Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Tuesday, June 29, 2004 The Pitch: It's like Crow meets Humble Pie! Imagine a linear accelerator that, instead of highly charged particles, hurtles bowling balls down in its length. And instead of other particles, the fast-moving bowling balls collide with a large mountain of shaving cream. I am here to say that none of the enormous resultant holes in the shaving cream would be one-tenth as large as those in the plot of Spider-Man 2.And yet, that didn't stop me one bit from surprisedly enjoying the sequel to the lackluster big-butt summer hit. In every other way, Spider-Man 2 seems such a superior movie to the first, I actually couldn't wait to get online and eat a big piece of crow. It's not that it's perfect, Spider-Man 2. It's just got a lot of things the first movie really seemed to lack: Like an actual performance from Tobey Maguire. In the first movie, Maguire's baffled stoner boy intonations for Peter Parker gave a one-trick centering to the storyline--luckless kid that really can't believe what's happening to him--that got pretty old pretty fast. In the second movie, Raimi and the scriptwriters so exponentially ramp up the amount of shit dumped on Peter Parker that Maguire's stunned expression moves deftly from bemusement to near-tears to stunned muteness at his own miserable life. And it works like a fuckin' charm. Whether it was because they canned his ass at the beginning of the film and he had to work to get the role back, Maguire actually gives an exceptionally good performance in this role. I'd like to say it will make him a star, but since he already is, I guess a better way of putting it will be: you actually will have a fondness for Tobey Maguire now, something I thought i would never say about that creepy cold control freak. Like actual direction by Sam Raimi. This actually is paced a bit more like a Sam Raimi movie than the first Spider-Man movie which I thought was simply a more hipper Spielberg-wannabe movie than an actual Raimi movie. Here, part of what makes Maguire work so well is he's a straight man for a barrage of constant Sad Sack jokes: at the ritzy reception where he's photographer, he always gets to the drinks and hors d'oevures just behind the person who gets the last item on the tray every god-damned time; he knocks on the door of the shared restroom at his apartment and, while he waits for a reply, the landlord steps ahead of him, newspaper in hand, steps into the restroom, and closes the door. Then opens the door, and asks for the back rent. It's like all the funny little bits in Crimewave...except actually funny. And a sequence where an unlucky surgery team try to remove the arms from Doc Ock becomes a brutally fast horror slapstick sequence right out of Evil Dead 2. And Doc Ock himself ends up being reminiscent of Darkman in regards to his origin, his hideout, etc. It's a lot more enjoyable to watch Raimi rip himself off than rip off the first Batman movie, and he seems to know it. Yeah, I just liked this movie. It's not great, the plot holes are obscenely large, the guy playing "Robbie" Robertson was too fat, the fight scenes all start well and all end hokily (Oh god, the subway sequence), Edi thought Dunst was wooden (while I thought she was much better than in the first movie). But if nothing else, Doc Ock has never been one-tenth as interesting a villain in his entire thirty-plus year career in comics (except, finally, for some of the stuff Bendis has done with him) as he is here. Not only does Molina give a quiet performance with scarcely a bit of ham on it, but Ock is a villain who, given genuine movement and not just the 2-D suggestion of it in comics, works. Every time those limbs of his whipped about, people in the audience ducked. Spider-Man 2? It's not gonna change your life or anything, but as a summer movie and as a Spider-Man movie, it works pretty god-damn well. posted by Jeff Lester | 7:53 AM | |
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