On the couch

The Amazing Spiderman
***
Directed by: Marc Webb
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Martin Sheen, Sally Field

Lay the Favourite
**
Directed by: Stephen Frears
Starring: Rebecca Hall, Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Joshua Jackson, Vince Vaughan
The Amazing Spider-Man is the reboot to a franchise so recently deceased the body was still warm. Despite being about as warmly anticipated as a colonoscopy, Marc Webb’s movie manages to distinguish itself from its forbears, despite some major flaws.

Despite the new director, new stars and new dimension (ASM was shot in 3-D) the origin story of how Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man is pretty well ingrained in the minds of comic book and film fans – what The Amazing Spider-Man promises is “the untold” origin story and, for about five minutes and a few allusions in the deleted scenes, it does attempt to do so.

Rather than start with Peter Parker, nerdy but likeable teen, the flick starts with young Spidey’s parents leaving their only nipper with Aunty Em (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen). It’s clear they’re not just eager to catch a great deal on lastminute.com and all of a sudden these science-y potential secret agents add an intriguing edge to the canon.

Unfortunately this doesn’t last long as we fast forward to the present day where Peter (Andrew Garfield) is a bright but spacey high-school pupil who, while certainly not one of the ‘in’ crowd, is far from the geek he may have previously been presented as.

The first hour serves as something of a box-ticking exercise – establish bully and love interest? Check. Get Peter bitten by some sort of nuclear/genetically modified/alien spider that will imbue him with powers and resultant ‘learning to use his powers’ montage? Check. Kill off wise and kind uncle in a tragically avoidable manner? Check. A burgeoning career as a crime fighter begins with sewing a lycra suit? Check and double check.

While this all may be oh so familiar for some, the addition of Sally Field and Martin Sheen certainly add a little heft to Peter’s back story as only great actors can.

Also adding a little spark to proceedings is Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey, Peter’s love interest for the film. It’s the scenes between Stone and Garfield that really make ASM worth watching as the two reveal some great on-screen chemistry.

Of course, it’s not just the set-up for Spidey that follows a fairly predictable path. The bad guy, when finally revealed, also adheres to the “conflicted friend/enemy” type found in the franchise. In this case it’s Rhys Ifans as Dr Curt Connors, a scientist who worked with the Parker parents and may have an insight into their disappearance.

After appearing briefly to tantalise with more potential details of that promised “untold” story, the good doctor fecks off to lose his marbles and turn into a giant psycho super-lizard when an experiment to re-grow his arms goes awry.

Once the big bad gets into his stride, all semblance of telling a story and one long, occasionally very entertaining, action scene kicks off which pretty much lasts until just before the end.
When it comes down to it, the biggest problem with The Amazing Spider-Man is that the villain sucks.

Not to take away from Ifans’ portrayal of Dr Connors – which is suitably tortured/manic – but a great big lizard with a penchant for chemistry just doesn’t cut it considering past baddies included a psychotic, flying billionaire, a genius with nuclear-powered mechanical arms and an evil alien symbiote.

Unfortunately for the Doc, scenes that serve to humanise him, revealing a lot more about his private life – he has an young, estranged son – and his relationship with Peter feature only among the deleted extras. Had they made the final cut, his Jekyll and Hyde-like transformation may have appeared more poignant and his character more interesting.

Also in the Spider-Man-hating business, Denis Leary shows up as Gwen’s dad, NYPD captain George Stacey. He does his usual acidic schtick but isn’t a patch on JK Simmons’ version of J Jonah Jameson.

A bit slow in parts and boring in others The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t a perfect superhero flick and while it may not be the best Spider-Man film ever, it’s certainly in the top three. The absence of Tobey Maguire dancing was always going to assure it of that small honour at least.

To call Lay the Favourite amusingly goofy but utterly unrealistic is to neglect the film’s most baffling aspect – it’s based (apparently) on a true story.

Rebecca Hall stars as Beth, a part-time private lap dancer who, sick with her lot in life, heads to Las Vegas in the hopes of finding a new, safer, more interesting and lucrative line of work.

Initially aiming to become a cocktail waitress, she ends up working for a small-time bookies, Dink Inc, under the inimitable Dink (Bruce Willis). Quickly proving herself to be both handy with numbers and good with the various punters, grifters and shysters she encounters as part of her new job, things start to look up for her. Unfortunately things take a turn for the worse when she gets branded a jinx and involved in some shady figures and all manner of peculiarity occurs.

Among the many bemusing aspects of Lay the Favourite is Beth herself. Hall is always good to watch but it’s a little baffling as to why everyone falls for or is so mad about her character.
She simpers. A LOT. And the ditz card gets played very heavily. Sure there are frequent mentions to the fact that she’s good with numbers but how she becomes so invaluable to Dink’s gambling operation so quickly is never really made clear and it’s kind of a big plot point to just expect the audience to take almost completely on faith.

It makes about as much sense as the rapidfire gambling lingo that rat-a-tat-tats between characters at irritatingly regular intervals.

Lay the Favourite feels like it wants to be either a badly dressed Ocean’s 11 or a sunnier Coen Brothers movie but fails on both counts. The story ends before it ever really begins and what happens in between feels haphazard and pointless.

It’s a shame because the cast itself is great. Hall is eminently watchable, as is Willis and Catherine Zeta-Jones does a brilliant job as Dink’s waspish wife. Unfortunately, the ensemble is let down by a weak and purposeless script. Pity.