We Love the City

Category: Movies

  • TIFF08: Midnight Madness

    Those who complain about the Toronto Film Festival becoming elitist clearly haven’t been to enough Midnight Madness screenings.

    It’s hard to find a crowd that embodies the Festival’s motto of “For the Love of Film” more than a Midnight Madness audience: Every night during the Festival, 1300 people pack the Ryerson Theatre to watch some of the strangest movies you’ll find anywhere – comedy, violence, horror, science fiction, and the just plain weird. It’s not the stuff that’ll show up on Oscar night – though there’s usually a hit or two to come out of it – but it’s pure, unadulterated fun to watch these movies with a huge crowd that loves them, that knows when to cheer, when to Ooh and Aaah, and when to just shout weird, random things at the screen.

    Detroit Metal City

    Let’s be up front about this: Detroit Metal City basically has one joke. Sensitive young Soichi moves to Tokyo with dreams of becoming a trendy pop star. Music is his dream, and he writes songs about feeling super and pretty girlfriends who make him cheese tarts. But somehow – it’s never adequately explained – he ends up fronting Detroit Metal City, the Japanese kings of death metal, as Johannes Krauser II, wearing makeup and a cape and singing – or, at least, shouting – songs about rape and murder. His delicately balanced life gets more complicated when he meets Aikawa, a pretty young music journalist who loves sensitive, trendy pop songs and hates aggressive and obnoxious death metal.

    So Soichi must try to woo Aikawa with sweetness while maintaining his night job as the king of rape rock. And this all goes on for about an hour and a half. It drags in a few places – Soichi can be too wussy, and Krauser’s songs too obnoxious – but there’s some inspired comedy to be found when things balance out. As Krauser, Soichi ends up stalking Aikawa and her would-be suitor through an amusement park, interrupting a Power Rangers show and helping out another sensitive pop singer. And when he returns to see his family, Soichi is shocked to find his younger brother worships his alter-ego, and employs Krauser’s mystique in the name of household chores.

    There’s also a second joke, though it doesn’t get quite as much play: Detroit Metal City’s chain-smoking, abusive manager, who kicks her musicians in the crotch and stubs out her cigarettes on people’s foreheads while trying to convince poor Soichi to embrace the Rock and Roll lifestyle. She’s kind of a hoot.

    Things bog down towards the end, as the story tries to get meaningful and goes back too often to the theme of Living Your Dream. Or, I suppose, Abandoning Your Dream to Give Others Their Dream. It’s kind of an unclear moral, and isn’t the sort of thing you should really get people thinking about. You could probably shave 15 minutes or so off the running time and create a leaner, funnier film.

    Still, Detroit Metal City has some inspired comedy, and can be flat out hilarious when it’s hitting its stride.

    Eden Log

    I admire the intent and ambition behind this French science fiction film. Director Franck Vestiel clearly has a vision for this film – it’s dark, disorienting, and largely eschews exposition in favour of slow reveals and gradual answers to important questions. Vestiel knows what he wants to say and how to say it as he tells the story of an amnesiac wandering through a bleak, nearly deserted subterranean landscape infested with the roots of an unusual tree and angry, hungry mutants.

    Unfortunately, Vestiel’s style gets the better of his storytelling: More often than not, Eden Log just feels confusing. Scenes are dimly lit by flashing lights, and interrupted with jarring camera work and choppy editing; it’s slow-going at the best of times, and downright indecipherable when there’s any action on the screen. And while I’ll admit that the larger narrative may be better appreciated on a second viewing, I’m not sure I care enough to spend that much time on it.

    More than anything, Eden Log reminds me of Myst, the PC game that consumed many lives over a decade ago: Walk to this room. Look at the objects around you. Listen to a recording telling you part of the story. Go to another room. Pull one lever, and turn the wheel to the left. Repeat.

    Then add the monsters from The Descent. I admit, I might have enjoyed Myst more if there had been mutants.

    Throw in some biblical references and social commentary, and you’ve got Eden Log.

    It’s an interesting attempt, and I’ll be interested to see what Vestiel does next, but Eden Log is, at best, an interesting failure.

    Sexykiller

    While Detroit Metal City gets by on one joke, Sexykiller has at least three, and they’re all pretty awesome.

    Sexykiller is sort of three different movies in one, and switches tone easily. In the beginning, we get the story of Barbara (Macarena Gomez), a med school student who spends most of her time looking fabulous and killing anyone who gets on her nerves. Director Miguel Marti embraces a surreal, absurd, and blackly humorous style – think Fight Club and the funny parts from American Psycho – as Barbara explains her motivations to the camera, fantasizes about living a Barbie-inspired dream life, and leaves a trail of bodies in her wake.

    Then: Romantic Comedy! Barbara overhears and misunderstands poor, nerdy Tomas talking about his job as a pathologist recruited to help solve the murders, and thinks he’s a serial killer, too. Wacky comedy ensues, like Three’s Company if Suzanne Somers had a hatchet.

    Finally, all of Barbara’s victims come back to life, and Sexykiller turns into a zombie movie.

    Marti is a guy who loves his horror movies. Sexykiller is sprinkled with references to the classics: Scream, Friday the 13th, Silence of the Lambs, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Evil Dead all get at least a passing reference. But Marti never lets the influences overwhelm his film’s identity, or turn it into an extended homage; Quentin Tarantino could learn a thing or two from the man. Instead, Sexykiller is full of fun – bloody, over-the-top, violent fun. It’s perfectly anchored by Gomez, whose unhinged-yet-adorable performance keeps the audience’s sympathies with the brutal killer; after all, most of the people she kills are pretty annoying.

    It’s no surprise that at the Q&A after the film, Marti cited Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson among his favourite horror filmmakers; he’s got the same appreciation for disembowelments and decapitations, and mixes it with a morbid sense of humour. Gomez was also in attendance at the screening, and was entirely delightful – tasked with translating for Marti, who spoke little English, she would occasionally admit she didn’t remember the rest of what he said.

    I don’t know if I can say Sexykiller< /em> was the best movie I saw at the Festival – though it’s certainly a contender – but it’s almost definitely the most fun I had, and one of the best times I’ve ever had in a movie theatre. I’m dreadfully afraid there will be a Hollywood remake, and that it will suck.

  • War Inc.

    I’m quite fond of Grosse Point Blank. I also really love Brazil. I even think Naomi Klein is pretty great. But apparently when you combine these awesome things, you end up with a very confusing mess of a movie. At least, that’s what happened to War Inc., which can’t quite tell what sort of movie it wants to be.

    The obvious influence is Grosse Point Blank, which cast John Cusack as a hitman experience moral doubts about his profession as he attends his high school reunion and romances an old girlfriend. It’s a nice and low-key character-oriented film with a dark sense of humour. But the other influence is Naomi Klein’s writings on the increasing privatization of war, both military and reconstruction. And that part of the film takes the form of gonzo, over-the-top satire. The two elements don’t mix at all well, and mostly end up cancelling each other out.

    Is War Inc. the story of a hitman’s quest for redemption and moral salvation, or is it a satire of the corporatization of war? Those concepts shouldn’t have to be mutually exclusive, and there are a few moments when they work well together. Joan Cusack happily embraces the satirical elements of the movie, and a team of videographers-turned-terrorists make an amusing foil. An “Embedded Journalist Simulator” offers journalists the experience of the warzone without the risk (unless they happen to be epileptic), and the assassin confiding in his OnStar navigatior is a decent running gag.

    But most of the time, it’s just jarring. The story of a man’s wife being murdered and his daughter kidnapped doesn’t really work against a backdrop of tanks with corporate sponsorships and top-secret bunkers in fast food chicken joints. A race through a warzone is less dramatic when we’ve already seen some of those soldiers delivering dry cleaning. And the finale is such a bizarre mixture of drama and absurdity that it elicits neither laughs nor emotion.

    Mixing broad satire and semi-serious character work is a daunting task, but it can be done. Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is the shining example: It’s an absurd dystopian society full of fascist bureaucracy, mad plastic surgeons, and rogue air conditioning repairmen, but it never fully abandons the drama and character that keep the film moving. But Brazil has an internal logic and consistency that War Inc., completely lacks.

    And then there’s the pop star. As a one-note joke, Hilary Duff is entertaining enough as the Middle East’s answer to Britney Spears. She’s inappropriately sexy, she’s marrying a tribal warlord, she has a thing for the appropriately reluctant Cusack. Fine. But as the film progresses, Duff’s role is increased to starring proportions, and neither the character nor the actress is up to the task. As if War Inc. wasn’t confused enough, it’s now also trying to tell the story of an innocent young girl caught up in the pop entertainment machine. There’d be hope for the movie if it abandoned this storyline: It slows things down for most of the movie, then plays a predictably implausible role in the finale.

    For a film that would probably like to think of itself as a smart comedy, War Inc. seems to think its audience is pretty dumb. A slightly amusing sign gets a closeup when it was pretty obvious in the previous long shot. The assassination target speaks, like half the cast, with a vaguely Middle Eastern accent, and is subtitled for some reason – and what’s even worse, there’s a grammatical error in one of them. (And no, it’s not even a funny one.)

    In its possible defence, War Inc. has the feel of a movie that has seen substantial studio interference. Maybe, at some point, it was the clever and balanced satire it so dearly wants to be. But perhaps the studio wanted some more romance and human interest. And then Hilary Duff got interested, but she wanted the part expanded.

    Then again, maybe it’s just not very good because the filmmakers are fairly inexperienced. War Inc. is Mark Leyner’s first screenplay, and director Joshua Seftel’s experience seems to have come in television and documentaries. That’s not exactly the sort of pedigree you want when attempting such a delicate balancing act. The film alternately lacks humour and subtlety, at all the wrong moments.

    It also borrows about 25% too liberally from Grosse Point Blank. While using that film’s concepts and (more or less) characters is all well and good, copying the inevitable “oh my god, he’s a hitman” scene almost verbatim takes things too far.

    War Inc. wants so badly to be clever and funny and cutting edge, but ultimately it’s just a mess. Its tone is wildly inconsistent, characters lurch to and fro in their motivations to serve plot points, and I’m not sure anyone even gave Ben Kingsley a copy of the script. The filmmakers bit off more than they can chew, and while I’m all for ambition, turning War Inc. into the film it wants to be would require a lot more skill. Grosse Point Blank wasn’t a particularly brilliant film, but it was perfectly executed and knew what it wanted to do; War Inc. barely even meets its predecessor’s standards, and its failings are even more obvious thanks to its lofty goals.

  • The New Frontier DVD

    I don’t think I’d be out of line for suggesting that Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier is one of, if not the, greatest superhero story of the last decade.

    Cooke took everything that people love about superheroes – the powers, the bravery, the action, adventure, and soap-opera romance, and big, crazy ideas – unspooled it from DC’s continuity, and mixed in some brilliant art to tell an epic story full of great icons and little heroes. One of the things I love about it is how Cooke mixed in nearly everyone, from the Challengers of the Unknown and Adam Strange to Superman and Wonder Woman, and gave everyone a strong identity and motivation. Hal Jordan’s story may have been more personal, but Cooke also hit all the right notes in making the Big Guns like Superman the icons they deserve to be.

    The news that there was to be an animated, direct-to-DVD adaptation of New Frontier filled me with some trepidation; it’s a big, sprawling story that does some of its best work with the lesser lights of the DCU, and “direct-to-DVD” isn’t exactly a phrase that inspires confidence. But then some of the details started popping up: Bruce Timm was going to be producing it. It attracted some fairly big-name voice talent. And, perhaps most impressively, Darwyn Cooke himself was going to be involved. (He’s listed as a Creative Consultant, fairly prominently in the opening credits)

    So maybe it didn’t have to suck. It might not be great, but getting Cooke’s stamp of approval surely meant some sort of guarantee of quality. And the good news is that no, it definitely doesn’t suck. But it doesn’t exactly inspire, either.

    First, let’s get the obvious out of the way: It’s a 75 minute movie, so there are substantial cuts. The Losers, Suicide Squad, and Challengers of the Unknown are toast, relegated to the corners of group shots. John Henry’s storyline is excised. But you knew that already, unless you live in an even richer fantasy world than me. (and I’m still holding out for Absolute Shade the Changing Man and All-Star Challengers of the Unknown by Cooke and Grant Morrison)

    Other character arcs remain more or less intact: Hal Jordan is probably the closest thing to a main character, and Martian Manhunter’s story is almost verbatim, including tidbits of his friendship with King Faraday. Batman’s role is beefed up a little, joining Superman and Wonder Woman as nominal stars of the film without dominating it. And the basic story remains the same: Something mysterious and sinister is happening, and the superheroes have to put aside their differences to stop it. Aside from the obvious cuts in the name of brevity, New Frontier is still distinctly Cooke’s work.

    But while it has Cooke’s ideas, characters, and stories, it lacks his execution. I’m not entirely sure who this film was made for: It’s been edited down to a family-friendly length, and the plot and cast streamlined. But it’s not particularly family friendly, opening as it does with Doctor Seuss committing suicide and then cutting to Hal Jordan blowing a Korean soldier’s brains out. The film maintains most of the dark elements of the book, but manages to feel more adult and less mature at the same time. It seems to crave an adult sensibility, but doesn’t give the audience a whole lot of credit.

    It doesn’t help that there’s not exactly a lot of subtlety in the script: it seemed important to screenwriter Stan Berkowitz that someone remind the audience that “The Centre” is the mysterious bad thing every five minutes or so. And the length restriction means the plot can’t flow quite as organically as it should – characters show up out of nowhere, do their thing, and wander off abruptly; Aquaman’s appearance in particular seems rather spontaneous.

    It seems as though the producers wanted to go in too many directions: They try to be faithful to Cooke’s story, but can’t quite get past the fact the fact that the original thrived on its depth and breadth – it unfolded slowly as threads were gathered from different stories. Cooke’s New Frontier was about an entire cultural movement, of society changing the way it looked at heroes, and heroes changing the way they acted; it didn’t seem at all out of place that Green Arrow would just show up, or Ray Palmer showed up in the nick of time with his amazing shrinking ray, because Cooke showed that these things were just happening all over the place.

    The film needed to be either a half-hour longer, or the script needed to be restructured in a way that let it develop more organically. I’m sure there’s some sort of marketing formula that dictates the length, but there really shouldn’t be a problem adding another 30 minutes if Pixar can win the Best Animated Feature Oscar – to say nothing of make piles of cash – with a 106-minute film. New Frontier is an ambitious project, and it’s disappointing to see it fall short of its aims due to a (relatively) artificial limitation.

    The big-name voice talent is something of a mixed bag. While most of the actors generally fit well with their characters, one must unfortunately accept that there was a reason why most of these people were available for a direct-to-DVD animated film: They’re not great.

    Don’t get me wrong: I love David Boreanz. Angel? Yes. He’s awesome. But while he can pull off swashbuckling, flirty, and cocky – all important attributes for Hal Jordan – he has the emotional range of a small square of plywood. The same can be said of most of the cast – Lucy Lawless as Wonder Woman and Kyle McLachlan as Superman are entertaining enough when they’re being heroic or advancing the plot, but tend to fall into a confused hole when called upon for inspiration or emotion; Superman’s motivational speech to the gathered heroes is downright painful.

    Neil Patrick Harris turns in a decent Flash, largely because the character doesn’t really call for a lot of range. Jeremy Sisto’s Batman is appropriately gravelly and grim. (Amusingly, Sisto has now played Batman, Jesus, and Caesar. That’s kind of awesome.)

    The animation has its highs and lows. Cooke’s visual style is obvious from the opening credits, and the film captures a lot of the hell yeah! moments Cooke did so well. (Including a surprising reinterpretation of a scene you probably didn’t expect to see.) Everything and everyone certainly looks the way you’d want them to. But the action scenes are kind of hit-and-miss – is it odd that Cooke did a better job showing off the Flash in a series of static images than the film could? The rocket sequence seems poorly constructed, although perhaps they were saving their budget for the climactic battle against hordes of monsters, which works quite well.

    New Frontier certainly isn’t the disaster it could have been, but while it won’t have fans shaking their heads in disappointment, it probably won’t light up too many smiles the way the book did, either. It looks like New Frontier, and acts like New Frontier, but it doesn’t have the same magic. Ultimately, it feels like a very skilled recreation that got all the pieces together in the right places, but didn’t quite understand why the original worked so well. Which is a hell of a step forward for superhero adaptations, but not quite good enough for New Frontier.

  • Top Superheroines of 2007

    The “Best of 2007” lists begin with one that took very little preparation or research. Since I probably owe a chunk of my meagre readership to When Fangirls Attack, I thought I’d start with the Top Five Superheroines of 2007:

    Kathryn Artemis, Black Summer
    All right, so Artemis hasn’t made a whole lot of substantive contributions to the story of Black Summerjust yet. However, she has a few points working in her favour:

    • She looks really cool. I mean, seriously – coolest looking superhero of the past few years.
    • It’s possible she falls towards the “totally batshit insane” spectrum of the Seven Guns. You know, the same end as the guy who ripped the President and all his advisors to shreds.
    • She’s capable of utterly massive carnage, wiping out a fairly large contingent of the US Army on her own.
    • She’s central to one of my favourite covers of the year.

     

    Phoebe, Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse
    Wormwood the corpse may be a clever, crafty, billionaire, but he does tend to get himself into trouble. And when he does, it usually falls to Phoebe to sort it all out, since his other bodyguard, Pendulum, is fairly slow and usually too busy complaining about his lack of genitals.

    So Phoebe gets to shoot demons, rip aliens in half with her magical tattoos, and deadpans and rolls her eyes frequently at her employer’s many quirks and eccentricities.

    Oh, and she gets peed on by leprechauns and doesn’t lose her cool. How classy is that?

    Brenda, Blue Beetle
    All right, technically she’s more of a sidekick-and-potential-love-interest than a superheroine. But still: she’s travelled across the universe in a boom tube, survived an attack by carnivorous ewoks, and helped destroy Devilance’s machinery. She launched a rocket and out-sassed most of the Teen Titans. She’s working on reforming her crimelord aunt. So frankly, I think she’s accomplished a lot. What the hell has Supergirl done lately, other than fly around in a belly shirt?

    Honourable Mention: Blue Beetle’s Mom. You know she’s awesome.

    Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8
    How could we have a list without Buffy? Well, to be honest, I considered it; she was seldom my favourite character. But Willow didn’t get to do much in the Season 8 and Faith’s arc was kind of disappointing. Dawn was pretty cool, though.

    But ultimately, it all comes back to Buffy. Wise-cracking and butt kicking? Check. Running an entire army of slayers? Yep. Putting a book published by someone other than Marvel or DC in the top ten? Right on.

    It’s Buffy, you know?

    Ramona Flowers, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together

    I think you all know that my love for Kim Pine knows no bounds. But Ramona’s just too awesome to ignore. She rollerblades. She gets your packages delivered on time. She has a multi-dimensional purse that stores a wide and useful array of weaponry. She has a dark and mysterious past that includes a sexy phase.

    If she’s good enough for Scott, she’s good enough for me.

  • Things I’ve Learned from Kung Fu Movies: The One Armed Swordsman

    • If you’re going to be a master swordsman, women will only stand in your way, by either a) trying to convince you to give it all up and become a farmer, or b) chopping your arm off.

    • If your arm is chopped off, it’s possible to walk for several miles before you eventually pass out.

    • If your arm is chopped off, it’s relatively easy to become an accomplished swordsman using your other arm and devising an entirely new way of fighting.

    • Handicapped people can make important contributions to society by killing lots of bad guys.

  • And that about wraps it up for this civilization…

    There is no comment I could make that would be clever enough to compensate for this atrocity. It’s all over, folks. Make you peace with your respective creator.

  • A Silver Lining?

    I’m pretty sure that making a film adaptation of Watchmen is a horrible idea in general, and I haven’t seen anything from Zack Snyder that suggests he’s up to a project of that calibre. If Terry Gilliam couldn’t do it, Snyder certainly can’t.

    But John Cusack as Nite Owl? Yeah, that could work.

  • Just Stab Me In the Eye

    So now it looks like Tim Story will direct The Losers film adaptation.

    What a horrible, horrible choice. Way to take a perfect, smart and stylish action movie and turn it into Hollywood pablum. It’s very nice that Story has made some money with the Fantastic Four movies, but that doesn’t mean he should be allowed to direct a film with actual potential.

    You couldn’t get someone from MI-5 like Johnny Campbell or Bharat Nullari? Or someone interesting like Park Chan-Wook? Even Steven Soderbergh – at least he’d have a bit of fun with it.

    Alas. The Losers is one of my favourite comics of recent years, and, at least at this point, it doesn’t look like I’ll even bother with the film. Though perhaps I’ll reconsider once the cast is announced, but I’m desperately fearing Jessica Alba as Aisha.

  • Crossovers and Nerd Puzzles

    So, how ’bout we discuss some comics?

    I like crossovers. I think a lot of people do. It’s cool to see Character X meet Character Y, otherwise unrelated characters meet up in a new environment.

    One of my favourite examples is “Law and Disorder”, an episode from the third season of Homicide: Life on the Street. Detectives Baliss and Pembleton go to the Baltimore train station to pick up a suspect being extradited from New York, and who should be accompanying the suspect but Chris “Detective Logan” Noth, at the time one of the stars of Law and Order. The suspect is handed over, Logan and Pembleton argue over which city is cooler, then Noth wanders off. This all happens in the opening sequence, and is never mentioned again.

    It’s great. There’s no reason why Homicide and Law and Order can’t co-exist. But then they started doing official crossovers between the two shows, and now my Homicide DVD set is missing part 1 of a two-part story. (Mind you, Homicide still has the best parts of the crossover: The character interaction. Bayliss flirts badly with Jill Hennessy, and Jerry Orbach and Richard Belzer find they share a similar love interest. It’s good stuff, plot aside.)

    So I enjoy overlap. And I can even get into legitimate crossovers, as long as they don’t happen too often. I love Superman/Madman Hullabaloo, because it’s just awesome fun. I love Wolverine’s totally gratuitous cameo in X-Force #120. (I’ve got Mike Allred on the brain today. Deal with it.) I love the array of guest stars who showed up for John Constantine’s birthday, and that Lucifer existed on the periphery of Sandman but never made a big deal of it. (The Death cameo was kind of gratuitous, I admit, but it did get me to take notice of the book. And at least Mike Carey balanced it out by writing a fantastic Lucifer-Destiny scene later in the series.) I even enjoyed Guy Gardener’s appearance in the most recent issue of Blue Beetle, and I normally can’t stand Guy.

    But I can’t manage any enthusiasm for the near-constant state of crossover Marvel and DC seem to be producing. Sometimes, I just want to read one or two books without being sucked into yet another universe-defining crossover epic.

    DC seems to have taken this approach to near-fetish levels with their insistence on labelling every single alternate Earth. There’s, like, 52 of them or something. I don’t know what they all are, but dear god, why? Why must everything fit together so precisely? Chris Claremont goes into his “multiverse” stuff now and then, but thankfully almost everyone seems to ignore him. Alternate realities are cool. Anal-retentive cataloguing of alternate realities isn’t. Apparently the Wildstorm books now take place on their own Earth, which is probbly more of a sales tactic than a storytelling strategy; perhaps those books will matter more, now?

    I get the “universe” and “history” appeal of superhero books, and these things can be effective tools when used properly. But everything seems to move from event to event, and everything has to fit precisely. Many of the fans who are left can’t seem to comprehend stories that aren’t part of the tapestry, so you end up with discussions on how much of Animal Man took place in DCU continuity, or whether – god help me – Vertigo’s current crop of creator owned books are on some “Earth” all their own.

    It’s just too much. Sometimes it’s cool to have stories overlap and cross over. But for the most part, it’s most successful when it’s relatively rare, when it’s actually cool or somehow surprising to see Characters A and B team up. Consistency is important, but not more important than things like “telling a good story”, “self sufficiency”, and “organic growth”.

  • Spider-Man 3: Because you need another review, right?

    While Spider-Man 3 is a pefectly entertaining action movie, one shouldn’t make the mistake of confusing it with a great film. Thankfully, director Sam Raimi didn’t.

    The sequel is quite similar to its predecessors, so in all likelihood you already know whether you want to see it or not. (For that matter, you probably have seen it, anyway. Is this the most redundant post I’ve ever written?)

    To get the flaws out of the way: The acting is pretty wooden: Kirsten Dunst’s emotional range doesn’t go much past “happy” and “sad”, and she spends much of the movie set on the latter. Tobey Maguire isn’t a heck of a lot better, but he at least gets to have some more fun in his role, as does Topher Grace’s Eddie Brock/Venom. Thomas Haden Church is good enough, but barely gets a handful of lines in the middle third. James Franco’s Harry is surprisingly effective after looking quite cardboard in the first two films, and Rosemary Harris’ Aunt May seems only to exist in order to monologue things the audience already knows. There’s very little genuine emotion on display here, but that’s not really why you’re watching Spider-Man, is it?

    There’s little question the film is too full, verging on bloated. Three supervillains, two love interests, and an evil costume with accompanying personality changes are crammed into two and a half hours. Characters don’t really develop as much as they reach different stages of development: Peter is happy. Peter lets fame go to his head. Peter is angry. Peter is possessed by alien costume and makes everything worse. Peter realizes what’s going on and presses “reset personality” button. He’s very, very sorry. And so on. The plot suffers similarly, with only subplots tying the film together. While Eddie Brock’s development works quite nicely, the inevitable transformation to arch-nemesis Venom feels rushed. (Perhaps this explains it?)

    There’s enough history to the franchise that this approach can still work if one remembers the character shorthand. Venom hates Spider-Man. Sandman isn’t a bad guy, but is forced into bad circumstances. Harry is kind of crazy. And so on. If you’re a big fan of the trilogy and have read enough of the comics, you’ve got enough information to fill in the blanks.

    On the other hand, the true Spidey fans may take issue with some of Raimi’s liberties. Inserting the Sandman into Spidey’s origin seems like an unnecessary complication, and using Gwen Stacey (a radiant Bryce Dallas Howard) as a jealousy trap for Mary Jane doesn’t quite sit right.

    On the bright side, Sam Raimi doesn’t let all this get him down. He maintains a light touch and brisk pace for most of the film, never forgetting this is still a movie about a guy wearing red and blue spandex and crawling up walls. Unlike many contemporary Marvel comics, Raimi maintains the radical belief that being a superhero should still be pretty darn fun. Even Dark Peter Parker gets to have some fun, showing off the proportional dancing ability of a spider.

    Raimi makes sure the tight plot gets moments to breathe, offering up a totally gratuitous yet nonetheless satisfying Stan Lee cameo, and importing Bruce Campbell to play the most ridiculously false Frenchman since John Cleese. J.K. Simmons comes back to stomp and shout as J. Jonah Jameson, and Grace is entertainingly sleazy.

    The action sequences continue to be flashy and slick, showing off the speedy and acrobatic nature of the protagonist. I am beginning to wonder, however,how many times Raimi can pull off a “Spidey catches a woman falling from a great height” sequence before it gets a little stale. The Sandman effects are surprisingly underwhelming, particularly when he assumes a gigantic form, and are often too reminiscent of Terminator 2.

    Like many Hollywood sequels, Spider-Man 3 suffers excessive one-upmanship: It has to be bigger and bolder, if not better, than its predecessors. It’s not enough just to be big – this movie had to be huge. And it certainly is, though not entirely for the best. Thankfully, Sam Raimi is there to at least filter out some of the production by marketing committee which plagues many franchises. He’s not going to try something truly ambitious like Ang Lee or Bryan Singer (both of whom have their flaws), but neither has he fallen on the studio hackery sword like the Brett Ratners of the world. It’s a fairly bloated film that runs the risk of collapsing under its own weight, but Raimi keeps it moving and injects enough life into it to keep it fun and entertaining.

    Spider-Man 3 might be the beginning of the end, but it’s still got Raimi keeping it alive. And while one could replace Maguire and Dunst easily enough, god help the franchise if Raimi decides it’s time to move on.