I went into this film without much expectations. The trailers I'd seen beforehand made this film seem very heavy-handed and very action-oriented. I like Andrew Garfield's work in The Social Network and I love Emma Stone's work. That was enough for me to give it a go.

Oh: and that Spider-Man's web-shooting capabilities were of his own device. Score one for getting that one right this time around.

Back to the film. Despite no expectations, I was extremely surprised that not only was this film better than I had thought it could be, but that to me, this is now the definitive Spider-Man film. And I loved the first Sam Raimi one.

What director Mark Webb (hah) has done is let the characters have real emotions, real thoughts, and actually get hurt, both mentally and physically. The characters matter, and Webb makes you care about them. These are people you can get behind or be against.

And that's even more important to the core of this film — that for a good amount of time, the action isn't present. In fact, the action is probably 1/3 of the film, if that.

But when that action picks up, whiz bang boom! For once, I could follow the physics of the action — Webb or his animation team really knows how to work within the space of the camera. You know where things are coming and going — the choreography of the action scenes are great.

Garfield as Parker really makes you believe he's Peter Parker. There is no suspension of belief when viewing him onscreen as Parker. Whereas with Tobey Maguire, I always got a slightly off feeling — could have been Raimi's slightly more campy take on the series, but Webb plays it close to a reality we know.

I won't say much more than that. I can say that I loved this film. It was pitch-perfect. Between this and The Avengers and what's looking to be another knockout from Nolan, this is going to be a great year for comic book heroes.