"Spider-Man: Homecoming" Review

Spider-Man: Homecoming is the sixteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the sixth theatrical Spider-Man film, is directed by Jon Watts (Clown, Cop Car) in his big-budget debut, and stars a large ensemble cast including Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr., Michael Keaton, Marisa Tomei, Jacob Batalon, Laura Harrier, Zendaya, Donald Glover, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Favreau, Donald Glover, Tony Revolori, and Martin Starr, with about a billion other supporting players. The film is the third cinematic iteration of Spider-Man since Sam Raimi's trilogy that began in 2002, and follows the failed would-be-trilogy by Marc Webb that began in 2012 with The Amazing Spider-Man. It is a joint project between Sony/Columbia Pictures, who hold official ownership of the Spider-Man character, and Marvel Studios, who have inducted the character into their Avengers lore after introducing him in the second act of last year's Captain America: Civil War. I think it's important to get all these franchise details out of the way straight out the gate, considering how complicated these superhero storylines are getting both in terms of their actual overarching fictional stories and the complex web of property ownership and corporate slip-ups that have led to so many different versions of these tights-wearing crime-fighters appearing on the big screen, small screen, and comic pages in the 21st century.

As far as actual plot goes, Spider-Man: Homecoming follows Peter Parker (Holland) shortly after the events of Civil War, where he has been recruited by Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark/Iron Man to be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, giving his assistant Happy (Favreau) daily updates on his small-time crime-fighting activities on the streets of Manhattan, an assignment Peter covers up at school and with his aunt May (Tomei) as the "Stark internship". Peter is dismayed that Stark falls short of offering him a formal role in the Avengers, but is nonetheless excited to be a secret superhero. The film follows his struggle to balance regular high school life - getting a date for homecoming dance, keeping his identity secret from his friends and family, participating in an academic decathlon - with his discovery of a middle-aged man named Adrian Toomes (Keaton), who has been illegally collecting alien technology leftover from Avenger battles to craft high-tech weapons and become the supervillain Vulture, a threat Peter is eager to stop on his own, much to the chagrin of Stark and his best friend Ned (Batalon), who just wants him to focus on being a cool kid.

The biggest relief in this film is that it skips past the origin story of Spider-Man, so the first act doesn't revolve around Peter getting bitten by a radioactive spider or watching Uncle Ben get murdered. Instead, the film plops us right in the middle of Parker's superhero life, and we get our insights into his character and the world around him through his relationships with supporting characters and through Holland's spirited performance. Holland is arguably the main highlight of Homecoming. Especially in contrast to the dark, brooding, "mature" Spider-Man from Andrew Garfield's iteration, it's nice to see a Spider-Man who not only exudes youthful exuberance, but just plain enjoys being Spider-Man. Holland is funny, sweet, incredibly charismatic, and toward the third act even has moments of surprising depth, allowing Peter to exhibit the flaws of any high school kid, being at times dangerously eager to face the world head-on as he attempts to make sense of it. I find him to be just about as good a Spider-Man as Tobey Maguire, though they are admittedly accomplishing very different things.

Peter/Spider-Man is supported by a remarkable ensemble cast of colorful characters, which is rich, finely wrought, diverse, and always fun to watch. Peter's friend Ned garners possibly the most consistent number of laughs out of any character, and Jacob Batalon is a young actor with impeccable comedic timing who is also extremely charming. Robert Downey Jr. has made a believable transition as the snarky, full-of-himself Tony Stark to one that is trying to break through the snark to be the cautious, wise, almost parent-like Stark that we got a glimpse of in Civil War. Michael Keaton strikes a convincing balance between empathetic and intimidating as Toomes/Vulture, who is one of the best-written villains in a cinematic universe plagued with uninteresting, bland, poorly written villains. The Spider-Man universe has always been unique in that many of his adversaries genuinely respect him and know that they're wrong, but have a misconstrued understanding of what they deserve/have to do. Keaton's character has a clear and even understandable motivation rooted in a personal desire to keep his family life afloat in the wake of sudden unemployment that has left him excusing his reprehensible morals for a perceived deserving rebuke of the rich and powerful's oppression of the little guy. It's refreshingly layered stuff for a Marvel villain, and Keaton does it great justice.

The film is also peppered with numerous smaller supporting players and bit parts that somehow feel earned and properly explored for a first film in a planned trilogy despite their short screen time. Homecoming keeps the laborious exposition at an impressive minimum considering the number of narrative gears turned and characters introduced. And those bit parts are well utilized - Martin Starr plays Peter's decathlon leader with his idiosyncratic grasp of perfect deadpan, Zendaya is charming and dryly funny as the sarcastic MJ, Donald Glover finely portrays a small-time criminal in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Hannibal Buress plays Holland's gym teacher who somehow managed to elicit belly laughs from my entire theater audience with just three lines of dialogue in the entire film.

The effectiveness of these characters is also bolstered by the well-constructed world they inhabit. This is the first MCU film where the "cinematic universe" concept has been used effectively for me. The elements in other previous Marvel movies meant to interconnect these franchises within franchises to each other have been inclusions of outside characters, quick tangential references to Infinity Stones, and in-jokes. Homecoming has all of those in short supply, but it also manages to make us really feel as though Peter Parker is going to high school in a world that has superheroes. Students play bang/marry/kill with their favorite Avengers, a civics teacher discusses the Sokovia Accords in class, and Captain America is the star of industrial videos on lab safety and puberty shown in classes. The high school world in general is wonderfully fleshed out, with my favorite detail being the wooden, bewildered students on the low-budget student news show (which gives us what I think is the first appearance of Comic Sans in a blockbuster film). There is quite a bit of downtime in this movie, with much of the movie's narrative leg work focused less on the squabbles of deities and giant beams shooting into the sky and more about the internal and interpersonal struggles of its main character. Especially the first half of this movie feels like a John Hughes movie with superheroes in it. Young children may find it boring and prefer the loud, colorful, fast-paced action they're used to in these Marvel flicks, but I appreciate the time this movie takes with its characters.

Of course, you won't miss out on any fun action sequences with Spider-Man: Homecoming. It's hard to come down from the high of action-directing and editing in Baby Driver (though this is total recency bias talking), but the action in this movie is standout for a Marvel film. They're decently crafted, well paced, lots of fun and peppered with good-natured humor, propped up by Michael Giacchino's thrilling score, and have a much sharper sense of stakes than other typical superhero films. An element of modern superhero movies I've often bemoaned is their tendency to inflate their conflicts into world-shattering scenarios with demigods punching and shooting at each other with no real visual consequences. Homecoming never even makes it outside of Manhattan, and while the visual effects here are as dazzling and about as plentiful as any other Marvel fare, the stakes here are entirely personal for Peter. Our villain is not concerned with literally destroying the entire universe like most Marvel villains, but rather just doing illegal and immoral things to keep his family safe. Remarkably, when your villain's to-do list shrinks from "end all existence" to simply "kill Peter Parker", the level of believability of their success increases, and any encounter with them becomes vastly more tense and exciting. There is one scene in particular in the third act (that I will not spoil the details of because it's actually a pretty great twist) involving Keaton's character and Peter that brims with uncommon tension for a Marvel film simply because of the fact that we have been made to believe this villain could try anything at any time. Another scene involving Spider-Man having to save people trapped inside the Washington Monument is surprisingly heart-pounding despite its relative simplicity. These may sound like small differences, but they are meaningful.

Overall, Spider-Man: Homecoming does not reinvent the wheel as far as blockbuster superhero movies go, and is not even the best Spider-Man film in my opinion (although this and the Sam Raimi films are both excellent at achieving very different things), but it gets a lot right and avoids a lot that could have been trite, boring, or uninspired. It's not perfect, but it's impressive that a film with six screenwriters could be a more focused and complete product than many other big-budget action flicks of our time. The most important thing it gets right, and the main reason for its success, is that it steeps all of its conflicts, be they on the small scale of high school dramas or on the larger scale of extraterrestrial arms dealing, in interesting, likable characters. Tom Holland and his mosaic of supporting characters make Homecoming eminently watchable from start to finish. Watts and company's tight grasp on the source material combine with the film's consistent humor, exciting action, strong characterization, and beguiling sense of charm and breezy fun to make this a superlative modern superhero movie.

I recommend this film to anyone looking for a fast, fun time at the movies who likes good characters, good-natured humor, and some sleek and decently directed action. It may be as meticulously manufactured and packaged as any other Marvel product, but it reeks of good intentions and gets it right far more often than it gets it wrong. Upon a second viewing I'm considering bumping this up to an A-, but for right now this is getting a B+, albeit an enthusiastic one. I look forward to seeing this Spider-Man in theaters again.

Grade: B+

"Baby Driver" Review

Baby Driver is an action comedy crime film directed and written by Edgar Wright, known for the films Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World's End, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, all of which I guess I should note right out the gate that I love. This film stars Ansel Elgort, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Lily James, Kevin Spacey, and Eiza Gonzalez, and follows a young getaway driver named Baby (Elgort), who provides death-defying vehicular escapes to small-time crooks from crime scenes in an effort to pay off a debt owed to an Atlanta crime boss (Spacey). Stricken from a young age with tinnitus, Baby constantly plays music on his iPod throughout his life, especially during jobs, with different iPods for different days and moods, and even makes mixtapes out of conversations he secretly records. He eventually falls for a cute waitress in town (James) just as he is recruited to help with one last job that seems doomed to fail, helmed by a psychotic criminal named Bats (Foxx). 

Edgar Wright is a favorite filmmaker of mine. An adroit connoisseur of visual comedy, quick wit, soundtrack assembly, and exact breakneck pacing, his feature outings thus far have been largely confined to the farcical. None of that self-referential humor is lost in Baby Driver, despite its genre trappings being less clear-cut than Wright's previous flicks. In fact, all of Wright's best and most memorable traits as a filmmaker are intact in Baby Driver, from his blink-and-you-miss-it sight gags to his snappy, cheesy one-liners to his unabashed love for the 80s. And it works just as well here in a heist comedy played mostly straight as it does in the realm of satire. While I haven't decided where it falls in comparison to Wright's other films, fans of his style will not be disappointed with this one.

Wright often gets flak for being mostly style over substance, and while I don't personally hold that to be true, I think it's important to talk about that style, because it's something Wright has in spades over the majority of other action and comedy directors of today. When we talk about the "style" in Edgar Wright movies in the context of style and substance, it's not "style" like in the Transformers movies or what have you. This isn't mere candy for the eyes and ears or quick cuts and swooping camera moves for the sake of being "different" - Wright's style is exact, measured, exhaustive, and requires a great deal of talent as a filmmaker, as well as an infrequently offered amount of creative control. Wright is the rare kind of comedy director whose films don't get away with being funny simply by having actors saying funny things or being in silly situations. The filmmaking - the relationship between things in and out of the frame, and the use of camera movement, editing, and sound design - often times create jokes where there were none, deliver information about a character, set and alter tones, etc. We expect these things with genres deemed more sophisticated; why not with comedies?

The point is, even if the assertion that Wright exercises style over substance were true, it would ignore the fact that his style is not superficial. And that is very true in Baby Driver as well. If you've heard any of the praise for this movie, of which there is a lot, you probably already know about its main standout element - its soundtrack is not only wonderful and varied, but it also underscores the entire film and the character of Baby, with the music syncing up with everything from car door slams to coffee cup taps to machine gun fire. This isn't just a feat of purposeful editing - there are long, uninterrupted takes of numerous very subtle character actions synced perfectly up to very specific songs, sometimes even sung along to or mouthed by characters in the scene. The music quite literally informs and drives every scene in the movie, to exhilarating effect. Even when there aren't any car chases or gunfights going on, the scenes of snappy dialogue and exposition never feel boring because of Wright's crackling direction, some great performances, and brilliant pacing, all not only underscored but emboldened by great song choices across the board (I also give this film credit over other recent films with great soundtracks like Guardians of the Galaxy, which, while having numerous great songs, is mostly filled with familiar chart-toppers, whereas this film gives the spotlight to some real deep cuts). This is a rare film that, to me, is never boring.

They are not the only impressive thing about the film, but the car chase/action sequences are incredibly impressive, and worth noting for sure. Wright underwent a painstaking effort to do the vast majority of the eye-popping, eardrum-rattling car tricks practically, with stunt actors and even the actual actors like Elgort and Hamm performing some spectacularly exciting maneuvers. Wright manages to wring both humor and thrills in nearly equal measure throughout these scenes. The opening scene in particular, in which Baby makes a harrowing getaway from the Atlanta PD to the song "Bellbottoms" by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, is legitimately some of the best car chase stuff ever put to film. In total, it's probably Wright's most singularly thrilling film, and the most exciting and impressively directed action flick since Fury Road.

On top of that, most of the performances are excellent. Ansel Elgort officially surprised me, going from what I always saw as a rather bland actor who would be relegated to young adult novel adaptations before making a strained Oscar bid in his 30s to an empathetic, charming character actor that oozes cool. Kevin Spacey isn't doing anything exactly "new", but he delivers his lines, both sinister and silly, with equal precision. Though her character is under-written (I would like for Wright to try writing a non-"dream girl" female character, although they are always well-done and fit their respective films), Lily James is unbelievably charming as Debora the waitress. Eiza Gonzalez is given some big moments to shine in what I hope is a breakout role for her, Jamie Foxx is silly and not always on his A-game but frequently steals the show as Bats, and Jon Hamm gives what might be my favorite performance of the film portraying perhaps the most compelling character.

As far as story goes, the movie stays relatively within normal crime/action/heist thriller territory, but it's never exactly predictable. Astute viewers will pick up on Wright's set-ups for both jokes and story beats alike that vary in their subtlety, but exactly how the shit is about to go down is always hard to predict. Partially through his direction and partially through his complete willingness to suddenly and unceremoniously kill off major characters in his films, Wright has an uncanny ability to keep the audience guessing at every turn, and to make almost any potential outcome seem plausible, a quality that can be and is used to conjure up both visceral tension and sudden belly laughs. This is also owed a lot to his characters - believable, but never exactly "real". We feel real sympathy for Baby when told his backstory, and we feel real fear that Foxx and Spacey's character have the capacity to do terrible things to Baby or anyone, and yet they all embody a sort of cartoonishness that not only lets them spit out zingers without looking ridiculous, but also make some outrageous decisions. There is a veil of fantasy to Baby Driver, but it never feels like an excuse or a "get out of jail free" card to eschew all sense. Instead, like most Wright films, it invents a reality very close to ours, one where we believe with near equal conviction that Baby is a real human being who is in real danger, as well as someone who could convince a girl he's known for a few days to commit to taking a never-ending road trip with him as soon as he's done being an accessory to theft and murder. (We believed Scott Pilgrim, played by a scrawny Michael Cera, when he said he punched a guy so hard he saw the curvature of the Earth, so stranger things have happened)

Baby Driver is ultimately a film about connection through music. It's a strong visual whenever Baby shares his earbuds with someone, literally physically connecting him to someone with music. Baby not only uses music to self-medicate his condition, but also to escape his life, keep himself moving, and just generally add rhythm and melody to his day, to the point that the whole world around him as we see it revolves around the music playing (which makes the very few scenes where there is no music playing just that much more harrowing). It's often as fantastical as any other Wright film thus far, but it's populated with characters anchored by great performers given great direction, and quite literally choreographed with an impressive attention to detail.

I'll note that, like most Edgar Wright films, Baby Driver's ending may not sit well with everyone, though it's not nearly as bleak as some of his others (his last film ends with the literal apocalypse), but I can't really think of a reason to not recommend this film unless you hate good action scenes, good music, humor, handsome men, or fun. It's fast, inventive, funny, sweet, and features some of the most impressively directed, shot, and edited sequences, action and otherwise, I've seen in a film in a while. It's more fun than any big blockbuster I've seen this summer, made for about one fourth the price. It is an almost perfectly executed fun time at the movies. If it is not on my list of favorites at the end of this year, we will have had a historically good year at the movies.

Grade: A