(Sam Raimi, 2002)
Raimi is a director perfectly suited to comic-book material. He is unafraid of camp; in Spider-Man he and screenwriter David Koepp wholeheartedly embrace some awfully camp dialogue, and it works. He understands the power of pulp imagery, and he knows how and when to use it - unlike some directors who take on the superhero genre and try to make it slick, or beautiful, or arch, Raimi shoots it as brightly-lit, visually exciting pulp. Which is as it should be, and which suits this particular superhero beautifully.
This is an origin story. The familiar origin story of Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire), entwined with that of his villain the Green Goblin (Willem Defoe). It is also a relatively early example of the huge super-hero film; and that means it works in a slightly different way to many of the films that followed it (even its own sequels). It gets its characters and emotional dynamics just right: Maguire is brilliant as Peter Parker, sensitive, bright, unsure of himself, always feeling guilty, and finally exhilarated to cut loose inside his costume. His love for Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) is delicately played and moving by the end of the film, as is the pivotal role played in his emotional growth by his Aunt and Uncle (Rosemary Harris and Cliff Robertson). Less successful is the material about the Green Goblin, which is a bit too camp in places, and lacks the emotional basis of the Spider-Man storyline.
The action scenes benefit from Raimi's fine eye and sense of rhythm, but the effects are occasionally dodgy, and strangely enough, there perhaps aren't quite enough action scenes.
That the final confrontation comes down to a simple slugfest is nicely true to a classic Spider-Man/Green Goblin story, and places the emphasis firmly back on the raw emotions of these characters.
Raimi would go on to perfect his approach to this genre with his next Spider-Man film a few years later.
Showing posts with label James Franco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Franco. Show all posts
Saturday, 12 April 2014
Tuesday, 18 February 2014
HOMEFRONT
(Gary Fleder, 2013)
Very much like an action thriller from another era - theres a lot of the 1980s here, and possibly even more of the 1970s - Homefront is never quite brave enough to go all-out to satisfy the sort of pulp cravings those movies effortlessly catered to.
Despite the presence of Jason Statham in the lead as retired undercover cop Phil Broker, director Fleder makes it all a little too slick and a little too mainstream to work. The screenplay - by Sylvester Stallone, a reliably canny creator in terms of base action thrills - is brutal and simplistic and classical in construction. Broker and his 9 year old daughter are living in a small Louisiana town after his (pre-credits) involvement in a massive operation to bring down a Biker gang ended in much bloodshed. A schoolyard altercation between his daughter and a bully escalates until the local drug kingpin, Gator Bodine (James Franco, surprisingly bland) becomes involved, discovers who Broker is, and calls in the Biker gang for help in disposing of this quiet man with devastating combat acumen.
The smalltown Louisiana setting works well, and the cast is unexpectedly starry for this sort of material, with the likes of Kate Bosworth and Winona Ryder both good in small parts as desperate women of different stripes, and Frank Grillo reliably nasty as a Biker assassin.
Fleder can do action competently, too, and Statham has a few impressive fight scenes. But competence is about as good as it gets. Its never delirious enough or offensively violent enough or bleak enough or funny enough. It sets up its familiar story, you know exactly what will happen, then that happens.
Which is perhaps what many Statham fans want of a Statham film. But he's capable of more. Films like this - with a sprinkling of cinematic pedigree - are small steps towards something more.
And its frustrating when they don't get there.
Very much like an action thriller from another era - theres a lot of the 1980s here, and possibly even more of the 1970s - Homefront is never quite brave enough to go all-out to satisfy the sort of pulp cravings those movies effortlessly catered to.
Despite the presence of Jason Statham in the lead as retired undercover cop Phil Broker, director Fleder makes it all a little too slick and a little too mainstream to work. The screenplay - by Sylvester Stallone, a reliably canny creator in terms of base action thrills - is brutal and simplistic and classical in construction. Broker and his 9 year old daughter are living in a small Louisiana town after his (pre-credits) involvement in a massive operation to bring down a Biker gang ended in much bloodshed. A schoolyard altercation between his daughter and a bully escalates until the local drug kingpin, Gator Bodine (James Franco, surprisingly bland) becomes involved, discovers who Broker is, and calls in the Biker gang for help in disposing of this quiet man with devastating combat acumen.
The smalltown Louisiana setting works well, and the cast is unexpectedly starry for this sort of material, with the likes of Kate Bosworth and Winona Ryder both good in small parts as desperate women of different stripes, and Frank Grillo reliably nasty as a Biker assassin.
Fleder can do action competently, too, and Statham has a few impressive fight scenes. But competence is about as good as it gets. Its never delirious enough or offensively violent enough or bleak enough or funny enough. It sets up its familiar story, you know exactly what will happen, then that happens.
Which is perhaps what many Statham fans want of a Statham film. But he's capable of more. Films like this - with a sprinkling of cinematic pedigree - are small steps towards something more.
And its frustrating when they don't get there.
Friday, 20 September 2013
THIS IS THE END
(Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, 2013)
Self-indulgent but largely in a good way, This Is The End takes a load of actors most famous for their work in comedy, asks them to play "themselves", then maroons them inside a designer-pretentious modern L.A. house while the End of Days happens outside.
Some of what follows is very, very funny.
It starts off a quite different movie. Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen's old friend from Canada, arrives for a week staying with his friend in L.A. Baruchel plays the only "normal" character in the film, his responses recognisable and relatively convincing, and he is reluctant to go to the showbiz party at James Franco's fancy new house.
Seth drags him along, and there is a brilliant party scene filled with excrutiating scenes of awkwardness, broad comedy as a coked-up Michael Cera debauches himself, some skillfully integrated characterisation and a series of dazzling cameos.
Then beams of light crack open the sky and lift people into the heavens, an earthquake strikes, a massive hole opens up in the ground outside swallowing up most of the party-goers, fires consume Hollywood, and the group retreat to Franco's house to wait it out.
After that its a study of friendship under pressure, with these exaggerated personalities and their big egos clashing over how to divide up the food, who sleeps where, the nature of the situation and who goes out for supplies.
There are a few hilarious sequences - a conversation about not seeming "rapey" overheard by Emma Watson, for instance, pretty much every conversation involving Danny McBride, playing his usual boorish creep, and when the situation ventures into horror territory there is a surprising amount of comic mileage in scenes of the men running around screaming in terror. But it is about 40 minutes too long, many of the comic ideas fall flat, and there is an inevitable air of smugness to it all.
That however comes hand in hand with audacity and bravery - this is a crazy idea for a film, but it works, and is even occasionally inspired. Plus you get to see James Franco (as game as the entire cast) eaten by cannibals.
Self-indulgent but largely in a good way, This Is The End takes a load of actors most famous for their work in comedy, asks them to play "themselves", then maroons them inside a designer-pretentious modern L.A. house while the End of Days happens outside.
Some of what follows is very, very funny.
It starts off a quite different movie. Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen's old friend from Canada, arrives for a week staying with his friend in L.A. Baruchel plays the only "normal" character in the film, his responses recognisable and relatively convincing, and he is reluctant to go to the showbiz party at James Franco's fancy new house.
Seth drags him along, and there is a brilliant party scene filled with excrutiating scenes of awkwardness, broad comedy as a coked-up Michael Cera debauches himself, some skillfully integrated characterisation and a series of dazzling cameos.
Then beams of light crack open the sky and lift people into the heavens, an earthquake strikes, a massive hole opens up in the ground outside swallowing up most of the party-goers, fires consume Hollywood, and the group retreat to Franco's house to wait it out.
After that its a study of friendship under pressure, with these exaggerated personalities and their big egos clashing over how to divide up the food, who sleeps where, the nature of the situation and who goes out for supplies.
There are a few hilarious sequences - a conversation about not seeming "rapey" overheard by Emma Watson, for instance, pretty much every conversation involving Danny McBride, playing his usual boorish creep, and when the situation ventures into horror territory there is a surprising amount of comic mileage in scenes of the men running around screaming in terror. But it is about 40 minutes too long, many of the comic ideas fall flat, and there is an inevitable air of smugness to it all.
That however comes hand in hand with audacity and bravery - this is a crazy idea for a film, but it works, and is even occasionally inspired. Plus you get to see James Franco (as game as the entire cast) eaten by cannibals.
Friday, 9 September 2011
YOUR HIGHNESS
(David Gordon Green, 2011)
How on earth did David Gordon Green, whose first two films - George Washington and All the Real Girls - were both sensitive, poetic, undeniably arty portrayals of the small-town South in America, how did he travel the distance to being director of Your Highness?
For here is a strange concoction; a quite brilliantly exact pastiche of the fantasy and sword & sorcery films of the 1980s, which skewers the tonal and narrative conventions of that genre and then yokes them to a stoner comedy - even the title is a weak joke - full of dick jokes. I mean that literally; the film makes much of the fact that one of the heroes wears a Minotaur penis around his neck for much of the climax. Some of the comic material is very funny, much of it is shockingly tasteless - the Jim Henson-style puppet who is a pedophile and molested Franco's hero as a child is one major lapse - and all of it is crude and obvious.
Most of the cast play it totally straight, allowing Danny McBride the majority of the big laughs as he gives yet another rendition of his usual inadequate, idiotic braggart persona. Even then, there is a limit to the number of times McBride saying "Shit" in a bad English accent is funny, and there are various spins on that gag throughout; Justin Theroux as a curiously underwritten and unfunny villain says "Motherfucker" as comedy-punctuation at the end of a stock villain speech.
It all ends in a big, generally straight action scene. Greens direction is competent and artfully recalls the 80s films which inspired this script, but all trace of the young genius with a unique sensibility and way of shooting the world has gone, and for all that Your Highness is sporadically amusing, that's a shame.
How on earth did David Gordon Green, whose first two films - George Washington and All the Real Girls - were both sensitive, poetic, undeniably arty portrayals of the small-town South in America, how did he travel the distance to being director of Your Highness?
For here is a strange concoction; a quite brilliantly exact pastiche of the fantasy and sword & sorcery films of the 1980s, which skewers the tonal and narrative conventions of that genre and then yokes them to a stoner comedy - even the title is a weak joke - full of dick jokes. I mean that literally; the film makes much of the fact that one of the heroes wears a Minotaur penis around his neck for much of the climax. Some of the comic material is very funny, much of it is shockingly tasteless - the Jim Henson-style puppet who is a pedophile and molested Franco's hero as a child is one major lapse - and all of it is crude and obvious.
Most of the cast play it totally straight, allowing Danny McBride the majority of the big laughs as he gives yet another rendition of his usual inadequate, idiotic braggart persona. Even then, there is a limit to the number of times McBride saying "Shit" in a bad English accent is funny, and there are various spins on that gag throughout; Justin Theroux as a curiously underwritten and unfunny villain says "Motherfucker" as comedy-punctuation at the end of a stock villain speech.
It all ends in a big, generally straight action scene. Greens direction is competent and artfully recalls the 80s films which inspired this script, but all trace of the young genius with a unique sensibility and way of shooting the world has gone, and for all that Your Highness is sporadically amusing, that's a shame.
Monday, 15 August 2011
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
(Rupert Wyatt, 2011)
The central section of Rise of the Planet of the Apes contains perhaps the best purely cinematic storytelling of any of this Summers blockbusters. That is when the human characters - never the movies strength, to be honest - fade into the background, and the narrative focuses almost entirely on chimpanzee Caesar and his experiences in an Ape Pound. Here we are shown what is basically a Primate Prison movie, with Caesar the young innocent having to learn the ropes on the inside, surviving violence and intimidation. Andy Serkis provided the visual references for the cgi, and he and the effects are marvellous in these sequences. Director Wyatt knows exactly what he is doing. His shot choices can be beautiful, and in the climactic scenes are often exhilaratingly spectacular, as well as eerie and often blackly comic, but they never weaken the muscular storytelling on display. He lays out the geography of this prison, clarifies the characters and conflicts, and moves the whole thing along at a nicely gripping pace.
But that is true of the film as a whole. Despite the void at the centre of the main human characters, who all seem cardboard cut-outs, even James Franco's "hero" (and especially Freida Pinto's pointless girlfriend), the exposition in the first act is done effectively and without tedium, and after that a note of dread enters proceedings and is made shriller as the film advances towards its climax.
By then, audience sympathy lies almost entirely with the monkeys. The villainous humans - cartoonishly personified by David Oyelowo in a suit and glasses - make sure of that.
The climax is occasionally magnificent and always stirring, even if the plot does contain some logical slips and the non-Ape characterisation is so disappointing. The set-pieces allow Wyatt to pull off some great, original shots, like the trees shedding leaves onto a suburban street as chimpanzees swing through the canopy or the mist-obscured Golden Gate bridge turned into a battleground. The references to the original series of Planet of the Apes films here are mostly subtle and even witty.
All that would be for nought, however, if Caesar's story didn't move viewers. But move them it does, and that puts this film in that rare position; this is a vastly superior summer blockbuster, uncommonly intelligent, engrossing and brilliantly made.
The central section of Rise of the Planet of the Apes contains perhaps the best purely cinematic storytelling of any of this Summers blockbusters. That is when the human characters - never the movies strength, to be honest - fade into the background, and the narrative focuses almost entirely on chimpanzee Caesar and his experiences in an Ape Pound. Here we are shown what is basically a Primate Prison movie, with Caesar the young innocent having to learn the ropes on the inside, surviving violence and intimidation. Andy Serkis provided the visual references for the cgi, and he and the effects are marvellous in these sequences. Director Wyatt knows exactly what he is doing. His shot choices can be beautiful, and in the climactic scenes are often exhilaratingly spectacular, as well as eerie and often blackly comic, but they never weaken the muscular storytelling on display. He lays out the geography of this prison, clarifies the characters and conflicts, and moves the whole thing along at a nicely gripping pace.
But that is true of the film as a whole. Despite the void at the centre of the main human characters, who all seem cardboard cut-outs, even James Franco's "hero" (and especially Freida Pinto's pointless girlfriend), the exposition in the first act is done effectively and without tedium, and after that a note of dread enters proceedings and is made shriller as the film advances towards its climax.
By then, audience sympathy lies almost entirely with the monkeys. The villainous humans - cartoonishly personified by David Oyelowo in a suit and glasses - make sure of that.
The climax is occasionally magnificent and always stirring, even if the plot does contain some logical slips and the non-Ape characterisation is so disappointing. The set-pieces allow Wyatt to pull off some great, original shots, like the trees shedding leaves onto a suburban street as chimpanzees swing through the canopy or the mist-obscured Golden Gate bridge turned into a battleground. The references to the original series of Planet of the Apes films here are mostly subtle and even witty.
All that would be for nought, however, if Caesar's story didn't move viewers. But move them it does, and that puts this film in that rare position; this is a vastly superior summer blockbuster, uncommonly intelligent, engrossing and brilliantly made.
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