Movie reviews:

It might be the quick sequel of the all-too-soon reboot but The Amazing Spider-man 2 (12A) boasts patience in delaying the introduction of its most recognisable villain, the Green Goblin. For a superhero movie it also seems more concerned with making room for Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacey’s (Emma Stone) romance and Peter’s search for his missing parents than punching bad guys. In revelling in its exploration of its complex villains there is — whisper it — a certain grounding to it all, with some time spent reacquainting Peter with childhood buddy Harry Osborn (a miscast Dane Dehaan), back home to take control of his late father’s (Chris Cooper) business and find a cure to his terminal disease. All that gravitas disappears, however, when Jamie Foxx’s Max Dillon, a mousy, Spidey-obsessed Oscorp employee (think Michelle Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle) falls victim to the classic late night lab tragedy by plunging into a vat of supercharged electric eels and emerges as the energy-wielding, neon-sporting Electro. In between the talkie scenes, which spend an inordinate amount of time setting up the next instalment, returning director Marc Webb does his best to wow with the fanboy favourite city swoops and effects-laden battles, but The Amazing Spider-man 2 suffers the same fate as its predecessor — cleverly assembled backstories give way to artificial motivations for revenge from bad guys who look too silly to be taken seriously. What will impress, however, is a stirring and brave finale.

Adapted by John Banville from his Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name, The Sea (12A) stars Ciarán Hinds as Max Morden, a man struggling to come to terms with the recent death of his wife, Anna (Sinéad Cusack). The hard-drinking art historian Max travels to Wexford, “fleeing one sadness by revisiting an old one”, and finds himself enmeshed in memories of a sun-drenched but catastrophic summer of his teenage years, which began with the promise of first love but ended in tragedy. Directed by Stephen Brown, the film is a beautifully crafted affair, as the story segues seamlessly from the present into the past (indeed, it often appears as if Max is suspended in a simultaneously occurring past and present). John Conroy’s cinematography is particularly evocative when excavating Max’s memories of the past, his memories not so much rose-tinted as suffused with the golden glow of reverie, which is sharply contrasted with the cold, hard blues that dominate Max’s painful present. As befits the title, the story quietly seethes with undertows and cross-currents, as Max bobs helplessly along in the turbulent wake of the women he has loved and lost, with Hinds offering a poignant turn as the desolate Max. Charlotte Rampling, Rufus Sewell and Sinéad Cusack are all strong in the supporting roles, although the radiant Natascha McElhone steals every scene she’s in.

Kate (Emma Thompson) and Richard (Pierce Brosnan) are mad as hell in The Love Punch (12A), and no longer at one another. When the divorced couple discover that their life savings have been stolen — legally — by a ruthless French businessman, they join forces with their friends Jerry (Timothy Spall) and Penelope (Celia Imrie) and fly down to the French Riviera, planning to steal the multi-million diamond the businessman has bought as a wedding present for his fiancée. Joel Hopkins’ movie bumbles along in an amiable fashion, functioning as much as a parody of the classic jewel heist flicks as it does as a comedy crime caper in its own right. Where you might expect Kate and Richard to be sweating the details of the heist, for example, the actual plotting takes up no more than a couple of minutes of screen time, while the couple’s bickering and score-settling, and the possible re-ignition of their original spark, comes to dominate proceedings. That kind of cavalier approach to the mechanics of the heist movie may well irritate the purists, but Thomson and Brosnan are inoffensively charming as they breeze through the light-heartedly humorous twists and turns, with Spall responsible for most of the laugh-out-loud moments as he gradually reveals — to the surprise of all, not least his long-suffering wife — the depth and breadth of his experience as a globe-trotting man of adventure and derring-do.