Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (2023) - Movie Review

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse changed the modern animation industry to the point where, when looking at the whole thing historically, you could reasonably split the timeline into pre- and post-Spider-Verse. It represented an approach to animation where anything and everything was permitted and encouraged, leading to many others that would take cues from its eclectic and chaotic visual style (The Mitchells Vs. The Machines, Entergalactic, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, just to name a few), and for an IP with many different media iterations already, it still managed to stand as one of if not the best yet.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018) - Movie Review

 

This doesn’t look like any other Spider-Man film. Hell, this doesn’t look like any other comic book movie. The reason why, though, is kind of strange: It actually looks like a comic book. Bent around the frame of Sony Animation at its high-energy, thought bubbles, onomatopoeic sound effects, even half-tone dots that show in a lot of older comic strips populate the landscape, giving this a tangible connection to the medium that birthed it.

Dope (2015) - Movie Review

 

It was inevitable that I’d come across a film like this during my December endurance run. I wasn’t expecting this to be the first time I’d officially run into it this year, though. With how many new releases come out and the different opinions on each one, there will undoubtedly be films that I disagree with the consensus on. In fact, come January, you’ll see just how many I disagreed with others on. However, prior to today’s subject, I’ve always gotten on the defensive: Excusing Jupiter Ascending’s sheer idiocy because it transcended into the realms of unintentional comedy gold, forgiving The Transporter Refueled as I genuinely think that series has gotten a bad rap overall, and pretty much any new films involving Adam Sandler since, at this rate, the hate for him is getting really dull by now. Here, I find myself looking at the product presented and going "What was so great about that?"