Aside from the obvious greed factor, one wonders why Columbia found it necessary to re-boot its successful Spider-Man series just ten years after the first film in the trilogy, five after the last. Except for a decent Andrew Garfield performance, nothing in The Amazing Spider-Man adds to the original. It’s the same story as the first film from a slightly different perspective told with more special effects, but less heart. There is no real character build-up. The villain figures out who Spider-Man is because Peter Parker dropped his cell phone – no shock, no surprise, no “I thought so” – just a weak utterance of Parker’s name.

Garfield’s transition from geek to hero is poorly executed. There is hardly any tension with other characters once he dons the suit. As good an actor as Garfield is, Tobey Maguire was far more interesting in the role. Martin Sheen is more or less as effective as Cliff Robertson was as Spidey’s Uncle Ben, but Sally Field is wasted as his fretful Aunt May. Rosemary Harris had more to do and better lines in the role ten years ago. As the female lead, the gifted Emma Stone doesn’t seem up to her A game. She mumbles a lot of her dialogue to the point that I thought maybe I needed a hearing aid – but, no, I heard the other actors just fine.

Rhys Ifans and Denis Leary do well with their stock characters. Ifans looks completely different from his younger days as a light comedian and may be on the verge of a whole new career as a middle-aged character actor. Eighties teenage heartthrob C. Thomas Howell is completely unrecognizable in his brief scene as the concerned father of the boy Spidey rescues from a dangling car on a bridge.

The Amazing Spider-Man is available on Blu-ray; Blu-ray 3D and standard DVD.

One of the great films from Hollywood’s Golden Age, Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece, Sunset Boulevard has finally been given its long-awaited Blu-ray upgrade. The immaculate black-and-white film is truly stunning as we once again enter into this dark noir that begins with William Holden’s corpse floating upside down in Gloria Swanson’s swimming pool.

Lots of extras, most, if not all, culled from Paramount’s recent DVD upgrade, reveal things we never knew or never thought we wanted to know. For instance, that classic opening scene was not originally in the film. Preview audiences laughed at Holden’s corpse talking to another corpse in the morgue so Wilder had it taken out and replaced with the one we now know like the back of our hand. The secret of how it was filmed with the camera looking up at Holden’s cold dead body is also revealed.

One of the film’s legend has long been that Swanson was more or less playing herself in the film. Nothing could be further from the truth. The actress was a prolific writer as well as a busy actress – she had been on the radio and in the theatre even if she was no longer a movie star when the film was made. She lived in an apartment in New York, not a decaying mansion in Hollywood.

Another long requested title that has been given a Blu-ray upgrade is 1955’s Guys and Dolls. The stylized film version of the beloved Broadway musical is to me a mixed bag. On one hand, it preserves most of the show’s great score, but drops three of the show’s best in order to make room for less successful new ones. Gone are the hit “A Bushel and a Peck”; the lovely “I’ve Never Been in Love Before” and the heart-tugging “More I Cannot Wish You”. Still enough of the original score remains to make it worth your time.

Non-singers Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons do well enough in the leads but co-stars Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine, reprising her stage role, as well as a superlative supporting cast led by Stubby Kaye, do full justice to the material.

Most of us know Perry Mason if not from Earle Stanley Gardner’s original novels then from the TV series that ran from 1957-1966 and ever since in syndication. That show, featuring the indelible performances of Raymond Burr as defense attorney extraordinaire Mason; Barbara Hale as loyal secretary Della Street; William Hopper as intrepid investigator Paul Drake; William Talman as crafty D.A. Hamilton Burger and Ray Collins as dogged police lieutenant Tragg, was not, however, the first series to tackle Gardner’s novels. Warner Bros. did it on the large screen from 1934-1937.

The six Warner Bros. films that comprise the series have been assembled in a Warner Archive Collection for comparison. The good news is that Warren William is excellent as the original Mason in the first four films. The bad news is that the films themselves never achieve a sure footing with the other characters. Only Della Street is featured in all six films and she is played by five different actresses.

We first meet her as played by stage actress Helen Trenholme who only made one other film, then by Claire Dodd, then by Genevieve Tobin, then by Dodd again, then by June Travis and finally by Ann Dvorak. Ricardo Cortez is Mason in the fifth film and Donald Woods, who played a different character in the second film, takes on the role in the sixth.

As for the mysteries, they’re all first rate and all re-told from a slightly different angle than they were later on in the long-running TV series. The first one, The Case of the Howling Dog is pre-Code allowing the killer to literally get away with murder, something that could not happen under the Production Code even in the later TV series.

Before Earl Derr Biggers wrote the Charlie Chan novels he wrote Seven Keys to Baldpate which was filmed seven times from 1917 to 1947. The original 1917 version was taken from George M. Cohan’s hit play co-starring Cohan, Anna Q. Nilsson and Hedda Hopper and has been previously released on DVD. Hopper has a connection to two new releases already discussed. She has a featured role in Sunset Boulevard and was, of course, the mother of the Perry Mason TV series’ William Hopper.

Now Warner Archive has put together a collection of three of the films made from the original novel, the 1929, 1935 and 1947 versions.

The 1929 version with Richard Dix is an interesting, if primitive, early talkie in which George M. Cohan’s name appears over the title. The better produced 1935 version with Gene Raymond informs us in no uncertain terms that the film is taken from an Earl Derr Biggers novel and a dramatization by Cohan. The still interesting, but less grandly produced 1947 version with Phillip Terry gives us the same information in smaller print.

New DVD releases this week include the animated Brave and the much anticipated Blu-ray upgrade of Lawrence of Arabia.