“The Big Sick” is directed by Michael Showalter and stars Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley, Central Intelligence), Zoe Kazan (What If, Ruby Sparks), Holly Hunter (The Incredibles, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice), and Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond, Ice Age) in a movie which is marketed stating that it’s based on “an awkward true story.” This movie, starring Kumail Nanjiani, as actually about Kumail himself, and this is actually based on the relationship between Kumail and the movie’s love interest, Emily, whose relationship has some blunders having to do with their cultural differences.
Going into this film, I didn’t really know what to think, I believe I do remember seeing ads for this film on TV, and I like Kumail Nanjiani. I’m also a huge fan of Ray Romano, even though in my book he hasn’t really done much of anything worth remembering in recent years. And if you know me well enough in real life, I’m not the type of person who flocks to the theater for rom-coms, although I did see something special in this movie considering it’s based on a true story involving one of the movie’s stars, producers, and writers, not to mention it has excellent scores given by Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb users, Metacritic, etc.
Usually when I talk about characters in a movie, the traditional thing I do is find an image of them related to the movie they’re in. For Kumail Nanjiani’s character, you may notice I’m doing something a little different. Why? Well, as I mentioned earlier, Kumail is playing himself in this movie. In other movies, this would usually be a complaint from some people, like how Melissa McCarthy, Ed Helms, or Adam Sandler might play the same character from movie to movie in some way, shape, or form. Although here, since it’s based on a true story involving an actor playing a past version of himself, this should be the one of the easiest acting gigs in the entire universe. So how does Nanjiani do? He does quite well, I didn’t like him as a character at first, but watching him in this movie, it felt nice seeing him grow as a person. His character was a shining star through this movie, and at times I felt his pain. There’s also one action that happens just about a quarter of the way through the movie as the main plot is developing that took this movie from being good to great.
While we’re on the topic of actors playing themselves, we can’t say the same for the actress playing Emily in this film, however this is Emily in real life. In the movie, she’s played by Zoe Kazan, although I couldn’t find a picture of her in this movie where she’s alone, so this is what you’re gonna have to settle for. Anyways, Emily in this film had some of the funniest lines, I thought she was a truly compelling character, and I thought she brought a lot to the table, although when I say that, consider how she’s a main character in this movie.
As much as this is ultimately Kumail Nanjiani’s movie, he’s one of the people that came up with an idea for it as a whole, I gotta say that in terms of aspects I thought were compelling throughout the movie, Holly Hunter is probably at the top of my list. Casting, GREAT JOB! I have no idea how much this character relates to the actual story, but nevertheless, seeing Holly Hunter as Beth at several points of the runtime just made me want to see more of her. If this were a film released during the fall, Hunter would have a higher chance of being up for an Oscar in my book.
Also, let’s not forget, Ray Romano. As mentioned, this guy hasn’t really done much of anything worth mentioning, and by that, I mean anything relatively acceptable, since “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” back in 2009. He was on Parenthood, which I heard was good, although it’s not aimed at my demographic and I never watched it. I saw him as a guest on an episode of “Kevin Can Wait,” but I completely forgot about it because the show was barely watchable. I can officially say, Ray’s back! I thought he aced his role, I was able to buy into his character, and he played a really good older dad character.
The chemistry shown between Kumail and Emily throughout this movie was believable, and if it wasn’t believable I probably would have taken major points off of this movie’s score, because this is based on true events involving the film’s main character, who is being played by the same person who experienced said events, not to mention that guy wrote and produced the movie with someone else who’s crucial to the film itself. I can’t exactly tell you I’m a guru who oversees every single detail of every person’s life and confirm that what is being shown on screen is entirely true, because I don’t know everything. There’s a good chance that someone could be reading this right now and I don’t know who it is. Granted since WordPress allows you to view what country a reader is from, or the name of the source they found this post, or perhaps a search term somebody used, I might get to know something about a certain reader, but not every detail is revealed. All I can say is, this movie set a very believable mood throughout. Some of the dialogue almost crossed the border to cheesy but it doesn’t go overboard with it and who knows, maybe those cheesy words were spoken.
As far as other complaints in this movie go, I do have a couple. First off, let’s talk about the editing. Overall this movie is well crafted and doesn’t have many flaws when it comes to editing. Although just because it doesn’t have many flaws, doesn’t mean it can’t have a few. There’s one scene in this movie which we see Kumail on a cell phone, it just cuts randomly a couple times, and yet we’re still looking at the same subject, the subject being Kumail in the same situation. It almost reminded me of “You Can’t Have It,” a movie that only 23 users on IMDb gave a verdict to, including me, only that movie had a s*itton more jumpcuts than this movie did, by the way don’t watch “You Can’t Have It.” That’s just a minor problem I have and on the subject of minor problems, is the product placement. I get it, films need product placement sometimes. But I remember seeing numerous scenes with a laptop in it, and just about every time, there was a MacBook. Oh yeah, the same goes with an IPhone. I remember seeing an IPhone in a lot of this movie’s scenes as well. Granted I recall seeing a Dell laptop too, but I think that was only one time. I might be somewhat OK with this if every single product shown here is true to the story, although it might remain as an issue. Although I don’t think something like this would be true because I’m looking at the technology and from my memory, the technology probably looked a little too futuristic. There’s a black IPhone in the movie and I believe it’s a newer model because I RECALL seeing the home button not having a square on it, which is a flaw for this movie because in real life, this movie takes place in the 2000s based on research, and the first IPhone with a home button to not have a square on it was the IPhone 5S which was released to the public in 2013. MAYBE I’M WRONG, MAYBE I’M IMAGINING THINGS, BUT THIS COMPLAINT STANDS *FOR NOW.* However, this movie is from Amazon Studios and when it releases on home video, it’s very likely that this movie won’t take a long time to become free on Amazon so I could probably watch it again and see if I was imagining things or not.
In the end, “The Big Sick” is worth seeing. I thought the performances all around were excellent, I thought this movie was well written, and there were little to no issues overall when it comes to this movie. Admittedly, it starts off rather slow, but it didn’t take much longer until my eyes were glued to the screen. I’m gonna give “The Big Sick” an 8/10. Thanks for reading this review. This Tuesday, I’m going to see the movie, “Dunkirk” in IMAX 70mm, words can’t describe my excitement! Also, I just want everyone to know, in case it actually interests you, “The Emoji Movie” comes out this upcoming Friday, July 28th. I have no intentions to see it, but, I would imagine a lot of you would want me to see it because of how atrocious this movie looks, so I DON’T KNOW if I’ll deliver on this, we’ll see what happens. But, if you want me to see “The Emoji Movie,” and I’m also not saying I’ll do this opening weekend if this manages to be a common request, leave a comment to this post with the following hashtag, you can include it by itself or in a comment with other words in it: #GOSCREWYOURSELFEMOJIMOVIE. I’m not saying it has to be all capital letters, but you get my point. I interacted with some people in my school, and they want me to see this movie. I’m wondering if I’ll even do that, but I might do this movie review for you if I get enough requests. And besides, “Atomic Blonde” is coming out the same weekend and I kinda wanna see that, not to mention “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” is out now too. Anyway, stay tuned for more reviews, and if you want to increase the chances of a review for “The Emoji Movie,” get cracking in the comments section. Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
Hey everyone, Jack Drees here! If you have paid close attention to the title of this post, you can tell I’m really pumped about what I’m going to discuss. If you have followed this blog for awhile, occasionally you might see angry posts about certain movies being made. I did one on the “Jumanji” reboot having a video game instead of a board game back in March and during the same month I did one on an announcement going around concerning a possibility that “The Matrix” was gonna be remade. Before that, I did a post in December about the fact that “The Emoji Movie” is a thing that exists. And no, since then it has not been canceled! It’s actually coming out July 28th! I wasn’t fond of those ideas and my opinions on said ideas are represented quite clearly in my posts dedicated to them. However, today is gonna be a little more positive. Today we’re gonna be talking about an upcoming movie called “The Disaster Artist.”
If you are unaware about this film, it is about the making of “The Room,” which is considered to be highly regarded as one of the worst films ever made. I haven’t seen “The Room” from beginning to end, I know what it’s about, I’m well aware of its overall cheesiness. Nevertheless, I’m really f*cking stoked for this film. Before we dive any further into this topic, I’ll explain the overall concept of it to you right now.
“The Room” is a film from the early 2000s, it is directed by Tommy Wiseau, who also wrote the film, and played the lead character of Johnny. The plot of the film is that Johnny is a successful banker living in San Francisco with his fiancee, Lisa. However, Lisa eventually is unsatisfied with Johnny and decides to seduce Johnny’s best friend, Mark. The concept of this film is pretty simple, however, many viewers found this film’s unintentional humor to be spinning in a wheel of complexity. And it probably gave the idea to many people, when they see a movie with the word “room” as such a defining part of the title, it would probably be bad.
Oh yeah, this happened during the following decade.
There are tons of screenings for this movie around the world, in fact Tommy Wiseau is currently doing his “Love Is Blind” tour which he does screenings for this movie, people get to meet him in person at a number of them, and there’s a Q&A session. There are probably a number of things people may think of when it comes to “The Room,” one of the biggest things I personally, and perhaps a high number of other people think of is some of the dialogue. Some of the movie’s most infamous lines are listed below.
JOHNNY: YOU’RE TEARING ME APART LISA!
LISA: Did you get your promotion?
JOHNNY: Nah.
*PAUSE*
LISA: You didn’t get it, did you?
JOHNNY: You betrayed me! You’re not good. You, you’re just a chicken. Chip-chip-chip-chip-cheep-cheep!
But perhaps one of the most famous lines, if not THE most famous line from this movie is from the beginning of a scene that takes place on a rooftop. It goes like this:
JOHNNY: I did not hit her, it’s not true! It’s bulls*it! I did not hit hit her! (Throws water bottle on ground) I did NOT. (Turns face) Oh, hi Mark.
In fact, for the teaser of this movie, we get to see this moment of the movie as if it were just being created. Since we’re on this topic, let’s talk about the trailer.
After we see a couple of logos, we cut to Tommy Wiseau, played by James Franco (Spider-Man, 127 Hours). He’s coming out of a door onto a rooftop. You can see he’s got his wig on, and if you know about “The Room” that wig might be stuck in your mind. There’s a green screen around Tommy and you can also see a black guy holding a mic. Tommy doesn’t remember his line, and the director clarifies which line Tommy has to say, then the scene starts all over again. Believe it or not, Tommy has to ask what the line is AGAIN. Then we see the THIRTEENTH take of the same scene! Did this actually happen? I don’t know, but I’m curious to know if it actually happened. At one point, the production is BEGGING for this s*it to end, and they’re all saying what the line is. Then, they get to, I’m not kidding, TAKE 67! Tommy comes out the door, then he says “I hit her!” Just wow! The director wonders if the line should be changed, then it cuts to him saying action, repeatedly, only because Tommy can’t hear him say action! The title shows up for the movie, and we get to Tommy perfecting the line. Everybody applauds based on what happens and the trailer ends.
The vibe of this trailer is perfect and it gets me super excited for this movie. It doesn’t feel dark, it’s almost somewhat goofy although serious if you ask me, and it honestly makes me wonder what really happened behind this set of the movie. Even though this trailer does explain the concept of this film, it does leave me wondering what this film is gonna be like. Is it gonna just focus on the production of this movie? Is it gonna involve Tommy’s personal life? I don’t have a clue. As far as other compliments go, the costumes are great, James Franco is probably gonna make a good Tommy Wiseau, and whoever came up with this idea is a movie god. By the way, James Franco’s brother, Dave Franco, is also in this movie and he’s playing Greg Sestero, the guy who plays Mark in “The Room.”
Another fun fact about this movie, it actually comes out a week before the new “Star Wars” film, December 8th to be specific. So while I imagine this movie would do OK on its opening weekend, I’m apprehensive towards how it’ll do afterwards. And to be completely honest, as much as I am a huge “Star Wars” fanboy, not to mention one who is certainly hoping to go see the new “Star Wars” on opening night, I’m actually currently a bit more excited to see this film instead of the new “Star Wars.” Why? Because this movie has better marketing. I liked some aspects of the teaser for “The Last Jedi,” but ultimately, the teaser was not only painfully average, but it made me wonder if it’s just gonna rip off so many elements from “The Empire Strikes Back.”
Also, if this movie’s good, which I bet will be the case, I want to see another movie on the making of another awful movie. One story I’m curious to hear about, is possibly the making of 2015’s “Fantastic Four,” otherwise known as “Fant4stic.” I saw this movie in the theater and it wasn’t that good. Although I did like it better than a number of other people, which is saying something, because many people consider this to possibly be the worst superhero movie ever made, if not the worst Marvel movie ever made. What made this movie pop in my mind was the fact that “The Disaster Artist” could have an interesting story behind it when it comes to the movie’s production, and if that is executed well, I might want to know more about “Fant4stic,” especially when you consider this tweet from Josh Trank, the director of “Fant4stic.”
By the way, if you go to his Twitter right now, that tweet has been deleted. I want to know, what was this “fantastic version” of “Fant4stic?” This is a story I want to see, not the fantastic version of “Fantastic Four.” OK, yeah, I actually do want to see that and I think everyone else does at this point, but nevertheless, I would like to know how this movie came together and maybe if there was any studio interference when it comes to this movie. Oh, and yeah, if this movie actually comes to life, don’t ask FOX (the studio behind “Fant4stic”) to do it, they’ll probably shoot you out of a cannon towards the Pacific Ocean, leaving you to drown.
Right now “The Disaster Artist” is one of my most anticipated movies, I haven’t seen “The Room” in its entirety, but I feel like I should now before I go see this movie. Also, I want to know, what is the worst movie you’ve ever seen? Or, what is a movie you can think of that’s so bad it’s actually good? Me personally, I think of “Batman & Robin” when it comes to this topic. Also, stay tuned for more content, including an upcoming review for the movie “Dunkirk,” it has now been confirmed I’m going to see this movie next week in IMAX 70mm film, I’m super excited, look forward to my review. Also this weekend, I might go see “The Big Sick,” starring Kumail Nanjiani, stay tuned for that review as well if I get around to seeing that movie, and stay tuned for other content on this blog! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
Hey everyone, Jack Drees here! Welcome, one and all to the final review in my series of Christopher Nolan films leading up to “Dunkirk.” Before we begin, let’s just get one thing out of the way. If you want to read the reviews for other Christopher Nolan films I’ve done, the links to them are down below so if you want to read those, go ahead. These reviews are for “Interstellar” and “Insomnia,” which is kinda funny. Every title of a movie I reviewed directed by Christopher Nolan, including this upcoming review, starts with “In.” Anyway, the links are down below.
Today, we’re gonna be talking about a highly appreciated film of Christopher Nolan’s, that my friends, is “Inception.” Fun fact about Christopher Nolan if you never happened to be aware, a lot of his movies are considered to be instant classics, and if you look at the top 250 movies on IMDb, a number of Nolan’s movies make the list. These films include “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Memento,” “The Prestige,” “Interstellar,” and “The Dark Knight,” which is actually in the top 4 below “The Godfather Part II,” “The Godfather,” and “The Shawshank Redemption.” If you didn’t know, “Inception” is yet another one of those movies. What do I think of it? Find out in my review!
“Inception” as uttered recently, is directed by Christopher Nolan and it stars Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic, The Departed), Joseph Gordon-Levitt ((500) Days of Summer, G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra), Ellen Page (Juno, Hard Candy), Ken Watanabe (Batman Begins, The Last Samurai), Tom Hardy (Star Trek: Nemesis, Layer Cake), Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later…, Batman Begins), Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose, Nine), Tom Berenger (Training Day, October Road), and Michael Caine (The Prestige, The Cider House Rules).
This film is about a guy who can take the ideas of others, and he’s able to do that with dream-sharing technology. At one point, he’s told that he must implant in idea in the mind of a CEO. If you look this movie up on IMDb, that’s basically the gist of the film, but to me, this film is about a lot more than just that.
If you remember my review for “Interstellar,” I mention there that it’s a movie that has a high replay value. I don’t rewatch this movie as much, but I still enjoy it. In fact, the first time I watched it, probably around the end of 2014, I recall falling asleep. Granted it was late, but still, I fell asleep. Then I gave it another chance in 2016, I was blown away. Now it’s 2017, I’m still blown away. In my review for “Interstellar,” I uttered that it’s a movie that everyone should watch at least once. That’s also the case with this movie. Rewatching this movie, I was glued to the screen. In fact, one of the reasons I consider “Interstellar” to be so likable is how well it has aged, I know it just came out, but still. In fact, now, I like it better than I did when I first saw the movie. It took me a while to grasp some of the things the movie was going for, or at least fully appreciate them. Almost every single time I watch the movie, I either find something I haven’t seen before, or become engaged throughout. Having watched this movie less, I still wonder if there’s a missing link that is keeping me from appreciating it more, although that would be saying something because there’s already lots I appreciate about this flick. We’ll dive into more about that later by the way.
Before we get into anything else, look at this image. This is from one of the first shots in the entire movie, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character of Cobb is lying down on sand, waves are coming in, and you can see his hair is a bit wet. When I first saw this during my recent rewatch I instantly thought this, and I’m not saying this is a negative because it does sound like something you’d hear on “Mystery Science Theater,” I said, “Oh, Jack survived!” If you ever saw James Cameron’s “Titanic,” which also has Leonardo DiCaprio playing the lead male, you’d definitely get my point. Speaking of which, let’s talk about his character in general.
Cobb is essentially the main dude who steals the ideas of others through dreams, and the way I see his character at times in this movie is the same way I see a professor. Not to say he’s boring or anything, it works. This is shown very well during the beginning of the film, especially during the sequence when he’s talking to Ellen Page’s character of Ariadne at the cafe. At times Cobb reminded me of a scientist as well, and that comparison can be shown with a conversation he has after Ellen Page vanishes from a room. When I think of certain aspects of this character and put them on a list, it almost seems as if this character has no weight. Although that’s not true. There’s a part of this movie dedicated to his relationship to Marion Cotillard’s character of Mal, and particular aspects of said relationship made me care so much for Cobb as a character. By the way, I love Mal’s voice in this movie.
I don’t hear many conversations about this movie in real-life, although if there are conversations about this movie in real-life, I’m a frequent person who starts those conversations, and one thing I usually don’t talk about in this movie is the action. This movie has one of the coolest action sequences I’ve ever seen in my life! I won’t go into detail, but there’s this one sequence where some characters are in a hotel hallway, and it starts rotating, it’s almost like a video game!
Fun fact about this film, there is actually a character in this film who goes by the name of Yusuf. He’s played by Dileep Rao, whose face you may recognize if you’ve seen “Drag Me to Hell” or “Avatar.” But I’m gonna give a little backstory about me before watching this movie. Dileep Rao interests me as an actor because while my first encounter with this guy was in the movie “Avatar” when I watched it in the theater, his name latched onto me in a different way. As you may know, I’m a nerd, and part of that has to do with my love for game shows. One of my favorite game shows, and I believe it’s a choice you’d all agree upon, is “Jeopardy!.” With that being said, Rao’s first ever TV appearance was on “Jeopardy!.” Not only that, but he also won a game. He appeared on the program in 2002, and his episodes aired on June 7th and June 10th. His total winnings are $34,400 along with an extra $1,000 as a consolation prize for when he lost. I saw his games on YouTube and I recall the description of the video saying he was in “Avatar” and that helped me recall his name. Overall, he gives a decent performance in this movie. As the movie is coming towards its end, he plays a key role.
If you have seen a number of movies before, you may have judged it for its lack of logic as a criticism. Here though, it actually works. It’s explained throughout the movie, that dreams can create things that are impossible to create, and I can believe that. I can probably remember some of my dreams and they’re not all realistic to the highest extent. The lack of logic in this movie sometimes ends up partially contributing to the plot and makes the movie more enjoyable as a whole, it’s like a superhero movie except nobody really has any superpowers. In fact, I’m gonna give you a little story about my life. I live near a number of shopping centers, and one of them is the Burlington Mall in Burlington, MA, otherwise known as one of the filming locations for the 2009 comedy “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.” Now that mall had some changes over the years, but around the early 2000’s, probably around when I was four or something, I always had a dream that I was going into a mall that basically resembled the Burlington Mall, the floor pattern in the mall, at least on the first floor was different to what it looked like back in the day along with how it looks now. In fact, it almost looks similar to a floor pattern that used to be in Roosevelt Field in Garden City, NY, I never went to that mall, I just know about it. As far as the second story’s floor pattern goes, I can’t exactly tell you if it was similar to how it was before its renovation during the 2000s, but I’m not sure. In fact, if you have ever been inside the Burlington Mall, you might walk towards the center and notice a bank of two scenic elevators, not only did they look different in the dream, they looked different from each other. One of them I recall having a single slide door, as opposed to reality in which case both elevators have two-speed doors, and one of them was something I can’t even describe. Partially because it’s hard to remember to the most supreme detail, and it sounds totally impractical. It was like the size of a trampoline, and you could probably see inside the shaft and it was pretty big. Also, I recall multiple times, I went outside the mall in my dreams and there was a McDonald’s or something, I believe I was at the mall with somebody, probably with a stuffed duck I had and actually still have today, #nostalgia. The voice of the person by my side spoke to me saying the McDonald’s was gonna blow away, and the McDonald’s actually blowing away, or at least the roof, one or the other, is something I remember happening. That popping in my head must have been an effect from watching something on TV as a child which a house blows away. I don’t recall what it was, if you ever seen something on TV which a house blows away, can you please leave a comment as to what it is?
One thing I noticed in this movie that I didn’t notice any other time while watching it is something that shocked me to the core. There’s this one scene where Cobb is interacting with Cillian Murphy’s character of Robert Fischer, Robert’s told to give the first six digits that pop in his head. These digits are important to the overall plot of the film. The digits are 5, 2, 8, 4, 9, 1. This movie plays around with those numbers a lot. In fact there are a few Easter eggs I noticed with these numbers I didn’t even realize existed until my recent watch. Just watch the scenes in the hotel and see what I mean.
Like a good chunk of Christopher Nolan films, the score done here was composed by Hans Zimmer. There are so many great themes that are actually stuck in my mind after watching this movie and there wasn’t a bad moment when it came to the movie’s music. In fact, when it came to the finale, the music was almost getting me to the point to making me want to bite my nails. By the way, the finale was not only epic and raised the stakes, I gotta say when it comes to editing, this is one of the best edited finales I’ve ever seen in my life.
One of the biggest motifs I noticed throughout this movie had to do with trains. There’s at least one moment through each of the movie’s acts that a train appears. In fact, one of those moments made the movie suddenly become more of a masterpiece, by the way, I’m not gonna get into it, although if you know what I’m talking about, it has to do with a quote with these words in it: “You’re waiting for a train.” Also, a little sidenote, when I was watching this movie once, there’s one moment in the beginning when Cobb says “I don’t like trains.” I just spoke to my screen saying, “Well you aren’t my friend!”
I’ll be completely honest, when it comes to the movie “Inception,” it’s really hard to talk about everything. Because there are some details that I want to talk about that are in spoiler territory, and when it comes to the characters, I wouldn’t say they are weak, but I would also say when watching this movie, I got more out of Cobb’s character as opposed to anyone else and everyone else is just there for the ride. However, this movie does blow my mind and that’s enough for me to say, this movie in its own way, is a masterpiece.
In the end, I’d say “Inception” is definitely worth a watch. This is definitely some of Christopher Nolan’s finest work. There are definitely occasions which I will find myself watching this movie again and I gotta say on a sidenote, I love the effects in this movie. This movie feels totally original and I believe it may have contributed to maybe some ideas used in Marvel’s “Doctor Strange.” Yes, that movie’s based on a comic book that came out long before it, but still. I’m gonna give “Inception” a 10/10. I mentioned some of the characters feel like they’re put in the background, although I don’t really think it’s a terrible thing. The overall plot doesn’t entirely revolve around them, they are there experiencing an adventure much like Cobb is. This is a movie that I feel can’t be recreated, and if it ever is recreated, it can’t top what’s shown in this flick. Thanks for reading this review, I’m gonna have my review for “Dunkirk” out pretty soon. If I don’t go see it this weekend, hopefully I can see “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” which is based on a graphic novel series of a similar name. Also, I’m not sure when this will happen, but my mother and I have plans to go see Kumail Nanjiani’s new movie, “The Big Sick.” I’m not sure when I’ll see it, but we have agreed to go see it nevertheless. Stay tuned for more upcoming reviews, thanks for sticking with me throughout my series of Christopher Nolan reviews, and I’m super excited for “Dunkirk” right now! Also, remember, stay tuned for more review series if the opportunity comes up to make them. For example, in September, Tom Cruise has a new film coming out called “American Made,” so I might review some Tom Cruise films beforehand. We’ll see what happens! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
Hey everyone, Jack Drees here! Before we dive into the overall purpose of this post, I want to start off by giving a little free promotion. I did this in a separate post before, but this one is gonna be briefer than a full length post. You may know what I’m talking about, you may not. But this promotion is for Curtis Armstrong’s new memoir, “Revenge of the Nerd.”
“Revenge of the Nerd” is a memoir detailing Curtis Armstrong’s life from when he was a child, to his career in show business. If you don’t know who Curtis Armstrong is, he’s a pretty awesome guy, and you may have seen him in possibly some of your favorite TV shows and movies. These include: “New Girl,” “Supernatural,” “Moonlighting,” “King of the Nerds,” “American Dad!,” “Risky Business,” “Revenge of the Nerds,” “Better Off Dead,” “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” and the one EVERYBODY, and I MEAN EVERYBODY KNOWS AND LOVES, “The Clan of the Cave Bear.” I preordered the book back in November, it arrived at my house recently, and when it comes to my progress in the book, I made it to the triple digit pages, so I can verify this is a page turner. This memoir came out on July 11th, so pick it up at your local bookstore now, and find out more about the life of a guy who has worked with Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Zooey Deschanel, Jamie Foxx, and Seth MacFarlane.
Alright, now with that out of the way, let’s get into an announcement here. One of my favorite traditions is going to conventions. I haven’t gone to many in my life, I’ve gone to Rhode Island Comic Con twice and I went to PAX East once. However, that’s about to change. Because I’m going to Terrificon!
Terrificon is convention scheduled to take place from Friday, August 18, to Sunday, August 20, at a rather well known casino in Connecticut, Mohegan Sun. I’ve been here many times in my life (not to gamble), but I was always there for fun. This time is no exception to that, except that I now have a real reason to go and I am actually attending an event there for once and not just shopping and dining. For the record, I’m not a guest on the lineup. However I will be there. If I have any hardcore followers who want to say hello to me at the time I’m there, don’t hesitate.
This year at Terrificon they have a number of guests coming. Some of these people include: Burt Ward, who you may know as Robin from the 60’s “Batman” show, Lee Meriwether, who you may know as Catwoman from the 60’s “Batman” show, Dean Cain, who you may know as Superman from “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” and the Comic Book Men, AKA Mike Zapcic, Bryan Johnson, and Ming Chen. Speaking of Burt Ward and Lee Meriwether and the “Batman” TV show, this con is actually being dedicated to Adam West.
You may remember about a month ago, Adam West passed away. I didn’t watch much of his “Batman” show, but I was disappointed to hear this as a “Family Guy” fan. What makes this even more disappointing is that Adam West was going to various cons with Burt Ward, and this was going to be one of their stops. If you ask me, just about any con right now, could be dedicated to Adam West and make sense, but it makes double sense here. If you had Adam West on the guest list, and he can’t come due to his death, you may as well recognize the occurrence of his death. Not only that, but there will also be a special screening of the 1966 “Batman” movie. I actually never watched that before, and I’m rather curious to check it out, so that should be fun.
I know this is a shorter post than usual, which actually may be a relief to some people. However, I just wanted to get this out, to see if there actually is anyone interested in my work and see if they actually follow me well enough and would probably recognize me in person. I dunno, it’s almost like a PSA more than anything. Plus I feel I should say I’m going because I like bragging to others that I’m going to cons, and Terrificon actually follows me on Twitter, so I feel like I should pay them back. Also, just a reminder, as of right now, I have tickets for SATURDAY ONLY. I’ll probably give an update in the future if I get tickets for either Friday or Sunday, but for now, I just have tickets for Saturday. Thanks for reading this post and I want to know in the comments, if there are any conventions that you’ve gone to that you think I should check out, doesn’t have to be near me (I live in Wakefield, MA by the way), what are they? Also, stay tuned for next week because that’s when I’ll have my review for “Inception.” Stay tuned for that along with more great content! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
Hey everyone, Jack Drees here! If you have read my blog at all last week, it’s possible that you may have come across my review for “Interstellar.” If you never heard of the film before or don’t know when it came out, that’s not a new release, that’s actually from 2014. I reviewed it because the guy who directed that movie, Christopher Nolan, has a new film coming out on July 21st. It’s gonna be in theaters everywhere including special presentations in various film formats. Today, we’re gonna review yet another one of his movies. But before we get into that, I want to say if you actually want to read my review for “Interstellar,” click the link down below and that will take you to the review.
Today we’re gonna be talking about one of Christopher Nolan’s earliest films, “Insomnia.” This film came out in 2002 and considered by many to be one of Christopher Nolan’s worst movies. Although based on ratings I’ve gathered for this movie, that doesn’t mean much of anything because it’s still got a good rating of 7.2 on IMDb with most of the individual ratings coming in around the 7/10 range, which can suggest that the movie’s watchable. Without further ado, let’s start the review!
“Insomnia” is as mentioned recently, is directed by Christopher Nolan, and stars Al Pacino (Scarface, The Godfather), Robin Williams (Jumanji, Aladdin), and Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry, The Gift). This film is a thriller and is about homicide detectives who are investigating the murder of a local teenager.
A couple things before we dive into this film, I have watched this movie once before, I thought it was alright but it definitely could have been better. But then I kinda remember doing two things at once (maybe, I don’t know). Although I thought I’d give it another shot because it is a Christopher Nolan movie and that is what I intend on reviewing for the next few weeks before “Dunkirk” hits theaters. Also, in case you didn’t know, this is actually a remake of a 1997 Norwegian film which has the same name as this one. I can’t really compare this movie to that one because I haven’t seen the other interpretation, but IMDb says it has an overall slightly higher score compared to the 2002 movie of 7.3/10 with most ratings coming in the 7/10 range, although it also suggests less people, at least those who use IMDb, saw the 1997 film and more saw the 2002 film. Now let’s dive into some characters, starting with Al Pacino.
In Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of “Insomnia,” I took a glance at the cast for this movie, and noticed the characters overall have different names, and I can understand that. This is based on a Norwegian film and this is kind of being directed to other audiences. Al Pacino plays a character named Will Dormer. Al Pacino is playing another lead role who occasionally uses a gun. And that’s not the only recurrence of an Al Pacino role. In fact, to even support what I said, you know how in some movies Al Pacino would do this over the top voice that sounds like Nicolas Cage if he knew which movies to actually be a part of? For example, in “Heat,” when he shouts “She got a GREAT ASS!” Yep, he does it here. Here if it were some other actor, it probably would have taken me out of the movie, but Al Pacino made it work because it’s almost like his trademark. Also, the way his character was written was rather investing throughout the film, and once it concludes, it totally works.
Next up, we’re gonna talk about Robin Williams in this movie, who gives a good performance as his character, Walter Finch. One minor complaint I have when it comes to this movie is something I noticed on the cover of my Blu-Ray I own for it, along with the poster. Robin Williams’s name is on it. And yeah, I get it, Robin Williams is a pretty big name, but he’s not really in the movie at all until the runtime approaches the second half. If Williams’s name was gonna be on the poster, I’d personally put it on the end, where Hilary Swank’s name is. After all, Hilary Swank is pretty much in the movie from beginning to end, much like Al Pacino. It reminds me of when I watched “You Can’t Have It” back in March. Rob Gronkowski, the tight end of the New England Patriots, was supposed to be in the movie, he was even in the center of one of the posters which contained a lot of characters, but he doesn’t even show up until like the final seven minutes. It just felt unnecessary and ruined a movie that while technically incompetent, still had an interesting story and a lot of likable characters. Although despite what I said Williams’s character wasn’t all that bad. When I was watching this movie for the first time almost two months ago, Walter Finch may have been my favorite character after finishing the movie. Speaking of which, let’s dive into a little more depth.
I want to talk about something I saw in the film and connect it to reality. In the movie, the murdered teen girl had a personal connection with Robin Williams’s character. Now Williams is playing a writer, he makes books. He mentions at one point, he was at a signing which the girl attended, they eventually talked, and they met a few more times after the signing. This scene actually got me thinking and made me ask a few questions to myself. Now, if you didn’t already know, one of my personal biggest idols is Curtis Armstrong, who you may know from content including “Revenge of the Nerds” and “Supernatural.” I met the guy in person before, he’s a fun dude, and personally, if I could hang around with him more, I would. After all, we have some stuff in common when it comes to our personalities. In fact, I’m actually meeting him again in just one day after this is posted. At one point, Robin Williams reveals that the girl showed him her writing when she became comfortable with that idea. For the record, she was interested in writing and a big focal point for her as a writer was poetry. He’s soon asked how the poetry was as a whole, and he replies to the person asking, saying it wasn’t good. Not long after he says the girl never knew his true thoughts about it, and he doesn’t know why he would spit something like that out of his mouth. Now I’m an aspiring screenwriter, I also enjoy writing on this blog, and I’ve been told these reviews, when it comes to my overall writing ability, have proven to be some decent material. If I wanted someone to judge me as a reviewer or as a screenwriter, I would want them to be as honest with me as possible. I would want to know if I’m the skyrocketing overlord of my craft or if I’m the pathetic ass of my craft. Although when it comes to this movie, I could understand where Walter Finch, the character played by Robin Williams, was coming from. Let’s say if I were a celebrity and I were at a convention as a special guest signing autographs and doing photo ops, I would love to meet my fans, I would love to see the stuff that they put all of their time and effort into. However, one thing I don’t want to do to my fans, is let them down. If I had a fan that came up to me at a convention, and they showed me a short review or something like that, I would love it if they’d ask for constructive criticism. I mean, heck, you guys know Doug Walker? The Nostalgia Critic? He’s at conventions all the time! If I showed him a review of mine, I’d want him to respond back to me with full honesty. I want him to tell me if it sucks, I want him to tell me if it’s awesome, I want him to tell me if it’s OK. A big thing I wondered about this movie, is what this girl was like as a person. Was she too shy to ask for constructive criticism? Did she ask for constructive criticism and never receive the truth? I’m actually curious about this. In fact, I’m even aware of my own mistakes without anyone else pointing them out. I make numerous errors on here. Here are some actual examples you may or may not have noticed from reading this blog.
Top 10 WORST Movies of 2016 “How does movie exist?!”
CORRECTION: How does this movie exist?!
“Transformers: The Last Knight” Review
(ON THE TOPIC OF CHARACTERS BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL BY PLAYING MUSIC IN SOME WAY) “I don’t recall seeing that type of humor anywhere. The closest I can say that has come to this, is during one scene from a “Family Guy” episode called “Baby, You Knock Me Out,””
CORRECTION: More than one “Family Guy” episode I witnessed was like this, “Blue Harvest” is another example.
“The Fate of the Furious” Review
“As far as other news goes, there is a TV movie coming out on HBO this Sunday, that movie is called “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” it’s based on a book by Rebecca Skloot, and focuses on the true story on the discovery of and research dedicated towards the HeLa cell, which changed cancer research forever. I MIGHT review it, I might not, I don’t even know if I’ll even see it, but if I do see it, there may be a possibility of an upcoming review concerning the film.”
CORRECTION: The movie premiered on a Saturday (By the way, I did see it, never reviewed it)
And yes, I know WordPress allows you to edit these things, at the moment I have no intentions to, because I feel I should reveal that I, am human, and I’m fallible.
Now let’s talk about Hilary Swank. She plays a character named Ellie Burr. I don’t have many complaints with this character. Some things that stood out about her is her outgoing presence and her name. And while I do think she may be the weakest of the three big names on the poster, I did enjoy her character in the movie. Although she did remind me of Optimus Prime from “Transformers,” a little bit. Weird comparison, I know. But believe me, you know how I mentioned her name stands out to me? She said her name multiple times during the movie, I mean it was necessary, but still, before she said it on multiple occasions, it almost felt like I just heard it not too long ago. You could almost dub in Optimus Prime’s voice in multiple moments of the movie and you will either hear something like “Optimus Prime,” or “My name is Optimus Prime,” or “I am Optimus Prime.” In fact, despite remembering how I technically enjoyed Hilary Swank’s character in the movie, moments containing her throughout are starting to fade from my memory.
Another minor complaint I have about this movie is the score, which is done by David Julyan, who also composed music for other Christopher Nolan flicks including “Following,” “Memento,” and “The Prestige.” I’m rather disappointed to say this because this is a Christopher Nolan movie and I usually like the scores I hear in them. At times in this movie, the score totally works and it matches perfectly with a scene, especially at the very end. But at other times, it feels like a scene should have no music whatsoever and yet there is music playing. Also, at times, the music played in certain scenes that are paced faster than others don’t really give any fast paced vibes and feel more like music that belongs in a particular segment of “Manchester by the Sea” or something.
I’ll say this and this isn’t really a spoiler or anything, but at one moment in the film, Al Pacino shoots his partner. It was kind of intense when I saw that and it felt extremely realistic given the circumstances the characters were going through. Seeing Al Pacino try to deal with this in the aftermath was rather compelling and added a bit to the overall story in terms of benefits. This leads to something else in the film that almost sounded illogical at first, but from the purpose of storytelling, it made the overall story a little more compelling than it already was.
If I have any other compliments to give towards the film, I’d say that the final shootout was awesome. I won’t go into detail, but this is one of the moments where the music (or lack of music) worked. Seeing the two sides going against each other in battle was investing and it had me glued to the screen. It was a very short fight, but it was also sweet. Some of the cinematography in this movie was pretty cool too, especially during the opening. From what I can gather, none of this film was done on a green screen, and I could definitely tell, and films like these are why I love when films are shot on location. Granted, I do enjoy all of the popcorn superhero films, but when a director wants to shoot a movie in the real world, only good things in my mind would come as a result.
In the end, “Insomnia” is definitely not Christopher Nolan’s best work, but that doesn’t mean the movie’s bad. There’s a lot to like about it. The cinematography, the characters, the performances, the editing, the dialogue. Although the film has numerous flaws, and some of them in my view, happen to be character quirks, but despite those quirks and flaws, I had a good time watching this movie. Watching this movie the second time was definitely more enjoyable than it was the first time. I’m gonna give “Insomnia” a very high 7/10. I was almost gonna give this an 8, but given time to marinate, this isn’t a movie I’d watch over and over again. Sure, it was an enjoyable ride, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t feel like something I’d be putting on in my Blu-Ray player in a week from now. Thanks for reading this review. I’m not sure if I’m gonna be seeing any movies this upcoming weekend, after all, I am going away to a family reunion. However there is a theater nearby in the town I’m staying in for a few nights, and who knows, it’s possible I could catch a movie there if there’s nothing else to do. Like, if it’s a rainy day or something.
Also, next week, I will be doing my final review in my Christopher Nolan series leading up to “Dunkirk.” That review is going to be for the 2010 flick, “Inception,” the film about a thief who is experienced in stealing ideas from others in dreams. Stay tuned for that along with more reviews! Scene Before is your click to the flicks, and before I end this post, here’s a funny line from “Insomnia.”
What has two thumbs and likes blowjobs? (POINTS TO HIMSELF WITH BOTH THUMBS) This guy! -Fred Duggar
Hey everyone, Jack Drees here! Today I little wanted to do something for someone I admire. If you remember months back on this blog, I did a post on the TV show, “King of the Nerds,” a reality competition on TBS that aired from 2013-2015. I honestly want it on the air longer, but that’s not something I want to talk about right now. One of the hosts of that show is Curtis Armstrong.
Even you haven’t seen the show “King of the Nerds,” you may be familiar with this name. If you don’t know the name, there’s a chance you may know the face. Aside from “King of the Nerds,” you may have seen or heard Armstrong in “New Girl,” “Supernatural,” “Ray,” “Risky Business,” “Revenge of the Nerds,” “Moonlighting,” “Dan Vs.,” and “American Dad!.” In real life, Armstrong, seemingly has numerous qualities of a nerd. Although I am looking at his IMDb and it kind of says otherwise, “I’m not an improv guy. I’m not a nerd, I play one on television.” He’s also revealed to be a bibliophile, Beatles fanatic, and Sherlock lover. I also consider Armstrong to be a fine role model and one of my all time biggest idols.
I’ve also met him in person at Rhode Island Comic Con in 2015. The moment I met him and got a picture with him is currently my profile pic on WordPress along with other social media including my Twitter and Google accounts. I mean, why not? It’s a picture I personally revere. Not to mention, I’m wearing my favorite t-shirt, a “King of the Nerds” t-shirt I won in a contest which shows the hosts, Curtis Armstrong and Robert Carradine, and it shows them in a bunch of different colors and facial expressions. You may also notice I have sunglasses as well, those also have a “King of the Nerds” logo. When I met Curtis I didn’t show that part to him, it could’ve slipped out of my mouth, but who knows? The same day, I actually got an autograph from him. Then I came back the following day to tell him he was the best part of the con. I wasn’t lying when I said that. Curtis was nice, we talked together more than I did with other guests, not to mention when I was talking to Curtis, it felt like I was talking with an actual person. I’m not saying the other guests weren’t friendly or nice. It’s just when I talked to Curtis, it almost felt like he didn’t want me to leave. Did he want me leave? Probably, there were other people waiting in line, and that always is a justifiable reason to leave. But I was having fun with him and I would imagine he was having some sort of fun with me. I felt that when we talked on the last day of the con, when we left, it almost felt as if I was in a movie. Curtis said he’ll see me “next time.” If that were a movie, it might as well be called “Jack and Curtis,” it would be less than 4 minutes long and probably wouldn’t make it to theaters, although it would definitely have more substance than the new “Transformers.”
I may be rambling here, but I feel it’s worth it, because if you’re new to this blog, or if you just want to hear a personal story of mine, this is one I enjoy telling, and it makes sense for what I’m doing. Because Curtis Armstrong has a new book coming out in a few days. This book is going to be called “Revenge of the Nerd” and it features the subtitle, “Or… The Singular Adventures of the Man Who Would Be Booger.” Why am I doing this? With everything Curtis does for me, I feel the need to do things for him, and this is one of those things.
“Revenge of the Nerd” is an autobiography Curtis has begun creating earlier this decade. This is going to contain some information on his early years in Detroit, a city which actually coined the term “nerd.” There’s also gonna be a focus directed towards his acting career, including some things behind the scenes of some of Curtis’s various projects.
I have not read this book yet, nor has many other people, so I can’t really give my own thoughts on it, it’s actually yet to come out. The official release date for this book is next Tuesday, July 11. This seems like a short promotion, and yeah, I did basically say just about everything worth saying about the book itself, however I’m not done.
Curtis has been going around various places promoting his book, in fact, when the book releases, there are more promotions coming up. I actually have a list right here. Right now, Curtis is actually at Indy Pop Con, in Indianapolis, but once that’s over, plenty of more promotions are on the rise.
NEW YORK, NY: Barnes & Noble Tribecca (July 11, release date of the book)
BOSTON, MA: Brookline Booksmith (July 12)
PORTLAND, OR: Powell’s Books (July 13)
PASADENA, CA: Vroman’s Books (July 18)
CHICAGO, IL: Chicago Flashback Weekend (August 4-6)
TULSA, OK: Circle Cinema *INCLUDES REVENGE OF THE NERDS SCREENING* (August 26)
BURBANK, CA: Monsterpalooza (September 15-17)
HUNT VALLEY, MD: Monster Mania (September 29-October 1)
PROVIDENCE, RI: Rhode Island Comic Con *INCLUDES REVENGE OF THE NERDS CAST REUNION* (November 10-12)
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: 80’s in the Sand (November 13-18)
You know how I mentioned, looking back, I felt like I was in a movie when saying goodbye to Curtis? Well, my plans which are set for this Wednesday may as well be considered the sequel. In case you guys wanted to know, I’m going to at least one of these promotions. I’m gonna be going to the one in Boston on July 12, and it’s quite possible I’ll be at Rhode Island Comic Con from November 10-12. I mean, I went the past two years, so why wouldn’t I be there? If you didn’t know, Armstrong is famous for playing Booger on “Revenge of the Nerds,” and he often finds people who recognize him as Booger, he’s not offended at all, he’s actually delighted by it. So viewers, I want to know in the comments, out of curiosity, do people ever call you nicknames? This can also include ones people don’t call you much anymore. Also, I REALLY want to know, have you ever had a nickname that had some sort of relation to something disgusting? For me, I don’t recall receiving any disgusting nicknames throughout my life, but I want to know if you’re any different. I’ve received some nicknames throughout my life including J-Man, Dr. J, Jackson 5, and Dr. Ees. Also, guys, I got another Christopher Nolan movie review coming up pretty soon. Stay tuned for that. As far as new theater releases go, I’m not sure which movie I’ll see next, maybe “War for the Planet of the Apes” even though I haven’t seen many of the other movies. Only time will tell. Stay tuned for more great content! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
TAKASHI: Excuse please, but why do they call you “booger?”
“Spider-Man: Homecoming” is directed by Jon Watts and it has a cast including Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jr., Marisa Tomei, Laura Harrier, and Zendaya. This film is the sixth standalone “Spider-Man” film to hit the big screen. You may have seen the interpretation of this web slinger once before in “Captain America: Civil War,” but ultimately, this is Spidey’s own movie, hence the name “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” The overall plot of this film involves Spidey trying to balance his life in school, while at the same time, having to take down the Vulture. Oh yeah, and Iron Man’s there too.
Going into this movie, I was pretty excited. I’m not much of a comic book junkie, but I do enjoy Spider-Man as a character, and pretty much every aspect of him resonates with me as a person. He’s a nerd, he’s smart, he’s trying to just get his life together, and he’s kind of an outcast when it comes to society despite having a number of friends. Although at the same time, I was worried, because the trailers did reveal a little more than I had hoped they would, and this movie was being advertised almost as an “Iron Man” film. I mean, you could argue that “Captain America: Civil War” qualified as an “Iron Man” film but to me, it actually worked there because part of the title is Civil War, signifying that there is a war among the Marvel heroes, and it still focused a bit on the story of Captain America and what he’s got going on during various portions of this film. If you watch the trailers for this film, you might as well think it should be called “Spider-Man: Homecoming (Featuring: Iron Man).” However, this movie isn’t really like that. Sure, Iron Man is in some of it, but it’s not like he’s taking up a good portion of the movie’s runtime.
Let’s talk about Peter Parker in this movie, now if you have watched all the other big screen “Spider-Man” flicks, you may be aware that in at least a portion of each series these flicks are part of, Peter’s a teenager in high school. That’s no different here in this movie. Parker establishes at one point in the movie that he’s 15 years old. Why do I mention this? Well, one thing people point out about the other flicks, is that Parker is being played by someone pretending to be a teenager, but they’re really in their twenties. For the record, Tom Holland, the guy playing this interpretation of Spidey, is actually 21 right now. I would imagined he would have been 19 and 20 throughout the process of filming this movie. After all he was 19 when “Captain America: Civil War” came out. So while it is not exactly age accurate, it is closer to being age accurate than the past Spider-Men we’ve received. Now, I gotta say, I have nothing really terrible to say about Tom Holland as Spider-Man, at times, when he’s in the suit, he reminded me of Andrew Garfield’s interpretation of Spider-Man. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, I liked Garfield’s interpretation. It was like the comics, he had all sorts of technology, he had some quips, which we’re gonna get to. Speaking of Andrew Garfield, I mentioned I had some cons with his interpretation as Peter Parker. I can’t say the same for Tom Holland. It was never awkward, it was fluid, and it felt like I was watching an actual nerd at times. Some of this is shown through his various complications he’s received through his personal life. Speaking of his personal life, let’s talk about one of Peter’s friends.
One character in this movie goes by the name of Ned Leeds, he was played by Jacob Batalon, and there was a point in this movie where I wanted some sort of technology that existed which could allow me to jump into a movie’s universe. I could go into this one, find Ned, and give him the finger! I mean, at times, I liked his character, he was a nerd like me, but there were times in this movie where it almost sounded like he was jacked up on caffeine and he was just, I don’t know how to describe him. Simply put, he was annoying. He eventually finds out Peter is Spider-Man, not a spoiler, it was shown in the advertising, and after that, he starts asking all of these questions, and it’s just too much to handle.
Let’s talk about Peter’s love interest in the movie. In Raimi’s trilogy, the love interest was Mary Jane Watson, played by Kirsten Dunst. In Marc Webb’s films, the love interest was Gwen Stacy, played by Emma Stone. In this universe, the love interest is Liz Allan, played by Laura Herrier. If you remember before this movie came out, rumors were going around saying the love interest in this movie was going to be Mary Jane, played by Zendeya (Shake It Up, K.C Undercover). However, none of that’s true. Sure, Zendeya’s in the movie, but she is neither the love interest, nor is she Mary Jane. Zendeya actually plays a character named Michelle, although at one point she does say people call her “MJ.” Anyway, back to Liz. When it comes to all of the love interests in every “Spider-Man” series we’ve gotten so far, I must say the relationship between her and Peter may be the most authentic. Is it my favorite? I don’t know, but in terms of coming close to a real relationship, this is something Peter and Liz have going for each other.
Now let’s get to where Marvel usually leaves a bit to be desired, the villain. In this movie, the villain is the Vulture. He’s played by Michael Keaton which I actually find rather interesting considering how he once played Batman. He’s one of the better villains I’ve seen Marvel put out recently. He’s not the best Spider-Man villain I’ve seen in all of cinema, that’s a close call between Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock and Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin. His relationship with Peter in this movie is interesting, he was almost terrifying at times, and his motivation was pretty clear.
Going into this film, I knew about this, but Happy Hogan (left), played by Jon Faverau, is also in here. What I didn’t expect is how much of a crucial role he’d have in the film as a whole. I’m not against it or anything, I’m just saying. Overall, I had no major problems with him, although he pretty much did the same actions as Tony Stark throughout the movie so there’s not too much separating the two characters in that sort of aspect. The two were basically mentors to Peter. The relationship between Peter and Tony was a bit more prominent, but there was a relationship between Peter and Happy too.
I want to talk about the movie’s screenplay and how it was presented. Multiple people wrote this movie, and while I do think they did a fine job, it could have been better. I’ll just put it this way. In “Captain America: Civil War,” Spider-Man, at least in my opinion, was the best part of the movie. Why? Pretty much every single line of dialogue uttered by him, mainly during the big throwdown at the airport, was comedy gold. Almost every line from Spidey was a quip, and they were all hysterical! Sure, you get some chuckle-worthy quips here, but nowhere near as good as “Captain America: Civil War.” And this kind of sucks because you have an entire movie dedicated to Spidey, as opposed to a movie that has him for about ten or so minutes. Now, if you read my reviews, you may be thinking I’m an idiot, because I happen to revere Tobey Maguire’s Spidey and I mentioned before that he doesn’t give too many quips and it works for him. Here’s the thing, it was established in “Captain America: Civil War” with this Spider-Man that he’s a s*it-talker. These are two different universes.
On the topic of humor, there was this one line given in the movie. A bunch of people are going on a bus, I honestly can’t recall who said this, it could’ve been Peter, I don’t know. But they’re all headed to Washington DC for Nationals, and one person talks about protesting and that’s a reason why they’re on this bus to DC, this is followed by a reply from someone else saying that protesting is patriotic. When I heard that, I couldn’t help but think about the following ideas. 1: This was one of the later days of shooting and Trump was in office. 2: The writers pretty much predicted Donald Trump would win and they had the balls to write this. 3: This may be anti-Trump propaganda. 4: This could have been a reshoot just to get that line in because Trump was in office and the people behind this movie wanted to insert a joke per se. I don’t know, but this almost sounds like the movie just wanted to bash against Donald Trump. I’m not against bashing Donald Trump, but that line was cringe-worthy and just all around forced.
Another problem I have with this movie involves Spider-Man’s suit. Tony Stark has a form of control over it, which yeah, it’s almost in the same way you operate a kid’s bike. That’s fine and all, but the problem with that is, at one point, Peter turns it off. Yes, that’s a spoiler, but I assure you, it very likely won’t affect much of your experience watching this movie. The thing I consider to be wrong with this is how the suit operates when turned off. There’s this artificial intelligence thingy inside the suit essentially, and it’s pretty much the Spider-Man equivalent to JARVIS. The mode Peter turns off is referred to as Training Wheels. Peter and Tony never get into an argument over this, but that’s not worth talking about. What I do feel like talking about is the fact that Spider-Man has an assistant in his suit, it’s basically helping him. It’s giving him advice on all sorts of tactics and stuff like that. If you have a mode called Training Wheels, wouldn’t that have the voice? Spider-Man has to figure out everything on his own without that voice. I mean, you could argue that the mode is called training wheels because Spider-Man doesn’t have access to all of the advanced s*it. But even with that, how does this resolve the artificial intelligence problem? Let’s look at it this way, there’s a sequence in “Iron Man 3” where a bunch of people are falling out of a plane and Iron Man has to save them. He has JARVIS who’s actually able to assist him. He asks JARVIS how many people are in the air, JARVIS replies saying a number somewhere in the teens, I believe it was thirteen. Tony then asks how many people he could carry, JARVIS responds telling him he can only carry four people. Tony is able to use his artificial intelligence to his own benefit and Spider-Man can’t, because, it’s too advanced for him. That’s like telling a student that he or she can’t refer to a textbook when they’re doing their homework.
Speaking of artifical intelligence problems, there’s more. At one point in the movie, Spidey actually tells her about Liz, and how he feels about her. Now, I won’t get super-spoilery, it might be minor-spoilery, but it’s not gonna affect much of your experience. Peter Parker actually TELLS her about Liz, but at no point does it reveal Peter SHOWING pictures of Liz or anything like that. At one point later in the movie, I won’t say when, the AI says that Spider-Man should kiss her. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT SHE LOOKS LIKE! WHY ARE YOU SAYING ALL OF THIS CRAP?!
One thing I have a very minor problem with is the movie’s title. It’s called “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and based on the content presented in the movie, it’s called that for a reason. During the movie, there’s this homecoming dance, but that barely has anything to do with the movie. If you want a better title, I’d go with “Spectacular Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man: The Inspired Hero,” “The Web Slinging Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man: Rise of the Vulture,” or “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.” As far as other complaints go, I was going to say there was one point which one of Iron Man’s suits come in and rescues Peter from an incident, and I began to question how it even knew where Peter was, but another part of me says that Tony might be tracking Peter and it happens to be something movie isn’t telling me, so I’m wondering if that complaint will either stand or fall.
In the end, “Spider-Man: Homecoming” is somewhat fun, but overall, it could have been a much better “Spider-Man” experience. There were some things I liked in the movie, and quite a few things I didn’t like in the movie. I haven’t even talked about Aunt May, I’ll say she was average. Certainly better than the last Aunt May we had. Considering how “Spider-Man” was established in “Captain America: Civil War,” this film was rather disappointing. By the way, if you don’t know my thoughts on “Spider-Man 3,” I believe it gets too much hate, and honestly, when compared to “Spider-Man 3,” I’d actually rather watch that instead of “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” Sorry guys, this is just how I feel. I’m gonna give “Spider-Man: Homecoming” a rather low 7/10. This might drop to a 6 sometime in the future, I’m honestly not sure. This film had a lot of good things about it. The high school scenes felt rather authentic, the villain was great by Marvel standards, I liked Tom Holland, but he was given better dialogue in “Captain America: Civil War.” Oh yeah, and Ned is just a chatterbox that I wanted to punch in the face. I may be judging this film rather harshly, but the thing is, this is Marvel Studios, who are usually known for making good movies, nine of them being at least 8/10 in my book, so this ultimately somewhat let me down. Sure, Sony was involved, but Marvel Studios collaborated so I feel something like this is worth mentioning.
Thanks for reading this review, Christopher Nolan’s newest movie, “Dunkirk,” comes out in two weeks, so right now I’m doing a series of reviews dedicated to past Christopher Nolan films, this week I reviewed “Interstellar,” I haven’t made a final decision on what my next review should be, but you’ll see what I decided on when I finish the review. Although if you do want to check out my review for “Interstellar,” you’ll either see an icon that can take you to the review, or that’ll be the post below this one. Also, since this is a review for “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” I’ll have links down below to all of my other “Spider-Man” reviews. Check those out if you’re interested, I had fun making them, and I hope you have as much fun reading them. Stay tuned for more reviews! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
Hey everyone, Jack Drees here! Today I’m starting a series of reviews I plan to do, it’s either gonna contain two or three movies, I’m not done deciding yet. But the point is, “Dunkirk,” one of my most anticipated films of 2017, is gonna be out soon. That film is directed by Christopher Nolan, one of favorite directors of all time. So I figured I’d review some other films Nolan has directed prior to “Dunkirk.” The first film by Christopher Nolan I plan to tackle is actually his most recent work, “Interstellar,” it came out November 5th, 2014 in select theaters, and it came out November 7th everywhere else. So without further ado, let’s start the review.
“Interstellar” is directed by Christopher Nolan, as mentioned earlier, and it stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine. You also have some other important roles from Casey Affleck, Mackenzie Foy, David Gyasi, John Lithgow, and Timothee Chalamat. This film takes place in the future and Earth is dying, all sorts of plants are dying, wheat is dead, corn is soon coming to an end, and Matthew McConaughey teams up with other explorers in order to find a new home for mankind.
Here’s a true story about this film, this movie, when I purchased my Blu-Ray at a store, cost $49.99. For the record this was in a casino so everything’s a little pricier there as opposed to other places. But still, after a couple years of owning this Blu-Ray, I have to say my purchase was worth the money. Also, you may notice it says that it has an actual IMAX film cell inside, which was part of why I wanted this edition of the movie. Speaking of which, I’m gonna talk about my first experience of going to see this movie. When seeing this movie, I did not go to any of my local theaters. I actually went to a theater in Providence, RI, which was over an hour away from my house. Why? They had a very rare presentation. Remember how I said that this film released on November 5th in select theaters? This theater was one of them, and that’s because the theater was showing “Interstellar” on film. Nowadays, seeing a movie on film is a rare experience itself, but this was special. This theater had an IMAX. Also, it was an older one at that. And it shows because this IMAX had film equipment. If I saw this movie with IMAX digital equipment, I would have a cool experience, but something would be missing, I would either have a smaller screen, or a smaller image. Depending how footage shown in IMAX is shot, it could fill up the whole screen with no black bars. That’s how the presentation of “Interstellar” was for 66 minutes of its runtime. At certain IMAX digital theaters, you could get that, but the screen would be smaller. At other IMAX digital theaters, the image would be bigger, but it wouldn’t fill the whole screen. This is why IMAX film is superior to digital, I even go into it a little deeper in a recent post, if you want to read that, the link’s down below. Also, I just want to say, I went to this presentation with my aunt, and if she’s reading this, I can’t thank her enough.
Starting off the character segment of this review, let’s dive into the main character of the movie, Cooper. He’s played by Matthew McConaughey, who you may know from films like “The Wolf of Wall Street” a filmed praised by average moviegoers and critics alike, and films like “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” a movie with an opposite reaction, including an WFCC Hall of Shame award dedicated to McConaughey himself, with the following suggestion: “Matthew McConaughey as cardboard cutout misogynist, in one too many phone-it-in rom-coms featuring toxic bachelors.” One thing’s for sure in this movie, his performance was great. He had all the necessary emotions at the right times, and his character, much like everyone else in this movie, is well written and chosen by casting. Cooper has two kids, Tom and Murph, who we’ll get to eventually. He also lives with a character played by John Lithgow named Donald. The reason why he gets recruited to the mission to save mankind is because he’s a great pilot, and there aren’t many of them on Earth. Oh yeah, and he also hates farming, which sucks for him because that’s what the world needed during this movie. Not to mention he lives on a farm. One more thing worth mentioning is that while he’s often referred to by his last name, his first name is actually Joe.
Anne Hathaway, who you may know from “The Dark Knight Rises” and 2012’s “Les Miserables,” is also in this movie, and according to IMDb, her character’s name is Brand, but if you are curious to know her first name, that happens to be Amelia. Like Cooper, Amelia Brand is also a part of the mission. Watching her in this film, I noticed how she acted as a character and there’s one scene where she’s on this planet, she finds an entity, but there’s this giant wave that’s bigger than the wave you saw in the final moments of “Point Break” coming in towards her along with the rest of the crew, she says she needs to take this thing back to the ship. Although Cooper is against this, he’s forcing Amelia to just get back to the ship as quick as she can. Their chemistry throughout the entire segment on this planet, is believable and fluid. By the way, her father is also an important character when it comes to this film, but we’ll get to him later.
The last human character who goes into space worth bringing up is Romilly. He’s played by David Gyasi, and he honestly isn’t in the film all that much as opposed to other characters, but when he is in the film, he’s there for good reason. There’s one segment where he’s wearing a blue shirt, you’ll see what I mean.
There are multiple robots in “Interstellar,” but the one worth mentioning here goes by the name of TARS. Why is he worth mentioning? Simply because he’s the funniest character in the movie. He has a bunch of different settings that can be played around with, and the characters in this film actually do play around with the settings. Some of you might think of robots as these emotionless things that can’t even do anything but serve people, but this robot kind of is emotional per se, because of a unique feature, humor settings. They’re introduced at the point when the crew’s ship is launched into space and TARS says “Everybody good? Plenty of slaves for my robot colony?” Also, when he’s joking, there’s actually a cue which can suggest that.
Michael Caine is also in this film, and if you have seen some of Christopher Nolan’s past films, Caine’s appearance here might not be a surprise to you. Why? Because he was in a good number of Christopher Nolan movies prior to this one, in fact, I just looked at his IMDb page, and the films listed in his “known for” section are all films directed by Christopher Nolan. Yeah, it said he’s known for “The Dark Knight,” “Batman Begins,” “The Prestige,” and “Inception.” It’s almost as if he and Nolan are a team and they have some sort of unbreakable bond, somewhat like Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg, they’ve already done of films together based on true events, and I only wonder if they’ll do more in the future. Caine plays a professor, he’s also Anne Hathaway’s character’s father, which can be suggested by his name, Dr. Brand. He’s important to the mission, but he doesn’t go into space, he basically encourages Cooper into going on the mission. His side of the story is mainly developing an equation of his own in order to help the Earth survive. During the movie, he also happens to work with Cooper’s daughter, who we’re actually gonna talk about right now.
Cooper’s daughter goes by the name of Murph, kind of sounds like a guy’s name if you ask me, but still, that’s her name. Murph probably has the most interesting story out of each character who remains on Earth during this movie. Not to mention, the actors portraying her do a phenomenal job with the role they’re given. Let’s start off by talking about young Murph, played by Mackenzie Foy. Mackenzie Foy’s performance in this movie, as far as child performances go, may be one of the best I’ve ever seen. Her acting ability is so fluid, so believable, so emotional at various points, that I instantly felt a connection with this character at first sight. Her character as a child is shown to be very unique in this futuristic realm. I’ll get into why a little bit later, but now let’s talk about the adult version of Murph, played by Jessica Chastain. Much like Foy’s performance, I was able to believe Chastain’s character as a person. The moment she appears is probably gonna get you glued to the screen. I won’t describe the scene in detail, but I’ll give the first words spoken by Chastain in this movie: “Hey dad. You son of a bitch.”
Let’s move away from Murph and talk about Cooper’s other kid, Tom. The young version of Tom is played by Timothee Chalamet, and the old version of Tom is played by Casey Affleck. As far as Tom goes, performance-wise, I think the versions of Murph did better overall, I’m not saying the Tom performances suck, but they’re just not as good as the Murph performances. Also, Tom doesn’t get much screentime as Murph. Believe it or not, I’m not against this. We see both characters and get to know them a little bit, Tom doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with anything, and his behavior shouldn’t come as much of a surprise in real life considering his age. If you look at Murph, she cries occasionally in the movie, she does it as an adult, but she is ten years old for a period of the runtime. One of my favorite scenes between the adult versions of Tom and Murph is when there’s all sorts of drama going on on Earth, while at the same time, there’s drama going on on another planet. I won’t go into detail because I feel like the flavor should be savored for watching the movie, but if you guys have watched the movie and somehow don’t understand what I’m saying, I’ll give you a line uttered by Murph during this scene: “Dad didn’t raise you to be this dumb Tom!”
One of my favorite things about the movie is the score, composed by Hans Zimmer. In one of my recent reviews, specifically for “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” I mentioned Hans Zimmer did the score for that movie. I also mentioned that the score for that movie was underwhelming in some ways. This score however, IS NOT that. The score in this movie may be my favorite of all time! There are so many great pieces of music and it’s a soundtrack I often listen to. It works very well in the movie for every segment, and one of my favorite things about it is that when you’re listening to it, it’s almost like listening to a clock. At some points of the score, you can hear something that almost sounds like ticking or tocking, and at other points, it’s 60 beats per minute, which also means 1 beat per second, so that is kind of a suggestion of time. This sort of stuff is shown in pieces of music played during the movie called “Mountains” and “Coward.” Below I’m actually gonna place a few YouTube videos, they’re actually songs from the movie. You can listen to them if you want to, however it isn’t mandatory, but these are some of my favorite pieces from the film. Speaking of which, I want to know, what is your favorite movie score? Let me know in the comments!
There are a number of songs I like in this movie, however these are the ones I just felt like displaying here, so enjoy! Also, there’s one thing that I want to bring up that this part of the movie makes me think of.
Right here we have the director of the movie, Christopher Nolan, and sticking with a topic I mentioned earlier, look at the camera he’s got. That right there is an IMAX camera. And if you ever watched an IMAX documentary, those cameras are often used for them. They also have a 3D camera which is heavier than the one Christopher Nolan’s holding, although this movie wasn’t meant to be shown in 3D, and the same can be said for any Christopher Nolan movie, so Nolan thought this camera would do the trick. Also, if you consider the difficulties of both cameras, difficulties having to do with size, sound, etc., imagine how much harder it would be to use an IMAX 3D camera as opposed to an IMAX 2D cameras. They have made lighter versions over the years, but those are digital and Nolan is against digital cameras in general. When I saw this in the theater and the aspect ratio changed, my mind was going in circles with excitement. Also, if you buy the Blu-Ray, you can see the aspect ratio change there as well. Although it doesn’t change like it does in the theater. Because nowadays, people traditionally use widescreen TVs, and those are different in terms of aspect ratios as opposed to IMAX screens. So for the scenes shot in IMAX, you can get the aspect ratio of 1.43:1 in a traditional IMAX theater, you can get the aspect ratio of 1.90:1 in an IMAX digital theater, and on Blu-Ray you can get the aspect ratio of 16:9/1.78:1 for said scenes. I don’t know if you’ll experience that when streaming the movie on Amazon or Netflix or something, but I know the entire movie if shown on cable channels would be 1.78:1 with the exception of the opening credits. Although if you watch the movie on DVD, the entire movie will have black bars and the aspect ratio will be 2.35:1. The way it’s used in this movie is pretty awesome. It’s better in the theater, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it at home too. I was mentioning in the last paragraph about one of my favorite parts of the movie, when all of the drama starts in space, and it is shot with an IMAX camera, it soon cuts to the Earth drama, the Earth drama is shot with regular film cameras and is shown in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. It’s transitions like these that don’t feel jarring as opposed to other movies *coughs* “Transformers: The Last Knight,” that I’ve seen shot with IMAX cameras. By the way, this later turns into all IMAX shots for a period of time and it looked amazing on my TV.
The father-daughter relationship between Cooper and Murph is actually one of my favorite relationships in all of cinema. Each scene with these two characters together on screen was screenwriting bliss. It felt authentic, and right before Cooper leaves, you can understand both of the characters equally. At the beginning of the movie, Murph is ten years old, and Cooper is a grown man. Murph wants her father to stay, but Cooper says he has to leave. Let’s face it, I can actually relate to Murph, because one time I was actually 11 years old, my mother was going on a business trip to Arizona, I wanted my mother to stay, but she couldn’t. Mom never left me alone without her for a few days so the whole idea of it was scary at the time.
In search for a new home, the crew stopped by a couple of planets, one of them was icy and the other watery. I enjoyed all of the moments on each planet, but some of my favorite parts in the movie happened when the crew was on the icy planet. I will not dive into detail because this is a movie whose details are worth keeping in secret.
By the way, this is a long movie, it’s actually one of the longest movies to come out in the 2010s. If you ask me, I don’t mind the long runtime. This movie to me, in terms of runtime mixed with entertainment value is like watching any of the “Lord of the Rings” films. Sure, they’re long, but they’re amazing! This movie is so long in fact that when it was brought to the IMAX 70mm theaters, the movie almost couldn’t be projected because of how long it was.
You may have read throughout this post and noticed me say that I can’t dive into detail about certain aspects of the film. There are a couple of reasons for that. For one thing, some of the stuff in this movie wasn’t shown in the trailer. Another thing is that when I see certain segments in this movie it leaves me with some sort of emotion that I feel shouldn’t be wasted before you decide to watch this movie one day. Also, in my view, this movie, based on the premise, sounds like it can simply be enjoyed by a lot of people. But to truly appreciate it, you have to watch it. And when I say watch it, you can’t take your eyes off the screen too many times. Various parts of the film either involve absolute observing or die-hard thinking. In fact, I’ll tell you, almost single time I watch this film, there’s something I might not notice when watching previous times. So who knows? Even though as I’m doing this review and suggesting to you the high number of watches I’ve gotten with the movie “Interstellar,” there still might be stuff I haven’t noticed. Although I will say, if you have seen some of Christopher Nolan’s other films, this film may be less confusing depending on who you are. You’ll probably know what I mean if you have seen “Memento.” Then again I only watched that movie once so what do I know?
However, there’s one detail I feel like sharing. This movie takes place in the future, and one thing that’s brought into the movie is idea of the Apollo missions. Essentially, Cooper is at a parent-teacher conference at the school his kids go to, and one of the teachers is talking about Murph. This teacher says that she believes that the Apollo missions were faked in order to bankrupt the Soviet Union, suggesting she doesn’t believe one bit of those missions actually happened and it’s customary for people in the future to believe that the people of Earth never went to the moon. Not only is that an interesting idea to put in the movie, but with all of the people who deny that we actually went to the moon nowadays, I can only imagine what the future holds when it comes to that.
Now let’s get serious for a moment and I’ll ask you a question. Has a movie ever made you cry? I can’t say many films have done that for me. “Toy Story 3” almost did, the same can be said for “Ice Age,” and perhaps even “Inside Out,” but I don’t recall one time where I shed tears during a movie because of something happening in it. I’ve watched this movie many times, and I did feel emotions during multiple watches, however, I never cried… until the last time I watched it. I rewatched this film for the umpteenth time in preparation for this review, and as the movie was coming to an end, there’s a very emotional number of moments in this movie, as this was happening, I was choking, and tears were falling from my eyes at various points. I WILL NOT go into detail, I need you to see this for yourself. This is how much I love this movie, not many other movies can make me feel this way. I cry in real life, and honestly, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, but it’s very rare for me to cry during a movie, and when I do, how do you think I feel about it after watching it? When I first saw this film, I thought it was a good time, I truly appreciated it for its cinematography and effects, but overall it was not the best film I ever seen. Then I watched it a few more times, enjoyed it, but still thought it didn’t hit me or anything. Then the next time I watched it from beginning to end, and didn’t fall asleep because it was super late, I f*cking loved the hell out of it. Now I’m here at this point, where I actually cried. That says something, this is definitely up there with my favorite movies of all time, and this is one of those movies I can’t stop watching because of my own connection with it before going in, after coming out, the technical aspects, the story, and my own emotions I feel while watching this masterpiece.
Ultimately, “Interstellar” defines what I love about movies. It has great characters, excellent technical aspects, including cinematography, effects, set design, also good location choices when this movie was shot in the real world, a compelling story, great music, a high replay value, likable performances, and execution delivered with such ambition that it shows how much passion was put into a project by so many people. “Interstellar” probably isn’t a film for everyone. Some people say it takes forever get into space, and I get that. Some people say some of the science in the movie is flawed, and I get that. Some people say they find it confusing, and I get that. Some people think it’s long, and I get that. Some people think it’s boring, and I get that. Some people think Tom as a character doesn’t get enough attention, and while that is a complaint I disagree with, I get that. Some people might go in thinking this is truly all sci-fi and has a complete focus on the space exploration and not as much of the Earth stuff and the drama and tose people might end up disappointed by the results, and I get that. However, to me, these complaints aren’t ones I have, and while I do sometimes pick movies apart for scientific inaccuracies, for example in my review for “The Fifth Wave” I pointed out there was a physics error, this movie is good enough in all of its other terrific aspects for me to ignore scientific errors. I mean, I cried, and I never do that during movies, so that says something that can’t be said about many other movies I’ve viewed in my lifetime. I’m going to give “Interstellar” a 10/10. This is a movie you should watch at least once in your life, if you have a bucket list and you didn’t write “watch “Interstellar”” on it, I command you to write it down. Or if it is written down and it isn’t crossed off, make an effort to watch the movie in any way you can. If you ask me, I’d personally watch the Blu-Ray on the biggest screen possible, because this movie is meant for that, if I ever get kick-ass surround sound one day, this is a movie I would use as a test for that. But please, seriously, watch “Interstellar.” You’ll likely thank me later. Thanks for reading this review and next week I will be reviewing another Christopher Nolan film, I’m not sure what it’ll be, probably either “Inception” or “Batman Begins.” Also “Spider-Man: Homecoming” comes out this weekend, so I hope to go see that as soon as possible, and if you are on a “Spider-Man” high right now like I imagine a number of people are, be sure to check out my last movie review for “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” The link for it is down below, please check it out, and stay tuned for more reviews! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
Do not go gentle into that good night; Old age should burn and rave the close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. -Dr. Brand
“THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2” REVIEW: https://scenebefore.wordpress.com/2017/07/02/the-amazing-spider-man-2-2014-a-crappier-version-of-spider-man-3-spoilers/
Hey everyone, Jack Drees here! Not too long ago, a new trailer just came out for the “Jumanji” remake. I didn’t really plan on doing much of a review, I tweeted about it, but that’s how far I went with the whole subject. Although now I change my mind about that. By the way, this movie isn’t gonna be called “Jumanji,” it’s actually gonna be called “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.” So yeah, it’s kind of like “Ghostbusters: Answer the Call” from last year, even though just about every person I know that had some sort of exposure to the film calls it “Ghostbusters.” …Oh lord.
Before we talk about the trailer as a whole, this movie actually is going to star a bunch of people I can admire. For example, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, I’ve seen him in a lot of movies, he’s very charismatic, and he always seems to have a smile on his face no matter what he does. You’ve also got Kevin Hart, who I also like, and as a matter of fact, this is not the first time Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson are in a project together. Go watch “Central Intelligence” starring Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson, it’s a fun comedy and it has some cool action. You also have Jack Black, who you may know from various roles such as Po from “Kung Fu Panda,” R.L Stine in 2015’s “Goosebumps,” and you may have seen him as Carl Denham in 2005’s “King Kong.” And last but not least for cast members worth mentioning in terms of this paragraph is Karen Gillan, who you may know as Nebula from “Guardians of the Galaxy” and Amy Pond/Soothsayer from “Doctor Who.”
The point is, you’ve got all of these actors I’ve seen before, while some of these actors are people I’ve seen in more work than others, I think these folks have proven they are talented. The Rock has his line delivery and kickassery, Kevin Hart has his loudmouth voice, Jack Black can put some charm into multiple characters I’ve seen him portray, and Karen Gillan is not really an actress I’ve seen much of, but she’s still talented for the stuff I’ve witnessed her in. This sounds somewhat familiar, it somewhat reminds me of “Ghostbusters” from last year. You’ve got these four actresses, they are at least somewhat decent when it comes to overall talent, I like some of these actresses more than others, and all of them are wasted in a piece of crap movie!
I don’t watch the original “Jumanji” all that much, but when I do watch it, I’m always entertained, I love the movie, and while I can’t quote it from beginning to end, there’s a lot I can appreciate about it. The plot of the original film is that a board game gets discovered by a couple of kids, this board game however is not an ordinary board game like Monopoly or Clue or Trouble. This game can bring a host of dangers. There’s a man trapped inside the board game, he gets released, and you’ve also got a bunch of creatures attacking the players as well as other people, and it’s just a fun time. I also can really appreciate the ending. The writing for it is solid and visually, it’s eye candy. This upcoming movie has some big shoes to fill, but I don’t think this upcoming movie can cross a bridge in order to fill said shoes.
Alright, on with the trailer. When the trailer starts, the first vibe I get is that of a comedy, and don’t get me wrong, the original “Jumanji” was meant to be a comedy directed towards a family friendly demographic, but when it’s displayed in this trailer, it feels, weird. Then a bunch of teenagers who go to school together are forced by faculty to enter the school’s basement, and they find a game system. It kind of has a found-footagey feel without being a found footage movie, I honestly don’t know why except for the fact that I saw “Project Almanac.” Then one of the teenagers say “An adventure for those who seek to find. A way to leave their world behind. Jumanji.” That line was actually a tagline for the original movie. This suggests the movie’s biggest change. Jumanji’s a video game. I wasn’t for this originally, and I’m still not for it, and after seeing the trailer, words almost can’t describe how much I’m not for it. So these folks choose their characters. The black guy chooses Franklin “Moose” Finbar, the chick in the red tank top picks Professor Shelly Oberon, who she referred to as “the curvy genius”, the guy with the maskless Kylo Ren-esque hairstyle chooses to be Smolder Bravestone, and there’s another girl who’s left choosing one character, and that’s Ruby Roundhouse. Eventually get transported into the video game and they are not the same teenagers they once they arrive, they aren’t themselves anymore, they’ve turned into different people, you know, those actors I mentioned earlier.
This movie shows who these characters are in the video game and who they are in real life. There are some attempts at comedy, kind of like some attempts given earlier in the trailer, but they all fell flat to me. Even this one thing where the hot red tank top wearing chick from the real world turns out to be Jack Black in the video game. Then the trailer suddenly jumps into fast paced action, showcasing some special skills the video game characters have. Some of it stands out, while other portions of this showcase just appear to be OK in my eyes. We also get a chunk of a helicopter chase and it could be entertaining, but I wonder if the rest of the movie will allow me to enjoy it. After that, the title slide appears, then we get this scene where the characters are talking, and Jack Black gets bitten by a horrible looking CGI hippo. There’s some banter back and forth between Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson, and the trailer’s over.
The biggest problem I have with this video game idea is that it might mean that less is at stake in this movie compared to the 1995 version. The last movie took place in the real world, with real stuff. Also, the people were normal people, they weren’t superhuman, they were just trying to survive.
As far as comedy goes, so far, I didn’t find anything funny. Maybe Kevin Hart can save the movie. He does almost the same thing every time, but it works. Maybe there could be some funny moments in the movie here and there, and if there are, that would make the movie watchable at the very least. I just hope it’s funnier than “Ghostbusters” from last year, and speaking of which, I’m gonna bring up some parallels.
The “Ghostbusters” remake came out last year on July 15th, it was released by Columbia Pictures, which is owned by Sony. This “Jumanji” remake comes out December 20th of this year, so their release dates are during different seasons. Guess who’s got the rights to the film? Sony! Not only that, but it’s also the same company Sony owns, Columbia Pictures! Also, let’s take two stars from both original films: Harold Ramis and Robin Williams. Harold Ramis was in “Ghostbusters” and he played Egon, and Robin Williams was in “Jumanji” and he played Alan Parrish. Both actors are dead now. I can’t remember if the “Ghostbusters” remake had a thing in the credits saying “RIP: Harold Ramis,” but regardless of that, the movie was still distasteful! You can argue it was a good movie in terms of showing girl power, but in reality, it’s not. Because the girl power involved in that movie basically destroyed the male gender. Literally, at one point in the movie, the girls all get together and defeat a ghost by shooting their proton guns at the ghost’s crotch! If you want to show girl power, and you have men in your movie, you can have men appreciate what the girls are doing and root for them. Don’t do whatever the f*ck happened in that piece of s*it movie. I don’t think this upcoming “Jumanji” movie is gonna attempt to show any sort of thing dedicated to girl power, progressivism, or showing that women are “better then men,” or anything like that, but I just think this movie, like “Ghostbusters 2016,” is going to ruin some people’s childhoods.
Many people, including me, watched “Jumanji” at a younger age, and they probably still watch it today. One big problem from my view is the movie’s name. It has “Jumanji” in it. A saying I heard about this in the YouTube comments for this trailer said that this looks like a funny comedy. The person who said that is wrong in my book, but let’s go on. They also said that people are getting angry over this idea because of the name “Jumanji” being put in the title of the movie. Here’s my problem with that. I don’t work for Sony, I don’t work for Columbia, I have no relation to any work put into this movie, so therefore, I had no power in deciding the name for the movie nor did I have any power over any sort of process in this movie’s entire creation. The people behind this movie are basically telling me that I must view this as a “Jumanji” movie. What if the recent “Beauty and the Beast” remake were not a remake and instead, a ripoff, which I hear it pretty much is when compared to the Disney animation. Some people might think of it as a ripoff and they might say “I’ve seen this before,” so it might affect their verdict when judging the film. I don’t mind having a bunch of changes brought to a remake, as long as they work. The original movie, which I’ve seen, will likely be in my mind as I’m watching the movie, and throughout I might want some of the vibes you’d get from the original, unless of course the original sucks. Let’s just say this, if this film were called something else that could probably be a badass video game title, it might catch interest from more people. Although we already live in a world where “Jumanji,” a movie with a board game, exists, and we also live in a world where this claimed remake, which contains a video game, exists. Let’s also put it this way, what if “The Notebook,” a romance film about a poor man falling in love with a rich woman, was marketed as an action thriller and then everyone looking for action gets none of it? I know there’s a saying that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can also look at the cover, and see if that intrigues you to go on to discover what’s next. This trailer along with other stuff I’ve seen related to “Jumanji” is essentially a cover for the movie, and based on what I’m seeing, nothing looks all that intriguing, and part of it is in comparison to the original, along with the fact that I didn’t laugh once. But who knows? Maybe the funny parts are all in the movie, oh wait a minute that never f*cking happens!
I am planning to see this movie when it comes out, in fact it will probably end up being one of the last movies I see this year considering the time it comes out. However, I’m not really looking forward to it. So hopefully, despite my extremely low expectations for this, I can walk out with a shockingly good movie. And yeah, I do recognize that the other “Jumanji” movie isn’t original work, that was actually based on a book. Also, on a last note, I am not against remakes, I’m against unneeded remakes. Was this remake needed? I wouldn’t say so. Also, Universal, DON’T REMAKE “BACK TO THE FUTURE!” Thanks for reading this post, I honestly don’t know what to say anymore and I’m around two-thousand words in already.
Pretty soon I’m planning on doing a series of reviews related to movies done by Christopher Nolan, one of my favorite directors of all time. He is coming out with a new movie, “Dunkurk,” on July 21. He’s directed films such as “Memento,” “Insomnia,” “The Dark Knight” trilogy, “Inception,” and “Interstellar.” I’m not sure what film I’m gonna do first, but I want to know, if there is a particular film by Christopher Nolan you want me to review, what would it be? Please leave a comment, and I assure you I do read them. Stay tuned for more more great content! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is directed by Marc Webb, who also directed the first “Amazing Spider-Man” film, and stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, and Dane DaHaan in the fifth live-action “Spider-Man” film brought to the big screen. This film continues the story of Peter Parker in what is being called, according to all the movie’s marketing, “his greatest battle.” …Honestly it’s not. His greatest battle happened in 2004 in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2.” He has to stop the evil Electro, while at the same time, he regroups with an old friend, Harry Osborn, the son of Norman, whose name was mentioned in the last movie, but has a much bigger importance in this movie. Meanwhile, he has to balance all of that with his relationship with Gwen Stacy.
The year before this movie came out, that’s when I first aspired to make my own movies in Hollywood, that’s also when I started to look at all sorts of film news regarding films that come out long from the day its announced. This was one of those films I was really looking forward to. “The Amazing Spider-Man” wasn’t the best Spidey flick I’ve seen, but it didn’t mean I lacked faith in its then upcoming sequel. When I first saw the first trailer for it, my excitement grew, and before it came out, it was my most anticipated film of 2014 right below the final “Hobbit” film. I liked the film when I first saw it, but as time passed, the film went from being good, to just being OK. Before watching this film again, I wondered if this opinion would change. So how was the experience of rewatching this movie? It was worse than I thought it would be. There were some cool moments, but this experience of rewatching this movie, was surprisingly boring and surprisingly almost anger-inducing. So much crap is happening in this movie that it isn’t even funny! You think a lot of crap happens in “Batman v. Superman?” A lot of the crap you see that movie, at least in my book, PAYS OFF! This movie almost seems to never know what it ultimately wants to be! It’s just a bunch of tones combining together in one product! It’s like putting peanut butter on pizza. Peanut butter is an unthinkable pizza topping and even if your friends call you boring for doing so, you’re probably better off ordering cheese pizza. Which reminds me, hilariously enough, this movie is full of cheese.
Andrew Garfield returns in this movie as Peter Parker, and when I compare Andrew Garfield with Tobey Maguire from Raimi’s trilogy, I do think there are some things I like better one way as opposed to the other. One pro Garfield has compared to Maguire is his age. He was a bit younger than Tobey when playing Peter in each of their first “Spider-Man” movies and he was also younger than Tobey was when they were doing their own second installments. Another pro Garfield has is his line delivery. OK, well, this isn’t entirely directed towards Garfield as an actor, nor is it directed towards Maguire, it’s more towards the writing. Garfield’s interpretation of “Spider-Man” is slightly more faithful to its source material. What do I mean? Garfield’s Spidey gives more quips as opposed to Maguire’s. Sure, Maguire did that too, but not as much. Although as Peter Parker, I think the better interpretation goes to Maguire. It was believable, it showed how much of a nerd he was, and it wasn’t as awkward. OK, you have every right to bring up some segments in “Spider-Man 3” which I consider understandable. Speaking of faithfulness to the source material, Spidey has web shooters. I personally prefer Spidey shooting webs out of his wrists simply because believe it or not, it sounds more practical. You have this high schooler, you have no verification that he or his family is rich, and now he’s making all of this technology that could be costing a lot of money. The creator of “Spider-Man,” Stan Lee, actually has a criticism for all of this. He likes the web shooters because at any point Spidey could run out of fluid and he’s forced to rely on his wits. By the way, Stan, Stanny, Stan by me, Superstan, if you’re reading this, which you probably aren’t, because you’re probably at a convention right now or something, I need you to rewatch Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2.” Spider-Man doesn’t exactly run out of fluid, but he has trouble producing it, which eventually leads to him losing his powers, I honestly think that’s better, but you do you. Also, from my memory, between the two films in Marc Webb’s Spidey series, Spidey never runs out of fluid. One of his web shooters becomes disabled, but he never runs out of fluid. If you ask me, after watching every “Spider-Man” film brought to the big screen that exists today, I’ve come to the conclusion that Tobey Maguire is my preferred “Spider-Man.” He may not be as funny, but he’s extremely relatable, I’m able to care about him, and his interpretation may be arguably the most realistic interpretation of a superhero I’ve ever seen.
Emma Stone also returns in this movie, and she once again plays Gwen Stacy. One key difference between her character compared to the love interest in Raimi’s trilogy, Mary Jane, is that Gwen is never a damsel in distress. Now, some of you might be getting tired of that sort of thing, and believe me, I don’t mind Gwen as a character being someone who’s able to stand up for herself, but at the same time, it makes her a dumbass, we’ll get to that in a second, but let’s talk about her in the beginning of the movie. We first see her in this movie graduating high school. She’s the valedictorian and she gives this speech that is supposed to have a huge meaning in the movie as a whole, Peter comes in after trying to complete the mission he’s taking on at the movie’s opening, he kisses Gwen on the lips. Kind of cringeworthy if you ask me. Although we do get a pretty good Stan Lee cameo. The relationship between Peter and Gwen is kind of off and on. They start off as boyfriend and girlfriend, they have an awkward conversation, awkward mainly for me, the viewer, which then leads to the two breaking up. Peter then stalks Gwen Stacy, which he later admits, so yeah, basically this attempt at making a “Spider-Man” movie turned into the superhero version of “Twilight” for a few seconds… Weird. The two eventually become friends, then it’s almost like they become friends with benefits. No, they don’t have sex, they kiss once in a closet, so you can probably call them friends with minor benefits. Then the two reunite as boyfriend and girlfriend just before Gwen is supposed to leave on a plane to the United Kingdom because she just got accepted to Oxford and they have summer classes. It’s a very rocky relationship, kind of like this movie. Oh, and you know how I mentioned when it comes to the character of Spidey in this series compared to the previous one that they are slightly more faithful to the comics? Well, in terms of faithfulness, this movie’s final act is faithful to Gwen Stacy too. Right before the big bloated electric battle begins during the end of the movie, you can see Gwen and if you know anything about the comics, and you watch this movie, just look at her outfit. It may look familiar to you. Some of you might be asking why I’m bringing this up. Well, in this movie, spoiler alert, I said there were spoilers in the title of the post, so if you are at this point without having seen the movie and you care so much, only blame yourself, Gwen dies. When she dies, she’s actually wearing the same exact outfit she wore when she died in the comics. Another thing I actually just found out, is that when she dies, it’s in a clock tower, and when that happens, it says 1:21. And if you read the comics, Gwen dies in issue 121. On the topic of Gwen, let’s talk about some other things.
One thing I want to bring up is the character of Captain Stacy, who is also Gwen’s father, which if you saw the movie which came out before this one, he dies in that. Before he dies, he says the words displayed in the image above. Peter actually sees Gwen Stacy’s dad throughout the film, not literally, because he’s dead, but it’s almost as if Captain Stacy is in front of him. Peter disobeying Captain Stacy’s dying words and seeing Captain Stacy at the end of the movie should have been a sign for him that Gwen could get in trouble. After seeing that, I wonder how obvious in terms of foreshadowing this would be to people. During my first few watches, I don’t remember seeing it all that much until recently. Although I probably did notice it and it just slipped from my memory because it’s been a while since I saw this movie. Also, I want to know, if you saw the movie, did you notice this? And what are your thoughts on it? I want to know in the comments.
When Gwen Stacy shows up as Spider-Man is fighting around the power grid, she says she must be here because she knows how this grid operates and that sort of thing, but she has to make it clear that being here is “her choice.” Listen, I get if you want a progressive female character that girls can look up to in a movie, but the problem here is, Gwen doing this, is just idiotic by the standards of common sense. “Highly Illogical,” as Spock puts it. Gwen has no superpowers, so it would be like me, a guy who hasn’t played a game of ice hockey in his life, suddenly joining the NHL. In fact, when Gwen dies, I blame her more than Peter. I mean, sure, when she died it was sad, but if you remember the quote from Captain Stacy which was recently brought up, Spidey tried to leave Gwen out of it, but she forced herself in. Sure, Spidey failed at getting rid of Gwen at that moment, but still. How could he? Maybe some blame can go towards the web slinger for failing, but Gwen nevertheless brought herself in.
On a different subject, let’s talk about some bad guys. One of the biggest problems people have with this film are the villains. If you remember “Spider-Man 3” from 2007, you may recall that people disliked it partially due to the movie having three villains (New Goblin, Sandman, and Venom). In this movie, the main villain according to the film’s marketing was Electro (right). However, Spider-Man interacts with certain people in this movie who potentially become villains, including the Green Goblin (middle), and the Rhino (left). So in a way, the “Spider-Man 3” problem exists in this movie. This problem is overall done differently, but nevertheless, it exists. Speaking of which, let’s talk about those villains.
Starting off with Electro, his character is played by Jamie Foxx and overall I thought the buildup for his character, going from average person to villain was very compelling and in a way, I was able to understand how he felt at certain points of the movie. At the beginning of the movie, Spider-Man is going around the city trying to complete an objective, and there’s this guy named Max. He’s going around the city and all of these blueprints he’s carrying fall out of his hands. Spidey lends a helping hand to him regarding the blueprints and he says that Max is Spidey’s “eyes and ears.” Max throughout the first act is treated rather horribly by those he works with, especially considering it is his birthday. As far as other positives go, I really liked the first fight sequence between Spidey and Max in Times Square. At times it is full of CGI, much like another portion of the movie that I bet you might predict I’m thinking of, but still, I enjoyed it. Speaking of CGI, there was this one sequence when Electro was blasting this amazingly massive sparkle wave throughout Times Square, that certainly did a lot of damage. Despite all of what I said so far, I do have some criticisms. Electro feels like a superhuman whose powers give you the will to do anything. At times, it’s almost as if the screenwriter needed a scene to make sense so he’d put in a power we have yet to witness from Electro and it just feels absurd. In fact, there’s one point where we see him, and he’s wearing nothing but boxer shorts. I mean, kids watch these movies so you can’t show any penises, but really?! Just do some closeups on Electro and cut his legs off! Might look weird in terms of presentation but it might make Electro slightly more convincing. Either that or crop the image or something!
Speaking of awful, let’s go onto Dane Dahaan. In this movie, he’s portraying the character of Harry Osborn, and if you know anything about “Spider-Man,” he’s the son of Norman Osborn. You may remember from the last movie, there was a subplot involving Norman and how he was gonna die soon. You barely saw his character during the movie, but still, that plot was a thing. Turns out in this movie, he actually has more screentime. How much screentime in total? Probably less than a few minutes. Norman actually ends up dying moments after talking to Harry and it turns out that the disease that was the killer for Norman happened to be genetic. Interestingly enough, Harry is getting this disease at a much quicker rate than Norman. This leads into a subplot that just got duller by the second. This subplot involves Harry getting a cure for himself. Eventually, he says that he needs Spider-Man’s blood. Part of this is based on research done by Peter’s father and the fact that Spider-Man himself was bitten by a Spider. Now let’s drift away from that and talk about Dane DaHaan himself. I haven’t watched much of Dane DaHaan’s work, but I hear he’s gonna be in “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” a movie I’m really looking forward to. Although it comes out the same day as “Dunkirk” so I’m gonna put “Valerian” behind that on my must see list. I don’t know how well or poor he does in other movies, but in this movie, Dane DaHaan may have given what I consider to be part of my top 10 worst performances of all time. Dane starts out in this movie as if he were a slow talker. Like, imagine if “Seinfeld” were soft rebooted today and the original cast came back to do more episodes, and if they did one involving an over-dramatic slow talker, this would be a character if the episode had a really dark vibe. Later on, it becomes better, but it’s really weird. Plus the way Harry looks as the Green Goblin is creepy, but I almost don’t buy it for some reason. Anyone else feel that way?
This paragraph is gonna focus on Aleksei Sytsevich, otherwise known as Rhino. This character is played by Paul Giamatti, a fairly respected actor from films like “Saving Private Ryan,” “Cinderella Man,” and “Saving Mr. Banks.” Much like Dane DaHaan in this film, this guy’s performance is weak. I personally like Giamatti’s performance as opposed to DaHaan’s, but that doesn’t say much because watching his performance was almost like watching a cartoon. The first few seconds of him on screen, he’s just obnoxiously yelling random mumbo jumbo that I guess can also be referred to as words, this is all being done while he’s driving a truck and the camera is just focusing on him as he’s shouting. You can argue that Spider-Man acts like a cartoon in this movie with those endless quips he’s got, but I can buy into it. If this was a voiceover role in an animation I might be a little bit more forgiving, but it doesn’t work in a live-action film like this.
Let me ask you something, have you ever seen a movie that you thought was so bad it was good? Common examples among people for this include: “Batman & Robin,” “The Room,” “Troll 2,” “Birdemic,” “Sharknado,” or “Nicolas Cage: The Movie,” yes, that’s not a real movie but if you know who Nicolas Cage is and follow his work you’d most certainly get my point. If “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” qualifies to be that sort of film, it does by a hair, at least that’s how I feel for now, but I do think there are more moments in this movie that can make this film hysterically bad compared to “Spider-Man 3.” I can actually ENJOY “Spider-Man 3” compared to this piece of crap! Aside from the future meme of Paul Giamatti’s performance in this movie, one of my personal favorite examples of this movie’s plethora of hilariously awful moments include this one scene where Spider-Man is going up against Electro. So the two are fighting in this CGI-infested battle, I mean, it’s a cliche in superhero movie climaxes so whaddaya expect? All of sudden, Electro flies from one structure of the grid to another, and from each structure to the next, is one syllable from “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Hearing it is funny enough, but it’s also funny to hear Spidey talking about it saying “I hate this song!” By the way, that’s not the only time “Itsy Bitsy Spider” was used in a “Spider-Man” movie. It was used in the finale of Sam Raimi’s first “Spider-Man” movie from 2002. Yeah, the Green Goblin was on his glider and he began singing, “The Itsy Bitsy Spider went up the water spout. Down came the goblin and took the spider out.” If these guys wanted to bring any more hilarity to the table, they should have put in “Boris the Spider” by The Who somewhere! I feel like I should talk about more of these, so you know what? I’m gonna talk about more of these.
There’s this one moment where Peter and Gwen are talking, they’re thinking of just being friends. At one point, Peter thinks of developing some ground rules now that they are friends. One of them is that Gwen needs to laugh differently than she usually would. So at one point she gives off this really corny laugh and it’s almost like listening to a female version of the Joker or the Green Goblin. In fact, Harry shouldn’t be the Green Goblin in this movie, Gwen should (laughs normally, not at all like Gwen).
This next moment isn’t exactly hilariously awful, it’s just… awful. Part of the movie is devoted to Peter finding the truth behind what happened to his birthparents. Some of it feels awkward, some of it feels like it wasn’t worth hearing, and this moment, just feels… insane. There is this bag that is shown at the beginning of the film, it’s ignored until somewhere beyond the halfway point. It had all of Peter’s father’s stuff inside. I don’t even know if I’m gonna end up getting the entirety of this information right, but this movie doesn’t feel right, so this movie and I may as well call it even. One of Peter’s father’s items was a calculator. Peter ends up breaking this calculator and inside it happens to have some subway tokens. Peter all of sudden starts doing some research and heads to the area which this subway is located. So he’s in this underground station, there’s a gateway where you put in your token, Peter puts one in and he goes through the gate, there’s no train on the tracks. Turns out there’s a train is underground! Peter actually pushes a wall in order to bring it up! What the s*it?! What idiot wrote this?! Who thought of this?! Inside there is actually a computer that contains a video Richard Parker, Peter’s father, made. Just… why?! This is f*cking New York f*cking City, not Smurf Village!
I want to talk about the score in this movie. Thus far, I’ve mentioned that I enjoyed every single score in a “Spider-Man” film I reviewed. This film, is inferior to the others in terms of that. I’ve likely heard less impressive scores throughout my life, but this film is the worst of the “Spider-Man” movies when it comes to the score. The music in this film was done by Hans Zimmer, one of my all time favorite movie composers. He’s also had experience with making scores for superhero movies prior to this one. If you watched Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, he did each one of those movies. He even did my favorite movie score, which is in “Interstellar,” a movie that came out six months after this movie. If you watch this movie and that movie, you can tell the same guy did both scores because they sound very similar at certain points. The biggest problem I have with this score, is this dubstep theme he did for Electro. I’ve listened to the theme on it’s own and I don’t exactly mind the music, as music, it’s fun to listen to. But when you place it in this movie, it just doesn’t work. My suggestion is probably putting this theme in the credits, which by the way, we’re gonna get to. There were some likable moments in the score, but in the end, it cannot even come close to rivaling Danny Elfman’s scores in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” trilogy.
Oh yeah, let’s talk about the ending of this movie, it sucks! It all starts out with a sinister six teaser, then it continues to a point which the public wonders where Spider-Man is, then Spidey is in the city, he’s about to take down Rhino, a villain you may know from the comics. He was shown in the trailer and there’s this one shot that looked pretty cool in it, the shot was shown in the movie, and as soon as they start fighting, the movie’s over! This ending might be disappointing to a lot of people, but a small shred of disappointment might be added if you were watching the trailer and were looking forward to that.
Now let’s dive into the movie’s end credits, because there is an end credits scene worth talking about. And just a reminder to you all, I wouldn’t be saying this to you if I were reviewing the movie back in 2014. I might point out that there is an end credit scene, but that’s pretty much all I’d say. But I want to bring a little more depth to the table. I still recall the first time I saw this movie, it was a sold out IMAX showing, or should I say lie-MAX because it was shown in IMAX digital (I’ve ranted about it more than once). There were about 500 people in the theater. Once the movie was over, a good number of them, including me, actually stayed for the credits. So we’re watching, throughout there is this song by Alicia Keys playing called “It’s On Again.” That song comes to an end, and we see this flashing, then we are cut to a door with an X on it, that signifies that we are getting a scene related to “X-Men,” which does make sense because “X-Men: Days of Future Past” has yet to come out and it was going to be in theaters soon. Once that’s over, we go back to credits, and throughout there are no other scenes. Now just a reminder to you all, I own the Blu-Ray for this film. It also comes with a DVD and digital download copy code so you can watch the movie digitally. I watched the Blu-Ray version in preparation for this review, and that was not the only time I watched the movie in that specific format. On the Blu-Ray, and this can also give a little suggestion to other home video formats as well, the end credit scene isn’t there! Now, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is a Sony film, and FOX owns the rights to the “X-Men” movies, so putting that scene in this movie is a little bit out of the ordinary. If that clip existed solely for the sake of promoting “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” a movie which came out three weeks after this one, I get it, but removing it entirely from the film later on is just wrong in my book! There are some people who enjoyed that in the theater and may have been looking forward to watch it again at home, but they don’t get to see it! I wonder if one day there will be another edition of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” released on home video and it will be subtitled “The Theatrical Cut,” and that cut will feature the “X-Men” end credit scene. For those of you who think I’m creating fake news and you plan to call out on me like Donald Trump, I have video proof, and I’ll mention once again, I WAS AT THE THEATER, so I saw something that maybe you didn’t. There is another video of this I found on YouTube that may have better quality, but I’m posting this video you’re seeing up above because in case you can’t tell, that was taken by someone in a movie theater, which was the only way you could really watch this scene. Also, if it looks kinda weird, that’s because the presentation was in 3D, quite possibly IMAX 3D.
In the end, my thoughts on “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” has changed quite a bit from what they were last time I thought about it. Last time I thought about it, I thought it was just OK, but now it’s sadly worse than that. The “X-Men” thing won’t affect my score, but everything else will. This movie is nothing but a bunch of scenes that are randomly placed together. Peter Parker was awkward, Gwen Stacy was stupid towards the end of the movie, there were too many subplots, Aunt May was rather annoying, there’s one moment from the start of the film that comes to mind when I say this, the script almost felt like it was written by Akiva Goldsman, the writer of “Batman & Robin,” Paul Giamatti is basically the Heavy from “Team Fortress 2,” and Dane DaHaan, just, why? Why Dane DaHaan? Why did this happen? If you watch this movie, you might have some fun watching it, but ultimately, if what you’re looking for is a good “Spider-Man” movie, watch “Spider-Man” from 2002 or “Spider-Man 2” from 2004. A couple last things before I give my rating, this movie has a good chunk of deleted scenes. Including a moment when Peter meets his father in person and the introduction of Mary Jane Watson played by Shailene Woodley (Divergent, The Secret Life of the American Teenager). This movie as a final product is the longest “Spider-Man” film ever made. If these scenes were included, the final product would have only been longer. I’m gonna give “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” a 3/10. For the record, I actually gave “The Amazing Spider-Man” a higher verdict, but in the end, I’d probably much rather watch this movie. Why? It may not be as well crafted as a film, but I can still enjoy some of the goofiness it has to offer. Not to mention, “The Amazing Spider-Man” is essentially something the world has seen before in “Spider-Man” from 2002, which was a better flick, this however is a different movie. Thanks for reading this review and I can now declare that my series of reviews dedicated to past “Spider-Man” movies is over. I want to know, if there is a series of film reviews you want me to do, what would it be? Right now I think I have one in mind. In a few weeks, the movie “Dunkirk” comes out, and that is a film directed by Christopher Nolan. Maybe before that, I should do some of his films from the past. Maybe I could do “Inception,” “Interstellar,” “Memento,” “Insomnia,” or his “Dark Knight” trilogy. This isn’t official, but I’m just saying I might keep it in mind. We’ll see what happens. Also, what is your favorite “Spider-Man” film? Mine’s “Spider-Man 2” by the way. And no, “Captain America: Civil War” doesn’t qualify. If you want to read any of my other “Spider-Man” reviews, I’ll have links to those posted down below. Hope you enjoy those and I hope to see “Spider-Man: Homecoming” in theaters as soon as possible. Stay tuned for more reviews! Scene Before is your click to the flicks, and now, I’m gonna leave you with a horribly delivered quote from Harry Osborn in this movie that I find hilarious.
“On my 16th birthday, you sent me Scotch.” -Harry Osborn
Scene Before 