Category: Jacob Batalon

SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY

Tom Holland’s fourth stand-alone film as the most famous web slinger of all time is his best installment and easily ranks at the very top of the very long list of MCU films.  Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a movie full of emotion, depth, and conflict ablaze in outstanding action sequences that reach new heights.  Finally, the Kevin Feige machine serves Tom Holland a hundred percent correctly.  There is not one weak moment in this new picture.  If anything, it serves as a reminder of what the recent Supergirl neglected in its construction. 

The story jumps to around four years after the complicated events that overflowed with experimental multi-dimensional fun in the last picture, No Way Home.  That movie opted to surrender to fan service with every favorite Christmas ornament on the tree.  Brand New Day delivers an assortment of new characters to progress a solid storyline of curveball surprises.  Thankfully, the narrative stands on its own with a grounded sense of maturity.  Tom Holland is no longer portraying Peter Parker as a klutzy dweeb whose silly carelessness leads to mountains of unamusing mishaps.

A sinister new kind of villain is terrorizing Peter/Spidey in a post age where no one has any recollection of Peter Parker, including his love interest MJ and his best friend Ned (Zendaya, Jacob Batalon). As well, his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) has now passed on while he’s left only with daily visits to her grave to offer solace.  Peter’s isolation as a super-hero crime fighter in New York is now that much more troubling as he cannot fathom how to approach this new antagonist who has a novel way of hiding within the populace of the city while staying right on Peter’s tail with disturbing torment. 

As well, returning writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers weave in a very popular storyline from the classic silver age comics as poor Spidey seems to lose concentration of his powers and thus some frightening inconveniences occur.  To aid the web head with these new challenges is the acerbic anti-hero Frank Castle aka The Punisher (Jon Bernthal, graduating from the Netflix/Disney + Marvel streaming series) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) who seems to have a proper stronghold on his Mr. Hyde, green goliath persona. For now!!!! There’s also the superhero clean-up crew known as the Department Of Damage Control, led by actor Tramell Tillman (from the inventive Apple + series Severance, which I strongly recommend).  A phone call away is a likable police lieutenant (Liza Colón-Zayas) and the new Black Widow aka Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) has an unsuspecting “office” nearby.

Everything looks improved in Brand New Day.  The Hulk is bigger, fiercer and angrier.  He’s much more well defined in his action scenes.  Frank Castle is not a hi & bye character.  He blends into the storyline of the film, with just enough backstory to care about his relationship to Spider-Man, unlike the fruitless contribution of Lobo in Supergirl.  All other characters are served valuable purpose to the transitions of the screenplay. 

Spider-Man actually occupies most of the film with the mask on.  Finally!!!!  What frustrated me tremendously about the first two Holland films was that the hero was hardly shown wearing the familiar threads of bright blue and red with the web stitching.  When I am watching a Spider-Man movie, I want to see Spider-Man.  At last, McKenna, Somers and new director to the franchise, Destin Daniel Cretton get it right.  The mask stays on.  The costume stays on.  Webs are shooting out all over the city and their various designs are wildly imaginative found in the best comic book issues. 

The choreography of the action sequences is superb frame for frame with punches, kicks, acrobatics and deflections.  Web swinging goes to new heights and across wide diameters.  Everything looks like a perfect design.

The second half of Brand New Day opens up some wonderful twists that lead the film down new paths.  What I’m grateful for is that this time Peter Parker works to solve all the dilemmas on his own.  He doesn’t turn to guys like Iron Man, Dr. Strange or Happy Hogan.  There is a wealth of Marvel favorites here, but this picture truly belongs to the title character Spider-Man following a promising formula used with Chris Evans in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Cretton wisely closes the film with a feel-good salute to Spidey’s hometown of New York City.  No special visuals or dazzling sci fi or animation.  Just sites of the most popular city in the world.  After a whirlwind experience of a breezy two and a half hours, this was the most suitable way to close out this outstanding chapter.  No needle drops of pop music.  Rather, sensitive instrumentals and bright visuals that lend to positive outlooks for the world we all share together.  Movies are not just for escape. Movies also have the magic to make us feel good about ourselves.

Tom Holland has wonderful chemistry with the whole cast.  I believe the scenes he shares with Zendaya are the couple’s best to date.  On rooftops high above the city and later in a confined room, the two actors have focused emotions accompanied with dialogue that never feels hammy or something built for daytime soap opera.  Just great acting from both leads who embrace how serious millions of fans are about the best in comic book film adaptations.  No one in this cast is cashing in a paycheck here.  They are looking to do great work that will stand the test of time when this movie is popped in the blu ray player ten or twenty years from now.

As the third act of this film began, I told myself this is easily in the top five best films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and without question the best Spider-Man film to date.  Anyone who frowns on comic book movies (Martin Scorcese, Terry Gilliam) need to become more open minded.  The best ones look for internal conflicts, remorse, love, hate, insecurity, trauma, grief, happiness, duty and responsibility.  Spider-Man: Brand New Day covers all of these bases.

One of the year’s best films.

NOVOCAINE (2025)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTORS: Dan Berk, Robert Olsen
CAST: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 82% Certified Fresh

PLOT: When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped, a man incapable of feeling physical pain turns his rare condition into an unexpected advantage in the fight to rescue her.


Just when I thought the John Wick franchise had shown me everything there was to see in terms of modern action films, along comes Novocaine.  If there are philosophical rumblings at the heart of the screenplay, I didn’t see them.  There is a brief scene where a character says probably the deepest line in the film, something along the lines of, “We all have something to hide.  Maybe we’re just looking for someone to show it to.”  Apart from that, though, this movie is a machine designed for one thing: thrill you and make you laugh and cringe all at the same time.  That’s three things, but you get the point.

Because this machine has only one purpose, any criticisms accusing it of not doing something it wasn’t designed for are moot.  You don’t eat a cheeseburger and then complain it didn’t taste like chateaubriand.  I got what the movie’s goals were after 10-15 minutes – or, actually, even after just watching the red-band trailers.  I went in with eyes wide open, and I was not disappointed.  My only real complaint is that those same trailers gave away a little too much of the very best fight scenes in the film, ruining two of the best gags (the deep fryer and the ball-and-chain).  But I forgive the trailer editors because the rest of the movie was so freaking entertaining.

Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid, whose father’s famous smile will haunt his face for the rest of his life) is an assistant bank manager living with a very real genetic disorder called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, or CIP.  He literally cannot feel pain, to the degree that he can’t even chew solid food because he could theoretically chew off bits of his tongue and not realize it.  His obligatory meet-cute with the love interest, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), involves him spilling scalding hot coffee on his hands, but of course he doesn’t feel a thing.  One thing leads to another, and they spend the night together.  Apparently, Nate can’t feel pain, but pleasure is another story.  (I thought that scene might include a homage to Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis’s love scene in Some Like It Hot [1959], but alas.)

Next day, as is revealed in the trailers, three robbers dressed as Santa Claus rob his bank, kill his boss, and take Sherry hostage.  On impulse, he takes off after them in a stolen police car, which of course leads authorities to believe he’s in on the case.  This also leads to the first of several jaw-dropping fight scenes, not because they’re insanely choreographed like a Jackie Chan movie, but because the physical violence shown on screen goes beyond anything I can remember seeing before in a fight scene.  Maybe Oldboy (2003) comes close.

Fair warning: if you are squeamish, this movie is simply not for you.  Just in the first fight scene alone, we see Nate get kicked, punched, seared by a scalding hot frying pan, and burned horrifically, which results in him wearing a bandage (and a disturbingly realistic prosthetic) on his hand for the rest of the movie.  The comedy comes from equal parts watching as Nate gets injured and simply powers through it, and from cringing and cursing and covering your face as those injuries occur.

I won’t give anything else away.  The movie does include an intriguing story development that I did not see coming.  My fellow Cinemaniac, Anthony, also made an interesting observation.  It was unusual to see a clearly comic film featuring so many actual deaths: multiple cops murdered after the bank robbery, a death inside the bank itself, and the body count keeps adding up as Nate gets closer and closer to rescuing Sherry.  Nate himself contributes (minimally) to the body count, but it’s mostly the bad guys killing anyone who gets in their way.  Is it possibly to balance almost slapstick physical comedy with so many, almost gratuitous deaths?

For myself, I didn’t think so.  I look at a movie like Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), with umpteen deaths, but it’s a movie that’s clearly having fun with the kung-fu genre, which requires lots of death.  Novocaine felt to me like a riff on the John Wick movies.  John Wick mows through LEGIONS of bad guys, getting punched and shot and sometimes falling from four-story buildings onto vans and just getting up, brushing himself off, and moving to the next fight scene.  Nathan Caine does the same thing, just not with legions of bad guys, but you’re constantly aware that he could be killed at any minute.  That kept the stakes raised, so I didn’t feel like I was watching a video game come to life.

Novocaine might be the most fun I’ve had at the movies in 2025 so far.  I laughed a lot, I CRINGED a lot (usually while I was laughing), and uttered more curse words at the screen than I have in a long time (usually “JEEEsus!” or “Oh SHIT”).  The story doesn’t quite reinvent the wheel, but the execution is superb.  Just to restate my warning from earlier: if you don’t like graphic onscreen violence, stay away.  Everyone else, enjoy!

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING

By Marc S. Sanders

Spider-Man: Homecoming makes some enormous strides with the most recognizable of all the Marvel Corporate Mascots. I’m just not sure I care for the approach.

The Web Slinger has always been best written when he learns from his mistakes such as grappling with his lack of responsibility that leads to the murder of his beloved Uncle Ben, or washing his red and blue suit with the whites.

In director John Watts film, episodes like these are never discussed. Instead, we witness Spidey foil an ATM robbery. It’s a fun scene straight out of the Saturday morning cartoon, but it ends with a beloved neighborhood mom and pop store going up in flames. The scene plays like a great house party until the parents arrive home early from their out-of-town trip. Now it ain’t so fun anymore. There are a few moments like this in the film that kinda suck the air out of a what’s supposed to be lighthearted script.

Tom Holland as the hero, Peter Parker, aka the high school genius with insecurity, is suitably cast in the role. He looks much more like a kid than his predecessors and he’s got great comic delivery of one liners. Tom Holland is right for the MCU fraternity. He plays well with others.

So Holland really makes sure every action scene is fun but Watts and his screenwriting team of 8 (EIGHT!?!?!?) people pull the rug out because they must insist that the Web Head screw up again and again. Problem is the screw ups are not fun, and they spoil the thrilling set pieces including a well done sequence within the elevator shaft of the Washington Monument. Same goes for a Staten Island Ferry attack. I just kept asking myself, why we can’t we celebrate Spider-Man. Must we be so hard on the guy? Even Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) disapproves. It doesn’t seem fair, I guess.

There is a moment during the 3rd act that salutes a very popular comic issue that truly conveys the hero that Spider-Man must become. As a comic nerd, I was grateful for that. The filmmakers didn’t forget its roots.

Michael Keaton is scary good as Adrian Toomes, the winged villain called The Vulture. He’s not even playing for laughs. Rather he’s playing for fear. I liked it. Keaton is just good in almost anything.

Supporting players are all good as well featuring Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Jacob Batalon (an especially amusing sidekick pal for Peter), Zendaya and Robert Downey Jr because a little Iron Man/Tony Stark interaction can go a long way.

However, this installment is huge step up from the Andrew Garfield clunkers but not as solid as Sam Raimi’s first two films which remain the best and most loyal to the original vision of the pop culture favorite. Raimi has no difficulty displaying the super hero’s every day faults and mistakes. What he did was make us feel sad about Peter’s errors in his ways, and we cheered when he overcame his obstacles. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, I shake my head with disappointment at the carelessness of Peter, not the mistakes he’s made.

See, to be reckless is not the same as human error. Watts’ interpretation is judged with disdain. Raimi’s is simply empathetic and relatable. That’s the difference in the two interpretations.

PS: My hat off to a great gag with Captain America as a lesson reminder in safety and well-being. It’s not as well remembered that Chris Evans has been hilarious in other films before his superhero days. That’s all brought back with great material for Cap to use. Really smart thinking here.