The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

 "Um, did your traffic jam have something to do with the Russian mob?"

Ouch. This is a rubbish film, isn't it? I mean, Andrew Garfield is great. Emma Stone, too. Jamie Foxx is superb in a very different take on Electro, although Dane DeHaan misses the mark as Harry Osborn. Still, the cast is pretty good, although Paul Giamatti is absolutely slumming it in a part like this. So why is the film such utter pants? After all, nobody wants to make a bad film.

For a fair chunk of the running time I was expecting to be expressing the opinion that this was a good script ruined by bad direction. Marc Webb was ok in the film's predecessor but this instalment is shot much more obviously like a music video, and is frankly annoying with all that jiggery pokery with the POV of the camera. I don't mind creative camerawork, in fact I admire it. But when it draws attention to the artifice, as it does here, it fails.

But it's not just the camerawork. This film has Electro, a half-hearted Green Goblin with a rushed backstory, and an even more half-hearted Rhino. Electro is sidelined tooo much to be effective as a villain,whereas the whole attempt to replicate Gerry Conway's classic 1970s comics tale of the Green Goblin and the tragic death of Gwen Stacy is frankly an insult in how rushed it is. The entire conceit of Gwen's graduation speech, and how it seems to impart extra maning after her death, is the ultimate in faux profundity. It really is a pathetic waste of a storyline that could have been devastatingly good. 

I seem to be on a run of bad Marvel films. Can we have a good one, please?

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

"I'm having woman cramps..."

Meh. Is that it? That was decidedly, boringly average, but then this is 2012 and Sony have to crank out any old Spider-Man film every few years. Still, those of us who have seen Fox's 2015 Fantastic Four know it could be much worse.

Not that this is a bad film, you understand. It's well-shot, adequately plotted and scripted, Andrew Garfield is a good-enough Spider-Man in spite of being blatantly too old, and the whole "cross-species" thing is a clever way of tying together the origins of Spidey and the Lizard. No; what's annoying is that they're doing that damn origin again, and Sam Raimi made that film in 2002.

Oh, they try to make things different- there's an emphasis on Spidey's dead parents. We get Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane and there's a twist at the end where he seems to decide not to dump her for her "own safety" after a promise to her dad in which two men agree her future between them. Patriarchy much? Still, at least this time it's subverted, even if the trope of Peter Parker's girlfriend always being a character integral to the plot is becoming a little groanworthy. We also get a more streetwise, skateboarding Peter whose academic geekery is downplayed, in spite of the fact that this time we get actual web-shooters. But we still get that damn origin story again, and the whole thing feels so uninspired that even a hilarious Stan Lee cameo can't save this film from mediocrity.

Zombieland (2009)

"So, do you have any regrets?"

"Garfield, maybe?"

No, in spite of the title, the year of release and Jesse Eisenberg, this film isn't connected to Adventureland. What it is, though, is bloody brilliant, a fantastically metatextual take (you know I love that kind of thing) on the whole zombie genre. Right from the start, with the narrative being based around Columbus' rules of survival in "Zombieland", this is a fun watch.

Yes, a metatextual zombie comedy has been done before in the form of Shaun of the Dead, which I must get round to blogging someday, but this is very different. Shaun of the Dead is a small, claustrophobic film based in London and set, in any case, on a small island. Zombieland is able to use the huge, continental size of the USA to show the full and terrible scale of the zombie apocalypse, and then have some fun. Oh, and 28 Days Later has had an influence: these zombies run.

Eisenberg's Columbus is fantastic both as a character and as narrator- a loner, a nerd, a virgin, possibly on the spectrum, but in circumstances like these he's ultimately able to get the girl, the girl in this case being the delightfully devious con artist Wichita. This could be said to be the best and weirdest romantic comedy I've seen this year.

 The stand-out character, though, is Tallahassee, with Woody Harrelson stealing every scene he's in as the loud, eccentric and very Southern Twinkie obsessive. There's a tragic side even to him, though: we eventually learn that the "puppy" he lost was in fact his son. This is enough to communicate the pathos but, wisely, is not dwelt in. Too great a focus on the human tragedy of the zombie apocalypse would spoil the fun.

The best bit of the film, albeit too brief, is of course the section with Bill Murray playing himself: one gets the distinct idea that Tallahassee, Bill's biggest fanboy, is acting as the authorial voice here. You can see his point: Bill is fantastic. And apparently Eddie Van Halen is a zombie roaming around Hollywood.

Basically, this film rules and absolutely has to be seen. But I knew that as soon as the opening titles started with Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls".