Everyone's going anyway so it doesn't matter what people like me say, but I wouldn't be overly swayed by all those SPIDER-MAN 2 raves.

Visually it's got that handsomely produced, big-studio pedigree thing, and content-wise it's obviously more of a searching, emotionally mature film than the first SPIDER-MAN was. The emphasis is on feelings and internal conflict over action and spectacle, which is why the critics, for the most part, have been wetting themselves.

Except most of the critics I've read haven't really admitted what it actually feels like to sit and watch SPIDER-MAN 2.

That's a fairly important issue, I think, so I feel obliged to report that as I watched it on Monday night, I gradually dissolved into Bill Murray in GROUNDHOG DAY. After a while I stopped hearing Alvin Sargent`s first-rate dialogue (which was also worked on by Michael Chabon). I heard only Sonny and Cher singing, "I got you, babe."

SPIDER-MAN 2 (Columbia, opening wide today) is another dutifully made, technically immaculate, minimum-security Danbury State Prison movie (i.e., you're allowed to go out into the lobby and pace around and make phone calls while it's showing), because it's the same old comic-book superhero shite.

I felt the first twinges of boredom only a few minutes in, I swear.

For the 37th or 38th time since Richard Donner's SUPERMAN, which opened 25 years ago, I tried to go with the story of an emotionally pained and conflicted super-hero, his difficult relationship with a very admiring girlfriend over coming-clean, what-kind-of-boyfriend-can-I-be? issues, and a brilliant scientist gone beserk over some personal /professional tragedy and transformed into a somewhat deformed, maniacal villain.

I also tried to deal with still more CG power-punch combat scenes between the hero and the Big Baddie, and yet another big, sonically-shattering, wreckage-causing finale.

Didn't we just do all this with HELLBOY?

Hear this clearly: SPIDER-MAN 2 is about absolutely nothing except Amy Pascal and director Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire and all the rest of the slicksters wanting you and me to buy tickets this weekend so they can get tipsy off expensive champagne and buy cool vacation homes and laugh even more loudly than usual at each other`s jokes.

Alan Sargent's script elevates the material, yes -- this is the way movies like this should walk and talk -- and Raimi makes it all take off and glide through the clouds and then in for a safe landing like a veteran pilot with good sensitive hands. But SPIDER-MAN 2 is still a tinker-toy thing assembled by people totally cowed by the how-to instructions from the same old dog-eared pamphlet.

Curses to the comic-book worshipping GenXers for subjecting movie-lovers to perhaps the most slavish and repressive adherence to trite genre formula in Hollywood history.

If and when a Nuremberg movie crimes tribunal is ever convened, an awful lot of cool directors are going to be sitting in the dock wearing dark shades and doing their best to make light of their relentless kowtowing to cheeseball comic-book storylines.

If this ever happens, I will not be Richard Widmark's rabid prosecutor in JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG. I will be Spencer Tracy...the kindly folksy judge who is sympathetic to the defendants (and certainly respectful of their resumes) but also capable of looking the facts square in the eye and making a tough judgement if necessary.

Enough with the Stanley Kramer. Here are notes off the pad:

1. Kyle Cooper's design of the opening-credit sequence is superb. Spider-web lines all over the frame, and title credits and camera work that seems to float and glide... punctuated by occasional water-color paintings of the SPIDER-MAN characters as they appeared in the first film. (An idea of producer Laura Ziskin's, I'm told.) Cooper is a master at main-title design. He also did the brilliant main-title design for DAWN OF THE DEAD, TITUS, THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU and SE7EN, which was perhaps the coolest and nerviest main-title sequence in movie history.

2. The emotional tension and heartache comes from Peter Parker's belief that telling Mary Jane Watson he's actually Spider-Man will endanger her safety, so he doesn't tell her what he feels for her or make any overt moves. And bullshit to that. What relationship doesn't involve risk and the possibility of being hurt? Life itself is risk. There's no room in a super-hero movie for someone to say, "I want to but it's too threatening, so I won't." Has anyone ever heard of any powerful guy in the real world abstaining from love or sex because of what his enemies might do to his partners? Of course not.

3. Kirsten Dunst isn't hot or fetching enough, and she never will be. I've never liked that Eastern European, widely-proportioned, super-prominent-cheekbone thing of hers....maybe because I'm not from Poland or Estonia. All she's got going are those lazy eyelids of hers and, okay, her acting talent, but if she were to get married to some Latvian prince and quit the business tomorrow I would not rejoice, but I wouldn't miss her much either.

4. Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker loses his spider powers three times while climbing and leaping, and as a result falls several dozen stories and slams into the pavement and dumpsters and whatnot. There's a pretty funny joke after the third fall when he gets up and moans "my back!" as he hobbles away. Anyone would be dead after these falls, of course. The disbelief factor isn't as severe as it was in DAREDEVIL (i.e., Ben Affleck falling 60 stories and landing upright on a painter's scaffold), but it's close.

5. When will poor James Franco get to do another JAMES DEAN-type role? He brings a precise charge to his Harry Osborn role, but it pains me to see someone as good as Franco playing second-tier parts, or even downward-leaning semi-leads like he did in CITY BY THE SEA. The guy is good; he's got it.

6. There's one really deliciously droll scene. Maguire has temporarily lost his Spider-Man powers, and is forced to ride in a building elevator to get down to the street, and has this quietly hilarious conversation with a guy who happens to join him on the ride down. It's the best moment in the whole film.

Manchurian Issue

It's been denied, but a guy I trust is telling me a new ending for Jonathan Demme's THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE was shot a week and a half to two weeks ago, apparently due to test-screening responses that indicated the existing finale wasn't cutting it with the folks.

I ran this by a senior Paramount publicist who told me "it isn't true." (It was later said that "close-ups" were recently shot that would go into the film.) MANCHURIAN producer Scott Rudin got back through a publicist at PMK/HBH, but no information was offered. I also called director Jonathan Demme's New York post-production office, but no one returned.

Okay, so it may not be true. If it were the Paramount publicist would have said so. On the other hand my friend heard the new-ending story from a guy he knows and trusts ("He has no axe to grind") who works in post-production on the Paramount lot.

In any case, shooting a new ending is no biggie. Everything gets tweaked one way or another in post. It certainly isn't unusual to hear such speculation concerning a feature filmed under the aegis of Paramount Pictures, which has a well-established rep for re-shooting its films when the numbers aren't what they could be, the most recent case being Rudin's THE STEPFORD WIVES.

I know that MANCHURIAN has been test-screened a lot lately, and that the responses on Ain't It Cool News haven't been wildly positive. I know, I know....I'm not supposed to pay any attention to such postings. Totally unreliable. Just ask David Poland.

Still, for what it's worth, an AICNer who claimed to have seen a test screening in early May in Philadelphia adamantly wrote a while back that "the final scene with Ben [i.e., Denzel Washington's character] and the sniper rifle is not satisfying."

The guy said he recalled that the ending of the final climactic scene in the 1962 John Frankenheimer original with Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey was "unexpected and very satisfying, [whereas] the end of this scene in [Demme's film] unfortunately didn't even feel like a climax."

I have a copy of Daniel Pyne's script, and if Demme stuck to the page ....hmmm.

In Frankenheimer's film Raymond Shaw (Harvey), a Korean war hero who's been transformed by Chinese communist brainwashing into a totally controllable, robot-like, cold-blooded assassin, pulls a big surprise by shooting his evil mother (Angela Lansbury) and her McCarthy-like U.S. Senator husband (James Gregory) from a position in the rafters in the old Madison Square Garden.

In the climax of the Pyne/Demme version it's not Shaw's finger on the trigger, but Cpt. Ben Marco's (Washington currently, Sinatra in the `62 version). I don't think I'll go any further than this.

If (and I do say "if") there's a problem with a scene near the end it may not be this one as much as the final, final one in Pyne's script, which is between Ben and Rosie (Kimberly Elise here, Janet Leigh in the `62 version), and set on a remote desert island.

The scene has an almost verbatim reciting of the heroic deeds of certain Congressional Medal of Honor recipients that were read by Sinatra in the '62 version, and the last two words in the script, as in George Axelrod's `62 version, are "hell...hell." It's a bit glum, and if Demme shot it as written I can see why some folks might have said, "Not cool or exciting enough!" But I don't know if this scene was even shot, so what am I on about? Nothing.

I've been in a MANCHURIAN mood since receiving a 42 year-old campaign button that was used to promote the `62 film. Jim Katz, a marketing veteran and a restoration guy (VERTIGO, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA) who worked for United Artists marketing in the early '60s, sent it to me in an envelope after reading of my liking for that evil-queen icon that was the visual centerpiece of the MANCHURIAN ad campaign.

The Right Time

The reason FAHRENHEIT 9/11 did as well as it did last weekend -- not just in liberal areas but in red-state cities like Fayetteville, Greensboro and Forth Worth -- was, I'm guessing, not entirely due to advance enthusiasm for the message of Michael Moore's film...although reports of generally positive responses (standing ovations, even) speak for themselves.

And it wasn't just due to the controversy element either. How many people would have rushed to see a hard-hitting Miramax film that Disney had refused to distribute if it had been, say, about the moral degeneration represented by the Hilton sisters?

I think a lot of people went simply because of the title, and what it portended. The title doesn't imply a savaging of George W. Bush. It's not called BAD DUBYA. It implies a direct look at the September 11th attacks and a portrayal of what happened as a result. It also implies a general grappling with the emotional side of the tragedy.

And I think after nearly three years of healing and putting the ghosts to bed people were ready to go back into it. They knew they were going to see W. get ripped, but also that any film with that title would wade into places they felt an urge to explore once more.

Neil Young voiced a similar sentiment to Independent Film Project chief Dawn Hudson after last week's screening at the Los Angeles Film festival. He said, "Michael Moore is saying something at a time when people want to hear it." Hudson said she agreed with my take during a phone conversation on Monday. "It isn't just the anti-Bush slant," she said. "It was about some kind of catharsis."

Speaking of which....

Anyone who went to FAHRENHEIT 9/11 last weekend has some kind of waiting-in-line story, plus reactions to the film itself. I urge anyone who went through this to read the postings on Michael Moore's site from viewers around the country. Their reports are clean, open, straight, unperturbed.

You know...none of that nyah-nyah David Poland nitpicking.

Of course, if you were to show me a web page full of passionate testimonials from fans who just came from seeing LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING on opening day last December, I'd be putting Poland`s nyah-nyah`s to shame and ripping the whole thing. I'm with the Average Joe's as long as they agree with me, and vice versa.

Here's the FAHRENHEIT 9/11 people-page link: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latest news/breakingnews/index.php?id=32.

This photo of the marquee of Oakland's Grand Lake theatre gets me like no other. This, to me, is the spirit of real America. No photo I can think of has made me prouder of my citizenship than this one.

Hitting Stride

I couldn't quite put my finger on it, not exactly, but I had a definite feeling during the just-wrapped Los Angeles Film Festival (June 17th through 26th) that L.A. finally has a forward-motion, self-aware, culturally in-tune festival that matters and is generating its own pulse.

Los Angeles is renowned the world over for being a spiritually afflicted place second only to Las Vegas, but something about the LAFF made it almost feel like a different town. The vibe at times was almost San Francisco or Seattle-like. The films were smartly chosen (that means different things to different people, I realize), the mood was smooth and smiley all around, the support staff was always helpful, and a good percentage of the female volunteers...whoops, there I go again.

I stopped for a second in the middle of an event last week and said to myself, "This is excellent....I'm glad this is happening...this is a good thing."

Earnest congratulations to LAFF director of programming Rachel Rosen, festival director Richard Raddon, senior programmer Doug Jones, all the other staffers, and IFP/West honcho Dawn Hudson, who officiated and coordinated, etc.

Perhaps the LAFF isn't yet competitive with the creme de la creme of essential second-tier festivals out there -- Tribeca, South by Southwest, San Francisco, etc. -- but at least that less-than-robust, not-fully-necessary feeling is gone. I remember reading a year or two ago that Sundance is actually L.A.'s film festival...it just takes place in Utah. I would say after this year that you won't be hearing that line any more.

The next step, of course, will be when a riveting debut feature (i.e., something new or at least unseen at any other U.S. Festival) shows up and makes headlines. If I had been in Rachel's shoes I might have gone a bit nervier here and there, but that's me.

For example, there's a very cool, nicely observed film set to play on Showtime later this summer called THIS GIRL'S LIFE, an intimate portrait by the British director Ash of a Los Angeles online porn star. It totally stands up on its own (it has a great performance by James Woods) and would have caused a definite stir. It played at last summer's Las Vegas Film Festival but hasn`t turned up anywhere since.

The special screening of FAHRENHEIT 9/11 last Tuesday night was a major high. Ditto the showing of Xan Cassavetes' Z CHANNEL: A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, which I saw and reviewed in Cannes. I didn't see anything new or startling, but that's my fault. I tend to be lazy in my choices.

Cassavetes and co-producer F.X. Feeney (who also provides the film's most moving commentary on the film's tragic subject, Z Channel programmer Jerry Harvey) said there was movement afoot to get the film a theatrical release before it plays on the IFC Channel. For what it's worth, I feel this should definitely happen.

I spoke with Hudson about the LAFF/s success on Monday. The IFP/West, which she's been running since the early '90s, has been sponsoring the LAFF for three years now. I told her I felt the festival had "caught wind this year," and she agreed.

"It was the accumulation of our efforts toward reaching out, " she said, along with the efforts of Rosen, "one of our greatest assets [who has] a superb rep as a programmer... she has excellent taste and such a passion for films."

"I do feel that the word of mouth was building among filmmakers," Hudson continued. "We set the tone...and this word has continued to spread and grow. Other than that I think we're getting a little sharper about our marketing to the L.A. community. It's not like we had a huge budget, but one thing we did right was identifying films by genre in the program....we listed in sections....so our communication of this became better.

"Plus we just had a jump in audience attendance," she added. "Way more than we had last year." I was later told that the LAFF box-office was up 22% and attendance totaled out at 45,000.

Anyway, good going all around, gang. Keep in mind my thought about taking things in a slightly edgier direction next year, and best wishes from this corner.

Man in Pain

"Boy, it's about time someone dissed the plague of movies based on comic books. I don't think I can name one film based on a comic that is truly a great movie. The original SUPERMAN comes closest, but that also was played as much for its camp value as anything else.

In any event, you've put your finger on why: they're basically all cliches featuring tortured superheroes, they're pitched to the emotional and intellectual levels of 14-year olds, and they simply have nothing to say.

They are -- duh! -- comic books. Pictures with bubble captions above them. Not literature. Not even great screenplays, a la CHINATOWN. Just dumb fantasy entertainment for kids. And because they're visual and can be storyboarded easily and are well-known properties for semi-literate teens, Hollywood keeps churning them out.

So goes reason #6,542 why major studio films really, really suck these days. Forgive me, but just saw A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUIENCE on IFC, and am awash in '70s nostalgia." -- Lewis Beale