“And that’s why you always leave a note!” Image via Digital Spy

Oh Spider-Man, why do you always play with my emotions like this?

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a movie that didn’t need to exist, given that a perfect Spider-Man sequel already exists. Yet, here it is. While it is here, it might as well be loud, proud, and filled with search engine product placement.

Picking up a bit after the first Amazing Spider-Man left off, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 finds Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) on the day of his high school graduation. As always, he is late, because he has to chase a bunch of people through recognizable Manhattan landmarks before he can watch his girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) deliver her valedictorian speech. While Peter loves Gwen Stacy, he also knows that dating Spider-Man can be a dangerous thing. Of all of the different stories in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the Gwen Stacy romance is probably the most interesting to watch. This makes it one of the few superhero movies where the romance is better than any of the action. I think that Garfield and Stone’s real life romance is partly to thank for the onscreen chemistry.

On top of the romance, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a film told in three villains. Ever since I saw Iron Man 2, I have preached against the Multiple Villain Syndrome that plagues most superhero movies. Yet, no one seems to listen (probably time to yell more on Reddit). Each villain has their strengths and their flaws, but mostly they have flaws. Let’s start with Electro (Jamie Foxx). His alter ego, Max Dillon, is a nebbish Oscorp employee who is creepily obsessed with Spider-Man. I loved the start of that character, as it was weird enough to not belong in a big blockbuster. Then, he becomes Electro too quickly and any semblance of backstory is gone.

Then, there is Harry Osbourne (Dane DeHaan), who becomes the Green Goblin. Harry and the Green Goblin are two of the most important characters in the Spider-Man universe, so it’s surprising that the movie barely gives them the proper introduction that they deserve. Despite the fact that the Amazing Spider-Man series is supposed to be a way to introduce Spider-Man to a new generation, you can’t really watch it without knowledge of the previous movies. Instead of a Harry backstory, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 decides to delve into the lives of Peter’s parents. Then, it does absolutely nothing with that information. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has the power to do something great. Yet, it also wants none of the responsibility.

The third villain is The Rhino (Paul Giamatti), who (spoiler alert?), is barely in the movie. He is in there either to tease another movie I am not sure if I want to see, or to satisfy the needs of people who were dying to see Paul Giamatti do a cheesy Russian accent. It’s okay, Giamatti now has enough money to build a second pool or whatever movie stars do with their money.

The biggest problem with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is that it keeps throwing challenges at Spider-Man and never quite knows how to handle them. Usually, writers and directors should have a better handle on their characters. Now, Spider-Man always has a lot on his plate. This is what defines him as a hero. Spider-Man 2 basically explores these same grounds, but it understood which issues were actually important to both Peter Parker and Spider-Man. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the equivalent of watching four screenwriters (not an exaggeration) run circles around each other for 150 minutes.

Throughout The Amazing Spider-Man 2 there are shades of what could have been, and ultimately there is disappointment at the mess that ended up on screen. Besides all that, I had a fun time. It did what a subpar superhero movie is supposed to do: it entertained at a moderately fun level. I just feel like at this point it is time that audiences started expecting something better.

Brain Farts From The Edge (SPOILER ALERT)

• Don’t worry, there are no cranes in site this time around.
• The end scene might be one of the worst I have seen all year. It is a blatant attempt at pandering. It is like they were trying to put in a message that wasn’t built up to at all.
• Okay, now we can talk about Gwen Stacy’s death: This was handled very well in the film. If you’re a fan of the comics, then there were teasers throughout (Peter and Gwen on top of the bridge). In the movie, the death takes place in a clock tower, and the tragedy is handled in a tasteful way. Emma Stone was such a great part of these movies, and it is sad to see her go. Poor Spider-Man, he’s always accidentally killing the ones that he loves the most.
• I wish this ended with Peter standing by Gwen Stacy’s grave and then giving up on being Spider-Man. That would have been a much stronger cliffhanger than Paul Giamatti in a rhino costume.
• On that note, Peter’s deep struggle of whether or not to be Spider-Man seems trivial here, when it should have been a larger focus. Giving up the ability to swing across New York City with web launchers must not be an easy decision to make.
• Sally Field is a great Aunt May. Overall, she’s a great lady, too.
• When Electro blows out the power in the city, everybody immediately freaks out. Okay, blackouts are bad and cause chaos. However, things don’t immediately explode the second a city stops running. Calm down, Marc Webb.
• Take it easy with the faux-Queens accent, Andrew Garfield.
• Four writers. Four f***ing writers. Did they just let everybody at Sony have a say in this?
• So…how much longer until Guardians of the Galaxy comes out?

Your grandparents are here right now eating lunch. They have great pastrami on rye. Also, this place was on the Guy Fieri Program once.

Summer is fast approaching and you are just a few weeks away from being able to burn all of your textbooks for firewood.

You will probably have a lot of free time this summer, and a lot of that time might be spent seeing relatives that you haven’t seen in a while. Perhaps those people are your grandparents, who might be heading up north to escape Florida. The humidity is no good for them.

Everybody knows that nothing brings families together like a day at the movies. Everybody also knows that nobody gets a movie title wrong like your grandparents do. They happen to come up with some creative titles that usually make absolutely no sense at all. Yet, they are often more creative than anything that most writers could come up with. One time, my grandpa referred to The Lincoln Lawyer as The Cadillac Man. In my eyes, that is pure gold.

In honor of all of the grandparents out there who just want to spend the day at the picture house, I have decided to breach the gap between two generations by providing what I hope is an accurate translation guide to accompany the one I came up with for holiday movies. Here is a helpful guide to the big movies of the summer, according to your grandparents:

A Million Ways to Die in the West: The Wild West

Captain America: The Winter Soldier: America’s Cold Warrior

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: These Remakes Are Garbage

Godzilla: Let Me Tell You Something About Pearl Harbor

Guardians of the Galaxy: Galaxy Quest

Million Dollar Arm: This Looks Wonderful

Neighbors: The Neighbors

The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Did You Hear What James Franco Did on the Instant-Photo App?

The Fault in Our Stars: Starry Night

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: What’s That One That My Grandson Wants to See?

Transformers: Age of Extinction: The Robot Dinosaur Picture

X-Men: Days of Future Past: Back to the Future

Possibly a metaphor for the latter part of Adam Sandler’s career. Image via Uproxx

They can’t all be good.

It is easy to forget that every year, with all of the anticipation that the summer blockbuster season brings, a lot of movies are released that nobody asked for. Usually, the end of August and the entirety of September are reserved for the worst bombs of summer that Hollywood wanted to hide from you. However, some of those sneak into June and July. After all, it just wouldn’t be summer without a subpar sequel and an Adam Sandler movie.

Here are the four movies coming out this summer that I want to see the least. I chose four because numbers are irrelevant. Also, instead of the individual trailers, I have decided to accompany each movie with an SNL skit that at least one of the actors from said movie was in. It is partly because you can find the trailers on your own, and partly because I want to remind you that I still love Adam Sandler:

4. Million Dollar Arm

While there are movies coming out that look much worse than Million Dollar Arm, the terrible thing about it is how safe and inoffensive it looks. An underdog sports story about an unconventional approach to assembling a team? Draft Day just came out and it bombed. White people and foreigners teaching each other touching life lessons because we’re all secretly racist? Get in line behind all of the rest. If you are going to give Jon Hamm a star-making vehicle, then at least give him something that plays off of his ability to smoke cigarettes and drink a lot of scotch.

3. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

I might be one of the few people on this Earth who actually enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man, even though I will admit that the crane scene was one of the worst deus ex machinas in film history. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 looks like it suffers from the same problem that has plagued many comic book adaptations: it overcrowds itself with too many villains. This is especially bad given that I can’t help but associate Jamie Foxx with that blue dude that Tracy Jordan keeps seeing in that episode of 30 Rock where he stops taking his meds. In addition, Paul Giamatti has shamefully been placed into a rhino costume. Somebody please tell Sam Raimi to come back.

2. Blended

If you look up “phoning it in” on Wikipedia, you’ll find a picture of Adam Sandler taking a nap on top of the Grown Ups 3 script. Blended looks like a sad waste of the squandered talent of Sandler and Drew Barrymore, who once upon a time displayed such amazing chemistry together in The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates (where Drew Barrymore ruined the ending of The Sixth Sense for me). Instead, we will get a lot of African stereotypes, and a lot more of me wishing I was watching Terry Crews in Brooklyn Nine-Nine instead of Terry Crews in Blended. Blended looks less like a movie and more like an ad for Hooters. This is what we get when we take Billy Madison and Big Daddy for granted.

1. Hercules

After seeing The Rock scream “I. AM. HERCULES!” in the trailer, I refuse to call this anything else but I, Hercules. This entire movie is a studio executive screaming, “Look! You know who Hercules is! He’s a familiar character! Give us money!” at an audience that secretly wants somebody in Hollywood to just invent a new action hero already.  I, Hercules is yet another example of Hollywood taking a story we have heard too many times before and trying to put it into a new, “gritty” package. The problem is that for me, stories like Hercules work much better when they are in musical cartoon form. In the future, I, Hercules will be looked at more as a reminder of a horrible trend than a horrible movie that came out in the summer of 2014.

https://screen.yahoo.com/hawaiian-hotel-000000278.html