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Modern marvel

Spidey took an unfortunate detour with Andrew Garfield, director Marc Webb and the underwhelming, dreary The Amazing Spider-Man films. (I’m still pissed about those cranes!) That GIF of Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker crying sloppily pretty much reflects my sentiment about the last couple of SpiderMan films.

Things get back on track in a fun way with SpiderMan: Homecoming, a complete overhaul of the Peter Parker character thanks to the effervescent casting of young actor Tom Holland. Holland is a fine actor and an impressive athlete. He does most of his own acrobatic stunts.

Of course, a Marvel movie needs a good villain, and Homecoming gets one in Vulture, played with snarling glee by Michael Keaton. Director Jon Watts and an admittedly ridiculous number of writers give Vulture an interesting origin.

He’s Adrian Toones, a construction salvage worker who had a city contract to clean up the mess in New York City after the events of The Avengers. Some government types take over and kick him off the gig, leaving him pissed and with a bunch of hightech alien junk in his possession. Toones constructs some weapons, including an elaborate winged suit, with the alien technology and, voila, Vulture.

Parker is a younger incarnation this time out, dealing with typical high school traumas that seem a little trivial after the events of Captain America: Civil War, where he sort of saved the day. He’s gone from stealing Captain America’s shield to worrying about girls, and he’s just a little bored.

Enter Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) who has given Parker his Spidey suit with some conditions, like that he can only be a “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” concentrating on local problems rather than the really big, worldly ones. Those are jobs for the Avengers, and Spidey isn’t on that level just yet.

The film is basically one half kick-ass Marvel movie—Watts is no slouch with an action sequence—and one half enjoyable and frothy high school comedy that would make John Hughes proud (including a soundtrack with everything from the Ramones to the English Beat). It achieves the difficult accomplishment of being a worthy Marvel Universe installment while being a great standalone adventure in its own right.

The presence of Mr. Reliable, Downey, Jr., holds everything together nicely and assures fans that this is very much another chapter in the continuing Avengers arc. He and Holland have great scenes together, and Iron Man makes more than one prominent appearance. Keaton holds up his part of the job with an expert’s efficiency, relishing a chance to be bad. Remember that moment in 1989’s Batman when he taunted the Joker (“Let’s get nuts!”)?

Marisa Tomei is the new Aunt May, and she’s a great Aunt May. There’s no J. Jonah Jameson this time around. Parker’s adventures as a news photographer will have to wait for the future. There’s too much going on in this one for that subplot to be included.

Hats off to producers for taking a risk with the relatively unknown Watts, whose other feature films include the horror film Clown and the very good Kevin Bacon thriller, Cop Car. Watts demonstrated that he could balance adolescent actors, humor and dread in an expert manner with Cop Car. What he didn’t demonstrate was his ability to coordinate massive special effects with a gargantuan budget. Whatever handicap he had entering the production is surely conquered at this point. He’s a big movie director to be reckoned with.

There’s a moment in Spider-Man: Homecoming that involves some heavy lifting, one that displays the magical powers of the character alongside Holland’s amazing representation of Spidey. In that moment, the character is genuinely reborn. This isn’t your typical approach to a superhero origin story—it’s a let-her-rip, no-nonsense declaration that the right web-slinging incarnation has arrived, and he’s ready to party. Ω

“And i’m in high school, so you know this backpack weighs 50 pounds.”

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4Baby Driver This is a nice car chase movie antidote to The Fate of the Furious, a car chase movie that made me never want to see a car chase movie again, let alone Vin Diesel’s mushy mug. The soundtrack is one of the year’s best, and the guy in the title role is a major star in the making. Ansel Elgort plays Baby, who we see in the film’s opening sequence driving the getaway car for a robbery, a kinetic chase choreographed to the great Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms.” The scene snaps with a colorful energy that’s been missing from car chases of late. The best car chase movie of recent years, Drive, also featured a lonely driver and great vroom-vroom, but the soundtrack and look for that film were more meditative and hazy—not complaining; it worked beautifully. Baby Driver opts for a more clear-eyed, zippy approach, and it pays off. Edgar Wright writes and directs for this, a project he took up after his failed dalliance with Ant-Man. The chases go off with precision editing, filmed in a way that makes you feel like you are in the car. And the soundtrack, featuring music ranging from Simon and Garfunkel to Hocus Pocus and Queen, perfectly complements them.

3The Beguiled According to director Sofia Coppola, this is not a remake of the 1971 film of the same name starring Clint Eastwood; it’s a new adaptation of the novel both films are based on. Nicole Kidman stars as the leader of a southern school for girls, shut off from the rest of the world during the Civil War. While out searching for mushrooms, young Amy (Oona Laurence) finds a wounded Union soldier (Colin Farrell) and leads him back to the school. As the man heals, the young students and teachers each interact with the soldier, and things eventually get, well, complicated. Everybody in the movie delivers good work, especially Kidman as Miss Martha, a strict leader with risky compassion for the enemy soldier. Longtime Coppola collaborator Kirsten Dunst is on hand as a teacher who gets some extra attention from the stranger, and she’s strong in her role, as usual. Other cast members include Elle Fanning, Angourie Rice and Addison Riecke. The film eschews the usual Coppola soundtrack exuberance for something very quiet and slowly paced. As the film works up to a boil, leading to a shocking climax, Coppola creates a true sense of claustrophobia and high tension. This isn’t her best work, but it’s good work, with excellent cinematography and art direction.

3Cars 3 The Cars franchise gets a nice little rebirth with Cars 3, a much, much better movie than Cars 2, and a slightly better movie than the first Cars. If you’re keeping score— and, really, you shouldn’t be, for there are far more pressing matters in your life—that still makes Cars 3 one of the more mediocre offerings from Pixar. Still, a mediocre Pixar film is better than most animated movies. Jettisoning the stupid spy movie bullshit—oops, I just cursed in a review for a G-rated movie … sorry, kids—that made the last installment convoluted and useless, the folks at Pixar choose to go an earthier, more emotional route with this one, and it works, for the most part. They also find a way to get the voice of the late Paul Newman into the mix, and hearing his beautiful growl again definitely warms the heart. Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is getting on in years, and he’s facing fierce competition from newer model cars like Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer), a strong, highly-trained vehicle that is beating McQueen on the racetrack. After a calamitous accident that renders his beautiful red sheen primer gray, McQueen is faced with either retirement or a new training regime comeback, Rocky III-style. The movie plays around with the notions of retirement and the rites of passage to the next generation, pretty heady stuff for a G-rated animated movie. Give the screenwriters credit for finally coming up with a story for Lightning McQueen that caters as much to adults as it does to kids. 3 The Hero Lee, an aging movie star (Sam Elliot) gets some bad news from his doctor and tries to make good on some mistakes in the face of some big decisions. If that sounds like a done-to-death story for you, it kind of is, but director and co-screenwriter Brett Haley makes things intriguing, thanks to a great performance from Elliot and an excellent supporting cast. Elliot is basically playing himself, a western star known for his big voice and iconic moustache, and the part was tailor made for him. His Lee is sort of a jerk, but the kind of jerk you have to like. The way that moustache arches with his smile is magical. Nick Offerman is stellar as Lee’s drug dealer and best buddy, while Laura Prepon has never been better as “the love interest.” Yes, it’s a cliché role, but she takes it to great heights. Elliot’s real-life wife, the great Katharine Ross, even has a role as Lee’s ex-wife, which must’ve been a little awkward to pull off on set. The film looks great, especially during Lee’s dreams, which have him acting out a final movie in his head. In a summer of blockbusters and blockbuster wannabes, this stands as one of its fine sleepers.

4Okja Director Joon-ho Bong, purveyor of spectacularly wacky cinematic things (The Host, Snowpiercer) delivers, perhaps, his wackiest yet with this tale about a future world where meat is scarce, so huge pigs are biogenetically engineered for slaughter. The title character is a prized, giant animal raised in the mountains by Mija (Seo Hyun), a young girl who thinks Okja is her pet. She’s oblivious to the fact that Okja’s days are numbered, so when an envoy for a large corporation (Jake Gyllenhaal going nuts) shows up and takes Okja away, Mija flies into action, and the bizarre adventure begins. Paul Dano, one of the kings of movie weirdness, chips in as the leader of an animal rescue corps that includes Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead) and Lily Collins. Following up her collaboration with Bong on Snowpiercer is Tilda Swinton, once again playing twins, as she did in Hail, Caesar!, two evil sisters running the corporation that produced Okja. The movie mixes absurd laughs with mayhem, and the cast is universally great. Like films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Babe before it, this movie looks to shine a light on the cruel treatment of animals and perhaps get you to pass on the bacon the next time you are at Denny’s. It’s streaming on Netflix.

1Transformers: The Last Knight The latest Transformers movie, Transformers:The Last Knight, gets the dubious distinction of being the worst in the series. That is some sort of major accomplishment. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to look at this collective pile of movie manure and decipher which of the five is the worst. It’s like going to a frat house the first week of a semester at Dickhead University and trying to pick out the dumbest, drunkest douche in the place. All of the qualifiers are terribly, criminally lame. I’m giving the award of franchise worst because it’s just so clear how every participant in this enterprise, from director Michael Bay right on down to the production assistant who smeared glycerin on Mark Wahlberg’s pecs, is jaded, tired and played out. Nobody really wants to be in this thing. The stink of “Who gives a shit … just pay me!” hits your nostrils with Wahlberg’s first line delivery. The best part of this movie is when Anthony Hopkins inexplicably goes to Stonehenge to witness a robot battle then gets blown up, leading to the silliest death scene ever. Yep, I just issued a spoiler. Anthony Hopkins, who should be ashamed of himself for participating in this thing, dies hilariously in this movie. I hope this spoiler pisses you off so much that you don’t go to the movie. Be mad at me for the next 10 years, but I know I did you a favor.