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"Turn around for you? Why?" "I want to look at you!" "Well, look at my face! I don't sing with my ass!"

A feminist film from Martin Scorsese of all people, how refreshing. I loved this one for firmly giving us a woman's point of view as a mother deals with a husband who doesn't appreciate her before dying (leaving her struggling to make ends meet), a mouthy son, and a creepy boyfriend who turns into an abuser. The friendship she has with a neighbor in New Mexico and the one she eventually cultivates with a co-worker in Tucson are beautiful and touching. The dialogue for the most part seemed authentic and inspired by Cassavetes, with fantastic performances all around, most notably from Ellen Burstyn and Diane Ladd. There are also lots of little bits to enjoy here: Jodie Foster at 12, Vic Tayback in the role he would carry over to TV, and Valerie Curtin (SNL Jane's cousin) as an incredibly awkward waitress. I liked the romance with Kris Kristofferson too, even if I felt a little conflicted by the ending. Not a film you'd normally associate with Scorsese, but it's one of his best.

"It's the choices that make us who we are, and we can always choose to do what's right."

This is a film with undeniable problems that many have outlined, including the tedious melodrama associated with an on-again, off-again romance between Peter and Mary Jane. The story which tries to shoehorn in four villains - the new Goblin, Sandman, the extraterrestrial symbiote corrupting Spider-Man, and then Venom - is also awfully crowded. There are silly aspects of the plot, like the amnesia or the butler not telling the scion how his father actually died, though to be fair, these are the kind of things you would see in the comic books all the time.

Despite those things, this was still entertaining to me, more so than others I guess. The Sandman and Venom designs were cool, and the battle scenes were shot well. I liked the bits of humor dropped in, like Jonah Jameson taking his pills at his secretary's urging, and Peter Parker strutting down the street after his ego had swelled. However, most of all I liked the extraordinary way in which Sandman was defeated. Rather than a climactic battle, to have him relate his own version of what happened in the past and then be forgiven by Peter Parker, who we had seen make his own mistakes, felt unprecedented and deeply humanistic, pretty surprising for such a film. The arcs of Harry and Peter's redemption were nice parallels too. This one is far from perfect, but it also feels underrated to me.

There is so much potential for a great historical drama here, but it's completely wasted by the weak storytelling of Bigas Luna. You have one of Spain's greatest painters, Francisco Goya, and the intrigue over who actually posed for his most scandalous work, the Naked Maja. You have Spain's power player of the day, the secretary of state Manuel Godoy, carrying on with Queen Maria Luisa and the Duchess of Alba, the latter of whom is also involved with Goya at least to some degree, and who dies under mysterious circumstances. You have the historical backdrop of King Charles IV being largely passive and inept in handling the complexities of what neighboring countries were doing at the time, something that would ultimately lead to Napoleon installing his brother on the Spanish throne. And you also have a fantastic cast, including Penélope Cruz playing Pepita Tudó, Godoy's mistress and modelling nude for Goya. How can you possibly screw all that up?

Well, for one thing, you screw that up by taking too much delight in the sexual antics in the first half of the film instead of fleshing out these characters and giving us more of a clue of who they were. It's juvenile how Luna focuses in on female body parts and practically titters over French depilation "down there," meanwhile giving us a string of sex scenes that were more banal than they were erotic. We get the Duchess of Alba fainting each time she has an orgasm, for example, and Godoy blowing raspberries all over the squirming Queen's belly. We don't learn anything about who Goya was as an artist, or that he suffered from profound hearing loss and had problems with balance, among other things (also casting into doubt whether he was physically involved with the much younger Duchess of Alba, despite clearly being smitten). We don't really see the forceful, haughty, and free-spirited personality of the Duchess that other sources describe. We don't see how unpopular Godoy was because of his disastrous policies and his propensity to line his own pockets. We really don't learn a damn thing about the era, except that the clothing was resplendent. The costume department certainly did its job, but this is a case of being all dressed up with nowhere to go.

The second half of the film then completely grinds to a halt, shifting into a bland exploration into the mystery of how the Duchess of Alba died, and whether she was murdered. The flashbacks which shift perspective and possible suspects quickly grew tedious, especially as they revolved around the chemicals in Goya's paints, which of course was conjecture. This is storytelling at its worst, taking a historical conspiracy theory and then describing it in as boring a way as possible. What's also lost is the sense of the scandal and outrage that all three of the principals, Goya, Godoy, and the Duchess, engendered. Just a weak film, made by an immature director.