dir. Sam Raimi 2002
starring Tobey Macguire, Cliff Robertson, Willem Dafoe

A lovely, good-looking and fine-spirited adventure of a boy and his commitments to self, as he passes into adult spider-hood. Spiderman is a modern myth, our hero is the anonymous Perseus, the successful Icarus, masked for humility, or vanity’s sake.

The familial threads are touching, and Cliff Robertson’s ‘Uncle Ben’ might get you welling at the eyes. The story is well-fleshed and animated, and sometimes, too plucky.

Sam Raimi is so versed in light-comic storytelling that he doesn’t miss an opportunity to goose the material good-naturedly. Perhaps a silent moment or two would have added a touch of grandeur.

But he gets so much right, and it’s joyous, and so much fun you forgive it it’s occasional silliness.

Superheroes in ancient and modern myth are often overgrown boys propelled by a loss of family.. they seek their father’s approval and to re-attach with their lost mothers..

Superman, orphaned in space, is nothing without earth, and his adopted earth-mother is Metropolis… Batman was orphaned in Gotham City, the place he returns to enact constant, remorseful vengeance, seeking catharsis for his anger.

And Peter Parker, parentless, but raised by loving relatives, takes flight in the only American city with a downtown long and tall enough to support his peculiar gifts; New York, which he protects, even as it torments him. It supplies both an endless series of potential casualties for him to save and quiet hiding places far above the noise of the world.

Whatever flaws you can find in costuming, line-reading, etc, you’ll be enchanted by the freedom and power of his impossible movement…the inspiring beauty of his muscular near-flight, held aloft on sticky organic threads spewed and strewn among the arches and shoulders of his mothering, antagonistic, tormenting, beloved and inextricable city.

The Matrix

(1999)
dir. The Wachoski Brothers
starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne

Just about perfect, as long as you don’t think too much.

In a world of nuclear ruin, I imagine your average intelligent computer could probably find a better fuel cell than a slightly warm, always hungry, constantly defecating comatose human, for whom they have to invent an elaborate mind warp, so as to, what, keep all their blood-slaves happy?

But Besides That…perfect in all regards.

With technical and martial arts grace, thanks to a long line of predecessors.

See the “Once Upon a Time in China” series (especially the first, with dvd commentary) for a great introduction to wire-fighting.

Next, pick up a concise guide to Hindu philosophy, a compendium of Dark Horse comics, and a pair of anti-gravity boots, and you’ve got it.

And Keanu? I’m tempted to say that making ineffectual look superhuman is the single greatest special effect, but that would undermine the great artistry that is painted all over the digital cells.

In the ‘nuked-world’ scenes, the film looks like it was photographed in an Eastern European sewer system, and the actors let you feel the grit and mold.

A very good action movie, plus a high school treatise on comparative religion….who could ask for more?

directed by Bryan Singer
featuring Hugh Jackman, Brian Cox, Ian McKellen and Alan Cumming
Boston’s Weekly Dig 2003

Professor Xavier’s academy for the genetically gifted becomes the target of government assault under xenophobic militarist William Stryker (John Ashcroft, anyone?), who kidnaps The Professor for cruel purposes. Wolverine, Jean Grey and new recruit Nightcrawler give chase.

Director Bryan Singer moved from strength to strength in X-men1, and it was a lean and mean good time.

In X2, Singer’s given into the devils in marketing and satisfied the comic book devotees more than his own film-making instincts.

There are five writers credited to X2—and it shows.

We’re saddled with a distracting 40-minute second act that follows the X-teens, led by ultra-bland Iceman, into the suburbs for a reunion with his parents. The coming out scene that follows (“Mom, dad, I’m a…mutant”) lacks real comedic or dramatic impact, and weakens the story arc.

The feeling of real-life menace is gone from X2. Wolverine, whose anarchic rage powered the first film, doesn’t spill any blood when he slices and dices. Worse, he spends the movie babysitting the X-kids, and seems to like it.

We don’t get enough of Magneto or Mystique (such breasts!), and new additions Nightcrawler and Lady Deathstrike get short shrift compared to the X-brats.

Poor Cyclops is gone for an hour, and Charles Xavier (master PBS narrator Patrick Stewart), again proves awfully gullible for a mind-reader.

The plot points don’t spring organically from character or action, but are retread, for the sake of fans, from decade-old comics.

Not Star Wars terrible, but not what it could’ve been.