Spider-Man

Director: Sam Raimi

Screenwriter: David Koepp, based on the comic book by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko

Cast: Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, J.K. Simmons, Rosemary Harris, Cliff Robertson

Recent times have been good to Marvel comics, and the long-anticipated arrival of Spider-Man represents the latest step up the ladder. Marvel has at last been able to catch up to rival DC comics by placing a trio of its superheroes into multiplexes - Blade, the X-Men, and Spider-Man. A major motion picture adaptation has long been a pet project of Spidey's creator, Stan Lee (who, along will illustrator Steve Ditko, gave birth to the web-crawler in 1962). In the '90s, James Cameron spent years developing the project, but eventually gave up when legal issues held up production indefinitely. Eventually, those tangles were loosened and Evil Dead director Sam Raimi was brought on board. In comic book language, this is an "origin" story, meaning that it tells how Spider-Man came into being. The movie starts by introducing us to nerdy high school senior Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), who is one of the least cool kids in school. He's shy and smart, and the girl of his dreams, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), doesn't know he exists, even though he has lived next door to her for more than 10 years. Things change rapidly for Peter when, while visiting a lab at Columbia University, he is bitten by a genetically altered spider. Overnight, Peter gains arachnid powers - a sixth sense, the ability to climb walls, unnatural strength and endurance, amazing agility, and glands on his wrist that allow him to spin webs.This is a pure popcorn movie - the kind of film one can unabashedly enjoy for what it is. There's plenty of visual flash and dizzying action, but not at the expense of the other qualities that make for a complete motion picture experience.


The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste)

Director: Michael Haneke

Screenwriter: Michael Haneke

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot and Benoit Magimel

Erika (Isabelle Huppert) teaches piano at a Vienna conservatory and lives with her mother (Annie Girardot) in a relationship that alternates between affection and physical violence. "We're a hot-blooded family," the mother says after being pushed against the wall by her daughter. Erika's father is in a mental institution, which eventually seems like the appropriate place for his daughter. Erika is stern, demanding and uncompromising--and the directorial style of Michael Haneke, who also wrote the screenplay, is as chilly as his heroine. The part of Erika seems well suited to Isabelle Huppert's cool personality. Huppert is fearless and uncompromising in depicting Erika's increasingly bizarre behaviour. As the feisty sharp-tongued mother, Girardot adds some rare vitality to the film. Extravagantly awarded three prizes by the Cannes Jury--Best Actor, Best Actress and the Grand Prix--"The Piano Teacher," like its title character, is repellently out of control. French-language, subtitled in ulgarian.

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