Grade:  A

Director:  Sam Raimi		Released:  June 2004
Writer:  Alvin Sargent, Michael Chabon, Miles Millar, Alfred Gough		MPAA Rating:  PG-13
Players:  Tobey Maguire, Alfred Molina, James Franco, Kirsten Dunst, J.K. Simmons		Running time:  127 minutes

Ratings System

Spider-Man 2 opens great, and continues to be great through almost the whole film.  In my opinion it's still not the perfect Spider-Man movie, but it's improved over the first.  The opening credits intertwine with artwork by Alex Ross which recaps the events of the first film.  I love that they used Alex Ross, his work is a perfect tone-setter.

There's a lot of cool shit I like about Spider-Man 2.  Such as ...  Spider-man taking the elevator because he ran out of webbing.  Peter Parker web-slinging to deliver pizzas.  Doc Ock's Evil Dead inspired escape from the hospital operating room.  Peter laundering his spidey suit.  Every scene with J.J. Jameson; he's a major scene stealer.  And the "raindrops falling on my head" montage sequence is one of my favorite moments in the film.  A perfect "ignorance is bliss" moment.

My only complaints would be about the slow part of the movie that drags a little bit during the middle.  Less moping around needed, more Doc Ock!  The CGI effects, while better than in the original, are still somewhat uneven.  The nerd side of me wants to complain about the inequalities of the comic book "science" (for example, Spidey (who has super-spider-strength) can take a ten story fall but when he punches Ock in the face (who has no super-strength), Ock just takes the punches).  And Kirsten Dunst's breasts are sadly not featured this time around.

This is definitely one of the best comic-book hero films I've ever seen.  Right up there with the first two Superman movies.

- crocoPuffs