What I’m watching: ‘Spiderman: Homecoming’ is fun action film Date: 7/20/2017
In theaters: Spiderman: Homecoming
When I first heard about yet another reboot of the venerable comic book superhero, the thoughts were, “Why?” We’ve had three movies starring Toby Maguire as the webslinger and two with Andrew Garfield. Do we really need another adaptation?
Well, I will readily admit my apprehensions about seeing this film were quickly dashed. “Spiderman: Homecoming” is a superior comic book adaptation.
For this film the writers and director clearly went back to the source material. Created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee in 1962, the character was originally a skinny, nerdy high school student. Those early books were full of teenage angst as Peter Park was trying to adjust to being a teenager in one life and a superhero in another. That’s what made Spiderman so radically different from any other superhero in the early 1960s.
No other Spiderman adaptation has captured that feeling or cast someone who portrayed a teenaged Peter Parker as well than Tom Holland. Although 21 years old, Holland easily passed as a kid several years younger. His characterization has the necessary balance of a kid chomping at the bit to be considered an adult and a young person awed with his new situation.
In this outing, the long-time Spiderman villain The Vulture is played by Michael Keaton. His Adrian Toomes is a salvage guy whose company has won the bid to clean up all of the alien wreckage from the battle depicted in the first Avengers movie. When the government steps in without warning to take over the job, Toomes snaps. He continues obtaining the materials and sells the weapons that are created from this to anyone with the money.
We are presented with a multi-layered bad guy and a multi-layered hero in this film, a nice switch from many action films.
The film is filled with humorous moments, largely supplied by Parker’s best friend, Ned, played by Jacob Batalon. Ned seems convinced that Peter should let people know who he is to change his social status at the school.
Be sure to stay through the credits to the very end for two bonus scenes.
Even causal superhero fans should embrace this new and superior version of your friendly neighborhood Spiderman.
On DVD/Blu-ray: Deluge
If you’re a habitual Turner Classic Movies viewer, you need to see this new release of a film that had been considered “lost” for many decades.
“Deluge” is an early example of a popular genre, the disaster film. Although fairly common today, in 1933 when this film was released, it was a novelty.
Made by World-Wide Pictures, a small independent studio, the film was financed by RKO, which released the film. It was not successful at the box office and RKO sold the special effect footage to Republic Pictures with the provision the actual film would be pulled from circulation, as the excellent commentary by Richard Harland Smith explained.
Lobster films and Kino Lorber have now released a restored version of the film and I found it to be a revelation. The plot, derived from a novel by S. Fowler Wright, tells the story of a new world created by a series of unexplained earthquakes and tidal waves. Our hero Martin (Sidney Blackmer) becomes separated from his wife and children and after the huge tidal wave creates a new landscape he believes them to be dead.
Martin finds professional swimmer Claire (Peggy Shannon) on the beach and nurses her back to health. The two must now fight back a band of renegades who want to kill Martin and imprison Claire.
Made before the Production Code kicked in, this film pulls few punches in how it depicts the new world. It moves quickly along – it is only 70 minutes – and has an ending that I certainly couldn’t predict.
The special effects showing the destruction of New York City were state of the art for 1933 and impressed me today.
The female lead, Peggy Shannon, was another discovery. Striking and talented, Shannon should have been a big star but was alcoholic and died of a heart attack at the age of 34.
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