Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Tom Holland is my Spidey. I know that's a fighting-word take in some circles, and no disrespect to Tobey or Andrew, but the man has earned it, and Brand New Day is another notch on that belt.

Everything I love about these movies is still humming here. Tom, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon are the beating heart of this whole run, and if you took any one of them out the thing would deflate. Peter and MJ carry the weight, and Ned Leeds is still the biggest laugh in the building. Batalon just knows where the joke lives. Every time he opened his mouth the theater cracked up, mine included.

That's not a hedge, that's the review.

The plot's got legs. The story actually goes somewhere. The scenery is genuinely stupendous, and I don't use that word lightly. This is a movie that looks like somebody cared about every frame you were staring at.

And the villain. Man. I love a bad guy who's doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, because that's the kind of antagonist that sticks with you after the credits. You get why they're doing it. You maybe even agree a little, and then you feel weird about agreeing, and then Spidey has to punch them anyway. That's the good stuff.

Cameos are a blast too. I'm not going to spoil anything, but the Hulk shows up and I lost my mind a little, because Bruce Banner is one of my favorite characters in the whole sandbox and Mark Ruffalo still owns that role. Every time he's on screen in one of these things I'm eight years old again.

Saw it with the kids. Theater was packed. Big screen, big sound, big reactions from the crowd, and yeah, that made it better. Some movies you can wait for streaming. This one you go sit in a room full of strangers for, because the laughs and the gasps hit harder when a couple hundred people are doing it with you.

Stuck with me on the drive home too. Kids were quoting it in the back seat. I was already thinking about when I'd see it again.

Recommend it to everyone. That's not a hedge, that's the review. Everyone. Go.