My full review here: http://exm.nr/11FWWHN

It ended up being one of those movies I liked, maybe even admired, but didn't ever love, and actually found myself torn over the more I thought about it.

Pros:
- the "humanization," which I was admittedly worried about, was the best part of the film. The struggle to fit in connected, and the Malicky Kansas imagery helped create a very Americana icon palate. It was odd that I found the still, quiet moments to be the best parts of this Superman film, but there you go. All of the pre-suit stuff was terrific, IMO.
- the hand-to-hand fight scenes were executed very well. Little moments got me jazzed, like the train coming over the horizon (although Chronicle kind of stole that move's thunder last year). For me, it never got better than the Smallville fight between Supes and the two lackeys.
- Crowe was terrific, and the sequence where he's helping Amy Adams was another real highlight. One of the few funny moments in the film.
- Costner and Lane... again, the human element thrived in this film. Both are so good.
- towards the finale, watching Fishburne and Michael Kelly try to save the intern was more exciting than anything else going on. Again, human element.
- Meloni's first and second showdown with the Kryptonette were enjoyable.
- I had no qualms with any of the "changes," either in story or in tone, to the Superman we're used to, save one, which I'll detail below.
EDIT- one more scene I absolutely loved: the church scene. Forces the questions about God to the surface... especially the ones Clark must have, as the Kents are unquestionably Christian and would've raised their kid that way. (Didn't they say Clark was 33 in this film? Ugh, lol.)

Cons:
- let's start with the problem nearly all origin films face: an abundance of clunky exposition. While Jor-El's explanation of the planet's history was stylishly done, many sequences sagged due to incessant explanation...
- ... the majority of which rested on Shannon's shoulders. Sigh... look, I love Shannon. He was given nothing to do here. Nothing personal to root his character in. From the second we see him, he's a one-note genocidal loon. While Jor-El and Zod both explain through clunky exposition that they used to be friends multiple times, we don't buy it, because we never see Zod's depth.
- the opening Krypton sequence had some very interesting ideas that I admire, especially Jor-El being a badass himself, but the dialogue is really rough throughout that whole segment. Feels like a costume stage drama with characters making loud expositional proclamations, not unlike the clunkier parts of the Thor film.
- the more personal the action was, the better it was. Unfortunately, Snyder keeps pulling the camera back to show building destruction a hundred or more times. Not only does this make the action less personal, which hurts the storytelling aspect of action, it makes it less fun-- I found myself very torn between rooting for the destruction of buildings and realizing literally millions of people are dying without a single mention. Supes is obsessed with saving people, except when bad guys are around, and then he's obsessed with building destruction. It was odd not to include more concern for his surroundings, which would've been consistent with the character they established, but would've made for less big explosions. I admired the choice to underscore the danger and destructive force of Superman's presence to those around him, but it's barely dealt with if at all.
- also, the more kinetic the fights became, the harder it became to tell what the fuck was happening. It was just punch, fly back, building explodes. Punch, fly back, building explodes. Ultimately repetitive and exhausting.
- no action was as bad as the World Ender vs Supes. You can't follow Supes hand-to-hand combat with Supes fighting a machine with nanobot tentacles or whatever. And the coughing to show his "weakness"? Ugh, kind of embarrassing, honestly. Hated that portion of the film.
- also, this may be just me, but I am ultimately far more terrified of personal threat than "big strange machines blasting rays," which seems to happen more and more in comic book films, because it creates a neater resolution (insane how similar Man Of Steel's ultimate threat/save-the-world move is to The Avengers). Zod knocking down buildings just to fuck with humans is way scarier than some machine, plus it would've given us more hand-to-hand. Outside of choking Ma Kent once and some vague threats to Lois Lane, Zod doesn't personally do shit to "the inferior race" until seconds before his demise. Which, again, would've taken 30 seconds and seems like an odd choice to omit.
- this is admittedly a nitpick: I'm tired of movies in which the bad guy takes over every TV and Nokia phone screen to deliver a message. In this, it was especially silly, with its subtitled translations everywhere it was transmitted.
- Supes killing a guy? Nope. Not feeling it. And the awful Vader NO didn't make it better. (There were a couple of Vader screams, none of which worked.)
- finally, the gender politics, which Supes has never been terrific about, was especially bad here, from Lara almost getting her kid killed with her womanly weakness for a child, the lady intern getting stuck, Lois needing help every step of the way from men, and (a cheap laugh in a film with very few laughs) the military officer swooning about how hot Superman is. I'm sure someone will take issue with my inclusion of this in the cons, but I felt it. Can't help it.

I've written more cons, but ultimately, the human stuff and the stuff in the pros makes up over half of the film, so overall, I did like it, and I'll be seeing it again to see whether my mind changes regarding some of the things that irked me. There's just way too much that bothered me first viewing for me to ever give myself over to the film emotionally, or to even enjoy it purely on an action level. A mixed bag overall.