So Much For That

At any given time, I’m harboring one or two secret crushes on upcoming movies. They’re usually projects that have little or no buzz behind them, and they almost invariably build to a roaring crescendo by the time they come out.

They also almost invariably star Natalie Portman.

Like Garden State and V For Vendetta before it, I have been anticipating the Portman-starring Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium for months off little more than a simple synopsis.

Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman) is the awkward and insecure manager of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, the strangest, most fantastic, most wonderful toy store in the world. But when Mr. Magorium, a 243-year-old eccentric (Dustin Hoffman), bequeaths the store to her, a dark and ominous change begins to take over the once remarkable Emporium.

It seemed like the kind of story that could be given a dark enough spin to successfully bridge the generation gap. With the leaking of at least one promising picture (Mr. Magorium's stamp of approval, presumably for his toys) and the close of principal photography, a trailer became imminent. I waited with baited breath, prepared to be blown away.

Yesterday, I found it.

Not so dark and mysterious as I had hoped. Bright colors, weird accents, obnoxious camera angles, Jason Bateman playing the same character he’s played for the last however-many years. Hoffman calls to mind other characters that have already been done more than once, and the whole things reeks of a certain kind of mysticality that isn’t easy to pull off.

I’ll keep my eye on this one, but I can’t help but feel more than a little let down by the thought of what could have been.

Does Whatever A Spider Can

As usually happens when a new installment of a series that I hold in some fond regard comes along, I’ve revisited the chapters before it. The series of the moment is that of our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man – a series that, as I recently discovered, bridges my rather recent (going on 4 years) surge of interest in film. I scrapped together my first film review in early 2004, but the interest that boiled before that included the DVD release of 2002’s Spider-Man. It was an enigma to me at the time: a movie that the whole world seemed to love that I thought was cheesy as all hell.

Then came Spider-Man 2 and one of the first full length reviews that I ever wrote. It’s not one I’m particularly proud of (hell, it didn’t even get ported from Rotten Tomatoes to theMINIPLEX), but it’s proven itself valuable as a time capsule of sorts: a vivid picture of where I was in my opinion of film, and just how far I’ve come in the nearly three years since.

Here’s what I wrote on July 2, 2004, unedited from its original posting:

I’m now very excited for Spider-man 3, but unfortunately not because Spider-man 2 left me in awe. Where the first movie was a corn and cheese fest, the second at least manages to present an acceptable villain, which allows for the only part of the film that I felt was truly up to par. Unfortunately, cheese and corn was still plentiful for the rest of the flick.

The part that I speak of liking is the middle forty or so minutes where Dock Ock (Molina’s half-human/half-CGI baddie) is set after Spidey, right up to the end of the subway sequence. But to speak of my likes, I must first explain my dislikes. This film is full of emotion and honest feelings – you can smell them in the theatre before you even sit down. Unfortunately, it is all unrealized potential – the film manages to capture very little of these feelings. To me, this is a perfectly good waste and the hindering factor that keeps this movie from greatness.

That said, the middle portion that I liked was the only part of the film that DID capitalize on these emotions – specifically with the connection between Spider-man and the inhabitants of the city that blindly hate him. At the start of the subway sequence, Spidey’s mask is burned and he is forced to remove it. It’s something that you barely notice. By the end of the sequence, he is all but completely wiped out after trying his damndest to save the fully-loaded train. At this point he loses consciousness and begins to fall – only to be saved by the grateful hands behind him. He is taken to the back of a subway car, and a carload of people just stand around in awe at the unmasked hero. It is the most honest moment I’ve seen in a film in recent memory, and certainly the best moment in Spider-man’s filmography. To me, this moment is what these movies are meant to be.

Soon thereafter, Molina’s Dock Ock breaks the Hallmark moment and comes by to claim his goods. His character is the coolest comic-book villain to be realized on film. The blending of Molina’s real life movements with his CGI arms is awe-inspiring (watch as Molina uses his actual arms and legs to help climb walls). There was never a point where I didn’t believe that the arms were actually a fluid part of his body, which is something to appreciate in these days of crappy CGI-fests. His battle sequence(s) with Spider-man are spectacles – worth the price of admission on their own.

Unfortunately, there’s more to a movie than cool battles. Perhaps it’s bad acting, perhaps it’s bad writing – it’s truly hard to tell – but this movie just never comes clean with it’s feelings. The dialogue sounds forced out of the actors’ lips, and it’s corny to begin with. Nothing ever reaches a dramatic peak – all of the conversations are very bland and, dare I say, predictable. By the end of the movie, you don’t really care that Mary-Jane and Peter can’t be together – because they spend so much time talking about it (without resolving anything) that you’re bored by the third time she appears on screen.

This is a flick that struggles to get into gear, and limps toward a truly stupid ending. Fortunately, there are those shining moments in the middle that remind you why you paid to watch the movie, but the product as a whole is very uneven and unsure of itself. By the end, it becomes painfully obvious that there really was no clean way to wrap things up – and as a result, we’re treated to enough endings to make Peter Jackson jealous.

However, I can’t help but recommend that you see it (as if you needed my approval). In a summer of lackluster blockbusters, this is one that can at least entertain you – even if it does make you cringe every now and again. I mentioned at the outset that I was excited to see Spider-man 3. That’s because Spider-man 2 comes oh-so-close to greatness, that I really think Raimi might just pull it off next time around. This movie is something that not many sequels happen to be – a reason to be excited for the future of the franchise.

6/10

Stylistically, the review makes me cringe even worse than I claim the movie did. “I think this, I think that;” it’s my fucking review – of course it’s what I think.

But I digress.

As for the opinions presented, only about two-thirds of it makes me feel stupid three years later (I would have figured it to be a lot more). I re-watched the film just the other day and while I still think it’s uneven and unsure, I’ve completely reversed many of the most certain-sounding statements in the above review, even if a few remain mostly intact.

- First, admitting to being excited about Spider-Man 3 is horribly embarrassing now that the film has arrived. However close I thought Raimi might have been with Spider-Man 2, all bets were lost on the third chapter.

- I still think Doc Ock is cool as hell, especially now that Venom was introduced and promptly wasted. Alfred Molina made a good call.

- I’m still in love with the subway sequence. Three years and one more chapter later, it’s still the purest sequence of the series, not to mention my favorite.

- The acting was bad at times, sure, but it’s now quite apparent that the downward spiral was hardly complete (Thomas Hayden Church excepted).

- The “truly stupid ending” is actually pretty damn redeeming. I don’t like to think I was too naïve to see what was going on there, but I (apparently) was.

- By the end of the movie, you really do care that Mary Jane and Peter can’t be together. By the end of the third? That’s another entry.

Historically, I’ve been unnecessarily hard on Spider-Man 1 & 2, but time and my delving deeper into the world of film have shown me the light. The acting goes downhill with each installment (where James Franco’s turn in the third installment represents rock-bottom), but is still only flirting with disaster in the second. Between Doc Ock, a whole webful of pathos untethered to an origin story, and the realization of that which was to come, Spider-Man 2 is a hell of a lot better than I originally perceived. I’d be tempted to declare it the best of the series, were my memory of the first not so fuzzy.

Three years later, I can safely say: “I never saw that coming.”

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Two years later, my memory of Fantastic Four is pretty dim. I didn’t really consider this a problem until Rise of the Silver Surfer rolled into theatres, but the crew behind the production did a good job of confirming that my memory loss was hardly a loss. With the exception of a pending marriage and a few character traits, very little has been ported from original to sequel. A blessing in disguise, it would seem, as revisiting the first film for any reason not named Jessica Alba is largely effort not-so-well wasted.

At some point, Rise of the Silver Surfer ceases to be a major Hollywood film and morphs into more of an E! True Hollywood Story. Characters that can finally move free from the anchor of their origin story have all the depth of ill-conceived stick figures. Each of their most dramatic moments are spoken (“I am so hot for you right now.”) – not shown – draining them of both poignancy and sincerity. The actors appear bored at almost all times, and it’s pretty hard to blame them.

Though it is decidedly better than its predecessor in every way (excepting Alba’s makeup), Rise of Silver Surfer still manages to take a backwards step or three. It’s the kind of movie that defies it’s own laws of physics shortly after stating them and saves all of it’s cool toys for the very end, rather than any of the other 20 times that they might have come in handy. Forgivable sins for a comic book movie, perhaps, until all good will is spent by identifying Stan Lee in his cameo, effectively outing every Marvel movie’s biggest in-joke.

The action is passable – though not entirely creative – until it “climaxes” with a deus ex machina that isn’t only foreshadowed beyond even a third-grader’s doubt for most of the movie, but is at least partially recycled from the first film. Throw in a villain that the audience is compelled to neither love nor hate with another that bends logic in the name of déjà vu and you have yourself the biggest waste of cool characters since Venom’s glorified cameo in Spider-Man 3.

Fantastic? Not so much.

[4/10]