'After the Hunt' has its rewards

    Watching Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, a movie about a purported sexual assault in a high-stakes academic arena, put me in mind of David Mamet's Oleanna, a 1994 movie that dealt with betrayal and accusations between a student and teacher in a college setting. Oleanna was delivered with sharp elbows. After the Hunt deals with similar issues but plays in a less insistent register.

   Mamet took aim at the staunch MeToo inflexibility.  Guadagnino tries a more tempered approach, leaving key questions unanswered and focusing on the way an incident of abuse plays out at Yale in 2019.

    Working from a screenplay by Nora Garrett, Guadagnino begins his movie with a dark screen and what sounds like the ticking of a clock, perhaps to suggest that the characters we'll meet are about to undergo a severe test. 

   Rather than turning his movie into a MeToo screed or a rant against cancel culture excesses, Guadagnino focuses on how the ambitions of his characters become enmeshed in circumstances over which they steadily lose control.

    After the Hunt centers its story on a Yale philosophy professor (Julia Roberts) who's on the verge of receiving tenure, the gold ring on the academic carousel. Roberts' Alma has a flirtatious buddy relationship with another professor (Andrew Garfield) who's also seeking tenure in the philosophy department.

   Alma's psychiatrist husband (Michael Stuhlbarg) seems like a vestige from a relationship that formed when Alma was immature enough to idolize him. The glow has worn off, but the relationship staggers on.

   Ayo Edebiri plays Maggie, the movie's most problematic character, a gay graduate student who sets off a campus firestorm when she accuses Garfield's Hank of crossing a sexual line.

   Is the ambitious Maggie -- who is suspected of having plagiarized her doctoral thesis -- telling the truth? Having pegged Maggie as a rising star, will Alma continue to support her or give her friend the benefit of the doubt? Do donations made by Maggie's wealthy family prevent the truth from being uncovered? And why did Alma single out Maggie for special attention in the first place?

   Roberts conveys flinty credibility as a scholar who has mastered academic speak while struggling with inner torment. Alma occasionally doubles over with stomach pain. She harbors a secret that, as the movie progresses, becomes easier to guess.

 Garfield does what might be his best work yet as a gregarious scholar whose affability could conceal predatory behavior, and Stuhlbarg ably plays a man who, when feeling pressed, expresses his anger in childish ways.

   Chloe Sevigny offers additional support as an academic who serves a guidance role with students and faculty alike, smoothing ruffled feathers and providing mental health counseling.

   Some of Guadagnino's scenes bristle with tension, and it's a pleasure to watch Roberts sink her teeth into a role. In one of the movie's strongest scenes, she eviscerates Maggie for being a spoiled child of privilege. In another memorable moment, she skewers one of her students deeply enough to scar the kid for life.

   It’s possible, though, that the movie overdoes things. Maggie, for example, is Black, gay, and super-privileged, a loaded deck of traits that supposedly grants her immunity in a DEI-dominated world. 

  Some of Guadagnino's choices seem like self-conscious strains to establish the film's intellectual bona fides. Ambiguities about the nature of truth might have been clear without references to the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's arty score can be both intriguing and jarring.

   Beyond all that, sexual abuse and cancel culture aren't exactly the freshest of subjects.

   Still, I got caught up in the way Guadagnino and his cast create the insular bubble in which academic power games are played. The movie's pleasures derive from the ways in which Guadagnino finds the  blood and bile that boil beneath a surface of academic refinement. I may be pushing the point, but After the Hunt sometimes felt as if a high-class helping of pulp somehow had gotten into Yale.

A non-linear look at a romance

   Some filmmakers delight in fragmenting time, disrupting its normal flow for non-linear storytelling. The technique can be illuminating if it serves as a structural prism that heightens understanding and deepens involvement with the tale that's being told. Then there's the other kind, a drama in which time shifts seem designed to elevate a story that otherwise might seem overly familiar.

   The romance We Live in Time tends toward the latter category, a love story that dices a familiar arc into chunks, some agreeable, some cliched, and others that might produce heavy eyerolls.

   Director John Crowley (Brooklyn, The Goldfinch) builds his film around the evolving relationship between Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield), a couple whose contrived meet-cute strains for novelty. Almut and Tobias fall in love, struggle to become parents, eventually have a daughter, and are ultimately jolted by news that Almut has an incurable cancer, a fate announced in an early scene.

    The doom-struck romance should (here's a shock) leave audiences reaching for tissues.  Garfield's ability to project the wounded soul serves a similar purpose, and for those who see real chemistry as opposed to a strained romance, the movie may strike a chord. 

    It's arguable that romance should carry playwright John Payne's screenplay, providing Pugh and Garfield conquer the way scenes are dealt out in what can feel like a near-random shuffle. 

    We Live in Time wears its editing like a costume that diverts attention from its characters, Tobias's job, whatever it is, seems suited to anonymity. Almut works as a well-known chef, an occupation that allows the movie to introduce a cooking competition into a cancer drama, which struck me as an example of trendy dramatic overcooking.

     And, yes, Almut and Tobias's daughter (Grace Delaney) is cute, a product of an over-amped childbirth scene that arrives before the couple can reach a hospital.  

     The story includes an assertive statement from Almut who doesn't want her daughter to remember her only as a mom, a thematic point that feels like an afterthought rather than one that's fully developed.

     The movie's title reminds us that changing times and circumstances can make a difference in relationships and how we perceive them. Fair enough, but a juggled timeline can't keep these characters from seeming to love, hurt, and grieve on cue.

      

     

How a musical was born -- almost

 

         When I was a much younger man living in Manhattan, I met lots of people. Some of them were actors. I won’t name names, but one became a major star. Only one.

          The majority of young people who head to New York seeking a niche in the arts find impoverishment, heartbreak, and crushed dreams. New York teaches painful lessons: The world owes you nothing. All you'll ever achieve is a bit of status on the fringes of the endeavor you love. Maybe you won’t even get that far.

          The risk: You become too old to be considered promising. You have no fallback, and you’re unemployable. Such is the gamble.

          Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut deals with someone who took the risk. Tick, Tick ... Boom! explores the life of playwright/composer Jonathan Larson before he hit the big time with his award-winning musical Rent.  

          It’s not surprising that Miranda chose Larson’s play for his directorial debut. He knows this milieu. He was part of it. 

          And like Larson, Miranda, still best known for Hamilton, helped remake the musical form. Here, he revels in the energy of a diverse group of performers bursting with a singular ambition: to have their voices heard.

      Those familiar with Larson’s story also know that it ended with an unexpected and shattering exclamation point. Larson died in 1996 of an aortic aneurism on the day of Rent's first Off-Broadway preview. He was 35.

       So Tick, Tick ... Boom! is a sad movie? Not really.

       It's an upbeat look at a struggling composer who's trying to establish himself in musical theater. Tick, Tick … Boom! focuses on Larson's efforts to put on a workshop performance of Superbia, a futuristic musical based on George Orwell's 1984. 

     As Larson, Andrew Garfield puts the movie on his shoulders and carries it a long way; he's the focal point in an aspirational world that swirls with talent, hope and energy.

    Miranda organizes the musical around a performance of Tick, Tick ... Boom!, a show Larson performs on a bare stage with a piano and back-up band. Numbers from the stage play mix with depictions of Larson's bohemian life in New York City. 

   The mood ranges from excitement to the desperation Larson experiences as he tries to write the song that will complete Superbia. The story also deals with the AIDS onslaught that has begun to thin the ranks of the creative class, striking close to home for Larson.

    Miranda brings a few additional characters into focus.

    Robin de Jesus portrays Michael, a gay singer who traveled to New York with Larson but who tires of rejection and poverty. Michael opts for a more stable life in advertising. 

   Larson's girlfriend (Alexandra Shipp) remains committed to him until she realizes that Larson uses intimacy to discover emotion for his songs. He’s too involved with his work to make a relationship succeed.

    Judith Light has a late-picture turn as the agent who gives Larson a tough lesson about the vagaries of theatrical endeavor.

     Larson supports himself by working as a waiter at SoHo's  Moondance Diner, a job that pays for the crummy apartment where he lives with an Everest of dishes piled in the sink.

   There's not much suspense about the outcome. Roughly half way through, musical master Steven Sondheim (Bradley Whitford) shows up to ratify Larson's talent. It's clear that the young man eventually will find a vehicle to propel his career. 

   Garfield, who does his own singing, pours on the energy -- sometimes to the point of annoyance and the movie's desire to celebrate the exuberant diversity that hit New York during the 1990s doesn't feel quite as fresh as it once might have.  

    Mostly, though, the movie remains engaging. Miranda works in a quick-cut, pop-and-flash style that reminded me a bit of director Jon M. Chu's colorful approach to the movie version of Miranda’s play,  In the Heights.

    Tick, Tick can be taken as an updated version of the “Hey Kids, Let’s Put on a Show” school of entertainment -- only smarter, more articulate and more driven.

     Perhaps fondness for its characters explains why at two hours in length Tick, Tick hangs on longer than it should.  It’s not only Larson who’s being celebrated and remembered; it's the dreams of youth.

      

     

He refused to be bed ridden

Robin Cavendish spent 36 years of his life paralyzed from polio, a disease he contracted while working in Kenya in the 1950s. Breathe, a new movie starring Andrew Garfield and marking the directorial debut of actor Andy Serkis, turns Cavendish's story into a life-affirming celebration. It may sound odd for a movie about a paralyzed man, but Serkis (The Lord of the Rings and the Planet of the Apes movies), has made a sometimes giddy, feel-good movie -- and, as a result, Breathe never feels entirely credible. Early on, the movie focuses on Cavendish's relationship with Diana (Claire Foy), the love of his life. The two meet, marry and head to Kenya. When the stricken Cavendish is brought back to England, he initially wishes for nothing more than to die. He has no desire to spend his life attached to a breathing machine. For an active adventurous man, life had lost its meaning. Diana, who by this time is pregnant, eventually brings her husband out of his funk and the rest of the movie charts the ways in which Cavendish struggles to lead a meaningful life. With the help of an inventor (Hugh Bonneville), Cavendish labors to escape his bedroom, an ambition that led to the invention of a mobile wheelchair with a built-in breathing machine. For those who are unable to breathe on their own, life becomes a new kind of adventure, one dependent on a continuous flow of electricity and, ultimately, on others. Displaying a preternatural helping of good humor, Garfield gives a spirited performance as Cavendish, no small feat considering he's limited to working with his face and voice. Serkis delivers moments of interest, but the movie eventually becomes mawkish with a conclusion that proves touching -- if not heartbreaking. If Breathe advances a view that's anything close to the truth, Cavendish probably wouldn't have wanted it any other way, but Breathe might have benefited from a little less burnish and a lot more soul searching.

Two priests suffer in 17th century Japan

Martin Scorsese takes his long-awaited crack at a novel by Japanese author Shusaku Endo..

If director Martin Scorsese chooses to grapple with questions of doubt and faith, he should at minimum be commended for the singularity and intensity of an interest that seems to have marked much of his cinematic career, perhaps his entire life.

So it's no surprise that after 30 years of trying, Scorsese finally has taken a crack at the Japanese novel Silence in what some are calling the third in his trilogy of overtly "religious" films. The first two being The Last Temptation of Christ and Kundun.

Written by Jay Cocks and Scorsese, the movie takes place in 17th century Japan at time when the country is being purged of its burgeoning Catholic population. The Japanese authorities are intent on staving off this first salvo of encroachment from the West.

Working from a 1966 novel by Shusaku Endo, Cocks and Scorsese create a grim world of suffering. The Japanese use a mixture of rigorously polite cajoling and brutal torture to persuade Christians to renounce their faith.

The most common form of renunciation involves stepping on a bronze tile or fumie that has been engraved with a religious image, thus marking an outward and incontrovertible sign of rejection of an abhorred western theology.

Silence weaves a story around its many torture sequences. Two Portuguese Jesuits (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) sneak into Japan to find their mentor Cristovao Ferreira (Liam Neeson). They can't believe what they've been told: Ferreira has renounced his faith and taken a Japanese wife. He lives contentedly in Nagasaki.

Before they leave for Japan, their superior (Ciaran Hinds) warns the two priests that Catholics are being tortured and killed in Japan. He cautions them against what surely will be a life-threatening journey, but they insist on proving that their mentor didn't betray his faith, a task that's doubly important for them because they took their faith cues from Ferreira.

Visually, Garfield and Driver couldn't be more different. Looking increasingly Christ-like or at least like a movie version of Christ, Garfield's Rodriguez has doubts, expressed by his inner voice and prayers. His experiences in Japan test his faith, and he posses the questions that are supposed to drive the movie.

These questions are stated -- often whispered by Garfield as queries about why God doesn't seem to hear the cries of the suffering faithful -- but they don't animate the movie or give it a sense of urgent, necessary life. Some of that may result from Garfield's inability to penetrate the depths of Rodriguez's tortured soul.

Driver, who's less seen because the two priests eventually split up, is an unusual looking actor, but here, he's been given the face of a gargoyle, otherworldly and strange.

Now, when it comes to torture, the Japanese are portrayed as adept and serious. They drip boiling water on bare flesh; they tie people to ocean-side posts and let them drown as the tide crashes in; they behead people; and they wrap people in straw and set them on fire. As a kind of piece de resistance, Christians are hanged upside down, their heads stuffed into holes in the dirt. Small incisions are made on their necks so that their blood slowly drains out of them.

The Japanese characters are strangely problematic, sometimes cartoonish. The Inquisitor who engineers all this torture (Issey Ogata) has a caricatured look. I've seen Ogata's performance described as comic. It's certainly weird and unexpected.

At one point, he hears disconcerting news and his body nearly deflates, something in the manner of air released from a balloon. Very strange.

Yosuke Kubozuka plays Kitchijiro, a self-confessed sinner who sometimes guides the priests and who has become something of an expert on what it means to renounce one's faith. He's a repeat offender.

Oddly, the movie lacks an exalting climax. I can't say more about this without revealing what should be discovered in a theater, but I'll also say that the issues Scorsese takes from Endo aren't general issues of faith in the face of terrible suffering, but issues pertinent to Catholic ideas about faith, martyrdom and apostasy as Endo (and subsequently Scorsese) interpret them.

Torture, of course, is an obviously condemnable form of coercion and watching it is appropriately appalling, but I don't know why we should be more interested in this particular part of Japanese history than we are, say, in the Spanish Inquisition that preceded it by several centuries.

Still, this is where Scorsese has landed to make a film that has been bracingly shot by cinematographer Rodrigo Preieto, whose images have staying power and depth.

It's not easy to reach a solid conclusion about Silence. As intellectually fraught as the movie can be, it also can be boring and stilted. At 161 minutes, it may seem nearly interminable to those who aren't caught in its sway.

For a movie that seems to want to explore questions about the nature and obligations of faith, Silence feels as if it has veered off into an exotic and foreign territory from which it has excavated a story full of gruesome sights and narrowly focused preoccupations.

Like the character Garfield plays, Silence too often feels like it's living in a world of its own and talking mostly to itself.

An honored soldier who refused to kill

Mel Gibson brings brutal violence to the story of a soldier who carried no weapon.

Anyone who as seen any of Mel Gibson's various directorial efforts should waste no time disputing Gibson's talent, even if it seems like another age when Gibson won his best-directing Oscar for Braveheart (1995).

Since then, Gibson's reputation has suffered a variety of blows, some having to do with the way he presented Jews in The Passion of the Christ and others stemming from a 2006 drunk-driving incident in which he went on an anti-Semitic rant.

Whether Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge becomes the director's moment of cultural redemption remains to be seen. But I can't deny that his movie -- particularly when it comes to its depiction of World War II fighting in the Pacific -- has rampant, chaotic power.

Gibson's Okinawa battle sequences look as if they might have been lifted from a horror movie, and should erase all doubt that war constitutes a form of lethal madness.

Gibson's camera shows that on the battlefield, human flesh can be shredded and bloodied in an instant. Men can be cut in half (literally) or set on fire by flame throwers. Corpses become nourishment for large rats.

War, we might judge, is the ultimate form of degradation: Its carnage reduces people to fear and flesh.

Well, almost ....

Gibson cannily puts the movie's violence to the service of a story about a man who refuses to kill. Hacksaw Ridge -- named for the 350-foot cliff that US soldiers scaled on Okinawa before engaging the enemy -- is a bio-pic about Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield).

Doss, a conscientious objector, insists on going into battle as a medic. He doesn't want to kill, but he also doesn't want to shirk what he sees as his duty to serve.

The early part of the film is both a corn-fed story and harsh melodrama about Doss's pre-war life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Doss grows up with an abusive, drunken father (Hugo Weaving) and a more protective mother (Rachel Griffiths).

When he hits his brother with a brick during a boyhood fistfight, young Doss realizes that he has the capacity to kill. The brother lives, but Doss undergoes an instant transformation: No matter what the circumstances, he won't kill.

Played with smiling innocence by Garfield, the adult Doss falls for a nurse (Teresa Palmer), the woman who eventually becomes his wife. Doss's refusal to kill is bolstered by his religion: He's a Seventh Day Adventist.

Cue the faith-based hosannas that may help create the audience for Hacksaw Ridge.

The movie tries to solidify its moral framework during Doss's stint in boot camp. His drill sergeant (an unexpected Vince Vaughn) and commanding officer (a subdued Sam Worthington) are rough on him, but also show compassion. They wonder why he just doesn't leave the service and go home. Doss's persistence puzzles them.

You needn't be a seer to predict that those who scorn Doss eventually will praise the courage that won him a Medal of Honor, the first awarded to a conscientious objector.

Doss certainly earned the award. When U.S. troops pull back to regroup, Doss is left alone atop Hacksaw Ridge. He persists in dragging soldier after soldier to safety. He improvises a harness that enables him to lower the soldiers to the bottom where they can receive medical attention. He saves 75 men in all.

No one should question Doss's heroism, but it's difficult for me not to think that the movie is riven with a contradiction it can't totally resolve: a commitment to the reality of violence makes us wonder whether Gibson is firing bullets while at the same time condemning the slaughter.

And although Doss does at one point help a Japanese soldier, there's little attempt -- as Clint Eastwood did in Letters From Iwo Jima -- to humanize a feared enemy.

Doss nestles a picture of his wife in a Bible she gives him before his induction into the army. It may be something Doss really did, but it's also a cornball, religious/romantic touch that says something about the movie's heart -- at least when it's not asking us to watch GI's being ripped to shreds.

There's talk that Gibson will receive an Oscar nomination as best-director for Hacksaw Ridge. If he does, it's the harrowing face he puts on war that will have earned him the nod.

I'm not sure, though, that we can tell whether Gibson's isn't as interested in the graphic carnage he portrays as he is in Doss's renunciation of all killing.

When houses stop being homes

99 Homes humanizes the devastations of the mortgage crisis.

In 99 Homes, director Ramin Bahrani -- who made his mark in the film world with 2005's Man Push Cart -- takes an exacting look at what happens when homes are in foreclosure and the vultures descend, a situation that in 2007 came to be known as the subprime mortgage crisis.

The set-up: Michael Shannon plays an unscrupulous real estate hustler who has amassed a small fortune, and Andrew Garfield portrays an unemployed construction worker who's evicted from his home, but winds up working for Shannon's Rick Carver.

Set in Florida during the darkest days of the recession, the movie early on finds Carver showing up at Nash's door with a couple of sheriff's deputies. They give Nash all of two minutes to gather his belongings and move his mother (Laura Dern) and young son (Noah Lomax) out of the house.

Nash initially resists, but there's no forestalling the inevitable. The family winds up in a bad motel with few prospects for improving its lot. At this point, you can feel hope swirling down the drain.

For his part, Carver wastes no time on hope. He's too busy scheming: He works for banks, but knows how to scam the government for money. He'll also offer insultingly meager amounts of cash to take over a home for a quick flip. He calls the program "cash for keys." How about taking $3,500 for your home before the sheriff shows up?

Unlike Carver, Nash has a conscience, and Garfield does a fine job of mining Nash's uneasiness. He's in a position that's bringing in unexpected amounts of money, first as a handyman for Carver and then as a participant in evictions. He's required to push people around the way he once was pushed around, but he's never comfortable in the role.

Shannon makes Carver a credible character, a man whose ethos springs from a dog-eat-dog reading of reality. He saw his father get screwed by the system, and vowed that he'd never share such a fate. Carver isn't about to be the dog that's eaten.

Carver's a businessman who learned how to shut off his emotions so that he could capitalize on other people's suffering. An amoral pragmatist, he's willing to give Nash an opportunity to flip the script on a society that has left him out in the cold. There's no bailout for losers, Carver insists.

Bahrani's movie revolves around two conflicting notions of housing.

To Nash, the home from which he was evicted is the cornerstone of his family's stability. He grew up the house. His mother operated her haircutting businesses there, and his son knew no other residence.

Carver's view of homes couldn't be more different. To him a house is nothing but a box and an opportunity to make money. Boxes have no emotional meaning and neither do the deluded people who live in them.

Carver used to make money by selling people homes. Now he makes money by throwing them out of their houses. He understands the irony, but doesn't much care.

Garfield, the British actor who took a turn at Spider Man, does fine work as a guy who wants to earn a decent wage with his hands, but finds himself dabbling in a world where money has become the only measure that matters.

Bahrani isn't afraid of social relevance, which may be why the movie's at its best when it's showing us what life is like for people who find themselves looking at their belongings on the front lawn and not knowing where the hell to go next.

It's an important image to absorb, but when you review the story in your mind, you may realize that Bahrani is better at presenting telling incidents and episodes than he is at delivering a fully enriched narrative.

Still, 99 Homes puts us in touch with a devastating moment from which many have yet to recover -- and perhaps never will.

'Spider-Man' makes another return

This edition mostly passes comic-book muster.

Comic-book movies consist mostly of a cascading series of episodes held together by the presence of a familiar superhero.

In the case of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, our superhero is a conflicted young man torn by fears that his crime-fighting destiny will wind up hurting the young woman he loves.

If you want to play ranking games with all the Spider-Man movies -- including those in director Sam Raimi's first iteration -- go ahead. Me? I'll just say that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 delivers enough of the comic-book goods to satisfy fans.

Director Mark Webb, who directed the first Amazing Spider-Man, again capitalizes on Andrew Garfield's mixture of pluck and vulnerability and on Emma Stone's irrepressible smarts.

He also adds a couple of major villains to keep Spider-Man busy and to flood the screen with the requisite action.

Spider-Man -- a.k.a. Peter Parker -- must take on the new head of the pernicious Oscorp, a childhood pal named Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan). Harry inherits the company when his father -- a man suffering from a disease that seems to be consuming him with rot -- dies.

A nerd who works at Oscorp quickly poses another threat. As the story unfolds, Jamie Foxx's Max transforms into Electro, a fiend who wants to suck all the power out of New York City. Electro is born when Max falls into a tank of electric eels.

Electrified and angry, an embittered Max stumbles into a major set-piece in Manhattan's Times Square.

No faulting Foxx, but there's only so much mileage that can be gained from watching bolts of electricity shoot from Electro's fingertips, a retro form of villainy.

As DeHaan grows into his villainous role, he gradually (and appropriately) loses our sympathy; he's better in the film's quieter moments and not quite up to the roaring fits of menace the script eventually demands.

The action is best when Spider-Man is swinging through Manhattan's streets. Much of the rest of the dash-and crash sequences have a take-it-or-leave-it feel with Webb doing his best to add emotional heft to the proceedings.

Some of this emotion derives from the conflicted relationship between Peter and Stone's Gwen Stacy, as well as from Sally Field's heartfelt performance as Parker's Aunt May.

May, now a widow, has cared for Peter since his father and mother (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz) were forced to flee New York, a bit of action shown in the film's bracingly brisk prologue.

Webb tries to give the movie's early sections a comic tone, but can't seem to decide how far to carry it as he moves toward a typically prolonged finale. About three-quarters of the way through its two hour and 22 minutes, the film begins to show signs of wear, and the need to dispatch with two villains adds a bit of anti-climactic bloat.

But Webb makes a couple of bold choices (one of which surely will prompt debate), Garfield isn't afraid to show a little confusion and all of Stone's scenes tend to sparkle. If Spider-Man 2 isn't a total triumph, it's entertaining enough to hold its own.

New life for 'Spider-Man' franchise

Fresh faces reinvigorate a familiar comic-book yarn..

A moody teen-ager is bitten by a spider that's been subjected to genetic enhancement. After the bite, the young man begins to develop strange powers. Suddenly, he's stronger than he should be. Streams of silken material shoot from the palms of his hands, further boosting his powers by allowing him to swing from high places or to leap from tall buildings without hitting the ground. It's as if he's able to make his own bungee cords.

A simple spider bite leads to a momentous destiny: The young man makes the transition from Peter Parker of Queens, N.Y., to Spider-Man.

Because most moviegoers and Marvel Comics fans already know all this, you may be asking yourself why we needed another movie to tell us how Spider-Man began his crime-fighting career, a movie that covers old ground rather than one that continues where the Spider-Man series left off in 2007.

Within the first few minutes of The Amazing Spider-Man, you may forget such questions, and realize that you're enjoying visiting familiar turf, this time with new faces and with a different sensibility than the one director Sam Raimi brought to the Spider-Man movies, a sensibility that's both edgier and a bit more complex.

The Amazing Spider-Man remains a comic-book movie, but in the hands of director Mark Webb, who's making the leap from a small independent film (500 Days of Summer) to a summer blockbuster, Spider-Man receives new life, something that might have been impossible with a movie called Spider-Man 4.

I saw The Amazing Spider-Man in Imax and 3D. But what I most liked about this version had little to do with the movie's extravagant effects or with watching Spidey leap from one Manhattan skyscraper to the next.

For me, the fun of this new edition of Spider-Man involved the way Webb and the movie's writers stake out their own turf, tweaking the characters to give them a different feel and adding more emotional complications.

Essentially, this edition of Spider-Man is like two movies in one. The first is a pure origins story in which Peter Parker acquires his superpowers. The second story gives Spider-Man his first real challenge, pitting him against The Lizard, a mutant creature derived from an experiment by a brilliant, one-armed scientist (Rhys Ifans) who has been working on something called cross-spieces genetics.

Events in the first part of the movie should serve as touchstones for most viewers. While he's still a boy, Parker loses his parents when -- for mysterious reasons -- they're forced to flee their New York home. Young Parker is left in the care of his aunt (Sally Field) and uncle (Martin Sheen).

When Parker enters high school, Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) takes over the role. The 28-year-old Garfield might be credible in grad school, but never looks as if he belongs in high school.

I know. I know. It's only a movie, but still ...

Webb does a good jog guiding Garfield through the awkward transition from Peter Parker to Spider-Man, even if he's a bit repetitive in showing us how Parker learns to use his superpowers. An early scene in which Peter's powers get the best of him on a subway car is one of the movie's most creative.

These high-school segments lay the movie's moral groundwork with Sheen's Uncle Ben setting ethical standards for young Peter.

I'm giving nothing away to tell you that Uncle Ben is killed by a fleeing felon, leaving Peter to develop on his own while Field's Aunt May frets about the fact that her nephew frequently arrives home looking much the worse for wear. Spider-Man is not immune from taking his lumps.

Garfield makes an edgier Spider-Man than his predecessor, Tobey Maguire, and he also suggests more complexity as he nurtures his crush on Gwen (Emma Stone), a whip-smart fellow student at a Queens high school. Gwen's father (Denis Leary) happens to be a New York City top cop who takes some convincing that a lizard-like monster is terrorizing Manhattan.

When it came to the monster portion of the movie, I was a bit skeptical myself. I didn't find The Lizard all that impressive, and a protracted action-oriented finale needlessly extends the movie's length.

But Garfield and Stone give Spider-Man a credible emotional life that fits with Peter's longing for his absent father, and in its overall impact, Spider-Man more the passes summer movie muster.

Here's hoping, though, that the next episode gets Peter out of high school and into a milieu where Garfield not only will be able to act the part, but to look it, as well, especially when he's not wearing Spidey's trademark mask.

How Facebook conquered the on-line world

The temptation in reviewing a hot-topic movie such as The Social Network is to try for a big statement. One could, for example, bemoan the illusion of intimacy that a massive social network such as Facebook seems to create. Or one might marvel at the technical savvy and sociological prescience it took to establish Facebook as a game-changing player in the world of communications.

Truth is I'm not ready to see Facebook as the mark of the devil or as a precursor of everything that's great about the unfolding century. For me, Facebook provides a way to keep in touch with old friends and relatives. I share tidbits (newsy or otherwise) that strike me as intriguing and may be of interest to others. I follow suggested links that seem worth a mouse click. I check Facebook at least once a day or (heaven help me) during breaks from Twitter.

Maybe it is just an illusion, but Facebook sometimes makes me feel as if I'm in the loop.

One thing's for sure: I'm not alone. With 500 million people using Facebook, it's a sure bet that a lot of them will want to see Social Network, a well-researched fictionalized and entirely captivating account of the founding of Facebook. The movie also exposes the various bruised egos and lawsuits that floated in the wake of this Web-based revolution.

Directed by David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing). Social Network might have been subtitled Revenge of the Nerd. Once the brunt of movie jokes aimed at characters with thick glasses, buck teeth and pocket protectors, geeks have morphed into major playahs, potential billionaires who have revolutionized nearly everything - from the way we buy music to the way we watch movies to the ways in which we keep up with world events.

The undisputed champion of the New Geek Order - at least according to Social Network - is Mark Zuckerberg, the kid who began Facebook at Harvard, spread his fledgling enterprise to a variety of other colleges and universities and eventually built it to the point where everyone from college kids to octogenarians have jumped on board. And, oh yeah, Zuckerberg turned himself into a billionaire in the bargain.

In the hands of Fincher and Sorkin, Social Network opens a window into the social structure of a prestigious university - we're talking Harvard and its culture of manic achievement. The movie also draws energy from the rollicking kick associated with invention and seat-of-the-pants entrepreneurship. From dorm room to billionaire isn't exactly an everyday journey, so Social Network passes the interest test with flying colors, particularly when you remember that Zuckerberg's now a ripe 26 years of age.

Of course, downs usually follow most ups, particularly if we're talking the stock market or drama. In this case, the down side involves the break between Zuckerberg (Jessie Eisenberg) and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). By its end, Social Network suggests that somewhere deep inside, Zuckerberg feels the pain of having thrown friends under the bus as he rose to the top of the teeming Web heap.

No point recounting the details of Facebook's founding. Know, though, that the movie draws on Ben Mezrich's book, The Accidental Billionaires. The word "accidental" is important. Zuckerberg doesn't seem to have an out-sized plan to conquer the world. As portrayed in the movie, he's an avid programmer and a conniving friend. He talks at high speeds, and spares no one's feelings. He's a tech genius who catches the social-network tiger by the tail and has the good sense not to let go.

These days success has many consequences, not least among them lawsuits. Social Network tells its story in flashbacks from two deposition sessions resulting from suits filed against Zuckerberg.

Saverin sued Zuckerberg after he was dumped as the company's CEO. Then there were the Winklevoss twins (both played by Armie Hammer). The Winklevosses invited Zuckerberg to join them in creating something they planned to call The Harvard Connection. They wound up suing Zuckerberg, claiming he stole their idea and turned it into Facebook.

The Winklevosses were the antithesis of the avid, socially inept Zuckerberg. They belonged to one of Harvard's elite clubs; they rowed crew; they considered themselves gentlemen. When's the last time you heard a college kid refer to himself as a "gentleman."
 

But it's Zuckerberg who remains the center of this energetic, fascinating and smartly written movie. As played by Eisenberg, Zuckerberg becomes a true movie oddity: A main character who also comes off as a class-A jerk.

You don't have to wait around for Social Network to put Zuckerberg's thoughtless cruelty on display. The movie's first scene establishes the boy genius as the kind of IQ snob who dumps on his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) because she attends Boston University. He evidently regards BU as such an unchallenging institution that none of its students should have to waste time studying.

Zuckerberg's insult reflects his idea of an entitled "brainocracy," a group empowered by the kind of super-intelligence that aces the SATs. You get the impression that Zuckerberg's ego revolves around always having been the smartest guy in every class. Look, if you're constantly at the top, it's easy to spend a lot of time looking down.

It's a tribute to both Fincher and Sorkin that we get caught up in a movie about characters who don't exactly warm the heart. We're enveloped by the ceaseless whirl of Zuckerberg's success machine, which increasingly takes on a life of its own. This isn't a story for the bygone dial-up age. It's full of high-speed connections -- in every sense.

Special note should be made of Justin Timberlake's contribution to this frenetic code fest of a movie. Timberlake appears as Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, chick magnate, entrepreneurial renegade and fellow brainiac. Zuckerberg found a conspirator in Parker, who - at least in this version of the story - taught him how not to feel guilty about screwing his friends during his conquest of the on-line world. Not that Zuckerberg was particularly guilt-ridden before he met Parker. Parker didn't start Zuckerberg's raging fire; he just poured gasoline on it.

When Parker convinces Zuckerberg to move to Palo Alto, the newly minted Harvard dropout starts to live a kind of dreamy nerd fantasy. Computer code mingles with a party atmosphere in the house Zuckerberg rents. He also runs into his first serious money, a $500,000 investment in his new company.

Fincher's final image leaves little doubt that Zuckerberg - the character in the movie, not necessarily the real guy - knows that all's not right, a message Eisenberg communicates with a drawn expression that makes him look as if he's on the verge of tears. Cynics among us might say, "What a shame; he can cry all the way to the bank."

It's a reasonably strong moment, but my first reaction after the movie - for all its depictions of business machinations, personal betrayals and brainy condescension -- had to do with Facebook. I wanted to drop my account, to withdraw from the ranks of those who have helped turn Zuckerberg into a high-tech titan.

The feeling passed. I'm still on Facebook.

If I had dropped Facebook I wouldn't have seen an old photo my cousin Richie dug up of my parents and most of my aunts and uncles, seated at a table at some long-ago wedding. I wouldn't know what foods are building the waistline of a food-obsessed "friend." I wouldn't know that another friend just found a new job, that still another is looking for a new house or that a page called "I'd Rather Have a Root Canal Procedure than Listen to Sarah Palin Give A Speech" has sprung up on Facebook.

I learn things - both trivial and significant - by participating in Facebook. But how you get from that to billions of dollars is beyond me. For that kind of action and savvy, you'll have to ask the real Zuckerbeg. Judging by the movie (and by a recent New Yorker profile), it's one bit of information Zuckerberg may not be sharing.

'Never Let Me Go': sensitive -- but remote

Mulligan, Knightely and Garfield in a rare happy moment.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel, Never Let Me Go, seemed an unlikely candidate for big-screen adaptation. That hasn’t stopped director Mark Romaneck, working from a screenplay by novelist Alex Garland, from attempting to bring Ishiguro’s carefully calibrated novel to the screen.

If ever a movie wanted to be taken seriously, it’s Never Let Me Go. Tastefully made, quietly presented and bathed in arty attitudes, Never Let Me Go look as if has been tailored for art-house consumption.

That's not necessarily a bad ambition, but too much of the time, the movie proceeds as if in a trance, unfolding in languid fashion while suggesting deeper meanings that, upon reflection, may not seem quite so deep.

The movie’s problem may be simple: Ishiguro told the story as a first person account from a 31-year-old woman named Kathy, played here by Carey Mulligan. Kathy recounted her days in school with strange precision and with ominous hints about what might be in store for her and her classmates.

Despite the intermittent use of an off-screen narration delivered by Mulligan, the story deadens when viewed from the outside, the only perspective an audience has. That’s why some of its most heartbreaking moments don’t drip with emotion.

I’m not sure that Never Let Me Go can be written about without spoilers. All I’ll say is that the three main characters are not facing a happy future. They’re also involved in a mild love triangle. Both Kathy and Ruth (Keira Knightley) are taken with Tommy (Andrew Garfield). Followed through stages of their lives, these three act like normal kids, then inquisitive teenagers and finally young adults. No matter how ordinary they seem, a sense of quiet strangeness surrounds them.

No faulting the performances, but Never Let Me Go winds up feeling as remote as it is finely honed. The more we learn, the more we wonder why none of the characters bothers to rail against his or her lot in life, something I didn’t feel while reading the novel. Maybe that’s the point Romaneck (One Hour Photo) is trying to make: He’s telling us about the way powerlessness is bred into people. And I suppose it’s true that most of us accept things the way they are. Our minds can be as gray as the sweaters worn by the students at Hailsham, the school where much of the story -- perhaps its best parts -- is set.

If you see Never Let Me go, you’ll realize that the movie has a sci-fi connection: Romaneck (like Ishiguro) probably wanted to play down the sci-fi aspects of his story and raise a philosophical question that can’t be stated here without spoiling more of the movie.

All I can say is that at the point at which my heart should have been breaking, I felt as I’d fallen into a kind of trance. The movie ultimately seems purposed to serve as an arty encouragement, a call to embrace life to the fullest because death looms for one and all.

It’s a lesson this artful, sensitive but emotionally reticent movie would have done well to heed.

A great trilogy about pervasive corruption

Andrew Garfield as a reporter in 1974.

Paddy Considine squares off with Sean Harris in 1980.

David Morrissey plays a troubled cop in 1983.

I don't know when I've seen a movie as devastating as The Red Riding Trilogy, a three-picture adaptation of four novels by British author David Peace. The three movies – which open Friday at the Starz Denver Film Festival – originally were made for British TV and total five hours in length.

Each of the films has a different director, each was shot in a different format (16 mm, 35 mm and digital video) and each takes place in a different year (1974, 1980 and 1983). All the stories are set in Yorkshire, England's largest county. Each film also involves the notorious Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who was convicted in 1981 after murdering 13 women during a five-year period beginning in 1975.

If all this sounds complex, so be it. The Red Riding Trilogy is one of the densest, most complex movies you'll ever see. On top of that, the thick Yorkshire accents of many of the characters challenge the American ear, and, on occasion, make one long for clarifying subtitles. But if you stick with the three movies, you will, I believe, encounter a masterpiece of darkness, an unremitting chronicle of corruption at every level of society.

Don't let the Yorkshire Ripper connection mislead you. The Red Riding Trilogy is not a whodunit nor does it peer into the twisted mind of a brutal serial killer. It is a portrait of Yorkshire (and, alas, of the human heart) during the course of 10 tumultuous years.

The movie is held together by a mantra recited by various corrupt officials. “This is the North where we do what we want.” Revelations about police corruption, individual intimidation and the hellish nature of ordinary life are hardly shocking -- not anymore. The Trilogy shocks us to the core because of the depth and the extent to which it follows its dark trail of evidence and accusation. The movie makes us feel as if we've caught a disease from which we can't recover, one that's slowly but inevitably fatal.

Throughout the three movies there are overlaps, recurring characters and references to previous events. Eventually, you begin to pick up the movie's rhythms, but you also know that each film represents a kind of dare: Keep up or fall hopelessly behind. Like many films that have plunged into dark, violent waters, The Red Riding Trilogy finds an eerie poetry of the underside, something that elevates pulp into art.

A rude, anti-lyricism anchors much of the dialogue, a disturbing directness that reveals the intentions of the characters, almost all of whom are up to no good. These are not epic villains with larger-than-life ambitions. They're cops you might meet at the local pub. They're also torturers and deviants who are motivated by the most naked forms of greed, men of appetite.

It's probably impossible to summarize the three films properly, but it's worth a fleeting try. The first film, directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Toni Grisoni (who wrote all three movies), centers on a journalist (Andrew Garfield) who's assigned to cover the Ripper murders.

Garfield's Eddie Dunford – a reporter for The Yorkshire Post – is no Bob Woodward. Initially bumbling, ill-informed and over confident, Dunford gradually learns the truth about the cops with whom he deals; he's pulled into a world that seems to revolve around a powerful local businessman (Sean Bean) who wants to build a shopping mall. He also meets the mother (Rebecca Hall) of one of the girls who has disappeared. He falls for her, but don't expect wine and roses.

The hard truth: When people believe they can do what they want and get away with it, a lot of other people will suffer.

So, no, Eddie Dunford is no hero. It falls to Eddie to deliver the film's sour opening line, which defines the worst of journalistic impulses: “Little girl missing. The pack salivates.”

Because the movie is set in 1974, the characters are incessant smokers. The images concocted by cinematographer Rob Hardy have the feel of smoke-clogged rooms that leave you gasping for breath. I haven't smoked in more than 25 years, but watching these characters puff away summoned some sort of residual nicotine memory from deep within my cells, the inescapability of old addictions.

And there are moments of great cinematic prowess. When Eddie decides that his relationship with Paula should go beyond reporter and source, he pauses at her front door. He knocks. She approaches, a hazy figure behind smoked glass. We know in our bones that once she opens that door and Eddie walks through it, nothing ever will be the same for either of them. Of course, the door opens. Of course, Eddie walks through it. The weight of inevitability seems to push Eddie toward his destiny.

Film two, set in 1980, revolves around a cop. Assistant Chief Constable of the Manchester Force Peter Hunter (Paddy Considine) is sent to Yorkshire to learn why the county's cops have bungled the Ripper investigation. By now, we know that setting foot in Yorkshire is a bit like sinking into quicksand; the more you flail, the worse it gets. But Hunter seems confident, competent and honest. So what if he once had an affair with Helen (Maxine Peake), an investigator he's chosen to work with him on the case? So what if his wife miscarried while he was on duty? We're inclined to trust Hunter with his gloomy sense of calm and face full of disappointment.

Directed by James Marsh (Man on Wire), the second film seems more stylish than the first, perhaps because it has been shot in 35 mm. But it takes us even deeper into Yorkshire corruption and makes clear the importance of a ferret-faced Yorkshire cop named Bob Craven (Sean Harris). Craven is an adept torturer and merciless rat who may or may not be overestimating the power that his own brutality gives him. He's an unashamed sadist.

In the final film, directed by Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie) the undercurrents of the plot begin to rise to the surface, coming into focus as much as a movie like this will allow anything to come into focus. The story now centers on Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey), a cop with a drooping mustache and a conscience to match. And be sure of this: A conscience is the last thing anyone needs on the Yorkshire police force of this movie. John Piggot (Mark Addy), a lawyer, also looms large in this portion of the story. Piggot hardly epitomizes legal success, but he's likable and has a taste for R&B. Reluctantly, he finds himself pushed in the right direction.

Given five hours of movie, it's neither possible nor desirable to flesh out every detail. The finale of the first movie echoes with the kind of violent retribution that concluded Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. The scenes of torture in the basement of a Yorkshire precinct house will make you wince, and there are so many well-drawn minor characters I couldn't keep track of them all: The soft-spoken but creepy Reverend Laws (Peter Mullan); the manipulative male prostitute BJ (Robert Sheehan) or the various Yorkshire police officials who view the world as theirs to plunder.

I've heard it said that these movies can be viewed as stand-alone dramas. See one and leave. I don't think that's true. The Red Riding Trilogy is an all-or-nothing proposition. Whether you see it now or wait to watch it on DVD, see it. As you watch, you'll find yourself making connections and coming to small realizations. A character that you've seen before will crop up, and you'll scurry across the landscape of recent memory, trying to identify his or her position in the drama. Eventually, a cumulative power begins to gather.

The Trilogy offers as complete a vision of a shabby, fallen world as anything I've ever seen. It's one hell of an accomplishment -- a worldview as well as a movie. Abraham Lincoln may seem an odd person to quote at this point, but I'll twist a thought from Lincoln's first inaugural address and say that The Trilogy makes us wonder whether the better angels of our nature haven't grown weary of us and permanently flown the coop.