Jon Watts' second Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: Far From Home, has a lot of things going on, but just as Thanos preached in Avengers: Infinity War, what keeps everything intact and moving at a sustainable pace in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a post-Mad Titan world is, somewhat ironically I guess, the fact Watts and the screenwriters are able to keep everything "perfectly balanced". What is most interesting in slating the sequel to Watts' 2017 film as the immediate successor to Avengers: Endgame though, is that it immediately signaled the type of tone Marvel Studios and "showrunner" Kevin Feige would be addressing the fallout of the monumental events that any average viewer of the MCU knew were coming. The fact remaining that while Endgame concludes on something of an uplifting note for Steve Rogers the ramifications for many other characters were nowhere near as...complete. There were countless questions that required the attention of the creators behind the curtain: what is the state of organized religion in a post-snap world? How did those who'd gotten re-married in the five years since the snap and weren't polygamists deal with the fact their husband and/or wife just showed back up one day? If kids not snapped away aged five years and presumably continued their schooling, why would they still be in the same grade as their counterparts that did "blip" away? As Betty Brant (Angourie Rice) puts it at the beginning of Far From Home, "it's been a long, dramatic, somewhat confusing road," and while the subject of our review today might be intended to bridge the gap and help audiences, "move on...to a new phase in our lives," the fact remains that this "bridging of the gap" could have been handled in a multitude of ways, but for one reason or another Feige and co. decided to place this responsibility on the back of their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and thus the question remains the same: why? Why is Tom Holland's sixteen year-old Peter Parker, the youngest avenger, the one to bear this responsibility? It all comes back to that aspect of tone and knowing what consequences to take seriously and place weight in while knowing which to laugh off; Watts' high school comedies dressed up as super hero flicks make an ideal vehicle to blend the heart and the humor and it doesn't hurt that the film becomes a pretty good "Spider-Man" movie along the way as well. Full review here. Video review here. B-
After he's busted for smuggling coke on his plane, Jim Hoffman (Jason Sudeikis) has a chance to start over in a lush, affluent suburb of San Diego. Jim and his wife, Ellen (Judy Greer) are surprised to find maverick auto mogul John DeLorean (Lee Pace) lives in a glamorous house down the street. Soon an unexpected friendship forms between the two men, just as John's new venture-the DeLorean Motor Company-is taking off. But with the FBI pushing Jim to inform on his flashy former dealer, Morgan Hetrick (Michael Cudlitz) and John's financing falling through the cracks, things are far from idyllic and perfectly set-up to take a dark turn. Based on real life events that became the celebrity scandal of its generation, Driven comes from director Nick Hamm and also stars the likes of Corey Stoll, Justin Bartha and Erin Moriarty.
No comments:
Post a Comment