Reviews

Rebecca Hall does an excellent job as a naive bookie in Lay. The other actors, Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Vince Vaughn are great in their supporting roles, but.... This movie was poorly written: the jokes fall flat, the script doesn't develop enough so that the audience can care about the characters, the gambling is explained only enough so that gamblers can understand what the actors are doing and there is very little plot action that's not inside an office looking at TV screens with sports games on them. Stephen Frears, the director, has done some major work such as "the Queen," and "High Fidelity," and i would think he was brought in to save this, but it's shot so plainly, like a made for TV movie. I get the feeling that this was filmed in a couple weeks and everyone involved wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. I give it 3 out of 10 for Rebecca Hall's efforts and the fact that she comes off as incredibly sexy, but other then that, it's totally forgettable.

Because of all the recent super hero movies and because the last Spiderman was only a few years ago, everyone's gonna compare them with all the videos & super hero movies they've watched in the past.

This version excels in a couple of ways to the Spidey's of the past, but fails in too many ways to be as good as past efforts. The web slinging and references to the Marvel comic's art work was excellent, far better then any past Spiderman films, and the fight scenes in a couple of instances were better choreographed in the closer shots.

But, the story was not as well written as either of the first two Raimi films, the character development was rushed, the editing was almost as bad as Spiderman 3 with missing pieces that jolted the eye and made the mind wonder. In other words, the CGI was excellent but the attention to detail of the real shots were poorly thought out. Example: Peter passes the doctor a coffee with his hand over the rim and in the next shot Parker's fingers are through the handle. Sloppy camera work happened like that thruout the film.

All in all it was entertaining and fairly well done, yet not a classic, nothing really new here. I'm sure it'll do well, the actors were good, and I look forward to seeing them try it again in the sequels. One thing I did miss though and that was Stan Lee's cameo.