Review: Spider-Man: Homecoming

I liked it, my 10-year-old liked it, what more do you need in a summer blockbuster?

This is a dialed-back Marvel film, Spider-Man isn't saving the world, just catching a bad guy. Most importantly, even though it's a reboot, we skip the whole origin story. The radioactive spider is mentioned, but that's it. And not a word about Uncle Ben.

Thank you for skipping all that; no one needs it anymore. The only thing missing that's important to the canon is J. Jonah Jameson. But I didn't miss him until my 10 year old pointed out his absence after the film.

Tom Holland (another Brit to play the role) plays it as an awkward teenager very anxious to get in the game, but is told to "keep to the ground" by (on-loan-from-Disney) Tony Stark. You don't believe he's 15, but still, he is good enough to make you forget the other Spider-Men.

This is another winner for Michael Keaton, who is less a genius super villain, and more a mob guy who's just doing business. He's not trying to  conquer the world, he's just running a black market for weapons. They're alien-enhanced weapons, but hey, business is business.

A third-act twist turned this good movie into a really good movie. There's a scene where you watch the gears turn in Keaton's head as he figures out Spider-Man's secret identity that's just as suspenseful as anything you'd see in a Hitchcock film.

There's just enough Avengers crossover to keep things interesting in the Marvel Universe, without it overshadowing the main star. (There's a funny running gag about Captain America doing all-purpose PSA's for Peter Parker's high school).

Marisa Tomei is the hottest Aunt Mae ever, but I'm not complaining.

Film review: Iron Man 3

A problem with writing superhero stories is sometimes, they're just too powerful. This is why they invented kryptonite. In most of the Star Trek films (and some episodes) the ship is somewhat disabled. (They make a joke of this in Star Trek: VI, where the ship is ordered to a destination the crew wants to delay, and to their dismay, the ship works fine.) And this is why through most of Iron Man 3, Tony Stark's Iron Man getup is only semi-functional. And not only that, but Tony Stark himself is suffering from crippling anxiety attacks. Part of me is thinking these are arbitrary hurdles, the other part thinks, well, you have to do it or the hero is just too powerful to be interesting.

He also spends a lot of time out of the gear, at one point when he and Don Cheadle are invading a villain's lair, it looks like a buddy cop movie.

That being said, it's a great summer movie, full of excitement and action. It might start off a little too slow for me. I kind of expected a James Bond-type thriller cold opening, so I was a little disappointed at that. I will say there's a jaw-dropping second act twist which should earn Ben Kingsley an Oscar. It won't, but it's worth it to see his performance.

Once again with the Marvel movies, there's a "cookie" surprise at the tail end of the credits. It was cute, but not worth sitting through the thousands of names in the credits.

A film geek note: If you read a review, this won't be a spoiler, but a nerd whom the hero dismisses at the beginning of the film, returns years later to be a villain. The Incredibles did the same thing.