Saturday, July 7, 2012

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN




Comic book superhero

PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS
Andrew Garfield: high school student Peter Parker
Martin Sheen: Peter’s Uncle Ben
Sally Field: Peter’s Aunt May
Emma Stone: 17-year-old Gwen
Rhys Ifans: research scientist Dr. Curt Connors
Denis Leary: Gwen’s father NYPD Captain Stacy

REVIEW
Amazing? Not to anyone who has ever seen or read anything about this comic book character. He does just what you expect from a superhero including flying around amidst tall buildings and saving people in distress. There’s nothing amazing about that so the title is a bit of an exaggeration. But that’s Hollywood for you.

Unless you’ve seen some of the marketing publicity it will come to you as a surprise that the film is about the creation of Spider-Man and the first hour is devoted to just that. Only then do things pick up with the result that the movie that is far too long at almost two and half hours. The trouble is, there is hardly anything original in the storyline after the prologue and as a consequence it is so déjà vu.

CLASSIFICATION
for sequences of action and violence.

FOR NITPICKERS ONLY
The police dispatcher requests that the officer respond to a 10-30 then goes on to give a description of the suspect. A 10-30 police code is for an emergency at the station. The correct code in this instance should have been 10-27 for a suspicious person or vehicle.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED




Romantic comedy

PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS
Aubrey Plaza: Darius Britt, intern at a Seattle magazine
Jake Johnson: Jeff Schwensen, one of the magazine's writers
Mary Lynn Rajskub: Jeff’s boss Bridget
Karan Soni: Amau, another intern
Mark Duplass: grocery store clerk Kenneth Calloway
Jenica Bergere: Liz, one of Jeff’s old flames

REVIEW
Although it’s not going to win any awards, this whimsical tale about people connecting with others (or reconnecting) is a pleasant enough outing. Promoted as a romantic comedy the humour is of the chuckles variety rather than all-out laughter. In fact pretty much everything is low key including the budget.

CLASSIFICATION
for language including some sexual references. That classification is way out of line: this is a PG-13 movie nothing more.

FOR NITPICKERS ONLY
While sitting in front of the fire, Darius has a sweater around her shoulders. From the front it’s on both shoulders but viewed from the right hand side it is only on her left shoulder.