The Week In Screenings Part LVII
A busy week again this time around, but a lot of the films I watched were embargoed, meaning I can let you know how they were until much later in the year. The only film I can actually talk about this week is The Amazing Spider-Man which I caught over the weekend. As always I made the journey over to the O2 to catch it in the always impressive Cineworld Superscreen, which always makes any film feel like a real event, especially a big summer tentpole film like this one.
Due to the weekend rain I was running late, so late in fact that I was tempted to cut my losses and catch it another day, but I decided to slog on and got there expecting to miss the first couple of minutes, only to find the trailers had actually only just started. That meant there must have been a record breaking near 40-minutes of adverts, trailers and info before the film, I was actually glad I was running late. One great thing about the pre-film fun was that the BBFC have now started using an updated version of their 1960s/70s classification certificate before the films, they’ve been using a very early version until recently and it was brilliant to suddenly see this new 70s version, one that I remember seeing when it was around for the first time.
But enough of that; how was the film? Well it’s OK and I don’t think it’s actually bad, while I was watching it I got caught up in the set pieces and the attempt to re-launch Spider-Man, but once out of the film you start to get the feeling that something was missing. Fundamentally there’s no real problem with a new take on Spider-Man, but what we didn’t need was to have to watch the origins once again when the Sam Raimi version is still so fresh, so sitting through that was kind of time consuming. Also the deliberate attempt to distance itself from those other incarnations by making everything so different felt like it was trying too hard. Everyone would have been fine with a new Spider-man film, as long as it was good, I think by trying to reboot the series before it really needed it, the filmmakers have just complicated things too much. A simple straightforward story would have been fine.
Not to say the film is bad, just a bit muddled, there are some great bits in here, mostly due to the cast being a great selection of actors, Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker is good, though he’s a very different Peter from the one we know, Emma Stone is as great as ever as Gwen Stacy and, Martin Sheen brings a brilliant level of decency to the role of Uncle Ben, so there’s a lot to be enjoyed here. It just feels like the filmmakers were so desperate to distance themselves from Raimi’s fondly remembered trilogy that they spent too much time trying to be different, instead of trying to be entertaining, which would have stood them in much stead.
Also this week you can get your first glance at my upcoming next Night Of The Trailers event, the information has gone live on the Roxy Bar & Screen website and you can take a read of what I’ve got planned for the next entry in my trailer events: Night Of The Trailers Returns. See it here.
Tags: screenings