Re-enter the comic-bookily animated world of Miles Morales, a Spider-Man but not the only Spider-Man, in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, a beautiful and fun new adventure.

Miles (voice of Shameik Moore) is doing a shaky job at balancing his life as a promising student at a smart-kid school who is carrying his parents’ — Rio (voice of Luna Lauren Velez) and Jefferson (voice of Brian Tyree Henry) — big expectations for his future and his job as a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. This is perhaps why he’s a little too flip and dismissive when battling the “villain of the week” The Spot (voice of Jason Schwartzman), whom he ditches to rush to a parent-principal conference. The Spot was himself messing with multi-verses; one experiment brought a certain radioactive spider to the Miles Morales world. But then he was blown up in an explosion I sort of remember from the first movie and now he is partly made of wormhole. We first meet him trying to use his wormholes to break into an ATM at a bodega. But then he realizes he can wormhole into himself and then travel through various universes — such as a universe entirely of Lego, for example, or one where New York City is called Mumbattan and is a massive, Mumbai-like megalopolis (with its own Spider-Man, one Pavitr Prabhakar voiced by Karan Soni).

This multi-verse-hopping and the associated destruction bring the attention of an elite group of Spider-persons who go around fixing multiverse breaches. One of these Spiders is the Spider-Woman Gwen Stacy, known as Wanda (voice of Hailee Steinfeld) when Miles first met her in the last movie. He is delighted to see her and when he learns that her visit to his universe was part of a mission, he decides to follow her into the multi-verse. Thus does he meet other Spiders she works with: Jessica Drew (voice of Issa Rae), a motorcycle-riding bad-ass Spider-Woman who kicks bad-guy butt while being pregnant; Miguel O’Hara (voice of Oscar Isaac), the very intense leader of the Spider team; Hobie (voice of Daniel Kaluuya), a supercool Sex-Pistols-y British punk Spider-Man whose friendship with Wanda makes Miles all jelly, and returning Spider-Man Peter B. Parker (voice of Jake Johnson), who I thought of as the schlubby Spider-Man in the first movie and who now wears a BabyBjorn-type pouch to carry around his Spider-powers-having toddler Mayday.

At first, Miles is eager to be a part of this supercool team of Spider people. But then he starts to become uneasy with their philosophy of putting adherence to canon and the events that make a Spider-Man who they are in all timelines — the death of an uncle, the crushing of a police captain — even over the life of, say, Miles’ dad, a police officer on the brink of promotion to captain.

It’s a nice bit of business, toying with the whole “canon” thing. Do all Spider-Man stories need an Uncle Ben-type to die after telling that universe’s Spidey that with great power comes great responsibility? Can Miles make his own choices, be both the city’s Spider-Man and a loving son? This movie seems to be folding in some “thinking about fans thinking about franchises” in its story of a teenager finding his way. And it folds in cinematic Spiders-Man past, from a little nod to the tangential Venoms to a nice cameo from an iteration of the last live-action Spider-Man. It ‘s a lot, but it all works and comes together to make something that feels like a fun recognition of all the ways we’ve seen Spider-Man over the last two-plus decades while also being its own thing.

Of course, all of this, good though it is, is very secondary to this movie’s visuals, which are absolutely beautiful and would, if this movie did nothing else right (and it does lots of things right), make this movie a “year’s best” contender on their own. This movie looks great. It does such awesome things with illustration style and color and little touches with the build of this character or the style of that one to convey who they are. It also uses these visuals to augment the emotions in a very comic book/graphic novel way, playing with color when, for example, Wanda tries to talk to her police captain dad (voice by Shea Whigham) to show them either far apart or coming together. Or playing with scale or with the size of the characters in the frame. It’s such a joy to look at and it gives the movie a liveliness that makes it feel shorter than its over two-hour runtime.

I’ll spoil this much about how Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ends — it doesn’t. We get the words “to be continued” on the screen and while that sort of thing normally drives me nuts (focus on the movie we’re currently watching, not the sequel! — is my usual anguished cry) I don’t think it gets in the way of enjoyment of this movie. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is so enjoyable that I don’t mind having sat through a 140-minute Part 1 and am excited for March 2024 when, Wikipedia says, I’ll get to see Part 2. A

Rated PG for sequences of animated action violence, some language and thematic elements, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. I would definitely let a tween kid watch it but might hold off for younger elementary kids. Common Sense Media, which tends to be a decent judge, pegs it at 9+. Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson with a screenplay by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is two hours and 20 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Sony Animated Pictures.

You Hurt My Feelings (R)

Julia Louis-Dreyfus accidentally glimpses behind the veil of niceties that keeps marriage and society functional in You Hurt My Feelings, a smart if meandering comedy written and directed by Nicole Holofcener.

Beth (Louis-Dreyfus) is a moderately successful writer whose memoir did OK but whose latest book is not getting the interest she’d hoped for from her publisher. What do they know, your book is great, her husband, Don (Tobias Menzies), assures Beth, always responding to her request to read drafts by telling her how much he likes it. But then, while Beth is shopping with her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins), Beth and Sarah overhear Don telling Sarah’s husband, Mark (Arian Moayed), how much he doesn’t like the book. Sarah is devastated — that her husband would lie to her, that he would dislike this book that she considers such a part of herself.

She doesn’t tell Don right away that she knows his true feelings, and thus he is bewildered with her anger at him. Of course all around this one untruth are a swarm of other things people say out of kindness and encouragement: Beth telling her college writing students that their pieces and ideas are good and interesting; Sarah always telling Mark what a great actor he is; Beth telling Don that he doesn’t look tired (Don is a therapist and one couple basically tells him he looks too tired for them to expect much out of him that day); both Beth and Don encouraging their definitely bright and talented son Eliot (Owen Teague), definitely too bright and talented to be working at a pot shop in Brooklyn, a-hem, they nudgingly say to him.

Even Beth seems to realize both that her hurt is real and that there really isn’t anything else Don could have said to her. They are a solid couple who love each other and love their son, who loves them back, even if all three of them annoy the poo out of each other at times. All four members of the central two couples dramatically state a desire to pitch their chosen career, which feels like a very normal reaction to having just enough success to feel like you should have more success and a general exhaustion with whatever the difficulties of said career are (other people, usually). There are few real problems here, just little pinpricks of annoyance at life, conveyed in familiar ways.

You Hurt My Feelings does feel longer than its 93 minutes but it is also at its best when giving its attention to one moment, one conversation and all the layers of things happening within it. This movie is very good at letting you see everyone’s discomfort and feel all the adjustments they’re making in the moment to try to keep on trucking through the conversation or the situation. This movie isn’t particularly buoyant but it is light and it never takes itself too seriously or tips into mockery of its characters.

Louis-Dreyfus is, naturally, the standout here. She just radiates genuine good-hearted imperfection. Like, yes she is this un-self-aware but also she’s not terrible. And, sure, she is the beautiful actress we’ve seen on TV for decades but she’s also able to access the goofy awkwardness of a real human. She helps make this solid if not brilliant movie enjoyably watchable. B

Rated R for language and for, like, who under the age of “I pay for my own health insurance” is watching this film?, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener (see also 2013’s Enough Said and 1996’s Walking and Talking), You Hurt My Feelings is an hour and 33 minutes long and distributed in theaters by A24.

Featured photo: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse