Reviews

{{I checked the "SPOILER" box because MAYBE someone who's familiar with the Spider-Man canon MIGHT be able to figure out something from what i say below.}}

Good thing I don't walk out on movies i paid for. {I've walked out on a few someone else paid for...}

If I did, i wouldn't have seen Spider-Man.

The first third or so was so horrifyingly "Look at us! Ain't we ka-YOOT?" that i nearly walked.

And even after they got away from what sounded an awful lot like what thirty-somethings with a bad memory and a tin ear thought was witty high school banter, it was still pretty lead-footed in some ways.

{The whole routine with "Karen" misinterpreting what he wanted got old pretty damned quick.}

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"Karen" is married to "Jarvis", BTW

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Things began to get better with the DC sequence, though.

Couple things I rather liked: I made wrong assumptions about some of the names that sounded like the ones from the equivalent period in the comic, which made a couple things more fun than they might have been.

I liked Gargan's neck tattoo. I liked what one of the other students' name turned out to be. Wow! Does SHE look different than i remembered her.

Happy Hogan is big enough (in more than one way) to admit it when he finally realises he was wrong - and to make it clear to Stark that he was, too.

Peter charging back into the fire - the very definition of a genuine hero.

Unlike the comics Vulture {any of them} Keaton's Adrian Toomes is a class act. It just hit me that he sort of reminded me of Benicio del Torro's Doctor Octopus, and his last line and actions.

{{EDIT: I canNOT believe i said "Benicio del Torres". I obviously meant Henry Fonda ... errr ... Alfred Molina}}

{And in another way, Dr Universe (from the "Spinnerette" webcomic...)}

Action was well-staged.

My reaction to Aunt May: "What the fu...?!?". She should'a married Vinnie when she had the chance.

LOVED some of the music: Da Bruddas from Queens don't get enough respect these days; hearing "Blitzkrieg Bop" where it was was almost as much fun and appropriate as recognising the opening notes of "Bad Moon Risin'" in "American Werewolf in London", all those years ago...

The opening credit theme was a hoot. Pay the man who did that symphonic arrangement whatever he asks. He's worth it.

Loved the tribute to the original animated "Spider-Man" series that ended the crayon-style part of the end credits.

And my ABSOLUTE fave after-credit sting sequence.

"...they let you live to death." The Angels throw you backward in time, which creates energy they live off.

This episode has about the highest behind-the-couch factor of ANY episode of ANY season of Dr Who, all the way back to 1963.

And, just when you think it's safe to come out - they throw those ten seconds of fast shots of Every Flippin' Stone Angel in Cardiff at you.

One of the most wonderful aspects of this episode is the fact that the Doctor and Martha get about five minutes total screen time ... but it is UNDENIABLY a true Dr Who episode.

If you listen carefully to and think about the dialog in the opening episode of Season 7, Part 2 - "The Bell of St John" - you might wonder if perhaps Sally Sparrow might be coming back.

About the second or third-lamest film Walter Hill has made in a career of making lame would-be Profound Existentialist Films. (I can't decide if this one or "The Driver" deserves second place in the lameness competition).

Lamest of all, of course, is "Streets of Fire", which is almost science-fiction but misses. It also happens to be my favourite Hill film, with "The Driver" at second favourite - mostly because they are interesting enough conceptually that even Hill's heavy-handed direction can't eff them up beyond redemption - though it's mainly the chase scenes that redeem "Driver".

I'm sorry - all of that violence, all of that sturm und drang, all of that angst, and for why? Why? "Sometimes I just do things like that." Lame lame lame.

Personally, i don't think anything in this comment is properly a spoiler, but some people get cranky about the most minor things, so don't read the last paragraph of this comment if you're one of them.

I used to have a copy of this on VHS (having taped it off cable in the 70s); unfortunately, a member of my family accidentally taped over it.

I would really like to have another copy.

This is very much in the spirit of the best "sphagetti" Westerns, and, in fact, in my opinion, is worthy to be mentioned in the same context as the greatest Western ever made, Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West".

If you ever manage to get hold of it, be sure to listen very carefully to the last lines of dialog, after the Butch-and-Sundance-get-away-with-it final action.

Literally the other side of "Close Encounters", this film uses many of the same techniques as did that film to work on our emotions and forebodings.

I consider this Spielberg's best genre film since "Jaws", and for much the same reasons -- he delivers the scares and the gotchas with verve and precision.

The plot is a bit slight, but the point of films like this -- and of Wells' original novel -- is more to portray the collapse (or not) of civilisation on a broad canvas; in fact, i believe that there may well be MORE "human-interest" type plot in this film than in the novel.

My biggest gripes are the sorts of gripes i always have with a Spielberg film -- his inability to stand back and let the situation or action carry its own weight, the need to "punch" it up, to play on our emotions, or to force the plot rather than allowing it to develop it naturally.

Thus, in, for instance, "Close Encounters", the REAL reason ROy Neary throws dirt in the window is that Spielberg's plot requires his wife to leave and Spielberg doesn't have the time or patience to come up with a good reason. In "Schindler's List", the little girl in the middle of the B&W cinematography is there to point up the pathos of the whole thing and to twist our emotions a little more.

There are several such moments in this film -- all of which completely defy logic and violate reality in scenes when the director should be trying his hardest to make it look realer than real so that when the stuff that's flatly NOT real turns up, it will SEEM more nearly real because of the surrounding reality.

Also, sadly, there are a couple of scenes where the effects -- mostly "practical" effects rather than special effects like CGI -- fail to stand up to the rest of the film, and one important sequence looked to me like one of the worst-executed "outdoor" soundstage sets in the last twenty years.

And, of course, the film demonstrates Hollywood's complete inability to understand anything remotely technical, in its portrayal of the effects of EMP.

ALl of which said, i didn't feel at all as if i had wasted my $5.50 senior-citizen ticket money.