Lukas labus

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is exactly the kind of Spider-Man movie I wanted after No Way Home. It doesn’t try to be bigger than everything that came before it. It just brings the focus back to Peter and I honestly missed that. The action is great but the quieter scenes are what stayed with me. The movie actually lets Peter exist outside of the suit and those moments ended up meaning more to me than any fight. I also loved how grounded it feels. New York finally feels like Spider-Man’s city again and the web swinging finally feels fast again. One thing I really appreciated is that it never falls into the usual Marvel formula. It isn’t busy teasing five other projects or throwing in random cameos just for a reaction. It never feels like it’s trying to sell you the next movie. It just does its own thing and I really liked that. I honestly just liked seeing Peter be Peter again. That’s the part of Spider-Man I’ve missed the most. No matter how many times life knocks him down he still gets back up and keeps going. I left the theater thinking this is the Spider-Man I’ve been missing.

Resurrection is the kind of film that reminds me why I love cinema in the first place. I spent the first hour trying to connect everything, then eventually gave up. Weirdly, that’s when it really clicked. It stopped feeling like a puzzle and started feeling like a memory. You don’t remember memories in a straight line either. The whole idea of a world where people can no longer dream genuinely got to me. Bi Gan isn’t really talking about sleep. It feels like he’s talking about what happens when people lose their imagination, their memories, the things that make them feel alive. Everyone is still there, but something important is missing. I also loved how the film keeps changing. Different time periods, different genres, different moods, but it never felt like it was showing off. It just felt like cinema remembering itself. That was probably my favourite part. There were shots that I knew I’d never forget, even if I couldn’t explain exactly why they affected me. That’s rare. Usually I leave a film thinking about the story. Here I left thinking about a feeling I still can’t really put into words. I know this is going to be one of those films I come back to every few years. Not because I think I’ll finally “understand” it, but because I’ll probably understand something different about myself every time I watch it.