Spider-Man: Homecoming – Cast Photos

Tom Holand as Spider-Man
Tom Holand as Peter Parker
Zendaya as Michelle “MJ”
Jacob Batalon as Ned
Michael Keaton as Adrian Toomes
Michael Keaton as The Vulture
Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan
Laura Harrier as Liz
Tony Revolori as Flash Thompson
Marisa Tomei as Aunt May
Martin Starr as Mr. Herrington
Jackson Brice as the first Shocker
Bokeem Woodbine as the Shocker
Michael Chernus as the Tinkerer
Donald Glover as Aaron Davis
Tyne Daly as Anne Marie Hoag

Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts
Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark / Iron Man

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Cast Photos

16 – Spider-Man Homecoming

So Spider-Man finally gets his own movie.  Finally.  Spider-Man has always been a fan favorite, and I think Tom Holland is an incredible version of the character.  Not only is he more age-appropriate than earlier versions like Toby Maguire or Andrew Garfield, but he does a great job as the unmasked hero, Peter Parker.  He has an air of innocence and teenage realism that the other actors often missed.  And of course, it’s always special when Robert Downey Jr. shows up as Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man.

And of course, we have to mention the awesome villain, Adrian Toomes, the Vulture, expertly played by Michael Keaton.  Keaton is one of those actors who has been around for a long time, and pretty much everything he does is good.  He seems to throw himself into his roles and this is no exception.  And we are used to seeing him as the hero, Beetlejuice notwithstanding.  But here, he plays the bad guy, and it is so good!  He is even frightening in the way he treats Parker, once he makes the connection to Spider-Man. 

The visual effects for this movie were, as you might expect from an MCU movie, were incredible.  All you have to see is the whole Staten Island Ferry scene to know that.  When the Ferry gets cut in half, length-wise, and Both Spider-Man and Iron-Man pull it back together, it was so cool to watch on the screen.  It was epic, and this is only the first of the MCU Spider-Man films!  The action was exciting, and the story was fantastic.  Add to that the perfect cast and their phenomenal acting, and you have yourself a great movie!

But there was so much more to it than even that.  In Captain America: Civil War, we got a great introduction to the character within the franchise.  We all loved him there, but here they expanded on the character.  We didn’t need to see the origin story again, it’s been done before, more than once.  We all know what happened.  Here, the filmmakers concentrated on what it means for a teenager to deal with being a high-school student and a superhero at the same time.  Even Parker’s approach to being a crime-fighting hero came from a realistically immature perspective, which was smart.  Even the emotional angle of Parker overcoming his teenage insecurities to find his strength and beat the bad guy was great to watch in the exciting climax.

But more than that, the movie firmly established Spider-Man in the overall tapestry of the MCU, cementing his place, his role.  They tied things into the bigger picture with how the Vulture acquired the technology to become a super-villain.  It was the alien Chitauri tech recovered from the Battle of New York in the first Avengers film.  And they showed pieces of the Airport battle from Civil War from Parker’s perspective.  Such a cleverly-written script!

I also really liked how the narrative stepped back and changed the role of Mary Jane into the new character of Michelle, who is called MJ.  She payed homage to Mary Jane, but was a completely different character.  Zendaya was great.  She was not even portrayed as Peter’s love interest, though it did leave it open to that potential in the future.  And I can’t forget another made-up character, Ned, Spider-Man’s funny side-kick, played by Jacob Batalon.  He was funny, but not stupid.  Again, he was a believable teenager, which was the point.  And there were a few other smaller parts that were important to the story, like Liz, Parker’s actual love interest, who just happened to be Toome’s daughter, played by Laura Harrier.  We also had Jon Favreau, coming back as Happy Hogan, and Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, Donald Glover, Tony Revolori, Bokeem Woodbine, Michael Chernus, Martin Starr, and Tyne Daly coming in to fill out the cast.  It was a really good and smart venture into the character of Spider-Man, in his first solo film in the official MCU franchise.

Top 10 Favorite Parts

  1. A Film by Peter Parker – The events of Civil War from a different perspective.
  2. Spider-Man stops the ATM robbery
  3. Peter leaves the party to chase down the first Shocker
  4. Toomes kills the first Shocker by accident
  5. Peter is trapped in the Damage Control Deep Storage Vault and his conversation with the suit lady.
  6. Spider-Man rescues the students from the Washingtonn Monument elevator.
  7. The Staten Island Ferry scene and Stark’s talk with Peter afterword. “If you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it.”
  8. Toomes threatens Peter in the car before the Homecoming Dance. Keaton was so scary in that scene!
  9. Peter finds the strength to get himself out from under the collapsed building.
  10. The climactic battle between Spider-Man and the Vulture on the outside of a flying airplane!

1941 – Greer Garson

1941 – Greer Garson

Blossoms in the Dust

I liked Greer Garson in this movie, but I didn’t love her.  She was good but not great.  Yes, some of it had to do with the way the character of Edna Kahly Gladney was written, but at the same time, some of it was the way Garson played her.  She was very unrealistic.  She was so saintly and good that she almost felt fake.  Nobody is that sweet, loving, and unfalteringly perfect.  Throughout the film, she displayed near-god-like powers of wholesomeness and sweetness.  But darn it if she wasn’t a pleasure to watch. 

The character of Edna was based on a real woman who not only cared for orphaned infants and children, but she fought to have the stigma of their illegitimacies be removed from their birth records so they could live their lives without the shadow of shame turning them into social pariahs.  Yes, the woman did wonderful things, but even real saints were human and had flaws.  But not Garson.  She was sheer perfection, and she looked gorgeous doing it.

Garson had an aristocratic air about her.  She had poise, and grace, and beauty.  She had style and personality.  She looked flawless whether she was in love, or had just given birth, whether she was pleading a passionate case in court, or was weeping over her dying husband.  But I think her performance, though good and sweet, could have been taken to another level if she had shown us a deeper, care-worn countenance, a sense of exhaustion or worry, or maybe even eyes that were haunted by the death of her only son.

But I don’t want it to sound like I didn’t enjoy watching Garson.  I did.  But could you imagine how much more impactful Edna’s story could have been if she’d ever shown a moment of deep weakness, or maybe even a short temper.  True, there was that one scene when her husband brings home an orphan to replace her son.  She shows a little bit of anger and grief, which is undercut in the very next scene, when she accepts the child into her heart.  I guess my real problem with her performance was that she played a caricature, not a character.  She was an idealized saint, not a real woman.  But I enjoyed watching her anyway.

1941 – Patricia Collinge

1941 – Patricia Collinge

The Little Foxes

I have to say, I have never heard of Patricia Collinge before now, but I was very impressed with her supporting roll performance in this movie.  She really stood out to me as a wonderful actress who did an incredible job creating a memorable character.  And the thing is, she did this without much screen time. She played Birdie Hubbard, the emotionally and mentally abused wife of Oscar Hubbard.  Before marriage, she had been the daughter and heiress of a wealthy cotton plantation, though she now knows, and is constantly reminded, that Oscar had only married her to take her inheritance for himself.  So she drinks.

Collinge was so good in this role. First, Birdie was a bit of a chatterbox, though her husband habitually chastises her to silence.  He publicly berates her in front of family and guests alike.  He treats her like dirt under his shoes.  Even her son, Leo, takes after his father, and is more-or-less apathetic about her.  The only solace she has from her miserable existence is her memories of her dear mother, and alcohol.  She has been treated like garbage for so long, she doesn’t know how to feel like anything else.  It was a sad and pathetic role, and Collinge played it perfectly.

From her mousy body language to her haggard and tired facial expressions, from the haunted, chaffed look in her eyes, to the clear and obvious depression, Collinge did a fantastic job.  There were two scenes that stick out in my memory.  The first was such a brief and subtle moment after a business dinner.  Her husband and brother-in-law were trying to schmooze a prospective business partner into going into business with the family.  She tried to contribute to the conversation, but was summarily shushed and chided for drinking too much and speaking too much.  After the businessman left, the conversation continued in the parlor, and you could see Birdie sitting alone in the background, looking forlorn and hurt to the point of tears.

The other was when she had an alcohol induced breakdown, admitting all her woes and sorrows, and ending up a sobbing mess.  Collinge did it all with pathos and desperation that was heart-wrenching to watch.  Her emotion really stood out, even next to the likes of Bette Davis and Teresa Wright.  I loved her performance.

1941 – Teresa Wright

1941 – Teresa Wright

The Little Foxes

I have always been a fan of Teresa Wright, ever since the first time I saw her on screen in 1942’s Mrs. Miniver.  She was young and fresh-faced, and an incredible actress.  She had a natural innocence in her appearance that not many actresses had and yet there was also a strength that was undeniable.  She knew how to turn on the emotion, but she was never over-the-top.  She seemed very at ease in front of the camera.

But I have to say, despite all that, and though I actually liked her performance in this movie, I think I was a little disappointed with her here.  Her character was a little one-note.  As Alexandra “Zannie” Giddons, the daughter of the callous and manipulative Regina, she was sweet and honest, though you could see the little ways in which she easily took after her mother.  This was her from the first moment she appeared on the screen.  She was petulant and immature in her innocence, and so she always had a look of self-righteous irritation on her face.  It was a very good acting choice, but the problem is that she stayed pretty much the same in just about every other scene in which she appeared, and it eventually got old.

But you see, I know Wright was a better actress than that.  It was the script that failed the actress, not the other way around.  Of course, I know I’m over-simplifying her character a bit, and that there were several layers to her character.  These came out in her relationships with her father and her aunt Birdie.  But those scenes were too few and too brief.  Then, she was sympathetic and sweet.  Unfortunately for Wright, they sometimes required the same expressions of immaturity and confusion as did the scenes of innocent petulance.

But it was the final scene that really sticks out in my mind.  It was there that Wright’s exceptional skills as an actress began to shine.  She saw just how evil her mother really was, confronted her, and left her.  Just enough of the innocence fell away and she saw her mother with a contempt born of experience.  The flicker of a fire began to bloom in Zannie’s eyes as she stood up to Regina and left her alone with all her ill-gotten gains.  That was where she earned her Oscar nomination.

1941 – Bette Davis

1941 – Bette Davis

The Little Foxes

Bette Davis, number six.  This was her sixth nomination for Best Actress.  She was clearly good at doing the deep drama, and she seemed to have a natural knack for playing a viperous villainess.  In The Little Foxes, she is a greedy and mean woman, willing to screw over her own family in order to become filthy rich, and she does it all without committing any actual crimes, other than blackmail.  She accomplishes her avaricious goals through manipulation and a generally sour disposition.  And while she did not actively murder her husband, she calculatingly watched him die without lifting a finger to save him.  Is that murder?  Maybe it is.

Bette Davis had been around the block a few times by 1941, but she was clearly still the hot ticket.  She was the queen of the silver screen bitches.  Well, maybe that isn’t entirely true.  After all, she played a virtuous and innocent victim in at least two other Oscar nominated films: Dark Victory and All This and Heaven Too, though she wasn’t nominate for her performance in that second one.  But if you look at all her other Best Actress nominations, she played a mean and spiteful woman.  Look at her films like Dangerous, Jezebel, or The Letter.  She seemed to be perfect for those kinds of parts, and both audiences and critics loved her for it.

Here she played Regina Giddons, one of three siblings who are willing to scheme, manipulate, steal, and in her case, even murder, kind-of, to become super wealthy.  She sacrifices the life of her unloved husband and her relationship with her beloved daughter to get what she wants.  In other words, she played a horrible woman.  The scene where she watcher her husband have his heart-attack was particularly good.  The look of calculated inactivity on her face, the frozen, manic anticipation in her eyes was perfectly done.

I might sound critical of her performance, but I actually really liked Davis in this movie.  She seemed to be perfectly cast, and I bet it was a difficult decision to award the Oscar to Joan Fontaine in Suspicion.  I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she had won.  Sure, she was being typecast in the bad-girl roles, but darn if she wasn’t so good at it.

1941 – Barbara Stanwyck

1941 – Barbara Stanwyck

Ball of Fire

Ok, I’m going to say it.  This little more than a mildly amusing movie.  The plot was silly and frivolous.  They had a few big names like Gary Cooper, who played himself… again, and Barbara Stanwyck, who was, granted, probably the most interesting character in the film, though the roll itself was not terribly dynamic or dramatic.  Now, I understand that the movie wasn’t trying to be a heavy drama or a deep romance.  It was a light romantic comedy.  But did that make Stanwyck’s performance worthy of an Oscar consideration?  I’m not convinced.

She played Katherine “Sugarpuss” O’Shea, a nightclub dancer and singer who is mixed up with a mob boss.  When the police come looking for her to interrogate her about her boyfriend, she hides out in the house of eight professors who are working on writing an encyclopedia.  Her fast-talking charm and sexy legs bring light and passion into their dreary den of scholarly endeavors.  This is what Stanwyck had to bring to the table.  Well, there is no doubt, she had the legs!

But the interest in her character, and the way she played it, was in her duplicity.  In order to convince the professors to let her stay, she had to make them all fall in love with her, especially Gary Cooper.  But she was lying to them all, and planned to leave him flat when he got her safely to her mob boss boyfriend, played by Dana Andrews.  The internal conflict the actress had to portray was certainly there most of the time, and the slow transfer of her affections from the mobster to the scholar was gradual enough to be believable. 

So I supposed I have to check myself.  Sure, the role itself lacked intensity, but that doesn’t make it a bad performance.  The plot point of the professor needing to research modern slang, and her proficient and easy use of it, gave her some dialogue that sounded tricky, at least to my modern ears, though there were a few times it sounded a little forced.  Stanwyck was good, and she performed the role as it was written, exactly as it was intended.  But did it challenge the actress?  Did it challenge the audience?  Did it stand out as an outstanding performance?  Maybe.  Why not?  So I guess I don’t mind the nomination.  But I am glad she didn’t win.

1941 – Joan Fontaine

1941 – Joan Fontaine

Suspicion

Clearly, Alfred Hitchcock had his favorites, and when it came to Joan Fontaine, the reason why was obvious.  Not only was she absolutely gorgeous, but she knew how to act, as well.  She was first nominated for an Academy Award in 1940 for Rebecca.  I liked her performance there, but I liked her even more here.  The character she played seemed to be more realistic, more relatable.  In Rebecca, the second Mrs. DeWinter was a little one-note in her terminal shyness.

In Suspicion, she played Lina McLaidlaw, a sheltered young woman who was on course to be a spinster, when she meets and falls madly in love with Johnnie Aysgarth.  Very soon after they meet, they are married, and when they arrive home from their honeymoon, she learns that her new husband is a penniless playboy who has never worked a day in his life.  After learning she has been lied to, and that her man has already put them into financial distress, she would naturally begin to doubt all his motives and intentions.  He continues to lie to her as the marriage progresses, mostly about money and gambling. 

This is where Fontaine shined.  Her consistent disappointments, and the ever-present lack of communication that was a staple of 1940s movie romances, all combined to make her doubt his every word.  Fontaine really understood her character, never allowing herself to go over the top with her reactions.  Her facial expressions and her body language was all perfectly timed.  In other words, she sold the character, lending complete credence to the film’s title, even to the point of suspecting Johnnie of murdering his best friend for his money.

Fontaine was wonderful as she drew her audience into her character’s suspicions, making us doubt her husband as much as she did.  That is the mark of both a great script and a great actress.  I mean, Cary Grant played Cary Grant (again), but Fontaine played a nuanced character with a wide range of emotions.  I really loved how she played every moment when she learned of Johnnie’s shortcomings.  She had worry, disappointment, fear, and everything in between, but she clearly never lost her love for her man.  After all, it was still 1941.

1941 – Orson Welles

1941 – Orson Welles

Citizen Kane

I’ll start this review of Orson Welles’ Best Actor nominated performance in Citizen Kane by saying that he was robbed.  That Oscar should have been his.  I mean, Gary Cooper was just fine in Sergeant York, but Here, playing the character of Charles Foster Kane, Welles turned in a multi-layered performance with nuance and depth.  He had to play the man at multiple ages, ranging from old to young, with an emotional landscape that, frankly, put Sergeant York to shame.

First off, let’s go over his look.  The makeup artists who made him age believably over the course of decades really knew what they were doing.  From young adult to middle-age, and from mid-life to old age, he looked real and natural at every stage.  And Orson pulled it off wonderfully, using his mannerisms and facial expressions to sell the look.  He did a fantastic job, no matter what age he was playing.

Then there was the wonderful way the character was written.  He was a man with way too much money, and a propensity for narcissism.  He had a pathological need to be loved, but had very little concept of how to love anyone but himself.  He treated both friends and wives as possessions, as easily bought or sold as a statue.  And yet, though he built a vast empire of wealth and acquisitions, he was never fulfilled, never happy.  There was a deep complexity about the man that Welles really seemed to embody perfectly.  It was a stellar performance.

And I’ll finish up by going into the drama of the film.  Welles really did the lion’s share of the film’s emotional heft, but it wasn’t all just him.  Every character had a great story, a moment to shine, and reason for being there.  But it was all aimed at enhancing Kane’s emotional journey.  He was written to be an enigma, a mystery of multiple levels.  Everything from his happiness to his anger, his ambition to his depression, his loves to his complete lack of understanding of love, all combined to make a truly memorable performance, for which I think Welles should have won the Oscar.  It was a part that was written better, and Welles was the better actor, than Gary Cooper in Sergeant York.  And it was all made even more impressive because Welles was also the writer, the director, and the producer.

1941 – James Gleason

1941 – James Gleason

Here Comes Mr. Jordan

Much like Robert Montgomery’s Best Actor nomination, I don’t really get why James Gleason’s performance was so highly regarded, though at the same time, I think Gleason deserved his nomination more than his costar.  The movie is a light-hearted comedy, a genre that is often overlooked when it comes time for awards.  .  Gleason played a supporting character who seemed to be, at times, a bit of comic relief.  And to be fair, I think he was actually the funniest part of the movie, which, unfortunately, isn’t really saying much.

He played Max “Pop” Corkle, Joe Pendleton’s boxing manager.  After Joe Dies in a plane crash and comes back as a rich investment banker and tries to tell Max who he really is, Gleason’s “You’re who?  Sure you are, buddy.  And who’s the invisible angel you’re talking with?  Let’s get you back to the loony bin,” act was perfect.  But it doesn’t take long for him to be convinced of Joe’s real identity, and he finds himself trying to negotiate with the invisible angel.

It was a silly movie, and fortunately, it was clear that the actors weren’t taking any of it too seriously.  But Gleason stood out, making his performance just enough over-the-top, as was necessary in a comedy, to be amusing.  None of the comedy was really outrageous or in your face, but it was all pretty inoffensive and innocent. 

But then in the last few scenes in the movie, his character actually took a turn for the dramatic.  When Joe’s new body is murdered, he is given word that Joe has been given yet another body.  He goes to meet the new Joe, and is ready to resume his relationship with his friend, only to discover that while Joe may be the man in Murdock’s body, he has no memory of his past lives, no memory of his good friend Max Corkle.  I think this is where Gleason earned his Oscar nomination.

The mix of disappointment and grief at losing his friend a second time seemed to really hit him hard.  There was also a sense of loss as he is once again disconnected from the supernatural, and his world becomes mundane again.  There was some genuine emotion on his face that was unmistakable.  Gleason did a fine job in that brief final scene.  But unfortunately, because of how his part was written, and not through anything the actor did or didn’t do, I think it was too little, too late.  Gleason did a good job with what he was given.  He just wasn’t given much.