Spider-Man 2

The Importance of Being Earnest I moved into my first apartment a few days ago. There’s something honestly so beautiful that this film has to say about the young adult experience through Peter Parker soldiering his way through the grief that makes it transcendent viewing even as the years pass. Raimi’s New York is such a fully rendered vision of a city, there’s this expansive sense of a community that makes the human touch in his superhero movies all the more poignant. Trading out Dafoe’s ravings as Norman for a barrel chested, deeply smooth redemptive villain in Alfred Molina’s Otto makes all the sense in the world for what Spider-Man 2 actually has to say. Things can always be better. If you work for them, they will be, even if it’s still not necessarily the outcome that you might have envisioned in your head. Being steady is the best way to be. Bill Pope shoots it like the closest I can imagine to a living, breathing Alex Ross painting (who crushes with those opening credits). That sequence where Peter prepares for a play he’ll never make it to on time is some of the most dazzling shreds of normalcy in one of these movies. Really wonderful how Sam Raimi manages to make these insanely funny soap opera melodramas without losing sight of the breathtaking costumed theatrics. That train sequence set piece is still as riveting as the moment when Mary Jane sees Peter in her audience is spellbinding. Raimi understands, first and foremost, that Spider-Man is a love story. Incredibly disappointing how a lot of clueless dudes on the internet react to Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson as if she and Peter Parker aren’t characterized as the epitome of an unspoken romance between two young people who have no fucking idea what they want for themselves. Just feels so tangible and genuine in a way that a lot of the worst modern superhero flicks don’t have an ounce of the courage to be. Remains my pick for the wallcrawler’s finest hour (at least in live action), hard to imagine getting a movie so good that it surpasses it. A really lovely superhero movie that is so great because, fundamentally and foremost, it’s about people.