Young Peter Parker (Maguire) does not have the greatest lot in life. He's beaten up at school, and the girl he loves, Mary Jane (Dunst), barely knows he exists. But on a trip to a research facility he's bitten by a genetically engineered super-spider, which transforms him into a superhero with all of the super-spider's powers (although, strangely enough, he doesn't appear to be venomous - there can't have been any Australian species in the mix...). He uses his new powers to become Spiderman, fighting injustice, yada yada yada.
It might seem unfair to pick on Spider-Man for being one long clich((eacute)), as it is based on a comic book, but even for a comic book 'Spiderman' is pretty bland. Somehow, the film rises above its source material to produce something, if not quite special, then certainly memorable. Tobey Maguire does an excellent job, as does Kirsten Dunst (although admittedly her job is mainly standing around in wet T-shirts). The main failing of the film is that both the villain and the hero wear masks, so it turns into 'Power Rangers' during what should be the pivotal scenes of the film. Definitely worth watching, but couldn't they have picked a better comic book hero to adapt?

Imagine a producer's fantasy about the next Jet Li movie: (1) Jet Li should fight Jet Li. (2) To make it dissimilar to Twin Dragons and many other movies, the Jet Lis must have special powers. (3) There must be some Matrix-style 'bullet-time' effects. Thus, The One. Here is the premise: There are 125 parallel universes (forming a 'multiverse'). People have devised a way to travel between these universes, but it is strictly forbidden, since there are too many possible ways one can mess up everything. Jet Li plays a shifty character hits on one of these possibilities: All he has to do is travel to the other parallel universes and kill each of his other selves. Each time he kills himself, he becomes stronger, faster and smarter. Eventually, when he manages to kill all his other selves, he will either become a god or destroy the multiverse. Simple as that. Luckily for us, the last of the Jet Lis won't go down without a fight. The stage is set for an almighty battle. Slightly dodgy plot premise aside, The One has amazing effects and great fight scenes. If you like Hong Kong style action movies, this is 'The One' to see.