Movie Review: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

by Tony Dayoub



After a number of previous attempts at getting the alchemy right, Sony Pictures finally gets its (500) Days of Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Ironic, because not even (500) Days of Summer director, Marc Webb, ever came close in the two Spider-Man movies he directed, starring Andrew Garfield. This time, the financially shaky Sony had to stow its pride and go running to Marvel, the very company it had scooped up the superhero franchise away from back when the roles were reversed, and ask it for help in developing the property. A wise decision as it turns out, because Marvel knows that what fans have wanted to see the most is its iconic hero interact with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I mean, what would DC be like without Superman or Batman, right? Disney without Mickey Mouse? Looney Tunes without Bugs Bunny? Marvel has long been scratching that phantom itch with Spidey, but they've played the long game, first introducing Tom Holland as a high school-age Peter Parker in 2016's Captain America: Civil War. This through Marvel's eminence grise, Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man.

Movie Review: Logan (2017)

by Tony Dayoub


When Ryan Reynolds was beating the bushes for an Oscar this past year, he dropped the tantalizing tidbit that even if his pattern-breaking, adult-oriented Deadpool failed to garner any nominations, he was sure Logan would have its turn at the awards dais. Wouldn't that be something, to see the childish superhero genre graduate to the same fully respected mythos status as the Western? Well, Logan is not the awards worthy graphic novel-based film Reynolds touted it as. But it is a damn good stab at that kind of a movie.

Movie Review: Suicide Squad (2016)

by Tony Dayoub


The highly anticipated Suicide Squad proves to be a not entirely unsurprising fizzle. It's the second in DC's expansion of its extended film universe (it's really not fair to count the far classier Man of Steel, which was never really meant to start this particular ball rolling, as part of the series). On paper, Suicide Squad looks like the most daring of the upcoming DC films. It features a deep stable of super-villains instead of the predictably stolid heroes. It is directed by David Ayer (End of Watch), a throwback to Walter Hill and the closest we've seen to a true auteur shaping this kind of film since Guillermo del Toro helmed Blade II. But save for a couple of lunatic performances by Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn and Jared Leto as Harley's boyfriend, the Joker, plus some lustrous cinematography by Roman Vasyanov, Suicide Squad is perhaps even more disappointing than its dark predecessor, Batman v. Superman.

Loose Thoughts on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

by Tony Dayoub


I've been wracking my brain all week trying to figure out why I can't come up with a coherent review for this weekend's big hit, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. It wasn't until I saw it again this weekend, in an obligatory revisit to take my two young boys, when I came to this conclusion. My thoughts are only as scattershot as the film itself tends to be. Dawn of Justice is Zack Snyder's attempt at jump-starting the DC Extended Universe or DCEU, the filmic counterpart to its rival Marvel's own cinematic franchise the MCU. It is reminiscent of those graphic samplers DC Comics puts out a month before they introduce a major storyline that will snake through its entire publishing lineup. The movie tries to whet the viewer's appetite for future installments, but fails to come up with a satisfying story that can stand on its own. So why not mirror the movie itself in presenting my own disjointed thoughts on the failures (and yes, some minor successes) of this schizoid superhero dirge.

Blu-ray Review: The Flash:The Complete First Season (2015)

by Tony Dayoub


Spinning off from it's popular sister show, Arrow, The Flash largely succeeded from escaping Arrow's long shadow within just a couple of episodes. Where it took nearly its entire first season for Arrow to fully embrace its comic book origins and leave behind the teen soap conventions of its home network, the CW, The Flash arrived fully formed, as its creators confirm in the new blu-ray set's only audio commentary. It has done so by turning its back on the dark, brooding atmosphere popularized by the Dark Knight epics that Arrow emulates. Instead, The Flash feels sunny and optimistic, largely a credit to the enjoyable bumbling geekiness of its nice-guy star, Grant Gustin, and his interpretation of CSI tech Barry Allen. It's a show whose occasional X-Files creepiness never really exceeds Goosebumps-level frights, making it ideal for family viewing, a fact which I can personally attest to (my wife and kids love it as much as I do).

4 Reasons Fantastic Four Is Anything But

by Tony Dayoub


I take no pleasure in piling on a bad movie, but a lot of us who grew up reading "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine," as Fantastic Four was sub-titled for many years, are mystified by the fact that not one of its movie iterations has been successful. It shouldn't take rocket science to re-calibrate the property to reflect what made the Marvel Comics' flagship title and a template for the superheroes that would follow. Take one look at director Josh Trank's version, though, and one starts to wonder if even the team's gifted scientist, Reed Richards (Miles Teller), could work out the formula needed to make Fantastic Four truly live up to its name. Here are four reasons Fantastic Four was anything but:

Movie Review: Ant-Man (2015)

by Tony Dayoub


Let's forgo all of the groaners about good things coming in small packages and so forth. Ant-Man is a pleasing enough take on the superhero movie that it doesn't need any help, tired jokes or otherwise, from a hack like me. Ant-Man is neither overstuffed epic like the recent Avengers sequel, Age of Ultron, nor clever, brooding thriller a la Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Ant-Man is a perfectly modest adventure about a man out of his depth in all levels of life who finally finds his niche in the disorienting world of the sub-atomic.

Movie Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

by Tony Dayoub


Avengers: Age of Ultron begins in media res, with the usually fractious superheroes seemingly having evolved into a well-oiled, super-powered machine as demonstrated by a coordinated attack on HYDRA and its new leader Baron Von Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann). Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is beating whole flocks of HYDRA soldiers with one swing of his hammer, Mjolnir. Captain America (Chris Evans) uses his motorcycle the way a gymnast would a balance beam, pushing off into acrobatic flips and bowling his enemies over before meeting the cycle again further down the line. The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, or a CGI version of him) simply barrels through the bad guys like a runaway train while the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) follows close behind, prepared to execute a secret "lullaby" protocol that mysteriously calms the green behemoth in nearly an instant. All of this unfolds while Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) is at his most detached, ordering his new Iron Legion of robots to do most of the dirty work while he flies overhead, trying his best to break through an invisible force field surrounding Strucker's castle.

Movie Review: Big Hero 6 (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


The idea of Disney exploiting its newly acquired Marvel properties for an animated film is a great on its face. The first of these films, but hardly its last I believe, is Big Hero 6, a cute superhero movie that should prove to be a font of unending merchandising opportunities directed to young boys the way Frozen has been to young girls. Cute as it is however , Big Hero 6 still comes up short as a children's fantasy.

Movie Review: Man of Steel (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

"You'll believe a man can fly." That was the now famous tagline for Superman: The Movie (1978) as it was known then, a film that changed my life when I first saw it at 6 years of age at Miami's now non-existent Dadeland Theatre. I had seen plenty of movies by now, even films with more glorious special effects than that one. Star Wars had come out 19 months earlier, of course. But there was something magical about seeing one of my comic book heroes interpreted onto the screen so masterfully by director Richard Donner and the late actor Christopher Reeve, something about seeing it in a darkened theater balcony, the kind one rarely finds in existence these days. That film is a linchpin in my life I now realize, responsible for my love of Manhattan (which doubled for Superman's adopted city, Metropolis), inspiring me to learn about much of Hollywood history later due to its conflux of new and old actors, like Marlon Brando, Ned Beatty, Gene Hackman, and others. The point is Superman: The Movie casts a pretty large shadow in my life. So it was with some uneasiness that I went into Man of Steel.

Movie Review: Iron Man 3 (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

"You know who I am." It's a statement made several different times in Iron Man 3 by both Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his nemesis the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) that turns out to be more of a question than a declaration: "Do you know who I am?" We find out who the Mandarin is fairly early. Whether you'll be satisfied with the answer largely depends on if you're a comic book fan who holds filmmakers accountable for screwing around with your precious text. The answer to who Stark is takes a good deal longer to arrive at a resolution, relentlessly driving Iron Man 3 to its conclusion rather skillfully thanks to director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) who consistently subverts the expectations one brings to the otherwise increasingly predictable and generic superhero movie.

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

by Tony Dayoub

So let's get the major criticism out of the way right now. Why reboot the Spider-Man series so soon? The dismal Spider-Man 3, overstuffed with dangling plot threads left over from previous films, only came out 5 years ago. But it isn't like the series couldn't recover from one crappy film. Rising salaries for its three principals, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and James Franco may be partly to blame. But why not just recast? Perhaps the aim is to rebuild on a better foundation. Whatever the reason is, the one thing that's certain is that Sony Pictures had to make a Spider-Man film pronto because, if they didn't, the rights would revert back to Marvel Entertainment and presumably its owner, Disney. Since Maguire and Dunst are getting a bit long in the tooth to realistically keep up the romantic histrionics in perpetuity, the reframing of the series with a younger audience in mind was assured. Hence, The Amazing Spider-Man.

Movie Review: The Avengers (2012)

by Tony Dayoub

Captain America. The Incredible Hulk. The Invincible Iron Man. The Mighty Thor. As a kid, I remember watching Jack Kirby and Stan Lee's angst-ridden superheroes, then not much more than a dozen years old, on an umbrella cartoon (because of its limited motion, you couldn't really call it animated) series called The Marvel Super Heroes. Though it was rewarding enough to watch these heroes' early stories play out onscreen, for most viewers, one of the coolest parts of the show was when some other super character would pop in to the storyline unexpectedly, a crossover. Hawkeye, Black Widow, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch and many others would rear their head, and one imagined that the Marvel Universe was an expansive setting in which anyone could be the recipient of a metahuman power infusion.

What works on the comic page, or on children's cartoons, doesn't always work on the big screen, however. Marvel has spent a lot of creative and monetary capital on establishing their individual superhero stars as the most special and most powerful characters in their respective franchises. Iron Man 2, the weakest link of the interlocking series of films that preceded Marvel's newest release, fails mostly because its star is eclipsed by what feels like an interminable succession of characters with powers as unique as his (or in the case of War Machine, nearly exactly the same as his). In a world with gadget-laden assassin Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), the electric-tentacled Whiplash or even the crafty superspy Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), what makes Tony Stark's Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) so special? As anticipation built for The Avengers, a culmination of Marvel's dream to unite its most recent moneymaking franchises, the film critic in me was going in with a skeptical eye.

Movie Review: Green Lantern (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

There are many reasons why Green Lantern fails. Here are three of the primary ones. First, the movie spends far too much time on the GL's earthbound subplots instead of his distinctive galactic milieu. Second, Warner Brothers is so concerned with strip-mining its stable of DC Comics characters in order to compete with Marvel Entertainment that the larger conglomerate slavishly follows their rival's blueprint for success instead of merely looking for inspiration in it. Last, the filmmakers who cooked Green Lantern up miss a great opportunity to offer us a different take on the superhero film, transforming the square stoic of the comics into the same prototypical smart-aleck movie antihero that's a dime a dozen these days. More on this in a moment, but let's begin with a quick primer for those unfamiliar with the 52-year-old comic book hero.

Movie Review: Thor (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

Shoving exposition into a summer blockbuster is quite a feat when it consists of years of mythology, both of the comic book kind and that of Norse folklore. In Thor, director Kenneth Branagh not only manages to accomplish both quite expertly, he also leaves room for the larger backstory of the interwoven Marvel films. Branagh (Henry V, Hamlet, and Much Ado About Nothing) is, not too surprisingly, a great fit at the helm of the latest Marvel Comic-inspired movie. At its core, Thor is a tale built of legendary battles, palace intrigue, and sibling rivalry on a grand Shakespearean scale.

Movie Review: Iron Man 2

by Tony Dayoub

Fulfilling the commercial objectives set by its preceding film, Iron Man 2 makes good on its aim to spearhead an entire Marvel Universe of film franchises. But at what cost? All of the goodwill engendered by its endearingly brash predecessor completely evaporates before this film reaches its denouement. Iron Man 2 doesn't play within any established dramatic constructs in existence. And it betrays the fine character work of its cast by limiting their appearances in order to tease fanboys with the promise of future entries in the tapestry it is intent on weaving.

Movie Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

by Tony Dayoub

The good news is that X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a lot better than the last X-Men film was. The bad news is that this overstuffed entry in the comic book mutant saga is as unwieldy as its title. No, this movie is not as bad as I expected, which kind of precludes me from poking too much fun at it. Worse than that... it's mediocre; not good enough for one to celebrate its ingenuity; not bad enough to revel in its outlandish action blockbuster hallmarks. It commits the cardinal sin of the superhero sequel - to try to top the one that came before it. And this being a prequel more precisely, it makes the same mistake as others of its ilk - to try to explain away any of the mystery about its main character which attracted us in the first place.

The Year 2000: Counting Down The Zeroes - Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan)

The passage of time can destroy or crystallize your opinion of just about anything. In the world of cinema, films can become dated or with hindsight, look quite prescient. M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable falls into the category of the latter. The visually arresting movie is the earliest example of American cinema examining the mythos of comic book superheroes with reverence. Misunderstood at the time of its release because of an ill-conceived marketing campaign designed to sell it as another Sixth Sense, it calls for a reexamination in light of last year's release of The Dark Knight. Like that film, this one takes the mythology of superhero graphic novels quite seriously, grounding the players in a real world, and burdening them with the same kinds of problems people deal with on a daily basis. Unbreakable is about two men who seem to be mirror images of each other-reflections and refractions will be a running motif. David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is a melancholy security guard who is in the early stages of separating from his wife, Audrey (Robin Wright Penn), and keeps his son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), at a distance. Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) is a wealthy dealer in comic book art who has insulated himself from the rest of the world because of a condition that causes his bones to break at the slightest impact. David is the sole survivor of a train wreck which brings him to the attention of Elijah. Elijah believes that if he is a man on one side of the spectrum of fragility, his opposite number, a man of superhuman strength, must reside at the other side of the spectrum. It all makes sense to David's son Joseph, a comic book fan who is looking for anything special to elevate his rather ordinary, estranged father. Elijah's relentless harassment of David and his family concerns him. David only sees an overgrown, bitter, isolated individual who has started believing in the comforting graphic novels he grew up with while real relationships eluded him. But Elijah is correct in asking David if he's ever been sick. He hasn't. And Elijah astutely suggests that the car accident that once sidelined David's promising football career may have simply been an opportunity for him to leave a sport which his then-girlfriend Audrey found repulsively violent. Shyamalan takes some of the conventions of superhero mythology and builds his own iconography around it. David's alliterative first and last name, for example, is common to superhero's secret identities, i.e. Peter Parker/Spider-Man or Bruce Banner/Hulk. Yet his depiction of David's environment in drab and industrial green tones is a cinematic expression. In the picture above, one can see how Shyamalan subtly frames the film's subjects frequently using columns, windows and the like as a subconscious reminder of the comic book panel, as first discussed by Jim Emerson at his movie blog, Scanners. That screen capture also implies the reflection motif discussed earlier with its inclusion of the chandelier in the frame. One man, unbreakable in body; the other, unbreakable in spirit, doggedly hoping to measure his own importance by confronting his opposite doppelganger; both are framed in the scene above. Here is an explicit framing of the two diametrically opposed men by the stadium bleachers, with David's past playing out behind them in the form of a football game at the stadium he guards. Once an active participant in the game, he is now an outsider relegated to overseeing its fans on the fringes. More of Shyamalan's use of color coding can be found in the cool blues and purples that dominate the screen whenever the crippled Elijah is onscreen. And his name is an evocation of prophecy, destiny, indiscriminate fate. Here, David is framed in the candy-colored hues of Joseph's world, a world of unfulfilled dreams and limitless potential sprung to life from Joseph's comic book sensibilities. Audrey and David on a first date since becoming estranged. With each experiencing a new lease on life since David's miraculous survival, their dreams become a possibility once more. The interior of the bar is lit like an exterior - lush, green, and with a hint of sunlight lining each silhouette. They are still in shadow, still haven't let go of the resentments; his over sacrificing his destiny for her, and hers over the wall he's built around himself. Here David is framed by the doorway in the dark, the long night of his rite of passage beginning with Elijah's message on the answering machine in the foreground. Framed again, this time by the train wreckage he survived, David wears his security uniform rain poncho as he remembers another wreck he lived through. The poncho evokes the capes so often found in superhero mythology. The weight of the past on his ultimate destiny, the superhero origin told in flashback is a comic book convention. In my mind (and perhaps only in my mind), this one recalls the staging of the origin on TV's Incredible Hulk (Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno), a TV show that was the first to show the same level of reverence towards a comic-book superhero. The train station sequence fuses all of the errant elements together, as David's destiny becomes clear to him. He has returned full circle to a train station, home to the same mode of transport that forced him to reexamine his life. James Newton Howard's score reaches an ominous crescendo during his sequence. Eduardo Serra's cinematography highlights evildoers - like the woman in the red jacket - with splashes of color whenever they brush up against David, as he instinctively reads their particular crimes committed. David, seen from behind with his palms pointing out, recalling similarly staged depictions of Jesus in biblical epics of the fifties like Quo Vadis (1951) and Ben-Hur (1959), where Jesus' face is given power by its absence from the frame. The crane shot depicts the emergence of the Messianically-lit David from the crowd of travellers, an abrupt shift in point-of-view reserved throughout the film for moments in which David's destiny comes to the fore. From the depths of hell - or at least the street below - a harbinger of evil rises toward the light: the evildoer that will prove to be David's first challenge. Out of the darkness and rain emerges the hero. The God's-eye point-of-view again, as the camera surveys the completion of David's journey - and its casualties - from above. Now a little more brightly lit, as David achieved a form of self-actualization last night. The dawn is taking hold for David and Audrey as their resentments recede with the shadows. David's gift to his son, a newspaper drawing of himself as a superhero. The family unit in the heart of the home - the kitchen - together at last. The once gloomy household now lit like an exterior also. The brightness of a new day for Audrey and David, and Joseph - now closer to his dad than ever - sharing his secret identity. The revelation that Elijah caused the train accident that set David on his path comes to him when he shakes Elijah's hand. A gloved hand, from the bitter man incapable of joining society, meets an outstretched hand, from a man who now knows who he is. David and Elijah are surrounded by the comic books that have, in their own unique way, defined who each is. David's joy is drained by Elijah's reveal, and the frame is overwhelmed by Elijah's cool-colored blues and purples. Elijah, eccentrically dressed as a criminal mastermind, realizes his own destiny as the villainous "Mr. Glass," or so he thinks. A virtual cipher all of his life, he still can't define himself without doing it through others: the teasing kids who invented the nickname, and David his superheroic opposite. This post was first published at Film for the Soul for its continuing series on the best movies of the 2000s, Counting Down the Zeroes, on 4/20/09.