Fable. Fantasy. Fairy tale. Spiderman 2 is one fantastic movie with a moral. The comic book art sequence at the beginning arrests your attention -- somehow capturing the essence of its subjects in in spare but colorful imagery. This is the how the entire movie works.

The film is, of course, a continuation of Peter Parker's adventures in the first Spiderman. Spiderman has to contend with a scientist gone mad, but, more importantly, with the pain he experiences over some terrible conflicts he perceives between his personal life and his "professional" career.

The cinematography, as in the first film, is a swooping wonder. There is a wonderful sense of dancing, dazzling through the air, leaping along with spidey. I enjoyed this in the first film and I enjoyed it just as much here.

But what really makes the movie is the classic story and beautiful, if archetypal, acting. There is behind the comic book capers and action sequences a question of life and philosophy, simply but honestly answered. I found this philosophical question, one about the tension between pursuing one's own dreams and desires vs. selflessly (heroically) giving to the community, to be a compelling and resonant one.

I can't tell how much of it was the acting and how much the direction but I felt that Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and almost everyone else on the cast conveyed their characters' moods and emotions quite well -- a lot of subtlety there in that comic book world if you care to feel it. The acting rings very true throughout -- I never feel emotionally manipulated, which is saying something.

There is a real atmosphere in the world created, and the acting dovetails with the CGI just perfectly to let you believe in a bold world of light and dark and superpowers stunts just as you sympathize with Tobey's all-too-human dilemmas.

I also enjoyed the soundtrack and of course the action scenes, which featured some whirling dervish choreography and inventive spidey-solutions to problems.

There were of course a few niggling problems with the movie. I admit that it was not a film that held my attention absolutely fixed the whole time. Its pace lagged just a bit in some places. I also found the villain (though quite cool) to be more of a simple caricature than the rest of the movie, and there are some plot holes regarding just how he managed to escape so many times from the police and so on.

But overall it was a warm and satisfying experience, as good a movie as I've seen in a long while, both entertaining and thoughtful, and a sequel that outdoes its predecessor.