack is a near mirror image of the portrayer’s real life ­– Jack’s kind of a wreck – I mean, even a bigger wreck than we’re used to. We find Sparrow early in the film without a crew, without a sound sailing vessel, drunk and stupefied and so desperate for more that he trades his super natural guiding compass in for a bottle of rum. Trades the compass… can you believe it? Fortunately, Dead Men doesn’t rely solely on Captain Sparrow, nor Depp’s half-in performance, for its dynamism. The scene-sucker this time is the new bad guy; the mostly-dead, blood-drooling, Spanish Captain Salazar (and that’s a theta on the z mind you). There’s just nothing like a well-rendered villain to make you sit up in your IMAX recliner and take note. Salazar, played superbly by Spaniard Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men), grabs you right off the bat, in the quite-good opening scene, and proceeds to dominate the screen whenever he’s on it.   

Alas, the rest of the film is not as good as its opening frames. Dead Men moves on from the promising start in fits and spurts through a sometimes-confusing mouse-maze of old and new pirate lore: ships in bottles, voodoo witches, zombies, magic gems and the like. New faces Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites, Gods of Egypt), Will Turner’s (Orlando Bloom) son, and young astronomer Carina Smith (Kaya Scodelario, Maze Runner) traverse the littered gauntlet, entangled with Sparrow, Salazar, and good ‘ol Captain Barbosa in a quest for Poseidon’s Trident – an instrument so powerful it can break all curses. The mix of generations is fresh and gives a needed boost to Dead Men’s stream of old gags which occasionally miss their target; although Jack’s truly creative encounter with a spinning guillotine makes up for the several action and comedic whiffs. 

Although spotty, Dead Men is a recovery of sorts of the Pirates Franchise. It’s an above average summer romp and is arguably the best of the franchise since the first film. Geoffrey Rush’s Barbosa and Bardem’s Captain Zalazar are more than enough to fill the slight void openned by Depp’s below-average and forced portrayal of an aging Captain Jack (he seems to be impersonating himself impersonating Jack Sparrow). It’s still all tremendously average, but it’s familiar and fun and it’s summer time – so what the heck - 6 out of 10.

La La Land is worthy of the accolades

I’m a sucker for a good musical – check out my Top 100 List and you’ll find several there. And La La Land is vintage film musical – cut from the same celluloid as the Gene Kelly and Fred-and-Ginger classics where an innocent-enough meeting between a man and a women can suddenly transform into the couple dawning oxford taps and soft-shoeing their way across a boardwalk or spinning around a street lamp. But despite the throwback style, La La feels neither old nor borrowed. Some mature (really old) viewers may wax nostalgic, but La La is truly its own new thing – with a classic musical mix of real and dream that somehow feels fresh and alive… and wonderful.

It’s not just La La’s style that is classic though – the film’s tale of star-crossed lovers is also a song as old as rhyme. Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) are dreamers – Mia, pushing caffeine at a Universal Studios’ coffee shop while trying, unsuccessfully, to break into the movie business; Sebastian, broke and trying to revive a career as a jazz pianist on his own terms. Their initial encounters are less than cordial, but as these tales usually go, fate causes their paths to repeatably intersect and the two romantics come together as they must. 

Their love and mutual support of each others’ dreams play out in poetic and dreamy musical numbers with some doors opening while others close. I should be clear here; Gosling and Stone are no Fred and Ginger. But their more-amateur performances of song and dance seem to fit naturally into La La Land, adding a genuine and honest feel to the film. As we old folk and classic-movie enthusiast would have to admit, many of the old Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly musicals were not great films – their stories simply quickly-assembled vehicles to get the over-the –top dancing talents of their stars onto the screen. This is certainly not the case with La La Land . The score may not be filled with the catchy tunes performed with high skill, but it is an effective, even powerful story teller. The film’s last scene – presented in front of the movies’ theme melody – displays this power and is a prefect summary of the slice of life we just witnessed – a hard review of the potential outcomes of the real and the dream and the decisions we make between them. We get to decide at La La’s last note, the last frame of the film, whether it was all worth it. La La Land is one of the best of the year – a magical must see. 9 out of 10.