Quick Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

In between the summer superhero behemoths -- "The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight Rises" -- comes "The Amazing Spider-Man." "The Avengers" turned out extremely well, and I have similar expectations for "Dark Knight." As for this Spider-Man film, my expectations weren't as high despite some of the hype. So I wasn't overly disappointed that I wasn't overly excited by it. It looks good, it's well-acted, but with it being a reboot of the franchise so soon after the previous three films (the first of which arrived in 2002) it felt like I had pretty much seen it before. Peter Parker's back in high school, with Andrew Garfield taking over for Tobey Maguire. They changed a few details, added some more, swapped out love interests and villains, but otherwise it's the same: Peter's bitten by the spider, gains powers, doesn't stop a bad guy, bad guy kills Uncle Ben, Peter becomes Spider-Man, fights villain... I will say that I liked it more than the first movie in the Maguire-as-Spidey trilogy, so if this new one's sequel improves similarly, the next one should be quite a film. My grade: B-minus.

Quick Review: The Social Network

For a film that has no chase scenes or buildings blowing up, "The Social Network" is surprisingly energetic. If you're looking for it to be the completely true story of the creation of Facebook, you're out of luck. It's structured around depositions in two different lawsuits against co-creator and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg). In one, Harvard rowers and identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea for a website to allow Harvard students to connect with each other. (One twin is played by Armie Hammer, and the other by Josh Pence's body with Hammer's face and voice digitally added -- weird! And impossible to notice, at least for me.) The other suit was filed by his best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), whose algorithm was used by Zuckerberg in the creation of "The Facebook," which started with Harvard and then moved to other schools (and eventually to all of us, of course, losing the "The" in the process). His shares in the company were reduced from one-third ownership to less than one percent after Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), creator of Napster, was brought into the company by Zuckerberg. None of the principals were involved with the movie, whose screenplay (by Aaron Sorkin of "West Wing" fame) was based on the book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich. It tries not to take sides so it's up to the viewer to decide, for example, if Zuckerberg is an insensitive jerk and a lying thief or merely a misunderstood genius. (Although it pretty much paints "the Winklevi," as Zuckerberg refers to the twins, as entitled snobs, and Parker as a party animal whose new friendship with Zuckerberg ends up destroying Zuckerberg's friendship with Saverin.) In a movie that's well-acted throughout, Eisenberg is the biggest revelation here. He is extremely successful in breaking out of that sensitive-soft-voiced Michael Cera mold. Cera himself made a start, but only a start, in breaking his own mold in playing Scott Pilgrim. He should take on a more challenging role, as Eisenberg has done here. My grade: A-minus.