Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a visually spectacular but unsatisfying animated superhero movie

***

General release

2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse did not just happen to be one of the greatest Spidey adventures to ever hit the screen. It also staked a valid claim to be regarded as one of the finest animated movies of all-time.

The production’s game-changing reputation did not just rest on its radical visual design, which resembled a session spent poring over a vintage, mass-produced comic from yesteryear. This was also where the multiverse – now a widely accepted staple of cinematic storytelling after the Oscar-winning success of Everything Everywhere All At Once – first showed its true potential as a narrative device.

Fast-forward five years and the arrival of a two-part sequel titled Across the Spider-Verse comes with some heavy expectations attached. While the visuals once again addictively shut down and reboot a viewer’s mind repeatedly, the scripting is not as enthralling or involving as it was before.

The sprawling storyline is near-impossible to summarise adequately, apart from the discovery of the Spidey teen rookie Miles (Shameik Moore) that it is now possible to jump between universes. While this opens the door for many other Spider-Men (and Women) to enter and change up the tale, it does not always make for riveting or coherent viewing.

Especially when (just like the recent Fast X) everything is set to end with an inconclusive, see-you-next-movie cliffhanger.

YOU HURT MY FEELINGS (M)

***1/2

General release

This poised and consistently amusing comedy of manners pivots upon one not-so-little white lie. This mistruth threatens to discolour and perhaps even permanently stain a marriage that was once so perfectly presentable.

Anyone who has ever been in a relationship where one partner needed unequivocal support from the other – but crucially, not their honest opinion – will recognise and indeed relish what goes on in You Hurt My Feelings.

Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld and Veep fame) has carved out a respectable career for herself as a writer. Her most recent book could have sold more units, but it has done well enough to prompt her publisher to ask for another.

The new manuscript is not coming along so well. While it is almost finished, Beth has her lingering doubts that it might not be as good as the last one.

Thank heavens, then, for the unwavering support of her unflinchingly devoted husband Don (Tobias Menzies, last seen as Prince Philip in The Crown).

A psychiatrist by trade, Don has always been there to boost Beth’s ego and guide her through the final maze of insecurities that leads to the finishing of a book.

Most importantly of all, after so many years together, Beth and Don are still very much in love. So much in love, in fact, that their adult son Eliot (Owen Teague) cannot bear to be around his parents for long.

Then comes that all-important white lie with the dark consequences. While out on a shopping trip with her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins), Beth spies Don in casual conversation with Sarah’s husband Mark (Arian Moayed from Succession).

Thinking it might be fun to eavesdrop on the goofy things guys say to each other, Beth and Sarah sneak up and listen in.

However, the fellas aren’t making idle chitchat about sports, cars or weather. Don is confiding in Mark that he can’t stand Beth’s latest writing venture. Continually reading all the new, same-ish drafts and issuing the same old faint praise is doing his head in.

Beth creeps away and enters a state of personal shock that proceeds to nudge her impossibly steady marriage to the brink of a possible meltdown.

Don’t be tricked into thinking the storytelling stakes are set too low in You Hurt My Feelings. Not when actors of such a high calibre such as Louis-Dreyfus and Menzies are involved.

With a clever, incisive screenplay to work with, these two fine lead actors (and an equally excellent group of support players) take a minor situation and spin it into something major. Not just by hitting the punchlines with unrelenting accuracy, but by finding every fine, flawed detail in their characters.

TO CATCH A KILLER (MA15+)

**1/2

Selected cinemas

While there is not much wrong with this solid crime procedural set in present-day Baltimore, there nothing too remarkable about it either.

Shailene Woodley plays Eleanor, a so-so cop who has designs on becoming an FBI agent. A mass shooting in her city allows Eleanor an opportunity to advance her career prospects by assisting a veteran FBI investigator named Lammark (Ben Mendelsohn) find the mysterious gunman.

After establishing the basics of its story quite vividly, the movie hits auto-pilot in its middle stretches to the point where it begins to get quite boring. Make it past this drab dip in quality and you will be rewarded with a surprisingly gripping, well-constructed dramatic climax.

Originally published as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will blow your mind but leave you wishing there was more