16. Aloha

The movie: Aloha (Cameron Crowe, 2015)

Have I seen this movie before? No.

How I saw it: At the Rave Fairfax Corner 14, one of the two theaters in the Washington, DC metropolitan area that are still showing this movie. I took a lovely drive out there to see it on a Sunday night, alone. The things I do for you people. I offer the following picture, a picture that is definitely not a screengrab from one of those ISIS hostage videos, as proof:

The recommender: Vincent Penge

The rationale: The trailer for Aloha is, to borrow a word, trash. The one-note characters (Alec Baldwin as an angry boss! Billy Murray as a Manic Pixie Dream Old Man!) and awkwardly expository dialogue ("Who doesn't want a second chance?"; "You can't pick my brains, they're unpickable!") honestly had me wondering whether this was a romcom genre parody, a la They Came Together. I want John to eviscerate this movie and spare me the cultural tourism of actually watching it myself.

My familiarity with this movie: I, like Vincent, have seen the trailer for this movie, and agreed with his assessment (as I said to FOTB Sam Thomas, after seeing it with her before a different movie, “that trailer was 0% subtext and 100% text”). The reviews (and attendant controversies) lead me to believe that the trailer accurately reflects the film’s quality.

I have this nagging feeling that Cameron Crowe isn’t any good. This is unfair of me, because I’ve only seen a few of his movies, but nagging feelings don’t need to be fair. In 2005, I was offered the chance to interview Cameron Crowe for the GW student newspaper about his then-new film Elizabethtown, which is, by nearly all accounts, hot garbage. I turned it down so I could watch Game 5 of the American League Division Series between the Yankees and Angels. The Yankees lost. I still don’t regret this, because, assuming that I felt the same way about Elizabethtown as almost everybody else does, interviewing him about it would have been wild awkward.

I’m on my guard these days: I usually read all the spoilers for seemingly crazy movies like this one, since I’d never see it of my own volition. But I’ve been holding off lately. While I've read a few reviews and had a cursory glance at the Emma Stone stuff linked earlier, I decided to remain unspoiled on the major plot points of Aloha, knowing that one of you jerks might up and make me watch it at any time. And verily, it came to pass.

Plot summary and trailer yoinked from IMDb and YouTube, respectively: “A celebrated military contractor returns to the site of his greatest career triumphs and reconnects with a long-ago love while unexpectedly falling for the hard-charging Air Force watchdog assigned to him.”

What I thought of the movie: I’m on record as saying that I like ambitious movies, and Aloha was certainly ambitious. It wanted me to laugh, cry, think, and nod in approval, to be awed by its cleverness and moved by its profundity. It wanted to say meaningful things about love, family, second chances, heritage, America, and the military-industrial complex. It did not succeed at any of these things. It did succeed in making me physically angry. I am hereby suspending my “I like ambitious movies” rule.

Chief among the many problems that this movie had (and it should be noted that the plot of this movie was insane and convoluted to a degree that just about defies description) was its dialogue. Vincent pointed out some of the worst, faux-cool one-liners in the trailer, and there are certainly many, many more of those in the rest of the movie; the one that I somehow had the wherewithal to write down was, “You sold your soul so many times, nobody’s buying anymore.” Sick burn.

But the main issue for me was that the characters don’t talk like real people talk. Sometimes that’s fine; the characters in All About Eve, for example, definitely don’t talk like real people talk. But they’re also very strong, believable, understandable characters. The characters in this movie are none of those things. They’re either tossing off pithy one-liners, like the ones noted earlier, or they’re intently articulating exactly how they’re feeling at that moment. Every line is meant to be either effortlessly cool or impossibly deep. So many things are said in this movie, and so few of them are things that actual people would say, even under the ridiculous circumstances in which the movie places them.

For example: Rachel McAdams, who has been married to John Krasinski’s character for twelve years, sees Bradley Cooper, whom she dated thirteen years earlier, and within a day of seeing him again is telling him, in detail, how dissatisfied she is with her marriage WHILE HER HUSBAND IS IN THE NEXT ROOM. She’s not even keeping her voice down! And the reason for this is that Crowe needs us to know how McAdams feels, and he doesn't trust her ability to express emotions like “dissatisfaction” non-verbally. It's almost insulting. (Side note: don’t get me wrong, I love John Krasinski [and not just because his name is v similar to mine], but he plays a hulking, laconic brute of a soldier here, which is something else. “We need to cast the role of a big, tough soldier. Get me the guy from The Office who smirked to the camera every five minutes.”)

Anyway. Listening to the movie made my head hurt. You can feel Crowe swinging for the fences, trying to write the next “Show me the money” or “You complete me” or “You had me at ‘hello’” or whatever, and it just all goes so wrong. Like, he thought it was a good idea to have Bradley Cooper say, “I go hard, I go deep, and sometimes I break things.” And that’s not even meant to be a sexy line! You could replace the dialogue from this movie with dialogue from an entirely different movie, and it would make almost as much sense.

The plot, as noted, is no less crazy. Every action that everyone takes revolves around Bradley Cooper’s character for no reason. Crowe does little to convince us why he’s so important to all of these disparate characters. Bill Murray (who is so wasted in this movie, in every sense of the term) keeps him around for no reason. Emma Stone falls for him instantly for no reason. Rachel McAdams emotionally cheats on her husband with him for no reason. In fact, the entire romantic side of the multi-sided plot is just a long set-up for Cooper’s character to have to choose between two unbelievably beautiful women whom he does not deserve. Must be nice.

The movie’s various plot lines are picked up and discarded at random. For a while it seems like the movie is going to be a paean to Hawaii, featuring members of its proud independence movement, but they disappear after one scene. Then it seems like it’s going to be about the insidious public-private partnerships that threaten our national security, and then it’s a love story, and then it’s a paternity story, and on and on. There's a whole climax involving a satellite that's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen, a climax that is written off as an afterthought three scenes later. It’s dizzying.

If I’m not doing a good job of explaining to you why it made me so angry, it’s because there were just too many things for me to write down. But I found that most of my scribbled, serial-killer-esque notes dealt with just how unreal the people in this movie felt. And the worst part is that I really think that this is Crowe's true ambition. He's actually going for “unreal.” This is why all the Emma Stone controversy makes sense to me: actually having a Hawaiian actress play her part would have tethered the movie too closely to real life, and Crowe doesn’t want that. He wants Aloha be better than real life, and having had to spend two hours of my real life watching it, I can tell you that it's far, far worse.

Am I happy I took Vincent’s recommendation? Uh, no. Ha!

What’s next?

UPDATE: Known tween Lindsay Filardo has recommended One Direction: This Is Us. I would copy and paste what I just wrote to her on Gchat, but this is a family blog.

15. From Justin to Kelly

The movie: From Justin to Kelly (Robert Iscove, 2003)

Have I seen this movie before? No.

How I saw it: DVD (via Netflix)

The recommender: Evan “Chich” Chiacchiaro

The rationale: I knew two things when I decided to make John watch From Justin to Kelly: that I absolutely wanted to make him watch a terrible movie, and that I had to pick what movie that would be in less than 90 seconds or someone else was gonna get in there. Luckily for John, From Justin to Kelly was what popped into my head. Plus, John loves musicals! How bad could it be?!! [Editor's Note: What can you say about Chich that hasn't already been said about ISIS?]

My familiarity with this movie: I am not an American Idol watcher. The only episode of the show that I can recall watching was the season 2 finale, back when I was in high school. Sister of the blog (SOTB) Lauren Krizel was a huge fan of Clay, and so I taunted her mercilessly when Ruben won. Sorry 2004.

I am, however, a huge Kelly Clarkson fan. LK and I drove up to New York to see the folks this weekend, and in the car we listened to the album Breakaway, a truly remarkable piece of work. Listen to the title track immediately:

I love that song for multiple reasons, but mainly because it tells us what Kelly's all about. You see, she grew up in a small town, and when the rain would etc. She's a dreamer, and she made her dreams come true. What a singer, what a song.

And thus I was really sad when I read this quote from our girl on this movie's Wikipedia page: “I knew when I read the script it was going to be real, real bad, but when I won, I signed that piece of paper, and I could not get out of it.” Being forced to do something that you don't want to do: I can relate, gurrl.

Plot summary yoinked from Netflix: “Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini are back -- this time, starring in a Miami musical infused with lots of romance. It’s spring break, and two groups of friends head south for some much-needed R&R. Romance blooms between the two American Idol alums (who aren’t playing themselves, but characters similar to them), but is it true love? This video includes the original theatrical version and an external version with two new dance numbers.” [Editor's Note: As appealing as those extra dance numbers sounded, I went with the original theatrical version.]

What I thought of the movie: It is absolute, unmitigated trash. (Not unlike Chich.) I’m really struggling to think of one redeeming thing about it. I guess we get to hear Kelly sing sometimes, and while the songs are pretty forgettable, they aren’t actively objectionable. So replace “unmitigated” with “infinitesimally mitigated.” (For the movie, that is. Not for Chich.)

It was very difficult to get through this movie, probably the hardest time I've had in finishing something for this blog. I watched it with LK on a sweltering day in our childhood home -- a home that, incidentally, is inhabited by people who don’t love to turn on the air conditioning -- and as the temperature inched higher and higher, I was overcome by a feeling of pure, utter helplessness. This movie is 81 minutes long, and it felt longer than Titanic. Watching this movie was like slowly being buried alive. I felt like goddamned Nikki and Paulo.

I think the main issue is that it's abundantly clear what a terrible idea this movie was. It's a naked cash grab that exists only to capitalize on the enormous popularity of the show, and it's as shoddy and superfluous as movies are capable of being. The story is a standard paint-by-numbers spring break romance, hackishly and heavily cribbing from Grease and other similar films; it's a movie that could have been made with any two (opposite-gendered) people who finished first and second in a singing contest. (I don’t want to belabor this point, because this was not their fault, but it must be noted that Justin and Kelly aren’t exactly Tracy and Hepburn out there.)

So here’s Justin and Kelly and their respective friends, heading to Miami for spring break. The two meet during a random dance number, and they sing about it but don’t actually talk to each other. Then he sees her in the crowd at some other thing, and they sing about it but don’t actually talk to each other. Then he runs into the ladies’ bathroom and finds her there, and she says, “Come here often?” It is an incredibly romantic scene, meant to call to mind the scene in Romeo & Juliet where the two star-crossed lovers meet in a ladies' bathroom and Juliet says, “Come here often?”

Each successive plot machination hangs on one ridiculous contrivance after another: she writes her phone number in lipstick (!) on a paper towel (!!) in the aforementioned ladies’ room, but it falls into a puddle. Kelly’s blonde (and therefore villainous) friend Alexa, jealous of Kelly’s ability to snag a man at spring break (a man, lest we forget, whose head looks like a Chia pet gone wrong), then gives Justin her own number, but tells him it’s Kelly’s. This propels most of the action in the movie, and could have been figured out so, so easily at like twelve different points, but then the movie would be even less than the 81 minutes that it is. (Justin does not give up on Kelly despite all these foibles, by the way, because This Girl Is Different, You Guys.)

I must pause here to discuss the secondary characters and their attendant subplots, which are so pitiful as to be nearly unfiskable. Justin and his two friends are party promoters, the professional equivalent of a mosquito buzzing past your ear. One is a smooth talker with frosted tips named Brandon. Brandon’s shirt is frequently unbuttoned; at one point he jumps into a hot tub with cargo shorts on. The other is named Some Nerd With Glasses. He wears long-sleeved shirts and bucket hats to the beach, and he’s constantly talking about the girl that he’s been “cyberchatting” with on the Internet. (“You should see her webpage!” he exclaims, moments before I paused the movie and wept.)

Kelly’s other friend is Kaya, played by Anika Noni Rose. A year after this movie was released, Rose won a Tony Award for her performance in the musical Caroline, or Change. In this movie, the musical number that she and her random spring break paramour share inexplicably fades to black in the middle of the song. I had to check to see if the DVD messed up, it was that jarring. I think the filmmakers were as bored as I was.

The rest of these goofballs orbit the main characters harmlessly, but Alexa comes through like Frank Underwood, trying to destroy everything in her path. She exchanges several texts with Justin to mislead him about Kelly’s intentions and whereabouts. DIGRESSION: the texting in this movie is out of this world. Remember, this is 2003; filmmakers were not yet aware of how to accurately depict text messaging (see also the classic Spreadsheet Text in the video for Nelly/Kelly Rowland’s “Dilemma”). Here we see that “Kelly” and Justin’s texts feature every abbreviation possible, because that’s totes how The Kids Text These Days. (At one point, Alexa, indicating that Justin should forget about going to the beach, types, “FGT BEACH.” I am too afraid to say anything else about this.)

Alexa has no motivation for acting this way toward her supposed friend. She doesn’t even appear to be attracted to Justin (and she has all of the attributes necessary to make time with any oiled-up juicehead of her choice within a ten-mile radius). There’s one scene in which Kelly and Kaya say vaguely rude things to Alexa about how she’s too man-hungry, which is meant to show why Alexa might be acting so spitefully. But every single line that Alexa has had in the movie to that point is about how man-hungry she is, and that one scene is meant to justify all of the awful things that Alexa does throughout the entire movie, including the time when she literally makes out with Justin in front of Kelly, and then claims that he came on to her. Alexa might be a nihilist. She’s in the wrong spring break movie.

There’s really not much else to say here. The movie throws every possible dumb obstacle in the book at our heroes to keep them apart, which is probably a good thing, because having them spend too much time together would remind us that they have zero chemistry. At one point, Justin takes Kelly out for a ride on his boat, during which they sing a song about they're falling in love with one another. Justin is at the back of the boat, steering and looking off into the distance, while Kelly sits at the front, also looking off into the distance. It is the creepiest thing I’ve seen on a boat since The Talented Mr. Ripley.

(One other thing worth noting: this film was clearly made for all of Kelly and Justin’s young fans, which is good because it teaches that young audience some important lessons, like, “If you meet a party promoter with terrible hair on spring break, it is OK to go out on a boat alone with him the next day.”)

At the end of the movie, I was left with the same question that nagged me from the beginning: why did this movie have to happen? Were the producers trying to convince us that Justin and Kelly were actually in love? Were they trying to kickstart film careers for them? (If so, they failed miserably at both.) In the end, From Justin to Kelly just feels like a relic from a bygone era, calculated to appeal to kids who are too guileless to see through the charade and too young to know what the phrase “contractually obligated” means. And poor Kelly Clarkson, the goddamned American Idol, was collateral damage. My God, is that depressing.

Am I happy I took Chich’s recommendation? If nothing else, it'll be nice to discuss it with him in person.

What's next?

UPDATE: The great Vincent Penge continues my downward spiral with the recently released, critically panned, and apparently RACIST Cameron Crowe film, Aloha.

14. Spider-Man 2

The movie: Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, 2004)

Have I seen this movie before? I think so.

How I saw it: DVD (owned by recommender)

The recommender: Josh Benjamin

The rationale: I am anxious to hear John’s take on Spider-Man 2. Even if John decides he hates it, I hope he will agree that it makes Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avengers: Age of Ultron look like utter crap. I purposely italicized each individual movie title in the list above and purposely did not italicize each individual comma in the list above, so John would have to unitalicize each title and italicize each comma—because that is the style he uses for these rationale paragraphs. [Editor’s Note: Josh italicized every other letter of that last clause. “Paste and Match Style” mitigated a lot of this nonsense, but still. What an absolute outrage.]

My familiarity with this movie: I know I’ve seen the first movie in this series (not to be confused with the other series of Spiderman movies which started like five seconds after this one ended), and I know I haven’t seen the last one. The fact that I can’t remember if I’ve seen this one either means that it made no impression on me, or that I’m getting old. Or both. I’m definitely getting old.

If my understanding of vague cinematic trends is accurate, Spider-Man 2 was the high-water mark for the first superhero movie boom of the 21st century. Batman Begins ushered in the second, darker wave a year later, and then all the Marvel movies started happening and I got a headache. (Old man rant alert:) Every other movie that comes out nowadays appears to be affiliated with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’ve seen a few of them, but I think I'm done with them now. It feels like you have to have seen all of the preceding ones (not to mention at least some knowledge of comic books). I took a break from these after Iron Man 2, and then I looked up and I’d missed like six movies. It’s too daunting at this point, so I’m just gonna call all y’all Marvel fans “nerds” and move on. (If there is one quality of mine that I’m really enjoying these days, it’s my selective usage of the term “nerd” as a pejorative for various “nerdy” things that I don't like, despite actually being a “nerd” in almost every sense of the term. Just intolerable.)

Plot summary and trailer yoinked from Netflix and YouTube, respectively: “Burned out from leading a double life, mild-mannered Peter Parker decides to shelve his superhero alter ego, Spider-Man. But will Peter suit up again when multitentacled villain Doc Ock begins terrorizing New York City?”

What I thought of the movie: I liked it. I can’t really go that far beyond saying “I liked it.” It had some really good moments, and I can see why it was popular (although maybe not the near-universal critical acclaim it got, but whatever). Doc Ock was a very solid villain, and Spiderman (despite Peter Parker’s blandness) is a pretty cool dude. I support any and all Spiderman-related graphic T's that Josh wears. (Also, I've definitely seen it before. I think.)

But I’m going to pick a few nits here. To be fair, many of the issues I had with this movie are similar to the issues I have with all superhero movies. Chief among these is the fact that, on several occasions, Peter Parker/Spiderman hears police sirens and instantly leaves whatever he’s doing to follow them. Let the police do their jobs! Former TMQ recommender and FOTB Kabeer Parwani points out that Spiderman doesn’t have to do any paperwork, and might also put long-running investigations and undercover officers in jeopardy with all his meddling. Imagine some poor detective, one break away from cracking the mob, and Spiderman comes in and webs all the suspects up. (Kabeer really thinks these things through.) I cannot imagine what the police unions would have to say about all this. (Maybe this is why they didn’t let Donald Glover play Spiderman.)

Most galling, however, was Kirsten Dunst’s depiction of Mary Jane Watson’s performances in a Broadway production of The Importance of Being Earnest. (Devotees of my blog ventures will know that I reserve some of my sharpest barbs for films that feature unrealistic depictions of THE THEEEEATER.) On two (2) occasions during the movie, Mary Jane is distracted by Peter’s unexpected absence (or presence) at her shows, to the point where she openly stares into the audience at his empty seat (or his stupid face) and FORGETS TO SAY HER LINE. THIS HAPPENS TWICE. HOW UNPROFESSIONAL IS THAT. IT'S A BROADWAY SHOW.

Aside from noting the aforementioned quibbles and scoffing at James Franco’s over-the-top, “AVENGE MEEEEE”-inspired brooding, I felt my enthusiasm for the movie curbed by just how telegraphed every major plot point was. At the beginning of the movie, Peter has a conversation with Dr. Octavius (Alfred Molina, who is really good and often feels like he’s in a different movie than everyone else) and his wife/assistant about how much Dr. Octavius loves his wife, which is convenient because one scene later she dies when his big experiment goes wrong. I watched the movie with Josh and FOTB Lindsay Filardo, both firm fans of the film, and this point Josh said, “This was a lot less predictable when I was 15.”

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course: not every movie has to be The Usual Suspects, and not every movie has to age super-well. And again, it's not like it's a bad movie. I don’t know if I’m being too hard on it: I might just have superhero fatigue, and I might just be an old coot. There was definitely a lot to like here, and I certainly enjoyed watching it on a Sunday afternoon with my frands. I just don’t know if I’m fully buying what it’s slinging.

Am I happy I took Josh’s recommendation? I suppose I am.

What’s next?

UPDATE: It was only a matter of time until Evan "Chich" Chiacchiaro stuck his nose in. From Justin to Kelly. It's all gone wrong.

13. Blow-Up

The movie: Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)

Have I seen this movie before? No.

How I saw it: DVD (via Netflix)

The recommender: Meg Moran

The rationale: My friends and I had rented a house in the Outer Banks, and it was raining. We were stir-crazy and also pretty drunk (or do I have to say “p drunk”?) [Editor’s Note: yes], so we sort of tore the place apart, and in the process someone found this movie, the only DVD in the entire house. And it was like someone found a box of mac n’ cheese in a college dorm at 3 AM.

 

Enthusiasm became disgust pretty much right after the opening sequence. We spent the next two hours making either expletive-filled pronouncements about the terribleness of the movie or expletive-filled pronouncements about the awesomeness of the Yardbirds. We all agreed that we should just turn it the eff off, but then, we didn't. As it spiraled in ever-widening circles of ridiculousness, we couldn't bring ourselves to stop. When it was over, we were all bitter and ashamed and cheapened, and we haven't spoken of it since.

Later, in the sober light of day, I IMDb-ed the thing, and I was surprised to learn that this is allegedly, like, a good movie. Not like, Gone with the Wind good, but film-school good. Now I'd like to think of myself as something of a patron of pretentious, esoteric bullcrap. I mean, I know who Antonioni is (albeit from Rent lyrics, but still!); plus, Herbie Hancock did the soundtrack, for crying out loud. Yet, I cannot bring myself to appreciate this movie. Maybe the Krizel treatment will cast it in a new light and help me change my mind.

My familiarity with this movie: This is an interesting test case for the blog. I feel like most recommendations so far have fallen into one of two categories: “this is a great movie, you’ll love it,” or, “this is a terrible movie, you’ll hate it.” Meg’s choice falls into a third category: “I think this is terrible, but many people think it’s great, and now you, a man who is very much the King Solomon of his era, get to decide who’s right.” I say let’s cut the movie in half.

Usually I have a fairly decent idea of whether or not I'm going to like a movie before I watch it (which is annoying, but often unavoidable in this Era of Unsolicited Opinions). But this one is a toss-up. I’ve heard good things and bad things about this movie from people whom I trust. The list of “people whom I trust” will be diminishing one way or another, which is not a bad thing. It’s like how I need to cut out a few hundred Facebook friends or so. Simplify, folks.

Plot summary yoinked from Netflix: “Legendary director Michelangelo Antonioni scores again with this tense mystery (his first English-speaking film) set in London among the city’s hipster crowd, the story of a popular fashion photographer (David Hemmings) who inadvertently shoots evidence of a murder. As he processes the negative in order to unravel the mystery, he must also deal with a dangerous woman (Vanessa Redgrave) who knows more than she admits.”

What I thought of the movie: I cannot offer anything to help Meg change her mind, as I neither liked the movie, nor related to it on any level. (I can definitely envision myself yelling at it while p drunk in a beach house.) I think many elements of it are pretty terrible, and the best thing I can say about it is that it’s visually interesting. But I don’t know if I can officially call it trash.

It feels like trash, though. We follow this sleazy, creepy, thoroughly objectionable man around for almost an hour before anything remotely interesting happens. When things do happen, they are often random and nonsensical. There are mimes involved. Some scenes admittedly look pretty cool, but they're interspersed with lots of fluff. It often feels like a piece of performance art, something that is to be endured in order to finally arrive at some oblique, pretentious message. It's hard to know how the filmmakers feel about the characters, or if they even care about them in the slightest. The protagonist says things like, “I’m fed up with these bloody bitches. I wish I had tons of money, then I’d be free.” He -- and, by extension, the movie -- is very, very easy to hate. 

And when (SPOILER ALERT) the central mystery doesn't really come to anything in the end, it's all the more frustrating. It feels like it's meant to be self-consciously weird, and there are few things I hate more than that. (I'm sure its supporters will talk about how this movie is meant to be a provocative response to people who are conditioned to want tidy resolutions or likable characters or whatever, to which I will respond: shut up, nerds.)

But here’s the thing: this movie is nearly fifty years old. I have to imagine that it made a lot more sense to audiences in the Sixties, as the Sixties were, famously, a v weird time. Furthermore, the Swinging London scene has been examined and parodied (e.g., Austin Powers) to such a degree that the movie has been forcibly and irreversibly recontextualized. I can read all the Wikipedia pages I want about how influential and groundbreaking this movie was, but I am still unable to appreciate it in any real sense.

So yes, I pretty much hated it, but I am willing to explain away my hating it. There's a chance that I'm missing something that a lot of other, smarter people see in this movie, but I'm OK with that. I think everyone can agree that, at the very least, Blow-Up is a movie of its time. And that’s fine! Not everything can be timeless. You don’t see many daguerreotypes these days, but we wouldn’t have Instagram without them. Y’all can have that one, it’s free.

Am I happy I took Meg’s recommendation? Here’s something else for free: next time y’all go on vacation, bring your own DVDs.

What’s next?

UPDATE: Graphic T-shirt enthusiast Josh Benjamin comes through with a movie that some consider to be one of the greatest superhero movies of all time, Spider-Man 2.