'Spider-Man' can still spin some fun

  As far as Spider-Man is concerned, the world has amnesia. Still heralded as a crime fighter, Spider-Man has become a loner. Even his closest friends have forgotten that he’s also Peter Parker, a nice guy from Queens. 

 To clarify: The collective loss of memory that underlies Spider-Man: Brand New Day stems from developments at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), the previous installment of the four-film series starring Tom Holland as Spider-Man.

 Directed by Dustin Daniel Cretton, this edition explores Spidey's deep loneliness, the soul-wrenching isolation that derives from being alienated from the humanizing comforts of his former life. 

   Don't fret: This alienation isn’t buried deep inside  psychological subtext: It’s right on the surface as are the usual Marvel tropes about problems that accrue to those deemed "special."

   So let’s spin ahead: Brand New Day offers well-mounted action, nicely executed vertiginous airborne set pieces, and a scene-stealing role for Jon Bernthal, who plays Frank Castle, The Punisher. As a character of ambiguous intent, Bernthal brings an amusingly credible dose of urban grit to the proceedings. 

    Mark Ruffalo also has a nice turn as Bruce Banner, the professor who becomes The Hulk. Like a child who recognizes that a tantrum has gotten out of hand, Banner agonizes over his destructive powers.

    Better yet, the movie remains grounded on Earth, one of the things that makes Spider-Man appealing. Sans his uniform, Spider-Man's body shows the bruises he receives from slamming into buildings. He also must fiddle with ways to control is arachnid genes.

    Familiarity with The Avengers and X-Men movies helps because you'll find some of the inevitable cross-pollination that has become a defining Marvel feature. Think branding within branding, which can create confusion for those who arrive unequipped with glossaries.

    The emotion in Brand New Day derives from Spider-Man's relationship with girlfriend MJ (Zendaya). Best pal Ned (Jacob Batalon) is obsessed with Spider-Man’s crime-fighting, but has no idea who the person under the mask might be. Both characters knew Spider-Man's secret identity before the onset of global amnesia.

     Holland does a fine job as a young man grappling with identity and loss, not only of his pals, but of wise  Aunt May (Marissa Tomei), whose grave he visits and who appears in a flashback.

     An early picture battle with Scorpion (Michael Mando) has some sting, but the main story revolves around a revelation (no fair saying more) fans should appreciate. 

      The story introduces a bureaucratic agency dubbed Damage Control. As Damage Control director William Metzger (Tramel Tillman) says he wants to harness the energy of a villain who knows how to leap from mind to mind and take over the bodies of … well …. anyone. 

      Depicted as waves of telepathic energy that ripple through the air, body-hopping can happen between any two beings who are no more than 33 feet apart.

     Marvel newcomer Sadie Sink, never mind how she turns up, proves a welcome addition. Watch for a cameo appearance by Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, a character with an unusual office.

     I can't say that I loved Brand New Day. Some of the storytelling feels muddled, a few talky scenes add emotion but slow the pace, and, true to Marvel's MO, Brand New Day dutifully does groundwork for possible future movies.

     Still, I enjoyed enough of Brand New Day to stay with it. Marvel's big-screen menu (sequels, prequels, and stand-alone adventures) seems as if it will run on forever, but credit Brand New Day for qualifying as a worthy special of the day.

                                     

Racing the clock to build a data pipeline

The excitement of obsessive ambition leads us to a familiar place in The Hummingbird Project.

The Hummingbird Project takes aim at obsessive ambition, in this case, the drive to gain the upper hand when it comes to buying and selling stocks by using high-speed data transmission to win milliseconds of advantage over the competition. For a while, the movie barrels along with dizzying urgency.

In addition, the movie gives Alexander Skarsgard (familiar from HBO's True Blood and Big Little Lies) an opportunity to shave his head to play a bald computer geek who can code his way out of just about any problem. Skarsgard’s Anton isn’t much when it comes to socializing, though. His stooped slouch of a walk makes you wonder whether, all things considered, he wouldn't be happier if he could simply disappear.

He can't. Skarsgard's Anton Zaleski must find a way to shave minuscule amounts of time off high-speed fiber optic transmission from Kansas to New York. The idea originated with Anton's cousin Vincent, played by Jesse Eisenberg in another avid performance.

You don't need an advanced degree to know that the movie is going to find ways to critique the driven world of high finance, but along the way, you'll find nice work from Salma Hayek, her hair turned stylishly gray, and Michael Mando, familiar from Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. Mando portrays the manager of the construction firm charged with building the data-carrying pipeline.

Although we've seen it before (principally in The Social Network), it's fun watching Eisenberg play a wheeling, dealing character.

But acting and character development isn't the problem here; the excitement generated by Vincent's scurrying personality eventually wears itself out, and we know from the start that the movie wants us to understand that there's more to life than making money.

Director Kim Nguyen, who also wrote the screenplay, finds himself a little behind the curve when it comes to tackling hollow, soul-destroying ambition, a theme that's spelled out so clearly that one of Vincent's conflicts pits him against an Amish elder (Johan Heldenbergh) who doesn't want to sell drilling rights on his land because he doesn't give a damn about speed.

The scene emphasizes a point that doesn't need underining: Speed can kill.