Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Spider-Man 2 (2004)

by Nathaniel R

With Sam Raimi's take on Doctor Strange new in theaters, we chose his earlier superhero film Spider-Man 2 (2004) as this week's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" subject. While Raimi directed all three of the original Spider-Man films, Cláudio was right to suggest that the second film could well be considered a "platonic ideal for what superhero movies should be". When the film first opened in 2004 I saw it twice on opening weekend, something I hadn't done since I was a teenager. Not coincidentally it made me feel like a little kid again, pouring over comic books. It was a kind of pop bliss seeing Spider-Man come to life in such a wonderfully judged adventurous, romantic, and thrilling movie. Though that kind of magic has long become normalized, Spider-Man 2 is still a thrill.

Revisiting it was fun though quite surprising in three specific ways...

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Cláudio's Best Shot Pick: Spider-Man 2 (2004)

The next episode of our series, 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot,' arrives tomorrow. It's focused on Spider-Man 2. Here's Cláudio's entry.

Before the plague times we're living in, it was my annual tradition to celebrate my birthday by going to the movies. Indeed, way back in 2004, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 was the picture that marked the occasion of my 10th birthday. It was love at first sight. While the first Spidey flick was good, this sequel seemed perfect to my young eyes, and, as the years went by, it soon became something of a platonic ideal for what superhero movies should be but seldom were. And yet, despite all this love, I think I started to take the picture for granted.

Revisiting Spider-Man 2 for the first time since my teen years was a revelation. I also had a blast…

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Best Shot Index: The act of looking in 'The Last Picture Show'

by Nathaniel R

Bronze Medal choice for Best Shot

The power of Peter Bogdanovich's unassuming breakout feature, The Last Picture Show (1971) sneaks up on you. It's often called a coming-of-age film which is not inaccurate but... coming to what? and of which age? It's mosaic of characters ranges in age from teenagers to senior citizens and at times it feels like they're not so much coming into something as never leaving it; They're lost souls in a ghost town. If you've never seen the film you might assume that a movie theater is a main character but not really. The theater is just one of the haunts that the central trio of high school seniors (Jeff Bridgess, Cybill Shepherd, and Timothy Bottoms) kill time at. They're less interested in the movie than in making out in the back row, anyway...

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Cláudio's Best Shot Pick: The Last Picture Show (1971)

The next episode of our series, 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot,' arrives tonight. It's focused on Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show. You still have time to participate! Here's Cláudio's entry.

Bogdanovich drops the audience inside a cold domestic scene early in The Last Picture Show. In the Farrow household, resentments and disappointments permeate the air, each individual stuck in their little bubble of dissatisfied placidity. Together yet alone, the Farrows' silence is a nervous thing, like a fly's wilting buzz as it suffocates in insecticide. Perchance to disrupt the muted disquiet, the matriarch enters her daughter's room and sparks a conversation. She tries to advise the younger woman, so she doesn't make the same mistakes her mother did. Mistakes like staying in their small Texan town, dying from boredom like the fly dies from bug spray.

"Everything's flat and empty here. There's nothing to do." – says Ellen Burstyn's Lois, her words reverberating through the film's most potent images…

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Best Shot Picks and Nathaniel's Choice from 'The Godfather'

by Nathaniel R

Our film title this week on Hit Me With Your Best Shot was in honor of the restoration of The Godfather (1972) for its 50th Anniversary. Here are the Best Shot choices from seven participants and my own towards the end of the post. Click on the images that follow to read the corresponding articles. I'll be "talking" inbetween the images about a film I've never written about before (!) as I select my own... 

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