The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (12A)
Verdict: Thunderous, but forgettable ★★★
Locke (15)
Verdict: Clever British thriller ★★★★
Stan Lee, who conceived Spider-Man more than 50 years ago and is now in his 90s, evidently approves of the way his creation has evolved for the 21st-century: as in most films featuring Marvel super-heroes, the old boy has a fleeting cameo in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
But Spider-Man's biggest battle in this film is with the 3D computer-generated effects which, impressive as most of them are, begin to get in the way, making some of us — if not Lee — rather pine for the days when he was content merely to do whatever a spider can.
Stil! l, Andrew Garfield again proves himself a perfect fit for the iconic red-and-blue suit. We would never guess that, very much unlike Spider-Man, Garfield was raised in Epsom and is actually quintessential Home Counties Man, no kind of name for a super hero.
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Spider-Man's biggest battle in this film is with the 3D computer-generated effects which, impressive as most of them are, begin to get in the way
As in his first outing, in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), he imbues Spider-Man with wit that feels unforced, and his alter ego Peter Parker with awkward, neurotic vulnerability.
In Marc Webb's thunderous sequel — which at two hours and 22 minutes is as over-long as it is over-loud — Peter grapples with the mystery of why his parents abandoned him so suddenly, and whether to let his Aunt May (Sally Field) in on his webby secret.
This latter dilemma yields some nice wry gags, as when Aunt May wonders why everything in the washing-machine turned blue and red, and Peter claims unconvincingly that he was putting the American flag through a spin cycle.
At least his girlfriend Gwen (Emma Stone) knows who he is, and as before there is some appealing chemistry between the two — not surprisingly, as Stone and Garfield are an item in real life.
However, this film is less about chemistry than electricity. The literally electrifying villain is Electro (Jamie Foxx), who in his early incarnation is Max, an anonymous but respectable underling at the shadowy Osborn Corporation, notable only for a particularly greasy comb-over.
Then a high-voltage accident turns Max reluctantly bad, sending him entertainingly bonkers in Times Square and giving him the power to plunge all of Manhattan into darkness.
Like the ravens leaving the Tower of London, Manhattan losing its light is symbolic of a world gone terribly awry. It is a modern American nightmare.
Spider-Man springs, swings and abseils to the rescue, of course. But a superhero's work is never done. Even once he sees off Electro, Spider-Man must contend with the Green Goblin, into whom his old school pal Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) has metamorphosed, ending up with a serious attitude problem and awfully bad teeth.
That is another modern American nightmare. Turning into a villain is bad enough, but a villain beyond orthodontic help, now that's enough to traumatise a nation.
Andrew Gar! field again proves himself a perfect fit for the iconic red-and-blue suit
There are plenty of stirring moments in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but it is not quite the sum of its parts. Garfield has proper star wattage, and gets able support, almost too able in the case of DeHaan, who rudely steals the scenes he's in much as he did in the recent picture about the pre-fame Beat poets, Kill Your Darlings.
But the narrative drifts, and those extravagant effects, paradoxically, make the film eminently forgett-able, or at least indistinguishable from every other CGI-heavy assault on our senses.
At entirely the other end of the cinematic spectrum is Locke, which amounts to one man driving his car after dark and nothing else.
Far from there being any special effects, there is scarcely any physical action at all, beyond a middle-aged father-of-two called Ivan! Locke (Tom Hardy) gripping his steering-wheel, glancing in his rear-view mirror, and making and taking hands-free phone calls.
It is those phone calls which let us into his life, the life of a likeable if intense man who at the start of his journey from the Midlands to London is both contentedly married and highly respected as a construction director on one of Europe's biggest building projects.
Classic: Andrew Garfield stars in the The Amazing Spider-Man 2 alongside Emma Stone
Indeed, it is the eve of arguably the most important day of his career, with thousands of tons of concrete about to be poured into the foundations of a building that will eventually stand 55 storeys high and, at sunset, will cast a shadow a mile long.
That is nothing, however, compared with the shadow cast over Ivan's entire existence by an uncharacteristic but catastrophic error of judgment seven months earlier, which explains why he is driving very quickly away from the construction site and must painstakingly explain to his less able right-hand man, Donal, how to cope in his absence.
Ivan had a drunken one-night-stand with a needy colleague called Bethan, while on a job the year before in Croydon.
Bethan got pregnant, insisted on keeping the baby as her 'last chance of happiness' and now! she is in labour, two months prematurely.
Ivan has not yet told his wife, Katrina.
He hopes that he can save his marriage while also doing the right thing by Bethan. But as he whizzes down the M6, insofar as anyone can whizz down the M6, his conflicting obligations — to Bethan, to his family, to his American-owned company, and to his own sense of self-esteem, which owes a lot to his dead father — are all illuminated no less than the road ahead.
This unfolds in real time, which is risky on the part of writer-director Steven Knight (who unveiled his talent for dialogue with Dirty Pretty Things ten years ago).
It is riskier still to point a camera! at a man's face and very little else, bar occasional shots ! of the road and, inevitably, the back of an Eddie Stobart lorry.
But Hardy, for some reason giving his character a mellifluous Welsh accent, also gives a captivating performance. To say that Olivia Colman as Bethan and Ruth Wilson as Katrina phone in their performances is for once not meant as a criticism. They, and everyone else whose voice fills his car, do a fine job.
This is Hardy's stage, though. His and Knight's. The latter might perhaps be accused of labouring the imagery — the construction expert who can't stop the cornerstones of his life crumbling — but actually it doesn't matter.
This is a terrific film, a clever thriller woven out of a largely ordinary set of circumstances, and beautifully shot despite the self-imposed visual constraints. It should appeal to anyone who has ever had to juggle work commitment! s with a private life, if not, I hope, as stressfully as this.
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