malexandria Reviews

The Great Gatsby (2013)

The Great Gatsby - Best film of 2013

[9/10 · 28 August 2013]

I don't think I've ever read The Great Gatsby. I know it is required reading in a lot of High School English Lit classes, but I'm fairly certain, surprisingly enough, that I didn't take English Lit - not even in College (I took French and Spanish instead). Always the practical one, who knew that I'd end up being "forced" to read all the classics anyway?

After a string of misfires (I hated Shutter Island and Inception) Leonardo DiCaprio returns to form. He is perfect as Gatsby. He deserves an Oscar nomination for this performance. Gatsby is a complicated, yet simple man. His entire existence is his desire to get the girl, Daisy (Carey Mulligan) that he foolishly let go of.

This is a role that was tailor made for DiCaprio. If DiCaprio wasn't already an A list mega star, this movie would have made him one. He just oozes off the screen and is simply radiant here (can I use the word radiant to talk about a guy?).

In any other hands, Daisy could easily be hated and come across as shallow, naive, and as someone just going through life, but Mulligan brings a lot of hidden layers to Daisy. You can see the inner conflict through her expressive eyes.

As wild and over the top as Moulin Rouge Director Baz Luhrmann usually is; The Great Gatsby is his most assured, straightforward, gimmick free (not counting 3D) film to date. From a pure story telling and directing standpoint it is by the numbers. There are very few scenes that made me feel like I took a bad acid trip. Even the party scenes are beautifully shot and framed here.

Much has been written about the modern mixing of Hip Hop with 20's era Jazz and how it wouldn't work. Luhrmann actually did an amazing job of not overdoing the gimmick. Yes, it is noticeable, but he uses it very sparingly, so it never took me out of the movie.

There was one scene when they were on the bridge and they passed a car that had rich black people in and they were playing Jay-Z's Izzo (HOVA). It was odd and random just to have rich black people appear out of nowhere. I loved Luhrmann use of various versions Lana Del Rey's song Young and Beautiful in the love scenes. It really added texture and emotion to the romance.

One of the most beautiful moments in the movie comes when Gatsby is lamenting everything that he's lost, and Tobey Maguire (Nick Carraway) says, "You can't repeat the past" and Gatsby responds with an earnest "Of course you can old sport," such a simple but impactful moment.

Generally, I'm not a fan of narration, but Maguire does an amazing job with the lyrical prose used in this movie. Maguire gives a mature, nuanced performance here where you can really see his love and infatuation for Gatsby grow while his distaste for his friend Tom Buchannan (a wonderfully evil Joel Edgerton) increases. At times it almost seemed as if Nick wanted to jump Gatsby's bones.

This is my favorite film of 2013. It hit all my buttons – beautifully shot, very hopeful (but with an ultimately sad end), and had some flashes of brilliant prose.

Spider-Man (2002)

Spiderman Fails to Enchant

[4 May 2002]

Due to legal battles over copyright ownership, Marvel's bankruptcy, and other issues, it seemed like my dream movie would never get me. After hoping and waiting for more than a decade, Columbia Pictures finally resolved the legal issues and announced that they were going to bring the beloved `Spiderman' to the big screen. Usually I don't get too excited over new movie projects, but this one I really got into the hype. The trailers ran the gambit from being terrible to awesome with each new version.

It seemed to have all the elements in place to be a really good, if not great superhero movie. So why, oh why, didn't I like it? What went wrong?

I can't remember the last time I left a theater feeling as let down and disappointed in a film as I was in this. I was pretty speechless when folks asked me what I thought, I couldn't quite verbalize why I didn't like it or how I felt. Now after thinking about it for a few days, I now know why.

Let me say `Spiderman' wasn't a `bad' movie. But it certainly wasn't great or even above average; it was a perfectly `pedestrian', run of the mil ho-hum movie, that didn't have a single moment in it that makes you go `wow'! Most of the movie's "wow" moments are in the trailers, which have been shown hundreds of times. It plays it safe and doesn't take any chances to be great or push any boundaries, which is what great movies do and what `Spiderman' should have aspired to do.

For those who have lived under a rock and don't know, `Spiderman' is based on the beloved Marvel Character created four decades ago by the `infamous' and creative genius Stan Lee and Marvel Character designer Steve Ditko.

`Spiderman' tells the story of Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), a teenager who was raised by his Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) and Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson). He's an awkward kid, who typifies the standard nerd `cliché', he's poor, he's bullied by the school jock, Flash Thompson (Joe Manganiello), ignored by the girl of his dreams, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), and are best friends with the local rich kid, Harry Osborn (James Franco), whom he befriended during tutoring sessions.

During a class school trip to a hi-tech genetics research facility, Peter is bitten by a radioactive spider and his life suddenly changes. He gains all the `proportional' abilities of a spider; which includes superhuman strength, the ability to spin webs, superhuman reflexes, the ability to cling to any surface, and a nifty thing known as `spider senses' – which warns our hero of impending danger. Can someone answer a question for me? If spiders have all of these abilities why are they so damn slow and easy to kill?

At first Peter doesn't realize what is happening to him until he finds himself involved in yet another fight with Flash. When he is able to effortlessly dodge all of Flash's punches and knock him out with one punch, he's just as surprised as everyone else. Imbued with excitement over his newfound powers he wants to turn use his `gift' to make money by becoming a wrestler. After being stiffed by the wrestler promoter, (Lying wrestling promoters? I'm shocked! Shocked!), he let's a thief who robbed the promoter escape.

Later that night, that very same thief shoots and kills his beloved Uncle Ben. In anguish Peter remembers something his uncle told him `With great powers, come great responsibility.' At that moment he vows to help the helpless and `blah, blah, blah'

While all of this is going on, Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), Harry's domineering and `distant' industrialist father is having some "issues" at work, he's about to lose a major military contract to a rival company if they cannot deliver a `super-soldier' serum to the government in a few days. His chief scientist tells them that in all their lab tests, the subject's where genetically enhanced to display superhuman strength, hearing, etc….but the side effect is, all the mice went insane (How do you know a mouse is insane?) and displayed a marked increase in aggressive behavior. Well of course, never having watched an evil scientist movie, and being desperate, Norman decides to test the serum on himself with the standard results. The experiment goes bad and he becomes an insane madman known as the Green Goblin (more on this later).

The movie does a pretty good job of telling Spiderman's origin, although it should have and could have done it in a lot less time than the 20 or 30 minutes it takes. It bogs the movie down. The `back story' seemed empty and stilted. Maguire's acting was ok, but he didn't quite have the raw star power or presence that was needed to anchor this film. But then, in the comic book (which I collected for 10 years) the Peter Parker `character' was never really all that interesting. He was only interesting because he was Spiderman. He used Spiderman to show an alternate side of himself - a confident, `fun loving' superhero, who would have a ton of zingers and funny quips that would drive the bad guys crazy. The character and personality of Spiderman was totally lost in this film. This Spiderman was more like `Batman', than the comic book Spiderman.

Kirsten Dunst was fabulous as Mary Jane Watson and the chemistry between the two were good as well. Unfortantely the rest of the cast is nowhere near as good as Dunst and Maguire are, with the notable exception of J.K. Simmons dead on `impersonation' of the cigar chomping gruff, blowhard, J. Jonah Jameson – publisher of `The Daily Bugle'. Who uses his newspaper as a soap box to trash and discredit `Spiderman'.

What was director Sam Raimi thinking when he horribly miscast Joe Manganiello as Flash Thompson, but his worst sin was James Franco as Harry Osborn. Franco looked as if he ate bad cabbage, or tasted sour milk and that was the only expression that he displayed throughout the entire film. Why was he picked? Was it his resemblance to Harry Osborne?

On paper, Willem Dafoe was perfectly cast as `The Green Goblin'. But there is but so much you can do with a villain who was never that great to begin with. The Green Goblin was a ridiculous villain in the comic book, and he's even more so on the big screen. The goblin suit, had to be the worst, cheesiest looking monstrosity that I've ever seen on a big screen. It supposed to inspire fear, a sense of danger, instead it inspired fits of hysterical laughter whenever the goblin put in an appearance. It looked klunky, fake, and just totally ridiculous.

As for the rest of the special effects, the night time sequences look fantastic, and the up close stunt work look fabulous and realistic, unfortunately the CGI in the movie looked really fake, especially the web swinging shots, which were plentiful, and some of the more `far away' shots. The heavy reliance on CGI is what robs Spiderman of his character, his humanity, and ultimately makes the film feel `hollow' and dare I say `cheap'.

Danny Elfman's music score was tame, borring, and non-inspiring. It was the same recycled, derivitive, crap that he's done every since he did the excellent score for Batman.

While watching `Spiderman' I kept feeling like I was watching the old `Spiderman' series from the 70s, just blown up to the big screen, and I kept thinking how cool this would be on television. Something you should never be thinking during a summer blockbuster, especially a superhero film. `Spiderman' is the perfect cookie cutter, carefully `packaged' corporate product.

Spider-Man (2002)

Spiderman Fails to Enchant

[2 May 2002]

I can't remember the last time I left a theater feeling as let down and disappointed in a film as I was in this. I was pretty speechless when folks asked me what I thought, I couldn't quite verbalize why I didn't like it or how I felt. Now after thinking about it for a few days, I now know why.

Let me say `Spiderman' wasn't a `bad' movie. But it certainly wasn't great or even above average; it was a perfectly `pedestrian', run of the mil ho-hum movie, that didn't have a single moment in it that makes you go `wow'! Most of the moments "wow" moments are in the trailers, which have been shown hundreds of times. It plays it safe and doesn't take any chances to be great or push any boundaries, which is what great movies do and what `Spiderman' should have expired to do.