99 HOMES

(Ramin Bahrani, 2014)

99 Homes isn't really a thriller, although it feels like one from the very first scene. Bahrani establishes a tense atmosphere with an opening crawl away from a dead man sitting in his bathroom, the rifle he used to end his own life in his hands, blood splatters on the wall, and through the house from which he was being evicted. Policemen move around, his wife and children wail as he is stretchered off. And in the middle of it all is Michael Shannon's Rick Carver, a real estate agent and developer who was the one evicting the man on behalf of the band which now owned his property. Bahrani follows him outside, through an angry phone call and a sarcastic, devastating exchange with a coroner, all of it soundtracked by a blunt, electronic rhythm. A feeling of dread has arrived, fully-formed, with this film. It never really lessens.
We see a little of Carver's life and business before he is evicting Nash (Andrew Garfield) from the family home where he lives with his mother and young son. Nash is a roofer, and in the 2008 of the film, the construction business has just collapsed, leaving him without a viable income. He and his family end up living in a motel after a horribly upsetting eviction. But he goes looking for Carver, believing some tools stolen, and instead, ends up working for him. Carver, impressed by his competence and initiative, promotes him rapidly, and soon it is Nash himself raking in money and evicting baffled families.
So 99 Homes is a deal-with-the-devil story, focused intently and fascinatingly on real estate chicanery in the world after the financial collapse of 2008. We see the details of the scams Carver and Nash run, and hear many of Carver's justifications. But Bahrani - a director whose films have always examined the reality of the American dream - ensures that we don't miss the other side of the equation. From the raw agony of Nash's mother and son when they lose their home, to the pitiful state of an elderly widower with nowhere to go and no family to call, this film is furiously moving about the human cost of the situation and furiously angry about the reasons for it.
The dread that settles in the opening scene does come to a head, but before that we get the spectacle of a terrific Garfield and a monstrous Shannon battling for the soul of the film. Both excel, and Bahrani's character doesn't miss a nuance. He is a director building a strong and undervalued body of work, and this may well be his best film yet.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2

(Marc Webb, 2014)

Here's a dumb move too many super-hero movies try to pull: make the villain sympathetic.
The source material rarely bothers. Oh, there are many sympathetic (or at least rounded, human) super-villains. But then there are also hundreds of thousands of super-hero comics from which they come. O the few dozen high-profile movies in the super-hero sub-genre, it is staggering how many attempt to make the super-villain somebody we can relate to. But who wants to relate to a villain? We can admire their energy, wit, style, intelligence, efficiency, combat acumen...but relate to them as people?
Partly it's to attract actors. They want interesting characters to play, with layers and emotional beats and moments. But they should know better. The truly memorable villains aren't memorable because they are sympathetic. Heath Ledger's Joker? Terence Stamp's General Zod?
In Marc Webb's sequel to his vaguely redundant Amazing Spider-Man, Jamie Foxx's Electro suffers from just this problem. Introduced as a humble electrical engineer at Oscorp (the Evil Corporation at the heart of this particular reading of the Spider-Man mythos) named Max, he stutters with a bad haircut, unappreciated, exploited and ignored. A chance encounter with Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) makes him an uber-fan, and soon afterwards he is given electricity powers by a pretty familiar accident at work. His second encounter with Spidey leaves him feeling betrayed, and out for revenge on the wallcrawler and the world.
Here's another common super-hero movie issue: too many villains. Webb stuffs in the Green Goblin (Dane De Haan) and the Rhino (Paul Giamatti in what is effectively a hammy cameo, or a hammeo if you will) on top of Electro. They all face our hero in an overstuffed last act, and all this on top of a subplot about the disappearance of Peter Parker's parents when he was a child, the return of his boyhood friend, Harry Osborn, and his ongoing difficulties in terms of his relationship with Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone).
That is where Webb's real focus lies, and as is the case with each of the Spider-Man films, the material with Peter's private life is far more compelling than any of the cgi super-hero battles. Gwen is the love of his life, but having promised her dying father that he would keep away from her, lest she come into danger, he is in constant conflict with himself. Stone and Garfield are the best things here, and their genuine chemistry brings each of the scenes they share to life in a way the rest of the film struggles to match. Their relationship feels complicated and warm in a real, human way, giving the events of the last reel surprising emotional punch.
Aside from that, its a middling super-hero movie. Some good gags, a few nifty action scenes, a great evocation of what it might be like to web-sling through Manhattan, and far too much time devoted to dull villains and their back stories and nefarious planning. Webb's style is the very definition of emptily stylish, but he spends what feels like an awful lot of time creating effects suited to 3D screenings.
Stone and Garfield make it just about worthwhile, but really, this is no better than the worst Raimi Spier-Man film, the third. And that is a problem.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

(Marc Webb, 2012) Setting aside the question of whether this "reboot" of a character last seen in cinemas only five years ago is even necessary - Colombia Pictures has to release a Spider-Man movie every five years or else they lose the cinematic rights to the character, which is all the answer you need - let's first focus on the question of the need for yet another origin story. Well, the greatest Super-hero characters all have suitably great, resonant origin myths. Batman, Superman, the Hulk and Spider-Man - the characters absolutely everybody knows - each possesses a unique, powerful beginning. Get that tale right - and The Amazing Spider-Man does, for the most part - and you have the basis for a solid piece of genre filmmaking, and maybe something more if all the necessary constituent elements line up just right. Spider-Man is at heart a fundamentally teenage character, and in such a power fantasy the emotional elements are familiar from other genres: angst, isolation, alienation, heartache, social awkwardness. Webb's film gets all of that right. Indeed, it's strongest material is the non-superhero stuff; this film opts for Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) as Peter Parker's Midtown High love interest, and perhaps unsurprisingly given the directors form with romcoms (his previous film was 500 Days of Summer) the scenes of their faltering romance are by far the best in the film. Andrew Garfield is terrific as Peter; more cool outsider than the kooky geek Tobey Maguire played in Sam Raimi's trilogy; and he and Stone have genuine chemistry. Their relationship is sweet, believable, and finally even a little moving, with just a note of the foreboding necessary in any such romance in the Super-Hero genre. Garfield is great at all the pain Peter endures, funny when he needs to be, and communicates the euphoric rush his powers bring him, but in his scenes with Stone he is all vulnerability and longing. She is set up as perfect for him, smart, brave, strong and beautiful, and her characters look is a geek-pleasing homage to the John Romita-drawn Gwen of the comics, with the same hair and love of knee-high socks and boots. The other supporting characters have been beautifully cast; the warmth and cozy affection of Peters life with his Aunt and Uncle is nicely played by Martin Sheen and Sally Field so that when he loses it, the loss feels immense, and Denis Leary gives Gwen's Police Captain father a decency and crotchety intensity which works perfectly for the character and serves the plot. All of that gives the film a surprisingly hefty emotional kick, especially in the last act, but the Super-hero material is generally less successful. Not the action scenes; the cgi-assisted sequences of Spider-Man and the Lizard (Rhys Ifans, decent if a little rote) in whirling, acrobatic combat are thrilling enough, the scenes of our hero mixing it up with policemen and common criminals far grittier and more effective, and the web-swinging passages are vertiginous and occasionally beautiful. But the plot is a mess; filled with gaping holes, evidently cut to ribbons in the editing suite (how else to explain the way several seemingly key threads - most notably the story of Peter's parents - absolutely disappear without explanation?), and consisting of a series of derivative, overly familiar beats. The heroes origin is tied up with that of the villain, the threat eventually effects an entire city, the exposition which sets up that plot is on the dull side while the villains descent into madness, is, rather, humanised in a tortured, cliched manner: all common factors in lesser Super-Hero films. It helps that everything looks nice, Webb aiming for an edgier, slightly more realist look than Raimi's stylised comic book world but keeping it all glossy with the help of Michael Bay's old cinematographer John Schwartzman, but James Horner's score is unremarkable. There is one formula in Super-Hero genre franchise creation; the first film can be solid, so that the second can be much better (see Raimi's trilogy, Brian Singer's X-Men films and Nolan's Batman series for good examples). Let's hope Webb can stick to that, since he's got the soild - if a little uninspired - first part out of the way already..