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of air travel.

The sequence is dazzling and pretty, a perfectly-orchestrated piece of wow-coolness, with what might be described as grace. However, that can be ascribed entirely to Singer, his editor, and his visual effects team. It's pure film, and performances in these sequences are irrelevant. And all the action sequences are, as said, great. But that selfsame sequence described above highlights what I would describe as this film's fatal flaw.

While performances are not central to why this film is fun, and it is-most of the actors are well-cast, most particularly the aforementioned Spacey, who is consistent with Singer's strategy of continuity with the previous films, in that he isn't simply playing Lex Luthor; he's continuing Gene Hackman's version of the character. With one difference: although we see at one point a roomful of toupees, this Lex spends most of the film as he should, which is bald. Hackman, it seems, refused to appear that way in the films he did because, he reasoned, someone as vain as Luthor would wear a toupee. (Actually, the real reason was that Hackman hated wearing a bald wig) Spacey gets in a great number of speeches, and he hasn't a single onscreen moment in which he is not a joy to watch. Lex's current beard(there are many subtle hints that Lex may be gay) is played by the excellent Parker Posey, who is a fantastic foil to Spacey.

One doesn't see very much of Frank Langella as Perry White, but from what one does see, one would have to assume that our previously crusty newspaper editor has taken to Prozac. He's not loud nor barking(though he has one or two mild moments), possibly because these days that would seem too much like J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man films; instead he's calm, very measured, very organized, and convincingly a modern-day newspaper editor. Which is why I don't buy him as Perry White.

Even less well-cast is Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane. While not the complete nonentity Katie Holmes was in BATMAN BEGINS, she shares with her a bland, phony, generic quality that is only slightly less grating. Holmes was playing a thinly-written character made up only so the film would have at least one woman in it. But Bosworth has a lot more to tap into: Lois Lane is an icon only slightly less famous than Superman himself. Though she appeared a little too old for the part in the 1978 film, Margot Kidder was, and still is, every inch Lois, and a convincing urban professional woman. Bosworth comes off as a professional woman too,

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