SOMETHING TO SEE THIS WEEKEND

Two more reviews:

Before Sunset ****

Director Richard Linklater revisits idealistic young lovers Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) now nine years older in what is on the verge of becoming the filmmaker's Antoine Doinel cycle. Yet for all its French New Wave influences (the film is even set in Paris), it's unique from the precedent films of Rohmer, Eustache, and Truffaut in that it's the story of a relationship, not individuals. The simple concept of their first meeting in Before Sunrise--two strangers fall in love as they spend 12 hours wandering the streets of Vienna--is here even more concentrated by a new urgency: Jesse and Celine know they don't have the luxury of waiting another lifetime to meet again. These characters continue to bring out the best in everyone involved. Hawke and Delpy have never been better, and even Linklater's oneiric Waking Life falls short in comparison as gorgeous reverie.

Spider-Man 2 ***

Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and director Sam Raimi are back for this superior follow-up about everybody's favourite web-slinger. Spider-Man was always the least macho of comic heroes, and Maguire and Dunst gave the first movie more heart than any summer spectacular deserves. Lighter on action, this second go around is even more focused on their relationship in what remains a clever coming-of-age love story. If that sounds too much like an episode of Gilmore Girls to your liking, maybe Spider-Man 2 is not for you. But it's funnier, faster, and more inventive than the first--Raimi's more recognisably the nimble filmmaker who honed his craft on delirious horror schlock. J.K Simmons returns as the blowhard newspaper publisher J. Jonah Jameson, and Alfred Molina proves a worthy heir to Willem Dafoe's villainy as another brilliant scientist seduced by the evil power of his own invention: the tortured, tentacled Dr. Octopus.