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Road to Perdition

Sam Mendes is best known and best loved for his 1999 debut, American Beauty, a satirical drama about a mid-life crisis gone wild. I'd say, though, it was 2002's Road to Perdition that is Mendes' masterpiece. Based on the graphic novel by Max Allen Collins and Richard Piers Raymer, the film is set during the gangster era of the early 20th century when Al Capone and his cronies reigned supreme. Michael Sullivan, Sr. (Tom Hanks) is a hitman for a fellow gangster, John Rooney (Paul Newman), who sees the senior Sullivan as a surrogate son. Rooney's real son, Connor (Daniel Craig), isn't too thrilled with the lack of affection sent his way and conspires to get Sullivan and his family killed. Only the hitman and his eldest son, Michael Jr., survive and go on the run from Connor and from the entire Rooney squad, especially an oddball photographer with murderous ways (Jude Law). The story of Road to Perdition isn't too complicated, but the imagery is lush despite being frigid and cold. Helped by Conrad L. Hall's amazing cinematography, this is a feast for the eyes. Even more, the many characters who populate the world of Perdition are not only appropriate in a comic book, but believable in real life. Among the many stellar performances, the two standouts belong to the non-Americans in the cast. For Craig, this is about as far from being James Bond as you can get; he makes Connor a creepy man, one who doesn't deserve his father's love nor someone who'd know what to do with it. Law has an almost gratuitously quirky character to play here, but he makes his crime scene cameraman the scariest thing either Sullivan can run into. Definitely the most underrated film Mendes has done, Road to Perdition is a chilling, beautiful look at the life of the gangster.

Spider-Man 2

With the way that 2004's Spider-Man 2 ends, I'd just like to presume there wasn't even a third film that followed it up. The last villain Peter Parker ever faced as the webbed crime-fighter of New York was Doc Ock, the disfiguration of Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), a smart if somewhat socially severe professor who tutors Parker through his college days. Things don't go well for this mentoring relationship when Octavius' experiment goes horribly wrong, turning him into an eight-limbed psychotic. Parker has to don the Spidey suit again and fight off Octavius, who goes after Parker's aunt May and his true love, Mary Jane Watson. Spider-Man 2 is just as great as the first film, with a few exceptions. Here, Peter gets the girl, and the action sequences (especially one where Peter has to stop a fast-moving train from falling off the tracks) are even more sensational than the original Spider-Man. What's more, with the subplot where Harry Osborne realizes who the man who murdered his father really is and a less flamboyant villain in Doc Ock, this film is firing on all cylinders. There are quirks here that became apparent in the third film (the use of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head", among other things), but director Sam Raimi adds enough emotional angst to these characters that the ups-and-downs of their relationships work. One of the stronger superhero films, Spider-Man 2 is so good that I'm willing to actually see the inevitable fourth story in the saga of Peter Parker.

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