Better RED than dead

Just seeing Helen Mirren holding a big ass gun is enough of a selling point for me to be excited to see this sequel. Here's your first look at RED 2

RBR: The Amazing Spider-Man

The fact that I waited until home video to watch this movie shows you the lack of urgency I had in seeing a reboot of this franchise. Despite having the story told to us a mere 10 years earlier, we once again sit through the origins of young Peter Parker getting bit by a spider and losing his uncle leading to his transformation into Spider-Man. This time around he's played by Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) who gives us a more rebellious than nerdy take on the character. One deviation from the previous origin story is that this one focuses on Peter's romance with Gwen Stacy. She's played by the always charming Emma Stone. Both she and Garfield give good performances although I don't necessary buy them as high schoolers. The biggest problem for me is that my familiarity with the story left me focusing on smaller details that irked me. For instance, the film takes place in New York, yet you would think that this is some post-apocalyptic version of the city considering how few people we actually see in the city outside of the primary characters. I also noticed the financial cheats the movie takes by having so much of it filmed in the shadows. You don't need a whole lot of CGI detail when everything is pitch black. Apparently all of the money was spent on the cast and it was not money well spent. You get distinguished actors like Sally Field and Martin Sheen to star as Peter's aunt and uncle and then waste them. Sheen unsurprisingly is killed off early on and Field more surprisingly disappears halfway through the film only to make a token appearance near the end. Director Marc Webb attempts to bring some gravitas to the franchise with his indie filmmaking style, but frankly it just wasn't needed. Flaws aside, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films actually felt like a comic book come to life. For all the realism that this adaptation offers, it equally saps the fun out of the story. This is a wholly unnecessary film (except for the people at Sony who needed to make it in order to prevent the rights from going over to Disney/Marvel) that doesn't need to be seem. It's harmless enough as a rental, but not a film that you need to go out of your way to see. Rating: ** 1/2

RBR: Green Lantern

A lot of the media is celebrating 'Green Week' this week, so it's only apprpos that I review Green Lantern. This is the last of the comic book movies from this summer that I wanted to see and was also easily the worst. This suffers from several of the characteristics common in bad comic book movies. First and foremost is the percentage of time spent on exposition. There is scene after scene involving narration or a monologue trying to cover the dense, yet uninteresting backstory to the group of superheroes known as the Green Lantern Corps. When we finally do get to the action, none of it is compelling, especially given the ease with which our hero, Hal Jordan (played by Ryan Reynolds) disposes of the threats even though we're told that it is a force that the rest of the Corps cannot defeat collectively. Given that director Martin Campbell did such a terrific job of reintroducing the James Bond character in Casino Royale, I certainly expected more here. However, this is a very poorly lit film that fails to make us care about any of the characters. The cast is comprised of a number of likable actors, but they are either not given enough time (Tim Robbins and Angela Bassett) or not given decent material to work with (Reynolds, Blake Lively, and Peter Skarsgaard). The film's ending leaves open the possibility for a sequel, but there was nothing here that enticed me to see another entry in this series. I'm not even sure Green Lantern's ring could produce a script that could turn this series into something entertaining. Rating: ** 1/2

Blasting Cap

If you're having a sense of comic book fatigure, you're not alone. This summer has been filled with superheroes debuting on the big screen, eager to tell the origin of their story. The latest of which is Captain America: The First Avenger. Set during World War II, we see how Steve Rogers from a scrawny nothing into the red, white, and blue hero we know today. The story of this transformation though is one that doesn't quite have the same dramatic heft to it as some of his fellow Avenger heroes.

Early on, we learn that Rogers (plays by Chris Evans) is eager to fight in the war but is deemed on multiple occasions to be physically unfit for battle. Enter Dr. Abraham Erskine, played by the wonderful Stanley Tucci, who recruits him to be the first guinea pig for a serum aimed to create super soldiers. He, along with Howard Stark (the father of Tony Stark aka Iron Man) are successful at turning Steve into the chiseled specimen they wanted. However, the key to why Steve was chosen in the first place is not for the dramatic visual transformation, but that he had the integrity that would be prevent him from abusing his newly acquire physical attributes.

This moral code which is established in the first half of the movie gets somewhat abandoned in the second half of the film when the focus turns, like it does in each of these movies, towards the showdown against the big villain. In this case, that's Red Skull, (Hugo Weaving), a Nazi soldier, who after obtaining a mystical, powerful cube, aims to establish world domination for himself. What he plans to do if he succeeds is never really established, though. Red Skull is a visually impressive character, but not as menacing of a villain as I would have liked. He just comes off as more crazy than evil.

The film boasts an impressive cast, although not all of the actors give equal performances. Tommy Lee Jones, playing a crusty colonel, is reliable as always to throw in one-liners and look tough. I also liked Toby Jones, who played Red Skull's right-hand man, Dr. Zola. On the other hand, Hayley Atwell, who plays Peggy Carter, a potential love interest for Cap, is nice to look at but has a dull as dishwater personality and fails to create any sort of chemisty in her performance. Likewise, the actor who plays Cap's best friend, 'Bucky' Barnes doesn't do much to establish that relationship, despite the significance it supposedly has in the story.

All of the key players needed for one of these origin stories are here but that merely makes the film competent, not fresh. For every archetype that should be included in a comic book movie, there has been a film that has come out before Captain America and offered the same thing in a more interesting manner. You feel like you're watching the film out of duty rather than enjoyment. The payoff doesn't come until we get Cap together with the rest of the Avengers team, which won't happen until next year.

It's hard to say whether or not the character would have been appreciated and understood in the Avengers movie had this film not first come out. That judgment won't be made until then, but for now, it seems like this movie did not have to be made. About the only interesting story element that felt novel here is the idea of our country using the newly created Captain America more as a propaganda tool rather than a fighting soldier. That could have provided some interesting commentary, but of course you can make social commentary in 3D, so that aspect gets abandoned in favor of scenes involving fights on trains and tanks getting blown up.

There's nothing to actively hate about this film, but it's timing is poor. In a summer filled with comic book movies, this one failed to find a way to stand out from the pack. Instead of feeling like there was an appreciation for this character and a desire to tell his story, the movie evokes a sense that this was merely a cog in the machine necessary to make the eventual Avengers movie possible. That sort of corporate greed is disheartening, but it's also what all of the captains of America today seem to represent. Grade: B-