‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Review: Always Forget, Always Remember

July 28, 2026

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…Started up a Brand New Day! (CREDIT: Marvel/Sony Pictures Entertainment)

Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Tramell Tillman, Michael Mando, Mark Ruffalo, Florence Pugh, Liza Colón-Zayas, Marvin Jones III, Zabryna Guevara

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton

Running Time: 145 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Occasionally Gnarly Action Violence, and a Little Bit of Language

Release Date: July 31, 2026 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: It’s been a lonely life for the Tom Holland version of Peter Parker ever since his last big screen adventure. He’s still Spider-Man, and New Yorkers still love their arachnid guardian, but a spell has been cast that has made everyone forget the entire existence of the human being behind the mask. He’s inching towards re-introducing himself to his former girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), but he’s got to be careful, since there are always new threats lurking around the corner. This time around, the primary threat is a mysterious newcomer (Sadie Sink) with the ability to jump her consciousness into other people who’s trying to expose a secret at the suspiciously friendly Department of Damage Control. Meanwhile, Peter seems to be going through a sort of second adolescence, as he develops new powers and then consults a relatively Hulk-free Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) to help him get a grip on these emerging abilities.

What Made an Impression?: The Day After When?: To rewatch or not to rewatch? That’s always one of the big questions at the heart of the latest MCU release. With Brand New Day, I wondered if I ought to revisit 2021’s No Way Home to remind myself how we got to the point where nobody remembered Peter Parker anymore. But ultimately, I decided I would prefer not to and instead see how this chapter stands on its own (which is typically my prerogative in general). And I believe I made the right decision. While things started off feeling a little vague, I appreciated that this movie didn’t feel the need to recap itself to death and instead give off at least a hint of mystery.
Criss-Cross: Brand New Day reaches towards the platonic ideal of a true low-key comic book crossover sensibility. We’ve seen Peter team up with all the major Avengers already, but what about the other rando Marvel heroes and villains we’ve yet to see him interact with before? Several of them are in this movie! But not all of them, as that would be too overwhelming. Sometimes superhero flicks have multiple antagonists combined with a whole host of friendly cameos, and it ends up feeling like three or four (or a thousand) different movies smashed together. But in this case, it feels natural enough that all these folks would be interacting with each other in this series of scenarios.
They Had an Effect on Me: My biggest bummer with BND is that the visual effects are too slick in the way that our digitized and sanitized CGI era so often is. There’s just not much tactility as Spidey swings around the Big Apple. Nevertheless, there is a decent amount of emotional heft to the big set pieces. It helps when there are some close-up shots interspersed within those sequences, as Tom Holland’s eternally youthful visage immediately conveys plenty of vulnerability.
Brand New Enough Indeed: Ultimately, I’m pleased to report that I was satisfied by Brand New Day because it didn’t feel like just more of the same once again in the way that so many Marvel movies have. While it didn’t quite blow me away like the most transcendent examples of this genre, I never quite knew where we headed. The reveals are clever, the ideas are sincere, and the enthusiasm is still real.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is Recommended If You Like: A mix of the old and the new

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Lattice Quanta

‘Novocaine’ is About a Guy Who Can’t Feel Pain, But You’ll Probably Feel Plenty of Pleasure While Watching It

March 12, 2025

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Jack Quaid as Mr. Novocaine (CREDIT: Paramount Pictures)

Starring: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon, Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh

Directors: Dan Berk and Robert Olsen

Running Time: 110 Minutes

Rating: R for Grave Bodily Injuries

Release Date: March 14, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: San Diego resident Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) spends his days working his sensible job as a bank executive and his evenings at home playing video games. He’s never really allowed himself to aspire to much more than that, which makes sense when you consider that he has congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP). After all, if he eats solid food, he might accidentally bite his tongue off and not even realize it. So better to opt for the most vanilla life possible and not risk any danger that his body won’t be able to warn him about. But then one day, he goes on a date with his new co-worker Sherry (Amber Midthunder), and she scrambles his brain so much that he starts to think it might actually be worth taking a risk here and there. So much so that when she’s taken hostage by bank robbers the very next day, Nathan decides to turn into an avenging superhero to set her free.

What Made an Impression?: The Sensitive Man’s Unlikely Action Hero: Jack Quaid is having quite the starmaking moment. He’s been banging around in big ensembles like Oppenheimer and Scream, while also letting loose with frequent guest appearances on the podcast Comedy Bang! Bang! He nailed it as the lead earlier this year in the robots-gone-wrong thriller Companion, and now he’s an even bigger casting coup in Novocaine. If he’s going to play a badass, of course it’s going to be the type of badass who can’t feel anything physically while feeling plenty emotionally. This movie is knowingly over-the-top, capturing the feeling of life-changing love making you do things that you never thought were possible. Nathan is profoundly in over his head, but for a guy who’s been living out under his head his entire life, it’s basically impossible not to cheer on his foolhardiness.
Loyal and Goofy Support: I simply mustn’t ignore the clutch supporting cast surrounding Quaid. First of all, Midthunder nails the hook of adorability (while harboring a secret that prevents her from drifting into manic pixie dream girl territory). Then we’ve got Jacob Batalan as Nathan’s video game buddy Roscoe, the latest in his specialty of preternaturally reliable friends. And finally, there are a couple of detectives on Nathan’s trail in the form of Betty Gabriel and, wait for it … Upright Citizens Brigade co-founder Matt Walsh. It should be a law (if it’s not already) that serious action movies like this must have a comedy legend like Walsh in an essential supporting role. Does this all add up to a movie that’s effective enough to cure CIP among any of its viewers? Not literally. But metaphorically? Definitely.

Novocaine is Recommended If You Like: Die Hard, John Wick, First dates

Grade: 4 out of 5 Gunshot Wounds

‘Tarot,’ or Tar-no?

May 5, 2024

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When in Tarot, do as the Tarots do (CREDIT: Screen Gems)

Starring: Harriet Slater, Jacob Batalon, Avantika, Adain Bradley, Humberly González, Wolfgang Novogratz, Larsen Thompson, Olwen Fouéré

Directors: Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg

Running Time: 92 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: May 3, 2024 (Theaters)

Is Tarot (The Movie) pro-divination or anti-divination? Fortunately, when it comes to horror, it doesn’t matter! This most definitely ain’t gonna change any paradigms about those Fool and Death Cards, but it does the trick for a Friday Night PG-13 Doopy Fright Flick. In conclusion, my visit to Make-Believe Tarot Land was perfectly cromulent!

Grade: Final Destination for Dummies

‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Actually Presents Many Ways Home, What with the Multiverse and All

December 14, 2021

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Spider-Man: No Way Home (CREDIT: Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures)

Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei, Alfred Molina, Benedict Wong, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, J.K. Simmons, Thomas Haden Church, Rhys Ifans, Tony Revolori, J.B. Smoove, Hannibal Burress, Martin Starr, Angourie Rice

Director: Jon Watts

Running Time: 148 Minutes

Rating: R for The Usual Punching and Stabbing, Perhaps a Little Darker Than Usual

Release Date: December 17, 2021 (Theaters)

Hey, it’s our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man back on the big screen! Or maybe, that should be our friendly neighborhood Spider … Men? (Hey, wasn’t there another recent movie that asked that same question? With so many years of comic book history to draw upon, you can be multi-universal in multiple ways.)

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Movie Review: ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ Offers Goofs Galore and Surprise Reveals Aplenty

June 27, 2019

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CREDIT: Sony Pictures/YouTube

Starring: Tom Holland, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zendaya, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Angourie Rice, Martin Starr, J.B. Smoove, Marisa Tomei, Tony Revolori, Remy Hii

Director: Jon Watts

Running Time: 129 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Nicks and Bruises from Webslinging Around and Awkward Situations That Teenager Somehow Stumble Into

Release Date: July 2, 2019

The name of the game is the ol’ switcheroo, the bait-and-switch, the smoke-and-mirrors routine … yeah, that’s the ticket. It’s only been a couple of months since the release of Avengers: Endgame, but despite all that seeming finality, the MCU must continue. And the first arrival in this new status quo is Spider-Man: Far From Home, which means we’re going to kick things off with an in memoriam montage that features Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” Comic Sans lettering, and a Getty Images-watermarked photo. But there are also some baddies to defeat, although Peter Parker (Tom Holland) would much rather focus on his school’s European class trip and taking things to a more romantic realm with his friend MJ (Zendaya). You get the sense that this cinematic iteration of Spider-Man would also like to just focus on the high school ecosystem. But superhero movie requirements beckon, and Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers’ script does a fun enough job of incorporating Peter and his pals’ shenanigans into the CGI blowout.

The topsy-turvy hook begins with the fallout from the fact that the people who were snapped away in Infinity War and then returned in Endgame (referred to here as “the Blip”) have not aged the five years that everyone who remained did. Adding to all the pandemonium is the appearance of Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), a caped-and-suited fellow who claims to be from a parallel Earth and is here to help fight some monsters that have escaped from his world. But not all is as it seems, as characters may not be who they say they are, relationships have sudden accelerations and decelerations, and it really isn’t what it looks like when a classmate discovers Peter taking his pants off next to a much older woman.

That sense of the wool being pulled over and off and back on everyone’s eyes lasts all the way through to the end of the credits, with the extra scenes turning out to be surprisingly essential in clarifying what just happened. Peter’s efforts to puncture his way into what’s really going on have a satisfying vibe of getting past the bullshit. However, that level of satisfaction is not met with any corresponding visual panache, as Far From Home plays it way too safe in the standard-issue Marvel CGI department. If this is the post-Endgame status quo, at least it won’t be so stressful.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is Recommended If You Like: Spider-Man: Homecoming, High Quality Character-Centric Jokewriting

Grade: I don’t know how to grade these Marvel movies anymore. I could give it a 4 out of 5 for Fun, but I also want to downgrade it to 3.5 out of 5 for (Lack of) Originality, and then I also want to downgrade it to Less Than 3.5 out of 5 for Frustration about this being yet another good-but-not great Marvel movie. So my overall grade is all of that somehow mixed together.

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ Switches Back and Forth Between Amusingly Diverting and Alarmingly Deadly

July 3, 2017

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This review was originally published on News Cult in July 2017.

Starring: Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr., Laura Harrier, Marisa Tomei, Zendaya, Tony Revolori, Martin Starr

Director: Jon Watts

Running Time: 133 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for the Usual Superhero Action

Release Date: July 7, 2017

The problem with the two Spider-Man movies with Amazing in the title (as opposed to the Spider-Man movies that could be accurately described as “amazing”) is that they hewed too closely to what had already been told in recent cinematic history. Spider-Man: Homecoming (the first Spidey flick to take place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) avoids that issue by crafting a Peter Parker (here played by 21-year-old Tom Holland, who easily passes for 15) that is markedly different than any classic conception. Rather than bounding himself by the code of “with great power comes great responsibility,” this Spider-Man bounds into any crisis with reckless abandon. As a big proponent of not being beholden to source material, I admire this decision, but I wish that director Jon Watts and his team of co-screenwriters had a stronger handle on what exactly this conception means.

This is very much a high school movie, with its emphasis on episodic, almost sitcom-esque structure. But it is also a superhero action flick, so the threats are just as deadly and just as adult as they are in any other Spider-Man or any Avengers film. The tonal bridge between these two halves is plentifully whiplash-inducing. It is absolutely fine to awaken a hero to the dangers of the world, because the hero’s journey has been fruitful for centuries of storytelling, and it is a valuable representation of real-life maturation. Even switching back to scenes of high school shenanigans after fights with the most wanted criminals is theoretically acceptable, because mundanity does exist right alongside evil. But it requires a deft hand to make that balancing act entertaining and palatable, a feat whose difficulty Homecoming vastly underestimates.

What Homecoming succeeds at most is its skillfulness at making fun of itself, or the MCU more generally. I often find blockbuster stabs at humor to be glib and obvious, but it helps when you have comedy heavyweights like Hannibal Buress, Martha Kelly, and Martin Starr (whom Community fans will note is essentially reviving his performance as Professor Cligoris). Still, as funny as it is, it feels out of place. After all, it is essentially window-dressing to the fight that Peter takes up against arms dealing Adrian Toomes (a controlled, but thoroughly sniveling Michael Keaton), who eventually takes flight as a mechanized version of classic comics baddie the Vulture. We’ve previously seen Spidey get into predicaments as stressful as what he gets into here (a rescue atop the Washington Monument, holding together the two halves of a fissured Staten Island Ferry), but never against the context of a Spider-Man who actually looks like a teenager.

Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark stops by for several scenes to lend a hand in some of these most dangerous moments. Holland does not need RDJ’s help to make his first big starring vehicle work, but Peter Parker does need Iron Man’s help to avoid killing himself. It is that alarming realization that makes it clear that this ostensibly light and fluffy actioner has maybe taken on more weight than it can bear. Still, it is enjoyable when it allows itself to be kid’s stuff.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is Recommended If You Like: The Other Spider-Man Movies But Wish That Peter Parker Actually Looked Like a Teenager and That Everyone Was Hitting on Aunt May

Grade: 3.5 out 5 Best Sandwiches in Queens