‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (PG-13)
★★★
“Brand New Day might not be the most rambunctious or exciting of Tom Holland’s Spider-flicks,” said Brian Truitt in USA Today. Instead, the fourth of the actor’s Spider-Man solo outings “aims to be a little deeper than the average Marvel Cinematic Universe installment while trapping you in its gratifying web.” The story picks up nearly five years after the events of 2021’s No Way Home, in which Spidey/Peter Parker averted disaster by having himself erased from the memories of everyone who knew him, even MJ, his girlfriend. As he now continues fighting criminal types in New York City, most notably a baddie who can jump from body to body, he’s “dealing with more adult problems,” including his isolation.
Holland seems “invigorated by the dramatic shift, giving a dense, great performance, easily his best in this series,” said Brian Tallerico in RogerEbert.com. Eventually, however, Brand New Day “succumbs to one of the biggest problems of late-stage MCU: The feeling that it’s just preparation for more movies.” But while that’s true to a point, said Nick Schager in the Daily Beast, this film “figures out how to integrate its individual and big-picture concerns into a relatively seamless whole.” It weaves in Jon Bernthal’s Punisher as Peter’s ally, the two making “a well-matched pair, with the former’s aw-shucks nobility clashing humorously with the latter’s fascistic gruffness.” Sadie Sink, meanwhile, fills a new role that promises to help keep the story interesting. And so far, the Spidey saga is only getting better. With the “possible exception” of the second Tobey Maguire Spider-Man, Brand New Day rates as the wall crawler’s “best film to date.”
‘I Want Your Sex’
Directed by Gregg Araki (R)
★★★
“I don’t entirely understand how we got here,” said David Ehrlich in IndieWire, but apparently, “it’s up to a 66-year-old filmmaker to remind the young people of America that it’s OK to be horny.” In his first movie in over a decade, director Gregg Araki aims to convey that message by casting Cooper Hoffman as a timid college grad who, after signing on as an assistant to an anti-woke artist played by Olivia Wilde, can’t say no when she selects him to serve as her latest sex slave. Unsurprisingly, the pair’s S&M-style trysts turn out to be “more comic than carnal,” and while Araki has made films with more focus and verve, this one “at least offers plenty of delights to gawp at along the way.”
Hoffman and Wilde “sport a playful, teasing rapport,” and Wilde clearly enjoys playing a shameless user who thinks all art is a scam, said Tim Grierson in Screen Daily. But a distracting framing device informs viewers that the story ends in an apparent murder, and because Hoffman’s Elliot becomes overly enamored of his boss, I Want Your Sex “fails to deliver on its initial promise to be an irreverent, libidinous romp.” A prevailing “devil-may-care sensibility” mostly saves the film, said Bilge Ebiri in NYMag.com. Araki and his cast clearly are having fun, and that feeling proves contagious. “Who ultimately cares if they don’t quite stick the landing?”