Movie Talk (July 4 2012)

Finally got around to seeing Men in Black 3 on Saturday (and bought my advance ticket for Tuesday’s ‘late’ showing of The Amazing Spider-Man).

MiB3 was quite enjoyable, had a touch of Back to the Future in there and a nice way of by-passing the paradox.  I felt it was better than the second one, and provided an aspect of closure and understanding to the relationship between J and K.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World was enjoyable, too (saw it on Monday).  Generally ignoring the impact on the rest of the world and focussing on Dodge and Penny, it was well done.  The brief highlights on how different people were reacting to/dealing with/accepting ‘the end of the world’ was interesting – ranging from ‘keeping things normal’ through to riots and ‘who cares, let’s just sleep with someone’, whilst keeping far away from any religious aspects.  To a certain degree, those things are 'standard', but it was nice seeing them, anyway.

And now, The Amazing Spider-Man...

Although a ‘retread’ of the one from a decade ago, I felt this one worked out a lot better – it still had the ‘bad guy talking to himself’ scene, but it was a lot briefer than the first time around.

Some of the action sequences came off a little awkward, but Flash (Eugene) had a lot of growth in the short time he was in the movie.   

Other thoughts:

- Gwen often looked a lot older than her 17 years;

- the killer of Uncle Ben currently has a ‘Joe Chill’ aspect going for him;

- I’m not sure why Oscorp would sell the bio-cable to someone like Peter;

- I know there’s a lot of construction work going on in Manhattan, but is there really that much along that stretch of the city?

- The discovery of the powers was reasonably well done (especially in the bathroom) – alas, the Dick Grayson handstand-to-dive has now probably been denied us forever :( 

- The banter between Gwen and Peter worked really well and it was good to see that he got her attention before getting the powers;

- Peter was still a stalking photographer, though (first time round it was MJ, now it’s Gwen);

- The Lizard was variable; and

- I prefer Captain Stacy approving of Spider-Man, and of Gwen's relationship with Peter, and I think he should have lived through this movie (and the sequel, and died in the third).

I guess that's enough for now ;)