The Grand Marvel Rewatch: Captain America: The First Avenger

Face front, true believers! Welcome to the next astonishing addition to “The Grand Marvel Rewatch,” designed to get us all sufficiently amped up for Captain America: Civil War, which comes out May 6, 2016. Each Wednesday, The Cinema King casts his eye back upon the twelve films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and offers five salient observations about the caliber of the films and the way they might play into Marvel’s latest installment in America’s favorite franchise.

Today’s fantastic feature film takes us to 2011 for Captain America: The First Avenger, for some good old-fashioned Nazi-punching.

1. One small step for a man... There’s a surprising sense of scope in this film that never lets us forget that Steve Rogers is just one man in a much larger war, a much bigger conflict that spans all the way back to Thor (note the shared appearance of Yggdrasil, the World-Tree) and much further forward (see #2). And can we just say – what a man! (No, I’m not referring to his pecs, at least not exclusively.) Chris Evans is spot-on as the old-fashioned Steve Rogers, and I love that the movie never laughs at him for his antiquated notions about the world. Instead, he embodies an ideal of heroism that of which our world and his could frankly do with a little bit more.
2. One giant leap for Marvel-kind. As small as the film’s focus tries to be, it downright explodes the Marvel Universe and perhaps might hold the record for most spin-off material. It introduces Hydra and the Tesseract, who persist in the MCU to this day; it gave us Howard Stark and Peggy Carter, who’ve had their own show; and it brings us full-force into The Avengers. I’m almost prepared to say that Captain America: The First Avenger is the most important film thus far in the MCU, insofar as it’s introduced a lot of important elements that haven’t left the franchise.
3. Raiders of the lost tesseract. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is at its best when it’s mashing up genres with the superhero genre like Guardians as a space opera or Winter Soldier as a 70s conspiracy thriller. But The First Avenger does that twice over: it’s a superhero film, which is also a WW2 film, which is also an elaborate Indiana Jones reference. In fact, it’s somewhere between Raiders of the Lost Ark and director Joe Johnston’s second film, The Rocketeer (which you know I love). High adventure mixed with war exploits, it adds up to popcorn cinema, as in the best it is.
4. Such a waste, such a terrible waste! The First Avenger is really entertaining cinema, but it’s a real shame that it’s a world that we can never really revisit. With Cap (spoilers?) frozen at the film’s end and thawed out in the present day, we’ve pretty much resolved Cap’s arc with Peggy and the Howling Commandoes. While most of the supporting cast has surfaced over on Agent Carter, we’ve gotten a little bit of continuity on the WW2 era of the MCU, but Hayley Atwell is such a marvelous performer (no pun intended) that she deserves more big-screen heroics. Ditto for Stanley Tucci, who’s absolutely perfect as Dr. Erskine, but he’s shuffled off fairly quickly, meaning we don’t get to see more of this great screen presence. And don’t get me started on Tommy Lee Jones, who a) I always forget is in this movie, and b) gets the best line of the film with “I’m not kissing you!”
5. Many happy returns. There’s a beat in Thor where Loki lies about Odin being dead, but The First Avenger amps that up by three when it kickstarts the MCU’s refusal to kill most characters permanently. You have Bucky Barnes, who’ll turn out not to be dead; Arnim Zola, who’ll turn out not to be dead; and of course Captain America, who turns out not to be dead. It’s an old comic book cliché, of course, so might we wonder whether we’ll see the Red Skull at some point in the future? Hugo Weaving is not shy about his reticence to return to the role, but if ever a character could be recast it’s this one. Call it “the War Machine precedent” (in being replaced, would we say Weaving got Terrenced? or Cheadled?). In fact, his apparent demise at the hands of the Tesseract, a known Infinity Stone, makes an Infinity War return all the more plausible.

There’s so much more to be said about Captain America: The First Avenger, so be sure to check out my original review. Join me in the Grand Marvel Rewatch over the coming weeks, and hit the comments to share your thoughts about the MCU. And don’t forget to tune in next Wednesday for the next installment, in which we take a closer look at the big one, 2012’s The Avengers. Excelsior!

Spotlight (2015)

After the credits rolled on Spotlight, I turned to my moviegoing companion and murmured, “That is what I wanted Truth to be.” A few weeks back I took the Cate Blanchett/Robert Redford movie to task for “all the self-congratulation of an Aaron Sorkin screenplay but less of the snappy prose,” and I stand by those words because Spotlight shows us how it’s done, emblematic of everything a journalism film ought to be – taut, gripping, honest, and well-performed.

Spotlight is the horrifyingly true story of a team of Boston Globe reporters (among them Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, and Rachel McAdams) and their editor (Liev Schreiber) who uncover mounting evidence of widespread child abuse in the Catholic Church. I invoke “horror” because of the dispiriting spiral of abuse the team uncovers, learning quickly that the story they’re working on encompasses as many as 87 priests and systemic attempts to cover up the scandal, which only begins to see light when a beleaguered attorney (Stanley Tucci) organizes a class-action suit against the Church.

The very first thing one notes about Spotlight – and indeed my principal motivation for seeing the film – is the impressive ensemble cast who are bound to be competing against each other when the Oscar nominations are announced next month. There’s not a face on the screen who doesn’t already carry a tremendous amount of screen presence from their previous work, and the only unfamiliar face – Brian d’Arcy James – pulls double-time to make up for the fact that he’s not immediately recognizable. The lot of them are doing award-caliber work with characters that are apparently quite close to their real-life counterparts. Keaton and Ruffalo are immensely compelling, particularly when the two butt heads on the story. The screen crackles when Keaton and McAdams go on interviews together, and it is as ever a delight to see Stanley Tucci in another idiosyncratic supporting role as the self-described only Armenian in Boston.

I had a critique formulating at about the midpoint in the film where I felt the characters weren’t clearly delineated enough, that their narrative places could be interchanged without much compromise to the narrative – that, in short, Spotlight was more about the telling of the story than the tellers. Which, to be fair, in a very real sense it is, but it’s also indicative of the slow-burn approach to the characters taken by director Tom McCarthy (he of Station Agent and an acting turn in Good Night and Good Luck, which feels of a piece with Spotlight). Rather than frontload the characterization, we find out more about the reporters’ motivations as the film unfolds. By the end of the film, and I confess this is a clever move, we’re left to reflect on the degree to which what we learn about the reporters influenced the way they pursued the story.

What surprised me about Spotlight was that there really was no “untold story” that the film exposes. It proceeds about how you’d expect – an investigation begins, details are uncovered, the story is published. (There’s one somewhat surprising historical curveball thrown into the mix, one that contextualizes the investigation in a very profound way, one that reminds you just how long ago all this happened.) What is remarkable is just how compelling this manages to be. And I’m returning to the Truth comparison because Spotlight manages its moral outrage without a sense of preachiness and without ever feeling baggy under the weight of its self-righteousness. Instead, its taut simplicity is its greatest strength, and its exemplary filmmaking ought be seen before the screenings fill up with post-Oscar bandwagoners.

Spotlight is rated R for “some language including sexual references.” The film contains in the neighborhood of 10 F-bombs and about twice as many scatological expletives. Though no abuse is ever depicted on screen, we do see survivors speaking frankly about the incidents and the emotional trauma thereafter.

Top 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe Films: #8-6

With Guardians of the Galaxy, the Marvel Cinematic Universe enters the double-digits club.  The job of a Top 10 list in this case is especially difficult because I knew precisely which would be #1 and which would be #10, but the rest I don’t have much complaint about.  The Marvel brand has been very reliable, so assigning ranks becomes a somewhat arbitrary game of quibbling and comparing.  That said, I feel fairly confident in assessing “The Top 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe Films!”

8.  Thor: The Dark World (2013)

“Thor: The Dark World is so full of top performers giving their all ... that it almost doesn’t matter that the story doesn’t break much ground.” 

The difference between Iron Man 2 and this sequel to Thor?  Tonal consistency.  As insubstantial as some critics said Thor: The Dark World was, it never felt like parts were grafted on.  Instead of attempt to pull closer to the larger franchise, this sequel takes the Norse god of thunder in his own thematic direction, closer to the action-comedy genre like Indiana Jones or Pirates of the Caribbean.  Fresh off The Avengers, Tom Hiddleston is still killing it as Loki, and his upgrade from pure villain to compelling antihero with mysterious motives is compelling enough to be its own movie.  It’s a good thing, because the primary antagonist is a little undercooked, and Thor’s own character arc leaves something to be desired.  What the film does have is a smashing score, an abundance of confidence, and a dexterity with fun action sequences that advance the plot without feeling like a narrative pause for a set-piece.

6 (tie).  Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

“I was always a fan of Joe Johnston’s other superhero flick, The Rocketeer, and Johnston channels his WWII nostalgia here, creating a perfectly retro atmosphere without feeling less than modern.” 

I will acknowledge the possibility of rose-tinted glasses in this case; as the quotation above attests, I grew up on The Rocketeer, and the idea of a version of that movie starring Captain America is positively dazzling to the child at heart.   This is such a feel-good movie, though, that it’s hard to imagine filmgoers not feeling those pangs of nostalgia that are so intrinsic to the character.  A man punching Nazis while literally clothed in the American flag will never get old, and Chris Evans shoulders the role of Steve Rogers perfectly, playing his patriotism in earnest.  The film is littered with great supporting players – Stanley Tucci, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell – in very memorable roles, but what keeps this film out of the Top Five is the same complaint I’ve had about a few of the Marvel Cinematic Universe entries:  a lack of a cohesive ending, largely because this film leads directly into The Avengers.

Come back Friday to see what tied for sixth place with Captain America as the controversial countdown continues apace!

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

The kindest thing I can say about Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction is that it reminded me very much of the fireworks show I saw on the Fourth of July this year.  In both cases, I attended out of a mix of curiosity, a mild sense of obligation, and a persistent feeling in the back of my mind that I was going to be disappointed.  And in both cases, I got exactly what I expected.

For that reason, I feel less inclined to berate Transformers: Age of Extinction than my readers might be expecting.  I knew precisely what to expect, and my expectations were pretty low, allowing me to take the fourth Transformers film for what it really is:  the cinematic equivalent of a fireworks show, all bombast and no bravura.  So I won’t even do the usual plot summary, because the plot can be summarized almost exclusively by naming actors and shouting onomatopoeias in all capital letters.

Fortunately, some very talented actors – Mark Wahlberg, Kelsey Grammer, and Stanley Tucci among them – are cashing what ought to have been very easy paychecks, and they’re more than capable of engaging an audience just on ethos alone.  They’re reliable and stable performers, and to be perfectly honest they, together with the budget, are what separate this film from a straight-to-DVD release.  It’s not particularly innovative, remaining in a very real sense indistinguishable from the three films that preceded it.  All one should expect from a Transformers film at this point is a series of very big, very loud, and slightly dumb explosions – which this Transformers delivers, and how.

At two hours and forty-five minutes, however, it’s absurdly long, baggy and bloated.  The words “There are too many robots” should not be an issue with a Transformers film, and yet there are far too many characters who come and go for reasons that can only be described as “plot.”  There are at least five factions of Transformers in the film, most of which are devoid of personality (and the ones with characterizations are viciously broad caricatures, like the samurai Transformer voiced by Ken Watanabe and the gun-toting Transformer voiced by John Goodman).  Only some of them are visually interesting – especially the dinosaur Transformers – but there’s little need for them in a film that very much resembles its main characters – lifeless, bulky, and clunky.

Sidebar:  one of my biggest cinematic pet peeves is when a film doesn’t properly introduce characters, such that I forget or never learn character names.  I think I can name about three Transformers in a cast of dozens.

Characterization aside, Transformers: Age of Extinction is a brutally tone-deaf feature, likely hard of hearing as a result of the amplified volume from the first three films.  The film barely has two settings – loud and very loud – and the pacing is astonishingly uneven while still managing to remain perfectly predictable.  There seem to be two distinct plots going on here – the American government’s pursuit of the Autobots and one corporation’s attempt to make their own Transformers – and either one of them would have made a decent enough film.  But since they’re thrown together into a film that is far more interested in explosions than in ideas, they’re reduced to what Mark Kermode has called “the loudest common denominator.”  Now, I realize that asking for ideas in a Transformers movie is like asking for a soufflé in a McDonalds, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask for the barest pretense of an idea.

What’s more, the film manages to be staggering insensitive, throwing around racial stereotypes to make the cast of Deadwood blush (for example, every Asian character is a master of some form of martial arts).  More patently offensive, Transformers boasts a neverending slew of quintessentially leery camera angles from Bay in which young women in tight/short clothing bend over things in slow-motion while the camera practically salivates over their lithe bodies.  It’s an eyeroll of the highest order to begin with, because Bay seems to be one of the only filmmakers outside of pornography not to realize that it’s the 21^st century and we’re all trying to be a bit more enlightened than that, but what makes it worse is that the film attempts to lecture us about sexualizing young women while doing exactly that.  There’s a loathsome moment where Wahlberg asks his daughter to dress more conservatively, which almost sounds like Bay reprimanding himself, but the camera is actually poised behind actress Nicola Peltz while apparently attempting to film directly up the leg of her shorts.

Aside from the perverse leering, aside from the casual racism, aside from the problems of pacing and length, and aside from the thin characterizations, every once in a while Transformers: Age of Extinction does manage to be a little bit of fun.  There are a few decent eyeball kicks, and Stanley Tucci is a real treat as always (it’s just too bad the film doesn’t actually know what to do with him).  But it is ultimately as mindless and as ephemeral as a fireworks show, but a good deal louder and very nearly unbearably longer.

Transformers: Age of Extinction is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language and brief innuendo.”  There are more robots punching robots and exploding than you could possibly imagine, and the film is replete with sexual objectification of female characters in tight clothing and accompanying light misogyny (“She looks hot”).  There’s one particularly well-timed F-bomb from Tucci and several other profanities of the scatological variety.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014)

It’s the classic story of a dog and his boy traveling through time, and while I haven’t had great things to say about DreamWorks animation in the past, I had more fun than I was expecting with Mr. Peabody & Sherman, a delightful kid’s movie with as much if not more to offer older audience members.

Mr. Peabody (voiced by Ty Burrell), having conquered every field of knowledge known to man, adopts a boy named Sherman (Max Charles) and builds a time machine called the WABAC (way-back) Machine.  Not bad for a talking dog, eh?  Mr. Peabody’s greatest challenge, though, comes when Sherman is bullied at school, and a reconciliatory dinner party with the bully Penny (Ariel Winter) and her parents goes awry.  Mr. Peabody, Sherman, and Penny end up bouncing through time, where/when they meet King Tut, Leonardo da Vinci (Stanley Tucci), and – on the eve of the Trojan War – Agamemnon (Patrick Warburton).

Mr. Peabody & Sherman is roundly the most enjoyable film adapted from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.  It succeeds where its predecessors – Boris and Natasha, Dudley Do-Right, and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle – failed because it attempts to be neither too zany nor too self-aware.  Instead of banking entirely on nostalgia or on excessively cartoonizing reality, Mr. Peabody & Sherman creates its own world with its own rules and briskly justifies its own existence with a series of quick jokes about a genius talking dog.

I’ve seen Mr. Peabody and Sherman referred to as “Dogtor Who,” and it’s an exceptionally apt comparison – one I wish I’d thought of, to be honest.  Like Doctor Who, this film carries an infectious exuberance about the opportunities afforded by time travel, the sense of limitless adventures to be had by slipping through the timestream.  At the heart of it all is a refreshing optimism about humanity, the idea that we could all be a little better if we surrender to the search for knowledge and compassion.  But both Peabody and Who perform that critical function of any work targeted to younger audiences; that is, they both work on multiple levels for varying audiences.  There are jokes in Peabody that the kiddies simply won’t get – the implications of Bill Clinton’s “I’ve done worse” or the potential awkwardness if one accepts Oedipus’s invitation to holiday dinner – and that’s fine.  In fact, it’s great; it ensures the adults will be guffawing just as loudly at the asides as the young’uns at the word “doody.”

I concede that I had my doubts about this film, particularly after hearing that Robert Downey, Jr. wasn’t playing Mr. Peabody.  After all, he’d have been a perfect match for Bill Scott’s pointed delivery on the original series.  But the greatest compliment I can pay Ty Burrell – other than to say that his Phil Dunphy on Modern Family never fails to split my sides – is that I forgot all about RDJ as a Peabody candidate and found Burrell a creditable Peabody.  Burrell manages to weave Peabody’s exceptional intellect with his unique pun-based sense of humor and of course his “deep regard” for his adoptive son Sherman, giving a performance that is both clever and affective.  The rest of the voice cast is strong as well, particularly Stanley Tucci as a put-upon if caricatured da Vinci, but it’s undeniably Burrell’s show.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman could have pandered to an audience of children, but instead the filmmakers have turned in a movie that can be enjoyed by just about anyone.  Mr. Peabody & Sherman is so much more clever than it could have been, and as a result I found myself having a fantastic time in the theater – which in the end is all I ever ask from a film.  No need to go back in time to un-see this one; if I could, I’d see it all over again.  Until then, I’ll tide myself over with the original clips on YouTube.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman is rated PG “for some mild action and brief rude humor.”  This movie is soundly appropriate for children who can handle a bit of light swordfighting, standard chase sequences, and the occasional flatulence humor.  Oh, and one scene of biting.

Monday at the Movies - February 4, 2013

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  I have quite a few reviews backed up in the queue, but I wanted to bump up a few more recent releases in the interest of topicality and relevance.  Also because I’m dying to talk about these two.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2 (2013) – After a mostly successful first half, the conclusion to this animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s iconic “last” Batman story is effective, engaging, and highly entertaining.  Though the decision to break the film into two parts seems motivated only by sales and creates an odd break where you have to change discs midstream, the filmmakers have taken advantage of this extended format and given us full versions of the two major confrontations that conclude the book:  Batman’s last match with The Joker, and his face-off with Superman.  My thoughts about the voice cast remain unchanged:  as Batman, Weller is solid (but no Conroy), and Ariel Winter is a good choice for the spunky Carrie Kelley.  The two new cast members, though, are even better; Michael Emerson is a genuinely disturbing Joker whose affection for the Dark Knight never wavers from how creepy it’s meant to be, while Mark Valley’s Superman is the perfect aging Boy Scout, unwitting lapdog for “The Man.”  The word I can use to best describe this film is “unflinching” because it more than earns its PG-13 rating; consistent with Miller’s gritty original, Part 2 is relentlessly violent, especially when depicting Joker’s last murderous rampage.  It’s an accurate treatment of the source material, but the senseless violence may turn off some viewers; I suspect, though, that’s the point, since it helps us understand the difficult decision Batman has to make when he tells Joker, “No more.”  While I’d like to see other superheroes get this kind of treatment, Part 2 confirms that the DC’s animated studio knows what it’s doing.

The Hunger Games (2012) – First of all, thank heavens for Suzanne Collins for giving us a sophisticated and emotionally compelling franchise to dethrone Twilight.  And thank heavens for Gary Ross, too, whose adaptation of The Hunger Games is smart and surprisingly artistic without compromising what works about the book – namely, the survivalist bent of the story and its biting political satire.  Jennifer Lawrence is the epitome of “rising star” as Katniss Everdeen, who’s thrust into a televised death match meant to supply a repressed populace with bread and circuses from the Capitol of dystopic Panem.  The decision to eliminate the book’s first-person narration is a wise one, cinematically speaking, but as a result the film may come off as a little flat and emotionless for those who haven’t read the book (or maybe it doesn’t?).  Wisely, though, the film expands beyond Katniss’s singular perspective, allowing us to see more clearly the state of life in the Capitol:  decadence a la Lady Gaga (including Stanley Tucci as the Capitol’s delightfully flamboyant version of Larry King), political maneuvering orchestrated by Donald Sutherland’s restrained but smarmy President Snow, and an infectious performative posturing that begins to corrupt our protagonists (which should pay off in sequels, if I’m remembering the books correctly).  Ross brings an artistic touch to the film, which indulges the sentimentality of one contestant’s death in a haunting POV shot, while prizing orchestral score over chaotic battle sounds to emphasize the dehumanization of the Games.  It’s a shame that he’s not returning for the sequels, but a fantastic cast (let’s not forget Woody Harrelson as the begrudging inebriated mentor Haymitch) led by Lawrence at the top of her game suggest that the odds are ever in this franchise's favor – at least, more so than Twilight.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” Don’t forget that the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month is coming up on Thursday (hint, hint), and after that we’ll see you here next week!

Tuesday at the Movies - July 10, 2012

A day late but not a dollar short (since we’re still free of charge), welcome to Week Twenty-Five of “Monday at the Movies,” in which I pregame for The Amazing Spider-Man with Emma Stone and the latter two Sam Raimi Spider-Man films.  (I reviewed Spider-Man [2002] back in May 2008.)

Easy A (2010) – There are some movie stars who can carry a film solely on charisma.  Perhaps the newest face in this crowd (which includes such personalities as Denzel Washington, Judi Dench, and Samuel L. Jackson) is Emma Stone who, while making her big debut in Superbad, garnered international attention for Easy A, a take-off on Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter in which Olive Penderghast (Stone) becomes the talk of her high school after a rumor about her romantic escapades takes on a life of its own.  I’m a sucker for literary updates (most of the time, at least, but I make no apologies for digging Twelfth Night by way of She’s the Man), and here the story works because it doesn’t use Hawthorne as a crutch but rather winks at the relationship and self- references itself in a clever way; a similar relationship with the John Hughes canon is fostered, as well, and the comparison is a successful one.  But as for charisma, Stone is insanely charming, extraordinarily gorgeous, and unceasingly hilarious as Olive; if the script is campy, it’s on her shoulders that the film succeeds.  Credit, too, should go to the supporting cast, which includes Stanley Tucci as Olive’s scene-stealing father, Thomas Haden Church as her favorite and most sympathetic teacher, and Amanda Bynes as the school’s antagonistic “Jesus freak,” an inverse Penny Pingleton.  Though the film relies on Olive’s webcam as a narrative guide, it’s a bad gimmick that works because of Stone’s aforementioned charm.  While Easy A may not yet be a classic like 10 Things I Hate About You, it deserves to stand in those ranks.

Spider-Man 2 (2004) – Under the capable direction of Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire’s second outing as Peter Parker stood for a long time as arguably the best comic book film (up until, y’know, The Dark Knight), and it’s still exceptionally strong almost a decade later.  Here we see the classic “second film” plotline of the hero questioning his place in society, finding trouble navigating the disjunct between secret identity and public persona, even – channeling the famous comic plotline – quitting the hero game for a time.  This thread is especially strong, ably guided by a strong screenplay which makes the webslinger’s struggle seem plausible but never forced.  Alfred Molina’s role as Doctor Octopus in particular contributes to the film’s success, layering the villain with a complicated mixture of pathos and psychosis.  Spider-Man 2 makes the smartest choice of all, which is to play itself almost completely straight, save for J.K. Simmons’s spot-on performance as J. Jonah Jameson (note to the rebooters – bring him back at all costs).  And if Spider-Man 2 is indeed a perfect superhero film, it’s because it avoids the temptation of the sequel to replicate and overfill, instead moving the series in a new direction and allowing its plotlines to breathe.  Reflecting on this film makes me think about the very nature of good reviews; it’s difficult to reach my standard 250 words because the film is exceptional.  In the words of Stan Lee, ’nuff said?

Spider-Man 3 (2007) – Take a breather.  Spider-Man 3 is not as bad as we remember.  The film is flawed, to be sure, but it’s not irredeemable; had it not been preceded by Spider-Man 2, things may have seemed different, but the film certainly suffers by comparison to its antecedent.  For the first hour, the film is strong, among the best of Raimi’s trilogy; consumed by revenge, Spider-Man hunts The Sandman while under the influence of a malicious alien symbiote which feeds on his vengeance and budding narcissism.  But the film escapes Raimi’s control near the beginning of the second act; the film is overfull, with Bryce Dallas Howard miscast as Gwen Stacy, who literally has nothing to do in this movie and whose absence would have no effect on the finished product.  What’s more, we have three villains (Sandman, Venom and New Goblin) who never get fully developed beyond shallow and poorly scripted motivations.  Worse, the film badly fumbles the symbiote plotline, opting for slapstick and easy laughs instead of focusing on the internal perversion and darkening of Spider-Man.  How much better might the film have been if we got a truly frightening Symbiote Spider-Man rather than the Emo Peter Parker we found tousling his hair and thrusting his pelvis?  What’s good about the previous films still holds – J.K. Simmons still aces his part, Thomas Haden Church as Sandman is another great villain – but Spider-Man 3 has a strong first act but spirals out of control like the Goblin’s glider.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Big Night (1996)

There's something about Italian accents, I think, especially when they're mingled with shoutings about food and good-spirited feuding. From The Godfather to Goodfellas, from The Sopranos to Cake Boss (an exciting and hysterical reality show about cakemakers in Jersey), I've never been able to resist the dulcet tones of the Italian culture.

There's no Mafia in Big Night, but we do have Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub as brothers Secondo and Primo, who own and run the Paradise restaurant in 1950s New Jersey. They aren't doing great business and find themselves in some financial trouble, thanks in part to the uninspired yet heavily commercialized competition across the street. Their competitor Pascal (Ian Holm) is waiting out their business in the hopes that Primo and Secondo will eventually come work for him, but Pascal tosses the brothers a bone when he says that - as a personal favor - he's invited musical bigshot Louis Prima to dine at their restaurant tomorrow night. With one day to prepare for the big night, tensions flare as high as the flames in the kitchen.

I've said it once, and I'll say it again. Why isn't Stanley Tucci an A-lister? Between this, The Devil Wears Prada, and the trailer for Julie & Julia, it's high time that Mr. Tucci starts getting some of the respect that he deserves. Though he looks a lot like Andy Garcia in this one (perhaps they and Mark Strong should get together and play a trio of brothers), Tucci is in good form, emotionally gripping in one breath and comedically gifted in the next. Plus, Tucci co-wrote and co-directed Big Night. Can we please get this guy the recognition he deserves? (At least he's hitched his wagon to the Meryl Streep star, so at least more people will be seeing his films.) Shalhoub (TV's Monk) has the stronger temper and thus more of the comic opportunity, but he's got a real chemistry with Tucci, and it's not hard to believe the two are brothers.

But the scene stealer in the movie is neither Minnie Driver nor Isabella Rosselini nor even Allison Janney as love interests; for big stars, none of these three ladies (who have proven themselves elsewhere to be fairly gifted, professionally speaking) are given much to do, though Rosselini tries the best of the three. No, the real "best supporting actor" as it were is Ian Holm as Pascal. Though he's not terribly convincing as an Italian (his accent isn't as impeccable as Tucci & Shalhoub's), his turn as a top restaurateur and expert salesman (particularly of himself and his grandiose personality) is superb. If you ever wondered how Pixar & Co. chose Holm for the villainous Skinner in Ratatouille, look no further than his entertaining used car salesman of a cuisine king.

I came into this expecting a laugh-out-loud comedy, which the film delivers though only sporadically in top-notch moments (see: preceding paragraph) and not in a consistent cheek-wounding capacity like The Hangover did. It's more appropriately a drama film with a comedic streak. As a result, there was a bit in this film that felt unnecessary; a subplot involving infidelty felt like fat that needed to be trimmed from this steak of a film, making its characters too fallible and unnecessarily complex. Furthermore, there's a predictable ending, accompanied with a familiar message about how all we really have is each other (a theme I prefer delivered in the "Family first" capacity of Arrested Development). But the film scores points on execution here, because the film's final scene is a deaf play between Primo, Secondo, and Cristiano (a young Marc Anthony) - all done in one long take. Of course, I just melt like garlic in a frying pan when I see a well-done long take.

For a few well-done moments, well-timed dialogue, and a top performance from Ian Holm, Big Night is hot. The film, though, tends more to simmer than sizzle and so is best appreciated like a fine wine and not a quick shot of what-have-you.

Big Night is rated "R for language," most of which comes from moderate use of the F-word, primarily from Pascal. But that's part of what makes him so endearing, to me!