film review: spiderman2. (some spoilers. you have been warned) i continue to like tobey maguire as spiderman. he's not your usual uberhunk superhero, and is able to convincingly play the uncertain, overworked, underpaid, conflicted character that is peter parker trying to decide how much he's willing to sacrifice to be spiderman.

i find kirsten dunst as mary jane watson, however, a bit annoying. mostly, i think it's her near constant bedroom-eyes expression.

rosemary harris as aunt may is, of course, perfect. as is alfred molina as doc octopus, who is an immense improvement in villiany over the stupid green goblin (oooh! sc-c-c-ary flying surfboard!)

i did enjoy the jibes that tobey maguire takes at himself. as he's embarrasingly taking the elevator down from a rooftop after his web power has stopped working, his fellow elevator-rider notes that his costume looks uncomfortable and spidey says "yeah, it's kind of itchy. ... and it rides up in the crotch." um, tmi spidey, tmi. later, he falls off a building and lands painfully on the ground and gets up moaning "my back, my back" which is a reference to him almost not doing this movie at all because of back pain he had from doing "seabuiscuit."

couple of quibbles: first, both times when doc ock is activating his fusion machine, he wears protective eyewear, and rightly so, i would imagine, in the face of a nuclear reaction. but no one else in the room wears anything, which is especially glaring the first time, when the scene is a demonstration for local vips. second, i really don't think that drowning what is essentially a small sun would work. i mean, come ON. and third, at the end, when the fusion reaction has become self-sustaining and is pulling all kinds of metal objects into it, even cars from the streets far away, the people in its immediate vicinity (doc ock, spidey, mj) seem to only be experiencing a light breeze. you'd think that the local environment would be a bit more chaotic than that.

even though it ended up with the happy ending of mj finding out that peter parker was spiderman and getting together with him, i was, for once, really glad about it. i have been getting increasingly annoyed lately with characters who refuse to tell another character (usually, but not always, a romantic interest) that they have a secret identity because "it would put that person in danger." so they give the person mixed signals, clearly interested, then inexplicably pulling away and end up making everyone miserable. clark kent does it as superman, both in the original stories and with the lana lang character in "smallville." on "alias" sidney bristow did it with the dixon character in seasons 1 & 2 when she was a double agent but wouldn't tell dixon that the agency he was working for wasn't the CIA, as he thought, but the enemy, because he had a wife and kids and that would put everyone in danger. like he wasn't just as capable an agent as her and wouldn't be able to handle being a double agent and keeping it from his family. ARG! i continually annoy karl by ranting at the screen (if it's a tv show) or at him after the movie that the secret-keeping character should JUST TELL THEM ALREADY. give the person a chance TO MAKE THEIR OWN DECISION, IT'S THEIR LIFE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. so anyway, i was relieved that mj found out who spiderman was, and that even though he left her, saying "now you know why we can't be together" she made the decision to come back to him saying "i know it's dangerous, being your girlfriend, but let ME make the decision about whether i want to accept that risk, thank you very much."

last comment: what is to become of the sweet but way to skinny daughter of peter's landlord? will she be in the 3rd movie?