Updates!

Since last we spoke, I've seen a number of films that have been all over the map. Let me just give you some capsule reviews to serve as catch-up.

First, on our way out West for vacation (dry heat is hot, yes, but it's not 90% humidity like it is at home!), I watched Florence Foster Jenkins and was surprised by how charming I found it to be. It could have been a simple one-trick pony - after all, the basic plotline is rich woman loves music, wants to sing, is just awful, but those around her shield her from this knowledge.

As Florence, Meryl Streep is wonderful. Her performance is not an over-the-top caricature, which would have been easy to do. Instead, Streep pulls in and lets us see this ageing socialite as a real person with real concerns. Jenkins' singing may have been treated as a joke, but her much-younger husband (played by Hugh Grant with rare restraint) has deep affection for her that transcends money (although they have an "arrangement," the need for which is described in heartbreaking detail) and her pianist (Big Bang Theory's Simon Helberg) comes to value the underlying warmth that emanates from this woman. While not a movie for the ages, it's a solid film and one with a simple underpinning of compassion and heart - you could do far worse.

Case in point - Spider-Man: Homecoming. I've had trouble putting my finger on it, but this movie left me just unsatisfied. It's far from bad, Tom Holland is solid, and there are some nice twists and turns in here (especially regarding Peter Parker's schoolmates), yet it never quite added up to WOW! for me. Yeah, yeah - Tony Stark. Yeah, yeah - a non-cadaverous Aunt May. Yeah, yeah - Michael Keaton as a much more interesting birdman than I thought he was in that other movie. It just never was quite enough for me. Still - I prefer Holland to Andrew Garfield's turn as the Web-Slinger. (Then again, after his turn in Hacksaw Ridge, all is forgiven, Andy!) I say it's a rental, but others may well disagree, and that's okay.

Then - zoinks! as Shaggy might say. FryDaddy and I had a rare opportunity to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid shown outside on a clear Utah night as part of the Sundance Institute's summer programming series. Think picnic on the grounds and you're there. I'd never seen Butch on the big screen and I was entranced enough to ignore my (very) cold feet. Butch is just a fantastic film and the obvious chemistry between Paul Newman and Robert Redford is glorious to watch. Also, we both won small prizes for our knowledge of Butch trivia, and yay! for prizes. Seriously, scout around your own area - outside summer movies are quite a thing and they are worth seeking out!

Last one - on the flight home, I finally watched Arrival, which turns out to be one of the most thought-provoking science fiction films I've seen in the last few years. How do we manage first contact with an alien species when neither side knows the language of the other? There's some GREAT stuff in here about the tricks and traps that are built into language and the high degree of skill required to truly understand a language, as opposed to just understanding the surface of it, like "milk," "ball," or "war." It's a film that isn't afraid to take its time to build, which I loved. Others may find it too slow, but I say that if you like your science fiction to make you think, Arrival is for you.

Then, just yesterday, I saw War for the Planet of the Apes, which seems to close the gap between the new movies (which began with Rise in 2011 and continued with Dawn in 2014) and the original franchise. I think there could be one more film to actually close that gap and shift the audience's sympathies back to the humans from the apes, but it ends at a darned good place. Woody Harrelson has been watching Apocalypse Now and would someone just please give Andy Serkis all the awards right now? Again, thought-provoking science fiction and it plugs a major hole in the storyline - namely, why can't the humans in the 1968 version speak? Yes, the effects are incredible, but without Serkis to sell it - I just don't think it would matter.

Whew! That's enough! Several movies are still to be released this summer that I'm VERY excited about - check back to see if Valerian by the eccentric genius Luc Besson is worth your popcorn money and, on another front, let's see about Dunkirk!

Spider-Meh

As is true of all art - both high and popular (a distinction I loathe, by the way), people are going to have different opinions and I'm not interested in proving to anyone that I'm "right" or that someone else is "wrong" about this movie. But I didn't like Amazing Spider-Man 2 and I needed some time to really figure out why. What made Amazing 2 so bad for me - and make no mistake, I think this movie is bad - is that the writers and director (Marc Webb, who helmed the first movie in the reboot) could never decide in what direction that wanted to travel - is it a broad, really "comicy" comic-book movie? Is it a tender exploration of love and commitment? Is it some sort of industrial spy thriller? - so it wound up not going anywhere and taking two-plus hours to not do so.

In fact, there are several scenes that come soclose to working - and I can't say more for fear of spoiling, although why you'd pay $10 or so to go see this is beyond me - that it's depressing when the scenes lurch into completely unworkable territory and then linger like the last party guest who can't take a hint even though you're running the dishwasher. There are plot holes that are just unforgivable and they're made worse by the fact that a line - a single line of dialogue could've explained them. (Example - if Harry was sent to boarding school at age 11 with no mention made of keeping up with Peter, they sure are bestest friends. And if they did keep up, why is it Harry doesn't know anything about Gwen?) Also, there's just some sloppy storytelling - Peter hangs out at that cemetery long enough for the leaves on the trees to go through all four New York seasons, yet the newscaster tells us only five months have passed. And that's nothing compared to how, by the end of the movie, Oscorp - a publicly-traded (there's a mention or two of concerns about how the stock price will be affected), multi-billion dollar enterprise is being run by someone who is clearly clinically insane, yet no one seems to mind.

My other main objection to Amazing has to do with apologists. Look, I'm a big believer that a good movie is a good movie. Period. Full stop. It's not a genre thing, although those categories are useful shorthand, but a good Western/scifi/romance/thriller/whatever needs to be a good movie first and foremost. Maybe the film has an added burden of working within the restrictions of that chosen genre (a musical needs songs, you know), but at its heart the question is always - is this a good movie? For my money - and going to the movies these days is a financial commitment - both Captain America movies are solid movies. Not solid "superhero movies," mind you; solid movies that work within their genre, but also work outside of it. On the other hand, Amazing winds up being the sort of film that even has fans of the superhero genre scratching their heads a little and then saying things like, "Well, it's a comic movie, so they're going for that sort of feel and you have to understand that." Fine by me, but then go for it. Shove your chips into the middle of the table and really go all in. Webb didn't and the movie suffers as a result.

I could go on, but really - there's no point. I like Spidey. I like the cheesy animated series of my childhood and I think one of the most gut-wrenching tributes to the horrors of 9/11 is contained in J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr.'s Amazing Spider-Man #36. "Frost," the story told more recently in Amazing 700.1, is a thoughtful piece of storytelling. And some neat things are happening in the Ultimate universe with Miles Morales wearing the suit.

Go read any of those. Skip this.