Elation and Fatigue in "La La Land"

The new musical La La Land, from Damien Chazelle, the writer and director of 2014’s Whiplash, is this year’s answer to The Artist. It’s a throwback to Old Hollywood, steeped in nostalgia. Musicals are so rare these days that many viewers may think of them as artifacts from a forgotten age, which they kind of are, and even when a musical does surface occasionally, it’s often of the self-conscious variety. As entertaining as La La Land is (and I’m placing it on my ten best of the year because I had such a good time at it), there’s something artificial about it, something artificial beyond the fact that it’s a musical and beyond the fact that it’s set in Hollywood. La La Land may be the cinematic equivalent to a day trip to DisneyLand: You’ve made the drive, paid the fare, and you’ve assured yourself you’re going to like it; and everything about the place—the sets, the characters, the costumes, the music, the rides—is practically screaming, “Love this, why don’tcha?” La La Land is charming to be sure, but if you think about it too much, it could fall apart. 

In the opening musical number, hundreds of motorists, stuck in a traffic jam on the 10, jump out of their cars and erupt into a cheerful, upbeat song about the L.A. sunshine, and it’s clear that these are all would-be showbiz people, who’ve packed up their belongings and moved to Los Angeles, or some suburban area on the outskirts of Los Angeles, hoping to fulfill their dreams. That’s where Chazelle’s millennial roots are showing. Singin’ in the Rain focused on silent-film-era Hollywood insiders having to prove themselves anew as the movies were making sound for the first time; in La La Land, they're all outsiders, constantly preening and rehearsing and marketing and networking themselves, because you never know what studio suit might be at that party, or which audition might be the one that garners a callback, or which bit part on a television series could lead to something more. La La Land is about possibilities in a world inundated with possibilities and choices, which is the reason that the romance between its stars, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, must be tinged with uncertainty. In La La Land, your dreams represent trade-offs. Maybe it’s a depressing sign of our modern cynicism, but if the movie let them have it all, it would feel like a cheat. 

The greatest thing about La La Land isn’t its musical numbers but its wistful musical tone, which is upbeat on the outside and melancholy on the inside: there’s a lovely, lachrymose theme that Ryan Gosling—who plays the struggling jazz pianist Sebastian—keeps picking away at on the piano, and it’s so entrancing and beautifully maudlin that it draws Mia (Emma Stone) into the piano bar where he’s performing, and that’s how they (sort of) meet. Indeed, La La Land experiences its emotions most fully in these songs (even when the emotions are canned, like in "Another Day of Sun"). And the songs aren’t particularly memorable or grand (although I’ve had "Another Day" stuck in my head all week); but they feel familiar and they have life in them, even if that life is distilled in a recycled and repackaged and shrewdly calculated form. 

That's where the film’s artificiality works for it: this is a secondhand musical, so we know the language, and Chazelle knows that he doesn't have to spell the emotional beats of the film out for us. He can focus instead on wooing us with the music and the gorgeous visuals, and the chemistry between Gosling and Stone, actors who play off each other marvelously, who convey tenderness or uncertainty or that over-the-moon feeling you get at the beginning of a romance, with just their eyes, or in the way Gosling flirtatiously pretends not to be into Stone, or the way Stone lets him woo her, fully knowing what he's up to. 

They’re lovers who don’t know they’re in love yet, and the pleasure is in watching how it will unfold. (Chazelle does keep us wondering if it will last, as dreams turn into opportunities that threaten to keep them apart.) In that big traffic sequence at the beginning, Sebastian honks at Mia because she’s distracted by her phone and isn’t paying attention to the road; she flips him off as he whizzes past her; later, in the piano bar, he breezes past her again, just as she tells him how beautiful his playing is. It's not until they meet a third time, at one of those apparently standard (and insufferable) industry parties, that sparks fly. As they’re walking to their cars in the purple-blue twilight, Gosling coos (his voice low like Dean Martin's but timid like Ricky Nelson's when they sing together in Rio Bravo) and Stone purrs in response (her voice is light and airy, but it grows). We could never fall in love with each other, they think, and the song lies, “what a waste of a wonderful night.” That’s the kind of lie we paid for, because we know it’s going to be proven false in about three seconds, when even the song happily loses its convictions.

Ryan Gosling, who’s started to grow on me as an actor (see his terrifically funny performance in The Nice Guys), has always displayed a certain indifference that to me alienates him from the audience. He embodies the blasé indifference of a Method actor, like James Dean but without Dean’s ambiguous persona, or like Brando without his electric energy. But in La La Land, Gosling’s subdued, hipsterish aversion to displaying emotion works to his advantage. It makes his eventual success seem almost inevitable, and it makes us less annoyed with his stubborn resistance to new ideas, if only because we don't take him seriously. (He’s a jazz traditionalist, wooed briefly into John Legend’s character’s band where he’s forced to play synthesizers and attend obnoxious photo shoots, and play the part of an L.A. music product.)

And there’s something flat in Gosling’s voice when he waxes on about the excitement of making your own art, without compromise. Does he even believe what he's saying? Or is it so obvious and assured for him, that he doesn't need to say it with conviction? Gosling's just as artificial as the movie. Fortunately, Emma Stone is never anything but genuine. Stone is the one we’re invested in: she’s clearly magnificently talented, but will any one of those agents or executives notice? Mia has attended one too many humiliating auditions, where rude, distracted studio execs stare blankly into their phones while she works herself into an emotionally wrenching state, showing off her acting chops to nobody. (As if anyone could ignore her.) And when Stone bats those big eyes of hers, it’s as though she’s Cupid, lassoing our hearts to the heart of this movie. We really ought to know better, but it’s like going to an amusement park: the elation and the fatigue become blurred sooner or later. 

Irrational Man

Greetings and welcome to the annual Woody Allen movie experience. We’ve carefully selected a script, possibly written 15 years ago (selected from one of our many filing cabinets), which we think will ensure your maximum enjoyment. Mind you, even if you are ultimately unhappy with our selection, you’ll be glad to know that the ordeal shouldn’t last longer than 90 minutes. As per usual, the opening credits will be that same white font across a black background, this time sans music. (We do appreciate the value of change.)

This year’s film is titled Irrational Man. We’ve decided to include as much voice-over effect as possible, since we, honestly, weren’t that into this project and didn’t have the energy to flesh out the characters or their scenes together. Handy voice-overs make everything so much easier when you’re trying to meet those pesky deadlines. Also, our regular viewers will be happy to note that our condescension towards women remains strong, as does our aversion to 21st-century technology. We’ll just leave all that high-tech stuff to the kids.

But here are some kids for you to look at, since this movie takes place at a fancy-pants-liberal-arts-college-in-New-England, and one of them kids is played by Emma Stone. She’s so adorable. And she’s going to be hot-to-trot for this glum philosophy professor named Abe, who is played by Joaquin Phoenix with a potbelly. And we know you’ll appreciate how brilliant Abe is, because Emma Stone’s character will remind you over and over again just how brilliant he is in her voice-overs. She will proclaim his brilliance and all the things that make him so brilliant. She will ruminate on how complicated he is and how sad. He feels that all of life is meaningless and there’s no point in carrying on. How Emma Stone’s character wants to save him.

And see Parker Posey? She’s so talented. (She really is.) She will play a science professor (we’re not sure of the specifics, so the generic term will suffice) at the same college at which Abe works and Emma Stone’s character studies. And Parker Posey’s character will want to bone Abe just as much as Emma Stone’s character does, because Abe is so complicated and brilliant and fascinating and broken and needing to be fixed!

And then—a plot twist.

We are not going to reveal any spoilers about the plot twist, because it does actually make the film more interesting, even though Joaquin Phoenix’s character is so fascinating we could just sit and listen to him summarize the great philosophers all day long and that would be movie enough for us. Somebody bring me a spoon so I can dig into this yummy intellectual stuff, because Woody Allen’s Survey of Western Philosophy is truly a revelation.

Also, we’d like to note that our poet of the year is Edna St. Vincent Millay, as she’s the poet Joaquin Phoenix’s character encourages Emma Stone’s character to read more of. (We hope you remember the time Michael Caine told someone—Mia Farrow? We can’t remember—to read more e.e. cummings in Hannah and Her Sisters. Actually I don’t think it was Mia Farrow.)

All right, now that I’ve got that out of my system.

I was disappointed with Irrational Man, but even as I write this sentence, the inner-critic who lives in my head is shaking his or her head and saying derisively, “Ahhh, what did you expect from Woody Allen these days?” I did hope that this one would be better, since the trailer looked so promising, and since I really do love all three of the leads. Joaquin Phoenix is pretty good as the mopey philosophy professor, but Emma Stone’s infatuation with him is a hard sell, unless you buy that she’s one of those fixer-upper girls. But she’s so smart. And she has a really good boyfriend her own age (cruelly named Ron) whom she cruelly mistreats. Her attraction to Abe feels totally forced, and not necessarily because the idea of it is incredulous. It's because Allen doesn’t write enough scenes of the two of them just hanging out and talking, letting their natural onscreen chemistry and individual charms woo us, the viewers, into their romance. Instead, we get repetitive assurances from the narration of Emma Stone that she just loves him and wants him. 

And again, Allen’s insistence that men are here to teach women about culture and keep them in their place is truly depressing. When Emma Stone’s character says to him, “I love that you order for me,” I felt like hurling. There is one tiny bit of growth in the Woody Allen character (because I think we can all agree that any lead in a Woody Allen movie that’s a man—and that’s all of them—is Woody Allen, whether it’s played by Woody Allen or not): he tells his college-student-girlfriend: “I like that you disagree with my ideas.” So that’s growth, I guess. Annie Hall probably deserved that much from Alvy Singer. And it only took 40 years. 

Aloha

The controversy surrounding writer-director Cameron Crowe’s latest film, Aloha, is becoming more significant than the movie itself. In case you aren’t aware of the backlash against Crowe, it involves his casting Emma Stone as a character who’s one-fourth native Hawaiian. The argument--which is being raised more and more frequently against Hollywood--hinges on the problem of under-representation in mainstream movies of vital, well-drawn characters who are not white and/or not male. Crowe’s response has been considerably respectful and apologetic, but it may also fall under the old adage, “it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” Crowe wrote:

Thank you so much for all the impassioned comments regarding the casting of the wonderful Emma Stone in the part of Allison Ng. I have heard your words and your disappointment, and I offer you a heart-felt apology to all who felt this was an odd or misguided casting choice. As far back as 2007, Captain Allison Ng was written to be a super-proud ¼ Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one. A half-Chinese father was meant to show the surprising mix of cultures often prevalent in Hawaii. Extremely proud of her unlikely heritage, she feels personally compelled to over-explain every chance she gets. The character was based on a real-life, red-headed local who did just that.

I must confess, the issue of Stone’s character’s ethnicity did not strike me as I was watching the film. I figured she was an American Hawaiian: someone of European descent whose parents or grandparents moved to Hawaii; only now do I recall Stone’s explanation of her ancestors, as well as her overzealous appreciation for the mythology of Hawaii. (It feels forced.) As I read over Crowe’s statement, I remembered a scene early in the film in which Stone’s character spells her name out loud, pronouncing it for Bradley Cooper’s character. That’s when she goes into a diatribe about her heritage, but it was lost on me. Crowe’s dialogue, particularly in the first third of Aloha, is muddled and even difficult to understand at times. You feel lost in it: it’s like bad old Hollywood writing; and really, the dialogue in old Hollywood movies was never this convoluted or confusing; it was dreamy nonsense. Crowe’s dialogue for Aloha is striving to be dreamy nonsense, and achieving only the latter part of its goal.

Stone plays an Air Force pilot assigned to shadow Cooper’s character while he’s visiting Honolulu. (The why is still a mystery to me, much like many of the film’s wobbly plot elements.) A romance develops between the two of them, only it’s not really credible, and there’s a half-hearted attempt at a love triangle, because Cooper runs into his ex-girlfriend, played by Rachel McAdams, who is now married to pilot John Krasinski. I adore Rachel McAdams, and she’s very good in Aloha, but she’s often forgotten by the movie, and Crowe does a generally terrible job at resolving the conflict between her and her husband, who’s comically incapable of carrying on a conversation. (His taciturn manner serves as the source of one admittedly genius moment later in the movie, which might justify rushing to theaters to see this movie before it’s gone.)

I think this is the first time I’ve ever felt critical of an Emma Stone performance. She’s uneven in a lot of the movie, but this is really the fault of Crowe’s writing. In the first half of the film, Stone talks too fast, like one of those madcap comic actresses from the 1940s, the way that Mary Astor did in the zizzy Preston Sturges comedy The Palm Beach Story. And Stone kind of looks like she’s doing a Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday) impersonation. She’s a go-getter and a busybody and she’s as crazily devoted to the integrity of her job and her state as Leslie Knope, the indefatigable parks department director of Pawnee, Indiana. But something about the Stone character’s reference to old Hollywood actresses and old Hollywood comedy doesn’t work, and it certainly doesn’t pay off, because by the time we’ve gotten used to it, she changes back into a modern-day girl, just in time to criticize Bradley Cooper’s character for letting a crazy billionaire send an armed satellite into space.

Aloha is an incredibly problematic film structurally and morally. Crowe introduces a lot of big moral dilemmas for his characters, and somehow manages to bungle them all. Bill Murray plays the mad billionaire who has essentially taken the place of NASA; he and Cooper are the only ones who know of his plans to put weapons in space; but in the end, Cooper walks away with impunity because he sabotages the satellite, and Murray is arrested. Somehow that feels too easy, and moreover, too complicated, for what should have been a simple, enjoyable romantic comedy.

There are other moral issues at stake here. Aloha is trying to do some kind of Hawaiian heritage public relations, but it fails pretty miserably. Go back and watch John Sayles’s wonderful Sunshine State (2002) if you want to see it done right. Sayles tapped into the psyche of Floridians, as well as the pulse of the developers trying to make money off of them; Crowe is trying to do the same thing in Aloha. I knew it was a bad sign when the movie’s opening credits showed us vintage Hawaii imagery in a vacant cultural collage as the names materialized on screen. Crowe is only scratching the surface, and George Clooney’s The Descendants did more to tap into the culture of Hawaii than this movie does. And worse yet, Crowe's attempts to address American imperialism in Hawaii have no depth to them: the Americans are the center of this film, and Hawaii and its people are basically in the way. Cooper is, after all, sent to Hawaii to try and sweet-talk them into letting Bill Murray launch his space program there without any objections from them.

Alas, here’s my problem: I walked away liking this movie a little more than my review indicates. It pushed enough of my buttons (especially that sentimental ending, which I won’t reveal, involving a character and his daughter) to give me a decent time. I loved Rachel McAdams and John Krasinski’s characters. I wanted the movie to spend more time with them, fleshing out their personalities and conflicts. I quite enjoyed the brief onscreen moments of Alec Baldwin as an Air Force commander. I appreciated Crowe’s attempts to understand the implications of a world without NASA. All of these ingredients worked to some degree or another, even if the movie as a whole wasn’t successful. It's one of the strangest movie experiences I've had in a long time. But it has charm and vitality, and amidst its many problems, there is a good movie, hiding, needing to be plucked out.

Birdman

Michael Keaton has never really gotten his due as an actor. His insanely bizarre (and wonderful) performance in Beetlejuice was followed by a subdued, underwhelming turn in Batman (although it’s my favorite Batman movie to be sure) and then, despite some good performances, he just sort of disappeared into the morass of very good but slightly forgotten character actors. Birdman is sure to grab Keaton an Oscar nom, and Keaton’s performance is strong, but the movie is not the masterpiece people think it is. It’s a pretty good study of an actor’s neurosis, but more than anything it feels like a gimmicky show-piece, tailored for awards season, featuring a sort of greatest hits collection of actor moments. Everybody gets to shout and cry and have a nervous breakdown, which will make things easy come Oscar time when they have to pick a scene to showcase the nominee(s).

The film follows Riggan Thomson, a washed-up actor whose main achievement was playing a superhero in a film series called Birdman. Now Thomson is making his triple-threat Broadway debut, directing and starring in a play he adapted from the Raymond Carver short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Thomson is fraught with self-doubt and plagued by the voice of Birdman, who picks at him relentlessly at times, criticizing his every move and urging him to rekindle the Birdman flames by doing yet another sequel. This constant inner-critic may be quite real, especially for actors, and the movie suggests that every character in Birdman who is an actor is plagued by some sort of constant, nagging, demeaning voice inside. What’s more, Riggan Thomson himself is endowed with actual superpowers. He can move objects with his mind—Carrie-style—and he can even fly. Well, it’s never clear if these are really super-powers or if Thomson is simply hallucinating like Russell Crowe’s character in A Beautiful Mind, but  to the film’s credit, it allows this mystery to stay mysterious.  

The director of Birdman is Alejandro Iñárritu, whose previous credits include the Brad Pitt-everything-is-connected drama Babel (2006) and the awards darling Biutiful (2010). Iñárritu seems to enjoy putting people together who are ready to tear into each other and then stepping back and letting the sparks and wigs fly. (This is theater after all, and everyone is always on one side or the other of hair and make-up.) Iñárritu is fascinated by the inner-workings of the theater, and he obviously thinks we are too. But his fascination begins and ends with the pet neuroses of his characters, the actors. The non-actor characters in Birdman (except for Emma Stone’s character) are basically invisible. Actors acting is the main attraction, put on display like a sideshow attraction at a traveling circus. It’s like watching the autopsy of a play, or more likely, the autopsy of the art of performance. It feels all the more “behind-the-scenes-ish” because of the camera, which treats Birdman like a documentary.

Birdman feels fluid and alive because the director of photography, Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity), is fond of shooting in long takes and letting the camera move around the set like a person. Most of the film takes place inside an old New York City theater, and the camera travels its narrow halls and invades it little claustrophobic rooms—as well as the main stage—like a nosy bystander recording every scene with a cell phone. Lubezki’s camera-work gives Birdman a certain visual style that has the ability to “wow” audiences because it’s very different from what they’re used to. And the movie bounches with energy as a result, even though that energy isn’t particularly organic. As interesting as the camera-work is, it feels like the movie’s chief gimmick, a hollow, obvious attempt to avoid feeling too stagey, too theatrical.

That’s the real issue I have with Birdman. Its many gimmicks don’t add up to anything substantive. There are lots of scenes of actors playing actors acting. And there are lots of scenes of actors playing actors having meltdowns or panic attacks. Iñárritu has identified all the well-known idiosyncrasies of artists who are terrified of failure and success, and who can never believe in their own talent. Naomi Watts, playing one of the stars of Thomson’s forthcoming play, has a moment when she realizes with utter disillusionment that she’s finally made it to Broadway and that the experience, one which she dreamed about most of her life, isn’t as satisfying as she’d imagined it. Or rather, it’s hugely crushing and ambiguous because it’s a giant success that’s riddled with frustrations and smaller disappointments. She longs to be validated by Riggan, who himself is seeking validation too. Watts is good, but there’s very little in her character beyond “self-obsessed neurotic actress,” which might easily have been written into the stage notes introducing her character if Birdman were an actual play.

There’s little dimension to most of these characters. Most of them are emotional wrecks, and the two characters who are supposedly the most dysfunctional are actually the most stable. One, played by Edward Norton, is a notoriously unpredictable theater actor named Mike Shiner, and the other, played by Emma Stone, is Riggan’s daughter, Sam, a recovering junkie. I could never quite buy her as a wreck because she seemed so much more together than the rest of the group. And Norton’s character, who shocks his co-stars by taking big risks on the stage, turns out to be the film’s voice of reason. He shouldn’t be, because he’s a jerk, but Iñárritu always allows him to make more sense than anyone else right after he’s done something to justifiably enrage them. He too is a kind of gimmick in this movie. The first time we see him, he strips down naked without a hint of shyness so the costume designer can fit him. He’s not afraid of being naked on the stage, you see. He’s a real actor who’s already done the work of feeling comfortable within himself and with his body. Fear of nakedness—physical or emotional—is for naïfs. Later, during a bed scene in the play, he tries to get Naomi Watts’s character to actually sleep with him, to make it more real. 

There is too much shouty, dramatic acting in Birdman and too much excessive neurosis. The movie is self-important, and maybe too aware of the fact that it has so much “going for it” in a sense. It does have a fine cast and parts that any actor would covet. Plus, it gets to play the literary game by referencing Raymond Carver, darling of the creative writing circuit, in almost every scene. But the Carver obsession feels self-indulgent. (Although that might just be my aversion to his writing.) The Raymond Carver we get in Birdman feels like straight Tennessee Williams: spare, ultra-male middle-class dysfunction, a less-bewitching, more economic version of A Streetcar Named Desire.

But, there are worse things than Birdman. It’s fascinating at times, and the drum score by Antonio Sanchez is pretty fantastic. It’s the most energizing thing about this movie. With Zach Galifianakis, who’s quite good as a prissy, anxious producer; Amy Ryan, as Thomson’s ex-wife and the calmest figure in the movie, Andrea Riseboroguh, Merritt Wever, and Lindsay Duncan.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

First, the bad: There are too many story elements (and not enough story development) thrown into the latest Spider-Man installment: Peter Parker's relationship with his girlfriend, Gwen; his search to find out the truth about his dad; his relationship with Harry Osborne, son of his dad's business and research partner; his own struggle to honor a promise he made to Gwen's police chief father in the previous film. None of these plot points has the time to grow into something sustained. When we see flashbacks of Peter's parents, we might be fooled into the thinking that the movie is going to focus on that story, but there's not much to show for it aside from a montage of Peter covering his bedroom wall with newspaper clippings and photos related to his dad's research and parents' tragic deaths. (There's an extended flashback scene where we see what happened to them, but it's never clear why the writers included it.) Later Peter discovers that his father's research lab has been kept in pristine condition, hidden in a secret subway compartment that was once used for FDR. While we do learn one relevant piece of information in this scene, it's an example of what doesn't work in this movie: the myriad bits of exposition that don't function as anything other than plot markers.

The film also develops at least two villains (possibly a third if you include the ending). Spider-Man has a lot on his plate, and increasingly, movies like this one are asking viewers to take on more, more, more. That's not to say we're getting more complexity, or more quality, just more. More bang for our buck, I suppose, because, like most of its ilk, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has a lot of bang. Much of it is generated by the latest villain, Electro (played by Jamie Foxx). I like much of this entry, but as I sit and recall how long it was, how bloated it was, I find myself wishing the movie had been pared down. The endless scenes of things exploding become mind-numbing and indistinguishable from Captain America and Batman and any other series.

Speaking of explosion scenes, I'd like to know how much hypothetical money it costs to repair New York City after Spider-Man (or any other superhero who calls the Big Apple home) does his thing. These enormous set pieces full of collisions and shattered glass and cars careening into each other and buildings collapsing and countless near-death experiences are just so wearisome. Every time I see one of these things--or even just the previews--I wonder why in the world so many people keep coming back. What else do they think they're going to see? And aren't they tired of the same old same old yet? The answer is an obvious "no" when you consider that this Spider-Man made 700 million dollars in the U.S. alone. Captain America has also broken the 700 million dollar marker, ditto X-Men: Days of Future Past (coming in ahead so far at 736 mil). I can only conclude that audiences--the audiences who live for comic book movies--have an unquenchable thirst for more of these, and presumably don't care that these movies repeat themselves or that the series are rebooted again and again. But why? Perhaps the culture has become so hopeless that superhero movies fulfill a kind of void. It may also be that these movies are like junk food: They condition people to crave the kind of flashy instant gratification they provide. When Pauline Kael described the 1977 Star Wars as a "box of Crackerjacks that's all prizes," she was describing every summer movie that's ever been made since Star Wars.

Now the good: Admittedly, Amazing Spider-Man 2 is enjoyable for what it is. And that isn't meant to sound like faint praise. I really did enjoy a lot of it, and I was satisfied with the ending, although it's conceivable that many people were not. What does work, and what is the saving grace of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, is Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. Andrew Garfield is an actor who truly feels, and that emotion registers on the screen. It's hard not to respond to his sincerity. He also gets more funny bits of dialogue and action this time, especially in the first forty-five minutes or so when he flies around performing various Spider-Man tasks. These moments allow Garfield's natural charm to come through those tights and that silly bug mask. And Emma Stone may be the most likable young actress working in Hollywood right now. I can't think of anyone like her at the moment. She gazes out into the world with those big dreamy starlit eyes, but she's also smart and confident. Never for once do you feel someone could pull the rug out from under her. The movie is surely bolstered by the charisma these two performers exude, and it makes much of Spider-Man 2 bearable, even fun.

Even though it's entertaining to see Spider-Man web his away around skyscrapers, the action sequences eventually blur together into the blasé chaos we've come to expect from these movies. However, every scene of the two young lovers takes on a separate movie life. No other superhero movie romance comes close to capturing this kind of attraction. The scenes of Andrew and Emma, however repetitive or cliched, are something like a rest stop along the highway of endless superhero movie madness. We get to step out of the car, stretch our legs, and breathe.

I'm happy to report that in this film, Sally Field (returning as Peter's loving aunt) has a little more acting to do this time around. A little more. In the previous film, every time Field appeared on screen, she was a bystander. (Oscar-winner: Best Veteran Actress to Stand Around and Look Concerned While the Stars Hash Out Their Problems.) It made me wonder how many days she came to work with no lines to actually perform. Is this a depressing thing for actors? Are they just grateful to be getting work after they've reached "a certain age"? If so, it's a disservice, and a waste of tremendous gifts. But here, Field's character finally gets to talk, and she finally has something to say. Sadly, Jamie Foxx, who plays a nerdy technician for Oscorp, is miscast, not because he gives a bad performance, but because it's simply depressing to see him play such a loser. As the outcast Max Dillon, he wanders through life virtually invisible to those around him. As such, he's got just the right amount of inner-rage welling up inside him to make him a terrifying presence once he dons super-powers as Electro. Foxx may have wanted the challenge of doing something different, but he's such a charming, handsome, in-command actor that seeing him play the schlubby Max Dillon is a let-down.

And just when we think the movie can't go on much longer, director Marc Webb and the writers decide to invest what seems like another eternity into the villainous deeds of Harry Osborn (played by Dane DeHaan). With Paul Giamatti (as Rhino, a big beastly man so unlike Paul Giamatti that I didn't recognize him), Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz as Peter's mom and dad, and Colm Feore.

The Amazing Spider-Man

The problem with The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) is Spider-Man 1, 2, and 3. Their existences render this reboot superfluous. But, if we must sit through another introduction to this comic book hero, we could do much worse than Andrew Garfield suited up and Emma Stone at his side. Their fizzy chemistry, marked by sweetly uncomfortable long silences and interrupted sentences, is reason enough to see this film. The director, Marc Webb, is especially competent at these scenes. (He directed 500 Years of Summer before this.) But he's not especially competent when it comes to the action sequences. They are visually incoherent, and that this problem--which is so woefully commonplace among our action movies, particularly the ones that spawn from the various comic book series--is overlooked by so many kind (or perhaps indifferent) viewers is indeed depressing. Not long after Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man, he gets into a brawl on the Subway. But the punches and kicks are so poorly put together that we cannot tell what's going on, who's getting hit where, and the structure of that scene simply falls apart, pushing the viewer away.

There are other disappointments too. Chiefly, Sally Field. It's frustrating to see such a talented and dare I say beloved actress playing such a dull role. All she gets to do is look concerned. She plays the loving aunt of Peter Parker, and she mostly just worries about him as he traipses into the house late, forgetting to pick her up from work or get eggs from the grocery store. Martin Sheen gets a little more speechifying, but he's so obviously set up as a kind of philosophical mentor--a Yoda figure if you will--that he doesn't really resonate. You may end up thinking of the previous Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) intoning, "With great power comes great responsibility." (And for some reason I kept picturing Glenn Ford, from Superman.)

The villain in this Spider-Man entry is a scientist named Dr. Connors (played by Rhys Ifans). His research in genetic mutation is the catalyst for Peter Parker's transformation into Spider-Man. But unlike Peter, whose physicality is enhanced by a bio-magical spider bite, Dr. Connors turns into something hideous and terrifying when he injects himself with a serum that's supposed to regenerate his missing arm. He turns into a giant lizard, thus enabling Marc Webb to play a little Godzilla. Fortunately The Amazing Spider-Man has more finesse than a Godzilla picture.

Andrew Garfield--the gangly suburban punk with brains and charm to spare--is truly a wonderful casting choice. He has a magnetism that Tobey Maguire--so gauche and awkward--lacked. He's also funny, but the film doesn't spend enough time letting him show off his comic chops. Perhaps someone was afraid of making Spider-Man too jokey. And Emma Stone has spunk where Kirsten Dunst was too adorable. This combination of qualities saves the film from being just another superhero movie. Written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent (who also wrote Spider-Man 2), and Steve Kloves.

Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad is a less exciting variation on L.A. Confidential.

It's 1949, and in Los Angeles, everything runs on mobster Mickey Cohen's watch. L.A.'s police chief (Nick Nolte) creates a special, secret task force to go after Cohen's capital and bring him down. Considering the story, and the cast--which includes Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Peña, and Robert Patrick, as cops, Sean Penn as Cohen, and Emma Stone as Cohen's moll, Gangster Squad should have been a lot better than it is. It's marred by clumsy writing and conventional plotting. The script is by Will Beall, and the film was directed by Ruben Fleischer. Both of them seem preoccupied with making Gangster Squad as gruesome and brutal as possible--without sacrificing their love of cheap sentiment: [Spoiler ahead] Brolin's pregnant wife survives after two of Cohen's men riddle her house with bullets, and when Brolin arrives, he follows the trail of blood into the bathroom only to find that she isn't dead; she has given birth. A cheap shot, the kind of trickery that outs an incompetent director faster than you can say "give me a break."

As ridiculous as it is--and it is quite ridiculous--Gangster Sqaud is compulsively watchable in its badness, and it has a sleek, colorful, shallow charm to it. The casting is intriguing, and yet somehow unlikely: Brolin is never convincing as a would-be family man, and Gosling is little more than a comic book character (he's still very enjoyable); Emma Stone, who is always likable, somehow feels miscast, although she isn't bad; meanwhile, Sean Penn turns into Freddy Kreuger, chewing up the scenery like a psychotic pair of scissors. ★★

Easy A

In Easy A, Emma Stone gives the kind of performance that makes it seem impossible for anyone else to have played the role of Olive, a perceptive but overlooked high schooler who dreams about being noticed, until her reputation takes a change for the notorious. A seemingly harmless tale of a one-night-stand (contrived in order to get her pushy best friend off her back about being such a home-body) launches her from forgotten nothing to the school's hottest topic of gossip. Then, an old friend asks her to help save his reputation (he's terrified of his homosexuality being outed to the viscous jocks), so they stage a little bedroom scene while at a party. Pretty soon Olive is every male virgin's go-to-girl: someone who will lie for them and improve their prudish reputations. But her notoriety comes at a price, and the high school Pharisees (led by Amanda Bynes, who inhabits her role with wonderfully poised bits of Bible thumping madness) engage in a little picketing, some light ostracism, and more than a bit of genuine hellfire and brimstone sermonizing, all at Olive's expense.

Easy A is one of the most original adolescent comedies in years, conceived by newcomer Bert Royal and directed by Will Gluck. Casting is heaven-sent: Stone is easy to like, and she has a natural flare for comedy that comes out in quirky facial expressions and a comic timing that operates in its own dimension: it works on such a wonderfully unexpected level that you find yourself laughing and not being able to stop. The script itself is chock full of funny moments, some of which are so subtle that half the audience isn't even aware of them. As Olive's funny, loving, and very laid-back, understanding parents, Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson seem to be having more fun than they've had in a long time. They're the kind of parents you wish you'd had, although it's more than probable that such parents don't even exist in real life. Thomas Haden Church and Lisa Kudrow are among the high school faculty, Malcolm McDowell is the grizzled principal, Aly Michalka is Stone's BFF, and Penn Badgley is the obligatory sensitive, smart, funny, gentlemanly stud who sees beyond Olive's faux reputation. Besides being original, Easy A taps into the trendy technique of referencing movies of the past (particularly John Hughes films), and also sends a healthy nod to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (which Olive's English class is studying during the events of the movie). ★★★

The House Bunny

In my quest to watch the noteworthy films of 2009, I inadvertently drifted back to 2008 and landed upon The House Bunny: the feel-good sophisticated comedy of the year! Or, perhaps the opposite. Let's be honest, no one goes to a movie starring Anna Faris (star of all the Scary Movie flicks) for her keen wit or comic bravado. She is, however, a funny actress (although she may be stuck in a rut playing the dumb girl for longer than she should). The House Bunny starts, proceeds, and ends, predictably enough: narcissistic and shallow but likable Playboy bunny Farris is ejected (rather suspiciously) from the Playboy Mansion (it may help to liken this to Nixon's self-imposed abdication of the White House) and forced to make something of herself.

She inadvertently winds up in a college town and discovers that being a "Housemother" to a sorority might be a pretty good gig for a girl whose only real talents are dressing in skimpy outfits and acting stupid to attract attention from guys (and envy from girls). Happening upon the fledgling Zetas, Faris offers to help them gin up their image and increase their non-existent recruitment (a problem which threatens the loss of their house). What is the answer to their sorority woes, you ask? Shredding their geeky appearances, social awkwardness, and smarts for sexy attire and superficial giggly-ness. Nothing that an out-of-work Playgal can't handle! Indeed, they transform from the caterpillars no one would talk to, to the butterflies everyone's talking about. The seemingly contradictory lesson? Beauty is on the inside (wow, HOW original). Of course, a rockin' hot bod helps too, giving you the audience to demonstrate your erudition and individuality.

It's always fun when shallow and sexist movies attempt to redeem their entire plots by offering a predictable but palatable message. Problems: Why would girls like this even WANT to be in a sorority if the other sorority sisters are so vapid and vain? Also, why would they want to change into something they aren't? The film (I often throw this high-brown term around like Paula Dean throws sour cream on butter) tries to present to us the idea that women can be both hotties and brains, like, at the same time, for real! ★★

Zombieland

Fantastic! Not my favorite "looking" zombies, but this is certainly one of the most fun zombie flicks in recent years, sort of America's answer to Shaun of the Dead. Woody Harrelson is a bad-ass. Jesse Eisenberg balances out Woody's redneck Dirty Harry persona with his neurotic, witty and insightful take on his new "world," which is--you guessed it--overrun by flesh-eating zombies. And who would have thought a zombie movie would quote All About Eve's famous line ("Fasten your seatbelts...")? ★★★