Spider-Man - Far From Home

Get Parker

Spider-Man - Far From Home
USA 2019 Directed by Jon Watts
UK cinema release print

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Well, Spider-Man - Far From Home is an okay follow up to the various Tom Holland starring Spider-Man movies of recent years. It’s not without its problems though and while various critics have claimed that this film is the first of what many people are calling ‘superhero fatigue’ at the box office... I think we have a while to go before that sets in yet. I think the somewhat muted response to this film is possibly because of the stealth approach to the title character but I’ll get onto that in a minute.

Of the superhero movies released by Marvel so far this year, I’d say this runs second place behind X-Men - Dark Phoenix (reviewed here) but way in front of the ‘so-so but not terrible’ Captain Marvel (reviewed here) and the terribly disappointing Avengers - Endgame (reviewed here)... so I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, for this year at least, DC wins the best superhero movie prize with their inappropriately unfaithful (to the original comics) but immensely fun SHAZAM! movie (which I reviewed here).

So... the new Spider-Man has a lot of the stuff which worked from Spider-Man Homecoming (reviewed by me here) tossed in with some excellent performances from Tom Holland as Peter Parker, Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds and the truly wonderful Zendaya as MJ. There are a lot of old Spider-Man character references in these movies but they’re so changed from the versions of them found in the original source material that, once again, characters are given the names of their comic counterparts only and have nothing of the look and feel of them. It’s a shame but it kinda works if you can forget these were comic book characters.

It looks spectacular but it kinda drags a lot, to be honest and I think the real problem with this for me is that you never really get to see Spider-Man in one of his regular costumes until near the end of the movie. He’s either winging it with a stolen half mask or wearing a ridiculous ‘Night Monkey’ costume and none of it really gives you that Spider-Man vibe that fans of the character may want. This is not to say there’s not a lot of action but it just doesn’t feel like anything great and I also think the lack of human, villanous henchmen during the fight scenes, instead of fighting big monsters which, anyone who knows who Mysterio is from the comics anyway, will know are just smoke and mirrors, just takes things away from having any stake in the characters.

Some good stuff though... Jake Gyllenhaal is great as Mysterio and when you see him finally from a different viewpoint, he switches into Spidey nemesis mode subtly and it’s very well played. Also, bringing back Happy played by Jon Favreau and having him dating Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May is great. Samuel L. Jackson and Cobie Smulders are back too and they do some nice stuff between them.

The main meat of the story though, for my money, is the blossoming relationship between Petey and MJ, which really is what this film is all about as far as I’m concerned, along with MJ ‘discovering’ Peter’s secret identity. Alas, once more this doesn’t happen in the same way as the comics, where it turns out that Mary Jane knew he was Spider-Man even before they’d first met... but they at least let MJ figure it out for herself here so, that’s kind of cool.

Now then, there are two post credits scenes here and, unusually for a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, they’re both kinda important in terms of story beats. The first one sees a famous Spider-Man character from a previous version of the franchise (the Sam Raimi series of films) return. Interestingly, since the person playing this character was so good doing it before, they’ve got the same actor back from that earlier franchise. Now, I did kinda thought this was going to happen with the same actor actually... but I thought they might take another couple of films to do it so everybody could forget this person was in it before. Nope, they’ve really gone for it here although, it has to be said, the revelations of this mid-credits cameo may mean that he really can’t be in it a lot in future movies (although he’ll have to be in the next one, for sure). Also, they cut out a nicely done scene which was shown in the trailer for this movie and, with the consequences implied by this first post-credits scene on the future direction of the franchise, it would have made a lot of sense to keep it.

The second and final post credits scene is also something of an eye opener although, it has to be said, I was a little disappointed in the direction Marvel chose to take this. All I’ll say about this one is... you really need to have seen Captain Marvel to really understand what’s going on here.

And... that’s me more or less done on Spider-Man - Far From Home, I think. It’s an okay movie with a nice score by Michael Giacchino which does ‘more of the same’ as the previous Spiderman - Homecoming although, sadly it doesn’t use the old cartoon series music this time around. There are some cleverly thought out, retrofitting link-ins with the various sub-villains here too, with flashbacks to previous MCU movies like Iron Man and Captain America - Civil War. Ultimately, though, this is not enough to elevate it to being a ‘great’ superhero movie... it’s just a nice addition which has its problems but I suspect it will still do some box office (although possibly not as much on repeat performance as the company might be expecting from it... I certainly have no desire to rush back and see it again). I do look forward to seeing how they go about dealing with the challenge they’ve set themselves here in any sequel, though but... I also feel like Marvel really need to raise their game to continue with the unprecedented box office dominance which they’ve managed to hold for over ten years now. Great writing would surely fix this issue. This movie feels like the franchise is getting a little lethargic and, while I had fun, I was certainly underwhelmed too. It’s still worth a watch though... especially if you’re not too hung up on the comic book versions of the characters who are, mostly, not in evidence here.

The Lego Movie 2 - The Second Part

One Brick Pony

The Lego Movie 2 -
The Second Part
2019 Denmark/Norway/Australia/USA
Directed by Mike Mitchell
UK cinema release print.

Well... here Lego again.

The Lego Movie 2 - The Second Part is a sequel to both The Lego Movie (reviewed here) and The Lego Batman Movie (reviewed here) and I have to admit my expectations were pretty high because I thought both those movies were really good. Alas, this new movie comes off as just another brick in the box office wall and gives us a somewhat dull and lifeless sequel, it has to be said.

Now, I realise I’m not really the target audience but the first film was able to deliver a mostly solid storyline with a lot of stuff going on and a humorous script that worked at both a child and adult level. The Lego Movie 2 - The Second Part doesn’t quite perform the same kind of entertainment, I thought. While there are certainly the odd throwaway sexual innuendos tossed into the script, this feels much more like a kids movie than a family film and, I have to say, I did find myself clock watching on this one, to a certain extent.

Now the film does a lot of good stuff and, don’t get me wrong, there’s still some nice surprises in here. It helps that you have a group of characters who are genuinely likeable, reprised from the original installment. And, sure, it’s got a certain amount of wit and charm along with some inventive ideas but... I dunno, it just doesn’t seem as prolifically inventive as the first part and although there was undoubtedly a lot going on in each frame... it really didn’t feel like it was really worth studying too closely by going back for a second watch. Also, it’s interesting that no characters from Star Wars or Marvel Comics made it into the movie this time around. I think the Lego Marvel characters were absent from the first film too due to some rights issues with Disney but at least the Marvel thing is discussed on screen here.

There are a couple of things here though which were real problems for the way I viewed the movie and one of them has to be the amount of songs in here. It’s not quite a musical but it is close and there are some cute but ‘not so clever as they think they are’ songs in this one featuring as breaks in a narrative which really doesn’t need them. I grew up in the 1970s watching various comedy sketch shows of the period which insisted adding in atrocious comedy songs each week and what that taught me was that, no matter how witty the people writing the lyrics on those things thought they were, they just weren’t funny and dragged to the point that you really didn’t want to watch any more of the show.... and I got that feeling here too. The songs just weren’t that good... some of the lyrics were okay but, yeah, the lyrics didn’t get 'stuck in my head', even as they’d promised they would and I was basically just wishing for them to end for the most part.

The other problem I had with this film was with something which was set up in the first movie but which, thankfully, The Lego Batman Movie safely ignored... having characters cross over into the real world. Like a Toy Story movie, a few of the characters manage to ‘get out’ of their own reality and there were a number of scenes where the narrative kept jumping back to the real world with Will Ferrell and Maya Rudolph. The original sequence in the first movie was a real pace killer and, similar moments in this film provide exactly the same problems. I could really have done without this stuff.

Mark Mothersbaugh returns as the score composer on this and he does a nice job once again (asides from the songs, which would have been better absent). I might grab the score album at some point but I can live without it for now.

A big cheer goes to the scriptwriters for starting straight up from the ‘Duplo’ ending of the first movie  but, continuing on with a plot that seems half stolen from Zathura (which I’ve not seen but even I could see the similarities) and a general, vague feeling that nobody really had anything clever to add in to the somewhat ‘by the numbers’ script kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the opening set up, in all honesty.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about this one. I don’t think this will be going on anybody’s top ten lists and I just felt the film was a bit lifeless in comparison to the previous two. The Lego Movie 2 - The Second Part is in cinemas now and if you’ve got kids who like Lego then you can’t really go wrong with taking them to see this one... just don’t expect too much out of it when you’ve got your ‘adult head’ on. Everything’s not awesome in this one.

Jack Reacher - Never Go Back

The Reacher 
Walks Among Us

Jack Reacher - Never Go Back
2016 China/USA Directed by Edward Zwick
UK cinema release print.

Jack Reacher - Never Go Back marks the second time that Tom Cruise has played Lee Child’s modern, literary hero after starring in the excellent Jack Reacher (reviewed by me here). At the time I saw that I was not the biggest Tom Cruise fan but I also didn’t turn off just because of the man’s unfortunate religious choices and, in the four years since I saw that one I’ve warmed to him much more as an actor who makes smart choices, does the job well and is, generally speaking, a decent human being (scientology aside and, frankly, I don’t want to taint this review by giving a showcase to that stuff).

This is apparently based on the 18th book in the Reacher series (the first movie was based on the ninth) and this one is a worthy successor to the original movie. I didn’t quite like it as much and it has an ever-so-slightly different feel to it but I suspect this is because the book is possibly more friendly to the Hollywood action genre rather than any specific changes in adaptation... although I’m sure that the company have made their fair share of those too. I’ve never read any of the novels myself but Lee Child continues to show support to the movie series by, once again, taking a small cameo role in the film.

This movie is all about a possible romantic interest for Reacher, who is in Washington to take a military lady out for dinner after a number of phone calls over the years. Her name is Turner and she’s played by one of Marvel’s finest Agents of SHIELD, Cobie Smulders, as seen in a fair few of their movies. However, when Reacher finally looks her up she is under military confinement for charges brought against her and, since Reacher figures she hasn’t done anything to warrant it, he also finds himself framed and under arrest for suspicion of murdering her lawyer pretty quickly. So he breaks her out of the military base and the two go on the lam, hunted by the US government and a team of ruthless assassins who want them dead while they try to piece together what brought all this into play.

A further complication on the way is the fact that Reacher may, or may not, have a teenage daughter he never knew about and now she has to go on the run with Reacher and Turner because, by a dramatic twist of fate, the assassins know about her and so they’re coming for her too.

And so here you have a recipe for an action movie which can involve male/female bonding, potential father/daughter bonding, potential girlfriend/potential daughter bonding and, surprisingly but refreshingly for a big budget Hollywood movie, female antagonism of the title character due to his sexist attitude... and yeah, this movie runs with it all and manages to hit all those emotional beats with room to spare. Which is no mean feat considering the pacing of the film which, frankly. doesn’t hang around in the same ways which were a key strength of the first movie... instead, devolving this into more of a slightly inferior Hollywood action blockbuster but, frankly, no less a fun one.

What I mean by that is that the first Jack Reacher was slower and had more of a suspenseful, genuine thriller air to it. You could imagine someone like DePalma or even, without too much of a stretch, Hitchcock directing certain scenes in the first one. That opening sniper scene in Jack Reacher, for instance, was a powerful set up. This movie is more like what you would expect from modern Hollywood action cinema... it’s a run, chase, punch, shoot and repeat movie for most of its running time but, as I said, it’s a damned good one so I’ve not really got much of a problem with this.

I don’t know much about director Edward Zwick but I did notice... and I’m not sure if this is a conscious thing or not... that he’s introducing certain characters and situations with a very quick establishing shot before refocusing on the main character in a shot with a slow pan or some such technique to give you a kind of ‘closer look in’ at who or what he wants you to notice. It sounds kinda lame that he should follow a regular establishing shot of, say, a character to do this... after all, think of what Spielberg does in the Indiana Jones films. However, quirky as it seems, it kinda works here and the lead in to the more focused shot is usually so brief that I don’t think half of the audience even realises he’s doing it.

This kind of foreshadowing of a shot is similar in theme to what he does with Tom Cruise’s character whenever Reacher is trying to see an event in the past the way it ‘may’ have happened and, although it’s a slightly different technique in terms of the motivation for the foreshadowing, I wouldn’t be surprised if the two aesthetics were linked, deliberately or subconsciously, by a similar approach to making the film.

What I can say for sure is that it’s a darned entertaining movie and the acting by Cruise and Smulders is great (although I noticed Cobie seems to not win most of the fights she gets into, for some reason) and the chemistry between them and the wonderful teenage actress Danika Yarosh is something which really helps pull the film together by making the three characters work together as a unit... although I’m sure you’ll realise why the teenager is in it in terms of a dramatic undertone to the action at the end of the movie and, alas, on that score this movie does exactly what you think it’s going to.

I was really quite partial to Joe Kraemer’s score for the first movie and was hoping they would bring him back for this one. Alas, that was not to be but I have to say that Henry Jackman’s score is an equally appropriate work to support this... especially since this second movie is much more action oriented. I think I’d need to listen to it away from the movie to make a proper judgement on it but, in terms of the way it supports the images, there’s certainly nothing wrong with it.

Jack Reacher - Never Go back is a solid Hollywood action hit and, if that’s what you want from your cinema then certainly I would recommend this one. The action sequences are unsurprising but well executed and the whole mix of good actors, good direction and a nice bit of action scoring is not a bad thing to have playing at your local cinema, for sure. I don’t know how fans of the books feel now about Cruise’s casting in this but, certainly, people who liked the first movie should be okay with this one, even if the run, punch, jump ethic does seem to take over just a little too much during the course of the running time. Also, if you’ve not seen the first one, there’s not really anything that isn’t explained in this one so... this can also be a jumping on point for the franchise if you are feeling left out from not having seen the original film. Something for everyone here.