The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

Everything wrong that Sony is doing with Spider-Man screams loud in the end credits of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” with the now-standard stinger tease all of us have become accustomed to in superhero flicks. This is different. We get not a peek at a new or undead villain, but (sigh) a long, random, unexplained “X-Men: Days of Future Past” clip. 

The scene hits the viewer, hit this viewer, like an error by the projectionist. A blip from the movie playing down the hall. 

There’s no connection to Spider-Man. It’s an ad. Chicken feed to answer a studio contract. A disconnected film. Money.

And, that, folks is what this whole sequel smells of, contract obligations and a studio desperate to launch sequels, spin-offs, toys, and soda pop tie-ins at Subway. 

This fast-tracked sequel to an unneeded 2012 remake of the 2002 “origin” film shows not story-telling prowess or a love of the Marvel comics stories that thrilled my childhood, but movies as sausage. Ground, not links.

Director Mark Webb and his writers give us the great Paul Giamatti as a rampaging psycho thief during an opening truck/car chase through Manhattan then drops the actor until a third-wheel finale with a tacky CGI head of the man in a robotic version of the well-known comic book character Rhino, one that oddly hints of a lost Transformer. 

What studio makes those films? Why the Rhino here and now? Action figures at Target? 

In between it all, Giamatti’s two scenes, we do get Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man, battling both Electro (Jamie Foxx, doing a loser nerd bit until he goes all angry nerd as a guy with electric-controlling powers) and a new Green Goblin in the form of Peter Parker childhood pal Harry Osbourne (Dane DeHaan, stealing the film with intensity that unsettles). Don’t forget hints of other comic book staples Black Cat, Doctor Octopus, and the Vulture. Oh, Venom, too, I think. Blink, miss, you get the idea. Keep a chart.

Even for a comic book geek and likely target of all this name dropping and play, the film lurches and crawls, stuffed with excess, and I have not even yet mentioned all the back story hoopla of Peter’s sad dead parents … which, in the sloppy end, does not mean much. 

(If you're not a comic book geek and lost in this review, sorry, I can't explain a Green Goblin to the unknown.)

I deeply enjoy the main cast here –- Garfield is fantastic, and Emma Stone as girlfriend Gwen Stacy plays smart before sexy –- far better than the first trilogy of Spider-Man films, but Giamatti is sadly wasted. Foxx works hard to make a character bite that has no teeth, or form. Chris Cooper has two scenes as Norman Osbourne –- father of Harry, and a Green Goblin in the books -– but they also smack of a wasted talent, a headline-grabbing name grabbed and tossed in. Why him in that part? 

Plot? Peter has graduated high school and over a long summer finds himself mixed up again in Oscorp, the evil corporation that figured in film one, and once employed his dead father. He’s also fumbling at a relationship with Stacy, whose cop pop previously made Peter (as Spider-Man) promise to keep away from, before succumbing to fatal injuries. Pete cannot keep that promise, though. He loves Gwen too much, and she him. 

Comic book fans know what happens as closely as Christians know how it turned out for Jesus. But when the moment comes, it’s a mixture of awe –- that’s happening in a big summer film, gutsy –- and exhaustion as we have seen two super villains crash in, and there’s that third and fourth and who knows else coming down. Mourn? Sorry. No time.

I will give Webb and company credit for the changes they made to Electro: The comic book outfit of the yellow face mask would never work on screen. So, they retooled the character from scratch. Nice move. Even if Electro is one of the shrug characters in the books. Where art thou, Kraven? OK, thank the gods they did not actually toss in Kraven. 

Less can be more, films can breathe. This “Spider-Man” ends gasping for air, and with a headache. Is it the disaster of “Spider-Man 3” (2007)? No. But only by a web’s width. 

Garfield is by far miles better than Toby Maguire, who hit a weepy whiny ditch and never got his ass out. He deserves a better movie to play in. I hope he gets it, soon. C+

Django Unchained (2012)

In his near-three-hour blaxploitation spaghetti western homage/ripoff “Django Unchained,” Quentin Tarantino serves up a blood-soaked raw piece of pulp fiction that makes “Inglorious Basterds” and its Nazi history redux seem Disney fluffy. He tackles slavery in the 1850s America and shows it in all its vile, morally offensive code, and does not blink -– a black man is ripped apart by dogs as whites standby cackling, and the “N” word is used as verb, noun, adjective, and an exclamation. I winched, blanched, and shut my eyes at the violence, and the images of African-Americans forced into chains and depraved medieval torture equipment. 

Vulgar and soul-killer upsetting? Yes. On purpose. How can it not be, how can any examination -- even fictional and heightened -- of slavery not make anyone with half a soul cringe, and look away in horror. Shame. But, hell, I say “Gone with the Wind” is far more offensive to the core because it shows slave-ripe America as some kind of utopian Candy Land. It was all good. The South was happy. I hate that film. Tarantino must as well. He fires on all cylinders, his anger at America’s past strong. Conservatives hate this film because it dares show America -– of 150 years ago -- as a moral cesspool no better than Nazi Germany. Leftists such as Spike Lee hate it because they didn't think of this film, cathartic in twisted ways, first. Thank God for Abraham Lincoln, and go see “Lincoln.” These films would make a wild double bill. 

Speaking of Candy Land, Candieland is the name of a Mississippi plantation run by a ruthless land owner (Leonadro DiCaprio) where Django –- a freed slave turned bounty hunter played by Jamie Foxx -– and his killer mentor (Christoph Waltz) seek to free the former’s wife. That’s the gist and final hour of this epic that is bloody brilliant in a dozen ways, a long overdue F.U. to Southern Whites, and their modern GOP apologists who use patriotism as a weapon of hate. 

There’s so much more to the plot, but I would exhaust myself spilling every detail. Cinema master that he is, Tarantino cannot justify the 2 hour 45 minutes running time. He takes a dig at the pre-KKK as the idiot cowards they were and are, but the scene is overlong and kills an otherwise tense encounter between the racists and our heroes. More scenes throughout play overlong or repeat themselves over and over again.

Further, his main characters are not strong enough, nor his plot strands or dialogue. No one here reaches the deep well of Waltz’s Nazi in “Basterds,” or Samuel L. Jackson’s hit man in “Pulp Fiction.” Except for Django’s rebirth as a killer throwing hate and bullets back in the faces of his oppressors, no one else moves an inch forward or backward. We get two over-the-top bloody shoot-outs in the same room split apart by a half-hour in which Tarantino drags his ass around as a slave trader with an Australian accent worse than I could ever mimic. 

In “Basterds,” Tarantino staged a key scene around a dinner and ratcheted the tension so tight, just as my heart was about to explode, his mayhem onscreen exploded. Here, during the big dinner scene, the air lets out, the talk drags on for 20 minutes, then the carnage hits. Then more talk. Then more carnage. Then more talk. Tarantino seems to have written a screenplay in which no idea was bad, and he could not depart with a page. 

So many grand ideas go unrealized. For the first time, I second-guessed Tarantino’s leadership as the Cinema God. See: DiCaprio’s sick twist prince -– and by gosh, he is damn good as a hothead-maniac -– runs a slave gladiator camp. He enjoys watching men of color kill each other in forced do-or-die sport, and his character demands a certain … repayment. Yes, he dies. But that death is cheap, quick, and with no deep wit.

But the real disappointment for me is Kerry Washington as the wife of Django. Great actress. Wonderful. But she is given nothing to do but react -- scream, run, serve, faint, and stand still when a gun is at her head -– after a lengthy buildup that promises a bad ass woman of fire. I wanted to her bash in skulls with the wine picture she is forced to carry, scream and tear apart people. Tarantino bares her body and scars, but not her inner-raging soul, and damn hardy, I know Broomhilda (her name) has one. I hardly believed this character came from the same mind that wrote “Jackie Brown” and “Basterds.” Or the “Kill Bill” series. Tarantino loves women in the best way.

I’m being far too negative. This is not a bad movie. It screams genius, daring, red-faced anger for great lengths. The acting is aces all around (Foxx is deadly cool, and Waltz is clearly relishing every line and twist of his beard), and Samuel L. Jackson re-creates the entire character of the “house slave” as a villain named Stephen. He’s no -– get that name, step n’ fetch it character -– but the true brute force behind Candie’s world. Watch him stand tall at the end.

Tarantino spends so much time making homage to spaghetti-western troupes and bringing in cameos (Johan Hill, Bruce Dern), I wished he focused more on Jackson’s traitor of all traitors, a bent-back man who is a far better power player and con man than Waltz’s bounty hunter. I would have watched another our of Jackson and Foxx going at each other. And sat in fear and awe. Nonetheless, this is near-unshakable film, and Tarantino knows it. Genius? Classic? Must own? No to all three. But unshakable, for sure.

After taking on fantasy Jewish revenge on Hitler, and now putting an African-American in a saddle with guns blasting racist Southerners, one has to wonder where QT will go next: A grindhouse take on Jesus? Or back to gangster-types? Tarantino still remains the most-surprising American filmmaker of our time. Whatever he does next, I’ll be there, eyes wide open. B