tick, tick... BOOM!

 Year:  2021

Director:  Lin-Manuel Miranda

Screenplay:  Steven Levenson, based on the stage musical tick, tick... BOOM! by Jonathan Larson

Starring:  Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Vanessa Hudgens, Robin de Jesús, Joshua Henry, Judith Light

Running Time:  121 minutes

Genre:  Musical, drama

New York City, January 1990:  Jonathan Larson (Garfield) works in a popular Manhattan diner but his true passion is musical theatre.  For the past eight years he has been working on his passion project, a dystopian science-fiction musical called Superbia.  In a few days time he has the opportunity to put on a workshop product of Superbia, which he hopes will attract the attention of producers and investors as well as proving his talent to friends and family.  Jonathan also feels intense pressure to become successful before he turns 30, which is just over a week away, and so he feels that this production is his last chance to "make it".  He also has to deal with personal tragedies, severe financial troubles, and the fact that he still has to write one of the key songs for his musical, and he has no ideas at all. Meanwhile the clock keeps ticking away.

This is a biographical film telling the early career of playwright and composer Jonathan Larson, who is best known for writing the hit musical Rent, which ran for 12 years on Broadway.  The film is based on a semi-autobiographical "rock monologue" Larson wrote in 1990.  The title refers to an incessant ticking sound that Larson says he hears in his head, referring to his feeling that time is running out.  The film cuts between Andrew Garfield, as Larson, performing the monologue in front of an audience, with a full band, and the musical drama which makes up the bulk of the film.  It's a hugely enjoyable film about the sacrifices, pressures, hopes and joys of making art.  Andrew Garfield gives a great performance in the central role, and also shows that he is a very good singer.  Alexandra Shipp is good as Susan, Larson's long-suffering girlfriend, and Robin de Jesús gives a fantastic performance as Michael, Larson's best friend who gave up his own acting dreams for a career in advertising.  The film acknowledges the AIDS crisis, which claims several of Larson's friends, and that casts a strong shadow over Larson's various problems.  The film marks the directorial debut of actor, writer, singer, songwriter, producer Lin-Manual Miranda, and it is a very accomplished debut, with a huge sense of style and visually spectacular.  The songs are very good.  This is one of the best films that I have seen about writing and the creative process.

Andrew Garfield in tick, tick... BOOM!

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Year of Release: 2021

Director:  Jon Watts

Screenplay:  Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, based on Spider-Man created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko

Starring:  Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Benedict Wong, Tony Revelori, Marisa Tomei, Andrew Garfield, Tobey Maguire,

Running Time:  148 minutes

Genre:  Super-hero, action, science-fiction

Following the public unmasking of Peter Parker (Holland) as masked vigilante Spider-Man, his life, and the lives of Peter's girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Battalion) have been made a misery.  Unable to escape the unceasing attention and endless controversy, Peter approaches powerful mystic Doctor Strange (Cumberbatch) to cast a spell to make the world forget that he is Spider-Man.  However, Peter's interference with the spell causes it to go wrong, bringing in supervillains from other dimensions to  Peter's universe.  

This is a sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) and is the 27th instalment in the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).  This also brings in characters from other non-MCU Spider-Man films such as Spider-Man (2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Spider-Man 3 (2007), The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014).  There is also an appearance from Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock from the Netflix Daredevil series (2015-2018).  This is one of the better MCU films, with humour and genuine emotion, towards the end there were several audible sobs at the screening I attended.  The action is spectacular, with a particularly impressive set-piece set in the surreal Mirror Dimension.  If you are not familiar with the MCU in general or the Spider-Man films in particular, this is not a very good place to start, and may be quite alienating for newcomers.  However, it is fun to see the old familiar faces, and they generally work well, even if there are too many adversaries for the film's good.  Crucially the film has some real emotion.  Peter Parker deals with some devastating losses, and there is some real weight in his scenes with MJ (of course Tom Holland and Zendaya are in a relationship in real life).  Peter is in many ways defined by his non-super powered support network, MJ, best friend Ned and his Aunt May (Tomei) who frequently act as his conscience and reminder that, in the immortal phrase, "with great power there must also be great responsibility." As always with MCU films there are additional scenes in the end credits.

Tom Holland in Spider-Man: No Way Home 

The Social Network

Year:  2010
Director:  David Fincher
Screenplay:  Aaron Sorkin, based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
Starring:  Jesse Eiseberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones, Rooney Mara
Running Time:  121 minutes
Genre:  Drama

This film charts the rise of the social networking site Facebook.  At Harvard University in 2003, student Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg) is dumped by his girlfirend Erica Albright (Mara).  Drunk, depressed and bitter, Zuckerberg takes revenge by bad-mouthing Erica on his blog and setting up a site called Facemash, for which he steals the photographs of female undergraduates from the university's "facebooks" (on-line directories of the students photographs and details) and allows users to vote on which girl they think is the hottest.  The site is so instantly popular that it crashes Harvard's servers and makes Zuckerberg notorious on campus, while doing nothing to improve his popularity with the femalle students.  The site brings him to the attention of identical twin rowing champions Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer and Armie Hammer) and their friend and business partner Divya Narender (Minghella) who are planning to set up a  social networking site called "The Harvard Connection".  Zuckerberg does not think much of either the Winkelvoss twins and Narender or their site, but he is intrigued by the idea of a social network and so he and his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Garfield) set up their own site called "The Facebook" which soon becomes a Harvard sensation.  However as the site goes from strength to strength, friendships and partnerships go sour and implode and Zuckerberg finds himself mired in litigation.

At first glance a movie about a guy who sets up a web site may seem like the most boring idea for a movie ever.  Who really wants to see a guy typing on a computer for two hours?  (Coming Soon:  Permanently Weird:  The Movie.  Five hours long, in black and white).  However the film is fascinating because it is not really a film about Facebook but about the people who developed it.  It's about how, despite all the money and fame, the success of the site left a legacy of destroyed friendships and lawsuits.  Mark Zuckerberg does not come across as a particularly likeable character at all however, it is to the credit of the film-makers and Eisenberg's performance in particular, that Zuckerberg is never entirely unsympathetic.  He treats people really badly in the movie, but he often doesn't seem to realise how what he's doing affects people, and seems genuinely bewildered when people react badly to his scheming and ruthlessness.

The film is full of great performances from Eisenberg onwards, with Armie Hammer being particularly notable in the dual role of the Winklevoss twins, and also singer Justin Timberlake who ironically is cast as Sean Parker, the founder of free music sharing site Napster.  The film is elegantly made, from the stately dimly lit corridors of Harvard to the cold, bright law firm offices, and the script is compelling and shot through with plenty of unexpected humour.

There are many opinions about Facebook and similar sites, some people love them while others hate everything about them.  Personally I think that the internet has changed human social interaction for the better.  The importance of sites like Facebook is huge and, I think, only being glimpsed.  Whether you love or hate Facebook, or even if you don't know the first thing about it, this is a fascinating and powerful film.  However it is important to remember, as with all films that are "based on a true story", this is just a work of fiction.  It is a drama, intended to entertain, based on someone's idea of what happened, and not a historical document.



"You have part of my attention, you have the minimum amount.  The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook where my colleagues and I are doing things that no-one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capapable of doing.  Did I adequately answer your condescending question?"
- Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) shows how not to win friends in court.

Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) and Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in The Social Network